Happy Friday, Betches! Labor Day weekend has arrived, and hopefully in a few short hours, we’ll all be off to enjoy a three-day weekend. But before you hit the pool, grab a lobster roll, and crack open the sauvy b, we’ve got one last Pop Off transmission to close out the season.

Obviously there is no better way to end summer than by watching Bethenny Frankel roughing it at Burning Man. The former RHONY star has already posted no less than 10 TikToks documenting her trip to the desert, complete with a luxury RV, chrome bikini top, and Mad Max goggles. This comes only days after she opened the divisive Supermodel Cafe in the Hamptons, so it’s been a big summer for the Skinny Margarita inventor.

In other news, feminist icon Gloria Steinem passed away on Wednesday, adding yet another depressing celebrity death to a concerningly large 2026 tally. The first full-length trailer for HBO’s new Harry Potter series just dropped, with the entire production looking nearly identical to the first film in the franchise. Over in Italy, the Venice Film Festival is beginning to mint Oscar candidates for the year, with John Malkovich surging as a new Best Actor candidate for his performance in Wild Horse Nine.

But none of this compares to the story we’ve been waiting to hear since Call Her Daddy host Alex Cooper posted that TikTok back in April.

Update On My Close Personal Friends — Alix Earle finally dishes on her Alex Cooper feud

In a move straight out of the Kardashian playbook, Alix Earle has saved all her best drama for reality TV. After waiting months to publicly respond to Alex Cooper amidst their feud, the influencer finally pulled back the curtain in the season finale of her new Netflix series Earle Meets World. And boy, oh, boy did she unload, claiming that Cooper purposefully got her drunk before a Call Her Daddy episode and then asked her lewd questions, that Cooper’s Unwell podcast network was disorganized and didn’t provide her with proper resources, and that Cooper used intimidation as a tactic.

“You are manipulative and toxic. Go ahead and say ‘it’s just a business’ all you want, but the way you approach business is disgusting. You choose money over morals. You took advantage of me at a young age in a new industry I knew nothing about,” Earle writes in a drafted version of a text she planned to send to Cooper. “You are full of false promises, and Unwell was a continuation of that. We had a call where you threatened me to not go to war with you, because you know how sick and twisted you are.”

Alex Cooper has yet to respond to the remarks made in the episode, but I feel like this feud is far from over.

The Couch Report — Watch Charli XCX as a film lead

As her new album Music, Fashion, Film makes very clear, Charli XCX loves the movies— watching them and starring in them. While she’s taken a number of smaller roles in the last couple of years and played herself in her mockumentary, The Moment, her greatest acting work to date comes in Erupcja. In the film, Charli’s Bethany returns to Warsaw, Poland with her boyfriend and reconnects with her former best friend/romantic partner Nel (Lena Gora). The 71-minute-long film is shorter than an episode of Stranger Things, but packs an emotional punch. It’s now streaming on Mubi and available to rent on VOD.

Be So For Real — So we’re never getting the Taylor Frankie Paul season of The Bachelorette

If you were holding out hope that the unaired Taylor Frankie Paul season of The Bachelorette would eventually hit ABC, it seems like it’s finally time to face the music. In a clip from the upcoming fifth season of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives that aired on Hulu’s Get Real podcast, Paul confirms that Doug Mason, a contestant on her season, proposed to her, but that after filming she reconnected with her ex, Dakota Mortensen. While this outcome was widely assumed thanks to internet spoilers, the fact that it’s being stated so explicitly during the marketing cycle for The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives clearly means that ABC executives are cutting their losses. Whatever intrigue around the missing season of The Bachelorette will be funneled into the Hulu series instead.

Current Hyperfixation — Chicken Shop Date is breaking up with us

All good things must come to an end, and apparently that includes Chicken Shop Date. In an Instagram post yesterday, Amelia Dimoldenberg, the creator and host of the beloved interview show, announced that the upcoming season would be the show’s last hurrah. Dimoldenberg launched the YouTube series back in 2014 and has since amassed a loyal following of millions. Over the last 12 years, she’s not only flirted with nearly every major celebrity alive, but also hosted the Oscars red carpet and made a cameo appearance in The Devil Wears Prada 2. While Amelia’s next move remains unclear, she’s almost certainly branching out to bigger and better things. Although I am sad I will no longer get to watch A-listers pretend to eat chicken fingers, I am excited for her to become the host of the British Watch What Happens Live. (That’s me manifesting, btw.)