Everything we can't stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture. This week: - Justice for J. Lo!
- Jane and Lily demand your respect.
- Kathy Bates made me laugh.
- Shania Twain made me laugh.
- Charlize Theron made me gag.
J. Lo's Oscar Snub Matters, People! In one sudden moment on Sunday afternoon, my body was jarred into a sharp, breathless stillness. My eyes went wide. I gasped. A frightful feeling flooded over me, a ghostly premonition that spread like a virus until the darkness threatened to crush me. It arrived so fast, so overwhelmingly: "Jennifer Lopez might not get an Oscar nomination for Hustlers."
I took to social media at once. It was Sunday, the holy day. Head to church, I pleaded. Light a candle for Ms. Jennifer Lynn Lopez. Pray for the woman who brought life to Ramona, so that she might win the recognition she deserves. For what other reason does religion exist, if not for this?
Well, it turns out that not enough gays go to mass—or God is a big Clint Eastwood fan—because that snub I so feared happened. When the nominations were announced Monday, Lopez's omission was arguably the biggest talking point.
 This is all hyperbolic, of course. I mean, yes, I haven't quite shaken my disappointment that Lopez was overlooked, most likely in favor of Richard Jewell's Kathy Bates, for her sensational, career-best, capital-M Movie Star performance in Hustlers.
Forget that her first scene, stripping to "Criminal" by Fiona Apple, immediately joins the ranks of most iconic film entrances in history.
Forget that what she accomplishes on the pole is a feat of athleticism and dedicated training on par with any actor or actress who won an Oscar for learning to dance, play a sport, master an instrument, or transform their body.
Forget how nimbly she balanced Ramona's swagger and confidence with her bruised vulnerability and desire for familial love and connection.
What I also haven't gotten over is the optics of why Lopez was overlooked, and what that means.
This year's Oscar nominations contained a shameful lack of race and gender diversity, a stained reflection of a remarkable year for performances by people of color, films directed and written by women, and stories centered on female experiences.
Lopez's inclusion in Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars was never guaranteed, even after she scored every important precursor nod and her revelatory work became one of award season's biggest talking points. Hers was one of the only contending performances in the category from a film that wasn't considered a frontrunner for any other nominations.
That in itself is an issue. Lorene Scafaria's film should have been considered seriously across the board. At its core, it's a Scorsesian crime thriller, the kind that would have been all over the nominations list had it been directed by a man. Because it was helmed by a woman, it was likely dismissed as "that stripper movie." I'd venture that many voters didn't bother to watch.
There's a misogynistic hypocrisy here.
Strippers and sex workers have long been reliable tickets to Oscar nods, so long as they're portrayed through the male gaze. A piece literally titled "Play a Hooker and Win an Oscar" was published in The New York Times in 1996. Since then, 10 more actresses were nominated for playing a stripper or sex worker, all in films directed by men.
That not only Hustlers, but The Farewell, Clemency, Booksmart, and Portrait of a Lady on Fire were snubbed entirely by the Oscars is important. It drives me crazy when people scoff that the Oscars have no taste, so who cares, why should what they think matter, etc.
It matters what the standard bearers of a multi-billion-dollar industry that drives cultural conversation and progress deems worthy. It matters what an institution that influences every decision made in that industry deems valuable, when that infiltrates hiring decisions, storytelling decisions, financial decisions, and visibility decisions. When we want our culture and concerns reflected and validated, it matters when that does not happen.
Lopez's snub is disappointing to a fan. But it also matters. If you need me, I'll be climbing into mama's fur for comfort.
Give Grace and Frankie the Credit It Deserves My favorite show on television is Grace and Frankie.
I don't think the Netflix comedy, which launched its sixth season starring Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin this week, is the best show on television. It probably is not even one of the best comedies. But there is something warm and delightful in the perfect execution of its, I don't know, Grace and Frankie-ness.
Lily Tomlin is eating Chinese takeout with salad tongs. Jane Fonda is making off with a bottle of vodka at an awkward luncheon. At the end of the episode, there's a heart-to-heart that makes you cry. It's apparently everything I want in a series, delivered by Jane and Lily.
 At risk of striking up a deafening orchestra of tiny violins, when your job is to write about TV news and buzz at a time when 532 scripted series air in a year—this is a real, not-exaggerated number—it's rare to have the luxury of watching more than a season of anything. Or, frankly, more than the six or seven episodes of a show you watch to write a review or interview an actor, no matter how much you like the series.
Yet here I am, 80-something episodes in on Grace and Frankie. The entire ride has been bliss.
When Grace and Frankie launched in 2015, before Netflix started making 400 versions of every kind of show there is, it was one of the finest examples of what value the freedom of the streaming service could bring to a tried-and-true genre.
The conceit behind Grace and Frankie is the sitcomiest of sitcomy concepts. Wild circumstances forcing cohabitation between polarized personalities is perhaps the most common elevator pitch in comedy. In this case, the wives of two law partners have no choice but to move in together after their husbands reveal they've been lovers for years. The women, who despise each other, grow to become unlikely best friends.
But the Netflix of it all meant that there could be raunchier content and more expletives, the latter finally allowing for the kind of cathartic dialogue these powder-keg sitcom setups realistically need.
No running time restrictions meant a deeper exploration of tone and emotion, skirting the "get to the punchlines" hamminess that plagues so many comedies while allowing storylines that actually feel meaningful.
And then there's the fact that the titular Grace and Frankie aren't the latest young blondes to emerge from pilot season, but two of the industry's most talented actresses, who happen to both be over 80 years old.
They're not the wise-cracking grandmas stealing a handful of scenes. We're investigating their lives, passions, and concerns. Sometimes that's insecurities about sex and judgment about age. Sometimes that's rallying your friend to come rescue you off a toilet that's too low for you to get up from with your bum knee.
(Has there ever been a more life-imitating-art indictment of our culture's instinct to dismiss older generations that Fonda organizing weekly protests, getting herself arrested repeatedly in the protest, to sound the alarm of climate change?)
 The best thing I can say about Grace and Frankie is that I still love it despite how irritating every scene and subplot involving Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston's Robert and Sol is. I'm more surprised than anyone that a progressive storyline about men of a certain age navigating their first public same-sex relationship somehow gets on every last one of my damn nerves. But here we are.
That said, there's still something revolutionary to champion here.
Here's the thing about being a gay man that's under-discussed, even in this age when representation is on the tip of the tongue, there are watershed moments like Love, Simon and Call Me By Your Name, and finally an understanding that we need to be telling coming of age stories from a LGBTQ perspective. Some of us have already come of age. Seeing a loving gay couple in old age on a show like Grace and Frankie and envisioning yourself and your partner there one day is a new, revolutionary, poignant thing.
I still hate Robert and Sol. I don't love that two of the most annoying characters on TV that are responsible for these strides. But in all my years of doing this job/watching TV/wanting to kiss boys, I've learned to make three-tier cakes out of crumbs. And I'll happily eat that cake while bingeing Grace and Frankie.
I love Kathy Bates. She's great in Richard Jewell. In fact, she's the best part of Richard Jewell, a film that, while thematically angering, is way more watchable than I ever expected it to be.
I would not have nominated Bates over Lopez, obviously, but I can at least appreciate this hilarious Twitter exchange she had with her The Waterboy co-star, Adam Sandler, who joins Lopez on the list of A-list snubs for his work in Uncut Gems.
Shania Twain Is Not Impressed My favorite thing about Shania Twain is that she apparently wrote the "So you're Brad Pitt? That don't impress me much" line of her song after seeing paparazzi photos of the heartthrob naked and not thinking there was much ado to be made about the size of his penis.
I love this because it's so shady. I also love it because, as a connoisseur of the photos in question, who could probably draw them for you right now from memory, I can say that Shania Twain is also absolutely incorrect in her judgment.
In any case, someone on Twitter made an observation about Pitt's role in Ad Astra and its connection to Twain's "Don't Impress Me Much" song and it made me laugh.
Charlize Theron's Worst Date Charlize Theron went on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon this week—watch the clip here— to talk about her Oscar nomination for playing Megyn Kelly in Bombshell (ugh) and told a story about a time when she was kissing a date in his car and he asked her to make out with his nose. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. Now neither will you. Awkwafina Is Nora From Queens: Basically the next Broad City, and earns that distinction.
Little America: Heartbreaking, human, and easily Apple TV+'s best show yet.
Sex Education: Gillian Anderson as a sex therapist! A delight!
Avenue 5: The first great new comedy series of 2020. Dolittle: It is very, very bad. © Copyright 2020 The Daily Beast Company LLC
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