Coffee & TV: Blue Bottle, Friends From College
Welcome to the 31st installment of my newsletter about my two very favorite things in the world.
Hello. I watched another show on an airplane:
At the end of February I got a new job, so I quit my current/old job, only to be un-offered my ‘new’ job after being ghosted for a week. I almost considered writing Ask A Manager, since this is literally never supposed to happen - women in particular, we are told, should always counter-offer, always negotiate, always ask for more (money, vacation days, flex time, whatever) - what’s the worst that could happen? They’ll say no! Your prospective employer will never, actually, rescind the offer. But: It Happened To Me. I was dumbfounded and scrambling. Should I try to get my old job back? But I had decided to quit in October 2018, when, after a full day of back-row coach class travel (on an UNPAID SATURDAY), I checked into a corporate apartment that hadn’t been cleaned since the last occupant left, and my supervisor told me I should “change the sheets myself” instead of agreeing to pay for a night in a hotel. That is the kind of thing that really makes you despise your work, and what you will put up with to remain on an ‘affordable’ health insurance plan. I decided to drain my 401k and live off that until I found another job. “But your 401k is for retirement!” one of my work friends said. Hah! I’ll be 60 in 22 years, exactly when climate change will, according to this UN report, render our lives/landscape “unrecognizable.” In 22 years I hope to be dead, or, best case scenario, NOT performing sexual favors for water, and in either event a couple thousand dollars will not help one way or the other. People who take retirement seriously in our 2019 world really crack me up.
Anyway, this is all super depressing, and I decided to temporarily distract myself from our (collective) dismal future and my unplanned unemployment by visiting several of my old friends from college who I haven’t seen for a while. Airplane tickets during the week are super cheap you guys, I can’t imagine why the planet is burning up.
On one of my flights I started watching the Netflix….comedy….Friends From College, about a group of friends
(L-R: Sam, [NOT a friend], Max, Lisa, Nick, Ethan, and Marianne) who went to Harvard together and reconnect when Lisa and Ethan move from Chicago to New York, where the rest of the gang has settled down, for Lisa’s new job as corporate counsel to Blackstool, a hedge fund. Max is newly engaged to Felix (Billy Eichner), so Felix acts as our POV character, and Lisa and Ethan’s move, the precipitating “event” of the series. It’s hard not to think of the setup in such an obviously structured way, since you can kinda feel the writers stumbling over it every time you watch…because none of these people make sense as grown-up friends?
Lisa: “I think I’m just anxious to see everybody, you know, whenever we get together, it gets so competitive and immature…We’ve got 20 years of grievances built up and ready to explode.”
So the writers (Francesca Delbanco and Nick Stoller who also….wait for it…went to Harvard) have to invent wackier and wackier and more and more forced set pieces to get the characters interacting in any believable way. Lisa and Ethan sleep on Marianne’s couch forever, even though they specifically moved because Lisa’s job at the evil Blackstool (haha, Harvard Lampoon, I see you) is so well-paying, because otherwise how would Marianne constantly interrupt Lisa and Ethan having sex? And what would making Ethan’s long-time affair with Sam even more cringeworthy, except him having it on on the couch he shares with Lisa, which belongs to Lisa and Sam’s best friend? And having to hide the summons he and Sam receive for ‘public indecency’ from both of them? Sam describes their relationship as “a stupid college hook-up that never ended.”
Of course a lot of the show’s content is stupid college antics that never ended:
Max: “That was kind of our funny hello.”
Felix: “It’s a lot of energy. Very loud!”
also:
There is a parody musical (Lampoon again), cars in pools, voice bits and imitations, a caper involving a dropped IVF vial (…hilarious?), nerf gun fights, a skunk spraying, and a case of rabbit-napping. Too bad, because the moments when the characters are allowed to breathe in the context of people who’ve known each other since basically childhood, the banter and bitterness that emerge is relatable and tantalizing. No one smokes anymore but somebody always has a cigarette. They’ve been to so many weddings together they know Marianne never RSVPs but comes anyway, and they hate it.
Nick on Sam’s over-the-top truck:
“Why don’t you go chase Jason Bourne in your G-Wagon?”
Marianne to Sam:
“You’ve always made it clear you don’t respect my life choices.”
Now THAT is intriguing: Marianne is single and has devoted her life to the theater (even if her latest production is a drag interpretation of Streetcar at a YMCA); Sam married a rich guy and had children. These are exactly the kinds of choices that drive friends apart and seeing them actually explored would be fascinating and fresh, but this is a throwaway line from an episode I can’t even remember.
It says something about this show that Felix (Billy Eichner) is written out halfway through season 1, and you’re like, fuck, not Billy Eichner! He’s the only truly funny thing going on here! I mean, absolutely no offense to Billy Eichner; he’s great and I love his work, but this show also features Keegan-Michael Key, Cobie Smulders, Fred Savage, Ike Barinholtz, Kate McKinnon, Becky Conner, and Seth Rogan. If Billy Eichner is your tentpole in this cast you have a problem.
In a rare correction Eichner was immediately put back in the second season, and this, plus the 90s-heavy nostalgia bomb soundtrack (if you think I will be emotionally manipulated by Portishead, Mazzy Star, and the Sundays cover of “Wild Horses,” please come forward to claim your prize) and several cross country flights, accounted for my watching the entire run of the series.
One of these trips was to Oakland, where I rented an Airbnb whose listing specifically stated that only one towel was provided. Given that lead up it wasn’t a suprise there were no coffee making facilities, but the room was a five minute walk away from a Blue Bottle storefront. Every morning, on my way to visit Leona, my friend from college who had just had a baby, I stopped in to get a New Orleans Iced Coffee. This Blue Bottle had pastries, sandwiches, all kinds of carafes/filters/grinders/presses, its own cookbook, and a bathroom. It was not recognizably the same establishment as the lean-to in an alley in Hayes Valley where I first had Blue Bottle 10 (?) years ago.
I think I was visiting San Francisco and me and my friends from college had gone bar hopping the night before. We had a lot of nights like this - if I were to drink that much now I would have to be hospitalized! But back then we just passed out en masse, fully clothed, at someone’s apartment, or came home at 3 AM and ate the entire contents of the kitchen while blacked out. The morning after one of these occasions we decided to drive over to Oakland for soondubu jjigae (a five star hangover food). On the way we stopped by the Hayes Valley Blue Bottle, which had just opened. I had never seen pourover prepared before. The line was long but it moved quickly; I remember putting cream in my coffee and waiting 2 or 3 seconds for it to blossom back to the surface, that’s how syrupy and strong the coffee was. We got stuck for a little while on the bridge and talked about how wired the coffee was making us, like it was a new drug. Part of me wishes I was still there.
Until next time,
Ruth
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