The Witch Hunts, Supermodel Series, and Soul-Stirring Jazz That Got Us Through the Week

This is the best of what we've been watching, reading, and listening to.

By Jezebel Staff | September 22, 2023 | 9:00pm

Entertainment Jez Recs

It’s time, to borrow a phrase, to slam your laptop shut until Monday. Slam it, seriously. That is, until you need to open it back up to click through what streaming services have to offer, to update your Kindle, or to go deep into a YouTube music recommendations hole. However, if you’d like something other than algorithmic suggestions this weekend, this story is for you. As we do every week, we’ve rounded up our favorite shows, books, and music to help you make the most of your precious downtime this weekend.

Stream The Super Models

This four-part AppleTV+ doc was comfort food to me. As I wrote in my review earlier this week, it’s glossy and largely unchallenging; while that may disappoint certain viewers, it makes for an extremely easy watch, as it traipses back through the ’80s and ’90s period in which four core supermodels—Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, and Cindy Crawford—reigned. It’s paced like a killer runway walk, and painted and polished like a camera-ready face. The four women are lively interviews and, at minimum, extremely exacting when it comes to discussing their place in the world. For the sheer dazzlement, I will rewatch this before the year is over. —Rich Juzwiak

Listen to “Cool About It,” by boygenius

Yes, Lucy Dacus is an icon at the moment because of her digital bodying of The 1975 frontman Matty Healy. But this week she also released a great music video through her group, boygenius, that tells the story of a girl and a dog, animated by Lauren Tsai. One of the best parts about boygenius is seeing how these three disparate artists (Dacus, Phoebe Bridgers, and Julien Baker) marry their styles together, and this unusual music video is a perfect example of how they manage it. —Caitlin Cruz

Read The Witching Tide, by Margaret Meyer

Maybe I haven’t watched the right TV shows or read the right books (or maybe it’s a certain ex-president’s repetition of the word), but I’ve long felt that the way we talk about 17th-century witch trials today strips them of their horror. However, Margaret Meyer’s new novel, which is reminiscent of both The Scarlet Letter and Hamnet, certainly avoids that. It’s extremely well-executed historical fiction: She colors in the broad strokes of things we learned about in school, while writing complex characters in complex situations. The inner monologue of the protagonist—a mysteriously mute servant in the home of a landowner she is devoted to—also asks interesting questions about what, exactly, divides what was considered “witchcraft” from what was deemed appropriately Christian. The book lags only when observations about nature or the weather go on a beat or two too long, but those bits are easy enough to skim over, and The Witching Tide is otherwise well worth your time. —Nora Biette-Timmons

Enjoy Troye Sivan’s “Got Me Started” music video

Troye Sivan released “Got Me Started,” the second single from his forthcoming album Something to Give Each Other, this week, accompanied by a gorgeous music video shot in Bangkok. The visuals are stunning, the choreography is surprising and fun, and it’s a lovely song that samples Bag Raiders’ “Shooting Stars” (with the group’s enthusiastic blessing). I adored Sivan’s album Blue Neighborhood when I was in high school but, for whatever reason, fell off his music after. “Got Me Started” calls back to the intimacy, yearning, and spunk of many of Blue Neighborhood’s tracks, and for that reason, I recommend watching “Got Me Started” and revisiting Sivan’s first album this weekend. —Kylie Cheung

Watch season 2 of Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal

Look, the criminal legal system is trash, but because I contain multitudes, I still appreciate seeing a ridiculously corrupt person get taken down. In this case, the person is former prosecutor(!) Alex Murdaugh, who was convicted of the 2021 murder of his wife and son. The late son was also accused of killing someone, and his dad allegedly helped cover it up. I devoured the first season of the Netflix show and I can’t wait to watch the second, which is out now and covers the patriarch’s murder trial. —Susan Rinkunas

Watch Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck

Thursday marked the 30th anniversary of In Utero, Nirvana’s last studio album, released roughly half a year before Kurt Cobain took his own life in 1994. The band’s official site is releasing merch and special edition LPs and such—here’s a nerdy/cute photo of bassist Krist Novoselic posing with a new vinyl—but I suggest marking the occasion with a watch (or rewatch) of Montage of Heck.

To the uninitiated: Montage of Heck is a 2015 documentary about, more than anything, Cobain’s mind. It’s filled with old Cobain family video tapes, and concert and tour footage, as you’d expect, but more revealing are the art it pulls and animates from Cobain’s many journals, as well as home footage recorded by Courtney Love and Cobain during their relationship. (The doc was originally Love’s idea.) Cobain was a formidable visual artist, and a fucked-up one: His darkest lyrics speak to the drawings he made, some of which are utterly horrible to see but impossible to look away from. The thoughts he scrawled down were likewise brutal and beautiful.

Cobain was never big on interviews, but any interviews he ever did are made moot by the twisted intimacy of these journals. Montage of Heck also gives Love room to speak about artistry, heroin, and the little family she and Cobain made together with her trademark bluntness. Cobain’s family members talk about his troubled younger years, and Novoselic has a big voice in it as well. (Interviews with drummer Dave Grohl happened too late to be included.) It is a top three music doc of all time for me, and 30 years of In Utero means it’s a great weekend to sink back into the montage of Cobain’s mind. —Sarah Rense

Listen to Natural Information Society’s Since Time Is Gravity

I saw these folks live this week and their music made me cry. (I think that should be a good enough recommendation on its own, but don’t worry, I will expand on it.) This avant-garde jazz group, led by Joshua Abrams, makes music that I can best describe as funky, repetitive, and soul-stirring. I won’t pretend to be able to write eloquently about avant-garde jazz, so I will just say that listening to these songs feels like getting snatched into the gears of an electrifying machine. Go outside, put on your headphones, give this a listen, and feel very, very alive! —Kady Ruth Ashcraft