The Off-Balance Variety Show: May 2025.
The Hollywood Dream, A Tribe Called Quest and The Beatles.
I hope everyone had a great May!
Here is snapshot of what watched, read, listened to and (mostly) enjoyed over the past few weeks.
As always, thanks for reading Off-Balance! Until next time,
Ryan.
Movies
TV
Music
What’s Next?
Substack Spotlight
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Mission: Impossible - The Franchise Reckoning
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That time I auditioned for Charlie Brown
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Conclave (2024)
There is something to be said for, every now and then, dropping the vail of supposed pretension and simply riding the cultural wave.
To this, as Pope Leo XIV ascended to the papacy earlier this month, Conclave, the Edward Berger-directed, Peter Straughan-written film based on the novel of the same name, saw a massive boost in online capital. Fittingly perhaps, in its deception, albeit fictionalized, of the centuries-old process that sees a new Pope elected.
And while there is a fair amount of intrigue to be found in the film, as Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) navigates the various socio-political arenas of the Vatican, that is, ultimately, the project in totality.
An as-expected political thriller with its most visible distinction being what is a heightened but ultimately-familiar feeling look behind a historically drawn curtain.
The production values are sharp, the dialogue is solid and the performances are engaging but Conclave really doesn’t hit too many surprise notes, save for a couple of so-it-must-be-said reveals in its third act.
Enough for what it is, though not much else.
Rating: 6.7/10
Grey’s Anatomy: Season 21 (2024-2025)
Still ostensibly a drama, more-and-more in recent years, Grey’s Anatomy has found itself inching towards full blown soap territory.
And it isn’t, in fairness, the creative death knell such a transition might appear to be on the surface, not entirely.
After two decades on the air, after 450-plus episodes and presenting a truly revolving door regarding its ensemble (only two original cast members, Chandra Wilson and James Pickens Jr, are still regulars), Grey’s has found a level of comfortability regarding its rhythm, that, to see itself endure well into the streaming era (even as emerging shows like The Pitt have captured the medical drama acclaim it once made its calling card).
But ultimately, there is only so far that comfortability can stretch before it inevitability falls into eye-rolling repetition and frequently throughout its twenty-first season, which concluded earlier this month, Grey’s found itself hitting that wall.
Well-worn beats, tired stakes and a continued reliance on cliffhangers over more effective, closed-loop storytelling.
And while Ellen Pompeo, as both a producer and the titular Meredith Grey, has moved more openly into a supporting role, she has also been incredibly forthright on how the show has evolved over the past few years and not always to her agreement.
Now, is that the be all, end all, necessarily? Of course not.
But if the face (and ever-present narrative voice) of the entire enterprise is willing to acknowledge the show’s inability to truly move past its own self-imposed creative limitations, it speaks to something more tangible, regarding the lack of drive in the writer’s room - next to, more pointedly, all the continued trauma they’re subjecting on poor Camilla Luddington’s Jo Wilson (the oscillating one-two punch between the penultimate episode and the finale, specifically? It felt particularly cruel).
Grey’s hasn’t flatlined just yet, its heartbeat, held up the work of its cast and the baseline emotion it brings forth from its stronger storylines, with, at the very least, one more opportunity to showcase the most high-intensity side of Seattle medicine, after recently being renewed for a twenty-second season.
But while the show has always had an inclination towards bombastic melodrama, historically, it has also found a balance with a semi-relatable thread of honesty too: something that was too often missing over its past eighteen episodes.
Season rating: 5.6/10
Charlie Hustle & The Matter of Pete Rose (2024)
After Pete Rose died last September, the discussion was once again renewed, that, regarding his potential candidacy into Cooperstown: the man with the most hits in MLB history, who was in tandem, also one of baseball’s most ostracized.
Permanently banned from the game in 1989 as a result of his infamous gambling scandal which saw him caught in a continuous loop of high-profile denial for well over a decade, before eventually coming clean in 2004 and admitting that, yes, he did indeed bet on baseball (separately, in 1991, Cooperstown ruled that anyone on the ineligible list would not be considered for enshrinement into the plague room).
This, capturing the contrast between the public persona Rose cultivated over the last years of his life: that of a man who cared little for the establishment, yet paradoxically, desperately, craved its approval.
And though Charlie Hustle & The Matter of Pete Rose, the four-part documentary series chronicling Rose’s life, career and post-career crusade doesn’t entirely shrink away from this angle, featuring a wide range of interviews with both Rose himself and those both in and outside of his orbit, there is, undeniably, an element of superheroism present.
Released in the summer of 2024, just before Rose’s death, it is impossible not to watch the project and see what is, really, a final, blatant attempt at audience rehabilitation.
The push to see Rose’s on-the-diamond accomplishments worth their weight enough to supersede everything else that coloured his character (from his time in prison for tax evasion to his acknowledgment of a sexual relationship with an underaged woman in the 1970s).
Earlier this month, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred overturned the ineligibility ban on Rose, Shoeless Joe Jackson and others who have long held the most prominent spots on the sport’s blacklist, thereby allowing them, posthumously, to be considered for Cooperstown consideration: just as, darkly enough, depending on one’s tolerance regarding humour in such situations, the gambling that saw them banished to the Shadow Realm in the first place has come to fully engulf the North American sporting scene.
But either way, even if Charlie Hustle was meant to be Rose’s last great pitch for baseball immortality, it struck out looking.
Rating: 5.5/10
The Studio: Season 1 (2025)
Perhaps the most fascinating thing about The Studio, the Seth Rogen co-created and led comedy, is that, while it never attempts to be more than it is, the conviction it already possesses is immediately apparent.
Openly satirical and increasingly self-deprecating but striking in its face value presentation too.
When film executive Matt Remick (Rogen) unexpectedly finds himself promoted as head of the fictional Continental Studios, he quickly learns his great enthusiasm for the medium will only carry the bottom line so far.
Meanwhile, as his team (Ike Barinholtz, Chase Sui Wonders and Kathryn Hahn) work to chase down leads while delivering on-time and on-budget, they often find themselves fighting the unrelenting confines of the industry, from reputation to their clashing personal dynamics.
And though mentored by his predecessor Patty (Catherine O’Hara), Matt, realizing he is struggling to fill the cold leadership shoes the job traditionally requires, resolves to do things his own way, for better or worse.
This then, being perhaps The Studio’s strongest swing.
Yes, Rogen’s presence and creative involvement would suggest a leaning towards his brand-defining juvenility but that isn’t the basis for the comedy here, dark and visibly cringe instead, interwoven with some semblance of (subtle) character and narrative work: most episodes are relatively standalone, though there are a few larger arcs that carry throughout the season’s ten episodes, building towards an absolutely chaotic one-two, penultimate-finale punch.
And though it doesn’t always find as a strong a balance between the as-established supporting cast and the real-life celebrity cameos as it could, the show’s strengths are supported by so much of its auxiliary framework, in addition to what already works comedically - the set and costume design, the cinematography and practical, on-location filming - it is more than worth the investment - even if the confirmed renewal for a second season does cast something of a question mark, in wondering how much of the concept’s juice has already been expended.
Rating: 8.3/10
Let It Be (The Beatles) (1970)
Sixty one years on now, from their amber-clad arrival at JFK and fifty-five years this month, specifically, since their twelfth and final album, Let It Be was released, The Beatles remain a fascinating proposition.
Not in a sense of diminishment to be clear but rather, understanding: what more, really, can be said?
They remain a dominant, influential force in broader pop culture, the continued academia surrounding their musicianship, technically and lyrically, has kept entire subsets of the industry they once revolutionized in business and five decades since they stepped off that impromptu stage alongside Billy Preston on the Apple Corps rooftop, the argument could be made that only a select few artists, if any, have truly matched their reach.
Yet the funny thing is, returning to Let It Be with a stricter purpose in acknowledgment of that after-mentioned milestone? It is almost impossible.
Sonically yes, it still feels fresh: keeping up with 1968’s The White Album, being envisioned as a direct counterpoint to the bombast of the band’s “studio only” era, Let It Be does come across as stripped back but not in a lesser way, seeing that rambunctious artistry be more present, more focused Even if it is often overshadowed, in discussion, by everything that had come to encapsulate The Beatles come the close of the ‘60s - be it the infighting, the financial questions, the personal and growing creative strife or the reality that placing too much weight in any one basket is simply foolhardy, as is the expectation that they would’ve stayed together, despite everything.
Nothing, after all, lasts forever.
Peter Jackson’s 2021 documentary miniseries, The Beatles: Get Back, itself a spiritual successor to the 1970 Let It Be project, speaks to this, showing the group during recording, separated somewhat from the overarching narrative that has come to colour the album.
Still riddled with tensions understandably but a degree removed from an all-encompassing arena of hostility.
Jamming as McCartney, more-or-less spontaneously, composes Get Back on the spot or Harrison, unable to suppress his amazement, as Ringo presents to the group what will, in time, become Octopus’s Garden (though released first, Abbey Road, the band’s eleventh album, would be the last in which they all collaborated as a quartet).
The record then, enduring not just because it is The Beatles but because it exists on its own terms: something, if nothing else, worth striving for.
People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm (A Tribe Called Quest) (1990)
While it is easy to point towards their second album, 1991’s The Low End Theory as perhaps their most visible crowning achievement, A Tribe Called Quest’s debut record, People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, which turned thirty five earlier this spring, endures in a far different way. Still something of a hip-hop/jazz bridge but almost startling in just how strong it lands on its own merits, even within the context of the East-West dichotomy that defined the genre at the time.
And, as stated above, while returning to Let It Be comes with, fair or not, the subconscious unpacking of the mythology that surrounds The Beatles at every corner, Paths of Rhythm, as a debut record, isn’t burdened with that same sense of expectation,
Instead, it is as though watching a door be jovially kicked open and being invited into a party bursting at the seems with energy.
The Tribe’s lyricism, covering everything from identity, the importance of safe sex and healthy eating, to an odyssey of a cross-country road trip. The production, rich and sonically grounded, from the sample work to the delivery, making it seem as though every listen, on every track, is the first, no matter how confidently one can recite in time.
Materialists (2025)
Following her heart-wrenching success with her debut film, Past Lives, the question wasn’t so much if writer-director Celine Strong could follow it up but rather, what angle she’d choose: evidentially, with Materialists, the result was a modern, maybe maybe-maybe not love story with the trappings of an early 2000s rom-com in support.
With a trio of who’s-who leads (Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal, Chris Evans) and what appears to be the retention of Strong’s steady hand at the helm, there is little doubt the film will build upon her previously established groundwork with strength.
But we’ll know for sure next month, with Materialists set to release in theatres on June 13th.
Grand Theft Auto VI (2026)
If anyone knows how to keep their fanbase in suspense, it is Rockstar Games.
Never a developer to follow anyone’s timeline but their own, though towards consistent results. Be it their Red Dead Redemption duology or their Grand Theft Auto titles, which are all universally considered, from their technical to storytelling prowess, as some of the greatest and most influential video games ever made.
And while the limits of that audience patience have been tested perhaps more so than ever before, in the twelve years and two full console generations since Grand Theft Auto V, there is, at last, genuine light to be seen at the end of the crime-chaos tunnel.
After announcing their long-awaited follow-up, Grand Theft Auto VI, had been delayed from its initial end-of-year, 2025 launch window earlier this month, days later, Rockstar released (a year-and-a-half since the first debuted) their second trailer for the title. Further showcasing what is expected to be a far more mature and grounded story compared to its immediate predecessor, in the Red Dead mold: a Bonnie and Clyde-esque tale taking place throughout their satirical recreation of South Florida in the modern social media age.
Realistically, there are few doubts Rockstar will deliver on the hype but the wait isn’t over yet. With its latest delay, VI is set for release just close on a year from now, in May of 2026.
Until then, Vice City eagerly awaits.
Substack Spotlight
There are many wonderful writers, out there in the wild but specifically so, here on Substack.
In that spirit, here are a few articles I really enjoyed this past month, including some from valued members of the Off-Balance community.
Do feel free, if you haven’t already, to expand your horizons and check out what they have on offer.
“Musings From Alcatraz”
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What makes Kristen’s account of her day spent at Alcatraz so engaging, is within the intimacy, the immediate honesty, that she presents it with.
Tracing the throughline from the prison island’s most infamous criminals, that cultural familiarity, to the more human, day-by-day existence that truly defined it: all tied together with her own personal experience and how it informed on her time on The Rock.
You can find her over at .
“Mission: Impossible - The Franchise Reckoning”
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As the apparent curtain call for the Mission Impossible series, The Final Reckoning arrives in theatres, with this essay, Kiara tackles not just the film itself (with an excellent review) but the franchise en masse.
Every high-flying stunt and edge-of-one’s-seat escapade, all playing into what has become one of the most successful and long-lasting action franchises in modern filmmaking, such cultural hold, from the raw audience metrics to the Tom Cruise of it all: a rarity, being a movie star, truly, in the classical mold, even with all the known caveats of his personal life that, for many, rightfully, will colour such perception.
But as Kiara frames the MI films against the ever-evolving landscape of modern cinema (not just in the immediate moment but for what, unknowingly, lies ahead too) it is a reminder to appreciate the baseline emotion films like Final Reckoning are trying so hard to conjure.
The power of the medium, truly existing one-of-one.
You can find more of Kiara’s work at .
Are We Worth Saving?
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A deeply moving, honest look at the human condition and the bedrock on which it has come to lay, Abby blends both personal anecdotes with philosophic questioning that lands, line-by-line, with great strength and impressive conviction.
Reflective and somber by necessity but hopeful too.
A reminder that our lives exist on an ever-shifting plane and are something best shared not through the siloed experience of individualism but collective uncertainty, wherever it leads.
You can find Abby at .
That time I auditioned for Charlie Brown
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Hey, Ryan here.
So, in the interest of full transparency, I know David personally - a former co-worker, mentor and all-around cool dude - but that understood, as he gears up to direct his first theatre show, this piece of his (in which he takes a look back at his time staring as Charlie Brown) captures so well what defines the theatre experience, even if you’ve never been behind that particular curtain.
From the uncertainty of the audition process and the toil of rehearsals, to the worry that absolutely nothing will come together until, right at the last minute, it does. That pursuit of the artistic fulfilment we’re all searching for, one way or another.
I’ve been writing on here for just over two years now and I’m hyped to support David as he begins his own Substack journey: that, as he blends personal and professional experience with both a skillful eye and great enthusiasm.
You can find him at .
Thankful that you included me here, Ryan, and despite it's mediocre rating - looking forward to the Rose mini-series. I wasn't aware of it!
Thanks for the shout-out Ryan - that is very kind of you and I’m glad you enjoyed that very personal piece. This is such a great concept (variety show)!