#62: I'm blaming the UK for Lena Dunham being bad now
Death By Consumption
7/8/25 - 7/14/25
The return from vacation hit hard this week, with work piling on bullshit (I will never not be annoyed at being asked to do my actual job? At work??? Grow up), so the only major consumption I was able to do this week was — when I wasn't melting outside — to turn my brain into absolute mush in front of Netflix. I know, I'm ashamed of myself! I promise I will make better choices this week. This is, really, the original reason for doing these emails: I hoped that, by noticing my consumption patterns, I'd be able to change them for the better, and yet here we are. I feel disgusting. Don't look at me!
This week, I wasted my one precious life on Earth with 3 new Netflix series and hated the two that are "prestige", while loving the one that's the trashiest (go figure!). I also watched Cronenberg's latest film, and read a beautiful gay book from the 80s, so it wasn't a total flop of a week.
Too Much, season 1 — on Netflix
This one hurt. I really wanted to like Too Much. I think Girls, in its prime, was a legitimate masterpiece, so I was so excited for Lena Dunham to get back to her roots and write a show that mocks the Modern Experience. But this is... a mess. I feel insane watching it and then seeing the discourse online, which is almost universal praise for every aspect of it. This is how I know everyone has lost it. Surely not everyone can be on Netflix's payroll, right?
First of all, it has to be said, and I'm sorry to say this because I love her too but: Meg Stalter does not have the acting abilities to carry an entire show. I'm sorry! She's fantastic at what she does, but when she has to tap into the more emotional scenes, it's just... not there. Not all comedians can be Jenny Slate! (It's also not great that sometimes she has to act against Lena herself, a much more natural on-screen figure, which just makes me wish Lena had written the show for herself instead of for Meg.)
And the writing is simply all over the place! It feels like Lena wrote this while scrolling TikTok, just a mishmash of Gen Z references awkwardly jammed in (usually through the voice of the sassy gay coworker, a character I loathe). You can practically feel Lena seething that this wasn't produced just a hair later, so they could force in a Labubu joke. Huge missed opportunity!
Basically at any given moment on Twitter (sorry: X the Everything App) I can scroll and still get fed a timeless Girls line posted — like just now, while writing this, I took a scrolling break (pray for my ruined brain) and was fed Marnie's iconic line, "I thought this would just be a nice opportunity for us to have fun together and prove to everyone via Instagram that we can still have fun as a group." That is so good!! It's hilarious and, while not something a real person would actually say, it still feels like something someone like Marnie might say, you know? Meanwhile, on Too Much, it's just characters screaming out tortured references to ketamine. You can feel the absolute desperation to have some of these lines turned into memes by Evan Ross Katz. It feels like the characters should be literally turning to the camera and winking after half their lines.
The scenes that work the best for me are the flashback scenes with her shitty ex, a not-too-veiled stand-in for Jack Antonoff. And it's no surprise that those scenes work better, because they feel pulled more directly from Lena's experience, so the jokes are sharper. It feels like she has something to say in these scenes, whereas I just don't believe she has much to say about, like, working in a British office with an annoying twink.
If Girls was the new Sex and the City, this feels a little like Lena's And Just Like That... . The only problem is that at least AJLT is so completely insane, so off-the-walls weird that it's become addicting in a psychotic way. Too Much is, unfortunately, not enough of anything for me, and it's mostly just too... boring.
Squid Game 3 — on Netflix
This one's on me. I knew the third and "final" (yeah right) season of Squid Game would be a pointless, moneygrabbing mess, and yet I watched the whole thing, getting increasingly angry as it went. Literally what was the point of any of it?! It became a parody of itself, an anti-capitalist show that was swallowed up by the most capitalist streaming service of all. This had none of the originality or heart or interest of the original; it was just pure sequel for sequel's sake. And, if the final scene is any indication, the Squid Game money train is going to keep on rolling. (Without spoiling too much, I will say that ending your massive show with, in the final 5 seconds, having a very famous actor randomly pop up to slap the shit out of a homeless person is a hysterical choice. I wish the rest of the series had been that weird!)
The Ultimatum: Queer Love, season 2 — on Netflix
More Netflix slop, but at least this knows it's Netflix slop. The Ultimatum is the craziest show ever invented: 5 couples — in which one person wants to get engaged (the "ultimatum giver") and one who isn't sure (the "ultimatum receiver") — agree to break up and move in with someone from one of the other couples for a "trial marriage." After 3 weeks with this new person, the original couples move in with each other for 3 weeks, and at the end of it everyone decides who they want to stay with. And the queer version is even more devious than the straight version, because it's 10 lesbians, so anyone can date anyone, and things get messy fast.
The premise takes the basic question of all reality TV ("how much humiliation will you accept in order to maybe get famous?") and ups the stakes, with people risking years-long relationships — on this season, a couple of TEN YEARS breaks up just to be on this show. I spend every second watching this show asking the TV, "Why are you doing this?! What is wrong with you??" The entire cast chills me to the core.
While I did find some women to root for in season 1, in season 2 I'm kind of rooting against all of them. They all seem deeply unwell to me? Like, let's just say I wasn't surprised to learn they all live in Miami. This is exactly what I imagined Florida lesbians were like.
For years, I've wanted a big, messy gay reality show, but they always tend to fail for various reasons (the best, to me, was still the one perfect queer season of Are You The One? on MTV), so I'm happy with whatever I can get. Which means, right now, The Ultimatum. Look, the way things are going, soon we're all going to lose our ability to get married or, like, adopt children, so I guess we might as well have some fun on the way out? I'm sorry to lesbians, though. First Ellen imploded, and now this? We need to get lesbians better PR.
The Shrouds (2024) — on Criterion
A very strange, very Cronenbergian take on grief. As always, there's plenty of body horror and big ideas swirling around in his work, but it started to lose me midway through. David Cronenberg apparently wrote this film after his wife died, and you can feel how personal the grief is, which is when it's most effective. But when it starts to dissolve into a loose conspiracy and vague dreamlike visions, I started to feel... sleepy. Don't come for me, Cronenheads!
Separate Rooms, by Pier Vittorio Tondelli (1989) — hardcover
This book, published in Italy only 2 years before the author's untimely death, is a heartbreaking portrait of grief and queer longing. Which means — say it with me — Luca Guadagnino is turning it into a film!
There isn't much plot, as the main character Leo simply travels around while mourning and remembering his lover Thomas. But that gay sad shit is Luca's bread and butter, so I'm now very excited to be absolutely ruined by the adaptation.
The book itself did a good job at already ruining me, like this description of Leo's panic at falling in love, which felt perfectly aimed at my anxious Jewish heart:
Thomas was asleep, dreaming, who knows? He was breathing slowly, wheezing slightly. It gave Leo a feeling of warmth and intimacy. But he felt desperate. And he did not know why. He loved Thomas. He loved him now in a way that was tormenting him. Yet none of this managed to calm him. He felt now as if he himself were at stake. Perhaps it was precisely this that scared him. There was no turning back. His life was forever bound to the life of somebody else. He should have handled it all quite differently. His stomach hurt with the anxiety about what lay ahead, hurt with the fear of the darkness that he saw all around him. What would happen tomorrow? And in a month's time? Or a year? Did they have a future? Would he be able to stand by this love? Wouldn't they both die? Wasn't everything futile? He felt his heart foundering in a surge of pity and penitence. And he lowered his head.
And now you're telling me my handsome baby Josh O'Connor is going to be acting those emotions on screen??? I have, as they say, never been more seated.