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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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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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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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

“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

We’re trying something a little bit different this week! We are introducing a free preview of our paid subscriber podcasts, so that our free subscribers can get a taste of what we on the Rich Text podcast. And because we want to make sure that *everyone* gets our weekly recommendations, we are moving that part of our newsletter into its very own entry, dropping Wednesdays. Let us know what you think of this new format!

Last season of the Netflix thriller “You” ended in an almost absurdly climactic way: Joe Goldberg, the main character and arch-villain of the series, killed his murderous wife Love Quinn, burned down their house, faked his own death, and left his baby son with a couple who would make better guardians. He then took off to Paris to find his new love object, Marienne, who had fled there with her daughter to escape him.

Season 4 finds us in an unexpected place: London. Joe has found his way to a new city, a new identity (Jonathan Moore), a new gig (American literature professor), and a new role in the drama. Joe, for three seasons, has been a serial killer and an irredeemable stalker; however much he may live in denial of his own nature, he has never strayed far from the role of Big Bad. But almost as soon as his story in London commences, Joe wakes up one morning to find that his colleague, Malcolm, has been knifed to death and left on his kitchen counter. In a panic, he disposes of the body — only to learn, from encrypted disappearing texts from an anonymous figure, that he did not kill Malcolm in a blackout fugue. He is being framed. Joe the villain has become Joe the victim, and, very quickly, Joe the detective, as he frantically tries to uncover the real killer.

That’s right. The first half of season four (the second half drops next month) is, as Joe himself realizes with a lit-snob groan, a whodunnit. His new milieu and social circle, a crew of sociopathically self-involved blue-bloods, are straight from an Agatha Christie novel, albeit a century later. And Joe himself is both the victim of a framing and the unlikely gumshoe. Ever the reader, he turns to reading Christie books himself to try to figure out how to untangle a mystery like a pro.

But this leaves the “You” viewer with all kinds of questions: Is the show really turning Joe into a victim, after three seasons of insisting on his villainy? Is Joe really someone who can be redeemed through a season of heroic efforts to protect some old-money elites from a serial killer? And what is the purpose — aside from keeping things fresh and entertaining, which, fair enough — of giving the season such an overt and kitschy genre conceit? What does it mean to take a dangerous man who always manages to maintain his own delusions of victimhood… and make him the victim of a cold-blooded murderer’s conspiracy?

With five episodes left to go, there are many possible answers to those questions — or perhaps the questions themselves will be invalidated by end-of-season developments. But we couldn’t resist hopping on the mic to dissect the first half of season one. We discuss its class satire and its meta-commentary on eat-the-rich entertainment, the murder-mystery conceit, and Joe as possible victim. Hope you enjoy! xo

Our Dallas “Love Is Blind” crew has officially returned to the small screen. And with them they brought some drama, some laughs, some true clubwear-at-brunch *lewks*, and a lingering question: When the hell was this thing filmed?

Here are a few things we knew:

1. Bartise said on Instagram that he had filmed three shows — “LIB,” “Perfect Match” and “After The Altar” before any of them aired.

2. They repeatedly reference it being a year since the weddings on “After The Altar,” and we know that filming wrapped on the original show in June 2021.

3. It appears to be summer as SK is on his first summer break after 1 year of graduate school.

4. The reunion was, according to production, filmed during a similar time period — “early autumn” 2022.

5. In both the reunion and the After The Altar special, Cole and Zanab indicate that they haven’t spoken since their wedding.

This may seem silly — who really cares? — but the lack of timeline made it hard to place the events of “After The Altar” in context. For example, how much time passed between SK *re-proposing* (!!!!!) to Raven and the cheating allegations that ultimately led to the end of their relationship? (See: The aforementioned NEW ENEMY in the headline of this post.) Did the proposal happen before or after the reunion was filmed? Did Zay and Cole have a conversation at Alexa’s 28th birthday party and make nice before going at each other during the reunion? It’s all a bit confusing.

After recording our whole recap and debating the timeline, we finally got an answer confirmed, which made it all make sense: “After The Altar” was filmed up to AND shortly after the reunion. Mystery solved! Hallelujah!

On this week’s pod we discuss more than the timeline (we promise!!). We get into the thriving marriage of the Lemieuxs, Matt and Colleen’s living situation, Bartise’s fuckery (especially when it comes to Nancy), SK and Raven’s disappointing end, and how absolutely mismatched Cole and Zanab always were. Enjoy! Xo

We’ve been reading…

I’ve started reading the galleys (early reader copies) of two of my lovely friends’ forthcoming novels: Laura Hankin’s “The Daydreams” and Alison Rose Greenberg’s “Maybe Once, Maybe Twice.” 10/10 recommend pre-ordering both of these absolute gems. -Emma

“The Daydreams” is so good!!!! Can’t wait for everyone to get to read it.

So, my recommendations in last week’s newsletter were a bit of a cry for help, and hopefully also marked the rock bottom of my winter depression! This week I saw a glint of daylight amid the clouds, so I decided to make the most of it and expend the energy to do things that actually make me happier. I made pancakes with the toddler, folded the laundry mountain that had been accumulating for weeks, got work done on schedule, and finished reading Katy Simpson Smith’s “The Weeds” instead of staring at my phone during every free moment. I’d been having trouble getting into the book, with its fragmented, dual-narrator structure and its frequent botanical digressions, but once I made time to surrender to its flow, the momentum soon carried me. It’s out in April. -Claire

We’ve been listening to…

The first two episodes of the new season of the investigative “Smoke Screen” podcast. This season, “Smoke Screen: Deadly Cure” investigates the story of former missionary Mark Grenon and his three sons, all of whom were indicted in 2021 for selling toxic bleach (dubbed Miracle Mineral Solution) as a fraudulent cure for everything from Covid-19 to malaria to autism. -Em ma

Despite shaking off my doldrums a bit, I have not gotten my podcast mojo back — lately, anything that goes in my ears seems to bounce off my brain, and I keep turning off shows after realizing I haven’t absorbed a single word. A positive listening experience from this week: On Saturday, I put on Camera Obscura while I made dinner with the toddler, and it turns out he’s finally old enough to hear “grown-up music” without having an entire meltdown and demanding to put on “The Wheels on the Bus.” -Claire

We’ve been watching…

I craved a comfort watch this week, so I went back to one of my all-time favorites: “The First Wives Club.” This 1996 gem has it all: Diane Keaton! Bette Midler! Goldie Hawn! Maggie Smith! Sarah Jessica Parker! Stockard Channing! ‘90s New York City! A revenge plot! Female friendship! A Gloria Steinem cameo! Just perfection. -Emma

We finally saw a movie! Our evening free time keeps shrinking (the child has decided his bedtime is 8:30 and we have been unsuccessful in nudging it back) and movies, meanwhile, seem to be getting longer? What happened to a tight 90 minutes? So we rarely even try these days. But finally we set aside two whole nights to watch “Tár,” which turned out to be much trippier and more intriguing than the discourse had made it sound. Although, yes, obviously it is concerned with “cancel culture” and the tension between pure aestheticism and moral judgment. Definitely worth two nights of my life! -Claire

We’ve been buying…

Well, it happened again. The new Hill House drop got me. I am absolutely obsessed with two of their new silhouettes: the Adeline dress, which is a perfect tenty mini (so comfy! so cute!), and the Matilda, which can be easily dressed down for a city dinner or dressed up for a wedding. (And yes I have actually already tried both of these on because I went to the Rockefeller Center store.) -Emma

We all know I’m also a Hill House girlie, but my order hasn’t arrived yet so I’m not making any recommendations as of this moment. Instead, a little life update: We finally just replaced our mostly-white quilt, after six years, innumerable pee splatters (from the baby) and poop smears (from our somewhat incontinent but snuggle-happy cat), and countless (surprisingly successful) washes. The final straw? Our son had an explosive nosebleed all over our bed. We actually did get the blood out, but I had already made up my mind; we deserved a new bedspread. I ordered this pick-stitch striped quilt, which was on sale at the time (sadly no longer) and matching shams. On the pro side, it’s heavy and sturdy and not literally dissolving from hundreds of scalding-hot washes; on the con side, it doesn’t fit in our small washing machine, so I have to figure out how to make sure the cat never touches it. -Claire

When a dating reality show called “MILF Manor” was announced not long ago, the reaction was immediate and unanimous: Wasn’t that a fake show on “30 Rock”? It does seem like a desperate TV exec, over a decade after the “MILF Island” episode of “30 Rock,” cribbed the concept of a reality show about hot moms for their own pitch.

But in practice, “MILF Manor” is somehow more tawdry than its fictional predecessor. “MILF Island” (tagline: "25 super-hot moms, 50 eighth grade boys, no rules”) seemed more akin to “Survivor” than a dating show. The bikini-clad moms competed in challenges, and the boys voted them off the island. “MILF Manor,” on the other hand, seems more akin to the scene-setting portion of a YouPorn clip than a dating show.

The eight hot moms who arrive at the Mexican villa, ready to date some younger men, quickly realize that the dating pool is made up of their own sons — one of them as young as 20. And while some attempts at romance are made, the show (at least the first two episodes) revolves more around forcing mother-son pairs into uncomfortably sexual situations: sharing rooms, touching their son’s bodies while blindfolded, and disclosing sexually graphic secrets. It’s the wink-wink-nudge-nudge it’s not really incest but isn’t it so taboo? formula that has produced an ever-growing wave of fauxcest porn featuring stepsiblings and stepparents. As Naomi Fry put it in her essay “The Mother Lovers of' ‘MILF Manor,’” the show is “haunted by the spectre of incest.”

It’s a striking contrast to another recent dating show about older women, “Back in the Groove,” which took “How Stella Got Her Groove Back” as its inspiration (down to the occasional presence of Taye Diggs as a host). “Back in the Groove” features three women in their early 40s, each looking for a fresh start after a season of struggle, who will be dating from a pool of 24 younger men. Though there’s a similar twist — one mom’s son turns out to be among the suitors — their relationship is treated respectfully rather than pruriently. And, more broadly, the show allows its three leads to be complete people with varied and complex desires, rather than setting them up for mockery and humiliation.

In this episode, we discuss the two shows — especially “MILF Manor” — and what it means that we need special, niche dating shows about older women dating younger men, plus the incursion of porn trends into reality TV and the freak-show-to-prestige-show reality TV spectrum. Enjoy! xo

We’ve been watching…

Comfy rewatches. I’ve spent the last couple of months in a bit of a depressive slump, which has reached its nadir in the past two weeks. Winter, which I used to love, is a bitch to get through now that I’m so careful about indoor socializing. The weather has been gray. I’ve been working through some old griefs that have resurfaced lately. Everything is fundamentally fine, but the zest has been lacking from life — and even from TV. Yes, I’ve been struggling to enjoy TV shows. That’s how you know you’re in a funk.

The best I’ve been able to do is fall back on an old favorite, “Lovesick,” which I’ve been watching in the evenings. If you’ve never seen it, it’s a delightful little show about a group of friends in Glasgow navigating love and friendship; the spine of the show is that one friend, Dylan, has contracted chlamydia and needs to contact all of his former sex partners to notify them. Despite this premise, it is, at its heart, a romcom. -Claire

I started Rian Johnson’s new Columbo-style procedural show, “Poker Face,” which stars Natasha Lyonne as a human lie detector who is on the run and solves a new case every week. I have only watched the pilot, but it was fantastic, and the case-of-the-week format allows for Johnson to get some really high-quality guest stars (Dascha Polanco! Benjamin Bratt! Adrien Brody!). -Emma

We’ve been reading…

Honestly, I’m having a bout of winter exhaustion which is impacting my ability to pay attention while I’m reading. Maybe it’s the fact that the sun has barely been out for the last two weeks, and thus I'm feeling antsy and a little low. So starting new books has been a bit of a slog. I have however been finding comfort in Heather Havrilesky’s Ask Polly columns, which feel like a salve on the days that feel the most hopeless. -Emma

Clearly we’re both in a deep pit of the winter doldrums. I look back on my carefree summer self as if she were a completely different person, someone who could process multiple complex sentences in a row without needing a nap. Anyway! Articles have been my salvation this week, perhaps the emotional highlight of which was the opportunity to leave my apartment to go to the cardiologist. After my appointment, I sat in a nearby diner, ate a stack of pancakes, and read Molly Fischer’s delicately cutting New Yorker profile of former New York Times Book Review editor and current opinion columnist Pamela Paul. Paul held a hugely influential position in the publishing world at the time when I covered books regularly, and her new role as an opinion writer (a terrible opinion writer) has been, um, retrospectively illuminating. So is the New Yorker profile. Then Paul put out a column revisiting, inexplicably, the “American Dirt” kerfuffle from several years ago, which inspired an immensely satisfying response from Max Read. Nothing like a little book world drama to make you feel alive again. -Claire

We’ve been listening to…

The latest episode of “If Books Could Kill,” about the ‘90s runaway bestseller, “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.” Extremely unsurprisingly, this bible of gender essentialism was written by a misogynist grifter! I honestly only knew the broad strokes of this book — I absolutely first heard about it via “Clueless” — so this deep dive was both fascinating and disturbing. -Emma

That episode is one of the few things that actually made me laugh this week! Thank you to Michael and Peter for your service. -Claire

We’ve been buying…

It’s incredible that I have reached 35 and yet I am still discovering so many new ways in which I have been doing my makeup wrong for years. I recently went down a rabbithole of makeup tutorial TikToks which led me to refresh my makeup. (Plus, a bunch of my most-loved products were fully running out.) I picked up the Dibs Beauty Desert Island Duo in shade 2, Charlotte Tilbury Lip Liner in Pillow Talk, my tried and true Make Up For Ever HD Foundation, and Make Up For Ever Ultra Matte HD loose setting powder which comes with a very cute little powder puff to apply it. -Emma

Emma, that’s because they keep coming up with new ways to do makeup! I promise you, it’s not your fault.

I have been trying to gently get back into exercise with a weekly yoga class, but all of my sports bras either have gaping cups or make me feel like my ribs are being cracked. Why is it so hard to find a sports bra for someone with essentially no boobs but a ribcage more than 28 inches around? I finally decided to invest in the Alo Yoga Wild Thing bra, which came highly recommended for my body type (flat), and it’s a winner — both comfortable and cute. And with just one yoga class a week, I only need to be able to afford one sports bra, right? -Claire

Let’s just be up front: we are by no means royal obsessives or enthusiasts. But we do live online, and the online chatter about Prince Harry and his buzzy new memoir “Spare,” which sold 1.5 million copies on its first day of publication, has been *loud.* The more we thought about it, the more it seemed like the Windsor family’s cultural resonance was worth discussing.

Like so many middle/elder millennials, any feelings of connection we do have to the Royal Family, originate with Princess Diana: the people’s princess, the woman who spent time in New York City’s AIDS wards, the mother of princes William and Harry, the tragic figure who died in a car crash in 1997 at the age of 36. (And for those of us who were children in 1997, a coveted purple bear Beanie Baby.)

After Diana’s death, her teenage sons became international media spectacles, becoming the targets of the same paparazzi who hounded their mother.

Even from across the pond, we knew that Will and Harry were H-O-T — especially William, with his floppy blonde hair and piercing blue eyes. So it’s not totally surprising that at least some Americans would sustain an interest in where the princes’ romantic lives ended up.

In the wake of Harry and wife Meghan Markle’s very contentious and public split with the monarchy — and retreat to Santa Barbara, California — we have gotten a veritable overload of royal headlines. This culminated with a Netflix documentary about Meghan and Harry, and then the release of “Spare.”

On this week’s pod, we get into all the juiciest revelations from “Spare,” why the monarchy is a human rights violation, and which royal sounds like the worst. Enjoy! xo

We’ve been reading…

Naomi Fry on new TLC reality show “MILF Manor” for the New Yorker. She explores what it says about the culture that there is now “a May-December dating show haunted by the spectre of incest.” A perfect essay, no notes. -Emma

“The Weeds,” a forthcoming novel by Katy Simpson Smith, which interweaves the stories of two botanists, over a hundred years apart, scouring the Roman Colosseum for every species of flora it contains. Both women are humble researchers working for established male scholars, and both are heartbroken, seeking solace in their rote, painstaking work. Taking the structure of a botanical encyclopedia, the narrative advances slowly, through emotional vignettes that begin to tile together and overlap, and it definitely requires some intentional focus to get into — but as a bonus, you will be inspired to Google Image search all kinds of obscure plant species. -Claire

We’ve been listening to…

Season 3 of the “Queen of the Con” pod, because I cannot get enough of scam stories. This season focuses on Danielle Miller, a self-proclaimed con artist who cut her teeth in some of New York City’s most elite institutions. -Emma

About a million years late, I have started listening to “Who? Weekly”! I think I resisted out of stubbornness (who among us hasn’t randomly decided to really stick it to the man by not consuming a piece of media we’d clearly love?), but I wanted to get into a new pod for the first time in a while, so I gave it a shot. It’s obviously deliciously funny and already keeping me more informed about all the randomly famous people out there. -Claire

We’ve been watching…

Screeners of Netflix’s forthcoming crossover mega reality dating show, “Perfect Match,” and let me tell you… from what I’ve seen I am HOOKED. We’ll be covering this one over on bonus episodes of “Love To See It,” and I am very excited to discuss the larger Netflix reality universe. -Emma

Screeners of the the upcoming season of “You,” which has kept me feverishly guessing in a way I didn’t think the show could still manage in season 4. There’s some genre experimentation, some absolutely bonkers twists — I can’t wait to have an in-depth discussion of it. -Claire

We’ve been buying…

Well, I did end up buying the Vince Camuto boots I wrote about last week, in the root beer suede, and they are FAB. Also got a new NEST reed diffuser for my living room, and it’s been so lovely to walk into my apartment every day and know it will smell good. -Emma

Dry shampoo from Rabbit Brush, which is applied with a brush instead of an aerosol spray and made from clay, clove, and black walnut hull. It’s very crunchy and “toxin-free,” but it also works really well, at least where I need it most: the bangs. Most dry shampoos leave mine just as stringy and limp as before I applied it, and this stuff actually makes them look soft and full again. Bonus (to me): it smells like cinnamon and clove. -Claire

In three seasons and less than a year in the life of Emily Cooper, our plucky Chicago girlboss’s Parisian adventures in love and marketing have somehow gone from infuriatingly absurd to deflatingly dull. Season three revolves around endless workplace furniture-moving that ultimately leaves our core Savoir team almost exactly where they began; on the romantic front, Emily, Mindy, and Sylvie all find themselves locked in deeply forgettable love triangles. After two vibrantly chaotic seasons about the misadventures of an American girl with all the depth of an Instagram photo but an unparalleled ability to inspire instant loathing, this season found the show treading water.

So what happened? Mostly, it’s the original sins of the show coming home to roost: a protagonist written with minimal emotional depth, and played with even less by a lead actress who struggles to display chemistry with any romantic interest; the show’s fixation on work and Emily’s workaholism, which set the stage for endless networking conversations and mind-numbing meetings; the absence of real stakes from any relationship except, perhaps, Camille and Gabriel. These flaws often added to the hilarity of the first two seasons, but by season three, they’ve settled into tedious ruts. It’s time for Emily to show some growth, or at least take a first step in that direction by experiencing an emotion more profound than mild regret.

In this episode, we offer our unfiltered takes on Emily’s funky blazers, basic-ass marketing pitches, and inability to have a conversation without turning it into a business meeting. Enjoy! xo

We’ve been reading…

“Spare,” by Prince Harry — not because of personal choice or interest, per se, but because of professional obligations. Lots of purple prose and scenery description, lots of sly jabs at Prince William. Stay tuned for more reactions! -Claire

Lol. SAME. Willy! Pa! The todger! Can’t wait to discuss. -Emma

We’ve been watching…

“The Circle” season 5: the all-singles season, baby! Absolutely delighted at this twist on the “Circle” formula, which amps up the sexting quotient to a significant degree. Eggplant emoji, peach emoji, eyes emoji, send message! -Claire

A screener of the upcoming Reese Witherspoon/Ashton Kutcher Netflix rom-com, “Your Place Or Mine,” which I *cannot wait* for it to come out next month so I can talk about it with people. It is such a treat to see some stars with big star power (and production power) really taking the rom-com seriously again. -Emma

We’ve been listening to…

Aubrey Gordon on the Burnt Toast by Virginia Sole-Smith podcast. I love Aubrey’s work and Virginia’s work, so to hear them in conversation is just brilliant. -Emma

We’ve been buying…

Even though I’ve been treating my nails like garbage lately (biting them, not oiling them or caring for them in any way), I got optimistic and bought some more Color Camp press-ons in the winter wool design. Love a neutral nail with a little bejeweled detail! Maybe I’ll even be inspired enough to apply them soon, despite the winter doldrums I’ve been idling in. -Claire

A soft, ultra-flattering, knit maxi dress from Abercrombie — currently 20% off! They were sadly sold out of my size in petites, so I went for the regular length. Also contemplating these embellished Vince Camuto knee-high boots, which have a rare wide-enough-calf for my legs and are absolutely gorgeous and also half off. -Emma