Amazingly Awful

Amazingly Awful is a comedy interview show that treats the interview as one thread among several. The hosts talk over one another, rebuild sentences out loud, correct each other and chase side arguments, and whatever the guest came to say has to make its way through all of that. A shouted chant insisting that it is all awful, every last bit of it, turns up at the top of several episodes. The guests across this run come from adult entertainment, and the conversations spend real time on the job itself. Kane introduces himself as one of the hosts, and in the Phoenix Starr episode he names a co-host, Fever. For the Wendy Raine interview Kane is on his own because the others are unavailable, and he wraps up by promising more of them next time. Wendy Raine uses that conversation to describe a working day far from the glamour outsiders imagine: dog walks, the gym, emails, research and hours spent trying to get editing software to cooperate. She says she arrived in the business almost by accident and now books shoots herself rather than through an agent. Phoenix Starr jokes her way through her own introduction, then speaks warmly about a crew she considers family and a mentor she leaned on when she was starting out. Selah Rain is blunter. She says everyone in the trade is a sex worker, and that the difference between her and an escort comes down to talent testing and taxes, which she pays through an LLC. She also confirms how content trading works and explains why many performers steer clear of relationships outside the industry, pointing to the risk of sexually transmitted infections. 'Where’s The Merch?! with Mia Rose' carries merchandise in its title and its chatter, alongside a treadmill, a seventy-pound dog and a mustache that apparently needs explaining. Jessie Rogers joins from her car, where she is hiding from her daughter, and says she had been preparing for quarantine for a while. That conversation takes a detour into what ASMR stands for and later lands on gossip about hygiene on set. It also shows the graver end of the show's range: talk turns to a man described as a sex offender, and someone insists that hurting women is unacceptable because every one of them is somebody's mother, daughter, sister or aunt. Solemn stretches rarely hold for long, since a crude aside or a group correction is usually close behind. What comes through anyway is a working portrait of the business, from booking and editing to testing, taxes and trading footage, told by the people doing it. The Wendy Raine interview is a good place to hear that side directly; the Jessie Rogers conversation shows how far the mood can swing in one sitting. Nothing here resembles a tidy celebrity chat, and what it offers instead is a frank look at how this corner of entertainment actually runs.