Do We Really Need Another Freaking Streaming Service?

Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture. [View in Browser]( [Subscribe]( [Image] with Kevin Fallon Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture. This Week: - The TV apocalypse officially is here. - The best reality show you’re not watching. - The! Chicks! Are! Back! - Haunted by Wicked. - A great tweet. Is Every Streaming Service a Disaster? In the time—4,000 days? 2 weeks? 6 months? 17 celestial moon cycles?—since the global shutdown began (if you told me it is still March or that it is January 2022, I would believe you; I am surprised every time I look at the actual date), three massive new streaming services have launched. Three! It’s a small number in theory. But in terms of the tidal wave of content that accounts for the Beautiful Mind-style math required to calculate new subscription costs and worth, and the relentless exasperation of searching for the one needle you want in what’s become a mountain range of haystacks, three might as well be 3 million. [Alternate text] On April 6, the still-nascent, almost novel days of pandemic disruption, [Quibi]( launched, bite-sized content to consume on your phone while on-the-go...with the small snag of nobody going anywhere. [HBO Max followed]( on May 27, bringing with it Friends’ return to streaming and a nationwide bafflement over what HBO versus HBO Max is, and who has access to which. This week [saw Peacock](, unveiled to a nation exhausted: of shutdowns, of assholes, and, maybe too, of content. I haven’t tallied the collective amount of money spent on licensing, funding, marketing, and technology for these services because it is rumored that when you see a dollar figure with that many zeroes, part of your brain immediately shuts down and tears start to projectile stream from your eyes. But projections place the total in the range of “an ungodly number” to “a metric ass-ton.” This is important, if imprecise information, as each of these streaming services’ launches have executed on a scale of “pretty wonky” to “a metric ass-ton disaster.” With Quibi, the fiasco is obvious and well reported. Despite $2 billion of investment and the involvement of every famous person you can think of, it could not retain subscribers. A New York magazine article [examining the state of the platform]( three months in served mostly as a reminder to those who did sign up to cancel their 90-day free trials. HBO Max was mired with brand confusion. The WarnerMedia service took its most esteemed entity’s name, but also incorporated content from TBS, TNT, CNN, Cartoon Network, and Turner Classic Movies. Because there already were two different HBO streaming services, HBO Go and HBO Now, people who already had HBO struggled to figure out if they had HBO Max. Both HBO Max and Peacock share a similar issue, in that they are both unavailable on Roku and Amazon Fire, two of the most popular ways to access apps. Peacock users also discovered that the integrated Apple TV+ interface was, in some cases, [taking users to Hulu]( versions of the content, not the Peacock-hosted ones. There’s also the curious phenomenon of how limited the availability will be for some of the movies touted by Peacock, with some disappearing from the service [in a matter of days]( after the launch. Plus, there’s its timing, last in line amid palpable streamer fatigue. (On the flip side, it has a free option!) Then there are the issues that all three services seem to share, from non-intuitive navigation—though anything is easier to navigate than Hulu, for the love of god—to the fact that, overwhelmingly, the original series that were available at launch were too mediocre to notice. (I’d say HBO Max has since made up for this with [Search Party](, [Expecting Amy](, and the latter episodes of Legendary.) And when it comes to programming, there’s the crucial issue that none of the services has any sort of identity that would telegraph to potential subscribers what kind of content will be on their service. My colleague Laura Bradley [wrote a fantastic piece](on this phenomenon, which extends far further than these three platforms. [Read it!]( Part of all this is to empathize with everyone wondering which services they’re really supposed to be shelling out money for and which are superfluous, because the truth is it’s incredibly difficult to give cogent advice on the matter. They’ve all been slightly disastrous, but all have their virtues—and yet there are untold amounts of content to access elsewhere anyway if you decide to forego all of them. [Alternate text]( The industry keeps focusing on where audiences are going to watch their content. Yet—and I truly believe this—the audience doesn’t give a rat’s ass about where they’re watching things. That’s true of the [“should movie theaters reopen” death watch](; I streamed [Greyhound on Apple TV+](, [Palm Springs on Hulu](, and [The Old Guard on Netflix]( and had one of the best movie-watching weekends of my life last week. Sure, there were some pangs for the cinema but also...not really. And then there’s the fact that no matter how many services are launched and how much money is spent to acquire The Office or Friends or what have you, the reality is just that people are going to flip on Netflix and figure out something to watch there. “Is _____ no longer on Netflix? Whatever, something else is.” It may be a watershed moment for the industry. But the floor is lava. Hey! Legendary Got Very Good! The finale of HBO Max’s reality competition series Legendary, in which voguing teams (“houses”) compete in ballroom challenges, aired last week, but I didn’t get around to checking it out until recently. Legendary is a fascinating series, in stark contrast to the age of reality TV talent competitions that birthed the harbinger of creative doom: [The Masked Singer](. It’s a celebration of authenticity and talent, a series that exists in the cautious tip-toe of outlets bringing the LGBT culture intrinsic to the ballroom scene [out into the mainstream](. [Image] There was an inelegant balance struck, and never consistently, between educating a new audience and embracing the DGAF attitude of people enjoying the opportunity to revel in the space they created for themselves. That was reflected in one of the more perplexing—and then maybe, too, excellent?—judging panels, which would veer so wildly from insightful to narcissistic to useless that, at the very least, you had extreme feelings about what they had to say. But somehow, going into my binge of Legendary, I had no idea that the finale would end up being one of the most inspirational yet haunting examples of how the pandemic shutdown affected TV productions in real time. After an emotional and explosive semi-final episode, the finale starts with somber, dramatic music. In the days leading up to the taping in March, during which the top houses were rehearsing, the first COVID-19 cases in New York City started making news. With that unease shadowing preparations, production was also forced to respond to evolving safety restrictions. Ultimately, a ban on gatherings of over 500 people meant shooting the finale without an audience, essentially stripping it of what is not only one of the show’s most integral characters, but one of the key elements of ballroom as a whole: the interplay with the crowd. At first, it was all eerie. (No thanks to the fact that the stage was overrun by performers dressed as demons, adhering to the “Heaven and Hell” theme.) Ballroom is meant to be a cacophony—of joy, of judgment, of living—and here was total and complete silence, outside of the errant gasp from Meghan Thee Stallion or polite clap from Jameela Jamil, while these performers vogued for their futures. On the other hand, there was something deeply moving about it. Whatever drive and adrenaline the houses manifest from the audience, they substituted with their own grit and determination. It was in line with everything their art represents: Laying it all out on the line, on your terms, and in the face of every barrier telling you shouldn’t or you can’t. It was fantastic. I wish Legendary announced itself with more of a bang instead of a handful of unsure and uneven first episodes, because the binge ended up being well worth it in the end. Not legendary, yet. But getting there. The Chicks, I Love Them. Blessings to all during this, the holiest of times. Congregation, it is that consecrated window, that hallowed space of possibility, of enlightenment, of salvation and glory. It is the weekend that the Chicks’ new album drops. Gaslighter debuted July 17, and the reviews are in, with God himself nodding, “That’s fire.” (In all seriousness, [check out]( these [raves](. Like the cicadas and my faith in humanity, a new album from the group that [used to be called the Dixie Chicks]( only comes around every 13 or 14 years. Praise be to all, now is that time. [Alternate text]( What I love about the Chicks is that the very qualities that make them so remarkable—their refusal to shut up and sing, the unapologetic truths in their music, their insistence on writing their own legacy outside of the script set by their fickle community—are exactly what make so many of the people who want to celebrate them feel a little bit uncomfortable, or a little bit pissed off. That’s what made this[interview with Vulture’s Madison Malone Kircher]( such a delight. It’s a really fun walk through their career, with insights into their music but also into the feelings surrounding their fame and controversy. But the moment that made me scream? The revelation that one of the options they considered while contemplating how to correct for having “Dixie” in their name was, instead of “the Chicks,” just “MEN.” “It’s our initials: Martie, Emily, Natalie,” Natalie Maines said. “I liked that we would go from Chicks to MEN.” THEY WERE GOING TO NAME THEMSELVES “MEN.” Just imagining the conservative conniption fits is enough for me, even though they didn’t go through with it. They are perfect. A Musical Moment I Will Never Forget There is no way to properly articulate the ways in which this video of 11 former Elphabas from Wicked singing “Defying Gravity” is both everything my gay Broadway-loving heart didn’t even know it was possible to dream, and also an utterly demented nightmare. [Alternate text]( For a high-school arts fundraiser organized by vocal miracle (and Kevin Fallon’s original Elphaba, a sacred designation) Shoshana Bean, Wicked alums including Idina Menzel, Stephanie J. Block, and Julia Murney united via webcam for a performance: Lovely! Touching! Impressive! The performance then ended with each successive Elphaba screlting (scream-belting) that final screech “ayeeeaahhaahhyaaaa,” one by one, layered on top of each other: Deranged! Unsettling! Also impressive! It was thrilling, yet also menacingly endless. I both adore it and am too scared to listen to it ever again. [You can watch it here](. The Good Tweet It’s this week’s [perfect/hella depressing tweet!]( [Alternate text]( [Image] - P-Valley: The racy, fascinating Starz series is my favorite new drama airing now. - Corporate: Very funny, provided you still remember what going to offices was like. - Down to Earth with Zac Efron: Honestly, why not drool while watching Netflix for a few hours? [Image] - In Deep With Ryan Lochte: Just…why? 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