Pseudoscience and Sobbing: The Goop Lab on Netflix, Reviewed

The six-episode series, available for bingeing on Jan. 24, turns Paltrow’s staff, and occasionally the star herself, into lab rats to test a slew of “wellness” techniques that the trailer warns can be “out there or too scary.” Some are scientifically sound and even bland. (Eating well and exercising are key to aging gracefully, it turns out.) Some are comically entertaining, like synchronized group yoga in the snow, or “snowga.”

Others come off as pure quackery: Like when an energy “healer” sends Goop’s chief content officer, Elise Loehnen, writhing in a self-described “exorcism” by holding his hands inches from her body. 

Goopers, as they’re called, treat all the experiments and the experts as equals, regardless of their legitimacy. “Just ’cause something isn’t proven doesn’t mean it doesn’t work,” says one guest, which may as well be the show’s motto. Ivy League doctorates present findings alongside a man who claims he can use a breathing technique to temper the body’s response to E.coli. Scientific language is used only as convenient: Luxury trips to wellness retreats are “going out into the field,” and people explaining their personal experiences are “case studies.”

In each formulaic episode, perky Goopers team up and go about their less-than-rigorous research. Some “labs” prove particularly popular. Almost everyone volunteers to go to Jamaica to try psychedelics in a therapeutic setting. Cue group hugging, laughing, chatter about how cool clouds are. 

Then sobbing. Tears are a constant in the Goop tests. Be it magic mushrooms, a workshop on female sexuality, or a psychic medium relaying messages from “the other side,” someone is always crying or about to. The sobs are sometimes legit—one workshop required the Goopers to swim in a frigid, 38F Lake Tahoe after doing a set of breathing exercises that were supposed to dull pain and make them feel warmer. 

A three-hour-long pseudoscience marathon, The Goop Lab is ultimately an infomercial. Most of the guests have previously appeared on its podcast, which is monetized. Goop Lab is also a store, online and in Manhattan and Santa Monica, Calif., where the website is based. The shop’s bestselling product is a $90 who’s who of vitamins called High School Genes, which has a nice synergy into an episode about aging gracefully (“The Health-Span Plan”). You could buy access to a session with psychic medium Laura Lynne Jackson, the star of Episode 6 (“Are You Intuit?”), by attending a Goop conference for the low price of $1,000.  

Western medicine, except when it makes the Goopers feel and look their best, is diminished. Paltrow and Loehnen celebrate when pharmaceuticals are fought off. Kate Wolfson, the executive editor of Goop, announces she can ween herself off her anxiety drug after a weekend course with Wim Hof, the E.coli guy. She’s met with congratulations, proof that Goop’s wildest claims outdo medical expertise. (Wolfson did continue consulting a doctor after the experience.) In an effort to legitimize the show, there are a few skeptics, but they magically come around to the Goop way by the end of each episode. 

In a country where vaccination rates are falling and public health emergencies are increasingly common, praising untested theories to millions of viewers is irresponsible, even if Goop claims it’s just fulfilling a curiosity. “Medical ideas should be studied before [they] are  offered to people as an option,” says Dr. Jennifer Gunter, a gynecologist who’s fought a digital campaign against the disinformation she says Goop publishes. 

Paltrow at least seems in on the joke this go-around, unlike in Goop’s great jade-egg debacle of 2018. That resulted in a $145,000 fine for making false or misleading claims about the benefits of inserting one into the body. The show’s poster features her standing in a very vagina-like pink space. She acknowledges that surgery is necessary when energy healing fails. And reacting to her colleague’s exorcism, she turns their brand into an adjective: “Could you, like, get any Goop-ier?”

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.