The Bechdel Cast - Buffaloed with Shelli Nicole

Episode Date: March 30, 2023

Caitlin, Jamie, and special guest Shelli Nicole eat Buffalo wings, avoid debt collectors, and chat about Buffaloed. (This episode contains spoilers) For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast Follow @HiShelli on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante, and @jamieloftusHELPSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everybody, this is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Las Culturistas. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture.

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Start changing it with the Bechdelcast. Hey, Jamie. Hey, Caitlin. Ask me how much student debt I'm in. How much student debt are you in and how can I liberate you from it? Well I think I'm somewhere I honestly haven't checked in years because I obviously have no intention of paying it but i think i'm somewhere around 80 or 90 000 in student loan debt for the master's degree i got from boston university in screenwriting which i would never mention i can't believe this is coming up so early in the episode this is never it's like

borderline aggressive i love it yeah well god, well. God bless. Thank you. Thank you. Well, look, today I've been sent here. I'm pivoted hard and now I'm a debt collector. And you just admitted to something pretty serious on mic. Oh, that I'm never paying it back. Yes. And me, Officer Jermaine Fowler, the world's most ethically confusing person, am going to have sex with you and then send you to jail. Actually, I was like, that does sound kind of sexy.

Hot. That is a kink of mine. Because there's been so much talk around, I mean, student debt specifically recently because of the ongoing failure to actually relieve student debt the way that people have been saying that it was going to. I want to shout out former guest of the show, Julia Clare, one of the people closest to my heart. She had a viral tweet recently. Yeah, where she said, watching banks get bailed out for the second time in my adult life while also preparing to watch the Supreme Court tell us that canceling a paltry 10K in student loan debt per borrower is government overreach. And then there's a picture of Scarlett Johansson in Marriage Story crying. It's a banger of a tweet. And I just wanted to show I was thinking about that tweet this whole damn movie. Love it. Well, shall we?

Oh, wait, we should say what the show is. We should say what the show is. Hello, it's us. This is the Bechdel cast. My name is Caitlin Durante and I have a voice that sounds like this today. My name's Jamie Loftus and I have a voice that sounds like this today not to brag.

Wow. And this is the Bexelcast our podcast where we take a look at your favorite movies with an intersectional feminist lens. Today we have a movie that came out in 2019 called Buffaloed and you're never gonna believe where this movie takes place. It is directed by Tanya Wexler, written by Brian Saka. And this movie is brought to us by a returning guest. That's so true.

We don't need to say what the Bechdel test is. Not today. Let's just breeze right past it. It's women's, honestly, and it's Women's History Month and I feel like we don't have to this month. We don't have to. Figure. We don't have to. Figure it out.

Look it up. Table flip. My voice sounds like this because I've just been screaming at men all month. Anyway. I haven't been using my voice. I've just been stealing. Perfect. Next year, just steal and burn things.

Yes. Save your voice, babe babe oh yes we should be silent now more than ever no more than ever just burn down their house oh like banshees of ed sheeran style okay okay that's my favorite joke that I've ever come up with. That is really funny. I, not to be pro-men, but that movie rips. I loved that damn movie. I was laughing. I was crying. Jenny the donkey. Are you kidding?

Feminist icon, Jenny the donkey. Everyone in that movie rocks. Colin Farrell being like Mr. Derp is so cute. He's like, what? Why not you be my friend? I loved it. That's great. We were about to introduce our guest. Yes, I know.

It's always going to be chaos when this guest is here, I feel like. It's true. She's a culture writer and critic you've seen her work on architectural digest vogue autostraddle and you know her from our episode on empire records it's shelly nicole aka the return of shrekky shrekky too i was like are we not gonna say shrekky because i will close this Zoom so fast. Also, I'm very happy that it's chaotic when I'm on all the time. That makes me so happy.

I love it. It's so fun. We're so excited to have you back. Truly. It's so hard not to talk throughout that part, especially when it's like, not to be on the side of men but I have this well the floor is yours if you have anything you want to say in response to what we said like three minutes ago no just the fact that I I don't want to be on the side of men and I just thought that that was funny and that I I mean we'll probably get into it because I was going to talk about my student

loan debt too but yeah mine's like not that much but yeah I'm excited I want to talk about money and buffalo and ill-fitting suits and um bad hair color I'm so excited there's so much this movie is truly a buffet of things to talk about it's a lot and it is it's a lot it was a little stressful to watch thinking of like various debts that i have that part just like there is a low humming anxiety to watching this movie where i paid off my student debt but there's so various well i went to school on a scholarship and only went to school once but i was i'm very very lucky that i i paid off my student debt it took forever it took over i think it took 10 11 years something like that damn but but i have a ton of hospital bills i

have not paid off and i hear about them all the time. Well, yeah, I'm not going to do it. And we, we, we, we, but like, I'm not going to do it. But I get, you know, every, there was a hospital bill I have from New York, like five years ago, where I didn't, I went to the ER and they were like, you're having a panic attack. Go home. And they're still like, but that will be $5,000. I was like, no, it won't be it will not be or it will be but i'm not giving it to you i'm not best of luck

to you and getting that absolute horse anyways um it's always fun to talk about various debts um okay so the movie is buffaloed Shelly what is your history with this movie I mean it came out pretty recently yeah it came out super recently I um cause what was it it came out in 2019 yeah I didn't discover it until the first lockdown

cause I was just watching everything I was watching everything if you hear someone in the background my partner is watching a basketball game right now okay um but I everything. I was watching everything. If you hear someone in the background, my partner is watching a basketball game right now. Okay. But I discovered it like through the first part of lockdown because I was literally watching anything and everything I could get my hands on because I had ran through all of my rewatches, like my new girl rewatches, The Office and all that stuff. And then I fell in love with Zoe Dutch. Like I started watching stuff with her. And I was like, who is she? She's funny. I don't know. I think

she's a really, really, really, really good actress. She's one of my favorite like white woman actresses, which of which I have like a few. But so I started watching it because of her and then I fell in love with it because she's hustling like it's about money it's about debt it's about scamming a little bit and it's all from a girl's perspective which I thought was really cool um and I I mean I didn't grow up poor I grew up like maybe lower middle class in Detroit both of my parents or my dad like worked at the factory and my mom um worked in an office but I learned about debt before I learned about earning you know and I learned about hustling before I learned about nine to fives which is in all, probably why I'm so successful at like

freelancing and why it doesn't like, like, if you owe me money for my I'm going to email you 73 times at net 61. I'm going to be like, Hello, me again. Me again, the return of checking I wrote for you turned in on time. Shrek 7 because I've emailed you 50 times but yeah I learned about debt before I learned about earning my parents didn't teach me like a lot about money but they taught me a lot about debt and I saw my parents paying stuff off and all that kind of stuff so I think I just connected with this movie through that. Because I might not know a lot about things like investing. And I was going to say like NFTs and all that kind of stuff. Caitlin and I know a ton about that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know that this is actually a finance podcast. That's why I wanted to come on here. Finance bros. But so I might not know a lot about that stuff but i know about hustling i'm always gonna make it work i can always get you know what i mean and this feels very similar to the story in the film and i just thought it was dope like is it chaotic and is it kind of breaking apart at a lot of things yeah but for the main part i just thought it was a really dope movie

to talk about like debt collecting from a girl's perspective and from the inside it was just dope so yeah i do appreciate that it's a movie about like hustling slash doing shady shit to get money from a woman's perspective because there are so many movies about that centering men yeah all that wolf of wall street type shit and all that kind of stuff money but all these movies about men scamming and getting money but it's never and also i like that it was from the point of view of her like she was trying to pay off student loans like she wasn't trying to like i guess in those other movies and other films they're always trying to just like make a buck to stay ahead and get on top but she was doing it because she was literally just trying to like pay off her shit right and then wanting to

do you know what I mean so I just thought it was dope I thought it was great it's one of like the dopest films I've seen about like debt and debt collecting that is from a real something i could connect with like that kind of perspective yeah nice yeah i had not heard of this movie until you brought it to us so my relationship with it is very brief but yeah i think it it posits some interesting things for us to discuss. I love that side-to-side bobble head of it. Because it's like, I have a lot to say, but not right now. But I guess I'll just have to wait and find out. I did. I mean, I've not spent a ton of time in Buffalo.

And I'd be curious, like, for people who are from Buffalo, like how they felt their city was portrayed because I always I don't know every time I see something that specific I remember how like flamingly angry I get when I feel Massachusetts has been misrepresented in television or film and so I am curious especially in like a comedy usually I feel like there were I don't know buffalo heads sound off because they were talking so much about wings that i'm like you know yeah there's a lot of wing talk it's like if it's a movie about boston and we're only talking about beans

i didn't know that about buffalo either so i would like for someone to be like is it really that big of a i because i didn't know that I didn't know the buffalo was known for wings. I did not know that. You never heard of buffalo wild wings? Oh, my God. I was like, wait, who's going to tell us? Oh, my God. I don't know why I didn't connect that to the city, but just the animal.

It's, I mean, it's like a super, I don't know why I didn't connect that to the city, but just the animal. It's, I mean, it's like a super, I don't know. I like did hot dog research in Buffalo. So I spent, that's why I've spent time there. Oh my God.

They keep referencing anchor bar, which is like technically I think the birthplace of Buffalo wings, Buffalo wings also invented by a woman. Happy women's history month wow yes yes girl bosses rejoice i'm learning so much about wings today i hate that i know so much i love that you know so much about that wow look at that well happy women's history month everyone look at that truly i mean what can't we do while you were discovering that buffalo wings come from buffalo i was googling the writer of the movie brian sacca who is from yes lockport new york and then based on a quick little Google Maps search I discovered that it appears to be a

suburb of Buffalo so so the writer is he's a buffalo head he's a buffalo head yeah but we let Matt Damon write movies about Boston you know so you're just not it's you can't just trust a single I just want to know what the Buffalo heads are saying. Sure. I've been, I've been to anchor bar. I've gone to the source. You're just bragging so much, Jamie on this episode.

I'm sorry. Yeah. I paid off my student debt and I had Buffalo. And I had to get jealous. I was about to say that I've never been to Buffalo, but then I am lying because I'm realizing how close it is to Niagara Falls where I have been and then I was like oh right I have a great uncle who lived in Buffalo and I have been there they've got good hot dogs shows you what I know well shut up Buffalo I'm a Buffalo fan I'm a fan fan of the buff. I had not seen this movie before.

I have like a lot of mixed feelings about this movie because I think you're like, I totally agree with you, Shelley, where it feels like this is like, and I feel like it's probably like intentionally done where it feels like a working class female perspective take on the big short format. Because there's a few different moments where she big shorts and is like, here is how money works. And you're like, yeah. She's big shorting. She's wolfing of Wall Streeting. She is definitely wolfing of Wall Streeting. Yeah.

She's wolfing out. And I do like, yeah, like the how like the whole framework of this movie is about how she becomes this like huge hustler kind of like super villainous character but started by just trying to like get by and there's like all this emphasis on how the system is set up to fail her and the only way that she can survive is by becoming a girl boss supervillain. I don't know. But then there's other stuff about this movie that I was like, huh? But I'm really excited to talk about it. I think it's, I've never seen a movie like it. And I also like, don't think that there's like what you're, you're saying,

like there's not a lot of movies that even attempts to have this discussion. And I'm really glad that this movie has like a really clear agenda of like wanting to talk about it and it felt like cathartic and cool to see stuff like that addressed because yeah I grew up in like a lower middle class family and I can't relate to Peg's life directly and I also didn't eat that many wings and so it's kind of like we were I was too busy eating beans but yeah like the the pressure to like you have to figure out how to get by in a system that's set up to ruin your life. Yeah. I'm glad I'm glad it's discussed. I'm glad that this movie exists.

Also, I did want to say the other thing that brought me to this movie was Judy Greer in the trailer. I was like, like oh for sure ever since jawbreaker i've just been like i will follow you anywhere and also i am really sad to talk about this but reboot being canceled really made me pretty upset i loved that show it's it was really good and i don't think it got the fair chance yeah it was really smart it was really funny really witty but yeah judy also bought me to this movie i was like yes like what the fuck an icon we still haven't covered jawbreaker on the show and that's classic wild i don't know how we even well shrekky come on back anytime oh i will talk about jawbreaker the return of the Turn to talk about Jawbreaker of all films. Listen, absolutely. Clueless gone wrong. Just, or clueless gone bad, as I like to say.

Let's do it. Let's get it on the books. But in the meantime, well, let's take a quick break and then let's come back and recap Buffaloed. Hey, everybody. This is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level.

The one, the only, Catherine Hahn is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right. The queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. I feel some Sandra Bernhardt in you. Oh, my God. I would love it. I have to watch Lost.

Oh, you have to. No, I know. I'm so behind. Katherine Hahn can sing. Oh, I'm to. No, I know. I'm so behind. Katherine Hahn can sing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad.

I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Luge. I'm not going to hawk this slalom. Rudy. Not hawk this slalom. I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it. It was somehow gorgeous. Yee, must flock your hollum.

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here's the plot of Buffaloed. We open in media res. Okay, master's degree in screenwriting. coming up again that's that's a five-figure term baby yeah um where peg doll played by zoe dutch i think it's deutsch is it deutsch oh is it deutsch i don't know i never i never know i i want to say dutch but i think it might be deutsch but whenever that happens I think

I'm when I'm thinking it's like supposed to be fancier I always hear when they're just like no it's it's just it's Dutch it's just Dutch it's just Dutch I was like oh I would love for her to yell at me it's just Dutch like it's just Dutch like you know what? Sure. No problem. It is. Okay, fine. Zoe Dutcher Deutsch is running through Buffalo, New York. She stops in front of a building. She fires a gun into the air and screams, I'm gonna kill you. You fucking jag off. And we're like, oh my gosh, what's happening? She's got a gun and it's like gold.

I love it. It's a lot. It's it. It's a lot. It's intense. It's a good opening. Then we cut to Peg as a child. She's giving a presentation to her brother, JJ, and her mom, played by Judy Greer. Did either of you ever do that when you were kids? Like give a presentation of like why I should be able to think?

Absolutely. Okay, same. A thousand okay same a thousand percent a thousand percent I kind of wonder I'm like I feel like I must have seen that convention happen on tv at some point and been like oh yeah amazing idea and like why I should be able to stay over Samantha's house this weekend by Jamie. Mine. I did it for, uh, I saw camp nowhere, which another classic, classic film saw camp nowhere on repeat,

rented it so many times. And I was like, Oh, I'm going to fucking sleep away camp. And I'm going to do a presentation as to why. And that was what I did. Like one of my many presentations to to my family and I went to camp that summer like it worked it was like for the

summer of eighth like after eighth grade like right before going into high school and honestly it changed my life for the best but yeah I will say like if I were a parent right now and a kid took the time and I could do it, I'd be like, yeah, I got to hand it to you. Like, look at this. Look at this damn PowerPoint. I'd be so proud of them. The effort. That Mercedes Benz you wanted? All yours.

Yeah. You got it. You got it, kid. Well, Peg is pitching Peg Inc., which is her company, something, something. She wants to invest money to grow a college fund so that she can go to an Ivy League school. And she wants a $1,000 loan from her mom. But her mom says, I don't have that kind of money. I'm already in a ton of debt myself. And then she gets a call from a debt collector. But Peg is hyper focused on making as much money as possible to secure financial freedom for her future. So throughout her youth, she does various grifts. She's selling buffalo

wings as if she's at a lemonade stand. She's selling cigarettes to teenagers. She starts selling counterfeit Buffalo Bills tickets, all to pay for this Ivy League education that she does get into. She gets accepted into a prestigious school, but she realizes that she probably won't be able to pay for it. The scene where she gets into college, I thought was so, that was like one of my favorite moments in the movie of like how well it handled the idea of debt even like generationally because like between our generation our parents generation that whatever like I know we all know this and so do our listeners but like the you know the the way that college educations were monetized changed so

significantly and so it's like when I was trying to go to college like my parents also similar to the Judy Greer character were like you got in that's awesome you should go and then like I couldn't go to the school I wanted to go to because like once we looked at it it was like oh just kidding false alarm this is impossible and you can't do it and Judy Greer's character's reaction where she's like I don't know I don't know how this shit works like you you got in, you should go. And like, I feel like there's so many people in our generation that experienced that and then got completely fucked.

Like, yeah. Yeah. No, same thing that happened to me. Like when I, I got accepted into the college that I originally wanted to go to. But the thing is both my parents that are very like different my dad is

very like I mean we'll we'll figure it out and my mom is very like um yeah we will but still no you can't go there and so I had the same situation like I got accepted to this college I was super excited but then the realization hit was like, oh, we cannot afford that. And because my school, my high school, like, didn't teach us a lot about, like, scholarships and stuff. My dad was like, yeah, you get a scholarship or grant. It was too late to start doing all that, you know. So I ended up going to another school that still was, like, fucked me over. Like, big time. Like, huge. that still was like fucked me over like yeah like huge and i was like shit i should have just went

to the school i wanted to go to either way if i was gonna be fucked anyway yeah so and i think you're right about that generational shit too because my parents didn't know half of the stuff that these people these loan officers and stuff were talking to them about you know what I mean so of course they just wanted me to be able to go to school so we signed so much shit and like it is just I think that was definitely the start of me being like this shit's predatory and I need to like just I would rather hustle my ass off and like pay for quarter for quarter versus doing the shit that I ended up doing yeah it's so frustrating it's like we were lucky that we even got to do that which is ridiculous like it it yeah I remember like the movie doesn't go into this much detail on like student loans specifically

and it did make me want a movie about student loans specifically yeah because there there was like I remember like this was like early 2010s but like the huge there was a huge confusion in my household about like what is a federal loan and what is a private loan and like what does that mean and i think we were sort of like confused into believing that a federal loan was like good and like they're not gonna give you shit which is not true at all they all fucking suck like private loans are maybe like worse but federal loans are not working for you in any way and like the way that we I don't know like yeah I think like part of the reason I was able to pay down my student debt was

because like you know I didn't go to the school I wanted to go to I went to the school that offered the most money and then on top of that like because of the way that like we fucked up the loans that we chose and so I had to start paying it back right away and worked full-time through college because they were like well you signed one thing one time so sorry like go fuck yourself like get a job time to start collecting yeah yeah you're a freshman in college but anyway you owe us money already yeah figure it out bitch and it just like it drives me nuts because it's like you know I'm I'm I don't know the the way people talk about it even people our age sometimes where it's like yeah I'm like proud that I was able to make that impossible situation work but like I wouldn't wish that on anyone and there's that's

hell no that's the other generational thing where people are like well i had to do it so you should have to and it's like no i shouldn't have had to do that i don't want anyone to have to do that i don't want anyone to have to do that so i don't want yeah it's fucking terrible it's terrible and there's so much to talk about but i'll wait we're only 10 minutes into the movie but anyways i thought that scene was really well done yeah i agree and then what happens next is she gets arrested for selling the counterfeit tickets she goes to court where her lawyer gets in a fight with the judge while the prosecuting attorney graham played by Jermaine Fowler, just watches this unfold. And then Peg is thrown in jail and starts hustling in jail,

selling Go-Gurt. I love it. She really can't be stopped. She cannot be stopped. And I'm telling you that, I'll get into it later, but her hustle mentality is what makes me, me fall in love because it's me. It's me. I'm like, oh, I'm in this situation.

Cool. So I'm going to figure this out. This this it's just always in me. And I get it from my mom. Like, it's insane. I'm excited. Yeah, because there are so many Wolf of Wall street parallels here where she just i i do respect a character that's like i refuse to improve okay cool i'm gonna meet you where you are yeah understood let's proceed

so she's she's selling gogurt in prison because she's still $50,000 in debt from all of her legal fees. Also, debt collectors are still after her mom. So she's just trying to alleviate this debt. After around three years in prison, she gets out. Peg's brother, JJ, now played by Noah Reed, who I think a lot of people would recognize from Schitt's Creek, gives her a job at the bar that he bought where Peg runs into Graham, that prosecutor, or more like prosecutee, because he's trying to flirt with her. I love Jermaine Fowler so much.

He's like the greatest his character is so confusing to me he's just all over the place it's not his fault i don't understand that's the one thing that i did not dig because who are you i'm like trying to scam a system just a little bit and you're're just like, not going to go to dinner with me. What? Well, it's like his whole thing. I just feel like he is so like weirdly inconsistent where it seemed like in

every scene he discovered she was a debt collector. I was like, you know, this, like, I just saw you learn this in the last scene, but up until like the end of the second act, he's like,

you do what? And I was i was like like you know this man she keeps telling you yeah it's confusing but it's bizarre and he i think he recognizes her as the person that he like put away like put in jail three years earlier yeah but he's like oh let me buy you dinner and she's like um you put me in jail bye i don't want to hang out with you i don't want to get wings with you mr fowler i don't want to do this with you and it's not like i don't believe that you know people who work for the da's office can get away with all sorts of shit like I'm sure that's true but I was just like is no what how is this allowed they're like unclear I don't know it's so confusing but you know I love to I love to see Jermaine Fowler I was like cool I thought they had like fun chemistry

too but the relationship I was like I just don't understand and then at the very end he was like well guess what peg my grandfather like was which like, pulling from real life, you know, things that happen in real life and are very tragic. He says, like, my grandfather was completely fucked over by debt collection and then was unhoused and then passed away before it was resolved. But I was like, but why are you bringing this up now? Now. Like, you could have told me that so many times. Yeah. But now when things are wrapping up.

It sounds like her job is a deal breaker for you. Why do you keep showing up? He's also actively investigating the company that she works for. It's like this won't work out. This is not for us. And he acknowledges that. He's like, this is going to be a conflict of interest but they still have sex so many times maybe the realism is that the da's office is

unethical and incompetent sure yeah but i was confused because it seemed like we were supposed to be rooting for him and i was like but he's he's doing such a bad job he's bad and then and then at the end like i, I don't know. She's like, I think he's my boyfriend. I was like, all right, whatever. You guys deserve each other. What are you talking about? Well, then Peg gets a call from a debt collector.

The screenwriter of the movie, too. He plays Sal. Oh, that's him. Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. So after talking to him for a little bit and realizing that he works in buffalo she realizes she can get a job as a debt collector because another thing

that is examined in this movie is that because now she had like had served time in prison she's very limited in the jobs that she can apply for and get but she's like well debt collecting is something i can still do she is like a this woman is a fucking bull like you tell her no and then she's like i'm good she's like i'll do something fucked up i don't care like i'd like so she gets a job working for this guy named Wiz uh Jai Courtney of iFrankenstein fame okay we were talking about this before Shelly came on the call I was like let me banging down the zoom door um yeah Jai Courtney let's talk about Jai Courtney really quick because here's the thing about Jai Courtney he was in i iFrankenstein, and we here at the Bagdell Castle love iFrankenstein, Jai

Courtney in iFrankenstein, he plays, look, the man's got range, first of all, he's Australian, you wouldn't know it in this one, he's secretly Australian, you do kind of, you can kind of tell in iFrankenstein, but that's growth, we we appreciate that from jay courtney because sam worthington is in some of the most highest grossing movies in the world and he still can't hide the fact that he's australian what was that what was that like line from avatar where he's like he's like playing a u.s marine and he's like when you at war you're like oh my god come on nobody thought to be like let's try that again can we get another take one more take anyway yeah one more sam sam you're supposed to be from michigan uh james cameron was just too focused on something else on set that day

this is i and i i we don't like this word and the way that it's used in this context but the best example of that in avatar is when sam worthington's like at battle it's insane and you're like oh my god uh anyways jay courtney doesn't have that problem he plays mr good in i frankenstein he plays an angelic gargoyle warrior who dies for gargoyle the cause yeah yes and this one he's patriarchy the guy one of our favorite tropes mr patriarchy and he's really making a meal of it he's just like growling the entire movie yes i didn't love the the character was baffling to me but i loved the jai courtney performance he was really he was really going for it mr patriarchy yeah yeah he was giving it 110 percent and speaking of numbers

yeah yeah that was good that was good thank you amazing i have a master's degree i would never mention it um we we learn how debt collecting works once she gets this job working for wiz where banks sell debt to like debt agents or debt brokers i don't know what you'd call them but they're selling they're selling people's debt for pennies on the dollar pennies right then debt collectors try to bargain with the debtors to settle their debt knowing that they can kind of negotiate because their debt is actually worth far less now that they've like bought it for pennies on the dollar. But they're like, oh, like, we'll bring your $50,000 debt down to $10,000. Little does the debtor know that

settling their debt for $10,000 is now profitable for the debt collectors. And all of this is barely regulated by the government. Right. So Peg makes a deal with Wiz that if she can become the top collector at this agency in one month, he will erase her debt. And she does it it she again has a knack for hustling she has a knack a knack for debt collecting yeah it's a it's a hell of a montage it's just a lot of like zoe deutsch reactions and writing on a chalkboard or a whiteboard right she's just so another reason why i kind of love her especially in these montages of this this montage of this part it shows how slovenly she is like she's just not she doesn't her goal in this movie is not to like she's not trying to be this pretty girl she's in it in fact

when she tries to be this girl that's like classic feminine it goes bad for her but i love how whenever she's at the board she's like eating she's wearing baggy clothes she's just her goal is to make money and get her debt erased and i love that in this montage it's just so dope she's like i'm gonna make money and i'm gonna look like shit while i do i do i i like i did i had that same note shelly where it was like oh heard like because we're told i feel like that happens in movies a lot that are about like if you're talking about a person that not even is like living below the poverty line but it's just like not upper middle class or above. They're either like cartoonishly styled to be like slovenly and filthy and gross,

or they're like just wearing rich people clothes in a way that makes no sense. And it's like, we see people in this movie where the same outfit twice, we see people have like stains on their clothes after eating messy food, just like shit that is so basic. But when you see it happen, you're like, oh, that never happens. It really never happens, especially the wearing the clothes twice.

I love when it happens in shows. I love when it happens in movies. And this too, I mean, this is like, I don't know, a film student trying to like reach a little bit. But I think it just showed how much she doesn't care like she just is trying she has a goal her goal is the money her goal is not femininity it's not like classiness or anything like that she's trying to pay her debt and she's not spending money on other stuff she's not trying to do any of that and it plays back into how she is as a person just like the dudes doing all those fucking movies where they're trying to like make it and oh god this

montage part just really made me happy also going back to the explaining the debt it was wild because i knew that shit and the only reason i knew that was because of my mom my mom because when i like messed up in my 20s a little bit, you know, you get a credit card in the mail. You're like, free money? Well. Don't mind if I do. I'll take three if you have it. But then I had to eventually tell my parents.

I was like, hey, I am in a little bit of debt. And I'm nervous. I was crying because these debt people were calling me. I was like 24 and they were calling me and they were telling me all this stuff, which was basically these guys, Sal and his crew, essentially just calling me. And then my mom would laugh at me. She would be like, they offered you what? And I would be like, yeah.

And I paid it. She said, don't you ever call right now and cancel that payment plan because no and just be like this is what I'm going to give you and I want a letter I want the and it it worked it blew my mind it worked and I just I just thought that that scene was was dope yeah when she big short it was great it was great that big short scene there I knew some not all of that like some of the history of like how debt can be sold and sold and sold I knew much less about and it's good like this is like uh I don't know I really appreciate what they're trying to do because it's like I don't know like it's fun to see this put in such a like goofy format and in a way that isn't like tragedy porn

or bashing you over the head like it's I don't feels like a spoonful of sugar kind of like approach to talking about this in a way that I much prefer to like watching people drown and you're like I could just do that I can look in the mirror in my life like I don't need that's that's why I love romps. It's true. I mean, this is a romp. Yeah. Okay. So she's discovering that she has a real knack for debt collecting, but she also discovers some unsavory things they do, such as exploiting elderly people like this woman, Mrs. Cooney,

by collecting on debt that has already been settled multiple times so they're just like bleeding her dry for every penny she's got because they're because she like didn't remember that she had paid that debt right so they're exploiting situations like that often and peg is fully participating um at first yeah then peg runs into Graham, the prosecutor again, who tells her he's investigating Wiz and his team of collectors and that Graham can't take her on a date if she's working

with these guys and being complicit in their horrible tactics. And then this is sort of a turning point where she realizes how awful they are. So Peg decides to strike out on her own and start her own debt collecting

business. I do think it's worth mentioning that she like part of what I did like about Peg's character, even though I was not rooting for her the entire movie, honestly, was that like, she is a very morally ambiguous character for lots of sex because it's not like she realizes that like wiz is unethical and then quits the

job she knows he's unethical and she's wholeheartedly participating it's when she doesn't get the cut up when it affects her bottom line that's when she's right it's not when it's fucking with other people like she knows it's fucking with other people and doesn't care until she i think that like she collected 125 000 and he would only give her 2 000 so she was like well i'm out of here and i'll like go find a better deal somewhere else so she is like at the end of the day she's like about her bottom line exactly which i also really dig too though because i think if i would not have loved this movie so much if at that point like when i realized she was like scamming this old lady if she had had this moral

high ground and was like oh i'm not gonna do this anymore i'm not gonna participate in this because that's not what happens to dudes in movies like they very much so know when they're doing something wrong and they do the same thing that she does peg is like i know that y'all are doing something wrong but now it affects me so now i'm gonna go do it because i want my money like this is about me and i think if they had made her into this like very holier-than-thou character it wouldn't have been very realistic first of all because it doesn't take a lot she's smart she knows that it doesn't

take a lot for her to set up this business so I really I'm really glad that they just made her go out on her own versus trying to be a good person and sticking it out or something like no right right because in the movie just would have been over it would have been also done yeah just would have been over it would have

been also done yeah it would have been a nice i learned my lesson bye and like you said like audiences tend to permit a morally ambiguous character who is a man far more than there's an expectation that women have to be so well behaved and we can't do illegal things. Yeah. And it's like, no, Peg was like, actually I can do illegal things and I'm going to do it really,

really well. And then I'm going to get a gold gun. Though at first when she does strike out on her own, she insists that her business is going to be legitimate with no shady stuff like clean she's gonna you know everything's gonna be above board so she starts buying the debts from wiz's supplier who's also wiz's brother also she has a there there is a like random like mr sweetie pie brother that comes out into the story at random points. So Judy Greer can be like, I love you.

And don't be a bad influence on your brother. Which I also thought was cool. I mean, this movie is doing a lot of table turn-y stuff. But in a way that I kind of, I guess, approved of or whatever. But I like the fact that her whole life, she's been the bad influence on her brother. Like, it made me so happy that she was the one who was like, and he's older, I think, too.

Yeah. I love the fact that she was like, you're going to do what I say. This is bad, but we're going to do it together. And I loved it. I loved it. Yeah. I'm excited to talk about the Judy Greer character, too, because I think there's like a lot of interesting stuff going on with her and Peg's relationship.

We're like both of them are super in the wrong in different moments. But it's like, ooh, interesting relationship. I'm excited to talk about it. For sure. OK, so Peg is setting up her business. She hires mostly like random people who she like sees potential in as collectors along with some women she knew from prison such as starla and backer peg's business starts booming everyone is good at their job also peg and graham are like kind of seeing each other slash sleeping together now

you're like yeah i guess okay but he keeps saying like i don't want to date you if if you're still a debt collector because of this investigation he's doing i just want to do two quick shout outs for like the character actors that compose Peg's staff, because we've got we've got some fun familiar faces in this bunch. OK, we've got playing the part of Francis. We have Lucia Stross, who we just talked about on 51st States. Better part for them. So was thrilled to see them. her name is francis not starla i guess that that's yeah i'd like whatever starla was her name she was using as a sex phone operator yeah when she was on the set yeah yeah she's credited as francis okay got it we have for all

my degrassi heads uh we have raymond ablack yeah do. Who was on Degrassi when I was in high school. Saf Bandari. I had a huge crush on him as I was watching this movie. Oh, my gosh. Oh, yeah. I mean, he's been in a ton. Like, he's super legit. He's done a ton of other stuff.

I think he was on, yes, he was also on Orphan Black. But because if you're a canadian listener you will know that it's the canadian like it's the canadian military you have to serve for two years in degrassi before and then you can move on to the rest of your life but he did he's he's one of our bravest canadian soldiers um serving on the cast of degrassi from 2007 to 2010 and you have okay my favorite the woman who plays Rhonda is in a small but memorable part in the original Santa Claus um she plays she plays Judy the waitress from from Denny's from Denny's yeah she's an icon i mean she's also been in a ton of shit but like iconically she is judy the waitress from the santa claus and i was like whoa i love that

isn't that amazing i also love how excited we got about the fact regular client of peg's mom because peg's mom runs a salon out of her house right and ronda seems to be her only customer also eating her out of house and home and also giving advice when it's not needed like i loved when she was like i could go for a fish stick i was like oh i know this lady i know this lady i would say no to a fish stick like it was just yes yeah perfect love it so good but yes shout out to um legend of cinema judy the waitress just i mean there's i love i've got a passion for character actors and we've got we've got a real murderer's row yeah in this movie for sure i also enjoyed the character backer played by laurie odom laurie odom yeah it's a it's a good batch yeah for sure and i love that

she went for hustlers you know other hustlers smooth talkers because there's so many different ways to hustle and everybody has their own sort of like niche yeah we keep talking about we'll see that it works out she picked the right people game recognizes game you know absolutely and i like that like peg i mean to some extent but it's like whatever peg is so morally compromised that she does lie to her employees with with with regularity and will like try to like be like look over here anytime they're like when are you gonna pay me and and i know i know like again buffalo had sound off would you forget that your boss didn't pay you if you got good seats at a buffalo bills game sound off in the comments i think i would just be upset at a buffalo bills game i would just be upset at i would be upset in the box at a buffalo bills game like damn i know that i've got

some money that i'm old so what because that's how i am when i don't get paid for my freelance work right away literally i'm just upset while i'm at the mcdonald's so like i'm just you're like interesting it seems like you could have used this money for anything else. It's so wild. Or I get really upset at this little site. I get really upset if it's like net 61 and then I see

an article published just like on the site. Just in general. Just like in general, if an article publishes. I'm like, hmm, interesting. I feel like instead of publishing that article, you could have just sent me my money you could have just paid me yes I was on a writing staff last year that like we were not allowed to unionize and then they brought us to a Dodgers game and it's like but let us unionize like what I like I don't want a hot dog and that's a lot coming from me i don't want a

free hot dog today i want a union i was gonna say come on a union or also like um i i don't follow like my editors on twitter but i know that they have one so if it's net 61 and they're tweeting about they're like out somewhere and my money hasn't hit my account i'm like huh interesting instead of going out or tweeting it feels like you could have paid me my fucking money but you know that's just me at a buffalo girls game upset i it is my new life goal to never get on your bad side ever because at the top of the movie, when Peg says, like, don't fuck with my money, that brought me in. Like, because just don't. Like, I'm a very kind person. But I think because of the industry that, like, I'm in and with the way that I grew up with, like, it's just very much like you could do everything else you could publish my

article late you could do this you could do but do not mess with like my money it's just no I can't handle it it's really interesting that don't fuck with my money is written on your shirt right now it is I didn't I really didn't want to bring it up because I know this isn't like a visual based podcast, but the photo that I'm going to send is going to be me in this shirt. So thank you for acknowledging that. An incredible shirt. I mean, it was an investment really. It marketing. I told you earlier, this is part of my merch. This is a part of my merch. Your other merch being just a shirt that says Shrek-y on the back. Don't sue me yeah

available now actually what a good hustle that you're running thank you anyway so Wiz is not happy that Peg has become his competition and he's like

this is war and he starts fucking with her including dumping a bucket of like probably fake blood on peg at a bills game and then trashing her office and stealing their paper aka these pieces of paper that have the debtors information on them which is how they are able to collect the debt from people i yeah the whole the carry moment at the buffalo bills game was like the patriarchy the guy behavior goes a little off the rails for me for part of it but there's a carry moment at the buffalo bills game we can't take that away from this movie. And then there's also the blow up doll, which like, yeah,

was just also, which led into another moment of her telling her staff, it's okay. Everything's fine, actually. Things are actually fine. It's no big deal. And then trying to get another date with Mr. Fowler.

I'm just like, what is going on? They must be just like terminally horny for each other. Because there's so many times where it's just like, anyone else? Anyone else? Anybody. Anybody else. But it also seems like one of my favorite, like, very, very movie things. It seems like Jermaine Fowler is maybe the only lawyer in the entire city of buffalo because he is like working on every case all the time he's never like what are the chances

what are the chances because he's he's the prosecutor in her first trial he's also there in court toward the end of the movie in her second trial and then he's also running this separate working in the capacity of an investigative journalist like he's doing a lot sometimes he's a cop because yes he's like you have the right to remain for the first 20 minutes and then he comes in he's a lawyer he comes in during the raid at the end where he's like in a bulletproof jacket I had to course correct my notes at some point because I spent the first half hour of the movie thinking that he was a police detective and not because that's how he's acting yeah that's how he's acting exactly yeah also I love his uh his secretary she's great oh yes oh my god iconically putting it in all day long i love that for her yeah she's

like what's happening what there's a party awesome bye i was like wow that's me when i have to when i work in an office i'm just like what huh i'm leaving and she's complaining about graham who is asleep at his desk apparently all the time and also like he's drunk on a Tuesday in the middle of the day because there's a time where she's like you can't drive home right now you're so drunk I mean he's doing a lot of work so maybe he's got he's got a wearing a lot of hats it's true he's you know self-medicating I guess yeah he's yeah he's he's got like five different jobs depending on what the scene requires okay so wiz is fucking with peg a lot wiz also has taken ownership of peg's brother jj's bar because jj had put it up for collateral on his mom's refinancing on something something debt the answer is always debt with this movie always so then peg

retaliates by calling the cops on wiz and the cops raid his agency which gives her the opportunity to steal all the paper back that he stole from her so now she has all this access to debtor information and she's able to make a bunch of money. But then her mom is like, Peg, you're hurting people with your job. And Peg is like, no, these people spent money they knew they didn't have. And this is when Graham is like,

well, what about my grandpa who was in medical debt? And then he lost his house and then he died. And Peg is like, I do IDK. What about my grandpa who was in medical debt and then he lost his house and then he died? And Peg is like, I don't know, IDK. What about my dad is what I would be. Yeah. The like end of movie there. This is another like thing that I mean, a lot of movies are guilty of. And it kind of makes me laugh where it's like the end of act two random information reveal that you're like, what?

Like, I mean, with with Jermaine Fowler's character it makes sense that that would be a but I but it doesn't make sense that he would be so deep into this relationship and suddenly it matters right exactly it's solid motivation for him so I don't mind that that's a part of his character at all but it's like but why did you wait so long to tell her that you've been dating this woman for months like what are you like you knew you know what's going on like i know she's not being totally honest but you know she's a debt collector and even an ethical debt collector is fucked up like you know that that's your job like and in the same way where

it's like i think i don't know i guess I don't know what narrative function it really served to I guess it like helps sort of like heal like the information about Peg's father how did we feel about that reveal because I I think I'm on board with it but I just like what what purpose did that serve other than to like bring her and her mom like a little closer together I guess I think it was that's what I was saying like some of the stories kind of like I feel like towards that they wanted to wrap it up I kind of felt like they were like we need to do this we need to say this we need to make this connection with them also because she was not close with her mom throughout the whole movie which was another thing that I kind of actually really liked so I think that they were trying to be like there's this connection and then and dropping off family stuff is a really good way to like speed up a story oh not a really good way it's a

way to speed up a story and I think honestly that's what they were trying to do but other than that I can't really think of why yeah right they did it so late i also like very much saw it coming it didn't even feel like a reveal because i'm like the dad yeah i can tell based on the stories that these people are sharing right that this guy is a piece of shit yeah and it's also just because of how much peg loved him and how averse her dad or her mom was to him. And like, when it came to money talk, it wasn't a surprise that he,

you know, like shrug. Who knows? I don't know. So Peg's mom and Graham are like ganging up on Peg being like, your job is evil. So then there's like this big argument among them and then the cops show up all of a sudden because wiz had tipped them off about peg's mom running an illegal

business or something um so peg's mom and jj are arrested which that's evil evil evil to do yeah what wiz did yes for sure but he's patriarchy the guy that's the kind of thing he's gonna do what do you expect so peg's mom is arrested then we cut to the opening scene with peg running through buffalo she fires the gun that she got from francis um and then she attacks Wiz and they're fighting. And then the cops show up again and arrest Peg. So she is detained with her mom. And this is where they have this like heart to heart.

They talk about their dreams and they talk about finances and debt and how Peg's dad was actually an asshole. So then Peg gets out and organizes a meeting with all of the debt collecting agencies, including Wiz's. Don't know why he's so amicable all of a sudden. Yeah, suddenly. He's like, I did kind of call the cops on your mom and ruin your life.

And he's like so I'm sorry I'm so sorry that yeah that climactic scene I was like ooh rewrite city going on here like um wait it's like I don't know I like I don't mean to like slam but it's like um okay

we gotta wrap this up we gotta wrap this up what if everyone was in the bar and then they said exactly what they did wrong and And then the movie over. And then the movie's finished. And that's exactly what. And then one more Buffalo Bills. Right. Because what happens is that Peg pitches all of these debt collecting agencies a scenario where they unite so that they can be this like huge, strong force and make a bunch of money.

And they're like yeah i love making money and here's all the shady shit i've done to make money but surprise peg was recording the whole thing it's a setup and she now has them admitting to doing a bunch of illegal stuff so the cops and jermaine fowler who is a cop in this scene, come in and arrest all of these. Who is? Honestly, I was so confused at that point that I didn't even realize that that was, like, weird. But that he was acting in the capacity of not his job. Like, just not even remotely his job.

He should be there. That makes sense. Yeah, sure. So bizarre. God bless. that makes sense yeah sure so bizarre god bless so peg then like sneaks off and goes to graham's office where he has all of the evidence on all of these people to convict them because he's again also an investigative journalist question mark um he's a hustler too lawyer cop investigator journal everyone in this movie he's got a lot is a hustler yep so peg torches all of this evidence because she wants to erase all of

those people's debts because she has learned a lesson debt collecting is actually evil she has not had the opportunity to learn this lesson earlier in the movie we gotta wrap this up yeah and she's like oh debt collecting is evil and you know most people are in debt because of medical bills and student loans and other ways that capitalist institutions fuck over so many americans so peg learns this but because Peg destroyed that evidence, that's illegal. So then she gets thrown back in jail for a while, but she's released.

She apologizes to her mom. She celebrates with her friends and she shifts gears from, to quote the movie, selling nothing to people with less than nothing which is what she did as a debt collector and she moves on to the people who have everything to the only hustle that's even more of an unregulated clusterfuck than debt collecting which is hedge funds okay i love that ending that was fun yeah that was fun it was cathartic i liked it

because they were like i think again trying to be like she hasn't really learned anything right right she's just gonna like use her her powers for sort of more good now yeah sort of more good yeah but she's still being very selfish. Like. Yeah. Love that for her. And then there's some text on screen about household debt in the U.S. being 13 trillion dollars, which is over half of what our like national federal debt is. So.

I can't believe that's a number. 13 trillion dollars. 13 trillion dollars. Outrageous believe that's a number. $13 trillion. $13 trillion. Outrageous. That's absurd. So that's the movie. Let's take a quick break and we will come back to discuss. Hey everybody, this is Matt Rogers.

And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Catherine Hahn is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right. The queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and, of course, the culture.

I feel some Sandra Bernhardt in you. Oh, my God. I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know. I'm so behind. Katherine Hahn can sing.

Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. And on camera, yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Ludie. Not hawk the slalom.

I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it. It was somehow gorgeous. Yee, my slok, you hollum. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017 was murdered. There are crooks

everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. the target of two assassination attempts, separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today.

And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president. One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. I always felt like Lynette was kind of this right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI in a violent revolutionary underground. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer.

This is Rip Current. Available now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. I feel like we have actually had a lot of discussion already. I did too. I was thinking that every time I interrupted, I was like, I could have saved this. Finish the episode. I'm like looking at the clock too. And I was like, Oh, Shelly, you're, you're a hustler. Chaotic energy. Thank you. So much.

So what's what's left? I think like we've had this discussion around peg but i i think that like peg is a really interesting character i i do like this movie kind of falls apart for me in the third act but setting up because like you were saying at the beginning of the episode shelly and honestly you've been like selling me on this movie more the more we talk about it. It's because I'm a hustler. I'm scamming you into loving this movie. You're scamming me. It's net 61 and I'm fucked. Con artist.

But I do think that like, yeah, we have so many male protagonists that are the scammer that we like, you know, don't morally agree with but you're like well I'm like down to watch this guy go for the ride even though it's like he has significantly less to like push up against yeah and it's cool to see a woman put in that role and be equally fuck you like I am bad because I think that I'm trying to think of an example of what we've covered on the show but i feel like sometimes when uh like a female lead is doing bad stuff the movie will go way out of its way to give like ethical reasoning for it in a way that you wouldn't for a flawed male protagonist they'd be like well she is mommy or like she is not like they there's like a traditionally feminine reason she has this huge thing that's going on this is why she's being bad this is why she's selfish even kill bill like that is like her whole she's only murdering people because she is mommy like that kind of

hustlers comes to mind as well where they're like yeah we're like baking drugs and feeding them to people but it's because i have a daughter yeah and even for me like promising young woman and stuff like yeah i love a revenge like this is not very revenge but i mean she is kind of mad at the system people peg anyway the system yeah but like i just don't i i want i've always wanted with like, if it's a revenge film with a woman, I wanted it to just be, she's just mad for no reason. Like, why can't she just want to be bad or want to be selfish or want to make these like money moves and all this kind of stuff because she just wants to.

She's not trying to like pay to keep her kids in the house or try to get someone out of the hospital and that's what i kind of love about peg it's like and she's been this way since she was a kid right like she's just wanted money and it's just something she learned from her dad which i also thought was cool was something a movie where um a girl inherits a trait or a characteristic or something from her father versus, like, her mom, which I think was super, super dope. But I agree with you that it loses me towards the end. And there are a lot of holes, you know what I'm saying? But I think because I was so amped about the plot and the money and just how Peg is,

I kind of, like, looked past them until right now where we're like dissecting them. Honestly, most of my issues with the movie are not necessarily like Bechdel cast lens related stuff. It's more just like this script could have used a second draft. Like the characters are a little like cartoonish and inconsistent the plot could be a bit more streamlined maybe but as far as like examining a complicated and like morally corrupt character who is a woman which again is is kind of a rare thing for a movie to examine because those characters that writers or that like Hollywood makes space for are almost always men.

Right. So yeah, I think there's just like, it's interesting to, that's a little why I guess speaking, like what we were just talking about where it's like the most of the movie doesn't like, we know why Peg is doing what she's doing,

but it is like a self motivated thing. She's not like, I'm trying to save the family. She's like, yeah, like clearly doesn't like we know why peg is doing what she's doing but it is like a self-motivated thing she's not like i'm trying to save the family she's like yeah family clearly doesn't want to save themselves i'm gonna save myself like it's not like she doesn't love her family but she's not like i guess you know using all of her time to be like come on mom it's not her like major concern yeah it's not even her brother's bar she's like you're being stupid about how you're running this bar i'm not gonna help you figure it out but but like you're doing a bad job doing this wrong yeah but like i i guess that that's why i felt a little like studio notesy to me that she's like so thoroughly absolved of everything at the end and then she like i don't know the

whole like colluding with the da's office at the end like that whole thing it's like this is a character who is self-motivated and bad like see that just like see that through i don't know i guess that they sort of do because she ends up just sort of like heel turning to do the exact same sort of diabolical shit in a way that's less harmful to vulnerable people. Yeah, yeah, I just didn't like it to the major thing that I didn't like, I kind of like that she had a shitty relationship with her mom. And I think that like heart to heart moment in the cell, it kind of made me a little upset, because it helped her make a turn or basically make a little turn or whatever.

Being like, oh, you're just like your dad. Da-da-da-da. It's like I wanted her to be like, yeah, I am. And I'm going to keep being like just like this is who I am. Like I'm going to be. So I kind of don't like, I didn't like that bit of it. But I don't know. I think it was because the same thing as like heart to heart. Learn something from your mom. This is learn why you're doing wrong i kind of did want peg to keep doing

i want her to like come back out of prison and be like okay so now i've learned exactly what not to do and maybe take it somewhere else to another city you know what i mean like just i mean but i yeah i dig it i would have ended like she's a she's like a little she's a little villainous and it's like but and we know why but it's like yeah yeah I don't know I mean it's like I guess do I want girl boss Jordan Belfort no but like while we're here I don't know like I guess I feel kind of like conflicted about it I do like the while we're here part of that though it's like well if we're gonna do this then right like let's just do because I don't it's not like I I feel like a lot of the times they do this with like black films too

they'll take a white film and like make it black I'm not trying to tell them to like take this like male-centered situation and make it put a girl there but at the same time if you're already here and if that feels like it was kind of the plan anyway you got to see it all the way through like yeah yeah I don't know I guess it's like I'm sort of all over the place in that regard because it's also like well our hero is um actively oppressing people and ruining their lives and that's I mean I guess that you, what this movie does really well is contextualize that like, a certain amount of this is just like who Peg is as a person.

She's super fucking motivated. And, but then where the society shit comes in is like, she has this really intense motivated personality in the context of growing up poor and in the context of growing up poor and in the context of being told that she's not going to amount to shit and like can't do anything and so it's like a little mix of like nature and nurture that like brings her to where she is and I feel like that's that's much more effective than like in a void oh she's just like this and I also think it like connects to her relationship with her mom uh which I think is really interesting and feels very like boomer like late gen x parent

and millennial gen z kid where her mom does still have a, even though she is a single mom who is, like, busting her ass so that her kids can get what they want, they don't have a great relationship, like you're saying, Shelly. I liked that they didn't have a great relationship. It, like, made sense because Peg represents all these things and these qualities that her mom is not comfortable with her mom still has like a fairly traditional set of values in terms of gender that comes up several times and then it's like this weird well yeah I want to know what you both think about this because there's like that weird chafing argument with them that happens a few times in the movie where her mom is being pretty sexist towards her and is like well why can't you just like settle down and like you know cut the shit and settle down you've met a nice guy which is super

reductive and horrible and shitty and peg never you know entertains it but then it also is like it almost i don't know there were moments where peg was like no i don't want to do that and thus i must do crime and you're like surely there's some middle ground here it's like or you could just not pay for the dinner because that's where i came it came for me is when she was talking about i'm gonna take you out and then the mom kept saying who's paying who's paying why would you pay that kind of situation and i think of instead of her being like oh she could have just been like I'm going to pay for this dinner not all right well I'm just gonna go open up my own scamming uh

business situation and be a girl boss so to show you that I can pay for dinners with whatever guy I want to it just was a very intense going against what mom wants situation yeah yeah also that character trait of peg's mom that she's like holding on to these patriarchal standards of a man should pay for dinner because a man should be the provider and then like i feel like a couple minutes later her mom's like peg would it kill you to wear a skirt every now and then that happened so late in the movie and it feels like it came out of nowhere i'm like yeah what has her mom been this like old-fashioned like this whole weird like sexist ideals lady that felt like her equivalent of my grandfather was in debt and you're like why am i learning

this now like why am i learning this about you now because if if let's say that was established earlier about peg's mom that like if she was sort of like judgmental of peg for wanting to be such a go-getter and wanting to make so much money because she's like no no no like girls and women shouldn't have to you know you should just go and try and find a man and and like let him be the provider why are you so gung-ho about making your own money and maybe that was like fueled peg's desire even more to be like i have to prove these sexist ideals wrong like yeah i don't know that might have been like kind of corny but at least it would have been consistent yeah because it also would have helped like again make it more consistent too if why her mom like didn't really know about

i guess the debt situations like in the house like it would have made sense if that was a part of the character if her mom was this person and a lot of women back in her day when she was being they didn't know how the finances of the house was being ran you feel me so because they were very much so like i am just taking care of house and home like i make sure dinner is cooked and the house is clean and all that kind of stuff so if they had introduced her as like more of a gen x version of that woman it would have also made more sense throughout the film too because i remember at one point she asked her as soon as she got home the one of the ladies talked about her roots too and she was like yes we're gonna get that taken care of and it's just like but then she was like get a job or i haven't

seen you in a few weeks it's just she was a little bit choppy. Yeah. That and like her being like women shouldn't like men are the providers. Meanwhile, Peg's mom owns and operates a business. Like a whole ass business. You would think that like, I mean, and again, this is but like if I have like a movie logic helmet on, you would think that if she felt that way, she would be remarried. Like she would actively sought that out for herself.

But it doesn't seem like that's been a priority for her, which is fine. I prefer that like for this story. But it's weird. I feel like there is maybe room for something a little more nuanced because, yeah it didn't seem consistent with the character and it's like there are you know intergenerational like varying definitions of like her mom is making you know what would be considered like an honest living like she is like I guess it's her business isn't technically legal but like she's she's not doing work that is hurting people her job is not ethically compromised.

And I feel like that's kind of an interesting conversation to have between a parent and a child. And between a mother and a daughter of like, I don't approve of what you're doing because it's hurting people. And where is your line of compromise morally? That's an interesting conversation but it felt more like they it became like a more basic something that's been like hashed out a million times of like put on a dress and get married which like you're both saying like doesn't really have anything to do with that character yeah yeah just shows up similarly wiz being so cartoonish in his sexism and i'm not saying there aren't men like this, but like,

for sure. I feel like it's chicks. Yeah. Here are some quotes from the movie. Wait, please perform a Jai Courtney style. Please. He says,

go be my bar bitch and get me some beers. And you're like, Oh, Jai. I was hoping that you were gonna start off with that one i really really really want and then when peg like double crosses him he's like this is why i don't hire bitches and i think what he means is this is why i don't hire women and he just thinks all women are bitches or something oh Oh, that's exactly. Oh, he is a thousand percent saying because woman.

And then like, he dumps blood on her head and like has a little handwritten note that says something like the only thing that bitches collect is menstrual blood. It was like cartoonish. Like you just like a cartoon character. And it is like called out. She didn't even know that she was going to try to like, I guess steal the job well she knew that she was gonna try and get a job there but he was like he told me he told me i was there was gonna be like a guest but he didn't say she was a piece and i was like oh yeah he also

yeah he aggressively sexually harasses her in the workplace multiple times. I was like, is this Buffalo's sexual harassment or is this character just using wildly outdated terms? Because could you just call me a piece? What year is it? There's another scene where it's when he's really

shortchanging her as far as how much commission she's supposed to earn. He puts his arm around her and is like making her uncomfortable invading her space and then she's like i mean she pushes back which i was happy to see where she's just like get your fucking hand off me but i think this is all just very indicative of while the movie was directed by a woman it was written by a man and i feel like yeah it was like what's his name uh brian saka he's like what does sexism look like oh my god it's when men call women bitches a hundred times dumps and throw blood and pour blood on you at a buffalo bills game and often uses uh blow up dolls from 1992 it was very al bundy like very what oh yes like what that was that was why he he was wild for that one and it

also just seemed like jai courtney's like as a man was like doing kind of some old man stuff when he was not an old man he was um yeah i thought like yeah i think that like honestly that as funny as i thought that character was i feel like it sort of again like in the same way it's like it felt a little too broad and like there could have been a more productive conversation of like i think a lot of like discrimination in general is done at like the microaggression level and this but this movie just like is not yeah does not have the capacity for micro anything like everything is like maximum all the time so it's just maybe not the movie for it but yeah no everything is very very very to the max and I think like when I was watching this movie too

why I like really connected with it. Because, like I said, it was during, like, the first lockdown. And I think this was, like, I watched it in May or something like that. I think it was because there was so much going on with money in the world in that situation. Like, a lot of people were, like, concerned. I mean, it's always stuff going on in the world with money. But a lot of people were, like, super concerned about it. it's always stuff going on in the world with money. But a lot of people were, like, super concerned about it. We didn't know what was going on.

People were losing jobs. Like, all this kind of shit was happening. And I think that's another reason why I was like, oh, yeah, I'm going to watch this movie about debt and scare myself a little bit more. Like, why not? Of course I am. But, yeah. And I'm just wondering why it's so hidden i guess like but i often find films like that where i like become obsessed with this movie that was probably not really meant to

be seen yeah did it have a theatrical release because i watched it on hulu and i was wondering like oh is this like a hulu production and that's the thing I also originally watched it on Hulu and this was like three years ago so I don't think it was even meant to have a theatrical release yeah I don't remember it getting a release if it did have one I mean this is something we could probably easily

look up no I mean it's it made like less than $30,000 at the box office okay which again and this was like pre pandemic too. So it's like not even released during it. So I do think it's, it's frustrating because I mean, I don't know,

like this director, Tanya Wexler, who also, I was like, Ooh, Massachusetts heads was one of the first queer was one of the first was gay marriage became legal in massachusetts in 2004 tanya wexler and her wife were one of the first couples to ever be uh legally married in the

country which i thought was really cool that's just a fun fact uh but like she was already a well-respected director this is her fourth film and i think it's like really frustrating that it didn't get more attention because it's like is it perfect no is it talking about stuff that no one ever talks about in movies in a smart and funny way that centers a woman who's poor and like like that these are all things that like very very rarely happen and I wish I yeah I wish I understood why it didn't get more attention because honestly before you pitched it Shelly I hadn't heard of this movie and like and I think too like with the cast being so stacked too like it's a pretty good it's a pretty dope cast like Judy Greer first of all but then you got all these familiar faces like to smaller roles but everyone is just like in it but yeah I I just thought it was like

a really dope movie because I movies that talk about money in any capacity is really pretty much interesting to me but I don't know a lot of movies about like debt and student loans and women that are all kind of rep and poor like being poor a poor woman it was just like that was what's really like drew me to it but and then i just like started really liking zoe dutch as an actress like but yeah i saw her in not okay which i know a lot of people did not like but um also she's i didn't watch that she's the daughter of leah thompson like the caroline in the city like what it's just like she is like that is like some that nepotism did please me a little bit that was one that actually that pleased me quite a bit if i'm being honest i was like huh okay i'm listening wait leah thompson of

back to the future she plays lorraine in back to the future whoa okay and she's in that duck movie howard i think howard the duck isn't she in howard we should cover howard the duck that would be fun that is a trip let's do duck december on the matreon and do howard the duck anducks. Oh, that would be great. Ducks, ducks, ducks, ducks. December? Absolutely. Wow.

Okay, we're doing it. We will not stop until every bad theme has been done. Oh, you could also do Duck Butter. Duck Butter. Did you already talk about that movie? What is that? Oh, my God. How do you know about all talk about that movie? What is that? How do you know about all these movies that I've never heard of? That movie has

maybe Fianke. Alia Shakat. Alia Shakat is in it and it's gay and it's bad to me. But it's called Duck Butter. Let gay movies be bad that's my campaign all the time let gay

movies be bad but then you have dykes and duck december yeah there it is wow okay i love it i love it i love a theme okay keep sending pic pic because we've been, it's shocking that we haven't, I mean, I think that our advantage is they were never good. They were always bad. And so we never had to be like, we have to think of another good theme. It's never, it's never happened. I love it. to go back to the like discussion of like finances and money and debt that's like the crux of this movie or

some might even call it the thrust of the movie I'm bringing it back whoa I'm gonna keep saying thrust I wish everyone could see the eyebrows on Jamie that went up with that like okay you can't fuck around with Caitlin when they're saying thrust it's that like okay you can't fuck around with caitlin when they're saying thrust

it's just like okay you win yeah don't try and stop me i'm not i'm not stop so here's what has happened i wrote down something in my notes and i don't remember if it's because it gets examined thoughtfully in the movie or if it's just a really meaningful, amazing thing that I had to say. I'm excited. I'm so excited. to the Ivy League school that she got into or any school. Yeah. Because as she points out that to go to the school that she got into would have been $70,000 in interest alone. Yeah, interest alone. So it's like hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition and housing and expenses that she would have incurred. So I'm glad they say. Right.

Yeah. and housing and expenses that she would have incurred. So I'm glad they say. Right. And one of the reasons she's so kind of hell bent on going to college and specifically an Ivy League school is she says that higher education is the key to financial freedom. Now, I think that. I think that's tongue in cheek. And I don't think this really gets examined or challenged in the movie. But while a degree does open a lot more doors for people, higher education is also kind of a racket.

And it ends up suffocating a lot of people in student debt that they have a really hard time escaping. And it doesn't necessarily like guarantee you a magnificent job right so i don't and again i don't think the movie is actually commenting on that i think this is my tirade against well my education my view is like higher education should baseline be more accessible because it feels like between our parents generation and ours it seems like you now need an expensive college degree to have access to the same level of jobs that our parents had with a high school degree and so now there's this huge financial entry point

to work at an entry-level job like it's hard to get my I mean my my brother is like struggling with this right now he's trying to get a basic office job and it's like he has a college education, but it's like, it's still not enough. And that wasn't as much the case with previous generations. And I don't know, it's like, I don't, I would never want to discourage anyone from getting higher education. I think it's more of a matter of just like, I think that I was, I'm very glad I went to college. I feel very lucky that I got to go. If I knew what I knew now, I would have chosen, I probably would have gone to a state school. I wouldn't have been as like enchanted by the like high price tag, like fancy looking like, like oh you have to go here but even that introduces a

sort of thing because you're like almost buying into an alumni network and you're buying in like there are things that come I I just like I don't know I I because I feel like there's there was a discussion about this in a recent like I think it was one of the trillion bullshit New York Times opinion articles that have come out recently I think I might be thinking of another publication but they were like you know asking like well where have all the English majors gone and like English majors a culturally catch so much shit of like this is a useless degree this sucks blah blah blah and I know like I've probably made similar comments like I have a useless degree like and I don't know like but in retrospect it's like you'd need people to be

incentivized to want to study literature and study history especially and like study history well but you can't be in you know six-figure debt to study history there's no way out of that like you're fucked and then so what do you do just like lose certain areas of study because it's been made so impossible to even access it i just i don't know i think the movie kind of like explores it a little bit by saying by the opposite right like i think that's what peg thinks she's like oh my god yeah like this is what I need in order to be somebody in order to get a lot of money in order to do all this shit then ultimately she doesn't go and she learns that that's actually not what you there's so many ways for you to like

be successful I guess it just depends on what kind of financially successful you want because she's scamming so it's a little bit different right but I think but successfully but I think that like I was very bought or in like sold a dream when it came to like college but I think that's like goes back to what it says about like our parents my parents were like I was the first person in my I'm the first person in my family to like go to college right like and to like graduate and all that kind of stuff like my brother went but he went for like two semesters and was like, absolutely the fuck not. I don't want to do this. You know?

Good for him. Good for him, right? And I think that I wish, like, when you were saying looking back, Jimmy, I think, like, I wish that I had been told more, like, the options. Like you said, a state school or going to community college first for some quarters and then transferring over or knowing that, like, I didn't have to do it in four years and rack up all that debt, all that kind of stuff. But I do think that that is a really big thing. And people never, I went to school for fashion. Like, I majored in fashion and I minored in journalism, right? But when I look back at it now, like no one's ever asked to see

my degree. No one's ever asked for it. I've never had to prove it. And then like, I never needed it for the career that I've made for myself now now like right I really honestly didn't need to go but I was told that that is what I needed in order to be successful was a college degree and then I ended up putting myself in this debt I ended up putting my mom and dad in debt and that's what I was going to talk about too with like debt in general that's why I know so much about it because like I said I learned about debt before I learned about earnings because my family was always paying something off or paying a bill or catching up on a bill or something like that so I was always more focused on that but I personally only have 30,000

in student loans and I only have that because my mom and dad took on the rest you know what I mean and I think it wasn't a plan i think it's just because like they were doing that same thing of being like this is your key so we are going to take this on because this is your key to doing all the big stuff and ultimately like rescuing or being there for us you know what i mean too so i think that's another thing that's kind of explored in the movie too like peg does want to make for herself, but she actually does say it when she talks about going to school. She's like, it's for her and it's for her family. Like, as selfish as she may be, she still knows that her success equals, like, theirs, which is kind of, like, a lot of pressure.

But, like, it's just a lot of pressure, but like, right. It's just a lot of pressure. So I guess, but yeah, I wish I had just been told more about loans and stuff. Like, right. It's so,

and I feel like it's like intentional that we're not so intentional. Yeah. You're 17. You are 17 years old. And then they're like, Hey, you want to go to college so you've watched those movies do you want to take out 90 grand loans right four years don't worry it's four

years we're gonna give you a really good degree you're gonna make so much money and then we'll like just get it back from you for a little bit you're 17 you don't know anything and i think we know more so if our generation um like has kids and stuff like that i think i hope that it's a little bit better for them just because we can now teach them more about these like predatory practices and what to be looking out for and all that kind of stuff and then the other thing is like pushing for like more systemic like that's i mean like literally what's happening in the supreme court right now and like how it sucks because it's like as individuals your powers you have more power in like telling your own child like hey i fucking fell for this we are not going to fall for this yeah we will

not be fooled again but then on the other end is just like continuing to push for this to be less of a problem like which is like theoretically this to be less of a problem, which is like theoretically what should be happening with student debt relief, even though it's nowhere close to the amount of like 10,000 is like a drop in the bucket for like everybody. It wouldn't even make a dent for most people. Right. Yeah. And to be clear, I love education.

I love learning. You have so much of it. You have so much of it. I have so much of it. And learning rocks. I'm not pro-ignorance. Correct. What I am against is what higher education has become as far as it's a scale. The business. And like you were saying, Jamie, about just sort of the shift in the in the job market of like our generation now needs an advanced degree for entry level positions versus what our parents needed.

So people noticed like, oh, there's now like this supply and demand thing that we can completely exploit. And I mean, tuition rates increase like dramatically every single year sometimes if i really want to feel awful i will google like annual tuition rate for boston university for just a lot of private schools cost fifty eight thousand dollars a year just in tuition sixty thousand dollars a year sixty four thousand like it's obscene there's so much complicity and I like Caitlin I don't disagree with your point that like not everyone I mean and Shelly you were saying this like not everyone like if you have first of all if you don't know what you want to do when you're 17 years old you are normal and you don't need to like yeah that

is so it blows my, it blows my mind. It blows my mind. It's like you're 17 and they're like, okay, so what are you going to do for the rest of your life? Are you ready? Pick. It's just like, no, I don't know. No. So like you should be allowed the grace.

But then it creates this wild issue where it's like, well, what are you going to do in the meantime if you can't get a job without a college degree? It just is a fucking whatever that fancy word for snake eating its tail is it's that but i don't know yeah but then there are like i do agree with you caitlin where there's like some things where it's like i don't know i went to emerson and i should be ashamed of that and i am uh but they horrible school after disgusting what i mean i really like i whatever i'm grateful i got to go to college i would not do that again but it's partially because it's like that school now offers like a comedy major and they will let wait they will let a kid go into six-figure debt when the answer is go to an open mic and humiliate yourself it's free

like that kind of shit you're like that's just like a predatory and a them problem with sixty thousand dollars a year and they're like will you speak to them i'm like no no because all you're gonna do is get on stage and be like don't do this but i think that's the thing too and they'll just like cut your mic and you're just right like no no no that wasn't very funny was it well i guess i didn't learn a lot and i think that's the thing too that a lot of colleges are doing right like i know we're kind of off topic we're not really on topic about the movie but like that's another thing that colleges are doing i think they're figuring out that we or people have figured out that they don't need to go to college to do certain things.

Like you said, a $60,000 a year to pay to learn how to be a stand-up comedian, I cannot believe that that's an actual degree. Like, that blows my mind. And sorry, but, like, you know you're going to be learning from exclusively failed stand-up comedians. Exactly. It's not going to be helpful. I think that's what they're doing. It's just, like, they're doing it's just like they're very aware that people are going other routes to do the things that they want to do so i think a

smarter kid especially of this generation with parents who are millennials will be like okay you want to be a stand-up comedian sure that's fine but i would rather pay for you to go take a $2,000 year class at Second City versus $60,000 a year at a major college for four years to do the same thing. So I think colleges are just trying to use their names that they have at these degrees and these programs to be like, you still have to go to college to do whatever it is you want to do. You still have to go to college because that's insane to me i did not know that you could actually get a degree in stand-up comedy from emerson college that's i will never shut up about it it is so fucked up to be clear i do not have this degree and i refuse to participate uh but like i don't know like i think like ultimately like i think something that that Peg is not affected by and I think that like her character is supposed to be Gen Z also I'm like this movie could take

place in any year I don't really know you don't see people using phone like cell phones anyways right um but it seems like she's like sort of a Gen Z coded character and I did appreciate that like I don't know like when I couldn't go to the ridiculously overpriced college that I would have been in debt forever if I had gone. And the reason I went to Emerson was because they offered me a big scholarship. And so that was really lucky, but like,

anyways, like the, it, I took it so personally, it felt like a personal failure that I couldn't go where I thought I was supposed to. And like, so it felt personal. And then it, I also just was not educated on my options whatsoever. And like, there was so much stigma and like shame if you couldn't do the thing you thought you were supposed to do.

And it seems like Peg does not suffer under that as the movie goes on like she's just like well i'm not like it it is the system it's not me so what can i do this has nothing to do with me yeah right yeah um i wanted to just really quickly i don't really have much to say about this other than i just think that the romance between Peg and Graham feels pretty wedged in yeah I don't mind that like Graham is there as a character kind of you know like representing whatever some kind of like institutional like also like the failure of like the legal system in the U.Ss i feel like could have maybe been better represented in his character but i'm just like why it doesn't like the story only suffers it was just weird

that character was so weirdly written and the story suffers from like trying to like put them together and i'm just like none of this makes any sense like you're constantly talking about how this is a conflict of interest and it is so why are you together i think they thought that if they were gonna make her such this kind of character that they had to give her a romance right but i which i do like hate but i would have really loved if instead of making him because I agree it's one of the things about the film that I'm kind of like this is weird instead of making him like a romantic interest I think it would have been cool just to keep him as this other lawyer that is just like happens to always be around because he's involved in this debt collecting

like situation you know I mean investigation yeah it didn't have to be romantic it could have been a little bit more comedic and but yeah it was kind of weird especially because they kept acknowledging that they should not and would not work out like they consistently did it so it was really weird to me but yeah it was kind of like thrown in there and she didn't need a romance i don't think peg needed one in general or was seeking one or wanted one but i think when it came to the script they were like well we can't make her a girl boss and single like right right pick a lane peg which is like wow because that sounds like something peg's mom would say randomly like absolutely i agree like i don't think that the love story was necessary but also it was like once again it was just like a little confusing because it seemed like at first she was like using him which she was

for most of the relationship but then at the end it's kind of like flipped and they're like well but she does love him i'm like i was not really picking up on that it seemed like she would go to be like hey do you want to have sex when she needed to steal something from the DA's office? Like that was almost exclusively what it was. And which that feels more consistent with her character. But again, it's like a third acting where at the end she's like,

I think he's my boyfriend. And you're like, I don't know if you like him. Like what? Do you have anything in common? Like, but that would have been great too, to keep her as this selfish person who was just very much being like I need some files I'm just gonna do this but I don't think they

were gonna they weren't too keen on keep making peg that way in like every aspect of her life which yeah they wanted to like redeem her just enough by the end of the movie yeah which and I do I do like the kind of like half redemption of like, she doesn't be like, I'm going to go, I'm going to become a second grade teacher. Like she's like, I think that like where she ends career wise at the end really worked. But it was like the little things like that of like, and now she's in a relationship

and now she has a better relationship with her family. And it's like, she can still be an asshole. Like, you know. For sure. But I don't know. The one last thing I wanted to say about this movie is so it's a comedy from 2019 and i think you can tell that it's a far like it's a more modern comedy compared to comedies of you know the 90s and early and mid 2000s because as we've discussed so many times so much of the comedy in comedy movies of those eras rely on a lot of punching down humor yeah whereas

this one generally avoids that the only thing that really stuck out for me was a remark that was kind of judgmental towards sex workers where a character says something like oh would you trust a lawyer that pays for sex and she's like no there's a little bit of a little bit of body stuff as well there are a few offhand comments about weirdly sal's body which is the screenwriter so i'm guessing that he was okay with it given that he wrote the joke uh but whatever there's like a comment about his body and then there was also like i think a pretty harsh um and overly simplistic reason about why her father died they were like well he ate unhealthy and so he died and you're like well that feels a little you know overly simplified but but

yeah i mean i mean in terms of like i mean even like a movie that would have come out 10 years earlier in 09 i mean it's uh pretty close to to night and day although you know there there are it's still centered around a white family and most people of color are sort of relegated to smaller roles. But again, it's better than where we were at. Which is another thing where it's like, I wish people knew about it and saw it when it came out. Because it would be great to have more rompy, funny, broad comedies that have like some kind of conscience come out like it would be cool to see those movies do better so there's more of them for sure you know room for improvement but also miles ahead of what we were exposed to in earlier years yeah uh does this movie pass the bechdel test it super does yeah yeah there's uh there's no way

around it folks it passes the bechdel test lots of combinations of characters we don't even need to break down how many because it's usually like if there are two women in the script they i believe are all named and they all talk to each other. So thrilled. Usually about money. Usually about money and crimes and scams and ethics. And, you know, there are conversations that reference the boyfriend, the brother and the father. But they are, I would say, in the minority of conversations. And now to the only metric that truly matters, the nipple scale. Caitlin, what are you giving Buffaloed on the nipple scale?

Well, on our scale of zero to five nipples, where we rate the movie based on looking at it through an intersectional feminist lens, I would give this, I guess, like a three and a half because, you know know like we discussed it's it's a movie that allows a like ethically complicated woman to exist and explore her like all the moral ambiguities that she's dealing with in her work and her life which most stories don't make any room for in a way that like I didn't mention this earlier but it's like I feel like this could be sort of seen as like a girl

boss narrative but I feel like it's only truly a girl boss narrative if the movie is endorsing the crimes which I don't think that this movie is this like no so I I feel like it's um it's all good yeah I just wish it was like I, I wish more people knew about it. And hopefully this episode is going to just freaking, what a publicity moment for this movie. Now that we're covering it. No, I'm kidding. But Zoe Deutsch just sent us an edible arrangement for this. I swear to God.

Thank you, Zoe. send us an edible arrangement for this i swear to god thank you zoe but i think because there are like issues with just like it's kind of a sloppy script and the characters are extremely cartoonish and inconsistent and there's just some like kind of storytelling things i i feel like it won't like stand the test of time the way that like people still revisit movies like wolf of wall street and uh big short and these like male centered premises unfortunately those movies do fucking slap they're so good yeah i know and this one doesn't quite rule quite so hard just from like a quality standpoint so but i feel like it'll be kind of lost to time yeah yes yes so but um yeah i'll give it three and a half um i'll give one to francis her pal that she met

in the pen in the clink wow i'll give one to so yeah oh my gosh i'm so cool uh i'll give one to becker the other woman she befriends from prison um i'll give one to judy greer and i'll give my half nipple to the rotting infested buffalo oh yeah do you think that was a metaphor for something i was like oh whatever okay fine we liked the movie i'll go three and a half as well um i think that this is a movie with its heart in the right place i've never seen a movie like it i agree that the execution is a little all over the place is a little sloppy but i think i mean i i really like the vibe this movie has which is like talking about something that is serious in a lighthearted, rompy way. I feel like that is like super, super, super the best way to or like a really effective way to start conversations like this of like not feeling like you're going to a lecture or like you're going to school or even like you're gonna fucking cry but it's like you learn about

something that affects most people in a way that is goofy and fun and accessible um i think it's cool uh i yeah like we were just talking about i think that like peg you know i'm not always rooting for her but i feel like her predicament is contextualized and that her you know crimes aren't endorsed but we also know why she's doing it but it also isn't like an overly like i am mommy thus i crime kind of thing i just thought it was cool uh i thought the jermaine fowler character was incomprehensible but that's not his fault he just he did his job um but that character was so confusing. The Judy Greer character was at times confusing, like, in terms of who she was and what she was about.

But I liked the relationship between, I think, like, this movie was at its best for me when it was, like, looking at money and generational stuff and class. Like, that's where it really, really succeeded um and i would love to see more movies like this i'm very glad we got to cover it so i'm gonna give it three and a half nipples uh and i'm gonna yeah i'm gonna give one to the the rotting buffalo head i'm gonna give one to jermaine fowler's dirty underwear i'm gonna give oh yes one to to the secretary who didn't care about anything.

And then I'll give my last half to Judy, the waitress. And so iconic. Denny's, it's an American institution. Oh, I love it. Shelly, what do you think? Okay, I'm going to go with three. I do want to say I gave it four and a half on letterbox but that's just because i was just like in such a good mood after watching it the first time

people are gonna come for you this is life-changing this is life-changing i was like four and a half um i would do three one is just for judy greer in general, like Judy Greer being a part of this movie in general. The second one is because I really like seeing a not so kind, super moral girl when it comes to movies about money and debt and collecting money and all that kind of stuff. And the third one is for, I'm going to say the wardrobe. I know that's so stupid, but I thought she looked incredible. The fits are good. So I'm going to say like three total. But I thought it was like super great, and I really do enjoy that it was,

I mean, we keep saying it, but women's history month. I really do like them um a movie about a girl who's kind of an asshole when it comes to money and she's not she just wants it she wants it to want it she doesn't want it to like solve world hunger or to like rebuild the community center or anything like that she just wants it because she wants money and i really like that and i and i like what it taught about like debt and collecting and money in general so three yeah i love that it had like such a clear like mission too and like that their its main character could still be a huge asshole and i

feel like it pulled it off the mission like i learned shit watching this movie she was a complete jerk but i did learn stuff i got verified on some information that i already knew that i was very happy about which made me like want to tell people about it even more and i also think that zoe's just a really good actress i think she's just like good at what she does i think she's pretty talented too but yeah I dug it I really like it I'm can't believe I learned so much about buffaloes and wings what the fuck it was so fun to watch your uh mind be blown in real time by that you're like it literally was I haven't had that feeling it's so long because I did not attach to that. It was the greatest.

Shelly, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for bringing us this movie. If you're looking to watch it, it's on Hulu. It's easy. It's accessible. It's on Hulu. Yes. And Shelly, where can we follow your work and follow you online?

Plug away. I hate this part.'m so i hate this part i'm gonna be great at this part um but i'm on twitter hi shelly on twitter and then i'm on instagram ayo shelly a-y-o-s-h-e-l-l-i and then hi h-i-s-h-e-l-l-i on twitter usually i just share all my work there on twitter and i'm always like having some discourse that I'm not really invited into. But or I try to start it and then I it happens and then I just leave. And then you. Oh, I love to start a conversation and then mute. It's one of my favorite things to do to start it and then be like, oh, I don't want to be here anymore.

This was just a passing thought about this movie. I actually fuck this by everybody. You're like, oh, I don't want to talk about this movie i've actually fucked this bye everybody you're like actually see you the fuck later i don't want to talk about this anymore i've made a huge mistake most recently i'm on uh i'm on a eurovision i love eurovision um and so i'm like trying i'm mostly talking about eurovision on twitter right now because I've personally ranked all 37 songs. Oh, you're that kind of on Twitter right now. I am.

And I personally have ranked all 37 songs. And but yeah, it's great. But that's mainly where I'm at. I'm never leaving Twitter. I even when it explodes, I will probably still be there in the ruins talking about some movie that no one's ever seen like Buffalo. I truly think of

I'm like, we're like the band going down with the Titanic. You're like, look, we are. We're too brain damaged to not be there. So it is what it is. We're going to stay here. And I also love that you worked in a Titanic reference. Right under under the wire right under the wire had to make it happen but thank you for having me i love coming back and i'll be back to talk about jawbreaker please

yes we're so overdue for a jawbreaker episode so So we'll have you then. Yay! And you can follow us on social media, Instagram, Twitter, at Bechtelcast. You can go to our Patreon at patreon.com slash Bechtelcast, where you'll get two bonus episodes every month. This month, we are wrapping up movies directed by women. So we covered big and we've got the Virgin Suicides as well. So you've got you've got range on the matri on this month. Oh, and you can check out our merch store at T public dot com slash the Bechdel cast. And with that, uh, don't pay your debt

to, uh, do crime and don't pay your debt. Never pay your bills. Bye. Bye. Hey, everybody.

This is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week,

we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Las Culturistas. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful.

Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. Don't miss Katherine Hahn on Las Culturistas. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadsden.

We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption

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