With Black Friday almost here, top retailers like Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, and Macy’s are dropping early deals for people who want to beat the rush and save right now. A large number of the deals below are the same deals you’d find on Black Friday, but just made active a few days early.

SEE ALSO: All the best Black Friday 2018 sales, right in one place

Here are some of our picks for the best deals:

• Embark’s dog DNA testing ket — save $40

• KitchenAid Pro 500 Series stand mixer — save $270

• Instant Pot DUO60 6 quart multi-cooker — save $15 

• Saeco X-Small Vapore automatic espresso machine — save $247.08 

• Save up to $200 on Samsung smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S9, S9+, and Note9

• Apple iPad (128GB) — save $79

• Save $100 on two Echo Spot devices 

• Save $120 on two Echo Show smart home hubs

• Save $50 on the Fire HD 10 

Here are all the best deals for Wednesday, Nov. 21:

Kitchen gear

• Cuisinart CSB-33 Hand Blender — $19.99 plus an addition $12 mail-in rebate (list price $37.99)

• Black & Decker BL2010BG 10 Speed Blender — $19.99 plus an addition $12 mail-in rebate (list price $37.99)

• KitchenAid – KV25G0XSL Professional 500 Series Stand Mixer — $229.99 (list price $499.99)

• LG – 2.0 Cu. Ft. Family-Size Microwave — $159.99 (list price $239.99)

• BLACK+DECKER Convection Countertop Oven — $32.00 (list price $39.92)

• Instant Pot DUO60 6 Qt 7-in-1 Multi-Use Pressure Cooker — $84.99 (list price $99.99)

• Farberware 3.2-Quart Digital Oil-Less Fryer — $39.00 (list price $69.99)

• KitchenAid Classic Series Tilt-Head Stand Mixer — $189.00 (list price $229.00)

• Anova Culinary Sous Vide Precision Cooker — $99.00 (list price $199.00)

• Cuisinart DGB-700BC Grind & Brew 12 Cup Coffeemaker — $111.35 (list price $124.86)

• Saeco X-Small Vapore Automatic Espresso Machine — $351.92 (list price $599.00)

• KitchenAid KSB8270CA Pro Line Series Thermal Control Jar Blender — $399.95 (list price $543.60)

• Avalon Countertop Self Cleaning Bottleless Water Cooler Water Dispenser — $231.99 (list price $289.99)

• The Complete 2019 Web Development Bootcamp — $9.99 (list price $199.99)

• iOS 12 & Swift – The Complete iOS App Development Bootcamp — $9.99 (list price $199.99)

• Advanced CSS and Sass: Flexbox, Grid, Animations and More! — $9.99 (list price $199.99)

• Complete Guitar System – Beginner to Advanced — $9.99 (list price $144.99)

• Machine Learning A-Z: Hands-On Python & R In Data Science — $9.99 (list price $199.99)

• The Ultimate Drawing Course – Beginner to Advanced — $9.99 (list price $194.99)

• The Complete Digital Marketing Course – 12 Courses in 1 — $9.99 (list price $199.99)

• Learn Ethical Hacking From Scratch — $9.99 (list price $194.99)

• Deep Learning A-Z: Hands-On Artificial Neural Networks — $9.99 (list price $199.99)

• Microsoft Excel – Excel from Beginner to Advanced — $9.99 (list price $149.99)

Smartphones and accessories

• Up to $200 off Premium Samsung Phones

• LG V35 ThinQ with Alexa Hands-Free – Prime Exclusive Phone — $549.99 (list price $899.99)

• LG G6+ – 128 GB – Unlocked – Black – Prime Exclusive — $399.99 (list price $799.99)

• Moto Z3 Play – 64 GB – Unlocked – Deep Indigo – Prime Exclusive Phone — $369.99 (list price $469.99)

• Moto G6 – 32 GB – Unlocked – Black – Prime Exclusive Phone — $199.99 (list price $239.99)

• Apple iPad (5th Generation) 128GB WiFi Silver — $349.99 (list price $429.00)

• Belkin Boost Up Wireless Charging Pad — $29.99 (list price $59.99)

• Anker PowerCore 10000mAh Power Bank — $25.49 (list price $31.99)

Amazon devices on sale

• Echo Sub bundle with two Echo (2nd gen) devices is $80 off — just $249.97

• Echo Sub Bundles with two all-new Echo Plus devices is $100 off — just $329.97

• Fire TV Stick bundle with Echo Dot (2nd gen) is $40 off — just $39.98

• Buy three Echo Dot Kids Edition devices is $110 off — just $99.97

• Buy two all-new Echo Show and save $120 — just $339.98

• Buy two Echo Spot and save $100 — just $159.98

• Fire 7 Kids Edition tablet is $30 off — just $69.99; or save $80 when you buy two—just $119.98 (buy one for $69.99 or buy two for $119.98)

• All-new Fire HD 8 Kids Edition tablet is $40 off — just $89.99; or save $110 when you buy two—just $149.98 (buy one for $89.99, or buy two for $149.98)

• Fire HD 10 tablet with Alexa hands-free is $50 off — just $99.99

• Fire HD 10 tablet and Show Mode Dock bundle $59.99 off — just $144.99

• Show Mode Doc for Fire HD 10 is $10 off — just $44.99

• Fire HD 10 Kids Edition tablet is $50 off — just $149.99; or save $150 when you buy two—just $249.98 (buy one for $149.99, or buy two for $249.98)

• Blink Indoor 1 Cam System is $33 off — just $66.99

• Blink Indoor 2 Cam System is $56 off — just $113.99

• Blink Indoor 3 Cam System is $76 off — just $153.99

• Blink Indoor 5 Cam System is $116 off — just $233.99

• Blink Indoor Add-On Cam is $18 off — just $71.99

• Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote is $15 off — only $24.99

• Fire TV Stick 4K with all-new Alexa Voice Remote is $15 off — only $34.99

• Fire TV Cube with Far-Field Voice Control and 4K UHD/HDR is $60 off — just $59.99

• Fire TV Recast 500GB with two tuners will be $50 off — just $179.99; or save an additional $10 on the Fire TV Recast 1TB with four tuners — just $219.99

CBD oil and CBD gummies

• Save 15% on all CBD oil products from Medix CBD with promo code: MASHABLE

Doggie DNA

• Save $40 on the Embark Dog DNA Test Kit

More coverage: Black Friday 2018

• Black Friday 2018 hub — all our coverage in one place

• Shopping tips and tactics for Black Friday 2018
  
   

Black Friday 2018 deals by store

• Amazon: Shop sales on Fire tablets, Echo Spot, and more

• Walmart: Shop sales on Xbox One S, Instant Pot, Nintendo Switch
  
   

Black Friday 2018 deals by category

• Gaming deals: Xbox One X, PlayStation 4, Nintendo, Alienware laptops, and more

• Laptop deals: Lenovo Yoga, Alienware, Dell, HP, Asus, and more

• TV deals: OLEDs from Best Buy, Amazon, Walmart, and more

• Smart home deals: Amazon Echo, Roomba, Google Home, Apple HomePod

As the air turns colder and we approach the holidays, we also find ourselves knee-deep in one of the best times of the year for sports: The NBA and NHL are in full swing, college basketball is getting warmed up, college football is barreling toward Bowl Season, and the NFL season is getting hot as teams position for the playoffs. Plus, there’s soccer and any number of other winter sports to catch should you be so inclined.

Thankfully, it seems that sports streaming has finally caught up to our needs.

SEE ALSO: Google officially unveils its new Chromecast streaming media device

Yes, we now live in an era when it’s possible to keep track of all the important games as you’re on the go between shindigs and holiday concerts. The advent of streaming sports has made it possible to never miss a moment instead of languishing in a bubble of, well, NO SPORTS. 

What a time to be alive. 

Out of the stone age

Watching a crystal-clear stream of almost any sporting event I could want on my phone is a far cry from the first — and only — way I encountered watching sports live on the go before the “streaming revolution.” 

That would be via the Sony Watchman, a brick-sized device that could tune in TV stations using an antenna to a screen that, in retrospect, seems barely the size of a postage stamp. 

I remember looking over a friend’s shoulder and squinting real hard to make out a college football game while on a school trip in the mid-1990s. Besides the small screen, we had to contend with the fickle nature of the antenna signal, which became even more fickle as we traveled miles and miles, going in and out of range. 

Given the size of phone screens and the ability to stream in high definition on said phones, it feels like the Watchman is a relic of a long ago time, as old as the black-and-white television. But the product was around deep into the 1990s, only being discontinued in 2000. 

That shows how quickly things have evolved in the 16 years since Major League Baseball offered their first-ever online stream of a baseball game. What was described as a “too choppy and too fuzzy” experience has given way to high definition streams of every baseball game at your fingertips. 

Hell, the last two years alone have brought rapid evolution. In December 2016, I wrote about how streaming services still left much to be desired. Now I’m cordless, relying on an over-the-top (OTT) subscription and some league-specific subscriptions to bring me more sports than I could possibly watch to just about every platform I could imagine.

And it’s paid off, giving me the chance to stay up to date and in the loop with the most important live sports events, no matter what family gathering or wedding reception I may find myself at. 

Earlier this year, I was at a Major League Baseball game. A few of us split our attention between the live game in front of us and the perfect HD stream of a live NBA playoff game on someone’s phone.

What a time to be alive.

The last stand of DVR-proof programming

The leaps in technology and the ease with which one can stream sports are certainly huge factors in why it’s exploded. But just as important is the fact that sports remains the last bastion of DVR-proof programming. 

For all the hand-wringing over, say, not being able to watch a Game of Thrones episode live, it’s still possible to watch the episode hours after airing. It just takes a little self control to stay off social media and the internet. 

But sports is still that ephemeral entertainment, something very much of the moment. As soon as a game is done, the analysis has started, and the cycle for the next match-up is already underway. Results are, literally, news: No one is going to hedge on sharing an NBA final because of a “spoiler alert.”

Besides, experiencing these moments together as they happen is part of what makes sports a worthwhile pastime, even in this new digital age. 

A 2016 study by the The Center for the Digital Future at USC Annenberg found that 90% of fans were willing to pay something for access to sports, while nearly two-thirds would pay for an over-the-top subscription. The study also confirmed that mobile devices were becoming more popular in how sports are watched, especially among younger viewers: “65% of GenZ and younger Millennial fans are consuming sports content on a mobile device.”

Ratings site Statista found very similar results, showing 63% of sports viewers ages 18 to 24 watched on “non-TV platforms” while over half of viewers age 25 to 34 did the same. And ESPN saw a healthy uptick in numbers when they started including streaming in their overall ratings measurements.

The bottom line: If you offer it, people will want it. There’s no waiting around to watch a ball game later. 

How to enjoy it

The first step, of course, is access. To view anything is going to cost you money. But if you subscribe to either cable or an OTT service like Sling or YouTube TV, you’ve cleared a big obstacle. While options vary by provider and by each provider’s subscription tiers, you’ll find most sports channels widely available to watch on your mobile device using your subscriber login. 

All four major sports leagues here in the United States — the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB — have stand-alone apps that offer various subscription levels for following action all year long. For soccer fans, there’s also the Premier League Pass and subscription add-ons like Fox Soccer Plus. And new digital streaming platform Stadium is starting to gain a little traction with its own pay platform. 

Plus, ESPN has finally launched its stand-alone ESPN Plus service, which includes access to tons of college sports, MLS and NHL games, and a deep library of documentaries and other programming (though not live streams of the official ESPN channels themselves).

But there are still free options! In an effort to keep audiences engaged and using their platforms, social media companies like Twitch, Facebook, and Twitter have begun adding sports streams. Both Facebook and Twitter have deals with Major League Baseball, and each has its own soccer deal: Facebook streams the Premier League in Asia and the Champions League in Latin America, while Twitter struck a deal with MLS.

And, of course, there’s Amazon and their rights to the NFL’s Thursday Night game for Prime subscribers, a highly coveted package that the company gained after out-bidding Twitter and YouTube. It’s another example of how the NFL, as it battles headlines about declining TV ratings, is shifting its focus to streaming. 

More options exist, far too many to list all of them. But streaming has become such an ubiquitous part of how we consume sports, teams and publishers include “how to stream” as part of their regular promotional efforts. 

In 2018, it’s pretty hard to not find a way to stream the sporting event of your choice straight to your mobile device.

The blackout problem

Of course, no system is perfect, and neither is the world of sports streaming. The biggest thing to be aware of is blackouts. While the outdated concept of the television blackout — not airing a team’s home game in their local market — is meant to drive fans to actually attend the games, digital blackouts are a different beast. 

If you’ve got a cable or an OTT subscription, you’re probably OK, provided that OTT subscription includes the regional TV channels airing the games. But without those options, it gets a lot tougher.

Stand-alone subscription packages offered by the NBA, NHL, NFL, and MLB all black out in-market teams, leaving local fans in the dark or to find more nefarious means of viewing. 

These digital blackouts are because the local stations paid a boatload of money for rights to your local team’s game, and they want to make sure they keep eyeballs on their channels. The leagues don’t really mind, because they’re pocketing the money anyway. 

Adding insult to injury for some fans is that fact the the leagues, particularly MLB, can make those markets notoriously far-reaching and frustrating. For example, Iowa is considered a blackout zone for six different teams (Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, Kansas City Royals, Milwaukee Brewers, Minnesota Twins, and St. Louis Cardinals), meaning none of those teams are available via the MLB.TV app; you have to pay for a cable subscription to see the games of any of those teams. 

And there are a handful of MLB teams, like the Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals, that are impossible to find on any streaming service thanks to those regional channels who really, really want to restrict viewers to simply watching on TV.

Tech hurdles also remain

Besides access, the biggest issue with sports streaming is, well, the streaming part. Without decent coverage, you’re not going to have the data to actually stream the event, something that might be a particular issue while traveling. It’s the Watchman antenna struggle all over again.

If there’s good news here, it’s that data coverage across the country is increasing, as are ways to grab a wifi signal. That said, even with good connectivity, it’s pretty easy to blast through data limits if you don’t have an unlimited plan. 

And yet, despite these issues, things are still as good as they’ve ever been. The quality and cost of services are improving, and availability is more widespread, especially as it becomes clear that streaming everything is our eventual destination.

Meanwhile, old Watchmans rust away in basements across America, a forgotten reminder of a dark time when we didn’t have nearly every sporting event available with just a few taps. 

We did this to ourselves. 

Welcoming Amazon’s Alexa into our home with trojan horse devices like Echo smart speakers, smart displays, set-top boxes, tablets, and the zillion other things the digital assistant has infiltrated was only the beginning.

So it’s not at all outrageous Amazon’s now put Alexa into a product you’d least expect to find it: a microwave.

The first question most people I’ve shown the AmazonBasics Microwave ask is: “Why would I want Alexa in my microwave?” And my response has been the same: “Why wouldn’t you want to use voice commands to control your microwave?”

Interest piqued, the follow-up question is always: “How much does it cost?” 

“$60, which is about what a microwave of this size and power already costs without Alexa,” I tell my suddenly more interested pals.

And that is how Amazon’s gonna sell a ton of these Alexa-supported microwaves.

SEE ALSO: Amazon Echo Dot (2018) review: Alexa’s gateway drug is more potent than ever

The product name gives away everything you need to know about the quality of this smart microwave: It’s as basic as any AmazonBasics product. 

A high-powered microwave for cooking a 20-pound turkey centerpiece, this microwave is not. This 700-watt microwave is good for making popcorn, or reheating a cup of soup or a rubbery Salisbury steak you picked up in the frozen aisle.

Its power is comparable to the non-smart $50 Sunbeam microwave of the same class I picked up from Target about six years ago and its size is the perfect fit for a college dorm room, basement man cave, or tiny apartment. 

Amazon’s smart microwave will heat up your frozen veggies or Campbell’s just fine with the press of the Alexa button below the keypad on the front. Just say “1 cup of noodle soup” after pushing it. 

Unfortunately, even with Alexa, the microwave didn’t make the mundane task of reheating food any faster or less of a chore.

Feeling too lazy to muster up extra energy to press the Alexa button even though you just had enough strength to place a casserole onto the glass plate? Not to worry, you can use a voice command like “Alexa, reheat six ounces of casserole” instead.

Whether you press the button (no need to say “Alexa” first) or don’t (in which you do have to use the Alexa command), you’ll still need to have an Echo device nearby it for the voice commands to work. There are no microphones built into the food-heating machine. Instead, when you press the button or call on Alexa, the microwave wakes up a nearby Echo device and uses it to listen to your voice command.

Unfortunately, even with Alexa, the smart microwave didn’t make the mundane task of reheating food any faster or less of a chore.

It didn’t feel magical or futuristic the way the original Echo and Alexa voice commands did when I first installed that in my apartment way back in 2015. On the contrary, this sad, basic microwave only reminded me how terrible microwavable food is and that I need to spend more time eating with friends and family instead of by myself.

Limited “cooking” options

True story: That Sunbeam microwave was my very first microwave. My parents never owned one and for good reason: You should learn to cook or starve. That, or get a job so you can buy takeout. 

I bought that crappy low-powered microwave because an ex-girlfriend wanted it and I secretly wanted to relate to modern civilization, I guess.

But the thing is: A 700-watt microwave just isn’t very powerful. Sure, it’s enough for reheating certain foods and beverages and you can defrost small portions (between 50-70 ounces) of meat such as chicken, beef, or pork, but you’re probably mostly gonna use it to pop some popcorn or reheat leftover pizza.

Ain’t nobody doing any real “cooking” with the AmazonBasics Microwave. Amazon could have went all-out and made the Alexa smarts cook the crap out of foods so nerds like me can remain glued to our YouTube and Reddit, but it didn’t. 

Even with voice commands, the microwave only knows a very limited number of things to reheat, defrost, and cook.

Amazon gave me a reviewers guide with a list of stuff to try out with the microwave and Alexa controls. So I went shopping and tried out as many as my budget allowed.

Alexa worked with aplomb for reheating basics like coffee, soup, noodle soup (not to be confused with regular soup for some reason), but it fell short on warming up my severely frozen chicken sandwich when I told it “1 burger.”

Some dinner plates still required personal intervention. For example, I told Alexa to “reheat 1 dinner plate” (a Salisbury steak with potatoes and a side of mac and cheese) just two ounces over the recommended “12 ounces = 1 plate” definition and was grossed out by the frost still visible on sections of the rubbery meat and mac and cheese. Whipping the mac and cheese to mix up the frost and flipping the steak over and then reheating it again cooked it a little better, but the preset just wasn’t enough. In the end, it was still trial and error to add more time to fully heat up the meal. 

If I’ve learned one thing from using voice assistants at home it’s this: If it fails to understand me or it doesn’t accomplish what I want the first time, I’m less likely to ask it to try again. With this Alexa microwave, after a few improperly heated or cooked sessions, my frustration made me ignore the futurism and just pressed the damn number buttons.

Maybe the thing that annoyed me the most was that the microwave didn’t know how to cook bacon. If there’s any one thing Amazon should have focused on when teaching Alexa cooking skills, it should have been delicious, crispy bacon.

But no… I had to cook bacon the old-fashioned way: like a caveman pressing still pressing buttons.

The microwave works with some nuanced voice commands such as “Alexa, microwave for 3 minutes” or “Alexa, reheat milk for 2 minutes on low power,” but I’d hardly say they’re more convenient than manually entering the settings.

And there’s also a built-in “Dash Replenishment” feature that keeps a tally of how many bags of popcorn you’ve eaten and then reorders more at a 10 percent discount before you out of it, but like meh. All I’m hearing is “Here, keep eating popcorn you fatty!”

It works, but it’s nothing special

There’s nothing to really dislike about the AmazonBasics Microwave. It’s a microwave! It reheats things, and it does so just fine.

Amazon is making it seem like adding Alexa to such a boring home appliance somehow reinvents the microwave. It doesn’t.

The thing’s $60 and didn’t catch on fire during my week of attempting to use it to cook several meals. Should you buy one? Go for it if you don’t need something more capable or it’s your first microwave. Did I mention it’s only 60 bucks? The Echo is separate, so if you don’t already own one I recommend an Echo Dot, which is frequently on sale for less than $50. That’ll get you cooking, but mostly on your own, since Alexa isn’t much help.

Ariana Grande is, once again, whipping up a storm of excitement on social media. 

The Sweetener singer has been posting a series of photos from the shoot of her next music video, and it would appear that she is going to be serving up some serious millennial nostalgia. 

SEE ALSO: Ariana Grande sings ‘Breathin’ with an all-female orchestra and just wowwww

On Tuesday, Grande spread clues all over her Twitter and Instagram pages, and if you’re into iconic teen movies from the early ’00s (who isn’t?), you’re in for a treat.  

On Twitter, Grande shared a serious of photos captioned “meet the plastics,” a reference to iconic 2004 teen movie Mean Girls.

On her Instagram story, Grande delivered even more Mean Girls vibes. 

Just check out this teasing shot that reeks of North Shore High – be careful not to fall into a trash can, Ari. 

Thank you for including this legendary quote from North Shore’s Jason. You can go shave your back now. 

From one iconic flick to the next; Grande also got busy channeling our favourite sorority girl-turned -lawyer Elle Woods from the 2001 Reese Witherspoon classic Legally Blonde. 

Doing some serious studying while getting in those steps is classic Woods.

Grande even had the original Paulette, Jennifer Coolidge, on set with her. 

Though Grande promised in an Instagram story that her video will feature references from four films. 

In an Instagram story, she hinted that the third is going to be 13 Going on 30 and she showed a photo of herself recreating one of Jennifer Garner’s Jenna Rink looks. 

If Mark Ruffalo is guest starring in the video, we’re going to scream. 

At this point, all we can do is guess what the fourth film reference will be. Although Grande has confirmed that it’s not going to be the obvious choice; the Alicia Silverstone classic Clueless.

Grande pointed out to a fan that Clueless had been done before – probably in reference to Iggy Azalea’s video for her hit song “Fancy.” 

Please do 10 Things I hate About You, Ari. 

Welcome to No Shame November! This week we’re diving into the pop culture we love that society tells us we shouldn’t.

Shame tends to be an isolating feeling. It convinces you that you’re repulsively strange or incorrigibly flawed, that no one else could possibly understand you or even want to. Worse, it has a way of feeding into itself, making it impossible to even consider reaching out to someone who might get it. 

Still, sometimes, someone manages to reach out to you even in the middle of all that turmoil. And sometimes, that someone is pop culture.

It might be a movie that reflects your anxieties back at you, reassuring you that others have been there before. Or a show that encourages you to open yourself up to the world, risky as it might be. Maybe it’s just someone reminding you to be true to yourself, and who cares what anyone else thinks.

SEE ALSO: I love Dave Matthews Band but I have a hard time showing it

Whatever the case, in honor of No Shame November, these are pieces of art that made us embrace the stuff that embarrassed us, or want to free ourselves from guilt and shame altogether. 

Erin Strecker, Entertainment Editor

I’ve never been a Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, but man, do some aspects of that show ring close to home—especially as the series has gone on and gotten away from Who Rebecca Will End Up With and instead turned its sharp eye towards Rebecca’s inner emotional life, and the fear and sometimes self-hatred that go along with that. 

There are plenty of moments on that show that make me feel seen. But one that always rises to the top of the list is this musical moment from Season 3, when the thing that Rebecca wants so bad (a healthy relationship with a guy she really likes) faces a hurdle from her own mind, plagued with self-doubt. 

“Just knock on the door!” I screamed while watching her wait outside her ex’s apartment. Alas, the fear was too strong and she bailed instead. The scene powerfully illustrated to me the ways your own mind can let you down, standing in the way of something you want with all your heart.

Angie Han, Deputy Entertainment Editor

I do not like to talk about my feelings. I don’t even like to have feelings, and I’m not a particularly emotional person to begin with. Humor and sarcasm are where I live, and earnest sentiment makes me cringe.

Which is why Sense8 took me by surprise. Created by Lana and Lilly Wachowski and J. Michael Straczynski, this show is nothing if not earnestly sentimental—starting with its premise, which takes empathy to its most radical and literal extreme. I laughed at it at first, and then laughed with it, and then began to sob with it.

Along the way it gently encouraged me to be more open, more vulnerable, more honest. Don’t get me wrong: I’m still not really a feelings person. But it did make me less embarrassed about having them in the first place, to the extent that these days I’m even comfortable talking about them on Mashable dot com for posts like this. Progress!

Alexis Nedd, Senior Entertainment Reporter

Groundhog Day the musical only ran for seven short months on Broadway. In that period, I saw it six times. The musical reframes the story of shitty weatherman Phil Conners becoming trapped in an exhausting time loop as an exploration of the “loops” everyone gets stuck in, most prominently the unyielding monotony of depression. Like most musicals (and like the movie it’s based on) it ends on an optimistic note, but Phil’s struggles with suicidal ideation, nihilism, and hedonism form the bulk of the show’s plot and pathos.

As someone who identifies with Phil, someone who occasionally lives with the feeling that nothing matters when every day feels the same, I found Groundhog Day’s musical journey incredibly uplifting to watch. When it lingered on Phil’s dissatisfaction and (frankly terrible) coping methods I saw myself, and when it presented its thesis—that life is really fucking hard, everyone gets stuck, and the way out is voicing your pain and connecting to other people—I cried. Like a child. Six times. 

I was ashamed to feel stuck before Groundhog Day. Now I know that I have agency over changing it. And if I don’t change it tomorrow… perhaps the day after.

Jess Joho, Entertainment Reporter

For many of the women who believe they can fuck their problems away, Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag was the first time we saw our deepest, darkest inner monologues spoken directly into a camera with no hint of shame. 

“I’m not obsessed with sex,” the unnamed character of Fleabag says to us candidly, breaking the fourth wall while sitting on the toilet. “I just can’t stop thinking about it.” 

Yup, that’s exactly it. Representations of promiscuous women usually turn us into sex-crazed male fantasies. But Waller-Bridge’s masterpiece was an unabashed rallying cry, and hard look in the mirror. For the first time, I saw the complexities of my sexuality—in all its brashness and vulnerability—reflected in her unwavering gaze. 

Also, what woman hasn’t seriously considered taking a good-looking dog as her date to a party? …Just us? Ok. Nvm.

Kellen Beck, Entertainment Reporter

On the now-defunct podcast TalkRadar, the main topic was video games, but often the hosts and guests would dive into their other personal interests, whether it was comic books, wrestling, niche comedy, or old cartoons. They approached everything so openly and with so much passion that it made me feel comfortable exploring these other interests where I previously felt I didn’t belong. Since listening to that podcast, I’ve felt so much more open to enjoying things, and I now believe there is no such thing as a guilty pleasure.

Whether it’s enjoying cartoons that are marketed toward kids, or getting really into wrestling even though some people think it’s not mature, or just openly enjoying a movie or video game that the public at large thinks is terrible, it’s all fine. There’s nothing that you should feel shame for enjoying, because everything has some sort of quality that can be appreciated by somebody. I live my life now openly enjoying pretty much everything I love.

Proma Khosla, Entertainment Reporter

By the time I moved to New York after college, most of my friends were months into steady corporate jobs or the next stage of their schooling. At 22, their lives were conspicuously stable, and I was sharing a bed with my friend in a sublet, sweetening my tea with stolen sugar packets while browsing for jobs between temp work.

Enter Broad City, the show about young women hacking it in New York that I didn’t know I needed. This messy, hilarious, but ultimately kindhearted show legitimized everything about my New York life; the tiny apartment, the scraping for cash, the lengths my roommate and I would go to to feel like we were saving money but also sucking the very marrow of our 20s.

Carrying multiple free drinks before the end of an open bar or transporting a coffee table across town on the bus were no longer the shameful antics of two barely-there millennials—they were just your average Broad City moments, and they added a cinematic quality even to our frequently janky lives. Growing up has meant shedding parts of my Broad City life, but the show helped me shed my shame and own the hustle.

Ali Foreman, Entertainment Fellow

Netflix’s rom-com Set It Up meant a lot to me, and surprisingly, not in the romantic sense. (I needed to see Lucy Liu and Taye Diggs hook up in an office setting as much as the next person, but that wasn’t the life-changing part.)

When Set It Up started streaming, I had just begun a new writing job—why yes, at Mashable—and I was cripplingly nervous about embarrassing myself. Watching Harper struggle in her own writing career with the agony that is impostor syndrome made me feel less alone and gave me the courage to tenaciously pursue my goals. I didn’t end up camping out at a local Mexican restaurant in a bathrobe, but I came pretty close.

I learned to embrace the reality that I was going to plow through dozens of bad first drafts and make countless mistakes on my way to becoming the writer I hoped to be. While I’m still far off from realizing all of my potential, I have confidence that I will get there because I am constantly, constantly practicing.