the goop lab launches January 24 on Netflix.
By Elazar Abrahams
So I spent time watching the Goop show. Yeah, laugh it up. I wasn’t planning on throwing away an hour and a half watching three of the six episodes, but Netflix delivered the season to my inbox so politely! Given the online chatter about the show’s erm, suggestive poster and the news stories about Gwyneth Paltrow’s ehh, unique scented candle, I just had to throw this docu-series on in the background. Let me tell you, it is sure to be critically-maligned.
In each 30-minute installment, Paltrow sends random Goop staffers to far-out locations to test the wacky health fads her lifestyle brand loves to promote. The first episode finds the team flying to Jamaica where mushrooms and other psychedelics are legal. We get to see them sample the drugs… for research purposes? Okay, sure. In the next adventure, Wim Hof (known as the “Ice Man”) teaches the gang of privileged bloggers how submerging themselves in freezing lakes has big health benefits. A quick Google search shows that this is heavily disputed. Knowing the past controversies Goop has been a part of, it is probably best to take everything claimed on screen here as a grain of salt. The third episode focuses on “female pleasure,” complete with lots of vulva talk. That is when I shut my laptop and powered it down.
After my morning binge of goop lab, instead of processing the garbage I had just watched, I spent time contemplating how an A-list actress with a phenomenal movie career in front of her settled for becoming a snake oil saleswoman shilling out phony products for ridiculous prices to other rich fools. Hey, at least she also got to be Iron Man’s girlfriend.
Perhaps this new series is best summed up by the disclaimer that appears at the top of each episode: “The following is designed to entertain and inform – not provide medical advice. You should always consult your doctor when it comes to your personal, or before you start any treatment.” No doubt when negative headlines about the show start rolling in, the creators will point to that and claim no harm was done.
This Friday, consider consciously uncoupling from Netflix.
I give the goop lab a D-.
TV and City 