The Goop Lab with Gwyneth Paltrow

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.