Megan Garber
The Dark Side of the Houseplant Boom
American culture is becoming more and more preoccupied with nature. What if all the celebrations of the wild world are actually manifestations of grief?
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Jim McAuley The Loss at the Heart of Guy Fieri’s Entertainment Empire
Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives is a mainstay of basic cable—and a rallying cry for a country that is losing touch with itself.
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20th Century Fox / Everett; The Atlantic Shallow Hal and the Never-Ending Fat Joke
The romantic comedy premiered 20 years ago. Its cruelties refuse to age.
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Macall B. Polay / HBO The Soul in Cousin Greg’s Linguistic Blunders
In the world of Succession, eloquence is a sign of complicity. Greg, a malapropism incarnate, is the exception that proves the rule.
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Will Heath / NBCU / Getty Saturday Night Live Turns the Big Lie Into a Big Farce
On the show, at least, Donald Trump is back.
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Fox Media; The Atlantic Reality TV’s Absurd New Extreme
How a genre premised on artifice got obsessed with disguise
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Paul Zimmerman / Getty How Gunther Broke the Fourth Wall
James Michael Tyler, who died yesterday, played the beloved Friends character with a sense of ironized self-awareness.
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Adam Maida / The Atlantic The Great Novel of the Internet Was Published in 1925
Almost 100 years ago, Mrs. Dalloway anticipated the anxiety of seeing—and being seen.
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Getty; Charlie Le Maignon; The Atlantic Ted Lasso and the Limits of American Optimism
On the new Culture podcast The Review, our Atlantic staff writers break down the Emmy-winning soccer sitcom and its much-discussed second season.
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Getty; The Atlantic Jeopardy, a Place Where Facts Used to Matter
The mistakes the show made in its attempts to replace Alex Trebek have doubled, for fans, as betrayals.
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Mario Perez / HBO The Leisure Class Always Wins
The wealthy vacationers in the HBO series The White Lotus assume that the world revolves around them. The show ultimately proves them right.
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Shutterstock; Teepublic; The Atlantic The Sad Irony of Andrew Cuomo’s ‘Love Gov’ Persona
The New York governor took refuge in his meme-friendly brand—until he couldn’t any longer.
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Apple TV+ / The Atlantic When a Show About Kindness Gets Darker
The hit sitcom Ted Lasso is a witty ode to empathy. Its second season remains warmhearted—and turns the show’s original thesis on its head.
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HBO Max; The Atlantic The Marriage Plot for the Age of Workism
The HBO show Hacks, like several other recent works, explores the particular intimacies of professional relationships—and expands what it means to be a couple.
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Glenn Harvey Tucker Carlson’s Manufactured America
The Fox host has a new daytime show, and he’s using it to poison the meaning of patriotism.
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Adam Maida / The Atlantic Slouching Towards Gilead
The Handmaid’s Tale showed the ease with which the unthinkable can become ordinary—a lesson crucial in the age of the Big Lie.
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Illustration by Paul Spella; images by Mary Evans … Top Gun Is an Infomercial for America
Reconsidering the meaning of Maverick
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Adam Maida / The Atlantic / Disney The Cowardice of Cruella
The new Disney film could have embraced villainy, in all its complications. Instead, it opts for a cheaper sort of sympathy.
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HBO Max / Getty / The Atlantic The Friends Mythology Has Come Full Circle
The long-awaited reunion special is an uneasy continuation of the sitcom’s easy fantasies.
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Apple TV+ How the Space Fantasy Became Banal
The final frontier, as a setting, has long channeled giddy dreams of human communion. A new group of cultural works explores the opposite possibility.
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Illustration by Oliver Munday; Christine Schneider / Brigitte … Hormone Monsters
Television turns to magical realism to explore the trials of early adolescence.
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