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Does 'The Lizzie McGuire Movie' Hold Up? May 01, 2023

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This is the free edition of Rich Text, a newsletter about cultural obsessions from your Internet BFFs Emma and Claire. If you like what you see and hear, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Rich Text is a reader-supported project — no ads or sponsors!

Twenty years ago, Hilary Duff cemented her status as a Disney Channel icon by starring in the first-ever Disney series movie spin-off released in theaters: “The Lizzie McGuire Movie.” As in the show, Duff played the perpetually lip-glossed, glossy-haired middle-school outcast, Lizzie McGuire, who manages to get bullied by being nicer and conventionally hotter than anyone you went to junior high with. The concept of the movie: Lizzie heads to Rome for a post-graduation class trip, only to catch the eye of an Italian teen heartthrob named Paolo and get swept into impersonating his ex-partner, Isabella, at a music video awards show. It’s millennial tween girl wish-fulfillment to the max, from Lizzie’s effortlessly stick-straight blonde hair and pinstriped flared low-rise jeans to her sudden ascension into pop stardom. And it should not be surprising that, as adult viewers, we found this classic tween flick to be rife with plot holes, bad accent work, and glib references to no-carb diets. How did we ever make it through middle school in the early aughts? This movie only offers more questions.

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But while “Lizzie McGuire” didn’t exactly inspire us with its artistry, there’s just something about a nostalgic rewatch of a movie that brought you joy as an adolescent — or even one that captures a time when you were young and corny enough to enjoy bad movies about middle-schoolers meeting cute guys in European cities. If you haven’t been listening to our “Bachelor” off-season pods on “Love to See It,” we’ve been rewatching teen romances that shaped our own youthful beliefs about love, ambition, feminism and finding ourselves: “Love and Basketball,” “10 Things I Hate About You,” “Easy A,” and many more to come. And honestly? Most of them actually do hold up.

Here on Rich Text, we’re doing it with a twist: instead of Very Important Teen Rom-Coms, we’re recapping a Very Bad Tween (Rom?) Com. Joining us for this rewatch was the wonderful Laura Hankin, our old friend and author of “The Daydreams” (out tomorrow!), a novel about four friends who starred on a Disney-esque teen show in the early aughts — and whose lives spun off in wildly different directions after a live episode went catastrophically awry and brought down the entire series. Now adults, the four cast members are brought back together for a reunion show, where old wounds are reopened, old secrets come to light, and old hopes are rekindled. It’s truly the satisfying version of rewatching “Lizzie McGuire” as a grown-up, with all the heady 2000s nostalgia plus the added depth of adult perspective.

So please, check out Laura’s delightful book, dig into our teen rom-com rewatch miniseries over at LTSI, and enjoy this tween rom-com rewatch — as a special treat, we’ve made it free!

And stay tuned, because we’ve got a lot of great pods coming this month for paid subscribers, including a pre-VPR finale Scandoval explainer, a “Selling Sunset” season 6 recap, and a “Yellowjackets” season 2 discussion!

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[PREVIEW] 'Love Is Blind' 4 Reunion: A Live(ish) Disaster Apr 18, 2023

Show notes

Spoiler warning: The “Love Is Blind” season 4 reunion will be discussed in this post and in great detail in the podcast! You’ve been warned!

Also, we attempted to be as up to date as possible on all of the tea trickling out post-reunion, but of course we had to take time to edit this episode, and in the intervening hours, Jackie released this apology on Instagram for the “disparaging remarks” she made about Marshall. (The word “homophobic” was not used.)

Hell hath no fury like a Netflix audience scorned by a “live” television event.

After heavily — heavily! — promoting the “Love Is Blind” season 4 *LIVE* finale, millions tried to access the live feed at 8pm EST on Sunday night and were met with… an error message. It was a reload, stare at a purple title card (first “It’s almost time! The live event will start soon,” and later, “There’s an issue with the livestream. Hang tight! We’re trying to fix it as soon as possible.”), watch it load again, get another error message, do the whole thing again, kind of night. This went on for more than an hour before just a segment of Netflix users were able to access the live feed.

When people finally got access to the reunion — either like us, in the middle of the livestream, or at 12pm PST the following day — it was… underwhelming. The cast members all seemed extremely anxious, made even worse by the fact that they had evidently been sitting around on stage for more than an hour in full hair and makeup, unable to get this show on the road. Jackie and Josh weren’t there, because of safety concerns, allegedly, though this went completely unexplained. Marshall had to speak in monologue to no one in order to rebut Jackie’s pre-taped criticisms. Our shining romantic heroes Brett and Tiffany barely spoke. Zack tried to chaotically defend Paul from Micah’s rather tepid criticisms, and Vanessa kept cutting everyone off. Plus, the baby pressure! The weird, creepy, I’m-gonna-invade-your-uterus-at-any-moment baby pressure! As TV writer/producer Francesca Ramsey pointed out on TikTok, the mark of a good host isn’t just someone who knows how to talk, but someone who knows how to listen.

We did learn that all three married couples are still together. (Hooray! We love love!) But this entire reunion truly could have been an email.

And yet… we did talk about it for two hours, including hopping back on to discuss Jackie chaotically posting “receipts” left and right. Hope you enjoy! Xo

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[PREVIEW] 'Love Is Blind' 4, Finale: Wedding Chaos Apr 14, 2023

Show notes

Spoiler warning: The “Love Is Blind” season 4 finale will be discussed in this post and in great detail in the podcast. There will be spoilers! Be prepared!

When Alanis memorably sang, “It’s like raaayyy-ee-aaainnnn on your wedding day,” she was trying to illustrate the concept of irony. She was mistaken, of course. Rain on your wedding day is not ironic; as Tiffany’s friend points out during a mid-downpour ceremony, it simply means good luck. And the good luck, this sodden Seattle wedding day, belonged to all of us “Love Is Blind” nerds, who were about to view the most shocking and joyous finale this show has delivered yet.

At every turn, we were caught wrong-footed — surprised by the yeses and the nos, surprised by the hidden tensions revealed and surprised by our own watering eyes when a couple said “I do.” Everything we thought we knew about this show (well, almost everything) had to be reevaluated. Were we wrong about most of these couples all along??

We’re not sure which moment left us most slack-jawed (Kwame’s decision? Micah’s decision to punt the first response to Paul? Paul’s post-ceremony words? Zack and Bliss’s final choice?), but it was hard not to finish the finale feeling like both the show and, perhaps, some of the cast themselves were withholding a lot of important information about these relationships. And yet it was still a surprisingly moving finale, with at least two weddings that left us verklempt in a good way.

In this recap, we discuss every twist and turn of this wedding day episode, what we missed about these couples all season and what we love about (some of) them, and who we think should stay together — plus, our updated enemies-to-friends ranking. Our live reunion recap will be coming next week, so stay tuned!

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[PREVIEW] 'Love Is Blind' 4, Part 3: Pre-Wedding Panic Apr 10, 2023

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It’s a big week for “Love Is Blind.” At this point in the season, things always start to either really come together or totally fall apart. And in episodes 9-11 of season 4, we got both.

On one end of the should-they-get-married spectrum is Brett and Tiffany, who continue to be THE Golden Couple of the season. It’s hard to say enough good things about these two. Their friends all seem like people we’d actually like to hang out with, they are communicative and open and thoughtful and loving towards each other. They both compromise, and know how to support each other. In this batch of episodes. Tiff buckles emotionally under the pressure of a looming televised wedding. But instead of taking her feelings as an attack on him or on their relationship, Brett recognizes that his partner is suffering and instead does his best to lift her up. (And prints some very beautiful portraits that he took of her. I mean…. SWOON!)

A couple who is faring much less well (and showing far less emotional maturity, which I guess is what an extra decade of life/dating experience will get you!) are Marshall and Jackie. These two seemed ill-matched fairly soon after they left the pods, and it all comes to a head this week when Jackie fails to show up for her wedding dress fitting, because she’s on a freaking date with freaking Josh. Poor Marshall didn’t even get a text. A rough as hell ending for these two, but also probably for the best.

This week, we dive into the third drop of season 4, which takes us right up to the big wedding days! We discuss the shaky ground Chelsea and Kwame seem to be on, why we can’t seem to get a proper read on Paul, Zack and Bliss’ respective family meetings, and deliver our final pre-wedding predictions, ratings and friend/enemy rankings. Hope you enjoy! Xo

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[PREVIEW] 'Love Is Blind' 4, Part 2: Reality Hits Apr 03, 2023

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The pods and sunny Mexico are in the rearview mirror, so it’s time for our four surviving couples to move into Seattle townhouses and start hashing out chore wheels. This is where the rubber meets the road. It’s the first opportunity the couples have to see if they can stand each other not just through a wall or at a lavish resort, but while managing the quotidian annoyances of delayed dish-washing, incompatible budgets, divergent life plans, and mismatched aesthetics. Brett drips water on the bathroom floor after showering; Paul keeps a sheathed Bowie knife on every flat surface in his home; Chelsea has never met a pink appliance she doesn’t immediately buy; Jackie is prone to long and intractable bad moods; Kwame doesn’t want to leave Portland even though his job is fully remote and Chelsea’s is very much not.

And that’s not all! For the first time ever, a “Love Is Blind” participant is setting his sights on a full switcheroo. After Zack and Irina’s engagement ended so catastrophically that even the two of them couldn’t help but laugh, Zack headed back to Seattle to meet up with his also-ran, Bliss. And it wasn’t just a friendly catchup! Instead, it seems the two sweet nerdlings felt chemistry in that bar and grill, and they’re soon dating in earnest. We’ve seen engagements crash and burn before… but going back for a chance with the runner-up? It’s fresh, it’s new, it’s (dare we say) rather Jason Mesnick. (What is it about the men in the Seattle area?)

This week, we dive into the three new episodes, try to figure out what the fuck is Irina’s deal, try to figure out what the fuck is Micah’s actual BFF Shelby’s deal, assess everyone’s families and home decor style, try to figure out what the fuck Kwame actually wants, and update our verdicts on who should get married and who are our greatest friends and enemies. Hope you enjoy!

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[PREVIEW] 'Love Is Blind' 4, Part 1: Seattle Is For Lovers Mar 27, 2023

Show notes

NOTE: When we started recapping this week, we thought it was a 4-episode drop, and then we realized it was actually a 5-episode drop! So we recap all 5 episodes in this podcast, but we recapped the last episode in a separate taping. (Also, be warned: This made the recap pod way longer than anticipated.) Thanks for bearing with us and sorry for any confusion. Xo

“Is love… really blind?”

This is the question that Netflix and The Lacheys purport to be answering each season on “Love Is Blind.” And even though the obvious truth is that the answer is no — perhaps out eternal enemy Shake was indeed right about this one thing — we are still thrilled to watch a new Pod Squad try to fall in love through a wall in just 10 days. It’s only been a few months since the last After The Altar special, and yet Netflix knows that we will be injecting any and all of their reality romance content directly into our veins.

Season 4 takes us to the Pacific Northwest, where we meet 30 singles eager to fast-track their way to a husband or wife… and maybe get left at the altar in another month. (But that’s an issue for another episode drop!!) In this first batch of episodes, we get a sense of who our core cast is going to be, who our golden couple is — there’s one every season — and which love triangles/quadrangles/chains are going to cause the most drama later on. (Lookin’ at you, Micah and Kwame!) Let’s just say the vibe is *very* different from that of our Dallas crew.

One disappointment, however, is the lack of body diversity. This is something that fans of “Love Is Blind,” and other dating shows like “The Bachelor,” have been advocating for for years. It felt like maybe LIB was starting to get the memo after they cast Alexa Alfia, who went on to be one half of LIB 3’s golden couple. Cut to season 4 and… every single cast member appears to be straight-sized.

But for every step back, LIB takes a step forward. This season’s innovations? A female romantic lead over the age of 35 (we are already obsessed with you, Tiffany!), and our first ever switcheroo engagement. Cannot wait to see if Zack’s bid for Bliss is successful.

In this week’s episode, we discuss the first five episodes, as well as our “Should They Get Married?” ratings, and our enemies-to-friends scale. Hope you enjoy! Xo

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[PREVIEW] The Most Unhinged Show On TV Mar 20, 2023

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In the final moments of “Sex/Life” season one, desperate Connecticut housewife and former New York sex-haver Billie (Sarah Shahi) is finally ready to act on years of yearning and months of journaling about the one that got away. She’s been trying to make things work with her handsome, loving, and loaded husband Cooper, and to put dreams of her handsome, loving, and loaded ex-boyfriend Brad in the past. But as the final episode comes to a close, the elevator doors to Brad’s penthouse open. Billie emerges, clad in a girlish puffed-sleeve floral dress. “Now fuck me,” she demands.

Season two of “Sex/Life” brings us back to that exact moment, when it seems Brad and Billie will finally re-consummate their passion and initiate an actual affair. But “Sex/Life” is not a show about cheating, or anything as taboo or titillating as adultery. It’s more of a show about serial monogamy, and extremely hot skinny people in committed relationships having mind-blowing missionary sex while bathed in fuchsia light.

And so season two takes Billie on a journey out of the depths of monogamy and into its shallows; she separates from her husband, immediately meets another handsome man who immediately becomes her boyfriend, occasionally works on her Columbia psych dissertation (it’s about how girls just wanna have fun), and allegedly spends half the week in Connecticut with her children. We also follow along as her embittered ex, Cooper, develops a sex and alcohol addiction that blows up mildly compromises his finance career. Meanwhile, her bestie Sasha has become a Goop girlboss and an icon of single-by-choice feminist girlies — and has once again fallen for her college boyfriend. Brad, Billie’s music executive ex, has met a model named Gigi and is finally really to settle down… maybe. In just six episodes, the season hurtles toward its fairytale ending at breakneck speed, cramming entire seasons’ worth of unhinged plot twists into single, underbaked episodes.

“Sex/Life” is a show about people who are rich, beautiful, and having abundant satisfying sex. They have charming children they love, careers they’re passionate about. And somehow, their lives seem absolutely miserable. Their lavish homes somehow appear bleak onscreen; their forlorn children are entrusted to nannies who appear to be unfamiliar with the concept of a day off. The best thing that ever happens to these people is a night at a fancy restaurant or party, sampling fine vintages while wearing sequins. Even all the sex, as in season one, is somehow both graphic and bland. The season is packed with slow-mo, blue- and pink-lit montages of the various couples banging in various standard positions (missionary, cowgirl), all of which left us vaguely bored.

In this episode, we sort through all the absurd storylines that make up this season, analyze the quality of the sex scenes closely (some might say a little too closely), and examine the show’s attempt to present a bland vision of monogamous marriage to one’s first love as daring, edgy, and revolutionary — even, dare they say, feminist. Also we literally cannot stop laughing. We hope you enjoy this episode half as much as we enjoyed making it. xo

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[PREVIEW] Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Joe Goldberg Mar 13, 2023

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Warning: This podcast contains many, many spoilers for “You” season 4, part 2. It also contains discussion of events in the show that pertain to suicide.

ANOTHER WARNING: DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU HAVE NOT WATCHED “YOU” SEASON 4.

We have been holding onto the knowledge of The Big Twist from “You” season 4 for weeks now. Praise the Netflix gods, now we can finally talk about it.

When part 1 of season 4 wrapped up, we had just learned that Rhys Montrose — Joe/Jonathan’s buddy, the likely future mayor of London, the One Good Man among a group of vapid, selfish, rich assholes — was the Eat The Rich Killer. Except… Rhys Montrose, or at least the Rhys we (and Joe) have come to know, doesn’t actually exist.

It turns out that Joe has channeled his obsession with the real Rhys into a full-on delusional state, in which all of Joe’s worst parts are expressed through a separate character, “Rhys.” Does Rhys Montrose exist? Yes. Does he know Joe/Jonathan? Absolutely not.

Now we know what kind of story we’re dealing with. It’s not just an ordinary whodunnit. It’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Imaginary “Rhys” makes this explicit in a speech to Joe: “You poured all that darkness you hated into a vessel you admired because you knew that the endgame was facing yourself, didn’t you? There you go, all the worst bits in a package you don’t mind having a pint with.”

And that is always what “You” has been about — Joe’s commitment to running from himself and to contorting the narrative to paint himself as the perpetual hero, no matter how many bodies end up lying dead in his wake. Season 4 brings us all into this delusion alongside Joe, and then wrenches us right out of it, and demands we look Joe (and ourselves) in the face.

Nothing about this season was subtle — like, did we really need the dungeon key lodged into a literal copy of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”? — but it added up to a raucous ride, and a really fun conversation. In this episode, we discuss the varying literary genres that the “You” writers played with this season (whodunnit! romance! fairytale!), the usefulness of the detective-as-killer trope, and where we think the show will, and should, go from here. Hope you enjoy! xo

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[PREVIEW] 'Love Trip: Paris' And 'Meet Me In Paris' Repackage The Fantasy Of French Romance Feb 27, 2023

Show notes

Ahhh, Paris. The City of Lights, the City of Love, the City of American Women Starved For Romance. In the American cultural imagination, the French capital has long been idealized as the most romantic, chic, charming destination in the world — the perfect place, as “The Bachelor” might put it, to fall in love.

On the heels of “Emily in Paris,” which (fittingly) made the concept of mingling a Parisian setting with American love stories all the more marketable, two reality dating programs recently dropped on streaming channels. On Roku, Reese Witherspoon and Zoë Saldana brought us “Meet Me in Paris,” a soi-disant “reality rom-com” about three unlucky-in-love women who spend 10 whirlwind days in the city, living out a semi-scripted pursuit for love. Hulu’s “Love Trip: Paris” is a more traditional reality show featuring four Francophiles who move into a Parisian apartment building to seek love with French suitors.

The two concepts are fairly different, and the results are predictably different as well: “Meet Me in Paris” is high-concept but low-impact, taking a big swing with its unusual conceit while glossing over bland casting and underbaked love connections with punchy movie-style montages and staged vignettes. “Love Trip: Paris” gives us standard reality dating fare, heavily seasoned with tropes about the hot-blooded, jealous French lovers and their culture clash with the easy-come-easy-go Americans, but the cast is undeniably more charismatic and the relationships less contrived.

But there’s one thing both share, at least so far (“Love Trip: Paris” had only aired four episodes as of our taping), and that’s a conviction that Paris was made for American women to fall in love in the most picturesque way possible. Everything that Carrie Bradshaw’s disastrous Paris move at the end of “Sex and the City” deconstructed about the City of Love has been reconstructed by Emily Cooper and wholeheartedly embraced by these reality shows; it’s not a city like any other, full of inconveniences and disappointments and people with their own problems and plenty of heartache. It’s a Technicolor backdrop, a romance theme park where American women can finally live their best lives and find a hot suitor ready to risk it all for their love on every street corner.

In this episode, we discuss the shared Parisian fantasy of these two streaming reality romance projects, weigh their relative strengths and weaknesses, and give a certain French suitor (ahem Mirko) a piece of our goddamned minds. Hope you enjoy! xo

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[PREVIEW] 'Your Place Or Mine' Should Be So Much Better Feb 20, 2023

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“Your Place Or Mine” has all the markers of a great romantic comedy: The friends to lovers trope! A script from “27 Dresses” screenwriter / “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” showrunner Aline Brosh McKenna! Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher, both of whom have aged like fine wine! A wild cast of supporting characters played by legends like Tig Notaro, Zoë Chao, Vella Lovell, Rachel Bloom, Shiri Appleby, Steve Zahn, and Jesse Williams!

And yet. It just… doesn’t work.

The best romantic comedies are fundamentally stories about personal growth that end in a successful romantic pairing. Look at “When Harry Met Sally” or “You’ve Got Mail” or Witherspoon’s best rom-com, “Sweet Home Alabama.” All of these movies deliver a clear narrative arc in which the leads learn fundamental truths about themselves that allow them to finally be ready for a loving relationship with the other. “Your Place Or Mine” merely gestures at such growth, telling us that it’s happening — somewhere! off-screen! — rather than showing it to us.

Witherspoon’s tightly-wound, “Saran wrap” mom (or Munchausen-by-proxy mom, depending on your interpretation of her anxieties about her child’s seemingly unlimited allergies) Debbie and Kutcher’s novelist-turned-soulless-corporate-consultant Peter, who you know is living an unfulfilled life because he organizes his books by color, barely register as human beings. They are more like archetypes, brought into the realm of humanity only because they are played by skilled actors who can deliver a passable performance even when they’re phoning it in.

That’s not to say that “Your Place Or Mine” doesn’t have any moments of delight. There’s the star-studded cast and some well-delivered jokes, mostly by Tig Notaro. But ultimately, “Your Place Or Mine” is a film best watched while folding your laundry.

On this week’s podcast, we tried to unpack why we felt so “meh” about what we hoped would be a movie that we’d rewatch again and again and again. Hope you enjoy! Xo

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