Topline:
We know there are a ton of TV shows to watch these days, so each week on LAist's daily news show AirTalk, we ask television critics to help you (and us) sift through them.
This week's critics: Jen Chaney, TV critic for Vulture, and Kristen Baldwin, TV critic for Entertainment Weekly.
This week's shows: Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake, Judge Steve Harvey Season 2 & What We Do In The Shadows Season 5
It’s both a blessing and a curse that we’ve reached a time when there’s just so much television to experience, with so many different places to find it.
If you're going to invest the time it takes to scroll across your streamer of choice and check out new shows, you want some payoff, right?
That’s where I step in, with help from a few friends, as a deus ex machina of sorts — a way for you to resolve that inner conflict of what to choose and make sure it’s something worth investing in.
On LAist 89.3’s AirTalk, we're joined by television critics each week to give you a rundown of shows fresh out of the oven. They serve you a taste of what to expect and from there, you can choose whether or not to indulge in the rest.
Now it's my turn to add to their topline thoughts and offer my impression of a few initial episodes. I may not have "TV critic" as my title, but I watch TV — and as a fan of film and television, I can at least give you an informed perspective. I'll even toss in my Gen-Z filter.
Sound good? Grab a snack and read on before you hit the remote.
This week, AirTalk’s Larry Mantle talked about the latest on television and streaming with Jen Chaney, TV critic for Vulture, and Kristen Baldwin, TV critic for Entertainment Weekly.
This week’s shows included:
Streaming on Max
“This is very similar in spirit…Fionna and Cake are sort of living in a world a lot like ours, but very soon a portal allows them to skip through the multiverse, and you see alternate versions of other characters who are in Adventure Time. It’s very clever.” – Jen Chaney, Vulture
First impression: Having originally just been a fan-fiction bit in the original series, Fionna and her cat, Cake, assume the role of adventurers after they’re transported into the land of Ooo.
Lasting impression: The original Adventure Time series was one that I got a chance to see a lot of growing up. Its world-building is at a level that very few shows intended for kids have reached. My journey watching the show ended years prior to its 2018 series finale, but that had less to do with the quality of the show and my growing interest in other shows. That being said— it's cool to see Fionna and Cake built off of years of lore that the original show set up, progressing the story after hard-fought wars and generations of adventures.
This new show is meant to get into themes that are less intended for pre-teens, essentially aging with the audience it originally had. You hear this through the language it uses and the early plot development you get of Fionna, crying over someone who’s broken up with her and trying to understand her passions in life.
The first two episodes are seemingly building up to the meat of the show’s plot, with character roles yet to be fully established, but it’s a ride I think folks of all ages could appreciate.
Who's behind it: The show’s executive producer and showrunner is Adam Muto, who also worked on Adventure Time and Adventure Time: Distant Lands.
When and where: The first two episodes are streaming now on Max, with Episode 3 releasing Thursday, Sept. 7.
Streaming on Hulu
“Interesting, but ultimately, low-stakes cases that are much more about interpersonal relationships than they are about money or property.” – Kristen Baldwin, Entertainment Weekly
First impression: An arbitration-based courtroom comedy that stars Steve Harvey, who hears a defendant and plaintiff out on their small claims, and then decides who’s in the right.
Lasting impression: The first episode of Season 2 really does run the gamut of what you’d hope for and expect from these small-claims court shows: non-offensive, low-stakes, and does a great job of keeping the comedy at the center of each case.
You see couples and friends bickering over money they feel that they're owed, with the court of public opinion giving decisions I thought were all fair. These aren’t arguments that’ll make your blood boil, yet they still do a great job of keeping you entertained. This is a testament to Harvey’s ability to riff off what each guest gives him, as well as the gallery that the production staff brought in to clap and react to everything.
These kinds of shows were the center of a lot of kids' lives growing up, usually being something you’d watch at home on a sick day, and just like Judge Judy, it leaves you feeling entertained for an afternoon.
Who's behind it: The showrunner is Myeshia Mizuno, who has worked on other arbitration-based courtroom programs like Money Court and Couples Court with the Cutlers.
When and where: All 10 episodes in Season 2 are streaming now on Hulu. Season 1 unfortunately is not available to stream as of now.
Airing on FX and streaming on Hulu
“When you do a comedy like this, it's hard to keep it fresh and funny for this many seasons, and I think they have really succeeded in doing that.” – Jen Chaney, Vulture
First impression: A mockumentary that follows a handful of vampires in Staten Island, along with Guillermo, a human that’s familiar to housemate Nandor The Relentless. The fifth season finds Guillermo in a sticky situation after he starts to turn into a vampire after being bitten.
Lasting impression: Probably one of my favorite TV shows out right now, its witty humor and creative situations do a great job of building off the premise originally taken from the film of the same name.
Vampires have served as symbols for immigration and sexuality over the years, and what makes this show great in Season 5 is how it takes advantage of this in a way that’s directly relatable to an everyday person. Not to delve too far into spoilers, but the fifth season has characters find their identities through ethnic enclaves and getting into humorous situations related to their sexual preferences.
Who's behind it: The show’s creator is Jemaine Clement, who’s best known for his role in the film and show versions of What We Do In The Shadows. Worth noting: He also split directing and writing duties for the original film with Taika Waititi.
When and where: All episodes are out now and streaming on Hulu.
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A long-running court battle between California veterans and the Trump administration will continue, as federal officials consider asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s order to build more housing for unhoused L.A. veterans.
What does the decision mean? A federal appeals court on Thursday agreed to temporarily pause the order to construct more than 2,500 new housing units on the Veterans Affairs campus in West L.A.
Background: The years-long court battle was initiated in 2023 by veterans struggling with homelessness in L.A. The case has centered on the 400-acre V.A. campus, which U.S. District Judge David O. Carter has ruled should offer more housing to the approximately 2,250 veterans experiencing homelessness in L.A. County.
What’s next? VA officials now have until Dec. 10 to decide whether to appeal their fight to the Supreme Court. Judges with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals told lawyers for the federal government that if they do not decide to appeal by Dec. 10, “the stay will be lifted immediately.”
Read on… to see what veteran advocates have to say about the latest development.
A long-running court battle between California veterans and the Trump administration will continue, as federal officials consider asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s order to build more housing for unhoused L.A. veterans.
A federal appeals court on Thursday agreed to temporarily pause the order to construct more than 2,500 new housing units on the Veterans Affairs campus in West L.A.
Mark Rosenbaum, an attorney with Public Counsel representing the plaintiffs, told LAist the delay could spell life or death for unhoused veterans, especially as the region braces for strong El Niño-driven storms.
“These are veterans who risked their lives and suffered both the visible and invisible wounds of war,” Rosenbaum said. “What the government is saying to them is, you're supposed to stay on the street."
VA officials did not immediately respond to LAist’s request for comment.
Veterans' lawyers in a court filing called a possible appeal to the Supreme Court a “hopeless shot.”
“The government has lost every time they have taken this to court. No court has ruled for them on any of these matters,” Rosenbaum told LAist. “This is part of the administration’s war on its own veterans, and it’s time for that war to come to an end.”
The litigation was initiated in 2023 by L.A. veterans struggling with homelessness. The case has centered on the 400-acre V.A. campus, which U.S. District Judge David O. Carter has ruled should offer more housing to the approximately 2,250 veterans experiencing homelessness in L.A. County.
In 2024, Carter ordered officials to add thousands of temporary and permanent homes, and end leases with UCLA, a private K-12 school and an oil drilling company, which he said did not serve the needs of veterans.
An appeals court last month blocked the federal government’s efforts to halt the housing construction. But veteran advocates knew that federal officials could ask for further delays as the case winds through the courts.
VA officials now have until Dec. 10 to decide whether to appeal their fight to the Supreme Court. Judges with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals told lawyers for the federal government that if they do not decide to appeal by Dec. 10, “the stay will be lifted immediately.”
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The Los Angeles Unified School District shortened the application window for specialized academic programs this year, and will no longer accept paper forms. Applications for the district’s magnet, dual-language and affiliated charter schools for the next academic year opened Oct. 1 and are due Nov. 6, 2026.
The backstory: If you want your child to attend their neighborhood school, enrollment is fairly straightforward; there’s a separate process for the district’s specialized programs called Choices.
Those include:
What's next: LAUSD also hosts fairs, organized by geographic region, where multiple schools table and share information about their programs, through mid-October. The on-time application deadline is Nov. 6, 2026, and the late application process starts Dec. 1.
Read on … to learn more about the Choices process and all the options available.
The Los Angeles Unified School District shortened the application window for specialized academic programs this year, and will no longer accept paper forms.
Applications for the district’s magnet, dual language and affiliated charter schools for the next academic year opened Oct. 1 and are due Nov. 6, 2026.
If you want your child to attend their neighborhood school, enrollment is fairly straightforward. There’s a separate process for the district’s specialized programs called Choices.
There are two windows to apply — on-time and late. The latter consists of all the spaces left after families who applied on time accept their offers.
Here’s the timeline for the 2027-28 school year:
LAUSD will no longer accept paper Choices applications. If families do not have a computer, they can use a smartphone to complete an application. LAUSD will also allow families to use computers at school parent centers.
Every child within LAUSD boundaries is assigned a school — find yours through the district’s “resident school identifier.”
But there are also hundreds of other programs available through the Choices process.
Those include:
No one type of school is inherently better than another, and no one metric defines a great school — there are many factors beyond test scores to consider, and we go over some of those here.
By far the most frequent piece of advice we’ve heard is to go on an in-person school tour if possible.
“The very best thing that people can do is go to the school and try to watch the way that educators interact with students, the way that students interact with each other, and the way that families are included or not in the life of a school,” said Jack Schneider, a University of Massachusetts, Amherst, education researcher and parent. “Once you do that, you really get a sense of what kind of place kids are going to school.”
Some schools post tour information online, but you may need to call for details.
LAUSD also hosts fairs, organized by geographic region, where multiple schools table and share information about their programs, through mid-October.
Topline:
The Justice Department found Thursday that the law school at the University of California, Los Angeles, illegally considered race in admissions.
DOJ findings: The Justice Department’s investigation found UCLA’s law school discriminated against white and Asian American students by favoring Black and Hispanic applicants in its 2023, 2024 and 2025 incoming classes. Its analysis found the mean LSAT score was lower for admitted Black applicants than for admitted white applicants.
The backstory: Affirmative action in college admissions has been illegal since a 2023 Supreme Court ruling forbade it. The same ruling said colleges could continue to assess how applicants’ backgrounds might speak to broader characteristics, but President Donald Trump has accused colleges of using applicants’ personal statements and other proxies to consider race in admissions — which conservatives view as illegal discrimination.
The Justice Department found Thursday that the law school at the University of California, Los Angeles, illegally considered race in admissions.
The announcement follows a similar finding against the university’s medical school and comes as President Donald Trump’s administration ramps up scrutiny of colleges’ processes for selecting students. The administration also has accused the UC Berkeley Law School and the medical school at the University of California, San Diego, of illegally discriminating against white and Asian applicants.
The UCLA School of Law said in a statement that it was committed to making admissions decisions in compliance with all applicable laws.
“Students are admitted through a comprehensive, merit-based review process that considers each applicant’s achievements and experiences,” the statement said. “We are confident in our process.”
Affirmative action in college admissions has been illegal since a 2023 Supreme Court ruling forbade it. The same ruling said colleges could continue to assess how applicants’ backgrounds might speak to broader characteristics, but Trump has accused colleges of using applicants’ personal statements and other proxies to consider race in admissions — which conservatives view as illegal discrimination.
The Justice Department’s investigation found UCLA’s law school discriminated against white and Asian American students by favoring Black and Hispanic applicants in its 2023, 2024 and 2025 incoming classes. Its analysis found the mean LSAT score was lower for admitted Black applicants than for admitted white applicants.
The department also said admissions staff at the law school instructed applicants during recruitment efforts, including one called the “Diversity Admissions Open House,” how to reveal their race in essays.
“Like many of its peer institutions, UCLA Law School runs a two-tiered admissions system whose academic bar for acceptance shifts up or down depending on the color of your skin,” said Harmeet Dhillon, head of the department’s Civil Rights Division, in a news release.
California voters ended affirmative action in college admissions in a 1997 ballot measure. In a brief filed in the Supreme Court case, the UC system said the change led to a precipitous drop in underrepresented minorities, especially at the system’s most selective campuses. The brief said UC went on to implement a range of race-neutral measures to increase diversity.
The Trump administration also has sued over the main UCLA campus’s response to allegations of antisemitic harassment. The administration’s latest finding sets the stage for a voluntary resolution to bring UCLA into compliance with the Justice Department’s legal interpretation or, if none can be reached, potential legal action.
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Topline:
Local artist Hedy Torres drew unfinished portraits of DACA recipients in 2017, while she was a student at Cal State Northridge, and pledged to finish them when her subjects attained lawful permanent residency. Last month, she reunited with her first subject and invited community members to watch as she asked him how his life has changed over nearly a decade.
The backstory: Lino de Jesús Pérez Cuevas was brought to the U.S. when he was 2. He is now a parent and an adjunct instructor at Cal State Northridge, but there was a time when he could not envision a stable future.
Why it matters: DACA does not grant lawful permanent status or a pathway to citizenship. Although the federal government continues to process renewal requests for existing DACA recipients, the agency is no longer approving first-time applications. Under the second Trump administration, DACA recipients are also experiencing significant delays with renewals. Some have lost their jobs. Recipients have also been deported.
Go deeper: Podcast explores a DACA recipient's journey back to Mexico after 30 years
Artist Hedy Torres asked a 20-something student from Cal State Northridge to sit for a portrait nearly a decade ago. Using charcoal on paper, she drew the dark-haired young man in black and white — but she deliberately kept the portrait unfinished.
The idea was that she would complete the piece if her subject, a DACA recipient named Lino de Jesús Pérez Cuevas, ever attained lawful permanent residency.
And now he has.
DACA, which stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is a program that provides two-year work permits and deportation relief for people who were brought to the U.S. as children. The permits can be renewed, but the program does not grant a pathway to citizenship.
In late September, Pérez Cuevas — who is now married, a father, a green card holder and an adjunct instructor at his alma mater — sat with Torres once again.
Torres’ project involves interviewing subjects as she sketches them. This year, she invited the public to watch her complete the portrait as she spoke to Pérez Cuevas about what it took for him to get a green card and what that means for his life.
About two dozen people gathered at a community center in West Hollywood’s Plummer Park to see her add details to the piece that speak to the passing of time.
“I just wanted to make people empathetic to what [immigrants] go through during this process,” she said. “You have to be very patient. There is a lot of uncertainty.”
Pérez Cuevas, who was born in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, was brought to the U.S. by his parents when he was 2.
When Torres drew him in 2017, he was pursuing a master’s degree in kinesiology at Cal State Northridge. That year, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced intentions to rescind DACA, which had enabled him to set goals without the fear of being deported. A 2020 Supreme Court decision allowed the program to continue.
Torres was once undocumented herself, so she understood the 2017 announcement was earth-shattering for the approximately 800,000 people who were then in the program, she said.
That year, Torres was also a student at CSUN, working toward a master’s in fine art.
She recalled recently that she wanted people to see DACA recipients as people, not numbers. And so, for her master's project, she proposed creating portraits of DACA beneficiaries.
The portraits would be rooted in interviews conducted as she drew her subjects. Leaving them unfinished, she said, would symbolize the precarity of the moment.
The pieces would have enough detail for viewers to see the subjects’ faces clearly, particularly their eyes and expressions. Other elements, including their bodies and clothing, would be more of an initial sketch.
The university greenlit her project and gave her a grant to pursue it. There was just one problem: Torres had to convince reticent DACA recipients to share their stories.
When Torres first messaged Pérez Cuevas about the project, he ignored her for two weeks, he said. But because they had a mutual friend, he eventually agreed to meet with her.
“I was trying to see whether this person was just an academic trying to complete a project for her own benefit, or whether she really cared about the community,” he told LAist.
They met at a coffee shop. Pérez Cuevas learned about the artist’s journey from the Mexican state of Colima and everything she’d lived through since.
Before 2015, for example, an undocumented person in California could not get a driver’s license. When she was undocumented, Torres was stopped by police and had her car impounded. She said she had to cobble together thousands of dollars to get her car back from a tow yard.
Pérez Cuevas could relate. He had experienced the same thing.
He decided to trust her.
After she drew him, Pérez Cuevas helped Torres connect with more DACA recipients at the university. She drew four other portraits, which were also left unfinished.
These works were acquired by the university, with the agreement that Torres would be able to borrow and complete them when — and if — her subjects attained lawful permanent residency.
As she worked on the portrait, Torres added soft lines rendered in charcoal to the image of Pérez Cuevas’ face, along with a robust mustache. And she continued the interview.
“What did you imagine your life would be like when you were young?” Torres asked.
Thinking back to high school, Pérez Cuevas said he realized then that not having a social security number barred him from decent-paying work.
“I didn't really understand what I was doing with my life,” he said, adding that he used to not think higher education was for him even while he was at CSUN. “My state of mind was really dark back then.”
He credited a college counselor with helping him navigate school. He earned his degree in 2017.
Pérez Cuevas said he has intimate knowledge of what it’s like to live with constant uncertainty: not knowing how he would pay for college because he did not qualify for federal financial aid; not being able to travel outside the country; and waiting anxiously for federal officials to make decisions on immigration laws that could transform his life.
“I can't stress enough how difficult it is psychologically to wait because it's something that can revolutionize your life,” he said. “You're betting your whole life on this approval and just that suspense of waiting, waiting, waiting, living with that anxiety.”
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services continues to process renewal requests for existing DACA recipients, but the agency is no longer approving first-time applications.
Under the second Trump administration, DACA recipients are also experiencing significant delays with renewals. Some have lost their jobs. Recipients have been deported. According to the agency, the median processing time for DACA renewals was one month in 2023. Currently, it’s taking seven months to process most cases.
Pérez Cuevas said he was able to adjust his immigration status after marrying a U.S. citizen and consulting with an attorney. His lawyer helped him secure a document that allowed noncitizens to travel abroad and seek legal re-entry.
“Did getting permanent residency give you a sense of freedom, a freedom you probably didn't have when you were under DACA?” Torres asked him.
“Absolutely,” Pérez Cuevas said. “The biggest freedom was psychological freedom. You have this weight that you've been carrying all these years that finally just gets thrown off your shoulders.”
One of the things he feared most was long-term separation from his parents, he said.
When his mother and father migrated to the U.S., they did not see their own parents — his grandparents — for 40 years, Pérez Cuevas added. After his parents moved back to Mexico during the pandemic, he feared they would also go decades without seeing each other.
But having a green card enables him to travel and see his family.
Pérez Cuevas told Torres that, paradoxically, the threat of losing DACA made him “weirdly ambitious."
He said he doubled down on his studies and took on every internship he could. He figured that if the U.S. decided to deport him, he’d still have his education and work experience.
“Even on the days where I didn't necessarily have the greatest energy or the greatest state of mind, I showed up for myself,” Pérez Cuevas said.
