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[PREVIEW] 'And Just Like That' Is Pure Thematic Chaos Jul 24, 2023

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We’re back to recap the second batch of episodes of “And Just Like That,” a show that we love to watch and also love to obsessively critique. And boy did a lot happen in episodes 3-6.

We got breakups, breakdowns, a Gloria Steinem cameo, an odd amount of petty crime, a particularly creepy scenario which involved a MILF list and grown-ass women checking out a teenage boy (no thank you!), and Carrie’s literal run-in with a very sexy Mr. Mariska Hargitay (yes please!).

We sped through at least three different seasons within four episodes. One minute, Charlotte and Harry are sending their kids off to camp over summer vacation, and the next there’s a literal bomb cyclone blizzard potentially preventing Carrie and Lisa from going to their respective book and film events. (Carrie is doing a book reading at a convention unaffectionately dubbed WidowCon, at the Sheraton. Lisa Todd-Wexley is being honored at MoMA, natch.)

By the end of episode 6, our gals seem ready to move on to some new chapters. Miranda and Steve’s not-quite-divorced stasis comes to a head, and we got the tee-up for the event that has been teased since months before the season even premiered: the inevitable return of Aidan Shaw.

The show remains a complete grab bag, both in terms of tone and character development. AJLT still doesn’t seem to know what it’s trying to say or accomplish. But at least we’re having more fun with Carrie & Co. along the way.

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[PREVIEW] 'The Bear' Builds Back Better in Season 2 Jul 17, 2023

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“The Bear” season 2 deserved better than what it got. After a highly acclaimed and buzzy first season (which just snagged 13 Emmy nominations), the FX culinary comedy/drama released its whole second season on Hulu in one drop. Instead of savoring one new episode a week — and having a whole day or more of discourse about standout episodes, like the celeb-studded anxiety attack “Fishes” or the meditative Copenhagen capsule episode “Honeydew” — we blew through all ten of them in just a week.

So we decided not to get carried past “The Bear” too quickly. This week, we circled back a whole three weeks in the cultural conversation to dive into the second season of this show — a season that slowed down the pace and opened up its scope as the plucky staff of The Original Beef retrain and rebuild toward an eventual reopening as a fine dining establishment called, of course, The Bear. This season takes Tina and Ebra to culinary school to brush up on their technical skills, while Richie and Marcus stage at Michelin-starred restaurants to find purpose and creative inspiration. Syd has become the glue of the restaurant, with her single-minded determination to earn a Michelin star keeping the whole team on track. Carmy falls in love, losing his own single-minded focus on work for the first time. This season gives space to each member of the ensemble as they venture out of the chaos of the kitchen and take on new challenges.

In this conversation, we discuss where this season takes each of the characters, what genres the show is playing with, how it depicts trauma and family dysfunction (and how it depicts healing), the heated shipping wars that broke out over Carmy-Sydney and Carmy-Claire, and the unexpected but resonant parallels between “The Bear” and “Ted Lasso.” Hope you enjoy! xo

If I Have A Baby, Will I Lose Myself? Jul 10, 2023

Show notes

This is part two of our two-part Q&A about motherhood and non-motherhood. You can listen to part one here.

CW: In this podcast, we discuss pregnancy and having children, and our own personal experiences with those topics. We know these are difficult topics for many people. If you’re struggling with infertility, or have suffered miscarriage, or have lost children, we know that questions around pregnancy and “choosing” to have children can be particularly painful. If this is the case for you, this may be a good episode to skip.

So much about diving headfirst into Big Adult Life Decisions is about embracing the unknown. And few things require more leaping into the unknown than becoming a parent — the first time or the third time or not at all.

The unanswerable questions are literally endless: How will your body react to pregnancy, should you want to and be able to (both big ifs) become pregnant in the first place? What will labor be like? Will your child be healthy? How will your body recover from childbirth? Will you still feel like yourself, and if not, for how long? What will your ambition look like? How will your friendships change, whether or not you have kids? How will you balance work and parenting? If you never have children, what will your older years look like? If you want children and are single, how should you preserve your fertility? If you aren’t sure if you want to have kids, how do you broach those conversations while dating? What will the world look like in 50 years if you choose to bring new humans into it?

In this episode, we dive into more of the thoughtful, thought-provoking, difficult-to-answer questions we got from you, our community. We discuss things like financial readiness, maintaining friendships across parent/non-parent lines, and how to maintain your sense of self if you decide to have children. We also try our hand at giving some advice: on egg freezing, on dating while grappling with whether you want kids, and on feeling like being a “baby maker” is somehow “unfeminist.” Like in our first installment, we come to few hard and fast conclusions, but like so many things, the beauty is in the discussion.

Hope you enjoy this candid conversation! Xo

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How Do You Decide To Have A Child... Or Not? Jul 03, 2023

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A couple of months ago, we asked our wonderful listeners for questions and suggested topics for a discussion on motherhood/non-motherhood — and received a deluge of outstanding submissions. This week, we finally got around to answering some of them! In this episode, we focused on questions about deciding whether, when, and how to prepare for having kids; choosing not to be a parent; the experience of pregnancy and childbirth; and the logistics of having kids while working and living in the city.

Many of these questions are profoundly personal, and really have no “right” or universal answer. We tried to balance speaking honestly about our own experiences and feelings with trying to circle some broader takeaways, despite the fact that everyone’s experiences and feelings on these topics are unique and can’t be distilled into simple rules. Doing these episodes on the motherhood question have been nothing if not a challenge to examine where our own emotions and beliefs about having kids took root — the values we grew up with, the examples we were shown, our own personality quirks, the lucky and unlucky breaks we’ve gotten along the way — and to reflect on how we really decide what to do with our lives.

We hope you enjoy, and stay tuned — we’ll have more coming soon, with questions about money, working motherhood, how having/not having kids can affect friendships and your relationship with yourself, and advice!

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[PREVIEW] 'And Just Like That' Season 2 Is Deranged As Ever Jun 26, 2023

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And just like that… we’re back in the saddle with Carrie & Co.

Carrie is experiencing the instability of the podcasting industry, Miranda is in Los Angeles with Che (yes, Che Diaz is still around), Charlotte is grappling with her role as a mom now that her children are bonafide emo teens, and Samantha is still absent (but going to make a one-scene appearance!) Our new leads are finding their footing: Nya is estranged from her musician husband after telling him she doesn’t want to have a baby, Che is filming their ill-fated pilot, Lisa is trying to do it all and have it all, and Seema is being utterly fabulous at practically all times.

Also… they’re all going to the Met Gala for some reason. And boning to Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” (except for Nya), in an opening montage so gratuitous one has to assume that it was written as an explicit answer to critics’ concerns that season 1 was oddly sexless for a “Sex And The City” show.

In short, season two of AJLT is both totally deranged and also enjoyable — though its first two episodes, which dropped on June 22, are among the weakest of the seven that were shared with press.

In this episode, we dig into the insanity of those first two episodes — Anna Wintour obviously has to approve Met Gala +1s!!!!! — and also look ahead at what this season of AJLT might promise. Because despite our critiques, of which there are many, there are delights to look forward to: The return of Carrie’s former Vogue editor Enid Frick (Candice Bergen), a Gloria Steinem cameo, some attempts at humanizing Che, and — finally! blessedly! — some sex that’s bad and embarrassing and comedic and brief. The kind of sex that drove much of what made SATC such a fun and special romp each and every episode.

AJLT will never be SATC. It simply can’t be. Too much time has passed, the world has changed too much, the show remains too Samantha-less, and the writers still don’t seem to know what they are trying to say about these women in this stage of their lives. It’s all over the place — “mesmerizing in that wobbliness,” as Vulture’s Jackson McHenry put it. But for those of us who loved the original, there are glimmers of hope in this second season amongst the boatloads of cringe.

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[PREVIEW] 'Vanderpump Rules' S10 Goes Out In A Blaze Of Scandovalous Glory Jun 12, 2023

Show notes

After Emma’s meticulous crash course in “Vanderpump Rules” and, more specifically, the Scandoval, we were both feeling prepped and ready as hell to watch a finale and three entire reunion episodes about the wild on- and off-screen events of the past season. The finale kicks off with Ariana and Sandoval’s raw on-camera confrontation about his affair — featuring Tom’s weak excuses and Ariana’s entire range of emotional reactions, from cold judgment to incandescent rage — and the ride doesn’t slow down until the closing moments of the reunion, in which Raquel sniffles as she admits that she and Sandoval have continued to lie about the extent and timeline of the affair.

The finale, we agree, is art; the reunion got a bit bloated with shrieked recriminations and dramatic stomp-offs by DJ James Kennedy, leaving us with three hours of TV that verge on ritualistic public shaming. In this episode, we sift through the new revelations, try to make sense of Sandoval and Raquel’s often bizarre emotional reactions to the reckoning they’re facing, and attempt to parse the difference between accountability and mob justice. Hope you enjoy! xo

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[PREVIEW] 'XO, Kitty' Is The Perfect Followup To TATBILB May 29, 2023

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We are GOING ON (mini) TOUR! If you live in the Philly, Boston or New York City areas, come hang out with us and see Love To See It LIVE! We’ll be recapping an iconic — and hilarious — vintage episode of “The Bachelorette” with some very special guests: “Normal Gossip” host Kelsey McKinney, BIP alum Jill Chin and comedian Arden Myrin. Get your tickets here.

This week, we took a quick break from weighty topics — like major life decisions and very important reality TV drama — to watch the latest teen rom-com offering from the Jenny Han cinematic universe: “XO, Kitty.” The Netflix series centers around the bubbly kid sister of “To All The Boys” heroine Lara Jean, and this time Kitty (Anna Cathcart) is sorta grownup and ready for her own perfect love story.

As the series begins, Kitty is headed off to Korea to spend her junior year of high school at the Korean Independent School of Seoul. She’s hoping to connect with her late mom (who spent her own junior year as a student there) and her long-distance boyfriend Dae (who is a current K.I.S.S. student). Best case: she gets both a new understanding of a mother she barely remembers and her elusive first kiss with Dae.

Instead, everything immediately goes wrong — Dae is in a (possibly fake) relationship with a gorgeous heiress, she’s been assigned to a boys’ dorm room, and she stumbles upon her mom’s best friend from K.I.S.S. but the woman won’t even acknowledge their relationship. Soon she’s caught up in an unexpected maze of love triangles and squares, and she’s neglecting her schoolwork while trying to unravel a mystery about a secret baby born while her mom was in Korea.

“XO, Kitty” is an unabashedly silly show in many ways; the plot turns are implausible and powered largely by truckloads of unlikely coincidences, and Kitty’s emotional range (which ranges from somewhat disappointed to irrepressibly perky) rarely seems to match the truly soap-operatic rollercoaster the series takes her on. It draws liberally from the K-drama genre, and revels in every campy twist. But the stories it has to tell about connecting with a lost loved one, and about the beauty and impermanence of young love, felt true enough to really hit home. By the end, we were right back in the rich hormonal and emotional stew of our own teenage years.

We talked about all of this, plus Kitty’s queer storyline — the first for a lead in a Jenny Han show — in this week’s episode. Hope you enjoy! XO, us.

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Uncomfortable Feelings About Motherhood May 22, 2023

Show notes

Content Warning: In today’s podcast, we will be discussing pregnancy and having children, and our own personal experiences with deciding whether to grow our families. We know these are difficult topics for many people. If you’re struggling with infertility, or have suffered miscarriage, or have lost children, we know that the question of “choosing” to have children can be particularly painful. If this is the case for you, this may be a good episode to skip.

It’s been nearly two years since we’ve had a conversation about motherhood on this podcast. Now felt like a good time to bring this loose series back. Claire is pregnant with her second child. Emma is watching so many people around her experience the joys and pains of parenthood for the first time, and is still confused about how she feels about having those experiences herself.

So consider this episode a casual check-in, one in which we try to be honest and raw about a topic that is so thorny for so many people. This conversation is far from the totality of our thoughts and feelings and fears and hopes, but it is a start.

We are working our way through all of the excellent questions and topics that listeners suggested when we said we were thinking of doing more motherhood/non-motherhood episodes. We plan to dig deeper into topics like the money question in future episodes. And we also are hoping to have guests — friends and experts who have lived experiences that we don’t.

Hope you enjoy. Xo

Check out our previous conversations on motherhood & non-motherhood below:

Bridging The Motherhood Divide (Ep. 1)

Mom Fashion & The Nap Dress (Ep. 2)

The Egg Freezing Boom (Ep. 3)

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[PREVIEW] 'Selling Sunset' Season 6 Has A New Villain May 19, 2023

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The big headline about season 6 of “Selling Sunset,” the real estate docusoap set amidst multi-million-dollar mansions in Los Angeles, was the departure of the long-time series villain, Christine Quinn. After five seasons of antagonizing doe-eyed heroine Chrishell Stause and systematically burning bridges with the rest of the Oppenheim Group — many of whom had been her friends for years — Quinn was finally pushed out. This left a gaping hole in the “Selling Sunset” lineup, and a big question: who would fill her antagonistic shoes?

In season 6, the show tosses in two new Quinn-esque agents to stir up drama. Between them, veteran O Group agent Nicole Young and newbie Bre Tiesi provide enough unwarranted friction with other agents (mostly Nicole) and panache (entirely Bre) to capably fill in the narrative void. Bre, previously better known as Johnny Manziel’s ex-wife and mother of Nick Cannon’s son Legendary, waltzes in with a Rolodex of billionaire and celeb clients; she also gamely beefs with Chelsea Lazkani over their realtor bona fides and Chelsea’s unsolicited opinions about her open relationship with Cannon. Nicole, a long-time member of the business and friend group, sets her sights on Chrishell’s good-girl image and is surprisingly successful at tarnishing it.

But in our eyes, season 6 marks the coming-out of another, greater villain — perhaps the stealth Big Bad of “Selling Sunset” as a whole. Yes, we’re thinking of Jason Oppenheim: twin, short king, cofounder, boss. After spending the first few seasons as mostly a background player, and then breaking out as a romantic lead through his season-long relationship with Chrishell, Jason has returned with a hot new girlfriend and an IDGAF attitude, leaving a trail of emotional and financial wreckage in his wake. His history of seriously dating women at the brokerage comes back to haunt him, but instead of handling it, he dumps it on his loyal bestie and lieutenant Mary and fucks off to Europe; while he’s on vacation, he also expects Mary to handle managing the brokerage, her own usual workload, and his personal condo-flipping project, leaving the poor woman a burnt-out husk. By the end of the season, we realized that Jason was really at the root of most of the really toxic drama at the Oppenheim Group, and he mostly gets to sit back and watch the women deal with the fallout.

In our latest episode of the pod, we discussed all of this, as well as Heather’s pregnancy persona, empanada entrepreneur Emma’s ability to slip in and out of drama, and Chrishell’s heel turn, and the Nick Cannon of it all. Hope you enjoy! xo

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[PREVIEW] Scandoval For Dummies May 08, 2023

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Note: Because of all of the clips and photos, if you’re receiving this in your inbox, you will have to click “view entire message” at the bottom of the email to see the full post!

For “Vanderpump Rules” fans, “Scandoval” was the culmination of a years-long commitment to the dramatic ups and downs of a group of Los Angeles strivers. For everyone else, it was a chance to ask… Who the hell are Tom Sandoval and Ariana Madix, and why are they the subject of an explainer in the New York Times?

Here on Rich Text, we were a house divided. Emma has been vigilantly watching “Vanderpump” since a few seasons in, and Claire has never seen a single episode. And yet, her interest was still piqued. How could it not be? Scandoval was a reality TV scandal that somehow managed to penetrate into the mainstream consciousness. So we decided it was time for Claire — and all of you — to be brought into the twisty world of “Vanderpump Rules.” So for two full hours, along with video clips and photographs, Emma explained the Scandoval to Claire.

What is Vanderpump Rules?

“Vanderpump Rules” (VPR) premiered in January 2013, as a spin-off of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.” The show, in its inception, followed a group of 20 and 30-something strivers who worked at RHOBH cast member Lisa Vanderpump’s restaurants in West Hollywood — primarily, SUR, which stands for Sexy Unique Restaurant. The show is currently airing its 10th season.

At its core, the show has always been about relationship dynamics, and specifically cheating. There are only a handful of cast members who haven’t been involved in public cheating scandals, but none of the previous cheating scandals can hold a candle to Scandoval.

The Short Summary

VPR original cast member Tom Sandoval cheated on Ariana Madix, his girlfriend of nine years, by having a secret seven-month affair with their co-star (and one of Madix’s besties) Raquel Leviss. This news first broke on March 3, 2023, and the ensuing fervor was coined “Scandoval.”

For those who aren’t initiated into VPR world — don’t worry, you soon will be — here’s the Scandoval in “Friends” terms: It’s like if Chandler cheated on Monica with Rachel, and Joey knew.

But what makes this scandal such a big deal is all of the historical context; the DECADE of footage fans have of Sandoval, and what that footage tells us about his patterns of (shitty) behavior.

Whether you’re a “Vanderpump” stan or newbie, we hope you’ll enjoy this episode! Below are all of the clips and photos referenced in the podcast. Xo

Watch Along Guide: Extended Clips and Photos

Clip 1: Tom Sandoval confesses to Stassi that he made out with Ariana in Vegas (watch on Bravo’s website)

Clip 2: Scheana brings up the “Miami Girl” rumor to Sandoval

Clip 3: “Miami Girl” comes to L.A. to meet with Kristen and confront Sandoval

Clip 4: James Kennedy proposes to Raquel with “Rachella”

Photo 1: Sandoval and Raquel at Coachella 2022

Photo 2: Scheana, Katie and Kristen show up to support Ariana

Clip 5: Scheana’s Elle Woods moment

Photo 3: Raquel talks to TMZ outside a Valley Village nail salon

Clip 6: A Tom Sandoval post-breakup mash-up (The Howie Mandel interview vs. Season 2 reunion)

Clip 7: Sandoval denies anything has happened between him and Raquel to a producer

Clip 8: Raquel sleeps over at Sandoval’s when Ariana is out of town

Clip 9: The “Vanderpump Rules” season 10 finale trailer

Photo 4: Ariana is spotted with a new man, Daniel Wai, at Coachella 2023

Photo 5: Lala, Lisa Vanderpump and Ariana attend the White House Correspondents Dinner

Clip 10: Roy Wood Jr. roasts Tucker Carlson and Tom Sandoval at the White House Correspondents Dinner

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