ANGIE HAN To say that an anxious, paranoid chill has gripped this winter would surely be an understatement.
In real life, half the country has been watching in horror as President Donald Trump and Elon Musk have dismantled, destroyed or otherwise disrupted institutions that had long felt — well, if not perfectly reliable and aboveboard, at least enough so that we hadn’t had to actively fret about them. Suddenly, it’s become much harder to trust that planes won’t randomly fall out of the sky, that Canada won’t have reason to fire missiles at us, that some 20-year-old crypto bro won’t start siphoning money out of your bank account.
Meanwhile, even when we haven’t been watching the news, an awful lot of our entertainment has been reflecting our unease right back at us. Hulu’s Sterling K. Brown-headlined Paradise and Netflix’s Robert De Niro-starring Zero Day unspooled massive conspiracies that stretched all the way to the very heart of the U.S. government, ensnaring evil billionaires and corrupt politicians along the way. Sound familiar? And over in the private sector, Apple TV+’s Severance season two and Adult Swim’s Common Side Effects have mined pitch-black laughs and thrilling tension from the realization that there might be no functional limit to the monstrosities giant corporations are capable of — no one they won’t betray, violate or flat-out murder, if it comes to it.
Heck, even Max’s reliably inspiring new medical drama The Pitt comes with a heaping side of institutional mistrust: The doctors may be heroic, but a health care system that claims to prioritize “patient satisfaction” while denying hospitals the resources they need is not.
It feels sometimes like we’re all trapped in a never-ending season of The Traitors, another trust-no-one series airing right now.
What about you, Dan? What shows are speaking to your sense of disorientation and disillusionment these days?
DANIEL FIENBERG One thing you can say about America in 2025 is that nothing has been subtle. So television is just following suit. Bold-faced messages of distrust really are everywhere on the small screen at the moment, and characters are going to desperate extremes to issue warnings, either to the world at large or, in some cases, to themselves. The cyberattack at the heart of Zero Day is accompanied by the threat: “THIS WILL HAPPEN AGAIN.” The heroes in Paradise hijack the sky — it makes more sense if you know the big twist — to warn the contented sheeple of the community in which the series takes place: “THEY’RE LYING TO YOU.” The “outie” version of Adam Scott’s character spends an entire episode of Severance attempting to literally burn the words “Who is alive?” into his retinas as a warning for his “innie.”
The paranoia of this winter’s programming is varied and pervasive enough that viewers of every political stripe can feel catered to. These may be shows that have premiered in the second Trump term, but they were generally developed and produced during the Biden administration and likely creatively emerged from the wreckage of COVID shutdowns and Hollywood industry strikes. So if Zero Day features a one-term president who may be experiencing signs of dementia, everybody gets to believe in their heart of hearts that the show is talking about The Other Guy and not their preferred Fearless Leader (and Zero Day exists in a world in which nobody actually says “Democrat” or “Republican”).
As you note, an unelected billionaire is currently dismantling our institutions — and if you watch TV, who could blame him? Sure, shows like The Night Agent (Netflix), The Recruit (also Netflix) and Reacher (Amazon) exist in worlds where the CIA and FBI might be useful as backup, but it’s the renegade lone wolves who really save the day. (This is not to be confused with NBC’s The Americas, a nature docuseries in which literal lone wolves are just going about their business.)
Angie, are you finding this rise in paranoia on TV to be productive — opening your eyes to new things to fret about or reassuring you that you’ve been right all along? More importantly, have you found anybody to trust?
HAN I think the word I’d use is “cathartic.” It’s satisfying, when I find myself grumbling yet again about how much health care costs even with decent insurance, to see Common Side Effects call out Big Pharma’s endless greed. Or to see Netflix’s imperfect Apple Cider Vinegar draw a line from that greed to the snake oil salespeople preying on desperate folks who no longer feel the medical establishment has their best interests at heart. There’s a reason the Severance innies didn’t find that “Lumon Is Listening” video comforting. When you can already see with your own eyes that things are messed up, it feels so much better to hear someone acknowledge that they can see it too, rather than have them insist that this is fine, actually.
But to your point, even the most jaded among us needs to believe in something sometimes. So thank you to Showtime’s Yellowjackets for returning to remind me that no matter what else is happening in the world, we can always rely on teenage girls to be emotionally violent. And to HBO’s The White Lotus, for once again serving up the tried and true pleasures of gawking at the extremely wealthy and deeply miserable. Here’s to SNL50 for letting us know that there’s one beloved, or at least begrudgingly respected, American institution still standing. Has the endless fountain of self-congratulatory projects — a four-part docuseries, a stand-alone documentary feature, a musical concert and a three-hour special — been a bit exhausting? Yes. Has it nevertheless been nice to see the outpouring of love from normies and A-listers alike for a show that, whatever its shortcomings, has given us lots of joy over the decades? Also yes.
Dan, where are you finding comfort these days?
FIENBERG If I had to fill out a patient satisfaction survey — we’re in the middle of a medical show renaissance in which we’re told repeatedly that the worst thing administrators can do is demand that docs pay attention to patient satisfaction surveys — The Pitt would be near the top of my list. It’s hard to believe a show featuring a degloved foot, a roach burrowed in a patient’s ear and one doctor whose entire character can be defined as “gets doused in bodily fluids” could be a source of comfort. But anchored by Noah Wyle in all his bearded, ER-honed gravitas, The Pitt delivers what we need at a moment we’re told institutions are failing. It reminds us that no matter how dire the bureaucratic nightmare, good people can still do good work.
That’s why some of these interchangeable Netflix political thrillers (The Night Agent, The Recruit, Zero Day and the best of them, The Diplomat) are reassuring as well. Corruption may go all the way to the top in universes both fictional and real, but strong individuals can still save the day. This isn’t what I generally believe on an ideological level, mind you, so perhaps what I appreciate about a solid, fast-moving genre show is when it knows that the trick to audience satisfaction needn’t be complicated.
Take Amazon’s Reacher, a show about a man who’s defined mostly as “big.” You don’t need a multifaceted adversary; you just need somebody bigger than “big,” and Reacher delivers on that front. Or The White Lotus, a series that’s sometimes very complex and sometimes as simple as “Drop horrible wealthy people in a gorgeous location and promise that eventually one of them will get killed.” And yes, good performances can make the whole thing satisfying, whatever the quality of the world around them (the Thailand-set third season takes a few episodes to find its groove).
HAN A great cast can make the difference between forgettable filler and a new favorite. Especially when the show itself isn’t trying to do anything wildly original. That we’ve gotten so many new procedurals lately seems fitting; what’s more comforting in times of upheaval than a classic formula that promises to nail the bad guy, or the mystery virus, in 44 minutes or less? But while, say, NBC’s Suits LA and The CW’s Good Cop/Bad Cop might aim for similarly fizzy pleasures, the former never manages to calibrate the right mix of light, heavy and offbeat for its cast; the latter, though, thrives on the chemistry between Leighton Meester, Luke Cook and Clancy Brown, which feels so deliciously cozy I wanted to wrap it around me like a blanket.
We’re living in an era so rife with real-life bad guys that even the man behind Walter White, Vince Gilligan, is calling for fewer villains and “more George Baileys and Andy Taylors.” And though I’m not suggesting that the stridently apolitical Good Cop/Bad Cop offers sharp insight into our current times, or that the doctors of The Pitt might magically cure what’s ailing America, or that Reacher punching his way out of problems is the best way forward — I think they have their place in a gloomy cultural landscape. Stories that reaffirm how craven and evil people can be are resonating right now, but it’s nice to be reminded how sweet and noble and funny we can be, too.
This story appeared in the Feb. 26 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.