Friday Five 2: Electric Boogaloo

I just realized that my last Friday Five did not even get to five items, so I’m definitely making up for that today.

Also, some exciting news! I have a series of interviews planned on the intersection between being a fan and being an artist/professional/creator, so this newsletter will delve into the interview/feature space. I’m planning to have the first of the pieces out by mid-May, so if that’s something that intrigues you, stay tuned for that one.

📺 A Show I Really Love Right Now

I have been binging 9-1-1 for the past few days, waiting for Season 7 to finally drop on Disney+. It’s a little odd to me that Disney, ABC, and Hulu don’t just coordinate and release episodes weekly so fans outside of the US could share a similar experience with US viewers (and discuss episodes when they do drop), feels like a good move to cultivate fandom for shows.

I highly recommend 9-1-1 for the found family vibes. While a lot of fans recommend that people start with Season 2, I think Season 1 lays out a lot of important lore and emotional groundwork for the ensemble, and you would miss out on part of their growth if you do skip it.

Episodes to watch: Karma’s A Bitch, Awful People, Athena Begins, Fools, First Responders, Hero Complex, The Devil You Know, In a Flash/In Another Life.

I would say just binge it and enjoy it for the high stakes, borderline ridiculous situations blended with serious drama, the found family vibes, and Angela Bassett acting her ass off week after week.

📺 An Episode I’d Recommend Even If You’ve Never Seen the Show

Bluey’s biggest episode yet, The Sign, is one of my favorite TV episodes of 2024 so far. I’ve been watching the show for the past few months and I am in awe at how you can get amazing storytelling for 5-7 minutes. The characters have depth (some develop them over time), the young dogs shown as still learning but also so wise and insightful, and the creators are unafraid to tackle Important Topics, very much like Sesame Street. The creators also seem to make every episode with the confidence that their core audience (tiny humans) can handle it, and that’s a level of confidence I aspire to as a storyteller.

The Sign tackles going through an unwanted change, challenging the idea of what makes a ‘good’ life (the fact that the story actively chooses to say that community makes a good life tickles me so much), the role of open communication in healthy relationships, and the magic that happens even when we’re going through a tough time or a rough change.

It’s one of the few episodes that feels more for the parents than the kids, and I do think every person needs to watch it. There are a few episodes that you’d need to see to get some background, but if there’s ever a show to binge, Bluey would be it.

(For a more contained story that doesn’t require a catch-up, I would recommend any of my favorites Sleepytime, Baby Race, Bike, Calypso, The Show, Army, Flat Pack, Curry Quest, Onesies, and Cricket).

📚 Fic Recs

Don’t yuck someone else’s yum!

A Failure to Communicate. The Devil Wears Prada, Miranda/Andy. I’m a big fan of miscommunication as a driving force when it’s deployed well and thelastgoodname writes this fic as a full comedy of errors. Over a decade later, I still love how rich a picture it paints with just dialogue.

Loving You Easy. Once Upon A Time, Emma/Regina. It can be a challenge to transport fantasy characters into a modern world, and I think Loving You Easy does this in a grounded manner that you get sucked into the world and the characters’ very specific situation right away. The work and school/studying scenes are done so well, whenever I read this I feel transported right back to my university days. And that song lyric that pops up is just the perfect closing note for this piece—not too cloying, just sweet enough to warm your heart.

From There to Here. Criminal Minds, Emily/JJ. I love a good road trip fic. A road trip fic with a lot of domesticity and reflection and smut? I’m there. I think road trips are a good device for character studies and to show the nuances of a particular relationship’s dynamic. SloanGreyMercyDeath has taken great care to expand on the canon characterization and you walk away from this fic charmed, laughing, maybe blushing a little bit.

🖼️ A Piece of Fan Art I Think People Should See

How do I explain this video without working myself up to a word salad? Ok, so the audio from this video comes from a Dropout show called Make Some Noise, which focuses on impressions, sound effects, and songs. This clip comes from a karaoke episode where improv comedians are given fake titles and real artists, and they have to come up with a few lines for the fake song on the spot. The pianist accompanying them lifts from that artist’s/artists’ real songs to give them a melody.

Comedian Zach Reino creates hilarious lyrics to the song Horsegirl (supposedly by Billie Eilish) and artist DeepBlueInk transforms it into a delightfully unhinged horse girl rant that also highlights how good of a Bad Guy parody this song is.

I love fans. They’re amazing.

🗞️ A few articles worth reading

Netflix Uses Seemingly AI-Manipulated Images in True Crime Doc. This is exactly the kind of shit that makes me so wary of AI. What’s wild to me is that some of Netflix’s hidden gems were its documentaries (Five Came Back, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, Chef’s Table, Abstract: The Art of Design, Period. End of Sentence., to name a few) and not only does this tank this particular movie’s reputation, it also tanks Netflix’s reputation as a home for documentaries. Again, a wild choice to make when your catalogue has a lot of good documentaries. Must-see documentaries. They have The White Helmets and Extremis on their catalogue.

Taylor Swift Isn’t the Economic Force. It’s Her Fans. Time published this article a day before Taylor released The Tortured Poets Department, and I found it a rather prescient read. It talks about multiple factors that led to the rise of the Taylor Swift fandom and along with it the record-breaking receipts for the Eras Tour. Heggeness points to economic agency, more women living independently, greater bargaining power, and the sense of universality in her storytelling as key drivers that led to Taylor getting to this point in her career.

What I appreciated about this article was the fact that it adds great context to how we got to this point, and the author wraps up the article highlighting that Swift’s rise as an artist is happening in parallel with other things like growing support for women’s sports, greater female representation in traditionally male industries like wealth management, and even changing conversations around care policies.

I do see fan studies becoming more interdisciplinary instead of just multidisciplinary and part of that has to be bringing in history, economics, anthropology, sociology (among other disciplines) to help contextualize and thicken what cultural and media studies have been able to give us so far. Fan studies as a discipline is still relatively young, and making it intentionally interdisciplinary would vault it ahead of other areas of study.

Oliver Stark wants to keep exploring Buck’s bisexuality on 9-1-1. SPOILER ALERT: Buck is bi. I’m lucky enough to have grown up with queer characters in my late teens and early 20s, and yet I still find so much joy in actors being happy to play queer or exploring characters.

It also contains this absolute gem of a quote from Oliver Stark, who plays Evan ‘Buck’ Buckley: "One of the things that makes me laugh is… women will be like, 'Oh, but I was attracted to Buck, and now I'm not.' And it's like, 'Well, these are fictional characters, so you didn't have a chance with him anyway, because he's not real.' [laughs] This is a show that has always contained queer storylines and queer characters. If [adding] one more is the tipping point or a deal breaker, then what were you watching to begin with?"

Bless this man and his PR team, that was an A+ way to handle the backlash.

If you liked this newsletter, please share this with your friends, family, and fellow fans!

I’d also love to hear from you. Are there any topics you’d like to read more of? Is this newsletter too long? Do you want me to do a deeper dive on topics from previous issues. I do love getting mail from readers.

Happy Friday, folks, and have a good weekend.