This Week in Pop Culture: October 11, 2024

Joshua Jackson's absolutely unhinged new primetime show, more horror movie recommendations, and so much more in this week's pop culture round-up.

Happy Friday, friends. I hope you survived the week and are looking forward to the weekend. Today is actually my wedding anniversary - my husband and I have been married 5 years - but since we celebrated with a trip to Milwaukee last month, we’ll keep it low-key and probably just go to dinner at one of our favorite dive-y places.¹ Whatever you’ve got planned this weekend, I hope you’re looking forward to it and are doing what you can to protect your peace these days.

This post about the I Know What You Did Last Summer reboot took me out this week, because it’s so funny:

She’s right and she should say it! Queen!

Speaking of tweets that I related to on a deep level, this one stirred something deep inside my soul:

Bringing back the “I Love the [80s, 90s, 00s]” series would heal me, I believe.

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

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What I Read:

Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Lies, and the Truths We Use to Win by Jessica Valenti: Jessica Valenti dispels misinformation and slices through the overwhelming amount of news about abortion bans in the United States to illustrate the full-scale war that conservative lawmakers are launching on women’s freedom. With plain language and the data to back it up, Valenti provides the talking points for us to talk about abortion with confidence and facts - and lays out the work we need to do to restore our fundamental human rights to abortion - which is healthcare.

I do not generally claim to have heroes,² but if pressed, I would likely mention Jessica Valenti, whose tireless and important work around abortion is essential in a post-Roe world (Mother Jones recently published an article titled, “The Anti-Abortion Movement is Relentless. But So is Jessica Valenti,” so I’m not the only one. I’ve long admired Valenti, whose other books helped me develop my consciousness and worldview when I was a baby feminist, and I consider her Substack newsletter,

Abortion, Every Day

to be essential reading. When she announced this latest, I smashed that pre-order button hard, and I’m glad I did, because her book lays out the facts about the state of Abortion in America in a clear and concise way. Reading this book made me feel a tiny glimmer of hope that I haven’t felt in a long time because she reaffirms that abortion is overwhelmingly popular amongst Americans and that every time it’s on the ballot, Americans vote to uphold our rights to access it.³ Highly, highly recommended reading as a tool in your arsenal to discuss the issue (whether you consider yourself a seasoned activist or a still-learning newbie) and to make sure you’re informed about what is happening, especially as we head into yet another tense election.

So Thirsty by Rachel Harrison: Sloane doesn’t need a reminder that she’s getting older. When her husband books her a weekend getaway with her best friend Naomi, she anticipates a weekend of wine tastings and avoiding her real-life problems (like her shaky marriage). But Naomi has other plans, and when she plans a night out with mysterious strangers, the two women have to reckon with changes to their lives for forever.

I loved Rachel Harrison’s book The Return, about a group of friends who reunite after one of them disappears for two years and comes back…different. Though I’ve tried to read a few of her other titles, none of them have hooked me enough to finish them until now, this smart, character-driven novel about vampires with a somewhat fresh perspective. I loved that the character of Sloane is struggling with aging (relatable to a person turning 40 next year) but ends up being forced to live forever. There are some cliches here (a brooding male love interest, questions about the ethics of animal blood vs. human, etc.), but what Harrison excels at is writing complicated, nuanced, and layered female friendships. That’s on full display here as Sloane and Naomi end up confronting the issues in their relationship as they face a literal forever together. Not necessarily my favorite read of the month, but very entertaining and perfect for spooky season.

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What I Watched:*

*It’s spooky season, which means that I’m firmly ensconced in my 31 days of horror challenge. That means you’re getting a lot of horror movie recommendations (sorry in advance to those who do not celebrate the best time of the year):

Doctor Odyssey, Season 1: After a life-altering incident, a doctor takes a job on a luxury cruise ship as the head of the medical team and navigates unique medical crises.

This might be the dumbest (scripted) show on TV right now, and I am obsessed with it. It is absolutely stupid, knows it, and is unapologetic about it, which makes for very fun viewing. Joshua Jackson looks great and is clearly having so much fun, and he’s a good enough actor that it makes up for the fact that the rest of the cast…isn’t so much. The show’s lore is already completely bonkers - he quit his hospital job after becoming patient zero for COVID and then…became the doctor on a cruise ship because he wanted more joy in his life? Who is gonna tell him about COVID and cruise ships? Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan over at Drinks with Broads posited that maybe he’s in purgatory and/or the ship is a COVID fever dream, and I love this unhinged theory so much, even if I think it’s giving the show too much credit. At any rate this is a perfect show for when you need to take a complete brain vacation.

I Saw the TV Glow (Max): When a classmate introduces teenage Owen to a mysterious late-night TV show on a channel for kids, Owen becomes obsessed with it, and his reality begins to crack.

This was really remarkable, and definitely warrants another watch just to catch some of the things I know I missed on my first viewing. Much like writer/director Jane Schoenbrum’s previous movie, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, this was in many ways a meditation on the trans experience and how media plays a role in revealing who people are to themselves. This was more explicit about its intents, and I found this one much more gripping and compelling as a result. The cast here is excellent, especially Justice Smith, and the soundtrack is incredible. I cried at the end! Really thought-provoking and moving and unsettling.

TV/Movie Tidbits:

• The Funhouse (Shudder): A group of teens attend a visiting carnival and decide to spend the night in the funhouse. But when they witness a murder by a deformed carnival worker, they must fight to survive the night. This movie, from 1981, is my first Tobe Hooper film.⁴ I actually liked the first half or so, because I thought it was interesting the way Hooper built tension just from the carnival itself, but when we started getting into the kills in the second half, I got bored. There’s also a truly staggering amount of gratuitous nudity in this that feels extremely 80s.

• It Lives Inside (Hulu): An Indian-American teen chafing against her traditional parents’ desires and her own has a falling out with her former best friend and accidentally unleashes a demonic entity that gets its strength from her loneliness. I really wanted to like this movie, based on the Pishach, a flesh-eating demon from Indian religions. And while it was refreshing to see a non-western mythology featured in a major film release, the movie’s pacing was wildly uneven and I was surprised and disappointed by how completely conventional the entire thing ended up being. There was nothing new here, and even the decision to not show the monster until the very end didn’t build enough suspension or fear to make it worth it. Bummer!

• Child’s Play (1988) (AMC, via YouTube TV): A talking doll meant for children is imbued with the soul of a serial killer and goes on a murderous rampage. Despite having seen - and loving Bride of Chucky many times as a teen, I had never seen the original film that launched the Chucky franchise. I vividly remember seeing the covers of the original series at the video rental store⁵ and being scared, and I’ve seen the 2019 reboot (much more gory than this one). Incredibly unscary viewing as an adult, but I did think the little kid who plays Andy was pretty good for a child actor and I worried a little bit about what kind of an impact making a movie like this would have on a child.⁶

• Speak No Evil (2022) (Shudder): When a Danish family befriends a Dutch family while on vacation, they accept an invitation to visit their new friends at their home in the remote Dutch countryside. What starts as a nice visit quickly goes awry as the Danish family grows increasingly uncomfortable but doesn’t want to appear rude. I tried to watch this movie last year and got too unsettled; with the release of the American version⁷ I decided to try again. I’m glad I did! In addition to being really unsettling, it was also very funny at times and genuinely tense before leaning into full depravity. A pitch-perfect social satire that I will not forget. Woof!

• V/H/S: Beyond (Shudder): The latest in the found-footage horror anthology offers five new short films loosely connected though interludes where experts talk about extraterrestrials and visual effects. Much more sci-fi focused than some of the previous V/H/S movies, this was pretty much par for the course when it comes to the franchise: some of the shorts are much better than the others. All of them were very gory and really leaned into the gross factor. Not a standout for me and definitely less fun than last year’s V/H/S: 85.

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What I Listened To:

Maggie Rogers, “In the Living Room”: Rogers is on tour right now but dropped a surprise bonus song and music video this week. Something about it is really giving “Torn” by Natalie Imbruglia to me, but I’m digging it.

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What I’m Looking Forward To:

The Sex Lives of College Girls, Season 3 (November 21, Max): The girls are back on campus for their sophomore year and are guaranteed another year of hook ups, heartbreaks, and friendship. Even though season 2 dipped in quality to a noticeable degree, I really like this show and am excited for another season!

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That’s it for this week! I’ll be back next week with even more horror recommendations, thoughts on more fall TV premieres, Netflix’s age-gap romance Lonely Planet, and so much more. I hope you have a great weekend and thanks, as always, for reading!

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1. I also suggested we get Taco Bell and eat it on the couch with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, but he seemed…less than thrilled with that idea. We’ll see!

2. I don’t think this is a hot take. If asked, could you name an actual human being you consider your hero? We’re all incredibly flawed beings, and I say “Never meet your heroes” at least once a week, so…

3. This is true as of now: we’ll see what happens in November. I am not chill about it!

4. I’ve never seen the original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre; my only association with it is from the 1987 “classic” Summer School starring Mark Harmon and Kirstie Alley, where two of the students are obsessed with the film. Summer School was on cable TV all the time in the mid-late nineties and I must have watched it a dozen times? I don’t know why!

5. Kids, ask your parents.

6. Alex Vincent was like six or seven when this was filmed!

7. Still unsure if I want to watch that one! So much of the original hinges on specific cultural norms and I don’t know how they’d translate that into the individualistic hellscape of being an American.