Me Gusta: August 20th, 2021
An animated series about birds, a book about vaping, and Anna Faris!
Honestly it’s been a really busy summer FULL of stuff I like, which is surprising for me (who notoriously hates everything), so I’m a little heartbroken that I have to keep this short because YouTube ruined people’s attention spans. But here we go, crème de la crème of stuff I liked this summer!
A TV show: Tuca & Bertie
The pitch: The friendship dynamics of Broad City with the animation of BoJack Horseman (literally - it’s created and run by Lisa Hanawalt, who drew BoJack)
The blurb: “This animated comedy series explores the friendship between two 30-year-old bird women — cocky, carefree toucan Tuca (Tiffany Haddish) and anxious, daydreaming songbird Bertie (Ali Wong) — as they live their lives in the metropolis of Bird Town.”
Me gusta porque: When this show premiered on Netflix, I wasn’t an immediate fan — I had BoJack on the brain, and therefore found its dreamier logic (for example, text messages that literally run across town to reach their recipients) a bit off-putting. Then, when the show got canceled and subsequently revived by Adult Swim, I decided to rewatch and was positively surprised by how, beneath the quirkiness, it accurately portrays the intricate dynamics of an adult best-friendship, both good and bad — something the second season (which is even better) amps up by exploring the ways in which close friendships can lead to co-dependecy.
Where: Season 1 on Netflix, Season 2 on Adult Swim (who just renewed it for a third!)
I already saw it! Then read this great New Yorker profile on Hanawalt.
A book: The Devil's Playbook: Big Tobacco, Juul, and the Addiction of a New Generation
The pitch: the traditional Silicon Valley scam narrative (think Theranos or WeWork), but one that messes with people’s LUNGS in addition to their wallets.
The blurb: “Big Tobacco meets Silicon Valley in this corporate exposé by journalist Lauren Etter of what happened when two of the most notorious industries collided—and the vaping epidemic was born.”
Me gusta porque: As a smoker who is fully aware of what it can do to my health, I’m fascinated by the rise and fall of vaping (“fall,” I should say, of what is still a multi-billion-dollar industry), which started as the healthy answer to smoking and eventually revealed itself to be a horrifying unregulated experiment in which ordinary people acted as lab rats. The kicker is, of course, that this is exactly what happened with smoking in the 90s, which in a matter of decades went from being endorsed by doctors to being practically legislated out of existence (though it’s still, also, a multi-billion-dollar industry — people love nicotine). Etter compellingly connects the histories of both industries in this unexpected page turner (and it’s a lot of pages) that I could not put down. I can’t wait to (not) be hired for the inevitable TV adaptation.
Where: Penguin Random House
I already read it! Then stay tuned for Hulu’s upcoming Dopesick, which tackles another ordinary-people-as-lab-rats crisis (OxyContin).
An article: “Funny Like a Guy”
The pitch: a celebrity profile that ends up indicting a whole industry.
The blurb: “Anna Faris and Hollywood’s woman problem.”
Me gusta porque: Okay so first, this article is from 2011, but I only discovered it this summer, so it still counts (plus this is my newsletter and put whatever I want in it). Second: while reading Caroline Siede’s joy-bringing column When Romance Met Comedy, I clicked through to this profile, and I was thoroughly engrossed by it; it felt like watching a great A24 movie (please follow up with me on my current thoughts about A24, which are intense), one in which I got to know Anna Faris anew. I’ve always thought she was amazing and maybe just didn’t mind being in movies that were usually beneath her — turns out she does mind! Writer Tad Friend does a great job revealing in Faris an actress who was ahead of her time by having no interest in being uber-hot or relatable or anything other than funny, and then was sort of overlooked when Hollywood finally caught up (Faris’s What’s Your Number came out the same year as Bridesmaids). After reading it, I went down a rabbit whole that included revisiting her movies, reading her book, and watching Mom, which is very good (not surprising since it stars Faris and Allison Janney) and tackles some pretty heavy stuff for a CBS sitcom, focusing on a mother and daughter who are in recovery for addiction.
Where: The New Yorker
I already read it! Then watch The House Bunny again (it’s what I would do, and did).
Feel free to send me any recommendations of things I might like, y hasta la próxima!
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