‘Girls Gotta Eat’ Has Thoughts on the McDonald’s Burger Debacle, Timothée Chalamet Backlash, and ‘Love Is Blind’ Drama

If the internet felt especially random this week, Girls Gotta Eat’s “The Snack” is right there with you. On the latest episode, hosts Ashley Hesseltine and Rayna Greenberg bounce from fast food CEO branding disaster to Timothée Chalamet backlash to the quietly political choices happening on Love Is Blind.

It’s a classic “Snack” lineup—funny on the surface, but just layered enough to say something real about the culture underneath it.

The fast food power ranking gets unexpectedly emotional

What should have been a routine product launch turned into one of the internet’s favorite corporate flops of the week. McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski appeared in a video promoting the chain’s new Big Arch burger, sliding the oversized sandwich across the table before taking what Hesseltine describes as “a nibble” and declaring, “We love this product.”

That word choice alone set off alarms online. As Greenberg points out, calling your own burger a “product” makes it sound less like food and more like something from a lab. The bigger problem, though, was the delivery. Hesseltine says she couldn’t stop thinking about the people behind the camera (think the social team, producers, lighting crew) wondering how no one stepped in to suggest a redo. “More than anything,” she jokes, “I want to see this f**king guy take a giant bite.”

It’s safe to say the moment quickly turned into a branding disaster when competing chains joined the fun. Wendy’s, Burger King, Jack in the Box, and others flooded the internet with parody posts and response videos, effectively turning McDonald’s marketing clip into the setup for a weeklong fast food roast. 

Timothée Chalamet’s opera and ballet comment turns into a much bigger backlash

When Timothée Chalamet said in a recent interview that he doesn’t want his career to go the way of ballet or opera—keeping something alive “even though no one cares”—the reaction is immediate. Hesseltine thinks the comment is strange, especially coming from someone with family ties to the arts world and ballet itself, but she also believes he’s trying to make a joke and then realizes too late that it landed badly. Greenberg agrees that the tone is light, but says the issue is bigger than whether he personally enjoys opera. For a major movie star to publicly dismiss smaller, less visible art forms reads as “punching down.”

Still, both hosts think the intensity of the backlash has as much to do with Chalamet himself as the actual comment. Hesseltine says, “I don’t know that this is necessarily so much about ballet and opera,” arguing that people seem eager to humble him because he’s started coming off as cocky. Greenberg makes a similar point, noting that this feels like one of those moments where a celebrity stops matching the version of them people had built in their heads. 

‘Love Is Blind’ gets called out for what it does—and doesn’t—show

Love Is Blind has been called out for the way the show handles politics. Greenberg points out that while the series always digs into huge topics like kids, money, religion, and sex, it has historically avoided making political beliefs a real storyline, despite the fact that, in real-life dating, politics is often one of the first dealbreakers people bring up. That’s why this season’s moment between Alex and Ashley’s father lands so differently. When Alex says he didn’t vote for Trump but would have, and Ashley’s dad responds positively, it feels jarring because it’s one of the first times the show says the quiet part out loud.

The bigger issue comes when former cast members reveal that political conversations were happening in the pods all along—they just weren’t making the final cut. Greenberg says she’s especially interested in that because these are exactly the conversations viewers would want to see. Hesseltine admits she initially thought the show was making a conscious decision to leave politics out entirely, but now it feels more selective than neutral. That, to both hosts, is the interesting part. 

Daryl Hannah pushes back against Love Story’s ugliest choice

The latest wave of Love Story discourse centers on Daryl Hannah, who was portrayed in the JFK Jr.–Carolyn Bessette series as needy, chaotic, and essentially an obstacle in the grand romance. Greenberg says the response to that portrayal has been overwhelmingly negative, with viewers questioning why the show goes so far out of its way to humiliate a real, living person. Then Hannah answers for herself, publishing a New York Times op-ed pushing back on what she calls a knowingly false and unfair depiction.

Hesseltine says reading it makes her realize just how disturbing this kind of dramatization can be when the person being caricatured is still alive and has to live with the consequences. Hannah reportedly writes that the behaviors and conduct attributed to her are simply untrue, and both hosts are clearly impressed that she addresses it so directly. 

Instead of adding emotional depth to the story, the show seems to have flattened one woman in order to elevate another, and both hosts are firmly on Team Daryl.

The headlines end in marathon chaos and Dak Prescott disaster

The episode closes with a grab bag of headlines, but two stand out. First, the Los Angeles Marathon produces a truly brutal finish when one runner, seemingly alone and headed for an easy win, gets overtaken right at the end by another competitor charging in from behind. Hesseltine says she has “never seen” anything like it and that it was “wild to watch.” The chaos grows when the conversation turns to the race’s controversial medal policy, which reportedly allows runners to receive a finisher medal after 18 miles because of extreme heat. Both hosts understand the safety logic, but neither sounds especially convinced that not finishing a marathon should still earn the same medal.

Then there’s Dak Prescott, whose wedding is reportedly called off after his fiancée allegedly discovers fake social media accounts he had been using to talk to other women. The detail that really sends both hosts is that the breakup comes after a joint bachelor-bachelorette trip and just before the wedding, despite the fact that the couple shares two children already. Greenberg says she’s impressed the fiancée walks away, even though it would have been easier to stay. Hesseltine, meanwhile, delights in the internet’s response, reading comments that compare the failed wedding to a Cowboys collapse. Cold? Definitely. But also, unfortunately for Dak, kind of on brand.

To hear the hosts dish about all the pop culture stories this week, listen to Girls Gotta Eatwherever you get your podcasts.

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