The Bechdel Cast - Smart House

Episode Date: July 20, 2023

This week, Personal Applied Technologies Caitlin and Jamie drink smoothies and chat about Smart House. (This episode contains spoilers) For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast. Follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP on Twitter.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

Don't miss Katherine Hahn on Las Culturistas. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice.

And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Mori Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Bechtelcast, the questions asked

if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism the patriarchy's effing vast start changing it with the bechdel cast jump jump the house is jumping jump jump the house is jumping uh what an iconic party i mean pat say what you will about pat she knows how to throw a party yeah she knows how to get the house jumping she is yeah oh pat is pat's an icon she is megan uh you know we love megan yeah in this house we love Megan. Yeah. In this house, we love Megan.

But. But, you know, Pat is the blueprint. Yeah. And then we're like, there's Hal from 2001 A Space Odyssey. And Hal wishes he was Pat. Oh, my God. And Hal's dreams. And is Pat a direct, obvious ripoff of Hal?

No. No? Not even a little bit no so sorry i i i trailed off for a second because i was trying to remember what pat stood for oh and i was like pp and toilet paper hilarious that's correct yeah no oh brain is dust what does it stand for personal applied technology okay that which is so generic it could mean anything i believe it i believe it okay this movie has everything it has an evil house played by katie seagal she should have won an emmy for this but she didn't because she's only in five minutes of the movie. We have a girl boss that we are rooting for, even though she's clearly on a destructive path. And, oh my God, fast forward Sarah's timeline, 20 years. I don't want to know.

Ooh, Tim Apple. There's this movie. Yeah. And also other things. But most importantly, those characters are so iconic. And so we are here to cover. Okay, wait, should we start over? No.

We are speaking of amazing paths. We are on one. This is the Bechtel cast. Hello. My name is Caitlin Durante. my name is Jamie Loftus and this is our podcast where we look at your favorite movies using an intersectional feminist lens through personally applied technology that we have been developing over the last seven years yes yes yes yes yes and we use the Bechtdel test yes as a jumping off point to initiate a larger conversation the bechdel test yeah what is it caitlin get me up to speed it is a media metric created by queer

cartoonist allison bechdel sometimes called the bechdel wallace test it originally appeared in Alice Bechdel's comic, Dykes to Watch Out For, in the 80s. It was intended as just like a goof, a joke. A lark. In the comic strip. But it has been made into this media test. Many versions of it. The one that we use is this. Two characters of a marginalized gender.

They have to have names. They need to talk to each other and the conversation has to be about something other than a man and we especially like it when it's a narratively impactful conversation and not just hello here's a strawberry smoothie icon but iconically this movie passes the Bechdel test quite a bit and I think that there are several important exchanges between particularly Pat and Sarah that you know this I just uh so we're covering smart house uh stunningly common request um yes but but i do think that it is one of the disney channel original movie from 1999 directed by lavar burton hello jump scare incredible i know it is by most people's metrics considered to be one of the greatest dcoms of all time uh i think it is a millennial classic and it holds up in a lot of regards extremely well and then in other regards uh it's camp it's camp caitlin when the when uh angie is

jumping on her bed to bewitched c'est la vie length. It's almost like Bewitched is paying them to do it, which they almost certainly are. God, we have some real 90s deep cut, like Bewitched Irish girl group, kind of a one hit wonder, unless you count their cover of Hey Mickey, which I thought was pretty great. Okay, sure.

But yeah, their big hit C'est La Vie features heavily. And then, oh my God, one of my favorite songs of being like six was Ryan Merriman and his merry troupe of boys do a choreographed. I never get over the scene. I mean, it's like a very popular scene if you grew up with this movie but it's to a ba a boy band called five couldn't be more of a one-hit wonder and even that's kind of a stretch but i remember them yeah and their hit song was called slam dunk the funk yes and and boy did they do a choreographed dance to slam dunk the funk? Okay. And they crush it. At this point, I'm like, this is the most cute boy behavior in the entire world.

I'm in. It was endearing. I did not realize that was an actual song. And I just figured it was like one of those like corny songs, like fake songs that was written for this movie and inserted into the movie to pretend like this is a popular song that everyone knows i did not realize it was a real ass oh my god i was so like i had so many older cousins that i feel like i i had a wealth of boy band knowledge before it even made sense to because like everyone was like five years

older than me i mean they're like the cutest boys are in o-town no the cutest boys are in you know in sync versus backstreet boys is the obvious one but you also have 90 degrees lfo 98 degrees and then you have flops like o-town and five but i but o- did. Do you remember that song? Cause I want it all or nothing at all. Oh my God. So many boys at this time and we honor them. Boys in bands. No, that song is real. I think that the house is jumping is not real.

No, that definitely sounds like a fake. Feels pretty on theme. It would be wild if that song already existed.var burton would have been jumping for joy unfortunately i think they had to commission the house is jumping incredible okay so and so the reason we're doing this movie is that we discovered that all of the movies that we are releasing in july three of the four that were like planned were live action disney movies because we've got the hannah montana episode that was a live show that came out we wanted to do you know a very like american jingoist movie so of course we were like national treasure 2 the haunted mansion's coming out so

we're doing the haunted mansion yes we also i mean i feel like even though we're covering disney movies and you know we should go to jail for that yes but but honestly on a long enough timeline every movie is going to be a disney movie and then we would have to cancel the show it would be challenging they're simply acquiring so many things are so scary but even within these live action disney movies um there's sort of a wealth of different genres you've got like the action with national treasure 2 you've got the coming of age movie with hannah montana you've got the horror movie with Haunted Mansion. And you've got the sci-fi thriller that we know as Smart House.

Yes. I want an alternate ending to this damn movie. I would also, as tired as this genre of movie is, and I feel like it's already kind of dying off, I wouldn't hate,

as long as LeVar Burton also directed it, I would not hate Smart House 2. An extremely smart house? Sarah is ruining the world. Pat, Ben has fallen in love with Pat. They're secretly married. Wow.

He's married to the house. Interesting. Angie hasn't spoken to the family in years she's a communist the dad twist he's dead yeah well he's my least favorite character yeah sarah is basically on a path to becoming the oscar isaac character from yes ex machina one of the many movies that this disney channel original movie that came out 20 years before shares a ton of parallels with yeah this movie is so brilliant i love it what is your history with smart house the movie though i had never i had never seen it

yeah wow again how do you feel well the only time i watch dcoms is for this podcast i had never seen any of them that's true and so i but i just i just sort of thought you would have started watching them in your spare time well okay i did watch one actually two of my own accord and it was teen beach movie one and two i remember and those movies rock and roll. They do rock. And they roll. And don't forget, they roll. They rock, they roll, and they rule. But aside from that, I've never seen any DCOMs on purpose. Well, this is an early one, and it is a classic.

It's the best. I first saw this movie. I don't think I would have seen it when it came out. I was probably too young when it came out. But they rerun these damn things on on the Disney Channel all the time and so I think probably I had seen it by the time I was like 10 yeah it may be even a little sooner um and it's just such a fun movie but it also like I don't know I feel like it captures it's it's definitely I think at its core a cautionary tale I would be so curious what the uh writing process was in terms

of figuring out how to end this movie in a way that wasn't terrifying to children because the ending is bizarre and feels dissonant with what the rest of the movie is especially because especially because pat essentially takes her own life at the end of the movie it's and then she lives in jail forever but that's the happy ending uh-huh we'll come back to it um i i understand why this movie can't end in a terrifying cliffhanger because it is for eight-year-olds but i just think it's like a fascinating moment in time of like excitement about technology but also uh fairly cautionary tale and it at first i was like oh it's so random that lavar burton would direct this, but it actually really isn't because he, at this point,

I will talk about some, like a couple of interviews that he, he did on this movie's 20th anniversary a couple of years ago. But like at this point in his career, he was Mr. Star Trek and like he's playing Geordi LaForge and, and he had directed a ton of episodes of Star Trek. So,

you know, like technological cautionary tales are in fact extremely in his wheelhouse. And he's probably one of like the most like the best, most interesting choices to direct this movie. And I feel like this movie accidentally really packs a punch. And I love it. And the stuff that holds up is kind of incredible. And the stuff that doesn't is kind of incredible. And the stuff that doesn't is, I was mostly laughing. I also think it's so funny that the guy that plays the dad,

who is by far the biggest flop character, can't stand him. He's, first of all, with all due respect to this guy, a very weird actor where some of his lines of dialogue are like, my children. and you're like what he just sometimes will end a conversation or like mark the entering and exiting of ryan merriman by being like my children and you're like what the fuck i also love that his name is kevin klein er kevin kleiner yeah just it Just like he's Kevin Klein, but more so. No, wait, it's not Kleiner, it's Kilner, but close enough.

No, it's Kevin Kleiner. Yeah, okay. He had to change it because people were just like, what do you mean? Kevin Klein's just enough. We don't need more. I like Kevin Klein. I like him too. I think that's still a safe opinion to have.

We don't know. I know. You never know in this world. I think I like Kevin Klein. Yes. Can't say that for all Kevins. As we say cautiously. Yes.

I mean, no one's going to beat the top Kevin of all time. And you know who that is, Caitlin. Kevin Le Mignon. Kevin Le Mignon. Kevin Le Mignon. That's exactly right. Bello. Okay. Bello, wake up.

Smell the hot bananas. Smell the hot bananas. Oh, my gosh. Wait. Really quick. This episode will have a bit of a Matreon feel to it for those of you on our Matreon. Because when it's just the two of us it's just tangents all day um my mom and i because we have my family's had a biannual time share on the outskirts of orlando for 20 years and next summer is our trip and my mom has specifically

set it up so that i can meet her in Florida to see Despicable Me 4 with her at City Walk. Wow. She's so excited. Wait is there a Minions ride at Universal in Orlando? Yes and it's like it's it's kind of like Kevin Kleiner than the Minions ride at Universal Studios Hollywood. They're building out like a whole new like land section. Whoa. That's even that's because I think at Universal Studios Hollywood, it's sort of like just the theme park from Despicable Me 1.

But they're going full Minions. They're like, no, we're doing VillainCon. We're going for it. Okay. I can't wait it's gonna be great the minions are um from what i can tell they're busting out of jail yet again these rascals i love them the minions are anti-carceral and that's canon okay smart house uh i watched it a lot when i was a kid I actually had seen it pretty recently because my boyfriend was

homeschooled and didn't have cable and hadn't seen smart house and so I had to fix that and now it's fixed yeah I'm so excited to talk about it great shall we get into it let's do it okay let's take a quick break first and then we'll come back for the recap. Buh-bye! The only Katherine Hahn is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right. The queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. I feel some Sandra Bernhardt in you. Oh, my God. I would love it.

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

Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Lugey. Not hawk the slalom. I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it. It was somehow gorgeous.

Yee, my slok, you hollum. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes. Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice.

And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Saner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it? Like you miss 100% of the shots you never take. Yeah. Rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app,

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

Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts bello we're back never gets old okay so here's the recap of smart house we meet a house but it's not just any house jamie it's a smart house yeah this house this house has brains for days i love a good i was trying to think of other movies that open with some sort of suburban paper boy gag i feel like there's other movies that start with paper boys doesn't barb and star open oh yes it does oh my god okay that's a superior paper boy scene um but i feel like yeah paper boy scenes um or you know paper paper child person paper person uh paper child is a little scary sounding

and then and then you have newsies that's the ultimate i mean that's paper boy the movie yeah god i've been listening to it so i've been listening to the soundtrack so much it's going to show up on my spotify year end list very embarrassing anyways we start with a classic paper boy scene which will pay off later yes believe it or not i love i mean love love we've got lavar burton at the helm there's not going to be a loop left unresolved no no no no um okay so we meet this smart house which was designed by a woman named sarah barnes played by jessica steen yes who designed this house and gave it all of these advanced capabilities, which we will learn more about in a little bit. But basically, the house has this AI operating system called PAT, which stands for pee-pee-poo-poo and toilet paper.

That's exactly. We are just really smart people uh yeah yeah smarter even than the house voiced by katie seagal who i never watched this show but i know a lot of people know her as peggy bundy unmarried with children right as well as i didn't know she's also lila on futurama okay so that's what i recognized her voice from i was like right whose voice is this i know this and then turns out futurama she's a legend everyone loves her and she is also pat i loved thinking about katie seagal in just like a vo booth doing 90 of the work for this movie where it's just like her saying ben like 50 times now ben now ben oh my god she's so like mommy like she's so i mean it's wild

yeah yeah i am a mother like no other you're like what oh great. So Sarah, again, that's the designer slash engineer of the house. Not really exactly sure what her job is. Science is a little wonky, but it was an ex machina as well. Right. She's a woman in STEM. It's safe to say. Yes. And she has launched this contest where some lucky family will win the house and that really begs the question

why would they not sell what would probably be a very like lucrative house to sell but they're just giving it away i wasn't i wasn't as thrown by that as why have they not had Sarah live there for a while or had someone like test run the house that eats your blood when you walk in. It seems like there would be some. But I guess, you know, even with a lot of tech today, the regulation just isn't there. And sometimes it takes the house almost killing a family to realize that maybe there should have been some sort of test. Self-driving cars that run people over, etc. Which is one of my biggest issues with this movie is like people should be more mad at Sarah than they are. But they're always like, no, girl boss, like she's doing her best. And I was like, she made this she made the

house is trying to eat you anyways well my head canon was that the reason they're giving it away rather than like putting it on the market to sell is that it's like a prototype that they want to test out via a family yeah that would make sense and it's also like that's so decom of like starting a movie with a kid winning a contest that you're kind of like yeah happens all the time in these movies got it okay so then we meet ben cooper who was played by ryan merriman of final destination three fame is that the one that's not what he's most famous for he is sort of the king of dcoms for like he is like running this channel for some time he has three classic disney channel original movies that he stars in back to back to back okay he is of course ben cooper in smart house who could forget

ben cooper in smart house not me hanging with mr cooper basically two years later he is in iconic basketball film the luck of the irish where he plays himself as well as he but he's like a basketball player he's always a basketball player in these movies disney loves because the characters in High School Musical play basketball. Oh, Carbon Blue. Well, I guess Zac Efron. Yeah, like the first one's very basketball coded. Yeah, just like a 13 year old playing basketball.

This channel can't resist it. So The Luck of the Irish is a movie about Ryan Merriman, who's a like teenage basketball player who then is turned into a leprechaun. And it's funny because now he is too short to play basketball. And then he is in kind of a serious one that I don't remember as being very good. But a young Misha Barton is in it. And it's called A Ring of Endless Light. Oh, my. It's a sad one. and then he was like i

need to get the fuck out of here i'm gonna go star in final destination three and later iconically for big fans of pretty little liars uh he does play a pretty pivotal early character in pretty little liars and uh he's killed by a bell at the, and then he wasn't on the show after that. Whoa. He has really been exclusively in really campy movies for his entire career. It's interesting. But yeah, I think Smart House is sort of his big...

Claim to fame. His first big, or just like his first big thing. But I think he's talented. I think he's a good child actor. Yeah. I suppose. Okay suppose okay lukewarm yes okay so ben cooper is a 13 year old boy who has been entering that contest to win the smart house so that he and his younger sister angie and his dad nick, that's Kevin Kilner slash Kleiner, can move in to the smart house. I just want to add really quickly that to just close the loop on this whole

basketball thing. At the beginning of the movie, you know that Ryan Merriman's character likes basketball because he's playing basketball outside. But in case that wasn't clear enough, his sweatshirt also just has a picture of a basketball on it and it's that cinematic subtlety that leads me to believe maybe this kid likes basketball and so later when Kevin Kleiner's like why don't you play basketball I'm like why doesn't he play basketball he's obsessed with basketball well he tells us it's because he's too busy being the mommy of the

family mommy now i think that ben is an interesting character anyways um the outfits are camp great they're amazing i'm laughing at the picture you just sent me okay so ben like we said he's like quote unquote mommy because he's doing a lot of the household chores and a lot of the work to keep the family together. And he knows that a smart house could help pick up the slack. So that's why he's so adamant about entering and hopefully winning this contest. The next day, the contest winner is announced and it's ben and he finds out at school and his friends are like wow good job ben there's a very uh 1999 reason that he doesn't find out at home and it's because he's on the internet too late so the phone the landline can't ring yes and if you

don't understand what that means then congratulations you're young you should ask your parents before you listen to that show yeah and then they also call a landline and leave a message on the answering machine which they don't get because they're not at home very 1999 problems there used to be so many ways to not know things i miss it um okay so his friends are congratulating him and then there's also this kid ryan i think it's his name who bullies ben yeah which you can tell because of how spiky his hair is exactly and he calls the bully his big mean nickname for ben is benny boy he's like hey benny boy do my homework for me i'm like we need to punch up ryan's i'm not scared enough of him i like yeah i love that like i mean i think that this is like still kind of true in children's media um but it's like

if if uh an actor has spiky hair it means they're either a bully or just a general little stinker or hair is not flat if you're a little stinker but i mean like ben's hair is pretty spiky i mean that was just he's a little stinker he is a little stinker but he's also mommy i love ben i'm rooting for him but the way he talks to his little sister is so evil he's so mean to his sister he's so mean to sarah he does not respect women um no he doesn't except he loves pat he loves pat and he loves his dead mom because yes, this is a Disney movie. Therefore there is a dead mom. We're going to need to kill the mom. Yeah.

Yes. Okay. So Ben and Angie and their dad, Nick meet Sarah who acquaints them with the smart house and with the operating system, Pat and Nick is like hubba hubba. Oh, Nick is such a fucking

dolt he like when he learns that they won a free house in the newspaper he immediately was like who is that hubba i was like you just won a house you weirdo why are you horny and you're on the phone with your 10 year old son stop being horny this is you're on the phone with your 10-year-old son. Stop being horny. This is yet another movie. This is also very era-specific of, like, a movie in which a young girl is obsessed with the sex life of her father. Yeah, what is this? A Mary-Kate and Ashley? Yeah.

But it's just, oh, it's so weird. Like, I want a new mommy. Shut up, Ben. Let dad go have sex with this lady we i'm like what and then ben is like absolutely not our dad is never going to fuck again he's also obsessed and then also the dad is so willing to engage in that conversation where it's like where i kevin kleiner i would be like shut up you guys like i it's not your business right and but also he is welcoming the discussion by being such a weirdo and being like oh awuga like yeah weird family weird weird family it's a very interesting dynamic they're going

through a lot but for crying out loud yeah okay so then we learn about what pat is able to do pat is basically ai and pat's able to observe each member of the family and learn more and more about them and then like make adjustments along the way blood she she eats your blood blood yeah just so she knows more about your blood this this all feels like they're especially the kitchen because i remember thinking the kitchen and then the floor absorbers where like if you spill something the floor eats it yes i think that that was like and then the huge well anyways but like there was so much about the house that was really really cool and a lot of it is just like ripoffs of like star trek things that existed forever which

again makes total sense because of the director but i just remember thinking this house was so damn cool and now i think it's very scary and not worth it and did the do you remember the daniel kaluuya episode of black mirror oh wait which one it's an what's the plot it's like almost 10 years ago but it's basically like people live in these future pods where like all your needs there's there's two references of like what the big because in in the smart house there are rooms that are just huge tv screens and they're supposed to be able to like take you anywhere they can make you feel like you're at a basketball game or a five concert or the jungle and the two things that it reminded me of was yeah there's a Black Mirror episode where it's supposed to be like really cool that Daniel Kaluuya is able to live in this pod and

it really gamifies your life and it's supposed to be fun and then of course it's Black Mirror episode so it turns out to be bad actually but the um that's very reductive but like that is the whole show yeah and uh they sleep in rooms like that the other one that it reminds me of is a Ray Bradbury story like I have to imagine that LeVar Burton has read this story I wonder if the writers had read this story i remembered it from when i was a kid but it's a short story called the veldt i meant to read it before we did this but i didn't have time but it's about a family that moves into the happy life home filled with machines i'm reading from scholarly journal wikipedia of course the hadley family lives in an automated house called the happy life home

filled with machines that aid them in completing everyday tasks blah blah blah blah the two children peter and wendy enjoy time in the nursery a virtual reality room able to realistically reproduce any place they imagine and and grow increasingly attached to it which is very like i feel like they go out of the way to show you this room. And Sarah's like, you can feel like you're anywhere like the job, like the Savannah or Cape Cod. I think those are her only two ideas. But the way that story ends, because the kids are getting more attached to spending time in the nursery, the parents start to be like, we don't know. Like we we kind of like for our kids to go outside and interact with people. The kids grow very hostile

when this is suggested um okay fast forwarding to the end spoiler alert for this story that came out in 1950 when the parents come to fetch them the children lock their parents into the nursery with so what they it's so vr in the story that they basically set up the nursery to emulate a savannah full of lions lock their parents in the room and the parents die i think i read this story too because this sounds very familiar i wish that smart house ended like i feel like if they had had if this was not on the disney channel this movie could have ended so differently. But I felt I'd be so curious. I looked to see if there was any reference to it in like the marketing around this movie, which, of course, there wasn't because it was a Disney Channel movie. But I have to imagine that people like the creative team of this movie knew about this story.

And like it feels like that room is a direct reference to like the scary VR room is a direct reference to it. Especially because there is that moment where they project a savannah savannah right like yeah elephants and apex predators and stuff right and then and and angie gets scared and then sarah's like okay i'll turn it off yeah you're just and that's sort of it because it's a disney movie But I was like, whoa. Are they Bradbury-ing right now? Oh, my God. Yeah. I maybe want to read more Ray Bradbury. I read that in, I think, like sixth grade.

And it scared the shit out of me. But in a good way. Anyways. I just wanted to shout out The Veldt. And then also, like, The Happy Life Home, Pat. It's the same thing. It's the same thing. But they're like like but what if this was only sort of bad what if we trapped pat there i if so bizarre anyways yeah sorry i just wanted to uh i guess that that's sort of context corner a little bit

sure sure no it's all it's all very helpful and pat in addition to those things can also like make a bunch of food and serve it to the family like you said absorb things into the floor if you spill let's say you request a strawberry smoothie and then the strawberry smoothie comes out and for some reason it's blue and not like pink like you might expect it's like a period commercial and then you spill your blue strawberry smoothie onto the floor well the floor absorbers incredible creative naming device will absorb the spill they only had 20 minutes to write this movie i'm sure i think yeah i i thought that that was so funny and it reminds me of the most futuristic appliance i own which i know i've talked about on the show because i'm so cocky about it is my automated spaceship litter box

for flea oh yes and it's kind of floor absorber adjacent in that the poo-poo does disappear but then it made me think i was like but all that does go somewhere and it's gonna be a stinky day when you have to empty out the floor absorbers sure that's gonna be a bad day anyways did you know that lavar burton talked to nasa to research how to like make this house cool it all feels or sorry not not uh LeVar Burton's the guy who wrote the one of the two male writers of the movie Stu Krieger because Stu Krieger also he's kind of a space head guess what other decom he wrote um I couldn't sayenon girl of the 21st century. That's right. Okay. This guy loves vaguely late 90s space technology. And I guess that he had like a plug at NASA that would help him like write in ideas.

Uh-huh. Interesting. Yeah. So here's what happened with me watching this movie. I forgot that DCOMs of this era have budgets of like 11 and oh yeah look like shit so i had in my head because i knew the premise of this movie and i knew it would be like futuristic high-tech house stuff and so i figured that the kind of production design of the movie would reflect the, you know, high tech capabilities of this house. That is incorrect.

Yeah, no. No, of course not. It's a I'm sure that this was like a general house set on a studio lot that they like added some dinglehoppers to to make it seem like a little fancier but yeah it's just like a sitcom set basically yeah with the sort of clunkily edited in like video screen rooms but I will say like as a kid that loved this movie it did feel like the moments they chose to show what the house could do it felt like it was enough for me the kitchen like the the snacks when when the girls are at the party and they get infinity snacks pat's control room like the claw outside you're like oh yeah when you think about it it's a lot of camera trickery and just being told that this can happen right

uh but i was i was duped i thought it was awesome i mean when you're eight years old it will seem impressive it's true when you're 37 not so much kayla why are you dunking on this amazing movie why don't you make smart house and call me back uh why am i they went to nasa they went to nasa why am i dunk dunk the house is dunking. No, you're slam dunking the funk. Sorry, I got my lyrics confused. Slam dunk the funk and then jump, jump, the house is jumping. Okay. Yes.

Sorry. Really complicated lore. Okay. So the family settles into the new house and they love it. Everything's great. Nick starts working from home and he's finding that he can be way more productive at work. His job is, he ships baseball bats, I think, is that, because there's one scene where Pat is yelling, I mean, this is later in the movie, but Pat's like, get back to work, buster.

But he is like on this call where he's like all right make sure all the bats and gloves get there by the end of the week i was like what is this man's job i i think that he is a sports equipment shipping guy i don't know vague very vague but sure and then when when uh ben calls him at the beginning he's in front of a bunch of baseball looking things i think he's like king of the bats sure and well then he brings ben home a basketball to remind us once again that ben likes basketball right oh yeah so he's so i mean he's got range it's not just bats and gloves yeah it's also other things okay so um so nick like the house is helping him be more productive at his job at school this popular girl named gwen who ben has a crush on is like hey ben you should invite me over to your cool house and so everyone's like wow this house

is really doing wonders for us jumping um it is jump jump but oh no pat malfunctions while trying to make smoothies smoothies are a big with oranges yes smoothies are a big motif in this movie and sometimes they are just too much things aren't going so smoothie anymore that makes you think the irony of pat malfunctioning and not running smoothly because she's trying to make smoothies is literary genius. Yeah, Ray Bradbury could never. He could not. Okay, so Pat malfunctions and we're like, foreshadowing much? So Nick has Sarah come over to see what went wrong. And Sarah stays for dinner, which makes Ben furious because again,

he thinks that Sarah is trying to replace his mom and he's really mean and condescending to her and he storms off. We'll return to this conversation. Yeah. I do think it is kind of amazing that Sarah has a pet rat named Butler. She's like, rat, like, rat, Butler, get it?

I don't get it. What is that a reference to? A reference to Rhett Butler, who was like a... Oh, gone with the wind. Yeah. What a bizarre reference to make in a DCOM. But at least Ryan Merriman's like, what? Shut up. decom but at least ryan merriman's like what shut up there that is weirdo behavior to name your rat

after a racist movie character um but i liked that she had a rat i mean she's not like the other women in stem no she's dated a bunch of serial killers and she has a pet rat. They didn't need to write that down, but they did. And I think it's interesting. Well, the rat is another thing that is planted and will pay off. Oh, yeah. So that's why we need the rat. Yeah. Anyway, that's just that Stu Krieger magic.

Yeah, exactly. So Nick goes to talk to Ben and he's like son you're taking on too much you don't have to work so hard to take care of us and ben is like well yeah i don't have to work so hard anymore because now we have pat she's going to be mummy now and nick is like well don't forget she's just a machine and then ben goes into the control room of the house and has pat watch a bunch of 1950s sitcoms to show pat how to be more maternal I'm just like, Ben, Ben. Now, Ben. Why not choose more current videos or anything? Yeah, we will return to this because. Yes. I also, I just like, I don't know.

I don't want to bully this 11-year-old character too much. But I'm just like, this kid should be in therapy. Like, Kevin Kleiner needs to get this kid into therapy. Like, he's, I feel bad because it's like, he does all this shitty little stinker stuff that's super misguided and sucks. But it's also like, it's obvious that like, he and his dad, like, he doesn't really have anyone to talk to about his mom. He's like, not been able to to like properly grieve about it and like i understand from a kid's perspective of like he feels like his mom is trying to be replaced and he feels like he can't talk about her ever which like has to be really hard on a kid and you would like

probably lash out and do a bunch of weird stuff and and all of that i just but it's like the movie the way the movie handles it it's very you know glazed over fantasy stuff but it's like this poor kid like he hasn't been able to grieve his mom and literally no one will talk to him about it and it's like not that it's that his dad shouldn't be allowed to move on like of course but it's like it doesn't seem like there's ever been like a structured conversation about it right and it seems like these like reactions from ben could at least be like tempered even if it doesn't change how he feels it's like i feel like you do owe you know your kid a conversation of like hey i'm going to

start seeing people and like this is like how do you feel about that and let's talk about it blah blah blah but Kevin Kleiner's like shut up I'm gonna fuck like they're you know but then in other and then eventually he feels bad about it but I was just like this dad is a mess so in that way it's hyper realistic yeah there's one conversation toward the beginning where ben says something like our family is perfect the way it is and then his dad is like well i think there's a little room for improvement and it's like that's such a cruel thing to say to children your grieving child i yeah i yeah i i feel i feel for ben i i have i'm lucky to have not lost a parent before

but like it just seems like he has no support whatsoever um and his dad is like um i don't know either like emotionally repressed or like doesn't have the skill set to like talk to his son about it and then is bringing someone new into his kids lives which of course like every parent is going to be different about the timeline for that um but i just i don't know like ben like it doesn't excuse ben being a little shithead at so many points in this movie but i also just feel like he just has very little support because his sister like probably would want to support him if she could but like she doesn't remember her mom well enough to do it right and then his dad won't talk

to him about it i'm just like buddy we gotta get you into counseling anyways he doesn't that doesn't happen he instead shows pat a bunch of you i think like pat literally gets radicalized by the youtube algorithm um yeah because ben is like here's some here's some shows and the titles of these shows are mother knows best my three moms which is like okay what's that show about make room for mama and noah's matriarch. Hilarious. And so Pat absorbs these so that she can learn to be more motherly, which works because the next day, Pat is like, brush your teeth, darling. Take your vitamins, honey bunny. Here's a cupcake, sweetie pie. And then she's also like dad you worry about business i'll worry about taking care of the kids i thought it's like it's kind of interesting

commentary on like media of that time but also it kind of goes nowhere um right i just wanted to quickly shout out the fact that for some baffling reason we get to see dad and sarah's whole date while ben is throwing his party before pat is put on the straight and narrow path of being a real disciplinarian kind of parent house um but i just think it's every time in a kids movie I'm like I In my long career of Being a child watching movies on the Disney channel I never once at any Given point was like what's Happening on their dad's date

And right but they Always show it to you and in this one for some Reason they show you this like They kiss You're like you and she Has he has a little Hershey kiss in his bag and then he's like kiss and I'm like I hate this guy it's so corny oh she's like objectively too good for him like she's literally a super genius and this guy is a flop parent who's like baseball bats leave her alone yeah um okay so ben is like wow it's like my plan is

working and then off screen i could like not track this sequence of events really or like why this was us anyway off screen ben stands up to his bully at the advice of his dad but ben gets beaten up very quickly and then like yeah they the bully i guess it's like good that they don't show it right but like but why does that happen yeah yeah like what's his name ryan ryan the bully ryan the bully kicks the shit out of him which again seems like okay kevin kleiner this is a good point to like talk to the school like do something but he's a flop so he does not do anything right i do not know why this subplot with the bully is in the movie it doesn't really connect to anything else all it really does for me is like reinforce what a shitty parent nick is where it's like the first time he bothers to give

his son any advice he gets the shit kicked out of him right and you're just like well i don't know maybe i think pat is kind of a better parent sorry wow I mean let's let's find out so Ben so after he's been beaten up Ben is feeling down and he's also still really missing his mom and you know Sarah is around more and more and he feels very threatened that she's gonna come in and like quote unquote replace his mom so then he watches a video which reminded me of remember on the john wick episode we were talking about dead wife.mp4 oh my god he watches dead mom.mov he does he really does and she and it's just like so i mean it's, it makes sense in a movie of this era. And then most, I mean, it's just as vague in deadwife.mp4.

She's like, John, come on, John. You're like, what are you talking about? Like, why are you on the beach? What's happening? And then this one, at least it's a little more grounded, but she's like running around the kitchen being like, mom is gonna buy you a mockingbird. Like classic mom behavior. Yeah.

And then she's like, I, yeah, it, uh, it's, it's very, I, I thought it was like sweet. It was like, if they're going to dead mom route i feel like disney movies usually just elect to uh not reference grief at all this one does at least like you would do like even when what ben's doing sucks in the context of a kid who hasn't been able to properly grieve his parent at least it does make sense but it's like that seems really sad even though the video is kind of funny right it's it's sad and he's crying and ryan merriman he is really good in that scene someone saw that and they're like but what if he was a basketball playing leprechaun wow he's got the range he's got Okay, so he's watching this video and Pat is observing, of course.

She's always watching. Meanwhile, Nick calls Sarah and asks her out to dinner on Saturday night, which she accepts. And Pat overhears Nick talking to Sarah about how he wishes that ben was able to have more fun so pat gets the idea to invite ben's friends over for a party the following night and so a bunch of kids from school show up this is where we get them doing a choreographed dance jumping um another scene that passes the bechdel test angie's working the door for some reason and there's two girls that show up give their full names and Angie says get the fuck out of here and they're like oh my god this party is so exclusive

I loved that pass that was a that was a good one it was really fun so the kids are showing up to the party including Ben's crush gwen ben and gwen okay hello a little bit too twinny for me but sure i'm too much rhyming too much taylor lautner married someone named taylor and you're like i'm sure you're very in love but this should not be legal i will not even consider dating anyone that has the first name of anyone i'm related to i feel like it would be really difficult for me to definitely someone with my own name but even like james i sort of like i couldn't do it it's too confusing my grandparents names were patrick and patricia oh and they thought it was hysterical and pat were they smart houses no they weren't very smart

houses but they were good people okay and anyways sorry i just called my grandparents not smart let's move on okay so we've got ben and gwen and then also the bully ryan shows up to the party because pat invited him so that she could publicly humiliate she wants to kick his ass she i feel like if this was a ray bradbury story she would have killed him yeah absolutely like decapitated him like megan did that to someone who bullied her friend katie it's not yeah absolutely so pat humiliates the bully and he goes running away meanwhile like you said we cut to the date that nick and sarah are on we see them kissing and then i was like maybe it's just the fact that i watched this movie when i was really little that but when they kiss i'm still like yucky it also just feels unnecessary for the

plot yeah yeah listeners please sound off other movies that do this like a kid's movie that includes a weird amount of insight on the parents love life that the core audience for these movies couldn't possibly give a shit about it's also mary kate and ashley where you just see the dad on that dating montage you're like yeah who cares which one was that was that billboard dad it was billboard dad we're gonna have to return to that wellspring at some point but sure we've got time mary kate and ashley august or something okay so nick heads home from the date while the party is still happening so ben and angie have to like kick everyone out and clean up the house via pat's floor absorbers but oh no they missed something and nick comes home and he sees it so they get in trouble for throwing the party but pat is like no no no it was my fault i invited everyone to the

party which is true so nick is like pat you gotta get yourself under control yeah he said pull it together pat you can't just throw awesome parties with my cool son you can't have the house be jumping. The house can't just be jumping like that. So Pat is like, absolutely, of course, I will simmer down. So then Pat starts like policing the family, what clothes they wear, what they do. She's like, you got to finish your homework and your baseball selling job before you do anything fun. And then they're like, well, this sucks. So they have Sarah come over to see if she can fix this new mode that Pat is in. And Sarah decides to shut the whole system down and give Pat a rest.

But Pat turns herself back on. Ex machina. Dun, dun, dun. Ex machina. Ex machina. Ugh. Meanwhile, Ben is throwing another fit about how his dad is falling in love with Sarah

and how he thinks Sarah's going to replace his mom. And Nick sits him down and he's like, that's not what's happening and they have like a really tender nice conversation i thought i thought so too i liked that scene and i just again feeling for this fictional kid uh i was like wow nick it would have been really cool if you had this conversation with ben four years ago why is it taking the house that eats blood to force you to have this conversation but yeah i thought that that was nice and they're in that scene nick is like well i lost my wife and um you're like damn that's true but uh i yeah i thought that that scene was really sweet. And it's also, I think, pretty rare in the space of a movie that stars a boy to have a,

even when it's like very, very misguided, to be like as emotionally expressive as Ben is. Sure, yeah. And then also that like a father-son conversation about their feelings. I feel like in 1999, that's like, that's pretty solid. It doesn't make Nick a better parent. He's still a piece of shit parent. And I think he's still really playing fast and loose with bringing someone new into the house before he's talked to his kids about it in a way that's also like fucked up and like kind of disrespectful to Sarah, too. Because he keeps just being like, my children.

And I was like, dude yeah you're hurting everyone's feelings like especially because this is the person who designed a house that's about to try to kill them oh oh but but you know sarah is gonna go full girl boss mode she has a laser i forgot that she had a laser like why the hell does she have this laser like a pocket laser like it fits in her pocket it was pretty great anyways we'll get there in a second because pat's about to go rogue yeah so what happens is pat who has turned herself back on makes this like hologram projection of herself and now she's katate seagal in the flesh and it's amazing she goes to ben's room to be like let's team up to get rid of sarah i know you hate her too and i'm the only mommy your family needs i am a mother like no other and you're just like i was so scared of her i was so

scared of her but i love her hair color anyways she's got a pretty good fit on um yeah she then throws sarah out of the house and barricades all the doors and windows trapping nick ben and angie inside because pat wants to keep them in smart house forever and then the like hologram starts duplicating itself and pat is getting scarier and scarier my god now there's 10 katie seagulls in the kitchen yeah yeah and it's like i know that nick can't be the hero of this but he's making the most weak excuses as to why they should be allowed to leave he's like no kids have to go to school i'm like nick you should be stabbing the house like why are you you are the least proactive parent in the history of parents yeah i know and then but then they

figure out a way to get sarah back inside via her pet rat and the newspaper retrieval door which were things that were set up at the beginning of the movie and ben is like pat you're out of control stop trying to be something you're not you can't be our mom because you're not even real and pat is like damn you're right she's bye i'll miss you and then yeah oh my god this is like very dry i think it is like coded essentially that like pat i mean she doesn't take her own computer life because she's still there at the end of the movie they like go out of the way to show you that like pat's alive but i feel like her being alive is almost worse did they learn nothing right right like they learned nothing and also she's probably pretty mad in there um but the way that they illustrate like her going to like it feels like computer heaven it's like they just start playing

like rainstorm.mp4 and it's it's i because katie seagal is a good actor you're sort of like oh my god it's just like two lines of dialogue and she's like you're right i have to die and you're like well no one said that um right but then we need the movie to end happy because it's a decom so i think the ending of this movie is so bizarre right so basically pat shuts herself down and then sarah is able to like reboot and maybe reprogram pat she's a genius she can do anything so that pat isn't so invasive and scary and then ben apologizes and he's like i learned my lesson not to mess with pat which true he should not have done but it's like sarah you should be the one apologizing for creating sarah like it's so i mean i i love being on women's side but i'm like i mean let women be sarah is but the movie has doesn't seem

to want to explore that like she's just so i think it is like vaguely misogynist that she isn't held accountable because i feel like the movie even though the movie like it is her job is relevant to the plot which is very rare um in a love interest character sometimes we know like what they do but i feel like it very rarely is actually relevant to what happens in the movie that's not true here like her job is super like the movie doesn't happen unless she's doing her job true but i feel like the way that like no one is upset with her that she's built this killer house and every time they call her over to fix the killer house she's like i don't know what's going on yeah can i hang out and like this is so unprofessional and

you'd like you need to make the house stop eating them uh she is like so i feel like the plot ultimately treats her more like a girlfriend because it's like they don't really take like the plot doesn't take into account the fact that she is like hugely at fault here not at all and yeah it to me the the romance between her and the dad is very like well it's a movie so of course but it still feels very wedged in and she is behaving very unprofessionally and like you can't be dating the person who is living in the house that you're using like this family is like i mean speaking of rat butler like these are your like test rats that you're testing this scary house on and that's that's also i'm just sort of like outside of

unprofessionalism the gall of sarah because i like if i were if i had a crush on someone who was essentially my lab rat and the experiment was not going well i would not be like let's go on a date i would be like this person's probably pretty upset with me but thankfully um nick is not uh he's not to quote another disney channel original series he's not a smart guy oh uh that's a disney channel series about you're never going to believe a 12 year old who's real smart uh anyways uh but yeah i mean we'll we'll talk about that after the break because that's what we talk about. That's what's happening right now.

Poopai! Hey, everybody. This is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Katherine Hahn

is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. I feel some Sandra Bernhard in you. Oh my

God, I would love it. I have to watch Lost. I feel some Sandra Bernhardt in you. Oh, my God. I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know. I'm so behind. Katherine Hanken's thing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke.

What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Ludi. Not hawk the slalom. I absolutely love it.

It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it. It was somehow gorgeous. Yee, my slok, you hollum. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Prudente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions.

Like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or, can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes. Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do. Like resume specialist Morgan Saner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is

usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it like you miss 100% of the shots you never take? Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia.

I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back.

Bello. Bello. All right. Let's, let's, because we were just starting to have that conversation anyways, let's just jump into the Sarah and then the Sarah Nick relationship. I think that like for your average DCOM of this time, in the context of this time,

Sarah is a bigger and more impactful character than your average decom which is nice because I feel like in all of these I mean in most sitcoms but especially sitcoms and tv movies for kids parents tend to be fairly tangential they're often just like big comedic doofus-y kind of characters we see that in lizzie mcguire movie we see that and even stevens like this movie does make the parental figures nick and then later sarah like flawed people i just feel like yeah as we were just alluding to sarah she's you know women's rights but also women's wrongs and sarah is wrong uh makes so many bad decisions in this movie but yes i wanted to start at the beginning because the way we're introduced to sarah is so bizarre the specific there there are specifics with this character

but they're all so weird uh we're introduced with her with a character we only meet twice who's kind of like misogyny the guy basically he's like her co-worker her boss like i don't know what their professional relationship is but he is wearing like clear sunglasses he's i think the publicist of this smart house he's like doing pr well he's doing a bad job they're both doing a bad job yeah but he's just like sexually harassing her casually and he's just like i don't know like of course because she's like we learn what her job is right away and we know that she's in charge of pat but then we also learn she's single and she's kind of a mess and then she read a book called smart women foolish choices and i was like wow i'm under attack uh-huh and she's like well have you heard of this book smart women

foolish choices it's my autobiography yeah which i thought maybe she meant literally and i was like because at this point you barely know her and i'm like is she an author like what is her job i don't know i mean it just felt very like something that we see pretty often that is like rooted in something that's real but it's like this movie is not equipped to make any sort of effective commentary so it just sort of like reinforces tropes about like women having careers and having satisfying personal lives like it's impossible to have both we have no idea why but it happens in society so let's just put it in the movie right right so that's that's like i mean i'm we won't break down the entire like it's but but yeah it's like the sort of thing where it's like it frames that uh which is, first of all, not prescriptive at all.

Plenty of women and non-binary people have fulfilling relationships and fulfilling careers. But I know that, I don't know, like I've definitely struggled with that. But it's always made out in movies like this and with characters like this to be a personal fault versus... It's her fault she just loves her job too much right which is something that you never see with male characters and we've talked about this a million times but it's like it's a pretty because i think because it's a kids movie it's really like flagrant the way that it's presented and literally we have glasses on her and then as the movie as she gets more comfortable and

more flirty the glasses come off but basically this whole first scene is just like her publicist question mark sexually harassing her negging her when she's like i don't want to date right now and he's like this is self-inflicted everyone has a crush on you. Yeah, it's very nasty. But then the way she's replying, I think, is very consistent with Boomer rhetoric of like, well, that's just the way things are. That's how I'm treated at work. And so she's kind of taking it all in stride. And she's like, no, work is much safer for me. And we learn.

So that exchange is pretty. It's like so bad. It's kind of campy, but it's just like atrocious because, you know, two grown men wrote it. And you're like, well, I guess that this is how you view women with jobs, question mark. And like the only thing that could make her have a satisfying personal life is the first guy we meet in the movie who isn't this creep in glasses like right there's no new ground being tread here but i was kind of just surprised at how boldly it was um yeah boldly going interesting star trek coded boldly going uh to a misogynist place we've seen a million times yeah like the

tropiest choice is possible basically when characterizing this type of like girl bossy character yeah and then the other thing the movie does is well so it sets up this you know it sets her up as being oh she's had nothing but like kooky horrible boyfriends and what is going on with these boyfriend descriptions she's like a i don't like a chicken thief or something i was like what the fuck are you talking there's a rubber chicken manufacturer but then there was someone who i think she was describing a serial killer or something along those lines it sounded like she dated us and i'm like wow do you have do the writers of this movie have so little faith in nick as a character that they have to

make him seem like a good alternative to a serial killer right so yeah she's just characterized as being like unlucky in love because she has poor judgment which like relatable sometimes for me at least but yeah i mean it's like there's but it's like also i think that that's the other thing is like it's always made out that you know mostly women characters are bad judges of character in this way like it's very and then but when that dynamic is presented with like men talking about past ex-girlfriends it's always like well because she was hysterical or she was crazy it's never like i feel like the way it's positioned here is like these men were evil and scary and that's my fault for dating them but if it's reversed they'd be like ah this like this broad i get

like she's out of her mind and it's there's no like personal accountability that which actually makes more sense uh but yeah i feel like it's it's for some reason sarah's fault that uh men are scary and that's the other thing it's just like yeah men are statistically more scary i mean i don't know what to tell you the history books do corroborate this yes so sarah's characterization is pulled directly from the tropiest tropes possible yeah and thrown into this like wedged in romantic storyline that is inappropriate for her to be in sure and then she becomes mummy sort of mrs mommy right and that's the other thing is like the movie has i think the movie makes the assumption that of course she wants to be a step parent like there's no like because all we know is like what hasn't happened for her which is a satisfying relationship it seems like that is something

that she wants which fine but we don't know anything else about what she like wants out of her life outside of that and then it's just sort of like assumed the like logic of the movie assumes that of course this woman in her 30s wants to be ryan merriman's stepmom where you're like i don't know like i just feel like she's her agency is like pretty undercut there which sucks because like contrasted with like you have such an interesting setup for a character there where it's like this super genius who has created this terrifying house in this like random suburbia for some reason like i i'm far more interested in that side of her and like who allowed her to do this who is bankrolling this what has she done in the past like but it's just all undercut for like girlfriend and mommy storylines where you're like this is a pretty diabolical character or maybe it's like you could

give her like a mr andrews from titanic kind of line where it's like she created this with good intentions and now it's gotten out of control and she must suffer for her hubris but none of that happens um but and and because this movie is genuinely very similar to a recent movie megan in which allison williams character is put through a lot of the exact same story beats of like right she is not super lucky in love but also like we learned about this character she's not really interested in relationship and that's fine she kind of just wants to fuck great i get why that's not going to be in a decom but anyways you could take a second to specify what does this character want out of her life and have enough interest in her but she's also like put in a position to suddenly have to take on a maternal role that she's not ready for and then she also has the super genius creation.

That she ends up having to destroy. In the same way that Sarah. Sort of kind of almost destroys Pat. And you get a far more satisfying story arc. But I think a lot of that is because it's like. We actually see the Allison Williams character. Struggle with the question of parenting and like, is that something she wants to do?

Is that something she's comfortable with and not have it just be assumed that that's of course what she wants. And that movie isn't weighed down with an unnecessary, uh, romantic plot with Mr. Random, Kevin Klein. Right.

Um, yes. So anyways, with Mr. Random, Kevin Klein. Right. Yes. So anyways, I guess that that does at least show how this weirdly stock character. I also am thinking of like Nicole Kidman in Paddington. Like, I don't know, like woman super genius with an evil invent. Like, I love it.

It's like Victor Frankenstein shit. It's great. But it's like the worst thing you can do to a character that like fun and complicated is do the most boring gendered uh things to them right but that's what happened to sarah unfortunately is indeed and listeners if you're interested for more discussion on megan you can scoot over to our patreon aka it's so true but pat is so pat is like pat walked so megan could run in those woods yeah and get that kid um let's see if there's anything else with sarah oh oh this bummed me out so we'll get to talking about ben but ben is basically like projecting his

anger at his father onto sarah yes to make sarah feel uncomfortable and not want to be around anymore which is shitty behavior very but he's i also like i feel like i keep coming to his defense because he's like a kid and no one has ever talked to him about his parent dying anyways but there's that scene where sarah's like oh it's the ray bradbury murder room let's make it look like cape cod i love cape cod and you're just like wow she's so interesting um but ben is like coming for her in this scene yeah and he says wait i have this written down where nick is being very complimentary of sarah which is nice that he like does you know value her skills he values what she can do and he's like she's a genius she's really great and then ben's like you know i hear geniuses are

impossible to live with and make everyone around them feel inferior and you're like whoa holy shit and he's like good for you and your big giant brain i was like jesus but she retorts by undercutting her own intelligence like she doesn't she's like you don't have to worry i'm not that smart i was like i don't know you made the house that eats people like it's kind of never been done before it takes some brains but and i i do i do feel bad for her in that scene and i do think that it is nick's fault more so than ben's um yeah he does put a lot of people in uncomfortable situations without adequately like having the conversations that need to happen to make sure everyone's on similar pages make sure people are feeling comfortable with what's happening he just ignores the need for all of that open communication right it's like yeah let's all eat peach cobbler together and then yeah and then later he like anytime he does

something he immediately def like and something goes wrong he immediately deflects the blame off of himself and it's just like so that was weird you're like that was your fault which has happened because like once ben and angie leave the room after that really tense discussion which wasn't was certainly like very cruel to sarah he does the thing he's just like my children and like that was your fault that that happened you fucking loser oh i just cannot stand this man's parenting he is such a mess yes so anyways there is that the movie kind of reinforces this idea that like children need two parents you need a mommy and a daddy and which is completely consistent with this era of kids media like it's but it's like pushing back on absolutely nothing right but then i think the

movie is cutting nick a lot of slack and like because it shows these scenes where it's like oh my gosh isn't he such a great parent he's like having these no conversations with his kids and it's like well yeah but he's not doing nearly enough he's doing it all half a decade late and like i felt like he was similarly deflective when he suddenly realized that ben has been taking on a lot of parenting angie for years where he's like hey I'm realizing that blah blah blah and it's like no earlier in the movie I saw you demand Ben do a list of chores to help his little sister which is like okay if that is the division of responsibilities at this house like okay maybe but but if that's the case but you can't just like pretend you didn't know that was happening.

You were actively making him do that stuff. You can't just be like, oh no, is this happening? You're like, yeah, I don't know. And it sucks because it's like, I feel like again, the story opportunities are there, but you're totally right. Like Nick is just cut so much slack where I don't mind that it's like

the movie draws your attention to like how challenging it can be to be a single parent to two young kids like sure i have no issue with that but yeah the fact that but they just like cut him but the fact that they're like and the solution to that is a new mommy like there's no alternative presented there's no even though he lists off a number of alternatives which included apparently they can afford child care if they needed child care but i feel like it's all of those options are presented as inferior to new mommy sarah which is just yeah boring right and shitty there's also a moment in the score of this movie oh where uh when nick first meets sarah first of all nick too horny overall he's a horny dad and i hate that um

his children are constantly having really strong opinions on how horny he is. I'm just like, we just like should not know this about dad. We just shouldn't. Call me old fashioned, but I don't want my seven year old being like, you should definitely fuck that lady down. You're like, whoa, whoa. No, don't do that. That was that was a pretty good Angie. She's she's little stinker coded big time.

She is. But anyways, do you have anything else to say about Sarah? I just feel like her story possibility is like all the interesting ones. Like I wouldn't have even minded if she turned villain at the end. Like being really defensive of her invention. It's like, no, this is the future. This is how it should be something like that totally i mean it's like which would make more sense because i mean imagine how long it would

have taken her to make pat and then just be like no i met a guy who doesn't kill people and so i'm gonna kill like i don't know i just think there were so many interesting ways for her story to go and they chose the most boring route i like at least that the story had enough respect for her to not like sideline her for the peak of the action because i sort of forgot like when that when that like pushes her out of the house which a part of me i was like is this just turning the only two women characters against each other? But I'm like, no, that also feels consistent with like the creator creature storylines. I'm like,

I'll give that a pass. And also you don't see that dynamic between two women, like a woman creator and a woman. And you know, also happens in Megan anyways. Well, and then also like in I Frankenstein, for example, thank you.

You have the, the monster turning against its creator which is what happens with pat it's it's true she's like let's kill sarah i love that pat's sort of like let's kill sarah and because when when she says that i'm sort of like let's kill sarah um in the same way when uh alicia vikander is like let's kill oscar isaac i'm like almost any other movie i'd say no but this one i think we have to kill oscar isaac um uh oh but i i thought i sort of was like oh no do they like throw her out of the height of the action but she's like very active and she comes back and she has a laser and like she is right i'd like the the sort of like the two people who ultimately take Pat down are

Sarah and Ben which makes sense to me I don't know I didn't have a problem with it so I was paying close attention to that so somehow Ben is able to send an email to Sarah you would think that Pat would be monitoring that I know i was like how'd you get do you have a burner well i think what happened what we're supposed to think is he went into the bathroom where it's been established that he has privacy like pat has no jurisdiction in the bathroom so he's sitting in the tub with his dog a golden retriever named mutt mutt i thought that pat was insulting the dog but then i just found out the dog's name was an insult actually mutt so yeah so he's sending an email to be like come here sarah and then so she well before that she has like sent a message via her rat to ben iconic and then it's kind of unclear how this oh i think it is his idea that

she comes in through the mail like the newspaper slot yes or something isn't his idea i don't i don't well he says something like i have a really wild idea if you're willing to go for it and then she's like haha yeah but we don't hear what the idea is so we just kind of have to assume yeah either way i'll even give the movie credit and say it was a joint plan because i always assumed that ben's part of the plan was like i will fake appendicitis and then you sneak into the house one way or another oh okay yeah so maybe it is her that like knows that she needs to get in through the mail slot yeah whatever but she's in the house she uses her pocket laser but then she kind of does nothing

else that's true because pat shuts herself down sarah doesn't do anything to like that's true i mean i don't know i guess i was more referring to the pocket laser moment, which I really love because it's I think it would have sort of chafed against like Ben. Like it makes sense that Ben's little monologue is the thing that ends up taking Pat out because he has to realize that computer isn't mommy before the end of the movie. But it would have been nice for Sarah to to do a little more but at least you also get I don't know Pat she's still learning she's chaotic like yeah I don't know yeah I Sarah definitely could have done more but I just felt like you know she doesn't do nothing which unfortunately I was pleasantly surprised at I mean the bar is so low and it's better than like at least Nick doesn't have

if Nick had a real moment during that scene I would have lost it. It made sense to me that Ben was Mr. Monologue there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. But yeah I don't think I have anything left on Sarah. Let's talk about Pat. I love

Pat. So again we've talked about a number of characters. I mean, Pat feels like a combination of a few tropes that we, or not tropes, just like characters that are often women, but not always, that we've talked about in the past. We've already talked about the Megan of it all, of an AI powered. I mean, it really is, like, impressive how much is similar, where it's, like, an AI-powered invention that was made by a woman to provide companionship and support to a grieving child. It is pretty stunning. It's a little looser in smart house,

obviously, because Pat's also doing all these other things. Yeah. But I feel like there's like definitely hints of Megan. There's hints of ex machina. Although that was like a more gender dynamic. But also it reminds me a lot of her. And how in our her episode,

which is now five years old, if you can believe it. Unbelievable. Time. But how we talked about in that episode how it is so common to give AI that is service-based and like this house is taking care of you. It's protecting you. It's associated with all these kind of traditionally maternal qualities.

And they will always assign a feminine voice to that. There's all sorts of reasons why. It's partially just because I think that they're like, because so many of these are designed by people who are like thinking in a mass market patriarchal way of like well people are more comfortable asking women to do things for them especially like household labor exactly or in the case of like gps i remember it was like and people are more comfortable yelling at women too so if they get lost they will feel better. And how that is sort of contrasted with more masculine voices are assigned to like less domestic tasks and less labor based things. And it's more like if you're asking something that like someone should know. I remember there was like a robot that competed on Jeopardy and that was like an AI powered machine that had a masculine voice because he was smart.

Shit like that like and I think that is very present in Pat in a way that the movie seems aware of and I think that it is kind of interesting that Pat's creator is a woman and I still like tracks for me fine because it's not like you know it's like you don't have to be a not all women are feminists or like you know and and I don't know I just thought it was it is like a really it just felt like uh she feels like an encapsulation of a lot of stuff we've talked about in the past and it seems like the movie is pretty aware of that I don't think that it delivers on it necessarily but it's interesting well Pat's interesting because a lot of what we see that operating

system do is household labor type stuff like she's prepping meals and she's cleaning the house via the floor absorbers but she's also keeping the man with the job on task of like here's how to be more productive she's doing like wifely duties yeah that right but then like she's also like doing ben's bully's homework for i don't know it's not exclusively household labor stuff but it is a lot of like the roles that women have like have been traditionally expected to occupy as far as like overseeing the general welfare of the family and stuff like that and like you know maintaining the household all of that stuff is pat's responsibility which is why ben wanted the house in the first place he kind of seems to resent that he had to take on a lot

of that responsibility and he's like i don't want to do it anymore i need a house to do this mummy stuff which for me which is like so at the core of what his character's issue is is like he wants to i don't know and and it is again like based on this false binary of like what a functioning family looks like that this movie really subscribes to of like well you need two parents probably a says man and a says woman for your life to be considered normal and functional and like Ben is does not want another parent but he also doesn't want to have to do all of this stuff at home and like it all tracks but i i like that um i don't know i guess i'm of two minds about this although i don't know yeah i'm curious because we've just discussed i frankenstein literally sorry adam frankenstein

has some pat energy about him um sure with like the whole like tortured creature turning into a monster over time narrative is i don't know in some ways i feel like pat going nuclear at the end could make it seem like she's hysterical but i also feel like the movie i don't know did you feel like i think i think i feel like it did basically do enough to illustrate that like Pat is not reacting in this way because she is a feminine robot she's reacting this way because she is receiving too much conflicting information and cannot handle it and is trying to perform the function she was designed to do and literally cannot do it because she is like not passing the Turing test she like doesn't understand feelings because she's a computer and that's the cautionary tale it's like computers can't you know be your

mom because they are like not capable of empathy not that that all moms are. But if my mom's listening, she's great. But I don't know. Like I feel like the movie did do enough. And it is satisfying seeing Pat create a living room cyclone at the end. I don't know. What did you think of like how Pat's emotions are portrayed in the movie? Yeah. I see what you mean.

The possible interpretation of like she gets jealous of the real woman, like this human woman trying to insert herself into this family because Pat wants to be the mummy. It doesn't feel quite that which could be read as like you know a female character turning on another one for like jealousy reasons but yeah pat only becomes the way she is because because she starts out pretty neutral she's like here's a blue strawberry milkshake or whatever no one's calling me out for that mistake all right let's see what we can do here you know and then eating angie's blood and being like here's how much body percent fat you have and it's like why is this a detail we need to have in the movie but anyway also um that's the bite and you're and everyone's like oh oh okay i guess that's the bite i'm like no that in 1999 that's triple scary so scary yeah um but

aside from those just like bad writing choices like pat is seems neutral as neutral as ai can be but then ben is like no you have to be a 1950s housewife. That's what I need from you. So then Pat is just like, okay. And not just like actual 1950s housewife, like media's representation of that. So it's like even more skewed and like even more tropey. So it does feel like there is like some commentary. I just, I find it confusing as a i don't know i mean because in

some ways like yeah pat's major glitching to being fed all of this like post-world war ii housewife media is commentary on how flawed that media is i just don't understand if i'm a kid in 1999 why that would be what I would jump to it's so weird because it's like Katie Segal played an iconic like Gen X TV mom like why wouldn't you just show them footage of married with children like why I don't understand why he's like seeking a parent that has no resemblance to the parent that he's lost like I don't I guess I just I will I think that there's probably an answer to that like but I just wish that I think that the like sort of vague like wishy-washy commentary on housewives in media of that era was sort of

undercut by the point that you're like I don't understand why this is what Ben is asking for. I don't understand how he's even seen these shows. Like, right. He's watching Nick at night. Just kidding. That doesn't exist in the world of Disney. But I mentioned Nickelodeon around me. Right.

You would think that it would almost take the life-size approach where Lindsay Lohan's trying to bring her mom back from the dead right and Ben would like show the video like the home videos like the dead mom dot mov files to Pat to be like this is the mom I need you to be that does not happen in the movie but that would make more sense i think yeah i understand why they don't do that because it would be fucking terrifying um and reminds me of a different early black mirror episode the domhnall gleason one where he dies and then they and like that the computer was bad in that one too yes just like all of them but uh yeah i mean that would have been too scary for a kid's

movie but it does like i feel like this even with me you could maintain the tone of this movie and have ben consider that or like or just give some reasoning of like why this is the media i'm showing because otherwise it just feels like this is probably just media that the 50 year old writer of this movie grew up with. And so he was like, yeah, kids of course want a mom like Donna Reed. You're like,

sir, kids do not know who she is. Right. Although Donna Reed is kind of a legend. She was like one of the first women to produce her own TV show. It's kind of the ultimate irony that she played a very, you know, passive character on this show she was

busting her ass to keep on tv anyways yeah i was confused at that i feel like the movie did a little bit of commentary on it and like showed that it's a flawed mentality and that it's kind of like a hollow ethos to like live your life by but it just was like it was a little mucky the way that played out it didn't say enough about it it was just like it was a little confusing and and then after that i think is when pat's like spying on them and she's like my kids need to have fun so then she throws the party i think that he shows her the 1950s video after the party. I'm pretty sure. Oh, wait, let me double check.

No, yeah. So the party happens after he shows. Okay. Which also doesn't really make sense because it's like, I don't think that those like stock characters wanted their kids to throw parties. Right. It's so weird. I don't know.

So that's inconsistent the only thing that it really succeeds in is giving Katie Segal an incredible aesthetic and costume to get into when she becomes a person outside of that the 1950s housewife mom I felt like the whatever they were going for there was a little confusing. Unless it was trying to demonstrate that that being your operating system would drive someone to want to start a cyclone. Which I'm sure many mothers of that age felt like. Again, not clear. I'm maybe giving the movie a little bit too much credit. But I love that Pat says, I am a mother like no other.

And I will not sit back and allow myself to be preempted i'm like oh he got powerful yeah yeah i think the movie if it is trying to say something it doesn't really stick the landing i'm not quite sure exactly what if any commentary it's making which is like a bummer because this subject matter, there's a lot of opportunity to say stuff about gender roles, about technology's role in society and in a family unit. What the expectations of a mother are and why that is like all of like, there's a lot.

Yeah. And it's like, it's weird because i do feel like this movie is not unequipped to tackle those questions but uh then you look at who made it and you're like well uh it's three guys and i'm guessing maybe that's part of the reason why you really don't get very much be that you would think that LeVar Burton would have, I don't know, he was Mr. Reading Rainbow. He should have read a book on gender roles. He should have read a damn book. Yeah, I think that what the criticism of this movie super succeeds in, I think, is like anticipating a lot of terrifying issues that come with an automated house yeah and because it's a dis i think it's and

i think it's interesting that that was i mean there's a great article in the ringer for this movie's 20th anniversary by ben lindbergh um called what smart hosts got right and didn't about the future uh that also clocked their ray bradbury reference so i was like wow uh two scholars okay geniuses uh no i'm not actually that smart no jamie you should be proud of your big giant brain i have to go and then you go my children uh god he's such a flop um but i i like the this article unpacked i guess that like the idea of the smart home became popular around the time ray bradbury wrote that story which was post-war so 1950 so like the housewife thing could have been contextualized better of like this era of american housewife media and like white american housewife media became popular around the same time that people

started speculating about smart houses. So like there's a connection there. It just is not really made by this movie, but I think it does really well. Like does anticipate the like cautionary tale of like giving a house, your blood, like giving away all of your data to technology that has not been tested and is not necessarily have your best

interests at heart um which is again why i think it is like a real waste to make sarah a mommy girlfriend character because she is at the front of the pack like making those decisions of, you know, like she has no ethical issue with having this proprietary technology have all of the data of your body. And it's like, OK, Sarah, are you planning on selling that anywhere? Like, you know, like there's so many questions that and maybe I mean, it's 1999. That might not have been a question that you would think to ask at that point sure but anyway i mean with some of the specific details of the house and potential issues of um interacting with ai too much i think it's cool that it's like it was such a prominent discussion that they felt like it was reasonable to make a decom about it that's's wild. I mean, I'm kind of impressed. And I do

think that because that message is so clear, and decoms and like most media for kids, if there is a message or some kind of takeaway, which there often is in children's media, a lesson to be learned, they're gonna really spell it out, because they want to make it clear for the audience and because there's nothing clearly spelled out about you know gender roles and the expectation of women and and the expectation of motherhood and things like that i think the movie just kind of threw that stuff in there had no idea what to say about it and was just like, there it is. I,

I DK. Yeah. So, but I, I think that again, it's like, there's limitations on what you can say that with that, uh,

in the purview of a 1999 Disney movie. Uh, I have a few quotes I wanted to share and then i have to pee so bad and also we've recorded longer than the movie i know but i wanted to share a quote from an interview with stew krieger from that same article in the ringer basically explaining why he goes for a soft optimistic end to this story um outside with the fact that it's a disney movie and they wouldn't have allowed it uh so he says quote i am basically an optimistic person the idea of wanting to have a reconciliation wanting to have these things ultimately be okay fit the disney method but it also fit what was

important to me almost every episode of the twilight zone ends in some kind of horrible technology will kill you away to be able to be the counterpoint and the counterbalance to that is not a bad thing which now that i hear that like that also feels very in line with a lot of Star Trek ideology of how technology is I mean there's like the kitchen in Star Trek is exactly like the kitchen in the smart house and that's presented as like this is a really cool innovation as long as it's used ethically which again I don't think this movie a really cool innovation as long as it's used ethically. Which, again, I don't think this movie really has the space for it. But it does feel like Star Trek is all about, you know, hope for a technologically driven optimistic future.

It's a fucking fantasy, but kind of nice. And then I wanted to share a quote from LeVar Burton. This is also an interview from 2019. He's being asked, do you think about this movie a lot? It's a weird question. He says, you know, because I started my directing career at Star Trek, I just automatically embraced science fiction and technology as a part of my background as a director. I love science fiction and always have. Smart House for me was a terrific exercise because not only was I telling a story for a completely different audience, but part of the idea was to really make that technology accessible and real. The whole idea of PAT, we're there now,

right? We're living in a time when technology has advanced to the point where there are devices that are controlling a lot of aspects of our lives. I've got Nest, I've got the Ring doorbell. We all have so many wireless devices that are connected to the internet of things. We're there. The flaw in Smart House is the kid was looking for the technology to fulfill a need that only a human being could. And the result, as you might predict, was disastrous.

So I think that that is like if that is like the core mission of this movie, I feel like it's successful. I agree. Yeah. So even if this is a successful commentary on technology in 1999 does it pass the bechdel test uh it does it does between sarah and angie i think a couple times and then Sarah and her creation Pat which I guess we can say is a female character even though it's an operating system genderless icon not a cis man for sure I yeah

and I I we didn't really talk about Angie I feel like Angie is other than Ben being really mean to her, I think that Angie is treated in a pretty gender neutral way. It's just like little sibling character. Right. That's how I felt, generally. Yeah. And she's better at video games than her older brother. Yeah. So that's cool.

Yeah. Good for Angie. Yeah. Except of how interested she is in her dad's sex life. That's weird. We need these kids in therapy. Anyways, it does pass the she is in her dad's sex life. That's weird. We need these kids in therapy. Anyways, it does pass the best of all tests a lot of times. I think most iconically between Angie turning those girls away at the door.

That's fun. And it's so funny that they get full names, so it does get to pass. That's true. But that's not the most important metric in the world, is it? No, because that would be our nipple scale, a scale where we rate the movie based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens, zero to five nipples. I guess I'll give this, I don't know, one and a half. it's not really as far as as far as like gender there's a lot present about like gender roles and the expectations of of women and the expectations of mothers and things like that the movie doesn't really know how to handle that in any kind of like thoughtful way and it mostly just relies on a lot of tropes and if they

are trying to if the movie is trying to say something it's not really sticking the landing as far as gender roles goes i i agree that it is successfully operating as a kind of cautionary tale on AI interfering too much in our human lives but it just doesn't really know exactly what it's doing with those other things I would say but um and then like with with Sarah being written as a rather tropey character it's a very white movie yeah ben has a friend who is a black kid we don't learn his name i don't think no we just see him dance to slam dunk the funk and then he says a few like friend character things which is frustrating because it's like this is a rare decon that has a black director but there's very little diversity to be seen in front of the camera or behind it uh otherwise true um which i'm sure is as a result of just the pressure of

the studio oh it's not levar burton's fault yeah no no right but yeah it is very of the era in that regard yes speaking of ben's friends ben's friends he's telling them about all the things pat can do and his friends are like wow that's like having the world's most perfect mom who's only there to serve and who never complains. And Ben is like, exactly. So it's like, okay. Well, I guess that's how we view moms. Fascinating. So that's awesome. I'll give it one and a half nipples. And it's all going to the strawberry smoothie, which for some reason is blue.

I'm going to give it two and a half. Part of that is nostalgia driven but i think that i think the sarah character has done a huge disservice by not exploring the more interesting aspects of her character and just relegating her to this role that is not even necessary in this movie i totally agree with you that the i there was way more space in this movie like and the ingredients are there but it it seems like the writers are just not equipped to turn them into something. Of examining what are the expectations of a mother?

And why, in most cases, is that unfair and based in a lot of historical patriarchy? And all this stuff, there is space in this movie and within the characters of Sarah and Pat to explore that. And I think that the movie definitely elects to go for a technology cautionary tale over an examination of gender roles.

But I think it was possible to actually effectively do both and that each point would be made stronger by including the other. We know that because there are movies that have done that before and since, and there is space for that here, and it's disappointing that it doesn't happen.

But it is like, I really think it's an awesome movie, especially for a movie of this genre i i like the ideas put forth in sarah's character i love pat she's an icon i love her i want to see a smart house drag show like oh wow and and i and i like the dynamic of like a sort of like an all-female reboot of Frankenstein, where you get the creator and the... And I wish that we had gotten more between Sarah and Pat

and watched that relationship go sour. If the movie really does want Sarah to turn against Pat, I would love for it to have been for a reason other than my boyfriend. Right. But I think that there are so many interesting ideas put forward in this movie and it's like it feels like as close to like a technology kind of jump scare story that kids of this generation got and a lot of it holds up really well and so uh it's not an intersectional win by any stretch of the imagination but i think it's like a really well told story and I, there's not a lot like it out there for kids.

That's true. So I'm going to go 2.5 and I'm going to give one to Pat. I'm going to give a one to Angie. I'm going to give the last half to Gwen because she didn't get to do anything. Wow. Yeah. And there you go, listeners.

That is our smart house episode of the Bechtel cast. Thank you so much for listening. And if you enjoyed the style of this episode, well, there's about 150 more where that came from. It's true, which is all found on our Patreon, patreon.com slash Bechtelcast, where we do two episodes every month, usually as a part of a fun little theme. In July, we're doing sleepover movies. And we're having a sleepover to mark the occasion. Oh, exactly.

It's such a blast over there. And yeah, it's like generally more casual and goofy. It's fun. So fun. We slam dunk the funk over there. We're going to be dancing in unison at our sleepover. For sure. Yeah.

The house, jump, jump. The house is jumping over on the Matreon. And by house, we do, of course, mean one bedroom apartment. Mm-hmm. over on the matrion and by house we do of course mean one bedroom apartment and yeah uh you can also find us uh on social media which i'm sure pat's been mining our information over there disgusting of her but i love her um you can you can find us over on twitter and instagram at bechtel cast or grab some merch over at tpublic.com slash the Bechtelcast. Wow.

Caitlin, do you want to go out and get some definitely strawberry milkshakes? Yes. But only if they're blue for some reason. Oops, I spilled. Oh, don't worry. The floor absorbers will suck it up. Okay, bye. Bye.

Hey, everybody. This is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Lost Culture East.

That's right. The queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. Don't miss Katherine Hahn on Las Culturistas. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti.

And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation,

then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated. Crooks everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.