“We Have A Closer Situation On Our Hands”
GMA3's love quadrangle.
What do you call it when two people are married, but one of the married people meets someone at work and decides to sleep with and ultimately start a relationship with that third person? So now you have a new couple, and the detritus of two previous couples. But what if that detritus, the new couples old exes, meet? And what if they start a relationship, or at least try to bond over their broken relationships, their old partners' newfound happiness, maybe even the fact that everything is a version of something else?
Devoted Hung Up readers will know that I am speaking, of course, about a Closer situation. In Mike Nichols’ adaptation of the early-aughts Patrick Marber play, a pair of couples become mirrors and muses. Julia Roberts is married to Clive Owen until a pathetic obituarist (Jude Law) saunters into her photo studio. Law is dating Natalie Portman, a precious 20-something whom he promptly dumps. Portman and Owen meet in a strip that used to be a punk club and have their own flirtation. Closer is as sexy as it is sniveling — gaudy with its own cleverness. There is so much unpleasantness in this movie, so much selfishness, so much matted, grubby desire between this quartet of beautiful lovers. I love movies about insatiable people; just when one person seems to have the relationship they want, they turn their gaze outward and look for something more.
Life imitates art: we have a Closer situation on our hands. Nearly a year after GMA3 anchors T.J. Holmes and Amy Robach were fired for giggling and carrying on, their exes have reportedly bonded over the affair-affair. “Marilee Fiebig and Andrew Shue are dating, according to multiple sources,” Page Six reported last week. “We’re told the couple have been dating for about six months after bonding over the traumatic experience of being cheated on.”
Then their exes went low, they got Closer. Fiebig is an immigration attorney and works for Save The Children; Shue was on Melrose Place. Holmes and Robach are podcasters. I am ecstatic.
After the news of their relationship broke, Shue celebrated with a pap walk for People. It was tasteful: running errands, solo, in downtown Manhattan. It doesn’t seem like a coincidence that in the wake of this news, Holmes1 and Robach lost the idgaf-war, making their red carpet debut as a couple at iHeartRadio 's Jingle Ball. This out Morning Shows the actual Morning Show.
Other things
I was on
’s podcast, in a lively, extremely detailed conversation about Phantom Thread.
I contributed to this
gift guide. Obsessed with this really lovely intro by Amalie MacGowan: Let it serve as a reminder to continue to stir shit up this season — every season. To be messy. To be abrasive. To experience limerence. (And love.) To cry big fat tears over things real and imagined. To laugh so hard that the only sound you expel is a wheeze.
(Hung Up’s gift guide, if you missed it, is here. It just got a shout-out on the always-excellent Lauren Sherman newsletter Line Sheet!)
My Substack dashboard keeps insisting I re-share this old post about Taylor Swift, so:
This One Line From Taylor Swift’s folklore Plays on a Loop in My Head
I’m mystified by acting, by the way a certain movement or intonation can make a whole person feel real. There’s a little magic about hearing a certain sentence said just so — a turn of phrase truly wild and creative, something you wish you’d said that one time, or something that wouldn’t feel right coming out of your mouth — but my
Keeping An Eye Out for Selener
It is finally God’s timing: Selena Gomez has a boyfriend again.
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