Never Been Kissed: Neurodivergence & Predatory Relationships

Welcome to Popcorn Psychology, the podcast where we watch blockbuster movies and psychoanalyze them.
My name is Brittany Brownfield and I'm a child therapist and I'm joined by
Ben Stover, individual therapist, Hannah Espinoza, marriage and family therapists. We're
all licensed clinical professional counselors also known as therapists who practice out of Chicago.
Even though we are licensed mental health professionals, this podcast is purely for entertainment
purposes and to fulfill our love of dissecting pop culture and all forms. Please
remember that, even though we are all licensed therapists, we aren't your therapist.
If you are struggling with mental health symptoms, please find a local mental
health provider. Hello. We are here to rip apart a rom com for
our Valentine's Day special episode. Today we are talking about Never Ben Kissed Yea.
It is a nightmare, straight up. Yeah, turn off now if
you love this movie so much that it's gonna hurt your feelings the rest of
this episode, Yes, turn it off now, Yeah, because just do
it. A little bit about the movie is it's a movie about a reporter
getting their first undercover job as a student and then her and the teacher fall
in love question Mark. Well, he looks at her with deeply intellectual eyes.
The rumor mill at that school would be going crazy. Oh yeah,
for sure with those who's giving her. We're gonna talk a little bit about
Josie. We're gonna talk a little bit about Rob. We're going to talk
about whatever that relationship was that was between a teacher and the student. We're
gonna talk about which is this movie okay in nineteen ninety nine. Yeah,
so where should we get started. Let's talk about Joe Josie Grossy. Oh
boy, So Josie Grossy. We get introduced to her. She's twenty five,
she dresses like she's eighty five, at least at least. She's very
passive, and she's never been kissed. I would say, I know.
One thing we're talking about before we recorded is like what is her deal?
And we were talking a little bit about what seems most obvious about her to
start with, and she does seem to be someone who really obviously, really
struggles socially, given the conceit of the movie, Yeah, that she's someone
who does not seem to have had any romantic anything up until now. Correct
Correct, she has not, and she seems to have a profoundly story book
understanding of what love is, and she can go on these big speeches that
are quite obviously conglamortions of classic literature about what love is and what things are
supposed to feel. Like. Yeah, that that bitches neck deep in Jane
Austen novels. Oh, yeah, for sure, she's watching the classic Britain
BBC Mani series double vhs that yes, I owned, of Colin Firth as
mister Darcy because the other one didn't even exist, not yet. Yeah,
she's very romanticized. She seems to live in her own little world for sure,
absolutely m but seems content, That's what I was going to say.
She doesn't seem miserable though, Yeah, she seems maybe, Yeah, she
doesn't seem miserable. She truly seems like she's found the things that give her
joy and she does them, Like when she's so in the pillows and she
has like a hundred pillows on her bed and she just sews another one and
she seems so happy to put it in its little spot. Yeah, Like
it seems like she's found a niche that she fits in where people around her
do seem to accept her. Yeah, she's got like good friends at work,
Mollie Shannon and Octavia Spencer that she seems to really get along with them.
She Yeah, she seems content with the way that she spends her evenings
making her pillows. She found a job that fits her exact interest in like
niche Like she loves grammar and writing, and she found a job that does
that. Yeah she's Yeah, Coppy editing and the newspaper in ninety nine is
a big deal. Yeah, she's ambitious and she seems to be succeeding in
her ambition. Yeah. Yeah, she's other than the fact that, like
she's got an assistant who's a douchebag who treats her like garbage. Yeah,
and so she's really passive with him. She does seem to be someone who
seems to be feeling she's She presents like she thinks she's doing fine. Yeah.
She seems to like the way she dresses, even though it's horrible.
She likes her gaucho pants. She definitely does. She definitely does. Yeah,
she's and even when she gets offered or told commanded to take this job
to go and recover, she doesn't have like that stereotypical trauma response. I
feel like you have in movies like this where she's like they zoomerly hard on
her face, She's like, go back to high school. And because I
feel like in other movies that's when she would have like the trauma flashback to
being bullied and mistreated. She genuinely just seems excited to be given the opportunity
to shine at work and to possibly become like a reporter, and she only
seems unsure about it and insecure wants her brother points it out and discourage and
honestly, I think he's coming from a protective place obviously, but discourages her.
Yeah, he does. M Yeah, And I think him pointing out
to her of like, dude, this didn't go great, yeah for you
last time? Do you remember what high school was like, Josie. I
mean, here's the thing he's not wrong in like looking her dead in the
face and saying, girl, you couldn't pull off high school when you were
in high school. How are you going to pull off high school seven years
out of high school? Yeah? Like, I think he was trying to
be real with her, Yes, but it is interesting that she's not cognizant
of that until he brings it up that it might be a bad idea that
I'd be doing, or that like she's choosing to revisit a time in her
life that was really hard for her, That she's choosing to go back into
an environment that she just struggled it in so much. Well, I think
that's a part of what we were talking about before we started recording, which
is that her social skills are lacking, and that she's young. She seems
she's immature in a young She seems young. She seems so young and so
old simultaneous. The clothing and the haircut that they gave her, the hair
color, I mean that they gave her for the that low bun and that
dishwater hair. Yeah, she's so innocent. That's something I kept thinking,
like, and she seems to be very similar to the high school version of
herself. Not that it was like a big period of time in high school
in twenty five, yeah, but just like how she's so vulnerable and open
with how she feels. It made me nervous for her, like reading but
going back, Like that's what I mean when she feels very young in that
way, like she doesn't have the social nuances and savvy and protectiveness that we
all have as teenagers. We're just no awareness. Just no, she doesn't
have any awareness about maybe anything, I mean, not not socially. Yeah
she was, yeah, I guess specifically socially, specifically socially yeah yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, because she she got into she went to
Northwestern. All of us have had clients from Northwestern, and I'll tell you
a story about that. I think we've seen a few Josie types where they've
had high success at academics and struggled socially. Yeah. I actually got in.
My specialty in grad school was counseling gifted kids, and a big part
of that was almost like we only have so much intelligence in our brain,
and if you're really, really intellectually intelligent, it's almost like it sucks from
the other intelligences you can have. So one thing that we talked about a
lot in those classes was how actually the smarter you are a qwise, the
more likely you are to have a lot of social difficulties, to all have
a lot of emotional difficulties. It is like it eats the part of your
brain that can do those other things. Almost. Yeah, And I think
I've seen that and a lot of people. I think there's always a balance
somewhere. There's only so many points we get to make up our little map,
yeah, where our skill sets lie in our brain. And with Josie,
I think you see that she is very intellectually gifted and very socially clueless.
Maybe that's the best word for her descriptures. Like when she reads that
poem in her English class in high school and it's just dead staring at the
most popular boy in school as and it's so obvious that it's that's about him,
and she's like almost crying, and she thinks she's like winning him over.
And later when they think that he's gonna ask her to prom the prank,
her friend tells her and she's like the poem worked, And I was
like, girl, you have got to be kidding me. Like I just
kept thinking she has no social risk awareness, protectiveness, that she's walking into
a trap, but also that she's no awareness of almost like the social hierarchy
of school, how class the class system of school works clicks, like all
all of that social intelligence that comes with that age, right that we all
start to learn. You start to figure out who your tribe is and who
they aren't. And she seems to be kind of stuck in that idea of
like, well, if I like it a lot and just perform it really
well, then they'll understand and like it as much as I do and also
therefore like me, and it'll work. And that's a really common trait that
you see in gifted kids and also in perhaps the neuro atypical community, of
like, I like something a lot, and I want to talk about it
a lot so that other people will learn to If they just like it as
much as I do, then and I like it, then they'll like me
and I'll be cool. And you're like, that's not how that works well,
where you get really caught up in your special interest, right, and
you don't have a lot of social awareness that your special interest isn't someone else's
special interest. It also you. Something you just said to Ben sparked an
idea in me that if she is someone that is so deeply romantic and maybe
consumes a lot of romantic media, how yeah, I wonder if like she's
copying what she's also seen in movies. Yeah, of like I'm just gonna
have this big, like proclamation of love I mean ten things I hate about
you And that does work though, but there's but she's missing all the elements
she is, but just the idea of like I could definitely see her thinking,
well, I just watched I don't know any Jane Austeny kind of movie
and the the protagonist just like says this big speech and like a show of
love towards the person that gets so swept off their feet that they're like,
I'm finally seeing you for the first time, and I'm just going to write
this poem for Billy and I'm going to read an English class and it's all
gonna click, and I'm just like, oh. But also that very naive
idea that one thing will make you cool. Oh, the idea that things
can turn around like that, and also the idea that one that there's one
magical thing, that it is one magical thing, right right, because it's
not. Yeah, coolness almost is effectively, I don't give a fuck.
What do you think about me? I'm gonna be me. There's more to
it, Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. Absolutely just kind
of have it or don't. And I will say too, like now that
we've kind of put in the ether, she does feel like she could be
neurodivergent of some in some context. Yeah, I don't want to label her
anymore than that, but her like lack of social cues, lack of social
awareness, that lack of like understanding social hierarchies. When I've worked with people
who are Murner divergent, they can really struggle with understanding power too, that
that person has more social capital than me, or that person has more literal
capital than me, or power, so I have to adjust how I approach
them differently. This more comes out with authority figures when I work with teenagers
on the on the spectrum or her nerd evergent, like, well, if
my mom can yell at me, then I should be able to yell at
her yeah, or something like that, you know what I mean. If
my teacher can boss me around, I should be able to boss them around.
And really struggling also to like understand and accept that there are differences in
people's positions socially. And that might also be why later in the movie,
when she is undercover and she's falling in love with her teacher, why she
might not also understand how bizarre that is too, or how inappropriate that is.
I was thinking the exact same as that, Well, we like each
other, and what does it matter if he's a teacher and I'm a student
in this dynamic because we're just people and I'm an adult actually, but not
understanding all the nuances of that, right, that in the power of that
he sees you as a child, even though you see him is a man,
as like a woman seeing a man, he's seeing you as a man
seeing a child. Yeah, and that's not the same. Yeah, because
it's one way for you doesn't mean it's okay as soon as he gets that
missing piece of information that the parallels she must be drawing, and I mean
it subtext to the Shakespeare play Oh as you like it? Yeah, you
like him that she's Rosalind in a mask and you just go like, oh
my god, girl, oh no. And I think the other things that
she does that also make me think she's more maybe nerdivergent is the way that
she corrects everyone's grammar, that very literalness, very Amelia Badelia of you know,
when do you know who a million da is? Yeah? Yeah,
yeah, I do. Like I remember very specifically in this movie, when
John see Riley's character and Molly Shan's character like fighting in her office and they're
talking about sex, like making love. She's like something, they're not dating,
they're having sex. And it's like that is not the time to correct,
Like she's so pedantic, like now is not the time to correct a
miss speaking, or that she's not understanding that Molly is intentionally using euphemism right
to change the way that relationship is. It's like that stuff too, of
like also not understanding how annoying it is socially to correct people's grammar and gonna
get somebody fired. Like not only that, but like, dude, be
cool. Yeah, yeah, she's so literal all that stuff. It's and
here's the thing too, is I feel like what is what is great if
you are nerd divergent is she found a job that seems to encapsulate a special
interest, which is great. Absolutely, she found a job that she can't
be obsessive about grammar and writing and specificity and all that stuff. And even
and it makes me think about even the stories that she wants to write about
being undercover, how like they're just not like she wants like she comes to
him about the coleslaw and what's in the Coalslaw, like she doesn't have awareness
about that's not a sexy story. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And she
has to have some awareness because she's in the field, some awareness about what
they usually write in in there in the paper, right in expose as Yeah,
yeah, absolutely right, it's salacious. Yeah, nobody gives a fuck
about coleslaw. No. No, somebody's life is getting like wrecked because they're
doing something they're not supposed to and you're there to find it. Yeahah.
Or even just like the fact that they got scooped about the court, like
the place where all the kids go to act out to hang at the party,
and the fact that she's aware of the court, it doesn't occur to
her. Oh that's the kind of story they're looking for, right right,
yeah, right. And I will say, going back to what we were
talking about earlier, too, is I think also where she feels more nerdivergent
is a lot of people. Well, here's what I'll say is we have
a neurotypical centered world. Ye, right, And so she does feel like
someone who is having a decent time in life with her nerdivergent self. It's
just the world around her is not letting her be that way, or they're
the one calling attention to her, and how she doesn't fit in right like
we were saying, how she seems to be content, she seems to like
the way she dresses, she seems to like how she spends her time.
It's all the neurotypical people around her, like her brother who keeps saying that's
wrong. No, you're wrong. That's wrong to dress that way, it's
wrong to act like that, it's wrong to like those things. And I
will say something that has changed a lot for me in the past few years
when I work with nerdivergent clients is I'm trying to be aware of how much
I'm centering the neurotypical experience and I'm unintentionally othering them, And how it's more
just like two ways of experiencing the world. Yeah, and not necessarily one's
right and one's wrong. Yeah, And that you can be neurodivergent like the
way that Josie might be and that doesn't and have a life that maybe looks
different than than which aneotypical person, but you're not necessarily like living a bad
life. Like if Josie come in my office at the beginning of the movie,
Yeah, I would really want to explore with her, But do you
like what you're doing? If you like staying in on the weekends, and
if you like cross stitching pillows, and if you like your pants? Who
gives a show? Who gives it? You know what I mean? Like?
Why do you feel like you need to change? Right? And that's
one of the things that's in the criteria of all of our mental disorders is
is it causing distress? Yeah, it has to be causing distress. I
was going to say the same thing, Ben, It's a part of any
diagnosis, like the diagnosis only is qualified by that one thing. It has
to be causing you distress. And she does not seem distressed. Mm hmm.
She seems more distressed being the undercover reporter and having to have the story,
and she seems more more distressed there than she does anywhere else. But
I would say that stress feels normal because she is a copy editor, she's
not a reporter. They threw her into another undercover role, yeah, which
is bonkers, and then they pressure the shit out of her and then not
and they even pressure like the boss, her boss, John c Riley,
like you're both gonna get fired. So like the stress she feels is understandable
given that she's basically no direction. And also they didn't do anything other than
vet her that she's young, Like, they didn't do any vetting in terms
of like her charisma, social skills, her ability. She obviously doesn't dress
like she would fit in a high school. Yeah, like Molly Shannon looks
more visually prepared to fit into a high school aesthetic than Drew Barrymore's character.
Yes, like Drew Bremer's character also looks clueless in terms of like knowing how
to go in and be undercover as a high school student. Yeah, well
yeah, and looking at how things like that are normally done, where people
are given handlers and have somebody to check in with the outside of the life
that they're operating to stay grounded to their own identity, and a way to
do that. You know, this isn't, you know, like a deep
undercover thing or someone's going six months into gangland or whatever. But it's still
it's important to recognize that she was set up in a way that was not
okay. M hmm. I think she wanted to be a reporter. She'd
talk to him about it. She wants to be a reporter, and I
think they kind of mentioned how she's already risen up pretty quickly. Yeah,
in the ranks already. I mean she's twenty five and she has an assistant
that's pretty dope. Yeah yeah. And so I think they were kind of
saying, girl, you're too ambitious, like, chill out, you'll be
a porter. Eventually, you have to earn your stripes. Yeah, earn
your stripes. And then this this opportunity to just falls into her lap by
their maniac maniac boss, the maniac owner of the newspaper. Oh yeah,
well they were I think the way I saw it was that they were trying
to help. They had her on kind of on a different track, m
like the editor, the copy editor, like the you know, like the
in house people versus the field people. Yeah, it seemed like John cy
Rally's character was flip flopping on at first, going like, you're not really
for the field yet for the field, that's not really kind of your jam.
And they were creating a safe kind of spot for her to succeed in
and letting her succeed, And then as soon as it became his ass to
the fire, all of a sudden, it became fine for her. To
be in a position she was in no way prepared for. Yeah, yeah,
it does seem John c Riley's character does have her number as her supervisor
of like, girl, you're not going to be in the field until he
has to figure out how to help her be in the field. Yeah,
because it goes over his head, right, And I guess she does kind
of have a handler with the audio that a guy. He can't talk to
her though, because he yells in the van a lot. Yeah, yeah,
he's on communication. Like, for instance, if they had had REALLYEF
he was token nineties. Yeah, but like if they hadn't, if she
had an ear piece in when she was gonna eat that pomp brownie, that
would have been really good for her. Yeah, you know what I mean,
Like she needed someone with more social savvy to like be in her ear
like that tech guy, yeah, and be like, do not eat the
brownie. You were about to get shit faced. So that's probably like so
much being that brownie. Oh it was a huge piece of cake. Well,
just looking at like their faces, like, I don't think they intended
for her to eat the whole thing either, definitely, did. I mean
I think no, I think they were like, oh, shit, she
just ate a whole half of that. She'd ate the whole fucking piece of
cake. Yeah, and you know what's speaking of, like the her seeming
dramatically out of place, I don't think she ever seemed more out of place
than in that scene when you're how clear it was that she was not perceiving
any social norms whatsoever than in that club. I mean, she just can't
pick up on all social cues, Like the social cues in her are just
living in two different neighborhoods. Yeah. Yeah, and she does think,
which is also what's so sweet about her. But hurts is she does,
you know, Lottie DAWs into these situations so earnestly, like I'll just show
up with the feather boa because I think cool people where have oather BoA's.
I Needa got her that outfit? What I need a got her of that
outfit? Sure? Okay, yeah, but just the way that she uses
up on my spaces. But now that we're talking about this more too,
it also clicks more why because if she's twenty five in this high school scenario,
if anybody should be skied out by the teacher, it should be her
because she knows that he knows he thinks she's a teenager. Yeah, you
know what I mean, she should have more perception on that than like her
peers. Cause when Hannah and I were watching it, we were like,
why did we love this movie so much when we were young? This movie's
fucking nuts. And I was like, well, Hannah, when we were
teenagers and watch this movie. This was wish fulfillment. When you're a teenager
and there's the hot teacher at your school and your stupid teenage brain is like
just full of just wild ideas, chemicals and ideas, nor your frontal lobe
is locking in, you know what I mean. Like that's usually when people
have perception, better perception on like past relationships that had like power dynamics.
You know, when you're a teenager, you're supposed to kind of be an
idiot and be like, ooh, I think that maybe if I wore this
shirt tomorrow, mister Smith whatever, maybe he'll like think I'm cool. Like
you have those fantasies about like winning over the much older teacher, but when
you're older, that would your like I said, your frontal low blocks in
and you're like, oh, that's bananas that I thought that, and then
if they did, that's gross on their part, Like that would be taken
advantage of me. So the fact that she goes into this space knowing that
he thinks that she's a student and it doesn't bother her at all. Yeah,
I think also says a lot about her social awareness and intelligence. Yeah,
Like I said, going back to the not recognizing power dynamics, which
includes age, you know, thinking everyone's like her peer kind of and it's
just brutal. Yeah. Well, is there anything else you want to specifically
say about Josie, poor little Josie. No, not specifically. I think
we've covered her pretty well. It's makes sense why she's never been kissed,
it really does. She probably has a hard time relating to peers, you
know. Even you could say, like her only friends are work friends and
they're older than her. So actually we don't see her with any the only
friends out of work. The only friend that she has in the whole movie
is when they show her when she's young, when she's a high school student.
She has that one friend, Yeah, who's as gullible as she is.
Yeah. Fortunately, Yeah, just like but nobody who had enough social
wherewithal when like the no one to relay the words of Akbar to her and
tell her it's a trap if the most popular boy unexplainably wants to take you
to prom mm hmm. You know, and I'll say this, We're about
to talk about Rob anyway. Fuck Rob, Yeah, warning her about that
when he was like good luck tonight, when she's got that tint foil outfit
one mm hm, which is also not current for the time. If she
was in high school four years before, seven years before, it was like
early nineties, why she were in the eighties ass outfit? Yeah, really
anyway, But the fact that he was popular and therefore he probably was very
familiar with Billy and maybe even rolled around in similar groups with him, Yeah,
seems likely. The fact that he does not do any give her a
heads up. This dude is a like I'm worried for you. Let me
go out there with you, like vet the situation a little bit. Yeah,
fuck him for that. Fair anyway. So we will take a break
here and then we will come back and talk about mister Rob all right,
mister Rob our other Well, the sibling of Josie Yes who gave her that
nickname at school and effectively ruined her. Well, I mean, I fought
with my siblings at home, but I know ever brought anything from home to
school. Yeah, no, we ever, no, yeah, never ever.
So the fact that he did that just again, maybe their parents don't
have good social skills. I mean, I think that's there's like a lot
of movies we talk about here, we don't get a lot of background when
we were even racking our brains before we recorded about like are their parents dead?
Like where are their parents in this movie now? Because they're only twenty
three and twenty five. Yeah, I don't know if we all missed it,
but maybe their parents passed away and Rob lives in their house. Maybe
because they just both look so goddamn old. It just doesn't feel like it
matters what their parents are, the idea that they right that in this movie,
they're trying to make me believe that David Arquette could pass for a high
school student. I know he's twenty three supposedly in this movie, but you've
got to be kidding me. Yeah, oh by ninety nine, well he
was already like Mary did, probably he's already done Scream Scream three years before.
Yeah, where they were a stretch for high school students already mm hmm,
oh no, he was a well he was a cop, right,
yeah, he was a cop. He was already not a teenager in Scream
right years before he's married to Courtney Cox by this time, isn't he probably
yeah close to it? Yeah? Yeah. So when he pops up on
screen and I'm like, this guy's gonna go back to high school in this
movie, I'd be like, what is this twenty one jump Street? Like
you can try to you cop, I'd be like, you're a cop here?
High school? I feel like, get away from a nark? Did
you just refer to that blue gatorade? Is blue raspberry? Cop? What
are the youths up to? Guys? I'd be like, get away from
a Where are they selling those marijuana cigarette? Yeah? Those jazz cigarettes?
No? But I think what is interesting that they show in this movie is
that Josie is arguably the nerd in high school, right, like King King
of the Nerds pretty much, And she has I would argue, a pretty
successful adult life outside of the romantic aspect of it. Yeah, Like,
she has her own place, she's making probably a good amount of money at
twenty five. She had a really good degree, right, and then the
flip of it. Kind of the other side of her is Rob who was
wildly successful in high school. You could argue peaked in high school, and
now he is in this total downward you know, trajectory. Yeah, what
happened to him that he he got in, got hurt, got hurt out,
He got hurt, he started playing, got hurt. He got hurt
in his first year of uh trying to play college ball, which happens all
the time, all the time. Kids are always getting hurt playing sports.
Yeah, and so it seems like he has his own kind of his own
version of arrested development where he I'm curious if the job he's working now,
the Tiki place, Tiki post a Tiki themed. Also something about the nineties
where they just acted like we were all gonna have like themed everything. Yeah,
Like it can't just be a post office. It's tiki themed and not
even a post office, like a packing ship place, like a FedEx.
It's like the place is by by the box and the markers stationary the state
and like the bubble wrap right like the place by where you and I used
to live. Brittany and I, fun fact used to live right by where
this movie was filmed right by the apartment where Josie lived. Okay, yeah,
but I'm curious if he's had that job since high school or maybe that
was the job he got once he got injured and they were progressed. It
seems as though that is the job he had when he was a teenager,
because the girl that he's dating years old, she says, you don't want
to still be working at the tiki post, And I think, and it
makes me think that he very much just came back and started working at his
old, like high school job, yeah, because she says, that's the
job you have in high school. Rom that's not like a real job,
yeah, which is also a funny way of looking at things that you know,
the nineties taught us all of like, let's go ahead and look down
on jobs that are in any way not college jobs. Well that was back
when like, you get that college degree, maybe you're set for fucking life.
That was the That was the story. No better, that was the
story. Now my friend who drives a forklift is doing better than most of
my friends who got college degrees. And you know, like we we we
mixed up some details in the nineties to talk down on and stuff like that
of like no, no, no, no, you can care for family
just fine with all kinds of jobs. Yeah, but he's stunted. He's
living in their parents' house. Maybe he maybe they did pass away and he
inherited it. Maybe or maybe they both inherited. And Josie she seems like
the type would be like you can just live there, Rob, I have
my own apartment, you know, yeah, or they're just out of town.
I really feel like they're dead. I mean they're dead right in guys,
if they're dad, I feel like they're dead something. And either's gone.
And she's trying to encourage him to go back to like to enroll in
community college, the fictional Lakeshore Community College, which is actually a decent name
for a fake college in Chicago, and he just is disinterested. He is
in full like melancholic on we you know, I think very much. I
had to dream for my life, and now the dream is not a possibility,
and I don't know what to do with myself. Yeah, you know,
this wasn't the way it was supposed to go. Mm hmm. And
people do get stuck in that, just like ye see him did and him
do in this movie, Well, I need Josie to come in here,
and like, but did she yeah? And did he also with her approval?
Ah? Yeah. I think I think it's very common to see people
get stuck in some kind of version of themselves that they didn't get to either
actualize or grief, so that it creates a nested loop. I've talked about
those before, a little unclosed loop of personality function that didn't get to either
complete its function or age out things that we have done enough. You'll even
hear kids say like, oh, I don't watch Pepa Pig anymore, Daddy,
Peppa Pig is for babies, and the parentles that they're like, do
you know how much Pepa Pig shit I had to buy for you to play
with? And how many times we watched those clips ad nauseam and like that
for baby s dating like from Baby Booster Playhouse you have sitting in the other
room, crossed fifty dollars one year ago, Like it's for babies and then
they're done. Bet are you okay? Yeah? Like, if you look
to the left, you will see a Peppa Pig playhouse. I feel like
we're sinking into something for you, but it's also it lends to the point,
and yes, yeah, maybe perhaps we're recording in Ben's house, so
we are aware of the Peppa Pigs, we are aware of the things are
in my sightline, including Big Playhouse. Yeah all right, so, but
also update, Eva no longer likes Peppa Pig. Yeah, everybody listening who's
been tracking Ava, she does not like Peppa Peg anymore. She stops sending
us Peppa Pig stuff, right, doesn't want it. We're on the trolls
and barbies now, oh dope. But anyway, the uh yeah, no,
that that loop that gets stuck. Like sometimes we get in kind of
arrested development loop with something where you keep thinking it anyone cares, Like every
A lot of people talk about stories of their life, but there's a difference
between not moving beyond it. I'm a former high school athlete, and like
that factors into part of who I am, but it doesn't doesn't define me.
Yeah, I don't think anyone needs to care what academic or athletic successes
or failures I had when I was sixteen. It doesn't matter. It can
be part of stories or context of things, but it's not It's not such
a small part of our life right as a lifetime. Yeah, as a
as a human it is. But all these movies like that we all watch
and consume and they make it feel like it's supposed to be so much more,
and they either make it or don't. Then yeah, I mean,
and I think this is a common trope, right of the person who peaks
in high school or they peak in college, and then they just become a
quote unquote loser because they don't know how to evolve and they're stuck in their
past, right, and then because there is no past to complete the loop
and let it carry out as normal function. Like for athletes that get injured,
they had invested so very much of their identity and activities and social network,
all their social capital, everything is on this identity of being this ballplayer.
And I don't think we do a very good job as a society of
educating youth athletes. That there are thirty two professional football teams, there's thirty
professional baseball teams. There's twenty five guys that make the baseball teams. M
twenty five by thirty. That's not a lot. And I don't think I
was it clicked in my head until way too late, and to realize,
like, you know, how many D one colleges have games on Saturday full
of kids that want nothing more than to be playing in two or three years
on Sundays, and how very few ever do get to that point and then
forget. You see guys like Kim like that are so stuck like that those
loops, whatever they are, and whenever they happen, can become really difficult
to get past. So it makes me think about too, how we do,
especially back then, I think, do such a disservice to kids when
we also over identify them with one trade, Like I wouldn't be shocked if
in their family, Josie's the smart one and Robs the athlete. Oh and
then when you do that to a kid unintentioned or intentionally, when something happens
where they get robbed, no pun intention, of the trait that they over
identify with, they will have an existential spiral, sometimes as young as teenagers.
Absolutely, and then they get stuck. Because I'll tell you this,
I wouldn't be shocked if rob thought he was really dumb, like he seems
like he feels insecure about his intelligence, and so even like attending something like
a community college would feel really vulnerable to him, perhaps, like all I
could be was an athlete back got room anything else. The best I can
do now is the teaky place. And what also you would think would be
a protective factor, but it's kind of probably maybe like an enabling factor is
that he has his housing taken care of, Like it's probably the house is
probably paid off, you know, and so he probably only has to pay
for his food and the bills, you know what I mean that, So
it allows him to stay stuckish. Yeah, like he's the kind of guy
that would become manager of the tiki post. Yeah, maybe the way that
he became safe again, but that stands a significant danger of being limited to
that milieu and that he may shy away from. But I had this other
identity taken from me, So I'm just gonna stay here where I'm safe.
Yeah, he hasn't even I don't think he's talking about finding a way to
get into some of the local minor league tryouts, get in front of scouts.
But he's so stuck in the ways that he would have done that as
a younger person that he's not thinking about like the amateur tryouts for adults that
most certainly exist, Yeah, or even what he ends up doing at the
end of this movie, which is you could become a coach, you become
a physit teacher, you know what I mean, Like there is other things
he can do with this skill, Yeah, that he's not even allowing himself
to explore because it's not going to be at the caliber of his ideal when
he was younger in his dream. So he's just it's very all or nothing.
If I can't do it exactly how I was going to do it when
I was eighteen, then I don't want to do it at all, and
you can't make me well. And you see this in many ways. I've
seen people do this who wanted to join the military that for some reason couldn't,
like little Miss Sunshine. Yeah, kind of like that where they latch
into that like we unaffectionately call them play army asshole culture, Like the dudes
who like have to have like what the military would have, like they have
to have like like they get they get Soldiers of Fortune magazine. Yes,
yes, I was brought up in a military household with guns, but like
not they become a sursday preppers slash informal militia members that yeah, that kind
of thing where like they would have never served, but they be like they
have to, like because they didn't get this loop closed of like getting to
do the thing and then having it changed to a mature view on it.
Like people who have served are like, yeah, bro, you know,
the bullets come back at you and you're not fantasy, Like it's not play.
It's not playing. We're not LARPing. We're not LARPing. It's not
a game. Yeah, Like explosions come at you too, Like it's terrifying,
and I wouldn't go back ever, m if you like, unless I
had to. Yeah, And then you see the people that like kind of
they couldn't do it, so they they spend a lot of their an inordinate
amount of their time and resources, kind of like we use the criteria for
substance abuse acquiring and getting stuck in and buying things, and that doesn't just
have to be for guns or playing army guys or like whatever. It can
be anything. But people get stuck in these loops and then I mean it's
the classic thing too, if people who never stop talking about college, people
who never stop talking about high school, like Uncle Rico and Napoleon dynamite,
who's like, watch me, who's videotaping himself do six spirals for who?
And for what? Right? You know? And people are totally going to
go on tour. Yeah, And I think, what's so sad about it?
Not even sad from like a mean pathetic sense, but sad in like
a genuine empathy sense, is you're not enjoying the life that you're living because,
like you were saying, Ben, your brain is so stuck in the
past and it's crippling you like you and and though this is obviously the movie
version of it, Rob is so stuck in this all or nothing thinking that
he really thinks his only other option is to try to do a redo where
he will convince people. I don't know, is he gotten fake papers drawn
up? Does he have a fake birth certificate? Remember he makes himself as
a post but like he's not thinking about if someone finds us out, like
the level of fraud, like if he did get draft, like if he
did get picked for like a height like a college or something like that.
Like there's an expiration date to this scam you're pulling off, bro, and
a routine crippling anxiety that will run underneath all whatever success you might get that
could be ripped up from under you at any moment, and it does.
Yeah and it does, oh it does, it will go poorly. The
whole high school team would get disqualified mmmmm yeah for having a kid that that's
that is that old on the thing. They'd be like fine or like have
to sit out the whole season, Like that's a major thing. So scandalous.
I mean if it was proven that it was an adult that did it
and like he just duped them, like but that the win would still be
vacated. Yeah, he would ruin. He would ruin all those kids' chances,
yeahah m to succeed. Just how tunnel vision he is and how like
reckless and impulsive that is absolutely because he just decides to do it. Yeah
overnight almost, Yeah, definitely overnight. I see what Josie's doing, and
he he you can see him also trying to convince himself that he's doing something
noble as well, Like I'm helping my sister out. I'm going to go
and I'm gonna help her be popular. And if I just happen to be
able to get like attention from scouts, like that's just like icing on the
cake. Like the way he's rationalizing this to himself. Oh yeah, like
I want to play in that, But coach, you think I can play
in the game. Of course, my skill, said as a grown man,
is massively dwarfing what these sixteen year olds are capable of doing. Like
yeah, no kidding. Yeah. And also this movie takes place over two
months. Yeah, so this is more movie magic. But the idea that
he thinks he can just show up, like for a few weeks, raising
the ranks, rise in the ranks of this baseball team as a senior,
I'm assuming and take over from another senior. You know what I mean,
It takes Mollis's position. Oh no, that's real. Oh well, anyway,
but just how I don't know, thoughtless the whole situation is. I
mean, I guess where I can throw him a bone? As he's twenty
three, his frontal lobe is not fully developed, even though he doesn't look
twenty three. I think the other thing that's not believable, that's what we're
kind of talking about a little bit, is also the fact that South Glend
South is where they both went to high school at is it? Yes,
I'm going I'd go back and forth on that. I don't know if that's
where they went high school. I'm pretty sure it's where they went to high
school. I'm with you. He seemed oddly familiar with it, but they
didn't seem to confirm or deny. I don't think they ever yeah, confirm
or deny. But I know the point you're gonna make. Go ahead,
Hannah. So the point I'm going to make is that if he's only been
out a school for a little bit of time, they should fucking know who
he is, Especially if he was that good on the baseball team, they
should know who he is. Probably has a picture on them exactly, Yeah,
because and yeah everything. So also there's also some pieces to the story
that just don't there's a big loop, plothole, city, wholewhere who are
their parents? And did they go to the high school? Those are pretty
big things. But yeah, but I will say he does do the thing
that we see people do when they're back in their familiar environment, which is
he blossoms like a flower eating that coleslaw. Oh oh yeah, I'm well.
I mean, just imagine all of the skills you have if you could
go back with all of the like awareness and things you could, oh,
yeah, do and all of the things you would just like dismiss your attention
from of knowing, like, nah, that doesn't matter, I don't need
that. I'm gonna focus on getting them scholarships by being smart, and I'm
not gonna waste my time at bashing my head in with a helmet on that
will go nowhere fast, all of these things that people talk about doing of
like, yah, I wouldn't have played sports, or I wouldn't have done
theater, I wouldn't have done music or whatever, because all that goes nowhere.
I would have been like focusing on X, Y or Z, OR'd
have gotten a job, or I'd have started my business whatever. They But
I think Rob mystery, but Rob blossoms because he wants to do the exact
same thing he was doing before, Like he's falling back into the only role
that he feels comfortable with, right, but he's also doing it with the
advanced knowledge of what didn't work, so he can sure sure is he doing
that less successfully than perhaps anyone who's fantasized about doing that would do. Yes,
you couldn't pay me a bajillion dollars to go back in high school.
Oh No, you couldn't pay me to go back to high school. And
I was like a popular kid, and Hannah was a mister Robbin high school.
Yeah, a lot of siblings. I was a homecoming queen, all
the best president, the whole shebang. Ye, all of the all of
the things. And I still wouldn't go back. No, Yeah, not
a million fucking years. I wasn't that. I was exactly where I am
now, somewhere in between. Yeah. But the ease in which he slides
back into that role and the ease in which he he just he wants I
mean, where I feel bad for him is he just wants to be a
teenager again. So bad because that's where he identifies his value and his strengths,
and he doesn't seem to have progressed, which I will say, at
that time when everyone was being pushed to go to college, when you chose
not to go to college, that would cause potentially like a big disparity with
you and your peer group. Oh sure, you know. And the fact
that he's staying home and he's living in his parents' house, still the house
he grew up in. He's working this arguably like dead end kind of job,
yeah, you know, and all of his He's I also he feels
like someone too that would because they're not dealing with the trauma of their injury
and the change in the trajectory of their life. I could also see him
pushing away all of his friends because I'm sure his whole peer group and all
his friends were other athletes, you know, most likely other popular kids.
And so he also strikes me as someone that even if his friends were still
trying to be his friends, I could see him like isolating, like totally
shutting down and not being able to deal with seeing other people live the life
that he wanted for himself. Yeah, I mean, the exer reality was
a lot different than what ours was. We were prepped for the exer reality,
the gen X reality of like go to college or like you're gonna have
a starkly different social stratification period. It just didn't make it seem like there
was any other fucking option. No, they and that's you know, we
were all kind of conditioned for that, and then the world fell apart,
yeah, right when we graduated. Pretty much, so that I think perspective
we're coming at it from from like watching that be true to watching it not
be true of being able to like look at these characters and go, no,
this was true for them. Mm hmm. Yeah. Also, like
I said, the part of you're not encouraged to be like a well rounded
person necessarily. No, you either get into college because you're smart, or
get into college because you're an athlete, and you just like, full tilt
push in whatever directions going to get you into college. And yeah, I
think I don't. I shouldn't act like I know anything about athletics. But
what they're about to say true. But are they changing things up so that
student athletes have to be more involved in academic life, like they can't coast
like they used to. Maybe I'm making that up or maybe I'm just wishful
thinking, but I think that's where they set up kids like Rob for failure
though, because I do know kids who like when you're more athletically inclined and
that's bringing prestige, like those kids will coast in school. So I could
also definitely see where Rob might genuinely have educational like blind spots, because he
could have been the kid where they barely pass all their classes and other teachers
give a shit because he's such a good athlete and they want him to play
that weekend, and he's got an athlete scholarship anyway, so who cares what
his grades are? Like Yeah, and then those kids are set up for
failure because not only are they over identified with that skill, they also are
sometimes literally not taught to have other skills. Well they're not. And there
their lifestyle even then, although not as much as as now were. Rec
sports weren't as professionalized, and you sports weren't as professionalized then as they are
now with like travel leagues and stuff, like some of the ship is insane.
It's nuts. That ship is insane. We overschedule our kids and that's
all I'll say about that. You got that right, Yeah, that's an
understatement. But it wasn't as much then. But the kids that ye made
as much fun into pro sports were in that life even then, you know,
like they were swimming or they were doing that, they're doing like they
had private coaches and like, well, that's your whole weekend, Like your
whole life is being this one thing, and then that gets taken from you.
And like we were saying that, also, where's where it's really horrific
that adults do this to kids too, Like we were talking about at the
top of this topic, is the probability that you will succeed and have a
flourishing a long career as an athlete is so statistically improbable. And the likelihood
that you'll get injured early in your career and be fucked you know what I
mean, that you're one like snapped bone away from like now you have to
do your life differently goodbye. And they don't prep kids for that, and
so, you know, it would be interesting to know more about Rob around
that time, like eighteen, and what happened directly after that, and if
he's just been in this I assume he's just been in this stasis for the
past five years, which is a long time to be stuck, to be
stuck. Like the concept of a towny, right, which is kind of
what he is, yeah, you know, which isn't really a word I've
even heard in recent years. Like that, it felt very specific to that
time period, like there were kids that went to college and there were townies,
yeah, right, And you always said it with that tone of voice
like, oh, he's a towny, gross, right, and Rob is
a towny. Yeah, he's a towny. And there's a difference between being
like a successful trades person and being a towny. Yeah, not always,
but the mentality of like, no, I'm just here doing my thing.
Yeah. And it also makes me wonder if their parents are dead, like
we're hypothesizing, right when did they die? I know, did they die
around the same time or a little after. I think what's confusing for me
is that you would think because Rob is older, No, he's younger.
He's two years younger than Josie. He is younger than her. Oh he's
twenty three, she's twenty five. Oh. For some reason I was thinking
he was older. Well, it's probably because he looks older, and in
real life I think he's older. Oh yeah, well then my point is
mute is moot? Oh, like if he had to like be the man
like step back, like if he was an older sibling and then your parents
die and you take the role of taking care maybe of the younger sister,
and yeah, he doesn't have that protectiveness about her, even though she so
clearly could have used him. I mean, I think you could make an
argument for the flip, which is that Josie is so high functioning in terms
of stability, and she probably took everything over and it really allowed him to
stay in a younger place mentally, like he maybe didn't even have to grow
up when that happened, because she feels like someone whos she was, she
probably would have was an excellent executor of that estate. She probably took care
of the house stuff for him. She probably, I imagine she set everything
up so that he could be fine. Yeah, and every once in a
while, like she goes over the house every Sunday maybe to have dinner,
make sure he has groceries in his fridge. Brings up community college again,
because they do seem fairly close, you know, they do, which is
my also why it feels like their parents are dead, because they do feel
like they're depending on each other. Yeah. Absolutely, And so I think
because Josie is so capable that was where I was and for capable in those
ways, that he didn't have to rise to the occasion, if you will,
and he could just kind of stay in his like sad sack understandably.
So if his parents had died, that's we suppose. But yeah, yeah,
so I think we covered Rob pretty well again, else are we gonna
not talk about the fact that he's dating a sixteen year old the whole film.
I mean, I think we can talk about that maybe in the relationships
abortion of this episode. Right, we should take a break before we get
to because it's probably the part people want to hear for a Valentine's episode,
so stay tuned. It was excellent, all right. So I'll say this
for a rom com, this movie is rife with underage overage relationships. Every
single relationship in this movie is with someone who is over the age of eighteen
and someone who is under the age of eighteen. Josie is twenty five,
and she's either being actively courted by her teacher who thinks she's under age,
or she's actively courting a teenage boy. And then you have a brother,
Rob who is also actively dating a sixteen year old girl who thinks that she's
dating high school or so ugh. I feel for her, yeah, I
mean for everyone involved. But it's all it's why there should be ethical oversight
of any undercover thing. It's just well, I mean that's also well,
here's the thing. What we have to just put all this under is the
nineties and brom com because I don't I mean, obviously, like this movie
was created on the precedent like the conceit of this movie, the romantic conceit.
The cute couple is a man who's probably closer to thirty yep, thinking
he thinks he's falling in love with the new high school student in his class.
That is what the barrier to their relationship, because every rom kind has
a barrier, right. The barrier to their relationship is the fact that he
would be charged with statutory rape, you know, like the line in the
movie Problem, the line of the movie where he says, oh what now
it's okay for me to be attracted to you? I could have barfed,
bro Yeah I did in my mouth barfed. Not only that, but the
fact that it's Josie's fault, both from Rob and from him, Like she's
the one who fucked up by telling like, you're sucking up our good time,
You're fucking up our good time bye, You're making it weird. Yeah,
yeah yeah. And So where I'm going off with that is so you
have to we have to we have to teleport our brains back to the nineties,
where the whole precedent of this movie people thought was fine. So if
we're gonna think about that, then of course, within this movie It didn't
even occur to like Gus, her boss or anyone that they would have to
maybe have conversations with her about ethical consent when you are going to be dilly
dallying with high school students, like don't like, what are the rules?
Do you get fucked up with them? Do you drink with them? Do
you take drugs from them? Do you kiss them, make out with them?
Touch them? Like all the stuff that I would hope they would talk
about nowadays in a situation like this, I don't even think was an occurrence.
Obviously, because this movie lives in a universe where it's okay that the
love interest is an adult thinking that he is in love with a teenage girl
and him professing it is him telling everyone that he was attracted to a seventeen
year old girl. He's confirming the inappropriate relationship by showing up at the baseball
diamond for a job of which she got fired. He's getting run out of
town for reputation. Wise foresaid inappropriate relationship that he then confirms he had.
But it's okay now because she was a grown up. That's like when guys
will say, but she's a tea. She graduated high school, like we
could start dating now. It's like, no, just because it's become legally
okay does not mean that it is ethically okay, oh, morally okay,
socially acceptable, which I think is a big conversation being that's happening now.
I see this lot on like TikTok and stuff like that, of I feel
like the generation that was formed teenage wives on TikTok is finally now aging into
early adulthood. So there's this class consciousness happening right now around age gap relationship
and how if you're nineteen and he's thirty two, just because you're nineteen and
legally okay does not mean that that powadynamic isn't fucked yep and weird, especially
if they knew you before you turned eighteen and and like they're not heroes because
they waited until you were legal, yeah, to get their hands on you.
Like Dane Cook is married to someone who's known since she was fifteen and
she's only like twenty something now and he's like fifty. That was the whole
thing too. I mean also with like Elvis and a Gracella. Yeah,
we're an entire general, right, an entire generation of rock stars. Who
was Stephen Tyler did he? I mean there was those famous little girl groupies
who bopped around for like Jimmy Page, Jimmy Page, Steven Tyler. I
think they all dated this one girl who was fourteen, and they like like
long term, live together dated like this was a very normal, normal,
quote unquote thing. And I think we're seeing the last remnants of that with
this movie, and now it's not socially acceptable anymore. And so this movie
definitely could not be made today. And watching it with my now brain,
with our now culture was like blowing my mind. Oh yeah, my brain
like was every time they like zoomed in on the teacher like thirst, I
was just like long gazing at her to jail, go to jail now,
right, like do not pasco, do not collect two hundred dollars? Don't
you look at that young girl? I want to be like, look away
from her. The Daddy of Two Little Girls is like bar sir. The
way that I went from a person who's seen this movie I don't know two
hundred times and knows all the dialogue and loved it at one point in my
life and to be so immediately turned around as soon as the opening scene of
him looking at her and just being like, this is fucked. This story
is about a guy who is attracted to a teenager and appropriate power dynamic between
the teacher and a student to begin with, and also everybody else who's adults
are also in relationships with teenagers like it's and nobody and there isn't and there's
no awareness yeah around any of it in the film, because I think,
what you I just kept remembering when I was watching it is I know that
Josie's twenty five, right me as the viewer knows that she's an adult woman,
but that motherfucker doesn't, And that alone is so deplorable that it is
to get on board with that. And I was fully on board when I
saw this movie when I was like fourteen for the first time. I was
like, oh yeah, my god. Like I said, it was definitely
wish fulfillment of like a certain demographic, you know, and also what a
danger but like handsome but like intellectually intense and like introverted, but like you
know, there's so much in there. Well also, if you were sure,
who's reminds me of to me? You know? Oh, and the
guy in that relationship Jason Bateman's characters. In Bateman's character, yeah, yeah,
yeah, and because what they're doing is actually demonstrating like the toxic thing
that actually happens in those kind of damn specifically when well, I guess it
doesn't the gender doesn't quite matter. But when I hear about it more from
like an older guy and a young girl, is that, well, she's
so mature, she's so smart, and they encourage that in this movie.
Like what seems to interest him about her is that she is so educated and
she is so intelligent and so quote unquote mature for age. Though she is
not mature for age. She's not a mature for an eighteen year old socially.
No, she's a dingling. Like lovingly, I call her a dingling,
you know what I mean. And she's smart, but I wouldn't call
her mature. Yeah and no, but this is that toxic idea of this
movie cells, Yes, is that people do use all the time, is
they're so mature for their age. And that also when I used to work
with teenage girls and they were actively in quote unquote relationships with older guys.
You know what's the message you always hear, Well, it's because I'm old,
I'm mature for my age and were at the same level. Like teenage
girls always think that they're they're maturing up instead of having the awareness yet developmentally
that No, like that guy's dating you because he's immature, not because you're
so mature. Like he's meeting you where you're at, not the reverse,
because there's a reason why women his age don't date it or he doesn't want
to date them, right, or what you saw like with his girlfriend and
his interaction where she was basically like imploring him to grow up. Mm hmm.
She was only in it for one scene, but then she was imploring
him of like, bro, I am a successful lawyer in New York City
and we're like moving our life on. What are you doing? Which I
think also encourages this toxic, dangerous dynamic, which is, see, women
his age are boring, right, they're prudes, they're buttoned up bitches,
business women like no fun or she like understand him. Yeah, but like
this girl over here, who's arguably in high school as far as he's aware,
Look how fun and free she is and he can be free with her
and himself and how much they have in common. Yeah, and they're on
the same level intellectually and like he's just so deep. Yeah, and so
like late nineties, Yes, I could predator well, and he does demonstrate,
like a good example of this is when they're on the ferris wheel and
he's telling her about his personal life. Yeah, like that is something that
if she was actually a teenage girl, which I do think she is developmentally,
you eat that up because you're in because you're in the you're in the
confidants of an adult is so thrilling when you're young, and then you're in
the confidence of an attractive man, like an attractive person that you're like a
person that you're attracted to. Like that is so intoxicating, and that is
what also creates that dynamic where a young girl does think that, well,
they like me because I'm mature. They can tell me about serious stuff and
even want my advice, and they take it seriously like they are actually demonstrating
unintentionally in this movie all the beats. That does create a gross, groomy
power dynamic. Yeah, without kind of the effective boundary setting. If something
else came out along this time, they had a similar relationship, although of
course not the heart throb guy but did you ever watch Freaks and Geeks Maybe
when it first came out, Like I caught it on TV occasionally, but
I've never like revisited it, so it's a bad reference for me. It's
worth a revisit. I'm sure it is. People love it. It's got
all the hot actors when they were brand new, like all of them.
Yeah, but the counselor in that well very much not the young heart throb
teacher motif person that this one is, but more the retired rocker who became
a high school counselor okay, semi retired rocker. But he forms like a
kind of familial relationship with Lindsay Weir, the main character, Linda Cardellini.
Yes, but he is always appropriate and he checks the boundaries. And then
there's a point in time where they're all like totally going out to see this
band and they got fake IDs and guess whose band it is? His?
His, and he sees them in the bar and then like he tells the
white stuff waters for them they're underage from the stage. Because I think that's
it. That reminds me of when he runs into Josie at that bar as
me, like I'm a therapist who at certain times worked primarily with kids and
teenagers, so basically like a therapy school setting. Right if I was at
a bar, especially if I was drinking with like my significant other, and
one of the kids I work with rolled up on me and a gaggle of
them, I'd be like, I hate to say this, bab, but
we got to get the fuck out of here. Yeah, yeah, like,
and also, don't make our contact. Don't even look over there.
Like even if those kids saw me and started to watch to me and be
like sorry, and I would dip, like, not even from a confidentiality
perspective, from a yeah, it's not appropriate, and it's a bummer for
me because I'm because I'm the adult, so I'm the one that has to
leave, right And you know, yeah, that's as a therapist where there's
like the confidentiality aspect, but not even that, Like, even if that
wasn't even a part of it, Even if I was just more of a
teacher to them, you know, and I could acknowledge their existence because they're
you know, we all know who we are to each other, I would
still be like, gotta leave. Because when I was an ra in college,
I was the same age as a lot of my residents. If I
was at the same bar with them, I had to leave. Yeah,
I get it. I just wonder, like I think as a teacher,
there's an extra dynamic there though you're supposed to be charged like a charge of
the like this is just a child's a charge of yours, like you're supposed
to you're responsible for their care. Is like as a therapist, there's some
ethical things that conserciality. We can't just be like, h go home.
Yeah, But even honestly, even then, if I was more of the
teacher, I don't think I would like parent them in that moment. I
would just be like I don't because also I didn't I wouldn't want to be
a lame Like I'd be like, I'm not going to blow their spot up,
if you know what I mean. If they have fake id's and they
came here and they're just having fun. Kids are allowed to get into trouble,
kids are allowed to act out, you know, to a certain degree.
Like I would just be like, I gotta get the fuck out of
here. It would be my worst nightmare if I was him to have someone
like Josie roll up to me at a bar, I'd probably already had a
few drinks, Like I'd be like, oh no, yeah, And I
wonder like what the you like? How Because I've never been a teacher,
I don't know how they cover that. Yeah, if that's something that,
like, if you see a kid like that, you might have some responsibility
to acted. I don't know what they're it's an under eighteen. It's like,
you don't have to be twenty one at that bar. Remember she gets
the loser sticker on her hand, a loser stamp. So it's also a
bar where all ages, which is also I think as a teacher, wouldn't
you avoid a bar like that? Yep, that high schoolers could go to?
Why would you ever go to a bar that you know that high school
students can get into. I'm sure as a teacher you're very aware of what
are the haunts that kids go to because either they can get away with underage
drinking or they can just get in under a twenty one one. Yeah,
and you would never go there. I would never go there unless I had
to for some reasons. Why. Pretty much all venues in Chicago or twenty
one only. Yeah, Yeah, but there are places I went to form
my eighteenth birthday, I went my mom drove me and my friends to a
club that was sixteen and up. Oh yeah, so like and if I
was a teacher in my town, I would never go there. Yeah exactly,
because why would you go there? Why would I even chance it?
I wouldn't have a good time? No, well, and of course not.
But I think there was one of the things we started talking about off
Mike about like why is it that this starts to happen like beyond just like
the nineties plot armor of things and the Forbidden Love kind of things, but
the what is it about sometimes being immersed in an environment that can start to
blind you to things? Is I know I have When I was doing the
Civil Air Patrol and Air Force Boy Scouts, it was the first time I
encountered this. Was there are people who would not find detractive at all.
And these were you know, I'll kid the kid, you know, but
there were people who you would find yourself going like, my brain is playing
tricks on me. This person I saw them three days ago, when I
had been immersed in a culture where like everybody wasn't wearing fatigues. I was
not attracted to this person and now that we're all in this homogenized environment,
they're starting to get really attractive. And like, do you mean like the
blurred lines of the high school setting. No no, no, no,
no no, not the blurred lines, the blurred lines of like the adults
being in the high school setting all the time, Like that's who they see
most of the day. So like when when we were on the air base,
like we're seeing people in the same stuff. There's not the differences in
how people dress or accentuate or whatever. And then you start to notice people
and things differently. And I wonder to what degree that happens to teachers who
are I mean, I know it does so the friends of our teachers,
like some not all teachers, not even most like, but that effect can
happen where it starts to like you're over homogenize in an environment and a culture
that you start to like identify as part of it. I will I will
say, as someone who, like I said, work with a lot of
teenagers and kids in different settings, so I was kind of in a similar
role where I was one of the few adults that was fully immersed with kids,
and also in that setting where part of being a good teacher therapist,
if you will, was like ingratiating yourself with the kids. Being in the
know. Like I've talked on many episodes about how part of being a successful
child and adolescent therapist is that you have to stay up to date with like
what they're into, what are the trends, what are they watching, what
are they listening to? So you have to somewhat kind of stay youthful to
continue rapport and to have successful rapport, right, And I would say,
like you could definitely know what it was like to witness adults who ate that
shit up a bit too much. Oh yeah, And what I mean by
that is like, here's the thing. It's very easy for kids to revere
you as much as they think that you're a fucking doork and loser, you
know what I mean. And teachers who are cool adults who are cool to
teenagers, like it is like it's very like I'm flattering, you know,
and you have your riffs and your inside jokes and stuff like that. And
I can see where certain people who aren't maybe I don't know if I want
to give I'm giving them a lot of grace and saying this people who don't
have a strong sense of self or maybe identity, probably get a little bit
too much from that dynamic. Like there was also a lot of conversation happening
on TikTok about this young teacher who would, like the video would be pointing
at her, but she would be like like just showing like conversations she was
having with And there was a debate that was happening about issue flirting too much
with the teenage boys in these videos, and so the whole debate happened and
people were talking about how like sometimes people get into this field, like even
thinking about the rob conversation where it almost like sparks that part of your identity,
like almost like when we talk about corrective experiences of like now I'm back
in this dynamic where there's the cool boy in class. He's my student now,
but he thinks I'm cool. And how like people adults even will still
get caught up in that dynamic who aren't being thoughtful or mature enough about the
slippery slope of that dynamic, like the boundaries of like when is joking becoming
flirting? When are you like getting too caught up in that? And I
would imagine it's people that probably like this this character who we get barely anything
about him outside of Josie's perception of him. But the little we do get
is he doesn't seem very happy in his relationship they break up. He seems
unsatisfied or unfulfilled, and so he strikes me as someone who might be getting
a little bit too much of that zing from how much his students think he's
cool. We see him wrapping up his high school hockey trophies and he's playing
hockey in class and showing off his hockey skills, like he's also maybe someone
who's still over identifying with that time in his life and isn't satisfied with the
adultness in his life. So he's getting his needs met by how much these
kids look up to him and are into him potentially, And that's dangerous.
And if you're gonna work with kids, you need to get that shit sorted
out, because you don't want to be in these enmeshed relationships with kids,
well correct, you need inappropriate, You need to be able to have boundaries,
boundaries and a recognition that you are there to serve them and their futures,
not them doing anything for you other than career satisfaction. Yeah, but
the and that's what I mean of, like recognizing the importance of that effect
of where you're getting over homogenized with an environment, like you're seeing them,
you're hearing their drama, You're okay, like you're in there, like not
saying like that doesn't have not everybody that gets I've worked, you know,
in a residential setting too, and like never once did I remotely get attracted
to students or anything like that, like not a thing. But when you
start to see it, or when I DJ dances for high schoolers and like
they're dressed up like little adults, you start to see how people who are
in this kind of setting all the time need to be mindful of how that
effect of being over involved and oversaturated in an environment can play on you if
you're not mindfully attending to your stuff, like you're saying like, yeah,
whatever is going on inside of you needs to be dealt with and buttoned up
because for the very very small majority that or not small majority, let's use
correct terms here, but the very small number of people where we do have
teachers and students getting involved, I am certain that that's part of it is
that they lost touch with how close they are to seeing young people all the
time that it starts to kind of change their perception of what's normal around them
as opposed to interacting with adults and realizing how very different teenagers are than grown
ups. Like they're losing the plot, Like they're losing the ability to perceive
that they're not that. Yeah, and all that's what becomes like yeah,
that's it becomes present in their environment. You use the term off mic for
it. What was it? What for that? Like perception bias, getting
proximity proximity bias. Yeah, yeah, the proximity bias of like whatever you're
around starts to become what you adjust to and it becomes normal to you.
So it's important to like be aware at all times like these are children.
One also that like, but don't the adults in the equation have the responsibility
to act like adults? Yeah? Yeah, I know. It's not an
excuse for that to exist. It's more what I'm saying is, like it's
important that people understand that when this does go this way of like a teacher
loses their focus. Yeah, there's a human in there that's going to need
to get treated at some point. Sure to like find out how did this
where does go wrong for you? Well? Like also where like what was
the story you were starting to tell yourself exactly? Like you see that with
like real life case is like Mary Kayla Turno, which has been a hot
topic because of that may a summer movie that came out, where the story
she would tell everybody even though he was twelve and she was thirty five.
Is that but he was the aggressor he came on to me, you know
what I mean. And it's because well, one there's probably something not clicking
in her mentally, and two that she was dissatisfied in her adult life.
But it's like, don't like he's a child, you know what I mean,
Like I think, but I see this who lot like not with the
sexual aspect of it, but like when I work with parents sometimes too or
like other adults where they they get so enmeshed in like younger people thinking that
they're cool or like being friendly, too friendly, or getting too much of
their social needs met by like the adoration of and the just being liked by
their kids and the peers, even like the cool mom shit like in mean
girls, you know what I mean. And I've seen therapists fall into that
trap where they're like, one, you know, how much you can just
see how much they're getting out of the kids liking them, And I'm like
it, I mean, it feels flattering when a teenager thinks you're cool,
because like they are the arbiters are cool in a lot of ways, and
like like you got to keep the ick going inside of you when a kid
wants to cross the line of course, because like in working with kids,
I work with teenage boys and I and so they do that and I was
like twenty three, you know what I mean, So they would do that
stupid teenage boys shit like try to steal my pen, try to give me
too many hugs, walk past me, and like graze me. And if
you had a camera on my face, I'm sure I was like making that
little place like every time it happened, like involuntarily, but I could see,
like I've seen other adults like you know, like kind of get a
little thrill out of that. I think the attention of it. Maybe that's
where I was looking for earlier, like getting so much out of the attention
of young people without realizing that of course they're giving you the attention because you
have the power in this dynamic and responsibility to like you were saying, Hannah,
to like keep a fucking lit on that. Of course, I mean
at all times, at no point ever should your relationship with a child as
an adult be anything other than professional or if you're a mentor or whatever.
But there's there's boundaries in limits, and at no point ever, if that
kid's developing feelings for you or anything, is that something that you allow to
remotely cross any lines, Like you hard wall address that immediately of like,
hey, this will never be that's that's not gonna be a thing. And
if it, like, if that's not going to be okay, then we
can't have this relationship, you know, Like it's it's very important that the
adult is the keeper of that at all times. There is no well the
kid was the aggressor of the kid came out of me. No, that's
why it's statutory rape. If yeah, becomes a sexual thing, it's not
okay. Yeah, And it's it's important to recognize for human beings that when
we we start to get that psychological effect going on that we're investing in the
environment, we see that you're going to maintain at all times the awareness of
you're not. This isn't the real world, and even too, like I
would argue, I mean, I would assume since it's the end of the
senior year that arguably Josie's eighteen, you know what I mean? Sure,
and so people, but even regardless of whether she's in his eyes legally of
age, like that power dynamic is gross regardless and how even if she was
eighteen, that relationship still which I think is like the argument that I hear
online now you know where it's like, well she was nineteen, Like she's
an adult, they're both adults, Like, oh that was existed then too.
Yeah, And I think we're finally realizing consciously, like I said,
class consciousness is rising in that there's still power dynamics within these relationships and that
has to like even like I said, even if this was above board,
right, that the way this relationship was conceived, it is like so inappropriate
and like you were saying, like, I don't know what is going on
in his brain, I'm switching top just a little bit. What is going
on in his brain when he shows up at that at the game at the
end to kiss her in front of the whole town question mark I don't know.
I'd never seen this before, and I honestly wanted the ending of this
to be like he did not, Yeah, so badly because also like a
dumb move, Like it's dumb for him to show up, Like it doesn't
make any sense. Also, he can never how can he ever be a
teacher again? He yeh can't Like yeah, his reputation. Also now it's
in a the paper of like the like one of the biggest cities in the
country. Yeah, you know what I mean, Like it's not even just
that, because I think we all have, you know, stories from our
hometowns where one of the teachers years before married someone after they graduated. Right,
everyone just kind of whispers about it. I know exactly what I'm thinking
of right now, andties but yeah, yeah, and and so and that's
scandalous enough, Like that's whispered about enough in small towns, right Yeah.
So this idea that he's basically doing that on a national stage, mm hmm,
Like what does that say about him from a developmental perspective, from a
maturity perspective, from an intelligence perspective, like where is his sense of self
preservation there? I mean he I don't know, I don't know at all
none plot armor. Also, this movie takes place over two months, so
let's keep that in mind as well. He is risking his entire career,
his life, if you will, for someone that he is known for two
months, mostly under false pretenses. M h. And he's gonna gamble on
that m h. Because what they like the same poetry and she's good at
class assignments, Oh my god. Like And also I think what is also
disgusting about this is like you see in the movie that he really believes in
her, Like he's really he he he's bummed out that she's not gonna go
to college, right, and he's really he like, which is none of
his goddamn business. But let's just argue that like that's coming from like a
well intentioned place, Like he sees this young girl, she's not he sees
her potential, she's not gonna use her potential, and that sucks, and
he's like really wants to Like the fact that also he's trying to engage with
her from a mentor position, you know, while simultaneou engaging and these flirty
behaviors with her is also so gross yep. And also is part of that,
like power dynamic. They're not peers, like he is establishing over and
over again he will. He's sending her such confusing signals. He's simultaneously stepping
into this mentor teacher dynamic with her, with that with the application thing,
stuff like that, but then simultaneously talking to her at a bar telling her
about his girlfriend on the Ferris wheel, putting her in his confidence in a
way that if she really was a teenager, would be so genuinely confusing.
And it does all that stuff like when people say gross misogynistic shit like daddy
issues. I hate that fucking term, Like when they say the girls got
daddy issues, Like why is that a girl attracted to a guy who's like
also like older than her or in this power dynamic with her? It's like,
because there are these mixed signals happening. It's not just this girls like
fucked up and like they're attracted to a guy rism of their dad. It's
because a lot of guys will play into that dynamic by by taking advantage of
them, by offering them all the things they want, which is, I
won't just be your romantic interest, but I'll also give you things that a
father figure would give you approval. Yeah, approval, praise, motivation,
encouragement and that and and that's predatory. Mm hmm. He is a predator.
Is a predator? Oh my god, this movie is ruined, y'all.
Yeah, this movie is over. This movie is over. This movie
had me googling the terms for the different stages of pedophilia. Like this movie
put me on an FBI list. This is how bananas. The plot of
this movie is I'm gonna be a professional and like I'm going to be pursued
by the CIA because of this movie is ruined. Be the fed. The
FED watching me is like, what's going man after you? But the I
can't stress enough, like that the foil between this and freaks and geeks,
which against even when she does try checks her, but he like he maintains
it's exactly what you're talking about. It's this adult who sees the potential in
someone who had been a math lead, who is like kind of falling in
with the burnouts and she doesn't really belong there. Like he's actually trying to
be a mentor to her. He's being a mentor to her, including creating
space for her to not succeed without it being his problem, Like he's like,
I'm invested in you, but like I can't do this for you,
and you're gonna make the choices you're gonna make. But you see the difference
in the appropriate way that things should happen. Where he is not a romantic
interest in the slightest. He does not mince words, He does not mince
his relationship. He does not, at any point in time send a confusing
message to her right and when she starts stepping like out of line, like
he revokes the first name basist thing and goes like, I think you probably
better call me mister or whatever, yeah, which I think is a decent
boundary. Like when I work with teenagers they called me miss Brittany, you
know, to create I think that separation, yeah, yeah, and sometimes
you need that. And I think, if you want a foil to this
movie, that would be my suggestion, beyond it being really good and tragic,
that it just ended that that show was full of a lot of really
good examples of how this relationship was garbage and that one was done well.
Where it is possible for there to be a mentor mentee relationship between adults and
kids, but like it, it can't be you're now exposing your life to
them. Yeah, like your personal life is none of their business, and
you're attracted to them, and like you're struggling with that and you can't like
you know, looking lustfully like no, no, no. Yeah. And
one thing also about teenagers you probably also know this Toohndah from working with teenagers,
is they sometimes want to know about your life because they want to cause
play being adults, right yea, And so they'll try to like know more
about your personal life. And I was always like, no, no,
maybe I'll tell you what I'm doing this weekend, but like but like it'd
be something I'd give him some dorky, water down answer like I'm gonna go
to the library, and like I'm gonna go like to a baseball game.
But I was not telling them about like they never knew if I was dating,
if I was single, Like they didn't like I was a adult to
them, and there's nothing behind that, you know what I mean. Like
I wasn't disclosing personal information much less volunteering it like he is in this movie,
which is another sort of like boundary thing that's arguably grayer. I don't
think it's gray, but just kind of putting that out there for anybody listening,
like, like, that's also part of setting those boundaries as adults is
being mindful of what you're sharing with kids teenagers and how that can affect that
power dynamic, Like you are not their peer. No, you are not
their peer. No, and they want to be your peer because teenagers want
to be adults. So teenagers want to be your peers. And your job
as the adult, like you were saying, Hannah, is to say sorry
to bum you out, but we are not peers. Yeah, and actually
I'm being a protector of you by continuously reminding you that I am not a
peer, that there's distinction between me and you. But this also just this
idea that just because we know she's twenty five makes it okay, Yeah,
it doesn't because he didn't. Yeah, because he didn't. The whole thing
he's contending with, the forbidden love thing, is he's contending with, like,
am I getting attracted to a child? And am I slowly blurring my
ethical lines and behavior to a realm? That's creepy? And if you want
to talk about Hannah, like the rob and what do they just she even
have a name. The girl he's dating the sixteen year old. She does
come up to him and tell him her name, but like, I don't
know, they're starting to feel very similar Robin him where it's like yeah,
absolutely, well, I mean again, this girl in the the sixteen year
old has no idea that I mean, how do you not know that he's
twenty five or you don't know? But you don't know what you don't know
as a teenager. That's the whole reason. Why what are you going to
do? Accuse a student at your school of being in his late twenties.
That would be such a wild idea. But but just thinking about just thinking
about what that's like as a sixteen year old and her not knowing, and
this whole relationship is under false pretenses, And now what if this was her
first relationship, Well, she was gonna lose her virginity to him, Yeah
I know, because that's what she decided. Yeah, so, I mean,
and he is clearly leading her on, clearly giving her some promise of
some kind. Otherwise they just hang around. There's some level of intimacy between
them because they're touching. He's standing between her legs. Yeah, at that
party, Yeah, exactly, like it very much feels like I think one
of the other victims in this in this movie is her. And again that
undermines your sense of self, that undermines your intuition, that undermines your ability
to recognize romantic relationships in terms of what they can feel like and what they
can be like. And that really for me puts Rob right next to mister
Colson villain. Villain. He's he is because again he is using a power
dynamic. He is not her peer, and he knows it. I knows
that. Oh. By the way, they don't fuck, so don't worry
about it. They make it very fucking clear that they don't fuck. That's
he's such a prince because he's such a prince because he won't because he's not
gonna foock her even though she's sixteen, you know what I mean. Like
that's the energy. By the way, Yeah, it's like so gross,
Like they keep doing like almost crop shots of her, like the way they're
sexual her. It's all such a sign of the times. It's so gross.
I was like showing up in booty Shorts's Barbie and all the stuff that,
like at the prom. Oh yeah, they're outfits are nothing's passing dress
goes. Jessica Alba is wearing bikini tops as regular tops. I used to
get stopped in the hallway around that same exact time because my shirts did not
meet my pants because there was like a half of an inch of skin because
my shirt rode up and wasn't touching my pants. I would get pulled aside.
Yeah, the fingers test and everything else. Yeah, yeah, which
is you know, dress codes are misogynistic. We don't have to get into
that, but like to where like a bikkini top in school was kind of
wild in that movie. But I think one thing this movie is doing is
hyper sexualizing teenage girls. Absolutely all the nineties teen movies did that. Yeah
it was bad of like look at this like unattainably attractive twenty five year old
or twenty eight year old person that like what kind of message you're we sending
to anyone, Like look at this body that you should have that's not attainable
for your age group because you haven't filled out or had trainers and like diet
plans and everything. And also yeah, high school girls do look like that,
and women already pursue them like they're basically women. Yeah, like it'
and they know what they're doing. Yeah, it's just problematic all over the
place of like self esteem crushing and then like encouraging creeptoidness is gross. Yeah,
and gross because Rob does not have to if he's only planning to be
at the school for a few weeks, he can be single. He could
bullshit and say he has a girlfriend who goes through different school or college,
literally say anything, except he could literally do anything besides what he does.
He doesn't have to date anyone in the few weeks that he's there exactly,
which again goes to we're taking earlier where he must be getting something for himself
out of this attention he's getting from this teenage girl, and that's so self
serving, it's so irresponsible. And I think what you brought up, Hannah
is a really good point which I don't don't even think we've had, like
I said, social consciousness about until very recently, which is how when you
take advantage of a young girl like that, you are or a young person
like this would also be if the genders was flipped like you are, like
you are doing something violent to them in the sense of their sense of self
around romantic relationships, their sense of safety, the fact that, like God
forbid if she'd slept with him, and like what that would mean to her,
about that her first time was robbed from her and what that means,
and like you said, like her ability to trust herself, like all because
it gave him a thrill that a sixteen year old wanted to fuck him,
yep, And like how self serving it is when people choose to indulge,
that's a generous word, choose to indulge in romantic relationships with younger people and
people they have powerdynamics with, which is why, as we've said many times
in the show, when you are a therapist, you are don't ever get
involved with your with your clients, even if they're not your clients anymore,
because you have that power dynamic and you are being self centered. Like if
I were to involve with a client, it would be because I'm getting something
out of that dynamic, and I'm also stealing something from them, something very
real and vulnerable and to be protected. And fuck me for that if I
did that, you know what I mean, And you gained access to that
information in a way that you yeah have not nefariosy, but you wouldn't have
had it, Well, I'm using the information nefariously. I don't know if
i'd go that far. That's deliberate, But I think nefarious is deliberate intention
to harm. But you gained it inauthentically, Well, yeah, you've formed
a relationship with the whole person at a level they may not have exposed to
you. They're vulnerable in a way that they would have guarded much more carefully
if they were dating you, versus if they're trusting you to be their therapist.
Where they're going to tell you, So you forming a romantic relationship to
that is is inappropriate? Nefarious is farther than to go, but it's it's
not. I think it's nefarious. I think I think it's I think it's
an abuse of power. Even people who become friends with friends with their clients,
maybe not even a friendly yeah, yeah, friendly or whatever. You
have to be the protector of that boundary. You have to be the protector
of that boundary. You have to be the one. Again, like in
professional settings, you have to act like a fucking professional. And if you
can't do that, you need to figure out why m and stop being the
professional while you can't do it. Yeah, and what I don't mean that
people who the therapists who get into relationships and has been a client doesn't become
possibly a nefarious What I mean is that if someone gets into a situation where
they're crossing the boundary, it doesn't mean that what they're doing is deliberately evil.
Doesn't stop it from being wrong's wrong. There's no defense of that.
It's not okay. Yeah, period. Yeah. The ethical standard for that
is five years, which should be years, even should be years. And
what asshole came up with five years and decided that five years was long enough?
I think in Ohio it's seven years either way. I mean, it
doesn't matter. It's like finding out someone's your cousin. Yeah, it's like
you're never gonna stop being related to me. Bro, Like there's never going
to be an expiration again, whether when you're like not someone I could be
attracted to? Right, you're right. So you you obtained information that allowed
you a level of closeness and information that you wouldn't have had in a dating
situation because you are a therapist, and that's what the boundary is for.
Because then if you created as a therapist side that you opened a relationship with
this person. You are now playing at this relationship with a level of advantage
that is outright, it's not even playing field no, which I think is
also the point you're making early about Rob is that he knows he's twenty three.
He's lived more life. Yep, he's already done high school. So
he also, whether he's conscious of that or not, and I'm sure he's
not, he has like more information that he can use to his advantage with
this girl, like looking impressive and put together and mature and like all these
all these personality traits or ways of being that would be impressive to a sixteen
year old. And like I said, he does not have to date anybody
this movie. It would have been very easy to just not have her be
a person in this movie. Yep. They could have made that choice.
And for to be a running gag that she's so sexual with him and that
he has to just push her away is very nineties, very gross. Well,
end up to dance, the weird line of like having Josie like have
to be like, dude, she is sixteen and you are a grown up
at the party at their house that he's hosting for high schoolers. Also the
implications the implications of that it's bad and for him to show a turn and
like restrain and like I feel it. You know good that he didn't you
know, take it any further than he did and cause more damage, But
that doesn't absolve him of causing damage in the first place. Yeah, And
where I can also vilify Josie is that she also does not have to get
romantically involved with a teenage boy. And as you see in this movie,
she's not even really seeing him. She's seeing her way to redo the Billy
prince situation, and so she is not even which I think is what happens
when older people choose to be involved with younger people is how much are you
even seeing that person in front of you so much as you're seeing what they
symbolize to you, whether it's a redo or an ego booth way he looks
through their eyes. The idea that I would also say to her, like
you are not being kind to this teenage boy. You are using him to
make yourself feel better because you got humiliated in high school and now you get
to redo it and you get to be the popular girl that makes the popular
boy fall in love with you, like leave him alone, you can get
a good story without getting caught up in him. Yeah, I mean how
would that story even go? Like if we really take a step out outside
of this and really think about what actually happened and what that story actually would
have been, Which is, she writes this story and then a week later
the information comes out that she was also pursuing somebody who was underage. If
this happened today, his parents would sue her. They'd sue the Chicago sometimes.
Yeah, they would get sued out the fucking ass. Yeah, and
the parents would be right to be pissed. On that note, have we
ripped that enough? Have you ripped it up enough? Perhaps too much?
Too much, would say, some would say too much. So we'll take
a break here and then come back with treatment. I can see Josie coming
into my office and saying, I feel really lonely. I am a like
bloomer, like I am not getting any like romantic filment in my life.
I don't know how to like do that part of my life. I'm successful
everything else, but not this. I wore the same outfit I wore as
two faces girlfriend to my first day of high school. Congratulations Ben, You're
welcome and so firstly, what I'd probably want to do because if I'm working
with someone and they're talking about like social cues and like I don't really I
can't connect to other people. Like after a while working with her, you
I probably pick up on her neurodivergency potential. And so I just wanted to
let people know in case they didn't know, a way that you can get
tested for a nerdivergency and that can also be ADHD stuff like that. So
it's not just autism. Is you get neuropsych tested, neuropsychological tests, and
you get that through a psychologist. What is very confusing about our field is
that there's a bunch of different names and they sometimes do the same thing and
that sometimes don't. So sometimes psychologists are also a therapists. Sometimes psychologists aren't
therapists, and sometimes psychologists just do testing. But I, as a therapist,
don't do testing, and a lot of psychiatrists don't do testing. See
how this is stupid, everybody, That's what I mean. This is all
stupid. So when you are looking for neuropsych testing, you go you reach
out to a psychologist, hopefully when a network, because neuropsych testing is expensive
because it takes about two and a half days, so it's hours of treatment
because you get fifteen hundred bucks. Yeah, it's thousands of dollars potentially.
So you want to find someone in network, which is what I always tell
people, I go call your insurance directly and ask them for names because this
is out of pocket. Is a little intense, And what you'll get from
a neuropsych testing is they'll evaluate your executive functioning, they'll evaluate your social skills,
they'll evaluate a lot of things. We had to do a neuropsychevil in
grad school in my in my test, in my psychological testing class, I
think where we all took the whole gamut of the testing of what a neural
what one of those evaluations would be. So a part of it was that
we took the whole class took the test and we got an average score.
But it's a lot. It's so many different types of tests. It's not
just for one thing. It's for maybe the whole gamut of M five criteria
or DSM criteria that there is like anxiety you also, so it's a really
good across the board thing you can get tested. It also helps you if
you need accommodation stuff like that, but it also just gives you a lot
of information about yourself, and it is the way that you can get definitively
diagnosed with NERD divergency as to neurosye testing. So she's someone that after working
with her for a bit, I might recommend that because it also that can
be a hard pill to swallow if I'm the first one bringing it up to
someone that they might be nerd divergent, because there's a lot of negativity around
that and stigmatization around being on the spectrum and YadA YadA, So I have
to be very careful when I deliver that news, and like I tell people,
it can be really enlightening because she might be someone who just keeps thinking,
what's wrong with me? Why am I so weird? Why can't I
get don't people like me? And so this can just help people understand themselves
better, absolutely and not ideally ironically, not feel maybe is othered, because
it's just it's just explaining to them that their brain works a little differently and
we can work with that. It's not a death sentence. And in my
experience of people who I've worked with who I've suggested them getting neuropsych tested.
It has been a good experience either way. Yeah, because either way they
have more information than what they started out with. And even that is helpful,
even if the answer is you don't have ADHD, you have anxiety and
depression, because the symptoms are so fucking similar. Yeah. Right, So
they were able to it rules things in and rolls things out, which is
helpful exactly. And then what help me is her therapist to be like,
do we just have to work on social skills period? Like is there something
else going on that's like stunted her? It was that trauma in high school
kept her in high school age. It also helps me to have realistic expectations
and fair expectations of her and the work that I would do, because if
you're stunted because of like a trauma or something, absolutely that's or because you're
insecure, you're anxious, and that's why you act the way you act.
That's very different than like your brain just works differently, Yeah, because you're
NERD divergent and we need to figure out a way to work with that.
Yeah, So that's what I would do with Josie. So I just kind
of leave that there, Okay, I'll go cause I think min would be
kind of short. So I decided to work with the sixteen year old girl
who uh rob is ruining her life. And a part of the reason why
I want to talk about this is because so much of my job is helping
people identify what a healthy relationship is and what the difference between a healthy relationship,
an abusive relationship, and an unhealthy relationship, and how there's differences between
that, And to be perfectly honest, I google you google it and it
comes up and you have a thousand, you know, a million hits about
what is a healthy relationship. And sometimes I think one of the most useful
things we can share with teenagers is what does a healthy relationship look like?
Because they don't have the means to get that education in any other way because
we don't teach it. And so something that I would want to help do
help the sixteen year old is having some awareness around that what happened is not
her fault. Yeah, that she wasn't doing something inappropriate or wrong. She
was acting her age, She was engaging someone who was her age. She
was expecting that to be the truth. If it was a peer relationship to
her, it was a peer relationship to her and her expectations made sense,
and it would take and there would have to be some self esteem building we
would have to do. We would have to talk about healthy relationships, we'd
have to talk about how to help her trust herself because when you get thrown
off in this way, and also that she is he is a predator.
Yeah, he's I mean, like the way that we've been talking about him
and what happened. He is a predator. He lies to her, he
maintains a relationship with her under false pretenses. And what I think one of
the biggest things that's missing from health classes that young people are getting, since
god forbid we actually talk about sex, is that they're missing this component of
what really relationships look like and what they can look like, and what and
what really is the difference between some of these behaviors. And it's just it
would be really important to help rebuild that for her so that she isn't stunted
and stuck and what a relationship looks like from the age of sixteen. Yeah,
because guess what that can fucking happen. Well. Also, what's kind
of dope about her actually is that she is so comfortable in her sexuality with
him, you know what I mean, like that she is a sexual person.
I don't know if she is, I think, but like how flirty
she is like that, And I would I would worry for her that she
would think that was her, like she was coming on to him, and
like, so you want to do that work about Like no, Like it's
like you were saying, it's it's it's okay for you to be in touch
with your sexuality and to want to act on that with someone that you thought
was an appropriate partner. Absolutely, and and but I could see a girl
her age like shutting that down. Oh Phil, find that part of her
after this? Absolutely, yeah, absolutely, So that's who I would want
to work with. Cool. I think that's probably who's most going to need
to be worked with anybody. I think when I look at this movie,
and I don't see anybody else that stands out to me beyond as like really
needing a How like Rob needed intervention a lot sooner to prevent him from getting
stuck in a loop that enabled behavior to become justified in his brain as being
okay. You know what happened is Rob. In real life, Rob would
get in trouble with the police, probably and maybe to get court mandated therapy,
and then he'd finally see you, maybe, and then you'd have to
talk about, hey, buddy, what the fuck? But the choices you
made? But yeah, maybe, I think he probably at this point in
time in the world probably sat in a pocket where that probably wouldn't go so
far as court I don't think, Yeah, I really don't think so I
was messed up as that is, I don't think it would have gone that
way. But I think for the movie to show the happy ending of him
to be like working in the school where he deceived everybody and like sort of
carried out around kids kids and like just like like I'm just like you're bro
now, I was like I was actually like working for my sisters. She
was working at whatever justification he was selling himself in the world on is not
okay. And I think for a recognition that I think I'm going to take
the systemic approach here and kind of echo some of the things Hannah sing.
But there's a reason why it's such a pain in he asked to go to
schools and like showing your idea and checking in at the office and doing all
these things, and it's that we need to be away and overseeing the aspects
of anybody that's around kids, and people do get into traps where they can
lose themselves for whatever is going on, and it's not okay, and it's
other adults that need to be the keepers of other adults. People do lose
themselves to all sorts of reasons, whether it be through inappropriate behavior, inappropriate
sexual relationships, or even emotional ones, because just as much damage can be
caused in inappropriate emotional attachments. But looking at the reason why licensing standards and
checkpoints and other things and ID checks and volunteer screens at schools exist is to
make sure that people don't have a history of doing behaviors like Rob did and
then got hired by the school to be a coach of the same kids.
He just what Yeah, or this other guy who is like read in art
cool written about him by someone who turned out to be a reporter who until
like the camera guy came in and totally blew his cover because he didn't see
him sitting there behind the hedgerow. Yeah was about to tell Josie that he
was in love with her. Is suddenly all okay now, and like everybody
in the town is showing up to just like support Josie and like let her
have her forbidden love. Like what the correct this guy should not work with
children ever again and should be registered because it's not okay. Well and even
if even if like he wasn't taking responsibility for that, he should hate her
fucking guts, bro, she ruined his life, no like he no,
he ruined his own life. No, but I no, but I mean
like in his mind. Let's say, if he didn't think it did anything
wrong her, he could make it an argument in his head that like this
girl, this woman pursued me under like she'd like the story was supposed to
be about him, which that's the only true thing about this movie when Gus
said, the story is about this teacher. Yeah, and your relationship with
him, so like the way that this man, but like the happier ever
after aspect of this is so really unrealistic because if he really felt like she
fucked him over, like you took advantage of me, like you you drive
a relationship to me under false pretenses to make me look like a creep,
you know what I mean. And you've ruined my life, You've ruined my
job. I have to move out of this town. I can never do
my career like my job again the way I do it now. Like he
should hate her fucking guts, you know what I mean, Like he wouldn't
be right to do it, but like, like that's what I mean,
Like that's the only thing that would make logical sense if I pursue his viewpoint.
Well, let's talk about her being naive again. You just told somebody
whose life you ruined where to find you. Are you stupid? Like in
real life, if he showed up at that baseball stadium, he would scream
at her or like shoot her. Well, I hope we woantn't go that
far, but it could. It's just anyway, but anyway, So I
guess I think we're sliding into final thoughts. Guys, let's take our final
break here and be right back. I think everybody knows our final thoughts like
this. I mean, I don't think I will watch this movie again.
It's effectively ruined for me. I hadn't watched it since I was a teenager,
and it was difficult to watch as an adult with my adult brain.
And also like the way that, like I said, society has shifted and
thinking about these dynamics as well, like so disgusting, put like, I
can't buy into this relationship. I can't believe this movie was so is still
so beloved. This is the top movie now. This is going above Sleepless
in Seattle in terms of a movie we have watched for this podcast that has
been changed so dramatically from how I initially received it after we actually took a
good look at it. So yeah, so this movie. Not only do
I hate this movie, I think this movie's dangerous and it encourages the precedent
that I think we've grown out of societally, but not enough so we like.
So that's my final thoughts, Anna, uh yeah to. I feel
embarrassed that I used to feel that this used to feel romantic. Watching it
felt really creepy and weird and felt like I really turned its head on me
ye watching this film and I think, uh yeah, I'm never gonna watch
it again. There's no reason to watch it again. I'm never gonna watch
it again. And I agree that I do think it is dangerous to have
something like this that romanticizes, romanticizes these kinds of relationships that are abusive.
Hm And so yeah, this movie sucks, and now I hate it and
I probably know the dialogue to the entire goddamn film because I've probably seen it
two hundred times. Yeah, Rip never been kissed, Benjamin. Yes,
this is my first time seeing it, last time, seeing it first time,
last time, first time, last time. I feel like I have
entered into the Hannah realm of I'm never gonna watch it again. It has
entered the same space of Batman and Robin in my head, where we just
pretend it doesn't exist and we don't speak of it unless it's brought up,
and each case, if it is brought up, we should on it immediately,
because it is. It does create a weird, dangerous thing. And
I think we have moved mostly far enough away from this, but not far
enough, and especially not through the lens of a teenage girl watching this who
might be having some of those feelings where like that might not register, or
you know, a teenage boy or whatever seeing it just legitimizes this dynamic,
right, anything that legitimizes the dynamic that it's it's okay to be attracted to
who you're attracted to, but also like you need to put the filters of
what would other people think about this. What would I think if I saw
my friend going through this? It does this feel okay? Is this actionable?
Like there's so many things that you look at that this routinely tries to
hold characters sort of accountable for but then goes like, haha, nineties round
come, nobody's accountable for anything. Everything's cool and everybody gets what they want,
which is secretly what we were flirting with the whole time. But also
it's okay now because I was an adult, even though you didn't think I
was. And you're like, watch this now through twenty twenty four lens and
go the fuck was going on in the writer's room. Well, I'll tell
you this too. In real life, if he was a genuine predator,
once she got revealed as being an adult, he'd probably lose all interest in
her. Yep, yep, and gross, it's just gross. It felt
disgusting to watch. Yeah, I didn't, I you know, I my
brain's been a little scrambled and I was started to watch Uh, She's all
that, which I thought was worse. Ben texted me and was like Usher's
in this movie and I was like, hold up, what movie are you
watching? Because Usher is not and never been kissed, and I almost do.
Immediately, I was like, I think he's watching She's All That because
I do remember ushers in that movie, and I had said it is one
of the ones that maybe we should put on the pole. Yeah, for
sure. So because of baby Brain, as I am on print to leave
right now, my mm hmm, this movie's title completely left until you said
that's I'm glad we did that, But it would have been funny if you
had had to if we showed up today and you were like, I'm ready
to talk about She's All That, and I'd be like, that's great,
we're talking about that, because I have been like cool, cool, cool,
She's All That's a movie I might know all the words too, yeah,
same yeah and key sack. Oh gross, I hate you for that.
I made all like five minutes into that movie before I was like,
and I hate this. And I think, as you probad of noticed from
my messaging about this that like I hate this movie, I now might hate
it more because at least those kids are all supposed to be in high school.
Yes, extremely problematic, created some really bad boundary problems that we need
to thoroughly extinguish in these movies that we remember is like, oh this is
fun and neat and like look at all the rampant doucheery, Like it can
stay there. I mean, I guess what does feel promising about society is
that I this movie could not be made today. No, Like it would
be flamed immediately by social media. Yeah, and it would die before it
was born. Yeah, a bunch of heerro might like it, but beyond
that gross. Well, on that note, havyvald, that's an appropriate age.
Yeah, and so, and as always, if you want to find
us and flame us about our take on this movie, you can find us
on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook at Popcorn Psychology, Twitter, slash x
at Popcorn Underscore psych You can email us at Popcorn Psychology at gmail dot com.
If you want to support us, you can find us on Patreon and
subscribe. If you are a ten dollars or more subscriber, you can get
access early to our unedited episodes, and if you're a fifty dollars or more,
you can pick the movie we talk about, but be prepared because if
it's a movie like this one, we might break your heart. So,
like I said before, Havy Valentine's Day and please only date adults. I'm begging you