Rich Text

Reading the comments on The Cut’s Instagram page is not for the faint of heart. Things tend to get weird and heated and even more weird, but sometimes they also get interesting, like they did after writer Shannon Keating wrote an essay about her confused ambivalence about having children. The piece ran with the eye-catching headline “Should I Be A Mom, or Should I Stay A ‘Brat’” ? (‘Brat’ is a ref...

Dearest gentle readers, the end of Polin season is upon us at last, bringing with it relief from weepy eyes and gasping breaths. Colin and Penelope’s love story climaxes in several senses during these final four episodes: with a declaration of love, with a long-awaited sex scene featuring a mirror, with his discovery of Penelope’s nom de plume, and with his eventual acceptance of her full self. Oh...

Bravo shows tend to be their most interesting and most depressing when we’re watching something dissolve, whether that’s a longterm relationship or the remaining space between reality TV cast members and their audience. “The Valley,” “Summer House” and “Vanderpump Rules” all ended their seasons with something fundamental shattering. On “Summer House” it was Lindsay Hubbard and Carl Radke’s engagem...

The great rom-com stars make it look easy. Meg Ryan, Julia Roberts, Drew Barrymore: When they fall in love on-screen, their charm pulls us in and the transparency of their emotions enables us to feel every moment of yearning and every thrill just as their characters do. But a rom-com lead can also, we recently discovered, turn in such a limp performance that it makes the sheer difficulty of being...

Dearest gentle reader… In the words of our dear gossip-monger Lady Whistledown, “Diamonds are not the only gems that sparkle.” On this season of “Bridgerton,” we are given an emerald, in the form of a no-longer-citrus-clad Penelope Featherington. The former wallflower is in full bloom, catching the eyes of both naturalist Lord Debling and her old friend Colin Bridgerton, newly returned from his tr...

“Selling the O.C.” has always distinguished itself from its older, cooler sister “Selling Sunset” by being slightly worse in almost every respect: the fashion, the characters, the politics, the drama. In season 3, that continues. The “Love Island”-inspired, Shein-designed outfits, the flatly unpleasant people, the thinly veiled bigotries, and the warmed-over storylines make for an uninspiring seas...

Are we in the golden age of friend-group Bravo shows? After doing a major binge of established shows “Summer House,” “Vanderpump Rules,” and new addition “The Valley,” we think that answer is a resounding yes. So naturally, we had to get Gibson Johns of Gibsonoma back on the Rich Text pod to do a little state of the Bravo union. All three of the aforementioned shows track the semi-glitzy, semi-dep...

Taylor Swift’s 11th original studio album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” was released last week into a world feverishly gripped by anticipation for a Taylor Swift album. Some were primed to adore her latest work, which Swifties broadly expected to be a thorough excavation of her relationship with her ex-partner of six years, actor Joe Alwyn; others were primed to mock and flame it. We, two rath...

It was sometime last year that it started to feel like Big Conversations about marriage and divorce were *everywhere.* David Brooks was lecturing young people to “obsess less about your career and to think a lot more about marriage” because marriage rates have been falling. Emily Gould was contemplating leaving her husband and then not over on The Cut. High-profile writers like Lyz Lenz , Leslie J...

Last week, New York Magazine’s The Cut published an all-time banger of a hate read — which is saying something, considering the run they’ve been on recently (from the “$50k in a shoebox” piece to the “tried to leave my husband and then realized I was just having a breakdown” piece). Grazie Sophia Christie’s floridly written and smugly framed essay, “The Case for Marrying an Older Man,” argues, wit...

One of the first things you notice about “Irish Wish,” the latest output of Lindsay Lohan’s deal with Netflix, is just how… saturated the colors are. The pink accents in her plaid knee-length dress look a little too pink. The green grass of the Irish countryside is a little too green. The blue of the water is a little too blue. Are we in Ireland at all, you start to wonder? Is that real clothing?...

UPDATE: On the afternoon of March 22, Princess Catherine announced that she is undergoing treatment for cancer . Our thoughts are with her and her family, and we wish her a swift recovery. This discussion primarily focuses on what the public reactions to her stepping back from public life say about the culture / the role of the royal family. Nearly three months after the last official appearance o...

It only took six seasons of “Love Is Blind” for Netflix and Kinetic to get Nick and Vanessa Lachey some real media training. At long last, our fair hosts seem to have discovered the power of a follow-up question! (They did seem to basically forget to ask about the majority of Jimmy and Chelsea’s relationship, but… baby steps.) This year’s reunion had some real production value behind it, was (bles...

SPOILER ALERT: This post contains some spoilers for the finale of season 6 of “Love Is Blind.” The Charlotte-based “Love Is Blind” season that started out so promisingly is looking pretty diminished by the finale — at least when you’re counting couples. Season 6 ended up being as short on weddings as season 5, and similarly gave us more mess than romance. But the finale was no less rich of an epis...

Just when we thought things had reached peak insanity on season 6 of “Love Is Blind,” receipts pointing to some questionable off-screen behavior of cast members started popping up all over TikTok . Full disclosure! We taped our recap of episodes 10 and 11 last week, but then the gossip started pouring out: about Jeramey’s previous engagement , about the serious girlfriend Trevor allegedly had DURI...

On this week’s pod, we recap episodes 7-9 of “Love Is Blind” season 6, which has begun to take some unexpected twists after a strong opening. Though the first drop of “Love Is Blind” episodes ended in a grim place, with at least two of the five engaged pairs collapsing into conflict within hours of attending their first social function together, their honeymoon in Punta Cana ends with all five cou...

Season 6 of Netflix’s “Love Is Blind” dropped its first six episodes on Valentine’s Day, and (obviously) we binged them all. The verdict? So far, so good. After an absolutely disastrous season 5, which left multiple lawsuits in its wake, and two couples fully erased from the season, we were wary heading into season 6. But six episodes in, LIB’s Charlotte, North Carolina season is off to a strong s...

Ever since one-time Bachelor — and famed “Kissing Bandit” — Arie Luyendyk, Jr. appeared on the first season of the Peacock reality series “The Traitors,” the show has been on our radar. We heard about it on social media and from friends; we heard that Arie showed a different side of himself in the strategy competition setting, and that the show itself was wildly entertaining. Nevertheless, we resi...

“What is the penis to me? What is its nature?” Jacqueline Novak asks early in her show, “Get On Your Knees.” After some consideration she concludes that the penis is tender, responsive, and has “the soul of an artist.” Like the organ it explores, “Get On Your Knees” has a tenderness at its center, wrapped in a package of genital humor. It is a show that exists in the liminal space between comedy s...

Just when you thought “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” would never be able to top the moment when federal agents tried to arrest Jen Shah during filming , the season 4 finale raised the bar to the heavens, delivering a finale as shocking and suspenseful as a scripted thriller. In the final episode, a classic Real Housewives girls’ trip dinner turns into a “Knives Out”-style showdown as the...

Content warning: We will be discussing infertility and IVF during this episode. If those topics are sensitive for you right now, we totally understand. Feel free to skip this week’s episode. Take care of yourselves, first and foremost. When Sami Jacobson decided to start trying to have a baby, she was 33, and, anxieties assuaged by a doctor friend, she figured, “it’ll just happen.” But then… it di...

This week, we finally got around to discussing the movie everyone has been talking about: “May December,” a film “loosely inspired” by the Mary Kay Letourneau-Vili case. Directed by Todd Haynes and written by Samy Burch and Alex Mechanik, it stars Natalie Portman as Elizabeth Berry, an actress researching her role playing Gracie Atherton, a woman who became a tabloid celebrity in the ‘90s after be...

FBoy? F, Hi. Again! After being unceremoniously axed by MAX in 2022, our favorite, innovative reality dating show has made a moderately triumphant comeback. “FBoy Island,” a show from the creative brain of former “Bachelor” EP Elan Gale, just wrapped up its third season on The CW, and boy do we have thoughts. First, there’s the good. We’ve been “FBoy Island” devotees since its first season in 2021...

The holidays are here at last, and one thing Netflix guarantees us during this magical time is a Christmas-themed chick flick starring one to three early aughts icons. The plot? Thin as a single snowflake. The message? Don’t stop believin’ (in Santa). “Best. Christmas. Ever!” wraps this whole package up in a shiny bow: Brandy Norwood, Heather Graham, and Jason Biggs star alongside Matt Cedeño in a...

Over the four months that Claire was on maternity leave, a whole lot happened, both in our lives, and in the greater cultural sphere. So we figured it would be a good opportunity to catch up, An entire, absolutely deranged season of “Love Is Blind” aired! Charity Lawson found love with Dotun Olubeko on “The Bachelorette,” and “The Golden Bachelor” premiered! (Claire is still recovering from the tr...