Everything we can't stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture. This Week: - Move over, Chris Evans.
- Fawning over The Good Place finale.
- Important J. Lo updates.
- The surprising Jessica Simpson moment.
- A dog!
Congratulations to the Best Chris, Chris Messina The committee responsible for the Iowa Caucus has finally delivered its results, and they are surprising. Coming out of nowhere, it is Chris Messina who, it turns out, is the best of the Hollywood Chrises. (He came in third in New Hampshire, which means he's all anyone's talking about anyway.)  Ranking the Hollywood Chrises was a thing for a moment there. The conceit was there were a bunch of beefy white guys who all vaguely looked the same, were starring in film franchises, were all named Chris, and all had the personality appeal of a microwaved baked potato. That last bit is important because it meant that people could baselessly announce their favorites and the decision was, in essence, unimpeachable.
There's no real argument as to why either Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Chris Pratt, or Chris Pine is better than the other. And there is no real argument why one isn't. It is like deciding on the tastiest brand of white sandwich bread.
The whole Hollywood Chrises thing isn't so much a thing anymore, since it became clear that Chris Evans, he with his knives out, the finest man to ever fill out a chunky fall sweater, was the best of the bunch, and Chris Pratt became an insufferable abomination. But it's also because the entire concept was a fallacy. The true Best Chris wasn't even up for consideration. It is Chris Messina.
Gushing about Chris Messina has been a passion project of mine for several years now. (Yes, I'm a philanthropist.)
The very appeal of him has always been that he exists outside the realm of those indecipherable other Chrises. He doesn't exactly look like them, wasn't as famous, and wasn't leading some sort of blockbuster. Well, the truth is he's far hotter than any of them, he is the most famous person in my heart and my sex dreams, and he is now starring alongside Margot Robbie in DC Comics' Harley Quinn movie, Birds of Prey. De facto, he is the best Chris!
From a casting standpoint, Messina's greatest asset has been the malleability of his gee-shucks, good-boy looks. It allows him to be slightly aggro and macho while still winning you over with an innate kindness, like in his The Mindy Project role as Dr. Danny Castellano, a TV character I would abhor in reality. And yet there has never been a fictional person I've been more attracted to in my entire life.
 He's a great entitled prick. (See: The Newsroom). He's a great underwritten supporting male character. (See: Julie & Julia.) He's a great "oh he was really good in that Glenn Close show, too." (See: Damages.)
His sweaty helpfulness on Sharp Objects was one of my favorite TV performances of 2018. And not just because of—mom and everyone related to me, avert your eyes—the scene in which he visits Amy Adams in her hotel room and they have sex and after she goes down on him, but before they switch to intercourse he sort of holds his dick in his hand and rubs it and it might be the hottest thing I've ever seen on television.
While we're all hot and bothered, let's talk about him in Birds of Prey. He plays Victor Zsasz, a supervillain henchman to Ewan McGregor's Roman Sionis (Black Mask). He has the bleached blonde hair of a gay in the throes of an existential crisis, and shares with Roman a sinister homoerotic energy that I truly don't know why every comic-book movie doesn't have more of. They're like a murderous Liberace and his meth-head Igor, and their unusualness is part of why the movie works so well.
(It must be said that Birds of Prey, a movie in which Rosie Perez does hand-to-hand combat while a Heart song plays, the big chase scene is done on rollerskates, and the entire storyline centers around the sanctity of an excellent bodega breakfast sandwich, is a delight. I can't believe you idiots all saw that rancid shit show Joker, but Birds of Prey is underperforming at the box office.)
Anyway, the newly appointed Best Chris is also starring in the third season of The Sinner. He's creepy as hell in it, this time not in a cartoony way but a "this guy probably murdered a nice lady" way. He stars opposite Hollywood's Best Matt, Matt Bomer, whose character has a throwaway line about the two of them sexually experimenting together while in college that I will never not be thinking about for the rest of my life.
Moral of the story here, folks: Chris Messina is the Best Chris. Get on board!
Kristen Bell Is So Good in The Good Place The Good Place series finale was so beautiful, so well thought out, and so expertly executed that it nearly convinced me to die. It was that good.
The NBC comedy technically aired its final episode January 30, but I finally got around to watching it Wednesday night in my apartment, which is, of course, the major milestone all TV networks mark. It also explains why I've been walking aimlessly around New York City asking strangers to hug me for the last 48 hours.
 Saying too much about what happened in the episode is a disservice. For one, the writers had built such a complex universe and charted such an admirably audacious journey that it became, as it neared its end, unfathomable that it could have a satisfying conclusion. There was no way for it to end, yet it did—and so spectacularly. Spoiling how would be criminal.
It's also important not to say too much because when you talk about this show and its plot you sound like a big ole pretentious dickwad.
Oh my god, this show sounds so lame and insufferable. A core group of four bonded humans, a reformed demon, and a not-a-girl, not-a-robot must figure out a way to prove that human beings are, at their cores, fundamentally good people, so long as they are provided with the philosophical instruments with which to exhibit their morality.
I know what you're thinking, right? Shut up, you fat dink. But the series managed to reveal humanity—in all its moral complication and also exhilarating ridiculousness—with such biting wit and self-awareness that it was, truly, one of the most enjoyable series on television for the last four years. The undersung key to that is star Kristen Bell.
Across the board, the acting on The Good Place is fantastic. There's Ted Danson, duh. Maya Rudolph was a guest performer for the ages. D'Arcy Carden as Janet is one of those comedic revelations we'll still be talking about decades from now. But it's Bell, the closest thing the show has to a straight man, that centers the whole thing.
Her line deliveries constantly floor me. A one-liner that is, essentially, an assemblage of words that are merely the vehicle for dripping sarcasm, is somehow expressed in a completely surprising way. I wasn't aware there were new ways to express shades of sarcasm, and I consider myself an expert of such things. But Bell found it.
She also found a means for telegraphing a deep desire to see other people for their goodness, often through a lingering stare, a slightly misty-eyed sigh, or a glance, carrying the weight of the show's lofty message with an effortless emotional ease.
There's a line she has in the finale that doesn't give too much away: "He's messing up, and trying again, and messing up again, and then getting things wrong, and then trying to make them right. That's what everyone does." She's describing, essentially, what it means to be a human. The way Bell delivers the line, I haven't stopped thinking about it.
Anyway, Kristen Bell: Good. The Good Place finale: Great. Me: Emotionally devastated.
Jennifer Lopez Inspires Me, Makes Me Tired The only things certain in life are death, taxes, and me never shutting the hell up about Jennifer Lopez.
We are still only 12 days into the new era—there was B.C. (Before Christ) and A.D. (After Death); now there's P.Lo. (Post-Jennifer Lopez's Super Bowl Performance)—which means that people are still reeling from and properly processing the miracle that was her halftime show set.
You may think I'm being ridiculous but there was an actual crucifixion. This is our religion now:
 In any case, this week Lopez shared a behind-the-scenes video revealing what her Sunday was like the day she changed history (performed at the Super Bowl). The video is inspiring. She's so excited for herself after nailing her set that I nearly cried on her behalf.
The mini-documentary begins 12 hours before her performance, when she goes to the gym. The gym. To be clear, Lopez's halftime show performance was so athletic and physical that I took a week off from exercise because I was so winded from watching it.
In other J. Lo news, this is what she looked like at a party on Sunday instead of going to the Oscars, which snubbed her. The Academy doesn't deserve her.
Jessica Simpson Is Serving! Jessica Simpson has been promoting her new memoir this week, Open Book, in which the aughts pop diva also-ran turned fashion billionaire is bravely frank about her battle with alcoholism, being sexually abused as a child, the body shaming she experienced throughout her career, and her relationship with Nick Lachey. Rarely are celebrities this frank about their experience in the spotlight.
To mark the occasion, Simpson has transformed herself into a high-fashion international assassin: A Shocking "Best in Show" Revelation The winner of the most important cultural contest of the week—not the Oscars, but the Westminster Dog Show—was Siba, a black standard poodle who triumphed over a fan-favorite golden retriever who mugged his way to the crowd's affection. Basics.
This week, Siba visited The Daily Beast's office. She arrived five minutes after I left for an appointment. We cannot be in the same place at the same time because I am Siba, Siba is me. Clark Kent and Superpoodle, and just like in the comics, only a fool wouldn't be able to see the resemblance.
I made this exact joke on Twitter already but I thought I was hilarious so I'm making it here again. The Good Lord Bird: Ethan Hawke does no wrong. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition: It's back and so is me crying every time they "move that bus!' Zooey's Extraordinary Playlist: Just delightful. High Fidelity: "Why not?" shouldn't be a reason to remake something.
To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You: Are we all finally acknowledging that Netflix's rom-coms are terrible? © Copyright 2020 The Daily Beast Company LLC
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