change the pear vol. 36 5 May 2026

hello from me in the northern hemisphere once again! i was just starting to settle into the autumn days in canberra, and have been plunged headlong into spring. not mad about it at all!

(not) on repeat

in march BTS released their first full-length album since 2020, their first new music since 2022, and i didn’t like it one bit! nobody is more disappointed than me, particularly as i literally have the lowest standards ever when it comes to music. i love a head empty no thoughts banger. i am probably the only person in the world who is genuinely still delighted by BTS’s 2021 westernslop singles, permission to dance and butter. but i don’t like ARIRANG.

i tuned into the music video for their title track, SWIM, and genuinely had tears in my eyes because i was so excited. within approximately 5 seconds the tears had DRIED. where was the choreo! where was the fun! where was the joy! why was lili reinhart in more of the mv than hobi! since then, BTS have gone on the record to say things like “we tried so hard to find a better title track than SWIM but couldn’t think of one”. other quotes from the members give hints that the entire album was rushed. it makes sense, given the timing: five of them had barely been released from military service before they were being shoved into a studio in LA. many of the songs sound pretty much the same, and they are all wildly overproduced. the final track, into the sun, is borderline unlistenable because of the vocal processing.

i got the sense, from not only the album itself but the promotion surrounding it and the fact that it’s linked to a massive two-year-long world tour, that it is a product trying to do two things. BTS stated that they went on hiatus because they felt disconnected from the music they were producing: ARIRANG was promoted as “a return to their korean roots”, “a celebration of korean culture”. but the other aim of the album is to proliferate their status as the world’s biggest boyband; to do this, they must make songs that are “relatable” to the western world, as stated by bit hit music (BTS’s record label) VP nicole kim. the result is, imo, a hot mess.

joshua minsoo kim’s pitchfork review sums up perfectly what i feel is lacking from ARIRANG:

The major difference here is how the vocals lack pathos, the key element that elevates BTS’s songs beyond mid-level, market-tested pop production. Sometimes, all a song needs to do is make you believe in something—love, transcendence, yourself—but ARIRANG’s messages repeatedly ring hollow, like birthday emails from a mega corporation.

he goes on to assert that the songs don’t sound assured and the album is vacuous; that they reflect “one facet of broader Korean culture: the desire for Western validation and global dominance”; that “with so much weight on their shoulders and money to be made, BTS could only crumble under the pressure. ARIRANG is the sound of their collapse”. it’s a damning indictment and truly disappointing.

currently watching

arenike has been telling me for months to watch a knight of the seven kingdoms and i finally tuned in alone in my hotel room in vienna and i love it. i love it!

a knight of the seven kingdoms is another game of thrones prequel, but it’s as similar to house of the dragon as day is to night. in six episodes of roughly 40 minutes, it tells the story of dunk, a hedge knight hoping to win the ashford tourney—and of the squire he picks up along the way, a bald little boy called egg. if house of the dragon is the high drama and dark epic battles of game of thrones, a knight of the seven kingdoms is its humour and bawdiness, its friendship and camaraderie. i think you can probably guess which one i prefer.

that isn’t to say the stakes aren’t high for our knight: when he sees cruel prince aerion assault a puppeteer for daring to depict the slaying of a dragon, he immediately fights tooth and nail to stop it. to touch the blood of the dragon is akin to treason, argues aerion, and wants dunk to be put on trial. dunk is induced to suggest a trial by combat, to which aerion responds that he must select six champions to face aerion and his six. “i have no one,” dunk protests. but it turns out he does. our little egg boy is actually prince aegon, disguised thus to allow him to participate as a squire when his older brother daeron decides he’d rather get drunk in an inn instead of going to the tourney. he helps dunk rustle up knights to fight his cause, including the lewd lyonel baratheon (side-note: does anyone else think he looks like peter dinklage?).

but he’s still short one—and then two, when aerion bribes one of dunk’s knights with a lordship and he deserts. cue a quick knighting of raymund fossoway, and dunk riding up and down in front of the stands to ask if honour has deserted the noble houses of westeros. it seemingly has… until prince baelor, aegon’s uncle and heir to the iron throne, rides in and stands by dunk’s side. i cheered!!!!!

house of the dragon depicts the targaryens in their glory days, with their immense beastly dragons keeping order in westeros, fighting each other for possession of the throne; game of thrones depicts the aftermath of their fall, when they are believed utterly dead and gone. a knight of the seven kingdoms is set when the targaryens’ star is waning. they used to ride dragons, as the drunken daeron tells dunk. hard to believe, but they did. now they are drunk and mad and cruel—and yet there’s still honour and fidelity in the targaryen house, as exemplified by baelor, and little aegon. let’s hope they prevail.

last seen

in my last dispatch, i wondered whether the pitt was going through a sophomore slump. i can now reveal that the answer is that the slump is not merely sophomore, it’s critical and appears likely to continue unless they radically change it up for the next season.

where to even begin. as i mentioned, the character work is severely lacking: i can’t name a single character who had a storyline i enjoyed. everything was extremely one note: from santos and her charting, to samira being bullied and humiliated by robby, to mel and her boring crisis over her sister having a boyfriend. in season one, we had ups and downs with these characters: we saw santos as the brash and cocky upstart needing to be taken down a peg by both collins and mohan, but also stick to her guns when she knew something was wrong with langdon’s behaviour and saving someone’s life with a REBOA in the midst of the MCI.

we saw samira criticised by robby for her pace, but also how her approach led to a quicker diagnosis for her mercury-poisoned patient, and how she firmly schools whitaker on his racist assumptions that a black woman in severe pain was simply looking for drugs. we saw javadi and her book smarts struggle to connect with patients empathetically, but also come into her own and bite back against her domineering mother during the MCI. this kind of stuff not only brings variety, but showcases our characters’ flaws while also highlighting their strengths. it’s good, complex character work that has been completely flattened in season 2.

the new characters were good, but not enough to save it. i also felt supremely irritated by the reveal of al-hashimi’s seizures: i simply don’t believe that she A) trusted robby that much or B) would tell him something so deeply personal even if she did, because the very next scene is her telling him it’s none of his business!!! hello? tbh the whole thing smacked of the writers not knowing how to get the information to robby so he could shout at her and tell her she can’t work in the ER. this could have been a really sensitive, emotive plotline, especially as sepideh moafi kills it in her role, but it’s ruined by shoddy writing and lack of careful attention.

the second problem is that we rehash a lot of the same ground as we did in season one. raise your hand if you already knew robby was suicidal and not coping with his trauma, and didn’t require 15 episodes of being bonked over the head with it. abbot’s speech in the final episode actually drove me insane with how in your face it was. WE GET IT! we seriously, seriously get it. no, i do not need another noah wyle emmy-bait scene of him looking into the distance with tears in his eyes.

another issue: the patients weren’t given nearly as much time and space as they were in season 1. i can name four or five storylines from season 1 that i felt strongly emotional about, and about one from season 2. instead we were given gimmicky “hey it’s the fourth of july!” cases, and time was wasted on the “we’re going analogue” plotline that could have been devoted to more interesting and complex patient cases.

in general, i felt that the writing was very much influenced by fan reactions to season one: for example, the mel/langdon scenes felt forced and unrealistic (she was really that enamoured with someone she worked with for one day and then made no effort to reach out to during his absence? ok), as did the samira/abbot shirtless scene they shoehorned in there.

it’s also supremely disappointing that samira mohan will be written out, and as many people have pointed out, a pattern with the pitt that started with the departure of collins from the ER in season 1. linking this article by caroline siede for an excellent analysis of the way the show failed samira.

by the final episode i was sick to my back teeth of the whole thing and couldn’t wait for it to be over. i won’t be tuning in for season 3!

reading

yesteryear by caro claire burke is one of the biggest releases of 2026. i remember seeing posts about it last year and thinking oh this sounds interesting. i regret to report that it is a perfectly fine literary thriller that is deeply intellectually empty. caro claire burke is not an incapable writer; however this is not, as it's being marketed, an in-depth exploration or deconstruction of tradwife content.

our main character natalie is a gone girl tradwife: a woman brought up within “the church” (denomination conveniently not specified) in idaho who goes to harvard, develops some incredibly confusing and contradictory beliefs about modern womanhood, finds a hapless man and immediately marries him, gets pregnant and drops out. when she discovers that her husband is functionally useless, she hatches a plan to become an influencer.

this would have been a stronger book if natalie had drunk the kool-aid for real: actually wanted to “return to tradition”, have loads of kids, blah blah all the tradwife bullshit. instead caro claire burke creates a situation where natalie essentially decides there's only one option for her: she must strongarm her rich presidential candidate father-in-law into giving her 5 million dollars to buy a farm and produce content about it. he agrees with the condition that she gets pregnant again and gives his son loads of babies.

this situation is tenuously believable at best, but fine, let's stretch our imaginations to believing that it could happen. but natalie's character just makes the entire thing unpleasant: it's a narrative suffused in cynicism, self-hatred manifesting as hatred of others, internalised misogyny, disgust in her children and her life, lying and pretence. it's not a convincing deconstruction of tradwifery because natalie is not a tradwife, she's manifesting as one in order to make bank, and hating herself and her family the entire time.

there are hints at something deeper and more interesting here—most notably when natalie hires a producer, shannon, to film her content. shannon (a pink-haired liberal from brooklyn) says she’s attracted to natalie’s content because she represents a “way out of the rat race”. when shannon arrives on the farm, though, the truth becomes clear: natalie’s world is underpinned by invisible labour, from her hidden appliances to the farm-workers and nannies she employs. however, this is only dwelt on for a matter of paragraphs before it’s back to the Natalie Show.

there's nothing interesting here beyond a fun thriller about what, exactly, has happened to make natalie feel like she's suddenly woken up in 1855 (these chapters are interspersed between others that tell the story of natalie's life and the building of her content empire). the clues are there: anachronistic language, a sense of the uncanny, but the plot twist that she's still living on her ranch and has decided to actually cosplay as a pioneer due to having gone totally insane through drugging herself up / being drugged by her family and also through having a home birth resulting in a child who is disabled.... not good. cheap and offensive, actually.

moreover, the twist removes all the complexity that the novel purports to have. is burke’s point that tradwives are actually all psychotic sociopaths suffering from hallucinations? i don’t think it is, but how can you possibly make a commentary on tradwife culture if that’s the specific vessel you choose to do it through?

the fact that burke has no interest or indeed inclination to explore the religious underpinnings of tradwifery also plays into this. as i mentioned, natalie’s religious upbringing is glossed over, and not mentioned in any detail. in later life, she purports to be a believer, but has no connection to any kind of religious community. in an interview, burke revealed that “whether it’s Mormonism or evangelicalism or Jehovah’s Witness, it’s really all the same in terms of how women are treated and what the expectations are for them.” okay. sure.

this is a book clearly written for a screen adaptation, where every slick comment is designed to be a voice-over for a trailer (“i have no problem with whores. look at mary magdalene. there's a woman who understood the assignment.” eugh!), where we are constantly hit over the head with the author's opinions or how she wants us to feel about a certain thing. natalie doesn't feel real at all: she's a confusing and yet also heavy-handed amalgamation of all the facets of womanhood burke wants to make a commentary on. as i said, it’s compelling and engaging, but ultimately yesteryear fails miserably at achieving its stated goals.

miscellaneous

the seawater pool in sydney harbour. seeing my boys (ateez) with bee, chiara and may. walking around the opera house with claire. the many and varied craft beers we found. the insane wind on the ferry. the ridiculous hemp house we stayed in. the local pademelon. claire laughing so hard they had to spit out their beer. disturbing the wallabies by our ocean-view bench. taking photos of claire holding things. BIG echidna. black bean dahl. onigiri. pickles in sandwiches. beer tasting in the sun. two pre-dinner cocktails and post-dinner wine in the wine bar without a menu. the extreme rain and me stepping in a giant puddle. tiger tower!!! poke bowls from scratch. climbing together and parkrunning together. graceland too playing in the car on claire’s final night. hana miming flossing. glee nights with amy and bananas on a stick. our sleepover with morgan and being invited over for dinner the next night. hiking around black mountain with bee. running into ash and cathy and iso in the airport. burritos with the village. walking the beautiful bush around daylesford with weggs. hanging out with wids on my lap. limaritas! the fizzy mineral water. all the mushrooms in the forest. weggs building us a fire. botanical gardens walk with ash morgan sophie and cathy. ashie holding my hand. playing hide and seek. morgan wanting to move on, “but there’s adults looking at birds mate, it’s not going to happen”. sunset mulligans flat walk with preety kostas marjory and michael. the flyers making it to round 2 of the playoffs!!! discussing anne carson with sadie. this anne sexton poem. this pat schneider poem. this philip levine poem. this lindsay turner poem. this joan didion quote.

thank you for reading and happy may. i’ll see you all soon. 🍐