Let's Get It Poppin', Castle Daddy!

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Pop culture be POPPIN’ this week!

A brief rundown, where I will link to absolutely nothing nor add any additional identifying information because it’s called GLOBAL CURRENT EVENTS, LOOK IT UP:

• Jax and Brittney “separated” - aka, no one asked for nor has plans to watch their new show “The Valley” and so they need a (desperate, transparent) PR move to drum up interest. Except!!! No one cares about their marriage! Britney never even should have married that man in the first place!!

• Speaking of transparent PR moves, K. Cav has a new boyfriend who’s, like, 20 years younger than her? You will NEVER see me begrudge a winter/summer romance where the woman is the winter (except when it comes to Sam and Aaron Taylor-Johnson…she 100% groomed him and the details about it are actually pretty gross), but y’all…I just don’t see it. I mean…for funsies? Sure. But like…a relationship?? Nah.

• The Firm tried to fool the public with a grainy Backgrid phone photo of someone they want us to think is Kate Middleton. However, the location was identified as being around the outer grounds of Windsor and not one of the private backroads; there appears to be no security around; it’s weird that Kate’s mom is squinting into the sun while “Kate” is wearing sunglasses (i.e, very obvious that they wanted Kate’s mom to be easy identified but used sunglasses to somewhat mask the face of “Kate”); once the photo got cleaned up by some sleuths on the internet…anyway, we’re all pretty sure that it’s not Kate! And I know that some people out there are all, “she’s entitled to her privacy” but A. She is to some degree but also actually isn’t, as a Royal figure, plus #justice4Meghan B. Even Sausage Fingers managed to release official photos and videos of him going through cards and well-wishes, and that guy has maybe three more months to live (and I will continue to call him Sausage Fingers until he actually makes things right with Harry and Meghan) C. There is NO WAY the firm would ever approve a photo I could have taken with my 2005 Blackberry for the press if that was actually Kate

• Leah of OG RHONY is suing Bravo, saying that producers caused her relapse, and that Andy Cohen doesn’t just do coke, he pressures HW’s to do it with him and then gives them favorite edits if he does. Y’all. I’m a 29 yr old woman who has literally never done a hard drug in my entire life and even I was like (in my best Jerry Seinfeld impression), “Who doesn’t know that Andy does blow?” #allegedly And was it pressuring or just being polite? Drugs are expensive! If someone offers to share with you, you should compliment their manners, at the very least! Plus, if you’re gonna include allegations like that in your lawsuit, you better be naming names! I wanna know who stood in the backroom of WWHL and had to say, “Drugs? Hahaha, c’mon guys, let’s go outside” the way they taught us to in D.A.R.E. Because we know it wasn’t Dorinda, Luanne, Tamra, Sonja, or Marysol!!! #allegedly

• Lala is pregnant with her 2nd child and announced it during a SponCon IG post for vitamins, which is just…so hilariously on-brand

• Bethenny is canceling her “ReWives” podcast, which is a thing that no one actually listened to, so that’s cool

• We got the first part of the RHOBH reunion this week: Dorit showed herself to be even more of a tone-deaf Karen on RHOBH, Annemarie continued to be a flop, and Crystal really shined out with her “You’re not a part of it, so don’t worry about it” when Annemarie tried to bring up stuff that happened on past seasons (when she wasn’t even on the show!). The big drag is that Andy seems to be doing the sympathetic “let’s hear her out” thing with Annemarie, so that makes me nervous that she is, in fact, coming back next season.

• We also got the first two parts of the RHOM reunion this week! We’ll probably talk more about RHOM next week because if you are not watching it yet, WHY ARE YOU PUNISHING YOURSELF - it is one the BEST Housewives casts we’ve EVER HAD. Anyway, the women all looked STUNNING - seriously, even when certain cast members were being incredibly annoying, you didn’t mind it so much because you still had a gorgeous look to feast your eyes on. Speaking of incredibly annoying, Larsa still refuses to take accountability for outing Guerdy’s cancer diagnosis to other cast members. She is also STILL lying about having sex multiple times every single night. When she was on Kardashians, she tried to tell everyone that her and Scottie had sex three times a night, then later she said it was four times, and now she’s trying to lie in our faces once again and say that her and Marcus have sex, to completion, five times every single night. In the words of Danielle Schneider, she is such a dumb, mean baby.

  

• Rachel is suing Sandoval and Ariana for revenge porn. I hope Rachel takes Tom for all he’s worth and publicly humiliates him in front of a court of law and a jury of his peers! I hope she puts another restraining order on Scheana, just to punish Shee-Shu for being so annoying about it! I hope Rachel also sues Schwartz for whatever it is she can sue him for that will ruin his entire life! I hope she sues Lisa and becomes the new CEO of Vanderpump Enterprises and then pulls a Poison Ivy situasch on The Ghost of Ken and doesn’t just become the newest Mrs. Vanderpump but also inherits Villa Rosa and becomes stepmom to Pandora and that other kid! I do not want her to sue Ariana and think that part’s a mistake, but like one of my Discord pals noted, I am also very much looking forward to seeing the “Single AF Cocktails” coffee table book be entered into evidence in a court of law!!!

• J.Lo’s movie This Is Me…Now and documentary The Greatest Love Story Never Told came out last week and we are gonna TALK ABOUT IT next week. So do your homework and watch both of them before next Tuesday so that you are prepared to present your opinions to the class in the comments!

(Plunder My) Castle Daddy

Y’all, I don’t even like competition reality TV: I don’t like tension, I don’t like physical challenges, I don’t like high stakes, I don’t like having to listen to some idiot from Florida talking about strategy or alliances. I like watching Women Doing Things and Real Estate Professionals Talking About Someone Else Doing Things and Couples Talking About Doing That Thing That The Other Girl In the Pod Was Never Gonna Do For You, and that’s IT.

So when The Traitors first premiered, I assumed it wasn’t for me. It had a mix of reality TV stars that I was sort of interested in watching, and everyone kept saying how good it was, but I was like, competition reality? I’ve got taxes to do!

But for once in my life, I was wrong! I loved it so much that I not only watched the first season of the US version, but also the UK and the Australia versions (and once I get done with my current writing project, I’m diving into NZ and Canada’s versions, too).

Unlike most people who have an opinion, I actually really liked the mix of reality TV stars and normies in the first US season. I thought having normal people on the cast helped the reality TV stars let down their guard a bit, and that made for a fun mix of heartwarming and heartbreaking. Also, some of the regular people were amazing…like Quentin, who was ALWAYS wrong and yet so sure that he was always right, and Andie, who I would literally die for (and also was very attracted to 🤷🏻‍♀️).

A lot of people disagree with me about season one, though, and say that getting rid of the normies and having it be all reality TV stars for season two brings way more conflict and drama. But, like, why do we have to go for conflict and drama ALL the time? It drives me nuts when people want to turn every show into Big Brother or Real Housewives of New Jersey. Why can’t we just have something cozy and fun stay cozy and fun???

Regardless, it has become appointment television for me - LIT-ER-ALLY. At 7:00 on Thursday nights, I put a few Pillsbury Chocolate Cookies in the oven, brew some Vanilla Comoro tea, and then camp out on my bed just in time to live watch with my Garbage World Discord when Peacock drops the new episode around 7:40. There have literally been weeks when I’ve thought it was a whole day ahead and then almost cried when I realized it was Wednesday and not Traitors Thursday. I don’t know if that says more about how much this show means to me or how empty my life has become, but also I do not care. Queen Elizabeth had Prince Phillip to be her strength and stay; I have this show!

Here’s all of my very correct opinions about this show, which include spoilers if you haven’t watched:

Back on the MTV Message Boards waaaay back in 2002 when Real World: Las Vegas was airing, I still remember the first time someone used the nickname “Trashelle.” And all the way here in 2024, the nickname still applies! No one is ever going to tell me that her accusations toward Peppermint weren’t just a little bit racially coded, because we all know that they WERE. So then Peppermint has to go home and we have to continue to be subjected to those outfits??? If it were up to me, I would’ve banished her just for that! And then her whole thing with the Shields, and how no one listens to her at the Round Table…people don’t want to help protect or listen to you because they don’t like you and they don’t think you’re smart. Nothing in the rules says you can’t banish a Faithful for being truly annoying! After all, if you gotta split your prize money with someone, it should at least be someone you like!

All those big-booty Big Brother and Survivor hoes - fans and players included - thought they were going to come in here and absolutely take over and dominate both the show and Bravo crew with their “strategy” and “gameplay”, and so it has been the most satisfying thing EVER to see Ms. Phaedra outlast both Dan and Pavarti. Phaedra may not have been the most strategic of Traitors, but she was DEEPLY underestimated by Dan and Pavarti, and the way she eviserated both of them in the Tower after they tried to play her and then again left no crumbs at the Round Table until her last night…LEGENDS BALL VIP.

Also her constantly trying to shift focus with food is always going to be so hilarious to me:

That’s not to say that I don’t like and respect some of the competition reality stars. Pavarti was annoying for more than just her headbands but is admittedly a tenacious legend; Sandra scares me, honestly, with how clever and observant she is…that bitch definitely stole somebody’s throne in a past life; and CT...I mean, the dude wore Johnny Bananas as a backpack during one of the greatest The Challenge moments of all time.

And that of course, brings us to the greatest love story that HAS been told: Phaedra and CT.

As someone who has been in love with CT since Real World: Paris (“her body is on fiah”) and then fell even MORE in love with him during the CT and Diem (RIP) of it all, it’s been sort of beautiful to see so many non-MTV people now share in the affection for that babelicious Boston beefcake with a hah’t of gold.

You know who else is in love with CT, though? Trishelle. Am I right, because I know I ain’t wrong: If my “buddy” didn’t light my torch to protect me from banishment, my guys friends can attest to the fact that I would’ve been like, “wooooow, okaaaay” and then would have just spent the rest of my life passively-aggressively bringing it up every time we had a couple of drinks. The only time I have ever cried over something a guy friend did and then hoped and waited for him to come and find me to talk about it was when I was in love with him.

Speaking of romance!! Peter and Ekin-Su totally did it at the Courtyard Marriott where the contestants are reported to have actually stayed vs the castle (though I WANT to believe that they’re staying at the castle, so that is what I am going to continue to CHOOSE to believe). My Discord peeps were initially suprised and even disgusted by this, until I had to remind them that Peter is perhaps most well known among Bachelor Nation as the guy who did it four times one night in a windmill with Hannah Brown. So basicaly, good for Ekin-SU?? Man though, that guy got ANNOYINGGG and cocky towards the end, right? Pilot Pete and his Petey Pals proved that no one cares if you’re right if you’re also being insufferable about it.

But now that this show is close to the end, I’m struggling a little bit with who I want to win. Last season was Tuff Stuff, because I loved Andie, a Faithful, but I also loved Cirie, a Traitor. That’s how I feel this season, too. I love Kate, though I don’t think she’s been as good playing the game from the other side as we all thought we would. I would be okay with Sandra winning, since I think she’s played as perfect of a game as she could - she stayed quiet, kept to the middle, wasn’t too vocal at Roundtables but just assertive enough, and has routinely caught onto things that others have completely missed. Sheree is the Quentin of our time - she gives us nothing but ignorant guesses and fails to move the game forward but she’s still here, all the way at the end. Same for MJ, who is unintentionally hilarious both in outfits and gameplay.

And honestly, I don’t care if any of the above win, but I just don’t want Trishelle to win, and I REALLY want CT to win.

I do think, though, based on reunion photos, that it’s going to be Trishelle and CT at the end. This is JUST a guess - I haven’t read any spoilers, I don’t know anything about anything - but in the span of the season, it also makes a lot of sense that Trishelle and CT would finally buddy up for real and make The Challenge alumni proud by successfully casting any lingering Traitors out.

And then, at the final fire, when Trishelle holds both of CT’s hands and confesses that she’s always had a little bit of a crush on him, she’ll wait for him to say it back, and he’ll just smile and drop her hands and shake his head, trying to explain that he’s already in love with me, a 29 yr old woman on the brink of her 30s, whom he doesn’t even know yet, but who keeps showing up in his dreams, whispering “Come to me, CT…I’m in Minnesooootaaaaaa. Coooome to meeee.” I gotta find hah, he thinks to himself. My haht has been set on fiah. So I gotta go get in mah cah, drive to the airport yahd, get on a plane, and go to Minnesotah, and fahnd hah.

What do you guys think? Who do you think Kate is gonna murder next? Who are you rooting for to win at the end (and who do you think is actually going to win at the end?)?

Speak your piece in the comments so we can all argue about it!!!!!

That’s it for this week!

Drugs not hugs,

-AC