Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Netflix's Charming but Deadly, with 'Adolescence' and 'You'
22 Plays5 months ago
This show contains spoilers for both the programs 'Adolescence' and 'You' on Netflix. In this prestige-packed episode, Jordan and Niv dig into the hit show 'You,' discuss whether its pulp or schlock (06:30), the formula behind the show (14:22), and who stands out as a performer (25:32) heading into the show's last moments. They dig into the last season (31:12), and how well its female lead holds the bar of quality relative to seasons past, particularly in the very last episode (43:18). Before the break, they discuss how the two shows connect (48:11). In the second half, they discuss 'Adolescence' and do a deep dive on all four episodes beginning with episode one (00:57:20). They investigate whether the show may be more like a play (or if any filmed art deserves that title) (01:07:03), before getting into episode two (01:24:47). They touch on the manosphere (01:24:47) before getting into episode three (01:41:07). They end on a sentimental note once they discuss episode four (01:53:35).
Special Thanks to The Powerknobs for the theme music!
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Zeitgeist
00:00:22
Speaker
Happy June, everyone. Welcome to Zeitgeist, the show where we talk about all the latest TV and movies while we listen to the latest music.
00:00:33
Speaker
We've got a couple of more spooky style episodes coming for you this month and next. And joining me to talk about all of that and to dive in with what works, what doesn't work,
00:00:48
Speaker
What is exemplary is, of course, my co-host, Nivo Baz. I'm Jordan Conrad, by the way. How you doing, man? Yeah, he's Jordan. and I'm very good, Jordan. I'll even say her name, Jordan Conrad. I'll even say it a couple of times. That's Jordan Conrad, co-host, everyone. Yeah, wow. oh That was, that was eerie.
00:01:07
Speaker
Huh. That was kind of creepy. That was, uh, dare I say. Yeah. Yeah. Are you trying to, you know, the old phrase where people in the corporate sphere, they say your name a bunch of times to try to get you to like nod along and like you, you know, kind of like a a cult leader. That was kind of what you were just doing. Were you trying to Joe Goldberg me? No, no, no. Like if I wanted to Joe Goldberg you, I wouldn't even say your name. I would just say, Hey, you, yes, you.
00:01:33
Speaker
You. Oh, see, that's funny.
Netflix's Dominance in Streaming
00:01:36
Speaker
So we're going to be talking this episode about the number one streaming service in the world, which is Netflix. We're covering two shows that have, I would say, a cult around them and a cult of similar interest.
00:01:50
Speaker
And that interest happens to be True crime more broadly, and we're covering two very, very, very different sections. In the second half we're going to be talking about the new limited series called Adolescence, which is, I think, as of now, no longer limited.
00:02:06
Speaker
But as of our recording for the part two, I think that was still technically a limited series.
Exploration of the Show 'You'
00:02:12
Speaker
But all that being said, we are going to be talking in this first half now about, as we have been hinting at, the beloved and sometimes there's been some complicated conversation around it, but it is the program itself.
00:02:27
Speaker
You, why owe Y-O-U, which has been talked about at length on everywhere from social media to news networks. There's a very funny clip from the Fox News Network where they do a who's on first style banter about the show You, which is great. You know I was watching an episode of You where measles came up. wait Wait, wait, when did I mention measles? I don't know. It was on You. well What was on me?
00:02:59
Speaker
What are you talking about? Raymond even hearing what I'm saying? I never had the measles. The measles and the vaccine episode was on you. We never did a measles and vaccine episode. of mine Is this a joke? I don't even know what you're talking about. It was on you.
00:03:11
Speaker
It was on you. I've never had it. It was an episode of a show, Laura. What's it called? You. What he talking It's called you. I've never done a show on measles. I just completely give up. We gotta get it. It's show called you on Netflix.
00:03:26
Speaker
There's a show called Laura Ingham on Netflix. The whole point is is that this show had ah pretty like low profile when it started and has slowly gained traction, often, in fact, quickly in the earlier seasons, gained traction and has continued to rise up to about season four. And we are now talking about season five, which is the final season.
00:03:46
Speaker
It came out a couple months ago and has some conversation around it, but I would say isn't quite at the same height that it used to be. And we're going to talking about maybe why that is. now The show You.
00:03:58
Speaker
I started watching this not actually too long ago. I've been kind of catching up to get to this final season. Have you been watching it as it's been coming out? Or are you doing the classic binge style that Netflix is known for? Well, I actually caught it when the show released on Lifetime before it got streaming.
00:04:14
Speaker
I watched it. hipster. yeah because my sister is like a big fan of psychological thrillers. She really loves that genre. I was visiting her in Sweden. She lives in Sweden. I was visiting her and it just came out and we were sitting like in her house and we were watching the show and we were like, oh, cool. This is really cool. I really like this. And then I researched it more. It was developed by Sarah Gamble, who was a writer on Supernatural.
00:04:38
Speaker
And Greg Berlanti, who's this really, really famous writer. He was like the showrunner of Dawson's Creek. He's done you know a lot of the CW shows like Riverdale and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, which was also on Netflix.
00:04:52
Speaker
He had a huge part in the Arrowverse, Titans, Doom Patrol. He's a really, really influential guy. And he endowed my program at Northwestern, so I wouldn't exist without him as a writer.
00:05:03
Speaker
And Berlanti does kind of give the show the quintessential lifetime oeuvre, even if it's not necessarily always going to be like a lifetime show.
00:05:15
Speaker
I do think by the second season, as it moved from Lifetime to Netflix, that it started to have more of a life of its own. Well, I will say that because of Sarah Gamble's work at Supernatural, there is like that part of like, okay, let's do a lot with very little because Supernatural was very known for that. A lot of the CW was very known for that. And I feel like, but Greg Berlanti, who's literally become like this giant, has become like this massive giant, become a master of like taking, you know,
00:05:44
Speaker
very, very like limited resources and making something really big out of it. And because he has such a wonderful relationship with Netflix, when ultimately Lifetime couldn't afford the show anymore because the show was becoming expensive, Netflix picked it up because they saw the potential. And I feel like if I was a betting man,
00:06:01
Speaker
I feel like they always position for the second season to belong to a streaming service. They obviously knew, OK, like this show has potential, but nobody will buy it because maybe of its subject matter, because it's ultimately about a stalker murderer in our times and our times haven't.
00:06:18
Speaker
been well known to receive. It feels very anti-woke, which we'll get to as well soon. But at the same time, there was something fascinating about the show because it felt like a guilty pleasure.
00:06:30
Speaker
And it also ties to another thing that we'll talk about later, which is this idea of schlock and how schlock can feel like a guilty pleasure as well in the mediaverse. I... struggle with that word you're using and I have a better one. Mediaverse?
00:06:44
Speaker
No, schlock. You've talked about it a couple episodes and I've used it too because it is serving an important purpose here. Because there is prestige, right? And there is schlock. And those two feel very different. You definitely feels more in the, I would call it pulp category.
00:07:03
Speaker
So pulp has, i would say, more of a component to genre. And I think pulp is respectable because it relies heavily on a formula, on a structure,
00:07:19
Speaker
But it carries familiar notes, and schlock almost indicates that it is familiar, but to a point that you don't really have to pay attention to it, and that there's no real interest point in delving deeper. And with the show You particularly, it feels deeply pulpy because it does have...
00:07:40
Speaker
Component elements that are, I would say, elevated, right? And you and I's favorite properties is Star Wars, which is quintessential pulp. But occasionally... Depends on the Star Wars.
00:07:52
Speaker
and Well, but it was built on Flash Gordon, right? George Lucas wanted to make a Flash Gordon program, and Flash Gordon is is quintessential pulp. So the DNA of Star Wars is pulp.
00:08:04
Speaker
But what you can do with the pulp... aspects, the formulas, is you can transcend it, and in programs like Andor, which I really hope we can cover at some point this year, is a great example of something that is truly transcendent. You, on the other hand, is a show that I think I wished could have done that full transformation. And I could almost see the way in which it was propelling itself maybe into a new transformative element that subverts a lot of the stuff that they build on early on. But I think that while it really loves its pulpiness, that love...
00:08:42
Speaker
ultimately I do think also could be the thing that draws the fifth season into a place of not quite mediocrity, but also not quite transcendence. Because it does have themes and elements of things that in previous seasons were played straight, subverted.
00:09:00
Speaker
But also, that subversion, I think does come at a ultimate cost for the show and doesn't make it one thing or another. It's maybe entertaining, maybe not. But you were also talking about season one, which I think we're talking about this show as a whole. Before do we get there, I think it's important for me to say that in my interpretation of Shock, which is really important for what I'm going to say for season five of you,
00:09:21
Speaker
I agree with you that most of you is pulp, your definition of pulp. But schlock for me is that idea that something is so bad that it's good. You know, there's an element of it that feels so melodramatic, so off-kilterly, like, uncanny and weird to watch.
00:09:37
Speaker
like that whole uncanny valley thing where it kind of makes you uncomfortable but it's at least like fascinating and you still gravitate towards it something like the room like the movie the room and also the only star wars movie that really represents shock for me is episode three revenge of the sith even attack of the clones you know like the whole idea of like i hate sand it's coarse it's irritating it gets everywhere that is such a schlocky line it's so bad but it's iconic because it transcends like how bad it is and it becomes so meme worthy that it becomes iconic.
00:10:09
Speaker
And I feel that art that demands your attention, whether it be like critically good or critically bad, it doesn't matter because it still demands your attention. It still becomes ah conversation piece because that's what art is. Successful art is art that grabs your attention and demands to be watched. That is, in my opinion, what successful art is. critically good art is different from something that's successful because success is measured, at least in TV, by how much it is in the conversation. That's why we're doing these show episodes. That's why we're doing this podcast.
00:10:39
Speaker
But, you know, have been a lot of times where we've covered things that have been critically acclaimed. And that's I really want to stress that that's very different. And when you look at the critical acclaim like adolescence, adolescence is a critically acclaimed show. It's like prestige level now for its limited run or not limited run, as we, you know, will discuss potentially in the second half.
00:10:58
Speaker
But whereas you, it wasn't trying to be prestige, but it was always trying to be part of the conversation. And it very much succeeded in doing. But if you talk about its critical acclaim, it has an average 90% tomato meter with these four seasons. So it's got a lot of love behind it, critically or otherwise. But not on Metacritic, because Metacritic, it's always in the 70s. It's always in the 70s, but where you look at like... But 70s is still pretty good for Metacritic, because Metacritic is much, much, much harsher than a Rotten Tomatoes score. But that's what I'm saying. like Metacritic is the better litmus test of a show, because it aggregates much harsher, therefore you get a more honest sort of take on it. In fact...
00:11:40
Speaker
When you look at the Metacritic meter, the highest season is part two of season four. It has 82 of 100, but it's out of eight reviews. Whereas the first half of that season was 73.
00:11:53
Speaker
And then season three had 77, which is the second highest. You know, like nobody actually breaks the 80s. And in season five, it's a 53 out of 12 reviews. Whereas adolescence, if I remember correctly, it was like in the 88 range in that first season or 90. But ninety but also Adolescence is a whole nother level. But that's what I mean.
00:12:13
Speaker
That's the litmus test. That's the actual broadness that we're talking about. Because yes, you can say that both shows are successful because again, the Rotten Tomatoes, I feel like represents what I'm actually talking about is the fact that they're both really good conversation pieces and they're both entertaining, you know, for very different reasons. I think adolescence is a much more harder thing to watch.
00:12:37
Speaker
but it's still something that demands your attention. Whereas you also similarly demands your attention. That's why it's so bingeable because it's like eating something that's really bad for you.
00:12:49
Speaker
But at the same time, you just can't stop because it is so good to eat. But ultimately, two completely different shows that talk about similar corners of, I would say, toxic masculinity. Yeah, that's also very different. Because when you think about like toxic masculinity, I feel like both shows actually challenge our stereotypical view of what that means.
00:13:09
Speaker
And challenge us as viewers, too, because the show does demand that you, in some part, or root for the main character, respectively.
Character Dynamics in 'You'
00:13:19
Speaker
So the main character of the show, Jill Goldberg, is from the novel series You by Carolyn Kepnes. She has been writing this character for a number of years and years.
00:13:32
Speaker
optioned the rights to actually this and its sequel so initially this was kind of coming around the like peak of prestige tv era and so i think lifetime was ready to go full tilt let's make prestige type stuff let's have our prestige show Now, of course, Lifetime, they're going to put their biggest batters behind it, so that's why Berlanti is on the show.
00:13:57
Speaker
It's definitely a program that feels uniquely, even from season one, it feels pretty glossy. It definitely has a little bit more of its indie character being on Lifetime.
00:14:09
Speaker
And as I mentioned, largely they're playing the tropes straight, right? So I also do want to highlight what these tropes are before we dive into how they utilize it. But I also want to dive into the season's kind of breakdown. So when you have the first season, there is the main character, who is Joe Goldberg, played by Penn Badgley. And I should also note this show doesn't work without Penn Badgley.
00:14:31
Speaker
The girl is Guinevere Beck, played by Elizabeth Lail. She is the girl, right? So when I say the girl, it is about infatuation. So Joe Goldberg is obsessed.
00:14:43
Speaker
He is a man who has a crush, and he gets obsessed with that crush. And I say crush because it's a limited amount of, I think, true love that you're seeing throughout these seasons. And I should specify, guys, if you haven't watched any of you and you're just trying to dip your toes in, this is probably the wrong thing. But I do want to talk a little bit about the details here in season one. so if you haven't watched the show, um maybe take a beat, pause this, go watch it. Because I don't want to muddy this for you. But I think to talk about Joe Goldberg, you have to talk about the fact that he kills people. He what? And...
00:15:17
Speaker
In the show, he does ultimately- i know! He does ultimately kill the girl, right? This is something that as time moves on you're getting into- Hey, listen, spoiler culture has gotten way out of hand. i i know god I don't love it, but I have to give my caveats.
00:15:34
Speaker
There's also the villain. So in season one, the villain is Shay Mitchell. I think maybe the strongest villain in all of the show, to be honest, in my opinion, was when Shay Mitchell plays Peach Salinger. So this kind of standardizes what we consider to be the villain in U show, who is someone who is typically a little bit ritzy. In this case, it's a socialite who Beck is just a little bit underneath the thumb of.
00:16:00
Speaker
And also is in love with Beck, which is not really a surprise if you know Shay Mitchell's earlier career. She has played ah gay woman before. In the other seat, there is typically the child. So this is best known actually for season two when you have Jenna Ortega. In season one, the character is Paco.
00:16:21
Speaker
And I think Paco is kind of a fun one because he mirrors Joe Goldberg as a character pretty effectively. And you actually get early on a great bit of this really tight storytelling where you have a character who is a representative of Joe Goldberg, you can really see um my how, yeah, Joe Goldberg was a child, much like Paco, who was traumatized in a similar way.
00:16:45
Speaker
And you kind of get that parallel. So it is a mature type of storytelling and one that shows the level of finesse that these writers do have and the potential of these writers too.
00:16:56
Speaker
Well, it's funny because you literally broke down their formula to a T. So you have Joe. Joe is like the one constant. He has the girl or the woman. he emotionally lusts. You're right. You shouldn't call it love.
00:17:12
Speaker
He just is so emotionally obsessed with them that he desires them. And when he manages to conquer them, because that's what it is, his conquest, he can't keep them because as soon as he gets them, he sort of gets bored. That's sort of like the theme that, you know,
00:17:27
Speaker
The grass is always greener to him. And because of that, he feels like he's not enough. it's It's a very cyclical way of like, okay, I'm trying my best. He's trying to be better. And he constantly falls back. There's a lot of like thematic work about like addiction with the show of him actually trying to be like a normal person, like a normal Joe. And he can't because that's another thing. Like that's the reason he's called Joe because he's just like normal Joe.
00:17:50
Speaker
And the other formula is there's always a child in season one. As you said, it's Paco in season two. It's a general take is a character, Ellie in season three. It is the neighbor kid.
00:18:02
Speaker
Oh, yes. Henry. It's the neighbor kid. It's the neighbor kid. Neighbor kid, totally. The neighbor kid definitely is applied there. The nice thing about the neighbor kid, though, is that he does play multiple roles.
00:18:13
Speaker
That is actually a sophisticated part of the show that I haven't given it credit. Yeah. ah My girlfriend and I have had a debate on which is the best season of you. She thinks three is the best. I think two is the best. I think that arc, season two to three, is like the best arc far. For sure.
00:18:27
Speaker
Season four, it's obviously the student. Yes, the student. I've got that on a retainer here, too. Thank you. Yeah. In season four, that child is Nadia. Yeah, Nadia. It's Amy Lee.
00:18:41
Speaker
And of course, in the final season, obviously, in the last one, it is Henry. It's Joe's son, who I forget the actor's name. Frankie DeMaio, who plays Joe Goldberg's son, Henry. And the other part of that formula is, as you said, there's always like a villain. And what would be like the it's never the police. It's funny because it's never the police. It's always people who are worse than Joe.
00:19:02
Speaker
They're also kind of like these skeezy, almost murderous people themselves. They're always manipulators. They're always like monsters themselves. And the reason why you have these villains, these children, is because it's a very sophisticated way of being like, look, Joe is not that bad.
00:19:18
Speaker
when you compare him to these other characters because obviously the villain characters are supposed to be like okay joe is the lesser evil and he should conquer them because they are that much worse and the reason we believe that is because joe takes care of people who are weak meaning children he has a very soft spot for children it has to do with his trauma because he himself was abandoned as a child and he felt like he was taken advantage of as a child and he was you know tortured as a child.
Seasonal Themes and Transformations in 'You'
00:19:46
Speaker
And of course, the last part of the formula is that it's always in a different location. Every season is a location. Season one is in New York. Season two is in Los Angeles. Season three is in the suburbs of California. Madre Linda, which is North NorCal versus SoCal. Yeah.
00:20:01
Speaker
And London is seasoned back in New York, which is part of the issue. We'll get to that as well. But that's the thing. This formula, every season is essentially the same. And it works because the one thing that is different in each formula is that it talks about a different part of joe's development like in season one joe's discovering himself he's discovering like what love is what love is really for him but it also is about him discovering what it means to be like a murderer he's killed a few people before i know like that's something but it really is like what pushes him to be the person that becomes in season two he discovers theoretically his true love his equal
00:20:42
Speaker
And so much is equal that he has to reconcile with the fact of like, oh, maybe she really is the same person as me. And I don't like that. And then it transitions to season three, where he not only needs to be a father for the first time, but he also needs to be in like what he feels to be in his own toxic relationship and not knowing what to do with it.
00:21:02
Speaker
And then season four is about rebirth and sort of redemption in the darkest way possible. And then season five is basically like, okay, we're going to go back to the beginning because that's what stories are poetry. It's like it rhymes.
00:21:17
Speaker
Right, George Lucas? Sure. But five is also, i would say, i think that what it attempts to be is about acceptance. where Joe wanting to accept himself and he is asking his wife to accept him.
00:21:32
Speaker
And he is also the person that he is chasing, the girl, I would say, or the woman, or the love is, or the you, is the person who he believes accepts him the most.
00:21:44
Speaker
I feel like that's my issue with season five, the acceptance part of it. It was so much stronger with season four, right? Because that's the other thing, the thematic work each location had.
00:21:54
Speaker
New York felt very poetic because it very much focused on like this guy in a bookstore because he works in a bookstore. It felt very much like storybook love, like watching Sleepless in Seattle, those old movies where it was like boy meets girl. um In season two, because it moves to you suddenly get like the LA vibe. You get like how, you know, shallow it is and how much he hates it because he's like a New York person. And he believes himself to be very deep, which puts him directly at odds with the shallow California type.
00:22:24
Speaker
Yeah. And then when we get to Marjorie Linda, which is North Cal and that suburban white picket fence type location, he himself is like, why am I here? You know, this is not me. I'm not meant to be in this environment like this person who lives like this normal life because he's essentially accepted like, oh, my God, I'm stuck in mediocrity.
00:22:43
Speaker
And that's how his wife feels as well. Like they're both stuck in this weird suburban hell where they cannot flourish as their true selves. but their true selves are psychotic. So it's like a weird situation to be in because it's ultimately like really funny.
00:22:58
Speaker
That's why season three in particular, just like we eventually have to talk about Victoria Petretti because she was the queen of that show. Oh my goodness. And you know what? She's got great taste in bagels. Shout out Maury's Bagels out here in LA. Sorry, eating a bagel at my favorite bagel shop in Silver Lake.
00:23:15
Speaker
Not to blow up her spot, but It's a great bagel spot and it's co-signed. So ah going through season three, did you want to talk about season four? Yeah, yeah. like And season four is obviously just about like, he's back in his element, right? Because he's in a space that he actually thinks is deeper. Again, London, he's doing a job um similar to his original job where he was like a bookstore owner in season one and season...
00:23:37
Speaker
Four, he's like a teacher for literature at London University. So ultimately, like he feels like he's an element again. He's rediscovering himself. He, of course, has like this fight between like, OK, should I go back to being like actual Joe or continue reinventing myself?
00:23:54
Speaker
Because that's another thing. Like every season, he almost has like a different name. i think in season three and season one, he goes back to being Joe Goldberg and season five, of course. But in season four and in season two, he goes by different names. In four, he's Jonathan Moore, which I think is the most important thing to be talking about because it directly involves him moving into season five. Because Jonathan Moore is the one who ends up meeting the girl of that season, Kate, played by Charlotte Ritchie.
00:24:23
Speaker
who then becomes the wife, kind of mirroring season three, where there's Victoria Bedretti and him, and he has conquered, and he starts to feel unhappy.
00:24:34
Speaker
And then season five, it's a mirror image. He is also unhappy, he does not feel accepted by his wife, and there's a lot of complication there. And he finds someone else to love and obsess over, which again, season three and season five really mirror each other because it's essentially telling a very similar storyline.
00:24:53
Speaker
I mean, in some ways, season five, like in the best of worlds, it was a season that really should have drawn influence from all seasons before it. But unfortunately, it feels like picked and choose what it actually wanted to add. It's frustrating because I could see what they were trying to go for.
00:25:09
Speaker
in some ways, they were successful. In other ways, they weren't as successful as previously. Because my main issue because every season had a really strong theme and had a really strong identity.
00:25:20
Speaker
i feel like even though season five utilized the same kind of formula, it didn't have as strong of an identity or as strong of a theme because they just didn't know what to do with Joe anymore as a character.
00:25:31
Speaker
And think that's where it failed. And before we talk about what doesn't work in the final season, let's talk about how it has worked in the past. So you've mentioned Victoria Betretti, who I think is the shining star of the show as a whole. Peak, peak, peak. Peak is a good word. I think that I found as we moved out of three into four that her leaving the show...
00:25:54
Speaker
was a mistake on the creator's part. I actually had a sense that just from the talk around it, that season three was kind of being set up to be her season.
00:26:05
Speaker
And in many ways, it kind of was. She got her own mirror plot to Joe, where she has a love interest. She gets a kind of a love interest. I mean, the boy in this show, he's combined into one. Exactly, is also sort of crushing on Victoria Bedretti, and she feels kind of complicated about that situation. But it is a very sort of different thing than Penn Badgley's character, Joe, just constantly following girls. And it's unique, I think, season three, the way that they do these kind of subversions. There's a character in episode one of season three who ends up getting killed by Victoria Bedretti by the end, and that, quote-unquote,
00:26:45
Speaker
the girl or the woman or the you ends up becoming a different you. And that is a character, Marianne, who actually appears pretty prominently in season four. And she shows up in season five as well. yeah In the sake of the,
00:27:03
Speaker
main crux of the show, Penn Badgley is a heartthrob. At the end of the day, he started off as Dan in Gossip Girl and then moved to playing this now iconic character.
00:27:15
Speaker
And the show doesn't work without him. But I also think that his most compelling aspects are also when he is most challenged because the show does rely heavily on the fact that we love him and that he is also a bad person, right? And those two mirror aspects, those two polar opposites are the thing that drive the show because he has a villain that we are going to be naturally opposed to because- Often tied to this idea of privilege because they're often, they're richer than him. They have everything going for them. They've never earned it. Exactly. And that's the other thing.
00:27:53
Speaker
He's like the underdog all the time, which is another reason why we like him. But at the same time, he is also in serialization continually placed in high society environments and always seems relatively comfortable there, which is why I find the show in its serial form iteratively and As the seasons progress, less and less charming because it's cute in the first season when he is just this guy who works at a bookstore.
00:28:22
Speaker
But by season five, he owns the bookstore. So he is now the person that he himself has been looking down upon. he has become Shea Mitchell character. He is now that person and there is really no really rock solid way that the creators have found to really prod at that. I think he's been prodded at best when he is actually put in positions where he is psychologically challenged like in season two.
00:28:51
Speaker
And in ah season three or four or five, he is generally in more privileged positions. But in season two, the characters aren't particularly privileged, but they are kind of dumb. And his villain in two is the brother of Victoria Pedretti, played by James Scully, who is an excellent actor in his own right, Forty Quinn. And Forty was, by wild margin,
00:29:18
Speaker
the best character for me in the entire series because he's a good villain. Because he wasn't a villain. Yeah, because he wasn't traditionally a villain. Because he wants to be like Joe Goldberg's best friend. And so yeah being that character in opposition to someone who honestly couldn't care less in season one, Peach was not interested in Joe and really only had any real interest in him when he was a problem and obstacle first.
00:29:45
Speaker
her and 40 is like you're my best friend i don't want you to leave like that's one of the best episodes in season two is when he like basically traps joe into doing acid with him or whatever they're doing but in any case moving to this final season it has a scaffolding and a job ah and yet it continues to just reset and it doesn't deviate there's a new place there's a new love interest we have a new character new place but old place sure in a sense it's all of the things that we recognize from season one but in a totally new environment
00:30:23
Speaker
and pen badgley is no longer just a meek guy around la he is now the guy and in some ways i do like that they did new york for the final season because it does feel subversive to do that i like that they have a new lens in which they are bringing joe back to a place that he does feel ultimately comfortable in but i do think that They have let him off the hook in a lot of ways, and I do think that making him comfortable is the last thing that you would want to do for a character that the creators, at least behind the scenes, espouse to not be interested in propping up.
00:31:02
Speaker
And yet throughout the show, they kind of do let him off the hook. Largely, I think, because the people around the show are driving it. And to talk about that, I also do think we have to talk about the girl in the final season, Madeline Brewer.
00:31:18
Speaker
You want to talk about this too? Madeline Brewer as the girl Bronte? We talked about this formula, right? This is the thing that made all these seasons successful. And I really wanted, before we talk about Bronte in season five in full, I think it's really important for me to say this.
00:31:33
Speaker
Season four, even though it was really different from all the other seasons because it was sort of a reinvention, it worked because it it drew so so much on this idea of like, okay, let's do something different in a completely different location.
00:31:47
Speaker
That's what season four was. It felt like a soft reboot. And it did that so well because it also tied to larger things like the murder mystery genre and things that, you know, weren't really explored in the world of you.
00:31:58
Speaker
And it did that really, really well because it just showed us that no matter who Joe Goldberg faces against, he's still the biggest monster in that show. You know, that was the whole like underlying theme that was bubbling over the surface.
00:32:11
Speaker
But in season five, I feel like they took what they did so well with season four, and they took that too literally. Because they were like, all right, if Joe is literally the biggest monster of the show, then he needs to be the villain.
00:32:23
Speaker
And what ends up happening is that in season five, Joe Goldberg is not really the main character anymore. It's literally Madeline Brewer's character, Bronte, who's positioned as that. And that's why, you know, there's been a lot of pushback against it.
00:32:37
Speaker
There's also been for a lot of other reasons, more misogynistic reasons, similar to the Last of Us discourse that's been going on recently. But at the same time, I personally think there is some merit to be said about some of the more critical things that have been said about season five, mainly that it tries so much to push a message that is important.
00:33:01
Speaker
I do really want to say that the message is important that, you know, like we need to treat Joe Goldberg as the monster he is and we shouldn't martyrize him because that's what we're unfortunately doing with characters like him.
00:33:12
Speaker
And Homelander from The Boys as well. That's like another big one, especially after, you know, this era of Trump where this whole characters have become so politicized. Characters that we should easily criticize have become like martyrs to certain spheres of politics.
00:33:28
Speaker
And I think that's wrong. I really, really do believe that it's horrendous. But at the same time, there is a way to showcase the fallacy and their heroism in much more intelligent ways. I don't think they commit to it, to be honest, man.
00:33:42
Speaker
I think that what you're talking about- That is what I'm saying. Is a different version of the show than what we end up getting, and a version that actually fully prioritizes Bronte as a character, and actually gives her a sense of identity.
00:33:58
Speaker
This is something that happens later in the season. Madeline Brewer- could have been, i think, positioned differently as a character that does have a lot of that chutzpah.
00:34:11
Speaker
But also, Brewer is a um fine actress, but and Anna Camp too, fine actress, but they play with these- Yeah, Anna Camp is just doing her true blood role. Yeah.
00:34:22
Speaker
precisely they act in a way that is not super three-dimensional i would say it's like i love doing this with you niv like two and a half yeah what's our margin here so yeah you love to talk about it a two-dimensional versus a three-dimensional character and i think we're split in the middle here wants versus needs man wants versus needs there's a lot of characters in season five that have very strong wants but have very little needs I think that Bronte gets close. It just isn't executed very effectively.
00:34:50
Speaker
And very similarly to how I wished in season three we had gone into the mind of Pedretti and done the season that way, that would have been my preferred way to watch season three. And that's also why I think that three lacked because we were getting these like really interesting subversions, but they were all in the background.
00:35:08
Speaker
In season five, we're getting less subversion than we were getting in season three. In terms of like raw character, we have essentially one villain, as opposed to in season three, we had like two. There was like a husband and wife character.
00:35:21
Speaker
So you got a little bit more subversion. There was also the neighbor. So there were a little bit of other aspects too, you know, the family of the neighbor. season Season five, there is essentially just one hardcore villain. And then there's also Bronte's friends who play ancillary villain characters, but I would say is really not. I disagree. I feel like everybody in season five was realistically a villain to Joe because that's what the show was supposed to be. Similar to how like Dexter in its final season, all of Miami PD needed to be against him because the jig was up in that final season.
00:36:00
Speaker
When the murderer is like about to be caught, then everybody and their grandma needs to be on him. You know what I mean? Okay. I don't know, Dexter, but let's compare it to a show that I think is like the high pinnacle of what a antihero could be. Breaking bad. Boom. You got it, buddy. Yeah, of course. so that is what I think this needed to be. You needed to have Joe Goldberg. That's a good example. Actually in a corner, right?
00:36:27
Speaker
He is never actually truly cornered. Sure, he is being punished throughout the season in various ways. The villains are definitely in their roots.
00:36:38
Speaker
But also, Kate as his wife is someone who sometimes is on his side and sometimes not. Bronte is a character who is sometimes on his side and sometimes not.
00:36:49
Speaker
The villain, Anna Camp's character, very really disseminates that duality by playing twins. She plays Regan, who is the one who's not on his side, and Maddie, the one who is on his side.
00:37:04
Speaker
And there is actually some kind of fluctuation there, which is kind of cool. And I'll leave that generic. That being said, you know, that fluctuation of the character makes, to me, Anna Kemp, my favorite person on this season of the show. Because I think she leans into what the show does best.
00:37:20
Speaker
And unfortunately, that leaves li Madeline Brewer in the number two seat. And that's tough. It's tough because Anna Camp, she really is honored to her name right now because she's literally camping it up. But it's so true because the show that made her career was True Blood, an HBO show about vampires.
00:37:35
Speaker
And she plays ah very similar character. The twin sisters are like an imagulation of her character from True Blood, which is like this really peppy, but really cruel human being.
00:37:46
Speaker
I think as awesome as Anna Camp is, and she really hands it up. She's like the definition of both pulp and schlock in that final season. She really is. No, heard. Yeah, like she gives so much of vital energy to that final season.
00:37:59
Speaker
But unfortunately, i feel like that investment in her and her character should have not have existed. I would have rather they cut the first half, like the storyline in the first half. Because it makes no real sense to everything else that's going on. Because it doesn't actually lead to the fact of like, okay, the whole world is turning against Joe Goldberg. No, it's trying to replicate the previous formulas from previous seasons, but in a much shorter form before they're like, oh, we need to wrap this up now. And the reason I brought up Dexter is because that example is notorious, infamous even, for messing that up, for literally taking a character like Dexter, who is like the a killer we sympathize with, and then really messing up like that final season of making everybody sort of like idiots around him. Whereas in Breaking Dead, you gave the good example.
00:38:44
Speaker
Like this is a person who is like a proper antihero who turns into a monster, a literal monster. And because he's turned into a literal monster, the whole world is against him and chasing him and he has no way to escape.
00:38:56
Speaker
Season five of You could have done so well if it actually brought back all the previous character or all previous storylines for previous seasons in a much more weightier way that actually called out Joe for his mess. Like I really like this is not really a spoiler, but there's like a montage of sort of like these reels like these Instagram reels from people or like to talk reels from people in support of Joe Goldberg and like a moment in the scene.
00:39:22
Speaker
And it's like a callback to previous characters, some are for him, some are against him. But I was like, why are these reels? Why are they these 10 second long reels? Why aren't these characters actually a part of the show, actually doing something in the show? Because that was heavily warranted because reintroducing New York, really introducing like the first season location and even, you know, Guinevere Beck, who was like the first main girl in that first season, she's brought up a lot just because it's in New York and the consequences of Joe's actions from season one, they carry over.
Final Season of 'You' and Narrative Analysis
00:39:55
Speaker
and I'm like, okay, that's cool. That makes sense. But nothing else really carries over because sort of a lot of the other stuff that Joe does gets sort of gloss. The only real effects, the only real sort of consequences Joe has to deal with and season five are things he did in season one and things he did in season four.
00:40:13
Speaker
And I think that's my issue. It sort of skips the peak. If we're going back to what really made this show click and really made this show really, really strong, it was season two and season three, and acting like those two seasons don't exist in season five is a colossal mismanagement of what to do with that story.
00:40:29
Speaker
The show is ultimately more interested in the fan service for its audience than the actual- And the message. Take away. of Joe Goldberg deserves nothing, right? Everything that Joe thinks he deserves, he almost gets.
00:40:47
Speaker
He finds a way to keep his child in his life. He finds a way to keep the everything that he really needs as a character down to the very last moment.
00:41:00
Speaker
He still is getting the attention that he craves, even if he is acting snobby about it. And I think that by the end of the show, we as an audience may feel that he's gotten his just desserts in some way, shape, or form, but I don't think that's true at all.
00:41:16
Speaker
And I think that the critique of his worldview is truly surface level, and that is, I think, the death rattle of a program like this that is so interested in being about subversion, even from the very beginning. But that's the thing, I would have really loved the storyline where it was like the last three episodes of the show, and it just had to do with Joe's like criminal court case, like him being like a murderer. Bro, for real. That would have been so good because that would have been like, if you really want to talk about Joe's strengths, his belief that he's the hero of his own story and him being able to convince anyone in that courtroom like, hey, you know, I'm not such a bad guy. This is all a mistake.
00:41:58
Speaker
I couldn't have done all this. Like, I'm a good person. Because again, people just naturally trust him and fall in love with him. I would have loved to see like the season put him in front of like an actual jury and have that be the final arc of the show where he's actually able to convince them but then in the last moment you know his quote-unquote villains the people who he's actually destroyed over the course of five seasons they are able to beat him by actually banding together like truly banding together and defeating this colossal dragon of a monster Because that's what he is. But they're always just portrayed in the show as kind of sniveling. Every character yeah that defies Joe is doing so with this, especially in the final season, this timidness of not feeling like they can truly commit.
00:42:46
Speaker
And Goldberg is the only guy who is committing to things. He is... fully self-confident. And that level of confidence is, I think, the thing that make people love him. But because the creators are continually reaffirming that he is confident in what he does, regardless of whether the things he does is actually good for society, i think the audience can't help but fall in love with him for that. And it's the thing that makes this such a tough, tough watch. But even then, it's really important because what what you said was so important, right? That's his biggest, biggest strength, you know, as a character.
00:43:24
Speaker
But even that gets betrayed in the final season because the person who ultimately brings him down is a character that isn't as smart as him. She's portrayed as someone who herself is not confident. She's constantly wavering, like, of how to react towards him, whether she has fallen in love with him or she wants for retribution.
00:43:43
Speaker
Because ultimately, the character of Bronte, which is like this big focal point that everybody's been talking about, is ultimately like an imagulation of like, okay, this is the person that brings him down. This woman needs to bring him down. And I'm like, okay, that could have worked.
00:43:56
Speaker
But the problem is she's not confident in herself. And because she's not confident in herself, her actions make no sense. She keeps changing her mind every two seconds. What's so funny is you said Bronte, you could apply that same doctrine to Kate too.
00:44:10
Speaker
She is someone who constantly second guesses herself. Yeah, it's true. Those are the two main contenders against Joe Goldberg in the season. Like the reason I bring Bronte up as opposed to Kate is because Joe knows how to handle Kate because he had like a similar situation with his wife, Love.
00:44:27
Speaker
When you have this weight of five seasons and this character has learned so much, he knows how to navigate pitfalls he's navigated through before. He's passed the worst of it. He knows how to be the master manipulator he is.
00:44:39
Speaker
And that's the thing, for some reason, Bronte is an unexplained blind spot, because even though she's the most wavering character there is, he still puts his entire weight of investment into her.
00:44:51
Speaker
And it just doesn't make sense. And that's why the final episode where they're sort of like road tripping together and she's still deciding what she wants to do, it doesn't make a lot of sense. And it actually feels like it's pretty disappointing. In fact, it felt like the show had more agency in the penultimate episode.
00:45:07
Speaker
Because it did sort of what I wanted. it took like not a lot of characters, but it took certain characters and put them together to be against him. It took three sort of women that he scorned and he really hurt and he really damaged and really destroyed their lives. and together they faced him and they essentially beat him and then he's saved by this person Bronte only for her to defeat him in the next episode I'm sorry I know I know we didn't talk about no spoilers but this is ridiculous it's been talked about across the internet already and I'm like I myself was annoyed at it I admit I was part of this discourse not vocally but I am part of this discourse because I myself annoyed at it
00:45:46
Speaker
So there you go That's all right. That's what editing's for. It's okay. That's enough of that. I want to talk about one thing that I do think works because, you know, it's it's nice to be able to highlight the good parts. I think that there is some element of this show that does have a level of effectiveness. Sarah Gamble was the creator of the show up to the final season and... No, until season four.
00:46:09
Speaker
Oh, for sure. That's why it also felt different. That makes sense. But then they definitely kind of stepped up to the plate and kept the tonal rhythm alive, which is excellent. But also they're talking about something that is very specific in terms of the world of romance literature.
00:46:26
Speaker
In some ways, You is very literature adjacent, and it brings in an audience that might otherwise not be watching a lot of other, like, programming, which makes it a really viable piece of content for Netflix, but it also makes it something that is culturally very viable. And in the final season, they actually do pretty directly reference book talk and specific elements of literature. They talk about Ibsen, which I'm sure you probably appreciate as well as I do. Yeah, of course. Niv, because they talk about a doll's house and Ibsen's relationship to feminism and how the sort of great literary masters might actually be kind of detached from our more modern idea of feminism, but also sort of like agency, sexual agency, the way in which the romance tropes give dark romance a new life and the psychological obsession that is couched in intimacy and in a lust is something that joe goldberg has continually operated under and in some ways the you literary series has also been a part of this like book talk derision of maybe low and high art in the sense that it is very beloved by a lot of readers and is the
00:47:47
Speaker
kind of utmost literary genre right now is romanticcy and this like romance style. It's just the biggest thing in terms of, you know, profits, but also in terms of just eyeballs. And so it's important to talk about, but I also think that like the way that they end up landing there is while valuable in a sense, because I think it's it gives Joe that challenge that I'm always looking for, like, to me, what makes a good season of you is whether or not he's actually being challenged. And so while season four, for example, where he's in London, and there's the whodunit is really lovely in a superficial kind of way. I just I just don't think that the formula is all the way there for me because I think that the girl in this show is just a little bit lackluster. The villain for the show really gives a pretty subversive twist by the end of season four where the villain is effectively Joe Goldberg himself. Yeah. And that seems to be kind of a cop-out because it doesn't really give a really a ah high level of, like, depth to Joe's character. And I think that bleeds into season five, ultimately, because what he is supposed to do is, like, actually challenge himself.
00:48:59
Speaker
And then that challenge is so meaningless that by the end of season five, we've just hit a reset. And so what we're left is... a series of scenes, right? The scenes themselves might be interesting, and the challenges within the scenes might be interesting, but it doesn't carry over.
00:49:15
Speaker
And that it leads into my larger critique of the show as a whole, which is not that it is not valuable, it's not that it's not interesting, but it's not something that I personally am interested in because as opposed to a show that we're going to talk about in just a second, as we're wrapping things up here, the serialization of a show like Adolescence, which does talk about this like true crime, this violence as a way of talking about masculinity is a valuable conversation to be had. But when done serialized in a way that really is interested in not just that
00:49:50
Speaker
initial person but the people around them as more than just these characters that interact with the main villain in this case joe goldberg in adolescence case the villain is actually just a kid which is pretty crazy but in any case the whole point of this show is that it's supposed to be a feminist spite and it's a weaponization against toxic masculinity and season five feels like a Like a shallow version of what it should. Like a cop-out. That's the nicest way to say that.
00:50:21
Speaker
It feels like a cop-out. And you have great examples of this. Brett Easton Ellis wrote American Psycho decades ago, and he is obsessed with tasteless pop culture. He's designed to be uncool and alienating, and he's despised by everyone.
00:50:36
Speaker
And in the show, they almost do that, where he is obsessed with Ibsen. He actually makes direct reference to Ibsen, In a very prominent piece of literature featured in this show, which harkens back to the previous seasons in a really interesting way, ultimately, this show is about Joe and his hypocrisy.
00:50:56
Speaker
And when the show works best, it is not about comfort, but it's about reckoning. And when Joe is given ah moment to actually be challenged, that's going to work.
00:51:09
Speaker
And at one final point I do want to make here is that Carolyn Kepnes wrote several books about Joe Goldberg that very closely mirrored seasons one and two.
00:51:21
Speaker
Season three was a pretty much whole cloth reinvention and takes the show and tries to really bring a lot of subversive elements. And then season four does something completely different and does something that is also attempting subversion by completely transporting him to a new genre.
00:51:41
Speaker
The look of the show is very different, but it is a soft reset and acts to subvert in a maybe new and interesting way. But they aren't actually connecting to each other, i think, nearly enough. and And that's something that you've also touched upon, is that you wish that there was a little bit more of that true reckoning and an attempt to make this feel more serialized and and real. But at the end of the day, I just don't think it does. Look, if you're trying to honor the fact that this monster has destroyed the lives of many, many, many, many women throughout the course of the show, then i think that the survivors should have come together. and in some ways they do, but I think they should have come stronger. And if you really want to talk about like the feminist element of the show, which you should, then you can't just have one person personify it, who's an entirely new character that is trying to avenge one particular character from the first season.
00:52:35
Speaker
No, you should really talk about like the people that Joe has directly harmed because ultimately what you're doing is you're not trying to build like one hero to represent all these characters. No, you want to give all the other characters, all these other survivors agency because ultimately that mirrors the actual real world. Because in the Me Too moment of today, the women who've bravely taken agency against their abusers are actually taking agency.
00:52:58
Speaker
And that's what they should have been representing in the show. That's my two cents on that. And talking about ah men and their relationship to women, in a second we are going to be talking about this show Adolescence, which is also on Netflix. It's very interesting how such different pieces of media can have such a ah connective tissue, which is the way in which we interact with toxic masculinity.
00:53:23
Speaker
Do you have any particular connective pieces here, Niv, in terms of how the shows kind of interact with each other? My main thing is that I do think that this is an excellent way for me to be able to talk about something that is otherwise not a genre that I typically dive into, which is true crime.
00:53:40
Speaker
And there's a lot of true crime on Netflix. There's a lot of true crime in the world right now. And there's some crime on the streets, but I think that the true crime genre of television and of documentary has kind of made these things more of a dissection point. And when you actually look at the data, like crime is going down and we're actually in a pretty safe place here in America in terms of like just kind of broad scope.
00:54:04
Speaker
But also like crime is worth talking about and any amount of crime is also just scary you know as a human being living on this planet we fear the things that are dangerous to us and dissecting these things in meaningful ways i think does allow us to be able to healthily take the thing that is ultimately very human and well learn from it just like you didn't like my definition of schlock i don't like your definition of true crime because it's inherently incorrect true crime is a genre of non-fiction work
00:54:35
Speaker
that examines an actual crime that was committed in a fictionalized way. Both you and adolescents, because they're not actually based on true crimes, they're both regarded as psychological thrillers and crime dramas. Sorry, I had to just put that out there. That's my little needling back. But I think that you're right. I still like the fact that you position them as true crime because they feel real.
00:54:57
Speaker
Even though you particularly feels pulpy, there is like a really disturbing realness. The fact that we like Joe as a character, and the fact that there's so many people who advocate for him as a human being. And then the creative team and Ben Badgley are like, what are you people talking about? This person's a monster.
00:55:15
Speaker
And it's because ultimately people like especially in a social media world relate to him because he's like, oh, I'm a person looking for love. He's just misunderstood. You know, like we're in an age where, you know, like people just misunderstand men. But in reality, you know, it's not about like men can do really awful things. Women can do really awful.
00:55:34
Speaker
Like ultimately, these shows try to examine that. And adolescence takes it and into a much more grounded way. You know, it does what you does as well, which is it takes a character.
00:55:45
Speaker
And it positions him in a very sort of sympathetic light. But then when we peel back the layers of sympathy and empathy that we grow for them and get to the very core of what makes them tick, that whole idea of nature versus nurture that we'll we'll talk about second half, you know, you start understanding like, oh, wait a minute, this core in the middle is pretty rotten and it shouldn't be empathized. It should be judged and it should be punished when ah does something very, very, very harmful and dangerous.
00:56:15
Speaker
Great summation. We're going to take a quick break and listen to some music. If you are listening on Mixcloud, shout out to you. You get a little playlist. If not, maybe it's time to boot up the website or app and check out our podcast there.
00:56:29
Speaker
ah If not, then ah go ahead and listen to this ad and we will be back in just a second to talk about adolescence on Netflix. Spoilers ahead and behind.
00:56:46
Speaker
Hi there, listener. I know you are not hearing music right now. That's because we actually do a legal form of music streaming that you can find exclusively on our homepage, which is Mixcloud. So if you are interested in listening to a playlist that I personally curate for every single episode, then I would highly recommend you take a trip to Mixcloud and finish the episode starting exactly here where you left off and listen to that playlist and then dive into the second half.
00:57:14
Speaker
That said, if you choose not to do so, here's the second half right now.
00:57:20
Speaker
Thank you so much. If you're listening on Mixcloud, shout out to you. And if you're not, you know what to do. So we are now going to be talking about adolescence. I think that it's fair to say that pretty quickly in this conversation, we are going to get into spoilers.
00:57:32
Speaker
So if you haven't watched it, first of all, what's wrong with you?
Introduction to 'Adolescence'
00:57:35
Speaker
Second of all, it's on Netflix right now. All four episodes have dropped batch style as Netflix is wont to do. So um Niv, let's actually start our conversation here. So I had not heard a ton about adolescence, and then it kind of became an overnight sensation. And you were one of the first people that I was hearing advocate for the show. It started from this is a really good show. And it very, very, very quickly became we have to cover this on our podcast. So yeah talk to me about where that started for you and kind of how that awareness grew that you knew that this was going to be the show that was emblematic of our zeitgeist. I mean, it's funny, and I feel like we're going to make this connection a lot with this particular episode of our podcast.
00:58:21
Speaker
But it the same way Chloe, the show Chloe that we covered, what was it, two years ago? like really rose up in our zeitgeist and I was like, we have to cover it. It happened in the same way because I opened Metacritic, which is a website that aggregates a bunch of reviews from essentially review sites. And I saw that adolescents got a really, really high review for I think it was in the high 80s or like low 90s. And I immediately was like, wow, that's insane. Okay, this new show has gotten this really high review. It's a British show created by Stephen Graham and Jack Torn. Stephen Graham being the actor we both saw in Venom 2. That's my knowledge knowledge of Stephen Graham. But
00:59:05
Speaker
You know, I saw that review score and I was like, Okay, I'm gonna give the chance. And then I watched the first episode and within n literally the first five minutes, not even the first five minutes, the first three minutes, I knew that this show was different.
00:59:20
Speaker
It had earned the score that it was given. And I knew immediately, no matter how it ended, because I didn't see the other episodes, I didn't even see the other like 50 plus minutes.
00:59:30
Speaker
I just knew just on those first three minutes alone that we had to cover the show because it did something that was insane, but also so grounded and something so grittingly realistic and painful that my jaw just dropped. And that never happens because nothing surprises me anymore.
00:59:51
Speaker
Wow. Hey, I mean, that's true. And i think that what is phenomenal about this show is that it is gritty in a sense, as you've said, but it's grounded.
Plot and Procedural Elements of 'Adolescence'
01:00:02
Speaker
The story does follow what we think to be kind of a down-the-middle crime drama. At the first glance, first blush, it seems like we have two cops and they're going to start taking on this really intense drama and there's going to be lots of twists and turns and lots of different suspects as a murder mystery procedural is want to do.
01:00:29
Speaker
But as episode one progresses, our expectations very quickly get thrown completely out the window. We've been bait and switched. And instead of gathering up suspects and drawing up clues, we're getting like a procedural but not in the procedure that we're used to. We're getting the suspect fingerprinted.
01:00:50
Speaker
And the people are around the suspect and we're getting the lawyer come in and we understand a little bit about like how that initially works, the relationship between the lawyer and the police.
01:01:04
Speaker
All the while, the biggest turn, which I haven't said yet, is the suspect. is a, how old is he? He's 12. And all of the weight that comes with that. He's a kid, and the rate is surreal, and it's so, so upsetting. It made me really, really angry. yeah So the part that you initially were like, whoa, this is this like intense moment. To me, I was like, get this away from me. Because I i don't like, I really don't, don't, don't like the true crime scene thing that's happening right now in our world i find crime to be and think a lot of people do like viscerally upsetting and now some people are going to be like this just draws me in because that sickness just is something that comforts me for whatever reason hey i'm not going yuck your yum it's not mine but i respect you and love you for that
01:02:00
Speaker
But the people who are, i think, in the vast majority are people who feel the same way I do, which is like, this is revolting, but also I'm kind of drawn in because I need to know what's like wrong with our world. It's, I think, tangential to doomscrolling in a lot of ways.
01:02:18
Speaker
But then we find out that the thing that this kid is being accused of is something that, from my perspective, he never could have done, which is that he killed this girl.
01:02:29
Speaker
Yeah. And... I guess we do know early on because they talk about how they're going to contact the little girl's parents very, very, very early well in the first scene. Let me put it this way. Right. So I want to correct myself first.
01:02:42
Speaker
Jamie Miller, the main sort of the suspect, he's a 13 year old boy. He's not a 12 year old boy. And the reason why the opening is so impactful is because we start with the two main cops that are about to raid his house.
01:02:54
Speaker
And they're essentially like talking about one of the cops kids and how the kid is trying to get out of school. So instead of talking to his mom, he talks to his dad, who's the cop. And he's like, well, the only reason the kid is talking to me because i am the softie. So he's assuming that I'm just going to agree with him and I'm going to tell him all right, act sick, stay home.
01:03:16
Speaker
It's fine. I'm OK with it. And it's like a very chill, normal, like. you know, human conversation so you have with your colleague about your child. And then two seconds later, they get into their car.
01:03:28
Speaker
They violently raid this house with a bunch of cops. It's not just the two of them. It's like an army of cops. It's not even like one squad team. It feels like two.
01:03:39
Speaker
There's so many cops there. It's so overwhelming. And you think to yourself, who is in this house? Is this like a drug then? and Is this like a mafia compound? What is going on here?
01:03:50
Speaker
And then they run upstairs and like you see the family members, they're freaking out like the parents, like Stephen Graham, and his wife, and his daughter, his teenage daughter, Yeah, the first person that you see is Lisa, who is Jamie's sister. yeah And she like curls into this ball.
01:04:08
Speaker
You watch her be like, what's going on? And then as she realizes that she's powerless in this situation, she disintegrates. And then Stephen Graham's character and the the character named Amanda, Mrs. Miller and Mr. Miller, we'll just call them Mrs. and Mr. Miller, right? So Stephen Graham plays Mr. Miller.
01:04:27
Speaker
They both run downstairs to see what's going on. And all they can do is say, no, please stop. Maybe you have the wrong house. Like, we don't know what's going on, but this cannot be real.
01:04:38
Speaker
And that's what I was feeling watching the show. This cannot be real. The show so smartly puts us on the defensive for the suspect, for Jamie, played by Owen Cooper.
01:04:50
Speaker
Because Jamie, the suspect, who's a 13 year old boy, who we see an entire squad of cops like essentially assault in his own home.
01:05:00
Speaker
The first thing that happens is they're yelling like, Jamie, we want to put you in custody for first degree murder. We don't know of who yet. But what happens?
01:05:11
Speaker
He gets up and he soils himself from being afraid. To the point where the cop, the guy who's like a father, tells him, OK, please get changed.
01:05:22
Speaker
Would you like to get changed? And then he escorts him into a squad car away from his parents and he escorts him to the police station. And that is the essentially whiplash effect that we get.
01:05:38
Speaker
between this assault of like police on this child, but also them trying to be like, okay, we're still human beings. We know this is a sticky situation. We're still going to try to handle this with as much grace as we can. But again, after literally raiding a house,
01:05:55
Speaker
It's really, really wild as an opening. And with Jamie, you just want to protect him, like this tiny kid. I mean, he looks like he is a truly like a 13-year-old boy. Like this is not a kid where he's actually 23 and they're playing him as 13. He's a baby. He's a child.
01:06:18
Speaker
And throughout the show, we realize that like a 13-year-old boy is a baby. It's not normal for them to be doing a lot of the things that they expect each other to do at their age. And that's ultimately, I think, one of the major dramatic points of the show is something that's actually fairly longitudinally true, which is that this is an age where children...
01:06:44
Speaker
want to act like adults, but don't have the mental capacity to do so. And it's that push and pull that they feel as kids that creates these really often harrowing situations in schools.
01:07:01
Speaker
And even more harrowing is the situation that Jamie finds himself in when he's accused of murder. Now, to talk about that, and to keep in mind, we are going kind of section by section. So if you are a audience member who has only watched parts of Adolescence, keep in mind where we are in the show because we are going to start revealing things pretty quick.
01:07:22
Speaker
So in the police station, he gets processed like an adult. It's something that is wrote in some ways. We also, at this point, realize that this camera is not cutting.
Production Techniques in 'Adolescence'
01:07:34
Speaker
That's also one of the brilliant parts of the show. Have you seen the Apple TV show, The Studio? i literally started watching it last week. It also kind of uses a one shot. It has the long take. It is an actual edit. And it actually like jumped to a couple of scenes because it can't do one shot.
01:07:51
Speaker
Mm hmm. But this does. But in general, it does keep the long take, right? So it's these rather extensive takes, maybe not a whole 30 minutes, but they are these like kind longish takes. It's a couple of long takes that are edited together to make it look like it's one take.
01:08:09
Speaker
A lot of shows, it's not really one take. Adolescence is one take. They don't cheat. They actually film it like a play. A play! Yep.
01:08:23
Speaker
And the way they did it, which is also insane. And you feel it. Like, we'll talk about the effect soon of how this is so effective, especially for this show, for this tone, for its style.
01:08:33
Speaker
But the way they did it is very much like a play. They had multiple rehearsals, like building up to the actual run through. And ah they worked together with the crew to actually like plan the camera movements in conjunction to like the actors routines and marking and striking in the actual shots.
01:08:52
Speaker
But each one hour, and again, each episode is one hour, was shot around 10 times with two takes per day. Episodes were three weeks in total. The takes used, and i actually have the information here, for each episode, the specific takes that were used were as follows.
01:09:08
Speaker
The first episode was the second take out of 10. The second episode was the 13th take. The third episode was the 12th take. And the fourth episode was the 16th take.
01:09:23
Speaker
Yeah, that fourth episode gave them a lot of problems, actually. I heard a little bit about that. Yeah, that is really wild and very interesting how they have to navigate the situation.
01:09:34
Speaker
But it is also very rarely do I feel that this criticism does come up often where people will watch a film and be like, well, you know, just because of the limited setting and the limited characters and the drama and this and that, it doesn't really feel like a movie. It feels like it could be a play. And I'm like, okay, well, blah, blah, blah, blah. Could Aggro Drift by Harmony Corrine have been an album? Could To Pimp a Butterfly have been a movie? Like, are we just going to treat all media as something that can be transposed indiscriminately? i don't think so.
01:10:12
Speaker
I am very, very, very much in the camp of a play is a play and a movie is a movie. And just because a movie like Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight has a limited setting and a limited characters, and it's a little bit of that potboiler vibe, I don't think that makes it a play. It makes it a movie with limited scope and characters. And the camera does important things.
01:10:34
Speaker
In this case, adolescence transcribes what's great about a play into a movie. And that is so difficult to do. And that's why a lot of times when people are like, a movie feels like a play or a play feels like a movie, I find that indiscrimination to be a little bit flip because i think that it does diminish the thing that makes it so vital in its respective platforms.
01:11:00
Speaker
And what adolescence does as a TV show is it proves that it actually TV often has functioned in a culture more like theater, more like a writer's medium than a director's medium.
01:11:15
Speaker
And adolescence is the absolute zenith of that theory that I guess I have and maybe someone else has too. Well, I'm actually glad you brought up the Hateful Eight example, because it really does feel like a play.
01:11:29
Speaker
And it's because he even it admits that he formatted it like a play. But I don't think... Where's my whoopee cushion? I need to make fart noises into the mic. It is true. Like, he did format it like a play. He even admitted that. Even, like, in his stage reading of it, he wanted to do, like, an actual stage production of it when the original, like, script got leaked.
01:11:49
Speaker
Yeah. There were a bunch of times where he was like, ah this could be a play. It's because he was thinking about it. But this, the reason I'm harping on this is because I don't think your comparison was apt in this case.
01:12:01
Speaker
Purely because even though a one take or a one shot can be attributed to sort of rehearsing a play, because it follows the same buildup of actually like building a routine like that.
01:12:13
Speaker
I don't think it's apt because that is not the tone it's sort of showcasing. In fact, it is so hyper cinematic. It is such a tense type of shooting, especially in conjunction to the mood it's trying to project as a story.
01:12:28
Speaker
The story is about a kid murdering someone. And we don't know if he did murder, if like he's been wrongly accused or if he is in fact guilty.
01:12:39
Speaker
And we are essentially going through this really whiplash, confusing situation, not just alongside him, but alongside his parents who are with him almost every step of the way.
01:12:52
Speaker
And again, this show is super hyper successful because it feels very, very real. The one take never robs us of that reality.
01:13:02
Speaker
Because when something is edited, it's almost Brechtian in its way. I know I'm comparing another theater style here, but it's almost Brechtian in that way. Enter the whoopee cushion. I know, I know. It's almost Brechtian in that way because it's very much like, this is not just art. This is real.
01:13:17
Speaker
we are not creating an illusion. We are very much presenting a true slice of life in presenting it to you in such a lens that you have to digest it as reality as some gritty, really messed up reality.
01:13:31
Speaker
And so I feel like the one take, it can be artsy fartsy, like Birdman, or the studio as something purely stylistic that adds to the flair of a show.
01:13:43
Speaker
But here, it doesn't feel like that. It feels very true to the DNA of what they are trying to do. And that is why I'm like, no, this is not having anything to do with sort of like the traditional structure of playmaking.
01:13:58
Speaker
This is just true reality. cinematic genius. But I will genius it is concede that episode three in particular is the only exception to what I'm talking about, because that is truly one location, one space, and it could have been easily done as a one act play.
01:14:17
Speaker
Well, but in some way, you've conceded to my initial premise, which is that that comparison point will always hit a blockade. If you try to compare Baby Driver to a mixtape, you're going to lose something in the process, despite the fact that one medium may closely ally to another.
01:14:38
Speaker
So in the case of adolescence, what is beautiful about it is that it it does have unique cinematic capabilities. And I would say episodes one and four particularly are the strongest in that capacity where we move locations in one and four. I would say largely you get people in vehicles and it does feel uniquely televised, uniquely cinematic.
01:15:04
Speaker
Now, of course, when we go from Jamie of initially getting booked, I mentioned that we begin to meet other characters. We meet his lawyer.
01:15:15
Speaker
There is a particularly harrowing scene where we really feel Jamie's young age, where he's forced to be strip searched. The way that we describe the show, it seems as if that if the wrong person had made it, it would have been really grim and hopeless.
01:15:33
Speaker
But because of the unique capacities of Graham and his collaborators, Every choice made in adolescence feels uniquely human and hopeful.
01:15:45
Speaker
And that's really hard to do, even especially in a scene where you're watching 13-year-old boy get strip-searched because they think he has a knife on him. But yet still, everyone turns away.
01:15:57
Speaker
Everyone in the room is very respectful. You get that Top down, it's the acting, it's the writing, it's the way that the camera moves. Every single aspect of it really does feel like they are taking care of the characters, even if the world of the show is uniquely suited to rough up Jamie and to turn his world upside down.
01:16:23
Speaker
But so much of that empathy towards, you know, this kind of story should be attributed to like Jack Thorne, Stephen Graham, you know, the creators and writers of the show.
01:16:33
Speaker
And Stephen Graham, especially because he plays Jamie's father, at Eddie Miller. And so much of like the cruelty or like the uncomfort is a more proper term.
01:16:44
Speaker
in the police station that happens to Jamie is reflected on Stephen Graham's performance as his father. Because so much of it, especially in that strip search, Stephen Graham's like character constantly says, hey, do you have to do this?
01:16:58
Speaker
He's a child. And they're like, yes, we have to. But do you have to? Yes, we have to. And with each layer of clothing, they're like, okay, we also to do this. We don't want to do this. We have to do this.
01:17:09
Speaker
And that especially i want to attribute something you said, like worse writers, worse creators, or more inexperienced actors could have done this exchange and not just this like exchanges throughout this entire episode, especially in that first one where we're introduced to this entire situation, this entire world.
01:17:29
Speaker
It could have been done so cheaply, so terribly, so melodramatically. Eddie Miller's character could have easily been like a raging father, someone who's angry for even being there in the police station with his son. Like, oh my God, what have you done?
01:17:43
Speaker
What have you done? Why am I forced to be here? This is just a really, really uncomfortable situation for everyone. And everybody has to deal with this now. And they're dealing it with as much grace as humanly possible, given the situation.
01:17:57
Speaker
And I'm sorry to say, for those out there that are like, we need more action and drama or more intensity in that first, no, this is intense because this is real.
01:18:09
Speaker
And that's what's so destructive about it. Because it tears you apart, just watching it. Because really, this whole story focuses so much on this father and son dynamic, and them trying to sort of converse with each other and communicate with each other, and realize that, you know, they can't really help each other.
01:18:31
Speaker
And you know, that carries out throughout the entire season. And it just destroys you, you yourself want to help them, and you realize that you're just as helpless as them. Well, and you wouldn't blame Mr. Miller for being angry because I myself was angry on behalf of him.
01:18:46
Speaker
So if he did say, hey, you guys get away from my boy, why would I have been upset about that? But in the world of the story, these people are good, kind human people. They are trying to do their best. They believe in the system. They believe that these police are doing what they believe is good. And these people are doing what they believe is good.
01:19:09
Speaker
You know, for the most part, everyone in the show, probably with the exception of one, is doing the right thing that they can do at that particular time. It's just that sometimes doing what you think is best just isn't always enough.
01:19:26
Speaker
And that's something I'd come back to time and time again throughout the show is just that feeling, you know, you can do everything right, but it's still not enough. Now, the other thing you pointed out was that people believe because this is such a big show and it became an overnight sensation, there's always going to be a backlash. Everyone backlashes everything ever.
01:19:44
Speaker
You know, when everything ever were all at once, one best picture, people were like, oh, there's too much going on. It's too sentimental. It's too this. It's too that. And to that, I say, you know, whatever. Go watch some Uzu.
01:19:58
Speaker
When people were yelling at Sean Baker for Enora and being like, oh, sex work, it's like, okay, well, if you didn't like Enora, maybe try one of other Sean Baker's films.
Comparative Analysis of Movies 'Tangerine' and 'Enora'
01:20:09
Speaker
He's made a lot of different types of movies. If you don't like the depiction of sex workers in Enora, try Tangerine.
01:20:14
Speaker
I think that Tangerine, in many ways, is a better movie. I was about to say, it's a reoccurring theme. There are a lot of other things that you can watch. If you don't feel like you have seen the other side of sex work and how... Anora and Annie, the character feels like very empowered and very on top of things. And, you know, it's not always that complicated. And sometimes things get really messy and ugly quick. Well, there's a movie for that is called Red Rocket. So to everyone, you know, if you didn't like adolescence, congratulations. The Minecraft movie is in theaters now. So it's if you don't like the reality in adolescence and you think it's too boring, ah you can watch a movie that was made for five year olds. So moving on from that aspect of the story into sort of the final moments of the episode one before we move into two and three.
Detective Investigation in 'Adolescence'
01:21:03
Speaker
Jamie eventually we find out through interrogation. He's seated at a table with his lawyer. Initially, Jamie is very reticent to speak to Detective Bascom and his questions.
01:21:15
Speaker
So there's Bascom and there there's Frank. um Detective Bascom is a black man. Detective Frank is a white woman. Yeah, and they're both played by really amazing actors, Ashley Walters and Faye Marseille.
01:21:27
Speaker
Like, I didn't even really know much of Ashley. Like, i this is the first time I've seen him in anything. But Faye Marseille, I've seen her in Game of Thrones. So I knew she was actually, like, a really more than decent actress to say. I'm always happy to see amazing talent because this There aren't any big names here other than one particular one we both have affinity to that isn't Stephen Graham.
01:21:48
Speaker
But I feel like every single one of the actors, big and small, really hit it out of the park. This is a really great show for child actors. And I believe his son was, you have that name?
01:22:01
Speaker
Yeah, Amari Vakas. These characters are very kind and very human despite the wild world that they exist in. And in the interrogation, we find out that Jamie, despite being really kind of on the defense and i think just really scared...
01:22:23
Speaker
We get to the meat of it, which is that Bascom shows Jamie his footage. And it's 100% clear at that moment to both Jamie and his father, Mr. Miller, that he is 100% a murderer.
01:22:35
Speaker
And he shivved a girl named Katie in a parking lot. And so that's where we realized that the show isn't asking if he did it. This is not the kind of show that's going to do with that twist and turn and new evidence comes to light. It's really a meditation on whether we're willing to accept that someone like him can do something like that.
01:22:57
Speaker
Yeah, and it's so important to say that because at first I was going to disagree with you. Because even though it shows us irrefutable proof that he did it, because it shows us the video, but it doesn't show us the video.
01:23:08
Speaker
The video is not edited in. They show us a video of a video, so to speak. The camera shoots the video from far away. So we see like a blurry video of him doing like, without a doubt, it's him doing it.
01:23:20
Speaker
Committing the murder, he's guilty of it. But because it creates just a tiny bit of suspension of disbelief, we're like, oh, maybe it's not him. Maybe it's someone who looks like him.
01:23:32
Speaker
And maybe the other episodes will focus on proving that it it's not him, that we've been tricked. that this is just a clever twist. Because even right before this proof is presented, ah Stephen Graham's character, Eddie Miller, asks Jamie, like his son, be honest with me, did you murder this girl?
01:23:53
Speaker
And Jamie says no And obviously, because he's a 13 year old boy, we have to believe him. We feel incredibly beholden to believe him purely because, again, he is a 13 year old boy.
01:24:08
Speaker
But then, you know, episode after episode after episode, it really becomes an exercise of like, as you said, it's not whether or not he didn't do it. It's a question of whether or not we can accept that he in fact yeah And on the converse, you have to come to grips with Bascom and Frank as characters too. Because i think that there is an impulse a little bit to protect this kid and in converse to feel suspicious of the people who are doing this investigation.
01:24:40
Speaker
Because we bring in continually characters who are in some ways at odds. But moving into episode two, we get a lot of time that we get to spend with Bascom and Frank. And what we learn, and this is also partially because of the beautiful and really truly human performances that you mentioned from Marseille and Walters, that they really are doing their best and that they are also furthermore doing their jobs.
01:25:08
Speaker
And- When Bascom arrives in the school, so episode two takes place in a school and we learn about the place where Jamie essentially disappeared in plain sight, lost in the system that was just perilous to help him.
01:25:24
Speaker
Yeah, they go to a school where he has his friends, where also the murder victim is from. She went to that school, too. And I think it serves such as a clever but poignant reminder that when a murder like this happens, it's not just the parents that get affected.
01:25:41
Speaker
It's the entire community that gets affected. Very quickly, we see how the school becomes almost like this ticking time bomb. in terms of how this new information spreads around them like a virus, like a plague, and affects all of them in very visceral and very intense ways.
01:26:00
Speaker
And that's why I'm really glad you mentioned how Bascom and Frank are just doing their job, because their job is not just to capture the criminals and take them into custody.
01:26:11
Speaker
It's also about calming the community. taking charge, being leaders in their community and sort of these safeguards. And that's also part of the reason why they're in that school.
01:26:22
Speaker
And it's so stressful for everyone, including and especially them. Go ahead. And one of the really phenomenal parts of the show is watching the ways in which each person in this society deals with the emotional labor attached to these jobs because in episode one you get the lawyer who weirdly does seem like he's kind of tuned out emotionally he is just there to do his job really he is kind of more interested in being a lawyer than he is in being a person and in certain parts of the show bascom kind of chastises the lawyer for being so emotionally flip and bascom is i think really dead down the middle
01:27:10
Speaker
Frank stays back for the most part. She's not in the same, i would say, probably tenure as Luke Bascom. And so Bascom takes the lead on this investigation. He thinks he understands, or at least he's given his best guess on what exactly occurred here.
01:27:27
Speaker
He has been doing all of the work, including scrubbing Jamie's social media account, which becomes such an essential part of the show, especially in episode two. He is determined as an investigator and as he's bringing in these characters at the school because he is, for the most part, not interviewing the teachers, not interviewing the principal, at least not that we see. He's interviewing the subjects. He's interviewing the children. He's interviewing people who are Jamie's age.
01:27:57
Speaker
And as he does that, we realize that he is way out of his depth in this environment, especially at first. He has a son that's Jamie's age, so I'm sure he thought, why wouldn't he understand?
01:28:10
Speaker
Why wouldn't he know what Jamie was thinking if he just was able to sit down with a couple of these kids? Especially because by and large, it seems like he is the guy who like is willing to kind of sit down and grapple with the life of a teenage boy. We learned that in the opening.
01:28:28
Speaker
But even still, it is very clear that the adults in the show adolescence are completely disconnected from the internet dense world of this show.
01:28:42
Speaker
And the way in which these children are online works. are something that the adults are, i think, honestly, to their benefit as human beings, unaware of.
01:28:53
Speaker
Because being so chronically online will give you, it's sort of like the allegory of the cave. The moment that you move away from the shadows on the wall into this new and in-depth world, you can't go back to that.
01:29:10
Speaker
So it's this superscript of ideas and subcultures that Jamie has been steeped in for so long that ends up actually becoming the thing that in some way corrupts his soul. And that's something we see throughout this show. Adam, Bascom's kid, reveals this to him. First, we get the students in their classroom and Bascom and Frank enters. Then we begin the student interviews.
01:29:36
Speaker
The first one is the interview with Jade, who is Katie's friend. This is a unique situation. In this first part, we get something that isn't really present in the rest of the show, which I do want to hear your thoughts and feelings of, which is how Jade, first of all, in grief, rageful, but in grief, she is in some way the only viewport we have into Katie's world, which I think is...
01:30:00
Speaker
Something that the show is very deliberate about, but it also does create a limitation on the way in which we address violence against women, particularly young, young girls. In this show, we only get the boy's perspective. We don't get Katie's perspective at all. We don't see her family.
01:30:19
Speaker
We don't see the fallout. We don't even get to really meet Katie as a character. And so Jade in episode two, this one rather small scene does tell us a lot about Katie and her internal life and her world and her perspective.
01:30:35
Speaker
It does seem to be giving space to Katie, but also that is the only moment that we get. It's true. And I think a lot of it has to do also with what happens. you You said a lot there. So I'm going to try to respond to all of it in a condensed way. But in episode one, you know, when they're still like interviewing when Bascom Frank interviewed Jamie and his father of like, look, we know what happened. Here's the proof purely based on your Instagram comments. Like that is the initial thing. They bring up the fact that Jamie comments on women's profiles in a really sexually explicit way that a boy his age really shouldn't sort of speak.
01:31:14
Speaker
I mean, no one really should speak that way. But the point is, so much of it is that they're both so sure from the way they lead Jamie in that interview, that what he did was wrong, and they're right in apprehending him.
01:31:27
Speaker
And of course, that culminates to the actual video. And again, that has to do with the fact that The reason why they are so cold to him is because they already know that he's murdered this girl and now they just are doing their job and seeking retribution.
01:31:40
Speaker
And so much of that, as you said, transfers in that second episode when they're like, OK, now we need to talk to these other kids. But the issue is, is that they're already treating Jamie like an adult because he did really adult things.
01:31:53
Speaker
He responded in a sexually explicit way on Instagram, and he murdered someone. Again, you don't see a child in that way anymore. You see an adult. So of course, they treat him like an adult. And we understand why they've been treating him like an adult.
01:32:06
Speaker
But then in episode two, when they tried the same thing with the kids, it completely blows up in their face. And it's kind of crazy because they are aware of Instagram. They are aware of it because, again, they use that as evidence against Jamie.
01:32:20
Speaker
But it really takes Luke Bascom's son, Adam Bascom, again, played by Amari Bakas, to tell him, like, look, the thing you're missing is how this internet culture really affects us.
01:32:31
Speaker
Because they were thinking of, like, okay, he's just a strange kid who's potentially, like, a sociopath or a psychopath, and that's why he did it. No, they missed the point that all the kids are affected by this toxic internet misogyny that has been really attributed by the Andrew Tate culture that we have right now. Right. We call that the manosphere. Just to answer your question of why Katie is not shown, it's because they are doing the whole manosphere point of view, because that is what they're criticizing.
01:33:04
Speaker
Of course, Katie is going to be treated sort of like this prop in this grand scheme of things, not in a necessarily like evil, bad way or in a badly written way.
01:33:16
Speaker
No, they're just showing the perspective of these kids. of like, okay, this is the culture. They saw her as this thing to be propped up, because that's what's happening. You know, her death is sort of, again, it's the very focus of the conversation, but she is not the focus of the conversation. Her death is.
01:33:34
Speaker
And that is what her friend Jade is criticizing. You know, all you're talking about is how she was killed. You're not talking about who she was. You don't care about who she was. And it's true. The police don't care who she was.
01:33:47
Speaker
The kids don't care who she was either. They just care about the fact that this happened, and now they're all dealing with it. And that's part of the internet culture we live in, that they just see the surface level thing as opposed to seeing the people behind it.
01:34:01
Speaker
Well, and in in many ways, the internet is tailor-made for kids. Like, kids don't understand the depth of things, necessarily. They just understand what things are.
01:34:12
Speaker
When we are introduced to the idea that Jamie not only may have committed a murder, but truly did commit a murder, the rest of the show is about the investigation on whether he realizes why and how that affects other people.
Cyberbullying and Its Impact on Jamie
01:34:27
Speaker
And it's because...
01:34:29
Speaker
children's brains are just that. I mean, it's self-evident. A kid is not going to understand the true ramifications of their actions the same way an adult will.
01:34:39
Speaker
And so that's why they are uniquely suited to be drawn down these rather obtusely constructed rabbit holes. Not to say that people over 50 don't get drawn into these rabbit holes just as often, but It's something that I think has really been a scourge on our culture, frankly speaking, because the younger you are, the more easy it is to indoctrinate you through ah set of these shorthands, right?
01:35:08
Speaker
These things like the 80-20 rule, which is introduced in episode three. This is something that if you're young and if you're susceptible to these kinds of ideas, if you're susceptible to the idea that you are not good enough,
01:35:23
Speaker
then you too can be in a place where you can feel that those things apply to you. Yeah, and I think that's important to say as well because episode two and episode three present the reason why Jamie committed this murder.
01:35:40
Speaker
It's because he was bullied. He was cyber bullied by Katie. He also theoretically also had feelings for Katie and he liked her and he wanted to be liked by her.
01:35:51
Speaker
But so much of his attention towards her, both positive and, of course, the negative, came from her cyberbullying him and labeling him as an incel. Yes, incel. So these are words that are all part of the Manosphere. So in talking about the Manosphere, I also want to unilaterally implicate Ryan, who is another major character in Episode 2, who is his friend, right? This is Jamie's friend. It's Jamie's one of best friends. Yeah. Yeah. His best friend who gets interviewed twice throughout the episode.
01:36:23
Speaker
My first instinct was to blame Ryan, of course, because this is the moment where we get another character in the show. And of course, my brain was still very much attuned to what I think of as pretty normal procedural television, which is that you introduce one suspect, then you introduce a second suspect in the second episode. But in this case, Ryan only serves to deepen the concepts and ideas that Jamie himself holds, which is that the Manosphere has kind of taken over their mindsets. Now, when we first hear about the red pill, red pill is an idea, a metaphor borrowed from the Matrix.
01:37:02
Speaker
The scene is that there is a character named Morpheus and Morpheus... and I think the matrix also is ubiquitously something that's interesting to people of that age because it's an idea that you can kind of break out of your existing literal matrix of society. So the Manosphere, I'm going to read the definition via Wikipedia, which it describes it as a varied collection of websites, blogs, and online forums.
01:37:30
Speaker
So by websites and blogs, this is probably... Something a little more antiquated. Online forums, I think, is more specific. Reddit and areas like 4chan, usually congruent with the alt-right.
01:37:45
Speaker
Particularly interested in men's rights. So there are a lot of kind of alt-right communities in this general vein. There are women's communities that are, I would say, tangential to the manosphere. Present on Reddit, women who are interested in quote-unquote high-value men.
01:38:03
Speaker
Andrew Tate, Aidan Ross is someone who's kind of underneath Andrew Tate, and Jordan Peterson as well. But the very first time i actually was aware of the Manosphere, this is the year that you and I met Niv, which was 10, 11 years ago. but It was near September, October. It was my first year of college in Chicago.
01:38:22
Speaker
And we were talking about the Gamergate scandal, which was really, really big at that time. And this is something that kind of continued on, which is men on the internet, predominantly Twitter, bullying women for encroaching on what they believed to be male-dominated spaces, right? Or not believed to be, but believed to be rightly male-dominated spaces. So ideas like in the gamer community, women in the gaming community were being targeted by these men who believed that they deserved more of a chunk of the pie.
01:38:56
Speaker
We are now in a space where there is so much divisiveness happening online. And you have a character like Jamie who is caught in the middle of it. And all of this becomes something that he is just a part of. By one way or another, he is going to be labeled as something. And is he that thing?
01:39:18
Speaker
Yes. So yeah that's also a complicated thing. But at the same time, not everyone is. Not everyone is one thing or another. In many cases, a person is more than a single belief they have. And I also do think that while Jamie was at that point totally far gone, he also didn't have to be.
01:39:38
Speaker
He could have been a normal, regular kid. It's just that the system and the people around him weren't able to see the signs late enough. I do think that I have known people who have fallen down these kinds of rabbit holes, and it's a matter of, are they reachable?
01:39:54
Speaker
Are they willing to actually have conversation with a rational adult about these kinds of situations? And in most of the cases I have seen, the answer is probably yes.
01:40:06
Speaker
It's interesting conjunction to the whole you conversation we had, because at the end of the day, you know how a sociopath or a psychopath created. It's not just nurture. It's a combination of nature and nurture.
01:40:19
Speaker
Episode one and two really talk about the nurture of why Jamie did what he did. sort of again, the cyberbullying and the toxic manosphere internet culture he lives in as 13 year boy, but the nature part of it is also a big part of the reason of why he did what he did.
01:40:37
Speaker
And I'm really excited to get into this third episode, because it's almost a two hander and a two hander means it's just focused on two characters, one of which is Jamie.
01:40:48
Speaker
And the other one is his psychologist, Bryony Ariston. I'm hoping I'm saying that character correctly. But she is played by a favorite of this pod, Aaron Doherty, who was the lead in the show, Chloe. Yay! I was so happy to be here.
01:41:06
Speaker
We're getting into a part of the show that I think is so part of our DNA because one of our first seasons of Zeitgeist 2022, we talked about a show that you talk about it like this is a show that everyone and their grandma has seen.
01:41:21
Speaker
But the Amazon show Chloe was very quietly released. And at a time when a lot of other shows were coming out, I do think that it was kind of buried in the bubble that was the prestige TV world. and I do think largely, despite the fact that adolescence is an absolutely phenomenal work of TV, one of the best, no doubt, it's still happening after this huge, huge, huge rush of really high budget, really high visual TV programs. And adolescence is ultimately, it feels more TV than not.
01:42:01
Speaker
I would say broadly, despite its really, really, really great execution and scope and writing and everything about it. But in the midst of this, you had a show which was also British. Chloe is the person that she sort of has this parasocial relationship with. In many ways, it is also a ah show about Instagram. But that's all I'll say. You guys should really watch Chloe on Amazon if you have any account And then listen to our podcast episode about Chloe because it is my favorite podcast episode we've done.
01:42:36
Speaker
I'll be really, really honest here. That is and remains the kind of show I always want to cover in our podcast. And I'm so glad another show like it, which is Adolescence, came up. In no small part because of the quiet gravity that Aaron Doherty possesses.
01:42:54
Speaker
And that is one aspect of episode three that really nails it
Jamie and His Psychological Struggles
01:42:59
Speaker
down. You mentioned that an 80-20 thing, which is the third episode of Adolescence, is the most theatrical in its execution because it's essentially one room.
01:43:09
Speaker
It's two characters. You called it a two-hander, which I would agree with. It is ultimately about Brainy and it's about Jamie. And that's it. I also think that this is a really interesting thing to pair with a film which was released last year through means that I still to this day find a little frustrating. It's a movie from a twenty four that was very, very, very slow rolled called Sing Sing. And it is essentially...
01:43:39
Speaker
A story that would have picked up 40 years after the life of a man much like Jamie, who after all this time finally learns the appropriate ways to be in touch with his feelings in a healthy and constructive way.
01:43:51
Speaker
Jamie, on the other hand, has none of those things. He knows how to act like a monster, even though he is a kid. And after he has been sitting in the cell for all this time, he's ready to bring out kind of the barbs. And in this episode, you get Brainy, who is as a character.
01:44:11
Speaker
Now, we can talk about the acting chops all day, which I know that's something that we at our podcast are really about, right? That's one of our tenants at Zeitgeist is being able to shout out actors as they appear on a show.
01:44:23
Speaker
But then you get to who is the character themselves? Like, what are they about? And how does the show portray them? Brienne is, i would say, in many ways, sort of a mirror to Bascombe. She doesn't, I don't think, well, we don't know if she has kids, we don't know she has a dog, we don't know what her family situation really is at all. That's one of the things about her, too, is that she keeps up this really, really, really thick veil.
01:44:48
Speaker
And she comes to work and she works. She is doing her job. And then you also get the warmth and the way that she calms the space when Jamie tries to escalate.
01:45:00
Speaker
Her warmth is never cheapened into naivety. Instead, it remains really hopefully complex. And her goal is to do the job that she has been given. And the best way that she knows how to do that is to keep that warmth and she stays transparent.
01:45:15
Speaker
And her transparency is something that really does ultimately throw Jamie for a loop. That's the thing that ultimately lets him have his guard down is that Briony says exactly what she is doing here.
01:45:29
Speaker
And she tells him in no uncertain terms how he can be a collaborator in that Well, it's also really important to say that the entire episode, more so than with the police, this episode really is emblematic to that classic cat and mouse game we see in a lot of storytelling.
01:45:48
Speaker
And what's really beautiful about this dynamic, this is what makes it particularly feel like a play, is that the cat and a mouse constantly switch because they're almost like chasing each other. They're one upping each other.
01:46:01
Speaker
And another thing to point out is the reason why Briony does a good job, not just because it's her job, she's a forensic psychologist, but the reason she is particularly able to get to Jamie's vulnerable side is because this is like their eighth, somewhere between their eighth or twelfth meeting.
01:46:20
Speaker
So they know each other at this point pretty well. And she remains like She has become his most consistent social interaction. And she's aware of that. She's built a relationship to understand him more because that's the thing. It's her job to get more information out of him to present to the court.
01:46:39
Speaker
And Jamie's also aware of that. Even though he's 13 years old, he's aware of this. What's interesting is that they both know they're playing this game. But obviously, they've both become invested in each other in really fascinating ways, as we see in this episode and how their conversation develops. But even from the beginning, she enters.
01:46:58
Speaker
It's really fascinating. I have to say this. She first talks to the security guard to see videos of Jamie. Before she enters her session, she sees videos him to just study him, to understand his state of mind.
01:47:10
Speaker
And basically, she goes in there and she immediately offers him half of her sandwich. Not all of her sandwich, but half of her sandwich. And it's a psychological ploy of being like, we are sharing information.
01:47:25
Speaker
We are sharing something. We are in a sharing relationship. So from the beginning, that is the tone she is trying to manipulate and set. And again, it's really, really fascinating because Jamie is once again, he's aware of this and he does his best to overcome it.
01:47:43
Speaker
But because he's 13, he doesn't have the mental maturity to overcome it as effectively as he thinks. So most of the time he divulges into what Jordan, what happens throughout this episode is Coping mechanism is to physically aggress, whether it's about, at first it is verbal, and eventually he stands up and starts shouting. Right, he becomes more aggressive. Masculinity as a performance, which is something that we learn more deeply in this episode. Jamie doesn't understand manhood inherently.
01:48:19
Speaker
He sees his father, he sees the person that Jamie wants to be, And that is more like his father, Eddie. But instead, what he is, is a young boy who maybe isn't super dexterous. He certainly knows stuff about working on the computer. And He very clearly wanted to have a computer in his home, which let's be honest, in 2025, that's a very particular choice. If you have a desktop computer, it means that you probably have certain types of knowledge.
01:48:52
Speaker
It's not that Jamie couldn't access Instagram without a computer, right? He probably has a cell phone. He probably can do a lot of things on his cell phone. So the fact that he does have a physical computer that he is lodged up with means that he probably is a very smart kid.
01:49:07
Speaker
But then he is labeled as a geek at school. And that, I think, shapes him in a lot of ways and shapes not only his identity, but the identity of who he aspires to be.
01:49:20
Speaker
And he aspires to be like his father. And he aspires to be ah man as defined by the Manosphere. And that language gives him a shortcut. It's a way that he can feel strong.
01:49:32
Speaker
It's a way that he can feel confident without feeling vulnerable. And so he uses that resentment in order to drum up level of confidence, that confidence, because it's not authentic, it becomes anger.
01:49:47
Speaker
It becomes violence. And that violence channeled is the reason why Katie had to die. And when I say Katie, I'm talking about the show.
01:49:58
Speaker
But I'm also talking about the thing that made the show happen, which is that when Stephen Graham sat down and turned on the news, he saw that he was watching schoolboys killing young girls. He watched these children not using yeah knives and they're shivving kids in the schoolyard like it's a prison.
01:50:19
Speaker
And the question was, why? And of course, at first blush, it was to blame the parents, right? To say, oh, well, it's just those parents who aren't taking care of their darn kids.
01:50:32
Speaker
But eventually, he and by the way, I'm quoting him from Stephen Graham was on Fresh Air. He has a great interview, highly recommend. And at this point, you actually also see, which is something that's very evident in this interview as a whole, which is Stephen Graham's level of empathy.
01:50:48
Speaker
And the way in which he and I understand that there are other co creators here. Jack Thorne. Shout out to Jack Thorne, not the vocal creator here. He is by and large kind of on the sidelines. Hopefully that changes with a possibly second season of the program adolescence.
01:51:06
Speaker
You know, in Severance, for example, we just saw, in which I don't know if you guys are all following Severance, but in the first season, it was largely Ben Stiller. In the second season, you get a lot more Dan Erickson. So hopefully we get to see more conversations with our the other creator here.
01:51:20
Speaker
But nonetheless, The way that Graham verbalizes this realization, he seems to have this pause in blaming the parents because he himself is a parent. And he himself sees the ways in which maybe you can do your best as a parent and still have things fall through the cracks. You know, children are, at the end of the day, their own people.
01:51:41
Speaker
And they are both wholly themselves themselves. But they are also a reflection of the many things that you don't realize about yourself. And that is the great, not contradiction, but the, it's a, well, and it's a balance, but it's also a question in the world of the show.
01:52:02
Speaker
which is how does that play out? How does that balance shift? Because ultimately the thing that created the show was a imbalance in the real world. And it's that same imbalance that the show breaks on, which is that something has been broken. That's the entire thing I was talking about before we started talking about so three, the whole idea of nature versus nurture.
01:52:29
Speaker
Right. Stephen Graham said himself, like, even though these kids can be affected by the outside world, they're also affected by their internal world. And in this session between Bryony and Jamie, this is the one moment I don't want to spoil because to me, this is the most important moment in the show.
01:52:45
Speaker
There's a moment where Jamie shows his true self. It's a very brief moment. It's just a couple of seconds. Out of everything that the show presents, it is the most horrifying moment that we see.
01:52:58
Speaker
And it's very, very brief. but it's still incredibly impactful and really powerful because it presents us without a shadow of a doubt the answer to the question that we've been struggling with this whole show.
01:53:14
Speaker
Can we accept that this 13-year-old boy murdered a 13-year-old girl. And in that moment, it's like someone shoves it down our throat.
01:53:25
Speaker
And the answer is yes, we have to accept it. That he is without a shadow of a doubt guilty of what he did. And that is the, by the end of three, the last moment that we get with Jamie as a
Family and Community Impact After Jamie's Crime
01:53:42
Speaker
character. He shows up very briefly in episode four to effectively give us a coda.
01:53:49
Speaker
on that moment and it gives us a moment to say okay like in many ways it's level of closure possibly for Jamie himself because the impact of this crime lives on in the family and that is episode four So I don't know if there's a whole lot to say about this final episode because it really just stands on its own.
01:54:15
Speaker
But just to say that there are a couple of things I do want to highlight. Firstly, Jamie gets a coda. It's Eddie's 50th birthday. It's 13 months after the murder. Yes.
01:54:29
Speaker
So you get what begins as a normal day in the family's life. And it's a life post Jamie. Eddie and Mrs. Miller are having a lovely back and forth about how much they love each other. I think that's another major moment of the show is being able to see how much love remains in this family.
01:54:52
Speaker
and despite all of the really like awful stuff going on in Jamie's mind, that is in many ways ah singularity that is completely absent from the love that exists in this family. And it's a love that is completely without conditions.
01:55:14
Speaker
And it's something that remains even after Jamie gets hauled away and he's arrested and he'll be tried as a guilty ah suspect and and that's it. Then he'll remain in prison for goodness knows how long. In the show, you have obviously a meditation and the final episode is sort of the last nail on the coffin.
01:55:37
Speaker
Which you have to understand why, right? Why is it that Jamie did this? And what is there to be helped is the other part of the question, which is what responsibility does this family have, if any?
01:55:51
Speaker
And the answer is both not much. And also, it's not as if they just created Jamie in a vacuum. And we learn about this because throughout the show, you eventually create a situation or the situation is created where Mr. Miller's van gets spray painted and he loses it.
01:56:15
Speaker
He becomes inconsolable and it's an extension of what has already been lost in the show. It's also just important to say on both counts, right? You mentioned the love.
01:56:27
Speaker
And it's important to say that even though this family shows a lot of love to each other, they still have a lot of love towards Jamie, even with what he did. And that's sort of part of the thing, right? That even though they have a ton of love towards Jamie, they're also being punished.
01:56:43
Speaker
They're being punished by Jamie's actions. even though you know he's being punished already by being and sort of in prison and going to be on trial. But this whole thing with the van and the whole like focus of this episode is how they themselves as a family are being affected and are being punished by the community at large.
01:57:05
Speaker
Well, and it's because, you know, these actions don't exist in a vacuum. The world is both very human and always trying to do their best. I mean, everyone's always trying to do their best and see the world as they believe it to be truly. But also, not everyone is great, and episode four details that in multiple aspects.
01:57:29
Speaker
Firstly, his van is spray-painted, and he rolls up to the essentially what is to believe to be the hardware store in Britain, which I don't know anything about, but that's a situation for the British version of Zeitgeist, not mine.
01:57:45
Speaker
And he's approached by a a Manosphere insider who voices his support for Jamie's attack. So within a couple of minutes through episode four, we're rocketed from, i mean, it's sort of a miniature version of what happened at episode one, right?
01:58:00
Speaker
This family is trying to live a normal life. And they are being moved to a space where they can no longer be complacent. And that's a moment where, I mean, i don't even need to get into the details, but Eddie snaps.
01:58:16
Speaker
And we get to see a part of him that lives in Jamie. I really like what you said that they really trying to lead normal lives. And it's on Eddie's 50th birthday. It's his birthday. So his wife and his teenage daughter are constantly trying to be like, okay, let's normal day.
01:58:32
Speaker
What should we do today? We should go out, we should definitely like celebrate in some way. But then the situation in the hardware store happens. And then Jamie calls and they suddenly have to sort of cool the temperatures back down in their grief because they're like, OK, our son has called and we can't show him that this is affecting.
01:58:53
Speaker
We can't blame him for what is happening to us, even though they can. And any other show they could and they can't. But they choose not to because, again, they love their son.
01:59:05
Speaker
And in so many ways, that is far more realistic to a vast majority of families dealing with this kind of situation. Because how could you not love your child, even after he did something monstrous?
01:59:19
Speaker
And then they just are like, okay, instead of dealing with the bullshit of the outside world that is affecting us, let's just, you know, order the food in. Instead of watching movie outside, watch it inside.
01:59:31
Speaker
You know, they they're still finding ways to be together and to live through this world. That's where we end on the show, you know? But it's interesting that this is, in many ways, the most complex and deep episode of the show and also the one that was toughest to film just because of logistics. And it happens to be that the very final moment in the final episode was the final take of the final episode and the final moment where Eddie kind of collapses into himself.
02:00:04
Speaker
is improvatory. And the teddy bear that was rested on the bed in the final moments of the show was put there actually by his own family. And I think that that is in many ways just a true emblem of the motivations behind the show, the true, pure motivations behind the show.
02:00:25
Speaker
And that is symbolic of the way in which this is a work of art that is so totally and wholly human in asking its questions, in diving into a something that is both horrid and yet deeply human.
02:00:43
Speaker
And it's something that can't be really explained or understood, but something that just has to be felt and held space for. I actually just have to, you know, tell this story because I don't know how else to really close off my view on this podcast.
02:01:01
Speaker
But to, which is a, this is a a rerecord that Radiolab did on a podcast. I was listening to this podcast the other day and it was on sort of mortality and on the way in which a beetle can become this like both wholly human character and at once something that is impossible to understand.
02:01:26
Speaker
And they use this concept to parallel the idea that these people who are working on studying these beetles, they had a professor who was brutally murdered in a alleyway.
02:01:43
Speaker
It was just a simple moment. where they are ripped of someone that they care so much about. And I'll tell you, if you find yourself at the end of this episode feeling that there's just a vacuum that's opened up, I recommend to, as a coda for this episode, follow Radiolab and go to their episode published on the 4th. It's a re-record from, or a re-airing from 2012 called Killer Empathy.
02:02:13
Speaker
And Sit with the ideas that are given in this episode. It just so happens to be that I watched adolescence and then immediately after listened to this. And what you learn is both the way in which we as humans have become so normal and so devoid of violence, but in many ways it is that level of brutality that also makes all creatures combined.
02:02:43
Speaker
And that is something that lives in Jamie. And that is something that lives in all of us. But it's not something that defines us either. There's space for both. I think what I will say is that when the prime minister of England, Keir Starmer, tells people to watch this show, you know, he wrote this on Twitter.
02:03:02
Speaker
As a father watching adolescence with my teenage son and daughter, it hit home hard. When someone says that, and he's a leader of an entire nation, knife
Toxic Masculinity and the Need for Positive Education
02:03:11
Speaker
attacks happen. These knife attacks happen.
02:03:13
Speaker
And, you know, in the United States, there are worse things. You know, there there are literal school shootings perpetuated by also young men who are part of this manosphere as well. in Israel, you know, there is a lot of toxic masculinity, especially with current events.
02:03:31
Speaker
The thing about it is that these things hit home really hard, especially for the young people that are exposed to this, this horrible, horrible mess that we've created for them as adults.
02:03:46
Speaker
The reason why it hits home is because there's an innocence to children. that we are absolutely robbing from them. And they should not be going through this.
02:03:57
Speaker
And yet they are. I think it's really important to say this because they are currently being educated. They are currently being educated through this toxic mess that we have given them.
02:04:08
Speaker
But we still have and a chance to educate them in a wholly different way, in a more positive way, of equality, of a way that's more respectful. And, you know, i was really happy to read that the show was essentially made free for Ewing in the UK after the UK government backed it.
02:04:26
Speaker
And I believe that it should be available really everywhere as a form of education. And I feel like more programs of its nature should be given as sources. But I think it's really important to recognize that we live currently in a world where this kind of insane, and I truly mean this, this is not just me speaking on a podcast. This is just me speaking.
02:04:48
Speaker
We live in a world right now where people who we view as leaders, they are spouting very harmful and disconnecting and violent rhetoric.
02:05:01
Speaker
And we have to absorb it every day. And this is just, it's a mess. It's an awful mess that each of us is going through. And we don't deserve it.
02:05:13
Speaker
We don't deserve absorbing this much handbook. But I promise you right now, if you're listening, i mean, yeah, if you're listening, the people who deserve it the least are the children who live in this world.
02:05:27
Speaker
Because if anyone deserves to be innocent and to not suffer the real labor being on its kids, and that's all i have to say. Shout out to kids, brah.
02:05:39
Speaker
And to young and old alike, thank you so much for listening to Zeitgeist. We really appreciate everyone's support and for everyone who is listening, whether you're listening on Spotify or Apple or Mixcloud, thank you so much for tuning in.
02:05:57
Speaker
and supporting us. And always, if you enjoyed this episode and listened to the end and as we continue to become more and more esoteric, tell your friends if you enjoyed it and please support us as you can through word of mouth. we are currently all free to listen and we really don't take that lightly uh these kinds of episodes we believe are similarly very important to be able to spread some kind of positivity towards others and if you feel like we have done that kind of
02:06:35
Speaker
positivity effectively give us a good rating on ah podcast platform if you feel that is otherwise you can always let us know through following us on instagram at zeitgeist pulp feel free to leave a comment and let us know what you would like us to do differently in future episodes but All that being said, i really do appreciate everyone who has been here today, whether you were here to check out the conversation on you on Netflix or the Netflix conversation on adolescence. Two really, really important parts of our zeitgeist. I have been Jordan Conrad. And I am Neville Boz. we will see you with a new episode very, very soon. Stay tuned and be kind to each other.
02:07:47
Speaker
Because the power is right.