I’ll save my “highly anxious thoughts and feelings about impending doom” post for another time. This one is all about the things you can do to pretend for an hour or two (or 100 hours, if you do some of these right) that things are not completely and utterly fucked up right now.
Grab a pink drink and get comfy with a cat — we might be doing this for a while.
THINGS YOU’LL NEED:
- HBO NOW/GO/MAX/WTF
- Amazon Prime
- Netflix
- Hulu
- May as well add Disney+
- A gaming system
- A wine glass
- A beer … glass?
- Plenty of space to stack books
- Plenty of time on your hands (HAHAHA)
WHAT YOU SHOULD WATCH/PLAY/READ/DRINK, IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER YOU CAN TOTALLY DO THE ALCOHOL THINGS FIRST
(ALSO THIS LIST IS PRETTY SKEWED TOWARD RECENT-ISH DISCOVERIES, I HAVE MANY MORE SUGGESTIONS):
The Sims 4 (your fiancé’s PS4)
Okay, let’s say it — The Sims is the shit. The first time I said sul, sul to this virtual world was… middle school? I can’t pinpoint the exact date, but I can see an exact moment: my sister Emily and I used to have to “take turns” per our mother’s direction and could only play in 30-minute intervals. This is actually hilarious, because if you’ve ever played Sims, you know that the loading screen lasts at least 10. And then, by the time you got everyone up and moving, somebody caught on fire using the cheap-ass microwave, somebody else was late to work, Bella Goth came over uninvited and broke your toilet, nothing got accomplished and then it was your sister’s turn. We fucking loved it and played that game until the disc disintegrated and then it came out on Playstation.
It’s obviously different as a grown-ass adult, but, listen, this game is fun and I don’t care if you judge me and my human Sims named after my cats. It’s easy to lose half a day trying to make the neighborhood hottie (or at the very least mediocre best pick) fall in love and then marry you so you can claim him and finally make him change that horrible haircut. Also, there is a PETS expansion pack and I made a digital pair of calico cats who act so much like my real calico cats that I am wondering if this isn’t Sims after all but maybe Black Mirror.
(At one point this was free to download? If not: rosebud rosebud rosebud IYKYK.)
Brooklyn 99 (Hulu)
Okay, okay, okay I know. Cops = bad, but Brooklyn 99 = good!
When Ryan and I first started watching this, it was before a pandemic and the (overdue) reckoning of the Black Lives Matter movement. There are PLENTY of things to discuss about cop shows, and especially good cop/no bad cops shows like this one. And really, I was never a cop show person. I am just a Michael Shur/Greg Daniels show person, so I wanted to watch this and, at the time, didn’t put much thought into the workplace part of the workplace comedy.
Before I gush about the show, it’s worth noting that good news: the cast is way more diverse than most cop shows; but bad news: they do 100% gloss over any animosity toward the police. There’s an arc where the captain is demoted briefly and has to join the PR department, and it’s 2013 and they’re like, “how do we get people to like the cops??” but just because of the vague notion that cops can be “intimidating” or “scary,” not because they are racist monsters murdering Black people. So, I get it. They have work to do. I read that they scrapped the upcoming season to Actually Address This, which, yes, is late to the game. But at least it’s happening? All that being said, it’s understandable that you might not want to binge a cop show right now. Feel free to skip ahead because, spoiler, there are more TV options.
But if you can get past the COPS of it all it is….
SO GOOD. Like, SO GOOD.
I’m going to say something pretty controversial, but: it’s better than The Office…and it’s better than Parks & Rec.*
Stay with me, people who were born between the years of 1985 and maybe, like, 1994? Ish?
Brooklyn 99 is consistently funny. Like, I think I LOL-ed at least once every episode — and there are SEVEN seasons. It is impossible to stay that good for that long (see: The Office). The characters are all equally Shur-like, and I really liked that there wasn’t a Ron Swanson or an April Ludgate or a Dwight Schrute that was so obviously forced to be the quotable, quirky, put-them-on-a-coffee-mug one.
We all know that nobody talks about The Office after Jim & Pam get married, and after a recent rewatch of Parks & Rec, I decided that while, yes, it is a Good Show, there are plenty of flaws (Ben and Leslie don’t make sense sorry not sorry more thoughts on this later byeee) and it felt more like background-worthy TV to me than something that I found genuinely smart and engaging throughout its entire run.
There is character development without characters losing who they are . There are corgis. There are annual Halloween episodes that are, admittedly, kind of annoying. There are jokes that come back and back and back without beating you over the head with it. There are also so many pop culture references, but not the obvious ones.**
Rewatch Breaking Bad / Mad Men (Netflix)
A one-two punch of late-00s, early-10s peak TV. Breaking Bad is better, but early Mad Men is actual television gold. I watched them both originally in college, and rewatching them as a person with more fully-formed opinions, fewer hangovers and a lot of other TV binged in-between, I enjoyed them even more.
Breaking Bad is a fucking masterpiece. THE CHARACTER WORK. THE WRITING. THE BRYAN CRANSTON OF IT ALL. I actually liked Mad Men more when I rewatched it. When Betty Draper asks for a fainting couch? Felt that. Also, I’m a legit professional copywriter now, and although it is not for an agency, there are some…hmm, good parallels in there. But, Peggy becoming a ~writer wunderkind~ after secretary school, though? Yeah, okay.*** And that last season? Er, okay… next.
Vanderpump Rosé
One time, we were at World Market and Ryan came to find me in the millennial pink plates section and was like, “I just saw something I never thought I’d see in real life.” And then took me to the wine section because it was Vanderpump Rosé. We weren’t engaged yet, but in that moment it was inevitable.****
I honestly bought it because I’m a fan of Vanderpump Rules (last season and IRL drama aside) and a relatively new rosé convert. I drank Barefoot Moscato at college parties instead of PBR because my personal brand has been ever-evolving but always reliable; switched to Riesling when I found it in cat-shaped bottles (also available at World Market, should we be renaming this Wine Market Wonderplace?); got into Chardonnay as I was trying to get Ryan’s mom to love me (it worked); and recently have gotten Old, so I don’t like the sweet things as much as I used to.
Also, I really like the color pink.
And, DANG, who would have guessed that Lisa Vanderpump actually makes a pretty decent wine? Just kidding—she is a mastermind of exquisite taste, explosive drama and perfect small dogs, so of course her pink wine is my fucking favorite.
Fast-forward to our second trip out to LA (for a six-year anniversary) and Ryan asked me, “Do you want to get married?” at SUR in-between my first and second glass of, yep — Vanderpump Rosé.
So, take a break and get a drink and maybe you’ll get engaged, too!
Killing Eve (Hulu)
Lady spies!!!!!!!!!! I randomly watched the pilot episode one weekend when Ryan was out of town, and then I accidentally watched like half a season in one night? This show is a national treasure (and actually originally BBC so not national, but a treasure nonetheless). The second season didn’t hold up as well, and I haven’t seen the third yet (that Hulu lag tho) but the FIRST? Sandra Oh! I would die for you! You have probably heard a few good things about Phoebe Waller-Bridge, too, who wrote a lot of the first season. It is SO good. It had been a long time since I had a relatively new show to tell people to watch every time we talked about TV*****, and I immediately started recommending this one.
And also, this is where I need to admit my extreme bias due to the eternal love I have for another lady spy show: Alias.
Killing Eve is not Alias (Alias got weird, in a way that JJ Abrams-adjacent productions often do and was imperfect, FINE), but it is so female-celebratory and whip smart and does that thing with big, blocky location title shots, hell yeah.
Uncanny Valley by Anna Weiner (your local bookstore)
My second-favorite movie is The Social Network and I will not apologize for that in this paragraph or any others BUT it is relevant because Uncanny Valley is about Silicon Valley.
I’d heard about this book because I am a person who enjoys Vulture’s Books to Read in _____ articles. I didn’t really get into non-fiction books until after college, and even then, I only enjoy books about feminism or things that will help me learn to do the work to be actively anti-racist or the occasional true crime novel (key word: occasional) or anything from a millennial woman’s POV in which she takes down the tech bro patriarchy.
This is not exactly that.
At least, I wouldn’t say she takes it down, but she does live it, and in an entertaining way. It’s a quick read, conversational and engaging. I wish it was a little grittier, that she’d been a little more honest about some of those douchebags? I wanted the hot goss, and she keeps it pretty PG. But, it wasn’t a bad choice at all for the first book I ordered from my local bookstore when quarantine hit.
Succession (HBO)
I am not big on Shows About Men Made by Men and was immediately turned off by the Executive Producer Will Ferrell title card, but after two episodes, I found myself thinking about it a lot? You know when you like a show so much you just think about it all the time****** ? So I was like, “Wait, do I like Succession?” and then after episode three-ish, I was like, “Wait, do I LOVE SUCCESSION.”
Every single character is a dirtbag. You can’t defend any of them. I don’t know enough about the Murdoch family to say it’s closely based on them, but I know it’s at least loosely? Who’s got time to look into this?
There are only 20 episodes, so I would not recommend getting obsessed with this show literally the week before a respiratory virus shuts down the entire planet and television studios, but…
I don’t think everyone likes it (wouldn’t be prestige TV if they did, ayo), and I get the criticism. I’m writing this still kind of thinking, like, “Why do I like Succession so much?” It takes a little bit to hit a stride, and at first the extreme tonal shifts from cool-toned drama to comedy are harsh. Even as a whole, I wouldn’t say it’s a dramedy? But sometimes it is so funny? But other times it is so sad and there are definitely Dramatic Moments? There is a Thanksgiving episode that is * so * good. There are many great turtlenecks, and coats, and burns.
There is also a 90-minute Zoom-filmed interview with the cast that is pretty good if you’re looking to kill some time on a lighter work-from-home day or something, I don’t know.
Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino (order from your local bookstore again)
The queen of millennial think pieces, in my humble biased opinion because in my free time I like reading lengthy New Yorker pieces about how “Instagram hot” has impacted the plastic surgery business.
Jia is a little older than me, 100 times more woke and 1000 times more likely to do things like get scouted for an MTV reality show? She’s one of those writers that other people (writers) describe as “insightful,” “makes you think,” “has interesting opinions on things like girl boss culture and sexual assault on college campuses and living in the era of optimizing yourself out of existence.” I agree these opinions are true, and I am not offended as a writer who would just like to be called “kind of funny” “sometimes.”
I’ve been recommending this to all my millennial lady friends. There’s a great essay about literary heroines, another about our obsession with ‘”difficult” women, but only the right kind. One about how all your friends start getting married, and what does getting married mean to a modern woman, and why do women still have to take their partners’ names and it was only a little triggering. It’s not a beach read (if you’re even braving beaches right now, am I right?) but it’s well-paced and easy to crush in a couple days if you’re not too busy playing Sims. (Jia Tolentino is too cool to play Sims.)
Rhinegeist Brewery Bubbles & Little Bubbles Rosé Ale
Drink break! The best beer is beer that is also wine kind of!*******
Barry (HBO)
Bill Hader hive where you at? Probably not rewatching It 2 because it was BAD but that’s okay because there are two seasons of Barry that are GREAT and pretty much as long if you watch them all together.
I think my favorite thing about this show is that it so easily could have been bad? The premise (former hitman joins acting class) could have been a glossy, unfunny ABC comedy. The characters could have been too much, the Chechen mafia too over-the-top. And instead, it’s this perfect blend of sarcastic humor, really, really funny writing (my favorite kind of show is the kind that feels writer-y, like I can close my eyes and read the script and be just as entertained) and enough action to remind you that Bill Hader? Plays an assassin? Trust me it works?
The only thing that doesn’t work for me is the female lead — I appreciate that she’s “complicated” and narcissistic, not a standard actress-wannabe blonde, and I’ve read interviews with her about how the actresses are encouraged to inform their characters because the show was created by two white men but deals with a woman in deep denial about trauma. But, I just find her really “meh,” and wish they’d just promote D’Arcy Carden to series regular instead.
ANYWAY, worth an HBO trial. And in conclusion, don’t watch It 2. Do watch Barry.
Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall / Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay (put on your damn mask and go to your local bookstore)
Fellow white women. please read something about feminism written by a woman of color. Bad Feminist completely changed my perspective, and I often accredit it to the beginning of my true, focused attempt to be a better ally. I know it’s not the most “scholarly” path, and I absolutely “woke up” way late. But, for me, a pop culture nerd™, it was the perfect first, big step — pop culture filtered through a humorous, but painfully honest lens.
I bought Hood Feminism recently, and it reads more like a memoir than something too heavily academic, which I like. It’s an experience I will never, ever understand, but she does a great job of telling it like it is, and it has helped me understand better, like, when I can help and when I should take a damn seat.
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara (support your local bookstores do I have to say it again)
I don’t do true crime shit too often, I don’t know. I just don’t. I’m getting to the end of this list and I don’t feel like elaborating right this second. I listened to the first season of Serial like everybody else, tried to watch Making a Murderer and got bored, DID sit (on my phone) through that Ted Bundy thing on Netflix last year. It just doesn’t do it for me like it does it for a lot of other people.
But what DOES do it for me is when a TV/movie is based on a book I haven’t read. I must immediately read that book if I am at all intrigued (this does not work for romantic comedies or things like that Gone Girl knockoff with Anna Kendrick? Am I getting the assumption right having seen the trailers and knowing it’s based on a book and then thinking, hard pass?) and so I finally read I’ll Be Gone in the Dark when HBO said they were making it a documentary and after people also kept telling me to read it.
It’s great! It’s disturbing! There are A LOT of crimes in this book, because this asshole was busy. It does feel like McNamara repeats herself a lot, but in the end it serves to remind the reader of ALL the information, and maybe she partly did it for herself, because this shit is TWISTY.
She was a fantastic writer, and even though the white male detectives in this book like to remind you 4590967 times that SHE ALONE didn’t lead to the arrest and eventual guilty verdict of this piece of shit…….it certainly feels like she could have.
Watchmen (HBO)
Hello, Damon Lindelof? If you’re reading this you should know that my senior year of high school I bought my boyfriend a copy of Watchmen for his birthday because I am cool and read it before I wrapped it because I am into awesome things, and also I will defend the second half of Lost as Not That Bad for the rest of my life!
Watchmen is one of those things that isn’t for everyone, and the original is more male-dominated and darker than I like my superhero shit, but I am here for any kind of team-up and rogues gallery and the backdrop of America sucks.
The good: Regina King, Queen of Everything. Silk Spectre comes back older and after she’s grown out her bangs. I learned things about historical racial violence I was literally never taught about in school, which is a shame. The budget is bonkers. The storyline featuring the Voice of Scar is bonkers-er but stick with it, it makes sense in the end. Literally everyone here is chewing up the script and the scenery and the digs at American history and they are loving it.
The just okay: The race stuff is heavy handed. Not unimportant, by any means, just really metaphorically obvious? Things are a little slow. There’s one plot point in particular that feels weirdly rushed and underdeveloped compared to the others. I wanted more time with the characters after they’d all come together. If you’re unfamiliar with the source material, you’ll be hella confused at times, and there’s also a weird undercurrent where, like, the OG source material was kind of stolen from the creator and the fan base hates that 3-hour Zack Snyder disaster and maybe this continuation, too? IMO you can Wikipedia this stuff and be less confused and enjoy it separately from what everyone is fighting about but LOL nerd culture is ruthless.
The last third of the season: is amazing.
Terrace House (Netflix)
Terrace House is a Japanese Real World that Ryan and I randomly got addicted to after Netflix thought we might want to watch it because…anime? Sure.
Six Gen Z aspiring model/athlete/fashion designer/Instagram influencers are given an enormous, flawless house to live in and two cars dependent on that season’s sponsors. And that’s…it. They just co-exist while working their modeling jobs and sometimes entire episodes take place 1) at the kitchen table 2) in the living room or 3) out at the pool and it is utterly fascinating to see what another culture considers “drama” compared to the actual hot mess of American entertainment.
I also enjoy it because I think it’s interesting to learn about what Japanese women want in a partner versus what the men say they want. The independent women are definitely intimidating as shit to some of these dudes, who tend to fawn over girls with deep-rooted traditional morals instead of the ones American culture would call, um, bad bitches.
There’s also a weirder angle: there’s a panel of … celebrities?….who watch the episode alongside you and provide commentary: I’m not sure who to compare them to—one’s an internet comedian, one is a model/actress, one is an actor, one is a former game show host. And they are BRUTAL. They criticize the members’ looks, their romantic choices, their lack of real jobs. It can be funny, and it is definitely mean. It’s a little like a round table version of someone live-tweeting The Bachelor.
I find Terrace House entertaining, educational, adorable at times. But beware that when you Google it, you’re likely to see something tragic—one of the members on the latest season recently committed suicide after being cyber-bullied. It turns out Terrace House isn’t as innocent as it seems.
I still recommend it, honestly. I think it’s worth watching even with those blinds lifted, because I watched three seasons believing it was, like, a Reality TV Show Mocktail, and the … reality … was that my perspective as an American viewer is just numb to what’s considered “too far” in reality television.
If only I had more time to write an extensive think piece about it!
Rereading The Great Gatsby (you should already own this from high school)
Welcome to the F. Scott Fitzgerald Fangirl Club, this is your President speaking.
This year seemed like a good time to give this another read, with it being the ~20s~ again and all (the Basic is jumping out).
And WOW did I forget that tire-screeching turn into Murder Mystery this book takes! Also, it’s funny! Also, Daisy Buchanan remains the worst second only to Tom Buchanan, although I am currently trying to work this into an Instagram caption because, girl, same.
“You see I think everything’s terrible anyhow,’ she went on in a convinced way. ‘Everybody thinks so—the most advanced people. And I KNOW. I’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything.’ Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom’s, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. ‘Sophisticated—God, I’m sophisticated!'”
Anyway, Gatsby a classic you may have had to read one summer for the AP English class you and your two best friends were in a year ahead of your peers because you were so smart and ambitious or something, or maybe for some reason you sat through the Leonardo DiCaprio / Tobey Maguire movie. But you should read it again because it holds up and the green light quote at the end…….chills!! I could go on forever, but, would I actually, because we are all borne back ceaselessly into the past!
Also, it is like, barely 200 pages long.
To-Go Cocktails
Wash all this pop culture down with a carryout Old Fashioned, Old Sport.
…
OKAY OR a spicy pink margarita, I’m sorry, I wanted to seem like a cool bitch who drinks Old Fashioneds and that was the perfect way to end this.
*I’ve recently rewatched P&R, and less recently but still recently-ish rewatched The Office (up until Michael leaves) and totally worth calling out that they both have their issues, too. Michael Scott is sexist, for sure. And racist? And so is Leslie Knope, a “feminist” who says things like, “What were you wearing?” after her mom hits on her boyfriend and who ties her best friend’s worth entirely to her looks. Anyway, more on that later.
**There is a Wanted reference at one point? In the year 2019? And I got whiplash from how quickly the image of James McAvoy with the guns came into my head?
***I hate the writer trope of lalala I am a person and POOF now I am a writer apparently! And an amazing journalist! Rory Gilmore don’t get me started!
****JK it was inevitable before then maybe one day I’ll blog about it.
*****I’ve spent a lot of time the last few years catching up on TV I missed because I was too young to care or off being cool and fun at college. This includes: Sex & The City, Buffy, Six Feet Under, Veep, Gilmore Girls, Friends (I know), Lost again, all the seasons of American Horror Story I originally skipped. And then I also wasted years of my literal life watching Game of Thrones.
******The first season of Westworld did this to me, now all I think about with Westworld is why am I still watching Westworld?
*******Jackie O’s Razz Wheat is an acceptable alternative.
hi, i’m holly. 