BFFs Lindy West and Meagan Hatcher-Mays (Text Me Back! Podcast) join Sam to dive into what pop culture gets right (and wrong) about friendships. The duo share their hot takes with Sam, make a case for renaming Love Island to Friendship Island, and ask if MTV’s The Real World ruined the country. Plus, should some problematic celebrities (cough *Cardi B* cough) get a pass for being too real? Watch the conversation!

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For not having really watched Love Island, it is a television program that comes up a LOT on my show. Take this week, for instance:

“A thing I realized the other day is that the show [Love Island] should be called Friendship Island,” Lindy West explains. “Because, by far, the most compelling part of the show is the bond between the guys and the bond between the girls. None of these [romantic] relationships are making it off the set.”

I brought on Lindy and her friend Meagan Hatcher-Mays to offer up some pop culture hot takes this week, on a particular theme: friendship. In large part because the two cohost a podcast all about friendship called Text Me Back. And also because they’re around my age and share a bunch of pop culture touchstones with me.

We’re on the same page when it comes to portrayals of friendship in popular culture: We want more of it, and we want it to be good. Deep friendships often last longer than most romantic relationships in our lives. So why don’t we get more friend movies than rom-coms and romances?

Can I offer you up one of my hot takes on friendship? (I don’t care if you say yes or no, I’m offering it up to you anyway.) I think some of the most nuanced portrayals of friendship on screen – friendships that evolve, and find connection across differences – are TV shows and movies about the police. Legal procedurals, buddy cop caper films, etc. You know the trope: one officer is a woman, the other a man. Or one is Black, and the other white. And they have to come together to solve the crime, beat the bad guys, and become better people. I love this entire subgenre, but what does it say about American society that these nuanced portrayals of platonic relationships have to be served with a side of copaganda?

You’ll have to watch or listen to the entire episode to catch more of Lindy and Meagan’s hot takes, including their theory that The Real World/Road Rules cinematic universe can entirely explain our current state of politics. Cardi B also comes up in the episode, as well as an entirely hilarious interlude about the ways friendships are forged in women’s bathrooms at nightclubs after midnight.

FRESH RECS

With that, I’ll leave you with one more thing: It’s a Song of the Summer. In fact, I’d call it THEE song of the summer. For years now, I’ve been seeing headlines declaring that we’ll never have a true song of the summer again. Our internet/streaming/on-demand era has so diminished the monoculture that it’s now impossible for one tune to capture the zeitgeist of everyone’s summer.

But as my previous show guest Tressie McMillam-Cottom pointed out, that theory doesn’t really hold for Black people this year. Our song of the summer is a little ditty by an artist called 803Fresh called “Boots On The Ground.” I won’t try to explain it to you, but I will point out that you’ve probably seen or heard this dance before, even if you aren’t sure you have. There are countless videos of fan-wielding Beyoncé concert-goers, and cookout attendees, and family reunion crowds dancing to this song’s totally irresistible refrain: “Where ‘dem fans at?” It’s become ubiquitous in certain corners of the culture and the Internet, and this week, it became even more addictive, with a new remix.

American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino lent her vocals to the remix of “Boots On The Ground,” and it’s dare I say perfect? Perfect barbecue energy. Perfect cookout energy. Perfect Song of the Summer energy, in fact. I urge you to play this song loudly and learn the dance that accompanies it – with your friends!

Happy weekend, and lemme know what your personal song of the summer is. I’m very curious.

— Sam