Break-ups and rom-coms are all the rage in this week’s edition of Your Weekly Watch! ***Spoilers galore if you have not yet watched this week’s Abbott Elementary.***
Abbott Elementary Lets Janine Grow Up
Well, it started off as a rom-com. After many seasons of will-they, won’t-they tension between Philly elementary school teachers Janine (Quinta Brunson) and Gregory (Tyler James Williams), the two adorkable neurodivergent baddies not only accepted that they were in love with each other, they also made the big step just a few episodes ago to move in together. Then, in episode 19 of season 5, “Trip,” Janine and Gregory have a fight over where they should go on vacation, how much to spend, and how they should get there. They realized that they were unaligned, and Janine suggested they break up. Gregory didn’t respond, but he also didn’t not respond, so they broke up. Their work bestie Jacob is now in shambles, as are many people in the audience.
Most of the comments on Threads are questioning Janine for breaking up with Gregory over something “so small” while staying with Tariq for years who was an absolute emotional and financial abuser and overall weight around her neck. Summarized, they’re saying of Gregory by contrast: “He’s a good man, Savannah!” Yet, as we know from the iconic source material of that quote, Waiting to Exhale, that wasn’t exactly true— and even if it were, it’s not exactly enough.
In retrospect, the writing was on the wall for the couple. In last week’s episode “April Fools,” Gregory’s tone with Janine in the cold open had me cutting my eyes at him. He started his comments criticizing Janine’s ability to be effective in her complaints to their boss Ava with, “no offense,” so you know some offense is soon to follow. Janine didn’t appear to take offense to his comments, though, and deferred that he may be correct that Barbara should be the one to talk to Ava instead. But I still didn’t like it. Why not let her try? Barbara, as it turns out, was no more successful than Janine would’ve been, anyway. I didn’t like him dampening her confidence in herself, I didn’t like his tone, and I didn’t like the words he chose to express his point. Later in the episode, Janine easily turns on Gregory with the rest of the teacher crew who believed that rules-stickler Gregory was the prankster behind the April Fools hijinks that were upending the school. It didn’t bode well for their relationship that she was so easily convinced he would do something so out-of-character, and it struck me as odd for two people in love to act this way. Maybe she really was annoyed with him for how he shut down her efforts with Ava earlier that day.
I’m actually thrilled that Abbott was bold enough to let their heart-warming comedy break up the fan-favorite couple just an episode later. And not just because this is my advice to any woman who has any complaints about how a man is treating her. I think there’s a way to disagree, and the way Gregory disagrees is revealing. They agree to go to Outer Banks for vacation, but Gregory wants to leave at 4 A.M. to drive there and Janine wants to save energy and time and fly. The point of a vacation is to relax, as she points out. But Gregory thinks flying is too expensive and a waste of money. So Janine, with the extra money she’s saved by having Gregory pay half the rent, buys their flights for them so he won’t have to worry about money. But he’s still worried about money—her money—and insinuates that she’s irresponsible. His rigidity and harsh way of explaining himself to her is no-doubt a part of his neurodivergence, and also, Janine doesn’t have to accept it. If there’s one thing she learned from getting stuck with Tariq for years, it’s that ignoring early red flags can lead to years of misery. She can either fall into her old patterns of accepting unacceptable things, or free herself and find out that she is stronger and more capable than she thinks.
Confident Janine who parts her hair down the middle now and stands in her bold fashion choices even when she’s being mocked, spoke up for what she wanted in her relationship, despite the cost. Gregory was either unwilling or unable to give it to her, and she bounced. I’m so proud of her!!! That’s what we call growth, girl. That doesn’t make Gregory a “bad person,” but him not being “bad”—or as bad as Tariq—does not entitle Gregory to Janine as a partner. I’m glad that Abbott is letting her grow up, stand up for herself, say exactly what she wants and be willing to walk away if she doesn’t get it.
They’ll get back together, I’m sure. But I hope Gregory will have to both acknowledge how he was wrong and change in order for that to be amenable, rather than relying on the patriarchal “good man defense” that there are worse men out there, so be grateful for what you have! Confident Janine isn’t grateful for what she’s offered, she’s going for what she wants.
In the words of the iconic Lucille Bluth:
You, Me & Tuscany Works Because Halle Bailey Is Cute Enough To Get Away With Murder
Good news! The movie that weirdos are trying to gaslight Black people into seeing in the theaters this weekend under pain of death (of all Black rom-coms henceforth) is cute! Starring The Little Mermaid’s Halle Bailey and Bridgerton’s Rege-Jean Page, You, Me & Tuscany follows Anna (Bailey) as a grieving culinary school drop-out who goes to Tuscany like she and her recently deceased mom always dreamed of. A series of unfortunate events leads her to squat in the empty villa of a man she met back in New York and when his Italian family comes over to look after the place, she lies and tells them she is their son’s fiancé. They embrace her as a daughter, but soon she finds herself falling for her fake fiancé’s Black cousin (Page). Shenanigans ensue when her lie becomes too big to hold.
This unhinged premise can only work because Bailey is adorable and has a high-pitched Disney princess voice that makes you root for Anna’s rights and wrongs. She also has great chemistry with the Italian family, which is at least as important as the love story, à la My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Bailey needed chemistry with both Page and Lorenzo de Mor who plays the fake fiancé Matteo, and they were all mostly successful in pulling that off. It’s a PG-13 movie, so the chemistry did what it needed to do: be safe, sweet and believable.
I was worried that the aforementioned threats that Black people must go see this movie or else!!! was a cover for the movie not being good. The still images they released earlier in the year reminded me that Page is more than a decade older than the ingenue Bailey, and I hate an age-gap romance. And the movie was written and directed by white people, so I had my reservations about why we’re still letting white people tell our stories when there are SO MANY BLACK WOMEN WRITERS AND DIRECTORS who could’ve done this.
There were a few times where it was evident that a white man wrote the script—when Halle’s hobosexual character decides to put on the lingerie of the white woman for whom she’s supposed to be house sitting, and when she was hollering about her edges getting wet. Ma’am! You have locs?! The other time that made me scrunch my face was the not-so-cute meeting between Page’s Michael and Anna. He almost runs her over with his truck and then is immediately rude to her when he sees her again in the café. This is literally the only other Black person around for miles! Usually, we are more happy to see each other—especially overseas.
I remember being on a yacht in Sweden, no other Negros for miles, and hadn’t seen one that whole week on land either. Finally I saw a Black man on a yacht floating nearby and lost my shit waving. He did not wave back. It was all I talked about to the people back home cause who raised him?! Anyway, if Michael was supposed to be one of those Europeans who don’t get excited to see Black people, then it should’ve been more of a sticking point for Anna and she should’ve said as much to Michael.
Otherwise, I wasn’t overly bothered by the script or the dialogue. And Page looks good in the film, not distractingly older than Bailey, so it didn’t impact my experience of their love story. It’s chaste enough for younger audiences to see—there aren’t any sex scenes—so maybe that helped with their attraction feeling more sweet than Bridgerton-esque, and on fire with passion.
But also, enough, Hollywood! Stop pairing 10+ years-older men with young women as love interests. Enough.
Cinematically, Tuscany looked gorgeous on the big screen and the film feels big enough in scope to watch it at the theater. To quote Harry Styles, “It feels like a movie. It feels like a real, like, you know, go-to-the-theater-film movie.” It sounded really dumb when Harry said that originally (and the movie he said this about did not support his statement) but when people asked me whether You, Me & Tuscany should’ve just been a streaming affair, Styles’ stylings were my first thought. It feels lush and warm, and expensive and it’s funny. Aziza Scott who plays the funny best friend is a stand-out and I wish she would’ve had a bigger role, maybe as a support for Anna in Tuscany rather than over the phone, so Anna isn’t the only Black girl in the whole city. But it was nice that racism wasn’t really an issue in this film, though I’m side-eyeing that grandma who knew from the jump Anna was lying and let her know just with her eyes.
Anyway, I laughed, I teared-up a bit, I thought seriously about visiting Tuscany—all the things a standard rom-com should do. It’s a perfectly standard movie that is not in any way revolutionary. Going to see the movie in the theaters is not in any way a revolutionary act, either. Paying a movie theater to see a movie to “stick it to Hollywood” is like hitting my tip jar to stick it to me. (Please, feel free!) Though unlike tipping me, the success of this movie will not do a single thing for any other Black filmmakers beyond those involved, because Hollywood doesn’t make decisions about Black stuff based on numbers; they decide based on the level of their own racism that day. See it if you want! Stay home if you don’t! Tip me if you got it!
Project Hail Mary Plays in Our Face
A few weeks back, after watching a series of deeply unsatisfying screenings for upcoming movies, I posted on Threads:
“i wanna go to the movies and get a cold ass sprite and popcorn with peanut butter M&Ms in it and watch a brand new movie that just blows me away in the best possible way. i wanna watch a movie and right in the middle of it, think wow. this is something special. i wanna leave a movie and think i cant wait to see that again! it’s such a rare and lovely feeling.”
In response, an almost unanimous audience told me to go see Project Hail Mary. Some even insisted that I see it in iMax. Knowing nothing about the film or the book it was adapted from, I took their advice and spent my little coins on a matinee iMax showing. I spent just as much on that popcorn-peanut butter M&Ms-sprite combo! And I took my seat in the back of the theater to watch Ryan Gosling trapped in space with an alien Tetris block, trying to save their respective planets.
About half-way through the movie, I definitely googled the run-time. I felt every second of its two hours and forty-six minutes. It’s unnecessarily long. There were some cute moments, some funny moments, and some teary moments that I later resented because I could feel the movie engineering the tears. I wasn’t that wowed visually and I definitely could’ve saved some money and saw it on a regular screen. Gosling is Ken in Barbie but this time in space, and the adorkableness was nearly unbearable. I tried to get on board with the story of interspecies friendship, overcoming betrayal, and rising to the occasion when you have no other choice. But it was a very long, hard, unenjoyable watch. It’s a chop that I could’ve skipped altogether off the premise alone.
I’m just tired of seeing these propaganda films about white American men saving the planet from assured destruction. Stop trying to make fetch happen with white male saviors, Hollywood! It hasn’t happened, it’s not happening and it’s never in the history of the world going to happen. After this week of Trump terrorizing the planet with his finger on the nuclear button, threatening to wipe out the entire civilization of Iran, it’s a laughable premise that Hollywood should be particularly embarrassed to ever try again. Knowing history though, reality will not deter these studio heads.
Between Trump, his entire cabinet, the U.S. Congress, Sam Altman, the Zionist state and Benjamin Satanyahu, white men are hell-bent on destroying this planet—and all of us in it. There’s no affable white guy, no reluctant all-American hero coming to undo the damage. After decades of this patriarchal, white supremacist, American military propaganda, I’ve simply had enough.
Freight shows J. Alphonse Nicholson’s immeasurable range
In late 2024, I had the pleasure of seeing J. Alphonse Nicholson perform in a live-tapping of the one-man show Freight: The Five Incarnations of Abel Green. Like Kendrick Lamar’s GNX track “Reincarnated,” Freight takes us through the many lives of Abel Green as he returns in different American eras, reliving the same spiritual problem with the same group of people but different situations to hopefully compel his wayward soul to learn from and heal his past lifetime mistakes. If you didn’t already know from Just Mercy, where Nicholson stole the scene from its star Michael B. Jordan, or from P-Valley where his closeted gangsta rapper electrifies or breaks you down with a look—J. Alphonse Nicholson is a star. I said as much in my review of his Sundance film If I Go, Will They Miss Me? back in February. One of the most underutilized talents we have has put his own self to use in Freight, co-directing and taping his live performance over multiple nights and editing the production into a film that’s now streaming on STARZ. Through each of the five acts and incarnations, Nicholson shows his immeasurable range; I can’t wait for the role that’s going to launch him into the stratosphere where he belongs.
Stay watchin’,
Brooke
Leave a Reply