April in Review

Hello and welcome back to another issue! These months are really flying by, aren’t they? I can’t tell if that’s a good or bad thing, but it’s happening, so! I am very excited for May, though. It’s my birthday month, for one, and I have a trip planned that I’ve been anticipating for some time. Plus, theatrical releases are starting to ramp up, meaning I will be spending even more time at my local AMC. Such fun :)

Today’s feeling: Excitement 🤩

Appointment TV settles in

There wasn’t much movement going on with TV this month. People largely stuck to the same few shows, happily consuming a new episode each week with a few binge-able series popping up to join the party.

What have I been watching? Oh, thank you for asking. I’m watching Ted Lasso and Succession just like everybody else and I’ve made it to season 3 of my Glee rewatch, unlike everybody else.

The Mandalorian says goodbye in style

With its season finale airing the third week of April, The Mandalorian bids us all a farewell, but not before it grabs another Serpent 🐍 crown on its way out. We also had three new hatchlings join us:

• Ted Lasso

• Schmigadoon!

• Bel-Air

All four of these shows are released weekly and that got the gears in my brain turning, so I conducted a little analysis check. Walk with me.

Weekly releases dominate the snake pit

Going back into the archives and looking at all of the Serpent winners so far, of the 17 shows that have been crowned, 16 of them have been on weekly release schedules. The one outlier, to no one’s surprise, was Wednesday, having earned its serpent crown back in December with 6 total weeks on the chart.

Of the 15 shows that appeared on this month’s chart, all but 4 of them—The Night Agent, Shadow and Bone, BEEF, and Firefly Lane—release on a weekly basis. All this to say, it’s clear that the weekly release model has staying power.

This isn’t really news, as TV has been releasing weekly for literal decades. But with the rise of streaming and Netflix’s particular championing of the binge model, studios would be behooved to choose the option that keeps their shows in the public conscience for as long as possible.

The movies are in fact…movie-ing

I guess you could say this for every month, but we had an eclectic bunch of films that people watched in April. What they have in common, though, is freshness. All but two of the movies on the chart this month were released either this year or last. This isn’t much to write home about but it makes the two outliers all the more interesting to see.

A movie that I would have liked to see show up on this chart is Hulu’s Rye Lane. A broad description would be that it’s a rom-com set in South London, but it’s a whole lot more than that. It’s as funny as can be, the leads are incredibly charming and have wonderful chemistry, and South London is as much of a character as the people in it. It’s lightyears better than a certain other rom-com that debuted on the April chart, but we don’t need to talk about that. I highly recommend Rye Lane, and all you need is an hour and a half because it is a brisk 82 minutes 🙌🏾.

Mystery slithers into place while Wakanda Forever sets a record

Murder Mystery 2 and Knock at the Cabin both made their debut on the chart this month, joining the ranks of Serpents past.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever takes its third Serpent title while also earning a new one. Currently sitting at 13 weeks on the chart, Wakanda Forever snatches the Marathoner crown from Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, which topped out at 10 weeks. I have no hypothesis as to why Wakanda Forever has been murdering the charts for this long, but I'm in full support of it.

I do hypothesize, though, that we may see some other marvel titles like Guardians of the Galaxy and Guardians Vol. 2 appear in May's chart as people gear up for Vol. 3, which'll be out by the time you read this.

Some interesting faces make an appearance

I’ve said this before but the movie chart is always so funny to look at because you never know what’s going to show up. Some of these titles make sense, like 80 for Brady and Scream VI, which are 2023 releases new to Paramount+. Or Home, which is a family/kids film new to Netflix and those always do well when they land on the service.

But I haven’t the faintest idea as to why enough people watched The Wizard of Oz on HBO Max within the same weekend for it to place. Maybe it’s an Easter tradition? Who knows, but I’ll be interested to see if it returns toward the end of the year along with other Oz inspired movies as we get closer to the release of Wicked.

Summer movie season is on the horizon

Summer is here! At least at the movies. We’ve got some heavy hitters coming to the big screen, with the aforementioned Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Fast X, and The Little Mermaid (2023) all coming out in May.

I am, for the most part, against Disney rehashing their entire backlog of animated classics, but The Little Mermaid? Yeah, this one‘s for me. AND I’m seeing it on my birthday? Say less, friends. I will single-handedly carry this film to $1 billion at the box office, so, apologies in advance for any more remakes Disney greenlights because of this.

Like every month before—and probably every month after this—there is plenty of new TV on its way. By the time you read this, I'll have already binged my way through Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story on Netflix. I skipped the first season of Bridgerton but the second had me by the throat so naturally, I had to return for another.

I’m also very excited about American Born Chinese, which hits Disney+ at the end of the month. The show follows a young boy struggling to adjust to a new school where he’s the only Chinese-American student when he becomes entangled in a battle between deities of Chinese mythology. If you could assign a concept to my brain it would be surrealism, so anything that combines fantasy with reality is so right up my alley that it’s become its own street.

They’re not new, but they’re worth checking out

The list of new movies to stream each month is usually fairly slim, and while I do try to include what’s coming out in theaters, this is a streaming-focused newsletter.

So, to buff it out a little, I thought I’d throw in some recommendations for movies that aren’t new to the world, but new to whatever streamer they’ve landed on for the month. Here’s a short list of some oldies but goodies that you should check out (or rewatch):

• Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) - Prime Video

• Attack the Block (2014) - Paramount+

• Bound (1996) - Prime Video

• Peter Pan (2003) - Netflix

• Unbreakable (2000) - HBO Max, 5/15

• Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016) - Hulu, 5/16

🎤 What are you enjoying this May?

That’s all from me this month! Let me know what media consumption you’re getting into and I’ll talk to you all in June 😊.