This Week in Pop Culture: May 16, 2025
Judy Blume's latest adaptation, A Nice Indian Boy, 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. There’s a big art festival in Minneapolis this weekend that we’re hoping to sneak into early, before the crowds get huge and overwhelming, and my husband and I are treating ourselves to a dinner at one of our very favorite fancy restaurants.1 Whatever you have planned, I hope you’re looking forward to it.
In news that made me gasp with glee this week, the Buffy reboot has cast its new slayer: Ryan Kiera Armstrong will star alongside Sarah Michelle Gellar in the Hulu pilot. There’s a cute video of SMG announcing it to Armstrong on Instagram:2
I can’t wait for this show! Here’s the rest of the pop culture that took up space in my brain this week:
What I Read:
All the Other Mothers Hate Me by Sarah Harman: When Florence’s son Dylan’s bully mysteriously vanishes during a class trip, she realizes that he’ll be the prime suspect. She decides that she’ll have to work to find the missing boy, but she has no discernible skills, let alone detective ones - and all the other mothers hate her. There’s also the fact that Dylan doesn’t seem that innocent, even to her…
This was a page-turner, if not my favorite thriller of the year. A debut novel, I did think it could have used a tighter editing hand, and that some of the humor that the book is going for didn’t quite land. That said! I love a messy main character, and we get that here in spades: Florence is a disaster: selfish, impulsive, and makes a series of completely unhinged decisions. That’s likely to rankle some readers, but not me: give me someone who is human and flawed and let me judge them!3 There are some twists and turns that I didn’t fully see coming, which is always a pleasant surprise. The details and world-building around the other mothers and the culture of the school are particularly well-developed; I also liked the skewering of the Brit’s obsession with looks and appearance. A good read-alike for the Finlay Donovan series. Excellent on audio.
Retreat by Krysten Ritter: Liz is a con artist who is constantly on the move. When she gets a job offer from a woman named Isabelle, the owner of a fantastic villa on the coast of Mexico, she can’t resist, hoping for a reset from her life. But when she’s mistaken for Isabelle, she can’t help but play along and pretend. It isn’t long before she starts to realize that maybe Isabelle abandoned her life for a reason - and there might be danger lurking for her, too.
Thrillers are always hit or miss for me because I’m an insufferable know-it-all who seems to be able to guess the twists a mile away with near-perfect accuracy. I loved Ritter’s debut novel Bonfire and was really looking forward to this one, but it was really mediocre for me. Ritter is a good writer,4 and the plot here moves along at a good clip right up to the end, but nothing about the book’s twists were surprising to me. I could see each narrative turn coming, and I felt like I’ve read multiple versions of this story before. It wasn’t bad, per se, but I wasn’t invested in it the way I hoped to be. Great for poolside reading, but don’t expect this one to stick to your ribs in any way.
What I Watched:
Forever (Netflix): Two teens who knew each other in elementary school reunite and fall in love, discovering all the ups and downs that the experience has to offer for the first time.
As someone who grew up reading Forever more than once, I consider myself someone very familiar with the story in Judy Blume’s classic YA novel. Going into this adaptation, I knew that some changes had been made to update the material, including setting it in 2017/2018, and featuring two Black teenagers. But I didn’t realize that the story is essentially gender-flipped, with Justin being the less-experienced person in the relationship, a boy from a wealthy family attending a mostly-white private school to Keisha’s star athlete from a less affluent neighborhood. And…I kind of love the changes? The cast as a whole is excellent, and the show is gorgeously shot, which makes every scene a feast for the eyes. The writing is sharp and nuanced, and much slower and more deliberate in its reveal of the characters and their motivations. It’s a rare Netflix show that demands you give it your full attention, which is a welcome change from the slop they often serve us. The show was developed by Mara Brock Akil, who used her own experiences raising her Black sons to inspire the series. This profile of Brock Akil and the cast in the New York Times (gift link) is great (it made me cry!), and I loved her explanation of why she shifted the focus of the book’s characters:
If Katherine, the book’s heroine, seemed socially powerless in her era, “I would posit that Black boys are the most vulnerable at this time,” said Brock Akil, the creator of the beloved 2000s sitcom “Girlfriends,” and several other comedies. “A modern Black family, I feel like we know how dangerous the world is.”
Highly, highly recommended. A slow-burn that captures the all-encompassing feelings of falling in love for the first time.
A Nice Indian Boy (VOD/Rental): When Naveen finally brings his white-artist boyfriend Jay home to meet his traditional Indian family, misunderstandings ensue and tensions rise. But despite their own thoughts about love and marriage, his family tries to plan the big Indian wedding of their dreams.
My expectations for this one were medium-low, because this kind of fish-out-of-water romcom can be so predictable, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked this! It helps that the cast as a whole is excellent: it’s so fun to see Jonathan Groff in a romance, and to have Karan Soni get to play a character with more development than we often see. But also great is the supporting cast, who bring warmth and depth to the characters, making for a movie that rises above the common tropes and cliches. There’s an endearing quality to the whole movie that can’t be overstated; I found myself grinning a lot as I watched these characters navigate planning a huge Indian wedding. Groff and Soni have instantaneous chemistry; it helps sell the whirlwind of their romance and makes for a really entertaining watch. I really liked this - I cried a little at the end! Recommended!
What I Listened To:
Avril Lavigne featuring Simple Plan, “Young & Dumb”: Has millennial nostalgia gone too far? This new single from the queen of pop punk5 is certainly making a strong case that we might have flown too close to the sun when it comes to remembering the good old days. The song is fine? It’s very standard pop-punk fare that leans heavily on both Lavigne’s and the band’s early days of fame and touring. But there’s something weirdly hollow about it, too - maybe it’s that these forty-somethings are standing in an empty pool while younger people skateboard around them? Or maybe it’s that their style nor their sound has never evolved in 20+ years? Either way, I don’t think this is going to end up in my rotation.
Charli xcx, “party 4 u”: Five years after releasing “party 4 u,” has finally released a music video for it?6 The song was a huge part of my pandemic playlist back in 2020, so getting to watch this (fascinating, weird, captivating) music video after so long was a real trip. The song remains one of my favorites, encapsulating what a weird, isolating time it was in those dark, early days. I’m a fan!
What I’m Looking Forward To:
Honey Don’t (Theaters, August 22): A small-town private investigator finds herself in over her head when she investigates a series of strange deaths that have ties to a local church. The newest movie from Ethan Coen boasts a pretty intriguing cast, including Margaret Qualley, Aubrey Plaza, and Chris Evans. I’m on record as not being what you’d call a Coen brothers fan, but we’ll see!
Echo Valley (Apple TV+, June 13): A woman who trains horses on her Pennsylvania farm has lived a hard life. When her daughter arrives at her door covered in someone else’s blood, she must decide how far she’s willing to go to protect her child. This might very well be a standard thriller, but Julianne Moore and Sydney Sweeney as the main cast has me seated.
We Were Liars (Prime, June 18): After a swimming accident destroys most of her memories from her fifteenth year, a young woman returns to her wealthy family’s summer home at seventeen and reckons with the past. This series is based on the 2014 novel by E. Lockhart - I remember really liking the book and am very curious to see how well it holds up and whether or not the series can pull off the twisty plotting of the book.
That’s it for this week! I’ll be back next week with more books, preliminary thoughts on Julia Michaels’ new album, and so much more. Have a great weekend, and thanks, as always, for reading!
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If I can get real for a moment: in therapy this week, my husband brought up the fact that when I’m told a plan for something, like where we’re going for dinner, I immediately look at the menu and the location and do some math about travel time/if it’s worth to go somewhere before/what construction might look like. He’s not wrong! I already know what I want to order. I like to plan! Let me LIVE!
Did I cry a little? Yep!
I am obviously perfect and have never made a bad decision or said the wrong thing. I definitely do not lay awake at night and run through idiotic things I said at parties a decade ago - that would be unhinged!
The caveat here is that she worked with a co-writer on this; she’s not credited on the cover but Ritter mentions her in the acknowledgements.
Or her doppelganger! True heads know.
The song has recently gone viral on TikTok. I had to read about this; I haven’t been on the cursed app since the original “banning.”
Ahhhhhhh I want to watch alll of the thingssss
Thank you for all three movie recommendations. I finished Miss Austen and I am bereft! I also watched that little video of Gellar telling Armstrong the news and I teared up🥲