winter break's pop culture winners
Plus some quick & dirty London eating recs
Happy new year! I went to London for a few days over Christmas and was shocked at how East Asian-ified it had become since I was last there in college: Every block from Shoreditch to Soho seemed to have an udon spot, a hotpot/KBBQ place, or highly specific Sichuan restaurant on it. Maybe I just didn’t notice restaurants in general when I was a broke study abroad kid there, or maybe it’s the influence of the East Asian diaspora riche on probably every international city these days? (See: any block near NYU in Manhattan.) The hotpotification of the urban landscape is something I would like to learn more about/contribute toward…
Anyway I have a short snappy list of where you should eat next time you’re in London: 1) Fuschia Dunlop’s spot Barshu, which is delightful in every way but also because they’ll sell you baijiu in like a normal amount (not a $300 bottle); 2) Brick Lane Beigel Shop (or Beigel Bake if you want to brave the TikTok crowds) for a salt beef beigel — sounds kind of insane, but was the most mind-altering bite I’ve had in recent memory; 3) Dishoom for breakfast, of course, specifically the sausage, bacon & egg naan roll that I will think about every time I have a now sub-bar breakfast sandwich for the rest of my life; 4) Rita’s to feel like you’re still in the LES but with better crab casino; 5) Tayyabs because every other place will be closed for Christmas but Tayyabs is going to be there for you and they’ll even take reservations :)
If you also suffered through the altogether disappointing final season of Stranger Things this holiday season, I’m afraid the only compensation comes in the form of Freddie deBoer going in on how catastrophically sucky it was (and he wrote this only going off the first four episodes — Freddie, we need the final judgment!). You can kind of skip the stuff at the top about the state of criticism and just sink your teeth into the specific issues taken with the show’s over-reliance on nostalgia and nerds-win ideology; it all made me think we are truly not being mean enough about how this show has fallen from grace, possibly because the fact of the attached child actors (who are pretty much no longer children anyway) shields it from true scorn. Here’s a taste:
Why is Eleven dressed as Josh Brolin from Goonies this season? For no reason at all, obviously, literally no deeper reason. But you ’memba Goonies, if you’re part of the Stranger Things core audience! Just like last season, when there was a character named Argyle for absolutely no artistically meaningful purpose. Artistic purpose wasn’t the point; the point is that you ’memba Argyle from Die Hard, and that makes your brain fire and you go “oooh.” And that’s this entire fucking show. That’s all it’s got. It’s a parade of absolutely empty references for the dumbest fucking people alive to coo and clap to. Congratulations.
The other point I would add to Freddie’s is like, I get that it’s just a children’s? (yet surprisingly gory, so actually that whole categorization is up for debate) TV show that dragged on for way too long and Game of Thrones-ed itself, but the fact that it was this show that put Netflix on its current runway as a billion-dollar franchise producer/the predominant force in Hollywood means that we don’t really need to see many further examples of what values and concerns are at play inside headquarters at the Big Bad Red N. (Also worth noting that the Duffer Brothers are going to Paramount now that that’s all done!) Clearly the story is not the central product anymore! How tragic. I remember staying up until 4 a.m. watching the first season of Stranger Things not, I think, because I was 10 years younger and full of guile, but because it was a genuinely riveting show; this final season felt like being on the receiving end of one big “ehhhh yea i feel like that’s good enough” shrug.
Elsewhere in holiday pop culture (don’t worry, we’ll get to the real touchpoint soon), The Ankler’s Daniel Parris put out a fascinating piece quantifying why the Avatar franchise kind of has like…no cultural footprint? I.e. When’s the last time you bought an Avatar toy or saw someone dressed up for it for Halloween? Can you as an adult human who’s seen at least two of the films even…name the main characters? (“Blue Zoe Saldaña” does not count.) I like the graphic that tries to contextualize the film’s “meme presence,” or rather, the lack of one. Perhaps we are all just misjudging James Cameron’s true feat in making a film that elides all irony???
Anyway the real pop culture story of the last month is the spectacular bolt of frisson brought on by Heated Rivalry, whose finale was so personally highly anticipated that I spent an hour in London on xmas day trying to figure out how to, in my own words, “do VPN on phone because HBO doesn’t exist in the UK.” The horny show + winter break combo (Bridgerton Season 1, lest we forget, came out on Christmas Day in 2020) is tried and true, but what was especially impressive is how lead actors Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams seemed to break the internet in the week between episode #5 and the finale with what seemed like a major last-minute press roll-out they were somehow very, very prepared for, considering the show was created for a Canadian streaming service for like, $5, and also these were like literally the weeks leading up to Christmas when normally you can’t even get an email answered????
In that one week (Dec. 19-26), I counted:
(1) GQ Hype cover
(1) Teen Vogue “compliment battle” video which definitely happened on the same day as…
And Them’s video interview. Whew! There are junkets, and then there was this!
There’s a Hollywood Reporter story on how nice it is to see the actors having fun on their press tour together, but it doesn’t get into what I want to know, which is…when did shit hit the fan for assigning editors and the respective press teams, and how did they coordinate it all, because it seems like these ~9 disparate shoots happened within a matter of like…the preceding calendar week. Why else would they drop on like, the same day or so? Traditionally, publications are negotiating for exclusivity windows — no one wants to cover Timmy or Odessa, for example, right after someone else big just did; I don’t think I’ve ever seen NYT and GQ and Vulture and Interview cover anyone at the same time like this. But concerning the exponential Heated Rivalry hype and its short window (six episodes! Ted Sarandos is probably feeding his hands underneath a zamboni right now!) (though actually, no, I’m sure he’s doing juuust fine), I’m assuming all the usual rules were out the window. Everyone wanted a piece of HR, and the hype multiplied on itself.
Meanwhile, the two actors also apparently had time to sign on for Seasons 2 & 3 of the show, plus had time to narrate an audiobook (and do a fantasy-themed shoot and some press for that). And how was your winter break??? Yeah you’re looking at your screentime stats feeling like a bit of a dipshit eh??? (JK JK. I will not reveal why I was on Google Chrome for 7.5 hours last Sunday because I don’t even understand it myself.)
Finally, every January I do a big sale of classified listings in Deez Links so that you no longer have an excuse to not promote your podcast/newsletter/Hinge account/website/employability/book/really, anything. I want you to promote your stuff in this newsletter in front of 38,000 very brilliant readers. I usually do $250 per listing; for all of January, I’m doing them for $100 a pop. So email me your 280-character length text with any links to delia@deezlinks.com, and I’ll get ‘em in this month’s issues! xoxo, D.
Yes thank you for pointing out the way everyone in media was working so hard. Let us not forget the 20-minute Hudson Williams skin care free associative video The Cut posted on Instagram, which doesn’t usually let anyone ever post anything that long. Like, how did they pull that off? Who pulled what and paid what? And while people keep mentioning the Hudson back arch on Twitter that had 24 million views back in mid-December, how many views are we at now?
HBO Max is supposedly launching in the UK soon, when we will fiiiinally get The Pitt! I have also failed to use a vpn to get around this.