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Image: Archi Banal
Image: Archi Banal

Pop CultureJune 24, 2023

The worst TV show Janaye Henry has ever seen

Image: Archi Banal
Image: Archi Banal

The comedian and star of 2 Cents 2 Much opens up about Hi-5 crushes, Ms Frizzle’s wardrobe and the abject horror of The Idol. 

It’s been a big year for Janaye Henry. The comedian and actor is fresh from a Billy T nominated season in the New Zealand International Comedy Festival and has just launched her brand new online chat show, hosted on The Spinoff, called 2 Cents 2 Much. Made for people who don’t listen to talkback or sit down for the 6pm news every night, Henry will be joined by expert guests every week to tackle everything from the revitalisation of te reo Māori to the cost of living crisis. So what better time to ask for her two cents on her favourite television moments?

My earliest TV memory is… Either Hi-5 or Blues Clues. I would quite often change up who my favourite was on Hi-5 and I don’t know what that says about me. Maybe it speaks to a lack of loyalty, but it doesn’t feel good. I think most people picked one and stuck with them, but for me it was anyone but Nathan. I would change a lot but it was never Nathan. 

The TV show I used to rush home from school to watch was… The Erin Simpson Show. Honestly, it was mainly the theme song of The Erin Simpson Show. I don’t think I cared about the content. I won a CD from her show and it was some DJ’s mixtape, like literally a DJ’s mixtape burnt onto a CD. No cover art or anything, just a disc in the mail. I honestly think she was just doing a flat clearout and getting rid of shit that she didn’t want anymore. 

My earliest TV crush was… Again, one of the Hi-5 girlies. I’d say Charlie out of all of them.

The TV ad I can’t stop thinking about is… There’s a few. Those ACC ads where people were falling off ladders were horrific. The drunk driving ones are a part of New Zealand history. But then I always think about those infomercials for a ladder that can do 67 things, or the “Ahh Bra”. I actually bought an Ahh Bra when I was way too young. There’s nothing to it at all, it’s like wearing a very loose singlet. I was 15 and I really don’t know what I was going through there. 

Janaye bought an Ahh Bra at 15

My TV guilty pleasure is… Probably Glee. I do feel a bit guilty about it because I don’t trust what the show is, I don’t trust the people in it and I don’t trust the people who made it. But it’s my life hack – and this is just guilt on guilt now – that if I want to listen to a song that has been cancelled, I just listen to the Glee version. For example, I will not listen to Robin Thicke’s ‘Blurred Lines’, but I will listen to the Glee cast version. It feels slightly better. 

My favourite TV moment is… The moment in Schitt’s Creek where Moira is marrying two people (I won’t give spoilers) and she turns around and she’s in this wig that is to the floor. That really spoke to me. 

My favourite TV character of all time… Kat Edison from The Bold Type [currently on TVNZ+]. She’s just really, really cool and I haven’t seen many characters like her before who are young and driven but flawed, but still have most of their shit together. I feel like so many young characters on screen are so sloppy and she’s just not like that.  

The most stylish person on TV is… Ms Frizzle from the Magic School Bus, undoubtedly. I think the worst version of myself dresses rockabilly – love and light to those who do – but I think Ms Frizzle is where you turn that corner. The silhouette still goes in at the waist and then it flares out, but the dress doesn’t have polka dots on it and we’re not doing rock and roll dancing. I truly think Ms Frizzle is a queer icon. We never saw a love interest, but I am sure she’s queer. She’s so queer coded. She has a pet lizard!

My most used streaming platform is… Netflix. It was the first one I knew about, and also my sister pays for it. I know that they’re trying to like stop people from sharing accounts, but mine still works. Until I’m locked out, I’ll be there. 

Ms Frizzle, style icon

My favourite TV project I’ve ever been involved in is… Hands down it is 2 Cents 2 Much. It’s like all the creatives on it were able to just open my brain up and look at it and make everything happen. All the way down to the wardrobe and the art department it was absolute heaven. It’s like we took all these people in the industry who are at the top of their games, and I’ve been allowed to let loose with this incredible team and make this really cool thing happen. And I got to co-write it with my bestie [Gabby Anderson]. You know when you’re in year three and you talk about what you’re going to do when you’re older? We just did it. 

The TV show that defined my lockdown is… The Ring Inz on Whakaata Māori. During lockdown I was doing te reo Māori immersively full time, and so I was trying to watch a lot of shows that use reo Pākeha and reo Māori, so I watched a lot of The Ring Inz. It’s about a kapa haka roopu who are trying to get good. It’s pretty fun and silly. 

The TV show I wish I had been involved in is… Desperate Housewives. My flatmate and I re-watched the whole series, which is seven seasons, across all of last year. It is just heaven. It shifts genres sometimes – sometimes it’s horror, sometimes it’s a romcom, there’s just so much happening. It also helps that the cast in real life are so scandalous. Ugh, it’s just heaven and I would have loved to have been in it. I don’t think I could have been a housewife because they are all so skinny and conventionally attractive, but I reckon they would have let me be a checkout operator or something. 

Desperate Housewives is a genre shifting masterpiece.

My most watched TV show of all time is… Dance Moms. I don’t think it says good things about me that the sound of children being psychologically tormented is soothing to my brain, but I’m obsessed. It’s just so good. The latest seasons get weaker once that core cast go, but I’m across everything Dance Moms. I’m obsessed with it.

My most controversial TV take is… Game of Thrones is really boring and a huge flop-erina. Too many names. My favourite character was Joffrey, but they killed him off so I stopped watching. There’s just too many names, and they are always talking about each other and I’m just sitting there like “I don’t know who the bloody hell you are talking about”.

A show I will never watch, no matter how many people say I should is… Breaking Bad. All I’ve heard about it is that it is men making drugs in a caravan? None of that sounds interesting to me. It sounds like Skins for adults. I already watched Skins when I was a teen, so I don’t need it. 

The last thing I watched on TV was… This is humiliating, but it’s The Idol. I’d heard all the things about it and I wanted to be a part of the conversation and I really regret it. I think the The Weeknd is a bad, bad man and that’s not defamation because it’s my honestly held opinion. There’s a lengthy scene with The Weeknd talking dirty, and it is truly the hardest watch I’ve ever sat through and I’ve seen the second Human Centipede.

Watch Janaye Henry in 2 Cents 2 Much here – new episodes every Tuesday. Read last week’s My Life in TV with Chris Parker here

Keep going!
Netflix hosts eat a fruit platter in a pool.
Luis D. Ortiz, Jo Franco and Megan Batoon from The World’s Most Amazing Vacation Rentals. (Photo: Netflix / Design: Archi Banal)

Pop CultureJune 23, 2023

Why mindless TV is more important than ever

Netflix hosts eat a fruit platter in a pool.
Luis D. Ortiz, Jo Franco and Megan Batoon from The World’s Most Amazing Vacation Rentals. (Photo: Netflix / Design: Archi Banal)

A celebration of the shows we turn to when we can’t handle the (real-life) drama.

This is an excerpt from The Spinoff’s Friday pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here.

“I skateboarded through the neighbourhood,” announces Luis D Ortiz. He kicks the back of his board up, drops onto a bright blue stroller near his Netflix co-host Jo Franco, and exhales. Ortiz, one of three friends fronting the vapid holiday series The World’s Most Amazing Vacation Rentals, has been rolling his way through the leafy suburb of Wisconsin’s Two Rivers in search of cultural insights. He didn’t find any. “Even though it didn’t catch on,” says Ortiz about the 1940s holiday home from famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright he’s been staying in, “it rocked the entire world.”

Mindless? Definitely. Informative? Absolutely not. Now into its second season, Amazing Vacation Rentals jets its hosts into stunning locations to gush over homes with great bones, sweeping vistas and eye-watering price tags. They’ve scored their dream jobs, and they know it. The trio chat, giggle, gasp and gawk. Franco has a habit of pointing at windows and ceilings and saying: “That’s art.” Megan Batoon calls at least three things “a masterpiece” in every episode. They breeze through each home spouting enough drivel to fill every room.

Three hosts do downward dog in a pool
Namaste nonsense on The World’s Most Amazing Vacation Rentals. (Photo: Netflix)

It’s about as vapid as TV can get. You’re not turning on a TV show like this expecting an education. You’re there to switch off your brain and zonk out. In one episode, they eat a fruit platter in a pool after doing downward dog on floating stand-up paddleboards. In another, they spend the night in sleeping bags glamping in a UFO-shaped orb. In Two Rivers, Ortiz sits on a hot pink toilet for a laugh. “I’m in the bathroom! I’m using it!” he yells, swinging the door wide open. That’s it. That’s the show. It never, ever gets any deeper than that.

That’s exactly how I like it. Right now, this inane nonsense is the only kind of TV my bothered brain can handle. I’ve just moved house and every room is filled floor-to-ceiling with cardboard boxes. There are things that need doing everywhere I look. Beds need to be made. Clothes need to be sorted. The kitchen looks like we need the Ajax Spray’n’Wipe clean-up crew to hit it harder than that time Brendon Pongia farted during a cooking segment on live TV. Even finding a glass to drink out of is a mission.

I’m stressed. So, for comfort, I turn to TV’s least informative hosts. They’re not going to compound my problems. They won’t make me struggle to understand the inner workings of a family-owned media conglomerate, or a dystopian society in which women are forced to have babies, or immerse me in an apocalypse in which a grieving father tries to turn humanity’s last hope into his new daughter.

Instead, every time is a good time. There are laughs, giggles and high fives. In a stunning Joshua Tree rental made out of mirrored glass, they fall asleep under the stars. In the morning, they do laps in the pool. Yes, Ortiz brought his skateboard. He uses it to get around inside.

Amazing Vacation Rentals does exactly what it says it will do, and absolutely nothing more. It hits my zonk-out pleasure zone like nothing else. Everyone seems to have their own version of this, some kind of brain balm to soothe trouble souls. My desk neighbour Anna Rawhiti-Connell tells me she turns to a different Netflix real estate show, Selling Sunset. She’s been watching episodes every night to help her switch off. “There is no war, politics, recession or poverty, just an endless parade of hideous luxury clothing and homes in the Hollywood Hills,” she says. I get it. I’m not judging.

Sam Brooks has professed his love for YouTube many times before, and it’s the thing he uses to calm his nervous system. Lately, he’s been watching compilation videos from American Dad, The Nanny and 30 Rock. It’s equal parts comfort and nostalgia. “They rub that part of my brain that makes me laugh and also reminds me of an easier, warmer time.” My wife watches Queer Eye on Netflix for a similar reason. “Every episode you’re guaranteed a happy ending,” she says. Another colleague falls asleep to an episode of The Simpsons playing in a single earbud – but only from seasons three to nine.

Early episodes of The Simpsons are the best kind of Simpsons.

Alex Casey has a variation on this. She watches YouTube gardening tours, which she calls “a very soothing and wholesome background noise to fold the washing to with many useful tips to absorb”. Her favourite is SpicyMoustache, a heavily tattooed Italian charmer with an incredible urban vege garden in London. “Watching a seed grow into a giant broccoli feels like the perfect antidote to the digital deluge, a reminder to slow down and get your hands dirty,” she says.

Perhaps that’s the point. There are thousands of better shows out there that could improve my intelligence, teach me something about the world, or challenge my core beliefs. But it’s rough out there. The cost of living continues to escalate. Interest rates keep rising. People are being mean. Someone cut me off on the motorway recently and had the audacity to give me the finger. There’s a time and a place for The Handmaid’s Tale and The Last of Us, but when you’re unpacking a new home, still trying to sort out wifi, and dealing with road rage – that’s not it.

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