People fall (and fall, and fall) from grace as television enters its Scandal Season

Plus: 'A Hero,' more Wordle, and what is making us happy! [View this email online]( [Pop Culture Happy Hour]( by Linda Holmes Welcome! It was the week when saying [unkind (and false) things]( about Taylor Swift was still really not a great idea. Come to think of it, it was the week when [the same went for Cardi B](. And it was the week when Peloton had another rough week being [featured in fiction](. Let's get to it. Opening Argument: People fall (and fall, and fall) from grace as television enters its Scandal Season On February 11, Netflix will premiere the series Inventing Anna, in which Julia Garner plays Anna Delvey (real name: Anna Sorokin), [the supposed heiress]( who became a topic of conversation after she was accused of defrauding banks, hotels and various people both rich and not so rich. On February 27, Showtime will premiere the series Super Pumped: The Battle For Uber, in which Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Travis Kalanick, who was [pressured into resigning from Uber]( after a series of allegations about the company's corporate culture and its mishandling of sexual harassment allegations. On March 3, Hulu will premiere the series The Dropout, starring Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes, the Theranos founder r[ecently convicted of defrauding her investors](. And on March 18, Apple TV+ will premiere WeCrashed, in which Jared Leto plays Adam Neumann, [the colorful WeWork founder]( eventually forced out of the company, accused of conflicts of interest and mismanagement. There's plenty to separate these stories from each other: Holmes and Sorokin have been convicted of crimes; Kalanick and Neumann haven't. Sorokin was accused of more personal deception like falsifying documents, faking financial records, and failing to deliver on promises to pay people back for things; the other three eventually got in trouble with investors or board members at huge companies they founded. Theranos has completely fallen apart as a business; Uber certainly hasn't. And even the structures of these projects can vary: Super Pumped: The Battle For Uber is envisioned as the first season of an entire Super Pumped anthology series about shocking business stories, meaning you could even get a Super Pumped: Theranos or Super Pumped: WeWork season in the future. But there's also a lot that unites these projects: high-profile stars playing people who fell from grace. Specifically, people who shared the trait of having been being gigantically ambitious when it came to making and possessing money. We're partly seeing a collision of scandal documentaries (and podcasts) with the limited-series streaming boom and the "movie star does prestige TV project" thing that's been going on for quite a while now. You can throw in a little bit of what we might call "First-Look-itis," the pattern of shows relying heavily on the publicity of "here's what this actor looks like playing this real person" photos that can precede premieres by months. (Think, for instance, of the attention Sarah Paulson got [back when we first saw her]( playing Linda Tripp for FX's Impeachment: American Crime Story.) We got first-look photos [of Seyfried]( [of Garner]( [of Leto]( all billed as transformations. (There were photos of Gordon-Levitt, too, but ... he kinda just [looks like himself]( Stories of alleged malfeasance or even outright scamming, whether in scripted or documentary form, are so popular and numerous that they're starting to form an interconnected Greedy Cinematic Universe: at least one of these series shows its protagonist crossing paths with Billy McFarland as he was coming up with what became Fyre Festival, the disastrous music getaway that was the subject of [two juicy streaming documentaries in 2019](. Part of all this might be schadenfraude, but it's not like all these people have fallen on particularly hard times. [A January Wall Street Journal article]( says Neumann is now an "apartment mogul," and Kalanick is in the food-delivery business with a whole new company -- that's already been featured in [one Vice investigation](. It might not be as much fun, but it might be more instructive to do an anthology series about all the "second acts'' that people like the ones in these stories manage to put together for themselves and the unlikelihood of stamping out a kind of wrongdoing simply by exposing one example of it. Because a series that presents the downfall of a person accused of dishonesty, or bad behavior, or negligence, or just being a great big jerk, without following up to see whether any of the consequences stuck? That is a limited series. --------------------------------------------------------------- Newsletter continues after sponsor message --------------------------------------------------------------- We Recommend: On February 3, Netflix is [debuting the show]( Murderville, in which Will Arnett plays a detective who's joined by a celebrity guest detective trainee in every episode, and they go solve a case. The trick is that the guest hasn't seen the script and has to roll with it and improvise as they go. Guests include Ken Jeong, Sharon Stone, Marshawn Lynch and others, and while I'm not 100 percent sure all of it works, it's definitely not something I've seen before. Sometimes it makes sense to recommend something I'm about to read instead of something I've read, so feel free to [join me in picking up]( John Darnielle's well-reviewed Devil House. My pal Alan Sepinwall and I appeared on the Screen Drafts podcast this week to come up with a list of the seven best NASA movies. [I think we made a good list](. What We Did This Week: [AJLT image]( Craig Blankenhorn/HBO Max [Stephen was joined]( by Ann Powers, Marissa Lorusso and Tom Huizenga to talk about books for music lovers. Glen, Joelle Monique, and Laura Sirikul [talked about]( The Book Of Boba Fett. I [talked to Roxana Hadadi and Bilal Qureshi]( about the new Asghar Farhadi film, A Hero. Kat Chow, Danielle Kurtzleben, Barrie Hardymon and I [talked about the pop-culture presence]( of a brand that calls itself a media company even if you might not: Peloton. And on Friday, we all [chatted about the craze of crazes]( Wordle. Speaking of which, we also published [my newsletter essay]( from last week, which dives into the ways in which Wordle strategy is life. Aisha wrote about the And Just Like That... ["diversity girlfriend problem."]( [Glen wrote about]( the Dungeons & Dragons-adjacent series The Legend Of Vox Machina. 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: - What's making Stephen happy: [Party of One by Dave Holmes]( - What's making Aisha happy: [“Your Bubble Is Not The Culture”]( by Yair Rosenberg - What's making Glen happy: [Wiki History Game]( - What's making Linda happy: Ronald Young, Jr. on [True Story on Peacock]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Stream your local NPR station. Visit NPR.org to find your local station stream. [Find a Station]( --------------------------------------------------------------- [Subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+](. Your support helps make our show possible and unlocks access to our sponsor-free episodes. What do you think of today's email? We'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: [pchh@npr.org](mailto:pchh@npr.org?subject=Newsletter%20Feedback) Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can [sign up here](. Looking for more great content? [Check out all of our newsletter offerings]( — including Music, Books, Daily News and more! 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