Yes, It's THAT Season of The Crown
Plus "The Killer" on Netflix & Jason Momoa on SNL!
Happy Thanksgiving Week to you all! [If you immediately said, in a slow voice, “Happy Thanksgiving back”—you are my people, and you have watched You’ve Got Mail a few too many times!]
The holidays are a time of year I live for, but they can also be emotionally devastating. A mixed holiday bag. My family has had a good share of heaviness this year, and yet right now, I’m so thankful my parents are back home from Mom’s stem cell transplant (!), reunited with their two dogs Belle & Louie (!), and starting the long road to recovery.
This week, I pray that you all have people [family or chosen family] to hug close, to laugh with, and to make criminally butter-heavy foods for.
I also have to say I’m just really, really, really grateful to share this little Substack space with you and be invited into your Inbox every week! :) Thank you! [“No, thank YOU’RE.”]
💜
This week, I’m reviewing:
The Thanksgiving episode of Saturday Night Live
The new David Fincher movie The Killer
The Crown’s final season, a.k.a. the one with Princess Diana’s untimely death. [What a great start to the holiday week, eh!?]
If you want to skip straight to my thoughts on The Crown, I have a few further down this post, but most of them I recorded in my first Substack Podcast!
🎧 Listen Now: My Thoughts on The Crown Season 6!
Question for you: I don’t want this to sound flippant, but I really am curious: Do you have memories of when Princess Diana died? Her funeral? Where were you? What did you think and feel? I was nine years old, so mostly, I remember my mom’s sadness and her explaining who Diana was. I also remember that I couldn’t believe there was such a thing as a REAL princess and that she wore, like, jeans.
Saturday Night Live Highlights: Jason Momoa
This episode was pretty lackluster, though a few sketches rose above! A good example is the one linked above — “Rome Song.” It’s just a riff on the “How often do men think about the Roman Empire” viral trend that was circulating on the internet — checks notes — two whole months ago?? Like, that is ancient history at this point, no pun intended! And yet, the sketch was fun!
So, here are my additional highlights and lowlights:
Highlights: Backup Musical Guest “Remember Lizards” | Bowen Yang as George Santos | Thanksgiving Week Airport Parade | Please Don’t Destroy - Ramen Order | UNTOLD: Battle of the Sexes
Lowlights: No surprise that it’s Weekend Update making unoriginal sexist jokes again!
Movie: The Killer on Netflix
Two weeks ago, I did a massive preview of all the “awards-y” movies coming out in November and December. Catch up here! Now I’m watching through them as they’re released…
As I said in my movie preview post, this looks like your standard-issue “assassin revenge plot” fare. But since it’s David Fincher — creator/director of prestige movies like The Social Network, Gone Girl, Fight Club, and Se7en — you know it’s going to be anything BUT standard issue.
Fincher is a precise, even infamously meticulous, filmmaker whom the boys in your college film club probably worshipped. So, in The Killer, we don’t just get a cold-blooded assassin. We get a cold-blooded assassin who listens to The Smiths!* We get an assassin movie designed in an art gallery that hosts the occasional open mic night!
Some say it’s Fincher’s most personal work because his protagonist is like Fincher himself: exacting and disciplined but perhaps less in control than he thinks, which is a nice little self-own.
If you like precise, self-referential, arguably pretentious filmmaking and you don’t mind violence, go for it! It’s filled with monologues, narrative irony, inverted tropes, dark comedy, meta-commentary — the whole literary shebang. It’s also beautifully shot and staged.
But ultimately, it’s still an assassin revenge movie. All the fancy trappings are fitted over a rather flimsy story: Guy Goes on Revenge Spree When They Come for His Girlfriend. You can comb through it for philosophical dread and questions about human existence — but only if you have the time and energy.
The takeaway of the movie, to me [because I DID have the time and energy!]: How loathe we are to take responsibility for the consequences of our own actions, and the lies and lengths to which we will go to not face the music.
Two other random thoughts I jotted in my Notes App while watching The Killer:
New movie trope! Instead of “Girlfriend in the Fridge,” we have “Girlfriend in the ICU.” Big step for women’s rights! I feel safe now!
How are movies still having us believe people don’t know when they’re being followed in a car?? I’m not an assassin by any stretch of the imagination, but if a single car takes the same turn as me, I’m ready to tuck and roll out of a moving vehicle at 60 miles per hour. Something to think about.
*For those not in on this reference: The Smiths are a magnificent band, but also a band beloved by liberal-arts snobs everywhere. The Smiths are the band I pretended to listen to in college to get social cred, even though I was really listening to One Direction. (This was also during my “camping era.”) In pop culture, The Smiths are the quickest shortcut to saying, “This person has TASTE! This person is a THINKER!” The Smiths are the band Joseph Gordon Levitt is listening to in the elevator in 500 Days of Summer when Zooey Deschanel leans over and says, “I love The Smiths.” Every The Smiths reference is trying to say, “This girl is not just a pretty face!” or “This assassin is also a philosopher!”
TV: The Crown Season 6, Part 1 on Netflix
Part 1 of Season 6 is out now; four episodes leading up to Diana’s death and the immediate aftermath. The final six episodes will be released together on December 14.
I was SO curious to see how they would handle this final movement, covering events that most of us can remember. How would they choose to tell this story? Would they point fingers? After all, there are a million ways to tell this story that we all think we know.
Plus, I was lukewarm on this cast in the last season (Season 5). I felt the characters lacked dimension and complexity. Seasons 1-4 were slow, but every scene crackled with the tension and emotion between the actors. Season 5 fizzled.
So, how was it?? Well, instead of WRITING out all my thoughts, I TALKED them out! I created my first “podcast” episode of the Substack, and you can go listen to it here (it’s only 10 minutes!):
🎧 Listen Now: My Thoughts on The Crown Season 6, Part 1!
My earliest memory of Princess Di is the commemorative Beanie Baby coming out at the height of the Beanie Baby craze (which if I remember correctly was not too long after she died). Weird to remember her death by a cultural artifact / toy created in response to it.
Every time I see a clip from SNL lately it's been borderline offensive and/or unfunny so I always appreciate you pointing out the ones you did like as I often like them too!
Does your podcast have spoilers?? I’m trying to catch up on season 5 right now so I can start season 6 and finish it with you!!