The Week in Streaming: Nobody Here Has Learned Anything

Somehow, this week is better than last week. Not because anyone involved has started making smarter decisions, obviously, but because the bad decisions are attached to significantly better television. HBO has space cops. Netflix has the Pogues. It’s Always Sunny has reached Season 18 without the state of Pennsylvania intervening.

Here is what is arriving this week, sorted by the increasingly dubious reasons you might decide to press play.

Sunday, August 16th starts with Lanterns (HBO, series premiere), starring Kyle Chandler as Hal Jordan and Aaron Pierre as John Stewart investigating a murder in the American heartland. Yes, it’s a Green Lantern show—alien rings, limitless constructs, the whole deal. HBO has nevertheless put them in a small town asking questions about a dead body. Correct choice. Kelly Macdonald, Jason Ritter, and Nathan Fillion also star, so the restrained procedural portion should last about six to eight minutes.

Vibe: Small-town murder mystery, except the detectives can accidentally weaponize their imagination.

Monday, August 17th brings back It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (FX/FXX, season 18 premiere). Eighteen seasons is an extraordinary amount of time for five people to remain completely untouched by personal growth, legal consequences, or basic pattern recognition. Charlie still cannot read. Dennis is still allowed outside. Frank is somehow still alive. Most sitcoms soften their characters over time. Sunny has spent two decades doing the exact opposite.

Vibe: The Gang has now been a public nuisance long enough to qualify for historic preservation.

Tuesday, August 18th hands over the bar to Cocktail Wars (E!, series premiere), hosted by Lance Bass and Joey Fatone. Three mixologists compete to impress celebrity judges with elaborate drinks. Expect smoke, fire, obscure bitters, and at least one contestant explaining that a garnish represents something deeply personal. At some point, someone will spend fourteen minutes constructing a drink that Joey Fatone will consume in approximately three sips.

Vibe: Chopped, but everybody is slightly drunk and Lance Bass is watching.

Wednesday, August 19th brings back Average Joe (BET+, season two premiere), with Deon Cole once again playing a man who would very much like to live an average life despite television’s continued refusal to let him have one. Joe’s particular gift is entering situations involving criminals, conspiracies, and escalating danger while maintaining the expression of someone whose original plan for the evening was probably just dinner. Season one already pushed that premise pretty far. Season two has apparently looked at the remaining limits and decided they seemed optional.

Vibe: The increasingly elaborate punishment for being the only normal person in the room.

Thursday, August 20th sends Outer Banks (Netflix, fifth and final season) out for one last treasure hunt, because apparently the appropriate response to years of shipwrecks, gunfire, betrayals, and deeply suspicious maps is to check whether there might be another one. The final season picks up after the hunt for the Blue Crown and sends the Pogues straight back into the kind of globe-trotting chaos that has made “maybe we should just go home” the least-used sentence in North Carolina. At this point, the treasure is almost secondary. The real mystery is how any of these people still agree to get on boats together.

Vibe: Five seasons of “this is definitely our last treasure hunt” finally becoming legally binding.

Friday, August 21st belongs to The Girls: A Khloé Kardashian Project (Hulu, series premiere), which takes the Kardashian reality-TV formula and points it at a new group of women. Expect relationships, tension, expensive rooms, and private conversations held directly in front of several cameras. The Kardashians may eventually run out of relatives, but apparently not television.

Vibe: Reality television has entered its cinematic-universe phase.

Saturday, August 22nd closes the week with Love Finds You (Hallmark Channel, movie premiere). A jewelry designer receives a package intended for someone else and decides its actual recipient might be her perfect man. She recruits a delivery driver to help find him. The delivery driver is played by Chris McNally. So. Mystery solved. Hallmark will nevertheless require approximately 84 minutes for everyone involved to catch up.

Vibe: A mislabeled package has done more for this woman’s love life than every dating app combined.

Also this week:
Disney Princess: The Ultimate Concert Celebration (ABC & Disney+, Sunday, August 16, special)
Home Safe (Lifetime, Sunday, August 16, movie premiere)
Kelsey Cook: Happy Hour (Netflix, Tuesday, August 18, comedy special)
Love Is Blind: UK (Netflix, Wednesday, August 19, season three premiere)
Lion (National Geographic, Wednesday, August 19, documentary premiere)
Resolve to Solve With Miles O’Brien (PBS, Wednesday, August 19, series premiere)
Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing (Netflix, Wednesday, August 19, documentary premiere)
Disney Worldbuilders (Disney+, Thursday, August 20, documentary premiere)
Novak Djokovic: The Wolf in Winter (Prime Video, Thursday, August 20, documentary premiere)
The Dynasty: UConn Huskies (Apple TV, Friday, August 21, docuseries premiere)
Conan O’Brien Must Go (HBO, Friday, August 21, season three premiere)
Mother Mary (HBO Max, Friday, August 21, streaming premiere)
The Run for a Million (CBS, Saturday, August 22, special)
The Babysitter’s Double Life (Lifetime, Saturday, August 22, movie premiere)

This Week’s Hostage: Lanterns

There are stronger arguments for being responsible this week. Outer Banks is ending. Always Sunny is somehow entering Season 18. Conan is back out in the world bothering people professionally.

But Lanterns has Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre playing Green Lanterns in an HBO murder mystery, which feels like someone assembled a television show by pulling increasingly specific things out of a hat until I personally had no choice.

It could be restrained. It could be weird. It could spend forty-five minutes discussing a murder and then suddenly remind us that both detectives own alien jewelry capable of creating a fighter jet.

Whatever happens, I need to see the version of Green Lantern that HBO looked at and said, “What if this were about two guys investigating something terrible in the Midwest?”

You are watching.

I am watching.

The cornfield has no idea what is coming.

Samantha spends her free time rock climbing and arguing with strangers on the internet about movies. Her taste ranges from Hallmark Christmas movies to the ‘Saw’ series, a dichotomy she sees absolutely no problem with.