Jeopardy, Reservation Dogs, and What's Your "Free Pass" Genre

What I'm Reading, Watching, & Listening To This Week

I’m baaaack!!!!!!! I went on a two-week vacation because all the advice I’ve heard is that when starting a newsletter, immediately go on an extended vacation. [That is not the advice I’ve heard.]

On my flight back home, I decided to gamble on watching Edge of Tomorrow, the 2014 Emily Blunt/Tom Cruise alien movie, even though I couldn’t for the life of me remember if it was or was not officially deemed hot garbage. Reader, it was not! I thoroughly enjoyed! [Rotten Tomatoes score of 91% to back me up if you believe in that kind of thing.]

The movie was a winner but it also got me thinking — Whether good or bad, I will always give a free pass to movies about aliens where there’s some pseudo-science explaining how the aliens work. If there’s a scene where the humans gather around a hard metal table in a post-apocalyptic bunker and discuss a 3-D hologram of the aliens’ biology/hive mind/language—SIGN ME UP. Even if it’s The Tomorrow War with Chris Pratt. Bottom line, if the genre includes “alien science horror,” I’m buying a ticket. [Note: Can we stop with this “Edge of the Day After Tomorrow’s Future War Past” mess?]

So, that got me wondering:

What’s your “Free Pass” movie genre or—as one NPR podcaster put it—your “Forgiveness Genre”?

Maybe you’d call it “guilty pleasure” but there’s no guilt about this! It doesn’t matter whether the movie is good or bad — you’ll still watch and enjoy it either way. Could be as general as “rom coms” or as specific as “movies about women fighting social norms but also falling in love with hotties in 1950s England.” Ben’s is sports-related teen dramas and they’re almost all horrible but he says he experiences “max happiness” while watching them.

Drop a comment and let me know your free pass genre! Now onto the recommendations.

In the News

• Jeopardy got a new host [who inexplicably wasn’t LeVar Burton] and then got rid of the new host posthaste! The new host was a company man who *checks notes* headed the search committee. Hm. But now the company man is canceled because of some past legal problems with pregnant employees [bad] and some racist/sexist comments [bad]. All I have to say is: GIVE US LEVAR!!! ALL THIS MAN HAS EVER DONE IS TRY TO GET KIDS TO READ MORE AND LOVED ONE WOMAN HIS WHOLE LIFE!!!!!!

• Disney’s new Star Cruiser Resort, which costs around $3,000/night for a family, which some have pointed out is more than many people’s mortgage payments. Sounds swanky! Until you remember every cantina in Star Wars looks like a rusty toilet built inside a sand dune. Well played, Disney.

• New photos from the set of the next season of The Crown. The next season is a big deal because it will likely feature Princess Diana’s death. To remain historically accurate to Prince Charles’ lewk, the wig team attempted to make The Wire’s sexpot detective, Jimmy McNulty, ugly. They did not succeed and Twitter finds this fact unforgivable. Which, L - O - L.

• Kendrick Lamar teased more about his new album this morning!!!!!!!!!!! We knew one was coming but this is the latest update, mostly outlining the fact that it will be his last with his current label, TDE, a split that I honestly should know more about and will deep dive later. Here’s the site he shared with his message: oklama.com.

Watching — Reservation Dogs

Okay, speaking of Free Pass movies/people/directors, Taika Waititi is a mega Free Pass for me.

Remember the first two Thor movies? Oh, you don’t? Right, cuz they SUCKED. Then a miracle occurred and a practically unknown Kiwi director named Taika Waititi took over the third, Thor Ragnarok, and we got the Sexiest Marvel Comedy of all time and the best use of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” since School of Rock.

He’s also known for awards darlings like Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Jojo Rabbit, What We Do in the Shadows [don’t sleep on this show!], and the new surprise hit, Free Guy with my faves Ryan Reynolds and Jodie Comer. Everything he does is good because it has a tone that feels like something you’ve never quite experienced before and wants to have fun but also says something about us. It’s like Wes Anderson if Wes Anderson had played sports in high school.

Okay, all that intro was just to say you should try out his NEW SHOW Reservation Dogs on Hulu. It follows the listless yet action-packed lives of four Indigenous teens who commit petty crimes to try to make enough money to escape their reservation. It manages to turn this simple idea into a show that’s quirky, hilarious, sad, loving, uncomfortable, poignant, and everything in between. And I’ve only seen two episodes. They cast Indigenous people in the roles and the teen actors are so talented.

There will be 7 episodes total, they’re each just 30 minutes, and they come out every Monday on Hulu. Catch up on the three that are already out!

Listening — “Little Things” by Big Thief

The general rule of my personality is “No Indie Music Before Labor Day.” Summer is for POP AND K-POP ONLY. But a lot of the outlets I follow were gushing about this new song from the “indie darling” band Big Thief. [Full disclosure, I had never heard of them.] It’s a song about obsessive longing for a romantic partner and the lead singer expresses it with a raw yet innocent straightforwardness. It’s sad but somehow also light, a little sublime. Definitely one of those songs that benefit from noise-canceling headphones and closed eyes.

Also listening to:

• Rumors by Lizzo and Cardi featuring the all-time line “last time I got freaky/the SEC sued me.” [Warning: this is not a link to the family-safe version!!]

• Willow Smith’s new punk album featuring Avril Lavigne

• And for anyone interested in K-Pop, Sunmi’s new single “You Can’t Sit With Us.” Note that this is the K-Popiest of K-Pop so if you aren’t initiated yet, you might feel overwhelmed by what I like to call the high gloss.

Reading

• “The White Lotus” Finale: Mike White Accepts Your Criticism - Vulture - (Don’t read this if you haven’t finished White Lotus!! If you have and you’re still mulling over the ending and the meaning of it all, this interview is excellent. I loved the show from start to finish. The ending was more of a denouement than I expected but it left me with a lot to ponder.)

• A Timeline of Afghanistan’s 4 Decades of Instability - NPR - (I haven’t made this newsletter to be a political space, but in my opinion which ultimately doesn’t matter, our abject failure in the way we left Afghanistan is a lesson in the failures of every administration since the start of the “war,” and America’s entire approach to foreign policy since WWII. I wish I had cared more about it before this happened.)

• The Opposite of Toxic Positivity - The Atlantic - (happier topic?)

• Why Do American Grocery Stores Still Have an Ethnic Aisle? - The New York Times - (Note: the title isn’t a smug rhetorical question, it’s a true exploratory one. I learned so much!)

Don’t forget to drop a comment! [I’m not needy!]