Imagine you’re stuck in your apartment for months. Only one streaming app has a new show coming out. Can you manage not to watch it? Here’s the catch: the show is about a situation so shamelessly pornographic that curiosity-induced viewership by everyone you know is virtually guaranteed. When the trailer for “Too Hot To Handle,” Netflix’s upcoming spiritual sibling to “Love Is Blind,” started making the rounds this week, it felt like another hit. The show, hitting Netflix on Friday, is like the “Seinfeld” episode “The Contest” if the script had been written by the Raya algorithm. They even cast a smart speaker as the host. A bunch of hot people have to stay on an island and not have sex with each other. Whoever makes it wins $100,000.The show is a situation, not a story. Of course, that’s nothing new. But what makes it scary to me is that we might not have of a choice but to be seduced by ever-more-ridiculous situation-based content for a while. New productions are on hold, which means most streaming services, including the ones that are already out and the ones that are about to be released, will have to make do for a while with what they already have. Except, of course, Netflix.
In the Wall Street Journal, the chief executive of the company that makes “Queer Eye” for Netflix said Netflix has “a content pipeline that probably takes them to the end of the year.”Just before the coronavirus pandemic hit the US, Netflix ramped up its push into reality TV based on the success of its other romance reality show “Love Is Blind.” So what’s in the pipeline? One certainty is more "Tiger King"-like documentary series made from existing footage. I've already that "How to Fix a Drug Scandal" will climb up Netflix's charts. As of today, it's on the Trending Now row but not yet in the app's Top 10. Another possibility is situation-based shows. One of the best things I read about Quibi last week was Mike Hale's review in the Times. "Situations and stories are two different things," Hale says, describing the plot-challenged episodic content on Quibi. While the situation-not-story is the downfall of Quibi's scripted broken-up "movies," it's rocket fuel for Netflix’s romance reality TV. These situation-based reality shows have to be easier to produce remotely than a scripted show, and even if I haven't heard of one yet I'm sure there will be one made involving Zoom soon.
The situations will only get more and more outrageous, engineered perfectly to be impossible to not stream. We're stuck inside. The stars of "Too Hot To Handle" can't leave their island. Shows like this are hostage situation content, but we're the hostages.
The shorter stuff
The reaction to the Punk’d premiere inside Fortnite was not good. (Instagram)
I learned the compound word “piss-elegant” from this brutal 2018 Martin Filler review of Architectural Digest’s editor Paige Rense’s book. Has anyone asked him to review Drake’s house? (NYRB)
A morbidly Jewish anonymous quote in this Ben Smith piece on Bob Iger and Disney: “They’re covering the mirrors and ripping clothes.” (NYT)
The good 17-minute Dylan song about the JFK assassination is his first #1? (Vulture)
Judging from the early leaks from the set of The Batman I didn’t peg the director as a bowtie guy. (NYT)
Conspiracy theory: Sophie Turner deleted her Twitter and hasn’t posted on Instagram since March 24 so she wouldn’t have to promote her Quibi show. (Twitter)
When you do a massive “Who Shot J.R.?”-style ad campaign and no one is there to see it. (Image)
Dana White really tried hard to do UFC on tribal lands during this pandemic. (NYT)
It’s really scary to think about the vibe inside Gal Gadot’s management, publicity and agency teams when she released that dumb singalong knowing her Vogue cover was about to be published. (The Cut)
Lis Smith kinda taking credit for Dr. Fauci's PR strategy. (VF)
Quibi already admitting that phones kinda suck. (Bloomberg)
Nathan King calling some folks he doesn't know crackheads. Very weird choice! (Air Mail)
If "Run" is a hit for HBO then Phoebe Waller-Bridge will be godlike in the TV industry after "Fleabag" and "Killing Eve." (THR)
I lost all respect for Jerry Saltz when he admitted on Twitter that he can’t make his own coffee. I regained respect for him when he went on Time Crisis. (iTunes)
Last week I said Amanda Hess is on a roll. But this is where she and I part ways. Sorry! (NYT)
The music supervision on "Devs" is very good. (YouTube)