Cole Sprouse is on Call Her Daddy this week and the interwebs are divided on whether he’s “radiating DiCaprio energy” or “transmitting the ick” based on new clips of him smoking a cigarette indoors while pontificating about his breakup with Riverdale co-star Lili Reinhart.
The Low-Brow Lowdown
Pete Davidson has a new boo. Her name is Chase Sui Wonders and they were in Bodies Bodies Bodies together. I learned this because they crashed into a fire hydrant in Beverly Hills causing a “geyser-like flow rising higher than a nearby street light.” No one got hurt so it’s okay to laugh.
Jenna Ortega airs out dirty laundry. In a new interview on Dax Shephard’s Armchair Expert podcast, Gen Z’s scream queen popped off about the juvenile choices the writers at Wednesday made for her character, citing incidents of arguing with them about contradictory plot points and rewriting shitty dialogue behind their backs.
Don’t blame her for trying to un-Riverdale the script but maybe don’t do press about it LOL.
Avril Lavigne gets her happy ending with Tyga. Only weeks after her breakup with ex-fiancee Mod Sun, Avril was photographed making out with Tyga at Paris Fashion Week, unraveling a complex web of exes, siblings, and business partners.
Good morning, Angels! The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show is back. The iconic fashion show came to end four years ago as the historic lingerie brand wrestled with an identity crisis — they’d made their name off of 90-pound supermodels and #thinspo fodder, but then it became “cool” to be “thicc” and “authentic.” To be a fly on the wall in those board meetings!
But as of this week, the company announced the show will go on, revamped to “champion women’s voices and their unique perspectives.” I wonder how much they’re paying Kim Petras to be the featured musical artist.
Kourtney Kardashian debuts a blonde bob. Apparently long hair is out now, and so are BBLs, so I can literally never win.
I Watched Fleabag Seven Years Too Late
Like most Americans, I have pretty bad memories associated with the year 2016. I was a sophomore in college with a deep side part listening to The Pinkprint on repeat and fully believing that liking wine was a personality trait.
I had a Facebook banner of Hillary Clinton wearing a rainbow array of pantsuits, and my bookshelf was filled with memoirs from female comedians like Tina Fey and Mindy Kaling. So if I was as deadset on being a cheugy millennial girlboss as I was, why wasn’t I watching the It Girl Feminist show of the time, Fleabag?
Despite only releasing two six-episode seasons, Fleabag was a cultural obsession. Even if you weren’t watching the show, you were probably aware of the existence of The Hot Priest and The Jumpsuit in the same way that Game of Thrones abstainers understood that John Snow was alive and winter was coming.
It was one of those shows where people would smite you with the fury of eleven possessed Furbies if you told them you weren’t watching, while simultaneously acknowledging with a straight face that it takes five episodes to get into. Even as late as this January, I was met with disappointed derision in the group chat when I shared I had only made it through the first two episodes over Christmas break.
But because I had nothing to write about this week, I got back on the saddle and watched the rest so we can talk about how the show holds up over time. Spoilers abound — this show came out seven years ago!
The gist: The titular Fleabag, played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, is a loser and asshole. Following the death of her best friend and business partner, she’s stuck managing a shoddy cafe and deals with her loneliness and insecurities by fucking anything that moves. She uses brash humor and spectacles of defiance as a defense mechanism, constantly pushing away family, boyfriends, and strangers alike.
The hype: Fleabag was one of the first shows to break the fourth wall without the sitcom mockumentary format. Fleabag consistently looks to the viewer throughout the show to make a snide remark about a man’s sexual performance or reveal her thinly veiled disdain for her repulsive stepmother.
2016 was also the heyday of the antihero, from Walter White and Don Draper in Breaking Bad and Mad Men to Olivia Pope and Jackie Peyton in Scandal and Nurse Jackie.
But what always separated the female antiheroes from the male was a strong moral compass — Olivia was Machiavellian in her Washington DC coverups, but it was typically for the greater good and she had firm lines she wouldn’t cross. Jackie was a lying, cheating drug addict, but she loved her kids and saved lives every day in the ER.
My guess for why Fleabag resonated so much with people is because in addition to its unique approach to form, it may have been the first time that a truly unlikeable, essentially irredeemable female character headlined a series.
The other example I can think of is Lena Dunham’s character in Girls, but it varies a bit because Hannah and her friends are recent college grads and much of their narcissism and stupidity can be attributed to youthful ignorance, whereas Fleabag is a grown adult who is actually self-aware about her flawed behavior.
So, does it hold up in 2023? I appreciated that the second season brought more electricity — the stakes have risen from “should I sleep with this buck-toothed stranger from the bus” to “should I seduce this charming priest who may be the only person I’ve ever held true romantic feelings for.”
It carries the entire heart of the series, so much so that it feels like season one was just a prologue before we reach the actual story.
Not that this hasn’t happened before — popular shows like The Office and Parks & Rec have famously struggled with first seasons that nearly faced cancellation, only to go on to become long-running golden geese for their networks. But when you only have two seasons to your name, and one of them is so-so, and everyone and their lesbian mothers are telling you to invest your time in it, the divide is a little more noticeable.
It’s impossible for anything to ever live up to the hype generated by a cult following of crunchy women, but Fleabag did a pretty good job. I walked into it fully expecting to be disappointed, but I actually really enjoyed it, but probably not as much as I would have with a Nasty Woman tote in tow.
Oscars Bingo!
The Academy Awards are on Sunday! I actually saw most of the Best Picture noms this year, except for like, Women Talking because apologies to women everywhere but it sounded like a major downer.
Here’s my official Uncultured bingo board to accompany the broadcast:
Prekend Wrapped
Watching: MH370: The Plane That Disappeared (Netflix)
Reading: “Vanderpump Rules Drama Explained” (TIME) — I fully admit to being completely ignorant to the Bravoverse, and that’s my cross to bear. If you were equally as confused about the cheating scandal in every headline this week, this article is pretty accessible summary.
Listening: The new Survivor behind the scenes podcast — if you had told me ten years ago I would be an avid listener of multiple Survivor podcasts I would have been so disappointed.
I remember the rainbow Hilary banner so clearly
OMG! I got lucky! Usually, I miss the pop culture bandwagon, but I managed to catch “Fleabag” at its height, thanks to someone mentioning it on a podcast I was listening to. I’m so glad you dove in. I loved your retrospective of it.