The Existential Page-Turners and Reality TV Tiffs That Got Us Through the Week

The latest Lorrie Moore book is her first that isn’t a short story collection since 2009’s A Gate at the Stairs. It comes in at a slim 208 pages, though it’s specifically listed as a novel, not a novella, on its cover. That’s fair, because though the plot is deceptively simple (protagonist Finn spends time with his dying brother and then dead ex, who’s decomposing), Moore packs in enough wry observations about life to fill several volumes from a lesser author. The two-hander scenarios yield script-like dialogue, and I was repeatedly reminded of the way peak Tarantino would sprinkle seemingly random but pointed observations about life into his larger narratives. Here’s my favorite:

“The stars just seem like a mess to me,” he sighed. “A hundred million billion stars and still not infinite.”

“I guess it will have to do. It will have to suffice as infinitude.”

“Guess so.”

“They shine, they sparkle, they share space, they have manners. Do you think each of these gazillion stars could be a person who died?”

“Each of these stars is a star that died or could be.”

“Are they in conversation? Part of a design? They each seem unaware of the others and since you don’t know whether they’re dead or alive, their lives are many years further back than their look of life. Their shine for us on Earth is all the same, whether we’re looking at dead shine or live shine. Starlight is simply performative.”

“You always lacked a little romance.”

—Rich Juzwiak

We lost an American great on Friday. Tony Bennett, one of our most talented voices, passed away at 96 years old and was singing up until the very end. One thing I particularly loved about his and Lady Gaga’s musical collaboration was how much she adored him, and really gave him his flowers while he was still here.

In a 2014 interview with Parade, she explained Bennett’s encouragement to keep at music during a time she felt especially defeated. “I spent a lot of time with Tony. He wanted nothing but my friendship and my voice,” she said. “He saved my life.”

Watching their duets, you can hear the love, warmth, and respect between the two of them. It’s incredibly comforting. Listen but also pull up a Youtube clip to get eyes on their connection. It’s magical. —Kady Ruth Ashcraft

One of the funniest shows on TV (laptops? streaming? whatever) returned in June, but I waited to start watching until this week so I had a healthy number of episodes to get through; 40 minutes of Righteous Gemstones at a time is simply not enough. This season, the adult Gemstone children have taken over church leadership from their father, and it is not going well. They are awful, hypocritical people who constantly fight, bringing to life lightly fictionalized versions of some of the worst people in American Christianity. And goddammit, they are fucking funny. I haven’t laughed out loud at a show this much since Veep—and Righteous Gemstones hits similar notes in its satirization of (a different type of) power in America.

This show has flown criminally under-the-radar, and none of the leads (Danny McBride, Edi Patterson, Adam DeVine, and John Goodman) has ever been nominated for an Emmy. I keep waiting for the show’s central joke to feel stale, but each season it gets better and more layered. I can’t recommend it enough.
—Nora Biette-Timmons

We got four stars on our chests!!! Friday night is the U.S. Women’s National Team’s first match of the 2023 FIFA World Cup. I really only feel patriotic while I’m watching these ladies whip the butts of every other country on the planet. This year, our squad features a bunch of newbies who are sure to make an impact as the they vie for the history three-peat. Literally no squad—men or women—has done it. I can’t wait to stay up late and catch the beautiful game. If you’re interested in other storylines, my colleague Lauren Tousignant pulled together all the must-watch moments of the next month, including power couples, federation and equal pay struggles, injury reports, and more.
—Caitlin Cruz

Nothing soothes me more after a long day of editing bleak stories about abortion bans than a little reality show called Love Island—specifically the original UK version. The show is exactly what it sounds like: a bunch of hot people in their early 20s on an island (usually Mallorca, though the winter seasons are now filmed in South Africa, which is not an island but who cares) who are forced to choose whom to sleep in a bed with every night until they find love. The audience regularly votes on their favorite couple and boots the most incompatible ones off the island, until the favorite couple left standing wins a big cash prize. It is vapid; it is horny; it is extremely binge-able; it is an absolute delight. Don’t engage too hard, just let it wash over you like an ocean wave when you most need to dissociate. (I recommend starting with Season 9 and continuing through the latest of Season 10.) —Laura Bassett

If you’ve ever felt like there’s a giant black hole pulsing just outside your periphery—not quite following, stalking, or threatening you, just kind of ensuring that you’re never too comfortable for an existential crisis, then Ripe might be your new favorite comfort read.

Sarah Rose Etter’s second novel follows 33-year-old Cassie, a marketing manager at a giant Silicon Valley tech startup that, on paper, looks like a dream job. But all the money she now makes goes to rent and she’s essentially required to do coke in the morning to keep up with the pace of her office and, ultimately, impress her insane bosses enough to not get fired. Beyond the typical, toxic millennial workplace, the increasing divide she sees every day between San Francisco’s unhoused people and the tech industry’s 1% is pushing her closer and closer to the edge of the black hole that’s hovered around her since she was a kid.

This book was super dark and very funny and, as someone who’s a huge fan of the “woman on the verge” genre (My Year of Rest and Relaxation, The New Me, Cursed Bunny, The Guest, etc.), I can say that Ripe really stood out with its unique format and heavily researched black hole facts. Not only was I reveling in the deep anxieties of a millennial woman who can’t help but keep screaming (on the inside) “is this really fucking it?!” I was also learning about science! Etter yanks you into Cassie’s deep, meaningless void, and I’ve never had a more enjoyable time wading through this specific level of hell. —Lauren Tousignant

I’ll be the first person to admit that I was skeptical of Bravo’s reboot of the Real Housewives of New York—one of the network’s most beloved (and recently, beleaguered) franchises. Could a cast entirely comprised of newcomers (including The! Jenna! Lyons!) prove capable of the kind of chaos longtime viewers have come to expect? Well, frankly, that much has yet to be revealed. But this week’s season premiere offered a lot of promise thanks to a petty tiff over a charcuterie board, truly aspirational wardrobes, and terrible, despicable wealth. Sure, I miss Ramona Singer’s runny bowel movements and Sonya Morgan’s townhouse trials, but, as it turns out, a new ensemble—and thus, new era—is what I needed. RHONY is back, baby…for now. —Audra Heinrichs

For your weekend reading pleasure, I recommend Ruth Madievsky’s debut novel All Night Pharmacy, a queer acid trip through Los Angeles and sisterhood that’s dripping with both mystery and mysticism. The book, out this week, follows a young woman living through the aftermath of her older sister’s disappearance and struggling with addiction, whose life changes upon meeting a Jewish refugee from the former Soviet Union who claims to be a psychic.

Madievsky worked as a pharmacist herself and drew much of her inspiration for the novel from lived experience. It’s a real page-turner, and the first book that’s made me actively interested in pharmacy—in other words, the perfect weekend beach read. —Kylie Cheung

I’m not sure that I can recommend the entirety of Hunters, a comic book-inspired show about Jews covertly offing all the Nazis who went into hiding after WWII and thwarting a Fourth Reich in the late ‘70s, in good faith. I do very much enjoy it—the wacky cast of Nazi hunters led by Al Pacino is like the fucked-up Avengers, and there’s an undercurrent of weirdness that brings levity to a show about Holocaust atrocities. But it is also outrageously violent and depraved in its depictions of human cruelty.

So whether Hunters, whose second and last season dropped on Amazon Prime in January, sounds like a show you can stomach is your call. But within Season 2 is a bottle episode that I 100% recommend to anyone: “The Home.” I can’t say anything much without spoiling it, but I will say that this standalone vignette about an elderly couple who lives near a concentration camp in 1943 Nazi Germany is both skin-crawlingly creepy and completely affecting. It’s a visually rich trip, too. But yeah, fair warning, it’s bloody as hell. —Sarah Rense

It’s time: Barbie is officially out. And while, yes, I do enjoy Barbenheimer content, as an abortion reporter, what I really love is Abortion Barbie, also known as Reproductive Justice Barbie and Mind Your Goddamn Business Barbie. Here are a few to treasure and share. Pregnancy Justice: “This Barbie is not drug testing and reporting patients.” An old favorite from Repro Memes: “Barbie and Godzilla fundraise for abortion.” Unionized abortion worker Barbies!!! Abortion referendum vote Barbie! Indie abortion clinic supporter Barbie! Finally, a very simple one from Abortion Fund of Ohio: Barbie font saying “Bortion.” (This comes in a shirt but sales end tonight!)
—Susan Rinkunas

As you can tell, I’ve been very busy consuming cinema in my spare time, and why not start with one of the greatest products of the entertainment industry of all time: George Lucas’ campy space opera! I have watched all three trilogies—that is nine films, to be exact—in the last two weeks, which is either neurotic or impressive. You decide! Though some groupies will insist you watch the films in chronological order, watching them in release order allows you to take a joyride through time—you have a backseat in the theater as the casts grow up, the technology progresses from homemade-looking crafts to impeccably designed interstellar worlds, and characters from the original films make cameos in the latest Lucas Film productions. I now have a brand-new set of parasocial friends and family. Lucky me. May the force be with you!! —Emily Leibert