television

I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can’t stop eating peanuts.
– Orson Welles

Jennifer Aniston criticises JD Vance’s ‘childless cat ladies’ comment

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The Friends star has previously spoken about her struggles while trying to have children through IVF.

By Bonnie McLaren

Jennifer Aniston has criticised Donald Trump’s vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, for resurfaced comments calling Democrats a “bunch of childless cat ladies with miserable lives”.

The Friends actress, 55, posted a 2021 interview with Mr Vance that has been widely shared since his selection as Mr Trump’s running mate for November’s presidential election.

“I truly can’t believe that this is coming from a potential VP of the United States,” she wrote on Instagram.

“All I can say is… Mr Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day.”

Mr Vance has a two-year-old daughter, and two sons.

“I hope she will not need to turn to IVF as a second option,” Ms Aniston wrote.

“Because you are trying to take that away from her, too.”

The actress has previously spoken openly about her struggles while trying to have children through in-vitro fertilisation (IVF).

Last month, Mr Vance voted to block Democrat-proposed legislation to guarantee access to IVF nationwide.

Ahead of that vote, Mr Vance and the other 48 Senate Republicans signed a letter saying they supported IVF, but that the Democratic bill was overly broad and “false fearmongering”.

In the clip, Mr Vance criticised Vice-President Kamala Harris because she has no biological children.

Ms Harris is stepmother to her husband Doug Emhoff’s two children.

But Mr Vance told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson the US was run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too”.

“Look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,” he said.

“How does it make any sense we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”

Kamala Harris’ stepdaughter, Ella Emhoff, posted a reaction to Mr Vance’s comments on Instagram on Thursday.

“How can you be ‘childless’ when you have cutie pie kids like cole and I?” the 25-year-old daughter of Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, and his ex-wife, Kerstin Emhoff, wrote. Cole Emhoff is her 29-year-old brother.

The BBC has contacted the Trump-Vance campaign team for comment.

‘Heartbreaking setback’

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg also addressed the comments earlier this week, speaking about adopting twins with his husband, Chasten.

“The really sad thing is he said that after Chasten and I had been through a fairly heartbreaking setback in our adoption journey,” Mr Buttigieg told CNN’s The Source programme.

“He couldn’t have known that – but maybe that’s why you shouldn’t be talking about other people’s children.”

There has also been backlash from fans of singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, who has no children – and three cats.

“It’s bold, for someone seeking votes, to hone in on ‘childless cat ladies’ when the leader of Childless Cat Ladies is Taylor Swift,” British writer Caitlin Moran posted on X.

Another X user shared the Time magazine cover where Swift posed with one of her cats, writing: “Hell hath no fury like a certain childless cat lady who has yet to endorse a presidential candidate.”

In 2022, Aniston told Allure she wished someone had told her to freeze her eggs.

“It was a challenging road for me, the baby-making road,” she said.

“All the years and years of speculation… it was really hard.

“I was going through IVF, drinking Chinese teas, you name it.”

But she had “zero regrets”.

“I would’ve given anything if someone had said to me, ‘Freeze your eggs. Do yourself a favour.’ You just don’t think it. So here I am today,” she told the magazine.

“The ship has sailed.”

Source: Jennifer Aniston criticises JD Vance’s ‘childless cat ladies’ comment

Bodkin review: An off-kilter, funny riff on true-crime hackery

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In Netflix’s comedic thriller, Will Forte and Siobhán Cullen seek journalistic absolution and find a whole lot of trouble.

By Jarrod Jones

True-crime podcasts have just as many fans as haters, and there’s a chance that Bodkin, the Netflix series from Jez Scharf that premieres May 9 about a trio of bickering podcasters, will appeal to both.

In a sense, Scharf’s mystery series, set in a beautiful, isolated Irish village, is optimal content for the Netflix binging model. It shares the protracted rhythms of typical true crime in that it’s brimming with detail while stashing its most salacious revelations for the end of each episode, almost as if it’s daring its audience not to hit play on the next one. Episodes are inundated with tin-eared true-crime clichés, but it’s done winkingly by Will Forte, who drops lines like “the more you learn, the less you know” and other such inanities. Its score, by Paul Leonard-Morgan, evokes the plinky earworm themes from investigative podcasts like Serial, a creative choice that seems almost Pavlovian in its design. Bodkin knows what it is, and thanks to this self-cognizance, it becomes more.

Yet, as good as Bodkin is, no amount of quality character work or engrossing mystery can kick enough dirt over how dumb it is to hear the word “podcast” repeated again and again. That might explain one of the show’s better recurring jokes: Gilbert (Forte), a Chicago-based podcaster eager to both please and impress, frequently tells folks from the provincial Irish village which gives the show its title that he’s doing a podcast. The retort we often hear, delivered in that politely barbed manner the Irish tend to excel at, is priceless: “And will people listen to it?”

The humor in Bodkin is, to put it mildly, droll. It sets a mood as much as the dramatic elements of Scharf’s story, and that blend of wit and melancholy mostly clicks. It makes much of the events that transpire in this fictional town feel both conceivable and ridiculous at the same time, even if those barbs are eventually sanded down by kindness and virtue before the end—an inevitability, perhaps, considering Bodkin is produced by Higher Ground executives Barack and Michelle Obama. Still, the series’ off-kilter approach is successful, by and large, and puts steam behind the many intrigues that uncoil during its seven-hour runtime.

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‘The End of the F***ing World’ Interview: A Show About Hope

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When the first season of The End of the F***ing World dropped on Netflix, it quickly became a cult sensation, despite many people being initially put off by the idea of a black comedy about a psychopathic teen boy luring a teen girl on a road trip with the intention of murdering her.

You couldn’t help but fall in love with the characters — even James (Alex Lawther), the “psychopathic” weirdo, but perhaps especially Alyssa (Jessica Barden), the prickly, loud-mouthed, opinionated, vulnerable, impulsive, caring, complicated heroine who is one of the best-written female characters in recent years.

Despite how incredible Season 1 was — or rather, because of it — another season of the show felt unnecessary.

While open-ended, the final moments of Season 1 were an exquisite completion of the character arcs of James and Alyssa. Where could they possibly go in Season 2 that would be anywhere near as satisfying as that final line, that final shot?

Time To Breathe

For writer Charlie Covell, the answer lay in the future, with Season 2 picking up two years after the Season 1 finale.

“I wasn’t interested in carrying on directly after Season 1 — I felt the characters and the story needed some time to breathe,” she tells Junkee. “I wanted Season 2 to feel like it had grown up a bit, for it to mature with the characters.”

The time jump allows both the audience and the characters space from the explosive Season 1 ending. We pick up with Alyssa in a very different place — literally, having moved away from her hometown with her mother, but also psychologically. Gone is the brash, argumentative give-no-fucks attitude; Alyssa smiles politely, does as she’s told, goes with the flow, and generally, just tries to get through the day.

For Jessica Barden, this new side of Alyssa was appealing to play. “Alyssa seemed to represent someone who always knew what to say and how to respond, but what happens when that person is struggling and how do you escape the persona you have given yourself? I think a lot of people feel like that.”

Consequences And Trauma

While Season 1 saw Alyssa and James trying to escape the immediate consequences of their actions, Season 2 is about dealing with the far-reaching consequences. The kind that don’t go away so easily, and that can’t be fit into a neat narrative arc.

“Season 2 is hugely about PTSD, and trauma that isn’t necessarily immediate — but buried,” says Covell.

“I think Charlie wrote Alyssa perfectly, especially how someone like Alyssa would respond to a trauma,” adds Barden. “It was not the most expected storyline to come from the series, but one that I think was important to show.”

Where Season 1 explored the way these characters found solace and hope in each other — the way they rescued one another — Season 2 focuses on the way you actually have to save yourself.

Bonnie

The addition of new character Bonnie feels a bit jarring at first, but her own story of trauma dovetails well with the main plot.

Like James in Season 1, Bonnie is haunted by her past, and it’s caused her to lash out in violent ways. Her desire for vengeance drives much of the tension in Season 2, and though her arc doesn’t land quite as powerfully as James and Alyssa’s, it does drive home the different effect the same events can have on people.

Like the rest of the characters on the show, Bonnie is complicated, and she stirs up complicated feelings in the audience. That’s part of what makes The End of the F***ing World so wonderful.

View image on Twitter

What About James?

The elephant in the room amongst all of this, of course, is James himself.

The last we saw of him in Season 1, he’d apparently been shot by police. A lot of fans feared he was dead. The beginning of Season 2 leaves us hanging — we don’t discover what happened to him until well into the second episode.

Without spoiling too much, his fate ties beautifully into the themes of trauma and grief that recur throughout the season, and his narrative concludes in a way that is sure to leave fans satisfied.

For Covell, a happy and hopeful ending was vital. “Because otherwise it’s so bleak! No, seriously — what was important for me was to suggest, tentatively, that there was a happy ending,” she says. “I think hope is important, particularly the way the world is at the moment.”

That’s one thing both seasons have in common: in addition to the incredible performances, writing, soundtrack, costuming, set design and all the rest, of course.

For a show titled The End of the F***ing World, it leaves you feeling remarkably warm and content. Which is, frankly, pretty damn necessary.

The End of the F***ing World is currently streaming on Netflix.

Source: ‘The End of the F***ing World’ Interview: A Show About Hope