3 girlfriends text about Ozark, Succession, The Staircase
plus arts/labor/media recs at the bottom
Three college girlfriends, now in their 30s, text late into the night about a handful of prestige TV shows, none of which could’ve been written by AI.
J, a journalist who is newly single and moving to Brooklyn: Did you all watch succession
H, a teacher who is exploring other jobs and loves basketball: Yes!
A, a writer who’s been chugging audiobooks about failure: Up thru Kendall’s speech - is there another ep?
J: Yes!
Last night new ep
A: Ok I’ll watch now
J: Also apparently the finale is going to be 90mins
A: Oo
The ozark final season was so shamelessly long I loved it
J: Loved that show Omg
A: Same I loved it!
H: I never saw it!
J: I strongly identified with Marty
Maybe it was aspirational
A: He was so fkn hot
I loved Jordana Spiro
Who ran the blue cat
The bar
J: Why??
A: I watched it twice and would watch it again with y’all
I don’t know I just found her hot
J: She was weak
Lol
I’m crazy
H: Is Marty Jason Bateman?
J: Yes!
H: I love him!
A: Omg succession
Greg is firing all these people on Zoom
Terrifying
J: So realistic
H: [eek emoji] [eek emoji]
A: shiv and tom, ouch
Woah
Omg
The interview
Their American accents are so good
Like world-class
J: And the actor who plays Nate is Australian
A: Tf!!
H: He’s Australian??
A [re: Spiro in Ozark]: Just now seeing this. I liked her weakness
I thought her sort of tentative defeated presence made her relatable and an interesting foil to Laura linney
A doomed human in an atmosphere of people rapidly turning into reptiles.
And she got to have sex with bateman
Did y’all see The Staircase
J: Yeah!
A: Parker Posey in the staircase is all the women who raised me
J: Oh I thought you meant the documentary
Have you seen the original doc
A: I started it
But only watched the fictional one all the way thru
Whatd you think of the doc
J: The person [Posey’s] playing is also very dynamic in the doc.
A: I should revisit!
J: I loved it!
The whole thing scares me though
A: Yeah
The eps of the doc I watched made me think he was innocent. And it scared me that hbo makes him look guilty and abusive
But a lot of things abt it scared me
J: I think he’s innocent too. I believe the owl theory.
It scares me that forensic scientist was proven to be a phony and that homophobia played such a big part in the conviction. I actually am against jury trials.
A: Yeah in that sense the hbo version is unethical
J: Yeah I haven’t seen the show but the discrepancies in the testimonies from the German witnesses is something I think about often
A: Jury trials have always struck me as a horror show
That story gets at something very elemental and terrifying abt the unknowability of truth/reality
J: Ours is such a punitive culture where people have so much faith in authority/the state
A: That’s why I freak out when people perceive me in a way that feels inaccurate
The basic life skill of being like “who cares what others think of me” feels at odds with the way we’ve structured our society (media/justice system)
J: Write about this in your sub stack! That’s a message people need to hear
A: Reviving my substack would require me to exercise that life skill
J: [hyperlinked] ‘New York Post - Widow who wrote grief book after husband died charged with his murder’
Btw I reread that news article about egg freezing and the alarm bells seem a bit conservative.
They’re like ‘women should just have babies right away regardless of what’s happening in their lives’
They’re basing their data on how many women feel remorse which is insane because every woman I know regrets every single decision she’s ever made
A: Everyone I pay for life advice has been telling me recently to stop second-guessing myself
I might actually write a substack
Can I send y’all a draft
Read about the WGA writers’ strike here (background), here (TV), and here (AI).