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TV
2025 TV Shows I Missed That I Wish I Had Seen Before Compiling This List: Heated Rivalry, Carême, El jardinero, Deli Boys, It: Welcome to Derry, Adults
2025 TV Shows I Missed, Don't Regret Missing, and Will Go Out of My Way to Continue Missing Until the End of Linear Time: Motorheads, Boston Blue, Sheriff Country, any of those new MCU shows
Top Ten Episodes of 2025
#10 "Pot O' Gold" The Bondsman
The rest of the series didn't quite live up to the promise of the premiere, but it's still a hell of a lot of fun. Quite literally. This introduction to the story of Kevin Bacon taking a gig as an undead demon hunter has some solid gore and the cast (which includes Sugarland's Jennifer Nettles and 100 Bloody Acres' Damon Herriman) really clicks.
#9 "#JoeGoldberg" You
Any show making its final season is going to want a bit of a victory lap, and this delightfully chaotic episode found a fun way to organically bring back a lot of familiar faces without banging you over the head with nostalgia.
#8 "F Is For Fuck-Up" Dexter: Original Sin
This episode is a hell of a lot of fun! They totally nail a trope that is almost impossible to pull off well: a comedic moment where a normally square character gets high. Plus the dynamic between Dexter and his father really shines, and Molly Brown gets to deliver her first great performance moment as Debra.
I will eternally curse corporate mergers for many reasons, but a big one is the fact that a post-Skydance Paramount+ summarily cancelled this show after renewing it for season 2.
#7 "Apple to Apples" And Just Like That
This episode is a lot, but it really stands out in a season where "not enough" would be a generous description of its contents. Carrie witnessing a family meltdown at a troubled teenager's birthday party is both surprisingly realistic and exhilaratingly tense.
#6 "Ghost Who's Coming to Dinner" School Spirits
Somehow, this is the first episode of the series where all the core teenage characters (ghosts and non-ghosts alike) are gathered in the same place. Exploring that dynamic was a blast, and the scenes outside of that moment were similarly lively.
#5 "Headhunting" What We Do in the Shadows
I find the "Cravensworth's Monster" material in this season to be absolutely useless, so those parts of the episode are a bit of a wash. But watching Nandor and Nadja attempt to navigate an office environment while infiltrating Guillermo's workplace is some of their funniest material yet.
#4 "Am I Smoking Too Much Weed?" Big Mouth
Even in its eighth (and final) season, Big Mouth never runs out of ways to simultaneously repulse and tickle me. Not only is this episode solidly funny, but it has quite a few genuinely heartwarming moments of tenderness that other episodes don't always have the interest in pulling off.
#3 "The Edge of Glory" Overcompensating
It is possible that no episode of television this decade has had this level of exquisite, wall-to-wall gags.
#2 "Black and Yellow" Overcompensating
The thing about Overcompensating is that it is very funny, but it will also leave you dehydrated from crying once every other episode. This is one of those every other episodes. It packs a wallop, but also really relishes the comedy inherent to early college life, mining an excellent moment from the labyrinthine rules of King's Cup (among many other things).
#1 "Welcome to the Black Parade" Overcompensating
Thanksgiving episodes have a weirdly amazing track record throughout television history, from Friends to Gossip Girl to Master of None. It shouldn't be possible for new series to keep adding great material to the heap, but Overcompensating has somehow pulled it off. Thanksgiving episodes tend to put characters into a new setting, allowing the dynamics to shift. This worked wonders here by allowing Grace and Carmen to bond, in addition to forcing Benny to contend with the past he is trying to hide.
Overall, it's funny, it's heartfelt, and it features stellar performances from Connie Britton and Kyle MacLachlan to boot. I might even say this episode is stuffed with delicious morsels, if I was feeling festive.
Bottom Five Episodes of 2025
#5 "Come Out and Play" What We Do in the Shadows
This episode, which follows a vampire gathering going very wrong, clearly cost them a hell of a lot of money in locations and extras and special effects. But jokes don't cost a thing, so I don't know why they skimped on those so aggressively.
#4 "After You" Only Murders in the Building
Only Murders in the Building loves to have an experimental episode where they take a break from the ongoing story and normal format to do something fresh. These episodes are always terrible. This one, following the life of the doorman of the Arconia, is more boring than it is truly terrible, but it's still hard to look at it as anything but a major waste of time, just like the rest of the show's experimental fare.
#3 "Future Days" The Last of Us
I can be absurdly picky about zombie narratives, so take this with a grain of salt, I guess. But this episode is what crystalized my feelings of antipathy toward season 2 of The Last of Us. They clearly want the show to be a human drama more than a zombie thriller, but when the interpersonal conflicts are this stale and wearisome, why bother?
#2 "Last Dance" You
The final season of You swung violently between solid highs and perilous lows, and this is the lowest of the bunch. They try to go for a Fifty Shades vibe and manage to bungle it even worse than the movies did. Plus, when an episode isn't firing on all cylinders, it's all too easy to poke holes in the fabric that makes up the season. For instance, Griffin Matthews' tendency to overuse hand-acting reaches its peak here, and it's almost impossible to ignore.
#1 "Forget About the Boy" And Just Like That
The penultimate episode of the newest incarnation of Sex and the City made a lot of huge swings (almost none of which organically arose from the plot of the rest of the season), but yet at the same time absolutely nothing happened. It's a glorious exercise in manic boredom.
Best New Show: Overcompensating
I'll admit that I am biased because, as a homosexual from the same microgeneration as the show's creator and star Benito Skinner, I am perfectly calibrated to receive the metric ton of gay millennial pop culture references that Overcompensating boasts. But this show (which follows a gay college freshman trying to fit in and not out himself) should be a home run for basically any viewer. It's got jokes out the wazoo (Actual jokes! In a comedy! Imagine!), it knows exactly how to tug your heartstrings when it wants to, and it takes place in a gloriously demented cartoon world. I couldn't recommend it more. Obviously.
Best Returning Show: Big Mouth
Straight through to the bitter end, Big Mouth found new and exciting ways to be completely, wonderfully disgusting.
Most Improved Returning Show: You
You season 5 is hardly a perfect gem, so this just speaks to how abysmally tedious season 4 was.
Most Degraded Returning Show: What We Do in the Shadows
This is a reverse of the You situation. The sixth and final season of What We Do in the Shadows is probably a 7 out of 10, but that's a huge drop in quality for a show that previously pitched five perfect games. Those returns had to diminish sometime, I guess.
Best Dramatic Actor: Patrick Gibson, Dexter: Original Sin
An excellent combination of goofy and eerie, Patrick Gibson really figured out how to create a character who is in line with Michael C. Hall's portrayal but still charming in his own unique way.
Best Comedic Actor: Milo Manheim, School Spirits
Wally Clark is emerging as an all-time great television himbo. Many kudos to Manheim, who gets better and better as the years progress.
Best Dramatic Actress: Anna Camp, You
Just like Dylan O'Brien in Twinless, Anna Camp could get kudos simply for playing twin sisters with polar opposite personalities. But she elevates her performance far beyond that by somehow, miraculously, making every second of the increasingly soapy melodrama that those twins find themselves trapped in feel organic and believable.
Best Comedic Actress: Wally Baram, Overcompensating
It is shocking that this is comedy writer Wally Baram's first major role, because she was born to bring this perfectly awkward character to life. Overcompensating is about Benito Skinner's character, but his storyline doesn't exist without his heterosexual female foil, and Baram's effortlessly funny work is the glue that holds the whole thing together.
Best Trans/Nonbinary Actor: Holmes, Overcompensating
It shouldn't be possible to steal a show as consistently good as Overcompensating, but genderqueer actor Holmes sure does manage to pull it off almost every time they're onscreen.
Best Guest Star: Bowen Yang & Matt Rogers, Overcompensating
Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers obviously have great chemistry together, having co-hosted the podcast Las Culturistas for nearly a decade. But that doesn't automatically translate to playing a hilariously toxic couple, so I'm glad that they did whatever prep they needed to do to make it happen.
Worst Guest Star: Charli XCX, Overcompensating
See? I don't just have nice things to say about this show! Overcompensating's executive producer and music producer Charli XCX also makes a cameo appearance as herself, and it's meant to be a bit of skewering of her public persona, à la Neil Patrick Harris in the Harold and Kumar movies. However, her performance as a heinous diva falls entirely flat. They were so excited that they could get her onscreen that they never bothered to think about what might be worthwhile to do when they actually did.
Best Couple: Charley & Yuri, School Spirits
Sweet gay love stories that are actually followed through upon on teen shows! They're less common than you think!
Worst Couple: Carrie & Aidan, And Just Like That
This spot is reserved for that self-indulgent, behatted monster and her toxic manbaby lover during any year they on my television screen.
Best Costume: Carrie's Postcard-Mailing Lingerie, And Just Like That
Carrie has worn some heinous outfits throughout the many installments in the Sex and the City universe, but there are several diamonds hidden in that rough. This is one of them. Should she be wearing this to post mail? Maybe not. But she looks jaw-droppingly incredible, so who am I to judge?
Worst Costume: The Hat, And Just Like That
Speaking of Carrie's heinous outfits... Seriously, that thing is bigger than Central Park itself.
Biggest Laugh: Nandor's Paper Towels, What We Do in the Shadows
Nandor took one look at the janitorial supplies at Cannon Capital and was instantly (and incorrectly) certain that he knew exactly what to do with them. He causes a lot of delicious chaos during his undercover gig, but his finest hour is the casual havoc he wreaks with a simple roll of paper towels.
Biggest Cry: The Hot Tub, And Just Like That
The moment where Charlotte and Lisa Todd Wexley had a shared moment of grief and compassion during a heart-to-heart in a hot tub while glamping was a brief, devastating reminder that these characters are meant to be real human beings.
Biggest Scream: The Chain Link Fence, The Last of Us
This setpiece, where a character must force herself through a narrowing, tightening space in order to avoid being devoured is proof that there are still pulse-pounding moments yet to be mined from the live-action zombie genre. Alas, The Last of Us forgets this lesson more or less immediately.
Biggest Thirst: The Rugby Prologue, Single, Out
The opening scene of Single, Out season 3 features the lead character daydreaming about a hot rugby player while sporting a haircut that is completely different from what he has for the rest of the season. While that detail speaks to how unapologetically chaotic this show is, the scene as a whole is one of many, many, many moments that are hotter than the otherwise considerably-less-than-professional production should really be able to get away with.
Best Kill: Kevin Bacon, The Bondsman
This isn't a spoiler. I'm talking about the pilot, where his hardass bounty hunter character is killed and brought to life, marking the beginning of his demon hunter era (just two months before KPop joined the fray). It's a gross special effect, and one of the only ones that really gets under your skin in this otherwise CGI-laden series.
Best SNL Sketch: "Plans"
As someone who has a "3" at the beginning of his age, I can very much relate to the existential dread of suddenly having to interact with other human beings when all you wanted to do was stay home in slippers and watch TV.
Worst SNL Sketch: "KPop Demon Hunters"
The recurring punchline of this whole sketch is that KPop Demon Hunters exists and that they could get the real-life Huntr/x to perform on SNL. Not everything is funny simply because it's true.
Best Musical Performance: Lady Gaga, 2025 Tudum
Not to brag, but I was in the room when this happened! Lady Gaga is a consummate performer, and she singlehandedly made it worth sitting through that disjointed, ramshackle Netflix promotional live event.
Worst Musical Performance: James Bond Medley, 97th Academy Awards
I'm not saying that any of these performers are bad per se, but they were incredibly random choices for a medley of James Bond themes that already had no reason to be in this year's Oscars telecast. Raye performing "Skyfall" was probably the best fit, though she tries to show off a little too hard, and it kills the meter of the song. Doja Cat performing "Diamonds Are Forever," on the other hand, was a huge miss. I imagine that singing wouldn't even be the first skill that she would list on her business card, so handing her a Shirley Bassey number was an incalculable blunder.
While Lisa performing "Live and Let Die" was slightly better, the medley mostly served to point out to the fact that most of our Top 40 stars right now aren't exactly torch song divas. And Margaret Qualley performing ballet to the Bond theme at the beginning? Uh... sure, why not.
Best Original Song: "Our Highway" The Bondsman
I know Jennifer Nettles is mostly acting these days, but if you get Sugarland's lead singer in your show, you better let her write and perform a fun-ass country song with Kevin Bacon! Or two. Or five. (Spoiler alert: They do a bunch, but "Our Highway" is the best.)
Best Line: "Actually, he's rumored to have titty-fucked me." Overcompensating
This is a perfectly idiotic line, perfectly delivered by Wally Baram as a character who is perfectly aware that the alleged titty-fucking never happened but is trying to keep a lid on maybe accidentally outing her best friend.
Worst Line: “The woman wondered what she had gotten herself into.” And Just Like That
Every line we get from Carrie's absurdly awful debut novel is a three-course meal of nonsense, but my favorite is the first one we ever get to hear. You think that maybe she'll develop her fictional character (a blisteringly obvious analogue for her favorite person: herself) over the course of the season, but nope. The character is always just "the woman." The shock never truly wears off.
2025 Crush: Tate Shaw
I couldn't find an in-universe picture of Jason Schmidt, who played Aidan's son Tate in And Just Like That season 3, so enjoy this photo from his IMDb profile. Say what you will about Aidan Shaw (and I have), but he sure has brought a light into this world.
BOOKS
Top Five Books of 2025
#5 Mirage City, Lev A. C. Rosen
The fourth installment in Rosen's mystery series set in 1950s California sees its closed-off noir-y detective character opening himself yet another crack. It's slow burn character development, for sure, but getting to spend time learning about the gay underground movements of the period while by the side of such a compelling character is oh so pleasant.
#4 Jane Austen's Bookshelf, Rebecca Romney
I picked up this book because I will at least give a passing glance to anything with the name Jane Austen on the cover. However, this is a much richer text than your average Austensploitation. Not only is Jane Austen's Bookshelf a candid and inviting history of the largely forgotten women whose work Austen read, it is a lovely memoir detailing the ins and outs of book collecting which also traces the often strange whims of literary history that shape the canon.
#3 The Romantic Tragedies of a Drama King, Harry Trevaldwyn
This is the most genuinely funny contemporary young adult novel that I've read in years. This tale of a love-obsessed drama kid deciding he's going to nab himself a boyfriend before learning how to be a boyfriend is pure, charming sweetness.
#2 Daughter of Daring, Mallory O'Meara
Mallory O'Meara, who has already cemented herself as a must-read voice in contemporary nonfiction, returns to form with her biography of Helen Gibson, the first female stunt performer in Hollywood. O'Meara uses Gibson's story as an inroad into discussing the unsung women of early Hollywood in general, and it's fascinating from top to bottom.
Take this from someone who has slogged his way through his fair share of film texts, but never has the history of filmmaking in the early 20th century been so compulsively readable.
#1 Sky Daddy, Kate Folk
This book, about a woman who has a sexual fascination with planes and whose dearest wish is to "marry" one by dying in a fiery crash, defies typical genre categories. Part thriller, part romance, and part psychological horror story, Sky Daddy is above all a nail-biting study of obsession and how it can radically reshape one's life. It is also a riveting, envelope-pushing experiment in how far a book can stretch a reader's instinct to root for the protagonist of a story to get what they want, even (perhaps especially) if they are an antihero.
It's also, somehow, the best ode to platonic friendship of the year and a frank admission that everybody is weirder than they pretend to be. This has proven to be a difficult book for me to successfully recommend to people, given its subject matter. But please. I'm begging you. Give this one a try. Don't get bogged down by what the plot sounds like on paper. Sky Daddy is not only my favorite book of the year, but my favorite new novel since at least 2021.
Top Five Books I Read for the First Time in 2025
#5 Freaky Friday (1972), Mary Rodgers
First, a warning: This book has way more racism in it than you're prepared for, even if you're a survivor of the fortune cookie sequence in the 2003 movie adaptation (though, to be fair, the protagonist her self is avowedly anti-racist). But I found this book to be tremendously readable and laugh-out-loud funny, even if it does feel like it was ripped from the moral universe of the 1950s rather than the early '70s.
#4 Jason Priestley: A Memoir (2014), Jason Priestley
I read a fuckton of memoirs from Beverly Hills, 90210 stars after finishing my marathon of the series earlier this year. Not only is Jason Priestley's the best, it is a genuinely compelling read when taken on its own. I appreciated the curt frankness of his (or, more likely, his ghostwriter's) authorial voice, in addition to the dishy content it brought to life.
#3 Evelina (1778), Frances Burney
This is one of the novels that Jane Austen's Bookshelf exposed me to, and boy am I glad it did! It has its flaws (ie. a protagonist who is a simpering nitwit), but it's an engrossing novel that combines literary wit with a more telenovela-esque storyline than anything Jane ever wrought. I mean, a fop gets attacked by a monkey in Evelina! This was a tough one to put down.
#2 Giant's Bread (1930), Agatha Christie as Mary Westmacott
I have been slowly working my way through the domestic dramas that Agatha Christie wrote under a pseudonym, chasing the dragon of the tragic masterpiece that was Absent in the Spring. None have come close to beating that novel, but all have been pretty darn terrific in their own right. Giant's Bread is the standout, presenting intriguing and layered characters who are brimming with feelings and vitality in the midst of a decades-spanning exploration of the life of a blossoming musician.
#1 Dangerous Liaisons (1782), Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
Yes, I read this because I watched Cruel Intentions for the first time this year. But we come to things how we come to them, and this was a rip-snorting good time. Knowing that books like Evelina and this soapy, sexy romp exist, I give a hefty amount of side-eye to anyone who claims that classic literature is boring. You just need to read the right things, my friends!
Best Book Cover: Don't Let Me Go
Full disclosure: I haven't read this book yet. I've got no idea if it's any good, and I'm told one isn't allowed to judge books by their covers, for some reason. But what a lovely cover. It's breaking basically every rule of young adult romance cover design, placing the couple off-center at that canted overhead angle, making the two figures meeting feel more candid and accidental, thus perfectly offsetting the fantastical inevitability implied by the rest of the cover. Also it's such a pretty shade of blue.
2025 Crush: Kris
Sarah Raasch's Royals & Romance series, which follows the princes of various magical holiday-themed kingdoms falling in love with each other, may be baffling, but it sure knows how to deliver a hot protagonist. In a world that teems with hot fairy tale princes, Kris Claus (the lead of the second novel, Go Luck Yourself) might just be the most eminently crushable.
HERE'S SOME STUFF THAT I DID IN 2025
Podcasts!
In addition to my work at Alternate Ending (which included falling in love with The Dentist and Day of the Triffids, breaking down the New York Times' best movies of the century and cheesy Christmas rom-coms, and introducing Mandy Albert to The Bye Bye Man on the sophomore episode of Your Movie Rocks), I got the Attack of the Queerwolf gang back together for a special episode raising funds for wildfire relief, talked to my buddies at Friendchise about Paddington in Peru and Dario Argento's Inferno, and made my first appearance on The Goods to discuss the strange COVID-era Christmas rom-com Dear Christmas!
Writing!
On this here blog, I got ole Census Bloodbath up and running again after a few years on the backburner and managed to review the last of the slashers of 1985. Stay tuned for more from 1986!
Elsewhere, I wrote a lot of pieces that I'm particularly proud of this year. On Horror Press, I wrote about the most important women slasher history, the best male nudity in horror movies, horror's deadliest twinks, the world of zombie movies from outside North America, and the 45 best minutes from the Friday the 13th franchise.
On Screen Rant, I reviewed Borderline, Screamboat, Fight or Flight, and Z-O-M-B-I-E-S 4: Dawn of the Vampires, ranked the musical numbers from Z-O-M-B-I-E-S 4, wrote up my visit to the set of Twisted Metal season 2, shared the second half of my CCXP interview with Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy, put together our massive 2025 Summer Movie Preview, and wrote a box office newsletter most every Sunday!
Other Stuff!
I won't share an image of this to protect privacy, but in addition to donating to wildfire relief elsewhere, I contributed to a very important charity effort now known as Land of Lovies that was created by Ashley Reckdenwald in an effort to provide children with replacements for beloved stuffed animals that were lost in the L.A. fires. If I was separated from my Pikachu and T-Rex at that age, it would have wrecked me, and I'm very grateful that Reckdenwald was thoughtful enough to realize how much little things like this matter, even among devastation that was so widespread and large-scale.
I was able to procure an exact replica of a little girl's stuffed bunny, and I truly have never felt like a single action of mine has had more of a direct impact on another person's life. I highly recommend supporting this organization however you can!
I finished my years-long marathon of Beverly Hills, 90210 and Melrose Place! To celebrate the final day, my boyfriend, Ben, and I watched the pilot episode of 90210, went to the real-life location that played the exterior of the Peach Pit, then watched the finale. I'll miss Brandon, Andrea, Kelly, Donna, David, and the rest of the gang (not Steve), but I'm glad to finally be free to watch other TV shows!
Ben and I went to two weddings on two consecutive weekends (in Lake Tahoe and Cleveland, two extremely comparable places) in addition to taking a massive road trip through Toronto (where we visited Corey Haim's grave), Montréal (where we visited the filming locations of movies such as Scream VI and Happy Birthday to Me) and Acadia National Park (where we looked at trees or whatever).
Oh, also Ben and I got engaged this year! Isn't that cute?
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