Ding Dong, Darling

Plus: winter TV recommendations, Cats and Little Women, and what's making us happy by Linda Holmes Welcome! It was the week when even [James Corden didn't seem sure]( about Cats — and he was in Cats. It was the week when [romance lost a giant](. And it was the week when everybody just kept on arguing about Star Wars . Let's get to it. Opening Argument Sometimes, you only learn how to make something good when you see something bad. It's easy to take for granted the structure of something like Top Chef or Project Runway until you see something like the Netflix/BBC series Glow Up. Now, I am not a makeup artist, so I cannot speak with authority to nuances of makeup artistry, but I do expect competition reality shows to be internally consistent and — this part is key! — to be structured properly so that episodes make sense. And thus, I shall begin my rant now. The way Glow Up works: There's a group of contestants, and each week, they start by competing in a shorter challenge, similar to a Quickfire on Top Chef . The bottom two people from that competition are placed in the Face Off Chairs (DUN!). Then, they move on to a larger, more creative challenge. At the end of that one, the people in the Face Off Chairs find out whether they "did enough" to get out of the Face Off seats. If one or both of them did, then one or two other contestants who performed poorly in the second challenge replace them in the Face Off Chairs. And then, there's the Face Off itself, where the two final people have a very short time (like 10 minutes) to complete a basic skills challenge on a model, like a simple winged eyeliner, and whoever does worse in the Face Off is booted. (The best idea the show has is that in the Face Off, the contestants make up identical twins so you can compare most directly.) This is a terrible structure! For one thing, the show never really explains what it means to "do enough" to get out of the Face Off Chairs in the second of the main challenges. Is it enough to just not be in the bottom two? Because if that's the case, it makes no difference what happens in the first challenge at all. Do you have to be very good in the second challenge? Like near the top? They don't say. But the worst part of it is the Face Off itself. The least interesting, lowest-stakes event in the entire episode is how the elimination is determined! You can tell how boring it is to watch two people face off to do winged eyeliner on identical twins by how little time the show devotes to the Face Off — it's sort of tacked on at the end. You can watch two highly artistic, creative challenges in which some people have breathtaking, artistic ideas and some people just struggle to do anything at all, but for most of those people, none of that will matter, and the whole show will come down to two good makeup artists doing something they both know how to do well, after which two judges literally look at their models with magnifying glasses to decide which was infinitesimally better. The judges, Dominic Skinner and Val Garland, don't know how to explain the difference between two people's rushed and therefore unavoidably B+ application of eyeliner, either. They just whisper about how close it is, say something vague like one was more "precise," and then send someone home. It is an enormously unsatisfying way to end a show. And it's a shame, because there is some awesomely weird stuff going on in the first two challenges, particularly the second one. Contestants are applying prosthetics, painting full scenes on models' faces, and creating exaggerated, fascinating effects. I love the fact that the show uses models that are young and old, from a variety of races, with a variety of vibes. I do not like, but can respect, the absurd way Val tries to make "Ding dong, darling!" into her catchphrase. (It's a compliment offered during judging.) It doesn't work; it always sounds forced. But boy, she is trying hard. Why am I sharing this with you during the holiday season? Because if you're fortunate enough to have any time off around now, I would posit that this is what the holidays are for, in part. Sitting around, resting your brain, resenting the worst elimination decision I have ever seen on a show like this, and resenting a perfectly nice lady for trying to make "Ding Dong" happen. I wish you this kind of frivolity. Just for a moment. Just for long enough that you can breathe, and forget your troubles, and imagine what it would be like to understand eyeliner this well. We Recommend I have a review coming of the USA Network cheerleader drama Dare Me, based on Megan Abbott's novel. But give it a try — as I'll expand upon in the review, it's creepy and effective and lurid in all the best ways. Also coming soon in the "see if it's your thing" category is Netflix's Spinning Out, which posits that stories about ice skaters have not delved deeply enough into what it would be like to have January Jones as your controlling mother. It's arriving Jan. 1, just in time for holiday gobbling. If you haven't yet checked out The Empty Suitcase Show in which Kristin Chirico goes clothes shopping in a variety of cities, I encourage you to track it down on Facebook Watch and see what she gets up to. The central conceit is that a plus-sized person stranded without anything to wear typically has a harder time finding stuff, but Kristin — as always — brings her good humor and great style to the show. There's also some nifty tourism, including some very tempting food and booze in their Charleston episode. What We Did This Week [Taylor Swift in Cats]( Universal Pictures A quiet week as we all spend some time with family, but [our Wednesday episode]( was, of course, about Cats. [Our Friday episode]( took us to Greta Gerwig's adaptation of Little Women, which is great. Stephen popped up on Christmas day with [a sweet short essay]( about "Smells Like Teen Spirit." What's Making Us Happy Every week on the show, we talk about some other things out in the world that have been giving us joy lately. Here they are: - Glen: [Doom Patrol]( - Stephen: [Ben Folds' book]( - Barrie: [Jane Eyre]( (TV mini-series) - Linda: [Doctor Foster]( What do you think of today's email? 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