Episodes
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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireandemma.substack.com
We don’t have any answers, but we do have a lot of feelings. We tried to express them in a cogent way, but full warning that we maybe were only partially successful. Claire would also like all of you to know that she’s angry and doing punditry. Please feel free to ignore her (or both of us!) if that’s not where you’re at right now. We love you all. We are so very grateful for this little community we’ve built together. Onward.
Thank you to Harry Huggins for editing this episode so we didn’t have to.
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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireandemma.substack.com
Warning: This post and episode contain spoilers for the “Love Is Blind” season 7 reunion!
This “Love Is Blind” DC reunion had it all, if “it all” refers to every one of Nick and Vanessa Lachey’s well-documented inadequacies as hosts: corny dad jokes that Nick’s punch-up writer clearly prepared well in advance, missed lines of questioning and failures to follow up on important points, muddled back-and-forth disputes between the cast that dragged out for long minutes while the moderators mentally checked out, Vanessa claiming dubious familial relationships with the “Love Is Blind” babies, and, of course, a couple of the biggest villains of the season being let off the hook with barely a slap on the wrist apiece.
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Episodes manquant?
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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireandemma.substack.com
Warning: This post and episode contain spoilers for the “Love Is Blind” season 7 finale!
The first 15 minutes of the “Love Is Blind” season 7 finale was riveting and wrenching. The following hour was largely boring, with sides of sweetness and dramatic irony. This is one of those finales that should have jumped straight into a reunion. (Not that we think…
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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireandemma.substack.com
The psychologist John Gottman has posited that there are four horsemen that portended doom in a relationship: contempt, criticism, defensiveness and stonewalling. If this theory didn’t already exist, it could have been developed simply by watching this season of “Love Is Blind,” in which contempt and criticism have infected several of the relationships root and branch.
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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireandemma.substack.com
At this point, it feels like it happens every season. You think you know who the villains are… and then more episodes come out and the TikToks start rolling in. Move on over, Leo. Stephen and Tyler (sob!) are ready to take your place.
In this week’s batch of “Love Is Blind” episodes, our couples finish out their time in Cabo…
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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireandemma.substack.com
Our nation’s preeminent insta-marriage reality show has taken its talents to the capital for season seven! It’s “Love Is Blind,” DC edition, and this mammoth first drop (six episodes, some close to 75 minutes long) showcases that special DMV flavor. Cast members work at think tanks and ponder whether they would have spoken to each other if they’d met “on the Hill.” In this episode, we recap drop one -- episodes 1-6!
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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireandemma.substack.com
After four years and four seasons of television, Emily Cooper has finally been in Paris for an entire year. That’s right: despite seasonal hopscotch, some misleading pregnancy timelines, and a general sense among the show’s audience, characters, and seemingly even writers that our plucky young marketing phenom has been in Paris forever, t’s really only been about 12 months in “Emily in Paris” time.
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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireandemma.substack.com
The minute the beat drops on Sam Smith and Kim Petras’ “Unholy” during the opening scenes for Hulu’s “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” you know you’re gonna be in for a god damn ride. The camera is trained on social media star Taylor Frankie Paul, a mother of two in her late 20s who is all hair extensions and highlights. She’s also the closest thing this series has to a protagonist. A producer asks a question to set the scene: “So tell us how a couple of Mormon moms, getting together, making TikToks, suddenly turns into this crazy swinging sex scandal?”
The show is ultimately more about Whitney Leavitt leaving the group chat than about a Mormon sex scandal... and yet we are HOOKED. In this episode, we discuss Paul’s tricky role as the show’s emotional center, saints and sinners, Whitney’s villain edit vs. the real villain (Zac), Demi’s feminist soapbox, Jessi’s company branding, and whether MomTok “can even survive this.” Hope you enjoy! Xo
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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireandemma.substack.com
Last season of “Selling Sunset” saw Chrishell Stause victorious, the undisputed queen of the Oppenheim Group and, more importantly, of the reality show about it. In season 8, her power can go unstated, but it’s felt; she and her clique run the school (complimentary). But as their stars are rising, and other agents jockey for similar clout, the narratives on the show seem to be driven less and less by real estate affairs and more and more by reality TV production affairs: Who set up what on-camera conversation, and for what purpose? Who said what about whom during an Instagram Live or in a social media conversation about the show? If a show depicts the personal lives of its stars — their marriages, family lives, romances — is everything pertaining to their personal lives fair game, or are some things too sacred or too sensitive to be used as TV fodder?
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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireandemma.substack.com
Spoiler Alert: This podcast and post contain spoilers for the “Love Is Blind UK” reunion.
The “Love Is Blind UK” reunion show dropped Monday, and we were ready. While we were eager for updates on all of our troubled but mostly lovable duos, there was one from whom we expected to hear nothing noteworthy: Sabrina and Steven Smith, the standard-issue golden…
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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireandemma.substack.com
Spoiler Alert: This podcast and post contain spoilers for the final drop of “Love Is Blind UK” episodes.
In this episode, we discuss the stag and hen dos, the most beautiful wedding venue we’ve ever seen on a “Love Is Blind” show, and, of course, who got married and who got jilted at the altar.
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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireandemma.substack.com
Spoiler Alert: This podcast and post contain spoilers for the second batch of “Love Is Blind UK” episodes, 5-9.
The certified hotties of the inaugural season of “Love Is Blind UK” are officially out of the honeymoon phase. Literally. Our six (!!!) couples leave Corfu and head back to London in this batch of episodes, where they move into some immaculately-designed riverfront apartments (seriously, we would like to move in!), meet each other’s family and friends, and begin to discover the cracks in their romantic relationships.
In this episode, we talk through the highlights of these FIVE episodes, call out our stand-out friends and enemies, and Claire gives her predictions for who will get married and who will split. Hope you enjoy! Xo
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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireandemma.substack.com
They’ve got the pods. They’ve got the golden goblets. They’ve got a Nick-and-Vanessa-Lachey-esque married couple with English accents (Emma and Matt Willis, to be specific). And they’ve got a host of singles from across the U.K., mostly in their late twenties to thirties, who are ready to bare their hearts through a luminous opaque glass wall in hopes of finding a spouse. “Love Is Blind UK” is here, and it’s got all the romance and drama we expect from the series with an extra dash of winning British slang and cultural references.
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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireandemma.substack.com
It feels like we’ve been preparing for this one for years. We’ve talked about nap dresses and mom bodies. We’ve talked about the fear of losing your selfhood in motherhood. We’ve talked about egg-freezing and IVF. We’ve talked about the way that parenthood and non-parenthood are treated on both the left and the right. And now it’s time for all of these threads to merge together into a mega-discourse, thanks to Ballerina Farm’s Hannah Neeleman and Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance.
A preternaturally beautiful, homesteading momfluencer and an alt-right weirdo with the face of a socially-awkward 14-year-old (and an unsettling obsession with punishing childfree women) may seem like odd cultural bedfellows. But, as Claire put it, if Ballerina Farm is the trad honey trap who makes the pro-natalist lifestyle look romantic and joyful, JD Vance is the trad boot heel of the state who aspires to grind down upon all the childfree women in America until they’re barefoot and pregnant in their egg aprons.
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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireandemma.substack.com
Note: We recorded this episode last Wednesday, so some of the post-show updates we discuss may have evolved!
“Love Island USA” did its big one this season. (Like so much of “Love Island” lingo… if you know you know. Soul Ties is craaaaaazy!)
Emma was curious what was behind the show becoming such a mainstream phenomenon now, six seasons in. So she recruited “Love Island” aficianado and the author of the superb Nightcap newsletter, Laura Bassett, to school her on the show’s history, and analyze Leah and Rob’s star power, Serena and Kordell’s rom-com arc, and what made season 6 so special. Hope you enjoy!
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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireandemma.substack.com
“The Bear,” everyone’s favorite drama-with-just-enough-jokes-to-get-awards-nominations-as-a-comedy, which follows a tortured-genius chef who heads back to Chicago to take over his brother’s Italian beef sandwich shop, has released its third season. In this podcast, we discuss what happened (and didn’t) this season, the critical backlash, our own initial reactions to season 3, how the repetitiveness and stagnation of the season might serve a purpose in its artistic project, and where “The Bear” could go from here. And despite how this may sound, we had a lot of fun with this one! We hope you enjoy. xo
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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireandemma.substack.com
Emma and Adam are engaged! Claire interviews Emma all about the proposal, and then they both discuss the feelings on surprise proposals, traditional wedding traditions and how their feelings about marriage interact with their feminist values. (Bonus: Claire talks about her proposal story!)
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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireandemma.substack.com
Watching Netflix’s new Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders docuseries, “America’s Sweethearts,” is like diving under the water to check out what a swan’s feet are doing as she glides elegantly across a glassy pond. The frantic but hidden exertion underneath, all in service of creating an apparently effortless movement forward, becomes suddenly, jarringly visible once you peer under the surface of the water. That’s the ultimate challenge of meeting the traditional high-feminine ideal: The work, no matter how demanding, must expand to include the work of making itself invisible. A Dallas Cowboys cheerleader is an elite athlete, a brand ambassador, a pageant-ready beauty, a sex symbol and an ever-ready helping hand. She works tirelessly and accepts the meager pay as an honor. She also makes it all look easy. It’s part of the job.
In this episode, we dug into the labor exploitation of it all, focusing on the devaluation of women’s work and the expectation that women will demonstrate their virtue through a willingness to donate time and effort. We also discuss the rigid beauty standards and casual objectification faced by the cheerleaders, and the upholding of a very specific feminine ideal through this brand. Hope you enjoy! xo
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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireandemma.substack.com
Reading the comments on The Cut’s Instagram page is not for the faint of heart. Things tend to get weird and heated and even more weird, but sometimes they also get interesting, like they did after writer Shannon Keating wrote an essay about her confused ambivalence about having children.
The piece ran with the e…
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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireandemma.substack.com
Dearest gentle readers, the end of Polin season is upon us at last, bringing with it relief from weepy eyes and gasping breaths. Colin and Penelope’s love story climaxes in several senses during these final four episodes: with a declaration of love, with a long-awaited sex scene featuring a mirror, with his discovery of Penelope’s nom de plume, and with his eventual acceptance of her full self. Oh, and they get married. (Details, details.)
But alongside the story of their friendship and love growing deeper and more complete, this season is telling another story: the story of how an intrepid gossip girlboss gaslights and gatekeeps her way to the top.
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