Last week I had a grumble about the cinema being on permanent half-term programming and then I read Kristen Stewart and Rachel Sennott in conversation for Interview magazine, and Stewart said this:
"Everything's just - reality's breaking. That's why movies are either so good or so bad right now. I feel like we don't really have the words for it."
Stewart said she was high, and when I read that and it landed with me, I definitely wasn't, but sometimes it takes a simple statement to capture something that is simply true. Movies are either so good, or so bad. I watched The Whale at the weekend. Christ.
They were talking in honour of Bottoms, which looks as if it will be in the Jawbreaker/Heathers vein of high school comedies and which I'm desperately excited to see. But more importantly, if Kristen Stewart says reality is breaking, then what are we going to do with our remaining time in this fractious and fractured world?
I have been watching The Ultimatum: Queer Love, an LGBTQ+ spin on the convoluted The Ultimatum format. One person gives their partner an ultimatum: either we get married, or I'm off, which sounds totally healthy and fine. As we all know, strong-arming someone into doing something they have previously expressed reluctance to do is the most romantic and emotionally steady path to true love. Then, to test the relationship - again, healthy - they have a "trial marriage" with a new person, and then they have a trial marriage with their original partner, and then at the end they have to say whether they're getting married or not. By comparison, Married At First Sight/Mafs is a Vatican treatise on the sanctity of marriage.
I have been waiting for a decent lesbian dating show forever, but wow, these female and non-binary contestants really make the case for why it has taken so long to get one. They talk. Do they talk. They talk, and they talk, and they talk. There are whole episodes of talking. It makes Andy Warhol's Empire look like a TikTok. Time stretches out endlessly as they discuss whether they are being honest to each other and themselves, and what they want, and whether they know what they want. Do they know? They don’t know.
I got through the first trial marriages, but by the time they were just living with their partners again, I found that it was perfectly feasible to skip entire chunks of the episodes. I have a lot of personal experience of shouting "say that again I can't hear you" from every room in the house at least 429 times a day; while there is a Black Mirror-esque appeal to watching that domestic rhythm reflected back at me on screen - "What's for dinner?" "I don't know, what's in the fridge?" ad infinitum - I can't say I felt I was spending my viewing time wisely on it.
So I skipped to the end and watched the final ultimatum, or is the first ultimatum the big ultimatum, and then the end is the proposal, but surely they've already proposed, anyway let's not get stuck in the logistics of it. Then I found that if I skipped all the boring talky parts in that, too, I could get through the episode in roughly five minutes. Then I thought I should watch the Reunion, which was as terrible as Netflix reunion shows often are, and took place a year ago, so is out of date anyway, so I skipped most of that too, then I read an article about what they were all up to now and realised I probably could have just watched the trailer and read that article.
There are people who will freely admit to reading the last page of a book first. The thought horrifies me. I won't read a review of a book I want to read until I've read the book first, in case it spoils it. I am chronically tied to finishing books that I'm not enjoying, because I feel obliged to complete them. I have given up on maybe three books in the last few years, almost all of them because I can't bear reading about animal cruelty, or posh people who don't seem to know how posh they are. That does exclude quite a lot of books, but I've got a good radar for it now.
I have fewer qualms about abandoning TV. I'd put in enough time with The Ultimatum to want to know what happened, but not enough so that I genuinely cared enough to add more hours of inane chat to my life. So I skipped to the end. I've done it plenty of times before. Terrible murder-mystery that somehow gets enough of a claw into you that you need to know whodunnit? Just watch the episode that tells you. So-so comedy that nevertheless has a series-long narrative arc built into it for no apparent reason? Watch the last episode, mate, you'll be fine. It is absolutely okay to skip to the end. If your investment is light, your time is precious and your curiosity is mild, then reality's breaking, so why not just go for it.
End Credits
'Rachel Sennott and Kristen Stewart Have a Slightly High Conversation' for Interview magazine.
The Ultimatum: Queer Love is on Netflix, which allows you to skip forward in 10-second bursts.
I have many questions about why they only use metal tumblers and wine glasses, or medieval tankards Ikea-style, on The Ultimatum: Queer Love, no matter where they are or what they are doing. They must take them with them to bars and restaurants. Why?
'What are the chaotic queers of The Ultimatum: Queer Love getting up to now?', an essential time-saving article on Autostraddle.
The Watch List
I will be spending the weekend with new Black Mirror, perhaps with some thoughts next week.
Once Upon A Time In Northern Ireland ends this week (Monday, BBC2); it's been absolutely excellent, devastating and human and even funny, at times.
Looking forward to Bridget Christie's The Change, on Channel 4 on Weds, particularly as it apparently has a "folklore consultant" in the credits.
And Just Like That is back on Thursday, and as much as I'd like to spend my breaking reality reading Proust, I will definitely be watching this instead.
If anyone is watching Poker Face in real time, the last episode is on Friday, on Sky Max, and even though the penultimate episode was intensely stressful, I can't think of a better crafted, more enjoyable show this year.
Also for anyone who doesn't have Glastonbury tickets (hiya) we can at least watch it vicariously on the BBC.
Recent work
A review of Sarah Beeny's documentary on breast cancer.