The Brunch round-up for January 17: The week and how it made us feel
1
Racing past
Breaking Bad took five seasons to slow-burn its way to Ozymandias, the episode in which bodies dropped, Walter White fell apart and TV history was made, with the first 10/10 on IMDb. It held for 12 years. Now, Heated Rivalry has pulled off the same feat in its first season, episode five, when pro-hockey rivals Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov finally admit their feelings for each other. Love is better than drugs, kids!
2
Fangirling hard
The Skarsgard men all look like Vikings, anyway. They’re tall, blonde, built for logging. So, it’s a delight to see how deeply uninterested they are in playing masculinity straight. Daddy Stellan just did a drag photoshoot at 74. Alexander plays a gay biker in the dom-com Pillion and is wearing sexy halter-neck tops at promos. Bill gave us Nosferatu’s Count Orlok — repulsive but still sexy. We’re here for it all!
3
Skipping the gym
Ozempic has made weightloss easier. It also shifted goalposts. Now it’s all about toned arms. Strength is literally the new show of status. Funny. We’d been repeatedly told that muscular women were chunky and ugly. How many new hoops are we expected to jump through before the game ends?
4
Wagging our tails
Losing to other actors is bad enough. But at this year’s Astra Awards, Ethan Hawke, Alison Brie, Sophie Thatcher and Sally Hawkins lost the Best Performance trophy to a dog. Indy, from the horror film Good Boy, delivered range, commitment and peak good boy energy. Let’s give pet actors their own category — and give every animal a trophy.
5
Feeling demonetised
Startup bros and Shark Tank hopefuls can pack it up. Malaysia has launched a “youth retirement home”. For RM 2,000 (about ₹45,000), burnt-out employees get rooms, food and free time to walk around a garden, stare into space, maybe have an original thought. We’re not mad, we’re jealous. We should have floated this business first.
6
Tuning in
The trailer for Ryan Murphy’s The Beauty gets weirder with each rewatch. Ashton Kutcher is a shady tech billionaire with a miracle drug that makes people hot. But it mutates into an STD. It turns Bella Hadid into a murderer. OK, Murphy’s last shows, All’s Fair and Grotesquerie, were awful. Are we still going to watch this one? Absolutely.
7
Spotting lizards
Why wasn’t Rose Byrne’s husband, Bobby Cannavale, in the audience going nuts when she won a Golden Globe for If I Had Legs I’d Kick You? He was at “a reptile expo in New Jersey,” picking up their new bearded dragon, she said in her speech. We listen and we don’t judge. We just cheer.
8
Clearing the backlog
Bring out the laptops, planners, and sticky notes. Young people are hosting Admin Nights – dedicated evenings with the besties, just to pay bills, clear inboxes, fill up paperwork and plan the week’s meals. Turns out, chores are less dull when you do them together. Wait, wait, wait. Shouldn’t we get paid leave for this if it boosts productivity?
