Primo Trash

I fell a little deeper into the Real Housewives hole this year. During quarantine times, when everyone was stuck indoors and most of us watched way more TV than was healthy, I started the Real Housewives of Potomac—not the most-watched or most-memed iteration of the franchise, I believe, but often considered its crown jewel for the more serious discussions that have taken place among its all-Black cast members about race. The RH universe, as a whole, has a pretty embarrassing track history when it comes to the diversity and the racial integration of its casts. The New York series (aka RHONY) was recently rebooted entirely, in large part because of racial issues that plagued the previous cast. I watched RHONY’s new version, which debuted this summer, mostly because it starred Jenna Lyons, former chief creative director and president of J.Crew, and I wanted to see what the hell someone who’s actually accomplished and respected in her field would be doing on that show. (Turns out: Showing off her crazy-gorgeous apartment, talking (quite winsomely) about her insecurities, and doing lots and lots of product placement. And staying as far away from any catfights as possible.)

Overall, though, New York was a snooze. Its polar opposite, especially in terms of entertainment value, has been Salt Lake City, which added two new cast members this season: Angie and Monica. Angie has made no impression on me, but Monica has been a drama godsend, and a new sort of figure in the RH world, at least for a Bravo dabbler like me. Monica is a divorced mom of four and does not appear to have a regular job—in contrast to many of the “Housewives”—which means that, when another cast member, Lisa, lost a $60k ring earlier in the season and talked about it for seemingly hours, Monica finally told her that she was out of touch and had the standing to do so. I’ve seen a lot of Monica hate online, much of it coming from the POV that the Real Housewives franchise is supposed to be about rich women and, thus, Monica is too poor to be on SLC. But I think that’s exactly what’s fun about Monica’s chaotic presence on the show; rich fragility is absolutely a thing—some people just cannot gracefully acknowledge their privilege—and Monica plays Lisa’s rich fragility like a fiddle. I guess the Housewives’ designer clothes and soulless McMansions and weird beauty treatments are supposed to be an aspirational draw for viewers; I’d rather watch Lisa have totally unnecessary meltdowns trying to defend her wealth.

-Inkoo

—The Curse Holds a Mirror Up to Marriage. There’s finally some good TV and movies again! I have been recommending The Curse—Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone’s new show, about a pair of newlyweds slowly destroying their marriage while trying to launch an HGTV show—nonstop to my friends. Also, I was pretty proud of this review!

—American Fiction. One of the most anticipated movies of the year is writer-director Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction, about a Black novelist (played by Jeffrey Wright) who, fed up with the anemic interest in his literary work, decides to write a mass-market, offensive stereotype of Black life as a pointed joke that, to his chagrin, becomes a runaway bestseller. Once upon a time, when Jefferson was a journalist, he wrote an influential piece about the pressure for Black writers to write about Black subjects, especially after national traumas involving race, and American Fiction feels like a related exploration of that idea. The movie doesn’t come out until December 15, but in case it wasn’t on your radar, I thought I’d give it some attention in this humble newsletter. The film is poignant, satirically precise, and extremely funny.

—Also funny: Quiz Lady on Hulu! I’d forgotten what an effervescent comedic actress Sandra Oh can be! She is marvelous in the very silly comedy Quiz Lady, in which she and Awkwafina play estranged sisters who need a get-rich scheme to rescue a pug, and decide to do so on a Jeopardy-like quiz show. The (pretty formulaic) plot is not the point; the jokes and the performances are, and they’re fantastic.

—Jezebel and the Question of Women’s Anger. Jezebel shut down abruptly on Thursday. The weekend before, site founder Anna Holmes published this essay in the New Yorker about how she views its legacy and its role in shaping our current online outrage culture. It’s as good an (accidental) eulogy for Jezebel as you can find.

—Senate Republicans erupt in anger over Tuberville’s military freeze. The political news has been extra-crazy recently, and this is an important story that I don’t think is getting enough attention. It’s about abortion rights, the functioning of the military (when global conflicts are very much happening!), and the outrageous loophole a single politician can exploit to hold hostage the lives and careers of government employees for an unpopular stand.

—How to write your own San Francisco doom loop story: An essential guide for visiting APEC writers. San Francisco has become cannon fodder in the right-wing culture wars. I very much enjoyed this parodic response to the doom discourse.