From cable miniseries (Angels in America) to period pieces (Pose) to Very Special Episodes (Beverly Hills 90210), narrative television has reflected and reshaped the public perception of HIV/AIDS for nearly four decades. It is not an exaggeration to say that television has played an integral part in how many of us came to understand what the letters HIV and AIDS stand for. From medical dramas and procedurals to cable movies and period pieces, American television has as easily reflected as reshaped public opinion on these issues, one fictional character at a time.

[Clockwise from top left] WandaVision circa the 1960s, the ‘80s, the ‘70s, and the late ‘90s/aughts. Our current golden age of TV is also a golden age of TV title sequences. From the overlapping moody silhouettes of True Detective to the dripping wax-figure goop of Daredevil, from the board-game relief maps of Game of Thrones to the neon hues of the synth-drenched Stranger Things, splashy, expensive-looking title sequences have become an expected element of high-profile series.

Can you love this super-pig? The premise of the movie Okja is simple: A corporation develops a genetically modified six-ton “super-pig” to solve world hunger, then a girl named Mija (Ahn Seo-hyun) adopts one named Okja as a pet and tries to save it from the slaughterhouse. But how do you convince an audience that a CGI creature is lovable enough that this girl (and the audience) can plausibly fall for it?

Normal face for reference. Instagram developers knew what they were doing when they put the “Add to Close Friends” button so close to the “Add to Story” button. It’s messy and we see you. But today it gave us the most wholesome celebrity interaction on the platform since Lorde made a finsta for onion rings. RIP @onionringsworldwide. Hozier inadvertently posted a video of himself with the Handsome Squidward filter, which chisels you to perfection in the image of Squidward from a 2007 episode of SpongeBob SquarePants.

vulture picture palace Dec. 13, 2007 Filmmaker Benh Zeitlin’s Beautiful, Disgusting JourneyFirst, a word of fair warning: This week’s film features gruesome beheadings, rotting corpses, mouse-eating, a pile of shit, and a human uvula used as an action-movie prop. ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7t8HLrayrnV6YvK5705qerGeYqrqiuoyura6kkah6tr%2FEnWSaq12WsLW1zqdkpqemnrJuvNGop6xn

This movie had the opportunity to show a more dynamic side of slavery narratives, but it ends up reaffirming the very horror it is trying to critique. I am tired. I am tired of pop-cultural artifacts that render Black people as merely Black bodies onto which the sins of this ragged country are violently mapped. I am tired of suffering being the primary lens through which we understand Black identity.

Danny Brown on leaving Detroit, getting sober, and finding happiness. Photo: Victor Llorente Twelve years ago, Danny Brown’s breakthrough sophomore album, XXX, wowed hip-hop heads with a split-personality performance showcasing the nightlife antics and daytime stresses of a man on the cusp of 30. He delivered his most reckless lyrics in a diabolical yelp and his personal reflections in a lower, more somber tone, like Biggie in a duet with himself on Ready to Die’s “Gimme the Loot.

While the finale offers some definitive answers about Bill’s killer, other more enigmatic storylines remain unresolved and invite further musing. Spoilers follow for A Murder at the End of the World through the finale, “Chapter 7: Retreat.” Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling’s projects tend to linger in the unknown — literally, with the cancellation of their Netflix series The OA before its third season, and figuratively, with films like Sound of My Voice and The East pondering the curiosities of cult dynamics, time travel, and whether Alexander Skarsgård in rebellious-activist mode is worth abandoning one’s undercover intelligence assignment to join a fringe ecoterrorist group.

Starfield’s pitch is straightforward: IT’S SPACE, BABY. In Bethesda’s new NASA-core role-playing game, the grand possibilities of endless galactic nothingness are the point. The story necessitates that you bounce across the stars on the hunt for mystical artifacts, but the sprawling design practically begs you to wander off to sample the numerous other adventures on offer. You can navigate the political muck of opposing factions, spend hours building hopelessly elaborate ships, grind it out as a space trucker, or bop around as a pirate shouting, “Pew pew pew.

Now is the winter of our Friends content. The show turns 25 this month, and because of the strange significance that our culture has attached to multiples of five, the internet has spent the past few weeks rehashing the series: debating whether Friends is Actually Bad, standing by while Meghan Trainor inexplicably rerecords the theme song, listing “ways to celebrate” the show’s legacy. When my editor asked us if we had any ideas about how to cover Friends’ anniversary, I was briefly reminded of the chaotic meaninglessness of the universe.