The Bechdel Cast - The Santa Clause 2 with Grace Freud

Episode Date: December 9, 2021

Jamie and Caitlin discover a new clause of the Bechdel Cast that requires them to release episodes until the end of time, including this one on The Santa Clause 2 with special guest Grace Freud.This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @GraceGFreud on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How do you feel about biscuits? Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes, and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their racist mascot, the Rebels, into something everyone in the South loves, the biscuits. I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? It's right here in black and white in print. It's bigger than a flag or mascot. Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's right here in black and white in print. It's bigger than a flag or mascot.

Listen to Rebel Spirit 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. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free. Subscribe to the iHeartTrue Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. In California during the summer of 1975,

within the span of 17 days and less than 90 miles, two women did something no other woman had done before, try to assassinate the President of the United States. One was the protege of Charles Manson. 26-year-old Lynette Fromm, nicknamed Squeaky. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI.

Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer, this season on the new podcast, Rip Current. Hear episodes of Rip Current early and completely ad-free and receive exclusive bonus content by subscribing to iHeart True Crime Plus only on Apple Podcasts. On the Bechdel cast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just

boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast. Start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Caitlin. Yes, Jamie? Do you know how we have a podcast? Yeah. And if we don't release an episode every single week, we'll die? Yes. Well, there's another rule. There's another rule. What? What is the new rule? We have to have sex with each other by midnight or the podcast will explode i mean fine look i've got a magnifying glass do you want to you can read it okay oh wow yeah i see it the fine print is right there will you marry me yes or no yes no pressure but christmas will die and children will hate each other if you don't do it okay fine so why don't you do it why don't you say yes i like to imagine that like

when jesus went back up to heaven you know he had a lot of free time on his hands so i'm listening god was like all right you well christmas is your deal you know like whatever you want to do with it feel free like all this mythology and shit and all these different holidays and shit and so that like in my mind the santa claus trilogy is a biblical epic that at its origin was carved out by jesus christ himself so that he would have something to do up in heaven yeah who decides what the santa claus is much less the santa claus the other one these clauses were written by him these clauses were capital h by the lamb by by jesus christ himself does that also apply to the escape clause from 2006 certainly yes and because like jesus it's not really, this is, it's why Christmas is so secular. It's because Jesus's whole life is being Jesus.

So when he was, when he approaches Christmas, he's like, I want to have some fun with it. So that's why you have the escape clause and the Mrs. Clause, et cetera, et cetera. It's so depressing. It's the last one, folks. Look, we're going out on top, which is, I mean, what's the point of continuing after we run out of Santa Claus movies? Honestly, I was getting sad as I was preparing for this episode because I was like, damn, what are we going to do next December? We're out. I do have an idea oh what is it i want to do all the rankin bath specials at once oh wow rankin bass like claymation specials i want to do an episode that's about all of them wow like heat miser snow miser santa claus is coming to town what is it rudolph

there's a gnarly rankin bass special about the easter bunny that involves like yeah like royal intrigue and like the royal family is trying to kill the easter bunny it's pretty wild my favorite one is jack frost which is rankinass' truly strong rebuttal of communism. Like, we simply must put our foot down. We need to make a claymation special about why the Soviet Union is a threat. I mean, okay, maybe we can't cover them all in one. Because there's like yeah that's quite ambitious and there's also the not very much seen little drummer boy 2 which is about market economies

and barter systems really yes 100 grace how do you know this are you might be the only person that's ever watched these i was i was alone a lot as a kid and that's if if you have any question about me usually the answer is i was alone a lot when i was a kid sorry grace and i were actually just catching up uh we were supposed to get dinner before she left town and we were we both got busy so we're just kind of catching up right now so the santa claus too okay so i let's go let's let's take it back a little bit and say that i nailed the introduction and i think that i brought i brought the energy jamie killed the introduction thank you so much and i don't think i've been introduced yet even i okay so let's do that and then we'll introduce the show and then we'll do other stuff. Okay, so we're doing an episode on Santa Claus 2.

Our guest is comedian, writer, you remember her from our episodes on The Santa Claus and The Santa Claus 3. And now it's time for The Santa Claus 2. It's Grace Freud. Hello and welcome back. Hi, everybody. Grace, welcome 2. It's Grace Freud. Hello and welcome back. Hi, everybody. Grace, welcome back. It's great to be here.

Now, can we just recap really quickly why we went 1, 3, 2? I know the answer, but I just want to make sure our listeners, in case we have listeners that have come in the past year, Grace has, I would say if you haven't listened to the first two santa claus episodes maybe stop this episode stop and go back to 2019 because we've we we covered it in a very particular order based on how much they interested us and so we went one three two and this is the last one available for now i really hope that we get to see two hours ago i literally texted uh yeah both my managers and also the most famous person who was a friend of mine and was like let's make a new the santa claus what do you say i really want to make a new the santa claus it

seems like a safe bet and i think we're gonna make it happen let's see if eric lloyd is available you know is he that it seems like maybe he's retired but would he come back to play uh 37 year old charlie let's see let's just see let's hope so yeah okay so the show that we're doing is called the bechtel cast and it's our movie podcast where we analyze movies through an intersectional feminist lens we've been doing you know what we've been doing it I don't I think we should just skip what the Bechdel test is we we are short on time here today this doesn't pass it right like you don't even need to know what it is. I watched through it twice and it doesn't. It does.

So we're just going to kind of gloss over what the show is because here's what you're going to do. You're going to go back and listen to the other episodes and then you'll learn. You'll find out. You need two Mrs. Clauses to talk to each other about the only female elf who works at the North Pole for two lines of dialogue. And they both have to be named Mrs. Claus. And that doesn't happen in this movie. And it's there. There is so many. It's so like this one is like, wow, Scott is like,

there are so many daddy plot lines in this movie. And Scott's the daddy every single time. Yeah. So many people's daddies. He really is. He's really. Gosh. The dad.

Like he's even like neil's daddy when you think about it yeah this movie has such like interesting sequel energy where it's like oh all these like pretty well-developed characters from the first movie now it's eight years later and they're parodies of themselves and some of them are not the same person anymore this movie has inside of it the perfect christmas movie but it really like in a weird way the santa claus sequels kind of try to like mcu themselves like they like pull in all of these other mythological figures. They're like, here's a bunch of canon that we're going to spew at you. The whole council of legendary figures.

Yeah, exactly. They lean into the small magical parts of the first movie, which really were kind of just sprinkled on and made the film beautiful and magical but then they lean into it so hard that all of a sudden the North Pole has a fucking like black water you know they have like their own military and like

all this shit they militarize the North Pole and Santa Claus the new he like self-identifies as a despot yeah multiple times it was i was like oh this is the fascist santa claus the santa claus too is maybe the most important work of art for understanding what 9-11 did to america i honestly don't think you're very far off there at all because you're just like why did we what happened between 1994 and 2002 because this came out okay so so for the audience this came out uh christmas season 2002 yeah so i don't know i mean let's see when it was shot um i'm not quite sure oh it was to see it was

supposed to be okay this is interesting i don't have an inside look i have two sentences on wikipedia but i'm gonna run with this please It was supposed to come out on November 21st, 2001, was postponed until 2002. The following year. I wonder what changed, if anything, in the movie between, you know, when it was made pre 9-11 in 2001 and 2002 when there's a despot that needs to be overthrown and there's a heavily militarized you know nutcracker army and there's at the end of the day all i care about is is david krumholz there and am i still in love with him and it's yes and yes he's still there but not quite enough no he's a prisoner he's a POW in this one.

Yeah. They make David Krumholtz a POW in the Santa Claus 2. I would say, you know what? I'm going to lay it all on the line and say probably 50% of the movie changed post-9-11. That's what I'm going to say. I mean, a big change I noticed was, speaking of David Krumholtz, his wig is no longer white guy with dreads.

It's now just tight curls. Yes, yes. Interesting. And I think that's a big improvement. He still looks good. Someone talked like, someone talked to the elves had to get a sensitivity training there's a uh there i was talking to something did did you see that ashley ray tweet about about how bernard the elf was like a formative sexual experience for like a large swath of young people yeah yeah well i i really do think bernard thef transcends gender. Like I do think that that is a non-binary character on screen.

And I think just that in and of itself makes you ask questions of like, well, if it's not a binary, then what does it mean to like someone who isn't going to fit into that? And that's where Bernard comes in. I like that. Okay, so real quick. Okay, okay. Grace, what's your relationship with this particular movie

and the franchise as a whole? I believe that this movie is the last movie I saw with my dad before he died I think I've said this before but I think it was yeah it was this one this is it to the 2002 one yes uh my dad died in 2003 okay wait a sec wait when did this movie come out 2002 so that does so christmas season 2002 yeah oh i you know i don't no no no it wasn't it was i saw this with his brother my uncle mark okay and i think he was there in my mind he's there but that doesn't quite add up timeline wise okay i'm so sorry if i just messed with the mythology i mean my dad died so like really nothing you couldn't do something worse to me. But so point being, this movie came out at a very tumultuous time of my life. Yeah.

And I do remember seeing it and thinking, oh, you know, maybe my dad just needs a wife um i guess we'll never know if like my dad would still be alive today if he had simply gotten a wife by christmas day 2002 it makes you think wow it makes you think so you have a very interesting relationship with this movie is what you're saying i mean and yeah and hopefully everyone has listened through the first uh five hours of information we have on this franchise on this podcast jamie what about you what's your relationship oh i remember seeing this movie in theaters i remember being like wow charlie's bad now huh oh charlie's bad oh he's putting a big old red circle with a line through it over a christmas tree ah that rocked me i was so shocked i remember being in the theater and being like charlie what no what are you doing he's the cutest cutie pie and he's

so i mean it's like this movie did come out eight years later so but for a kid that was watching the santa claus every year very jarring to see charlie be pre-teen bad boy about to give a girl a kiss because she's like sometimes it feels good to be bad and you're like whoa okay so that is um i mainly remember this i mean also i just remember there were so many movies in this specific era like all the time but in this era there were a lot of disney movies with this premise where it's like kind of like the uh beautiful perfect intro i did where it's like if santa doesn't get married at midnight we're gonna cut his head off and you're all fucked like this same this similar premise was in the princess

diaries too that came out i think a couple years after this where it's like she's not going to be royal anymore unless she gets married tomorrow so what's she gonna do huh and then that's the whole movie um and this is kind of a more militarized uh version of that story at the north pole i don't know why these movies came out within two years of each other. I don't know why these stakes are so, it's so weird because it's like these, these are stakes that are associated with like times where women were considered property and not like middle school principles.

But this movie overlooks that. they're like well why not both why why not both yeah it truly like it's fucked it's fucking weird like it's really fucked up i think it would be significantly less fucked up if the ending was slightly different but oh my gosh the way that he presents the way that he like convinces well we can get to that later we can yeah we'll get that proposal is oh my god yeah it's so wretched and it takes something that like yeah we can analyze it by like you need a woman as if you need like uh like a house or something like as if like a piece of property but before that i think that like it's it does come off as in general like kind of sweet oh this is a cool little rom-com and then that happens and it's like jesus christ santa what did you do it's very scary like at the very end there has to be some

way to navigate around this clot like get a lawyer santa there has to be a way around this you don't need to put the literal weight of the world like and i like how they i don't like but like they try to frame it as a joke they're like haha no pressure but all the joy in the world will disappear unless you marry me right now and she's like well can i and then the way they girl boss this character is honestly ahead of its time what's your relationship to it caitlin sorry yes yes i had never seen this one i grew up with the first santa claus movie and i watched it a ton as a kid but by the time this one came out i had aged out of this type of movie so i didn't see the second or third santa claus movie until prepping for last year's episode that we did on Santa Claus

three so you never saw the marriage at gunpoint no no I did not so my my history with this installment in the franchise is quite brief but let's talk about it um let's talk about it this This is the hereditary of Santa Claus movies. I will say, as horrifying as it is, I do feel like I got a little bit of nostalgia that I'm dubious about. But I was like, wow, there's a lot of body horror in this film franchise. I feel like you don't get that kind of body horror in children's media today although maybe i'm just not watching enough and they are doing uh very scary things well paddington certainly doesn't have any body horror i'll tell you that right now um let's take a quick break and then we will come back for the recap. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks.

Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts.

I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. Available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. One session, 24 hours. BPM 110, 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare.

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

I felt too seen. Dragged. I'm N.K., and this is Basket Case. So I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown. I was crying, and I was inconsolable. It was just very big, sudden swaps of different meds. What is wrong with me? Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies.

On Basket Case, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in. Because if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of conditions that are pretty hard to live with. But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place will tell you there's something wrong with you. And it will call you a basket case. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And we're back. We're back. Okay. I'm going to try to get through this as quickly as possible. Good luck. Here we go. Okay. So, Santa Claus 2 opens with a plane flying over the North Pole and almost

detecting Santa's workshop with their radar or whatever. So Santa Claus, a.k.a. Tim Allen. Because all of this infinite magic cannot block an oil plane's fucking radar.

All of this beautiful magic cannot do the same as soundproofing. You know? I guess they should have put some foam yeah they should just put a jacket over the north pole and that probably would have done yeah does not add up um but santa claus and bernard and several other of the elf employees have to go to elf con one and. And during this, we meet Curtis.

That's Spencer Breslin. ElfCon 1. Like, pump the brakes. There's an ElfCon 1 because it's the winter of 2002 and everyone is in a very negative place on these issues. And let us recognize for a moment that elf con one is normal that is what they are at in times of peace because at the end of this sequence santa goes let's go back to elf con one they are always on alert they are always prepared and in fear of the specter

of a terrorist attack on the north pole and not only that but santa multiple times references military strategy which suggests to me that tim allen santa cla Claus is a well-read military general. Now, I'm, okay. So now I recall that in the Santa Claus one, there is a hint at militarized elves. I believe that there's an elf. It's like a CIA or FBI kind of thing. So there's like not no precedent for this. Well, it's special forces. or FBI kind of thing. So there's like not no precedent for this.

Well, it's special forces. I think it comes off more as like a SWAT team almost, you know? Yes, yes, yes, yes. But it's fun. The difference there is it's goofy. You know, it plays more like Power Rangers and less like the U.S. military. And the scale feels much smaller than elf con one yeah it's like it's like five elves it's a small operation not not saying it's the best thing in the world but uh elf con one is definitely an escalation from the 1994 militarized elves but but at the same time this is all an aesthetic thing because all of a sudden

santa is in military garb with a special military hat with medals and shouting out orders and they go all the they eventually go up all the way to elfcon 4 but nothing they don't do anything they do nothing but tell people to be quiet right they don't launch missiles or anything it's a waste of taxpayers money it really is a waste of elf taxpayers money it's a waste of elf taxpayer money what's also wild about this is that this has nothing to do with the rest of the plot of the movie yeah it's like santa needs to get married that's shitty but that's enough to do the movie you don't need to add a war like if anything it softens the b-plot of the film which is this toy santa right that militarizes the north pole

it's like you see that happen and you're like what do you mean like that already happened like we already saw the real santa bring it all the way up to elfcon 4 in this scenario the real santa is barack obama and the toy santa is um george w bush like bar Like Barack Obama still did a lot of drone strikes, you know? But when he came into office, people were like, all right, it's chill. The wars are going to be good now, you know? Right. And then we go to, and then that carries through to the Santa Claus three, which you can pause this episode right now and go back.

Jack Frost is Donald Trump. Exactly. Exactly. Wow. go back and and jack frost is donald trump exactly exactly wow i'm also realizing that spencer breslin was it also in the princess diaries too meaning that he's really um kind of a popular choice for this exact premise if this premise is happening on the big screen and there's a forced there's an arranged forced marriage happening on screen. You got to get this kid around. You got to get Spencer in there. Yeah, Spencer Breslin, really. There was an era.

There was really a Spencer Breslin era. So Spencer Breslin plays Curtis, who is an elf. And then we see Santa playing a game of football with the elves. Basically, everyone is having fun. Except there's one little thing where curtis and bernard have something that they need to tell santa very soon we'll put a pin in that meanwhile santa's son charlie who is now a teenager and kind of a rebel did you not love the i hope it was written for the movie whatever the the fuck that song is, when he's doing his little graffiti where it's like, I've been a naughty boy, I don't deserve a toy.

Like, it was like, Fatboy Christmas. It was so funny. It's like they just, they gave someone's uncle 500 bucks to like just write a puny Christmas song. They're like, go off, Christmas songs he's been a naughty boy it's just you and your guitar man just fucking do what you need to do dude I love bad boy Charlie

he's such a good graffiti artist he's so talented get this kid in an art class direct this energy he's spray painting on a wall at school to impress a girl and also like call out the principal for hating christmas it's pro christmas spray paint yeah everything that charlie charlie is continually gets in trouble for spray painting pro christmas messages throughout the school it's very funny and he gets caught by the school principal principal newman

yes so then back at the north pole santa finds out that not only is his son Charlie on the naughty list for getting in trouble at school, but also there's another Santa Claus with an E. There's another legally binding clause that says... The Mrs. Claus. Little Spencer Breslin really has to do a lot of heavy lifting exposition-wise in this scene. The line they give him is so funny. He's like, I know there's a santa

claus but guess what there's another santa claus and i'm sorry and i should have let you read it but i didn't have a big enough magnifying glass here i have 500 magnifying glasses and now you can read it and that's the movie and like he has to say all of this in like one breath but he doesn't and then after he's after santa's looked at the closet found out he needs to marry a woman it's also specifies a woman it's very very clearly it does not say just marry it says you need to pick a woman and then marry her and um and that's on jesus christ for writing that down it really is on jesus christ for writing it like that i would also note nowhere in that clause does it specify they have to love each other

correct like which is i which to me is almost not very christmassy like you know like you would think that like true love you know would be like an important power like a little engine of christmas cheer wow that didn't even occur to me but but that's not what it's about what it's about is is the marriage yeah and then after that spencer again is is given the acting challenge of his life and he goes big maybe too big i don't know if it quite works but like kudos to him and he goes like the decentification process has begun yes and it almost takes me out of the movie to tell you the truth he goes that big but but he really does illustrate the stakes certainly so to provide the context here uh santa has to find a woman and get married to her.

And if he doesn't do that by Christmas Eve, which is only 28 days away, he will cease to be Santa. And as Curtis points out, the de-Santification process has begun where he has started to look less and less like Santa and more and more like his former self, Scott Calvin. Immediately after this, there's a meeting of the Council of Legendary Figures. We've got Mother Earth. We've got Father Time, the Easter Bunny, Cupid, Sandman, Tooth Fairy. And no Jack Frost. Jack Frost only pops up in the next movie. It's like...

That's true. I do feel like the Council is better utilized in the next movie it's like it's true i feel like i do feel like the the council is uh better utilized in the third movie in this one they're kind of like i'm thrilled to see them i love a good aisha tyler performance but it's like they're not doing much except with the exception of the tooth fairy who i forgot became intimately involved yeah this this scene seems to only happen because we need to establish that the tooth fairy is a person because that's going to pay off later i feel like we didn't you didn't actually need that you could have just i like it wouldn't have blown my mind if the tooth fairy just showed up and i'm like oh yeah that makes sense i agree israel there's like three movies fighting to be the movie here one of the movies

is a rom-com one of the movies is a grand mythological christmas movie and then another one of the movies is essentially the christmas version of thin red line um yeah and if it had just been the rom-com it could have been one of the best christmas rom-coms ever it still would have been super dated but it would have like made sense yeah it could have been really fun and cool you know like the concept of like they're needing to be a mrs claus like i think they could have played it in a way that didn't quite come off as property you know yeah if they had like given themselves that if they had taken away from the fascism plot line and maybe characterized and fleshed out the rom-com plot line maybe it would have been a little different and changed the

wording of jesus christ's clause to make it less menacing yes exactly exactly if jesus had if the diegetic jesus of this universe had been a little more thoughtful in how he wrote these clauses it would have been a better movie well i mean i don't know what we're talking about because uh it took five whole men to write this movie so i don't there's i just think it's it took five whole men to write this movie. So I don't know. I just think it's I mean, I know that that's how these movies work. But it just it is always funny to me to see how many writers are credited on movies like this. And they're just like really hard to understand. Like who I'm like, OK, so which of these writers, Don, Cinco, Ken, Ed and John really wanted the fascism plot to happen which of them wanted

the rom-com which of them wanted bad boy charlie like i want i want plot points attributed so i know who to avoid in the future oh gosh okay so so now scott aka santa has to go back down to chicago or wherever his family lives to deal with his son, Charlie, and to find a wife, his wife. But he also has, you know, Santa responsibilities at the North Pole. So this is when Curtis gets the idea to use this machine that they have, which will make a toy version of Santa who will run the North Pole while real Santa goes and does the stuff he has to do. Right. So Santa takes Comet and they head to Chicago

where Scott links up with his ex-wife, Laura, and her husband, Neil. And they immediately fuck right in front of Neil. Why didn't you just fucking go for it? I thought it was... Whenlin said links up she meant that's what i meant yes and then after that they go and meet with principal newman to talk about charlie getting into trouble and principal newman and scott have met before and they hate each other because she's a public school educator which means that she's evil yeah this movie hates public

schools yeah like with it with a fiery hatred that only five rich guys could have committed to the page uh but the i i thought it was interesting that it seems like all of the qualities that were annoying to scott about laura in the first movie she no longer has in this movie she her character has basically been like like sapped from her body and those qualities now exist in the principal all she does is say you're a good dad Scott yeah you're a good dad and a better a better father and a good man and a good Santa she can't stop saying what a good father he is even though he is largely absent like it just like i just thought it was very bizarre how like her care like it's neil's character was turned up to an 11 and her character was just like

disappeared it's gone yeah yeah it's there's nothing yeah there's nothing there bums me out she's only there to say you you did nothing wrong but you've done you you are okay and it's like did you even see the first movie laura yes it's very hard to like talk about like really what was scott's emotional arc in this because like right constantly the movie is telling you there's nothing wrong with him and he did nothing wrong but he thought he still has to do this shit you know but he also like he also said it seems like at different points they're implying like well part of the reason charlie's getting in trouble is because scott is so absent which yeah i could conceive of but then that kind of goes away and they're like no no charlie's just acting out because he's in love with christmas and he hates that he can't tell everyone that

his dad is santa you're like well that's's wrong of him to miss his father. Right. That's incorrect behavior. That ending exchange was chilling to me. Between Charlie and his sister Lucy, where he, what does he say? He says, knowing isn't a burden. It's a gift. You like it's it's kind of a burden for you charlie like we gotta god and the lucy stuff is a whole nother movie honest to

god like that that's that's competing lucy is charlie's little little sister yeah she she's a big santa fan oh she she loves santa yeah there are several new female characters introduced in this movie and there's uh there's lots to talk about with all of them yeah yes and the thing of it is like for a movie that is ostensibly about that's ostensibly that wants to sell it to you as a romantic comedy about santa finding his mrs claus the last 10 minutes of the movie don't even have mrs claus in it like it's just a whole other deal like wrapping up this other thread and then she appears in the credits yes yeah oh gosh okay so back at laura and neil's house this is when we meet their young daughter lucy uh who santa slash scott has a very close relationship with and again santa who is now looking more and more like scott calvin he has started to try to meet women yeah for example

he goes on a date with molly shannon who is obsessed with christmas but in like a freaky way so it doesn't work out yeah well i mean i'm not gonna complain about that scene being there because molly shannon is amazing but huh what and then at the i liked how at the end she's like oh you don't support my music career well you don't support women and i was like yeah yeah you don't support women if you don't support me being annoying at a restaurant that's exactly what i think is true exactly it was almost like that joke felt like a joke like making fun of me too but like from like in 2002 ultimately i agree with her if you don't support me yelling at a restaurant you hate women period

like believe women are you saying i'm supposed to believe that woman that thinks her singing voice is good um i don't think so i didn't really know where that scene was going but always happy to see molly shannon i mean she kills it yeah she certainly kills i would say that honestly that scene doesn't go far enough like i i wish they had really let her unleash herself you know like she's never full-on belting you know which is disappointing to me maybe in santa claus 4 we'll bring her back in my hard reboot um she'll be playing an entirely different character oh good good good good um okay so meanwhile up at the north pole toy santa is taking the rules too seriously and is becoming a bit of a

tyrant basically he wants all the kids to be on the naughty list. Then Charlie gets in trouble at school again. For more pro-Christmas graffiti, by the way. For doing, quite honestly, even better graffiti than he did the first time. Oh, yeah. His graffiti, by the way, looks professional. It looks really... Shout out to whatever production designer was looks professional. It looks really... Shout out to whatever production designer was doing that.

It looks great, right? I mean, really? I honestly, watching this, I was like, am I forgetting that at some point the principal or someone is like, listen, Charlie, stop messing around. You're good. You're really good. But you got to stop with this graffiti and start picking up a paintbrush. Also, the graffiti says, trim a tree, go to jail, is what it says.

That's what the principal is saying. Which is not even clever. I think it's very powerful and really very powerful and it's so odd to me that such a secular go to jail a christmas movie that does not mention jesus once that doesn't have a single cross also has a character in this case santa claus himself scott galvin confront the principal and be like why aren't there any christmas trees in this school why aren't there any lights and tinsel and she's she's very reasonably like hey it's a public school and he's like well gosh golly god darn it here's some money for a wreath but she says it's a public

school therefore we don't have the funding for christmas decorations not it's a public school. Therefore, we don't have the funding for Christmas decorations. Not it's a public school because separation of church and state. Like she cites the wrong reason. Yeah. And not for nothing. But like, I mean, my experience in public school was that there was a lot of holiday stuff. Like I did not find that to be washed out. I mean, to the point where maybe it was warranted to be like, hey, why is there so much Christmas

stuff in this separation of church and state school? But I never found that there was any lack of celebrating literally any holidays, including the fucked up ones that indoctrinate you into all sorts of messed up shit. So I don't even know what it's supposed to be commenting on because i don't really know of public school kids that didn't that weren't exposed to a ton of christmas stuff at school right yeah i mean yeah we sang christmas songs in choir yeah santa came to school well sorry i didn't go to some fancy massachusetts private school with a school santa but that sounds pretty i'm telling you i went to public school grace and there i know but in massachusetts the golden gilded state of the union oh my god i i grew up in one of the iconically it was voted uh 2005's

worst 100 places to live in the united states oh my god um okay so charlie gets in trouble at school principal newman whose first name is carol by the way christmas carol she makes charlie and Christmas Carol. She makes Charlie and Scott do community service where Carol and Scott warm up to each other a bit. And then later that night or some night shortly after that, Scott shows up at her house and asks if she would like to get a bite to eat with him. But she was headed to the faculty Christmas party. So she invites him along. And she is so thirsty that she's like, yeah, we heard dad that I hated until this morning. For sure. for sure I think it's important to note that the Santa Claus 2

is actually an adaptation of the novel The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith which many will know for its other film adaptation Carol so the Santa Claus 2 takes a lot

of liberties basically all it pulls from the price of salt is that there's a woman named carol and it happens at christmas time but it is it is cool at least that there's a disney movie that was based on a novel written by a dyke icon it It's true. And we've covered Carol on this very show. Yes, we have. So shout out to the movie Carol. And shout out to the movie

Santa Claus 2. But yeah, he shows up. He's like... There's so many points in this film where it's like, you really couldn't beat that you know like jokes where you're like you really couldn't beat him being like oh oh i just want to ask uh do you do you want to go get noodles and pie like you couldn't beat that come on yes uh so he so he shows up he invites she invites him to her christmas party he uses

some of his santa magic to take her there in a horse-drawn sleigh and they chat along the way they get to know each other a little bit better uh then they go to the christmas-based trauma she's like oh yeah that's what my parents told me grow up because christmas reasons and she's like and that's why i didn't she punch someone she got in a fight at school yes yeah who was saying santa isn't real yeah like there's so many not so many but like two or three moments in this movie where it's implied that like it is a deep psychic wound that has led carol to become a public school teacher like i don't know why this movie hates public school teachers so much because it's also implied that her like weird christmas trauma is like and that's why i'm the

meanest teacher in the whole world well i i did i gotta admit that they i had a christmas uh committed psychic wound um that led me to becoming a comedy writer which was that i found out santa wasn't real because i was reading the sund funnies. And there was, like, one of those, it wasn't the far side. It was like a far side ripoff, you know? Oh, God. Single panel comic. Not even worth it. Like, F is for fake or something.

Okay. And there was a comic about how Santa wasn't real. And for whatever reason, like, I got the, like, I read the funnies every day. I got the i got like i i read the funnies every day i got the joke and the way this joke was positioned for whatever reason really convinced me i was like wow that must mean i mean this joke wouldn't make sense if he was real i don't know like i was just like wow santa for real definitely doesn't exist and because of that i became a comedian because i want to prove that you can do good comedy without telling kids that Santa isn't real.

So if any kids are listening to this right now, Santa is real, actually. We've just been goofing, but Santa is real. Yeah, I hope that if kids are still listening to this, Santa is real. I feel like I double and triple down on finding out Santa wasn't real each and every year by adding more Santas to Santa University. And just, you know, adding a multiplier to the number, the sheer number of Santas that are real, but also very mortal, you know. True. Much like these Santas, much like Scott. Scott will die if he doesn't find a wife so soon, which is why he goes to the party with Carol. And it's and the party is she's back.

Dull. So Scott uses some more of his Santa magic to liven it up. And he gives all the party goers a bunch of gifts. Classic retro toys. Right. And he's running out of his Santaanta magic which means he's gonna have trouble getting back to the north pole i forgot to add that part in there but carol is suspicious of scott and all the magic he seems to be using but she's also dazzled and carol and scott kiss

and it's a bad kiss sorry it's a really bad'm like, we can't get a second take on this kiss. They're just like, sometimes you're just like, wow. It's a kiss that made me think, wow, a kiss is just two faces next to each other. I mean, to be fair to the filmmakers, Scott is like, I haven't done this in a while. But truly, I mean, like, come on, man. I mean, Tim Allen is disgusting. Also, like, I would say that the original Santa Claus suggests that he kind of has game. I'm not saying that's a good thing.

I'm not saying he has respectful game. I'm not saying he's a good person. No. But I am saying that the original Santa Claus kind of suggests that Scott Calvin has game. Yeah, I agree and it's like because I mean I feel like you know you do have the evil Tim Allen represented in this movie through fashy Santa Claus I feel like I can see fashy Santa Claus easily texting Karl Marx Communist Manifesto Wikipedia every single morning probably no problem but Scott Calvin the centrist Santa Claus if you will um yeah just a a sexless weirdo in this one really doesn't really plant one on the woman he will very soon basically forced to marry him if you are ideologically standing on sand, then your dick's going to be as wobbly as your legs.

Which I think Scott Calvin experiences in this book. Sounds like a Bible verse when you say it like that. I can just see that in like a cursive font on a picture of sand. Okay, so there's a gross kiss. And then he tells Carol that he is Santa Claus, but she thinks that he is mocking her. And he's also upset that his dad is seeing his principal and didn't even tell Charlie about it. Oh, fuck. That means Charlie's in danger of becoming a public school principal. I know, right? With all this Christmas-related trauma that he's experiencing? Yeah, stop that!

He's got a... I mean, come on on you don't want your kid to be a public school principal you want your kid to be a charter school principal so they can defraud the school out of hundreds of thousands of dollars that's the dream i would also like to say that interestingly enough carol says something maybe like the only thing i've ever seen in a disney movie that approaches being like really body fat positive whatever at least in from that time from when i was growing up not like the more recent ones disney yes queen you're really doing it thank you now no one's doing it like you girl care so at one point scott tells carol before he says that he's santa he's like i'm usually a lot bigger than this and she goes that's okay i i am sometimes too yeah i thought that was beautiful

because she's that she's seen him when he's really fat before. Like, you know, she's seen it when he's big. And I was like, oh, I love Carol. Yes, Carol. And I've actually, the whole movie I liked Carol as a character. I thought she was like fun. And that's what makes what's about to happen even more tragic. Because like in the ending bit of this,

they, they do what they did to Scott's wife. They lobotomize Carol and turn her into like just another little, like one of his wenches. Right. Right. Yes. And I do,

I do think it's like Carol. I agree with you. I feel like, I mean, I don't, I don't love how she's written at a lot of points. And I feel like they really like make her evil at work in a way that feels pretty gendered of like, oh, you know, like women have to be really mean at work or people won't take them seriously kind of thing. But I feel like there is an angle from which you can see Carol where it's like, you know, she projects this very intense image at school.

But then like among among friends, she's chill. She's fun. carol where it's like you know she projects this very intense image at school but then like among among friends she's chill she's fun and i feel like that is actually a real teacher archetype that exists in the world i've had teachers like that who are like friends with my parents or like friends with or like neighbors and they're not scary in a neighbor context but when they're like dance faster jamie they're scary and so i just wanted to shout out miss carol thomas uh from brockton high school who was yelling at me to dance faster but she was my cousin's neighbor and she was nice okay carol's like that exist so at the north pole back of the north Pole, Toy Santa is now a fascist dictator

who has built an army of toy soldiers and he is hell-bent on giving all the children in the world lumps of coal. He says, I am a despot. Yes, he does. Despot, yes! He just says that out loud on purpose. I really think that if they if they wanted to

actually do that they should have gone all the way and they should have had him kill bernard i mean don't even take i have so few things he should have had him cut bernard's head off and held it up over the elves and screamed is this what you want is this what you want to happen to you ha ha ha i guess he really is the head elf now and that would have made sense too because Bernard isn't in the third film. Wow. Instead, Toy Santa just arrests Bernard. Yeah, and he's still a POW.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So then Curtis the elf goes to Scott and tells him about the problems with Toy Santa. But Scott can't get back to the north pole because he used up too much of his santa magic and comet cannot fly because he ate too much candy and gained a lot of weight so even though there's that one moment in the movie there's still quite a bit of fat phobia in this yeah comet farts a bunch like yeah in like the most like i mean and this is not the worst part of that scene because this is a very like a fat phobic moment um but the fart sound effect that they choose really does sound like fart.mp3 it is the most uninspired fart sound i've ever heard in all of

cinema i'm like you gotta make your farts custom with this what wait let's check in on the budget this movie had a 65 million dollar budget and they they played fart.mp3 unconscionable and in 2002 so they can't get back to the north pole so they have to call upon the tooth fairy to get scott back to the north pole meanwhile charlie shows carol the magic snow globe that bernard had given him in the first movie to get her to believe that scott is santa and i don't understand how that works but it does and now she believes. It just shines. A bright light comes out of it and she's like, fuck, dude. Your dad is Santa. Your dad is Santa.

Holy shit. So back at the North Pole, Scott tries to confront Toy Santa who captures Scott and Curtis. But then the Tooth Fairy shows up again with Charlie and Carol who untie Scottott and then he and the elves go to try to stop toy santa but it's too late toy santa has already left to deliver all

the coal to the children of the world because i guess now it's also christmas eve question mark yeah that happened pretty quickly i i wasn't clear on that either. But real Santa chases after dictator Toy Santa on this reindeer in training named Chet. And he successfully stops Toy Santa. And then the elves. The most uninspired action sequence. It's really bad. It's truly a bummer. Oh my god, Tim Allen does a line from Toy Story in that action sequence.

What is it? Like, you're sad, strange little man. You're sad, strange little man. But Toy Story came out seven years ago at that point. Why is he doing that? I'm not sure. Hard to say. Well, they had five writers, but they were still missing a line when they turned it in.

So the producers had to copy and paste something from one of his other movies. He should have said Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto Wikipedia. That would have been that would have really you know gussied it up. He should have done like a quote from Benito Mussolini. He should have he should have said something about how he kept

the sleigh running on time or something. Oh my god. That is on par with the beheading bernard suggestion oh okay so then so christmas is saved yeah but scott has to tell carol that he can't keep being santa unless he finds a mrs claus so then he proposes to to Carol and she says yes and then they get married that night and then he delivers the toys around the world and then the movie ends with Scott and Charlie and Lucy having a nice tender moment. That's the end of the movie. Let's take a quick break and then we will come back to discuss.

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

And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life.

It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session, 24 hours. BPM 110, 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up?

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

We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I felt too seen. Dragged.

I'm N.K., and this is Basket Case. So I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown. I was crying and I was inconsolable. It was just very big, sudden swaps of different meds. What is wrong with me? Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies. On Basket Case, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in.

Because if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of conditions that are pretty hard to live with. But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place will tell you there's something wrong with you. And it will call you a basket case. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Okay, so what haven't we covered at this point? There's quite a lot, I would say. There's a lot.

There's so much stuff to talk about. There's the fucking proposal. Okay, so. Yeah, let's talk about what happens to poor Carol, who I do agree. I essentially like Carol. I feel like there is enough written about her that you're like, I like this lady. I see why she and Scott are mostly I see like I it's not the least chemistry I've ever seen between two characters. Yeah.

So there so there's that. There's that. There's the fact that the whole premise of this movie hinges on Santa needing to find his wife. But we don't know why. It's never established why that's part of it. Why is heteronormativity. That's what Jesus said had to happen. That's what is Jesus.

Why don't they ever challenge this institution that is creating all of these clauses? And who is it? Like Mother Earth? Like who's in charge of this and why can't they defy it? I would say maybe it is Mother Earth because there are a few suggestions that she is essentially God, you know, throughout two and three. Yeah. That's true another thing about this relationship is it's another example of like two people who will end up in a romantic relationship but they start out hating each other i i don't know why this is such a common premise for a romantic

storyline enemies to lovers baby i personally never had that happen to me i personally never in my life started out hating someone and then ended up like marrying them oh wait do you want to like fuck like what's going on i think we not too long ago quote oh i think it was in the uh it was the you've got mail episode yes there's like a a nora effron quote about how nonsensical this setup is, except that she's like, well, but it's a movie, so you have to do it. Where it's like, yeah, I've certainly never absolutely fucking hated someone upon meeting them and then later realized that they were my one true love. It's not something that happens. And I would say if it is happening to you maybe maybe take a look at what's going on you know could be maybe a red flag to suddenly be like actually i don't

fucking hate you i fucking love you you know yes and then and then her flipping and and deciding that oh he's not so bad after all i don't i can't really track that evolution yeah the most disturbing part i think of that whole arc more than like her flip and being like wooed or whatever is in the proposal santa essentially says that he groomed her like he's like it's so weird he's like you've known me all your life i've been with you since you were a kid i've always been there for you i've always loved you haven't i carol it's really creepy yeah that is like perverted to say and also it wasn't him it was one of the old santas he's only been santa for eight years which is canon in the movie. But that makes it feel like hereditary.

It makes it feel like she was bred for this. You know? It makes it feel like she was designed for this. It's very, very yucky. And it's weird to have all these elves be like, come on, marry him, marry him. Like, you can almost see her saying no and then them grabbing at her and like eating her you know yeah they're turning on her and then she's transformed into something inhuman which we see in the credits when she is like turned into this mrs claus a totally different person

than who she was just dancing around fattened up totally different hair than who she was, just dancing around, fattened up, totally different hair. The Santa Claus transformation in the original film, to me, does come off as magical. But the Mrs. Claus transformation comes off as body horror, to me, at least. And that's not me being fatphobic. I'm just saying that this woman was kind of forced into turning this inhuman mythological character that's not her right when and then like the the

it's supposed to be okay because well she can still teach and so in that way uh you know has she really lost anything it's like well yeah what about her like uh family and life and the also a choice in the matter um yeah because the elves i mean the elves would absolutely eat her if she said no because their whole fucking ecosystem relies on her saying yes right now and there i also thought it was uh the the abby abby the elf there's still i mean look the north pole is a patriarchy in this movie there are no girl elves in high up positions it's bernard and it's what's his name little spencer breslin flopping around wait wait wait it's a really high up position to be santa's waitress like she's santa's full-time waitress and then he's so like emotionally unintelligent that she has to start proposing to carol for him it's oh and so his little child

made that he flirts with sometimes oh i know it's so creepy and then yeah part of that proposal is him guilting carol into marrying, saying like, hey, no pressure. But if I don't get married, you know, Christmas won't happen. The children everywhere will stop believing in Christmas and in Santa. The elves will lose their job. So she like basically has no choice but to be like, I guess I have to marry you now. And it's like the stakes being this high is presented as a joke and then she kind of responds like ha ha ha well i guess what else

am i supposed to do and then she's like don't come home too late and then and then he turns back into santa before her very eyes it's very like there's an instant god and this also means that carol now has to sacrifice everything in her life, which does get commented on. He's like, I know I'm asking you to leave everything behind, but this place is worth it. But she like has to leave her life,

her job, like her family. She doesn't even get to say goodbye. It doesn't seem like she doesn't get to go back, get her stuff. And as we've, we've spoken on before in, in the Santaanta claus three episode

it does feel like the school she teaches was kind of just created so she had a place to teach i mean like what exactly is she teaching these elves are immortal like how does this work you know and also it's like she doesn't she can't teach what they need to know she's like it's like when a mobster buys a nightclub so that his girlfriend has a place to sing this does get suggested at the end of this movie because he's like and yes um you can be the principal at the school here that we definitely have at the North Pole for sure. We already have that. Wink, wink. Yeah, we've been needing one of those.

Yeah, so they're clearly lying about that. But yeah, bottom line, she has to sacrifice everything in her life. Woohoo! before that i mean the the romance leading up to this very bizarre scary proposal is again him showing up at her house to ask her out it's one day and they go on one date it is one day they have the worst kiss in all of right movies yeah i was worried that he was going to wait a long time because i didn't remember how this movie pans out exactly i wasn't sure about the like specific plot points and i was worried that he was going to wait a long time to tell carol that he is santa because that's the type of thing where in a movie like this right

the character often a man would keep this secret and like keep lying to his love interest so i was surprised he's up front about it i was surprised he's up front about it though he's he's up front about it he tells her very quickly it's like at the end of their first and only date yeah what he should have done is invited her back to the house he was staying at his his ex's house brought her to the backyard and been like here's a reindeer look at him fly you know that would have been the same moral thing like him revealing his secret but in a way that's like there you go you know that makes sense like here's your decision i would say honestly telling someone you're santa at the end of a first date is that's too soon i mean it's i don't want to know at the end of a first date is that's too soon i mean it's i don't want to know at the

end of a first date i would want to know but also i would want to know on a second date for some reason it's confusing that she doesn't believe him because she's seen what is clearly magic on display that he is doing in front of her very eyes yeah but then when he like contextualizes it she's like no you're making fun of me because i told you about my christmas trauma yeah that's such a leap to like i told you that i had like i liked christmas but then a kind of bad thing happened that maybe a lot of people would probably not still be caught up on but um like and you're making fun of me by like imagine being like hurt by that too like even if he was joking right like being like right how dare

you joke that you're santa claus you know she was really put on i mean i i i almost got there with understand because she was but she's like boy you're making fun of me because of my Christmas trauma and now you're telling me you're Santa Claus I'm like I don't know that that would be an antagonistic response it would be a weird one if he were making it up but I don't I don't yeah but who cares also in that scene where they're bond I guess we're supposed to think that they are bonding over their love of christmas or their former her former love of christmas i don't know whatever whatever they bond over is like definitely not enough to build a marriage on because it's like pizza crust and

the model of some random car but the clause doesn't require as grace pointed out a happy marriage it just requires a marriage and this is just to go to my point that if this whole movie had just been about that romance could have been good sure but they have like i don't know 10 pages of the screenplay allocated to developing this romance so you hardly get any of that and then the movie just like presents this very weird rushed thing where he's like, by the way, I came here to find a wife, but I didn't expect to fall in love because that's not detailed in the clause. I don't need to do that. Which is also so bleak. And she's like, wait a minute.

You love me. Oh, my gosh. Wow. Awesome. Awesome. But I mean, the way romantic love is depicted in almost every movie is upsetting. It's not good?

Can we talk about Lucy? Yes. Which, I think, Grace, did you say that sounds like a whole other movie? Yeah, I mean, like, the first movie was all about Charlie and Santa's relationship. This movie tries to get that again. So Lucy, I don't know if we've been clear enough, is Neil and...

Neil and Laura's kid. Yeah. And I like that we see that Lucy has a good relationship with Scott. That's nice. Yeah, that's cool. That is cool. Yeah.

And in broad strokes, I guess it's cool. They keep kind of gaslighting her about how Scott isn't Santa. Maybe that's too severe of a word. They keep being like, oh, no, that reindeer and all that. He's not Santa. But the thing is, they really try to have their cake and eat it, too, in a million ways in this movie, including by trying to have another Charlie Santa story engine, but with Lucy

and Lucy has like 12 minutes of screen time. It's just not there. It's not. Lucy, doesn't she come back for three? She's back in three? She does. She does, yeah. And she doesn't really have much of a

character. She loves Christmas. Right. Charlie she doesn't really have much of a character. She loves Christmas. Right. Charlie had more. Charlie had like some sass to him, some comedy about him. And Lucy is just like, like when they need a kid to be like, but on Christmas, you're not supposed to fight or yada, yada, yada, that sort of thing.

Right. There she is. And there she is, baby. I don't, yeah. I wish that there was yada, that sort of thing. Right. There she is. And there she is, baby. I don't, yeah, I wish that there was a little, because that kid is so cute, and I liked the idea of, like, building a relationship with her and Charlie, but the end scene you get with them is so bleak, where Charlie just sort of is just, like,

the knowledge that your stepfather is Santa. Don't let it be a burden. Let it be a gift. But if you fucking tell anyone anyone the whole family is screwed like it's just oh there's all of these like burdens on this family and then laura has been like incepted by some someone where where'd she go i i just i wonder what the like what the thinking was behind that that like totally removed i'm like can you not have two adult women with opinions in one movie like do you have to take them and then give them in the santa claus movies it seems part of the christmas magic is an enchantment in the north

pole where if you're a woman who goes there you you are lobotomized forever now you are just like a servant docile it's not good it's a very yeah it's a very sinister vibe when an adult woman is taken to the north pole it never ends well for them no all right what did the is there anything else people want to touch on just that i mean yeah, I guess we talked a little bit about Abby the elf seeming to be an important elf, but only in the sense that she brings Coco to Santa, whereas like Curtis and Bernard are the ones making important decisions. I feel like there's still kind of weird vibes between her and Santa,

but at least it's not like in the first movie where they like explicitly yeah that will never leave me that was awful like so good good on you the santa claus two writers for not having that happen right also at the end she has to be saved by charlie when the toy soldiers are attacking the elves. And that doesn't make any sense. He just like, he raffles down. Right. From where? He's like, that's my new thing.

Oh, bad boy Charlie. We love him. Yeah. And then also, I mean, I feel like this is an extension of what happens in the first movie. But every, like, because Neil's goofiness is turned up to an 11, like in the first and in all movies of this era any therapist character is like what a what a loser this person's doing nothing for no one therapy is

for weak people and we don't believe in it and like this one it goes even further at one point scott is like have you ever helped a single person yeah and neil doesn't neil says nothing right like yeah it's uh it's like cartoonishly over the top in terms of like that i don't know but that was again like so many disney movies at that time because it's i always think of it the jamie lee curtis freaky friday character too where like the people who come to her when she's a therapist and that are like so overplayed and so like othered and demonized and you don't see any of neil's patients but you just see him being absolutely like red to shit over and over and over of like your job isn't real like and from santa claus santa

claus is saying i don't consider your job legitimate like that's that's dark that's fucked up yeah uh mother earth played by aisha tyler yeah the only woman of color with a speaking role in the entire movie and while she is in a leadership role because she's maybe god she's god she is god she's playing the role of god and yet has nothing to do nothing to do the tooth fairy has way more narrative significance than she does although i think it was an interesting and subversive choice to make the tooth fairy a man in this franchise and i wanted to just shout out uh the actor who played the tooth fairy died this week the week that we record he died very recently art lefleur so he's been in a million movies a great truly a great character actor really really a great

character actor so if if you don't know who he is like from from us saying his name or whatever if you see his face you'll you'll have a million memories of him so rest in peace yeah i like the tooth fairy character um but i wish that they'd use the whole league a little more because they have so many good like yeah you know they have michael dorn i always forget michael dorn is sandman and michael dorn is like work-life balance is important and that's sort of his whole role in this movie i don't know and frank from from Everybody Loves Raymond. But Scott's boss from the first film is the... Oh, yeah.

It's Father Time. Father Time, yeah. Right. Whoa, I didn't even connect that. Wild. That's wild. Yeah. Everyone at the North Pole only speaks English

and with an American accent, as if... In the first movie, there's British elves. I mean, it's still English, but there are as if in the first movie there's British elves I mean it's still English but there are British elves in the first movie I think it would have been much cooler if they had summoned Mother Earth to help them travel by like cutting off the head of a sheep

and like rubbing the blood on a tree now we're talking exactly rubbing the blood on a tree or something exactly I mean rise from the dirt and suck them up save it for your Santa Claus

4 pitch I don't really have anything else to say yeah I mean it doesn't pass the Bechdel test like that and I don't think it's even close well okay okay if you consider if you consider that she's building an argument i can see the wheels wait wait wait there is a there is a scene where luc goes, mom. And Laura goes, yes.

And Lucy says, I lost another tooth. Should I put it under my pillow? And then Scott. There we go. There we go. This movie passes. The stage was two. Passes.

The mental test. No. Not meaningfully. No, but that tooth is important. That is a narratively important tooth no it passes oh my god I don't feel great about it either I don't feel good

about that at all this is perfect it's perfect but this is how we're ending this by recognizing that the santa claus too passes the bechdel test i mean that means that meets every criteria it is like you can't deny that that tooth is important yeah i know so oh my god the verdict is in it passes unless there's a secret clause to the bechdel test that we don't know about and we are just

finding out get Spencer get Spencer in here we're spending we need his magnifying glasses but yes let's write the movie on our nipple scale zero to five nipples based on an examination of the movie through an intersectional feminist lens I'm gonna give I guess, like one nipple, a half nipple between the ludicrous romantic storyline that is creepy and based on absolutely nothing aside from Santa needing his wife to continue justifying his existence. Carol being forced and guilted into a marriage after going on one date with the guy, her having to sacrifice everything in her life as a result. I hate it. The movie does introduce several new female characters, but... Well, some are now just a husk of their former selves but technically yes there are many people there are there are women in the movie homunculi there oh oh homunculi

but um most of the women who are present are not really uh contributing much to the story or they don't have any agency or they get coerced into a marriage with santa claus at the last minute so i don't like it i'm gonna go down to a half nipple i'll give my half nipple to comet the reindeer oh my gosh no wait well i mean i can't tell you what to do i just wanted wanted, I forgot to say, Comet was a, I've talked about this on the show many times, but this specific era of like

combining animatronics with CGI used to scare the living shit out of me. And Comet is a formative example of like, I can't look at this or it's gonna haunt me like really haunt me comet is a scary looking the eyes the way the eyes it's it's not good i feel absolutely fucking defeated by the fact that this movie passes the bechdel test it kind of blows my mind uh and it really is like giving me a headache to think about and you know like when you're at a point where you're like you can feel in your sign you're like i could get a nosebleed at any second

so i'm gonna give it five nipples because this has been a three-year journey we've been on wow with the santa claus movies we went one three two because we're not like other girls we're not gonna do it in order um i'm going to give it five nipples because I think that this is the first one that passed the Bechdel test. And is it my least favorite of the three by a long shot? Absolutely.

I don't like this one. I don't enjoy watching it. I won't be returning to it. Unlike the Santa Claus one and three, which I will be coming back to for years to come. I can't believe i just hey i lost a tooth should i put underneath my pillow yes you should and then so i have to give it five nipples i have to give it five nipples and i'm giving them all to bernard again oh very good grace i also have to give it five nipples oh my god sorry caitlin because it's now in the top five percent of movies we've ever covered how could i give any less

than a 100 score how could i give any less than five nipples to the very air that I breathe. The Santa Claus films are inside of me and outside of me. And they're like, the Santa Claus films are what my pastor told me Jesus was. Like, always with me. Always there for me. And how am I supposed to give a negative review of a building block of life itself? I just don't think that I can do that. Caitlin should have really thought of that before she came here. I just don't think that i can do that um i'm going to give my five nipples

i'm going to give each one of them to a different one of my close friends and have them take care of them as if they are each a key that one combined what is able to unlock something in me that is like a pure joy that might need to be unlocked in the future in a dark time so i'm going to disperse these nipples amongst my friends that will be keepers of the s Claus 2 nipples and they'll be able to use them in a time of great need in the future and if I pass away before that time comes I hope they use the nipples

to unlock a great Christmas joy in somebody else like say a fascist dictator you know like if Trump gets reelected use those nipples to teach him the true meaning of christmas that is so beautiful and i'm crying really really beautiful she really is listener because she really is

jamie i can't i can't look there's a waterfall going on across jamie's face right now i can't look. There's a waterfall going on across Jamie's face right now. I can't stop fucking crying. And this is really hard for me. Jamie, I'm sorry you're crying. Thank you. Grace, thank you for coming back and completing the trifecta of the Santa Claus trilogy and making this the best holiday tradition I've ever participated in. Yeah, maybe the only holiday tradition I've ever participated in, really. I love Christmas, but I had a hard childhood.

Oh, we've got five hours of audio on that i actually think uh where can where can people follow you online and check out your stuff well two things one i never mentioned that i i re-watched it with motion smoot moving on because I it's, I'm watching it on my in-laws television and I couldn't figure out how to turn it off. And that made it even more surreal and weird and like stomach wrenching. And I suggest everyone should do that to really be able to like, look at the world and what it is in a new way.

Where can you follow me? I'm at Grace g freud on twitter um i have a newsletter too that's like tinyletter.com slash grace freud i'm part of a comedy duo called girl god um and we are doing a never-ending tour we're in chicago in de Angeles in January we're back in New York in February we've got more shows to announce soon also watch Rick and Morty in two years

when my episode comes out 2023 there's some fucking bangers thank you guys for having me I've really loved this so much and I'm glad that we this is the only thing i've ever completed in my life so i'm glad that we finished out the trilogy wow thank you grace we love you that's beautiful it's a it's a christmas miracle uh speaking of shows uh we we're gonna be at san francisco sketch fest we keep forgetting to promote this show that

is actually quite soon yes uh we're gonna be back it's on january 19th and you can come if you're in san francisco we're gonna be uh releasing additional tour dates soon so you can just imagine what's around san francisco what's directly you know above san francisco and also caitlin and i want to go to vegas North Pole is directly above San Francisco we're going to the North Pole yeah you know I know that we've said adult women shouldn't go to the North Pole but we're just gonna see what happens well Jamie I've been proposed to by Santa and I have to say yes so we're going to the North Pole wow I'm gonna'm going to try my luck with Bernard, see if he'll have me. Best of luck.

And I am going to fuck a reindeer. Peace out, everybody. Bye. Bye-bye. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 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. To listen to new episodes one week early

and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. I'm NK, and this is Basket Case. What is wrong with me? A show about the ways that mental illness is shaped by not just biology. Swaps of different meds.

But by culture and society. By looking closely at the conditions that cause mental distress, I find out why so many of us are struggling to feel sane, what we can do about it, and why we should care. Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The story of one strange and violent summer, this season on the new podcast, Rip Current. Hear episodes of Rip Current early and completely ad-free and receive exclusive bonus content by subscribing to iHeartTrue Crime Plus, only on Apple Podcasts.