Enter Through The Gift Shop, and Exit Through Rescue: HI Surf

Yes, that's a real show title!

Gather round, ye Broads, for another edition of Enter Through the Gift Shop, a regular feature of this newsletter wherein we dig deep into the bowels of museum gift shops and emerge with their most delightful (or weird) (or both) offerings. Recently: The SPAM museum! The American Visionary Art Museum! Some random French place called the Louvre! Today, we’re heading to Vegas, baby, to visit the National Atomic Testing Museum, on the recommendation of fellow Broad Jessica P. Despite having been to Vegas many times in my life, I’ve not made it out to this museum, an oversight I plan to rectify the next time I visit Sin City, because it looks fascinating.

“The National Atomic Testing Museum (Atomic Museum), is a national science, history, and educational institution that tells the story of America’s nuclear weapons testing program at the Nevada Test Site. The Museum uses lessons of the past and present to understand better the extent and effect of nuclear testing on worldwide nuclear deterrence and geo-political history. It provides collection-based exhibits and learning activities for greater public understanding and appreciation of the world in which we live. Its collections and activities are inseparably linked to serve a diverse public of varied ages, backgrounds and knowledge.”

Per its Wiki:

“The museum covers the period from the first test at NTS on January 27, 1951, to the present. Among its exhibits covering American nuclear history is a "Ground Zero Theater", which simulates the experience of observing an atmospheric nuclear test.

Other exhibits include Geiger counters, radio badges and radiation testing devices, Native American artifacts from around the test area, pop culture memorabilia related to the atomic age, and equipment used in testing the devices. Other displays focus on important figures at the facility, videos, and interactive exhibits about radiation. The museum also features a piece of the Berlin Wall, Berlin Wall graffiti art, and two pieces from the World Trade Center.

In 2012 the museum added an exhibit about Area 51, and expanded the exhibit two years later.”

I can only imagine that when Oppenheimer came out, the folks at the Atomic Museum were like, THIS IS OUR TIME. And my hunch that this museum is an interesting visit is borne out by its TripAdvisor reviews, which are glowing — and special props to the one reviewer who made the classic joke that you “don’t have to be a rocket scientist” to get something out of the experience. The tour guides, in particular, get raves, but people seem to be pretty into the museum in general, calling it both educational and sobering. (Although reviews on the Area 51 exhibit are mixed; Area 51 People are probably very persnickety about their alien content.)

And as much as I don’t know if contemplating the massive destructive possibility of man makes one want to shop — “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” and all that — apparently the in-person gift shop is, in the words of Yelpers, “amazing,” “pretty great,” “small,” “affordable,” and, in one person’s experience, full of employees arguing about NASCAR. I can’t speak to that, but the online version of the shop is definitely decent, if extremely specific; somewhat small; and almost totally lacking in product descriptions. For example, there are probably not a ton of people who would wear nuclear bomb earrings, but if you know one of them, this gift would probably be a major hit — pun not intended. (There are so many bomb-related colloquialisms in the English language. I almost wrote, “right on target.”)

Those are also available in pin format, although I think the radiation symbol pin would look cooler on a jean jacket. If you’re more of a patch person than a pin person, they also have a lot of patches. The biohazard one is a classic, and I also dig this very cool NNSS patch:

This really needs a pithy description telling people what the NNSS is. The Atomic Museum is part of the Smithsonian; somebody, write the Feds and tell them to hire someone to whip up some descriptions here! A speedy wordsmith could do this in a week! Give a Broad the job! Anyway, as you can see on the patch, NNSS stands for Nevada National Security Sites and that means:

 “A primary mission of the NNSS is to help ensure the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile remains safe, reliable, and secure from our enemies. To accomplish this, the NNSA Stockpile Stewardship Program deploys a wide range of science and technologies, focused on experiments in weapons science and the potential for weapons dismantlement.”

This seems important, and I assume you learn all about it at the museum so that when you run into their cool patch at the gift shop, you understand it. The NNSA are currently hiring, albeit not product description writers. (Do you ever end up looking at random job descriptions and think, “Wow, I am NOT QUALIFIED to do that.” I just did that with Nuclear Facilities Operations Specialist I [Fissile Material Handler - Certified Packaging Program].) Anyway, they have neat patches!

Back to the gift shop — which I actually am qualified to discuss, thanks to more than forty years of experience in the art of buying things while on vacation. There are, of course, a bajillion magnets, if you are a person who collects magnets from your travels or who just want a mushroom cloud on your fridge for some reason. There are t-shirts of varying taste levels. Weirdly, there are neither tote bags nor mugs, but there are bottle stoppers. (I guess thinking about nuclear war might make you want to drink.)

They also have this bitchin’ Corsair Airplane keychain, which I also needed to Google:

Another Smithsonian-affiliated Museum, The National Museum of Nuclear Science and History,¹ which does NOT have a good online gift shop WHATSOEVER, told me that the Corsair “was instrumental in training pilots in nuclear weapons delivery tactics and in developing and testing weapons for weapon delivery.” That makes sense! It also looks neat next to your car keys.

Finally, for you toy and game lovers, I have good and bad news. The online shop at the Atomic Testing Museum has no toys. (I guess this is actually also good news? That might not be seemly.) But it does have a decent selection of games, including something called Atom Duel — the description just reads, “card game” — and this:

Proliferation: The Game of Nuclear Strategy, which gets a very robust product description, somehow. This game sounds both fun and sort of stressful — which actually seems like a good representation of what visiting an Atomic Testing Museum itself might be, now that I think about it. Synergy! The mark of a great museum gift shop.

Until next time,

— Jessica

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We Don’t Need Boring Baywatch

It’s network premiere season — something that sadly has decreased in meaning without the Entertainment Weekly preview issue in my mailbox, and with new shows arriving at more random times, but I shall soldier forth. So far I’ve gotten through Matlock, High Potential, and Rescue: HI-Surf. All three shows seem to have debuted to decent numbers, but none of them seem poised to crack the Emmy race, although Kathy Bates’s name alone might get her on the short list (or win her a Golden Globe, because they’re crackpots over there). Mild spoilers in the next paragraph, if you care, though it really won’t ruin anything for you.

Matlock and High Potential are variations on the tried and true — or tired and true? — fish-out-of-water theme, in which a folksy, plain-speaking everyperson shocks their smug future colleagues. In Matlock’s case, Bates’s Madeline is reviving her dormant law career by using folksy charm and the invisibility cloak of her age to finagle her way into a job, then proves she’s cleverer than everyone else at the law office. High Potential involves a cleaning lady — Kaitlin Olson — using her 160 IQ and the invisibility cloak of three children to help the cops solve a case, then proves she’s cleverer than everyone else at the police station. Matlock is The Good Wife: Centrum Silver Edition, and High Potential feels like someone put all of Kaitlin Olson’s other characters in a blender and then handed her a baby. Both shows even build in a side quest: Kaitlin Olson will be using her police access to find her long-missing paramour, and Matlock threw in a Suits-y twist of a false identity and a burning need for vengeance. I appreciate the thought that went into it, but I’m not sure it needed to be that deep. Both are perfectly fine one-eye shows, but if you really want to enjoy a well-crafted, well-cast, and tonally fresh hour in this basic genre, watch CBS’s Elsbeth instead.

The worst of them was Rescue: HI-Surf, which is pronounced “high surf” even though the “HI” is styled in all-caps because it’s set — and shot — in Hawaii. And there is surf, and it can get high, and people will need rescuing. To say this sounds like a ChatGPT title would probably piss off our robot overlords. I feel like the execs all sat around a table blurting out variations on Baywatch until they gave up and drew words out of a hat. Not that Rescue HI-Surf is trying to be Baywatch; it isn’t, and that’s a good thing. Baywatch was made to be stumbled upon on cable when you were in college and drunkenly eating pizza at 3 a.m., or in college and trying to cure a hangover at 2 p.m. with a Big Mac. “Check out Pamela Anderson’s boobs while she jogs” was basically a consistent B-plot on that show that no one questioned, and I am NOT sorry that era of character development based on cup size is behind us. Honestly, I think 90 percent of the reason that show worked was that there hadn’t been a Baywatch already. But now there has been, and you cannot serve up a lifeguard show without people making the comparisons, or at least furrowing their brow at the premiere and saying, “So it’s like… Gritty Baywatch?”

Sadly, it’s not EITHER potential version of Gritty Baywatch. It’s more Bland Baywatch. Pilots are hard, and many a show has found its footing several episodes in, but this should have at least come out of the gate with a can’t-miss rescue scene — a creative take on ocean catastrophes, or even just a truly taut and tightly shot and edited sequence that gives you a sense of how these people uniquely operate. Instead, it drags, and every rescue feels the same: Someone falls off a surfboard, the lifeguards have to find them, there is CPR, someone spits up water, and it all happens boringly. We also sit through not one but TWO overlong lifeguard physical fitness tests, the latter of which involved cast members who looked as if they were told to run in slow-motion and that they’d speed it up in post. (Spoiler: They did not.) It’s as if the mandate was, “Less sexy than Baywatch, less frenetic than ER, and less expensive than those scenes in Barbie where Ken’s job is beach.” If you aren’t giving us sexy high camp, and you haven’t sprung for kick-ass effects that make the aforementioned HI-Surf — not to be confused with HI-C — a formidable character in its own right, then what’s left? What are we even doing here, and why? I rarely suggest turning to Blue Crush for advice — mostly because no one in Blue Crush who receives advice does anything useful with it — but at least that Hawaii-based surfer flick touched on simmering tensions and resentments among the locals. The location was not negligible, as it seems to be here.

The ER comparison is relevant because its overlord John Wells not only exec-produced this thing, but directed the first two episodes, so this man theoretically knows his way around pacing and tension. His TV pedigree also includes The West Wing, for God’s sake, so he also knows characters. Alas, here, Adam Demos of Sex/Life plays a guy whose personality appears to be simply, “Australian,” and not enough sex or life. Lead actress Arielle Kebbel — something of a Hey, It’s That Guy, RIP Fametracker — so far has little to do but squint into the distance and remind us she used to be engaged to him. While the teaser suggests some drama on that front, there is no heat or chemistry between them or anyone else in the cast. Everyone is very congenial, very sandy and windblown, very Drink Beer Sitting On The Back of The Jeep. Doug Ross and Carol Hathaway, they are not.

The second episode aired last night, and it was no better. The search for a girl who got washed away from her parents, and then their own missing colleague, had all the urgency of trying to decide whether to put a Band-Aid on a hangnail. It took 39 minutes for anyone to move with haste, and 90 seconds later it was over. I can’t believe FOX cancelled 911: Rob Lowe — it has one season left to air and that’s it — and yet this lives. Say what you will about that show, but it’s entertaining, it’s got a sense of humor about itself, and it once had a volcano erupt under an Austin mini-golf course. Beat THAT, John Wells.

— Heather

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ICYMI…

Yesterday, paid subscribers got our recap of the back half of Emily in Paris, a very silly dumb show that I really love, and also love to yell about. Spoiler: I hate Gabriel!!!

Emily in Paris: Season 4, Part II, The Recap

And Friday, paid subscribers got our recap of the most recent episode of Only Murders in the Building, a sometimes silly, non-dumb show that we also really love. This season has a lot of ham. Literal and otherwise!

Only Murders In The Building, episode 4: The Right Kind of Weirdo

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Last Call

— If you watched this current season of Emily in Paris and found yourself wondering about the French mountain town Megéve, never fear: Tatler has it amply covered, including a review of the Four Seasons Megéve, where apparently the “lymphatic drainage massage was a revelation.” Emily could use a revelatory massage! — J

— Emerald Fennell is adopting Wuthering Heights and has cast Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi. “As CATHY AND HEATHCLIFF?” I loudly asked my computer when I read this. I actually trust Fennell’s instincts — and I think Robbie is a great actress, although I also think she has RAGING Modern Face² — but I have some concerns here. (Is it maybe going to be a modern adaptation?) Elordi is also starring in Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of Frankenstein — as, for real, Frankenstein’s monster. (Oscar Isaac plays the titular Dr. Frankenstein.) I can’t wait to see what other item from my English 10B syllabus he tackles next, and I have to admit that I’m low-key impressed by his wholehearted embrace of some of the most fucked-up storytelling (complimentary) of the nineteenth century. — J

— INTRIGUING: They’re making a sequel to I Know What You Did Last Summer — I assume this would be the next in the series, as the original film of course already has a sequel — and Freddie Prinze Jr. is confirmed to reprise his role. Deadline reports that Jennifer Love Hewitt “is still very much in negotiations to reprise the role of Julie James.” I cannot imagine she will pass on this; surely, they’ll make it financially worth her while, and work around her job looking stressed at a computer monitor on 9-1-1. If only Sarah Michelle Gellar could ALSO return, but of course, her character is dead. OR IS SHE? — J

— Finally, good news: As you know, we’ve been raising money for state legislature races in swing states with The States Project. And as of last week, we reached our goal of $10,000! A HUGE thank you to everyone who so generously donated! State legislatures are a vital part of our governmental process, and can create real change. On the advice of The States Project, we upped the donation goal to $20k to keep this an ongoing giving circle — but no pressure. Everything from here on out feels like a cherry on the sundae. We are thrilled, and so grateful to everyone who donated!!

1. Motto: “Reactions welcome.” They nailed that one!

2. Technically, she is also producing this so her casting is perhaps not THAT surprising once you factor that little tidbit in.