Death by sequel

My irritation with sequels, the (unchanged) VS fashion show and a summery lil spritz

Thank you for reading this issue of The Middle. I hope you enjoy this selection of my thoughts, feelings, etc. Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss a single sentence. Sian x

Thoughts

• Let’s get this out of the way up top: the people who were making content (i.e. GRWM, hurricane house prep, etc) during the hurricanes in Florida are fucking idiots and you can not convince me otherwise. Using a natural disaster to get eyeballs on a TikTok you’ve made as you ignore advice to evacuate your house for your own personal safety is the height of delusion and arrogance. I literally boil with anger when I see this. There is nothing endearing about a situation like this, where many people have lost their entire homes and belongings, if not their lives. Not everything is content. 

• Not sure why people are expecting Alex Cooper to interview Kamala Harris like she’s a hard hitting BBC political reporter. That’s not her vibe and she’s made it very clear it never has been. If you don’t like it, maybe don’t listen? It’s really quite simple. Also when is this fucking election over? I think I know more about how the US government works than my own.

• The Victoria’s Secret fashion show. Not watching, will consume via social media. My impressions: underwhelming. It’s been too long, too much scandal and not enough meaningful change. The void was filled by the Savage X Fenty juggernaut, so anything VS was going to come up with now was going to look shit unless they burnt it to the ground and started again. And they didn’t. Can’t stop thinking about how they put their ‘plus-size’ models in the most covered-up, conservative outfits. Sigh.  

• Friend texting me with great concern about the resurgence of capris aka pedal pushers. Feel like these are more in my wheelhouse than the god awful Bermuda shorts getting around though. 

• News that Dolly Alderton is writing the Netflix TV series remake of Pride & Prejudice has me very excited and incredibly hypocritical once you read my essay below. I don’t give a shit, I’m here for it. 

Feelings

Last week, it was announced that Nobody Wants This was green-lit for a second season and I’m feeling conflicted. I feel like I could get cancelled just by admitting this, but I don’t think it needs a second season and I say that as someone who unequivocally adored the show. Honestly, I’m concerned that a second or subsequent seasons are going to completely ruin the charm of the original product for me. 

I think this speaks to something I’ve noticed and have become increasingly fatigued and frustrated by, in film and television of late. Everything is getting a sequel or a universe or a remake and I need it to please stop. I literally do not have the time or inclination to list them all, we would both be here forever, but the biggest offender is clearly Marvel. I used to watch the movies, I was into the big ensemble casts, the high-impact entertainment and it felt exciting, at first, to see how all the stories interwove and interacted with each other. But it got too big and too stupid and so, so tedious. I did a quick Google search to determine out how big the universe is and it’s up to something like seventy seven titles in between the various movies and TV shows, either out or in production. Seventy seven. There’s even a show that was recently released that is a satirical look at creating film and TV inside a superhero franchise. I know it’s not part of the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) but it’s adjacent content and I hate it on principle. Aren’t we all sick of it? Or is the global pull of the comic book nerds too strong? Is it really making that much money?

Let’s address some others on my shit list. Despite loving the books and original screen adaptations, we now have seperate prequel series (both with multiple seasons!) for The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones. Again I ask: was 6 movies and 7 seasons of a TV show not enough? The same can be said for Star Wars and the amount of new content this has spawned. I watched the first (maybe the second? I can’t remember) movie in the most recent trilogy and wasn’t invested enough to keep going. How many people other than the die hard fans can say the same?

Continuing along the offender list are the remakes that didn’t need to be made. Why was Mean Girls reimagined into some musical shit show? The iconic lines and cultural internet moments the original movie created are still entrenched in our collective psyche. I know the original movie is already twenty years old but why did we need to confuse the Zoomers with a remake when we could have educated them with canon instead? Don’t even get me started on the reported Harry Potter TV series now in production. WHY??? The last movie in the franchise only came out in 2011 and with all of the media, merch (there are incredible global theme parks for christ’s sake), and other assorted paraphernalia, do we really need more? 

And what about the sequels? The content that extends upon the original idea. Take The Joker, the 2019 movie starring Joaquin Phoenix. I loved it, despite seeing this character in multiple iterations over the years (RIP Health Ledger) and thought Phoenix’s performance was incredible. Did we need the sequel starring Lady Gaga that was recently released? No, we didn’t and by all accounts, the movie is a bit shit and Phoenix thinks so, too. Or the trauma-porn TV show 13 Reasons Why that got three seasons when everything was wrapped up in one. And what about The Hunger Games franchise that has a prequel movie that I can barely be bothered to write about. Why do the powers that be, the people that are funding these projects, decide to keep pumping money into expansion instead of innovation? Why do they keep flogging the horse that feels well and truly dead? I know it’s all about money and low-risk investment. The thinking is that by funding a sequel or a remake, you will capitalise on an existing fan base and our current obsession with nostalgia, therefore turning a massive profit. But with the cultural fatigue of content ‘universes’ and poorly-performing sequels, you can’t honestly tell me they’re a lower risk investment than an original idea or a book adaptation we haven’t had before?

It’s not all bad, I guess. The Handmaid’s Tale has just started shooting its sixth and final season, bringing an end to an incredible story birthed from a single book. And before you ask, no, we did not need the sequel, The Testaments, and no, it did not deserve to win the Booker Prize. I am completely biased because both the book and the series are some of my absolute favourites, but the original text was beautifully placed to expand the story with the amount of threads it left loose at the end. There was a lot to grab onto and you can tell the writers have worked so hard to make the series feel like you are seamlessly stepping off of Margaret Atwood’s page and into Hulu’s visual interpretation of Gilead. 

This is where my big concern with Nobody Wants This comes from. The show was created and captured so beautifully - it was funny and heartfelt and real and honest and gave us a look into the Jewish culture and religion that we hadn’t seen before. It wrapped up nicely, didn’t leave a massive cliffhanger and didn’t feel too overdone at the end, like, WINK WINK: ANOTHER SEASON COMING!!!! *blaring horn emoji*. I am going to be writing about the show for next weeks newsletter and you can probably could call me a hypocrite at any point while reading this newsletter edition but I just don’t see where it can go without ruining the perfection of the original content. Maybe it’ll be great and I’ll be writing to you in a year or two as I eat humble pie after binging an impeccable second season of the show. Maybe I’ll be back here to say ‘I told you so’. 

Etc

LISTEN - The Parents Aren’t All Right, The Daily Podcast from The New York Times

God, this podcast episode has me thinking a lot about parenting. The hosts discuss how the word ‘parent’ has evolved from noun to verb and how our modern culture and social media has driven the development of a term called ‘intensive parenting’, so much that the Surgeon General of America has put out a public health warning about it. This isn’t because they’re worried about the kids and their outcomes, it’s actually about how this phenomenon is destroying the mental health of their parents. The pressure that today’s parents now face to be optimising every single moment for their children, in thanks part to social media and the amount of mothers heading back into the workplace, and the guilt that they are not doing enough for their children, is leaving parents completely burnt out. Statistics show that today’s parents are spending the same amount of hours at home as what parents did in the seventies. Tl;dr? Don’t feel guilty about letting your kid watch TV so you can hide in the pantry and scream. 

DRINK - Strawberry and basil spritz

After yapping all week about pasta, I had two of my girlfriends over for dinner where I cooked a Sicilian-themed dinner; pasta alla Norma was our main course. And because I didn’t already have 45 other things to do, I decided to make a distinctly non-Sicilian spritz but I still think it was a beautiful fizzy edition to our meal. Maybe it’s because I’m still thinking about the blackberry mojitos from The Perfect Couple and they’re not quite in season yet and I wanted something fizzy and refreshing to cut through the dense, delicious pasta. And because I generally have a shit load of berries in my fridge, I cooked up a quick compote and added that to a wine glass filled with ice, soda water, a shot of gin (omit for the sober angels) and a few basil leaves. I didn’t even take a nice photo for you to have look at, you’ll just have to trust me on it.  

Strawberry Compote

200g strawberries, chopped

100g caster sugar

Splash of water

Vanilla bean paste

Lemon juice

Put the strawberries, sugar, water and vanilla in a small saucepan and boil the shit out of it until it starts to thicken and the strawberries soften and get mushy. Simmer on low and add a splash of lemon juice to get just a little bite of acidity for balance. Cool and spoon a big tablespoon into your glass for your spritz. I kept the leftover compote in a jar in the fridge and it was gone three days later. 

READ - If Icarus wore lingerie, by Pandora Sykes

This essay by

Pandora Sykes

for her Substack,

Books + Bits

, is impeccable. She describes the jarring reality of the Victoria’s Secret fashion show that she attended in London in 2014, where the show did not match the vibe of what we see on the screen. She recounts the dodgy history of the brand, how the scandals that rocked it haven’t quite managed to crumble it but instead, VS is clinging on for dear life and hoping the return of their famous catwalk shows will let the phoenix rise from the ashes. Brilliantly written, as all of Pandora’s content is, and well worth the subscription to do so. I’ve already downloaded the audiobook she recommends in the piece. 

If Icarus wore lingerie

Happy spritz szn,

Sian x