| Everything we can't stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture.
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Everything we can't stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture.
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The return of Bridgerton has put me in a mood. Roughly a million thoughts about the Wicked trailer. The most captivating thing you'll watch this week. Bring! Back! Mamma! Mia! OK, I get the Glen Powell thing now.
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Whenever I go out these days (roughly once every seven months), I am baffled and bereft. No one announces my presence as I enter the ball. Not a single person is wearing a corset. There's not a bushy sideburn to be found. And the music? It's not an orchestral arrangement of a recent pop hit, but an actual pop hit that is playing. The scandal of it all! Worse, when I go to spread the gossip for all to hear, it's not Lady Whistledown's latest newsletter that I am directed to, but a rancid place of toxic disrepute called "X" instead. My fervent desire each year for the romantic escapism of Bridgerton surprises me, but it's more potent now than ever—especially after I've seen the episodes of Season 3 that dropped this week. I'm not a person who is comforted by the coziness of Hallmark Christmas movies; in fact, I find myself rather allergic to them. I'm never whisked away by the period romances that enamor so many people—unless you can't be whisked straight to a bored social media doomscroll. Yet I relish being transported to the Ton each new season.
(Warning: Some spoilers for Bridgerton Season 3.)
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This latest season—it's released in two parts, with more episodes coming June 13—encompasses the best elements of Bridgerton, especially a central couple in Nicola Coughlan's Penelope Featherington and Luke Newton's Colin Bridgertoon to root for in both endearingly wholesome and absolute horny ways. I watched them dance romantic mind games with each other, admit their love, and get to third base in the back of a carriage this week on yet another entirely bad-vibes weather day in New York City, from my office getting a crippling backache while trying to hunch over and obscure the love scenes from view of my coworkers. (I'm an entertainment journalist, not a pervert!) Amidst generally terrible circumstances, I was still completely swept away. That's why I think this season of Bridgerton is going to really resonate. It's not just that the season is objectively good, as my colleague Laura Bradley wrote in her review. It's that it's perfectly timed: Just when we need it, Bridgerton is ushering in Swooning Season. It's mid-May already. I'm in the mood to swoon! I have a theory: I think we jumped the gun when Challengers came out. The sweaty tennis ménage à trois was like a cinematic pheromone. Everyone, I think, gets a little more romantic and, dare I say, a little more randy when spring comes. But we shot out of the cannon with Challengers, all of us positively feral after screening it. It was too much too fast. Almost immediately, the weather got shitty again. The pollen count reached a nuclear level that suffocated me if I dared venture something wild like "go outside." I plummeted from "sexy for spring" to "bedridden for certain death." As if sensing the malaise, Bridgerton arrived to resuscitate. Its sweetness and sultriness pairs perfectly with the bright weather forecast ahead, easing back into the spirit. The spirit to swoon. "Swooning," of course, can mean many things. Did I swoon at Penelope's makeover and Colin's beefy transformation? Of course. A glow-up is an inspirational swoon. I may even do three-to-five sit-ups later. Did I swoon over Coughlan's assured ascension to leading lady status this season? It's one of my favorite performances of the year so far, a delicate flitter between shy and self-pitying to wishful and determined—punctuated with heaving sexual magnetism. Did I swoon over Bridgerton's poetic dialogue? The way the show's characters discuss what love means to them—what they need to evolve within themselves in order to feel worthy of it—should be bound in a book of mantras for me to recite each morning.
Did I swoon over the sex scenes? As jarring as it was to see my husband Jonathan Bailey going down on a woman, he's so sexy on screen that I even found that to be hot. And by the time Penelope was getting fingerbanged by Colin while an orchestral version of a Pitbull and Ne-Yo played, I was ready for a cold shower. (I will say, however, that I refuse to endorse fans' couple nickname for Penelope and Colin: "Polin," a homophone of my current greatest enemy in this world.)
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In fact, Bridgerton has already inspired to swoon over other things. That Wicked trailer defied (heh) my most cynical expectations for the film, which I assumed to be a disaster. Instead of being a troll when it was released, I swooned. |
Reading the reviews that just came out of Megalopolis, Francis Ford Coppola's rumored $125 million opus humbled me. I had been prepared to lavish in the most vicious pans, relieved that such expensive hubris resulted in a film so reportedly disastrous I'd never have to see it. Instead, the careful consideration of the film's captivating silliness intrigued me. Now I can't wait to see it. I forgot how much I love to swoon over mess.
Even when it comes to my unspeakable attraction to Jonathan Bailey, this week I was reminded that I contain multitudes when it comes to my leering crushes. For example, I am able to swoon over both stars of Fellow Travelers, which I did plenty of over Matt Bomer when these photos of the actor on set of his new film were released.
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It's called growth. Happy swooning. |
It was around minute seven of my 13-minute monologue about the plot of Wicked that I realized, wait…not everyone knows every single plot point, lyric, costume, and casting trajectory of this musical??? The three-and-a-half minute trailer for the upcoming film was released this week, prompting my TED Talk. I came up as a high school musical theater kid, then New York City college student, then gay elder millennial at a time when Wicked was a sacred, foundational text. It has been news to me that not everyone is versed in the sometimes confusifying Ozian world. But as a scholar, I can provide two important services.
First, this movie is planned to be released in two parts. So that wildly long trailer only teases what is half of the Broadway musical. I expect better this time than when I saw the Mean Girls musical in theaters and people in the audience started laughing the first time someone started singing because they didn't know it was a musical. We all know there are songs in Wicked (even if, strangely, no one in the trailer is actually shown singing them…). But I can foresee a mass "WHAAAAT?!" when the film cuts at the end of "Defying Gravity" because the second act is planned to be its own movie. Arrive educated!
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Second, as a person who has seen the musical [redacted] times, here are the moments in the trailer that should excite you the most—a.k.a. "The Moments I Squealed at My Desk While Watching the Wicked Trailer." - When the intro starts in voiceover, "Are people born wicked, or is wickedness thrust upon them," I first went, "Preach!!!," and then thought, "That sounds an awful lot like the original Glinda, Kristin Chenoweth, to me." I think she's making a cameo as some sort of narrator. - The fact that they did Cynthia Erivo's Elphaba hair in braids is beautiful. - Only 25 seconds in, and we get a shot of Jonathan Bailey smoldering as Fiyero. Smart move for selling tickets. - The preview of Ariana Grande's "Popular" reassures us all that she's going to do a chesty-nasally Glinda voice and not a breathy-heady Ari voice. - A random shot of Ariana doing a full-extension battement. Go girl! And then seconds later she swings from a chandelier? We're getting the physical comedy Glinda needs. - Who knew Glinda had such giant hands? |
- They made the much-despised (among Wicked fans) goat teacher character Dr. Dillamond an actual goat. That's the only thing that will get me excited about the fact that they kept Dr. Dillamond in this movie. - No wonder Nessarose is so cranky all the time—Elphaba sent her and her wheelchair flying through the air. |
- Jonathan Bailey delivers the line, "She doesn't give a twink what anyone thinks," a.k.a. my cause of death. - The moment I was sold on Ariana as Glinda was her hilarious delivery of, "I couldn't possibly… this is your moment… I'm coming," while running for the train. - The propaganda poster of Elphaba and the burning witch effigy is adding a much darker connotation to a show that is already surprisingly dark! - I'm much more dazzled by Cynthia's vocal choices in the scoop up to "look to the Western sky" in "Defying Gravity" than I am by her options in the classic final riff. - If they're showing baby Elphaba, will they also show her mother? (Possibly played by original Elphaba Idina Menzel?) - How much CGI glass was broken in the making of this movie? - I sadly think they've already, six months away, used that final "Defying Gravity" screlt so much in marketing that it may lose its impact in the film! |
The Most Captivating Television of the Week |
With apologies to all the great scripted content being produced right now, there is no piece of filmed footage that will rival the three-minute video of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Kyle Richards getting into her car and realizing there is a mouse perched next to her side-view mirror. It's all filmed on her phone. Her sheer terror is at first comical, but then eerily believable. I'd cast her in those Halloween movies she stars in if this were her audition tape. But then she zooms in on the mouse, and you see that it is making direct, unflinching eye contact with her. You instantly understand why Richards is acting like Stuart Little is about to kill her.
It's a captivating video. I implore you to watch.
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Meryl Streep said this week that there are talks for a third installment of the greatest franchise in cinema history, Mamma Mia!, and that she'd like to be a part of it. She cautioned, however, that she doesn't know how that would work, as she is canonically dead in the sequel and only appears as a ghost.
To this I say: Give us this goddamn film already, you studio nerds. This is a musical based on the music of Swedish pop group ABBA that inexplicably takes place in Greece instead, where a woman invites three guys her mother fucked to her wedding in order for one of them to walk her down the aisle—and they all came. Who do you think are the Mamma Mia! fans who are sitting there going, "Well, if there's one thing this new movie absolutely must do, it's make sense?!" Gimme (gimme gimme) this sequel now!
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I'm officially onboard the Glen Powell Is the Next Great Male Movie Star train. |
More From The Daily Beast's Obsessed |
The iconic Annie Potts gave an interview about the end of Young Sheldon, with an amazing quote about ending such a hit: "Are they stupid?" Read more. I got a rundown of the Palm Royale finale, a beautifully bonkers episode of television that has to be seen to be believed. Read more.
OK, but seriously: Is this the most foolish crop of Survivor contestants ever? Read more.
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Bridgerton: Listen: The world is a better place when someone is playing a violin version of a Sia song. (Now on Netflix) The Big Cigar: André Holland gives a stellar performance, as is the André Holland way. (Now on Apple TV+) - Trying: This is truly one of the most underrated series on TV. It's so funny, and I cry every episode. (Wed. on Apple TV+)
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| The Strangers: Chapter 1: The worst thing a remake should make you think is that you should just go watch the original instead. (Now in theaters) Back to Black: Amy Winehouse, I will avenge you. (now in theaters)
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