Welcome to Now See This, THR chief TV critic Daniel Fienberg’s weekly viewer guide newsletter dedicated to cutting through the daunting clutter of the broadcast, cable and streaming TV landscape! Comments and suggestions welcome at daniel.fienberg@thr.com.

Meesa Jar-Jar 'Minx'

Spend the weekend preparing for the release of Paramount+'s wildly expensive, utterly generic Halo with a pair of intimate, female-driven comedies. HBO Max's Minx, about the intersection of feminism and pornography in 1970s Los Angeles, is clever, a bit sexy and features very good work from Ophelia Lovibond, Jake Johnson and scene stealers Lennon Parham and Jessica Lowe. Check out last week’s  TV's Top 5 podcast interview with creator Ellen Rapoport. I'm an even bigger fan of Amy Schumer's sad, sweet, occasionally hilarious Life & Beth, which our Angie Han calls "messily personal" (in a good way). For more on this Hulu release, read Lacey Rose's great THR  profile of Schumer.

Trolling on the 'Deep' 

In the early days of the pandemic, the internet got a lot of amusement from Ben Affleck, Ana de Armas and their Dunkin' Donuts-adjacent relationship. Then that ended and the internet got a lot of amusement about the second act of Affleck's timeless love story with Jennifer Lopez. Ever stop and think that we spend too much time talking about Ben Affleck? Apparently that beats spending time watching Adrian Lyne's erotic thriller Deep Water, the origin of that Affleck/de Armas union. Lurching onto Hulu this weekend after skipping a theatrical release, Deep Water  is earning less-than-glowing reviews. Our David Rooney's commentary includes such words as "lethargic," "preposterous," "wooden" and more! 

Once More Unto the Data Breach, My Friends

Stop me if you've heard this story: Opportunistic huckster capitalizes on either the Internet or a cult of personality or both to make zillions before an inevitable collapse. It's been an exhausting spring of repetitive limited series programming, but if you tuned in for Inventing Anna, Super Pumped and  The Dropout  (easily the best of the lot), get ready to watch Jared Leto pretend to be 6-foot-5 and Israeli in Apple TV+'s WeCrashed. Our Angie Han writes that it’s “amusing but ultimately inessential.” But once you're watching Apple TV+ anyway, at least check out Severance and get ready for next week's  Pachinko premiere.

The '+' Stands for Violence and Trauma

You might have noticed that your Disney+ account is suddenly very concerned about whether or not you want access to its full TV-MA catalogue, which was never an issue before. The reason? The full roster of grim-and-grimy Netflix-Marvel shows is now part of the Disney+ family (plus hundreds of episodes of Marvel's Agents of SHIELD). The first seasons of Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage  are among the best things Marvel has done for TV. The first season of Iron Fist really is not. 

Honoring William Hurt

Oscar-winning actor William Hurt died last weekend at 71. Along with Michael Douglas, Hurt was a paradigm of flawed '80s screen masculinity, and while it's notable how many of his best performances — Kiss of the Spider Woman, Children of a Lesser God, Body Heat — aren't available for easy streaming, if you start your weekend with Broadcast News on HBO Max and then check out the second season of FX's  Damages  on Hulu, you've done well for yourself.

This Week's THR Staff Pick 

It's our second week in a row with a pick from senior business editor Ashley Cullins, who notes, "For better or worse, I tend to remember every actor as the first memorable character I see them play for the rest of their career. So there was a 50-50 shot I’d be into Hulu's How I Met Your Father. On one hand you have Lizzie McGuire (Hilary Duff) and on the other you have the evil rape-y frat guy from Promising Young Woman  (Chris Lowell). In this case, it’s Lizzie for the win and I actually find myself rooting for the guy I was sure I’d hate. While I’m happy to see Kim Cattrall narrating this and not in that other NYC-based reboot, I do wish this charming cast wasn’t shoved into an existing IP format. But, if you just let it be what it is, it’s a very cute, fun watch."