These Irish Shows are Batting 1,000!
Bad Sisters & Derry Girls, plus the joy of a Fat Bear Contest, Giselle's Witch Powers, and SNL + Bake Off Recaps!
Well, sports fans, it’s MLB Playoff Season — an occasion I have gone 33 years of my life blithely ignoring but am now inexplicably writing about for an actual website! [My editors are seasoned sports writers, and I know how to research. We get the job done, but still, crazy!]
The other day I was explaining to my friend Laura, an actual ballplayer, how until very recently [months ago?], I couldn’t have confidently told anyone the difference between a dugout and a bullpen or that they were definitely words for two different things. She looked at me in astonishment and said: “What was it like watching baseball all this time?” I said, “Fun! There’s fried Oreos, and you get to scream a lot!”
It’s the second time in my life I’ve fallen a*s-backward into the sports reporting world. At my first post-college publishing job in Chattanooga, I ended up taking the lead on a local football magazine. I tromped around East Tennessee in a pencil skirt, demanding to speak to football coaches, prying rosters from their stunned hands, and chatting my way through ESPN lunches full of men over 65.
It was fun! I felt like Elle Woods entering the courtroom for the first time. [The sports radio guys were flabbergasted at the amount of data I squeezed out of those teams! #winning] Cut to 2022, and this week I’m writing a piece exploring why none of the major sportsbooks have odds on the National Women’s Soccer League Playoffs. JUICY STUFF.
Anyhoo, your turn: I’d love to know if there’s something you’ve done for work/in your past/that you currently love to do that would surprise people about you! People are always understandably dumbstruck when I tell them I produced a football magazine when I was 24.
Yours could be anything! Have you won several sexy dance contests? Are you a whiz at jigsaw puzzles? Did you switch careers? Did you/do you go to Renaissance Fairs? I’m just spitballing here. Share your Little-Known Facts/Interests in the comments!
Since They’re Using the Word “Nukes” Again… How About Some Fun Things in the News This Week??
Vote for your favorite bear!! Fat Bear Week is a March Madness-style competition with bears living in Katmai National Park in Alaska. [A park which, delightfully, has a mountain named Dumpling Mountain!] As the bears feast to prepare for winter, the Internet votes for our favorite chonky boy/girl! With names like Chunk, Grazer, Walker, and — inexplicably — Holly!, these bears don’t know anything about nuclear weapons!
Hasan Minhaj’s The King’s Jester is on Netflix!
Not to brag (but to definitely brag?), we saw this in person, and I laughed so much my face was sore! Hasan isn’t just funny, he’s also a deep thinker and clever writer. This comedy special is higher stakes than his first, with more self-reflection. It’s a fab watch, if just for his story about using a boba straw to suck snot out of his daughter’s nose. 🤣😩 Also, his shoe game❤️🔥.
[Warning: it is not for the kids! For a nice religious husband and father, he’s still got adult content galore!]
The Sports Conspiracy Theory of Our Times? TikTokers think Giselle Bündchen is a witch and her magic spells made Tom Brady good at football. Now, this is a conspiracy I can get behind!!!
This *actual theory* that *real people have* supposedly explains why Tom is garbage at football now that Giselle is leaving him and stopped doing her little spells to help him. Tom has said Giselle made “little altars” at his games, manifests things into existence, and is into “healing stones.” I think this is all hilarious, despite the fact that I can hear a Wizened Church Lady warning, “Don’t play with Satan!” But still…what a theory!
P.S. Conspiracies aside, did you know that Giselle’s millionaire status helped the Patriots get so good? If you’re into sports, money, or women as breadwinners, check out this video:
[Also, she moved to BOSTON for him. So, witch or not, he owes her.]
Watching - All the Irish Shows
Bad Sisters on AppleTV+
“Murderously good!” says one review — and I salute!
Have you been pining for a show like Big Little Lies but, like, funnier and 100% more Irish? Or maybe you’re more interested in something like Derry Girls, but they’re grown up and going full Goodbye Earl on their brother-in-law? Or maybe you just like dark comedy, great plot twists, surprising characters, a pinch of sexiness, and a dollop of powerful female rage?
Reader, I say “YES, INDEED” to each of these! And that’s why Bad Sisters is the most fun I’ve had watching TV in a while. I have also adopted the phrase, “She’s got a bit of a sneery head on her.” Great one.
Derry Girls - The Final Season
IT’S BACK!!!!! Thank you, Celtic goddesses! I haven’t started Season 3 yet, which dropped on Netflix this Friday, and I blame sports! Ben and I watch Derry Girls together—because it’s got UNIVERSAL APPEAL—but the Guardians are in the playoffs, so Derry Girls had to wait 48 hours.
But what I can tell you is that Season 1 is a near-perfect comedy series from start to finish, and Season 2 is just as good on the comedy side, if slightly less thematically rich.
Also: You MUST use subtitles. Do not—like me—go thinking you’re better than everyone and can “understand UK accents.” Because THESE accents you—and I—most certainly cannot.
Saturday Night Live Highlights
Even SNL went full Irish this week! Brendan Gleeson hosted in preparation for his new movie The Banshees of Inisherin, and his costar, our beloved Colin Farrell, made a surprise appearance! [The two of them were hilarious in “In Bruges.”]
Willow [Smith] was an excellent and supportive musical guest!
Highlights: (1) Marcello Hernández on the MLB Playoffs. Maybe it’s just because I finally watch baseball, but this slayed me. (2) “Try Guys” called out how absurd that whole debacle is. (3) New Cast Advice was a bit obvious a riff off Kate McKinnon’s Close Encounters, but I liked Molly! (4) Blonde was only moderately funny, but I love Chloe Fineman’s spot-on impressions.
Lowlights: The eyeball skit did NOT hit for me [my humor is not Sarah Sherman’s humor], and I got a little queasy during Blood Oath!
Bake Off Corner - “Glockymolo!”
Wellp, I thought it couldn’t get any cringier than the time they did Japanese week and most of the challenges weren’t even Japanese. But they have outdone themselves! Mexican Week was just about as bad as we all expected, and it wasn’t just because they pronounce it “TACK-oh”!!
I blame Paul and his “I just had my study abroad in Mexico, and now am Mexican” energy. You just know he bullied production to do this theme because no one in their rightful mind would think this was a good idea!? Also, how does no one in the UK know how to say “pico de gallo”??? How are tacos “baking”? Do they think the only holiday in Mexico is the Day of the Dead? It’s like they watched Coco once and were like, “I think I understand Mexico.”
ANYHOOO. While the theme was capital-C Cringe, we still have winners and losers to talk about. There were a lot of tears this week, and I’m not just talking about the tears of any Mexican who was forced to watch this. Kilt Guy and Rebs are out! I thought Rebs would Fail Up until the final five, like many twee blondes before her, but she did not! I would say the show is learning from its mistakes, except that we were just forced to watch Paul mansplain tacos.
The innuendo was fierce [fondling balls, buttcrack jokes, buns in the oven, tight and stiff, deflowering, make it stop!], and a bizarre scene between Paul and Dawn looked like the meet-cute in the World’s Most Cursed Rom-Com.
Episode 4 Leaderboard
Janusz
Sandro
Maxy — so glad she won Star Baker!
Syabira