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New This Week

• Attempting to make sense of Fast X. (A foolish errand.)

• A little Vanderpump Rules scandal rant.

• My latest personal and professional venture.

• The refusal to pay writers what they deserve is already impacting TV.

• The wildest TV clip I’ve seen this week. (Maybe ever?)

‘Vroom, Vroom’: The Movie

I had the best time at the comedy event of the year: Fast X.

I’m not being entirely facetious. I genuinely enjoyed myself, laughing up a storm at this outrageously bad movie—the rare case when the phrase “so bad, it’s good” actually applies. It was an escalation in amusement, too. 

When the movie began, I was gobsmacked by how terrible it was. The attempts at exposition made no sense. The dialogue was preposterous. Even the first few action set pieces weren’t that impressive—hard to follow and visually flat. Action is supposed to be this franchise’s whole thing! I wasn’t just having a bad time. I was actively irritated by what I was watching.

But then things started to take a turn. It was maybe around the 47th time someone earnestly made a reference to Dom (Vin Diesel) and the importance of family. I had finally been broken. Each outrageously sincere discussion of “family”—the global network of street-racing grifters and their various agency friends—chipped away at me, like a ludicrous chisel attacking my capability for credulity: that what I was watching was real, and really that horrible. 

Eventually I shattered. Any fortitude I had been maintaining in an attempt to scrutinize Fast X in the way that I would any other film splintered into pieces. I started giggling. I couldn’t stop. Then, the laughter energized me. It enthused me. 

Before I knew it, I was slapping my thighs, as each new line of dialogue during the film’s climax was worse than the one before it. When, during a high-speed chase, a child climbs onto the roof of a car and starts dismantling weapons, I hooted. When that same child leapt out of one vehicle’s window and into that of another, I hollered. When a major character had disappeared during a shootout—ostensibly because no one knew how to involve him in the plot—and then, once it was over, just popped up on screen again, I started applauding. An ovation for outrageous levels of cinematic buffoonery.

Jason Momoa appears in this, the 10th installment of the Fast and Furious franchise, as its Big Bad. He’s Dante, the son of someone Dom had killed many, many years ago, and he’s randomly decided that now is the time to exact revenge. Why now? Don’t be ridiculous. The Fast and Furious series operates under Fight Club rules: The first rule of Fast and Furious plotting is don’t ask questions about Fast and Furious plotting. What happens in Fast X happens. It just does. And we accept it, because that’s what you do when you’re family. (After surviving all two hours and 20 minutes of this movie, I feel as if I can call these people my family now.)

Momoa’s performance as Dante doesn’t walk the tightrope of taste as much as it takes that rope, twists it into a tangled knot, sets that knot on fire, mixes the ashes with glitter, and then throws handfuls of the sparkling dust in the air and dances underneath it. 

Dante is flamboyant, effeminate, and quirky, which he subverts into an exaggerated, menacing, and imposing figure. He’s flashy and cheeky, with a mannered physicality meant to unsettle you. You can tell that someone—be it Momoa, the director, the writer…who knows—thinks he’s doing intense and impressive villain work, in the vein of Heath Ledger as the Joker. Instead, it is more akin to someone who is blatantly trying to do villain work in the vein of Heath Ledger’s Joker, but wildly missing the mark. 

At first, I thought I was offended by all of this. By the end, my broken, chuckling self thought it was a riot. Moreover, one has to appreciate that Momoa at least appears to be having fun, which shouldn’t be an anomaly in the 10th installment of the Fast and Furious franchise, for God’s sake. Yet the massive cast is shockingly grave and morose for most of the film, save for one celebrity cameo that had me shrieking. Once I decided I was going to pivot watching this film into a pleasant experience, I chose to cheer for Momoa’s baffling performance as Dante, too.

So what is the plot of Fast X, anyway? I truly do not know. I know that I sat in the theater for nearly two and a half hours, that my eyes were open, my ears listening, and my brain working. OK, yes, at one point I left for a few minutes to use the bathroom, refill my drink, and answer a few emails. But I doubt that someone bothered to actually explain what in the hell was going on in this movie during that exact time I was gone.

That leads me to what is either my most depressing observation about the film, or maybe the most encouraging. I haven’t decided how to spin it.

There’s so much talk about artificial intelligence right now, and its potential to replace screenwriters by scripting movies. More than any piece of pop culture I have ever seen, Fast X seems like it could have been scripted by AI. 

Dozens of characters from past Fast and Furious movies sporadically appear, often with no context or reason, as if an algorithm searched through the franchise, pulled recognizable faces, and placed them in the film. 

The action set pieces don’t have any correlation to the plot, and there’s even a sequence from a past film that’s thrown in as a flashback with almost no explanation. (It’s not until you see the late Paul Walker on screen that you fully process it as a flashback.) And the scenes that stitch those action segments together contain a kind of Fast and Furious-like dialogue that plays as if someone was trying to parody the franchise—or, you know, asked a computer to mock a simulation of what a Fast and Furious script might sound like. 

An actual line from the film, and not a Saturday Night Live spoof of it: “Without honor, you got no family. Without family, you got nothing!” Absolutely ghastly. And yet, by the point it was uttered, with painful seriousness, I was nearly moved to leap out of my seat and applaud. Oh, how I laughed. 

I realized that, as tempting as it is to be annoyed that a movie is inexcusably bad and will make hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office (while others that are more deserving struggle for an audience), sometimes you have to disengage from principle. This was the silliest movie I’ve ever seen. But I was in that theater anyway. Why not enjoy it?

All the Vanderpump News That’s Fit to Print

I apologize if I blew your eardrums out with my, “Oh, come ON!” groan that was loud enough to be heard across multiple time zones. I’m over this smug and myopic nonsense.

There was a somewhat viral moment this week when social media users clocked that actor Liev Schreiber commented on an Instagram post from the New York Times promoting the paper of record’s profile of Vanderpump Rules star Ariana Madix. “Is this news?” he wrote. IS THIS NEWS?!

To say that Schreiber was dragged for this comment is an understatement akin to saying that I am only merely perturbed by that attitude toward entertainment news content. Whether or not you are a person who watches the Bravo series, the fact is that a massive population of people are hungry for updates, explainers, gossip—news!—about the scandal at the center of it. Moreover, if you aren’t familiar with what’s happening, you might appreciate the public service of an explainer detailing what this whole big deal is… and why this is news. 

I have nothing against Schreiber. He even magnanimously apologized, sort of, replying to podcaster and writer Danny Pellegrino, “Sincere apology to you and Ms. Madix. Didn’t realize I was in the entertainment section.”

While nice that he said that, it still rankles me. Entertainment news is not something that is siloed just to the “entertainment section.” Pop culture is culture. It preoccupies us, it drives national conversation, and it merits serious dissection and reporting. (It’s weird to me that an actor wouldn’t share that viewpoint…) It reminds me of the years of people having the same attitude anytime Kim Kardashian was written about. Kim Kardashian. Inarguably one of the most famous people in the world. Yes, updates on her life are news.

I don’t go around commenting on every silly sports story I see and trying to minimize their value. Go off with your footballs and baseball bats and grotesque amounts of money invested in these corrupt institutions. But understand that other people have other interests that merit just as much attention.

*Some personal news…*

ABC announced this week that it’s producing a new Bachelor spinoff titled The Golden Bachelor that will air this fall. It will follow the format of the long-running dating show franchise, but will feature a cast exclusively of senior citizens who are looking for love.

It’s a “whole new kind of love story—one for the golden years,” the network said. In the show, a “hopeless romantic is given a second chance at love in the search for a partner with whom to share the sunset years of life.” The potential paramours “have a lifetime of experience, living through love, loss and laughter, hoping for a spark that ignites a future full of endless possibilities.”

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to these last few months. I’m excited to finally be able to announce the news, and hope you enjoy following along with my romance journey when The Bachelor, Now With Old People premieres this fall.

Fall TV Is Looking Bleak 

Now let’s talk about the real reason we’re finally getting The Golden Bachelor. Yes, I have long thought that a version of The Bachelor that didn’t just feature 24-year-olds who laughably think they’re reaching their last chance to find a romantic partner would be fascinating. But the circumstances under which we’re getting it are depressing. 

This week, ABC released what it called a “strike-proof” fall schedule, meaning a lineup of shows that can run if the current WGA strike continues and scripted series do not return to production in time for the fall. That lineup: all reality shows, news programs, game shows, and reruns of Abbott Elementary. Let’s call what it truly is: a “strike-necessary” fall schedule. A “please, just pay the writers their value” fall schedule. A “networks and studios are screwing everyone over and refuse to budge” fall schedule. 

Anyway, enjoy Judge Steve Harvey, I guess.

The Golden Age of Television

These past few weeks have made me realize that we aren’t properly grateful for amazing scripted television when we have it. For example, I remember watching Doogie Howser, M.D. when I was growing up. Yet I don’t think I appreciated the level of spectacular TV I was privileged to watch, until this clip resurfaced online this week: when Bette Midler guest-starred as a dying Mother Earth, Neil Patrick Harris’ child doctor couldn’t save her, and then E.T. showed up.

Watch it here. 

More From The Daily Beast’s Obsessed

Mrs. Davis’s first season was bonkers, inventive, urgent, and a blast. You should watch! And you should also read our finale breakdowns. Read more here and here.

The Other Two is the funniest show on TV. All the cool kids are saying it! We’ve broken down why it’s so good. Read more.

Johnny Depp had a new film premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. Would you believe it was a disaster? Read more.

• Queenmaker: The Making of an It Girl: While not the documentary you’d expect, it’s still a fascinating return to the socialite era of the early aughts. (Now on Hulu)

• American Born Chinese: Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, and Stephanie Hsu—the stars of Everything Everywhere All at Once—reunite for this series. (Wed. on Disney+)

• FUBAR: I admittedly have not watched this one yet, but the trailer for this Arnold Schwarzenegger action series implausibly cracked me up. (Thurs. on Netflix)

• Fast X: All of my kidding aside, it’s not good! (Now in theaters)

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