Paltrow’s ‘Goop Lab’ entertains, is wacky
Prepare to be thrown for a Goop. Netflix’s “The Goop Lab” (now streaming), shows the staff of the lifestyle brand – including founder and Oscar winner Gwyneth Paltrow – exploring a wellness topic in each of its six episodes. It is, at times, as eccentric as the docuseries’ poster, which seemingly depicts Paltrow inside a vagina, which caused a stir on Twitter.
Episodes explore psychedelic psychotherapy, Wim Hof ’s mind-over-matter method, female pleasure, aging, energy fields and mediumship. Speaking to Goop’s mission, Paltrow recently told USA TODAY: “We help people get closer to themselves (and) open minds to ways (they) might get closer to themselves.”
In the series, Paltrow offers nuggets from her personal life, where the mom who honestly spoke about what jerks teenagers Apple and Moses can be really shines. For example, did you know Paltrow had a “very, very emotional” experience while trying MDMA in Mexico? Or that her cleanses are not kid-approved?
“My kids are gonna bum out,” she says, examining a new diet plan. “Every time I do a cleanse they’re like, ‘Oh no!’ You get all grumpy.’”
She apparently started Goop because she felt her calling to be “something else, besides, you know, making out with Matt Damon onscreen, or whatever.”
Early in each episode, onscreen text warns that the content should be viewed as entertainment.
“The following series is designed to entertain and inform – not provide medical advice,” it reads. “You should always consult your doctor when it comes to your personal health, or before you start any treatment.”
(Paltrow’s brand isn’t free from controversy. In 2018, the company paid $145,000 to settle a case brought by California officials over unsubstantiated health claims for a trio of products.)
The show is entertaining and thought-provoking. At times, it’s also head-scratching. But that’s what we’ve come to expect from the brand (save for the disappointingly mundane “Sex Issue” book released in 2018).
Let’s give a woo-hoo for the woowoo!
Among the series’ many Goop-y moments:
Chief content officer Elise Loehnen goes pescatarian for 21 days in an effort to lower her biological age. While trying to figure out dinner, Loehnen says salmon and brown rice may be on the menu – which sounds a little skimpy, like it could be missing a vegetable, until the camera pans to the cost of the fish: $41.99 a pound. (We wouldn’t spend a dollar more on this dinner, either!)
Loehnen acknowledges the cost of her salmon – $48.71 – is “crazy.”
In an effort to normalize the appearance of female genitalia, closeup shots seem shocking.
“You’d have to show more than one,” sex educator Betty Dodson advises in the episode. “Because if you only showed one, that would become the one. We’d all imitate it.”
Cue a sequence of eight photographs. (A woman is also shown having an orgasm in this episode.)
While I couldn’t bring myself to watch a staffer have cones and thread inserted into her face in a quest to achieve a more youthful appearance, I couldn’t look away from the work of John Amaral, identified as a “body worker and chiropractor.” According to his website, he can “help people amplify their energy, expand their consciousness and upgrade their performance so they can experience mindblowing levels of clarity and freedom.”
Amaral admits his sessions can look strange.
What exactly is he doing? “When I’m moving my hands in the air and I’m snapping my fingers, and I’m making sounds with my hands, I am putting energy into the field around somebody’s body, and I’m changing their energy system just by the way I interact with it,” he says.
What it looks like is very interesting, to say the least.
Loehnen began making noises as her body lifted from the table she was lying on during her treatment.
“I had an exorcism,” she joked. After Loehnen gave her account of her session, Paltrow had some fun: “Could you, like, get any Goopier?” she asked. “She’s Goopier than I am!”