For many years, Libby Gelman-Waxner, then an assistant buyer in juniors’ activewear, moonlighted for Premiere magazine and Entertainment Weekly as the world’s most beloved and irresponsible movie critic. Now she’s been coaxed out of retirement to make her mark in online criticism, at the urging of her close personal friend, the novelist and New Yorker contributor Paul Rudnick.
As a deputy associate in designer activewear at Amazon, specializing in distressed-denim-with-stretch, I keep my eye out for cultural trends. My new favorite genre is Rich White Women with Emotional Problems in Peril on Streaming Shows. Examples include Nicole Kidman as a successful romance novelist with a shady past in “The Perfect Couple,” Nicole Kidman as a beautiful therapist married to a questionable man in “The Undoing,” Nicole Kidman as an abused wife with beachfront property in “Big Little Lies,” and Nicole Kidman as a possibly unethical therapist in “Nine Perfect Strangers.” Kidman is fabulous in all of these projects, because she’s always impeccably dressed, deeply charismatic, and sometimes seems to change wigs in the middle of an onscreen conversation.
While Kidman rules the field, up-and-comers include Julianne Moore as a wealthy cult leader in “Sirens,” and Clare Danes, who’s played a tormented C.I.A. operative in “Homeland,” a tormented lesbian memoirist in “The Beast In Me,” and a tormented show-biz agent in the truly great “Fleischman Is in Trouble.” Danes is an extraordinary actress who welcomes the most visceral challenges and the most harrowing breakdowns—she’s the grittier Bette Davis to Kidman’s shimmering Joan Crawford.
Here are the rules of these shows: first of all, the leads must own a stunning second home in either a Hampton or on Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard, along with an expansive place in Manhattan. There must be many rooms in these residences, with Nancy Meyers-esque open-concept kitchens, bedrooms with tufted headboards, bathrooms the size of Pfizer laboratories with dressing areas, and, of course, wraparound decks and columned porches with stunning views of assorted oceans and harbors. It’s only possible to cope with a splintering marriage and ungrateful, cross-addicted children if there’s at least one cupola with a winding staircase, overlooking a pea-gravel drive with enough square footage for a fleet of BMWs. I don’t want to see anyone suffer in a studio apartment or even a colonial. In “The Watcher,” Naomi Watts, as a gifted ceramicist, is renovating her estate, which may be haunted, presumably by someone Martha Stewart beheaded because the topiaries were ragged.
Next, our leading ladies must have attracted the dreamiest if often corrupt husbands, played by the likes of Hugh Grant, Kevin Bacon, Bobby Cannavale, Liev Schreiber, and Alexander Skarsgård. These handsome galoots may cheat on their spouses or worse, but this allows the women to smolder in drifting chiffon. Their children are either troubled or spoiled, and remain largely interchangeable—they exist to not appreciate their stunning, tightly wound moms. (“You have plenty of time for your millions of followers, but not even five minutes for me!”) If a child is under ten years old, they will be coddled and protected from danger, like homeschooled Birkin bags. The women rarely have close friends, only rival hostesses and often down-market sisters. In “The Better Sister,” Jessica Biel reckons with the slutty, drunken Elizabeth Banks invading her Hamptons abode, while in “Sirens,” Julianne Moore copes with a pop-in by the slutty, drunken Meghann Fahy (one of her many staff members’ siblings). These bad girls serve as foils, waking up at 7 A.M. after blurting long-buried family secrets and passing out on the manicured lawn. Banks and Fahy are sensational, and both get to smoke even after they’ve been told not to because the smell might infest the chintz drapes in the breakfast room.
The plots of these shows usually center on a murder, which occurs not so much to end a human life as to inconvenience our star, who must postpone a brunch or a media event to conceal an inconvenient corpse. Bloody, mutilated bodies are often discovered as our heroines are returning alone, after midnight, from a museum fund-raiser, causing them to kneel in an evening gown to ascertain the victim’s identity, and then burn their now blood-stained Dior. During the next few days, they are forced to speak with various detectives, who are either jealous townies, grizzled veterans, or potential new love interests—I’m not sure why Dick Wolf hasn’t done a “Law & Order: Amagansett.”
