Alright. Alright, alright, alright. The b***h is back. Sound the trumpets. Lay down the red carpet. Bring out your offerings. UTP is back for 2026.
Originally, I had written a whimsical intro about the razzmatazz and pizzazz of welcoming the new year and my overcoming a writer’s block that has afflicted me for the better part of two months.
I was actually finalizing the edits to this very edition while sitting in a Powderhorn, Minneapolis coffee shop the morning of January 7th, when Renee Good was murdered just over a mile away as the crow flies. I had actually taken that as a mental health day, if you can believe it.
I can’t emphasize enough how much worse things have gotten in the last few weeks. I’ve actually been paranoid to write anything about this but I just don’t give a s**t anymore—Minneapolis did nothing to deserve this and the constant trauma and grief of everyone has so successfully been channelled into productive anger by people who are far braver than me.
There is no figurehead making the media rounds. It is so decentralized it’s almost baffling that anything is coordinated. People act on good faith. Minnesota’s unique culture of civic participation, one that’s been stamped out in neighboring Wisconsin—which by definition is not a democracy, prepares a variety of responses. It is the most inspiring thing I have ever experienced.
Believe it or not, living in a total police state is actually Not Great. South Minneapolis, particularly, is now teeming with SUVs with license plates from far-away lands, if they have any at all, filled with masked, armed goons who will turn any bystander—observer or otherwise—into a prop for their twisted fascist marketing campaign for a worse world.
I mean, s**t, I’ve gone to mass twice this month. Thank God for Father RJ at St. Thomas More in Saint Paul.
When I was revising this to write about the ongoing conflict in Minneapolis, I originally started writing about schools; the highly public assault of Roosevelt High School students on the same afternoon Renee Good was murdered was the high school the kids on my street attend. I was aghast at the cruelty of the decision to do that, and there was no naivete in my thinking that this was just the beginning. This is going to get worse. And it did. So here we are, weeks later.
I can’t and won’t recount more of the events for you: I know you are paying attention. Don’t look away.
I have an idea for a Minneapolis-centric gonzo piece about being a Regular Person In All This B******t, but that’s not what we’re doing today.
Instead, I still want to share what I wrote, and maybe provide a little friendly humor in these trying times. They want you to be afraid. They don’t want you to enjoy jokes that made my Greatest Generation grandfather nearly faint. “I wasn’t expecting so many four-letter-words,” was his review of Putting the Moron in Moroni. They don’t want you to read UTP.
The original bout of writer’s block was broken by a guest appearance at a local wrestling show, so I’ve got some of that below. Emily and I watched a dating show about virgins on Hulu and I have some things to say about it. And finally, I saw and am here to report on my Official Opinions of Wicked: For Good. Sorry ahead of time.
Hang in there. Stay safe. Minneapolis is the greatest city on the planet and it’s not even close.
RINGSIDE WITH UTP
BREAKING: EDDIE KINGSTON SHOWED UP AT NIGHT ONE OF WREMIX AND IT WAS THE GREATEST MOMENT OF MY LIFE
January means a lot of things to a lot of people, but for local wrestling fans, we know it as the first of local wrestling promotion F1RST Wrestling’s shows of the year, Wremix, one of their signature flagship events that combines burlesque dancing, pro wrestling, and music into a damn fun few hours of entertainment where the bar has no line, and getting ringside is achievable without shoving and pushing people out of the way.
The show was re-branded from “WrestlePalooza” after WWE shamelessly ripped the name away from them to counter-program AEW’s September pay-per-view, All Out. Sure, it was an old ECW PPV brand name, but really? You gotta f**k over F1RST and AEW? F**k off.
These shows usually have surprises—it is a wrestling/rock concert/burlesque variety show at the Twin Cities’ best “danceteria,” First Avenue, that venerable bus-station-turned-nightclub of old. This night was no exception, and my God what a treat.
This was our first time attending both nights of this event. We had done much hand-wringing over whether we were actually going to go to the first night, but we decided a day or two beforehand that it was going to be worth the feet pain, little sleep, and extra cost and got tickets.
F1RST has been host to stars from across the wrestling world in the past, and it’s not unheard of for stars like Swerve Strickland, Orange Cassidy, and Danhausen to make appearances at shows. My review of Saturday Night Nitro in September has many examples, like Ultimo Dragon, Shotzi, and Priscilla Kelly.
We arrived early and stood in the same spot we always stand. The show started a little late and after the video hype package and following promo monologue by F1RST Wrestling’s own blue-haired host we love to hate, John Maddening.
The first match begins with the walk-out of current Uptown VFW Champion Jordan, the toothless all-arounder billed by his full home address, who is also my coworker’s friend’s ex-boyfriend. He walks out to A Tribe Called Quest’s “Can I Kick It?” which always come back when he positions his opponent on the ropes and asks the crowd “Can I kick it?" with the required “Yes you can!” cheer in response.
The match was billed as having a surprise opponent. “Can I Kick It?” starts to fade out and the lights go out. After a few beats of silence, the distinctive Phantom of the Opera-esque organ of the fake-DMX theme song of only one wrestler in the world: god damned f*****g Eddie Kingston.
EDDIE KINGSTON? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? The same Eddie Kingston I’ve been writing about for the past months since his triumphant, if disappointing AEW return late last year? The same Eddie Kingston of whom I have a magnet of a chibi version of on a filing cabinet at my desk at work? The same Eddie Kingston who had to fight for everything he had?
Yes. It was.
Eddie came out and didn’t say much. Billed as “The Mad King” Eddie Kingston, he and Jordan had a well-matched bout until the match was rudely interrupted by the perennial F1RST Midwest indie circuit darlings None More Violent, which features “The Freakshow” Cho (who threatened to murder me at the 2024 Doobie Dabbler) and the extremely scary and equally pretty Jinn Hallows, who is always killing it in a crop top.
Eddie and Jordan teamed up (twist!) and fought None More Violent, but not before Eddie cut a little promo (thank God! Give this man the microphone!). The match featured an amazing moment where the crowd grew quiet and Eddie shouted “F**k you, you m***********g c********r.” Incredible to hear in person, literally 10 feet away.
I didn’t mention that Eddie Kingston did make eye contact with me. We usually stand within eyeshot of the front right ring post on the ground level. Between the two shows, I:
* Made eye contact with Eddie Kingston,
* Drunkenly called for Jordan’s attention (on night 2) and, when I had his attention, I screamed “I saw you walking around at the state fair last year!” Emily hid her face in shame like Marge Simpson,
* Double main-eventer and man whose career I thought we watched end at MOA, Gringo Loco, was given superpowers by me pointing at him and screaming as we made eye contact twice,
* We also saw local music stars The Gully Boys hanging out at the Depot Tavern attached to First Ave before night 2.
If I reviewed every match, it’d be the whole damn newsletter/podcast and I also don’t remember them all, but my favorite wrestler I had never seen before was Effy, the TNA legend (who is strangely anti-AEW) whose whole gimmick is that he is gay. He was begging Shane Black, whose gimmick is that he’s a lifeguard, not to take his clothes off. He apparently has a kayfabe gimmick of targeting twinks, so that also came up. He fought both nights and they were both amazing.
F1RST Wrestling more than delivered with Wremix. Carrying the torch of the One True WrestlePalooza, Wremix featured excellent burlesque performances, including an outstanding “omelette du fromage” Dexter’s Laboratory cosplay. Music was awesome both nights, and the Gully Boys were a treat as it was their last local show for a while.
Wrestling evangelists will tell you that if the campiness and pageantry of wrestling is even a little interesting-sounding to you, go to a local wrestling show. Wremix will likely happen twice yearly, once in January, and once in June for Pride. Let me know if you wanna go, I’m always down.
WHAT’S ON THE IDIOT BOX?
HULU’S VIRGINS AND THE BANALITY OF CULTURAL REGRESSION
Ah yes, a 6-episode limited reality series about awkward grown adults seeking love and connection is actually about the slow cultural regression we’ve been speedrunning since the COVID-19 pandemic. Hear me out (or don’t, you don’t get a choice).
The premise of Virgins is extremely simple: four adults who consider their lack of intimacy core to their identity struggle and flounder as they try (and fail) to get laid. We watched the spiritual prequel earlier last year (also on Hulu), Are You My First?, whose premise was far more competition-esque. Love Island but nobody has any game.
Why anyone would sign up to be on this show is beyond me, but they found four wannabe reality stars who must have a thing for public humiliation rituals because I don’t understand how anyone would think this is a good idea.
I want to point out, as r/polyamory users will do about the existence of the concept of “jealousy,” that the conflicts these people have with being virgins are entirely self-created and self-reinforced. You actually don’t have to tell people that? You actually don’t have to make a big deal about this fabricated social construction of your identity? Who knew hitching people with miscalculated values of self-worth (too high and too low) to the wagon of a social identity associated with naivete and inexperience on a TV show that doesn’t care about their well-being might come off a little, I don’t know…distasteful?
Anyway, the first virgin we meet is Alex, a lovable loser who lives in the attic of his parents house in Reading, PA, a personal hell of his own design.
He is a hairy man (no hate) with unkempt balding hair and a disheveled beard. He laments how difficult it is for him to get laid and date as we get a tour of his bedroom, which he does point is not his childhood bedroom. He has a crappy guitar that appears to be missing strings “on display” leaning against a wall, an out-of-date bikini swimsuit calendar, and most horrendously, a TJ Maxx generic video game controller throw pillow prominently placed in the center of his bed, where he says the action “doesn’t happen.”
Alex’s wingmen for the show are his two older sisters, who are thoroughbred Rust Belt girlies who don’t mind putting down beers at the bar as they observe their brother fail miserably at interacting with women. They also love to put him down, frequently mock his appearance and demeanor, and only talk highly of him when he isn’t present. They push him to his limit as he fumbles his way through “tantric speed dating,” just one of multiple instances of the show appropriating various Southeast Asian cultural traditions. He connects with a woman who is verrry into him, and you just want to root for the guy.
They have another date which he gets his chest waxed beforehand (coward) and gets an admittedly very good haircut and beard trim. Things go south for Alex when he makes what is either a) a bafflingly terrible romantic miscalculation or b) cruel set-up by producers he is too naive to push back against. Either way, after their second date, he brings her back to his parents house and shows him his bedroom, a proposition that is usually associated with intimacy. However, he gives her a literal tour and we see her excitement and adoration for our endearing loser turn to horror in real time as she sees the most personal space of this manchild with no social or emotional skills.
The pièce de résistance of this disastrous date was when Alex sat her down on the bed and confessed that he was a virgin in an extraordinarily awkward and embarrassing way. She clearly dissociates as she plans her next moves. She says she had a good time with him and does really like him, but when he (again, EXTREMELY awkwardly) goes in for a kiss, she brutally rejects him because it’s “too early” for that. Getting rejected by the woman you met at a tantric speed dating class must be devastating. She leaves, and we later watch them Skype, where she proceeds to friendzone him. Incredible stuff.
I’d be remiss not to mention the second primary woman he dates, who is a pretty, agreeable, put-together 30-something with a career, goals, and knows what she wants. She, again, finds Alex to be a lovable loser who is naive, but he does not reveal that he’s a virgin until their third date. Which is a weekend getaway at a couples sex retreat resort, one of the ones you see on architecture Twitter accounts because of the giant champagne glass hot tub and heart-shaped swimming pool: both in the room.
What I also didn’t mention is that they had not even kissed before he took her to the resort. She put two-and-two together, but didn’t get a full picture of the situation until he confessed his virginity over dinner at the on-property romance-themed restaurant. They go back to the hotel room, he wants to try out the pool, so he strips and gets in. She takes her shoes off and sits on the side, only dipping her feet in. She reveals in an interview with producers that she is deeply uncomfortable and that she will be getting her own hotel room that night, LMAO.
We do get an incredible sequence where he is trying the champagne glass hot tub…by himself. He’s a good sport, and you really hope this was just cruel planning by the producers, because it really does feel like he was the victim in a plot, not a dumb man with no emotional intelligence. It goes without saying, he does not get any action in the six-episode season of this show.
Sonali is a 37-year-old Indian-American woman who has allowed her conservative upbringing and religious/cultural trauma to completely define her life (a personal hell of her own design) even when she admits her family mostly lives in India.
I know a thing or two about concealing who you are for norms that exist entirely in my own head, but my God this woman takes it to another level. She has an extraordinarily embarrassing virginity mood board in her room, which has a giant sheet of paper with cute letters that reads simply “DEMI-SEXUAL” in her bedroom. She also laments that she can fall in love with someone with “just one kiss”and that she only calls having sex “making love,” much to the horror of the man she is dating at the beginning (they do not go another date).
She is just…a lot. It’s hard to be mean to this woman because 90% of her problems could be solved if she had a team of mental health experts to help her manage her symptoms, ideally not filming and airing their sessions on national television. She is the most obviously exploited person on this show. She has an intense demeanor, doesn’t handle advice or help from experts well, and has extremely unrealistic expectations for what intimacy is and how to get it.
I’ll spare the details but she sees a series of experts, each more dubious than the last, including a final “womb healing” from a white lady with dreads named Nicki Jean who is a self-proclaimed “priestess healer" who details on her website that she was inspired to become a tantric priestess after a visit to Magdala, Israel.
At the recommendation of a certified sex therapist, she struggles with a “sex surrogate,” an extraordinarily kind and professional man with whom she gets very testy over his insistence she do literally any of the things he or the other sexual health professionals recommend she do to overcome her purely psychological barriers to intimacy.
She is literally told it’s all psychological and she immediately says “there is something physically wrong with me.” None of her dates on the show lead to second dates or a change in her virgin-status, but she does make progress with Nicki Jean and the surrogate, which I guess is something.
Jacksonville, FL-resident Rhasha is the oldest participant on the show at 42 years-old, and also clearly the most desperate to actually resolve her situation. At least she is seriously attempting to leave the personal hell of her own design.
She is ruthlessly normal and suffered an incredible amount of emotional trauma from a scam marriage she was part of after a man in the US on a visa started a long-distance relationship with her with the goal of marriage. They got married, he got citizenship, and divorced after a year. He was never attracted to her and they never so much as kissed in the year they lived together. Talk about ego-destruction. Wheesh.
This has also led to an extremely humorous relationship between her, her sister who looks exactly like her but with piercings and tattoos, and her mom. She is far too open about her (lack of) sex life with her mom and sister, much to their chagrin. Her sister mocks her and her mom is prudish but is the show’s closest thing to comic relief because her reactions to her daughter’s increasingly transparent and unhinged sharing of her kinks with her family are truly some of the best scenes of the whole show.
Again I will spare details about her dating life but she gets does the best of all of the show’s competitors for willingly leaving her comfort zone to see what she likes, but not before doing, what I believe, is the most unhinged s**t I’ve seen on the show. She AirPlays her iPad to the TV in the living room to look at dating sites with her mom and sister, presumably just for the TV show segment. But this woman is using Bumble, which, sure, but in f*****g Safari. Who is using Bumble from a web browser??? I didn’t even know that was possible!
Her unhinged run as the most desperate virgin ends as she books a weekend at a swinger’s resort with a friend of hers. She is propositioned multiple times but instead decides to invite the quiet, reserved man she’s gone on like four dates with to show up and go to the sex resort night club with her. She gets wayyy too drunk and despite a cliche closing of the hotel room’s door and blinds, they more than likely just went to bed as the show tells us she is still a virgin by the end.
Deanne is the final and most unlikable person on this show, whose high standards and over-inflated dating market self-worth have built her an intimacy-less personal hell that she takes out on her friends.
The 35-year-old LA resident is (shocker) a wannabe actor who admits her standards are too high. Multiple eligible (hot!) men proposition her for a date or two but she just dismisses everyone.
The mark of any good reality show is deducing whether a star’s neuroticism is indicative of their mental health, an exaggeration for the camera/tryout for further reality TV opportunities, or a construction of the show’s producers and editors. With Deanne, I’m fairly confident she really is just this shallow.
Instead of going to therapy, Deanne frequently visits a professional matchmaker (I hate LA) who is highly critical of Deanne’s standards and narcissism. She frequently remarks that she needs to be with someone who “looks like a celebrity.” I guess she’s pretty, but she does just look like a million other WASPs from Connecticut who moved to LA after the holiday visits home during her years at USC became too unbearable and that a return to New England will never be an option.
Thankfully, we benefit from her unhinged narcissism as the matchmaker flatly calls her shallow, and we do watch multiple first dates with Deanne fail miserably as she so obviously has no emotional maturity. Unfortunately she doubles down and takes no opportunity for self-reflection.
The banner segment for Deanne, however, is when her matchmaker signed her up for a live dating podcast show (I hate LA) where local comedians will do blind dating or something on stage, which is part fun variety show, part stand-up, part game show.
The comedians roast her incessantly, and the beauty is that Up-Dated!, the live show, is a true blind date: she is literally blindfolded. Her vapid obsession with superficiality is put on ice as an extremely kind pick-me guy waxes poetically about how much he would do for the right girl, etc, etc. Thankfully, the comedians use every opportunity to poke digs at her inexperience and narcissism whenever she says something to signal her interest in him.
Unfortunately for us, it goes really well! She actually sets up a real second date with the guy, which is at his house. He hires a private chef (I hate LA) and they dine al fresco with wine on his back patio. For literally no reason though, she gets ‘the ick’ and when he wants to kiss her at the end of the date, she denies him.
Okay, Noah, what’s your point? What does this have to do with cultural regression?
I’m sure true Reality TV foamers will be happy to tell me all of the similar terrible shows from the many years, but as someone who has watched a lot of novel dating reality shows made in the past couple of years, this one was a real throwback to the era where TLC went from an educational non-profit funded in-part by NASA to air educational shows in Appalachia to the human zoo nightmare that an average day of TLC programming since 1998 could be characterized as.
This was the most Nathan for You-esque dating show I’ve maybe ever seen. At least Are You My First? was virgins with other virgins, and in a Big Brother-esque compound. This show is all about humiliating the stars in their day-to-day life. The show’s handling of Sonali is absolutely baffling and exploitative—she’s clearly very traumatized by her conservative upbringing, and instead of taking her to the appropriate professionals where she is able to actually heal, she’s given televised appointments with new professionals where she is prodded on things to intentionally antagonize her. She is always extremely uncomfortable on camera and gets in verbal confrontations with multiple people, including the producers.
More importantly, this show lays bare that the social construction of virginity is very much alive and well. If these people, especially Sonali and Alex, just got out of their own way and would accept that intimacy is going to be messy, occasionally unpleasant, and rarely ideal for your first time, and that that isn’t a big deal, maybe they wouldn’t be on this show.
The urgent surge of virgin-focused content merges pretty well with a subjective trend anyone who makes the mistake of using social media has seen, where incel-adjacent manosphere language and ideas are now part of the general American lexicon. Maybe it’s a stretch, but purity and sex culture in America are absolutely fucked and perceived wildly differently from person to person.
It’s not a new trend either. I’ve bemoaned the Mormon cultural hegemony that the trad wife trend (another example of incel-adjacent manosphere garbage becoming mainstream) has co-opted. I’d argue shows like Virgins are meeting the same end, with far more banality.
This show was made at the expense of four people who, despite their worst efforts, cannot get laid. It is not uplifting, it does not inspire hope, it does not have a real point. But the producers excelled at the Fielder Method because I was physically cringing, laughing out loud, and hooting and hollering at dozens of scenes across just six episodes.
This show takes an uncritical look at the concept of virginity. Not a single person on the show suggests that “hey, maybe this social construction isn’t really that important?” For those on the show, the construction is a number of things: unjustifiably high standards, extreme discomfort with intimacy, lacking self-worth, having too much self-worth, bad luck, etc.
The producers knew what they were doing when they make every star on the show awkwardly share with a date that they are a virgin in dramatic “coming out” type conversations where people are being subjected to serious and uncomfortable discussions rather early for a casual romantic or sexual relationship. In what world are any of these middle-aged suitors not going to run for the hills when they learn the uncomfortable and awkward person they are on a date with for a TV show has next to zero experience with intimacy or navigating the emotional challenges of a committed relationship, let alone having a history of dating literally anybody?
Watch it if you want. It sucks and I basically told you everything that happens. Let me know if you think my takes are wrong. Is it really that deep? Probably not. But like classic episodes of Catfish, the misguided pursuit of lust, love, and longing delivers schadenfreude unlike anything a Mark Burnett show is able to do in 2026.
UTP AT THE MOVIES AT HOME IN THE BASEMENT
NOBODY LEARNED ANYTHING AND THE STRUCTURAL CONFLICTS AND POWER STRUCTURES OF THE STATUS QUO WERE MAINTAINED: YES, I WATCHED WICKED: FOR GOOD
Just in time for the holiday season, I watched the much-anticipated 2025 film sequel to the 2024 film adaptation of the first half of a 2003 Broadway musical based on a 1995 gritty fanfiction based on a 1939 film adaptation of the 1900 book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
When I watched Wicked 1: Even Less Wicked, it was my first time engaging with the Wicked version of the land of Oz. I had obviously seen the 1939 classic, erroneously believing for years that it was the “first color movie,” but the closest I got to Wicked was when I was in high school and one of my band teachers bragged about seeing Wicked on Broadway during the school band trip to New York a couple of years earlier. This did not sell me on going on the New York trip in band class. We almost played a Wicked medley, but the senior band director had us do a Wizard of Oz one instead. The “If I Only Had A Brain” tuba solo was very funny, I’ll admit.
I enjoyed Wicked: The Movie, although I had a lot to say about its themes, the fact that it’s a commercial for toys and brand tie-ins, and its missing-of-the-point about facades and the message of the movie. It was compelling enough that I was hesitantly excited for the squeakquel, even if I didn’t know any of the songs or story aside from the fact that Act II ties in The Wizard of Oz more than the first half.
I won’t go as in-depth as the first one because I think a lot of my critiques are the same, while the praise is in far shorter supply.
Wicked 2: 2 Fast 2 Wicked picks up one year after the events of the first one. Elphaba has retreated to a magic treehouse somewhere outside of the Emerald City. Glinda has been installed as a useful idiot/puppet of the anti-animal regime. Glinda is set to wed the guy from Bridgerton, who is actually in love with Elphaba. Tragedy!
Wicked Episode II: Attack of the Clones takes the big picture of its predecessor and throws it out the window. The large-scale social upheaval of the anti-animal pogrom is heavily diminished and appears largely reduced to simply the Emerald City and Munchkinland. The widespread instances of violence and subjugation from the first movie are replaced with incidental moments, like the animals leaving Oz while Elphaba begs them to stay, which just happens to feature an aninal from the first movie, the bear who raised Elphaba, or when Elphaba discovers animals in cages in a windowless storage room accessed through a secret passage in the Wizard’s infamous room. An addition (according to Emily) to this movie that did show new subjugation was a passing scene where Broadway’s SpongeBob is unable to board a train to leave Munchkinland due to new policies of the Wizard and his regime.
This movie was, to me, just a combo of Star Wars, Harry Potter, and the Hunger Games. Far less Harry Potter this time because the gals aren’t in school anymore.
Star Wars visual motifs are everywhere in this movie, especially Return of the Jedi and Revenge of the Sith. The forest chase scene with Elphaba and the flying monkeys is eerily reminiscent of the Endor speeder chases. Throne rooms for the Wizard, the Rowling-ass-named Mrs. Morrible, and Elphaba’s sister Nessarose, the new de jure governor of Munchkinland, all feature geometric window patterns that evoke the Emperor’s throne room(s) featured throughout the Star Wars franchise. Elphaba’s black attire and green accents are evocative of the final form of Luke in the original series, who is grizzled and experienced, sporting a new green lightsaber. Glinda is (begrudgingly) the Anakin character—she’s smart enough to know the regime is evil but will never sacrifice her own comfort in the status quo for people she cares about. She will, however, cry a lot.
My favorite is the new “Bubble” song that Grande sings in a setpiece not featured in the original musical. Comedian Chris Fleming called this set “Ariana Grande’s Room at the Marriott Bonvoy” but to me it is strikingly similar to Anakin and Padme’s apartment on Coruscant in Revenge of the Sith.
I think in terms of creating an action movie geared towards a wide family audience that is dystopian beneath the veneer of Oz, this movie benefits from the groundwork that The Hunger Games’ depiction of “The Capitol” gave us. Both cities feature futuristic and fantastical cities, whose main connection to the outside world is a fancy yet impractical train. Citizens in both cities are easily persuaded with propaganda and choose to ignore realities they aren’t personally persecuted under. The Hunger Games cultural aesthetics in the Capitol are laughably gaudy and decadent—many people look like they belong in Whoville, and Wicked is, well, exactly the same way.
Let’s talk about those aesthetics.
The story of Wicked (not any specific adaptation) is more than just giving dark backstories to the ostensibly cheery and reductive 1939 story by making you think about the characters another way. It’s also meant to make it very very very obvious that the glamor and glitz of Oz is a facade that requires intentional and nefarious actions by those in power to maintain, hence the literal scapegoating of animals and by extension Elphaba in order to create a common enemy for Ozians.
The aesthetics and facade of Oz are critical to the theme and message. We get a drawn-out sequence where Morrible gives Glinda her famous bubble, which is revealed to be mechanical, not a function of her magic. Glinda’s entire character in this movie is built around her being a total facade and that she is not magical; her entire identity is a construction of powerful leaders in Oz needing a universal good guy and useful idiot to keep the masses from getting too self-aware. Glinda, much like her fellow Ozians, is shown to be stupid, shallow, and somehow still a f*****g good guy by the end of it, only after anyone with any real stakes has already given everything they can to fight evildoers.
She’s the epitome of a Counter-Strike player who hears that you’re rushing B on Dust II, but decides to walk behind the whole team and wait until the whole team is dead before actually pushing to nab a couple of stolen kills before losing the round for the whole team. The “America declaring unilateral victory in World War II after the Soviet campaign on the Eastern Front” of Oz.
At every turn in this movie, in stark contrast to the first, nearly every person in this movie acts in their self-interest. Glinda has to be hit in the face with The Message at least a dozen times before she finally decides with Elphaba that, actually, we have to maintain the status quo. Elphaba should quietly leave with Bridgerton Man and Glinda will replace the Wizard and try to reform the system from within. Elphaba literally wants to avoid bursting Glinda’s bubble.
Once again, however, where Wicked: The Way of Water misses the mark in its biggest sense is once again missing the whole point. Wicked as a marketing product cashes in extensively on superficial veneer of The Wizard of Oz. Wicked can only exist as a product if the iconic images of Munchkinland, the Yellow Brick Road, the Witch’s Tower, the Wizard’s room, the Emerald City. The movie unironically shows you these Things You Know to give you that serotonin boost from a feeling of nostalgia, that gets carried on to branded hairbrushes at Great Clips.
The facade of Oz in the movie is literally the exact facade Wicked gets to hide behind in the real world to avoid telling an interesting story. We ignore the genocide, we do not really reform any institutions, and the movie still ends the way the first one started, with the burning of an effigy of Elphaba. As far as I’m concerned, this is just Reconstruction, everything stays basically the same even if the people are different and things are called something different.
I Still Know What You Did Last Wicked misses mark in the most guilty way possible, however: the music. Holy s**t the book is weaaaaak. They already established they’re willing to add new music, why oh f*****g why is there not a Wicked: The Pre-Sequel medley reprise somewhere in the final act? Like what the hell? Why, oh f*****g, why do I not get to hear “Defying Gravity” and “Popular” one last time? Are you f*****g kidding me?
Here, I’ll fantasy book it.
When Glinda and Elphaba are in the Emperor’s throne room from Star Wars shortly before (spoiler) Elphaba fakes her death, we get a dramatic Frozen esque scene where both Elphaba and Glinda are on opposite sides of door so Glinda can hide while Elphaba is “killed.” They’re singing whatever song they’re singing, but imagine if they did just a few lines of somber reprisal from “Popular,” perhaps Elphaba realizing that, while Glinda did make her popular, the flying monkey’s paw dilemma has also made her a pariah. Then have Glinda sing about how proud she is of Elphaba for doing the right thing while she sings a few lines from “Defying Gravity.” The duet could last one minute or less and I would’ve been happy. But no. That never happens.
