I'd rather smoke crack than eat cheese from a tin

Farmer Wants a Wife, Romy Mars, and Gwen's Slippery Slope.

Hi friends! You may have noticed Uncultured springing up in your inbox like an invasive fern a little more than usual lately.

That’s because I am officially launching a twice-a-week cadence, with the Thursday low-brow lowdown being joined by a Monday deep dive edition.

I’m also rolling out an option for paid support of Uncultured. The increased scope of the project will of course require a lot more time, so if you’re a disposable income kind of person and/or you’d like to support independent women-led media, your contribution is greatly appreciated!

And rest assured, any money gained from this will go back into the platform, through movie tickets, advertising spend, and trying weird foods to review like the Hidden Valley Ranch ice cream.  

If monetary support doesn’t make sense for you, but you’d still like to endorse the project, sharing links out to social whenever the #content moves you is equally cherished.

And as an incentive, if you subscribe this week, I am making a one-time offer to send you the highly embarrassing private TikTok I made this month of me as a 25-year-old cooking chicken for the first time. 

Okay, thanks, Sharks! Let’s get into the headlines.

The Low-Brow Lowdown

Bone Broth Babe Gwyneth Paltrow is getting sued. The Goop matriarch made an appearance Utah court due to claims that she crashed into an elderly man on the ski slopes back in 2016, causing broken ribs and brain damage. Gwen is countersuing, claiming that he skied into her. Either way, this is the waspiest lawsuit ever.

Amanda Bynes is in trouble. Earlier this week, the former actress suffered a psychotic break, culminating in her walking around Los Angeles with no clothes on. She’s currently on a 72-hour psychiatric hold.

Brenda Song and Macaulay Culkin secret second baby confirmed. Kieran Culkin confirmed in an interview that the couple has a one-year-old at home — I mostly find this interesting just because I’m so curious what Kieran and Brenda talk about during family hangs.

Ed Sheeran announces he’s planning a posthumous album. With his new album Subtract completing his mathematical symbol series, Sheeran told Rolling Stone that he has five more in him, the last of which will be a perfect album he tinkers with for the rest of his life, released after his death.

At first I thought this was kind of a cocky move, but on second thought, it’s kind of genius. You have something motivating you through your final days and you don’t have to read the snarky tweets from the nerds at Pitchfork afterwards.

We have a new Bachelorette! I’m gonna be honest, I only made it through the first two episodes of Zach's season, but one of his runner ups, Charity, found out on the Women Tell All show that she won the real first prize.

Nick Lachey ordered to attend Anger Management. After a run-in with a paparazza last year when Lachey attempted to grab a photographer’s phone out of her hand during a night out with Vanessa, the Love is Blind host sets out to learn some deep breathing exercises.

The superior Sprouse is engaged. After Cole’s press tour about nothing this month — does he have a memoir or something we don’t know about?? — his twin brother Dylan took the spotlight to announce his engagement to Hungarian model Barbara Palvin. It’s sad that you can spend your whole life training to be a supermodel, and all you get in return is a Sprouse.

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On Monday, I launched my new interview series Caught Red-Handed, where high-brows and hipsters pull back the curtain on the tackiest guilty pleasures they’d normally cringe at copping to. If you missed it, the first issue is here.

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Farmer Wants a Wife

I talked earlier this month about how I was sort of getting brain fatigue from all the identical dating show content I force myself to watch, but the FOX series Farmer Wants a Wife, an American spin-off of an Australian show of the same name, weirdly brings a different flavor to the farm-to-table.

Unlike most dating shows, the insight that FWAW is built on actually kind of makes sense — four farmers working on remote cattle ranches have trouble finding love because they’re quite literally isolated from the rest of society. If Farmer Landon fires up Tinder, his closest match is probably ten miles away, and that’s assuming she’s not a porker.

As a solve, the network flies in big city gals from various metropolitan areas to spend six weeks dating the farmer of their choice and getting immersed in ranch life (e.g. rolling hay and stacking logs).

And let me tell you, these girls are terrifying. In the pilot, they swarm into a barn in their LoveShackFancy sundresses like they’re rushing Pi Kappa Gamma.

And get this: they decided to leave their jobs for six weeks to go to Oklahoma or whatever based on a one-minute video they saw of their farmer. One minute! I can’t even decide if I want to get a beer with a guy based on his two truths and a lie prompt on Hinge. (BTW, it’s always like, “I speak three languages. I played D1 lacrosse. Mark Cuban said hi to me in an elevator.”)

I kind of thought the men were going to be giving more Stardew Valley energy, like harvesting crops and whatnot, but they mostly deal exclusively with cattle. However, they do say things like, “she’s cuter than a speck on a wagon wheel,” which feels like it was pulled directly from a shelved Hannah Montana episode.

These are the farmers. And the narrator exclusively refers to them as “Farmer Ryan” or “Farmer Hunter,” like they’re doctors or something.

Anyway, there’s a couple things that I love about the format:

Each farmer only gets five girls. As we know from The Bachelor, the first few episodes with 20+ women battling it out are usually pretty boring. But when the pool is whittled down to seven or eight, that’s typically when we’re finally able to discern Stephanie B. from Stephanie S. and get a little more invested in the relationships.

The girls MOVE IN to the farmer’s HOUSE. Forget the stuffy Bachelor Mansion or a the white-labeled three-star Hawaiian resort. These houses have character. Just imagine being a humble cattle rancher and all the sudden having five sexy Telehealth marketers living in bunk beds in your spare room.

Farmer Allen’s ex-wife painted his kitchen cabinets robin’s egg blue and his date immediately picked up on it and got salty. Chaos that Perfect Match could only dream of.

Girls get eliminated at the dinner table. How bizarre is that? Everyone’s still on their third margarita when the farmer is like, “okay, I’ve made my decision!” It’s less forced than a rose ceremony, but also three times as awkward, because you’re basically getting dumped in front of everyone else while Cassidy is picking corn out of her teeth next to you.

I’m not saying that I’m going to continue watching this show religiously, but I have to admit I’m a little curious about it’s all gonna shake out. Like, will Amanda really leave her music agent career behind to live #TheSimpleLife with the cowboy of her dreams?

And it doesn’t seem like the men really care about becoming farming influencers, either, so I guess I am rooting for them to find love on this journey. Not that influencers don’t also deserve love, but you know what I mean.

★★★☆☆

New It Girl Unlocked: Nepo Baby Romy Mars

Earlier this week, Sofia Coppola and Thomas Mars’ 16-year-old daughter, Romy, went viral on TikTok after cementing herself as her generation’s ultimate nepo baby.

The casual video begins with Romy telling the camera she’s been grounded for CHARTERING A HELICOPTER from New York to Maryland to visit a camp friend on her dad’s credit card.

The rest of the video is her trying to make pasta with vodka sauce, which is eerily similar to the aforementioned TikTok I made last week of me basically using a stove for the first time, except I have no excuse.

She doesn’t know the difference between garlic and onions, relies on her babysitter to fetch the ingredients for her, and jokes with him that her helicopter “fiasca” coincides with Women’s History Month.

In a unique yet universal display of teenage rebellion, Romy explains that she’ll likely find herself in further trouble upon publication of her video, because one of her parents’ biggest rules is that she’s not allowed to have public social media. She says they don’t want her becoming a nepotism kid, but she posits that their efforts are futile — TikTok will make her famous regardless.

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Prekend Wrapped

• Watching: Succession Season 4 Premiere! (HBO)

• Reading: “Gisele Bundchen on Tom Brady, FTX Blind Side, and Being a ‘Witch of Love’” (Vanity Fair) — In the opening paragraph she performs Reiki on a wounded bird. Unmissable content.

• Listening: In honor of the Eras tour, I’ve recommended the One Direction episode of Normal Gossip to multiple people this week. A great entry point if you’re new to the pod.