What to Binge-Watch this Week

In today’s newsletter, recommendations on binge-worthy TV for the break. Plus:

Naomi Fry
Staff writer

This past year has felt more like a decade, and I, for one, could use a little break. To that end, this holiday season, on the netherweek between Christmas and New Year’s, I’m planning on going nowhere and doing nothing; or, rather, I’m planning on going somewhere (my couch) and doing something (bingeing hour after hour of television). If you’d like to join me on my pajama-clad journey, here are some favorites that are worth watching.

“Mad Men.” I’ve actually gotten a head start on Matthew Weiner’s AMC drama about nineteen-sixties ad men (and the women who love them), and I’m currently finishing up Season 3. I hadn’t rewatched the show—a peak avatar of golden-age TV—since it went off the air in 2015, and I was relieved to discover that it remains shockingly great, and that Jon Hamm as Don Draper is still the worst/best man in the world.

“Laguna Beach.” For a jaunt back to a seemingly simpler time, how about a binge-watch of MTV’s mid-aughts reality-TV answer to “The O.C.”? What could be more low stakes than tan, Orange County teens dating, shopping, and gossiping in the fat years before the subprime-mortgage crisis? If God made anything more relaxing, he kept it to himself.

“Strangers with Candy.” I’ve long been planning to show my teen daughter this amazingly funny series, in which Amy Sedaris plays Jerri Blank, an after-school-special style seventies junkie dropout who goes back to ninth grade in her late forties. ’Tis might be the season to finally do it.

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P.S. Canadians, Australians, and the British traditionally celebrate Boxing Day on December 26th, by boxing up goods to donate to the less fortunate. In the U.S., the tradition differs slightly. “Americans observe the day by staying home with their families and staring glassy-eyed at their empty Christmas-present boxes,” Kate Hahn writes, in a useful and humorous guide for Commonwealth visitors. And don’t forget to order the perfect boxed meal: pizza. 🍕

Hannah Jocelyn contributed to this edition.