the b-roll: #14
just keep watching
Hello, b-roll readers, one and all. I come to you this week with, for all intents and purposes, a media consumption digest, sprinkled with my weekly happenings. Hopefully, this special edition is alright with you — I simply couldn’t get enough of what’s been on the big (and medium and small) screen as of late. Perhaps you’ll feel inspired, or maybe you’ll tell me to get outside and touch grass immediately. Either way, let’s get into it.
This week’s newsletter spans TV, film, documentaries, sports, and podcasts, so buckle up. Obviously, this is riddled with spoilers. Proceed with caution.
Tell Me Lies series finale
Because I am such a considerate friend (we’re all friends here), I’ve refrained from speaking on the ending of Tell Me Lies until now, hopefully ensuring that all avid watchers had the chance to watch the series finale, which aired last Tuesday. If for some reason you are behind, keep scrolling.
For those who are interested, I’ll give a recap on the show as a whole. This is off the dome, so if I get a few things a bit wrong, let’s just call it my artistic interpretation.
Tell Me Lies follows the relationship between Lucy and Stephen over the course of eight years, flashing back and forth from their time at Baird College to the wedding of their “best friends,” Bree and Evan.
Stephen is a few years older than Lucy, and is obsessed with becoming a lawyer so he can make a better life for himself, despite his complicated family and lack of financial stability. At the time he meets Lucy, he has just ended a relationship with Diana, who comes from a wealthy family but is equally as driven towards law as Stephen, if not more. We quickly learn that Stephen was an extremely toxic boyfriend to Diana, and that’s putting it lightly.
In the first season, we also meet Bree and Pippa, who are Lucy’s best friends at school, and Evan and Wrigley, who are Stephen’s. For a very quick overview on these characters:
Bree: Sweet, innocent, and kind, at least when we first meet her. She doesn’t have much family, as she grew up in the foster care system.
Pippa: Is not afraid to speak her mind, very spunky, and acts like she really doesn’t care what people think of her (key word: acts).
Evan: Super wealthy, and this is kind of his whole thing. Seems like a very nice guy, and will do pretty much anything to be liked. Throws money at pretty much every problem.
Wrigley: When we first meet him, he is a silly jock type. Doesn’t seem like he has much going on in his head, but his character evolves a lot.
At the very beginning of the plot, Lucy’s roommate, Macy, is killed in a car accident after a party during the first week of school. It’s right around this time that Lucy meets Stephen, who claims to have barely known Macy, but really he’s lying. You’ll figure out pretty quickly that he does this a lot.
Lucy and Stephen quickly begin their relationship: it’s extremely toxic, and he tortures her emotionally. Pippa and Wrigley get together, as do Bree and Evan. Throughout the season, we slowly learn through flashbacks that Stephen was actually hooking up with Macy (they knew each other from home) and he was in the car with her when she died, but staged it to look like she was alone. The car that struck them was driven by Wrigley’s younger brother, Drew, which Stephen uses to manipulate and scheme everyone he possibly can. When Lucy finds this out, she writes an anonymous letter to the school outing Drew for his crime. Somehow, Stephen finds a way to get the blame for this placed on Pippa, causing a huge fight between her and Wrigley that results in them breaking up. During this fight, Wrigley falls and suffers a football career-ending injury.
At the very end of the season, Stephen publicly gets back together with Diana in front of Lucy, causing her to drunkenly hook up with Evan, who is actively dating Bree. Evan, like the idiot he is, confesses this to Stephen, who records it for later use like the psycho he is. Lies, lies, lies. Also, in flashes forward to Bree and Evan’s engagement party, we see that Stephen is somehow engaged to Lydia, who is Lucy’s best friend from her home town. You still with me?
Next we begin Season 2, where Stephen is fully back together with Diana. Evan admits to Bree that he cheated on her, but not with who, causing their breakup, and Bree starts having an affair with her professor, Oliver. He is emotionally manipulating her to the maximum, as is his wife, Marianne, also a professor of Bree’s. This seems to be a pattern for Oliver, and his wife knows all about it.
Pippa is sexually assaulted at a party by Lydia’s younger brother, Chris, who now goes to Baird. The only people who know about this are Lucy and Diana, who take care of Pippa that night following the assault. Pippa and Diana start to get very close in the aftermath. Lucy reveals this assault without Pippa’s consent, but then quickly tries to cover it up by saying it actually happened to her. This is the big lie of the season.
Drew, who comes back to Baird to visit his brother, Wrigley, after leaving school last season, overdoses on pain pills and dies in Stephen and Wrigley’s dorm room, leaving everyone devastated and confused. Pippa takes care of Wrigley in his grief, and they end up back together. At some point, Lucy and Stephen get back together, despite literally no one being supportive of that. In the flash forward at the wedding, we see that Stephen has sent Bree the recording from last season of Evan admitting he slept with Lucy, thinking it will uproot the entire day. Still following?
Finally, we arrive at Season 3, the most psychotic of all. Lucy and Stephen are together, and he is desperately trying to get her to admit that she slept with Evan, but she continues to lie about it. Lucy, thinking she can trust Stephen, tells him about her sexual assault lie, which just proves to be more ammo for him to hold over her. He treats her like absolute crap, and they break up again. Somehow, he dupes her into admitting that she lied about being assaulted on camera, and keeps it on a flash drive.
Pippa has begun an affair with Diana, despite still dating Wrigley. He clearly has no idea this is going on. We find out that Diana and Stephen have both gotten into Yale Law, their dream school. Diana also learns that she is pregnant with Stephen’s baby, and has an abortion. Stephen is furious that Diana wouldn’t consult him first, and retaliates by sending her nudes to her dad. This sparks her decision to go to Stanford instead of Yale, letting her psychotic ex keep her from her lifelong dream.
Bree has finally untangled herself from Oliver, but is clearly traumatized from the whole thing. From the beginning of the season, we start to see sparks fly between Bree and Wrigley, but both think that nothing can be done about this. They start a photography class together, and grow closer, eventually leading to Wrigley bringing Bree to see her mom, who she hasn’t seen in years. Bree invites her mom to her big photography art show, and she tentatively agrees. For whatever reason, Bree gets back together with Evan after this, who has seemingly manipulated her by following advice he got from none other than Oliver, the man who traumatized Bree the most. They get in a massive fight when Evan finds out Bree went to see her mom and didn’t tell him.
In the background, Bree has become infatuated with a girl that is now, for lack of better words, being Olivered. Bree reaches her breaking point and storms to his house, instead finding Marianne. The two have an emotional heart to heart about Marianne and Oliver’s marriage, and Bree calls Wrigley to pick her up instead of Evan. The two finally kiss and admit their feelings to each other, and promise to break up with their significant others as soon as they can.
The day of the art show comes, and Evan offers to get Bree’s mom from the train, but decides to get her drunk before bringing her to Baird. She embarrasses Bree in front of everyone, only driving her closer to Evan. Wrigley breaks up with Pippa, but she she begs for him back and the two spend the night together after the art show. Bree finds this out and decides to cling to Evan, without ever talking to Wrigley about the whole thing.
At the same time, Lucy is trying to manipulate Stephen into giving her the flash drive of her admitting she lied about being assaulted. This is unsuccessful, as he figures out he’s being played. But, this sends Lucy into a complete erratic spiral, where she is acting completely unhinged, forgetting large chunks of time, and being very self destructive. She eventually confronts Stephen and tells him she can’t take it anymore, that he should just post the video and get it over with. This clearly spooks him a bit, and he gives the flash drive back. She tells Pippa and Bree that she is finally free of him.
Soon after their “breakup”, Pippa admits everything about her sexuality and her cheating to Wrigley, and he’s extremely understanding. Absolute king. Pippa also laments that no one ever does anything to stop Stephen from torturing people. At the same time, Bree has finally convinced herself she likes Evan, and goes to spend the day at this house. While he’s in the shower, she discovers a photograph of him and Lucy from the night they cheated and finally puts the pieces together. She abruptly leaves, and goes to confront Lucy, but on her way there she runs into her mom, who most definitely shouldn’t be there. It turns out, Oliver and Marianne have convinced Bree’s mom that she made everything about the affair up and used this as a ploy to keep her silent. A very frustrating and intense confrontation ensues between all of them, and Bree doesn’t get the chance to talk to Lucy about Evan.
Next, we see that the video of Lucy has indeed been released, leaving us unsure of who released it. Stephen swears he had nothing to do with it, and Lucy starts to doubt her own sanity, given her recent behavior. Lucy is expelled, devastating Bree and Pippa, and essentially ruining Lucy’s life. Pippa admits to Bree that the whole lie began because of her own assault, and Bree seems to forgive Lucy for everything because of all she’s going through. She get’s Evan to admit he slept with Lucy and the two get back together. In perhaps his most redeeming move ever, Wrigley reports Stephen to Yale admissions for leaking Diana’s nudes, and his offer is rescinded.
In the flash forwards, we learn that Wrigley and Bree began sleeping together at her and Evan’s engagement party, when they finally (after SIX YEARS) discussed their feelings for each other. It should be noted here that Wrigley is in a horrendous wig in this timeline. We also learn that Lucy has continued to be involved with Stephen, despite both of them being in relationships with other people. Diana and Pippa are officially together by the time of the wedding. Plus, Diana went to Yale because Stephen could not.
At the wedding, Stephen has an a-ha moment, and realizes that Bree leaked the tape of Lucy as revenge for sleeping with Evan. He gets on the microphone and exposes everyone for all their lies over the past eight years, including Bree and Wrigley’s affair, Lucy’s tape, his own affair with Lucy, and Evan’s cheating. The wedding devolves into hilarious chaos (the first time we’ve ever really seen humor in this show), and Stephen and Lydia call off their engagement, which they both admitted was for revenge on Lucy anyway. As Stephen goes to leave the mess he created behind, he expects Lucy to go with him, which Bree scoffs at. And, as our girl always does, Lucy goes with Stephen. The two seem to be driving off into the sunset together, but they stop at a gas station. When Lucy goes in to get them some coffee, he abandons her there by herself. In the final scene of the series, we see Lucy hysterically laughing, maybe finally free from all of this.
Throughout the entirety of this last season, I found myself wondering how on earth the show was going to be able to tie up all the loose ends it was creating episode after episode. But, for the most part, I felt they really did it. Wrigley was by far my favorite character, and the finale gave me hope that he and Bree might end up together after all. I would’ve preferred Stephen to be dead or in jail, but I’ll allow it. His and Lucy’s endings felt realistic to me, and that went a long way.
Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model
Now that you’ve gotten 2,000 words on Tell Me Lies, let’s move on, shall we?
Over the weekend, my roommates and I started Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model, Netflix’s new exposeé on the making of Tyra Banks’ smash hit. As someone who grew up watching ANTM, this documentart has been on my list since it was released two weeks ago.
In the new series, Tyra explains that her vision for ANTM was to show that anyone can be beautiful, despite traditional beauty standards that were perpetuated by the modeling industry at the time. Honestly, a lovely sentiment, but this is not at all what the show turned out to be. Not by a long shot.
When I think back on the show, I don’t remember it being as outwardly exploitative and bad as it clearly is. To be fair, the show premiered when I was three years old, so I was definitely watching it at a young age. I most vividly remember the “makeovers,” where they would drastically change the contestants’ appearances and then tell them they were not allowed to be upset because that’s what it’s like to be a model. I also remember the contestants being weighted and constantly told they were chubby, despite weighing what I weighed in the fifth grade.
What I seemingly did not remember was certain girls being forced to get dental work or risk elimination, multiple “race-switching” challenges (literal blackface), and filming and excusing of sexual harassment and assault. What was allowed to go on on that show, under the guise of “good TV,” is absolutely baffling, and Tyra herself, as well as her producer, Ken Mok, take very little accountability to the damage they caused to the people they were aiming to celebrate. We still have one episode left, but watch this space. I’m gripped.
Alysa Liu
The Olympics may be over, but you can’t make me stop talking about Alysa Liu! Sorry!
By the time Alysa’s free skate had come to pass, I had reached the point in the games where I could frankly no longer keep up — I only have time for one full-time job. However, this was a replay I would not be missing.
What an absolute cutie patootie and complete badass Alysa is. She came back to skating on her own terms, and it clearly paid off. I really don’t think I’ve ever seen a skater have fun like she does on the ice. Seriously, how was she so relaxed on the world’s most stressful pressure cooker of a stage? Her poise, her grace, and her energy are honestly incredible. I am in awe of her.
I was obsessed with her free skate to Laufey, and even more obsessed, if possible, with her exhibition gala skate to PinkPanthress and Zara Larsson’s Stateside remix.
Again, this girl does whatever she wants, and she’s freaking amazing at it. I can’t think of a more deserving person to bring home the gold. And let’s not forget, that’s what the U.S. women do.
“Wuthering Heights”
To stay relevant in the cultural zeitgeist, I had to go see “Wuthering Heights.” I used to hate going to the movies (I actually had a fear of it), but lately, I’ve been finding it to be a lovely way to get out of the house.
On Saturday, I took myself on a little solo date to the Georgetown AMC (which is well out of my way but they have Coke and not Pepsi) to see Emerald Fennel’s adaptation. I, like all of you, have heard the discourse about the movie. Mainly, it’s nothing like the book and erases key plot points having to do with race and power. Completely heard, absolutely understood. However.
As someone that did not read Brontë’s original text, I actually really enjoyed “Wuthering Heights.” Maybe I’m not as woke as I think I am. It registered to me as more of a fan-fic: it kept the names of the characters and general setting of the original, but that’s really where the resemblance stops. When I thought of it as a standalone work, separate from all the commentary around it as an adaptation, I found that I was entertained.
I’ve already talked about how much I loved the soundtrack, but that was going to be a given for me, as there’s very little that Charli XCX has done that I haven’t liked. Once seeing the movie, I found myself most taken by the visuals. It was absolutely gorgeous to watch, the costumes (which weren’t historically accurate, to which I say, who cares) were so visually interesting, and the setting was stunning. I could not look away from the screen.
I also thought the actors did an incredible job, most notably Hong Cha who played Nellie, and Owen Cooper who played Young Heathcliff. I had low expectations, and yet found myself crying in the final scene. Overall, I’d say if you’re open to enjoying this movie, you should go see it. If the discourse is all too much and you’ll be in your head about it, skip.
Jonathan Groff | Good Hang with Amy Poehler
For my last piece of media, I’ve finally watched my first episode of Good Hang with Amy Poehler. I’ve been seeing clips on TikTok for months, and while packing for my upcoming trip to San Diego, I decided to listen to a recent episode where Amy hosted one of the all time greats, Jonathan Groff.
First of all, before I get into the episode itself, I have to say: Amy Poehler is an incredible interviewer. She is obviously hilarious, but her questions are so hard-hitting and interesting. She features her guests so respectfully and gracefully, getting serious while still making everybody laugh. I can already tell Good Hang is going to be a new go-to for me.
As for Jonathan, he has been in many of my favorite things, including Spring Awakening, Hamilton, and Glee. Naturally, I was curious to learn more about him on a deeper level. I was shocked to hear that he grew up on a horse farm in Lancaster, PA with his Mennonite family. I had no idea he was a last-minute addition to Hamilton, especially given his character all but stole the show. I was cackling as he described his “tornado-forward interpretation” of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz at the age of four. I could go on, but I highly recommend listening yourself.
My favorite part of the episode, one that actually made me tear up a bit, was when Amy asked what Jonathan’s favorite lyric that he ever got to sing was. He responded with a line from “Growing Up” by Stephen Sondheim, from the musical Merrily We Roll Along. It goes:
“So, old friends, don’t you see we can have it all? Moving on, getting out of the past. Solving dreams. Not just trusting them. Taking dreams. Readjusting them. Growing up.”
Jonathan and Amy discuss that in order to truly be successful, you have to be flexible and adaptable with your dreams. You can’t be tied to the past, but you can still have a relationship to it. Being adjustable to whatever comes your way is the best you can hope for in life. Oh, and nothing can be done alone. Gorgeous stuff. Please go listen to this episode.
That’s all for today, folks. I’ll cover the rest of what would’ve gone into this newsletter elsewhere, but I can’t in good conscience keep you all here any longer! See you next week <3
I’m going to listen to that podcast and I will watch wuthering heights when it’s on tv. I read the book but it was a very long time ago so I will just take it as a new piece.