I took a lavender bath tonight

On Sunday my plug for HBO Max died because my fancy sister gets free access through Yaaaale now. I honestly feel like one of my limbs has been detached from my body. Is that dramatic?

But instead of watching TV last night, I got caught up in a serious Serial wormhole. It was just announced that Adnan Syed might get a new trial and be temporarily released from prison after 23 years on his own recognizance, after information came to light about the prosecution withholding two potential suspects from the defense.

Even though I think Adnan did it, I still find myself revisiting the Reddit feed every eightish months.

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Rough Cut

Movie review, TV binges, etc.

I mostly still follow DeuxMoi for the Sunday Spotted so I know which restaurants to go to on the company card, which means I also encountered their excessive paid promotion for Tell Me Lies, a new Hulu romance series from executive producer Emma Roberts (lol).

I don’t engage with the Sally Rooniverse on principle, but I will wager a guess that Tell Me Lies is like a smuttier version of Normal People. Normal People is getting an advanced degree in Comparative Literature at Vassar while Tell Me Lies is cruising through their state school Gen Eds. You tell me who’s more fun at the party.

The main theme of the show centers around the toxic relationships that stick with you for years and the unrelenting cycle of emotional abuse. I feel like everyone can relate to this to some degree, whether the relationship was romantic or otherwise — like we all have that person or persons who we should have cut off years before we finally did, but our failure to do so added a unique wrinkle to our life and perspective.

The first four episodes are out now, you can down them pretty quickly with half a Bota Box.

The logline: “Ice queen” college freshman Lucy meets charming yet insufferable upperclassman Stephen, and the two embark on an eight-year toxic entanglement.

Bleck, ok? It’s actually a lot less annoying than it sounds! The actors are good, and there’s some additional intrigue beyond just who’s fucking who which keeps the pacing steady.

The yasses:

• The protagonist is a bitch, which I love. She breaks up with her high school boyfriend the day she leaves for college and then laughs when he gets upset. She deviates from the Tumblrcore love story archetype where the ingenue is a bookish virgin who loves Earl Grey tea and is too close with her mom gets corrupted by a seasoned bad boy. Initially this puts her on more level ground with Stephen, but I’ll be curious to see how her demeanor shifts or insecurity flares as their relationship progresses and devolves.

The nasses:

• These “college freshmen” are way too well dressed and styled for 18-year-olds in the year 2007. It probably benefits the plot if we aren’t distracted by ugly clothes, but the lack of cropped vests and skinny scarves is an offensive historical inaccuracy.

Closing thoughts: I know I was kind of selling it hard at the top, but you definitely don’t need to watch this. It’s decent but there’s so much good TV right now that this is nowhere near the top of the list.

If you also consume an obscene amount of content and are in a draught it could work, or if you’re recently going through a breakup and need process your pain or something like that.

But fair warning: don’t watch on a plane or it at the gym. It’s giving Showtime After Dark.

★★★☆☆

Villain Edit

Girlbosses, toxic cool girls, scammers.

Next week, season 43 of Survivor is upon us — and at this point in my life, my sole mission outside of affording liposuction is to get more people to watch it.

If you like Game of Thrones or Succession or any prestige drama about outwitting your competition to achieve power, why are you sleeping on this series!? Yes it’s on CBS which is embarrassing, but I implore you to push past that initial discomfort.

It’s Fiji. It’s hot people. It’s non-hot people. It’s politics. It’s drive, tenacity, resilience. It’s manipulation, backstabbing, blindsiding. Someone could literally illustrate that 48 Laws of Power book based on examples from the show, all while it’s unassumingly cocooned in fun for the whole family packaging.

The cast bios are out, so I put together some ill-informed pre-season predictz:

First out: Geo Bustamante — he says he hates laziness (barbz, stay in school) and people who don’t have common courtesy, which means when his tribe starts building the shelter on Day 1, he’s going to come across as a shift manager corralling his disgruntled teen employees at a Cheesecake Factory, alienating everyone immediately.

The villain: Cassidy Clark — she described herself as “groovy” which is a red flag for me. Are you Velma from Scooby Doo? I could see her like, freeing the chickens from the coop, too.

Sole survivor: James Jones — he won an adult chess tournament when he was 12, but he’s not a square because now he’s a night club manager where he’s used to managing difficult personalities under pressure. Winning combination of game theory and street smart.

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EGOT Status

This isn’t why we do this.

I actually watched the Emmy’s on Monday, from the Access Hollywood pre-show all the way to Succession winning best drama at 11:01 PM.

Unlike the traditional auditorium setup, this year they borrowed from the Golden Globes with tables, and plopped in Zedd as a DJ. I think they were trying to inject the historically drab ceremony with a younger look and feel, and it worked, since it sort of felt like all these A-List celebrities were gussied up for the fall Homecoming dance.

I assume by this point in the week you’ve already seen Zendaya’s gorg gown, the older lady from Abbott Elementary breaking into song, Mindy and BJ entering to Baby Love and maybe soft-launching their relationship (optimistic speculation), and Jennifer Coolidge refusing to be played off by the acceptance speech music no matter how loud it got.

So in case you missed it, I’ll fill you in on the awkwardest moments of the night:

• When presenting, Lizzo was ambushed by the teleprompter instructing her to say that the Emmy statuette “is in her own way a very big girl,” and she was visibly taken aback. I feel like they should have run this by her? Or maybe they did and she just doesn’t read her emails.

• Jimmy Kimmel lying on the stage for the full duration of Quinta’s acceptance speech, committing to a botched bit with Will Arnett. Quinta said it didn’t bother her when she was asked after the show, but obviously it did! She is a first-time winner and wanted her moment without a faux-catatonic out 45-year-old distracting the eye.

• After winning Best Drama, Succession creator Jesse Armstrong awkwardly quipping: “Big week for successions — evidently a little more voting involved in our winning than Prince Charles.” Brian Cox was like that’s tacky and then Jesse sort of backtracked it, but it was all mumbled in British and a weird key to end on the night on.

• Oprah pontificating about how hard it is to win an Emmy when you’re competing against all 8 Billion people on planet Earth, making your odds 300 million to 1. Um, I don’t think Amanda Seyfried is competing with her dental hygienist for Best Actress in a Limited Series but sure?

Skinny Soundbites

Half-baked mini thoughts

This week was low-key predictable:

• After a scintillating ramp-up, I was thoroughly disappointed to learn that Kourtney KB’s Lemme is just another vitamin brand. The packaging is cute as hell, but aren’t vitamins are a joke in 2022?

• And while Kourt is partnering with fast fashion brand BooHoo to “push them to make sustainable changes” (re: she needed the money to fund her gummy business), the founder of Patagonia is donating his entire stake in the company to a climate change org.

• Is it truly a Bachelor franchise finale if a finalist’s racist past doesn’t emerge on social media? Images surfaced of Gabby’s last man standing Erich wearing blackface in high school, commemorated in his yearbook, so we’ll see how/if it’s handled during next week’s live show. This stuff always comes out at the very end — ABC has so much money, why don’t they do a more comprehensive vetting process? Or when they interview prospective contestants, they should be like, is there anything you want to tell us before you potentially become recognized all across America?

• No surprise here, but Tyler from Selling The OC and Brittany Snow are getting divorced after two years of marriage. She deffo saw him getting a “nosey” from Alex Hall and was like, G? Goodbye.

• And lastly, Anne Hathaway made my dreams come true sitting next to Anna Wintour in an Andy Sachs lookalike fit with the iconic bangs. If you didn’t model your first year in New York after her role in The Devil Wears Prada, what were you even doing?!

Prekend Wrapped

What the fuck is a prekend?

• Watching: The Come Up (FreeForm/Hulu) — A new docu-reality series about six Gen Zers trying to make it in New York. This has a 172% chance of making me feel horrible about myself. Don’t text.

• Listening: Down The Hill: The Delphi Murders (WarnerMedia) — I haven’t true crimed in a while, but watching season 2 of Only Murders in the Building made me want to reengage.

• Reading: “Two Dozen Tech Founders Living in a Mansion. What Could Go Wrong?” (Vox)

Sound On!

Hit me with your best thot.

Pop culture is more fun with friends. I want to know:

1. Emmy’s aside, what wins your personal award for the best show you watched this year? 

2. Will either Gabby or Rachel still be engaged during next week’s finale? 

3. Do you take vitamins? As a society, should we reject vitamins?