Its main cast includes the talented Angela Bassett as Sergeant Athena Grant, Peter Krause as Captain Bobby Nash, Oliver Stark as Firefighter Evan “Buck” Buckley, Jennifer Love Hewitt as Dispatcher Maddie Buckley, Ryan Guzman as Firefighter Eddie Diaz, Aisha Hinds as Firefighter Paramedic Henrietta “Hen” Wilson and Kenneth Choi as Firefighter Paramedic Howard “Chimney” Han. 

Premiering in 2018, the show has won numerous accolades, most notably for Bassett herself, and has been consistently popular with six seasons under its belt. However, nearing the end of its sixth season, Fox opted to not renew its highest rated series and canceled the show. ABC picked up “9-1-1” for its seventh season smoothly after its cancellation, but its production was delayed as a result of the SAG-AFTRA strikes. When the strikes were resolved, the show was able to start filming its latest season in late 2023. On March 14, “9-1-1” premiered its seventh season with an epic three-part premiere.

The one thing I love most about “9-1-1” is the number of absurd scenarios these responders have to face across the semi-fictionalized Los Angeles. There is at least one major disaster that happens per season that have plot arcs covered across multiple episodes, an example of which I believe is the craziest is when there was an enormous tsunami striking the coast of LA, washing half the city in its third season. For its seventh season, ABC decided that  “9-1-1” had to pull out all its big guns for an incredible return from their near-death cancellation. 

Across its first three episodes, the show picks up where it left off with Athena and Bobby celebrating their long-awaited cruise honeymoon. However, this honeymoon’s cut short with international pirates attacking the ship and causing it to shipwreck, all the while the tropical storm they were trying to avoid turned into a Category Five hurricane. While Athena and Bobby fight for their lives, the rest of their team risk their own as well as their jobs in a crazy rescue mission to get them out of their situation. Switching focus from Athena and Bobby to the rest of the team, we are shown multiple interpersonal conflicts, such as Athena worrying over her marriage with Bobby and wondering if they know how to communicate without their jobs in the way and best friends Buck and Eddie trying to understand Eddie’s son, Chris, as he goes through the motions of puberty like dating multiple girls at once. 

The cruise chaos is so unbelievable, it might top the tsunami arc I love so much. I have been keeping up with “9-1-1” updates through X, formerly Twitter, and the interviews the cast have done leading up to the premiere, which shows how much promise this new season carries. I can’t personally wait for the upcoming wedding episode between long-term couple, Maddie and Chimney, an impressive “9-1-1” crossover episode with “The Bachelor,” and their much-anticipated hundredth episode whose plot has been largely kept under wraps. 

I don’t know what else to expect from this season, but I do know that I won’t be disappointed if the characterization of the main cast and their relationships with one another continue to grow and develop as they always have, regardless of the crazy situations they get themselves into. I heavily recommend tuning into this show if you love fanatical drama, hot firefighters or the phenomenal Angela Bassett. 

Before I go into my favorites, as always, let’s first get into what you should know of this year’s Academy Awards. The most nominated films rank with “Oppenheimer” leading with 13 nominations, followed by “Poor Things” with 11, “Killers of the Flower Moon” with 10 and “Barbie” with eight. 

Amongst impressive records, there were several notable nominees. Steven Spielberg extended his record for most Best Picture nominations to 13 for “Maestro.” John Williams beat his own record again of most Oscar-nominated person alive (with 54 nominations) for Best Original Score for “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” Martin Scorsese became the most Best Director-nominated alive, surpassing Spielberg with his 11th nomination for “Killers of the Flower Moon.” “Godzilla Minus One” became the first Godzilla movie from its long franchise to be nominated for an Academy Award (and by God, I hope it wins; it was a phenomenal film) for Best Visual Effects.

Of the acting nominees, three are openly-LGBT+ actors: Colman Domingo, Jodie Foster and Lily Gladstone. Lily Gladstone also became the first Native American to be nominated for Best Actress for her incredible work in “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Similarly, Scott George is the first member of the Osage Nation to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song for “Wazhazhe (A Song for My People)” from “Killers of the Flower Moon.” 

The 96th Academy Awards is the first time the Academy has enforced diversity rules for the Best Picture category, designed to encourage an “equitable representation on and off screen to better reflect the diverse global population.” On top of this, nobody pulled a “Riseborough,” with no surprising nomination coming out of the blue, which the Academy had discouraged last year. For the first time since 2001, the Academy announced a new category for Best Casting, which is set to be included by 2026. However, they were criticized yet again for not recognizing stunt performers and performances as their own category at the awards, considering it’s one of the film industry’s oldest art forms. 

Amongst the controversial, Greta Gerwig was snubbed of a Best Director nomination for her film “Barbie,” resulting in massive uproar among film fans. Even more surprising, Margot Robbie was not nominated for Best Lead Actress for “Barbie,” despite her co-stars Ryan Gosling and America Ferrera having garnered ones. Likewise, Leonardo DiCaprio was snubbed from an expected nomination for Best Lead Actor for “Killers of the Flower Moon”. 

There are several personal favorites I believe were snubbed from this year’s awards. There were no nominations for Pedro Almodóvar’s western short film, “Strange Way of Life,” Charles Melton for his role in “May December,” Dominic Sessa for his role in “The Holdovers” and Celine Song and Greta Lee, respectively, for Best Director and Best Lead Actress for “Past Lives.”

Now onto my top picks for who I’d like to see win this year’s Oscars! For Best Original Screenplay, David Hemingson’s “The Holdovers” deserves to win as one of my personal favorite films to have come out recently. The premise of a strict teacher (notably played by the incredible Paul Giamatti) forced to chaperone students who’ve got nowhere to go on Christmas break really sold me as a concept and a film, regardless of the predictions pointing towards Celine Song’s “Past Lives.” 

While predictions also point toward Da’Vine Joy Randolph for Best Supporting Actress for her work in “The Holdovers,” I personally favor Danielle Brooks for her fantastic role as Sofia in “The Color Purple.” As the only Academy nomination the movie received, and all other snubs accounted for, it would be remarkable if Brooks won, considering she previously played the role on Broadway. She has been one of my favorite actresses in recent years, coming from incredibly comedic roles in “Orange is the New Black” and “Peacemaker.” My pick for Best Supporting Actor is, unsurprisingly, Robert Downey Jr. for his role as Lewis Strauss in the brilliant biopic, “Oppenheimer,” whom other predictions point to as well for greatest contender. 

Against popular opinion and what my friends know about me, my top pick for Best Leading Actor isn’t Cillian Murphy for his role in “Oppenheimer.” While I am a big fan of Murphy, especially in “28 Days Later,” “Batman Begins” and “Breakfast on Pluto,” my heart and pick goes out to Colman Domingo for his role as the gay civil rights activist, Bayard Rustin, in “Rustin.” Domingo, a prominent gay Afro-Latino actor, has been one of my favorite actors ever since I first watched him in “Fear the Walking Dead.” If he were to win, he would make incredible breakthrough records as the first Afro-Latino as well as first openly-LGBT actor to play an LGBT role.  

Similarly, my top pick for Best Leading Actress is, of course, Lily Gladstone for their role as Mollie Kyle in “Killers of the Flower Moon.” While overall predictions are split between Gladstone and Emma Stone for her role in “Poor Things,” when comparing the two films, I just absolutely fell in love with Gladstone and their performance. If they were to win, they’d achieve an accomplishment most of us merely dream of: fulfilling her high school superlative of “Most likely to win an Oscar.” I can’t wait to see her star in more films to come after such an incredible film debut. 

Of the Best Animated Film category, I believe each one deserves the award. However, if I were to choose one above all, it would have to be ND Stevenson’s “Nimona.” Adapted from the graphic novel, the film has an impressive take on different types of love as well as gender identity. Mixed with a fantasy fairytale storyline, stunning vocal performances from Riz Ahmed, Chloë Grace Moretz and Eugene Lee Yang and a one-of-a-kind animated style, it makes it my top pick of the season. I have no idea who might truly win considering the popular predicted nominees are Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron” and Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s “Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse,” but “Nimona” has my full support. 

Now, like how all Academy Awards end, here’s my top pick for Best Picture. In a not-so-surprising manner, I have to agree with what everyone else believes will be the winner, Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer.” As a huge fan of Nolan’s work, “Oppenheimer” is one of his most awe-inspiring, with an enormous, star-studded cast. As someone who also had a huge hyperfixation on the history of the atom bomb when they were 12, I am astounded that there is now a movie dedicated to it, and that people now know about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the horrors he helped contribute. With its 11 nominations, as well as the number of other accolades the film has received, “Oppenheimer” is a total shoo-in. 

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions and predictions. That being said, I do declare my top picks are better than everyone else’s. The 96th Academy Awards is set to air on March 10, 2024, and I encourage everyone to tune in. If you’re unable to, I highly recommend watching all the nominees I detailed as my favorites. You should give them all the love and attention they deserve.

The prequel, subsequently named “Young Sheldon,” is a coming-of-age sitcom, stylistically shot differently than Big Bang Theory, and it explores Sheldon’s life as a child prodigy with his family in East Texas before becoming the weird man we all know from “The Big Bang Theory”. 

The show takes place in the late 1980s/early 1990s with Sheldon (Iain Armitage), age nine, starting high school and the majority of the show focuses on his relationships with his family, such as loving his mother, Mary (Zoe Perry), all the while he constantly argues with her over religion, not knowing how to bond with his father, George (Lance Barber), embarrassing and annoying his older brother, Georgie (Montana Jordan), who he goes to high school with, and not being able to understand how he can be related to his twin sister, Missy (Raegen Revord). Sheldon absolutely adores his maternal grandmother, Connie (Annie Potts), who is often referred to as Meemaw, despite the fact she is an adventurous and sarcastic woman. Parsons returns as adult Sheldon to narrate over the show in similar style to the sitcom “Everyone Hates Chris.”  

I’ve only ever seen a little bit of “Big Bang Theory” when I was younger, but like everyone, I knew a lot about it simply from how big it was. And to be honest, I hated it. From what I’ve seen, the show overplays its laugh tracks for every mediocre joke thrown in, and it has a lot of uneasy jokes centered around Howard’s Jewish heritage and Raj, being the only person of color in the group, as an Indian. I cringe every time I remember how popular Sheldon’s quip when he thinks he pulled off a joke well, “Bazinga,” was literally everywhere from merch in stores to people adopting it into their vernacular to be quirky. When I heard “Young Sheldon” was a show I paid no mind to its existence and went on my merry way.      

Recently, however, I found clips of the show on TikTok and I noticed how different the show was shot compared to “The Big Bang Theory.” Out of mere curiosity, I began to watch the show. I was hooked immediately.

Young Sheldon is nothing like his adult counterpart (at least in my opinion) and he isn’t as annoying. It’s endearing to watch the child prodigy (who is also very autistic-coded) learn how to grow up, socialize and see how his family relationships shape him as a person. Despite the constant struggle he has with the rest of his family in trying to understand one another with their range in intellect, they all very much love each other. 

In fact, the show doesn’t even focus on Sheldon half of the time, often giving us more insight in internal struggles of the rest of the family and their relationships with each other, such as Georgie and Missy often getting along as the “dumb ones” when they see how their parents constantly hover over Sheldon and his problems. We are given insight into the marital problems between Mary and George as they often struggle to find a compromise between treating Sheldon as his proper age or giving him all the opportunities that come his way, such as whether he should start college at 11. 

To everyone that has doubts over this show because of its predecessor, trust me when I say it’s nothing like it at all. There’s not even an insufferable laugh track for every joke! At best, there are some easter eggs here and there that you may recognize from “The Big Bang Theory,” but other than that, you don’t need to have seen it to watch this surprisingly incredible show. “Young Sheldon” is currently slated to release its seventh and final season this coming May 2024. 

For all the people who don’t know BBC’s “Doctor Who,” this sci-fi fantasy show first premiered in the 1960s with a reboot in 2005. It centers around the adventures of the Time-Lord called the Doctor, a humanoid extraterrestrial being. The Doctor travels in and around the universe as well as time with his spaceship called the TARDIS. The Doctor usually travels with a companion or few and they often save lives and solve mysteries with wit and intellect. As a Time-Lord, the Doctor is able to regenerate into a new body, gender and personality if they ever get too injured to be saved, a plot device in order to introduce a new actor or actress as the Doctor to keep the show going.

The Fourteenth Doctor shocked fans around the world that David Tennant returned to the part, because there had been news that Ncuti Gatwa, known for his roles in “Sex Education” and “Barbie,” had been recently casted to be the next Doctor. Amid the confusion, the showrunners eventually revealed that David Tennant would play the Fourteenth Doctor for a set of three specials to celebrate the show’s 60th anniversary, before Ncuti Gatwa would become the Fifteenth Doctor for the upcoming Christmas special and new season. 

On top of the three specials, the show brought a handful of former producers and actors back to the show, including old executive producer Russell T. Davies, and David Tennant’s old co-star and companion, Catherine Tate, playing Donna Noble. 

New stars to appear in the specials include Yasmin Finney, a current star in Netflix’s “Heartstopper,” as Rose Noble, Donna Noble’s daughter, as well as Ruth Madeley as Shirley Bingham, a top UNIT scientist. 

The first two specials featured enemies such as the returning Beep the Meep and the unknown, mysterious No-Things. The main foe in the last special is the Toymaker, an old foe of the Doctor’s, last seen during the First Doctor’s run back in the 1960s. He is portrayed by American guest star, Neil Patrick Harris. 

Without spoiling too much, these specials were quite special. We saw David Tennant’s Doctor reunite with longtime-favorite companion of mine, Donna. On top of that, Davies makes strides in both acknowledging the importance of gender, sexuality, as well as physical disability. The specials focus on positively representing and respecting Rose Noble and her transgender identity. They also highlight Shirley Bingham’s use of her wheelchair, showing how she doesn’t need to use it a hundred percent of the time and how that’s okay. Even the Doctor is acknowledged as canonically being a genderfluid individual, whose pronouns differentiate whenever presenting as either male or female. This is great for them to do as the longest running science fiction show, which has always made strides towards expressing progressive ideals since their debut. 

I am excited to see Ncuti Gatwa’s version of the Doctor as he will be the first Black person to be in the show’s lead role. As an actor, he shows great promise, and, in comparison to the other past incarnations of the Doctor, he seems to be the first version of the Doctor in a while to be both charismatic and mentally well. I can’t wait to learn more of the Doctor’s new personality and his new companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) in the upcoming Christmas special. I doubt people will be up in arms about what to expect of the Fifteenth Doctor because, as Davies said, “[the] path to Ncuti’s Fifteenth Doctor is laden with mystery, horror, robots, puppets, danger and fun!”, which all seems extremely promising. 

Marvel’s “Loki” is a Disney+ original series, and one of Marvel’s first, which premiered in June 2021. It centers on an alternate version of the fan-favorite character, Loki (Tom Hiddleston), and takes place after the events of the “Avengers: Endgame.” After taking the Tesseract, Loki inadvertently creates a new timeline and has to answer to the Time Variance Authority (TVA), a bureaucratic organization that exists to monitor and keep the “Sacred Timeline” in place. Season 1 revolves around Loki’s dilemma: he can either be erased from existence or help Agent Mobius (Owen Wilson) and the TVA find a rogue female Loki variant, self-named Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino). The first season ends with He Who Remains (Johnathan Majors) — who created the TVA and is a variant of multiversal villain Kang the Conqueror — dying by Sylvie’s hand and the Sacred Timeline’s split into the multiverse. 

Season 2 of “Loki,” which premiered Oct. 5th, picks up immediately after its first season’s finale. With new characters like Ouroboros (Ke Huay Quan), the TVA’s R&D specialist, and Victor Timely, another variant of Kang the Conqueror, Loki and his misfit friends try to save the multiverse all while questioning whether the TVA is even worth saving. Loki struggles with warping through time as a result of the Sacred Timeline branching out.  

Loki’s newest season does phenomenally better than its first, which had some premises that didn’t entirely make sense to the audience. While everyone loved seeing Loki finally play the part of the good guy, the same wasn’t true in season one. The first season features this Loki variant with the same characterization as he had in 2012, which makes sense as that’s the difference in the Sacred Timeline he was ripped from. For me, it was upsetting to see a character who had developed so much in various Marvel films after “The Avengers” (2012) be replaced by an old/new version of himself. No one could be certain whether the show would do the long-loved character justice, especially given that they abruptly killed off the version of Loki we knew in “Avengers: Infinity War.”

A bizarre plotline in the first season was a romance between the two main Loki variants, Loki and Sylvie. The two share a kiss in the season finale; thankfully, it’s revealed that Sylvie only does so as a ruse to kill He Who Remains without Loki’s intervention.  Another strange theme is dismissiveness toward Loki’s gender identity. Sylvie is targeted by the TVA and her timeline erased because she is female and therefore threatens the sanctity of the “Sacred Timeline.” There are many things wrong with this premise. In the Marvel Comics, the character Loki is canonically genderfluid, appearing in many comic runs as Lady Loki when she wishes to present as female. With the plot in the first season, their gender identity could have been explored; Loki only ever presented as male in the cinematic franchise. However, the show does have a scene where Loki asks his other variants how weird and crazy it is that there could ever be a female variant (which entirely diminishes the importance of acknowledging their gender identity). 

Season two ties up the loose ends and odd plot points that left people hanging after season one. Its showrunners decided to retcon the romance they developed between Sylvie and Loki, who they depict in a bickering, sibling-esque relationship. Instead, they emphasize Loki’s relationship with Mobius, who guided Loki in becoming a better person in season one. This emphasis elated both the wider audience who regarded Hiddleston and Wilson’s dynamic as the best part of the show, and fandom shippers who hated the Sylvie and Loki plot. Personally, I loved their moments in the show; they give a buddy-detective back-and-forth punchiness (such as when Mobius convinces Loki to ride a tandem bike to chase after Victor Timely), and it’s nice to see someone other than his brother Thor, be close to understand Loki. 

The season two finale brought a beautiful yet tragic conclusion to Loki’s story. Despite claiming he just wants to save the TVA, we find out that Loki is scared of ending up alone; what he truly desires is to be with his friends. This motivates him to find a way to save everyone, which he tries through continuous time loops when he realizes he can control his time-slipping. But no matter how hard he tries or however many centuries he lives through, he isn’t able to stop the multiverse from collapsing. It is only after conversing with Mobius that he realizes the burden he must take on to save everything and everyone.

 He grabs hold of all the branches of the multiverse, positions himself outside time, and separates himself from his friends to serve as the conduit to ensure all timelines can coexist. We finally see our fan-favorite character do good on par with (if not more than) the Avengers and Marvel heroes. I finished the show with both joy and grief as I saw Loki sacrifice himself and his desires and settles watching over his friends and loved ones from his throne. It is a relief that Marvel gave him an appropriate send-off after the great characterization they built over two seasons. 

Mitski Miyawaki, professionally known as Mitski, is a Japanese-American Indie singer-songwriter. She signed with Dead Oceans in 2015, where she released her critically acclaimed albums, “Be the Cowboy” (2018), “Laurel Hell” (2022), and the recent “The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We” (2023). However, I personally did not know of Mitski until her popularity spiked for her 2018 album, which became a massive hit on TikTok in 2020.

When Mitski came out with her new album “Laurel Hell” last year, in addition to an international tour, the internet raved about having the chance to experience her songs in person. Most likely anticipating this great impact, Mitski had reached out to her audience, and asked, via Twitter on Feb. 24th, 2022, if her audience could refrain from using their phones too often at her concerts. 

 As Tom Skinner from New Music Entertainment put it, “the musician went on to say that people watching her perform through a screen makes her feel like she is being ‘consumed as content’ as opposed to ‘getting to share a moment’ with the crowd.” However, her tweet was met with backlash, and has long since been taken down, from many supposed fans, claiming how Mitski had no right to ask this of them, how pretentious she must be, or accusing Mitski of being ableist as some people claimed they needed use of their phones for their mental health.

There have been multiple instances on both TikTok and Twitter, where many who attended Mitski’s “Laurel Hell” concerts complained of the lack of concert etiquette from other audience members when watching Mitski perform. People are attending her shows raving as though they were at a BTS concert, discussing Mitski’s improv dances, or continuously belting out her songs with her. None of which are manners that would be disapproved of at any other mainstream artist’s concert, but are, according to these people, disappointing to witness at Mitski’s concerts, where people expect a small, relatively quiet crowd. 

Which begs the ultimate question, can Mitski even be considered an “indie” musician anymore? All I know is, whether or not she is, she and her fans must come to terms with her mainstream popularity, with her fans having to learn to be more respectful to their beloved artist and other concert-goers.

This new game revolves around the lives of both Peter Parker and Miles Morales, who serve as Spider-Men to their often-troubled New York City. They struggle with the next steps in each of their lives, with Peter unsure of how to balance the personal with the heroic aspects of his life, and Miles unsure what to do with his college applications and future. While they struggle through their own journeys, they are forced to combat new and old foes with their two main antagonists Kraven the Hunter, who sets up New York City as his new hunting ground, and the Venom symbiote, who bonds with Peter, creating tension in his relationships.

Building on top of the overarching character development both protagonists have gone through, as well as making their fighting and swinging action even more fluid than the past two games, it’s no wonder that this game was a hit with its new and old fans. 

“Marvel’s Spider-Man 2” specifically has an incredible portrayal of inclusivity and representation, particularly of the deaf community. As seen in the “Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales”, we see Miles meet his deaf classmate (now friend and crush) Hailey. Rather than simply having Miles speak to her while she lip reads what he says, we saw the two characters speak to one another through American Sign Language (ASL). Insomniac turns it up a notch in this new game, having Hailey as a prominent side character like Miles’ best friend, Ganke. “Marvel’s Spider-Man 2” demonstrates Ganke also conversing with Hailey through sign language, though with the mistakes and slowness of a new beginner, as well as having an interpreter at their school. There’s even a side quest where you can play as Hailey, painting a mural with no audio to simulate being her. I found that feature really sweet, because it offers the audience a reprieve from all the fighting (though that’s never a bad thing). 

Video games have come a long way with inclusivity and appropriate representation, alongside all other forms of entertainment. In the past decade, and even just the past few years, we have had all sorts of better representation ranging from disabilities, ethnic backgrounds, race, gender and sexuality. Games such as the Red Dead Redemption franchise have come a long way in providing representation in their games franchise, helping future games in doing the same. 

It shouldn’t be a surprise to see such representation in video games because it should be the standard in general. I still commend it regardless, because it’s definitely long overdue for video games to have deaf representation such as the new Spider-Man game. I can’t wait to see what’s to come for the future of video games, and to see even more games with diverse casts and people. And I definitely recommend playing “Marvel’s Spider-Man 2” if you’re a nerd for these particular heroes (and would love to meet Hailey)!

“House, M.D.” is an American medical drama that ran between 2004 and 2012. The show centers around the series’ main character, Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie), a misanthropic medical genius with a dependence on pain medication, who leads his team of diagnosticians to unveil the causes of their patient of the week’s mysterious illnesses, before it’s too late. 

Dr. House’s favorite justification and catchphrase, “Everybody lies,”, is all he needs to explain why he treats his patients with a rude bedside manner and offensive disdain. He not only berates his patients, but his fellows under him as well. House always shoots down their suggestions and clashes with his team over providing the right hypothesis for his patient’s ailments. This also results in him fighting as well as flirting with his boss and the hospital administrator, Dr. Lisa Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein), who reminds him of the legal and medical consequences of his experiments in his quest to find the right answer before it is too late. However, this doesn’t mean she stops him; Without fail, Cuddy allows House to proceed with his medical malpractice and even enables his addiction to his pain medication. House possesses only one true friend, the head of Oncology, Dr. James Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard), who, for some unknown reason, sticks with House through every predicament he gets himself into. House was even the reason behind two of Wilson’s three divorces. 

House gets to do what he wants and gets out of whatever trouble he is in because, despite all sorts of drawbacks like being investigated for drug abuse and the infinite amount of legal suits he deals with, he is unfortunately always right. Every episode (minus those that don’t feature the usual procedural structure) ends with House having some random epiphany, usually a throwaway line, and suddenly, he’s “That’s So Raven” and figures out the solution, regardless of whether he has evidence to prove that his patient has that particular ailment. Despite everyone’s protests to his questionable methods of gaining information on his patients, such as instructing his team to break into patients’ houses, they always follow through either to prove that he was wrong (which he never is) or because they believe he has to be onto something if it’s one of their last options in order to save their patients.  

As we all know, there is no way this man would be practicing medicine in real life nor do his solutions make sense at times, even to people like myself who have no medical knowledge.  A single shot of cortisol suddenly allowed the previously paralyzed man to get up from his wheelchair and have a surprise miracle? Absolutely not. But, damn, if it doesn’t make for a really good ending to an episode. “House, M.D.” is a ridiculous show, with even more ridiculous solutions, and in hindsight, problematic dialogue and decisions, but it does have its moments, with sincere discussions about disabilities, drug addiction and chronic pain. There is also depth to some of House’s relationships, especially with Wilson and Cuddy doing their best to slap him on the wrist while also putting a comforting hand on House’s shoulder. These themes, coupled with the show’s enticing outlandishness, is enough to hook a person to binge watch House, M.D. for hours at a time. I definitely recommend watching this show if that’s right up your alley, giving it a 10 out 10 in malpractice suits. 

Nevertheless, many have opined that the comic book franchises are not what they used to be. This has been attributed to the emergence of new streaming services and to the COVID-19 pandemic. Disney+ launched in November 2019, months after Marvel’s biggest film in their franchise, “Avengers: Endgame” released, and right before the pandemic. Max, formally known as HBO Max, launched in May 2020 with catalogs of numerous DCEU [Detective Comics Extended Universe] films, and DC universe shows, both animated and live action. The pandemic halted film releases for months, bringing the era of streaming to its peak. 

With the launch of Disney+, Marvel Studios announced the production of high-budget, streaming-exclusive series that included established Marvel characters from previous films as well as establishing new on-screen heroes through their own series, such as “Ms. Marvel,” “She-Hulk,” and “Echo.” This caused uproar from many people, fans or not, who were told that in order to understand new Marvel films, they had to watch different series in order to fully understand the current in-universe. This also discouraged many from starting or continuing to watch the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) altogether, as there was now too much content. Many also complained that the VFX work done in recent Marvel series and movies, such as “Thor Love and Thunder” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantamania,” are done in poor quality despite their high budgets, although this can also be  attributed to Marvel’s history of  mistreating their VFX artists.

DC Studios has never been equal to Marvel Studios’ hype, because of their many inconsistencies regarding what is canon across their films and live action shows. After Christopher Nolan’s films, DC Studios attempted to garner similar traction by creating its own tie-in universe with big superhero titles such as “Justice League” and “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.”  However, fans hounded the studio for the release of different studio versions, such as “Zach Snyder’s Justice League,”annoyed with the franchise’s inconsistency and difficulty collaborating with filmmakers.  The studio faced more criticism due to its  lack of direction and poor dialogue and CGI in their most recent 2023 films like “Shazam! Fury of the Gods”, and “The Flash;” both films underperformed at the box office, with the Shazam! sequel grossing only $133 million against a $125 million budget and “The Flash” grossing $267 million against a $200 million budget.

In stark contrast, according to Box Office Mojo, 2023 is the first year in over 20 where the top three grossing movies are neither sequels nor comic book films; with Barbie ($1.43 billion), The Super Marios Bros. Movie ($1.36 billion), and Oppenheimer ($933 million) as its frontrunners, demonstrating the audience’s move to different cinema. Martin Scorsese’s new film “Killers of the Flower Moon” and Sofia Coppola’s new biopic “Priscilla” have received considerable attraction and widespread critical acclaim after performing well at the Cannes and Venice Film Festivals. The venerated A24 studios have received several of the highest accolades and ratings in the past decade, with critically acclaimed films like “Everything, Everywhere, All at Once.” Internet virality has created huge turnouts, allowing low-budget films to have extraordinary grosses. A24’s “Talk to Me” raked in $10 million on its opening weekend against a budget of $4.5 million, and MGM’s “Bottoms”, according to Deadline, had an estimated $500k first weekend gross with its limited release across just 10 movie theaters. 

This does not mean comic book films are entirely dead! The public holds high regard for comic book films that go against the grain of often repetitious cinematic universes, such as the animated “Spiderverse” films and DC’s standalone “The Batman,” starring Robert Pattinson. These comic book films differ from anything the MCU and DCEU offer with their fresh dialogue and creative film direction. DC studios are even having a makeover as, according to Forbes, Warner Bros. Discovery has assigned James Gunn and Peter Safran as the new CEOs of DC Studios, and the two plan to develop an entirely new cinematic universe with new actors and actresses to play its titular characters. While one cannot say whether comic book film franchises will ever regain their past buzz, perhaps the push for newer and better direction will put a new face to the genre.