Bottom Row: The Boys: Season 5 (Amazon Prime Video); The Dark Wizard (HBO).
In this edition of TV-Review Catch-Up, I’m giving you my thoughts on 1) the return of one of my favorite shows of all-time, 2) an entertaining, now-cancelled Netflix sci-fi series, 3) the second season of an Apple series with some relatively big stars, 4) the final season of a major superhero series, and, finally, 5) my favorite documentary thus far this year.
Scrubs: Season 10 (Revival) | Series | Created by Bill Lawrence (Showrunner: Aseem Batra) | Release Year: 2026 | Season Length: 9 Episodes | Recommended?: Yes.
In the 2000s, I was hooked on this show. Scrubs became a personal favorite show of mine, and, over the years, I’ve still returned to it often to spend time with characters that I have a lot of love for. So, I was very excited when they announced that they were doing a revival or reboot, of sorts, with the same characters and actors. I was hopeful that this could wash out the bitter taste of the ninth season, which was essentially a spin-off continuation with new main characters to pass the torch to. Now, I should say that it wasn’t an awful season of television, and I did like some of those new characters, but it was an underwhelming end to a show that meant a lot to me. And still does. So to have a fresh tenth season, what, sixteen or so years later, is a nice treat, especially as it attempts to put the original leads back at the center of the series, while a new group of intern characters has, naturally, joined the show in recurring roles.
I was concerned that the show might struggle to recapture the magic of what once worked, but that is not the case. It doesn’t take long in this nine-episode season before J.D., Turk, and Elliot all feel like the characters of the original series. In fact, they’re so good that their shining (i.e., Zach Braff, Donald Faison, and Sarah Chalke) only makes absences even more apparent. Although so many of the old supporting characters do make a return, the fact that Judy Reyes, Neil Flynn, and John C. McGinley, especially, aren’t series regulars this season does feel strange. There are narrative explanations for two of the three, but Reyes really should’ve been in much more of the show than she is this season. However, when the season is at its strongest, in the final three episodes, those three actors feature prominently, and I am hopeful that an eleventh season could have them be actual series regulars again.
In addition to the solid group of interns, the most prominent new characters here are Vanessa Bayer’s head of HR and Joel Kim Booster’s Dr. Kevin Park, who becomes J.D.’s new rival at Sacred Heart. While I will say that they eventually started to feel more natural in the show, they take some getting used to. One final issue that I will highlight is that here in the tenth season, certain plot elements feel like they’re repeats of what the original show did before. Lessons that have already been learned. However, since the three leads now have leadership positions, and the fact that the new interns naturally need to learn these things as well, you can make an argument that this feeling of ‘have we done this before?’ is intentional. However, perhaps the showrunners should emphasize further that they know this is what is happening and that it is deliberate.
The Boroughs | Series | Created by Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews | Release Year: 2026 | Season Length: 8 Episodes | Recommended?: Sure.
One thing that I think must be said up front is that this show was recently cancelled by Netflix, so there won’t be a second season. However, I don’t think it needed one, and I think the show can be enjoyed on its own without further episodes down the line. Frankly, I was even a little bit surprised it wasn’t designed as a one-season show, because it sure felt like one. The Boroughs is a sci-fi series set at a luxury retirement community in New Mexico, where, as it turns out, supernatural or extraterrestrial beings are perhaps feeding on the elderly staying there. The series follows Alfred Molina’s character Sam, a grumpy, recently widowed older man, as he witnesses an attack on one of the other residents. As the series moves forward, multiple other residents — played by strong actors like Alfre Woodard, Denis O’Hare, Clarke Peters, Geena Davis, and Bill Pullman — appear and, in some way, shape, or form, get involved in the action.
The Duffer Brothers, i.e., the creators of Stranger Things, are executive producers on the show, and, like I know others have written elsewhere, it really does feel like a spin-off of that very series. The Boroughs — or ‘Senior Citizen’ Stranger Things meets Cocoon, as I called it in my notes — is a competently made sci-fi series that keeps you hooked until the very end, even though many of the ‘twists’ or ‘reveals’ that it builds up to are fairly obvious from the get-go. I thought it was a pleasant watch, even if it never felt like a true prestige series. It’s got interesting creatures, a somewhat familiar overarching plot, and great actors to hold your attention through it all. I will say the Geena Davis romantic storyline sometimes felt a little bit far-fetched, but it is by no means a grating aspect of the series, which is mostly just fine without it, however, being exceptional at any one thing.
Your Friends & Neighbors: Season 2 | Series | Created by Jonathan Tropper | Release Year: 2026 | Season Length: 10 Episodes | Recommended?: It depends.
I have a complicated relationship with this show. On the one hand, I think it’s got a great cast, as well as a good original premise hook (i.e., that this show is about Jon Hamm’s character trying to keep up with his standard of living after his wife leaves him (and he loses his job) by stealing from his obscenely wealthy neighbors and former friends). But, on the other hand, I am frustrated by how it feels like the show, or, more aptly, the showrunners, weren’t satisfied with it being this class-conscious heist-of-the-week type of show that it felt like it was in a good position to become. Instead, in this so-so second season, it feels like the show moved away from that. It was a tough sophomore season because of it. Instead of seeing multiple heists and break-ins (and Hamm negotiating his winnings with the pawn shop owner), the focus is on seeing Jon Hamm’s character be blackmailed into his former job, while we get a lot of scenes with side characters and their uninteresting rich people problems. I have a lot of time for Amanda Peet and Olivia Munn, but their subplots never went in directions that got close to being about what the show was once sold as.
Although I enjoy seeing Jon Hamm’s character watch old movies and don’t need constant heists, the midlife issues overwhelmed the show in the second season, when Peet’s character’s midlife crises and the two leads’ daughter opted not to go to college. Although the focus on parenting, midlife crises, and blackmail all make sense on paper, the balancing act did not work as well as intended. I will say that I still really enjoyed seeing Jon Hamm in this show, and I’ll add that James Marsden was a fun new addition to the show, as a widowed billionaire who thinks he can control Hamm’s character. As the season ended, I also think choices were made that stretched credulity in a really head-scratching way. So, yeah, I guess if you’re invested in these characters beyond the steal-from-the-rich premise it was sold on, I think you could still have a good time with this, but I have to say that I was somewhat disappointed by the second season.
The Boys: Season 5 | Series | Developed by Erick Kripke | Release Year: 2026 | Season Length: 8 Episodes | Recommended?: Sure.
When the fifth and final season of Eric Kripke’s adaptation of Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s comic book series The Boys premiered and wrapped itself up earlier this year, it felt like it did so without strong word-of-mouth. I’ve been a fan of all the seasons, but I’m usually slow to start each one, often opting to binge-watch it when I’m ready rather than watch it week to week. It took me a long time to get ready this time, and I only just finished it the other day, even though it ended in May. I think a part of me was sated or full of what the show was offering. This has always been a sharp satire of both Hollywood, American politics, and, chiefly, cinematic superhero trends, and it felt to me like the show had said what needed to be said in the first four seasons.
When I finally got around to finishing it, I must admit that I still had that feeling. Don’t get me wrong, I think the fifth season does what The Boys has always done well. It is dirty, violent, and has an irreverent sense of humor, the final concoction of which is always quite tasty to a certain audience. I felt that the fourth season doubled down on the political satire in ways that I thought worked really well for the show, and the fifth and final season keeps on layering it on thick with regards to how much they want us to see Donald Trump in its superhero villain known as Homelander, who, in this season, wants to not only rule the world but be acknowledged as the messiah. As always, Antony Starr is fantastic at playing this uber-powerful but extremely thin-skinned megalomaniac, and I thought the ending the show gave us for his character really worked.
But the season as a whole feels like more of the same without adding much to it, and I think the structure of the season leaves a lot to be desired. So much of the season is about this search for a virus that starts to feel pointless after a while, because the final hero versus villain confrontation is not ultimately about the virus itself; rather, the importance of the virus is based on what comes after the climax of the series. And, frankly, I have mixed feelings about how it ultimately ends. Not only are there way too many endings in the mixed bag of a final episode, but I also think what happens after the final confrontation with Homelander feels way too rushed to fully work. That said, I did enjoy my time with the show, and while this season of the show wasn’t its most successful one, it is by no means a bad one.
The Dark Wizard | Documentary Series | Directed by Peter Mortimer and Nick Rosen | Release Year: 2026 | Season Length: 4 Episodes | Recommended?: Yes.
No documentary that I’ve seen this year thus far has stuck with me quite as much as The Dark Wizard has. It is a four-episode docu-series about Dean Potter, the late rock climber and BASE jumper, that not only works as a fantastic companion piece to Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s Oscar-winning documentary Free Solo about Alex Honnold, who not only appears in this documentary but is interviewed and, the documentary posits, is a key part of why Potter’s life went the way it did. The Dark Wizard is such a fascinating watch. The terrifying acts shown in the series shake you and take you to the edge of your seat. The stories told are astounding, and strong narratives are formed over the course of the series.
The whole smoking-provocateur counter-culture ‘dark magician’ type, Dean Potter, versus the next generation, by-the-book, but extremely talented free soloist, Alex Honnold, is such an interesting narrative that forms in the second episode. The FreeBase journey that Potter later took on only makes you more convinced that he is going past his limits. You feel like Potter was taunting a line that he couldn’t uncross. It is a very sad, well-told, sometimes off-putting, anxiety-inducing, and yet always thoroughly entertaining documentary series with so many ‘you have to see it to believe it’ moments that it is absolutely incredible. Indeed, all the footage that you would want is there. It not only genuinely had me on the edge of my seat, but it also made me sob. It’s a fantastic documentary.
– Reviews written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.
