10 Entertainment Trends We're Ready to Say Goodbye to in 2023 (& One We Want to Keep)

2. The problematic “Bury Your Gays” trope

We’ve seen this toxic trope play out so many times, from the death of Rose on Jane the Virgin to Poussey's triggering murder in Orange Is the New Black. In case you’re unfamiliar with the trend, it’s been around since the late 19th century, and it typically involves a queer couple where one partner endures suffering, gets killed off or eventually realizes that they were never actually gay. Initially, this was used by gay authors who wanted to write about gay characters without breaking any laws and social mandates. And unfortunately, this harmful trend still persists.

For example, take HBO Max’s House of the Dragon. Laenor developed feelings for Ser Joffrey Lonmouth. But this romance quickly died before it could even begin, because Joffrey was brutally murdered by Criston after appearing in just two episodes.

4. Whitewashing (and, yes, we're still talking about this in 2023)

Hollywood’s diversity problem is nothing new. And while there have arguably been less egregious examples of whitewashing in recent years, the fact remains that Hollywood still has improvements to make.

For instance, in 2022, we saw this with the casting of Daisy Edgar-Jones (a non-Jewish woman) as Carole King in Sony's biopic, Beautiful, which led to major backlash on social media. One fan even reached out to King directly and said, "Please, please can you speak out against this casting. They're erasing us."

Then there was the casting of Bradley Cooper, a non-Jewish actor, as the famed Jewish composer, Leonard Bernstein. Understandably, fans were not happy to see the actor in surfaced photos from the set, where he’s seen sporting a prosthetic nose and chin. *Sigh.*

5. TV hosts who aren’t really TV hosts

Perhaps this trend flew under your radar, but you’ve definitely seen this before. A certain celebrity (or duo) will pop up at the beginning of a reality show or dating show to serve as “host” and offer a basic introduction. But throughout the course of the series, said host is nowhere to be found until mayyyybe they show up in the finale. Need proof?

Just take a look at how much actual screen time Michelle Buteau has on The Circle, or how often Nick and Vanessa Lachey appear on Love Is Blind. And oh, we can’t forget about Hulu’s new dating show addition, Back in the Groove. PureWow's VP of News & Entertainment Philip Mutz points out, “I watched Back in the Groove on Hulu with Taye Diggs as ‘host’ and he was literally in the series for three minutes.”

6. The influx of lazy food competition shows

We can all agree that food reality TV has gotten a whole lot more...bizarre as of late. Or as Mutz so eloquently puts it, Hollywood started “scraping the bottom of the barrel with food show ideas.” Need we remind you of Easy-Bake Battle, a totally misleading cooking show that features zero actual Easy-Bake ovens, and Next Level Chef, where the contestants scramble to complete cooking challenges in kitchens that are stacked on top of each other?

But of course, we can’t forget Netflix’s Is It Cake? The meme-inspired series follows a group of contestants as they bake unique cakes disguised to look like a variety of objects in order to fool the panel of judges. But watching Mikey Day dramatically slice through random objects with a sword can only keep us entertained for so long (and by "so long" we mean about ten minutes...).

7. Incomplete series on streaming platforms

We know, we know. It’s all because of content licensing agreements and streaming platforms can only do so much when they only have rights to a certain number of episodes. But we can’t tell you how frustrating it is to get all caught up on the first season of a show, only to find out that the rest of the seasons are missing, or that there’s a huge gap between seasons offered on the streaming service. (We may or may not be salty over the fact that Hulu is missing several seasons of Survivor.)

PureWow's Executive Editor Dara Katz definitely knows the struggle. After noting that HBO Max pulled 200 episodes of Sesame Street, she said, "I can only watch the same narrative so many times."

8. The podcast-to-TV pipeline

It’s typical to see Hollywood take its inspiration from books, true events, old shows and films. But now, it’s clear that Hollywood is overusing yet another source for "fresh" ideas: podcasts. We’ll admit, this has led to some hits, like WeCrashed, The Thing About Pam, Gaslit and of course, The Dropout. Still, we have this nagging feeling that as this pattern continues, we're about to be waist-deep in dozens of podcast-inspired shows that we never asked for. *cough, Dr. Death season two, cough*

10. Inconsistent streaming schedules for new releases

Nothing really beats having thousands of shows and movies at our fingertips. But honestly, keeping up with the latest releases (across different streaming platforms) is a lot of work. Why, you ask? Well, this year has shown there's zero consistency in terms of how new episodes are released, as you may have noticed with services like HBO Max, Hulu and Netflix.

“I love that HBO makes us wait for a show like White Lotus,” says PureWow's Senior Director of Special Projects & Royals Rachel Bowie. “But Sex Lives of College Girls would drop two episodes at once on certain weeks. Then of course, Netflix drops some things in full, but others (like the Harry & Meghan docuseries) in separate batches. It can be a lot to keep track of and results in missing new episodes.” We certainly wouldn't mind a little consistency with new releases in 2023.