The Odd Couple
In bitterly polarized times, Martha and Snoop’s friendship shines like a beacon of hope.
Who could ever have predicted this friendship?
In taste and background, they couldn’t be more different. He’s a pimpish erstwhile gangbanger who loves tats, bling and blunts and once recorded the song ‘I Wanna F*** You.’ She’s an uppercrusty superachiever doyenne and expert on everything from how to build a raspberry trellis to making the perfect chocolate curls to patching a hole in a wheelbarrow tire. They get along like a house on fire.
She’s all about cotton-jersey Breton-striped boat-neck shirts, Birkin bags and Tod’s loafers. He’s more inclined toward bandanas and rings and pendants featuring a US dollar sign. She takes to Instagram to post about the joys of Petrossian caviar. He posts this:
Funny, right? I bet she laughed. I hope so since it seems to be aimed at her. It’s like he’s saying ‘look Martha! I’m the shizzle in the kitchizzle—but on MY terms.’ That pretty much sums up the ethos of this eccentric partnership, from his first appearance on “Martha Stewart Living” in 2008 to their current collaboration “Martha and Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party.”
Despite their differences, or perhaps because of them, the chemistry between these two is real. You could prove it in a lab with a simple experiment in heat transfer. We know heat moves from one material to another as a result of difference in temperature. Thermal energy naturally works toward a state of equilibrium, as hot material gets cooler and cool material hotter. In this case, Snoop warms Martha’s wintry, patrician demeanor while she cools his hot-headed hoodrat impulsivity. Science!
Seeing these two hit it off makes me think of those adorable cross-species animal friendships you see on boredpanda.com, when two strikingly different creatures become inseparable. Like these critters…
Or these…
Unusual animal bonds often follow some type of trauma, like injury or abandonment. Did the trauma of prison help forge Snoop and Martha’s bond? As most everyone knows, one did time for drug possession, the other for insider trading. One channeled zen Buddhism to endure the drudgery of scrubbing floors, caught up on books of classical literature, picked crabapples around the grounds and made them into jelly. I think you can guess which one.
What’s it like inside their friendship? Does he send her Spotify playlists and text to ask whether to thaw the turkey on the counter or in the fridge? Does she reply with ‘New phone. Who dis?’ Do they riff on their shared experience with cavity searches?
It makes me think that what these two really need is not another cooking show but to play themselves in their very own multi-cam sitcom, complete with a live audience and laugh track. Character foils are a comedic golden goose. Some potential scenarios off the top of my head…
—Snoop visits Martha’s sprawling Hamptons pile for a luncheon gathering. Someone needs to slaughter one of her blue-ribbon Chantecler chickens for the coq au vin. Snoop volunteers but rather than wringing its neck, he pulls out his 9-milli and blows the chicken’s head off.
—Snoop, worried about looking the fool in front of Martha’s mucky-muck friends, asks for etiquette lessons. They start with the proper pronunciation of ‘sandwich.’
Martha: ‘sawnd-wich.’
Snoop: ‘you mean sammich?’
Martha: No. Repeat after me: saaaaaawwwwwn-de-wich.
Snoop: sangwich?
<<<Throws her hands up in exasperation.>>>
—Snoop surprises Martha with gingerbread from her own recipe but with one extra ingredient: pure Colombian darpa. The two of them get so blazed, they wind up in bed together.
Wait… wut?
Oh I get it. You’re OK with a May-December romance as long as the woman is ‘May’ and the man is ‘December.’ Well, too bad because it’s scientifically proven that heterosexual men and women can never be ‘just friends.’ Also, sexual tension is one of two pillars of every great sitcom. Class divide is the other, which Martha and Snoop come by naturally though their differences aren’t as pronounced as they might appear.
Back in the 1990s, as her star was rising, Martha learned a thing or two about outsiderdom. In virtually every magazine profile, her elite east-coast media biographers never failed to mention her maiden name (Kostyra) which was their code for “her ancestors are Polish immigrants and not Mayflower pilgrims.” Back then, it seemed important for us to know that Martha Stewart, like Ralph Lauren—né Ralph Lifshitz, child of Ashkenazi Jewish immigrant parents—was just an invention, one designed to generate new money as opposed to old.
In an especially nasty 1996 essay in the New Republic, mean-girl journalist Margaret Talbot called her “Mildred Pierce in earth-toned Armani.” Twenty-six years after the fact, the story reads like parody. In one passage, the writer describes Martha acquiring a Federal-style house in Westport, Connecticut, all but hinting that she swindled the owner—a WASPish old spinster who couldn’t keep up with repairs—out of her rightful legacy. The author describes the transaction as “a saga with overtones of Jamesian Comedy. A family with bloodlines but no money is simultaneously rescued by an energetic upstart with money but no bloodlines.” Meeee-owww!
Things have changed since then. Nowadays, the media fawn over Martha Stewart and she doesn’t appear to hold any grudges. Like a lot of outsiders who made it big, she might even revel a little in her triumph. Not unlike Snoop whose never had a moment’s shame over his humble beginnings and once said “you can take me out of the ghetto but you can’t take the ghetto out of me.” No wonder they get along so well.
"We know heat moves from one material to another as a result of difference in temperature. Thermal energy naturally works toward a state of equilibrium, as hot material gets cooler and cool material hotter. In this case, Snoop warms Martha’s wintry, patrician demeanor while she cools his hot-headed hoodrat impulsivity. Science!" Thank Bog or Dog (Jewish; not allowed to spell it out) she did NOT go into the part about "heat travels to cold, never cold to heat" because I could never figure out how they know that. She is putting it more coherently. Sriously.