Well, it’s officially summer. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and the noises of happy children swimming in hastily filled, inflatable above ground pools fill the air. It’s an unmistakable feeling. The possibilities are endless. You fashion yourself a new pair of cutoff shorts, rip the sleeves off a T-shirt and head outside to enjoy the summer fun. Then, three minutes go by and your shirt sticks to your chest with sweat and you remember that summer kind of sucks sometimes and you start to wish that YOU were one of those kids swimming in a hastily filled, inflatable above ground pool. But you’re not. So what do we do to escape the Dog Days of summer? The same thing we do to escape the rain / snow / awkward social interactions / almost all human to human contact, NETFLIX!
Luckily, I’ve been Netflix binging and future binge planning in that department for months so I was able to curate the perfect list of summer smash hits coming to Netflix in the hot months of 2018. Crank that Air Conditioning, order a pizza and chill. I got it from here.
1) The Break with Michelle Wolf (June 3)
Screeching onto the list with an unapologetic and sometimes controversial opinion is the lovely and talented comedian and actor Michelle Wolf and her new series on Netflix, The Break. Her tongue in cheek talk show host style and quirky kicks keep audiences laughing as well as asking the important questions of both themselves and the society in which they live. With a familiar format, aside from a few notable exceptions, The Break is a show viewers will immediately feel at home watching. The scripted fake “Commercials” are hilarious and remind me a bit of Saturday Night Live’s parodies. All in all, the show seems to be funny but is yet to set itself apart from the talk show crowd. But it’s new. Only time will tell if it will have the chance to mature.
2) Cooking on High (June 22)
Netflix is no newcomer to the innovation game. From its inception, it has been bringing us the newest, cutting-edge content. There is no change when it comes to Netflix’s newest reality cooking show, Cooking on High. It’s 2018 and there are a few unavoidable things that come along with being alive right now. A few examples are the current political climate, the inevitable AI robot takeover, and the fact that marijuana is becoming more and more widely accepted as both a medicinal treatment for numerous ailments, as well as a versatile recreational substance for adult consumption. Cooking on High is the first show of its kind, pitting two chefs against each other in a cannabis-infused cooking competition unlike the world has ever seen before. Literally. This has never been done. With a panel of, for lack of a better term, “experienced” celebrity judges (including Ngaio Bealum) and the backing of Netflix, this show just may reach new heights!
3) Shameless Season 8 (July 28)
Shameless is the story of Fiona Gallagher (Emmy Rossum), a twenty-something from the southside of Chicago doing everything she can to help raise her younger siblings while her alcoholic father, Frank (William H. Macy) slums around town, living one stolen social security check to another, occasionally remembering to bathe. The family isn’t classy or rich or affluent. In fact, they’re pretty crude in most instances, but they love each other and there is no way around that. Even Frank, although the love the family has for him is shown in an odd way. From neighborhood bonfires to corner store heists and drama filled relationships, the Gallaghers are always a good bet for an entertaining 45 minutes. Season 8 drops July 28 and if you haven’t seen it yet, that gives you plenty of time to binge the first seven seasons!
4) Sacred Games (July 6)
This is actually very exciting. It’s India’s first ever Netflix original series and it looks to be nothing short of action-packed. Like India’s Pablo Escobar or Heisenberg, Sacred Games star character is tortured, living an unsustainable life of drugs, dirty money, and unimaginable violence. But when a man finds himself living on the edge, he’s got to pick a side. One leads to salvation, while the other may take him down a road full of choices that he can never come back from. See which side he chooses in Sacred Games on Netflix July 6, 2018.
5) Later Releases (Summer 2018)
So it turns out it’s pretty hard to find out what Netflix plans on dropping a couple of months ahead of time, but I did what I could for you guys. These may not all be released in August, or even summer, but they WILL be released on Netflix this year, and let’s be real, it doesn’t really matter what month it is, does it? We’re still going to watch Netflix when we can’t think of anything else to do. For that reason, here you go. A somewhat conclusive list of Netflix originals dropping sometime between the end of July and the end of December 2018. First up, Season 2 of American Vandal, Netflix’s hilarious original mockumentary series in the style of Making a Murderer that plans to figure out who spray painted so many “members” on the teachers’ cars. Next up is Dogs of Berlin, which I can only guess (using my advanced, blog writer brain power) is about dogs that live in Berlin. I bet they eat a lot of sausages. Third is Eggplant Emoji: The Movie. I have no clue what that even COULD be about. Honestly, I have a few ideas, but none of them are cartoon friendly. Up fourth is Green Eggs and Ham, the animated Dr. Suess series that promises to be a trip down memory lane for anybody that was brought up on Dr. Suess books. Number five is House of Cards season 6. I’m still a little upset that it’s not a card stacking reality show, but I’ll survive. Sixth is How It Ends (movie) followed by Maniac (series) and finally, the second season of Mindhunter.
There you have it, an exhaustive list of Netflix originals and more, dropping this summer (and slightly later in 2018) for you to take your mind off of the extreme summer heat. Who knows, maybe someday you’ll have an inflatable above ground pool to hastily fill and swim in until the sun recedes back into his hideout for the winter. Until then, sit back, relax and put on some Netflix. Chill.