What makes or breaks a mystery show is how much information it gives the audience. Most shows in the genre often expect viewers to sit through hours of setup for one big reveal. Obviously, that works well when the payoff is worth it, but for a series to genuinely sustain its momentum until the very end, that formula can get old pretty fast. For a mystery show, every episode should feel like it matters.

That is where pacing becomes everything, because even with the smartest premise in the world, if the story isn’t structured well, the audience has no reason to want more. Luckily, the Netflix shows on this list avoid that problem, keep the cases moving, and turn every chapter of their narrative into an important piece of the bigger picture.

‘Dark’ (2017–2020)

Image via Netflix

Dark is one of Netflix’s most brilliant shows. The streamer’s first-ever German-language series begins in the small town of Windern after the disappearance of a young boy, but that is only the beginning. Dark actually connects four families across multiple generations and reveals that the caves beneath the town are tied to a time-travel cycle stretching across decades, which is connected to the disappearance in question. Jonas Kahnwald (Louis Hofmann) becomes the closest thing the show has to a central protagonist, because Dark keeps widening its scope until practically every character, relationship, and detail becomes part of something much larger.

There’s no denying that the show is complex and hard to keep up with because of its interconnected timelines, but that’s also the fun part. Almost every episode keeps the audience on their toes and shifts the stakes. Nothing in the show feels disposable because almost every storyline feeds back to the central mystery. This kind of intentional storytelling makes watching Dark an extremely rewarding experience, despite the information overload. In fact, it gives the show rewatch value like no other, because when the rules of its world become clearer, the audience is practically compelled to go back and watch how everything falls into place so perfectly.

‘Dept. Q’ (2025–Present)

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Dept. Q could have easily been another gloomy cold-case drama, but the series is way more interesting than that. The story follows Edinburgh detective Carl Morck (Matthew Goode), who is pushed into running a new cold-case unit after surviving a shooting that leaves his partner seriously injured and another officer dead. His first case centers on prosecutor Merritt Lingard (Chloe Pirrie), who disappeared years earlier and was presumed dead. The catch is that the audience learns that Merritt is still alive and being held captive somewhere, while the protagonist has no idea.

This completely changes the nature of the mystery that Carl and his team are trying to solve and gives every episode a sense of urgency. One storyline follows Carl, Akram (Alexej Manvelov), and Rose (Leah Byrne) as they dig into an investigation most people have already forgotten, while the other keeps returning to Merritt to fill in the gaps about what really happened to her. The show perfectly blends its strong character work with a brilliantly paced story, which is what makes it such an easy binge.

‘Dear Child’ (2023)

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Dear Child is a six-episode German miniseries that follows a woman named Lena (Kim Riedle) who has been living in complete isolation with two children, Hannah (Naila Schuberth) and Jonathan (Sammy Schrein), under a terrifying set of rules imposed by their captor. The story actually begins with Lena escaping and ending up in a hospital after being hit by a car, which is an interesting creative choice for a mystery show, but it only makes things more confusing. Her appearance connects her to another woman named Lena Beck, who disappeared 13 years earlier.

This brings detective Gerd Bühling (Hans Löw) and the missing woman’s family back into the picture over a case they thought had gone cold. Dear Child’s backwards setup gives every episode an incredible amount of momentum because with every answer, her situation gets stranger. There is definitely a lot for the show to juggle between Hannah and Lena’s individual storylines, but the show never wastes a single minute. Every episode delivers important revelations without ever making the mystery feel boring. Dear Child is criminally underrated, especially for a narrative this tightly constructed.

‘The Chestnut Man’ (2021–Present)

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The Chestnut Man is a compelling Danish mystery that begins with a dead woman being found in a Copenhagen playground along with a tiny figure made from chestnuts left beside her. Detectives Naia Thulin (Danica Curcic) and Mark Hess (Mikkel Boe Følsgaard) are assigned to the case, but things get much stranger when they discover evidence on the figure connected to Kristine Hartung, the young daughter of politician Rosa Hartung (Iben Dorner) who disappeared a year earlier and was presumed dead. Suddenly, one disturbing crime expands to reveal something much darker.

What The Chestnut Man does ridiculously well is make practically every episode change the shape of the investigation. The chestnut figures are essentially the killer’s calling card. They begin appearing at the scenes of other attacks, which keeps tying new victims back to the same investigation. It doesn’t take Thulin and Hess long to realize that they are dealing with someone extremely smart, who knows how to cover their tracks flawlessly. There is barely any room for all of this tension to sit still, but that sense of adrenaline makes it impossible for the audience to stop watching until the very end.

‘The Mire’ (2018–2024)

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The Mire is a Polish series that begins in 1984, shortly after the end of martial law, when a sex worker and a local Communist official are found dead in the forest. The police quickly settle on an explanation, but journalists Witold Wanycz (Andrzej Seweryn) and Piotr Zarzycki (Dawid Ogrodnik) are not convinced at all. At the same time, two teenagers die under suspicious circumstances, which gives the reporters another reason to keep investigating. Soon enough, the seemingly disconnected tragedies start to converge and expose the town’s politics and crime.

That idea only grows stronger as the series moves forward. The Mire Season 2 jumps to 1997, when a devastating flood uncovers human remains in the forest, while Season 3 pushes the timeline into 1999 and drags even more buried history back to the surface. Each era adds another layer to the same mystery, which gives the show a density that most crime dramas can only dream of achieving. By the end, the audience has moved beyond just caring about individual cases because the town itself becomes the subject of the investigation. The show’s long-form approach makes every episode feel rewarding because The Mire believes in intentional storytelling, where the smallest of details matter.

‘The Snow Girl’ (2023–2025)

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The Snow Girl is practically impossible to stop watching. The Spanish series begins during a Christmas parade in Málaga, where five-year-old Amaya disappears in the middle of a crowded street. Journalist Miren Rojo (Milena Smit) becomes obsessed with the case and starts investigating alongside detective Belén Millán (Aixa Villagrán), even as years pass without a clear answer. Then, six years later, a mysterious video suddenly proves that Miren’s obsession wasn’t unfounded. From there, the show moves between different points in time as new evidence appears, old suspects come back into focus, and the journalist’s own past starts affecting how far she is willing to go for the truth.

Every episode in The Snow Girl reveals something meaningful without slowing the story down. The stakes shift within seconds, and that relentless momentum is what makes the show so addictive. Once the case is back in the public eye, Miren’s hunt gets even more aggressive, and in turn, more reckless. The most interesting thing about the show is how it shifts perspectives at extremely crucial moments to let the audience see parts of Amaya’s disappearance from angles Miren cannot, without giving away the full picture too early. The Snow Girl knows exactly how much information to reveal before immersing the audience in the next episode, and that is a masterclass in pacing.

‘Bodies’ (2023)

Bodies has a premise that sounds completely ridiculous until one actually starts watching. The eight-episode Netflix miniseries begins when the exact same naked corpse appears on Longharvest Lane in London across 1890, 1941, 2023, and 2053. Each body is discovered by a different detective, including Alfred Hillinghead (Kyle Soller) in Victorian London, Charles Whiteman (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd) during World War II, Shahara Hasan (Amaka Okafor) in the present day, and Iris Maplewood (Shira Haas) in the future. Now, none of them initially knows that anyone else is investigating the same impossible crime. However, each case gradually starts pointing toward Elias Mannix (Stephen Graham) and a conspiracy stretching across more than 150 years.

The fun comes from watching those four timelines slowly come together. The idea could have gotten messy fast, but Bodies is extremely careful with the rules of its world. The same names, symbols, photographs, and pieces of evidence keep resurfacing across decades, so the audience is essentially solving four cases at once, but every answer narrows them toward the same thing. A lot of shows use time travel as a gimmick, but Bodies actually weaves the concept into its layered narrative. There is simply too much happening in the series for any episode to feel forgettable.

‘The Residence’ (2025)

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The Residence breathes new life into the classic locked-room mystery, and the premise works because it’s set right inside the White House. The eight-episode series begins during a disastrous state dinner where White House chief usher A.B. Wynter (Giancarlo Esposito) is found dead. Detective Cordelia Cupp (Uzo Aduba) is assigned the case. The catch is that she is dealing with 132 rooms and 157 suspects, including politicians, staff members, guests, and employees who all seem to be hiding something. FBI agent Edwin Park (Randall Park) is assigned to work alongside her, who quickly realizes that Cordelia has absolutely no interest in investigating the case the conventional way.

She asks completely irrelevant questions and has a habit of comparing human behavior to birds, but beneath her quirks, it’s fascinating to watch her casually pointing out every inconsistency in the case. Now, the sheer size of the suspect pool could have made The Residence feel repetitive, but the show is smart with its structure and moves into a new corner of the White House with every episode. The series works as a screwball comedy, but the whodunit element is never overshadowed by the humor. Aduba holds all of it together and brings a unique charm to Cordelia in all her eccentricity without overdoing it. The result is a show that feels playful without sacrificing the mystery, and that is a treat to watch.

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The Residence

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Release Date

2025 – 2025-00-00

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Network

Netflix

Writers

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Paul William Davies

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When it comes to Tom Cruise, the box-office readies itself for his impact. Between hit franchises like Mission: Impossible and Top Gun and action smashes like Edge of Tomorrow and Jack Reacher, it’s rare to find a Cruise outing that’s, well, disappointing. But everyone’s success streak dips sometimes, and the star had one major (dare we say, blockbuster) misfire that has recently found new life on Prime Video. If you guessed The Mummy, we’re both frightened and amazed that you’re right.

‘The Mummy’ Is a Monstrous Mess of Mixed and Unmet Potential

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The 2017 reboot of the Mummy was a conceptual mess from the very beginning. Rather than being a stunning re-imagining of The Mummy franchise – which originated during Universal’s monster movie era in the 1930s, and was at its peak back when Brendan Fraser was the lead — the film was meant to be more of a proof of concept for Universal Studios’ proposed “Dark Universe” franchise rebooting their old monster properties that, sadly, went nowhere. In fact, there are four different movies titled The Mummy, and of those entries, the one boasting Tom Cruise is somehow the worst. The supernatural action-adventure flick follows U.S. Army Sergeant Nick Morton (Cruise) as he unintentionally brings the ancient Egyptian Princess Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella) back from the dead. Having been mummified, the sorceress returns with unspeakable power and an unparalleled vengeance she seeks to visit against the modern world. However, Morton becomes supernaturally tethered to the titular villain, and slowly begins his own monstrous transformation. The Mummy, then, chronicles the battle for Morton’s soul as he wanders into a terrifying world that’s bigger than he imagined.

Tonally, The Mummy never quite settles on saying anything of note. It tries its hardest to do far too much and ultimately achieves none of it. In just short of two hours, the Alex Kurtzman-directed film struggles to settle on what exactly it actually wants to be. Is it a Tom Cruise action flick? Of course. Is it a horror movie? At times. Is it the kickstart of an expanded universe? Undoubtedly. Is it a comedy? It’s difficult to tell — but Prime Video audiences seem to love it. Or, at least they’re finally curious enough about it after a decade to give Cruise the time of day, making it the #4 most-streamed movie on the platform.

Watch this critical failure if you dare, but just know that everything it tries to build towards crashed and burned before it escaped the shadows…

Dark Universe Crashed and Burned Faster Than Any Blockbuster Franchise

If you’ve been around the movie scene in the last decade, then you already know that the Dark Universe franchise never happened. Although Universal first attempted a “soft” introduction with Dracula Untold, that film didn’t live up to the shared universe standards the studio hoped to achieve. The Mummy is a fascinating relic of an era where every major studio was desperate for its own Marvel-style franchise, complete with big-name stars, rich mythology, and an action-comedy feel. Remember, this was a time when the Marvel Cinematic Universe was in full swing and the DC Extended Universe had been successfully launched in only a few short years. Universal aimed to follow Disney and Warner Bros. with its most iconic movie monsters — and on paper, we understand why. In practice, however, it’s no wonder that this entire concept (like some of Tom Cruise’s other worst movies) died on impact. It’s too bad the end result felt so rushed.

The Mummy may be making waves on streaming, but if you’re looking for a modern take on the Egyptian monster, you’re probably better off waiting for the next Brendan Fraser movie.

The Mummy is available for streaming on Prime Video.

Despite incredible reviews and winning five out of 11 Emmy nominations, Prime Video has opted not to move forward with another season of Spider-Noir. However, Spider-Noir‘s ​​​​​​cancelation might actually be a blessing in disguise, since it both indicates the best path forward for future Spider-Verse television installments and sets a new standard for any upcoming projects featuring variants of the Friendly Neighborhood Wall-Crawler.

Prime Video’s ‘Spider-Noir’ Tells a Complete Story in One Season

Part of the beauty of Spider-Noir is that it offers a complete saga that revolves around New York’s only superhero, Ben Reilly (Nicolas Cage), AKA The Spider. While Reilly’s opening monologue — “Someone once asked me which universe this was” — briefly hints at the existence of the greater Spider-Verse and that he previously encountered beings from other worlds, the final episode doesn’t end on a cliffhanger, and there’s no sequel-baiting or setup for future seasons or other spin-offs.

Even Cage, a huge get for the series in his first major television role, seems to share that sentiment. Speaking to Deadline regarding the show’s cancellation, the actor explained, “For me, one season is perfect, having said what I wanted to say with this dangerous, innovative, pop-art Spider-Man.” Ahead of the first season’s launch, he also informed Variety, “All of us achieved what we set out to do, and it works on its own.” The key takeaway from Cage’s comments is not criticism that the show won’t continue, but celebration of the fact that such a high-quality Spider-Man project existed in the first place.

‘Spider-Noir’ Offers the Perfect Model for Sony’s Spider-Verse

As a standalone adventure, Spider-Noir presents the perfect model for Sony’s franchise to utilize moving forward. The studio’s attempts to launch a big-screen Spider-Man universe have largely been a disaster outside of Tom Holland‘s films and the critical success of the Spider-Verse animated movies. Deadline has reported that in the wake of Spider-Noir‘s cancellation, Sony and Prime Video plan to develop future projects with Marvel characters that Sony has ownership of, specifically any who are available within the existing Spider-Family.

Deadline’s report also indicates that multiple projects are in development, with one nearing a series order, but rather than striving for multi-season projects, the Spider-Man TV universe should exist as its own franchise. Spider-Noir can ultimately serve as a chapter in a larger TV anthology, with each series focusing on a new hero or adventure rather than setting up a larger continuity. Additional seasons are nice, but there’s something to be said for standalone miniseries that can offer viewers a complete and finite experience.

‘Spider-Noir’s Standalone Model Also Fixes the MCU’s “Homework” Problem

Image via Prime Video

Recently, the greater Marvel Cinematic Universe has been in a bit of a decline, with the exception being the most recent sequel, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which continues to break box office records. Even Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige pointed out that the franchise has become bogged down by too many spin-offs and offshoots, comparing the experience of watching every MCU TV series and movie to something “more like homework than entertainment.” A cohesive shared universe can be fun, but not every saga was meant to go on forever.

Debuting a series as a one-off event creates an easier entry point for fans, thus solving the MCU’s existing “homework” problem — if some viewers didn’t get around to watching Spider-Noir, for example, the next Spider-Verse series might be more to their liking. The best move forward is to make every new Spider-Man TV project a limited miniseries, starting with a live-action adaptation of Spider-Man 2099 starring Oscar Isaac as Miguel O’Hara. Regardless, Spider-Noir ending after only one season isn’t necessarily a mark of failure; it actually provides the perfect blueprint for Sony’s Spider-Man Universe on the small screen.

Fans of “Entourage” got a surprise when Jeremy Piven and Adrian Grenier reunited for a Betr ad, bringing two of the show’s most recognizable stars back together. While the appearance may have been a nostalgic moment for fans of the hit HBO series, not everyone was thrilled to see it. “Entourage” creator Doug Ellin has shared his reaction to the unexpected reunion, and he is far from amused.

HBO’s “Entourage,” created by Doug Ellin, followed Hollywood star Vincent Chase and his close-knit group of friends as they navigated the highs and lows of fame. The series starred Adrian Grenier, Kevin Connolly, Kevin Dillon, Jerry Ferrara, and Jeremy Piven.

The show was a major hit series, running from 2004 to 2011 for eight seasons, and was followed by the “Entourage” movie in 2015.

On September 8, the sports gaming company Betr released an ad featuring Piven and Grenier, and while they didn’t appear as their respective “Entourage” characters, their appearances, behaviors, and mannerisms are identical to their on-screen counterparts.

In the ad, Piven, who played ruthless and ambitious Hollywood agent Ari Gold in the series, arrives in a sports car and barks orders at people. Grenier, meanwhile, appeared as relaxed as his “Entourage” character, actor Vincent Chase, and was lounging on a yacht.

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Doug Ellin Calls Betr Ad ‘Trash And Theft’

Following the ad’s release, many wondered whether Doug Ellin, who wrote “Entourage” and was the main creative force behind the series, was involved. He took to X and answered some questions.

One fan said he hoped Ellin directed the Betr advertisement. Ellin responded by saying, “I think it’s pretty d-mn obvious I didn’t write it. My god.”

He also replied to another user who said it was “cool” to see Piven and Grenier together again, and some positivity would be nice from Ellin.

“I have zero positivity in watching things I busted my a-s of on for years he turned into garbage seek. Zero positivity. Go create your own sh-t. And if you need money for Flip burgers. This is trash and theft. Period,” Ellin wrote.

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The ‘Entourage’ Showrunner Said The Ad Made Him Want To ‘Throw Up’

Ellin took to social media to share his thoughts after receiving messages from people about the “god-awful commercial.” In a video, he made it clear that he wasn’t involved in the creation of the ad at all.

He acknowledged that “Entourage” was not for everyone, but he said it was a great show. “This wasn’t,” he then added, referring to the Betr ad. Ellin went on to say that many people in Hollywood work hard but don’t get enough credit, adding that it wasn’t about him, but about all those who worked on the hit series.

Moreover, Ellin said he had to “beg” Piven to do “Entourage” because he initially didn’t want to do it, and the actor allegedly distanced himself from the series and his character afterward because “he had so much better sh-t going on.”

“I watch it and I wanna throw up,” he added.

Toward the end of his video, Ellin said the video was “trash.” However, he said he wasn’t bitter about it. “I want everyone to get paid, get rich. Just f-ckin’ do your own sh-t,” he said. In the caption, he wrote, “When I see cheap, sh-ty imitations that try to pass for what we did it makes me puke.”

A Betr spokesperson has responded to Ellin’s comments and said, “We were excited to bring Jeremy and Adrian back together,” stressing that the actors appeared in the ad “as themselves.”

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They noted that the response to the video was “overwhelmingly positive,” claiming they garnered “10 million organic social views in less than 24 hours.” As for Ellin’s remarks, the spokesperson said, “We appreciate Doug watching the ad and helping promote it.”

Jeremy Piven And Adrian Grenier Reunited Off-Screen

Piven has a background in theater and sketch comedy, and in 2017, he transitioned into solo stand-up comedy. In March, the actor shared a photo of a reunion with Grenier.

In the caption, Piven said he was performing a stand-up show in Austin, Texas, when he spotted his former co-star in the audience. It was a welcome surprise because the two have not seen each other in almost 10 years.

Multiple “Entourage” cast members have expressed that they are interested in a reboot, but Ellin shut down the possibility multiple times, citing the cultural shift in the entertainment industry and a lack of an offer to bring the show back.

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The official trailer for CBS’ Cupertino just gave fans their first look at the legal drama featuring Busy Philipps, who appears in a surprising role following her health challenges.

CBS’ Wednesday, September 9, sneak peek featured “a scrappy lawyer takes on a powerful tech giant in a high-stakes legal battle, navigating the cutthroat world of Silicon Valley while fighting for justice and the little guy’s rights,” according to the official synopsis.

Mike Colter and Rachel Keller lead the cast as their characters rebound after they were cut loose from their tech-related jobs, creating their own firm to help those going up against Silicon Valley’s powerful conglomerates.

Philipps, 47, appears in several scenes as Natalie. In a previously released character description, Natalie is described as “the beautiful and delightfully blunt first wife of an AI Billionaire, who divorced her when she turned forty. Now Natalia wants revenge and agrees to finance Michael and Olivia’s start-up law firm in order to go after his and other AI businesses.”

“We are the disrupters now,” Natalie says in one scene. Elsewhere in the trailer, Natalie is seen nonchalantly pulling out a gun from her purse.

Cupertino, which premieres October 8, also stars Ella Stiller, Nik Dodani and Renée Elise Goldsberry. Guest stars include Stephen Kunken, Fisher Stevens and Stephen Pasquale.

After filming season 1, Philipps revealed she underwent surgery in early March — weeks before she started production on Cupertino.

“I’m grateful that I’m alive,” Philipps told People last month while calling this period “the weirdest six months of my life.”

Philipps credited a Prenuvo full-body scan for helping confirm the presence of a grade 2 oligodendroglioma, a rare slow-growing tumor. Philipps underwent surgery, where doctors removed a 2.6-centimeter mass from her brain.

“It is considered malignant, but it has the best prognosis of all of the malignant gliomas,” Philipps’ neuro-oncologist, Dr. Alexandra Miller, told People. “It’s sort of defined as a cancerous tumor based on the ability of the tumor to regrow over time, rather than it looking very malignant under the microscope.”

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Philipps recalled facing more challenges when she contracted a staphylococcus on her incision and needed a second surgery for wound debridement. The actress has since taken to social media to thank everyone for their outpouring of support.

“Everyone (mostly) has been so overwhelmingly kind in the past 24 hours, so thank you so much for all your well wishes and love and prayers and support,” she wrote via Instagram in August. “But just to reiterate, because the internet loves a clickbait [story], I AM ALREADY RECOVERED! You all have literally watched me recover since March 2, you just didn’t know it! I AM TOTALLY FINE! YAY MEDICINE!”

Cupertino premieres on CBS Thursday, October 10, at 10 p.m. ET before streaming the next day on Paramount+.

Writer and producer Dan Harmon became an icon to sitcom aficionados with his NBC series Community, which will soon return with its long-promised movie to cap off the story. Harmon has also elevated the serialized format and helped fans think about it more critically — first through his early short-form content with Channel 101 and later through his podcast Harmontown and its accompanying documentary. However, Harmon’s biggest contribution to the sitcom world is the one that breaks the formula the most: Rick and Morty. After 13 years and nine seasons, the show is still evolving and pushing the limits of genre and medium. Despite its controversies, older episodes are also aging gracefully.

Some might hesitate to even categorize Rick and Morty as a sitcom, but its impossible to deny that the Smith family and their foibles are the real heart and soul of this story. Beneath the heavy outer layer of science fiction, action, and existential dread, the show is fundamentally driven by the relationships between Rick Sanchez (Ian Cardoni,) Morty Smith (Harry Belden), Beth Smith (Sarah Chalke,) Summer Smith (Spencer Grammer,) and Jerry Smith (Chris Parnell.) That’s the reason this series has weathered all of its storms and held up for over a decade, and it’s the reason that it’s the ultimate sitcom of our era.

‘Rick and Morty’ Has Always Stayed Ahead of Its Audience

Image via Adult Swim

The whole point of Rick and Morty is fitting grandiose sci-fi concepts into a 22-minute sitcom format. No idea is too complex, nothing is off limits, and in the end the finer details are only window dressing for a story about the Smith family. In retrospect, Harmon and the other writers and producers clearly knew this from the beginning. The first season made a splash by boldly cramming thought-provoking ideas into each episode. The humor wasn’t just irreverent for good manners and language — it seemed at first like the writers didn’t even care about the sustainability of the story. They gleefully introduced huge paradigm shifts and contradicted their own worldbuilding at every turn.

What remained consistent was characterization. The overarching joke has always been that a sitcom completely resets at the end of episode, leaving things relatively stable for next week. This has been true for more conventional shows for decades, it’s only exaggerated and parodied here. Rick and Morty even introduced the ultimate narrative device for this in Episode 6, “Rick Potion #9,” where Rick reveals that he can and has switched realities for his own convenience. His ultimate superpower IS the sitcom reset, but the story begins when Rick takes his grandson along with him, giving the show some long-term stakes.

Holding back the reveal of this reset ability for the middle of the season was a brilliant move, creating a sense that Harmon and his team had predicted audiences’ biggest question about the show and answered it before it could be asked. Since then, the impression that the writers and producers are thinking ahead and staying in conversation with the viewers has been a core part of its humor. This is the secret behind Rick’s fourth-wall-breaking jokes as well as meta-commentary on what’s going on behind the scenes — from the long waits between seasons to the personal controversies plaguing Harmon and series co-creator Justin Roiland, and even the re-casting in Season 7.

Ultimately, Harmon was ahead of fans in terms of what Rick and Morty is all about as a show. While fans crafted elaborate theories and begged for more serialized stories about the Citadel of Ricks and Evil Morty, Harmon actively resisted this pivot and insisted on sticking with the standard family sitcom format. The show has certainly evolved over the years, but the long-lasting changes are more like those that would happen on a family sitcom than on a high-concept sci-fi adventure. Adding Space Beth to the ensemble is akin to adding Frankie Dart (Paget Brewster) to the main cast of Community, or making Rebecca (Lori Loughlin) part of the main cast of Full House as the show went on. Meanwhile, ongoing storylines like the Citadel have hardly impacted the lives of the Smith family outside the confines of a 22-minute episode except to develop their relationships and characterization.

‘Rick and Morty’ is ‘The Simpsons’ of Its Era

The longevity and continued growth of the Rick and Morty franchise is proof enough that its unique approach to sitcom storytelling is working. This year, the show concluded its ninth season with generally positive reviews, leading right into the premiere of its first full-length spinoff, President Curtis. This show takes a similar approach to the sci-fi sitcom mashup, but in this case it’s a workplace comedy rather than a family one.

Rick and Morty has extended its reach into other media over the last 13 years, from spinoffs in various mediums to games, merchandising, and even live events. The franchise’s broad success shows that audiences understand and embrace what it really is — not a sci-fi epic, but an episodic sitcom exploring what it means to be a family, for better and worse. The characters might get wrapped up in any kind of adventure from week to week, but there’s a comfort in knowing that they’ll almost certainly end up safe and sound at home in the end, right where we’ll need them to kick off next week’s installment. The difference is that while past sitcom heroes might develop a crush or deal with a bully, Rick, Morty, and the rest of the Smiths might topple an intergalactic empire between the title screen and the credits.

In many ways, Rick and Morty does the same thing for sitcoms that The Simpsons did when it first premiered. At the time, The Simpsons used animation to parody the sitcom formula and exaggerate all the absurd features of modern American life. In the process, the show told some truly heartwarming stories and fleshed out this archetypal family into characters we could really care about for decades to come. Rick and Morty is on a similar track, and it shows no signs of slowing down.

Rick and Morty is streaming now on HBO Max and Hulu in the U.S. President Curtis has three more episodes to go, airing on Sunday nights at 11:30 p.m. ET on Adult Swim. New episodes are added to HBO Max as soon as they air.

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Release Date

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December 2, 2013

Network

Adult Swim

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Showrunner

Dan Harmon

Directors

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Bryan Newton, Dominic Polcino, Anthony Chun, John Rice, Stephen Sandoval, Jeff Myers

Writers

Tom Kauffman, Wade Randolph, Eric Acosta, David Phillips, Erica Rosbe, Sarah Carbiener, Matt Roller, Michael Waldron, Caitie Delaney

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• 
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  Justin Roiland

  Rick Sanchez / Morty Smith

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The ice isn’t the only arena making streamers horny for storytelling. Between Heated Rivalry and Off Campus, hockey has been mined so thoroughly that the open water is now auditioning for its turn. Crew Girl, Netflix’s newest teen soap, has all the predictable trappings: excessive voiceover narration, quiet luxury, and love interests with abs you could grate Parmesan on. It’s squeezing eight episodes of drama out of a different, though just as niche, school sport, and that’s the action that actually works. Crew Girl is cheesier than its competition, with a weaker love triangle and rougher performances — but, oddly enough, the rowing itself is good. In fact, it might be the only thing keeping the season from completely sinking.

What Is ‘Crew Girl’ About?

Crew Girl follows Teagan Tao (Miku Martineau), a 16-year-old rowing prodigy whose life is dismantled in the pilot’s first 10 minutes. She wins a singles’ sculls race as her parents — Ella (Jessica Paré), a woman who runs exclusively on positive vibes, and David (Byron Lawson), a hotelier embezzling funds from his friend group — cheer from the sidelines. Then, the FBI rushes in to let us all know that Teagan’s dad is about to become a headline. What follows is a familiar spiral into downward mobility, complete with a move to mom’s dumpy coastal hometown of Eagle’s Cove, and a dilapidated house in desperate need of an exorcism.

Eagle’s Cove exists somewhere on the Atlantic coast, in that Netflix rendering where old money has colonized every square inch of shoreline. The kids at Easton Prep, Teagan’s new school, arrive by chopper and spend their summers piling up crypto fortunes. Teagan gawks at it all. Her old life of private hotels and pay-to-play athletics was itself a tour of privilege, but the show treats her as an outsider anyway, hoping we won’t notice. At Easton, of course, there’s no girls’ rowing team, which means Teagan’s only option for staying on the water is to take the tiller of the boys’ varsity eight as their coxswain. Like every member of the 99 percent, we too did not know the meaning of that sentence before finishing this series. So, in layman’s terms, she’s in charge of steering the damn boat.

Half the season is Teagan grinding against ingrained misogyny for scraps of respect; the other half is the camera treating those same boys like a very generous buffet, complete with heaping helpings of shirtless, sweaty rowing-machine choreography set to EDM thumpers. It’s the kind of eye candy that starved fan-edit accounts are going to make a whole meal out of. Crew Girl, and we mean this affectionately, knows its audience. Every sport, as the running theory goes, can be gay if you squint hard enough, and this show is operating with its eyes glued shut.

Netflix’s ‘Crew Girl’ Has a One-Sided Love Triangle and a Family Plot That Won’t Quit

The love triangle here is where things get thin. Josh Regis (Sam Braun) is the standard arrogant prep-school captain, and Braun doesn’t add anything to the template. Cam Dillinger (Kyle Clark), the quiet underdog with a chip on his shoulder, is more interesting. And Clark plays him that way, with a mix of sincerity and edge that only makes the romance more lopsided. You quickly get the feeling that one side of this triangle is doing all the work.

The family plot drags too. Every teen soap seems to feel it needs shitty parents to justify the kids acting out, and Crew Girl leans on that too hard. The FBI subplot, the mom-daughter fallout, the absentee dad… none of it goes anywhere, and all of it pulls focus from the team dynamics that should be driving the show. Paré is the only adult in the cast who can actually act her way through the material, and she even struggles to make sense of why the camera’s spending so much time on characters drinking Pinot in airplane hangars instead of Oakley-armed meatheads in tiny little boats.

Netflix’s ‘Crew Girl’ Is Fine — If You’re Here for the Boats

Image via Netflix

We’re wondering too, because, weirdly, the boathouse is the only place Crew Girl works. The rowing scenes are the surprise. Someone in the production clearly cares about the sport, and you can see it in every frame on the water. The coxswain moments, especially, with Teagan barking splits, reading the water, and correcting a stroke rate, are shot with the kind of care the show doesn’t bother to bring anywhere else. And the Haverford Cup arc in the back half is the closest the series gets to earning its plot. It’s not Friday Night Lights, obviously, but by the end, we were Googling what an erg is, and that’s more than most eight-episode teen soaps get out of anyone.

None of this makes Crew Girl good. The love triangle lacks spark, the dialogue is stiff, and outside of Clark and, to a lesser extent, Martineau, the cast is mostly just hitting marks. There are no teeth to the rich-kid satire or real stakes to the familial subplots. But if you’re the person this was built for — a YA romance junkie with a yacht club membership — it’s fine. Not what Netflix wants it to be, not as bad as it could have been.

Crew Girl is now available to stream on Netflix.

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Release Date

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September 12, 2026

Network

Netflix

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Showrunner

Vivian Lin

Directors

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Alysse Leite-Rogers, Norman Buckley, Jacquie Gould, Simon Barry

Writers

Jennica Harper, Julian Doucet, Vivian Lin

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Cast

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  Jessica Pare

  Ella Emerson-Tao

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Pros & Cons

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• Crew Girl delivers on the shirtless-boys-on-rowing-machines promise, if that’s what you came for.
• The rowing scenes are well-shot and actually interesting to watch.

• The family scandal plot drags every episode down.
• Most of the supporting cast can’t act.
• It’s cheesier than the shows it’s trying to be.

Brian Austin Green isn’t above poking fun at his friends — Jennie Garth included.

Green, 53, shared a series of videos alongside multiple laughing emojis to his Instagram Story of comedian Pete Zias reacting to Garth’s clothing line on Wednesday, September 9.

“Yes it’s time for Jennie Garth,” Zias said in the first video, while watching the actress during her recent QVC appearance.

As a model showed off a pink blouse designed by Garth, 54, Zias added his own commentary as the QVC host described the item.

“Love it … they’re paintbrush dots,” he quipped. “It’s feminine, it’s flirty, it’s frumpy.”

Zias also poked fun at Garth’s outfit as she donned a light blue and white blouse with jeans.

“Little House on the Prairie! She looks like she was held captive and escaped from decades of being held captive,” he joked.

As the women talked about one outfit dubbed “the skipper,” Zias quipped that they should “skip away.”

Green also included a second video from Zias as he watched another QVC segment featuring Garth.

“Jennie Garth has a line of clothes at QVC,” he announced while reading the item details. “Me by Jennie Garth. Woven pull-on embroidered hem ankle pants.”

Zias also poked fun at the color choice for the neutral wardrobe items that Garth displayed.

“It’s a great color. I love beige,” he quipped. “Beige on beige. Brown on brown. Ah, I love this.”

Green and Garth have been friends since they starred on Beverly Hills, 90210 together in the 90s. The pair have supported each other over the years with their various ventures.

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Related: Jennie Garth Says ‘90210’ Cast Is ‘Super Close’ at ‘Different Times’

Mikel Roberts/Sygma via Getty Images Jennie Garth gushed exclusively to Us Weekly about her pal Tori Spelling while discussing her new podcast — which has a Beverly Hills, 90210-inspired name. “She’s such a strong girl, even though she probably wouldn’t say she is,” Garth, 52, exclusively told Us of Spelling, 51, while promoting her new podcast, […]

Garth decided to pursue a career as a fashion designer in 2024 and launched her clothing line, Me by Jennie Garth that same year. The brand includes everyday wardrobe staples for women such as sweaters, blouses, knit tops, denim, pants and more. Garth’s designs are inspired by her and her BH 90210 character Kelly’s style.

After releasing her second line with QVC, Garth exclusively told Us that her daughters — Luca, 29, Lola, 23, and Fiona, 19 — were by her side throughout the process.

“My girls are so encouraging and so supportive,” she gushed back in October 2025. “They’ve seen me lost. They’ve seen me searching. They see me have successes and also big failures. Every time I try something new, they are just right behind me, supporting me so much.”

Sometimes, actors are their own worst critics. Even if they’ve won Academy Awards, there are plenty of Hollywood stars who critique themselves as harshly (if not more harshly) than their own critics. Brad Pitt is no stranger to this mentality either, though you may be surprised by which of his performances he despises. Before he returns to theaters this fall with the upcoming Heart of the Beast, you ought to revisit his memorable performance in A River Runs Through It — the famed Robert Redford picture he thought he did poorly in.

Brad Pitt Was Quite Critical of His Work on ‘A River Runs Through It’

Image via Columbia Pictures

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It’s been over 30 years since Redford made A River Runs Through It, an American period drama based on the memoir of the same name by Norman Maclean. But despite all the praise and attention at the Oscars that the film garnered, Pitt struggled with his performance as the troubled Montana reporter Paul Maclean. Back in 2011, the star spoke with Entertainment Weekly about his career highlights at the time, noting that, despite Redford’s best directorial efforts, he didn’t believe that he was ultimately “skilled” enough for the role.

“I think I could have done better. Maybe it was the pressure of the part, and playing someone who was a real person — and the family was around occasionally — and not wanting to let Redford down.”

While Pitt also admitted that it had been a long time since he’d seen the film, his feelings remained the same after nearly 20 years. Of course, anyone who has had the pleasure of enjoying this visual memoir of a bygone era of the American West will gladly note that Pitt is fantastic on the screen. More than that, he’s easily one of its defining features; indeed, Pitt truly makes the movie. Sure, Craig Sheffer is fantastic as Norman, and Tom Skerritt‘s performance as the Reverend Maclean is quite profound, but the youthful energy Pitt brings to the role of Paul was undoubtedly a career-making performance. Pitt’s carefree younger Maclean boy — who is somehow as charismatic as he is emotionally reserved — understandably earned the high praise of critics everywhere.

Although Pitt would revisit the world of early 20th century Montana later in the romantic drama Legends of the Fall (which, ironically, saw him playing a fairly similar character who was also a bootlegger during the Prohibition), the truth of the matter is that A River Runs Through It is an excellent picture that is only made better by Pitt being in it. In fact, one might even argue that it’s because of Pitt that the entire thing lands. The stark contrast between Paul and his older brother Norman only works because of Pitt’s on-screen charisma, and the two often stand antithetical to one another as brothers often do. Some may consider it one of Pitt’s most underrated features, but perhaps the best way to describe it is underappreciated.

‘A River Runs Through It’ Is a True American Classic

There are few movies that capture such a distinct yet beautiful time in American history better than A River Runs Through It. Set in Montana at the turn of the 20th century, it chronicles not just the boyhood of Norman and Paul, but how their paths diverged in adulthood. Redford — in one of his greatest works of cinematic art — was able to do the impossible here by constructing a truly breathtaking snapshot in time, pulling directly from the first-hand accounts of the real-life Norman that float right off the page. The film is no different, as it evokes nostalgic feelings for a time that one did not live through, and provides a call to adventure towards the simple outdoors. It’s hard to describe just how A River Runs Through It can touch deep into one’s soul, which is perhaps why Taylor Sheridan honored the idea himself in The Madison.

It’s hard to imagine why Brad Pitt can’t bring himself to see what so many others have regarding this picture, but the best way to appreciate it is by revisiting the film. A River Runs Through It has long been considered an essential Robert Redford movie, one that proves his strengths behind-the-camera as he evokes provocative and powerful performances from his stars. Pitt may not be able to appreciate what he was able to achieve on the big screen, but we certainly do.

A River Runs Through It is available to rent digitally on Prime Video.

Get a rundown of Us‘ top stories making headlines in celebrity news, sports and entertainment on September 9, 2026. Here are the key takeaways:

• Sydney Sweeney stripped down for a new Novig ad campaign, covering her breasts with oversized footballs and posing nude across a basketball hoop, tennis court and pool table to promote the sports trading app. The Euphoria alum has also signed on as a strategic partner and equity holder in the company.

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• Sandra Bullock opened up about the fallout from ex-husband Jesse James‘ 2010 cheating scandal in an Interview magazine profile with Jennifer Aniston published September 8, calling it “a really dark time in my life.” She described stashing her newborn son Louis inside a hockey bag to smuggle him past paparazzi after the affairs became public.

• Phaedra Parks and Chris “CT” Tamburello‘s Traitors friendship has blossomed into a long-distance romance, a source exclusively tells Us, with the pair growing closer after CT’s marriage to Catalina White ended. The couple made their red carpet debut at the 2026 Creative Arts Emmys on September 5.

Edited by Samantha Benitz. Story produced with AI assistance