Kevin Fallon

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. Loving the new season of Insecure. Having enough of spoilerphobes. Being scarred by Nicole Kidman. Getting burned by NPR. Feeling seen by Adele. Spoiler Alert: This Is About Spoilers Someone tweeted something about a Marvel movie this week, and the internet lost its mind. I could probably copy and paste that statement into an article that publishes every week, but the truth is I rarely bother […]

The Netflix adaptation of The Baby-Sitters Club is TV’s coziest warm hug. It is finding the color butterfly clip for your hair to perfectly match your outfit. The heart used instead of the dot on “i.” The rush of excitement when your crush circles “yes” on a passed note that reads, “Do you like me?” It is finding a group of best friends and knowing that, no matter what, they understand and are there for you. So, color me shocked to discover when watching the second season of the series, which premiered last week on Netflix, that, this go-round, The Baby-Sitters […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. It’s odd branding that crying to Adele has become a Super Bowl event. Adding to the bizarre emotional bloodsport in this case is the source of the anticipation: The singer, one of the most astute translators of the complex tangle of pain that knots around heartbreak and love, has gone through a divorce since her last album. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that […]

Linda’s son was shy, even as a baby. He didn’t play well with others. Not that he was mean; he just didn’t know how. At age 13, he started a gaming profile to play fantasy games. Hearing him interact with other players over the headset made Linda happy. Middle school was hard for him. The family had moved. It was a new school. He was depressed. He was in and out of therapy because he hated it. All he wanted was to feel normal, but the therapy made him feel like he was “not human.” Linda, played by Ann Dowd in […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. In my years as an entertainment journalist and critic, I have passionately abided by the idea that art is a capsule of the mood and feeling of a certain time. And therefore I have no notes about the current television moment, which seems to be screaming: Wow, it really sucks to be alive, huh? The Squid Game of it all is its own conversation. But we’re […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. This week: Forever traumatized by Squid Game. We’re doing that “next James Bond” thing again… Three magical duets. The celebrity quotes I can’t stop thinking about. Cher!!!!!!! Spoiler Alert!: I Am the Next James Bond I wondered if anything sounded like more of an interminable drag than the two-hour-and-43-minute running time of the new James Bond film No Time to Die, “the most emotional 007 movie […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. This week: The best show on TV right now. Fear not, the celebs are ending the pandemic! When was the last time you talked to Margaret Thatcher? Wow, Nine Perfect Strangers was bad. Nicole Richie’s birthday was lit. Hollywood Has Saved Us From the Pandemic. Phew! It’s about damn time someone said it. I don’t know why it took this long. Here we’ve all been, frolicking […]

It admittedly feels lame, or lazy, to each TV season crown a freshman series “the new low for reality television.” Every year, there’s any number of similar coronations—or, I guess, condemnations. Has the ball dropped in Times Square? Then usher in the new wave of griping about the “trashiest,” “stupidest,” “most offensive,” “craziest,” or, a modern favorite, “batshit” reality show “ever!” Or at least until next year! This isn’t a recent phenomenon, born out of desperation for the clicks, likes, and retweets that come when headlines scream in hyperbole. For over three decades now, the race to crucify the next evolution […]

End all awards show bits. That’s the lesson. The Emmys winners did the show for them. They were all (mostly) great. There were surprises sprinkled throughout, the kind of fun that shocks TV critics watching alone on their couch with some rosé and makes them stand up reflexively and start clapping about. (That was me, when Mare of Easttown’s Julianne Nicholson deservedly won, Olivia Colman’s Queen Elizabeth reigned over Emma Corrin’s Princess Diana, and Hacks creator/writer/director Lucia Aniello got her double win. Is, as the kids say, “nature healing,” or did Kate Winslet just win an acting award while reminding herself […]

You know Mike O’Malley. Or you think you know him. What do you know him from? Maybe you recognize him from something you’ve seen on TV, but you can’t place it. Or you can’t shake the feeling that you grew up with him. Was he a neighbor? Did you go to the same high school? It nags at you. You know him. But, like, know him. “I have this Irish face, man,” he says. “There’s a lot of people who look like me.” The truth is, if you’re a millennial of a certain age, you grew up with O’Malley, who was […]

It was two minutes of flawless reality television. Sunday night’s season two premiere of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City began with a wrecking ball to the fourth wall. A producer is seen setting up cameras in a van that will transport the cast to a girls’ trip, a wink to fans’ gleeful astonishment and gratitude: Oh my god, the cameras were actually there to film THAT! “That” would be the authorities swarming production in order to arrest cast member Jen Shah, who was charged with fraud in connection with a telemarketing scheme that targeted elderly people. One’s giddiness over […]

The Humans begins with an establishing shot, the camera gazing up from the small interior courtyard of a Chinatown apartment building. It’s one of those New York areas so claustrophobic that the idea of it being “outdoor space” is a tease. Craning to glimpse a sliver of the sky, it almost seems unreachable, creating an illusion that the surrounding brick walls are starting to cave in on you the harder you struggle to look. Something matter-of-fact shouldn’t seem so impossible, yet from the bottom of the courtyard looking up, it’s an existence from which you may never escape. Before vertigo sets […]

It’s about seven minutes into the premiere of Impeachment: American Crime Story when Linda Tripp is called a “treacherous bitch.” That Monica Lewinsky is the character who says this about the recently deceased civil servant shouldn’t necessarily be a surprise. As anyone who followed what may be the biggest political scandal of the last century remembers, Lewinsky ended her 1998 grand jury testimony by tearfully saying, “I hate Linda Tripp.” But it is a notable start to the series. Ahead of the Sept. 7 premiere of FX’s Impeachment, the third installment of Ryan Murphy’s Emmy-winning American Crime Story anthology, producers revealed […]

Heléne Yorke has been giving online foot enthusiasts everything they want. The actress, currently starring in season two of the showbiz satire/bitingly funny millennial comedy The Other Two on HBO Max, jokes that she knew she had made it when a Google search of her name surfaced—as it does for the biggest A-list stars—a profile in a database that outlines a celebrity’s age, net worth, and information about their feet. “More than anything I’m flattered that people give a shit about my net worth,” Yorke laughs in a recent Zoom interview. The bizarre, yet high-SEO fetish is one of The Other […]

The great thing about pop culture is that everyone gets to have an opinion. It’s just that so many of them are wrong. I kid. I’m not (that) elitist. The phrase “everybody’s a critic” exists for a reason, presumably beyond to torture me, a person who is a critic. But every once in a while there is a groundswell of opinion about something that, while it must be valid—there are enough people thinking that way for it to be noticed—is absolutely baffling. To say it’s wrong would be as flippant as the people spraining their thumbs with their flurry of tweets. […]

In 2019, one of the year’s best new TV series rode into the zeitgeist hidden inside a conspicuous, headline-making Trojan horse: one in the shape of Justin Bieber. The Other Two, created by former Saturday Night Live head writers Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider, cannon-balled into the pop culture conversation with its juicy hook. Ask them—or any of the SNL players at Studio 8H during their tenure—who was the most difficult host to work with, and even the most gossip-shy would almost immediately blurt out the Biebz’s name. Here was a show from Kelly and Schneider that was being sold as […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. This week: The Jeopardy! Scandal Is Very Upsetting to Me! It’s truly astonishing that Jeopardy! managed to screw things up this badly. Few things in entertainment seem as sacred as the show, which, after decades on air fostering intimate relationships with viewers each night as they sit down for dinner, found its cultural significance only heightened in the last year. That was partly a product of […]

For the first time, the subject of Ryan Murphy’s Emmy-winning FX anthology series American Crime Story, which based previous iterations on the O.J. Simpson trial and Andrew Cunanan’s murder spree, was involved in its making. Monica Lewinsky is a producer on Impeachment: American Crime Story, which launches on FX Sept. 7, and consulted on all the scripts. Sarah Burgess, the series’ showrunner, executive producer, and writer, said that she went through every page of every script with Lewinsky to confirm the telling of events according to how she remembered them. “I added a couple of moments that Monica told me about […]

Warning: Spoilers follow for the season finale of The White Lotus. When Jake Lacy was flying to Maui last fall, he didn’t know he was going to kill someone. But he couldn’t be more excited that he did. At the time, the actor, known for roles in projects like The Office, Obvious Child, and High Fidelity, had only seen one script for The White Lotus, the HBO satire/dramedy/summer sensation from writer-director Mike White that aired its season finale Sunday night. Lacy’s Shane kicked off the series, a Disgruntled Rich White Guy seething at an airport, glaring out the window as a […]

“Gays are very hard.” “Yeah, they’re super hard!” The double entendre is unintentional, but it perfectly fits in with what John Onieal and Jimmy Fowlie are talking about. They are the creator and star, respectively, of Bridesman, which, after its premiere at Outfest LA on Aug. 14, will be the first original scripted series from Grindr. As in the gay hookup app. “Gay are harsh critics,” Fowlie clarifies. Onieal remembers, sight unseen, the reaction on social media to the announcement that the platform typically used for trading photos and soliciting meet-ups would now be adding episodes of television to their grid […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. This week: “Why aren’t you watching The Good Fight?” – my dying words. MTV turning 40 and feelings. Christopher Meloni’s ass and FEELINGS. Your St. Dolly Parton update. The Taylor Swift-Simone Biles mashup we didn’t know we needed. Saying “I’m so old I remember when MTV played music videos” ages a person more than the sentence itself. It’s lame. It’s cliché. It’s also so true. The […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. The Good Fight Is on an Incredible Run Right Now It was heartening throughout the pandemic to hear from friends and family how many people were bingeing The Good Wife. And I understood why anyone who sampled it became obsessed. The politician’s wife dealing with his scandal was a juicy hook. Kalinda was TV’s best character, until she was the worst. Alicia and Will’s sexual chemistry […]

In some respects, Brendan Hunt pulled off the most difficult job of all on Ted Lasso. He’s the guy who made you fall in love with the annoying lead character. Sure, the Apple TV+ comedy series—which just broke an Emmy nominations record for season 1 and premiered season 2 last week to rave reviews—is celebrated now. It’s a show about an underdog British football team, yes. But it was also so profound in depicting the power of a positive outlook in hard times that audiences discovering it at the harshest moments of the pandemic championed its now-legendary “niceness” as healing. People […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. Shirtless Adam Driver on a Horse. It’s Called Art, Sweetie. It’s a big week for haunted horses. First, there was the viral story about a horse in France who travels through the halls of a hospital, choosing which terminally ill patients deserve his visit. I need to be as clear as possible on this, so listen closely: If I am ever in a hospital that employs […]

The fireworks went off. But to what end? Is it even prudent, at this point, to list everyone who didn’t want the Olympics to happen this year? The ceremony was brief and, sure, beautiful. Out of respect, everything was subdued. There were speeches about international solidarity and perseverance. But the question raised by Friday’s Opening Ceremony was mostly: Is this respectful, or just stupid? It’s a shame that organizers in Tokyo had to dampen what I’m sure would have been an explosive display, had the mood been appropriate. We got some cultural dancers, the hints of what might have been had […]

Melissa (Cecily Strong) and Josh (Keegan-Michael Key) are a couple struggling to keep the spark alive three years and change into their relationship, at just about the time they should be making the commitment to an eternal flame. In hopes of rekindling things, they attend a couples’ retreat in the wilderness, an experience with the grand promise to be their relationship’s great white hope when things are starting seem like a great big bummer. Cue the thunder strike and the torrential downpour, soaking the couple as they get lost in the woods. Some bickering later, they hear church bells and follow […]

In the sweet spring of hope and this early summer of freedom and rebirth, it’s our instinct to repress the traumatic events of this past year, such as the Emily in Paris discourse. The series’ surprise, arguably ridiculous Golden Globe nominations this past winter helped set into motion investigations into corruption and a lack of inclusivity that just about destroyed the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Yet here we are talking about the show in an awards context again. In what might be the most baffling of Tuesday morning’s 2021 Emmy Award nominations, the polarizing Netflix series appeared among the Best Comedy […]

The Jackass Shark Week Special begins with a warning to not attempt the following stunts at home, the same disclaimer that’s preceded every episode and movie featuring the band of fear-neutered man-children risking bodily harm in the name of shock and laughter. Johnny Knoxville remarks, “Shark Week, the Jackass guys: What could go wrong?” Then, after a smirk and dramatic pause: “What could go right?” No one, not even rabble-rousing stuntmen who have been at their jackassery for more than 20 years, expected just how wrong things would go. Seconds into my Zoom with cast member Steve-O about the experience, he […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. This week: The Real Housewives existential crisis. Death, taxes, and watching trash on Netflix. Cinema returns with Adam Driver’s musical cunnilingus. I think you should watch I Think You Should Leave. Pfizer, Moderna, and, now, AstraTubbica. Your Love of Julia Roberts’ Wig Offends Me The shit you all watch. The complete and utter nonsense. The lumpy chemical water at the bottom of a Porta-Potty. The green […]

Just prior to our phone conversation, Jennifer Coolidge received a surprise gentleman caller. “An incredibly handsome guy showed up to the gate. Just really a stunning, stunning guy,” she coos in that instantly recognizable rasp of hers: a little warm, a little sensual, a little lacerating, and a little loopy, like the vocal equivalent of a spiked sweet tea. “I was like, ‘Oh! Who’s this?” she says. “And then he’s like, ‘I’m here for the COVID test…’” The actress, known for making like a bandit with memorable roles in Legally Blonde, American Pie, and Christopher Guest’s comedies, was gearing up for […]

Hello, readers. I have a big secret to tell you. But you have to promise you won’t get mad. When you watch the new Gossip Girl, premiering Thursday on HBO Max, you’ll learn what it is. But it’s just so juicy I can’t help but dish now. In fact, if I’m going to talk about this show, it’s kind of the most important thing to tell you. It won’t affect how you feel about it. I swear. It’s a funny story, actually. They tried to tell us we couldn’t talk about it, but we stood our ground. We thought you just […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. This week: Go outside? Gross! Watch these shows instead. Very! Important! Jonathan Taylor Thomas update! Top Chef was flawless this season. Never not thinking about The Rosie O’Donnell Show. This horrible, heinous news week? No thank you!!! The Emotional Return of Jonathan Taylor Thomas It is tempting to roll your eyes and laugh at an Us Weekly headline that reads, “Jonathan Taylor Thomas Spotted in Hollywood […]

Near the beginning of the documentary Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Wasn’t Televised), a 19-year-old Stevie Wonder starts ad-libbing some opening bars to “It’s Your Thing.” He’s clad in a stylish suit on a stage erected at Harlem’s Mt. Morris Park on a humid, rainy day in the summer of 1969. Not that the damp, stagnant weather stood a chance against his crisp vocals, which lacerated through the mugginess to the delight of local revelers singing along under umbrellas and makeshift ponchos. After finishing a chorus, Wonder, shielded from the precipitation by a red-and-yellow parasol carried by a handler, […]

There are arguably few things gayer than Disney. But for LGBT Disney fans, the relationship is historically fraught. The connection is profound. It goes beyond the nightly rendition of “Part of Your World” at the Marie’s Crisis piano bar or the passionate, mimosa-fueled debate about which cartoon villain is the best. For a community whose childhoods are so often defined by being “a funny girl…different from the rest of us” and wondering “when will my reflection show who I am inside?”, the messaging, the whimsical escape, and, for the love of Minnie, the camp of it all made the House of […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. Time to Watch Porn on Netflix Again There was a time last summer, pretty much exactly a year ago, when everyone was basically watching porn on Netflix. The kinky soft-core international series 365 Days, which Daily Beast critic Nick Schager called “a Polish Fifty Shades of Grey,” became a sensation. It spawned debate about its controversial storyline and the abusive nature of its sex scenes—but also […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. Our Objectification of Britney Spears I am, as always, in awe of Britney Spears. I’m not sure what I expected when it was announced that the pop star was going to address the court about her controversial conservatorship on Wednesday. Maybe it’s these last years’ undercurrent of cynicism braided with skepticism that made me assume the news from the hearing couldn’t be that shocking. The Daily […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. This week: How Much Is Luca Basically Call Me By Your Name? No one emotionally prepared me for the final act of Luca. I can already scan my inbox of emails asking why I’m putting an agenda on a nice kids’ movie, but we’re still in goddamn 2021, at a point where we have to assign agendas to kids’ movies in order to be seen. Luca […]

It brings me no pleasure to report how much of my headspace is devoted to Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck’s PR-heavy second go at a relationship. And who am I to call it a relationship? Maybe they’re just testing the waters again after a traumatic time, seeking comfort in the comfortable. Maybe they’re just fucking. Maybe it’s all a stunt. The fact that I could write a damn Harvard thesis on all three hypotheses makes me hate myself. But there is a vibe they are projecting, one that makes me laugh. Especially now, and especially after all this [gesticulates wildly with […]

Controversy is always in fashion on the Real Housewives, where scandal pairs with cast members like the latest trendy Gucci bag. For fans of the Bravo franchise, a breaking TMZ alert screaming the name of the shows’ stars can seem like Christmas morning. As journalist Kelley Carter says in a new documentary, “What is so interesting is every time one of these women is caught up in some type of legal situation, the first thing all of us think is, my God, I hope the cameras are rolling.” But, for Bravo viewers with a conscience, this time it’s different. Well, different-ish. […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. This week: Can I Also Be Paid Tens of Millions to Not Do My Job? This week it was announced that Chris Harrison, a department store mannequin who was accidentally brought to life when a teen witch lost control of her powers after a frustrating Jamba Juice experience at a suburban Oklahoma mall, was officially fired from The Bachelor after 20 years. Or he and the […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. Kris Jenner: Devil, Saint, Hero, Nemesis, and Friend Kris Jenner, you’re doing amazing, sweetie. Keeping Up With the Kardashians ended Thursday night after 20 seasons on TV. I don’t know what happened because I didn’t watch it. I’m willing to bet none of you did either. Despite the media fanfare over the reality-TV juggernaut coming to an end, this has been the lowest-rated season in the […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. Happy Pride to Hillary Duff! It’s the wonderfully awful time of the year, when everything from my toothpaste to my toilet paper to my nightly burrito—you try living above a Chipotle—are festooned with rainbow packaging and maxims about pride, equality, love, and acceptance. Thank you, Charmin. Twitter accounts for snack crackers are sentiently proclaiming their activism in support of the LGBT+ community, and my bank has […]

Over Mare of Easttown’s seven-episode run on HBO, its obsessed audience has transformed into amateur sleuths, putting a gumshoe’s fedora on their Twitter avatars as they piece together the crime thriller’s central mystery: Who killed Erin McMenamin? A Google search of that very question yields dozens of blog posts and fan forums ranking the possible suspects. Now that Sunday night’s finale has aired, suffice it to say that the actual killer was likely a surprise to even the series’ most keen-eyed viewers, though one of the most popular theories surrounding the whodunnit was confirmed. The Daily Beast’s Obsessed Everything we can’t […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. The Amusing, Enduring Legacy of “Smelly Cat” “Hallelujah.” “Feeling Good.” “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” “Smelly Cat.” The most-covered songs of all time are indelible vocal showcases, emotional tributes to the subtlety of the human experience, and paragons of timelessness that, when paired with the right performer, can stir the soul in new and unexpected ways. And then there’s “Smelly Cat.” Of course the song, first performed […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. Movies Are Back, Baby! It’s happened more often than I’d like to admit in the year/year-and-change/interminable hellscape/however we’ve been quantifying time during the pandemic before things started to open up again in cities like New York, where I live. Movie theaters have been closed or, when softly reopened in pre-vaccine times, reserved exclusively for crazy people comfortable sitting in an enclosed space with strangers eating popcorn. […]

Warning: This story contains spoilers from HBO Max’s Friends: The Reunion, which premiered Thursday. About an hour and 20 minutes into Friends: The Reunion, James Corden asks what he calls a “cheeky” question. The cast were all good-looking, charismatic, and young when filming began. It’s “inconceivable” to him that there was never an off-screen romance in some permutation. Did anyone hook up? The camera instantly trains in on Jennifer Aniston, who shoots a kind of mischievous look down to the other end of the couch where David Schwimmer is sitting. “I mean…David?” she says, having him take the floor. The Daily […]

When “failson-in-chief” Andrew Giuliani, the son of disgraced former New York City mayor and Donald Trump flunky Rudy Giuliani, announced a fool’s bid to be the next governor of New York, it was open season for comedians, talk show hosts, and pundits. Even Fox News seemed to raise an eyebrow over Giuliani’s thin resume—he’s never held elected office—while interviewing him. On Sunday night’s Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, John Oliver took aim at the delusional gall of Giuliani’s attempt to unseat Andrew Cuomo. But he also examined the larger culture of clowns leaving the circus for political office—and succeeding—and the […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. Special is one of those TV series that is “important,” which sounds so insufferable and pretentious—especially because the Netflix show, which returned for season two this week, is anything but that. But it’s also one of those series that is doing important storytelling—that word again…gross…—in so many different ways that focusing on just one does a disservice to the others. The comedy is created by and […]

In The Me You Can’t See, the groundbreaking Apple TV+ documentary series about mental health on which Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry are partnering, Winfrey says, “The telling of the story. The being able to say out loud, ‘This is what happened to me,’ is crucial.” In conversation with her, Harry agrees, “The only way to free yourself and break out is to tell the truth.” Both he and Winfrey share their own epiphanies and journeys with mental illness and mental health, as well as what it’s meant to relate their experience to others. Episodes of the series also feature stories […]

Ellen DeGeneres’ talk show is ending, as it should and as the fates, allegations of a toxic environment, and Dakota Johnson foretold. The upcoming season 19 of the series, which has produced over 3,000 episodes, will be its last. It tees up a goodbye tour for a host who radically changed daytime television, the entertainment industry, and, when it comes to acceptance of the LGBT community, our entire culture. Now she is mostly known as the person who, according to reports, turned out to be the tyrant that had long been whispered about, announcing her departure while complaining about the circumstances. […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. This week: Bennifer, masters of their craft. Girls5eva is extremely my jam. Fat Will Smith has already disappointed us. Already dreading the Elon Musk SNL. The best magazine cover of the week. Girls5eva Is So Much Dang Fun When God made it so that his creations could hear, I truly believe it was because he knew the gift that was in store, the greatest one he […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. Bennifer Is Back?! On Saturday, you can watch Jennifer Lopez in a makeshift enchanted forest wearing a shimmering bodysuit with dramatic bell sleeves that eclipse her own height as she leads a stadium in Los Angeles through a singalong of Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” in the name of equitable distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine. Is this a chaotic game of doomsday Mad Libs? Or is it […]

On any given episode of Saturday Night Live, the “Weekend Update” segment, hosted by Colin Jost and Michael Che, is either the sharpest or the most painful part of the night. Part of that is owed, of course, to the almost impossible production schedule of a weekly TV sketch show meant to be topical and lacerating up to the minute of its 11:30 pm launch—a challenge that’s especially evident when it comes to Jost and Che’s weekly news desk outing. But that can also—and frequently—be owed to their comedy’s wild spectrum of taste level, provocation, so-called “wokeness,” and tried-and-true late-night edginess. […]

Over the years on the drama-filled, blissfully batty-and-booze-soaked seasons of The Real Housewives of New York City—the standard-bearer when it comes mixing the perfect reality TV cocktail of comedy, delusion, pettiness, and pathos—there have been fights about brunch invitations. There have been arguments over Trump, informed voting, and civic duty. There has been slut-shaming and sex positivity, “women supporting women” and frenemies betraying them, skinny dips and black-tie galas. There have been parties thrown, tantrums thrown, and prosthetic legs thrown. We’ve followed divorces, sobriety journeys, legal troubles, and plastic surgeries. We’ve seen someone drunkenly tumble into a rose bush and then, […]

Trixie Mattel’s makeup is its very own cultural phenomenon. The eyes are both big and small, extreme and feminine: jet-black eyeliner that swoops up from her tear ducts to her temples, like mirror-image cheese wedges occupying 30 percent of her face. Shocks of stark-white accents set off the massive eyelashes that rise off her face like Venus flytraps. The contouring is cartoonishly severe, transforming Brian Firkus of Milwaukee into the famous RuPaul’s Drag Race alum with the signature look that is part Barbie, part Kewpie doll, part Indianapolis office worker who just left a makeover at the cosmetics counter at J.C. […]

Trinity is an “invisible” spy, accomplishing missions impossible because, as a plus-sized Black woman, society doesn’t see her. Elisa is the leader of gang orientation, instructing new members on updated work-from-home procedures and paid parental leave policies. Commanch Pitters II is a “Blackstorian” who explains that, in 1896, two Black women were eaten to death by zombies after being the first people to arrive at a party, a trauma that “reverberates across generations of Black people who refuse to be on time for anything, for fear of meeting certain death.” The Daily Beast’s Obsessed Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and […]

Between 1970 and 2005, Samuel Little allegedly murdered 93 people, according to his own confessions. That means he killed more people than Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, and Ted Bundy combined. He claims to be the most prolific serial killer in American history. So why don’t you know his name? Starz’s new true crime docuseries Confronting a Serial Killer, premiering Sunday night, details how Little, who died in 2020, made his away across the country over the course of decades, treating back alleys, pick-up corners, and underbelly jukebox joints as his hunting ground, targeting prostitutes and drug addicts—often poor women of […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. This week: Let ‘Younger’ Age Us Out of TV’s Horrible Pandemic Era Have we maybe, finally, reached a time when our favorite TV series don’t feel the social responsibility to awkwardly shoehorn the pandemic into their plot lines? If the new—and final—season of Younger is any indication, the fantasy is here. As it should be. For six seasons, the show has been my favorite TV fantasy. […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. The Dance Floor Is About to Get Pfizer-ed Up I don’t want to brag, but this week Lady Gaga called me an “artist.” Yes, obviously it was directly to me and not to the 84.2 million people who follow her on Twitter and the perhaps billions more who read the message once countless news websites picked it up. She and I just have that relationship. She […]

Mare of Easttown is one of those shows that makes it hard to fall asleep after watching. It may not seem that way after its scene-setting, though still engrossing, premiere on HBO Sunday night, but the mystery-thriller speeds through a winding maze of twists, startling you after each hairpin plot turn. Marketing materials tease the Kate Winslet-starring drama using a line of dialogue that compares solving one of the show’s crimes to finding “a needle in a thousand haystacks.” As the episodes unfold, in each of those haystacks is another disturbing grenade of information, just waiting to detonate. You’d be excused […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. Watch This Really Interesting Documentary! Donor 5114 is 6’1” tall. He’s of medium build with straight brown hair and brown eyes. His skin is slightly olive, and he tans easily. He has full lips. He’s naturally athletic; when he works out, he tends to see results quickly. “Optimistic” and “curious” are the two words he’d use to describe himself. Lying is his least favorite quality in […]

For the first time in what was, for some of them, over 20 years, members of The Real World’s inaugural New York season were reuniting. Norman, who became the “first reality TV star” to come out as bisexual (the de facto first, because there weren’t any other reality stars), was hugging Julie, the Southern “fish out of water” who helped birth the TV-as-a-fishbowl format. Eric was catching up on his new career as an ayahuasca shaman while Heather, who still works as a radio host, couldn’t stifle her laughter—she would be having none of that. On the other side of the […]

For almost a decade, Adam Neumann convinced millions of people he was a genius. Actually, that may not be hyperbolic enough. He convinced them he was a messiah, or at least one in his own mind. He is the co-founder and former CEO of WeWork, the company that set up flexible shared workspaces for start-up companies by selling them as not only desks and square footage, but the opportunity to be part of a vibrant new community of like-minded, energetic professionals. As The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson explains in the new documentary WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. This week: Melting down over the Real Housewives scandal. Laughing at the best Instagram account right now. They’re spending how much on Knives Out? The only Benson-Stabler reunion moment I care about. Just when Lindsay Lohan couldn’t get any more confusing… My Favorite Instagram Account I can’t pinpoint exactly what it is about comedian Kevin Zak’s remixed celebrity interview videos that he posts on his Instagram […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. The Real Housewives of Having No Real Money It is my hope that every pop-culture enthusiast gets to one day experience the unbridled thrill Real Housewives fans feel when one of the franchise’s stars is mired in public scandal. The feeling is unparalleled, an excitement and anticipation as details start to trickle that’s like the night before Christmas as a child, losing your virginity as a […]

Hazel heaves open a sewer lid in the middle of the desert and hurls herself out of the ground. Soaking wet and gasping for breath, she nurses the bloody wound on the back of her head. The escapee’s visible distress quickly transforms into a gleaming smile of relief. She turns to the glistening white monolith of a building behind her, and gives it one of the most erect middle fingers captured on camera. What the hell happened to her? In Made for Love, the new HBO Max series that launches Thursday, the answers come fast, like a bullet train of truths […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. Chrissy Teigen leaving Twitter is suddenly something I care about. Tina Turner’s documentary is obviously something I care about. My favorite Jessica Walter Arrested Development moment. The Nanny is coming to save us all. The most absolute trash thing I’ve ever seen. Obviously You Should Watch the Tina Turner Documentary There is footage of Tina Turner in the new documentary, Tina, in which the music legend […]

When National Geographic selected the subjects for the first two seasons of its critically lauded Genius anthology series, there was a collective nodding in agreement: Yes, Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso are geniuses. They are worthy! They are taught in schools! They are complicated, mysterious, and a little dangerous! They are, of course, men! The selection of Aretha Franklin for the third installment of the series Genius: Aretha, which launches Sunday on National Geographic and streams on Hulu the next day, seemed then a little provocative—and exciting. There’s not a person with ears who would dispute the suggestion that Franklin is […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. This week: My favorite new reality show. The best TV opening scene I’ve seen…maybe ever? Justice for Tinsley Mortimer. A really pure, nice video to cleanse your life. And Harry Styles to cleanse your libido. Will You Like This New Marvel Show If You Don’t Like Marvel? When Marvel’s WandaVision premiered on Disney+ this winter, I wouldn’t shut up about my surprise that, given how exhausted […]

In the documentary series Demi Lovato: Dancing With the Devil, Demi Lovato reveals the details of the night she overdosed in 2018, including that she had three strokes, a heart attack, suffered brain damage, and has lingering blind spots in her vision: “I don’t think people realize how bad it actually was.” She discusses the drugs she took that night: heroin and crack cocaine, which she found out later was laced with fentanyl. She reveals that she has done heroin again even after that overdose; she stresses multiple times she is lucky to be alive. She says that she was sexually […]

At the start of Sunday night’s Grammy Awards, host Trevor Noah joked that this year’s show would be “the biggest outdoor event this year besides the storming of the Capitol.” But the best thing about the telecast was that it never seemed bogged down by the Big Event burden that has rendered so many other pandemic-era award shows almost unwatchable. Coming a week after last week’s disastrous Zoom Golden Globes, which seemed hell-bent on recreating the ceremony’s eye-rolling forced fun in spite of extreme circumstances and in the face of the organization’s scandal, the Grammys were refreshingly… chill. Well, as chill […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. This week: The Oscar Nominations That *Should* Happen In hindsight, maybe we shouldn’t have been surprised that the coronavirus became such a harrowing global pandemic. Months before Tom Hanks confirmed he had it, Hollywood revealed that it had lost its sense of taste entirely when the Academy failed to nominate Jennifer Lopez’s performance in Hustlers for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. (I swear it’s been days […]

Early on in the HBO Max series Genera+ion, a high-school girl watches a YouTube video on how to deliver a baby as her friend, who claims to not have known she was pregnant, goes into labor in a mall bathroom. A twin brother and sister are both eager and anxious to sexually experiment with a guy… the same guy. Errant spunk shoots into someone’s eye. Dick pics are sent around. Drugs are pilfered from parents and shared. A school-shooter drill is noted for its exhausting tedium more than its trauma. More refreshingly, the full spectrum of gender and sexual identity is […]

Any interview conducted with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry was going to be juicy, especially at this state of their royal exodus and in the midst of such a treacherous tabloid maelstrom. But only Oprah Winfrey could have produced what we saw on CBS Sunday night: A generation-defining interview. A global event. Blockbuster television. But, more importantly, actual substance; finally, into the gale of the constantly churning royal rumor mill, the unveiling of actual people and, through them, perseverance and grit. In that regard, consider Winfrey’s interview to be a long-awaited wrecking ball through the palace walls. Yes, paramount to all […]

It’s not news that the Golden Globes, as an awards show, are a bit of a joke. But, my, has that joke gone stale. The joke resurfaces every few years, sometimes from the ceremony’s stage itself. In 2016, host Ricky Gervais dinged them as “worthless,” likening the honor to “a bit of metal that some nice old confused journalists wanted to give you in person so they could meet you and have a selfie with you.” Tina Fey and Amy Poehler hosted Sunday night’s ceremony in unprecedented times: Because of the pandemic, each emceed from a different coast with a few […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. This week: Watch these good movies! Lololol another streaming service. The TV montage video of the week. Martha Stewart, icon. Maya Rudolph, ICON! Another Freaking Streaming Service? It’s at the point that I honestly can’t bring myself to do another one of those “should you subscribe to this new streaming service?” pieces. It would be like the 15th in this last year. Do you have unlimited […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. The Good Movies Have Finally Arrived If there is one thing that’s become certain about “These Uncertain Times,” as they’ve been so dramatically dubbed, it’s that time has become both meaningless and the most meaningful thing we have. It has now been over a year since I last went to work at my office. For many of us, this is the anniversary of the last thing […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. This week: The surprise bop of 2021. The best show on TV right now. Barb and Star 4ever. One of the best Idol auditions ever. Extremely, extremely good news. Please, For the Love of God, Watch “It’s a Sin” Look, we’re like 50 days into 2021. I know it’s ludicrous to call something the best show of the year so far. And it’s not like the […]

When the news broke that Rush Limbaugh died Tuesday at age 70, in an unusual occurrence, other celebrity names began trending in connection with him: The people he had cruelly mocked. Chelsea Clinton, for example, spiked as a trending topic. “Everyone, the Clintons have a cat. Socks is the White House cat. But did you know there is also a White House dog?” Limbaugh said once, setting up a joke. (Following his death from cancer, the controversial radio broadcaster’s biggest fans were quick to remember his purported sense of humor.) The punchline is that Limbaugh then showed a photo of Chelsea […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. This week: The Justin Timberlake backlash intensifies. You need to watch Judas and the Black Messiah. The only Super Bowl thing to care about. (It’s cheese-related.) Still the best Britney Spears take, 14 years later. Serena Williams, always the GOAT. This Is Now a Daniel Kaluuya Fan Forum Daniel Kaluuya gives that look, and it’s all over. If you’ve seen his performances in Get Out, Widows, […]

Everything about the Superspreader Bowl, as this weekend will inevitably become, seemed intent on manufacturing the image that everything in the country was business as usual: unnecessary football game, excessively large crowd, dangerous partying, and hyperbolic capitalism passed off as entertainment, pandemic be damned. At least the halftime show was an essential reminder that we are still in the midst of a dystopian hellscape, no matter what alternate reality was being presented at the Raymond James Stadium in Tampa Bay. During the brief break from Tom Brady’s victory lap, The Weeknd sprinted through a medley of his biggest radio hits as […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. This week: The best show you should watch RIGHT NOW. I watched a lot of Sundance things and here’s what was good. The Golden Globes is embarrassing and we say ENOUGH! Our fairy godmother is bringing some important streaming news. I laughed at that Chrissy Teigen tweet. The Sundance Movies You’ll Actually Care About For many entertainment journalists and critics, myself included, the last “Before Times” […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. ‘Pushing Daisies’ Is Finally Back From the Dead We are closing in on the one-year anniversary of the last time I went into an office for work. I remember scoffing at the inconvenience but looking forward to working from home for a change of pace, [whispers this part] thinking it was maybe a bit of an overreaction, and stocking up on frozen pizzas like I was […]

It took exactly 111 minutes from the start of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival for there to be an outrageous bidding war. The premiere film at this year’s virtual festival—rather than the fanfare at the Eccles Theater in Park City, couches around the world were the primo seats—certainly set a tone for an unprecedented outing that had everyone in the industry wondering how the movie, and maybe more importantly the market, would play. As it turns out, very well. On Saturday afternoon, it was announced that Apple Studios purchased the opening-night film CODA for a cool $25 million, meaning the first […]

It goes without saying that, lately, we’ve been preoccupied with what we’ve lost. The immediate reaction is sadness and anger, but lingering behind that is a wistfulness, especially if you broaden things from the personal to the universal; when you think about what we’ve lost as a culture. Alex Trebek, Regis Philbin, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Lewis, and, just this last week, Larry King, Hank Aaron, Cicely Tyson, and Cloris Leachman. Different pop-culture projects have brought renewed focus to the deaths and legacies of Fred Rogers, Robin Williams, and Whitney Houston. These are people who have been icons across generations. When […]

The story of the “Most Beautiful Boy in the World” unfolds like a dark thriller. It’s a story about the perils of child stardom. It’s a cautionary tale about the exploitation of young stars and the commoditization of beauty. It’s a horror story about the stripping of one’s agency at a young age and the reverberating effects that has on the rest of their life. It’s a glimpse at the generational cycle of trauma, guilt, and depression, and the seeming impossibility of feeling one’s own worth. Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday, The Most Beautiful Boy in the World […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. We Don’t Appreciate Wendy Williams Enough It has come to my attention that Wendy Williams: What a Mess, the documentary on the dirt-dishing daytime TV supernova’s life, career, struggles, and triumphs, begins with Williams reclined on a chaise lounge under a chandelier, crying while eating caviar off a Dorito. This is important information, as the airing of this documentary immediately follows Saturday night’s premiere of the […]

If you’re old enough in America, you know that Bruce Springsteen showing up to perform in a primetime special alongside some politicians means shit is serious. The Boss turns up on TV when things have gotten real bad, when there is intense spiritual and patriotic rebuilding to do. And so he’ll kick off the rebuilding that needs to happen with a tune that manages to somehow exactly manifest the mood of a crisis time—no matter how many years, or decades, prior the song was written. That’s just what he did Wednesday night to open Celebrating America, a 90-minute primetime special to […]

The golden dove brooch on her chest could be seen from the moon, but even that was just a diminutive accessory overshadowed by Lady Gaga’s broad, beaming smile as she nailed her rendition of the national anthem at the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on Wednesday. She was broadcasting something bigger than her fashion choices, bigger than her often over-the-top celebrity persona, and, arguably, bigger than the historic moment she was cast to be a part of. She was telegraphing pride. Nothing speaks more to how much we venerate the American entertainment industry than the importance we place on […]

It’s the 2021 hype-up conundrum: How do you get people excited to party when you’re the people who have been explicitly telling them not to party and also no one can go party because it is a pandemic? The Biden Inaugural Committee’s kick-off celebration to the week of swearing-in events was, then, about as awkward and as confusing as you might expect. A dogged effort to stage something uplifting and fun, Sunday night’s We the People concert and fundraiser (a small donation garnered Biden/Harris supporters access to the virtual event) was kind of silly, kind of sad, incredibly random, woefully low-energy, […]

This week, the world as I know it was turned upside down by the news. Sex and the City is being rebooted, sans Kim Cattrall. On the one hand, that’s like having sex without… having sex. On the other hand, I will devour every episode of this and have already drafted a grassroots army to help fashion voodoo dolls of any and every person caught speaking ill of this show. I bring this up because of how quickly the news passed. The Daily Beast’s Obsessed Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture. Since this […]

The joke’s on me for thinking someone was going to make the pandemic fun. Not that it has been fun, and not even that it should be. But the last months of watching the morose, superficial, and, most often, aggrieved regurgitations of life in the early days of quarantine have been such an uninsightful slog that the lively and slick trailer for the new film Locked Down was like a beacon of hope for COVID content to come. This wasn’t going to be, it seemed, yet another insufferable spelunking of the harrowing early days of the pandemic, when precautions, quarantines, and […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. This week: Vanessa Kirby Should Win an Oscar The opening sequence to Pieces of a Woman, which was released on Netflix Thursday, is devastating, to the point that there is a swath of its potential audience that might not be able to watch. It’s really that upsetting. That said, it’s also astounding, directed by Kornél Mundruczó and with stunning acting work from Vanessa Kirby (the former […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. This week: A look back at how much we forgot about in 2020. The things to look forward to in 2021. Hilaria Baldwin, obviously. My new crush, Bridgerton’s Jonathan Bailey. The hottest photo I have ever seen. The TV Shows to Look Forward To With “Moderna” and “Pfizer” the sexiest words you could ever hear, people have been joking and posting about all the things they’re […]

The year of the pandemic is ending similarly to how it began, with people begging Hollywood to, please, stop. There have been no sequels, thankfully, to the ghastly video organized by Gal Gadot of her celebrity friends crooning verses of John Lennon’s “Imagine” in an adventurous array of keys. That was an exhausting, narcissistic stunt orchestrated in the early days of quarantine, the point of which was to promote… well, it’s still not exactly clear. (Though Gadot is, sadly, at the forefront of a particularly horrendous sequel of another kind that’s closing out the year.) But around the Christmas holiday the […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. Hahahaha That Was This Year?! There is a rumor that I was actually happy at one point in 2020. The alleged incident was said to have taken place on February 2, just blissful weeks before the world stopped turning, things ceased to make sense, people refused to wear masks, and things like sanity and fulfillment were realities, not merely concepts. This so-called happiness apparently occurred in […]

It’s a bit of a Scrooge-y Christmas season for all of us, and so Shonda Rhimes gave us Regé-Jean Page, as a little treat. Page is the male lead of Bridgerton, the new period soap opera that marks Rhimes’ first project to air from her massive Netflix deal. The Daily Beast’s Obsessed Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture. The series itself is like a thought experiment asking, “What if Jane Austen had seen Gossip Girl and was then asked to write a binge-worthy TV series that is meant to be consumed with a […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. It’s Kelly Clarkson season. The epidemic of bad finales. Vaccine narcissism. Tainting Lizzie Maguire. The worst casting news ever. The Terrible Flight Attendant Finale Was So Frustrating It’s extremely annoying when people clap after a bumpy landing. Folks, the fact that you thought for a brief second while the plane was doing the “WAP” dance on its way down to the tarmac that you were going […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. Make the Yuletide Gay If I had to pinpoint the exact moment in this last four-year hellscape when I was reminded there was still hope for humanity, it would probably be when we sent “All I Want For Christmas Is You” to number one. You might think this is a gay’s attention-craving hyperbole, and, well, yes it absolutely is. But it is also a reminder of […]

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. Sometimes there are people who wonder why journalists and culture writers spend so much of their time parsing celebrities’ behavior and writing pieces about what their actions mean. Thanks to a bombshell reported piece from The Hollywood Reporter on Johnny Depp, who in November lost a U.K. lawsuit that essentially allowed the press to call him a “wife beater” after hearing evidence about his actions against […]