May Binges Part 2: Rooster, Margo's Got Money Troubles, DTF St. Louis

I have been watching several shows week-to-week in the past months, but now they're all available to you for one big, glorious binge. Each of these shows have been weird and wonderful in their own unique way, so I'm excited for you to get started on these and tell me what you think!

Rooster: Created by Matt Tarses and Bill Lawrence (of Ted Lasso and Shrinking fame), this is a show about an author named Greg Russo (Steve Carell), who writes popular mystery paperbacks with a swashbuckling protagonist named Rooster. His daughter, Katie (Charly Clive), is an Art History professor at a New England liberal arts college, and she is married to a Russian history professor, Archie (Phil Dunster). When Archie sleeps with a graduate student, Sunny (Lauren Tsai), naturally the marriage is on the rocks, and Greg shows up on campus to check in on his daughter. He then has to step in to help her after events spiral and she unleashes some of her righteous anger on Archie. The President of the College, Walter (John C. McGinley), is a fan of Greg's work and agrees to protect Katie's job if Greg will remain on campus and teach a creative writing seminar for a semester. And thus begins a semester of hi-jinks.

Yes, this is a comedy, but there's obviously a lot of high-stakes drama at play. I certainly found it very hard to understand why Katie wouldn't just dump her loser husband, particularly as Sunny is pregnant with his child, and I also found it hard to understand why Sunny was keeping the baby and holding out for a life with Archie. It's the British accent, I guess, it keeps those American women intrigued. The acting from every single person in this cast is stellar, and the tone is always so light, and breezy, and wonderful. There are great jokes in every episode (my husband and I still yell "Cop Hawk" at each other on occasion) and every character is enormously idiosyncratic, but like all of Bill Lawrence's other shows, there is a ton of heart that keeps you feeling warm and cozy. Steve Carell is always a delight to watch, and this show is no exception, so give it a shot. It's an excellent diversion.

Margo's Got Money Troubles: Speaking of actors who are always a delight to watch, you can never go wrong with a show that stars Elle Fanning. Here she stars as the titular Margo Millet, a twenty-year-old college student who has an affair with her English professor, gets pregnant (what's with all these college students being impregnated by married professors?), and decides to keep the baby (what's with everyone refusing to get an abortion?). Naturally, that decision leads to the titular Money Problems. Her mother, Shyanne (Michelle Pfeiffer), was also a single mom, who knows how hard it is, and therefore thinks this is a terrible decision. She is also not great with babies and is too busy trying to lock down her relationship with Kenny (Greg Kinnear), a religious youth minister who has a very rarefied idea of who Shyanne is. All of that will come to bear over the course of the series.

Meanwhile, Margo lives with three other roommates, two of whom move out because living with a baby is unbearable, but the other, Susie (Thaddea Graham), is a supportive babysitter who wants to help Margo win at life. Unfortunately, they still need to make that extra rent money, which is when Margo's father, Jinx (Nick Offerman), fortuitously shows up and moves in with them. Jinx is extremely supportive and great with babies, but he is exorcising demons of his own, all of which will also come to bear over the course of the series. 

Created by David E. Kelley, based on Rufi Thorpe's excellent 2024 novel, I cannot recommend this show highly enough. I haven't even gotten to the central conceit of the show, which is that Margo's solution to her Money Problems, is to start an OnlyFans account. The evolution of her work on that platform is truly wondrous to behold. In fact, while I loved the show, I would certainly exhort people to read the novel, because I remember being utterly captivated by its creativity and ingenuity when depicting Margo's OnlyFans work and how she learns to build a fanbase and create more engaging content. This show is brimming with excellent actors, has a unique and compelling narrative, and it will be one of the best things you watch all year. Get to it.

DTF St. Louis: This show is definitely one of the best things I have watched this year, but oh man, it's so hard to explain it to people. Written and directed by Steven Conrad, settle in for seven episodes of the most bizarre murder mystery you've ever seen. 

The story centers on Floyd and Clark (David Harbour and Jason Bateman), two men who start off as colleagues, and then become best friends, and then...things get complicated. At the start of the series, we know Floyd is dead, in suspicious circumstances, and two detectives, Donogue Homer and Jodie Plumb (Richard Jenkins and Joy Sunday) are tasked with the investigation. The clues immediately point to Clark as the murderer - he was present at the scene of the crime, and after looking through his cell phone records, it becomes apparent he was having an affair with Carol (Linda Cardellini), Floyd's wife. But things aren't quite so cut and dried, and as these detectives investigate further, they unearth all manner of bewildering shenanigans afoot in this quiet suburb.

I won't discuss matters further - you have to let this show gloriously unfurl its wild petals around you and engulf you in its bizarre tone and sexual complications. A terrible thing has happened to Floyd, and every character is harboring some deep, dark secrets, but this is also a very dark comedy and an ode to male friendship. It's hard to keep track of time in this show, with the myriad flashbacks and revising conversations and scenes from different perspectives once we get a new piece of information. I don't know that I would have enjoyed watching this on a weekly basis - a binge was the perfect way to keep everything straight in my head and really indulge in the brilliant storytelling. If this was a book, I would have stayed up all night reading it, so get ready for an epic binge to finish up this show. All of the actors are at the top of their game, and you will not be disappointed.