Film Features

Anne Hathaway's "Witches" Apology, and the Problem with Body Horror

Is it even possible to separate what is frightening and disturbing from what is harmful and offensive?

The Witches - Official Trailer

On Thursday Anne Hathaway took to Instagram to apologize for her role in the HBO Max original movieThe Witches and its depiction of the titular villains as having so-called "limb differences."

The movie is based on Roald Dahl's 1983 novel—which was previously adapted into the classic 1990 version of The Witches. It tells the story of a young boy who stumbles upon a convention of horrifying witches with the power to turn children into mice. Hathaway portrays their leader, the Grand High Witch—a role previously played by Anjelica Houston with sinister glee.
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Film Features

Why Tom Hooper Is the Defining Director of the 2010s

Love him or hate him, he is THE director of our generation.

Tom Hooper

Photo by Kristina Bumphrey/StarPix/Shutterstock

"Find you a man who can do both."

A bit of advice that began life as a meme, became general relationship advice, and finally settled in the culture as an identifier of any multi-talented individual. "A man who can do both" is what this generation demands of its lovers and heroes alike. It is the embodying cry of a generation that was forced via technology to adapt to multiple circumstances, to code-switch at will between professional and text speak, to lead a meaningful life in the midst of unavoidably-publicized global crises and catastrophe. We "do both" by necessity. We have built our culture around "doing both." This duality is what made Tom Hooper the perfect director for these times.

While Tom Hooper's name isn't exactly among household names like Steven Spielberg, Greta Gerwig, or Quentin Tarantino, he has been putting out critically and commercially acclaimed work for the last decade, enough to vault him into the same category as the aforementioned by any metric. His 2010 film, The King's Speech, cleaned up at the Oscars. Nominated for an astounding 12 awards, it won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Colin Firth) and Best Screenplay. He followed that up in 2012 with the best version of Les Miserables ever put to film, an enormously expensive production in which the actors sung live during each take, something that was previously unheard of for a movie musical. He finished his winning streak with The Danish Girl in 2015, a tragically under-seen powerhouse film that showcased two little-known actors who would go on to win Oscars: Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander, the latter of whom won for Danish Girl.

Hooper became known in film circles for the performances he drew from his actors, his sweeping wide shots, his careful shot construction, and his intensely-purposeful plotting. He became quickly associated with other contemporary masters like Paul Thomas Anderson and David Fincher. After three consecutive films that garnered rave critical reviews and made their budgets back at the box office (Les Miserables made almost $500 million worldwide), the world waited with bated breath to see what Tom Hooper's next move would be. If you still hadn't heard of him after Danish Girl came out, you can be forgiven for your ignorance, because Hooper went into hibernation for the next four years. He emerged after all that time for one final masterwork, the film he is now most famous for, and the one he will undoubtedly be remembered for:

Cats!

In an unbelievable turn of events, Tom Hooper, who a decade earlier owned the Oscars, tried his hand again at making musicals, adapting Andrew Lloyd Webber's surrealist broadway smash-hit for the screen. It did not turn out well.

Cats!, released just last December, was an expensive disaster for a multitude of reasons. It was critically panned. It lost $25 million dollars on an estimated $100 million-dollar budget, much of which was invested in special-effects like "Digital Fur Technology" (i.e. digitally covering every actor in fur so they appeared more convincingly like anthropomorphic cats than if they were to wear costumes). Dame Judi Dench and Sir Ian Mckellen, British thespians of the highest-degree, shared scenes with Jason Derulo and Taylor Swift. But weird sometimes works. It just didn't work here.

At least during its wide release, it didn't. Although still under a year old, Cats is gaining new life in a cult-film scene that includes movies such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Room. There is a growing contingent of the population interested in watching and re-watching the objectively awful CatsCatsfor the sake of its unintended hilarity and for how well it mixes with drugs or alcohol. This is the great coup of Tom Hooper. This is why he embodies this generation's defining decade better than any other director: he can do both.

Tom Hooper spent the better part of the 2010s proving he was a director of the highest caliber, who could create compelling films with varied budgets, varied casts, and in varied genres. Tom Hooper also spent the final month of the 2010s proving he could screw up almost every part of a film and still find success in it. There is an unprecedented and exciting element in his career. While it's not at all uncommon for acclaimed directors to make career missteps, none of his caliber has ever made such an appalling dud of a film after such a profound string of successes. Regardless of where his movies will eventually settle in cinematographic academia or how they will age, you can't look away from them. What does it say about his work that Cats is probably his best known film? But watch any of his three earlier hits, and one can see they're obvious masterpieces, smart and funny and often heartbreaking, well-acted and well-shot and well-written.

Defining this decade of film is a really heartening endeavor. Careers like Greta Gerwig's (Lady Bird, Little Women) and Ari Aster's (Hereditary, Midsommar) and Damian Chazelle's (Whiplash, La La Land) thundered to life. The masters like Tarantino (Django Unchained, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) and Alejandro González Iñárritu (Birdman, The Revenant) made some of their best work. Female directors were criminally under-utilized and under-recognized (only Gerwig was even nominated for Best Director this decade, joining only five women, ever), and perhaps that is the defining story of the decade.

But the defining director still must be decided, and Tom Hooper is the one with the most range, who created a classic Oscar darling, revolutionized movie-musicals, and crafted the next great midnight cult film. The defining director of the decade is the one who can and did do both. Tom Hooper may not be the best director, but his whiplashing career reflects the chaos of the 2010s, and the generation of millennials who claimed it as their own.

CULTURE

Suggestions for Celebrity New Year's Resolutions in 2020

It's not the advice they want, but it's the advice that they need

Photo by: Kelly Sikkema / Unsplash

With the year coming to an end, the annual announcement of New Year's resolutions are kicking off.

People want to make changes in their lives, and a new calendar gives people the occasion to rethink their habits and try to live better in 2020. But so often we are not the best judges of our own problems. Like the friend who announces that he's going to start eating more kale as he downs his eighth shot of tequila, it's sometimes necessary to get some outside perspective from the people who love you most. With that in mind, it's time to take a cold, critical look at our best celebrity friends, and give them the advice they need for the new year—whether they want it or not.

Kanye West: Don't Start a Cult

Kanye West attends the Manus x Machina Fashion in an Age of Technology Costume Institute Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Photo by: By Ovidiu Hrubaru / Unsplash

Kanye, you've never been the kind of person who does things the easy way. You could have stuck with being a musical genius, but you decided to be a fashion icon too, and you created the Yeezy. When they gave a Grammy to Taylor Swift instead of Beyonce, you didn't tweet something passive aggressive—you got up on stage and did something about it. When you were in debt, you didn't talk to your bank, you asked Mark Zuckerberg for $50 million. And more than a decade after you said, "George Bush doesn't care about black people," when it seemed like the whole world was finally ready to stand up and condemn a Republican president's bigotry, you declared that Donald Trump was your brother because you're both "dragon energy."

So now that you've started your Sunday Services, released an album of spirituals, and produced a Christian Opera—Oratorio?—you are fully set up to devote the rest of your life to developing and running the cult of Yeezus. But is that really how the greatest artist of all time should be focusing his energy? Sure you could convert your fans into an insular flock of devout followers who would die for you. But at this point, that would honestly be too easy. It's time to shake things up. It's probably not too late to decide to be the most influential sculptor of our generation, or the greatest therapy patient of all time. Even if you decide to focus your energy on your 2024 presidential run, that's cool, as long as you avoid taking the easy path: Don't start a cult. Also, please don't tell T.I. that investigating his daughter's hymen is "god approved..."

Kim Kardashian West: Fix the American Justice System

Kim Kardashian attends the CFDA Fashion Awards at Cipriani South Street, in New York

Photo by: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP/Shutterstock

Kim, you've honestly been doing some amazing stuff in the past couple years, and we all kind of feel like we were underestimating you. For too long we thought of you as just a reality show star and a fashion model—an artifact of America's vapid celebrity obsession. But you are so much more than that. Since 2017 you have helped free dozens of prisoners who were falsely convicted or hit with overly punitive sentences. In 2020, we're going to start setting our expectations higher to really help you reach your full potential. Starting January 1st, you have twelve months to fully fix the problems with the American justice system. If you finish early, maybe try to solve climate change too. And maybe check on your husband—seems like he's trying to start a cult.

Tom Hooper: Don't Make Any More Musicals

Tom, after you directed The King's Speech, you won the Oscars for both Best Picture and Best Director in 2010, and you clearly felt empowered to pursue your true passion—making star-studded movie versions of classic musicals. Les Miserables was a hit at the box office, and it even won some awards, but the reviews were mixed. You could have asked yourself why you cast Russel Crowe in a movie that required him to sing, or you could have taken that as a sign that your passion for musicals may not be aligned with your particular talents as a filmmaker, but you were undeterred, and we admire your perseverance. That said, with the selection of your second musical adaptation, you revealed something important about yourself: You have terrible taste in musicals.

Cats has always been a bad musical, and there was probably no way you could have made it into a good movie. You may have misunderstood the appeal that allowed the show to run for 18 years on Broadway—people liked the wild costumes, and the way the performers moved through the audience. The music itself was only ever decent at best, and your ambitious plan to put Idris Elba, Ian McKellen, and Dame Judi Dench in motion capture suits, and digitally convert them into cat creatures would have been misguided even if the result hadn't turned out so deeply unsettling. So, while you've scrambled to recover something watchable from the ashes of this disastrous movie (please don't—it's better as a disaster), we want to make sure you go into 2020 with this important lesson: never again.

Jeremy Renner: Make a "Cats" Movie

Jeremy, no one appreciates your genius. People spent much of 2019 mocking your musical ambitions and using your personal app to embarrass you. It's time for you to show the world that you have nothing to be embarrassed of. Take your incredible singing voice and your untamed energy to a project that truly deserves you: Cats.

We know it's not what people expect, but you're unpredictable, we gotta tell you. And sure, they tried to make a Cats movie this year, but they forgot the secret ingredient—that certain, special Rennergy. You could play every role! And also, all the characters names could be changed to Jeremy Renner, and instead of CGI, you could just be buck naked, covered in body paint. All us Renner heads would go crazy for it. It's a good idea, and it's how you should spend 2020.

Eddie Murphy: Don't Leave Us Again

Eddie, you were gone too long, and your comeback has been too good. Don't be a Mickey Rourke. Be a Michael Keaton—come back for good. Dolemite Is My Name is an amazing movie, and your recent appearance on SNL destroyed their usual ratings. So don't just tease us that you might get back into stand-up or you're thinking about another movie. Make 2020 your year. That is all.

Bill Maher: Lose a Lot of Weight

Bill, you made headlines in September by advocating for fat shaming saying that "it needs to make a comeback" and, "Shame is the first step to reform," and you couched it in terms that made it sound like you were helping people get healthy. You seemed to be implying that people who struggle with obesity don't even realize there's an issue, and they need your bullying in order to see themselves clearly. We were shocked, not because you were ignoring the fact that a shame spiral of yo-yo dieting is actually more detrimental to cardiovascular health than obesity itself, but because you delivered your proclamation with such the smug sense of superiority. It meant that you were absolutely right—that you can't even see what a disgusting pig you are.

Bill, you may think that you are as slim and svelte as ever, but the jowls beginning to form on your cheeks tell a different story. We have to wonder what you even see when you look in the mirror, because for must of us it's hard to even stomach looking at you. To put it bluntly, if you don't have the decency to be ashamed of yourself, we'll have to shame you into dropping some of the excess weight you're lugging around. An adult male skeleton typically weighs around 25 pounds, so our best estimate suggests that you should aim to lose about 135 pounds in 2020. That might sound like overkill, but trust us, no one will miss it when it's gone.

Elon Musk: Get Off the Internet

Elon Musk at the Rihanna's First Annual Diamond Ball at the The Vineyard on December 11, 2014 in Beverly Hills, CA

Photo by: Kathy Hutchins / Shutterstock

Elon, remember last summer in the aftermath of the Thai soccer team cave rescue, when people were criticizing your ill-conceived submarine plan, so you called that rescue worker "pedo guy?" And remember how now he's suing you? Or what about the people who have taken issue with your "mass transit" plan that involves drilling a new, single-lane car-tunnel every time traffic gets backed up? Remember how you called your critics "subway stalinists," and dismissed the recognized phenomenon of induced demand as "irrational?" And that's not even getting into all the abuse you took over the botched Cybertruck demo. That must have been hard for you, but not as hard as it was for the rest of the world when you tweeted that image of Tesla stock reaching 420.69...

The point is, you just don't seem to be mature enough to handle the internet. You are not alone, a lot of billionaires—and even "billionaires"—seem to have trouble controlling themselves on Twitter. The good news is, you can still have an active, vibrant life. By all means, keep developing new battery tech and launching free-internet satellites for the world to use. Just don't use the Internet yourself. Make 2020 the year of Elon unplugged. You'll be much happier without being confronted by all the people trying to poke holes in your genius, and we can maybe go back to thinking you're kind of cool.

Grimes: Leave Elon Musk

You're way too cool for him, and you know it.

Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders: Please Save Us

Just in case Kim can't fix all our problems alone, could you two please team up and save the world from the people who are so afraid of you? Kthanksbye.

FILM

"Cats" Is the Worst "Star Wars" Movie Yet

If you were hoping that Cats would be a great Star Wars movie, you're in for a disappointment. It's a bad one.

As a huge Star Wars fan, I've spent months looking forward to the latest entry in the saga: Cats.

I wish I could say that all the anticipation was worth it, but I honestly think it's the worst Star Wars movie yet—and yes, I'm including the prequels. While I understood the backlash to The Last Jedi, I didn't expect J.J. Abrams to so thoroughly retcon all of Rian Johnson's contributions to the Star Wars universe. It was like starting over from scratch.

Perhaps that's why he also felt the need to throw in such a huge cast of new characters we've never heard of before. New characters appear and are introduced so quickly that it's hard to know who we're supposed to care about, which really saps the energy out of all the intrigue and interpersonal drama. Leaving aside the introduction of new elements like the Heaviside Layer—which promises new life, erasing the stakes of mortal danger—I just didn't find myself invested in any member of the Jellicle tribe (who seem to be the new faction of the Resistance).

Early in the film it seemed that Rum Tum Tugger—a rebellious character with a lot of sex appeal, in the mold of Han Solo—was going to be central to the action now that Han himself has been killed off. But as things progressed, I was less and less sure. Was I supposed to be looking for some conflict to arise with the new Jabba the Hutt character—an imposing plutocrat named Bustopher Jones? Or is the true villain the kidnapper Macavity, played by Idris Elba, who steals away the sage, Obi-Wanesque Old Deuteronomy, as portrayed by Judi Dench?



And can we please talk about these new names? Star Wars has always had some weird ones—I'm not going to defend Jek Porkins—but Munkustrap? Skimbleshanks? Bombalurina? Do all the new characters have to have dumb names like this? Obviously I'll make an exception for the bright spot that is Mr. Mistoffelees—whose name is almost as cool as his mysterious new force powers.

Speaking of force powers, it's great that there are so many new force-users performing acrobatic Jedi moves, but does it have to be such a focus? The newest installment was so obsessed with showcasing these impressive abilities that it seemed to forget entirely about Star Wars staples. With very little in the way of training montages, characters seem to be able to perform superhuman feats the likes of which we've never seen before, but I don't think I saw a single light saber battle.

Speaking of Star Wars staples, did John Williams drop out of this one or something? The music in this one was fun at times, but it lacked the thrilling, epic scale of Williams' orchestral sound. And all the characters singing about themselves and each other didn't really help. I also thought it was a strange decision to make the switch back to CGI from the practical effects that have dominated in the sequels so far.

That said, replacing all the characters with sexy anthropomorphic cat people was a great call, and made me really excited for the future of Star Wars. Go see this one with your parents.

CULTURE

Can Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds Just Kiss Already?

They can joke all they want, but we all see the way they look at each other

Hugh Jackman Montblanc MB 01 Smart Headphones & Summit 2+ Launch Party, New York, USA - 10 Mar 2020

Photo by Kristin Callahan/ACE Pictures/Shutterstock

They say that shared trauma binds people together.

So perhaps it was the experience of filming the mess that was X-Men Origins: Wolverine that cemented the strange, sexually charged bond between Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds. Certainly Reynolds' appearance in that film as a bafflingly mute version of Deadpool has become fodder for a lot of the comedic jabs between them.



Most recently their love/hate/lust relationship involved Jackman replacing Reynolds in a promotional image for Free Guy and an interview with Australia's Today in which Reynolds called Jackman "an evil person," and worse still, accused him of being Canadian. Whatever the original source of this electric energy, Reynolds and Jackman have been going after each other for years, like the kid on the playground tugging pigtails as an expression of love—except that there are two of them, chasing each other in circles.



Their flirt-feud first came to the attention of the general public in 2015, during the filming of Deadpool. In a post on Jackman's Instagram, Reynolds appeared in full Deadpool makeup and put on a flimsy Australian accent. Claiming to be Jackman, he asked the public to vote for him for People Magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive." Jackman and Reynolds had both already been picked for that honor—Jackman in 2008, Reynolds in 2010—as heavily referenced within the Deadpool films themselves. But the suggestion that Jackman was eagerly seeking to reprise that title—and also that his face is a horrific mass of scar tissue—became the first comedic jab in a back-and-forth that has continued to this day.


From a fake truce involving commercials for each other's brands to a political attack ad and a complex, deeply sexual bromance-triangle with Jake Gyllenhaal, Jackman and Reynolds clearly want to be the sexiest men alive all over each other. But for some reason, they seem to be permanently stuck in the middle part of the rom-com where they tease each other lovingly, but aren't quite willing to acknowledge their true feelings. Stop holding back, guys!

Two ripped, charming dudes with killer jawlines should not be kept away from each other by society's expectations or, you know, committed, loving relationships with their wives. It's time for the world to call upon Blake and Debora-Lee to sanction this holy union. It's time for Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman to finally make out, and for the angels to rejoice.

Music Lists

In “Modern Love,” Anne Hathaway Shows Us Love Can’t Fix Bipolar Disorder

The show, based on Terri Cheney's column of the same title, provides a uniquely nuanced depiction of mental illness—and highlights the gaps that still exist in the ways we tell stories about it.

On the episode of Modern Love called "Take Me As I Am, Whoever I Am," Anne Hathaway's character Lexi spends half her time in bed.

She spends the other half of her life gallivanting around New York City, wearing sparkles and styling herself after famous actresses, asking out men in grocery stores and making up for the time and the lovers she lost while she was catatonically depressed.

At best, the episode is a uniquely nuanced depiction of real mental illness, emphasizing the fact that Hathaway's illness may not be easily curable, refusing the temptation to glamorize her symptoms or suffocate her with pity and pessimism. At worst, it still falls into some old traps and perhaps could've done a better job of explaining the specifics of Lexi's diagnosis and the actuality of what bipolar is and is not.

Like all the episodes of Amazon Prime's new series Modern Love, it's based on a real-life story published in The New York Times' column of the same name. Hathaway's character is based on an essay by a woman named Terri Cheney, who specifies in the first paragraph that she suffers from what she refers to as "ultrararidian rapid cycling."

There are many different forms of bipolar disorder, far more than the typical binary of Bipolar I and II imply. Bipolar I, the best-known type, involves periods of severe mania and severe depression, whereas with Bipolar II, the manic episodes are usually slightly less severe, though periods of depression can be extremely intense. With both of these types, lengths and symptoms of manic and depressive episodes can vary, though most people experience one or two cycles per year, with episodes lasting around 13 weeks, according to a 2010 study. Episodes can be triggered by events such as seasonal changes, trauma, or grief, but they can also happen naturally due to to the vicissitudes of brain chemistry and daily life. Sometimes symptoms of mania and depression can co-occur, and this is referred to as a mixed episode.

There are many other variants of bipolar disorder, including cyclothymic disorder, which describes brief periods of mania and depression that are slightly less severe than full-on Bipolar I or II. Then there's the kind of extremely rapid switching that Hathaway's character experienced. Affecting 10-15% of people diagnosed with bipolar disorder, rapid cycling is officially diagnosed when someone experiences four or more cycles in one year. Ultra-rapid cycling is when a person cycles through episodes in one month or less, and the sort that Cheney and Lexi have is called ultra-ultra-rapid cycling or ultradian cycling, which means that cycles can occur within a 24-hour period.

As with most mental illnesses, every person's diagnosis is different. For Cheney, ultradian cycling means that she'd often spend days or weeks in bed, only to awaken suddenly to the sound of birdsong and a feeling of euphoria. Like her TV adaption, Cheney tells us that she tried dozens of treatments, including dangerous electroshock therapy, while keeping her illness secret from friends and family and making up for her down periods by exceeding expectations when she was up. She was able to pull together a life, but all this didn't make dating easy. "When dating me, you might go to bed with Madame Bovary and wake up with Hester Prynne," she wrote in her Times column.

Refreshingly, neither Cheney's essay nor the TV adaption equates the right treatment or the perfect person with a cure and a happy ending. Instead, after following their protagonist through a failed relationship that began during a manic episode and quickly tanked when her mood turned, the essay and show end with a bit of realistic hope. "I've finally accepted that there is no cure for the chemical imbalance in my brain, any more than there is a cure for love," Cheney writes, lines that Hathaway repeats in the episode's conclusion. "But there's a little yellow pill I'm very fond of, and a pale blue one, and some pretty pink capsules, and a handful of other colors that have turned my life around."

Battling the Stigma Onscreen: Violence, Love, and Bipolar Representation

While illnesses like depression and anxiety have become more socially acceptable and widely understood (although too often they're still not viewed as valid illnesses, instead treated like something that can be willfully overcome with a little yoga), bipolar and other personality disorders are still heavily stigmatized and misunderstood.

For example, people who suffer from personality disorders are far too frequently blamed for things like mass shootings, when actually only 3-5% of violent crimes are perpetrated by people with mental illnesses (and 97% of mass shooters are white males with histories of misogyny and domestic violence).

In reality, bipolar disorder has absolutely nothing to do with violence. It's also completely untrue that people with bipolar are unable to have relationships. Everyone is different, and people with bipolar disorder are just as capable (or incapable) of loving and being loved as anybody else.

While Hathaway/Cheney's illness appears to be unusually unpredictable, many people with mental illnesses can and do thrive in relationships. While unstable relationships can have particularly negative and triggering effects on people who suffer from mental illnesses, stable relationships of any kind can be incredibly beneficial. And while no one should use their mental illness as an excuse to use others as therapists or sole support systems, supportive friends, partners, and family members can be vital in terms of providing the kind of acceptance and structure that people with mental illness may have trouble giving themselves.

Still, it's a blessing that "Take Me As I Am, Whoever I Am" doesn't over-glamorize the effects or importance of relationships. Anne Hathaway's Lexi finds relief in confessing to a coworker about her illness, but there is no implication that the coworker will be able to heal her or support her in any way. Confession and interpersonal love are perhaps over-emphasized in some forms of modern mental health discourse, but premature or forced confessions can have negative consequences, and confession by no means make up for actual treatment, large systemic changes, or genuine external and acceptance. Sometimes, acceptance means accepting the reality of illness and treatment in all their ugly and unpalatable forms, a reality that is too often forgotten in exchange for the more palatable narrative that tells us that love can heal all wounds.

The Future of Bipolar on TV: Hopefully More Diverse, and Created by People Who Really Suffer from Mental Illness

For her part, Terri Cheney, a prolific writer who has written several memoirs about her experience with mental illness, is apparently very satisfied with Hathaway's nuanced portrayal. "When you think of the illness in terms of a familiar face, it's less frightening and easier to understand," she told Glamour. "That's why having someone as famous as Anne portray a woman with bipolar disorder is so terrific: It's an antidote to shame."

As in her essay, Cheney is quick to emphasize the fact that sometimes there is no cure to mental illness; it's not like you can just confess that you have it and expunge it from your brain chemistry. "After a lifetime of living with a mental illness, I've discovered that the most helpful thing someone can say to me when I'm suffering is, 'Tell me where it hurts,'" she added. "I don't want advice. I don't want to be cheered up. I just want to be listened to and truly heard."

Hathaway also seems to understand the importance of her role. "I have people in my life who I love so deeply who have received various mental health diagnoses, and that's not the whole story of who they are," she said. "But in many cases, because of an intolerant society, that's the space of fear they're kept in."

As there's more mental illness representation on TV, hopefully we'll see more nuanced portrayals of people with mental illness. Many Hollywood shows and movies have heavily exaggerated the symptoms of bipolar disorder, giving characters who suffer from the disorder violent narratives or dramatic breakdowns (Empire, Silver Linings Playbook), painting them as anti-medication (Law and Order: SVU) and using episodes as plot devices (Homeland), despite gaining praise for featuring characters who suffer from it.

Perhaps in the future, shows will also begin discussing the disorder in more precise terms and becoming as open and explicit about treatments, medication, therapy, and the messy vicissitudes of daily life as they are with dramatizing mental breakdowns and choreographing manic episodes.

Maybe they could also try to focus on people of different race and class backgrounds, as mental illness is frequently whitewashed, though it cannot be separated from things like race and class, and certainly not everyone with bipolar has a swanky entertainment law job or lives in an apartment like Anne Hathaway's utterly absurd one. Perhaps Modern Love itself shouldn't be expected to get real about mental illness, for even this episode does feel lost in the show's saccharine, wealth-buoyed rom-com vibe, caught up in the "permanent delusion that New York makes people fall into a special kind of love, unattainable anyplace else (unless on a brief trip abroad)," as The Washington Post writes, a delusion that anyone who actually lives in New York knows is utterly untrue (but that always makes for a hit TV show).

Still, when all is said and done, there will never be a singular or perfect depiction of bipolar disorder, and a depiction of mental illness on a show like this one will certainly expose lots of people to a sympathetic narrative they otherwise might not have encountered.

Like all illnesses, bipolar disorder is an ongoing process that affects everyone in a completely unique way, and there is no quick fix for it. But with medication and support, it's something that's possible to live and thrive with—and yes, to love with.

Though Lexi never finds true love, she finds something else. She finds self-acceptance, openness, a growth mindset, and the belief that she isn't in need of fixing. And in this life, perhaps that's the best kind of fairy-tale ending we can ask for.