The Bechdel Cast - How Stella Got Her Groove Back

Episode Date: September 24, 2020

Jamie and Caitlin take a trip to Jamaica with special guest Kenice Mobley to discuss How Stella Got Her Groove Back.(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @kenicemobley on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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The patriarchy's effin' vast, start changing it with the Bechdelcast. Hello and welcome to the Bechdelcast. My name is Caitlin Durante. My name is Jamie Loftus. And this is our podcast. It is. You know, wait, I want to actually, let's start this episode with a quick call out. Okay.

Because I went to our Wikipedia page to see what number episode this was going to be. And our Wikipedia page, someone stopped updating it. Aww. It's been left in June it's just June she whiz I know so I feel lost but we do have wait let me figure out their Twitter handle oh yes yes who um who very generously uh made 500 charts. Yeah, so it's on Twitter. Their handle is without gorillas. But it truly is really fascinating.

We reposted it to our social media, but it kind of just breaks down every aspect of our show. Like truly every aspect of like, how has Caitlin rated movies? How has Jamie rated movies? What is the breakdown of like directors by gender and by race and just basically a really interesting look at what we've covered so far that was genuinely helpful to us so shout out truly some like incredible work that is genuinely like informing and helping our show so yeah thank you so much and um but you know wikipedia i don't know who who we genuinely we never knew

who was keeping our wikipedia page up to date but thank you for all of the work that you did and i think it's a beautiful tribute to our show all the way through june 2020 incredible anyways welcome to the show welcome to the show this is uh the Bechdel cast in which we examine film through an intersectional feminist lens one movie at a time and we use the Bechdel test simply as a way to initiate a larger conversation about representation but Jamie what's the Bechdel test okay I do know the answer okay i'm ready it is a media metric originally created by queer cartoonist alice in bechdel sometimes called the bechdel wallace test uh that requires that a piece of media do the following and we have altered it

slightly for the purpose of our show um so two named characters of a marginalized gender must talk to each other about something other than a man for two lines of dialogue it doesn't usually happen in a movie not enough not enough have you seen austin powers sorry i have our wikipedia page up and just pulling from you know uh there's a lot of movies in which it doesn't pass we use this as a jumping off point for discussion we don't spend the whole show trying to figure out if it passes the bechdel test imagine how boring that would be i think i think someday we're gonna pivot to that that would be a fun april fool's episode is just going through a script line by line that is like the shawshank redemption and be like what about this exchange what about this one nope

between two men still no uh well today's episode i think will you know not to spoil anything but i think it's gonna fare okay ish as far as bechdel test specifically goes but there's a lot to talk about because the movie is how Stella got her groove back and a popular request a popular request and of course we have a guest joining us she is a comedian she is one of the co-hosts of Love About Town podcast. She's a host of Complexify on Vice. And she is our first ever fourth time guest of the Bechtel cast. It is Kaniece Mobley. Hello. That makes me so happy. I didn't know I was the only fourth time guest. Suck it, other guests. You other guests can kiss my ass.

I'm a fourth timer. Next time I'm on, I get a smoking jacket. That's how this shit works. We're doing it. We talked about that. We talked about that last time. Yes. We did. It's important that they know.

There's a jacket on the way. Yes. I feel validated and i don't know why i vindicated but i'm gonna go with that too oh yeah you should you should feel those things hell yeah congratulations it's so good to see you it's good to see you too man this is not important to the podcast at all but i do love your sweatshirt very much uh it is when bong joon-ho won for best picture right yes yes it's uh oh quick quick shout out caitlin and i were just talking about it uh this was a sweatshirt made by one of our favorite companies super yaki it was a collaboration they did with karen han who's like this amazing writer who is so funny

and yeah so they just made a bong joon-ho sweatshirt and it's my prized possession that's so cool it's really good um and that does a little bit to foreshadow an upcoming episode we're doing on parasite yeah i strictly choose outfits based on foreshadowing future very strategic stuff going on here my all my t-shirts are um flashbacks to past episode because past episodes because i have uh several josie and the pussycats t-shirts i have several titanic shirts i have several paddington shirts i have several star wars shirts i have jurassic park shirt i have a several back to the future shirts i have an indiana jones shirt i'm really just i have too many graphic tees about a lot of toxic movies not all of them are toxic movies but

too many of them are among us doesn't have a shirt or two referencing a toxic movie i thought that you were saying that the shirt you were wearing at this moment was a reference and i was like deep deep blue sea she's just wearing a blue t-shirt but i was just like oh god what is okay sorry that's on me makes you think you know maybe it is though could be could be blue is the warmest color maybe we're overdue for that episode so oh yeah um okay so kanice what is your relationship with how stella got her groove back so everyone in my life saw it when i was early teens or no like late childhood whatever you call that tweens yes uh everyone in my life was seeing it when i was a tween and my cousin moved down to St. Thomas, I think, after reading the book, not watching the movie.

My mom went on this very dramatic vacation where she bought several bathing suits for it. She went to St. Thomas. So it was like a big thing that people were talking about. And any time anyone dated a younger man, it was like, oh, she's getting her groove back. So I didn't see it until this year, but it was part of my world for 20 years before that. Sure. Have you read the book at all?

I have not read the book. I am so interested in reading it based on the background that we discussed before this recording happened. Which we'll talk about. Yes, yes, yes, yes. A little bit later. Caitlin, have you read the book?

I haven't read the book. Okay. As you know, I never read books. Well, this is the part where we at the Boxable cast famously remind our listeners that we do not read books. We don't read books. I still think I'm, I still carry so much trauma from how mad people were after the Lord of the Rings episode I'm like we are not a book podcast

I don't know what to say people were furious at us a few people were furious at us too for the practical magic episode there was a book just read the book there is a book who knew we had to do an episode every week we can't be reading a book who knew we have to do an episode every week we can't be

reading a full we don't have to there's a free podcast we don't like just take it or leave it oh my god it stresses me out so it stresses me out so much so just so you know we didn't read the book did not read it but i agree that they're re-watching the movie made me want to read the book. Jamie, what is your relationship with the movie? This is, I think I have this experience with a number of movies we've covered before. I've seen this movie, but I saw it on TV, like TBS or TNT in chunks. And I never really sat down and watched this movie and really like took it all in at once. So this is my first time really like giving this movie my full attention.

I knew I was like five when it came out. So I did. So I don't remember. I know a lot of people like my mom saw it. I text her. I was like, did you see how Stella got her groove back? She's like, oh, yeah, it was a bit. It was a night out with friends. I was like, OK see how stella got her groove back she's like oh yeah it was a bit it was a night out with friends i was like okay oh chill yeah just loves a rom-com and this is you

know we're in the golden age of rom-coms here so yeah i this was my first time kind of really seeing it with full attention and i really loved it it it really, I mean, I'm easily emotionally manipulated. And this movie did take full advantage of that at many points. But I loved watching it. It's such a fun, different, cool movie. What about you, Caitlin? I had never seen this movie before prepping for this episode. I'll chalk it up to if you take the event diagram of romantic movies either like

romantic comedies or romantic dramas because this movie kind of falls somewhere in the middle of that it yeah it it switches tones at different moments yeah for sure uh that on like one circle of the venn diagram and then movies that Caitlin tends to watch and enjoy. There's very little overlap. It's Titanic. Titanic is in the center. Yes. And it's maybe like Moulin Rouge.

Interesting. And Before Sunrise. and before sunrise and then every other romantic drama or romantic movie really of any kind um is you know i just probably haven't seen it or don't care about it so i had not seen this movie so i didn't really know what to expect there's a lot to unpack there's a lot to talk about i can't wait it's there's some goofy there's some really silly scenes that I can't wait to describe. And I'm very excited. Can't wait. Can't wait.

Should we just, should we dive into the recap and go from there? Yeah, a lot happens in this movie. A lot happens, and yet there's sort of not a plot. Caitlin thinks it's too long. It's too, it is too, it's two hours long. It is, I'm gonna agree. For a rom-com, for what? Yeah, condense all this.

Yeah. It's pretty long. Definitely ways to tighten the story. Make it 90 minutes. Don't know why it was two hours. Okay, so we meet Stella. That's Angela Bassett, of course. We see her at work.

She does something with stocks or money or business. And then the twist, Victor Garber. Victor Garber is there. Did not remember he was in the movie. How Stella Got Her Groove Back comes out in 1998. Weren't you just in titanic the year before this victor and he's like yeah he's like i sure was any questions if a movie involves water the ocean the a planned trip that goes awry he's there he doesn't even need to be near the water he just has to be in the movie but he's there in spirit yep yes point is stella has kind of like an important high stress job and she's

very good at it then we meet stella's sisters angela played by suzanne douglas who i'm not super familiar with her or her work um but her other sister is vanessa played by regina king such a funny regina king performance yes she's been doing this for so long she's so good i'm big fan big fan the other sister wow i mean you'll get to this with the recap but what a bitch okay she is uh worth noting that she is highly gregnant in this film she is gregna with twins with two gregs two little gregs swimming around in there um okay so her sisters especially angela is trying to set stella up with a man and stella's like i'm okay I'm okay. I'm good. We also learned that Stella has an 11 year old son named Quincy and he goes off to spend a couple weeks with his dad, Stella's ex-husband, Walter.

And while he's gone, Stella sees a commercial for Jamaican tourism and which she kind of like projects herself into the commercial. And then she's like, fuck it. I'm going to call my best friend, Delilah played by Whoopi Goldberg. And she's like, let's go to Jamaica. And Delilah is like, yes.

So then cut to there in Jamaica. And I think it's their first morning there. Stella is at a restaurant having breakfast. And suddenly Taye Diggs is there and restaurant having breakfast and suddenly tay diggs is there and he approaches her and he's like hello good morning my name is winston shakespeare and she's like okay great name yeah great name great name um which she's like your name is fake and he's like well what if shakespeare was black we don't know which is a very popular theory and it comes up all the time it came out like this there was another like wave of that this past year

oh really wait i hadn't heard this before oh wait no maybe this year it's uh it's it's often discussed that shakespeare is black and that beethoven is black maybe that's what happened this year i think the beethoven one came out this year the shakespeare thing i remember just generally as a thing it's a a wash in that he was part black. Maybe the chick he wrote the sonnet about was part black. It's, yeah, it's all good. Oh, interesting. I'm going to have to do some reading on this.

Hell yeah. In any case, Winston is hot. Big plot point. Very important. Extremely important that we know that Winston is hot. I did write that down. I was like, I just need to say Taye Diggs. Damn.

That's all. That's the note. Yeah. He looks great. This is like his like career making role. Right. This was like his big breakout role. His first feature.

I think. I think so. Like he had already done in Rent on Broadway or something before this. Yeah. Like mostly stage. Oh, yeah. And then that's how he had met Id something before this. Yeah. Like mostly stage. Oh yeah. And then that's how he had met Idina Menzel. Right.

Right. Right. Also, I should say that my first year of being on Twitter, which was like 2009, 2010, I spent the entire first year just trying to tweet at Taye Diggs to get him to follow me. Why?

Because he follows everybody. He follows more people than follow him. He has like. Some celebrities are just like, what is the strategy there? Yeah. There were like articles written about it. I don't know if anyone remembers this this but like people were writing and like commenting all the time about how like people are like what is Taye Diggs doing on Twitter he just will follow anybody he just so he was following tons and tons of people and they

weren't you know that some of them were people with like no other followers like he was just following anybody so I was like I need him to follow me so I was just following anybody. So I was like, I need him to follow me. So I was just constantly tweeting either at him or about him trying to get him to follow me. And it never happened. He's to this day. Wow. He only follows people who like don't care. Yeah.

I was trying too hard. I guess. I don't know. You could have just sat still. And now I'm like, does Taye Diggs follow? He doesn't. There's no way that Taye D follows me but maybe he does you never know that's true i think i think we should listeners please help us all get followed me kines jamey we all need to be followed by tay digs and we need your help so please there's also okay so there's another

tay i just there's i saw tay diggs recently on television because i shamefully watched selling sunset and tay diggs is a very present force on it's like a netflix reality show about this group of horrible women who sell real estate in like off of sunset so it's just like full like remove your brain from your head tv i i enjoy it time to time it's very silly but tay diggs is on the show buying a house in the first season and everyone's like is the central plot of the whole episode is is Taye Diggs gonna buy this really nice house and then I forget if he does but then in the next season and the next season Taye Diggs is not physically there but is present because he seems to have had such a big outsized influence on season one of Selling Sunset that in season two or possibly three his ex-girlfriend

or his current girlfriend at the time I don don't remember, all of a sudden, she's a cast member of Selling Sunset. What? Oh. I don't know why Taye Diggs has such an influence over what happens

on Selling Sunset. He has permeated that show more than you'd think. He's a mystery, that Taye Diggs. Anyways, I'm a big fan. Oh, good grief okay so the point is that in the story he is attractive and he is 20 years old

and stella is 40 and they figure this out right away because he starts to hit on her and she's like how old are you even and he's like i'm 20 and she's like cool i am twice your age also an amazing example of like so infrequently do women get to play their own age on screen and angela bassett is permitted to play her age in this movie it's i think that's like so rare and awesome yeah meanwhile tay diggs is a little older than his character i think he was 26 27 26 27 when he when this movie comes out at least i think so anyway uh he is not bothered by the age difference and he invites her to this like pajama disco party that's happening that night and she's like um thanks but no thanks

but then she goes to the dance and they dance together all night but she doesn't spend the night with him and Delilah uh Whoopi Goldberg again is like Stella why didn't you have sex with him like what are you doing you silly so andand-so and Stella's like I don't know he's like 20 years younger than me I don't know what I'm doing and then the next day Stella takes a dip in the pool and Winston's like hi I'm here again we got a Buscemi test this movie yeah yeah although have you seen pictures of a young Steveve buscemi i feel like yeah yes i have and you're like okay i'm listening i get it yes mr man who's followed me to a pool tell me more yes well in the movie when she's like this pool scene danny glover was in the movie and all

his scenes get cut but remember the part where she's like help me there's this like old man over there trying to hit on me that's danny glover what yeah did not know but they cut everything out except for that kind of like wide shot where you can't even tell that it's also because he's like in old makeup they like aged him up to make him look older um so you can't tell that it's him but anyway they cut all of his scenes so she's like this old guy is trying to hit on me and he's like well so am i and she's like what you're trying she like someone doesn't know how does she not know you just danced with this man for six hours in a row when he when you

arrived at the pajama party he stared directly at your breast for a while before looking into your face to talk to you and you're like but you're attracted to me what oh it's so rom-com though it's so 90s rom-com where like the female lead is like me it's like duh yes right even though i mean when they met he like comes over to her and he's like let's have breakfast together you're so beautiful yeah come to this party with me yeah and the moment they meet but she is like not aware that he is hitting on her because she's like wait you want to be intimate with me and he's like yeah and she's like okay so then cut to they're in her hotel room and she okay i don't know how to describe this foreplay that happens but it's like it's awkward

at first and then he thinks she's like in her bed all under the covers lying completely still so then he takes off all of his clothes but surprise she's behind him so she like jumps on him and then they're like woohoo yay and then the weird scene but you're like it's hot but it's weird yes Yes. It's goofy. And then they have sex. But then, and I was getting a little confused by this because it seems like he kind of blows her off. Or she interprets it as being blown off because he very suddenly gets a job. And he's like not available to hang out with her the rest of this vacation. I mean, I kind of interpreted it where she didn't believe that he had gotten the job.

And so she's like, I'm being blown off. And he made up an excuse to not hang out with me. Yeah, that's what I thought she thought. Yeah. OK. It was like an insecurity thing. But he did get a job. But he did get a job.

Yeah, he wasn't lying. I think she assumed that he was making up an excuse to blow her off. But I do have a quick question. Yeah. She's staying at a job yeah he wasn't lying i think she assumed that he was making up an excuse to blow her off but i do have a quick question yeah she's staying at a resort why is he at the resort great question good like he's there for breakfast he's not working there he's just he he has a hat like he lives with his family kind of close why is he there why is he there i thought that too i did not think that well he does say at one point like i'm here trying to get a job so i don't know if he's just sort of lingering by the the resort because he ends up getting a job in the kitchen as like a chef

yeah they're like well you seem to be here a lot so would you like a job that seems like something my mom would suggest though like for how to get a job. Well, have you tried just going there, hanging out, see what happens? They're bound to do something. You're there. Yeah. I mean, that's how a lot of comedy clubs like they're like, oh, well, if you want to get booked here, you just have to spend your entire life here. And then we'll maybe think about booking you.

Maybe. But there's a guy named josh that you gotta see him he makes people laugh so much so we're gonna book him but not you right ever remember comedy okay um so anyway she's like she's pissed that that she thinks like she's being blown off and she goes back home to San Francisco where she gets fired from her job. She's like, now what am I going to do? But then she gets a call from Winston and he's like,

I miss you. Come back to Jamaica. And then cut to, she's back in Jamaica. Very unclear of, I was like, I was like, is it summer?

Like, is it okay that Quincy is, is Quincy skipping school to be a Jamaican? The time of this movie, the timing of this movie is not clear because she's like, yeah, I told Quincy maybe we'd go down for the summer. Wait, when was he with his dad?

How long is their relationship before they're like, we'll get to that stuff. But it feels like this feels all very fast. In California, you can't tell the weather, but what? Right. Right. Especially because like, and yeah, we'll get to this but, like, he moves in with her at one point. And it's like, but you've only been hanging out for two non-consecutive weeks?

Like. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Anyway, so she returns to Jamaica, this time with her son and niece. So she's hanging out with Winston. He introduces Stella to his parents, but it doesn't go well. Like his mom comments on Stella's age, calls her desperate,

stuff like that. And then Stella gets word that Delilah is having a medical emergency due to cancer, which Stella didn't know Delilah had. So Stella returns to the U.S. Delilah dies. Winston shows up at the funeral. And then he moves in with Stella. Like now they're living together. Again, the timeline is very unclear. Yes. Because you get some idea of time when you find out that Whoopi goldberg has been in the hospital for two weeks but then

you're like well what they don't live in the same place so i don't know like you it's very unclear yeah right yeah for sure but he's living with her now and some issues arise in their relationship the age gap is weighing on st in particular. Winston is kind of self-conscious about not being as financially secure as she is. And Stella's just kind of overall feeling sort of aimless about her life and her career. And then Winston asks Stella to marry him. And she does not give an answer. And week or so passes and he's like well clearly i'm not the man you want so i'm just gonna i'm gonna go back to jamaica and go to medical school so he packs his things up and heads to the airport but stella beats him to the airport

we don't know how good driver there's a little okay she's a jet there's a little throwaway line from the radio broadcast where we so we see winston in the cab and on the radio it's like well the 101 is is there's so much traffic so if you're going to the airport good luck but the 280 is the coast is clear so So apparently that lets the audience know that Stella took that highway instead. And that's how she beats him to the airport. Cause when he enters, she's already there.

She's looking around frantically and then they spot each other. And then she's like, yes, I will marry you. And then they kiss. And that's the end of the movie they're gonna live happily ever after i know in my head i'm like it's not gonna work out the stress of him being younger plus going through medical school also are they just giving out admission into stanford medical like she's just like oh my god what yeah she's like just go

to stanford yeah she's like stanford has a medical school right why don't you just go there no application no waiting process no interviews that's like a what yeah that is a testament to the power of angela bassett because when she said it I'm like oh yeah why didn't he think of that when that is objectively so ridiculous yeah yeah we're just like oh yeah that's what he'll do Harvard's got a medical school right that was I was I was as because I forgot if they get together at the end or not and so after they broke up I was just when he's like I'm gonna go to medical school school I was sitting next to my boyfriend and I was like, but there's doctors in America. Don't go.

And Angela Bassett felt the same way because that's what Stella says. Yeah. Well, let's take a quick break and then we'll come back to discuss. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state.

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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 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. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts, separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago, when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks.

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And we're back. Yes. Where to begin with this? I feel like, so, okay, just to, I guess, contextualize when this movie came out, I feel like this movie falls squarely in kind of the golden age of rom-com movies where it's like the 90s into the mid-2000s it's kind of a 10-year period where problematic rom-coms are just several times a year there are many actresses associated with the genre but this is like i now especially after re-watching it i think for all of the silly things that we're going to talk about, of which there are many, I think it's one of the best. And it's one of the most grounded, interested in its main characters, interested in subverting what you kind of think about this genre, while also doing a lot of silly things associated with this genre.

100% agree. Yeah. also doing a lot of silly things associated with this genre 100 agree yeah yeah like there's they she sets boundaries in this movie in a way that i'm like hell yeah like i don't feel like a lot of characters in rom-coms are like actually i don't like you talking to me like this and this is a clear issue and let's have a discussion about it it's like for some reason i made up in my head that you're cheating on me and now we're fighting like it a lot of the disagreements that they have seemed justified in like a we set boundaries oh misunderstanding sort of way yeah right i love that she that's like one of the best things that you you never see if you see a woman in a rom-com set a boundary it's almost as like i feel like it's framed as like a challenge

to cross it and it's a no means yes situation which we see in rom-coms all the time of like stay away from me titanic stay away from me and then he's shows up and then she's like you're right i love you and i don't know i i like that st, by and large, there's a few moments where you're like, what happened there? But I like that Stella is, I mean, not just setting boundaries with Winston, kind of setting boundaries with everyone. She sets boundaries with her sisters, especially Angela. Who deserves it. Who deserves it. But even Angela kind of has that moment of like they have an actual

discussion and angela i was i was like is she going to be like a shrew character yeah but then she has a moment of they have a moment of understanding and apology and you can sort of understand why angela's worried about stella but also it's like why are you behaving so rudely yeah but yeah she sets boundaries that should not be revolutionary in a rom-com but it is especially because i mean i don't know still even how much i would classify this as a rom-com because i mean there are humorous moments yeah it takes a little bit of a tonal shift, especially when Whoopi Goldberg dies. Okay. That did not need to happen.

No, it didn't at all. Not at all. I think that, well, I think it happens because this is kind of loosely autobiographical for Terry McMillan, which we'll talk about more. But she mentions in some interview that I watched that around this time in her life, her best friend died. So I think she just incorporated that into this story. But does it make sense for what else happens in the movie? I don't know maybe not but I mean a lot of rom-coms there's like a very

kind of tried and true structure where it's like either they're usually very hetero so it's like the man and the woman can't be together because they start out hating each other or they're starting to fall in love but one of them has lied

to the other one about something very significant and they'll starting to fall in love but one of them has lied to the other one about something very significant and they'll have to come clean by you know the end of the second act and what is that going to mean for their relationship so these are the formulas so this this movie doesn't fall into that formula at all it's more just like here here's a woman who knows what she wants who's already very established in her life because she's 40 she's a mother and she has her shit together and then along comes winston shakespeare who is just too hot to ignore and and he like worships her and she's just like okay you know what i deserve this i deserve someone who likes me and who cares about me and even though do they have anything in common no they don't they don't but you know they mostly get along and they're very attracted to each other.

So that's why they're together. I guess. Yeah. I mean, whether they are. I mean, it's one of those things where I think it speaks to how ingrained this kind of format is, where it's like even if you pretty much know it doesn't make sense and a breakup between them is probably healthier for both of them. And they basically almost make the practical decision. You would be so upset if they didn't kiss at the end because it's a movie. But like realistically, this would most likely not work out.

But I mean, again, it's like going into the autobiographical stuff which i guess we should just sort of address at the top yeah so um this movie was um based on a novel by terry mcmillan who we have discussed on the show before because she's also the author and co-screenwriter of waiting to exhale she is an icon of this era and now she's still writing. She has like some fun quotes that I want to go to for an interview she did this year. But why her personal life is relevant to this is because a lot of it is pulled from her own life directly where she went on a vacation in her early 40s met a man who was 20 or in his early 20s and they got married and so like she lived out the full how Stella got her groove back narrative

at least and and you know in 1998 this is reflective of her full experience where they get married and Terry McMillan got married to what was his name his name uh Jonathan Plummer Jonathan Plummer so they do get married and as of 1998 they are married and it's all good and later on it became and I guess I guess like I only feel comfortable talking about this because she was very public about discussing it and even as of this year was like yeah no regrets but so it turned out that their relationship was kind of built on a lot of asterisks in that he was a gay man and that he married her to get i mean it was she said and then he sort of said it was to get a green card so their marriage fell apart in the early to mid 2000s Terry McMillan went there's two different Oprah episodes about it it's all very of the era where yeah Caitlin and

I both watched through the interviews where the first episode she goes on oprah and she's like i feel so betrayed i feel like what is happening this is this is like horrible which yeah that sounds like a very understandable experience yeah yeah but she goes on oprah to be like what the fuck and then like five years after that she and christopher or not christopher plumber oh my god I would love Christopher Plummer just you know what you're like trying so hard not to make a mistake and then you just make it the sound of music how Stella got her groove back right there one after the other boom boom his biggest legacy okay about the love story between Terry McMillan and Christopher Plummer? It didn't end well. So she and her ex-husband, Jonathan Plummer, go on Oprah like five-ish years after that in 2010.

And everything is kind of cool, but they discuss their experience. You hear both perspectives. And that's kind of like a wrap on, you know, because How Stella Got Her Groove Back is so so autobiographical I guess that's how it really would have ended but this movie was made in 1998 and we didn't know what Terry McMillan would come to know at a later time yeah right but that said Terry McMillan I know we discussed her on the waiting to exhale episode but she's bucking awesome um she's an iconic black writer who also made the jump into adapting her own work which i feel like is very rare yeah she she adapts it with and we all i'm gonna just breeze through it because we talked about it on the other episode she uh partners with ron bass who is like kind of a controversial white male screenwriter who I don't I mean, make of him what you will, I guess.

He's written a lot. He's co-written a lot of wonderful movies. He seems often paired with a first time or less experienced screenwriter. But he is very, for a straight, cishet white guy, he is very often writing on projects that are about marginalized communities, which I don't know. I mean, he co-wrote Rain Man. He adapted The Joy Luck Club with Amy Tan, who was the author of the novel. And then he adapted Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back with Terry McMillan. There's also a side controversy where it's speculated that all of his screenplays

are sort of written by his female assistants. That's a whole thing. He seems somewhat controversial, but there's not a ton written about him. I wasn't really able to land anywhere it's all a little sus to me sure terry mcmillan at least liked him enough to collaborate with him a second time this is their second collaboration so i don't know let's ignore him terry mcmillan is awesome yeah this is like partially based on her life. Yes.

Hell yeah. Just kind of to piggyback a little bit more on her and her kind of like legacy and stuff. And then we can kind of get back more into the specifics of Stella. I was reading an article from The Guardian entitled, it was just sort of like kind of profiling her. It's entitled novelist terry mcmillan on love death and dirty secrets they describe the terry mcmillan effect uh quote a phrase some used to describe the publishing industry discovering how starved for relatable stories black women are or were which is like very i mean terry mcmillan has written like a few of only

a small handful of movies about like that celebrate like black womanhood and that like celebrate black female friendship and again like i mean we talked about this on the set it off episode where there's only like as far as like kind of more mainstream movies go there there's like girls trip there's waiting to exhale as far as like an ensemble cast of black women like yeah and their story like there's just so little so um yeah i mean and and terry mcmillan and her work has like contributed to what little there is as far as like cinematic stories so we are we are grateful for that um but yeah I mean it does it goes to show how how few of these types of stories there are you know audiences want more and studios keep just not making enough I will say HBO makes stories for black women in a way that I'm like, guys, look how well these shows are doing for HBO. Just yeah, like, I'm not even asking you to be

good people just make a good financial decision. Like, all the black women I know watch TV, if they watch movies, yeah, they go out, they do things, they give money to black stuff. All you have to do is make black stuff. Some of it is not good, but we are still going to buy it. Just like it makes good economic sense because we're like, yes, that is me. Thank you. Thank you. I don't have to mentally put myself in the body of a blonde, thin white woman who's younger than me to have a story. Thank you.

Okay, please give this to me. Yeah. And that's only, I feel like that's been in pretty recent years too with things like insecure and yeah um and prior to that it was just like well let's give another you know white blonde person a show yeah yeah there's a lot of terry mcmillan in the screenplay it's hard to not bring her up every two seconds right but she also speaks to another thing that i think how stella got a group that kind of deviates from your cookie cutter romantic movie from the late 90s um which is addressing an age gap in text at all especially an age gap where the uh woman in the relationship

is older she spoke about this in an interview this year where she just says, quote, nobody talked about it back then, meaning age gaps. And she's like, at the time for women, dating a younger man felt like a dirty secret. And so she's like directly, I mean, not only because it sounds like she got a fair amount of blowback about an age gap in her own life, but also because it's like, well, if she was feeling this way, she guessed correctly that other women were feeling this way. And she'd never seen it addressed in a, in a large way that doesn't bring a lot of, that examines it without like casting shame. I don't know. It's awesome. in particular, where it is deemed as being socially acceptable or more socially acceptable

for an older man to date a far younger woman. Whereas if an older woman is dating a younger man, a lot of people take a lot of issue with it for reasons that are of course rooted in sexism and ageism you know society not finding value in older women society having rigid beauty standards that glorify youth and demonize the natural process of aging uh you know just reasons like that yeah and so in the movie we see you know it's it's Stella is 40 Winston is 20 he has just finished his like four-year college degree in biology he's kind of gearing up to maybe go to med school but he also doesn't know if that's what he wants so that's where he's at in his life whereas Stella is established in her career which she does get fired from later right but the beginning of that I will say is like and I think it's also seen in

Waiting to Exhale there's this of the 90s there's this like respectable black woman and like she's got to be hyper competent and they really like she's on the phone with like three different people she's like telling a white assistant that she needs to go do this and that and the other it is this competency porn that like informs how I was like oh this is how I'm gonna be when I'm 40 oh my god that's like this is what being an adult is uh yeah it's I'm happy that we're moving away from that because that's very hard to both achieve and maintain. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah. But it is. It was nice to see that when I was growing up. Sure. Yeah. And like it is like an unfair standard.

Yeah. Because like, you know, black women can be mediocre, too. Like they don't have to be like you. They don't have to be these like rich, awesome stockbrokers. We can be semi-unemploy like rich awesome stockbrokers we can be semi-unemployed comedians yes we can do it all just show us doing all the things yes thank you oh my god that that scene i was uh i mean i was back and forth on that because i totally see what you're saying there i and but this is also the most i've ever seen a woman do her job and us understand what her job is in a romance movie where usually it's like hi i'm a curator don't ask me why i'm interested in this or how i got this job i'm a curator i'm a baker and it's like you don't know

what their passion is and you don't know yeah i don't but but that that there are two that's a it's a double-edged sword where i hadn't even considered that they're bringing it up not for no reason and yeah and i think there's a whole other conversation to be had about her career and her interests in making furniture um so i won't dive into that too much yet. So back to the kind of age gap thing where, so Winston approaches her. There's never any, like I'm reminded of like an episode of 30 rock where like Tina Fey starts dating a much younger man,

but they're both lying about their age. Cause it's like, Oh no. So she's pretending to be like 30, even though she's like 38 or something. And he's pretending to be like 30 even though she's like 38 or something and he's pretending to be 25 even though he's 20 so there's nothing like that in this story and how Stella got her groove back they are both extremely upfront about their age right off the bat Winston doesn't seem to have an issue with it at all. He learns how old she is.

And he does say some stuff that he thinks is a compliment and it's not a compliment. Because he's like, you're 40? You're too hot to be 40 because 40-year-old people look like shit is what he's saying. Okay, loaded. Yeah. He's like, I've never seen a 40-year-old woman look as beautiful as you. And it's like, I know you think you're complimenting her, but that's not a compliment. Right. Anyway, you don't need to tear down every other 40 year old woman that's ever existed in the process. Right. In any case,

they're both made aware of each other's age right off the bat. And it is something that Stella especially struggles with. She's getting flack from nearly everybody in her life about it. Her sister, especially Angela, is like, you cradle robber. Delilah teases her about it. Although Delilah is also like, please have sex with him immediately. Yeah. She's very supportive in a short term sense at first. Right.

She's supportive of a fling. And then when it becomes a relationship she dies we don't really know because she dies about it it kills her i do i do kind of i mean i think that i don't know there's good parts of how this is handled and bad parts i feel like the fact that the age gap is discussed so much taking the autobiographical elements out of it and just viewing strictly as story the fact to me that they are constantly talking about the age gap has a lot to do with the gender dynamics at play here because we see in movies all the time uh male lead who has a much younger who has a 20 year age gap or more with a female love interest and most of the time it's not even addressed or if it is addressed it's addressed through a joke or some kind of like whatever but it's like it's a non-issue where in those relationships as well age gap is like for

sure i mean i'm like i'm like how does leonardo dicaprio connect with his girlfriends i don't know what do they talk about yeah what did they there's such a i feel like we've i've maybe brought it up before but there's a really funny clip of leonCaprio knowing exactly what happens in season one of Euphoria, and it's fully because he only dates 22-year-olds that watch Euphoria. Oh, God. But he's like, yeah, as Euphoria season one episode five famously said,

I'm like, oh, your girlfriends are so young. Yeah. He's like, my girlfriend was born the year Titanic came out, and you're like, oftentimes, yes. In any case we're i'm not here to like cast a ton of judgment on relationships with age gaps what i'm saying is that it does feel very intentional that it's when there is an older woman and a younger man that it is brought up constantly and brought up to shame her versus i think when

you we see it in the reverse it's like hell yeah dude like right look what you did so that's like a really real thing where we've seen it in like pop culture a ton when it's like they're kind of like othered and like they're cougars they're like predators they're blah blah blah cougar town right do you guys think that she would be as villainized and do you think that some of the plot points of this would go away if he happened to be a rich 20 year old oh because like the thing that initiates some of their fights is like what he can't afford what he can't afford what he's had access to what he hasn't had access to like when she's on the phone talking to whoopi goldberg when she goes down to jamaica a second time she's like he hasn't really done anything and he hasn't traveled anywhere should we just be dating rich

20 year olds i guess is my question it makes you think yeah there is kind of a class thing but also like he's the son of a surgeon so he's not actually poor he just like right isn't making any of his own money really at this point so it's yeah i don't it's weird yeah okay i'm not sure i just want an excuse i have this man on the lot no i'm kidding i no i mean that is like a class is i, can you see you already started discussing it? But like class is a thing in this movie that it isn't. It's only brought up kind of in one scene, kind of where which is a scene I really like where Stella is talking about. Why does she work in the job she wants?

And it's not because it's something she was passionate about she was passionate about furniture question mark but that did feel so tacked on you're like okay sure yeah she likes furniture I've never seen a passion for furniture in a romantic movie before so I guess that's new groundbreaking yeah but I like the scene where she's talking about well I didn't take this job because I felt passionately about it I took it because like my mom was passionate about me being lifted out of poverty and that is a really powerful potent conversation that is really only kind of addressed through the furniture storyline yeah but it is it's like she's she has i mean look at her house oh my gosh yeah that's a nice she has money and

my apartment could fit in her furniture studio and i'm just like wow okay cool cool cool cool you just have my apartment just sitting behind your house unused. You haven't been back there in years. Okay. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. There's a poor people don't really come into play in this movie at all, which is kind of, to me, compounded in the fact that it takes place at,

or a lot of it takes place at a like resort, which are famously exploitative. Oh yeah. Like take from poor people and so yeah class i this genre just doesn't like to acknowledge poor people yeah ever really like for all the things that this movie does right that is not one of them yeah the closest thing i think would be like regina king needs to to borrow $300 because she has a job, but it's a lower paying job and she doesn't seem to be earning enough to make ends meet. Yeah.

But she drives an ambulance, which those are some of the funniest parts of the movie. Someone's being loaded into the ambulance, like clearly having a medical emergency. And they're like, come on, let's go. And she's like, in a minute, and they're like come on let's go and she's like in a minute i'm on the phone i'm like oh regina king is so funny all the time i think she's been funny she can do funny everywhere yes uh but yeah they do kind like they they don't even address it but when when stella goes and meets winston's parents and she's trying to be nice because she senses the situation is awkward she's like oh can I help with anything and the mom very quickly asserts the workers can do that

it was just like this weird thing that's like no no we're wealthy like I and it seemed like she was playing with class in that moment too because I don't think she knows that Stella is like a wealthy person right it was just like it was this weird like let's constantly shift the dynamic so that you are not comfortable and then that the rest of that scene is winston's mom being like you pathetic desperate piece of shit dating my son which brings us back to the the age gap thing we're like yeah jamie you were saying it we're not here to like shame people in relationships that have an age gap no and in fact it's like i'm fully supportive of like they should like if this is a relationship they want they like each other like yeah yeah

who are their families and friends to be like this isn't okay it's just the i think it's just the amount of discussion that's had about it that is what sets it apart't okay it's just the i think it's just the amount of discussion that's had about it that is what sets it apart but that it's like it's indicative of the discussion and yeah it gets talked about a lot in this movie but that's only because it is very much mirroring how society feels about this dynamic of the older woman and the younger man and like stella has been conditioned to think like this isn't okay like uh what am i doing and then winston's just like i don't give a shit like i i love you um so but yeah it's just it yeah it's just interesting it's kind of just worth noting that so much of their conversations are about there's a when he's in

the pool he's like say it a three million times that way i never have to hear it again about how you're 20 years older than me like he keeps trying to like get her to get it out of her system because he's like i don't care as much as you do and she's like ah but yeah it's only because like she is a product of her environment of like living in a society where people don't deem it acceptable for older women to be romantic prospects or to be sexually viable. Even though Angela Bassett is the most beautiful woman on the planet. Like I want. OK, I have six years to get to like she's 40 right like someone's like you look good for 40 she looks

good for all time and I have six years to get to that level if I'm gonna meet like my mental projection of what 40 looks like it is infuriating I just Angela Bassett to me all time like if I would write a movie about myself I

would cast Angela Bassett as me today I just she's if you had the choice you'd be like yes Angela Bassett I want it to look like I can punch someone in the face like with barely moving my fan she's got the best like I just I love her so much okay I'm not gonna skin is flawless her arms her arms her arm shoulder combination puts michelle obama to shame and it's glorious everyone in this movie is unconscionably beautiful like it's just it's a it's rude yeah like it's also i kept getting confused because I'm like Angela Bassett and then also a character named Angela how dare you yeah like don't do that that's rude yeah passive aggressive but also I'm like I guess you know Terry McMillan didn't know Angela Bassett was going to be in it

but she should have yeah she should have yeah the way that people react I mean it's especially that scene with with Winston's mother where that was a scene I didn't like where I know, it's especially that scene with with Winston's mother, where that was a scene I didn't like, where I know that Winston's mom is reflecting the judgment of society at large on relationships where there's an older woman and a younger man. But I also I didn't like how anyone handled that scene, really, because in my head and I I mean, I'm I'm who am I to tell Stella what she should have done but it's like Stella has a young son herself and I felt like there was a meeting ground in that conversation where she's like okay I understand why you would worry about your son I also have a young son but like please consider that your son is an adult and is making choice and like but the framing of his mother is just kind of like truly like a one line of dialogue shrew like character and then we don't even she's never

discussed again like it never comes up right yeah again i don't know who's paying for his medical school right i just what right i'm like did they cut him off after that it didn't seem like it and then after winston's mom completely rails against stella she's like outside and she's like i've never been more humiliated in my life and winston's like don't you think you might be overreacting and she's like no she said all these things to me and then granted like a few seconds later he's like yeah that was out of line i'm sorry like but he's just like um you're overreacting and it's like um no she's not uh let's take another quick break and then we will come right back for more discussion

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early

and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeartTrueCrimePlus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. I felt too seen. 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. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts, separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago, when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today. And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president. One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson.

I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI in a violent revolutionary underground. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer. This is Rip Current, available now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, something I just wanted to bring up briefly because just for fear of sounding hypocritical, because depending on when this episode gets released, we will either have just released

or are about to release an episode on the movie Ghost World. And in that movie, there's a relationship between an 18-year-old girl and a 41-year-old man, I think is how those ages break down and the age gap is brought up more than what i mean to give it the smallest amount of credit at least the age gap is addressed where normally in that kind of relationship it wouldn't even be referenced right and so so in that episode we took a big issue with the fact that like this sexual relationship happens between this very young woman and an older man. Whereas on this episode, I'm like, yeah, Stella, get it. Go have sex with Taye Diggs.

Who cares that he's 20 years younger than you? And I think that has a lot to do with. So if you're like Caitlin, you're being a hypocrite but in my defense um i feel like it has a lot to do with how each of these movies frame those relationships because the the the age gap and the kind of the ages of these characters are all pretty similar between these two movies but the circumstances are different enough where thora birch's character is still a teenager. She's only just graduated high school. She's still taking a high school art class.

Whereas Winston is not a teenager. He's a few years older and more mature. He has finished college. He's in his 20s. Yeah. So I know, I mean, I feel conflicted about this because like on one hand, I'm like, yeah, Stella, like go have sex with Taye Diggs. And I'm like Steve Buscemi get away from Thora Birch yeah I think definitely uh everyone go back to that episode if you want to hear more about it

I I feel the same thing I mean I don't know I think this movie by and large I agree that Taye Diggs is not fully mature but is more mature yeah than Thora Birch's character in Ghost World putting one against the other I don't think really makes sense because they're really different relationships yeah and really different characters who are in different stages of life but in any case yes there's a lot that I like I do like that this movie addresses age gaps and kind of I mean in some that you could view as kind of dismissive of the younger person where it's like there's Coco Puffs in my bed he wants to watch the Lion King there were a couple of things where I was like this doesn't feel consistent where it was like the Coco Puffs in the bed during the call when he's like you should

come back to Jamaica he's very serious until this weird it felt tacked on thing where he's like and can you bring junk food like right and the cocoa puss like all that stuff just makes it like okay you guys wanted to emphasize that he was young but like that that felt very tacked on for sure yeah that that like i was like what he's an adult he has a job he has a biology degree yeah he could why is it i mean who among us doesn't want to sometimes eat cocoa puffs and watch the lion king it's fair i i thought the bet the best way this was tackled was in the movie theater scene where he wanted to see kind of i guess like a movie that skewed very young that was like she did she didn't think was good and then they run into her pregnant sister and her pregnant sister's like judgy husband and friends and they're like

oh did you like that the ending was so sad and stella was like embarrassed to be like i saw this movie for teenagers and they were like oh stella that's wild to me that response yeah i know like who would be like oh actually i didn't see like i didn't see schindler's list i saw my big fat greek wedding and then people are like wow what's wrong with you like how you fall young people see serious movies and older people see movies that are fun yeah yeah i think it was like it was just that they went to a comedy and then her sister angela was like ew you saw a comedy film also that scene is so weird because there's this guy whose name either his name is judge or his job is that he's a judge not sure

but he's judge reinhold judge reinhold is there uh this is the guy who angela had previously tried to set stella up with before who had like called her but then you know it all fizzles out when she starts having sex with tay diggs but he's there and he seems to be with another woman on a date. But he's like, Stella, let's get together sometime. Let's go running. And his date is framed to seem very frigid. But I'm like, no, she's totally right. He's being rude.

He's asking another woman out in front of her when he's on a date with this this other woman yeah weird um yes weird there's there's a few other really silly scenes to me the foreplay scene where like winston like tries to flirt with her by like putting ice on her back and then stella like freaks out he's like i'm gonna go to the bathroom and then when he comes back he sees what i guess she had like deliberately like made it so it looked like she was lying in the bed all covered up completely still and he's like well i better take off my clothes then and then she pounces on him from behind and then it's like all flirty again i was like i'm not sure whose foreplay goes like this. And if it's effective, if it works for you, fine.

But I was just like, what is happening? I definitely felt that is a thing that he read in a book or a magazine. Like, oh, you got to try this sex move. Women love it. And then he did that. And she's like, I swear to God, if you ever in your life. Also, this is a question that you guys are probably asked later but like i know very few 20 year olds now who would have the confidence to be like hey you're a lady and

i like looking at you and we should hang out more even though you're a stranger and i will continue to hit on you even when you say you're not sure about the relationship i feel like the 20 year old guys i know right now have a hard time even with the first part of that. I have never spoken to a 20 year old since I was like 22. So I don't know how they are right now. I don't know what they're like. There's I mean, I think, yeah, for this. It's tough because it's like I want to say one thing but it's like i also you also need to like

contextualize it very carefully because i do believe for this relationship to make sense in the movie you have to have some sort of suspension of disbelief but when i say that i'm not saying that relationships with age gap require suspension of disbelief it's just how this one is sometimes presented to you right that you're just like what like things like why is he at this resort all the time is that even allowed like there's just a lot of little things you need to suspend in order for it to work where and there's kind of like an equally loaded discussion that i've found around this movie of this movie has 49 on rotten tomatoes which is fully ridiculous yeah um and you can just i mean we talk about it all the time but there's so many corny white guy reviews of this

movie that are just like i don't understand it's not for me you want to see this that's not good yeah it must be bad since it wasn't made for me it's the it's kind of the typical bullshit there but i saw a lot of reviews even current um there was like an av club article about this when it came on the 20th anniversary two years ago referring to it as like a romantic fantasy and i feel like fantasy is a loaded term because it is fantastic plot wise that this relationship works out. Right. But I feel like the implication there is that it's a fantasy for an older woman to be cared about and desired and loved by a younger man. So I don't like the way the word fantasy is deployed in this movie, even though I fully don't think their relationship is going to work for the reasons illustrated in the movie. But that's like that's why these two people i don't think would be in a relationship that would function not right every relationship

with an age gap like this yeah no it's confusing it's to me it's like what are they compatible about they don't seem to have anything in common they don't seem to have that much chemistry like yes they're both extremely attractive but like actually when they're on maybe maybe i just don't know how to read chemistry on screen but i'm just like do they even like what i don't know um but the more important i mean they just they don't no common interests what are their interests besides making furniture for stella and having sex with each other and having sex with each other so I think furniture sex I guess I would have just liked to see both of their characters developed a bit more and just in terms of like what what about them is

compatible which would really help me I would I would be rooting for them more if that were the case yeah but either way i'm still like yeah like get into that shower stella with all of your clothes on while tay diggs is naked okay yeah i was like wow so a she angela bassett is one of the few people who can look good while wet like while coming out of water and not looking like a dog that's been like hit in the face that's how most people look when they are wet she looks great when she does it so that's crazy second thing she decides to go to jamaica like the next day they go to jamaica the type of braids that she have takes like 10 hours to do so i'm like bitch what are you talking about that's not realistic at all to me and that she's just like yes i will get my hair wet and okay i right now have braids

these things hold water like you wouldn't believe that she's gonna fuck in a shower and then be carried into her bed and then fuck there like her bed is soaking wet there's water everywhere there's a pool from the bathroom to her room it's a mess i there was not a towel in sight. This is a thing that I could not disbelieve. We see her get her hair wet like three different times in the movie. She's always underwater. It's a very wet movie. Yes, I think that is how people will describe this moving forward. How Charlotte got her groove back.

The very wet movie. I mean, the poster is her in people will describe this moving forward. You know, how Charlotte got her groove back. The very wet movie. Yes. I mean, the poster is her in front of the beach. Exactly. After she goes into the shower with him, and she's also wearing all of her clothes. She's like wearing a sweater. And she's like, I'm just going to step in the shower with you and we're going to kiss. And then it cuts to like them in bed.

And he's like, I think the implication is like like he has fucked her so good that she's crying. Because there's like tears coming out of her eyes. Oh, I thought she was crying because she was confused. I took it as like a last time we had like. That makes more sense. Has anyone ever done this in a relationship where you know this is the last time where you're like yeah this isn't gonna work we both know it's not gonna work we're gonna take this one last evening together and then it's oh like i took it as a like well that was the last of it cry uh-huh

that that makes way more sense there yeah no she's crying because she's sad because she's like, we have nothing in common. Yeah. So I do think that this is to Caitlin's point that they don't develop these characters enough. I think one thing that a lot of black movies in the 90s have to deal with is that you're trying to be respectable to the point where like, what are her flaws? Like that she likes work it like it they're very much so trying to make her like nope she's not like a single mom in the way that you think of a black single mom no no no she's very professional okay she's also uh dedicated she's also athletic she's got good god we need to know she's athletic and uh she has a passion uh maybe

she needs to return to it but like that but like she can't have some of those depths of character because she's so busy trying to like or the care like the people who wrote it whatever are so busy trying to make her seem perfect and unassailable right and i feel like that probably stems from black filmmakers trying to correct some of the damage that's been done regarding representation of black people in movies prior to this right because like before this it was i mean it was a lot of really racist archetypal characters like you know the mammies and the bucks and like really horrible and really damaging reductive tropes like that yeah it was also blaxploitation films and those characters it was black characters who were in movies with predominantly white casts who were there playing characters who were

criminals or pimps or you know just again all the reductive racist representations or just an absence or a lack of black characters and media. So I feel like black filmmakers in more recent decades have had the burden of trying to repair some of that damage that was done, of course, by mostly white filmmakers with really positive representations of black characters in their movies and i feel like it just kind of lent itself to some black characters who were almost too perfect yeah who had no flaws and tons of wealth and awesome jobs it's like the the model minority trope like of yeah because i i feel like i mean there's so much from this generation of entertainment that i mean that was i feel like i mean aside from bill cosby like that's a lot of what previously a

lot of the conversation around the cosby show was was like the first uh or one of the first major black sitcoms that was popular across everywhere but it was pulling from a lot of model minority like this is a very wealthy yeah you know class privileged family but then that means like then you just have the like characters who don't end up being that well developed or who feel just a little bit more kind of stock character without any flaws because like yeah which i understand like wanting to write characters that way especially based on like the poor representation that had been seen in movies prior to that but yeah then it just means means like okay well then angela bassett is perfect yeah doesn't have any flaws um did you guys this is a very specific reference but there's an snl skit where they try to make a barbie they

make an asian barbie and they like are trying so much not to fall into stereotypes that they're like she has a chef's hat and a dog that's it we're not saying she's a cook though we're not saying what her likes and interests are because we don't want like i haven't seen that but that sounds pretty funny that's really funny it's like a barbie developed by a focus group to like not offend anyone and it does it's just she has a chef's head that's that's the doll make of that what you will yeah that's funny i mean it's like it's it's such a frustrating thing to feel like this movie is hung up on but like in context of the time it comes up, I feel like it does line up pretty cleanly with, I mean, not just the genre at the end, but like a lot of the common tropes around black characters

in this genre of the time. Yeah, including, I mean, including the other Terry McMillan adaptation we've covered. Yeah. Right. I mean, I will say, I like this movie. I saw it for the first time this year with a bottle of wine and a lot of cheese and it was perfect as god intended yes as a mid-30s lady

this is it was right a shot straight to the i don't know basketball but like you get it like a three point from that line nothing but net shot it was made for me uh but yeah it does have i'm like she doesn't like get mad or like have a problem of any kind okay like right i mean there are there are issues with in the relationship but even so the the relationship is based on what like what are they what are they like what do they have in common yeah anyway yeah i man it does seem and and i do appreciate that he kind of realizes that at some point and then we still get our kind of irrational happy ending um but he also kind of realizes like oh right like i what am i doing you know it's like i i've really inserted myself in Stella's life.

And like, what, I don't know. It's, I do like that. Well, I do think, you know,

all the characters are undeveloped to varying degrees. I don't know why I'm defending this movie so much. I really like it. I think they're less underdeveloped than a lot of characters in this genre. Cause like, this is the undeveloped genre where Winston. Okay. A choice that I thought in this genre because like this is the undeveloped genre where winston okay a choice that i thought in this movie that was really cool is you get like a female gaze cinematography approach

to tay diggs yes at first though not for the whole movie where it's not making the like how i mean like how megan fox and how many like know, conventionally attractive women are treated on screen. We're just like assumed this is how we're going to look at her. Yeah. Where I feel like the cinematography choices in this movie are cool because we are seeing him through Stella's eyes. So at first she's barely listening to what he's saying. He's talking about medical school, but it's a slow pan on his body. Right. But once she gets to know him you don't really get those shots anymore because that's not how she's seeing him anymore she's seeing him as

a whole person and like there is more to him than i mean and there's like he's certainly not he is kind of like a spoiled rich kid who's figuring out his shit in a lot of ways to the point where i mean who can afford to just hang out at a resort like no one you know yeah those meals are not cheap no i'm just like and then he's always like i have no money i'm like until you text your mom like what he bought her like this heavy piece like this big piece of like oh yeah equipment for her a furniture workshop he also buys her an engagement ring like he's he pays for that meal at that restaurant that he offers to pay for which was probably upward like easily over a hundred dollars like yeah he seems like he gets a stipend from his parents or that's my that's my guess that's the only thing

that explains it to me yeah which and i get why like still is also like i'm not totally comfortable with that like it all makes sense. But I, I like that Winston, I think Winston is given a little more depth and like layers to who he is. And the way Stella sees him and grows to see him has more layers than most romantic movie couples. Yeah. Um,

quick note about the female gaze to just going back to that really quickly. The way that this movie and a lot of movies kind of frame the female gaze or like the idea of the femaleiggs' character and you know her eyes are lingering on his arms and his like lips whereas like the male gaze in most movies is like tits and ass so even like the like the kind of female counterpart quote-unquote of a gazey shot is still like more respectful it's like oh his his lips and his like his shoulders and then it's like it's a more intellectualized gaze than the reverse it at least involves his face you know like he's not a headless woman of Hollywood. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

it's, I, I, I, I really like how this movie handles female gaze because sometimes it's like when it's kind of a one-to-one of like, Oh, you don't like the male gaze.

Well then just have the opposite. And it's like, well, that's not really what I asked for. And I feel like this movie toes that line pretty well where like it's just it's fucking cinematography like in theory if you're doing it right it should be reflective and tell you something about what's going on in the movie not just like catering to the basest aspects of your audience like so in that way i feel like this is successful because we're seeing him through stella's eyes so yay yeah can we talk about whoopi goldberg and how she yeah they kill her

in the movie i didn't i don't like it i i i don't know and i was curious about this because i don't want to if this is if this is an aspect that was taken from terry mcmillan's life i don't know and I was curious about this because I don't want to if this is if this is an aspect that was taken from Terry McMillan's life I don't want to minimize that in any way I wasn't able to find any information on whether Delilah's character is in any way pulled from her experience so I'll just say that because I I would hate to find out that and that's so disrespectful but if it is a story choice i don't like it it is so i think that that's like one of the lazier things that this movie does is brings in whoopi whoopi goldberg to be the best friend and have like even for the best friend have more to do than you know it is normal right you get that but then and it is foreshadowed in the movie because

when she says on the first trip to jamaica like she's kind of just saying vaguely ominous stuff i'm like oh no they're gonna she's gonna die that's yeah why and and i'm like it's like sitting next to my boyfriend being like they're gonna kill whoopi goldberg to teach angela bassett that she needs to live in the moment and that's literally what happens yeah they kill whoopi goldberg to teach angela bassett that she needs to live in the moment and that's literally what happens yeah they kill whoopi goldberg to teach angela bassett she has to be in the moment why do that don't do that i like whoopi goldberg a lot she's great i yes i love her i do i do appreciate that the movie does dedicate real estate to both uh stella's relationship with whoopi goldberg's character and stella's relationship to her two sisters i feel like a lot of romantic movies i'm thinking

of like the notebook where it's like do we meet any of rachel mcadam's friends or hear them talk like you're just told they exist yeah and they're in the background sometimes yeah there's like that movie's just like so hyper focused on the on the romance, whereas like we see like and then also like with with Stella's son and like we meet her ex-husband and we like see that dynamic, which is like that, too. I love that scene. It was like her worst fear of like having to show everyone this thing that she does have some shame around. And everyone was flipping cool except Angela. Like everybody. Yeah. They're all like, hey, what's up, dude? dude yeah even her ex-husband is cool with it yeah her ex-husband

and Taye Diggs have that little scene together and Taye Diggs kind of pushes back and is like why are you giving me advice doesn't seem like it worked out too well for you that was great very sweet I really loved that okay couple things i just want to say real fast um just tay digs and his jamaican accent inconsistent inconsistent yes some and some scenes i'm like that sounds really authentic i think he did a good job there i mean i'm by no means an expert on a Jamaican accent but it was also inconsistent enough that I was like that sounded very Irish right then and not Jamaican um so I'm not sure that he's doing a good job all the time it seems to be I I looked up some it seems to be a pretty popular opinion that the accent is perhaps not good.

I think that, you know, you can be a great actor and probably just maybe not do an accent in a role. See Keanu Reeves, see Brad Pitt. There's a lot of actors that we love who just have never done an accent successfully well but then there are there are actors like a friend of the show our king alfred molina who masters every accent he does chameleon every no one even knows he's british he's british he's british what yeah that makes him hotter that does real tough that works i get it now jamie i was questioning this for a long time right now that you him hotter that does real tough that works i get it now jamie i was questioning this for a long time right now that you tell me that he's british i'm into it it's a game changer it really is um i like that white people are cast in this movie the way that black people are cast

in most yes mainstream hollywood movies and that they are barely there they're mostly in the background they have very few lines of dialogue. I think Victor Garber is the only white person who says anything. Name and lines of dialogue. Isaac visibility. Oh, right. Oh,

also Victor Garber is not credited in the credits of this movie, which I thought was fun. He's not credited. And then I checked on Wikipedia and it says Victor Garber is not credited in the credits of this movie, which I thought was fun. He's not credited. And then I checked on Wikipedia and it says Victor Garber uncredited. I'm like, damn, the year after Titanic, uncredited. Wow. This business. I think it's worth just briefly noting that there are two characters named Jack and Buddy,

who Delilah, Weppy Goldberg's character is like trying to hook her and Stella up with and they their whole thing is like oh look how unappealing they are yeah but the things that are done to make them seem unappealing is that one of them has a stutter and the other one is kind of chubby so just some needless body and speech impediment shaming right so you know not great but yeah for a movie coming out in 98 there weren't that i mean that was kind of the only like really sort of like reductive thing that i noticed right i like that buddy had enough confidence to take all of his clothes off at that pajama party yes like i i scandalized. I was like, if I

was invited to a party and then everyone's tits came out, I would be furious that I was not warned that this was a tit party. There should have been a written memo that I might see. You have to tell me. I have to get the tits ready if I'm supposed to just throw

them out there. I was like, wow. You know what? He loves like wow he's this you know what he loves himself and he loves his body and I like that that's being shown yeah it's true um any does anyone have anything else they want to say about the movie let's see yeah uh justice for Delilah I like that we knew with, just going off of your comment, Caitlin, about how we, like not only do we know Stella's support system,

we also know at least a little bit about them. And the movie, in ways that it's just like every movie could do this. We see Whoopi Goldberg at her job once. Yeah. And you're like, I know something about her. Wow.

Her job is to stuff calvin klein mannequins who are wearing underwear make them seem like they have bigger dicks she's a high-paid mannequin stylist baby and i that's a fun rich person job in a movie love it um oh uh this movie was uh directed by uh i wanted to bring up some behind the scenes stuff this movie was directed by, I wanted to bring up some behind the scenes stuff. This movie was directed by a black director, Kevin Rodney Sullivan, who I had a lot of fun learning about because he's had kind of like a fun career where he started as a child actor and then he grew into a writer director. He has mostly been directing TV, but like he's directed every big TV show.

He directed 30 Rock episodes. He directed 30 rock episodes. He directed modern family episodes. He's directed NCIS. He's directed how to get away with murder. He's directed Riverdale. He's like a big shot TV director now and, and directed this movie. So he's great.

Another person I had a lot of fun learning about was the editor of this movie, a black editor named George Bow bowers who i recommend you you just kind of dig into his life because he was also a filmmaker and he sounds like he was a really cool experimental filmmaker as well um so there is not a ton of women behind the scenes of this movie aside from terry mcmillan getting the co-writing credit there's a female producer there's a couple female producers if i remember correctly there's a few i just i don't know i was honestly like i wish that a black woman had been the director of this that said kevin rodney sullivan seems really cool and there's i saw i all i'm looking at is i'm seeing one producer credit and

it's a lady named Debra Schindler. Debra, yes. And then I'm seeing a couple, Terry McMillan was also an executive producer, as was Jennifer Ogden. Don't know how to say it. So a couple, like, executive producers are women. That's good. Yeah. So, yeah, I think just taking a look at the behind the scenes stuff is good

this movie was reviewed in a very pointed way because there were simply very few uh black reviewers and female reviewers that were working at this time so it's just kind of the classic like this movie isn't about me i don't get it yeah no stars kind of thing yeah not no stars but like it just very passive aggressive reviews right um i don't know yeah i think that's all i got i really like this movie my favorite exchange is when uh stella and winston first meet and he just says good morning and she replies with are you a rapper like that's the first thing she says to him you're like i'm trying to get from a to b here but i just can't like okay sure i mean maybe she's like okay a subcategory someone that would be eating at a resort alone yeah is that i'm like what like

he doesn't necessarily i mean what does a rapper look like but he doesn't necessarily look like a rapper no he's just eating at a resort alone yeah i didn't even think about that but that's a weird ass i would be like cool so you don't want me to bother you okay bye like that would be the end of the right wow that's a weird ass thing for you to say okay goodbye she doesn't even say like hello or good morning back she just he's like good morning are you a rapper like it's just like uh no um i will i i deeply love and this is something it's something so 90s and like embedded in my heart a sex scene where there are gauzy white curtains fluttering in the wind i think it's so important i love it so much where they pan to them and they're just gently moving and like only one is because that's where the fan that the designer is like pointed at the yeah oh it's i don't even

know if these ones were steamed sometimes you can still see the the wrinkles from where they took it out of the packaging but man the gauze perfect very really adds a layer of sexy to the to the scene caitlin i just i just want that she has such good sex that she cries that made me laugh so much i was like why is she crying i don't understand human emotion. Whoopsies. Okay. I guess my final thought would be that this feels pretty tropey for like any kind of romantic movie. But at the beginning of the movie, Stella is like, I don't care about meeting a man. I don't need a man.

This is actually an exchange I really like where she and her sisters are getting pedicures or they're, they're at a spa. They're talking. And then like, they annoy her. So Stella says, don't talk to me for the next two hours, five seconds pass. And then Angela, her sister is like,

you need a husband and your son needs a father. You're just like, whoa. And then Stella says, Stella says, says had one got rid of him so glad i did and then she's like also like my son has a father his name is walter if you remember him you know him yeah yeah and then she's like you know just because kennedy which is uh angela's husband just because kennedy writes produces directs and stars and all three acts of your drama. Don't fool yourself.

Every woman doesn't need that kind of guidance. So she's basically saying, like, I don't need a man. And that's great. But that is also like rom-com code for she's going to end up with a man by the end of the movie. Yes. One hundred percent. Without question. Well, yeah, I guess it's I guess we haven't brought yeah there's definitely I think because of the time and the genre there's definitely echoes of like eye rolly like 90s girl power where it's like I don't need

a man I just need a man you You're just like, okay. I just haven't met Taye Diggs yet and looked at his arms and suddenly, as soon as that happens and I find out he's not a rapper. Ultimately going to be a burden. Then.

I also, okay, when the movie ended, I was just like, I was like, what a confusing day for Quincy, her son,

because he has just been told, like, say goodbye. You're never going to see this man again. And then guess what? He's your stepfather and he lives with us. Good night. Like, oh, my gosh. Yeah, I wouldn't trust adults after that. Messy.

I know. Yeah. That's like all in the span of like however long it takes her to drive to and from the airport within an hour remember how he just left to move back to jamaica well he's back and we're getting married yeah and then she would be like oh you misunderstood like she could just like gaslight him into being like no no no you misunderstood he is actually your stepfather now quincy has to get his groove back in like the sixth grade or however i do love that as a movie in the way that they did like a fuller house and a girl meets world

just like how with like the kid gets his groove back yeah oh he's such a sweet character he is and he makes her breakfast so we see a young boy cook a young nurturing son yeah and he's like i want to do something and he tells his me he's like he's like mom i just want you to have fun while i'm gone and like he really did oh i just love their relationship and i like that you do get to see uh it and that like as a a mother like is a character who is like romantically viable because like i think a lot of movies would be like oh you have a kid well then see ya yeah yeah i mean a 40 year old woman being romantically viable a mother being romantically viable like there's so many i don't know i'm i'm just gonna defend this movie to the end of time that scene between them at the airport

at the beginning made me cry i loved it where he's just like now mom i want you to take care of yourself and i care about you and you're the best mom ever and she's like oh i'm gonna go to jamaica you're like all right i guess i'm gonna go and get dicked by tay diggs that's what it's what my son would want it's what my son would want. It's what my son would want. He's also very cool with their relationship. Okay. Well, does this movie pass the Bechdel test? Definitely. Yeah.

And it's thanks to the writing being careful to include her sisters and Delilah. It does pass the Duvernay test obviously far more handily than most movies yay movie yeah uh shall we rate it on our nipple scale yes let's shall uh zero to five nipples based on its representation of women and also just an overall examination of intersectional feminism um i would give this film contextualizing it knowing that it is like a romantic movie and based on that it is going to be centered around a romantic relationship and in this case it's a heteroromantic relationship knowing all of that i think i would give it a three and a half or a four like just the fact that you have you see representation of an older woman being like worshipped and respected by this far younger man

again it's something that society was not deeming as acceptable it's something that other characters were not deeming as acceptable but Stella was just like fuck it I'm gonna get my groove back okay this and then this is how and I didn't even know that I didn't have my groove but I'm gonna get it back and then it's Winston Shakespeare is gonna give it to me um and so that and just, yeah, like the the exploration of her relationships with her sisters and her friend Delilah and her son and different things to to characterize her. The fact that maybe we could have gotten a better understanding of why they're in love with each other and like what they're compatible about. But again, that's,

I mean, that's like we said, it's pretty standard for the genre. We, we don't know why these people are ever in love, except that they are close to each other and they are both conventionally attractive. But it's like,

do we ever really know like why JLo and Matthew McConaughey were in love? No, no, they were just hot and around each other. It's implicit. It's inherent to the genre. It's just hot and around each other it's implicit that's all it's inherent to the genre yes it's just hot and around or my least favorite twist i knew you when i was a child therefore i have to marry you 13 going on 30 yes yes yes right right right uh so yeah sorry i was on my nipple rating um i'll give it you know what i'll give it i think i'll do like a three and a half or four i don't know what's everyone else gonna

do i need other people's influence here i i'm gonna do probably i will fully admit this is partially just i'm rating with my emotions but but I want to give it a four. I just feel like this for the reasons we've discussed, this movie doesn't do everything right. But there's so much about this movie that is, first of all, I mean, if we're talking about subversions in the drama or to the genre this story is pretty engaging and like makes sense more often than not which is not something you usually get i also oh something we didn't talk about is like the kind of one of the big inciting incidents in in this movie is that stella wants to like she's not embarrassed or like ashamed of self-care and like practicing self-care and that I mean that's a whole the the whole practice of self-care can

get kind of insidious and capitalism steeped we won't go there but on the surface level I think it is really nice that the first time we see Stella not at work she is you know like having a relaxing day with her sisters and this whole trip with Whoopi Goldberg is self-care and like redefining herself and just seeing women especially not young women and especially a black woman like prioritizing herself and being like you know what I like even though and I thought it was kind of a cool detail that she says she wants to do it and then she's like no I don't want to and then her friend is like no we're gonna go like that felt really cool yeah you just don't see movies like that very much where it's like a woman who's very for the most part like without shame being like I deserve this like I'm gonna take care of myself and you know the internalized shame and back and forth

that comes with that is a very real thing and I like that it's addressed but at its heart I feel like this is a story of like self-care and prioritizing yourself and recognizing that you can have responsibilities in life and not totally lose sight of who you are. And get your groove. Yes. That's where the word groove comes into play. And I found that to be very soothing and wonderful and nice to see in a movie for all of the goofy problems that we discussed. So kind of for that alone, it's going to get for me.

And you just don't have many black romance movies. And I like Terry McMillan. I like that this is based on a true story, even though it ends not like the movie. And yeah, I really like this movie. So I'm going to give two nipples to Stella, one nipple to Delilah RIP and I'll give one nipple to what was the niece's name the niece I was like why is she here also Chantel's whose kid was that I think it's I think it's Regina King's daughter oh okay I was I just it wasn't clear to me which sister's kid that was yeah that makes sense yeah that's a legitimate question that I never thought about and she doesn't come back but I'm like there she is

because Regina King sorry there's a jackhammer happening behind me um Regina King refers to like waiting on what I think is a child support check from like her ex-partner and I her name is Chantel if I'm not mistaken chantelle i think it's yeah i think she is regina king's daughter her like one line that she got i thought she was like very engaging and funny for the one scene that she is in so she gets my fourth nipple good for her nice she said okay that's really funny because it's the two kids talking in the pool Quincy is like oh yeah like Winston's a lot younger than my mom and Chantal's like well how young and he's like not quite 30 which is like a decade off of how old he actually is but then Chantal says oh that's not

young because 30 is not young everybody uh yikes um so yeah that was very funny um okay so yeah i'll give it four nipples as well most of my gripes with the movie are more like screenwriting based you know like it could have been a half hour shorter you know there was some weird tonal shifts that i couldn't quite make sense of. I love Taye Diggs' accent. I give one of my nipples to him trying to do it to make an accent. I'll give two to Stella and I'll give one to Regina King. I am going to give it four nipples.

One to the scene in the shower where Taye Diggs' butt is very prominent and Angela gets to be dressed the whole time um so I'm gonna give one nipple to that scene in particular uh one to Regina King because she deserves everything in the world one two would be Goldberg because she's very funny in this way that's like hell yeah I hope that that's the type of friend relationships I continue to have well until my 40s. I mean, I don't want to die, and I don't want my friends to die, but you get it. I want a good relationship with my friends.

That is what that nipple is for. And I'm going to say the fourth nipple to every time they yell as a group at Angela, the sister who's a jerk. I loved it. I enjoyed it so much when they would be like, shut up, Angela. And everyone's like, yeah, we don't like you.

And it's like, yes, you suck. And your whole family knows it. Yeah. Stella goes over to her house to be like, you disrespected my boyfriend yesterday and I need you to apologize. And then she does. She's like, I didn't mean to be rude.

Like, I'm just looking out for you. Aren't you worried about this? I liked that you get resolution there. Yeah. And then Stella's like, of course I'm worried about this, but like,

you just need to be supportive. I'll be the worrier here. So yeah, I did. I like that little arc. Kanice, thank you so much for being here, for being our, again,

first ever, fourth time guest. Listeners, check out our Back to the Future episode on the Matreon, our Casino Royale episode on the main feed, as well as an episode that is, what did we name it? It's like

something, something in a discussion with Kananiece Mobley. Yeah. Anyway. She'll be back for her jacket. You'll be back for your jacket. I do. I mean, if you guys happen to have a velvet smoking jacket, I would never turn it down.

Just so you know. You'll see it. You'll get it. Where can people follow you online? What would you like to plug? So you can follow me online on all of the platforms at Kniece Mobley. I just even made a TikTok because they said that I had to. And it has no videos because I don't know how to use that app.

Me either. So look out. I will one day have one. It's going to be great. And I have my podcast which is called Love About Town Caitlin you've been on it Jamie you were on Person About Town but we got to get back for Love About Town

I'm now co-host of Complexify on Vice so check out all that stuff and you know just you know keep your eyes peeled I'm around you're doing stuff look behind you yeah right now no okay well uh thanks again so much for being here we always love having you um you can follow

us on social media at bechtel cast you can subscribe to our Patreon, aka Matreon, and check out that Back to the Future episode with Kniece. And then you can do that by going to patreon.com slash Bechtelcast. It's only $5 a month and it gives you two bonus episodes plus access to the entire back catalog. And again, sorry if you can hear the jackhammer behind me. You can get our merch on tpublic.com slash the Bechdel casket. All your favorite stuff. We also have masks in the store now. So if you are looking for a new mask to add to your Dystopia collection, we have those as well.

Yeah. Well, everyone, let's go and get our grooves back. What do you say? I lost mine. Gotta go out. I lost mine. I need to get my groove back. What do you say? I lost mine. Gotta go out. I lost mine. I need to get my groove back. But too bad we can't travel.

What are we supposed to do? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I want to go to Jamaica. Damn it. All right, bye. Bye. Bye. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated.

Crooks everywhere unearths 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. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts.

Fantasy football fans, the NFL season is here, and now is the time to do your homework. The best way to do that homework is to listen to the NFL season is here and now is the time to do your homework. The best way to do that homework is to listen to the NFL Fantasy Football Podcast. Come hang out with me, Marcus Grant, as well as my pal Michael F. Florio as we give you all the insight you need to set the best lineups each week.

For a smart, fun, and entertaining path to league domination, the NFL Fantasy Football Podcast is the show for you. Subscribe now and listen to the NFL Fantasy Football Podcast on the iHeartRad Subscribe now and listen to the NFL Fantasy Football Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Teddy Mellencamp.

And Tamara Judge, better known as the Twats. Yep, you heard that right. We're the hosts of Two Teas in a Pod. For all the housewife lovers out there, every week we break down every episode and give you our opinions. So join us as we stir the pot and get ourselves into some trouble. Okay, maybe a lot of trouble. Listen to Two Teas in a Pod on iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.