Rich Text

Content warning : In this podcast, we discuss some very difficult topics — notably, suicide/suicidal ideation, sexual assault and child sexual abuse. Please listen with care. On Friday, the Supreme Court released its opinion on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. In it, the court overturned Roe v. Wade, denying the existence of a constitutional right to an abortion. The majority opinion,...

This week we come to you with two summer romance offerings: a must-watch movie and a we-watched-it-so-you-don’t-have-to movie. Hulu’s “Fire Island,” written by and starring Joel Kim Booster, is a groundbreaking, thoughtful, funny, and tender modernization of “Pride and Prejudice” set in Fire Island Pines, a legendary gay resort town. Centering on the friendship between two gay Asian-American men,...

“Normal People” was the first Sally Rooney streaming series to enrapture the viewing public, with Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones bringing sensitive jock Connell and snooty social outcast Marianne to life onscreen. But “Conversations With Friends” is the original Rooney, the debut novel that launched the Irish writer to such massive fame and acclaim that her public persona now primarily revolves...

We’re in the midst of a streaming content bubble. Everything is being optioned; every week, three or four shows drop into the flooded TV landscape that boast giant budgets and star Matt Damon or Jessica Biel. Streaming series are being made out of books that haven’t even come out yet and TV shows that came out less than 20 years ago. Any news story that garnered a moderate amount of national atten...

Tan France. An indoor water feature. A sculptural swoop of scarlet sleeve. A fake montage of all the ladies arriving. Amanza undergoing 3 hours of glam squad work for a 90-second proof-of-life FaceTime appearance. Chrishell blushing joyfully over a special someone named G Flip. The Oppenheim twins weeping while continuing to hold their faces nearly immobile. The “Selling Sunset” season 5 reunion h...

After five too-brief seasons of “Selling Sunset,” it was finally time for us to tackle the realtor reality soap — and finally time for me (Claire) to take a crash course in learning to tell 5-7 almost identical long-legged blondes apart from each other. (It’s a steep learning curve, but I can now reliably tell the difference between Emma and Christine, based on minute differences in lip plumpness....

What if you really did have to work all the time ? What if there were no family, no friends, no evenings or vacations, not even eight (okay, six and a half) hours of restful slumber? Would a stack of colorful erasers and an occasional offering of melon or deviled eggs be enough to make this life worth living? What about collegial but superficial friendships with a handful of coworkers? A quarterly...

If you watch “The Bachelor,” in some small part, to soak in the befuddling spectacle of 24-year-old women weeping because they’re not engaged yet and will never be chosen … boy, has Netflix got a series tailor-made for you! “The Ultimatum” is the streaming platform’s latest romance reality show, and, more specifically, it’s part of the Lachey cinematic universe. Like “Love Is Blind,” the show is h...

This is the free edition of Rich Text, a newsletter about cultural obsessions from your Internet BFFs Emma and Claire. If you like what you see and hear, consider  becoming a paid subscriber . Rich Text is a reader-supported project — no ads or sponsors! Coming soon: A subscribers-only episode about Netflix’s batshit new reality dating show “The Ultimatum.” In the final episodes of the NBC sitcom...

When “Bridgerton” season 2 dropped a week and a half ago, we couldn’t wait a single day to share our first reaction to the season: where is all the sex? We’re too impatient for a 7 episodes of sexual build-up, and we’re too impatient for a week of reflection before demanding that the creators of this Netflix live-action romance novel give us more horny content. If you missed our quick chat about i...

It’s extremely fitting that, for his latest glistening but somewhat creaky period drama, Julian Fellowes (the creator of “Downton Abbey”) selected Gilded Age New York, the historical stomping ground of obscenely wealthy robber barons and their socially ambitious, upstart wives. Much like our own, it was an era of excess and extravagance made visible, of luxury goods flaunted in order to advertise...

It seems impossible that anyone could want to bring low-rise jeans back. Right? On that point, we thought we were safe. They require a bikini wax and low-coverage underwear; they feel like they’re perpetually on the brink of slipping off your butt. Sitting down in them, much like sitting down in a hoop skirt, requires a keen sense of spatial awareness and precise, practiced movements. They are des...

Spoiler alert: This episode contains plot descriptions for each movie discussed. Don’t listen if you don’t want to find out how these (hint) romantic comedies end! After bathing our brains in intense reality TV drama for the past few weeks — from devouring “Love Is Blind” to taping our eyelids open to make it through the four hours of “The Bachelor” this week (with four more to anticipate this com...

No sooner had the “Love Is Blind” season 2 reunion episode begun than Shake started trolling. “How are y’all feeling?” Nick Lachey asked the group. “I’M NERVOUS ABOUT HOW WE GET EDITED,” blared Shake, who desperately wants everyone to know that he only appeared to be making cruel comments about his fiancée Deepti behind her back because of editing . And also, as he suggests later in the episode, b...

We all know it’s possible to develop to develop deep, passionate feelings about someone you only know through their voice. It’s called “listening to a podcast.” But would you agree to marry your favorite podcaster, sight unseen? This is the conceit of “Love Is Blind,” a Netflix reality show about 28 hopeful singles who step into custom-built pods (coincidence? we think not) and speak to each other...

The slippery thing about scams, cults, pyramid schemes, grifts: As horrifying as it is to be caught up in one, it can be difficult to explain what makes them any different from the general rules of life under capitalism — especially America’s religiously inflected version, in which hierarchical structures are a given, charismatic personalities are venerated, and wealth is synonymous with moral wor...

In the finale of season 1 of “And Just Like That…”, our gals are in the full swing of their third acts — mid-widowhood, mid-divorce, and of course, mid-happy marriage and motherhood. Carrie, almost a year after Big’s death, needs to decide where to put his ashes to rest, possibly with the aid of Big’s eternal spirit speaking to her through a malfunctioning reading lamp. Miranda finds out, through...

In episodes 7 to 9 of HBO’s “Sex and the City” reboot “And Just Like That…”, the mid-life crisis season, the crises continue apace. Carrie writes her grief memoir and goes on a tragic date. Charlotte discovers her 15-year-old daughter knows about thirst traps. Miranda has an affair AND a divorce without ever having an on-screen conversation with her teenage son. These three episodes offer only sli...

If there’s anything more horrifying than being a teenage girl stuck in a hormonal body and a socially treacherous high school, it’s being a teenage girl stuck in a hormonal body and the Canadian wilderness as winter approaches, food dwindles, and your fellow teenage girl companions are growing increasingly hungry and restless. That’s the topline selling point of “Yellowjackets,” a Showtime drama a...

We both have a lot in common with famous comedy multi-hyphenate Mindy Kaling. We often wonder if everyone is hanging out without us, and we adore romantic comedies. Most importantly, we graduated from college over a decade ago, and some part of us can’t help but wonder: Are young women on campus these days having more fun than we did, personally? (Or would they be, you know, Covid aside.) To be fa...

Over the last four episodes of “And Just Like That…”, our awesome threesome has really gone through it. SPOILER ALERT: We will now talk about what they’ve gone through. Proceed with caution. Carrie begins to suspect Big carried a torch for, or had an affair with, Natasha. Then she needs to get major hip surgery due to a congenital defect, and face the possibility of never walking in heels EVER AGA...

This is the free edition of Rich Text, a newsletter about cultural obsessions from your Internet BFFs Emma and Claire. If you like what you see and hear, consider  becoming a paid subscriber . Rich Text is a reader-supported project — no ads or sponsors! We soft launched Rich Text one year ago . It was supposed to be a hobby, an experiment, an attempt to rediscover joy in writing after a demoraliz...

The perennial question faced by protagonists in fiction — especially, let’s be honest, female protagonists — is whether they are “likable.” It’s both an understandable question (to convince an audience to spend any significant amount of time in their company, one would think it should be pleasant to be around them) and a limiting one (“likable” characters are not the only ones who are interesting...

A glamorous romance author tries to buy a Scottish castle from a grumpy duke. Not one, but two L.A. writers travel to the frosty East to spend Christmas with a prospective lover’s family, only to encounter a himbo who throws a spanner in the works. A foxy noblewoman joins forces with her childhood sweetheart, now a private security expert, to recover a stolen Vatican relic — and her relationship w...

And just like that, we watched “And Just Like That…”! In this subscribers-only pod, we discuss the return of sad Carrie, problematic Miranda, and boring Charlotte — and, sadly, of “she-lives-somewhere-else-now” Samantha. (This time, she isn’t going to get tired of waiting for Smith under a mountain of sushi and decide to move back to New York.) The pod is, obviously, chock-full of spoilers for the...