Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead with Amy Nicholson

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
On the beck Doll Cast, the questions asked if movies
have women in them? Are all their discussions just boyfriends
and husbands? Do they have individualism? The patriarchy? Zef invest
start changing it with the beck del Cast. Hey, Jamie,
Hey Caitlin, it's me, your mean old babysitter, and and

(00:25):
I have a list of rules and a list of
chores for you to do, okay, such as talk about movies.
Oh see, I thought you were going to do uh.
I thought you were gonna do Rose Lindsay. And I
thought that I was going to have to reply to you.
I'm right on top of that, Caitlin. Oh that makes
more sense because that is way more what the movie

(00:47):
is about than the babysitter being dead. So I kind
of fumbled it. Yeah, it's about learning to navigate your
way through life as a girl boss when you're when
you're a liar. I love it. And you know, start early.
It's never too soon. You know, when you're seventeen with
your hot dog job and us start selling uniforms to

(01:11):
members of a gigantic chemical conglomerate, something they go out
of the way to tell us about. For some reason,
I love this movie uh, welcome to the Bechtel Cast.
My name's Jamie Loftus and I'm I'm right on top
of that, Caitlin. Thank you so much, Jamie. And my
name is Caitlin Darante and I'm your boss and your
babysitter and your mom. And this is our podcast in

(01:37):
which we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using
the Bechtel test simply as a jumping off point to
initiate a larger conversation. But Jamie, what is the Bechtel test? Well,
I'm right on top of that, Caitlin, I can tell
you what it is. This is about to not pass
the Bechtel test. But is that what men say when
they're having sex with you? I'm right on top of that, Kate, alright,

(02:03):
moving right along. And then and then I turn around
and they're dead, just like the baby, and they just
slumped to the ground. I don't. I don't have sex
as much as I watched Julia Child and then stop
smoking so much weed. This movie rocks, okay. The Bechtel
Test is a media matric created by queer cartoonist Alice

(02:25):
and Bechtel, sometimes called the Bechtel Wallace test originally made
as a bit of a goof a bit of a
bit for comics she made in the eighties a bit
a bit of a bit, but has since become a
very popular way of analyzing media. Lots of versions of
the test. Here's ours. We require that piece of media

(02:46):
have two characters of a marginalized gender with names who
speak to each other about something other than a man
for two lines of dialogue, and it should be a
narratively impactful uh line of dialogues such as such as,
I'm right on top of that rose, and thank you
Jamie for being right on top of explaining the Bechtel tests.

(03:08):
Was an incredible job. I'm so impressed. Actually I am not.
I did none of the prep for this episode today.
I had Kimmy Robertson do it for me. Did you
Did you delegate it to a colleague who is obsessed
with doing busy work? Yeah? Sorry? I actually took advantage
of the most vulnerable person in the workplace I could
find and was rewarded for it. So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, cool,

(03:33):
good job. There's only two people in our workplace. I'm like,
I don't know who. We don't have a Kimmy robertson,
maybe we should know we shouldn't get an employee and
exploit them. What am I talking about. Let's get this
episode started, yes by introducing our wonderful guest. She's a
film critic for The New York Times and host of
the podcast Unspoiled. It's Amy Nicholson. Hello everybody, and welcome.

(03:58):
It's so nice to be here. I've been I've been
wanting to tell you, you you know, like my podcast since
we started, because we were going through the a fight
top one and then like realizing we could get rid
of a lot of them. We absolutely asked the graduate. Yes,
I loved you guys going hard on the movie. I
hate that movie so much. That movie sucks, so fuck
you the Graduate. It's gone. Thank you brings me so

(04:20):
much joy. It's so bad and Unspooled is incredible. Thank
you so you brought us. Don't tell mom the Babysitters Dead.
What is your relationship your history with this movie. Yeah,
I was thinking about that, and I was thinking, I
think this might be one of the first movies I
ever saw in a theater. Maybe you know, I'm a

(04:43):
child was alive in the eighties, but I don't remember
a ton of the eighties, and we didn't go to
movies a lot when I was a kid, but I'm
pretty sure I saw this around the time that I
saw Home Alone, and I have loved this movie deeply
since I was a child. I watched a lot of
TV instead, so I watched Married Children all the time,
and the idea that there was a movie with Bundy
was the coolest thing in the world. And I thought

(05:03):
this movie was the coolest thing in the world. And
I still kind of do think it's one of the
coolest movies in the world. Hell yeah, have you guys
seen it before? What's your whole thing? I had not
seen it before, And so coming into this movie, this
and the other classic babysitter movie of well, I guess
that maybe there's a handful because there's like the Babysitter

(05:23):
Club movie, which I also haven't seen, but I did
read those books. And then there's Adventures in Babysitting, which
was maybe what like five or six years before you
I've still never seen that one, also with Keith Coogan.
Oh is he in it? Also? Wow, he's really niche.
Babysitter content Getting Getting typecast and Baby Baby Set brutal,

(05:50):
So I have seen that one, but I missed all
of those movies as a as a youth, so I
hadn't seen Don't Tell Mom the Babysitters Dead until I
started prepping for this episode, and I didn't love it. Um,
it's okay, it's okay to be wrong every once in
a while. It's okay. Thank you, thank you for giving
me permission to be wrong. But I just I found

(06:11):
all of the characters very irritating, even the ones you're
supposed to be rooting for and um, And I think
it's because I resent movies that are clearly for like
teens and kids that are like all the adults in
this movie suck and the kids are awesome. I know
I'm getting old because watching those movies as an adult,

(06:32):
I get like, very unreasonably annoyed about movies like that.
So that's kind of my That was my reaction to this.
But I think this movie does, like addresses some interesting
things that I was not expecting it to address, So
I'm excited to talk about it. Jamie, what about you?
What's your relationship with this movie? Also very recent, but

(06:53):
I had the opposite takeaway from this movie. I watched
this movie for the first time. In some point in Lockdown,
I was in the mood for something silly and did
not really like I didn't know. I'm trying to think
of movies where there's like this kind of comparable effect
where the title of the movie has kind of nothing

(07:14):
to do with what happens in the movie. But I
was ready for a whole like I don't know, Weekend
that Bernie's babysit or high Jinks or something, and not
like Girl Boss, Working Girl. But I really really enjoyed it.
When I saw it, I was like surprised at the
number of things that this movie tries to take on

(07:34):
while staying pretty silly and um, I thought, I don't know,
I guess I would. We can get into it in
the discussion, but I would argue that not all the
adults in this movie suck um, or or that there
are at least some I think that all the adult
men in this movie suck, and that doesn't bother me
for sure, But I think Rose Lindsay is um It's

(07:55):
a character that we can root for, and even you know,
I was okay, I think my in battle watching this
movie with analysis. Outside of early nineties tropes that we'll
talk about is I was trying to get a gauge
for like how people feel about their mom, and their
mom is such a polarizing character even it seems like

(08:17):
with fans of this movie, where there are some people
who are like, you know, their mom's supposed to be
thirty six in the movie and has five kids in
a house that is absolutely falling apart. Uh, and she
does funk off to Australia, and some people think that
that is practice and amazing, and other people think that

(08:37):
that is negligion. And I was like, oh, I guess
I was off. I had a crisis last night where
I was like, oh, I was yeah. I always sort
of thought that's not great parenting, but then I'm like,
maybe that's my internal misogyny. But then I'm like, no,
I think it's bad parenting. You shouldn't just go to

(08:58):
Australia when you have kid as young as yeah, five
kids ranging from I don't know, the youngest one seems
to be like seven, yeah, and then there's like old
she left them with a full on stranger. One thing
about people in this movie is they don't check resume,
is they don't vet how could you it was the nineties.

(09:19):
I think it's great gen X parenting because, like, I
know we're going to get into all of this, but
like that mom has had it, and I would say
as much as the not all of the adults suck,
at least not Rose. I think the kids do kind
of suck. And I'm like, if I was that mom,
absolutely I'm getting out of here, like I'm over it.
Nobody helps her. She's so mad. I know we'll get

(09:40):
into this, but I need that needed to be said. Also,
to be clear, I don't think that Rose sucks. It's
more like every adult in the movie is presented in
a particular way. Many some of them are like mean
and conniving, nagging, but Rose is just kind of like clueless.
I mean, she's very nice, and she's like a supportive
boss since she seems good to work for. But just

(10:01):
the way that every adult is presented in a rather
cartoonish and usually unflattering way, I feel like that's that's
sort of my I don't know, it depends on the movie.
My mileage with that sort of varies, but sometimes I
like my favorite movie when I was a kid for
a while was Jimmy neutron because all the parents suck
and then they're kidnapped by aliens. I mean, I think

(10:26):
this is a movie about how growing up sucks, and
nobody ever goes up that much. In Rose can still
be swede and bubbleheaded and easily distracted. True, I mean relatable. Yall?
Shall I do the recap and we'll go from there.
Let's do it right. So we meet Swell, who you

(10:50):
eventually learn is a that's a nickname for Sue Ellen,
which is a name. I was like, I'm sorry, her
name is Swell. I was very confused for a while.
But Swell is played by Christina Applegate. She just graduated
from high school and she thinks she's about to have
a fun summer of freedom because her mom is about
to leave for Australia to go with I think her

(11:12):
boyfriend for two months. Yeah. I like to think that
there's an alternate timeline of like when the mom gets back.
I'm always like and what was she up to out there?
Like what did she We know that she's had a
big fashion change at least something something in her core
has been alot. She's a she's a freeer woman. But
she says, I've had a very rough thirty seven years

(11:34):
and I need a break. Yeah yeah, Mom, she good
for her. I like that she has I like an
eat prey love while her children's lives are falling apart. Okay,
so Swell thinks she's going to have all this freedom
this summer, But surprise, her mom has hired a babysitter,
Mrs Sturak, to look after Swell and her four younger

(11:56):
siblings for the summer. Much too, Swells dismay. Mrs Sturic
seems like a sweet old lady at first, but as
soon as their mom leaves, she reveals that she's actually
very mean, and she has a tyrant, a list of
rules and chores for Swell and her siblings, who are

(12:16):
Walter he's the youngest, Melissa, I think his next youngest.
She's a bit of a you know, quote unquote tomboy.
Then there's Zach, who's like a tween. He seems like
he's maybe like twelve or so. He's very romantic. He
has a girlfriend he really likes. He's also the kid
that sells Kiana Reeves the surfboard and point break no Way.

(12:39):
Yeah wow. Gotta love nineties kid actors um and then
there's Kenny, who seems only a little bit younger than Swell.
He's probably like sixteen, maybe fifteen. Um, he's like a
kind of rebel teen punk kid. You know it's weird.

(13:00):
It's like they give the ages for the kids on Wikipedia,
and I don't know about you, guys, I have like
a total blindness for kid ages. Like I couldn't tell
you how any kid is. No clue. They say the
youngest kid is eleven, it's started eleven, and then like
the girl is twelve, and then the heart drop is fourteen,
and then it doesn't bother saying with Kenny's but he

(13:21):
could drive. I assume that that is simply not correct.
There's no way that Walter is eleven that no. I
was at Target yesterday, um, buying a baby shar gag. Okay, yeah,
I'm pretty wealthy. Uh, but I was. I had like
a half hour to kill some I'm like, all right,

(13:41):
I'm just going to sit in the Starbucks area of
Target and kill some time. There were these two kids
next to me who I could not I was trying
to figure out how old they were, had no idea,
but they were actively planning to shoplift the whole and
it was so fun to listen to them because they
were just like not not setting themselves up for success.

(14:02):
I was rooting for them steal from a big box store,
of course, but they one of them just kept like
hissing at the other. Yeah, man, everything has barcodes on it. Okay,
stop asking me. What were they prioritizing? What are the
kids these days into? As far as I know, the
plan was to steal a bunch of Halloween candy. I
think bigger I know I And then but then when

(14:25):
they left, there was a mysterious they had. They were
looking at TikTok. They did a TikTok dance. This sounds
like a vision I had, but they were they were real.
And then they had like a can of shaving cream
with them, which they also may have stolen, and they
put a bunch of shaving cream all over the table
they had been sitting at. And then they stole Halloween
candy and uh disappeared into the America Halloween. If they

(14:48):
wait a couple of weeks, they're gonna get Halloween candy
for free. Steal a steal a DVD. I guess they
don't know how to work DVDs, but steal something they
could sell for candy, steal something smaller st v D.
I know they were. They were absolutely blowing up. Wow.
I like that story though, but I was like, they
are these kids like eight or are they fourteen? Like?

(15:11):
I have no idea. It's it's hard. I really can't
tell children. But I'd refuse to believe that Walter is
as old as eleven. That doesn't seem right at all. Okay,
So Mrs Derek is mean and a tyrant, and so
Swell goes to confront her about her authoritarian rule, and

(15:31):
when she does that, Swell discovers that the babysitters dead.
She must have died in her sleep, and the siblings
realized that if they call, their mom will be notified
and come back home. And they don't want their mom
to come back home just yet. They want to have freedom,
so they decide to leave Mrs Directs body on the

(15:55):
doorstep of the mortuary and then spend the next two
months taking advantage of their mom being gone. They're horrible, like, yeah,
they're not good, they're bad kids. But so the next morning,
Swell goes to buy groceries with the money their mom
had left to Mrs Sturk to like buy food and

(16:18):
for spending money and stuff. But the envelope is empty,
and they realized that Mrs Dorrick must have, you know,
just like had the money on her when they left
her body at the mortuary. So they don't have access
to that money anymore. So Swell now needs to get
a job, so she goes to work at a place

(16:38):
called clown Dog, which is a fast food joint. Can
you imagine how that makes me feel? To see I
was thinking about you the whole time, Jamie, so as
I I was thinking about your respect for the meat.
Thanks Fred there. I have been to if if we
have any listeners in Albuquerque in a greater Albuquerque area,

(17:00):
they do have a place called clown Dog hot Dog Curler,
and I wonder if it was inspired by this movie
because it opened after it came out. Also there the
hot dogs clown Dog in Albuquerque are not chili dogs
as this fake one is. It's very fucked Their whole
thing is like we make fucked up hot dogs. And
I got this thing they're called the three ring Circus.

(17:22):
That was like a hot dog with onion rings and
like spaghettios. Okay, I'm listening and like a third circular.
It was so nasty. And then it was like and
they're like, no, it's clown it's a joke, Like this
is what I have to eat. It obviously different kind
of clown Dog place. No, but you're touching on something

(17:42):
I think we're gonna wind up talking about in this movie.
Presenting something disgusting and then being like it's a joke.
I'm kidding, right, yes, oh yeah, because that's the that's
the whole gust the perports line. Yeah, um and the job.
Swell does not like the job, and she quits it
almost immediately, but not before she meets Brian, another teen

(18:08):
worker at clown Dog, played by Josh Charles So. Then
Swell goes to apply for a receptionist job at a
clothing manufacturing company with a resume that she copied and
pasted from a book, and there she meets Rose, the
senior vice president of operations, who hires her on the

(18:29):
spot to be her executive administrative assistant, which is a
phrase they repeat forty seven times throughout the movie. I
really like, I think there is like a lot of
good satire of like corporate life in this movie, and
It felt very on point first for someone to just
like meet someone that they sort of liked and they're like, yeah,

(18:51):
I'll hire you over this person who's worked here for
years because I just don't like them for reasons, and
thus enemies are made. Vital vital enemies are made in
this film, Yes, exactly. So what happens is that this
executive administrative assistant position was supposed to go to this woman, Caroline,
but Carolyn is mean and Rose doesn't like her or

(19:13):
went to work with her, which is why she gives
a job to Swell. So Rose shows Swell around the office.
She introduces her to Gus, which is Rose's colleague slash boyfriend,
although they have a mutually unexclusive relationship as they define it.
So then Swell and her siblings go out to eat

(19:36):
at I think according to scholarly journal wikipe Ch Cheese,
he's in the background. Oh, I didn't even notice. Yes,
the locations in this movie were really like Taylor made
to thrill me. I was gonna say, not to blow
up your spot, Jamie, but I feel like it's all
of your major food groups hot dog from hot dog

(19:59):
to check e cheese pizza. They aren't a Chuck e Cheese. Um,
you can see for all my Chucky Cheese heads, you
can see the early nineties Chuck suit, the one that
always looked crusty in the background of a few scenes.
I love that. Okay. So they're leaving Chucky Cheese and
as they're leaving, a few drag queens steal their car,

(20:21):
a k Mrs Dorex car that Swell had been driving around.
So Swell calls Brian, the guy she met at clown Dog,
for a ride and then he asks her on a
date and she says yes. Then Swell goes to her
first day at her job at the clothing company, but
she she's in over her head. She asks another assistant, Kathy,

(20:45):
to help her with the Q E D report a k.
She basically has Cathy do part of her job for her,
and it's Kimmy Robertson from Twin Peaks. Okay, that's okay,
I know. I was like, am I supposed to know
this name that Jimmy's saying? Like it's just her voice? Yeah,

(21:06):
for sure, I recognize her now, Okay. So then Swell
discovers that the mean receptionist woman Caroline, is Brian's older sister.
Oh no. She also meets Bruce, who is played by
David du Koffney. He was not expecting to be in
this movie, especially in a role this um small and

(21:28):
small pick and sleazy. Yes, right before he was he
was not anything at this point, right heall good cheekbones man,
right exactly. Yeah, so he's an asshole and he's also
Caroline's boyfriend because there's a lot of inter office dating
at this company. Yeah. Well, there's also no HR department

(21:49):
that I was able to find, which is because they
would have been really busy if they right, if they
had thought to hire. So meanwhile, Swell learns that she
won't be paid for two weeks, but they've run out
of food at home. And then Swell learns about petty
cash in her desk and takes some of it to
buy groceries. Her plan is to borrow it and then

(22:10):
pay it back when she gets her first paycheck. Um.
And then meanwhile at home, Swell is assuming more and
more of kind of like a mother slash guardian role
for her younger siblings. She's supportive when they need it,
she disciplines them when they need it. Stuff like that.
Back at the office, Swells starts to get the hang

(22:31):
of things. Uh Gus takes Swell to lunch. He's a
disgusting creep. Swell also goes on a couple dates with Brian,
but she won't tell him where she works, partially because
Caroline is his sister, and he gets upset that she
won't be honest and forthcoming with him, so he storms off.

(22:54):
She's upset about that. She's upset that she has had
to take on all these you know, adult responsibility ease
when she feels she should be enjoying her youth. And
You're just like, at this point, You're like, these kids
hate their mom because this is getting so dire. Um,
they must really hate their mom. I did, like, I

(23:14):
feel like a lesser movie, and I know we'll get
into the Swell and Brian relationship, but I feel like
a lesser movie would have her really like, you know,
like she's upset that they sort of break up, but
she's also like, but I have things to do. And
then Brian just disappears from the movie for the next
half hour because she she has shipped to deal with
and so she just um like a real like a

(23:36):
real single mom girl boss compartmentalizes it and forges ahead.
She takes her bubble bass. She complains about how nobody
in the house, none of her none of her younger
siblings care respect the work that she's doing. She just
gets on with it anyways, because that's the rule. And
she's got so much to deal with because meanwhile her

(23:56):
siblings steal a lot of the petty cash. They buy
home entertainment system, Zack buys a diamond for his girlfriend,
They buy some other stuff. Also, Walter falls off the
roof because he's trying to do something with the antenna
for the new TV. He has to go to the
hospital nineties injury. Yeah, Kenny is being an insolent little

(24:22):
ship all the time. And then meanwhile at work, Caroline
is trying to dig up dirt on Swell to get
her fired. Gus continues to be creepy. Also, sales are
way down at the company where like Rose was trying
to make this deal to sell uniforms to a school,
but they lose that account and now the company might
go under, So things are really falling apart for Swell

(24:44):
and Friends. Eats an eminem off the floor, which, uh
is maybe one of my favorite parts of the movie Wild.
So things are falling apart, but Swell gets an idea
to make the uniforms that they design and sell, make them,
you know, snazzier and more fashionable, and and to put
on a runway show to impress possible clients. And her

(25:08):
boss Rose thinks this is a great idea, and she's like,
rent a banquet hall and pay for it with the
petty cash, which of course is all gone, and Swell
can't reveal that, so she's like, let's just have the
fashion show in my house. So then Swell has her
siblings clean up the house because it's a mess, and
everyone rallies and they managed to put on a nice

(25:31):
event and the fashion show is going well, but oh no,
Caroline and Bruce have discovered that Swell is only seventeen,
so they try to blow up her spot at the event.
This is also when Brian shows up to profess his
love for Swell via like the truck the drug the

(25:53):
circus truck Um. And it's also when Swell and her
siblings Mom comes back a week really from Australia, so
everything you know, falls apart for a moment, and Swell
admits that she's only seventeen. She's not ready for all
of this responsibility. She's in way over her head. And
while her mom is upset that she threw a big

(26:16):
party and things have gone off the rails, she's like,
wait a minute, the house looks good and everything actually
kind of seems to be under control, even though my
youngest son has a broken leg. Um. Rose is also
impressed with Swell and no one is actually that mad,
and then Swell and Brian kiss and makeup, and then

(26:39):
the movie ends with swells mom being like, Hey, whatever
happened to the babysitter? And then we cut to two
guys visiting her grave thanking her for the money that
she left them a k a. They found the cash
that was on her body, and they even do have
gambled it all the way in Vegas, and that money

(27:02):
could have gone towards feeding children. Tragic. So that's the
end of the movie. Let's take a quick break and
then we'll come back to discuss and we are back. Okay,
where do we want to start? I don't know. There's

(27:23):
actually kind of a lot of different aspects of this
movie worth discussing. Does anything jump out to you right away? Abe?
You know, I would say, if there's one like top
line thing that jumps out at me in this in
this movie, and it's it's a phrase I didn't know
when I saw this for the first time that this
is a movie about a young woman discovering invisible labor

(27:43):
that all women do, that her mother has been carrying
this burden of the house. Nobody has been seeing the
mother's labor. Nobody cares about the mother's labor. This house
is trashed, nobody's helping her with the dishes. The mother's like, fine,
I'm gonna do some visible pleasure for myself. Screw you guys,
and then sue well and realizes, oh ship, this world

(28:04):
is not fair to the expectations it puts on women,
and nobody will help me, and realizing how much adulthood sucks.
Like one of one of the things one of the
jokes I love about the Petty Cash is like she
just assumed she'll get her first paycheck and then pay
it all back in full and then even without her
family stealing from her, just like they did from their mom.

(28:25):
She finds out about taxes and she's like, what's this taxes?
I mean, I find a love it very relatable as
the person who remembers getting my first office job and
being like, what do you mean I have medical benefits.
I don't even know what that is, right, Like, yeah,
I I agree, and I like that to a lesser extent,
I like that this movie is very much Swells movie,

(28:47):
but you do also get a little bit of the
invisible labor understanding from Kenny to even though he's still
like I would argue, he's still almost a complete and
total asshole the whole movie, because it's like this combination
of he behaves very traditionally masculine in that he has
no issue with calling his sister the mainest thing he

(29:09):
can think of, and he doesn't apologize for anything, but
he also learned, but he's I I think it's kind
of cool that the movie puts him in the role
of having to keep the house together and like realizing
that you can't just funk off, or like someone will
get hurt like Walter gets hurt, or like you will starve.

(29:32):
I just I don't know. This movie is so campy
and funny that it's like, via watching Julia Child's PBS broadcast,
a young Stoner learns that he should finish high school
you're just like, yeah, cool, great, good for him. He
learns about brie and room macky creole mushrooms, like he's

(29:53):
like leveled up when he starts catering. I like, an,
you're right, I mean, And it's kind of arbitrary that
it divides out this way where it's like a woman
in the workforce, man keeping the hearth because they flip
a pizza box right, like they flipped like a frozen
to decide who's gonna work, and it just works out
this way where like they wind up in kind of
the quote unquote opposite stereotypical roles of like she being

(30:16):
the supporter, him having to keep you know, the kids fed,
which he does a terrible job at for most of
the entire movie because he's hanging out with his buddies. Hellhound, Skull,
lizard in mole. Those are their names. I didn't even
catch that. Those are their names. Oh yeah, when they're
like valets at the end, they have hellhound and skull
and lizard like on their name tags. Honestly iconic. Um yeah,

(30:40):
I found that. And then there's one scene in particular
that really helps to like fully demonstrate this towards the
end where Swell and Kenny have an argument where Kenny
is like, oh, you're always working. You didn't even call
to say you'd be home late, and you know, I
was working all day on this cast role, and you
didn't even mention how nice the house looks. And when

(31:00):
was the last time we even went out to dinner.
You don't appreciate me. And she's like, why go out
there and bust my ask to earn money for us
and put food on the table, And it's it's an
argument we've seen before, but it would be traditionally between
a mother and a father, so like not teen brother
and sister. But the movie is like, very clearly and
like for comedic effect, mapping those dynamics onto these like

(31:24):
teen siblings. But it is like kind of you know,
quote unquote gender swapped in terms of traditional gender roles
and expectations, where Swell is like the quote unquote man
or father because she's the breadwinner, and Kenny is the like,
you know, quote unquote woman or mother because he's doing
domestic and like caretaking work, which I wasn't really expecting

(31:47):
for the movie to acknowledge. So I found that really interesting.
And this movie does a lot of cool stuff I
don't know like and and also that I mean, I
don't know. I guess that they don't maybe this isn't
a criticism, but they don't like explicitly say that at
any point that but like that this is like they're
falling apart at doing these respective jobs and their mom

(32:08):
was expected to do both of those jobs at once. Amy.
I like your take on the mom being like fuck
you guys, Like I'm out of here, because it's like
they can't you know, it's like there to be fair
their kids, but like they can't last you know, six
weeks doing what she does and they're only doing half

(32:28):
of it. And I like that it's sort of this, um,
I don't know. I I don't mind that the movie
isn't super critical and doesn't place a ton of value
a judgment on the mom. And that's why this like
debate exists. Is it just you sort of bring your
own baggage and opinions on parenting to the table. Yeah,

(32:48):
there's even that like tiny throwaway line because you're right,
she the mom is doing everybody's part, and like somebody
lines so I forget which a kid, but they're like
I wish dad was around and she just goes, no,
you don't. That's all we know about how their family was,
but that that house is a trash heat of disaster
of muldi bread and newspapers everywhere. But if it was
worse when their husband, the dad, was there, how bad

(33:10):
must it have been? Right now, there's also that moment
with I think the last time the dad comes up
is right after they've decided to get rid of the
babysitter's body, and I think like Swell says something to
Kenny where she's one of them, asked like she'll be
called that, and the other kid is just like, no,
he would not give a ship. That doesn't care. That's right,

(33:33):
dad doesn't care. And you know, I appreciate that has
a screenwriting choice because it would be so easy to
just make the dad dead or something. And the mom's
like a said widow and like maybe she gets this,
like get her grew back in austin Land stuff, But
like that the movie makes it part of casually being
like the dad's alive and he doesn't care. That's brutal.
I respect how brutal that is, right, and that there's

(33:56):
just like there are I don't know they're Caitlin to
Urban to make you like this movie. There need to
see there. I might on top of that too, we're
going to do it because there are like a lot
of like interesting like little some versions of like what
you expect of like teenage characters. Also, I really liked

(34:17):
the um I guess it's like this is just gonna
be a long conversation about Swell because that is like
she's just all over the place in this movie. But
I like that at the beginning of the movie she's like,
I don't really know if I want to go to college,
Like that is something that you don't usually hear about,
especially in a way that like her mom is concerned,

(34:39):
but like you know, she can't really control what her
her kid decides. I really like that conversation between Brian
and Swell where they're like, well, I like this, but
like do I want to, you know, get in debt
forever about it? I don't know, like I would rather.
And I was like, yeah, this is like all teenagers
should have this discussion with each other, because there's like
I don't the only way I didn't like where that landed,

(35:02):
even though it's probably like I guess, more realistic, but
at the end of like, swell, take that damn job.
What are you thinking you want to get into fashion
school debt? You were making thirty seven thousand dollars a
year in yeah, and so what if you lied to
get the job, but you were doing a pretty good
job at it. Care Also, I think I like the idea.

(35:26):
Well maybe I don't. I like the idea that from
a glance, this movie is about, you know, a young
woman who like learns responsibility and she kind of takes
control of things and she becomes you know, sort of
like a leader in a in a sense, and and like,
you know, things that we can be like woo who
it's a a girl doing stuff. But then she yeah,

(35:47):
like you she said, Jimmie, like becomes a girl boss.
And I don't know, but the point is, um, what
was my point? No, I don't remember it, going back
though to that scene, so like yeah, and then like
her and Brian are talking about and they're like, oh,
I thought that my parents, like our parents had like
a college fund for us, And it turns out they don't.

(36:08):
But you can assume it's because like they're lower middle
class and they can't afford to stave up for college
even in the early nineties. Yeah, I mean, I'll be honest,
that straight up happened to me, Like my parents will
made my whole life. They were saving from my college
and then marched my senior year after I'd only applied
to expensive private schools. They're like, oh, we had to

(36:28):
spend that. We're so sorry. I was like one similar
deal here, samilar I want to bet a state school,
which I love. I've like, do it again all over again,
then wind up with any fraction of college debt. But
oh my god, okay, oh wait, we can't talk. I'm
so sorry we can't talk about this date scene though
that we keep talking about that saying the most important
word in it, which is grunion. I had to look

(36:49):
up with a grunion. Did someone tell me what a
Grunnian is? You guys, the Grunian stuff happens here. Y'all
can go grun in this year, like yeah, gren Like
if you go to like Venice Beach, then am on,
it could be each I forget what time of beer
it is. I've done it once. These little fish wiggle
out and they come and they hop around on the
sand in the middle of the night, and like if
you go down there the ones time I win. I
remember it was like a party of people are drinking

(37:09):
beer waiting for the grunion to show up. Whoa, yeah,
it's a real deal. And the gun. You know, they
don't bone like us, but right there they're not horny. Um,
that's so cool. Okay, cool, that's good to know. Yeah,
we live in Grunnian country. This is the Greunian zone.
You might even call it Grunian Canyon. Oh god, thank you,

(37:31):
thank you so much. That was good. Oh wait, I
remember my Um the point I was going to make
the reason Generally, I like swells character and I like
the journey she goes through. I don't have a problem
with that, except that she takes credit for Cathy's work
and never like follows back up with Kathy to be like,

(37:51):
oh my god, Like I feel like she's not like
expressing enough gratitude for her and she's taking advantage of Kathy,
never giving the credit she's due. And big thing for
this episode is justice for Kathy. I agree with you
on that. I think there's a deleted scene where like
at the end of the movie, Sue Ellen tells Rose
and Ros like, please keep working for me. She's like

(38:12):
you need to hire Kathy. But I think they deleted that,
and they probably should have kept that. That would have
endeared me to both of them more because I sort
of that knowing that there's a deleted scene that sort
of clarifies it a little, because it's also like they
go through the trouble of like having Kathy be there,
so it seems like something is there's going to be

(38:32):
some sort of resolution with her, and there just isn't. Oh,
I wish that that was Cannon, because that does seem
like one of the few, like I mean, I guess
you could you could argue that, like Caroline Desert, I
think Caroline should just go work for another company. Honestly,
she's she's very she's very diabolical, and I think a

(38:52):
lot of companies need that. So I think she would
do great elsewhere. And she's very angry and condescending, and
she's like personal and l the way she's so mean.
I do like that. That was another thing that we
talked about, you know, sometimes where it's like, oh, these
two women who just irrationally dislike each other. But I

(39:13):
don't know, I felt like Caroline's character, you don't know
exactly why she's so angry, but it feels like more
in the way of like you don't know exactly why
their dad sucks, but it's like I had enough information.
And there's so many relationships between different sets of women
in this movie. They're all white women, which will get
to but there are so many different types of women

(39:34):
in this script that like having one who was like
grouchy and shitty like didn't bug me too much because
in that same office you have Rose and you have Kathy,
and they're all like really really different, uh flavors of
of person. But yeah, Kathy deserved better and she was
what a sweetheart where she was like, oh, yeah, I

(39:56):
put in for that job, but it must not have
been good enough. And I hope that I hope that
they gave her the promotion and they gave her a raise,
because it's not like like the only thing that I mean,
Swellen was good at delegating, but that's like a classic
I feel like that's part of the It felt like
that was like part of the corporate satire they were

(40:17):
trying to get at. That kind of goes away by
the end because by the end, I think you were
supposed to believe that Swell was good at her job
when she really wasn't. She just figured out how to
like fake it better, right, which can be a useful skill.
But yeah, because that is one of the ways that
Caroline tries to write her out. She's like, Kathy has
been doing all the q EAT reports and it's supposed

(40:38):
to be like Dune Dune done, but instead Rose is
like delegation amazing girl boss behavior, which I think is
really funny and I kind of want to say not
in Caroline's defense, but if you look at this movie
from her point of view, she's not wrong. She was
in line for a job this unqualified girl who strikes
her as a phony. She can't prove it, but she

(40:58):
has a sense that this role is not right. She's
right about that too, you know, she's like she's justly aggrieved,
but she's like playing the game in the wrong way.
She's playing the game of like this is what's right
and fair, and this office is like, but what about
what's charming and funny? And she doesn't get that. Yeah,
and she's also so mean that no one wants to

(41:21):
interact with her except for David D. Kofney, which is
not the worst problem in the world to be fair
that I would I would accept that problem. Oh no,
I have to go home and have sex with David
dicofany damn my life job so hard. Uh yeah. The
Caroline character, I mean, and I like that, Like you

(41:41):
get certain humanizing aspects of her where it's like she
has a good relationship with her brother and like you
see her give him again, like maybe if you're this
deep in the movie, you're like, no, I want to
Swell and Brian to end up together, which's like I
don't really care, but like Caroline gives him good advice.
She's like, yeah, it seems like something's off with this girl.

(42:03):
You should like just move on with your life. And
I was like, you know what, Caroline, pretty good advice.
That's why I have more information than you, and you're
right about that. And of course he's a teenager so
he doesn't listen. But I was like, you know, Caroline,
you're you're right. I mean, she's she's pretty on point
about everything. I think it's just the the delivery of
the information. Um yeah, just she's still at the phase

(42:25):
of life where she thinks that she lives in a meritocracy.
I get that very much. I remember the first time
I got like I got pulled over a ticket when
I was in college, and like a cop said that
a train crossing signal was crossing and it wasn't, but
they said of like ran across signal that was like flashing.
Absolutely wasn't like a bar would have gone down. I
couldn't have even done it, but they pulled me over

(42:47):
for it anyway. And I remember like going to the
courtroom and being like, you know, eighteen to like tell
them what the truth was and realizing nobody care and
I had to pay the ticket anyway, and being like
so upset going to this like Oklahoma court house and
crying to my dad on the phone, like what do
you mean you can't just tell the truth as an
adult and people listen. It's so I feel you, Caroline,

(43:09):
like I get that moment, right, But also to kind
of like what you're saying about the Brian relationship. I
like that this movie doesn't make us have to believe
that this is like their love of a lifetime. It's
like summer Romance gives a ship, you know what I mean,
not like it's not They're not pulling some sort of
John Hughes punch. We're supposed to believe that this is

(43:30):
like yeah, yeah, yeah, And I do like, I I
don't mind that relationship. For like most of the movie,
there's a few moments where you're like, what it seems
like a bit much, But I like that, Um, it
doesn't feel shoehorned in for me, like a lot of
like romance subplots can, because it's like Brian sort of

(43:53):
is like this plot stand in for like Sue Ellen
being able to still be a kid and like be
able to be goofy and have fun and like almost
sort of be herself, which we don't which she doesn't
have anywhere else because her friends are gone and heard
and she's in gridlocked traffic for six hours a day.
So I I like that they found, you know, like

(44:17):
a way to show like but she's still a kid
and like should be allowed to be a kid, like
when they literally go to a toy store so they
can play on the kid toys. It's directing wise, what
I appreciate that. And this film is directed by dude,
you know, it's directed by um Steven Herrick, who actually
did a lot of he had Like he's one of
those people I think of as like the eighties a

(44:38):
tour that you didn't pay any attention to, Like he
interroded like you know, Critters and Bill and Taed and
Mighty Ducks, but you're like you're never like, oh yeah,
Steven Herrick, you don't really think about it. But like
I respect that he's a guy shooting this scene where
Christina Applegate, like the hot chick from Married with Children,
is bouncing on a bouncy ball in a low cut
short with spikes all over it, and there's not one

(44:59):
shot of her boobs. Do you know there's not the
littlest bit of like, let's watch her bounce, Let's really
watch her bounce. Yeah, men doing the bare minimum. I
respect that bare minimum at least when it's there. Thank you,
you know, I hear you. I'm also seeing Stephen Harrick
directed the Glenn Close live action A hundred one Dalmatians.

(45:24):
That alone, that's very spot good for him. Okay, yeah, no,
I agree. I like that. I don't know like Swell
is I think a really well realized character where like
she's definitely not perfect, she funks up all the time,
she isn't buzzling, and she's be buzzling she's taking credit

(45:47):
for work she didn't do. She's not good at ur
her job, but there's but I don't know. She's also
a teenager, Like teenagers like, yeah, kids mature decisions often times,
and I like that the movie like gives her space
to kind of like be a funk up and like
not know what she's doing because there I'm trying to.

(46:09):
I mean, I feel like there's a lot of especially
when they're as like conventionally beautiful as Christina Applegate, Like
you often get these characters who are young women that
they're like, well, why bother writing this character? Like we
have a hot actress doing it? So who cares? But
like there's a ton of lawyers to who Swell is.
And she does like grow a lot, but not like

(46:31):
so much that it's unrealistic. I feel like the only
man realistic thing. She like completely gets the way with
it to the point where she gets to like say
that as like one of the last lines in the
movie where he's like, how do you think you're going
to get away with it? And she's like, well, I
basically did. When I told my boyfriend we are going
to come on and talk about this movie which I

(46:52):
made him much during Pandemic. He'd never seen it. He
brought up this weekend, this interview he saw with Christina Applegate.
I don't know if it was like recent when she's
talking about being and her actress or like at the time,
but they're asking her how she played Kelly Bundy and
married to children at the same time, Like how how
she played an idiot bimbo, And she said, I don't
think of her as stupid. I think of her as

(47:12):
a person with a short attention span and that she
found a way into that character that wasn't I'm going
to mock this character. I'm gonna let you laugh at
this character. This character is your like typical blonde bimbo.
She is just a person who it's easily distracted, and
like found this way around it that allowed her to
love and respect the person she's being. And I think
that that's I mean, she's like fourteen fifteen, I think

(47:34):
when she started that show, so that I think that's
a glimpse into her as an actress, even as a
teenage actress. She's like a legit teenager when she makes
this movie. Yeah, she's cool. I really like her me too.
The one thing though, I'm at at. I don't blame
her for this. I blame like maybe her agent, maybe
the production designer, maybe the director. I have this real

(47:54):
pet peeve about this kind of thing happening. Where do
you know, Like we see her driver's license at one point,
and if you pause her driver's license, it gives a
height and a weight that is definitely not true. Do
you know what I mean? No, I didn't look at
that a lower weight than she Yeah, would probably be
an absolutely lower weight than a person alive could be,

(48:17):
right at that, like at her height end weight. You're like, no,
I just remember that thing being like rampant when I
was a little kid, like male characters giving girls weights
because they don't understand how much girls really wait and
you're like, no, that's not it. Like there's a Christopher
Pike book that I read around the same time where
they're there's like the hot girl and like her chubby
friend who's like called chubby the whole way through the

(48:38):
movie or all the way through the book, and then
like halfway through the book they reveal her weight and
it's like a hundred and thirty pounds, and you're like, what,
it's a stuff like that is always stuck with me,
but that that happens on her license and I want
to say, it's probably like the agent being like, let's
make I don't nobody knows what weights are. Let's just
make it tidy. She's one hundred pounds, right, Okay, I'll

(48:59):
say they say she's five six, and I'm like, what,
um that probably not she would be dead. Yeah. I
think we last talked about that where because I have
a similar thing where like so many like little things
like that when I was a kid, stuck with me
truly forever. It sounds like a joke, but it's real,
but a lot of my teenage eating disorder struggles could

(49:23):
be traced to, like, amongst other things, but a very
specific line of dialogue in an episode of Family Guy.
It's not great, But I think the last time we
discussed this was in Bridget Jones because the weights they
give in Bridget Jones as attributing to like this is
a deviant weight is just so absurd. It's a perfectly

(49:44):
healthy weight that she is, but they presented like it's inexcusable,
like an unhealthy and unattractive and just like all this
you know, normative bullshit that that did a number on
a lot of people. I didn't notice the Yeah, god,
damn it, I know, but that stuff does get stuck in.
You remember reading a book once that described a character

(50:06):
it was like the dude and the girly had a
crush and described her stomach as being quote not just
flat but concave it like being eleven and reading that
being like, Oh, that's a beauty idea. What Oh, that's
what I have to strive to achieve. Yeah, so movies,
you did it in a movie that I think subverts
a lot of hyperfeminine stereotypes. They still got that in America,

(50:31):
to damn it. I guess the worst things in this
movie are just in like the tiny visual things, Like
I think it's almost at the very end of the
movie where you go back to Kenny's bedroom, which has
been like the site of horror, Like I feel like
the movie implies that Kenny's bedroom killed the babysitter. The
babysitter because he's got like it's so terrific it boobies
and skulls and weed and pizza crust on the record

(50:52):
player kills the babysitter shouldn't even met Kenny. She never
met Kenny, but his like room was so crazy. But
you go back to a room later and like, I
don't know why, it's like an angle. I think you
don't see the rest of the movie, but you're like, oh, man,
Kenny has a Confederate flag on his wall. I noticed
that too, and I was like, what, I didn't notice that.
It's right at the end. I'm like, oh man, it's

(51:14):
already becoming a better dude. And you're like, what, why
was that there in the first place. They live into
southern California, Like yeah, I mean fucking racist pieces of
shit are everywhere. Yeah, I mean, look at the news
in Los Angeles this morning. Um, this will make no
sense to people listening to the episode. Uh, we'll figure

(51:36):
it out. Let's take a quick break and come back
for more discussion, and we're back. Uh, can we? I
want to get into Rose lindsay world, but before we
do so, I just wanted to touch on the babysitter. Yes,

(52:00):
really quick. Now, she's not long for this world. Uh,
and she is absolutely evil, Like for the for the
one minute we get to know her, I feel like
I feel like the most memorable thing that she does
outside of just like who what is the name of
the I want to shout out the actor who played

(52:22):
her because it was a great switch. I love that
to use the Twilight Zone music cue that was to
indicate that she was about to become a cartoon villain
eat a Rice Marin Like she was great as Mr
rac Um. I feel like the most memorable thing she
does for our purposes is makes Melissa wear a little
pink dress and wants her to be so rigidly feminine

(52:47):
and finds it disgusting that Melissa plays baseball, which no
one else in the family does. Everyone else in the
family is at least even though they like they're like
siblings and they can't stand each other, they at least
see like fundamentally respectful of who everyone is. Like they're
not making fun of each other. But anyways, as far

(53:07):
as Mr Rock goes like, there are I'm trying to
like the evil old lady thing is uh, it's a trip. Yeah,
they shoot her in this way. There are a couple
of points in this movie where I was like, did
this director make pizza commercials? Due to be like can
they shoot her in that kind of like monstrous fish

(53:27):
eye lens that I always associate with like eighties and
nineties pizza commercials. So it's like whoa in your face.
I mean the intro to like those kind of looney
tune grandma thing that you see going on. She's like
the annoid, Like she's basically like the commercial pizza nooid,
but a grandma. It is like just making her hideous,
the baggy stockings like intro baggy stocking. First, they really

(53:51):
do not present her favorably, and the fact that she
is the oldest character and you know that she's and
an old woman, and that they call her an old
hag several times, and they really, you know, just some
ages choices were mad. Yeah, I don't know, we've we've

(54:11):
talked about it, and they show plenty of times of
just how older women are more often made a joke
of versus given any sort of characterization. And I mean
that's like a lot of women characters across the board
of all ages, but I feel like older women specifically,
it's it's more common to either like turn it into

(54:33):
body horror or just a very simplistic judgment value, and
in Msteric's case, it's both. So I'm trying to think
of the last time, the last movie we I don't know. Anyways,
she's not long for the movie, and the movie doesn't
dwell on it really. Once she's gone, she's really and
truly gone, and then all of a sudden, it's like

(54:55):
teenage working girl, right. But I just want to mention that, Yeah, yeah,
there wasn't. Earlier draft two of the script, I think
she was nicer. I think that was one of the
notes when it was starting to get put into actual production,
was like, I think the original scripts well and only
had two siblings, and the babysitter wasn't that terrible? And

(55:15):
I think when they finally made it, they're like, she
needs more siblings, and we have to make this babysitter
meaner because otherwise it's almost too sad. It's cruel, way
too cruel of the They probably have to justify them,
like dumping her at the mortuary, so they're like, oh, well,
if the babysitters really mean that kind of quote unquote
justifies these kids, you know, just dumping her body at

(55:39):
least they live in saying she's a nice old lady,
which is a lie, but that is a very funny,
like last joke that her tombstone says nice old lady.
And it's funny because like one of the things that
she does it so awful is she comes up with
like the chore chart, you know, and actually, like Sue
Ellen just winds up having it come up with the

(56:00):
short chart. Right. So not that I think this movie
is like apologizing for the way it treats Msteric, but
I think it is like, you know, honestly, these kids
are horrible and they do need short charts, and she
wasn't wrong. Yeah, she made some points in her brief tenure,
though I do appreciate. So we see something that she
does to each of the kids to demonstrate just how

(56:21):
evil she is. She's like, Walter, read an entire cyclopedia
and give me a report tomorrow morning. My aunt used
to do that. She interrupts a little date between Zach
and his girlfriend, who he will later buy a diamond four.
She calls his girlfriend to trollop yes pretty hard, and

(56:41):
then like physically abuses Zack by kind of like yanking
him by the ear. Again. She looks at Kenny's room
and then dies because of it. But to be fair,
if I walked into someone's room and I saw a
Confederate flag, I would maybe at least pass out. I know,
but you know that wasn't what she thought it was
booby because we don't we don't see that in that scene.

(57:03):
She right, she was like, oh my god, boobs drop
over dead. Kenny was so horny that she died. But
a lot of these things are framed as like, oh
my god, look she used like enforcing ridiculous things on
these kids. And one of those is she tries to
enforce this this idea of like femininity onto Melissa, because
Melissa had been established as again like a quote unquote

(57:25):
tomboy who likes to, you know, play sports and dresses
and kind of you know, a gender neutral or masculine way.
And she's like, no, no, no, little girls should dress
and act like little girls. And so she puts around
this pink frilly dressed, this big bow in her hair,
and it's almost exactly like the Mary Poppins outfit. I
think they like the girl friend Mary POPPINSS. I think

(57:46):
it's like that, but pink even worse. I think at
least Mary Poppins girls were like blue. But I think
it's like, I'm I'm your old school nanny and this
is what's appropriate in the year of our Lord Ninete. Right,
So Mrs Deck flicting these rigid gender norms on a
character who doesn't conform to prescribed norms of gender presentation,

(58:07):
at least in terms of clothing, and the movie framing
the babysitter's behavior and rigid thinking as a bad thing
for her to have done. I was like, Oh, another
progressive thing I wasn't expecting from this movie. And honestly,
like you know, we were talking about the gender in
version between like Kenny and Sue Ellen, I think there's
one with the siblings too, because of the three younger siblings.

(58:31):
You know, Walter is just the TV kid, but you
have like the girl who's obsessed with sports and the
boy who's obsessed with romance. And I think that's a
flip flop too. Would be so much easier for it
to be like the boys the jock and she's the
mooney one, but they flipped that. Yeah, And he's like Cynthia,
you're my moon goddess, and he's sweet about it. He's
a big romantic true right. Like you pointed out the

(58:52):
twilights of music, he get that kind of back to
back in a row of like twilights on music. Then
he's with his girlfriend and they're playing Casa Blanca music
and then they like she goes into the room and
suddenly it's like psycho music. These are probably my first
exposures to all of these songs when I was a kid,
and so um so props to that too, preparing me
for Casa Blanca. That's the sound of romance because that's

(59:14):
when Cynthia was his moon goddess. Right, I didn't even
put that together. That like Zach's obsession with with romance,
and that's I like. And then as for Walter's obsession
with vintage game shows, can't really account for it, but
happy for him anyways, Yeah, good for him, and I
like that this is like a little little thing. But

(59:35):
with Melissa's character who apparently that actress is a known
kind of iconic modern scream queen Danielle Harris. She had
been in oh yeah, as young as she looks here.
She had already done two really gnarly Halloween movies before
this came out, nary one where she's like, I believe

(59:55):
the lords that she's Jamie Lee Curtis is like orphaned daughter,
and so Michael Myers is going after her I've seen them.
They're very humudinous and they're terrible. I can't tell the
four from five at all. Wait no four, actually wait
there to forest credit. Four has a lot of like
girls dressed like Kelly Bundy, and it's kind of fun.
Five is just awful. But but yeah, she is a
total scream queen. She's so cute in this movie. But

(01:00:19):
what I like about Melissa's character, it's just like it's
such a simple thing, but like whatever, she she's like
gender neutral or sort of masculine style, and but she's
still like a little asshole. She's a little stinker. And uh,
it's not because she defies gender norms. She's just whatever

(01:00:39):
eleven or something. And I like that her her mini
arc in this because the younger kids don't have as
much of an arc, which is fine, but her mini
arc is that she just really wants someone to come
to one of her baseball games. And it's such like
a sweet, like latic key kid problem of like your
parents are just like her mom is too busy to go.

(01:01:02):
Is she a little harsh at the beginning of the
movie where she's like, little legal be there next summer.
I'm fucking off to Australia, you know whatever. But um,
I like that her little mini arc is complete because
Kenny goes to her game, he cheers her on and
he's proud of her. It's nice, it's cute. I was
reading an article actually with her with with Daniel Harris

(01:01:24):
when she where She was saying, as they were filming
this movie, she had the biggest crush on you know,
her brother, Christopher Petit, who plays like Zach the heartthrob guy,
but he had the biggest crush on Christina Applegate. It's
so like it never came to fruition, but that when
they were a little older, they actually did get to
go on a couple of dates right before he did

(01:01:46):
die very young of a drug overdose, which is said
he's one of the kind of generation of nineties boy
kids who really got run ragged and didn't make it
through the decade. Like, um, the one that always sticks
out to me is Jonathan Brandis. It's like this this
was my generation of sexual awakening. So like Jonathan Brandis
and this kid were like my heart and Leo they're

(01:02:08):
like my heart throbs, but most of them didn't make it.
And like it's I find it really interesting because we
talked so much about like what happens to young actresses
and how much they really really do get put through
the ringer. But the young nineties boys all got really
left and all wound up with like you know, addiction
problems or most of them, and it's like really rough

(01:02:29):
and they all kind of vanished from the cultural memory. Which, yeah,
I always think about River Phoenix. He was a little
before that, but the same same they're probably going out
for a lot of the same roles. Like I think
they've heard Leo I think refer to it once that
like the kids he always saw in his auditions, a

(01:02:51):
lot of them died because they were all competing with
Leo for most of their parts and stuff. That's so yeah,
I I don't know. As the more time that goes on,
I'm just like, child stardom should be illegal. I just
don't believe that there's an ethical version of it. But
but we would be remiss not to say a shout

(01:03:14):
out to Titanic. We're going to bring up Leo anyway,
that's my favorite movie. We need to wedge in a
Titanic reference at least once an episode. I made sure
that Titanic stayed on our list, by the way, for Unspoiled.
I think that movie is amazing and I will not
broke anybody who tries to say that that movie is
badly written, Like are you kidding me? Every single time

(01:03:35):
I watched that movie, What a perfect movie. There, I
was realizing, okay, last Common and then I promise we'll
get to Rose Lindsay, Um, I realized Rose Rose. I
was thinking the other day about how I always have
wanted a nickname to stick for me. It has not happened,

(01:03:56):
but when it has happened, it's been Jim or Jim
and I love that. And I realized that I feel
like people take me more seriously when they're calling me Jim,
And I was like, why do I feel that way?
Outside of like people just tend to take masculine people
more seriously. And I think it's because of all the
Titanic Behind the Scenes FEATURETTS I watched when I was

(01:04:17):
a kid, where everyone's talking about Jim Cameron so reverently,
and they're like, well, what Jim says, girls, And I was,
I think it's just stuck with me, And so when
I'm in Jim mode, people listen to me. I always
find that so fascinating when there's a director that you
know by one name, but everybody who knows him in
person calls him something else. It feels like a power
like James Cameron Jim Jim, like well to to the

(01:04:41):
people he was screaming at twenty six hours a day,
he was just Jim. Okay, Rose lindsay, yes, we gotta
get to the gal herself. Now. I know I've thrown
around the word girl boss um quite a bit early
the episode. I do feel like that term is um
arriving at its um. I don't know, I'm I'm becoming

(01:05:05):
the term. Well, I do think that there is still,
uh the sexism that is implied within that term has
sort of gotten muddled over the last couple of years.
Where when I first started using that term, it was
like supposed to be a shorthand for like woman who
is complicit in the crimes of capitalism in order to
like survive at a higher level. But I feel like

(01:05:28):
it has since kind of just like turned into a
castaway phrase that is just used to describe like a
woman in a position of authority who I personally don't like,
which I think is something that happens now it's been Karen,
I think a little bit yeah, where it's like, you know,
I'm I'm not going to write an essay about it,

(01:05:50):
but I feel like the way that it was when
we started using it firstus how people kind of weaponize
it now is not great. However, I do think that
to some ex sent Rose Lindsay fits the original intention
of the term. But I also like her, so it's hard.
She's working in the fashion industry, so like, you know,

(01:06:15):
like you're like, okay, inherently exploitative. Um, she's making uniform
you know, it's her job to make sure that they're
selling uniforms to a chemical company, although apparently they also
need to sell stuff to a school, which didn't make
sense to me if they are chemical company subsidiary. But
I don't know the company. The manufacturing company was a

(01:06:36):
subsidiary of the chemical company, and so and then they
the manufacturers just sell uniforms to anything that needs a uniform,
like a school or workplace. Right, like a Cisco I get,
I don't even know what Cisco does. I just feel
like Cisco does every right, it's very I was like,
it's a very business e business, and that I don't

(01:06:58):
understand what is going on or what everyone's job is.
But Rose as a person, I think it is like
a really cool character that like satirizes a lot of
like nineties corporate culture. And then also like I was
surprised at how empathetic and gentle the writers are with her,

(01:07:19):
Like I feel like a lesser movie she would have
like gone with Gus's word above above Swells. I feel
like a lesser movie would have like formed this weird
rivalry between them, whether Swell liked it or not. But
Roses like very cool about the whole thing, which kind
of makes sense for like, she's you know, I guess

(01:07:40):
she can't tell when someone's a child versus they're not,
but apparently neither can we and U and I like that.
I don't know, I like. I like that she is
very in Swell's corner and like is you know, tells
Gus to fuck off and advocates for Swell over her
relationship with Gus. I think it's nice. Yeah, she is

(01:08:01):
sweet and supportive of her employee and believes her when
she says like, yeah, your boyfriend is hitting on me
and being a creep and then he's like, who are
you going to believe me or a kid, and she's like,
I'm going to believe the kid. And then she forgives
swell Like I love that she forgives s weall. She
was like, yeah, you'll grow out of it, like it's
just so cute. I don't know. Yeah, and she's still

(01:08:23):
giving a mentor her feel like we can get dinner
even if you're not going to work for me, like
I see you, I'll write you a college recommendation letter.
And I think they do film her in ways where
you can see that she is actually respected at her job.
One of the one of the first real shots we
get of her at work is like she's seated at
her desk in a red outfit I think red or
or and she's always like matching her hair to her clothes,

(01:08:43):
which I think is so fun. But she's seated and
at her desk is surrounded by people trying to get
her attention, trying to be like we need you, we
need you, we need you. Like they film her in
power positions there, which I respect, And actually I kind
of like that they work for like a giant subsidy,
because I don't think Rose is like a fool that
they're working in high fashion, Like this isn't Devil Wears
product where there's glamor here like Roses sort of like

(01:09:05):
there's not glamour. What are you talking about? Like the
idea that fashion isn't all glamour. I think it keeps
this film to me from being like Roger Ebert said
this was like fantasy wish fulfillment, and I'm like, what
are you talking about. She gets a job it's actually
not that glamorous, and she finds out about taxes. I
was like, does he think that? Like what does Roger
Ebert young women want? Yeah? But also I think there's

(01:09:29):
like you get these glimpses of Rose as a person
who you know has had to make some compromises in
her life. Like one are the ones I find really
sad is when gust the sleeves bag who's always hitting
on you know so well and then being like just kidding,
fuck me, just kidding. But when he invites her way
for the weekend, She's like Rose's real statement of it

(01:09:51):
is she says, like shades of real intimacy, like she's
been I think a little starred for what actual grown
up connection is because she's just in this working thing,
and I don't know if it's coming on, Like working
women can't find love, but like she's settling for little things,
you know, but she's excited about it at the same
time she's happy about shades of real intimacy. It's such

(01:10:13):
a complicated because it's like I can't like get myself
in to be like I don't really like I feel
like it's so open to interpretation how to take because
it's definitely a real thing that like women in straight
relationships are constantly asked to kind of settle for crumbs
in situations like that, and I like that, Like yeah,

(01:10:35):
like like you're saying, I mean she you get like
a lot of different like a lot of like what's
frustrating about the relationship and what's unfair to her, And
also like they don't shy away from the fact that
like she wants to fuck, and like there's she wants
a relationship with Gus. Yes, but she's also extremely horny.
She has not like the Grunians. No, but yeah, he

(01:10:56):
gave her a forty eight hour orgasm, which I find
very hard to believe meeting Gusts and seeing how clueless
he is to what women actually think. I don't know
how a guy can be that out of reading body
language and give Rose at orgasm unclear, but she seems
that happy. Also, I'm clear that line where she says,
every girl over have a cucumber in the house. Is

(01:11:16):
that about I bags or is that about sex? I
think she's saying, you're gonna want to suck that cucumber.
Um Rose does say some like some very inappropriate things
to her employee. I was thinking that, But then also,
I mean, and this all whatever. Rose does not know
that Swell as a kid, and Swell does initiate those

(01:11:39):
conversations in most cases, should Rose reply by being like
I just came for an entire weekend. Definitely not. But
Swell Swell is like repeatedly and if we know why,
because she's trying to gauge like what Rose and Guss
relationship is. But Swell is bringing that up and like
kind of pushing the conversation along. So it is inappropriate,

(01:12:01):
But I don't think it was like inappropriate in a
in a void like it seems like Swell was open
to having the conversation. And it's also daffy. Have you
ever had a free our orgasm? No, I've never been
to Santa Barbara, Right, there's a few the few, like
there's a few like great lines in this or the same,

(01:12:21):
Like it's in the middle of a disgusting scene, but
when when the waiter asks Swell what she wants to
drink and he's like sweet or dry and she goes
a little little bit of both. Yeah, because I love
that she's like studying Vogue magazine in order to figure
out what an adult woman is, because there's like a
dress up element to what she thinks adulthood. Is that
montage where she's trying to get dressed for the first

(01:12:42):
time for work and all the bows are too big
and the lady buns and this power suit montage of
like what women were supposed to wear the office looks
so goofy on her and she's trying to figure her look.
And then yeah, like reading I mean I did that
was like a suburban kid in Texas reading Vogue magazine
to figure out like what adults did you know? And
I'm like, also, have you guys ever had vermouth as

(01:13:03):
a grown up? I only started drinking it recently, and
it's really nice. I feel like we got rainwashed by
like James Bond movies that you're not supposed to get
near Vermouth? Vermouth is wonderful. What does it taste like?
Because I I just think of it as like in
the same way I put it in a category of
like that's not for me, mouth, brandy, et cetera, I

(01:13:24):
would call it complicated wine. Like I don't I don't
know if I don't know if you live near Los
VELAs or like No Figure a bistro by likes three.
They have vermouth on their happy ar menu white black
and red or white white black, I mean right, pink white,
pink and red. And it's just if you want to
try it out in a happy other price you feel
really sophisticated drinking vermouth on the rocks. Jamie, let's go

(01:13:46):
vermouth on the rocks. I wouldn't say that out loud.
There's that sounds so nice. There's some orders that I
just that you're just like the first time I said
I'll have the salmon. I'll never forget it was that
the American Girl Doll Cafe. But they had salmon, and
I ordered it, all right. I forgot that that was
one of your other food groups. They do hot dogs,

(01:14:10):
chucky cheese, and girl Doll Cafe at the Grove unfortunately,
but you know that just gave me a sentiment. I
think when I became an adult and start living on
my own, I was ordering salmon and feeling so impossibly
sophisticated because we had fish sticks when I was a kid.
I didn't eat salmon, right, and I thought salmon was
so glamorous, and then I was embarrassed. I thought it

(01:14:31):
was glamorous, and I didn't eat it for a long time.
And now I'm back full salmon returned to the fall.
I love salmon. It's one return to the fault. It rocks.
And uh, you know, if you can get a reservation
an American girl Doll cafe, which is genuinely challenging, um,
it's pretty good there. Hell yeah, okay, I wanted to

(01:14:52):
We've touched on this already. But as far as the
Gusts character, let's talk about I think it bears mentioning
that if that sentence made sense, my brain is not
fully cooperating with me today. But I appreciate because I
feel like this is the rare movie of this era
that presents a character who is a predator and engaging

(01:15:15):
in very predatory behavior that The movie also recognizes as
predatory behavior because so many movies from this era show
a character, usually a man, being very creepy and predatory.
But the movie is like, he just likes her, He
just likes her. It's great, this is romantic, right, but
this guy is being extremely predatory. And you know, it

(01:15:38):
shows Swell constantly being like you have the wrong idea.
I am not interested in you, like, stay away from me.
You're making me uncomfortable, and then every time she says
something like that, he'll be like, oh, you got the
wrong idea. I was just kidding, you know, like lighten up.
It was just a joke, which is such a like
I was like, oh, I don't know if I've ever
seen it like laid out that clear really in a

(01:16:00):
movie before, because that's such a thing, especially when it's
like his interest there is like he wants to hit
on someone who works for him, he wants to cheat
and his girlfriend, but he also wants to protect himself
above all else and have grounds to like accuse her
of lying like down the line, and so it's just
like that like knee jerk of like I'm just joking,

(01:16:21):
I'm just joking. I'm just joking and it becomes like
his catchphrase. And I love it because it's the PG
thirteen movie. She can't shoot his dick off, but she can.
She can water gun. She make him look like he
pissed himself with a water gun. Yeah, he says the
grossest line of dialogue I've ever heard in a movie,

(01:16:42):
and I don't even want to repeat it. Here is
it about? Okay? He says, a woman gets older, she matures,
she ripens, juices start flowing. I'm flowing up. It's just gusting.
I do want to shout out that actor John gets

(01:17:03):
for Um being so like almost alarmingly good at like
just like the face he's made, because it is like
whatever like we've it doesn't bother me in this case,
but the sort of like sexual harassment the guy um,
and that's his whole character and it's like every shitty
thing that you could do he does. And he even

(01:17:26):
makes that like what is that like comedy movie sexual
harassment face where like there's an eyebrow thing happening and
there's like a teeth thing happening, and he's like like
and just being and their lips look wet, like even
if they're not licking their lips. You can imagine that
they're licking their lips. Yeah, yeah, you're just like, Sobo
needs to towel this man off, Like what is going on?

(01:17:47):
He's like breathing heavily, so disgusting. And so the actor
nailed it hopefully not method uh but yeah that was
and and and I like that. It's like we're clear
that like Swell is being extremely direct and not that
she has to be in this situation, but she's also

(01:18:07):
concerned about Rose getting fucked over because she cares about Rose,
and so not only is she trying to you know,
protect herself from this guy, she also wants to do
what she can to like inform and protect her friend,
which is, um, I think, a cool thing to do.
I like her relationship with Rose so much, and I
also like so I think the last thing I have

(01:18:29):
to say about Rose is just again with the scene
where she eats the eminem's off the floor and they
think that the company is going to go under. This
is like I don't even think this is like a
gender thing. But like in movies with like high power
or like with high pressure workplaces, I feel like very
often everyone who works there thinks that this is the
most important thing in the world, and like my life

(01:18:50):
will collapse if I don't work at this company. But
Rose is sort of like this fucking sucks, Like I
need the money, I need the consistent paycheck, but it's
just a job. I'll get another job. And I was like, yeah,
like I've felt whatever, Like there is like a certain
amount of privilege to that, but that that is a

(01:19:10):
very privileged white person thing to say. But also I
do like that. I don't know, like, but I think
that my counterpoint to that is like a career woman
stock character, Like it seems like Roses at the beginning,
who actually is just like I just want to make
enough money to live, Like I don't give a shit
about this company specifically. I don't mind that, no, And

(01:19:32):
I think I think the movie makes a point of
actually expanding it a little bit, where like in that
whole stretch it is the company going over. It's not
just like Rose being like, oh fine whatever, blah blah
blah blah blah. One of the things Rose has to
do is she has to go down to like the
garment area and fire Franklin, the guy from one flew
over the Cuckoo's nest who is an older man, and like,
who knows if Franklin is going to land on his feet,

(01:19:54):
but like I think you know to go to like
this actually is affecting people, and poor Franklin he only
gets like two scenes, but like it's sad if they
take it there at least yeah, and they're like, I mean,
this movie has like a very clear class that it
wants to criticize and take a look at, which is

(01:20:15):
like by and large, the like I guess middle to
upper middle white collar class, which is mostly in this
movie in particular a lot of white people, which is
like it takes place in the l A area. There's
like never any reason for that to be the case,
but yeah, I mean it's it's I think one of
the only like less elegant transitions out of not that

(01:20:38):
this is like a movie I would describe as very elegant,
but um how when Swell like I feel like there's
a level of at least naivete maybe like some class
privilege as well when Swell quits clown dogs so abruptly,
where that is more like wish fulfillment than anything else

(01:21:00):
in in this movie for for me, as like, oh yeah,
like I had a million jobs like that when I
was like in my teens into my like early to
mid twenties, and to just be able to be like, wait,
this is fucking gross. I hate this. I'm leaving. Like
there's a definitely an amount of privilege to her doing
that that the movie doesn't seem interested in really analyzing.

(01:21:21):
And because she is like an attractive young white woman,
she's able to, you know, execute the con in the
way that the con needs to be executed for the
movie to work. It's true. But also when she quits
like that, like it's in a way I think they
give you one beat where it's not like totally a
victimless quitting, because then when she hangs out with Brian later,

(01:21:43):
it's like, oh, you had to clean up all the
mess that I walked out on. They at least don't
let it end on the like Tida no consequences. It's like, Oh,
this kind of nice guy who I feel like at
the beginning's almost coded as beneath what she would think
she should be dating. Maybe you know, like a guy
who's like working for living. He had to clean up
after her. Yeah, it's not like it's not like the

(01:22:04):
deepest thing in the world. But it's like I find
it interesting when they take those moments to shoehorn that
little thing, and that makes it a little more realistic.
And like Brian still works there at the end of
the movie, like it seems like he and Caroline's family
are from a lower class than swell And and her family,
which if we're going back to like Caroline, that you know,

(01:22:26):
makes her even more righteously outraged as like this, you know,
this faker teenager from like an upper middle class family
is like taking a job that Caroline is better qualified for.
You know, That's that kind of class outrage is very
relatable in an environment where Rose is, you know, literally
just picking someone who seems nice and kind of reminds

(01:22:49):
her of herself, and because Caroline does not remind her
of herself, she does not qualify for the job. Probably
same for Cathy. Also, Rose is just kind of being
lazy in that situation, which also happens in corporate environment
all the time. Yeah, she's like Vasser come to Gassan
and Calvin Klein, He's like she's very label conscious, like
you went to Yeah, And I will say one thing

(01:23:11):
about the happy ending that I think is really funny though,
is like those outfits that save the whole company. Though,
like basically Harley Quinn goes to high school, outfits are
absolutely going to take the company because this movie is
coming out in like Nirvana never Mind is about to

(01:23:31):
hit stores, and as soon as that hit stores, nobody
is going to be wearing these pink nurses outfits and
Roger Rabbit ing like that moment is over, like they're
gonna put all their money in these costumes and then
no kid is going to wear them because they're gonna
want to wear flannel. But I apprecially that her friends
all rally behind her, including the only black character in
the film, her one her one friend Katrina is it Katrina?

(01:23:53):
I can't remember which which friend it is. The movie
doesn't care enough to let the audience know what her
name is, because I did. If they did give us
her name, I didn't catch it. They do, but it's
just like in a rush. She like introduces them one
by one and it's like Nicole Katrina. But then she's
like panicking because Brian is running by, and it's like
I think her friend just walks out. She's like, thank you, Katrina.

(01:24:14):
All right, we're good bye bye, Becky, We're done here.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, this is a very white movie. Yeah,
which there's like no reason for that to be true.
And I think that the only like friend of Swells
that even has a role outside of just being like
hi is the one that ends up dating Kenny question Mark. Yeah,

(01:24:36):
oh wait, this is a question I had how old
is Brian? Because there's one point where he's like, oh,
let's go to this thing and then she's like, well,
I can't I'm not twenty one. And he's like, oh yeah, Bomber,
I'm like, wait, how old are you? I think I
understood that is he's like, oh shoot, yeah, I also
can't go because I'm also not twenty he's her aid,

(01:24:57):
because I mean, assuming if we're operating under the assumption
that like he just graduated from high school, he's about
to start college, because he talks about how he wants
to go for like marine biology or something, I understood
it as he also just graduated from high school, so
neither of them can go okay because that because I
also I was like, oh, they're around the same age,

(01:25:17):
and then he was like, oh that sucks you can't go.
I was like, are you like twenty seven? Like, what
what do you think about that line that they have
towards the end where they're like having their reconciliation talk
and I don't remember if he says that, if she
says it, but one of them says, we didn't break up.
We had a fight. Oh. She says that. She's like,
we didn't break up, we had a fight. And also

(01:25:39):
if you thought we broke up, you must have also
thought that we were together. And he's like yeah, and okay.
So his whole thing is that he's not very good
at open and clear communication, as demonstrated, but that swell
is either she's lying. Yes. A scene that kind of
stuck out to me, and this is a quick moment,
but they're kind of like gearing up to kiss and

(01:26:01):
he's like talking. He's like, oh, here comes the moment
where we might be romantic, and she's like, yeah, I
like that moment. And then he's like, all, but I
ruined it because we talked about it, and talking about
it always ruins the moment. And then there's a beat
and then she walks up to him and gives him
a kiss, and I basically him being like talking about

(01:26:23):
it ruins the moment. I think people should talk about
kissing before they kiss. I think people should be like, look,
can I kiss you? Do I have your consent? Maybe
it does ruin the moment for a lot of people,
but I think that we should all be talking about
kissing and then kiss. Yeah, always, every kiss, every single
kids you have with everybody, know, but like your home life. No,

(01:26:49):
but like in those moments where you're like, what's the vibe,
I'm not sure you know it's I think it's helpful
because there's so many moments where like we see us
a was kissing a movie because no one because people
are just like making assumptions, and I'm pro talking about it. Well,
like in the Graduate. What I hate about the kiss
and the graduate, To bring it back to the hatred

(01:27:10):
of the graduate for a second, is like Dustin Hoffman's
first kiss with Mrs Robinson in the Graduates, Like they're
up in the hotel room, right, and it's sort of
like awkward, and they've been like in the bar and
now they're up in the hotel room. She inhales a
cigarette and then he kisses her before she exhales, and
then and then she exhales, and it's played as kind
of like a joke, like ha ha, look how awkward

(01:27:31):
he is. But that's the moment where to me, I
turn on this on this movie because I'm like, Mrs
Robinson could date any of those hot guys downstairs who
were checking her out when she walked in. Why is
she going to have sex with this guy who can't
even kiss her? Right? Like, it's such a right, right,
It's like why that guy is such a klutz. It's
like a comedy moment that makes it just be like
she could do so much better. She should just leave.

(01:27:54):
The whole movie is just a fucking disaster. I can't
stand it. In the case of this Kissed though I
agree that you're saying Calin, I feel like there should
be better consent talks and movies. In this way, it
felt like a clumsy teenager thing where like I feel
like by him saying like, oh, the moment and then
she acknowledged the moment, I feel like that was a

(01:28:14):
discussion of it was an awkward teenage one and it
wasn't the explicit like can I kiss you, which you
know would be ideal, but I don't know it for
my it didn't make me feel like it was inappropriate
or uncomfortable because they were both like, oh, there was
the moment and we're like, seventeen, we suck. And I
was like, would I have been capable of better when

(01:28:34):
I was seventeen? Certainly not. Yeah. The first thing she
says is I hate this moment, and then she thinks
she hurt his feelings, and he's like, I don't mean
I hate this, you know, but she hates the self
consciousness of it. Yeah. I guess where I'm coming from
is think about who the intended audience was for this movie.
It's like young people. It's kids. It's like, you know,
teens and tweens, and if they see a movie where

(01:28:55):
someone's like talking about it ruins the moment. I don't know,
I mean, because that's not necessarily true. And again I
think we should normalize checking in with a person before,
you know, like a first kiss. But ultimately, the characters
do check in, they do talk to each other about it,
and the moment doesn't get ruined because they do kiss.

(01:29:18):
So and we should question how many Grunnion died for
this kiss because they do pan down and there's all
these Grunnians flopping around their feet, and I hope the
Grunnian population is doing well. And I will say I
took a second while we were doing this podcast to
google Grunnian Run and it actually happens about every other
weekend from March to July. So no kidding, I'm saying

(01:29:38):
next spring, next year, run run is all yeah. Um.
I was wanted to touch on a few behind the
scenes things for this movie very white. Behind the scenes,
there is a female co writer who was primarily a
novelist still is primarily novelist, teaches creative writing all over

(01:30:02):
the place. But Tara as on I hope I'm saying
that correctly, was also a writer on Doogie Houser, as
was Neil Landau, the other credited writer. So I think
that this that they just met on Dookie house Er
and then we're like, we gotta vega movie. Um. But
I do think that if this movie was written by

(01:30:22):
two dudes, that very likely would have been quite different.
And I liked I like this script by and large.
And then there's also an iconic woman producer on this
project as well, Julia phillips Um, who was the first
woman producer to win the Oscar for best picture back

(01:30:44):
in the Day for the Sting. This is like one
of her like less famous movies, but it's the last
one that she produced. But she also produced like Close
Encounters and Taxi Driver and all these famous movies. So
I wonder if there's any Julia Phillips and Rose right owned.
If Julia Phillips was, like I get being a working

(01:31:05):
woman in kind of like a weird corporate male environment
and how to be heard, I would like to think that, like, yeah,
I like that there's female producers. She would at least
given the script read and given her notes on Rose,
I'm certain of that, and I want to believe that
that's true. I hope so too. I also want to say,
like some of the reviews of this, like Jane Cisco

(01:31:25):
voted this movie one of the year's worst films, and
I just don't understand on what planet you would say
that this is one of the years worst films. It
is still heavily rotten on Rotten Tomatoes, which to me
is like I feel like I see this a lot
as a critic, where like movies about female friendship just
are not that's the whole subplot is not recognized at
all by critics, and there's like, it's girls wearing clothes

(01:31:48):
and putting buns in their hair. How lame? And they
miss all of the stuff that's interesting that happens time
and time again. I get met to even thinking about
like Vampire Academy, where all the reviews of that were
like why isn't there more vampire killing? And you're like,
it's a movie about teenage girls in their friendship. What
are you talking about? But that's boring to me, so
so I hate it. Yeah. And also another critic, Peter Trevor's,

(01:32:10):
he had this line in it he called Christina Applegate
the quote unflatteringly photographed Applegate another thing in which I'm like,
what the only thing I can think of is like
in the climactic scene where she's in that you know,
black dress and she has the cool little black ribbons
in her hair or black bows. I don't even know
what those are, they film her in a way where
you can see that, like Christina Applegate has arm hair,

(01:32:33):
and like maybe that's what annoyed annoyed the critic is like,
women aren't supposed to have arm hair. How dare they
film her in a way where you can see that
she's a mammalian creature, but like, that's the only thing
I think of where she's unflatteringly photographed because it's Christina Applegate.
What are you talking about that? Right? That's so that
reminds me. I mean, that's happens so often, and I

(01:32:54):
can't imagine how frustrating it is to be a critic
and have to like contest with that still just like
fucking wild um. But I always think about how like
male critics compulsion to only be able to see movies
about women in the framework of movies they've already seen
about men, Like Caitlin. We talked about this in the
Now and Then episode a couple of years ago. How

(01:33:16):
Now and Then was like panned because they're like, it's
just stand by Me for girls, and it's like, no,
it's just a movie about girls, like what what is
wrong with you? Or like when Book spart was, I mean,
that was well reviewed, but I think was like girls
super bad, and you're like, like, the only argument for
that is that there's two members of the same family.

(01:33:40):
But it's like it's just people just don't like when, um,
when women are friends, it makes them nervous because we're
we're telling, we're telling secrets, and the secrets will bring
down society as we're going. So it's uh. In this essay,
I will it's bestenating. This is only TANGI untily related.

(01:34:00):
But I was thinking about it a lot this weekend
because there's this film that just opened, The Luckiest Girl Alive.
But if y'all are aware, it's like a Mila Kunist
movie they just opened up on Netflix. It's based on
a book that came out in about it. This is
not a spoiler. A girl who like in high school,
was gang raped and then immediately after there was a
school shooting, and one of her rapists is like the
hero of the school shooting, and like, how does that

(01:34:23):
play out in her life after that? And the way
that this character plays it out is like being a
girl boss. It's like literally a girl boss movie about
somebody who that can't process her trauma. The key to
this movie, like is that it's like specifically set in
two thousand fifteen, and so it's about pre me Too
and what that world was like. But it got all

(01:34:44):
these negative reviews from people who weren't really conscious of
the fact that it was or why it was. Why
that was important, and everyone's like she's just being a
shallow girl boss, and I'm like, that's the point. It's
about how we were trained to process trauma before we
were allowed to talk about it more openly. And I
just always find that fascinating when like a film is
about something but people don't realize it's about that right

(01:35:05):
anyway on my mind right now, because it's like fascinating
to go back to like recent period piece history. I
didn't know that that movie had had come out or
what it was about. I only saw that people were
like feeling a kind of way about it, Yeah, which
I mean, I get if you're not watching it through
the lens of but it's like there's no other reason
for that movie to be said in except if they're

(01:35:27):
making a point about how to process stuff pre pre
being able to talk about it more openly. Yeah, right right,
Which is something that I think that like don't tell
like the Rose Lindsay character toes the line of somewhat
successfully because you know through certain exchanges that she certainly

(01:35:48):
benefits from class privilege, she certainly benefits from white privilege,
and also she is still contending with sexism and like
discrimination in her workplace and like ask to work harder,
diminishing returns, and like both of those things are true.
It doesn't make the you know, way she uses her
privilege any better, but it just contextualizes it. Although like

(01:36:12):
I don't know, I know other I feel like this
is to me emotionally, the last movie of the eighties,
and then we go into it feels very like remember
Ronald Reagan. But we are getting a remake at least,
and I haven't Yeah, they haven't announced that of the casting.
The only casting that I've seen so far is that

(01:36:34):
Rose is going to be played by Tyra Banks. Interesting.
Oh and that and that just reminds me that we
still haven't done our life size episode and that is
important to me. Um, I can, I mean Tyra Banks
can certainly girl boss it up all day. That's she's
been doing it for decades. That's yeah. Um. The lesson

(01:36:55):
I want to briefly mention is the scene in which
three drag queen steal their car, which they stole from.
This is strict, but like they come out of Chucky Cheese.
Three drag queens are stealing queens at Chucky Cheese, like
not sure in full drag for a moment I was like,

(01:37:15):
is this a really weird too long food reference? But
then I'm like, no, that movie came out several years
after the point is they're the only like queer characters
in the entire movie. And then you see them doing
something wrong, Um there thieves, and I was like, I
don't that's not even a stereotype, Like what is what
is happening? I just ended up thinking like that was

(01:37:38):
fucking weird, Like that was a weird decision to have made.
But like, and this is again like absolute crumbs, but
like the meanest thing that's said about them is like, hey,
those drag queens are stealing our car, which is technically true,
that is what happens. They're not saying the wrong thing, no,
they but like what Yeah, I didn't don't know what

(01:38:00):
to make of that. Who is the third one? Like
one of them is Maryland, one of them is lives,
But then there's one in polka dots with like curly hair,
and I was like, who's that one? Right? I also
couldn't place her. I wasn't sure. That wasn't like Dolly Parton, wasn't.
That's why I was wondering, But I didn't see comically
large boobs, but it does happen really fast. It was
a very big that was just not sure. Yeah, and

(01:38:22):
then I mean that would have been well, I mean,
who knows, but theoretically that could have been a fun
cut away for the end as well, like where did
they go in the damn buick? Right? I kind of
wish they had gotten the money instead of the random
mortuary employees, but you know that's true. That would have
been wonderful had been under the floorboards or something, right, like,

(01:38:44):
then we could cut to them and Mr Derek would
have hated that, and that's what we want, ye But yeah,
I I also I wrote, I just was like, well,
I guess that that's something that happened in the movie.
Like the only thing I had was like, there's no
other identifiably queer characters in the movie, not for I

(01:39:08):
don't know, but who knows? Okay, I think that that's why?
Is there anything else anyone wanted to touch on it?
For me? The only last thing I can think of
is that I appreciate this movie is making fun of
corporate speak of ninety one that is now dead, Like interfacing.
It makes such a big joke about the word interfacing.

(01:39:29):
It interfacing has now been retired, so it means that
you know, touch base read whatever whatever we say now zooming,
circle back, circle back. Yes, someday it will end, or
we could bring back interfacing, which is actually what we're
doing right now. I love to interface with my friends. Okay,

(01:39:49):
my last two little things. I liked the line did
he just read dianetics or something that was fun about
the hot talk And then they were like, no, he's
addicted to pills, and I was like, oh about maybe
Mr But Mr Egg also an amazing character name who's
yelling at to smile more like he's a villain. And

(01:40:10):
then there's also a moment at the very end because
the character's name is Caroline. Am I Caroline? Okay, there's
a moment in the last scene of the movie where
Josh Charles says Caroline. He just says Caroline. He says
the wrong character name in the last scene about the
character who's supposed to be a sister, and that that

(01:40:31):
just made me laugh that no one got a d
R for for that because he just says straight up
the wrong name and she's like, yep, uh huh um,
it's great. Well, speaking of female characters with names, and
sometimes maybe they talk to each other. What I'm saying is,
does this movie pass the Bechdel test? Yeah, instantly almost. Yeah.

(01:40:55):
Swallow talks to Rose obviously, a lot, talks to Caroline. Yeah.
Lots of conversations and combinations of characters that passed her Mom, Melissa,
her group of friends when they're shopping, and like you
can see that, like she's she can't buy all the
jewelry that her friends can buy, can buy, she's like

(01:41:15):
a little poorer than then. The first thing we see
her do is like pick up some gold beads and
she can't buy them. Are you kidding me? But they're
like I can do anything. I'm a free woman. And
they're not being like boys boys boys. They're talking about
like doing cool ship together. They're talking on going to Europe, Europe, Europe, Europe. Yeah,

(01:41:36):
it very much passes you go, you go movie. But
what about the only movie metric that's important flawless perfect
the nipple scale where we write movies on a scale
of zero to five nipples based on just looking at
it through an intersectional feminist lens. I would say, because

(01:41:59):
there are not that many movies and certainly not of
this era that are about what's effectively a single mom
trying to balance work, parenting, and a social life, and
like empathizing with her when she doesn't totally pull it off,
which is cool, and because you know, again like she's

(01:42:20):
not literally a single mom, but that's the role that
she ends up taking on through most of the movie.
I find that very cool that this is a movie
about that, even though she's a seventeen year old who
is faking a lot of this stuff. Um, but still
still an interesting topic to examine that, you know, we

(01:42:43):
should see more of. Yeah, and just other things that
we talked about, you know, the movie showing a sexual
predator character and actually framing him that way. But then
there's other things like, uh, you know, the way the
movie makes the only like old woman a horrible monster,

(01:43:04):
the extreme whiteness of the movie. Things like that, um,
that are very tropy. I don't know. Maybe I would
give this like a three three nipples. Let's go with that,
and I'll give one to Swell, I'll give one to
her mom. I'm I'm like team mom for being like,

(01:43:26):
you know what, you kids are unappreciative of all of
my labor and I need a break from you, So
here's the worst babysitter in the world to take care
of you instead. And then definitely my last nipple goes
to Kathy again. Justice for Cathy, who deserved so much
more gratitude and appreciation and credit for the work that

(01:43:47):
she did, which she never gets on screen. So big
fan of Kathy, Justice for her. I'm gonna go three
point five, maybe even three point seven five of them
feeling nuts, but also three yeah, very precise science. But
I think this movie is doing so much right, especially

(01:44:08):
for its time, and still manage it manages to be
like a really can't be fun movie to watch. I
feel like I'm going three point seven five. Maybe everyone's
going to be upset with me, but I but it's
my it's my life. That's what I learned from the mom.
Fuck you FU fuck you who I'm responsible to I'm
leaving um okay. No. I think that, like, yeah, a

(01:44:29):
movie whose premise is based in having empathy for a
single working mom who is not getting it completely right
but has her heart in the right place is a
cool thing. I think that it's you know, fixation on
the white upper middle class is very typical and unchallenging

(01:44:49):
of the time. You know, like there are movies that
do a far better job of you know, like there
should be more satires and comedic satires of the working
class and like of uh, the non white working class,
and this is just not one of those movies. Um.
And you know, I think that there was room in
in the movie to address that stuff a little more.

(01:45:12):
But you get so much. You get you get the
creep being called out as a creep, she gets to
shoot him in the dick, like, you know, we have
women believing each other about creeps, which you never see. Yeah,
I think this movie is just really fun. Maybe I'm
scaling it a little too high because I just really
enjoy it, But I'm gonna go three point seven five

(01:45:33):
and I'm gonna give one to Swell. I'm gonna give
one to r I'm gonna give one to Dolores and
who framed Roger Rabbit because that's Joanna Cassidy's best part ever.
And I give one to Tara Eisen and then I'll
give the last point seven five to Melissa. Oh yeah, Melissa,

(01:45:54):
love Melissa. I wish we got more from her. Amy,
what do you think I'll go higher than everybody. I'm
gonna go for point to five nipples because I think
this movie does so much right without drawing attention to
the fact that it's doing everything right. There's nothing in
this movie that, for a millisecond, feels like a vitamin
or a lecture about you know, gender roles in society.

(01:46:17):
Not a single bit of it is like, oh, here's
where we tell you guys how to really live your life.
There's nothing preachy in this moment. I think. I think
this movie speaks to kids, young adults, me at my
current age on just like a fun level, representing the
way that the world both is, you know, which is
a lot of labor, a lot of unfair stuff, a
lot of grunt work that you have to do, a
lot of people getting taken advantage of, a lot of

(01:46:38):
people getting rewarded for the wrong reasons. All those things
are true, and it doesn't hide any of that, and
it doesn't sugarcoat anything. It doesn't make working look like wonderful.
You know. It's not like a movie where a girl
gets a job and suddenly she has the high heels
and the wardrobe like this is. I think I've really
lived in movie about what it is like to get
your first job and how hard it is and how

(01:46:58):
like strange the working world is. And I think it
both calls the corporate world on its bullshit and shows
what it's really like. What I like about these kids
is I feel like the kids are all actual, authentic
kids and they're not like scrubby or shiny, and none
of them sound like fake kids to me, Like nobody
is too idealized, nobody is too shiny. Yeah, definitely, the

(01:47:18):
Mrster comes out of a pizza commercial. But other than that, like,
I don't think there are many kids movies like this
that gets so many things right. And I always want
to take a really strong stance in pointing out these
kids movies that do make the right choice every time
there's a lazier choice. There's so many lazy choices that
could have been made in this movie doesn't do any
of them, doesn't do any of them down, from like

(01:47:40):
the romance, crazy One, being the little kid, the Little Boy,
and so for that, you know, for being a movie
that to me felt like kind of an artext for
oh is this how the world works? Great? Okay, I
get it, you're warning me, And also you're not putting
me in a box. That's magical. And I feel like, yeah, kids, me,
they are so important because it's how we start to

(01:48:01):
see the world. And so yeah, there's nothing in this
that I think would turn a kid off, and I
think would like lay them out for what to expect
and show them what's unfair, and maybe people will go
to the workplace and be a little bit nicer to
the you know, to the poor, poor poor said um
Cathy's of the world, and maybe the Cathy's of the
world see this movie and they're like, wait, yeah, exactly.

(01:48:26):
I'm taking off my point seven five because I do
agree on like the bizarre whiteness of l A, which
was never true and wasn't true then, and l A
is about and you know, I didn't you want about
to enter a moment of really reckoning with the racial
things that have been whitewashed over in this in this
city for sure. Amy, thank you so much for for
coming on the show and for bringing us this movie.
This was so fun. Oh this is my pleasure, Caitlin, Jamie.

(01:48:47):
Has been so fun to be here, So thank you
for having me aboard. Come back anytime. I'd love to.
This is so fun where can people follow you online?
Check out your writing, check out anything that you would
like to plug. Oh yeah, my social media handles are
the Amy Nicholson. I'm right now, Really we're going. I
think I'm only on Twitter for twenty four hours a week,
which is highly recommend It's so nice. I log in

(01:49:10):
on Thursday and I log out Friday morning, and then
you get to be oblivious the rest of the week.
Whatever is important, people will eventually tell you over a
beer and yeah, yeah, I read for The New York
Times and my podcast is Unspoiled with Paul Sheer, where
we just did Jennifer's Body in Midsummer, which I love
talking about Midsummer in terms of like trauma, bad boyfriends,

(01:49:31):
or boyfriends who just cannot handle because they are immature. Yes,
we had a similar discussion on our main Treon, which,
speaking of you can follow us on social media at
spectel Cast on Instagram and Twitter. You can subscribe to
our Matreon at patreon dot com, slash specktel Cast, in

(01:49:53):
which we have covered both Midsummer and Jennifer's Body as
bonus episodes on the Matreon. All for five dollars a month,
you get access to the back catalog and two new
episodes every single month, and you can get merch at
t public dot com slash the Bechdel Cast. Holiday is

(01:50:13):
coming up, you know, so there's that link. Um okay
with that, Let's let's all head on down to the
graveyard and steal some corpses money. Yeah. Thanks, nice old lady,
Thanks for starak. Bye bye,

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead with Amy Nicholson