The Daily Beast Obsessed

Catherine the Great did not fuck a horse. That is the official position of The Great, Hulu’s zany period piece chronicling Russia’s longest-ruling female as she first arrives in the country and enters a loveless marriage to Emperor Peter III, theirs a shitty relationship that plants the seeds to a fruitful reign of power.

In early March, when it became clear that the wrath of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States was going to be widespread and unforgiving, a disturbing, if unsurprising report came out: Wealthy Americans were apparently contacting their doctors and asking if they could pay for an early vaccine. Cost was no object. Of course, there was—and is—no vaccine, leaving the rich at no advantage on that front.

It is perhaps the most miserable day yet. They’ve all been vaguely miserable, but this one, coming when it’s started to seem pointless to even tally the days of quarantine anymore, seems particularly bleak. The wind is so loud you can hear it indoors. The rain is coming in pathetic smatterings, as if even it couldn’t be bothered to try all that hard, and grayness blankets everything, like someone’s isolation depression was asked to draw a rendering of its general mood.

Daniel Radcliffe sits across from me in a staging area for Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’s interactive special, Kimmy vs. The Reverend. He’s wearing a scraggly (fake) beard and murmuring, so as not to disturb the filming taking place on the other side of the wall.

The new HBO series I Know This Much Is True is excellent. It’s also incredibly depressing. As in relentlessly, viscerally depressing. Right now, in these times, with the lot of us passing the time staring grimly out the window yearning for a wisp of hope or uplift to come our way. It is a hell of a time—with a hell of a mood—for what ranks as one of the most emotionally draining dramas in years to make its way to TV.

When Larry Wilmore welcomed controversial right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro on his podcast last year, his fans revolted. The former host of The Nightly Show wasn’t phased. “I’m like, whatever everybody, calm down,” Wilmore says on this week’s episode of The Last Laugh podcast. For Wilmore, Shapiro is a “fire-thrower” in “the same way that people on the left are fire-throwers.

To those of us isolated and claustrophobic in 500 square foot apartments, be grateful: at least we’re not stuck on Justin Bieber’s boat. As if we weren’t already suffering enough, the singer and his wife Hailey (née Baldwin) have offered viewers an “intimate look” inside their lives while quarantining at home in Toronto.

The upcoming Michelle Obama book-tour documentary, Becoming, presents a point of confirmation about what we might expect from the Obamas’ post-White House project. Namely, that it is primed to inspire individuals to integrate themselves into the halls of power rather than seek to undo them.

In this present moment of intense national (and global) stress, there’s nothing quite as cathartic as a simultaneously wrenching and heartening cry. In that regard, Rewind delivers in spades. Sasha Neulinger’s documentary is as affecting as they come, both for its portrait of unthinkable horrors perpetrated against the weak and defenseless, and for its optimism that healing—however arduously attained—is possible.

Does anyone actually want TV shows and movies to tackle life under coronavirus quarantine? Parks and Recreation’s one-time reunion special proved Thursday night that there may be exactly one case when the answer to that question is yes. And this was it. It’s inevitable that once the world opens up again, so will the floodgates on all the attempts to encapsulate this very unusual time on screen.