By Will Dawson

Aleshea Harris’ Is God Is landed on me like a warning siren dressed up as a revenge movie. A few weeks before I saw it, headlines were dominated by stories of Black men committing horrific violence against their own families. Almost immediately, the public conversation shifted toward sympathy for the perpetrators, framed as “mental health crises,” while the women and children left shattered in the aftermath became secondary characters in their own tragedy. Which is insanity dressed up as commentary. Watching Is God Is against that backdrop made the film feel less like fiction and more like an ancient truth retold through blood, fire and myth.

Harris’ film is not subtle about what it’s interrogating. At the center is Man, played with chilling restraint by Sterling K. Brown, a serial abuser whose violence permanently scars his wife and daughters. Literally. But what makes the film sting is not simply the abuse itself. It is the ecosystem around that abuse. The excuses. The selective memory. The willingness of communities to protect harmful men as long as those men remain charming, familiar or useful.

The story follows twin sisters Racine and Anaia, played by Kara Young and Mallori Johnson. As children, they survived an unspeakable act by their father that left them physically and emotionally scarred. Years later, their dying mother Ruby, portrayed by Vivica A. Fox, summons them with one final request: kill their father.

That premise could have easily collapsed into exploitation or empty pulp. Instead, Harris builds something stranger and more layered. Is God Is feels like a collision between Thelma & Louise, The Color Purple, and Eve’s Bayou, with a touch of gothic folklore drifting through the edges. The dialogue swings between poetry, dark comedy and raw emotional confession. The violence is brutal, but the film is more interested in the psychic inheritance of abuse than in spectacle.

What stayed with me most was the relationship between the sisters. Young and Johnson play Racine and Anaia with a chemistry that feels lived in. Young is a budding star who exudes high energy, like a firecracker waiting to explode. Watching her on screen gave me chills and reminded me of young leading ladies that came before her, most recently Dominique Fishback in Swarm. Her Racine is hardened and combative, almost daring the world to mock her sister again. Johnson is more subtle and restrained in her portrayal, adding a layer of balance to the duo. As Anaia, she moves through life more cautiously, carrying visible scars that make strangers reduce her to ugliness before she even speaks. Harris understands how trauma reshapes identity differently depending on how the world responds to your pain.

There is also a sharp gender critique running underneath the entire film. As the sisters search for their father, they encounter people who defend him, romanticize him, or minimize what he has done. The supporting work done by Erika Alexander, Janelle Monae and Mykelti Williamson is top tier. Through those characters, Harris is plainly interrogating the cultural habit of rehabilitating abusive men while demanding impossible grace from the women they destroy. In that sense, Is God Is feels painfully current, even though its themes are timeless.

Visually, the film is mesmerizing. Harris approaches the material like theater translated into nightmare language. Colors glow unnaturally. Characters often feel suspended in some in-between realm where realism and allegory overlap. You can tell this story originated as a stage play, but Harris mostly uses that heightened style to the film’s advantage rather than letting it feel constrained.

I do think the third act loses a bit of momentum. For so much of the runtime, Man exists as a looming shadow, fragmented through flashbacks and obscured framing. When he finally fully emerges, Brown gives him an unsettling softness that works on paper, but the final confrontation lacks the emotional explosion the film seems to be building toward. The ending, which inevitably involves fire, feels more functional than transcendent.

Still, that slight stumble does not diminish the force of what Harris accomplishes. Is God Is is furious, mournful, funny and deeply observant about the way misogyny reproduces itself inside families and communities. It is a revenge story, but it is also a meditation on memory, inherited pain and the moral confusion that trauma creates.

Most importantly, Harris refuses to let the suffering of Black women and girls become background noise. In a culture that often rushes to humanize violent men before fully grieving their victims, that refusal carries real power. Is God Is does not ask for comfort. It asks for recognition.

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Is God Is (2026, Amazon/MGM)

Kara Young, Mallori Johnson, Sterling K. Brown, Vivica A. Fox

Rated: R

Director: Aleshea Harris

Rating: 7/10 — Two sisters on an quest for revenge, fueled by a violent family history.

Biopics walk a tightrope. On one side, reverence. On the other, revelation. Michael, the 2026 film starring Nia Long, Colman Domingo, and introducing Jaafar Jackson as the King of Pop himself, leans heavily toward the former… sometimes to its own detriment.

Let’s start with what undeniably works.

The music is everything you remember, and then some. The film understands the emotional muscle memory tied to Michael Jackson’s catalog. It doesn’t just play the hits. It stages them. These sequences are where Michael finds its pulse. Jaafar Jackson, in particular, is a revelation. Portraying his uncle could’ve easily slipped into impersonation, but instead, he delivers embodiment.

Sure, it could be easy to put on a red jacket and sunglasses while singing some of your favorite tracks (I will neither confirm or deny that I’ve done that before). What’s not easy is capturing the cadence of Michael, the mindset and passion it takes to give the embodiment the depth it needs to look authentic. It is evident that Jaafar worked tirelessly to perfect each mannerism, each singing note. Each dance move. The movements are sharp, the voice is eerily aligned, and the aura is present in full force. When he’s performing, the film breathes. It’s confident. It’s electric. And for me, the best part of the film.

The early years also land with clarity and purpose. The depiction of a young Michael navigating life under the weight of an overbearing Joseph Jackson (Domingo) contrasts effectively with the warmth and grounding presence of Katherine Jackson (Long). I’m not going to lie: I took every Joseph insult personal during the screening (Don’t call me Big Nose!) and my heart melting during every popcorn/Three Stooges scene with Katherine. Whew.

These moments provide the film with its most human footing, showing us the roots of both the discipline and vulnerability that would define him. But here’s the problem: we’ve seen so much of this before.

The performance recreations, while stunning, largely echo what’s already been preserved in archival footage. I remember where I was for the video premieres of “Thriller,” “Beat It,” and even though I was still a preteen, the Motown 25 special where Michael literally moonwalked to the stars.

Even the generations that didn’t grow up in the golden era of Jackson have access to every MJ performance. They’re polished, for sure. In fact, the cinematography is stunning and will forever be a feather in director Antoine Fuqua’s cap. The way he captured those original moments and movements, most of which were filmed in the original settings, took me back to my childhood and sparked great memories.

However, familiarity only carries a film so far. And where Michael stumbles repeatedly is in its refusal to go deeper.

This isn’t just a story about music. It’s a story about a person who reshaped global culture. Yet the film rarely lets us sit with Michael Jackson the person. His personality, his quirks, his inner conflicts are skimmed over rather than explored. His relationships, especially with his brothers, feel more implied than lived-in. There’s a noticeable absence of texture in these dynamics, as if the film is hesitant to linger too long in any space that isn’t accompanied by a soundtrack.

Even more frustrating is the missed opportunity to unpack the music itself.

We don’t get a meaningful look behind the curtain. The creative process — the late nights, the experimentation, the genius-level decision-making that defined albums like Off the Wall and Thriller is largely absent. Instead, we’re given end results without the journey. The why behind the music: the composition, the lyrical intent, the innovation is barely touched.

There’s a brief moment where the film gestures toward depth, particularly in its exploration of the concept behind “Beat It.” As a former Los Angeles resident I saw up close the tension that existed between the Blood and Crip gangs. The idea of bringing both sides together without violence taking place felt impossible. Michael being able to convene a summit of sorts, and as a result of said summit convince the members from both sides to appear in a music video, was extraordinary. It definitely lends to how powerful he was and the positive effect he had on everyone he met, even sworn enemies. That scene hinted at the kind of insight the entire film could’ve offered. But that thread is never fully pulled.

What we’re left with is an experience that feels more like pressing play on a greatest hits album than watching a fully realized biopic. It invites nostalgia but stops short of delivering new understanding. You remember where you were when you first heard these songs. You feel that again. But you don’t leave knowing much more about the man who made them.

And that’s the core issue.

Michael frames itself as a rise from humble beginnings to global superstardom, but it treats that ascent as a given rather than a phenomenon to be examined. What made Michael Jackson the most famous person on the planet? What did that level of fame cost him? How did it shape his identity, his relationships, his art? Hell, why did he adopt the high pants/gloved hand look?! These questions linger unanswered, replaced by brief lines of dialogue bridging one musical montage to the next.

In the end, Michael exists in a strange duality.

As a musical experience, it’s undeniably effective. At times, even transcendent. It reminds you why the music mattered, why it still does. In those moments, it feels like a masterpiece.

But as a biopic that is tasked with unpacking the life of a cultural titan, it plays things too safe, too shallow. It avoids the depth that could’ve elevated it from homage to higher knowledge. And in doing so, it becomes something less than it could’ve been.

A monumental story, told at surface level.

I didn’t hate Michael. I didn’t love it either. Both can be true.

What were your thoughts of the film? Please share in the comments.

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Michael (2026, Lionsgate)

Jaafar Jackson, Nia Long, Colman Domingo

Rated: PG-13

Director: Antoine Fuqua | Writer: John Logan

Rating: 6/10 — boosted by nostalgia, carried by the music, but held back by everything it chose not to say.

Dear Always Be My Baby by Mariah Carey

You don’t arrive loudly.
You arrive gently — like a hand on the small of my back when the room is too crowded and the world is moving too fast.

I’ve always loved how you never beg for permanence.
You just know it.

There is a softness to you that people mistake for fragility. But your promise is steady. Unbothered. Unrushed. You don’t have to dramatize devotion because you understand what it looks like when love is real and lived-in. When it doesn’t need witnesses. When it doesn’t need urgency to survive.

You say our love will never end and somehow it never sounds naïve.
It sounds assuring.

You are a song written by a Black woman who knows that tenderness is not weakness . That wanting someone to always be around is not clingy, it’s clarity. It’s choosing continuity in a culture obsessed with exits.

You are the quiet architecture of forever.

Every year, someone presses play on you and lets you speak what their mouth is still learning how to say. Every day, you become the proxy for a promise somebody is trying to keep.

You are delicate.
You are intentional.
You are devotion with good posture.

And I love you for reminding us that sometimes the boldest thing you can say is:
stay.

Dear When I See U by Fantasia

Listen.

You do not hesitate.
You do not soften your landing.
You do not whisper desire into a safe corner of the room.

You walk in already in like.

No curiosity.
No “let me see where this goes.”
No emotional buffering.

In. Like.

Your joy is audible. Your wanting is unapologetic. Your whole body participates in the feeling. You are what happens when a Black woman stops negotiating how visible her affection is allowed to be.

You are an affirmation.
An intentional confession.
An aggressive kiss on the neck.

A strongly vocalized confirmation.

It’s why Black men love you so much.

There is no space in you for false interpretation. No room for emotional plausible deniability. You are not coy. You are not careful. You are not cool about it. And thank God for that.

You are the sound of a woman saying:
I know what this does to me.
I know what you do to me.
And I’m not going to pretend it’s casual.

Every note feels like sunlight hitting skin that has been waiting on it. You make vulnerability feel athletic. You make joy feel earned. You make attraction feel holy without ever calling it that.

You are a song that lets Black women be giddy and grounded at the same time.

You are not falling.

You have already landed.

Dear Just Because, by Anita Baker

Whew.

Ms. Anita.

You don’t rush the moment.
You sit with it.
You weigh it.
You turn it over in your hands and decide. Deliberately.

You love like someone who has already done the math.

What moves me about you most is not how deeply you care. It’s how clearly you care. You do not hide behind mystery. You do not dress devotion up as restraint. You do not confuse emotional maturity with emotional distance.

You look at this person — this precious gem, so nice to have around — and you make a clean declaration:

I love you.
Just because.

Not because they rescued you.
Not because they completed you.
Not because the timing finally worked.

Just because you thought about it.

There is something radical about that. A Black woman choosing love without a performance of pain attached to it. Without a survival narrative required to justify the softness. You don’t need a dramatic backstory to validate tenderness. You simply arrive at it.

You are romance with a backbone.

You are affection that knows itself.

You are proof that loving someone does not have to be complicated to be meaningful. It only has to be honest.

And in a world that keeps trying to convince us that love must always be earned through chaos, you stand still and say:

No.
I choose you.
Because I want to.

These three songs are universal Valentine’s Day gifts — passed hand to hand, heart to heart.

Every year.
Every day.

They matter because they let Black women speak love without façade. Without irony. Without apology. With full transparency. With full intention.

Which is why these letters — like the songs — are important.
Timely.
And downright love-ly.

By Will Dawson

I met Reverend Jesse Jackson in the in-between spaces of history.

Not the glossy moments you see in documentaries or campaign highlight reels — but the narrow hallways outside packed ballrooms, the crowded press risers, the long security lines before marches, and the hurried handshakes between sessions at national conferences when the real work of movement-building was still unfolding.

From 1998 through 2011, while I worked with the National Urban League, I had the privilege of encountering Rev. Jackson on several occasions — across different cities, different crises, and different chapters in our collective struggle. Whether it was at national conferences filled with policy talk and possibility, press conferences at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., or marches and rallies centered squarely on the rights and dignity of Black Americans, he was always there — never ornamental, never distant, never disengaged.

He was working.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a towering civil rights icon who battled alongside Martin Luther King Jr., negotiated global hostage releases, and publicly confronted corporations for their failures on diversity and voting rights, has died.

He was 84.

And even writing that number feels small compared to the weight of what he carried.

To say Jesse Jackson was a “leader” does not begin to describe what he represented to those of us who came of age in the shadow of his voice. He was a bridge — between the movement generation and those of us tasked with translating that moral urgency into policy, advocacy, and institutional reform. He was proof that protest and negotiation belong in the same sentence.

I still remember the first time I saw him walk into a conference hall where I was working registration. His presence shifted the room before he ever reached the podium. People leaned forward without realizing it. Conversations slowed. Cameras came out — but what struck me most was not the celebrity of the moment. It was the seriousness.

At one press conference at the Press Club in Washington, I watched him listen more than he spoke. He waited. He nodded. Then he answered questions in a way that protected the questioner’s dignity while sharpening the political point. That was one of his great, underappreciated gifts — he built people while building movements.

In marches and rallies, when chants rose and anger cracked through the crowd, his voice cut through with discipline. He reminded us that moral clarity does not require cruelty. That righteous anger must still aim toward justice, not spectacle.

History will rightly record that he stood alongside Dr. King. That he was only feet away when King was assassinated. That he helped build what became the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. That he ran for president — twice — and changed the very architecture of who could imagine themselves on a national ballot. That he energized and registered millions of Black voters. That he negotiated the release of Americans held overseas. That he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

But what I will remember most are the quieter moments when he leaned in close enough to be heard without a microphone.

“Stay rooted,” he always said. “Power moves fast. Justice moves slow. Don’t confuse the two.”

In recent years, as progressive supranuclear palsy weakened his steps and softened his voice, Jesse Jackson still refused to step away from the work. Even in 2021, he allowed himself to be arrested twice in protest of the Senate filibuster rule — because, in his words and in his actions, democracy delayed was democracy denied. That same year, he and his wife Jacqueline endured COVID-19 complications. His body was tired. His mission was not.

His longevity, as Rashad Robinson once said, is part of the story. Jesse Jackson had countless opportunities to do something else with his influence. He chose the hardest path — again and again.

And he chose it in a time that now feels heartbreakingly familiar.

His death comes amid a renewed rise in white nationalism and relentless attacks on voting access.

That makes his absence feel heavier.

Even the unlikely acknowledgments that followed his passing — from political figures who had disagreed sharply with him, including the current president — could not erase the truth that defined Jesse Jackson’s public life: he never stopped holding power accountable. He never softened his critique for access. He never confused proximity to influence with allegiance to justice.

He was born into complicated beginnings. He grew up in a segregated South. He joined the movement as a teenager. He walked from Selma to Montgomery. He ran operations for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Chicago. He confronted corporate America through boycotts and negotiations. He carried the chant “I am somebody” into the ears and hearts of generations who had been told, in a thousand quiet and violent ways, that they were not.

And when younger activists took to the streets decades later — after too many names to recite — he still showed up, reminding them that their cause was just.

I do not pretend that Rev. Jackson was perfect. He was human. Publicly, painfully so. But greatness in movement work has never required perfection. It requires endurance. It requires humility before the magnitude of injustice. It requires the courage to remain visible when silence would be safer.

For those of us who worked inside institutions like the National Urban League, trying to translate protest into programs, outrage into outcomes, and moral vision into legislative language, Jesse Jackson made our work feel connected to something older and far larger than any grant cycle or administration.

He made it feel sacred.

Today, I grieve not only a man, but a living archive of struggle.

I grieve the sound of his cadence. The way he braided scripture, policy and poetry into a single sentence. The way he could remind a room full of professionals, lobbyists and donors that this work was always about people.

Jesse Jackson had the vision for a more just and inclusive America. He believed in it with unwavering faith. And he dedicated his entire life to bringing it closer within reach — while teaching the rest of us how to carry the torch when his hands could no longer lift it.

I was lucky enough to meet him in the places where movements are quietly sustained.

And I will spend the rest of my career trying to honor what he showed me there.

By Will Dawson

There’s something quietly radical about Mary J. Blige Presents: Be Happy. Not because it reinvents the Lifetime movie formula — but because it insists that a 50-year-old Black woman is still allowed to choose herself, loudly and without apology.

Executive produced by Mary J. Blige, the film draws emotional DNA from her 1994 anthem “Be Happy,” and you can feel that legacy of hard-won self-definition running through every frame. Directed with surprising tenderness by Gabourey Sidibe, the story follows Val, played with lived-in vulnerability by Tisha Campbell. Val’s escape to New Orleans becomes less about romance and more about memory — remembering who she was before marriage, motherhood, and emotional invisibility.

The film is at its best when it centers stillness: quiet hotel rooms, tentative laughter, and the soft bravery of being seen again — especially through Val’s connection with a charming but guarded photographer, played by Mekhi Phifer. Sidibe keeps the gaze firmly on Val’s interior life, echoing the film’s central truth: self-love is not selfish, it’s survival.

Still, the movie doesn’t fully escape the familiar beats of its network home, Lifetime. The pacing rushes key emotional reckonings, and the husband’s arc feels underwritten, flattening what could have been a more complex portrait of long-term Black marriage. Even the symbolic makeover — clearly nodding to Waiting to Exhale and its iconic haircut moment with Angela Bassett — leans a little too hard on shorthand.

But what Be Happy gets deeply right is its cultural timing. As Blige recently told Essence, today’s Black women are understanding their worth. This film reflects that shift — not with spectacle, but with grace.

Val isn’t chasing a man. She’s reclaiming a life. And for once, that’s enough.

By Will Dawson

“I know your image of me is what I hope to be.”

That lyric, that line sits in my chest like a held breath. It isn’t a boast. It isn’t even a promise. It’s a confession. It says I see myself through your eyes, and I’m reaching for that version with both hands, knowing full well my grip isn’t always strong enough.

Because hope is not certainty. Hope is work.

Sometimes that image is love shaped. A partner looking at me with belief that outruns my proof. Seeing steadiness when I feel unfinished. Seeing gentleness when the world has trained my shoulders to stay tight. Loving me not for who I’ve mastered, but for who I’m still trying to become. Wanting me to be present, to be honest, to be soft without disappearing. And I want that too. I want to be the man your faith assumes I already am.

Sometimes that image is smaller, quieter, heavier. A child’s eyes tilted upward. Watching how I enter a room. How I speak when I’m tired. How I carry disappointment. How I carry myself. Wanting to be safe. Wanting to be proud. Wanting to know that the world may bruise them, but it won’t take them unarmed. I want to be what they remember when they think of strength that didn’t have to shout. Protection that didn’t require fear. Love that showed up, again and again, even when it was inconvenient.

And sometimes that image isn’t personal at all. Sometimes it’s public. Projected. Inherited. A silhouette already decided before I speak. Before I fail. Before I succeed. A world that asks me to be exceptional just to be acceptable. To be calm under pressure, but never cold. Confident, but never threatening. Visible, but not too much. Human, but somehow immune to pain. I know what the world hopes I am. I also know what it expects me to survive.

That’s the weight beneath the wanting.

Because when Donny Hathaway sings (sermonizes?) that line, you can hear the risk in it. The vulnerability of saying: I might not get there. You can hear the courage of saying it anyway. Of placing the desire on the table, uncovered. No armor. Just truth. Just reach.

As a Black man, hope is never abstract. Hope is survival with imagination. It’s believing I can be more than the narrow margins I’m given. It’s choosing tenderness in a place that confuses it for weakness. It’s choosing accountability when the world already has its foot on my neck. It’s deciding that I will not let disappointment turn me into something unrecognizable to myself.

That line isn’t about perfection. It’s about alignment. About closing the distance between who I am when no one is watching and who you believe I can be. About honoring the grace in being seen with generosity, and the responsibility that comes with it.

Because being hoped for is a gift. And it’s a burden. It means someone is trusting you with their vision. Their safety. Their love. It means failure will hurt more than pride ever could. It means trying, even when the odds feel loud.

So I stand in that sentence. Not claiming I’ve arrived. Not pretending I won’t fall short. Just saying: I am aware. I am reaching. I am listening. I am willing.

I know your image of me is what I hope to be.

It’s more than a song for you. It’s a promise. And every day, in this body, in this skin, in this world, I decide — again — to move toward it.

Word to Leon Russell.

By Will Dawson

I was watching a news program the other night when a simple phrase slid across the bottom of the screen, and I could not peel my eyes away from it: “We are here for good.”

Five words we use separately every day, yet they landed with the weight of a thesis about what it means to be human. On the one hand, they sounded like a promise — we are here to be good, to do good work, to treat one another with decency and care. On the other hand, they sounded like a declaration of permanence — we are here for good, forever. And the tension between those two meanings stopped me in my tracks.

Because the truth is, we are here to be good… but we are not here for good. We are temporary. We are fragile. We are passing through. And that is not a flaw in the design of life; it is the very thing that gives life its urgency and its meaning. Tomorrow is not promised. The next conversation, the next apology, the next act of courage, the next moment of kindness — none of it is guaranteed. Which means every chance we get to be here has to count for something.

When you really sit with that phrase, it becomes a kind of moral compass. If we are here to be good, then being decent is not optional. Doing good work is not a side project. Loving people well is not something we get to postpone until things are easier. It is the work. It is the point.

And that feels especially important right now, in a world that often feels loud with turmoil, soaked in anarchy, and flirting with dystopian values that tell us to look out only for ourselves. In a world where people with that surname are shamelessly taken away.

It is easy to become numb.

It is easy to retreat.

It is easy to decide that kindness is naive.

But that little phrase on the screen wouldn’t let me off the hook so easily. It made me think about how I am living. It made me think about how I wish we all were living.

Then I thought about children. Have you ever really watched how kids move through the world? They walk into a room as if it is a miracle.

They ask questions without embarrassment.

They give affection without strategy.

There is wonder in their eyes and good in their hearts, not because they are perfect, but because they have not yet learned to ration their hope. Watching them makes me smile. It makes me hopeful. It reminds me that goodness is not something we invent.

It’s something we remember.

Imagine what this world would look like if that mindset were in our DNA. If we walked into our workplaces, our homes, our neighborhoods, and our communities with the quiet urgency of people who know they are not permanent but who intend to be meaningful. Imagine how we would listen, how we would lead, how we would forgive, how we would show up for one another.

“We are here for good.”

We are here to leave things better than we found them.

We are here to do work that matters.

We are here to love people like it counts… because it does.

So let’s live fascinated by that idea. Let’s live with reverence for the short, beautiful, unrepeatable time we have. And let’s make sure that when we are no longer here for good, we can honestly say that while we were here, we were, in fact, good.

It’s the weekend. We made it through. And that’s good, too. Respect.

By Will Dawson

January 2026 arrived wearing sequins and soft chaos for Teyana Taylor, a month so busy it could have used its own glam squad. If time were a red carpet, she walked it with a wink and a wave, turning every headline into a reminder that reinvention is her favorite accessory.

The year kicked off with news that she and her latest beau, Aaron Pierre, had quietly called it quits during the holidays. Folks whispered about mismatched timelines and the age old question of who wants the ring and who wants a little more runway. Taylor, ever the poet of her own life, let the speculation swirl like confetti while she kept it moving. When you are a multi hyphenate with a heart full of dreams, sometimes you choose your own rhythm over someone else’s tempo.

Then came the moment that made every R and B lover sit up straight. During a recording session with Cartunezzz to promote her new album, Escape Room, Taylor slipped into a cover of Sade’s “Cherish the Day.” It was not a tribute so much as a conversation across generations. She took that silky classic and made it her own, bending notes with grace and grit, reminding everyone that her voice is as much a superpower as her style. Applause poured in like a warm rain, the kind that makes flowers and confidence grow at the same time.

As if that were not enough sparkle for one month, Taylor walked into award season history with a Golden Globe win for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture for her role in the genre film One Battle After Another. Nominated back in December, she arrived in January as a first time winner, glowing with the kind of joy that lights up a room before she even says a word. Her acceptance speech did just that. With tears that felt like truth, she spoke to little Black girls everywhere, telling them they belonged in every room. Not just the rooms with velvet ropes but also the ones where decisions get made and futures get shaped.

Between heartbreak headlines, studio magic, and a golden statue in her hands, Taylor turned January into a masterclass in being fully alive. She laughed, she sang, she won, and she spoke with a tenderness that could lift a whole community. If this is how 2026 begins, then buckle up. Teyana Taylor is not just escaping rooms. She is opening doors.

Check the vids below to see Taylor’s stirring cover and emotional acceptance speech.

By Will Dawson

Netflix’s His & Hers is the perfect limited series to air in January. It’s all frost, shadow, and slow-burning menace. It is binge television in the purest sense — sleek, pulpy, and engineered to keep you watching long past the point when you should have gone to bed. On that level, it largely succeeds. But like a lot of prestige thrillers, it also flirts with something deeper than it ever quite delivers.

The series opens with a lurid image: a young woman stabbed to death on the hood of a car in a Georgia forest. The investigation falls to Jack Harper (Jon Bernthal), a small-town detective whose authority rests not just on his badge but on how well he knows everyone around him. Jack bends rules easily, relying on personal ties as much as procedure — a familiar figure in Southern noir, where masculinity and power tend to blur into each other. When it’s revealed that Jack slept with the victim shortly before her murder, at the very spot where she was killed, the case curdles instantly into something messier and more morally compromised.

Then Anna Andrews (Tessa Thompson) returns home. She’s now a television reporter in Atlanta, but she’s also Jack’s ex-wife, still carrying the weight of a shared tragedy: the death of their baby. Anna left town in the aftermath, and her reappearance cracks open wounds that never really healed. From the opening moments, when she’s shown watching Jack and the victim from the shadows, the show frames her as more than a journalist — she’s a woman with unfinished business, and possibly a suspect in her own right.

For a while, His & Hers looks like it’s about to become something genuinely sharp: a murder mystery built around two people who once loved each other now locked in suspicion and grief. There’s something potent in that setup, especially with Thompson and Bernthal, whose performances bring very different kinds of emotional weight to the screen. You can feel the show straining toward a kind of intimate, ugly duel — not just over who committed a crime, but over whose version of the past gets to stand.

But the series never fully commits to that tension. Instead of letting the relationship between Jack and Anna drive the narrative into darker, more volatile territory, the show repeatedly pulls back into safer, more familiar thriller beats. The story starts leaning heavily on flashbacks about teenage friendships and buried secrets, which flatten what might have been a far more psychologically charged two-hander.

That’s where His & Hers starts to feel frustrating. On paper, it has everything it needs: a bestselling novel, a strong cast, a lurid crime, and two emotionally wrecked leads. In practice, those elements never quite ignite. The characters don’t always click into place, the plot edges into implausibility, and the Georgian setting — for all its mossy trees and moody light — never becomes the kind of living, breathing landscape that this genre thrives on.

Still, there are moments where the show cuts deeper than you expect. The flashbacks that chart Jack and Anna’s marriage, especially the slow devastation following the loss of their child, are quietly powerful. Those scenes give the series its emotional spine, and they anchor the mystery in grief, guilt, and the impossible work of trying to protect what you love when it’s already been taken from you.

His & Hers is a show that keeps you watching even when you know it isn’t fully living up to its promise. It’s flawed, sometimes maddening, and always just a little too restrained. But it’s also moody, compulsive, and heavy with winter atmosphere — the kind of series that pulls you in, wraps you in its cold, and refuses to let go until the last twist lands.

By Will Dawson

OK so… I came up in an era when Sesame Street was non-negotiable viewing. And the Emmy Award-winning Christmas Eve on Sesame Street, which was released on December 3, 1978 by Jim Henson and Co., was appointment television, watched while grown folks cooked, argued, and told you to sit down somewhere and stop touching things. I didn’t have language then for why it stuck, only that it felt real in a way most holiday specials didn’t.

Sesame Street looked like a neighborhood I recognized, sounded like adults I knew, and understood — without explaining itself — that Christmas joy didn’t come shrink-wrapped. It came from people looking out for one another, even when nobody had much to spare. Below are a few reasons why I still love it to this day.

1. Oscar the Grouch is the original Christmas hater — and he commits to the bit.
   Oscar doesn’t just dislike Christmas; he sings a full villain anthem about it. “I Hate Christmas” is gloriously petty, deeply committed, and honestly relatable if you’ve ever been overwhelmed by forced cheer. As a kid, it was hilarious. As an adult, you realize Oscar was just setting boundaries in a very loud trash can.

2. Big Bird’s Santa anxiety feels extremely real.
Big Bird worrying about how Santa gets down chimneys — or finds a nest — is childhood logic at its finest. What makes it special is that the adults don’t mock him or brush him off. They take his concern seriously, because that’s what good grown folks do. For a lot of us, this was an early lesson in what it felt like to be heard. And the cameos by reporter Kermit THE Frog and Bird’s co-conspirator Snuffy is a stealthy, nice touch and makes me wonder where all those kids are today.

3. Bert and Ernie’s “Gift of the Magi” plot goes harder than it needed to.
Two roommates with no money, both quietly sacrificing the thing they love most to make the other happy? That’s not just a parody — that’s emotional storytelling. It was funny then. It’s devastating now. And it taught a whole generation that love is about intention, effort, and sometimes very bad financial decisions made with a full heart. To this day, their version of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” is one of my favorites.

4. Cookie Monster vs. Santa is a master class in communication breakdowns.
Cookie Monster trying — and failing — to tell Santa what he wants is pure physical comedy, but it’s also sneakily smart. Watching him attempt to call, type and write in order to share with the big guy what he’d like for the holiday, only to be thwarted each time by his own kooky, cookie-centered greed, is absolutely perfect.

5. “Keep Christmas With You” is the quiet emotional knockout.
This is a song that has stayed with me throughout the years. From the first time the kids sang it IN FULL ASL, the tears came. And stayed. When it reappeared at the end of the episode, I was fully invested. No, like I knew all the words. What I love is that it reminds you that the spirit — love, generosity, joy — is supposed to last longer than the wrapping paper. Long after anyone stopped believing in Santa, hopefully they still believed in that.

Christmas Eve on Sesame Street works because it understands something timeless: Christmas is funny, confusing, imperfect, and deeply emotional when you’re a kid (and even when you’re an adult). It is a classic episode that trusts its audience and relays important messages. I loved it then and will continue to love it into the foreseeable future.

Check it out. I’m sure you’ll love it, too.