This week:
- You have to watch Adolescence.
- You also have to watch The Pitt.
- This is a Gwyneth stan newsletter.
- The only reason to care about Cats.
- I believe in magic.
You Need to Be Watching The Pitt
I had a fun chat with a coworker at my office’s coffee station this week that felt like I was in a time warp. We were gabbing about how much good TV there is right now. That alone would be a trippy throwback—in person at an office, talking about TV?!—but there was an added element: We were raving about Noah Wyle playing a doctor in an unmissable medical drama series.
The comparisons between the new Max series The Pitt and Wyle’s alma mater series ER are done and lazy—but not so done and lazy that I wouldn’t joke about it in the lede of this piece. What cannot be talked about and stressed enough, however, is just how excellent The Pitt is, and how everyone should be watching it. (Gauging by the uncharacteristically earnest odes to the show I see on my social media timeline each Thursday night when new episodes drop, it seems that a lot of people have already caught on.)
This Thursday, The Pitt launched—I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say—a three-episode arc that ranks among the most astonishing runs of television I’ve seen in a long time. The series, if you’re not familiar, takes place in a Pittsburgh emergency room, with each episode chronicling one hour of the employees’ shift. It’s hour 11 of a 12-hour shift when the ER is alerted that there was a mass shooting at a local concert festival and, as the closest trauma center, dozens—if not hundreds—of casualties were headed their way for treatment.
Nothing about the episode is message-y about issues like gun violence, but there is something inherently powerful about the simultaneously unflinching and matter-of-fact way The Pitt depicts the event through the prism of how victims are treated for the injuries. It’s a perspective that I’ve never seen, and I was quite moved by it.
Making just as much of an impression on me was something that shouldn’t be a novelty, but was: I found myself quite emotional watching the procedure of it all. The episode shows essential workers well-trained for a disaster scenario like this one, doing an exceptional job at the tasks they were prepared to do. Competence in the face of extreme situations had started to seem like a fantasy these recent weeks. I’m grateful for The Pitt confirming it as a reality.
Queen of Disassociation
I love Gwyneth Paltrow. I don’t know if that’s polarizing. I don’t care if we’re supposed to hate Nepo Babies or rich white women who treat astronomically priced wellness nonsense as a basic human need.
In every interview I read or see with her, she comes off as extremely intelligent, seriously invested in her company and projects, and has a really fun streak of sarcastic and self-deprecating humor. I want to wear matching cream-colored cashmere sweaters, sip bone broth, smoke our one allotted cigarette a week, and shoot the s--t with her. That’s especially true after this Vanity Fair cover story interview and accompanying career retrospective video that came out this week.
I can’t get over her complete unawareness and ambivalence every time she’s asked about appearing in Marvel movies. In the video clip, the interviewer tells her she’s been in seven Marvel films, and Paltrow reacts with utter bafflement: “That can’t be right.”
She owns it, too, which I love, retelling the story about how she had no idea she was in one of the Spider-Man films. To wit, when asked if she’ll be in the next big Marvel film to shoot, Captain America: Brave New World, her face adopts an expression as if someone just spoke a language to her that she doesn’t understand: “What is that?”
I crave this level of dissociation from my professional life. Icon of boundaries.
Worst Jellicle Ball Ever
Donald Trump outed himself as a theater queen—albeit one with horrible taste—this week during his loathsome takeover of the Kennedy Center. During his meeting, he revealed himself to be a fan of the famously abhorred musical Cats.
There is nothing to celebrate about anything going on with the Kennedy Center right now, but Trump’s endorsement did give me reason to revisit one of my favorite Sex and the City scenes, which I quote every time someone brings up Cats—and only 5 percent of the time does anyone have any idea what I’m talking about.
In Season 5, Episode 8, “I Love a Charade,” Nathan Lane’s Bobby Fine and Julie Halston’s Bitsy Von Muffling meet Carrie and her friends, Charlotte casually says that she liked Cats, and is bullied for the next 90 seconds over it. “I was just so thrilled somebody actually liked Cats,” Bitsy says, and then I said for the last 20 years every time someone brought up Cats, and have done a dozen times this week because of this Trump story.
Magic Is Real
I saw David Blaine do a card trick this week at a press event for his new National Geographic/Disney+ series Do Not Attempt, and it was so cool that suddenly I believe magic is real and take back anything I have ever said that was cynical or skeptical about it. It was that good. (The other things he does in the series are significantly wilder than a card trick. But I’m a basic person and the card trick blew my mind.)
What to watch this week:
Misericordia: Terrible name. Great movie. (Now in theaters)
Bob Trevino Likes It: Based on a surprising, touching true story. (Now in theaters)
The Studio: Seth Rogen brings you the funniest TV show of the year. (Wed. on Apple TV+)
What to skip this week:
Snow White: I genuinely don’t know a single person was excited for this. (Now in theaters)
Good American Family: Not every crazy true-crime story needs to become a TV show. (Now on Hulu)
The Alto Knights: Two Robert De Niros, two bad performances. (Now in theaters)
