frustratingly mediocre but i can't stop watching
This week: GLOW, Younger, 4 Weddings, & another superhero movie?!
Hi again!
Thank you so much for sharing the newsletter with friends, family, enemies, people sitting near you on the bus. It means a lot and helps even more.
In the spirit of (keep on) keeping on, please forward A Waste Of Time to someone who owes you money and encourage them to subscribe. Maybe tell them the debt is cleared if they sign up now?
My gift of thanks comes in the shape of these three relevant updates you can use to impress someone:
A Native American tribe is suing Billions for allegedly trashing their reputation in that last season.
And Greta Gerwig’s Little Women film trailer finally dropped. Who’s your favorite so far?
Don’t forget you can still watch the newer Little Women miniseries starring the Thurman-Hawke child on Prime.
Here’s what I watched last week - the good, the bad, and the embarrassing:
Thursday, August 8
I finished the fifth episode of Four Weddings And A Funeral and can conclude the kid who plays Giles (Hector Bateman-Harden) is the best actor on the show. Craig (Brandon Mychal Smith) who also played Shitstain on You’re The Worst) is also great.
Glad Shitstain is getting to shine.
Friend of the newsletter Amma Marfo sent in this great take about the show:
*runs in, out of breath* Hi, I'm here to speak in assiduous defense of Four Weddings and a Funeral?
So there is a kind of characteristic I've come to really enjoy in the Mindy Kaling-verse: a kind of unrealistic whimsy that somehow manages to escape slipping into disbelief.
To compare it to another show that had lots of elements of "huh?!" that we let slide in our younger days, teens don't talk like they did on Dawson's Creek. And several of those characters were unlikeable to the point where I'd sometimes say "Thank goodness they have each other," and likely why it seems like no one else around liked or got them.
I feel the same about the Four Weddings brood (and have said as much about individual characters out loud to myself more than once), and did in some ways with the Mindy Project crew. But she has a sense that makes these characters endearing to each other, and therefore to us, that DC doesn't. And if you haven't revisited it recently, give it another go-round. Anyway, I'm hooked, infeasibility be damned!
I love her point that the characters are meant to be unlikable. While not my main gripe with why the show doesn’t work, it will stick with me as I continue watching/griping about it.
Where to watch: Hulu
Friday, August 9
I woke up at 4:00 am for absolutely no reason other than my body sometimes thinks this is a fun thing to do. It became clear I wasn’t going back to sleep so I watched the previous night’s Late Night with Seth Meyers and the season finale of Grown-ish, which focuses on Zoe doing her and not getting caught up in which man to pick. Good on the writers for showing a young woman deciding there’s more to life than having a boyfriend.
👍👍 for this season’s self-sufficient narrative.
Where to watch: Hulu
Saturday, August 10
Friday night was friend of the newsletter Sam Matthews’ birthday party where I forgot my age and drank like a 25-year-old. Given this foolishness, I slept until noon Saturday, moved to the couch, and watched Late Night then Thor: Ragnarok.
I had an infamously terrible time watching Justice League and vowed to avoid any other “turd” of a superhero movie until next year. Well I’m nothing if not a woman who changes her mind so I broke my own word for Thor on account of it directed by Taika Waititi, who is absolutely one of my favorite directors.
Taika is a New Zealand filmmaker responsible for What We Do In The Shadows but I especially love him from smaller films like Eagle vs. Shark and Hunt for the Wilderpeople.
Beware the “moderate coarse language.”
At its core, Taika’s work is a celebration of humanity in which the absurdity of everyday life shines through. He does this through pee-your-pants bickering, stand-out side characters, and hilarious little quips. So bringing his loving look at our own mundane mortality to a story about superheroes and thunder gods (or whatever the fuck) is quite brilliant. So yes, I will probably watch more of his films for the MCU.
A treat, if only for these lovely little asides.
Having sufficiently wasted one entire beautiful, sunny summer day, I left for White Plains to watch a friend perform the role of Jack’s Mother in her high school alumni group’s production of Into The Woods. She was great!
This scene was brutally well done.
When I got home at night, I made my semi-monthly boxed mac n’ cheese and got about halfway through season 3 of GLOW before falling asleep on the couch.
Where to watch: for Late Night - Hulu, for Thor: Ragnarok and GLOW - Netflix
Sunday, August 11
I was convinced to exercise in a park Sunday like some kind of fit person. Don’t worry - I made up for it by coming home, finishing GLOW season 3, and restarting the series all over again.
We are not worthy.
Season 3 finds the ladies doing a residency in Las Vegas. It includes a brilliant drag cabaret performer Bobby Barnes (Kevin Cahoon) and Geena Freakin’ Davis as Sandy Devereaux St. Clair, the manager of the Fan-Tan Hotel & Casino.
It is excellent, smart, feminist, and extremely funny. It covers everything from stereotypes, immigration, aging, racism, sexuality, homophobia, and even eating disorders. There’s even a wrestling match retelling of A Christmas Carol. Can your fave even? Watch it. It’s great.
*Mild GLOW spoilers ahead*
Please also give special attention to the relationship between Ruth (Alison Brie) and Debbie (Betty Gilpin), which brilliantly captures the complicated dynamic between two women who are friends but also can’t quite stop being upset with each other. The final scene between them is at once a heartbreaking and absolutely accurate portrayal of a friendship that feels more like family and somehow feels comfortable and frustrating no matter how much you love the other person.
Female friendship is a beautiful, complicated thing.
The only bothersome part about season 3 is the initial heavy emphasis on Debbie’s eating disorder that’s just dropped in later episodes. Is it when she starts dating “Tex” or when she brings the baby to Vegas? I can’t quite remember but I realized her bulimia is never actually resolved. That seems weird, right?
Where to watch: Netflix
Monday, August 12
With every intention of being productive, I watched TV and cleaned out my inbox but manage to catch up on quite a bit of show so consider that my productivity for the day. I watched the following:
*Claws & Younger spoilers ahead*
Younger - we are FINALLY back on track and talking about the entire point of the damn show: Liza’s secret. The BIG reveal was a bit abrupt but I love, love, love the way Diana handled and how the relationship between these two women continues to blossom. As you know, Diana and Lauren are the two best characters on this show so seeing how Lauren stans Diana, referring to her exclusively as “Diva” really tickles me.
Diana wears no necklace & little makeup in this scene - that’s how upset she is!
Claws - the season 3 finale arrived and whew did a whole lot happen. In a dream world, shows would shoot their shot with the big reveal in the penultimate episode and use finales to take the storyline a bit further. Alas, Claws did not do this but they did pack quite a lot of action into the finale. I especially want to point out that not only did Desna shoot that bus driver point blank in the face (does that make it her first cold-blooded kill?), she also switched out her “Boss” necklace for one that simply reads “faith” after Benedict points it out to her at the beginning of the episode. I also mentioned justice for Anne and she sure set out to get it for herself this finale.
Later, while opening HBO for the new Succession, I got sidetracked and watched the past 2 episodes of Last Week Tonight. On August 4, they had an incredible old clip of Cosby talking about prison which John Oliver caveats “has not in any way aged badly” LOL. Then in the August 11 episode, the show went all in going after Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, the president of Turkmenistan. This is what the show does best, antagonizing malevolent out-of-touch leaders – or as the show calls him, “a dangerous autocrat with some notably strange obsessions” – with all the power and resources at their disposal thanks to “business daddy” AT&T.
This episode was super good.
After an entire day of building up to it, I finally turned on Succession and watched it through twice. Yes, this family is psychotic but it’s all done in such an impressive, mind-fuck way that I want to hear every single insult and catch every single side eye they give each other. I call it the Veep effect on account of also having to watch of those eps twice to catch their rapid-fire quips.
Revved up by Succession and it’s overarching bad/powerful-man narrative, I went back to Showtimes’ Roger Ailes miniseries The Loudest Voice and caught up on the final 2 episodes. It’s really wild to think about how long Ailes’ machinations were allowed to fester and grow, how few women will ever receive justice, and how much affect this disgusting piece of shit of a man had on the state of America today. It makes me at once fully enraged and fetal-position upset so you decide if you actually want to watch it.
Here for the Sienna Miller renaissance.
As a palate cleanser, I put on 4 Weddings and a Funeral episode 3 again because it includes Quentin, my favorite character on the show so far (after Harvey, the dog). I continued to be upset about their ham-fisted dialogue which has characters speaking to each other in the most expository way imaginable.
Where to watch: for Younger - tvland.com, for Claws - tnt.com, for Last Week Tonight and Succession - HBO, for The Loudest Voice - Showtime, for 4 Weddings and a Funeral - Hulu
Tuesday, August 13
While doing dishes, I watched a particularly good Late Night. Kathy Griffin promoted her new documentary Kathy Griffin: A Hell Of A Story about the fallout of her Trump-severed-head photo; George Takei talked about life as a young boy living in a Japanese-American internment camp [he called the the current Trump administration policy of “children, being torn away from their parents” a “grotesque new low” for the America]; and Jacqueline Novak promoted her off-Broadway show Get On Your Knees - which I absolutely want to see now.
Kathy faced a 2-month federal investigation for the uncensored version of this photo.
Then I opened Netflix with the full intention of starting Tuca & Bertie. I’d heard lots of excellent things about it both when it premiered an when Netflix cruelly canceled it after just one well-received season. But first, Tiffany Haddish Presents: They Ready was advertised to me so I watched the first two episodes of that. The premise is simple and lovely: Tiffany gives comedians she thinks are great their own 30-minute stand-up episode. She introduces them, then they get the rest of the time to shine. It’s amazing to see her giving back and really makes you root for the comics she highlights.
Finally, I started Tuca & Bertie, which features Haddish and Ali Wong’s voices. 3 episodes in, the series was so delightful that I felt compelled to tweet:
At 3:00 am, I woke up for exactly no reason once again, couldn’t go back to sleep, and started The Let Down.
Where to watch: for Late Night - Hulu, for Tiffany Haddish Presents, Tuca & Bertie, and The Let Down - Netflix
Wednesday, August 14
I tried Late Night but they did a very weird sketch at the beginning about a VR-simulated climate crisis thing (?!) that devolved into a guy being obsessed with his ex-girlfriend Sheila. It was too much so I turned on the new Four Weddings and a Funeral instead.
*Four Weddings and a Funeral spoilers ahead but honestly, who cares*
Gemma and Bash are in constant competition for best character (now that Quentin…you know) proving once again that side characters are so much better than their main counterparts. (Like on You're The Worst, and Love, and even Gilmore Girls.)
There are certain instances, like Zara’s friends being the butt of every joke, that make me wonder if the show is particularly nice to its female characters???
And I am absolutely HERE for Dermot Mulroney being perfectly cast as the older divorcee who will absolutely fall for Ainsley. As you know, I absolutely adore him in The Wedding Date - a perfect movie for a free afternoon - so the fact that he’s in this, and still looking extremely good, is key to me continuing this frustratingly mediocre series.
When I came home later that night, I had some work to finish and turned on the same episode for a second viewing.
For a show I don’t think is particular good, I sure am giving them a lot of views.
It’s so literal and so obvious and so earnest and leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination that it often makes me feel quite uncomfortable. Anyone who’s lived through a complicated relationship situation of any kind will know that some things are better left unsaid. 4 Weddings clearly does not ascribe to that philosophy because here are some things the characters have said OUT LOUD:
“Go big or go home.”
”Oh, you should go home.”“I didn’t know you were coming over.”
“What am I doing? I’m not going to Craig’s wedding because I’m jealous?!”
“Like, you don’t have to talk about it. You just feel it every time you’re together. That spark.”
That last one really did me in because it’s exactly what I want from the show - “You don’t have to talk about it” indeed!
So we don’t leave this episode on a negative note, I will admit the Hotels.com sponsorship of Craig and Zara’s Love Chalet televised wedding is brilliantly meta.
Can Love Chalet throw my next birthday?
After that, I watched one more episode of The Let Down where Audrey struggles with mommy brain and can’t remember an answer at trivia night. She also continues lying for absolutely no reason in an attempt to hold onto the part of herself that existed pre-baby.
“This is fine.”
What I also love about The Let Down that Workin’ Moms (a very similar show) doesn’t touch on is the canyon that develops between the woman who has the baby and her friend who doesn’t. As a friend who doesn’t, it really makes me aware about flaunting my unencumbered, childless schedule in a new mother’s face. And considering 95% of my Instagram feed either has given birth or will any day now, it’s something to think about.
Where to watch: for Late Night and Four Weddings - Hulu, for The Let Down - Netflix
And that’s all she wrote, folks. Stay tuned for next week’s TV diary where we WILL continue discussing Succession because that last episode…phew.
xoxo,
-delia
Testimonials
“‘She also has a Podcast Finder Quiz which you should take if you’re ever in the mood to listen to something other than Michael Barbaro’s infuriating cadence.’ THIS. The way he announces the date annoys me to no end. Loving the newsletter!” - Emily Egan
“This is great! Perfectly captured my feelings about Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee. You successfully got a new subscriber, no summer fruit needed!” - Courtney Costello
“Just lucky to have A Waste Of Time in my life tbh.” - Nick Bond
If you write nice things about the newsletter, I will shamelessly share them here.
Keanu Korner
Keeping it simple this week because these photos speak for themselves.
Final Thoughts
I am available for hire so if you want me to write something for your publication, please get in touch.
Forward this email to someone who’s also watching 4 Weddings and A Funeral and encourage them to subscribe.
You can tweet about this newsletter and tag me or follow me on Instagram – that’s where I spend all my time anyway.
Don’t forget to share the subscription link so people know where to find #theart.
And email me about what you’re watching, what you liked, and definitely what you thought was A Waste Of Time.