At this very moment, there are two types of people in this cruel world: Those who not only know about the movie One Night Only—it’s like the Purge, for sex!—and, because of this cursed knowledge, have already seen and shared every meme and joke about it and are perhaps incapable of consuming any new piece of information without turning it into a meme or joke about it (responding to any news item with “what if this was on the only night of the year single people could legally have sex”?); and people who have achieved a state of “offline” to which I can only aspire.
trash jones@jzux
no more dating apps, i want to meet someone the old fashioned way. by finding love on the one day of the year when single people are legally allowed to have sex
7:30 PM · Jul 28, 2026 · 419K Views
50 Replies · 1.4K Reposts · 28.7K Likes
I am violating one of my cardinal rules of culture (namely: don’t talk in class if you didn’t do the reading) because I have not actually seen this movie. Maybe I will someday… on a plane? But for purposes of this newsletter having seen the movie is neither here nor there. The important thing to know is the premise, which is that two single straights, played by Monica Barbaro (who I can only assume signed onto this before getting nominated for an Oscar) and Callum Turner (…what is his excuse) meet-cute and hope to find love on a now-infamous evening: the one night a year single people are legally allowed to have sex.
brian@brianonhere
odysseus’s crew getting surly and restless as it becomes more and more clear theyre not gonna make it back to ithaca in time for the one day a year it’s legal for single people to have sex
12:55 AM · Aug 2, 2026 · 638K Views
29 Replies · 3K Reposts · 59.4K Likes
The premise inspires far more questions than I imagine a rom-com can answer but I have learned, again through my evidently incurable condition of continuing to spend at least a little bit of every day of my one wild and precious life on the internet (ya i KNOW i got the brick i’m working on it!!!!!) that the movie does try, and as you might expect the trying only makes it worse and/or more confusing: gay people have found a “workaround” (?); everyone has a “biometric implant” which tracks their sexual activity (??); this system is the result of a that law was passed by our Congress (???).
Brooks Otterlake@i_zzzzzz
In this promo still for One Night Only we can see that someone has spraypainted "REPEAL" over an HHS notice about the sex rules. Which implies that this whole thing resulted from congress passing a law in at least a marginally functioning democracy. Very odd
2:41 AM · Aug 5, 2026 · 309K Views
37 Replies · 279 Reposts · 14.7K Likes
The movie feels like something out of the parallel 30 Rock universe in which I’m not entirely convinced we do not currently reside.
I think that sometimes modern rom-coms are hamstrung by the need to be TOO realistic and not zippy and silly ENOUGH, and that rom-coms of yore were freer, looser, and zanier in a way that made it all more fun. Personally “dystopian alternate America with sexual surveillance state” is not the, uhh, zany direction in which I would have taken things. HOWEVER: Some of my favorite romantic comedies have extremely ludicrous premises and are all the more delectable for their innate absurdity. Like Ball of Fire, which I recommended in one of the very first installments of TRR.*1
In this issue I have a double header of ridiculously-premised and wonderfully-executed rom-coms for your viewing pleasure!
There is a Jersey part of my heart that believes it isn’t even really summer unless I have eaten funnel cake on a boardwalk. Is it kosher to seek out this Jersey-coded experience in Delaware? I’m going to find out when I head to Bethany and Rehoboth later this month! I’ve never been, so if you’re up for a little role reversal, you should send me your recs. (Is this the one night a year when TRR readers are legally allowed to tell the TRR writer what to watch, read, listen to, and obsess over?)
Come say hi and get your signed copy of my debut novel Retro at Bethany Beach Books on Sunday, August 23 from 6-7:30 p.m. and/or at Browseabout Books in Rehoboth on Monday, August 24 from 1:30-3:30 p.m.!
If your summer is keeping or taking you elsewhere, do not worry: You can get your copy of Retro wherever (and whenever!) books are sold. And you can really be a TRR VIP if you leave a review for Retro on Goodreads, Amazon, and/or Barnes and Noble. I would never suggest even pausing from your summertime pleasures to do this. You can give your girl five stars from your poolside perch, with one hand on an ice cold drink or a holding a cigarette (not encouraging just saying!).
I looooove a movie about a pure-of-heart grifter! Barbara Stanwyck—dressed tip to tail in some sensational Edith Head ensembles, more on those in a minute!—plays Jean Harrington, a con artist who is, I guess now that I think about it, also a nepobaby because she is running cons with her dad (Charles Coburn) and his partner, Gerald (Meville Cooper). We meet them on a glamorous ocean liner headed to New York from South America. Their mark: Charles Pike (Henry Fonda!!!!!).
They’ve got their eyes on Charles because he’s the heir to an ale fortune. But Charles is, hilariously given the casting, a very shy and awkward dork and an ophiologist, that is, an expert on snakes—he was just in the Amazon for a year, studying his beloved creatures—who has no idea how to talk to women. Not that he wants to talk to women; all he wants to do is study up on snakes. The man’s just crazy for snakes! He is supposed to be straight! It’s not a metaphor! Jean gets Charles attention with a slapstick classic (she literally trips him) and of COURSE she quickly (snake)charms him.
This came out during the Hays Code days and when Joseph Breen, then-administrator of the Hays Code (professional Gen Z before his time?!), read the script, he told Sturges he’d need to cut out the totally obvious “illicit” sexual relationship between the two leads, not to mention all the other sexual content.2 But boy did they figure out some workarounds!
Alas: Jean goes and falls in love with Charles for real just as Charles finds out that Jean’s a scam artist and rejects her. What are the ODDS? Furious in your classic woman-scorned mode, Jean decides to get back at him: The boat has barely docked when she gets busy insinuating herself into his life in New York by gaslighting him3 into thinking she’s NOT the woman who smushed her face against his on that ocean liner; no, she’s the Lady Eve Sidwich! She has a British accent4, and she has him so bewitched, bothered and bewildered5 that he falls in love with her again. And then there is still more scamming and twisting ahead!
Everything in this movie is the silliest thing that has ever happened until the next thing that happens. The clothes are a DREAM. My favorite outfit is that two-piece number from that “ideal mate” clip above but there really isn’t a dud in the bunch. I wish Edith Head would give ME a bunch of sumptuous gowns and dazzling little numbers to wear so I could run multiple cons on the same gorgeous, rich, and hapless man. Instead I must attempt the same ruses with a wardrobe of my own design, in these underwhelming times when no one makes clothes like they used to.
I know I said the premise of these recs would be absurd. This one is both slapstick-silly and, as any Washingtonian woman can tell you, 100% accurate, because it is basically a movie about how there’s not enough affordable housing or eligible men in D.C. In The More the Merrier, both shortages can be attributed to World War II. What’s the District’s excuse now?
Benjamin Dingle (watch these recs back-to-back for a Charles Coburn double feature!!) is a retired millionaire who is in our nation’s capital to consult on the housing shortage. Ironically he is unable to find housing upon his arrival because he’s early and his hotel isn’t ready; he winds up convincing Connie Mulligan (Jean Arthur!), who’d posted a classified ad looking for a roommate, into letting him sublet half her apartment.
The very next day, Benjamin meets Sergeant Joe Carter, who is also in need of a place to stay. Enterprising man that he is (I guess that’s how he became a millionaire?), Benjamin rents Joe half of his half, and now Connie’s got two random men living in her apartment. It is not much consolation to her to know that Joe’s only supposed to be there for a week before he ships out (see above re: war).
Would you believe that Connie and Joe develop feelings for each other? But how inconvenient is that and not just because they’ve got a third-wheeling roommate between them: Connie is already engaged! She will NOT repeat her mother’s mistakes (marrying for love and not security)! She WILL wed Charles J. Pendergast (Richard Gaines), a bureaucrat, the responsible choice!
Benjamin, a mensch and a half, is extremely invested in his new roommates finding love with each other and so he goes out of his way to meet this Pendergast character; determines in his infinite wisdom that Joe is the better match (I cannot stress enough that none of the principals have known each other for more than ~three days); and schemes to get those two lovebirds together. Misunderstandings abound, one of which drags the FBI into things because of a snarky, ill-advised joke Joe makes about being a Japanese spy.
But really the most important thing for you to know about this film is that it contains an all-time great sidewalk kiss scene. You’re welcome!
The “you bet” and then kissing the engagement ring she got from someone else… !
ICYMI: Ball of Fire is a very endearing and ridiculous take on Snow White and stars THE Gary Cooper as a grammarian who is working with a bunch of nebbishy nerds on a new dictionary when he gets stuck on the entry for “slang.” To get hip to how the kids are talking these days, he enlists a hot nightclub singer (Barbara Stanwyck!) who takes him up on this invitation because she’s on the lam, hiding from her boyfriend, who is, what else? A mob boss.
in the interest of full disclosure: I put this in here as a Buffy reference and found out, just now, as I was searching for the link to that episode, that it is actually a Rodgers and Hammerstein song from 1940. It’s even more retro than I realized! You really learn something new every day you log on, and that’s why I can never log off. Anyway: Here is Ella Fitzgerald’s rendition of that classic!
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