“There is no coincidence. Only the illusion of coincidence,” Alan Moore famously wrote. While the V for Vendetta author wasn’t referring directly to Trainwreck: Poop Cruise when he had freedom fighter V make that remark, it’s hard not to think about Moore’s dystopian epic this week. After all, the show about a feces-filled cruise ship is at the top of Netflix’s movie rankings at exactly the same time as an oligarch famous for allegedly expecting workers to pee in bottles took over a city known for its problematic sewage system to hold an estimated $50 million wedding. Coincidence? I still don’t know her, but I do know a lot of us are feeling like shit these days. How can we not?
The streaming series—which shouldn’t be confused with the Amy Schumer rom-com of the same name—launched June 10 with an episode about the November 5, 2021, fatal crowd crush during Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival, in which eight people were killed. Dark stuff, maybe too dark for the same week we watched President Donald Trump send masked troops into Los Angeles in a scene that evoked Damon Lindelof’s reboot of Moore’s Watchmen as much as anything.
The next episode, about late Toronto mayor Rob Ford, felt almost quaint. It feels like a lifetime since the one-time Toronto mayor who left office over allegations of crack use was in the news. (It was 2014.) Damian Lewis played Ford in a movie released in 2019. I don’t remember it, do you?
I do, however, remember the ill-fated Carnival Triumph cruise from 2013, in which a two-day trip from Galveston, Texas, to Cozumel, Mexico, turned ugly when an engine room fire stopped the ship in its tracks. For three days, about 4,100 passengers and crew were adrift in the Gulf of Mexico (there goes my Oval Office access!) without electricity, which meant the ship’s toilets could not flush. And now you know why it’s called Poop Cruise.
The question of where to eliminate solid waste when the primary receptacles are out of order dominates much of the hour-long episode, as does the discomfort one experiences without air conditioning or fresh food. (The vessel was stocked with non-perishable goods that helped sustain the trapped passengers and crew.) No one died, or even suffered serious injury, though a passenger who spoke with SWNS claims trauma so deep that they’ll never cruise again.
Poop Cruise is a pleasant enough way to while away 45 minutes under the days-long heat dome, a weather condition caused by, scientists say, the rapidly worsening climate crisis. “At least we aren’t stuck on a boat in the Gulf,” we mutter as we click “play.” As the episode rolls, we can even scroll through images of private plane-flying B-listers (and Oprah Winfrey, in all her Phil McGraw and Mehmet Oz-boosting glory) celebrating the founder of what’s reportedly one of the world’s most notable polluters. In 2013, it was 4,100 people on a poop cruise. But today, it just might be all of us.
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