The Bechdel Cast - Cadet Kelly with Keah Brown

Episode Date: April 29, 2021

This week, we're unlocking a Matreon episode on the Disney Channel Original Movie Cadet Kelly featuring a segment with special guest Keah Brown!(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @Keah_Maria on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing.

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sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Captain's log, stardate 2024. We're floating somewhere in the cosmos, but we've lost our map. Yeah, because you refused to ask for directions. Thursday. identity, and the human spirit. With a hint of mischief, one episode at a time. Buckle up and listen to In Our Own World on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Trust us, it's out of this world. On the Bechdel cast, the questions asked, if movies have women in them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast start changing it with the bechdel cast a 10 hi caitlin um i'm sorry i don't know what that means i don't speak your military jargon because

i'm an art student in new york city by art student, do you mean owns a ribbon dancer? Well, guess what? I love the military industrial complex, even though I'm a 15 year old girl. Well, now that you put it like that, it sounds really cool and appealing and I will also be in love with it. Let's kiss! And that's the plot of today's movie uh this is a vecto cast uh my name is jamie loftus my name is caitlin dorante and uh this is our podcast where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point. Jamie, what is it? What's the Bechdel test? Oh, right. The Bechdel test is a

mediometric invented by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechdel-Wallace test. There's many variants on it. What we use, it requires that two people of a marginalized gender with names must speak to each other about something other than a man for more than two lines of dialogue. A lot of movies don't pass. Two lines of dialogue or also, again, our kind of new, the newest caveat. The meaning-o-meter. Yeah. Is it a meaningful conversation that, could the conversation be removed from the movie and nothing would be impacted kind of thing?

Fortunately, I don't think a problem will really be having today because today we are unlocking one of our favorite episodes from our Patreon aka Matreon we do this but we've only done this a couple of times there's over 80 episodes uh in the Matreon if you're if you've run out of main feed episodes uh that is where we cover maybe like not even less requested movies just kind of like more niche goofy goofy movies an extremely goofy movie i can't believe we haven't covered any goofy movies we'll get there uh i know that danny fernandez wants to come on and talk about a goofy movie uh thank goodness. But yeah, we're unlocking one of our favorite episodes

today and it's a returning guest to the main feed. Kia Brown talks to us about Cadet Kelly DCOM classic Sexual Awakening for Many. Yes. As you'll hear on the episode i until very recently didn't know what a decom was

so cadet kelly was one of the first ones i had ever seen you've come a long way since we recorded this too i mean i feel like i have you've been radicalized a little bit it's it's true it's true. It's true. But, you know, we did a DCOM month last point the incredible gracie gillum you know we're decom heads die hard for life uh and cadet kelly certainly i feel like is is among many generations at this point considered a top tier decom in spite of all its military industrial themes. So there you go. So there you go. So this is, this is a Matreon episode.

So you might notice it's a little loose. It's a little, it is extremely goofy. And if you're like, Hey, I love these vibes. You can sign up for it if you, if you so choose.

Yes. This is our plug for the Matreon. And cause we usually plug it at the end of the episodes and i'm like people probably you know they they skip over that so here we are at the beginning plugging the matreon go to patreon.com slash spectral cast it is five dollars a month it gets you these two bonus episodes every month, plus access to the, as you said, Jamie, 80 or more episodes that we have accumulated. Yeah, I'll read off some recent episodes to whet your appetite. We just finished. Okay, this is one of our worst themes. This is not Borat Titanic Month.

We did Borat Subsequent Movie Film and Titanic again. We've also recently done... We observed Molina March this year with Ralph Breaks the Internet and The Da Vinci Code. We did... I forget what we called this. Movies with an animal in the title February? Oh, yes.

It was something very clunky like that. Yep. With Chicken Run and Coyote Ugly. And then we did Amy Adams. She can do it all. She can act in any genre January with Enchanted and Arrival. And that's just a taste.

That's just a taste. There's 86 episodes on the Matriarch. Good Lord. Holy cow. Wait, is that the letterboxd list that you're pulling from? No, I'm pulling from Scholarly Journal Wikipedia that is fully updated. Wow.

Incredible. Shout out to whoever edits our Wikipedia page because it is up to date. I love it. Please, if it is you, apologies for us forgetting that it's you. Please let us know who you are so that we can properly credit you and send you merch and like we i i just i feel indebted to you because you know more about our show than i do i refer to this page all the time amazing um so enjoy this episode, this unlocked episode on Cadet Kelly and enjoy Kia Brown. The Bechdel cast.

Hi, Matrons. Hi, Matrons. It's part two of DCOM July. I have genuinely been enjoying this, this DECOM July. I mean, as with every DECOM July, AKA we've never done this before, but, but I, Caitlin,

you're becoming a full fledged DECOM stand after years of saying things like, what is this? What is a DECOM? I don't like these. These are boring. All of a sudden you've seen the light. I truly owe you, Jamie, and everyone an apology. Because I did not know how influential these films were.

I didn't realize that everyone had grown up with them except for me. I didn't realize how important they were to so many people and still are for some of them. I just, I completely somehow missed. I mean, I know how. It's because I grew up without cable. And I also, again, I was, I'm the age where as they were becoming popular, I was aging out of like that demographic of media intended for children and families. Sure. So that's how I haven't seen any of them. But now that I've seen a few of them and like a fair number of the ones I've seen, including...

You went off curriculum. I went off, not for the podcast or anything. Although I think it would be really interesting to cover this movie someday is teen teen beach movie it is my favorite movie now it's so good it's just it's like back to the future meets pleasantville meets uh west side story it's great i loved it so um yeah i mean i'm i guess i you could say i'm a i'm a decom stan i yes i'm so glad that you're here with us with the decom community let's keep covering decoms the podcast is pivoted no but we have been covering so so many we just did we have uh when

you listen to this there's an upcoming cheetah girls episode that i'm really excited about and so but today so we we conducted a survey to see taking the temp on what the dcoms you felt strongest about also it it warrants saying that when we were soliciting um options on twitter and instagram the most overwhelming response we've ever gotten to anything ever in the history of ever. Truly. People feel really strongly. I had no idea.

But so the options we gave you, and if you're listening, I guess you already had access to this info, but we had a smart house, motocross, cadet Kelly, spoiler alert, 13th year on double teams.

It was, it was a tight isish race between smart house and cadet kelly i thought smart house was gonna win but what did i know oh you can't i i felt i felt like cadet kelly was gonna take it but we should cover smart house at some time because it's like techno future dystopia right i haven't seen it in like at least 10 years but I feel like maybe it holds up but you know that's not always true well next year for DCOM July we'll cover Teen Beach Movie and Smart House we might even cover DCOM July

we might observe 2021's DCOM July this September we just don't know wow the calendar is unpredictable on the Patreon sometimes July comes in September it's technically Portman July right now, but I heard that this year that falls in next March. Well, also, we can't forget about J-Lo July,

which we last year observed in September. That's true. And when J-Lo July comes back around again, who knows? It's always July, but it's never July. So it's DCOM March. And my head hurts now. Anyways, Cadet Kelly won by over 100 votes on the Matreon.

And so here we are discussing Cadet Kelly. I am very excited to talk about this movie with you, Caitlin. This was your first time seeing it correct correct okay this was my one of my favorite dcoms as a kid but like many dcoms i remembered basically zero plot points um but i did um you know i just this was a movie that i really liked as a kid, and I like to watch it over and over, and I like to watch certain parts over and over. And then you get older, and you're like, I see. I see what was going on there. Cadet Kelly is fascinating, and it's good. And quick context, I guess, before we we do the recap because we also have a secret

surprise guest today um to talk about all of uh the queer glory and cadet kelly so we'll cut to that little segment a little later on um but yeah be ready for. But so this movie came out in 2002. At the time, it was the highest, like the most viewed Disney Channel original movie ever. Eight million people tuned in on the premiere night of this movie, which is pretty huge. And I think that a lot of the reason that was was because they pulled out all the stops for this DCOM. They took two of their most popular stars on the channel, Hilary Duff, a.k.a. Lizzie McGuire, which was like kicking off at this, and then Wren Stevens, a.k.a. Christy Carlson Romano,

a.k.a. also Kim Possible, but I don't think Kim Possible was out yet at this point. Anyways, two Disney Channel icons who had never been in anything before and so it was an epic crossover and it uh and gary cole i'm sure was very cool in the movie tween girls loved gary cole they demanded it so you know i think that some people would say it was hillary and christy carlsonano who brought us. But I can say as a tween who was there as a nine year old at this time, I can tell you for sure. We were tuning in for Gary Cole.

I know I was shocked because normally I feel like I mean, D comes cast, you know, not not that Gary Cole's like an A-lister, but he tends to be in cinema that is like getting wide studio releases. And, you know, he's like a, he's a recognizable person, a character actor. And then like DCOM's will pull from like the like F or G list actor. My theory is that because I looked this up because I was like, I feel like I know why Gary Cole did this movie. I think it's because he had a tween daughter at this time. Oh,

so I think it was one of those. I mean, also I, I can't imagine these movies pays particularly well for their supporting cast. Again, they have $14 for their budget per each decom and you know 12 of those dollars are going to hillary duff so but but i think i looked it up and uh gary cole has uh has a daughter who i think

would have been like seven or eight when this movie came out so i bet it was like one of those choices to say like guess what i'm cool and then he was cast as the lamest character so it's too bad yeah that makes sense though cool are we ready for the recap let's recap cadet kelly so we meet kelly collins that's hillary duff she goes to an arts school in new york city ever heard of it who is she the cheetah girls i love this was also like a peak i'm sorry i'm already like getting excited but this was like peak i mean i guess this is still peak but like tween entertainment loves teen art schools in new york there was also a show out at this time. It's called Tyena on Nickelodeon.

I think I brought it up before because the title character is in Freaky Friday. But it was all about a girl pursuing her artistic dreams in New York, but she was only 15. Very exciting, very compelling plot. Sorry. Wow. Okay.

So she goes to this art school. We meet her parents who are divorced from each other, but they still have, they're on friendly terms. Her dad is a, has a job. I'm not sure. He's a photojournalist, I think. I think so. Or something. Yeah, it's kind of vague.

But they're close i did really appreciate that they made it and i feel like amicable divorce not life-ruining divorce on screen um is pretty rare representation to the point that even watching it in 2020 i was like oh you don't that's so nice you don't see that a lot like they they broke up because they simply were not in love anymore and it's fine yeah also like just the fact that disney acknowledges divorce at all was something that i found surprising because like they're like yeah well maybe one of the parents isn't in the picture but it's because she's dead we killed her there no it was i found that very but that's that's the beauty of the decom that's where they test these ideas to say true are we is america ready and then the tweens are always ready and then it makes its way into the theatrical releases sure and then we get moana the most progressive text

of all time i think we can draw a direct line from this to moana okay so um we also meet her mom who's a working woman her job is also a little unclear she's an editor she just said i'm done editing when she suddenly leaves her job she's like i'm done i'm done editing video editor is she the editor of a like a major magazine trope i mean if we're to guess based on tropes she's almost definitely she works at a magazine she's like she's like jenna from 13 going on 30 yes wow i can't believe i got that reference well look at us look at us wowie so kelly's mom announces that she is getting married to this guy, Joe. That's Gary Cole. He is a retired military general.

And Kelly takes this news well, but then there's another surprise coming Kelly's way. And it is that they are all going to move to upstate New York because Joe got a job as the commandant. Whatever that is, i don't know i didn't fact check to see if any of this stuff was correct um i'm just we're just assuming that uh this is canon this is true this is canon for the military yeah so he's the commandant of a military school where Kelly will have to attend. And Kelly is very upset by this, but she has no choice in the matter. So she arrives to the military school. She does not fit in.

She is not like the other military school students. Also, at this point, we get it set up that there are students tossing around plastic rifles in unison um aka the drill team which will become important it becomes a plot point yeah then she meets carla that's andrea lewis who is nice and for for listeners who were very watching television all the time at this time, Hazel from Degrassi, Andrea Lewis. So all my Degrassi heads, yes, that is Hazel. Got it. Never watched that show. She later dates Drake on Degrassi.

She was Drake's girlfriend on Degrassi, but then she broke up with him because he was being an asshole. Well, speaking of assholes so carla is nice but then kelly meets captain jennifer stone aka christy carlson romano who is mean um and kelly is like you know what this military school needs to be a kinder gentler place and it's up to me to change it which never ends up happening by the way um then uh kelly has another run-in with jennifer but carla is like hey i'll teach kelly how to military and jennifer's like fine we also meet brad that's sean ashmore he's the cutest boy on campus who all the girls like but captain stone likes him but does she we'll talk about that later no she doesn't um so he is he is off limits to

all the other girls there's a welcome back dance later that week. And then Kelly takes Carla to her house so she can try on her dresses. Carla doesn't have any dresses of her own. It feels like there's an implication that she comes from like a low socioeconomic background. But the movie simply refuses to get more specific. It's frustrating. Then we see all the students doing drills kelly is struggling with this or i don't what is that what you call it i don't know they're doing they're like crawling in the mud whatever that's there it's an obstacle course like i don't know

oh yeah i don't know military jargon and i don't care to find out okay kelly's struggling jennifer continues to give her a hard time and she's like you're gonna stay here and do this until you get it right which means that kelly misses the dance um because she's like doing this obstacle course again with uh gloria but it's also raining and so they're it's like kind of like hot like it's weird like they're they're like oh we're so like it's so wet but we're bonding and you're like clothes are clinging to my body and i don't i don't mean to like i'm not i'm i'm not trying to sexualize hillary dove i'm saying my experience watching this as a kid uh was like they're wet like that it was the vibe yes yeah so then kelly falls down a she's already muddy and then she

falls down a muddy hill tumbles through the doors into the dance right into jennifer the most intense hill tumble of all also like this i guess lizzie mcguire already would have at this point but like this movie solidifies hillary duff's queen of the pratfall uh i mean she pratfalls nonstop. But this pratfall, the falling has stopped, but she continues to fall into Christy Carlson Romano for 30 seconds. She's like, whoa, whoa. How have you not regained equilibrium at this point? She can't stop falling. It's incredible.

Right, because she runs long after she would have like she would the momentum would have slowed by that point but she keeps barreling through the dance crashes into jennifer and then like is hanging off of her and falling onto and into her for another 30 seconds 30s and it's incredible and then brad is like not helping jennifer no at all he's like oh i didn't know you could get down and dirty or something it's what he thinks is a hilarious joke right you're like brad shut up shut up brad anyway so kelly has gotten mud all over jennifer's white dress and kelly just continues to have a tough time at school her mother tells her that she is pregnant with joe's baby she's gregna as hell we'll talk about it it's a plot baby she got pregnant with the second act of the movie oh god okay and then um jennifer is continuing to harass kelly um so then kelly puts paint in

jennifer's hair which she gets in huge trouble for there's a whole hearing and her stepdad punishes kelly by assigning her to help the drill team this is the team that flings around plastic rifles and she has to like shine their shoes and stuff then she starts to notice that what she thought was like a not cool thing that is done by robots is actually really beautiful and she's like maybe i could do this maybe i could fling rifles around yeah she tries and she's not really she's really bad at it but she's still her interest remains and then there's this meet where the team underperforms and brad is like oh we need inspiration we need originality we need creativity and kelly's like wait a minute we need improvised early 2000s dancing

she's like i went to an art school in new york city ever heard of it i'm creative and then she asks gloria who we saw in like the obstacle course scene to coach her and teach her how to do the drill rifle flinging. And so we get a training montage. Then Kelly tries out for the team and she makes it. And she and Jennifer have that amazing dance off in the quad. It's this isn't, this is a, if you don't remember anything that happened in the movie

you still remember this scene the quad dancing for sure so brad sees them dancing and he's like wow yes this is the kind of stuff we need so then kelly approaches jennifer and she's like hey what if we're like partners and we like do this dancing thing at the regional competition that's coming up love it because i guess they don't hate each other anymore well they never slash they've always been in love right and then it's the day of the regionals but wait a minute kelly's dad who was supposed to be there isn't there and she's worried that something might have happened to him so she decides to leave the competition with her stepdad joe aka mr gary cole trying to impress his daughter aka sir which is what he is i think in imdb his character's name is sir which is so funny to me yes this is well that's also like that is such a weird trend at this time they're well not like

calling an executive male figure sir is not a trend uh but or it's a very long trend but there there was a do you remember there was a character named sir in holes john voight plays a character oh yes mr sir mr sir and then there was also in a series of unfortunate events, a mysterious male figure who only identified as Sir. It was a thing in the early aughts. Wow. Also, where's our Holes episode? Where is our Holes episode?

Honestly, I am still struggling with deciding what my birthday picks are. Maybe Holes is going to knock off something. We'll see. Oh, I would love that, Jamie. I love Holes. i love holes i love holes zero and holes one of my biggest childhood crushes loved him oh my gosh anyway yeah i love the book love the movie okay so joe and kelly are like we got to go find my dad and they go to look for him in the wilderness in the wilderness and he has fallen off of a cliff which again this is basically the same climactic sequence from cheetah girls where a dog falls in

a hole instead we have dad falls off a cliff this is funny uh it's funny because he has fallen off a cliff is not hurt is not hurt not right There is that shot of him turning over his shoulder, unscathed. Not even like a makeup scratch. He's just like, Kelly, you're here. I was like, what was preventing you from getting up? You seem fine. Even though he fell, what was like, I don't know, 40 or more feet off of this cliff onto a rock. And it's like, how did you survive he would have been so

hurt if he had survived the fall but instead he's literally not a mark on the man but then he's still pulled on to like a gurney yes it's really weird it's really i don't understand also in both this movie and in cheetah girls where again the climactic sequence at least partly involves a character falling in some way yeah in both cases those things don't have anything to do with the rest of the story like why suddenly are we focusing on the dad again and it's like what she's in the middle of a competition right now i feel like the decom playbook takes the save the cat mentality very seriously literally to the point where you yeah they're like we need to save someone yeah because they do interrupt the climax of the movie basically

hillary duff misses a lot of the climax of the movie yeah to go save the dad like it's a whole i don't know why it happens i do i will say i prefer the way it resolves in cheetah girls better which is they sing the dog out of the hole they just lift the dad off the clip i would rather they sang him up the clip but uh it just doesn't well i guess in so in the cheetah girls they're using they're they're using their singing skills which we which is a huge part of the story in cadet kelly and cadet kelly she's using her obstacle course training to save her dad it's true so there's still some plant and payoff there i guess there's definitely plans i think that that was like very intentionally done i just i think it's more fun to watch uh the cheaty girls sing a dog out of a hole but that's just you know we're all different also and i

didn't realize this until my second watch of the movie where him having a tendency to fall is also planted because in the very beginning of the movie, when he is picking her up at her art school, he's like balancing on a ledge and then just falls off of it. So I guess the screenwriter is like, well, we have to establish that he tends to fall or else the climax won't make any sense. Which is like really looking out for the viewer maybe a little too much.

It's not absurd that anyone on a cliff might fall off of it. Right. It's inherent to cliffs. They're slippery. But I appreciate the plant. Yes. It was very narratively important. Yeah.

So then they saved the dad and this is the conclusion of a weird subplot that i don't think needs to be there where like well i guess we can discuss it but she's like oh my stepdad who's been this rigid military man this whole time is finally learning feelings right learning how to be a dad blah blah blah i don't hate it you know yeah i guess yeah i guess it's like why is so much real estate given to the dads all of a sudden i don't hate that like men learn how to have feelings that's nice like military men specifically too i thought that was like a cool thing we'll talk about it yeah um. Anyway, so they returned to the competition just in time for Kelly and Jennifer to do their dancing thing, which is a part of the rifle slinging. Then Kelly's school gets second place in the competition.

And then I think like Jennifer promotesifer promotes kelly she's like you're the cadet captain now which i didn't realize she had the power to do right i don't know if it's like i hope this happens for you or if she's like i'm promoting you because i have the authority to do that what she should be doing is apologizing but uh that that's just not what this movie is going to do but it does so many other things their their relationship is still kind of abusive though yeah and then that's the story i think they get second place and then um yeah she learns the value of having gone to military school i get question mark i So what we're going to do with this episode is

we're going to now cut to a discussion we had with the wonderful writer Kia Brown, who is just a full on cadet, Kelly Stan, an expert. And we're going to start by having a discussion with her about a lot of things, but mainly focusing around the queer coded or perhaps just queer themes of Cadet Kelly. And then we'll pop back in at the end and talk about a few other things. So enjoy Kia. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 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 iHeartTrue Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. I've been thinking about you.

I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session. 24 hours. BPM 110.

120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare.

This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was 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 his 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. So the first thing we want to do is to go into a segment with a special guest. She is a journalist.

She's the author of the book, The Pretty One on Life, Pop Culture, Disability and Other Reasons to Fall in Love with Me. It's Kia Brown. Hi. It's me. Thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. I'm really pumped.

You're a Cadet Kelly scholar. Yes, I should put that on my resume or my website or something. Yes, I am a scholar. Thank you. So a major thing about this movie that a lot of people have latched on to is the relationship between kelly and jennifer among other characters and the romantic tension the queer subtext or in some case for some people like it's like queer text for them not just it's almost exclusively what's been written about this movie since has to all do with the queer oh let's let's go with text yeah let's go with text

but yeah we're so excited to hear to hear your your thoughts on this we know you've spoken to this before on one of our favorite podcasts let's hang out yes yes so we'll start by yeah just tell us what your relationship is what your history with the movie is um well i grew up like we all did on hillary duff and so when her and raven simone were carrying disney on their backs for that like section of time when nobody else was doing anything worthy they were like fine we'll do it it's okay and um now hillary duff was like I'll give you my time Raven was like yeah me too sure whatever pay me um and Cadet Kelly came out and I was like I was like wow this is so great like I was like well first of all I've never really been a big fan of like

military stuff but I was like we love Hillary D, so I'll be watching. And then I watched it and I was like, oh, this is really not straight. It is decidedly very gay. Yeah, decidedly. And then I got older and I was like, oh, I was really

right in my initial thinking. Thank you, Kia, for being correct. Because what? There's nothing that's straight about that movie at all. There's nothing. Not even the love interest tracks. That doesn't even mark Brad. Why is he there?

Get him out of the story. You can almost see the little sparkle in his eyes of like, he's like, I don't belong here. Get me out of this movie. He's like i don't belong here get me out of this movie this vehicle is not for me i'm just here so i can get paid and i respect that right otherwise it's just what what is he there for he doesn't do anything really no like he doesn't have any big moments he spits on a shoe it's so gross well it just goes to that scene i hate it to this day i'm like do you have to i mean like it's this whole thing and i'm like that's disgusting thanks

yeah he does it twice because at first he's like that's not how you shine a shoe and then he spits on it and then later i guess when they're meant to be the movie is trying to get you to think that kelly is flirting with him. She's like, I could really use some more spit. And then he spits again. Yeah. I was like, Kelly, I don't know. I mean, Kelly is like not a very effective flirt with anyone.

But that but that was just that pushed me over the edge. I was like, stop asking. Isn't he like the X-Man who turns into ice? Isn't that what happened to him? I don't know much like the X-Man who turns into ice? Isn't that what happened to him? I don't know much about the X-Men. He's one of them. Who knows? But she keeps asking him to spit.

And I felt watching it as a child that we were supposed to be like, ooh. And even then. But I just didn't. I know. I was like, I don't think anyone felt that way when they watched it i know i didn't i was like this is too much can we move on thank you i think i mean i was very curious about like if hillary duff or christy carlson romano ren stevens my queen had spoken to this at all and Chrissy Carlson Romano spoke about it in 2017 but it was very like I don't know very dodgy I wish she had just been like no it's a queer movie obviously

because she is giving like the most flirtatious performance I have ever seen she's like she makes like maggot kink like it's you're just like whoa but christy calls her mom kind of like talks around it she's like i think that disney films usually are very much about a sport or a family and this one is about kids living on their own at boarding school and then the reporter kind of repeated the question was like okay but is it a queer movie like you just described a movie uh and christy cross and romano said what i make of that is that this is art even if it's a disney channel film it's still art and the reason why my films and tv shows have done well over time is because they have substantial value that obviously rings true with fans and fans of all ages i feel blessed to have played jennifer stone

because i do think if she could have an influence over people going through all sorts of different things then that's very flattering to me so she doesn't answer the question oh she really she really talked around she talked all the way around and then she was like god bye so i swear there must be something like when you sign a contract with disney there's some clause or something where it's like do not talk about gay stuff it has to there's no gay stuff in our movie like it's like the scientology it's like for 20 000 years you cannot it's like that it has to be a c-org contract. It's literally the only reason. And I remember she has a YouTube channel,

Krista Carlson Romano. And she like filmed herself re-watching Cadet Kelly, like her scenes in Cadet Kelly. And she was like, yeah, she was like, because some of the songs were different, I guess in the Disney Plus version. And version and like she was like we had rainbow flags i remember they're not like that in the disney plus version of it but she's like i feel like they were rainbow and then it was just like weird because then she like said it and then she like

paused herself and then swiftly moved on to something else and i was like oh the seorg contract do you think they did well there is a lot of rainbow imagery in this movie between the blanket that kelly is like this is my blanket and i'm gonna have it on my bed and then the hair that she like the painting of the hair that she puts on jennifer is like in a rainbow yeah right so my i i when i saw this movie when i was a kid i knew that i really liked it and i liked to watch it over and over and i couldn't articulate really why what it was that i liked about it so much but i knew i really liked it but watching it now it is like it feels like as close to a queer decom as especially for this time as you were ever going to get with with like the rainbow imagery of like it's Hilary Duff trying to make me be herself in this really oppressive environment. And her like treasured object is a rainbow blanket and then you have christy carlson romano who is you know

trying to basically like assimilate and thrive within this oppressive environment and she destroys the blanket but she secretly thinks it's cool and like it's just uh the symbolism the symbolism yeah it's all there all of it i found this list on something called autostraddle.com where a contributor it's my favorite website um a contributor by the name of may ranks all 100 disney channel original movies by lesbianism it's the funniest thing i've ever seen and it's it's just a list of literally over a hundred dcoms ranked and cadet kelly comes in third oh my god like the third most lesbian number one is princess protection program oh yeah yeah yeah it is always kind of those like weirdly like military-y premises that like you know let this i forgot about prince's protection program all right and then number two

which is one that we got a bazillion requests for as we were gathering requests for decoms was motocross oh yeah okay this is a good list it's a great list because motocross even down to like the haircut yes absolutely like they were really on one i really am like i mean the chemistry that these two have in this movie is incredible. It's like... You're talking about Kelly and Jennifer, right? Because to me, there are so many combinations of characters that you can ship. And that there's romantic tension between them. Because I was getting very strong...

Carla has the biggest crush i've ever seen ever on kelly can we just can we talk about it please yes because this is the hill i'm ready to die on like tired is you know bless their hearts tired is kelly and jennifer wired is carla and kelly it's just all the way through you just she's like looking at her all longingly she was like oh i'll help you figure it out sure i'll take over your little spit cleaning job so you can join the little gun whatever uh real team yeah the drill like the gun whatever the drill team like yeah i'll stay over at your house and like you we can pick out dresses for the dance and i love you

i mean what like that's that's our whole vibe the entire movie she's just like i love you i mean if you're down if you're cool if not it's fine but i love carla first first and foremost because i'm a huge degrassi fan and it's hazel like one of the iconic og degrassi characters i don't think i'd ever seen her in anything else i forgot that this character was played by her and oh she's great. I wish that we knew more about her. I feel like everything we learn about her is extremely vague. To the point where I was like, is this going to come back? Where she kind of makes it sound like she didn't have a great home life. But she words it like, well, if I could choose it, it wouldn't have been the one I would have chosen.

And then that's kind of the last we hear of it. I wish that we got to know her better outside of like what a big crush she has on Kelly, which is amazing. But I wish that Kelly knew more about her. Right. I wish that they made some more allusions because it's like, okay, so your home life wasn't great, but don't they have to pay for military school? Right.

So like who's paying for it? You know, like what is going on there? They didn't really give her more, but I wish that they did for sure. Cause I love the actress who plays her, Andrea Lewis. Yes. She's amazing. She's like a 2000s, 2000. I mean, she's just an icon. She's the best.

And she gives such a like sweet performance here too of like when i just every time she walks away from the crowd because she's shy and like so we're like carla no come come hang out with the group carla like i just love her um yeah i do wish we just had gotten to learn more about her because at least with jennifer they kind of just say like oh she's from a military family so there's pressure on her to like and it's just a sentence of context but it is helpful in like knowing where she's coming from but for some but like with carla it just seems like it comes up a few times but it's just completely beaten around the bush and talked around,

and then you never find out. Yeah, it feels like deliberately glossed over. But then it's such a bummer, too, because Kelly tells Carla a bunch of stuff about herself, but it's like, but Carla... Never gets the chance to. Yeah, Kelly, give Carla a chance to talk about herself. I found it so, one of my my favorite even though it breaks my heart but that scene when carla sees kelly call amanda her best

friend and then oh my god i was like oh i did that i did that oh god it was so sweet she was so brokenhearted and then it was like wild because kelly still didn't get it until her stepdad was like you can have more than one best friend and she was like oh she's like oh shoot you're right i didn't you're right i love it he was like two best friends two dads you're like whoa which is another like yeah even even this, quote, straight marriage between Kelly's mom and Joe. It's like, no, I'm like shipping Joe and Kelly's dad. Right. They had a look between each other that was much more powerful than any look. Why else would Joe insist on like, okay, we have to go find, they don't even know what's,

why he's not there at the recital or whatever they're doing. Right. He's like, we have to go find him. He's like, we have to go find him. He might be hurt in the woods. And it's like, Joe, like you've got, like you have to stay behind at your recital like this is such a big deal but there's this whole weird subplot that like starts to overwhelm

the main plot but it's like the subplot between kelly and her stepdad yeah and then also like kelly and her dad like it's all these weird dad related subplots that like start to take up too much space yeah the main plot they do it was a very long scene but um the point is that um i'm pretty sure there was also romantic tension between um kelly's dad and two dads two dads she even says like i have two dads they're definitely a trouble at best because the random baby on the way i was like maybe the baby on the way is the compromise for them introducing kelly's dad into their relationship galaxy brain i love the plot baby there's another weird thing with that, and this will bring it back to the relationship with Carla. But there's a very bizarre interaction that Kelly has with her mom when Kelly's mom is like, by the way, I'm pregnant. And she's like, don't worry, Kelly, I'll still love you 100%.

That was so, I was like, Kelly did did not that's not your first thought when you find it or that i was that i that's not what you say to your child when you're having a second love you and i've been thinking about that too but but i probably still will and i've loved you longer i was like but then she says something in between that. She's like, I'll probably still love you a hundred percent. And then she says, and I'm sure I'm going to love this baby.

Like that's too much uncertainty. I have to have like headcanon theory about Kelly's mom. I think that Kelly's mom is going to wake up one morning and be like, what am I doing? Because she like she she is. I don't know. I feel like Kelly Kelly's mom is kind of the victim of the plot in a lot of ways, because it's like she's like a working mom and she's like an editor in New York. And then she meets Gary Cole.

Boom, drops everything. She's like, OK, I'm retired. I cook full time, which there's a lot. We'll talk about that as well of like the military life and the pressures put on military wives. Like that's a very real thing. But the way that the plot frames it is kind of goofy and it just seems like her life does a 180 entirely.

And then it sealed it for me when she was like, I think I'll love this baby. I'm like, I don't know that you're totally sold on the decisions you're making, Mom. Like, I feel for her. I do, too, because I was like, like, when I watched it recently, I was like, well, wait. So she just drops everything in New York, forces her kid to go into military school. Feels like this is the right decision. So like you went from and I understand that people want to be homemakers like cool. Yeah.

But it just seems so odd to me that you you're dating this man and then you marry him and you're like, well, I don't want to work anymore. All that work I don't want to do. And then, bam, I I'm gonna ship my kid off to military school when she's like in the middle of a school year yeah and take her from everything she knows right art school and take her from everything she knows to be like this is gonna be great for you Kelly no it's not it's not it's gonna be so bad and I even tweeted I was like does she go to does she have to go into the army after military school and people were like no chill it's okay she doesn't i'm like thank god because she probably doesn't want to no no no she believes in gun control she's i love that she

explains but she and then and then also that's also kind of on like her biological dad too for not like speaking up he's like oh yeah like i'm just kind of a photographer so i guess you're going to military school i'm like someone should be maybe questioning the military school besides kelly like even kelly's best friend amanda doesn't question it she's like i'm gonna miss you this sucks you know it's like why is no one standing up for kelly yeah that's a whole thing but bringing it back to the carla thing so her mom is like you know i think i'll probably still love you 100 i'll probably also love this baby probably but i will love you longer kelly and that's what kelly says to carla where it's like, yes, you're also my best friend.

It's just that I haven't liked you as long as my other best friend. It's like this weird callback. It's so weird. But as far as the Kelly-Carla friendship slash potential romantic relationship, that was like the big one that I was shipping. Thank you. In the movie. That makes me so happy. Because I feel like a bazillion

like articles you know it's not necessarily like prestige journalism that's being a lot of newsletters i found a lot of sub stack newsletters that are just like a blog my favorite my favorite title was one uh a newsletter that came out last year and the the the headline is just cadet kelly was lesbians and that and the story continues it's really fun yeah but yeah they mostly focus on jennifer and kelly when there really is i mean there's a whole menu of ships to be had yeah because we also we haven't um brought up gloria yet gloria right love so oh my god she's gorgeous she is we love her and we get i mean we at least we get more backstory for her as well which i thought was like that scene with her and kelly is so nice and then they like stay friends and build their friendship and i like i i i don't remember picking

up on that ship as much when i was a kid but this time i was like oh i i think gloria was my top ship this view oh nice gloria's just gorgeous i felt like she had more of a thing with jennifer yeah then nothing oh sure there was a vibe there yeah they were they like i mean because it was they were like i don't i don't know how military school relationships work but they were together all the time maybe it was just a friend i don't know they well there's so much weird stuff with brad but there's that scene where like brad's the distance and Jennifer thinks that she likes Brad because like either she's suppressing her queer feelings or she doesn't know that she's gay yet or something. But she's just like, how does my hair look? And then Gloria is like, it looks perfect.

It always does. Yeah. You're just like, OK, Gloria. I yeah, I really like Gloria. I, yeah, I really like Gloria. I'm glad that she, I kind of, like, forgot what her exact thread through the story was, and I was worried that we weren't going to get her back after she and Kelly have, like, I feel what she and Kelly have is just, like, a really strong, like, powerful queer friendship. We love those i love it and then and then when she comes back and she like teaches her how to guns i don't know there's like that's the that's the perfect way to describe it kelly's like teach me how to guns and gloria's like okay i'll do it and she teaches her how to how to guns and she gets really good at guns and i don't i i mean the

military industrial part of their friendship isn't my favorite but it is very sweet like that friendship is very sweet i wish you got like a another like last moment with gloria and jennifer because yeah that's a thing kelly also realizes the importance of paying someone for their time and effort she's like i need you to train me to guns but i'm not gonna i insist on paying you so here look at what i have to offer scarves bracelets welcome to my etsy shop choose what she's like and then isn't there some like occasional like the occasional use of hillary duff voiceover was like accessories are always the way to a girl's heart i'm like all right

even when she was like i have to figure out how to fix this family and raise this baby and it's gonna be hard and i'm like aren't you 15 like she's so young like go outside and play what do you mean kelly in general i just just re-watching it this time like kelly is such a like good and open-minded and like thoughtful person i love her she's when her when she finds out her mom is pregnant she's like i guess i have to be in the military because i don't want my mom to get upset while she's pregnant i'm like what what like she's just so concerned the two women in that family between kelly and her mom they make way too many compromises and it's like

no stop it stop compromising for joe especially because you get the feeling that kelly's mom is waiting for her to say let's get out of here and then she's like oh thank god and then they could they would just flee. But they're like not... Because Kelly wants to appease her mom. Her mom wants to appease Kelly and her new husband. And then they're just trapped in the military. Right. And not to make

it a thing, but Joe feels like the type of guy who, you know, gets off of work on the weekend, drinks a little too much, says something, like, smart, and, like, is kind of nasty when he drinks. Like, I don't know. I just kind of have a vibe where I was like, are you sure you want him? Like, do you want to stay here? You can leave. Like, you guys could, you could have the baby, and then you could go could go like you don't have to stay here

at the military school he's like the principal of the military you really you really gave up your life yeah so that he could go be a principal at a school which is a choice but i just i've always thought that like in some way she was like can we go like we'll take Carla too like let's right let's leave Kelly we'll take Carla and the baby we're fleeing the state like we're getting out of here it makes no sense why Kelly's mom would marry this guy like they have such I don't I don't understand that relationship and i and i wish that i feel like even though i i appreciate and we'll talk about this as well but like i i do appreciate like the amicable divorce uh plot point which i feel like you never get in movies even though it

is like not uncommon at all and just like normalizes it but but yeah like the really you only know that they met at a wedding that's kind of the only i don't know i just feel like something is really sinister is going on there it just seems strange for like a woman you know like well into her career and seeming to thrive at it like i wish we had seen a discussion between gary cole and kelly's mom just to get some context for like you know even just a line from kelly's mom like this is actually great like i feel like i i've finished what i wanted to do in this profession i'm ready to move on I'm sick of the city whatever it is something not just like I feel like at this point the reason she's with Joe is because he's more

stable right but like he's so boring and like his whole thing was like oh well you know my dad was the principal of the school and his dad was also the principal. And it's like, okay, but like, do you do anything for fun? Like, what do you do for fun? Do you watch TV? He used to guns for fun. It was so weird too, how they were like, oh, the gun stuff. It's like super important, super serious. Like don't make a mockery of it, but it's also like, so you guys go to competitions

and you play with guns and then you leave. How serious is that really? It is a gun recital. Like, you hate to say it and you hate to hear it, but it's fully a gun recital. They're dancing. That also, I mean, that dance. Oh, the dancing.

Oh, God. It's just cemented in my memory forever well the one where they're like kind of improvising the one and they're having a dance off yeah like in the middle of the quad or whatever yeah whatever you would call that but they're like oh i that was for me that was my rewind moment that and all the scenes where uh christy carlson romano gets really close to hillary dove's face my girl personal space i know it happens so often between a bunch of different characters and it's like just kiss already right you went as well you're already here just ah it is so funny to i mean it is not funny but like curious that christy cross and romano like gave that performance and then was like all coy about

it you know 15 years later like i don't know i was like you know christy cross the romano you were so close to hillary dub's face um. But yeah, this movie is just, there really is just a full menu of queer ships in this movie. It makes me very happy. I wish we had just gotten more Carla. Agreed. Also, I think that the dances, they make me laugh because the one on the quad is better than the one in the

competition yeah we like it's just like the one on the quad is better and i'm like how does that work like okay right they were just like improv they're like yes and zip zaps up or it's gonna like improv this whatever and then the one that's like rehearsed which like there's some weird editing choices made in that scene and i was like who the fuck edited this movie and i looked it up and it's a woman and i felt really bad for thinking it was horrible editing because i was like oh women never get to be editors in movies women can be mediocre too that's true that's that's always been our goal on this show but you're right the dance on the quad was much more enjoyable to watch and just better choreographed than the weird one at the gun recital right and it's really like

it also isn't saying much because they they both weren't great but given the choice the one in the quad was definitely better yes yeah yeah and then you mentioned this earlier kia but the fact that carla ends up kind of being a part of the drill team not like actually on the on the team but she just like basically kelly's just like i don't like to shine shoes will you like help me or will you can you just be here with me and carlos is like yes i have an enormous crush on you so i will be i will go wherever you are right literally that's the only explanation because i would not be like oh yeah i'll shine shoes even though i don't have to right because like kelly's doing it as a punishment right and then she's just like hey can you do my punishment with me and carla's like yes it's like

well i think it's i don't know like it and then and then carla tries to reverse engineer it and she's like this is actually because the military means that i should shine shoes with you because i'm in love with you but it's actually because of the military. Did you know? And Kelly was like, okay, so oblivious to Carla's crush on her. It is.

She needs to open her eyes and see the light. Well, Kia, do you have any other thoughts about? Yes, I do. Yes, please.. I said that too quickly. Yes.

Please. I didn't like at the end. Okay. So when Jennifer's like, oh, my family's moving. And like, I hope that you become a whatever and like get a little maggot just like you or whatever. And I was like, but how about we don't glorify this little rank thing that you have going on and tell kelly to leave military school like i just was like you're giving her the wrong message like she's not supposed to be all hard and mean or whatever like i don't know i just i

thought about that when i was re-watching it i was like no i don't want her to get another maggot i want her to go home i want i also was like that choice i i vaguely remembered that but it felt a little bit cruel where so many of these dcoms like it was assumed that there was going to be a sequel but this this kind of the end of this movie kind of like slams the promise of a sequel it just like slams the door in your face of like no they don't go to school and they're never gonna kiss stop dreaming jamie like they're like they're never gonna kiss and um that was hurtful why did they do that yeah they had they gave you no opening they're like a sequel no in high school musical they're like well maybe we'll kiss next year you know like but you're right like with the dynamic between i mean kind of separating it

separating the queer read from it just like the dynamic between kelly and jennifer is this very like jennifer's higher ranking and she's this like militant like you maggot you suck i hate you and i'm gonna rip your blanket apart and just like all this stuff but then in the movie yeah ripping your blanket the same thing happens in full metal jacket too i'm pretty sure um but she but then they become friends uh as the movie wants you to think that it's just a platonic friendship. But like, this is something we see in a lot of like straight romantic relationships in movies as well, where it starts out as this either antagonistic or like a man is stalking a woman or a man is abusive to a woman. And then suddenly or gradually they are in love with each other and it feels like it's just like a weird trope and this exists with like in other movies of

like female friendships where or something that starts out as a very antagonistic female relationship that kind of grows over time and i don't again i'm always like trying to figure out like what is the use of this or what's the purpose or what are you trying to say with all of this yeah like that enemies to lovers trope but i think a lot of times it can be harmful in the grand scheme of things because they never when they get to the point of being friends right they never really discuss the previous abuse right they don't believe in rectifying that situation it's just like oh we're friends now so we're not going to talk about you know how you made me feel like crap or how you pushed me in the dirt ripping my blanket did x y

and z just to get back at me and i think that that's not as cute as people seem to believe when they're like praising them like i feel like there should be a an aspect to these stories where it's like i'm also going to apologize for my previous behavior and that would be much more healthy than just what they do now she's just like i'm moving to europe bye hopefully you get someone that you get to abuse later too right and it also it ties into the um like women in competition trope as well where again the story has you believe that they're kind of competing for the affection of this brad guy because there's that scene where they're like they both spot him across the quad and then they like

speed walk over to him to like try to like make a good impression on him so and then just like on top of that again just like the antagonistic female relationship and it's for no other reason than like jennifer is just like mean and it's like i don't i can't really make sense of it but it happens a lot in both like children's media and like rom-coms where it's just like the two people the two leads of this movie they hate each other why cuz reasons yeah right cuz plot devices like it is it's it's funny because even as a person who enjoys a lot of enemies to lovers fanfic i only ever enjoy the ones where they like where there's an apology like that's my wheelhouse i'm i don't understand when it's like i slashed your tires i keyed your car i i punched your mom in the face but we're not going to talk about any of that we're just

gonna we're too busy kissing now right and it's like what no i mean it's like it's pretty clear that jennifer owes kelly a pretty huge apology before she leaves and i feel like it is just kind of glazed over like by the fact that she gave kelly a compliment one time that it's like and all is forgiven which obviously is not true or realistic and and it kind of like glazes over a lot of what she was doing was not like like i don't know i mean i i guess i i've never been to a military school full disclosure but it's like in theory you cannot just target a single person and harass them and destroy their stuff relentlessly um and then be like it's because i had a crush like it's because i thought she was cute like no

i think her parents also owe her kelly's parents also owe her an apology 100 i'm like dead set on that because you just uprooted her and and like you didn't ask for her opinion and i think it's a larger cultural issue where we don't talk to children about what they want and need because we think that because we're parents we have the ultimate say but you know that's maybe a little too too deep for the conversation but I thought about it I'm like you really just changed her life forced her to attend military school because I guess online classes weren't an option and then you were like you were like you're gonna enjoy it like I just I don't know I think that they need to apologize to her and then also promise the baby that comes that the baby doesn't

have to go to military school right yes please the baby that may or may not be loved by its mother um yeah it's such a drastic change that kelly has it's like one thing if like a family has to move or like there's a remarriage and like things get slightly uprooted but to take her from an arts school in new york city to a rigid military industrial complex education that has to be pretty traumatic but the movie doesn't do that much to explore that really. Yeah. I guess the last thing I wanted to talk about in relation to the queer subtext slash text is Brad. So what's his name? Sean Ashmore,

who I guess has a twin didn't know until did some research for the movie. Yeah. He was a twin who was in, I think Aaron Ashmore who was in veronica mars it's a whole thing anyway brad is like the hottest boy in school all the move again the movie wants you to think that all the girls love him and it's like um okay but there's a really confusing aspect to the movie where carla says something to kelly toward the beginning that makes you think that jennifer and brad are dating but then jennifer has to like try to get him

interested in her again like i don't think like are they dating or does she just have a crush on him i think that they were that i my read was that they were not like officially at least not in like an uh an official way otherwise brad is a terrible boyfriend well that's the thing because like i'm still a little unclear but i think the movie's idea is that they are dating because they like go to the dance together carla says oh that's jennifer's man so he's off limits to all the other girls like all this stuff that makes you think that they're like together but he treats jennifer so horribly like ignores her like the majority of the movies like i don't really care like what you have to say and like he laughs at her when she gets mud like when kelly

gets mud all over her dress if i if i saw my boyfriend spitting on another girl's shoe i would be like excuse you there's an unspoken agreement that you do not spit on another girl's shoe like even the even the hat thing when she like had to show her hair he was like well you have to show it it's regulation he humiliates her publicly yeah in that little um cadet hearing i'm upset by this they're like oh brad all the girls like brad but does brad even like girls is the question i might not even like girls he was like i don't i want to go home he was like i didn't ask this. Talk about characters we know nothing about. Like, Brad, you're just like, what could possibly be going on with Brad?

We don't know. We'll never know. Like, his background is unclear to us. He seems pretty mediocre at what he does. Like, if he really is canonically supposed to be Jennifer's boyfriend who likes who likes her he's doing he's a mean terrible neglectful boyfriend truly i guess at least i appreciated that that storyline just kind of tapers off and doesn't come in to anything and it's not as though like i had a feeling because i hadn't seen this before and i didn't know how the story was going to go. What I thought was going to happen was that they'd really wedge in a love story between Kelly and Brad where, you know, Brad is dating Jennifer at first.

But then he starts to see how mean she is. And then he starts to like Kelly because she's nice and quirky and fun. And so the fact that the movie doesn't go in that direction and what was being set up there sort of doesn't pay off at all i do appreciate that because this feels like a movie where a heteroromantic subplot was not necessary i think that was true because of the age difference at the time of me i think he was much older than hillary duff so they probably didn't true oh like in real life okay yeah yeah that makes sense because hillary duff was like 14 when this movie was shot which you forget because she's such a talented actress but she was quite young

and then i think um chrissy carlson romano is 17 in this movie everyone is children yeah but i think isn't shauna ashmore he was like in his early 20s what is not children yeah and gloria wasn't either okay she's like 23 or something she's everything to me so i said it's like oh let's true this movie came out my wife just checking in on her um but it's i think that that's part of it too where it's just like they were like bruh we can't have this child and this grown man or this like kiss on on disney channel but i wasn't i wasn't upset by that at all because it felt like it was forced. Like, the most that I remember Brad saying in the movie, even seconds after watching it, is, you make me smile, Cadet Kelly. Like, I don't remember anything else that he says. So I'm like, well, that was weak anyway. Like, it was like maybe the person who wrote it felt like there needed to be a love interest, but also realized while they were writing it

that the more interesting relationship was between the relationship of like all of the girls and not the men. Like the men seemed to be props that they were, which I think is revolutionary for their time in terms of being like, yeah, no, these guys are just props like they're here for this and this and this but we're not really here for that so it was like that was nice we appreciate that yeah I agree yeah Kia any other thoughts I mean I think I covered I think I covered all

this was just like the most life-affirming discussion well thank you so much for for joining us this was tons of fun where can people follow you where can people check out your stuff etc yeah um i for first of all thank you for having me that was really genuinely so much fun you can find me on twitter and instagram at kia k-e-a-h underscore maria m-a-r-i-a i have a website kia brown.com and a facebook page at the keah brown so i'm in all those spaces and then um you can buy my book the pretty one available now for purchase and then in fall of 2022 i have a picture book coming out called sam's super seats for the children via copelya books so all those good things amazing i can keep you updated with please yes and come back on

the show uh another time bring your favorite movie and we'll yes oh no i'm definitely taking you up on that yep yeah happy to have you anytime thank you both Defne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 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 unhearts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks.

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Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 his right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged housewife

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um we have a few more things we want to discuss um i think another major thing to talk about is the like very pro-military propaganda message that this movie is yeah so i um i can speak to this a little bit about some of the culture that is portrayed here uh because as i think i've brought it up on the matriam before and as you know caitlin uh i I almost married into the military rather young. And this whole like setup of the I don't know, like this is I think it's a little unusual because it's directed mainly at teen girls. And I think it is far more common. And this is pointed and gendered in itself but um for this kind of propaganda to be angled at uh young male identifying children is like okay you need you know how what is the peak of masculinity what is the peak of you know discipline and and so i i feel like the vast

majority of uh you know like military movies about young people are feature and are targeted at boys so this is I think the rare exception that we see young women doing it I don't unfortunately it's still the fucking military industrial complex that there is really no downside i think my main issue is there is no real downside to this like situation for kelly it sort of implies i think in a slightly disingenuine way that like there's room for individualism in the military and like you can meet people in the middle art students can become soldiers and it just feels a little i don't know like i will say watching this movie as a kid did not make me want to go to military school for what it's worth it's still and i'd be curious to hear what our listeners who saw it as as young people think but it didn't make me want

to go to a military academy but it did i think i think that the takeaway you're supposed to get is that kelly while she is a like very original and individual person which she isn't really punished for it does help her character every step of the way but like her life was enriched for having learned the discipline of a military school and that she had made assumptions about the oppressiveness of the environment that was inherently wrong which if you look at i mean and i don't i don't want this episode to take too dark a turn so i will just say you know you can do your research on your own but but the experience of any marginalized person in the military it is just it's just a full-on fallacy that military discipline and experience is a universal good

that's not to say that it hasn't served many well and we're not trying to discredit going to a military school or joining the military as a life choice. Like, it's, you know, we're addicted to the troops. We're in love with the troops. No, no, but all that to say. If that's your choice, your body, your choice. It's your choice. I mean, and it's like, I don't know, I dated someone who was in the military for a very long time. And so it, you know, but the implication that it is a universal good for everyone. I mean, women are not treated particularly well in the military. And that's a huge understatement. And you can look to some recent news items for more information on that. The subject of race in the military is not often brought up, and there is huge historical erasure of non-white soldiers, and not to mention being queer in the military, being trans in the military. There's endless stories and accounts

about how the oppressive environment that is presented to us in this movie as something that will make you learn something about yourself and make you a better person for yourself and for the people around you you know no negatives are really examined other than the fact that it's uncomfortable at first i think that's as far as this movie goes of like whoa this is weird and like i don't like that like i'm being yelled at but and not it's not like i'm not expecting this decom to like take on this serious like deep-rooted misogyny of the

american military but maybe it should but it's it's it's too pro i feel like it's it's hard to disagree that it's way way too pro so having seen this for the first time only days ago and had no idea what it was about at all based on what was being set up in like act one in the beginning of act two i had really different ideas about where the story was going to go because here's here's what kind of gets set up so we meet kelly at the arts school she loves creative expression she's very artistic she's a free thinker uh and that's like the main thing about her character um then she's told that she has to go to this military school because her mom is making her uproot their entire lives for a man, more or less. Kelly is very reluctant about

this, understandably so. Then she gets to the military school. She sees what it's like. And she's like, I need to turn this into a kinder, gentler place. She says different lines of dialogue like, you know, we've got brains. We're thinking people. She's challenging sort of the uniformity of the military ideology every step of the way or not every well at least at the beginning um she says i'd really like to try and retain my individuality around here she says we may be in military school but we still live in a democracy she's talking about how she hates the uniformity the rules the khaki of it all so for the first chunk of the movie she's talking about how she wants to change this place so i thought where

the story was going is that she was going to bring her like creative energy and change everyone's mind about how the school should be run and instead she gets more and more indoctrinated into this military lifestyle and ideology and basically loses her sense of identity and becomes just another like military drone and i'm like what the fuck and it feels very like early 2000 i mean and this comes up in every decom discussion basically very like early 2000s i mean and this comes up in every decom discussion basically very like early 2000s girl power feminism where it's like oh i can be in the military but i'm gonna wear a scarf so girl power and you're like no kelly no there i think it is interesting where it's like the i think it's very clever and creative the way that the ideals of the military

are presented to kelly because some of it sounds good to the point where i agree with it whereas it's like you know that um and i think this is communicated through carla where carla basically says to kelly like it's not just about you it's's also about serving the interests of the group. And we help each other. And we're a community. And stuff that is like, okay, I agree with this. But it's leaving out. It's misrepresenting by omission.

What they're actually being prepared and groomed to do doesn't come up um or the politics of which you know like this is this movie was made during the first bush administration this movie came out six months after 9-11 like yeah the context for what is going on here is very intentionally i feel not stated i also was wondering I think I was wondering if they were going to say the name of the president because they asked twice with like who who is in charge of the military the president of the United States like because no one was wanting to say George W. Bush at this time uh or now really so uh yeah it it is it is a slice of propaganda that i find kind i mean i guess i will say it is not the worst it wasn't as bad as it could have been but i don't know i mean where i feel like the setting

of this works is in like this setting really works for the queer reading we were discussing where you know as the symbolism of like someone trying to assert their individuality and feel confident in themselves in a very oppressive judgy environment i feel like it works really well for that setup but in terms of just kind of the flat rate of pro-military and like the commandant is probably a really nice guy and you know like all this stuff um yeah it's military propaganda uh yeah that's like that i was like blown away with how much that ends up being a part because again the the mood i feel like the movie is setting you up for kelly being the one to come in and disrupt the rigidity and right just like influence change or at least i thought i mean at least because i for i honestly forgot

how this movie ended i forgot about the dad off the cliff like just all this not memorable plot points but like the fact that she truly affects zero change at this school nothing and instead she more she gets brainwashed she's like this thing that i thought was really ridiculous of throwing rifles around is actually my new favorite hobby and she even, in the beginning of the movie, she, she's Kelly is a comedic genius. She makes a bunch of really funny jokes. For example, I wrote down a couple of my favorites. She's like up on a ledge during the obstacle course.

And she's like, she's like, I hate heights. I'm even hoping to not get too tall. Hilarious. She says my mom and Joe met at a wedding and they liked it so much they decided to have one of their own hilarious she's making she's cracking jokes constantly and then over the course of the movie as she's getting again like more indoctrinated into this military ideology

she like i feel like just like starts to lose her personality her like vibrant bubbly like jokey creative self and she like she adopts that like military speech that they're expected to speak in where she's like permission to speak this cadet has an idea like all that she doesn't lose it entirely but like which is i would it would have been so scary if we had like just lost hillary duff in the process of this but yeah i mean it is kind of weird for a movie that seems to be at least attempting to challenge like oh the military doesn't you know like beat the personality out of you but like there is something there is a net loss in her and i feel like that is framed

as a good thing i mean it's like a good thing that i don't know i mean it's cadet kelly i don't know. I mean, it's Cadet Kelly. I don't know. It's, hey, Cadet Kelly out of cadet school. What's the movie? But it is military propaganda, and we recognize that. Yes. There's also a scene where she's in a classroom, and we don't get many of these scenes when she's, like, actually learning stuff that, like, a military school would teach you.

But there is a particular scene. The rear is good. Yes. Okay. The language used here is really funny. Yes. But so the teacher is talking about the Korean War and he's describing this thing and it feels so hilariously defensive where he's like, um, we didn't retreat.

That thing wasn't a retreat. It was an advance to the rear and it was actually super awesome that we did that because it was like really on purpose and not at all a failure it was actually a brilliant strategy and it's like this is what you're teaching children like are you kidding me well i mean every american school teaches bullshit revisionist history but this was a funny this was funny because it also wasn't very well written. Where you're just like, actually,

it was, we were, it was awesome. It was good. And you're like, all right. And then Kelly's like VO is like, I didn't realize that there were so many lessons from the military that were

applicable to my own life. My favorite, my favorite Hilary Duff voiceover is when she first gets there. And then it's almost like a Lizzie McGuire cutaway, but there's no cutaway. It's just a static shot on Hilary Duff. And it says, hello, where can I get a cafe mocha? You're just like, okay, Hilary Duff, relax. I was so confused by that because i thought she was saying

it out loud it was like diegetic dialogue but it's but then it like you see her lips not moving and i was like oh i guess this was voiceover it was i was that was so that was right and but it's weird i feel like that was almost a weird reference to Lizzie McGuire because there's cutaways in that show. But it cuts away to a cartoon that is her inner monologue. But in this one, it doesn't cut away. Oh, is that what happens? I've never seen Lizzie McGuire, so I don't understand how it works. And one of the writers on this also had written on Lizzie McGuire, I believe. Yeah, so they will cut away to a cartoon Lizzie and she'll say a cute comment and then it'll cut back to live action Lizzie McGuire I believe. Yeah so so they like will cut away to a cartoon

Lizzie and she'll say like a cute comment and it'll cut back to live action Lizzie and this movie I think attempts to do that but it's not an episode of Lizzie McGuire so you're not cutting away to a cartoon so it's just often a static shot of Hilary Duff's not speaking face but you hear her voice and you're just like what is this? I have okay so i wanted to shout out one of the writers of this movie she has come up on this show before kind of an iconic uh writer of of many generations gail parent co-wrote this movie um we've talked about her. I forget why we've talked about her before, but she has written a lot of really, really famous shows

targeted at women specifically. She wrote on The Carol Burnett Show. She wrote on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. She wrote on The Golden Girls. She wrote on Rhoda. She wrote on, and then she also wrote this movie. She wrote Confessions of a teenage drama queen she's written a lot of like really iconic female centered stories so i was thrilled to see i didn't

know that she had had a hand in cadet kelly but you have to assume that she, you know, a lot of the very strong bonds between women, which we've discussed at this point, can be attributed to her. And so I wanted to shout her out. The other writer of this movie, his name is Michael Walsh, and he seems to have been a journalist and then wrote this movie. I don't know. Shrug. Shrug. And then, sorry,. I don't know. Shrug. Shrug. And then, sorry, Larry Shaw is the director. And so he had directed episodes of Lizzie McGuire.

I see. Okay. That's kind of, I mean, I guess that's all you really need for a background. Although you said earlier there was a female editor. There was, it seems like, I'm going to just give the majority of the credit for the writing of this movie to Gail Parent and then say Michael Walsh was brought in to write the dads I don't know

but I was happy to see that this movie was written by women I think that that is something that you see in DCOMs more frequently too is that you see women writing stories for women and girls again because decom is more of an experimental environment and also uh you don't uh need to pay the employees as much so i'm sure that disney is always thrilled to pay uh non-male identifying people way less. So there's that.

But yeah. Well, speaking of the dads, can we talk about the parents and their storylines in general? Because there's some really wacky stuff going on here. We already talked about. We talked about the two dads in love. We talked about the two dads and then we talked about the pregnancy. So the i mean and i want to be careful in the way we've talked about it a little bit already but it's like like we were saying earlier we don't want to like disrespect

the choice to be a homemaker and to want to be a stay-at-home parent spouse whatever it is like definitely it just the way it's framed in this movie is very abrupt and kind of confusing. And I, I don't know, like, as someone who is very hesitant and resistant to be a military spouse, this was what I was afraid of. Where, and, and, and again, like, if you were a military spouse yourself, like, we would love to hear from you and hear again like if you were a military spouse yourself like we would love to hear from you and hear like is cadet kelly's mom at all reflective of your experience or was it just bad writing but but there is certainly an expectation or at least a trope that you have to drop everything in your life and commit yourself to your spouse's career which is very much what happens in this movie we don't really have and i think my issue with it is we don't have any idea really how she feels about

it or like what really was she doing before and why did she choose to leave this life outside of just relationship like you have to imagine if she's being presented to us as this like cool single mom prior to this like what is she leaving behind what was her life before this and like you just don't know and so and and then you see her struggling to adjust to her new life demonstrated to the fact that she doesn't know how to put on an apron i don't know like and and so it seems like she is struggling but it's just kind of presented as like funny and so i just i don't know it just ended up kind of making me feel like confused and sad for her in a way that it was just like you know just as much as kelly her life has been completely

uprooted it seems like she doesn't even leave that house that they're living in so she doesn't really have a support system around her like it would have been nice to see like maybe she becomes because like a very common thing is like a military wives or military spouses will hang out together and like there's a support network there and it would have been cool to like even see that referenced in passing that she had found a community that she wasn't just like left alone with the stove all day trying to learn how to make turkey and that's her journey in the movie as she gets pregnant and she learns how to cook turkey like i just don't love that and i wish that since this movie does seem to have a mission to reflect the american military experience which it doesn't obviously i mean i just i just felt like she was bradley cooper by the wayside uh in this plot and she didn't need to be no especially because like

the relationship that kelly has with both of her father figures end up being way more important to the story than the relationship with her mother and i don't understand why that is i don't know why that choice was made because with similar to kelly her mother is also having to adjust to this like military lifestyle so why couldn't they like why couldn't we see them bond over that further or like discuss this new lifestyle that they're having to adjust to and and instead we get this like weird like dad fell off a cliff and i have to teach my stepdad how to be a father and it's like why is that your responsibility why like why did she marry this like why did kelly's mom marry a guy who like has no emotional intelligence

whatsoever like well and i gotta be honest i don't really give a shit about i mean i know he's important to the plot theoretically because he has to eventually be flung off a cliff but i don't care about the original like i don't the original that i don't care about kelly's biological dad and i also don't think he's as good a parent as the movie makes it a mission to me. I mean, and this is like inherent to not just DCOM, but children's media in general of like, mom does the mean thing. Dad does the fun thing.

Because like we discussed a million times, it's a societal expectation of female parents to do the majority of the parenting. And therefore they're kind of demonized because that means they're doing most of the discipline right anyways this movie is kind of no exception where kelly's dad is like fun and goofy and they're both klutzy and they both trip a lot and you're like yay and uh but already it's like he does not put up a fight for kelly to not have to go to military school. He prioritizes his career above his daughter.

He's busy going off to Chad and Sudan and Myanmar and Thailand, which he says in an accent as he's like describing the countries he's going to. He's like speaking in some nondescript accent. And what it's like that whatever you're doing, sir, you're being racist. Like what the racist? Yes, he's being racist also it's very clear that the places he's going are just uh sound stages in burbank in any case like yeah it's and so he like prioritizes his career above her he does a racist accent in the first scene he appears in he just kind of shows up uh when he feels like it and then kelly is so thrilled and then it's presented as if like oh this is how like gary cole is going

to learn how to be a father and you're like this is actually really not an example that you would necessarily want like he has a better personality than gary cole but i feel like that is something that happens with like manipulative neglectful parents all the time where i was actually kind of feeling for gary cole in that scene because he is emotionally stunted deeply but at least he is present and he is you know he can be counted upon in kelly's life whereas her dad is just like he's just not around he's just off wherever so i'm anti kelly's fun dad i am also like you said like i am anti the dad's taking up all the parental real estate um i mean fortunately

most of the movie is truly like kelly jennifer carla all having crushes on each other all like falling in love but but yeah like when we zoom out it usually is the dad i i guess i sort of appreciate gary cole's journey in this of like being able to appreciate his stepdaughter's individualism but it just takes up too much space i don't know like it's just ultimately i'm kind of like meh what is your relationship i would have loved to see his relationship with his with his wife with kelly's mom a little more because like you i don't understand what brings them together because we just don't really know enough about her to know what about him is appealing to her we know a lot about him also he should be constantly like

thanking her and kissing her feet for being like oh my god thank you so much for this huge compromise that you and kelly made by like uprooting your successful life in new york city to live with me while i'm a commandant at this school like the again the whole the compromises that these women make that just... For Gary Cole. For Gary Cole with a mustache. And his spawn. Yeah, it's not ideal. And yeah, Kelly and her mother both need to...

I mean, we talked about this already, but they have to make too many compromises. Yes. The last thing I want to mention is the titanic reference hello in the song that happens both at the very beginning of the movie during the dance routine that kelly and amanda are doing at the art school and then again at the end um during the weirdly edited dance routine at the gun recital I do think not before before we come for the editor I do think that the movie was pretty significantly re-edited for Disney plus okay my recollection and I think he referenced this a little bit was that the music at the end was swapped out I think it was originally a little bit was that the music at the end was swapped out.

I think it was originally a different song, which is why the editing kind of looks funky. I think it was like that editing was synced up to a different song that maybe Disney lost the rights to. I see. But sound off in the comments if you agree. I sort of remember, I don't remember that opening song being in it twice.

I think that they just kind of piped it in at the end because they still had the rights to it. They're just like, oh, yeah, we have this one. But in any case, the lyrics, which I can't make sense of, are as follows. I wear a disguise. I'm just your average Jane. The super doesn't stand for model, but that doesn't mean I'm plain. If all you see is how I look, you miss the super chick within. And I christen you Titanic. Underestimate and swim.

Underestimate and swim? I didn't catch that. I don't know what that means, but I was like, there's a Titanic reference. If you don't understand what an amazingly empowered woman I am, you're going to drown in the ocean. Drown in the Titanic? I think that that's what it's saying. I don agree with this message i don't endorse that lyric but i do love a good titanic shout out yes um well anyway as far as cadet kelly goes i think that was all i had did you have anything

else no no i i uh we should figure out if this movie passes the Bechdel test it does it super does it's very often two female identifying characters with names talking about the military talking about the drill team famously genderless rifles

and various things yes this movie passes quite a bit and it is also like i mean it passes between kelly and carla it passes between kelly and gloria it passes between kelly and jennifer kelly and her mom passes a bunch yeah but what would we rate it on our nipple scale this is kind of challenging i if you look at it from the standpoint of the movie focusing on the relationships between several female characters and how you have a lot of budding friendships or a lot of budding romances depending on how you look at it uh the fact that it doesn't wedge in a romance with Brad. But, you know, these are reasons to like this movie.

It would be nice to have a, I don't know exactly what the intentions of the writers were, but either way, it would have been, it would be nice to have a similar movie where different characters actually identify themselves as queer, and then we could have seen actual queer visibility on screen in a movie intended for young people. Like, think how cool it would be if, you know, this was a story about a bunch of queer kids in military school, you know, a place where queerness, I have to imagine, is not tolerated. But, you know, like, if a bunch of queer kids find each other and band together and support each other and maybe kiss sometimes. I feel like there's a

subplot to that effect in that show Sex Education. Anyway, I need to finish watching it. But point is, this is a DCOM, this is a Disney movie. And, you know, Disney was never going to do that in 2002, or in present day. So even, you know, years after this, we've referenced that Kenny Ortega interview where Kenny Ortega, a queer director, was not allowed to have a queer character in High School Musical. So it's like this, you know, is certainly not a new trend, but it is, I feel like, yeah, certainly the closest, like, other very important part of the movie, which is the very pro-military propaganda message that it is perpetuating is not something I appreciate. Like, yeah. No, I mean, like, again, if you want to join the military, that's your choice. But i would liken a lot of like

military ideology to police ideology it's a lot of the same horribly racist sexist homophobic transphobic all the horrible things it's it's basically one in the same to me so i am going to take a very brave anti-military industrial complex stance. Wow, Caitlin. You're going to be attacked in the comments. So the fact that this movie is like, again, the story being that like, the more Kelly is in military school, the less her individuality and personality remains intact is um scary and upsetting but like the movie framing that is like it's actually awesome that she finally has

structure and it's like it's not as though she was a bad kid before she wasn't misbehaving she was artistic and the word structure i mean i feel like that's just kind of like a little military dog whistle for like having the personality beat out of you. There's a difference between structure and military structure. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So all of that. Oh, gosh, I don't know. With all of that in mind, I think I'm going to have to give it like two.

Oh, wow. OK. Or maybe less. Why? What were you going to gonna give it and then i'll copy you i'm kidding i'm not gonna tell you you pick yours all right i'll give it two well there's also i mean between like carla and gloria you do have a few women of color in the movie, but they are also, they are not given nearly as much narrative significance or focus as the two white women leads of Kelly and Jennifer. Um, so we don't love that. Um, I'm going to go down to one and a half. I enjoy this movie. I don't, it's not that I hate this movie. I actually like had a fun time watching it.

But there's a lot of like very early 2000s Disney. Like Disney has its stink all over it. I don't know. It's one and a half. And I'll give both of those nipples to the dance off that happens in the quad. This is, I think, our most significant deviation in a while i'm gonna go with three um because i it absolutely i need to dock it for being early 2000s girl power feminism military propaganda which um while i completely disagree with it i mean you gotta give it points for being that specific of the the boxes they're

trying to check in the way that this movie is being written um i do think like i i obviously am not pro-military industrial complex i i do think that it is a muddled not good attempt to try to represent military families on screen because while I am not pro-military I do think you know it's like kids who are in military families also deserve some representation on screen what I don't like is that the way that it's represented is so uncritical of the military and so pro like well whatever your soldier parent does is the right thing and you you must follow and it's just deeply uncritical so it's like representation you don't usually see but it's so unchallenging that i feel like it ends up kind of being moot yeah yeah i i would love to

see a you know a decom about a military family that maybe begins to disagree with the military maybe it has starts to have you know question it because for about a military family that maybe begins to disagree with the military. Maybe it starts to have, you know, question it because for all the reasons we've discussed of how deeply prejudiced and violent the military can be towards people who do not conform to their ideal, which is a... Cishet white men. Cishet white men, super soldier type,

then you're going to be punished. And this movie frames that punishment as a character building thing and not a an abuse tactic meant to beat the personality out of you so i do not like that however uh what i do like is i really really really like kelly and she really spoke to me as a kid just as her personality. And while I do agree that her personality is diminished by having gone to a military school, this movie didn't make me want to go to a military school. It made me want to be Kelly and maybe kiss a girl. Like those were the things that I took away from this movie as a kid.

And so those, I mean, I might be ranking it too high for nostalgia points, but I do think that this is like as close to queer representation in a DCOM that you could get. And in 2002, that was just not something that you were really getting anywhere else in children's media. So even this like coded attempt to show something,

I mean, clearly it spoke to a lot of young people because we're still talking about it. And, you know, Kia still has a lot of love for it. And I mean, I like that there are a number of, you know, like could be richer, but fairly rich relationships between the girls that attend the school. I do have an issue with I think that it is kind of a classic slight to a black character to not make their home life or their background really plot relevant or specific enough. For sure. And so I will dock it for that. Maybe I'm giving it a 2.75 but either way i think that cadet kelly does so much that a lot of children's media wasn't even attempting to

do and so even though it flops in some regards i appreciate the the queer reading of this movie which is i like we were saying it feels basically like text on a rewatch. I love Kelly. I feel bad for her mom. And the military industrial complex is scary. And I like to think that they both end up getting out of the military and starting a small gardening business together. So I'm going to give it 2.75 and I'll give one nipple to Carla and one nipple to Gloria and my other 0.75 nipple to the Greg. Baby Greg, who is born later.

Baby Greg, who may, who will probably be loved by i mean baby greg's parents just when she's like i'm sure i'll love this baby too i don't know maybe i know i was just like she needs to get some time off like this is not okay um so yeah so that's cadet kelly sorry there's literally a military plane flying over my house oh how fitting well so thank you again so much to our special guest kia brown make sure to check out her book make sure to follow her on social media she's awesome and she'll be back for a main episode at some point. So tune in for that. And yeah, thanks for listening, Matrons. Thanks for your support.

Bye. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself?

There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso

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