Spring is here, but Netflix has made it particularly hard for us to leave our couch and enjoy the sun. Why? Because the streaming giant is releasing a massive amount of new content this Friday.
Want a dose of black pride? Then watch the second season of Dear White People, the dramedy depicting a college campus filled with racial tensions and deeply entrenched prejudices against blacks. For the adventurous, there is the wacky Korean variety show Busted! As if that wasn’t already enough, the creator of Arrested Development took to Twitter yesterday to announce that a restructured version of the show’s fourth season will also be premiering. This time, the season’s events have been edited into chronological order, rather than the character-focused, time-hopping structure Mitch Hurwitz employed the first go-round. So cancel all your weekend plans now, because it’s time to put your binging skills to the test.
Here’s our pick of the Netflix shows you should binge watch this weekend:
Arrested Development: Season Four Remix
Fans campaigned over eight years for this prematurely cancelled sitcom to receive the revival it deserved. However, when season four premiered on Netflix during the summer of 2013, we were all split over whether it was dud or the greatest comeback ever. Due to budget constraints and scheduling conflicts, Hurwitz was never able to get the original cast of Arrested Development all in one room at the same time. So he had to get creative. What resulted was a dizzying, schizophrenic series of episodes that flip-flopped across plotlines, character perspectives, and meta narrative threads. It was hard for even the most hawk-eyed viewers to keep track of what was going on.
It seems as if Hurwitz is attempting to earn redemption ahead of Arrested Development’s highly anticipated fifth season. He’s gone back to the editing room and re-cut the scenes to play out in chronological order, saying he hopes a “unified story of cause and effect” will emerge for viewers. We know, you may be saying this isn’t actually new. But enough time has passed that the episodes should surely feel fresh to you— especially rearranged in this much more logical, and less confusing, format.
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Dear White People: Volume 2
The second season of Dear White People could not be arriving at a better time. The past month has seen a slew of conversation-sparking moments happen in black culture. The myriad experiences of blackness have been put on full display: from Beyonce’s Coachella performance acting as a fabulous, high-budget showing of black pride, to Kanye West’s controversial tweets about supporting Donald Trump inspiring a barrage of think pieces. Therefore, exploring the variety of black coming of age experiences is vital to showing white people we are not a monolith. (See: some people offensively assuming Kanye West doesn’t care about black people and insinuating he’s an “Uncle Tom” figure simply because his political views don’t match up to what’s expected from a black male.)
Busted!
Netflix is increasingly putting a focus on creating authentically global content. There’s already been a host of great country-spanning originals, including the German drama Dark and the Spanish thriller series Money Heist. Now Netflix is taking a lighter turn with the slapstick variety show Busted! The concept is simple: seven contestants become detectives and attempt to solve a set of “fun-filled” mysteries. The show is heavily populated with South Korean celebrities, from actors Ahn Jae-wook and Park Min-young to K-pop stars Sehun of Exo and Sejeong of Gugudan.
If anything, watch the show for the great wardrobe. Where can we get that amazing Sherlock Holmes-esque cap?
Anon
Last month, Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal tapped into our incessant fears of technology overtaking our identities. Anon explores the idea of the government recording and archiving our experiences 24/7. This makes solving crime extremely easy, as all cops have to do is mine through people’s data to see what happened. However, a detective is thrown for a loop when he comes across a mysterious woman who does not have this invasive technology implanted in her brain. What follows in an intriguing, heart-racing game of cat-and-mouse that imagines what happens when not taking part in technology is the most radical and subversive thing you can do. here’s all the new netflix stuff you should watch this weekend