Kevin Fallon

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 […]

For much of the past year, a meme that may or may not be true, circulated pointing out that William Shakespeare wrote his masterpiece King Lear during a pandemic, essentially asking: So what are you going to do? It was probably intended to inspire and motivate, but in many ways really just shamed people. Whatever the interpretation, it seems that Taylor Swift saw that meme, said “Billy S., hold my mug of mulled cider,” put on her closest turtleneck chunky sweater, and then penned and recorded evermore, her second glorious pandemic masterpiece released within five months. According to Swift herself, it’s […]

If we’re going to keep saying, “This is just like an episode of Veep…” at the very least we deserve an actual episode of Veep out of it. That’s somewhat behind Sunday night’s fundraiser for America Votes’ Show Up For Georgia, in which star Julia Louis-Dreyfus, showrunner David Mandel, the comedy’s cast, and special guests including Stephen Colbert and Don Cheadle will gather virtually for a table read of the classic—and apparently prescient—Veep episode “Mother.” The virtual fundraiser is aimed to urge voters to turn out for the upcoming Georgia runoff elections, in which Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock could […]

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 Flight Attendant is good! The Saved By the Bell reboot is also good! I Hate Suzie? Good, too. How To With John Wilson? More like How To Be Good With John Wilson. And also a drunk lady. How Is “Saved By the Bell” This Funny? Peacock’s Saved By the Bell is so much smarter than it has any right to be. It’s to […]

There have been, by my rough count, approximately 789 TV reboots, revivals, reimaginations—however Hollywood types want to sheepishly spin it—that have been unleashed in recent years. It’s an oppressive assault on creative originality and manipulation of nostalgia that, outside of a select few (wonderful) examples, rarely pans out beyond the pre-release press and excitement, or a well-thought out premiere episode. So it’s no small praise, then, to say that Hulu’s reboot of Animaniacs—yes, of all shows, that kids’ cartoon from the ’90s—may have pulled off one of the most successful reboot openings yet. And it did so by leaning more aggressively […]

The best thing about Happiest Season is how excited everyone was that it exists. It’s been over a year since the film was first announced, a press release issued into a collective warm hug by Film Twitter, Gay Twitter, and People Who Like Happy Things Twitter. It is a queer Christmas-set romantic comedy directed and co-written by Clea DuVall, a “how can you not root for her?” icon. It stars Mackenzie Davis (Black Mirror: San Junipero) and Kristen Stewart (the internet’s swoon target). It injects queerness into the ceaselessly popular, but dejectedly parochial and aggressively hetero cottage industry of holiday romance […]

In 2015, New York became only the ninth state in the country to require all health insurance plans to cover gender-affirming surgery, a fact that underlines how new—and woefully lagging—recognition of transgender health and dignity is in our culture and its institutions. It meant that, for the first time, all transgender and non-binary people would have access to surgery and medical care. A year later, Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City opened the Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery, the first major unit of its kind in the U.S., offering broad, multispecialty transgender care in one location and to 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. This week: Dash & Lily on Netflix: Cute! The Weeknd at the Super Bowl: Meh! Annaleigh Ashford as Paula Jones: Iconic! Nicole Kidman’s green coat: To die for! Celebrity interviewer Leta Powell Drake: A legend! Ban Men From the Super Bowl Halftime Show There is a segment of the population for whom it never once crossed their minds that, with the pandemic only getting worse, there […]

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. “Dash & Lily” Is the Warm Hug We Deserve At its core, Dash & Lily is a cruel taunt. The Christmas-themed romantic-comedy series, which premiered on Netflix this week and has already shot to the top of its most popular list, is set in New York City during the holidays, a postcard from Before Times reminding us of the magical spirit of the city at that […]

It’s a grotesque, criminal form of sexual predation and abuse. It’s a high-school fantasy. It’s sensationalized tabloid fodder. It’s a pop-culture trope. Both in society and in pop culture, the teacher-student affair has become unfortunately ubiquitous, alternately bastardized in “hot for teacher” celebrations of machismo and exploited—even fetishized—in media-circus scandals that mine salacious details for clicks and ratings. Lost in all of this, however, is the reality of the situation for the actual humans involved, whose lives are impacted long after the affair ends, the media interest wanes, and the swirls of judgment start to evaporate. “We wanted it to be […]

Ever since The Crown first premiered in 2016, its first season covering Elizabeth II’s marriage to Philip in 1947 and coronation at age 27, through the resignation of Winston Churchill in 1955, there has been an unignorable urgency among its Netflix fans to hurry up already. It’s not that fans didn’t savor the show’s sumptuous production or become rapt in its juicy glimpse beyond the palace walls. But they also had the kettle heating on the stove, ready to sip the tea as the show’s timeline advanced to the tabloid drama of the modern era many are, largely, more familiar with. […]

As the nation is in a fit of laughter that may never stop over the Trump campaign press conference that was, through a hot potato game of incompetence, held not at Philadelphia’s swank Four Seasons hotel but at the Four Seasons Total Landscaping company’s parking lot next to a porn shop, it was only fitting that Kate McKinnon’s Rudy Giuliani made a stop at the Saturday Night Live “Weekend Update” desk. “Did you see my press conference today?” McKinnon’s Giuliani greeted Update co-anchor Colin Jost. “It was at the Four Seasons. Fancy!” “I’m glad I made it to the show on […]

This might have to be fact-checked, but we can say with pretty solid confidence that this is the first time a new episode of Saturday Night Live has aired within 12 hours of the presidential election being called. Oh, and barely two hours after the president-elect’s victory speech wrapped. (And after a football-game delay.) The episode didn’t, as seemingly everyone on Twitter predicted Saturday, open with Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump sitting down at a piano to sing “Hallelujah,” replicating Kate McKinnon’s elegy after portraying Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign. Instead, in a bit of a troll to everyone’s cynical predictions, […]

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: Slowly losing our minds. A great election freakout Another great election freakout. A great election tweet. The Queen’s Gambit! Alton Brown’s Election Night Menu How quaint it is to turn back the clock to 430 years ago—Monday night, the night before Election Day—when everyone braced for the insanity ahead by sharing their eating and drinking plans for the long night. Source link

“I’m off the deep end…” took on another meaning in the last days before the election as “Shallow” singer Lady Gaga, who performed the Oscar-winning ballad at Joe Biden’s eleventh-hour rally in the battleground state of Pennsylvania Monday night, found herself as the attack target of Donald Trump under more bizarre circumstances than already typical of the president. After spending the day the target of the Trump campaign’s bullying attacks—related to a, by all accounts, unsubstantiated tie to an anti-fracking group eight years ago—Lady Gaga took the stage at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh to open for Biden before he made his […]

Maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that Superstore, one of TV’s smartest and most plugged-in, though underappreciated, series produced the best episode of television that has grappled with the pandemic thus far. To be fair, it’s not a tall order, with the efforts from new shows like Social Distance and Love in the Time of Corona to the recent premiere of This Is Us ranging from instantly dated and twee to emotionally manipulative and overwrought. But a caveat like that doesn’t properly celebrate how the NBC sitcom managed not only to capture the uncertainty and unprecedented nature of that moment, but […]

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 Reason Borat Works Isn’t Actually Borat Who had the Borat sequel on their list of possibilities for an October surprise? By now you’ve likely heard about the film’s shocking Rudy Giuliani segment, one of those all-time great exposés that make it seem as if the floor and your jaw are magnetized. The Trump toad agrees to be interviewed by an attractive, blonde foreign journalist. He […]

Imagine, if you will, a New York City in which there are actually people. They are everywhere. They’re teeming the streets on their way to work, bumping shoulders as they draw up their jacket collars at a crosswalk on a crisp fall evening. (Remember bumping into people?) They’re on the way to packed cocktail parties, done-up for events, heading to dates, or hurrying to pick up their kids, who are ricocheting off their classmates like carefree pinballs in the school courtyard while they wait. The New York City of the new HBO thriller series The Undoing is as integral an element […]

“The fate of the universe is once again on the line,” teased Anthony Russo at the start of Tuesday’s Biden Victory Fund grassroots fundraiser featuring select cast members of Marvel’s Avengers films. It was one of many parallels drawn between the superheroes who assembled to save the world from evil Thanos in the fictional films and the voters uniting at the ballot box to rescue the country from Donald Trump. The comparisons were made only partly in jest by Avengers: Endgame directors Anthony and Joe Russo, who served as moderators for the “Voters Assemble!” event, and Senator Kamala Harris, who joined […]