what i've been watching instead of doing stacked

an update

I put stacked on hiatus on a sort of lackluster, bummer note -- not even with the beautiful, round number of 50. I started thinking about my life a year from now, and dreading being in the same position that I'm in now, imagined blaming my misery on this hyperfixatived devotion and regretting how I was spending my time. I do not want to resent the way I enjoy myself. And so, I'm taking a break! (Of course, I didn't stop thinking about Supernatural, I will never stop.) I've made some progress in things that are more important in the absence of this newsletter, but I also have just laid on my bed and looked at my phone. I missed writing in this register, though! Especially when I am supposed to be doing something else :) So: Here's what I've spent time with in the last two weeks.

Drive-Away Dolls

It may not seem like a feat to watch a movie when you have days set aside where you're watching several episodes of 45-minute long television, but I think I will forever associate this film with a sort of cloud moving from over my head; I had the brain space, the mental energy for other things. And isn't that amazing? I'd been interested for a while because I LOVE Geraldine Viswanathan (Miracle Workers rules), but after The Substance gave me the Margaret Qualley bug, it seemed like the right thing to do. I think the Coen brothers should go back to making movies together, for sure? But it was fun! All of the performances were fun, even when they weren't given much to do character-wise (Geraldine is better than this!). I remember people really hating on Margaret Qualley's accent but I think she can do whatever she wants because she is beautiful :) The driving relationship of this movie is essentially the same as the Dean & Cas plot in 5.03 “Free to Be You and Me,” so you know. How can I not like it.

Conclave

I went to LA for a reading last week and I always try to get to a theater when I'm traveling since the logistics are a little bit difficult where I live. I love, love going to the theater; I love the way you can be alone and with others at the same time¹. What a great thing to see in that big, dark, beautiful place!!!!!!! I'd really wanted to see Conclave based on Twitter jokes, sorry to say, but oh my goodness. It was so fucking good! Beautiful, beautiful. There is nothing more visually stunning than Catholicism? It's very impressive to make such a compelling film essentially about a bureacratic process. Kind of felt like a career best performance for everyone involved, the score fucked, I legitimately was holding my breath at several different points, and I left the theater wishing I could hold on to the devastating optimism the film softly communicates. At dinner afterwards, we argued for one another for Pope. The full experience. As far as rankings go, this is definitely my #2 2024 release (I Saw the TV Glow being the first).

Gossip Girl S2

I recommended Gossip Girl Fanfic Novella by Charlie Markbreiter to the dear friend I stayed with when I was in LA; they liked it, of course (it is kind of an aspirational text), and immediately fell into a Gossip Girl rewatch. Instead of making everyone watch the planned Supernatural episodes for the duration of the trip, we just watched one of my OTHER favorite CW shows. I've seen this show many, many times, but not since reading Gossip Girl Fanfic Novella, and it's fun to see how my attention to characters shifts because of it (which mostly means we said “Oh yeah. He's trans.” every time Nate was on screen). The last time I watched, I was in college -- so physically the same age as a lot of the cast, and far more emotionally close to the psyche of a teenager. The characters in Gossip Girl never really felt young to me; this is one of the rare shows I watched from airing to finale instead of coming somewhere in the middle or dropping off before the end. Being below the target age group meant they couldn't really feel young, anyway; glamorous, larger than life, a stage in their life I struggled to imagine myself reaching. The show extended into my own teenage years, but still, they felt leagues away from me—and not just because of the wealth, but the vibracy. But, the distance helps me see it; the speed used to bother me sometimes, but I think the way every relationship and situation is approached with naive, life-ending urgency is a tenant of being young. It's just impossible to recognize when that speed is your equilibrium. It's always fun to return to a show and think about what all of those actors are up to now, too. I think Leighton Meester should have a bigger career! The drama of Blake Lively's Colleen Hoover movie didn't seem to get resolved! I think Ed Westwick is an alleged rapist ? I should fact check that but I won't. And Chace Crawford is actually better on Gosssip Girl than The Boys!!???!???!!!??!! I'm on S3 now and will definitely keep watching instead of checking out anything new.

Doctor Odyssey

This had been on my list since before it aired! But it was coming on a little too late in the evening for me to try something new, so I missed the first chunk of episodes. No matter what, though, a medical dramedy taking place on a cruise ship? As a network TV devotee, I knew I had to tune in. I watched the six episodes that were out in one sitting :) It's not good, of course, but it did its job: I can never say no to the thematic weaving of external disasters with the emotional state of medical professionals. Any time a familiar guest star appeared, I just thought about how happy I was they were working. The season finale was a few days ago (tragically only 8 episodes), and it was truly dreadful. Just, an incredible loss for what made the first handful of episodes so fun to sit through with a crazy simultanous escalation-and-halted-momentum made worse by the fact that it is TRAGICALLY ONLY EIGHT EPISODES -- we are sent to a place that should not, by the TENANTS OF NETWORK TELEVISION be able to arrive at without at least 3 22-episode seaons behind you. But, if you've got some time, go for it. I guess. It will absolutely be cancelled.

Great British Bake-Off

I really like Sumayah, but this is a good season overall!

Trap

Kind of the best dumb movie ever :) There's something so, so endearing about how earnestly family-oriented this serial killer movie is. It's not really my genre, so I don't know, maybe the murderers in thrills are always girldads! My brain kind of just chattered Oh it's so wonderful how much Cooper loves his daughter and brought her to this concert where M. Night Shyamalan's daughter, who he seems to love so loudly, is performing, and it's like you ask the audience to emphasize with the fictional father-daughter relationship as it is reflected in their own lives , too, and also asks you to consider it about the filmmaker's real father-daughter relationship? in your own life? too? does Saleka being on stage and her being the daughter's director make us feel endeared towards Cooper Trap because of the transitive property ? Would I feel endeared to Cooper if there wasn't that second layer of father-daughter relationships? I was stoned. Great watch!

The Floor

I started this Rob Lowe-hosted game show when I was in New York, with Cassie and Danny. We watched a few during my stay, but this is the only one I picked back up. The premise is: everyone has a category they are theoretically an expert in. Their one-tile of space on The Floor is named for this category. Contestants go head-to-head in each other's category; if you win, you take that person’s territory. But, the categories are things like “school supplies” “cheese” “world currency" (ok that one was actually pretty hard). The result is grown adults basically challenging each other at guessing flashcards of basic items. It's ridiculous.

Supernatural

Despite no longer sticking to the stacked schedule, I did end up watching some episodes of Supernatural anyway: 9.06 “Heaven Can't Wait" and 15.09 “The Trap,” both by Bobo Berens. Two episodes that make my stomach hurt, two episodes connecting red string from when I was a terribly, irationally fast teenager to my present. A good summary of the ~50k words I gave to Supernatural before this. I didn't watch the finale on its anniversary, but I did think a lot about and its ironically hopeless conclusion. I thought about it alongside Conclave, actually, a film with an ostensibly liberal belief with regards to what an individual in power can do, but works because of its hyper-specific frame, and the knowledge of its constraints. There's a very grounded understanding of what putting faith in someone means, and the narrative aligns and rewards that understanding (in a surprising way, for electoral politics). Supernatural has a lot of questions of faith and faithlessness, what it means to oscillate between the interchangeabilty of belief and dependability, and having to unlearn that belief over and over again, as it leaves you alone. The finale is not interested in exploring conclusions to the questions it's already asking; instead, it resorts to a belief that the afterlife is an adequate reward - rather than continuing to live in the present. This belief is one continually thwarted time and time again throughout the series, but in the end, the peace the Winchesters find never gets to be in life. We are meant to be satisfied with this? Supernatural's most wonderful tension is the way the nuclear conservative family ideal is regularly smashed, just as often as it is built back up again. It is jarring for the series to end with it unsmashed to guide the narrative's decision making. Supernatural believes itself to be hopeful, in the end! But its ending, too, is just a replication of the cycles, just in a deeply unaware way. It turns out a delusional, rotten optimism, that leaves me wondering is this really the limit of our imagination? is this what we think we deserve? I'd like to write about it more specifically in depth, I think. But first, I want to consider more examples of hope in art to consider it alongside.

1. My first newsletter was actually partially about this :)