Dirt: Explaining the jokes

The Amy Sherman-Palladino whisperer.

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Jasmine Harris on revisiting Gilmore Girls via TikTok. Alexis Gunderson on a Netflix marketing fail.

The Reference Library

My TikTok experience got a little unhinged once I found Scott Westwood’s “Explaining Gilmore Girls Jokes…” series.

Unhinged like Paris equating her dating fears to the tragic fate of Sunny von Bülow, and Lorelai naming her dream sequence twins after child murderers. Some are uplifting; Luke’s anti-mall tirade leads to an informative Emma Goldman reference.

Mostly unhinged though, because Luke telling Lorelai not to sit on any cold benches without wearing underwear is a reference to the myth that it’ll give you hemorrhoids. As TikTok user tolive4thehopeofitall said, “This series has me believing I never once understood a Gilmore Girls joke.” — By Jasmine Harris

What WAS That?

Netflix’s October 28 press release of Kat's Punk Playlist: Free Radio Beats To Chill/Summon Demons To—i.e., an animated, cyclops-eyed boombox YT livestream of Afro punk tracks meant to tease Henry Selick’s long-awaited Wendell and Wild—might have led to another blog about the whiplash of consuming streaming media as an aging punk in the post-sellout era, save for the fact that Netflix’s PR strategy couldn’t even manage to be coherent enough to sell the selling-out. 

 To wit: Not only did this year’s Halloween have nothing to do with the film at hand, but Kat’s Punk Playlist, itself, is literally just five tracks long. Meaning even if (checks notes) Sate, Big Joanie, Nafets, Bad Brains, Death, and more¹ wanted to sell out, Netflix seems to have gone out of its way to keep them from taking full advantage of even that. 

Obviously this isn't the first (or worst) example of streamers getting lost in their own baffling bullshit—I mean, who can forget Peacock’s astoundingly bizarre egg-watch livestream? Who can forget QUIBI?? But considering how keen I *truly would be* to have 10 hours of "…and more" Afro punk tracks to chill/summon demons to, maybe it's no surprise this was the bit of dickish léger de PR main that finally broke me. — By Alexis Gunderson

The Dirt: Don’t be stingy with the Afro punk.

1. Count those names again; there are no more!!!