Premiering Sunday, I Love LA begins with witty storylines of toxic friendships, insecurity and the vanity of social climbing. According to Sennott, Gen Z has “been through it.”

With a killer cast starring Josh Hutcherson, Leighton Meester and Odessa A’zion, relatable comedy and an overall ode to the Los Angeles experience in the social media age, Sennott’s depiction of influencers and it-girls alike is hilarious and uncomfortably real.

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Beginning on main character Maia’s 27th birthday, the first episode sets the scene for what seems to be a difficult friendship after her old friend, Tallulah, surprises her from New York.

Their close proximity is only made more difficult when the possibility of the two living and working together again becomes real. It spells disaster considering Tallulah’s infringement on all of Maia’s birthday weekend plans. 

With a conflict at the end of the episode between the two, their friendship is revealed in depth by their confessions of struggles in life — Maia with her job and Tallulah being broke despite her luxurious and cool image on social media.

Sennott sets up what is sure to be a tumultuous relationship through classic Gen Z behavior —  gossiping and seemingly becoming friends after the session. With her combination of humor and serious moments, Sennott’s portrayal of complicated friendships and the struggles of the social media realm becomes all too real. 

Included in the premiere’s promising storylines are Maia’s job and her insecurity as she struggles with being ignored by her boss.

In one scene, Maia attempts to secure a promotion but her boss can’t do as much as look away from the pedicure she’s getting at the same time. It’s exaggerated, but still realistic to the audience in the ridiculous workplace environment Gen Z is growing integrated with. 

With simple comedic scenes of not being able to get a reservation at a popular restaurant and failing at skipping the line at a club, Sennott shows Maia’s uneasiness with Los Angeles and being ignored at her job contributes to Maia’s insecurity — setting up an inner conflict of knowing her self worth in a city of social climbers. 

Although a standout series premiere, some characters felt a little unpolished. Maia’s boyfriend, played by Hutcherson, seems to be a reflection of Maia’s character and not much was done throughout the episode to give him depth beyond Maia’s pet.

The same can be said for Maia’s other friends, Charlie and Alani, as they seem to be parts to fulfill Maia’s life.

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It’s no surprise the show would center around her, but in similar shows built on the classic arc of a friend group living and discovering themselves in the city, such as Girls and Sex and The City, most characters immediately announce their personality to the audience, setting the stage for further development.

Sennott’s dedication to humor and focus on her character’s storyline doesn’t leave much room for other points of the show to stand out. More dedication to other characters throughout the rest of the season would be the aspect to take the series from good to spectacular and something I hope improves with the coming episodes. 

Time will tell how the series pans out, but with an exciting new HBO Sunday show, Sennott promises an exciting and distinct series that promises to be a standout show.

Hearon provides many similarly wise words in his first comedy special, Model Comedian, released on HBO Max Friday.

Hearon has written for Netflix and acted in several TV shows, including Mr. & Mrs. Smith and Overcompensating on Amazon Prime, but his podcast So True with Caleb Hearon has perhaps earned him the most Internet fame through his collaborations with figures such as Ziwe, Brittany Broski and Trixie Mattel. Hearon was sixth on Rolling Stone’s list of “25 Most Influential Creators of 2025.”

The hour-long special delves into Hearon’s life as a self-described “fat, gay, from Missouri, not Republican yet” man.

With personal anecdotes relating to family and friends mixed with pertinent political commentary, Hearon makes it clear he’s just another guy trying to deal with his life.

He delves into many sensitive topics in his special, including suicide, mental illness, gun violence, homophobia, transphobia and the Holocaust. Although Hearon’s acknowledgement of these topics is sometimes abrasive, he effectively speaks to the issues his audience is already painfully aware of.

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Hearon excels at balancing the bleakness of our present moment with an abject joy for life.

He begins the special describing his newfound tendency to appreciate the little things, calling himself “Midwestern Aunt-pilled.” Even something as dull as nice weather is enough to get him teary-eyed.

This brand of positivity is quite rare in the entertainment world these days, even in an industry like comedy.

The target audience for Hearon’s special is undoubtedly millennials and Gen Z, as Hearon makes heavy use of modern Internet slang and phrasing. Older viewers may not understand sentences like, “Yeah, pack ’em up, baby boy.”

But to the chronically online, Hearon’s linguistics cement his status as a regular guy.

His overall comedic timing is solid throughout, never losing momentum in his delivery.

Hearon frequently uses sarcasm, though many instances fall flat.

After giving very heartfelt insight into what it was like to lose his father, whom he had a rocky relationship with, Hearon follows up by saying, “And if any of you had ever been through anything … this part would probably be hitting like crazy.”

He offers the sarcastic insinuation that his audience members lack experience with grief, but the joke has no ground to stand on, needing a precursor relating to the crowd’s personal lives.

The part of the special with the most payoff is a three-minute segment in which Hearon asks individual audience members to yell fatphobic remarks at him so that he can respond with a new anti-bullying phrase he wants to teach overweight kids.

He does this three times with three different audience members, the first of which he deems too kind, the second too harsh and the third just right. This Goldilocks-esque bit culminates in Hearon responding to the scripted bullying in a monotone voice, proclaiming his anti-bullying slogan: “I have a gun.”

It’s a dark joke that nonetheless has a great set-up and follow-through.

Hearon also weaves political commentary throughout his special. He emphasizes how conservative straight men appear gay through their appearances and rhetoric, mocking figures, including Ben Shapiro and JD Vance and calling them variations of the f-slur.

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While popular with the special’s live audience, this segment lacks any originality. Discourse regarding “closeted” conservative Republicans is all but a household topic nowadays, making the bit seem stale.

Ending the special, Hearon boldly discusses the Holocaust, recounting a trip to a concentration camp that he and his LGBTQ+ friend group took in Berlin. 

He jokes about the tour guide’s absurdly casual demeanor while simultaneously emphasizing the horrors of the Holocaust. The subject is clearly close to his heart as a gay man, and he treats it with just the right balance of sincerity and absurdity.

Model Comedian won’t make your stomach hurt with laughter, but it provides an intriguing and humorous ride through Hearon’s life.

Fans grew divided over which brother, Conrad or Jeremiah, was better for Belly, the main character. For its third and final season, the series needed to wrap up all of its plotlines and give its characters worthwhile endings all the while satisfying this massive audience. 

Unfortunately, it failed. The journey through the series beat the destination. 

Serious issues arise in Belly’s contradictory feelings towards the brothers. After Conrad diverted his flight to Brussels to meet her in Paris the previous episode, she questions his motives before dismissing her worries entirely to show him around the city. 

When the two then take a moonlit stroll and kiss after attending a party for Belly, where he gifted her a vial of sand from Cousins Beach, she admits she still hasn’t moved on from him. Hours later, she doubts — once again — Conrad’s feelings for her in a sudden shift that paints her character as erratic. This back and forth dynamic grew exhausting.

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After spending the entire season fawning over Jeremiah and alternating between ignoring or taking advantage of Conrad, their sudden relationship feels incredibly unbalanced. 

The show portrays the treatment of the person she supposedly loves abysmally. When Conrad suddenly accepts her after all of it, it’s heartbreaking.

Even though Belly’s audacity is on full display, the finale doesn’t drag. Scenes move quickly, emotional beats hit and intense moments are interspersed with moments of lightheartedness to keep the story flowing. 

This pacing made the finale bearable to watch despite the aggravating nature of its cast. The series’ music also aided the ambiance of the scenes without directly overshadowing them. 

Take Belly’s realization of her steadfast love for Conrad. Her mad dash through the streets of Paris is over-the-top and her love confession once she catches him is even more ridiculous. 

The story doesn’t linger on them but instead shifts to the other couples, providing some much-needed relief from Belly and her antics.

Despite this success, the other two couples featured in the finale — Jeremiah and Denise, and Taylor and Steven — failed to redeem the series’ romance element. With Jeremiah and Denise, their transformation from friends to more feels incredibly forced when every interaction between the two feels as if Denise is mothering him. 

It prompts questions about his sudden feelings for her. Does he actually like her, or is he trying to find a new mother figure now that Belly has left him?

Steven and Taylor suffer from a similarly lopsided dynamic to Belly and Conrad. Taylor, throughout the season, both encourages and deters Steven from pursuing other girls. Watching both couples, I couldn’t help but picture Steven and Denise together as their interactions appeared natural and effortless. 

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In a way, Denise, Steven and Conrad all displayed depth and maturity to balance the insanity of their relationships as essential voices of reason. 

Although the finale ties up everyone’s storylines, it leaves behind a lingering lack of fulfillment. There’s also a strange relief that summer is finally over, because at least fall doesn’t come with Belly and her drama. 

Ultimately, Cousins Beach is now closed. At least until the movie.  

Where viewers might have been excited about a fresh start, the show falls into repetitive cliches, which is exactly what fans didn’t want after season four’s let down. The show continues to recycle the predictable story of charming yet deeply disturbed serial killer Joe, but by season 5, the repetition feels more like writers block then character consistency. 

The season opens three years in the future, with Joe explaining his new life in New York City  with his wife, Kate. While setting the series in London for season four seemed rather random, bringing Joe’s story back to New York felt full circle for the series end. 

But instead of building on the season four finale, the premiere continued clinging to cliched tactics. 

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Working with their established, iconic material is effective in moments. As the owner of the iconic bookstore Mooney’s, Joe is inclined in one scene to go to the basement where the “cage” —  a plexiglass box originally meant for preserving books, but later used to trap victims — remains. 

Without much subtlety, the show guides audiences to think that a body will end up there soon enough, making an eerie homage to earlier seasons. 

He also quickly finds himself obsessing over a new girl, who he finds living in the store.  Of course, she is a book fanatic, which Joe found hard to resist since the first episode. But it’s grown born to see Joe fall head over heels for someone, only to grow bored once he has them and begin his mission to ruin their life. 

Visually, the show’s moody lighting, flashes of cityscapes and zoomed in close up shots of characters remain effective. The voiceovers —  once a window into Joe’s mind —  now come off overused. In past seasons, Joe referred to the girl he is obsessing over as “You.” Now, season five introduces “you” as Joe’s season four self.

This new framing suggests that Joe is attempting some kind of self-reflection. But the sudden change to the city undermines any attempt at real growth, making all of his progress vanish.  

But watching Joe embrace fatherhood with his son Henry is a welcome change, despite leaving the child in Los Angeles. Like Henry, almost the entire cast introduced in the premiere are new faces. 

While I typically prefer continuity in intense series like You, the new cast works — especially since Joe is living an entirely different life now. But the struggle to remember all the new people, including a set of identical evil twins, takes away attention at moments from other events in the episode. 

By the time the episode ends, Joe, of course, already has a new target after learning about an upcoming hit piece about his wife’s past. At first, he resorts to putting his desires into writing, telling the story of how he wishes to kill the person who sent in the hit on his wife, showing his true willingness to change. But it’s clear Joe missed the thrill of killing — you can see it when he puts on his classic black hat to get the job done.

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After seasons of Joe fleeing and changing identities, returning feels risky and contradicts his pattern of escape, rendering the move out of place rather than a part of  believable story progression. In one scene, Joe is seen smiling for cameras, embracing the paparazzi attention alongside his famous and wealthy wife — a shift from his usual paranoia in past seasons.

His new comfort in being seen feels thrown in without much thought. It disrupts Joe’s developed character and makes his return home seem less natural and more like an added twist for the sake of the show. 

Joe’s cycle of obsession, murder and regret is stuck on a loop from season to season. While the familiar New York City setting is a nostalgic nice touch in watching Joe fall back into the same cycle is unappealing. Nonetheless, the intense premiere already has me hooked on this season and I’m excited to see how the series concludes. 

Comedian and evil genius Nathan Fielder premiered the new season of his acclaimed HBO show Sunday —  a surreal blend of fiction and reality where Fielder elaborately scripts scenarios to help others overcome difficult situations. While the first season aimed to help people through mundane moments, Fielder has a much more noble goal this time around — preventing airline crashes. 

The season opened on a strangely somber note. Fielder, typically an awkward mess, is serious and thoughtful as he reviews historic plane crashes. There’s no gimmicks, no reveals, no twists. Between conversations with safety experts, Fielder sternly watches real-time simulations of these crashes shrouded in the flames of failure, an unsuitably imposing shot.  

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Fielder argues that poor communication between pilots and a lack of assertiveness to take control of a situation is a cause of crashes. His experimental solution is to simulate a pilot’s day-to-day life, requiring the construction of three replica airports and more than 70 actors employing “the Fielder Method” – which involves stalking random pedestrians to replicate their exact mannerisms – to improve pilot communication.

The premise’s juxtaposition shines as it floats between reality and ridicule. Fielder highlights an intriguing flaw in airline safety while roping viewers into his insanity. You’re almost convinced these asinine methods may harbor an ingenious breakthrough, compelling you to root for Fielder even if he’s easy to laugh at. 

But The Rehearsal is only about airplanes on a surface level. Rather, this season examines social anxieties and highlights the growing refusal to take control of situations. 

Fielder follows “Moody,” a pilot with a long-distance girlfriend. While initially pitching the experiment as a revolution to airline safety, he eventually coaches Moody to confront his girlfriend about their relationship problems. The setup indirectly compares co-pilots who refuse to take control of crashing planes with failing relationships. Just like watching a couple argue in real life, it’s a tense and cringeworthy scene. 

The human moments are what make The Rehearsal so special in the first place. Fielder’s social interactions are a sight to behold as the show revels in his uneasiness. In one particularly memorable scene, Fielder intently observes Moody’s morning routine, awkwardly sitting on the toilet as the pilot brushes his teeth. It harkens back to the skin-peeling scenes in season one, where Fielder attempts to engage with others normally but fails spectacularly. 

Past the lunacy, Fielder offers surprisingly thoughtful commentary on our daily interactions. In one poignant scene, he highlights how pilots sometimes only interact with each other on a transactional basis, unable to muster small talk. The metaphor extends to general interactions with co-workers, forcing viewers to tackle an uncomfortable truth about social interactions.

Yet, Fielder barely disguises that The Rehearsal is an excuse to work on his insecurities. He continues to “rehearse” through his anxieties, presented in a brilliant scene where he calls a United Airlines representative, only to reveal he hired an actor to play the part.  

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Fielder grapples with his persona, caught between making a comedy and potentially reforming the entire airline industry. These internal struggles feel almost voyeuristic, yet remain captivating. He has perfected a blurred reality by keeping viewers contemplating how much of the “real” Nathan Fielder they are watching.  

The Rehearsal proves its oddball premise can hold up in much grander scenarios, delivering another strange but deeply engrossing episode of television. There’s no telling where Fielder will take us this season, but just like an airplane about to take flight, hopefully it’ll only go up from here. 

The first season’s massive success landed it 24 Emmy nominations and eight wins, a feat the first episode of season two accomplished through masterfully established major conflicts without feeling forced or overcrowded. 

The premiere opens on a five-year time jump, bringing viewers up to speed with the community Joel and Ellie helped build since the last season. The setting is where the beautiful cinematography of the show can shine, alongside incredibly detailed set pieces establishing a small-town commune in snowy Jackson, Wyoming. 

Through an overgrown piece of pipe or a lava lamp in Ellie’s room, the story subtly reveals itself in the details — foreshadowing a horde outbreak and showcasing a culture frozen in time. But it maintains the first season’s raw, emotional storytelling — driven by human relationships rather than by the extraordinary world surrounding them. 

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What the show has fans questioning, however, is the fate of Pedro Pascal’s character Joel, who dies in the early hours of the video game’s sequel. Though there are no hints to his death in the first episode, it appears that the uncertainty of the event will be a central point of the season. 

Although the second game — of which the second season is centered on — was largely unpopular with players, the show’s deviations from the game’s story could serve as a way to remedy its wrongs. Allowing Joel to survive, at least in the premiere episode, gives viewers more time to understand his experiences and relationships to other characters. 

Audiences see this personal side to Joel in his therapy sessions with psychotherapist Gail, played by Catherine O’Hara, where he reckons with the disconnect between him and Ellie as she navigates young adulthood and teen angst, a main theme for the season. The scenes between the two create a new dynamic for the show, a refreshing new take on the game’s unexplored elements. 

But in certain cases, using material directly from the game creates a more impactful moment. A tender scene where Ellie and her girlfriend Dina share their first kiss at a community dance is abruptly interrupted by community members who called them a homophobic slur. 

The scene, nearly an exact remake from the same moment of the game, feels like a necessary yet shocking ice bath of realism, ripping viewers out of the fantastical environment to remind us that hate and bigotry are just as real and tangible in this world as the show’s infected monsters. 

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The Last of Us offers intensely visceral and cutting depictions of very real problems — strained father-daughter relationships, girlhood crushes and identity politics — amidst an unreal environment, showing viewers in an effective style that the world of the show isn’t too far from our own. 

The question now is whether or not the rest of the episodes can live up to that standard. 

The hit HBO original series’ third season wrapped up Sunday with an almost 90-minute finale. But even with the extended runtime, the episode couldn’t tie up all the loose ends that series creator Mike White unraveled over the previous seven episodes. Like the monkeys in the Thai trees, viewers were left hanging.

Though the season opened with the piercing pop of gunfire and an unidentified body floating among lily pads, The White Lotus isn’t your average “murder mystery” show. With multiple sets of characters and subplots that rarely intersect, the series often feels more like literary-themed reality TV.

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Across the first seven episodes of the season, viewers follow the Ratliffs, an obliviously privileged Southern family whose father faces white-collar crime charges. Outside of this, Jaclyn, Kate and Laurie  — a Real Housewives-esque trio — seem to teeter on the edge of personal and friendship crises.

All the meanwhile, Rick and Chelsea — a seemingly stereotypical age-gap couple — reveal some surprising depth as Rick angstily searches for the man who killed his father and Chelsea struggles to stay desperately upbeat amid his identity crisis. Belinda, a recurring character from past seasons, is hunted by Greg, who plotted to kill Jennifer Coolidge’s character in season two. Throughout all this, Thai resort workers Mook, played by BLACKPINK’s Lisa, and Gaitok remain largely sidelined by the wealthier characters.

Season three follows the now-familiar template Mike White has concocted — rich white characters confronting subtle emotional nuances, class divides between resentful resort staff and entitled guests and at least one jarring sex scene that leaves viewers questioning their commitment to the show.

But that formula demands each season to be more shocking and unexpected than the last, and this time, the surprise factor fell short.

The finale ends with the guests leaving the resort all having undergone some sort of transformation — for better or for worse — but the pivotal turning points are skipped. Crucial plot developments are traded for an empty montage, set awkwardly to Billy Preston’s upbeat “Nothing From Nothing.” We never see the Ratliffs’ reaction to their father’s impending imprisonment, or watch Jaclyn, Kate and Laurie process the trauma of being caught in the crossfire of Rick’s shootout.

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Without these pivotal reactions, viewers are left to fill in the blanks themselves. In past seasons, that ambiguity felt intentional, even satisfactory. But with season three’s revolving characters and scattered plotlines, it just feels incomplete.

Perhaps the unsatisfying ending is intentional, designed to leave us feeling empty and confused. The innocent, Buddhist Gaitok betrays his convictions and is rewarded with a romantic interest and a career promotion. Piper, the Ratliffs’ daughter, abandons her fantasy of living in a bare monastery and embraces her Southern belle status. And Chelsea, arguably the most genuine character, is killed for her loyalty to Rick.

Mike White’s slow-burn storytelling and ability to create such vibrant yet relatable characters is certainly a talent that makes The White Lotus unlike anything else on TV. But no matter his talent, this finale feels undecipherable, leaving viewers to decide whether this season was a waste of time or a masterful commentary on the corrupting powers of money.

The show follows a group of employees whose consciousness is “severed” between their work and personal lives. The central four, led by Mark S., who is played by Adam Scott, work in the “macrodata refinement” department for a biotechnology company called Lumon to sort mysterious datasets into boxes based on the emotional responses the numbers evoke.

The season two finale, released last Friday, cements the show’s perfect execution in an action-packed psychological thriller that maximizes Severance’s trademark suspense.

Similarly to season one, season two’s finale is a series high point. Severance gets better when everything is on the line as the outies — outside-world versions of the characters — desperately try to communicate with their inside personas and Lumon executives tighten the leash to extract crucial data for the unclear, ominous goals of its founder. As everything heads towards a moral crux, loyalties are tested and true motives are revealed.

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The final episode picks up at the climax of a season-long battle of wills between innies and outies to unleash more than an hour of gut-wrenching tension. 

The finale opens with a 20-minute conversation between Mark’s severed selves as they record videos for each other to communicate and plot a daring mission that takes on the brunt of the episode.

Season two expands the show’s atmosphere of dark, almost occult-like mystery, achieved through a series of perfectly executed details. Lumon is pristine and mathematically divided, while the severed floor is a literal maze. Mark’s frantic search for his wife through the halls and outside the central macrodata refinement office uncovers increasingly disturbing results.

But on the outside, the world remains covered in snow. The shadows cast on the characters’ faces preserve them in a constant state of weariness. 

This facade quickly decays into a headstrong fight against the company, fueling fervent fan speculation over Lumon’s overarching motives. 

Near–constant narrative symbolism, from the weirdly sinister goat room to the archaic, dystopian speech of Lumon executives, furthers this mystery. This is later highlighted comedically during a stand-up routine in the finale between the cunningly hilarious innie supervisor Mr. Milchick, played by Tramel Tillman, and an animatronic Kier Eagan, the founder of Lumon. 

Evolving over 10 episodes, Mark nears completion on the cataclysmic Cold Harbor file, which is hailed by his bosses as one of the greatest achievements in human history. Once the file is completed, Milchick dances and conducts a marching band through the office.

This scene instantly becomes a defining point of the season. In the darkest, most critical time in the innies’ lives, the workers’ boss indulges in over-the-top, superficial antics to “reward” them for their work. Underneath the outlandish humor of Milchick introducing a new department, choreography and merriment, lies a stark critique of corporate culture — and by extension, capitalism. 

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It’s a moment that reminds us how Severance eerily mirrors our own world. 

As Mark detaches himself from the musical celebration and escapes towards the dark hallway, expecting to find his outie’s wife, the season reaches a brutal climax. Action and violence explode across Lumon’s pristine halls, smearing its sterile building in red. Everything falls apart at lightning speed, fitting for a season that has been broiling with tension from the start.

Scott’s lead as Mark is arguably the series’ most nuanced. He effortlessly switches from a grieving, desperate husband trying to rescue his captured and once thought to be dead wife, to an eager leader of the severed floor. 

Other season highlights include Tillman, whose facial expressions and expansive vocabulary have catapulted him to stardom.  

The severance procedure serves as an ingenious plot device that raises enough moral questions to fuel the show’s emotional side, which we see as the innies start to establish their autonomy. Previously, the innie-outie dilemma was a mind-bender, but in season two, it becomes a harrowing question of life and consciousness, and what it means to have two separate, often clashing personas.

After the series finale, it’s clear this conflict will propel season three’s narrative. 

A puzzle-box mystery of epic proportions, Severance not only avoided the pitfalls of many second seasons but exceeded expectations at every turn, drawing in audiences with the illusions of revelations only to leave them more lost — and intrigued — than ever. 

In an interview with The Diamondback, Jagannathan discussed her chaotic character, Lucky Auntie, and her time as a Terp in the ‘90s when she swapped astrophysics for journalism and theater — a pivot that led her to acting.

Deli Boys follows Pakistani American brothers Raj and Mir Dar, who inherit a chain of Philadelphia delis after their father’s sudden death. But their lives spiral when they discover the family empire is a front for smuggling and selling drugs.

Raj — played by Saagar Shaikh — and Mir — played by Asif Ali — are hilariously anxious and unprepared, flailing through their criminal misadventures. They fumble with disposing of bodies, hiding drugs and even attempting murder — all without the grit or strength to pull it off. 

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The show is a bizarrely wonderful mix of workplace drama, crime thriller and pure slapstick comedy that checks every viewer’s box. Raj, the laid-back brother with a shaman girlfriend and a collection of bongs, clashes with Mir, the more serious but perpetually anxious sibling. 

Their relatable, brotherly dynamic fuels the season’s 10 episodes. Despite the characters’ comedic performances, the Dar brothers grapple with their father’s death and the realization that he wasn’t the stand-up guy they thought he was.

So how will they navigate the dangerous, complicated and sometimes political world of crime? Enter Jagannathan as Lucky Auntie, their sharp, no-nonsense boss.  

Lucky Auntie, the temporary CEO of the deli — or rather, the drug empire — looks every bit the mob wife with fur coats, long nails, voluminous hair and designer handbags. But make no mistake — she’s the boss.  

“It’s so comedic to me,” Jagannathan said to The Diamondback. “The character really allowed me to incorporate a lot of physical comedy and just be larger than life.” 

The show, undoubtedly lighthearted, infuses comedy with sharp political commentary to draw attention to deeper messages. At a time where pop culture feminism often gets dismissed as an eye-rolling byproduct of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, Deli Boys champions powerful women in the workplace — albeit a highly unconventional one. 

Jagannathan described Lucky Auntie with an unabashed boldness that mirrors her character. 

“Lucky is just fucking crazy,” she said. 

She’s not wrong. Lucky Auntie is crazy in a refreshing way. She fights back against an all-male board that runs the drug trade, shutting down their sexist jokes and grumbles about her ambition. She’s power-hungry, and she owns it, unapologetically taking up space. 

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Beyond Deli Boys, Jagannathan is an advocate for the arts. As a 1996 graduate of this university’s journalism program, she said she struggled in astrophysics before switching majors.

“It was so hard for me,” Jagannathan said. “I just kept failing my classes over and over again, and then when the arts opened up, and I took acting classes, this whole other part of my brain got activated.” 

If it wasn’t for the poor grades in science classes, Jagannathan would have never discovered her niche, she said.

“I felt so much more like myself and so much less like a failure … and more like I was coming into myself,” Jagannathan said. 

Jagannathan’s passion for the arts and acting shines through in her performance as Lucky Auntie. Her unique dynamic and genuineness makes Jagannathan’s Deli Boys character unforgettable.

Saturday Night Live celebrated its 50th anniversary this weekend, starting with Friday’s star-studded Homecoming Concert at Radio City Music Hall. The celebration continued with a rerun of the show’s first ever episode in 1975 — which featured The Muppets and inspired the 2024 Golden Globe-nominated film Saturday Night — on Saturday.

On Sunday, a three-hour special aired live from Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. The episode featured a who’s who of the comedy world, with too many surprise cameos to count. The audience at Studio 8H overflowed with A-list celebrities, including Cher and Peyton Manning.

The usual suspects also returned to the studio. Tina Fey, Eddie Murphy, Seth Meyers, Leslie Jones, Pete Davidson, Kate McKinnon, Will Ferrell and other comedy legends dominated on their home court. Amy Poehler described the event as a “family reunion” on the red carpet before the special.

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The special also brought back fresh interpretations of classic sketches. Domingo, Black Jeopardy and Close Encounter were among the more recent returning fan favorites. John Mulaney reprised his New York Musical sketch in the biggest and boldest rendition yet.

Rachel Dratch reprised her depressing yet iconic role as Debbie Downer. Davidson came back as his nonchalant character Chad. Poehler and Maya Rudolph reverted back to their “Sweater Weather” days for Bronx Beat.

In an homage to his Lonely Island days, Andy Samberg starred in an ‘80s-inspired music video alongside Bowen Yang, hilariously commenting on the mental health issues comedians face. A commercial parody compilation covering 50 years perfectly underscored the cultural significance of Saturday Night Live. Watching it felt like opening a memory box.

The special was a true celebration of the show’s earnest beginnings and how far it has come, with particular respect to cast members who have died. With tears in his eyes, Adam Sandler sang a commemorative song honoring the show’s history and dead SNL stars, such as Chris Farley, Norm Macdonald and John Belushi. 

In a brief cameo to introduce musical guests Miley Cyrus and Brittany Howard, actress Aubrey Plaza made her first public appearance since the death of her husband in early January wearing a tie-dye shirt in his honor.

In a night packed with touching tributes, Laraine Newman and Jane Curtin held up an image of Gilda Radner during goodbyes — the only women on the original cast. Garrett Morris, another original cast member, also received his flowers for his contribution to building a historic comedy establishment.

The music lineup was also stacked with a fair blend of some of the industry’s biggest artists. Duos such as Paul Simon with Sabrina Carpenter and Lil Wayne with The Roots illustrated how SNL has been instrumental in picking the right artists at the perfect moments.

[Maryland Opera Studios reimagines fairy tale in its operatic show ‘Fishwife’]

SNL also didn’t shy away from its past controversies and public mistakes. Tom Hanks introduced a segment that depicted a compilation of racist, sexist and other bigoted skits from the show’s 50 year history.

With a three hour runtime, there was something for everyone. To die-hard fans, who understood the significance of each brief cameo and every historic comedic reference, three hours wasn’t nearly enough. But even those less familiar with SNL enjoyed a game of celebrity “Where’s Waldo?” 

By the end of the night, the Goodnights stage was more packed than before with show creator Lorne Michaels making a surprise appearance on stage. It was a reunion that felt like the audience watching at home was part, too.

The special was not without faults — the multitude of moving parts left quite a few technical issues. But these little slip ups made the episode all the more endearing. Saturday Night Live may be a 50-year-old entertainment institution, but it is also still a coalition of comedians flying by the seat of their pants to try to put on the best show possible. 

And for 50 years, they have succeeded.