each episode reads, “The following se-
ries is designed to entertain and inform—
not provide medical advice.”)
L
ike other celebrity vanity proj-
ects—Beyoncé’s “Life Is But a
Dream” comes to mind—“The Goop
Lab” is a documentary in name only. Ex-
ecutive-produced by Paltrow, it is pro-
paganda for the Goop company and for
its ideas of magical thinking. Every liv-
ing thing and inanimate object is lit as
if from within—or through the Insta-
gram Paris filter. Paltrow’s young, mostly
female employees are preternaturally at-
tractive, a well-apportioned mixture of
races, sexualities, ethnicities, and tem-
peraments. Montages shot in what we
are presumably meant to refer to as “the
lab” show them busily brainstorming,
typing, and meeting—but never too bus-
ily; this is, after all, a healthy workplace
culture, an office so clean and so bright
that no one would want to leave it.
The boss is most often seen draped
over a rose-colored couch, forefinger and
thumb forming an “L” on her temple.
Beside her is Elise Loehnen, Goop’s com-
petent, oddly affectless chief content
officer and Paltrow’s personal consigliere
and sometime foil. (“What could possi-
bly be wrong with you?” Loehnen asks
Paltrow, mimicking her critics. “You have
everything!”) Together they interview
experts, often characters familiar to fol-
lowers of Goop, who tend to form a dyad:
one is usually an alternative health prac-
titioner, and the other is a licensed pro-
fessional, there to buttress the practi-
tioner’s claims. In the first episode, “The
Healing Trip,” Paltrow recalls the clar-
ity she attained while taking MDMA
“once in Mexico.” Of course, she could
not possibly ingest any drugs on her own
show, but she can deploy her employees,
or “Goopers,” as satellites for the Goop
mission. Loehnen is fully on board, ready
to display her fealty by flying, with Pal-
trow’s assistant, Kevin Keating, and two
other team members, to Jamaica for a
psychedelic mushroom-tea ceremony.
“This is a sacrament,” the instructor says,
“so we can be with the spirit of the mush-
room.” We watch as the employees trip.
Overcome by memories of past losses,
two of them cry hysterically, while Loeh-
nen naps on a yoga mat. The team
emerges clear-eyed, forever changed.
“The Goop Lab,” lowbrow TV with
high production values, is the most un-
settling kind of sponcon—the soulful
kind. Wim Hof, a popular healer who,
following the death of his wife, came to
believe in the salutary benefits of breathing
exercises and immersion in freezing water,
teaches a group of Goopers “snowga.” A
bodywork expert asks several employees
to lie down on massage tables, and then,
like a puppeteer, pulls at the air above
them as they writhe, moan, and weep. In
every episode, the skeptics are converted,
and the believers are reaffirmed.
If “intuiting” and “energy fields” are
not your bag, you were never going to be
swayed by “The Goop Lab”—although
I confess that, after watching, I did take
one, brief, ice-cold shower. True believ-
ers in alternative therapies might be put
off by the show’s efficient portrayals of
“healing”—breathing exercises on the
grass, for instance, that lead to instanta-
neous catharsis. The show’s queasiest,
most Oprah-y moments involve the tes-
timonies of regular people, meaning peo-
ple who would likely never read or buy
anything from Goop. They are filmed,
styled and dressed like Goopers, sitting
alone, on designer chairs, with the white
lab in the background. An Iraq War vet-
eran who for years suffered from P.T.S.D.
reports that MDMA therapy eliminated
his suicidal ideation. A man diagnosed
with Guillain-Barré syndrome claims that
the cold-water therapy restored his full
range of movement; he can now do a split.
And yet, when “The Goop Lab” winks
at its own absurdity viewers are in more
danger of being entertained, even moved.
“The Pleasure Is Ours,” an episode about
female orgasms, is great TV and genu-
inely educational, largely thanks to the
charismatic and rightly militant ninety-
year-old sex educator Betty Dodson,
who, since the seventies, has led group
workshops for women determined to
find sexual satisfaction, in which she re-
quires that they study their own and one
another’s vulvae. (“We used to say that
a woman had to learn how to ‘run the
fuck,’” she says.) The episode comes with
its own exposure therapy, in the form of
a montage of photographs featuring vul-
vae. Later, Dodson assists a colleague as
she demonstrates the “rock and roll” mas-
turbation technique. I’d never seen a
woman coming to orgasm filmed that
way, with such lack of fetishism. For a
moment, I was thoroughly Gooped.
PROMOTION
