March 15, 2024 • 26 mins
You asked, we answered! In this episode, Jess & Susie take a trip down memory lane — responding to “in retrospect” moments shared by listeners (you!). From a generation named after Jordan Catalano of “My So Called Life” to Brandy and Monica’s faux-feud in “The Boy Is Mine,” here are some moments from the 90s that you can’t stop thinking about.
FOR MORE:
- Meet Generation Catalano (Slate, 2011)
- Monica on 25 Years of ‘The Boy Is Mine’ (The Hollywood Reporter, 2023)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
This was exactly the thing that My So Called Life
was trying to counter, but instead of lasting one season,
lasted many seasons, and one of the critics actually said
it was arguably one of the worst long running.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Shows on television.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
I'm Jessica Bennett and I'm Susie Bannacarum.
Speaker 4 (00:22):
And this is in retrospect, where each week we revisit
a cultural moment from the past that shaped us.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
And that we just can't stop thinking about.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
Today, we're delving into some of the great ideas that you,
our listeners, have sent in. We've been asking for your suggestions,
and these are some of the moments that you can't.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Stop thinking about.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Jess people sent in so many good ideas, and some
of them were things we had thought of, but some
of them weren't. And this first one we're going to
talk about was something I didn't even know existed, which
is a suggestion that we talk about Generation Catillano, which
is based on a character in My So Called Life,
a show you and I were both obsessed with.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Will you tell us about it?
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (01:03):
So, Generation Catialana is based on Jordan Catalano. Snaps to Lisa,
who sent this in, because I am still in love
with Jordan Catalano.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Yes, me too, the fact that we come here, let's
keep it like our secret.
Speaker 4 (01:21):
He was played by Jared Letter, And to be clear,
I'm not saying this about Jordan Letter.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
I'm saying it about the character.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
But my so called life was this show that ran
for one season, tragically only one ragide and it was
a high school drama.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
It made Claire Dance famous.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
She played the lead character who was also the narrator,
Angela Chase, and Angela's love interest was Jordan Catalano.
Speaker 5 (01:45):
The thought that I might be seeing Jordan Catalano in
a few hours was like impossible to comprehend.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
There was also her two best friends, Ricky and ray Yanne.
This was a high school drama that didn't have the
kind of sack grend earnestness or like after school special
sense vibes that like Thousands Creek did. It was for
emo types who wore flannel and docs and were like
really in their feelings.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Yeah, so I wore flannel and docs, but I would
never have described myself as emo. But when you say that,
I feel like I should confess that I wrote really dark,
lame poetry at this time of my life, so maybe
I did qualify as EMO. But this concept that Lisa
sent in, this concept of generation cattleano, I had not
heard about this before.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
What does it mean?
Speaker 4 (02:34):
It basically describes where you and I meet, which is
this generation between gen X and millennials. Like I'm a millennial,
you are gen X, but we have this focal point,
this reference between us.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Yes, because I never really felt quite gen X. So
I love that there's this other mic, the other way.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Of saying cusp right, yeah, Like it's more fun.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
And actually I feel like we should note that I
mentioned the tragedy my circle.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Life only ran for one season.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
And that was despite the best efforts of our producer, Lauren,
who when she was a teenager wrote many letters to
the creators.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Of that show to try to get it to continue.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
And I remember that big like such a thing, like
we were devastated, devastated.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
I was devastated when it was canceled. It was kind
of like Freaks and Geeks. Although I did not watch
Freaks and Geeks when it was actually on the air,
I watched it many years later, so I did not feel.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
That tragedy when it was canceled after one year.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Right, But I remember being so upset when my Socles
life was canceled.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
I rewatched My Circled Life a fe years ago and
it does hold up, like I cried.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Oh, it really brought me back.
Speaker 6 (03:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
It was a high school drama. It was like love interests, friends, parents.
There was a coming out story with Ricky, but it
just had so much raw emotion behind it, and it
really brought me back to that age.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Oh God, I really should rewatch it too.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
And I feel like this is a good time for
me to tell you about my proudest fashion moment of
all time, which is that when I was at ABC News,
I interviewed Claire Danes for.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Something Oh you did.
Speaker 6 (04:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
I was wearing like a cool black suit.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Yeah, and I was wearing these baby blue sneakers with it,
which wasn't like so common at that time, and she
was like, I really like your sneakers.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Oh that's cool. Was this wait? This was later? This
was like Homeland era.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Yeah, this was Homeland air.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
This was like when I was working in news, so
I must have already been in my thirties.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
I feel like we should also note that in the
show she had this like dark red hair kind of
like long Bob, and I spent so long trying to
get that hair color it would never really work. And
my hair because I have dark brown hair, like everyone
wanted that hair.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Yes, who is a battlefield for your heart?
Speaker 7 (04:51):
So when brand Graft told me my hair was only
the deck, I had to listen.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Well, she just was very cool, even though she wasn't.
The character she was playing wasn't supposed to be popular
or cool in the way the traditional.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Teen shows set that up.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
So that's I think the other reason it felt very
relatable because she was a cool person, but she wasn't
necessarily cool in high school, which is not the same
thing people.
Speaker 8 (05:15):
Always say, how you should be yourself, Like yourself is
this definite thing like a toaster or something.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
She was saying the uncool thing. Yeah, that you were
thinking on the inside, which is like why won't this
guy acknowledge me? Like there's something here, we feel something.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
And there was so.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
Many just like tense, so rare, like longing stairs through
the hallway, Oh my god. But then he'd like ignore
her later, which anyone who's been in high school and
had love interests remembers, Yes, but particularly maybe in this
time and but she like says it out loud, Like
there's a scene where she's like, why are you like this?
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Why are you like this?
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Like what like how you are?
Speaker 1 (06:00):
I do want to say that Lisa is not the
only person who suggested My So Called Life. Actually, my
friend Lauren's husband has become addicted to the show. She
said she got him addicted to it. And Lauren is
an old friend of mine from ABC, and she sent
me a text saying he thought we should do My
So Called Life or Working Girl because we've mentioned that
movie a few times and I think that's a really
(06:21):
good idea. He also wanted to give us a little
intel on something we talked about in the Amy Fisher episode,
which is that Joey Betafuco was really into arm wrestling,
and he wanted to let us know that there was
an effort in the eighties to make Heies Digg's arm
wrestling a thing on Long Island.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
So he just wanted to give a little pizza.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Yes, wanted to update on that a little piece of
Long Island history.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
I'm sure my Long Island relatives so ill appreciate that.
Let's get to our next suggestion. This one came from
(07:10):
again a number of people, Betsy Watson, Jamie Kramer, and
Shannon Paris, thank you all for writing in. And this
is that moment between Nancy Kerrigan and Tanya Harding.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
The infamous clubbing heard around the world.
Speaker 7 (07:24):
Yeah, Kerrigan was hit several times on the leg around
the knee by what's being described as.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
A club of some sort. So I definitely remember this.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
This was a story I was very into and for
people who haven't seen it, Eitania is.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Such a good movie about this.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
But the background here is basically that in nineteen ninety four,
Harding and Kerrigan were two of the best ice skaters
in the world. Tanya Harding has delivered her challenge.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Will it be enough for the national title?
Speaker 2 (07:53):
You'll find out when.
Speaker 5 (07:54):
We come back, as Nancy Carragrin looks on.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
And they had always been pitted against each other because
Nancy Kerrigan was this kind of like sweet girl next
door and Kanye Harding had this kind of like trashy,
cheap vibe that people often commented on, which feels really
nasty in retrospect.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Tanya has a more complicated life than a lot of
these other women competing here.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
I mean, she was poor, she didn't come from money.
She had a hard upbringing. She couldn't afford the fancy
literally uniforms, whereas Nancy Krigan was like this beautiful kind
of upper crust type, doesn't she look all?
Speaker 2 (08:34):
She looks angel Well.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
That's actually one of the interesting things about the stories.
It turns out they actually were raised in similar economic conditions.
Like Nancy wasn't from that well off of family, but
Nancy had a loving family who supported her, and Tanya's
mother was by all accounts pretty abusive to Tanya.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Her upbringing was really unstable.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
But the controversy itself was that they are about to
compete against each other in the Olympics and Tanya Harding's
husband at the time orchestrates an attack on Nancy Kerrigan.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
In which somebody hits her leg with a crowbar.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Correct I don't know if it was with a crowbar,
but basically she's coming off the ice where she's practicing.
There are cameras all around, and this sky comes out
of nowhere and hits her knee, trying to make it
so that she can't compete some hard art black nick.
And in the end she does compete, and she does
(09:33):
really well and Tanya Harding does really badly.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Nancy Kerrigan skated the performance of her life.
Speaker 8 (09:38):
Gathery Devitt wound up seventh, Tanya Harding eighth.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
But the intention here was to derail her career, and
because there were all these cameras around, it was captured
and so it was this really huge national story. And
then over time it came out that actually it was
Tanya Harding's husband who orchestrated this. There was some question
about whether or not on You herself had been involved
(10:02):
in the attack, and eventually she did plead guilty to
conspiracy to hinder prosecution for trying to cover up for him.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
But to be clear, this happened in real side, Like
do you remember watching as I may?
Speaker 3 (10:13):
I remember I was like so excited. I love the
ice skating in the Olympics.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
I remember being with my parents and the scene of
Nancy Kerrigan in all white on the ground holding her legs,
crying and saying like my leg or.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
My life is something?
Speaker 4 (10:28):
Why that was played on repeat, on repeat and repeater.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
It was like the cover of every sory.
Speaker 4 (10:33):
I so distinctly remembered watching that and it being everywhere.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Yeah, and also just the unfolding of was Tanya involved,
wasn't she like that whole kind of mystery, and then
the unpeeling of it, I think just really captured the
imagination for a long time and it became a classic
comedian narrative which as you and I know, people love,
which is it was really framed as good versus evil. Right,
Nancy was good, Tanya Harding was evil, and you know,
(11:00):
this effectively ended Tanya Harding's career. But then it got
a revisiting with this movie E Tanya, and it really
added more nuance to the picture. So that has changed
the way a lot of people thought about it. At
the time.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
There was not a lot of nuance.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
When that revisitation occurred.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
One of those layers that was peeled back, like you mentioned,
is that turned out she was in this very abusive
relationship with the ex husband, Jeff Glouley, who was then
later found to have committed the crime or orchestrated the crime.
And so that too was just a complexity that was
not there in this sort of good evil narrative.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Speaking of feuds women who have been pitted against each other,
I think the next one is a suggestion that we
talk about Brandy versus Monica and The Boy's Mind. This
came in via Ayisha Johnson and also Jenna McCollum.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
Okay, so I remember this so much because I loved
this song. This was like the jam of the of
nineteen ninety eight. It was a song called the Boy
Is Mine by Brandy and Monica. It was a duet
and at the time Brandy and Monica were both pretty
popular and well respected singers in their own right. They
(12:14):
were also notably teenagers. And yet, as often happens when
there are two women doing somewhat similar things, and like
you can't possibly have two of them, and so all
these rumors started sprouting up that they were in this feud,
and so then I just learned this.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
In doing additional research.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
I thought that the feud began with the song because
in the song, they're basically fighting over a boy.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Right, It's like that boy is mine.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
No, he's mine, Yeah, he's mine. I'm sorry, you seem
to be confused. He belongs to me. The boy is mine,
you know, and on and on. But actually I read
that in fact, the rumors of the feud had gotten
started earlier, and so this song was originally written as
a solo song. For Brandy, but she brought in Monica
to do it a duet so they could.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Like squash their beef or their entry beef or whatever
it was.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Weren't there rumors that the feud was kind of manufactured
to get them both attention, But then eventually it became
so real that there was like an incident at the Grammys.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
Yeah, there was an incident took the Grammys, where like
maybe they got into a fight of some kind, And
so there was always this sense around this that was
this real? Was this manufactured by the producers? And certainly
like the tabloids who at that time were running the
world didn't seem to care.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
So the feud was everywhere.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
The feud was everywhere. But one of the things I
read in preparing for this was that it's kind of
an enduring mystery, right, like they've never really addressed what
caused the actual break between them, because then they really
weren't friends for a really long time. And recently they
did this versus battle in twenty twenty. They did it,
Oh yeah, I remember, yeah, And they said during that
(13:52):
that they hadn't spoken in eight years.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Believe it or not, is our first time in the
same room for hell long eight I think eight or nine.
That's long done. That's too long. It really did become
a real thing, but we still don't really know why.
Speaker 4 (14:05):
So actually this is a random side but Jessica Bennett,
one of my doppelgangers, who was a writer for Vibe,
I frequently get her Google alerts, and recently one of
her Google alerts was an interview with Monica Wow, and
I was like, oh my god, thank you.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
This is so useful. Anyway, funny, small world.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
But in this interview with her, Monica said, I wish
people would stop putting the two of us against each
other and stop attempting to compare who sings better, who
looks better? Who I did the other one, because I
never came into the space with the spirit of competition anyway.
And I think that what we now kind of understand
is that, yeah, like they were two really different people.
Maybe they didn't totally get along, but like who cares.
(14:46):
Artists don't have to get along. But the fact that
they were these two young teenage black women who were
operating in the same space created this storm and probably
ultimately made that song do better.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Like that song was everywhere.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Yeah, it's an iconic every word me too, and I
can never recite the words to songs. Like an ongoing
joke about me with my friends is that I get
every word wrong in a song, but I know all
the words so the boys.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
To be clear, we had, in fact, thought about doing
a whole episode on this, but it's too expensive to license.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Yes, yes, I will say that there's obviously still a
lot of interest in this because that Versus Battle I
mentioned six million people tuned in it.
Speaker 4 (15:26):
Liah Kamala Harris, Oh my god, yes, she was on it.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
She appeared on the live stream with Monica and Brandy.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
I thought that was hilarious.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
And I just wanted to thank you ladies, just you,
plans you stars you.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
And did she like was she just a fan or
did ye?
Speaker 1 (15:47):
She was encouraging people to vote, so it was a
way to get out the vote, but I think also
she is a fan.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
I love that.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
Okay, So there's another show that I want to talk
about that Claudia Juliana sent in and I just remember
occasionally this show would be on TV. It must have
not been on cable because we didn't have cable, and
so like when there was nothing else on, I would
watch this show and I always hated it so much.
And that show is Seventh Heaven.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Yeah, Seventh Heaven, which was objectively speaking, a pretty terrible show.
When Claudia Juliana sent this in, she said that we
should talk about how nineties TV was very into life,
lesson messaging, and very Christian forward, and I think that's true.
It was really the era of after school specials and
this show, which I never watched, Touch by an Angel
was very popular. But I did watch Seventh Heaven, and
(16:51):
looking back on it is absolutely wild. It was about
a minister and his wife raising seven children, so it
was kind of Chris. Yeah, it was overtly Christian. There
was so much like saccharine morality. Every episode was like
someone had a secret or had done something wrong, and
then eventually it was like discovered and solved, and then
they each would get like a speech from either their
(17:13):
minister father or his angelic blonde wife about how to.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Do the right thing.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
And this is the show that gave us Jessica Bielle.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Correct, it is the show that gave us Jessica bille
And also, unfortunately, it is the show that gave us
Stephen Collins, who played the minister Dad and turned out
to be a pedophile.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4 (17:32):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
In twenty fourteen, he confessed to sexually abusing underage girls,
one of whom was ten, after audio of him talking
about it in a marriage counseling session leaked.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
So he didn't even deny it.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
He actually said he had sexually abused three underage girls,
but denied being a pedophile.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
So not a lot of people watch the show anymore.
I think at that time it got pulled from rerams.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
But I will say that seventh heeven was one of
the first major hits for the w B, which people
may not remember, but it was a teen channel that
went from nineteen ninety five to two thousand and six
when it became Dawson's Creek.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
The c W. Yes, it gave us Dawson's Creek.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
And probably so many other shows, right, so many other shows.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
This was really like the teen cable channel, and then
it merged with another channel to become the CW and
then that became the teen channel.
Speaker 4 (18:20):
Okay, And actually it's funny that you say this because
this is sort of like where we started this conversation
on my so called life, which was the kind of
anti After School teen special.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Yes, this was exactly the thing that my so called
life was trying to counter, but instead of lasting one season,
lasted many seasons, and one of the critics actually said
it was arguably one of the worst long running.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Shows on television.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Yeah, because it was just like Christian propaganda essentially.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Oh wow. I should also mention here that.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
There's this guy who's been watching Seventh Even and doing
recaps on TikTok that.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Are always going viral amazing and they're very funny.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Wait, do you know his name?
Speaker 2 (18:57):
His name is Heartthrop So check out his tiktoks.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
Oh my god. Okay, it's like heart Throb Heart, but
heart Robert.
Speaker 6 (19:07):
I'm rewatching Seventh Heaven. Please just listen to the plot
this episode I just finished, where a white guy is
a victim of racism. Simon finds a homeless girl on
the street and he brings her home to keep her
is a pet. This episode with a drunk ant is
so good. Simon's friend has an older sister. Her name
is Karen, and she isn't a gang white Christian problems
of the nineties, So, you know, like.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
All good things, TikTok has found a way to make
Seventh Heaven funny. It's never intentionally funny, but it is
very funny to look back on.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
I wonder has TikTok discovered my so called life yet?
Speaker 1 (19:38):
I don't know, but I feel like a lot of
these TikTok recaps are for shows that are ridiculous, and
I hope that they are not making fun of my
so called life.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
That's true.
Speaker 4 (19:47):
Although do you remember I guess I forgot like ten
years ago on Tumblr the clar Dance cry face was
a big meme.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Oh really, I didn't.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Know about the clar Dance cry face. I remember the
Kim Kardashian cry Yeah.
Speaker 4 (19:59):
No, before Kim Kardashian to kryface, there's a very distinct
clear Dance cry face. And I think that during the
Homeland era this is going around, but it really started
with Angela Chase. Oh you're feeling interested Google that there
were so many good things that people sent in. We
will probably do another episode devoted to them, but there
were a few that we felt like needed honorable mention. Yes,
(20:22):
so I'll start with the first one. This is from
Tara Eleene and she this was cracking me up. She
writes about the time that Tom Cruise jumped on the
couch during his interview with Oprah about how in love
he was with Katie Holmes.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
I know you remember this.
Speaker 8 (20:36):
I remember this, and I was watching it live, okay,
and then this idea that he kind of like paraded
her around and on People magazine and that party is
like she was aprized, this is this is words.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Well, there was also very obviously some tie to Scientology,
like yes, exactly gotten divorced from Nicole Kidman, and the
rumor was that he had essentially had Scientology audition girlfriends
for him.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
So he went on.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Oprah to convince people that his love for Katie Holmes
was true. But he really overdid it and literally stood
up on her couch and started jumping up.
Speaker 4 (21:14):
Because I was working in a newsroom then, and I
don't think I watched it live, but it was played
on repeat over and over. I mean that momentage like
Freeze screaming him.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
He was so out of control, he seemed unhinged.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
So it really didn't do what he was hoping, which
is quell rumors that it wasn't a real relationship. Another
honorable mention we have here is from someone named Clerby.
She was listening to our hig Yales episode and it
made her think of the color red, the Lady in Red.
She was curious when this color became the sexy color
for women, and I think that's actually a really interesting topic.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
Also, I'm thinking of that song Red Red Wine.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
I mean, I guess there's a lot of red in
a lot of places.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
I mean, I love Lady in Red.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Anyway, but yeah.
Speaker 4 (21:58):
Clarby notes that color theory, especially between men and women,
could be a good topic for us, and I totally agree.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Rebecca Carroll, who's a friend of the podcast, also messaged
me to ask if we'd considered Blue Lagoon.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
And I've never seen Blue Lagoon?
Speaker 4 (22:11):
Have you? I swear that I have seen Blue Lagoon,
but now I can't. I'm like conflating it with all
of those other type of movies.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Hold on, can we google it?
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Yeah, Well, it's I think it's vaguely pornographic.
Speaker 4 (22:24):
Maybe it was like that Sexy water movie.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Sexy Water Movie is a great way to put it.
I think it's about two very young teenagers, like stranded
on an island, but there's a lot of like nudity
in sect.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Imagine a boy who didn't know he had become a man.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
My heart's beating so fast.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Mine too.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
It's okay, yes's rick.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Yeah, So that's definitely a topic we should probably explore.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
It someh Okay, this is coming back to me now.
Speaker 4 (22:52):
And I think Brookshields has since talked about this because
she was so young and probably didn't have a lot
of agency and how she was portrayed her.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Actually, if you haven't watched the Brickshields documentary, which I
saw I went to the premiere of, that is a
great look back on her career from her perspective, and
just like how she could never win.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
She was either always accused of.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Being too sexual or not sexual enough, and that is
just like a wild thing where people would openly ask
about her virginity when she would do interviews when she
was still a teenager. It just feels crazy to look
back on. So that's a recommendation if you haven't watched that.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
And then maybe this is a good one to end on.
Speaker 4 (23:31):
But this is our friend Rachel Sklar, who is Greece obsessed,
and I think we actually probably have to come back
to this and like do more on and maybe she
needs to make a guest appearance. But she talks about
Stephanie on the step ladder in Greece too specifically.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
So funny.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
I don't really remember Greece too that well. I've definitely
seen it, but I do remember Greece. I was obsessed
with Greece. I wasn't allowed to see it when it
first came out because it was considered too racy for me,
so of course I just made me want to see it,
and I just love this movie.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
There's so much to mine in it.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
There's like Rizzo, who is just like one of the
best characters ever, and that song she sings that there
are worse things she could do than go with a
boy or two, Oh my God. And then of course
there's the Sandra d transformation that she goes from being
like sort of the sweet innocent girl next door to being.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Like bubba ba boom.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
So I really feel like Greece has so many themes
we could mind.
Speaker 4 (24:25):
I've now clicked on a link to Grease latter scene
on TikTok and there's like hundreds of videos with women
reenacting Steve Flatters stop Latters, so clearly we need to
refresh our memories of what this scene actually is.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Hilarious so I think that's enough for today, but we're
going to do more of these. We really appreciate you
guys sending them in. We love hearing from you. So
keep telling us about the moments that you think about
and that impacted you, and we'll keep sharing them.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
Susie, I'm really excited for our next episode. Can you
tell us what's in store?
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Yes, it's an interview with one of my personal heroes
and amazing editor, Jane Pratt, who was founder of the
iconic teen magazine Sassey.
Speaker 5 (25:14):
People now talk a lot about that Kurt Cobain and
Courtney love cover. Yes, I remember going into my meeting
with the publisher and having to pitch Kurt Kobain as
basically I've painted him to be like one of new
kids on the block or Backstreet boys.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
This is in retrospect. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Is there a pop culture moment you can't stop thinking
about and want us to explore in a future episode.
Email us at in retropod at gmail dot com or
find us on Instagram at in retropod.
Speaker 7 (25:53):
If you love this podcast, please rate and review us
on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you
hate it, you can post nasty comments on our Instagram,
which we may or may not delete.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
You can also find us on Instagram at Jessica Bennett
and at Susie b NYC. Also check out Jessica's books
Feminist Fight Club and This Is Eighteen.
Speaker 7 (26:11):
In Retrospect is a production of iHeart Podcasts and The Media.
Lauren Hanson is our supervising producer. Derek Clements is our
engineer and sound designer. Emily Meronoff is our producer. Sharan
Atia is our researcher and associate producer.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Our executive producer from the media is Cindy Levy. Our
executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stemp and Katrina Norbel.
Our artwork is from Pentagram. Our mixing engineer is Amanda
Rose Smith. Additional editing help from Mary Do. We are
your hosts Susie Bannaccarum and Jessica Bennett.
Speaker 7 (26:44):
We're also executive producers. For even more, check out in
retropod dot com.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
See you next week.
This was exactly the thing that My So Called Life
was trying to counter, but instead of lasting one season,
lasted many seasons, and one of the critics actually said
it was arguably one of the worst long running.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Shows on television.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
I'm Jessica Bennett and I'm Susie Bannacarum.
Speaker 4 (00:22):
And this is in retrospect, where each week we revisit
a cultural moment from the past that shaped us.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
And that we just can't stop thinking about.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
Today, we're delving into some of the great ideas that you,
our listeners, have sent in. We've been asking for your suggestions,
and these are some of the moments that you can't.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Stop thinking about.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Jess people sent in so many good ideas, and some
of them were things we had thought of, but some
of them weren't. And this first one we're going to
talk about was something I didn't even know existed, which
is a suggestion that we talk about Generation Catillano, which
is based on a character in My So Called Life,
a show you and I were both obsessed with.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Will you tell us about it?
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (01:03):
So, Generation Catialana is based on Jordan Catalano. Snaps to Lisa,
who sent this in, because I am still in love
with Jordan Catalano.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Yes, me too, the fact that we come here, let's
keep it like our secret.
Speaker 4 (01:21):
He was played by Jared Letter, And to be clear,
I'm not saying this about Jordan Letter.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
I'm saying it about the character.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
But my so called life was this show that ran
for one season, tragically only one ragide and it was
a high school drama.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
It made Claire Dance famous.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
She played the lead character who was also the narrator,
Angela Chase, and Angela's love interest was Jordan Catalano.
Speaker 5 (01:45):
The thought that I might be seeing Jordan Catalano in
a few hours was like impossible to comprehend.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
There was also her two best friends, Ricky and ray Yanne.
This was a high school drama that didn't have the
kind of sack grend earnestness or like after school special
sense vibes that like Thousands Creek did. It was for
emo types who wore flannel and docs and were like
really in their feelings.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Yeah, so I wore flannel and docs, but I would
never have described myself as emo. But when you say that,
I feel like I should confess that I wrote really dark,
lame poetry at this time of my life, so maybe
I did qualify as EMO. But this concept that Lisa
sent in, this concept of generation cattleano, I had not
heard about this before.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
What does it mean?
Speaker 4 (02:34):
It basically describes where you and I meet, which is
this generation between gen X and millennials. Like I'm a millennial,
you are gen X, but we have this focal point,
this reference between us.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Yes, because I never really felt quite gen X. So
I love that there's this other mic, the other way.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Of saying cusp right, yeah, Like it's more fun.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
And actually I feel like we should note that I
mentioned the tragedy my circle.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Life only ran for one season.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
And that was despite the best efforts of our producer, Lauren,
who when she was a teenager wrote many letters to
the creators.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Of that show to try to get it to continue.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
And I remember that big like such a thing, like
we were devastated, devastated.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
I was devastated when it was canceled. It was kind
of like Freaks and Geeks. Although I did not watch
Freaks and Geeks when it was actually on the air,
I watched it many years later, so I did not feel.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
That tragedy when it was canceled after one year.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Right, But I remember being so upset when my Socles
life was canceled.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
I rewatched My Circled Life a fe years ago and
it does hold up, like I cried.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Oh, it really brought me back.
Speaker 6 (03:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
It was a high school drama. It was like love interests, friends, parents.
There was a coming out story with Ricky, but it
just had so much raw emotion behind it, and it
really brought me back to that age.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Oh God, I really should rewatch it too.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
And I feel like this is a good time for
me to tell you about my proudest fashion moment of
all time, which is that when I was at ABC News,
I interviewed Claire Danes for.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Something Oh you did.
Speaker 6 (04:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
I was wearing like a cool black suit.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Yeah, and I was wearing these baby blue sneakers with it,
which wasn't like so common at that time, and she
was like, I really like your sneakers.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Oh that's cool. Was this wait? This was later? This
was like Homeland era.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Yeah, this was Homeland air.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
This was like when I was working in news, so
I must have already been in my thirties.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
I feel like we should also note that in the
show she had this like dark red hair kind of
like long Bob, and I spent so long trying to
get that hair color it would never really work. And
my hair because I have dark brown hair, like everyone
wanted that hair.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Yes, who is a battlefield for your heart?
Speaker 7 (04:51):
So when brand Graft told me my hair was only
the deck, I had to listen.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Well, she just was very cool, even though she wasn't.
The character she was playing wasn't supposed to be popular
or cool in the way the traditional.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Teen shows set that up.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
So that's I think the other reason it felt very
relatable because she was a cool person, but she wasn't
necessarily cool in high school, which is not the same
thing people.
Speaker 8 (05:15):
Always say, how you should be yourself, Like yourself is
this definite thing like a toaster or something.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
She was saying the uncool thing. Yeah, that you were
thinking on the inside, which is like why won't this
guy acknowledge me? Like there's something here, we feel something.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
And there was so.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
Many just like tense, so rare, like longing stairs through
the hallway, Oh my god. But then he'd like ignore
her later, which anyone who's been in high school and
had love interests remembers, Yes, but particularly maybe in this
time and but she like says it out loud, Like
there's a scene where she's like, why are you like this?
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Why are you like this?
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Like what like how you are?
Speaker 1 (06:00):
I do want to say that Lisa is not the
only person who suggested My So Called Life. Actually, my
friend Lauren's husband has become addicted to the show. She
said she got him addicted to it. And Lauren is
an old friend of mine from ABC, and she sent
me a text saying he thought we should do My
So Called Life or Working Girl because we've mentioned that
movie a few times and I think that's a really
(06:21):
good idea. He also wanted to give us a little
intel on something we talked about in the Amy Fisher episode,
which is that Joey Betafuco was really into arm wrestling,
and he wanted to let us know that there was
an effort in the eighties to make Heies Digg's arm
wrestling a thing on Long Island.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
So he just wanted to give a little pizza.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Yes, wanted to update on that a little piece of
Long Island history.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
I'm sure my Long Island relatives so ill appreciate that.
Let's get to our next suggestion. This one came from
(07:10):
again a number of people, Betsy Watson, Jamie Kramer, and
Shannon Paris, thank you all for writing in. And this
is that moment between Nancy Kerrigan and Tanya Harding.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
The infamous clubbing heard around the world.
Speaker 7 (07:24):
Yeah, Kerrigan was hit several times on the leg around
the knee by what's being described as.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
A club of some sort. So I definitely remember this.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
This was a story I was very into and for
people who haven't seen it, Eitania is.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Such a good movie about this.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
But the background here is basically that in nineteen ninety four,
Harding and Kerrigan were two of the best ice skaters
in the world. Tanya Harding has delivered her challenge.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Will it be enough for the national title?
Speaker 2 (07:53):
You'll find out when.
Speaker 5 (07:54):
We come back, as Nancy Carragrin looks on.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
And they had always been pitted against each other because
Nancy Kerrigan was this kind of like sweet girl next
door and Kanye Harding had this kind of like trashy,
cheap vibe that people often commented on, which feels really
nasty in retrospect.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Tanya has a more complicated life than a lot of
these other women competing here.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
I mean, she was poor, she didn't come from money.
She had a hard upbringing. She couldn't afford the fancy
literally uniforms, whereas Nancy Krigan was like this beautiful kind
of upper crust type, doesn't she look all?
Speaker 2 (08:34):
She looks angel Well.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
That's actually one of the interesting things about the stories.
It turns out they actually were raised in similar economic conditions.
Like Nancy wasn't from that well off of family, but
Nancy had a loving family who supported her, and Tanya's
mother was by all accounts pretty abusive to Tanya.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Her upbringing was really unstable.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
But the controversy itself was that they are about to
compete against each other in the Olympics and Tanya Harding's
husband at the time orchestrates an attack on Nancy Kerrigan.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
In which somebody hits her leg with a crowbar.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Correct I don't know if it was with a crowbar,
but basically she's coming off the ice where she's practicing.
There are cameras all around, and this sky comes out
of nowhere and hits her knee, trying to make it
so that she can't compete some hard art black nick.
And in the end she does compete, and she does
(09:33):
really well and Tanya Harding does really badly.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Nancy Kerrigan skated the performance of her life.
Speaker 8 (09:38):
Gathery Devitt wound up seventh, Tanya Harding eighth.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
But the intention here was to derail her career, and
because there were all these cameras around, it was captured
and so it was this really huge national story. And
then over time it came out that actually it was
Tanya Harding's husband who orchestrated this. There was some question
about whether or not on You herself had been involved
(10:02):
in the attack, and eventually she did plead guilty to
conspiracy to hinder prosecution for trying to cover up for him.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
But to be clear, this happened in real side, Like
do you remember watching as I may?
Speaker 3 (10:13):
I remember I was like so excited. I love the
ice skating in the Olympics.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
I remember being with my parents and the scene of
Nancy Kerrigan in all white on the ground holding her legs,
crying and saying like my leg or.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
My life is something?
Speaker 4 (10:28):
Why that was played on repeat, on repeat and repeater.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
It was like the cover of every sory.
Speaker 4 (10:33):
I so distinctly remembered watching that and it being everywhere.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Yeah, and also just the unfolding of was Tanya involved,
wasn't she like that whole kind of mystery, and then
the unpeeling of it, I think just really captured the
imagination for a long time and it became a classic
comedian narrative which as you and I know, people love,
which is it was really framed as good versus evil. Right,
Nancy was good, Tanya Harding was evil, and you know,
(11:00):
this effectively ended Tanya Harding's career. But then it got
a revisiting with this movie E Tanya, and it really
added more nuance to the picture. So that has changed
the way a lot of people thought about it. At
the time.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
There was not a lot of nuance.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
When that revisitation occurred.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
One of those layers that was peeled back, like you mentioned,
is that turned out she was in this very abusive
relationship with the ex husband, Jeff Glouley, who was then
later found to have committed the crime or orchestrated the crime.
And so that too was just a complexity that was
not there in this sort of good evil narrative.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Speaking of feuds women who have been pitted against each other,
I think the next one is a suggestion that we
talk about Brandy versus Monica and The Boy's Mind. This
came in via Ayisha Johnson and also Jenna McCollum.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
Okay, so I remember this so much because I loved
this song. This was like the jam of the of
nineteen ninety eight. It was a song called the Boy
Is Mine by Brandy and Monica. It was a duet
and at the time Brandy and Monica were both pretty
popular and well respected singers in their own right. They
(12:14):
were also notably teenagers. And yet, as often happens when
there are two women doing somewhat similar things, and like
you can't possibly have two of them, and so all
these rumors started sprouting up that they were in this feud,
and so then I just learned this.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
In doing additional research.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
I thought that the feud began with the song because
in the song, they're basically fighting over a boy.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Right, It's like that boy is mine.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
No, he's mine, Yeah, he's mine. I'm sorry, you seem
to be confused. He belongs to me. The boy is mine,
you know, and on and on. But actually I read
that in fact, the rumors of the feud had gotten
started earlier, and so this song was originally written as
a solo song. For Brandy, but she brought in Monica
to do it a duet so they could.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Like squash their beef or their entry beef or whatever
it was.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Weren't there rumors that the feud was kind of manufactured
to get them both attention, But then eventually it became
so real that there was like an incident at the Grammys.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
Yeah, there was an incident took the Grammys, where like
maybe they got into a fight of some kind, And
so there was always this sense around this that was
this real? Was this manufactured by the producers? And certainly
like the tabloids who at that time were running the
world didn't seem to care.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
So the feud was everywhere.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
The feud was everywhere. But one of the things I
read in preparing for this was that it's kind of
an enduring mystery, right, like they've never really addressed what
caused the actual break between them, because then they really
weren't friends for a really long time. And recently they
did this versus battle in twenty twenty. They did it,
Oh yeah, I remember, yeah, And they said during that
(13:52):
that they hadn't spoken in eight years.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Believe it or not, is our first time in the
same room for hell long eight I think eight or nine.
That's long done. That's too long. It really did become
a real thing, but we still don't really know why.
Speaker 4 (14:05):
So actually this is a random side but Jessica Bennett,
one of my doppelgangers, who was a writer for Vibe,
I frequently get her Google alerts, and recently one of
her Google alerts was an interview with Monica Wow, and
I was like, oh my god, thank you.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
This is so useful. Anyway, funny, small world.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
But in this interview with her, Monica said, I wish
people would stop putting the two of us against each
other and stop attempting to compare who sings better, who
looks better? Who I did the other one, because I
never came into the space with the spirit of competition anyway.
And I think that what we now kind of understand
is that, yeah, like they were two really different people.
Maybe they didn't totally get along, but like who cares.
(14:46):
Artists don't have to get along. But the fact that
they were these two young teenage black women who were
operating in the same space created this storm and probably
ultimately made that song do better.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Like that song was everywhere.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Yeah, it's an iconic every word me too, and I
can never recite the words to songs. Like an ongoing
joke about me with my friends is that I get
every word wrong in a song, but I know all
the words so the boys.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
To be clear, we had, in fact, thought about doing
a whole episode on this, but it's too expensive to license.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Yes, yes, I will say that there's obviously still a
lot of interest in this because that Versus Battle I
mentioned six million people tuned in it.
Speaker 4 (15:26):
Liah Kamala Harris, Oh my god, yes, she was on it.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
She appeared on the live stream with Monica and Brandy.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
I thought that was hilarious.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
And I just wanted to thank you ladies, just you,
plans you stars you.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
And did she like was she just a fan or
did ye?
Speaker 1 (15:47):
She was encouraging people to vote, so it was a
way to get out the vote, but I think also
she is a fan.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
I love that.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
Okay, So there's another show that I want to talk
about that Claudia Juliana sent in and I just remember
occasionally this show would be on TV. It must have
not been on cable because we didn't have cable, and
so like when there was nothing else on, I would
watch this show and I always hated it so much.
And that show is Seventh Heaven.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Yeah, Seventh Heaven, which was objectively speaking, a pretty terrible show.
When Claudia Juliana sent this in, she said that we
should talk about how nineties TV was very into life,
lesson messaging, and very Christian forward, and I think that's true.
It was really the era of after school specials and
this show, which I never watched, Touch by an Angel
was very popular. But I did watch Seventh Heaven, and
(16:51):
looking back on it is absolutely wild. It was about
a minister and his wife raising seven children, so it
was kind of Chris. Yeah, it was overtly Christian. There
was so much like saccharine morality. Every episode was like
someone had a secret or had done something wrong, and
then eventually it was like discovered and solved, and then
they each would get like a speech from either their
(17:13):
minister father or his angelic blonde wife about how to.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Do the right thing.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
And this is the show that gave us Jessica Bielle.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Correct, it is the show that gave us Jessica bille
And also, unfortunately, it is the show that gave us
Stephen Collins, who played the minister Dad and turned out
to be a pedophile.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4 (17:32):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
In twenty fourteen, he confessed to sexually abusing underage girls,
one of whom was ten, after audio of him talking
about it in a marriage counseling session leaked.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
So he didn't even deny it.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
He actually said he had sexually abused three underage girls,
but denied being a pedophile.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
So not a lot of people watch the show anymore.
I think at that time it got pulled from rerams.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
But I will say that seventh heeven was one of
the first major hits for the w B, which people
may not remember, but it was a teen channel that
went from nineteen ninety five to two thousand and six
when it became Dawson's Creek.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
The c W. Yes, it gave us Dawson's Creek.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
And probably so many other shows, right, so many other shows.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
This was really like the teen cable channel, and then
it merged with another channel to become the CW and
then that became the teen channel.
Speaker 4 (18:20):
Okay, And actually it's funny that you say this because
this is sort of like where we started this conversation
on my so called life, which was the kind of
anti After School teen special.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Yes, this was exactly the thing that my so called
life was trying to counter, but instead of lasting one season,
lasted many seasons, and one of the critics actually said
it was arguably one of the worst long running.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Shows on television.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Yeah, because it was just like Christian propaganda essentially.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Oh wow. I should also mention here that.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
There's this guy who's been watching Seventh Even and doing
recaps on TikTok that.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Are always going viral amazing and they're very funny.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Wait, do you know his name?
Speaker 2 (18:57):
His name is Heartthrop So check out his tiktoks.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
Oh my god. Okay, it's like heart Throb Heart, but
heart Robert.
Speaker 6 (19:07):
I'm rewatching Seventh Heaven. Please just listen to the plot
this episode I just finished, where a white guy is
a victim of racism. Simon finds a homeless girl on
the street and he brings her home to keep her
is a pet. This episode with a drunk ant is
so good. Simon's friend has an older sister. Her name
is Karen, and she isn't a gang white Christian problems
of the nineties, So, you know, like.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
All good things, TikTok has found a way to make
Seventh Heaven funny. It's never intentionally funny, but it is
very funny to look back on.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
I wonder has TikTok discovered my so called life yet?
Speaker 1 (19:38):
I don't know, but I feel like a lot of
these TikTok recaps are for shows that are ridiculous, and
I hope that they are not making fun of my
so called life.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
That's true.
Speaker 4 (19:47):
Although do you remember I guess I forgot like ten
years ago on Tumblr the clar Dance cry face was
a big meme.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Oh really, I didn't.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Know about the clar Dance cry face. I remember the
Kim Kardashian cry Yeah.
Speaker 4 (19:59):
No, before Kim Kardashian to kryface, there's a very distinct
clear Dance cry face. And I think that during the
Homeland era this is going around, but it really started
with Angela Chase. Oh you're feeling interested Google that there
were so many good things that people sent in. We
will probably do another episode devoted to them, but there
were a few that we felt like needed honorable mention. Yes,
(20:22):
so I'll start with the first one. This is from
Tara Eleene and she this was cracking me up. She
writes about the time that Tom Cruise jumped on the
couch during his interview with Oprah about how in love
he was with Katie Holmes.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
I know you remember this.
Speaker 8 (20:36):
I remember this, and I was watching it live, okay,
and then this idea that he kind of like paraded
her around and on People magazine and that party is
like she was aprized, this is this is words.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Well, there was also very obviously some tie to Scientology,
like yes, exactly gotten divorced from Nicole Kidman, and the
rumor was that he had essentially had Scientology audition girlfriends
for him.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
So he went on.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Oprah to convince people that his love for Katie Holmes
was true. But he really overdid it and literally stood
up on her couch and started jumping up.
Speaker 4 (21:14):
Because I was working in a newsroom then, and I
don't think I watched it live, but it was played
on repeat over and over. I mean that momentage like
Freeze screaming him.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
He was so out of control, he seemed unhinged.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
So it really didn't do what he was hoping, which
is quell rumors that it wasn't a real relationship. Another
honorable mention we have here is from someone named Clerby.
She was listening to our hig Yales episode and it
made her think of the color red, the Lady in Red.
She was curious when this color became the sexy color
for women, and I think that's actually a really interesting topic.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
Also, I'm thinking of that song Red Red Wine.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
I mean, I guess there's a lot of red in
a lot of places.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
I mean, I love Lady in Red.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Anyway, but yeah.
Speaker 4 (21:58):
Clarby notes that color theory, especially between men and women,
could be a good topic for us, and I totally agree.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Rebecca Carroll, who's a friend of the podcast, also messaged
me to ask if we'd considered Blue Lagoon.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
And I've never seen Blue Lagoon?
Speaker 4 (22:11):
Have you? I swear that I have seen Blue Lagoon,
but now I can't. I'm like conflating it with all
of those other type of movies.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Hold on, can we google it?
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Yeah, Well, it's I think it's vaguely pornographic.
Speaker 4 (22:24):
Maybe it was like that Sexy water movie.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Sexy Water Movie is a great way to put it.
I think it's about two very young teenagers, like stranded
on an island, but there's a lot of like nudity
in sect.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Imagine a boy who didn't know he had become a man.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
My heart's beating so fast.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Mine too.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
It's okay, yes's rick.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Yeah, So that's definitely a topic we should probably explore.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
It someh Okay, this is coming back to me now.
Speaker 4 (22:52):
And I think Brookshields has since talked about this because
she was so young and probably didn't have a lot
of agency and how she was portrayed her.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Actually, if you haven't watched the Brickshields documentary, which I
saw I went to the premiere of, that is a
great look back on her career from her perspective, and
just like how she could never win.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
She was either always accused of.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Being too sexual or not sexual enough, and that is
just like a wild thing where people would openly ask
about her virginity when she would do interviews when she
was still a teenager. It just feels crazy to look
back on. So that's a recommendation if you haven't watched that.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
And then maybe this is a good one to end on.
Speaker 4 (23:31):
But this is our friend Rachel Sklar, who is Greece obsessed,
and I think we actually probably have to come back
to this and like do more on and maybe she
needs to make a guest appearance. But she talks about
Stephanie on the step ladder in Greece too specifically.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
So funny.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
I don't really remember Greece too that well. I've definitely
seen it, but I do remember Greece. I was obsessed
with Greece. I wasn't allowed to see it when it
first came out because it was considered too racy for me,
so of course I just made me want to see it,
and I just love this movie.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
There's so much to mine in it.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
There's like Rizzo, who is just like one of the
best characters ever, and that song she sings that there
are worse things she could do than go with a
boy or two, Oh my God. And then of course
there's the Sandra d transformation that she goes from being
like sort of the sweet innocent girl next door to being.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Like bubba ba boom.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
So I really feel like Greece has so many themes
we could mind.
Speaker 4 (24:25):
I've now clicked on a link to Grease latter scene
on TikTok and there's like hundreds of videos with women
reenacting Steve Flatters stop Latters, so clearly we need to
refresh our memories of what this scene actually is.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Hilarious so I think that's enough for today, but we're
going to do more of these. We really appreciate you
guys sending them in. We love hearing from you. So
keep telling us about the moments that you think about
and that impacted you, and we'll keep sharing them.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
Susie, I'm really excited for our next episode. Can you
tell us what's in store?
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Yes, it's an interview with one of my personal heroes
and amazing editor, Jane Pratt, who was founder of the
iconic teen magazine Sassey.
Speaker 5 (25:14):
People now talk a lot about that Kurt Cobain and
Courtney love cover. Yes, I remember going into my meeting
with the publisher and having to pitch Kurt Kobain as
basically I've painted him to be like one of new
kids on the block or Backstreet boys.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
This is in retrospect. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Is there a pop culture moment you can't stop thinking
about and want us to explore in a future episode.
Email us at in retropod at gmail dot com or
find us on Instagram at in retropod.
Speaker 7 (25:53):
If you love this podcast, please rate and review us
on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you
hate it, you can post nasty comments on our Instagram,
which we may or may not delete.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
You can also find us on Instagram at Jessica Bennett
and at Susie b NYC. Also check out Jessica's books
Feminist Fight Club and This Is Eighteen.
Speaker 7 (26:11):
In Retrospect is a production of iHeart Podcasts and The Media.
Lauren Hanson is our supervising producer. Derek Clements is our
engineer and sound designer. Emily Meronoff is our producer. Sharan
Atia is our researcher and associate producer.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Our executive producer from the media is Cindy Levy. Our
executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stemp and Katrina Norbel.
Our artwork is from Pentagram. Our mixing engineer is Amanda
Rose Smith. Additional editing help from Mary Do. We are
your hosts Susie Bannaccarum and Jessica Bennett.
Speaker 7 (26:44):
We're also executive producers. For even more, check out in
retropod dot com.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
See you next week.
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