Our episode starts with a blinged-out, bored Victoria riding around town. Some people gather to watch her carriage pass:

But, elsewhere, a much larger crowd gathers to protest:

“One Man, One Vote,” the signs read. A reasonable request, right? Apparently not; soldiers aim rifles at the protestors, yell “In the name of the Queen! Fire!!!” and shoot everyone.

Back at Buckingham Palace, Victoria and Lord M agree that Queen Elizabeth I had it all figured out by staying single forever. Marriage just leads to unhappiness, divorce, or getting cuckolded by Lord Byron, so why bother?

The following day, Victoria’s uncle on her mother’s side, Leopold, arrives to say passive-aggressive things about her height (we get it! she’s short!) and how he would be living in Buckingham Palace if his wife hadn’t died during childbirth (she preceded Victoria in the line of succession). For a country known for its stuffy manners, these people sure don’t have any.

Victoria’s mom doesn’t waste any time conspiring with her brother about making Victoria marry their other sibling’s son, Albert. If you’re following along, yes, that means Albert is Victoria’s first cousin.

And before you leave a comment, yes, I’m aware that this sort of thing occurs often in royal families to keep alliances strong, but it doesn’t make the fact that Victoria and Albert share the same grandparents any less gross.

Never one to miss an opportunity to beat a dead horse, Sir John randomly chimes in from the sidelines: “YOU NEED A HUSBAND!”

Victoria announces that they can continue discussing how she’s nothing without a husband,  but that she has to go govern now.

Across town, Uncle Scar is upset that he’s not the only power-hungry uncle around. Scar’s wife has a solution: why doesn’t Uncle Scar try to make Victoria marry George, one of the first cousins on her father’s side?!

Lord M finds Victoria to tell her two things:

1. Ew! Your first cousin?!
2. Some starving poor people are protesting for their civil rights and getting shot.

Victoria is like, Oh, that’s weird. Anyway, I can’t wait to dance with you at the opera tonight! Somewhere, Marie Antoinette’s headless ghost is floating around, wailing, You chop off my head for wanting to share some cake, but she gets away with this? Come on!!

Downstairs, the servants pick sides — #TeamRussianGroper, #TeamCousinAlbert, #TeamCousinGeorge, #TeamLordM — and place bets. They’re all wrong. #TeamJess all the way.

At the opera, Russian Groper and Cousin George fight over Victoria with mean looks, while Leopold creepily stalks Victoria through binoculars.

After the performance, Uncle Leopold threatens Victoria with the idea that, if she doesn’t take the safe, incestuous choice with Albert and instead marries Lord M, protestors will burn everything to the ground and probably kill her. Victoria obliterates him back into his proper place with this royal clapback:

“I think you forget that I’m of a royal line that stretches back 1,000 years, whilst you’re the king of Belgium, a country that did not exist a decade ago.”

Back at the palace, lead maid Ms. Jenkins gets an upsetting note from her sister, but doesn’t want to talk about it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (Dear Victoria writers, you don’t have to force a “downstairs” narrative in an attempt to be Downton. You’ll never be Downton, and that’s okay.)

The next day, Victoria and Lord M trot around on horseback, talking about boys. The verdict: Russian Groper is hot and gets what it’s like to be a spoiled royal, but is he too foreign? As for Cousin George, he’s the worst, but an incestuous English marriage would be super popular with the people. Decisions, decisions.

You know who else is English? Lord M! He and Victoria stop just short of winking at each other and licking their lips. (Fun fact: in real life, Lord M was 40 YEARS OLDER than Victoria and didn’t like each other in that way. But reality makes for dull television, so here we are.)

Elsewhere in the palace, Victoria’s mom complains to her brother about how poor she feels and asks for money. He quickly delivers a NOPE, reminds her she lives in a frickin’ palace, and recommends she dump Sir John and get back on Victoria’s good side. Victoria’s mom blinks slowly and responds, No, but for real, can I borrow ten dollars?

Sometime later, Victoria is out in public to unveil a monument to her dead father. There are more soldiers than usual because the protestors are gaining steam. Some are even talking about pushing for women’s right to vote. At this idea, Victoria laughs, “Now, you are teasing me!”

Russian Groper and Cousin George fight over who gets to help Victoria ascend a single small step. Victoria doesn’t need help though; as we learned last week, her new rebel move is to confront staircases without holding onto people. You go, girl!

The moment she unveils the monument, protestors erupt in shouts and Victoria is whisked away to safety. Leopold pops up out of nowhere to remind Lord M that he’s old and should stop flirting with his niece.

Later that night, Victoria plays with Lord M’s telescope (this is not a dirty euphemism), while, across town, Lord M holds important papers and stares off into the distance. They’re basically reenacting this scene, but with way more sexual tension:

Downstairs, the Italian chef is losing his hotness by the syllable, as he badgers Babyface Maid over her mysterious past. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (Again, Victoria writers, we don’t care about these forced B plots.)

The next day, spooked by his conversation with Leopold, Lord M stays away from Buckingham Palace, but Victoria, not well-versed in play-hard-to-get or he’s-just-not-that-into-you, jumps in an unmarked carriage and goes to his house. Their interaction goes something like this:

Victoria: 

Lord M:

Victoria:

Lord M:

Victoria:

Lord M:

Victoria opens up about how she thought Lord M was just a replacement father figure, but that she realized she wants him to be her daddy, in a sexual sense, too! Lord M says he can’t do that because he’s super busy being sad about his cheating, dead wife for the rest of his life.

The next day, Victoria changes up her look (because nothing helps one get over a breakup more than a fierce makeover).

A bunch of dignitaries arrive for a ball in Leopold’s honor. Russian Groper and Cousin George fight over who will dance with Victoria first. Victoria chooses Russian Groper because hotness trumps foreignness.

In some hallway, Babyface Maid gets Mrs. Jenkins to spill on that letter she received from her sister. Turns out she has a nephew, whom she hasn’t seen in a long while because servants don’t get PTO privileges. He always said he would come visit her and he’s finally coming to London….

… “to be hanged and then to be cut open while he’s still alive.”

Turns out he was part of the protesting movement. WOMP.

Back in the ballroom, Lord M asks for a dance, even though he just stomped on Victoria’s daddy-issue-filled heart. He brings up the relationship Queen Elizabeth I had with the Earl of Leicester. Like their situation, it was a will-they-won’t-they, forbidden love thing that involved a dead wife. Victoria imagines the point of this story is to say, Screw it! Let’s French kiss like it’s 1559! But his point is actually, I’m still just not that into you. Also: did you know I had a wife who cheated on me with Lord Byron?

Next up in the dancing request line: Sir John, who spends the entire song telling Victoria she needs to snag a husband to “keep her behavior in check” and pop out some babies already. Get some new material, dude.

The next day, Russian Groper gives Victoria a fancy gift with their initials spelled out in diamonds, and then announces that he’s going back to Russia to marry some princess his dad picked out.

So much for #TeamRussianGroper.

Over at Uncle Scar’s pad, he’s still grumpy over being a 67-year-old heir, who’ll probably never be King. His wife cheers him up: “Remember, even healthy women can die in childbirth!” Wow. I feel really bad for the real-life woman this character is based on. After a cursory dive into her Wikipedia page, I declare that this depiction is unfair.

Back at the palace, Victoria tells Mrs. Jenkins and Babyface Maid that she wishes she was a man because corsets suck. They both put up praise hands and say, Amen! 

Mrs. Jenkins falls down for no reason and asks to be excused. Victoria is like, What’s her damage? Babyface Maid spills all the details about Mrs. Jenkins’ nephew and how most non-royals think the punishment for protesting should be a bit more lenient than being sliced up and gutted. Victoria is like, Hmmmmm, maybe!

Victoria finds Lord M and says she wants to sign a petition on whitehouse.gov or something to save the protestors’ lives. He’s like, Ummm, you’re the Queen. You can just commute their sentences and set them up with new lives in Australia. She’s like, Cool, we’ll do that, then!

On a roll, Victoria runs off to take care of another bit of business. She informs Sir John and her mom that she will grant Sir John’s request for money and a title in exchange for disappearing forever and ever. Shocked, Victoria’s mom turns to Sir John to find out if he’s really willing to drop her for a few coins. Sir John’s response:

Later that day, Victoria tries to make amends with her mother: Hey, sorry about sending away your best friend / maybe lover and for humiliating your cancer-stricken friend and speeding up her death. Here’s some fancy lace and a bigger allowance. We cool? Victoria’s mom decides that they are.

The next day, Victoria is painting a portrait of Elizabeth I. She tells Lord M she’s decided to take a page from the former Queen’s playbook and be single forever, while getting some on the side (*wink*). For the hundredth time, Lord M turns her down and tells her to maybe consider marrying her cousin Albert. This Albert better be hot, geez.

Some time later, Victoria is playing a dramatic song on the piano, while everyone sits around her, pretending not to be bored. Cut to two men descending stairs. Their boots have tassels on them. Their faces have mustaches on them. They walk in and everyone stands, but Victoria is too focused on her music to notice.

Albert (rudely, in my opinion) walks up and distracts her mid-concerto. He says her name. With her eyes, she says, UM, WOAH, TOTALLY COOL WITH THIS MARRIAGE THING NOW.

End scene!

After every episode, it’s only right to reward characters who’ve impressed and diss the ones that haven’t, so here goes:

PIECE OF COAL: Russian Groper. What a tease!

HONORABLE MENTION: Victoria’s Mom. Losing all your friends and being left with a daughter who hates you must be tough. Here’s a pity prize to go with the fancy lace.

BRONZE: The Protestors. What do they want? Basic voting rights! When do they want it? Preferably before they all die of starvation! Keep fighting, comrades.

SILVER:  Elizabeth I. For inspiring independent women that they don’t need a man (unless he’s super-duper hot).

GOLD: Mrs. Jenkins’ Nephew’s Guts. They get to stay inside of him! Yay!

Until next week! If you miss me, read some of my other work or follow me on Twitter @xcusemybeauty!

Our episode starts where the last left off. Albert rudely interrupts Victoria’s concerto, when he could have very easily cooled his jets and waited for her to finish doing her thing. Victoria’s cute dog, Dash, is like, Did he just? Oh, hell naw! He runs up to Albert and lets him have it. Unfortunately, none of the humans are fluent in Canine. Here’s a translation of Dash’s barking:

Albert follows this faux pas with another. In a textbook negging move, he tells Victoria she made “fewer mistakes” than the last time he heard her play. We’re supposed to like this dude? No thanks. #ImWithDash

Victoria’s mom is like, Look, Victoria, aren’t Albert and your other first cousin sooo hot?! As if the incest isn’t gross enough, she refers to them as “specimens.” Victoria and I agree that this entire display is gross.

Albert wants to make plans to hang out and check out her art collection, especially the paintings by Leonardo da Vinci. Victoria responds with a Who dat?

Victoria gets out of spending time with Albert by explaining that she’s going to be too busy going over war reports from Afghanistan, the 19th century version of “I have to wash my hair.”

Later that night, Albert and his brother, Ernst, debrief on the interaction. Ernst thinks Albert should be less of a d-ck in the future. Good idea!

Albert threatens to go home because she didn’t immediately fall to his feet when he insulted her piano skills. He also whines about how, even if things worked out, he would be married to a woman who was more successful than him. This is like that elevator scene from The Shining, only instead of blood gushing out, it’s a sea of red flags.

In a separate bedroom, Victoria and her servants dish on Albert. They decide he’s hot, but rude, and suffering from a bad case of Resting Bitch Face™.

The next day, some dude is trying to explain the concept of a stamp to Victoria. She finds the whole thing preposterous and hilarious: “So everybody who wants to send a letter will have to lick my face?!” Albert resting-bitch-faces in a corner and reprimands her for laughing at such a brilliant invention. Yep, that’s right; they’re not even married yet and already fighting… over stamps!

Victoria goes out on a balcony with Lord M and primal screams. Lord M is like, OMG, don’t worry! The war reports from Afghanistan look really promising! Victoria is like, Huh? How can you care about world affairs at a time like this? A boy was mean to me!

It’s that time again, when the Victoria writers try to interest us in a servant B-plot again. Babyface Maid meets some woman in an alley, who threatens to tell everyone that Babyface used a fake identity to get the Buckingham Palace job, unless she pays up. I feel like this exact thing happened on Downton Abbey. 

Albert and Ernst head into town, where they are introduced to daguerreotypes. Almost as cool as stamps! Albert notices fancy ladies being rude to beggar children. One of these kids is the main character from Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Match Girl.” Albert instructs a servant to give her a few coins. Ugh, now I’m stuck thinking about how sad that story is (Cliffs Notes version: people are trash and don’t buy a poor girl’s matches, so she hallucinates before freezing to death in a gutter).

Anywaaaay, that night at dinner, Albert glares at Dash the Dog, while Ernst tells Victoria how much fun they had at the National Gallery. She asks if they checked out Hayter’s portrait of her (it’s her fave). Albert is like, Definitely did not! I hate modern art! Old Masters for life! Especially Rubens! Victoria replies that she detests Rubens and “all that wobbling flesh.” Longest, worst first date ever!

After dinner, Albert walks in on Victoria and her friends playing cards, and declares that he hates card games. Cool story, bro. Nobody asked you.

Ernst decides the only way to salvage this mess is with a Schubert duet (naturally). Victoria and Albert take out their sexual frustration out on the keys and manage to make beautiful music together. The song ends and they share a nice quiet moment… until Albert tells Victoria she has small hands. Like Donald Trump, Victoria doesn’t appreciate this being pointed out.

Then, things get worse:

Albert: “You play very well, cousin, but I believe you do not practice enough. It’s necessary to play for at least one hour each day.”

Victoria: “But a queen does not have time for scales every day.”

Albert: “Only for card games.”

The next day, Victoria agrees to continue hanging out with Albert for some reason. She racks her brain for a safe topic that won’t lead to more insults. Aha! Gardens! Surely he can’t find a way to turn that subject into something hateful, right? Yeah, no.

Victoria: “Do you like gardens, Albert?”

Albert: “I prefer forests.”

Back at Buckingham Palace, Babyface Maid steals a diamond hair pin. She puts it back a few minutes later.

That night, Victoria throws a house party in Albert’s honor, even though he doesn’t deserve much more than a kick in the teeth and a permanent exile. Albert sulks in a corner (because he’s the worst) until he sees Lord M ask Victoria to dance. Like a grumpy toddler who hasn’t had a nap all day, Albert walks up to Lord M and wails, Mine!

Like most toddlers, he gets his way and do-si-dos with Victoria. Soon, he gets distracted by a flower Victoria has placed in the middle of her boobs. He inhales her cleavage, looks at her lustily, and says… that it reminds him of his mom.

He takes out a knife, sensually slices his shirt open, and places the flower near his nipple. Victoria looks on like:

It looks like they’re about to get into some Billy Bob and Angelina sexy blood vial stuff, but they stop short. I guess that’s in next week’s episode.

The next day, Lord M tries to update Victoria on Afghanistan. Victoria does not give a single you-know-what.

She’s too giddy about taking a road trip to Windsor to care about foreign affairs. Maybe if she shows Albert a forest, he’ll stop being so mean! (Fat chance.)

At Windsor, Albert is grumpy because he doesn’t like his dinner outfit.

Victoria tells Lord M about how she just binge-read the coolest book: Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist. Lord M says that his Netflix queue is already super long so he doesn’t have time to read about grave robbers and pickpockets. Albert, Patron Saint of Contrarians, comes out of the shadows to declare that he loves Oliver Twist and grave robbers and pickpockets!

The next day, Victoria finally figures out how to get Albert in the mood: show him an old oak tree! It works. He tells her he hates her hat and tells her to take it off. He considers kissing her, before deciding nah.

Victoria tries to rescue the moment by asking about what happened to his dead mom (not exactly something you’d find in a Dirty Talk 101 course manual). Apparently, his mom left his dad when Albert was five and then died sometime later. I mean, if Albert was my son, I would also run away and die, so I get it.

Off in the distance, Dash can be heard squealing in pain. Oh, hell no. If Dash dies, I will seriously stop recapping this show.

Dash broke his leg! Albert rips part of his shirt off to make a puppy paw tourniquet. Awww! Two points for Hufflepuff! But, moments later, Albert throws a jealous hissy fit over Lord M and tells Victoria she should just marry him because she seems to love to surround herself with sycophants. Minus those same two points from Hufflepuff!

Victoria: “How dare you! May I remind you that, while you were looking at paintings in Italy, I was ruling this country! I don’t need you to tell me what to think, Albert.”

Albert: “No. That’s Lord Melbourne’s job.”

SLAP HIM! KILL HIM! DO IT!

She doesn’t.

Back in London, Babyface gives some lace collars to Random Blackmailing Lady because she needs to feed her baby or something. I still don’t care.

Because of the bicker-fest in the forest, the Windsor slumber party is called off and everyone returns to Buckingham Palace. Victoria complains to Lord M that Albert is super jealous of him. Due to his constant barrage of critiques, she starts to believe that there’s something wrong with her, not him: “Albert always looks at me as if I’ve done something wrong. I’d like him to smile at me.” Wake up, girl! He’s negging you! It’s a classic pickup artist move! Don’t fall for it! (She’s totally gonna.)

The next day, Lord M takes Albert aside and says, Look, I’m old and going to retire as Victoria’s Prime Minister soon, so stop being such a jealous little sh-t.

That night, Victoria gets all gussied up, puts boob flowers in her hair and all over the mantlepiece and calls for Albert. He’s like, Oooo! Boob flowers! You know how much thinking about my dead mom turns me on!

She discards all my sage dating advice and proposes marriage to him. (Note: he’s still very much her first cousin.)

He responds, Of course! Sorry for being the worst! Let’s make out!

Actually, no. His real response: “That depends.”

Minus all the points from Hufflepuff. What is this dweeb’s damage???

He eventually agrees to marry her and they giggle about how it will be “a marriage of inconvenience” because of how mentally abusive he is. Ha ha ha, so funny.

End scene!

After every episode, it’s only right to reward characters who’ve impressed and diss the ones that haven’t, so here goes:

PIECE OF COAL: Albert. A high school World History textbook already spoiled this marriage for me, but I’m still hoping Dash interrupts the wedding during the “Speak now or forever hold your peace” part and, in a twist of revisionist history, saves Victoria from a lifetime of passive-aggressive mind games. I also hope that Dash gives Albert rabies.

HONORABLE MENTION: Afghanistan. Victoria doesn’t give a crap about you, but Lord M and I do!

BRONZE: The Little Match Girl. I would say it gets better, but it doesn’t.

SILVER: Lord M. The walking and talking embodiment of “I’m too old for this sh-t.” He deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for not slapping these people to death on the daily.

GOLD: Dash. This adorable pup knew Albert was bad news from the start. The only one who continuously keeps it real. MVP and all-around dreamboat.

Until next week! If you miss me, read some of my other work or follow me on Twitter @xcusemybeauty!

Other recaps:

‘Victoria’ Season 1, Episode 2 Recap: All The Single Ladies

‘Victoria’ Season 1 Premiere Recap: Bow Down

Our episode begins with Victoria and Albert being awkward virgins. Albert’s brother, Ernst, who’s had sex approximately one billion times with prostitutes all across Europe, can’t stand to watch. There’s no elegant way to tell two people that they’re being excruciating, so Ernst settles on: Oh, look, some shrubs! and walks off.

Left to their own devices, Albert and Victoria decide to go make out behind a random dirty sheet. Three milliseconds into their tongue-wrestling match, Victoria is overcome with tingly feelings. “Albert, we must get married as soon as possible!” Translation:

Albert also wants her sex, but must go back home to Germany to pack all his mustache scissors first. He tells her he’s bummed that he’s the one who has to leave his home country (usually it’s the woman). You’re a girl! Why can’t you be the inconvenienced one??

Instead of blasting a riot grrl anthem in his face, Victoria responds with a I wish I could be an ordinary subjugated wife for you, but, ugh, I have to be one of the only women alive who have it pretty good in this era. 

Before he jets, Albert is like, Oh, yeah, one more thing, I want a weekly allowance. Victoria is like, What’s money? Also, what is a weekend?

Later, Albert sits through a seminar by his Uncle Leopold, titled How to Remind Your New Wife That Her Brain Is Smaller Than Yours and That You Will Do All The Thinking For Her Henceforth. The syllabus is basically this:

1. Boys rule.
2. Girls drool.
3. Having mistresses is cool.

Downstairs, it’s time for the Victoria writers to force recycled Downton Abbey servant storylines down our throats. This time, there’s a candle-selling crime ring for us not to care about. Also, a young male ingenue announces he wants to study and better himself, just like Downton’s Daisy. Again:

Victoria finds Lord M so he can explain what money is. He clues her in, and also spills that her Uncle Leopold still regularly receives £50,000 from his super-dead wife, all of which he uses to house his actress mistress. The ever-naive Victoria is like, Having sex with people you aren’t married to?! That’s a thing?! 

List of Things Victoria Just Found Out About:

• Infidelity
• Stamps
• Poor People
• Money
• Leonardo da Vinci

Coming soon:

• What Penises Look Like
• What Penises Do
• Where Babies Come From

On the front steps of Buckingham Palace, Victoria and Albert say goodbye. It goes something like this:

Victoria: Oh, my beloved! How will I live a single minute without you getting mad at me for something really small and dumb? You complete me. And yeah, I’m the first one to ever say that because Jerry McGuire won’t be released for another 156 years.

Albert: You have six weeks to get me my money. Oh, and I want a fancy title too. Later!

Right before he walks off, he puts his mouth really close to her neck and whispers the following like he’s starring in a G-rated, 19th century version of Fifty Shades of Grey: “Imagine I’m kissing you here on your neck, and how often I want to kiss you when I return.”

The next day, Victoria meets with the Privy Council to announce her intention to marry Albert. It’s a chance for a bunch of old white dudes to decide whether they’re cool with her right to choose what she does with her life and body. They are nowhere near cool with it. Is this 1840 England or 2017 America? Who can tell?

Members of the Privy Council start a rumor that Albert isn’t even Protestant! And thus, the birther movement of the Victorian era is born.

Victoria storms out and demands that Lord M convince Parliament to just make Albert King Consort. Lord M warns that, if people get in the habit of making kings willy-nilly, they might realize that monarchy is a joke and that the billions in taxpayers’ money spent on once-used gloves could go to something else. Victoria quickly responds: No title for Albert then. Anyway!

Over in Germany, Albert’s dad is very jazzed about all the money this marriage is sure to send his way. He’s going to fix the leaky roof! He’s going to buy his mistress the latest Victoria’s Secret fashions! Schnitzel and bratwurst for all!

Back in England, Parliament is like, Not so fast! They decide Albert will get half of what Uncle Leopold got. And definitely no title.

Meanwhile, Victoria is still processing the news of Uncle Leopold’s actress mistress. The way “actress” is said makes the word seem like a stand-in for “ginormous whore.” But Victoria is relieved that her uncle is the only man who would ever be so depraved as to have a mistress.

Victoria: “At least I know Albert doesn’t have any secrets.”

Lord M: “Well, that usually comes later, ma’am.”

Victoria insists that Albert is not that kind of guy.

Lord M lets her keep thinking that:

Back in Germany, Albert whines in a sauna about pretty much everything. For you Poldark fans out there, who might be missing Masterpiece-approved manly chests, here’s an underwhelming treat to tide you over until Ross gets back to scything:

Albert eventually puts his clothes back on and pens a letter to Victoria, which consists of the lyrics from Rihanna’s “Bitch Better Have My Money.”

Back at Buckingham Palace, Victoria freaks out every time someone brings up the fact that she’s totally going to get cheated on. She distracts herself with wedding planning. She decides her dress will be white, instead of the customary gold brocade. All her friends give each other stank Ewww, she’s so tacky! looks behind her back, especially this friend:

In Germany, Ernst surprises Albert by taking him to a brothel. Albert is not in the mood.

Ernst explains, Dude, I just want you to be good at sex! “Our dear little cousin will thank you for it.”

While Ernst is off engaging in a casual orgy, Albert nervously makes out with a woman named Gretchen. She tries to get to second base and Albert interrupts: Um, instead of grabbing Lil Al, can you grab a notepad and a pen instead? I want you to draw a diagram of a vagina and write down what I’m supposed to do to it.

Gretchen, being the humanitarian that she is, recites Monica’s “Seven Erogenous Zones” monologue from Friends:

Meanwhile, having just found out that her dad was a cheating bastard like every other man she’s ever met, Victoria tries to get her mother to reassure her that Albert isn’t already messing around with the Gretchens of the world. Victoria’s mom cannot tell a lie:

“Albert? No. Not yet anyway…”

A few days later, Albert returns to town. Victoria immediately holds a title ceremony to avoid any more of his emo whining. He shall be a Knight of the Garter. Sounds cool! But not cool enough for Albert, King of the Mopey Mopers. He wants a seat in the House of Lords, like Lord M! And more money! And… waaaaahhhhh.

A live feed of Albert:

Also this:

Victoria tries to calmly tell Albert he needs a nice, long nap:

But he keeps on Veruca Salt-ing:

So Victoria pulls a true boss move and announces to the entire room that Albert is tired and will be taking a nap now.

That night, Victoria finds comfort in spooning Dash. She should’ve listened to him, when he was barking up warnings during the last episode.

The next day, Victoria has had enough. She runs all around the property to find Albert and have it out. When she finds him, he POINTS A SABER AT HER THROAT.

Unfortunately, she doesn’t slap the crap out of him. Instead, she promises that, even though she’s a Queen, she’ll make sure to always obey him.

Meanwhile, back at home, the lead butler is in love with a visiting German maid. He sent her all kinds of sexy emails over the past year, but she never got any of them! Spam folders: ruining lives since 1840.

Some time passes. It’s time for Victoria’s wedding! She decides that she wants a normcore ceremony (no diamonds, only boob flowers).

Albert’s vows:

“With this ring, I thee wed…” (Sounds very familiar. He totally copied Michelle Obama’s wedding vows!)

“With my body, I thee worship…” (Thanks to Gretchen’s diagram, I bet he will!)

“And with all my worldly goods, I thee endow.” (LOL, he doesn’t have any — he’s not even a Lord — but that’s a nice thought.)

Albert then says “Amen,” as if he’s saying “I’mma put a baby in you sometime within the next 15 minutes.”

After the ceremony, Victoria finds Lord M to essentially serenade him with a farewell rendition of “I Will Always Love You.” They briefly kiss on the cheek, and Lord M watches Victoria skip on her way to lose her virginity. Lord M goes home to binge-read some trashy novels and then die of old age.

Upstairs, Victoria is undressed and ready for action. Albert comes into the bedroom, Gretchen’s vagina diagram seared into his brain. They lock eyes and think, Let’s do this.

End scene!

After every episode, it’s only right to reward characters who’ve impressed and diss the ones that haven’t, so here goes:

PIECE OF COAL: Albert. The embodiment of First World Problems.

HONORABLE MENTION: Uncle Leopold’s Actress Mistress. All publicity is good publicity, right?

BRONZE: Dash. He’s a loyal spooner, always right, and super duper cute. Bless him and his little broken paw.

SILVER: Incest. Inter-family relations continue dominating royal family trees. You get a club foot! And you get a club foot!

GOLD: Gretchen. So wise. So charitable. Canonize her already!

Until next week! If you miss me, read some of my other work or follow me on Twitter @xcusemybeauty!

Other recaps:

‘Victoria’ Season 1, Episode 3 Recap: You’re So Vain

‘Victoria’ Season 1, Episode 2 Recap: All The Single Ladies

‘Victoria’ Season 1 Premiere Recap: Bow Down

Before we get to this week’s episode, I need to share a bit of actual history. This is a real letter Victoria wrote to Lord Melbourne about her wedding night:

“It was a gratifying and bewildering experience. I never, never spent such an evening. His excessive love and affection gave me feelings of heavenly love and happiness. He clasped me in his arms and we kissed each other again and again. To lie by his side, and in his arms, and on his dear bosom, and be called by names of tenderness, I have never yet heard used to me before – was bliss beyond belief! We did not sleep much.”

Could have saved a lot of space by just writing “Albert is a great lay.” Victoria clearly owes Gretchen, the vagina-diagram-drawing prostitute from last week, an Edible Arrangements fruit bouquet or something.

Now that we’re all on the same historical page, let’s get to the episode at hand.

We find the newlyweds fooling around in bed. Governess Dictator, who somehow missed the birds and the bees memo, is shocked when she walks in on them.

Because they’re horny 20-year-olds who just found out what their private parts do, Victoria and Albert are turned on by the whole thing and have some more sex in her honor.

Downstairs, all the servants are discussing how much sex the royal couple are having. They all settle on A LOT.

The lead butler decides to be gross about it: “The royal stallion needs time to cover his mare.”

No wonder that German maid never read his sexy letters.

One of the servants receives news of a fever outbreak in some poor neighborhood nearby. In addition to being a terrible erotic fiction writer, Lead Butler is also mad xenophobic: “I blame the foreigners!”

Elsewhere in the palace, it’s time for Ernst to head back home to Germany, but he decides to stay in England and contract as much syphilis as possible instead.

Victoria and Albert make it out of bed, but are still making out in some hallway. Albert kills the mood by alluding to “when the children come.” Victoria is like, Ummm, can I live my sex-positive life for one second before you start begging for a male heir to make yourself feel like a real man? The answer to that question appears to be no.

Victoria tells Albert to go play, while she handles some government business. He is instantly bored. He tries to play the piano, but it’s out of tune! Then, he tries to look at a painting, but it’s dusty! Then, he tries to read a book, but that too is dusty! Waaaahhhhh!

Victoria beckons for him right before his brain overheats from all his brattiness. He finds her at her desk and is like, Ooo, you want me to read these Parliament papers and explain them to you? Victoria is like, Nope. My itty-bitty lady brain works just fine, thanks. I just need you to stamp them.

That night, a bunch of fancy people come over for dinner, but they’re all losers compared to a jewelry-wearing Dalmatian named Mr. Bumps, who knows how to curtsy and is probably also very good at yoga:

Because Albert is a killjoy who hates anything that doesn’t immediately benefit him, he announces that he hates Mr. Bumps and thinks the pup’s Victoria pendant is tacky. First, he went on record as hating Dash, and now this?

For the past 17 years, we’ve been asking ourselves, “Who let the dogs out?” I can now provide an answer. It was me. I let the dogs out, so that they could find a time machine, go back to the 19th century, and do this to Albert:

Mr. Bumps and all the loser humans who are lucky to be in his presence are ready to sit down for dinner. But there’s a controversy holding things up! It’s customary for Victoria to be escorted through the doorway by one of her uncles. But Victoria wants it to be Albert (because she knows if it isn’t, he will throw another tantrum). Victoria’s uncle shuts that idea down real quick, leading to more of this:

Victoria’s mom comforts Albert by saying, Don’t worry; they’ll respect you once you prove that your testicles work by producing a male heir (girl heirs need not apply).

Later that night, Victoria asks Governess Dictator for birth control tips. Remember: This is the same woman who didn’t know people had sex on their wedding night. Her advice: after the deed is done, jump up and down a bunch of times. (Don’t try this at home, folks. Victoria had 9 kids.)

Meanwhile, in poor people news, Babyface Maid tries to reach her frenemy and her baby, but their neighborhood is closed off due to the fever outbreak. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The next day, some dudes ask Victoria if she’ll speak at a Slavery Is Bad conference. She’s like, I support your cause, but won’t say so publicly because I need to protect my brand, like Taylor Swift will do during a pivotal election cycle over a century from now. 

Alfred decides that he will take time away from his busy schedule of crying over dusty objects and making voodoo dolls of cute dogs to speak at this conference. He wants to earn something of his own, even if that something is just a lanyard.

Downstairs, the hot Italian chef offers to help Babyface Maid get to her friend… but he’s going to need something from her in return.

Albert notices that Ernst is about to give syphilis to Victoria’s married friend, so he asks his brother to be a whore somewhere else, preferably Germany. Ernst almost cries, either because he actually cares about a woman for once, or is just experiencing a leaky side-effect from one of his STDs.

It’s time for another dinner, which means another episode of Who Wants to Be A Millionaire (Doorway Escort)! Albert is down in the dumps, per usual, because he knows it won’t be him. But Victoria has a trick up her sleeve! She managed to convince her Uncle to shut up about the escort custom by granting his non-royal wife a title. Bribery: works every time.

Victoria and Albert get to walk into the dining room together! Huzzah! Victoria is over the moon!

Albert is not. (Are you surprised?) He wants a victory of his own, you see. Wah wah wah.

Downstairs, Babyface Maid thanks Hot Italian Chef for, not only passing along some money to her frenemy, but also relocating her and her baby to a suburb that isn’t ridden with disease.

Babyface: “I suppose you want something in return.”

Hot Italian Chef: “Yes, I do…”

Hot Italian Chef: “…I find myself thinking about you sometimes when I’m at my sugar work, and I find it hard to concentrate because I don’t know your name. Your real name, that is. The name you were born with. So, um, that is what I would like.”

She tells him her name is Nancy. That night, Hot Italian Chef creates a letter N out of sugar and leaves it on her pillow.

Across town, it’s time for the Slavery Is Bad conference. Albert tries to make small talk with Jonas, an escaped slave from America, by asking if escaping was hard. Jonas is like, Ummm, yeah, but not as much after I outran the bloodhounds and all the white people who wanted to murder me. 

Outside the hall, Victoria rides up and announces, “I have come incognito!”

Someone breaks it to her: Girl, we can still see you. So she goes back home.

Inside, Albert is having a major anxiety attack ’cause he can’t remember how to properly pronounce “barbarous.” He walks up to the podium and, instead of opening his mouth to deliver a bunch of stress vomit, he manages to deliver a long, beautiful speech that boils down to: “Hey, guys! Slavery is really f-ed up and America sucks for loving it so much. Can I get an Amen up in here?” The congregation says, Amen! and compliments him for not sounding overly German. Yipee!

Albert rushes home to have celebratory sex with Victoria. Afterwards, Victoria waits for him to pass out so she can do her Plan B Jumping Jacks.

All the jumping wakes up Albert, who demands to know what Victoria is doing. She tells him she’s trying to sabotage his sperm. He breaks it to her that the only way to effectively do that is to not have sex at all. They look into each other’s eyes and consider abstinence for a beat, before saying Naaaahhhh in unison and engaging in unprotected sex for the zillionth time.

End scene!

After every episode, it’s only right to reward characters who’ve impressed and diss the ones that haven’t, so here goes:

PIECE OF COAL: Albert. I hope that piano never gets tuned and nothing ever gets dusted. That’s what you get for hating dogs who have done nothing to you!

HONORABLE MENTION: Whoever Convinced Victoria Her “Disguise” Made Her Invisible. So shady. So funny.

BRONZE: Mr. Bumps and Dash. Spinoff please!

SILVER: Gretchen. She’s not technically in this episode, but her sex teachings are. Respect.

GOLD: Hot Italian Chef. It’s really awesome when people turn out not to be sexual predators. *throws underwear at him for being a decent human being*

Until next week! If you miss me, read some of my other work or follow me on Twitter @xcusemybeauty!

Other recaps:

‘Victoria’ Season 1, Episode 4 Recap: Wedding Bell Blues

‘Victoria’ Season 1, Episode 3 Recap: You’re So Vain

‘Victoria’ Season 1, Episode 2 Recap: All The Single Ladies

‘Victoria’ Season 1 Premiere Recap: Bow Down

Our episode begins with Victoria and Albert pretending to care about a classical music concert. The Queen seductively rubs her pinky finger against the Prince’s pinky finger. This British mating call translates to I can’t wait to tongue wrestle you like crazy. 

Out of nowhere, Victoria pukes a little in her mouth. So much for the effectiveness of those Plan B Jumping Jacks! Victoria runs from the room, screaming “I am bilious!” (I’m totally adopting this line as my hangover catchphrase.)

Back in the concert room, Sir Robert Peel and his a-hole friends are talking smack about Victoria. One of them says, “Women are queer cattle” because general misogyny is always on trend.

Later that night, Victoria is in bed, trying her best not to projectile vomit into Albert’s face, à la Regan from The Exorcist.

But he makes it very hard not to by picking a fight over manufacturing, of all things. Victoria takes the words right out of my mouth: “You say ‘manufacturing’ and my soul shrivels with boredom.”

“Mine does not,” Albert retorts, before diving into an Ugh, I can’t believe you don’t love trains! rant. He decides her having an opinion different from his means she’s sick, so he calls for a doctor.

This week in servant B-plots no one cares about: Hot Italian Chef and Babyface Maid indulge in a sensual chocolate taste test. The other servants look on with envy.

Back upstairs, Victoria shares the least-shocking news of the century: she’s pregnant! But she’s not exactly jazzed about it.

The next day, Victoria’s mom is forcing her to drink brandy mixed with cream. Incest and now fetal alcohol syndrome? Good luck forming all your fingers and toes, little cluster of cells!

Alfred swoops in to say he believes this binge-drinking-while-pregnant thing is:

Victoria’s mom reassures her that she knows best: “Listen to me. Your nurse is a virgin. Your husband is a man. Your doctor is a fool.” I don’t agree with her point of view, but the hilarious way she expresses her opinion has me like:

Before I can get comfortable liking Victoria’s mom, she declares that Victoria should give up working from home, and that women should let their husbands do everything, especially the thinking. She obviously did not get the Fifth Harmony memo that women can indeed work from home:

Later that night, Victoria’s reasons for not wanting to be pregnant come to the fore:

1. Childbirth hurts.
2. She just started having fun, sexy times.
3. “You are going to look at my body and be revolted!”

This is where I expect Albert to say something blunt and unhelpful. But he surprises with this poetic, panty-dropping line: “My desire for you will never fail. A love like ours can burn down a city.”

Now that the Queen is pregnant, a bunch of evil Parliament dudes are drooling over the idea of her dying in childbirth. They force her to pick someone to rule in the event of her death. She picks Albert and they lose their minds. He’s German! He’s soooo emo! He seems like he has too many teeth in his mouth! (Okay, those last two complaints are mine, but you get the gist.)

Victoria and Albert decide to take a road trip up north to convince some rich country bumpkins from the opposition party to chill on the hate and let Albert be Victoria’s second-in-command. On the carriage ride, Albert gives a sermon on how cool trains are. This makes Victoria want to puke.

A few hours later, Victoria and Albert are dining with their hosts, Mr. and Mrs. Conservative Hater, who list the approved activities for the next day: for the men, hunting; for the women, sitting down and being quiet. Albert announces he would rather visit local factories. Mrs. Conservative Hater can’t hide her Ewwww, But Poor People Work There face.

The next day, Albert scandalizes his hosts even more by talking about how rad it’ll be when trains dismantle class divides by allowing poor people to travel for better wages. Mr. Conservative Hater is like, You’re bad at reading rooms, huh? Class division = England’s brand. You would know that if you were from here, which you’re not because you’re a stupid German.

Sir Robert Peel, the leader of Parliament’s conservative wing, feels bad for Albert and offers to show him a train he has on his property. Albert begs Victoria, Mommy, can I go play at Robbie’s house, pretty please, I’ll never ask for anything again, I promise, pleaaaase, Mom!

Victoria’s response:

Albert goes to bed grumpy and sneaks out before Victoria wakes. He and Robert Peel spend the entire next day cementing their bromance by putting their faces directly into pollution.

All train-blissed out, Albert returns home covered in soot. Victoria is piiiiiiiiiiiissed.

Victoria: “Look at you! You look like a peasant!”

Albert: “I’m not the one eating beetroot.”

Victoria: “What? What is wrong with beetroot?”

Albert: “It’s peasant food!”

The next day, Victoria decides to see what all the fuss is about. She sneaks off and hitches a ride on Robert Peel’s train.  She is instantly obsessed and memorializes her locomotive feelings in a poem:

Get your next of kin, your sister, and your friend
Ride on that, choo choo, ride on that, choo choo
Come on, ride the train, hey, ride it, woo woo
Come on, ride the train, it’s the Choo Choo train

155 years later, the Quad City DJ’s set her poetry to music, creating this iconic ’90s jam:

The next day, Robert Peel tells the conservatives in Parliament that his BFF Albert is not that bad and shall not be denied the position of Regent. Everyone Kanye-shrugs. Cool, glad we spent an entire episode on an issue no one actually cared about.

Back home, Victoria gets back to:

Albert knows better than to ask to help. But the train ride has transformed Victoria. For the first time, she lets him do more than stamping. Sure, she can slay on her own, but a fun collaboration never hurt anyone.

End scene!

After every episode, it’s only right to reward characters who’ve impressed and diss the ones that haven’t, so here goes:

PIECE OF COAL: Victoria’s Mom. Forcing a pregnant woman to binge drink is bad, but mixing delicious booze with milk is unforgivable.

HONORABLE MENTION: Dash. Victoria’s pup isn’t even in this episode, but I like him more than most of these people.

BRONZE: Babyface Maid. Despite a life of servitude, she spends all day flirting with a hot Italian and eating chocolate. Get it, girl.

SILVER: Beetroot. One century’s peasant food is another’s expensive appetizer sprinkled with feta crumbles.

GOLD: Albert. He never struck me as having any game, but then he comes out with that “A love like ours can burn down a city” line. Touché! Gretchen taught him well.

Until next week! If you miss me, read some of my other work or follow me on Twitter @xcusemybeauty!

Other recaps:

‘Victoria’ Season 1, Episode 5 Recap: I’ll Make Love to You

‘Victoria’ Season 1, Episode 4 Recap: Wedding Bell Blues

‘Victoria’ Season 1, Episode 3 Recap: You’re So Vain

‘Victoria’ Season 1, Episode 2 Recap: All The Single Ladies

‘Victoria’ Season 1 Premiere Recap: Bow Down

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! No, not the holiday season, but the beginning of a new RuPaul’s Drag Race season! The trailer for the show’s ninth season dropped this morning, which means it’s time to overanalyze all 34 seconds of it through a live blog! Follow me…

0:01 — We have a premiere date! March 24, 2017! Don’t expect to hear from any gays in your life from 8pm to 9pm on that day.

0:02 — A queen erupts out of a blast of fire and glitter. She looks great, but is wearing green, which avid watchers of the show know spells doom.

0:03 — The past few months have been filled with so much bad news that it’s nice to take a moment every time something good happens. Let these words sink in:

0:04 — RuPaul isn’t wearing those ugly oversized hats this season! Yay!

0:05 — The contestants are as jazzed about this as I am.

0:06 — Someone went through Sailor Neptune’s laundry and she’s not pleased:

0:08 — Drain-the-swamp lily pad realness!

0:10 — Surprise! The show is leaving Logo, the marginally-relevant LGBT cable network, for VH1, the not-relevant-since-Behind-the-Music-and-Pop-Up-Video network. That leaves Logo with Golden Girls reruns and not much else. R.I.P.

0:11 — Looks like Mama Ru is still a huge fan of Season 7 winner Violet.

And how could you not be after witnessing all of this drag magic?

0:12 — The show is now on Fridays, which I momentarily got angry about (I have a life, RuPaul!), before remembering that I’m old now and celebrate TGIF by staying home.

0:16 — This queen tries to eradicate “I’m not here to make friends” from reality TV in favor of this Big Freedia paraphrase: “I didn’t come to play; I came to slay.” I support it.

0:17 — If Cindy McCain and the wink-with-your-tongue-out emoji had a baby drag queen.

0:18 — Gays on Tumblr start thirsting in 3, 2, 1…

0:19 — If all that incest the royals partake in resulted — not in a club foot — but the birth of an evil strawberry.

0:20 — The Gay Agenda has infiltrated the Lollipop Guild. Is nothing sacred?!

0:22 — A Pearl lookalike contest with a dash of appreciation for Magnolia Crawford’s pointy nose contour.

0:26 — Known for consistently hosting D-list celebrity judges (hi, LaToya Jackson!), the show appears to have secured a few extra coins from VH1 this year. The producers naturally spent it on booking Lady Gaga because no one has ever stanned themselves to death on television before.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to see how this turns out.

RuPaul’s Drag Race premieres its ninth season on March 24, 2017 at 8pm on VH1.

Our episode begins with Victoria saying, “Ugh, I’m so bored of this!” No, she’s not talking about every unnecessary servant storyline this season; she’s referencing how lame being pregnant is. All she wants is to dress up as a deity and perilously lean back in a wooden chair at the Grammys. Is that too much to ask?

Apparently so. Everyone in her circle has agreed that she should just stay home, preferably in bed (essentially a death sentence in the age before Netflix). Meanwhile, Albert is enjoying his uterus-free life, reading joke books and running off to bromance some more with Robert Peel. Victoria is not pleased.

Across town, Uncle Scar returns to England from Hanover, his “German postage stamp” of a county. He’s been wishing and hoping and thinking and praying about the Queen dying in childbirth, and will be damned if he doesn’t have a front row seat for that and his subsequent coronation.

Back at Buckingham Palace, the servants are also convinced she’s most likely going to die and start talking about looking for new jobs. Geez, everyone needs to:

In a creepy studio apartment at an undisclosed location, some twerp is plotting an assassination. We know this because he reads his instructions (from Hanover!) aloud. I’ve never killed a monarch, but I’m pretty sure the first rule in regicide is Don’t be a loudmouth about it.

Across town, Victoria is surrounded by baby gifts. She hates all of them. She’s also not too jazzed about breast-feeding — “I am not a cow!” — and instructs her servants to find her the best boobs in the land.

In a separate wing of the palace, Ernst, the Great German Man Whore, returns to break up Victoria’s friend’s marriage, and also to maintain his brand of spreading around as much syphilis as possible. Victoria’s friend resists his advances, until he drops a line about how she deserves a man who notices the way her curls fall on her neck. She promptly changes her tune to A little bit of syphilis never hurt anybody.

Elsewhere, Governess Dictator opens that day’s batch of the Queen’s fan mail. For the hundredth week in a row, a stalker named Captain Childers sends a bonkers letter promising to “free” the Queen. Governess Dictator decides to continue doing nothing about it.

Downstairs, the head maid is excited to judge a bunch of village women’s breasts: “I was brought up on a farm. I know how to spot a good milker.” After an initial Goldilocks struggle — these are too small, these are too round — she finds a pair that is just right.

Back in the undisclosed location, Twerp Assassin shoots at a scarecrow stand-in for the Queen. That’s scary and all, but can we take a moment to appreciate his dress-making abilities? If Project Runway was around in his day, maybe he wouldn’t have to channel all his creative energy into assassinating pregnant women.

At the palace, Victoria insists on going for a joyride around London. Three feet past the gate, Stalker Captain Childers throws violets at the Queen and yells about how much Albert sucks. He is quickly arrested and Victoria decides that leaving the house is overrated. Liz Lemon, this random little girl, and I agree:

It’s time for us to pretend to care about what’s happening downstairs. Hot Italian Chef has a job offer to set up his own establishment. Having a food truck is cool and all, but isn’t cooking for the Queen and every world leader already a pretty good gig?

He doesn’t seem to think so. He wants to take the opportunity, but only if Babyface Maid comes with him. This romantic overture is met with a whole lotta meh from her:

After a short investigation, the authorities decide Captain Childers is not a real threat. Victoria is like, Sweet! Time for another joyride! What could possibly go wrong?

Sure enough, three feet from the gate, Twerp Assassin rushes up and shoots at Victoria, who thinks Damn it! I should have listened to Liz Lemon, that chips-loving little girl, and that guy who writes snarky recaps about my show.

Back in Who Cares? Land, Babyface Maid pays her frenemy a visit to ask for advice. To be or not to be married to a really hot, sweet, and sensitive Italian dude, who will most likely bake treats and bring them to her in bed after sex until she dies of old age. Hmm, that’s a tough one.

Despite the fact that Hot Italian Chef saved her and her baby from dying of fever and even found them a new apartment without the help of Craigslist, Random Insufferable Baby Mama Who Really Didn’t Need to Be in This Show advises Babyface Maid not to trust him and to break his heart.

Back at the palace, Uncle Scar turns up to pretend to care about Victoria’s well-being. He brags about the size of the crowds along his commute that showed up to cheer him on.

He then brings up how Victoria is most likely going to die in childbirth to her face. That’s pretty egregious, but what’s more barbaric to Victoria is that he gave her teaspoons as a wedding gift. As punishment for this crime against humanity, she abruptly ends their awkward hangout by loudly saying “GOODBYE!”

Later, the authorities reveal that Twerp Assassin apparently didn’t shoot real bullets and wrote those Hanover letters to himself. Wow. He really sucks at life. He is to be acquitted for being really bad at assassinating, and also for being criminally insane.

STOP EVERYTHING. DASH IS BACK! BEHOLD HIS ROYAL CUTENESS:

I would like this show 900% more if all the characters were played by dogs.

Alas, heaven is not a place on Earth, so let’s return to the humans…

Hot Italian Chef finds Babyface Maid to find out if she wants to run away with him and start a cute, cozy life together. It goes down a little something like this:

And after he made her all that chocolate and saved her bitter frenemy’s life? So wack.

In an upstairs bedroom, Ernst shows up in Victoria’s married friend’s bedroom. Ooo la la! The first thing he says is, “Thank you for letting me come.” Interpret that line however you wish.

He follows this up with another line you can read into, if you want: “Will you do what I ask?”

Turns out he just wants a lock of her hair.

In the Queen’s quarters, Victoria has a brief freak-out over Twerp Assassin’s acquittal, but quickly gets over it by going on another joyride because YOLO.

Downstairs, Babyface Maid has a change of heart! She runs up to the chef to profess her love! He turns around!

It’s his replacement. He’s gone forever. Goof of the century.

The next day, Victoria goes into labor. Old dudes congregate outside her bedroom door, waiting for her to die. Being stubborn, Victoria refuses to bleed out and gives birth to a healthy baby girl instead. Victoria skips the whole Yay! I didn’t die! part and goes straight to worrying about whether Albert is mad at her or not: “Do you mind that she’s a girl? We’ll have a boy next time.”

And on that frustrating, misogynistic note, the camera pans away from their bed and season one comes to an end.

That’s all, folks! It’s been a pleasure watching along with you this season. You can keep up with my other work all over KQED Pop and on The Cooler podcast. And if Twitter is your thing, follow me!

Other recaps:

‘Victoria’ Season 1, Episode 6 Recap: C’mon Ride the Train

‘Victoria’ Season 1, Episode 5 Recap: I’ll Make Love to You

‘Victoria’ Season 1, Episode 4 Recap: Wedding Bell Blues

‘Victoria’ Season 1, Episode 3 Recap: You’re So Vain

‘Victoria’ Season 1, Episode 2 Recap: All The Single Ladies

‘Victoria’ Season 1 Premiere Recap: Bow Down

The first season of PBS’ Victoria might be over, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still obsess over the historical figures who inspired the show. I’m not sure about you, but a huge part of my viewing experience involved pausing every few minutes to dig into historical research on what actually happened and what these people actually looked like. Get a load of the latter with these compare-and-contrast portraits of the real-life people and the actors who play them:

Queen Victoria

Prince Albert

Lord Melbourne

Prince Ernst

Sir Robert Peel

The Duchess of Kent

Sir John Conroy

Charles Elmé Francatelli

Dash

Still want more Victoria? Relive it all through our cheeky Season 1 recaps:

‘Victoria’ Season 1 Finale Recap: Bye Bye Baby Blues

‘Victoria’ Season 1, Episode 6 Recap: C’mon Ride the Train

‘Victoria’ Season 1, Episode 5 Recap: I’ll Make Love to You

‘Victoria’ Season 1, Episode 4 Recap: Wedding Bell Blues

‘Victoria’ Season 1, Episode 3 Recap: You’re So Vain

‘Victoria’ Season 1, Episode 2 Recap: All The Single Ladies

‘Victoria’ Season 1 Premiere Recap: Bow Down

Is there anything Steph Curry can’t do? Judging by his recent appearance on Carpool Karaoke, I’m going to go with a firm nope. Not only can he carry a tune, but, thanks to the influence of Queen Riley, he knows every word to songs from Frozen and Moana.

Warning: Watching this video will make you want to have an Angelina Jolie-sized brood with Steph.

Alec Baldwin has been keeping busy lately. The star of the animated film The Boss Baby has a new memoir out and also keeps popping up on Saturday Night Live to play President Trump.

Baldwin tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross that his impression of the president is purposefully exaggerated. “We’re doing it live on a TV show at 11:30 at night in front of a live audience, so there’s a kind of volume to it,” he says. “It’s kind of the Macy’s Day Parade [version] of Trump — it’s a very larger-than-life thing.”

Baldwin grew up in a family of six kids on Long Island, N.Y. His father, a dedicated high school teacher, didn’t make much money, but they bonded over late-night classic movies. Initially, Baldwin thought he would pursue a career in law and government, but he decided instead to go into acting — much to the chagrin of his mother. “She was apoplectic,” Baldwin says. “She was screaming on the phone, ‘What is wrong with you?’ ”

Baldwin details his entry into show business, as well as the highs and lows of his career and his life, in his memoir, Nevertheless.

Interview Highlights

On his Trump impression on SNL

I say, “Left eyebrow up, right eyebrow down, stick your mouth out as far as you can like you’re trying to bite somebody’s nose off, and just kind of growl with that irritability. …”

The [thing] I try to lock into and kind of hold on to just for that brief five minutes of the cold opening is [Trump] not having any fun. … He doesn’t shut up about how rich he is. He doesn’t stop talking about how much money he has, and how much privilege he has … and he just seems miserable. If he’s an advertisement for wealth and privilege, then, good God, I think it’s terrible.

On how growing up in a household with five siblings affected him later in life

I walked out of that house with almost crippling OCD. Like I’d be standing in the hallway of my apartment in New York and the driver was downstairs and I needed to get into the car now, like right now, or I was going to miss my flight, and I’d be making sure that all the books were stacked neatly on the table in the entry hall of my apartment.

I’d be sitting there literally with my thumbs squeezing the books so all the seams were right and the books were stacked just so, and whoever was primary in my life would be looking at me like, “You’re kidding, right? You realize we’re going to miss the flight.” I’d be like, “Excuse me?”

I didn’t realize it was all coming out of this house of mine, which was just a hurricane and a mess all the time, because my mother just didn’t have the energy to clean up after six kids all the time.

On taking high-paying roles instead of following his passion for creative work

Even unconsciously, my whole life became about I don’t want to be like my dad. … I don’t want to get in trouble financially. A man’s job is to make as much money as he can, that’s it. That’s it. … That effed up my career in some ways; I didn’t really do what I wanted to do careerwise. …

There’s a turning point, which I view clearly as a turning point, there’s a spell of time there where I go and I don’t do Prelude to a Kiss on Broadway and I go do The Marrying Man, because they’re going to pay me a million dollars for the first time in my life, and I thought, “Well, that’s who I am. I’m a guy that’s going to star in films, and you’re going to pay me a lot of money, and that’s the career I want to have.”

The movie was not a good movie, and I should’ve done Prelude. I should’ve followed the instincts I had up ’till then. My instincts, if I had followed them, I would’ve gone to Broadway, and I would not have chased the money, but I did the money instead, because people talked me into that.

On staying committed to his work as an actor

I think that people who are actors very often … have kind of a phobia of being caught undercommitted to their work. … When I did Mission Impossible a couple of years ago with Tom Cruise … I said to Tom, “What motivates you?”

In some way Tom is mesmerizing to me, in terms of his career and his work ethic. I said, “What drives you now? You’re so many years into this.” … He says, “I gotta give them their money’s worth … on both ends, the people who are writing me my check and the people who are buying tickets to the film. I’ve got to give on both ends.” …

And I’ve felt that same way. A lot of actors … go to tremendous lengths to commit to their work as actors.

On aging in Hollywood

Ian Parker from The New Yorker … wrote an article about me and he described me [as resembling] … “an NFL football player in his broadcasting years,” and I thought that was a very funny description, in the way where you kind of let yourself go and don’t really tend to that grooming and that kind of self-examination.

I guess there was a part of me that it was maybe even a form of depression. … There was some of that. I didn’t care enough, and I started to care about other things. Plus, the really difficult thing was my divorce and my custody battle for my daughter, were right around 2002 and on through about 2007, 2008, it was a lot of more bad than good in my life, quite frankly.

Listen to the full interview!

Copyright 2017 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air.

In case you’re not yet familiar with the name, Tom Holland is Spider-Man. The new one. Not the Tobey Maguire one. Or the Andrew Garfield one. And definitely not the Nicholas Hammond one. On first glance, Tom Holland isn’t terribly memorable. He’s of small build and sweet face, and doesn’t carry any particularly distinguishing features.

Despite it all, prepare to have Tom Holland shoot right to the top of everyone’s Favorites list, thanks to his astonishing appearance on Lip Sync Battle. Displaying none of the middle-of-the-road, image-safeguarding that so often goes on at the start of Hollywood careers, when new stars are trying to appeal to as broad an audience as possible, Holland went full drag in his battle with Spider-Man: Homecoming co-star, Zendaya.

Sure, he more closely resembled Tim Curry’s Dr. Frank-N-Furter than Rihanna, but full marks for going all in and making this quite literal splash:

By the way, those dance moves come from a heap of classical training and a two-year stint starring in London’s Billy Elliot: The Musical.

Good luck trying to forget Tom Holland now.

We are now five (harrowing) episodes into Hulu‘s astonishing new series, The Handmaid’s Tale, based on Margaret Atwood‘s dystopian 1985 novel of the same name. In case you haven’t yet engaged in the weekly trauma of watching this thing, here’s a brief overview to get you up to speed:

Elisabeth Moss plays a strong, modern woman named Offred (birth name: June) contending with a new authoritarian system that has taken away her child, murdered her husband, and enslaved her — and every other fertile woman in the country — to act as what are essentially “two-legged wombs” for the largely sterile aristocracy. Failure to obey new rules regarding everything from language restrictions to dress code result in a variety of physical tortures and disfigurements that are better left discovered through the show or novel (also because the mere idea of describing them here is giving me the heebie-jeebies).

Try and get through this trailer without crying:

If you are in possession of a womb in real life, this is basically the most terrifying thing that’s ever been on television. Ever. It’s all the more frightening, of course, because of our current political climate. With the Republican party going after women’s reproductive rights on both a national and state level; and with an overwhelmingly wealthy, white, male government looking after wealthy, white, male priorities, The Handmaid’s Tale is particularly hard to watch right now. For a lot of viewers, it simply isn’t a massive stretch to imagine a scenario of this sort occurring in real life.

As such, every week, and with every new episode, Twitter explodes in a totally reasonable panic bomb.

Occasionally, someone thankfully drops something vaguely humorous into the mix:

What’s abundantly clear is that The Handmaid’s Tale is scaring the crap out of a lot of people, when watched in conjunction with the current administration. On the plus side, it has also given communities that oppose Trump shorthand for the fear they are experiencing around civil liberties.

Beautifully, women are even incorporating the Handmaids’ distinctive robes and bonnets into reproductive freedom protests around the country.

In Iowa, women dressed as Handmaids to protest a new bill requiring women to get an ultrasound before they can receive an abortion:

In Missouri, this group of Handmaids protested the state’s new budget plan, because it would cease funding to any and all organizations that provide abortion services, and all but do away with funding for family planning:

In Texas, Handmaids showed up at the Capitol building to protest the SB25 bill, which would allow doctors to lie to their pregnant patients about any signs of fetal abnormality, should that doctor suspect the patient may wish to seek an abortion under those circumstances:

Chilling, no?

A second season of The Handmaid’s Tale has already been scheduled. It might be hard to watch, but there are worse ways to keep us on our toes.

History tells us that when actors try and impersonate iconic pop stars for the purpose of television-based entertainment, the results are almost always cringe-worthy to the point of unwatchable. The more distinctive the real-life star, the worse it is when someone makes a TV movie of their life.

So, prepare to experience slack-jawed wonderment at the first trailer for Lifetime’s upcoming MJ biopic, Michael Jackson: Searching For Neverland, because this thing might actually be kinda-sorta okay! (Bonus points to Lifetime for casting Tyreese from The Walking Dead in it. We’ve missed you, Chad Coleman…)

Let’s quietly get our hopes up and avoid thinking about the inevitable disaster that will occur every time MJ impersonator, Navi, has to do a dance routine:

In defense of this general sense of optimism, it should be noted that the whole super-offensive Joseph Fiennes disaster last year has left us with particularly low expectations for anything King of Pop-based. Maybe Searching For Neverland looks cool just because Lifetime‘s previous music biopics have set such a low bar. The following didn’t exactly set movie critics alight with praise:

Britney Ever After (2017)

The Guardian said: “Watching Britney Ever After may be a strange experience, but as the woman herself says in one of her soliloquies: ‘It’s really hard to know what to feel, but you’ve just gotta keep going.'”

Ring of Fire (2013. That’s right — this Johnny and June Carter Cash biopic came eight years after the near-perfect Walk the Line. Why bother?)

“…so incomprehensible that it’s, well, creepy,” the New York Post gushed!

Whitney (2015)

“Ultimately comes across a bit flat,” the LA Times declared!

Aaliyah: The Princess of R&B (2014)

“A soulless, aimless look at the life of the singer,” raved Deadline!

Michael Jackson: Searching For Neverland  premieres May 29, 2017. Clear your calendars and buy some popcorn.

After a 25-year break, the third season of Twin Peaks premiered on Showtime last night, and it’s even stranger now than it was back in the early ’90s. The new episodes are only partially set in Twin Peaks, and by the third episode, there’s even a scene in outer space because: David Lynch.

To give you some idea of the off-the-scale weirdness involved, take into account that, this time around, Agent Cooper has at least two doppelgängers (one of whom closely resembles Glenn Danzig); there’s a glass box in an apartment building in New York City that appears to be a portal for violent evil; there’s a talking twig dispensing advice in the Black Lodge; the Black Lodge is now accessible in casinos in South Dakota; Bobby is a cop; and Lucy and Andy’s son happens to have grown up to become Michael Cera doing a Marlon Brando impersonation.

In an attempt to grapple with all of this, it seemed best to get in touch with some experts. Regular attendees of the Twin Peaks Fest have turned obsessing over the original show into a bonafide art form, so we tracked some of them down to see what they think of the show’s new direction.

Brian Linss is an artist based in Beaverton, Oregon, and has been attending the fest for six years now. Having watched the first two episodes of the new season, he remains considerably less confused than most viewers. Of the different locations this time around, he says: “The story is Cooper’s return to Twin Peaks, so the new locations were expected.” He believes that the glass box is “probably two coordinates where ley lines cross, creating a rift between two worlds.” And of that amazing talking twig, Linss says, “It is the evolution of The Arm, or in other words, the replacement for the Little Man from Another Place.”

Another Twin Peaks Fest regular, writer Lori Savageau, wishes the new season stayed within the confines of the small town, and is having a hard time adjusting to current day Twin Peaks. “It jumps around so much and seems to be trying so hard, without establishing that small town feel I so loved in the first one,” the Grass Valley resident says. “I feel like such a downer about it because all my friends seem to love it. For me, it feels too much like David Lynch being… modern. I probably need to watch it again.”

Savageau’s friend and fellow Fest-goer, Mary Hütter, disagrees. “I don’t really know how I feel about the new Twin Peaks season yet,” she explains. “It’s beautiful and touching and complicated and hilarious. It’s also going to take some digesting. I love it, but it leaves me at a loss for words that make sense. As Twin Peaks has always been, it’s more of a feeling.”

When asked if he has any series–related predictions to share, Brian Linss says simply: “I predict these 18 hours will not be the last we hear of Twin Peaks.”

Even if the show does end after Season 3, we predict the internet will be having fun with all this for a long time to come.

In pop culture terms, the new trend for major television networks throwing live musicals our way every few months feels like the ultimate in post-modern malaise; a glaring confirmation that, yes, America, there are no more ideas. It’s over. We got too spoiled, and now we must pay.

Attempting to bear witness to these pseudo-theatrical debacles only makes the darkness descend further, for the message is clear and the message is this: not only are we out of ideas in 2017, the ideas being rehashed for us are typically presented in a manner that is distinctly crappier. Perhaps the networks think that we, as a nation of gif-making mockers and Twitter-based critics, simply don’t deserve the undiluted joy of the originals. Perhaps they want us to make do with secondhand productions that neither capture the excitement of a real live theatrical play nor the flawless gloss of modern television productions, because our cynical eyes just don’t deserve the effort.

Even after the nation suffered through 2013’s constipated Sound of Music and the unintentionally comedic nightmare that was 2014’s Peter Pan Live, the networks have continued making these live musicals. While improvements have been made — 2015’s The Wiz Live had the decency to throw some Cirque Du Soleil stuff in the mix, 2016’s (still reasonably pointless) Grease Live made some efforts to impress, and Hairspray Live was elevated by appearances from Ariana Grande and Jennifer Hudson — these oft-outdated musical “events” haven’t been well-received enough to justify how many more we’ve got coming our way.

In case you didn’t know, here’s what the nation is facing in the coming months: The Wonderful World of Disney: The Little Mermaid Live on ABC this October, Bye Bye Birdie with J-Lo and A Christmas Story this December, Jesus Christ Superstar next Easter and, at some as-yet-undetermined-time, a live production of Rent.

Even with all this in mind, last night’s not-even-live production of Dirty Dancing on ABC represents the pinnacle of TV that no longer cares what we, the audience, think of it. If the original Dirty Dancing didn’t need to be 3-hours, it is unabashed madness to assume anyone would want this one to be.

1987’s Dirty Dancing is a ridiculous film with a frequently insane script, but it remains much-beloved around the world because of its magical combination of ’60s nostalgia, super-cute wardrobe, great soundtrack and, above all else, the electric chemistry between Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze. It is, unequivocally, a film that never, ever needed to be re-made. And if anyone was going to insist on doing something so foolish,that entity should have been a major movie studio, not ABC.

Despite featuring some solid talent — Sarah Hyland, Nicole Scherzinger and Debra Messing all do the best with what they’re given — this thing is almost entirely lacking in any sense. The warning signs came early. ET, speaking to Abigail Breslin in a recent episode, as part of a preview for Dirty Dancing, pointed out that the Little Miss Sunshine star had “absolutely no dance experience.” Breslin herself admitted as much: “I was like ‘I wanna be like Baby. I wanna dance like that, but I’m the most uncoordinated human being on the face of the Earth, so it didn’t seem like a likely scenario for me.”

Yes, everyone, ABC cast a non-dancer as the lead in a movie about dancing. And that one little nugget of info serves to symbolize the essence of everything that happened on our televisions last night. Breslin tried her adorable best — in many ways out-charming Jennifer Grey’s whiny Baby — but her lack of grace on the dance floor was a major stumbling block and a serious oversight on the part of the producers.

And as for Patrick Swayze’s replacement, Colt Prattes? Swayze’s shoes are simply too big for anyone to fill. And while Prattes has all of the abs, he’s somehow lacking the sexual dynamism.

Truly, ABC’s Dirty Dancing is a remake for people who want to see the original done with less dirt and worse dancing. And that’s true, even after the added scenes where Scherzinger teaches Breslin about the power of her womanly groin. (No joke.)

ABC’s Dirty Dancing has a weaker soundtrack too — modern day covers of the golden oldies and DD classics (including, criminally, Swayze’s own “She’s Like the Wind”) that made the original so special, with some bizarre musical interludes thrown in. Like the part when Baby’s dad finds out she has spent the night with Johnny and responds by going to the dance studio and inexplicably singing Frank Sinatra’s “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” to himself on the piano. Also, did anyone want or need the final dance routine to be performed as a group vocal number where even the parents join in? The answer is no. Just… please, no.

There’s a lot to complain about when it comes to the fad of live television musicals, but somehow, remarkably, last night’s Dirty Dancing — utterly confused about what it wanted to be — actually made it possible to miss the productions that commit all the way. At least when things are live, the promise of things going wrong at any given moment is tantalizingly there. ABC’s Dirty Dancing was all kinds of wrong — just not in the fun ways.

The five long months since the finale of Poldark‘s second season have felt like wandering an unforgiving desert, thirsty for water… and more shirtless shots of Aidan Turner scything and mining and, um, other stuff. Well, my fellow parched Poldark fanatics, here’s a droplet for you: the trailer for the third season!

I’ve now watched this 40-second tease more than 12 times. Here’s what I’ve learned about what we can expect when Poldark returns on October 1, 2017:

Ross’ awkward haircut has grown out…

…which means that Demelza won’t be able to stay mad at him for any of his betrayals, but what else is new?

Elizabeth is really going through with this whole giving-birth-to-the-spawn-of-satan thing (or is Ross the actual father??). Paging Jerry Springer. Also, according to pregnancy lore, carrying low means it’s a boy.

Confirmed: It’s a boy! And his name is going to be Valentine. You can’t see the baby’s face, but I bet he’s side-eyeing George so hard.

Agatha is still kicking, and will continue her habit of talking smack about people while pointing a finger right in their faces. Bless her.

New hottie alert! Demelza apparently has a brother that isn’t an abusive slob! His name is Drake!

He has all of his teeth!

He bathes in babbling brooks!

The Poldark producers clearly know what their audience wants.

I think this warrants an animated gif replay, don’t you?

Some random teen likes what she sees.

It isn’t long before they get to whatever base symbolizes Eskimo kissing.

In addition to good looks, good teeth, and good bathing techniques, Drake is also good with children! This is beginning to be too much. Ross who?

Once you think one new young babe is too much to handle, another one pops up, looking like a 19th century Harry Styles.

But back to the old guard. Dwight Enys seems to be in danger! Hasn’t he been through enough? The break-up with Caroline, for sure, but also never getting to hang out with Horace the Pug again.

Speaking of Horace’s mom, here she is. Can we pan the camera down to her feet to get a glimpse of the real star please?

Woah! Demelza will find a reason to smile? We didn’t get any of that last year, thanks to Ross being the worst husband ever, so this is a welcome sight.

Ross will continue to engage in more awkward war stuff…

…and punch dudes in awkward hats. Cool, I guess.

And George is still working on his audition tape for RuPaul’s Drag Race.

In case you’re unfamiliar with my previous Poldark-related work, his drag person calls herself Hisstina Snakespeare and looks like this:

That’s all we get for now. If this short preview wasn’t enough Poldark for you, don’t distress; you can relive all the show’s past glory through my cheeky recaps!

Poldark Season 3 premieres October 1, 2017 on PBS.

In case you haven’t checked Hulu’s new movies section recently, there’s a documentary that just came out titled Dumb: The Story of Big Brother Magazine. Unless you were a skateboarder in the ’90s, you probably have no idea what Big Brother was. But the magazine’s influence is still ricocheting around the pop culture landscape and has undoubtedly touched you at some point, whether you know it or not.

The most obvious thing to come out of Big Brother was Jackass — MTV’s paean to stupid stunts and behaving badly. Before Jackass, Johnny Knoxville made a name for himself in the skate community (despite not even being a skater) by showing up on Big Brother videos and literally attacking himself with a variety of weapons, including an actual gun. As somebody who was pretty submerged in the skateboard community the year this video came out (1998), I cannot overstate the gleeful-yet-horrified impact that watching Knoxville shoot himself had at that time.

Approach this footage with caution if you don’t like cursing and/ or watching dudes really, really hurt themselves:

By the time Knoxville had thrown himself in front of a moving vehicle for another Big Brother video, just a year later, the skate community was as desensitized to this kind of stunt as the entire nation would later become after three seasons of Jackass.

It wasn’t just the Big Brother skate videos that were nuts, Big Brother magazine made National Lampoon look like Disney Adventures (Chris Pontius wrote for it, Steve-O literally set his face on fire to get in the magazine, and Jason “Wee Man” Acuña was the subscription manager). It was less about skateboarding and more about self-consciously trying to offend — which is why there were news stories warning parents about the dangers of Big Brother, and why it ended up being owned by Hustler-founder and First Amendment fan, Larry Flynt.

Truly, in the pre-internet age, Big Brother was a dark entity. It was a window into the most self-destructive, nihilistic elements of skateboarding. It was uncomfortable to read. There were graphic depictions of bodily fluids and rampant, full frontal nudity. It was sometimes homophobic and frequently sexist. Its “KIDS ISSUE” had a cover designed to appeal to children, but articles about bestiality and BDSM inside. Instructions on how to take drugs and how to commit suicide were featured. Big Brother embraced every taboo possible in the same decade that political correctness became a thing, and thrived both because, and in spite, of it.

When Big Brother first emerged in 1992, the shadier, dirtier, riskier elements of skating were already well-established (thanks in no small part to what was happening in the Bay Area in the late ’80s and early ’90s). Big Brother just did more to shine a light on them than anyone else ever had, and subsequently managed to push skateboarding’s focus almost entirely in that direction — at least for a few years. The more sexual and offensive content there was in the magazine, the more the entire skateboard industry embraced shock value.

As previously stated, without Big Brother, there would have been no Jackass. And without Jackass, the boundaries of how ridiculous and dangerous you can be on television and in movies would not be where they are now. Actor Jonah Hill, speaking in the Dumb documentary, describes Big Brother as his “biggest influence comedically” because it made him think “humor could be cool, because it could be dangerous.” In the world of print, one has to wonder if men’s magazines like Maxim (launched 1995) and FHM (launched 1999) would have had the idea of incorporating so much unclothed female flesh into non-related and mainstream content if Big Brother hadn’t done it first.

One of the great ironies of Big Brother is that it helped create the environment that caused the boom in skateboarding in the late ’90s and early 2000s, but was simultaneously destroyed because of it. Once skating hit the mainstream — thanks in part to the growing success of the X Games — skate companies, wishing to cultivate an air of respectability, couldn’t get away from Big Brother fast enough. And without advertising dollars, the magazine was doomed.

In the post-internet age, it’s difficult to imagine anything being able to shock quite like Big Brother did in its heyday — but Big Brother is also an indelible part of why we, as a culture, are inherently less shockable now.

Back in February, David Frum, former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, jokingly likened the first few weeks of the Trump administration to my favorite show about Russian spies:

I laughed, re-tweeted, and then stopped laughing. Wait, I do sort of feel like an off-screen extra in an episode of The Americans!

It has become uncanny to watch fictional stories in this age of post-truth, alternative facts, and daily melodrama. Nothing feels entirely fictional or entirely real; what used to be a respite of guilty pleasures and genuine entertainment is now an eerie reminder of the specific uncertainties, dangers, and horrors of this particular time.

My suspension of belief no longer exists, and even if it did, it doesn’t seem smart or responsible to suspend it. Of course, fiction usually seeks to reveal something about our lives and our worlds, but this current intersection between fiction and reality is something different for me.

In Hulu’s comment sections under episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale, people debate our current dystopia more than anything related to plot or character. In January, Orwell’s 1984 had a 9,500 percent increase in sales, as readers no doubt wanted to brush up on doublethink. Even The Bachelorette, which is usually quite willfully anachronistic, has the first black Bachelorette being courted by a man who allegedly believes Black Lives Matter is a terrorist group and  liberal woman aren’t to be trusted.

While I haven’t re-read 1984, I have found myself drawn to watching Scandal again, a particularly soapy show that I’d given up on years ago when it went off the rails. I was curious to see how the narrative would unfold, considering our reality seems more nail-biting and suspenseful than anything we could make up. I was not surprised that the gory, amoral roller coaster suddenly had the sickening gravitas of one of those true crime TV documentaries. None of the behind-the-scenes machinations felt that far-fetched. In fact, the murder, mayhem, and subterfuge is all quite symbolically rich, as if there is something meaningful to be gleaned from Elizabeth getting bashed with a baseball bat or the Electoral College being blackmailed. Scandal has become an artsy exposé!

After speaking with writers from Scandal, House of Cards, Veep, and Madam Secretary, The New York Times’ Jim Rutenberg discovered the new reality of what it’s like to write TV in the age of Trump: “Suddenly, the writers who work on political television shows were competing less with one another and more with real life, because of a president who transformed their seemingly escapist scripts into something resembling nonfiction — and scrambled the traditional notions of political cause and effect that they tended to base their drama upon.”

That’s at the heart of it for me, as a fiction writer and someone who loves stories: what role does fiction play when the truth is stranger than fiction, and when it’s ever more essential that we value and uncover the truth?

Perhaps fiction, even the lighthearted television variety, has a responsibility to keep us alert to our reality rather than inspire us to escape it. Not everyone and everything has to be political all the time, and yet I have to admit that, lately, when I watch a show that doesn’t at least somehow engage with our current political and cultural climate, I find myself asking, What is the point of this? Even comedy sitcoms like Black-ish and Kimmy Schmidt find a way to get some commentary in.

The Handmaid’s Tale has been discussed extensively (and very beautifully in Emily Temple’s piece for Lit Hub). I’ve had a lot of mixed emotions and assessments while watching, but the most unfamiliar sensation has been a too-real sense of doom, fear, and portent. Most things I watch, even disturbing things, don’t stick with me for too long afterwards. I take them in, think about them, and let them go pretty easily. But The Handmaid’s Tale leaves this strange and unprecedented after-image that frightens me and inspires me to (among other things) stay updated on Amy’s Siskind’s list of things that are subtly changing around us. It’s no surprise that women have been showing up to protests in red cloaks and white bonnets. It’s really quite something to see images from the Texas State Capitol (and just the other day in Ohio) that evoke scenes from a book I read in 12th grade English class.

“Yes: your life, right now, is both text and context for this television show,” Temple writes. Later, she continues, “…what it really does is remind us of the true precariousness of our own situation in America. We rely so much on the perceived rules of our society, but in fact we have almost no control. We assume that the rules will protect us, but those rules aren’t actually real.”

What this all points to on a very macro and existential level is that what is “real” is so often not. We construct notions of something being lasting, fixed, and solid, and we use this illusion to comfort ourselves into a false sense of security and inaction. Sometimes, it is the illusion of fiction’s unlikeliness, sometimes the illusion of a boundary or an impossibility. More and more, I get the impression our fictional stories are trying to point out the danger of the illusions, rather than weave them for our entertainment.

I’m reminded of the second part of Mark Twain’s famous quote. “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.” We have no idea what plot twist is coming next; the truth does not have to stick to what is possible.

Of course, this is just TV and pop culture that I’m considering here. Films, music, comedy,  literature, and visual art are ever more vital (Google “any art form” in the age of Trump, and you get incredible results). As Charles McNulty writes in the LA Times, “The arts and the humanities nixed by Trump’s budget proposal pose a direct challenge to demagoguery. Literature, theater, music and the visual arts promote contemplation. They invite individuals to ask questions, consider alternative views and second-guess what they’ve been brainwashed into believing.”

Let’s keep paying very close attention to all the stories we’re being told, and to what we believe is true.

On Friday night, a new American monarch rose to power beneath a cascade of rose petals, a cracked mask and the ballads of Whitney Houston.

But she didn’t just use the glamour, comedy, acting and lip syncing prowess that fans of RuPaul’s Drag Race have come to expect from America’s Next Drag Superstar. Sasha Velour relies on brains.

An “amateur drag historian”

When the 30-year-old queen is at home in Brooklyn, N.Y., she produces and stars in a monthly drag cabaret event called Nightgowns. She co-founded Velour, a magazine spotlighting lesser-known styles and issues in drag. She received an MFA from the Center for Cartoon Studies and studied political art as a Fulbright Scholar in Moscow.

She also considers herself an “amateur drag historian,” acknowledging there have always been different schools of drag — all competing, warring, pushing the art in new directions.

But for Velour, her style comes from simultaneously paying tribute to the queens who came before her and blocking out any voices that might try to dictate what her drag should be.

“I want to do something that is not just a pastiche of drag that’s come before, but is really authentically me,” she said. “I try to tune out all the drag that’s out there and tap into the drag that I was doing when I was a little kid — when I didn’t even know the word ‘queer’ or that gay people were out there. … Tapping into the things I’ve always loved and building a drag that honors those.”

And now that season nine is a wrap, Velour can officially add being the ninth queen crowned on RuPaul’s Drag Race to her resume — bringing her eclectic, academic and sometimes controversially intellectual brand of drag to the main stage of American queer culture.

“I mean, it’s been one of the biggest things I’ve gotten pushback about, is being an intellectual and what that means,” she said. “I grew up in this house of intellectuals, and for me it wasn’t like a negative thing. And what I’ve discovered is for a lot of people it is. But I think knowing history, liking to talk about ideas — like, I just genuinely like to geek out and go on these intellectual thought journeys. I want to show people it’s not elitist to be a deep thinker.”

Advancing an art form

As reigning queen of the Drag Race empire, Velour said she plans to use her platform — and cash prize of $100,000 — to bring other LGBTQ artists across America into the spotlight. Over the next year, she hopes to take projects like Nightgowns and Velour magazine across the country, showcasing and connecting drag communities from America’s big cities and small towns.

“I just want to be able to get kings and queens and nonbinary performers working together and having discussions about what drag is currently, what it has been and where we can move it to that is truly new,” she said. “I think if we work together and have a conversation, we can really advance the art form.”

Velour also plans to follow in the footsteps of other notable Drag Race alumni by dipping her toes into video production and music — albeit with an noticeably Velourian spin.

“When I was on the show, I said I will never create drag queen music. There’s too much of it and it’s horrible,” she said. “But then they kind of tricked me into [doing] this weird, academic talk-rapping that’s — it’s not for everyone, but the people who love it are really into it.”

The “talk-rapping” she’s referring to, for the record, is in two collaborations with fellow season nine contestants — “C.L.A.T.” and RuPaul’s “Category Is…” remix, which was produced as a challenge on the show.

In one verse, Velour opens with: “Radical, magical, liberal art. Gender is a construct; tear it apart.” Which, for her, is what the art of drag is all about — challenging gender and empowering people to follow their own paths.

“A lot of people still have the idea that drag goes from one end of the gender spectrum to the other end of the gender spectrum, and they expect drag queens to be masculine out of drag and hyper-feminine in drag,” she said. “I think that portrays a lot of binary thinking and ultimately a lot of misogyny. I hope people appreciate that drag always has been more about the blurriness of gender rather than these two extremes.”

“We make ourselves royals”

As Velour watched her victory Friday night as the first queen ever to be crowned on VH1, she had a moment thinking back to her childhood — before she had other LGBTQ people in her life or understood the world of gay culture.

“I imagined scrolling through channels and just discovering [Drag Race] on VH1. This, like, giant theater full of people cheering for queer people in the most glamorous, fabulous costumes — just being emotional, being angry about politics, being truly themselves. And I thought about how powerful that would be, and it was really humbling,” Velour said. “That’s really the message of drag in the end. We make ourselves royals.”

“I hope that speaks to people and reminds them that America is full of scrappy, strange, beautiful people making magic for themselves.”

The third issue of Velour comes out on July 5 and will include the contestants from season nine of RuPaul’s Drag Race. It will also feature discussions on the connection between transgender politics, liberation and the drag community.

Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

If you didn’t watch the entirety of new Netflix series GLOW over the weekend, chances are you were simply too busy doing a plethora of amazing Pride-related stuff. That’s okay. You can casually start watching this show about women’s wrestling next weekend, only to find that you can’t step away from your TV. Truly, this is the most insanely addictive show to hit screens since Stranger Things (the ’80s — and Netflix — is clearly having a moment right now).

Amidst all of the leotards, compelling drama, and genuinely heart-felt humor, it took me a couple of episodes to really notice Rhonda Richardson, a.k.a. Britannica (the smartest of all of the wrestling personas in the show, she clobbers her opponents with a text book).

Rhonda’s character has so far been noticed online for her resemblance to Robyn Lively in 1989’s Teen Witch, and not much else. This is a reflection of how many amazing characters there are in this thing, rather than an indictment of her character. Rhonda is a beautiful and outspoken live wire with a sweet nature and unfiltered sexuality.

It was in GLOW‘s third episode (the hilariously titled “Wrath of Kuntar”) that it clicked.
“Hang on, that’s Kate Nash!” I said.
“Who the hell is Kate Nash?” my perplexed binge-watching companion asked.

I hit pause and put this on:

Nash has been an indie music darling in the UK for a decade — something quite evident by the 13 million views the “Foundations” video has wracked up on YouTube thus far. Her first album, Made of Bricks, was full of jaunty piano-based tunes about unrequited crushes, bad relationships, and childhood friendships. Nash unselfconsciously sang the entire thing in her broad London accent. Legend has it, the album was only written to kill boredom, after the singer broke her foot in a panic induced by getting rejected from the theater school of her choice. On her home soil, the twist of fate catapulted her into actual, BRIT-Award-winning stardom (she beat PJ Harvey and Bat For Lashes in the 2008 Best British Female category).

At the start of her music career, the then-20-year-old Nash combined wholesome, traditionally feminine aesthetics with a penchant for cursing and unfiltered opinion-giving. It was an intoxicating combination, but one that didn’t really speak to the more punk rock aspects of Nash’s character. On the side, away from all the adoration, she played bass part-time in a punk band called the Receeders. She also fully embraced underground, DIY culture with her own fanzine and blog, My Ignorant Youth.

Nash’s second album, 2010’s My Best Friend is You, had elements of her earlier sweetness — even incorporating ’60s girl group vibes on lead single, “Do-Wah-Doo” — but her on-stage image got spikier and the album tracks were far dirtier and more caustic than anyone had expected. By the time 2013’s Girl Talk came out, it was widely noted that Nash had “gone full riot grrrl.” Reviews were a little mixed, but Nash doubled down, creating a YouTube channel called Girl Gang TV, that The Guardian dubbed “a meeting place for a new generation of likeminded feminists.”

Suffice it to say, Kate Nash ending up on a show about sexism, female empowerment, community amongst women, and DIY determination shouldn’t be in the least bit surprising, especially since, before that pesky broken foot, she had been more interested in a career in acting than in music. (Fun fact: she attended the same London school for performing arts that Amy Winehouse and Adele did.)

Kate Nash’s fourth album is due out sometime before February 2018, but it’s hard to imagine GLOW not taking over her life for the forseeable future. The cool thing is, this second leap into the limelight comes with its own in-built girl gang — something she’s been trying to cultivate on her own for years.