The Spunky White Ladies, Psychological Thrillers, and Strike Signs That Got Us Through the Week

You could spend your weekend devouring the latest updates from England on King Charles’ coronation, which kicks off in the wee hours of Saturday morning if you’re stateside—we’ll be covering it—and promises to feature swords, sausage fingers, and some sensationalized gossip. Or, you could divest from that particular news cycle and sink into the following movies, books, and strike-supporting content, which we on staff have been very much loving.

Our Jez Recs for the week lie ahead. And if you’d like to recommend something for next week’s edition, drop it in a comment here or email it to us at [email protected] with the subject line “Jez Recs.”

Do I have baby fever? No. Do I want kids at some point? I don’t know—but what I do know is how fucking crazy I feel about having to think about it now. So as much as I love a fuzzy, heartfelt movie about a woman who doesn’t want kids but then her sister and brother-in-law die or whatever and she gets stuck raising their kids…what we don’t have enough of is movies that treat the decision about whether or not to have kids exactly as it should be treated: like a psychological body horror thriller.

So I really loved Clock, Hulu’s new movie starring Dianna Agron as a woman who doesn’t want kids and who’s never felt her biological clock ticking at her to have kids…but who finally succumbs to society’s insistence that she should be thinking and wanting and frothing at the mouth over having kids. Succumbing to society’s pressure is never a good thing! And in Clock, it’s truly terrifying. This is a dark, disturbing film, but if you’ve ever felt fucking crazy over everyone squawking at you about your goddamn biological clock, it’s pretty delightful. —Lauren Tousignant

At first glance, the Netflix series Firefly Lane looks unbearable. It’s about two white ladies, who are also childhood best friends, struggling to ascend the corporate ladder as journalists and navigate their romantic relationships with men. But by the show’s second and final season, what could’ve been an unnecessary addition to the streaming landscape had become a show so touching it brought me to tears—as very little television does for me nowadays.

Despite the various men, jobs, and cross-country moves in these women’s lives, Firefly Lane is, above all else, about the transcendent power of female friendship, positioning platonic love as equal or of greater importance than romantic love. I won’t spoil the plot, but I will say that it had me revisiting all the great feminine loves of my life: my mother, my sister, my best friend of 30 years. As in Firefly Lane, they are the center of my universe. Sometimes, all it takes is a little show about spunky white ladies to remember that. —Emily Leibert

One of 2023’s hot books, Biography of X, is a towering work that comments on, among things, art-world ridiculousness, the elasticity of identity, culture divides in the United States, and the fool’s errand of compressing a life into narrative. As Catherine Lacey’s protagonist C.M. Lucca writes: “I know now a person always exceeds and resists the limits of a story about them, and no matter how widely we set the boundaries, their subjectivity spills over, drips at the edges, then rushes out completely. People are, it seems, too complicated to sit still inside a narrative, but that hasn’t stopped anyone from trying, desperately trying, to compact a life into pages.”

But Lucca persists. A formal fictional exercise that mixes fantasy and reality (Richard Serra, David Bowie, and Kathy Acker are among the characters), the book represents Lucca’s attempt to tell the life story of her dead wife, an artist known as X, who took on many guises over the course of her life and career, through a series of interviews with people from X’s past and recollections of her various projects. This includes a fascinating reimagining of U.S. history, wherein for 50 years starting in 1945, some Southern states seceded to create the authoritarian and theocratic Southern Territory. (That’s where X was born.) But beyond the book-as-book exercise, Lacy’s inventiveness when describing X’s various attention-grabbing exhibitions, and the genius visual annotations, Biography of X consistently stuns on a sentence-to-sentence basis. This is a wise, wise work whose central character asks out loud the fundamental question many of us do when entering a relationship: “Could it be that the best thing that could ever happen to a person could also be the worst?” —Rich Juzwiak

A lot of talented writers have been pushed to the limit by greedy Hollywood executives unwilling to part with 2% of their profits so that workers can earn a living wage. Gross! But that’s why television writers are on strike. And while they’re on strike, they’re bringing their talent to writing excellent picket line signs that I absolutely delight in reading. It’s almost as if these folks’ lifework is crafting dramatic scenes with high stakes or penning witty banter that thousands of people quote on the daily. The signs are excellent. Take a moment over the weekend to seek out photos from the strike on Instagram, Twitter, and the various sites covering the action. It’s a nice fix of good writing while studio execs figure out how to get their shit together and value their workers. —Kady Ruth Ashcraft

In the wake of Jordan Neely’s tragic killing on a Manhattan subway train this week, much of social media has devolved into a depressing debate about our obligations to each other as individuals in a broken society that dehumanizes unhoused people. So I can’t recommend enough Sophie K. Rosa’s Radical Intimacy, published in March, and its powerful meditations on fostering love and community amid the innately exploitative backdrop of capitalism, as well as our fundamental obligations to not just abstain from killing but actually care for each other as fellow human beings. Rosa also dishes harsh appraisals of the commodification of mental health and wellness as a profitable business opportunity, instead of making meaningful societal investments to address the roots of mental health crises and offer real support beyond apps like BetterHelp. It’s an especially necessary conversation as hordes of Twitter users argue that we’re entitled to kill mentally ill and homeless people who make us uncomfortable on public transit. —Kylie Cheung

It’s Friday and I’m still thinking about her. Who? The Met Gala cockroach, of course.

Variety announced her arrival on the carpet alongside all the other celebrities, then about 30 minutes later shared an in memoriam post after someone stepped on her. Some users guessed about who she was wearing, including Bugtegga Veneta and Dolce & Buggana, while others simply noted that she served. One fan went so far as to paint her in a…familiar gown. The best jokes of all, however, were from those who suggested that the creature was the reincarnation of the Gala’s truly awful honoree, Karl Lagerfeld. Rest in piss, Karl! —Susan Rinkunas

Set in Ireland shortly after the Great Famine, this movie tells the tale of a young girl who doesn’t eat anything but “the manna from Heaven”—she’s a “fasting girl,” which is a fascinating and alarming phenomenon you can read more about here—and four months later, still lives. To figure out the mystery, an English nurse, played by Florence Pugh, is tasked with watching the girl. She watches all right, and what she discovers is wholly awful, so much so that her wrath is incendiary.

The Wonder is based on a book by the author of Room, Emma Donoghue, and is directed by Sebastián Lelio, who also did Disobedience and Gloria. It was released in 2022 and was nominated for a bunch of awards in Britain. I’m only watching it now because Netflix marketed it to me in the most boring way possible (dull key art, terribly chosen scene to auto-play), so I just didn’t click on it forever, and no one I know or follow was talking about it either. (You really have to try to get me to turn my nose up at a period drama, by the way.) But it is so unforgettable—framed in a startling way, paired with an unsettling score, another Pugh performance for the books. So better late than never. —Sarah Rense

You or Someone You Love is a love letter to abortions and those who get them. Hannah Matthews is an abortion doula, which she defines as “someone who supports you—physically, emotionally, spiritually, practically, and logistically—through your abortion... The work of an abortion doula can be done, in one form or another, by anyone.” She is reporting from the frontlines of the abortion rights crisis: In addition to her doula work, Matthews works in a reproductive health clinic and volunteers with a support hotline, hearing day in and day out about people’s abortion experiences. She tells us about her own abortions, too, weaving her personal story with others’ and with interviews she does with workers and activists across the country. It is a deeply moving book that brought me to tears more than once, not out of sadness, but out of the way she paints abortion as transformative and beautiful. If you want a taste, check out the excerpt we published earlier this week. —Nora Biette-Timmons

Never mind that the series finale of Killing Eve aired over a year ago. I am—as I am to most things that leave their mark on pop culture—woefully late to the BBC spy thriller and dark comedy. Even more unfortunate is the fact that I am also susceptible to spoilers, meaning I’m aware of how it ends and that the people who were watching it on time were left profoundly disappointed by it. For now, though, much like with any impetuous, intoxicating infatuation, I’m in too deep to care.

Only Jodie Comer could portray an endearing assassin, and Sandra Oh, the brilliant and bored agent consumed by the pursuit of her. The writing is sharp (thanks to Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Emerald Fennell) in the first and second seasons, at least. The sartorial statements are striking without being distracting. And the chemistry between the two protagonists? Frankly, even if all else sucks, I’ll still return. Honestly? I’ve never looked more forward to impending devastation in my life. —Audra Heinrichs

In last week’s Jez Recs’ comment section, reader MrSixx left this hint: “There’s a Japanese YT channel about a pair of pet otters. I can watch that forever. Except they get my dog all anxious with their squeaking.” Amazing tip. We’re guessing it’s referring to KOTSUMET, the YouTube channel for otters Kotara and Hana. And yeah, it’s a freaking delight. Thanks for the tip! Sorry ‘bout your dog!