What to Watch This Week: 'Harley Quinn,' 'Paper Girls,' 'Keep Breathing' and More

Here is everything you should be watching this week. From HBO's 'Harley Quinn,' to Prime's 'Paper Girls,' to Netflix's 'Keep Breathing' and more.

Harley Quinn HBO
HBO

Image via HBO

Harley Quinn HBO

If you’re still on a high after watching Nope last weekend, you’re not alone. There’s still a chance to watch the Jordan Peele film in theaters again this weekend to catch all the things you may have missed the first time around. But if you’re looking for something completely new, we have some titles that dropped this week that you may want to check out right from home. 

The first season of Paper Girls is arriving on Prime Video on Friday, July 29, while Netflix attempts to recreate the success of last year’s Maid with a new limited series titled Keep Breathing, starring the incredible Melissa Barrera. Hulu is being brave this week with a satirical comedy Not Okay about a girl who poses as the survivor of a deadly attack for Instagram fame. Sick, right?

And of course, HBO Max is not to be outdone by the other streamers. While Rap Sh!t is also picking up steam on the platform, Season 3 of the animated series Harley Quinn arrived on Thursday, July 28. Season 5 of grown-ish is bringing all the fun over on Freeform, while AMC’s Better Call Saul Season 6 continues to be one of the best shows on TV. 

Check out our suggestions for what to watch this weekend below, and come back to see all the exciting new releases heading our way for the first week of August.  

'Harley Quinn' Season 3

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When: Thursday, July 28

Where: HBO Max


I haven’t written much about DC’s Harley Quinn animated series on the site because I was waiting for its third season to hit HBO Max from the (largely) now forgotten DC Universe app. The Kaley Cuoco-led show is, frankly, nothing short of brilliant in how it manages to effortlessly combine comedy, a satire of DC Comics, and compelling serialized storytelling into one all-killer, no-filler series created by Justin Halpern, Patrick Schumacker, and Dean Lorey. That remains the case in the first three episodes of the show’s third season, which hit HBO Max this week. The TL;DR version of Season 3 focuses on diving into the fully-realized relationship between Harley (Cuoco) and Poison Ivy (Lake Bell) in the wake of committing to being in a relationship. While some shows would find a reason to break the couple up after a few episodes, Harley Quinn Season 3 is committed to their commitment; instead of breaking up at the hint of a problem, both Harley and Ivy work through those issues as they arrive like adults. This resulting Harlivy partnership feels adult, thoroughly considered, and (most important) like real life. Not too shabby for an animated series that features plenty of cartoonish violence and a litany of sex jokes! 

These first three episodes offer an excellent overall indication of where the season is headed (I’ve seen a little over half the season thus far) and also function as a good, clean starting point if you haven’t checked out the series thus far. (It’s worth it to check out prior seasons, though). If nothing else, Harley Quinn is just as unpredictable as the protagonist at its core and well worth your time accordingly. –William Goodman

'Paper Girls'

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When: Friday, July 29

Where: Prime Video


Even before Amazon picked up the rights for a splashy adaptation of Paper Girls, the Brian K. Vaughan-written and Cliff Chiang-illustrated Image comic book series, the series drew a lot of comparisons to Stranger Things. Sure, there are strands of overlapping DNA; a group of young kids in the 80s find themselves drawn into an unexplained mystery surrounding their small part of Cleveland, Ohio, that also leverages plenty of time-period nostalgia. However, that’s just about where the comparisons end.

The Stephany Folsom (Toy Story 4) and Christopher Cantwell & Christopher C. Rogers (the minds behind supremely underrated Halt and Catch Fire) created series are far more interested in the dynamics between the four 12-year-old girls at the core of the story. As a result, the performances from newcomers Sofia Rosinsky, Camryn Jones, Riley Lai Nelet, and Fina Strazza come alive with a sense of live-in reality—even across the two episodes, I watched before its release (all eight episodes hit Amazon today). The core of the plot’s premise is better left discovered for viewers to watch unspoiled. Still, the exploration and deconstruction of standard teenage tropes (hopes and dreams, overall generational growing pains, the dawning adulthood’s harsh realities) that come along with the show’s killer hook are rendered in ways that feel anything but rote or boring. Paper Girls certainly feels of a piece with the character-based work Cantwell and Rogers did on my beloved Halt and Catch Fire; fans of that show will find a lot to love (and a lot of similarities) in how these titular paper girls are written. The characters of Halt have continued to stay with me long after that series concluded; the most significant praise I can give Paper Girls thus far is that the show is building a foundation to do the same thing again. —William Goodman

'Keep Breathing'

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When: Thursday, July 28

Where: Netflix

It is my job to stay informed regarding new releases for movies and TV, both on streaming and in theaters, but I had not heard any chatter about Keep Breathing until I checked Netflix’s release schedule. As soon as the screeners hit my account, I watched all six episodes in one sitting. These days it’s getting harder and harder to capture my attention but this show, and its star, did that. Keep Breathing tells the story of an uptight, Type A, New York lawyer named Liv (Melissa Barrera) whose plane crashes in the remote Canadian frontier and she is the lone survivor. In order to stay alive, she must fight against the unpredictability of the wilderness she finds herself in while also coping with and facing her past personal demons that have kept her emotionally stunted for years.

Barrera, who also starred in In The Heights, is brilliant in the Netflix limited series. She tackles both the physical and emotional aspects of this role so fiercely, that you can’t help but keep watching. While it is a survival story like Castaway and The Mountain Between Us, this one also has the component of a young Latina woman facing the truth about her childhood that has shaped her into the woman she is today. She must choose whether to stay stuck or free herself from the weight of generational traumas. Netflix has had major success with other women-led dramas like 2021’s Maid, and Keep Breathing deserves that same kind of treatment. If you have some time this weekend, give this one a shot. —Karla Rodriguez

'Not Okay'

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When: Friday, July 29

Where: Hulu

Social media is a problem, we should all know that by now. Hulu’s Not Okay attempts to show the pitfalls of faking it for the ‘gram with a story about a young woman named Danni Sanders (Zoey Deutch) who is an aspiring writer with no friends, a shaky dating life, and a weak Instagram following. Thanks to her photo editing skills, she pretends to go on an influencer-like trip to Paris in the hopes of boosting her social media clout, and also impressing a guy. (Ugh.) 

During the time she’s pretending to be in Paris, a terrifying incident goes down in the city and she now has to keep up the facade when she gets back home that she was there and is now a survivor of the event. She gets the attention she was seeking, but things go left and the Internet quickly turns on her. Is it a bit weird to use a scary situation like the one they’re portraying on the show to tell a lighthearted story like this one? Yes. But maybe somebody out there will learn to just keep it real on and offline. This looks like the kind of simple, fun movie people will either love to hate or hate-watch, kind of like the initial reaction to Netflix’s Emily in Paris but people love it now. If you’ve got an hour and 40 minutes to kill while you do your weekend cleaning, go ahead and hit play. —Karla Rodriguez 

When: Monday, July 25

Where: AMC

After Better Call Saul took its one huge piece off the board last week and jumped closer in time to the events of Breaking Bad, the logical thought for this week’s episode, “Nippy,” was that we’d finally get a set of long-rumored and anticipated set of cameos. But Saul is often as slippery and unpredictable as its lead protagonist, and as such, the show returned to its long-gestating Gene Takovic timeline to give the audience an update on what Saul’s post-Breaking Bad life is. Part of Saul’s appeal is how it’s often zagged when its audience has anticipated it to zig. 

The episode (directed by longtime Gilligan and Gould collaborator Michelle MacLaren with a script from Alison Tatlock) saw Saul pull off one last con, returning not to the Saul Goodman persona but to that of Slippin’ Jimmy as he worked out a way to solve his problem with Jeff the cab driver (an excellent Pat Healy, stepping in to replace actor Don Harvey who couldn’t continue the role due to scheduling issues with HBO’s We Own This City) in the most Jimmy way possible. MacLaren and Tatlock manage to make something as simple as fencing some goods as electric and tense as Breaking Bad’s “Dead Freight” train job while also diving deep into the process-first approach that’s defined so much of Better Call Saul. Along for the ride is the incredible and legendary Carol Burnett as Marion, Jeff’s mother, who effortlessly slides into this world; her chemistry with Odenkirk is among the episode’s many highlights.

But the most striking moment in an episode full of them comes in the final moments. As Gene wanders around the scene of the department store crime, he comes across a shirt and tie combination that feels very akin to what Saul Goodman would have worn once upon a time. He takes it off the rack, holding it against himself in the mirror, before putting it back on the end cap of the rack. It’s almost as if it’s an intentional pause to signal that we might not yet be done with this era of the Jimmy McGill story. With three episodes left, let’s hope a return to Cinnabon Gene is still on the table. —William Goodman

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