I have a friend who is amazing at his job, and he’ll talk to work people while I’m still on the phone because I enjoy listening to him work. Now I know, it’s competency porn!! Hahaha! And, my own stories of attraction make so much sense after reading your story. Thank you!
What a read substack bestie, and you made me think a lot, so I apologize for what is about to happen.
Competence is no longer merely attractive. It is countercultural. We live in an age that has somehow confused self-presentation with substance, as though a good headshot, a personal brand, and the phrase “just circling back” are adequate substitutes for actually knowing what the hell you’re doing. Society is now so overrun with polished incompetence that the simple sight of someone handling reality with calm, useful skill feels less like attraction and more like a religious awakening. Not a full denomination, maybe. But definitely a chapel.
There was a time, perhaps, when mystery was seductive. The brooding stranger. The artistic soul. The handsome disaster leaning against a doorway like he personally invented longing. But adulthood is a merciless editor. At some point you stop wanting mystery and start wanting someone who knows where the passports are. The older I get, the less interested I am in charisma that can hold a wine glass and the more moved I am by a person who can reset the router without requiring a family summit, an emotional breakthrough, and a blood oath.
Because that is the thing no one tells you when you are young and drunk on chemistry: attraction changes when life begins making demands. It changes when the child has a fever, the basement floods, the dog eats something medically ambitious, the insurance claim gets denied, the school form is due, the car makes a sound like an Old Testament warning, and somebody in the room has to remain a person. That is when the pageant ends. That is when cheekbones clock out and competence takes the throne.
And maybe that is why competence hits so deeply. Not because it is flashy. Quite the opposite. Competence is rarely glamorous. It does not enter to applause. It enters carrying a flashlight, a charger, and a realistic sense of next steps. Glamour says, “Behold me.” Competence says, “Try not to touch that wire.” Glamour wants to be desired. Competence wants the smoke alarm to stop screaming. One of these is fun at a dinner party. The other is the reason the house is still standing.
Hot people are everywhere. Useful people are rare.
That, I suspect, is why competence exerts such strange emotional gravity. It is not just admiration. It is relief. It is the nervous system recognizing that someone in the vicinity is not about to become additional chaos. In fact, they may reduce it. They may even absorb some of it without theatrical collapse. And for those of us who have spent enough time around people who confuse volume for leadership, panic for urgency, or confidence for wisdom, that steadiness can feel almost indecently intimate. Nothing says “take me now” quite like a person who can stay calm while opening a PDF, calling the pediatrician, and locating the breaker box.
What makes competence beautiful is that it is not perfection. God protect us from the perfectly curated. Perfection is usually just anxiety with expensive lighting. Competence is something sturdier and far more human. It allows for flaws, rough edges, bad moods, odd habits, and the occasional irrational stance on how the dishwasher should be loaded. But when the moment comes, the competent person shows up inside reality instead of fleeing into performance. They do not need to look like the hero. They are too busy being useful.
And usefulness, when joined to love, becomes something close to sacred.
Because competence, at its best, is not just efficiency. It is care with muscle. It is attention that knows how to act. It is tenderness with a clipboard. It is love in sensible shoes. Love that remembers the appointment. Love that asks the right question in the emergency room. Love that can de-escalate a crisis, file a claim, refill the prescription, make the spreadsheet behave, and still hand you a glass of water before you realized you needed one. We talk a great deal about love as feeling, and fair enough, humans adore a mood. But competence is love with an operational budget.
That may be why so many of us are drawn, over and over again, to stories in which capable people walk into chaos and make it navigable. Not because we long for perfection, but because we long for order that does not humiliate us. We long for the quiet reassurance that problems, while still real, may not be fatal in the hands of someone who knows what matters. Incompetence exhausts because it turns every difficulty into a referendum on whether civilization deserves to continue. Competence, by contrast, can make even disaster feel survivable. It does not erase pain. It just gives pain a plan.
And in a culture drunk on spectacle, that kind of grounded mastery has become almost erotic in its rarity. We are surrounded by people performing expertise as a personality trait. Everybody is a thought leader until the printer jams. Everybody is a visionary until the toddler vomits on the way to soccer. Everybody has a podcast voice until the flight is canceled and the gate changes three times and suddenly the sexiest person in America is a middle-aged woman in orthopedic sneakers saying, “No, don’t get in that line. I already called.”
That is the real seduction. Not mystery. Not swagger. Not the well-lit fraudulence of seeming impressive from across the room. Trust. The deep animal exhale of knowing this person will not vanish when things get hard. They will not turn one problem into six. They will not hold a meeting about having a meeting about the possibility of someday addressing the issue. They will not post a reflective caption while the kitchen burns. They will show up. They will assess. They will act. They will probably also have tissues, and honestly, at that point you are dealing with dangerous levels of allure.
Because what is attraction, finally, if not the body’s way of making an argument? And what competence argues, quietly but powerfully, is this: you do not have to carry the whole storm alone.
That is why competence feels bigger than a preference. Bigger than a type. Bigger even than chemistry. Chemistry is exciting. Competence is sustaining. Chemistry can light a room. Competence can keep the pipes from freezing. Chemistry makes for excellent songs and regrettable texts. Competence builds a life you can stand inside. And when you have lived long enough to see what unreliability costs, that difference stops being theoretical very quickly.
So yes, competence is attractive. But that word almost undersells it. Competence is one of the last remaining civic sacraments. A visible sign that somebody, somewhere, still takes reality seriously. Still knows how to convert care into action. Still believes that if a thing needs doing, it ought to be done well. In an era of posturing, that feels miraculous. In an era of instability, it feels safe. In an era where so many people have mastered the art of looking prepared while quietly becoming the reason everything is worse, competence feels like grace with a tool belt.
And perhaps that is why it lands so hard in love. Because eventually romance stops being just about who makes your pulse race and becomes, at least in part, about who helps your pulse return to normal. Who steadies the room. Who handles what can be handled. Who shows up again and again in the plain clothes of reliability until you realize that dependability, in the right light, is more ravishing than almost anything else on earth.
The truly compelling person, in the end, is not the one who dazzles from a distance. It is the one who can enter a mess, emotional or logistical or existential, and without fanfare say, “Here’s what we do next.”
That is not just sexy.
That is civilization.
That is grace.
And for those of us who have learned the hard way what it costs to rely on people who only know how to look the part, it may be the closest thing to romance that does not lie.
First, I wonder if there is some completion where writers compete to say the most thought provoking things under severe time constraints. You would be world champion.
Second, I am in awe of you. No sarcasm, sorry, just a complement I know will feel uncomfortable.
Three: it's like you know my husband "Competence is something sturdier and far more human. It allows for flaws, rough edges, bad moods, odd habits, and the occasional irrational stance on how the dishwasher should be loaded." That dishwasher thing!!!
Four. This line should be widely distributed, it so full of wisdom:: "Because eventually romance stops being just about who makes your pulse race and becomes, at least in part, about who helps your pulse return to normal."
Ok wow… I think you’ve just unpacked something I’ve been drawn to my whole life and never connected the dots on, while also adding a porn reference lol 😂 But also, reading this, I can feel it from a nervous system perspective too. There’s something incredibly regulating about watching (or being around) people who are deeply competent. Like your whole body just softens a little because someone else has it handled (could be a kink, who’s to say 🙃) And when I think about it, that makes so much sense, especially if you’ve spent periods of your life in uncertainty or emotional chaos. Of course you’d be drawn to that kind of steadiness. It’s not just attractive, it’s safe. I can see it in my own life too. That pull toward people who can walk into something messy and just… know what to do. There’s a calm in that which goes way beyond logic. And I think that’s why it hits the way it does. It’s not just admiration, it’s your system recognising something it can rest into. Anyway, that’s just some brain dump thoughts on that in real time.
“Competency porn” such a good name for it 😂 (god I feel old) and also, way deeper than it sounds.
Yes, yes yes to all of this. I laughed so hard when I heard the term and it was so unexpectedly poignant. You should've seen my 18-year-old's face when I was talking about it at home, I thought he was gonna die😉.
That way, it's not just attractive. It's safe, feels so right to me. I think sometimes the word safe gets a bad reputation, but safety in relationship should be an absolute necessity.
M also I just wanna say I'm so glad to be in this community with you, I love hearing your thoughts.
I have a strong feeling that your husband is my soulmate (too).
Jokes apart, I completely get it.
I just wish I had someone in my life growing up who held their ground when I couldn't, someone I could look up to and model, instead of learning to regulate and function all by myself.
Now, I freak out occasionally when I'm entirely hopeless and feel trapped—but definitely not as much as I used to. That feels like progress and I hope it is.
Needless to say that I too am attracted to the men who're collected. You're not alone, T.
It sounds to me like you were doing some important work. And I will definitely acknowledge that having a partner helps, but there have been times I can lean on him like a crutch. I've had to learn to stand on my own and grow my own confidence too. It sounds like you are doing that part first, but that also means you will be someone else else's confident partner one day and what a gift that will be to someone else.
I never thought about it before, but you’re right there’s something deeply reassuring about watching competent people in action. Thanks for introducing me to the term competency porn!
I loved those same two TV shows....and now you taught me why. My 4th husband (long story), is extremely competent in many things...in a completely different field than my competency. I don't know it we're the perfect match, but I think we have deep respect for each other, and that's a LOT.
That is quite huge I think. And I felt the same way as you when I heard the phrase, he said in realization of what was happening that I had never articulated.
Both the shows you mentioned are some of my absolute favorites, Grey's Anatomy is the current show I feel it shows the competence and the messy humanity. It is exciting watching people solve complex problems. Watson on Peacock is a newer version of this...
In the era of Epstein, it’s a shame that competency, capable, crisis management, tackling what ever with skill, has the public attaching the word porn. I’m old enough to find that a “turn off”.
Omg. While I couldn’t ever get into ER (trypanophobia), we are huge fans of *The West Wing*. But only after giving up on it in the first season (blame Mandy) and then returning to it the following year after my wife watched an episode with my SIL and her husband while visiting.
While your message seems to focus on crisis management competencies (and the confidence of those who manage those crises), mine is often a little bit different. Gifted authors, speakers, stage performers in musical theatre and rock or country musicians, and even therapists demonstrating their crafts…
I’m welling up as I type this, recalling Esther Perel, casts of countless Broadway and touring musicals, and multiple concerts.
The first time it hit me, I was at a tour stop for Huey Lewis nearly 15 years ago. The album was covers of 14 little-known hits from former Stax Records. He had originals in the show as well (because this is what fans really want to see). And the Venue was a casino showroom. Nothing huge.
I felt like I was in their garage. Maybe it was that sense I had or the memory of playing with friends in high school and college to a full house (yes, an actual house) of other friends, jamming to what we loved and for each other.
Perhaps in your examples, competency porn includes crisis porn as a subset. I’m drawn to the artistically creative stuff a whole lot more than the intervention stuff. Though, apparently, ADHD (per my therapist’s psychoeducation at one point) is great for fast and busy restaurant kitchens, ERs, first responders, and, yes, Starbucks baristas (both my kids have excelled there).
I simply love your addition. I am not very musical myself, but every time I have been to a Broadway show I woke up with tears and feelings of overwhelmed. Thank you for helping me name what was going on for me. You are right, there are all types of competency, foreign, crisis confidence is just one of them I think.
I wonder if the level of confidence of those who demonstrate competency isn’t something that attracts us. We go (in The West Wing) from (I’m sure I’m not spoiling much in a show pilot over 25 years old!) a President hitting a tree while riding a bicycle. The Deputy Communications Director having hooked up with a sex worker who smokes cannabis. Pretty small crises to those who don’t feel strongly against sex work and marijuana use.
But the crises get bigger. And the point isn’t the crises for me. It’s the relationships. The banter. The Sam and Josh. The Toby and CJ. The Leo and Jeb or Jeb and Delores Landingham.
And we cannot have story without friction. (Still listening to Esther Perel being interviewed by Trevor Noah (her podcast 7/7/25).
I have a friend who is amazing at his job, and he’ll talk to work people while I’m still on the phone because I enjoy listening to him work. Now I know, it’s competency porn!! Hahaha! And, my own stories of attraction make so much sense after reading your story. Thank you!
Haha. It's the best name, isn't it?!
Terrific!
Totally! 💯😆
This is my love language!
Same!
This is very touching, and very relatable. George Clooney and ER soothed me through many a crisis in my youth 😊
Apparently, I am VERY not alone in my early love of George.
It’s definitely porn though.😂
What a read substack bestie, and you made me think a lot, so I apologize for what is about to happen.
Competence is no longer merely attractive. It is countercultural. We live in an age that has somehow confused self-presentation with substance, as though a good headshot, a personal brand, and the phrase “just circling back” are adequate substitutes for actually knowing what the hell you’re doing. Society is now so overrun with polished incompetence that the simple sight of someone handling reality with calm, useful skill feels less like attraction and more like a religious awakening. Not a full denomination, maybe. But definitely a chapel.
There was a time, perhaps, when mystery was seductive. The brooding stranger. The artistic soul. The handsome disaster leaning against a doorway like he personally invented longing. But adulthood is a merciless editor. At some point you stop wanting mystery and start wanting someone who knows where the passports are. The older I get, the less interested I am in charisma that can hold a wine glass and the more moved I am by a person who can reset the router without requiring a family summit, an emotional breakthrough, and a blood oath.
Because that is the thing no one tells you when you are young and drunk on chemistry: attraction changes when life begins making demands. It changes when the child has a fever, the basement floods, the dog eats something medically ambitious, the insurance claim gets denied, the school form is due, the car makes a sound like an Old Testament warning, and somebody in the room has to remain a person. That is when the pageant ends. That is when cheekbones clock out and competence takes the throne.
And maybe that is why competence hits so deeply. Not because it is flashy. Quite the opposite. Competence is rarely glamorous. It does not enter to applause. It enters carrying a flashlight, a charger, and a realistic sense of next steps. Glamour says, “Behold me.” Competence says, “Try not to touch that wire.” Glamour wants to be desired. Competence wants the smoke alarm to stop screaming. One of these is fun at a dinner party. The other is the reason the house is still standing.
Hot people are everywhere. Useful people are rare.
That, I suspect, is why competence exerts such strange emotional gravity. It is not just admiration. It is relief. It is the nervous system recognizing that someone in the vicinity is not about to become additional chaos. In fact, they may reduce it. They may even absorb some of it without theatrical collapse. And for those of us who have spent enough time around people who confuse volume for leadership, panic for urgency, or confidence for wisdom, that steadiness can feel almost indecently intimate. Nothing says “take me now” quite like a person who can stay calm while opening a PDF, calling the pediatrician, and locating the breaker box.
What makes competence beautiful is that it is not perfection. God protect us from the perfectly curated. Perfection is usually just anxiety with expensive lighting. Competence is something sturdier and far more human. It allows for flaws, rough edges, bad moods, odd habits, and the occasional irrational stance on how the dishwasher should be loaded. But when the moment comes, the competent person shows up inside reality instead of fleeing into performance. They do not need to look like the hero. They are too busy being useful.
And usefulness, when joined to love, becomes something close to sacred.
Because competence, at its best, is not just efficiency. It is care with muscle. It is attention that knows how to act. It is tenderness with a clipboard. It is love in sensible shoes. Love that remembers the appointment. Love that asks the right question in the emergency room. Love that can de-escalate a crisis, file a claim, refill the prescription, make the spreadsheet behave, and still hand you a glass of water before you realized you needed one. We talk a great deal about love as feeling, and fair enough, humans adore a mood. But competence is love with an operational budget.
That may be why so many of us are drawn, over and over again, to stories in which capable people walk into chaos and make it navigable. Not because we long for perfection, but because we long for order that does not humiliate us. We long for the quiet reassurance that problems, while still real, may not be fatal in the hands of someone who knows what matters. Incompetence exhausts because it turns every difficulty into a referendum on whether civilization deserves to continue. Competence, by contrast, can make even disaster feel survivable. It does not erase pain. It just gives pain a plan.
And in a culture drunk on spectacle, that kind of grounded mastery has become almost erotic in its rarity. We are surrounded by people performing expertise as a personality trait. Everybody is a thought leader until the printer jams. Everybody is a visionary until the toddler vomits on the way to soccer. Everybody has a podcast voice until the flight is canceled and the gate changes three times and suddenly the sexiest person in America is a middle-aged woman in orthopedic sneakers saying, “No, don’t get in that line. I already called.”
That is the real seduction. Not mystery. Not swagger. Not the well-lit fraudulence of seeming impressive from across the room. Trust. The deep animal exhale of knowing this person will not vanish when things get hard. They will not turn one problem into six. They will not hold a meeting about having a meeting about the possibility of someday addressing the issue. They will not post a reflective caption while the kitchen burns. They will show up. They will assess. They will act. They will probably also have tissues, and honestly, at that point you are dealing with dangerous levels of allure.
Because what is attraction, finally, if not the body’s way of making an argument? And what competence argues, quietly but powerfully, is this: you do not have to carry the whole storm alone.
That is why competence feels bigger than a preference. Bigger than a type. Bigger even than chemistry. Chemistry is exciting. Competence is sustaining. Chemistry can light a room. Competence can keep the pipes from freezing. Chemistry makes for excellent songs and regrettable texts. Competence builds a life you can stand inside. And when you have lived long enough to see what unreliability costs, that difference stops being theoretical very quickly.
So yes, competence is attractive. But that word almost undersells it. Competence is one of the last remaining civic sacraments. A visible sign that somebody, somewhere, still takes reality seriously. Still knows how to convert care into action. Still believes that if a thing needs doing, it ought to be done well. In an era of posturing, that feels miraculous. In an era of instability, it feels safe. In an era where so many people have mastered the art of looking prepared while quietly becoming the reason everything is worse, competence feels like grace with a tool belt.
And perhaps that is why it lands so hard in love. Because eventually romance stops being just about who makes your pulse race and becomes, at least in part, about who helps your pulse return to normal. Who steadies the room. Who handles what can be handled. Who shows up again and again in the plain clothes of reliability until you realize that dependability, in the right light, is more ravishing than almost anything else on earth.
The truly compelling person, in the end, is not the one who dazzles from a distance. It is the one who can enter a mess, emotional or logistical or existential, and without fanfare say, “Here’s what we do next.”
That is not just sexy.
That is civilization.
That is grace.
And for those of us who have learned the hard way what it costs to rely on people who only know how to look the part, it may be the closest thing to romance that does not lie.
First, I wonder if there is some completion where writers compete to say the most thought provoking things under severe time constraints. You would be world champion.
Second, I am in awe of you. No sarcasm, sorry, just a complement I know will feel uncomfortable.
Three: it's like you know my husband "Competence is something sturdier and far more human. It allows for flaws, rough edges, bad moods, odd habits, and the occasional irrational stance on how the dishwasher should be loaded." That dishwasher thing!!!
Four. This line should be widely distributed, it so full of wisdom:: "Because eventually romance stops being just about who makes your pulse race and becomes, at least in part, about who helps your pulse return to normal."
Wow! Christopher! Your response could be a book. Your writing is competence porn.
I did write a book once.
And it is beautiful.
Ok wow… I think you’ve just unpacked something I’ve been drawn to my whole life and never connected the dots on, while also adding a porn reference lol 😂 But also, reading this, I can feel it from a nervous system perspective too. There’s something incredibly regulating about watching (or being around) people who are deeply competent. Like your whole body just softens a little because someone else has it handled (could be a kink, who’s to say 🙃) And when I think about it, that makes so much sense, especially if you’ve spent periods of your life in uncertainty or emotional chaos. Of course you’d be drawn to that kind of steadiness. It’s not just attractive, it’s safe. I can see it in my own life too. That pull toward people who can walk into something messy and just… know what to do. There’s a calm in that which goes way beyond logic. And I think that’s why it hits the way it does. It’s not just admiration, it’s your system recognising something it can rest into. Anyway, that’s just some brain dump thoughts on that in real time.
“Competency porn” such a good name for it 😂 (god I feel old) and also, way deeper than it sounds.
Yes, yes yes to all of this. I laughed so hard when I heard the term and it was so unexpectedly poignant. You should've seen my 18-year-old's face when I was talking about it at home, I thought he was gonna die😉.
That way, it's not just attractive. It's safe, feels so right to me. I think sometimes the word safe gets a bad reputation, but safety in relationship should be an absolute necessity.
M also I just wanna say I'm so glad to be in this community with you, I love hearing your thoughts.
Oh god, you have an 18 year old too? say no more. So do I 😑🫠😂
Listen, thankYOU for recieving my thoughts. I’m stoked to be here too 🥰
Ha! Yes, a 19 yr old, an 18 year old and a 7 yr old. All boys. I’m NEVER bored.
Oh sheesh 🫣
ok, well 20 and 18 here, Son and daughter. We should really connect privately 😂
I have a strong feeling that your husband is my soulmate (too).
Jokes apart, I completely get it.
I just wish I had someone in my life growing up who held their ground when I couldn't, someone I could look up to and model, instead of learning to regulate and function all by myself.
Now, I freak out occasionally when I'm entirely hopeless and feel trapped—but definitely not as much as I used to. That feels like progress and I hope it is.
Needless to say that I too am attracted to the men who're collected. You're not alone, T.
Thanks for sharing. 💙
It sounds to me like you were doing some important work. And I will definitely acknowledge that having a partner helps, but there have been times I can lean on him like a crutch. I've had to learn to stand on my own and grow my own confidence too. It sounds like you are doing that part first, but that also means you will be someone else else's confident partner one day and what a gift that will be to someone else.
Thanks for acknowledging, T.
And God, I never thought about it that way. That I could be someone's rock in the future. It makes me feel...strong, dependable when I think about it.
I hope to grow into all that.
It’s clear, all the way from here, that you already are.
Omg. This explains my obsession with procedural police dramas 🤣
Exactly!!
I’ve long been attracted to this as well! I remember as a kid calling it “the adult in the room.” Also, I love all those shows, too!
The perfect wording for it!
I never thought about it before, but you’re right there’s something deeply reassuring about watching competent people in action. Thanks for introducing me to the term competency porn!
I'm glad it landed for you. It really stopped me in my tracks when I heard it.
I’m right there with you on ER!
This whole piece made me smile-from the references, to your love story, to your lovely way with words!
Well, thank you so much for this little gift this morning. You made my day.
I loved those same two TV shows....and now you taught me why. My 4th husband (long story), is extremely competent in many things...in a completely different field than my competency. I don't know it we're the perfect match, but I think we have deep respect for each other, and that's a LOT.
That is quite huge I think. And I felt the same way as you when I heard the phrase, he said in realization of what was happening that I had never articulated.
Both the shows you mentioned are some of my absolute favorites, Grey's Anatomy is the current show I feel it shows the competence and the messy humanity. It is exciting watching people solve complex problems. Watson on Peacock is a newer version of this...
I watched several seasons of Grey's Anatomy before I tapped out. But I definitely enjoyed it. I've never heard of Watson, I'll have to check it out:)
I think it's ironic, too, because people I've talked to about how competent they sound often internally feel like they aren't.
In the era of Epstein, it’s a shame that competency, capable, crisis management, tackling what ever with skill, has the public attaching the word porn. I’m old enough to find that a “turn off”.
I get that, it's a shocking word, which is part of why it drew me in.
Omg. While I couldn’t ever get into ER (trypanophobia), we are huge fans of *The West Wing*. But only after giving up on it in the first season (blame Mandy) and then returning to it the following year after my wife watched an episode with my SIL and her husband while visiting.
While your message seems to focus on crisis management competencies (and the confidence of those who manage those crises), mine is often a little bit different. Gifted authors, speakers, stage performers in musical theatre and rock or country musicians, and even therapists demonstrating their crafts…
I’m welling up as I type this, recalling Esther Perel, casts of countless Broadway and touring musicals, and multiple concerts.
The first time it hit me, I was at a tour stop for Huey Lewis nearly 15 years ago. The album was covers of 14 little-known hits from former Stax Records. He had originals in the show as well (because this is what fans really want to see). And the Venue was a casino showroom. Nothing huge.
I felt like I was in their garage. Maybe it was that sense I had or the memory of playing with friends in high school and college to a full house (yes, an actual house) of other friends, jamming to what we loved and for each other.
Perhaps in your examples, competency porn includes crisis porn as a subset. I’m drawn to the artistically creative stuff a whole lot more than the intervention stuff. Though, apparently, ADHD (per my therapist’s psychoeducation at one point) is great for fast and busy restaurant kitchens, ERs, first responders, and, yes, Starbucks baristas (both my kids have excelled there).
I simply love your addition. I am not very musical myself, but every time I have been to a Broadway show I woke up with tears and feelings of overwhelmed. Thank you for helping me name what was going on for me. You are right, there are all types of competency, foreign, crisis confidence is just one of them I think.
I wonder if the level of confidence of those who demonstrate competency isn’t something that attracts us. We go (in The West Wing) from (I’m sure I’m not spoiling much in a show pilot over 25 years old!) a President hitting a tree while riding a bicycle. The Deputy Communications Director having hooked up with a sex worker who smokes cannabis. Pretty small crises to those who don’t feel strongly against sex work and marijuana use.
But the crises get bigger. And the point isn’t the crises for me. It’s the relationships. The banter. The Sam and Josh. The Toby and CJ. The Leo and Jeb or Jeb and Delores Landingham.
And we cannot have story without friction. (Still listening to Esther Perel being interviewed by Trevor Noah (her podcast 7/7/25).
Otherwise, boredom.