The Bechdel Cast - Can't Hardly Wait with Shelli Nicole

Episode Date: February 22, 2024

This week, Caitlin, Jamie, and special guest Shelli Nicole go to a graduation party and discuss Can't Hardly Wait! Don't forget to check out linktr.ee/bechdelcast for details + tickets for our Shrektanic Tour in the UK this May! Follow Shelli on IG at @ayoshelli and Substack at www.hishelli.net See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that?

That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller

from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality,

cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Brrrr. Attention Bechtelcast listeners. We're going on tour. We really are. And it's not just any tour. It's a tour in the UK. And it's a tour where we are covering Titanic and Shrek. Brilliantly titled the Shrektanic tour.

Yes. Shrektornic. We're working on it. There's a couple months before the tour. But yes, we are really excited. We're currently doing five shows in the UK with more shows to be added. Stay tuned at the end of May. Yes, starting with two shows in London on May 22nd. One's at 6.30. That's a Shrek show. One at 9pm. That is a Titanic show. Then we are scooting over to Oxford on May 24th. We are covering Titanic. Okay. That

show is a part of the Saint Audio Podcast Festival in Oxford. So be sure to check out our show, as well as other shows at the festival. Then we're scooting up to Edinburgh on May 26th and doing Shrek. If you're a Scottish Titanic fan, you are going to have to commute. And I know that that's not. But listen, you live in Edinburgh. We're covering Shrek. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but also you're welcome.

And then if you do want to see titanic you can head down to manchester we're doing a show on may 28th and that's a titanic show so yeah you're just going to want to come to kind of all of them if you live in the uk if you live kind of anywhere in europe or sort of just anywhere in the world as your bechtel cast allies in the U.S. can attest to our live shows are super fun it is like a live episode plus a bunch of fun stuff we dress up we bring audience members on stage sometimes we do it's just it's big and goofy and silly and we're covering two of our favorite movies that are Bechtel cast canon so we want to have a good time. We'll be bringing exclusive merch and we

will be doing meet and greets before and after the show. We want to meet everybody and we're really really excited. And tickets are already going fast because we released it to Matrons first. Plugging the Patreon really quick. Little perk for the

Matrons. Yep. you if you live in those areas get those dang tickets because these shows will sell out yes they will so head over to our link tree link tree slash bechtel cast grab your tickets for the shrek tanic tour and enjoy the episode. On the Bechdel cast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast. Start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Jamie.

Caitlin. I wrote you a letter because I'm in love with you what and the do you know why no you don't even know me no I do and I know you don't I know that you love strawberry pop tarts and that I love strawberry pop tarts and that's enough what I unfortunately not to break the Bechdel test immediately, but I sent that scene to my boyfriend. I was like, wow, we sort of had that conversation at one point. It was like the first night he stayed over at my house and I was like, oh, do you want any breakfast?

I have three Pop-Tarts. And he's like, wow, that's all I have at my house. Meant to be. We should keep this thing going and never improve as individuals. It's kind of nice. So all that to say, teenagers are smart, actually. This movie is so bizarre. Welcome to the Bechdel cast.

My name is Jamie Loftus. My name is Caitlin Durante. This is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel test as a jumping off point. For a larger discussion, the Bechdel test is a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, often called the Bechdel-Wallace test since she collaborated on it with her friend Liz Wallace. That makes it sound like it was like this big project. It was not that. It was just a throwaway joke. It was just kind of a day that they had. In Alison Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For from the mid 80s, there are many versions of

the test. The one that we use is this. Do two characters of a marginalized gender have names? Do they speak to each other about something other than a man? And ideally for us, is it a much requested guest. I feel that, I'm just excited to bring her in. The vibes on our episodes with this guest are just sort of unmatched. It's like chaotic good. Yes. And also I would say very Shrekian. And not for nothing. And not for nothing. Read the byline. It's right thereline it's right there it's right there

she's a culture writer you can see her work on Substack at HiShelly as well as Architectural Digest and Vogue you know her from episodes on Buffaloed and Empire Records it's Shelly Nicole hi I'm so happy I'm back. Welcome back. I hike you forgot about the Shrekian. How could I? I mean, I need to put the mic down now because that's so rude of me. Has that not become your professional byline? It is.

It is now. Now that I'm solo and on my own, I'm changing my sub stack from Hi Shelly to exactly that. Yes. Hi Shrek-y. Hi Shrek-y. Exactly. I mean. 100%. and on my own i'm changing my sub stack from high shelly to exactly that yes high shrekky high shrekky exactly i mean a hundred percent theoretically i mean you know shrek 5 is allegedly in production so if you're pitching yourself for reviewing it i mean you're like well who who are you gonna hire over shrekky herself who better than me i would love to go to a premiere of that. Wow. That would be so great. My first interview. Guys, I'm going to do it.

Now that I know it exists. I'm going to make sub stacks send me. I'm currently spending so much like I mean I haven't done anything but I just think about it a lot. I was like Despicable Me 4 comes out July 3rd. How hard could it be to get invited to that like

I have I like I do have to go I have Shrek news for everyone what oh my god tell us I was at the mall the other day right brag I love that sentence I love that a very 1998 review i love this sentence it's true i'm setting the scene i was at a store called box lunch who knows oh i know it's it's sort of like hot topic but like a little but i think it's like quieter quiet it's not quite so hot i guess it's like a warm topic kind of thing yeah yeah yeah i thought that this was literally to be like a sweet green or something like that. I didn't know. No. Like Hot Topic's like conservative sister.

Kind of. Yeah. Like it's, it is. It's like if Hot Topic got a desk job, but it's still all like weirdly like merchandising, like merchandised stuff. And they had a Shrek section and they had this a shrek attraction you could say and there was this unbelievable sweater that was like a full cable knit sweater with like huge knit onions all over it and then on the back was shrek like 3d onions 3d onions like huge onion like pom-poms

oh my gosh it was really wait james for the shrek fan with like a huge amount of disposable income was this at the glendale galleria yes okay good let's go there and buy it. It's called a business expense. Gosh, I'm looking for... Okay, here it is. I'm going to put it in the chat. It is $65. I guess for a nice... $65? I'm like, for a sweater you'll wear every day for the rest of your life?

Maybe. I mean, small price to pay. Maybe. There's also a Shrek hockey jersey. Okay, see, this isn't as bad as i thought it was gonna be i think it's tasteful i think you could wear it to like parent teacher conferences yeah and be like yes i'm the parent and people will be like i feel like someone should call the feds because this child is not okay this child is not in a happy home oh well okay let's talk about now that we're all caught up

so today we're talking about can't hardly wait from 1998 and i didn't mean for that to rhyme i was gonna be like that was very cool you're good that was very cool yeah it was very nice anyway so uh shell, what is your relationship with this movie? I saw this movie when I was in middle school because it made me want to go. It made me excited to go to high school.

You know what I'm saying? I think I had seen a lot of movies that year because I was looking it up like when this movie came out, what else came out? Dead Man on Campus came out this year too which a lot of people don't believe me when I talk about it that it is a real movie I was like never seen it Zach Morris yeah and it's got quite a plot one of my favorite teen movies um came out the faculty came out featuring like Usher right Disturbing Behavior with like a bad girl crop top

katie holmes so all of those were like i was like oh it's kind of like bad high school or scary high school or whatever but this one was so sweet and had like i know it's a bunch of silliness in it but it had like a cute little love story and stuff and i saw i rented it at blockbuster of course and when i did rent it it became one of the movies that i always rented like because i would rent like two or three movies at a time and i would try to get a new one and then like one where i'm like i'm just going to watch this all weekend and i'm gonna fuck this dvd up like but i love this movie yeah and then that's my relationship to it nothing really queer based really because i was trying to think of that i will say this is one of the first movies i saw that i knew my answer to like do i want to like

be her kiss her i knew i wanted to be amanda beckett and and a lot of the other movies I saw I was like very confused this one right out the gate I was like I just want to be her loved her tank top loved the hair I wear hair styles like this to this day but yeah I just like I love this movie so much I love also stand by it I stand by the fact that I think that this movie has one of the greatest soundtracks I have ever heard in a teen film. It's good. The boldness required to do the same smash mouth needle drop twice. You're like,

yes. What is this? A Shrek movie? Shrek one? It is Shrekian. Opening on a smash. It is Shrekian. It's like it was shrek before i feel

like shrek saw can't hardly wait it was like here's how my film has to open i need that i mean it's aligned i mean i'm just saying but this movie is like fucking incredible and i think it's the first time i also saw hazy moments in movies like for for some reason when Amanda or Jennifer Love Hewitt, famous three named actress. Yes. I mean, this was the era. Yeah. She got like RuPaul season one drag race lighting in a lot of the moments where she was like monologuing her ass off. But yeah, I love this movie so much.

I love this movie. Oh, Jamie, how about you what's your history I'd never seen it I'd never seen this movie before I jealous I don't know like why because I thought yeah I had like seen a lot of the 90s teen movies this is just one that I hadn't seen for whatever reason my personal connection to it is that i was employed by seth green for two years wild so i'd certainly and i've written with well i mean breckin meyer's not in this movie very much but like we were in the same writer's room for a chunk of time so i have uh like an attachment to two of the guys in the movie and then also like without this movie is

you know and i guess it wasn't a success at the time it came out but without this movie we wouldn't have josie and the pussycats and so i knew it was like even if i don't love it i have to honor its place in history because the directors harry elphont and deb Deborah Kaplan, who wrote and directed this movie, also wrote and directed Josie and the Pussycats. Yeah. That's so cool. Right? I did not know that. Yeah, I really enjoyed this movie.

I think the places where it's dated is really dated, obviously. dated obviously but I like this movie especially because we've covered a lot of teen movies of this era I think it's doing a lot more than I expected in terms of like showing it giving its characters some depth and some grace and like I don't know any teen movie that ends in a somewhat gray area I'm really intrigued by because it's just like not what happens. It's like, it ends with like a kiss and you will die with this teenager. Like smash cut to 25 years later. They're still together. Right. Or like,

or a bet or a lie or whatever it is. Right. So it's like there, this movie's, you know, trafficking heavily in like stereotyped high school characters, but I feel like it's doing a little more in terms of like showing us the shades of gray to these characters.

I think if I had seen this as a teenager, I would have been like, wow, Preston and Amanda. As an adult, I'm so underwhelmed by Preston and Amanda. I'm like, Amanda, what are you doing? What are you doing? Yes. The reality hasn't changed. Like I had a, I mean, I think we'll, we probably all feel the same hasn't changed like i had a i have a i mean i think well we probably all feel the same way but like she was so right and the way she like

cut him down to size and then she read i was like well sure he wrote a nice letter because he's a big fan of kurt vonnegut question mark was he famous for love letters no but like he has the romantic stylings of kurt vonnegut but like nothing he still doesn't know her she was right yeah so yeah anyways i thought this movie was fun and good and i love lauren ambrose literally love lauren ambrose i was gonna talk about how like dyke coded this movie and that character is she's going to nyu she's like wearing all black she's giving like claire duvall light you know who's also in this movie who's also two seconds it's great everybody is in this movie everyone is in this movie everyone and i say this with love i feel but it's like i think that in teen comedies today because we have covered like some modern teen movies everyone

does look so perfect and i like that like i mean even though some of them are kind of maybe visibly in their 20s it's still like i i'm like how do i say this in a way that feels respectful but like I like when they're like yeah they're playing teenagers they can kind of look like shit and like be wearing confusing outfits and like be sweaty and like it feels like such a cool like because this is Debra Kaplan and Harry Elf on its first feature and it's like you could tell they're not working with a lot of money so sometimes people are just sweating yeah and Jason Segel's there and I guess we'll allow it yeah why not um yeah I don't know I'm excited to talk about it uh Caitlin what's your history with this movie I had seen it a

couple times uh before prepping for the episode it wasn't something that was like in heavy rotation for me but I saw it I think for the first time in probably college I don't think I saw it when I was still in high school so I was by the time I saw it for the first time I was just like high school I already did that I'm not impressed and then I feel like I saw it again within the past five years I don't know what would have necessarily compelled me to re-watch it maybe just because i was like i love josie and the pussycats and i want to be more familiar with those filmmakers work so i watched it again and i was reminded that it's like like you were saying jamie a more i would say a slightly more subversive version of like a teen ensemble cast movie.

I was reading because I was having like a half-baked version of this thought. And then I was reading the big retrospective of this movie that was published in The Ringer like five years ago or so. And Debra and Harry, because we're friends. And so let's just call them deborah and harry of course they they said they're like our inspiration for this was what if the party scene from say anything was a movie and i was like this movie has so much say anything energy to it like the the friendship between preston and denise felt very say anything because that's like another thing teen movies famously can't do is like friends of the opposite gender not getting married at the

end of the movie that's so cool to know oh preston and denise are so cool like it reminds me so much of friendships that i had where it's like there's like not not any sexual tension between them that part yeah but it's clear they're never gonna act on it and like it's never gonna happen I was like oh I definitely was friends I had those friendships where sometimes you're like stop and then you're like I hate I hate I love the extra like like it's very that. And I think so, too, because it's super like, you know, it's not not there, but they're never going to act on it for the sake of like, we're such good friends. Like, yeah, this would be so weird. Yeah, it would quite literally ruin.

And I'm going to NYU. So I can't like deal with that like and honestly like you don't want a Kurt Vonnegut boyfriend going into college dead weight you really don't no not when you already wear like leather jacket and lace like unironically to a teen party with your like haircut and no it's just no no I love that character though though. She's so cool. Right? All right, let's take a quick break, and then we'll come back for the recap.

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

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Okay, ready? Here we go. It's high school graduation, and all the teens are talking about a huge party that night and there's a rumor going around that mike dexter also i was like okay oh my god the liz lemon boyfriend yes astronaut mike dexter from 30 rock yeah yes unbelievably distracting so distracting incredibly because i was like why do i why do i know that why do i know this name yeah is there any world i'm like did they just pick two first names like is it or is that like was the a writer at 30 rock like a fan of this movie really bizarre we don't know we never know one of the main characters is named basically astronaut Mike Dexter. He has dumped Amanda Beckett. And it's a big deal. All the teens are talking about it. And then when Preston Myers,

played by Ethan Embry, learns this, he is elated because he has a huge crush on Amanda. And he tells his best friend, Denise, played lauren ambrose that he wants to finish what he started with amanda four years prior which was which turns out to be nothing and if that sounds like a threat it kind of is really it really does he's not not Not stalking her. Very sinister retelling of the plot of this movie. Yes. Yeah. So we see a flashback where Preston misses his chance to give her a tour of the school on her first day of school because she moved there freshman year.

And Mike Dexter gives her the tour instead, which led them to getting together. So Preston missed out on his chance. But now that Amanda is single, Preston is going to make a move. Meanwhile, we meet astronaut Mike Dexter, who is played by Peter Facinelli, a.k.a. Carlisle Cullen from Twilight. Yeah.

What a career. This movie is so rooted in like teen dumb you know what i mean because also the teacher in like the flashback scene when he was me she was the one of the og pink ladies from greece she's one of the ones who sings like the toothbrush song in greece this movie is like rooted in teen film history and to then have this cullen come on hello i'm really like fascinated by like and i know i don't i'm sure that it's like rarely intentional but like an actor that is just like a mainstay of like coming of age like through their career like luke perry comes to mind like his career, he was always in teen stuff, even when he was 50. And you're just like, it's just where he thrives. Who knows why? It's just where he thrives. You know, we all have our little niche.

Yes. And I feel like, you know, Peter Facinelli, energy he was on suit he was on supergirl like oh yeah he's for the teens who can say why oh well mike dexter he's this like jock bro dude asshole type and he encourages his other shitty jock friends to break up with their girlfriends like he just did and they're like yeah that's a great idea these girls are holding us back also one of the jock friends is sean patrick thomas from save the last dance which we just covered so that was a 90s jump scare i wasn't prepared for but i was like of course he's there yeah then we meet William Lichter played by Charlie Corsmo uh he's the class valedictorian he hates Mike Dexter for bullying him for years and so William and his like quote-unquote nerd friends are plotting this like

revenge scheme revenge of the nerds much it does have like a little bit of incelli energy yeah very much that yeah anyway they're planning this scheme against mike dexter and his jock friends at the party that night then we meet kenny fisher that's seth Green and his friends. And the thing about them is that they are white kids who are appropriating black culture. And they are like called homeboy number one and homeboy number two in the like. Yeah. The character titles on this movie. It's a mess. Yeah.

It's a mess. It's messy and then the other thing with kenny fisher is that he is like desperate to have sex with basically any girl at the party and he has this whole backpack full of like lube and condoms and candles and all this like sex paraphernalia he's got like the sex equivalent of a go bag. Like it's just. Yeah. Really. The fact that it like flaps open too.

Like it unzips all the way. Something about that never sat right with me. Because I was like book bags don't do that. Do that. So that must be for something naughty. Another. Another bizarrely sinister element of this movie. Yes. The boys in this movie. Yes.

The boys in this movie are scary. So scary. Kind of across the board. Like I'm not rooting for a single one of them. Nope. Okay, so people start arriving at the party, including Preston and Denise. And Preston feels really good about his chances at getting with Amanda Beckett, partly because he hears a Barry Manilow song, Mandy, on the radio. And he's like, that's basically

the same name as Amanda. So he takes it as a sign that he should give her a letter, like a love letter that he wrote for Amanda. Then we finally see Amanda on screen for the first time. She's played by Jennifer Love Hewitt. She shows up at the party and Preston's like, okay, I'm going to go give her my letter, but he's still trying to work up the nerve. He keeps missing opportunities. Then Amanda talks to her cousin about her breakup and how... Ay, yay, yay. Yeah. It it's just i don't know if this is where the cousin stuff started like you know how it ends up in mean girls too but like oh yeah no thank you please that i mean first of all fuck this guy because he full-on assaults her and also fuck preston because preston walks in and does not do anything.

And I know that he's like assuming that they're hooking up, but it's like she's visibly struggling. And he's like, oh, she doesn't like me. I was like, you don't like her. She's getting assaulted. You're not doing anything. You fucking loser. Yeah. So what happens here is that her cousin, Amanda, is talking to him about her breakup and how it has like affected her sense of identity and who is she if she's not Mike's girlfriend and then he responds by

like surprise incest kissing her and she's like what the fuck dude and then Preston walks in at the exact wrong moment. He assumes that, you know, she's just kissing another guy. And then he's hurt by this. And Preston throws the letter away. Yeah. Then Preston leaves the party. And he's like moping about how she isn't supposed to be with someone else. She's supposed to be with him because he believes in fate and how there's like one person for each of us. Right. And all of his stuff basically boils down to like, she needs to be with me because I said so. Like, that's all it is.

Because I fell in love with you when you walked in one time in over four years. That love has simply just grown. And I know I could have like talked to you at a locker or like a game or whatever I've never been through this many rewrites in my entire life that he has in this like letter yeah because he says he's rewritten it like a thousand times or something like that I don't know if that's hyperbole or what but I'm just like you've never talked to her how do you even know if you like her anyway all right so then there's a scene where preston crosses paths with a stripper dressed as an angel played by jenna elfman incredible she right love the sentence love the scene yes she tells him about this time when she missed her opportunity to talk to scott

baio and very 1998 yeah and how she's always regretted it and preston doesn't want to make that same mistake so he heads back to the party to try to talk to Amanda. Meanwhile, the valedictorian kid William is getting drunk and letting loose for the first time. Mike Dexter is annoyed that none of the other jocks have broken up with their girlfriends yet. He's he does not realize how bizarre he seems just marching up to couples actively making out and being like, I need to talk to you. I was like, you are the weirdest fan in the entire world.

The movie knows that. Yeah. Mike Dexter doesn't. Yeah. He like starts to see himself getting sadder by like couple three, I think. And then he's like, wait a minute.

Did I make a mistake? Sometimes I've like, when you see just like men do shit like that you're like give me that confidence for one second let me do something that sucked up and like have no idea yep okay so meanwhile uh denise is wandering around by herself she's having trouble like connecting with anyone. Seth Green is trying to hit on different girls, mostly to no avail, until he finds a girl who is willing to go to the pool house with him.

So he goes to the bathroom to get ready for sex. But then Denise bursts in, and they get stuck in the bathroom together because the door is broken. And so we see some scenes with them in the bathroom. Denise calls out Seth Green. What's his character's name? Kenny. Kenny.

It's Seth Green. She calls him out for being fake. And she's like, look in the mirror. You're white. And he's like, what? Crazy. And then we learn that they used to be friends. But ever since like high school or middle school, they've kind of drifted apart and they don't talk to each other anymore. Also, Preston's letter to Amanda kind of fatefully

makes its way back into the house because it's like getting stuck on people's shoes and like flying around the air and it ends up right in front of amanda so she picks it up and reads it and then she's like wait who's preston myers so she started like exactly who indeed i like how they're like how could you not remember him i'm'm like, name one memorable quality about, sorry about this child. I will say that like that scene of the letter passing has been one of, to me, one of like the coolest scenes I've ever seen in like a teen movie. Cause it's just so like,

I don't know something about it. I was just like, this is so cool. I vividly remember rewinding that scene so many times like i just thought it was so cool i was like this is creative wow it's like slightly a rube goldberg machine kind of thing ish or adjacent anyway it is it's visually fun and so she gets the letter and she starts going around asking people who and where preston myers is but no one gives her a clear answer right meanwhile mike dexter talks to jerry o'connell

who's in the movie for a few minutes and mike dexter realizes that maybe it was a mistake to break up with amanda based on jerry o'connell being this like former high school stud but now that he's a college freshman none of the girls want to date i'm a dozen also i'm sorry he is not a freshman he is like he is 30 30 there well i have looked it up he and um he and seth are the same age i think that he just looks more i don't know he just looks like uh he looks older than he is he looks grown as shit yeah like because when they said that i was like what no but the name trip mcneely again incredible now that isn't a teenager make a high school kind of name like that kid never existed but he exists in high school kind of name. Like that kid never existed

but he existed in high school movies exclusively. Trip McNeely. Wasn't there another Trip in another movie? Like a teen movie? Trip with like two P's? I'm pretty sure but I can't remember. I wrote

Trip character. What? That's not helpful. Trip Fontaine from The Virgin Suicides? That's who it is because I am obsessed with The Virgin Suicides. That was nice, Jamie. Ladies, we did it. That was nice. That was solid.

Wow. That's the name of the Josh Hartnett character in The Virgin Suicides. In The Virgin Suicides, yeah. We got there. Wow. Josh, that's the name of the Josh Hartnett character in The Virgin Suicide. In The Virgin Suicide, yeah. We got there. Wow. Here's what I did. Trip character. Then I clicked on the Wikipedia page for Trip.

Then I went to the subsection fictional characters. For Trip. It was that easy. You did it. Trip McNeely does not appear on this list, unfortunately. Okay. Trip erasure much anyway okay so mike dexter realizes it was a mistake to break up with amanda so he goes and tries to get back together with her by surprise kissing her and she's like oh no like we're through

and you're an egotistical asshole. And then after that, because like everyone was watching this whole scene play out, a bunch of boys go up to Amanda and try to get with her. And she's like, ooh, get away from me. And this is also when Preston returns and like rushes over to Amanda. And he finally works up the courage to tell her that he loves her but because she's so fed up with all of this unwanted male attention she's like what you think i'm just gonna have sex with you think again you loser and you're like yeah fair i mean fair fair yeah she was right but also she's that's who she's been looking for. Yeah, exactly. She didn't even know.

She doesn't realize it. She does not realize that he's Preston Myers, the guy who wrote the letter and who she's been asking around about. And she's rejected him nonetheless. And so Preston is so, so, so sad. And he runs away. We cut back to the bathroom. And now Denise and Seth Green are kind of vibing yeah

and then he surprise kisses her because there are so many surprise kisses in this movie so many surprise kisses yeah in the in the 90s in general in the 90s yeah in general especially teen film yeah but um she actually likes it and then they start making out and then they have sex using the various memorabilia from his weird backpack kinky backpack yeah uh cut back to amanda who looks up preston in the yearbook and she realizes that he's the guy who she just lashed out at and she's like oh no so she goes around trying to find him but the cops show up at the party and it breaks up the party everyone scatters and Preston has already left so the next day Preston and Denise are hanging out.

She tells Preston that she had sex with Seth Green. And he's like, um, why'd you do that? Yeah. Which also, like, who are you? I mean, again, talking a big game. And for what? Yeah. It took you four years.

Yeah. Right. And then Preston tells Denise that things didn't work out with him and Amanda. I guess it just wasn't meant to be. And he's about to leave for college slash a Kurt Vonnegut workshop in Boston. So he's like leaving that day. And he's also at like Union Station in L.A. I was like, you're about to be on the train ride of a lifetime if you're taking a train to Boston. Whatever. I know that that's not where the movie takes place, but it is visibly Union Station. some text that tells us what their future holds for example william goes to harvard and forms a

multi-million dollar software company and it's like okay mark zuckerberg goodbye yeah not rooting for him and then also like i thought like a pretty harsh ending for mike dexter like both william and mike you're like it's very like revenge of the nerds era like geek shall inherit the earth yes right and then yeah because mike dexter's he like becomes a loser but there's a lot of like body shaming and like class shaming yeah class shaming making light of alcohol addiction all of this stuff to like you know imply that he's a loser now yeah we see a little text about denise and seth green and their like on again off again relationship and then the movie ends with preston at the train station and who shows up but amanda

with the letter he wrote and she's like like, damn, you're leaving, huh? Well, maybe this is how it was supposed to be. Bye. And he's like, damn, yeah, bye. But then he's like, wait a minute. No, that's the love of my life. So then he turns around and he runs after her. And then they kiss.

And they're still together to this day. And she writes him letters or something. And you're like, the end. The end. Oh, do we not know what she's going to do with her life? No, we don't care. She writes him letters. That's what she does.

She writes him letters. That's her literal life. Wow. Feminism. Another win for feminism. All right. Let's take another quick break and we'll come back to discuss. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist

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Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session. 24 hours. BPM 110. 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up?

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We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. and we're back shelly is there any particular place you would like to start um yes i definitely want to start with kenny and his kenny's introduction right okay so when i was watching this movie like when i first watched it i'm i'm in middle school right i don't think i had the words for like what cultural appropriation was i just knew that he was like pretending to be black right yeah so i don't know how at the time

with my like young mind young age how offended i was because I was just like he also wasn't the main part of the story that I was that I cared about you know so I was just like this is weird because every time he came on the music in the background switched to like hip-hop or like something R&B and all that stuff so when I re-watched it like a few years ago i was like uh-oh like i was just i remember being like oh shit this is so bad and then as i watched the movie more i realized that when i originally watched it when i was a kid this movie was the first time I started realizing pairings of black people right like even in something like Clueless which it's so obvious like you know Dion is with her boyfriend you know I'm saying I was like oh that's like fine but then I started realizing the purposeful pairings of like the black characters and I just thought that

was so interesting because obviously I saw it in this movie too because they're the only two black people in the school and the popular group like Mike Dexter's friends and Amanda's friends like her name is Tamara she's also in the wood and stuff like that I realized her character yeah but like I don't know I think it's just so interesting that young me didn't not clock that about kenny but didn't wasn't fully like upset like i think gen z would be like if this happened if this movie came out now so many things obviously but if that part of the movie happened i think a young 11 year old watching it would still be like a young black 11 year old watching it would be

like uh this is terrible like he shouldn't be doing that but at the time i just remember being like this is weird but he's not my focus so i just thought it was so odd that that was such a choice of a character yes it was and i wonder like you said, like there was, you know, especially as like a middle school age person, there wasn't quite the same language around cultural appropriation as there is now. And, you know, it's not something that necessarily tweens are thinking about that much but also i wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that like this was like a pretty like white people appropriating black culture and like speaking in aave and like wearing fubu and listening to exclusively hip-hop and stuff like that like this was a movement it was a horrible movement yeah like, it was a thing that for the time felt normalized, quote unquote,

just because like a lot of people were doing it and you saw characters like this on screen in movies. Yeah. From this era. It was such a thing. Again, it was a horrible thing to have been normalized, but it was a thing.

Yeah. I think the reason I didn't like, maybe the reason why I did, I knew that it was a thing because I did see it, didn't like maybe the reason why I did I knew that it was a thing because I did see it but in my everyday life right like I went to a mostly black school and stuff like that so it was it was kind of like if there was a white boy in our school and was acting like that it kind of was like that's who he is versus a few years later I went to a school called Oak Park High school and then there was cranbrook high school um not well sorry seahome birmingham seahome or whatever and they were a

fancy school and we would do this is so weird to talk about now but we would once a year they would have a select group of students come to our school and we would go to theirs for like a few days that sounds like a movie it is and it was like to us it was cool to go see their shit because they had like a really fancy school and all but to them it was like what were they learning you know what i'm saying other than being like oh they're here a bunch of poor kids so i remember like going there and stuff people would be like there's white boys doing this weird shit over there like like and it was like they were the Kenny's and shit like that but at our school if the white boys were doing it it was kind of just like I don't know a product of the environment

it was a little bit it wasn't as fake you know i mean so when i was watching this it kind of made me be i when i was younger i just didn't clock it you know i mean but now i was even today when i was re-watching it again i was like oh my god this is so bad this is so bad it's like i first of all that high school school switch thing, that's going to stick with me because what? Yes. Well, that's kind of the premise. Have you seen that show? Jemay or Jemay?

Jemay? Is that what it is? It's a it's a spinoff of Summer Heights High. It's an Australian comedy show. Oh, I know what you're talking about. It's incredible. It's one of my favorite shows of all time. But yes, it's similar to that and we would do

it like oak park high i would do it with birmingham seahome and you know we would see their fancy pool and like their top like of the line computer lab and like but thinking about it now it's like when they came to us they were what being grateful for what they had like you know what i mean right it's like not and i don't i'm like and what is the supposed takeaway from that supposed to be like other than like systemic anger but it's like do kids have language for that at that time no because when you're in high school at that time this is like early 2000s you're just like oh shit they have a computer lab with all colorful macs you know what i mean right like we weren't at least i wasn't taken away anything from it other than being like i want a computer room with colorful

macs right right i mean it's like yeah i i think when i was in high school my takeaway would have been like oh fuck these rich kids fuck them i'm mad at that I hate them and not like why do we not get access to this exactly I I don't know it's almost like children are not operating but I feel like hope maybe today's kids are are a little different or at least like are a little more conditioned to think that way for sure with Kenny yeah I I i'm interested to talk about him because caitlin i agree that it's like this it's not like this movie invented this stock character this was definitely i mean i knew versions of this kid yeah and i feel like a lot like if you went to i i don't know can't speak to high schools now, bravely.

But in the span of time that we were growing up, it's like these kids existed. I guess that it's like, and I'm not, I don't necessarily object to an attempt to, but it just felt like there's no real comment happening. There's like, it approaches, like Denise calls him out. Yes. But that kind of doesn't go anywhere i don't know that doesn't go anywhere because she has sex with him two seconds she has sex with him yeah she looks out for them denise yeah how do how do we feel about how that plays out because i was i was i was honestly surprised that it was called out at all same but well then

the other thing that sort of is approaching commentary but not really is the scene where kenny's friends are standing among oh god black kids yes and one of them says the n word yes i think he's attempting to use it as a term of endearment but the black kids are like what the fuck you can't say that yeah and then they chase him away yeah and i think that's the only kind of commentary that was ever in 90s and early 2000s teens film when you're talking about race it was like they had to have a white person say the n-word or like they had that they had to make that person like make black people angry and that was the only way to include black teens in a film was if you were using them to like again further the plot of a white character that probably should not have

been created in the first place and those black kids don't get any lines like you know what I mean like it's not even re-watching 90s and 2000s teens film always makes me realize like because how much we weren't in the movies you know what i mean how much like a black president unless it's like a save the last dance but like again that is pushing forward the plot of julia styles like that's she for sure everything was around around that but it was what i had access to it's what i wanted to see and like all that kind of stuff but in this movie specifically the amount of like fake blackness or attempt to like put black people black teens in a teen film it was so bad it's so it's like just unbelievably at best misguided

because it's like yeah we have two white writer directors and I mean I feel like it says everything that they include Kenny and I would say like he's a I don't know he's a more memorable character than Preston like yeah he's I I knew about this Seth Green character I did not know about the Ethan Embry character and so for him to have such a large portion in the story and for his character to be so defined by how much he's appropriating black culture and then also like seeing him effortlessly, you know, like take it on and off as as needed. Like in the bathroom, that was the switch. Right. It blew my mind. And then it's like, so to put that much energy into bringing that character to life while making no effort to characterize any of the black teenagers that, or black 24 year olds,

whatever, that populate this party. Because it's not a, like, it's more diverse than I, you normally see in a 90s teen movie. But the focus is all on the white characters. Even though you have so many famous 90s black actors at this party. What are you doing? And it was really wild, too. Even when they were talking to Donald Faison, he called him a hootie.

You know what I mean? The bandmate called him hootie after he called him the the white artist formerly known as Prince and it's always something like like that like a black person has to be like agitated in order to be included sorry a black teen fake as they may be age wise in these movies has to be agitated in order to be included same thing for even bigger movies like Bring It On like that whole situation they were stealing from them and it had to be a whole you know what i mean it's just and still a great movie but it's

always been like that in teen films even a mean girls the unfriendly black hotties are they unfriendly or do they like not want to fuck with you because you're like boring. Like, you know what I mean? Like, right. Or like directing micro or macro aggressions at them constantly, like constantly. Like you're putting that label on them and they have to be agitated in order to get a reaction or to be included in these narratives. And it was it's less now because everybody's so focused on like D.I. and all this kind of stuff like that like

the new main girls and all that but in the 90s they were like no let's just make black people mad it was mask off yeah like and and even on top of like it relying on agitating black teenagers in order for them to participate anything that was said to or by a black character was connected to race like because and i think that that is just an extension of like these two white writers cannot conceive of what the inner life of a black teenager would be and it's like well no maybe they just discuss their own race in every interaction. I'm like, what? Even in the, um,

the scene too. And I mean, this might be a little bit of a reach, but even in the scene where Mike pulls away the two guys when they're dancing with their girlfriends and Jamie Presley. And, uh, I think her name is Tamara.

I don't want to, I wrote it down. Oh, Tamela, Tamela Jones, Tamela Jones. Yeah. Where Tamela Jones and Jamie Presley start dancing together while they're is tamara i don't want to i wrote it down tamela tamela jones tamela jones yeah where tamela jones and jamie presley start dancing together while they're all the boys are having a conversation yeah yeah like i said this may be a reach but they're dancing the wild things and then essentially

like the black girl starts to like pretend to tap jamie's ass while she's like twerking on her a little bit i don't know you feel me like it's something like yeah even that kind of micro like oh this is how black girls be dancing like and then i there's i'm trying to remember the last time we had this discussion and again it does feel and like correct me if i'm wrong but like it does feel like it's very inherent to this era too where it where it just feels clear that it's like casting wise, this movie is not going to make an interracial couple happen. Like it's the black teens date black teens, the white teens date white teens.

And that is like the movie is not going to attempt anything else, which actually kind of like if you consider the fact that it's going to be another three years until save the last dance comes out which like whiffs this same that like an attempt at an interracial teen couple yeah tremendously which she could listen to our episode that either just came out or is about to come out about save the last dance it's just like a it's a bad era it's a bad era for sure it's bad and that's what i mean by like that was the first time that i like noticed the pairings of like oh black teen black teen black teen black teen you know what i mean so and it's like then what happened was we started getting movies like

um what's the one with christina milian oh love don't cost a thing where it's like, there are two black characters. Yeah. It's like, there are two black characters as in a teen movie, but she's fair skin and like got soft hair, you know what I mean? And like,

it's that whole vibe and we get it. And that's in 2003. The only one that I can think of that even i think is done so well with a monoracial dark-skinned black couple and they aren't even teenagers is rylane rylane is one of my favorite movies of all time and if y'all haven't watched it you should watch it it's like it just came out last year it's really yes i saw it at sundance i'm sorry to throw out that conversation but well you have to watch it. It's done so well.

And it's black and it's British and it's incredible. And you should just watch it. It's on Hulu. Nice. Okay. But yeah, I mean, the reluctance to put anything on screen besides like a very rigid very stereotypical scenario when it comes to representation of race on screen across all movies across all genres in this era and beyond in teen movies when they often have like a big ensemble cast or like groups of friends like the boy has his popular guy friends and then the then there's the group

of popular girls so you have like a lot of characters and therefore a lot of opportunities to show that part a lot of different types of people but the boxes that people get put in and it's often again like favoring whiteness or light skin in general. It's, you know, not exploring relationship dynamics that exist in the world, such as interracial couples. It's just like, well, obviously only the black kids would date the other black kids or, you know, just stuff like that. And it's just still rigid.

We still see these weird rigid boxes that... We were talking about that off mic before we started recording, where it's still very much an issue. And I think it is freaky to see it laid out so unquestionably clear, especially with a character like Kenny in as prominent a role as he is it's just like kind of unbelievable because it's a huge role it's good also there was like an interracial couple in this movie i just realized that that one guy that was kind of a creep the black guy and melissa joan hart's character they end up linking up at the end that's true in the cafe

because they're both like just hyper they love love school they love memories they're like remember that time that blah blah blah and they're like wow i love having a memory which he was kind of a creep but i was like i don't hate that end game because she was like not a creep but they're definitely both weirdos yeah they're both always supportive of like it may be the coupling that ultimately makes the most sense and it's just like they were the ones who like i mean you just couldn't leave the movie without having an interracial couple they were like we do it too and maybe that was the start of all of them in in teen movies maybe it was melissa joan hard and maybe that's the start of all of them in teen movies. Maybe it was Melissa Joan Harden. Maybe that's what it was.

I kind of forgot that I did. I watched this movie twice and I totally forgot. Also, like, if you blink, you miss it. Yeah. I mean, it's like they're not. Yeah. I think that it's like the amount of real estate. And it's like, I think Seth Green does great with what he's given.

But it's like. He does, though. It's not going. I mean, if it was going somewhere, I don I mean we'll never know we'll never know if that was ever going to go somewhere because it's just like this movie for all the things I like about it it's like not not only not built to have that conversation but has no interest in any meaningful commentary well because the whole movie hinges on tropes and stereotypes and clicks of high school students you know you got the jock kids you've got the nerds you've got the popular girls and

none of that is particularly challenged i would say like preston he like doesn't really fit into a group but other than that because he's not like unpopular he's just not he's just he's just kind of coasting forgettable yeah that's my issue with him is he is just like he is i feel like he's the stereotype of like teenage everyman like he's just there i mean right it's not ethan embry's fault but it's just like he's just there. He's just there. And then, again, stereotypes about jocks are like put there and not questioned or challenged. You know, they're meatheads. They're bullies.

They don't have any interest outside of sports and sex. But again, you get like a little like glimpse into like maybe this is going somewhere. And it's super over the top. I'm not saying it's necessarily like super well done, but in those moments where it's like the jock and the nerd are hanging out together and they're having this like real kind of like intense conversation. And you're like, Oh,

this is kind of cool where it's like, they're kind of attempting to reconcile. He's trying to drunkenly acknowledge that he's been horrible to william and like they're having a conversation that you're like oh this like moments like that i'm like oh i wouldn't have expected that in this movie and i wasn't even really upset by how that resets at the end that felt unfortunately kind of true to life of like oh that was just one time and like technically Mike Dexter did do him a kindness by not endangering his scholarship and like making sure he didn't get in trouble and taking the fall for him and like

that's a really kind thing to have done and then when they see each other the next time the dynamic is reset mike dexter doesn't and that felt like unfortunately like i i didn't hate that beat because it felt more realistic than mike dexter being like wait you guys like that's not who he is we're friends yeah i bought it yeah i definitely bought it the thing that i thought was really cruel was like learning what happens to mike dexter after that that felt like the movie being like he deserves this this like very again it's like it felt like there was that whole sequence where it felt like the jock nerd stereotypes were being challenged but where where we leave both of those characters are both very in line with what those stereotypes are where he grows up to like you know he's a cool

nerd now and he is a supermodel girlfriend meanwhile this guy like it's all of these prescriptive like his life didn't turn out as well yeah he peaked in high school the way right and that's what i was gonna say yeah you would think that he would like high school was all that they had and i think that goes to like the writers too you can always tell how a writer feels or felt about somebody in high school you know what i mean like so you can't tell me that these people aren't sort of either writing jennifer love hewitt's character in a way of like oh i wish i wasn't Amanda Beckett and then writing what happens to Mike in a way of like somebody that really fucked them over that probably made it and whatever made it

sense means to them but in in this movie that I'm writing like they lose yeah you lose you know you can always tell that in movies and what I was gonna say about the whole like mike and um the nerdy guy situation was re-watching like honestly a few years later this time i remembered it i was like oh that happens is all of the like queer shit that was just that is bad like because when they the pictures were supposed to be him getting caught out not just like in a kinky thing but like with a guy is the thing that is so bad and then like kenny's friends they dropped the f-bomb twice in 10 minutes into the movie they call kenny one when they're in the store and i think again at the party when they're like eating chips

so yeah that kind of stuff and then i saw claire duvall and i was like wait we all know who she is like like it's so i think this was one of the first movies where i like couldn't really pick up on anything that i was like queer queer coded I think the only thing I reacted to was when the girlfriends were dancing together. When I was younger, I was like, hmm, wait a minute. That looks fun. Like, you know what I mean?

Where it's the whole girls trying to get attention from the guys sort of thing. But that was the only sort of, because I always like think and look back to like, is there any queerness in these movies that I was like attached to but this one i kind of was like no not really not really which is wild because this is the team that goes on to make josie and the pussycats which is so wild to me they're just they're just warming up hello caitlin from the future jumping in here with a little editing note so So in the original episode that we released,

we have a discussion right here about Denise based on me misunderstanding and mishearing a line of dialogue in the movie. Some listeners pointed out this goof of mine, and we just decided to cut that part of the conversation from the episode because it's based on something that's not at all canon to the movie. And it's based on me not hearing dialogue very well. So we didn't want to mislead listeners. So, you know, we just thought it best to remove that part of the conversation. But it did bring us back to the topic of the denise character so we'll just jump back in where that conversation picks back up so back to the episode but it just i mean i think it just at my core pains me i've been in in the same way where anytime you see a cool girl who deserves the best end up with the Kenny

Fishers of the world it's just like it really and I feel like the movie is at least a little more self-aware about that because it references the fact that like they're not gonna stay together I hope forever where they're like they broke up they got back together so it's like it seems like it's a summer before college kind of thing situation yeah but it's still it hurts to see a girl like Denise Fleming who just really has everything going for her quite literally like truly well also like it feels to me like the movie is kind of setting up some arc for her where she goes to the party that she's reluctant to go to. You see her just kind of like walking around by herself. She retreats into herself the way that, you know, many introverted people do.

She has a hard time, you know, striking up conversations. And so I'm hoping, because I didn't totally remember how the different events of this story played out as I was prepping for this episode. I was like, like oh hopefully like she meets a friend it would be nice if she had a female friend who she could connect to and it stinks because I do like how the structure of this movie allows for like b and c plot like it feels like in a way just kind of like a really long tv episode because like what's going on with Denise and Kenny is just like an episode of something. Yes.

It's just a bottle episode happening in the middle of this larger narrative. And I like that, but I just don't like the stories that they're choosing to plug in there. Because even if we're talking about like, say anything, a movie that I'm not like over the mood about, but we talked about it recently. And I think that like its influences are really clearly felt in this movie but like the the friendship between lloyd dobler and his best friend cory is like we we talked about i mean it's weird to the extent that like his like best friend is just like it seems like her whole thing is talking about how much how awesome lloyd dobler is but it's you get a lot of moments with them where it's like this is a very warm friendship that is platonic and like you never see that in teen movies and theoretically that's what we're getting with Preston and Denise but we don't actually see

them together very much and I feel like that was another thing with Denise that just goes underexplored where you it sucks because i think the two actors have really good chemistry and you can it feels like a real high school friendship but they're separated for so long in these like romantic entanglements that it are not i'm bored by one kind of grossed out by the other yeah and it's like i really do wish we had and also what's his uh ethan embry's character like for the if you really look at watch the movie he's also not in it like that like his story is not super focused i feel like they thought like they wrote it in a way where they were just like oh you know that he's trying to do this thing so right we don't really have to like fully focus on him and we know it's gonna happen and it's going to happen so we don't have to really

tell you all that but i do think that you're right jamie their friendship was like he knows the ins and outs of who she is like she didn't why she didn't really want to go she knew about this fucking letter he's been writing and then like we don't get to see them really interact other than something that's a little bit like angry because she don't want to be there she's dragged there and all that ditches her and he ditches her so like immediately and she doesn't even get the opportunity to like which would feel in step with her character be like fuck you yeah i didn't want to be here and then you bailed on me to go talk to someone who doesn't know you exist fuck you like no yeah and i don't think that't think in, like, newer teen films either that we really, like, I mean, there are more, like, platonic friendships between, like, people of, like, the opposite gender and stuff like that. But it's always, I still feel like it gets still very, like, slapsticky the whole like i'm straight and this is my queer

best friend and that is why we are platonic not just because we are just fucking friends you know what i mean it's always something else like there's another reason why of course they wouldn't be dating of course they're just friends so yeah it's really frustrating and then in and then in the other corner we have Preston and Amanda and I I don't know I so we've sort of touched on this a little bit already where I like don't dislike Amanda as a character again we get more from her than I was expecting it just the plot ultimately I think kind of bails on her because I thought that in the scene before it turns into cousin incest but the scene where she's like explaining for like I you know wasn't a popular

girl in middle school it wasn't until I moved to this school and like was sort of like selected quote-unquote to be a popular girl and I don't want to end this relationship because I don't know how to define myself outside of it like it was pretty like I was like into that I like that I mean you could argue in comparison to the other popular girls she's very not like other girl types because the other women are really like bimbo stereotyped and they are very vapid just yeah turn on each other uh if male attention is on the table and so i found that frustrating although it is subversive that one of the popular girls has seen the movie 12 monkeys and can speak to it like it's true i she has it in her life let her speak i don't hate amanda i do hate that she's like i always like i said i always was like she was the one where i was like oh i want to be her you

know and i think i hate it the only thing i hated now but i probably really wanted that she was like hot but secret smart you know what i'm saying like she secretly is like aware of literally everything that's going on which we get in this monologue that she does where she's like hyper aware but she couldn't because like you said she didn't have her own she was not ready to be who she was on her own so that was one of the only things i really was like after re-watching being like we made her like stupid for no reason or not stupid but just being like i'm just pretty and that's it like airy because it was very clear that she was aware of her popularity but like of a bunch of other things but she never put it out there because she was like this is not what these people care about

and i need to keep being this person while in high school anyway so yeah right and then that gave her an identity crisis and she's like i don't know who i am if i'm not dating Mike. But then that to me sets up an arc where she's going to then discover something about herself. Right. And not just jump into another relationship. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

With a guy that's kind of worse than Mike. Because this guy, like, I read. Bad in different ways. At very least a lateral move. Yeah. It's just, that's what I found frustrating is like in, because she is very clearly typed, not like other girls. I wouldn't say that's a fault of the Amanda character as much as how the other girls are

written. It does feel very regressive to be like, only one girl can be hot and nice and can read and you're like it's it's actually most of them not all of them you know but it is a few many many of them uh but but in any case as far as like what amanda's character i like most of what she says but then what she does is often in direct opposition to it i really liked that speech of yeah like how to like the identity crisis but then what happens after that she's assaulted by her cousin it's this weird horrible 90s joke and then she finds this letter i understand why you would be charmed by whatever the fuck is in that letter but but then it just like, it's always in contradiction because I really like her speech shouting down Preston

like we were talking about where she was just like, you don't know me. We see her receive a lot of male attention she doesn't want. She has to like be literally physically pushing people away from her. The outburst makes total sense. And she's right. Preston doesn't know her. No idea.

And that doesn't change. It's not like all of a sudden they like, I don't know. I don't know if you if these characters absolutely have to end up together. I think there has to be some sort of like time passes or they have like a long talk or like they can't not talk. Because it was literally the next day. It was the next day. Not even day. Like it was like the next day it was the next day not even day like it was like the party ended probably like what 12 hours later yeah and then she shows up with her angel shirt on

and like hey let's be the guy you know me now it's just like there needed to be some time passing but at that point we're already like what 80 something minutes into the movie. So they were like, we gotta wrap this up. Like, yeah. So it's like, I like everything she says, but it doesn't match up with what she does. And she's still just like tossed from one man who doesn't understand her and wants to define her based on what he's projecting at her to a guy that's going to do the same thing in a new and interesting way. In a new way, yeah. And we also don't know what her dreams are which was so crazy because her high school quote too was um first of all it was jewel which was very aligned with me and i was kind of middle school because pieces of you i was like i wore that song out as though I was previously an unhoused Alaskan person.

Like I ain't like, but they made her so, I mean, I don't know, but it was something about her using Jewel as her like quote of being like, I don't know who I am. It was always something more to who she is, but we don't get to ever figure out what that is we learn zero things about her because like it says like her future plans colon undecided but that doesn't mean she still can't have interests or like avenues she might pursue but instead we just know nothing about her nothing about her and i think that that like would really help

the conflict that the movie is always sort of like restoking and abandoning about like her kind of crisis of self it's like well what okay you don't want to be mrs popular what do you want to be or like what parts of yourself did you have to suppress to be in this relationship successfully and that's that's maybe an in for Preston of like, you know, and it would be the most hokey teen movie thing ever, which is like, you know, I just really love reading Kurt Vonnegut. You know, and it's just like, it's not that complicated. Like, it's like, give them something.

But it's like, they don't, there's nothing keeping these two together, except that she knows that he is infatuated with her. But we were just told that she's kind of put off and disgusted by that. Yeah. Because that's not based on who she is. It's just kind of a mess. Yeah. And we don't know anything about her ever.

And he doesn't know anything about her. Her friends don't really know anything about her. Mike never really knew anything about her. So it was kind of this setup of being like, we're going to learn some shit about her her friends don't really know anything about her mike never really knew anything about her so it was kind of this setup of being like we're gonna learn some shit about her right like and then you're right we get that monologue but then we get ultimately nothing but i don't know i think maybe i wanted to like i think i was so attached to her because this is gonna sound a little hokey myself but i was very misunderstood and I was like oh she and I and ultimately she is misunderstood right whether it's like teen drama situation or not she just is and I think she was the first teen girl character that I had seen in a movie that was all the way

throughout like she was just misunderstood she didn't really have any like growth or change or like come into the person she would like disturb her behavior katie holmes like she fucking figured her shit out by the end of the movie all these movies even jennifer love hewitt and i know what you did last summer which i think also came out that year same year same year yeah she ultimately figures out who she like she comes into herself and i think this character did it and at the time like i wasn't so it was a very clear-cut case of like yes i'm gay but i don't want to kiss her this one girl in this movie i just want to like be her you know it was crazy it's i don't know i mean and it's i i wouldn't say that i mean i think we've covered a lot of movies kind of like this recently i wouldn't say

that she's like significantly less written than other characters which is sad and the bar is low something we're always reminded of and i also think it's like that's kind of what tends to happen in a movie with 5 000 characters like that's just kind of like what happens in an ensemble comedy but it's if we're what we are told about her is underdeveloped and not really paid off in like how she acts but i like but it sucks because i like i do like her yeah i like her i like her i like denise and neither of them are given that much characterization beyond the very surface level thing. And meanwhile, I feel like we know multiple things about each of the major male characters.

Yes, we do. And that same characterization isn't lent to the only two girls who have major roles in the movie. So yeah. Pee pee poo poo. Also pee pee poo poo are. Please. I've got some more pee pee poo poo.

Okay. We've touched on a few of these already, but just the way that like the teens talk to each other and treat each other. It's stuff that's very common for this era both in like real life because you know i was i was a little younger than these kids were in 1998 but i remember the stuff that people were saying to each other and how they were treating each other very common for the era but as we were saying earlier the movie just doesn't want to challenge any of that behavior it's more just like presenting it as a normal part of late 90s high school culture the way that you know several characters body shame each other say

ableist things to each other call each other homophobic slurs the nerds like revenge plan against the jocks is like homophobic revenge porn that one was yeah that was the most i think i just like i really detest a revenge of the nerd scenario it they age so unbelievably poorly because now they're billionaires and ruining the world i'm like i'm not i'm simply not rooting for him even like my first watching like when i first watched these this movie i kind of probably fast for after the first or second watch i probably fast forward past a lot of their plot and that was one movie too that was one like range of movies that i never really touched i only needed one was like revenge of the nerds and there's so many of them that was one movie too that was one like range of movies that i never really touched

i only needed one was like revenge of the nerds and there's so many of them that was one because there was a time i was obsessed with like an 80s comedy teen comedy i saw one of those and i was like this is enough like this is they're all the same they are all the same they always involve something like it's either a deeply homophobic or misogynist revenge plan that involves a gadget. And you're just like, this fucking sucks. And it also like sucks for like actual nerds. Like it's not fair to actual nerds because it makes them out to be like villains. And it's like, no, you can just watch Star Trek.

Like it's truly all good it's totally fine yeah yeah the way those movies characterize nerds is characterizing them as being as toxic as the jocks just like in a different way and again it's just putting people into boxes and you know all that stuff a few other of these pee pee poo poo things is um there's a foreign exchange student oh my god and a bunch of jokes are made at the expense of someone who doesn't speak english as their first language like some of the kids are teaching him phrases that like they're like yeah just say this to people and one of them is like would you like to touch my penis and then he says that to preston and preston's like yuck and you're like yeah that

is a gross thing to say to someone but it's all you know like it's all you know it's the same old bullshit it's the same thing also there's the kid who steals stuff and that favorite character for some reason i don't know i unfortunately i do have to say I was this kid at parties I once went to an MIT frat party my freshman year of college and I got in big trouble because what the one of the boys that lived on my floor his brother was in the frat and so we got like the plug we got to go and I drank a ton of vodka and stole two pool balls and just I was like I'm not gonna steal them all I'm just gonna make it unusable I was just like feeling really diabolical and then I was somehow it was traced back to me shockingly I probably wasn't that slick yeah I felt connected to the kid that goes to a rich

person party and steals things just takes things yeah fair yeah i mean we all should be stealing from the rich but i feel like what's happening here in this movie is like a joke being made of kleptomania or like the media's interpretation of that which is like you know a real condition certainly a real thing i guess i was just interpreting it more as like i'm at a party at a rich guy's house no because you see him like steal from the convenience store you see him steal from the diner he takes the gumball machine yeah he steals a cop car which also we should be stealing from cops as well i just didn't like i think that that character i'm sorry i i appreciate like i i don't want to make light of kleptomania and also i'm like

this kid's generally doing good praxis by me i don't see you know see the problem to me he like was just like very background but that guy his name is chris owen he's from Royal Oak so he's from a city in Michigan that's like five minutes after Detroit and um he's also like just been a weirdo in so many movies he's an American Pie like he's all he's just the Shermanator kid oh god an American Pie I'm pretty sure he like keeps pretending that he's the Terminator i feel like he's is he also the kid in a different teen movie where there's something about pubes on pizza i think this is why does that sound familiar she's all that oh yeah he's like the kid who has to eat pubes on or it's his pubes that get put on the pizza or something he that's him i've mercifully wiped this from my memory because that came up

she's all that came i gotta watch she's all that again tonight anyway that's what that's happening for so but yeah so i kind of just was like this guy is just background to me and i think like it was supposed to be like a kitschy teen thing but yeah yeah yeah for sure a few other they're not really cameos because these people weren't famous yet but it's like people who would we would go into it on to recognize um you see melissa joan hart she has one of the bigger roles of these like minor characters i think she's killing it yeah you've got clay duval you've got amber benson aka tara from buffy oh really see i didn't watch buffy i didn't know she she's there uh selma blair has a tiny little appearance yes selma blair jason siegel does and then breckenmeyer

and donald fazan are in a band together and i think that they also recruit seth green and then form du jour from josie and the pussycats oh that's so cool i'm sure i'm missing people but there's also um mine that i pulled because this movie is stacked right this movie is wildly leslie grossman who i fucking love so she's the girl that the original girl that seth green is going to hook up with uh-huh she's the one who's talking to her friend. And Leslie Grossman is, did you watch The Good Place? A little bit. Yes. She's the main character's mom.

She's also in Popular from the 90s, which is one of my favorite shows from the 90s. It's popular. And Sarah Rue is in this too, who was also in Popular. She's the sheep girl who's like, you're all sheep. There's Jamie Presley, Selma Blair. Yeah. oh leslie grossman was also an american horror story maybe you know from that but she is so good but my favorite part of the little cameos and stuff is just that i think did you all remember popular or watch popular or ever heard of popular to me it feels like a fever dream but i know it's real because i wikipedia tells me so um but sarah rue and leslie grossman are in this show called popular

and it's like two sisters who parent their well their parents get married so they become step sisters one's popular one's not it's just so it's so good and i suggested everyone fucking like try to get your hands on popular if you can but salma blair yeah she's in it and then cruel intentions comes out the next year so yeah this is like she's on she's on the cusp she is on it yeah this is just a deeply profoundly 90s goofy head to toe for good reasons and bad yeah uh does anyone have anything else they want to talk about i don't oh yeah the only other thing that i have is that the song that um amanda walks into like sneaker pimps six underground has always been one of my favorite songs and it's because of this movie and i've always loved that song and i

like had a little trivia thing where i was able to name that song and people were like why do you know that song and I was like can't hardly wait and it was like one of the best experiences in my life like no way all that rock I like did it yeah it was so cool I was like yeah this is secret and everyone was like all right I was like yeah I stayed in my room a lot when I was a kid so but I love that that when the indoor kid uh when you have like an indoor kid jump out it's just it's really it's great there's so few we get so few opportunities it's great to feel seen yeah uh yeah I wanted to yeah the the the double smash mouth you're not like walking on the sun yeah but what about walking on the sun twice? And I was like, that is an interesting question.

It's tricky. Busta Rhymes, Blink-182, Third Eye Blind, Missy Elliott. It's just like, it feels good. It feels good. Anyway, does this movie pass the Bechdel test? I don't think so. I would say no. I think the popular girls talk to Amandaanda about gwyneth paltrow but the context is still about mike dexter and also we don't really know those girls names they're labeled

as like girlfriend number one girlfriend number two etc um and then like denise doesn't really talk to any other women there's a few women who approach her or there's like a girl who approaches her um but again we don't know these characters names and the conversations are not that narratively important so i would say yeah spiritually no to passing the bechdel test yeah i think it's like spiritually and possibly literally as well yeah because if it does pass it's nothing of importance there's no meaningful uh relationships between women which which not for nothing does echo a lot of the issues we had with say anything where it's like right andy and still i think say anything did a better job of like diane and cory at least talk do they talk about lloyd dabler yes but do they talk yes yes it's like women don't

really talk to each other in this movie. It's kind of interesting. However, it is co-written and co-directed by a woman, Deborah Kaplan. And so, you know, I want to be sure that that never happens. And also two women producers are leading the top line of this. Jenno Topping, which is kind of an incredible name uh as well as betty thomas so it's not as if there's not women involved in the production there's quite a few women involved in the production however very very white production on the crew side certainly yeah so let's put this movie to the test of a real of a proper metric of a generation the nipple scale

zero to five nipples where we rate the movie examining it through an intersectional feminist lens i feel like i can only give this like i think one nipple is even sort of being generous yeah it is a fun enjoyable movie but it's got a whole slew of problems just you know presenting teens being horrible to each other and like screaming homophobic slurs constantly without anyone batting an eye the two main female characters are both i would say pretty underdeveloped and their storylines revolve around some romance with a man and the again the kenny fisher and his just whole thing and the centering of white characters in general all of that stuff also seth green's character um pees and then doesn't wash his hands so oh no that's realism i mean the teenage the hygiene of teenage boys is disgusting certainly horrible i do appreciate any teen movie that

doesn't end in prom i appreciate that there's a character who's a sex worker and she's not shamed for her job. No, she's a literal angel. She's an angel. Yes, but there's a whole slew of other problems but there are some kind of minor subversions here and there but not enough to

make it feel... A lot of the beginnings, I feel like we talk about this sometimes where it starts to subvert something and then kind of chickens out and goes back to what you expect would happen yeah so i'll go one nipple actually and i'll give the nipple to the movie josie and the pussycats i'm gonna go one nipple as well yeah i think that there are moments in this movie that creep up towards saying something i don't know it's so of its time where my i i understand why there's a lot of nostalgia for this movie there's so many like extremely 90s things about it but i'm okay with leaving it in 1998 i don't think i'll be really returning to it i have no attachment to it

a double smash mouth drop why i could just go watch Shrek, you know, if I wanted to hear the same Smash Mouth song twice, I could go watch Shrek 1. But I don't know. I think that there is certainly stuff to like about this movie. I like Amanda. I wish that there was more coherence with her storyline. I think that there and I like Denise and I wish that there was more coherence with her storyline. think that they're and I like Denise and I wish that there was more coherence with her storyline there's a lot of interesting characters in this movie that I wish were talking to each other but they're always talking to a person that I I'm not very interested in yeah and that's a shame uh yeah ultimately very dated uh and I'm gonna give it one nipple and I'm gonna give it to Jenna Elfman's character because I really that I think

is the one actual like I could say like firmly that felt like a subversive scene to show a sex worker who has a meaningful moment in the plot who is not shamed or blamed and moves the plot forward like that never happens and good for that scene one nipple yeah i think from the lens that we're examining it from outside of my and this happens with every movie i've ever bought on this podcast it's been like this movie in general to me eight nipples but from the lens that we are yeah the lens that we're examining it from, this absolutely gets like, I think, I want to say one and a half. And I think it's mainly because of Amanda Beckett's character, because that's what really made me love the movie so much anyway. And I really do think we were on the cusp of like really exploring her. But like you said they chickened out with her and yeah I think so my one nipple goes to

just like what Amanda could be and then the half goes to um her outfit because that's been one of the outfits of my and I had that outfit like a few years ago I did a little revamp on it but no way the outfit because um it's super cute and chill and simple but yeah so one and a half one and a half nipples but eight shelly nipples because it's incredible well of course there's the shelly scale and then there's the nipple scale there's this all yeah there's a whole thing going on. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining us again. This was, as always, another, welcome to the Three Timers Club. At five appearances, you get a jacket.

We've been lying for years. Someday. I'm so happy. I love it here. Come back anytime. Where can people check out your writing and follow you online, etc.? I am. So I'm mainly doing a lot of work on my sub stack.

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Yay! And that does it for us. I guess let's go to Union Station and board a bus to Boston. Let's see if we make it. Bye. Bye. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm.

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