The Bechdel Cast - The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause

Episode Date: December 10, 2020

Jamie and Caitlin are bound to a clause for which they must cover all three Santa Clause movies with special guest Grace Thomas.(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @GraceGThomas on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, Bechtelcast listeners. and it's especially relevant for today's episode because we are doing an online live reading of the Santa Claus, the first movie, with Jamie, with me, hi, it's Caitlin, with Grace Thomas, who was our guest on the first Santa Claus episode from last year, and who is our guest on today's episode, also with Joelle Monique and with Danielle Perez. So we've got a great cast. We're so excited. It's going to be so much fun. The show is on Sunday, December 13th at 6pm Pacific, 9pm Eastern. Check out our Twitter or Instagram or go to caitlyndurante.com slash shows for information on how to get tickets to the stream on YouTube, which you can watch live

on December 13th, or you can watch anytime after that, as long as you've bought a ticket. We are doing this show as a fundraiser for Reclaim and Rebuild Our Community, a very worthy cause. So we really hope you'll support them. Check out the show. We love doing these shows, and we really hope you'll join us. And until then, enjoy today's episode. I'm going to start with my favorite

quote from the movie ready yes i'm ready wow wow wow welcome to the bechdel cast my name is jamie loftus my name's caitante. So that was Alan Arkin. Yeah, his last lines in the movie are, wow, wow, wow. You know what? It didn't make an impression on me. And I really stuck with me. Because he makes a terrible pun. And then Anne Margaret is like,

let me get in on this little pun. And then Alan Arkin says arkin says wow wow wow and that's the end of his arc that's the end of his arkin he oh whoa talking about wow wow wow he goes from being like i'm in a garage to wow wow wow i'm santa's father-in-law incredible storytelling really beautiful stuff uh this is the bechdel cast by the way ever heard of it yes this is our our santa claus three episode uh but first this is our podcast where we discuss movies from an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel test merely as a jumping off point. Jamie, tell me about the Bechdel test. I forget. Well, I'll tell you. The Bechdel test is sometimes called the Bechdel-Wallace test. It's a media metric that was invented by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel

that requires, for our purposes, many different versions of this test. Our purposes require that two people of a marginalized gender with names speak to each other about something other than a man for two lines of dialogue. I'm realizing I don't really know if that happens in the santa

claus three does it i didn't pay attention for everyone who listens to our podcast 30 seconds one time they're like is this the podcast us figuring it out it isn't and i honestly didn't even remember to pay attention this time that what i think same does it great i think that like the question you need to ask first is do all elves count as a marginalized gender um if the answer is yes then still no it does not pass i mean do the elves get to talk to each other there were so many there was one time i wrote in my okay so this is our santa claus three episode we're going to introduce her in a second but grace thomas is back this is our one of our most uh honored holiday traditions even though it's just the second time there's only three movies we're gonna figure it

out um truly one of our favorite episodes one of our like one of our favorite episodes, one of our listeners' favorite episodes. I did write down in my notes that there were probably a lot of child actors who got their SAG card on this movie because there's a lot of elves that have one line and they go, they just get in a line, a single file line in front of Tim Allen and they say, hi, Santa, look at my toy.

And then Tim Allen goes, wow, what a great toy. And then they just go to the back of the elf line and the next at my toy and then tim allen goes wow what a great toy and then they just go to the back of the elf line and the next kid comes up and they and then he actually i think if you look in the blooper reel he hands them a sag card tim allen hands them one and then yeah yeah yeah this is the uh this is the bechdel cast so yes so our our guest today she's a very funny comedian she has a podcast coming out in january called competitive literature which everyone must check out and you remember her from our santa claus one episode it's grace thomas hello there she is's up? I would just like to say hello to the fans, first of all.

First and foremost. I'm really, you know, without you, this episode wouldn't have happened. Because Jamie and Caitlin hated the last episode. They just despised it. But the fans just kept calling out for another one. And then it just had to happen. That is true. I mean, we famously did on stage.

And then, Caitlin, you edited it out later. But at the end of the show, you and I said in unison, we hated this. And people at the show remember. But it was. And they booed you. The entire audience booed you. Things really kicked up that night uh i mean if you were at the denver show i'm sure you can you know there there was a fight there are court records uh we were at court we had to go on zoom because what with you know

the whole situation but we went to court on zoom yeah and you know i i was i was happy with with with where we settled on that yeah they did the the court didn't resolve it until like april of this year even though that it was recorded in december just because apparently apparently theater brawls are way down on the list of things that they deal with. Not a top priority. It's unfair. It's not right. But I did think it was very clever that you and your lawyer added

that if you won in Zoom court that you would come back for the Santa Claus 3. Yes, exactly. I mean, I'm totally broke from hiring a lawyer for this. And the judge did say i didn't need to hire one because it was like a misdemeanor but it was it was worth it i think i think we're all satisfied with where it's landed i think so yeah i'm so excited to talk about this movie because i remember grace you said last year during santa claus one that that Santa Claus 3, a movie I think I'd only seen one time, feels like it takes place in a completely different universe than the first one.

I'm getting worked up. I am getting worked up. It just does not make sense as a continuation of the first two movies. Not just canon wise, not just how it just blows past canon, not just how it warps the story and the characters but just like tonally the first the reason the first two movies are funny is because it's got this kind of like serious real world perspective dealing with these like you know real world emotions you know like dealing with divorce dealing with getting back out there i'm not saying these are super serious movies but then all of a sudden there's like an elf cia you know like that's why they're so enjoyable and then there's some everything changes in santa claus three there's there's none of that reality it's all just it's like a it's like a Rankin-Bass special,

but in the worst way. I love Rankin-Bass specials, but it's that in the worst, because it's just detached, and when it's not, when it's this live action, it's not only a live action as opposed to claymation, it's also a continuation of a franchise that wasn't that at all and it just

has less it has it leans into the fantasy elements and has less fun with them at the same time and also like effectively kind of like ruins some of the good parts of the first movie which i forgot that it does at the end it goes back to the first movie and then adds in a bunch of nonsense as canon that it's like, oh, actually, in 1994, Martin Short killed Santa when he went, hey! See, that was the only part of the movie that I liked, that when they go back, travel through time and screw with the timeline, because I love that stuff.

I love any time travel, like screw with the timeline because i love that stuff i love any like time travel screwing with the timeline i don't know i i like that too and i mean they do i guess fix it kind of in the end but i will say before we get into the synopsis but before we even get into the rest of it i'll get the the nipple score of this movie i don't i don't even think we can pretend that it's even gonna get half you know because this is by far the the most misogynistic santa claus movie of the three by far and it's also maybe the most misogynistic Christmas movie I've ever seen. Like, it's, like, devastating. It's, like, so misogynistic that you almost had to let... Because I'm like, okay, the second...

We can't talk about the Santa Claus 2 too much because we have to talk about it next year. But, like, you know, the whole Santa Claus 2 is, like, and we're just gonna... We gotta get Carol to give that career up. We gotta get her out of that job of hers. And so you think that that would be the most misogynistic

one, but it's not. It's the one where she's in labor for the whole movie. And at least in the Santa Claus 2, it like kind of, oh, she's like, oh, Christmas magic, you know, she like like, oh, Christmas magic. You know, she like,

like, well, you know, I don't know if I was presented with marrying Santa Claus and I knew he was Santa and whatnot. Maybe. You know, I just leave everything behind. Maybe.

I would. I think I would. I think I would. For me, that's a hard pass. I would. But I would also, I would demand a role's a hard pass i would but i would also i would demand a role you know i would be like yes yeah you know i would be an active first lady of the north pole well mrs claus has a role it's just completely nonsensical

it just doesn't make any sense you mean mean when she teaches children elves in elf school who look identical to the adult elves just because all the elves look like children? Yeah, that fucks me up. Is that what you mean? That fucks me up. I think about that regularly, and it really fucks me up. How do the new elves get made? How do they get made? Are they born?

They're on a twilight loop. They just go back to school every 100 years they just keep going there i was confused about that too because maybe i missed something which is possible because this movie feels long but it's very short um she seems to only teach them about her life like that her main lesson is like kind of like what happened to her the christmas she she is trying to teach them math she is at first she's like there's a there's a reindeer math question and then abigail breslin is like no i can't dance up and she she's you know she's feminist icon abigail breslin because she stands up and she's like listen mrs claus i want to know why don't you teach us what we want to learn and and you'd think it would be like anything but like slay math you know but what she wants to know

and apparently the whole class wants to know is she pretty explicitly says like why did you leave your entire life to come up here and teach which is a very that's just good that's good journalism like it it does beg the question and that that part so she does start by teaching a math problem but then she derails math class to tell her life story um which is unusual for an elementary teacher to do um but that specific moment there's and this is a bad this is a note i took that i'm like i don't like this note it reminded me of the beginning of portrait of a lady on fire oh where they're like in the class and she's like who painted what is this painting what is this and then she like is like oh well it's a whole thing there's a way to read this entire film as an analog to portrait of a lady on fire i mean one of the last scenes is, you know, Santa looking at Jack Frost from across the room.

And then Jack Frost looks back at Santa. And then the movie's over, you know? And if that isn't gay. And Mozart is playing. Yes. Yes, Mozart is. The whole time. And our Scott Calvin, a.k.a. Santa Claus,

is pants not on fire at one point in the movie. His pants are totally on fire. Wow, portrait of a Santa Claus on fire. I think that these French assholes ripped off the Santa Claus 3, the escape clause, so so badly and i think they need to be held accountable for this the last place you'd expect to look for plagiarism it's the perfect crime it's the perfect crime there exactly i so i did yeah at the beginning I wrote down Abigail Breslin, portrait of an elf on fire, but it is portrait of a Santa Claus on fire at the end. Yeah.

I'll give it up to this, to the Santa Claus through the escape clause. It is a very gay movie, even though it's violently misogynistic. It can be both of those things, and it is. Two things can be both of those things and it is two things can be true there are i i felt honestly i have like i have a fair amount of notes but i have the thing i have more notes than i was prepared to have was in regards to um the blooper reel which i guess we'll get to but the blooper reel really um resonated with me i feel like it because it is 80 tim allen and martin short yelling screaming screaming screaming in like 10 different scenes and then you're like wow i guess they were screaming in unison in a lot of different scenes but when there's no special effects or music it really is jarring to be like wow they're screaming and then one of the only other bloopers there's like a there's

like a few random ones but it's like tim allen screaming martin short screaming tim allen and martin short screaming and then one scene of the easter bunny sexually harassing ann margaret and her saying i'm so uncomfortable and then children laugh and you're like wait there's children here and then that's the end of the blooper one of the worst parts of this movie is that everybody wants to fuck carol's mom oh my gosh except for carol's dad carol's dad doesn't want anything to do with it. Because Carol's dad, a.k.a. Alan Arkin, wants to have sex with Aisha Tyler. Yes. Well.

Which I was like, okay, that's kind of an iconic pairing. But also, like, you can't. You can't. So I'm split on that. I'm split on that. I'm split on whether or'm split on that I'm split on like whether or not he wanted to fuck her because there's like one like three

like he's like putting his head on her shoulder and so like my there were a lot of weird sexual things in this movie but that I didn't know if I was supposed to take it as that because especially because she's mother

earth you know and he like is laying his and she pats him you know like i did kind of it was okay i was so when i saw that there's a shot at the end this this episode is just going to be chaotic and everyone just has to deal with it like the the shot at the end where alan arkin is like really slowly laying his head on aisha tyler's shoulder normally i would take issue with that and be like oh that's creep but then i in that i was like well it's alan arkin and aisha tyler like as a static image i'm on board in context maybe not quite as much but as a static image alan arkans head gently rested on aisha tyler's shoulder that's a fun image i might even commission that to a little paint or even as like i've got a big one of those already

i've got one right above my bed. My fiance hates it. They keep telling me to burn it or that they're going to leave me. They'll come around. They'll come around. I will say, should we do the synopsis? We're just going to get you. Yeah. Well, real quick, our history relationship with the movie.

Grace, you said you'd only seen this one once before, right? But you're a big fan of the first two. I'd only seen it once before. It was in theaters with my cousin who passed away last year. So again, every time I've seen this movie for the first time with someone, they're dead. You know? They just bam, bam, bam. I'm so sorry. Bam just bam bam bam bam bam well i've joked about it enough that i'm kind of a nerd to it you know but it certainly happened ah jesus i don't know i'll tell you one

thing this isn't really movie related but when your family has entirely cut you off because you're trans pretty much and then you find out a cousin's dead it's like well this is pretty sad but i have nothing to do you know no plane tickets to buy it's very like it's a very chill way to find out a family member is dead because you simply have no responsibilities don't you can't send flowers because you don't even know where anyone lives anymore it's a chill i mean it's bad for a lot of emotional reasons but it's also like if you want to be able to be lazy when a family member dies just be trans did you it's like you're a text reaction away from yes yeah yeah that's a thumbs down i i wanted to i so i had to remind myself for this episode

who ann margaret was or is she's alive right so i think the reason that we are like oh everyone is horny for ann margaret i think that's a joke for parents i think it's a joke for boomers because ann margaret was like kind of like a young bombshell in like the 60s so i think every parents are supposed to be like oh yeah and margaret she used to play a bunch of you know sexy roles and so now she's she's uh she's a grandma but she's still sexy but not to alan arkin it's kind of like this is like a, you know, like a story quilt or like, you know, like just an old tome of genealogy or something. Just like a story of our culture. And it's a way, the Santa Claus 3 is a way for boomers to pass down to a new generation about how fuckable Aunt Margaret is. Back in the day, we wanted to fuck Aunt Margaret.

This is something you should know and carry and tell to future generations. Because it took me a second to be like oh they're free i don't get you can kind of like tell when i can't even really describe what the choice is but when they're like framing someone like an older actor very particularly where you're like oh i'm supposed to know who this is i just don't yes for sure and that's how they present her because you're like oh alan arkin that's exciting and i'm like i think i'm supposed to be excited about i don't know who this is i kept thinking it was reba mcintyre and then i was like uh no she's just got a good wig yeah but it's ann margaret and you know she she does what she can and then she's and then

apparently she was sexually harassed by the eas Bunny. So we got to cut her some slack. Everybody. God. I think. Well, okay, Jamie, what is your relationship with this movie? I'm not even sure. I think I've seen it once. I didn't see it in theaters. I think I've watched it on TV, like sort of. I think that's my history.

I know that like it was familiar enough that I'm like, I've seen this movie. I know the Martin Short Santa Claus, but the specifics of like the number and volume of plot lines, I did not remember. So I'm pretty sure I've seen it once on like TBS or something. Got it. What about you? I'd never seen this before. I did grow up with the first Santa Claus movie

but hadn't seen either of the two sequels until just the other day when I started prepping for this episode. I've seen two. Coming in pretty fresh. The main thing that i forgot about this movie that really uh pissed me off and dried me up was that there's no david krumholz yeah i was shocked by that too i totally forgot that and that's just rooted in in this film's refusal to evolve the canon and mythology of the North Pole.

It entirely refuses to just love it, love the world it's created in the last two films. And I hate that. And that hot chocolate girl isn't there either, who's been presented in these earlier movies as this like mystical ancient figure you know and then it's just like well our head elf and our like elf sorceress just are on vacation you know because they aged out of the roles because in an elf lore children forever but spencer breslin gets to come back i felt bad because i was like feeling kind of aggressive towards spencer breslin and that's not fair but i was like you're supposed

to be the smartest elf here and you just give jack frost all the info he needs you fucking little little fool you i mean he looks like a dollar store beans you know from even stevens he does i always forget that spencer breslin is not in fact beans yes he's not he is not even beans poor i mean i'm sure this is no this is not a personal attack on spencer breslin but i did i did have a very emotional reaction when his character i mean he just can't hold a candle he cannot do what bernard does and it shows oh that's all i'll say yeah i mean i this this film really just destroys so much much of the mythology too because the the elves are presented as, like, you know, like, loving what they do, being so invested in the North Pole.

But then when Jack Frost takes over and just makes them be theme park employees, it's like, oh, they're slaves. Like, oh, this is against their will. Like, you know, they're just a part of this. They're like little homunculi, you know, that are being forced to do this. And that leaves a bad taste in your mouth that reverberates throughout the last two movies, too. Yeah. It is also unpleasant.

And that was also just like a very bizarre choice to me. I always find it really, it just feels disingenuous whenever in a disney movie they make some like point about like oh look at all this they they consumerize it and they opened a theme park i'm like i'm gonna need this message from literally any other company because uh that's like it's just simply not gonna hit for me so i thought that that choice and why this movie is so fucking weird. I guess we I guess we should do the recap. Yes. Let's do the recap.

Let's take a quick break first and then we'll come back and do the recap. 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.

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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 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, Luge. I'm not going to hawk this 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. Wow. app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts wow the guy who directed this movie also directed tooth fairy starring dwayne johnson what a weird corner to paint yourself into i mean he has some sort of curse on on him he's got a clause he's beholden to some sort of fucked up clause and then i feel like we this somehow might have come up last year but it's worth mentioning that the writing duo that writes both santa claus two and three uh are the same writers of there's Something About Mary. And you can really, and also the Lizzie McGuire movie, which actually like was an arrow to my heart.

Yeah, confusing. Well, at very least there was a female writer on the Lizzie McGuire movie as well. So maybe she, or maybe that movie is terrible and I just don't remember. But, which is probably the case. But yeah, Ed Dechter and John john j strauss wrote this movie i mean seemingly under duress you have to think this movie went through like well i mean it's just you know the santa claus 2 is a sweet film it's like not a perfect film but it's sweet at least you know and this movie i mean it must have gone through a dozen rewrites it must have it seems really it seems like it was like there's three drafts that all ended up in the

same in the same script yes right and a bunch of people must have thrown in jokes and ideas because like jack is such a a mish mish mash of a character that just a character. I don't know if this will surprise you two, but I have a deep, unabiding love for Jack Frost. That's not where I saw that sentence going. Continue. I'm just offended. I'm deeply hurt by how they portray Jack Frost in this movie. Well, who do you know Jack Frost to be?

Because I don't have a ton of context for Jack Frost. I feel like I have, like, more of an aesthetic idea of him. I don't have a character idea of him. Well, I'm Finnish, and Jack Frost is a big Finnish mythological figure. I did more research into it and he's like has his own chapter in like this thing called like the kvalers or something that's not what it's called but it's like i believed you really big tome of ancient finnish poems and stuff and it makes sense because my finnish grandfather used to reference him a lot so I feel like it's like

in my blood kind of to love Jack Frost I just love Jack Frost as like kind of a scamp you know but also like in his heart heroic and I hate I fucking just I don't understand Martin Short and I don't think anybody under 40 understands martin short and so that is the perfect hot take i like i like the idea of martin short yes i always think like fully get it when i i'm gonna see a movie with him in it i'm like oh i think i like martin short and then i see it and i'm like i fucking hated martin short and that he was you're like what was like yeah it was i i don't know like i just don't understand i feel like whatever it was that made martin short the funniest person on earth is a generational like if you're born after a certain time you're like i'm not offended i'm not upset i just don't

understand what what everyone was so excited about yeah he made a wish to a genie that granted it but it was like he wanted to be famous but the genie was like okay you'll be famous and beloved but only people born in the 1950s will find you funny he was like sounds good parents love martin troy and i like martin short i just and and i feel like he like brings a cool energy that like movies need sometimes and he can make a bad movie not as bad because he just brings like commitment and energy but i don't fully get it and also you you brought up an excellent we we have covered the michael keaton jack frost on our patreon before i didn't i honestly does the michael keaton jack frost have anything to do with

the mythology because i was because he was just in a band and then he died and he came back as a snowman okay just making not at all um and then there's been a serial killer Jack Frost movie too. Yeah. I just don't think people have enough respect for the finish. And I think that's something that we can really confront here. Well, Grace, I think it's up to you to write a respectful Jack Frost film. Positive Jack Frost representation. There hasn't been enough of it in cinema i agree the

only other jack frost representation i've seen is michael keaton getting killed on christmas eve on the way to do his cover band and that just is definitely not the worst movie in the world that's not to cut it. I will say, he was the hero in Rise of the Guardians. That dream works for me. That dream works for me. Rise of the Guardians. Is that a movie about owls? No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Not Gahool? That's the Guardians of Gahool, yeah. Oh, what's Rise of the Guardians? It's about, like, so Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Jack Frost. But they all don't have this quite, like, Santa Claus isn't called Santa Claus. The Easter Bunny isn't quite called the Easter Bunny. But they have to, like, rise up and defeat this shadow demon. And it was, I think, one of Jeffrey Katzenberg's last films at DreamWorks before he moved on to Quibi.

To Quibi. Oh. Rip Quibi. Rip Quib. All right. I think it might be time for the recap now. Oh, damn. I'm so sorry, Caitlin.

No, that's what we're here for. Like you said, this episode's chaos, and that's just how it is. I can't believe, yeah. Sorry, I'm still stuck on the Michael Keaton, Jack Frost. Whenever they bring together the holiday mascots and want it to be like, isn't this empowering? I'm always like, this is kind of of like it just feels icky to me and it feels like when they try to put serial mascots together and you're like i don't i don't want this i don't need this they do this in um al frank bombs the life and adventure of santa claus

which was the final claymation adaption that Rankin-Bass made. Yes. And that comes off. That's my favorite. I love that movie. And that comes off cool because they're not like the Easter Bunny and shit. It's like the Lords of Spring, you know, and like the nature elves and Mother Earth and yada, yada, yada. And that's cool. It's like mythological stuff. Yeah. And in this, it's like the nature elves and mother earth and yada yada yada and that's like mythological stuff yeah

and in this it's like the easter bunny and then cupid played by kevin polak my partner walked in while i was um you know taking diligent notes about santa claus three and then he went oh ha kevin and then walked away i was like how dare you fucking see kevin pollock in a full-on diaper and they go oh ha kevin and walk away it was just not okay with me and we're on it's the relationship is a sham where's kevin pollock even from um he's in she's all that i think oh oh my god wait we're recording this the day after i'm so i mean we hated she's all that but do you want to know some gossip i'll put some gossip on the pod and then we'll recap the movie yeah so okay so it's like los angeles local gossip that's pretty draconian and evil so our mayor eric garcetti, is a terrible man. He's the worst.

And yesterday, as of this recording, he had shut down a COVID testing site at Union Station for the reason that he had, or his office, or whatever office does that, they had rented Union Station to a reboot of She's All That called He's All That starring TikTokers. And that's why 500 people

couldn't get their COVID tests today. Isn't that the most evil shit you've ever heard in your life for the worst reason? That's fucked up. I mean, what TikTokers? Because, like, if they're some of my faves. Addison Rae, does that change your mind?

Oh, she's a... Are you back on board? No, I'm not. No. Oh, she confuses me. I looked her up once, and all of her stuff is just about... It's like one of those youtube families you know like it's but it's like just like a single young girl talking about like oh this

is the boy i'm with now and it's like what why can't this is what cinema used to be you know people used people used to go to the movies for these stories. And now they're getting them from Addison Rae. I always get the feeling I'm like, I am just like, I shouldn't be here. I should get out of here. Either way, no one should shut down a COVID testing site for he's all that starring Addison Rae. That's the most evil shit. Anyways, shout out Kevin. Kevin.

Kevin. Kevin. Okay, Caitlin, we're ready to do the podcast now. I guess we'll find out what's going on with Santa Claus 3. I know, it's just like, do we just not want to talk about this? I'm just delaying so much. All right, I'll make this as quick'm just delaying so much. All right. I'll make this as quick as possible.

We'll see how it goes. Oh, there's so much. Okay. So just a really quick fill in the gap between Santa Claus 1 and Santa Claus 3. In Santa Claus 2, there's a new clause that says that Santa Claus has to get married by next Christmas, which is in like a month or else he can't be Santa anymore. So he ends up falling in love with Carol, his son,

Charlie's school principal, and she becomes Mrs. Claus. So that's what happens. But also I realized here's a little, I was, but her, her maiden name is Carol Newman, which because her name is Carol, because which, because her name is Carol,

because Christmas. And she needs a new man, meaning Scott Calvin, a.k.a. Santa Claus. There's a poetry to these films. There's a poetry to these films. It's very literary, you know, the imprints that they're taking.

I was like, oh, she needs a new man, and she will leave her job for a new man for all the listeners out there i really really suggest watching these movies with a script in hand because otherwise you're just not gonna take it in like you should it's true i felt really empowered i was like oh new oh, Newman. It was all there. All the hints were there. Maybe we talked about this last year too, but the plot of the Santa Claus 2

is also the plot to the Princess Diaries 2, right? Isn't it the same thing where Anne Hathaway has to get married by the end of the month or the country sinks into the ocean. Or like, I don't even know what the consequence was. There's like these evil Eastern Europeans that are going to usurp you. Well, I mean, I thought I made note of that, too, because I was like, oh, there's it feels like there's a lot of movies where a woman needs to get married by a certain deadline or else there will be consequences. Because Aladdin was another thing that came to mind,

where Jasmine has to get married in three days or whatever. So I was like, okay, that's an interesting subversion that a man has to find his wife. Yeah. And that almost suggests that. But then he's like, you need to rob a woman of her career in the next 30 days or you're fucked or Christmas is canceled. Well, I mean, you know, yeah, he could have found someone who could work from home. Yeah, Scott, ever think of that? Jesus.

Yeah. Well, here's my thing about that, about losing her career and whatnot. She didn't have to necessarily because she could have just been like, oh, I'm the high school principal of the North Pole, you know, because apparently there's kid elves in schools. But there's got to be some like North Pole bimboization because by the time we get to the santa claus three she's an entirely different person she's not sharp she's not

funny she's not like she's just like teaching at an elementary school she's not like enterprising about like what like what she wants these kids to know and learn yeah and it and that happens also there's like a north pool himboization to to scott who like becomes this soft not quite as smart or wily guy you know and it even extends to the family members who after a while being in the North Pole there are these soft goopy guys you know and it's just it's it's perplexing well to Laura

okay the way we have to talk about the plot I got so frustrated I'm like Laura and Neil are we even I was genuinely like why are Laura and Neil even here? Until I saw Martin Short blow CG air and CG ice them. And I'm like, oh, that's why they're here.

So I could see the worst effect I've ever seen in my life. That's why they're here. And Laura. Okay. Well, okay. Maybe we should start. Let's start at the top so laura i was like i was so lost with laura i was like where is laura's head at i don't understand okay what

happens in the movie though okay so uh santa claus three opens on mrs claus who is now a teacher at the north pole and she starts to tell her students who are either children elves or adult elves. We don't know. It's high school and they're 40. They look younger than most of the other elves.

They really do. Especially at the end of the Santa Claus 2 we also see her teach elves a little bit and those elves look even younger they look like toddlers basically so where are these elves coming from where are they coming from i don't want to think about it because yeah i don't want to know i don't want to know. I don't want to know. But my mind goes places. You know, I have ideas about what's happening. And I just don't want that to be happening.

I just broke a pen. I appreciated the cinematic restraint in not even trying to tell me what happened. I was like, you know what? I just, thanks. Thanks. All right right so she's telling them this story and then we flash back to uh mrs claus who is now highly pregnant uh she is about to give birth like professionally pregnant it's like it's wait i know we have to talk about what happens to the movie. You know what?

What if we don't? Was anyone else like really like confused by the ending shot of the movie where it's like they're Greg that they have. Santa and Carol have the huge. I mean, I guess we don't know how much longer after the baby is born, but the baby is huge. It's like a three month old baby. It's pretty big. It's about the size of Abigail Breslin. And then the movie ends on like a shot of the baby. A freeze frame of the baby.

Not only that but the last thing that santa says is like here's buddy claude gray claws here's gray claws and and you're like wait did they not know the name had they not met the baby yet what's what's going on right he brought them because it's like okay if she's already back in the classroom she's already had her full mrs claus maternity leave i'm gonna generously assume that you know she has good health insurance although given the fact that she doesn't fit in the hospital i don't know but she's already back at work and she has not yet named her baby is that no i think no no no no no no no no because she says we named him after his grandfather yeah so no no no yeah they named it but i'm just saying that it's weird that santa is like hey here's this information you didn't have even though there's

like i don't know maybe 500 elves here and every elf knows everything that happens so and there's a freeze frame on the baby the baby almost but not quite breaks the fourth wall good job baby yeah good baby acting good baby acting don't look in the camera i think if you're a baby that would probably be hard but the but then it freezes as if to be like you're i felt like the implication was like and the and this is the setup for the santa claus four yeah the next generation of like baby we've already established in in santa claus movie canon that you become Santa Claus by murdering the existing Santa Claus. So is this implying that Buddy Claus is going to kill his father? Or what about Charlie?

What about Charlie? What about Charlie? And in my draft of Santa Claus 4, all of these questions are answered. All of these questions are answered. these questions are answered i really think you know hashtag make wait i'm trying to think of a good one hashtag hashtag higher grace to write santa claus for that's not a good one grace to clause for hashtag santa grace Grace to Claws 4. Hashtag Santa Grace. Santa Grace. Hashtag Santa Grace.

And we will demand Disney produce my dramatic version of the Santa Claws 4. No more comedy. Now we just really get to what's behind the characters. It's about time. it's about fucking time i totally agree i think of the film less as a sequel and more of a coda not only not only for the trilogy but really to our own our own journeys individually in regards to the Santa Claus mythos and how we accept and move on from that joy and wonder. Wow. I mean, where do we go from here?

Every time I watch a Santa Claus movie, I'm like, where do we go from here? As a nation, as a culture, where do we go? Has anyone been keeping up with Tim Allen's Twitter? I felt like at some point we had to talk about it would feel disenjoyed because we know i think we also discussed this last year that tim allen is like an unrepentant republican like bad views bad like we we we we can't he's he's there and yet we cannot claim him because he is bad. But the way he had a tweet recently.

Grace, did you see this one? Yeah, he tweeted about the communist manifesto. He tweets very conspiratorially in a uniquely boomer way where he'll just say things. And I think what he's trying to like i think what he's trying to accomplish is a mic drop but you're like i don't know what you're saying so so he tweeted this on november 13th 2020 carl marx communist manifesto wikipedia that's the whole tweet and he spells carl marx wrong he spells it with a c not a k he says karl marx communist manifesto wikipedia i cannot i can guess what does he mean

i can guess but i don't know wikipedia throws me for a loop karl marx communist like the first two i'm like i see okay where's he going with this? There's a connection between those two things. But then Wikipedia. I'm gone. I don't know. I have often referred to Wikipedia as the modern day Communist Manifest. But I'll give it up to Tim Allen. A bunch of people clowned on him and he was he

was basically like ah this is funny you know when people were like making fun of yeah he's like you know i too don't know and so i as a punishment for him i was like okay well let's go to tim allen's wikipedia which he seems to have contempt for and see you know what's going on and he is like he endorsed trump in the 2016 election like he sucks right but um the the most recent sentence the most up-to-date sentence that seems to be connected to these november 13th tweets and i honestly didn't pursue the thread outside of the iconic tweet carl Marx Communist Manifesto Wikipedia. But all it says is, on November 13th, 2020,

Tim Allen published a series of tweets which appeared to condone and endorse child labor, which I feel like, interestingly, in a horrible way, ties to the Santa Claus universe. Yes. So I'm like, did the Santa Claus radicalize dim allen in the wrong direction we don't know we don't know we know his politics are shitty and bad

but did they come from the santa claus we don't know what happens in the movie i'll tell you after this quick break. Oh, okay. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhearts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state.

And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. 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 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, Lugie. 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. And we're back. Okay. Okay. So, Mrs. Claus is telling a story to the children elves. She's pregnant.

She's about to give birth any day now, but it's also almost Christmas, so it's not a good time. Santa Claus is busy with Christmas stuff. She also misses her human family. So Santa is like, well, I'll bring your parents here to the North Pole. But they have to maintain the SOS, a.k.a. the secret of Santa. So they have to disguise the North Pole as Canada. So they do that. And this is linked to his magic. If the secret's revealed, Santa loses his magic.

Right. For whatever reason. Yeah. Yes. But then I, yeah, then i struggled with the end if that's true then how do you explain alan arkin realizing he's father christmas's in law i think they kill him i think after the credits they're like you got to see this majesty and now we're gonna they just leave them out in the cold alan arkin and um old hottie what was her name and margaret and margaret same same amount of

syllables we're left out in the snow and just just were like oh we saw that and then and then they died and were buried and maybe they were given some sort of christmas tomb but um i think that's what happened i kind of was like there was about i knew that there was no way that they were just gonna let judge reinhold never come out of his ice prison but i was like how funny would it be if judge reinhold just kind of like stayed whatever han soloed there yeah oh frozen in carbonite yeah that was also a very that was that was a that was a special effect that turned my stomachs it's awful it is a nightmare the only thing worse of them getting frozen is them getting unfrozen yeah oh my god i was trying to figure out why i couldn't find information on why david krumholtz didn't come

back and broke my heart i could was it because he was on numbers yes it was because he was on numbers unbelievable numbers has taken so much from us I think David David Grumholz would have had a film career if this fucking procedural didn't just take him out of it for years David Grumholz would have an Oscar right now if not for

fucking Numbers he could have been a fucking contender we gotta get David Grumholz back in the mix. He's 42. He's got a lot of career left in him. It really was like he could have done. I mean, honestly, you could say maybe he dodged a bullet by missing the Santa Claus three.

But sure. You know, but I haven't seen a second of numbers. I just know it's a procedural. And now I know that it took David Krumholz from us and gave him to what? Our moms? Who watched Numbers? I don't know.

I certainly didn't. David Krumholz, you know, just looking at his recent filmography, I don't know what he's like. But I feel, you know, like later on, we were like, good for me for having a good crush. He was in At Home with amy sedaris he was in nora from queens he was in the new twilight zone he's doing some fun stuff he was in hail caesar

yeah he's around yeah we got it we gotta get him back where is he at his presence i mean i think it's it's fair to say his presence is is missed in the santa claus three truly i think the movie would have made total sense if he was there it would be great if in the santa claus four or in what not the same we need a santa claus four to end the current saga but when the santa claus is eventually rebooted what if david krumholtz was in the main role i would love that think about that i think honestly we're at a point in this and this okay let me know if this is totally off base but i feel like we're at a point in this movie series where we could kind of easily kill off tim allen oh is that okay i think we should, let's not spoil the Santa Claus 4 by Grace Thomas.

That's true. Okay. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. Well, shall we just check in to see what's happening in Santa Claus 3? Oh, yeah.

Before we dive too far into that. Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. Cool, cool, cool. Okay. So, you know, it's a busy time at the North pole with all of the christmas and the in the pregnancy we're at the beginning we're still five minutes into the movie and then the council of legendary figures calls an emergency meeting to let santa know that jack frost has been trying to upstage santa. Basically, Jack Frost wants his own holiday and he is jealous of Santa.

He resents that Santa gets all of the winter notoriety. Right. And specifically, what he's doing is distributing these full-size cardboard cutouts of himself that have sashes around them that say Merry Frostmas.ness yes and so apparently jack frost can just tell everyone like i'm jack frost i exist i'm real um and he's just doing this right there's no secret of frost there's only a secret of santa But this is, I mean, talk about frosty tips.

Oh. We've got frosty tips. The frostiest. We've got the frostiest tips possible. Aisha Tyler plays Mother Nature, reprising her role. Who is God, basically. Yeah, she's literally God. She's like the queen of all of them.

It's so interesting that in this film, God is basically a black woman. And it is not reflected in society at all. It's just that it's not reflected at all. The world isn't different in any way. It's just like, yeah, Aisha Tyler is is Mother Nature and she's not doing shit for shit. She's just doing these meetings once in a while. for shit she's always like sucked into these horrible like political infighting between santa and jack frost it's like can you work she should be dealing with climate change but instead mother nature you think that would be her choice that is why climate change is happening because jack cross and cupid and the tooth fairy and

santa are always doing their little piss shit and also she's the only woman on the council yeah the rest of the council is just like these shitty guys except for father time who seems chill but other than that it's just these shitty guys it's one of those things where you're like okay uh of course like a black woman cast as essentially god incredible but wait who's writing it the writers of there's something about mary ah that's where we're gonna have a problem that's that's why we immediately see her attention turn to the you know two of the most impotent people in the room and it stays there and then she's like well i guess i you know two of the most impotent people in the room and it stays there and then she's like well i guess i you know if she were allowed to use her full powers she could have killed alan arkin at the end for daring to rest his head true on her shoulder she should

have just like you know like she could have just you know not that i want to see that happen to alan arkin i don't but she could have zoost his ass you know well the thing about this whole meeting is like yeah so jack frost tried to like create a new holiday and apparently only district she also mother earth notes that these cardboard cutouts have only been distributed throughout the Pacific Northwest for whatever reason. So he doesn't even have enough to go around the world. And so my thing is, why even call

a meeting? If they hadn't called this meeting, it would have been fine. But they did! And that fucked everything up. It was not meaning worthy if there was going to be that little done about it and i also was like okay people should be like kind of i i appreciate the radical empathy extended to scott calvin when he's like i'm sorry everyone i'm just really tired. My wife is pregnant. And everyone's like, oh,

okay, no problem. Which is great. Paternity leave for Santa Claus, for sure. Yes. And they're so mean to Jack Frost. I'm immediately inured to him because I'm like, well, Jack Frost just wants to have a little fun,

maybe have a little celebration of him. And they're just so dismissive and mean. And they call him, like, the best friend, not the main star. Just, like, so... They're so weird to him. Especially when it turns out, you know, he's one of the most powerful beings on Earth. Because he can just freeze people on a whim, you know? Right.

And, like, you don't need to, like, participate in this council, really whim you know right and like you don't need to like participate in this council yes exactly they're going to punish him by kicking him off the council of legendary creatures and it's like what does that do to him then he just doesn't have to come to these meetings right like good good for him right it's not are they getting like health insurance by being a part of this council like no they're he can just yeah go off and do his own thing true they're also mad at him because i guess he like made snowfall in the amazon and stuff and he froze a volcano but that's cool shit he should have been doing that he should do more of that honestly he can probably combat global warming also he should yes well oh okay so that. He should do more of that. Honestly. He could probably combat global warming also.

He should. Yes. Oh, okay. So that was the question I had at that meeting that comes up. I realize I haven't looked at my notes in like an hour. Oh, my God. So, yeah, based on the way that he is like, Jack Frost is introduced by Mother Nature.

She says like he set off a vault like he set off something like everything he sounds like either he's like causing climate change or he's like the amelia bedelia of weather because he's like geese are going north for the winter and it just sounds like everything is going on wrong like the implications of what he's doing it's both implied that it's like catastrophic in a global sense but also it seems also weirdly limited to like mall cardboard cutout yes it was like confusing my big question too is like we never figure out how the rest of the more the like legendary immortal creatures work is there a new jack frost from time to time you know like what that's a good what happens also i thought it was

very funny that what he's charged with like what mother nature like reads as the charge to jack frost is attempted upstaging of saint claus you're like it's a felony first of all like why what vested interest does mother nature have in upholding that law if she's in charge why is there a law against upstaging santa claus who is beholden to that law is she is she beholden to that law what kind of is this a democracy are humans beholden to that law like if someone puts up an incredible like you know like what if like you know like some organization is like giving kids whose whose parents are incarcerated like like presents does mother nature show up and just be like oh you can't do this you're upstaging santa claus and drag them into the earth so

confusing like i just yeah that also hurt me and then on top of that okay so on top of that we have carol who is no longer the carol we once knew in the santa claus too because she used to be like an administrator at a school yeah but then she's openly hateful towards like elf children adults in front of them and she's like i just want family human family and like you're just like you're so mean they're all right there and then the elves are like yeah we we suck like you're just like what are you carol and i mean she could have just said she wanted her mom and dad like she didn't have to be like you little monsters you know and the elves continue to be on her side to the point where like you know santa who i understand is incredibly busy i don't think he's doing anything particularly wrong like she's also being like

very insecure and clingy kind of because she's like santa has to do this and that and can't hang out with me right now you know and just keeps like that's her whole thing throughout the whole movie. And it's like, well, it's like a couple of days until Christmas. Like, come on, come on, you know. I mean, you know, unplanned pregnancies happen all the time. But this could this is I mean, the the one day he works a year i think the elves don't know how to do c-sections or maybe they don't have big enough knives for humans because the elf firmary as they call it doesn't have a big enough bed for her that does not seem

sanitary there i will say like there is that one moment where anne margaret and alan arkin show up at like where she's going to be delivering and anne margaret says something like she's like this doesn't seem safe and i was like wait she's totally right it doesn't seem safe no not at all these children can't perform a surgery and and and and carol doesn't even really fit in this room like she's gonna run out of oxygen also are are these kids are these elf children-ish e people are they just gonna like just stare at this adult woman's gaping vagina as a baby that's a good question it really and if so why were alan arkin did alan arkin and ann margaret just think like well i guess that's canada like what

were they thinking okay the fact that they like are in what's clearly santa's workshop surrounded by elf children and like are like yep I believe this is Canada like what's wrong with them they don't well I'll say I'll give them this maybe um the sandman's magic like kind of altered their perspective although you know they didn't really go that hard like if they had stepped into the wrong room they would have seen what was going on if they really if they really wanted to make sure that these elves were hidden and would just look like regular people or children they needed to cut the tips of their ears off too because they all have these like little pointy ears so they would have had to clip their ears if they were gonna really really do this

you know it's true so really like yeah her parents um I did appreciate the I knew we were only in moment 15 of the movie but I appreciate it there were some choices made in the set design of this

movie that you're like holy shit and i did not re-watch the santa claus 2 to prepare for this so i don't remember if any of this set is carried over from the santa claus 2 my guess is no because it was too much time but i have a short list of the um set design choices that really uh fucked me up the first of which is the santa claus fireplace where santa claus is oh and it it looks exactly like tim allen santa claus it looks exactly like tim allen santa claus they put that in after he after he became santa i was it's horrible i it was sickening i and it and it's such a wide shot and it's their family home and i'm like that is just not like carol needs to like speak up

about that whole situation because he had he must have had that installed you know after their marriage so that's not good set design i did like was all the canadian sets that were like this is canada i promise i was like okay i'm laughing that's fun but the other horrifying set design or i guess this is technically prop design is uh frozen judge reinhold i'm never gonna get over that that's not okay also i forgot about the room full of snow globes and i hated it that's all it's so much bad stuff it could have been so much more beautiful like you could have made a beautiful room full of snow globes this was not it this was not it you just did it there's not even any locks on them they could be in like orbs or like some sort of magical enchantment.

So just to remind everyone, we talked about this in the last episode, but this has to do, I think, with the budget arc of the Santa Claus extended universe. Santa Claus 1, budget $22 million. Box office, $190 million. Santa Claus 2, we said they overshot it. Too much money. $65 million budget. $172 million returns. They're like, okay, we got to scale it back.

But then maybe for Santa Claus 3, they scale it back a little too much because the budget is $ 12 million and they can barely afford tim allen and two thousand like five years later or something right like 12 12 years after the original so it's like yeah 22 22 million in 1994 money god only knows how much that was this is 12 million in like future money it's not a lot of money and you can tell and it's just such and it made a lot of money still it it made over a hundred million dollars that that is a very successful comedy you know it didn't matter it turns out it didn't matter if it was good or not yeah well they got martin short they got mart Short for $5 million,

Kim Allen for $6 million, and then they had $1 million for the rest of the movie. They're like, Spencer Breslin, we're paying you in experience. It's too bad. Okay, I know that she comes in the second movie, but every time I see Lucy, I'm like, who lucy lucy's got there's nothing to her her whole shtick in the entire movie is i like snow i love snow globes and that's what saves the day and where they land for her i found the end okay wait we should get back to the movie i did not like where lucy's lucy's arc landed very creepy and weird yeah so okay well speaking of snow globes so at this meeting this meeting of legendary figures the escape clause gets brought

up but santa is like, that's too extreme. And that's the thing. That's the thing. That's the subtitle of the movie. And we're like, what's the escape clause? And we find out soon after, along with Jack Frost, because he's intrigued by the escape clause, we learn that if Santa invokes the escape clause via the use of his magical snow globe he will travel back through time and have the opportunity to never become santa so this is an important piece of information but so this is the out of this entire movie and all of its sins

i touched on this in the last episode but what i didn't know though so when we were talking about the santa claus before i had re-watched this i i thought that he was told about the like santa was told about the escape clause in his third film that is not true he already knows about it which kind of like why not just cut that scene like cut the scene where he knows about it because that you're just like well i just landed on being like well i don't like it but jack frost is just a very you know effective politician like they're well because yeah in the in the first two movies he has to learn about the clauses. That's part of the fun and games of the movie. But for him to already know about the escape clause,

so we don't really even get a proper introduction of it until a while later. And then he still gets tricked into invoking it. And it's like, wouldn't you know not to say those words? And it's like halfway in the movie where he found like it feels like the inciting incident happens really far into the movie yeah like he finally because you're like oh okay what would get this movie started was him the trailer would even imply is him wishing he was never santa claus but that happens halfway through the movie it happens more than halfway through i swear to god it happens an hour into the movie.

And here's the thing. I mean, God, you know, so many, so many issues. But when it comes down to it, I mean, he fucking. But in the first movie, it's made very clear that he can't just quit being Santa. It's made very, very clear. It just seems manipulative. Since there was an out. I mean, it really, it destroys the entire premise of the first movie.

It just rips it off. Yeah, it totally does. And moreover, you have to wonder, how many Santas have there been who did just go back you know how many and apparently when you do that you you have knowledge of the future so did a santa like go back and stop 9-11 you know like what santa yeah like how how how far does this power go how can it only like it spits on the 1994 santa claus and that was why i was personally so mad when they went back in time and went back to the first santa claus movie i'm like that's you stay you stay away from that i don't want martin short anywhere near that scott calvin you know he he retains all of his memories when he jumps into the future which makes no sense

i mean i don't i fucking and i guess it's a fail safe too you go back to the moment you were turned into santa so you guess i guess you have another second to like decide right you could still make the choice to become santa again in case you change your mind right hmm oh my god it's really messy well let's talk about what happens for the hour before this happens because there's a lot of shit that doesn't make any sense so because there's like 47 plot lines um so after we learn about the escape clause santa goes to pick up his what his wife's parents and bring them to the North Pole. He also brings his ex-wife, Laura. Which is like, can anyone unspool that for me? not be extremely eager to get my ex-husband who i have like a tensely okay relationship with

at best like my ex who i am like co-parenting with but then i'm not gonna talk to him the second charlie graduates why is she so eager to go be like at the bedside of his pregnant new wife that did not make sense to me and i was like laura would never so so what one thing i do have to say is they have a much warmer relationship in santa claus too they okay like they do they do have a much warmer relationship and friendship friendship but i totally agree her it's so frustrating it's just like a totally different tone and she's all of a sudden just like wide-eyed bushy tail oh santa claus oh i want to make a doll and and and and and and it just it's what really gets to me is that Neil and Laura are all of a sudden turned into these totally different characters that have no grounding in reality. And that shows how the rest of the film is not, like, grounded emotionally at all. So there's no, like, there's nothing, there's nothing to learn.

There's nothing to feel, you know. Yeah. Like even if they do have a good relationship, I just can't see her offering to be his new wife's midwife out of nowhere. Like it just doesn't make sense to me. And then on top of that. If Lucy really wanted to go, I could see her and Neil going with her. But I think they wouldn't be like oh oh my god elves they would be like oh this is cool and here's the thing here's the fucking thing

it would have been much funnier if they were themselves it would have been much a much funnier movie if they were themselves and i agree neil hams it up and does like yoga with the elves but that's not it would have and also there's these weird just generic east asian music cues when yes there are racist music cues like the whole neil i mean i feel like that kind of follows throughout the series as well as like a general so first of all there are a number of weird racist music cues used whenever he talks about therapy and this movie i mean there's like a moment in the santa claus the first santa claus too where it's like very anti-therapy very anti-mental health treatment at all because neil is always made out to be like this hippie who is like

trying to take care of his mental health and what a loser like that whole plot that whole like angle does not age very well but it was like especially bad in this movie it was when he was like let's take feelings inventory and you're like okay that like, I guess what this character would say. But then he's like using it to rationalize doing something that isn't what his character would do. I just don't get it. It was annoying. And it's manipulative. And Neil in the earlier films, I agree.

They shit on it. But they also like let Neil be himself. And they also let him be like a reasonable parent you know like he's not he's not a villain he's just like a guy they kind of make fun of you know that's kind of what i liked about neil in the first movie was like that part of what aggravated scott so much about neil was that he was like a good guy and that like really loved Laura and like that's a more effective like emotional choice than like making a you know a villain marry your ex-wife is making a genuinely nice guy who loves your ex-wife be with her like that's I don't know

I thought that was cool you don't usually usually see. And then they just, whatever, throw it all away. Throw it all away. Pissing me off. Another weird thing, and I guess I understand why they did this, but it's also, like, narratively speaking, it's a weird choice where they've shifted focus away from Charlie to Lucy, and Charlie is barely in the third movie. And it's like, yeah, he's a teenager. I hated that. got i we're invested

in charlie as a character in his growth as a human being and then not not only do they switch him out for lucy and i i mean i would understand him taking a back seat but they don't hardly put him in at all except for the fact that he saves the fucking day in the end like he calls upon he apparently is in contact with the council of legendary creatures he calls upon them to like save the day in the end and like help make enough toys and whatnot so he's just like in the background like checking in like okay all right well i gotta make some calls you guys do your little story uh and then i gotta i gotta like make some make some send some emails you know but the other thing is lucy is a nothing character there's nothing nothing to lucy at all except your love of snow

i feel bad because i'm like okay it's not i'm not talking about the actor. No, no, no, no, no. I'm just like, I've got no interest in this character. I almost felt like she was being used at times because they couldn't afford to have Alan Arkin there. Or they couldn't afford to have, they only had Martin Short for so many days. Because Lucy would be used so, in such clutch moments, usually with like a red bull machine i just was like yes red deer red deer red deer i'm like okay i'm i've never been laughing less in my entire life like then when i saw red deer we've got to continue this synopsis because i have things to say about the red deer machine but i feel like they'd be confusing if i said that now but yeah lucy as a character i'm just like the least

developed and i'm so disinterested in her yeah sorry and she's there and charlie is so basically like the whole family is now the north pole minus charlie so we're back at the north pole jack frost has been scheming. He's like breaking stuff. He's breaking the machinery. Chaos is just erupting all around them. And then he finally figures out how to get into the Hall of Snow Globes, where he goes into and steals Santa's magic snow globe. Neal! I love it. That's for all the fanfic people that wanted santa to hook up with neil that's what they call there's a category on fan fiction oh my god this is such a joyless film that there really there really isn't even like i don't even ship anyone with anyone really

except santa and jack frost just because i think it would be cool not because i think the movie laid that groundwork really but um i do i will say that at one point in my notes i wrote down um the santa claus three is a coming out story the north pole itself is gay maybe even trans i'm so i'm trying to like ground that idea keep going keep going it i just think you can't you can't you can't ignore the fact that after the time travel shenanigans the north pole is basically turned into a place for Jack Frost to sing show tunes. You can't ignore that fact. You simply can't.

It's true. It's true. And baby Mozart is there. Baby Mozart is there. All right. What happens next, Caleb? It makes you think. It makes you think. What happens next, Kayla? It makes you think. What happens next?

So in addition to all this chaos happening around the workshop, things are very tense between Santa and Mrs. Claus. And her parents and her are like, maybe we should have never come here. And then Jack Frost tricks Santa into saying, I wish I'd never become Santa at all while he's holding the snow globe, which transforms both of them back through time on the night from the Santa Claus one, when Scott Calvin kills Santa, some random Santa, and puts on his suit.

Only this time, Jack Frost gets to it first and he puts on the santa suit making him become santa so then scott calvin is transported into this kind of like alternate timeline where he never became santa he's like a corporate stooge he doesn't talk to his family anymore his son hates him laura and neil are divorced and then like as we've said jack frost has like commercialized the north pole i hate that his fuck up means that laura has to go through additional emotional trauma like why does scott rubbing a snow globe mean that laura has to go through a second divorce not fair and not only, but they like hint that she has like a shitty job, like waitressing or something or working in retail because they give her a name tag. Yeah.

Oh, I didn't even realize that. Yeah. Oh, OK. So now you're like, no, she's also like poorer, even though her ex-husband is like CEO of toys. Like, what the fuck? And her other ex-husband is a doctor psychiatrist like what the fuck it pissed me at the though that i was like why are we pun like hasn't laura been through enough hasn't laura exhibited extreme patience with her ex-husband santa claus over

the years yes why are we still punishing her? Why are we still punishing Charlie? Come on. I don't mean to rewind. But we did skip through a lot of stuff just now. Yes. In regards to like. So Lucy and Lucy's parents also go up with carol's parents and um santa shows lucy the snow globe room that

we spoke of yeah and how you get to the snow globe room is you turn a couple of levers on a red deer like red bull vending machine did you guys when you were kids and you didn't have any money and you had to like wait for your parents or something somewhere did you guys just press buttons on a vending machine or whatever because i used to do that all the time or i would take like a common pokemon card that didn't wasn't worth anything and just shove it into the dollar slot and see if something would happen i like what you do with like well this is a low value, so this is a worthwhile risk. Just to see if something would happen, or put a piece of paper in there, or take a paper clip. I guess what I'm saying is I tried to rob vending machines, and I was never successful.

With polywag. I think I actually used Machop, but I have this crystal clear memory of that for some reason. Just shoving a Machop into a bin. You just gotta see what happens. Evocative. This is gonna be in my memoirs. Please. gonna be in my memoirs please so and throughout this time jack frost has been gleaning this information about about the snow how to get the snow globe and what santa needs to do exactly um and at the same time he's just been fucking up the whole workshop by just freezing random things

around the workshop and creating huge fires and yada yada and no one's able to tell it's jack frost apparently because even though this like enemy of christmas is like being punished by having to work there no one's got an eye on him which is curtis's fault again another fuck up from curtis who's supposed to be an abject failure like sorry but i mean I it's like but it's it's it's it's why elves should have basic income because if elves had basic income Curtis could be fired and still have the resources that he needed but he can't the only way for elves to survive is to do this busy work um yeah so jack frost has also been messing with with santa and mrs claus's marriage by causing various chaos and carol again is just like oh no santa's gotta gotta do all this stuff and isn't paying attention to me

while there are literal fires happening she's well all of this is happening while there are explosions and fires and machines going haywire she's like why isn't santa paying attention to me it's infuriating, especially when you consider that her previous career was a school administrator. She's uniquely qualified to deal with this problem. Like, she has a master's for this.

Carol is a totally different character. It's so frustrating because it's like it would literally have helped the script if she just pulled from her known skill set to deal with the problem but instead they're so interested in just like making her so subservient and obsessed with her like santa husband it just is so frustrating you know what's even more messed up she's the one telling this story and so she is the one betraying herself she's betraying herself as subservient

she's betraying herself as totally incompetent i didn't even think of that that's and insecure and codependent she's the one telling this story that is brutal i didn't even think of that i was like oh this is all according to Carol. What if she finished that story and Scott was in the back of the classroom and he's like, oh, my God, Carol, you're being so hard on yourself. That would have been a beautiful way to end it. It ended up being with her reckoning like, oh, my God, I have such low self-esteem. And like it goes, I'm like, wow, I'm'm seeing myself all of a sudden i'm seeing myself in carol yeah and santa like gets her an appointment with like a cognitive behavior elf therapist she should go to neil

and then neil is like carol you're like you have you have been present you just are not giving yourself you know he needs some self-esteem. And Carol's like, oh my God, I'm seeing it all so clearly. Yeah. Cut the, get rid of the freeze frame on the baby is the last shot. The last shot should be her realization. Carol's waking up. I need to realize my value.

Yeah. And then that's how the movie ends. That's a relatable journey I would be so on board with Carol being like I why am I punishing myself all I've done is my very best I think that would have been really good especially if they jumped forward like a thousand years and Carol was getting like really old and she was giving the commencement speech at Elf University, which is the university she founded. Is that a sister college to Santa University? It is.

It is. Yeah. Yeah. It would be Elf University and not Santa University. I'm just just like look at how the elf firmary. Of course. The elves need an education. They deserve an education.

I hope it's free. I don't know. What if the elves are in debt? That would be stressful. I hope they have a union. Do you think they've unionized? Definitely not. No. Because they have they literally work with their god. Like Santa is their god.

Yeah. That's problematic. That's like saying, have the angels unionized? No. Because their entire shtick is just serving God. And the elves' entire shtick is serving Santa. He can literally, there's multiple times in the movie where he tells the elves to say something and then they all say it in unison we love you mrs claus after she's like i want a human

family these elves are i hate them and i'm like okay first of all those are obviously human children carol they're like read the room but she won't she i i felt okay so and then another moment because carol like you're totally right grace she has nothing to do with the carol we met and fell in love with in santa claus too and then there's even a scene where i was like on jack frost's side yet again where he kind of, there's like a scene where Carol is like, just blankly staring at a Christmas tree, like blank, just touching it with her fingers and just boop,

boop, boop, boop, boop. And she's filling up a Christmas tree. And then Martin short leans in and is like, Hey, Carol.

And then he basically said a bunch of things that i agreed with where he was like so don't you regret marrying someone who values their job more than they value you like don't you ever feel like lesser than and the way that your husband treats you and she was like no i don't she's like she's like tweaking the christmas trees nipples the whole time not even making eye contact with jack frost just being like no i love i love christmas i just wish my husband was would be looking at my my jingle bell pregnancy more i'm when is greg gonna come and you're just i was so frustrated with her in that scene because i'm like that's not the carolina and i'm on board with jack frost i agree my whole thing too is that like and she could have responded

like well i don't think he prioritizes work over me i think that like this is like a difficult time like she could have said something that made sense for why she wanted to stay with scott but also wasn't her just being like christmas you know but she simply did not and she even goes as far as to like let jack pick the christmas tree like when her whole thing was like i'm gonna pick this christmas tree she's getting mowed over it's so not fair it makes me it made me sad yeah because i was just like carol like you're totally right like she could have just been like well if this was a march birth it would be a very different story but she's like i don't care like it's just so it made me sad also did carol's parents not

like i know that carol's parents need to be completely like not caring about anything in order for this plot to work but they also are like okay this is actually a two-pronged question i'm so sorry we're about to hit the two-hour mark that i have a two-pronged question which is first of all i was like wait a second like alan arkin and ann margaret seemed to be very like i just was curious i would be curious of like what the discussion was when she went home to them was like I'm marrying an elderly Canadian toy maker no no not I'm married I'm married not I'm married right they had to get married in the Santa Claus 2 before they had to be married which he guilts her into marrying him at the end of that movie we'll talk about that grace when you come back for the santa claus 2 episode but but like where to like if you're you know a successful school

administrator in your like 30s and you go home to your parents and you say i have just i've already married an elderly canadian toy maker i just feel like there is a bigger conversation there yeah that we never get a look into and then on top of that i have a just a quite because i didn't re-watch the santa claus 2 for this is carol now immortal is that like oh is she gonna live forever i think so i think she is well here's what i think i think. So think about this. When Scott Calvin goes to the North Pole in the first movie, right after Santa Claus dies, he does not meet the old Mrs. Claus, right? No. true is that when someone becomes the new mrs claus they are basically pledging their they're entwining their life literally in with santa claus so that when santa claus dies mrs claus dies as

well i brought this up on the on the on the other episode yeah we talked about this where i think her life force mrs claus's life force is attached to Mr. Claus. And if he dies, she dies. Unless. Unless. So between Santa Claus 1 and 2, there's what, like, whatever number of years that Scott Calvin is not married. So he's allowed, he's apparently allowed to get away. So seven years that he's not.

So he's allowed to get away without a Mrs. Claus for seven years until suddenly there's this other Claus where he has to get married. David Krumholz has the tea there. He's like, yeah, actually, year seven, actually, it becomes urgent. Yeah. Right. Suddenly it's very urgent. So maybe the Santa Claus that Scott Calvin kills was also just unmarried the way that he is unmarried for seven years at the onset of of santa claus too that's a possibility that we must consider please and thank you i think it's

possible but i do not think that's the case i think this is possibly so but but that but that is all to say like now that she is permanently but it just i also feel like it is a weird movie choice right because usually traditionally we see santa claus and mrs claus are you know of comparable ages visually but to you know preserve mrs claus in But to preserve Mrs. Claus in carbonite as a young woman of birthing age forever? I'm like, is her job to be pregnant now? I was stumbling over that. What I'm trying to say is I just missed David Krumholz. Well, no, that's an interesting point. Because, again, Tim Allen as Santa

looks visibly quite old. He's got white hair. He seems like a senior. Whereas Carol as Mrs. Claus, they don't age her up at all. Because, like, Tim Allen... Even though they're still technically, like, he's, like, older than

her as got Calvin, but not, like, 40 years older than her as Scott Calvin but not like 40 years older yeah but like they visibly age Tim Allen up but they do not age her up at all because it's like a Hollywood sexist thing where it's like well we don't want to see an older woman on screen with our eyes gross we have to keep her young looking and preserve her youthful looks but we can age this man up as much as we want so yeah and it's i i also i wonder if santa is in control of that you know well i mean i guess he is like apparently there's a whole law about how you you cannot cross him so maybe yeah i mean maybe caitlin just i'm just yawning

47 hours well let me finish this recap i'm almost done and then okay and then we'll start and then we'll just then uh thus begins the two-hour discussion we will have no um okay so jack frost as santa has commercialized the north pole turned it into a resort so scott calvin goes back to the north pole confronts jack frost who looks so frightening as santa claus by the way and scott calvin has lucy help him get his snow globe back and then scott tricks jack frost into saying that he wished he had never he had like voice recorded it earlier with the pen the spell gets the clause gets reversed and it transforms them back to the same moment in the first movie where uh scott is like holds jack frost back so that 1994 scott calvin can

put on the santa suit and everything goes back to the way it was with scott being santa claus and so he goes back to the north pole he and carol make up she has her baby and then that's the end of the movie i think you do grace you brought this up a couple of hours ago but i i i do think that you know 9-11 should come up in this movie and just doesn't like well no see 1994 to 2006 is, that's a big cultural shit. So it kind of does. It kind of does. Because there is... So when Curtis is... Like, Curtis is in his little snowmobile,

and he comes up to Jack Frost, and Jack Frost is like, so I've heard about this escape clause. Can you tell me more? Curtis says, no, I've heard about this escape clause. Can you tell me more? Curtis says, no, I can't because of the Elfland Security Act. Oh. Whoa.

Yes. Right. Oh my God. That totally went over my head. And if we all remember, if we all remember in the Santa Claus 2, we see that the North Pole has a military not just the strike team from the santa claus one but there's elf con two and they have and there's like med

military medals and stuff oh yes oh i totally forgot they militarized the north pole and santa claus you gotta wonder. You know what? How many planes were on 9-11? How many planes? Three? Four. No, there was four planes. So was there a fifth plane?

Was there a fifth plane on 9-11? And did it hit the North Pole? Oh my God. My gums started bleeding when you said that. It's a sign. Oh my God. Don't look at my teeth okay going on moving moving right along that was the one thing i forgot to write this down but the part of set design that i also found very visually striking and disturbing was the santa claus plane oh yeah the north pole plane horrible look at my teeth are bleeding oh

my god are you okay it happens sometimes when i get really worked up i just start to bleed from from everywhere um i just happens with my teeth that happens with my nose it happens all the time um okay i'm falling apart and the the plane where it's like you get the aerial shot of the plane and it's Santa's arms wingspan. Yes. Like he's a bird who can fly. I think, okay, could we quickly, because I think we've, I mean, Carol disserviced,

not the woman we met, completely just like, and she also disappears for so like long stretches of the movie the majority of the movie when scott goes back in time carol is the only one he doesn't say hi to and also no one knows who she is right like yeah so it's you feel bad you're like okay so no one even knows she exists in this time frame. That's really sad. Right. They explain it as like because he's like where he's talking to Laura when he goes back. He's like in the alternate timeline and he's like, where's Carol Newman?

And she's like, who? Charlie's principal? I don't know. She moved away. But it would have been such a more like a stronger emotional beat if he had like gone to her and she's like i don't know who you are or ew like i don't know you're that my student's dad who never bothers to show up to anything you piece of shit like why wouldn't they have included them anyway here is what i think was going on here's my theory let me know if you so this actress who plays mrs claus elizabeth

mitchell was on lost yes from 2000 so she might have been shooting lost and they maybe didn't have as much time with her as they thought they would that's i think that my guess is that happened with a lot of actors in this movie is they didn't have a big enough like the santa claus three doesn't have a better budget than lost so if elizabeth mitchell is like well where am i gonna go she's gonna go with lost and not the santa claus i my guess is that maybe maybe maybe maybe ed dexter and john j strauss don't come on the pod but like let us know you know like i would bet that maybe she was supposed to be more involved and then maybe couldn't be i don't know that's maybe hollywood should learn a little fucking loyalty you know she should have been like fuck you damon lindelof

i'm going to play mrs claus and I'm going to be so pregnant. That'll show him. And that'll show him. But one other thing. One other thing. Please. Just one. You can only get one more, Grace.

I just thought, you know, if I was Carol's parents,, just taking in what I've been told is Canada, I would be like, well, this obviously isn't Canada, and my son-in-law is running a human trafficking ring. Like, this is obviously some sort of, like, child trafficking thing. These child little, like, indentured servants. Like, this is horrible. We need to call someone it's very very dark i like the elf situation i feel like i i try i have to almost suspend my disbelief and be like i think that we're supposed to think i i can't get too deep into it or i'll start to cry it doesn't

it doesn't something's not right there not right there and now jamie's jamie's gums are just gushing are your eyes bleeding are you bleeding from your eyes i just burst a blood vessel in my eye because i thought too hard about the santa claus again i it happens to me all the time this is just where we're at at this point in the year but but speaking to the elves spencer breslin's character sucks so much he's supposed to be the best elf as we've said he's not the best elf but the way that he displays that he's not the best elf is that he gets into this weird like masculinity like superiority contest with martin short where martin short dupes him so easily as like i bet you don't even know what this really specific law is and spencer

president's like are you serious of course i know what the specific law is here's the specific law fuck that um but let's talk about lucy really quick because we didn't really end up getting to lucy here's my question why do uh why am i supposed to care about lucy i you're not even i don't care about lucy and i feel bad but i also don't there's gotta be a deleted scene too because so like so yeah so scott fixes it he's santa again jack frost it has been subdued and the council of legends as we said has been called by charlie um and and they're mad at jack frost however lucy's parents laura and neil are still frozen and Jack Frost says I can't unfreeze them because to unfreeze them I would have to unfreeze myself which I don't know what that means in the is a fucking elemental avatar of ice i laid on the floor when that happened because i'm like i can't the movie ends in five minutes what do you mean what are you

talking about and then santa gives lucy a nod and it like, you know what to do. As if they've discussed this at some point in the movie. Which, if so, gross. Gross. What she does is she goes up to this villainous man and gives him a big hug, which thaws him in this disgusting way where his skin starts to crack. And he starts to melt. And as this happens, he gives out moans of pleasure. While this little girl is holding him, he goes,

Like, just, he's moaning in pleasure and he's like oh i smell sunscreen you know and stuff like that and then he speaks spanish he speaks spanish and he's done this he's been like hey compadre before and this is like a martin short dag that he brings into all of his fucking roles from like the three amigos onwards he'll just break into spanish sometime and it comes off as pretty weird and racist i guess i don't like it just is out of left field and it feels like it's like the joke is that he's speaking Spanish and I feel like if the joke is that you're speaking another language that's not great yeah the worst part is so so after after she's done hugging him and he's continuing to

to melt or unfreeze I guess is the word in this world not melt unfreeze he goes i don't know how could you do this and she goes i hate this you didn't know about the power of magic hugs because apparently she has that power not just a regular power can i keep going because i i think she has the power of magic hugs and what happens she cracks his skin open as yes she cracks his skin open he moans in pleasure and as soon as he's unfrozen he's suddenly in a white suit his skin is normal but worst of all he's got like this comb over thing going on he no longer has his hair frozen back which is like perfect hair for martin short he's just got regular hair which makes him look like an adult child just a real fucking weirdo like a little fucking like disgraced pastor and he just it's disgusting like what happened is not just disgusting it also is like kind of set up too much in a way that like because in an earlier scene

lucy like santa brings lucy into the hall of snow globes which is like the hall of photoshop floating snow but in that scene lucy grabs a snow globe that she's like oh it's my snow globe and then you zoom into this snow globe and it's a tinier lucy and she hugs a snowman and the snowman turns pink foreshadowing yeah and then scott's like see you have those magic hugs scott set up the magic i just didn't fucking catch it i mean it is poetry it is it is poetry there is what the thing about this this it's like any given the santa claus movie is a million word poem right because you got the dialogue but you've also got all the pictures and if a picture is worth a thousand words then this must be a million word poem this is not a good poem but it

is a poem and there is it is the fact that that lucy has magical hugs which is a creepy setup the creepy payoff is set up with a creepy setup i I hate it. I wish that, like, Lucy doesn't need to be there. You can cut out that whole, I guess, like, we want to bring Laura and Judge Reinhold back into it. But, like, you could have gotten rid of them. Especially if you're getting rid of Charlie, too. Like, what's the point of bringing them back? I mean, when you think about it, what this movie is is really a climate change origin story because okay i'm listening all of a sudden jack frost doesn't exist anymore the man who summons winter is just

gone we don't know also is he gonna die now that he's lost his ice magic is he not an immortal anymore has this has this little girl damned him to hell we don't know are these more questions that you will answer in the santa claus four perhaps the santa claus four is actually kind of a bottle episode it all takes place in a hospital good i don't want to spoil anything else please don't no if bernard isn't there i'm gonna scream i'm gonna lose it i'm gonna yeah there's gonna be consequences if bernard's not there all right we need Krumholtz available. Because we mentioned Martin Short kind of randomly speaking Spanish in ways that it's played as a racist joke. Let's not forget the duck, the toy duck that speaks three languages. The duck says El Ducco says Quacko.

Le Duck says Quack and ill duck says quackay so it's i guess it's spanish french and italian but it's just like are you fucking joking el ducko says quacko that to me that was just horrendous writing that was just like the worst i'm like you couldn't translate three sentences that wasn't the duck says quack also that the logic of that toy doesn't even make sense why would you want a duck that when you squeeze it it says hi i'm a duck i say quack that doesn't even make any sense yeah that was that was like that was a very 2006 joke that didn't even make sense they're like I want a duck that says what it is and what it does yeah that was

that was ridiculous I didn't like the music cues that were like lined up with Neil that was really 2006 in an unsavory way I just there's just so much of this movie you're just like what is fucked up and

what is just horrific writing? And sometimes it's both. Are all the elves white? No. You do see some non-white elves scattered, but they're not. They're rarely given any lines. They're not prominently featured. Yeah, definitely not.

There's more people of color in this movie than is in the Santa Claus one, but not in meaningful roles. Because even when it's like Aisha Tyler is God, but still they don't give her anything to do. Kind of the same thing with the Sandman, who is that guy from Star Trek. What is his name? He's like a Star Trek legend. Michael Dorn. Oh, yeah. Oh, wow. trek what is his name he's like a star trek legend michael dorn oh yeah oh wow yeah he's like he's a

star trek legend and he plays the sandman and he's like he's in like one scene and it's like i get the movie's not funny but it's supposed to be funny but then he never comes back and so it's just like it's just an empty husk of a fucking movie it sucks yeah we didn't even talk about how the whole opening sequence is like mrs claus going into labor just kidding and then everyone's mad at her right she didn't have a baby one of the elves is like i canceled a pedicure for this which just threw me off so yeah just going forward there's so many opportunities for interesting relationships between women there were like more opportunities for like let's give motherfucking nature something to do and it just like it just doesn't happen it

just never happens yeah and with carol like we, we were talking about how the way that she's characterized in Santa Claus 2 is completely undone. And she's made to seem this codependent. There's a bunch of weird stuff going on there. I do want to give, I'm hesitant to dump too much on her just because she she has every right to like expect things from her partner even if it is like busy season at work but like sure yeah it's the way but the way it's written the way it's written i don't know it's like there's no nuance to it it's just like a fucking mess nothing makes it and she's just like if i'm being honest i also don't think that the writers just knowing that they're the same writers as there's i'm being honest i also don't think that the writers just

knowing that they're the same writers as there's something about mary yeah i don't think that they are like oh it just didn't read for a lot of people that she actually does deserve better like i don't think that they are thinking that hard about her character which is why i feel like a little more comfortable dumping on it because I'm like these these writers have demonstrated time and time again that they don't really care about how they write female characters at all totally is there something about Mary not like a cool feminist movie oh sorry I should have I it actually really is and so I say that because I'm like well nothing they wrote could compare to that feminist master we gave it five nipples um across the board yeah yeah yeah yeah i agree i mean carol very clearly deserves better but i don't think the writers think that yeah yeah for sure they're just like

wives are uh naggy right wives are like always just like why don't you spend more time with me yeah in the second movie they did have her as a fully realized character who like maybe unreasonably made a decision in the end to throw her life away but before that she like she like you know was this like principal who had like a personality and whatnot um and now they're just like well now she's not woman she's wife no longer woman wife now you know right like being married makes her suddenly deeply uncomplicated obsessed with reproduction and the attention of her husband like that that's where i thought those writers were at i just didn't think they were trying to build a nuanced yeah for sure character she definitely deserves better and i see

like obviously if you're eight months pregnant year round you're gonna like need some assistance and you deserve some assistance from your partner but they're just like i don't i don't believe they're thinking no no, they're not. There was a Game Boy game for this. What? I'm sorry. I was just like going through Wikipedia. Let me double check.

No, Game Boy Advance. Game Boy Advance in 2006. There was a Game Boy Advance game. There's a playthrough on YouTube that I'm scrolling through right now. You're playing as santa in some scenes but then about two-thirds of the way through the game much like the movie you become tim allen in a suit and i think you just play through the plot of the movie i think that's all you do incredible well it sounds like a great game then since this movie's so good i feel

so bad for alan arkin to have to have been in this movie i feel really bad for aisha tyler i think that the tooth fairy wishes he was robert de niro um the easter bunny is scary i'm just reading through the the three notes that i took for this movie uh wasn't expecting the anti-capitalist message but like you said jamie it feels extremely hollow coming from a disney movie uh right i'm just like okay cool so did you not want me to pay you 18 that's what annoys me is when hyper capitalist companies are like what if we made an anti-capitalist message i'm like well fuck you i don't know i just it makes me i know that it it makes me mad i'm just like okay cool but like you still oh sorry do you not want me to go to your fucking theme parks that you have

five trillion of get a girl like what are you saying this was disney being like all other theme parks are bad the only ethical theme parks under capitalism are Disney World and Disneyland. That's the new phrase. Which is such bullshit because the second you even step foot within like 20 miles of Disneyland, they're trying to upsell you on everything, which is like what happens at North Pole, the theme park in the movie. So it's just like, what are you talking about, Disney? Anyway, there's this and then but I do I did. Maybe I was just so emotionally exhausted at this point. But at the end where Alan Arkin says, so you're Father Christmas, which means and he keeps like really milking it and he's like so that means

that i'm father-in-law christmas and then and then the movie pauses for laughs which is never a good sign when the movie like builds in time for you to laugh oh it's not good but doesn't that mean he has to die then? Oh, he must die. He knew the secret. I think that Father Christmas-in-law would have also just been a funnier string of words. That's my personal opinion. I mean, that exchange takes like 30 seconds. It's so poorly edited and long.

It's really long. It keeps cutting back to Tim Allen. And it's like, I don long it's really long it keeps cutting back to tim allen and it's like i don't really care how he reacts but that means they have to kill alan arkin grace you're totally like they keep repeating sos do you guys think alan arkin is a cool guy in real life i hope so i just feel like i'm not saying he's a bad dude but he's kind of got one mode and it's like cranky dude I don't know maybe that's not his in real life mode

but I always wonder when guys like when actors only have one mode is that because that is who they are maybe I mean that's Tim Allen right that's Tim Allen that's Martin Short I mean's tim allen that's i mean carl marx communist manifesto wikipedia wikipedia that's what if what if they cut to okay over the shoulder shot of scott calvin santa claus he's making unless he's checking it twice but all it says

wikipedia over and over.com Wikipedia over and over and over and over and over. I think you have a 5 to 10k like meme on your hands, Jamie. Alright, I gotta get out of here, my friends. I got serotonin to chase.

Does anyone, we've been recording for a hundred hours, does anyone have any other thoughts feelings i have a few can i just read off some notes please please um okay i'm just gonna start from the from the top which might include some that i've already said but i'm just gonna read them off go for it how are new elves made they're all kids abigail breslin if mrs claus is teaching elementary school then who's teaching high school huge tim allen santa fireplace in hospital not just santa tim allen santa dollar store beans is back why doesn't the elf firm and elf firmory have a human ward if elves are not born but made what do they think of pregnancy and birth

is the child elf doctor going to pull the baby out of out of out of this i think the reindeer are very ill all the time they are they are farting they are full of slime and so very sticky and what this whole movie has a much less down-to-earth feel very truly weird music and it's more goofy tone makes lucy's whole deal just not stand out they they hate jack frost because he's gay jack is simply more messy than naughty but more than that he understands how the world works jack could have single-handedly killed santa with one breath no but the legendary figures can't use their magic on each other remember this is that's true but that wasn't revealed until the end of the movie break the law break the law at this point break

the law i think it's it's not like a legal thing. It's like they physically cannot do it. There's just so many different types of laws in this world. Okay, also very important. Why is Jack obsessed with asking random people to be his elves? That isn't solved. He just is randomly, very awkwardly, like shoehorning, will you be my elf? And that just doesn't make doesn't make any sense especially because he's got this plot to just become santa well because he asks some of the already existing

elves then he asks lucy the human child and then he and then he also he also asks ann margaret in like a sexy seductive way. He's like, will you be my elf? And she's like, yes. But it's like, what is your game, sir? There should be a spinoff of the Santa Claus through the escape clause that is just more Jacks. Like Jack Frost, Jack shit. Jack Dawson from Titanic. jack dawson there you go have you guys considered like what if this movie had made a billion dollars

like this was before iron man we could we could just have a bunch of like christmas movies throughout every year and different like legends and whatnot and not not superheroes i don't know if imagine how yeah the world would be so different. It hurts. It hurts to think about. Would you prefer that world or the one that we currently have? Or if you didn't know what that world was like, you just knew it was different. Would you take a chance and jump into it? Oh, yes. Yes, I think so. And would I be disappointed yes would i

regret it 100 but would i have would i have tried much like being santa's wife i would give it a good six months just to see and then i would escape claws myself yes okay that's what i was just gonna say the movie should be about m. Claus having the opportunity to invoke the escape clause. It should be her story. The escape clause should be divorce. Because she's given up. She's sacrificed everything in her life. Her family, her career, all this stuff.

She probably has some regrets. This movie would have been so much better if it had been about her and her journey and her deciding whether or not she wanted to escape this life or if maybe it she maybe through this journey she learns that it is worth it after all but that would have been so much more compelling i don't give a shit if scott kelvin wants to not be santa anymore i don't care well and also santa never like scott never really doesn't want to be santa exactly you know it's not like it's a wonderful life where he's like really like i don't want to be alive anymore i'm gonna jump off this bridge you know he doesn't do that perfect perfect no notes now honestly if this was just like a beat for a beat

redo of it's a wonderful life with santa claus it would have been a much better movie yeah and i hate it's a wonderful life and i know i'm alone in thinking that but i think that movie sucks and i don't find it charming or good at all there i said it i don't feel strongly either way that's how i feel about it. It's a wonderful life. I've seen it. I'm like, yeah, it was nice. That's all I have to say about it.

And then my head exploded in blood, which is, you know, want to happen. All right. Does anyone have anything else? We have to stop soon. The movie sucks. I wish I could invoke an escape clause from ever having seen this movie yeah get me the fuck out of this movie that would be my review here's my review if i was a film critic and writing like a like an article like a review and a publication i'd say scott calvin

wishes he had never become santa at all i wish I had never seen Santa Claus 3 at all. Hey, look at her go. Wow. That's devastating and cruel. I think that what we've done here tonight is better than the Santa Claus 3, and it did not cost $12 million. And it was twice as long. And it was twice as long. I just twice as long i just would like to say

just one more thing oh please please please please yeah grace you get one more thing the easter bunny openly shits on the floor as he's helping on Christmas Eve. Chris, I'm setting my dog. He openly shits on the floor. Yeah, he's like, sorry. Sorry about the pellets I'm leaving behind. I blocked that out, but you're totally right. So we see him both shit on the floor

and hit on Aunt Margaret in the bloopers in front of children. So we don't have time to really unpack the bloopers, front of children. So we don't have time to really unpack the bloopers, but I highly recommend you watch them. Does this movie pass the bachelor's? I think there might be a few

stripping away all the context lines that pass, but a lot of the context of conversations that do happen between women or between Lucy and her mom or Lucy and another character. I feel like they're almost always about either Santa Claus or maybe Jack Frost. Like there's a lot. I think men. I honestly I also forgot to pay attention at all. So I do not know. But if i'm kind of just like going back

through the scenes in my memory it feels to me like a lot at least like the subtext is about yeah a man if if not explicitly about a man i don't completely believe i mean even if this movie does technically pass the bechdel test it doesn't't deserve to. It doesn't. Okay, okay. It doesn't. I'm agreeing with you, even if it does. It just like, spiritually, it definitely doesn't. Yeah.

Even if it does, it somehow doesn't. Final ruling. Right. I'm Judge Reinhold. Oh, wow. Yeah. Incredible.

So, yeah, let's say a no for this one and don't fact check us please and thank you as far as the nipple scale zero to five nipples based on an examination of intersectional feminism i'll give this a half nipple for the few characters who do pose the question including abigail breslin and jack frost who are like hey isn't it pretty fucked up that you gave up everything in your life and don't you wish you hadn't done that maybe or don't don't you feel kind of cheated or you know something like that so I appreciate that the question gets asked

but it seems like it's mostly asked to bully her so i i yeah it's there's so many asked with every almost good thing that happens there's 500 asterisks of like but it was actually made to it was said to make her feel horrible about her life right the start like the first like 90 seconds of this film were written by someone entirely different than the person who wrote the rest of it yeah yeah i believe i believe it a hundred percent like it's this is like even though there's only two credited writers there were uh there were make it make yourself seen other writers on the santa claus three it doesn't seem like the it's consistently bad in three different ways it's like there had to have been other people involved that were like they wrote one bad movie about jack

frost and then the other people wrote a different bad movie about mrs claus and then they wrote a different bad movie about maybe like laura and neil and then they just mashed it all together and it's one thing we haven't talked about and i really think we would be a mess if we didn't talk about it is of course of course there's maybe the worst musical number in all of film in this movie oh my god when martin short yes so there's a santa claus show in jack frost santa north pole there's this santa claus show it's just horrible he does this riff on i'm leaving new york new york new york but it's like north pole north pole instead of new york new york they don't even have a full fucking orchestra i I fast forwarded through it.

I couldn't watch it. I truly blocked that out, but you're totally right. That 100% happens. And it could have been so good. It could have been a moment that almost saved the movie. You know? It really could have been beautiful. I watched this movie six hours ago.

How am I here not knowing that? This movie really does a number on your neurons. It really scrambles them up. Are your neurons bleeding, Jamie? My neurons. Did you see? My ears are bleeding. I just have this thing wrong about me where whatever Christmas movie I watch, I keep all of those memories forever.

And even if I imagine them as pieces of paper that I throw into the fireplace, the ashes that come out, I see the memories play out in them. They're just with me forever. Please say that motif is in Santa Claus 4. That's dark and beautiful. It certainly is in the Santa Claus 4.

And that the fireplace that you throw your memories into is the same fireplace in Santa Claus's bedroom. Tim Allen's mouth. Tim Allen's mouth fireplace and Judge Reinhold Frozen are two of the most cursed Christmas images of our generation right up there with the baby Grinch. And it's just... And do we have... What else?

Is there anything else we need to touch on? Oh, I was in the middle of my nipple rating. Oh, yes. Sorry. Go ahead. I'm going to give this a half nipple, even though it's more than it deserves. But I will give it to Aisha Tyler. And that, yeah, that's the end.

I'm going to, I can't give this any nipples. I want better for Aisha Tyler. I want better for Laura. I don't remember what the actress's name is. I want better for Mrs. Claus. I don't, unfortunately, I don't remember what the actress's name is I want better for Mrs. Claus I don't unfortunately I don't really care about Lucy I want better writing for Lucy so that I do care about her I want David Krumholtz back is the most important thing is what how could you possibly think that this movie was going to succeed narratively without Bernard the Elf?

It would never happen. Zero nipples. It's sexist. It's weird. And it's just a god-awful movie. I hope Aisha Tyler made a whole bunch of money because otherwise not worth it. Yeah, zero nips.

What about you, Grace? How many nips am I able to give it? Five is technically the maximum, but, you know, speak your truth. I am going to give it four and a half nips. And the reason is because Mrs. Claus basically has a home birth and we we don't really see that on film you know we don't really see that on film and that's empowering i think and i think it shows women that that can be done so yeah i'm going to give mrs claus two nipples and then i'll give the other nipples to the elves that made the home birth happen and um i just think that that's really inspiring and

i agree and i i i have elucidated why i think this movie is misogynistic and horrible. Oh, definitely. But we need more home birth representation. And so for that, I think it does deserve four and a half nipples. I see what you're saying. I'm going to change my nipple rating to negative four to balance out the average. I'm so sorry to do that to you, Grace. But I need the average to be kept low so what you've just ensured is going to happen is that grace is going to take us to court again and and that we're going to be back here doing santa claus 2 next year oh darn it that's what's gonna happen i've got my

lawyer on the line right now he's actually actually been, my lawyer, I'm sorry, my lawyer, she, she. Oh, feminism. Has been listening to this entire podcast. Wow. Well, tell her we don't have a lawyer. We can't afford one. So you will be back.

Sounds good. Grace, thank you so much for being here. This is my favorite tradition and now it's officially a tradition now it is and we are maintaining the tradition of doing a christmas movie trilogy with doing the first movie first the third movie second and the second movie third because we are doing the same thing with a christmas prince so wow this is a time-honored tradition um yes grace thank you so much for being here you're a delight where can people check out your stuff follow you online etc so my main my big thing is at grace g thomas on twitter Grace G. Thomas on Twitter. And Grace's podcast is going to be so fucking good.

Jamie is the first guest on the first episode. And Caitlin will be a guest very soon. Thank you. It's called competitive literature. It's me and my co-host julie greener or another icon it's me and my co-co it's competitive it's called competitive literature myself grace thomas and my co-host julie greener each week have a guest who picks one of their favorite books that we have a week before the podcast to read it.

And then on the cast, the guest judges who has the best opinions on the book and picks a winner. So the first episode that we're doing is on a series of unfortunate events. It was with Jamie. It's going to be killer. It's coming out in January. I'm super, super excited for it. We talk about if the authors are fucked up. We have the guests give us a little bit of a pop quiz. We go through the whole book. I'm super psyched. We're going to have my fiance's dad on it,

who's a cool weirdo, talk about his favorite book, the favorite book of all dads nowadays, Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. Yeah, I hope you guys check that out. And just follow me at Grace G. Thomas for more updates on that. In addition to that, my Ko-fi is like ko-fi.com slash Grace Thomas. And I am launching a new monthly thing on there soon where I'll do one monthly video exclusive to people who are subscribing to that. So I think I'm going to switch from Patreon to Ko-fi soon and do that.

And yeah, just check out my videos and whatnot and subscribe to Competitive Literature soon when we release our trailer. And yeah, I just keep talking and talking and talking. I have some books coming out next year, but none of them are announced. So you got to follow me on Twitter to find out. Come back to film all the fucking books, Grace. Yeah, it's pretty messed up. Talk to, email my editor. Well, you got a lawyer and an editor?

He's a really good guy, actually. My editor's a very nice man. I have no problems with him. It's just how the production schedule works he's not doing anything wrong amazing well yes follow check out all of grace's stuff you can follow us on all on twitter and instagram at bechtel cast you can subscribe to our patreon aka matreon it's five dollars month. It gets you access to two bonus episodes every month. And because it's December, we are doing

as our bonus episodes this month Christmas Prince 2 and Princess Switch 2 switched again. Aka three princesses. Aka three many Vanessa Hudgenses. Three many. Yes. And this is her

this is I believe her first movie post cancellation so there's gonna be a lot to talk about do you remember when do you remember when vanessa hudgens went live and said she had no regard for human life that was this year and now we get to talk about it on the matriarch and that's where and that's where that will be i think that was a pretty fun way for her to get canceled all around. I was just like, I guess that was just a blanket. Like, I don't care about anybody. Goodbye. Whoever lives and dies, I don't care as long as my carnal need for pleasure is satiated.

Where's the merch? Where's the merch that says that? Well, speaking of merch, you can buy ours at tpublic.com slash the Bechtel cast. And that's, I mean, happy Santa Claus with Grace Thomas episode, everybody. You earned it. Also, hashtag Santa Grace and tell Disney that they should let me ride in the Santa Claus car. Tell Disney how you feel. And the last thing I'll say is I wish I'd never become Santa Claus at all.

Oh, no. Bye-bye. Bye. 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.

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