I don’t watch the Academy Awards. In a town built on cowardice and complicity in the face of fascism and entertainment as distraction over art as liberation, Hollywood and its institutions are ill-equipped to judge, let alone honor the best art produced in a year. So, I didn’t tune in to watch the two best singers in the joint with the most challenging performances of the year in a very radical film open up the awards show and bring the house down only to later lose awards to less challenging performances in offensive and exploitative films. I just caught the clips on Threads later.

But what I did see again this year—as every year—is a constant yearning for the validation of institutions that were created explicitly to keep us out. Social media was abuzz with praise for the Academy awarding “the first Black man” costume designer, the “first Dominican,” “the first Palestinian film,” in the Academy’s 97-year history, as if these are not embarrassing, damning indictments of this institution’s white supremacy and cultural irrelevance.

There were also cries about the lack of political speeches from the Oscars pulpit in an era of fascism and repression. Folks were big mad that Zoe “I did blackface and wore a prosthetic nose to play Nina Simone” Saldaña didn’t acknowledge the trans community or our government’s violent transphobia in her acceptance speech…for a movie that is undeniably transphobic and racist garbage. Others were upset about the visually stunning Dune: Part Two not getting its due when it’s literally the story of an Arab liberation group fighting a bunch of white colonizers for their lives, liberty, resources and land. Not quite this crowd’s cuppa tea! Though none of the Dune 2 cast or crew ever spoke up for Palestine as they appropriated Muslim fashion on the red carpet for their press tour, at least The Brutalist star Guy Pearce wore a Free Palestine pin on the red carpet last night. But I’m much more interested in the protestors who gathered outside the Dolby Theater in Hollywood to disrupt traffic and the red carpet with chants of “While you’re watching bombs are dropping” and “No celebration until liberation.”

The message was further elevated from the main stage when No Other Land, the Palestinian film about the zionist state’s illegal and brutal occupation of Palestine, managed to win Best Documentary in a room full of seething zionists. Its director Basel Adra used his acceptance speech to call on the world to “stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.” But the insult to injury was swift when the film’s Israeli co-director both-sided the genocide, centered himself, and “intertwined” Palestinian suffering under settler colonialism with his own suffering as a… *checks notes* …settler colonialist.

Without a doubt, in Zionist Hollywood, No Other Land could not have won as a purely Palestinian film by Palestinian filmmakers about Palestinians surviving oppression. They must be dignified and validated by a liberal zionist co-signer who will come behind a Palestinian and undermine his speech about liberation from zionist occupation and oppression by papering over it with the equivalent of a “coexist” bumper sticker.

And that’s just what made it into the ceremony.

As I mentioned last year, Marianne Jean-Baptiste in Hard Truths and Clarence Maclin in Sing Sing gave two of the best performances of the year and would never be recognized by the Academy for those performances. MJB played with care what this industry dismissed as an “angry Black woman,” but who was actually deep in suffering and depression, relentless and hilarious, harrowing and heartbreaking. Black women don’t win Oscars for roles that don’t service a white supremacist understanding of Blackness. We barely win them at all.

And Sing, Sing—a film about incarcerated men at the infamous prison finding hope and healing through a dramatic arts program—was 2024’s best film, not just thematically and cinematically. Still, it would never have a chance. This is not just because of the subject matter and the fact that white Academy voters refuse to watch themselves being racist on screen anymore (the “woke” days are over, hunny.) But also because of the radical way the film was made.

The film’s star, Colman Domingo, was paid the exact same amount for his work on the film as the film’s most entry-level worker, a production assistant. Each person who worked on the film also received an investment stake in the film so that the film’s financial success would be split amongst its workers based on the amount of work they did for the film. Workers owning the means of production? Not in Hollywood. The institution not only has every reason to dismiss the great art and message of this film, it also has every motivation to prevent its mass success. What if others see the model and *gasp* start to emulate it? This is a town built on hierarchy. The Academy is the zenith of elitism. Who would it serve to remind people that our power collectively surpasses the power of their institutions?

In 2023, after Beyoncé lost Album of the Year at the Grammys for the best work of her career, Renaissance, and several Black directors and Black women’s performances were ignored at the Oscars, I wrote a piece on “The Grammys, The Oscars, and the Prison of the White Imagination.” Despite Beyoncé winning her long-coveted Album of the Year Grammy this year for an album I’ll never listen to twice, the ideas I shared on these entertainment institutions and their purposes still stand, as well as our need as artists to tear them all down. Here’s an excerpt:

“We know that radical queer AF Black art like Bey’s “Renaissance” album is not going to be rewarded by anti-Black, white supremacist institutions, right? We know, but we still show up to the tweet party, we still turn on the TV with our fingers crossed, hoping against hope — only to be reminded of what we already know.

Take some time, lick your wounds, but please, my people, stand up.

Every year, these white supremacist institutions do the exact same thing, sprinkling a few wins for colored folks here and there to make believe that the door to the ultimate white validation prizes is still open. And every year, Black artists pour their hearts into their art, breaking records and literally creating the culture that makes every industry move, only for the door to be slammed in their faces.

It’s been 65 Grammys ceremonies, 95 Oscars ceremonies; what is it going to take?

And I’m not asking white people how much harder we need to tap dance for their love. The point of white supremacy, after all, is to be and remain supreme. There is nothing we can do but be beneath them, living or dead, as far as white supremacy is concerned. So, I’m asking us, my people, what is it going to take for us to get off their self-defeating, goal-post-moving hamster wheel of white supremacy?

Step one is acceptance, and that’s always the hardest. Wouldn’t it be easier if white people just stopped being racist? If they uprooted the systems of power that keep them in control of resources to the detriment of every other group of people that isn’t white? Sure. But at what point in history have they ever just stopped of their own accord?

There was an entire war fought over slavery, so, they didn’t freely stop back then. For about six months in 2020, white people and their institutions pretended that the cold-blooded murder of George Floyd by police was enough to change entire systems, to uproot the historic rot of anti-Black racism that had been their playground for actual centuries. But I’ll remind you, it wasn’t the snuff video of his brutal murder that brought about even the pretense of change; it was the masses who took to the streets around the world and the protestors who burned the Minneapolis Police 3rd Precinct headquarters to the ground in the name of Floyd that incited governments and corporations to act.

Now the backlash to even the tiniest movement of the needle has been so swift that our society has literally regressed in all areas, as white people have put their New York Times best-selling anti-racism books back on the shelf, never to be seen again. Ron DeRacist has made it actually against the law in Florida to teach white people their own abhorrent history. We’re back to denying that white supremacy and anti-Black racism are systemic systems of belief that control entire industries around the world. So no, my people, they are not going to just stop — not on the big stuff, like the system of policing or education, and not on the more subtle stuff, like the systems of creating and validating the images and sounds that shape our daily lives.

Your album won’t make them do it. Your movie won’t. Your talent won’t. You may wind up being in the handful of Black people who won a big one, who made history as a “first,” who gets invited into all of the rooms, who gets a seat at their table. But these industries only work by continuing the illusion that anyone can succeed in them if they work hard enough. Any success you get within their industries will not only be used against you when you hit the Black ceiling, but also against every other Black person who never even makes it through the door. No amount of Black success within their institutions will ever uproot the anti-Black reasons for which these institutions were created in the first place.

They were created to hoard wealth. They were created to seize power. They were created to quash organizing and rebellion of the working class.

As the evil Oscars architect himself, Louis B. Mayer, once said, “I found that the best way to handle [moviemakers] was to hang medals all over them. If I got them cups and awards, they’d kill themselves to produce what I wanted. That’s why the Academy Award was created.”

The Grammys were literally created by white record executives who were upset about the impact of rock and roll on popular music and culture, with the goal of controlling the standard for what “quality” music is.

This is what the white imagination does; it stifles everything around it, keeping us in a loop of bland mediocrity, as they sit as judge and jury over the “quality” of our inherent right to create. The architects could not have been more explicit in sharing their nefarious purpose. Subsequent generations could not be more explicit in their intent to enact their nefarious plans in perpetuity.

Mother Toni Morrison once said, “the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. … None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”

We’ve tried begging. We’ve tried shaming. We’ve tried being more excellent than the white imagination can ever hold. But there will always be one more thing. The white imagination is a prison. It’s past time for us to tear it all down.

Their awards shows would crumble without Black talent in the audience, on the stage and in the virtual audience making them relevant. Let them crumble. But we cannot stop there.

In its place, we must not build the same institutions with the same white supremacist values, as we’ve seen time and again Black institutions upholding colorism, transphobia, queerphobia, ableism, capitalist exploitation and misogynoir, like good foot soldiers for white supremacy. Instead, we must get liberated from the white imagination that says we can’t be as boundless as we were created to be.

In the world that we artists create, there will be no anger and heartbreak over white supremacist snubs because the art we create was never for them and their rubrics and their judgment in the first place. We must reimagine ourselves as artists unchained by the desire for their distraction trophies.

We need the radical imaginations of the artists to create outside of these systems of oppression. If they’ve created systems to squash collective power, then we already know what we must do. We must organize the financing for our art. We must organize its production. We must organize our own distribution. Let’s pour our collective power into this work, into building the artists’ world, where we are free to work and create in safe environments for livable wages.

When we march and tear down and rebuild, let it not be for the goal of a VIP suite in their prison or a cell with a view; let it be for our total liberation from the limits of what they’ve said is possible.”

Turn the TV off on the Oscars and Grammys; stop submitting to them and lending them your credibility, culture and influence, and watch their power whither on the vine as we build another possible world together.

Stay watchin’,

Brooke

*Spoilers for Severance seasons 1 and 2 and Trigger-Warning for discussion of r-pe*

I’ve been having a ball talking Severance theories with folks on social media every week after each episode. I love that the show asks the audience to think deeply about its premise of a corporation whose employees volunteer for a severance procedure that prevents them from knowing what work they do all day and that the show gives us new clues each week to help us solve the show’s mysteries. I love that we’re debating the ethics of the procedure which essentially creates a whole new person (the “innie”) who’s enslaved to the corporation and has no memory of their “outie’s” life. It’s fascinating and disturbing, the lengths we go to in order to avoid feeling pain or even discomfort. I love a show that makes the audience examine our own character.

The fun of theorizing around a mystery-box show like Severance is coming up with theories that are rooted in actual evidence that the show’s writers and performers give to the audience: through dialogue, cinematography, props, production design, body language, facial expressions, etc. I’ve seen some AMAZING theories so far, but I’ve also seen some duds. Truly, some of us are watching the show with our Third Eye and the other two are closed! But, it’s been awhile since we had a mystery-box show this epic—(maybe Lost in the early aughts?)—so, I understand if we’re a bit out of practice. And sometimes our theories wind up revealing more about us and the way we view the world rather than whatever the showrunners might have intended.

One theory that has been getting on my last nerve for the past few weeks is that Lumon’s highest-ranking Black un-severed employees are going to team up to take the company down. Yes, according to some loud fans, Severed Floor Manager Seth Milchick and Natalie, the comms director and public face of Lumon, are oppressed prisoners who will band together to take down their evil corporation. Again, that’s the middle manager of Evil Corp. and the actual public face of Evil Corp. Banding together. To take down the company they sold out to years ago. Okay.

It all started back in Season 1. Milchick was a deputy manager of the Severed Floor workers, or the “innies,” Mark S., Dylan G., Irving B. and Helly R. He often played the “good cop” to their floor manager Ms. Cobel’s “bad cop” (ignoring the fact that a cop is a cop, I guess). While each of the innies are called by their first names, Milchick and Cobel get the title of Mr. and Ms.—despite the fact that Milchick is much younger than Irving and at least not far enough in age from Mark, Dylan and Helly to be called Mr. But, by Lumon law, innies are not considered people. They are essentially enslaved to both Lumon and to their outies, who decide whether they live or die, what they eat, how they dress every day and more. That makes their managers, Mr. Milchick and Ms. Cobel, their overseers. Overseers, if you remember from slavery, are bad people.

But Milchick starts to get some sympathy early in season one when he sends our innie heroine Helly R. to the “break room.” Unlike the typical corporate break room where people, you know, take breaks, Lumon’s break room is a bit more literal. It’s intended to “break” the rebellious spirit of wayward innies by hooking them up to a lie detector test and making them read a pre-written apology statement thousands of times until the lie detector test says that they mean it. As Milchick tortures Helly in the break room—“I believe you still don’t mean it,” he repeats over and over —she pleads with him, like, hey, you’re a reasonable guy, you know torture is bad, don’t do this. And you know what he does? He proceeds to torture her anyway for the rest of her time on the clock that day and picks up again the next morning when she comes back to work. But he looked sad for a second when he did it! So people were like, “Oh, a flash of humanity??? Maybe he’s not so bad???” I repeat: he tortured Helly R. for several hours over a two-day period!

The actor who plays Milchick, Trammel Tillman, is fantastic in the role; he’s playing the character with layers; he can code switch with the best of them, and plaster on that corporate, toothy grin while he’s seething inside and lying straight to an innie’s face. It also doesn’t hurt that Trammel/Milchick is very good looking. And hey, audiences love a handsome villain redemption arc! So people are rooting for Milchick to one day stop being the bad guy.

Yet, by the end of Season 1, all he has done is spark a revolution with both his incompetence and his evilness. First, he accidentally leaves a radicalizing book from outside of Lumon for the innies to find that teaches them the exact opposite of what Lumon has been brainwashing them to believe: Your job needs you—not the other way around! Milchick also wakes up innie Dylan after work hours at outie Dylan’s home, where innie Dylan accidentally finds out his outie has a kid, a son who calls him daddy! Milchick rips the kid out of innie Dylan’s arms and puts Dylan back to sleep. This not only incentivizes Dylan to revolt, but also reveals to Dylan and the other innies that it’s possible for the innies to take over their outies after work—even off Lumon’s grounds. Big mistake, Milchick. Huge.

The final act of Milchick’s unmitigated evil in season one was to kill Irving’s budding love with fellow innie Burt. Once Milchick discovered that they were falling for each other, Milchick had Burt “retired,” which is Lumon corporate speak for killed, as an innie only exists on Lumon’s severed floor, and if their outie never comes back to work, the innie is essentially dead. It was unnecessarily cruel and the final straw that sent Irving, Lumon’s most faithful innie employee, into a rage. “Let’s burn this place to the ground!” Irving says, and that’s exactly what he, Dylan, Mark and Helly attempt to do in the season one finale—none of which would’ve happened without Milchick’s cruelty.

Half-way through Season 2, Milchick is still a torturous, evil company man, except now he’s been promoted for his troubles. With Cobel fired, he’s now floor manager, and though he’s pushed some ludicrous “kindness reforms,” (again, playing “good cop”) it’s evident that Milchick has no idea what kindness is. The break room has been transformed into an actual break room, with posters co-opting images from the innies’ season one revolution into corporate propaganda. Instead of being locked in their departments, as Milchick did to the team in season one, he’s now given them hall passes to roam the halls freely when they need a break. And he says he’s removed all the cameras and recording devices from the floor so the team can speak freely to each other. The best way to keep a prisoner is to make them believe they’re free, as Cobel said in season one. Of course, Milchick knows there’s a mole among the team that’s reporting back everything that they say, so what do they need cameras and recording devices for? Again, this is more of Milchick’s corporate cruelty shining through, treating the innies as subhuman things to be toyed with and manipulated for the needs of the company.

But then, Lumon was racist to him.

Genuinely, this is where all the “Milchick’s about to turn on Lumon!!” hot takes are coming from. The only Black guy in management—middle or otherwise—faced some racism this season from Lumon’s governing Board, and that is enough for people to not only sympathize with him but to project a radicalized spirit into him. Here’s what happened:

After Milchick is promoted to Cobel’s old job of Severed Floor Manager, Natalie, the Black comms director and liaison between Lumon’s Board and everyone else, comes into his new office with gifts. “The Board is jubilant at your ascension,” she tells him, speaking as the mouthpiece of the Board with that same plastered corporate smile Milchick does so well. “It wants you to feel appreciated.” Natalie gives him the gifts—a cycle of iconic paintings of Lumon’s founder (and god—did I mention Lumon is also a Scientology-level religious cult??) named Kier. Except in these paintings, the very white, blue-eyed Kier is in blackface. Painted dark brown, with a glorious mustache just like Milchick’s own. I’m surprised they didn’t also copy Milchick’s incredible ‘fro onto Kier as well.

Natalie explains that the Board wants him to be able to see himself in Kier and feel a connection. Actress Sydney Cole Alexander plays the scene with chilling ease, stuffing down any of Natalie’s unauthorized emotions.

“Oh, my!” Milchick says, taken aback by the gifts, but I’m not entirely sure why! Is he mad that his employer —whose whole business model is slavery —sees him as a Black person, instead of just “Seth, the great manager of the Severed Floor”? Or is he mad that the Board thinks he needs Kier to be Black in order for him to obey and be loyal to Kier and Lumon, even though he’s clearly done so for a number of years already? I guess it says something about Milchick that he’s not happy with this ridiculous, empty racist corporate gesture of “inclusion,” but I seem to be in the minority of people who don’t know exactly what the audience should get out of his discomfort with the portraits. The nicest way I could phrase my confusion is: Corporate sell-outs don’t like corporate sell-out things???

The sympathy for not only Milchick but Natalie got more intense when Natalie shares that the Board wants her to convey that they also gave her blackface Kier paintings when she ascended to her comms director/face of the company role. Yikes. Milchick struggles to express gratitude to the Board for the horrifying gifts and Natalie, ear-piece firmly in her ear, interrupts him to say, “The Board has ended the call,” through that blank staring grin she always wears. So they’ve both suffered a bit of racial humiliation at the hands of Lumon, with Natalie now serving as both the mouthpiece and the handmaiden of the Board, responsible for inflicting it on another Black employee. Milchick doesn’t blame her for her role, however, and tries to connect with her over the “complicated” feelings the paintings evoke, but she gives him nothing to bond over. She leaves and he buries the paintings in the back of his closet.

A month later, just before his first monthly performance review as floor manager (HILARIOUS, Severance writers! The only thing worse than a corporate performance review is having it monthly.) Milchick tries again to connect with Natalie over the paintings and she once again blank stares him into oblivion and says don’t keep our masters waiting. This has led people to conclude that Natalie is a prisoner of the Board—they may even be lurking inside of her head, if she’s severed!—and can’t connect with Milchick. I even saw a theory that Natalie must be severed to the point that she’s no longer a Black woman and that’s why she can’t connect with Milchick.

I hate to use this language, I truly do. But they have pushed me to the edge. Have these people never met a coon??????????

Genuinely! Non-rhetorical.

Have these theorists never met a Black person who identifies as Black and is the happiest agent of white supremacy one could ever meet? NYC Mayor Eric Adams. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Trump Secretary of Housing Ben Carson. Skinning and grinning, as the elders say! Not to leave out democrats: were these theorists asleep during the Biden genocide when his formerly pro-Palestine Black woman press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre became the administration’s mouthpiece, excusing and obfuscating the genocide of Palestinians? Did we forget the Black woman ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield who single-handedly (literally! it was her single raised hand that did it, several times!) blocked UN votes for a ceasefire in Gaza? Black people aren’t inherently immune to selling out other marginalized people for a check, for prestige, for power. They don’t have to “sever” from their Blackness to excuse their choices to advance, either. We just know, as the saying goes: all skinfolk aint kinfolk.

Milchick and also to a higher degree Natalie, are extremely powerful Black characters in the Severance world. Natalie not only serves as internal comms for Lumon (keeping even the CEO-in-waiting, Helly R.’s evil outie Helena, at arms length from speaking to the Board directly) Natalie is also literally the face of the company. In the pilot episode, we see the twice-marginalized Natalie out in front, taking the bullets from journalists on the news who questioned the legality and ethics of Lumon’s severance procedure. That grinning face defended, obfuscated, and shielded Lumon from accountability and criticism, all while presenting the company as an inclusive, progressive place just by hiring her, a Black woman, to be its public face.

Black agents of white supremacy whitewash their corporate and governmental overlords with their presence every day.

Remember when “Grandpa Joe”—the author of the Crime Bill which targeted and mass incarcerated hundreds of thousands of Black people while his own white criminal son walked free—was seen as not racist because he had a Black woman Vice President and played second fiddle to Obama for a few years? Remember when every criticism of Kamala upholding her genocidal boss’ policies—even when it was clear she would lose the election over it—was dismissed as racism and sexism against her? Remember when we couldn’t hold Obama accountable for expanding and exceeding Bush’s racist immigration policies; building 100 miles of border wall in Mexico; not closing Guantanamo Bay; droning more people (and American civilians!!) than any other president in history; signing the Blue Lives Matter law protecting police in the middle of the BLM uprisings; and deporting more people than any president until Biden’s term— because he was already facing racism from white people so we just had to sit on our hands? It’s not his fault he can’t do anything to help Black people specifically—they’ll kill him! Apologists hushed Black critics in the lead up to his 2012 re-election.

Well, damn. Wouldn’t it be better to get someone in power that can actually do something for us instead of being satisfied that the person with all the power who’s not doing anything for us is also Black??

If you can’t tell, these Milchick and Natalie defenses are triggering old wounds! I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see that the same people that think Natalie is in some Get Out sunken place situation held against her will by Lumon also have “The 92%” somewhere in their social media profiles. Get Out is an interesting parallel, though not for the reasons they point out. In the same way, eager audiences who have been socialized to see white women as inherently innocent, ignored every single evil thing that Allison Williams’ character Rose did in Get Out to proclaim that Rose was actually hypnotized by her parents and wasn’t doing evil things knowingly. The leaps, the bounds, the lies we tell to make conventionally attractive evildoers innocent of their crimes.

Natalie is a pretty, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, Black woman who did enough to earn the complete trust of the Board she represents. While we don’t yet know her backstory and why she chose to work at Lumon, we do see that she comes and goes freely onto the severed floor and in the outside world, showing zero signs that she is severed herself; showing zero signs that she doesn’t revel the power she has in her role—even putting CEO-in-training Helena in her place in episode 5 of season 2. She happily spouts Lumon propaganda on camera and off, and is even in the process of hijacking the book that radicalized the innies in season one in order to turn the book and its author into yet another Lumon propaganda tool. Co-opting a revolution is what Milchick and Natalie do best. (It’s giving Obamacore!) If being the mouthpiece for the slave-holding company didn’t radicalize Natalie, giving a fellow Black employee a few racist blackface paintings isn’t going to do it either.

Same with Milchick. Yes, the Board praised him in his monthly review for receiving the racist paintings with “grace” and appropriate enthusiasm, and that had to be humiliating. And sure, getting reamed out in a performance review for using paper clips the wrong way and using “too many big words” when he speaks has to be frustrating. Especially when they’re deriding his ideas as “calamitous” in the same breath! Being criticized for being “too kind” to the innies has to be upsetting when his whole identity is I’m the good cop (not to mention, as a tall, muscly, dark-skinned Black man, he has to be the least threatening version of himself to succeed in this snow-white corporate world). But Lumon’s biggest insult to Milchick’s injury to date might just be filling his old job of deputy floor manager with an actual child! Ms. Huang looks about 12 at most? She’s maybe a robot, maybe a clone, maybe a severed child with an adult’s consciousness in the chip in her brain—who knows! But as far as we the audience and the innies she supervises can tell, she’s an actual small child. Where Cobel had him as a right-hand man, he has a mouthy pre-teen who just might be ratting on him to his supervisors. The disrespect! And after all Milchick has done for these people!

But people have taken these racist inconveniences Milchick has suffered as evidence that this clearly power-hungry Black man is one small step away from leading the revolution against Lumon.

First, don’t disrespect my revolutionaries Helly R., Irving B., Mark S., and Dylan G. like that! They’ve already started the revolt inside Lumon. Not to mention, Dr. Asal Reghabi, the rogue Lumon doctor who left the company and has now reintegrated two severed employees. If you want some Black revolutionaries to cheer for in this show, Reghabi and Dylan G are right there. Milchick and Natalie, if they ever tire of the power they wield gleefully over others long enough to try and take Lumon down, they would be joining a revolution already in place, at best.

But I don’t think they will. Milchick is horrible to Dylan, a fellow Black man whom he doesn’t even see as human. He manipulates Dylan to obey him by dangling time with Dylan’s outie’s wife in front of him and threatening to take that time away if Dylan gets out of line. Just as Natalie has no racial solidarity with Milchick, Milchick has no racial solidarity with Dylan. Milchick lies to the innies as easily as breathing. He tortures them. He whitemails them. He throws their smores into the fire to punish them for laughing. He taunts Mark S. for being a victim of r-pe (more on this later). And he’s really mean to and resentful of his child-assistant, who, though annoying, is a child (maybe!). All in the name of Lumon. Some of this stuff is corporate policy. A lot of this stuff he chose to do on his own. If enslaving the innies instead of treating them like people wasn’t enough to radicalize him against this company, a little racism won’t do it either. Perhaps he’ll get fired like Cobel, and perhaps lie in wait for the chance to take down the company like I think Cobel is doing. But it will be about revenge, not moral obligation, not justice—not revolution.

And that brings us to the worst theory I’ve read yet: that Helena Eagan is also trapped by her family, against her will. Yes, the Evil Corp. CEO-in-waiting, and noted r-pist of innie Mark (yes, it was r-pe! Mark did not consent to having sex with Helena! He thought he was having sex with Helly R.! that is r-pe!) is somehow the real victim in all of this. Sure, Helena was only a child when she planted the idea in her father’s head (pun intended) that everyone in the world should be severed. But she’s a full-grown adult now—thirty years old, according to Milchick in the pilot episode—and doing her part to make sure that global severance domination happens.

Oh, she’s so sheltered by her family’s religious cult and she’s never had a boyfriend and she’s jealous that her innie has found love with Mark S. and she just wants to experience it for herself! NONSENSE. This lady is a legit psychopath. Did you see the look she gave to Irving in his tent when he refused to ignore the signs that she was a mole?

Terrifying!

She’s not down there on the severed floor to experience the love she’s never had—she’s not capable of it! She’s down there to spy, undermine the innies’ revolution, break down their alliance, and gain leverage to keep them under her control. This is why she manipulates Mark into having sex with her, r-ping him by deception, knowing that he believes she is someone else. That’s who Helena is—a manipulator and a deceiver. (This other theory, that Mark S. starts being mean and cold to everyone in ep. 5 because he’s “reintegrated” with his mean, cold outie rather than because he’s upset, hurt, confused, scared and violated in the aftermath of learning that Helena sexually assaulted him is disturbing! Reintegration is obviously a slow process, Mark is not yet fully reintegrated and the usually light-hearted Mark is reacting understandably to the trauma of Helena’s serious physical and emotional violation of his body and heart!)

What leverage Helena gains by r-ping Mark is yet to be seen, but it might be a pregnancy. Nothing like holding a man hostage with a baby—that’s as retro as your bangs, Helena! I hate this theory, but it seems to be an obvious outcome, since there is a baby crawling around with Kier’s head on it in front of Mark in the season two opening credits. The Kier baby’s head is also covered in snow that it shakes off, mimicking the snowy terrain of Woe’s Hollow, where Helena infiltrated the innies and r-ped Mark. Horrific if true!

R-pe is never about love or attraction, it’s always about power, and Helena, as the heir to Lumon, has the ultimate power over all of them, but especially the innies. It’s unclear what excuses she’s making—if any—for r-ping Mark, someone who is clearly deemed “special” to the company, though we still aren’t sure why yet. But we do know that Milchick knows what Helena did to him and uses it to threaten Mark S. in the elevator in episode 5 this season. Two evil heffahs ganging up on poor Mark.

Sure, Helena’s daddy, the current Lumon CEO, Jame Eagan, is the original evil one. He invented the severance procedure that enslaves everyone; He calls Helena “fetid moppet” when she embarrasses him in public; He raised her in a cult with no love and no care and no nurturing (seriously, where is her mother??). And you know what, thems the breaks sometimes. She is, again, 30 years old. She does not deserve innocence to be projected onto her. She’s shown nothing but delight at being cruel to people—from Cobel on down to the innies! I do not feel sorry for her and hope there is no redemption arc in her future. Let Helly take over Helena’s body full time and do something good with it, like pop a Plan B for starters, end the Eagan line and then destroy that company once and for all.

In my last piece on Severance, I wrote of the show’s premise as a metaphor for what capitalism forces us to do—sever from our humanity in order to survive. Milchick, Natalie, and to a lesser degree, the more powerful Helena, have metaphorically severed parts of their humanity in order to keep working at Lumon. Sure, they’re victims to varying degrees, in the way we’re all victims of capitalism. But that does not remove their agency. And that does not make them innocent. (The strong defenses of these characters choices though makes me wonder what excuses people are making for their own behaviors at work. If you see yourself relating to Helena, Milchick and/or Natalie, maybe change course ASAP!!)

Props are obviously due for not only Tillman, Alexander, and Britt Lower who plays Helena/Helly, as their nuanced portrayals of truly awful characters have sparked a level of audience sympathy that, as you can see, has blown my mind. But jumping out the window to see some phantom goodness in villainous characters only helps to obscure and excuse villainous behavior.

It’s concerning that people don’t see Helena tricking Mark into sex as r-pe. It’s concerning how much sympathy the Black characters who are doing evil things in order to gain power are getting just because the face-eating leopards they work for started nibbling on their faces. What did they expect?? In the meantime, let’s just enjoy these excellent TV villains for who they are and, if that’s where the writers are going with their characters, let these calamitous malefactors earn a redemption arc with their actions instead of our projections.

But let me go before the Board gets on me for being long-winded and using too many big words.

Stay watchin’!

Brooke

In the best of times, in the worst of times, we do language, as Toni Morrison says, and we make art. And these 10 incredible shows are nothing less than soul-stirring, heart-warming, fire-sparking art. Here are my picks for the best shows to watch on TV right now:

Abbott Elementary

This Black woman-led show about a group of passionate, under-resourced elementary school teachers is in its fourth season on network TV with a majority-Black cast and POC writers’ room. Throughout season four, Abbott has explored the impact of gentrification, labor strikes, and the ever-present racist education system —all while giving us goofy Black love and being laugh-out-loud funny in its, I REPEAT, fourth season! Already renewed for a fifth season, Abbott Elementary is a rare gift of a show that has only improved as the series goes on—giving us plenty of opportunities to tear up over its sweetness and cackle at the absurdity of the lovable cast of characters and their daily adventures at school. And we love when a series touches the heart both on and off screen—showrunner Quinta Brunson (whose mother is a retired teacher) and her team have been celebrated for the ways they have fiercely protected the cast of children on set and the staff during the writer’s strike of ‘23. And we’ve also seen Brunson use the show’s marketing budget to help teachers in Philly elementary schools get the funds they need for their classrooms. THIS is what great TV is all about: imagining another possible world and bringing it into reality.

Watch Abbott Elementary on Wednesdays on ABC and next day on Hulu.

Severance

If you haven’t yet read my deep-dive on Severance as a metaphor for how capitalism disassociates us from our bodies and our humanity to better control our labor, what are you waiting for? (There’s only mild spoilers in it for seasons one and two.) It is the best show on TV right now and I have not been this excited for a weekly drop of a show since Succession aired its final season in 2023. The show follows Mark Scout (Adam Scott) a grieving widower who has decided to undergo the severance procedure to work on the Severed floor of the mysterious corporation Lumon Industries. This is a brain surgery that severs his brain in two: his regular outside-of-work self (the “outie”) and his at-work self (the “innie”). He has no knowledge of what he does at work all day and his innie has no knowledge or memories of life outside of the Severed Floor of Lumon Industries, making the severed a corporation’s dream employees who can focus a full 8 hours solely on productivity and not breach corporate trust when they leave. What makes Mark and his co-workers choose something as drastic as severance is absolutely fascinating, and the answers continue to deepen and unfold over these first two seasons, along with what Lumon is up to and why they require their employees to undergo literal brain surgery to protect their nefarious secrets. Join me in existential crisis as the show makes us ponder such questions as: “who are we without our memories?” and “What does it mean to be human?” and “Who decides?” But my favorite lesson of the show so far is: Capitalism’s a b-tch, and then you revolt.

Watch Severance on AppleTV+.

Mo

In the season two premiere of Mo, now streaming on Netflix, the titular Mo is in a jam. Played by the stand-up comedian Mo Amer, who also created the show that’s loosely based on his life, Mo is a Kuwaiti-born Palestinian refugee in Houston, TX who’s been trying to get asylum for 22 years. Just months before his asylum hearing, he’s essentially kidnapped by the Mexican cartel and brought across the border into Mexico with no way to legally get back into America in time for his asylum hearing. When he has a chance meeting with the U.S. ambassador, Mo’s problems could disappear with the flick of the ambassador’s wrist— if Mo will just accept that there is an “Israel-Palestine conflict” instead of the truth: it’s an illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine. Mo refuses. This is the spirit of Mo and Mo: damn a career, damn the money, damn the platforms: it’s #FreePalestine and the truth or nothing at all. Extra points that Mo is actually hilarious in this scene that is also truly infuriating.

This is the beautiful balance the show creates. “We are more than just our pain,” Mo’s sister Nadia tells their mother who can’t stop doomscrolling through updates about the genocide in another episode. It’s a scene that takes you from crying to crying laughing when Nadia tells their mom to watch The Great British Bake-Off to unplug, and their mom starts back up again, reminding Nadia and the audience that Britain literally started this whole ugly occupation in the first place. No Bake-Offs for them!

I have not seen this level of integrity in a show centered on Palestinian characters since Hulu’s Ramy—probably because Mo and Ramy are the only two Palestinian-led shows I’ve seen on American TV. Executive produced and co-created by Ramy star Ramy Youseff, Mo is also the only Palestinian show on TV currently (Ramy is on a long hiatus before an eventual fourth and final season). And despite (or perhaps because of) its heavy themes, Mo is even stronger, funnier and more heartfelt in its second season as Mo grapples with the consequences of the draconian U.S. immigration system, the ongoing U.S.-Israeli genocide in Palestine, and his own poor choices in a world that gives him no good choices in the first place.

Being so close to the Mexican border in Houston, Mo incorporates the struggles of not only Mexican and other Hispanic immigrants, but also other Arab immigrants and West African immigrants as well, with supporting character Tobe Nwigwe’s Nick playing a first-gen Nigerian-American. If I have one complaint about this otherwise perfect show about global solidarity of oppressed people in struggle, it’s Nick’s (or Tobe’s) use of “nigga” to refer to Mo and his other non-Black friends. Thankfully, Mo doesn’t use the word nor do any other non-Black people in the show, but I cringed every single time Nick/Tobe did this. Just…why??

It’s corny, wack and anti-Black when Black Americans do this with non-Black folk too, but there’s an extra layer here of disrespect that’s specific to Black American culture when a word we flipped and reclaimed for ourselves is co-opted for use with non-Black people. Season 2 is rumored to be the final season, so they can’t address this in a season 3 (but there’s still time to let me in the edit bay! I’ll fix it!). But because this show is so good at highlighting a diverse group of intersecting struggles—including a really touching storyline about how disability is handled in the Palestinian community when his older brother finally gets diagnosed with autism in mid-adulthood—it really sucks that they dropped the ball when it comes to respecting Black American culture.

Otherwise, the entire Mo team has made one of the most important shows on TV under an extreme amount of pressure to address genocide and apartheid while still being funny and showing Palestinian joy as revolutionary. I dare y’all not to cry in the finale! And major kudos to Youseff and now Amer for taking every opportunity to make major studios pay for your trips back home to Palestine!! Run those Netflix and Hulu pockets for freedom and the right of return, IKTR!

Watch Mo season 2 on Netflix.

How to Die Alone

Well, this one sucks—not the show, of course, but the news that just came out that Natasha Rothwell’s How to Die Alone has been canceled after only one season at Hulu. The comedy series followed creator and star Rothwell as a dysfunctional airport worker who has a near-death experience while abandoned and alone on her birthday and decides to totally change her life—for better and for worse. In the 30-minute sitcom, Rothwell tackled issues of Black women’s loneliness, navigating the world in a fat body and finding purpose and self-love after 40. The only other show like this might be Survival of the Thickest, whose season 2 premieres on Netflix soon. But Rothwell’s witty, funny, heartbreaking show deserved more seasons to find its footing.

Watch How to Die Alone on Hulu before they take it off the platform!

Industry

If you miss Succession like I miss Succession (I’ve now mentioned Succession like 3 times in this one newsletter—I miss Succession!!!) then you’ll love its Gen Z fail-daughter, Industry. Another Sunday night HBO show that’s finally getting its due in its third season, Industry follows Harper Stern (a deliciously villainous Myhal’a) an investment banking prodigy (read: sociopath) and her entanglements with an industry that punishes weakness and rewards ruthlessness. “You’re not a killer,” Succession’s Logan Roy tells his son Kendall as to why he’ll never lead the family business, and let me tell you: Harper Stern has no such problems. What’s hilarious is that Succession actually explained hostile takeovers so well over the show’s four seasons that I understood exactly what was going on when Elon was forced into upholding his pledge to buy Twitter. But after three seasons of Industry, I have zero clue about investment banking and what it entails other than it’s absolutely evil, soul-rotting work—and that’s all I need to know. They say so much financial jargon and I don’t understand a word—sorry to that industry! But the audience doesn’t need to understand investment banking to enjoy the series because the actors’ faces tell us everything we need to know to either be in rapture or total suspense as the numbers on the stock market ticker tape go up and down. Season three focused less on Harper in the beginning to its detriment—we need our Harpsichord front and center!!—but it’s still a thrilling ride. She is the moment. Harper’s absolutely unhinged behavior makes this show a rollercoaster that will have you screaming at the TV and biting your nails for the next episode.

Watch Industry streaming on Max.

Interview with the Vampire

If I could describe my favorite vampire adaptation in one word it would be: genius. Though as a child, I loved the campy, homoerotic ‘90s film with Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and a (way too young!) Kirsten Dunst, that movie was more than a little bit racist. Brad’s Louis was an offensively “good” enslaver of Thandi Newton (et. al) on a Louisiana plantation in the 1700s. And the film actually toned down Louis’s racism—it’s nothing compared to how blatantly racist he is in the Anne Rice’s novel of the same name. So when the showrunner Rolin Jones was adapting Rice’s Vampire Chronicles series, he or someone on his team, had the, once again, genius, idea to make Louis Black, change the time period to the early 1900s, age up Claudia from 5 to a teenager so she could be played by an adult (who is also Black!!!!). Lestat, the infamous vampire devil, is still a centuries-old Frenchman, but instead of the blatantly homoerotic subtext of both the novel and the movie, the series is blatantly homoerotic text: an all-out interracial, interspecies (for an episode) “romance” —which I use loosely because trigger warning: domestic violence!

Instead of an enslaver, 19th century Black creole Louis de Pointe du Lac (played with such depth and longing by Jacob Anderson) is a pimp in New Orleans’ red light district. (Again, genius!) The grandson of an enslaved creole son of an enslaver, Louis comes from a Black family that inherited money and land. Unable to find “respectable” work for a negro in the quarter, he turns to the city’s underbelly and sets himself up as a capitalist on the rise. Rejected from society by race and from his deeply religious family because of his suppressed sexuality, Louis is an easy target for the charismatic Lestat’s promise of ultimate power, self-acceptance, eternal life and eternal love through vampirism.

“Come with me,” Lestat (a terrifyingly seductive Sam Reid) coos to Louis in the pilot episode. “Be all the beautiful things you are, and be them without apology for all eternity,” Lestat promises, and who wouldn’t be tempted with romance like this?? Of course, this moment takes place in the middle of a Lestat-induced bloodbath (in a church, no less!), if that’s any indication how Lestat’s “love” will be. The racial and sexual implications of an interracial gay couple with a HUGE power imbalance and an adopted biracial Black daughter in the early 1900s adds so many intersecting layers that a boring, all-white remake would never have touched.

After a stellar season one, which covered the events of the first half of the novel, season two finishes book one of the series and focuses on (my favorite topic) grief, the malleability of memory, and—as all vampire lore does—what it means to be human. The actress who plays Claudia in season one (Bailey Bass) is replaced by British actress Delainey Hales for season two due to scheduling conflicts, and though unsettling at first, the cast change also ends up being perfect for the storyline. Louis is narrating both seasons via the title’s premise: an interview with the aging journalist Daniel Malloy (a scene-stealing Eric Bogosian) whom Louis once tried to confess his sins to back in the 1970s.

Now in the covid-pandemic-riddled 2020s, Louis tries again to get a now-sober-yet-dying Daniel to write his story. But his memories of Claudia are so clouded by time and grief that of course how he remembers her in the early part of her life in season one greatly differs from how he remembers her during the events in the past in season two as a grown woman trapped forever in a child’s body. Though both of actresses’ New Orleans accents are hilarious (Bailey’s is more camp, Hales’ gives up by the end of the series) they both do such an incredible job with the version of Claudia they play that I can’t imagine either of them playing the other’s version, even for consistency’s sake.

Though season one has a more in-depth focus on race— having fledgling Black vampires under the thumb of a white one with a centuries-long head start—season two could’ve done with more racial and gender analysis. (Hire a Black woman writer in your writers’ room, Rolin Jones!) Our favorite vamps may have escaped Jim Crow by fleeing to Europe, but there’s no way the violence Louis and Claudia face aren’t rooted in both race and for Claudia, being a Black girl. But that’s my only quibble.

Another anti-capitalist banger, this series shows that, even when you sell your soul to the devil, there’s no such thing is equality for Black people under white supremacy and capitalism. I’m not *quite* sure Louis gets that message, but I can’t wait to see how it all shakes out in season three, which covers the second Rice book in the series, The Vampire Lestat.

Watch Interview with the Vampire on AMC+ with this 30-Day Free Trial code: AMC30FT.

Shrinking

Who misses Schitt’s Creek? This AppleTV+ dramedy series about a group of therapists and their wacky clients might be just the fix you’re looking for. Admittedly, the premise is far less funny than Schitts, which centered on a once-wealthy family that has to slum it in a motel of a town they bought as a joke once. The main character of Shrinking is a grieving widower therapist (Jason Segel) whose alcoholism and drug use has made him an absolutely terrible father to his high school aged daughter. As he vows to get his life back on track for her sake, he winds up doing some incredibly unconventional therapy to help his ailing clients and himself. Rounding out the cast of therapists is a fantastic Harrison Ford as the grumpy but wise head of the practice, and the always charming Jessica Williams (if you were worried about her being too hot to be hooking up with Jason Segel’s character in season one, don’t worry, they rectify this in season two!).

How on earth is this show like Schitt’s Creek? I’ll just say you’ll feel good after watching it. As much as it’s a show about grief, it’s also at its heart about healing. You’ll see a path to another way we humans can be with each other and build community, even in the most depressing of times. And if you could make a show like that, why not make that show?

Trigger warning: there is a plot line about extorting a loved one into forgiving someone who has harmed them that I did not love! But it does open up an interesting abolitionist premise for season three about what we as a society do with people who cause harm and what harm-doers can do to repair harm, which is well-worth a watch.

Somebody Somewhere

In keeping with my favorite theme, Somebody Somewhere follows Sam (phenomenal star and show creator Bridget Everett), a 40-something who moved back home to Manhattan, Kansas, to care for her cancer-striken sister, and is now stuck there in her house in the wake of her sister’s death, trying to figure out her life. To call Sam’s relationship with her remaining sister Tricia (a fantastic Mary Catherine Garrison) “difficult,” is to understate their level of ire towards each other. And with an alcoholic mom and a weary father, Sam finds comfort and true friendship with her old high school classmate Joel (a heartbreaking Jeff Hiller). This lovely little show—small in scope but with a huge heart—might be way more Schitt’s Creek than Shrinking, as it similarly centers on queer characters in a rural town who find the community, love and acceptance that they never thought possible before. This is such a character-driven show that there isn’t much to say about the plot over its three (and sadly final) seasons. It’s a slice of the lovely kind of new life that proves you’re never too old to open your heart and start again.

Watch Somebody Somewhere on streaming on Max.

Squid Game 2

I am a total wuss when it comes to on screen violence and especially gun violence. I close my eyes and plug my ears until its over. I hate it. And yet I cannot get enough of Squid Game. After a blockbuster season one, which followed a goofy, deeply in-debt father, Gi-Hun, as he unknowingly signs up to play deadly childhood games for a chance to win a fortune, the Korean series is back for a second season. This time, on this edge-of-your-seat thriller, there’s a team effort to dismantle the games that exploit the working poor and mimic a society that’s artificially constructed by capitalists to kill and oppress the majority of people while rewarding the smallest possible number with a chance to escape poverty. Though haggard and weary from his season one exploits, Gi-Hun is not that much wiser and still makes the goofiest most naive mistakes possible, leading to the second season also ending on a cliffhanger, like the first. The main cast of season two try their best to rebel against their capitalist overlords but show what can happen to the revolution when you’re outgunned, outmanned and out-planned. Though substantively more than a bridge-season, it’s clear there’s much more story left to be told and the third and final season which was shot simultaneously, will air later this year, so you have plenty of time to catch up on the mega-hit before the series finale drops.

Like Severance, Squid Game the series (and its grotesque, yet unfortunately entertaining reality show spin-off) is another anti-capitalist saga that just so happens to be making its streamer A LOT OF MONEY. Unlike Severance, Netflix bought the rights from the show’s sole creator, writer and director, Hwang Dong-yuk, and made $900 million, of which Hwang received zero royalties and lost six teeth from the stress of making season one. How’s that for life imitating art? Hopefully, he negotiated the hell out of the contract for the second and third seasons that Netflix begged him to do, and got some good tooth implants. But it does beg the question: is consuming anti-capitalist art pushing us to uproot the system or placating us with the idea of watching TV with good politics as our sole act of resistance while the studios and streamers make obscene amounts of money that the most exploited laborers never see? I guess that’s up to us.

Watch Squid Game season 2 on Netflix.

We Are Lady Parts

You are simply not ready for the JOY that We Are Lady Parts will bring. Centered on a fledgling British muslim college womens’ punk rock band of the same name, this 30-minute comedy wrestles with Islamophobia and anti-Black racism in London, sexism in the music industry, and female rage. My favorite hijabis on TV are back for a second season where their band’s newfound virality challenges them to define who they are and what they stand for, as the struggling musicians are faced with an opportunity to sell out for a (much-needed) check. I love everything about this show, from the specificity of a diverse group of Muslimas’ lives in London to the absolute bops the women sing on the show. Give me 10 seasons and 10 albums, now! Though there’s no word yet on if a third season is coming, you can listen to their bangers on YouTube.

Watch We Are Lady Parts on Peacock.