I'm Stephen Maccalf, and this is the Slate Culture Gab Fest, Always Re-Gather edition.

It's Wednesday, May 12th, 2021.

On today's show, Girls FiveEva comes to us from the Tina Thay Comedy Factory. It's about a spice

girls like girl group reuniting in middle age. It's on Peacock, the streaming service of NBC.

I understand it. I think that's what that is. And then, which vaccine did you get? Apparently,

even a huge public works campaign undertaken in the spirit of universal

well-being can be turned into a status competition in 2021. What else did we expect? With Pfizer

is the most supposedly statusy symbolic of all the jabs, this is crazy. And finally,

the disciple is currently up on Netflix. It tells the story of a youngish musician in Mumbai,

trying to keep alive the tradition of Indian classical music

in an otherwise indifferent world.

We'll be joined by Justin Chang of the L.A. Times,

the great film critic, who has been championing this film as maybe the best of the year.

Joining me now is Julia Turner, the deputy managing editor of the LA Times, Julia. Hey, how's it going?

Hello.

And of course, Dana Stevens is the film critic, the also wonderful film critic of Slate.com. Hey, Dana,

how's it going? Hi. Pretty good. Uh, shall we? Shall we dig in? Let's do it.

Girls Five Eva is a girl group from the 90s, a one-hit wonder who disbanded, whose members

each found their way into fame's somewhat pitiless afterlife.

Fast forward to now when a rapper named Little Stinker has sampled their hit, they get asked

to back him live on Fallon's show, and you have the basis for a Tina Fey shepherded sitcom.

The creator here is Meredith Scardino, a writer on Faye's Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

...