Sidebar: Mollipede Edition

Taylor's reviews, the Mollipede, and other fascinations from this week

This is my weekly roundup of links and recommendations. If we talked IRL, I’d likely derail our entire conversation with “sidebar, have you read | watched | listened | deep dived on this?”

Have you watched?

The Nanny (Peacock)

Before Fran Drescher was a SAG President and Labor Activist (TM), she was the star of this classic comedy of a woman from Queens who becomes a nanny for a straight man producing Broadway Shows. I haven’t seen this in forever, but the theme song is itself a classic. It’s so bold to reveal the entire plot in the theme song and just expect we’ll still watch. I wonder if that alone would suffice on TikTok these days. I’ve been enjoying this as a “chill out before bed” show.

Franklin (Apple)

I don’t know what happened to Michael Douglas, but this man is making me feel things as Ben Franklin. He feels perfectly cast as a person with enough charisma to carry off portraying Franklin in Paris where he attempts to form an alliance with France during the Revolution. I find his grandson annoying, but then again, can anyone in this family compete? There is a kind of grudging acknowledgment on Franklin’s part that maybe he wasn’t the kindest husband or family man and he is trying to make up for it now. I am interested to see where this is going. John Adams just arrived in the last episode available now and you KNOW that’s going to be drama (a nerd who can’t drive can’t really hang with Franklin, to paraphrase Clueless).