Everything we canât stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture.
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New This Week - Diane Lockhart abandoning us in our time of need. - The most beautiful new show on TV.
- The Twitter mess is horribleâ¦but also funny? - We have thoughts about Peopleâs âSexiest Man Alive.â - The good news that we all deserve. What Will I Do Without The Good Fight? In the [first scene of The Good Fight](, Christine Baranski, [as Diane Lockhart](, is staring at her television, eyes wide and mouth agape. Sheâs frozen, stunned at whatâs watching, as if her body is in a state of shock. Forget âfight or flight;â she is traumatized into stillness. On her TV, Donald Trump is being inaugurated as president of the United States. That episode premiered five years ago, less than a month after the inauguration happened in real life. Famously, [The Good Fight creators]( Robert and Michelle King rewrote and reshot the pilot following the shocking election results. That quick pivot injected the series with what would become its defining trait and that of our collective existences in the years that followed: incredulity. After [six seasons](, The Good Fight wrapped up its remarkable run this week on Paramount+. (Its final episodes are titled âThe End of Democracyâ and âThe End of Everything,â to give a sense of how bluntly the series engaged with the reality of the world and its palpable nihilism.) I canât tell you what a relief itâs been to spend these years with Christine Baranski, [bonding over that incredulity](. Each one of Diane Lockhartâs heavy sighs has been meaningful to me. Audra MacDonald, who plays Liz Reddick, Dianeâs partner at a law firm, is unparalleled in her skills at befuddled stuttering and shaking her head in disbelief. I felt seen. Thereâs a way that Sarah Steeleâs Marissa Gold, an investigator-turned-lawyer, cocks her eyebrow, crinkles her forehead, and sends her eyes bugging out of their sockets that was like staring into a mirror each time she was on screen. Itâs not just that The Good Fight wrote Trumpâs presidency into the show, when few other drama series did. Itâs that it also bolstered the obvious anger and fear surrounding those years with more complicated feelings of bafflement, exasperation, delirium, and desperation. When one canât comprehend how the reality surrounding them is possible, they feel unmoored. With its graceful act of acknowledging that feeling when no other series or even news program really could, The Good Fight steadied us again. âWhatâs bad for the world is often good for our show,â Robert King recently joked to me [in an interview](. It was cheeky, but it was certainly not a lie. The key clarification is that The Good Fight was never opportunistic about its incorporation of lifeâs overwhelming darkness. No real-world story was garishly exploited for some kind of triggering emotional response. If anything, the showâs portrait of the unsettling dread that weâve started to wear as a second skin has been generous. Itâs maybe even been healing, though the series never had such schmaltzy intentions. Now that The Good Fight is over, after a flawless six-season run, Iâm not sure where to turn for that service. A program that I felt a similar attachment to was [Full Frontal With Samantha Bee](. The talk show, which allowed Bee to fume each week over the outrageousness of the political landscape, was the closest thing we had to screaming into a voidâa release we all needed. That show, however, [was recently canceled](. Russell T. Daviesâ Years and Years was essential viewing for its unwavering dramatization of the impact our current climate will have on the future; it was also so upsetting that, [after one particular episode](, I had to turn off the television to go vomit. And Lord knows The Handmaidâs Tale has long [overstayed its welcome]( as a necessary cautionary tale. There are plenty of series that use character studies to show what life is like for certain demographics in unprecedented timesâeven the Roseanne [spin-off The Conners]( is a great example of that. But they lack the direct confrontation with todayâs surreality that The Good Fight was. One imagines that a return to âcomfort viewingâ might be a last resort, the feel-good boom that made [Schittâs Creek](, [Ted Lasso](, and [The Great British Baking Show]( such hits during the pandemic. Iâm not opposed to that. (From this year, I would recommend [What We Do in the Shadows]( and [Girls5eva]( for sheer laugh content, and [Somebody Somewhere]( and [Better Things]( to experience all the feels.) But I donât think pure distraction is healthy. The thing is, though: Iâm not sure there are many shows that Iâd want to tackle the news of the world in the way that The Good Fight did. On a recent episode [of the podcast Las Culturistas](, guest Abbi Jacobson used the word âtrumpedâ as a verb, and then stopped herself to reword what she was trying to sayâhorrified at even hearing Trumpâs name out of her mouth as normal vocabulary. I get that. Imagine if Modern Family or This Is Us suddenly had plots about Kellyanne Conway. No thanks. Itâs similar to how seeing the pandemic unfold in scripted series in 2020 and 2021 bordered on insufferable. (The Good Fight, unsurprisingly, is one of the few shows to incorporate the pandemic brilliantly.) Itâs an impossible position to be in. No other series seems equipped to do what The Good Fight did. But pretending those issues donât exist doesnât feel right, either. These last years passed as if there were a safety line that tethered us to reality, but someone cut it when we werenât looking. Now weâre spinning off into space, watching sanity, grace, and dignity disappear into the distance as we ping-pong against other people who are going through the same experience. Itâs not a great strategy to ignore the fact that youâre falling. Thereâs a natural, unsavory conclusion to that tactic. Watching The Good Fight, then, has been akin to releasing a series of emergency parachutes, to at least slow the fall. To reference a popular plot on the show, itâs been like microdosing catharsis. Iâll miss that trip. OK, The English Is Really Freaking Pretty Thereâs a lot of darkness on TV these days. As in, I canât see a damned thing. Good luck watching an episode of [Ozark]( if you havenât retrofitted every window in your home with blackout curtains and crawled down to cover every gap between a door and the floor, to ensure that no light seeps in. There was that [episode of House of the Dragon]( that caused a veritable riot, because no one could make out what was happening on screen. The conflation of âgood TVâ with âdark TVâ has gotten out of control. But watching the new Amazon Prime series The English was like seeing TV for the first time again. In this case, almost literally. On the recommendation of [my colleague Coleman Spilde](, I checked out the Western series, which stars Emily Blunt and Chaske Spencer as an unlikely duo journeying through the plains together to accomplish their respective missions. And if it isnât the prettiest dang series Iâve ever seen. Created and directed by Hugo Blick, it is so bright and colorful I contemplated wearing sunglasses while watching it. The visuals are stunning. Shots of Blunt in the center of the frame, the wind sweeping her hair, are beyond gorgeous, with the sky behind her so blue it seems painted. A sun flare bursts in the corner of the frame, as if itâs going to come through the screen. So many shots like that are so beautiful, I felt moved to shed a single tearâa poignancy that would be worthy of such camera work. (Are the shots that nice, or am I just so moved at finally being able to see something on TV again? Who could say?) Thereâs a lot to endorse about The English. Blunt continues her reign of being perfect at acting, and Spencer very much rises to the occasion as her scene partner. But, folks! Again, itâs so pretty! Watch and (if youâre like me) weep! Laughing as Twitter Digs Its Grave I am so conflicted about what is happening with Twitter. Iâm both sad about the community I might lose and the laughs that I might not get back if Elon Muskâs dimwitted policies eventually drive us all off the siteâbut also tantalized by the possibility of being freed from my unhealthy devotion to a toxic social media platform. Still, thereâs fleeting amusement to be had as Musk burns it all to the ground. Muskâs announcement that impersonation accounts not clearly marked as âparodyâ [would be immediately banned]( was a calamity and a joy, as people tested the limits of this (apparently serious) threat. But the thing that has me giggling still is the policy that no longer allows verified users to change their names. That, again, is to thwart impersonation. It also is boneheaded. Good luck to you if you ever get married and take your spouseâs last name. Elon Musk said, âSingle-people rights!â A perhaps unintentional result of this policy, however, is that anyone who changed their Twitter name to something silly for Halloween and forgot to change it back before this new rule went in place is now stuck. Case in point: [This hilarious tweet]( from RuPaulâs Drag Race winner Jaida Essence Hall. The Truth About the âSexiest Man Aliveâ Iâm going to let everyone in on a secret that will blow your minds. It will make you rethink everything you know about yourself, the world, and humanity. Itâs that shocking. Are you ready? Peopleâs âSexiest Man Aliveâ is a sham. (âWhat?!â youâre thinking. âThe title that went to Blake Shelton instead of Ryan Gosling in 2017 isnât democratic or legitimate?â I know. Iâm sorry to break it to you.) The issue is orchestrated between the editors of the magazine and celebrity publicists who are pitching their clients, often because they have something to promote. A celebrity needs to agree to be on the cover, and their publicist needs to think itâs a good career move at that moment in time. Thereâs a whole photo shoot and everything; if an actor doesnât want to do it, or feels embarrassed by the attention, he doesn't get the titleâeven if he deserves it. All that said, [this year, the magazine got it right](. Sexiest Man Alive is selected through a flawless process, and the decision is unimpeachable. Itâs perfect. Itâs right. No notes. Rejoice, My Fellow Humans Thereâs [hope for the future]( yet: [Obsess over it!]( [See This] - Black Panther: Wakanda Forever: If we must see a Marvel movie, at least itâs this one. (Now in theaters) - Falling for Christmas: If you watch this movie and take it seriously, seek help. (Now on Netflix) - The English: Emily Blunt in a Western! Pretty person in pretty places looking pretty! (Now on Amazon) - Teletubbies: Support our purse-toting purple alien. LGBT rights! (Mon. on Netflix) [Skip This] - Mammals: Wild timing for a show in which James Corden plays a Michelin-starred chef to premiere. (Now on Amazon)
- R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned: A straight-to-streaming sequel to a movie we didnât even know existed. (Tues. on Netflix) Like our take on what to watch?
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