Ricardo Hubbs/Netflix
This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here.
Somewhere in a basement in Maryland, there is a VHS tape of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Allegedly. The truth is that my siblings and I never found it, which is how my poor father ended up having to pay a fine to, against his will and much to my embarrassment, own the Blockbuster rental copy of the film.
Forgetting to return a Blockbuster rental—or losing it entirely—and then having to weather a parent’s exasperation when they’re forced to buy it is a rite of passage for Gen X-ers and millennials. Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants was not the first, nor the last, acquisition that the Fallon Family VHS Library made in this manner. Purchase-via-negligence was as much the quintessential Blockbuster experience as roaming the aisles of the video store itself.