Rich Text

Season 4 of "The Ultimatum: Marry or Move On" has dropped, just in time to help fill the cavernous void left by the finale of "Love Island" season 8, and the vibes are worse than ever. "The Ultimatum" has an inherently fraught premise: It brings together six established couples who disagree about whether to get married. They "break up," date the other people in the experiment and choose one to have a three-week "trial marriage" with, and then return to their original partner for another trial marriage. The show ends with each person deciding whether to get engaged, leave alone, or leave in a relationship with someone they met in the experiment. It's never a feel-good show, given that it carries so much deeply rooted pain and disappointment from each relationship – and the potential for such a great betrayal – but this season is taking it to another level.
Tess Higgins, aka Reality Scholar on Instagram, joined me for a lively recap of the first four episodes of this season (the first half of the first drop). We have so many questions about this season, starting with casting: Where do they find these people, and specifically, where do they find these men?
Reality dating shows have reflected an overall cultural shift toward rigid gender roles in the last few years, as women seek "protectors and providers" so they can "lean into their feminine," while men search for bubbly and nurturing "homemakers" with taut bodies. This season of "The Ultimatum" is a prime example. But it's not just reactionary values on display this season – it's the wedge that those values drive between heterosexual couples, who are buckling under the pressure to perform gender for each other. And can we blame the manosphere for why almost all of these guys are emanating absolutely noxious energy, or is that just a quirk of casting? This motley array of two-faced, manipulative man-children is enough to convince any rational woman to choose a life of celibacy. And yet here these ladies are, considering a lifelong legal partnership with them.
We discuss all of this, as well as the risks of casting 23-year-olds on a marriage show, appropriate date conversations and behavior, disrespectful group texts, and much more.
Hope you enjoy! I will be back next week to recap episodes 5-8 with another special guest.
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We laughed, we cried, we gawked at leaked wedding photos! This week on the pod, I'm joined by the wonderful Kelsey McKinney, co-owner and journalist at Defector Media, for a two-part conversation: first, a general chat about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's epic wedding at Madison Square Garden, then a recap of the Netflix rom-dramedy "Voicemails for Isabelle."
Though neither of us particularly wanted to pay attention to l'affaire Swift-Kelce, this splashy event has a gravitational pull on the discourse. We chatted about how Swift's choice of wedding venue clashed with many people's expectations and assumptions about her taste – including ours – and what it means that the word "tacky" has been thrown about so liberally. We also got into the spectacle of billionaire weddings and conspicuous consumption at this particular moment, as well as what it signifies that the couple made massive charitable donations in conjunction with the wedding.
Then, we turned our attention to a Netflix romance that we both liked much more than we expected: "Voicemails for Isabelle." We unpack how deeply creepy the concept of the movie is, and how many unsettling choices the male lead makes... and why we found ourselves getting on board anyway. We got in our feelings about how the movie captures the joy of sisterhood and the devastation of grief, and we recapped the whole thing – the silly moments, the millennial-core details (a gourmet dessert nacho food truck? hell yeah), the satisfying physical comedy and goofy side characters, and every moment that made us cry.
Hope you enjoy! xo
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By the beginning of July, I have entered my now-annual "Love Island" fugue state. I fall asleep watching new episodes, and I wake up and immediately reach for my phone to scroll social media reactions. I try to recap the major plot points to my husband, who is usually baffled by the onslaught of details and my feverish emotional state. It's all I know how to think about about at the moment. So I was thrilled to get a chance this week to chat with, Anna Peele, contributing editor at Vanity Fair and the author of "Enter the Villa: The (Unauthorized) Reality Behind 'Love Island.'"
As a relative newbie to the "Love Island" universe, I'm always looking for more insight about the show's history, influences, and impact, and Peele's deeply researched and reported book is the motherlode. She analyzes the show's forerunners and how executives put together the show that has evolved into an international mega-franchise, and breaks down that franchise's rocky introduction to the American market. She offers insight into how producers actually shape – or don't shape – storylines and character arcs, and into how contestants perceived their experiences.
In our conversation, we discuss the evolution of the "Love Island" format, what made it tricky to bring to America and how it contrasts with "The Bachelor," the significance of the show's hosts and inimitable narrator Iain Stirling, how contestants experience being in the bubble of the show's set, our takes on the most recent "Love Island" USA seasons, and much more.
Hope you enjoy! xo
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It's a hot romance adaptation summer. After years suffering through a rom-com movie desert, streamers have discovered that rom-com television series might just be where its at. At a time when heterosexual dating has never seemed bleaker and toxic men are wreaking societal destruction at the highest levels of government and tech, it makes sense that a lot of us are yearning for the uncomplicated fantasy of safe men to love.
In mid-May "Off Campus" became a runaway hit for Prime Video. Based on the first book in Elle Kennedy's sexy hockey series, millions of viewers fell in swoony, embarrassing levels of love with the romance between Garrett Graham (Belmont Cameli) and Hannah Wells (Ella Bright). The show shot to the top of the streaming charts, launched a viral soundtrack, and spawned a spate of thinkpieces about why women in their 30s and 40s couldn't stop watching. (The two of us were among them.)
So when we saw that "Every Year After," a show based on Carley Fortune's bestselling novel "Every Summer After," was also coming to Prime Video, we were anticipating another banger. Unfortunately, where "Off Campus" broke through with fans and critics, "Every Summer After" decidedly did not. Is it still #1 on Prime Video? Certainly. But it feels like people are doing more hate-watching than crush-watching.
These two shows share surface-level similarities. Both are part of Prime Video's obvious push to recapture the magic they found with "The Summer I Turned Pretty," both are based on popular novels, and both feature young hotties finding and bungling and finding love again. So we wanted to dig into what made them land so differently.
Part of the issue is tone (fun vs. somber), part is that ineffable chemistry between two leads that either leads the audience to invest in a love story or detach from it, and part of it might just come down to structure. Where "Off Campus" effectively integrates trauma into a sparkly, sexy series, "Every Year After" seems to view grief and trauma as totalizing. (Even "Every Year After's" big sex scenes somehow manage to feel dark and dour.) As Angie Han wrote in her review of "Every Year After" for The Hollywood Reporter: "So besotted with its own heartbreak, it forgets to sell the romantic fantasy that would make it worthwhile in the first place."
Before we wrapped up the episode, we took a slight detour into Bravo-land to give our high-level thoughts on "Summer House: The Aftermath." (TLDR: It was mostly a nothingburger, West deserved to be fired, Ciara forever, and Lindsay did some good tough love work.)
Hope you enjoy! Xo
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Three full weeks of "Summer House" reunions, and not an ounce of genuine remorse from Amanda Batula and Westling Wilson in sight. And yet, we persevere and we watch and we take notes in painstaking detail because as Michelle Obama recently said on her IMO podcast... "Reality TV is sociology."
There was a whole lot of telling behavior to analyze during part three of this reunion. Amanda was detached and monotone, West was detached and monotone, Ciara was both vulnerable and strong in her reads of them both, and Kyle was much more of an emotional "mess" than Carl ever was. Although it's hard to create closure on a situation when the two people at its center are incapable of and unwilling to take true accountability, at least Ciara got the chance to say her piece and move on to bigger and better things. (We hope she's having the time of her life in Fiji right now.)
Unfortunately, one thing we did not get was clarity. No one can seem to nail down a clear timeline of West and Amanda's relationship, and the pair manage to fully evade Kyle's direct questions about what the hell was going on between them at the Super Bowl! But one thing we did get confirmation of? West is a diabolical fuckboy. He admitted that he had been "unclear to a zillion women that [he's] dated," that Meija believed they were in an exclusive relationship, and that he was not monogamous with Amanda until their joint statement dropped. (A.k.a. When his roster dried up because he was enveloped in scandal.) After this reunion and the bonus "Aftermath" episode we're getting next week, I think we've seen enough from West. He doesn't need to appear on our TV screens ever again.
Before fully moving on from "Summer House," we discussed the timeline Jesse Solomon dropped on his Instagram, and dipped into Amanda's behavior towards Kyle on the most recent episode of "In The City."
We rounded out this episode of Rich Text by diving into what we've been missing on "The Valley," namely the way that Danny's actions are being reevaluated by the audience now that we're being shown more of his behavior. It's an overdue reckoning for Danny, who admitted to drunkenly sexually harassing fellow castmate Jasmine and groping her partner Melissa. This season, Jasmine is finally being given the space to call out the inequities she faced and continues to face as a Black, queer reality star. Unfortunately, it remains to be seen whether most of her castmates and the audience are ready to really, truly listen to her.
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