How Is ‘Nine Perfect Strangers’ Such a Hot Mess?

Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture. [Manage newsletters]( [View in browser]( [Image] with Kevin Fallon Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture. This Week: - That Nicole Kidman show is confusingly not good. - That Jeopardy shitshow depresses me. - A new Sandra Oh series! Rejoice and be glad! - Oh no, Carrie Underwood, no… - Pretty photos, as a little treat Nine Perfect Strangers, One Messy Show There are few positions that suck to be in more than the person at bat after someone [hit a homerun](. (This is the rare occasion where my wonky sports metaphor is actually informed and not some “shot the touchdown into the goal” nonsense. For a time in his tweendom, Baby Kevin was a perfectly competent Little Leaguer, a feat of hand-eye coordination and spatial awareness that this [redacted]-year-old who can’t walk through his living room without crashing directly into the coffee table can barely believe he ever had.) In any case, when you’re in that position, everyone is thrilled and excited, riding the high of witnessing greatness. All that energy is then turned onto you. Of course you’re not going to hit a homerun. You know that. They know that. But glory fosters delusion, and therefore nothing will possibly satisfy anyone except that unlikely follow-up homerun. Even if you hit, like, a double or triple, it’s a let down, a disappointment that’s magnified by its proximity to the previous triumph. And if you strike out? The enthusiasm crash is so violent, if you look up after you’ll see the [Road Runner speeding away]( from Wile E. Coyote with the rest of his anvils. I don’t know why I decided to start a reaction piece about the first few episodes of [Nine Perfect Strangers]( by talking about baseball, but here we are. The point I’m making is that the new Hulu series, which stars [Nicole Kidman](, [Melissa McCarthy](, and [Regina Hall]( and is about a bunch of rich and entitled people attempting to recharge at an expensive getaway, suffers greatly from debuting just three days after the [finale of HBO’s The White Lotus](, which starred [Jake Lacy](, [Jennifer Coolidge](, and [Connie Britton]( and was about a bunch of rich and entitled people attempting to recharge at an expensive getaway. The series was about as much of a watercooler obsession—the TV world version of a home run—as there’s been this summer, and the finale was fantastic, in this critic’s opinion. Other people have quibbled about elements of the episode, and the great thing about television discourse is that everyone gets to have strong opinions, even those who are absolutely wrong. (The complaints about Alexandra Daddario’s reunion with Jake Lacy being unbelievable are ludicrous, and hint that not enough of you have spent your life amidst insufferable millennial women to understand that it was exactly what a character like that would do.) In the aftermath of The White Lotus ending, people wanted more The White Lotus...which is to say they wanted Nine Perfect Strangers to be The White Lotus. It is not. In fact, I’m not even sure the series is good. The first three episodes premiered on Hulu this week, setting up the central premise and some not-that-interesting mysteries. There’s an unconventional wellness retreat that nine guests, each hoping to confront their own personal crises, descend upon—or, rather, are chosen to attend as very few people are lucky enough to be selected for one of its limited slots. Its spa treatments, personalized diets, and bucolic environs evoke resorts like Canyon Ranch, were a luxe getaway like that to seem immediately sinister upon arrival. Something seems off and vaguely nefarious, like a GOOP underling might spring out from behind a bush at any point and start pelting you with jade vagina eggs. Melissa McCarthy plays a successful author reeling from bad professional news and a dating-life disaster. Bobby Cannavale is an addict and overall grump. Regina Hall is a divorced mom who wants to lose weight and feel healthier, and possibly has some screws loose. There’s a married influencer couple struggling with their relationship. A family of three is working through a son’s suicide. Luke Evans is there, too, seemingly just to be cranky and hot? The mystical figure at the center of it all, however, is Nicole Kidman’s Masha, a Russian healer/former business lady/possible ghost. That’s not even a joke. Her whole thing is that she technically died once after being shot and rebirthed with a new purpose, which is apparently to be both ethereal and intimidating while rich people bitch about not being able to use their phones. Right off the bat, nobody wants to be there, which is a bold creative choice for welcoming viewers to your TV show. On the one hand, I get it. As a person firmly against the concept of being among other people, the thought of being confined to a resort with eight other strangers—perfect or otherwise—and a constantly smirking Russian witch lady is misery. But groaning displeasure, while certainly my general state of being, isn’t exactly the jolt to get you excited about a new series. But that’s the thing: the jolt never comes. Over the course of three episodes, the circuitous narrative amounts to the guests wondering, on a seemingly never-ending loop, “Why are we here?” They learn that Masha is incredibly picky about the guests she selects.They discern that the nine of them and their traumas are meant to fit together like a puzzle, that they’re all there for a specific reason. They suspect the treatments they’re receiving are more experimental in nature than they might have thought: “Why are we here?” Three hours into the show, I do not know why they are there, but I did stop caring about the answer in about half that time. It doesn’t help that the performances are all over the place. McCarthy is the standout, delivering a “Reese Witherspoon in Big Little Lies” kind of revelatory performance, bitchy and soulful at the same time. In fact, she’s the only person on the show whose character even vaguely resembles an actual human, a byproduct of the fact that no one seems to understand what the tone should be. They are all acting as if in entirely different series. Then there’s Kidman, floating through the series with her cryochamber chic aesthetic. It’s phenomenal not just how often Kidman works, but how big of a swing each performance is. It’s also disappointing how often, lately, a study of her work is reduced to yet another outlandish wig and uneven accent. There’s no denying her Masha is captivating by nature—this is Nicole Kidman holding your attention on screen, after all—but nothing about the character is as enrapturing as the presence she fortifies. What is Masha hiding? The story is so underwritten that no amount of Kidman’s signature eye-twitch acting could hypnotize you into caring. I’m not sure if Nine Perfect Strangers is that bad, or if it’s just hurt by comparisons to The White Lotus. It’s a show in which the plot kind of hangs there stagnantly, like an unmoving cloud of humidity, like the one torturing the privileged guests at Masha’s retreat. As a person already terrorized by his intense tendency to sweat, that’s not the refreshing escape I’m looking for. The Jeopardy! Scandal Is Very Upsetting to Me! It’s truly astonishing that Jeopardy! managed to screw things up this badly. Few things in entertainment [seem as sacred as the show](, which, after decades on air fostering intimate relationships with viewers each night as they sit down for dinner, found its cultural significance only heightened in the last year. That was partly a product of the climate in which it was airing. There was the terror of the pandemic and its unknown. There was the lunacy, anger, and actual violence of the political landscape. And there was the knowledge that Alex Trebek was likely in his last run as host as he battled cancer. Tenets of what the show stood for were a comfort in contrast to the reality outside of our living rooms. Truth in the age of disinformation. Stability in the face of unrest. Certainty in uncertain times. The show was a soothing nightly reminder of what we valued, everything from its example that seriousness can still be silly and fun to the memories of time spent watching the show with family baked into every episode’s theme song. That the show would carry on its legacy following Trebek’s death with class didn’t seem to be an arduous responsibility. To most of us, it seemed like an inevitability. Another certainty. Another fact. The show is an institution, and the institution would carry on nobly. How, then, did we end up in this unpleasant disaster, a PR nightmare that is already threatening to taint the show’s future? [Alternate text] In the wake of reports that newly announced [replacement host Mike Richards](, who will take on nightly duties while actress Mayim Bialik emcees primetime specials, [had made sexist remarks]( while executive producer of The Price Is Right and as [co-host of The Randumb Show podcast](, Richards [released an apology]( and [stepped down from his position]( this week. It came after intense social media backlash and outcry from Jeopardy! fans—fans who were already unhappy that Richards had been chosen over frontrunners like Ken Jennings and Levar Burton. It’s a hurricane of negativity rattling the foundation of the one thing in pop culture that was supposed to be stalwart and undisturbed. Can the show dig itself out of this wreckage? It was hard to tell how much the social media uproar surrounding Richards had infiltrated mainstream audiences, most of whom might still be more upset that Burton didn’t get the gig than even aware of this controversy. Someone wondered if the show would adopt a “this too shall pass” attitude and hope the storm blows over. Or would producers cut it off at the pass and replace Richards before the new season starts, which would only reignite the bad press and the ugliness of the host search? To that latter point, Richards said, “I want to apologize to each of you for the unwanted negative attention that has come to Jeopardy! over the last few weeks and for the confusion and delays this is now causing.” The new season will now begin with guest hosts once again while another replacement is sought out. When Richards was announced as Trebek’s successor, I personally didn’t mind. He was, I felt, the strongest of the contenders that I watched during the test trials. In reality, the show seemed like such an institution—and Trebek so singular and irreplaceable—that the choice of permanent host didn’t seem to matter to me. The fact that almost everyone who took part in the trials was competent, endearing, and entertaining proved that it would be the show’s reputation that would carry it into the future more than the magnetism of any replacement. But now that reputation has been tarnished, and that future is threatened. A lot of people wanted Richards, whose Machiavellian dealings have also been off-putting, to step down. Is that enough to repair the damage that’s already been done to the hallowed show? I feel like, for the first time when it comes to Jeopardy!, there is no right answer. More Like One Perfect Sandra Oh, Am I Right? In contrast to Nine Perfect Strangers, a series in which, in its first three hours, essentially nothing happens, [Netflix’s The Chair]( is a series for which three hours is its entire season, and everything happens. It is a swirl of so many ideas—provocative, thrilling, heady ideas—that it starts to resemble one of those kaleidoscopic Magic Eye posters that, when you stare at it, another image emerges. In this case, it is the image of Sandra Oh, holding an acting trophy for the way she lassoed all those ideas from the messy tornado they could have created into yet another tour de force performance. In six episodes so breezy I had windburn after watching them, The Chair tackled (deep breath): bureaucracy in academia, institutional misogyny, institutional racism, institutional ageism, cancel culture, disinformation, journalistic responsibility, cultural assimilation, gender norms, internet trolls, grief, sexual harassment, and even touches of When Harry Met Sally’s “can a man and a woman just be friends” question. And yet it’s really funny and, somehow, coherent—a feat pulled off by actress Amanda Peet, who created the show and produced it along with her husband, (wait for it) Game of Thrones’ David Benioff and his producing partner D.B. Weiss. Maybe it’s not that surprising of a follow-up series for the Thrones duo. After all, Sandra Oh is and always will be our Khaleesi. It Is COVID-Problematic Celebrity Season! The Great Celebrity COVID Comeuppance is upon us and I haven’t felt this electric and excited since that one time a glitch in my local pizza place’s delivery order computer system caused them to send me a surprise second pie the day after the first one for free. It’s not because I’m particularly happy about the fact that there are rich and influential people who are anti-vaxxers or anti-maskers as we enter month 400 of this fresh hell. It’s because karma is a raging bitch and I can’t wait for all of them to feel her wrath as they get exposed. [Alternate text] This week, Broadway star [Laura Osnes lost out on a performance]( gig because she refused to be vaccinated and American Idol [Carrie Underwood was caugh](t liking a tweet by conservative hemorrhoid Matt Walsh raging against school mask mandates. There will be more of these revelations. These people might fancy themselves discreet, but like teenage boys fresh off their runs as Ren in their high-school production of Footloose, they will always come out. It’s sad to learn that some of your favorite performers are absolute dipshits. But [grabs karaoke mic] maybe next time she’ll thiiiiiiink before she [likes] tweets. Beautiful Photos From The Crown to Soothe Your Soul [Alternate text] What I love about [this photo of Elizabeth Debicki]( as Princess Diana in the upcoming season of The Crown is how much care was taken in everything from her appearance to her facial expression to the way she’s lounging to evoke a near, almost eerie mimicry of the late icon. [Alternate text] And what I love about the accompanying image of Dominic West as Prince Charles is that they were just like “eh, comb his hair a little different and that’ll do.” [Alternate text] - The Chair: Nothing more satisfying than six episodes of Sandra Oh excellence. (Fri. on Netflix) - Work in Progress: Season two of a true gem of a show that I wish more people would discover. (Sun. on Showtime) - The Other Two: One of the funniest shows on TV, plus a superior Molly Shannon performance. (Thurs. on HBO Max) [Alternate text] - Reminiscence: 2021 has been surreal enough. I don’t need my mind being bent in my entertainment, too. (Fri. in theaters and on HBO Max) - The Walking Dead: Truly the only show I will tolerate a “wait, that’s still on!?” reaction. 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