The Goop Lab with Gwyneth Paltrow

There’s a reason that snake oil was successful long before Paltrow discovered it: Slick things are shiny too. “The Goop Lab” is only the latest iteration. ... Paltrow is a compelling host — not giving too much of herself away, ever stopping short of pure endorsement of any topic even as she gives it air — on what is a carefully structured, elegantly built, compulsively watchable show about, mainly, complete nonsense. No wonder she makes people so very mad.

Goop Lab’s six episodes generally skirt the most eyebrow-raising of Goop’s nonsense, while mixing up the far-out and the less so. ... Don’t let The Goop Lab’s other experts fool you. Paltrow is the most expert of all: Self-aware, self-actualized, self-improving, and beyond self-reproach, she’s what Goop is actually selling.

It’s almost impressive how aggressively obnoxious the first episode is. ... But whenever the show moves away from the Goopers and focuses on actual humans — each episode features “case studies” with everyday folk who have tried the “alternative” treatment being discussed — it’s hard not to be drawn in on a more genuine level. ... One big problem with most of Goop Lab, though: It’s boring.

“The Goop Lab,” lowbrow TV with high production values, is the most unsettling kind of sponcon—the soulful kind. ... And yet, when “The Goop Lab” winks at its own absurdity viewers are in more danger of being entertained, even moved.

It’s a marketing show aimed at selling products, both goop-related and otherwise. If you know you’re being sold a bill of goods, you won’t be disappointed.

There are some (some!) genuinely interesting discussions being had, but they quickly get overwhelmed by the baffling, idiotic and genuinely bizarre world that Goop likes to operate in.

The Goop Lab isn’t even worth hate-watching, it’s so anger inducing.

There are few surprises in The Goop Lab: The show is as silly and grating as expected, and Paltrow doubles down on the polarizing persona she's cultivated for the last decade and a half as Hollywood's most famous woo-woo peddler.

What’s disturbing about the show is that when you combine Gwyneth’s aura of trustworthiness with a mishmash of real science, New Age nonsense, vague female empowerment rhetoric, naked commercialism and some startling knowledge gaps in areas where Goop claims expertise, the result has its unique dangers. ... Some episodes are more than just distasteful.

Watching The Goop Lab is like channel-surfing at 3 a.m. and finding back-to-back docutainment, only instead of Bowflexes and George Foreman Grills they’re peddling Paltrow and her empire of stone diffusers and activated charcoal toothbrushes. (The simile works because they’re both trying to sell you stuff, but also because the show is boring). ... The show strains under its attempt at self-awareness, with frequent comments about the accessibility of their lifestyle.

It presents itself as airy infotainment even as many Americans are unable to access even the most basic forms of medical care. That makes the show deeply uncomfortable to watch. So does The Goop Lab’s just-asking-questions approach to health—its breezy mistrust of expertise itself.

There is an adamantine refusal to accept that sorrow and anxiety are attendant upon life all the way through, and a demented commitment to expunging every negative moment from it, whether by vegan eating, cold plunges, the cleansing of energy fields, psychic intervention or any other pseudoscientific activity that can be monetised for people whose gullibility marches in lockstep with their wealth.