This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here.
- Fangirling over Baby-Sitters Club.
- The real Emmy race.
- Shhhhhhh.
- Breakout stars.
- Mariah Carey update!
Emmy voting ends Monday, which is important because it means there are just days left to grab the Boomers who vote for this godforsaken ceremony by the shoulders and plead, “Sir! I beg of you!! Have some taste!!!”
So while voters are busy catching up on the final season of Modern Family and being the only people in this world who can sit through a season of Ozark, here are our fruitless wishes for 12 actually worthy performances they might consider. (To be clear, this refers to actors on the fringe/outside conventional odds of being nominated. Your Succession white people will be fine.)
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Kirsten Dunst in On Becoming a God in Central Florida: The best dark comedy performance bafflingly submitted in the drama category.
Ncuti Gatwa in Sex Education: Find me a better coming-of-age performance. I dare you.
Kathryn Hahn in Mrs. Fletcher: Critics keep using the words “complicated” and “messy” to describe female performances without paying homage to the actress who defined them.
Russell Tovey in Years and Years: This series was so upsetting I actually vomited while watching because I was so distraught, so let’s give it some trophies, yeah?
Natasha Rothwell in Insecure: If there is a performer who has created a character so fully realized she need only appear on screen for me to laugh, I don’t know her.
Dave Burd in Dave: Penis!!!!!!!!!
Danielle Brooks in Orange in the New Black: Not to be hyperbolic, but the best dramatic performance of the streaming TV era.
Rosie O’Donnell in I Know This Much Is True: This is what people mean when they use the word “revelation.”
Christine Baranski in The Good Fight: You thought you were going to read an Emmys piece by a gay without the words “Christine Baranski”?
Regina Hall in Black Monday: Flawless.
Jonathan Groff in Mindhunter: The spit in Hamilton is actually the second-best thing he did this year.
Nicholas Hoult in The Great: If/when this performance doesn’t show up on nomination morning, discredit the Academy.
There was a scene in Saw II in which someone has to swim through a pit of rusted, contaminated syringe needles. The assumption is that if you can wade through it you will also, against all logic, survive.
Anyway, Disney World reopens this week, in the midst of the peak of a lethal pandemic. My deepest, sincerest wishes for any of you who intend to enjoy the park this weekend would get me fired, so instead let’s all pretend that’s not happening and laugh at this.
In Japan, regulations that include wearing masks also recommend that patrons of the reopened Disneyland not scream while on roller coasters, so as to not accelerate the risk of spreading COVID-19.
Doesn’t that seem untenable, riding a roller coaster without such release? Executives hear you, and have alternative advice: “Scream inside your heart.”
The gag of the shutdown is that I have been SCREAMING about how good Search Party’s new season on HBO Max is, but there’s no one around to hear me.
So I will say this here: The season is so dark you might want to turn it off (don’t), the references are so meticulous you will gasp (ahh!), and new cast member Shalita Grant gives the kind of performance you file away so that you can tell future generations “I first saw her in…” (It’s that good).
She somehow plays the ultimate parody of a millennial and the definitive truth of a millennial, both at once. Also her foil is Louie Anderson, giving an all-time great Louie Anderson performance. (I visited the set for filming of season three, and it couldn’t be more besides the point, but he told a story about a linoleum floor that I still tear up about while typing this. A linoleum floor!)
In any case why aren’t you watching Search Party?
Quarantine is now just a countdown to September.
What to watch this week:
Palm Springs: Incredibly entertaining...and weirdly profound.
Greyhound: If a Tom Hanks WW2 movie premieres on streaming, does anyone hear a sound?
Brave New World: The best new show on the new Peacock streaming service.
What to skip this week:
Intelligence: The worst new show on the new Peacock streaming service.
