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What’cha Watchin’?

Getting crazy with editorial intern Austin Sanders

February 23, 2018, Screens

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (The CW)

Musicals are cool now (sorry to theatre nerds who always thought they were cool), and one of the coolest is Rachel Bloom's CW series. The show has previously succeeded by trading in hilarious riffs on romantic-comedy cliches, but the third season has really dialed up the show's sense of drama. Bloom and her writers have humanized the "crazy" in the show's title in ways that most TV struggles to do, let alone a show that features songs like "Period Sex" and "The First Penis I Saw."

The Ritual (Netflix)

I am 100% there for any horror movie that sends a group of overly confident adventurers into an eerie environment where evil is sure to lurk. The latest from David Bruckner, the director behind the "Amateur Night" segment of found footage anthology V/H/S, fits that bill precisely. The Ritual follows a group of British blokes as they hike through a Swedish national park in search of understanding after the tragic death of a friend six months prior. They eventually make the unwise decision to take a shortcut through a densely wooded area that practically screams "DO NOT ENTER," and are met with a series of supernatural phenomena that ranges from grotesque to psychologically tortuous. Recommended for anyone who needs more reason to avoid joining their outdoor friends on any spring camping trips.

Frontline (PBS)

The folks behind the PBS documentary series have produced some of the most important investigative journalism over the past few decades and the latest series has proved no different. Already this year it aired a two-hour report on Europe's migration crisis, an hour on the MS-13 gang crackdown in the U.S., and a two-part investigation into the sectarian conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran that has plagued the Middle East for decades.

– Intern Austin Sanders

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