#61. 'Sex, Love, Goop' (Netflix)
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This bonus episode dives straight into Netflix's Sex, Love, Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow's earnest and deeply strange sex-therapy reality series, and the three hosts land in wildly different places on it. Vic, who watched the most and even ran a couple of the show's suggestions past his wife Kate, narrates its stranger corners with relish — "sexological bodywork," penetration therapy, a therapist who claims to give a blindfolded woman an "energetic orgasm" without touching her, and Goop's own notorious yoni egg and (since-recalled) vagina-scented candle — at one point comparing the show's true-believer therapist couple to the folk duo from A Mighty Wind. Sonny lasted about seven minutes before slamming his laptop shut, declaring the whole thing physically repulsive and likening his revulsion to how JVL feels watching horror movies, while JVL barely engaged with the actual footage but holds forth at length on Gwyneth's spectacularly awkward hosting (a "bizarro-world Oprah" who is "nobody's best friend"), plus tangents into Dr. Ruth, the old Loveline radio show, and the economics of celebrity lifestyle brands like Goop, Honest, and Reese Witherspoon's Hello Sunshine. Being a quick bonus episode, there's no extended opening banter — the trio opens with a short riff on childhood memories of straining for glimpses of Skinemax and HBO's old Real Sex before diving in. It closes with a tease that the following episode will turn to Squid Game instead.
From the show notes
It's like Real Sex , but starring Gwyneth Paltrow and terrible. On the plus side, somebody else saw it!
Full transcript
Vic00:00:00Hello and welcome to a special bonus episode of the Sub-Beacon. I'm Victor Matus along with Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Just a reminder, the Sub-Beacon is now available through Patreon. Go to subbeacon.com. You'll easily find us. Please subscribe. Tell your friends. Today we're talking about Sex, Love, Goop on Netflix, which is such a perfect match pairing with us here on the show with three guys. A very controversial, racy new series hosted by Gwyneth Paltrow. Oh my gosh. Gwyneth Paltrow. Sex, Love, Goop. This is going to be amazing. You guys saw it. Victorino? Yes. Do you remember when we were kids? Yes.
JVL00:00:56Sex, Love, Goop. And some days if you jiggled the cable box just right. That's right. Got the switches between. You could get for a split second. Yeah. But you might see a boob. Something from Skinamax. Yes. You get a boob or something. It's crooked though. It was crooked, but it was amazing. On channel 31. And so you were, you were conditioned to think that this cable TV sexy time was. Oh, this is it. A garden of delights. Delights. That it was amazing. That's right. And then at some point you had like a free, you know, your, your family got a free week of HBO without knowing it. And you were like, yes. And you wait till everybody's asleep. You stuck downstairs to the living room. And you put on. It was. A show called Real Sex. Oh yes. Thinking that you were finally gonna get the meat and potatoes. Yes. So. And then it was like the turtle put his head away. I have to tell you this though, like,
Vic00:02:00you know, a good, a good friend, you know, I've had this discussion with a good friend of ours. Let's just call him Mike. And he, and, and, and I say, you know, it's so awful. And he goes, oh, I love it. I said, what do you like about it? I go, it's terrible. And he goes, ah, I love it. Cause it's real. He goes, it's real. You know, he likes the idea that you're watching something that's really happening as opposed to a performance, you know, but you know what I'd read. There's a reason why they don't put real on and, uh, you know, real sex, real sex. Would you believe. There were 33 episodes of real sex, 33, 3300.
Sonny00:02:33No, just 33. They were real. They were all like standalone. It wasn't a season. It was
Vic00:02:40like real sex, one real sex too. But, but after I would say after like real sex 20, you were better off going into like the back alley behind port authority, just watching like three homeless people do it. It would be much better. The material would be much better. It's true. Somebody told me why my buddy Todd said he saw this and did alley and port authority and like, oh my gosh. And I'm like, ah, it was like probably better than real sex, you know? Um, okay. So I do have to say, I do have to say, uh, um, uh, we are, we are. Explain to us what sex love goop is. Okay. Well, Vic.
Sonny00:03:17Well actually Who wanted to watch the show? I want, I want to, I want this on the record. Who wanted
Vic00:03:22us to watch this? I have to tell you, it was somebody else who wanted to watch the show. Sex Love Goop is a titillating series about six couples needing to work out their kinks and do they ever. One uptight woman goes from being very anal to being very anal. Host Gwyneth Paltrow seems open to many possibilities. Talk about sliding doors. This show will tug at your heartstrings and more. It gets to the meat of the matter and lets us take a peek behind the curtain. Just remember this. Women are like cars. If you think something's wrong, check the oil. I give Sex Love Goop three stars. You know, it's funny. I don't know. There were no there was nothing actually email about the episode. I'm just going to point this out from what I've seen. There are implements and such. So what is this about? The big the big boy review is there are you have to do the big boy. I cannot help. There are six couples in need of sex therapy to work things out in their relationships, marriage or whatnot. I believe there are two lesbian couples and then there are the rest are heterosexual couples. One is an elderly couple. Skip that episode. But what you notice is that there are like an episode of two guys. You know why? Because guys know what they're doing and also they know it. You know, the guy is not the issue here. What I what I discovered. Watching bits and pieces of Sex, Love, Goop, which is six episodes, is it's all about her. This whole thing is about what goop is. It's all about women and about how much how much more complicated they are. And so these couples go to Gwyneth Paltrow, who is the host. You know, they they they they they excite you because, oh, Gwyneth Paltrow, the host of Sex Love. She's not she's just the host. She even though she does talk about she'd be open to some of this stuff, she doesn't do any of this stuff. That's the first thing. And the second thing is what makes it controversial is it's more than just couples therapy. These therapists get very hands on and it reaches us.
JVL00:05:35Why, whatever do you mean, Victor?
Vic00:05:38Well, again, they it's they really insert themselves into the relationship. So it's really weird. And by the time you get to episode, I don't know, three, four episodes, they're in there. And it is problematic because, well, as Goop has many things that are problematic. But in this in the series and Netflix, it's very edgy. It's supposed to be very, you know, they make it very central, but it's not because, as JBL said, these are not people you actually want to see in general, but they're actually involved in there's there's there's there's it's penetration therapy. There's no other way to put this right. Sex. It's called sexual. They call it sexological work. But as other people have been reporting, that sort of work is basically illegal in forty nine states, not in California. So I'm going off to California now to be a sexologist. And, you know, it is you have to be very open, so to speak, to that sort of thing where the therapist, yes, JBL, just like that. But, you know, it's all consensual, they say. And the therapist will say, is I'm going to put my I broke Sonny. I think I'm going to put my hand in here and I'm going to enter. And she's doing this thing to make the other woman very relaxed while the woman's partner is standing there, supposedly not jealous or thinking, hey, this is kind of weird. And another episode, it's all perfectly normal. There's a there's a lovely there's a lovely couple, this this sort of mid-age sort of thirties, forties, African-American couple. And the husband is laying down and the sexologist says, first of all, it's perfectly OK to get an erection. OK, I'm just going to let you know. It's great. It's great. So don't feel weird about that. And I'm like, OK, and what else? You know, like what is the goop and sex love goop, you know? So she says, don't worry about this. And she creates she says she's rubbing the guy's body, saying, OK, so if you do this stuff and she's as if she's showing, you know, the wife like, oh, this is how you can really excite him by just rubbing these parts of his body. And and the wife like, oh, you're touching my husband. That's the first thing. And then the second thing is she does something called an energetic orgasm where she swears she's not actually touching touching the obvious parts of the guy's body, but brought him to that same point. And he cries. He has tears. That's the that's the other thing. And I probably cry in that
JVL00:08:14situation. I would say the weird was this before or after she put on her Wolverine claws
Vic00:08:21after after that was that thing, that and the sort of what looks like whips and other implements to, you know, down there. Very interesting. That's the way I would put it is interesting. And the other thing that is, I'd say the weird the other weird thing other than the insertion is, if you will, other than all of this, all of this is the sexologist has a partner and he looks like a guy from one of the Chris Guest movies. And his name, I forget his name. And the two are like, it looks like something out of Mighty Wind. Remember when they were believing in the colors, they had the faith in the colors, and she talks
JVL00:08:59about Congress of the cow. Yes, that's, you know, the dog was watching money. No, but
Vic00:09:05also the other, the, the, in a mighty wind, the folk song one, and the woman is talking about how she used to be in other like, she used to do adult films before she found, you know, folk singing, and then and then she used to do a certain thing. Anyway, the couple that are having this conversation. That's the couple that this resembles. And he brings her into an orgasm, supposedly by not even touching her, like initially he does, he just puts his hand down there very gently. But after that, he's just creating these air motions with his hands. And she starts like, like, you know, sort of undulating, her body is like moving around, and she starts gasping and goes and the couple is watching sort of in disbelief, but disbelief, like this is so crazy. How did I end up, you know, on the show? Or, wow, how is this happening? And he looks like David Copperfield doing a magic act, you know, where he's like, raising her body raising her hips without touching it. And she has blindfolds on. So that was the whole thing is she can feel it, even though she can't the energy, the energy, just the energy, so much energy. And all I could think, you know, and again, it's good. And I can think of this is Gwyneth Paltrow. It's Shakespeare in Love. And here she is doing the show. And it's so weird. But goop is very weird. As you know, goop sold two things that were very questionable. One was the Yoni egg. You know, the egg, it's an egg a woman supposed to insert in her.
JVL00:10:35I'm not I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with it, Victorino. Could you describe what it is?
Vic00:10:40It's an egg. And you're supposed to insert it in yourself in order to regulate your rhythms. And that time of the month. And also moisture and other issues. Wait, I have one right here. Hold on one second. Um, that's what they pull it out. Actually, I can't. And the other one that remember, they want to goop sold a vagina smelling candle. Then it exploded. So they stopped selling
JVL00:11:10it. Yes, I knew there was something very fishy that moves your hands over it and directed
Vic00:11:14your energy toward it. Yes. So that that was it. But again, how is this? How is this not porn? That's the question, right? I mean, under the guise of, Hey, you know, this is
JVL00:11:23sex. Because the goal of porn is to turn people on. This is not. I, I, so I, full disclosure,
Sonny00:11:32I watched five minutes, maybe seven minutes of the first episode and I turned it off because I was like, these people, these people disgust me. And it's not because they are disgusting people. It's because they won't shut the fuck up about their personal lives. I don't, I don't, I am not interested in at all in the sex lives of other people. I don't want to hear about no offense guys. I don't want to hear about your sex life. I don't want to hear about, I don't want to hear about random people on the street sex lives. I don't want to hear about these idiots sex lives. And like, I just, I like, I, I imagine this must be how JBL feels watching horror, like watching a horror movie because I was like, I was watching a horror movie and I was just like, I, I hate this. I, I, this physically repulses me. I have no interest in any of it. I have to turn it off or I'm going to like throw my laptop out the window. And I did. So I did. I just like, I shut it off. I couldn't, I could not watch it. I could not, I read, I read the descriptions. So like while the episode, while the episode was playing at 1.5 times speed, cause I was like, maybe I can power my way
Vic00:12:42through it. Maybe I can just, you can't rush it. Sonny, you can't rush it. It's gotta be
Sonny00:12:48sensual. Don't stop. Stop it. I, I, as, as I was, as I was trying to power my way through it, I read some of the like descriptions of the other episodes and I was like, Oh, this gets worse and worse. This gets worse. This gets much worse. I am out. I'm out. I'm out. I just, I'm out. I'm out. I couldn't, I couldn't do it. I was, I, I'm sorry. I'm going to let you guys carry the rest of this episode. But I like, I got, I got seven minutes. I got
JVL00:13:17seven minutes into this. I was like, fuck off. I was surprised because these things can always go one of two directions. Uh, the, the first direction and the most common is
Sonny00:13:32that it's all really just about communication. Oh, right. Every, every, every, every vote
JVL00:13:40German woman in the Caribbean guy. It's always just like, look, the key, the key to all of this is really just better communication. But the other way is the Dr. Ruth. And this is like full Dr. Ruth, but even creepier in its own way. And I don't know, do young people even know who or what Dr. Ruth was? Because she was like, Mr. T. She was just this thing that happened in America and she was an eternal eternal. She showed up. She'd always, she was on the letterman show a few times a year. She was just this cultural icon. And she was this little four foot 11 German lady, uh,
Sonny00:14:26who like titillated everybody by talking about sex, talking about, you know, Dr. Ruth's best
JVL00:14:32time. And this is full Dr. Ruth. And I, I mean, it doesn't work for a lot of reasons. So many, many reasons. Gwyneth Paltrow was very, very bad in this. In this. And I, I love, I love Gwyneth Paltrow, but it's so, and it's like, oh my gosh, this
Vic00:14:53woman is, was, you know, uh, you know, an iron man and, and she's great. And yet she has these crazy ideas.
Sonny00:15:01She was in seven. I, I just, I just want to, that's what I was imagining while I was watching
JVL00:15:06this to say this, because I think she's a wonderful actor. I like her and almost everything she's in. Um, reality TV host is not a high value proposition, but it is a different skill set than being an actor. You know, like what Jeff probes to do. Isn't very valuable. Isn't very what Jeff probes does. Isn't very valuable to society, but it is a distinct skill set and not everybody can do it. Yeah. And Gwyneth Paltrow trying to yuck her way through being the, the, the center pole that this thing revolves around where she's joshing with the normies who aren't
Sonny00:15:51beautiful like her. She's gorgeous. You look at her. It is so disconcerting. This is one of the reasons why I had to shut it off. Cause I was like, I was like, this is none of this
Vic00:16:03works. Just none of it. None of it works. You look at her and it's just, you know, I
JVL00:16:08mean, it's yeah. She's like a bizarro world. Oprah, like somebody trying to do an Oprah impression despite having all of like, but it's all coming out. Herky jerky or something. It was just, I honestly, the single most interesting thing about the show was watching Gwyneth trying to host it and seeing how spectacularly it failed, trying
Vic00:16:33to like, trying to, trying to share things in common and because she's, she's trying
Sonny00:16:38to transition from being an actor or into and looking amazing, a personality lifestyle brand. Yes. And like, and, and like, I guess you can do that. I bet, you know who could
JVL00:16:51get away with Reese Witherspoon and Jessica Alba have just done this and they make more
Sonny00:16:54money than everybody else in Hollywood. Jared Leto could get away with this. He could, he could get away with this. Why? Absolutely. He could because he is like I, you, you, you, you're smirking JBL, but he actually has like Island getaways where people come listen to his terrible band and tens of thousands of people show up.
Vic00:17:14I'm sure tens of thousands of people subscribe to goop. It's a group is $250 million company.
Sonny00:17:23I mean it's a real business. It's a thing. It's a thing. Yeah, but it's not, it's a thing,
JVL00:17:29but it's not like honest level, which is the, the Jessica Alba corporation that she, this is like a thing that's happened right now. Shaq getting in with Papa John's, um, celebrities, celebrities have not quite figured out that they can command real money, which is to say pieces of the action, right? They can come in to a product, especially a product which is young and which needs some sort of brand differentiation the way Jessica Alba did, right? The way Reese Witherspoon has with her happy go fun, whatever fucking hello sunshine production company is. Uh, and they can say, look, don't, don't pay me, don't pay me. I just want half. And then when things happen, you know, half is a lot. Yeah. When you're talking at the corporate level. Yes. You know, this idea of like getting $50 million a movie. That's for chumps. 50 million's not cool. You know what's cool? 500 million. Yeah. Yeah. For some brand. You could start making corporate money. And that's what I guess Gwyneth is trying to do. And she just thought, I have this goop thing. Why not get in on the Netflix, while everybody else is doing it.
Vic00:18:43Yeah. Netflix.
JVL00:18:44I just think that she should never be on camera ad-libbing ever.
Vic00:18:48It's a little awkward.
JVL00:18:51I, I, it's.
Sonny00:18:52She's nobody's best friend.
JVL00:18:54No. She's nobody's best friend.
Sonny00:18:56Your best friend. She's not like her. She's trying to be. She's trying to be. Wait a minute. Are you saying. Oh, we're, we're just girls here having girl chat about our vaginas and our orgasms. And it's like, nope. Are you, are you. Nope. This is, this would be less awkward if I was playing, uh, Gwyneth Paltrow.
Vic00:19:13Are you telling me that after the C the series ended that the couples couldn't call her up and say, Hey, you want to hang out next weekend? That's not going to happen.
Sonny00:19:22See, that's, that's a, that's a series I would watch. Gwyneth Paltrow avoiding phone calls. You know, it's funny. From all of the people on sex, love, goop.
Vic00:19:30Your repulsion Sonny. I it's interesting because for me, your, your revulsion, your repulsion, your revulsion is interesting because for me, I'm like, oh my gosh, this is, this is really weird. Disgusting. Ah, okay. I'll see how it goes. And in fact, you know, I mean, I was talking, Kate watched a little bit with me and she was intrigued by some of the storylines because of the, you know, the issues that they have and what it, but again, it's really the issues here, communication and things and, and, and, and, and about like pleasing women and such, but we actually, you know, talked about this and then, uh, we actually decided that we were going to give some of this a try and we, so we got some of the same implements like the beads. We tried the beads. That's why I'm sitting on my side right now. Victorino, where did
JVL00:20:12you map when you did the little blueprint test? Did you map to, to, oh, it's so obviously
Vic00:20:19every guy's going to match. Every guy's going to map sexual. Cause that's not what are you going to say? It's like, it's like, that's what we think of. We're dudes, you know, this is what we do. Um, I always reminds me of the hilarious Rodney Dangerfield line. Never ever told this joke on the show. What before about, um, Ronnie Dangerfield is on the tonight show and he was talking about how he was having sex with his wife and he goes, I was going on. It just wouldn't end. Finally. I said to her, what? You can't picture anyone else either. It's gold. It's gold. Uh, anyway, so that is, that is that, um, anyway, I don't know, but it was, it was a big day. I saw it in the news because I said, we should watch this because something just illegal happened here and what it, oh, it's that. And it was
JVL00:21:03this penetrating. So I, I want to talk briefly about just this idea. Uh, so the, the porn industry, which, you know, we've talked a little bit about, but the porn industry was revolutionized to begin the internet with the idea of amateurs, right? They had to like, you know, people just make their own porn and upload it onto, you know, the, the Seth Rogen did a movie about this, right. Um, called porno directed by Kevin Smith. Was that the one? Oh, Zach and Mira, Zach and Mira, Zach and Mira, Zach and Mira. I am not a connoisseur of porn, but I did always think to myself, I don't know, like, isn't the whole point? We have the city in America and we built an entire city whose industry is just creating beautiful people for the rest of us to stare at. Right. I mean, that's all, that's all any of Hollywood really is like, you just want to look like, oh, is Joseph Fiennes going to bang Gwyneth Paltrow on screen? Yeah, look, they're doing it. Yep. That's cool. They're beautiful. They don't look like us. And the idea of like, you know, like again, titillation, having like just people look like us. No, that's not what any of us want. Nope. Does anybody want that? I don't think anybody wants that. Nope. I
Vic00:22:21mean, I have, I, that's why we have Los Angeles. I'm actually holding back. I'm actually, what I'm not going to say is just, yeah, but the answer is yes. You're, I agree with you. I
JVL00:22:28agree with you, but I could just take it more to low. What does that even mean? It's like,
Vic00:22:31you know, like where you go, say like, I would, I want to watch myself, you know, like who, who would do that? You know, but people, there's obviously people out there who do that, like, you know, watching movies and stuff with themselves, you know, and stuff, but not, you know, that's like, no, no, thank you.
JVL00:22:45That's like saying, uh, I, I don't want to go watch NFL football. I'd like to go watch the middle school football. I prefer middle school football to the NFL. What, who does that? Right. No, literally nobody does that. So why would it not be true of sexy time stuff?
Sonny00:23:03Yeah. No disgusting. All this is disgusting. I'm disgusted. I'm whichever one of you two made us watch. It was me. It was interesting. You know, no. Is Dr. Ruth dead? Take your word for it. I'm
Vic00:23:18sure she's surprised if she's still alive, but she was, she was old then. I'll effort
Sonny00:23:23that. I'll effort it while you guys talk. Nope. That's all I have to say. Actually,
JVL00:23:27I think we're done and I hope we, uh, oh my God in heaven. Don't you dare say her name?
Vic00:23:33Wow. Really? She's 93 years old. God bless.
JVL00:23:39Germany. Yeah. Her media career began in 1980 with the radio show sexually speaking and she, this is, I guess, you know, like Dr. Drew came. Remember this is where Adam Corolla came from. Sure. This is his radio show talking about sexy stuff with, uh, with Dr. Drew was the clinical goop. And again, just Gwyneth, just go Dr. Drew and Adam Corolla. I, I, I
Sonny00:24:09would listen to that show sometimes on, uh, 99 one. Yeah. What was that? What was that called? HFS? No, no, no, no. I'm trying the, the show love lines. That's what it was. Yeah. Love lines. Terrible show. Yeah. I can never, I never really got anything out of it. I was just like, ah, this is boring. I, again, because it's like just people talking about sex. I don't, I am so uninterested in hearing. No, the, the joy of love lines was
JVL00:24:39the calls, which were clearly made up calls because the situations were so crazy. Well, and then it was watching on them, right? That was the joy of love lines. It was like crank yankers, but for sex at like two in the morning, cause it was all, it always aired crazy, crazy
Sonny00:24:57late. Yeah. Okay. All right. Is that it? Are we, are we done with this? Can we, can we
Vic00:25:04pick something? Yeah. You pick something. You pick something. I'll pick, I got next
Sonny00:25:08week. All right. No, I get to pick. Oh, that's right. That's right. That's game. You did that. That's right. That's right. All right. JVL. Squid game is a global phenomenon. We had to, we had to do squid game. Sex love goop is a, just a bunch of perverts. Just sick freaks. I'm sure it's fine.
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