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Speaker 5: Table, Hello and welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics.
Speaker 6: Friends.
Speaker 5: We've established a while ago that one of these superpowers
Speaker 5: is being a spy, that we think of that as
Speaker 5: kind of super heroic behavior. Well, what if you're a
Speaker 5: spy to solve a crime that's like kind of like
Speaker 5: double And what if it's all about going undercover? And
Speaker 5: what if you're an amateur who's never gotten undercover before
Speaker 5: but has to because you're the only one who can
Speaker 5: do this job. And what if you're Ted Danson doing
Speaker 5: it in a show written by the folks who brought
Speaker 5: us The Good Place, and many other such things.
Speaker 6: We're talking today about A Man on the Inside.
Speaker 5: It's a short little show on Netflix, eight thirty minute episodes.
Speaker 5: If you haven't seen it already, it's really a treasure.
Speaker 5: I pretty much adored it. I'd one or two complaints
Speaker 5: that'll bring up, but really it does so many great
Speaker 5: things about take the mystery genre in a new way.
Speaker 5: But also, I mean, if you had any kind of
Speaker 5: hard Thanksgiving or just for whatever reason, you need comfort show,
Speaker 5: this is like the ultimate like just it's very much
Speaker 5: cozy television, Like it deals with hard issues, but it's
Speaker 5: just like everyone is just a fairly good person in
Speaker 5: the show.
Speaker 6: And it really.
Speaker 5: Brought up a lot of great issues about aging, about
Speaker 5: relationships between parents and children, about widow and and sort
Speaker 5: of what happens after your partner passes away and how
Speaker 5: you find a new life for yourself, all wrapped up
Speaker 5: around this mystery that involves an elderly man who needs
Speaker 5: something to do being hired by a private investigator to
Speaker 5: go undercover into a not a nursing home, but a
Speaker 5: retirement community. Retirement community, yeah, where it's you know, kind
Speaker 5: of a it's what my step grandmother was in, an
Speaker 5: aging in place where there are medical facilities for once
Speaker 5: you need them, but it can start out just as like, yeah,
Speaker 5: you just have an apartment here the cafeteria and people
Speaker 5: do your laundry, but you predict to live your own life.
Speaker 5: And it was just there was so much of the
Speaker 5: show did in the short four hours that it had,
Speaker 5: And Paul brought this to my attention and wanted to
Speaker 5: talk about it, and I'm here to talk about it too.
Speaker 5: So Paul, let me just start by what made the
Speaker 5: show something you want to talk about?
Speaker 3: Number? One, I enjoyed it, and I think that, you know,
Speaker 3: goes a long way, and wanting to talk about something
Speaker 3: every now and then, maybe we talk about something I
Speaker 3: don't enjoy so much or enjoy some of but think
Speaker 3: other parts of it are preposterously bad. Yeah, maybe even
Speaker 3: something we talked about recently. But also one of my
Speaker 3: like recent pet peeves is just the like abundance of
Speaker 3: overt agism really that just pervades pretty much all levels
Speaker 3: of society or whatever, and certainly Hollywood as well. And
Speaker 3: one of the things about agism that I think is
Speaker 3: so interesting is it's not just like anti aged people, right,
Speaker 3: like the older you are the worst or whatever. There's
Speaker 3: also it really goes in all directions where there's ages.
Speaker 3: I'm directed at young people, like children and then young
Speaker 3: adults and like, you know, generations which I kind of
Speaker 3: have to break out the quotes for because like they're
Speaker 3: they're a thing, but they're also not a thing, like
Speaker 3: many things, you know, and and the way you know,
Speaker 3: going at each other, and these stereotypes for like enormous
Speaker 3: groups of people that are by no means monoliths, and
Speaker 3: you know, there's obviously there's some reality to the situation,
Speaker 3: you know, to the fact that you know, when when
Speaker 3: humans are born, like our brains are not that developed,
Speaker 3: and over time the body and the brain develop and
Speaker 3: we we gain information and we'd learned skills, and at
Speaker 3: a certain point some aspects of those begin to decline.
Speaker 3: But like that point is different for different people. And
Speaker 3: the idea that then that that's like inherently a bad
Speaker 3: thing and like it is solely negative, and that that
Speaker 3: is like the defining feature of a person. I mean
Speaker 3: it seems very ablest, you know, right, yeah, but then
Speaker 3: just also just the idea of just thinking you know
Speaker 3: so much about a person when you really only know
Speaker 3: one thing about them. Yeah, right, And and so this
Speaker 3: show I felt, I thought was really good in terms
Speaker 3: of representation in a broader sense in terms of you
Speaker 3: look at the cast and the characters, and it looks
Speaker 3: like San Francisco. To me, it looks like, you know,
Speaker 3: northern California. I mean, there's people in Sacramento, there's there's yeah,
Speaker 3: the East Bay is involved a little bit, right, But
Speaker 3: like a lot of that is sort of to me
Speaker 3: in the kind of the kind of subtle way where
Speaker 3: it's just that's just there and it's not commented on.
Speaker 3: But then, you know, because it's a retirement community, you know,
Speaker 3: age is obviously discussed in a way that like within
Speaker 3: the show in a way that doesn't feel like we're
Speaker 3: trying to make a point. It felt to me more
Speaker 3: like just a show that was like, we want to
Speaker 3: portray life with real people, the majority of whom happened
Speaker 3: to be you know, between seventy and ninety or something
Speaker 3: like that, which is just very uncommon in television shows
Speaker 3: and in movies.
Speaker 6: It really is.
Speaker 5: And I think that's true both just for shows that
Speaker 5: are just about people like you know of this Gus's
Speaker 5: Union statist in age, but also in stories about those
Speaker 5: folks and the generations under them, like the their kids
Speaker 5: or their grandkids. And that is certainly a part of
Speaker 5: this story. I mean summary, I'm not gonna give away
Speaker 5: the murder mystery that I'm not gonna give away the
Speaker 5: mystery ending until kind of a spoiler section at the
Speaker 5: very end.
Speaker 6: But because some of the most parts the plot doesn't matter.
Speaker 5: It's very much about just sort of like the the
Speaker 5: experiences these people are going through.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say the plot is non central to
Speaker 3: the story.
Speaker 5: That yes, the plot is an exercise to give us
Speaker 5: these these story moments and these character.
Speaker 3: Moments based on a true story.
Speaker 6: Though, by the way, oh that's awesome.
Speaker 5: So anyway, there's this guy, Charles, whose wife has very
Speaker 5: recently passed away. We eventually learned it from Alzheimer's, and
Speaker 5: that the last six months had been really hard, as
Speaker 5: it often is with Alzheimer's, and he's doing well, like
Speaker 5: there's no he seems to be medically in good shape.
Speaker 5: His memory is sharp, but he's he's retired and his
Speaker 5: wife has passed away and he's not doing anything, and
Speaker 5: he's kind of clipping out articles and sending them to
Speaker 5: his daughter, but not really communicating with her much. She
Speaker 5: is married and has three kids, uh entering. They're white,
Speaker 5: her husband is Asian, and their kids are are mixed
Speaker 5: and really kind of a beautiful representation I think of that. Yeah,
Speaker 5: like yeah, like you're in San Francisco in tech like that,
Speaker 5: they're in Sacramento, Sacramento. Yeah, and it goes completely uncommented on.
Speaker 5: That's one of my favorite things that it's just that's
Speaker 5: just California.
Speaker 6: That's he's a loving grandpa.
Speaker 5: They're loving grandsons, and you know, they're between like I
Speaker 5: think eight and fourteen, and they're kind of idiots and.
Speaker 3: Yeah they're kids, they're teenagers, you know. Yeah, but they're
Speaker 3: just people too.
Speaker 5: Yeah, all the characters feel real and nuanced. I'll get
Speaker 5: to that second. Let me just finish the summary. So, meanwhile,
Speaker 5: a woman has had something stolen from her. Her son
Speaker 5: is very concerned about this. Her son hires a private
Speaker 5: investigator to find out what is this crime happening in
Speaker 5: this retirement community and is offering a huge amount of
Speaker 5: money to help. So the people the private investigator who
Speaker 5: they hire says, let's hire a can i you know, subcontractor.
Speaker 6: A man to be our man on the inside. And
Speaker 6: they do some interviews.
Speaker 5: They find Charles is a good choice and they send
Speaker 5: Charles in and Charles does some interesting stuff to figure
Speaker 5: out who, you know, why the why these thefts are happening.
Speaker 5: So it turns out there's multiple of them, and there's
Speaker 5: some interesting stuff about being a spy and being you know,
Speaker 5: mystery solving. This is a mystery show, and we'll talk
Speaker 5: about that.
Speaker 6: To be sure. But along the way, he also has
Speaker 6: a lot.
Speaker 5: Of great sort of connections that he makes with the
Speaker 5: other people in the In the nursing home, there's a
Speaker 5: number of women who are interested in him and flirt
Speaker 5: with him. There's another guy who surceees him as a
Speaker 5: romantic rival because of.
Speaker 6: That sexual rival sex rival many times.
Speaker 5: There's a friendship that he has with Deti, who is
Speaker 5: the woman running all of it. Who is Roman of
Speaker 5: the actress's name.
Speaker 3: It's Rosa from Yeah, Rosa from Brooklyn ninety nine. It's
Speaker 3: Stephanie Beatrice.
Speaker 5: Sephanie Beatri's neck. Yet it's by the same folks who've
Speaker 5: made Brooklyn nine nine and the Place, and so a
Speaker 5: lot of those acts pop up parks and wreck. A
Speaker 5: lot of the actors who you've seen in those things
Speaker 5: pop up a bunch. I'm not gonna give away who
Speaker 5: because it's fun cameos, but it's definitely a cool thing.
Speaker 6: And so there's some high jinks.
Speaker 5: His actual daughter finds out and like pretends to be
Speaker 5: the niece so that she doesn't get caught. He strikes
Speaker 5: up a good friendship with a guy who's there, but
Speaker 5: eventually he is being the spy. The man on the
Speaker 5: inside gets revealed. He's asked to leave, and there's tension
Speaker 5: and people are upset at him, but everything kind of
Speaker 5: works out in the end and he doesn't go back.
Speaker 5: He doesn't stay in the nursing home, but he maintains
Speaker 5: friendships with people there, and he by the end of
Speaker 5: it is much more active. He's starting to lecture again.
Speaker 5: He was a former professor. He's developing friendships and doing things.
Speaker 5: He has a much better connection with his daughter and
Speaker 5: they're they're connecting more and doing more things.
Speaker 6: He's coming to better terms with the loss of his
Speaker 6: wife and his feelings about that, and it all just
Speaker 6: kind of wraps up in a.
Speaker 5: Very nicely but not in a like super sacriine like
Speaker 5: I said, Like I had a sense of like, oh,
Speaker 5: he's gonna decide to move in now, and it's like, no,
Speaker 5: he doesn't need.
Speaker 6: It by any means.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he stays friends with some of the folks in there,
Speaker 5: but he's on his own. He's lecturing, he's working. Some
Speaker 5: people who felt like they were good romantic connections get together.
Speaker 5: Some people you could see them as having good romantic
Speaker 5: connections don't, because not everything gets tied up night little bows.
Speaker 5: And it's what struck me more than anything was just
Speaker 5: that it never painted in broad strokes.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 5: This is what I was kind of saying before that,
Speaker 5: Like a lot of times, it feels like the show
Speaker 5: is going to take one perspective of another, either a
Speaker 5: it's all about these old folks, and they're ungrateful wretches
Speaker 5: of children who are super selfish, who are super mean,
Speaker 5: who don't care enough when I'm always kind of wondering, like, so,
Speaker 5: what did you do to those kids to make them
Speaker 5: not want to come visit you all the time? Or
Speaker 5: it's all about the kids who are having to kids.
Speaker 5: I mean, there are people in there has.
Speaker 3: The kids of the parents, but they are adults.
Speaker 5: They're trying to leave their old lives, but like, you know,
Speaker 5: grandma's living in the spare bedroom and she's always driving
Speaker 5: you crazy, and like it always feels.
Speaker 6: Very one sided or the other.
Speaker 5: And sort of have this show where it was like, yeah,
Speaker 5: everyone's struggling, but everyone's doing their best, even like there's
Speaker 5: a couple of moments where the parents, the daughter and
Speaker 5: the son in law of Charles are struggling with their
Speaker 5: kids because their kids, you know, all jump on a
Speaker 5: trampoline and all break bones within one day of each other. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and they're all like, oh my god, are we horrible
Speaker 5: parents or are these terrible kids? Because yeah, parents feel
Speaker 5: that way sometimes, but they get through it and they
Speaker 5: talk about it. And it just felt like it was
Speaker 5: a really a story about people, none of whom were
Speaker 5: painted with a broad brush.
Speaker 6: Everyone who had characteristics. You know, there's one or two
Speaker 6: who are.
Speaker 5: Kind of like, let's make them the foils of some
Speaker 5: parts of the stories, in which case they're quite funny.
Speaker 5: But even then, like there's some understanding ability.
Speaker 6: To who they are and what they're doing. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I mean, I think above all else, it just
Speaker 3: feels to me like a show about people, and you know,
Speaker 3: the people are from a diverse range of ages, and
Speaker 3: you know, when you're a parent and you're not sure
Speaker 3: what's you know, going on with your kids or like
Speaker 3: are you messing things up? Like maybe one of the
Speaker 3: most helpful people to talk to could potentially be a parent.
Speaker 3: Might not be for everybody, you know, But I think
Speaker 3: in the show we get the sense that they hadn't
Speaker 3: really talked in that way before, you know, and then
Speaker 3: now that they're connecting about something else, you know, he's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: these things happen, you know, like kids are going to
Speaker 3: break bones. Like you know, just because your kid does
Speaker 3: something stupid doesn't mean they are stupid. It just means
Speaker 3: they did something stupid, and it doesn't mean you did
Speaker 3: something bad as a parent, Like, yeah, you know, they're people,
Speaker 3: they make some bad decisions, to make some good decisions,
Speaker 3: and and so yeah, just the really the treatment of
Speaker 3: kind of of all the characters as as people. I
Speaker 3: really appreciate it. And you know, this is in a
Speaker 3: thirty minute comedy dramedy. I don't even know, like I
Speaker 3: think it's a comedy, right, but it's not like a
Speaker 3: laugh outside, laugh out loud constant Hyjenk's kind of comedy.
Speaker 3: You know, it takes its time with things. But again
Speaker 3: it's you know, it's only up eight episodes long, so
Speaker 3: it's you know, it's four hours. And you've got to
Speaker 3: fit a mystery, You've got to fit personal development. And
Speaker 3: you know, you need a certain number of characters if
Speaker 3: you're going to have a mystery, right, Like you can't
Speaker 3: have three characters and you know, one's a victim, one's
Speaker 3: investig in, and it's like, well it's probably the third
Speaker 3: person then yeah, you know. So, but I did appreciate
Speaker 3: that Charles's new friend, Calbert, like had a thing going
Speaker 3: on himself with his son, you know that like they
Speaker 3: had their own thing, and and that there were a
Speaker 3: lot of little things like that where you know, the
Speaker 3: characters had most of them. Not everybody had that much
Speaker 3: of a story, right, but they they got to have
Speaker 3: their part of the story as well, even while you
Speaker 3: know you have the needs of the plot and to
Speaker 3: move the mystery forward and everything.
Speaker 5: I think Colbert's story was one of my favorites, particularly
Speaker 5: because it was the one I felt like it would
Speaker 5: have been so easy for them to again paint with
Speaker 5: that broadbrush, because his story is that he has a
Speaker 5: son who's incredibly successful in the tech world. He's black,
Speaker 5: though again that's never brought up. It's just kind of
Speaker 5: one more part of filling out the diverse world that
Speaker 5: he's all living. They're from Baltimore, and his son got
Speaker 5: a job in the Bay Area, and so had kind
Speaker 5: of suggested, but maybe pretty firmly suggested, without really talking
Speaker 5: to his dad about it, that the father kind of
Speaker 5: moveo move across the country to this retirement community so
Speaker 5: this son could be near him.
Speaker 6: And now the son.
Speaker 5: Has gotten off for a job in Singapore and wants
Speaker 5: to move to Singapore, and also is kind of in
Speaker 5: the same way like, well, come on, dad, you'll I
Speaker 5: can find.
Speaker 6: A retirement community for here in Singapore.
Speaker 5: And again this could have so easily been a story
Speaker 5: about a dad who just doesn't want his son to
Speaker 5: succeed or doesn't want his son to outgrow him and
Speaker 5: wants his son to always stay close to him, or
Speaker 5: it could have been about a son who is just
Speaker 5: a terrible son and just feels like his father's a
Speaker 5: burden and will take his father wherever he is because
Speaker 5: he cares more about his own need to be near
Speaker 5: his father than his father's actual needs. And it's not
Speaker 5: like both of them resent each other a little bit
Speaker 5: because they haven't been communicating very well, and they kind
Speaker 5: of have a breakthrough and Charles helps him, Like you know,
Speaker 5: Charles's that kind of character who helps most of the
Speaker 5: others have the breakthrough they need to fix their own stuff.
Speaker 5: And I think it's like they have the conversation and
Speaker 5: the father kind of makes it clearer, like he has
Speaker 5: found a life for himself in San Francisco and he's
Speaker 5: not gonna hate his son or be mad at his
Speaker 5: son his career takes him. He's very proud of his son.
Speaker 5: His son does decide to not take that kind of
Speaker 5: new position and stay in a good job in the
Speaker 5: San Francisco Bay area, and the father's clearly quite happy
Speaker 5: about that.
Speaker 6: But it never.
Speaker 5: Feels again like the son has to learn to not
Speaker 5: be terrible or the father has to learn that not terrible.
Speaker 5: It's just two people in a tough situation and they
Speaker 5: figure it out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. They have to learn to understand each other,
Speaker 3: to figure out what they want, and then just to
Speaker 3: make their own decisions, you know, like they both had
Speaker 3: agency in those decisions, right, And I thought that's that's
Speaker 3: kind of what was important there in terms of their relationship,
Speaker 3: was that you know that Calvert was like, no, I'm
Speaker 3: I'm not going to move to Singapore, you know, like
Speaker 3: I already moved across the country. I'm not going to
Speaker 3: move across the world. Personally, I might be like, yeah,
Speaker 3: that sounds fun. Check out singing. But also he just
Speaker 3: made a new friend, you know, and and he you know,
Speaker 3: he seemed to be getting along well.
Speaker 6: So you know.
Speaker 3: The fact that his son decided to stay is nice
Speaker 3: and I think makes the story feel a little warmer.
Speaker 3: But if he decided to move like that wouldn't necessarily
Speaker 3: been bad or horrible thing. It's like, you know, his
Speaker 3: dad's well taken care of. He can still visit, like
Speaker 3: you know, just because you're both in San Francisco doesn't
Speaker 3: mean you see each other.
Speaker 6: All the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, that's but you know, they can they
Speaker 3: can go to some Giants games, maybe when the O's
Speaker 3: are in town, try and figure out which orange and
Speaker 3: black uniforms are which the All Halloween baseball game.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And it feels like that's done.
Speaker 5: And I feel like that's done not only for the characters,
Speaker 5: but also for the very idea of the retirement community.
Speaker 5: And I've talked about this a little bit in regard
Speaker 5: to mental health, and I feel like the same thing here,
Speaker 5: which is that in both cases, there is a long
Speaker 5: history of both mental health facilities and elder care facilities
Speaker 5: being places of extreme neglect, and they're being a real
Speaker 5: sense of kind of warehousing the people in society who
Speaker 5: we don't like and don't want to see and we
Speaker 5: don't want to be burdened by. And that's horrific and
Speaker 5: a history that should be dealt with. And it is
Speaker 5: true still in you know, both elder care and mental
Speaker 5: health care facilities all across the country still to this day.
Speaker 5: But it's not the majority, and I don't know if
Speaker 5: it ever was. It is certainly not the majority anymore,
Speaker 5: and it's getting better and better. And I know for
Speaker 5: myself when my mother was, you know, starting to really
Speaker 5: age and have problems, like she made it very clear
Speaker 5: she did not want that in any way, shape or form.
Speaker 6: And I think that.
Speaker 5: And granted that was fifteen years ten years ago, and
Speaker 5: things have gotten even better since then. But like this portrays,
Speaker 5: a retirement community is not like the perfect heaven on Earth,
Speaker 5: but also not as hell on Earth. It's just a
Speaker 5: nice place where you get to be with people and
Speaker 5: you don't have to cook your own meals anymore. And
Speaker 5: my mom would have hated that part probably, but also
Speaker 5: would have liked that you.
Speaker 6: Didn't have to do her own laundry.
Speaker 5: But I do think that my mother, like a lot
Speaker 5: of people of her generation, had gotten this idea that
Speaker 5: these places were horrible and also that it was a
Speaker 5: sign that your children were abandoning you or abandoning your
Speaker 5: responsibility to you if for them to do that, And
Speaker 5: I think that's really harmful.
Speaker 6: And I don't blame my mother.
Speaker 5: As people her generation, I think because she never saw
Speaker 5: TV shows like this, Like right, it was not how
Speaker 5: horrible it.
Speaker 6: Was, and like you know, our family structures are very different.
Speaker 5: My father grew up in a home with his grandparents
Speaker 5: and his great grandparents and a lot of his cousins,
Speaker 5: and like the whole family who was living together. And
Speaker 5: when it's eight adults and four kids, having one more
Speaker 5: adults who's kind of really needed me medical help, that
Speaker 5: makes a lot of sense. When it's a nuclear family
Speaker 5: that very often has very little connections with other people,
Speaker 5: having you know, an older person in the house who
Speaker 5: needs a lot of medical care and attention is a
Speaker 5: lot harder.
Speaker 6: Doesn't mean it's not important, doesn't, but it does.
Speaker 5: It doesn't mean that you're not a loving child or
Speaker 5: a loving grandchild or whatever, or sister or brother if
Speaker 5: you don't want to be that person or you can't
Speaker 5: be that person. So I just really appreciated that they
Speaker 5: kind of moved beyond the idea of that that somehow
Speaker 5: children are doing something wrong by putting parents in places
Speaker 5: like this. I mean that just that phrasing of I'm
Speaker 5: putting my parents there. What's very clear is that in
Speaker 5: some cases the conversation was not as good as it
Speaker 5: should be, but that it's the parent and the child
Speaker 5: or and the caregiver whoever it is mutually coming to
Speaker 5: the decision that this is what they should do, and
Speaker 5: that for the most part, the people in the in
Speaker 5: the retirements community are pretty happy about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I mean, I know, I don't have a
Speaker 3: lot of experience with retirement communities. I recently met someone
Speaker 3: who lives in a something sort of like this, I
Speaker 3: guess it's a little different, who really doesn't like it,
Speaker 3: but because you know, they don't get along with the
Speaker 3: building manager basically, you know, and like obviously anything like that,
Speaker 3: whoever's running the place, like getting along with them and
Speaker 3: having a good relationship with them seems pretty essential as
Speaker 3: well as you know, whatever staff there is. I know,
Speaker 3: my mom for two years lived in a place that
Speaker 3: wasn't it was like it was like one of those
Speaker 3: like fifty five and up communities or something like that
Speaker 3: where it's it wasn't a home. It was it was
Speaker 3: an apartment complex, you know, but it was an apartment
Speaker 3: complex that was you know, people all around her, you know,
Speaker 3: age range, and and she she liked it, you know,
Speaker 3: she she made friends there. They had you know, this
Speaker 3: this food thing that was like you know where you
Speaker 3: could like they you would get food there and whatever.
Speaker 3: Not like a cafeteria. It's like a food bank thing
Speaker 3: that they did like once a week and whatever. You know,
Speaker 3: local places would like donate to it. And but you
Speaker 3: know that's definitely not the same. I I do have
Speaker 3: a couple of people that one in the family and
Speaker 3: one a family friend who went somewhere like that and
Speaker 3: then died very shortly thereafter of COVID. And I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, we know that that hit very hard in
Speaker 3: those places during right early on especially, and so you know,
Speaker 3: my only view is really as an outsider and like
Speaker 3: you know, being aware of my own ignorance. And then
Speaker 3: from like watching The Golden Girls, where you know, Sophia
Speaker 3: is like the home say it Dorothy the home like
Speaker 3: you know, shady Pie, you know, and Dorothy's like shady Pine,
Speaker 3: like it's a threat, you know, just ender there. But
Speaker 3: then you know, then they have another episode where somebody
Speaker 3: goes to a worse place, but then they try and
Speaker 3: find a better place for her, you know, with acknowledging
Speaker 3: that like there's different there's different kinds, you know. But
Speaker 3: like also like in Fraser where like his dad, you know,
Speaker 3: the pilot is like you know, his dad's I don't
Speaker 3: I don't think he's even that old. Maybe he's in
Speaker 3: his sixties or something, but he's you know, his brother
Speaker 3: Niles is like, oh, there's this wonderful brochure here, you know,
Speaker 3: whatever it's called. You know, we care, so you don't
Speaker 3: have to like it doesn't say that it's like it
Speaker 3: might as well, but you know, the point being that, like,
Speaker 3: you know what you're talking about, Like, obviously that is
Speaker 3: the perception I think among among many anyway, and it's
Speaker 3: good to hear that that's not the reality everywhere. Of course,
Speaker 3: any sort of facility or group or whatever, there's going
Speaker 3: to be variation, right of course, and people are gonna
Speaker 3: have different experiences even in the same place. But you know,
Speaker 3: I mean, because we can see that there's a couple
Speaker 3: people who really don't have positive experiences in this place. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, but that's not necessarily the fault of the place.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's the fault of the person, or maybe it's
Speaker 3: just a bad fit sometimes, you know, or maybe it's
Speaker 3: that they never get a visitor, and like if they
Speaker 3: were there but then they got a visitor once a
Speaker 3: week or something, maybe they'd feel differently because then it
Speaker 3: feels less about like, oh, we're just stowing you away
Speaker 3: here more like, well, this is where you live, you know,
Speaker 3: and there's emergency services to take care of you. There's food,
Speaker 3: so you know, if you don't have to cook your food.
Speaker 3: Some places also you can cook, right, But then there's
Speaker 3: also a dining there. But like if it's just a
Speaker 3: place you live, and then it has these additional services
Speaker 3: and these facilities, like I think that feels very different
Speaker 3: than almost feeling like it's an institution, like a like
Speaker 3: a prison basically, you know.
Speaker 6: I also two things there. One is that I should
Speaker 6: have brought this up before.
Speaker 5: I think it is very important to mention that like
Speaker 5: Charles clearly has a good deal of money, and there's
Speaker 5: a lot of like that this is an expensive place. Yes, yes,
Speaker 5: And I think that probably again with both mental health
Speaker 5: and elderly care, the amount of money you're able to
Speaker 5: pay is not gonna get Like I am sure there
Speaker 5: are some medicare only facilities that are quite good, and
Speaker 5: I'm sure there are some very expensive ones that are
Speaker 5: quite bad. But for the most part, the more you spend,
Speaker 5: the more you're gonna get. And is like probably you know,
Speaker 5: the at the bottom rungs, I'm sure that for both
Speaker 5: mental care and elderly care is nowhere near enough, and
Speaker 5: that is a real, real problem in this country. But no,
Speaker 5: I do think that that it shows, yeah, that these
Speaker 5: facilities can be good, and the people who work there
Speaker 5: are from incredibly caring. Is a really nice There is
Speaker 5: a person who dies at one point during the show,
Speaker 5: and you really see it the effect that it has
Speaker 5: not only on her whole community, but on the staff.
Speaker 5: And just this last weekend. It feels weird to say
Speaker 5: this because most of my life I didn't have a grandfather.
Speaker 5: Then I married Mary, and I all of a sudden
Speaker 5: had grandfathers. And one of them passed away and we
Speaker 5: did the memorial this weekend and a couple of people.
Speaker 5: He was in aging in place facilities what they call it,
Speaker 5: and he had started out being fairly independent and he
Speaker 5: had his own kitchen and things like that, and then
Speaker 5: kind of eventually over time got moved to more of
Speaker 5: a a real like medical room where he's getting you know,
Speaker 5: much more around the clock care until they eventually passed away.
Speaker 5: And I think we had like four residents and three
Speaker 5: members of the staff all came to his memorial service,
Speaker 5: and two of them were in tears. You know, you
Speaker 5: can clearly tell, you know how how much they he
Speaker 5: was loved in that community. The other thing I wanted
Speaker 5: to say, because I think it is it's it's an
Speaker 5: ongoing issue throughout the show that I think they framed
Speaker 5: really well that you kind of brought up, especially with
Speaker 5: COVID and stuff, is the idea of loneliness. And one
Speaker 5: of the things that is kind of the starting idea
Speaker 5: of the show is that Charles is quite lonely. And
Speaker 5: yes he has his daughter, he has his grandkids, but
Speaker 5: he's not really connecting with them. You know, his wife
Speaker 5: was probably his wife and his work were the two
Speaker 5: things that really like brought him alive, and he doesn't
Speaker 5: have those anymore. And you talked about how COVID is
Speaker 5: really devastating in communities like this, and because our grandfather
Speaker 5: was in one like he got moved in about a
Speaker 5: year beforehand, so we were very concerned about him. And
Speaker 5: from what I understand, I haven't seen too much of
Speaker 5: the data.
Speaker 6: I was just a little of the data that this
Speaker 6: is true.
Speaker 5: COVID like itself, did an awful lot of damage and
Speaker 5: had a high mortality rate in nursing homes like that.
Speaker 5: And in aging care facilities, but also the simple fact
Speaker 5: that because of because of the need to lock down,
Speaker 5: you couldn't have visitors that a lot of people just
Speaker 5: kind of faded and either came out with like brain
Speaker 5: function that was nowhere near as good, or you know,
Speaker 5: passed away at some point from something else. But in
Speaker 5: part because like they weren't fighting it, you know, theyn't
Speaker 5: as much to live for because they did not have
Speaker 5: people getting come to visit.
Speaker 6: And the place that Grandpa.
Speaker 5: Chuck was in was really good because like we were
Speaker 5: able to like drop off a computer and they like
Speaker 5: fully you know, sanitized it, but then taught him how
Speaker 5: to use it.
Speaker 6: So we can video chat with him.
Speaker 3: That's great.
Speaker 5: I think a lot of places did something like that,
Speaker 5: but I'm sure other places didn't, you know. And we
Speaker 5: talk a lot about male loneliness, especially now in regard
Speaker 5: to like the election and younger people and stuff like that,
Speaker 5: and I don't think it gets talked about a lot
Speaker 5: in terms of older folks.
Speaker 6: And I think I was really touched by that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, I mean spoilers for the end, not what happens,
Speaker 3: but I mean, I guess this eliminates one of the suspects.
Speaker 6: But when.
Speaker 3: When Dedi, the head of the facility, finds out that
Speaker 3: Charles is a spy and that he was there under
Speaker 3: false pretenses for you know, thirty days, and she she resigns,
Speaker 3: and and then he tries to convince her to stay,
Speaker 3: partially by saying, hey, look, you know I was there
Speaker 3: under false presenses, but like I really was lonely, you know,
Speaker 3: and you saw that, you know, like you you see
Speaker 3: everything that's going on, and you you know, you know,
Speaker 3: even if you didn't know why I was there, like
Speaker 3: you knew what I needed, even when I didn't know
Speaker 3: what I needed, you know, and that that loneliness really
Speaker 3: was a very bad thing for him. And you know,
Speaker 3: he quite possibly would even without any real health issues,
Speaker 3: like might die earlier if you know, without a connection
Speaker 3: to anyone, you know, without really connecting with his daughter
Speaker 3: besides clipping newspaper articles. And even if not, even if
Speaker 3: he lived longer without interacting with other people, you know,
Speaker 3: it would likely be a less fulfilling existence. You know,
Speaker 3: It's not just about how long you live, you know,
Speaker 3: it's like what you know, what do you get out
Speaker 3: of what do you experience? What's what's your life? Like,
Speaker 3: you know, and there's I don't think there's any reason
Speaker 3: that someone's later years or last years like need to
Speaker 3: be in solitude, you know, and don't need to be
Speaker 3: with only people of their own age. I mean, I
Speaker 3: certainly understand it can be harder to connect with people
Speaker 3: of different ages, you know, on all sides, on all sides,
Speaker 3: but I've I've always felt it was worth the effort,
Speaker 3: and you know, and having some people closer to your
Speaker 3: own age to be around to connect with, I think
Speaker 3: always does have some value. Like it's not like those
Speaker 3: are the only people you can connect with, but you know,
Speaker 3: those might be the only people who really understand some
Speaker 3: things about what you're going through, right or who are
Speaker 3: more likely to be able to relate to certain experiences.
Speaker 3: There's this great conversation about nouns and that, you know,
Speaker 3: Calvert initiates, and then and then Charles continues, and you
Speaker 3: know about just like starting to just lose nouns and
Speaker 3: be like, you know that that thing, uh, you know,
Speaker 3: that that movie with what's his name and and what's
Speaker 3: her name? And then they were both in that other
Speaker 3: film what's it called like? And you know that's a
Speaker 3: that's an experience that you get a taste of, maybe
Speaker 3: at a at a younger age. You know, I certainly
Speaker 3: have more of a sense for it now in my
Speaker 3: forties than I did in my thirties and than I
Speaker 3: did in my twenties. But I also know, like I
Speaker 3: don't experience it the same way my mom does in
Speaker 3: her eighties, you know, And that, you know, being being
Speaker 3: able to talk to someone, having having some connection to
Speaker 3: somebody with certain similar experiences or just like a certain
Speaker 3: mass of experience. I think.
Speaker 6: There's a couple of things there.
Speaker 5: I wanted to go back to what you said about
Speaker 5: the clipping out of news stories because that I was
Speaker 5: kind of tearing up earlier. I think I'm okay now,
Speaker 5: but like that hit me really hard because that was
Speaker 5: something my mother did.
Speaker 6: She didn't.
Speaker 5: Literally do that, but she would, like, you know, she
Speaker 5: had a New York Times subscription, and she would copy
Speaker 5: and paste things. She didn't quite ever find the forward button,
Speaker 5: but she would literally just like take a screenshot and
Speaker 5: send that to me of an article that and I,
Speaker 5: you know, watching it, I was both like reminded of
Speaker 5: how much love there was in that and and had
Speaker 5: a kind of waves of guilt of like, did I
Speaker 5: respond to those enough?
Speaker 6: Did I not?
Speaker 5: And then kind of, you know, went through some of
Speaker 5: the emails and found that I did respond a lot
Speaker 5: and felt better about myself. But also, you know, there's
Speaker 5: always a sense of like you could have done more.
Speaker 5: I think that that comes with losing someone like that.
Speaker 5: But yeah, it's just that moment hits so hard because
Speaker 5: it felt so real. Because again it's so clear that
Speaker 5: the daughter is not like, oh god, mom, I want
Speaker 5: you to never bother me again. She loves her father.
Speaker 5: She clearly wants to connect with her father, but she
Speaker 5: doesn't care about he's an architect, he's an engineer, and
Speaker 5: he sends her things about like interesting architectural facts about
Speaker 5: you know, Belgian monasteries and.
Speaker 3: Nine hundred year old Belgian monasteries. She's like that sounds
Speaker 3: so boring.
Speaker 5: That There was one part where he says to Colbert,
Speaker 5: his friend, Hey, do you want me to tell you
Speaker 5: all about some interesting facts about the Gildinggate Bridge. He's
Speaker 5: like no, And Mary, my spouse was watching, was like
Speaker 5: I want to hear some facts, so I read them.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, somebody should write his book, although I'm sure
Speaker 3: there's already a book about like one hundred books about
Speaker 3: the Golden gate Bridge.
Speaker 6: For sure.
Speaker 5: For sure, I would say there's one little thing that
Speaker 5: bothered me, and it was it's become a trope in
Speaker 5: movies like this, that on TV shows like this that
Speaker 5: I don't love. But I do think it was handled
Speaker 5: a little more respectfully than it was before. But I
Speaker 5: wish we would just kind of get past this, which
Speaker 5: is the as medical science improves, and I know, like
Speaker 5: look in any chart about like STI use STI rates
Speaker 5: and a nursing home and you'll see, like you can
Speaker 5: find the exact moment when VIAGRAA hits the market because
Speaker 5: sexuality in these places have greatly increased. And overall that's good,
Speaker 5: you know, they'll say, for sex obviously needs to be taught,
Speaker 5: but we continue to find the sexuality of old people
Speaker 5: something to laugh at, particularly the sexuality of older women.
Speaker 5: And there's kind of a running gag of a couple
Speaker 5: of women in the in the community who are very
Speaker 5: horny and and one of them has a like it's
Speaker 5: coming on pretty strong to Charles, and he lets her
Speaker 5: down very gently with a like, you know, he never
Speaker 5: kind of shames her in any way. He kind of
Speaker 5: explains that you know, he hasn't over his his wife
Speaker 5: who's passed on, and it's a very nice scene. But
Speaker 5: the show that like, you know, every time he talks
Speaker 5: about like the sexuality the people around him, like the
Speaker 5: younger characters in his life, especially the private investigator, a
Speaker 5: kind of like, oh, don't tell me about that, and
Speaker 5: it just it just struck a little bit as a
Speaker 5: wrong note to me because it felt like, yeah, there's
Speaker 5: a time and place, and I truly get like boundaries,
Speaker 5: but the idea of particularly older women being like, oh,
Speaker 5: isn't it so funny that they're so sexual, or you know,
Speaker 5: things like this. You know, one makes a comment about
Speaker 5: Pedro Pascal and like how she's always having dirty thoughts
Speaker 5: about him, and both me and my spouse were like, yeah, same,
Speaker 5: I get it, but like, yeah, so that was kind
Speaker 5: of like my one sour note. But again, it's sort
Speaker 5: of like of all the bad things people do that
Speaker 5: are kind of like ageist and like making fun of
Speaker 5: the elderly, this is so many steps of steps better
Speaker 5: than anything else I've seen. I just would have wished
Speaker 5: that one was a little better.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I could have done without that as well.
Speaker 3: I do think that is part of the reality of
Speaker 3: people of different ages interacting and having conversations about things.
Speaker 3: You know, Yeah, like you could have the same what
Speaker 3: was uh.
Speaker 6: I feel like.
Speaker 3: I was watching something else and somebody was talking about,
Speaker 3: Oh no, it happened that. So I totally hear what
Speaker 3: you're saying, and I get it, and I respect it
Speaker 3: and I mostly agree. Yeah, but they they turned it
Speaker 3: around also though, where the daughter mentioned hooking up with
Speaker 3: like this kid a friend that.
Speaker 5: Right, he was showing a picture of like, oh yeah,
Speaker 5: remember that's like my friend's son when you're like eight, Like,
Speaker 5: oh yeah, I hooked up with hi when you were seventeen,
Speaker 5: when we were seventeen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and like he had a similar reaction of like
Speaker 3: I don't want to hear that, you know, yeah, And
Speaker 3: so I do feel like, you know, I mean, there's
Speaker 3: certain things that are common reactions that like you don't
Speaker 3: need to center right, you don't need to have them there,
Speaker 3: and and so I do agree like kind of playing
Speaker 3: it too much for laughs, I think is I don't
Speaker 3: think it's great. But at the same time, I also
Speaker 3: feel like it wasn't played that much for like, I
Speaker 3: feel like it was played for more than laughs, I
Speaker 3: guess is the way I would say, you know.
Speaker 5: I think it would be much better to do this
Speaker 5: than to not address the topic at all. And at
Speaker 5: one point they mentioned like an older woman who like
Speaker 5: needs more batteries for a vibrator, you know, like, yeah,
Speaker 5: that's great, it's the It was things like the kind
Speaker 5: of like over aggressiveness of the women who are hitting
Speaker 5: on him. Okay, And there's a scene where like they're
Speaker 5: having some machinery installed and the men who are doing
Speaker 5: so are and the two women are kind of like
Speaker 5: scoping them out, and it felt like the show was
Speaker 5: laughing at them instead of celebrating in a humorous way
Speaker 5: that they're still sexual and still you know, joy the
Speaker 5: side of people are attracted to.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I would say in that scene, I didn't
Speaker 3: feel that like that's fair, you know, But the other
Speaker 3: ones where there were reactions from a third party, yeah,
Speaker 3: I feel that, Yeah.
Speaker 5: You fair, that's fair. So let's talk about the mystery
Speaker 5: of it all. And I know you're someone who, like
Speaker 5: I really love mysteries. We haven't talked about them too much.
Speaker 5: What do you love about mysteries and how do you
Speaker 5: feel about the way that this handled the mystery.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I love puzzles in the first place, anything
Speaker 3: where there's like an answer and you need to think
Speaker 3: to figure it out. Like I just I actually just
Speaker 3: made a book called one thousand and one Easy Sudoku
Speaker 3: Puzzles for my Mom, where I literally assembled a thousand
Speaker 3: and one Sudoku puzzles for my mom and then I
Speaker 3: put them into a book because I was like, well,
Speaker 3: if I'm going to put these on a sheet for
Speaker 3: her anyway, I might as well. But so like I'm
Speaker 3: just I'm just always really been into puzzles. I love
Speaker 3: chest puzzles, and mysteries are this like they're like people puzzles,
Speaker 3: you know, it's like not just about figuring, Like there's
Speaker 3: and you know, there's some artifice involved in composing a
Speaker 3: mystery and displaying it and throwing some red herrings in there.
Speaker 3: And so sometimes I can solve a mystery by just
Speaker 3: thinking like, well, they wouldn't have had it be this
Speaker 3: if they were this person, they wouldn't have had this scene,
Speaker 3: you know, or they're putting this in here for this reason.
Speaker 3: And I prefer not to do that too much because
Speaker 3: I think that kind of takes away from it a
Speaker 3: little bit. But it's really hard not to, you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: Like it's hard not to think about the writing usually
Speaker 3: while watching something. I think with this, I didn't that
Speaker 3: much though, which is really a testament to great writing,
Speaker 3: I think, is when you know it's it's like an
Speaker 3: umpire or a referee in in baseball or in a sports game.
Speaker 3: It's like, if you don't notice they're there, they're doing
Speaker 3: a good job. Yeah, but also yeah, so so it
Speaker 3: just in general, in terms of mysteries, I love the
Speaker 3: kind of people puzzle. I love cozy mysteries, especially more
Speaker 3: than kind of the you know, more hard boiled or whatever,
Speaker 3: but all sorts of mysteries. This one, I I loved
Speaker 3: the mystery. I suspected correctly and maybe the second episode
Speaker 3: I think, and then it took a couple more episodes
Speaker 3: to really figure out exactly what was going on, not
Speaker 3: just like kind of who it was, but I thought
Speaker 3: it was, Uh, are we going to say what happened?
Speaker 6: Now?
Speaker 5: I think I think we can. I think we're gonna
Speaker 5: have a bit of a spoiler section here. I'm not
Speaker 5: gonna say who the person is, but I will kind
Speaker 5: of say it a little bit broadly spoiler in kind
Speaker 5: of three to two one. And I'll say I predicted
Speaker 5: this from the first episode because my first wife worked
Speaker 5: in nursing homes for a long time.
Speaker 6: Yeah, as a little nurse.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And one thing she told me is that at
Speaker 5: least every week someone reports something stolen. Yeah, and well, yes, well,
Speaker 5: like in the three years she worked at a place
Speaker 5: like that, once there was an actual stolen item.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Most of the time.
Speaker 5: It's that you have a lot of people with a
Speaker 5: lot of memory issues, yeah, who either can lose things
Speaker 5: or who can take something from someone else because they
Speaker 5: think it's theirs. And yeah, in the end, it turns
Speaker 5: out that it was someone who would like they talk
Speaker 5: in the show about how once you start to have
Speaker 5: real memory loss issues, you go to a different part
Speaker 5: of the facility and that that's kind of like people
Speaker 5: are a little like scared or nervous of that, and
Speaker 5: it winds up being like and again, this is very much.
Speaker 6: The cozy part of it.
Speaker 5: Someone who's not maliciously stealing, but it's just getting confused
Speaker 5: about she sees things that remind her of things she
Speaker 5: owned many years ago, thinks they're hers, and takes them. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and yeah, I saw that coming. But then I did
Speaker 5: think they did some good. For a while, I thought
Speaker 5: it was going to be the staff, and then they
Speaker 5: like they thought it was gonna be the staff in
Speaker 5: an early episodes like okay, her right.
Speaker 3: So then it won't be the staff exactly.
Speaker 5: And then I kind of get so caught up in
Speaker 5: the in the stories and the people that I kind
Speaker 5: of forgot like, oh, right, there's a mystery.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well it's like he forgot to write,
Speaker 3: like he was there doing you know, his friend died,
Speaker 3: like and then he's like, well, I've got to I've
Speaker 3: got to go to Sacramento and just do anything but
Speaker 3: be here with this grief. And and so he basically
Speaker 3: bailed on the case at some point, not not on purpose,
Speaker 3: but like out of sort of like self defense, self preservation,
Speaker 3: like yeah, you know, and yeah, so I thought it
Speaker 3: was it made it so I mentioned before there's actually
Speaker 3: there's a Chilean documentary. I forget the name. I'm sure
Speaker 3: they reference it here, but where this guy, yeah, the
Speaker 3: mole Agent. That's not the origin name. It's in Spanish,
Speaker 3: but it like basically this this guy did this. He
Speaker 3: went into a retirement community and and like tried to
Speaker 3: investigate something undercover and found out, you know, that one
Speaker 3: of the things that was going on was something like this.
Speaker 3: And obviously this is this is a fiction series. It's
Speaker 3: not a you know, a direct adaptation or anything, but
Speaker 3: that's that's the inspiration for it, that like something like
Speaker 3: this happened, and you know, as you're saying, like, it's
Speaker 3: not an uncommon thing to happen that you know, somebody
Speaker 3: takes things that you know aren't theirs, but they don't
Speaker 3: know that, you know, they don't you know, maybe don't
Speaker 3: know where they are, like and so it to me
Speaker 3: it was a it also made sense that like he
Speaker 3: solved it because he had experience with that, you know,
Speaker 3: if you think about it too hard, like maybe it's like, hmm,
Speaker 3: shouldn't they shouldn't the people working there, Like maybe DD
Speaker 3: could have solved it, you know, but it's like, okay,
Speaker 3: you know, it's like, but it just it. I thought
Speaker 3: it was just a really nice mystery because it's like
Speaker 3: most of the mysteries I watch or read are murder mysteries,
Speaker 3: you know, like and a bunch of people get killed there,
Speaker 3: and like people are dying here already, Like we don't,
Speaker 3: we don't need a murder, you know, And not every
Speaker 3: mystery has to be a murderer, not every mystery has
Speaker 3: to be malice. Like, sometimes it's just something happened and
Speaker 3: we don't know what happened, and we want to try
Speaker 3: and figure it out, and you know, and that that
Speaker 3: pervades life and and all sorts of things, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's what science is basically, is trying to
Speaker 3: figure out what's going on, right, yeah, and so yeah,
Speaker 3: So I just thought it was a nice.
Speaker 5: And I think I think we live in a world
Speaker 5: today where we are very quick and I hold myself
Speaker 5: to this as well, to associate malice to any decision
Speaker 5: of someone else that we don't like, or any action
Speaker 5: of what you don't like.
Speaker 6: And I think there is a lot of malice in
Speaker 6: the world today.
Speaker 5: But I also think a lot of the times it's
Speaker 5: you know, I am, I am working with this set
Speaker 5: of facts, and so I judge your action with that.
Speaker 5: But if I remember that you are working from a
Speaker 5: completely different understanding of the facts of the situation, your
Speaker 5: action takes on a very different tenor you know, and
Speaker 5: we can talk about like why do you have a
Speaker 5: different set of facts or whatever I have different set
Speaker 5: of facts or whatever, but like still it's it's you know,
Speaker 5: I think that this is a great example of that.
Speaker 5: We're like, yeah, there's no malice whatsoever, but of course
Speaker 5: everyone jumps to that, and I'm kind.
Speaker 6: Of glad that they didn't show this.
Speaker 5: But I will say that one thing that I think
Speaker 5: is frequently a reality of these situations. Certainly, we're in
Speaker 5: the places that my ex wife worked at, and a
Speaker 5: lot of the others are friends of my worked at
Speaker 5: in unfortunate reality and not this true of all, but
Speaker 5: like that, often older white folks will wind up blaming
Speaker 5: the staff, who often people of color, for things disappearing
Speaker 5: and stuff like that, and.
Speaker 6: Like, again, we didn't need that in this you know, right,
Speaker 6: it is a reality.
Speaker 5: It's worth mentioning, but because also it's not the case
Speaker 5: a lot of and a lot of times it is
Speaker 5: like Grandma forgets that she sold something or gave it
Speaker 5: to someone else and then assumes that like, you know,
Speaker 5: the Hispanic maid sold it or whatever sold it, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And I mean that dynamic was present, right,
Speaker 3: like Didi's latina, and you know a lot of this,
Speaker 3: I mean, the staff is representative of the region. I'd say,
Speaker 3: you know, it's I mean, it's a diverse staff, but
Speaker 3: like the main suspects we were not white folks, you know,
Speaker 3: and that wasn't brought up, but I did feel that,
Speaker 3: you know, and I kind of felt like because of
Speaker 3: the show and the feel of the show, I was like, therefore,
Speaker 3: they probably didn't do it, you know, like like his
Speaker 3: friend Calbert is black, and I'm like, and his son's black,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, they probably didn't do it, yeah, because
Speaker 3: you know, like it would feel like it would feel
Speaker 3: worse and like ultimately like you should be able to
Speaker 3: have anyone be guilty or be the cause of whatever,
Speaker 3: you know, like in a better world. But you know,
Speaker 3: stories are viewed within the world in which they're made,
Speaker 3: and our world has a lot of you know, racism
Speaker 3: and and other various bigotries, and so having a story
Speaker 3: where that wasn't you know, where I feel like the
Speaker 3: viewer could bring their own prejudice prejudices, you know, right,
Speaker 3: And I'm sure many do. And there's at least one
Speaker 3: other show where I remember watching and someone being like, oh,
Speaker 3: they're going to have the black guy be like the
Speaker 3: you know, the bad guy here or whatever. I was like,
Speaker 3: just keep watching this show, like you know, but they
Speaker 3: obviously played on on that stereotype or that that that
Speaker 3: bias of people to sort of misdirect and and here
Speaker 3: I don't think they were doing that like super deliberately
Speaker 3: or anything, you know, but that that was there, and
Speaker 3: and it you know, it made the actual resolution more
Speaker 3: of almost like a relief, you know, that was like, ah, Okay,
Speaker 3: there's not any because I feel like if it had
Speaker 3: really been a real theft, like a deliberate theft, it
Speaker 3: would have undermined the I'm not saying this is like
Speaker 3: the message of the show, but it's a message that
Speaker 3: does come from the show. Is like these places can
Speaker 3: be nice and good, you know, and good for most
Speaker 3: of their residents, not everybody. It's not going to be
Speaker 3: a perfect fit for everybody, but like the goal is
Speaker 3: to help people and buy and large they're doing a
Speaker 3: good job of that.
Speaker 5: No, I think that's true, and I actually that you're
Speaker 5: going to go a little bit of different direction, but
Speaker 5: I think it's very similar.
Speaker 6: But to me, I think that's the message.
Speaker 5: But also a real big part of the message is, yes,
Speaker 5: there's shitty people out there, most people are fundamentally good
Speaker 5: to some extent or another, and a lot of their conflicts,
Speaker 5: even where they're kind of being not great people, yeah,
Speaker 5: there's probably some misunderstanding or some reason behind it, you know.
Speaker 5: And like the guy who's kind of like the the
Speaker 5: you know, erotic rival of our character.
Speaker 3: Like sexual rival, and he got it.
Speaker 5: Like he's very toxic, masculine, and he's very kind of
Speaker 5: like possessive. He's also dying of cancer, and like that's
Speaker 5: never presented as an excuse, but it's also like this
Speaker 5: guy's kind of like, yeah, I'm just gonna do what
Speaker 5: I when I know, I'm not gonna try and change.
Speaker 5: I've got six months left. And in one of my
Speaker 5: favorite moments, because I remember something my mom fought about
Speaker 5: a lot, you know, like my mom, My mom could
Speaker 5: have probably lived fifteen years longer than she did, she'd
Speaker 5: show and part of it is because she was an addict,
Speaker 5: but also like she could have eaten healthier, but she
Speaker 5: kind of made a conscious decision of like in her words,
Speaker 5: like she could live twenty years eating rabbit food, or
Speaker 5: she could live ten years more eating the food she
Speaker 5: really loved.
Speaker 6: And there's a scene.
Speaker 5: Where, again this guy is dying of cancer, and he
Speaker 5: to go smoke a cigar, go buy cigars. And one
Speaker 5: of the people at the at the home, one of
Speaker 5: the staff isn't comfortable doing that because he knows it
Speaker 5: doing that, like every cigar he smokes is gonna like
Speaker 5: speed up the clock on whatever time he has left,
Speaker 5: And and Deeede both doesn't like tell the staff member like, no,
Speaker 5: you have to go, like she validates the staff members feelings,
Speaker 5: but make sure that the staff member stands like that
Speaker 5: is their concern. It's okay to not want to participate,
Speaker 5: but that she's also she's gonna take him shopping for
Speaker 5: the cigars herself, because she fully honors the choice that
Speaker 5: this guy's making of saying like, yeah, if I can
Speaker 5: have four months with cigars or five months without, I'm
Speaker 5: gonna I'm gonna keep smoking cigars, and and other people
Speaker 5: don't want.
Speaker 6: My father is the exact opposite.
Speaker 5: He has cut out more and more things out of
Speaker 5: his diet, and he's in great shape and will probably
Speaker 5: live well into his nineties if not hit one hundred.
Speaker 6: And I think his choice is just as valid as
Speaker 6: my mother's.
Speaker 5: But yeah, so just that one little moment really like
Speaker 5: touched me, and I was like, like, I'm so glad
Speaker 5: that that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, I mean, and then she kind of
Speaker 3: talks him out of getting the cigar. Yeah, but not
Speaker 3: in a like in a deeply manipulative way, but not
Speaker 3: in a in a like empathetically manipulative way though. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so it was.
Speaker 6: I didn't love that part. I forgot about that.
Speaker 3: But yeah, but like she drives him there, and it's
Speaker 3: his choice. You know. She doesn't say you shouldn't do this.
Speaker 6: Or I won't let you or something like that, right, right, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like this is your choice. But you know,
Speaker 3: they talk about some stuff and he's like, yeah, maybe
Speaker 3: I won't do this, like maybe I would rather spend time,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe I would rather have more time like
Speaker 3: and that, to me, the part that matters is that that's
Speaker 3: his choice.
Speaker 5: Right because like, yeah, if either staff members have been
Speaker 5: like no, I'm not going to do that, then it's
Speaker 5: not his choice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And like, I don't think all manipulation is necessarily bad, Like,
Speaker 3: you know, I mean, people can make a number of
Speaker 3: different choices, and there are ways I think of leading
Speaker 3: people to make better choices without leveraging something or guilting
Speaker 3: them or.
Speaker 6: You know, like.
Speaker 3: Her point wasn't really so much like you owe this
Speaker 3: to you know, Virginia, you know who you're marrying. It's
Speaker 3: not that you owe this to anybody, but it's that
Speaker 3: you could do this and this, this could be like
Speaker 3: your gift to her kind of right, you know, because
Speaker 3: he's kind of trying to figure out, like what can
Speaker 3: I even do to console her? You know, her best
Speaker 3: friend just died, and it's like, well, not dying might
Speaker 3: be helpful, you know, and like I don't know so
Speaker 3: and you know, I mean, it's encouraging people to make
Speaker 3: healthier decisions, I think is something that I appreciate and support.
Speaker 3: But the difference between encouraging someone to make healthier decisions
Speaker 3: and basically telling them if you make any other decision
Speaker 3: that's not a valid choice, I think those are two
Speaker 3: very different things.
Speaker 5: I want to push back a little bit on your
Speaker 5: use of the word healthier there, because I think that.
Speaker 3: I mean literally, yeah, I mean in.
Speaker 5: Terms of physical health, yes, I think that there are
Speaker 5: times in which emotional health and other kinds of health
Speaker 5: matter a lot more. And I just think there's a
Speaker 5: lot of really problematic language around like what is or
Speaker 5: is not physically healthier? Then I know that's not what
Speaker 5: you necessarily mean, but that I think is wrapped up
Speaker 5: in that. But I do agree with your general concept, Yeah,
Speaker 5: for sure, And I.
Speaker 6: Think that that's the.
Speaker 5: It's she offers him a different way to understand the
Speaker 5: choice he's making without trying to tell him what choice
Speaker 5: to make.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 6: Just on the subject of mysteries, though, I.
Speaker 5: Think I've talked about this on the show before, but
Speaker 5: not for probably a couple of years now. My favorite
Speaker 5: set of novels are about a character named Matthew Scudder
Speaker 5: by Lawrence Block, and they are much darker books. They're
Speaker 5: like very there's always a murder, there's always like you know,
Speaker 5: some danger, there's always high stakes.
Speaker 3: It's Hell's Kitchen, right, Yeah, they.
Speaker 5: Help well, I mean one of the biggest in the
Speaker 5: same way that Baltimore is a character in The Wire. Yeah,
Speaker 5: New York City and especially Hell's Kitchen as it becomes
Speaker 5: Clinton is very much a character in the book. And
Speaker 5: I feel like for people want to understand, like my
Speaker 5: my knowledge of New York. The books go from nineteen
Speaker 5: seventy five, which is like right before I was born,
Speaker 5: till the early two thousands, or about when I left
Speaker 5: the city. But like, the thing with the character is
Speaker 5: he's an alcoholic and he is in treatment, and as
Speaker 5: the books go on he's better and better, but especially
Speaker 5: early on, he really needs he's fighting tooth and nail
Speaker 5: to not take another drink, and he solves mysteries as
Speaker 5: a way to keep himself busy, and as part of
Speaker 5: that he goes on a lot of like psychological journeys,
Speaker 5: and every book is about some different step, not like
Speaker 5: that each book is the Twelve Steps, but like they're
Speaker 5: always about some different part of his recovery in some
Speaker 5: way that he's dealing with life, and the murder mystery
Speaker 5: is often like they're often quite good and well done,
Speaker 5: but they're never the most important part.
Speaker 6: Of the book.
Speaker 5: It's a character study where the mystery is kind of
Speaker 5: the plot device to kind of take us along. And
Speaker 5: this is very different in tone and feel, but it
Speaker 5: felt very much that same way, where like, yes, there's
Speaker 5: a mystery, and yes I love it, but I also
Speaker 5: feel like if if you've decided to keep listening now
Speaker 5: and you haven't seen it, I think that you will
Speaker 5: can go in knowing the mystery and still love this
Speaker 5: in a way that a lot of other mystery is
Speaker 5: like I've never seen the Sixth Sense because I know
Speaker 5: the spoiler.
Speaker 3: We were at the Mayfair and someone said, what happened?
Speaker 3: At least I was I think you might have been there? Yeah, right,
Speaker 3: And then I saw the movie like ten years later,
Speaker 3: and I was like, what was the point of watching
Speaker 3: this movie? Like I already know. I won't even say
Speaker 3: it here because I respect maybe somebody doesn't know and
Speaker 3: they can go see it and hopefully they haven't listened
Speaker 3: to the song Jiz in my Pants, but because it
Speaker 3: has a spoiler for it. But like, you know, I
Speaker 3: really appreciate that I got to see the usual Suspects
Speaker 3: without knowing what was going on that you know, knowing
Speaker 3: a mystery, like certain mysteries, I mean the sixth Sense
Speaker 3: is like, really, it's just such a certain types of
Speaker 3: mysteries when especially when it's such a twist thing or whatever,
Speaker 3: I think, really don't play that well without the mystery
Speaker 3: being a mystery. Whereas you know, I think you can
Speaker 3: see Empire strikes back and like already know whether or
Speaker 3: not Vader is Luke's father.
Speaker 6: And like you'll be okay, yeah exactly.
Speaker 3: I personally love generally prefer mysteries where the mystery is
Speaker 3: really central and the detective doesn't go through a bunch
Speaker 3: of personal crap and they're just like they're like a
Speaker 3: person who this is what they do. They solve mysteries.
Speaker 3: They're like the constant through line through a series of mysteries.
Speaker 3: But that's not what this show was. This show it
Speaker 3: wasn't about someone going through a bunch of personal crap.
Speaker 3: It was about life, you know, and then there was
Speaker 3: a mystery there that was like, you know, kind of
Speaker 3: the construct for that.
Speaker 5: And we're gonna talk more about mysteries and our bonus
Speaker 5: content for members, which, by the way, if you're not
Speaker 5: a member yet, for only five dollars a month, fifty
Speaker 5: five dollars a year, you get to become a member.
Speaker 5: With that, you get avery content, you get bonus content,
Speaker 5: you know a lot of other great stuff, and you
Speaker 5: get to help us keep the lights on. So if
Speaker 5: you haven't done that yet, please think about becoming a
Speaker 5: member for only five dollars a month. And we're about
Speaker 5: to wrap up. Paul, any of the kind of last
Speaker 5: things you want to say about the show.
Speaker 3: I just enjoyed it, you know, I don't have I
Speaker 3: don't know. I didn't. I didn't make a list of
Speaker 3: things I wanted to talk about. Basically, I started watching
Speaker 3: the show. Then I was like, Oh, I'm going to
Speaker 3: get my mom to watch this show. So I watched
Speaker 3: the show with my mom and then and I saw
Speaker 3: it because Lee was watching it, and then I was like, Oh,
Speaker 3: what's this? And actually I ended up watching it partially
Speaker 3: because Lori Tanchin is in it, who plays she's the
Speaker 3: President of the Council of the Resident Council, but she's
Speaker 3: in another show that I enjoy a lot that I
Speaker 3: don't think you made it through. I didn't think it
Speaker 3: was quite your brand of humor necessarily. Nora from Queen's
Speaker 3: she plays the grandmother in that show, and one of
Speaker 3: the things I love about that show is her in
Speaker 3: that show and how much of a character she gets
Speaker 3: to be as the grandmother. And it's they're just throughout
Speaker 3: history have not been enough characters who are like important
Speaker 3: to a story and really get to be full people
Speaker 3: over the age of sixty, you know, unless maybe they're
Speaker 3: old white men and they're like a politician characters or
Speaker 3: lawyer or something like that, you know, but.
Speaker 5: Or are there the mister Miyagi or the you know
Speaker 5: exactly the wise old person who's often a person of color,
Speaker 5: like the magic you know, et cetera.
Speaker 6: Uh trope.
Speaker 5: But you know, you're right, like who get to be
Speaker 5: fully actualized characters instead of talking plot devices?
Speaker 6: Yes, or character growth for our younger characters.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and like I love mister Miyagi, you know, I
Speaker 3: think it's the best character in the Karate Kid. But
Speaker 3: like you know, first of all, that's not a super
Speaker 3: common thing, and like you know, the older character as
Speaker 3: plot device is the main place you see them or
Speaker 3: have and I think it's been getting better over the years,
Speaker 3: you know. I mean we did the episode on the
Speaker 3: Golden Girls, which was like an outlier in its day,
Speaker 3: but I do think it's continued to I think Netflix
Speaker 3: has had a lot of shows with older characters, and
Speaker 3: I mean even something like The Book of Boba Fat,
Speaker 3: like it's an action show where you know they're in
Speaker 3: their fifties and maybe tomorrow more.
Speaker 6: I think sixty two and ming No Win with like
Speaker 6: fifty seven.
Speaker 3: Yeah, something like that. And you know, it's just nice
Speaker 3: to see because it's like everybody should get to play
Speaker 3: an important character, like no matter what age you are
Speaker 3: and and so it's just nice to see more of it.
Speaker 3: And I just really enjoyed the show. And you know,
Speaker 3: when you were like, can you do a podcast tonight,
Speaker 3: I was like, yeah, if you'll watch four hours of
Speaker 3: this show, and you got through it, so.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: We had a couple of other episodes plan. I really
Speaker 5: want to do something on Prey, which I don't know
Speaker 5: if you've seen.
Speaker 6: Fantastic.
Speaker 5: It's another retelling of the Predator story, but set in
Speaker 5: an American community, like just at the start of where
Speaker 5: white people are coming into it.
Speaker 6: And I had a lot of fun watching it. I
Speaker 6: have a lot of good thoughts on it.
Speaker 5: Mostly I was like, it is so cool that they
Speaker 5: did such a good version of the Predator movie in
Speaker 5: this community in a way that was really honoring and
Speaker 5: authentic to that community.
Speaker 6: I still don't like Predator movies.
Speaker 5: It was great so that we want to do something
Speaker 5: about Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood. We'll see where those go.
Speaker 5: But yeah, thank you Paul so much for stepping in
Speaker 5: last minute. Hope you folks enjoyed all of this. We'll
Speaker 5: have a lot more to say about mysteries and spy stuff,
Speaker 5: or not a lot, but a little in our bonus
Speaker 5: memo content for everyone else.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much. We have spoken