This Week in Pop Culture: April 11, 2025

A new doctor drama, Hulu's Dying for Sex, and more in this week's pop culture round-up.

Happy Friday, friends. I hope you survived the week okay and are looking forward to the weekend. Passover starts this weekend, so if you’re celebrating, I wish you Chag Pesach Sameach, and hope that next year brings liberation.¹

I don’t have anything for the top of this newsletter; I felt like it was a slow celeb news week and work continues to be a waking nightmare (not to mention the rest of the world), so I’m tapped out. In honor of the season finale of The Pitt this week, please enjoy this picture of Noah Wylie posing with a book as a palate cleanser:

Here’s the rest of the pop culture that took up space in my brain this week:

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What I Read:

Rental House by Weike Wang: Keru and Nate were college sweethearts who managed to make it despite their family differences: Keru’s strict Chinese immigrant parents have strong ideas about chasing perfection, while Nate’s working-class, white family don’t fully trust his intellectual pursuits or his “foreign” wife. But when the couple invites their families on a vacation, they find themselves navigating their families and asking themselves big questions about coming together despite vast differences and what to do when things start to crumble.

This was a smart, incisive novel about cultural and generational divides that I found both compelling and oddly moving, even though not much of anything happens between its pages. Wang’s writing is sharp and often very funny, and her dialogue feels very grounded in how people actually talk (she also manages to thread the needle when it comes to revealing what people don’t say, too). This is subtle, quiet, and probably not for readers looking for a lot of action, but I really liked it and it gave me a lot to think about when it comes to chosen family and how relationships change over time.

Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, and Me by Whoopi Goldberg: Whoopi Goldberg would never have become Whoopi if it weren’t for her mother, Emma Johnson. When she lost her mother in 2010, and her brother Clyde five years later, Whoopi felt deeply alone for the first time in her life. In a series of stories about her childhood, Whoopi shares details from her upbringing in the projects of New York and stories of her strong, single mother who raised her children to be independent and strong.

In a listless attempt to find audiobooks that could keep my attention these days, I stumbled upon Whoopi Goldberg’s recent memoir and decided to give it a try. I wouldn’t consider myself a Goldberg fan, per se - many of the soundbites I’ve seen of hers on The View seem a little YIKES for my tastes - but I did love the Sister Act movies as a kid, as well as some of her other projects. And I ended up liking this very much, largely because Goldberg narrates it and it’s as frenetic and all over the place as she is. It’s so clear how much love she has for her mother and brother, and the stories of her childhood in New York were very well done. I also appreciated learning more about her early days as a struggling artist, and her many marriages. This was fun, if not fully cohesive, and I think probably works best as an audiobook. I can’t imagine trying to read a print copy because of the way she jumps around in time and topics.

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What I Watched:

Pulse, Season 1 (Netflix): Doctors and interns at Miami’s busiest Level 1 Trauma Center try to navigate medical emergencies while their newest chief resident Danny Simms tries to balance the pressure of the job with the fallout of her romantic relationship with a senior member of staff.

Reviews have not been exactly kind to this new doctor drama series, and after watching the entire first season, I can see why: in a landscape flooded with medical dramas, some of them incredibly long-lasting, it takes a lot to stand out. It’s impossible not to think of The Pitt as being a new medical show that has a fresh take on the genre,² and this…is not The Pitt. What’s weird is that the first few episodes make you think it might be: the first half of the season takes place over one single hospital shift during the midst of a hurricane. But the problem is that because we’re dropped into the middle of a catastrophe without having a sense of who anyone is or what their deal is, it’s very hard to keep doctors and patients straight (and even harder to care about their interpersonal drama).³ By the time we get into the second half of the season (which is arguably more watchable and narratively cohesive), I found myself struggling to understand what points it was trying to make about sexual harassment and power dynamics. I think they’re trying to make a point about there being no perfect victims and how complicated situations can be, but it’s a very weird tone to pick given the state of the world, where women are literally having their rights stripped away. The acting is pretty good (and there are some TV pros in the cast, including the wonderful Justina Machado and Nestor Carbonell), but ultimately the whole thing feels very hollow? I found it watchable enough while simultaneously playing Stardew Valley,⁴ but I don’t think it will stick with me for very long. If you’re needing something to scratch a Grey’s Anatomy itch, this might work, but it’s nowhere near as fun as that show was in its first few seasons.

Dying for Sex (Hulu): A woman diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer ends her long-term marriage in order to explore herself and her sexuality before her death.

Based on the podcast of the same name about a real-life woman named Molly Kochan, this series isn’t quite like anything I’ve ever seen before, and I mean that in a good way. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen something so explicitly feminist,⁵ so purely focused on women’s pleasure, than this delightful, funny, heartbreaking TV show. I will not lie: Michelle Williams is hit-or-miss for me; I think she’s a great actress whose real-life messiness and wide-eyed ingenue persona can sometimes overshadow her performances. But she’s excellent here, as is the rest of the cast, including a truly hilarious Jenny Slate as her best friend and Rob Delaney⁶ as her hot, weird neighbor. I was surprised and delighted by the fact that this show devotes as much time to the character’s sexploits as it does her friendship with Slate’s character; at the heart of this series is the romance of female friendship. It’s rare to see a female friendship portrayed as realistically as it is here - it feels lived in and whole and beautiful. I also loved that the show doesn’t shy away from its exploration of the may quirks and kinks of sex and desire and attraction. The show feels both subversive and expansive in its exploration of sex and desire and friendship. One of the best of the year - mark my words. Highly, highly recommended.

Y2K (Max): On the last night of 1999, two high schoolers crash a New Year’s Eve party, hoping to have the time of their lives. Instead, they find themselves fighting for their lives when the theorized disaster of Y2K becomes a reality and machines rise up against humanity.

Do you remember where you were on December 31, 1999? If, like me, you were a teenager at the time, you definitely do. This was a nostalgia-filled romp with some of the best/most fun needle drops I can remember in recent history. It goes hard on the nostalgia, which won’t work for everyone, but it worked for me, at least for a while. It did kind of run out of steam for me, in part because I don’t think the center quite holds. But the cast is good, the soundtrack is awesome, and it never takes itself very seriously.⁷ I’d like better things for Rachel Ziegler, who cannot seem to catch a break, but this was a fun enough time for me this week when I couldn’t handle anything super serious.

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What I Listened To:

The Beaches, “The Last Girls at the Party”: Not only is the song a total 80s-inspired bop, the video is very fun. This new to me band has been on rotation this week. This will be a fun song to play all summer long; it’s practically begging to be played at the beach or at a cookout.

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What I’m Looking Forward To:

Overcompensating (Prime, May 15): A closeted former football player starts an unlikely friendship with an outcast in an attempt to fit in. This looks fairly unhinged but also like it might be a lot of fun? There are blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearances in the trailer for Kyle MacLachlan and Connie Britton, and that’s honestly enough for me to at least try it out.

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That’s it for this week! I’ll be back next week with thoughts on Netflix’s North of North, preliminary thoughts about the new season of The Last of Us (already renewed for a third season!), and so much more. Have a good weekend, and thanks, as always, for reading.

🖤 If you liked what you read, please consider tapping the heart at the top or bottom of this newsletter - it helps others find my work. 🖤

1. I said what I said. We keep fighting for the freedom of Palestinian people - and for oppressed people everywhere.

2. Seriously, The Pitt is appointment television for me every week. It is SO GOOD!

3. I didn’t even realize until episode six that two of the residents are SISTERS!

4. The need for complete disassociation these days is overwhelming, and the calming, functioning town of Stardew Valley called my name.

5. Despite the fact that the show never says the word outright!

6. Cast this man in more things! Also, read his excellent books.

7. There’s a scene with a blender to the groin that will haunt me to my dying day.