I ❤️ a Hate-Watch. Don’t You?
The New York Times
TV shows that are expensively made yet irritating to sit through — for some reason, I can’t get enough of them. Why do so many of us watch things we think are bad?
When it premiered in 2017, I quite liked “The Bold Type,” a television series about three 20-something women working at a fictional magazine called Scarlet. Although the show could tend toward after-school special, with the characters learning important lessons about speaking your truth, facing your sexuality or getting regular gynecological examinations, its heartwarming conventions — young women living their editorial dreams in the big city — worked their magic on me.
My love began to curdle during the third season. That’s when a new guy is brought into the office to spearhead Scarlet’s weirdly late foray into online publishing (it was set roughly in 2019). For reasons I couldn’t fathom, he referred to the magazine’s website as “The Dot Com.” Over and over and over again.
To someone who’s spent her career in digital media, this was a bridge too far. It suggested that the show’s writers hadn’t ever worked in this world, hadn’t talked to anyone who did, maybe had never read a magazine. My annoyance grew in the fourth season, as the star columnist (a fount of bad ideas) got “her own vertical,” by which the show meant “a blog.” What was going on?
I found myself declaiming to friends and colleagues about how deranged this turn of events was. I kept watching, but only to get annoyed at the things that I used to excuse as creative license: plot holes, improbable couplings, messed-up New York City geography. What I’d once enjoyed, I now hate-watched.
Hate-watching is a weird thing. There is so much to see, do, hear, read: Why spend precious time, in an age of nearly infinite media, plopped in front of a bad show to pick it apart? It’s like gorging yourself on a disgusting meal not because you’re hungry, but because you want to gripe about it later. Or taking a vacation with someone you find excruciating, not because you don’t have any actual friends, but because you want to bellyache afterward about all the stupid things they said and did.
Yet hate-watching is now part of the cultural conversation and arguably contemporary life. Chalk it up to morbid curiosity: We start watching a show because it looks appealing, but we keep watching because we want to complain about it at happy hour. It’s fun to be the person who describes a particularly terrible story arc or performance to our friends’ disbelief. Besides, it’s better than whatever is on the news.
In these videos, directors walked us through pivotal sequences from their 2026 Academy Award-nominated films.
Drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound have been hailed as miracle treatments. But one in 10 people are what scientists call “non-responders.”
“Sinners” and “One Battle After Another” have been neck and neck all season. Here’s what our expert thinks will go the distance.
The award, one of the most prestigious in the field of American history, honors “scope, significance, depth of research and richness of interpretation.”
The Meta C.E.O. bought a waterfront compound for $170 million, The Wall Street Journal reported. Ivana Trump’s townhouse and a “Breaking Bad” house also sold.
A settlement is reached in the case of Mike Disfarmer, who renounced his family. Decades later they sued to take back his life’s work. When heirs battle the people who built their legacies, the art may be at stake.
The things that make Liza Liza.
At 67, the actress is still reinventing herself, with two new TV shows, “The Madison” and “Margo’s Got Money Troubles,” and an evolving attitude about her work.
Dozens of former employees say René Redzepi inflicted physical and psychological violence on the staff for years.
The agreement, which requires a judicial sign-off, would avoid a breakup of the concert giant. But states who joined the suit object to the terms.
In “Shrinking,” this veteran performer has finally found a job in which he feels fully appreciated. “It’s the greatest experience I’ve had in my acting career,” he said.
The Met has looked to a foreign government, to new strategies, even to outer space, in its scramble to find money to sustain the country’s largest performing arts organization.
Bill Lawrence, the man behind comedies-with-heart like “Scrubs” and “Ted Lasso,” is in the midst of a career renaissance. He has five shows on the air now, including “Rooster” with Steve Carell.