Pamela Adlon's Better Things is returning for a Louis CK-free third season of Better Things.
Pamela Adlon's Better Things is returning for a Louis CK-free third season of Better Things.
WATCHING: Remember how everyone binged Making a Murderer over their Christmas holidays in 2016? For weeks, it was the only thing anyone talked about. Netflix tried to repeat their true-crime holiday-binge trick in December, but didn't quite pull it off. That's not because of the show: Murder Mountain debuted onDecember 28, and has a similar kind of twisted story and whodunnit plot. It's set in Humboldt County, Northern California, an area where a lot of legal marijuana is grown. It's also where a lot of people go missing, never to be found again. Intrigued yet? Go watch.
WAITING: It's been a longer wait than usual for the third season of Better Things, Pamela Adlon's slice-of-life comedy that returns to Lightbox on March 1. There's a good reason for that: Louis CK had a big hand in getting her show on to screens, and the troubled comedian co-wrote and directed much of the first two seasons. "I haven't spoken to him in quite a long time," Adlon recently told the New Yorker after CK was outed in the #metoo movement. Adlon spent her time off replacing him with an all-female team of writers. In other words, Better Things was already good but it's now going to be even betterer.
LISTENING: In the middle of January, Toro Y Moi released an album so fun and upbeat and steamy that listening to it felt like a complete summer overdose. Now that temperatures are starting to cool, it's the perfect time to get into Chaz Bear's sixth album Outer Peace to keep those summer vibes going. Songs like Fading and Freelance sound like MGMT had a one-night stand with Passion Pit and they gave birth to their secret lovechild in a paddling pool and called it "Caribou". Okay, that's ridiculous, but you get the idea.
BINGEING: I'd completely forgotten about the existence of Crashing, HBO's excellently gentle comedy about the reality of a struggling comedian. We're already five episodes into the new season (it screens on SoHo2 here), and I've been ripping through them, mainly because it's such an easy watch, seamlessly mixing Pete Holmes' awkward life and comedy struggles with some genuinely very funny stand-up segments. Best of all, this season includes more of Leaf, the guy Pete caught in bed with his wife way back in episode one. If anyone deserves his very own spin-off show, it's Leaf.
