AMC’s new show Dietland
Dietland is based on a novel by Sarai Walker, in which our protagonist, Plum Kettle, suddenly finds herself in the midst of worldwide drama and intrigue centered around the weight-loss industry. Plum (Joy Nash) is a solitary young woman saving up for weight-loss surgery while ghostwriting letters for Kitty (Julianna Margulies). Then through a series of increasingly more bizarre encounters, she gets drawn into a shady conspiracy and starts to realize that perhaps her prospective weight loss has a lot more stacked against it than just the prospect of her eating less. Meanwhile, a feminist terrorist group called Jennifer is dropping dead male sexual predators out of the sky. It was a lot to take in when I binged the first three episodes, but now after episode four, I’m still curious about where this insane corkscrew plot is going to go, and straight-up captivated by Margulies hamming it up as uber-vain businesswoman Kitty. Catch up at amc.com (I’m also reading the novel, which is great.) [Gwen Ihnat]
Justice fra diavolo
This is the stuff that populates my Google News feed: A Connecticut woman was recently awarded more than $85,000 resulting from a plate of pasta that hit her in the face while she dined at a restaurant. The man behind the pasta flinging had aimed the dish at a man with whom he was arguing, but then he missed and hit the poor bystander. The assailant claims he was acting in “self-defense.” (I’d really like to hear more about that.) Why I’m mentioning this weird story, though, is because the carbohydrate in question was pasta fra diavolo, one of my favorites at the red-sauce joint in my hometown. I could really go for a plate of it now—not flung at my head, though. [Kate Bernot]
DISCUSSION
Middle school food fight story. I was sitting with my nerdy crew when a jock dude started throwing tater tot detritus at us. I picked up a bit and hit him right in the philtrum. Now, jock dude was in a rage. He asked who threw the shred of potato. His buddy helpfully provided my name (which I won’t give here). My name, as it happens, is not too common, but not rare enough that it isn’t shared by the occasional 1990 middle school nerd. So jock decides it was the other nerd, four seats down, with the same name, and launches a slab of cafeteria salisbury steak at the innocent party. Luckily, his aim was untrue, and the grey-brown missile landed with a terrible, wet slap against the wall, to slowly slide into oblivion.
Years later, I had to take a drug test for a crappy retail job. Who administered the pee test? The same jock. He had found Jesus and was very polite by then, but I still worried he would take his long held vengeance on my prospective minimum wags job at Future Shop.