Fug File: Film and TV

In the absence of my fall/winter hate-watch, Smash, I’ve been forced to hate-watch The Newsroom and Bunheads, which is satisfying enough — like scratching an itch when you have the chicken pox: You know it will lead to no good, but damn, in the moment it feels right — but not quite the same. I miss the way Smash’s lofty aspirations come crashing down because they’re tethered to bad characters and weird plots and wrong assumptions and faulty logic… and bad costuming. On that front, I refer of course to Debra Messing’s character and her pathological obsession with dusters and scarves, and the kind of layering usually reserved for extremely homeless people who don’t have anywhere else to keep their stuff. But the new showrunner has also hired a new costume designer, and if this is indeed part of the show, it does it seem like they’ve gone in the opposite direction. Specifically, a nakeder one.

What nightmare is this? She looks like she bought a dress at Goodwill for a mass wedding that will be performed in a meadow moments before another Rapture (a real one this time, I’m sure). If her chest doesn’t file a grievance with SAG, then at least she should pull a diva trip and refuse to come out of her trailer.

Then again, maybe this was just a run-through. Because another set of pictures that appears to be from the same location shows her wearing something entirely different and a lot more Julia.

Her name is now an adjective