For most of the pandemic, I’ve been relatively careful, and when I’ve done risky activities, it’s usually something that I feel is “worth it,” as in if I got covid from that activity, it would be worth it because at least I had a fun time. So naturally I got covid for the first time on a disastrous trip to Hersheypark where it poured rain the whole time, I only went on one ride, and eventually had to take shelter in a nightmarishly crowded Hershey’s Chocolate World gift shop. It was so crowded I said “If I don’t get covid in here then I must be immune.” (I am not immune.)
Anyway covid sucks! I got a little sample platter of all the symptoms. Since Shawn was still negative, I isolated in our spare bedroom and mostly watched TV because I didn’t have the energy to do much else, and also because I was confined to one room. It felt strangely like living out of a dorm.
Here are some stuff I watched/read/listened to over the past week or so.
Starstruck
I'm always hearing about how "rom coms are back" but since rom coms are my favorite genre, I'm a harsh critic of them! Most of the modern ones I watch are "cute" but don't come close to the peak of the genre. They're haha funny but not actually funny. Even though it’s a series (or just a long movie for me since I watched two seasons in one sitting), Starstruck is the closest modern approximation to Richard Curtis rom coms that I love (Bridget Jones, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill). The premise of Starstruck is that a normie girl named Jessie (played by Rose Matafeo, who also created the show), hooks up with a hot guy she meets at a bar, only to later realize he's a famous movie star (Tom, played by Nikesh Patel). Jessie has wild curly hair and works the concession stand at a movie theater and lives in a messy "flat" with a roommate. Tom lives in a house out of Architectural Digest and has perfectly coiffed hair and stars in terrible action movies. On the surface, they don't have a lot in common, but as they keep bumping into each other and begin an on/off relationship, you realize they actually do fit. She's a mess but comfortable in her own skin. He has his shit together but never seems fully comfortable.
They have good chemistry and all that, but to me what makes this really work is that the supporting cast of friends and coworkers feels genuine. So many bad rom coms rely on the trope of the protagonist having 1-2 friends/colleagues they bounce off of and that's it. What I love about the Richard Curtis movies, for example, is that the groups of friends feel so full and lively, which is what this show does too.
My favorite line, which I wrote down in my notebook without context, is when Rose says "men know nothing about film."
Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey
This is the opposite of Starstruck in that it's a documentary about cults. I've seen plenty of cult documentaries in my time to know the story is roughly the same each time, but they always suck me in. This one is about the FLDS church, the off-shoot of mormonism centered around polygamy and run by Warren Jeffs, a horrible and hideous man currently in jail for the world's ugliest crimes. But what fascinates me most about cult documentaries is hearing from the people who got out, and the way they found connections to the outside world.
One woman talked about how they never had access to music or movies or really any culture outside of their extremist religious cult, but she somehow got an ABBA CD and would listen to it everyday while thinking about her crush.
The Crooked House
I'm entering my Agatha Christie era. I was at the library a month ago and saw a whole shelf of leather-bound Agatha Christie books and grabbed one at random because I'd never read one before and murder mysteries are always fun. The Crooked House involves an 85 year old patriarch who is mysteriously poisoned. The detectives, including the protagonist who plans on marrying into the family, have to figure which of the dozen or so family members in the house did it. I didn't see the reveal coming but that's why I like murder mysteries because I literally never guess the murderer.
The Echo Maker
I didn't really do much reading during my isolation because I felt like a pile of doo-doo and couldn't concentrate. Also I'd finished all my library books and don't have a ton of books in the house I haven't read (and many of the books I haven't read belong to Shawn and are about CIA war crimes or something). I don't read a lot of novels by heterosexual men, but I picked this one up because it was there. I’ve never read Richard Powers and I'm only about a third of the way in but I don't know if I like it yet. It's about Capgras syndrome (a syndrome where someone thinks a person close to them has been replaced by an imposter) and also sandhill cranes.
Murder On The Orient Express
Once I finished The Crooked House, I immediately wanted some more Agatha Christie books but didn't have any so I started listening to the Murder On The Orient Express audiobook on Libby. It's narrated by Dan Stevens, who's quite good at accents. I've never seen any of the film adaptations so once again I have no idea who the murderer is.
The Way Down Pt. 2
In 2021, HBO released a documentary called The Way Down, about a cult church called The Remnant Fellowship. It's based outside Nashville and was run by Gwen Shamblin, an insane lady with even more insane hair (you have to look up photos there is simply no way to describe). In the 90s, Shamblin started a religious weight loss program called The Weigh Down, which spun out into the church, which became a an emotionally and physically abusive cult about worship and dieting. What makes this cult so weird is the way it just exists in the middle of these wealthy suburbans, not in some far off rural area like a lot of cults.
The craziest part is that while the three-part documentary was being edited, Shamblin and seven other leaders from the church died in a plane crash (while flying the plane to a Trump rally in Florida). Suddenly, people who weren't comfortable speaking out about her behavior while she was alive felt free to do so. The documentarians were contacted by enough people that they released two more parts this year as a follow up, which is what I watched.
Love Island
I already wrote about watching a lot of Love Island so I won't do it again. While I was sick and isolating in our spare bedroom, Shawn and I would watch Love Island at the same time on separate TVs and live-text each other's reactions. Please at least watch this clip of professional Italian Davide talking about picking out his outfit.
Sex and the City season 1
Sometimes when you're sick you just want to watch something comforting that you've seen a hundred times before. I didn't watch And Just Like That but I did read recaps of it. To me it's not canon because to me it's stupid that they made it without Kim Catrall and then had to cut out another character completely because of assault allegations and then cut another character because he died. I really don't need a series like this to keep going forever. Anyway season 1 is a perfect time capsule and Carrie's hair is incomparable.
Blown Away
At the point when I was watching this I was so bored of watching TV but still didn't after the energy to do other things (and also because I got the less common covid symptom of gastrointestinal mayhem). I love competition shows about crafts like British Bakeoff or the Great Pottery Throwdown, and Blown Away, which is about glass blowing, is a perfect example of how Netflix ruins things by being so Netflixy. Each episode is 30 minutes, which I don't think is enough time to see the crafts because the judging and critiques are so short I'm left feeling like I don't understand why someone won or got kicked off. You also don't get to the know the contestants as well because there just isn't time. One lady mentioned in the first episode that her husband recently died and made a tribute piece to him and then we never hear about it again.
The glass is very cool though.