So what now, we just go back to watching Real Housewives?
It’s been an extraordinary week heralding an extraordinary time, delivering news that left all of us on a spectrum of reaction—all of it extreme. Whether you’re thrilled, terrified, shell-shocked, confused, exhilarated, devastated, smug, relieved, or furious—to each their own—the election results have moved all of us in outsized fashion. How soon and in what ways, then, do we, when we can, start to go back to “normal,” whatever that may now mean?
For me, the past few days have been surreal. I don’t understand how, every time I’ve walked outside, all of New York City isn’t running around like panicked atoms bouncing off each other screaming, “WHAT IS HAPPENING?!?!” What do you mean you’re just going to buy a green juice on your way to work? Does that dog that you’re walking even know about the results in Pennsylvania? You’re going on a date?!
Yet there are parts of life that do go on, and quickly. So after my endless Tuesday night flipping through various networks’ election coverage, gathered with my colleagues around a TV in the newsroom to watch the speeches delivered by Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, and realized that I couldn’t possibly watch one more pundit pontificate and possibly retain the last semblance of my sanity, I ended up staring blankly at my TV screen: Well, what do I put on now?
I did have a new episode of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City to watch. Would that be the right amount of comforting, or distracting? Or would I feel shamefully vapid for retreating from politics and the seismic nature of world news by watching a bunch of ex-Mormons argue over who is or isn’t invited on a group trip to Palm Springs? (It turned out that a bunch of friends I have a group chat with all ended up watching RHOSLC at the same time, so whatever feelings watching it gave, at least, at that moment, there was community in it.)
I asked some of my Daily Beast colleagues what was the first thing that they watched after working tirelessly on Election Night.
Mathew Murphy, a senior news editor, turned to his old friends, the ladies of The Golden Girls, for some relief. The new seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under and, like me, RHOSLC, were also top of the list. Our visual director, Elizabeth Brockway, turned to Law & Order: SVU’s Olivia Benson and Odafin Tutuola, “because nothing says comfort and de-stressing like watching an elite squad of dedicated detectives investigate vicious felonies.”
Benjy Wilson, head of social media, admitted his choice was “a bit niche”: the new season of Misfits and Magic on Dropout for “the biggest dose of escapism I can find.” Our Washington bureau chief, Mary Ann Akers, cracked me up with a story about someone she knows in D.C. with ties to the Democratic party who has spent the week watching The Andy Griffith Show reruns with the sound off.
For senior editor Tim Teeman, “The Young and the Restless has performed a vital public service this week.” He then proceeded to regale me with a plot about some people named Victor, Nikki, and Sharon, which sounds like it must be thrilling if you’re a fan of the show. Otherwise, his additional suggestion: “Sex and the City reruns. Always Sex and the City reruns.”
Is tuning into cable news all day, every day, as I sometimes feel tempted to after a major event like this galvanizing? Numbing? Harmful? “My advice this week is to turn off cable news and start bingeing the two perfect seasons of Detroiters on Netflix,” senior entertainment editor and resident cable news guru Matt Wilstein says. “It’s the perfect show to help turn off your brain this week and maybe if enough people watch it, they’ll throw us a bone and make a third season.
I wondered a bit this week what a person could put on if they want to somehow engage with the news and what’s going on in the country without, like, watching The West Wing or The Newsroom and requiring a lobotomy immediately after.
A workplace mockumentary like Abbott Elementary isn’t overtly political and will make you laugh, all while slyly driving home a point about the need for funding for education and to pay teachers what they deserve. In that genre, a new show called St. Denis Medical premieres on NBC next week, applying the Office-style format to doctors and workers at a hospital in suburban Oregon. Starring The Goldbergs’ Wendi McLendon-Covey, it is funny and irreverent—and very real about the madcap state of healthcare in this country.
There are several procedurals airing right now that lean far heavily into being absolutely bonkers than Law & Order-style intense, like ABC’s 9-1-1 and new medical drama Doctor Odyssey, or FOX’s attempt at a modern day Baywatch, Rescue: Hi-Surf.
In a bit of wild timing, Yellowstone returns Sunday night on Paramount. In what ways the show “reeks of Trumpism,” “is a conservative fantasy liberals should watch,” or is “a red-state show” has dominated discourse as the series has grown to be one of the most popular on TV. How will that play in different parts of the country after this past week? It’s actually a fascinating cultural experiment, given how many people have long-been obsessed with it.
I don’t know if any of this is helpful or even needed. “Well, what do I watch on TV now?” is not exactly the most pressing question facing America at this moment. But here’s hoping that, however you’re feeling, there’s a Real Housewife, a long-running soap opera character, or Olivia Benson to keep you company. Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to check in with my dear personal friend, Carrie Bradshaw.
