Ted Lasso if a ChatBot Wrote It
+ a Charlotte Brontë hatchet job, SNL, & Melanie Lynskey
Hi guys. For all of you who have been so kind as to ask about my mom, I wrote a little update about how she’s doing. You won’t see it in your Inbox [since “Hannah’s life updates” aren’t what you signed up for], but it’s there on the site. 💜 Thanks to everyone sending thoughts and prayers, it means a lot.
Now to give everyone TOTAL whiplash — it’s time to dive into the things I’ve been enjoying/confused by/despising this week!
Ted Lasso Season 3 dropped Wednesday, the first of several “sequel seasons” of beloved TV franchises premiering in the coming weeks. Also in the pipeline:
The Mandalorian, Season 3 (out now!)
Shadow and Bone, Season 2 (out now!)
Yellowjackets, Season 2 (streaming March 24)
Succession, Season 4 (on HBO March 26)
Are you excited about any of the above? Am I missing any sequel seasons that you’re really excited about??
Of all the sequel seasons and multi-season comedies and dramas out there, which one “stuck the landing” the best or the worst for you? Obviously we have “best landing” contenders in Friends, Breaking Bad, The Wire, The Sopranos. And we have “worst landing” contenders in The Office, Game of Thrones — and Ted Lasso I fear!
Drop a comment and let us all know your thoughts. 👏🏼
In the News
Artificial intelligence can ace the bar exam—meanwhile, humans are saying no to wearing pants and staying in caves! [But if we didn’t invent AI so we could go off and not wear pants, what DID we invent it for???]
🤖 GPT-4, the latest version of ChatGPT, could get into law school. During work this week, I generated an outline about water treatment [for a client! for money!] using this little ChatBrain and saved myself half an hour of work! Obviously there’s a lot to fix about AI — especially how our human biases get mixed up in there and AI can spit scary stuff out. One Atlantic article called it “autocomplete on PCP.” [Which made me laugh very hard, I can’t help it!] She’s just a little brainiac high on confidence and low on boundaries, but she’ll help you with your homework!
👯♀️ The latest fashion trend is taking our Covid “no pants” preferences to the next level. Would you or would you not wear tights as pants in public? I would NOT, mostly because I feel like I’d have to break out into a performance of Cell Block Tango or they would try to return me to the local cabaret in the year 1920! But wow, remember when the mere leggings as pants trend sent our culture into a tailspin? Thoughts and prayers to that guy who wrote an op-ed about it at my alma mater. 🙏🏼
🏈 NFL QB Aaron Rodgers went on a “darkness retreat” causing me to read an entire ESPN article for the first time ever. I had to know what a “darkness retreat” was! Apparently you live in a little apartment in a cave and [mostly] don’t turn the lights on, but you can go outside. Rodgers went into his cottagecore-studio-apartment darkness retreat “90 percent sure” he would retire from the NFL, and emerged demanding to play football for the New York Jets! All I can picture is a tiny holographic Larry David popping up in the meditation cave telling him New York is “prett-ay, prett-ay, prett-ay good!”
[My favorite part about this, though, is the headline from Slate: “Aaron Rodgers' darkness retreat included lights in his room.” Not Slate being the emotionally unavailable parent he’ll never be able to make proud!]
TV: Ted Lasso Season 3 - It’s bad!!
The first episode of Season 3 was…not good lol. Surprising no one!
Season 1: a delight; emotionally rescued us in a global pandemic. Season 2: basically terrible. Season 3: the script has been reduced to a hot churning mess of buzzwords, keyphrases, google searches, old Tweets, memes so past their prime they’re already old on Instagram, and tired jokes!
It’s like it was written by a ChatBot given the prompt: “Write a script for Ted Lasso in the tone of This is Us and the vocabulary of a Buzzfeed quiz.”
RIP Ted Lasso. We loved you once. Your bubbly optimism and comfortable empathy were subversive by their very nature of being safe, predictable, and filled with hope for the world. Now we’re insecurely attached to finishing your final season no matter how badly it scrambles our brains.
MOVIES: Emily (a Charlotte Brontë hatchet job!)
The Complain Train hasn’t stopped yet, folks! BUCKLE UP!
There are three types of homeschooled girls: Austen Girls, Brontë Girls, and the girls whose parents were so metal [aka fundamentalist] that they weren’t allowed to read. [Sorry, that got dark fast!]
I was a Brontë girl. I liked my stories dark, ghosty, rainy, grubby, and hopelessly, sincerely—absurdly, even?—romantic.
[The only Jane Austen book I ever read was Northanger Abbey and I was 90% of the way through it before I realized Austen was just making fun of girls like me.]
There is no question that Emily — a new film “about” Emily Brontë [the word “about” doing an 80-hour work week in this sentence!] — is the kind of movie that teenaged Hannah Vanbiber would have made her entire personality for a period of several months. And, reader, it pains me to say this, but: That is NOT a compliment to the quality of the film! Teenaged Hannah memorized the lyrics to Phantom of the Opera on the CD booklet from Barnes & Noble. Teenaged Hannah learned enough HTML to create an Arwen-themed LiveJournal. Teenaged Hannah made “Chasing Cars” by Snow Patrol the ringtone for the boy she had a crush on.
Listen, I don’t want to be a snob but what I’m saying is that Emily feels like it was written by a Chatbot that was born and raised solely on Etsy.com. This Emily Brontë has “wonderlust” sketched above her bed. This Emily Brontë uses lavender as her “secret ingredient.” This Emily Brontë has sex in a barn and is absolutely unbothered. This Emily Brontë is both the prettiest girl in the village and an unknowable mystery. This Emily Brontë is the main character of Taylor Swift’s Folklore.
It was not a good movie. But it was pretty!
The last thing I’ll say is that Emily was a real Charlotte Bronte hatchet job!!! They said, “Let’s make Charlotte a combination of Cinderella’s stepsisters and the Shame Nun from Game of Thrones.” Charlotte Bronte SLANDER!!
Reading - This delicious Melanie Lynskey profile
I freaking loved this article, it showed a woman who is nuanced and kind and observant and profound.
Yes, her characters are surprising, but maybe almost any woman is surprising, deep down.
“Maybe it’s just about unraveling the inner lives of women who are not usually examined,” Lynskey said.
Saturday Night Live Highlights — Jenna Ortega & Pedro Pascal
Again, I’m behind on SNL, which is weird because it’s actually better than it’s been in a while! My two recent favorite episodes were Pedro Pascal’s and Jenna Ortega’s.
Highlights from Pedro Pascal’s episode (way back on Feb. 4)
HBO Mario Kart Trailer. (hands down the best)
Lisa from Temecula. Ego broke everyone in this sketch!
Highlights from Jenna Ortega’s episode (March 11)
Her adorable monologue! [Demonstrating the “no pants” trend!]
Please Don’t Destroy - Road Trip. Where is the lie?
James Austin Johnson’s Random Celebrity Impressions. The Bob Dylan one o!m!g!
My fav sequel season (probably of all time) is Pushing Daisies Season 2. That show was PERFECT. I'm forever gutted that we didn't get any more seasons (but maybe it's for the best and the show would have jumped the shark). Feel the same way about Hannibal (also Bryan Fuller!) - it's like Pushing Daisies but the saturation is being turned up on blood instead of pie ingredients.
This post kinda gave hater vibes but in the nicest way (lover vibes, hater words). Justice for teenage Hannah and cringe queens everywhere tho.
LOVE. 🤣🤣🤣🤣 So much to quote!!
“Teenaged Hannah learned enough HTML to create an Arwen-themed LiveJournal.“ 🤣🤣 #witness #accomplice
“This Emily Brontë is the main character of Taylor Swift’s Folklore.“ 😂😂😂 I now know what this movie will be like!! Hahahaaaa.
I lovvvved that Melanie Lynskey article, too!! And of course just love Melanie Lynskey. “Maybe it’s just about unraveling the inner lives of women who are not usually examined.” 😭😭🙌🏼🤩