The Bechdel Cast - Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead with Amy Nicholson

Episode Date: November 17, 2022

Jamie and Caitlin are right on top of chatting with special guest Amy Nicholson about Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, Rose. (This episode contains spoilers) For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast Follow @TheAmyNicholson on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante, and @jamieloftusHELPSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. There's so much beauty

in Mexican culture, like mariachis, delicious cuisine, and even lucha libre. or wherever you get your podcasts. And I'm your host, Santos Escobar, Emperor of Lucha Libre and a WWE Superstar. Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast. Start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Hey, Jamie. Hey, Caitlin. It's me, your mean old babysitter. Oh.

And I have a list of rules and a list of chores for you to do. Okay. Such as talk about movies. Oh, see, I thought you were going to do, I thought you were going to do Rose Lindsay and I thought that I was going to have to reply to you. I'm right on top of that, Caitlin. Oh, that makes more sense

because that is way more what the movie is about than the babysitter being dead. So I kind of fumbled it. Yeah, it's about learning to navigate your way through life as a girl boss when you're uh when you're a liar i love it yeah and you know start early it's never too soon you know when you're 17 quit your hot dog job and uh start selling uniforms to members of a gigantic chemical conglomerate something they go out of the way to tell us about for some reason i love this movie uh welcome to the bechdel cast my name

is jamie loftus and i'm on i'm right on top of that caitlin oh thank you so much jamie and my name is caitlin dorante and i'm your boss and your babysitter and your mom and this is our podcast in which we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point to initiate a larger conversation but Jamie what is the Bechdel test well I, I'm right on top of that, Caitlin. I can tell you what it is. This is about to not pass the Bechdel test, but is that what men say when they're having sex with you? I'm right on top of that, Caitlin.

I'm right on top of that. All right, moving right along. And then I turn around and they're dead, just like the baby. And then they just slump to the ground. uh-huh i don't i don't have sex as much as i watched julia child and uh then stopped smoking so much weed this movie rocks okay the bechdel test is a media metric created by queer cartoonist allison bechdel sometimes called the bechdel wallace test originally made as a bit of a goof a bit of a bit for a comic she made in the 80s of a bit a bit of a bit but has since become a very popular way

of analyzing media lots of versions of the test here's ours we require that a piece of media have two characters of a marginalized gender with names who speak to each other about something other than a man for two lines of a marginalized gender with names who speak to each other about something other than a man for two lines of dialogue and it should be a you know narratively impactful line of dialogue such as such as i'm right on top of that rose and thank you jamie for being right on top of explaining the bechdel test that was was an incredible job. I'm so impressed. Actually, I am not I did none of the prep for this episode today. I had Kimmy Robertson do it for me. Did you did you delegate it to a colleague who is obsessed with doing busy work? Yeah, sorry. I actually took advantage of the most vulnerable person in the workplace I could find

and was rewarded for it. So yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Cool. Good job. There's only two people at our workplace. I'm like, I don't know who we don't have a Kimmy Robertson. Maybe we should. No, we shouldn't get an employee and exploit them. What am I talking about? Let's get this episode started. Yes, by introducing our wonderful guest. She's a film critic for the New York times and host of the podcast unspooled it's amy nicholson ah hello everybody hello and welcome oh it's so nice to be here i've been i've been wanting to tell you you know like my podcast in school it started because we were going through the afi top 100 and then like realizing we could get rid of a lot of them we absolutely axed the

graduate i mean yes i loved you guys going hard on that movie i hate that movie so much we absolutely axed The Graduate. I mean, yes. I loved you guys going hard on that movie. I hate that movie so much. That movie sucks. That movie sucks. So fuck you, The Graduate. It's gone. Oh, thank you.

That brings me so much joy. It's so bad. And Unspooled is incredible. Oh, thank you. So you brought us Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead. What is your relationship, your history with this movie? Yeah, I was thinking about that. And I was thinking, I think this might be one of the first movies I ever saw in a theater.

Okay. Maybe. You know, I'm a child who was alive in the 80s, but I don't remember a ton of the 80s. We didn't go to movies a lot when I was a kid. But I'm pretty sure I saw this around the time that I saw Home Alone and I have loved this movie deeply since I was a child I watched a lot of tv instead so I watched Married with Children all the time and the idea that there was a movie with Kelly Bundy was the coolest thing in the world and I thought this movie was the coolest thing in the world and I still kind of do think it's one of the coolest movies in the world hell yeah have you guys seen

it before or what's your whole thing I had not seen it before and so coming into this movie this and the other classic babysitter movie of well i guess that maybe there's a handful because there's like the babysitter club movie which i also haven't seen but i did read those books and then there's adventures in babysitting which was maybe what like five or six years before yeah i've still never seen that one yeah also with keith coogan oh is he in it also wow yeah okay he's really niche babysitter content getting getting typecast and babysitting movies could be babysat yeah brutal um so i have seen that one but I missed all of those movies as a as a youth so I hadn't seen Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead until I started prepping for this episode and I didn't love it um oh no Caitlin it's okay it's okay to be wrong every once in a while it's

okay thank you thank you for giving me permission to be wrong. But I just I found all of the characters very irritating, even the ones you're supposed to be rooting for. And, and I think it's because I resent movies that are clearly for like teens and kids that are like, all the adults in this movie suck and the kids are awesome. I know I'm getting old because watching those movies as an adult, I get like very unreasonably annoyed about movies like that. So that's kind of my that was my reaction to this. But I think this movie does like addresses some interesting things that I was not expecting it to address. So I'm excited to talk about it. Jamie, what about you? What's your relationship with this movie? Also very recent, but I had the opposite takeaway from this movie.

I watched this movie for the first time in some point in lockdown. I was in the mood for something silly and did not really like didn't know. I'm trying to think of movies where there's like this kind of comparable effect where the title of the movie has kind of nothing to do with what happens in the movie but i was ready for a whole like i don't know weekend at bernie's babysitter hijinks or something same and not like girl boss working girl but i really really enjoyed it when i saw it i was like surprised at the number of things that this movie tries to take on while staying pretty silly and um i thought i i don't know i guess i would we can get into it in the

discussion but i would argue that not all the adults in this movie suck um or or that there are at least some i think that all the adult men in this movie suck and that doesn't bother me for sure but I think Rose Lindsay is um is a character that we can root for and even you know I was okay I think my main battle watching this movie with analysis outside of early 90s tropes that we'll talk about is I was trying to get a gauge for like how people feel about their mom and their mom is such a polarizing character even it seems like with fans of this movie where there are some people who are like you know their mom's supposed to be 36 in the movie and has five kids in a house that is absolutely falling apart and she does fuck off to Australia and some people think that that is absolutely falling apart uh and she does fuck off to australia and some people think that

that is praxis and amazing and other people think that that is negligent and i was like oh i guess i was off i i had a crisis last night where i was like oh i was yeah i always sort of thought that's not great parenting but then i like, maybe that's my internal misogyny. But then I'm like, no, I think it's bad parenting. You shouldn't just go to Australia. When you have a kid as young as, yeah, five kids ranging from, I don't know, the youngest one seems to be like seven. Yeah. And then there's like maybe like a nine year old.

She left them with a full-on stranger one thing about people in this movie is they don't check resumes they don't vet how could you it was the 90s i think it's great gen x parenting because like i know we're gonna get into all of this but like that mom has had it and i would say as much as the not all of the adults suck at least not rose i think the kids do kind of suck and i'm like if i was that mom absolutely i'm getting out of here like i'm over it nobody helps her she's so mad i know we'll get into this but i need that needed to be said i also to be clear i don't think that rose sucks it's more like every adult in the movie is presented in

a particular way many some of them are like mean and conniving, nagging, but Rose is just kind of like clueless. I mean, she's very nice and she's like a supportive boss and she seems good to work for, but just the way that every adult is presented in a rather cartoonish and usually unflattering way. I feel like that's sort of my, I don't know. It depends on the movie.

My mileage with that sort of varies, but sometimes i like my favorite movie when i was a kid for a while was jimmy neutron because all the parents suck and then they're kidnapped by aliens i mean i think this is a movie about how growing up sucks and nobody ever grows up that much and rose can still be swayed and bobbleheaded and easily distracted true i mean relatable very relatable shall i do the recap and we'll go from there let's do it all right so we meet swell who you eventually learn is a that's a nickname for Sue Ellen, which is a name I was like, I'm sorry, her name is Swell. I was very confused for a while. But Swell is played by Christina Applegate. She just graduated from high school, and she thinks she's about to have a fun summer of freedom because her mom is about to leave for

Australia to go with I think her boyfriend for two months yeah I like to think that there's an alternate timeline of like when the mom gets back I'm always like and what was she up to out there like what did she we know that she's had a big fashion change at least something something in her core has been unlocked she's a she's a freer woman but she says i've had a very rough 37 years and i need a break yeah yes go mom she good for her i like that she has i like an eat pray love while her children's lives are falling apart yep okay so swell thinks she's gonna have all this freedom this summer surprise, her mom has hired a babysitter, Mrs. Stur of rules and chores for Swell and her siblings who are Walter.

He's the youngest. Melissa, I think, is next youngest. She's a bit of a, you know, quote unquote tomboy. Then there's Zach, who's like a tween. He seems like he's maybe like 12 or so. He's very romantic. He has a girlfriend he really likes. He's also the kid that sells Keanu Reeves the surfboard in Point Break.

No way. Yeah. Wow. Gotta love 90s kid actors. And then there's Kenny who seems only a little bit younger than Swell. He's probably like 16, maybe 15. He's like a kind of rebel teen punk kid. You know what's weird, though, is like they give the ages for the kids on Wikipedia.

And I don't know about you guys. I have like a total blindness for kid ages. Like I couldn't tell you how old any kid is. I'm not great at it. No clue. They say the youngest kid is 11 wrong so it's like it started 11 and then like the girl is 12 and then the heart drop is 14 and then it doesn't bother saying what candy is but he can drive i assume that i mean that is simply not

correct there's no way that walter is 11 that no i was at Target yesterday um buying a baby shower rag okay yeah I'm pretty wealthy uh but I was uh I had like a half hour to kill so I'm like all right I'm just gonna sit in the Starbucks area of Target and kill some time there were these two kids next to me who I could not I was trying to figure out how old they were had no idea but they were actively planning to shoplift okay um the whole and it was so fun to listen to them because they were just like not not setting themselves up for success I was rooting for them steal from a big box store of course but they one of them just kept like hissing at the other yeah man everything has barcodes on it okay Okay, stop asking me. What were they prioritizing?

What are the kids these days into? As far as I know, the plan was to steal a bunch of Halloween candy. Think bigger. I know. But then when they left, there was a mysterious, they were looking at TikTok. They did a TikTok dance. This sounds like a vision I had, but they were looking at TikTok. They did a TikTok dance. This sounds like a vision I had, but they were real.

And then they had like a can of shaving cream with them, which they also may have stolen. And they put a bunch of shaving cream all over the table they had been sitting at. And then they stole Halloween candy and disappeared into the Americana. Halloween candy. If they wait a couple of weeks,

they're going to get Halloween candy for free. Steal a DVD. I guess they don't know how to work dvds but steal something that you could sell for candy steal something smaller what are you doing dvd i know they were they were absolutely blowing it wow i like that story though but i was like are these kids like eight or are they 13 yeah 14 like i have no idea it's it's hard i really can't tell children yeah but i'd refuse to believe that walter is as old as 11 that doesn't seem right at all okay so uh mrs sturrock is is mean and a tyrant and so swell goes to confront her about her authoritarian rule. And when she does that, Swell discovers that the babysitter's dead. She must have died in her sleep. And the siblings realize that if they call

911, their mom will be notified and come back home. And they don't want their mom to come back home just yet. They want to to have freedom so they decide to leave mrs direct's body on the doorstep of the mortuary and then spend the next two months taking advantage of their mom being gone they're horrible like yeah they're not good they're bad kids but so the next morning swell goes to buy groceries with the money their mom had left to Mrs. Sturek to like buy food and for spending money and stuff but the envelope is empty and they realize that Mrs. Sturek must have you know just like had the money on her when they left her body at the mortuary so they don't have access to that money anymore so swell now needs to get a

job so she goes to work at a place called clown dog which is a fast food joint can you imagine how that makes me feel to see i was thinking about you the whole time jamie so was i i was thinking about your respect for the meat oh thanks fred there uh i have been to if if we have any listeners in albuquerque any greater albuquerque area they do have a place called clown dog hot dog parlor and i wonder if it was inspired by this movie because it opened after it came out oh interesting also they're the hot dogs at clown dog in albuquerque are not chili dogs as this fake one is it's very fucked their whole thing is like we make fucked up hot dogs and i got this thing there called the three ring circus that was like a hot dog with onion rings

and like spaghettios okay i'm listening and like a third circular it was so nasty and then i was like this and they're like no it's clown it's a joke and i'm like this is but i have to eat it I'm listening. And like a third circular. It was so nasty. And then I was like, and they're like, no, it's clown. It's a joke. And I'm like, this is,

but I have to eat it. Yeah. Obviously. Different kind of clown dog place. No, but you're touching on something. I think we're going to wind up talking about in this movie, presenting something disgusting and then being like,

it's a joke. I'm kidding. Right. Yes. Oh yeah. Cause that's the, that's the whole gust thing perverts uh line yeah yep yeah um and the job swell does not like the job and she quits it almost immediately but not before she meets brian another teen worker at Clown Dog, played by Josh Charles. So then Swell goes to apply for a receptionist job

at a clothing manufacturing company with a resume that she copied and pasted from a book. And there she meets Rose, the senior vice president of operations, who hires her on the spot to be her executive administrative assistant which is a phrase they repeat 47 times throughout the movie it's a mouthful i i really like i think that there is like a lot of good satire of like corporate life in this movie and it felt very on point for for someone to just like meet someone that they sort of liked and they're like yeah i'll hire you over this person who's worked here for years because i just don't like them for reasons and thus enemies are made vital vital enemies are made in this film yes exactly so what happens

is that this executive administrative assistant position was supposed to go to this woman carolyn but carolyn is mean and Rose doesn't like her or want to work with her, which is why she gives the job to Swell. So Rose shows Swell around the office. She introduces her to Gus, which is Rose's colleague slash boyfriend, although they have a mutually unexclusive relationship as they define it so then swell and her siblings go out to eat at i think according to scholarly journal wikipedia cheese chalky cheese it looks like a chalky cheese he's in the background oh i didn't even notice yes i'm sorry the locations in this movie were really like tailor-made to thrill me i was gonna say not to blow up your

spot jamie but i feel like it's all of your major food groups hot dogs from hot dog to chucky cheese pizza they are the chucky cheese um you can see for all my chucky cheese heads you can see the early 90s chuck suit the one that always looked crusty okay in the background of a few scenes love that okay so they're leaving chucky cheese and as they're leaving a few drag queens steal their car aka mrs stirak's car that swell had been driving around so swell calls brian the guy she met at clown dog for a ride and then he asks her on a date and she says yes then swell goes to her first day at her job at the clothing company but she she's in over her head she asks another assistant kathy to help her with the qed report aka she basically has Kathy do part of her job for her and it's Kimmy Robertson from

Twin Peaks oh that is okay that's who Kimmy okay I know I was like am I supposed to know this name that Jimmy's saying like you it's just her voice yeah for sure I recognize her now okay so then swell discovers that the mean receptionist woman carolyn is brian's older sister oh no she also meets bruce who was played by david dacofni who i was not expecting to be in this movie especially in a role this um small and small yeah and sleazy yeah this is right before he was he was not anything at this point right he was just like sleazeball good cheekbones man right exactly yeah so he's an asshole and he's also carolyn's boyfriend because there is a lot of inter-office dating at this company yeah well there's also no hr department that i was to find, which is why, because they would have been really busy if they had thought to hire. So meanwhile, Swell learns that she won't be paid for two weeks, but they've run out of food at home.

And then Swell learns about petty cash in her desk and takes some of it to buy groceries. Her plan is to borrow it and then pay it back when she gets her first paycheck. And then meanwhile at home, Swell is assuming more and more of kind of like a mother slash guardian role for her younger siblings. She's supportive when they need it. She disciplines them when they need it. Stuff like that.

Back at the office, Swell starts to get the hang of things uh gus takes swell to lunch he's a disgusting creep swell also goes on a couple dates with brian but she won't tell him where she works partially because carolyn is his sister and he gets upset that she won't be honest and forthcoming with him so he storms off she's upset about that she's upset that she has had to take on all these you know adult responsibilities when she feels she should be enjoying her youth and you're just like at this point you're like these kids hate their mom because this is getting so dire um they must really hate their mom i did like i feel like a lesser movie and i know we'll get into the swell and brian relationship but i feel like a lesser movie

would have her really like you know like she's upset that they sort of break up but she's also like but i have things to do and then brian just disappears from the movie for the next half hour because she she has shit to deal with yeah and so she just um like a real like a real single mom girl boss uh compartmentalizes it and forges ahead she takes her bubble baths she exhales she complains about how nobody in the house none of her none of her younger siblings care or respect the work that she's doing oh yeah but she just gets on with it anyways because that's the role and she's got so much to deal with because meanwhile her siblings steal a lot of the petty cash they buy a home entertainment system uh zach buys a diamond for his girlfriend they buy some other stuff also walter falls off the roof because he's trying to like do something

with the antenna for the new tv he has to go to the hospital very 90s injury yeah kenny is being an insolent little shit all the time and then meanwhile at work carolyn is trying to dig up dirt on swell to get her fired gus continues to be creepy. Also sales are way down at the company where like Rose was trying to make this deal to sell uniforms to a school, but they lose that account and now the company might go under. So things are really falling apart for Swell and friends. Rose eats an M&M off the floor, which is maybe one of my favorite parts of the movie. Wild. So things are falling apart, but Swell gets an idea to make the uniforms that they design and sell,

make them, you know, snazzier and more fashionable, and to put on a runway show to impress possible clients. And her boss, Rose, thinks this is a great idea. And she's like, rent a banquet hall and pay for it with a petty cash, which of course is all gone, and Swell can't reveal that. So she's like, let's just have the fashion show in my house. So then Swell has her siblings clean up the house because it's a mess, and everyone rallies, and they manage to put on a nice event and the fashion show is going well but oh no carolyn and bruce have discovered that swell is only 17 so they try to blow up her spot

at the event this is also when brian shows up to profess his love for swell via like the the truck the truck the circus truck and it's also when Swell and her siblings mom comes back a week early from Australia so everything you know falls apart for a moment and Swell admits that she's only 17 she's not ready for all of this responsibility she's in way over her head and while her mom is upset that she threw a big party and things have like gone off the rails she's like wait a minute the house looks good and everything actually kind of seems to be under control even though my youngest son has a broken leg um rose is also impressed with swell and no one is actually that mad and then swell and brian kiss and make up and then the movie ends with swell's mom being like hey whatever happened to the babysitter and then we cut to two guys visiting her grave thanking her for the money that she left them aka they found the cash that

was on her body and they seem to have gambled it all the way in vegas when that money could have gone towards feeding children oh tragic uh so that's the end of the movie let's take a quick break and then we'll come back to discuss. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhearts 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. It was December 2019 when the story blew up. In Green Bay, Wisconsin, former Packers star Kabir Bajabiamila caught up in a bizarre situation. KGB explaining what he believes led to the arrest of his friends at a children's Christmas play. A family man, former NFL player, devout Christian, now cut off from his family and connected to a strange arrest. I am going to share my journey of how I went from Christianity to now a Hebrew Israelite. I got swept up in Kabir's journey, but this was only the beginning. In a story about faith and football, the search for meaning away from the gridiron

and the consequences for everyone involved. You mix homesteading with guns and church and a little bit of the spice of conspiracy theories that we liked. Voila! You got straight away. I felt like I was living in North Korea, but worse, if that's possible. Listen to Spiraled on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, this is Jimmy O'Brien from John Boy Media. I want to quickly tell you about my podcast. It's called Jimmy's Three Things. Episodes come out every Tuesday and for about 30 minutes,

I dive into three topics in Major League Baseball that I am interested in. Breaking stories, trends, stats, weird stuff. Sometimes I make up my own stats. Sometimes I do a lot of research and it ends up, I was wrong the whole time. So that's something you can get in on. Use Jimmy's Three Things podcast to stay up to date on Major League Baseball and to make you just a smidge smarter than your friend who's a baseball fan. You listen

to me and then you go tell him, hey, I know this and you don't. So I make you smarter than your friends. That's what Jimmy's Three Things is all about. Listen to Jimmy's Three Things on iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find it on the Talkin' Baseball YouTube channel and new episodes drop every Tuesday.

And we are back. Woo, okay. Where do we want to start? I don't know. There's actually kind of a lot of different aspects of this movie worth discussing. Does anything jump out to you right away, Amy? You know, I would say if there's one like top line thing that jumps out at me in this movie, and it's a phrase I didn't know when I saw this for the first time, that this is

a movie about a young woman discovering invisible labor that all women do. That her mother has been carrying this burden of the house. Nobody's been seeing the mother's labor. Nobody cares about the mother's labor. This house is trashed. Nobody's helping her with the dishes. The mother's like, fine, I'm going to do some visible pleasure for myself. Screw you guys.

And then Sue Ellen realizes, oh realizes oh shit this world is not fair to the expectations it puts on women and nobody will help me and realizing how much adulthood sucks like one of one of the things one of the jokes i love about the petty cash is like she just assumes she'll get her first paycheck and then pay it all back in full and then even without her family stealing from her just like they did from their mom she finds out about taxes and she's like what's this taxes i mean i find all of that very relatable as a person who remembers getting my first office job and being like what do you mean i have medical benefits i don't even know what that is right like oh yeah i i i agree and i i like that to a lesser extent. I like that this movie is very much Swell's movie, but has no issue with calling his sister the meanest thing he can think of.

And he doesn't apologize for anything. But he also learned. But he's I think it's kind of cool that the movie puts him in the role of having to keep the house together and like realizing that you can't just fuck off or like someone will get hurt like Walter gets hurt or like you will starve and I just I don't know this movie is so campy and funny that it's like via watching Julia Child's broadcasts a young stoner learns that he should finish high school you're just like yeah cool great yeah good for him he learns about brie and rumaki and creole mushrooms like he's like leveled up when he starts catering i like it and you're right i mean and it's kind of arbitrary that it divides out this way or it's like woman in the workforce man keeping the hearth because

they flip a pizza box right like they flip like a frozen pizza box to decide who's gonna work and it just works out this way where like they wind up in kind of the quote-unquote like opposite stereotypical roles yeah of like she being the supporter him having to keep you know the kids fed which he does a terrible job at for most of the entire movie because he's hanging out with his buddies hellhound skull lizard and mole those are their names i didn't even catch that those are their names oh yeah when they're like valets at the end they have hellhound and skull and lizard like on their name tags honestly iconic um yeah i found that and then there's one scene in particular that like really helps to like fully

demonstrate this toward the end where Swell and Kenny have an argument where Kenny is like oh you're always working you didn't even call to say you'd be home late and you know I was working all day on this casserole and you didn't even mention how nice the house looks and when was the last time we even went out to dinner you don't appreciate me and she's like well i go out there and bust my ass to earn money for us and put food on the table and it's like it's an argument we've seen before but it would be traditionally between a mother and a father so like not teen brother and sister but the movie is like very clearly and like for comedic effect mapping those dynamics onto these like teen siblings but it is like kind of you know quote-unquote gender swapped in terms of traditional gender roles and

expectations where swell is like the quote-unquote man or father because she's the breadwinner and kenny is the like you know quote-unquote woman or mother because he's doing domestic and like caretaking work right which I wasn't really expecting for the movie to acknowledge so I found that really interesting and this movie does a lot of cool stuff I don't know like and and also that I mean I don't know I guess that they don't maybe this isn't a criticism but they they don't like explicitly say that at any point that but like that this is like they're falling apart at doing these respective jobs. And their mom was expected to do both of those jobs at once.

Amy, I like your take on the mom being like, fuck you guys. Like, I'm out of here because it's like they can't, you know, it's like they're to be fair, they are kids. But like they can't last, you know, six weeks doing what she does. And they're to be fair they are kids but like they can't last you know six weeks doing what she does and they're only doing half of it and I like that it's sort of this um I don't know I I don't mind that the movie isn't super critical or it doesn't place a ton of value judgment on the mom and that's why this like debate exists is it just you sort of bring your own baggage and opinions on parenting to the table yeah there's even that like tiny throwaway line because you're right she the mom is doing everybody's part and like somebody whines to her I forget which kid

but they're like I wish dad was around and she just goes no you don't right that's all we know about how their family was but that that house is a trash heap of disaster of moldy bread and newspapers everywhere but if it was worse when their husband the dad was there how bad must it have been you know there's also that moment with uh i think the last time the dad comes up is right after they've decided to get rid of the babysitter's body and uh i think like swell says something to kenny where she's one of them asks like she'll be called dad and the other kid is just like no he would not give a shit dad doesn't care yeah that's right dad doesn't care uh and you know i appreciate that as a screenwriting choice because it would be so easy to just make the dad dead or something and

the mom's like a sad widow and like maybe she gets this like get her groove back in aussie land stuff but like that the movie makes a point of casually being like the dad's alive and he doesn't care that's brutal i respect how brutal that is right and that there's just like there are i don't know there caitlin i'm determined to make you like this movie there we'll. We'll see. I'm right on top of that too. We're going to do it. Because there are like a lot of like interesting,

like little subversions of like what you expect of like teenage characters. Also, I really liked the, I guess it's like this is just going to be a long conversation about Swell because that is like she's just all over the place in this movie. But I like that at the beginning of the movie, she's like, I don't really know if I want to go to college. Like that is something that you don't usually hear about, especially in a way that like her mom is concerned. But like, you know, she can't really control what her kid decides.

I really like that conversation between Brian and Swell where they're like well I I like this but like do I want to you know get in debt forever about it I don't know like I would rather and I was like yeah this is like all teenagers should have this discussion with each other because there's like I don't the only way I didn't like where that landed even though it's probably like I guess more realistic but at the end I'm like swell take that damn job what are you thinking you want to get into fashion school debt you were making $37,000 a year in 1991 yeah and so what if you lied to get the job you were doing a pretty good job at it also i think i like the idea well maybe i don't i like the idea that from a glance this movie is about you know a young woman who like learns responsibility and she kind of takes control of things and she becomes you know sort

of like a leader in in a sense and and like you know things that we can be like woohoo it's a girl doing stuff but then she yeah like you said jamie like becomes a girl boss and i don't know but point is um oh what was my point no i i don't remember it going back though to that scene so like yeah and then like her and brian are talking about and they're like oh I thought my parent like our parents had like a college fund for us and it turns out they don't but you can assume it's because like they're lower middle class and they like can't afford to save up for college even in the early 90s yeah I mean I'll be honest that straight up happened to me like my parents told me my whole life they were saving from my college and then March my senior year after I'd only applied to expensive private schools they were like oh we had to spend that we're so sorry I was like what similar deal here yeah similar deal I want a

better state school which I love I'd like do it again all over again then wind up with any fraction of college debt but oh my god oh okay oh wait but we can't talk I'm so sorry we can't talk about this date scene though that we keep talking about without saying the most important word in it, which is grunion. I had to look up what a grunion was. Can someone tell me what a grunion is? You guys, the grunion stuff happens here. Y'all can go grunion this year.

It's like, yeah, grunion. Like, if you go to, like, Venice Beach, Santa Monica Beach. I forget what time of year it is. I've done it once. Yeah, these little fish wiggle out, and they, like, come come and they hop around on the sand in the middle of the night and like if you go down there the one time i went i remember it was like a party people are drinking beer waiting for the grunion to show up whoa yeah it's a real deal and the grunion are you know they don't bone like us but right they're they're not horny um that's so cool okay cool that's good to

know yeah we live in grunion country this is the grunion zone you might even call it grunion canyon oh god thank you thank you so much that was good uh oh wait i remember my um the point i was gonna make the reason generally i like swell's character and i like the journey she goes through I don't have a problem with that except that she takes credit for Kathy's work and never like follows back up with Kathy to be like oh my god like I feel like she's not like expressing enough gratitude for her and she's taking advantage of Kathy never giving the credit she's due and my big thing for this episode is justice for Kathy I agree with you on that.

I think there's a deleted scene where like at the end of the movie, Sue Ellen tells Rose and Rose is like, please keep working for me. She's like, you need to hire Kathy. But I think they deleted that and they probably should have kept that in. They should have kept that for sure.

That would have endeared me to both of them more because I sort of, knowing that there's a deleted scene, that sort of clarifies it a little because it's also like they go through the trouble of like having Kathy be there so it seems like something is there's going to be some sort of resolution with her and there just isn't right oh I wish that that was canon because that does seem like one of the few like I mean I guess you could you could argue that like Carolyn does I think Carolyn

should just go work for another company honestly she's she's very she's very diabolical and I think a lot of companies need that so I think she would do great elsewhere and she's very angry and condescending the way that she's like person L the way she's so mean. I, I do like that. That was another thing that we talk about, you know, sometimes where it's like, oh, these two women who just irrationally dislike each other. But I, I don't know, I felt like Carolyn's character, you don't know exactly why she's so angry. But it feels like more in the way of like, you don't know exactly why their dad sucks. But it like i had enough information and there's so many relationships between different sets of women in this movie they're

all white women which we'll get to but uh there are so many different types of women in this uh script that like having one who was like grouchy and shitty like didn't bug me too much because in that same office you have rose and you have Kathy and they're all like really really different uh flavors of of person but yeah Kathy deserved better and she was oh what a sweetheart I know where she was like oh yeah I put in for that job but it must not have been good enough and you're like oh I hope that I hope that they gave her the promotion, and they gave her a raise, because it's not like, the only thing that, I mean, Suellen was good at delegating, but that's like a classic, I feel like that's part of the,

it felt like that was part of the corporate satire they were trying to get at that kind of goes away by the end, because by the end, I think you were supposed to believe that Suell was good at her job, when she really wasn't. She just out how to like fake it better yeah right which can be a useful skill but yeah because that is one of the ways that caroline tries to rat her out she's like kathy's been doing all the qed reports and it's supposed to be like done done done yeah but instead rose is like delegation amazing girl boss behavior which i i think is really funny yeah and i kind of want to say not in carolyn's defense but if you look at this movie

from her point of view she's not wrong she was in line for a job this unqualified girl who strikes her as a phony she can't prove it but she has a sense that this girl's not right she's right about that too you know she's like she's justly aggrieved but she's like playing the game in the wrong way she's playing the game of like this is what's right and fair and this office is like but what about what's charming and funny right and she doesn't get that yeah yeah and she's also so mean that no one wants to interact with her except for david de cuffney which is not the worst problem in the world uh to be fair that's i would i would accept that problem oh no i have to go home and have sex with david de cuffney damn it my life is so hard uh yeah the carolyn character i mean and

and i like that like you get certain humanizing aspects of her where it's like she has a good relationship with her brother and like you see her give him again like maybe if you're this deep in the movie you're like no i want swell and brian to end up together which is like i don't really care but like carolyn gives him good advice she's like yeah it seems like something's off with this girl you should like just move on with your life. And I was like, you know what, Carolyn? Pretty good advice. That's I have more information than you.

And you're right about that. And of course, he's a teenager, so he doesn't listen. But I was like, you know, Carolyn, you're you're right. I mean, he's she's she's pretty on point about everything. I think it's just the the delivery of the information. Yeah. She's still at the phase of life where she thinks that she lives in a meritocracy.

I get that very much. I remember the first time I got pulled over for a ticket when I was in college, and a cop said that a train crossing signal was crossing, and it wasn't, but they said it ran a cross signal that was flashing. Absolutely it wasn't. A bar would have gone down.

I couldn't have even done it. Right. But they pulled me over for it anyway. And I remember like going to the courtroom and being like, you know, 18 to like tell them what the truth was and realizing nobody cared. No one cared. And I had to pay the ticket anyway. And being like so upset, like going to this like Oklahoma courthouse and crying to my

dad on the phone. Like, what do you mean you can't just tell the truth as an adult and people listen and so i feel you caroline like i get that moment right but also to kind of like what you're saying about the brian relationship i like that this movie doesn't make us have to believe that this is like their love of a lifetime it's like summer romance who gives a shit you know what i mean not like it's not they're not pulling some sort of john hughes punch we're supposed to believe that this is like forever yeah yeah and i do like i i don't mind that relationship for like most of the movie there's a few moments where you're like what what? Seems like a bit much. But I like that it doesn't feel shoehorned in for me like a lot of like romance subplots can.

Because it's like Brian sort of is like this plot stand in for like Sue Ellen being able to still be a kid. And like be able to be goofy and have fun. And like almost sort of be herself which we don't which she doesn't have anywhere else because her friends are gone and her and she's in gridlock traffic for six hours a day yeah so i i like that they found you know like a way to show like but she's still a kid and like should be allowed to be a kid like when they literally go to a toy store so they can play on the kid toys it's cute directing wise what i appreciate that in this film is directed by a dude you know it's directed by um steven herrick who actually did a lot of he had like he's one of

those people i think of as like the 80s auteur that you didn't pay any attention to like he interroded like you know critters and bill and ted and mighty ducks but you're like you're never like oh yeah steven herrick you don't really think about it exactly but like i respect that he's a guy shooting this scene where christina applegate like the hot chick from married with children is bouncing on a bouncy ball in a low-cut shirt with spikes all over it and there's not one shot of her boobs do you know There's not the littlest bit of like, let's watch her bounce. Let's really watch her bounce. Yeah. Men doing the bare minimum.

You love to see it. I respect that bare minimum, at least when it's there. Thank you. I hear you. I'm also seeing Stephen Herrick directed the Glenn Close live action 101 Dalmatians. That alone. That's very special good for him okay yeah no i i agree i like that i don't know like swell is i think a really well realized character where like she's definitely not perfect she fucks up all the time she is embezzling and she's embezzling she's like taking

credit for work she didn't do she's not good at her job but but there's but i don't know but she's also a teenager like teenagers like yeah she's a kid make mature decisions oftentimes and i like that the movie like gives her space to kind of like be a fuck up and like not know what she's doing because they're I'm trying to I mean I feel like there's a lot of especially when they're as like conventionally beautiful as Christina Applegate like you often get these characters who are young women that they're like well why bother writing this character like we have a hot actress doing it so who cares but like there's a ton of layers to who swell is and she does like grow a lot but not like so much that

it's unrealistic i feel like the only unrealistic thing is she like completely gets away with it to the point where she gets to like say that as like one of the last lines in the movie where he's like how do you think you're gonna get away with it and she's like well i basically did when i told my boyfriend we were gonna come on and talk about this movie which i made him watch during pandemic he'd never seen it he brought up this weekend this interview he saw with christina applegate i don't know if it was like recent when she's talking about being a younger actress or like at the time but they were asking her how how she played Kelly Bundy and married with children at the same time, like how how she played an idiot bimbo. And she said, I don't think of her as stupid. I think of her as a person with a short attention span and that she found a way into that character that wasn't I'm going to mock this character.

I'm going to let you laugh at this character. This character is your typical blonde bimbo. She is just a person who's easily distracted and like found this way around it that allowed her to like love and respect the person she's being. Nice. And I think that that's, I mean, she's like 14, 15, I think when she started that show. So I think that's a glimpse into her as an actress, even as a teenage actress. She's like a legit teenager when she makes this movie. Yeah.

She's cool. I really when she makes this movie. Yeah. She's cool. I really like her. Me too. The one thing, though, I'm mad at, I don't blame her for this. I blame, like, maybe her agent, maybe the production designer, maybe the director. I have this real pet peeve about this kind of thing happening. Where, do you know, like, we see her driver's license at one point. And if you pause her driver's license, it gives a height and a weight that is definitely not true

do you know what i mean you're like no i didn't look at that a lower weight than she yeah would probably be an absolutely lower weight than a person alive could be right like at her height and weight you're like no i just remember that thing being like rampant when i was a little kid like male characters giving girls weights because they don't understand how much girls really weigh right and you're like no that's not it like there's a Christopher Pike book that I read around the same time where there there's like the hot girl and like her chubby friend who's like called chubby the whole way through the movie or a whole way through the book and then like halfway through the book they reveal her weight and it's like 130 pounds and you're like what it's a stuff like that has always stuck with me

but that that happens on her license and i want to say it's probably like the agent being like let's make i don't nobody knows what weights are let's just make it tiny she's 100 pounds okay i'll say they say she's five six and 108 108. And I'm like, what? That probably not. She would be dead. Yeah. I think we last talked about that. Because I have a similar thing where like so many like little things like that when I was a kid stuck with me truly forever. It sounds like a joke, but it's real. But a lot of my teenage eating disorder struggles could be traced to like amongst other things but a very specific line of dialogue in an episode of family guy it's not great but i think the last

time we discussed this was in bridget jones because the weights they give in bridget jones as attributing to like this is a deviant weight is just so absurd it's a perfectly healthy weight that she is but they present it like it's inexcusable like and unhealthy and unattractive and just like all this you know normative bullshit that that uh did a number on a lot of people oh i didn't notice the yeah god damn it i know but that stuff does get stuck in you. I remember reading a book once that described a character. It was like the dude and the girl he had a crush on. And it described her stomach as being, quote, not just flat, but concave. And like being 11 and reading that and being like, oh, that's a beauty ideal?

What? Oh, that's what I have to strive to achieve? Yeah. Yeah. So. Well, at movies you did it. In a movie that I think subverts a lot of hyper feminine stereotypes uh they still got that in there damn it i guess the worst things in this

movie are just in like the tiny visual things like i think it's almost at the very end of the movie where you go back to kenny's bedroom which has been like the site of horror like i feel like the movie implies that kenny's... Killed the babysitter? Killed the babysitter! Because he's got like... It's so terrifying. He's got boobies and skulls and weed and pizza crust on the record player. Kills the babysitter.

She never even met Kenny. She never met Kenny. But his room was so crazy. But you go back to the room later and I don't know why. It's like an angle I think you don't see the rest of the movie. But you're like, oh, man, Kenny has a Confederate flag on his wall. I noticed that, too. And I was like, what?

I didn't notice that, Kenny. It's right at the end. And I'm like, oh, man, he's already becoming a better dude. And you're like, what? Why was that there in the first place? They live in Southern California. Like, yeah. I mean, fucking racist pieces of shit are everywhere

yeah i mean look at the news in los angeles this morning um yeah oh yeah this will make no sense to people listening to the episode we'll figure it out let's take a quick break and come back for more discussion. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhearts 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. It was December 2019 when the story blew up. In Green Bay, Wisconsin, former Packers star Kabir Bajabiamila caught up in a bizarre situation. KGB explaining what he believes led to the arrest of his friends

at a children's Christmas play. A family man, former NFL player, devout Christian, now cut off from his family and connected to a strange arrest. I am going to share my journey of how I went from Christianity to now a Hebrew Israelite. I got swept up in Kabir's journey, but this was only

the beginning. In a story about faith and football, the search for meaning away from the gridiron, and the consequences for everyone involved. You mix homesteading with guns and church, and then a little bit of the spice of conspiracy theories that we liked. Voila! You got straight away. I felt like I was living in North Korea, but worse, if that's possible. Listen to Spiraled on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone.

This is Jimmy O'Brien from John Boy Media. I want to quickly tell you about my podcast. It's called Jimmy's Three Things. Episodes come out every Tuesday, and for about 30 minutes, I dive into three topics in Major League Baseball that I am interested in. Breaking stories, trends, stats, weird stuff.

Sometimes I make up my own stats. Sometimes I do a lot of research, and it ends up I was wrong the whole time. So that's something you can get in on. Use Jimmy's Three Things podcast to stay up to date on Major League Baseball and to make you just a smidge smarter than your friend who's a baseball fan. You listen to me and then you go tell him, hey, I know this and you don't. So I make you smarter than your friends. That's what Jimmy's Three Things is all about. Listen jimmy's three things on iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast you could also find it on the

talking baseball youtube channel and new episodes drop every tuesday and we're back uh could we i want to uh get into rose lindsay world but before do so, I just wanted to touch on the babysitter. Yes. Really quick. Now, she's not long for this world. And she is absolutely evil. Like for the, for the one minute we get to know her, I feel like, I feel like the most memorable thing that she does outside of just like, who, what is the name of the, I want to shout out the actor who

played her because it was a great switch. I love that they used the Twilight Zone music cue to indicate that she was about to become a cartoon villain. Ida Rice-Marin, like she was great as miss direct um i feel like the most memorable thing she does for art purposes is makes melissa wear a little pink dress and wants her to be so rigidly feminine and finds it disgusting that melissa uh plays baseball which no one else in the family does everyone else in the family is at least, even though they're like siblings and they can't stand each other,

they at least seem like fundamentally respectful of who everyone is. Like they're not making fun of each other. But anyways, as far as Mr. Rock goes, I feel like there are, I'm trying to like the evil old lady thing is, it's a trip. Yeah.

They, they shoot her in this way. There were a couple of points in this movie where I was like, did this director make pizza commercials? Did it be like, could they shoot her in that kind of like monstrous fisheye lens that I always associate with like eighties and nineties pizza commercials where it's like,

whoa, in your face. I don't mean the, the intro to like those kind of Looney Tunes grandma thing that you see going on. She's like the noid. She's basically the commercial pizza noid but a grandma. It is just

making her hideous. The baggy stockings. Intro to baggy stocking first. They really do not present her favorably and the fact that she is the oldest character and you know that she's an old woman and that they call her an old hag several times and they really you know just some ageist choices were made yeah I don't know we've we've talked about it on the show plenty of times of just how older women are more

often made a joke of versus given any sort of characterization and uh i mean that's like a lot of women characters across the board of all ages but i feel like older women specifically it's it's more common to either like turn it into uh body horror or just a very simplistic judgment value. And in Miss Stork's case, it's both. So I'm trying to think of the last time, the last movie we, I don't know. Anyways, she's not long for the movie and the movie doesn't dwell on it really. Once she's gone, she's really and truly gone. And then all of a sudden it's like teenage working girl

right but i just wanted to mention that yeah yeah there was an earlier draft too of the script i think she was nicer like i think that was one of the notes when it was starting to get put into actual production was like i think in the original script swell and only had two siblings okay and the babysitter wasn't that terrible and i think when they finally made it they're like she needs more siblings and we have to make this babysitter meaner because otherwise it's almost too sad it's way too cruel of yeah they probably have to justify them like dumping her at the mortuary so they're like oh well if right the babysitters really mean that kind of quote-unquote justifies these you know, just dumping her body.

At least they leave a note saying she's a nice old lady, which is a lie. But that is a very funny like last joke that her tombstone says, nice old lady. And it's funny because like one of the things that she does that's so awful is she comes up with like the chore chart, you know? And actually like Sue Ellen just winds up having to come up with a chore chart. Right. So not that I think this movie is like apologizing for the way it treats Miss Durek. But I think it is like, you know, honestly, these kids are horrible and they do need chore charts. And she wasn't wrong.

Yeah. She made some points in her brief tenure. Yeah. Though I do appreciate. So we see something that she does to each of the kids to demonstrate just how evil she is. She's like, Walter, read an entire cyclopedia and give me a report tomorrow morning. My aunt used to do that. She interrupts a little date between Zach and his girlfriend, who he will later buy a diamond for. She calls his girlfriend a trollop. Yes.

Pretty harsh. And then physically abuses Zach by yanking him by the ear. Again, she looks at Kenny's room and then dies because of it. But to be fair, if I walked into someone's room and I saw a Confederate flag, I would maybe at least least pass out i know but you know that wasn't what she thought it was boobies because we don't we don't see that in that scene she right she was like oh my god boobs drop over dead kenny was so horny that she died but a lot of these things are framed as like oh my god look she's like enforcing ridiculous things on these kids and one of those is she tries to enforce this this idea of like femininity onto melissa and because melissa had been established as again like a quote-unquote tomboy who likes to you know play sports and

dresses and kind of you know a gender neutral or masculine way and she's like no no no little girls should dress and act like little girls and so she puts her in this pink frilly dress this big bow in her hair and it's almost exactly like the the mary poppins outfit i think they like the girl from mary poppins which i think it's like that but pink even worse i think at least mary poppins girls were like blue but i think it's like i'm i'm your old nanny. And this is what's appropriate in the year of our Lord, 1991. Right. So Mrs. Sturrock inflicting these rigid gender norms on a character who doesn't conform to

prescribed norms of gender presentation, at least in terms of clothing, and the movie framing the babysitter's behavior and rigid thinking as a bad thing for her to have done. I was like, like oh another progressive thing i wasn't expecting from this movie and honestly like you know we were talking about the gender inversion between like kenny and sue ellen i think there's one with the siblings too because of the three younger siblings you know walter's just a tv kid right but you have like the girl who's obsessed with sports and the boy who's obsessed with romance. And I think that's also a flip-flop, too.

It'd be so much easier for it to be, like, the boy's the jock and she's the, like, moony one. But they flip that. Yeah. And he's like, Cynthia, you're my moon goddess. And he's sweet about it. He's a big romantic. True.

Right, like, you pointed out the Twilight Zone music. You get that kind of, like, back-to-back in a row of, like, Twilight Zone music, then he's with his girlfriend and they're pointed out the Twilight Zone music. You get that kind of like back to back in a row of like Twilight Zone music. Then he's with his girlfriend and they're playing Casablanca music. And then they like she goes into the room and suddenly it's like psycho music. Right. These are probably my first exposures to all of these songs when I was a kid. And so.

So props to that, too. Preparing me for Casablanca. Yeah. That's the sound of romance because that's when Cynthia was his moon goddess. Right. I didn't even put that together, like, Zach's obsession with romance. And that's, I like. And then as for Walter's obsession with vintage game shows, can't really account for it. But happy for him anyways.

Yeah. Good for him. And I like that this is, a little, little thing. But with Melissa's character, who apparently that actress is a known kind of iconic modern scream queen. Yeah. Danielle Harris. She had been in. I didn't know. Oh, yeah.

As young as she looks here, she had already done two really gnarly Halloween movies before this came out. Gnarly ones where she's like, i believe the lore is that she's jamie lee curtis's like orphaned daughter and so michael myers is going after her i've seen them they're very homogenous and they're terrible uh i can't tell the four from five at all wait no four actually wait there to four's credit four has a lot of like girls dressed like kelly bundy and it's kind of fun five is just awful but but yeah she is a total scream queen oh oh i she's so cute in this movie but what i like about melissa's character it's just like it's such a simple thing but like whatever she she's like gender neutral or sort of masculine style and but she's still

like a little asshole she's a little stinker and uh it's not because she defies gender norms she's just whatever 11 or something and i like that her her mini arc in this because the younger kids don't have as much of an arc which is fine sure but her mini arc is that she just really wants someone to come to one of her baseball games and right and it's such like a sweet like latchkey kid problem of like your parents are just like their mom is too busy to go is she a little harsh at the beginning of the movie where she's like little league will be there next summer i'm fucking off to australia you know yeah whatever but um i like that her little mini arc is complete because kenny goes to her game he cheers her on and he's proud of her.

It's nice. It's cute. That is sweet. I was reading an article actually with her, with Daniel Harris, where she was saying as they were filming this movie, she had the biggest crush on her brother, Christopher Petit, who plays like Zach, the heartthrob guy. But he had the biggest crush on Christina Applegate. And so like it never came to fruition.

But that when they were a little older, they actually did get to go on a couple of dates right before he did die very young of a drug overdose, which is sad. He's one of that like kind of generation of 90s boy kids who really got run ragged and didn't make it through the decade like um the one that always sticks out to me is jonathan brandis but it's like this this was my generation of sexual awakening so like jonathan brandis and this kid were like my heart and leo they're like

my heartthrobs yeah but most of them didn't make it and like it's i find it really interesting because we talk so much about like what happens to young actresses and how much they really, really do get put through the ringer. But the young nineties boys all got really effed and all wound up with like, you know, addiction problems or most of them. And it's like really rough.

And they all kind of vanished from the cultural memory, which. Yeah. I always think about river Phoenix. He was a little yeah before that but uh same era same era they're probably going out for a lot of the same roles like i think they i've heard leo i think refer to it once that like the kids he always saw in his auditions a lot of them died because they were all competing with Leo for most of their parts and stuff.

That's so, uh, I, yeah, I, I, I don't know as the more time that goes on, I'm just like,

child stardom should be illegal. I just, uh, don't believe that there's an ethical version of it, but, uh, but we would be remiss not to, um,

say a shout out to Titanic. If we're going to bring up Leo. Anyway. That's one of my favorite movies, too. We need to wedge in a Titanic reference at least once an episode. I made sure that Titanic stayed on our list, by the way, for Unspooled. I think that movie is amazing. And I will not broke anybody who tries to say that that movie is badly written.

I'm like, are you kidding me? I cry every single time I watch that movie. What a perfect movie. Ugh, they're... I was realizing... Okay, last side comment, and then I promise we'll get to Rose Lindsay. I was realizing...

Oh, do you mean Rose Duet Decatur? Rose! Rose! I was thinking the other day about how I always have, like, wanted a nickname to stick for me. It has not happened. But when it has happened, it's been Jim or Jimmy. And I love that. And I realized that I feel like people take me more seriously when they're calling me Jim. And I was like, why do I feel that way outside of like,

people just tend to take masculine people more seriously. And I think it's because of all the Titanic behind the scenes featurettes I watched when I was a kid where everyone's talking about Jim Cameron so reverently and they're like well what Jim says goes and I was I think it just stuck with me and so when I'm in Jim mode people listen to me I always find that so fascinating when there's a director that you know by one name but everybody who knows him in person calls him something else. It feels like a power move. Like, James Cameron, Jim. Jim.

Well, to the people he was screaming at 26 hours a day, he was just Jim. Okay, Rose Lindsay. Yes. We got to get to the gal herself. Now, I know I've thrown around the word girl boss quite a bit early in the episode. I do feel like that term is arriving at its, I don't know, I'm becoming disillusioned

with the term. Well, I do think that there is still the sexism that is implied within that term has sort of gotten muddled over the last couple of years where when I first started using that term it was like supposed to be a shorthand for like woman who is complicit in crimes of capitalism in order to like survive at a higher level but I feel like it is since kind of just like turned into a castaway phrase that is just used to describe like a woman in a position of authority who I personally don't like which I think is something that happens now it's been Karen'd I think a little bit yeah where it's like you know I'm I'm not gonna write an essay about it but I feel like the way that it was when we started using it versus how people kind of weaponize it now is not great

however i do think that to some extent rose lindsey fits the original intention of the term but i also like her so it's hard she's working in the fashion industry so like you know like you're like okay inherently exploitative um she's making uniform you know it's her job to make sure that they're selling uniforms to a chemical company although apparently they also need to sell stuff to a school which didn't make sense to me if they're a chemical company subsidiary but i don't know the comp the manufacturing company was a subsidiary of the chemical company andary but i don't know the comp the manufacturing company was a subsidiary of the chemical company and so and then they right the manufacturers just sell uniforms to anything that needs a uniform like a school or a workplace right like a cisco i guess

i don't even know what cisco does i just feel like Cisco does everything. Right. It's very, I was like, it's a very businessy business in that I don't understand what is going on or what everyone's job is. But Rose as a person, I think is like a really cool character that like satirizes a lot of like 90s corporate culture. And then also like I was surprised at how empathetic and gentle the the writers are with her like i feel like a lesser movie she would have like gone with gus's word above above swells like a lesser movie would have like formed this weird rivalry between them whether swell liked it or not but rose is like very cool about the whole thing which kind of makes sense for like she's you know i guess she can't tell when someone's a child versus they're not but apparently

neither can we and um true and i like that i don't know i like i like that she is very in swell's corner and like is you know tells gus to fuck off and advocates for swell over her relationship with gus i think it's nice yeah she is sweet and supportive of her employee and believes her when she says like yeah your boyfriend is hitting on me and being a creep and then he's like who you're gonna believe me or a kid and she's like i'm gonna believe the kid and then she forgives swell like i love that she forgives swell she was like yeah you'll grow out of it like it's just so cute i don't know yeah and she's still game to mentor her feel like we can get dinner even if you're not gonna work for

me like i see you i'll write you a college recommendation letter and i think they do film her in ways where you can see that she is actually respected at her job one of the one of the first real shots we get of her at work is like she's seated at her desk in a red outfit i think red or orange she's always like matching her hair to her clothes which i think is so fun but she's seated and at her desk is surrounded by people trying to get her attention trying to be like we need you we need you we need you like they film her in power positions there which i respect and actually i kind of like that they work her in power positions there which i respect and actually i kind of like that they work for like a giant subsidy because i don't think rose is like that

fooled that they're working in high fashion like this isn't devil wears prada where there's glamour here like rose is sort of like there's not glamour what are you talking about like the idea that fashion isn't all glamour i think is it keeps this film to me from being like roger ebert said this was like fantasy wish fulfillment and i'm like what are you talking about she gets a job it's actually not that glamorous and she finds out about taxes none of this is like i was like does he think that like what does roger ebert think women want young women want yeah but also i think there's like you get these glimpses of rose as a person who you know has had to make some compromises in her life like one of the ones i find really sad is when gus the sleazebag who's always hitting on you know

sue ellen and then being like just kidding oh fuck me just kidding exactly but when he like invites her away for the weekend she's like rose's real statement of it is she says like shades of real intimacy like she's been i think a little starved for what actual grown up connection is because she's just in this working thing. And I don't know if it's a comment on like working women can't find love, but like she's settling for little things, you know. But she's excited about it at the same time. She's happy about shades of real intimacy. True. It's such a complicated because it's like I can't like get myself in 1991 brain to be like, I don't really like I feel like it's such a complicated because it's like i i can't like get myself in 1991 brain

to be like i don't really i like i feel like it's so open to interpretation how to take because it it's definitely a real thing that like women in straight relationships are constantly asked to kind of settle for crumbs in situations like that and i like that like yeah like like you're saying i mean she you get like a lot of different like a lot of like what's frustrating about the relationship and what's unfair to her and also like they don't shy away from the fact that like she wants to fuck and like there's she wants a relationship with gus yes but she's also extremely horny she is not like the grunions no but yeah he gave her a 48 hour orgasm which i find very hard to believe meeting gus and Yes, but she's also extremely horny. She is not like the Grunians. No. But yeah, he gave her a 48-hour orgasm,

which I find very hard to believe, meeting Gus and seeing how clueless he is to what women actually think. I don't know how a guy can be that out of reading body language and give Rose a 48-hour orgasm. Unclear. But she seems that happy. Also unclear, that line where she says,

every girl over 25 should have a cucumber in the house. Is that about eye bags or is that about sex? I think she's saying you're going to want to fuck that cucumber. Rose does say some very inappropriate things to her employee. I was thinking that, but then also, I mean, and this all, whatever. Rose does not know that Swell is a kid and Swell does initiate those conversations in most cases should Rose reply by being like I just came for an entire weekend definitely not no but Swell Swell is like repeatedly and if we know

why it's because she's trying to gauge like what Rose and Gus's relationship is but Swell is bringing that up and like kind of pushing the conversation along so it is inappropriate but I don't think it was like inappropriate in a in a void like it seems like Swell was open to having the conversation and it's also daffy have you ever had a 48 hour orgasm no I've never been to santa barbara right i love there's a few uh the few like there's a few like great lines in this or the same like it's in the middle of a disgusting scene but when when the waiter asks swell what she wants to drink and he's like sweet or dry and she goes um a little bit of both yeah because i love that she's like studying vogue magazine in order to figure out what an adult woman is because there's like studying Vogue magazine in order to figure out what an

adult woman is because there's like a dress-up element to what she thinks adulthood is that montage where she's trying to get dressed for the first time for work yeah and all the bows are too big and the lady buns and this power suit montage of like what women were supposed to wear the office looks so goofy on her and she's trying to figure out her look and then yeah like reading I mean I did that I was like a suburban kid in Texas reading Vogue magazine to figure out her look and then yeah like reading i mean i did that i was like a suburban kid in texas reading vogue magazine to figure out like what adults did you know and i like also have you guys ever had vermouth as a grown-up i only started drinking it recently and it's really nice i feel like we got brainwashed by like james bond movies that you're not supposed to get near vermouth vermouth is wonderful okay what does it taste like because i was i just think of

it as like in the same way i put it in a category of like that's not for me vermouth brandy etc i would call it complicated wine like i don't i don't know if i don't know if you live near los feliz or like no figaro bistro by like the los feliz three they have vermouth on their happy hour menu white black and red or white white black i mean right white pink and red and it's just if you want to try it out in a happy hour price you feel really sophisticated drinking vermouth on the rocks jamie let's go vermouth on the rocks i want to say that out loud there's uh that sounds so nice there's some orders that i just that you're just like oh the first time I said I'll

have the salmon I'll never forget it it was at the American Girl doll cafe but they had salmon and I ordered it all right I forgot that that was one of your other food groups they don't go hot dogs chucky cheese and American Girl doll cafe at the Grove, unfortunately, but, um, you know, that just gave me a sense of it. I think when I became an adult and started living on my own, I was ordering salmon and feeling so impossibly sophisticated because we had fish sticks when I was a kid, I didn't eat salmon. Right. And I thought salmon was so glamorous and then I was embarrassed. I thought it was glamorous and I didn't eat it for a long time. And now I'm back full salmon return to the fold. Cause I love, I love a salmon. It's wonderful salmon return to the fold because i love i love a salmon it's wonderful return to the fold

it rocks and uh you know if you can get a reservation at american girl doll cafe which is genuinely challenging um it's pretty good there hell yeah okay i wanted to we've touched on this already but as far as the Gus character. Let's talk about Gus. I think it bears mentioning that if that sentence made sense, my brain is not fully cooperating with me today. But I appreciate because I feel like this is a rare movie of this era that presents a character who is a predator and engaging in very predatory behavior that the movie also recognizes as predatory behavior because so many movies from this era show a character usually a man being very creepy and predatory but the movie's like he just likes her he just likes her it's great this is romantic right but this guy is being extremely predatory and you know it shows

swell constantly being like you have the wrong idea i am not interested in you like stay away from me you're making me uncomfortable and then every time she says something like that he'll be like oh you got the wrong idea i was just kidding you know like lighten up it was just a joke which is such a like i was like oh i don't know if i've ever seen it like laid out that clearly in a movie before because that's such a thing especially when it's like his interest there is like he wants to hit on someone who works for him he wants to cheat on his girlfriend but he also wants to protect himself above all else and have grounds to like accuse her of lying like down the

line and so it's just like that like knee jerk of like i'm just joking i'm just joking i'm just joking and it becomes like his catchphrase and yeah i love it because it's a pg-13 movie she can't shoot his dick off but she can she can water gun she make him look like he pissed himself with a water gun. Yeah. Yeah. He says the grossest line of dialogue I've ever heard in a movie. And I don't even want to repeat it here. Is it about juices? Is it juices flowing?

Okay. Yes. He says a woman gets older. She matures. She ripens. Juices start flowing. Puke. I'm throwing start flowing it's disgusting i do want to shout out that actor john gets for um being so like almost alarmingly good at like just like the face he's made because it is like whatever like we've it doesn't bother me in this case but sort of like sexual harassment the guy um and that's his whole character and it's like every shitty thing

that you could do he does and he even makes that like what is that like comedy movie sexual harassment face where like there's an eyebrow thing happening and there's like a teeth thing happening and he's like like and just being and their lips look wet like even if they're not licking their lips you can imagine that they're licking their lips yeah yeah you're just like someone needs to towel this man off like what is going on he's like breathing heavily so disgusting and so uh the actor nailed it hopefully not method uh But yeah, that was. And I like that it's like super clear that like Swell is being extremely direct. And not that she has to be in this situation, but she's also concerned about Rose getting fucked over because she cares about Rose.

And so not only is she trying to, you know, protect herself from this guy, she also wants to do what she can to like inform and protect her friend, which is, um, I think a cool thing to do. I like her relationship with Rose so much. And I also like, though,

I think the last thing I have to say about Rose is just, again, with the scene where she eats the M&Ms off the floor when they think that the company is going to go under. This is like, I don't even think this is like a gender thing, but like in movies with like high power or like with high pressure workplaces, I feel like very often everyone who works there thinks that this is the most important thing in the world. And like my life will collapse if I don't work at this company. But Rose is sort of like, this fucking sucks like I need the

money I need the consistent paycheck but it's just a job I'll get another job and I was like yeah like I've felt whatever like there is like a certain amount of privilege to that but also that is a very like privileged white person thing to say but also I do like that i don't know like but i think that my counterpoint to that is like a career woman stock character like it seems like rose is at the beginning who actually is just like i just want to make enough money to live like i don't give a shit about this company specifically sure i don't mind that no and i think i think the movie makes a point of actually expanding it a little bit where like in that whole stretch of is the company going over it's not just like rose being like oh fine whatever blah blah blah blah one of the things rose has to do is she has to go down to like the

garment area and fire franklin the guy from one flew over the cuckoo's nest who is an older man and like who knows if franklin's gonna land on his feet. Right. But like, I think, you know, to go to be like, this actually is affecting people. And poor Franklin, he only gets like two scenes. But like, it's sad. They take it there, at least. Yeah. And they're like, I mean, this movie has like a very clear class that it wants to criticize and take a look at which is like by and large the like i i guess middle to upper middle white collar class which is mostly in this movie in particular a lot of

white people which is like it takes place in the la area there's like never any reason for that to be the case but yeah i mean it's it's i think one of the only like less elegant transitions out of not that this is like a movie i would describe as very elegant but um how when swell like i feel like there's a level of at least naivete maybe like some class privilege as well when swell quits clown dog so abruptly yeah where that is more like wish fulfillment than anything else in in this movie for for me as like oh yeah like i had a million jobs like that when i was like in my teens into my like early to mid-20s and to just be able to be like wait this is fucking gross i hate this i'm leaving like there is a definitely an amount of privilege

to her doing that that the movie doesn't seem interested in really analyzing and because she is like an attractive young white woman she's able to you know execute the con in the way that the con needs to be executed for the movie to work it's true but also when she quits like that like it's in a way i think they give you one beat where it's not like totally a victimless quitting because then when she hangs out with brian later it's like oh you had to clean up all the mess that i walked out on yeah they at least don't let it end on the like ta-da no consequences it's like oh this kind of nice guy who i feel like at the beginning is almost coded as beneath what she would think she should be

dating maybe i see that you know like a guy who's like working for a living he had to clean up after her yeah yeah it's not like it's not like the deepest thing in the world but it's like I find it interesting when they take those moments to shoehorn that little thing in that makes it a little more realistic and like Brian still works there at the end of the movie. Like it seems like he and Carolyn's family are from a lower class than Swell and her family. Which if we're going back to like Carolyn, that, you know, makes her even more righteously outraged. It's like this, you know, this faker teenager from like an upper middle class family is like taking a job that Carolyn's better qualified for. You know, that's that kind of class outrage is very relatable in an environment where Rose is, you know, literally just picking someone who seems nice and kind of reminds her of herself.

And because Carolyn does not remind her of herself, she does not qualify for the job. Probably same for Kathy. Also, Rose is just kind of being lazy in that situation, which also happens in corporate environments all the time. Yeah, she's like Vassar, Comme du Garcon, and Calvin Klein. She's very label conscious. Like, you went to Vassar? Great. Me too. And I will say, one thing about the happy ending that I think is really funny though is like those outfits that

save the whole company the like basically harley quinn goes to high school outfits yeah are absolutely gonna tank the company because this movie is coming out in 1991 like nirvana never mind is about to hit stores and as soon as that hits stores nobody is going to be wearing these pink nurses outfits and Roger Rabbit-ing. Like, that moment is over. Like, they're going to put all their money in these costumes and then no kid is going to wear them

because they're going to want to wear flannel. But I appreciate that her friends all rally behind her, including the only black character in the film, her one friend, Katrina. Is it Katrina? I can't remember which friend it is. The movie doesn't care enough to let the audience know what her name is because I didn't if they did give us her name I didn't

catch it yeah they do but it's just like in a rush she like introduces them one by one and it's like Nicole Katrina but then she's like panicking because Brian is running by and it's like I think her friend just walks out she's like thank you katrina all right we're good but bye becky we're done here yeah yeah yeah yeah yes this is a very white movie yeah which there's like no reason for that to be true and i think that the only like friend of swells that even has a role outside of just being like hi is the one that ends up dating kenny question mark that's yeah oh wait this is a question i had how old is brian because there's one point where he he's like oh let's go to this thing and then she's like well i can't i'm not 21 and he's like oh yeah bummer i'm like wait how old are you i think i understood that is he's like oh shoot yeah i also can't go because i'm also not okay he's her age

because i mean assuming if we're operating under the assumption that like he just graduated from high school he's about to start college because he talks about how he wants to go for like marine biology or something i understood it as he also just graduated from high school so neither of them can go okay because that because i also was like oh they're around the same age and then he was like oh that sucks you can't go i was like are you like 27 like what no what do you think about that line that they have towards the end where they're like having the reconciliation talk and i don't remember if he says it or if she says it but one of them says we didn't break up we had a fight oh she says that she's like we didn't break up we had a fight and also if you thought we broke up you must have also thought that we were together

and he's like yeah and okay so his whole thing is that he's not very good at open and clear communication as demonstrated by not that swell is either she's lying at the whole movie yes a scene that um kind of stuck out to me and this is a quick moment but they're kind of like gearing up to kiss and he's like talking he's like oh here comes the moment where we might be romantic and she's like yeah i like that moment and then he's like oh but i ruined it because we talked about it and talking about it always ruins the moment. And then there's a beat and then she walks up to him and gives him a kiss. And I basically him being like talking about it ruins the moment.

I think people should talk about kissing before they kiss. I think people should be like, look, can I kiss you? Do I have your consent? Maybe it does ruin the moment for a lot of people. But I think that we should all be talking about kissing and then kiss yeah always every kiss every single kiss you have with everybody your whole life no but like in those moments where you're like oh what's the vibe i'm not sure you know it's i think it's helpful i felt because there's so many moments where you're like oh what's the vibe i'm not sure you know it's i think it's helpful i felt

because there's so many moments where like we see a surprise kiss in a movie because no one because people are just like making assumptions and i'm pro talking about it well like in the graduate what i hate about the kiss in the graduate to bring it back to the hatred of the graduate for a second is like dustin hoffman's first kiss with mrs robinson in the graduates like they're up in the hotel room right and it's sort of like awkward and they've been like in the bar and now they're up in the hotel room she inhales a cigarette and then he kisses her before she exhales and then and then she exhales and it's played as kind of like a joke like ha ha look how awkward

he is but that's the moment where to me i turn on this on this movie because i'm like mrs robinson could date any of those hot guys downstairs who were checking her out when she walked in why is she gonna have sex with this guy who can't even kiss her right like it's such a right right it's like why that guy's such a klutz it's like a comedy moment that makes it just be like she could do so much better she should leave. The whole movie is just a fucking disaster. I can't stand it. In the case of this kiss, though, I agree that you're saying, Caitlin, I feel like there should be better consent talks in movies. In this way, it felt like a clumsy teenager thing where like I feel like by him saying

like, oh, the moment and then she acknowledged the moment. I feel like that was a discussion. It was an awkward teenage one. And it wasn't the explicit like, can I kiss you? Which, you know, would be ideal. But I don't know it for my it didn't make me feel like it was inappropriate or uncomfortable because they were both like, oh, there was the moment and we're like 17 and we suck. And I was like, would I have been capable of better when I was 17 no certainly not yeah the first thing she says is I hate this moment and then she thinks she hurt his feelings and he's like I don't mean I hate this you know but she like hates the self-consciousness of it

yeah I guess where I'm coming from is think about who the intended audience was for this movie it's like young people it's kids it's like you know teens and tweens and if they see a movie where someone's like talking about it ruins the moment I don't know i mean because that's not necessarily true and again i think we should normalize checking in with a person before you know like a first kiss but ultimately the characters do check in they do talk to each other about it and the moment doesn't get ruined because they do kiss. And we should question how many grunion died for this kiss. Because they do pan down and there's all these grunions flopping around their feet.

And I hope the grunion population is doing well. And I will say I took a second while we were doing this podcast to Google grunion run. And it actually happens about every other weekend from March to July. No kidding. I'm saying next spring, next year, Grunion Run is on. I just wanted to touch on a few behind the scenes things for this movie. Very white behind the scenes. There is a female co-writer who is primarily a novelist still is primarily a novelist teaches creative writing all over the place but Tara Ison

I hope I'm saying that correctly was also a writer on Doogie Howser as was Neil Landau the other credited writer so I think that this that they just met on Dookie Houser and then were like we gotta make a movie um but I I do think that if this movie was written by two dudes it very likely would have been quite different and I uh I liked I like this script by and large and then there's also an iconic uh woman producer on this project as well julia phillips um who was the first woman producer to win the oscar for best picture back in the day for the sting this is like one of her like less famous movies but it's the last one that she produced but she also produced like close encounters and taxi driver and all these famous

movies so i wonder if there's any julia phillips and rose right i wonder if julia phillips was like i get being a working woman in kind of like a weird corporate male environment right and how to be heard i would like to think that like yeah i like that there's female producers who i hope she would at least given the script to read and given her notes on rose i'm certain of that and i want to believe that that's true i hope so too i also want to say like some of the reviews of this like gene siskel voted this movie one of the year's worst films and i just don't understand on what planet you would say that this is one of the year's worst films it is still heavily rotten on rotten tomatoes which to me is like i feel like i see this a lot as a critic where like movies about

female friendship just are not that whole subplot is not recognized at all by critics and they're just like it's girls wearing clothes and putting buns in their hair how lame and they miss all of the stuff that's interesting that happens time and time again i get mad to even thinking about like vampire academy where all the reviews of that were like why isn't there more vampire killing and you're like it's a movie about teenage girls and their friendship what are you talking about yeah but that's boring to me so so i hate it yeah and also another critic peter trevors he had this line in it he called uh christina appleg, quote, unflatteringly photographed Applegate. Another thing in which I'm like, what?

And the only thing I could think of is like in the climactic scene where she's in that, you know, black dress and she has the cool little like black ribbons in her hair or black bows. I don't even know what those are. They film her in a way where you can see that like Christina Applegate has arm hair. And like maybe that's what annoyed the critic is like women aren't supposed to has arm hair. And like, maybe that's what annoyed, annoyed the critic is like, women aren't supposed to have arm hair. How dare they film her in a way where you can see that she's a mammalian creature. But like, that's the only thing I can think of where she's unflatteringly photographed

because it's Christina Applegate. What are you talking about? Yeah. Right. That's so, that reminds me, I mean, that's happens so often and I can't imagine how frustrating it is to be a critic and have to

like contest with that still which is like fucking wild um but I always think about how like male critics compulsion to only like be able to see movies about women in the framework of movies they've already seen about men like uh Caitlin we talked about this in the now and then episode a couple years ago how now and then was like panned because they're like it's just stand by me for girls and it's like no it's just a movie about girls like what what is wrong with you or like when book smart was i mean that was well reviewed but i think was like girls super bad yeah and you're like like the only argument for that is that there's two members of the same family but it's like it's just people just don't like when um when women are friends it makes them

nervous because we're we're telling we're telling secrets and the secrets uh will bring down society as we know it so it's uh in this essay i will it's fascinating this is only tangentially related but i was thinking about it a lot this weekend because there's this film that just opened the luckiest girl alive i don't know if y'all are aware it's like a mila kunis movie that just opened up on netflix it's based on a book that came out in 2015 about a this is not a spoiler a girl who like in high school was gang raped and then immediately after there was a school shooting and one of her rapists is like the hero of the school shooting and like how does that play out in her life after that and the way that this character

plays it out is like being a girl boss it's like literally a girl boss movie about somebody who like can't process her trauma the key to this this movie is that it's specifically set in 2015. And so it's about pre-Me Too and what that world was like. But it got all these negative reviews from people who weren't really conscious of the fact that it was 2015 or why that was important. And everyone's like, she's just being a shallow girl boss. And I'm like, that's the point. It's about how we were trained to process trauma before we were allowed to talk about it more openly right and I just always find that fascinating when like a film is about something

but people don't realize it's about that yeah right anyway on my mind right now because it's like fascinating to go back to like recent period peace history I didn't know that that movie had had come out or what it was about I only saw that people were like feeling a kind of way about it. Yeah, which I mean, I get if you're not watching it through the lens of 2015. But it's like there's no other reason for that movie to be set in 2015, except if they're making a point about how to process stuff pre-20. Me too. Pre-being able to talk about it more openly.

Yeah. Right. Which is something that I think that like don't like the Rose Lindsay character toes the line of somewhat successfully because you know through certain exchanges that she

certainly benefits from class privilege. She certainly benefits from white privilege and also she is still contending with sexism and like discrimination in her workplace and like has to work harder for diminishing returns and like both of those things are true it doesn't make the you know way she uses her privilege any better but it just contextualizes it although like i don't know 1991 1991. I know.

Although I feel like this is, to me, emotionally, the last movie of the 80s. And then we go into the 90s. It feels a bit very, like, remember Ronald Reagan? But we are getting a remake, at least. We are? Yeah, they haven't announced a lot of the casting. The only casting that I've seen so far is that Rose is going to be played by Tyra Banks interesting oh and that and that just reminds me that we still haven't done our life size episode and that is important to me um I get I mean Tyra Banks can certainly girl boss it up

all day that's uh she's been doing it for decades that, yeah. The last thing I want to briefly mention is the scene in which three drag queens steal their car, which they stole from Mrs. Sturrock. But like, they come out of Chuck E. Cheese. Three drag queens are stealing the car. Why are the drag queens at Chuck E. Cheese? Like, so many questions. I'm not sure.

In full drag. For a moment, I was like, is this a really weird too long foo reference but then i'm like no that movie came out several years after right the point is they're the only like queer characters in the entire movie and then you see them doing uh something wrong um they're thieves and i was like i don't that's not even a stereotype. Like what is, what is happening? I just ended up thinking, I'm like, that was fucking weird. Like that was a weird decision to have made.

But like, and this is again, like absolute crumbs, but like the, the meanest thing that's said about them is like, Hey, those drag Queens are stealing our car, which is technically true. That is what happens. They're not saying the wrong thing. No, they, but like but like what yeah i did not know what to make of that who is the third one like one of them is marilyn one of them is liza but then there's one in polka dots with like curly hair and i was like who's that one right i also couldn't place her i wasn't sure that wasn't like dolly parton was it that's why I was wondering but I didn't see comically large boobs but it does happen really fast it was a very quick yeah that was just not sure

yeah and then it I mean that would have been well I mean who knows but theoretically that could have been a fun cutaway for the end as well like where did they go in the damn Buick right I kind of wish they had gotten the money instead of the random uh mortuary employees but you know oh that's true that would have been wonderful I've been under the floor boards or something right like then we could cut to them and uh Mr. Eck would have hated that and that's what we want yeah but yeah I I also I wrote I i i just was like well i guess that that's something that happened in the movie like the only thing i had was like there's no other identifiably queer characters right in the movie not sure i don't know uh but who knows okay i think that

that's all right is there anything else anyone wanted to touch on? That's it from me. The only last thing I can think of is that I appreciate this movie is making fun of corporate speak of 91 that is now dead. Like interfacing. It makes such a big joke about the word interfacing. Right. Interfacing has now been retired. So it

means that, you know, touch base whatever we say now. Zooming. I'll circle whatever we say now, zooming. I'll circle back. Circle back. Yeah. Yes. Someday it will end.

Yeah. Or we could bring back interfacing, which is actually what we're doing right now. Oh, I love to interface with my friends. Okay. My last two little things. I liked the line. Did he just read Dianetics or something? Oh, yeah. That was fun.

About the hot dog. And then they were like, no, he's addicted to pills. And I was like, okay, that's a bit classist. But Mr. Egg, also an amazing character name. Who's yelling at Soylent to smile more. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Like, he's a villain.

And then there's also a moment at the very end. Because the character's name is Carolyn. Am I? Carolyn. Okay. at the very end because the character's name is carolyn am i carolyn okay there's a moment in the last scene of the movie where josh charles says caroline oh he just says caroline he says the wrong character name in the last scene about the character who's his sister supposed to be a sister and that that just made me laugh uh that no one got adr for for that because he just says straight up

the wrong name and she's like yep uh-huh um it's great well speaking of female characters with names and sometimes maybe they talk to each other what i'm saying is does this movie pass the bechdel test yeah yeah instantly almost yeah swell talks to rose obviously a lot talks to carolyn yeah lots of conversations and combinations of characters that pass her mom yeah melissa her group of friends when they're shopping and like you can see that like she's she can't buy all the jewelry that her friends can buy can She's like a little poorer than them. The first thing we see her do is like pick up some gold beads and she can't buy them. Are you kidding me?

But they're like, I can do anything. I'm a free woman. And they're not being like boys, boys, boys. They're talking about like doing cool shit together. They're talking about going to Europe. Europe, Europe, Europe. Yeah, I it very much passes passes so you go you go movie but what about the only movie metric that's important flawless perfect the nipple scale where we rate movies

on a scale of zero to five nipples based on just looking at it through an intersectional feminist lens. I would say, because there are not that many movies, and certainly not of this era, that are about what's effectively a single mom trying to balance work, parenting, and a social life. And empathizing with her when she doesn't totally pull it off which is cool right and because you know again like she's not literally a single mom but that's the role that she ends up taking on through most of the movie i find that very cool that this is a movie about that even though she's a 17 year old who is faking a lot of this stuff um but still still

an interesting topic to examine that you know we should see more of yeah and just other things that we talked about you know the the movie showing a sexual predator character and actually framing him that way but then there's other things like, you know, the way the movie makes the only like old woman, a horrible monster, the extreme whiteness of the movie, things like that, that are very tropey.

I don't know. Maybe I would give this like a three, three nipples. Let's go with that. And I'll give one to swell I'll give one to her mom I'm I'm like team mom for being like you know what you kids are unappreciative of all of my labor and uh I need a break from you so here's the worst babysitter in the world to take care of you instead.

And then definitely my last nipple goes to Kathy. Again, justice for Kathy, who deserved so much more gratitude and appreciation and credit for the work that she did, which she never gets on screen. So big fan of Kathy, justice for her. I'm going to go 3.5, maybe even 3.75 if i'm feeling nuts but also 3.5 yeah very precise science uh but i i think this movie is doing so much right especially for its time and still managing manages to be like a really campy fun movie to watch i feel

like i'm going 3.75 maybe everyone's gonna be upset with me uh but i but it's my it's my life it's your life that's what i learned from the mom fuck you fuck fuck you who i'm responsible to i'm leaving um okay no i i think that like yeah a movie whose premise is based in having empathy for a uh single working mom who is not getting it completely right but has her heart in the right place is a cool thing I think that it's you know fixation on the white upper middle class is very typical and unchallenging of the time you know like I there are movies that do a far better job of you know like there should be more satires and comedic satires of the working class and like of uh the non-white working class and this is just

not one of those movies um and you know i think that there is room in in the movie to address that stuff a little more but you get so much you get you get the the creep being called out as a creep she gets to shoot him in the dick like it you know we have women believing each other about creeps which you never see yeah i think this movie is just really fun maybe i'm scaling it a little too high because i just really enjoy it but i'm gonna go 3.75 and i going to give one to Swell. I'm going to give one to Ro... No, I'm going to give one to Dolores and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, because that's Joanna Cassidy's best part ever. I'm going to give one to Tara Eisen.

And then I'll give the last 0.75 to Melissa. Okay. Oh, yeah, Melissa. Love Melissa. Wish we got more from her.y what do you think i'll go higher than everybody i'm gonna go 4.25 nipples because i think this movie does so much right without drawing attention to the fact that it's doing everything right yeah there's nothing in this movie that for a millisecond feels like a vitamin or a lecture about you know gender roles in society not a single bit of

it is like oh here's where we tell you guys how to really live your life there's nothing preachy in this movement i think i think this movie speaks to kids young adults me at my current age on just like a fun level representing the way that the world both is you know which is a lot of labor a lot of unfair stuff a lot of grunt work that you have to do, a lot of people getting taken advantage of, a lot of people getting rewarded for the wrong reasons. All those things are true. And it doesn't hide any of that. And it doesn't sugarcoat anything. It doesn't make working look like wonderful. You know, it's not like a movie where a girl gets a job and suddenly she has the high heels and the wardrobe. Like, this is, I

think, a really lived in movie about what it is like to get your first job and how hard it is and how like strange the working world is and I think it both calls the corporate world on its bullshit and shows what it's really like what I like about these kids is I feel like the kids are all actual authentic kids and they're not like scrubby or shiny and none of them sound like fake kids to me like nobody's too idealized nobody's too shiny yeah definitely Mrs. Starr comes out of a pizza commercial but other than that like I don't think there are many kids movies like this that get so many things right and I always want to take a really strong stance in pointing out these kids movies that do make the right choice every time

there's a lazier choice there's so many lazy choices that could have been made in this movie. For sure. Doesn't do any of them. Doesn't do any of them. Down from like the romance crazy one being the little boy. And so for that, you know, for being a movie that to me felt like kind of an urtext for, oh, is this how the world works? Great. Okay.

I get it. You're warning me and also you're not putting me in a box. That's magical. And I feel like, yeah, kids movies are so important because it's how we start to see the world. And so, yeah, there's nothing in this that I think would turn a kid off. And I think it would like lay them out for what to expect and show them what's unfair. And maybe people will go to the workplace and be a little bit nicer to the you know to the poor poor poor said um kathys of the world and maybe the kathys of the world see this movie and they're like wait yeah what the fuck exactly i'm taking off my point seven five because i do agree on like the

bizarre whiteness of la which was never true and wasn't true then and la is about and you know 1981 about to enter a moment of really reckoning with the racial things that have been whitewashed over in this city. For sure. Amy, thank you so much for coming on the show and for bringing us this movie. This was so fun.

Oh, this has been my pleasure. Caitlin and Jamie, it's been so fun to be here. So thank you for having me aboard. Come back anytime. I'd love to. This is so fun. Where can people follow you online check out your writing check out anything that you would like to plug oh yeah totally my social media handles are the amy

nicholson i'm right now really working i think i'm only on twitter for 24 hours a week which is highly recommend it's so nice i log in on thursday and i log out friday morning oh and then you get to be oblivious the rest of the week whatever is important people will eventually tell you over a beer and yeah uh yeah i write for the new york times and my podcast is unspooled with paul sheer where we just did uh jennifer's body and midsummer which i love talking about midsummer in terms of like trauma bad boyfriends or boyfriends who just cannot handle because they are immature. Oh, yes. We had a similar discussion on our matron, which speaking of, you can follow us on social media at Bechtelcast on Instagram and Twitter.

You can subscribe to our matron at patreon.com slash Bechtelcast, in which we have covered both Midsommar and Jennifer's Body as bonus episodes on the Matreon. All for $5 a month. You get access to the back catalog and two new episodes every single month. And

you can get merch at tpublic.com slash the Bechtelcast holidays coming up, you know. So there's that link. Okay. With that, let's all head on down to the graveyard and steal some corpse's money. Yeah.

Thanks, nice old lady. Thanks, Mr. Ack. Bye. Bye. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated Crooks Everywhere

unearthed the plot to murder a one woman WikiLeaks she exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. Captain's Log, Stardate 2024. We're floating somewhere in the cosmos, but wherever you get your podcasts. For hidden truths, navigate the depths of culture, 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.