News What to Watch What to Watch and Read This Weekend: Matthew Rhys and Monopoly —the Twin Evils of Capitalism Plus: God needs new material in Paige Lewis’s Canon By Molly Templeton | Published on May 22, 2026 Image: Apple TV Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Apple TV Happy there’s-a-Star-War-in-theaters day to all who celebrate! Honestly I thought The Mandalorian and Grogu was coming out next week for a really long time. No real reason for this, except that I guess I found it a little hard to keep track of a movie that feels like an episode of television that just happens to be playing in theaters. I’ll see it eventually, but let’s be real: I don’t need to tell you about the Star War. Let’s talk about some other stuff! In This House We Will Watch Tatiana Maslany Do (Almost) Anything No, Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed isn’t an SFF series (alas). But it stars the star of Orphan Black and She-Hulk, ergo: It is Of Interest. At least to me. And according to the AV Club, Maslany is “better here than she’s been anywhere since her Emmy-winning turn on Orphan Black.” This is very promising! Very few things have given this woman enough to do in the years since Orphan Black! As Apple TV explains it, “The series follows newly divorced mom Paula as she falls down a dangerous rabbit hole of blackmail, murder, and youth soccer.” One of these things is not like the other, right? OR IS IT? I’m gonna find out.  Resetting the Canon There is exactly one book that I am frothingly excited about this week, and it’s Paige Lewis’s Canon. You can read the synopsis, sure, but I feel like this pair of sentences from Brooklyn Rail’s review may tell at least some of you everything you need to know. “For millennia, God has been recycling the same tropes that we all know from Homer, Virgil, Dante, and the Bible. By the time we get to the action in Canon, the schtick is getting stale.”  God’s schtick is getting stale. I am here for this—and for the fact that the book is set in the ’90s, making it the kind of historical fiction (sorry) I deeply love to read. There are Good Guys and Bad Guys and a nonbinary hero named Yara who has been chosen to save the day, but also a prophet who’s pretty sure she should be the one to save the day, and, listen, Karen Russell called this book “an unprecedented page-turner.” If Karen Russell finds it unprecedented, I simply must know more.  The True History of Monopoly One of the more unpleasant headlines I read this week involved the opening of a Monopoly-themed steakhouse, which “offers a high-end culinary experience complemented by the luxurious aesthetic of the Monopoly universe.” I don’t want to visit the luxurious Monopoly universe, no thank you! But on the upside, this creepy synergy led me to learn the real history of the loved-and-loathed board game—which was patented by a woman named Elizabeth Magie. Magie called her Landlord’s Game “a practical demonstration of the present system of land-grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences.” In an excerpt from The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World’s Favorite Board Game, Mary Pilon writes: Lizzie created two sets of rules: an anti-monopolist set in which all were rewarded when wealth was created, and a monopolist set in which the goal was to create monopolies and crush opponents. Her vision was an embrace of dualism and contained a contradiction within itself, a tension trying to be resolved between opposing philosophies. However, and of course unbeknownst to Lizzie at the time, it was the monopolist rules that would later capture the public’s imagination. Magie didn’t sell the game to Parker Brothers; a man named Charles Darrow did, and he’s the one who got all the royalties. If you would like to become further incensed about all of this, I really do recommend reading this excerpt from The Monopolists, and/or just reading the whole book, which would probably take less time than most games of Monopoly. The Specific Enjoyment in Watching Matthew Rhys Suffer Yes, I need to talk about Widow’s Bay again. Widow’s Bay is great, and only occasionally do I have to pick up my phone and not look at the screen because it’s just a little too creepy for my delicate sensibilities. There are many specific and wonderful things about this show—including the incredible Kate O’Flynn as the long-suffering assistant to the mayor, and Stephen Root as the guy who’s sure he knows what’s really going on—but man do I love watching Matthew Rhys suffer. As mayor Tom Loftis, Rhys cares about putting his town on the map. The national map. With tourists and everything. And no matter how weird shit gets—scary ladies hunting him in his bathtub, parties that go deeply awry—Tom is going to continue to stubbornly ignore what’s directly in front of his wide eyes. It’s funny, it’s spooky, and it’s, um, really quite relevant, watching this minor government official just absolutely reject reality in favor of his preferred version of events.[end-mark] The post What to Watch and Read This Weekend: Matthew Rhys and Monopoly —the Twin Evils of Capitalism appeared first on Reactor.