The Prestige TV Podcast - The Four Most Absurd Things About 'Firefly Lane'

Episode Date: February 17, 2021

Juliet Litman and Liz Kelly talk about 'Firefly Lane,' the Netflix hit starring Katherine Heigl and Sarah Chalke. Hosts: Juliet Litman and Liz Kelly Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Get this new must-have concealer at Sephora or at Sephora.com today. Welcome to TV concierge. I'm Juliet Litman. I am the host of Bachelor Party and the co-host of Jam Session on Ringer Dish. I'm joined today by Liz Kelly, the co-host of Tea Time on Ringer Dish. Liz, hello. Hi, Juliet. TV Concierge is the Ringer's guide to the vast streaming landscape.

We are here today to discuss the Netflix sensation as of the time of recording. I believe it's number two, 10, almost 14 days after release. Firefly Lane, the latest confection for women, although men please enjoy as well on Netflix. It stars Sarah Chalk, who I think is probably most famous for Scrubs. Was she famous to you? Yes, but only from how I met your mother. That's my knowledge of Sarah Chalk. I love Sarah Chalk.

We can come back to that. She's just so likable. Don't you wish Sarah Chalk was like in your family? You could like see her at like an event. Yes. Yes. I mean, she's my aunt. She'd be a great mom.

Yes, exactly. She's like your lovely aunt. And of course, Catherine Heigle, who apparently wants to go by Katie now, whatever. Catherine Heigel, she was on Grids Anatomy. Obviously, she was Izzy. And I think at this point, maybe until Firefly Lane, she was kind of famous for like formerly being on Graz Anatomy and like having a feud with people on the way out. Yes, exactly.

Her feud with Shonda rhymes. is like her claim to fame in the last decade. You don't want to be on the wrong side of history of Shonda Rimes. No. I think the show might be evidence of that. Firefly Lane is based on a book, and it is about two friends, Kate and Tully, who meet in high school.

They're from Washington State. It's like mostly a Seattle show, which I do enjoy, by the way. Seattle's a great TV location. And basically from there, things go insane. Liz, what's like your review slash description of this show? This is like the vibe of This Is Us, but on Coke, I feel like, because they basically track three different decades

of these two women's lives. It goes like, 1970s when they're in high school, they're budding women, the 80s when they're like young working women trying to carve out their lives and their careers. And then you have like early aughts where you catch them divorced or either like really successful depending on their individual situations. But the show cuts back and forth between these three different eras like so quickly. It's kind of hard to keep. up. So hard. It's hard to follow the show, right? Completely. Yes. And we can talk about this, but they don't distinguish the looks besides the very young characters well enough where you almost think you're in the odds and then you see a big computer and you're like, oh, that must be earlier than that.

It's just really confusing. So if you like high speed shit and like complicated human dynamics, I guess this is the show for you. And this is us comp is good because this is us is also absurd, but there's like a sweetness and like a pathos to it. Yes. That is grounding. The show does not have that. This show has like people, has Catherine Hegel blowing lines on like episode three.

Yes. And like the 1980s timeline. You're just like, why? At best you could argue that it shows humans are complicated, but at worst you're like, who am I rooting for and who am I watching? Like even Sarah Chalk who's like supposed to be the lovely through line who's like the sweet one and Tully is the crazy one.

And she is like half cheating on her husband half the time, even though they're kind of separated. She kind of like sleeps with other people. It's a very complicated situation. It sure is. It sure is. On that note, we were talking about how crazy this show is. So I thought it would be good to go through our top four most absurd things about firefiling. There's a lot.

We're going to do our best to cover them all in these four buckets. I would like to begin with number one, the wigs. The wigs are crazy. What's the worst wig in your opinion? I think it's got to be Johnny because you don't assume that a man is going to be in a terrible wig. And yeah, he is. It's Kate Malarkey's love interest and then eventual husband as you track these women's lives. But he has supposed to, in his 80s era, is supposed to have this really blown out, really long, mullet-y hair.

It is so atrocious. I haven't seen anything like it. That character in general is super confusing. Yes. Do you even believe that he's into Kate? any point? No. And in fact, I know that you didn't complete the show, but he in fact sleeps with Tully at one point. Yeah. Liz, I didn't need to finish it to know that. It was so obvious that happened. It's so obvious. Very complicated. And are we doing spoilers on this episode? Well, I think

I think he just did. Okay. Well, he also dies at the end. So it's a very complicated life that he led. And then it ends really badly for him. So I don't know. It's one of the worst love triangles in the history of TV. First of all, most love triangles, you see. coming on, right? It's like none of them are usually a surprise. Right. This one was, it's, you know, it starts really in episode one. And it's so obvious that it's not even fun. And for me, it also, it made me hate Tully basically like right away. I was just like, that's that woman's husband, which brings me to number two. It is so absurd that they are made in each other's lives. Like, this is the definition of toxic friendship. Yes. And then the very

last scene is apparently they have some major falling out, which they don't explain, happens, which maybe season two, we'll find out. Maybe 400 other things will happen in between then. But too much goes wrong. I think at a certain point, I feel like growing up, Juliet, you got to cut some people out of your life, the toxic people. That's what we're taught. That's one of the best parts of becoming an adult is getting cut out friends. You're just like, this isn't working for me. We're done here. Exactly. It feels like they should do that. I don't know. Honestly, it was so clear for episode one, and I watched it half of it. it was so clear that that Tully and Johnny like had something going on between them that I was just like stunned that Kate even like tolerated either of them. That's so messed up. And when Johnny comes back from a trip out of town, he goes to Tully's house. And like yes. Johnny has children with Kate. What the fuck. And also the whole point of like a will they won't they storyline. The way that that's fun is that you believe that the two of them kind of do want to. And it feels like the entire.

time Johnny just doesn't want to. You got kind of trapped. I don't know how, but he did. I don't know either. The other thing is that, like, while we really like Sarah Chalk, and there's just something about her that's, like, so inviting. What a great actress. She's a real TV actress because, like, you want to spend time with her, not just like in one-offs. But you're just like, why had her and Johnny even get together? I know they kind of explain it. They track their relationship in the early days. But it's still kind of inexplicable. She's never really that fun. Agreed. I know. The poor girl got kind of a shit storyline throughout the entire thing. Which is more of a testament to Sarah Chalk. Exactly. It's so impressive. Exactly. I also had a hard time distinguishing between Johnny and then Tully's like boyfriend of the moment.

Yeah. Like kind of really looks alike. Yeah. I think that might have been intentional, but I'm not completely sure. Can I nominate one other absurd hairline before we move on to maybe another? Okay. The character of Cloud is Tully's mom. And she is played by the same woman throughout, which we will talk about hopefully the aging

process and how they try to distinguish these. We're going there next. Juliet, correct me if I'm wrong, but Cloud in the 70s, it's supposed to be a hippie, drug-addled woman who struggles with addiction and being a mother and all that. Instability in general. Yes, indeed. She has ombre hair, and it just feels like that maybe wasn't of the time. And then it makes it even more confusing when she turns into like a cartoon witch at the end,

as she's supposed to be like an old woman. But she's got ombre hair. That's not, that didn't make any sense. Took me really out of it. The other thing that ombra hair is it requires maintenance. You can't just like do it. Unless you've had some like radical shift in your hair, which does happen. But it's not like she can just like wake up and have ombre.

She has to like go to the salon for that. And this hippie character definitely wasn't doing that. Exactly. Exactly. Let's talk about how they differentiate between storylines. I think that's number three, how they age these people. I mean. So we explain this at the beginning. basically there's the three timelines.

There's when they're teens, then when they're like beginning their careers, and then when they're like in their like late 40s or whatever. And they're so little to distinguish between the 80s and the odds, as you said earlier. But I think that the like supplementary characters make it even harder to tell because those are the ones, especially men and someone like Cloud who are just like,

what is your role at this point and how old are you supposed to be? Like if they started out as an adult, and they don't change out the actor. It's really confusing. Yeah. I know that obviously, Catherine Hegel and Sarah Talk were the two main actresses in this,

so they were not going to make them have less screen time than the two young actresses that were the teenagers. I really like those two young women that played the young Tully and Kate. I feel like they should have maybe transferred those two to like the 20s, you know, like early budding career storyline

because it was just tough to watch them. And they'd obviously done some glossing of their face, is and it just really, it was very obvious. I felt kind of bad. I think this leads into also like just a kind of general Catherine Hegel conversation, which is, I just think that like, did they know this was going to be in 4K? Do they know this is going to be an HD? They don't do Catherine Heigle any favors.

Like, I just feel like she, her makeup looks like a skew all the time. Her wigs are really bad. We should have mentioned her. But like her, her aught's wig is particularly awful. And even though. supposed to just be like a simple hair style. I don't know. I just feel like Catherine Higel was done dirty. She just like does not look good at any point in the show. It's not her. I don't think it's her fault. I'm not saying Catherine Higel is not attractive. I see they make her look bad.

Yes. I'm telling you, Cloud, Catherine Higel's mom looks like the snow white witch that gives her the poison apple. Like she looks like a cartoon character. And she's supposed to be this elderly woman. It's just they could have done it better, I think. It's Netflix. It's 20, 2021. Where is the good graphics? I don't know. Watching the show is sort of like, did anyone work on this? It's just sort of feels like solo budget. Because this is like, it's in the same class as Virgin River as sweet magnolias. Just sort of like all of these adapted, Bridgetton even, all that was very high budget. But they're all adapted from books. They're all geared towards like the same kind of lifetime

hallmark female demographic, which is a huge demographic. I think we're both part of it. Did you watch those other shows, by the way? Mm-mm. I didn't. I'd recommend Sweet Magnolia's number one, Virgin River, number two. Okay. They're pleasant. Okay.

They're ridiculous. But, like, those shows, they look more, like, hallmarky, which is, like, fine. It's like a look that you kind of get used to. Yeah. This show, this just, like, looks cheap. The whole thing, the whole production value of it. I think it got in the way of my enjoyment. It just, like, didn't look like a nice television show, and I was very confused by that.

Yeah. these two powerhouses, right? Even though Catherine Hegel has been out of the game for a long time, she's so recognizable as an actress. She is a good actress in general. So is Sarah Chalk. Just feels like they deserve better. They really did. Something about it just seems like really low budge. And maybe it's like they use so much brown to do the office in the 80s in Seattle. I was like, why is the predominant color you're brown? Am I watching the plane in Austin Powers? I was just like very confused. Yeah. No, I agree. I agree. Lastly, number four on this list of absurdity, this show suffers from what I call DeGrasi

Syndrome, which is like every bad thing that could possibly happen and every life event that could possibly happen happens in this show. And there's just a lot going on. Yes. Within one individual decade of their lives, all of those things happen, which is why it brings you back to your point. Or how did these two women weather their friendship together after so much unspeakable tragedy and things have gone wrong. I mean, yeah, everything you think can happen happens. Infidelity, a dog dies, family, a teenager that's really upset all the time. Like, it just, it's just is way too much. The other thing is so, this is not funny at all, but Tully's character early on in the season, she's a victim of sexual assault. And that kind of like, that combined with her mother being

this hippie who wasn't really home is supposed to kind of explain the instability of Tully and her anger as a teen and also as an adult and it's supposed to be like this sort of like foundational story to understand her. But the show is so crazy and goes at such a breakneck pace that it like undermines the trauma that Tully's character could have faced.

And you're just like, wait, wait, wait, wait. And then it just becomes like gratuitous. You're just like, why did this character have to get raped? Yes, 100%. And that also happens to that character later on where she suffers a miscarriage. And Tully decides on her talk show with her platform in the early odds,

which is really unheard of, to talk about miscarriages. She invites her audience to speak about what they've gone through. And again, because things happen so quickly, it's whiplash. Basically, the next scene, she's back to being, you know, a teenager dealing with her mom's drug abuse. It's just, like, I would have rather spent, you know, that would have been an episode to spend in that. Pick one. Yeah, exactly. And there's definitely get more seasons. I mean, it's just gangbusters on Netflix.

When I see these shows coming now, I'm just like, okay, this is going to be number one for X number of days. Like, it's kind of crazy how they've just, like, milked this phenomenon. But so many people I know are just, like, watching Firefly Lane over the last two weeks. And this one I just did not like nearly as much as the other ones. I think it's because I found the Tully character so, like, just like slippery. Couldn't understand her. Didn't make any sense. And there's fucking changing timelines all the time.

Three timelines is too many. It should be a limit on two. Yeah. And also there's too many characters that all kind of age, like Kate has a brinking brother that has an entirely different storyline. And like he is in the closet for a really long time and that is like a whole other thing. I just wish they would have spent more time developing, you know, any one of these things. What's the rush? What is the rush? You have infinite amount of time. It's just, I really wish they had done it a little bit more sort of based. It kind of gives you

appreciation for Sump, who lived through every major event of 40 years. And you're like, wow, they really nailed that, you know, from his leg braces to. to being a Vietnam War soldier, to just really, you know, running across America, he lived through all of it. Yeah. And this is the opposite of artfully done.

Which was your favorite timeline in era of these women's lives? Like, if you could control it, season two, they just focus on one. Yeah. I like the most recent. I was just like,

I just want to know, I would have been okay. I think I would have gotten rid of them as teenagers. Ultimately, I just didn't care for that one. One thing I know about myself now, I know I'm getting old because, like, teenagers on TV don't really do it for me anymore.

Wow. I'm just, like, not that into it. And that's a dramatic shift from who I thought I was. So I'm just like, give me, give me them as like in their 40s as moms. What about you? Or not as moms, but a mom. What about you? Yeah.

I would either like for them to be in their teens and then jump to their powerful women kind of owning themselves in their lives and their love lives career, whatever. The in between and maybe it's because I'm like closer to that. And I'm like stumbling in my career and trying to make the right decisions on all these things. You're not stumbling in your career list. Sometimes it feels like, you know, the confusing era where you're just like, who am I am. Where your whole job feels like your entire life. Yeah. Especially right now with work from home.

You're just like stuck in your room. Just all you have is your job and like maybe making dinner at the end of the day. Maybe. And then I'd rather kind of like look forward and be like, okay, these people are like not really what, you know, it's not what I'm going through. So it's easier to watch and consume. Sure. A little bit more escape is.

Yeah. Yeah, of course. I get that. That's funny. It definitely speaks to our respective places in life. But it's a good question because, like, there's a root of a good show here. It's just, like, too much. Yes. And if they can pay it back. I also think it's solvable. Like, just pick one of these storylines. Also, to your question, I would like a show set in the 80s and, like, media. That would be cool. Yeah. I don't know if you watch Black Monday on HBO or, excuse me, on Showtime. But I liked it. I didn't love that show. But, like, I was just like a good period piece. The 80s, let's go. Why not? Yeah.

I know. And then maybe fix the hair if you're going to do the 80s. Like, do different wigs or something like that. Go different. Yeah, exactly. Oh, my goodness. Well, if you want to understand this roller coaster ride that is Firefly Lane, check it out on Netflix.

And for more of me, Catch me on Bachelor Party and Jamession. For more of Liz, Katter on Tea Time. Thank you so much for listening. This has been TV Concierge.