Speaker 1: Welcome to Popcorn Psychology, the podcast where we watch blockbuster
movies and psychoanalyze them. My name is Brittany Brownfield and
I'm a child therapist and I'm joined by.
Speaker 2: Ben Stover, individual therapist.
Speaker 1: Hannah Espinoza, marriage and family therapists. We're all licensed clinical
professional counselors also known as therapists who practice out of Chicago.
Even though we are licensed mental health professionals, this podcast
is purely fronted him and purposes and to fulfill our
love of dissecting pop culture and all forms.
Speaker 2: Please remember that, even though we are all licensed therapists,
we aren't your therapist.
Speaker 1: If you are struggling with mental health symptoms, please find
a local mental health provider. I've lost my hand, I
lost my bride. Johnny has his hand, Johnny has his bride.
You want me to take my heartbreak and put it
away and forget what am I forrid monumental justice. That's
how it opens. That's how we are talking about Moonstruck today,
which is one of my favorite movies, and we will
be discussing identity crises and relationships. The movie our share
is a widowed Italian American woman who falls in love
with her fiance's hot temper to strange younger brother played
by Nicholas Cage.
Speaker 2: I want you to just say that back to yourself
four times.
Speaker 1: What hot tempered Italian brother?
Speaker 2: Hot tempered?
Speaker 1: It's like my manifest hot tempered to strange younger brother
played by Nicholas Cage.
Speaker 2: It's like she's riding my manifest hot tempered. And how
many times have we seen this situation in our offices?
Speaker 1: Go someone who is dating the brother of the fance
every other week at least. I'm filthy with Loretto's So
where we're going to start where First we're going to
talk about Cosmo and Rose. Cosmo is SHA's dad and
Rose is her mom, in case you don't know the
names by heart like I do. So a part of
the reason why we're talking about them as a couple
is because there's a lot of different things that are
impacting their relationship but also their identities as people. And
so a part of Cosmo's deal is that he is
afraid of dying and he is taking that out by
stepping out on his wife. Stepping out what an old
school arm. I love that not the idea the.
Speaker 2: Phrase, and also locking down is spending and being generally
miserly and different than he has been his whole life. Yes,
which we only know through the context of his wife. Oh, okay,
her dialogue.
Speaker 1: Your rich is Roosevelt, that's what she says.
Speaker 2: Your father was never cheap. He got cheap when he
got old. He's trying to take the money with him.
Speaker 1: He thinks he thinks if he takes his money with him,
he will die.
Speaker 2: Really to spend his money, he won't die. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And how miserly he's being about Loretta getting married again, Yes,
and he refusing to pay for it, even though he
didn't pay for anything before when she got married, because
she got married at the courthouse. So we're gonna start
with Cosmo and Rose because, like you said, Cosmo is
How old do you think Cosmo is? It's hard to
tell anybody's age in this movie. Fifty seven that cannot
be sixty five, shares character. Loretta is thirty eight. Yeah,
so at least probably in his sixties, yeah, early sixties.
Speaker 2: Maybe, Yeah, maybe in his sixties.
Speaker 1: My guess is they were twenty when they had Loretta,
and she's the only child, right, No, she has she
has a brother who they had. Remember the mother's side.
Speaker 2: That's right, she's the only daughter.
Speaker 1: She's the only daughter. She has a son that she
had later in life. O. Because she says, I had
your brother after I was thirty seven. Oh okay, thirty eight.
Speaker 2: Right, and he's already moved out and doing his thing.
Speaker 1: Yes, he got married and he has three kids.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, Hannah is gonna be our Moonstruck history orient
on this episode. Thank you very much. Well, moving back
to front, she's like a little Wikipedia about this movie, yes,
which I appreciate. Yes. So, Cosmo is having probably the
most stereotypical midlife crisis, which we're calling existential our identity crisis.
What we mean by stereotypical is that he is a
man in his as we've now established, late fifties, early sixties,
who is not dealing with entering into the sunset era
of his life, the twilight of his life, like you guys.
We're saying he is getting a lot more miserly. He's
pinching pennies where he wouldn't. I don't know if you'll
just take anything from the whole plumbing scene if that
means anything about how he's changed, really trying to get
money out of these other people, but he is doing
that thing where he starts to have an affair. We
don't really know anything about if that's his first affair,
his only affair, how long the affair has been going on.
They're pretty casual in a way that makes me feel
like they've been together for a bit. Wait, him and Mona,
I don't feel like they've been together for very long.
So we're starting to with Cosmo and Rose as Cosmo
is doing the most stereotypical version of an identity crisis,
a midlife crisis, though it is later on in his
life in that he is cheating, he's having a full
blown affair with a lady named Mona.
Speaker 2: And he's also simultaneously preparing to pay for the wedding
of his daughter. I think the point of that scene
you mentioned earlier where he as a successful plumber, he's
very clearly showing these people that in their apartment they
have shit, probably lead pipes. Quite typically, they will walk
people through their choices, unless he's always like this at business,
where he's going like, look, I only work with copper pipe.
That's it, because everything else sucks and is dangerous. I'm
not doing it, but I feel like The point of
that scene was probably for them to show he is
going to go ahead and skip the discussion the massage
of the client to talk them into.
Speaker 1: I just feel like that's what kind of salesman he
always was. I think so, yeah, but I could see
why why like that does make sense too, like why
he just automatically upscaled them instead of what you said, right.
Speaker 2: Because I feel like the writers included that for a reason,
and it could have been for one of two wanted
to show he was always like that and his wife
was calling him on a shit that you already have
a lot of money and we're proving it that this
is how you have it, yeah, or the other one
is showing that he's accepting he's going to pay for
his daughter's saying he's just being a little bit about
it because he's having an existential crisis. I didn't write it,
so I don't know, but I feel like that point
was included for or that scene was included for a
reason to show something.
Speaker 1: Well, then he tells his Mona about it. It was
his way to like, yeah, br it's his brag story
to Mona, like the woman wanted to be cheap, the
man who would have what men always know.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, yes, obviously. However, he's also married to a woman
who is very much not that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's married to a very sensible, grounded, smart woman. Yes,
who is clock his tea, as the kids would say,
pretty swiftly.
Speaker 2: I mean as someone who's a husband to an Italian
wife who is very smart and very successful in quite
a bit like Rose. I don't think you will find
a great many people of that culture who are not
similarly in charge of their household. You know, these men
who are like men are that's what men sound like us.
That's what men sound like who are dumb. But he knows,
no doubt, he knows who he married. They've been married
for a long time.
Speaker 1: Fifty two years, he knows. Oh well, then if they've
been married for two years and they can't be in
their late fifties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good point. They got to be pushing seventy. They
gotta be, assuming they would have got married to eighteen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, at least yeah, seventy. Well, we have cracked
the case, y'all. They are in their seventies to have
an affair in your seventies. But we are very clearly
seeing with Cosmo that he is well one. He seems
very moody, but that's hard to tell if that's him
all the time time thing because it cracked me up
because he was talking about what a cry baby Johnny
was bobing. Most dramatic person ever. But he seems very
irritated all the time, like he's got like a more
of like a surly put out disposition, and he's always
talking about death and all that kind of stuff. He's
definitely at the time in his life where that is
ever present on his mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's he's in his seventies, since you know our
Wickahanna over here knows.
Speaker 1: And how old is his dad nineties probably nineties, probably nineties,
which he looks like he well he And it makes
sense too for him because we see him what I
think is embracing old age and like he's spending time
with the people who are alive. He's going to the
to the cemetery with his buddies, and it seems like
he has a community of people that he's with, and
I feel like Cosmo doesn't really seem to have that.
I don't know if we're just not singing that because
he's being such a prey or not I mean.
Speaker 2: I think yet again, this is written like a classic Yeah,
Italian or Greek comedy play. Yeah, we're seeing characters that
are foils of each other. Yeah, all over the place.
Not only is the dad hanging out with his buddies
in a cemetery, he is bringing his five dogs to
piss on the grapes.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: If that doesn't show fuck you death, that's a fair
point as the symbolism, like fuck this place. It's not
a place of reverence. It's a place you go when
you're warm food. We're gonna live. These dogs are alive.
I'm alive. I don't need to fear this place. He's
letting his dogs piss on it.
Speaker 1: They do destroy that cemetery plot that they're standing by
these dogs. But I will say Cosmo seems to be
doing that thing that sometimes people will do later in life,
where they're sort of doing an inventory of their life.
I don't know, like what has my life meant? You know?
Like there's the classic line at the end, what does
he say about his life? It's built on nothing horrible
thing to say, But he is someone that seems to
be really judging the life that he's lived and not
happy with what he's seeing, because think about also the
dinner scene where Raymond Rose's brothers trying to tell that
really cute story about the moon, a very romantic, sweet
story that should increase morale, and it seems to just
pissed Cosmo off. Yeah, And I don't know if that's
him doing this inventory of his life. I don't know
if he does want to be reminded of the past,
or if he's like, that story is stupid, because my
life is stupid. I don't know, Like, what do you
guys think about if it's reminding him of being in
love with Rose and feeling really close to her and
like feeling ashamed. That was when he was before they
were engaged. I think teenagers probably, Yeah, yeah, that was
when they were really young. So maybe he doesn't want
to be reminded of that.
Speaker 2: I think he doesn't want to be reminded of it
because there's a war of parts happening inside his head,
and his attached part that's saying that is our wife
and we love her is globbing onto it, and his
shame and anger parts are grabbing hold of that and
going and that's how we got here, you stupid asshole,
And we're angry and we don't want to think about
it or talk about that, And is a shame part
is going and you have tickets to the opera with
your mistress and you don't deserve to think about that moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because in that moment, that story, what it's doing
is telling a story of what a romantic, sweet person
Cosmo is. Yes, and he can't relate to that right
now because of what he knows he's doing. And simultaneously,
I assume why he's doing something like have an affair
is because he's trying to recapture that feeling that he
had when he was young.
Speaker 2: Which he doesn't have with Rose right now and is
resentful of. However, it's quite clear that he doesn't have
it right now because he's viewpoint on things is so
distorted by his own sadness and feeling unfulfilled, even though
he has everything he ever wanted and needed in more
than other people, which yet again we see a foil
to him with the professor character was his name, Perry,
Parry's a foil to him. Perry has prestige and success.
He's a professor at NYU.
Speaker 1: And he's getting to live that bachelor esque life where
he's just splanking a carousel of nineteen year olds.
Speaker 2: Well, living in a one bedroom apartment. Yeah, and seeing
that person who has the prestige that a nineteen year
old would see, who is able to acknowledge the life
of a professor is quite often not as glamorous as
a nineteen year old may think it may be. Yet
this person's in charge of your life. But they go
home to live in a one bedroom apartment because they
don't make any money, whereas the plumber's got a whole house,
the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a mansion. Yeah. Well, it's a very
like grass is Green or bullshit, because both Perry and
Cosmo aren't happy internally. They're doing that thing that we
all do to a certain extent, which is, oh, that
person over there has it all figured out. Us is
trying to do the thing that Perry's doing, which is
like that free and easy, sexy bachelor life, whereas ironically
Perry is idealizing the big old house and trying to
like fuck his wife.
Speaker 2: Yep, because he doesn't have the life he thought he
would either. And that's what Ericson was talking about. What
you're describing is the central conflict of this stage of development,
which is ego integrity versus despair, and you either arrive
at a place where you're comfortable with your life and
what you've achieved and are able to do things that
make you continue to feel like you, or and adapt
with the change like the grandfather did. He is adapted
to the change the phase of life that he's in.
He knows what's his business and what isn't. He doesn't
say shit about seeing Rose with Perry. He doesn't say
a goddamn thing. The whole family. Everybody's airing their shit,
and he's like, pay for your daughter's wedding. Yeah, that's
the big confrontation he has to his son, pay for
your only daughter's wedding. He could have busted Rose out
right then and there, and he is like, that's not important.
Speaker 1: Well, so he seems thoughtful overall, even with the pay
for your daughter's wedding. He seeks out the counsel of
his friends. Yes, he does too, as a sounding board
to figure out should I be bothered by this and
should I say something to him? So, even though we
see very little of the paternal grandfather, he's seems like
a very thoughtful person.
Speaker 2: Yes, he does. He does, and he's but he's accepting
what is within my value system, what makes me feel
like me? Who do I consult about this? My friends
who are of my culture and are in the same
place as me, So these are the people we should
be consulting. He maintains within that and is seeing people
not do so and look lost. So he's going back
to what is within his ego integrity, where he's seeing
his son on the opposite side of that in despair.
Ye not made peace with aging. He has not made
peace with accepting that. By the time we're in our seventies,
we should start being able to see the complicated side
of life. We should start understanding that things are rarely
black and white, almost never are they black and white,
and shit happens. Make the choice that's right for you,
for your family, do the thing that keeps you safe
and happy. Other stuff, let it go well.
Speaker 1: I think. Also really good comparison to him is his
brother in law, Raymond, and how Raymond is someone who's
I'm assuming about the same age because it's Rose's brother, yep,
a little younger, and he seems to be getting at
a satisfactory from the life he's actually living. We see
him have his own little moment by the end of
the movie where he's very excited and he's feeling young
and his wife's even saying, you look like you're twenty
five again in the moonlight, and they get a little
saucy with each other, which is very cute, Which is
very cute, and I think he's a great example of
someone who is looking for the pleasure and the joy
within the life he's living with the person that he's
with instead of stepping out to find those things. And
so he's a good j exposition of like he's not
doing anything he didn't get, like he'd even the lottery,
Like there isn't anything that changed in Raymond's life other
than he got kind of like the romance in him
the moon if you will, and he's like appreciating the
life that's in front of him, yep, and seeing the
young person and his wife that he fell in love with,
whereas Cosmo is stuck. Cosmo is unhappy, and he's doing
that thing people do sometimes when they're unhappy, which is
blame everything. But besides looking internally.
Speaker 2: Where they struggle with that ego integrity versus despare conflict.
Is that's part of it, right, is they look everywhere
but themselves. But the thing that needs to change is them.
They have to accept that you're different. Now, you're older.
Now everything is different. Now you didn't get everything you wanted,
but you got a lot.
Speaker 1: I mean they're living pretty fucking nice. Yeah, I'd be
curious to ask Cosmo, like, what what are you still
looking for?
Speaker 2: I got a big ass house in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: They soon have generational well, they're very set.
Speaker 2: I don't know about generational well.
Speaker 1: I don't know about generational as much as it does
seem like everybody works for everybody has their own small business,
is what it really seems like, right, Like Raymond and
Rita have the store, and he is a plumber and
Loretta is an accountant, and they're all kind of working
within each other's businesses.
Speaker 2: It seems like, yeah, Loretta is their bookiep. This is
recognizing you're seeing people and different sides of this and
how they get into these midlife and late life existential crises,
points when they fail, these Ericsonian stages. And at this
point in time as opposed to now, the ages are
probably about right in their sixties plus you start entering
this ego integrity versus despairs, you get to the point
that you realize life is winding down. You don't have
much else you can accomplish because now you're thinking about
the end of your life, and that starts to either
scare you or you're good with it, And it's going
to scare you at some point until you get good
with it of realizing what you did do and that
it was enough.
Speaker 1: Which is the existential you know, like the idea of like, ugh,
death is coming for me?
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, Existential literally refers to of existence, yes, and
anything that threatens that existence produces fear.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Time is the guaranteed thing that will end your existence.
Speaker 1: And So what I like about this movie in terms
of it just being like a like a play, right,
like an examination of the human condition, if you will,
is that that is like the question that keeps coming in, right,
is why to mention women? Is what Rose keeps asking
because Rose is observing Cosmo acting the way he is,
and she's trying to figure it out but in a
very sensible way where she's asking other men what the fuck?
Basically it comes down to what we're talking about, which
is that they feared death, this idea of like chasing women.
I don't know if it's just they think if they
get that vava voom back in some way, that they'll
live forever, or will it just distract from the death
that's coming for us all?
Speaker 2: I mean, you know what the answer to that is,
they want to live while they're alive because they recognize
that the time left to do it is expiring, and
they're refusing to face the fact that that time in
your life is over. So they are distracted seeking the
distraction from it because they haven't accepted that you already
did that. Now you're on this phase of life where
you just you sit and appreciate all that you made.
Speaker 1: And I think the problem with someone like Perry and
why they have also their own really hard existential crisis,
is that he has kind of been on a hamster wheel.
He's trying to stay at this age and trying to
go back to a certain age by like dating the
same kind of girl, going to the same restaurant, having
the same fight, has the same response. What does he say?
He says, like, get rid of the evidence. Yep, get
rid of all evidence of her. He says that both
times right, yep, yep, Like he is on a hamster
wheel of his own making, and he's like, why am
I not going anywhere? Why don't I feel any better?
Where I do feel bad for him is that when
he's talking to Rose and he's saying why he he's
pursuing these girls that make him look ridiculous because that's
what he looks like. He doesn't look cool and sexy. No,
sitting across from these girls. Definitely, he looks like a
dumb ass. He looks like their father. Yeah. And also
to have a fight with such a young person publicly, yeah,
is so embarrassing.
Speaker 2: And to have and imature Both mother and daughter say
exactly the same thing about it was to communicate the
universality of that opinion of women seeing how sad of
an existence this man is living.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he can't see outside his own shit because,
like I said, the conversation is with Rose, when she
asks what he likes about these women, he does that
thing that sometimes people do, unfortunately, where instead of describing
something about the person, their personality, character about them, their values,
instead they give themselves away. They tell themselves by only
describing how that person either makes them feel or what
they do for them. Yep, and he's saying it with
no awareness zero of how he sounds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, agreed, which is allowing Rose to further I guess
she's trying to create empathy.
Speaker 1: Rose, He's trying to have a conversation with him, like
she's really trying to like get in there, almost anthropologically
like yeah, right, I agree, and he is just he
doesn't have enough awareness to give her an answer that
makes sense.
Speaker 2: I think he gives her the answer she needed.
Speaker 1: Yes from Perry.
Speaker 2: Rose gets the answer from Perry she needed and was
looking for. Parry does not understand what question he was
being asked.
Speaker 1: Well, he obviously doesn't understand anything because at the end
of the walk home he makes a move on her
and he has no awareness of how he looks to her. No,
which is like the more the more she knows about you,
the more you itck her out. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yes, you didn't have a chance at any point, No, never,
you were science yes, yes, picking your brain yes. Which
the hilarious part of that is him, being a communications professor,
absolutely cannot clode and he can't.
Speaker 1: Have not have fights that too.
Speaker 2: Well, he also can't detect that nothing in this communication
he's having with her, is in any way sexual, she's
at all studying you?
Speaker 1: Yes, Well, he's that kind of guy that if you're
at all friendly to him, he thinks you're like hitting
on him or you're into him. He doesn't understand that
her like being kind and like smiling and inquisitive is
just her treating him like a person. Yes, not wanting to,
but because it's that very like if you are a hammer,
so everything is a nail. He has a very small
window of how he views things that he's putting through
that view, and so he it seems like he only
looks at women in a specific way, Yes, especially young women,
because of his own ego stuff like. I think he
could get there, but it'd have to do a lot
of work on himself. That he's not young either. Yes,
I mean he's certainly looking at women. I think his
behavior in a certain way. I think his behavior towards
her shows it's not just the young ones, but the
young ones.
Speaker 2: Reinforces the point that he's he's searching for a time
that is lost. He's searching for a version and a feeling.
It's not even about them.
Speaker 1: No, it's I mean he admits that without realizing he's
admitting it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, which is sad for him really, because he's
failing ego integrity versus the spirit. This movie is showing
the entire plot of Citizen Kane over and over and
over and over again that no matter what people have
or haven't squared with the thing that they needed most,
they're still going to want that, and their behavior, no
matter what they have, is going to drive them towards that.
And Citizen Kane, he achieved everything, but he still wanted
the feeling he got from riding his sled down a
hill as a kid, and that was the thing that
was lost, and that's the thing he wants on his deathbed.
Perry wants to feel excited about what he's doing again,
and he feels like he's in a loop. But he
has to stay in that loop to stay where he is,
and he can't accept that this is what you bought
with your career, and you have to accept that baseline
and then grow challenge yourself from here or you will
get stuck. But he doesn't. He stays stuck. Yeah, and
then therefore the thing he most wanted was to grow
his life and he didn't. You know that, Cosmo is
in a similar spot. He just has different things that
he may have wanted, but he seems like there's something
he didn't get from life that now he's trying to
find again, or he feel like he's lost touch with
and he doesn't see a way to get that need
meant in conventional ways, so he starts opening up pathways
to behavior that are outside of what's socially acceptable to
get there. That's what people do. If you are hungry
and you can't get food from working, what are you
going to do?
Speaker 1: Steal?
Speaker 2: That's what you're gonna do. You're gonna you're gonna bag,
You're gonna steal, You're gonna cheat because you.
Speaker 1: Have to eat well. And how I talk about this,
and I'm sure, Hannah, I've heard me say this more
than once. Perry is someone that has a hole in them.
What I mean by that is he's trying to fill
up something. He's trying to fill himself up. And Cosmo's
doing that right now too.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: When I think of this, I think of like an
actual like a space in them. That's why you see,
like you're just saying, like these people that have so
much money and they get all these accolades, and they
make these status they keep going up the ladder, if
you will, in different ways, and yet it's not enough
because there's something internal that they're trying to outsource. If
you're listening and you find yourself in one of these
pickles where you're like, oh, I finally got that much
money and I still feel empty or something's missing. If
I got this relationship right, losses, amount of weight or
something that is that you're trying to outsource something that
has to come from within. It's what these two guys
we've talked about so far. That's what they're doing where
it seems like Raymond he doesn't have that he's getting
what he needs from the life that he's in.
Speaker 2: Correct, Yes, Raymond is the healthy example. Yeah, for sure,
he is appreciating what he has. He is appreciating him
and his wife both. They are both appreciating that we
are not twenty five anymore. But I still see it
in you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And we can be playful and we can have
fun and we can be silly exactly, and our younger
selves don't die unless we kill them ourselves.
Speaker 2: Correct, we just have to make peace with They can't
be on all the time. Anymore because life has grown
beyond that, and people that get stuck in that try
to force themselves into situations that are no longer appropriate
for them and fail to recognize the great cost that
they're putting on themselves and go. Don't know if anybody
saw the wrestler, Nope, it was good.
Speaker 1: It look like a bummer.
Speaker 2: Yep, it is a bummer. Yeah, but it's this.
Speaker 1: Oh that's what I assumed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Ricky the Ram is a guy that Mickey Rourke
is playing, and he's a wrestler that's got a heart
condition and they are telling him like, you were going
to die if you don't stop wrestling, but he keeps
wrestling and taking three guesses of what happens at the
end he dies, and where is he when he's when
he dies, Yeah, he's climbing the top, climb the top rope,
jumping off.
Speaker 1: You know I heard that on that movie. Mickey Worke
kept wanting his character to wear sunglasses, and it got
to the point that the director, Darren Aroski Ernofsky would
have him padded down before every scene because he was
always sneaking sunglasses into his clothes and pulling them out
mid scene. And sucking up the take, and so he
would still sometimes be able to successfully sneak sunglasses into
a scene.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that character is a not so subtle Yeah. The
ridiculousness of that character. He's not letting go of the
fact that you're aging and you have to stop, and
you look ridiculous and you're gonna die. You can have
a happy life if you stop doing this to your heart,
and he can't.
Speaker 1: Because what's interesting too about the Cosmo Perry comparison, if
you will, is that Perry's looking like he says, right,
I'm looking for the feeling I get when these girls
look at me like I'm brand new. Right. Yeah, that's
also why people will cheat, right, because Cosmo finding Mona,
like that story about the Plumber, is him having someone
look at him with bright eyes, looking at him like
he's brand new, like he's shiny. And what's interesting though,
is he's still doing stuff that he could be doing
with Rose, Like when he's taking Mona to the opera,
Rose is just going to the restaurant by yourself. Yeah,
And so it's that interesting thing where he's not married
to someone that doesn't want to do the kind of
things with him because Rose is getting out of the house.
But it's not about that. It's about what he gets
from Mona with the novelty piece.
Speaker 2: Yes, well, don't forget the whole quote that Perry gave
because it wasn't just about how he looked in their eyes.
That was part of it, but the other part went deeper,
much deeper than that. It wasn't even about them, which
is where it becomes the saddest parties. He was saying
it made him miss when he was younger and felt
excited about his life and his career. The way the
women look at him makes him feel like how he
was then.
Speaker 1: That's what I mean. Like, So him being able to
recount these stories to Mona because they're new to her, Yeah,
makes Cosmo feel that young feeling, which is why he's
choosing to do these activities with her when he could
very easily do them with the wife that he has.
Speaker 2: But his wife knows his stories and isn't impressed when he, Yeah,
sells somebody something above what they need or can afford.
Speaker 1: What do you think about when she confronts him at
the table and everybody is there. I think it's so interesting.
The family is so close and is together all the time,
and it's so interesting that she brings it up in
that setting but also says so little.
Speaker 2: I think we should take a break here before we
talk about that, and then we will answer that. So
you're talking about in your question, what do we think
about Rose confronting Cosmo in front of the whole family,
plus this new guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which nobody knows anything about, Ronnie.
Speaker 2: Who just is there with his charisma the size of Manhattan. Yeah,
wearing that glove with no explanation, but so traumatic. I think,
so thing one. This is the culture. My wife will
routinely tell stories about how her grandparents would quite often
just show up, just like the brother and sister did.
They just show up at the house. For contexts for listeners,
my wife's father is from Italy, from Italy, not born
in Italy and immigrated, so her grandpa parents also from Italy,
lived in Italy until nineteen fifty, and they would just
show up, which my mother in law hated, hated because
that is not her culture. And his very large Italian family,
people just drop in on each other and just show
up and be in each other's business and be around.
So this is kind of the culture, just being close
as opposed to some of the other cultures in the
americanism that has moved away from collective family culture and
into individualism, and certainly by the eighties, you'd be seeing
the clash of this that exploded in the nineties and
two thousand starting because the different generations are going, why
the fuck are you in my life like this? Whereas
as you're seeing in this family they just kind of
accept it. It's just kind of the way it is.
So in my clients that are Italian from and some
of them from New York would look at this and
they would say, yep, is just way it is. So
to us in twenty twenty five, being of the millennial generation,
we look at this and go, the fuck is going
on here? But remembering that this is forty years ago
with people there sure are already forty, meaning they were
born in the forties. This looks weird to us, but
it wouldn't be weird to them. But the therapist of
millennial generation to me is going no, no, no, no, no, no,
what are you doing? But they don't seem perturbed at all.
Speaker 1: When we watched this. We watched that scene in my
in a family therapy class, and my professor talked about
how Rose is the matriarch of the family and how
a part of the reason and so it's kind of
going in with what you're saying, but that she's the
matriarch of the family and that that's why A part
of why she brings that up in that moment was
also because she is the head of the family and
she has to address it somehow, like she's gonna take
charge of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, also like the setting of it is she's at
the head, yes the table, and she's like commanding. I
also wonder if it's because, well, Loretta already knows. I
feel like Loretta would be the one that you'd most
want to protect in that situation, blowing her dad's spot
up in front of her. Yeah, but she already told Loretta,
and I think that's part of it. I also wonder
if it's just like what you were saying, Ben, I
think there's a lot of just like openness. But also
when Johnny wants to talk to Loretta in the same
scene by herself and she says, I want my family
around me. So I don't know if there's also that
idea of everything we do together affects each other. In
a more like symbiotic way. And so this is yeah,
like kind of what you're saying too, Hanna of like
it's approaching the system, the whole system. You've got to
get your shit together. What are you doing I'm making
It's almost like she's making like a queen, like she's
making a ruling. Yeah, and she wants witnesses.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also I think it keeps him on best behavior
in a way that maybe he wouldn't be if it
was just the two of them. Ye, Like, maybe he
would bullshit, maybe he would get upset. And because it's
happening in a way where he wants to save face,
Kim doing it the way he did it, Like he
could have argued maybe that would be his way of
thinking he's saving face or bullshitted, but the way he
did it was, in my opinion, the most succinct way
to save face is just like not get into it,
not say any more details, not pull his own spot up,
just like Okay.
Speaker 2: I mean yeah, he I mean he made an ass
of himself. He tried it. His fight part showed right up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he had hit the table once, but then he
did say that thing about my life's built on nothing
and that to me, that was really cool. But again,
but again I think he was talking about himself and
not thinking about Rose. That's what I mean. He's like,
what we've been talking about is he's so caught up
in his own ego. Yeah, yeah, that he's not. He
can't even hear how awful that is. That takes my
breath away every time I hear it. Because also Olympia
Ducocus does such a great job reacting to that where
she got her right there. Yeah, like her tearing up
her taking so such a big offense to that, because
that is a really offensive thing to say to your
wife who you've been with for fifty some years, that
you are talking about her life too, in the life
you've built together and the children you had, one of
them's here at the table, why don't you spit in
my face?
Speaker 2: Basically, and to God, I mean, they're very Catholic.
Speaker 1: So well, she wants me to go to confession, correct,
which I also feel like that's the penance and that's
her kind of just asking him to do. Also, the
thing we're talking about, which is you need to go
look at yourself in the face, and how they would
look at theirselves in the face as someone who's raised
Catholic myself, is you do go to confession and you
have to sit in humility and admit to what you've done.
And as we see in the scene with Loretta in
the confessional, their priest knows who they are, like what
do you look? Says like for sure, Coretta, that they
have that small probably neighborhood parish where everybody goes to
confession all the time, and so everyone knows each other. Ye,
she's not surprised to see your mom. They're necessarily like,
they're not spurtly surprised to chief to each other. Maybe
they're surprise by professional but yeah, and so her saying
I want you to be confessional, and he is that
more like that stronger reaction to that, because what she's
saying is you got to You can't. It's not just
gonna be done here at the table. You're not getting
off that easy. No, you also have to go have
an ego death basically, yeah, with the priest, and then
you can come back to me and we'll keep it moving. Yeah.
Speaker 2: She said exactly what she needed to in the ways
that she needed to. But had she not done that
anthropologic study of talking to that dipshit and realizing that, oh,
people get this lost, she found empathy for him. Yes,
at no point did Rose intend to leave his ass,
but she was thinking about it until she encountered Professor Dickhead.
And when she realized the universality of what men are
struggling with, I think it changed her approach and she
saw the brokenness that this man has that's her husband.
And when she sat and took that punch, that emotional
punch right in the face of him, invalidating her whole
life and everything that she's done to make him happy
and say, my life is built on nothing. She does
nothing other than in Italian I love you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is he should get on his knees and
kiss her little feet. I know why he's the way
he is. Yeah yeah, But I'm just like, oh, that's
the real moment of generosity she gives to him, Because
you're right, Like, she's settled with what her life mm hmm.
She's grounded within herself. Yes, she's not struggling with her ego.
Speaker 2: She is not. She's on ego integrity, which.
Speaker 1: Is also why she's having a hard time understanding his
deal and well, why men cheat?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, she's struggling because she's got everything she wanted.
She has her life. She wants to see her daughter
married and do well. And she knows that she's struggling
because her husband died and she didn't get to do
the things that she wanted, and she seeing her daughter not,
you know, necessarily pass through her own stages and kind
of reverting back through when she already passed through. Her
daughter should be well into a different phase than seeking
a relationship, supposed to be clear of that already, but
her husband died, so she's back and she knows it.
But everything else she's watching with appreciation, where she's watching
her husband go look so lost because he wants his
fucking sled. He wants to feel things, to feel alive
when he's facing the twilight of his life and not
accepting it, and she's realizing that he's in a crisis.
Speaker 1: It also makes me wonder with Loretta and also maybe
wonder with Rose too, or even like Rita when Raymond's
kind of like flirting with her and all a sudden
she's like stop at we're old, Like she's like, what's
wrong with you? Actually, in the beginning of movie, when
Loretta is kind of going around all the businesses she
book keeps. And there's another couple. They're older. There's a
couple and he tries to with his wife and she's
like stop, sure, stop at year olds. He's like, ah,
come on, and it's cute too, but he is to
go to talk her into it. It almost makes me
wonder if I think for women that we are still
to this day to a certain extent. So this idea
of like, you have a shelf life that ends pretty early.
You're only hot sexy furle until you're what thirty thirty five,
maybe if you're extra hot, hitting the wall is actually
the phrase that men still use on the internet about women.
Oh she hit the wall because she's older than like
thirty or whatever, I can get fun And I yes,
And so I wonder too with like women, because Loretta
has also resigned herself at thirty eight to be like
this old spinstery maid even though she's my age. Is
this idea that they die when they're young, this young
version of them. They kind of accept that that version
of you dies young and you can't get it back
because you're on the shelf. You hit the wall. Whatever
we think about women, and so this idea is like
an older woman to try to like get back to that.
Women have a like have a different identity crisis going on,
or not one at all at this older age, because
I think there's more of this idea that we're conditioned
to have as women, of there's no regaining your youth
once you're done, you're done. I don't think it's a
good idea.
Speaker 2: It's her whole story, right, that's her story. She's rediscovering
that and proving that's false lore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well yes, and so I think we'll talk more
about that. But I mean, like with Rose having a
hard time understanding Cosmo and these other men, because I
don't think it's an idea that even crosses an older
woman's mind. I have to get back to this like
a younger version of myself or being seen as a
younger version of myself because as women were never taught
that's even a possibility, whereas men like you can have
babies till you're dead and all this other stuff. Right,
So I think there's this idea more with men that
you can like recapture a youth or a strength or
the ego or whatever that I don't think women are
conditioned to believe in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's true.
Speaker 1: There's just no recapturing anything. As a woman. You're like, well,
I'm older now and the world treats me different, yep.
Speaker 2: Which is an unfortunate reality. One of the things that's
a persistent belief about men that is probably created by
men conveniently for our benefit. But the idea that like
men look better when they get older. Who made that
shit up?
Speaker 1: Like oh, salt and pepper man, Like the fact that
like a man's like a carry grant type as they
get older, the way George Clooney was treated until he
got married. Basically, Yeah, and how there's not really a
woman version of that. Definitely not. Even if you say cougar,
that's not said in like a sexy way. Really, it's
usually making fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah no, no, no, no, that's no. It can be either.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll tell you this from the women. Never look
at a woman who's a cougar and they're like, ooh whatever,
use the word cougar. No in a nice.
Speaker 2: Way, y'all might not.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't think any woman aspires.
Speaker 2: To be a cougar, is what I'm saying. Yeahly not no, Yes.
Speaker 1: The way that I think men peter Pan syndrome.
Speaker 2: Shit, yeah, no, no, no, I accept that. But yeah,
on the men's side of that, they're gonna look at
that at least as more potentially positive because perhaps they
can get with a hot older lady who's hot to trot.
So never mind what mental space she's in, and that
that might not be coming from a healthy place. Yeah,
And that all those sacrifices that she's making to dye
her hair and appear younger and work out and all
the things she's putting herself through might not be coming
from a healthy place of acceptance. And the surgeries or
whatever else she may have done to appear youthful, if
she's not one of the lucky few who can look
like that later into life, that that's a massive sacrifice.
That's you know, there's some shit there. They're they're they're
looking at that as like because they're idiots, going, oh,
look at the older ladies into me, and you just go, oh, buddy.
Speaker 1: I guess I'm just wanting to touch upon how like
the gender dynamics can come into play with this idea yea,
and also how it infiltrates, infiltrates and shows up in
the way that Rose is like, what the fuck, why
is he doing this? Why are you doing that? You
look stupid? Cause even like if I saw a version
of Perry that was a woman with young college age guys,
I would also be like, you look stupid. Of course,
Like there's not really a version of what Perry Indra
Cosmo's doing that. I think other women really like Revere
the way that I think sometimes it seems to me
outside looking in that men will kind of like Revere
that of men that do.
Speaker 2: That, certainly men of this time, yeah, men of men
of that time, men of now a little bit mixed, yeah, mixed.
Speaker 1: But like I look at that and I think kind
of what Rose is talking about, which is like, what's
going on with you, bro? Like that doesn't look sexy
or impressive to me. You look like someone who's trying
to fill up a hole inside of them.
Speaker 2: Looking at the different standards and the different things that
happened to men and women across ages, and how things
are idolized versus looked at as sad, broken humans trying
to recapture things that they've lost and not accepting where
they are, and then making ridiculous sacrifices to get there,
which happens on both sides, right, all sides.
Speaker 1: And how this really hurts men, right, is that it
creates this idea that you can do this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can recapture Bill. Yeah, like, oh, have you
guys seen the Mermaid picture?
Speaker 1: I don't want I don't want to see anything Sunday,
the day of the Lord. I don't want to see that,
not on the day.
Speaker 2: Fuck, I'm gonna show it to you anyway, wait.
Speaker 1: Till we go on? Should we take another break here
and then be.
Speaker 2: Back Yes, but we should probably conclude this Mary Adventures.
Speaker 1: Well, let me ask you then, Hannah alpha to wrap
it up. What do you take from the final scene
with Rose saying that in front of everyone. I think
that she is using her leverage in the right way,
like the power she has, the power that she has.
I think that she is using that power in that moment.
She doesn't have to say a lot. She just says,
I want you to stop seeing her and go to confession,
And then she says, then go to confession. But I
really feel like it almost feels like she's calling him in.
It does feel like she's calling him in because I
think she's letting him know in some ways, when she
says this, she's also seeing him like I see you,
I see what the fuck you're doing, and it's not okay,
and you have to knock it off. Yeap affairs affect
everyone in the family. Yes, they don't just affect the
two people who are experiencing the betrayal or the one
person who's experiencing the betrayal. So I think in a
lot of ways, it's actually really smart to put it
out in the open like that, in a way where
even though we already know that she already talked to Loretta, Yeah,
and Loretta already kind of new Wells adult exactly, and
everybody's adults, so that's also a different experience as well.
I feel like she is also showing him that you
don't we don't have to you're hiding something, you don't
have to do that, you don't have to act like this,
like you're a part of us. Yeah, you're a part
of this family, and you're And he's really like pushing
himself off by himself even by like she points out
that he's drinking more, he's more grumpy, he's not answering
her questions when she asks him, where have you been
or what's going on? Or how are you feeling? He
doesn't answer any of those questions do any of those things?
So I feel like when she brings it up at
the table and then very like you said, very graciously
and very generously, then says, and I love you, come
back to us. I get it. You did this thing.
I love you. Let's continue to have this happy life
that we have. Yeah, that the thing of like we've
we've made a good life. Let's not fuck it up
in the eleventh hour, right, and look at everyone here.
All the is here, This is all that we've built.
These are all of the people. This is what that
love us. Yes, us together, all of us. And you
are married to me. I am the matriarch. You are
the patriarch.
Speaker 2: But you also need to get your shit together, snap
out of this bullshit and wake up because this these
are the stakes. This is what you have to lose.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Because she was not soul searching and exploring to figure
out what the fuck is wrong with him? She was
soul searching and figuring out am I ready to leave this?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Like, is this a done deal?
Speaker 2: She decided no. But had he continued past this point,
I guarantee that would be a different answer.
Speaker 1: Very do you know what? You know? What else I
really appreciate about Rose is that she also doesn't try
to look and see what she's done wrong. So many
times when we see a partner cheat in films and
in media, we see that the woman becomes like, what
did I do wrong? Am I not sexy enough? Am
I not young enough? And I'm not? She doesn't think
about any of that shit. She's just like, why does
one man need more than one woman? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Mona.
Speaker 1: She doesn't need to know anything about Mona. No, she doesn't.
She's not like, oh, is she younger, prettier, whatever? Mona
is inconsequential, She's just a byproduct of that thing that
cause was going through.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's when she gets the answer. She can kind
of make peace with herself of like, oh, it has
nothing to do with this girl.
Speaker 2: Actually, yes, other woman, it has nothing to do with me,
It has nothing to do with her. It's because he's
acting like he's a mess, because he is, because he is.
And when she finds that empathy for him, she extends
an olive branch. And then of course a consequence which
good for her.
Speaker 1: Which is also I think, and you might bring this
up later, Hannah, when you have to work with a
couple who has done something like this, there both has
to be a commitment to moving forward with the relationship,
but they're not going to keep punishing each other. Yes,
but also there has to be something that the person
who does the wrong thing kind of has to do
to show to the person who's been wronged, going to
like confession and maybe something else too. Yeah, you know,
maybe she's like you got to talk to the priest
once a week. Yeah, is him showing to her I'm
hearing you and I'm going to follow through with being
someone that you can trust.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we should take a break here. Welcome back
from our break.
Speaker 1: So now we're going to talk about the star of
the show. Who was this Loretta Loretta aka Share Share
She's incredible. So Loretta is kind of the reverse situation
where she went through a trauma in her early well
thirty right, because she says like, I waited for love,
So I waited till I got married, till I was
old twenty eight, twenty eight, then she had and then
it got hit by bus. Yeah, And so she's someone
who has actually kind of resigned herself to being old
and what she's kind of given up in a different way.
And I think it really shows in her relationship with Johnny,
where it's very platonic. It's not very romantic. No, it's
very practical. It's very I need to get married to somebody.
Speaker 2: And have kids because these are the things that I want,
and I haven't had anybody come knocking. So I guess
I gotta settle for this guy because he's here pretty much.
Speaker 1: Well, it makes you wonder like Loretta obviously, Oh, I
assume she really really loved her husband, Yes, because she
waited until she didn't settle. She waited until she was
in love, and then he fucking died horribly and she'd
move back home and live other parents, And so I
would imagine I'm sure a good chunk of her thirties
were spent in like full blown grief, trying to get
herself together.
Speaker 2: Like an actual existential crisis that yes, your entire life
just blew up.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, everything that you thought was going to be was
taken away in an instant hit by a bus.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So by the time she's probably has enough energy
to like lift her head out of the fog. She
is like at an age where you are told you're
like a dinosaur, especially if you're trying to get pregnant.
Oh yeah, I mean even when even when her mom
brings up to her, well I had your brother after,
you know, after I was thirty eight, and even Chaer
is like, I yeah, but I don't think that's just
not going to happen. She really doesn't think that she's
going to be able to have a baby. Yeah, Like
she thinks it's her life is done in a lot
of ways which she has not settled with. Clearly, she
is not okay with that. You know, people reach certain
ages and don't have kids and are fine with that,
but she's not. Well, it's because it's something a choice
that got made for her, yes, instead of a choice
she made right.
Speaker 2: Which is different. You know people that choose they don't
want kids and start hitting the point where some doctor
would very kindly tell them that if they would have kids,
that it's a geriatric pregnancy at this point, which is
you know.
Speaker 1: A man came up with that fucking term.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think anyone.
Speaker 1: Cheriatric is so crazy for high risk as soon as
you hit thirty five, you're automatically high risk pregnancy.
Speaker 2: Yes, well they replaced high risk with geriatric.
Speaker 1: Well they're fucking counts, aren't they?
Speaker 2: Your words? Your words? I am correct, but you know
you're correct because you know we had our second child
after thirty five and those terms were used. Yeah, and
they were like, whoa old lady entering Obgyn?
Speaker 1: Clear the way for this thirty six.
Speaker 2: Year old I you know, looking back on I really
wish Caroline would have gone in like with her hair
sprayed stark white, with like a babushka on and a
cane walking into the next even a walker to be
like walking. I could tell them to suck it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I got a baby.
Speaker 2: You know, my wife is a spirited Italian woman. This
is not beyond something she could do. I wish, you know,
that would have been something we would have been in
a place to unlock from our personalities, but we were
not because it was scary. You're automatically a high risk
pregnancy and they can certainly see you next fucking Tuesday. Yeah. Yeah.
So in the eighties, worse, not better, right.
Speaker 1: Definitely yeah, worse, definitely worse. And as someone hook I said,
who grew up Catholic, there was many a Catholic family
in my church growing up, where they were having babies
well past thirty eight, but not their first kid. Yeah,
I think that's like the hard part. Interesting is then
these like classic no no contraceptive Catholic families that they
will have babies up until they're forty, until the woman
has meta pause pretty much pretty much.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting that though that's usually a common thing,
that there is still this idea of like, you can't
start having babies this late.
Speaker 2: Correct, which is a very different thing because subsequent pregnancies
are much easier on a body than the first one,
but also you figure some shit out. But she doesn't
even know who the father is gonna be because no
men have come a coin, which seems, you know, doubtful.
It seems more likely she was not open to anyone
stepping into her life because the love of her life
got fucking killed horrible.
Speaker 1: Which is how I think Johnny weaseled his way in.
There was just a friend he's probably was just a
friend of the restaurant who's always sitting by himself. Yeah,
Bobo at the beginning, and he's like, oh, we're losing
a bachelor customer. You hate to see it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean this guy is he was there, Yeah,
and he like said okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Because as we can see, and Johnny go ahead, and
Johnny asks only asked Loretta to marry him because his
mother is dying. The way he proposes to her is obnoxious.
By the end of the proposal, almost as Batman, he's
acting like, oh girl, he's acting like she proposed to him.
Speaker 2: Did you just say almost as bad as Batman?
Speaker 1: The worst proposal in the business.
Speaker 2: Yes, I would just like to point out that you
said Batman.
Speaker 1: Mask of the Fan. Well, we're gonna him mask of
the Fan. Why do you have to say it? Who's
the worst proposer? Bruce Wayne doing karate in his backyard
or garage or whatever. Or Johnny? No, Johnny, it's Johnny
because it's like because also like Johnny.
Speaker 2: The fun out of here. It's Johnny. You guys don't
even believe yourselves right now. You're just trying to me
because you're right, My trolley has been so effective over
the past seven seasons that you are doing it to yourself.
Speaker 1: Yes, but yeah, like well one, Loretta is like over
identifying with being old, absolutely, and the idea of the
idea of being old, like she's it's not even necessarily
that her hair's going gray and she's not covering it.
It's also the way that she is, she's styling her hair,
the way that she's dressing, the way that she's holding herself,
like she's someone that has let the idea of herself
being like fun and taking care of herself and this
and this, like just like appreciating her beauty and her
body and her looks and the canvas that is your body,
Like she gave it all that up. Maybe that's something too,
Like when you're in grief the way that she probably was,
you don't really give a shit about that stuff. And
then I wonder if like coming out of it, like
the best she could do is kind of what we
saw in the beginning. Yeah, Like my hair's pinned back,
you know, it's it's orderly, Like she looks very much together.
She also very much looks like if you looked up
Spinster in the dictionary, old girl's pictures right there, like
with the hair all back and with her coat done
all the way up to her fucking chin, and her boots,
like you don't see any of her skin, yeah, at
all and so also Johnny is someone who's also very
unthreatening because when you've gone through the trauma she's gone through,
the idea of like giving your heart away to someone
that you will love that much again is terrifying. So
also Johnny's a very safe person to be with, kind
of what her mom says, do you love him?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Good? Do you like him? You know? Like that's also
she's invested in that idea too, because if something happened
to Johnny, you know, no offense to Johnny, she'd be fine. Yeah,
and she knows that, Yeah, she knows she's marrying this
whatever guy, which is also why that shitty proposal is
good enough for her because he doesn't have a ring,
he doesn't have jack shit, he doesn't have anything. He
doesn't have anything. And again, you don't have to do
like a whole dog and Pony show to tell someone
that you want to marry that ring, but you should
have a fucking ring. It's like he didn't even think
about a ring until she brought it up. Yeah, because
I feel like he found out his mother was dying
and he just asked her the first chance he goyn,
I should have dinner on Friday like we always do.
So I'll just order to shame the champagne extra yeah,
and then begrudgingly giving her the pinky ring, getting on
one knee when she say at the end, she goes,
you just have to be there. I'll do everything once again.
You would think if you just heard the end of
that conversation, you would think that she came to dinner like, well,
you please marry me? Yes, please, please, please, please please,
And he was like fine, like as if he didn't
initiate it and proposed to her.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't think she was expecting that to happen,
but she was like yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he don't know. He's such a ding dong,
like he is comic relief, Like he is doing clown work.
He is like the Sircases thing was Danny Ayela.
Speaker 2: This guy usually plays mobsters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but he's doing good clown work in this.
When he tugs the top of his hair, he's like,
what was he saying about the sky not enough, not
enough bloods getting to my sculpe sometimes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he normally plays scary mobsters. Yeah, good fellows and
like or something along those lines.
Speaker 1: He plays. He's been into a ton of shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he normally plays like the scary mobster characters.
Speaker 1: So good in this dumb ass Oh he's so dumb.
Johnny makes sense for where Lorette is at in the
beginning of this movie. He's just a whatever. He's a
placeholder for a milestone in life. Which also I wonder
with her parents getting older too, if there's a part
of her that's like, I have to it's still the eighties,
you know, this idea of a husband is protection too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean it's still the eighties. Women have
been able to have credit cards for eight years at
this point, maybe maybe less.
Speaker 1: But also in this cultural setting, we're talking about where
you live with your parents. So you get married and
then you live with your husband, and then when your
husband dies, like in this situation, you move back in
with your family. So also it's a way for her
to maybe she feels like, so I can move on
with my life and have my own home and all
that kind of stuff too, And she's I don't know,
because John's a little bit them because Rose wants her
to move in. She's like, why don't you move in
that She's like, I would love to move in. I
love the house. I would love to live here. Pop
don't like Johnny, So that's the because she she would
be interested in that in living at home still, so
that makes sense. But I think that also just the
idea of like generational living is so interesting in general
and is really cool to see in this film. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And when they're talking about selling the house for.
Speaker 1: Them, which they would get a pretty if they could
hold onto that property for another thirty years, right, I mean,
I think that's why they want Leretta to move in, Yeah, yes,
so that she can take the house over when they're gone.
Speaker 2: But also don't forget the cultural aspect of this, of
that they want to see their daughter married. They're living
in a clearly small Italian community, which you know, in
New York in the eighties would still be a holdover
from what used to exist because remember, for a long
time Italians not looked favorably upon in New York, in
particular when they immigrated in mass following the collapse of
their economy and world in the fifties, because remember they
were part of the Axis Powers, they were the enemy. Yeah,
managed to carve out a higher place in society now eventually,
but then.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, and that's what the Godfather's about exactly.
Speaker 2: And the godfathers earlier than this, right, Yeah, obviously, but
you know, persona non grata would have been an accurate description.
So these small ethnic communities are all about survival and
they figured out some patterns that work, which is staying
within their community and growing their families within their community.
And now that she's not having a husband, they know,
as they're going to die, and she'll know, the message
they've been getting since they were kids is find a husband,
get married, have kids, stay within our family, our people. Well,
she's not able, she's getting old and worried about death.
She doesn't have a husband. What's going to happen to
her when they die?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you can tell that she is looking for
somewhere to put that caretaker role because even when she
goes to meet Ronnie and she goes to his apartment,
she immediately starts making him food. In this very this
is what she does, like even though she's never been
there before. Her role is to know men's needs and
to fulfill them. Right, you need steak, you need blood.
She goes right into that, even with the manches and no,
so you're right in that not only are her parents
getting older, but then who's she going to keep taking
care of when they're gone?
Speaker 2: So she needs like a husband in that role? That too, right,
It's it's all of those. Yeah, it's how how do
I find fulfillment? How do I find protection? How do
I execute the roles I'm comfortable with? How do I
get my needs met? Because Johnny or Ronnie, one of
the two of them is going to meet some needs.
The other one is dipshit? Who is what did the
dad call him a big baby?
Speaker 1: Yeah, big baby, which I was laughing at because I
was like, it's a big baby. Look in the mirror, Cosmo,
I know that's right, and you'll see a baby looking
back at you exactly.
Speaker 2: But even he's not as big a baby as Johnny.
Speaker 1: Oh, Johnny is a mama's boy. Obviously. It's like, oh
my god, cries so hard when his mom is laying
in the bed after he gets off the phone when
he's talking to Loretta right and his and even his
mother is like, Ugh, stop with your crying.
Speaker 2: I'm fine, where's my food?
Speaker 1: Obviously part of why he's like a huge schmuck is
that when his mother's no longer dying, he goes back
on his word with Loretta, well because then he thinks
if he marries Loretta, his mother will die. I think
that's bullshit. I think he's telling himself. I know there's
a lot of superstition in this movie, but I think
that's him just looking for an out. Well. Also, Loretta
points out that she could still hear her big mouth
talking about her in the background, So I mean, I
don't know that they have a great relationship. And then
Ronnie points out, and so your mother is still running
your life You're forty two years old. Yeah, so they
clearly have a dynamic. Yeah, Johnny and his mother. Yeah,
because Ronnie's not Italy tending over their dying mother.
Speaker 2: He doesn't know well.
Speaker 1: And when Loretta, when Loretta says, she says, why aren't
you in Palambro And he says, oh, she doesn't like.
Speaker 2: Me because he isn't going to be controlled.
Speaker 1: Well also because he is beef with Johnny, and I
wonder if but but I would also say something I
just want to touch upon with like the identity crisis
meaning making grief and all that shit is the superstitious
stuff that Loretta keeps doing. I have to get married no,
I have to get married in church. I got married
in city hall. That's why my husband died. She's still scared,
she still has that obvious imprint of trauma on her,
and so how she's trying to get control over it
is all the superstitious stuff, which a lot of people do,
you know. That's why with the Johnny proposal, she's like, no,
you got to get done on your knees, you got
to give mirror ring. We got to do it right.
And like also that everyone else is telling her like
bad luck, the way everyone's talking about bad luck and
making Loretta sound like it's her fault her husband died.
I guess I wanted to disvalidate for Loretta that. I
get why she does that, because you want to feel
like you can be in control of your circumstances. And
so she doesn't get her again. So she does all
the superstitiou stuff, or she believes in all of it
because it lets her believe that my next husband won't die.
And I don't think that stuff's going to necessarily go
away once she's with Ronnie. But I'll talk about that
in treatment. Yeah, well, I mean it's not Catholicism. Roman
Catholicism as a whole is a superstitious religion. Oh yeah.
And the reason why I believe in all this supernatural
stuff is because I was raised Catholic. You get raised
to believe in like demons and angels and like all
this like scary weigi boardy stuff. Yeah, and you're right,
like there's a level of mysticism within Catholicism. Yes, that
is why I'm so witchy nowadays.
Speaker 2: Yes. I mean I was raised by Methodists and they
are quite the opposite. It is so different. I remember
my boy Scout Troupe was in the basement of the
Catholic Church and once a year we'd go to the
Catholic Mass, and I remember just being there, going what
the fuck is going on here? And what do you do?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: I stand, you kneel, you need to stand? Like what
am I supposed to do? Am I at the gym?
Or what are we doing here? I don't understand?
Speaker 1: Love. Wow. Yeah, the Gothic tradition of Catholicism is like
the only thing it's really got going for it. I
just I don't think it has anything going for it.
Speaker 2: The amount of superstition deeply ingrained within the Italian culture
in general, and how that spirals off the religion that
headquartered right in the middle of their country.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: It makes sense. And when you see her doing all
these things, yes, psychologically we see that and go, ah,
we're trying to get control of things that are so
very out of our control and represent the biggest existential
fear of death and no longer existing and being on
the other side of realizing how fragile that existence is
and how quickly gone. Yeah, the spark of life is gone.
It creates the need to feel in control of that,
and she was so stripped of that that it makes
sense that she would be in that place because that's
what people do. We seek to find meaning and control
in ways that don't even make sense if it makes
us feel better.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so she gets to experience. Though the change
you see with her, like I said, is kind of
reverse in that she starts the movie giving up and
I'm old, and by the end of the movie she's
realizing she's only fucking thirty eight, and that she like
goes and embraces the fear that she's had. Like she
does that embracing of the uncertainty, which is what you
have to do also with the essential you have to
figure out what you give a shit about, and then
you have to be okay with with what you can't control.
Her choosing to be with Ronnie is her doing that? Yeah, Yeah,
I would say that. And I feel like what's interesting
about her and about Loretta and Ronnie is that I
think they're both people who have given up in a
very specific way because of loss, whether it's the hand
or the girl friend or losing her husband, and they
seem to and because they're both in that same place,
I think that's why we see them kind of clinging
to each other in such a big way, because they
both feel alive again through a time where they've both
been struck by grief, and it can be really hard
to feel joy and to feel good and to feel
pleasure and to want to feel pleasure after experiencing some
of the losses they both had experienced. Yeah, you're right,
because Ronnie, as you so gloriously acted out in the
very beginning of this episode, he has not just lost
his fiance. Yes, he lost his hand and that's.
Speaker 2: A big deal, and his brother and.
Speaker 1: His brother and his family probably too, so he's been
stuck as well. You're right. I never e thought of
it this way. That's a great comparison to make Hannah
in that Loretta's shut down in this very stereotypically like
shut down. Yes, like she's made herself small and she's
made her life and she's made her expectation small and
her hope small. Whereas Ronnie is doing the anger.
Speaker 2: Approach yes, which is fuck you, I'm gonna kill myself,
get the big knife off the wall.
Speaker 1: No, Ronnie, don't do it. And so he's in deep
pain and he's doing that thing that I feel like
I do sometimes aries energy is where he's being very
dramatic people people. If people don't know what it means,
I should look it up. Just look at up, look
at berries fire signing. Basically understand something I've had to
work on my own therapy is I don't have to
be very dramatic for people to understand how deep my
feelings are.
Speaker 2: And so especially not with an expressive face like yours,
thank you.
Speaker 1: And so Ronnie, I feel like he's doing that thing
where he is in such deep pain, Ronnie, that he
is making these big splashes because there's a part of
him that's like I need everyone to know how much
I'm hurting to hurt people. Hurt people. He's having his
own contradictory experience inside because in his whole little like
Shakespearean monologue, he gives what he's introduced into the movie.
He keeps going on and on of a howe, Johnny's fallow,
johnnys faut, Johnny's fault, and then he goes, Eh, it's
nobody's fault. But it is what I like about Ronnie
is And maybe she found him at a time when
this was already gonna happen. Somewhere in him is he's starting.
He does seem like he's capable of flexible thinking in
there he's torn. There's the old Ronnie and then the
Ronnie he's been for the past few years. Mmmm.
Speaker 2: But he's not a guy that's sweating in a basement.
I don't think that's who he. The man owns a tux,
he likes to go to the opera.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this guy owns the bakery correct, which means he
doesn't have to shovel the coal. He can pay. He
has people who work for him. He's putting himself through.
He's putting himself in this uncomfortable and staying and like
staying in that and that anger, but also in that trauma. Ye,
like where he got like where his hand got chewed
off at was at the bakery, Like having to figure
that every fucking day when you go in and not
being able to use that hand, like is just punishing
himself over and over and over again. Yeah, yep, And yeah,
he and Loretta are both over identifying with their emotional experience.
Speaker 2: As people do when they haven't processed it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And so then they meet each other and they
do like just antagonize each other because probably that thing
where we all know of, like when you meet someone
and they remind you of you and it pisses you off, Yes.
Speaker 2: It happens, but it can also attract you because yeah,
you see that exact right brand of antagonism to break
you out of your shit and reawaken the rest of
your soul, your.
Speaker 1: Wolf, I mean that whole wolf conversation that they had
where then they had fucked afterwards. I was like, yes,
this makes sense. You're both you're both revealing different things
to each other about the other person.
Speaker 2: And you can see it and since it.
Speaker 1: And you can see it because you have been in
a similar place it's almost like they've been waiting for
the right person ask them the right question exactly.
Speaker 2: She told him to take out his revenge on her face.
Speaker 1: Yes, she did leave nothing but skin and bones. That's
what she says. I love this fucking movie. I do
know all the dialogue. Well what do you think?
Speaker 2: So you feel like, well, yeah, will you watch it again?
Speaker 1: I almost watch it again today, even though I'd already
watched it. Yeah, that's kind of like your interpretation of
the You're a wolf, I'm a wolf? Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Her point was that you knew that you were not okay,
and that where you were was terrible for you, and
you had to escape, but you couldn't do it in
a socially acceptable way. So you hurt yourself, shut off
your hand because you saw yourself in a trap. And
you're the kind of person that you know like you
can't say it, but you will. And like she she
saw right through him. She's like her mom. She's like Ahna,
and no bullshit, don't bullshit me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Loretta's very sensible. I mean, she's a bookkeeper, she's doing
everybody else. She also, I think one of the things
I really appreciated about the way that Olimpia Dacoacus played
her part and share a plays they're part of that.
They're both women who know who they are.
Speaker 2: They don't They and real conversations with each.
Speaker 1: Other exactly, and they have real conversations and they have
real conversations with other people. I think you're hitting upon.
So the whole time I was watching this movie for
the bajillion time, I was trying to think to myself,
why does this movie feel so different than my Big
Fag Greek wedding, which we talked about, even though so
many of the pieces of it are so similar. Yes,
the family dynamic, and I think you just hit upon
a big part of it, which is that Loretta feels
like her mom's peer as much as you can feel
like a peer given their dynamic, like the traditional mother
daughter dynamic. Whereas in Big fact Greek wedding, there was
like the adults and the children. Yes, and even if
you were like thirty, you were still the child who
just told what to do. Because I'll tell you this,
they might all have an opinion about each other, but
nobody's really able to tell each other what to do.
Like Loretta stays out all night if she wants yep,
and they all she's gonna hear about it for sure.
But she has autonomy, yes, and that she can tell
I don't want to talk about it. Like with Rita,
Rita go on, what's wrong, what's wrong? And she goes,
I want to talk about it. And I wrote that
in my notes because like, see this is a class
example where everyone feels like they can push back boundaries wise. Yes,
like Loretta is basically saying, stop it, I'm not going
to talk about it. Yeah, leave me alone. Yeah, and eventually,
I mean Rita does have to be told the three times,
but she relents, and Laura leaves and and Rita didn't
go like call her mom Rose and was like I
just saw Loretta and she just all wounds up, like
what's wrong. Yeah, there is this autonomy there and respect, yes,
that we did not see in my big freang grey
wedding about everyone's importance and power, like even like Roses
in Cosmo's fucking neck, she's on Cosmo's neck. Yes, she
is as she should be. And yeah, and so if
you think you're.
Speaker 2: Going to have a successful marriage with an Italian woman
and she's going to be the neck of your family,
turning the head, you are making mistakes.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about that when I was watching it yesterday.
I was like, wow, I was like, this is a
really good example of it not being like that at all. Yes,
this film and the way that and again just the
way that they know who they are and they respect
each other, and there isn't this like fantastical idea of
a man is going to make all your problems go away,
even though the even though the idea of having to
be married and having to have children is still very
much there, they just respect each other so much more.
It makes it so much more palatable. And also that
Loretta can still do what she wants.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're going to tell you the truth, but you
know they're going to be on your team. Yeah, you
guys have met my wife and hung out with her.
You know, do you think that she is any neck
turning the head of like that I am the head
of the family and she is a neck turning No,
definitely not. That's not the case.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: We we are equals and decide things together. But also
if I think I'm going to make any decisions without her,
I got another thing coming.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like there's no, that's not greasing the wheel, so
that Cosmo thinks that something's his idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they all know.
Speaker 1: They think of a fuck if that Cosmitics is Ietea
or not. Cosmo is a part of the council making decisions,
but he's not the king. No, this family, if nothing else,
has a queen. Yeah. And like with Loretta, Yeah, she
knows who she is. She just got her life her
like light snuffed out. Yeah. Absolutely, and yeah, And probably
part of that too, is because her parents do seem
like they're they're willing to let her be whoever she
needs to be as a widow. Yes, Like even when
she tells them, I'm getting married to Johnny, They're like, ugh,
really are you? Like, I think they would have been
happy for her to like not, I mean, of course
they probably would want her to be fine love, but
I think they also would have been okay with her
just living with them forever yeah, until they died. Yeah,
And it didn't seem like there was any pressure coming
from them exactly about like get find another husband, get married.
They actually seem to be actively discouraged her and almost
too much, like of like, you're doing this again, She's like, oh,
come on.
Speaker 2: I mean they also are clocking her to use the
word of the day. They're clocking her behavior and they know.
My mom asks her at first, I mean it was Hilaire,
I said. They all said the same thing because also
on point. But the again, do you love him? And
she says no, yeah, and the moms, I mean the
bomb is dumping her ship early on there and playing
her hand like good because people that love you will
hurt you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's she's in her own feelings about this.
Speaker 2: She's sure situation, sure is which because she already knows yeah.
But the the reality there also is that she knows
that her daughter does not love this man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she does, and she knows her daughter looks like Share. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Even though they played her down, she.
Speaker 1: Doesn't maybe why, which is maybe why Share got an
oscar for this movie, because she does a good job
of holding herself differently, even though my mind is like
that Share the whole time. When she comes out of
that beauty slot, I'm like, oh, that's Share, Yeah, which
puts that lipstick on. When I was younger and I
watched this movie, I couldn't get over how easily she
could put her lips stick on without touching it up. Yes,
I've gotten better at it as I've gotten older, getting
my ten thousand hours great at it. But the sameless thing,
I was like, Wow, that's a woman. Was young, Yes,
that's a woman. She has her presence like even her
the scene, the classic scene where she's kicking the can
down the street. Yes, she has allowed herself to be
herself fully again and to have hoped, which is very
different than Cosmo or Perry, who are trying to perform youth. Yes.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then she comes home and her mom is like,
what's going on with this? She's like, everything's different, Mom,
everything's different. She just shook off the rest of her
grief on that walk back. I can have something that's different.
Speaker 2: Yeah. That was not a walk of shame, now, was
it it? Yes, was not great time.
Speaker 1: But also going to the opera and crying, she let
herself feel, yes fully what she was doing with Ronnie,
she was opening up her feelings again. She's giving in fighting.
It's still along the way, slapping in the face a
couple times, a couple times, not out of it. She's
trying to ignore the fact that she's still a vivacious person. Yes,
until she can't anymore. And that's different than I'm trying
to chase a young version of myself.
Speaker 2: It's the same thing. It's just the foil. I'm trying
to keep it shut down, Yeah, so that I don't
get hurt by letting it out, because the last time
I let myself believe and hope, I got hurt. It's
the way people are. It's not just that we go
out and do the dumb shit to do it. It's
that we protect ourselves from getting hurt because we view
that as equally as dumb as the dad going out
chasing the other woman. It's two sides of the same coin.
People are seeking to meet their needs in the best
ways they have available. They always do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And like we're saying, Ronnie is yeah very I'm
like really impressed with you looking them together like that, Hannah. Yeah,
I don't know why I didn't see that before, but yeah,
Ronnie is doing the same thing where he's doing the
anger thing. Also is a protective thing, yes, because clearly
he is a love sick romantic. Absolutely, he wants to
go to the opera. I want to take two things
I love. I want to take you to the opera.
Like you said, he owns a tux, he listens to
music on his record player. He is a romantic who's
trying to act like he's a angry maniac. Yes, and
that also deters other people from getting close to him.
So it's also another way, like, so, yeah, there are
two people pushing people away with this stereotype of themselves,
and then they find each other and they can't do
it anymore.
Speaker 2: Yes, because that woman who is in the store that
he owns is deeply in love with him. Yeah, and
he likely and I mean she flat says he doesn't
even know.
Speaker 1: I don't know. She kind of seems like she's in
love with this toxic version of him, the character he's playing,
this troubled bad boy, beast beauty the beast type guy. Sure,
I don't know if she would like the real version
of him. Yeah.
Speaker 2: He also clearly has been in the gym.
Speaker 1: I mean, he looks good.
Speaker 2: Dude's shredded.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I feel like there's something romantic about the
way that he's acting in the beginning of the movie
that if you were a young person, a young girl, teenager,
young woman, you'd be like, oh my god, he's so torn,
Like that's that's what she likes. About him right, like
she's like, ah, I love this tormented man, isn't that
what She's like? Oh? I would never if Kyler ren
existed in real life. You best believe I would not
be getting involved a grown man who just bashes things
into the wall like a crazy person. No, no, so
like a real life Ronnie. I'd be like, oh, yeah, yeah,
that's what I mean. It's very romantic in in this
very specific way that's not real life.
Speaker 2: Yes, not real life, No, it's not. But he's Yeah,
he's absolutely doing the same thing that she is, just
in the male centric way, especially younger male way of
being mad. I'm so angry. Just don't love me because
I'm gonna kill myself at any second because I just
can't stand my life anymore. And why can't anybody see that?
My life is fucking terrible? But really, what everyone wants
to put on a tux and look pretty and go
to the opera.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because as soon as he's into her, all that
stuff falls away. He's very chill with her. Yeah, he's
very romantic with her. There's several moments when he could
get wound up with her, and he doesn't really, he
doesn't act like he does in that bakery.
Speaker 2: No, And I think the whole foreshadowing of the scene
shop truck and the opera right at the beginning is
showing us to remember that with a transformational experience that
transcendentally takes us out of our own experience and allows
us to experience the emotions of characters echoing real human experience,
we can bypass that shit that keeps you stuck and
allows you to connect to the real feelings with a
different mechanism of release that allows you to safely confront it,
which is exactly what happened for both of them at
that opera show, And the movie showed us that that
was what was going to happen, that it was not
an accident. We see the grandeur of the opera being
prepped for and all that it takes to create that
kind of magical experience where you face that kind of
beauty and carefully crafted experience to take you away from
your shit and stand in the life of that character,
realizing that every story is a human story.
Speaker 1: Well, on that note, should take a break here and
be back with treatment. Yes, all right, Hannah, do you
want to go first? Charocle first? So I was thinking
about doing therapy with Cosmo and Rose. I don't know
if they need it. What I will talk about is
what it's like to help a couple who who is
experience in infidelity. I think maybe I don't know if
it's because of their age, or because of their culture,
or because of whatever, because of the magic of the
movie in general, but the way that it's handled at
the table makes me really think that I'm not saying
they wouldn't benefit from some reconnecting experiences in therapy, having
them do things in session with me, so they could
kind of be in a different setting and experience each
other in a little bit different way. I think that
would be helpful, but I don't know that that they
would need to come to me. So what I will
talk about though, is what needs to happen when a couple.
When a couple comes to you and somebody has had
an affair, they are aware that the affair has happened
both people, and they come in and they want to
work on their relationship. And so a big part of
helping both partners is first by allowing the partner who
experienced betrayal to be seen and heard for their thoughts
and feelings of what they experience. Also for or the
partner who experience betrayal, that they are also able to
ask for anything that they might need to help to
encourage trust in one way or another. And yes, it
may take time, And I don't mean it's going to
take two weeks. I mean it's going to take some
fucking time. Yeah, because a trust has been broken, and
people who are the person who was betrayed, they often
experience PTSD like symptoms when they found out a partner
has had an affair. They can have nightmares, they can
have flashbacks even to times in their life where they've
asked their partner questions about what they were doing or
what was going on and they were lied to. They
can have all different kinds of experiences that has to
be treated and acknowledged in order for you to get
to the part where you start to actually work on
the relationship. I know.
Speaker 2: A fun fact about that exact statement is the EMDR
trauma protocol or when that has happened, requires both people
to be in the room. Oh. When you do, the
EMDR work to pop the bubble of the emotion that's
been hiding so that the pain can be seen and
felt by the person that caused it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2: I'm going to talk about some damn Yeah. I have
not ventured down that path, but I read that shit
and went, oh, damn yeah, we're gonna bust that right
open now, aren't we.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And even if you listen to somebody like Esther
Pirell talk about working with couples, she talks about something
very similar when she's working with infidelity. A lot of
times the partner who has stepped out wants there to
be an end in sight so when their partner will
trust them again for when things can go back to
quote unquote normal, they're often searching for that, and that
has to be something that has to be off the table,
and you have to really experience what is your partner feeling,
what is your partner looking at? What is your partner
thinking about every fucking day because you've been cheating on
them for god knows how long, Because no matter if
it's a year or six months, or ten days or
twelve days, it's the same fucking betrayal, and a partner
will feel like the rug has been pulled out from
underneath them, and so that really has to be addressed.
I also would definitely recommend that both people seek individual
counseling as well, because, like we've discussed with Cosmo, he
is stepping out because of his own shit. Very rarely
is it because of something that their partner did. Almost
always has something to do with something they've experienced, something
they've gone through, or something they're looking for or trying
to find because they're not satisfied with some fucking part
of their life. So after we help the symptoms of
the partner who has been betrayed decrease, then I can
start doing some very small trust things in session, something
as simple as I'm going to give you directions and
you the pen and paper, and I want you to
write down what the purseon, what you're hearing the person
say in terms of like drawing a square or something,
and that can help them build a little bit of trust,
remember what it's like to have to rely on each
other in a little bit different way to just start
to get the ball rolling just a little bit. But
it's a lot of work. And what I can tell you,
people can come out of therapy after having an affair
and have a much more loving and a much more
connected relationship than they had before. If they're really willing
to do the work and to take the time that
it takes to heal because it is possible. And also
for some other people that's not possible. That's not what
they want, and they want to leave their partner. That's
okay too, There's nothing wrong with that. All I'm saying
is that when if you're going to come in and
you're going to do the work, that's the work that
has to be done.
Speaker 2: Hurt people want to know two things and two things only. Yeah.
Thing one that my pain is understood, full stop, and
you need to understand it to their satisfaction, not yours.
Thing two, whatever's hurting them is going to stop. That's it.
It's really simple. But if you think you're going to
skip through that part one, you will be stuck because
they will be stuck not able to deactivate their pain,
and they will not trust you. And there is no
back to anything you killed that. Yeah, that is dead.
It must be grieved and buried because you have a
new reality now where one of you stepped out or
both and violated the trust. Whatever existed before that is gone.
Have you ever forgotten any bad thing that ever happened
in your life? No, neither of the not real.
Speaker 1: That also brings me to doing couple's therapy with Loretta
and Ronnie, because I'm gonna tell you right now, they
are experiencing when people have an affair. There is excitement,
there is intrigue. Sometimes there is the mystery part of
all of it. And they will have to and I'm
not saying that they'll have a hard time with this,
but they will need to have some support around building
a relationship that's based more on how they feel on
an everyday basis than in these big passionate moments that
they experience all the time. Yeah, because when you've met
in a relationship where one of you is stepping out
at another relationship, you have to do some work in
order to build trust to make sure that that's going
to work for both of you. All right, And that's it. Well,
since it is behind the scenes, it's twelve forty three
am on a Sunday night, So I'm going to keep
this very brief in that I would work with Loretta
just because, like I said earlier, she still has grief
and trauma within her, and so with Ronnie, especially because
she loves him so much. If it continues on the
trajectory of this, I could imagine that some of her
superstitious anxiety might come back up and maybe even get
worse because she loves ron If she keeps loving Ronnie
so much, I think it's going to activate some of
that for her. And so she's someone that I think
would need to do some maybe trauma work around that
experience of losing her husband, probably for the first time
doing that work, because I assume she hasn't done it yet.
She's someone that I might even recommend to do AMDR
while she's working with me if there are like stuck
points from that time in her life when she lost
her first husband. And she's someone that we would just
have to do a lot of work around. How are you.
It's very basic stuff, trauma and form CBT kind of stuff.
How are you feeling? Why do you want to do that?
Why are you? I would be worried that she would
cross in a maybe even like OCD territory with a superstition,
and so she's someone that would just need higher awareness
of when she's feeling anxious, challenging that anxiety, and having
replacement coping skills for that anxiety. If she's engaging in
the superstitious stuff you could argue is reassurance seeking behavior.
I want to do the Sign of the Cross, I'm
gonna get married at church. It's all stuff that we
can do to reassure ourselves, and the problem with it
is that it doesn't last. So you have to keep
doing that stuff because the underlying anxiety is not being treated.
And so she's someone that would just have to really
get her hands around that in therapy so that she
doesn't start doing stuff within her relationship with Ronnie that
actually might impact the relationship or just make her miserable. Still,
I'm not feeling better even though I'm with him. Actually
I'm feeling even worse. I'm feeling really freaked out. Yeah,
and so she I would think she would need therapy
to work on that freaked out and she's gonna probably
feel So that's what I would do, Benjamin.
Speaker 2: I would work with Ronnie as much as I think
Johnny probably needs the most therapy. I also don't think
I'm the therapist for him, So I would pick Ronnie
because usually the types of cases I do best with
are the people that have the biggest, darkest things that
they are keeping from themselves, but they're so desperately wanting
to release that it doesn't take all that much convincing. More,
what it takes is some guidance and some normalization of
that so that out it comes, but in a healthy way.
And I think when I look at Ronnie, he's exactly
the type of client that I usually do pretty well
with because you can speak his language. Right now, Johnny's
gonna need quite a bit of time.
Speaker 1: Johnny doesn't need a therapist. He has his mother.
Speaker 2: And he may not even do well with a male therapist.
But I think Ronnie, on the other hand, would really
benefit from having someone to help further process the heat
seeking missile of comments that Loretta dropped on him. That
cut your bullshit. You did it to yourself because you
were stuck and you knew it, but you couldn't let
yourself out in a way that was socially acceptable to you.
Like I said earlier, you had to do something, and
that was the only way you saw out. It wasn't
just that one thing. You need it out of your
family system. You needed out of that bad relationship, and
you needed something bad to happen to you. Nobody just
leaves you because you damage your hand. It's ridiculous. They
might leave you because you're a raging ass bag about
it because what you really wanted was to get out
and you didn't see a sensible way to do it,
so you hurt yourself. Well that's the kind of heat
seeking missile of a therapist. I am. I might not
come to you that hard, but I believe that popping
that bubble of bullshit we keep around ourselves like no,
it was everybody else's fault, like the fuck it was.
I think we sometimes need that, but that to be
done by a trained clinical professional that knows people don't
do well when you just pop their bubble with no
off rahim. If you just go like, stop your bullshit,
well you're going to meet their fight part real fast,
or they're going to retreat even harder into their behavior
because fuck you, or they're going to activate even more
need to escape. So I think looking at somebody like
Ronnie who's going to absolutely not be just okay because
he got the love of his life, they're going to
be so many things that he's been hiding from himself
four years that need to be processed and need to
be done so in a way that simultaneously pops that
bubble and calls him on his shit, while also providing
him with a safety net that he can process safely, calmly,
and learn to reregulate himself so he doesn't just become
fucking hulk is what he's going to need. And I
think working with him through whether it's I guess, CPT
cognitive processing kind of model that doesn't necessarily require him
to talk about all of the things about losing his hand,
but does require him to reframe the broken mindsets that
have come from all that he's been through and all
of this psychological armor he's created around it when the
truth is you were hurt and you need to start
reframing this idea that you're hurt and will always be
hurt and broken. Or it's something like EMDR that works
with defanging the worst moments of life and helping you
realize that, yes, they were scary then, but they don't
have to be scary now for you to know what
to do to survive anything similar in the future. You
can let go of the hurt because your body already
learned all it needed to. But working with him in
some kind of trauma informed way to help him through
that so that he and Florreta can have the life
that seems to be in front of them, but the
pathway in reality would not be so smooth as well.
You just immediately like took your brother's fiance and had
sex with her twice while he was gone preparing for
the death of your mother. Yeah, that's not gonna go great, Johnny.
Maybe a little bitch, but there's some issues here, So
that's what I would do.
Speaker 1: All right. Well, let's take our last break carey back
with final thoughts. Let's called perverse what we just did. Benjamin,
this is your first time seeing.
Speaker 2: It, at least the whole thing I've seen. I've seen
multiple clips, and funny enough, my father would routinely name
this as one of his favorite movies. Oh now that's
probably because Cher does the big glow up and he's
the way he is. But the movie itself is it's
really good. It's a it's a really good movie. And
I know I message you guys right in it. But
I have a phrase from being married to an Italian
wife that I joke about is having an Italian wife
is really good for your head size. And then it
they make sure it doesn't get too big and bad
for your waist size as they feed you, and they
don't care if that gets too big because it keeps
you around. Well. I love my wife dearly and for
all that she is, and the way that she does
keep my head in check is much needed, and it
is probably why we found each other. Much like these
two clowns, but they speak a similar language, and you know,
my wife and I can both keep each other in
check and say things directly to each other, which we needed,
and people that were a little more delicate probably wouldn't
survive either of us. And haven't this movie really nails
some of these cultural things. You know, I've been part
of an Italian family for what sixteen seventeen years now,
Like god damn, they just fucking nailed it in many ways.
But it's also it's a classic script. This movie could
be put in any time period and fit. Yeah, totally
just changed the setting, changed the clothes. It's still going
to fit. This story will fit, and it's classic. And
the oscars were well earned and deserved. The only question
I have is where was Nick Cage's because I think
he probably deserved one for this performance here, not the
share and Olympiadacacus didn't because they absolutely did their their
facial acting and transforming and showing the things that weren't
they were phenomenal. But the movie's great. It's incredibly well done,
and I like this one. I think it will hold
up to time much better than my big fact gory
wedding that we did that kind of it's a similar vein,
but I don't think that's going to hold up the
time as well as this does not even close.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love this movie. I've seen it many times.
After I watched my Big Fact Grey wedding with Hannah
for Arvana's episode, we did a spiritual cleanse by watching
Moonstruck immediately afterwards, even though we knew we were going
to be watching it again for this recording right now.
And so I love Moonstruck. I'll watch a million more times.
It does reaffirm what I said in the Big Fat
Greek Wedding episode, which is that if you are close
to your family and it makes you feel good and
it feels like a part of your support system, then
I don't care how close you are to your family
as long as it feels like a positive thing for you.
And I think this is a good example of They
are very close to each other. There are up each
other's butts, but it seems to work for all of them,
and it seems to make them all feel good and happy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it doesn't see it support it.
Speaker 1: Like at the very end of the movie, she says, Johnny,
I want my family around me, so I just want
to make the distinction, Like you know, my favorite big
fat Greek wedding. It's not the closest of the family
that's the problem. It's the way they treat each other
as the problem. And this movie is such a good
juxposition to that one in terms of like, very similar idea,
but execute it a lot, a lot healthier. Even though
in a lot of ways you'd say this family's more.
I don't know this family is real or I think it's.
What I like about this movie too, is everyone's more real,
Everyone's more everyone's funny and KOOKI I love how funny
this movie is. It makes me laugh every time I
watch it. It's got the weirdest lines like this script
could not work if the actors weren't as good as
they are, because they do some goofy stuff they'd really do.
But I love this movie, and I also love Joe
versus Volcano, which is written by the same person. But yeah,
I love this movie. I watched a million times, and
I take it away. I love this movie. I have
loved this movie for a really long time. I this
was a movie that I would watch with my siblings.
We loved Nicholas Cage screaming about his hand. We would
crack up when we watched it. It's a very cozy movie.
It's really well acted, and it's just really fun to watch.
Like I just I enjoy it so much, and it
makes me laugh really hard. And I know all the
dialogue and I'm sure it's very annoying. I hope all
of you enjoyed me saying the lines a lot in
this episode. So yeah, So I love this movie and
I will definitely watch it one hundred more times. This
movie feels very warm. There's the thing about like eighties
nineties movies that had like a warmth to them. Yes,
that I love, and they do feel very cozy. Well,
even Tim Burton's Batman. I love that Batman. He's very
drama drama in that movie. Yes, with his turtle rampage.
You want to get nuts, Let's get nuts? All right? Well,
on that note, you know, go outside and look at
the moon, y'all. And you can find us at popcorn
Psychology on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram threads. You can always email
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You know, everybody go out there and you know, grab
life by the balls.