The Tony Awards reliably does right what every other award show does wrong, and this year’s ceremony, hosted by an infectiously enthusiastic Pink, was no exception.

The telecast each year is a celebration of the work the theater industry accomplished, a spotlight on the nominated talent, and an unabashed annual call to arms to continue artists’ mission of provoking, interrogating, uniting, and inspiring.

That’s a whole lot of words that could read as “hokey!” “corny!” or “pedantic!” in blinding neon signs, the kind you see on the marquees on Broadway. But that’s the beautiful thing about Broadway and those neon lights. They’re not meant to be subtle. That the Tony Awards ceremony each year so gleefully embraces what it’s actually about—theater!—is what makes it such a blast to watch, and one of the most entertaining nights of TV.

The Tonys get what other telecasts like the Oscars and the Emmys don’t.

It’s relentlessly confusing how often those shows punch down on viewers, each year contorting themselves in uncomfortable ways to trick audiences into thinking they’re not watching what the ceremony is technically there to do, in the foolish hope that it might make them more interested. “If we get a few pop stars to sing for no discernible reason, they won’t remember this is to give out trophies to movies they didn’t see!” “Quick, assemble the Avengers to present, and maybe they’ll forget we didn’t nominate a Marvel movie for Best Picture!”

On paper, the Tony Awards are at a disadvantage: the projects being rewarded are seen by a minuscule number of the potential TV viewing population. Only the people who made it to New York and bought pricey tickets to a nominated show or two have context for the nominees; the number of people who have seen most of all of them is even smaller.

So what does the Tonys do to account for that? It shows us the shows! What a concept!

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There are certain people in the world (me) for whom a romantic comedy pairing of Jennifer Lopez and Ted Lasso Emmy-winner Brett Goldstein is ideal.

There’s Jennifer Lopez, royalty of the genre, incandescent movie star, and patron saint of Kevin Fallon’s joy. And there’s Goldstein, the grouchy and scowling Roy Kent with an irresistible heart of gold beating beneath that oh-so-masculine hairy chest.

In Office Romance, her solar-flare charisma refracting against his deadpan armor is a refreshing shift from the typical raging battle of sheer magnetism that defines—and neuters—most rom-com scene partners. There’s nothing neutered about this movie, now streaming on Netflix, a surprisingly frisky R-rated addition to J.Lo’s Swooning Cinematic Universe (the only cinematic universe I care about).

Reviews of rom-coms are reliably insufferable, rejecting the expected beats of the genre as lazy and the predictability as juvenile. If you see my eyes bouncing somewhere down the West Side Highway, please grab them for me. I seem to have rolled them too hard.

Office Romance is a prime example of giving the people who want to watch a movie like this exactly what they want. For rom-com lovers, yeah, it’s predictable. Thank god for that. It’s so satisfying.

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The Gilligan’s Island jokes write themselves.

It was the first time I had ever commuted to an interview by ferry. The trip was only a surprisingly short eight minutes from Lower Manhattan to Governors Island, but it was for what was meant to be a three(ish) hour “tour,” of sorts.

I was to spend the afternoon and early evening with Antoni Porowski, who is following up his 10-season stint as one of Queer Eye’s Fab Five with his second National Geographic series, Best of the World With Antoni Porowski. We had a lovely interview on the waterfront, gazing at the Manhattan skyline, attended a cocktail-making class, and sat for a dinner he was hosting with Nat Geo on behalf of the series. Then the heavens opened up.

It was as if a cartoon character was up in the clouds and pulled a lever, suddenly dumping all the rain the sky could hold on our dining tent, all while another minion turned the dial on a wind machine up to maximum speed. Workers scrambled to batten down the hatches—the first time I’d seen that phrase employed in real life—tying down tent flaps that were billowing in the storm, as diners alternated between nonchalantly eating their salmon and giggling while filming the melee.

Waiters, soldiering on with service, scurried in and out of the tent with trays of gourmet food on platters guarded by umbrellas. The event’s photographer ran out to capture the scene, admirably undeterred as his safari hat flew off and blew away.

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There are trilogies that shift culture. The Godfather. The original Star Wars films. The Mighty Ducks. (Real ones know.) And now, there’s the Summer House three-part Season 10 reunion.

I’m being hyperbolic, of course. But, like, also not really.

With reality TV on an ever-exploding trajectory of popularity and fan investment at an intensity typically reserved for sports bettors, the Summer House reunion is a kismet collision of a major scandal on a hit show, a cast ready and rabid to turn it into a soap opera, and Bravo at its peak powers when it comes to editing these episodes in a dramatic and satisfying way.

What was once a little corner where reality TV fans gossiped together has now taken over most of the metaphorical house, with more and more varied swaths of people invested in the drama.

The drama: Soon after she separated from her husband, Kyle Cooke, Amanda Batula confirmed she and castmate West Wilson are dating, despite the fact that West used to date Amanda’s best friend, Ciara Miller, who counseled Amanda through her emotional breakup with Kyle—oh yeah, and West and Kyle were good friends too. It’s a baffling (though delicious to watch) amount of betrayal. Bravo has thus far been expertly parsing it out across the reunion episodes, with the second part of the trilogy now streaming on Peacock.

The episode featured a fascinating symphony of disparate energies, for once making the typically intelligible reunion cacophony of screaming into a captivating sociological study.

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Like any respectable gay, Andrew Rannells is obsessed with Allison Janney.

The actor, who originated the role of Elder Price in The Book of Mormon on Broadway and had his screen breakout as Elijah on Girls, first worked with Janney in 2025’s sequel Another Simple Favor. A reunion didn’t take long to come to fruition; they are currently starring in the HBO movie Miss You, Love You, a heartbreaking and humorous—aka deeply human—film about grief, regret, and resilience from Oscar-winning screenwriter Jim Rash of The Descendants.

“I would love to do a musical with her,” Rannells told me on the new episode of Obsessed: The Podcast. “Could I be Vera if she was Mame?” he said, fantasy casting himself with Janney as the brassy BFF duo in a musical revival of Mame, which any producer with a modicum of taste should greenlight immediately.

“She was never, like, an underdog,” he said, answering my question of why the gay community finds her so iconic. “She was always celebrated. But I feel like it sometimes takes, like, a little extra. The gays just saw her as something special.” There’s a certain intangible “broad” energy to her, like people would refer to her as a “dame” in older times. “It’s like a Mame energy,” he said.

In Miss You, Love You, Janney plays Diane, whose second husband has just died. Instead of coming to her side himself to help with arrangements and console her, her estranged son sends his assistant, Jamie (played by Rannells), forcing the two strangers to tiptoe around each other and their explosive emotions at one of the most intimate times in a person’s life.

“Jim wrote this beautiful script about people who want to be very independent and want to just sort of like go on it alone,” Rannells said. “And they find very quickly it’s better to share your pain and your grief with someone else. When I read the script, and I think Allison feels the same, we’ve both sort of recognized, ‘I do that, too.’”

Rannells is one of the most talented comedic and musical theater actors in the business, having appeared on stage in Hairspray, Hamilton, Falsettos, and The Boys in the Band, and on screen in comedies including The New Normal and Black Monday and movies like The Intern. Miss You, Love You is a graduation of sorts for him.

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Paul Rudd Sings!

I have a soft spot for the films of John Carney. He’s the man behind the movies Once, Begin Again, and Sing Street, song-filled stories about connection that some might consider schmaltzy or saccharine, but my corny self absolutely adores. Rot my teeth, cinematically, John!

His latest film is Power Ballad, which stars Paul Rudd as Rick, a washed-up rock star stuck doing wedding-band gigs to support his family. At one such job, he encounters a pop star named Danny, played by Nick Jonas, a former boybander trying to shed that image and be taken seriously as a solo artist. They spend the night jamming, writing songs together, and having one of those electric nights of random connection that seem to only exist in movies like this.

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For fans of Hacks, watching the final episodes was an anxiety-inducing experience akin to watching a bomb’s countdown clock tick closer and closer to 0:00, frantically hoping someone would cut the right wire in time to stave off devastation: Was Deborah Vance going to die???

(Warning: Spoilers ahead for the series finale of Hacks.)

Of course, this is the masterful comedy series Hacks. So the episodes, including Thursday night’s series finale, were outrageously funny, sharply observant, boiling over with piping-hot commentary about the entertainment industry, and gorgeously, movingly human. But, yeah…also stressful!

What had been hinted at with breadcrumbs over the previous few episodes came out fully baked early in the finale when Deborah (Jean Smart) revealed that her cancer had spread, she won’t be seeking treatment, and she has decided to end her life at an assisted suicide facility in Zurich, following what she hopes will be a lovely farewell vacation with her writer-turned-best-friend Ava (Hannah Einbinder).

Smart spoke about her reaction to this finale plot, specifically being taken aback by it, and my eyebrow initially raised in a similar way; in fact, it just about catapulted off my forehead and through the ceiling when I realized this hysterical comedy I’ve been adoring for five seasons was going in this direction for its conclusion. But what a fool I was to doubt, as the episode was as unique and funny and special and sneakily profound as anyone would expect from this show. It was a big emotional swing, but a confident one—and an ending that was absolutely earned.

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It was the Bravo Super Bowl.

The launch of the Summer House reunion episodes was a seismic event for reality TV fans, with countdowns to Tuesday night’s premiere, watch parties at bars that typically reserve such an honor for sports finals, and even a movie theater screening.

I was mildly invested in the “Scandoval” era, which is probably the last time there was this much excitement for the come-to-Jesus controversy accountability session that is a Bravo reunion. But the anticipation for this, which is to say, the salivation for a verbal sofa execution of two of the show’s cast members has been, to borrow a favorite phrase from a Summer House fan favorite, even more “activated.” And, wow, did the episode not disappoint.

The Summer House cast didn’t just show up to dig scandal-ridden stars Amanda Batula and West Wilson’s graves. They transmogrified into construction-grade excavators and had the pair six feet under within six minutes.

The hype, if you’re unfamiliar, is because in the time between shooting of the season wrapped and the reunion was filmed, it came to light that Amanda and West were sleeping together and in a relationship.

During the season of Summer House that was airing at the time, Amanda was struggling in her marriage to castmate Kyle Cooke and ultimately decided to separate from him. Her best friend in the house, Ciara Miller, was her biggest supporter and constant shoulder to cry on during this process. Ciara was also navigating the rekindling of her relationship with her ex, West, who is also one of Kyle’s best friends.

So it was a blow to everyone when it came out that Amanda and West had been secretly hooking up, betraying their best friends, and lying to everyone about it. Hence, the reunion fireworks.

I’m an avid reality TV fan—aka an addicted obsessive—and I cannot remember a time when two people of the show so immediately and extremely became villains. Every other conversation I’ve had in the last two months has been with people needing to download their opinion on what happened with Amanda and West. So to hear them try to explain themselves on the reunion was going to be one helluva juicy episode of television.

Especially since, as we learned while watching, the cast arrived locked and loaded, ready to go scorched earth with their flame throwers from the start.

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Never say that the Real Housewives series has no educational value.

Following the last episode of The Real Housewives of Rhode Island, scores of people were inspired to expand their vocabulary. A Google search query for the phrase “slam pig” spiked immediately after the episode aired and the several days that followed. (Seriously, I looked it up.) Searches for “slam pig meaning” were up 80 percent. Bravo fans, always willing to expand their minds.

The scholarship mission was inspired by an insult hurled by cast member Rosie Woods DiMare at adversary Kelsey Swanson during what ranks as the most explosive fight of the season so far. (That’s tough competition, too, though it’s notable that either Rosie or Kelsey has figured heavily in the other two major dust-ups.)

Now, if you’re faint of heart, I don’t necessarily encourage googling this particular term, and implore you not to search it on X. Suffice it to say, it’s an unsavory way of describing a promiscuous woman, and one that Rosie had locked and loaded to fire off at Kelsey when tensions spiked.

It’s another notch in the belt for “Nosy Rosie,” the breakout star and reigning chaos agent of the buzzy newest entry in the Real Housewives franchise. So, as an unrepentant Bravoholic and RHORI obsessive, it was a treat to get to talk to her for Obsessed: The Podcast.

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The final episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert was pretty snoozy. But, when you sit with it, beautifully so. Profoundly so, even.

The overwhelming—which is to say, underwhelming—mundanity of most of the episode was a pointed choice.

The episode did not, in fact, have Stephen Colbert standing center stage holding a flamethrower and metaphorically torching the Trump administration, which would’ve appeased outraged fans salivating for something like that. It was also not a grand symphony of emotion and endless tears, which arguably would have been earned, but instead some occasional sentimentality played in pianissimo.

Some might have anticipated a parade of stars to rival the Met Gala, but the episode didn’t live up to that expectation. That might sound like a silly observation given the fact that the last guest was Paul McCartney and there were a slew of celebrity cameos, but those appearances would barely rival just one dressing room of other meaningful tribute events, like SNL50—or even Wednesday’s penultimate episode of Colbert’s show.

Instead, Colbert delivered a normal, not particularly funny monologue, touching on sinkholes and the hantavirus. His interview with McCartney, who was also promoting a new project, was par for the course. Everything was business as usual, up to a strained wormhole bit that led to a concluding singalong. A strained bit and a singalong? A typical outing in late-night.

In going out this way instead of with something more bombastic, Colbert is reminding us of what we’re really losing if we lose hosts like him, if we lose this late-night format, and if we lose these shows’ ability to engage with the news and our feelings about it.

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Ryan O’Connell is on a unique kind of celebrity mission.

The writer and actor from TV shows like Netflix’s Special and Peacock’s Queer as Folk reboot is on a press tour to promote his new book of autobiographical essays titled Inspiration Porn. Because of that, I have never in my life seen so many interview headlines that include the phrase “getting railed.”

“It’s like, be the change you wish to see in the world,” he tells me. “If you build, they will come, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.” Later in our conversation, he’s even more explicit: “I really hope that everyone reads this book and becomes a little bit sluttier.”

Inspiration Porn is O’Connell’s third book, following I’m Special and Just by Looking at Him, continuing his reputation for naked candor about his experience navigating cerebral palsy, discovering a satisfying and rich sex life as a disabled gay man, and breaking into a Hollywood system that had been notoriously close-minded to stories like his.

This latest collection of essays isn’t, of course, just about sex, though, in many ways—like so much in life—it kind of is.

He writes with a kind of peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich combination of self-deprecation and impressive confidence that shouldn’t work together but is uniquely and surprisingly delicious. With his lacerating wit, he examines his life wishing to be different and figuring out as a person who is disabled and gay how to be accepted in a society that, let’s be real, struggles to lend dignity to just one of those things.

As bullet points, the list of experiences he parses reads as ideas from a pitch meeting for a ’90s-era trauma exploitation indie movie being submitted to Sundance: going through adolescence with CP, his mother’s alcoholism, getting hit by a truck, his own alcoholism, his pill addiction, his complicated relationship to sex. But that’s reductive. It would also be reductive to refer to the stories, written from a current place where O’Connell is professionally, personally, and sexually thriving, solely as “inspiration porn”: How uplifting that O’Connell is where he is, given all he’s been through! (Blech.)

The truth is, the book is O’Connell’s self-exploration of his life, told with the proper amount of interrogation, confusion, hindsight, anger, and humor. It’s dishy. It’s horny. As the marketing for the release proudly proclaims, it is O’Connell “bravely healing his soul through his hole.”

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There’s an experience that happens rarely when watching television. It takes a singular kind of show to elicit it. You watch it and sporadically let out a “ha!” or a “tee-hee-hee” outburst. You’re not cackling or giggling through, as you would to a laugh-out-loud comedy, and you’re not gasping repeatedly, the way a truly creepy horror series might have you doing. You’re just kind of generally tickled by the show.

I am tickled by Widow’s Bay.

The Apple TV series is what I am deeming the coolest show on TV. There is no scientific evidence or metrics for that. It’s just based on what a few people who I think are cool have said, and then, of course, my own personal feelings.

It stars Matthew Rhys—the coolest actor on TV—as Tom, the mayor of a New England island town who is desperate to turn it into a tourist destination, but keeps getting thwarted by the pesky little fact that it is probably (most definitely) haunted and cursed.

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We’re heading towards an apocalyptic event of “shaken, not stirred” puns in trade magazines and pop culture websites, as it’s just been announced that Amazon MGM officially started auditioning actors to be the new James Bond.

Variety reported that Game of Thrones casting vet Nina Gold, who was just nominated for the inaugural casting Oscar for her work on Hamnet, has been hired for the arduous task of adjudicating which of cinema’s most handsome men is the suavest, sexiest, and looks best in a form-fitting tux. Everyone has a cross to bear in this life. Prayers for you, Nina.

The even more important role in all of this, however, is mine: sitting on a couch barking my opinion of who should be cast, even though it doesn’t matter what I think at all. I take the role very seriously.

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With The Comeback just wrapping its final season and only two episodes of Hacks left, therapists for pop-culture superfans who care far too deeply for this kind of stuff are doing the Lord’s work right now. (Shout to you, Sharon!)

Rather than wallow and obsess alone over the last stretch of episodes of Hacks, I did something far healthier and way more fun: I interviewed the show’s co-creator, Jen Statsky, about them for a new episode of Obsessed: The Podcast.

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How do you say goodbye to someone you’re conditioned to greet with a chipper, “Hello, hello, hello!”?

That’s the rain shower of emotion puddling around the series finale of The Comeback, a pool of somewhat histrionic, yet earnest and earned, tears from the show’s passionate fans and championing critics. (AKA: me.)

The HBO comedy, starring Lisa Kudrow as a veteran actress who dizzyingly follows the compass wherever it points toward the future of the TV industry, didn’t just wrap its third season; it wrapped its entire run. It wrapped 21 years of a legacy, owed to its unique pattern of releasing one season every 10-or-so years. That’s actual decades for adoration, appreciation, marveling, and, at least in recent years, memeification to steep. So taking the last sip after all that brewing—it hits you strong.

And so when I watched that final episode, and especially that last monologue from Kudrow as Valerie Cherish, it hit me hard. It was, like Valerie, perfectly imperfect. I can’t imagine a finer way to end the show.

If you haven’t watched The Comeback, well, first of all, I’ve hired a Game of Thrones Shame Nun impersonator to follow you around for the next three days.

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In 2024, Real Housewife Dorit Kemsley lit a cigarette. Nothing has been the same since.

For the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star, who had long exasperated fans with her inexplicable accent and carefully curated (read: boring) TV image, it was like a Bad Sandy in Grease moment. She separated from her husband, exposed his alcoholism, and then used the same lighter she fired up that cig with to set her relationship with former best friend Kyle Richards, the Alpha Socialite of RHOBH, aflame.

Fans were living for it, this no-fucks-given attitude, a badass phoenix rising from the ashtray.

That was then. The attention that Dorit received for breaking bad may have briefly given her wings, but now, a resounding sentiment among fans is that she’s flown too close to the sun.

The RHOBH reunion just ended, finally putting punctuation on a long and monotonous running sentence.

The conclusion of any Real Housewives reunion is a reflective point for the show’s fans, if not for its stars as well.

RHOBH finds itself in a strange position. There is deep history between much of its cast, which is typically an asset for a Housewives season. But the sheer dominance of Dorit’s “I’m going through a hard time” spiral-cum-tantrum, and refusal to engage in any accountable conversation with the cast, amounted to a weekly viewing experience akin to playing a video game and reaching game over at the same point again and again. RHOBH’s final boss is Dorit Willing to Engage, and it’s yet to beat it.

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It was a mythical time in New York. A magical one, really.

In the basement of a condemned Gristedes grocery store in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, a musical-comedy masterpiece that seemed to have escaped from a melatonin fever dream shared by three virtuosos of creative lunacy was staged.

The decidedly unglamorous conditions were the damp incubator from which Titanique was almost destined to grow. As water dripped on them from the air conditioning, audiences were the culturati, the tastemakers spreading the gospel of this Céline Dion-inspired masterpiece. They were the word of mouth. Turns out, they had big ones.

A drunken seed of an idea that began among best friends Tye Blue, Marla Mindelle, and Constantine Rousouli 10 years ago has blossomed into a wholly unique, hysterical, ludicrous triumph and a comedy hit. Titanique graduated from that basement and is now on Broadway.

Eight times a week, Mindelle’s delulu version of Céline Dion swears to audiences that she was on the Titanic and survived the sinking, so she tells them about the voyage as she remembers. Dion’s version of events is a lot like the movie Titanic, but filtered through her signature kooky-craziness, all while the characters belt the French Canadian diva extraordinaire’s banger power ballads to the theater’s rafters.

After receiving (more) glowing reviews, the show is nominated for the Tony Award for Best Musical. Blue, who also directs, Mindelle, whose Céline is the greatest thing you’ll see on Broadway this season, and Rousouli, who also plays Jack, were all nominated for writing the musical. Mindelle is also nominated for Best Actress.

They also happen to be three of the funniest people in the world—and the guests on a new episode of Obsessed: The Podcast. Watch here.

They may be the toast of Broadway right now (clink!), but the trio still has fond memories of their rodent-infested beginnings.

“We were like, oh, this is great! Finally, we’ll have our dreams come true,” Mindelle says. “Then Gristedes was condemned in the middle of the summer, so all the rats from Gristedes would come down to the basement.”

“Take shits in our makeup,” Rousouli adds.

“They had also given them rat poison, so they would poop little fluorescent poops in our makeup,” Mindelle continues. “So we were like, OK, they’re gay rats. They’re crawling around. They’re pooping all over the set. And then I’m singing ‘My Heart Will Go On’ and trash juice is leaking onto my face.”

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I Can’t Believe How Good This Movie Is

When I first learned about The Sheep Detectives, a film in which Hugh Jackman plays a shepherd whose flock of sheep band together to solve his murder, I couldn’t believe it existed.

Moreover, I was concerned for Jackman. Was he behind on payments for a beach house? Was one of the producers on the film blackmailing him? Or more to the point, had he simply lost his mind?

Well, I have now seen The Sheep Detectives. A running plot point in the film involves deducing which of the suspected murderers is the “fool.” Friends, it turns out that the fool is me.

This movie is a shear (get it?) delight. It is tender and thoughtful. The screenplay, a rip-roaring whodunnit tinged with endearingly twee humor, is impeccable. And the cast, both human and ovine, delicately treads between comedy, heart, farce, and unexpected emotionality.

Either I, like Jackman, have simply lost my mind, or we are two of the sanest, impossibly attractive (humor me) blokes around. Because, dare I say it, The Sheep Detectives might be my favorite film of the year so far.

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The giggle-inducing one-liners fly fast and furious in the new movie Influenced, observations about influencers and image-obsessed moms in the Upper East Side that run like a ticker-tape of shrewd, savage comedy. But there’s one in particular that made me guffaw so loudly I nearly missed the rest of the scene.

The star and co-writer of Influenced, Jill Kargman, plays Dzanielle, a momfluencer obsessed with curating her family’s life not just to keep up with the Joneses in the neighborhood, but to impress the aspirational followers on social media. Her husband (Justin Bartha) asks her what the catering will be for an upcoming party. “Pigs in a blanket and sliders, only bigger,” she casually responds.

It killed me. That’s, like, hot dogs and hamburgers, folks. When I mention how much the line tickled me during an interview with Kargman, she’s giddy. “I’m so glad you noticed that,” she says. “No one notices it! I love that joke.”

It’s simply the tragic fatass in me, I respond. I’m the kind of person who maps out the hors d’oeuvres-consuming strategy at a cocktail party with the intensity and care that Magellan might chart the navigational course for an expedition. Kargman and I are kindred spirits in that way. “I always stand by the door where the cute cater waiters come out,” cutting them off at the pass, she says. That’s the move!

I first met Kargman over a decade ago, when she created and starred in the Bravo scripted comedy series Odd Mom Out, based on her experience interacting with the momzillas flocking around the gilded age of the Upper East Side, where she was raising her family.

Kargman’s outsider perspective, which has earned the moniker “The Bard of the Upper East Side,” wasn’t because she didn’t belong there; her father is the former president of Chanel, Drew Barrymore is her ex-sister-in-law, and she scored cameos in Influenced from the likes of Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow by asking for favors at one of the ritzy parties her social circle throws. It’s because she seems to have the gene that is missing from so much of the cohort at school pickup: rationality. An ability to see the ludicrousness in so much of the behavior she was witnessing.

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The Bear surprised audiences by dropping a surprise episode this week, almost 11 months since its previous season aired and a month before its new season is set to release.

The show is an Emmy-winning, zeitgeist-seizing hit. The unexpected episode, then, should be so exciting.

But, oh my god, is this the most tedious and underwhelming hour of television I’ve watched in ages.

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