Midsummer Nights’ Binge Watching
Now that we've successfully resuscitated our Glob Blog, we hope to take our own advice from our first post ever, 'Taking The Just Do It Concept and Applying It,' and create to our hearts' content once again!
During our recent hiatus these past few months, we've had a lot of long days that ended with us laying in bed in a comatose-like state binge-watching a bunch of shows since we were too exhausted to do anything else. However, something was different about watching shows together this time around compared to even just a few years ago, let alone watching shows growing up. There was a noticeable increase of some much-needed diversity all around.
So let's talk about that.
At some point, after Disney+ thrust itself into existence and commanded the collective attention of the people, we finally binged and watched all the Marvel movies together. As a result, our love for the Marvel Cinematic Universe was born. Doza had already seen a few films, but Nush was fairly new to the world of superheroes, MCU or not. It's been a beautiful journey watching and experiencing them all together. We've also enjoyed the many spin-off shows like WandaVision and Loki, but the addition of Ms. Marvel has been our favorite so far for a couple of reasons.
For those who don't know, Ms. Marvel centers around a high school girl named Kamala. Kamala is a highly creative superhero fan who's always found it difficult to fit into the community and society around her, save for a couple of friends. This continues until she gets super powers making her feel closer to her favorite superhero, Captain Marvel, although if we're being honest, the only thing similar about her and Captain Marvel is a loosely shared namesake. Let's be real, Ms. Marvel > Captain Marvel. But anyway, the notion of not fitting in, especially as a teenager, is a theme we've all seen done countless times before, but what really stands out about Ms. Marvel is the South Asian, Pakistani American, and Muslim representation that is seldom shown to a global audience.
Although the media often pushes a tension-fueled agenda when covering anything related to India and Pakistan, many Indians, Pakistanis, Hindus, Muslims, and the entire South Asian diaspora actually do get along peacefully, but peace is rarely reported on now, isn't it? In fact, as an Indian American and Hindu herself, Nush actually grew up with many South Asian friends of differing nationalities, backgrounds, and religions. Some of her strongest and longest-lasting friendships are a result of sharing so many commonalities with others growing up.
Ms. Marvel really highlighted the representation that so many have never seen before. From the music to traditions, food, sights, vibrant décor, language, and beyond, every single episode tear-jerked us in ways unrelated to the unfolding story in front of us. The realization that we are actually witnessing a show like this in our lifetime in the US and on Disney no less was overwhelming! That means somewhere in the early stages of preproduction, someone somewhere, probably in a stuffy meeting surrounded by high-ranking corporate executive suits said, "hey, let's do it like this," and now here we are!
In addition, the entire Ms. Marvel team did a tremendous job highlighting the historical events of the Partition of 1947 which divided then-British India into two independent domains, India and Pakistan. This was all under the British-oriented notion that Hindus and Muslims were too different to be in one country.
As the show suggests, it is evident that every family has a partition story and since Kamala's family's partition story is integral to the plot, we won't dig deeper into it right now, but seeing this event from history that impacted over 15 million people be highlighted in a mainstream show on Disney was surreal.
In addition, the show's creators even reached out to a bunch of South Asian artists we already follow to create unique works of art specifically for the show. Click here to see the stunning art on Marvel Studios’ Insta! It's good to see Disney flex its financial muscles back into the communities it takes inspiration from and feels a lot more personal.
In case it's not obvious already, we absolutely loved this show and look forward to seeing Ms. Marvel again in the upcoming 'The Marvels' movie in 2023. We often listen to the soundtrack from Ms. Marvel on Spotify, basically on repeat, and we highly recommend you watch the show too if you haven't already!
The Garcias on HBO Max is actually a reboot of a Nickelodeon tv show from the 90s called, The Brothers Garcia. The reboot was not on our radar at all until one random day when Doza was talking about how there aren't enough Mexican-American shows that didn't involve gentrification or drug/gang-related themes like On My Block, Gentefied, etc.
Sure, we've seen shows with Hispanic or Latino representation like One Day At A Time (Cuban-American) and Jane The Virgin (Venezuelan-American) just to name two. And the last show about Mexican-Americans we could think of during our conversation was the George Lopez show from the early 2000s. Obviously, we aren't claiming to know every Mexican-American-oriented show in existence, so if there are others, please let us know so we can add them to our list!
Anyway, Nush brought up The Brother's Garcia, a show she remembered from her childhood that was actually set in our city of San Antonio! According to Wikipedia, the "series was billed as the first English-language sitcom to have an all-Latino cast and creative team." Doza had never watched it, so we tried looking for where we could watch it. Much to our dismay, we could only find a low-quality version uploaded sporadically to a random YouTube channel. We watched it regardless and stumbled upon a comment by the show's co-creator Jeff Valdez from 7 YEARS AGO claiming that he was trying to obtain the rights for a potential reboot…
After seeing this comment, we had to investigate further to see if he had been able to get the rights yet, and... HE DID! Even more exciting was that the new show had just premiered on HBO Max in April of 2022, so we happily watched the entire first season. While most of the charm came from the nostalgia of the original show partially attributed to the use of the same cast for the main, now adult, characters, we felt the storyline wasn't really our cup of horchata and was a bit lacking. But as a show you can put on in the background, it serves that purpose fine and we're happy that the cast, crew, creators, and all those involved were able to reunite for some much-needed representation!
In case you didn't know, we are big fans of Mindy Kaling. We've watched almost all of her movies and shows (both of us), read all of her books (Nush), and followed her inspiring career and life, including her media company Kaling International. So, of course, we consistently binged every season of 'Never Have I Ever' since it debuted in 2020, including season 3, which was released on August 12th on Netflix!
The show follows a first-generation Indian-American teenager named Devi as she navigates life after a traumatic year. It covers all the teen-centric themes like popularity, school, friends, family, romantic relationships, and so much more. Like Ms. Marvel, it was absolutely refreshing to see a show follow a South Asian American lead rather than being regulated to a side character. Not only does NHIE have an amazing cast of South Asians, but it also has a diverse group of supporting cast representing many different backgrounds. Not only that, but these characters go through their own issues and arcs highlighted in conjunction with Devi's story in creative and relatable ways.
We'll admit that the appeal of watching this show was, first and foremost, seeing someone on the screen that looks like us (or in this case, Nush as an Indian American). It highlighted many cultural and religious things right from the first episode that we've never seen on mainstream television before.
The show highlighted festivals that we celebrate, like Ganesh Chaturthi and Navaratri. It showed off amazing Indian food that isn't just your typical takeout order but what families actually eat at home. It also covered the struggle of Indian Americans not being "Indian enough" or not being "American enough." Going even further, it showed the intricate social pressures of marriage for young Indian women and gave us the opportunity to hear languages like Tamil that are often so easily passed over for more mainstream languages or simply having only English dialogue despite the diversity. We're amazed that this show even exists, and we get to watch it!
However, it has also received a lot of criticism for certain storylines and how they were written, but no show is going to be perfect and loved by everyone. One example is that this show flies in the face of many hard-trenched traditions that some people may find an issue with. Not surprising that the show's creator, Mindy Kaling, has also been a controversial figure most of her career for her refusal to 'fit the mold' that many Indians and women are constantly pushed into.
In fact, we think the show has been getting better with time season over season, with the latest being the best so far. Although the 4th season will be the final, we can easily picture ourselves rewatching this show again and again.
To truly make things come full circle, you know when two things you love that you weren't expecting a crossover from come together out of the blue to do just that? Well season 3 of NHIE had an in-person premiere collaboration along with Live Tinted. And yes, this is the same brand Nush has been talking about on stream for years that is without a doubt her favorite beauty brand. We were lucky to snag a Live Tinted x NHIE set with some awesome beauty products. If you’re interested in checking out some Live Tinted products send us a message so we can give you code for $5 off your purchase from their online store! We are particularly partial to the Hueguard, a 3-in-1 Mineral SPF 30 that we both use especially with how freaking sunny it is all the time here in Texas lol, and Superhue, a hyperpigmentation serum stick that Nush uses daily. As of the time of writing, we haven't tried a product from Live Tinted that we haven't liked.
We could go on and on about many other shows that we’ve been binging this summer but for now here are a few more that we feel deserve an honorable mention - The Summer I Turned Pretty, Moon Knight, Partner Track, Pretty Little Liars Original Sin, Locke & Key, and Baymax! - all of which also had their own compelling stories and characters in their own right.
We’d love to hear about shows you have been watching this summer! Have any shows stood out to you? Or is there a show that's a must-watch? Let us know your recommendations!
