Order SO THIS IS HAPPENING

The fact that I’ve been so preoccupied with my book means that every time I watch or read something, I’m compelled to scrutinize it. Naturally, this has led me to compile an exhaustive watchlist, judged almost entirely by criteria dictated by wherever I happen to be in the writing process.

The list is getting long so I’m doing you all a favor and breaking it out into a 1+ posts.

Before we start, however, a special shout out to , fellow romance author for and all around good samaritan who kindly offered to animate my book cover. Given travel plays a key part in my book, it’s such a beautiful tribute to the story. Not to mention, seeing Becca and Royce full of life and dimension. Check it out:

On to the list. Well, the first part anyway.

KILL YOUR DARLINGS, EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM

I’ll start with ripping off the band-aid because why not get the hard one out of the way early. Here are a few things I’ve watched recently that could have benefited from the editing room.

• Project Hail Mary: This film, adapted from Andy Weir’s (The Martian) novel of the same name, has been equally cherished by fans and critics. Ryan Gosling, its star, can carry any film or SNL episode. That is for sure. He can sing, dance, act and make our hearts swoon. And power up vibrators too, apparently, but that’s something you’ll need to read my book to learn more about. Either way, what I learned from this 2.5 hour film is male directors love to give their audiences BIG films they think are worthy of being extra long, when 9/10 times they aren’t. Just ask Christopher Nolan whose last film to come in just shy of 2:30 was 2010’s Inception. Coincidentally, it was also his last decent film.*

  The Skinny: This film could have been done and done in a tight 1:45 with fewer cinematic montages and back story expos (that no one asked for) and more Rocky and Ryan scenes because the heart of the film is the ET construct. Never doubt the powerful connection between an alien and his or her human. Just don’t.

• Alice & Steve: The mid-life British Gen X dramedy about two good friends who stop being friends when he starts dating her adult daughter is not worth the watch. Despite the acting talents and chemistry of its stars, including Flight of the Concords’ Jemaine Clement, and Nicola Walker (The Split, Annika, and my personal fav, Last Tango in Halifax), the script creates obstacles that even a seasoned comic, like Clement, can’t rescue himself from.

  The Skinny: The show was so packed with throwaway jokes and examples of neurotic interiority being externalized that it ultimately killed the setup. And that’s coming from a person who could watch Curb Your Enthusiasm re-runs non-stop. I’m not sure the show was salvageable regardless, but the parting shot involving Clement and Walker’s characters did demonstrate what we’d all wanted to do after watching the first fifteen minutes.

Writer Lesson: I hate killing words, but damnit, you need to. Most of it’s ego. Really, it is. Focus on the primary story you’re telling and taking the reader along in the cleanest, possible way. Also, don’t get too voiceover-y in your writing. Interiority is hard and should be used sparingly. Move to the action - the dialogue, the movement, the interplay between the senses. I often think about author Joan Didion when I think about pacing and rhythm of novels.

Plus, you can pull all your unused jokes and deep cuts into a “parking lot” as and I discussed!

Lastly, Project Hail Mary’s best moments center on the budding connection between two life forms, who on paper having nothing in common. It’s the relationship that makes the film, not the science, which is really just window dressing.

* 2017’s Dunkirk came in under 2 hrs but that’s likely a technicality given how expensive it was to make (between $100-150 million).

STOP WITH THE EGO ALREADY!

• Silo, Season Whatever: This sci-fi show on Apple TV+ about the end of times, where humanity is holed up in bunkers because the climate has become so catastrophic, used to feel a lot more far-fetched. These days, it’s more like: “Oh, the air quality is so bad the sky is orange? Okay. Just another Tuesday in the Northeast during wildfire season.” “Oh, wait, we have a wildfire season, now?” Wait, what’s the protocol? Well, wearing masks, as always, which inhabitants of this show know a thing or two about.

  

  The Skinny: This show is all about mystery and suspense which naturally lend themselves to lying. Fine, Hey, I’m a paying Britbox subscriber now and an Agatha Christie card-carrying fan of just about any Poirot or Marple adaptation from this century and of course, Ustinov, but where I start to see red, is when there are so many lies on a show you can’t even track the story. Doesn’t help that we have to wait at least a year between seasons. Now they’re giving “Vitamin D” to the Silo residents, which is a forgetting drug. Between the characters forgetting what’s happening and my perimenopausal haze, this show is really starting to lose a key demographic: me. Don’t get me started on the two timelines popping up this season which take place 300 years apart.

  Writer Lesson: I mentioned keeping it simple with the word volume in the KILL YOUR DARLINGS section, but the bigger lesson here is don’t get too cocky that you take your audience/readers for granted. Keep them in the story. That also assumes there is a story, a primary one, that you’re invested in telling. The multiple off ramps make sense for a “Choose Your Own Adventure” pathway but not for a story with a heroine you’re rooting for, like Juliette in Silo. And don’t give your main character amnesia. That’s a minor grievance. But they are your eyes and ears, and you need a quasi-reliable narrator, after all.

VOICE MATTERS

• Not Suitable for Work: One of my Summer binge shows has been a Mindy Kaling one. I love her brand of funny. Who doesn’t love Never Have I Ever, Sex Lives of College Girls, The Mindy Show, etc.? But where her latest one, about young professional twenty-somethings living in Murray Hill, went off course was when every character started sounding like Mindy. Most notably Kell Washington (Nicholas Duvernay), a nice, aspiring actor on the show. The dialogue felt inauthentic and, after a while, hard to listen to. I would still watch a season two because this is Kaling, but listening to her characters on this show really highlighted the importance of character voice, which leads me to the next lesson.

  

  Writer Lesson: Read your work out loud. It probably doesn’t hurt do it in the voice of the character you are envisioning. This will ensure you nail their manner of speaking. One issue I find as I review my manuscript is word bias. I love the words “Fair” or “True” (don’t psychoanalyze this) and then, at some point, realize I’ve given them to both main characters. The problem is that “fair” really belongs to the more socially justice-oriented character. It’s not to say that people who are around each other a lot don’t influence one another’s ways of speaking, but try and be true to what a character will say and how they will say it. Oh, and don’t write people speaking English as a second language who speak English perfectly. This doesn’t make sense, unless they learned English as a kid. Ultimately it’s more than just words when it comes to voice, but start there!

KNOW WHAT YOU DO WELL & LEAN INTO THAT

• Kylie: Pop princess Kylie Minogue has had a long career, and, naturally, it’s had its ups and downs. Her journey is documented in a new three-part Netflix series. I can’t say the documentary made me more or less interested in her, beyond reminding me of some of her early hits and her Neighbours career. And her relationship with INXS frontman Michael Hutchence. But I did appreciate Kylie’s approach to her life and career. She knows what she’s good at, and she leans the hell into it. In her case, that’s pop music. She experimented with indie music for a while and acting, of course, but found her way back to pop in her 30s.

• Ted Lasso, Season 4: Ted is back, and that’s good, because Jason Sudeikis is basically Ted Lasso at this point. The first episode of the current season is out, and Ted is going back to Richmond, U.K., this time coaching a women’s football team. What I liked about the first episode is that the show’s trademark warmth and fuzziness, along with its willingness to lean hard into cringe, are all still on full display. This show knows exactly what it needs to do. And that is, end every episode with a heartwarming, life-affirming scene or two set to a Mumford & Sons song which is sure to elicit a least a waterfall of tears from yours truly. And it delivers. Every single time. Because, of course it does.

  Writer Lesson: Play to your strengths. You won’t be able to do everything well. In my case, it’s that I don’t particularly write closed door steaminess well. I may never be 5/5 on the spicy romance, chili peppers scale, but funny, situational rom-comedy with a touch of grief and emotional depth, backed by really funny chosen family. Yes. I can do that. Oh and I can write the hell out out of a workplace. Did yo hear that Mindy Kaling? Oh, and I’m taking calls, too.

Let’s Talk

What are you currently watching?

Do you also analyze shows and films based on writing criteria?

Name something that you wish you did better.

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On the one hand, it’s a surprisingly astute commentary which thoughtfully tackles the emotional isolation and loneliness of single motherhood offering a more nuanced twist on the classic woman-scorned allegory.

In fact, it inverts the scandalous cautionary tale of the femme fatale hell bent on vengeance for her ex, bringing it to a screeching halt that leaves you wondering not if gaslighting occurs, but just how many times it has occurred in cinematic history, and just how frustrating that realization is.

Paula, played to perfection by Orphan Black‘s Tatiana Maslany, is more relatable, yet no less frenzied, neurotic, and at times downright unhinged than your typical Claire Danes character, fingers running through her hair and all.

As a side note, if I were to lodge a grievance, it’s that the series leans a little too heavily into the familiar “crazy, bipolar” playbook we’ve seen time and again when depicting complex, middle-aged women onscreen. Messy can come in many forms, but it doesn’t have to look like this EVERY TIME:

Paula’s ex husband Karl (Jake Johnson), whose name tells you everything you need to know about him in that “He’s a Karl,” has left her for a co-worker he was probably already romantically involved with prior to the marriage dissolving. Paula and Karl share a young daughter, Hazel, who plays soccer and Karl and his new wife, Mal, are attempting to change the terms of their custody agreement at Paula's expense.

From the get-go, in the explosive season opener, we know that Paula pays a cam boy (A cam boy is an online male sex worker) for sex, intimacy, and a bit of companionship. But the cam boy is only the entry point into understanding Paula. The series quickly reveals that this isn't just a story about a woman seeking physical release; it's about a woman trying to reclaim pieces of herself after being reduced to roles—wife, mother, overlooked woman in the workplace, abandoned spouse—that no longer fully fit.

And that’s what makes Paula such an interesting contradiction.

By trade, she’s a fact checker, which also means she’s naturally suited to investigating crimes and drawing up a mean murder board (wink, wink), a skill that will come in handy as the series progresses. She’s also the type of fun-loving mom who dances well-choreographed TikToks with Hazel and pretends she has her shit together, because the consequences of letting that carefully constructed image crack could mean losing custody of her daughter.

BUT, BUT, BUT…It’s Also Hella Funny

This show is also a workplace comedy and veers into screwball territory at times, especially in the nonstop banter between the Gen Z co-workers. Charlie Hall (The Sex Lives of College Girls) plays the neurotic Rudy and, yes, is the unjustly talented, and handsome, progeny of Seinfeld's Julia Louis-Dreyfus and SNL's Brad Hall.

Opposite him is Kiarra Hamagami Goldberg as Geri, an ambitious, bold foil whose confidence perfectly offsets Rudy's anxious energy. These two have chemistry for days, but it’s their will-they-or-won’t-they situationship that keeps the show from becoming too dark, especially when Paula is being actively hunted by hitman Murray Bartlett (Physical, The White Lotus) who coincidentally frames Paula.

The comedy is rounded out by the sharp-tongued, gambling-friendly Sofia Gonzalez (Dolly De Leon), an occasionally inept but mostly savvy cop who wants to believe in Paula but, like the rest of us, finds her complicated and unreliable, as far as suspects go. Her repartee with Jon Michael Hill's Detective Baxter, a warmer, more vulnerable counterpart, crackles, giving the series a welcome buddy-cop energy just when it threatens to become too dark.

A Bonus

Let’s Discuss

• Name a femme fatale who, in retrospect, was done dirty.

  The second, third, or fourth time you watched, you realized you’d been fed a skewed story that never really served her. I’ll start. Rosamund Pike as Amy Dunne in Gone Girl. Or Margaret Qualley’s character in How to Make a Killing.

  Who’s yours?

• What’s been your Summer breath-of-fresh-air show?

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If They Don’t Make the Movies or Shows You Want, WRITE Your Own Story

After decades (?!?!) of reviewing other people's shows and films, I've come to the conclusion that there's no greater happiness than birthing a world of vibrant, tender characters and crafting a story worthy of them.

True story: One of my funniest characters, in my soon-to-be-published workplace romance novel, SO THIS IS HAPPENING (order here), a sassy, tells-it-like-is Jewish grandma with bright red hair from Florida named Estelle, lives rent-free in my brain, and during a recent MRI gave me the necessary “tough talk” to get through the experience.

I had an entire dialogue with her as I lay in the loud, dark, claustrophobic depths of the MRI machine. She could be annoying at times, but I imagine that’s exactly why she got through to me. I credit Estelle, and, inexplicably, Justin Bieber’s “Yummy” for getting me through what would have otherwise been a hellacious experience for someone who skews high on anxiety.

If you’d told me a year ago that I’d be having conversations with my book characters, I’d have called you crazy. Let alone that a single character could make me smile and chuckle my way into a somatic, blissful flow state during an MRI.

But I guess that’s the thing about stories. The truly moving ones bring us characters who feel so real, it’s as if they’re already a part of our lives. We will them into existence and they have the power of elevating us in dark moments.

In the words of another tough broad, though likely not as tough as Estelle, listen to the late, great Cass Elliott of the iconic 60s California sunshine band, The Mamas and the Papas, “make your own kind of music"…Because that’s exactly what I’ve done.

Order SO THIS IS HAPPENING (because it is) today. And meet Estelle. You will miss out if you don’t.

Executing on the Premise:

Stage this romance in a picturesque lakeside summer idyll with non-linear timelines that move languidly between past and present-day events, and, of course, cast attractive leads; for optimal effect, one with a sad eyes and one with dopey ones.

Have the girl be a cute, horror-obsessed nerd and the guy, an introspective, science geek, who is secretly hot, but doesn’t really know it. The result is an unbalanced power dynamic, where one person is oblivious to his own appeal (although, so are we, but that’s more accidental, than intentional), while the other builds her sense of worth around it. As in: If he hangs around me, I must be worth something.

Borrow from bona fide, tried-and-tested cinematic filmmaking techniques used and perfected in other hit Prime YA coming-of-age, emotionally gripping romance vehicles, like The Summer I Turned Pretty, and add in a well-choreographed soundtrack to ground the emotional undercurrent of the story, since we’re all, in some way or another, products (descendants or otherwise) of the MTV generation. In other words, no feeling is complete without a good song to help us process our trauma memories and properly expunge the bad juju.

And for good measure, painfully tease a horrific event/catalyst in the trailer that leads to the breakup of the main couple. The last part is a bonus play for this particular franchise, which is an adaptation of the wildly successful Carley Fortune’s “Every Summer After” series.

As a reader of all of Fortune’s books, I can tell you that you’re better off with the source material. But, if you’re looking at the ratings, this show hit #1 on Prime Video worldwide, so there’s that.

So here are the three areas where this show veers off course and loses points on the rubric.

1. Sam’s Acting & His Chemistry w/Percy: Matt Cornett is cast as Sam Florek, the male lead. Cornett played E.J. in High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, a former boyfriend of Olivia Rodrigo’s character, Nini, for those of you who are pop culturally curious. I grew to really like E.J.’s character arc on HSMTMTS. His acting was nuanced there, he showed good range, and his character evolved into someone far more emotionally available. So I know he has the ability to play someone less wooden. But as Sam, he’s hard to root for. His dialogue is delivered in a stilted fashion, and something just feels off. You’re never convinced that he’s really pining for Percy (Sadie Soverall) and similarly, that she can fully stand to be in the same physical space that he occupies. It didn’t help that my husband observed Sam/Matt looks like a young Armie Hammer. My mind immediately went to cannibalism.

   

2. The Big Teased Secret, Its Betrayal, and Its Reveal: The fact that Charlie, Sam’s brother, and Percy had sex/got it on is not a big deal. But the whole, WE ARE ON A BREAK concept is lost on these GenZs. Maybe this is an unpopular opinion of one, but I can honestly say the trailers made me want a BIG betrayal worthy of its hype. The fact that Percy found solace in the arms of a nicer, hotter dude, who thought the world of her was not the issue. Apparently, him being Sam’s brother was. The severity of the response was over-the-top. The nothing-will-ever-be-the-same headline written on Charlie’s guilty face and Percy’s panic attacks are testament to this. And yet, again, the act didn’t justify the actions. Sam treated Percy pretty poorly and broke up with her, to boot.

   

   And all this leads into…

3. The Greek Tragedy of it all Translates to Doomed Coupledom: Percy’s name, which is short for Persephone, Queen of the Underworld, whose abduction and forced marriage to Hades is one of Greek mythology's most enduring tales of deception, betrayal, and lost agency. She's condemned to spend part of eternity with a man who never truly deserved her.

   

   All this, feels oddly on brand for Percy's relationship with Sam, who may be no Hades, but he's certainly no angel either. He repeatedly puts her through the emotional wringer, like a modern-day Persephone trapped in a cycle she can't quite escape. In the flashback scenes, Sam breaks up with Percy every time something physically separates them, which is absolute hogwash. Their entire relationship is built around summers together, for crying out loud. Percy’s family vacations at the lake every year, and Sam’s family lives there year-round. They already know how to survive nine months apart. Then, when Sam leaves for a summer program at Stanford, he once again goes back to his pattern of love ‘em and leave ‘em with Percy. This guy is like a Pavlovian experiment. Instead of communicating, he invents excuses to push Percy away and manufacture a breakup. Meanwhile, she’s still sitting there thinking he’s the best thing since sliced bread. That made me genuinely sad.

Example of a breakup dialogue:

Sam (via EMAIL!): “I can’t do this, Percy. I need to focus on my studies.”

Percy (to herself): “Wait...what?”

Percy immediately calls Sam.

A suspiciously attractive-sounding girl answers.

Girl: “Ohhh, Sammy’s busy picking up the beer,” she purrs, somehow managing to roll non-existent rs seductively.

Percy (to herself): “I knew I never should’ve let him go!”

Meanwhile...

Charlie, Sam’s hot, older, emotionally available brother: “Want to build a boat?”

Me: “Percy, the answer is standing right there.”

If what follows is betrayal, then color me Dynasty—because guess what? I’m absolutely here for that story. The one where Percy chooses Charlie, the guy who’s been waiting in the wings all along and is actually capable of loving her the way she deserves. He listens. He waits, and he pounces. They run the Tavern together. He, with his financial acumen. Her with her, well Percy-ness.

This is the twist the series needed, and as such the poster would have to be revised to include the three of them. It becomes a classic Sabrina plot, with reverence to The Summer I Turned Pretty because who isn’t a fan of two brothers vying for the hand of the lovely maiden.

Where The Show Redeems Itself

• Elisha Cuthbert, former 00s Maxim it girl, who hasn’t been in Hollywood for a minute is way too young to be Sam and Charlie’s mom, even if she had Charlie at like 16. However, she’s expertly cast as the kind, cool mom who is the perfect maternal stand-in for Percy, given her own parent’s being unavailable most of the time

  

• Aurora Perrineau as Chantal, Percy’s bestie, was the breakout star of this show. She was fun to watch, the perfect foil for Percy, and brought much-needed levity and tough love depending on the occasion. Her unexpected romance with townie Jordie was not only a departure from the book but also one of the highlights of this season.

  Chantal and Jordie’s relationship is the perfect illustration of what can happen when you veer a little off-script from the source material to create something that translates more effectively onscreen. I can’t wait to see more of them!

The Fashion of it All

FOR THE LOVE OF FLORALS, TUTUS, & TIARAS! Percy’s wardrobe is in major need of an adult style refresh. I can get behind that her emotional age is 18, the age she was when her betrayal occurred, so perhaps that is leading to these unfortunate decisions, but this was terrible. How can you root for these fashion disasters?

Don’t Leave Me Hanging: What DID You Think of Every Year After?

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Bonus Read: Substack buddies of and FilmStack member and film enthusiast, Sara of were BOTH willing to get into it with me on topic of this show and feed my need to dissect it:

Other Beth News

• I’ve completed my second draft of my book SO THIS IS HAPPENING, a witty and fun romance launching in February, in time for Valentine’s Day.

  Here’s my updated cover reveal:

Which is why it should come as no surprise that I’m covering the hottest onscreen young adult romance series to hit Prime (and our boob tubes, period) since the iconic, Sabrina-esque The Summer I Turned Pretty. Like that breakout hit, Off Campus is leaving plenty of middle-aged women swooning.

Here to help analyze the Off Campus phenomenon is parenting writer and hilarious funny woman, , author of the highly successful and unforgettable , in which she goes deep on the experience of nurturing and bringing into the world well-rounded, loving, and exceptional humans—otherwise known as children.

A special thank you to Charlotte for her vulnerability, her authenticity, and her uncanny ability to get straight to the heart of it in our conversation on this show. She doesn’t avoid difficult topics, but confronts them boldly and in her signature voice, elevates messy into an art form, which is no easy feat.

Diving head first, right in, like the puck bunnies we are…Keep in mind this is a hockey romance and the term “puck bunnies” is a real thing:👇

Giphy Credit: The ultimate hockey show, the Canadian comedy, Letterkenny, for expanding hockey cultural awareness.

Off Campus - How did we get turned onto this show?

The more apt question might be: how do we get turned off? Seriously, please put your advice for moving on in the comments because I need to know I’m doing research for a friend.

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But First…Its Premise

Off Campus is explosive, packed with fierce storylines, sexy scenes, and perhaps most improbably—and yet sexiest of all—men who talk about their feelings.

The plot centers around hockey culture, but not in an aggressively gross way. Garrett, the team’s star player, and most of his hockey teammates are actually pretty sensitive and thoughtful guys. Hannah, the female lead, is a musician attending the university on scholarship and is delightfully cast.

Garrett, who goes by his last name mostly, which is Graham, is looking to become a stronger student of philosophy and needs Hannah's help. Hannah, meanwhile, is trying to get the attention of another musician on campus. Naturally, the two strike a deal and agree to fake date, in what romance-land affectionately refers to as the "fake dating" trope. And as with the fake-dating arc, real feelings develop, because wouldn’t you know it, that’s kinda a thing.

The ensemble provides a fun, light counterbalance to some of the show’s heavier themes, including sexual assault and domestic abuse.

Back to Getting Turned On By This Show. I Mean Tuning In for It.

Charlotte: I was telling my friends the other day that literally the only “news” I consume is celebrity gossip and pop culture updates—so I knew this show was coming quite a bit before it was released, and was intrigued by how everyone was describing it.

When it finally dropped, I watched the trailer and knew I’d have to avoid it because it had all the markers of something I’d end up binging... which is exactly what happened. I lasted just under a month, and then I started watching on a Monday night and took the next day off work to watch. I set my own hours so that’s not as dramatic a gesture as it sounds, but still.

I am a sucker for rom coms featuring men who emote really well with their eyes, which is obviously the case for Off Campus. Give me a guy looking at a girl like he can’t live without her and I am SOLD!

Beth: After binging this series—because it was a foregone conclusion that I would watch the minute it appeared in my Prime queue, no questions asked—I went back and watched everything Off Campus lead actor Belmont Cameli has been in. So yes, you could say he’s compelling. As far as male romantic heroes go, he’s what we call in the romance literary worlds, an all-green-flags situation.

Along for the Ride (2022), currently streaming on Netflix and adapted from Sarah Dessen’s novel of the same name, is absolutely worth your time. Like Off Campus, Cameli plays a young heartthrob carrying the weight of a traumatic past. It’s through his relationship with the more introverted and sensitive Auden (Emma Pasarow) that he begins to heal.

So, you know, not too different thematically from Hannah (Ella Bright) and Garrett Graham in Off Campus.

Why do you think “Off Campus” is so popular among young to middle aged women?

Charlotte: Overall, I think it’s a really fun, cute show with dark themes that are handled respectfully. I can see how that translates well across age groups. I can’t speak for the younger women other than to say I imagine the hot guys and the inspirational girls help with viewing numbers, but for the older crowd (I’m 37, so I think I fall into the “older” viewer camp. Editorial Note from Beth: Um, 48 here, so definitely not.) I think there are a few different things going on:

1. He’s Got Bette Davis Eyes: The emotive eyes get me every time. I watched Office Romance just before Off Campus, which is a very different vibe but Brett Goldstein was all eyes in that, too, and I loved it. Didn’t love the movie so much, but the EYES! I think the feeling that brings up is ageless, it’s just so tender and lovely and I just love love, so for me personally I think I’ll always be drawn to things like this, regardless of how old I get. Nobody Wants This had this going for it, too. Adam Brody is great at the old eye acting. Just going to sit here and think about who else emotes well via eye contact now, aren’t I?

   I’m making this weird. I’ll move on. (Beth: Yes, but it’s a fair point. I call it the puppy dog eyes. But could be a cat too per Puss in Boots.)

1. Upright Hot Dudes: As a mum of boys, I think it’s likely there are women my age watching and just enjoying seeing some positive male teens on screen. Gives me hope for their future, though I will say it’s a bit odd at times watching a raunchy show whilst thinking “I hope my boys treat girls this well.” (Beth: Yes, but also so valid. I feel this with every part of my being.) Especially when things like mutual masturbation are going down… There are lots of positive depictions of girlhood out there so I don’t know if this hits so much for the girl mums. (Beth: It does!). I also have a girl, and I didn’t have the same sort of thoughts about her with it really, but the poor lads are all being tarred with Adolescence, so maybe the hot jocks of ice hockey will curry them some favour.

2. Gen Zs: It’s interesting to see how younger generations do things.

3. Nostalgia: It’s nice to watch young people fall in love and remember what it was like to be young. I don’t exactly feel old myself, but I’m definitely not a teen falling in love for the first time, you know?
   

Beth: As a teen mother—wait, no, that’s not right. As a mother of teens—the positive representations of male intimacy, consent, and young men openly talking about relationships and about how to be thoughtful, attentive partners is what really resonated with me.

To me, that’s everything.

I think it’s similar to why so many middle-aged women gravitate toward Heated Rivalry. Yes, there’s undeniable chemistry, but there’s also tenderness, emotional intimacy, yearning, tension, and questions of identity. Those themes transcend age demographics.

Admittedly, I fast-forwarded through some of the more explicit scenes. The show is considerably more graphic than your average YA romance, but that was simply a personal choice based on my own comfort level. That said, Off Campus has all the ingredients of a blockbuster young adult romance series in spades.

Chef’s kiss. Just one note, which I’ll get to later on…

Who are your favorite characters? And not so favorite?

Charlotte:

Logan: I think you can tell immediately that he has the hots for Hannah, but I feel like he doesn’t really overstep with it and although there’s a bit of flirting and a bit of sulking, he does ultimately put his friend first, which I don’t think we would have seen in teen dramas for our generation.

Allie (etc): I loved Allie but mostly I loved her hair—great fringe. I actually liked every character, I think. Which is interesting, there’s usually someone that stands out as a villain, but not this time. Maybe Allie’s ex, saying that—I didn’t love that guy. Oh! And the baby faced guy Allie hooked up with at the end, he looked like a toddler and I didn’t understand why we were supposed to think he was sexy. He was absolutely not sexy. I’m on a roll now but also the musician Hannah initially fancied… Just, no. Ew.

Beth: It’s more fun to talk about characters we hate. Allie’s ex tops that list. He’s so bland that I don’t want to waste words on him. The guy who plays Dean’s rival and Allie’s “pass” whom she hooks up with to convince herself she’s not falling for Dean, and who is sure to have a bigger role next season, is the actor who plays James Marsden’s son, Jeremy, in Paradise. His Off Campus character is the worst, ALL red flags, right down to his Lacoste V-neck sweater. But he might also be a plausible romantic rival to Dean when it comes to Allie and surprise us all, thereby making him the best. They aren’t mutually exclusive in romance. In fact the best characters are a little of both. And at the very least, his inconvenient presence on and off the ice will make Dean have it step it up a notch if he wants to hold onto his hockey position and Allie.

Best Scene

Charlotte: Scene wise, I’m sorry if it’s crude to go straight to this, but the mutual masturbation scene was a big highlight. I loved that whole sequence, and again I think I need to say it’s just not what we would have seen in something made for millennials as teens. We had (and I’m about to go down an American Pie rabbit hole here) Jim filming Nadia and sending it to the whole school, and Stifler shagging anything that moved whilst having only one brain cell—this was what was normal for us.

By comparison, we have this show (Off Campus) in which one of the creative kids asks one of the jocks to help her orgasm, and instead of just jackhammering her he’s asking his friend for advice… And that friend’s advice isn’t “here Kevin, here’s a secret book from the library about oral sex, passed down through generations,” it’s “she has to trust you.”

It felt almost revolutionary to watch this—to witness a male character soul searching over such a thing, to the point that I spent the whole time waiting for the other shoe to drop—for Graham to do something awful to lose Hannah’s trust. But it doesn’t happen! Instead, we are treated to a show of vulnerability and endless compassion on Graham’s end, and then we get to the orgasm giving and he spends the whole time doing the eyes at this girl and making sure she knows she’s safe and not pressuring her or making her feel broken or bad and I’m sorry, but where was that when we were younger? If we’d had this sort of stuff as teens, #MeToo might have been less of a movement

Beth: Along those lines, the best scene was the lead-up to that sex scene at the gym (the memorable “weight room” scene) with Dean, Allie’s love interest, advising Graham (Garrett) about how to satisfy Hannah. Dean is on the surface a stereotypically hot jock, but he’s crafted with a lot more nuance and dimension to allow for a much more interesting character! (Note from Charlotte: I am also very much Team Dean.)

@parasahopelessromanticGREAT TALK 🤭 #offcampus #deandilaurentis #garrettgraham #primevideo #thedeal

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Wants/Wishes/Desires for S2

Beth: We know Off Campus season two is going to be Allie and Dean focused which works because they are the bonafide Season One breakouts. If I had one note for Season One is we were given way too much Allie and Dean romance and not enough teasing of things to come. I’m excited to explore their love, but could have had a sprinkling of it and not like an avalanche. A little goes a long way. Though I’m not sure if that saying is applicable to these two very loud personalities.

Charlotte: I love Allie and Dean. I think they’re great together. I agree though, I don’t know how they’ll be able to do a whole season on them as I feel like we’re sort of already at the point where it’s obvious they’ll end up together? I’m excited to see, though, Dean was one of the more surprising characters, so whatever they do, I’m here for it!

Now It’s Your Turn

Did you watch this show?

Did you enjoy it?

What storylines do you hope for in S2? S3?

If you’re not partaking in Off Campus, what are you currently watching?

Leave a comment

Related Recommendations

Interview with Charlotte:

Good Humor

Funny AF Woman #25

How did you nurture your funny side…

Read more

6 months ago · 38 likes · 49 comments · Good Humor by CK Steefel

The Midlife Club

Why Are Middle-Aged Women Obsessed with Off Campus?

I spent this week on a US college campus deeply enmeshed in the world of ice hockey. I stood, transfixed in the men’s locker room surrounded by a wall of perfect, naked athletic bodies. Ok, I was on my sofa, in a tracksuit with a packet of Digestives binging through both the biscuits and the entire first season of…

Read more

2 months ago · 1 like · The Midlife Club

Into this combustible mix comes Poldark aka Aidan Turner (Keri Russell’s boy toy in the latest season of the The Diplomat) playing fiery and provocative Irish journalist Declan O’Hara, formerly making a pittance at the BBC before being lured away by Tony’s money, swagger, and promises of artistic liberty and agency, alongside his aging stage actress wife Maud (Victoria Smurfit) uprooting their family to live in a castle in the Cotswolds, and you have the makings of a madcap relationship-centered clashing-of the-cultures-and-classes drama where hotter heads will prevail.

And there will be explosive results.

Rivals in a snapshot?

Think 80s Dynasty-level soap opera hedonism, spiked with modern-day feel-good updates, of a Ted Lasso variety, with the competitive, cutthroat rigor of a Succession, though not taken to quite that degree. Throw in a problematic age gap romance for good measure that everyone can’t stop talking about (and rooting for).

Side Bar: Amazon Studios’ YA romance Off Campus hockey locker room antics and green-flag boyfriends + Rivals Cotswolds lust, power, and bare rumps make up at least 80% of my Instagram feed.

It wouldn’t be fitting to go on this Rivals romp without , a Substack friend and fellow Jane Austen and Bridgerton enthusiast who finally got me to hit “Watch” on my Hulu player when this show’s flashy advert came up yet again with its second-season launch.

It was via one of Claire’s notes, perhaps the one below even, that had my FOMO reaching altitudes I wasn’t willing to concede to. If you watch the first 5 minutes of the show, you will see the double entendre in this sentence.

After willfully ignoring Rivals’ first season for reasons unknown (Hulu wants me to watch. I will resist!), this past week I binged all ten episodes of its first season and awaiting weekly drops 🙁 of this show’s second season with bated breath. Too bad they’re splitting up the sophomore season’s 12 episodes because of the World Cup, but honestly, the shit sandwich tracks. This is England, after all. Where football reigns supreme. Even if some of us want our drama, scripted and spicy, and served chilled with the other kind of red flags.

So let’s dive into the analysis now…

The Coming of the “Bonkbuster”

Claire, what first turned you onto this show? And as a U.K. native, can you speak a bit to how “Rivals” author Jilly Cooper’s work is generally regarded in England and within the broader cultural zeitgeist?

I think what drew me to Rivals was the cast, to be completely honest. An adaptation of an ‘80s ‘bonkbuster’ wouldn’t naturally be something I’d eagerly anticipate, but the list of names involved started to indicate that this was pitching itself as prestige television.

I have to admit to not having read much of Jilly Cooper’s back catalogue, apart from the inevitable ‘sex education’ received at the hands of somebody’s mum’s copy of Riders doing the rounds at school (upon graduating from somebody’s older sister’s copy of Judy Blume’s Forever).

Cooper was an incredibly successful author, but there was undeniably an easy dismissal of her importance because of the genre her novels fell into. So it’s especially glorious that she lived to be part of this reclamation of her work.

Her warm, witty, and mischievous personality, along with her deep expertise in character creation, is beautifully captured and translated through both the writing and performances in the series. Laura Wade is an incredible writer (fan girl alert) and, along with Dominic Treadwell-Collins, has expertly woven a deep knowledge and respect of Cooper’s books into an adaptation reveling in the delight and the despair of considering the ‘80s through our modern lens.

More on the Bonking & Chemistry

Beth: As mentioned earlier, Claire was the one to convince me to watch. And I stay for… Taggie and Rupert - our star-crossed lovers. Taggie, the 20-year-old daughter of Declan and Maud, is the show’s emotional center and moral compass, perpetually tasked with putting these rakes in check, whether it’s Rupert or Tony’s half-brother Basil, who seems to be starting something up with her this season. Then again, Rupert is busy protecting Cameron from Tony, but really finding reasons to bed her.

Taggie is underestimated by both her parents, but especially her mother (they are polar opposites in the best ways), and she’s often written off as a silly girl, when in reality she has more layers and nuance than almost anyone else in the ensemble, with the possible exception of Lizzie Vereker (Katherine Parkinson), the compassionate and kind, romance writer and long suffering wife of TV personality, James.

Top storyline for me (no surprises here) is the Taggie and Rupert romance, which many have understandably filed under the “problematic age-gap” category, given she’s 20 on the show and he’s in his late 30s. Life-experience-wise, they’re drastically different, and yet they fit together. She brings out his integrity and deepens his capacity for care, while he empowers her to speak up for what she believes in and be her best self.

And their chemistry speaks for itself in every tension-filled stare and thinly veiled moment of want they share — whether out in the sparse fields tending to the animals or across a crowded room full of loud personalities, where they somehow block everyone else out and exist entirely within their own orbit. See below.

Claire: Favorite Storylines?

1. Lizzie and Freddie: They quickly became the beating heart of the show in season one and the layers of their romance are perhaps even more compelling this time round. While most others around them consistently give in to their impulses without a thought, Lizzie and Freddie are giving us yearning. They want to be together, they are made for each other and deserve better than the unhappy marriages they’re stuck in, but their thoughtfulness and compassion and caring about not hurting others (again utterly refreshing in this show) is what attracts them to each other as well.

2. Charles & Gerald: I’m so glad Charles and Gerald are being given room to grow as a storyline in season two. The tenderness between them is just gorgeous (particularly in a heartbreaking moment in the most recent episode), and like Lizzie and Freddie they are a couple whose stakes are very high. They are both hiding or diluting their sexuality in different ways to make themselves more acceptable in society.

   

3. Uneven Power Dynamics: Fighting for equality within a relationship is a recurring theme across the show, and goodness only knows where that fight is going to take Declan and Maud this season (ducks as plates and Irish-accented expletives fly across the room), but I’m actually most interested in watching that play out in the Strattons’ car-crash marriage. Sarah Stratton is constantly trying to build success on shifting sand. That woman hustles HARD. Actress Emily Atack (her enormous hair) and Rufus Jones, who plays her husband on the show, work so well together.

How would you describe the show to a friend?

Claire: Rivals is a work of surprising genius. So many people, myself included, were not expecting Rivals to be such a rich delight. Yes it’s silly and sex-mad (probably best to broach this up front, depending on the friend!), but it’s also smart, nostalgic, funny, romantic, dramatic and brimming with fascinating characters.

It’s expertly well-crafted froth, which is so rarely achieved and therefore supremely satisfying to watch.

Where do you hope the show goes?

Beth: This season is missing some of the yearning I felt in the Taggie and Rupert romance in season one, especially as they’ve been estranged for the first four episodes and barely interacting. To your point about Sarah Stratton, Claire, she’s barely had any onscreen time in season two! I need more of these people.

I need less of the Maud + Tony flirtation. It’s too repulsive even for me. If every spouse starts sleeping with each other’s partners, I think it’s going to get too silly for me. I can’t do Declan + Cameron either. It’s too convenient to have former partners hooking up. What is this, Shania Twain’s life?

Claire: Honestly, just more of the same please. The writing is of such high quality, I trust them implicitly. It’s refreshing to see a large and exceedingly talented cast utilized so well, and great that the more peripheral characters from season one are now enjoying more time in the sun.

I think I need to witness comeuppances for Tony (eaten alive by peacocks?) and loathsome James (eaten alive by Deidre?), and I’d obviously love HEAs for Lizzie and Freddie and Charles and Gerry.

With such a broad set of characters and the next generation (of horny offspring) chomping at the bit, this show could run and run.

HELLO HULU: Spin-offs We NEED NOW

Beth: The Young Monica Diaries: Lord Tony Baddingham’s wife Monica (played by Claire Rushbrook) is quietly becoming the most compelling side character on this show, and arguably the one with the richest untapped backstory. She perhaps even warrants her own Lizzie-style midlife love affair of the heart. Paging Dame Enid Spink…

Unlike Tony, who clawed his way up from grammar school and still fundamentally lacks class, Monica is the one who brought money, pedigree, and social legitimacy into the marriage. She grew up in the same world as Rupert and Muffy’s mother, and every so often the series teases flashes of who she once was: gutsy, intellectually alive, even daring — a young woman who once played Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and clearly possessed a dramatic, spirited streak beneath the polished exterior.

What makes Monica fascinating is the tension between that younger self and the woman she’s become. As the kids say, it’s her LORE! You just know she has a treasure trove of stories you want to hear about that have led her to become who she is now. She’s the epitome of stoicism and shrewdness, someone who understands power intimately and survives by mastering emotional restraint. Yet those glimpses of her past suggest a woman who may once have wanted more than survival: romance, artistic passion, freedom, maybe even joy. Yes, give us this version of Monica. We will take all of them.

Beth in the Wild (in her own Spin-Off):

• On May 16th, I moderated an historical romance authors’ panel at the Ashland Library (co-sponsored by ) with celebrated authors Loretta Chase, Eloisa James, Caroline Linden, and

Sound Off:

• Are you watching Rivals?

• What ARE you watching?

Confessions: Still Watching But (Slightly) Regretting

Half Man - It’s brutal. I can’t watch Richard Gadd’s character, Ruben, literally beat someone to a pulp one more time. It’s happened more than once. Episode 5 nearly ended me. But there’s only one episode left. I think I can handle it…

Read more about WHY I'm watching at all

Your Parting GIFt

Brought to you by Widow’s Bay, episode 3. This show proves to all of us a few things:

1. Next to Rivals, it’s the best show on TV

2. Stephen Root has improved with age, even if his Office Space role was the most memorable character to emerge from that film. He always steals the show.

3. Widow’s Bay is written and directed by a woman - Who else would make a “sea hag” villain who kills her male victims by sitting on their faces. 🙌

I’m getting choked up writing this and teary-eyed thinking about Joanne’s light being extinguished because, while this turn of phrase is often used colloquially when people die, Joanne truly was all light. She was the OG hype woman — always there with a cheer, a like, or a comment whenever you sent a piece of work out into the world.

Joanne was brilliant, with a memory and recollection for film and TV that rivaled any Jeopardy! competitor. I was absolutely a fan girl of hers, though I don’t think I ever flat-out told her that. I did my best to champion her work, collaborate on projects like this one, and simply be in her orbit.

What I know from people I’ve lost and struggled to understand the WHY of it is that best way we can keep people with us is by remembering them in these ways. So here’s to Joanne, who gave so many of us warmer, cheerier moments simply by gracing us with her presence, engaging in cultural analysis, and making us part of her chosen people.

Here’s last year’s MAMA-themed film and tv piece:

It’s my honor to welcome and to this Substack as we dive into mother-themed films and shows that have truly moved us, emotionally, physically, or both. Each of us has chosen a favorite movie and TV series that centers on the powerful, complex bond between mother and child, and in some cases, mothers with other mothers (and clones, kinda?).

More on our contributors:

is a self-professed pop culture nerd whose Substack contains listicles of shows (like this one on fabulous onscreen siblings) you should be watching and salutes kick-ass creative women. She’s also a Libra (like yours truly) and someone to follow on Letterboxd (Film).

, a former film magazine editor and resurrected film critic, writes and her post on the screenwriter for Romancing the Stone [Read here] is what clinched the deal that I would forever be tuning into her work. She has a way of digging into a film’s backstory that’s very meets Inside the Actor’s Studio.

“Picks” Rundown/Format:

Title of Movie or TV Show

WHY was it chosen?

Actors/Production Info

Helen’s Picks 😂👗🛸🇬🇧❤️

🎞️ Favorite Mom Film: You Again [Trailer] [Release Year: 2010]

Why: Kristen Bell’s Marnie is horrified that the high school bully (Odette Yustman’s Joanna) is marrying her brother. Marnie’s mother, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, is equally disturbed to learn that Joanna’s aunt is the same Mona she had a feud with in her salad days. Sigourney Weaver delivers her lines in the same drily comedic style we saw in Heartbreakers, as she and Curtis battle cars, couture, and choreography. Meanwhile, the younger generation is obliviously caught up in their parallel conflict.

Bring your sense of humour and you will not be disappointed by this fun and frivolous comedy, which, being distributed by Disney, does not shy away from a couple of tender moments too. Look out for the alien face-hugger reference!

Starring: Kristen Bell, Jamie Lee Curtis, Sigourney Weaver, Odette Yustman, Betty White

Director: Andy Fickman

Production Company: Touchstone Pictures & Frontier Pictures

Producers: Andy Fickman, John J.Strauss, Eric Tannenbaum

📺 Recommended TV Show: If you are in the mood for darker comedy, it’s hard to do better than the British sitcom Motherland. Daughters will get an insight into what it takes to be a mother. Mothers will, no doubt, identify with a lot of the feels!

Joanne’s Picks 👩‍👧‍👦👻🖤🧬🧠

🎞️ Favorite Mom Film: Mama [Trailer] [Release Year: 2013]

Why: Because horror and motherhood go great together. Here, you get punk rocker Chastain forced to make room in her life for Victoria and Lilly, her partner Lucas’ (Coster-Waldau) nieces, who went missing five years ago in the wake of their parents’ deaths. As she forges a connection with the older girl, Chastain’s Annabel learns the girls were cared for by a maternal creature who won’t give up her babies, no matter the cost.

The tender chemistry between Chastain and Charpentier highlights the growing bond between Annabel and Victoria; the same can be said for the moments between Charpentier, Nélisse, and Botet’s mommy fiercest. It’s refreshing that the film doesn’t diminish the girls’ love for Mama, putting their needs above all else.

Starring: Jessica Chastain, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Megan Charpentier, Isabelle Nélisse, Daniel Kash, Javier Botet

Director: Andy Muschietti

Production Company: Universal Pictures

Producers: J. Miles Dale, Guillermo del Toro

📺 Recommended TV Show: Orphan Black: Of all the amazing relationships on this show about clones and those trying to oppress and/or destroy them, the ones that hit hardest involve Sarah Manning, her daughter Kira, and her foster mum Siobhan. Throughout five seasons, the trio learn from each other, lean on each other, protect each other, and support each other through the really dark times and the lighter moments when they can catch their breath. Maslany’s Sarah and Kennedy’s Siobhan have the most complex relationship on a show filled with them; the actresses dig in, bringing out the women’s brutality along with their deep affection. [Editorial Note from Beth: 100% agree!] Wexler’s Kira has a maturity beyond her young age, yet clearly shares Sarah and Siobhan’s stubborn nature. Besides, nothing says love like Siobhan wielding a shotgun with intent.

Beth’s Picks 👩‍👧 💔🤰🌸🇪🇸

🎞️ Favorite Mom Film: Parallel Mothers / Madres Paralelas [Trailer] [Release Year: 2021]

Why: Nobody does complex, messy, layered mother representation better than Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar. From one of his earlier films, All About My Mother [1999] to Parallel Mothers, he’s leveraged his muse, actress Penelope Cruz, for full emotive effect. Here, in Parallel Mothers, she plays Janis, a middle-aged, unattached photographer who discovers she’s pregnant. The film's crux follows her relationship with another mother, Ana, an adolescent girl of some wealth, with whom Janis bonds as both go into labor in the same room at the same time. [A similar theme narrative is found in the film adaptation This Time Next Year, where the storyline of the friendship between the two mothers of the romantic leads is more compelling than any romance.] As I observed previously, it’s because “the birthing process (and its pain) connects mothers in such deeply therapeutic ways.”

One of Almodóvar’s recurring themes is the sisterhood and maternal bonds that connect women, often single mothers. His characters are expressive, nurturing, reflective, and beautifully flawed. What unites them is their refusal to be confined by convention or anyone else’s expectations. They “live life and are free,” as one telling line from the film puts it. But it’s within the community of women that they truly come alive, because women are, after all, the bearers of life.

Starring: Penelope Cruz, Milena Smit, Israel Elejalde, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Rossy de Palma, Julieta Serrano

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Production Company: Sony Pictures and Entertainment Iberia

Producers: Agustín Almodóvar

📺 Recommended TV Show: The Aussie sitcom The Letdown approaches early motherhood with a kind of blunt honesty and raw sincerity that this incredibly challenging period demands. This show, similar to my film pick above and the film Nightbitch [review here], not to mention CBC’s Workin’ Moms, speaks to the salvation of mom peer groups, with often comic and tender connections in forming friendships there. The Letdown, a double entendre referencing both a breastfeeding term and the emotional “let down” that follows the heavy responsibilities of momhood, also captures the absolute loneliness of becoming a mother, where your partner’s experience is vastly different. Still, there’s this new life you’re inextricably connected to, forevermore, through the transformative act of becoming a mother.

As Brandi Carlisle sings in her beautiful ballad “The Mother” [Listen here]:

Welcome to the end of being alone inside your mind
You tethered to another, and you're worried all the time
You always knew the melody, but you never heard it rhyme…

The first things that she took from me were selfishness and sleep
She broke a thousand heirlooms I was never meant to keep
She filled my life with color, cancelled plans and trashed my car
But none of that is ever who we are

A Final Note

Nothing (no book, no advice, no well-meaning warning) can truly prepare you for motherhood's emotional and mental weight. It’s staggering. Looking back, especially now that my own kids are older and those early years feel like a hazy blur, revisiting that time through these films and TV shows has cracked something open in me. It’s helped me remember just how hard it was, at the beginning, yes, but let’s be real, all the way through, and it's stirred up a deep, almost aching empathy for that version of myself. My little sister just had a baby, and meeting my new niece has pulled me right back into those raw, beautiful, exhausting early days. So maybe, in some small way, this collection is for her. A quiet offering. A way of saying: I see you, and you’re not alone. It also serves as a note to my younger self: Be kind to yourself. It’s a long and sometimes bumpy ride, if you’re lucky.

Let’s Discuss - Sound Off!

What’s your favorite mom-themed depiction in a film or TV show?

Leave a comment

Other Mother-Related Posts:

When life is stressful and you’re wound tight by default, horror is a kind of escapism. No matter what scary shit is going on in the world, getting viciously murdered by Stephen King’s “It” clown, after he dives into your worst fear(s), (spoiler alert: it’s dying) is worse. Period. So when a show can mesh the tension-laden aspects of horror, without too much gore, and make me laugh cynically while giving me expert acting talent that sends my memory bank into an orgasmic recall whirl of “Wait, that’s the [person] from..[some random ass show]”, gosh, it’s a trifecta of perfection. I’m firing on ALL cylinders.

Folks, I give you, Widow’s Bay, starring Matthew Rhys and currently airing on Apple TV+ with 3 episodes released, and unfortunately for yours truly, only dropping an episode a week, or I would have binged it already.

Its Premise:

Widow’s Bay, the titular setting of the show, also doubles as an eerie New England island off the coast not to far from Cape Cod where its citizens exude the ethos of the song “Homesick,” in which Vermonter Noah Kahan matter-of-factly declares:

New Englanders are gruff by nature, and the villagers of Widow’s Bay are exponentially more so. They have reason to be, too. Their island is steeped in horror lore, the kind that would send the average person sprinting for the ocean — even if they couldn’t swim — because somehow that still feels like the safer fate.

Matthew Rhys plays the island’s mayor, a widower and single father determined to bring tourism to the haunted little outpost. He’s tasked with the near-impossible challenge of gentrifying and marketing the antiquated, deeply spooky community to Northeast urbanites desperate for a cheap weekend escape. We’re talking the kind of people willing to overlook generations of ghost stories so long as there’s a quaint harbor, good chowder, and an Airbnb with “character.”

The kid who plays Rhys’ son on the show is the most realistic teen boy I’ve seen on a show in a while and the relationship between father and son is outstanding. I think that’s also down to its writing and direction.

The cast is rounded out by (Somebody Somewhere, Pluribus), Stephen Root (Barry, News Radio), Dale Dickey (My Name is Earl), Kate O’Flynn (My Lady Jane), and of course Halt & Catch Fire’s “Bos” aka the reverend.

And I wholeheartedly agree with this Reddit user’s sentiments on Bos/Reverend actor Toby Huss and seeing H&CF actors on other shows. It’s bittersweet.

In Closing

The show gives Midnight Mass vibes in its remote New England island locale, close-minded villagers/townies, suspension of reality in favor of supernatural horror and religious elements, and a main character to root for. Then again, I think I just described every Stephen King book plot, too.

Related Reading

Half Man is so GADD Good

Many people had beef with Baby Reindeer — a British black comedy and, arguably, horror series about a man stalked by a woman while simultaneously reckoning with the trauma of being sexually assaulted by another man. The kerfuffle, however, was less about the show’s harrowing subject matter and more about the offscreen discourse surrounding Fiona Harvey, who filed a $170 million defamation lawsuit claiming she was the real-life inspiration for Martha, the show’s stalker character.

I was not one of the beef people.

Regardless of the surrounding drama — which, at the time, felt akin to the very public arbitration spectacle of the Baldoni-Lively litigation (or “Livigation,” or “Litagadoni,” which sounds less like litigation and more like an artisanal pasta made of ligaments) — the show itself made for hypnotic viewing. Dark, gutting, and claustrophobic in its opening episodes, it eventually rounded a sharp emotional bend and barreled toward an ending too overwhelming for our hearts to neatly contain.

P.S. The uber-talented wrote a bang-up review/commentary on the show back when it was on that captures pretty much all of my own feelings about it - only more incisive, eloquent, and far more cohesive.

Off on a Tangent with Kate Darracott

Rave review: Baby Reindeer – Netflix

I am not usually drawn to tales of woe, but since starting this Substack I’ve liked to pay close attention to what everyone else is watching, and therefore have been keeping one foot in Netflix’s Top Ten, hoping for another One Day or The Gentlemen…

Read more

2 years ago · 47 likes · 33 comments · Kate Darracott

All of that is to say: Richard Gadd, the creator of Baby Reindeer, is back. This time not on Netflix, but on HBO, with another emotionally lacerating, pulls-no-punches drama centered on toxic relationship dynamics. Only now, the lens shifts squarely onto masculinity and the male gaze, interrogating the ways men perform intimacy, power, resentment, and vulnerability with the same unflinching discomfort that made Reindeer such a difficult show to look away from.

The series centers on Niall, often and mistakenly called “Neil,” a gay teenager growing up with his single mother in a rough pocket of 1980s Scotland. Niall is bright, precocious, and deeply fearful, the sort of kid so polite and anxious that he never corrects people when they get his name wrong. He is, effectively, “the head.”

Enter Ruben: “the body” played by Richard Gadd. The son of his mother’s girlfriend, Maura, Ruben crashes back into Niall’s life when he returns to live in Niall’s bedroom, after a stint in juvie. From the opening episode onward, the show positions his arrival like an incoming storm. Niall, already bullied and perpetually bracing for humiliation, fears Ruben’s return as much as he’s drawn to it.

Ruben is every conceivable red flag. He’s volatile, angry, self-destructive, and damaged in ways that ripple outward onto everyone around him. But he also possesses the ability to protect Niall from the boys who torment him, to make him feel significant, or at the very least visible, in that intoxicating, puffed-chest way teenage boys so often mistake for safety.

Unfortunately, Ruben is also profoundly stunting for Niall. Their relationship traps him in a cycle of fear, dependency, and arrested emotional growth, preventing him from fully coming to terms with his sexuality or developing into a confident version of himself. Ruben makes Niall feel protected and desired, but never truly safe, and the distinction between those two things becomes one of the show’s most devastating insights.

Three episodes in and I’m hooked.

Other Stuff I’m Watching:

• Your Friends & Neighbors S2 on Apple TV+ - Jon Hamm and Amanda Peet make this show incredible to watch. Mid-life “breaking bad” disruption for the 1%ers never looked so good.

• Margo’s Got Money Troubles on Apple TV+ - Just started this David E. Kelly/Michelle Pfeiffer joint production starring Elle Fanning as a college student who gets pregnant by her professor and turns to drastic measures to support her family. Short, fun episodes. Pfeiffer and Offerman are such joys to watch!

• The Audacity on AMC - It’s Silicon Valley meets Curb your Enthusiasm with Zach Galifianakis.

Reading Bits:

• wrote a really thoughtful piece on male friendship and connection. He credited watching DTF St. Louis as being a source of inspiration and deeper thought about his friendships. It’s a must read:

  Earworms and Song Loops

  Lean on Me: Examining Male Friendship in Media, Pt. 1

  Who Needs Friends…

  Read more

  3 months ago · 8 likes · Steve Goldberg

Other Beth News

• In case you hadn’t heard I’m publishing a workplace romance from Empress Editions. SO THIS IS HAPPENING (the name of the book, that is) is headed your way in time for Valentine’s Day. Pre-order link pending. My wonderful publisher updated the Empress website today with this blurb which I’m still all kinds of gushing over.

  

• This past week/-end I had the pleasure of attending Empress Editions (my publisher :) events in NYC celebrating the launch of Fallout by , at incredible book celebrations and lively discussions hosted by and .

• I also got to see ’s talk on the ’s Physical Health panel at Symphony Space. Read more about that here:

  Lastly, I had the pleasure and joy of spending time with brilliant fellow Empresses and and our lovely editor Molly Z. Side note: Any women willing to indulge my chaotic impulses — like sprinting to the Metropolitan Museum of Art at 8:40 p.m. before its 9 o’clock closing just to stare at marble busts and discuss musculature — immediately earn a place on my “friends for life” list.

  

• On May 16th, I’ll be moderating a romance panel in Massachusetts. You should come.

  ---

Thank you for making it to the end of this post. If you like what you see, please leave me a like.

His film is so quintessentially New York and Jewish that it invites comparison to Woody Allen, Jesse Eisenberg, the aforementioned Baumbach, and Nicole Holofcener—the latter perhaps the closest stylistic match. Still, Shear’s Fantasy Life (2025), which won the Narrative Feature Audience Award at the 2025 South by Southwest (SXSW) Film & TV Festival, feels distinctly of its time, following his title character, Ben, as he navigates mental health challenges - a diagnosis of OCD and anxiety with panic disorders.

Within the first ten minutes of the film, Shear’s Ben, who is Jewish, sits in his therapist’s office (played by Judd Hirsch), voicing fears of internalized antisemitism. These fears stem from his intrusive thoughts about Jewish people he encounters in the city, and the harsh things he tells himself upon seeing them (“kike whore,” “hooked nose”). He’s deeply unsettled by what this might mean. Hirsch’s character, full of acerbic wit and pragmatism, matter-of-factly responds by suggesting a different cocktail of medication.

After this scene, the film shifts dramatically. Perhaps it’s Hirsch’s absence for much of the next hour, but the tone becomes slower, quieter, and, in many ways, more raw and intimate. We’re introduced to Hirsch’s son and daughter-in-law’s family, as Ben is offered a job babysitting for them through the office manager, who turns out to be Hirsch’s wife.

Ben’s one night babysitting gig evolves in a more of a “manny” role over the course of a year with him growing closer to Amanda Peet’s character and the girls he’s taking care of.

Amanda Peet is Everywhere (Thankfully) & Depression Sucks

In a very meta turn, Amanda Peet’s Dianne Cohen plays a once-rising 2000s film star whose career stalled around the time she began having kids. She’s married to an aging hipster musician, David (Alessandro Nivola), whose ever-present beanies recall U2’s The Edge, but her own life feels stuck. Their dynamic is staid and, while not unloving, feels under-nurtured, and at the very least, hardly the picture of a “healthy couple.” They speak past one another, and David has taken to day-drinking Tom Collinses, something Dianne keenly and incisively notes is “very goyishe.”

A bout of depression, possibly mixed with anxiety, helped trigger her acting career pause over a decade ago and now seeps into her day-to-day, making even getting out of bed feel impossible. She relies on her parents to take the girls to school, while Ben handles pickup.

Ben quickly picks up on her loneliness and, as someone grappling with his own mental health challenges, recognizes the contours of her depression. They begin watching films and series together. It’s initially innocuous, though there’s a subtle undercurrent: a hint of a crush from Ben, met with moments of physical affection from Dianne.

Side note: Amanda Peet also stars in Your Friends & Neighbors on Apple TV+, where in Season 2 her character’s arc centers on the upheaval of menopause and a career that has come to a defining, shattering halt, forcing her to redefine herself. It’s a serious look at a woman entering her early 50s, trying to find her footing in a community of 1%ers where many wives invest heavily in cosmetic enhancement. It stakes the claim that to age gracefully and retain your features is a radical move in today’s world.

The film plays with the “will they or won’t they” dynamic between Dianne and Ben. His feelings register as a kind of extended childhood crush, while hers read more as a stand-in for the friendship she lacks—as someone who, we learn, has no real friends. The film brings this thread full circle in its denouement, in a beautifully quiet scene with Holland Taylor, playing a therapist (and notably the real-life partner of Sarah Paulson, Peet’s close friend).

“Do you really think your privilege makes you less deserving of care?”

Taylor’s character urges Dianne to sit with that question and to interrogate why she believes it. But first, she has to do the work. Ben does too, though perhaps to a lesser degree. There are no guarantees that Dianne and David will make it, but they remain bound—to each other through their parents, their children, and something that may matter more than individual happiness and that is, their shared tribe.

Beth’s Outtakes

• Anyone catch that Bette Midler’s daughter Sophie Von Haselberg played David’s sister? If you blinked, you have missed her.

• Zosia Mamet’s small scene wasn’t enough. Needed more of her in this!

• The book Dianne is reading when Ben joins her on the couch is a very famous 1946 book by Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl which documented his experiences as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp

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Related Reading

Speaking of deduction, all seasons of David Suchet’s Agatha Christie’s Poirot is out on Hulu (with Disney Plus).

The mystery of Floyd’s death is, in some ways, a red herring as is, point of fact, this show’s premise. DTF St. Louis is really a profound examination of detachment and the search for fulfillment in your late 40s and early 50s. It challenges the long-sold idea that you can spend your entire career at one company and retire comfortably with a sizable 401(k). Even if that path were still possible, the notion that any company would remain loyal to you over a lifetime feels increasingly like a fallacy today. And expanding upon this idea, the fact that one relationship can do the same for you throughout your life, as is the case with marriage. And what constitutes fulfillment? Psychological safety is imperative as is love and belonging, which is where this show does the majority of its heavy lifting.

Warning: Spoilers for DTF. St Louis below

Love & Acceptance

Both Clark and Floyd are operating from the same quiet deficit. Neither feels seen or valued in the place it should matter most, their own homes. Clark’s line in the finale, “I just want to matter to more than a few people,” lands because it’s so revealing. Those “few people” are his wife and kids, the very relationships that should anchor him, yet they don’t feel like enough.

That longing points to something larger the show is getting at and that is the distortion of value in a world shaped by social media. We’re conditioned to equate visibility with worth, to believe that being liked, followed, and amplified by strangers somehow carries more weight than being known and needed by the people right in front of us, because the prospect of that, is untenable - it’s harder. Validation becomes scalable, almost transactional, and deeply impersonal

And yet, the show undercuts that idea in a really meaningful way. For all the characters’ grasping for something bigger, broader, more affirming, it’s the small, intimate moments that actually carry weight. The quiet acts of showing up, the hard conversations, the forgiveness extended when it’s least deserved. That’s where meaning lives. That’s the hard stuff and the fast track up the Maslow ladder.

There’s an irony at the center of it all. The thing Clark thinks he wants, to matter to more people, is exactly what pulls him further from the kind of connection that might actually make him feel like he matters. Meanwhile, Floyd, despite all his perceived failures, embodies that truth. In the end, it’s not the size of the audience, but the depth of the connection, that saves and redeems us.

The lack of external validation is why both make the decision to go on an app called “Down to Fuck.” For Clark, while we don’t have all the details, he hasn’t had sex with his wife in a while and she barely has any onscreen time. They play board games with the kids and Clark seems to be a loving father, but he’s a ghost in his own home, in some ways.

As an aside, in an updated Bechdel-Wallace test, where I added “or kids,” it would seem that Eimy, Clark’s wife wouldn’t pass.

Bechdel-Wallace Test Criteria:

1. There must at least have two named female characters.

2. They must talk to each other.

3. Their conversation must be about something other than a man. (or kids)

For Floyd, the strain at home runs even deeper. He and Carol haven’t been intimate in a long time, but more than that, there’s a palpable distance between them. Carol seems to view him as a disappointment. He isn’t the go-getter she hoped for, and his inability to earn more pushes her to take on a part-time job as an umpire, despite having no real experience, just to help cover their debts and support their teenage son, Richard.

Richard, who is dealing with serious mental health challenges, lashes out in ways that are both shocking and difficult to process. The show doesn’t sensationalize it so much as use it to underline the volatility and pain within the family. Yet what stands out most is Floyd’s response. From the opening scene of them in therapy together, it’s clear that Floyd meets Richard with patience, empathy, and a kind of unconditional love that feels almost radical.

In a world where Floyd is constantly made to feel like he’s falling short, as a husband, a provider, even in his own body, he still shows up. And in that, the show makes a quiet but powerful argument: his worth isn’t defined by Carol’s disappointment or society’s expectations, but by his capacity for forgiveness, compassion, and presence when it matters most.

The Prospect of Being Free to Be You & Me

As we grow older and (ideally) a bit more self-aware, our bodies shift in ways we can’t ignore. Lines deepen across our faces, worry creases settle in beside laugh lines, necks soften, and weight gathers in places it never used to. That’s just the quiet, inevitable work of time. What the show captures so well is how personal that evolution feels for Floyd and also how lonely and isolating it is to feel unloved as your body and mind move through time.

I appreciated how it explores his grappling with those physical changes without reducing them to a punchline. Floyd’s weight, his penile insecurities, and his attempts to take better care of himself become a throughline, especially as Clark nudges him toward healthier choices. But it’s not just about diet or discipline. It’s about identity, control, and the uneasy realization that your body is no longer something you fully recognize or command. The show resists letting that shift define Floyd’s worth.

Reality is Not as Seedy, But Often Sadder (Which is perhaps why we look for external outlets/channels)

The idea of watching two middle straight aged men dance to music stripped down to their tighty whities and one dancing in a more suggestive way while trying to arouse the other just to make him feel good, is not how I saw this show ending, and it wasn’t remotely sexual either. But it does say something how this show challenges our sense of norms, in the best ways, and what passes for happiness - laying out your authenticity for all to see. Let these men dance! And let me eat a pint of ice cream in the first five minutes of Poirot while also side tasking and reading a book. This is WHO I AM. Accept me, Godamnit. Don’t ask me how I have time to watch everything I watch. I’m an ADHD grown ass women wunderkind. But enough about me.

The Myth of the Femme Fatale - She’s Really Just a Tired Mom & Fed Up Wife

Carol’s arc is perhaps the most revealing, which is saying a lot given everything else the show takes on. Early on, she’s framed almost as an archetype, a kind of femme fatale figure in Clark’s narrative, someone seductive, duplicitous, possibly even dangerous with her perky, plump tits on full display at a lawn party which she meets Clark. There’s the insinuation of an affair, the whisper of a life insurance plot, the easy slide into imagining her as a “Black Widow” who might be capable of killing her husband.

But the show methodically dismantles that projection. Carol isn’t a villain, she’s exhausted. AMEN! Her sealed juvenile record isn’t some dark, violent past, it’s rooted in survival, stealing food for her family. And when Floyd dies, there’s no grand conspiracy unfolding. She’s passed out on the couch, depleted after taking Richard to the hospital following another one of his episodes. And the teenage manager of her umpire gig wants to give her an award, not because she’s sleeping with him too or used her feminine wiles on him, but rather because she is really good at what she does and cares about the kids’ success.

What looked like mystery or malice is revealed to be something far more ordinary and, in many ways, more devastating. Carol is a woman stretched beyond her limits, carrying more than anyone can reasonably hold, and quietly unraveling under the weight of it all. If that doesn’t earn her at least $1 Million in Floyd’s life insurance, I don’t know what should.

The Bromance Barometer

In the same way that Heated Rivalry was super popular amongst mid-life women, I wonder if this is a show that resonates more with women than with men, because it’s an idealized interpretation of how men can be vulnerable with one another without any societal norms dominating the dynamic. In the case of DTF, we’re talking about two straight men (with one being a bit more fluid) and in the case of Heated Rivalry, two gay guys. Either way, as I mentioned in a prior post:

What lingers isn’t the murder, but the platonic love between Clark and Floyd. In a show that frames Floyd’s death in a public locker room at the Kevin Kline pool (cause yeah, Kline is from St. Louis), surrounded by gay paraphernalia, choosing tenderness over suspicion feels almost subversive.

That’s the lasting element of the show: its insistence on radical vulnerability and a deeper kind of friendship where men are actually permitted to speak honestly about their feelings, the good, the bad, and the ugly. They name their insecurities, sit in their inadequacies (something women have long been socialized to do), and still find acceptance in one another - and can even develop their own unspoken language to do that, in Clark’s case it was learning ASL so he could communicate with Floyd, an ASL interpreter, on a different level altogether.

There’s physical affection, a growing self-awareness, and a genuine desire to be better, not just individually, but for each other. It’s tender without being sentimental, and raw without feeling performative.

And yet, the show doesn’t let that vulnerability exist without consequence. In a powerful, sobering ending, it suggests that even this kind of openness, this reaching for connection and understanding, doesn’t guarantee fulfillment or stability. In fact, it can strip everything down, leaving them exposed, and in some ways, with nothing.

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Oddly, this show must have been brought to us by Jamba Juice, which made its way into the first half of the season everywhere:

Other Mid-Life Fodder

At eight 30-minute-a-pop episodes, the first season of Big Mistakes equates to 240 minutes of TV viewing which is roughly 4 hours. That’s like one and third movies these days (yes, Barbenheimer ruined it all for us).

Gratuitous link to Barbie review below.

The Premise of Big Mistakes

Dan Levy plays a pastor named Nicky, the adopted son of Laurie Metcalf’s (Roseanne’s Jackie) matriarch, Linda. They live in a New Jersey town that feels like it could double as a setting for The Sopranos, where everyone is Italian. Nicky is the eldest of three siblings. His younger sisters are Morgan (Taylor Ortega), the wild child with glorious hair who tried acting in NYC but now works as an elementary school teacher back home, and Natalie, the Type A sibling who doesn’t quite fit in with Nicky and Morgan but cares for her mother intensely, and I mean intensely. She’s running Linda’s mayoral campaign, because yes, Linda is running for office.

Linda promised herself she would finally do something for herself after her mother, aka “nonna,” died. From the first episode jump, the audience is launched into chaotic frenzy of a hospital room, where Linda is shouting orders, arguing with doctors, trading barbs with her children, and somehow already turning the moment into a campaign stop. It’s intense. Thankfully Linda mellows out a bit as the story progresses because the SHOUTY-ness that frames her existence is much too much.

However, if you can make it through the dysfunction of the first 10 minutes of Bad Mistakes, you’ll make it through the show. The payoff comes in the form of dark comedy, fraught sibling dynamics and connection, mobsters, and crimes of Breaking Bad proportions that make it all the more worthwhile. At its core, it’s a poignant story about family, and the crosses we bear in the name of love (and sanity).

It’s hard to watch this show without comparing Nicky to Levy’s Schitt’s Creek character, David. Nicky feels like a more grown-up version of David, someone who has matured and become less self-obsessed, while still retaining that same sensitive, sarcastic, and hilarious way of being.

But like any actor who has played an iconic, beloved TV character, it can be hard to move on from public perception. Just ask Henry Winkler. He’ll always be “The Fonz,” and likely asked to do his signature “ayyy” even though Happy Days aired more than 40 years ago.

@80s_born_90s_raised“The Fonz” from “Happy Days” being my spirit animal #henrywinkler #happydays #70stv #thefonz #arthurfonzarelli #comedy #relatable

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The Rachel Sennott Effect: Morgan’s Character

Where the show departs from Schitt’s Creek, beyond the obvious Levy and O’Hara parallels, is in Morgan, Nicky’s sidekick sister. In Schitt’s Creek, Alexis begins as fairly superficial, with surprising depth emerging over time. Morgan, by contrast, feels closer to a Rachel Sennott–type character (I Love L.A., Bottoms, I Used to Be Funny, Shiva Baby): more overtly neurotic and impulsive, striking a balance between self-loathing and self-obsession that edges into something darker.

Rachel Sennott co-created the show with Levy, and her influence is clearly felt here. Morgan is the tough yet vulnerable, self-doubting sister, in contrast to Nicky, who is sweet and outwardly kind to others but unkind to himself. He’s also keeping his romance with Tariq a secret, fearing he could lose his job and his congregants if it comes to light.

In Short

The funniest moments of the show come in the second half of the season, where it finds its emotional footing and dramatic rhythm. The cliffhanger finale leaves me hopeful it will return for another season. It also feels like the story is only just beginning to show its full range and there’s more characters to explore, like Elizabeth Perkins (Big, Weeds), whose Celia-esque character, is set up to play an even bigger role next season. And RIP to Mark Ivanir’s Ivan who was so well cast in this as a Russian mobster with a conflicted heart. I will miss him.

Let’s Discuss

• Do you miss SCHITT’S CREEK?

• Do you know how to fold cheese?

• Lastly, have you or are you planning to watch BIG MISTAKES?

• What’s the BIGGEST mistake you’ve ever made? (Joking, you don’t need to answer that)

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Another Excellent Dan Levy Netflix Creation (This one more serious):

The Curiosity Shop Podcast

If you’re interested in organizational psychology, or workplace EQ, chances are you’ve come across the names Adam Grant and Brené Brown. Both have contributed extensive research and published numerous books focused on bringing theory into real-world application, with Brown approaching the work from a social work lens and Grant from an academic one.

Their latest podcast, The Curiosity Shop, available wherever you listen to podcasts, including YouTube, is an experiment in how two people who have previously disagreed on important topics (and are likely to disagree again) can model how to learn from one another’s differences. Their conversations span topics ranging from leadership and vulnerability to conflict, trust, and how we navigate disagreement in the workplace and beyond.

Here’s a note on “metacognition” and some thoughts it spawned based on my own professional experience. I like that my brain was already doing some of this analysis and monitoring work years ago, even when there wasn’t a word to describe it.

Speaking of Workplace…

So This is Happening is HAPPENING: It’s my workplace romance (think Bridget Jones Diary, if Bridget were Jewish and lived in New Jersey) novel! Excited to share that it will be published by the incredible Alisa Kennedy Jones’s Empress Editions. Here’s my most recent passage:

Other Stuff I’m Reading

• At the Intersection of Inner Monologue and Romantic Musings: My Inner Monologue When a Handsome Man Returns My Gaze

  This Was Funny at 2 a.m.

  My Inner Monologue When a Handsome Man Returns My Gaze

  Oh, he’s very handsome. His eyes look kind. His arms look like he could help me bring Costco items up to my top floor apartment…

  Read more

  4 months ago · 6 likes · Michelle Milliken

• Earning even more respect for Wes Andersen’s muse Jason Schwartzman: A Library Card is a Bicycle for your Brain

  Swellspoken

  "A bicycle for your brain" & a few other delight-a-nators

  I’ve been seeing a chiropractor since I was about 8 years old. I was in a car accident around that time (everyone was fine!), but the crash was significant enough to necessitate x-rays of my spine. Turns out my spine wasn’t injured by the accident but was already wonky to begin with thanks to a pretty pronounced curvature, aka scoliosis. I still remembe…

  Read more

  4 months ago · 21 likes · 7 comments · Alyson Mosquera Dutemple

• Your Favorite Classic Bedtime Stories Rewritten for Today: Fun NEW State-Sanctioned Titles in our Library’s Kids’ Section!

  Humor Saves!

  Fun NEW State-Sanctioned Titles in our Library's Kids' Section!

  Dear Chesterfield Library Patrons…

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  4 months ago · 16 likes · 23 comments · Sheila Moeschen

• Cultural Tidbits BTS on the Dark Winds series which I’m finally catching up on thx to a free trial of AMC+: Zach McClarnon on Directing ‘Dark Winds,’ Redford, and ‘Run Lola Run’

  Whatever Nevermind

  Zahn McClarnon on Directing 'Dark Winds,' Redford, and 'Run Lola Run'

  Hey WNVM-ers…

  Read more

  6 months ago · 25 likes · 29 comments · Fawnia Soo Hoo and Whatever Nevermind

Hulu’s sci-fi Lost successor, Paradise, wrapped its season 2 this past week with a truly fitting finale; one that was redemptive, action-packed, and dramatic in all the best ways, staying true to the sophomore-season high that’s kept viewers, like me, hooked each week.

If you’re like me, you might even think this season topped the first which is saying something (less James Marsden screen time, after all). But the more I get inside the minds of creator Dan Fogelman and EP Sterling K. Brown (This Is Us), the more I want to know these characters. In any high-stakes, forced-proximity narrative, you have to be invested in the characters or else what’s the point?

This season introduced us to new characters like Dylan/Link (Thomas Doherty, Dove Cameron’s ex and also co-starred in The Descendents with her), Annie (Shailene Woodley, Aaron Rodger’s ex and also famous from her debut as a teen in the show, The Secret Life of an American Teenager) and of course the sad-but-psycho Gary (Mindhunter’s Cameron Britton) in another chillingly villainous turn here as someone hung up on Terry, Xavier’s wife.

As with any change and my brain’s reflexive disdain for having to adapt to new names, faces, connections in the context of a story, I looked upon these new characters initially as interlopers, feeling protective of the expansive Paradise universe, and rejected them, however I was eventually won over.

Annie’s arc, in particular, as the caretaker of Elvis’s Graceland in the first few episodes was a beautifully told vignette. I respect that Fogelman took us on the offramp here and exposed us to another character and one with lasting ties to Xavier and Dylan/Link, despite her brief existence on the show. The message being: Life outside the bunker, contrary to what S1 led us to think, continued, was tough, and people persisted - well the strong anyways.

Finale spoilers ahead.

So here’s the stuff I really dug in the finale:

Jane & Dr. Torabi

• In the penultimate episode, Dr. Torabi stabs Jane—the rogue agent/ commando-style villain who was basically killing everyone—in self defense. And yes, it happened in the very same shower where Torabi had her first-season steamy shower sex scene with Xavier (Brown’s character). Talk about trauma though because fast forward to S2 finale and that Torabi-Xavier-Teri meet cute where Xavier introduces Torabi to Teri, his wife, as “his therapist.” If looks could kill…Torabi might be gunning for Xavier.

  

  @paradiseonhuluCan't wait to unpack this awkward moment in Season 3. 🤭 #ParadiseHulu

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• Oh and to boot…The beginning of the episode reveals Jane is still very much playing the part of a stabbed, unconscious person on the floor of Torabi’s shower. By the end, poof, she’s gone. WHAT??

  

Sinatra’s Redemption in which Sinatra becomes Samantha Once Again:

• Since Sinatra gave the kill order for Xavier’s daughter, Presley, in a desperate bid to reclaim Cal Bradford’s Wii in season one’s cliffhanger—proof that she hasn’t always acted entirely soundly—she has been on a redemption arc this season. That arc is underscored by the fact that she was shot by Jane in the season one finale and spends the beginning of season two recovering.

• The “Alex” time-space quantum continuum definitely needs further exploration in S3. Arguably, it was one of S2’s weaker plot lines. But based on what we know so far, Dylan—the child of Sinatra and Samantha Redmond, who was believed to have died in a tragedy involving him eating ice cream atop a mechanical pony and collapsing—actually survived in this timeline. He went on to become the leader of the rebels and the bunker outsiders and Annie’s baby daddy. Which means that Sinatra is a grandma.

• Bloody Noses Are a Symptom of the Time Travel (?): Apart from his date of birth matching Sinatra’s son Dylan and his blue eyes, Dylan also shares a penchant for bloody noses with his possible mother, Sinatra. But then, in the finale, X, or Xavier, gets one too. A bloody nose, that is, which blows this theory out of the water. I think it’s more likely a result of the space-time travel.

  And remember Billy, Jane’s fiancé, whom she kills in the first season because she’s the worst? He had bloody noses too.

  

• VISIONS! It took me till the season finale to figure out that Xavier’s season’s-long vision of Dylan/Link leading him out of the bunker was actually a flash forward. I shouted this out loud at the beginning of the finale and was so proud of myself. It’s the small moments, right?

Xavier/X Becomes the Leader of the Free World or Something Like This

• Sinatra passes her bent baton to Xavier/X before hitting the self-detonate button, realizing that Alex has deemed X the one who must save the world. A card marked “AWAITING USER: X” with numbers provides instructions and coordinates to a second bunker under Denver Airport, which houses a quantum computer designed to save the world. So I guess this is next season’s plot…

Paradise Viewers: What did you think of this season?

I know I didn’t write about Jeremy, Cal’s son, and the prisoner’s escape plot, but that story line was good too.

What were some of the other subplots you enjoyed and what were the loose ends that need some tying up? What are you hoping for next season?

Leave a comment

Moving on to DTF St. Louis

The dark suburban mid-life murder mystery DTF. St. Louis, starring Jason Bateman, David Harbour, and Linda Cardellini, is a slow burn, but by episode three you are completely locked in.

Harbour stars as Floyd, a down-on-his-luck but not defeated ASL interpreter who works with Bateman’s Clark who is news meteorologist on the news. The real romance is between the bros - Clark and Floyd - and not Carol (Floyd’s wife) and Clark despite their sexual affair.

What lingers isn’t the murder, but the platonic love between Clark and Floyd. In a show that frames Floyd’s death in a public locker room at the Kevin Kline pool (cause yeah, Kline is from St. Louis), surrounded by gay paraphernalia, choosing tenderness over suspicion feels almost subversive.

The show asks us to question Floyd’s potential bisexuality through an innocent encounter with a gay man named Modern Love, a DTF (Down to Fuck) app user. It demands that we question our own complicity in thinking his double life led to a seedy murder. This is somehow a more convenient truth than the idea that two men can love each other purely platonically, and be affectionate without sex being in the mix.

When Bateman’s Clark says, “I loved him,” under interrogation, and Richard Jenkins and Joy Sunday’s detective characters look at him dumbfounded, making him repeat it, the moment defies all of society’s conventions. Above all, it challenges us even more than the whodunnit itself—the question of who murdered Floyd—which is meant to engross us.

Woman of the Year (1942)

When Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn joined forces on their first film, the workplace romantic comedy Woman of the Year in 1942, as the story goes, they didn’t like each other at first, but within weeks, they were enamored. The good news is we are the benefactors of their fiery dynamic and get to watch it unfold onscreen in Woman of the Year, a gender reversal film, in which Hepburn plays a worldly polyglot reporter, and daughter of a diplomat who was raised abroad, and Tracy, a working class sports beat reporter.

Woman of the Year is classic opposites attract love story and within days or weeks (who can tell?) of them meeting but not really dating too much, Tracy’s Sam asks Hepburn’s Tess to be his wife. The two marry and, as anyone might predict, Tess’s all-consuming work lifestyle and lack of boundaries begin to strain the relationship, only compounded by Sam’s inability to communicate his frustrations. It’s infuriating but surprisingly real—until Tess brings home a Greek orphan in a last-ditch attempt to save the marriage. Her desire to conform to a traditional female role leads her to neglect her career, culminating in a drawn-out scene of her making eggs for Sam that stretches to 20 minutes and could have been done in two. All said, it’s an interesting film, even if the last 40 minutes go downhill rendering the message a bit muddled.

Workplace Romance News

• So This is Happening is HAPPENING: It’s my workplace romance (think Bridget Jones Diary, if Bridget were Jewish and lived in New Jersey) novel! Excited to share that it will be published by the incredible ’s Empress Editions. Catch a glimpse of my editing process and a sneak peek passage:

• If you haven’t pre-ordered the YA coming-of-age romance See Dot Smile, what are you waiting for? It’s a beautiful story centered around Dot, a high school Senior, and her group of friends. It explores friendship, sexuality and love - platonic and romantic. Not to mention the uncertainty of moving on at a tender age. Brought to you by and also being published by Empress! [Pre Order on Amazon]

  

• I’ll be moderating a historical romance author panel, “What’s Old is New,” on May 16th for the Romancing New England & Ashland Library 5th Annual Romance Festival. Sign up. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some reading to do…

Ryan Murphy continues to rule the FX–Hulu universe. While I’m not the core audience for American Horror Story, Feud, or American Crime Story, I was genuinely drawn into Grotesquerie, a dark, often unsettling exploration of religion, penitence, and second chances. It was riveting.

I may have been in the minority, though. The show never quite broke through culturally, aside from the side chatter about Travis Kelce balancing his football career with acting roles and whether the trade-off was worth it.

An aside: The Kansas City Chiefs’ stats in the past season may be evidence in support of it not being worth the hit.

For more on why Grotesquerie is a compelling watch:

Oh L'Amour

When Ryan Murphy’s latest FX creation, Love Story entered my consciousness via IG reels, I was a goner. And when it surfaced on my Hulu feed, I realized I was in need of a full-on ‘90s resuscitation.

The cinematography and visuals for Love Story are arresting.

Exhibit A: The Poster Art

There’s one point in the finale of the show when JFK Jr. and Carolyn sit solemnly in a dive bar after their marriage counseling session, trying to repair the fissures in their marriage. The camera pans out on John sitting slightly pulled in toward Carolyn, knees touching, which reminded me of Edward Hopper’s illustrious, career-defining Nighthawks. There’s an unspoken intimacy in the way their bodies gravitate toward each other, like magnets instinctively finding one another. As the show suggests, the couple was not lacking sexual chemistry or the kind of intimacy shared by two soulmates.

For all that’s been said about the fraught depictions of the real-life figures at the center of this story [Daryl Hannah’s NYT op-ed is a telling read and John John’s nephew Jack, has been panning this show since its inception], it’s worth remembering this is a fictionalized narrative, one that stitches together headlines into a kind of patchwork quilt to shape a nine-episode arc. No one truly knows what was said behind closed doors or in private moments between Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and John F. Kennedy Jr.. As with anyone, the only people who do are the ones who lived it.

That said, make no bones about it: his show is exceptionally well done. The storytelling, the Radiohead–Dido–Massive Attack-infused soundtrack, and the immersive ‘90s analog world all land. It’s especially striking in its portrayal of John’s effortlessly chic Tribeca loft (still enviable by today’s standards) where he and Carolyn move through a rarefied, almost mythic version of Camelot, buoyed by beauty, privilege, and the illusion of permanence.

Unfortunately, outside their doors, the show captures a much harsher reality and that is the unhinged, feral paparazzi circus that relentlessly hounded Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and the way her anonymity evaporated the moment she married into the Kennedy name. As portrayed, that loss of privacy seems to fuel her retreat, and a quiet unraveling tied to a life no longer her own, where even basic accessibility came at a cost. As Carolyn’s intuitive sister Lauren observes, John has already claimed the title of prince and every tale needs its antagonist, inevitably casting Carolyn in this role. Oh, the Camelot metaphors, just keep on coming!

And it’s impossible to view that in isolation. This was the same era when Diana, Princess of Wales died in a car crash while being pursued by paparazzi. Diana was already cast in the role of a fallen princess in media circles who was off gallivanting with lovers and deemed an improper and “loose mother.” It’s an unsettling parallel that underscores just how dangerous that media frenzy had become.

Side note: For a sharp look at the British press and royal image-making, revisit the later seasons of The Crown. It becomes a masterclass in how present-day King Charles, then Prince, in his mid-life years, was consumed with public perception and how “The Firm” worked overtime to shape (and sometimes skew) that narrative in their favor.

Love Story is for you IF:

• You love highly addictive shows featuring highly sellable leading actors who exude the essence (and looks) of the people they are playing, Sarah Pidgeon as Carolyn and Paul Anthony Kelly as JFK Jr.

  

  

• If you were at least late teens during the late 90s, this story really sticks. I was living with my best friend, just out of college, in Boston and caught up in the collective zeitgeist of shock that permeated the tragedy when the crash occurred.

• You have been dying to see Grace Gummar, (the Meryl Streep daughter married to Mark Ronson), as Caroline Kennedy. And boy, she’s tremendous. If it doesn’t earn her a “For Your Consideration” Emmy nomination for her performance as a grieving sister during the finale, than I don’t know what qualifies.

  

• You’re craving the aesthetics of a posh NYC pre-digital life. Feels off-the-grid and natural in the best ways. Folks: I was there. It also meant your clothes reeked of cigarettes any time you left a bar or restaurant. Remember that.

  

• You long for a time when you could saunter into a five-days-a-week office, casually drape yourself across a desk, and get away with an hour of actual work (posing for the CK One ads) and when “functions” were basically synonymous with “work events.” Remote work didn’t exist, folks. And pretty privilege still exists.

Final word: Just watch the show! All episodes are now out on Hulu.

BIG NEWS: I’M BECOMING THE MAIN CHARACTER IN MY OWN SHOW!

Ok, now that I’ve baited you into reading my announcement: It’s not entirely accurate but it’s not inaccurate either. Also, I have dreams of an onscreen adaptation for this, so there’s that.

As many of you know who read I NEED TO WATCH THIS! on the regular, I write about romance quite a bit, both onscreen and on occasion, books. Well, here’s where it’s all comes together:

I am proud to announce my workplace frenemies-to-lovers romance book IS HAPPENING. The book, aptly titled, SO THIS IS HAPPENING is slated to release in February 2027, because as any good Scorpio knows, Feb is the season of love (9 months later and all that).

BRAINY + SEXY WITH A HEAVY DOSE OF VULNERABILITY:

A big SHOUT OUT to and for bringing Becca’s (FMC) story to life, championing it, and creating a nurturing space for me to tell the story of one working woman’s journey of love, self-discovery, and her climb up the corporate ladder. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Following up on Melanie Griffith’s Working Girl, it only feels fitting to drop a fellow working girl Bridget Jones gif here because honestly, it perfectly captures how I felt when I found out when was interested:

COVER REVEAL:

Fellow Empresses &/OR Humans-Supporters (thank you):

If I missed an Empress, pls drop a comment.

Thank you all for reading to the end of this post and your continued support. Now leave me a comment :)

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Post Show Credits: A Few of my Favorite Female “BOSS” Onscreen Characters & A Tribute To All the Romantic Female Leads Who Came Before Becca in SO THIS IS HAPPENING:

• Diane Keaton’s J.C. Wiatt: Projecting hard-working NYC working mother energy in the 80s’, Keaton’s character proved you could be a BOSS while mothering and find romantic love. You just needed to move to a remote VT town to do so and discover a very single Sam Shepard.

  

• Lucy Hale’s Lucy Hutton: In my humble opinion, Lucy Hale, similar to Emily Bader (People We Meet on Vacation and My Lady Jane) exudes smart rom-com FMC energy. In Sally Thorne’s onscreen adaptation of her novel, the enemies-to-lovers workplace dramedy is in full force. Sweet, bookish, and ambitious Lucy is up for a promotion at the publishing company where she works, putting her up against the stone-cold Joshua. It turns out neither is exactly what they seem, and together their chemistry is absolutely combustible.

• Elizabeth Moss’s Peggy Olsen: Mad Men makes my top three shows of all time. Having started my career in tech, at the intersection of publishing and digital, it’s not shocking to me that the 21st century in many ways mirrors the ‘50s and ‘60s when it comes to women in the workplace. Peggy Olson is the working world’s everywoman, and when she finally found romance with the sensitive and thoughtful stud/Art Director Stan Rizzo—after seven seasons of “will they or won’t they” tension—I was literally shouting from the rooftops.

If you’re around my age or older, you may also miss the days when there were half as many nominees and the Academy actually did the work of properly curating the films. Alas, here we are. And no, I won’t be seeing a film about Train Dreams even though I heard the film is fantastic because nothing screams, “I’m so happy I live in the here and now,” more than watching films about the physical dangers and imminent threats of early 20th Century life in the Western U.S. (see Killers of the Flower Moon or A River Runs Through It). Seriously, I want my modern plumbing and in-home bathroom! And I won’t be watching Bugonia, either and not because of the shaved head look on Emma Stone (ha, ha SNL Weekend Update), but because basically even though I enjoyed Poor Things, I’m over Yorgos Lanthimos films, especially as his best one came out over ten years ago now: The Lobster.

So here are the performances and films that I’m rooting for (or at least quietly cheering on) this evening:

Best Actor: Wagner Moura aka Narcos’ Pablo Escobar for The Secret Agent

Make no bones about it. The Secret Agent IS this year’s I’m Still Here [read my stellar review here] and Brazilian cinema is having a moment, that I personally hope lasts, and much of its power comes from how these films foreground human connection and the healing force of relationships against the backdrop of Brazil’s military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985. Wagner Moura is exceptional in playing not one, but two roles in this memorable film that captures the essence of Brazilian life during this era.

Moura’s primary character, Marcello/Armando is a scientist who refuses to play ball with the corrupt, shadowy forces profiting from the regime. It requires a performance built on restraint, quiet courage, and constant vigilance. Moura nails that beautifully.

The Secret Agent is now streaming on Hulu. Overall, the film is fantastic and all of its characters richly carved out and real.

Best Actress: Rose Byrne for If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

This was a tough one, if only because I saw Hamnet and Jesse Buckley’s performance as a grieving mother won me over [per my review]. But then I saw Rose Byrne in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, also playing a mother, coincidentally. A modern one, though, dealing with the hardships and underappreciated realities of being essentially the primary caregiver to her daughter. And mother of mothers, I could not choose. But I have. Maybe Conan O Brien’s unexpected performance in this was the deciding factor or Byrne basically talking to herself for the entire film duration since her daughter was not onscreen. Either way, I have done what the Academy could not with their Best Picture nomination and whittled it down for you on the Best Actress nom. And you’re welcome.

Best Film: Sinners

No other film was as explosively and disruptively different, in that blockbuster sense, than Sinners, which combines a reckoning with the past, present, and future in a way that is fun, celebratory, and serious all at once. The story is compelling, the music and dance numbers dazzle, and the quality is strong across the board. Vampires too. I just want this film to take it, even though, yes, I loved Hamnet as well.

Best International Film: Sentimental Value

Why?

In Summary: Best Picture: Sinners, Best Actor: Wagner Moura, Best Actress: Rose Byrne, and Best International film: Sentimental Value

Oscars Gossip Miscellanea (Cause I’m Fancy with Words)

• Everyone needs to stop the Timothée Hal Chalamet hate over his comments on no one going to opera and ballet anymore. He’s not the cultural voice of his generation. He’s an actor. He was talking to McConaughey for crying out loud. And I for one, am not getting in his way in his quest for Best Actor. That man is committed. He’s method. He’s like if Brando, Brody and Pitt had a child in some throuple hybrid Why Choose? configuration. Leave him be. Marty Supreme, that is. Also, you know it’s bad when Spielberg has something to say about it. [People] But folks, Chalamet will outlive most of you reading this (and definitely Spielberg) unless he does something really stoopid and he kinda is the voice of his generation. So there’s that.

• A 🔥Take: One Battle After Another is not the film that should make the very talented Paul Thomas Anderson (or PTA for short) a Best Director/Best Film shoo-in this evening. Licorice Pizza and Alana Haim, I was there for. This one, was meh, or “mid.”

  Speaking of Alana and a film the Academy showed ZERO love for:

• Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion, the seminal novel about celebrity culture and the corrosive undercurrents of Hollywood, is experiencing a resurgence, as a new generation of readers discovers just how sharply its observations about fame, emptiness, and the machinery of the entertainment industry still resonate today. But did you know it was adapted into a film in 1972, co-written screenplay by Dunne and Didion, and distributed by Universal Pictures? Talk about a meta moment of art and life crashing into one another on a Hollywood backlot, and Anthony Perkins and Tyne Daly (Cagney & Lacey) were in it!

  

  A bonus Didion and Dunne trivia factoid dinner party topic:

  Book Read for Saturday: Highly recommend Come to Dinner: A Life of Food and Friendship with Joan Didion by Sara Davidson, published by Empress Editions and now available for pre-order. It’s a perfect spring palate cleanser in that it’s light, warm, and companionable and with a depth and gravity that with leave you feeling both restored and a little recharged.

Per my GoodReads review:

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“A relationship is not just one person’s personality. It’s the dance between two personalities.” - on the most recent episode of ’s ReThinking podcast which explores “relational intelligence” and how our interpersonal behaviors and emotional expression spill into every aspect of our lives, but notably how this impacts our professional relationships.

The Skinny: This podcast episode and its examination of “relationship baggage” and complementary personalities is fascinating. Understanding our inclinations and being advocates for our preferences can lead to healthier and more successful work relationships. Are you more task oriented or relational? Do you think you’re one but are the other or are you both/and? (wink wink to Industry fans)

The other question is: what do you need in an ideal work partner—or a partner in general? Someone who challenges you, or someone more agreeable? What complements you? There is no universally right or wrong answer, but one tends to encourage more growth than the other. So maybe there is a right answer after all. Sorry, I know that sounds complicated…

A confession: Like Adam Grant, I’m independent-thinking positive (a descriptor, not a judgment!). I naturally gravitate toward helping others, but I sometimes find it harder to be on the receiving end of help and per Perel, this presents its own set of needs. I’m also like Mother Teresa in that we’re both ISFJ - Introverts-Sensing-Feeling-Judging - and yet sometimes I live in data and use it as a comfort blanket to appear more cognitive. Or perhaps I’ve simply been trained this way, developing “dual fluency” and analytical framing skills through 20+ years in corporate business environments and earning an MBA.

Curious if others relate: do you find it easier to give support or receive it?

I’d rather leave a comment.

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Work Relationships ?!?! - You Feel Me Right?

No other CURRENT show blends workplace tension with the baggage of daily life elevated to such a dynamic emotionally charged peak quite like Paradise. Blending themes of trust, the healing qualities of chosen family, and stewing on life’s meaning, Season 2 is proving even more compelling than its first, a rarity in the sophomore slump that shows often take. It’s back for another season on Hulu, and I’m genuinely glad to have this dystopian political thriller, with some The Last of Us vibes, in the queue among the billions of streaming options out there. Right now, it’s the only show I actually want to come back to week after week. Apart from DTF St. Louis, but that’s a post for another time.

I phoned a funny friend and fellow Paradise fan, to contribute some thoughts and if you aren’t yet listening to his podcast or subscribed to then you need to remedy this, pronto.

❗❗Spoilers ahead for Season 4❗❗

I asked Henny the typical triple loaded question in TV/Film analyst circles of what are this season’s hits, misses, and where he thinks it’s all going (cause it’s got to be going somewhere…Unless it’s Lost, in which case it really was going nowhere).

Here’s what he had to say:

Sterling Brown has been a revelation to me. I know I’ve seen him in some stuff before (notably the other Dan Fogelman-helmed uber popular family drama, This is Us) but he is so good. And Shailene Woodley is awesome too.

But therein lies the rub a little for me. I loved The Last of Us and then they unceremoniously killed off one-half of the relationship that was absolutely the heart of the show. I never watched another episode. [Editor Note: Brave choice. I wanted to quit too. And I think I may…Also, per Henny’s inference, Woodley’s character was killed in episode 4, and she was the emotional core of S2, alongside Xavier, so far.]

I have a sneaking suspicion that Paradise is headed down this same path. Similar to shows like Lost and The Walking Dead where the most compelling parts of the show, at least to me, were the quests the characters were on and not the actual characters.

I think that was what was so exciting about season 1 of Paradise: an incredible story, that I couldn’t wait to see where it went, coupled with a super dynamic and watchable lead.

I’m getting the feeling that the show doesn’t know where it eventually wants to finish.

Back to Beth…A few misses for me this season are the prolonged backstories that try to explain why characters are the way they are through parallel storytelling. It’s just too slow. I know Henny and I have kvetched over this and I’ve admitted to the occasional fast forwarding of scenes.

I also miss James Marsden overall, though his appearances in the flashbacks have always worked. Since his character died early in Season 1, he’s really only ever existed in the “before” scenes. One of my favorite scenes from Season 1 is Marsden, the President, in his bathrobe, asking how he can make a mixed tape.

@paradiseonhuluHe just wanted to make a mixtape. 🥺 #ParadiseHulu #JamesMarsden

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I do love Dan Fogelman’s obsession with Elvis Presley and Graceland because I’m right there with him. Fans: Xavier’s daughter’s name is PRESLEY! That was our Easter egg. Even the idea that Shailene Woodley’s Annie, who happens to be a tour guide at Graceland when the disaster hits, could fall for a geeky, hot scientist played by the guy from The Descendants who used to date Dove Cameron, and who knows nothing about Elvis makes me smile (and this isn’t even an Ali Hazelwood book!).

On Topic of Sexual Healing, but without A Lot of Sex

Vladimir rolled onto Netflix with many moans and a whimper. Sorry, could not resist.

Based on the bestselling 2022 novel by Julia May Jonas, the eight episodes fly by at just under 30 minutes each. I binged all of them yesterday while waiting to pick up a child.

The story follows a very #MeToo era scandal involving a popular male English professor, played in trademark rogue cad fashion very Mad Men Roger Sterling style by John Slattery, who is accused of sleeping with several female students. Side note: Slattery’s acting is one of the best things about this show.

His wife, M, played by Rachel Weisz, is reeling from the scandal and trying to clean up her husband’s mess when a hot new professor arrives, played by everyone’s favorite younger man fantasy/thirst trap, Leo Woodall (see Bridget Jones’s: Mad About The Boy and The White Lotus Season 2). M and Slattery’s character enjoy an open marriage which is fraught and M’s complicity in her husband’s consensual affairs isn’t without complication or liability as the show suggests. The lack of binary (good vs bad) here makes for a more interesting, layered and nuanced watch.

In textbook Fleabag confessional, break the fourth wall fashion, M fantasizes and obsesses over Woodall’s titular Vladimir Vladinski and eventually goes for broke when it comes to fulfilling her desire.

The ending is chef’s kiss and a little quirky. Weisz can be slightly annoying at times (maybe the frozen expressions), and the constant need to be alluring, but she keeps you locked in. Admittedly, I fast forwarded through some of the sexual fantasy scenes.

The family dynamic between Slattery’s character and their adult lawyer daughter Sasha is well done, and academia is depicted fairly close to reality, at least from my perspective as the daughter of an academic and someone who has long been on the periphery. It is not a must watch, but it is a fun escapist show.

Cuts Deeper: For women, M’s character highlights the very real invisible burden required to sustain her family, or at least her perception of what is required, even if Weisz’s departures from reality feels flighty and lacking substance at times. The reality is darker and inescapable: a woman’s load and her ability to truly soar in middle age, post-50s life, often demands a complete overhaul of everything she has learned. There is no playbook and sometimes, you need to burn the whole damn house down to start over.

Earning Your Laugh Lines

You With The Sad Eyes: An Audiobook Reco

Highly recommend listening to Gen X actress Christina Applegate’s memoir. Full of the warrior woman/survivor story of a Hollywood legend. She’s incredible. And guess what? It’s not sad. It’s inspiring.

Other Shows I’ve Watched & Enjoyed This Year

• Bridgerton Season 4 - It’s best yet! The Cinderella, rags-to-riches story didn’t disappoint

• Ponies (Peacock) - American women in the late 70s getting their Soviet spy action on.

• All Creatures Great & Small (PBS)- Not an exceptional season but an exceptional show whose season kept pace with its status. Themes: Chosen family, historical drama, cute animals

• Love Story (FX/Hulu) - The Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and JFK, Jr. “love story” show is definitely controversial. Yes, everyone is reminding us it is all fiction—because it is—even if certain elements are lifted from headlines. Just like Ryan Murphy’s show about the Menendez Brothers is also fictional. All of his work takes dramatic license, as Daryl Hannah reminded everyone when she received hate mail for her portrayal on the series. In fact, if anyone could make a case for wrongful depiction or character slander, it might be her. The show really did her dirty.

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What are you watching?

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No, I’m not the new Lady Whistledown but I may as well be. Here to convey some news: The three Gen-X ladies are back at it—Sheila, Ingrid, and moi—joined by the lovely Claire Holden, a self-described “ardent Austen admirer” whose Substack, It’s All About the Words, offers cultural and whimsical excursions (rabbit holes) on topics you will be interested in, if you are reading this.

Last time the Gen X panel swooned over The Summer I Turned Pretty, [dig in] a modern spin on the classic Sabrina love triangle: awkward girl next door, two brothers, an emo shy guy to root for, and a determined, thoughtful heroine worth cheering on. And by “us,” I mean Gen-X women, who’ve embraced this YA hit with fervor not unlike Heated Rivalry.

This time, we’re kvelling over a period drama, none other than the ever-popular, acclaimed Bridgerton on Netflix, based on the Julia Quinn series.

About This Season: Season 4 of Bridgerton delivers a Cinderella-esque love story between Sophie, the illegitimate child of a nobleman, forced to work as a maid for her stepmother, and the romantic libertine artist Benedict Bridgerton, who has no intention of finding a suitable wife until a masquerade ball and a captivating young woman catch his eye.

For the first time since it began in Dec. 2020, the series meaningfully explores the upstairs-downstairs class divide and introduces a heroine who has truly endured significant hardships, giving her a grounded and refreshing perspective within the otherwise elite Bridgerton society.

Why do you like Bridgerton? Have you watched all seasons?

Ingrid: I’ve watched Bridgerton from day one. I love romance, so when I found out Shonda Rhimes was coming out with an adaptation of a Regency romance, I couldn’t wait to see her vision for it. I love Bridgerton’s diversity; its aesthetics, sets, costumes, music—they all come together to make it a groundbreaking show in television.

She: I’ve watched Bridgerton from the jump. I love Regency romance. When I was a tween I discovered a series called The School for Manners by Marion Chesney [See Goodreads], which revolved around two spinsters who, to stave off poverty, go into business refining “difficult” girls to ultimately match and marry during the season. I was a fourteen-year-old kid who knew about the Ton and dance cards and rakes. I was not popular. So I just love the Bridgerton universe and this season was its finest so far, I think.

Beth Editorial Note: AGREED. This season was its finest.

What do you think?

Beth: I’ve watched Bridgerton since the beginning and never looked back, even when the two-year gaps between seasons have felt endless. I will never quit this show. I love it because it is a modern reimagining of the period drama, unafraid to portray intimacy and the real challenges of love, blended with pop flourishes and contemporary sensibilities that foster empathy across cultures and classes. I am here for every ball scene, especially for the Vitamin String Quartet’s orchestral takes on songs like “Never Let You Go” by Third Eye Blind, “All I Wanted” by Paramore, and “Lose Control” by Teddy Swims [listen here]. It gets my brain firing on all cylinders trying to deduce what songs are being played! Oh, and the pageantry and costume/set design, as Ingrid, you mention! It’s breathtaking.

Let’s talk Season 4’s Cinderella story line with Benedict Bridgerton, the seemingly wayward, but always Boho, never serious, “spare” /second born son, and his relationship with Sophie, the smart, kind, and perceptive maid who gets under his skin.

Claire: I should probably immediately declare my Benedict bias—I’ve been waiting since Season 1 to bear witness to his talents, and Season 4 did not disappoint. For me, it returns to the emotional heights of Season 2 but edges into first place because the central pairing is so beautifully matched.

Luke Thompson is an exceptionally strong actor and his delivery floored me repeatedly—the soft, the sad, and the furious (protecting Francesca, my heart!). Yerin Ha meets him beat for beat, so the romance feels like a true exchange rather than a performance imbalance.

Beth: I’m a sucker for a Cinderella storyline, but don’t have a high threshold for intolerable cruelty (and I’m not talking about the Catherine Zeta Jones film, though OK, that too), and bearing witness to the abuses that Araminta Gun, Sophie’s stepmother, inflicted on her was tough throughout this season. Even when you know how Cinderella ends, with her getting her Prince, you still have to sweat through it, and I very much felt that way watching Araminta in scenes with Sophie, to the point that I may have had to fast forward through rather tense moments. To Claire’s point, Luke Thompson is a force, though! And Yerin Ha keeps pace. They got me through it as well as all the other incredible storylines which we’ll get into below (wink wink).

She: At first, I was a little let down by the Cinderella rip-off, BUT they really just used it as a plot device, which was smart. We first meet Sophie as the Woman in Silver at the masquerade ball. She’s out of place, but she definitely belongs. I think that’s the initial, subtle distinction that anchors her character, makes her enormously engaging and interesting, and signals to viewers that this is not a “typical” Cinderella story.

That fairy tale is, in part, about masking and unmasking, inhabiting a kind of real self. In that way, you could say that both Sophie and Benedict are living versions of a Cinderella story: he embraces himself as a bit of an outlier, freer spirit than the other Bridgertons, and Sophie is not only the romantic Cinderella figure, but she begins to understand herself as more than “just a maid.” - She

Ingrid: As a little girl growing up, Cinderella was by far my favourite fairy tale. Nowadays, I am not a fan of the Cinderella trope. It’s one of my least favourites because I’m not a fan of a woman being rescued into better circumstances by a man. Nevertheless, I went into the season with an open mind, curious to see how the show would spin the trope. I think they did a good job. There’s enough resistance to being rescued from Sophie herself. She didn't just give in to becoming a mistress. Even when Benedict agreed to marry her, she still hesitated to give in, despite loving him deeply. She refused the idea that Benedict would have to live a life cast out from his family.

On subverting the traditional Cinderella narrative by positioning women as the ones doing the rescuing:

Ingrid: The season’s saving factor, though, was that in the end, Sophie was rescued by women. Women who all banded together to find a way to sell the love between Sophie and Benedict to the queen. Benedict is saved just as much as Sophie is. Mrs Bridgerton, Lady Danbury and above all, Alice Mondrich all played their part in hatching up a story and performance good, and entertaining, enough to convince the queen to change her mind and bless the marriage.

On the expansive world of Bridgerton (its universe) and elevating the younger Bridgertons:

Claire: The wider world felt newly integrated—the side plots enhancing rather than jarring. Establishing the youngest Bridgertons worked well, and Hyacinth’s ‘definitely not a ball’ dance rehearsal was a joyful, warm-hearted callback to Season 2’s country dance. The Francesca/John and Queen/Lady Danbury storylines were beautifully handled and deeply moving.

Overall, this [season of Bridgerton] felt like a confident return to form that left me emotionally spent and gasping for a rewatch. - Claire

Beth: Agreed. While the central love story this season was epic, it was almost the surrounding pieces that kept me completely entranced. The side stories and broader narrative arcs—especially the exploration of grief (Edward and Violet, Francesca and John)—added emotional depth and resonance. Even the compromising positions of mistresses (cheeky phrasing aside) were brought to the forefront in ways that thoughtfully examined the societal disadvantages they were forced to endure. The result felt layered, charged, and genuinely compelling.

Favorite scenes, storylines and misses

The Wins:

• The moving depiction of the friendship between the Queen and Lady Danbury

  • I LOVED the thread between The Queen and Lady Danbury. I’m tearing up just writing that. If anyone reading this has not watched the Queen Charlotte side chapter, you must. [Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story] It will give you a deeper appreciation for these women individually as well as their friendship. I love that the show continues to evolve Charlotte and allow us to see the cracks in her armor. (She)

  • Like Sheila, I loved the thread between Lady Danbury and the Queen. Theirs is such a tender and deep friendship in a power dynamic that usually wouldn’t have allowed for it. It might be my favourite subplot of the season, maybe even more so than the main romance plot. (Ingrid)

  

• Hyacinth’s Junior Prom

  • We can all relate to come moment in time when you wanted to be so much more grown up than you were and allowed entry into a version of that–attending a grown-up party or going to the movies without an adult. (She)

  • Overall, I really enjoyed the younger sibs, both Hyacinth and Gregory, to lesser extent as he was away at Eton for part of it, getting their due and the beautiful tender moments between boring Colin, who can be sweet, and Gregory as he gave him advice about a girl he liked. (Beth)

  • I loved Hyacinth’s subplot too. I loved her unapologetic enthusiasm for everything marriage and romance. She goes full in. Which contrasts so well with Eloise who outwardly shuns the marriage mart. (Ingrid)

  

• Lady Violet and Marcus Consummating their Relationship and Violet’s New Chapter

  • SPILL THAT TEA - in reference to Lady V and Marcus hooking up (She)

  • I loved this storyline because it beautifully connected the parts of Lady Violet, a long time favorite of mine, who are still grieving her husband sixteen years later (or so, based on Hyacinth’s age), with her growing desire to rediscover romantic love and companionship. Watching her evolution unfold alongside Francesca’s fresh grief after losing her husband, and Benedict’s choice to pursue love beyond society’s prescribed lines and conventional paths, made this parallel storytelling especially powerful. That intergenerational layering—grief, risk, reinvention—was one of my favorite aspects of the season! (Beth)

• Agency and Destiny: Penelope leaving her Whistledown gossip days behind her; Lady Mondrich as “Lady in Waiting,” and Eloise believing more in romance

  • Penelope developing herself as a writer and Alice Mondrich finding her own voice as a Queen’s lady-in-waiting: I loved those two threads, both such good additions to a regency romance, where you’re dealing with the confines of the time and the fact that women’s roles in society were limited. (Ingrid)

  • Speaking of Eloise, this season there was a subtle change in her that fascinated me. It was as though the creators decided to expand her character, to give her nuances. We saw a crack in her complete lack of enthusiasm for marriage that began to show in episode five, when she was watching Hyacinth’s recital. She looked on at the youngsters with a fondness, a sparkle. (Ingrid)

• Sophie & Benedict’s Love Story

  • I love how both of these characters are caring and kind. They are outsiders in different ways and quiet observers, which I think makes them both more emotionally intelligent and attuned. For me, that sets them apart from the other Bridgerton couples in previous seasons. When Sophie observes how attentive Benedict is being to Posey and whispers, “Look how kind he is to her.” That reveals so much of his true character and that she prizes that quality. And in Ep 7 or 8 when Benedict passes her the sketch of his country home, My Cottage, and she takes it out a second time to study it and notices he has changed it to “Our Cottage,--” that was a heart drop moment for me; one of the many ways this season paints in such beautiful character details with the finest of brushes. (She)

The Misses:

• Francesca and John!

  • I could have used less of their storyline, ordeal. Although all of the “pinnacle” anxiety was kind of funny and also, relatable. This season clearly positions Francesca for more turbulence and evolution ahead, but I was a little grumpy that it took oxygen away from the Sophie and Benedict inferno. (She)

  • Part 1 (episode 1-4) and any of the Francesca scenes. I just found her boring. A lot of the focus on part 2 and with her husband, John’s passing made her more human and likable, but still my least favorite Bridgerton next to Anthony. His coming back and giving his older brother advice to Benedict was a miss for me too. Anthony can’t get his ass out of his head long enough to show up in kind and effective ways for his siblings. (Beth)

  • I think the pinnacle storyline went on for far too long. It lasted for half of the season. I was so relieved when the second half started and there was no mention of pinnacle. The only pinnacles we saw were in the hot bathtub scene haha! (Ingrid) - Indeed, Ingrid!👇

The showrunner, Jess Brownell, has teased either Eloise or Francesca for next season’s love interest. Who do you want it to be? (And Brownell has also confirmed Eloise’s love interest is NOT Theo - Sorry Theoise fans…)

Ingrid: I’m not the biggest Francesca fan. So definitely Eloise. Especially after seeing her this season. I haven’t read her Bridgerton book yet, so I don’t know her romance story, but I do hope they pair her with a real hunk. I’m kind of hoping for a love-at-first-sight for her. I think it would confuse and challenge her views on love and marriage in such an entertaining way. I think pairing her with a real rake would be the ultimate match!

Beth: I’m going with Hyacinth because of course I will choose someone not even in the running. But truthfully, she’s who I want, even when I have to wait 6 years for that story…

She: I’d like to see Eloise in the spotlight. Though it’s challenging because we’ve already seen her fumble around being out in the season; she’s declared herself “on the shelf,” but not exactly an option; and we’ve seen a small dalliance play out between her and the printer (definitely not of her class). So they will need to take her story some place a little new. I can see her falling in with someone who challenges her, shares her values and dreams to see the world, but is not initially coded as a romantic prospect.

ELOISE IN FOR THE WIN (2/3):

Best Bridgerton Season:

Beth: 2 (Kate and Anthony’s story, based on author Julia Quinn’s The Viscount Who Loved Me) so far, but the second drop for S4 rendered it nearly tie in the end. Wait, no, I’m a season 4 gal now but wait different tropes - enemies to lovers in S2 vs concealed and mistaken identity/Cinderella in S4 so there’s my loophole. Also Anthony is intolerable making me rate 2 slightly below 4. It’s a wash! But definitely 2-4.

She: I think this season is the best, or at least it’s my favorite. The characters become much richer. There are so many small, but very powerful, moments, scenes, exchanges that add more depth to the characters and the world. The fully realized portrait of Sophie as the Lady in Silver painted by Benedict that closes out the season is another detail that felt so exquisite and moving.

Ingrid: Season 2 was my favourite. Nothing beats the Kanthony chemistry. And although I liked the subplots in the last four episodes of season 4 the most of all seasons, chemistry between romantic leads wins out for me every single time.

Eagle Eyes: Details You Won’t Want to Miss from Season 4

• In the Bridgerton Season 4 finale, Benedict wears a special tie pin featuring a hand-painted kite. This accessory is a symbolic callback to his romance with Sophie (named Baek in the series) at My Cottage, where he repaired and flew an old kite belonging to Gregory. My Cottage is also where he and Sophie fell in love.(Credit: Claire)

  

• Be sure to watch the outtro of the finale - fast forward past the credits for the epilogue! If you’ve gotten this far into this post, you probably know this. (Credit: Sheila. I would have missed it otherwise!)

Romance is in the Air: Related News

• Special thanks and shout-out to for having me on her podcast, Talk Fiction to discuss romance and all its taboo topics, including 🐺 🧑 switch intimacy, soap operas (or daytime serials), and if HEAs are really necessary in love stories. The latter being even more verboten in romance reader circles. You won’t want to miss it! Listen here and if you like it leave a heart ❤️ so others may find it.

  Beautiful, Daring, Stupid

  14 | Big❤️‍🔥Energy

  Welcome back to Talk Fiction, the podcast dedicated to entertainment media’s most overlooked underdogs: Fiction writers…

  Listen now

  5 months ago · 11 likes · 5 comments · Meg Oolders and Beth Lisogorsky

• I’m addicted to Ryan Murphy’s Love Story on Hulu, which chronicles the tumultuous at times romance between John F. Kennedy Jr., a member of that American political dynasty family, and the lesser known (meaning “non celebrity), Calvin Klein PR publicist/fashionista Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy. It’s the other Cinderella love story out there. I’m in it as much for the fashion, playlists, and glossy artifice as for the high-profile 90s love story itself. Nah, I’m just here to listen to Chumbawamba once again. I also love the depiction of ensemble characters like Jackie O, Calvin Klein (aka “Carolyn’s boss”) and Ethel Kennedy. wrote about this show in her latest. Check it out.

• On topic of women banding together, The Last Thing He Told Me, an adaptation of Laura Dave’s novel produced by Hello Sunshine, is back on Apple TV+ for its second season. For those unfamiliar with its premise: It’s a thriller of a ride as we uncover the WHY behind Jennifer Garner’s Hannah’s husband, Owen disappearing and leaving her with his daughter, Bailey, who wants nothing to do with Hannah. If there’s a love story in this show, it’s the mother-daughter chosen family love story between Hannah and Bailey, which continues to grow and evolve in the show’s second season as Bailey gets to know more about her biological mother’s backstory.

For more Bridgerton Season 4 fodder, check out:

Let’s Discuss

• Do you love a good Cinderella story?

• Is Prince Charming ever as interesting as you want him to be?

• Do you remember the first “grown-up” event you went to as a kid on the cusp of wanting to be an adult, yet not quite one?

• If you partook…What was your favorite and least favorite storyline in this season of Bridgerton?

Leave a comment

In no particular order and with some runner ups mentioned:

Hal Wyler aka Rufus from The Diplomat

Hal Wyler, played by the indomitable actor soon to don the mantle of Mr. Bennet in the upcoming Pride & Prejudice (2026), is that incorrigible alpha masquerading as a beta for his formidable wife, the very official, very impressive Ambassador to England.

Their marriage is a high-stakes spy tango that makes Mr. & Mrs. Smith look like amateur hour. Hal can sell you any story with a smile, but you’re never quite sure which team he’s batting for: Team Wyler or Team Hal.

Still, the man is undeniably magnetic, even when he’s being… well, a Hal. We get it, Kate. We really do.

Unpopular Opinion of 1: Rufus Sewell is our Gen X upgrade on Donald Sutherland’s (may he RIP) Mr. Bennet in Joe Wright’s 2005 P&P adaptation with Keira Knightly. At the same time, It makes me feel hella old since I think he still looks like he did 17 years ago:

Related Reading: [Kate Wyler did a Bad, Bad Thing; Keri Russell’s Current Era is Spy/Diplomat]

Don Draper/Jon Hamm from Mad Men or Your Friends and Neighbors

As I’ve said time immemorial, Don Draper is the bee’s knees. Not because he’s morally upright. It’s precisely because he’s not. He’s flawed, slippery, aspirational, self-sabotaging, and somehow still magnetic. A walking contradiction in a perfectly tailored suit.

And Jon Hamm? The undisputed king of bringing these complicated men to life. Not just Draper in Mad Men, but again in Your Friends & Neighbors, where the charm is intact and the moral compass is, as always negotiable.

He’s enigmatic at all times which as we know is a core ingredient of the rake. You can practically see the inner machinery whirring, the cogs turning at full tilt. He understands the rules of the game. He just can’t always resist breaking them. And that tension? That’s the hook.

Related Reading: [Beth’s Top 5 Prestige Shows]

The Oddball Choice: Russ Holliday/Glen Powell from Chad Powers on Hulu

There’s something about Glen Powell as disgraced, canceled, vaguely douche-adjacent Russ Holiday that makes you want to personally oversee his redemption arc. He’s smug. He’s spiraling. He’s “aging bad boy” coded in a way that feels both self-aware and deeply unserious.

Which, of course, is the entire joke when he pivots into Chad Powers—full-send cringe, aggressively cheesy, and somehow… a better human? The hair. The vibes. The earnestness dialed up to eleven. It’s giving chaos-to-contrition pipeline.

Maybe the eventual Russ–Chad merger spells redemption. Maybe it doesn’t. Either way, watching the experiment unfold is half the fun. Low-frills. Easy breezy comedy with a Steve Zahn drop.

Runner Up Rakes:

• Robert from Industry

• Sawyer from Lost

• Not a TV show, but would be remiss not to mention Josh O’Connor’s character, Patrick Zweig from Challengers, a film I otherwise hated, but for him

• Remington Steele (the OG rake)

  

K, Let’s Dish!

• Who is your rake TV or film boyfriend?

Leave a comment

Shows I’m Watching or Have Watched Lately

Unfamiliar on Netflix - Thank you for the reco!

Vanished on a free MGM+ trial

Also: spies and sex or spies and no sex, but that exquisitely fraught, will-they-won’t-they tension, depending on the episode and your blood pressure. Think The Flight Attendant, but not as sharp. Probably because what’s missing here is the secret sauce: Zosia Mamet as the deadpan sidekick anchoring Kaley Cuoco’s glorious chaos.

And then there’s Sam Claflin. Listen. The teeth. The startlingly perfect, laser-aligned white teeth. They are dazzlingly distracting. He’s British. Which means the smile alone is screaming danger, possibly psycho, maybe sociopath, almost certainly not to be trusted. He’s putting on a facade, surely.

Hijack on Apple TV+

Meh. It’s ok. Not as good as the first season. I mean how many modes of transport can you hijack. Wait, don’t answer that question. Please. This season has moved from an airplane to a subway car.

The Last Thing He Told Me on Apple TV+

I loved season one because who among us doesn’t appreciate a thriller where the female lead gets spectacularly duped by her very attractive husband, only to rise from the ashes sharper, stronger, and several steps ahead of everyone in the room?

Yes, she’s blindsided. Yes, the man is a hottie. But what makes it sing is watching her claim her agency so fully that the power dynamic flips on its head. And in the middle of all the mystery and manipulation? She shows up fiercely for her stepdaughter in a way that scream CHOSEN family.

That evolving partnership becomes the real love story. Not the vanished man. Not the secrets. But two women choosing each other and becoming exactly the duo we didn’t know we needed.

Industry on HBO

This one is drenched in finance-world rot: Brit posh mashed up with opaque jargon no one truly understands (least of all the viewing audience, which somehow makes it better). Every season is a full reinvention, with new power structures, new moral sinkholes, and new ways to feel unsettled. Season 4 is currently in motion, and yes, somewhere a literal or metaphorical gong is being struck. You feel it.

And when it comes to tense, electrifying relationship dynamics, father–daughter, boss–subordinate, mentor–monster, the Eric Tao / Harper Stern pairing is the modern-day Don Draper / Peggy Olson.

Charged. Cruel. Co-dependent. Brilliant.
Pure television genius.

Let’s Dish!

• What are you watching?

Leave a comment

Upcoming Post Reveal

Next week, I will be joined by my fabulous Gen X ladies who dish on pop culture with me, and , as we rap battle our end of season review of Bridgerton Season 4. Just joking. I can’t rap.

Catch up on the following fun reads to get you in the mood for love and sin or lovely sin:

🎙️ Podcast News

This week, I had the privilege of joining the talented romance author of the soon-to-be-released See Dot Smile on her Talk Fiction podcast [link here] to dive into all fun things romance, including my other life as an avid romance reader and book club host. Meg and Dish about HEAs and HFNs, pretty much a taboo topic for any romance reader, but we go there. Can’t wait to share with you the episode!

Beautiful, Daring, Stupid

A mercurial space for fiction (poetry, humor, essays, podcasts) and honesty from award-winning author, bona fide super-romantic, and critically-acclaimed mother of two, Meg Oolders.

By Meg Oolders

My New Favorite Emoji - Credit:

🫠 = Melting Face. Often attributed to feelings of shame, anxiety, and fatigue in response to overall life stuff.

I was already fully aboard the Jacob Elordi train (drooling and all) back in the The Kissing Booth days when he was still dating former child star Ramona-Joey King, his romantic lead in the series, because of course chemistry art intimated life. And yes, the “drooling” reference is deliberate: it’s a direct quote from the first film, when Elordi’s character’s brother tells his best friend (King’s character) to stop drooling over his older brother. Consider this my long-standing credibility check on Elordi lore. And yes, I avoided Euphoria, because that stuff is too dark, but mostly here for the rest of his stuff.

Love Actually Listicle

This category is for all the unrequited love tropes that either get their HEA (happily other after) or experience some sort of life-altering catharsis. It often involves one character that has been pining away and harboring deep romantic feelings for his/her friend. Cue Andy Lincoln in Love Actually:

And really, Kiera, you should have left your hubby. Unpopular opinion of one.

One Day (2024, Netflix series adaptation)

Right person, wrong time. Friends-to-lovers. Class differences. And time travel—well, sort of—in that the story unfolds over many years, from Dex and Emma meeting at uni (that’s Brit for “university”) all the way through their 30s.

Quasi Tragic Ending: You need to see it to believe it.

This Time Next Year (2024, Paid watch)

Based on the glorious Brit romance author Sophie Cousens, this story follows two fated people, born on January 1st, who orbit one another over the course of their lives. Friends-to-enemies-to-lovers, yes, but also a beautiful tale of platonic love and friendship, including the relationships between their mothers. Don’t let the low IMDb ratings dissuade you. This one’s a keeper.

P.S. Book lovers - Sophie Cousens latest book is a love triangle involving a humanoid and it’s SPECTACULAR (all caps).

Read about This Time Next Year here

The Materialists or Past Lives (from the Celine Song vault):

Burn-it-ALL-Down-for-Love Listicle

If “Bad at Love” by Halsey is playing in your head as the unofficial soundtrack to this list, you’re exactly right. This one’s dedicated to the toxic, ugly, yet undeniably poetic kind of love—the kind powered by damaged characters we know we shouldn’t relate to… and somehow still do.

The Beast (2023, Paid watch)

Hoping to eliminate pain caused by their past-life romances, Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) continually falls in love with different incarnations of Louis (George MacKay). Set first in Belle Époque-era Paris Louis is a British man who woos her away from a cold husband, then in early 21st Century Los Angeles, he is a disturbed American bent on delivering violent “retribution.” Will the process allow Gabrielle to fully connect with Louis in the present, or are the two doomed to repeat their previous fates?

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004, Disney - because yeah, why not?)

The Jim Carrey–Kate Winslet tragi-romance of the early aughts remains one of the most prescient AI-inflected love stories of its time. It’s a melancholy, mind-bending exploration of memory, regret, and emotional erasure born from the inventive hivemind of Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman. I still think about this one 20+ years later.

Ten Things I Hate About You / Taming of The Shrew - Subcategory

Naturally, the top Apple TV+ show of the year, Pluribus, comes immediately to mind when I think about the things I claim to hate—but secretly love—about one woman’s attempt to make sense of (and find happiness amid) the end of the world as she knows it.

Spoiler alert: Carol does not feel fine, despite what R.E.M. once promised us. Her wife has just died and she is lonely. And that’s precisely the point. The show interrogates the parts of ourselves that make us human, asking whether happiness actually requires the elimination of our darker instincts like anger and resentment or whether those impulses are inseparable from any honest version of being alive.

Other Films in this “All Consuming” and “Love is Ugly Beautiful” Genre

Classic Love Listicle

Often embodying a savior component, including the popular Cinderella or the Cinder-dude equivalent meets Prince/-ss Charming, and mostly, just good old fashioned love - the kind with concealed identities and love triangles we relish, of course.

Roman Holiday (1953, Tubi)

What’s not to love about the story of hidden identities and how the course of one day can alter the trajectory of your life. The film stars a 23-year-old Audrey Hepburn as Princess Anja/Ann of some European country and Gregory Peck, as American journalist Joe Bradley, who is on to her. I covered it in a [Romance Film Club in October 2024]

Now, Voyager (1942, Tubi)

From last year’s V-Day roundup

Bette Davis, plays Charlotte Vale, a traumatized “spinster” born to a wealthy New England family, with the misfortune of having an abusive mother (Gladys Cooper) who seeks to keep her down. A kind psychiatrist (Claude Rains) and a benevolent sister-in-law (Ilka Chase) conspire in the best of ways to get Charlotte out of the grips/talons of her mother and into a healthier environment. The result is transformative, and as any good love story will teach you, where self-worth/self-love blossoms, so does romantic love. As Charlotte befriends a married architect named Jerry (Paul Henreid), and the two discover what it is to be truly understood and seen.

A side note: Paul Henreid, Davis’s lover interest in Now, Voyager, also played Victor Laszlo in Casablanca, that other well-known love triangle film. Heinreid is dreamy so I’m not feeling too bad Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) ended up with him. Besides, if we’re being technical, Casablanca is a quadrangle romance involving Louis, Rick, Ilsa and Victor. So, you’re welcome for the video below:

An Affair to Remember (1957, Paid Watch)

Nick Ferrante (Cary Grant) and Terry McKay (Deborah Kerr), star as the substitutes for Boyer and Dunne from the original Love Affair (1939). At the start of the film, they are both engaged to other people. But they fall in love during a European cruise as they endure the pressures of pesky paparazzi.

Read more here on the recurring themes of love, missed connection, and the role technology plays in both bringing couples together.

Sabrina (1954, MGM+)

Forget the part where this Audrey Hepburn - Humphrey Bogart film solidifies the romance triangle genre of “Cinderella” meets her match, but the twist here is Prince Charming is anything but charming, as Bogart does his best as Linus, the practical, reliable brother to William Holden’s playboy that Sabrina is initially attracted to. If there wasn’t a Sabrina, Summer I Turned Pretty, that addictive YA love story, would never have been. Watch the OG Billy Wilder directed original.

Bridgerton, Season 4 (2026, Netflix)

This headline below says it all. Now that have it the hidden identities are revealed, will part two, coming out in two weeks resolve the class disparities so Sophie and Benedict can find their ever after?

Musical Notes About Breakups

A now a word from our sponsor re: the love story between singer Paul Simon and actress-writer-comedian-Princess Leia-all around talent Carrie Fisher and how being written into a Simon song is #endgoals:

Related Love Notes

One of my first posts on Substack (Feb, 2021)/ Happy 5-year Anniversary to me!

Leave a comment if you do love the way I do. I mean per this post, of course. And naturally, give your nominations and recos for these categories:

• Love Actually/Unrequited

• Burn it all down for Love/Bad at Love

  • Including Sci-fi twists

• Classic Love

Leave a comment

Tip: To see any of these movies for free, check out Kanopy first to see if they are available. Kanopy is a free video streaming service offered by the library that provides instant access to thousands of critically acclaimed movies, documentaries and Kids favorites.

I digress, but not really, so read on. In Matt Ross’s 2016 family com-drama Captain Fantastic, now streaming on the library app Kanopy, the quiet and soulful Viggo Mortensen plays the patriarch of a large family living off the grid somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. He has enough kids that at one point I was convinced two of them were the same child, but, in a Sound of Music Von Trapp children style, the film ultimately gives each one a distinct personality and just enough screen time to flesh out their individual traits.

If the name Matt Ross sounds familiar, it’s because he also played Gavin Belson on HBO’s tech satire Silicon Valley. Belson was a hyperbolically unlikeable CEO, a thinly veiled Jobs-esque figure (see, we got there!) whose unchecked ego was memorable. Ross’s own experiences growing up in alternative living communities inspired the film.

Like the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, the mother in Captain Fantastic, Leslie, is dead, her absence shaping everything that follows, including their excursion to the outside world on a road trip to the SouthWest to attend her funeral. The circumstances of her death add weight to the film’s emotional gravity, leaving no Julie Andrews–style stand-in to restore order. Instead, we’re left with a father trying to hold his family together, reckoning with what must change in order for them to survive while still preserving the values they were raised on.

Those values are uncompromising: a communal, off-the-grid existence; no technology; education shaped by nature rather than institutions; a steady diet of the classics; political literacy; and a deeply anti-capitalist worldview. The film’s anti-tech stance feels strikingly of-the-moment, aligning neatly with the Jonathan Haidt (The Anxious Generation) worldview on child-rearing and the psychological toll of social media and technological overexposure. What’s remarkable, though, is its prescience: Captain Fantastic arrived at least five years before Haidt became a household name and nearly eight years before his book crystallized those anxieties into a broader cultural reckoning.

The film opens with the eldest child, Bodevan (George MacKay), named, as he later explains, because all of the children’s names are deliberately unique, immediately signaling that this is a family operating by its own rules. Camouflaged in mud, Bo prepares to hunt a deer using a knife rather than a gun. He succeeds, and his father marks the moment not as spectacle, but as ritual, less about conquest than initiation, ushering Bo into adulthood according to a belief system entirely their own.

While Viggo’s character, Jack, can be polarizing as times with his convictions and determination unyielding, there’s a lot to be said about the discipline and mental and emotional rigor he demands of his children. He’s preparing them for a world in which they will need to be strong, in all aspects, and it’s admirable. They are respectful, incredibly fit, collaborative, and as a family, for the most part operate as unit, connected by love and beliefs. They are eccentric, quirky, knowledgeable and yet confident.

As the film’s cover art suggests, however, one thing missing from Jack’s otherwise rigorous education is social exposure to the outside world. When the family does encounter it, modern society is rendered in near–Wall-E fashion: people anesthetizing themselves with food (It’s 2016; well before GLP-1s entered the chat), an endless stream of violent video games, and a pervasive discomfort with honesty.

In one scene, the always-excellent Steve Zahn responds to his child’s question about how his sister-in-law Leslie died by offering a softened euphemism—“sickness”—and a vague explanation that people get sick and die. Jack, by contrast, gives the child a direct, clinical account of Leslie’s diagnosed illness (bipolar and manic) and what it meant, refusing to sugarcoat reality. His sister (Kathryn Hahn) is horrified. You can’t tell kids these things, she insists.

Therein lies the film’s central parental debate. Jack does not believe in euphemism or avoidance. When one of the younger children asks what sex is, he offers a straightforward, scientific explanation—no embarrassment, no moral panic, no theatrics. Just facts.

The question the film keeps circling is whether this radical honesty is a form of care or its own kind of harm.

On the highway south to Leslie’s parents’ house, Jack drives past a mall, the children watching with visible intrigue. He shares a somewhat misunderstood (context is everything) quote from 1920s pro–free market president Calvin Coolidge—“The chief business of the American people is business”—using it to distill his own disdain for the shopaholic “lazy” life. The film frames the desire for something different as an act of resistance, and as the triumphant and moving ending suggests, it is far from futile.

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An indecent proposal is one Benedict Bridgerton, this season’s romantic lead in the popular Netflix staple Bridgerton, knows well. As the resident rake and someone who would have absolutely thrived in the 1960s free love/group sex era (that happened, right?), Benedict is the classic “spare” second son. Unlike his older brother Anthony, all pent-up sexual energy sprung from a Martin Scorsese Wolf of Wall Street fever-dream pitch, Benedict is the less serious bon vivant artist type—more sensitive, more curious, and perpetually bucking against the societal norms that have long held sway in Regency-era Mayfair. Think Prince Harry with the older-woman “young stallion” story regarding his virginity. That tracks with something that happened to Benedict too. Or better yet, think Harry in The Buccaneers and the whispered, lurid story of his governess. Come to think of it, that parallel might not be accidental.

Benedict’s life leading up into this current season makes for a compelling subject for this show because who doesn’t want to reform a rake? At least, in romance terms. Reforming the rake is its own sub-genre of romance and I’d even venture to say, a sort of kink. Don’t dial Ana Huang on that one. We’re not talking dark romance, a la 50 Shades of Grey, though Benedict, adorned in his black pirate-looking Andy Gibbs-chest baring suit in this photo still above befits the description.

So who better to reform Benedict than someone who can call him out on his BS? Enter Sophie Baek, the aforementioned Cinderella: the unfortunate stepdaughter of the tyrannical Lady of the House, Araminta Gun, and her two daughters, Rosamind and Posy Li—the latter being the kinder, more Sophie-sympathetic of the two. In this telling, Sophie, an overlooked and “invisible” figure in British society due to her status as a maid, and a mistreated one at that, dreams of attending the Bridgerton Masquerade Ball, just to take in the fete and all its grandeur.

Sophie, unlike most maids of the time, is educated, can speak a few languages and is well-read as her father insisted she learn alongside her stepsisters.

Translation: Sophie can quip, sound posh, and act refined (and reserved) with the best of them, or at least comparable to Audrey Hepburn as a chauffeur’s daughter in Sabrina.

Here are a few of the ways in which the season delights so far and makes it a standout:

• It’s its most socially aware and socially conscious season yet.

  • The fact that Benedict would be attracted to a woman from a lower social class is neither surprising nor particularly inspired, as far as story goes. What is new, however, is that this is the first time the lead couple includes someone who isn’t from an elevated social class. There are still rules and a strict hierarchy of rank for Sophie: while her lineage may technically lay claim to her being a Lady by virtue of her father’s position, she has been and is treated as a maid, and worse than one, by her stepmother and at least one of her stepsisters. Benedict is guilty of this, too, as he pursues her as a mistress after admitting how much he desires her, but he is also a product of his time and what he knows. As he observes his brother, Anthony, and a good friend, both have or had mistresses, and they are otherwise decent men.

  • The Maid Wars subplot: Sophie being fired by Araminta Gun unknowingly ignites a war for maid talent as ladies scramble to staff their households. The show’s handling of this delicate topic gives bargaining power and much-needed attention to maids and the downstairs crew in a distinctly Gilded Age/Downton Abbey way. It also smartly ties the conflict to the upstairs set, like Lady Featherington, who remains completely blind to her maid Farley’s actual needs, offering her dresses in lieu of a raise. Where, exactly, is she supposed to wear society gowns?

• Lady Danbury’s and Queen Charlotte’s friendship is dynamic and interesting, especially as it highlights the power of mature female friendship—two women who have effectively grown up alongside one another, with one now ready to leave the nest, and how their relationship has to evolve. Hats off to Adjoa Andoh for her portrayal of Lady D, a fierce, vulnerable, and complex former Lady in Waiting for the Queen, who also does double duty as her confidante and dear friend. I could watch this friendship forever.

• My Favorite New Character: Hyacinth. She may be her sister Eloise’s polar opposite in her desire to be the pick of next season’s ball and her eagerness to have a household of her own, but she has emerged as the Bridgerton sister I want far more screen time with. She’s bold, smart, and self-possessed and can hold her own with her very opinionated older sister, Eloise. Go H!

  

• The Character Most In Need of a Reboot: Eloise. The best scenes with her are when we witness the two Bridgerton “black sheep” siblings - her and Benedict on the swings, commiserating but also having each other’s backs. The least interesting scenes with her so far this season- every other one.

• Representation of a Quieter Love Takes Center Stage. Francesca, that other Bridgerton sister we barely knew existed prior to Penelope and Colin’s season, not only usurped their love story, but is now taking up valuable screen time that could have gone to the Sophie–Benedict (Sophedict? Benephie is better.) romance, which is unfortunate. While I deeply appreciate showrunner Jess Brownell’s creative choice to spotlight a non-conforming couple within a show whose entire conceit depends on lusty, steamy scenes transpiring between fiery couples like Pen and Colin and Kate and Anthony, and I respect Francesca’s sexual journey and her more vulnerable discussions around reaching “pinnacle” (or orgasm, in today’s language) with Lady Violet and Penelope, she and John are just so damn boring.

  

• Lady V (or Violet) Loses Her V-Card (Again) in A Very Second Chance Romance Beautiful Story. This whole storyline is the gift that keeps on giving. Go Violet Bridgerton. Your mostly grown kids can take care of themselves for an evening every once in a while and mama has needs that need tending to.

Between the Pages & Sheets (This is Bridgerton, After all)

In the Bridgerton book series, Sophie and Benedict’s story is book #2, meaning it takes place before Penelope and Colin’s season, unlike the Netflix series, which presents Penelope and Colin as an already established couple, firmly in the throes of honeymoon rapture, dry humping in carriages on the way to brunch with the Colin’s sister, per the current season.

In Julia Quinn’s novel, another plot diversion from the show is the time between the masquerade ball and Benedict rescuing Sophie at the country estate of his friend is far more pronounced. In fact, two years pass, which is not the case in the show. While some time clearly elapses on screen, it is definitely not two years.

The novel isn’t particularly spicy, but as this series goes, the show must deliver. The steamy scenes in the first four episodes of season 4 are hot, the hottest involving Sophie’s lingering gazes at Benedict during his skinny-dipping excursions at “My Cottage,” the Bridgertons’ country estate (because this family’s wealth knows no bounds) and a subsequent salacious kiss. Perhaps the real high point? Benedict’s abs, because clearly someone’s been working out. And yes, of course the climactic scene, pun intended, on the staircase, when they got to 3rd base and Sophie reached orgasm. Francesca: Take notes, dear!

Romance Fodder

• Emily Henry’s People We Meet on Vacation on Netflix got me through January. I watched it multiple times. It’s such a fun, yet emotionally grounded rom-com that it made me a rom-com believer again. Plus, as the lovely and talented pointed out, in a very full-circle moment connected to this post, there’s a Gilded Age link: Tom Blyth, one half of the love match in PWMOV, previously played a minor character as one of Gladys’s suitors. (His name was Archie Baldwin and he should not be confused with season 3’s Billy Carlton, whom Gladys actually fell in love with and who had a more material role.)

  

• Dirty Dancing reboot - has all the goods on this one. I’m mixed about this film happening as I’m sure many OG film fans are about the prospect of bringing such a quintessential 80s rom-dram flick about love in the 60s in the Catskills to a modern 21st Century setting but alas, anything to get people to watch this classic, will be for the greater good. I, am fancasting already for Swayze’s irreplaceable Johnny Castle’s grandson to be played by Heated Rivalry’s Connor Storrie, a fellow Texan. I should note that I have no idea if there is even a grandson in the plot. I’m just trying to connect dots.

  

For When You Finish Bridgerton: A Perfect Story

A Perfect Story is a Spanish Netflix limited series (five episodes) and a fake-dating romance featuring an economically divergent couple: Margot, a wealthy heiress with grand ambitions, and David, a nice-guy florist juggling three jobs just to make rent. They pretend to be dating to win back their exes. The acting, story and ending are chef’s kiss and may just be the antidote to all the tundra-like weather the Northeast is experiencing at present.

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Eleanor immediately dismisses the class after enduring one particularly off-key performance, but in the hallway she encounters Vera, a Holocaust survivor who mistakenly assumes Eleanor is there for the Holocaust Survivors Group. (The casting here raises a brief eyebrow—the majority of the group appears closer to 60 than the 80-plus survivors they would need to be—but the scene otherwise unfolds as expected.) Eleanor, who we already know is prone to fibs and white lies, (“harmless,” according to Bessie earlier) hesitates, then begins telling Bessie’s story as if it were her own. The film lingers just long enough on Eleanor’s internal struggle to register the weight of the lie before she commits to it.

It’s this impassioned retelling, Eleanor speaking, but Bessie’s story, that draws the attention of Nina (Erin Kellyman), a journalism student still reeling from the death of her mother, also Jewish, six months earlier. Nina urges Eleanor to let her interview her for a piece she’s working on. Eleanor resists at first for obvious reasons, but a tentative friendship forms between the two women, each unconsciously filling the absence left by grief: Bessie for Eleanor, and Nina’s mother, Jeanne, for Nina.

Lying Becomes Connection

If the film makes a hypothesis of any kind, it’s that loneliness can drive people to act in ethically questionable ways.

The film’s trailer makes a big hullabaloo about the lie, which of course is horrific especially given the existence of Holocaust deniers and those seeking to discredit that extermination of 6 millions Jews ever happened. It’s morally shaky ground given our times, but the film itself is more ensconced in the actions we pursue in response to the pain of loss.

Eleanor, in the wake of a spiritual rebirth, chooses to pursue a Bat Mitzvah, a rite of passage denied to her in Bessie’s story, now claimed as her own. Drawing a parallel between religion and purpose, Eleanor’s Torah portion for her Bat Mitzvah is a story which mirrors her own circumstances through the story of Jacob and Esau, which coincidentally is built on questions of birthright, substitution, and moral ambiguity.

Holocaust Films

Director Scarlet Johansson’s debut film is impressive. It’s ballsy. Taking on the Holocaust is not an easy subject matter for a first film, let alone one in which our protagonist lies about being there. While watching the film, I thought of the recent wave of Holocaust heritage films, like A Real Pain, which I adored [See here], Lena Dunham’s Treasure, which missed the mark but was saying something more profound and comical about about intergenerational processing of grief.

These films tend to orbit the same fault line: those who survived and fiercely avoid the past, and their descendants, who sit in silence trying to trace the outline of a gruesome history that has shaped their parents or grandparents into who they are—fearful, resistant, emotionally detached, and avoidant.

Eleanor the Great keeps the pain of the Holocaust present and urgent through the lives of its living, and recently deceased, characters, underscoring the prescient reality of a future without surviving eyewitnesses. The film argues that while firsthand testimony is irreplaceable, what becomes essential is the continued existence of messengers willing to carry these stories forward.

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Low Stress and High Comfort TV

All Creatures Great & Small is back on PBS, and it’s glorious escapist television in the best sense. Families, animals, and small, human-scaled stories of courage and vulnerability unfold against the rolling Yorkshire farmland of the 1940s. It’s television as a warm blanket, steeped in kindness and quiet resilience.