Send Help with Blair Braverman

This week, Caitlin, Jamie, and special guest Blair Braverman get stranded on a remote island and survive by discussing Send Help (2026)!

Check out Blair's new podcast, 'What to Carry, What to Burn,' and her website www.blairbraverman.com 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women
and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, zephynvest start
changing with the Bechdel Cast.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Hepple, hepple, send, hepple, Jamie, what I misspelled?

Speaker 3 (00:21):
Help?

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (00:22):
No?

Speaker 3 (00:22):
Wow? Men really do be misspelling four letter words, don't they. Yeah,
and that's sort of a taste of what this movie
is like. Yes, welcome to the Bexel Cast. My name's
Jamie Loftis.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
My name is Caitlin Derante. This is our show where
we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using the
Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point. And what
might that be? Jamie?

Speaker 3 (00:47):
Well, I can tell you. It is a media measure
created by friend of the show and namesake of the show,
Alison Bechdel, that was originally created in her comic strip
I Used to Watch Out for Beck in the eighties
as a one off joke, has since become more of
a mainstreamified media metric. The version we use requires the

(01:07):
two characters of a marginalized gender speak about something other
than a man. For more than two lines of relevant dialogue.
They should also have names, and you know does this?
This is tricky because I feel like this movie exists
in if I'm like breaking down all the asterisks to
the bechel test that we've had to use, difficult to

(01:28):
pass in a two hander that involves a man as
one of the two, exactly this and nonetheless, nevertheless this
movie persists. But also that's just our jumping off point.
I guess I've just told you it does pass the
Bechdel test, but not by a lot. There you go.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
You can turn off the showd let's lock in.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
Let's lock it in, do it and get our amazing
guests in the chat.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Absolutely. She is a writer, an adventurer, and host of
the podcast that's about survival stories, What to Carry, What
to Burn? It's Blair Braverman. Welcome.

Speaker 5 (02:08):
Hello, I'm so happy to be here.

Speaker 3 (02:10):
Welcome, We're like to have you.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
So we're talking about Send Help, which came out earlier
this year, right, yeah, twenty six. Sam Raimi directed.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
Feels Like Longer, and boy did this movie choose its
moments to remind you it's a Sam Raimie movie.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
It sure does.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
If any other person had directed it, those moments would
be so very confusing. But because it's him, You're like, well,
I guess contractually he has to do four or five
of these.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, they're fun moments.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
For I mean, I'm I'm pro, I'm pro the Raymie
scary Rami isms, jump scare thing. But yeah, it just
came out, So I guess it's hard to have a
storied history with this. But I know, Blair, you were
like truly the perfect guest for this movie. We were
talking about all the different survival based movies that's out there,

(03:01):
and this is the one that centers around a woman.

Speaker 4 (03:05):
So this is this is what we get. We get
this in Baby Island.

Speaker 3 (03:10):
Oh my god, Wait what is Baby?

Speaker 2 (03:12):
I don't know that one either.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
Oh.

Speaker 4 (03:13):
So, I'm obsessed with survival stories. But I'm also obsessed
with survival stories like how we tell the stories about survival,
like in kids books and in movies and in all
these different things. And I went through a couple of
years ago and I tried to find every story for
kids about survival in the wilderness, and it's pretty much
all about boys.

Speaker 5 (03:33):
Because I was a kid, I was a little girl.

Speaker 4 (03:35):
Who loved like hatchet and yes, survival books. I love Hatchet,
and it is very hard to find a book for
kids about a kid in the wilderness, my side of
the Mountain type story where the kid is a girl,
And you'll get these very weird genres when there's a
girl in filve So either she's like fleeing sexual assaults

(03:56):
or abuse, right like Julia the Wolves. Or you have
a book like Baby Island, which is an incredible work
of literature, and it is a survival story about two
little girls who are stranded on an island, a desert island,
and have to survive, except for they also get stranded
with four babies no.

Speaker 5 (04:16):
So at the time.

Speaker 4 (04:18):
Yeah, So as they're learning how to like eat bananas
for food and try to like send messages and bottles,
they're also learning how to deal with colic and like
what to do if a baby is slow to walk,
and how to get these four babies to keep the
Lord's day, oh my desert Island. And it's this amazing
sort of confluence of genres that I truly think is

(04:40):
like progressive in a way because the authors like little girls,
like desert islands, and they like babies, so I wanted
to give them both.

Speaker 3 (04:49):
Just seems like so much work for these kids. I
love that there's I'm looking at this the cover right now.
I feel like there is a very fun modern adaptation
of this story. And also like, because it came out
in nineteen thirty seven, they're like, Okay, we can't just
have girls on an island. They have to be doing

(05:10):
some sort of sort of parenting as well. That's why
I'd never heard of that before.

Speaker 4 (05:16):
Yeah, like motherhood is hard for these girls. It's even
harder because they're stranded on a desert island. But like,
I recognize the absurdity of the book, but I really
do think like I'm for it.

Speaker 5 (05:29):
Yeah, so it's very bizarre.

Speaker 4 (05:30):
And I also feel like survival stories about women tend
to like, Okay, this is my theory going into this
before I even saw the movie, is like, when someone
is stranded in the wilderness in some way and we're
telling a story about it, they either tame the wilderness
or they go feral. So they either turn the wilderness
into like a functioning society allah Robinson Caruso, or they

(05:53):
go feral and become wild themselves. And that's what happens
to women in these stories. Interesting okay, which I would
say that Send Help fits into that category if she
sort of becomes a wild beast herself, or like they
become like witchy or just sort of like I don't know.
It was interesting.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
I mean, farrell is a good word for it.

Speaker 3 (06:11):
I feel like, yeah, totally, that's so interesting because I
was thinking so much about this movie compared to have
you seen Triangle of Sadness?

Speaker 5 (06:21):
No, I haven't.

Speaker 3 (06:22):
I was thinking a lot about Triangle of Sadness, same movie.
It's a very similar movie. I think Triangle of Sadness
a little matter. But yeah, but I feel like it's
because well we can talk about it in the discussion.
I feel like this movie holds back in these like
weird ways that feel kind of gendered. And also, I
guess it's worth saying that Send Help is a movie

(06:45):
that centers around a woman that is written by two
men and directed by a man, which I do feel
like you can feel in certain moments and choices. But
that's so fascinating that like Blair, that makes so much,
that makes so much sense. It's almost like you've spent
a lot of time thinking about this. That's wild. Yeah,

(07:07):
because I mean, and then compared to I guess, what
are the directions when the survival story centers around a man.
How does that manifest differently with like the response to
the environment in these stories usually with men.

Speaker 4 (07:22):
You see the pattern of them quote unquote taming the wilderness,
you know, sort of creating a functional society, like having
it's very dominance over nature. So you know, the phrase
you'll hear on survival shows is like, I'm gonna make
nature my bitch is a phrase you'll hear a lot,
which is an absurd It is such an absurd concept

(07:42):
to begin with. Truly, Yeah, nature is definitely gonna.

Speaker 5 (07:45):
Make you her bitch. That's how these things.

Speaker 3 (07:47):
Work, kind of undefeated.

Speaker 4 (07:50):
I mean, it's nature is indifferent, like it's these things.
These concepts don't translate onto wilderness. We are trying to
take our human concepts and project them onto something that
is so utterly indifferent that it reduces them to absurdity.

Speaker 5 (08:05):
But yeah, normally you would see.

Speaker 4 (08:08):
I mean there's an interesting way in this movie that
she also is is a very competent survivor, yeah, and
is able to sort of create like a survival version
of an executive desk on a beach, on a Tropical Island,
so she's kind of doing both. I don't know, we'll
get into.

Speaker 3 (08:24):
It, right, but then at the end, I mean I
also on this viewing, I was like, I don't like
the end of this movie, but well, we'll get into it.
So did you see this movie when it came out
or is this your first time?

Speaker 5 (08:35):
I just saw it now.

Speaker 3 (08:36):
Ooh, I'm excited.

Speaker 5 (08:37):
I've been interested in it, but I hadn't.

Speaker 4 (08:39):
I hadn't. Dug in Caitlyn.

Speaker 3 (08:41):
I think we might have the same history with this
movie because we saw it together.

Speaker 2 (08:45):
We sure did. We saw it in theaters. I'm trying
to think who else was with us? Was it Bryan
Bryan Grant Grant Okay.

Speaker 3 (08:52):
Yes, three amazing key hymns at the AMC with us?
Really cool?

Speaker 2 (09:00):
Yeah, yeah, so yeah, we saw it in theaters. It
came out in late January, right, so, but I hadn't
seen it since then. But it came onto streaming. I
forget which platform, Disney Plus. Yeah, and it was like
one of the most streamed movies ever or.

Speaker 3 (09:21):
Something which actually does scan for me, and I still
didn't understand how like streaming they assisted translates to money
through subscriptions. But I'm like, no one's signing up for
a movie for Send Help. But I feel like Send
to Help being success successful and streaming makes sense to
me because it feels so very much like a movie

(09:42):
you would watch on a plane, even though it heavily
features a plane crash. And I feel like movies that
are successful on streaming are plane movies. We were talked
about that that's a theory I have.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
No I think you're onto something.

Speaker 3 (09:58):
Yeah, a good streaming movie. Unfortunately you should be able
to kind of fall asleep during it. And this is
a good movie, but this is a plain movie, I feel.

Speaker 2 (10:07):
I'm with you. Yeah, yeah it was. It was like
heavily streamed, so but also I'm like, is it one
of those things where like people actually watched it or
was it just the next thing that came on, whether
or not you were sitting in front of your TV
actively consuming it or not. Who knows?

Speaker 3 (10:25):
The algorithm moves in mysterious ways. I mean, this is
a really good movie and it was like successful, it
was successful financially. I'm glad it's successful, and streaming it's whatever.
I'm the bar is so low right now that it's
like original story that centers around a woman being successful,
no further questions, like, fine, we'll take it. But it's
also our job to look at it very carefully because

(10:46):
it is so like speaking to your point that it's
sent help in Baby Island, a book that is almost
ninety years old. It's like, this is this is rare
in a way that I don't think was really a
part of this movie's narrative as it came out, well.

Speaker 2 (11:04):
I was thinking about I was like, wasn't there a
Reese Witherspoon wilderness survival movie Wild, Although I'm not sure
how much of it is, Like I haven't seen it,
so I don't know how much of it is her
like trying to survive, but it's about a woman who
takes an eleven hundred mile solo hike through I'm guessing

(11:29):
the wild, hence the name of the movie, as a
way to recover from a recent personal tragedy according to
the log line of the movie. So I don't know
much about that. And if it really if it falls
into this camp of stories we're talking about.

Speaker 4 (11:47):
I would hear I'm going to be such a survival nerd, please,
I would categorize those differently because to me, there's a
difference between going into wilderness recreationally and being stuck there
for sure, And so for me it becomes to me
like it fits into the category of survival story if
someone can't get out, yeah, and so for her going

(12:07):
on a hike, it's like a wilderness story.

Speaker 5 (12:09):
But it's not.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
It's very intentional.

Speaker 5 (12:11):
It's not quite part of.

Speaker 4 (12:11):
The same genre. It's a different genre, fair sort of
a tracker and adventure story as opposed to survival.

Speaker 3 (12:18):
Got it, So Send Help, Baby Island.

Speaker 5 (12:21):
Those two are definitely the same genre.

Speaker 2 (12:24):
And then also, I mean you mentioned it already, Jamie,
but Triangle of Sadness, and I guess like skip ahead
about two minutes if you want to avoid spoilers for
Triangle of Sadness. But the whole time I was watching
Send Help the first time, I was like, I've already
seen this movie and this and it's Triangle of Sadness

(12:45):
in the sense that the main characters include a man
who has a set of qualities that a like western
capitalist society values and a woman whose qualities are not
nearly as valued by said society. Then they are stranded
on a tropical island and suddenly the woman's qualities and

(13:09):
skills are necessary for survival, and the man has no
wilderness survival skills, so the dynamic between them significantly shifts,
where the woman now holds all the power, and then
also that it turns out the uninhabited island is actually inhabited,
and then some murders happen along the way, partly because

(13:33):
the woman doesn't want to give up her power and
go back to her life where she was undervalued, which
is basically the premise of both movies.

Speaker 3 (13:40):
Yes, but I will say that where sendh Help, I
mean I like Send Help because I think what it
has going for it is it is like way more
broadly comedic than Triangle of Sadness, definitely a different tone,
and that it is like firmly centered on Linda, where
Triangle of Sadness is more of a like I mean,

(14:00):
I forget the name of the character who she becomes
very important, but she's not like the protagonist for sure.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
Yeah, it's more ensemble cast vibes.

Speaker 3 (14:10):
Yeah, but there are a lot. I mean it is
if you've seen both movies, it is a very like
similar similar to the back half of that movie. And
I think does a lot of what this movie does
a little more. I think it was just like a
little less afraid of some of the themes I think
this movie is. This movie is very and then we'll
take a break and talk about what happens in the movie.

(14:31):
But my as I was rewatching it for the show
and not just for fun, what was sticking out to
me was like it for a very long time. It
was like it seems like the story was afraid to
let Linda do something like morally bad, like they hold
out so long, including like this movie is for starring

(14:52):
two tremendously hot people stranded on an island completely sexless.
We have to play by thirty rock rules where we're like, right,
Rachel McAdams is fugly. I hate to see her coming.
She's certainly not one of our most beautiful people. Sure, fine, Right,
movies will ask us to do this and we have
we have to, we have to comply. But yeah, I

(15:15):
don't know. They were like a few themes that they
do address, and triangle of sadness. Sex does become part
of the equation in an icky way, and triangle of
sadness and the way that power is explored just feels
a little less like oh, we're not gonna you know,
we'll deal with the violence around this plot, but we
won't deal with sex or desire or anything like that,

(15:37):
which I thought was like just kind of weird. And
then the good for her ending is something we've seen many, many,
many times at this point. But well, we'll get there,
we'll get there. Should we should we take a quick break.

Speaker 2 (15:48):
Let's do it, and we're And here is the recap
of Send Help. We meet Linda Little played by Rachel McAdams.

Speaker 3 (16:10):
She's she's ugly, she's hideous, ugly, ugly, ugly.

Speaker 4 (16:14):
Her hair is greasy, and I the first moment she
came in, I was like, I'm calling now her hair
is going to be less greasy on the desert island
than it is in her office, And that was true.

Speaker 2 (16:25):
We're right, I do.

Speaker 3 (16:26):
I'm like, I want to give the movie a pass
on the like, the two main characters are such stock
characters that you kind of just have to roll with it,
but the fact that they go out of their way
later for Rachel McAdams to realize she's beautiful. Actually, when
she looks at her reflection, I'm like, al right, she
literally takes her glasses off, you know, two very broad

(16:49):
gendered types are appearing in this movie.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
Yeah, she takes her glasses off, lets her hair down,
she's all that style, and suddenly she's gorgeous. But it's
also implied that like the eye lind makes her hotter.

Speaker 3 (17:02):
This is where, okay, this is where it kind of
got into like lost vibes, and I'm like, ooh, I
love it. There's there are similarities between the character of
Linda Little and the character of John Locke on Lost
in that she really comes alive when hunting Bore and
everyone's like, what the hell, why how are they hunting bore?
And magical properties on the island making it so that

(17:25):
you don't need glasses and or don't have cancer anymore.
It's kind of Lost vibes.

Speaker 2 (17:30):
Yeah, that's so true.

Speaker 4 (17:31):
I really appreciate the costume designer who figured out what
she should be wearing to look like she was frumpy
in an office that would then turn into an outfit
that looked cool on a desert island. Yes. Yes, as
she gradually took the layers off like that, that is
some costume design.

Speaker 3 (17:49):
By the end, she's in a she's like washboard abs
in a crop top and you're like, why the hell not,
why the hell not? Yes, this this the ugliest woman
at work.

Speaker 2 (17:58):
Sure, right, So this is her character. Her hair and
her clothes are unkempt. She's like socially awkward and generally tuna.
It's stuck to her face and she works in this
office surrounded by a bunch of like dude bros. And
everyone is undermining her at work. We also learn that

(18:22):
she is obsessed with the show Survivor and with like
survival stuff in general, where she has all of these
books on how to survive in the wilderness and there's
all these pictures of her camping or otherwise outside doing
something in the wilderness. So back at work, when the

(18:43):
boss's son, Bradley Preston played by Dylan O'Brien, takes over
the company for his dad, Bradley gives the promotion to
VP that his father had promised to Linda. He gives
it to this guy named Donovan instead, who's another like
Fratborough guy who had taken credit for this big report

(19:08):
that Linda had prepared, and he takes all the credit
for her work. Linda confronts Bradley about not getting the promotion,
and he basically says that she is not likable enough
to get the job and that she eats too much
stinky tuna. Yeah, but he does invite her along to
this meeting about the Bangkok merger.

Speaker 3 (19:30):
She it seems like she is the only person I
mean whatever, Like the movie does go way out of
its way to show that, like she obviously is the
person for the job, She's the only person that seems
to have cracked how this merger could take place. Who
knows how the hell that shit works. This is the
first of many times I don't know why, Like it
didn't bug me when I was just like watching it

(19:52):
in the theater. But both both lead characters in this
movie are so frustratingly gullible at every turn. Linda is like, yeah,
when you work at a company for seven years, they
then treat you well. I'm like, what year is it, Linda,
wake up? Wake up? Uh? And then when later when

(20:12):
these two just are obsessed with accepting food from each other,
I'm like, guys, guys, we have to stop accepting food
from each other. Anyways.

Speaker 2 (20:22):
Yeah, they're two back to vaccines where they poison each other,
But we'll get there.

Speaker 3 (20:27):
There is parody in in gullible decision making here right, Yeah, Okay.

Speaker 2 (20:33):
So Linda Bradley, that guy Donovan, a couple of other
of like Bradley's bro buddies board a private jet to Thailand,
and on the plane, the men find Linda's audition tape
for Survivor, in which she's talking about how she knows

(20:54):
how to survive in the wilderness and she knows all
of the ways that you can make fire and has
all these other skills. But the guys are laughing at her,
and so she's humiliated.

Speaker 4 (21:05):
God, it's such a good audition tape, though, She's like,
she's like scaling playgrounds, like doing ridiculous.

Speaker 5 (21:12):
It's so good it would get.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
Her on the show.

Speaker 3 (21:15):
I know, I thought they were covering. I also like,
how dare you make fun of someone's uh survivor audition
tape that is a that is a grand tradition.

Speaker 2 (21:24):
Huh.

Speaker 3 (21:25):
Well yeah, because Blair, you you've been on survival shows before,
and so it's like if you if you approve it's good.

Speaker 5 (21:33):
Well, I don't know.

Speaker 4 (21:33):
I never had an audition tape. I was recruited.

Speaker 5 (21:36):
You're but I I.

Speaker 4 (21:41):
Mean, it's just gonna be ridiculous. You're just like they're
gonna make me look ridiculous. That's that's what you sign
up for. It's it's the game. It's fine.

Speaker 2 (21:48):
Yeah. Yeah. There are a lot of like iMovie transitions,
silly like wipes and stuff between shots. But the point
is we know she has survival skills and that's about
to be very important because what happens next is they
hit some very violent turbulence and then the plane starts

(22:11):
like imploding and the door rips off. Several of the
guys are sucked out of the plane.

Speaker 3 (22:20):
It's a very Sam Raimi way to crash a plane.

Speaker 2 (22:23):
Oh yeah, yes, lots of like gory violence happening along
the way.

Speaker 4 (22:29):
So Donovan, the guy who was going to get the
VP job over her, dies like gruesomely.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
Yes.

Speaker 4 (22:36):
And I was watching this yesterday with my family, My
kid's grandma, my mother in law's watching this and she
just shakes her head. She goes, Linda, you shouldn't have
come on the trip. You'd be VP right now.

Speaker 3 (22:50):
That's so true. Oh my god, Sam, she could have
I mean, she could have been CEO. I mean because
Dylan O'Bryan would not have made out without her. Now,
I would have been dead. In five seconds. I also
loved that even in the middle of that like gruesome,
great flane crash, there are like character moments for both

(23:11):
of our our weird little guys where you know, Bradley
is like, get the fuck away from me, like immediately
just like tosses his best friend's question mark off a plane,
and Linda is like ultimately does choose to like save herself,
but also like thinks about it for a second take.
It is sad, it is not necessarily thrilled that they're

(23:35):
getting sucked into the ether, which feels.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
She does try to help the men who are being
sucked out of the plane, but then when she realizes
that they're going to like sacrifice her for their safety,
she's like, never mind, fuck you.

Speaker 3 (23:47):
Guys, exactly. Yeah, but I just I liked that that
that sets up their vibes on the island quite.

Speaker 2 (23:54):
Well until the movie gets confused about the Linda character
and then and then they're like, wait, now I say
Linda is a murderer. At the end, at the end,
there's Linda's sort of like Jigsaw and you're.

Speaker 3 (24:07):
Like, what there is they she does kind of go
Jigsaw and you're like, wait, this was her little Game.
I don't know if that makes sense given the movie
I just watched, but whatever, we'll talk about it.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
Talk about it anyway. The plane crash lands in the
ocean near a remote uninhabited.

Speaker 3 (24:29):
Island or is it?

Speaker 2 (24:31):
Or is it? The only survivors are Linda and her
boss Bradley, who wash ashore on the island. Bradley's leg
is injured and he's unconscious at first, so Linda gets
to work on using all of her survival skills to
build a shelter from the raw materials on the island,

(24:54):
as well as to collect rain water for them to drink.
The next day, Bradley wakes up. He is so sad
that all of his broskies have perished, but Linda seems
excited to be there. She's kind of living out her
dream of being on Survivor. She builds a fire, she

(25:18):
catches and roasts some fish, which Bradley very reluctantly eats, because,
as we recall, he hates the smell and taste of fish,
and he is still repulsed by Linda, and he is
still undermining her and not appreciating all that she has

(25:39):
done to keep them alive so far. So she leaves
him stranded on the beach all day and night to
show him that the power dynamic has shifted. They're not
in the office anymore, he is no longer her boss,
but he is completely reliant on her for survival, and

(25:59):
she now holds all of the power in this situation.

Speaker 3 (26:04):
I love this like it's I think, my favorite choice
in the movie, because I do feel like it kind
of goes off the rails towards the end. It just
feels so like Linda in like the ways that I
personally love Linda that like she is undercut, she is
treated like an employee, and she's like, Okay, I'm not
going to kill you, but I'm going to do something

(26:26):
that forces you to acknowledge my value. And it's like,
you know, women shouldn't have to do that, but she
did what she had to do, yes, And of course
he didn't learn his lesson. She's Here's okay ultimately, and
we're going to get to it soon. But I'm just
I'm still I forgot how strongly I felt this when
we left the movie the first time, and how strongly

(26:47):
I feel it now. Why couldn't she just have cut
his dick off? Why can't we just let her cut
his dick off? Why does it have to be a rat?
Why are we doing the hard candy thing? Just cut is?
Come tell me about it. We paid twenty dollars to
see this.

Speaker 5 (27:06):
And it's a rat.

Speaker 3 (27:08):
Come on now? I agree anyways, I agree anyway, But
you know two men wrote it, so they're like, there's
a rat.

Speaker 2 (27:15):
Then did could never be cut off? Yeah? Okay, so
the power dynamic has shifted. Then she hunts a wild
boar for them to eat. The boar puts up a
fight and there's some classic Sam Raimi gore and blood splatter.
The scene is awesome, it's really fun. And then she

(27:36):
manages to kill the boar because again she is thriving
in this environment. And this is also when she starts
to get hotter, her hair and her skin look better. Again,
she's like figuring out how to wear her clothes to
make it so that they're more flattering.

Speaker 3 (27:53):
But I mean, speaking to your point, Blair, I feel like, yeah,
this is like the Secuens where she's becoming She's not
conquering nature in the way that like men's stories tend
to go, but she's like becoming one with nature and.

Speaker 4 (28:07):
Like right, and he accuses her of being Susie homemaker,
which I just that cracked me up because if Bear.

Speaker 5 (28:15):
Grills was doing the things right he was doing.

Speaker 2 (28:19):
You're like, oh my god, you're so cool. I can't
believe you know how to do this stuff. You're so valuable.

Speaker 4 (28:25):
But it's okay, So like, I mean, this is something
when I've been researching real survival stories, like a lot
of times women in real quote unquote real survival situations
will like go out of their way to make things beautiful,
and men too, like they will make things beautiful. We
need beauty to survive, and so like these like a
rays of fish that look like you get them in

(28:45):
a fancy sushi restaurant with flowers, or like cups of
flowers on the table, or things that are decorated and pretty.
That's a very realistic thing for people to do when
they're stranded on a desert island. But for him, he's like,
not that as life affirming. He's just completely dismissive of
everything she's.

Speaker 2 (29:05):
Doing, not even just the like making things esthetically pleasing,
but also just her like gathering water and food for them.
He's like, this is a fuck a waste of time.
You should be sending out a distress signal blah blah blah.
And she's like, I'm feeding us, I'm keeping us alive.
Like what are you talking about.

Speaker 5 (29:25):
She's making a fire plow. You know how hard it
is to make fire with a fireplow.

Speaker 2 (29:30):
I can only imagine.

Speaker 5 (29:32):
It's basically impossible.

Speaker 4 (29:36):
It's basically impossible to do. And she just is like casually,
like she just has all of these skills.

Speaker 2 (29:42):
Yeah, I was.

Speaker 3 (29:42):
I was so curious. Yeah, from your perspective, because I
know you've like you've done it yourself, You've studied somebody's
survival stories. Does this feel plausible like the way that it?

Speaker 2 (29:53):
Okay?

Speaker 4 (29:54):
I mean yes and no, Like I thought it was
very interesting, Like clearly someone writing the script or someone
doing the set design like has really researched. There's these
little details like when it starts raining, and she's like,
cover the fire.

Speaker 5 (30:07):
Because it is so hard to get a coal.

Speaker 4 (30:10):
As long as you have a coal, you can rebuild
a fire from a single coal, but it takes so
much labor to get that coal that once you have
a fire going, your goal is to like always keep
a hot coal in it. Twenty four to seven for
like months at a time. So I'm like that detail.
It starts raining and she's like cover the fire with leaves,
like people aren't.

Speaker 5 (30:29):
Going to catch that.

Speaker 4 (30:30):
But that is like deep into understanding of what it
would actually take to be on a desert island.

Speaker 3 (30:35):
Nice.

Speaker 4 (30:36):
And then there's these other moments like the spear that
she uses to hunt the bore is fire hardened at
the tip. Oh okay, so like the end is black,
which means that she like in between sharpening it was
hardening the wood over coals so it would become much
harder and be able to pierce the bore's skin. And
so you have this like sharpened piece of wood, but

(30:58):
it's very black at the end because of the like
painstaking process of blackening it. And I was just like, oh, somebody,
somebody did that, somebody who made this movie, like I see,
I see you, and not to be like too, I
personally have made a fire hardened spear and hunted a.

Speaker 3 (31:18):
Whoa, uh huh, this is not surprising to hear.

Speaker 4 (31:22):
I was like, oh my god, Linda, like I see
your girl, Like I know how many.

Speaker 5 (31:28):
Days it took to make that spear.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
Have you also stabbed out the boar's eyeball.

Speaker 4 (31:35):
No, no, the boar actually had like left its home
and I did not succeed, but and like, yeah, you can't.
Like then at the end when the boar like impales
itself and that's the way she kills it, that's what
you got to do, because you're not strong enough to
impale it. But if its force is coming toward you
and you have the spear toward it, So like a

(31:55):
really good way to impale a boar actually is if
you can like find it's dead and then really deeply
bury a spear outside it so it's pointing toward the
opening and it has to be a fire hardened spear
and then smoke it out so it comes out running good.

Speaker 2 (32:10):
Whoa wow, good to know. Thank you. Any other survival
tips you would like to share on this episode by
all means.

Speaker 4 (32:17):
So, I was like nerding out over these, like there
were some things that were so unrealistic and some things
that were so like inside Baseball, and I was really
enjoying those.

Speaker 3 (32:27):
That's so cool. I was. I couldn't find an answer
for this. I was looking to see if they had
like a survivalist consultant on this project.

Speaker 4 (32:35):
They did they and they ignored them at times, but
they definitely was a consultant. Okay, it comes through.

Speaker 3 (32:40):
That's so fascinating. Yeah, because I guess it's I don't know.
I guess, well, now I'm totally derailing. But is there
a movie that feels like is there a movie that
is like thought of by survivalists to be the closest
to an like authentic experience.

Speaker 4 (32:56):
I don't know. Actually, I haven't seen all the movies,
and I also I'm not part of a survivalist culture.
I'm just an independent enthusiast.

Speaker 3 (33:05):
And that does actually kind of make sense given the
whole thing.

Speaker 4 (33:09):
So I think that there's probably a lot of like
communal wisdom among survivalists that I am.

Speaker 5 (33:14):
Not privy to because I'm just sort of like at.

Speaker 4 (33:17):
Home reading books survivalists or like going out in the woods.
It's like people just go out in the woods on
their own. I don't know if they really commune.

Speaker 5 (33:26):
There's conferences. I guess I've never been to one.

Speaker 3 (33:28):
I guess that that it is kind of a it
is a solo thing. That's kind of the point. But
that's so interesting that I mean, I'm glad that they
had a consultant. I'm sure that that's like where those
authentic details come from. And I guess we can also
tell the moments where they were like, well, this needs
to happen in the script.

Speaker 2 (33:47):
So so back to the story. Tropical island survivalism is
really working out for Linda. She's thriving. The island has
given her a makeover somehow. And then she sees a
little boat by the shore and she's about to flag
it down because it seems like, oh, they're saved. But

(34:09):
then she says, hmm, no, not yet. It seems like
she wants to ride out this power trip that she's
on a bit longer. It has already been two weeks.
Bradley is very frustrated that they have not been found
and rescued yet.

Speaker 3 (34:27):
Yes, while contributing nothing at all, nothing.

Speaker 2 (34:32):
Yeah, his idea is to build a raft and try
to sail out to sea on it in the hopes
that they'll find a boat or a shipping route or
something like that. But Linda is like, no, no, no,
we need to stay on the island.

Speaker 3 (34:46):
This iconically also happens and lost, and it also iconically
does not work. Yes, Walt burns it.

Speaker 2 (34:55):
Oh my gosh, wow, I forgot Membo Walt anyway.

Speaker 4 (34:58):
Id.

Speaker 2 (35:01):
Anyway, Linda shuts down Bradley's idea about the raft, so
he is furious and he fires her and then goes
off and tries to build his own camp in a montage.
That is so funny because he's terrible at it.

Speaker 5 (35:19):
He's actually average or good at it, I would.

Speaker 2 (35:22):
Say, compared to Linda.

Speaker 4 (35:25):
These things that she's making look easy are so hard
to do. Actually, I mean he's in there's some ways
he's like except like he can't like lean a stick
against a tree trunk, he like struggles to do that.

Speaker 5 (35:38):
But like, he's not cartoonishly bad.

Speaker 4 (35:40):
He's actually just sort of how a lot of people
would do. Like he can't make fire with a fireplow.
No one can make fire with a fireplow.

Speaker 5 (35:48):
Like, no one can.

Speaker 4 (35:49):
It's a waste of energy.

Speaker 5 (35:50):
Don't even try use a bow drill if you must.
But like he's actually just very realistic.

Speaker 4 (35:56):
He's not even cartoonishly bad.

Speaker 2 (35:58):
I mean, right, I think about what I would do
if I were in this situation, and I would not
accomplish anything.

Speaker 3 (36:06):
Yeah, so I would die.

Speaker 2 (36:07):
I think I would die pretty immediately me. But compared
to Linda, I guess is the point he does not
seem very good at it because she seems exceptional at
these skills.

Speaker 3 (36:18):
Yeah, I do appreciate your saying that this is probably
just what an average person would do, though, because but.

Speaker 4 (36:24):
It's great, Like she's just watching him like that was
one of the most enjoyable seeds.

Speaker 2 (36:29):
She's watching him, she's like crafting baskets and sun hats
and a hammock.

Speaker 5 (36:35):
Because the humor isn't like that he's bad at it.

Speaker 4 (36:38):
The humor is that he doesn't recognize that she's so
good at it, so he sees her doing things well
and then presumes instead of presuming she's very good at this,
he presumes it must be it might be easy, and
then he fails miserably. That's very funny.

Speaker 3 (36:53):
Yes, I do like what like with Bradley consistently, because
both of these characters are so broad. These are stock
characters we have seen before in a new situation, but
that like consistently. He like part of his Part of
the reason that he almost dies so many times, like
on his own, is because he is like freakishly incurious

(37:16):
about his surroundings and he refuses to treat Linda as
a peer. He would rather do almost anything, including anchoring
significant physical pain before he will treat Linda as someone
deserving of respect and not as an employee, which definitely
works well in the story for.

Speaker 2 (37:36):
Sure, and then he eventually gives up, although his last
ditch effort is to write out help on the beach
using a bunch of leaves and sticks, but he misspells
it and writes out hepple, and then Bradley gives up.
He on fires Linda. He apologizes for how he has

(37:58):
treated her and underrested her. He begs her to let
him come back to her camp, and she eventually agrees
and shares her lunch with him. She has made this
lovely spread of sushi and flowers and fruit, and meanwhile,
his leg has healed a lot. So Linda takes Bradley

(38:21):
on a walk through the wilderness up a mountain, and
then she shows him a spot on the other side
of the island where two rocks are like crisscrossed to
look like an X, and she says, don't go to
that part of the island. It's all poisoned vines and
thorn bushes. And then on their way back Linda almost

(38:43):
falls off a cliff where this like loose bit of
ground falls out from under her, but Bradley saves her.
But we'll put a pin in that, because that's like
Chekhov's loose ground on the cliff. And then at the
camp they get drunk off of fermented fruit alcohol that

(39:05):
she made. They share their backstories, where Bradley says that
his parents were distant and abusive and hm, maybe that's
why he's the way he is now. Linda tells him
that she was married before, but her husband, who was
also abusive, died in a car accident because she let

(39:29):
him get behind the wheel when he was drunk. And
then she also is like, ha I love it here.
I never want to leave the island, sweetie, And we're like, oh,
something's happening there. The next day, a violent storm hits
the island, so they head inland to a cave. They're

(39:50):
all cold and wet, and they huddle together for body heat,
and again it seems like there's a vibe shift where
maybe something romantic is going to happen between them. And
then they make a plan to rebuild their camp that
washed away in the storm together almost like they're a
couple or their.

Speaker 3 (40:12):
Mother and son, like that's sort of the dynamic that
is being I think sort of played around with in
this and I felt like, I don't know if I'm
like pro or con I'm saying this neutrallly. It felt
like at some point the movie kind of like wouldn't
make up its mind about which direction they wanted this

(40:33):
dynamic to go in, or like how exactly the characters
were feeling about it. This is but maybe this is
just me comparing it to Triangle of a Sadness, which
makes a hard decision where the women in Triangle of Sadness,
I have to just look up the character name. The
woman who was previously an employee on the cruise ship
and then you know, is the only person with survival

(40:55):
knowledge basically takes the hot guy like it breaks up
a couple and has says like, Okay, hot guy, you're
going to live with me now and we're going to
have sex and you will be protected by me in
sort of exchange for this arrangement. And so you know,
Triangle of Sadness does not shy away from explicitly sexual

(41:20):
dynamics that develop in this survivalist community. But I mean
in scent help. There's only two of them, and so
I don't know. I guess I don't have like I
didn't want something to happen. It just felt like the
movie was like ignoring what felt like claro dynamics. I
don't know, but what do we think? What do we think?

Speaker 2 (41:39):
It feels messy to me because it feels it seems
like it's hinting that Linda is attracted to Bradley, she
might potentially be romantically interested in him, but then it
kind of walks that back different times, but then it
happens again at the very end, which we'll talk about

(42:00):
out in a scene that was very frustrating to me
when they're like professing their love for each other. But yeah,
to me, it just feels like quite messy and that
the movie doesn't really know what's going on and that
it describes it's like abscribing frustrating qualities to the woman
character like this this single, unmarried woman character.

Speaker 3 (42:24):
Yeah, well, well to construct this, But yeah, I guess
it was like I I the actors have I thought,
like really great chemistry and could have got like committed
to either direction of the like weird, like the messy
dynamic of like she is acting basically in a maternal
capacity to them, but there does seem to be some

(42:44):
sort of attraction, but the movie just sort of is
like shrug anyways, anyways, anyways.

Speaker 4 (42:49):
But she's acting in a maternal capacity but also an
abusive capacity, right, it presumes always that, Like I feel
like the presumption here is like if a woman has
more than a man, she will be abusive with that too. Yeah, right,
Like that's sort of the logic within the film.

Speaker 2 (43:07):
Which is fair. I mean, the concept of like absolute
power corrupts absolutely is like not gender specific, but right, it's.

Speaker 3 (43:18):
Not like Bradley would have done more with, like better
by that power if he had the ability to hold it.
But I also I feel like we're given some and
now I'm like, maybe there are like lynkers to it.
I haven't considered. I'm not sure where the information we're
given about the two of them in the toilet wine
scene is like really interesting because like we're told that

(43:42):
Bradley like speaking to like what we were just saying Blair,
like she is acting as a caretaker, but an abusive caretaker,
and that is Bradley's background is he grew up with
abusive caretakers. But I feel like that doesn't if that's
meant to come out in their dynamic. I feel like
it was like it could have maybe been clearer. And

(44:02):
then Linda's story is like wildly charged of like I
guess I wasn't I wasn't sure with her character if
this is like because she was also abused and then
knew that her husband was going to be, you know,
risking his and other safety and you know whatever, that's

(44:23):
a whole ethical myer that this movie's not equipped to handle.
And that's fine, but I don't know, like it felt
like that was such a like specific, intense piece of
information and I don't know if she feels a type
of way about it. I don't know if she really
feels remorse about it. And then it kind of just
like this we learned that kind of right before she

(44:44):
like quote unquote goes off the deep end in terms
of like violence and grabbing at everything to make sure
that they stay on the island, and yeah, don't I
don't know. I really liked that scene of them opening up.
And then I feel like, ultimately I didn't really do
too much with their revelations because like if the revelations

(45:06):
are meant to say, here are these two stock characters,
but they're actually way more nuanced than you thought. But
then they kind of just go back to acting like
the stock characters through the rest of the movie.

Speaker 5 (45:17):
I found her background.

Speaker 4 (45:20):
I read it as having explanatory power for her being
a survival buff right, Like her husband of a decade
is abusive, was abusive, so her home was a site
of survival, and a way to deal with that is
to become obsessed with like survival as a sort of
isolated concept and prove to yourself that it's something you
can tolerate.

Speaker 3 (45:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (45:41):
I mean, one of my big theories about survival in
general is that, like wilderness, survival is not a separate
category from other survival in life.

Speaker 5 (45:48):
It's just sort of like a distilled version of.

Speaker 4 (45:52):
All the survival challenges we have that allow us to
sort of look at it head on. And so, I
don't know, I just interpreted when she's talking about that,
I was like, Oh, that's why she got into survival
is because it's something that she was doing on a
daily basis in her household. So, like, her response to
trauma is partly reflected in the fact that like all
of her bookshelves are like that we see in her

(46:13):
apartment early on, are like how do you survive when
a situation in which it's very hard to do?

Speaker 2 (46:19):
How to survive? And how to talk to your bird?

Speaker 4 (46:22):
Yeah, exactly Like to me that felt linked, Yeah, implicitly
linked in her character.

Speaker 2 (46:30):
That makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 3 (46:31):
I hadn't thought about it from that angle, but that
absolutely makes complete sense. Yeah, Linda is so there's so
much there. I guess I just get frustrated with where
this story lands for her because it feels like kind
of a contrived ending to like this very nuanced or

(46:51):
this like deceptively nuanced character.

Speaker 2 (46:54):
Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 3 (46:55):
Interesting.

Speaker 2 (46:56):
Yeah, In any case, Linda and Bradley are now working
together to build a new shelter. They seem to be
on decent terms at the moment. And also Linda has
a knife that she has been using for different things

(47:16):
that she said had washed up on shore, but she
used the one with a knife. She never lets Bradley use.

Speaker 3 (47:24):
It, which, unfortunately, I feel like the reveal later kind
of stands to kind of undercut a lot of like
what it seems like Linda like these amazing things Linda
is doing as a survivalist at the ending causes you
to be like, well, she kind of wasn't doing a
lot of that, was she. But we'll get there a
little bit.

Speaker 2 (47:43):
But we do see her in the very first sequence
where she's like building the initial shelter.

Speaker 3 (47:48):
The initial stuff, like her.

Speaker 2 (47:49):
Bashes a rock to like create a jagged like piece
of a rock, and then she kills that boar when
she caused a bore. And also like, I mean, correct
me if I'm wrong, Blair, But survivalists, like they have tools, right,
such as knives and other.

Speaker 4 (48:07):
Yeah, Like if someone is in a shipwreck or a
plane goes down, they often have the contents of the
entire ship, right, But that doesn't mean they're not don't
have to be extremely creative because they can't get out,
and they have to take the tools they have and
use them in every way possible to meet every one
of their needs. Like to me, that didn't diminish her
survival skills.

Speaker 3 (48:26):
At all, totally.

Speaker 2 (48:27):
I could have a well stocked kitchen and I would
still die in the wilderness. Okay, So Bradley then offers
to make Linda dinner the following night. Again, the vibes
are unclear. You could read this as like, are they
on a date?

Speaker 3 (48:48):
She's got a flower, she's got a flower in her hair,
that's the that's alway.

Speaker 2 (48:51):
It seems like she thinks it's a date, that's all
we know. But then she starts to feel very woozy
and it turns out that he has poisoned her. And
when she becomes incapacitated, he gets on a raft that
he secretly built and tries to escape, but his raft
almost immediately breaks apart, and then Linda, who is still alive,

(49:14):
saves him, but she's also like barfing on his face
from that was.

Speaker 3 (49:18):
Supporting big old Sam Raimie bar the worst scene.

Speaker 4 (49:24):
I couldn't I couldn't watch.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
It, but classic Sam Raymie. Yeah. And then and then
the next day, to retaliate, she poisons him with an
octopus that she had caught that contains like neurotoxins that
paralyze him, and while he's unable to move, she pulls
out her knife and acts like she's castrating him, but

(49:51):
just kidding. She was slicing a dead rat. But she
like threatens him that the next time to chop off his.

Speaker 3 (50:00):
Nuts, which is actually not true because the next time
she has the opportunity to physically harm him, there's no
bullets in the gun, So I just am like, let
Linda kill this guy. Why are we putting all of
these narrative ideas away? But and again, maybe this is
just like a scene in this movie that I think
is like pulled from almost like copy pasted from a

(50:21):
better movie, which is like this is the scene from
Hard Candy where Elliott Page says that Patrick Wilson is
being castrated, but in fact that's not the case, and
it is. I mean, it's super effective, but like this,
I don't think Scent Help is doing anything really new
with that scenario. Yeah, I don't know, maybeybe it's just

(50:45):
as a Hard Candy head, I was like, hey, you can't,
can't fucking do that?

Speaker 2 (50:49):
Do that? You can also and also just cut off
his balls. He like poisoned you and was about to
abandon you. Pop his stick off.

Speaker 3 (50:58):
There's this state between the two of them where it's
like you get the feeling that she wants him to
do better, or like wants to believe he's capable of better,
but like there's no evidence to really support that. So
I don't I don't know. I don't know. Maybe I'm
just a sadist, and I think, like, but but if
this movie is like supposed to be a like, like

(51:22):
a woman who has been mistreated and ignored in her
place of work getting the greatest revenge opportunity of all time,
I think, I'm like, just let her have it, Let
her do it. Why does she have to show him
mercy this deep into the movie? But you know, cynically,
I'm like, well, two men wrote it, so that's why.

(51:42):
But who knows. I don't know. Yeah, I wish they'd
just let her have it.

Speaker 2 (51:46):
I agree anyway. A little later, when Linda is off
gathering fruits, another boat approaches with Bradley's fiancee Ury played
by edel Ismail, who has been looking for Bradley this
whole time, but not wanting to give up her position

(52:08):
of power. Linda leads Zuri and the boat captain along
the treacherous path on the cliff side where Linda almost
fell and died earlier, and it seems like Zuri and
the boat captain maybe also die, but we kind of

(52:28):
cut away to Linda returning to the camp being very depressed,
perhaps from the murders that she may or may not
have just committed. She has a nightmare about it. And
then the next day Bradley finds Zuri's body mostly buried
in the sand, and so he confronts Linda about killing Zuri,

(52:52):
and they start fighting, and they're strangling each other and
they're ripping bits off of each other, and he pokes
out Linda's eye and she stabs with her knife, and
again more classic Samaraimi violence. And then Bradley escapes toward
the part of the island with all of the poisoned
vines and thorns, except just kidding, that's actually where this

(53:16):
like luxury beach house is located, and he breaks in.
Linda follows him inside and then gets on the intercom
and reveals that she has been coming to this beach
house for a while. This is where she got the knife.
And then we also get a flashback here that confirms

(53:38):
that she definitely murdered Zuri and the boat captain. So
she's like gone off the rails. Basically, she finds Bradley
pulls a gun on him. He begs for mercy and
says that she's the most incredible person he's ever met.
He wants to build a life together here on the

(53:59):
island because he loves her, and she's like, exactly, let's
do it. I love you too, but he was lying
and he attacks her again, though she gets the upper
hand and finally kills him with a golf club golf
club to the head.

Speaker 3 (54:16):
Which is like, ooh, great, great writing moment, Wow, the
instrument of her oppression. Yeah, men golfing.

Speaker 2 (54:25):
Yes, And then we smash cut to Linda golfing like
a year later because she has been rescued and she's
a celebrity now. She has turned her survival story into
a best selling book that's being adapted into a movie.
And then the movie Send Help ends with Linda breaking

(54:47):
the fourth wall several times yeah, and saying something like
no help is coming, so you have to learn how
to help yourself. The end. And so let's take another
quick break and we'll come back to discuss and we're back.

Speaker 3 (55:15):
Yeah, Blair, I'm so curious what your impression of this
movie is. What was on your mind as you were watching, Like,
what was jumping out to you.

Speaker 4 (55:26):
I'm not a horror movie person, so I partly was
just like, oh my god, I can't I can't handle
like vomiting out. So much face, and I'm squeamish about
that kind of thing, but I was very excited about
the survival story, and I wanted to root for Linda Moore.
Like that was very frustrating to me. I think I'm

(55:49):
just too squeamish to like let go and just be
like this is a revenge fantasy. And I was just like, like.

Speaker 5 (55:55):
I was almost rooting. Oh, I was almost rooting for Bradley.

Speaker 4 (55:59):
When he's like taking taking the raft off the island,
I'm like, I don't know, man, you're a prisoner, like
you suck, but like that doesn't mean you deserve to
be like kept prisoner, Like go be a shitty person
somewhere somewhere else. I guess like I couldn't quite separate
just watching it, like I had trouble separating her behavior,

(56:22):
Like I just couldn't like I couldn't suspend this belief
enough to like take her behavior as cathartic revenge and
separate it from the fact that it just is like
super abusive to trap someone on a desert island when
they like might die of an infection.

Speaker 5 (56:39):
And so I wanted him.

Speaker 4 (56:41):
I was frustrated because I wanted him to be even
more hateable and her to be even more likable, so
that I could sort of let go and enjoy the
revenge fantasy.

Speaker 3 (56:51):
What could I'm so curious, like what could have gotten
you there? Because that makes total sense.

Speaker 5 (56:57):
I mean he's bad, He's very bad.

Speaker 4 (56:59):
Like I don't know, I don't know, Like it might
just be like I.

Speaker 5 (57:04):
Was too literal and watching it.

Speaker 2 (57:06):
Maybe now I know what you mean. I tend to
feel the same way where And I think this has
to do with like some strange writing choices and like
inconsistency with Linda's character, because she starts out as someone
who obviously she's frustrated with being undermined and underappreciated at work,

(57:28):
and all of these men are taking credit for her
labor and just being awful to her, like mocking her
for the way she looks and all this stuff, and
so it's not hard to empathize with her initially and
then even later on, like in the toward the middle
of the story, there's a moment where it seems like

(57:50):
Bradley is starting to realize that he is utterly dependent
on her for survival and that that's something he needs
to acknowledge and appreciate or at least he's saying that
he does, whether or not he actually feels it.

Speaker 3 (58:06):
It's like he never fully does. But also like you're saying, Blair,
that doesn't justify. I mean, it is like a fully
mutually abusive dynamic that they're in, but she's the one
with more power.

Speaker 5 (58:19):
Yeah, right, right, right.

Speaker 2 (58:21):
But there's this moment toward the middle where again Bradley
is like, okay, like I do need this other person
to survive for the time being. It's after that montage
where he's like trying to build his own shelter and
he is not very successful, so he kind of comes
crawling back and asks if he can stay with her

(58:42):
at her camp, and she responds with, well, that depends
on like what you're willing to do or how far
you're willing to go, implying that she's asking for sexual favors,
which is a reference to earlier when they were still
in the office when he was interviewing like a pretty
young potential assistant and he asked her how far she

(59:06):
was willing to go for him, again implying I'm expecting
sexual favors from that young woman, and then Bradley starts
to unbuckle his pants and then Linda is like, oh, no,
I was just kidding, Like I would never do that,
I'm not like you. So it feels like she has

(59:28):
been established as someone who, even though she's undermined, she's underappreciated,
and she resents that, which of course anyone would. She's
not going to abuse the power that she has, at
least in this capacity, but then she proceeds to like

(59:48):
super changes. Yeah, she proceeds to start to abuse it
pretty significantly, and then it gets really violent and she's
killing people, She's killing Zuri and this bolt cap, and so, like,
I don't know, it just feels like her character is
written to be like quite inconsistent and I could never
really get a handle on what's going on with her.

(01:00:12):
And then we get that reveal that she had maybe
murdered her husband or at least allowed him to die
or enabled him to die, and we also don't know
if she's being honest about.

Speaker 3 (01:00:23):
That or I also think that the dynamic around Okay,
I guess not to like go in too hard on
the writers, but like, I do feel like especially in
the like including dynamics of abuse and background of abuse,
parental abuse and spousal abuse, on both, Like I think
that the movie is just like not equipped to handle

(01:00:45):
having introduced those topics because I think that like I
think especially on Linda's end, where we are given like
pretty specific detail on the fact that she was thoroughly
abused by her husband who was an alcohol and I
do feel like the way that it's written and that
information is delivered, that it's delivered as if she is

(01:01:08):
a murderer, which to be opens up this whole like
that like this is the key to like, oh, she's
quote unquote psycho. It would be quote unquote psycho to
do that. And it's like, is that a morally amazing
decision to make? No, but to me, mainly because drunk
drivers hurt innocent people, right, But that that's more the

(01:01:29):
issue from my standpoint than like this abuse like this
happens all the time of someone who's been abused reaching
a breaking point, and it's like from what we see
in this movie. And and also just sort of like
the other movies that these this para writers have written,
they're at a Freddie versus Jason movie. They've written a
lot of franchise movies. I just am not seeing much
to go on that, like this is the writing team

(01:01:52):
to try to put a spousal abuse plot point in
late in the movie. And then and the fact that
like shortly after that information is introduced, she goes off
the deep end and that information is sort of all
like mixed in. I felt like we were given like that.

Speaker 2 (01:02:11):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:02:11):
It's after that scene that the movie really starts to
lose me because I think up until that point, we're
given these stock characters and then kind of stripping away,
like well, who are they really? What are their backgrounds?
Like how is this power dynamic going to shift? But
then it turns into something far more like conventional at

(01:02:34):
the end, and it's like a conventional like I don't
mind watching a woman go off the deep end and
kill a bunch of people. Great, this is a movie
I have watched many times and I will watch many
more times. But like, I don't know, yeah, that was
like that scene in particular. I think it's a good scene,
but it just like quickly after that, it just don't
think that the movie is able to like handle the

(01:02:56):
intensity of the themes they're presenting. And then they're like
she's actually cuckoo crazied now and she is like an
unrepentant murderer, which I think is a very It's definitely
a choice after learning that there was this, that she
was abused, to then have her, you know, begin to

(01:03:17):
act severely like less moral than she did before we
knew she was abused. I just I don't know, it's interesting.

Speaker 4 (01:03:24):
It bugged me, yeah, and it I mean it made
me think, like, are we even supposed to believe she
was abused necessarily? Like are we supposed to think maybe
she's lying about this to justify that she got mad
and maybe or maybe didn't kill her husband like it.
I wasn't even sure sort of within the world of
the film, what whether we were supposed to believe it
or not?

Speaker 3 (01:03:45):
Yeah, okay, because there's like that other moment in that
scene too, where again I'm like, this is so interesting
if only it were going anywhere where. Like Bradley is
talking about how he was emotionally neglect and physically abused
by his mother, and it sounds like emotionally neglected by
both of his parents, but that he knew that his

(01:04:08):
mother had been abused, and so he tried to not
hold like quote unquote hold it against her too much,
and then they have that like conversation that you're like,
this is really interesting where she's like, oh, so that's why,
like you feel okay about the fact that you're a
monster because you come by it honestly, and he's like, yeah,
I guess that is how I feel, and like that's

(01:04:28):
such an interesting conversation. But I don't know. Maybe I'm
like over and underthinking it about like the consequences that
that conversation has. I think it just like these two characters,
it seems like they're punishing each other for having been
vulnerable with one another, which is interesting, is like now
you know my secret and so you must die. But

(01:04:49):
it doesn't feel like that's exactly what's going on either.
I guess I just don't know what's going on by
the end, like where the characters are at emotionally. The
back to back poisonings I found like kind of bizarre
and frustrating because you're like, why are we accepting food
from each other twenty four hours later?

Speaker 4 (01:05:06):
At what point do you just say, like, Noah, catch
my own fish.

Speaker 3 (01:05:10):
Right, like she can hunt a bore. I don't think
she needs his tapas, but whatever, I don't know. Yeah,
I also did find Linda a strong character to establish,
but it just felt like the movie didn't know what
to do with her by the end, which I feel like.
I would love to talk about good for her endings

(01:05:31):
in movies because we've covered a lot of them. They
are not exclusively written by men. There are plenty of
good for her endings to popular movies that some work
for me, some don't. I think the maybe one of
the more famous ones that does work for me is
Gone Girl, right Like that's an iconic good for her

(01:05:54):
ending Gillian flantcy genius. They're also good for her endings
that do not work for me, like such as Promising
Young Women Emerald Fanelle that and the ending to that
movie is a fucking mess, But there is I feel like,
and I'm like maybe being conspiratorial, but when men write
this ending, it feels like they just didn't know how

(01:06:17):
to end the movie in a more thoughtful way. Because
we have and again, some work for me, some don't,
but we have. I have like a list of them,
and they're almost all by men. The Avich by Robert Eggers,
Midsummar by Ari astor Ready or Not by I forget
who it is, but it's a guy, there's Carrie Heathers,

(01:06:40):
like the List of Knives out last night and so
ho apparently I don't know that I did not see it,
but I want to talk more about this on the Well,
we talk about this on the show all the time,
but like specifically when men are trying to write a
story that is empowering to women, I feel like there's
like a series of patterns that I noticed that I'm like, well,

(01:07:03):
I don't know that that's what I don't It doesn't quite.
It's just like a little uncanny valley the way it lands,
and to me, the way that this movie just like
cuts to and she's famous now and everything's fine and
she's winking at the camera.

Speaker 2 (01:07:17):
She has her personality is completely different than it was.

Speaker 3 (01:07:21):
Right, It's like not putting off on the character we met.
We're basically being told like you've been watching like a
completely a moral person this entire movie, and now we're
happy for her. But it's like, but part of what's
so interesting about Linda is that she chooses to save Bradley.

(01:07:42):
She has a question of like she wants to help.

Speaker 2 (01:07:45):
Several times, like yes, over and over, like three, four,
five times, like it's yeah, it happens a bunch.

Speaker 3 (01:07:53):
I don't know.

Speaker 5 (01:07:53):
Is there ever a good for him ending?

Speaker 3 (01:07:56):
I feel like most every movie it doesn't.

Speaker 2 (01:08:00):
It doesn't feel framed that way though, because it's just like, well,
of course, a man triumphing at the end of a movie.
That's just how stories end, so it doesn't feel special
or significance.

Speaker 3 (01:08:13):
I guess I'll clarify that when I say it good
for her ending, I don't just mean a movie that
ends well for a woman. It means that she has
generally been responsible for someone's death, and then it ends
on usually the same shot, which is her smiling at
the camera being like, I did what I had to do.
Poor things. This also happens like there's It is like

(01:08:35):
very much something. I mean, it's always happened like it happens.
It wasn't invented recently, but it happens in movies a lot,
I think, especially post Me To. If you are a
male auteur and you aren't quite sure what to do
with your morally complicated female protagonist, this is how the
movie tends to end, like, yeah, she's been responsible for

(01:08:58):
someone's death or violence, and she ends with like a
little smirk. We should have a we should make a
super cut of this because it is like, truly stunning
how many times it's happened in the last fifteen years.
I don't think it is like net Bad or anything
like that, but it is at this point. It's definitely like,
if you're gonna do this at the end of your movie,

(01:09:18):
you better have something new to say about it, I guess.
And I just like this one doesn't really to me,
and it feels out of step with It feels like
it's pushing the ending of a different character onto Linda
because I just don't buy this for Linda at all.
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (01:09:34):
Well.

Speaker 2 (01:09:35):
The other thing that really flummixed me was basically the
climax where they're in the luxury beach house about to
kill each other, but then in an attempt to save
his life because Linda has a gun pointed at him,
Bradley makes this plea of like, no, no, no, no, Actually,

(01:09:59):
you're so awesome. You've taught me so much. I don't
want to go back to my old life. I want
to stay here on this island with you because I
love you. And for some reason she falls for that,
and she's like, I love you too, and then a
moment later, she realizes that he has like procured a

(01:10:20):
weapon that he's hiding, and then he lunges at her
with it, right, and then she finally kills him. But like,
what the hell was that moment? I love you too,
I believe you well.

Speaker 3 (01:10:33):
I don't know why she seems to be realizing in
this moment that he would kill her without hesitation, because
he has attempted to do so several times, but she
seems so betrayed. I because she because I'm assuming she
knows there's no bullets in the gun. I don't actually
know if that's true now that I'm saying it out loud,
But it seems like she, at least to be is
like set up to be like she's just trying to

(01:10:53):
scare him the same way that she only kills the rat.
She doesn't actually she's not actually going to do something
horrible to him. She just wants to freak him out.
And then when she says, oh, he wouldn't have hesitated
to shoot me, which going back to what you were saying, Blair,
if we're viewing this as yeah, well he's her captive,
like it wouldn't actually be out of pocket for him
to do. She's quite dangerous, even if he is a

(01:11:15):
piece of shit. At this point, like, I don't I
don't know. I'm glad Linda makes it because I like
tuna sandwiches and sometimes struggle in conversations at work.

Speaker 2 (01:11:29):
So well, that's the thing, Like I relate to her
toward the beginning of the movie. By the end, I'm like, like,
and maybe that's the point. I don't know. Maybe. And
then to your point also, Blair, at the beginning of
this episode, when you said, like, survival stories are either
like you tame the wilderness or the wilderness makes you fair.

(01:11:50):
And it seems as though the wilderness in this case
has like any like violent impulses she may have, I've had.
It seems like being on this island really brings out
in her. Or was she like that already. We don't really,
I don't know. But this ending where she's like, aw,

(01:12:15):
you love me, I love you too, I feel like
it's the movie the men who made this movie being like, well, yeah,
Like she's this lonely old spinster, or at least that's
who she was in her previous life, so of course
she's gonna embrace a good looking man who says that

(01:12:36):
he loves her. Of course she's gonna like fall for that,
regardless of how he has treated her in the past.
I don't know if that's exactly what the implication is,
but like her doing this one eighty and being so
gullible that feels like it comes out of nowhere, that
it's like very inconsistent with her character, because yes, she

(01:12:59):
is a bit gullible, but she's also not so naive
that I feel like her in that moment would fall
for what Bradley is saying.

Speaker 4 (01:13:10):
That just read to me as like her being unstable,
which she sort of is established as being, Like, is
she rational? I don't think she is acting rationally, not
anymore right right, it's very unclear on whether I don't know, Like,
to me, I'm just like, oh, she's not. She hasn't
been thinking clearly for a while. Perhaps that was how

(01:13:33):
I read that.

Speaker 3 (01:13:34):
I mean from the moment she sees the boat and
chooses not to But again, I guess I read that
as like I'm still with Linda in that moment, where yes,
at that point, she is deciding to be keeping a
prisoner versus you know, your more traditional survivalists.

Speaker 2 (01:13:53):
Set up.

Speaker 3 (01:13:56):
So that is like the moment where she sort of
starts to But at that point, I feel like it
still makes sense with who we met at the beginning
of the movie, where she has been so demeaned, intentionally
humiliated by this guy that I guess you're like I
was I felt at the beginning. When she makes that decision,
she's like, I'm just gonna ride this out a little

(01:14:17):
bit longer, just a little bit longer until she can
get the VP job secured, and then okay, I'll let
them know, you know, I will pretend to come across
this together. It still felt like it was a part
of a larger like not admirable, but like a plan
that didn't feel completely a morally like I don't know,

(01:14:40):
it's still kind of at least made sense to me.
It didn't seem like someone who was losing their mind.
It just seemed like someone who was making a very calculated,
cruel decision.

Speaker 4 (01:14:48):
Yeah, that makes sense actually now that I think, Like
in the moment, I was just like, oh, she's sort
of losing her mind. But now that I think about it,
they have established her early on as someone who will
sort of take any crumb that could possibly be interpreted
as a romantic interest and just run with it despite
all evidence to the contrary. Like she's like, oh my god,

(01:15:09):
this guy, we totally had this like chemistry and flirtation
at the you know, at the Christmas Day party, right,
And it turns out he just like said hi to her,
and she did that that thing of being like someone
spoke to me civilly and therefore like they have a
romantic interest in me, and so to me.

Speaker 5 (01:15:30):
Her believing when he says, you know, he wants.

Speaker 4 (01:15:34):
To make a life with her at the end is
consistent with that part of her character that we met
early on, where she's just sort of so like rationality
goes to the side when she thinks that this particular
person might possibly want to be with her.

Speaker 2 (01:15:49):
That is so fair, although I think it's still kind
of like a misogynist writing choice where.

Speaker 4 (01:15:56):
Yeah, yeah, it's like it's like a cheap trick, but
it's it's one that's deployed multiple times.

Speaker 3 (01:16:02):
Right, Like the only way I feel like it gets
out of making a misogynist writing choice there is if
the person we meet at the beginning, who I think
is falling into and because you have Rachel McAdams who
is a genius playing her like Rachel McAdams, I feel
like is doing a ultimately kind of poorly constructed character

(01:16:23):
justice and like you really feel for her, but like
on paper, I'm like, I see that guy's name. Damien
and Mark wrote this character who as a woman who
is middle aged single, and she is made out to
be lonely coded, right, she's drinking too much, she's talking

(01:16:47):
to her pet file pathetic, right, yeah, And so it's
like they're already presenting her as like unstable and basically
delusional as it pertains to how she communicates with men
with her career. I think that this also weirdly, like
the fact that she thinks that Dylan O'Brien is flirting
with her, which also doesn't work when you're like, why
is it so implausible that Dylan O'Brien would flirt with

(01:17:09):
Rachel McAdams, But whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:17:11):
Like you're like, what, especially after the Island makes her
so hot?

Speaker 3 (01:17:14):
I know, After the Magical Island makes her so fuckable,
but like it's so it's so ridiculous, But also in
the way that she approaches her career, like she's made
to seem delusional that she would ever have an opportunity
to get this job, and so it's like, Okay, we're
presented with that stock character. So by the end, has
this character been like has this stock character been meaningly subverted?

(01:17:36):
And I think the answer is no, Like the answer
at the end is like she's she's still like out
of touch with reality, She's still delusional, and now it's
just working out for her. Like there's some stuff in
the middle that feels interesting. I think the fact that like, again,
well going back to what we've been talking about the
whole time, that Linda has a ton of agency, she

(01:17:57):
has a ton of power. But I I don't think
that it's really bringing anything new to what is like
an unhinged, lonely woman character. At the end, she is
like an amorl murderer. So I'm like, I know I've
seen this one. I don't think that this is like
a feminist revenge plot really, because the way that she

(01:18:19):
ends up quote getting her revenge is like, I don't
think she really does get revenge in the end, Like
she ends up kind of killing him in self defense
after imprisoning him. Like it's too messy to be a
revenge story.

Speaker 2 (01:18:33):
Right, And then the quote unquote empowerment that she experiences
at the end is like, Okay, now she's rich and
famous because she exploited this story for personal gain in
which she actively murdered several people and is obscuring that.

(01:18:54):
And then she says to camera like, don't help any one,
and no one's coming to help you. Be all by
yourself and that's how you survive the end, And I'm like, well,
that's not a good message to put out in the world.

Speaker 3 (01:19:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:19:12):
Also, isn't it strange that they sort of introduce her
early on as sort of a mathematical savant to explain
why she's really good at her job and then drop it,
Like I was like, how is how is being a
numbers savant gonna come to play on this desert island?

Speaker 5 (01:19:26):
But it almost just is sort.

Speaker 4 (01:19:28):
Of included as a way of explaining why she's so
gifted at her job without giving her credit for it.

Speaker 5 (01:19:34):
Like it's not like she's.

Speaker 4 (01:19:35):
Dedicated and work hard, works hard and smart. It's like, oh,
she she has this sort of savant skill that is
almost a thing she's like born with, not a thing
she puts effort into.

Speaker 5 (01:19:47):
And that's like, oh, she's so good at her job.

Speaker 4 (01:19:50):
But it's not even like because of choices she makes,
like she just happens to be I don't know, it
seems weirdly dismissive.

Speaker 3 (01:19:58):
Yeah, and it's like not relevant to how this story
ends up unfolding, Like, as far as I can tell,
it's like her survival like hobby that brings all of
her skills to it.

Speaker 2 (01:20:09):
Well, we're forgetting that she uses her her number skills
to memorize a four digit number which is the code
to the luxury beach house. So it does pay off.

Speaker 5 (01:20:22):
Oh okay, mass.

Speaker 4 (01:20:25):
The poff.

Speaker 3 (01:20:27):
That's I hadn't even connected that. Yeah, that's absolutely true,
Like a lot of it, I don't know, like that's
this I guess going back to like calling this a
plane movie, I think we're thinking harder about This is
the kind of movie we're thinking harder about than anyone
who has ever watched it, including professional critics like but but,
but I did see this movie talked about as a

(01:20:48):
feminist revenge tale, and I see a lot of movies
with this specific ending marketed as a feminist revenge tale.
And I think we're throwing that around too loose. I
think that it's just respectful to actual feminist revenge tales.
I think this is like a fun movie, and I
think Linda, even though she's inconsistent and I think falls
into a lot of tropes, I still like like I

(01:21:13):
like her character. I do, but I don't think that
this falls into like feminist revenge cannon because I don't
think she gets her revenge particularly feministly. And it is
written in all these gender tropes by two guys, So.

Speaker 2 (01:21:29):
It feels to me like girl boss white feminism.

Speaker 3 (01:21:33):
Well, but that's the only setting that like male writers
know how to write.

Speaker 2 (01:21:38):
It's not good for the most like these movies.

Speaker 3 (01:21:39):
For the most part, there's a few, there's like Boots Riley,
but even he sometimes struggles with women.

Speaker 4 (01:21:45):
It's just this right to me, the tell that this
is written by men attempting to sort of critique gender
dynamics is the forms that the sexism takes very early on,
which is so cartoonish. Yes, like the men in the
office are literally saying.

Speaker 5 (01:22:01):
Let's go boys, and that took balls and in a way.

Speaker 4 (01:22:07):
Sort of diminishing office sexism into these like cartoonish statements.

Speaker 5 (01:22:13):
I feel like it's a way of letting men off
the hook.

Speaker 4 (01:22:17):
Like then then people can be like, I would never
say I know better than to say that took balls
to a woman in an office, so therefore I can't
be sexist or I can't be treating women differently than
men because I wouldn't use that language. And it also
just I feel like the sexism I see and I

(01:22:37):
hear about from women is never like, ah, someone said
that took balls. It's like much more nuanced and systemic
and insidious.

Speaker 3 (01:22:46):
And protracted too.

Speaker 2 (01:22:48):
Right, the moment where Donovan steals her report that she
worked so hard on and then passes it off as
his work, is like, I'm not saying that hasn't happened
before throughout history, but it has become such a trope
at this point that it's like it seems like it
was the only thing that the writers could think of

(01:23:09):
to demonstrate. Look how sexist this office environment is that
Linda has to put up with.

Speaker 3 (01:23:16):
Well, it reminds me of It's like the Stock character
we refer to, and I'm surprised it hasn't come up
on this episode already. But the patriarchy, the guy Stock character,
which is who Bradley is. He is patriarchy the guy,
which can be fun if like meaningfully subverted, but like
what doing that offers to male writers is a way

(01:23:38):
of ignoring what you're describing Blair, like how sexism affects
people in the workplace in really specific situations, and there
is this feeling around it of like, well, I can't
be sexist because I don't use the top ten sexist
catchphrases that you see in movies right where it's yeah,

(01:24:00):
I think another case of this movie biting off more
than it can chew because we are given like some
insight into Bradley, and Bradley is a prisoner, but the
movie doesn't really know what to do with all of
these things being true at once. It certainly doesn't know
what to do with Zuri, which is like something that
just feels worth mentioning that, like because we have basically

(01:24:21):
a twohunder with two white characters, that our only black
character with any screen time is brutally murdered. Not awesome,
but also that like they don't know what to do
with Zuri as a character period. She is like fiance
dot jpeg, Like there is nothing to her other than

(01:24:42):
I love Bradley, Like where's Bradley, Where's Bradley?

Speaker 4 (01:24:46):
Say?

Speaker 3 (01:24:47):
Oh no, those are the three things she does in
the movie. I love Bradley. Where's Bradley? Ah, that's what
she does.

Speaker 2 (01:24:55):
And it's just like.

Speaker 3 (01:24:58):
There are opportunities to show more nuance with the gender
dynamics in this movie that it just feels like kind
of perhaps a skill issue. And also like when you
have Sam Raimi jump scares and like all this, like
if you have someone who's like a really fun director
making the world interesting to watch, like it's maybe easier

(01:25:22):
to get away with. But yeah, as far as like
classifying this as a feminist revenge tale, it's just too
much of a mess and not it's not saying really
anything Like I again, I'm so cool with a woman
being unhinged at the end, Like there are feminist movies
that end with a woman being unhinged. Yeah, this is

(01:25:43):
just simply not one of them. I don't think.

Speaker 2 (01:25:45):
Well, I mean speaking to the Sam Raimi of it all,
because his style is so distinct and because his movies
are as are often very heightened, like I can excuse
a series of stock characters or even like stock tropy,
sexism or just like kind of tropes in general in

(01:26:06):
something so stylized and heightened because that almost seems like
an intentional part of the style. But like to your point, Jamie,
I feel like it needs to then eventually be subverted
or more nuanced, has to be sprinkled in, or something
else needs to happen where there's active commentary or something.

(01:26:30):
There is a moment where and let me know what
you both think of this, where it's the scene where
Linda poisons Bradley and pretends like she's castrating him, And
while she's doing that, she's giving this monologue where she says,
you know, I know how hard this must be for you,

(01:26:51):
not being in control. You're not used to being in
this shall we say submissive position. I mean, it's natural
for you to not be able to take orders from me,
to have to depend on me for your survival. It's
just natural. It's your biology. And I wasn't sure what
she meant by that, because is she talking about gender

(01:27:13):
in the sense that.

Speaker 3 (01:27:14):
Like talking about like NEPO, right is? I think because
and again this is like a very binary gender approach
to take, but I also think that this movie has
a very binary approach to gender. I think she's talking
about gender because she's allegedly cutting his dick.

Speaker 2 (01:27:31):
Off, right, because she's because if she is talking about gender,
it seems like she's referring to the fact that like
men tend to assume more dominant roles in society and
women tend to assume more submissive roles. But that's not biology,
that's socialization. But she's labeling it as biology. So that's

(01:27:51):
why I wasn't I wasn't sure what she meant, because
she could be talking about his parents, especially his dad,
who was this big, powerful boss man who was used
to being in a position of power, because so much
of this movie is about power and shifting power and
abusing power. But yeah, I didn't know what she was

(01:28:16):
talking about.

Speaker 3 (01:28:18):
I think I think again this is this is like
tied into and I'm specifically talking about I think the
men's version of a good for her ending that this
is just a feature, right, Like it's you make you
do a monologue and then you and you break the
fourth wall at the end, and like this it almost
just feels like a way to end a movie versus

(01:28:41):
like the way this movie should have ended. It feels
very like shoehorned in and it's it's like, yeah, that
speech to be felt just again out of step with
out of step with who she's and at the end,
I think ending on such a clear like yay Linda,
like I want to be on board, but we know

(01:29:03):
too much. We know too much to just be like
yay Linda. We have too much information and the dynamic
is too complicated, and it feels like it's like undercutting
both characters to end the movie in that binary of
a way.

Speaker 2 (01:29:20):
It feels like it's intentional that she ends up being
not especially sympathetic or empathetic.

Speaker 3 (01:29:28):
Yeah, which is fine. She hasn't just to be sympathetic,
but it.

Speaker 2 (01:29:30):
Does it does make the end harder for me to digest.
Fun fact, so this script was being knocked around since
I think, like twenty nineteen.

Speaker 3 (01:29:42):
That would make sense. That's when every movie ended with
a good for her smirks.

Speaker 2 (01:29:46):
True, it didn't start to enter more of a significant
like pre production period until several years later, and then
in twenty twenty four is when Rachel mcadam's was brought
on board and she was like entering negotiations to be
the star of the movie, and Sam Raimi specifically wanted

(01:30:09):
her for the role because he had worked with her
previously in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, of course,
but he considered her character to be underutilized.

Speaker 3 (01:30:23):
In I don't even remember that she was in that movie,
and I thought.

Speaker 2 (01:30:28):
She, I guess barely is. And it's like, Okay, well, Sam,
you directed that movie. So whose fault is.

Speaker 3 (01:30:35):
It that she was unialized?

Speaker 4 (01:30:37):
Fair?

Speaker 3 (01:30:37):
But I also think probably Marvel. I feel I feel
like the creative person involved in it a franchise movie,
has any agency over what happened.

Speaker 2 (01:30:46):
This is true, but that's why he was like, I
want to showcase her talent more in a in a
different project where she can be the star.

Speaker 3 (01:30:56):
Right, which he did do. And so yeah, and I
think it makes sense for Rachel mccadams if she has
tried to, Like she doesn't often play characters like this.
I don't think I've ever seen her in a horror movie,
or at least not in the last decade. Like it all,
like Rachel McAdams is. She's just so good. She's one
of our best. I feel like she should have won

(01:31:17):
an Oscar for being in Are You There?

Speaker 4 (01:31:19):
God?

Speaker 3 (01:31:19):
It to me, Margaret, she's so good in it. She
could do so much. I just think that, yeah, like
it has nothing to do with the characters, and I
don't even really think has very much to do with
the direction. It's just like the way that the character
is written is just such a is so disjointed and messy,
and yeah, I don't know, Yeah, is there other stuff?

(01:31:42):
Was there anything else that you'll wanted to get into.

Speaker 2 (01:31:45):
I think it's worth mentioning that these types of survival
stories are almost always told through a very Western lens,
because so much of Western culture has been kind of
built around removing humans from nature, whereas indigenous cultures are

(01:32:07):
all about having a symbiotic relationship with nature and being
stewards of the land. So a story like this is
just like, to me, so obviously like western kind of
imperial vibes, because it's like, well, you wouldn't even have
to try so hard to survive in a situation like
this if you hadn't been so significantly removed from nature

(01:32:33):
to begin with, kind of thing.

Speaker 4 (01:32:35):
Yeah, Yeah, that's definitely, that's definitely the case in terms
of like people from cultures that live close to the
land don't experience being trapped in the wilderness as a
survival situation. In the same way, it can be more
like like if someone lives a subsistence lifestyle and they

(01:32:55):
I don't know, something happens with their boat and they're
stuck on an island for a while, or there's a storm,
they're stuck out on a hunting trip or anything like that.
Like that is almost the equivalent of like, oh, man,
I went into the city and I like missed the
last bus home, right, and you know, it's an annoying maybe,
but it's not. It's not life or death. In the

(01:33:15):
same way, it's like, oh, I had to do something
else or be creative or sleep in a place I
would rather not have slept if I had caught the bus, right.
And that's not universal in every culture, of course. For sure,
it's definitely a pattern in terms of, you know, the
closer side, the more wilderness is part of your everyday life,
the less of an emergency it is to be stuck

(01:33:36):
in it.

Speaker 3 (01:33:37):
For sure, I guess this is if this is like
to putting you on the spot, please feel free to disregard.
But if because this is like so rare to see
women in a survivalist plot, is there something that you
would like to see? Is there like anything that sticks
out is like, well, why the hell isn't there a
movie about this person dynamic situation or I don't know.

Speaker 4 (01:34:01):
That's a really good question. I want to see more
stories about girls in survival. I'm writing a book actually
right now that's like a middle grade book about a
girl who's lost in the woods with her dog, just
because that's like that, I want it to exist.

Speaker 3 (01:34:15):
Look up Baby Island.

Speaker 4 (01:34:18):
And yeah, I think like fiction and nonfiction are different,
right in terms of how these stories are told. So
in nonfiction, it's always interesting to see sort of how
women handle these situations, and women are often I think
there's a presumption that women in a wilderness survival situation
are less capable than men, and that often is not

(01:34:39):
the case when it actually plays out in real life,
and you will see like women surviving where men don't,
or women trying to survive where men might, I don't know,
immediately decide that they should just kill themselves to save
themselves suffering, whereas women will sort of fight fight for longer.
And that's obviously on a very case by case basis,
but I think that in fictional stories you will see

(01:35:03):
a lot more assumptions coming into play, where like a
woman in a survival situation is sort of becoming more
quote unquote manly in order to survive, and that is
not necessarily the case. One of my one of my
favorite survival stories is about Maurice and Marilyn Bailey, and
there's an incredible book about them that came out recently

(01:35:23):
called A Marriage at Sea, and this couple are stranded
on a lifeboat for months and Maurice just immediately is
like throwing in the towel like time to commit suicide,
and Marilyn sort of saves them both. And also while
she's doing it, is like sketching dresses she wants to
sew in her notebook for when she gets home and

(01:35:45):
planning dinner party she's gonna wear.

Speaker 3 (01:35:47):
Them at and then are so awesome.

Speaker 4 (01:35:50):
And it's these things that would be seen as dichotomus,
like that being so sort of stereotypically feminine, while she's
also like harnessing sea turtles to pull them through the
ocean to try to like go against the current toward
the land.

Speaker 5 (01:36:03):
Like the truth is that femininity is not at odds.

Speaker 4 (01:36:07):
With survival and it's not less tough, and that is
a truth that is very hard to hold in fiction.
For people. But it's a really interesting pattern that I
see playing out, and I would love to see more
of that reflected, sort of like skills that are seen
as traditionally female being respected for the survival skills that
they are as opposed to seeming beside the point or irrelevant, right,

(01:36:33):
you know the idea that like women will get on
a desert island be like I broken nail, you know,
like those sort of tropes, or they like become masculine
and that's how they're like becoming tough, Whereas in real
life what you see is like, obviously not every woman
is feminine, but like a woman who is feminine that
is not in conflict with her being a really badass

(01:36:53):
survivor and it can even sort of augment her skills.
And I think that's like a really interesting thing I
never see portrayed in stories.

Speaker 3 (01:37:02):
Yeah, that like femininity is not disqualifying to survive and
can be an asset.

Speaker 5 (01:37:07):
Yeah exactly, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:37:10):
Well, someday, someday, you know, women will be allowed to
write a movie and maybe we'll see it.

Speaker 2 (01:37:17):
I'm fingers crossed.

Speaker 3 (01:37:20):
I'm so excited for your ya book.

Speaker 4 (01:37:23):
That's incredible, Thank you, thank you that one.

Speaker 2 (01:37:25):
That one.

Speaker 4 (01:37:27):
I've been wanting to do that.

Speaker 3 (01:37:28):
For a while, absolutely amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:37:32):
Well does the movie pass the Bechdel test?

Speaker 4 (01:37:35):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (01:37:40):
I think on it. You could argue on a technicality,
but I'm not really inclined to give it to it.
But what do you think, Caitlin, Well.

Speaker 2 (01:37:47):
Okay, there's a there's a moment where Linda talks to
her colleague in the office who's a woman, but they
mostly talk about that guy Donovan, So that one I
don't think count does she have a name? If so,
we barely learn it, So let's say no to that.
Linda does talk to Zuri, but I think pretty exclusively.

(01:38:09):
And then Linda talks to that woman journalist at the
very end who's interviewing.

Speaker 3 (01:38:15):
What I had marked as like what she I guess
there might be what I'll open up for a possibility
is there might be a one pass in Zuri and
Linda talking the second time where she's like, oh, is
it just just you? But the subtext to that conversation,
I would still say, the subtext to that conversation is

(01:38:36):
very much Bradley.

Speaker 2 (01:38:37):
It's where's Bradley?

Speaker 3 (01:38:39):
Yeah, where's Bradley? Ah? Yeah. So even if there's a
tech I'm sure it passest a technicality somewhere, but spiritually
I would say nor agree.

Speaker 4 (01:38:51):
Yeah, I don't think it does.

Speaker 2 (01:38:53):
But what about the Bechdel cast nipple scale, where we
rate the movie based on a scale of zero to
five nipples. Examining the movie through an intersectional feminist lens,
I feel like maybe a two for this one, two
two and a half. I do appreciate that it is

(01:39:14):
a survival story about a woman and showcasing a woman's
ability to survive and her skills that she has developed.
I think that's cool, and I wish there were more
stories with that basic premise. I think the movie starts

(01:39:35):
to explore potentially interesting things about shifting power dynamics and
abuse of power regardless of the gender of the person
who holds the power. But the movie, again, as we've discussed,
just like Still Employees sexist tropes, so I'm not as

(01:39:59):
inclined to find it that interesting. Yeah, yeah, I think
two and a half and I'll give one to Rachel McAdams,
one to Edel who plays Zuri, and my half nipple
will go to the bore. Wow, that boar did nothing wrong.

Speaker 3 (01:40:23):
I'll go to it and a half as well. Yeah,
I think that this movie is fun. It is like
not setting back feminism, but it's not really it's I
would say it is. It is not doing anything for
it either. It is kind of which is why I'm
giving it a basically neutral score. I like Linda as
a character, and I feel like ultimately the way that

(01:40:46):
she's characterized kind of loses its way in a way
that I wish it hadn't. But great performance from Rachel McAdams,
and yeah, I think that's all I have to say.
So I'm gonna go two and a half nipples given
wonder Linda, Wonder Rachel, and half to my favorite character
from Lost, John Locke.

Speaker 2 (01:41:08):
Of course. Yeah, Blair, how about you.

Speaker 4 (01:41:11):
I was also independently thinking two to two and a
half stars, but I think you're You're right. There's some
things that's doing right, Like she has more survival skills
than him.

Speaker 5 (01:41:20):
So I'll do two and a half.

Speaker 4 (01:41:22):
I'll do the higher end of that scale. And I
am giving I think, all of my nipples to the
fact that this island has no bugs, because this island
would be so full of sandflies and fleas and mosquitoes,
and like everyone would just be ab look at have
like skin that looks like it's raw bumps constantly all

(01:41:42):
the time, and I appreciate it that that wasn't part
of the film.

Speaker 5 (01:41:46):
And it also seems like an island I want to
go to for that reason.

Speaker 3 (01:41:49):
So totally let it where it is due. Yeah, I mean,
apparently it is a destination. There is a mansion there,
so maybe that's why they built the freaky mansion. It's
because of the buglass island.

Speaker 4 (01:42:01):
Yeah, I'm thinking, how did they get rid of the
bugs for.

Speaker 2 (01:42:04):
The filming pesticides? The billionaire who owns the house probably
just dumped a bunch of pesticides all over the island.

Speaker 4 (01:42:11):
You know what, maybe there are secret tropical places without bugs,
but it's only owned by billionaires. They've snapped them up
and that's why the rest of us don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:42:19):
Yeah. Oh, could be brutal in any case, Blair, thank
you so much for joining us for this discussion. Thank
you for having me come back any time. I would
love to tell us where people can follow your work,
listen to your podcast, read your books, etc.

Speaker 5 (01:42:37):
So I'm the author of a couple different books.

Speaker 4 (01:42:40):
Most relevant to the topics here probably is the novel
Small Game, which is about a survival reality show where
the crew disappears and the survivors have to actually survive
and figure out where that line is between choosing to
partake in a survival game and actually being in a
survival situation.

Speaker 5 (01:42:58):
And you know, the women do great in that story.

Speaker 4 (01:43:03):
And more relevantly perhaps is that I'm now hosting a
podcast called What to Carry, What to Burn, and in
each episode, I tell a true survival story and they're
really interesting. I really loved researching them, and I was
thinking about them a lot with this film, like there's
you know, like an example would be this island that

(01:43:25):
two shipwrecks happened on at the same time, and one
of the shipwrecks the people all work together and they
ended up like building society from scratch and then building
a ship and sailing away to safety after several years,
and every single person lived and the other shipwreck on
the same island at the same time. Everyone was very

(01:43:46):
stuck in their roles, like the captain of the ship
was like I'm the captain, and they tried to be
very hierarchical, and it immediately devolved into everyone hunting each
other for cannibalism woo. So I think these stories are
very interesting if you are interested in them. Also, come
on over to What to Carry, What to Burn?

Speaker 2 (01:44:03):
Totally.

Speaker 3 (01:44:03):
Yeah, gosh, oh Clair, you're the coolest. Thank you so
much for coving on this show.

Speaker 2 (01:44:08):
Oh my gosh, thank you you're the best cool.

Speaker 3 (01:44:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:44:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:44:13):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:44:14):
You can find us in all the regular places, mostly
Instagram at Patreon aka Matreon, where every month, uh, we
cover a very specific topic of ours. Are your choosing
this this month? It's it's me because it's my birthday month,
and so we're covering a Minions movie. And if you
don't like it, please don't unsubscribe. It is the best

(01:44:35):
way to support the show and we need you to
so badly.

Speaker 2 (01:44:37):
You never who knows how to survive the Dominions Dominions?

Speaker 3 (01:44:42):
Yeah, yeah, I think the Minions are spreading the idea
that men are inherently survived, like the survived. There's no
women Minions until my Minion movie and then things change. Yeah.
And also Minions they're cheating because they can't die, so
I think that they would actually die if they could,
but they can so they don't. That's glad for that.

(01:45:02):
I'm so glad for that. I don't think I'd be
able to handle a.

Speaker 2 (01:45:06):
Dead Menion Kevin Laimon, may he live forever and ever.

Speaker 3 (01:45:11):
I don't think we have a say.

Speaker 2 (01:45:12):
We don't have a choice.

Speaker 3 (01:45:13):
He can't die, and and thank and thank Minion God
for that. All right, Well with that, let's go take
our bird and good for hers all all the way
down the island.

Speaker 2 (01:45:27):
Yeah, bye, bye bye.

Speaker 3 (01:45:34):
The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted and
produced by Me Jamie Loftus and.

Speaker 2 (01:45:39):
Me Caitlyn Durrante. The podcast is also produced by Sophie Lichtermann.

Speaker 3 (01:45:44):
And edited by Caitlyn Durrante. Ever heard of Them?

Speaker 2 (01:45:47):
That's me? And our logo and merch and all of
our artwork, in fact are designed by Jamie Loftus, Ever
heard of her?

Speaker 3 (01:45:55):
Oh my God? And our theme song, by the way,
was composed by Mike Kaplan with vocals by Katherine Voskrasinski.
Iconic and especial thanks to the one and only Aristotle Ascevedo.

Speaker 2 (01:46:07):
For more information about the podcast, please visit Linktree Slash
Spectelcast