Robyn Bahr
By Robyn Bahr
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Life ‘Orange Is the New Black’ Season 4 Brings Deeper Issues — but Less Passion
I’ll admit, I’m an “Orange is the New Black” crier. No, “sobber” is probably more accurate. I blubbered through the bittersweet second season finale, hot tears raining down my cheeks as ball-busting Miss Rosa, in a final bid for freedom before she succumbs to cancer, mows down the villainous Vee in a stolen prison van…
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Life Vibrant Documentary ‘Author’: The JT LeRoy Story Questions How We Invent Identities
The truth of fiction is that it is all lies. None of it happened. It was all made up. Of course, we don’t think of fiction in these moralistic terms – after all, we’re complicit in the exchange. People wouldn’t spend billions of dollars annually for their eyeballs to suck in candy-colored CGI fantasy worlds…
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Life ‘UnREAL’ Is Back and More Biting Than Ever in Season 2
One minute you’re getting matching “Money. Dick. Power” tattoos with your boss-slash-best frenemy. The next minute, the last part of that mantra comes back to bite you after you both vie for it and lose. Just another day in show business, right? So begins the second season of “UnREAL,” which premieres today. The show smashed…
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Life Broad City’s ‘Jews on a Plane’ Finale Has In-Jokes For Everyone
As people of color continue to lunge against the tide of Hollywood’s systemic discrimination, the past three years of television have borne witness to a revolution of representation for a different hidden-in-plain site demographic: Jewish women. While the 1980s and 1990s ushered in an era of highly visible Jewish performers and programming, from Seinfeld to…
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Life ‘Inside Amy Schumer’ Starts New Season — but It’s ‘Surprisingly Soggy’
“She’s broken the heart of over a thousand men… with her bare hands. She didn’t just take back the night… she took back the whole f—cking week.” These aren’t stale “Chuck Norris facts” from the Internet’s toddler days, but the opening narration of “Inside Amy Schumer” for its surprisingly soggy fourth season. The show returns…
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Life ‘Crazy Jewish Mom’ Book Seeks Publicity By Insulting Female Publicists
Another day, another viral social media phenomenon. Suri’s Burn Book, Feminist Ryan Gosling, Reasons My Son Is Crying — do you recall these breezy, one-joke concepts that ruled your procrastination rabbit holes during slow days at the office? You laughed, you scrolled all the way through the archives, and you shared posts with friends. Then,…
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Life Nora Ephron’s Son Takes Mom’s Advice in ‘Everything is Copy’
The biggest buzzword right now in the field of psychology might be “resilience” – that vague and desirable quality of being able to weather whatever crisis life throws at you and bounce back again, stronger than ever. Yet, as Jacob Bernstein argues in “Everything is Copy,” his loving but candid documentary about his cultural icon…
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Life Cable TV’s Mothers Come Out — As Jewish, and Sexual
Is there a television stock character more recognizable than the Jewish Mother? From Molly Goldberg and Ida Morgenstern to the more coded matrons of the popular Jewish-ish ’90s sitcoms, these mothers were interfering, loud, obsessive women who carried smothering affection in their zaftig frames, imbuing their children with guilt and insecurity in equal measure. They…
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Culture ‘A Complete Unknown’ proves that one thing about Bob Dylan will certainly endure
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