It’s a soggy, fall weekend in New York, the kind I’m secretly grateful for because it means there’s nothing to do except fold laundry and put clean sheets on the bed while a banana bread rises in the oven. It’s been a full calendar year since I sent out a newsletter missive, which is also what happened to all of my blogs of Christmas past (the extant xangas, the zombie tumblrs, etc.,etc.), a graveyard of abandoned projects. As ever, I remain too precious about my own words, way too neurotic about being perceived.
But in the last year, I’ve also acquired a new job as an editor, which has been…a revelation? I’ve edited stories about sexless sluts and misery lesbians and girls who vape in secret and it is deliciously fun to help sculpt other talented people’s words, adding a little extra body here, trimming and shaving there, sprinkling in a turn of phrase just to see how it reads, and hopefully asking good questions about the meaning of it all. (Naturally, I myself hate being edited until it’s over, at which point I’m like “oh yes this is much better, thank you”). When I work with a writer, I never ever think “who the fuck are you?? and who cares what you think??” as I often think about myself. So I’m trying to replicate that spirit here, with more looseness and fun.
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I don’t have an essay in me at the moment but I do have recipes I loved and TV shows I think more people should watch and a passage that gutted me, so that felt like as good a place to start as any?
Something I think you should eat:
I’m not even sure this counts as a recipe since it’s essentially sauteing a shitload of cherry tomatoes in olive oil and mixing it with pasta but man, what sorcery. The ½ cup of oil is essential—do not skimp. When I made it, I spilled pasta all over the sink trying to do some insane one-handed maneuver with the pot and the strainer, which led to burning my fingers as I tried to recover my lost linguini. I ate a bowl of it while icing my hand on frozen green beans and it was still a highlight of my evening.
Something I think you should read:
It is hard to describe the premise of/“recommend” All My Puny Sorrows, by Miriam Toewes, without bumming people out and/or making them worry about you, but it is…divine? And so blindingly funny for a book that’s trying to answer the big, scary question of why anyone would want to live when there exists that other option. Here is the passage I mentioned:
We drove down Corydon Avenue towards my mother's apartment. How are you doing, she asked me? Fine, fine, I said. I wanted to tell her that I felt I was dying from rage and that I felt guilty about everything and that when I was a kid I woke up every morning singing, that I couldn't wait to leap out of bed and rush out of the house into the magical kingdom that was my world, that dust made visible in sunbeams gave me real authentic joy, that my sparkly golden banana-seated bike with the very high sissy bar took my breath away, the majesty of it, that it was mine, that there was no freer soul in the world than me at age nine, and that now I wake up every morning reminding myself that control is an illusion, taking deep breaths and counting to ten trying to ward off panic attacks and hoping that my own hands hadn't managed to strangle me while I slept. Nora texted: We have carpenter ants now. I texted back: good. Put them to work rebuilding the broken door.
Something I think you should watch:
I don’t think Apple TV is particularly invested in making sure anyone actually watches anything on it, which is a shame because I lovedPlatonic. Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen play two friends who fall out when Seth’s character gets married, and reconnect in the wake of his divorce. There’s not really the advertised “will they secretly fall in love” element here (yawn! boring!) which is for the best, because the actual substance is better. Nestled among all the A++ antics, there’s some real profundity here about the phases of life when you desperately need and rely on your friends (post-divorce, for example) and periods when you inevitably drift away, and all the bittersweetness of those diverging and converging orbits. Platonic was created by Nicholas Stoller, who also directed Neighbors in 2014, so it is also interested in middle-aged women being allowed to be spectacular fuck-ups. The supporting cast is excellent (Luke MacFarlane as a sweet, befuddled husband; Guy Branum as the best friend/coworker). I would watch Rose Byrne open jars of mayonnaise, truly.
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In Nancy Meyers’s Something’s Gotta Give, Diane Keaton, after having her turtlenecks and then her heart ripped apart by Jack Nicholson, begins to weep and then to type. Diane plays an uptight playwright named Erica Barry and in the aftermath of her dumping, she’s cracked open—the words of her latest project pour right out of her. The seasons change and Erica continues to write and wail, wail and write, mouth open in comical anguish.
I love this scene because, well, I love a little feminine hysteria and Diane Keaton does it so well, and like most things Nancy Meyers, it’s an aspirational fantasy. I will never own a beach house in the Hamptons, I will never wear an all-white ensemble without soiling it, and I have never achieved divine emotional catharsis through writing. Allegedly, “everything is copy,” but artistic productivity has never been what flowed from my personal crises. Not to be melodramatic, but why would I want to layer one agony on top of another?
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Writing is just what I do when a) conditions are ideal and b) I’ve exhausted all the other possibilities. Today, I was supposed to write this cute little essay, just for myself, just to clear the pipes. Reader, I’ve gone for a jog, made lunch, showered, cleaned the kitchen, attended to the urgent matter of opening my mail, watched an episode of Top Chef for a “break,” and it is now 4:45 p.m. I do a lot better with editors and deadlines, but I’m at a career juncture where I’m hunting both and forced to steer my own rickety ship.
Nancy and Diane aside, when I see someone onscreen go into a fugue state and pop out their play/screenplay/novel in the span of a scene, I’m outraged. Where is the endless revising, the beating of the head against the wall, the self-recriminations, all the stupid little walks you have to take to clear your head, the firm conviction in the middle of every project that wow, you must be very dumb and this is actually quite bad? The novelist Philip Roth once said, not at all melodramatically, “Coal mining is hard work. This is a nightmare.” (H/T: Mason Currey’s excellent newsletter about artists’ daily rituals).
If it’s so much self-laceration, so much torture, why do so many people do it or at least aspire to it? I guess because of the possibly deluded belief that you have Something to Say, because of a rush you may have gotten from seeing something published under your name, maybe because someone once said that they connected with something that you wrote, or maybe because you’re coasting high off the memory of having written a really good sentence.
Even depictions that are wise in other ways tend to romanticize the period when the work actually happens. Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Little Women is sublime about the loneliness of having writerly aspirations, especially in adulthood, when the meandering days and unfettered creativity of girlhood give way to practical concerns, like trying to earn a living.
But Jo too experiences that mythical creative starburst. After Beth’s death and after Laurie marries Amy, a grieving Jo writes Little Women in a daze of sleepless nights, her pages laid out on the floor by candlelight, her hands cramping and smudged with ink. Isn’t that the hope? That you can create something timeless from your suffering?
But the slog, absent the soaring score, that satisfying crescendo, is more like the inner monologue that runs through Adaptation, a meta-comedy about the nervous breakdown the real screenwriter Charlie Kaufman had in attempting to adapt Susan Orleans’ book, The Orchid Thief.
“To begin... To begin... How to start? I'm hungry,” the fictional Charlie Kaufmann (played by Nicholas Cage) says to himself. “I should get coffee. Coffee would help me think. Maybe I should write something first, then reward myself with coffee. Coffee and a muffin. Okay, so I need to establish the themes. Maybe a banana-nut. That's a good muffin.”
Ah, there it is. The distractions, the cluttered brain, the perverse rewards system. Charlie’s monologue can get even darker, unleashing his most hateful thoughts about himself. “Do I have an original thought in my head? My bald head,” he asks himself. “Maybe if I were happier, my hair wouldn't be falling out.”
Possibly the reason TV and film sidestep the actual, ugly process of making art is because watching someone do it i.e. endlessly marinate in their own neuroses is uncomfortable and not all that compelling to watch.
I’ve wrestled with all kinds of fears and insecurities my entire writing life. I’ve tried to outrun them or shove them down but that’s mostly meant avoiding doing the thing that, for whatever reason, appears to bring me some satisfaction and fulfillment. I’m reaching toward the realization that maybe the fear is not something to conquer, but something that sits in the room with you every single day, alongside the scraps of paper and the half-eaten muffins, until it feels more like a companion than a ghoul.
And what if your worst fears come true? In the musical Tick Tick…Boom, based on the real life of the composer and playwright best known for Rent, Jonathan Larson is filled with visions of grandeur (“I’m the future of musical theater,” he says, only half-joking). He’s also a self-absorbed if charming menace and a reckless procrastinator who blows off his friends and loved ones to stay up all night andstare at a blank screen. His friends assure him that “there is only one Jonathan Larson”—that his talent is singular—but he doesn’t know that yet.
After eight years of toiling away at his first musical, Superbia, while waiting tables, absolutely nothing happens. No accolades, no money, no producers knocking down his door. “What do I do now?” Jonathan asks his agent (Judith Light), defeated. “You start writing the next one,” she says. “And after you finish that one, you start the next. And on and on. That’s what it is to be a writer, honey.” Jonathan Larson survives this rejection, he does write the next one, but passes away from a heart condition the night before Rent is set to debut off-Broadway.
It turns out that there are things even crueler than failure, than having to stare down a blank page. Life is short and fickle, so it has to be on to the next one.
Each week that passed I wrote something amazing and nothing happened, so I dug in and wrote harder. I thought I was trying to get somewhere. I thought there was somewhere to get. I had no idea that what I was experiencing was being a writer, and that no matter what happened, good or bad, I would feel exactly the same way forever.
RIP to the Queen, there have been someveryfunny tweets.
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Here are some of the things I vaguely believed when I was a teen growing up in Texas in the 2000s:
That the N*Sync song/lyric “God must’ve spent a little more time on you” was the most romantic thing I had ever heard. (WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THIS VIDEO, the subject of a different newsletter)
That my whole life would change if I somehow got to go out-of-state for college, where I would inevitably meet someone handsome and nice who wanted to make out with me and that we would get married when I was 24, or if I was really dragging my feet winning my first joint Nobel/Pulitzer, 25.
That if you had pre-marital sex, you were probably going to hell.
That abortion was, for reasons I hadn’t really looked into or considered, shameful and wrong because good girls don’t get pregnant.
I’ve been thinking about those half-formed, evangelically-tinged Young Me thoughts in light of everything that’s happened in the last month and lamenting that the people who have muscled their way to power appear no more sophisticated than an idiot 15-year-old who had her brain addled by purity rings and Joel Osteen reruns. My parents are Muslim and far more progressive than I gave them credit for but we had never talked about this so I was left to pick up cues from the Culture and the Culture in the 2000s was fucked.
The teens these days seem a lot wiser, with an intuitive understanding of bodily autonomy and misogyny, and they have far better pop culture examples, thanks to a revolution in abortion storytelling. I’m thinking specifically of the gorgeous episode of Sex Education, in which one of the main characters, 17-year-old Maeve, resisting the pull of shame and stigma, has a small, quiet abortion that allows the rest of her life to unfurl.
In Sex Education, reluctant “sex savant” Otis and Cool/Tough Girl Maeve team up to give sex therapy to their classmates, in the absence of the adults in their lives dispensing much useful information. Otis, cribbing material from his actual sex therapist mother (a fierce Gillian Anderson) and despite his own inexperience, turns out to be very good at answering teens’ gamut of outrageous sex questions (how much masturbation is too much masturbation? is my orgasm face weird?) in his own bumbling, earnest way. Maeve, in need of cash, turns their minor’s clinic into a business.
In only the third episode, Maeve finds herself unexpectedly pregnant after a tryst with Jackson, a high school Golden Boy. We don’t know much about Meave at this point except that she’s a social outcast with pink highlights and smudged eyeliner, and that she lives alone in a trailer park, with no family to be seen. Maeve promptly schedules a consultation at an abortion clinic. Asked by the intake nurse if she’s considered adoption, Maeve answers breezily, “I don’t think anybody would want a pregnant 17-year-old.”
The only hitch is that the clinic requires someone to escort her home after the procedure. After a few halting attempts to ask Jackson and a girlfriend, Maeve asks Otis to meet her after school at an unspecified address to do an unspecified favor. Otis, thinking he’s being asked on some sort of date, shows up to a nondescript office park in a suit, only to be harangued by a pair of anti-abortion protestors. Shenanigans ensue.
Up until about a decade ago, abortion, when it was discussed or shown on television at all, dramatized The Choice, acceding to the right-wing framing of it as always a moral question. Characters agonized about their decision. Sometimes, they felt the irresistible draw of motherhood and had a baby, as Miranda did on Sex and the City, complete with a dramatic walkout of an abortion clinic. Other times, they avoided one by a well-timed miscarriage. Cristina Yang was scheduled to have an abortion in the second season of Grey’s Anatomy but, under pressure from ABC’s Standards and Practices, Shonda Rhimes gave her an ectopic pregnancy instead (at least it resulted in one of my favorite Grey’s scenes).
Things only began to change six years later, when Rhimes had amassed enough power to tell the story she wanted: Scandal’s Olivia Pope has an abortion on network television, making the decision on her own with no input from anyone else, not even the would-be father, the president of the United States. Rhimes even showed the outpatient procedure in a medically accurate way–no sweaty brows, no faces scrunched in pain, no ominous clanking of surgical instruments. This watershed moment heralded a new age of abortion plotlines: low-keys ones that showed 1) how minor the procedure is in the first trimester, when 92 percent of abortions take place and 2) how the possibilities in a person’s life could open up after an abortion; how it empowered instead of diminished them.
Still, people getting or considering abortions on television tend to be younger, whiter and have no other children. Sex Education addresses this deftly: when Maeve gets to the clinic, she meets Sara, a chatty middle-aged woman and mother of three, who announces that it’s not her first time there. Maeve is initially annoyed by the loudmouth antics but softens as she persists in lightening the mood. As they’re waiting to be called into the surgical room, Sara reassures Maeve and another patient that it’s all going to be fine; she grabs their hands and makes them do the wave. Maeve’s procedure, under sedation, is shown to be brief and matter-of-fact, about as big of a deal as a root canal.
Otis, meanwhile, waits outside for Maeve with the anti-abortion protestors–a boy and a girl–who are in a bizarre religious fanatic lover’s spat about, naturally, the meaning of penetration. He goes to the market across the street to pick out a post-abortion get-well present for Maeve. After some thought, he decides on flowers and a sandwich.
The entire episode radiates incredible tenderness and compassion for people who have abortions and their reasons for doing so. It’s not blind to the judgment that can dog someone’s valid reproductive choices. You see it in Maeve’s hesitation in asking someone to pick her up from the abortion clinic, and in the cruel way a nurse tells Sara as she’s recovering that there’s no chocolate pudding left, but maybe there will be the next time she’s back. But Sex Education allows Maeve and Sara to care for each other in a moment when they are intensely vulnerable. Maeve gifts Sara her chocolate pudding; Sara tells Maeve that she feels way more guilty about the kids she had than the ones she didn’t. “I bet your kids really love you,” Maeve answers.
Later, in a scene that I now find the most romantic thing in the world, Otis walks Maeve home to her trailer park, not asking her a single question about the circumstances that led to their abortion date. Maeve’s abortion is never mentioned again and she continues to live her life, trying her best to rise above her less-than-ideal circumstances.
I wish I had this kind of template in my young idiot days. What did I know then about anything? About falling in or out of love, or catastrophic life-altering accidents. About the mysterious workings of a body, about miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies and fetal abnormalities. About how no amount of good girl-ing can gird you from life’s vicious knocks. Those reckonings would all come later, but I wish the first thing I had learned was a little compassion, for myself and for others trying to live the best version of their lives.
My hope is that even in these unbearably grim times, we care for each other in every way we know how, that we never abandon one another, even as the state has taken a turn toward the murderous. May we all be able to have the small, quiet abortions we deserve.
Recent good things:
Did you know you can start the process of getting abortion pills RIGHT NOW, even if you are not currently pregnant, from Aid Access, to keep in the cabinet for yourself or perhaps someone else in need (they are prioritizing pregnant people first but should get back to you in a few weeks)?
Rita Moreno, then Rosita Dolores, was just 17 when she was scouted at a dance recital and set up for the meeting that would change her life, with the legendary MGM executive, Louis Mayer. She wore a dress made by her mother and a corset to give her a “wasp waist,” to make her look more like her idol, Elizabeth Taylor. It worked like a charm–Mayer declared her a “Spanish Elizabeth Taylor” and she was given a contract on the spot.
But first there was business to attend to. In her early days on the studio lot after moving to Hollywood, hobnobbing with stars, her wildest dreams miraculously coming into focus, a casting director called her to his office and said her name just wouldn’t do. Rosita was, astonishingly, “too Italian,” he said. How about Ruby Fontino? Marcy Miranda? Or Rita, like Rita Hayworth? And so, Rita Moreno was born.
The bargain sounds almost Faustian–your name for riches and fame–but even after that, for the next decade, Moreno would have to dutifully play bit “ethnic girl” parts in MGM movies. “No, no. I got Native girls. I got Pacific Island parts. I got Egyptian girl parts–anything but just acting roles,” she said in a Fresh Air interview earlier this year (at 90, Moreno gives no more fucks and the interview is candid and delightful). Usually, she wore thick, muddy makeup to darken her face and often, the part called for an accent. Moreno only knew how to do one so all of the characters ended up sounding vaguely Puerto Rican.
I’m a musical theater rube so I didn’t know much about the lore of West Side Story–not the 1957 Broadway show or the 1961 film, with music composed by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics from a young Stephen Sondheim–until I saw the most recent Steven Spielberg reincarnation a few weeks ago. Since then, I’ve been thinking a lot about what a stroke of destiny it was that Moreno was cast as Anita in 1961, even in a story as flawed and deeply polarizing to Puerto Ricans as this one.
Tony and Maria, the star-crossed lovers/horny teenagers, do a fine job of making dopey eyes at each other for two and a half hours and watching the Jets and the Sharks pirouette-joust is strangely mesmerizing. But it’s Anita, the outspoken, charismatic girlfriend of Shark leader Bernardo, whose arc from exuberant optimism to devastating betrayal feels like the heart of the story. Art is funny that way: Bernstein, Sondheim and their collaborators, Jerome Robbins and Arthur Laurents, were just looking to fill in some details in their Romeo and Juliet retelling so they picked “New York” and “gangs” and “Puerto Ricans” as if filling out Mad Libs. Yet, with Anita, they created a character who has endured for 60 years. And who better to understand the uneasy pacts you’re forced to accept to make a life in America than the actress compelled to give away her own name.
Spielberg’s newest West Side Story rehabs it, scrubbing it of its most outlandish stereotypes while underscoring the themes that are relevant today–the virulent racism, the struggles of recently arrived immigrants and an entirely new dimension added by screenwriter Tony Kushner, gentrification and displacement.
“America,” Anita’s signature number, is a cheeky but heated argument between Bernado and Anita about the trade-offs implicit in American life for Puerto Ricans: the comforts and the consumerism trumpeted by Anita, soured by the reminders of marginalization and bigotry that Bernardo airs (Buying on credit is so nice/One look at us and they charge twice; I'll get a terrace apartment/Better get rid of your accent; Free to be anything you choose/Free to wait tables and shine shoes).
Is it a little cheesy? Well, sure. A little simplified, a little saccharine? Yeah, it’s a musical!
In 1961, Moreno was thrilled to finally be playing a dignified Latina woman, but she was still forced to put on the fake accent and cake her face in muddy make-up. She was most aghast at the prospect of having to sing the opening lines of “America,” as they were in the musical: “Puerto Rico/You ugly island/Island of tropic diseases,” followed by a series of other offensive insinuations about poverty, crime and overpopulation. Lest you think this didn’t read as an outrageous caricature at the time, here is a letter from a New York City doctor published in the New York Times in 1957 protesting (“Today Puerto Rico has no significant disease problems related to its tropical climate”). To Moreno’s great relief, Sondheim changed the lyrics in the movie to the hardly much better: “Puerto Rico/My heart's devotion/Let it sink back in the ocean.” Spielberg’s “America” gets a further update, jettisoning all the nastiest lyrics, casting the exceptional Ariana DeBose, an Afro-Latina actress, to play Anita, and staging it on the thrumming streets of New York.
For some, the bigger problem is that the whole foundation of this debate–and in fact, the story of lovers straining to overcome tribal animosity–is too shaky, too devoid of context. Andrea González-Ramírez writes in The Cut:
For the most part, the film struggles to engage with the elephant in the room: Puerto Rico is a colony of the United States, and most of what the Sharks experience is directly linked to imperialism on top of your classic American racism and anti-immigrant sentiment.
It’s true, none of the West Side Story’s, none of the America’s are built to address how American colonialism helped create the conditions that Puerto Ricans were fleeing in the first place. Still, “America” rings true to the arguments I’ve heard play out in my own diaspora. You can covet your new washing machine and keep the fucked geopolitics of your homeland’s predicament in your head at the same time.
Anita’s optimism about America is a survival tactic–take the good, do your best to withstand the bad, be brave enough to want better. It’s her dreams—of marrying Bernardo, a terrace apartment, a shop of her own—that feel the most real, sweaty and alive with desire. And so when those dreams start to collapse, it feels all the more crushing. Her beloved Bernardo killed, Maria in love with his murderer, Anita still goes to Doc’s Pharmacy after that night of bloodshed to deliver a message from Maria to Tony. And then, she is harassed, humiliated and nearly raped by a pack of Jets. It’s the final straw and Anita tells the lie that sets the final tragedy of West Side Story in motion. Its most durable message might be that those who most wholeheartedly believe in the idea of America are the ones most in danger of being leveled by it.
Moreno thought that West Side Story was really, this time, going to change her life, especially after she won both an Oscar and a Golden Globe for her performance. In fact, she continued to be offered small, offensive parts. “It was the heartbreak of my life,” she said. “I really constantly believed everything was going to be good until it wasn't.” She wouldn’t do another film for seven years. There were other, more unthinkable horrors in her life. As revealed for the first time in her memoir, she was raped by her agent, and continued working with him because she believed he was the only one who would champion her. Her tumultuous affair with Marlon Brando ended in a botched abortion and a failed suicide attempt.
The respect that she so craved, both from the industry and for herself, accrued slowly and painstakingly, over the course of decades. Eventually, she became one of only 16 people to earn the distinction of winning an Oscar, an Emmy, a Grammy and a Tony. In Spielberg’s West Side Story, her stature was reflected in her executive producer credit and the role that was created for her, as Valentina, Doc’s widow and Tony’s confidant. To savor it, at long last, Rita Moreno just had to survive.
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Is new Gossip Girl "bad"? A debate with GG scholar Margie Truwit
**A LOT OF SPOILERS AHEAD IF YOU CARE ABOUT THAT SORT OF THING**
The Gossip Girl reboot that debuted earlier this year on HBO Max has been described as a “tired retread,” “an absolute mess,” and, in a particularly devastating rebuke, not “fun.”
I, for one, was having a great time watching the unhinged drama unfold among the brooding Gen Z-ers at Constance Billard, the Upper East Side prep school where in the original GG universe, Serena, Blair, Dan, et al. ran amok. All of the wildness of the reboot—the batshit storylines, the stilted performances, the arch dialogue—seemed part and parcel of any good-bad trash TV, but I was surprised to be in the minority to think so (admittedly, it’s been hard to continue defending this trainwreck as the season has worn on). I decided to bring in preeminent Gossip Girl scholar/friend of Bad Taste/funniest compiler of TikToks I know, Margie Truwit, to discuss in detail. Here is our lightly edited, only ever-so-slightly condensed Slack chat.
For the uninitiated, here’s the basic rundown of the characters and central dramas of new Gossip Girl.
It’s revealed in the pilot that the put-upon teachers of Constance Billard have revived Gossip Girl as an Instagram account to regain some control over the nightmarish, ultra-privileged students and their equally odious parents. The whole scheme is masterminded by failed novelist-turned-English teacher played by former millennial wunderkind Tavi Gevinson, a stroke of pure casting genius.
Zoya and Julien, the Serena/Blair of the show, are formerly estranged half-sisters. Their mom left Julien’s Grammy-winning music producer dad for Zoya’s staid (but still debonair) lawyer one, and died after giving birth to Zoya. Julien is a top-tier socialite and some sort of mega-influencer, but constantly fretting about her brand and status. Zoya is from Buffalo, which apparently makes her uncool, but also reads books and has thoughts about them, which makes her...I’m not sure, subversive?
Obie is the scion of a prominent New York family that has shady business dealings but he’s woke as hell and goes to protests and stuff. He starts the series as Julien’s boyfriend but...you probably already know where this is going, we are contractually obligated to have at least one love triangle, if the combatants are related, all the better.
Julien’s friends (?), Luna and Monet, do her styling and PR with all of the zealotry of paid image consultants, which seems odd, but more on that later.
Audrey and Aki have been dating for so long that the sex has gotten routine and boring, which, WHAT, they are 17 years old!!!! Their bedroom doldrums lead them both to their friend Max, an impish purveyor of sexual pandemonium, a proto-Chuck Bass. Max, meanwhile, wants to ravage his classics teacher, ugh.
Without further delay, our chat!
nfkhan96 8:01 PM
Ok, Margie, first I must know: what is your relationship with Gossip Girl 1.0? Did you watch while it was on/were you a devotee?
Margie Truwit 8:02 PM
Watched religiously when it was on, including memories of watching in Craven D [a dormitory at Duke University]
nfkhan96 8:03 PM
so you LIKED it
Margie Truwit 8:03 PM
oh hell yes
nfkhan96 8:03 PM
you were on board with the whole thing
Margie Truwit 8:03 PM
did you not like it?!?
nfkhan96 8:03 PM
i did not watch while it was on!!! i actually watched the first season last year in the middle of the lockdown and i was like…this is absolutely nuts
so i think that colors my experience of the reboot because they seem insane in similar ways to me, so i’m not sure what we were expecting from this??
Margie Truwit 8:04 PM
oh ya absolutely insane like these kids were 15 and going to the palace which is typically filled with tourists and 50 y/o men
nfkhan96 8:04 PM
yeah, serena cheated with her best friend’s boyfriend IN PUBLIC, at a bar, it looked like??
the handwaving in the pilot about chuck’s ATTEMPTED rape??
Margie Truwit 8:05 PM
oh yes so i remember that being weird because it was a very vivid experience for jenny in the books
which yes, i read
and it’s like a blip on the radar in the show
nfkhan96 8:05 PM
oh man this is very exciting, you’re more versed in this universe so i’m excited to hear your thoughts
so I’m sensing that I think new Gossip Girl is a fun chaotic mess, not unlike the original, but you sort of hate it? What bugs you THE MOST about it?
Margie Truwit 8:06 PM
What bugs me the most is the casting and the writing problems, like none of these people have any emotions (in a bad way, not a blair way) and it is SO heavy handed with the current age references
you don't need to mention olivia jade to know its 2020
nfkhan96 8:07 PM
hahaha i do admit that the references are really crazy
[some of the aforementioned references: “I’m in LA tonight with a session with ‘Billie,’” “repost some Sonia Renee Taylor instead of sending me birthday memes”]
Margie Truwit 8:07 PM
and like tbh none of these people actually seem rich/influential
the teacher plot is just like bonkers
nfkhan96 8:09 PM
okay those are fair points! i guess i think that serena, blair, nate, jenny, etc. also seemed weirdly robotic to me and the lines were equally ham-fisted, i think dan did a kind of good job but like…he also got published in the new yorker when he was a senior!
is realism really the point here??
Margie Truwit 8:09 PM
ok agree on the OG casting with the exception of blair
nate was like
catatonic
nfkhan96 8:09 PM
he heavily relied on his bangs for charisma
Margie Truwit 8:10 PM
worse than ryan of the oc
it was unrealistic but they did seem v privileged and lived a certain lifestyle, but had drams that was like, oh wow i feel that and i want to know what happens
new gg is like here's a tweet from when you were 12 and all of nyc is cancelling on ur bday which like
not that exciting!
nfkhan96 8:12 PM
It definitely sounds like a bunch of 30 year old television writers creating a fantasy where they imagine how privileged teens of today behave but they have no clue
but it kind of works for me too because i have no clue either what the teens of today are like!
do they really go to locanda verde BEFORE SCHOOL? is louis vuitton still cool???
Margie Truwit 8:13 PM
yes and the filters
like this is probably what the youth do
finstas and such
nfkhan96 8:13 PM
I do not understand the motivations of Luna and Monet specifically?
Margie Truwit 8:14 PM
NO IDEA omg
nfkhan96 8:14 PM
what is their skin in the game of fluffing Julien? but with that being said I do enjoy them the most
they are like a bitchy Greek chorus
Margie Truwit 8:14 PM
Right but that even feels kind of tired
Gretchen Wieners did the thing
nfkhan96 8:14 PM
damn
Margie Truwit 8:14 PM
like the last episode was the spring fling dance
nfkhan96 8:14 PM
why wouldn’t Monet and Luna have their own influencer empires? The only qualifications for being an influencer are being hot and rich, which check and check!
Margie Truwit 8:15 PM
right and when there is a power vacuum they could become the stars
The only ones i like are Aki and Audrey
nfkhan96 8:15 PM
oh interesting
Margie Truwit 8:16 PM
that plot is interesting and like oh yes this is an identity thing that is good to watch
nfkhan96 8:17 PM
see, I thought that adding sexual fluidity to your typical love triangle is still a play at scandalousness that’s a bit lazy
Margie Truwit 8:17 PM
oh absolutely lazy
nfkhan96 8:17 PM
it’s another thing where they seem to be straining to scream WE MADE THIS IN 2021 WE KNOW WHAT POLY IS
Margie Truwit 8:17 PM
the new chuck is trash
nfkhan96 8:17 PM
is that max?
Margie Truwit 8:17 PM
yes
the audrey mom piece i guess too i like
its dark but oh she has family things that don’t seem too contrived
nfkhan96 8:18 PM
she had to close her factories in laos made me laugh hahahaha
ok going back to the initial twist: the teachers running Gossip Girl! i thought that was pretty fun, especially because again, I am of teacher age now and I can picture being terrified of my students and wanting to exact revenge on them
it didn’t hit for you?
Margie Truwit 8:19 PM
did not hit
you would be fired immediately!
i agree on the revenge thing, i went to a high school where they released grades after hours on a friday so people couldn’t call and reach a person to complain
but like that's how they handled insane parents
nfkhan96 8:21 PM
lol it’s funny which realities you aren’t willing to bend and which ones you are!
Margie Truwit 8:21 PM
yes this is true
nfkhan96 8:21 PM
for everyone!
Margie Truwit 8:21 PM
it would have been more natural for julien's friends to restart gg
to knock down zoya or whatever they want to do
like are the teachers gonna have a plot line other than trying not to get caught?
nfkhan96 8:22 PM
it is interesting how stone-cold brutal they are
Margie Truwit 8:22 PM
oh yeah for sure
nfkhan96 8:22 PM
Tavi Gevenson chatting up Zoya and then calmly proceeding to destroy her life via posting
Margie Truwit 8:23 PM
I actually do think the tavi casting is hilariously good
nfkhan96 8:23 PM
yes me too!!!
Margie Truwit 8:23 PM
pick a millennial feministy icon
watch her burn hs girls to the ground
nfkhan96 8:23 PM
very clever to make the teen ingenue a teacher
what do you think about the central conflict between Zoya and Julien as the main drama?
is it as good/satisfying as Serena vs. Blair?
Margie Truwit 8:24 PM
it needs more oomph
the family drama is there, sure, and Julien getting Zoya into school on the DL was a decent twist
but playing a vid of her getting bullied and that's the big reveal so far?
nfkhan96 8:25 PM
they are also see sawing so quicklyyyy
they love or hate each other for 20 minutes max before it’s onto a new dynamic
Margie Truwit 8:26 PM
yes agree
nfkhan96 8:29 PM
for a lot of Gossip Girl, I am like “who are you based on? who is the protype you are supposed to be emulating?”
i thought that of Julien--is she an Olivia Jade?
Margie Truwit 8:29 PM
Yes!!
I agree
no idea who they are supposed to be but maybe that’s the point like i’m too old to know
nfkhan96 8:30 PM
i bet the youngs wouldn’t know either though
i thought Instagram was PASSE
Margie Truwit 8:30 PM
i asked my analyst at work for a sense check
nfkhan96 8:30 PM
and…?
Margie Truwit 8:30 PM
right no idea who they are supposed to be
If I might ask a question
what are your thoughts on the parents here
nfkhan96 8:31 PM
i guess the ones we’ve seen the most are the dads…i think Zoya’s dad is a grounded enough figure! Julien’s dad…well, I love that because he is a music producer, he has to be wearing a funny hat at all times.
Margie Truwit 8:31 PM
the casting destroys me here too
Julien's dad once played a serial killer on SVU who killed immigrants
nfkhan96 8:32 PM
Oh no
Margie Truwit 8:32 PM
no one's fault but my own really, but it is always in my head
I think they are just too hip
nfkhan96 8:32 PM
The drama with Max’s two dads was interesting
I thought that was an inventive way to stir up your basic family drama over an affair
Margie Truwit 8:33 PM
it was inventive and had actual feels
but again I think they are all too hip
Eleanor Waldorf and Lily Van Der Woodson were like
the rich women I see at my nail salon on the upper east side
nfkhan96 8:33 PM
hahaha what about Rufus though
Margie Truwit 8:34 PM
ok that is a gripe with old gg
nfkhan96 8:34 PM
i feel like they put him in a puka shell necklace to indicate that he was low-key poor
Margie Truwit 8:34 PM
if you can afford that loft
like you’re doing fine
but he was the lone hip one
helpful context that it’s still a prep school on the upper east side
nfkhan96 8:35 PM
the met steps!
okay so I think what we’re circling around is how much realism do we need in GG? It’s def a world that 99 percent of us will never know anything about so it’s even hard to fact check it, but you’re right I’m not sure the emotions are grounded enough to make it all fire smoothly
Margie Truwit 8:36 PM
this is a good question
i think i need some element of realism + escapism
like i can envision this is the outline of a real place but the high drama and lavish lifestyle hooks me
but maybe that's so because i associate this show with like rich upper east side peeps
based on my prior fandom
nfkhan96 8:39 PM
yeah i think it’s prob a v different experience going in with those priors!
to me, this kind of gives me Younger or Sex and the City vibes
or even RIVERDALE vibes because it’s so batty
the dialogue is almost camp? especially with Monet and Luna?
Margie Truwit 8:40 PM
toooootally camp!
it does feel like younger but i also quit that, but hilary and sutton are like very likeable
so it kept me longer than it otherwise would in that that show makes no gd sense and mariska hargitay's husband IRL should know sutton foster’s not 23
nfkhan96 8:41 PM
i forgot that was mr. hargitay!! but yeah just like that was a cartoon version of publishing, i think this is a cartoon world of privileged teens
okay 2 more things i want to get to before i let you go
what do we think of Obie as a romantic lead?
i think…kind of a dud!!!
Margie Truwit 8:42 PM
Total dud however
he does remind me of a lot of boys who think they are a lot cooler than they actually are
nfkhan96 8:43 PM
lololol
Margie Truwit 8:43 PM
totally average looking, pretends to be smart, dating the coolest girl at school?
nfkhan96 8:43 PM
i wish i knew who he was based off too?? who is the real woke king of new york?
is he supposed to be…Harry Styles?
kind of?
Margie Truwit 8:44 PM
hahahaha
i think there are a lot of rich boys in nyc prep schools who are like not me im not like my banker dad who just cares about money
nfkhan96 8:45 PM
lol the way that they denote worldliness/wokeness is also extremely funny
Margie Truwit 8:45 PM
YES
nfkhan96 8:45 PM
-has read toni morrison
-knows what a picket line is
-sees a jeremy o. harris play
Margie Truwit 8:45 PM
HAHAHAHHA
nfkhan96 8:45 PM
-and likes it
Margie Truwit 8:45 PM
but also those same boys grow up
and join old sae at duke [a fraternity at duke university]
only hang out with rich girls
its very realistic but boring i guess
nfkhan96 8:46 PM
oh man brief anecdote, this one SAE-type guy in one of my english classes once recited a big chunk of the love song of j. alfred prufrock in class and i’m realizing now
that is obie!!
Margie Truwit 8:46 PM
YES
exactly
takes doc studies classes
graduates to work at jpm
nfkhan96 8:47 PM
hahahah do you think that’s Obie’s path on the show?
he takes over the family business and becomes a union buster
Margie Truwit 8:47 PM
maybe not on show but in real life absolutely
he’s going to have to make a hard choice in show prob
of like do i do the rich thing or do i take an unpaid political internship with bill deblasio
nfkhan96 8:47 PM
oh wow that is his future
being bill deblasio
what do you think in general about the class/privilege anxiety providing some tension here? i feel like it could be good but is executed weirdly because some of these rich kids really relish being rich in a way that seems over the top
In real life, i think these kids would think they were middle class even though that’s insane
Margie Truwit 8:49 PM
totally agree
julien rich is probably the right rich
like oh im having a birthday lets call princess nokia (who is this????)
nfkhan96 8:50 PM
I think that was a good choice i think bc princess nokia is kind of underground cool!
it’s interesting that she was willing to do this cameo!!!
they must’ve paid her buckets of money
Margie Truwit 8:51 PM
agree great choice
like goes with theme of show of rich kids being slightly edgy
nfkhan96 8:51 PM
yeah exactly
ok last thing: Max and his freaking CLASSICS teacher
i thought they weren’t going to go there
and then…they did
Margie Truwit 8:51 PM
ok that guy is hot tho
nfkhan96 8:51 PM
LOL
it’s fine if the teacher is hot enough
Margie Truwit 8:52 PM
the teacher is a skeeze though
he’s too ick to be hot enough for me
nfkhan96 8:52 PM
yeah im bummed that they went for that because it is such a tired, boring storyline on every teen show
Margie Truwit 8:52 PM
like you just picked up a student with every pill known to the sackler family
it wasn’t like you were at a party and things got weird!
nfkhan96 8:53 PM
yeah and it is so unequivocally gross!! and not to get too preachy but we must stop making it seem sexy because it is not!
Margie Truwit 8:53 PM
100%
nfkhan96 8:54 PM
so I think I’m going to stick with GG 2.0 because I ENJOY this show while understanding that it is actually pretty bad. could anything be done to win back your affections??
Margie Truwit 8:54 PM
oh im 100% going to stick with the season and watch it
it is culture
so i will see if it can get better
i would like to see some more drama/cliffhangers
make me want to see what happens next like they did with blair and serena! i legit would be like omg cant wait til next week
nfkhan96 8:56 PM
lol ok ok really last thing but can we talk about Julien being absolutely ready to nuke Zoya with the video from Buffalo and pivoting within 2 minutes to giving a speech about being a bully?
and after being drugged???
Margie Truwit 8:57 PM
total spring fling vibes
nfkhan96 8:57 PM
i was PING PONGING
Margie Truwit 8:57 PM
cady getting up to pick up her crown being like its just plastic!!
nfkhan96 8:57 PM
maybe that was the inspiration
ok margie thank you so much!!!! this was so fun!!
Margie Truwit 8:57 PM
so much fun!!! thank you for having me on for such a slacktacular chat!