Post-Pourri: March 2025
'Shrinking', Post Malone Oreos, 'Mickey 17', and a house that sort of looks like Paddington Bear
(NOTE: This one’s longer and might get cut off in email form. Click the title to read through in the more comfortable Substack showroom!)
I’m writing more, which you can probably tell. That’s good! Certainly there’s more time when you’re unemployed again (that’s Hollywood, baby) and no longer using PingID 300 times a day to “authenticate” yourself on one more Entertainment Partners website. I am in fact one of the more authentic people I know. If a computer can’t see that, I can’t help them.
Some bigger pieces in the offing about finally KOing my Facebook account two decades in, and — I know I’ve promised this one for over a year — “My Year of Lyfting Dangerously,” which I’m hoping to get out sometime before the midterm elections. But those require thoughtfulness, vulnerability; the honest truth is it’s much easier to just talk about stuff I’ve been watching, eating, watching again, and seeing (the original watching). In any case, Lifting Fog remains FREE TO READ1 and therefore immune to criticism. Leave that to me!
‘Shrinking’
I’d like to think my hatred of the Peabody Award-winning ‘Ted Lasso’ is pretty well-documented on this Substack. In posts that have absolutely nothing to do with ‘Lasso’, I’ve written:
‘The Bear’ isn’t a comedy. It can make you chuckle from time to time, smile a little, but… it’s not a comedy! ‘Ted Lasso’ wasn’t funny, but it was definitionally a comedy.
Or:
There’s a Christmas episode in season two so cloying I’ll never forget it, the primary conflicts of which are a kid bullying Roy Kent’s niece over her bad breath (I thought this show was about soccer) and making sure a holiday dinner for London-stuck players has enough tables. Riveting stuff! In the first story, the girl out-nices her bully, convincing him to change his ways; in the latter, would you believe it, they find enough tables. (It is implied this happens due to kindness.) This show has won the Emmy for Best Comedy two years in a row.
And just to drive the point home about the ways in which I think a gentle TV show can both reflect and maybe cause a country-wide infantilization:
The national decline in both religious practice and governmental confidence has resulted in Americans now looking toward entertainment as a form of moral instruction, re-casting TV/film characters as teachers we should be following, and not fallible dramatic creations (YES, I’m talking about ‘Ted Lasso’. I’m always talking about ‘Ted Lasso’)
Anyway, I quote myself here not merely to highlight my own consistent h8r bona fides, but to explain why for two years I’d avoided another Apple show, ‘Shrinking’, which comes from the same creative team2 and suggested a very ‘Lasso’-ish bent, only in the world of Pasadena psychotherapists and not British footballers. “Not for me!” I thought, and skipped merrily along, warmed by my self-satisfaction.
But recently, more and more trusted friends have been banging the drum for ‘Shrinking’, which apparently has turned out to be less “the show we need right now” (‘Lasso’’s official tagline, basically) and more “a funny show that’s good, and also thirty minutes tops.”
Reader, they had me at “thirty minutes tops.”
It’s good! An incredibly solid comedy, light on its feet with a strong laugh ratio and network bones you can feel even if the characters occasionally say “fuck,” awkwardly. ‘Shrinking’ is loudly, proudly, a SITCOM — the denial of which really started to rankle me on ‘Lasso’, ballooning to 40 and 50 minute episodes about suicide and/or the sexual orientation of minor characters. Yes, ‘Shrinking’ can get sad — it’s a streaming show, this is required by law — but in a way that strengthens the underlying comedic architecture, rather than demolish it. The main pleasure just comes from spending time with these characters (not for nothing, they’ve already produced 22 episodes in two seasons, practically radical today), each of them the right balance of sitcom predictable and streaming dramedy real.
Apple marketed ‘Shrinking’ on the shoulders of Harrison Ford’s TV debut, a not uncommon gimmick of the past half-decade. Wait wait wait — this movie star is deigning to do television? With all the little people?? The irony on ‘Shrinking’ is that Ford’s not the lead, and to a large extent barely treated like a star. He’s one part of a larger sitcom ensemble, no more or less important than Jason Segel or Jessica Williams or, like, Michael Urie (okay, he’s more important than Michael Urie). Again, sitcom math! Add (1) a compelling premise, explored in simple but clear episodic stories and (2) an array of sharp, funny performers who can bounce off each other in endless permutations and you get (3) a show that could theoretically run forever, if Apple lets it. I just need the executives over there with decision-making power to do one thing for me. And that’s
Post Malone Oreos
Peak TV may have ended with the writers and actors strikes two years ago but for every industry on a downswing, another finds itself in full bloom. That’s the snacking world right now, an absolute Gold Rush of flavor experimentation — even flavor recklessness — buttressed, for better or worse, by a strong emphasis on brand collaboration.
Oreo has been the poster child for this for well over a decade now, unafraid to collab with ANYONE. We’re talking:
Swedish Fish Oreos
Dunkin’ Donuts Mocha Oreos
Peeps Oreos
Coca-Cola Oreos
The list goes on and on — here, if you want the full roster — in ways that go beyond logic, propriety, or frequently taste. So it is with some skepticism that I picked up their latest effort, a new cookie inspired by recording artist/guy who fell asleep first at the sleepover and got a dick drawn on his face, Post Malone.
Guys… I’m here to tell you that Post Malone absolutely IS a flavor, and an all-timer at that. The tech specs: one chocolate and one vanilla cookie enfolding a layer of salted caramel x shortbread creme3. Now, on paper, none of this sounds extraordinary. Certainly it doesn’t sound like the singer of “Circles” or “Sunflower”.
But the harmony of it all, the way each component winds up nullifying another’s excesses, softening what could have been a frankly childish grab-bag? On its own, salted caramel skates dangerously close to sickening. Paired with chocolate, it’s an elegant dream. Ditto vanilla and shortbread, two halves forever trying to be made whole, if only for a brief moment.
There’s artistry here, my friends. There’s purpose. Who knows if Post Malone Oreos (PMOs) embody the spirit of Post Malone, but if the man had any hand whatsoever in shaping this flavor — if he was there in the lab mixing, matching, sampling; making music with saturated fats — then I have to respect his taste, if not his music. PMOs are the best thing Nabisco has cooked up in years and deserve a permanent place on the shelf.
‘Mickey 17’: Lost in translation
Okay, so I need to start this (non-spoiler!) review by acknowledging that I am:
far too online and
far too swayed by the conversation surrounding a thing, frequently more than I am the thing itself
This is not news to you; I just spent 500 words up there rehashing my dislike of ‘Ted Lasso’, a show I would not have disliked half as much if not for the religious cult that sprang up in its wake. I’m working these things out in therapy, and here on Substack.
So when I scanned Twitter the other night for early ‘Mickey 17’ reactions, trying to gauge where to set expectations for Bong Joon-ho’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning masterpiece ‘Parasite’, and all I kept reading were some variation of “fun and quirky!” or “a little disjointed, but who cares when the movie’s so fun” or “Robert Pattinson is having fun!” or “Bong is having fun!”… I knew this was gonna be a rough ride for ol’ Hendog.
Some would say comparing a knowingly arch sci-fi romp like ‘Mickey’ to a tragicomic thriller like ‘Parasite’ is unfair, that every movie should be judged on its own terms, a filmmaker allowed to stretch in whatever direction they want. Sure! Yes! I fully subscribe to the “blank check” model regularly afforded winners of Hollywood’s biggest prize — every Best Picture-winning director4 should be allowed to make whatever they want as a follow-up. But is it unreasonable to expect that a director who’s proven himself so adept at thematically rich filmmaking, who knows how to marry sophisticated commentary to low-brow stories, might still utilize those skills in his follow-up?
‘Mickey’ starts strong, with a killer hook (Robert Pattinson endlessly reborn as copies of himself) and deep “I want to know about every random thing you’re showing me” world-building that suggests a movie that could go anywhere. But any time it does begin to go somewhere… it stops, abandoning one idea (say the shared consciousness of two people with one identity) for another (fascists colonizing an alien planet) and then another (threesome with yourself, bro) and another (aliens are goopy but also cuddly), none of them cohering into one story, let alone one tone.
I stopped thinking about ‘Parasite’ pretty quickly and started thinking about ‘Poor Things’, a movie that operates on a similarly elevated tonal level5. Why did that work for me and this one not? Probably, it boils down to consistency. Everything in ‘Poor Things’ was wacky, but it was consistently wacky. Emma Stone (deranged, manic) bounces off Ramy Youssef (deranged, anxious), then Mark Ruffalo (deranged, horny). Each character and episode different, but the overall feeling the same throughout. Meanwhile, ‘Mickey’ swipes through scenes that are sincere, arch, flippant, gross, and yes, wacky… but pointed in what direction? Working in service of whose story?
In all of this, Pattinson winds up sidelined in his own movie. And dude’s playing multiple characters! Or, well, he’s playing multiple parts in what amounts to a live-action Looney Tunes6. Is the performance “fun”? Insomuch as Pattinson is a capable and interesting actor, yes. He’s Adam Driver, he’s Michael Shannon, he’s Nicolas Cage; he knows how to electrify a scene, whatever he’s asked to do. But in the end, in every incarnation of Mickey, it’s largely a funny accent in want of a character. That’s pretty much the movie at large, too.
And, as promised, a house that looks like Paddington
I live in LA, which means there’s every possibility this place was recently painted as some sort of environmental marketing for ‘Paddington in Peru’, now in theaters. But I choose to live in a world of serendipity and magic, where something so simple as a tri-color apartment building may in fact contain the spirit of a fictional British bear. Open your eyes to the art that’s all around you or whatever!
…with a paid option if you are so inclined
A team I would like to go on record as, independent of ‘Lasso’, respecting the hell out of, particularly Bill Lawrence, who created ‘Scrubs’ and ‘Cougar Town’! If he’s reading
Oreo is legally required to call it “creme,” not cream, as it contains no dairy
Who sometimes also win Best Director, but not always
And also featured an over-the-top performance by Mark Ruffalo
A live-action ‘Looney Tunes’ NOT shelved by Warner Bros!