The Bechdel Cast - Flubber

Episode Date: November 5, 2020

On this episode, Jamie and Caitlin bounce their way into an important analysis of Flubber. (This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow@BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP on Twitter Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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um yes welcome my intro was gonna be something like, um, hey, Jamie, I invented some green flying rubber. Do you want to come try it with me? I hope it doesn't hit me in the head with a bowling ball and I go, owie. The bowling ball scene, I mean, this is the flubber episode of the bechdel cast so get ready for some like serious discourse the bowling ball scene i thought it would have been so much funnier if the spy like guy if his head just like exploded like what is that movie where the head like fully explodes well that's what would happen if a bowling ball you're just pulverized skull would be all over the pavement yeah that is i'm trying to think of that you do you know like the gif i'm

talking about where someone's head just bless you son i don't i mean probably i've probably seen that i'll think of it anyways this is the flubber episode of the bechtel cast this i don't know if this has really been a request i feel like it's been like a joke request yeah i don't think anyone's ever wanted this to happen also we should say right at the top here so this is the episode that is being released the week of the u.s election and the reason if you if you don't know the re if you're if you don't know the reason because you're like what do you mean i love elections they're so fun you know it's just no matter the outcome and that really didn't feel good to say everyone's fucking exhausted and upset yes and so we figured you know why not why not release an episode on the

flubber we're not trying to make you like well see this is where it gets complicated we were saying you know let's not make you know be strenuous with anyone's brain this week because we're usually geniuses but like let's not like choose any material that is like really dense right but then it turns out we forgot so much about flubber and there's actually quite a bit to talk about well there's a bit to talk about but it's i think tonally it's not gonna upset you it's not gonna upset you tonally this episode will still be light either and we're we are recording this well before the election so we do not know two weeks the outcome so this is either going to be a we just don't know or a way for listeners to escape the tragic result of the election. We don't know, but here's Flubber. We don't know what's going on.

Here's Flubber. And so here's Flubber. So the Bechtel cast, if this is your first episode, change that. No. Listen to this and only this episode oh that's really fun this I mean it would be kind of mean to us but if like you know when someone's like oh I want to try this podcast what but it's been on for a long time what episode should I start with and they're like flubber the flubber episode changed the way i watch movies um the bechtel cast is our podcast where we uh take a look at some of the movies of the world that have had a cultural impact and we look at it using an intersectional feminist lens and we use the bechtel test as a jumping off point for discussion and i'm spoiling it

i can't believe this movie passes the bechdel test i'm actively upset by it it's like may i enter yes you may oh okay uh i was like i'm aware of a couple different conversations but i i forgot to pay close enough attention as per usual. There's a conversation between feminist icon Weebo and feminist icon Dr. Sarah. Uh-huh. Where she's like, hey, Sarah, let me in. I'm a robot. I can't use doorknobs.

The doorknobs. Right. And Dr. Sarah's like, okie doke, come in. And you're like, well, God damn it. Well, damn it. Well, if it doesn't pass the damn test. Well, I'll be. Well, gosh darn. Wait, Caitlin, what is the Bechdel test, though?

Oh, my goodness. It's a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechdel-Wallace test. It requires, for our purposes, our version of the test, two people of any marginalized gender must have names, they must speak to each other, and their conversation has to be about something other than a man, and that conversation must last at least two lines of dialogue.

Hey, Dr. Sarah, let me in the window. I'm a robot. Okay, come in now back to talking about robin williams and what a toxic life partner he is in this movie truly i don't know what's going on in this movie but it's the flubber episode flubber 1997 directed by les mayfield produced by john hughes and it's we've talked about john hughes a few times on this show right i mean we definitely did the breakfast club but we he's come up quite a bit yes he has a couple of good movies and then it's really like

deadlock between a lot of movies for worse yeah and this is by no means his worst but it's it's not very good i think other of his movies are more competently written i think this might be the least competently written movie he's ever worked on right he has movies that are more problematic, but do adhere to story. Story structure a little better. Whereas Flubber has third act problems. Oh, it's got second act problems. It's got first act problems. Well, the movie ends in the middle of the second act,

and then it just kind of starts again. I was genuinely, I mean, kayla you have a master's in the damn thing as a student film but where is it from i would never bring this up on my own so thank you for doing it for me you know egg you on a little yeah yeah yeah it is a master's degree in screenwriting from boston university not medfield or whatever this is only because it's not real also okay this is fun uh friend of the cast slash one of the closest people in my whole life julia claire is from medfield oh medfield massachusetts medfield college does not exist but I guess the reason this movie takes place in Medfield, Massachusetts, is because Walt Disney's best friend is from there. And there used to be a like special tiny airport in Medfield so Walt Disney could visit his friend.

And that's the fun fact i learned so to all our medfield massachusetts listeners they don't need to hear about flubber from us it's medfield canon well may i share my fun fact yes please so at toward the end of the movie philip and sarah are trying to pitch Flubber to Ford Motor Company. And she holds up a sign with Phillip's email address on it. pbrainard at medfield.edu. Now I took it upon myself to email that email address. Did anything happen? I said, hi, Phil. I would like to buy some Flubber, please.

Caitlin! In response response i got this address not found p brainard at medfield.edu the message was not delivered because medfield.edu could not be found there's no such thing as it turns out that's a really hard way to find out that they made up a college for the movie i know i'm devastated like usually i forget who i was talking about was it were we talking about this on a different episode where it's like usually when there's like fake phone numbers and emails they lead some somewhere and it's usually like donate here or like haha here's the movie website they couldn't even be bothered they couldn't even be bothered to make up medfield.edu for this movie i can't believe this yeah i think

we talked about we talked about that on an episode that is coming out in the future after post this episode what if we were like what if everyone was like wait they don't record live um so you'll hear us talk about that and you'll be like oh my god oh my wow there it is my god so we don't have a guest today we know we don't have a guest we just thought we would goof around today because we're goofing it's a tough week here in the u.s and so yeah you know we wanted wanted to speak to none of it and hopefully offer you a little bit of escapism. Yes. So actually, Flubber. Flubber is our guest.

Here in spirit. We have here with us Flubber. Do you think there were Flubber toys? It's so weird. There was a lot of... I remember I had a Flubber Happy Meal toy for sure. Yeah, that sounds familiar. They had these like Disney Happy Meal toys where it would be like the base of the toy was like a fake VHS tape and then on

top would be a little Flubber wearing sunglasses. Oh, I've got, oh, Jamie, your little memory. Wow, I'm so proud of myself. That's literally what it is.'s wearing sunglasses i love when flubber wears sunglasses i will say the dance scene in flubber while unnecessary is iconic and and they're we're big fans of uh super yaki flubber here and flubber and you know how super Yaki will do shirts that are like credits in movies? Yeah. I want a shirt that says Flubber Mambo by Danny Elfman. Danny Elfman? That was such a good credit.

I like, stop. It says like score by Danny Elfman. And then there's a separate title card that says Flubber Mambo by Danny Elfman. Why is that its own thing? I wondered that too. And then I came up with a theory, which is I feel like if you really make a point to single out a song, it says to me, you're trying to get trophies for that song. Do you think they submitted Flubber mambo for a best original i mean it definitely wasn't nominated but i wouldn't rule it out i like that theory yeah

i think that they were like flubber mambo is gonna sweep we gotta it is good that whole like i love the flubber dance sequence i was still you know, we are like weirdly gendering the flubber at one point. But outside of that, it's a great dance sequence. The flubber turns into drums. The flubber turns into horns. The flubber. What can't the flubber do? And that's a question we never really get answered.

No, you're right. I thought there was going to be a lot of gender issues with the flubber do? And that's a question we never really get answered. No, you're right. I thought there was going to be a lot of gender issues with the flubber. Right. But it's really, the flubber ends up kind of being... Genderless icon. Genderless icon. At one point, it wears a skirt, but we don't really... I mean, that could mean anything.

That's true. So, what's your history with flubber my history with flubber it came out when i was i guess 11 so i was like pretty much the target demo more or less i was like getting to an age where i mean this was the same year that Titanic came out as well this movie comes out mere weeks before before Titanic yes and as soon as Titanic came out that was it for me I watched nothing for an entire year besides Titanic but I got a few weeks worth of Flubber in so I had seen it do you think Flubber was like the last movie you saw before Titanic? Like in theaters? I don't even know if I saw Flubber in theaters.

We definitely rented it. We never owned it on VHS. I'm so sorry. Yeah, I think we must have just rented it a couple times. Because my sister was like eight at the time. And she would have been, I i think a little closer to the target demo prime flubber so i had seen it a couple times as a child probably like 97 98 and i have not i had not seen it since then so it was a pretty big cultural staple in the late 90s but

yeah i just i never bothered with it again as soon as I discovered Titanic most people know about Flubber but no one remembers what happened in Flubber it's very much like a Wes Anderson movie in that way where you know what it is and you remember three things that happened in the trailer but you really are not able to answer any further questions true yeah well what's your history with it we definitely owned this on vhs but i have a very early formative memory of seeing flubber in theaters because i was my my bro my baby my brother was born shortly before this movie came out i remember this was like wow he was well actually he was born in april

1997 so he would have been like an infant but not like the tiniest infant like not completely ridiculous to bring an infant to flubber but like i see where this is going so your mom brought a baby to flubber my guess is that me and my cousins really wanted to see Flubber and my mom brought a tiny baby and was like, let's see how it goes. But I was like, yeah, I was four and my brother was baby. And I just remember he kind of wrecked the Flubber experience. What with being a loud baby. And so I just when I it's this movie and then weirdly Eddie Murphy Dr. Doolittle which I think comes out in 98 I'd have to check that but those were two movies about wacky professors

that I was really excited about that my brother cried his little baby head off the whole time and ruined it and so Ben ruined flubber the first time but then we did get the vhs tape and i saw it many times after but i haven't seen it for 20 years yeah at least like i think that probably we got flubber on vhs i watched it 50 times and then i haven't watched it since 1999. Sure. So there was a lot I didn't remember about it. But I yeah, early, early memory.

Me and me and Flubber and Ben, if you're listening, he fucked Flubber all the way up for the whole family. Ben. Honestly, it's on my mom. She shouldn't have brought a baby to Flubber, but it was worth a try. Maybe have slept through flubber but it's too compelling he just couldn't i mean the bouncy ball the flying rubber it's flubber i i think i remember the trailer for this movie more clearly than the movie itself because there were a few moments that i was like oh that's a trailer moment such as when he says it's flubber that's definitely in the trailer or when he says what a bang that's definitely in the trailer i didn't watch the trailer but i'm pretty sure and then and then

when what's his name uh christopher mcdonald is dancing with the flubber that's definitely in the trailer and then when the basketball player jumps with the flubber. That's definitely in the trailer. And then when the basketball player jumps with the flubber. Right. There's no women in the trailer is what I'm saying. Uh-huh. Well, there's barely women in the movie. So poor Marsha Gay Harden. I didn't know who Marsha Gay Harden was the last time I watched this movie.

Me either. And now that I watch it, it was like in her career wise it was a pretty early role for her and uh we gotta get her out of this movie we can't escape i know i know by the way uh dr doolittle did come out in 98 and it was directed by a woman betty thomas wow so I guess we have to cover it we do I I bet that movie sucks but I remember really really liking it I have two formative memories that Dr. Doolittle which is first that my brother cried the whole time and second that because I would always go to movies with all like 10 of my cousins because my mom ran like a fake daycare out of our house yeah and so we would all go together and I remember someone got like a roll of starburst and they were like just pass

the starburst down the row and for some reason I thought my cousins were unwrapping my starburst and I had like four starbursts that with the full wrapper told this story before but i didn't realize it was that movie it was eddie murphy and it was so embarrassing because i was like haha what a crunchy starburst you just didn't know you were eating like i hate paper yeah clearly it hasn't affected me at all because i don't even remember it happened oh my god okay all right so should should i just uh do the recap and good luck yeah i'll see i'll try to come in on the assist where i can thank you so much all right first of all there's an opening sequence that is very similar to the opening sequence of back to the future and we're like

oh i guess you know les mayfield watched back to the future and just copied it i had not connected that okay i do enjoy the opening of the movie and a danny elfman score cannot be denied unfortunately um so it was you know there were moments when on the rewatch of this where i was kind of like dancing with my dog let's say i mean there's a mambo the flubber mambo snubbed the snub of the century um but just that part where like you see all the robots like making breakfast and stuff like that something very similar happens in back to the future i wrote that down is i think that that is safe to say a full-on movie trope because i thought of two other movies that happens in that are not back to the future oh wait what

also happens in peewee's big adventure at the very beginning and it also happens at the beginning of wallace and gromit uh in a lot of the shorts and then i think also in the movie where i don't i don't know what it says about the movie other than like there's an inventor in this movie that and the lengths that men will go to to not do household chores but it's like breakfast, breakfast machine is definitely some sort of movie link. They're trying to tell you something, something, something semiotics is breakfast machine semiotics. We don't know. Yeah. Anyways.

Yeah. He does have a breakfast machine. And then I immediately tried to think of all the other breakfast machines that I'd seen. Well, we've got four. Four. That's too many. That's a lot. Listeners, if you can think of any others, please. That's all in like a 20-year span, too.

Too many. Yeah, it's true. Okay, so. That's two movies with a Danny Elfman score. Sorry. Wait, what was the other one? Pee Wee? I think so.

It was a Tim Burton movie. Safe to assume. Oh, right. Let's see. Yeah's see yeah anyways continue this is not important so this breakfast machine belongs to philip brainard that's robin williams brain get it right and yeah if you're like oh is this movie subtle his last name is brain this movie is adapted from another disney movie i think when like every live action disney movie that came out in the 1960s except mary poppins i was like no thank you um but it's one of those so there is a precedent for this character right but that doesn't make his name less really bashing you over the head with a mallet so this movie so the property

is based on a short story by samuel w taylor and it's also based on the movie the absent-minded professor right which i did you we talked about this a little bit before and as soon as you mentioned it i was like oh maybe it's like right there on my disney plus i'll hit play so i watched like 75 of it just to like see if there's anything worth talking about i watched clips and i was just like my takeaway i don't like it but it definitely had i was actually the only thing i found in my research and like i watched a few clips of it that i didn't realize that there was i thought that flubber was a 90s yeah naming convention but flubber it's been with us as a culture it's been there flubber's been there for yeah for you know almost 60 years at this point so that's so think about that which means we're

due we're about due for another flubber the 30 if the 30-year cycle is true gird your loins we're getting flubber in the next couple of years honestly yeah it would be an honor to be involved you know what would be the most embarrassing like classically this this moment in time mistake to be do you see where i'm going with this all-female reboot of flubber okay okay i don't hate it flubber was a woman in stem you're just like wow please just let a woman direct a movie that's literally we didn't ask for girl flubber um but would i watch it yes i would watch but now that you mention it we're getting it but hold on we're getting hold on flubber girl okay i'll watch it okay so anyway so this is an adaptation which i didn't realize until i went on wikipedia yeah i

didn't know that before like researching for this right yeah the one thing i'll say about a absent-minded professor is that there is another female character who they eliminate in flubber because the professor has like a housekeeper yes that i think they replace with webo i think they combine a housekeeper and a dog into yes that was my read i was like wowie wowie wow where to where to even begin or i think they turn the housekeeper into weber the other robot and then the dog Charlie in the first movie gets turned into Weebo so for everyone listening if you I remembered there was a robot assistant in Flubber I did not remember the extent that she is involved in the movie then that how much she wants to have sex with him I did not remember how horny horny horny she was i yeah i remembered that

i the two things i remembered about her was that she was a robot assistant and that she sometimes played i remember that she played a clip from dumbo on her screen at one point because she communicates only in disney owned clips yes which Which is like fun as a kid but as an adult kind of embarrassing to watch. Yeah, exactly. So, okay. Sorry. Where are we? No, it's no one's fault.

It's a dense text. It's Flubber's fault. All right. So, Philip Brainerd. He is a science professor at Medfield College which is at risk of closing down because it owes a lot of money or something. They're in dire financial straits. And then we learn by Philip telling his robot, Weebo, oh, if he could just discover this new source of energy he could save the college and once you listen if you're if you've gotten this far in the episode you gotta watch flubber um i didn't realize until i looked at the i had like scholarly journal wikipedia up as i was watching the movie yeah and it said jody benson as webo i was like wait a second Jodi Benson is Ariel and then once you find out

that the voice of Weebo is the voice of Ariel you cannot unhear it and you're just like why does Ariel want to have sex with the professor it's so bad anyways it's her and I'm pretty sure that the later video you see is also her I'm pretty sure i was curious about that if it was i i don't know exactly how jodie benson looked in 1997 but it looks like her with 90s hair so i'm assuming right okay and then we expect her to break it out in song and be like you want singamabobs i got 20 she just wants to be where the people are but she didn't understand that once she was there where the people were that if she wasn't a people she's not gonna be able to be she kind of has had the same problem in two movies and the first one she's a mermaid and she can't attain the arbitrary love interest and the next one this is basically the little mermaid too She wants the arbitrary love interest who would not be nice to her,

but she's a robot this time. It's complicated. Wow. Makes you think. Weebo. All right. So Phillips, his future wife, Sarah, played by Marsha Gay Harden. Oh my God. They're supposed to be getting married that evening, but he keeps forgetting about it because he's so absent-minded he's the absent-minded professor we know did you catch i watched this movie twice and i kept forgetting to check she works at the college as well her door says dr sarah does it say what she teaches do we know what she's like a professor of i was under the impression that she was like the dean or the president oh okay i thought but i don't remember how i got that information this poor woman does not have a true friend in her entire life

because she is being stood up by this man at the altar for the third repeatedly this is the third time yes and her friends aren't like maybe dump him yeah she's got one friend martha who's just like who's too supportive i'm like martha you really need to step it up as a friend because marcia gay harden is humiliating herself over and over. Yes. For this loser. Yeah, he's missed two other wedding dates of theirs, but he's like, don't worry, Sarah.

I will not miss our wedding this time because she's all like, if you miss it this time, we are through. Now, before the wedding, though, Philip's rival, Wilson, shows up to his classroom and he openly admits to the following. Stealing Philip's ideas, being petty, being corrupt and wanting to steal his bride to be. OK, honestly, we have no choice but to stand. He is the most expository character i've seen in a movie in a really long time like he's so and he's played by christopher mcdonald who is a a well-respected like a good character actor who also has like resting 90s villain face like he literally they're

like typecasting him as mr steal your girl uh and then there's that one what is that line read he does where you're like oh my goodness like can you be serious he like he like walks out after he's been wooing her and he's like i can't lose the girl is mine and you're like did he just say that out loud like it's so i feel my read was that christopher mcdonald fully knew what movie he was in and he was just like all right i'll read the line fine i'll dance with the flubber you might not like what you see but that's on you he also at one point shits the flubber out of his butthole. He sure does. So let's not forget that.

That is actually a really good point and I should have made it sooner. We can't forget that he does shit the flubber out his butthole. And that's after he's been defeated because you can argue that that scene takes place after the movie should have ended. Right. There's a whole point where the movie should have ended. Right. There's a whole point where the movie ends, but then it keeps going. Mm-hmm. Anyways. Yeah.

So Wilson shows up. Okay. So then later that day, as Philip is getting ready for his wedding, he figures out the final piece of the puzzle for this new energy source that he's been working on. And then he like does some science stuff he accidentally blows up his lab but it ends up working because what emerges but flubber it's not a scary movie october's over it's november no more scares no flubber is a blob of green gelatinous bouncy goo that also seems to be sentient that was a question i had yes here's a question uh-huh when flubber starts wilding out bursting through glass harassing the neighborhood weebo flies up to

also the science of this movie i'll say it as a scientist it makes no sense because he's because robin williams dr flubber or professor flubber whatever flubber professor flubber is like i need to make things fly but his robot can already fly how is she flying great question could that technology be applied but anyways we both flies because she can she flies up to professor flubber and says oh no you gave a step further even if free will can be put in a little test tube why would you then give it to flubber you would think that flubber having free will right would only cause problems there's no practical use for flubber having free will and a personality here's my theory okay as also a scientist i have your scientific theories sure i think that that line is meant to be

a joke and it just so happens that it's not funny that it's not funny? That it's not funny. But then how do you explain Flubber having free will? Having free will? Yeah. Yes. I don't think he deliberately gave Flubber free will. That might just be a byproduct of the very complicated formula he was working on, I'm guessing. I was trying to read this movie like a few movies i think there's a few influential movies you can kind of map this movie on and one of them is i frankenstein

i think that flubber and adam frankenstein have more in common than we ever could have met but then don't they just kind of they have free will but they just kind of take it in different directions i don't know i mean i guess victor frankenstein didn't necessarily want his creature to have free will but then it just kind of did that was kind and that's kind of a question that comes up later of like do robots have souls that's brought up in exactly one line of dialogue and then right they're like we're actually not equipped to handle that and they're right um do robots have souls does flubber have a soul no one asks that and that's a problem except for us so we're out here doing the important cinematic discourse that is absent from the world.

Yeah, exactly. Okay. Exactly. Exactly. Anyway. So Philip inventing this substance makes him miss his wedding so now wilson the rival man is there to make a move on sarah because she's all like i'm through with philip and he gives her a ride home and we're like oh no marcia gay hardin already has no self-esteem let's not make this worse

i can't wait to talk about that i'm just like does she have like a sibling does she have like a friend like is there anyone in her like we've all been at a low point sure in terms of like i'm not asking for what i need in a relationship but this is just egregious she needs someone in her life to intervene i know it's not funny you know what slubber is sentient slubber should could and should intervene should have been like dr sarah you know you're a brilliant woman with your life ahead of you why are you settling for someone who keeps i'm just imagining like oprah why isn't oprah in this movie does also i feel like if dr sarah watched a single episode of oprah she would be like whoa i need to i need to stop accepting less than what i deserve

you know who would have been a perfect already character in the movie who would have talked her out of marrying philip is wee. She would have done it for selfish purposes but Weebo should have been there being like Sarah you can do better. Yeah I work for the guy but he's not a good romantic partner. Go find someone else. Weebo goes a very different way. Weebo

says I'm gonna ruin your marriage. I feel like is it implied that she just never reminds him that it's his wedding? And also that's on the assumption that someone needs to be reminded that they're getting married which means they're not invested enough in their relationship but like i'm sorry i'm just like he's just so absent-minded though he's absent-minded i feel like he just maybe is a lifelong bachelor it's all good like if you're not wanting a real if you were like work over relationship every time then maybe just you need a certain kind of a relationship or no relationship but i'm not seeing the compatibility i'm dr phil i'm not seeing the compatibility. She seems like she really like wants an engaging

relationship. You're not wrong. I just I tried to view her as like, if she were my friend, what would I do? And you would simply be like, don't marry him. Stop trying to marry this person. They're not they're ill equipped. You've tried twice already. It's failed both times. Don't keep trying. You're so sad. Like, you're so sad about him. Let's just, like, he's ill-equipped. We've got to move on. We're in Medfield.

The city's swarming with romantic prospects in Medfield, Massachusetts. Maybe. I don't know. I've never been. So, okay, let's take a break before we go any further because this is going to be an episode where 90% of the episode is recap

so let's take a break and then we'll come right back to keep recapping Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia.

I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption 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. and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session. 24 hours.

BPM 110. 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it.

That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams.

Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I felt too seen. Um, dragged. I'm NK, and this is Basket Case. So I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown. I was crying, and I was inconsolable.

It was just very big, sudden swaps of different meds. What is wrong with me? Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies. On Basket Case, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in. Because if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of conditions that are pretty hard to live with. But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place will tell you there's something wrong with you. And it will call you a basket case.

Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. And we're back. So where are we? So Philip has missed his wedding. So he goes to Sarah and he's like, I'm so sorry. But I was just too busy inventing flubber to be at our wedding and then he shows her flubber and she's like i honestly don't give a shit about

flubber we're through now meanwhile how many i mean we've all been there we've all we've all been stood up for flubber i do love his angle coming into this scene and his angle is like no no no no no no no no i know i stood you up at the altar for the third time but it's because flubber and she's supposed to be like oh oh okay so she does stand up for herself here and then there's another trailer moment which is robin williams throwing himself directly onto his spine from a third story window i was just gonna say he that would have broken his spine would have been a fatal accident but there's a i mean that's part of i like that's a, that's kind of a part of like the like 60s movie, 90s movie dissonance, where in the 60s, I'm sure it looked so cartoony, goofy that you're like, oh, this is a cartoon basically. But when you see it with like more updated effects, you're like, oh that he he would have died well unless i will say i did have

difficulty paying attention to the absent-minded professor when i was watching it but i'm pretty sure that moment doesn't even happen not that specific moment but the stunt that's like the stunts to me the stunts i saw like looked faker i guess because it was just like an older movie but in the 90s i i mean maybe this is controversial but i feel like for the most part the effects while there's too many of them they mostly held like flubber i have no notes that's lord of the that's my lord of the rings for 97 like the cgi the practical effects yeah pretty decent the only thing that really like bumped me is like whoa those effects look old were some like cgi geese flying in the sky yeah

yes those looked really fake but the flubber i'm the flubber dancing i was like well color me impressed who am i to say how flubber dances this is the only way i've seen it yeah i that well they did have an 80 million dollar budget and i think like 70 million of that went to animating flubber in 1997 money like hold on i'm gonna crunch some numbers you please i feel bad i'm slowing down the recap so much today um i'm gonna convert no flubber money no this is important we need we need the adjusted for inflation oh okay wait oh wait i'm there i got a website that's like you do the math no thank you who are we professor brainerd i'm like do we get a first name for him uh yeah philip philip oh yeah who am i phil brainerd i don't think so okay 1.62 i'm doing a math problem it would be 129 million

dollars in today money that's wow so much embarrassing that's such a big budget for for flubber animation well you know the scene is iconic to the flubber mambo no less all right so meanwhile will wheaton is suddenly in the movie and you you're like, sure. Sure. He's 25, but he's 15. He's a student of Philip's at the university. Oh, so he's like 20. Yeah, he's like probably 20. Oh, wow. But he is flunking his chemistry class.

So his rich dad, Chester Honaker, sends his goons to Philip's house to kick his ass. We're not really sure, but they don't get a chance to do anything. That was another question I was like, what were they going to do when they arrived at Professor Flaubert's house?

They were wearing dark clothing that made them seem like they were going to try to rob him for grades i didn't know what their angle was but yeah well the scene right before that is like well he has principles but anyone can be bought for the right price basically so okay are you going to go bribe him doesn't seem like it it seems like you're going to go try to beat the shit out of him right but whatever they intended to do they don't get to do because this is when philip is doing more experiments with flubber and he's rubbing flubber all over golf balls and bowling balls which end up hitting the

goons he has so many sports balls for his experiments at his house uh it's like you're the worst scientist ever why aren't you in like a legitimate lab you're not measuring anything you're not like everything every experiment he does he's like not using the scientific method at all well it fully implies that whatever he's doing with flubber the university does not have any interest in funding because you would like that was another question that i had about story logic where is he like doing the first draft of flubber at his house then he has to apply for a grant to do like is it an academia issue or like, but he already works there. And apparently he's going to get married to someone who's like higher up.

Like, couldn't he ask? Possibly the president. He could he could ask her, like, who should I ask for funding about Flubber? Maybe. But well, Jamie, they're not on speaking terms because he forgot to go to their wedding for a third time but this is my other question if like so he it seems like he's been working on Flubber for maybe a little while like he like that's what Phil and Weebo have led me to believe is that he's been working on it for a bit

so we're to believe that his work he doesn't discuss with his fiancee at all even though it would actually be really helpful because she could probably help him secure funding to do what he's doing yes which then led me to this theory which is every this is okay every time professor flubber doesn't marry marcia gay hard and does she just say i'm not speaking to you here's the next wedding like does she just not speak to him between weddings he doesn't show up at because i don't understand why he wouldn't tell her about flubber until after he missed the third wedding right it seems like she would be interested in it, which is later confirmed when she's interested in it.

Yes. Yeah, right. Yes, this all tracks because he already has most of the formula. The only thing that he needed to figure out was like, oh, I need to introduce like heat into the equation to like, whatever to have some reaction reaction and that's what ultimately invents flubber so he'd been working on this for who knows how long he had never told her about this ridiculous again this is another red flag for dr sar, well, you were working on like sentient goo and you didn't even tell me if if a romantic partner of mine was like, by the way, I made flubber.

I my reply would be, what do you mean, by the way? Is there no transparency? Yeah. Why were you keeping that whole process a secret? I thought you were cheating on me. I mean, while you're at home making flubber with your robot and then i would dump them which they also don't cohabitate which i think sometimes happens maybe that was more of a thing in the 90s where you wouldn't already be living with i feel like that's almost a carryover from the 60s probably of like yeah i guess you get married

and then you move out of your the house you grew up in or something i don't know i was yeah i was like that's like kind of unusual by today's standards but i don't i don't remember 1997 maybe that was something that happened but even so it seems like they weren't on speaking terms before the wedding and then and this is like getting nitpicky i'll admit but they both go to work the day of their wedding don't you people usually take the day off and it also implies that they're getting married on a weekday which also really rarely happens they are getting married on a friday evening at 6 30 at 6 30 p.m i don't know that much about wedding culture granted but what i do know is that you usually get married on a weekend day a saturday maybe a sunday so people can come so they don't have to people can come

work right and that you can just have the day off and enjoy the festivities that the friday at 6 30 i at first was thought that was a writing mistake but then I thought about it and I think it's not a writing mistake. And it makes me really sad. I feel like that's third scheduled wedding logic where you're like, I don't care when it is. I just want it to happen. And you can see there's like 14 people there. It's a very small wedding. And it makes you wonder how many people

were invited to the first wedding versus the third which makes you wonder how many tens of thousands of dollars has been wasted on all of the like deposits and all the people you have to book the caterers the flower people the everything i just have to repeat john hughes wrote this movie like and he adapted and and in the so neither of us have watched the original all the way through but based on everything i know about the 1960s version it's less of a movie and more of a series of episodes of like here's what happens with the absent-minded professor he does this and then it kind of ends and then this happens and then that kind of ends and then it's this and then like i don't think so at least from what i the chunk that i want or

like the three quarters i watched it was like a fluid like movie yeah god i mean the clips i saw i was like these seem like three different movies i mean but i guess that that's what the 1997 movie is too it takes a slight like act three of the movie like well first of all i think maybe the 60s version is better written because like the whole basketball game the whole like villain with the rich guy that all gets introduced almost immediately which does need to happen right story logic wise well and also there's no like robot there's no robot it's just it's simply a dog and you're like well that make that's a movie that's a kid's movie it's someone and it's a dog instead of someone and it's their tortured robot assistant that's in love with them.

Like that change was a change. The big difference with the absent- I keep wanting to call it the nutty professor. That's not the same thing. The absent-minded professor is that later in that movie, he tries to sell the flubber technology to the government yes so a bunch of stuff happens there and then meanwhile the bad guy the rich guy who's evil like tries to trick him and like so there's slightly different plot points there but generally it's like yeah it's like a pretty standard

cohesive movie that doesn't feel that episodic uh and that is probably again better written than flubber because that script is a mess it's not good but it's structured like right that's i don't yeah i don't know and john hughes took the original like by all accounts from the like context i was able to find there's not that much written about you you know it's bad when you can google the name of a movie and then the word buzzfeed and there are no results that's how you know you are you were you were addressing lost media but bill walsh randomized name for me but he he co-wrote mary poppins he did like the 60s live action disney movies basically is what he was famous for writing and so he wrote the original script and i guess that john hughes like officially took his script

and they were like john hughes rewriting a bill walsh script wow this is going to be so good and then it just like got hornier and it wasn't good right what I will say the absent-minded professor while the collective 15 minutes I watched bored me out of my skull and oh yeah you want to leave this earth it at least like wasn't horny there's a noticeable absence of horny why is the children's movie so horny it's so horny like that for me i just don't understand yes yeah we'll talk about that yeah as soon as we somehow this is the recap is the episode in a way yes in a way um okay so the goons show up they get fought off by the flubber balls they get hit by the bowling ball right would have been if you're watching the movie tell me like it wouldn't be funnier if his head exploded and one of the goons

simply died of flubber related causes that's by the way the goons the goons are played by and i didn't bother even to look up the actors names but it's there i didn't know who they were it's buffalo bill from silence of the lambs yes is one of them and then the main prison guard from shawshank redemption is the other one unbelievable how did they i mean i guess they're like john hughes movie 80 million dollar budget robin williams disney you're like this all sounds like things that people like but then unfortunately it is flubber and then it's wow that's so cruel also i wanted to shout out the uh the character actor who plays Martha in exactly two scenes. Yes. Who is apparently Martha Gay Harden's only friend in the world

and is too afraid to tell her that she's in the most toxic relationship of all time. But it is iconic character actor Edie McClurg who is in everything. If you feel like you recognize her from something, it's because you probably do she was i remember her in uh i remember her in ferris bueller's day off she's in that i remember her in i think yes she's in carrie oh i remember her from planes trains and automobiles she's in a

scene where steve martin says fuck like a hundred times in a row because she's like playing this customer service role so that's also a John Hughes movie so she's in a bunch of John Hughes movies okay so she's John Hughes canon yeah so he brought her in for the but she's first of all classic stock best friend character

where the only thing we know about her is that she is the leading lady's best friend but unfortunately the second thing we know about her is that she is the leading lady's best friend but unfortunately the second thing we know about her is that she is the worst not a good friend not um the first thing we know she's a friend the second thing we know she's a bad friend and that's all we know yes also i'm sorry like dr sarah if again if i'm putting myself in dr sarah's shoes if my triple fiance who keeps not not being my fiance because he won't show up to a wedding yeah if my triple fiance can't remember my only friend's name i'm not gonna marry them like i'm just not you know right he doesn't even remember her name and it's supposed to be like haha he doesn't even know

her name he's so absent-minded and you're like this is not working just like no this is a bad person don't marry we need to get like marcia gay harden out of here we got to get her out i know all right so back to the recap right so. So Philip. It's been an hour. It's been an hour. Yikes. Philip figures out how to make his car fly using Flubber. And then he flies it over to Sarah's house to win her back. But she is already canoodling with Wilson, which really upsets Philip. He throws an apple at his head yes uh meanwhile back at philip's

house weebo creates a hologram image of a woman i think with the sole purpose of seducing philip but the twist is i think it's actually jody benson's body which is like doesn't make it better it makes it i think even weirder i know but yes she goes on some it looks like the it looks like the um thing that share has at the beginning of clueless yeah i thought that too she creates this all a hologram image of this woman and she's about to like surprise kiss philip in his sleep but before she can he wakes up and he's like wait a minute i got it i can use flubber to influence the results of the basketball game because there's this basketball game that's happening surprise between there's like medfield and rutland where

wilson works and he wants to do this because Wilson was like, if my team wins the game, then we have to go away for a weekend together, Sarah. So Philip's like, well, I can't let that happen. I can't let the other team win. I have to use Flubber so that Medfield wins. Ah! This scene is so pointless that it like makes your body hurt yeah it's also a huge

component of the the absent-minded professor 60s movie yes right i knew that it was like a big thing in both of them but in both of them you're just like you're just like why i think it has a purpose in the first one but in this one it's just like a really long scene yes so then philip goes and sprays liquid flubber on the team's basketball gear and then he goes to watch the game while the game is happening weebo is back at home and lets flubber out of its container cue flubber mambo. That's when that scene happens. And then we cut back to the basketball game where Medfield College wins.

Right. But Sarah is still like, no, Philip, I'm hanging out with Wilson. So he goes home and confides in Weebo about how much he loves sarah which weebo records and then she goes over to sarah's house to show her all of the gushy stuff that philip was saying and sarah is touched so she goes back to philip and she's like i'll take you back and then he's like look here's my flubber car and she's like this is how we can save the school so then they go we should say the movie that is set up for us should end when they get back together that's where the movie for me i'm like okay so at the beginning of the movie right oh no i keep forgetting about the wedding at the end she forgives him okay, we'll get married again.

It's a bad plot, but with the plot we're given at the beginning, it's like, I had no more questions after that. There's no more. I mean, the loose end tying up is like the fact that you included a robot and made them horny, but that's kind of on you. The whole like, but that's kind of on you the whole,

like, but what's going to happen to the school? It's like, Oh wait, I never fully understood that. Yeah. Stake. Uh,

and I don't care and I don't care about like, it seems like the, that's the other thing is like the like goons that are sent to the house are taken out by Flubber. And then it was for me sort of like, all right, cool. Yeah. They're gone. Resolution.

They're like, guess what? They're back. You're like, why? That the third act is so it was so rough. It was really hard to pay attention. Here's why. It's because and they don't do enough to to properly set this up or explain it. But the evil rich guy has loaned the school money so that he's like, I'm going to collect on my loan by stealing flubber. So then that's why we still have this like tension of him trying to like take the flubber and like all those stakes.

But that should have played out before Philip and Sarah got back together. I feel like. Yeah, because you're right. Because once that tension is resolved, we're just like, OK, cool. The movie should be over. The only thing that was unresolved for me that the movie doesn't even resolve, they instead murder the character, is that like, oh, you know, know like weebo is the driving force that gets professor flubber and dr sarah back together but doesn't that you know hurt for her because she has these strong feelings for for professor flubber so what i thought might happen because

i don't remember how this fucking movie ends i'm like oh like webo's gonna have to have this personal reckoning of like well how where do i go from here as as a as a robot where do i go you know like the i've accepted that this is not a relationship that's gonna happen for me but instead that doesn't happen. She seems to immediately be like, oh, well, I know it was killing me before and I canceled multiple weddings on purpose, but I'm over it. And then she's killed.

Yeah. Another example of a woman who's in love with this mediocre man and then just like... It's literally her for two-year-olds like it's oh the movie her right movie her if it was for someone who was zero years old if they were like okay so computers and humans could they fuck let's discuss and then like flubber flubber arrives at, no, they can't. But just in this case, I mean, it's possible.

Again, you're like, maybe. I knew this didn't happen because I was like, I would have remembered. But maybe Weebo could go date another guy, a human guy. You don't know. But obviously she doesn't do that. Instead, she's killed. Instead, she is killed. I just can't get over the fact that webo is murdered murdered and then we're supposed to care about it but i could not even begin to make myself care about that moment

because we about like we're still kind of mad at webo right because webo has done a lot of fucked up stuff and yeah i'm rooting for no one right except for kind of dr sarah who i'm like i just need her to like you know get a therapist or like talk to someone who's gonna like be like act with some self-esteem right but i don't feel anything for professor flubber because he's like a narcissistic jerk who doesn't care about anything except Flubber. That's who I'm rooting for. I'm rooting for Flubber. I don't know what Flubber wants and what they're trying to do. I want Flubber to get whatever they want uh i'm not rooting for weebo because weebo is is oh like also very selfish and doesn't

care what is going to make professor flubber happy she just wants what's going to make her happy and then she surprise kisses him via astral projection and i don't like that and like so i'm not rooting for weebo dr sar Sarah has is kind of like too big a project to take on so yeah you're just kind of rooting for Flubber I feel for Dr. Sarah but I'm rooting for Flubber the whole Weebo thing is

so it just like made my head hurt I totally forgot about the whole Weebo love story and the fact that it is not just unresolved but killed it's such a john hughes thing for me to be like i don't know what to do with this female character let's get rid of her like let's see ah you know i don't know well why don't we take another break and then come back to finish the recap.

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. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project.

All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session. 24 hours. BPM 110? 120? She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not.

What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people.

There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams dream sequence is a new horror thriller from blumhouse television iheart radio and realm listen to dream sequence on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts i felt too seen. Um, dragged. I'm N.K., and this is Basket Case. So I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown. I was crying, and I was inconsolable. It was just very big, sudden swaps of different meds. What is wrong with me?

Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies. On Basket Case, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in. Because if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of conditions that are pretty hard to live with.

But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place will tell you there's something wrong with you and it will call you a basket case listen to basket case every tuesday on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and we're back all right where were we um the disaster of a third act of this movie oh my gosh yes so sarah and philip get back together and then they go to ford to sell the flubber technology weird spawn in the movie you're like oh really but that was the first movie too is also a ford car you're like what yeah right american industry is dead get over it but chester the rich bad guy he's mad at

philip again because the whole loan thing or something again it's not clear but he sends his goons to philip's house to steal the flubber and in so doing that's when they kill webo but webo has uploaded her consciousness onto the computer and then a daughter of webo is created we bet or something i feel like we are in this episode we are kind of analyzing things in real time wow i mean the weebo death i was like wow the weebo will i did not remember and i was like That video, she's so horny. She's like, oh, Professor Brainerd. Ariel the Mermaid. And again, I'm like, Dr. Sarah, are you really like, yeah, seems cool to me. Like, oh, your robot was murdered.

But it was so horny. And he's like crying yes also there is that okay one of my favorite bad line exchanges in this movie and again it's like no just i love robin williams no disrespect to him it's not his fault that this movie sucks he's doing everything he can but there is that there's that line where after it seems like dr sarah has dumped him for good and he comes home he's like me me me and then he he says like this is just you and me now webo it's just us and she's like uh and then he says and flubber makes three and then i just was like i watched that exchange so many times because and flubber makes three i'm like i can't write like that that's genius that's and flubber makes three that's incredible

back to the will the will is so horny and again the story logic she's like okay so first of all it's another example of like professor brain professor flubber only has toxic relationships in his life he has a toxic like relationship where he's like mistreating his triple fiance dr sarah and then he has a toxic relationship with with weebo but it's kind of like more on both ends there because weebo is also like deceiving him and hiding yes from him at every turn and you're like this is double this is you know there's it's there's two parties in this situation where i feel like dr sarah is kind of more squarely a victim of the relationship but weebo is like oh yeah i copied all my data and i never told you and you're like who programs a robot to do that no like i can't think of but again okay professor flubber's big problem is he gives he gives all of his creations too much free will which also begs the question if he has invented a robot with like he she's ai he has

invented artificial intelligence how has he not sold that technology to save this school how has that not been something the only thing he put in it was google calendar and disney plus that's the only thing that's in the robot is it has two apps it's calendar and disney plus and neither of them work uh but it can fly but it can fly and it has its own thoughts and feel it experiences human emotion it falls in love with a person but then it only can play clips of dumbo like it's so confusing that but like yeah no weebo is shady as hell like she's she's like oh by the way i copied all of my data and i never told you also i've been this i've been i've been jody benson the whole time but you just didn't know and And I'm so horny.

And she looks like a Kate Bush music video is what she looks like in that. Oh, with the outfit she puts on? With the flowy. I'm like, this is like full Wuthering Heights. Like, what is this? But what she says is, first of all all i never told you i copied my brain which is something as the creator that you would want to know she copied her brain on an emergency disc a floppy disc yes a floppy disc yeah and and she implies that she's had like digital zero and one sex with his consciousness because

she's like i made a copy of my brain but i took out all the parts that are like weird and random and i replaced them with parts of you which to me says it's their baby she made a baby right which they do refer to her like the new weebo the little red weebo as their daughter so and then they raise her i'm like i'm i don't know i don't know i was just like i was maybe i'm being a little hard on weebo but i'm like weebo deceitful to the very end like yeah by the way i'm pregnant and you sure i'm dead but i'm pregnant and you have to raise it with marcia gay harden i'm like what and now flubber makes four and flubber makes four because now and then they they like gender flubber at the end because they're they make

flubber like the brother kind of they're like i'm not sharing a room with flubber he's stinky you're like what i i just can't believe i just can't believe the like from that on i'm like i don't even know where we are so so she dies but she's pregnant she dies but she's pregnant to raise the baby you have to raise the baby and here's the schematics for the baby right he also just happens to have an updated newer looking little red webo robot that that consciousness gets uploaded into i guess i can't even handle it yeah it's it's no good okay so we're almost done with the recap we're at the climactic sequence so philip and sarah go to chester to get the flubber back and wilson is also there and somehow for some reason sarah is surprised that he's

a bad guy and it's like do you not have any judge of character at all Sarah? I'm just like what? I mean I'm like I just wish I could talk to Sarah I wish you were real and then all the goons

are there so this big fight breaks out but Sarah andip have put flubber all over their hands and feet so they're you know bouncing all around they're punching the bad guys flubber goes through wilson's digestive system out of his butthole and that's the final like woo we won that's iconic and then they're like yeah the enemy once the enemy poops flubber out his butthole that's how you know you won

you won the battle's been fought and you lost so they win and they save the college and then Philip and Sarah finally get married but they get married remotely because he still can't be bothered to show up for the wedding. I had to rewind.

I'm like, there's no way he didn't show up. And he's in his basement like a mile away. He's right there. It's ooh, ooh. And she has to kiss her daughter she's to kiss her daughter who's the who's the baby of a robot that was murdered and you just want better for her you want better for her she has a pattern where she is with this toxic person and this toxic person just begets toxic robots toxic everything i just i couldn't believe he didn't show up at the wedding at the end it's like furious i was so mad

and flubber makes four flubber makes four and then and then here's what i wrote um and then they live flubberly ever after. The end. Sorry, that's the police coming to arrest you for what you just said. Oh, ACAB. I can't. This movie. Okay. We've talked so much already.

Yes. Some lines that stick out to me. Flubber could save this college okay that i love do it for weebo that's great uh this line when after sarah and professor flubber are back together we're going to sell you the flubber okay that's a line that they say to the rich guy yeah oh what else is there and flubber makes three of course so many iconic lines i think oh and i was also going to say that should we should just try to introduce that into like the lexicon of this podcast of like when the villain is defeated they have pooped out the flubber they pooped the flubber and then the movie is over

they oh i can't he says something like oh mommy and then he poops it out he goes oh mommy you know what that's another iconic quote he says oh mommy poops out flubber yeah that is something that happens oh you gave flubber too much free will that's another so do you have any notes on flubber no perfect i actually i thought i would but then i didn't i'm oh sorry i meant like the character flubber like flubber i thought was gonna i thought that they were like gonna miss pac-man flubber and they were gonna put a lot of gender coding onto flubber but they really the only example of that i could find was when flubber dances with flubber the flubber mambo yes the flubber i mean oscar-nominated in a just world. Right. I already, in the time we've been recording this, have tweeted it at Super Yucky and I'm getting them to consider it.

Wow. That's just called efficiency, baby. But it seems like they were trying to put on some gender signifiers onto flubbers. Yeah. Flubbers. Multiple flubbers yeah flubbers um flubbers where they put a kind of a skirt a dancing skirt onto flubber but i would say even that you know flubber is such a genderless entity that really any flubber could be wearing the skirt and while i would say that probably whoever wrote it wasn't was probably in a more gender normative 90s mindset. I don't know that for sure.

So in that way, Flubber is a gender fluid icon. I agree. I think that there could have definitely been, because a lot of things that, especially of this era and before this, and even there's residual things after this, where something that would not be gendered at all

would never be assigned any gender will still be given gender signifiers and this even happens in like a lot of animated movies where like animals are the characters and they find ways to be like well the female character even though the female and the male of this species look exactly alike you could not distinguish them has long eyelashes and a bow long eyelashes and like a bust and like hips sausage party yeah that yeah like like weird animal titties that don't actually exist there there's a great old at this point but like an anita sarkeesian video that like breaks down this whole phenomenon of just like adding egregious gender signifiers because no reason literally just to do it right which i

honestly thought i i was going into this with my 1997 brain thinking for sure that was going to happen with the actual Flubber more, but then it was just done with Weebo instead. Yes. But Flubber, you know, the Flubber itself, iconic. Iconic. Still. Justice for Flubber.

There, I said it. All the Flubber. All of the Flubber. There, I said it. All the Flubber. All of the Flubber. There was one time when Flubber made a fat phobic kind of joke where Flubber made fun of a butt. And I didn't like that. I noticed that as well. And Flubber really needs to get right in that way. Yeah. needs to get right in that way yeah so there i mean it wasn't it wasn't completely flawless but

it honestly i thought that the the the actual flubber not the movie flubber was going to be there was going to be way more to talk about but i kind of don't really have that much to talk about i really just have like weebo and dr sarah same so kudos to flubber the character you go flubber i love the mambo flubber seems to be able to reproduce asexually yeah because flubber is replicating itself over and over again but i wouldn't say that the flubber isn't horny so for me it got like the flubber did seem to be i'm like the flubber reproduced asexually we saw but i also feel like we saw the flubber kind of getting like you know like stimulated by the other flubber so there are some questions about the reproductive habits of flubber but also i'm like i'm such a prude well also it begs the

question is flubber an organic material or is this inorganic chemistry is this organic chemistry or inorganic chemistry we still don't really know yeah and it really you would think well i don't know does does too much free will imply sexuality maybe we just don't know i don't know i mean because professor flubber never made it clear what the ingredients are in too much free will we may never know we will never know the flubber is kind of just like a scientific miracle and i hope that the flubber gets emancipated from professor flubber much like again and i'll draw that i frankenstein parallel again uh-huh you know i frankenstein got away from professor well he killed professor he killed he did kill him uh he killed him and what if flubber killed professor and then got away and then waged the war of gargoyles versus demons

i love i appreciate it so much um if flubber did kill professor flubber that would not be a children's movie but it would be a movie i would watch yeah and maybe he doesn't deserve to die but he certainly is not worthy of a relationship with dr sarah dr sarah i mean i don't i've maybe i've already said everything i need to say about dr sir i just like again and it's like we've been having a a flubber load of fun in this episode but from a writing perspective this is like just a really poorly written female character that it doesn't seem like was written that much better in the 1960s but it's just kind of stunning how passive she is and outside of like the joke slash point we've been making of like she clearly has no support system to like advocate for her and she's not able to advocate for herself but it's like

john hughes is writing this this is not a real person you know like right there is even a version of this script that goes exactly the same way i still wouldn't like it but like dr sarah doesn't really even stand up for herself one time the one time she stands up for herself it's to be like i'm breaking up with you enough with the flubber but then she just goes back on that and and also the the way that what's the villain's name the guy who shits out the flubber what's the villain's name? The guy who shits out the flubber. What's his name? Oh, Wilson. Wilson. The way he treats her is also really coercive and gross where he, I mean,

where he literally does like a mission statement where he's like, I'm here to steal your girl and your flubber. And like, and your flubber too. And your little flubber too.

Your little flubber too. I'll get you, my pretty. And your little flubber too you're a little flubber too i'll get you my pretty and you're a little flubber too that shouldn't be that funny um but he i mean the way he treats her and the way she responds is it's a very coercive situation but in a way to me it was clear that the writer wasn't really aware like he knows that wilson is bad but he doesn't know how to write the response so i just i ended up like feeling badly for her in that situation too because it was hard to tell is she interested in him but she's not but then she is but then she's not and it seemed like she was just appeasing him to end the conversation but it didn't seem like that was what the movie i wasn't sure what the movie thought here's my read of it because like you said the one moment

she stands up for herself when she like puts her foot down she's like we are through you failed to show up for our third wedding so i can't do this anymore it's like god that's already the line first of all right it's like wow that's like after the first wedding he didn't show up that's when you draw the line maybe but whatever you're it's your life so she puts her foot down she breaks off the relationship and then that's when what's his fate wilson swoops in she somehow does not notice that he is a sleazy piece of shit because she just does not have any awareness of the world at all and this is because of this trope that we see a lot where I think a

lot of male writers of screenplays think that women are so just like desperate for the affection of a man she will just get engaged to the first man who pays her any attention so when wilson comes in he's like well i'm here now yeah let's kiss and she's like well okay and then and then when and then when he turns out to you know he doesn't show up for the third wedding well three strikes and you're out mister as far as weddings go and and then the first guy that shows her attention after that she engages and like yeah she's like well we're in a relationship now i guess and you're like marcia gay harding you're the president of a fictional college like you know you're a woman

in a leadership role right like you're a woman in academia you're like there's just no reason that her logical choice would be so like anyone like she's a really smart and i don't know it's and i and i understand like where there's a lot of women in leadership roles who still struggle with self-esteem i get that i just don't think that the writer is thinking that hard about it it just seems like a generalization of like she's a woman over 30 she's desperate to get married like that was more how i read that choice yeah exactly or there's another reading of that where we're we're supposed to think that they're genuinely in love which brings me to a point that we didn't we didn't touch on yet which was the like most mind-numbing character explanation for me in the whole movie where i don't even remember which rejection oh i think it's like after the basketball game where professor flubber comes home and he's like she don't love me because

i stood her up for a wedding three times he's like no she doesn't love me because I stood her up for a wedding three times. He's like, no, she doesn't love me. She likes the guy. And then Weebo seems like she's about to confess her love and be like, let's have sex right now, Professor Flubber. Take my astral projection body. But then he says, and I didn't write down the quote i should have something akin to well you don't understand weepo i am so absent-minded because i love dr sarah so much and you're like that does not make sense that does not make your that is the most gaslighting to your own robot shit i've ever heard it's like no it's i keep forgetting about our wedding because i'm just thinking about

how much i freaking love you and it's like yeah no dude you're thinking about flubber like we see what you're thinking about and you're 25 8 committed relationship with flubber studies like you're not thinking about sarah that's the whole problem the whole infuriating start scene where like his google calendar is like mary sarah and he's like i don't know i don't know haircut flber? And you're like, oh my god, we know you can read. What's happening? Yeah, I wrote down that this is a story about a man who loses his fiance because of Flubber and then uses Flubber, the reason he lost his fiance to begin with, to try to win her back. And it's just like, you're. And it works. You're supposed to be a genius. How is this your logic?

Right. And then the fact that it does work is just like, this is the worst writing I've ever seen in my life. It's so frustrating. Yeah. And then the fact that like, he doesn't even apologize to her, really. Like, Weebo starts to feel guilty, which she should, by the way. She keeps intentionally sabotaging the wedding. Although, again, he shouldn't be forgetting the wedding.

He shouldn't need Weebo to remind him he's getting married. That said, if he needs Weebo to remember and she's not doing it because she wants to have sex with him, that's not good. Either way, Weebo starts to feel guilt because she has too much free will. And she goes to a Bechdel cast passing scene with Marcia Gay Harden. Because she's like, you know, whatever. I'm accountable for this. She's like, no, look. Also, she's like, no, look.

I'm secretly filming Professor Flubber at all times. That's right. From multiple cinematic angles angles and here is him and here is him saying this totally irrational explanation of why he keeps missing the wedding which is that he's absent-minded because he loves you and marcia gay hardens like oh i forgive him and you're like that is not not only is that not just not a good explanation of what's going on it's also he never apologizes to her or like he sort of kind of does and passing me like oh i'm so glad we're past all of that like and now you can really focus on what matters which is

flubber which was the problem like i just don't get it not only does he not apologize he never even just tries to talk to sarah about what is clearly relationship problems that they are having he never yeah it's like if he were an adult he would be like look i know like here's some flaws that i have i'm so sorry i'm gonna work on being better but the only thing he ever does is just be like here let me show you how much of a genius I am let me show you how good I am at flubber and that's gonna save our relationship it's just like no I'm so good at flubber you don't understand baby baby baby baby like you know when a guy is like flailing and he's like baby baby baby no come on come on just a lot of soft bees so you're like stop um he's

like that but with flubber uh which has a couple soft bees in it i it's uh i felt i felt so mad when she and then also the like why does i mean this is a convention we've talked about a million times but this is just so uniquely bizarre why does everyone want to have a a kiss with professor flubber while he's asleep they're like you know it's like when it's the same it's the same logic that will eventually get us an all-female reboot of flubber which is like what if we just do the same thing that we did that everyone hated but we flipped it and you're like no one wants that like what if we kissed an unconscious male and it's like that's not what people were asking for actually uh please and somebody because weebo is always citing Disney movie references,

she like to show her intention of what she wants to do with, I think her name is Sylvia, the like hologram version of her. There's like this little clip of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves that plays where you see Prince Charming kissing an an unconscious snow white and she's like yeah great idea i'll do that too and it's just like and then the only that's what happens when the only thing you install on your emotionally intelligent robot is disney plus it's commentary she's gonna start wilding out with some irrational behaviors okay what was that shirley mclean movie that she kept watching and then like that was the thing that made her realize that oh i if i love him i need to let him go

kind of thing i don't know i was wondering that too and then i was like wow we're so young we don't even know what this movie is i don't know let me look up some shirley mclean performances and see if we can guess. Because there were a few, I'm guessing that they had to license a few things. I don't know what Disney owned at this time because I'm like, they own The Simpsons now. I don't know if they did then. Who knows?

I don't think so. They use a Mickey Rooney clip. They use a Shirley Temple clip. They use like a few old Hollywood clips. What do you think it was? Was it Shirley MacLaine? Was it Terms of endearment maybe she was i think would have been older by that point was it it wasn't the apartment i think i've

seen that one no because that movie's in black and white steel magnolias no she would have been even older i don't i have oh wait terms of what is terms of endearment maybe that is right 1983 deborah winger shirley mclean i don't know there's someone out there screaming at us from home being like it's this movie i don't know the only thing i know about terms i haven't seen terms of endearment but i know that karina longworth talked about it on last season of you must remember this and that's all i know when you said terms of endearment i thought the thing that came to my mind was steel magnolias so i don't know the difference between movies we're so young and that's honestly killing us um yeah i haven't i don't know what that was but i also that was my first like everything i thought

was going to happen to the flubber in terms of like aggressively forcing gender stereotypes onto a character that it doesn't really make sense would be this heavily gendered happened to webo instead where we had a version of this conversation in our her like thing where it's not it's not an irrational writing decision to make an assistant programmed tool to have a woman's voice and I know a lot of the time it seems like oh well this is a win for women but it isn't because the reason that it that like Siri has a female voice or like you know all the Siri knockoffs is because we're, you know, at a young age formed to think that women work in service, you know, like care roles. And people are more comfortable telling a woman what to do than telling a man what to do. So that is why all your robot voices are or most of your robot voices are

defaulting to female and then there's a bunch of examples of like when it's a science like when it's a science assistant you'll hear a male voice and like why is that and it isn't like off the wall that weebo would have a female voice because you would assume Professor Flubber is more comfortable telling a woman what to do than a man, which we know because he keeps disrespecting women the whole movie. But then there's the other robot, Weber, who seems to be doing only domestic chores. And I feel like that robot was coded male. I think so.

But also, you can't really tell because weber never really talks i don't think it doesn't really have an arc where was weber's are where justice for weber come on justice for weber yeah i don't really know what was going on with weber other than he was a vacuum cleaner um but it but he was gendered male i think that they use he him pronouns towards weber who is a vacuum cleaner why did we gender the vacuum cleaner so many questions uh there um yeah but like the fact that on top of like the semi-coherent choice where again her is not a movie i like i think it's a fucking i don't like it kind of movie but at least the the like assistant was made with a like female coded personality and it's made clear in the movie why that is happening right yeah in this movie it just happens and then she's also given all these like human female 90s stereotypes.

Right. That is like, did he program these? He doesn't seem to be emotionally intelligent enough to know what any woman is like. He literally says, I wish I understood human beings. I wish I understood women. I wish I understood emotions and passions. I wish I understood any of that wish I understood emotions and passions. I wish I understood any of that. So how,

end quote, it's because he just keeps knocking over this like court of free will. He's got in his basement. I'm just like, you know, the fact that the fact that the first thing we see, you know, we bow with,

I don't know why I thought her name was Phooebe listeners if there's another robot assistant in a movie called phoebe i was shocked that her name wasn't phoebe but maybe my brain was just like phoebe it's the same either way the first thing we see where she's on her own she's like crying at a romance movie right it's not you know it's just like it's a lot of it's a lot of coding and then when you consider who her programmer is you're like how did this happen exactly how long has she existed for like is this something she's developed over time like yeah does she get smarter as she does she like develop and grow independent of her programming? There's a lot of questions.

I don't know. I feel like they're like, okay, so the viewers of this movie are four years old. And they're Jamie and her brother is crying. And they're going to be like, okay, so we don't need to really worry about Weebo's arc. And they're like, no, kill her. Do whatever. She won't remember. And they were right. And I feel like that is like people will be like,

Caitlin, Jamie, why are you analyzing Flubber so deeply? This is a children's movie. You know what? First. And in this case, normally I would say, well, doesn't media formulate how you view the rest of your life? But in this case,

we did not remember any of the problematic elements. so the answer is i don't know well we didn't remember them consciously maybe but maybe we did subconsciously what if i have been i'm like what if i was watching okay devil's advocate maybe this happened to a listener let us know you're watching flubber and then you're like oh my gosh every toxic relationship in my life is because of flubber like i have been stood up at the altar three times three times several times and i didn't realize it was because i was just chasing this unrealistic ideal of Professor Flubber and Weebo. And Flubber makes three. And Flubber makes three. I'm just never going to get over.

That's another shirt I want, just like that part of the script. And Flubber makes three. I'd buy it. I'd wear it. I honestly thought that Flubber was more of like a cult movie, but it's kind of not. I think it's just kind of like people remember robin williams saying it's flubber flubber right well my other counter argument to it's a movie for children is that there are many movies for children that are a million times less problematic and better written and some of my favorite movies i.e paddington paddington 2 moana etc well there's even like problematic

children's movies that stuck with me more and i still think are better like right we have whatever you can listen to the little mermaid episode but even in terms of like the canon of jody bentz in children's movies would i ever unless i was like making a joke choose flubber over the little mermaid no like never because the problem is here that more people would be negatively affected by the toxic messages of the movie flubber if flubber was a good movie but since it's not i think that generally the the negative effect was kind of neutral but maybe if it was good like the little mermaid is a good movie with a lot of bad messages and that is why so many people carry so many negative messages from it flubber is a bad movie that no one remembers what happens in it

so but a lot of people did see it grossed enough people almost 180 million dollars worldwide at the box office in 97 money which adjusted for inflation is five billion dollars this seems like this was a thanksgiving movie it was released like around thanksgiving time yeah i think mid november bring the whole family to see flubber and i guess they did i did i was there um this movie sucks so much like but did i have fun watching it yes well the other okay so the other going back to weebo the not the weird one of the weird things about her is that she is so she's rife with all of these like women be desperate women be lying and deceiving women be shirley mcclain's all that kind of stuff but she is still the more active female character than sarah sarah is so passive weebo is far more active but everything she's doing is deceitful

so it's just like what is the takeaway i'm supposed to be rooting for we like i think that we're supposed that i can't suspend my belief to be rooting for Professor Flubber or Weebo. I think that they both need to work on themselves. And I really need to send a long email and be like, I can't be your friend anymore because this is just becoming too much. And the way you're treating Professor Flubber isn't okay. And the way Professor Flubber is treating treating professor flubber isn't okay and the way professor flubber is treating the people in his life isn't okay and i just need to remove myself from the situation and dr sarah and i are going to get an airbnb this weekend and just talk things out

like that's what martha should have done but we don't know anything about martha um yeah no i this movie really wants me to empathize with webo but webo is acting like a 12 year old which maybe she is i don't know i like it's just a very junior high revenge tactic to me and astral projecting to surprise kiss someone that's new for me in a movie but i don't like it but i've never seen it before i've never seen that uh-huh we've seen astral because there's there's moments in like blade runner 2049 there's moments in oh i you act as if i seen that movie get a grip there's moments like that where they're like okay let's make out with a hologram but yeah i don't think there's ever a ford movie probably it happened

but there's not uh most of those kisses seem to be consensual so yeah this is i think maybe a rare instance of uh a non-consensual hologram kiss so whoops yeah so that's not good and then it happens also in real life and neither time is there any consequence the first time it happens he's like i had a dream about basketball and the second time he's like oh goody my ex-girlfriend broke into my house and kissed me and now i'm so happy and now we're gonna get married a fourth time and you're just like i'm not gonna show up to that wedding either get me out of this movie. And I'm not going to show up to that wedding either. Get me out of this. Yeah, literally.

And he isn't. It's like, get me out of this movie. Get me out of this world. Did you have anything else? Two last quick things. OK. Phil is like, hey, Weebo, come into this flying car with me. And she's like, no, flying makes me sick,

even though she is a flying robot. Yeah, I was like, don't you fly all day, Weebo? And then she's like, I'm sick. And he's like, you're a robot. And she's like, oh, yeah. Oh, right. The other thing I wanted to say was Flubber clean energy, question mark. Yeah.

Oh, my God. Wait, that's a way better application of flubber than a basketball game yeah flubber seems like renewable clean energy although we don't we don't know for sure we don't really know what went into the making of flubber literally like elon musk the story down to the toxicity and lack of understanding of how to treat a human being that Professor Flubber has. This is the blueprint. Elon Musk sees Flubber in theaters and is like, I could do that. Yeah. I could be cruel to women and any employee I've ever had. Yeah. And then and then also make electric cars.'s his flubber tesla more like flubber let's not do that it's a flubber i wish that there was a flubber toy also this was

such a moment for like 1997 is such a moment for like goop in children's entertainment you got slime you got flubber you got gack remember gack i remember gack and it's a cycle too because it came back a couple years ago as like slime that you would make at your house and that like child youtubers would be like i'm making slime and it's like what okay kids love goop i get it i remember getting gack for my birthday once and being like, oh my God, a whole egg full of goop. Now my parents spent $8 on like, that's too much for goop. Flubber expensive. Do you think that Gwyneth Paltrow saw Flubber and she's like, there are other applications to this?

Yeah, the implications of this technology are just unbelievable. I'm looking up Flubber toys because I would get one. You'd buy a Flubber? I would buy a Flubber. Well, don't email P. Brainard at medfield.edu asking to buy some Flubber because he won't respond. God, what an asshole. Honestly, toxic to the very end. There are Flubber bean bags that the disney store made

and there is of course 500 million people on ebay trying to get rid of that happy man meal toy with flubber wearing sunglasses there's also oh my god there's also a what the hell there's a talking weebo wait that's what what there's a talking weebo listen i pre-quarantine i would be like i would never get a flubber toy but guess what i bought a babu frick and it's in my house and i also tried to buy i don't know i don't know if it's ever coming it seemed like it was kind of from a suspicious vendor but something caitlin you sent it to me is something called green baby because i don't think they can call it baby grinch without paying royalties right but i mean in a way flubber another green baby a listener sent us that link actually so and i'm so

sorry i don't i don't shout out remember your handle but shout out to the listener who made us aware of green baby aka baby grinch the toy and honestly i have to say i think i just gave a random person 30 dollars i just don't think that my feeling is that green baby isn't coming i will be it will be a christmas miracle if green baby gets here in time for me to watch Baby Grinch with it. We'll see. Your heart will grow three sizes that day. My heart will explode out of my body and I'll die if Green Baby gets here. It would make me so happy.

But I don't know. Well, and Flubber makes three, anyone? So the movie does pass the Bechdel test as we've discussed between oh yeah sarah and webo that quick exchange the remainder of that conversation is them talking about phil so that doesn't pass and then sarah and martha also talk but i think they only talk about the impending hetero wedding yeah that's coming up so i don't think any of those exchanges pass jamie if we have a nipple scale that we have to oh no this movie on zero to five nipples based on how it fares looking at it through an intersectional feminist lens sure uh you know what five five flubbers i don't know i i guess i

would give this like a nipple okay because i don't think the movie i mean i guess I appreciate any story in which a man is largely motivated by a woman. I feel like although I mean, it annoys me when a woman is largely motivated by a man. Right. In a movie. But I don't mind the flip of that. Right. Because I think men normally aren't characterized that way so when you do see it i'm like okay that feels sort of like a subversion um although everything that he does to try to

win her back is ridiculous and ill-informed and he needs to go to several hundred hours worth of therapy to learn how to be a better partner right because he also does like he the one time he attempts to communicate with her he just ends up spying on her instead right so that was that was a double disappointment was like oh it's like oh he's gonna go try to communicate with her but then he instead spies on her and then never talks to her and drives away in his flying car immature right and just the way that sarah seems to be characterized as just being so desperate for the attention of a man that she will just be with any man who is paying attention to her

and weebo is characterized as just being also obsessive with the only man she knows to the point where she's lying to herself. She's lying to him. She's lying to everybody about it. It ain't right. But I don't know. I guess one nipple for reasons I don't even know about. I don't know why. I don't even.

I mean, i'm tempted i'm i guess i'm gonna say like a half um but i like do have a bizarre unexplained i mean i actually i can't you're gonna hate this i can't explain my attachment to the movie and you know what it is the flubber i love the flubber i love the flubber i love when the flubber dances i love when the flubber bounces around and breaks things and scares people i like when the flubber is caught in the glove i like when the flubber dances the flubber mambo i like when the flubber is caught in the glove i like when the flubber dances the flubber mambo i like when the flubber lives happily ever after and i love when flubber makes three do you mean flubberly ever after in a way yes i so this movie i mean the redeeming part of flubber is the flubber um the story is horrible the story is maybe one of the worst um it is at least i mean i guess the argument that you can make is that it's like not a male protagonist that is openly

disdainful of women but just kind of extremely dismissive and careless and i would assume all of his relationships but we only see his relationships with women i can't imagine that it's like he would have a male friend who he would be really attentive towards that doesn't really make sense to me but we only see him mistreating his partner and mistreating well i don't even i mean and something something weird robot relationship uh he has a toxic relationship with his robot and then we also see a heavy gender coding on an aerial the mermaid robot who is i mean she's suffering i feel for her in some ways but also she's like not nice and she is not an ally to other women because she keeps bucking over dr sarah who did nothing nothing nothing, nothing, nothing. If she's going to love anyone, she should love Weber,

the other robot. He's right there. He's also a robot. You're probably more compatible. Why don't you try to have sex? To be fair, we had nothing nice to say about Weber. We didn't think. We're just like, what? He's just a vacuum cleaner. Also, there was more. She doesn't need to date Weber,

but just Webo needs to take the L or search just yeah, we both need to like take the L or like search herself. And what she really needs to not do is die in a blaze of glory and then tell someone that she's pregnant. So I'm going to give it half of one nipple. And then also like what happened with Martha? She was a bad friend and she was disrespected by the plot she

wasn't even at the wedding well i mean to be fair it's the fourth one it's true she's like i've been to the first three i'm not coming to another one that's i mean maybe that's just her establishing boundaries that are like maybe kind of healthy uh true she's like listen i'm not you're wasting my time i have an e-harmony date did that exist in 1997 um in any case yeah in any case or match.com i don't know what the 1997 dating site was it was like i think it was still not very online was it i think it was but it was like the period of movies where i wonder when those movies started when it was like if you dated online everyone in the movie would be like no no don't do that and then three years later they're like i get like i'm taking three dicks a week from the internet um in any case that was that has nothing to do with this movie i give it a half nipple but i'll give it five flubbers also i don't think there is a single

person of color on screen at any point in the entire even in scenes where there's like there you're on campus and you see like extras and stuff i think every person is white which we should have mentioned sooner um in our defense this is a john John Hughes movie, so it almost goes without saying that it's going to be very white, incoherent, and toxic. Yeah, this movie isn't good, but its saving grace is the one thing that John Hughes didn't make up, which was Flubber. Flubber Forever, I just put a Flubber toy in my eBay cart, and Flubber will be getting to my house on Tuesday. Incredible. Well, that's our Flubber episode. I think you'll agree that it was necessary and good.

I'm like worried. I hope everyone in the world, everyone in the U.S. is doing OK this week. I also hope that we're doing OK this week. I mean, who knows? They're, you know. We, yeah, we don't. We, again, don't know what the results of the election are at this time of this recording. We record like a month in advance.

And that's just self self-care yes so that's flubber that's flubber hey here's something i'd like to plug of my own oh yes go ahead i do a new instagram live show called movie talk with caitlin it is derived from a facebook bit i did for a while back when i still used facebook but it's an instagram live show now where me and a guest uh jamie you've been on it i've had several friends of the cast on it at this point as well but it's just me talking about movies with people there's no preparation that i have to do beforehand there's no uh post-production work i have to do afterward it's just a fun little time so check that out follow me on instagram to be able to watch the show you can do that uh follow me at

caitlin dorante and i have a little thing to plug as well. Please. I have a podcast coming out called Lolita Podcast because I couldn't think of another thing to call the podcast. It's coming out right here on iHeartRadio. It is a deep dive into the story of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita

and its cultural impact in all the ways it has been twisted to get global culture to take every single wrong message from the original work. So that is going to start airing on November 23rd and that there's going to be episodes

airing into the new year. And it is a project that is very interesting and is actively ruining my mental health so check it out sorry to hear that it's fine it's actually really interesting jimmy you should watch a movie talk with caitlin for a palate cleanser i should i do i will great um and then you can follow us all the regular places on bechtelcast. Follow us at patreon.com slash Bechtelcast for $5 a month. It's our Patreon, a.k.a. Matreon.

And you'll get two bonus episodes a month. And it's Mary Kate and Ashley November for some reason. I insisted. Let's see how it goes. And you can get our merch at tpublic.com slash the Bechtel cast. And most of all, just take care of yourself. Take care. Engage in mutual aid.

We will always keep you updated on everything there that we can. And get yourself a Flubber toy. You deserve it. You deserve it. And also live Flubberly ever after. And Flubber toy. You deserve it. You deserve it. And also, live Flubberly ever after. And Flubber makes three. Bye-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. 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. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

New episodes every Thursday.