This Week

• Finding the entertainment in Musk vs. Trump.

• A fun new show to binge this summer.

• My vacation travelogue.

• The Carrie Bradshaw hat to end all hats.

Laugh to Keep From Crying 

During the surreal and often devastating instances when it seems the nation is burning, the internet’s pyros come out to play. They giggle and serve up their macabre humor, as if certain dystopia is their fetish—in turn entertaining us as the smoke rises and the ashes fall. 

It was mere seconds after Elon Musk and Donald Trump began their bitter ex-lovers’ quarrel that the phrase “the girls are fighting” spread across my timeline at a dizzying pace that was almost impossible to keep up with, like a vaccine-preventable contagious disease during RFK Jr.’s tenure. 

“The girls are fighting” is a phrase used cheekily to both signal surprise and acknowledge the silliness whenever a spat arises seemingly out of nowhere between two formidable people, whether within your friend group or in the public sphere. (“Formidable” is a term that, as one can understand especially given this instance, can be used loosely.)

Social media is often a hellscape, especially the site formerly known as Twitter that has been bastardized by Musk himself. So it’s become a welcome, if highly unusual, tradition that when it’s reality itself that becomes the hellscape, we retreat to those sites as our playground: a retreat for joking, mockery, and, in that, community. 

Gallows humor reigns as the brightest minds with X accounts and free time on their hands at work turn consequential news into entertainment. Something as ludicrously monumental as this Trump vs. Musk quarrel—utter pettiness with immense implication—can only be treated with eye-rolling snark. 

We joke and make memes as a coping mechanism; it’s a turning of the tables: the powerful become the court jesters, and we guffaw in pity at their foolishness. Yet part of this experience is the harrowing understanding that the foolishness derives from something incredibly serious. The instinct towards humor is both a deflection and an honoring of the gravity of the stakes, the way the best satirization always is. 

There’s a delight in two ridiculous people publicly humiliating themselves with backyard barbs traded over public forums, and a disgust that these people we’re laughing at happen to be making decisions that affect our livelihoods, rights, and general well-being. 

In other words, it’s the grandest of entertainment, of the kind pop culture strives to produce—and likely wouldn’t be able to fictionalize on this scale. 

The fallout between former lovers, scorned by betrayal, is classic fodder for soap opera. A childhood spent watching General Hospital has prepared me for this moment; we’re only at the very beginning, and the drama is only going to get more implausible. 

The Shakespearean elements of two powerful entities warring from ivory towers, ignorant—or uncaring—of the ramifications that may rain down on the plebeians below is the fodder that fuels great series like Succession and Industry. The farce of it all—these guys, really?—is why someone in your office has said, “This is just like an episode of Veep!” at least once a day for the last six months. 

Comparing modern White House politics to the Real Housewives has become a mainstay tool of processing the shocking uncouthness and petulantly pugnastic behavior of today’s officials. So, it’s no surprise that everyone from Bravo fans to the network’s Big Daddy, Andy Cohen himself, have been gleefully comparing the Musk/Trump rumble to a Real Housewives catfight. Expect a table flip at any moment. (Can Trump even lift the Resolute desk?)

And so we’re taking to the internet to gossip about and process this remarkable political moment the same way we do those TV shows: We meme through it. 

Thank goodness for that. The last few days have been hilarious—a banner time to be Extreme Online, proving that endless doomscrolling is an investment that eventually will pay off. 

The Real Housewives memes came fast and furious, and Cohen was loving it:

It’s unclear if Wicked was on Trump’s list of Kennedy Center-approved musicals, but this is spat is well-timed to this week’s trailer for the movie sequel: 

Musical theater fans also saw the parallels to Rent: 

Many remarked that this makes the Drake and Kendrick Lamar beef look chaste:

And as if someone wasn’t going to bring the Kardashian-Jenner family into this: 

It’s rare these days that something, be it news or a TV program, dominates and captivates in such a universal, riveting way. 

We celebrate the return of monoculture when we’re all arguing about incest while The White Lotus is airing. We find solace in it when a new Pope is selected and we can all intelligently (and humorously) discuss the choice. And when the president of the United States and his billionaire lackey go at each other with such vicious acrimony that you have instant PTSD to the Great Ashley vs. Jessica Cafeteria Fight of Seventh Grade, well, you sigh…and still appreciate it.

Has anyone Photoshopped some sort of Gladiator and Trump/Musk meme yet: “Are you not entertained?” 

A Perfect Summer TV Binge 

I am terrified of the youth. 

That they’re so self-actualized and bold intimidates me. That they’re so young still infuriates me. That they think they know it all exasperates me, and yet also makes me feel nostalgic. (Everything Boomers said about me and my fellow millennials, I think about Gen Z. It’s the smarmiest circle of life.)

So, this abject terror has been a hurdle for me to overcome when it comes to new programming featuring the new generation. I either scoff it: You think you’re making cute commentary on the world from your fresh perspective? We made cute commentary first! Or I am forced to view it through it between my fingers because I’m so alarmed by what I’m seeing. (Euphoria, I’m sure you’re a great show, but you and I were never going to be a match.)

It’s to my surprise, then, how charmed I was by the new comedy Adults. 

The FX series, now available to stream, centers on a group of friends in their twenties who all live together in a house in Queens. They each have distinct personalities, of course, but operate as one amoeba, together shepherding each other the indignities of having to face the responsibilities of adulthood while training to whiteknuckle onto the gregarious identity you formed while coming of age in college.

I was slightly older, but generally the same age as the characters in Girls and Broad City. And, in a different, trippy way, was roughly the same age as the college students in Overcompensating—another fun summer comedy binge—in the year that show takes place. 

With Adults, it’s weird to both identify with their struggles, the way that, often to my horror, certain plots in Girls and Broad City resonated with me, but also feel so…old. I find the curios of their travails humorous—the premiere brilliantly satirizes how the generation uses wokeness and activism for clout, or at least how we assume they do. I also want to shake them by the shoulders and give them advice. 

In that respect, Adults is a fine entry into a “young in NYC” canon alongside Girls and Broad City. 

These shows reveal how all the ways the city can devastate you seem like levels in a video game when you’re young, with endless opportunities to beat it again when you fail because, at that point in your journey, you still had a bank of new lives to use. You don’t know yet how it gets harder and harder to regenerate each time the Big Boss defeats you. 

That got existential real fast; it’s also simply very fun. Adults is a breezy, humorous watch, perfect for a “ain’t no way I’m going out in that heat” afternoon. 

What I Consumed on My Vacation 

I was away last week on vacation. (Highly recommend.) I embarked armed with three hardcover books and enough downloaded episodes of TV shows to max out the storage space on my phone. 

Naturally, I read about 100 pages of one of the books, and watched not one episode of those shows. 

Instead, I watched Paddington in Peru on the plane, and cried—yet took solace when, after glancing over my screen numerous times, the bro in the aisle seat next to me proceeded to turn on the movie himself. The number of Sex and the City and The Office episodes I watched instead of anything new I could write about in this newsletter? The limit does not exist.

I spent several nights in London, where I saw the ABBA Voyage concert, in which holograms of ABBA looking exactly as they did in their heyday perform their catalog of hits to a crowd treating it as if they have taken a time machine and are watching the group in an actual concert. It was the weirdest f---ing thing I’ve ever seen. 10/10 experience. Everyone must go. 

I saw another musical on the West End that’s based on a beloved movie that was so bad I left at the intermission. It would be rude to reveal what it was, so, um, that’s all.

Today’s Top Entertainment News 

• ‘The Girls Are Fighting’: How Musk vs. Trump Became Such a Petty Joy
• The Fan-Favorite Departure Devastating ‘Welcome to Wrexham’ Fans
• George Clooney Predicts Trump’s Downfall: ‘He Will Be Finished’

And Just Like Hat  

If you love Sex and the City or And Just Like That, have ever watched an episode of Sex and the City or And Just Like That, or even have ever just heard of Sex and the City or And Just Like That, I implore you to read Tom Smyth’s ranking of hats worn in the new sequel series in Vanity Fair. It’s called journalism. 

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More From The Daily Beast’s Obsessed 

• The Wicked: For Good trailer is out, and fans of the, let’s say…“relationship” between Glinda and Elphaba have thoughts. Read more.
• An interview with Wes Anderson about his charming new movie The Phoenician Scheme. Cinema! Read more.
• An interview with the fan-favorite player from Welcome to Wrexham. Sports! Read more.

• Dangerous Animals: A serial killer feeds his victims to sharks. Sold. (Now in theaters)

• The Tony Awards: Earnest moment: This telecast every year brought me so much joy growing up…and still does now. (Sun. on CBS and Paramount+)

• Ginny & Georgia: Yes, messiness is the point of this hit Netflix show. But where’s the line? (Now on Netflix)
• The Ritual: Al Pacino, call your agent. (Now in theaters)

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