The Failure of "Project Runway" and the Defensiveness of "And Just Like That..."

T Lo unpack why they don't cover "Project Runway" and all the ways the show has failed to do what it promised, then they do yet another deep dive into the penultimate episode of "And Just Like That..." before the whole thing goes away for good. PLUS: Billie Eilish says the wrong thing! And is "The Devil Wears Prada 2" being spoiled too early?

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:23):
We're Tom Lorendo and this is the Pop Style Opinion Fest.
Telegan is welcome back to another edition of the Pso.
I am the tea in your telow Tom Fitzgerald, and
I'm here with the low and your te lot. Lorenzo,
my cousin, La La hust find how are you?

Speaker 2 (00:36):
I'm fine? And tab Hunter is right here next to
us on a pup clothes.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
That's not the actor tab Hunter who has been dead
for ten years, but our cat tab Hunter. Anyway, I
wish the real tab Hunter was on a poof clothes
and to my feet, ninety years old than dead Listen,
he was still hot until the day goet weird very quickly.
All right, much to discussed this week. I know Lorenzo

(01:02):
is very happy to hear that the guilded Age has
been Rettend.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
I'm so excited because I sometimes I'm late watching it.
You watch it first, and I'm every time I watch first.
Of all, I get so excited because it's I mean,
come on, you can't take that the whole thing seriously
and obviously, but it's just so entertaining. The costume is everything,
and it's everyone is so talented, A great group of actors.
It's not.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
It's not quality television. I'm not going to predict that
it is, but it's pretty television full of very good actors.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
And something I've tried to get across in our recaps
this season is that Julian Fellows the showrunner of The
guilded Age and also of Doubt and Abbey. He made
his name on both shows. He's very good. We can
rollerize at all of the silliness of his plots and
all of the cliches. I mean, everything is so stale,

(01:57):
and every every lady's maid is is scheming and plotting,
every young daughter is you know, running off with the
wrong man. He always returns to the same soap opera
plots over and over and over again. That's not a
criticism because honestly, soap opera's always returned to the same
soap ropa plots over and over and over again. It
is what it is, and he's actually very very good

(02:19):
at soap opera plotting. It's silly plotting, of course, But
I have to say, you finally caught the episode last night,
the previous the episode that aired this past weekend where
spoiler spoiler, spoiler, go ahead and fast forward. If you
are not caught up on the guilded age, we're only
going to talk about it for a few minutes. Spoiler

(02:41):
George gets or or I don't actually know it. A
bullet is fired on.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
George, right, and of course he didn't die.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
And the setup of that shot, I know, I literally
applauded and I was like, Julian Fellows, you are a
fucking genius. When he did it was it was so
melanchi dramatic. It was so silly, and yet I can't wait,
and everybody who watch it can't wait to see what
happens next week, Like, yeah, of course that's probably not

(03:09):
killing all Morgan. But it was so perfectly exquisitely done.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
And every episode is so packed. Man, there's so much.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
There's too much. There's entirely too much going on. If
I if I could offer a single well, no, once
you start getting into like this is what they could
do to improve the show and so on, forget it.
You could tear it straight down to the to the
studs because there's so much wrong with how this show

(03:41):
is done, the plotting and certain character work and everything.
But like I said, it's pretty to look at the
everyone's wearing insane costumes, literally insane constants some of them.
Most of them are not even pretty, they're just insane
to look at gorgeous sets and locations and everything like that,
and yeah, they're there's always grumbling with shows like this.

(04:02):
It was the same thing with Downton Abbey about although
it's probably more pronounced with the Gilded Age, but this
critique of people who either don't watch the show or
don't like the show, and they're like, you know, poo
pooing anyone, who would you know? These were terrible people.
Aristocrats were terrible people. Robber barons were terrible people. And

(04:23):
I'm like, yeah, okay, you know the Ewings on Dallas,
we're terrible people. The roys On succession were terrible people.
I don't understand people get weird about this sort of thing.
Is if we're like supporting robber barons or something. We're
rooting for robber barons, and I'm like, no, Actually, what's
great about shows like this and Downton Abbey is that
it allows you to indulge in storylines within this world

(04:47):
and you don't have to worry too much about the
implications of it because you are a century or more
removed from it. So I mean that's one of watching
the Gilded Age, and for instance, rooting for or George
Russell is like watching you know, House of the Dragon
and rooting for right nearing target. You know, it's they're

(05:08):
terrible people, but you pick one and you root for them,
and it doesn't matter. Of course, Robert Barons were terrible people.
But who gets a shit. It's light entertainment.

Speaker 2 (05:16):
I love everything about it. I think it's light, it's
you know, just go with it. The costumes are amazing.
I also love the fact that it's such a group
of talented people. They're all Broadway actors everything exactly. They're
all from Broadway, most of them. And I love that
because we get to see these people acting and doing great.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
Some of them are not. The main cast are all great,
but some of the I would say, some of the servants,
uh huh. You can tell they don't spend a lot
of time on camera. I'm sure they're wonderful on stage,
but they're less than subtle on camera. I'm specifically thinking
of most of the Russell servants. That was my one
thing I was going to say, is that again, you

(05:55):
can't really get into structural critiques of the show because
the show is just very silly. But I do think
he has this very British upstairs downstairs take on these
types of storylines, and the bottom line is that the
downstairs of these houses weren't necessarily all that interesting servants
in an aristocratic setting, in a literal castle like downtown Abbey,

(06:19):
there is stuff that you can unpack about the British
class system and about what they call a life in
service because it was considered an actual lifestyle for people
from generations ste So that's fascinating. But I'm not saying
you can't examine nineteenth century social stuff in New York.

(06:39):
It's rich with that sort of thing. But the fact
of the matter is American servants didn't have that same
sense of awe for their employers that and so you
can't write them the same way. So they all sit
downstairs in both houses, the van Ryn House and the
Russell House, and they sort of bitch and snipe a
little bit, but the storylines can't really go anywhere. When

(07:01):
you had Doubt and Abby, you had people who were
literally born into that light, their parents were born into
that light. They considered an honor to live, so there
was all this stuff you could unpack. This is just
poor people working for rich people, and there's not a
lot you can do there unless you really want to
dive into how much resentment they had. And he doesn't

(07:21):
like to do that. He does not like he likes
one resentful ladies made, but the rest all love their employers.
It's not going to have them bad mouth them. He's
not going to show them living. For instance, in Squalor.
You know, I don't think those people had great rooms
to stay in, and he doesn't. Notably, he never shows
He almost never shows what their life is like downstairs.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
That's true, that's true. I do appreciate all the African American.

Speaker 1 (07:47):
That's the far best thing in the show.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
The gay story, Oh I do. I do. I think
it's important to have that there.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
Listen, I'm not imposed to a gay story, but the
guilded age. He's not going to show the reality of
what that life was, so he kind of flubs it
a little bit. To me, the best thing he could
do with Oscar, if he wanted to really pursue a
storyline with Oscar that felt true to the times, is
have him get married to a woman. I know that

(08:18):
his boyfriend John Adams, he declared that he would never
do such a thing and he would never live such
a dishonest life. But the fact of the matter is
that would have been an unusual Oscar Wild had a wife.
That would have been an unusual attitude for a gay
man to have back then, and he kind of pressured Oscar,
you know, not to follow through with mud beaten and

(08:40):
all that. So I think they I don't know, I
think they're setting up this, especially now that he's come out.
He's essentially come out to his family, right the pressure
for him to that he must feel to be getting
married is going to be greater than ever. So find
him some lesbian. Write a lesbian into the show, although
that would be even harder to portray accurately, because I mean,

(09:04):
worse than gay men. Lesbians lived lives of complete loneliness
and or they were either spinsters who lived with lady
friends and actually they had leeway to do that in
the nineteenth century, or they just didn't express that. That's
the thing about gay people prior to the twentieth century
is most of us really weren't expressing our gayness that much.

(09:26):
We didn't have opportunities to do so, and we would
have been killed if we had tried. And that's the
reality of those characters. Is I appreciate Oscar. I really
loved that scene. I thought that's that was his best
scene Blake Ritson's, But I don't think you can do
very good. I would imagine certain African American historians somewhat

(09:51):
bristle at the at the way the black storylines are handled,
although I actually think they're handled a little better because
Julian Fellows has a co writer who was a black woman,
Sonya Warfield. She's also an executive producer. But again, you
have to sort of give this very sort of lightly

(10:11):
smoothed over. Now, granted, these were aristocratic, these were the
black elites, so no, they weren't really they weren't really
experiencing racism in the way that we would because they
were segregated from it. But I just feel like when
you're dealing with misogyny and racism and homophobia in for instance,
in nineteenth century or early twentieth century story, you're either

(10:35):
going to have to show the brutality of it or
and this is what he chooses to do, he smooths
over it and he makes it appear a lot more
of an option for living, I guess for gay people
than it actually was at the time. That's my only complaint.
And actually I'm talking longer about this than I intended
to go.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
No, but that's it. I agree. The African American.

Speaker 1 (10:58):
I love it.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
I love it because it shows you can tell. I
love how how you can tell that even as an
African American person at that time, if you had that
certain level in society or money, you know, you still
had your prejudice these ahead, right your old Peggy's.

Speaker 1 (11:14):
Father is a formerly enslaved man. Like that's it's that's
so poignant, you know, to have that character and to
have that brought up in conversation, And I love that
the show explores things like colorism in that community and
that sort of thing.

Speaker 2 (11:29):
No.

Speaker 1 (11:29):
I sat on social media after last week's episode. I
kind of wish they would just spin that off because
all of the Brooklyn storyline, all of Peggy Scott's storyline
with her family, is much much more interesting than anything
that's going on on sixty first Street. It would be
a fantastic show to just do a show about the
black elite of the nineteenth century.

Speaker 2 (11:50):
And maybe maybe they'll they'll do it.

Speaker 1 (11:52):
Maybe the popularity of this show will, you know, spur
on someone to do.

Speaker 2 (11:55):
But I'm excited that the show is doing you well,
that people are very happy.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
It could run for years. I know, I know they
could run this for seven, eight, nine seasons if they
want it right.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
If you embrace it for what it is, it's fun,
it is and the same thing without maybe yeah, yeah
it's not.

Speaker 1 (12:13):
It's not prestige drama. No, but it's pretty and everybody
in it is a very good actor.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
Well that's the thing. I mean, you watch these people
act and you're like, oh my god, they're just good.
They're very very good.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
Some of them are struggling with very bad material. But whatever.
All right, we talked about that week long. Why don't
we take a short break and we'll come back, and
Lorenzo has some TikTok stuff to talk about, and of
course after that we'll be talking about and just like that,
we'll be right back.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
We're back, and we're going to talk a little bit
about things that are exploding on TikTok and it's Lorenzo's TikTok,
and it's also all of the Internet. Some of those
topics here, but let's start with Kim Kardashian of course,
so it kind of explodes that Kim Kardashian as usual.
You guys know that she has this kid, what is it,

(13:03):
this Kim's line, and they launch a new product. It's
a facelift mask that you can wear and apparently you're
going to look like them if you buy the mask
and wear it every night.

Speaker 1 (13:16):
Yes, so that's why they look like that, not for
the one hundred thousand dollars worth of I know, cosmetic surgery.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
The thing. That's the thing, that's why I find it genius.
That's why I think this family, my god, this family,
because prior to launching this product, the whole family was
nothing but out there talking about their cosmetic surgeries and
their work they did. And we're finally going to talk
about what we did. Blah blah blah, you know, because.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
They don't say anything unless it's to sell a product. Yeah,
that was all a preamble to selling this product exactly.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
So they launched this mask that you know, some real
doctors are saying that does nothing. Allegedly, some say that
it might work if you use certain products with it.
Blah blah, blah. Anyway, the bottom line, the horrifying part
of it is that it's so doubt in like twenty
four hours or I don't know, twelve hours, the product
was gone. And that the part that kills me is like,

(14:13):
you know they're doing what they're doing. I mean, they're
making money, they don't care. But I don't understand. I
don't understand why people always buy that shit. Everything they
launch gets so dull.

Speaker 1 (14:25):
We made it following I mean whatever, I don't understand
it either. There was a lot of outcry over these
facial masks or face lift masks, what are you gonna
call them? But I still say that they're literally nothing new.
I mean women used to wear them back in the
in the twenties thirties, and for like different to keep
your you're basically to keep gravity from taking over and

(14:48):
to keep your skin tight so that you don't get
like a double chin or a sagging neck. I have
no idea if they work, but they certainly didn't create
a new form of snake oil. They've done products like
this for a really long time, So whatever, I don't.
I mean, who am I to rail against women using
beauty products? I always remember, I always remember the line

(15:11):
Esta Lauder out of line, the famous you know cosmetics queen.
She always said that all of the youth products, the skin,
youthening products, and all of that stuff, it's just hope
in a jar. She said, We're just selling hope in
a jar. And as a man, it's really not for me,
I think, to get into like criticizing. Look, there's a

(15:32):
lot of pressure for women to way more on women
than there are on men to appear young, to appear fit,
to appear you know, vibrant and beautiful. So I'm just
not going to roll my eyes because some of them
are being you know, I don't know, quote unquote fooled
into buying this product. I don't know. Maybe it works,
who knows. It's like a trust for your face basically.

Speaker 2 (15:52):
Yeah, I mean some I just find.

Speaker 1 (15:53):
I'm not It doesn't bother me, I guess is what
I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (15:56):
Boy, it doesn't bother me. Necessary because I didn't spend
the money. But how much is it? You know, it's
like forty dollars or something. It was just I think
not that I mean whatever, that's a secret. I mean,
they keep it, they keep it affordable that everyone.

Speaker 1 (16:10):
Can buy, can buy one and give it a shot.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
That's the same thing with her sister, you know, and
and their you know whatever makeup line.

Speaker 1 (16:18):
Lip lip line, because makeup is it's it's somehow somewhat affordable.

Speaker 2 (16:24):
Uh so you buy it, you know. That's what I mean.
Every house, every design, a major house, says that that
they make a lot of money selling perfume. You know,
it's not necessarily.

Speaker 1 (16:35):
Chanel n't make money on those tweet jackets. They make
the money on the glass sunglasses and the workop sunglasses
because that's something you can afford. So they're very smart
about that. That's what they put out there and people buying.
But I find it so amazing that people would just
I don't know, it's it's it. Yeah, I'm still surprised
by at the point of all the things that they

(16:57):
all the products and ship that they have pushed out
the world, that one strikes me as one of the
least egregious because I guess because it's based on something
that that actually existed before the Kardashians started selling it.
And I think I sort of feel that way about
skims as shapewear, Like the Kardashians didn't invent shapewear. They
didn't invent invent the need for shapewear or the cultural

(17:19):
forces that put women into shapewear. But I'm whatever, shapewear
is an evil, It's it's not as evil as I think.
The all the shit that they put do to their
faces and bodies cosmetically, and then try and act like
anyone can attain what they have, or that it was
attained naturally. That's sort of all the filters that they use,

(17:41):
all that sort of thing. That stuff is more damaging
than a line of shape.

Speaker 2 (17:44):
But that's what I mean to do. But that they
do in a very subtle way. They don't come out
and say.

Speaker 1 (17:48):
Sure, everything they do is damaging.

Speaker 2 (17:50):
They don't come out and say, if you buy this,
you're gonna look like me. But they show their face
over and over again, claim that they did whatever, X,
Y and Z, and then a product. So you cannot
I mean you have. I mean that's what people do.
They associate, you know, what you look like with the
product you're selling. That's true of me, cup of all

(18:10):
this stuff. I'm not saying you shouldn't bite anything. My God,
I buy everything, but I don't know when.

Speaker 1 (18:17):
I buy I mean, here's can I say something, uh huh,
I don't want to interrupt. I just think maybe this
is what we're both heading towards. It's not the product itself,
not this specific product, not the skims, not the lips shit,
none of that. It's that overwhelmingly that family has no soul,

(18:38):
They have no inner life, They have no pursuit of
anything intellectual, anything artistic, anything of value. Their only message
to the entire world, relentlessly, over and over and over again,
is pushing this highly falsified sense of beauty right on

(18:59):
their followers. And then, you know, by doing that, definitely
putting the pressure on their followers to cinch their waists
or get face lips, or get their lips plumped, and
all the other shit those women have had done to
their bodies. To me, that's it. It's the message that
they send rather than any specific product or look. The

(19:19):
message is one of total vacuity. There is literally nothing
going on there, nothing at all. And listen, I write
a fashion blog about celebrities. I'm not curing cancer. I'm
not walking children through nature. I don't feel that anybody
in a capitalist system needs to feel bad for trying
to earn a living in a way that isn't perhaps

(19:40):
the most uplifting way we all have to do our jobs,
but their entire lifestyle, everything about them is so vacuous,
is so without meaning, without art, without new one, with
no desh whatsoever. It is so surface. That's my problem
with the Kardashians is that that if one some of them,

(20:00):
I don't know, you know, wrote a book, like hire
a book and ghostwriter and write a book. But maybe
you know. I know Kim is trying to act, and
she's trying to get her law degree, and I guess,
but all that seems very shallow to me. She's not
really doing any work whatever. I don't want to suggest
that they're harmless. Actually I think they've done a lot
of harm. But I also feel like.

Speaker 2 (20:23):
No, they're definitely not harmless.

Speaker 1 (20:24):
I think their hegemony is over. I don't think they
control the culture of the way they used to. I really,
I actually don't. Every single move they used to make
was reported on, and now we don't even hear about
them all that much.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
Well that's true, but they still sell their product.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
No, of course, and they still have their followers. But
I just don't think they are at the cultural force.
They were as recently as three or four years ago.

Speaker 2 (20:47):
Right, So anyway, so that's that. But I thought it
was interested in the whole thing that and it always
surprised me. And when I say, always so doubt and
you know, we can't find it anymore and they are
I had more money for them, And what did you
achieve with that? Nothing? Yeah, anyway, that's topic number one.
Topic number two is Billie Eilish. Yes, people are still

(21:10):
talking about it. We're a little late on this, but
people are still talking about it. She Uh, she's been
promoting her new album I Believe or she's been singing
all over the world and she stopped in Ireland and
while she was on stage, she said to the audience,
because she was very excited to be there, I guess
it's her first time in Ireland. I don't know. She said.

(21:30):
She was all excited and she said, I can't believe
I'm here. H And you guys all look like me.
That's pretty much what said. Because she was excited that
she was there, that she was in Ireland because she's
Irish American. Uh And and of course you know, the
fans defended her. But the other side, you know, criticized

(21:52):
her a lot, saying that it was a little you know,
white supremacy of.

Speaker 1 (21:57):
Her farc Go ahead, you, I mean, we got a
bunch of messages last week calling me a racist because
I didn't think Sidney Swingey was a Nazi. So I'm
gonna I'm gonna defer to you. They're gonna call me
a racist again after this conversation, but go ahead.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
I I think there. I think the problem is with
most of these people famous people today is that they
are not trained to speak. Uh not that you can't
be natural and and you know, speak your mind or
whatever when you're on stage because you're excited. But as
a famous person with millions of followers, you always have

(22:31):
to be careful how you phrasing. I would have said,
I don't know, I'm so excited that I'm here among
my people, and.

Speaker 1 (22:39):
You don't think that would have ved the same level now?

Speaker 2 (22:44):
Or are you say I'm so excited that I'm here,
you know, among my Irish people or whatever?

Speaker 1 (22:48):
Leimmey. I think those comments would be harmless, but I
also think they would receive the same level of backlash.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
I know, but when you specifically say that people who
look like me and you are a white person. Yeah,
I mean that causes some questions.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
All right, I lovelet's see, I'm not You could go
any American of Latin American descent if they went to
the country from which their people came from for the
first time and said, oh my god, everybody looks like me,
no one would bat an eye. And that is true.
You could even say that about Italy, I think. But

(23:29):
when you start getting into pale people, it starts becoming racist,
or at least it starts being viewed as racist. And
to be honest, I have a little bit of a
problem with that because, frankly, I went to Ireland for
the first time last year and I had the exact
same thought. I even said it to you at one
point when we were walking through Dublin. I was like,
it's so weird. Literally everyone we pass on the street

(23:51):
looks like they're related to me. Now, Ireland is not
a completely homogeneous culture, but it is one of the
one of them, one of them. It's as homogenious as
a culture gets. In your in modern Europe, I'm believing.
I saw plenty of South Asian people, I saw plenty
of black people when I was in Ireland. It's not

(24:12):
that I didn't see any, but it is a country
where you go and ninety nine percent of the faces
you look at are going to be Irish faces. They're
going to look Irish to you, and if you are
an Irish American who has never been there before. It
struck me while I was there, I was like, oh wow,
it's like one big family reunion here. I have heard

(24:32):
other Irish Americans say the same thing. I don't think
there's anything racist in that. I think the phrasing was questionable,
but I think her point was more than obvious. This
again goes to and people are going to call me
naive or whatever. Do you really think I just want
to ask anyone who had a problem with that statement,
do you really think are you telling me with a

(24:54):
straight face that Billie Eilish got up on a stage
in a stadium and said, thank God, there's only white people.
Do you really think that's what she was saying? Or
do you think she was a pale Irish person who
with a very pale Irish face looking out at a
bunch of pale Irish face. It was clumsy wording, but

(25:14):
her meaning could not have been more obvious.

Speaker 2 (25:17):
And you go ahead, go ahead. If you watch the video,
you can see that she's excited to be there, and
it just came out. That's how I feel. And she's
been very good about many causes, many social you know.

Speaker 1 (25:30):
There's no reason to leave this up.

Speaker 2 (25:31):
Yeah, so I know, don't. I don't think she's racist.
I don't think she meant that way. It just came
out that way to a lot of people.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
And I maintained that if she was any it's several
different ethnicities or races, she would be allowed to say
something like that about going to her home or country
of origin and no one would bat an eye. But again,
she's very pale. And if you go to if you're
Norwegian and you go to Norway and say, oh my god,
everybody looks like me, fun, that's racist. But if you're

(26:02):
you know, Colombian, and you go to Colombia and say,
oh my god, everyone looks like my Aboela, No, that's
that's not racist.

Speaker 2 (26:10):
Come on.

Speaker 1 (26:12):
I understand, I understand the times that we live in,
and I understand that we need to keep our antenna
up for these sort of things. But between I really
feel like lately people are just focusing on the most
pointless shit imaginable. Like again, it's true. I hate to
repeat my point from last week, but we're bliodming, we're
building concentration camps in this country and obsessing over shit

(26:33):
like this is just stupid, stupid shit. All right, I'm done.

Speaker 2 (26:37):
There you go.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
Now they're all going to call me racist, No they won't.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
Uh So the next topic is everywhere we I mean,
we're like whatever. Wherever you go online, there's a picture
of n Hathaway somewhere on set. So the devil wear
is brought us. They're shooting the new movie and it's
everywhere in New York and people are just going nuts
because if you shooting in New York, most likely you'll

(27:02):
see something.

Speaker 1 (27:03):
And she's wearing a lot of very high fashion. Ah,
very much in the just like that mode where there,
And I do think the ship's deliberate where they are
putting her in very very discussable outfits and shooting these
very big scenes out on the street.

Speaker 2 (27:15):
Yeah. And as always, you know, people, I always say
social media, you get the excited people first, the happy
people first, and then you start getting the angry people
later on any topic.

Speaker 1 (27:25):
Yeah, So so now.

Speaker 2 (27:27):
They're complaining that they're they're they're seeing too much. Then
we just saw her with the apparently allegedly her boyfriend
in the movie. So they're annoyed that they're getting they're
they're seeing all these things. They're they're they're seeing what
she's wearing. They want to be surprised about what she wears.
And then with all these pictures, uh, you know, get.

Speaker 1 (27:44):
Off social media. I mean, what the fuck people are
such babies, such a baby I don't want to see that. Well,
then get on social media. This is like going to
a television site and complaining that you saw red a
spoiler or something.

Speaker 2 (28:02):
In fact, things got so you know, talked about that
the direct I think it was the director who came
out with an article saying that he was actually excited
to see that many people around the set. People were
excited about the and he expected that that it was
going to be crazy, you know, with bodyguards everywhere controlling
the crowd because it's New York. I mean, you know.

Speaker 1 (28:24):
It's a highly anticipated sequel. It's all about high fashion
items and glamor. Yeah, there's going to be a lot
of buzz and every time she steps out to shoot
something in some outfit it's going to get covered, and
we are going to cover it. Our site actually got
minor mine and no one. It wasn't so much a complaint.
It was more like, I wonder, if you know, musing

(28:44):
as to whether or not this was giving just too
much away. No one complained on our site. But you know,
you can not click on these things. You can filter
in hathaway out of your social media if you like.
All of this is easily manageable. But expecting entertainment or
fashion sites not to cover this movie while it's being
shot is.

Speaker 2 (29:03):
Just when everyone has been waiting.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
For you, aren't You weren't being spoiled on this movie.
You are choosing to spoil yourself and you're not taking
any sort of responsibility for that. And as as a publisher,
that sort of thing gets on my nerves, like, no,
you need to decide what you're going to read. You
can't tell other people not to write things that you
don't want to read. Yeah, that's not how that works.

Speaker 2 (29:25):
Yeah, it doesn't bother me. I mean I actually like
when I look at those things, because when I watched
the movie, the actual movie, I'm like, oh, I remember them,
I'm remember them shooting this or whatever. You know.

Speaker 1 (29:35):
Yeah, I mean, same thing with Sex and the City.
They had the I mean and just like that, they
had that scene with her buying pies and I was like,
I remember featuring this and saying, oh, apparently they're doing
a Thanksgiving episode and turned.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
Out oh wow.

Speaker 1 (29:46):
Anyway, I have no anger over this, and I just
think people who complain about this are just people who
like to complain. Like, you don't have to see pictures
of man hath the Way shooting the Devilwar's pri two.
You have all the control over that.

Speaker 2 (30:02):
Yeah, Tom has been taking his antipe anger pill.

Speaker 1 (30:06):
Oh please miss her. We have to do so many
takes because he gets so angry. Anyway, anyway, do you
have anything else say about antathaway, because I'd say, we'll
take a short break and come back, and we do.
We're going to talk about Project Runway briefly, yes, and

(30:26):
then we're going to do and just like that, we
will be right back.

Speaker 2 (30:31):
We're back.

Speaker 1 (30:32):
We're not covering Project Runway. This Project Runway has returned
for its twenty first season, and it was a big
deal because Heidi Klum came back and she didn't bring
Tim Gun with her. They threw nil on on the roadside,
and now law Roach is one of the judges.

Speaker 2 (30:52):
I wonder why they didn't bring tiam Gun back.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
Oh, come on, he's The answer is that he's old.

Speaker 2 (30:58):
He's old, right, I mean, I don't I hadn't.

Speaker 1 (31:00):
I think Tim's about seventy three's somewhere in that range.
But I'm sure that was the answer. They didn't want
a seventy three year old on the show. They wanted
to break it down a little bit. At this point,
the idea of revitalizing a refreshing Project Runway seems very
silly to me, but I you know, we did make
our name in case you don't know, and I don't

(31:21):
expect it's funny. There was a point at which I
many years ago, when we first hit it big as bloggers,
and when we moved past Project Runway and started the
Tom and Lorenzos site, I remember being annoyed. I was like, someday,
someday someone's going to mention us and not mention Project
Runway in the same sentence. And then now we've been

(31:44):
doing this for so long, and we've been away from
Project Runway by so long that I think there's whole
chunks of our readership who don't actually know that we
started doing right. You know that are are are claim
to pain.

Speaker 2 (31:55):
So I also don't get alloyed when people remind us
of Projeck Runway mad Men, for example, because I hate
when actors do that. Actors get annoyed when you talk
about an old project or an old character, very famous
character that they played. I get annoyed when they get annoyed,
because you know, people love you for what it's something

(32:16):
you created.

Speaker 1 (32:17):
I know, I know, so no, I actually you.

Speaker 2 (32:20):
Know, obviously we want to do other things, and we
have done other things. But I don't get annoyed when
people remind.

Speaker 1 (32:26):
Us I should say that this is not an attitude.

Speaker 2 (32:28):
I have to know.

Speaker 1 (32:28):
And it was in those years when we started out
as fan boggers, and then we made the choice to
become entertainment and fashion bloggers and to open our own
site and that trends, and to become legitimate cultural crikes.
And to move from that from to move from fan

(32:49):
blogger to legitimate cultural critic where other critics see you
as a worthy critic. That was very, very difficult. That
was a very long hard process for us to move
to the point and to be seen a certain way,
and it was important to us to be seen that
way because when we started, like in two thousand and six, blogging,

(33:10):
nobody blogged anymore. But at the time blogging was seen,
it was so dismissive how the media talked about blogging
in time. So, yeah, we entered into it with a
little bit of defensiveness because we felt like there was
constantly this sense of being dismissed. So when we were
moving away from Project Runway, it was very important to

(33:32):
me that we established a reputation that had nothing to
do with Project Runway. Now, as you said, I don't care.
I like that our name comes up, but we're not
a force in the Project Runway fandom at all anymore.
There's a brief period where we were Project Runway fandom.
We were where everybody went to get their fix, a

(33:53):
Project Runway fandom, and.

Speaker 2 (33:56):
It was us. And let's not forget blogging.

Speaker 1 (33:58):
Project blog, Project run Late lamented BPR.

Speaker 2 (34:01):
Yes, and there were great I mean there was pretty
much the two of us.

Speaker 1 (34:04):
Yeah, it was only the two of us doing it
back then. I loved my time doing that show. I
learned how to recap a show. I learned how to
write a blog recapping that show. But the reason we
didn't come back to it. We dabbled it over the years.
We did a few seasons where we recapt it on
the podcast and when Christian came in and after a

(34:28):
Heidi left, and I just think the show is I'll
be blunt. I think Project Runway is a failure as
a concept, and I think it has proven itself to
be a failure over and over and over again. We've
talked about this, but I figured with the new season
and you figured it as well, like, let's just address
this one more time. Project Runway can be very entertaining,

(34:50):
and I think it is most entertaining for people who
are home sellers and crafts people because they can watch
the work being done and the problems that are getting
solved while the work is being done, and that stuff
is fun. But if you are a fashion person, and
we are, you know, our perspective is we want to
see fashion.

Speaker 2 (35:10):
No, there's no fashion.

Speaker 1 (35:11):
There's no fashion.

Speaker 2 (35:12):
The shit that.

Speaker 1 (35:13):
Comes down that runways crap. And the reason it's crap
is because Tim Gunn not was standing. Because famously, Tim
Gunn was the one that told producers when they were
developing the show that yes, you can make a day
a dress in one day. What he didn't tell them
is that you can only make shitty dresses in one day.
You can only make poorly designed dresses in one day.
The number of believe me, I have watched Okay, so

(35:38):
not in the last three or four seasons. So in
the first fifteen or sixteen seasons of Project Runway, I
watched every single dress that walked down that runway, every
single outfit that every single designer made, and I might
be able to pick out ten that are worth walking
an actual runway, and the rest of them are puckered messes,
poorly designed messes, cheap looking fabric. It's just yet.

Speaker 2 (36:01):
And it's not that these people are not talented, it's
just no, that's they don't have the time and the
material the source is too produce something decent.

Speaker 1 (36:09):
That's the point.

Speaker 2 (36:11):
That's the point.

Speaker 1 (36:11):
You can't do fashion as a reality competition. You literally
cannot do it because the fashion is always going to
be shit.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
It's fun to give them candy and to make a
dress or whatever, and that could be that would be
even fun if they had time to use that candy, right,
But no, they give them what ten hours, six hours
or four hours to make a dress, you.

Speaker 1 (36:32):
Know, and listen if that again, to go back to that,
that's entertaining to watch. It's entertaining to watch them do it.
But then what happened, and this, I think is my
my main issue with the format of the show is
then you have them walk that joke of a piece
in front of fashion, literal fashion people. I mean, Nita

(36:54):
Garcia is a big fucking deal. Who are then eat
it as if it were serious? If everybody treated it
more as a joke and kept it a little bit
lighter and we were all in agreement that this is
not how fashion is produced. And I'm sure you're a
better designer than this. But the way I heard that,
law Roach made a couple of people cry, and I'm like, yeah,
that's the shit. I don't care that he's mean. I

(37:16):
don't care that Nina is mean. But making a designer
feel like shit because they couldn't make a beautiful dress
in eighteen hours on no sleep is just mean. It's
just cruelty.

Speaker 2 (37:27):
It is It is because you clearly, and if you
don't know anything aside from Project Greeno, you don't understand
how garments are made for major House.

Speaker 1 (37:37):
Now he killed the reputations. I do believe there is
a reason why. Putting aside, we can talk about, okay,
why has only Christian Siano reached any level of fame?
And that's a whole separate question. My other point is
why has ninety five percent of the people on this
show had virtually no notable career after the show disappear

(37:57):
entirely because it ruins their who wants to hire these
people when they walk shit down a runway. It's bad
for the designers, it's bad for fashion generally, because I
think people walk away from this show with a complete
misunderstanding of how passion actually works, how what it takes
to be a fashion designer. And I think it's mean spirited.
I mean, I didn't used to think this, but then

(38:20):
when the when the seasons pile up and you're looking
at one hundred I don't know how many hundred designers,
at least a couple hundred designers have been on this show,
and you see that there's no there's nothing right, and
even Christian Siriano, I'm sorry, there are no Christian Siriana's stores,
you know, I don't even know that he has a

(38:41):
line in a department store. I think he has one
flagship store.

Speaker 2 (38:44):
I think he has a story here. I can't remember
if it's still open, But yeah, I mean he does.

Speaker 1 (38:48):
He's a dressmaker. He does very very well.

Speaker 2 (38:50):
He does well. He does a lot of wedding gowns,
and he does well red carpet stuff.

Speaker 1 (38:55):
Yes, he has dressed So this is not a criticism
of him at all.

Speaker 2 (38:59):
I know you have to understand there is a vast
difference between dressing everybody and actually making money producing a line.

Speaker 1 (39:05):
Yeah, I mean I was in a store.

Speaker 2 (39:06):
Yes, sometimes your fame is dressing everybody because they get
the stuff for free and it's great exposure. But that
doesn't mean that you it trickles down to actual money
for you in the bank. So there's that.

Speaker 1 (39:20):
Part of what spread this conversation is that we featured
Heidi Kloon this week on our site and she went
soon as we saw the pictures, I mean we burst
out laughing at the outfit she was wearing. I was like, oh, someone,
some poor designer with no sleep made that for her,
and it was It was a piece made during a
challenge on the show by one of the designers to
make something for her to wear on Good Morning America,

(39:42):
and she wore this utter monstrosity. Now I don't know
the designer. I don't know her at all. I don't
know her work, but I'm sorry. This is now attached
to your name. This hideously ugly dress is now attached
to your name. And this is what Project Runway has
done for you.

Speaker 2 (40:00):
You.

Speaker 1 (40:00):
I don't know. Maybe her aesthetic is like this, maybe
all of her stuff looks like this. It's not that
the dress was pull I mean she did something with it.
There was a lot going on with that design, and
it actually wasn't poorly constructed. It was it. I don't
think the finishing was quite as polished as you know,
if she were wearing Chanel or something.

Speaker 2 (40:22):
It's five hundred designs all put together into one.

Speaker 1 (40:25):
I mean, it's just this cacophony. And and that's my take,
Like maybe maybe that is what all her work looks like,
but I know that this is what she produced on
what eighteen thirty six hours tops So to me, that's
not a representation of you as a designer. That's some
trick you pulled during a you know, a variety show,

(40:46):
But it's not fashion and when Heidi walks around like
this in public on television promoting this shitty fucking dress
with your name, that's not helping you as a designer.

Speaker 2 (40:58):
Now, it's not. I mean it's fun to go to
a store like they do and they have what five minutes,
ten minutes to pick a fabric, which is insane, and
then take it to the studio and produce something that's
fun for television. But that's not how it works in
real life and fashion out there is brutal. People with
a lot of talented are closing their doors, their houses

(41:20):
and everything, their businesses because they can't make money. They
have no support, financial support, and these people are very
talented people, but they go nowhere. It's very brutal. So,
and let's face it, when you have when you go shopping,
let's say you don't know any of the designers. When

(41:40):
you go shopping, you go, you judge a garment based
on what it looks for you as decent looking, and
then you buy it because you like it. So if
you don't produce things that are pretty or they are
you know, as Nina Garcias is aesthetic pleasing, you know
you're not gonna buy it. You're not gonna sell it.
So that's that, especially if you're not famous, if if

(42:03):
you just you know, some designer that nobody knows.

Speaker 1 (42:05):
I literally felt sorry for that digner way. I saw
Heidi in that dress and I don't even know her,
but I'm just like, there's no way this is helping you.
This is not going to help your career. And I'm
sure that designer must be thrilled on some level and
she's putting those pictures of Heidi in her portfolio, but
I'm just like, let you no, that's I'm sorry. No.
Investors aren't going to line up when they look at
that and.

Speaker 2 (42:26):
The whole thing, because you know, I mean, Heidiklaman's tacky
as hell.

Speaker 1 (42:30):
But even for her, the dress was too much.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
She wouldn't be caught that in that thing if it
wasn't the challenge.

Speaker 1 (42:35):
That's the other thing is that she wears these things
that are made on the show, and nobody believes that
you would wear this normal never never never. So it's again,
it's not helping anyone's reputation. It's not. It doesn't it's
not promoting fashion. It's all it promotes is itself is
Project Runway. Which is fine, but you know you again,

(42:56):
you look at other shows like Drag Race and the
various dancing shows and singing shows and performing shows and
cooking shows, and those people move out into their field
and you hear from them, and that never happens with
Project Runway. Not really.

Speaker 2 (43:13):
No, you get a little bit of I like Christians.
You are on it because he's been through the process,
you know, you become famous and to have a line.
So he gives good advice every now and then. I think,
and because he understands he went through that process. I mean,
he talks about the fabrics. You know, this fabric is
not gonna work because you know whatever, he's good at that,

(43:35):
so more of that. Maybe I don't like the judges.
I think they're I don't know. Sometimes I think the
judges are just do mean for television.

Speaker 1 (43:44):
It's just mean. How can you yell at someone permitting
my shitty dress in one day?

Speaker 2 (43:48):
Right?

Speaker 1 (43:48):
Like right, right, you're just play acting at it.

Speaker 2 (43:51):
Right. It's good television, And I don't like it. It's yeah, yeah,
all right, but that's pretty much it. It's back Project
Runways back. It's getting a little a little bit. I
don't know, people are a little excited about it, I
guess because of all the you know, promos out there. Yeah,
but we yeah, we just can't. We just can't look

(44:12):
at fifteen.

Speaker 1 (44:14):
I think it's pieces and I think it's mean to
the designers. I think it has a long history of
I mean, I recapt these things, a long history of
just one shitty outfit after another. And I do think
it comes from that time. Like you know, you think
of a show on Netflix like Nailed It, whereas people

(44:34):
making absolutely horriful, horrible cakes and stuff like that, and
there's a sense of fun to that. I think Project
Runway would only work if it wasn't so career. That's
the thing. These people, they they are hungry designers who
really think this is going to help their career. And

(44:54):
it's like, oh freak, no, no, you should not come
into this. Like maybe get on television and like Christian
did and become a character and maybe you'll get some
help that way. But if you think this is going
to help your fashion career, oh honey, no, you better
off going home the first week and getting out of it.
It does not help your fashion career. And there are

(45:16):
so many people who were on this show who are
out of fashion completely. I can name like five, right,
but I'm not going to because it's not my place
to talk about them. But I know people who dropped
out of fashion who were on that show go ahead.

Speaker 2 (45:28):
I know. I agree. I always like to compare to
like a singing career or being discovered as a singer.
It's different because it's your voice. It's only a voice.
You have a fantastic voice, they're going to invest in it.
But if you're a designer, there are so many elements,
so many people behind you. You're just the creator, the
creative person there. But there's all the people actually making

(45:49):
the garments, you know, financing those things, everything that you
need to create a collection and sell it, right, So
there's a lot My thing, are you just one piece
of the you know, the whole thing.

Speaker 1 (46:03):
I keep reiterating this, but I just remember to point.
I always think about Laura Bennett, who was a finalist
in season three. She was the reason we started a
blug in the first place, and she produced this absolutely
beautiful finale collection and it was all these sleek gowns

(46:25):
made in velvet and lace with plunging necklines, and I
distinctly remember Nina Garcia is saying when they were deliberating, Yes,
it's a beautiful aesthetic, and she you know, the work
is impeccable, but is this really is there really a
market for this? And I'm just like, you know, we're

(46:47):
looking at this almost twenty years later. Is there really
a market for lace and velvet dresses with plunging necklines?
This is literally all anyone has sent down a runway
for the next twenty years. And that's my issue with
the show. Nina gars It is an expert. I'm not
disparaging her, but the format of this show does not
allow her to use her expertise, so she has to
get these sound bites, and she wound up saying something

(47:08):
so stupid, Right, who's gonna buy Lastus with velvet skirts?
Everybody for the next few years.

Speaker 2 (47:15):
If you go back in time, that's all people were.

Speaker 1 (47:17):
He saw it coming.

Speaker 2 (47:18):
Yeah, it was all lace and sheer. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:21):
I mean you can look at Laura Bennett's finale collection
and it still looks current. And I don't even think,
no Tino shade against Laura. I don't even think she
was some grand talent in, you know, some visionary She
just had very good taste, and that was her sthetic,
and that was her aesthetic, and that is actually where
fashion went right after that. And that's what the show

(47:41):
didn't say it at all.

Speaker 2 (47:42):
And that's the other thing the show doesn't understand is
that there are different ways of make a garment, different
aesthetics out there. Yeah, you know, you don't all have
to produce the same thing. You don't all have to
do something just because it's trendy or whatever. I mean.
You you, you know, you have a voice, you have
a talent, do whatever you feel like doing. That's why

(48:02):
when you want a certain style, you go to Chanel
or you go to another brand, right if you're looking
for something else.

Speaker 1 (48:09):
I also know that the people on the show, Lara
Bennett being a prime example, who were able to bang
out flawless dresses in the time periods you know a
lot of to them, they simply made a dress that
they had made a dozen times before. Yeah, Laura admitted
to that all the time, and plenty of designers have
admitted to that. Oh well, this is in my line.

(48:29):
I've made this dress two dozen times. Well what's interesting
about you? Okay, so this is just dressmaking and I'm
not disparaging dress making again. But Project Runway positions itself
as the arbiter of high fashion. It's going to find
the next great American fashion designer, and you're rewarding people
who are spitting out the same dress they've made a

(48:50):
hundred times.

Speaker 2 (48:51):
Yeah and yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (48:53):
That's our issue with the show. I'm not mad at
the show. I enjoyed the show, and if you enjoy it,
I'm not making I don't want anyone to feel bad
about enjoying this show. It's fine, but I can't watch
it anymore because I just don't think it has anything
to do with its stated goals.

Speaker 2 (49:07):
And even if I felt like watching it, there's there's
nothing there anymore to talk about. That's that's what it is.
I'm just as an look at that.

Speaker 1 (49:18):
Awful lighting anymore, the way they god the lighting on
that runway, where it's just pools of light and it's
all black, and I'm like, no, that's not what runways
look like. And I swear to God, knowing what I
know about production design, television production, and knowing what I
know about reality TV, I think all these years the
lighting on that runway was terrible on purpose. They want
those They want the outfits to look bad so that

(49:40):
the judges have something to rail against. And they know
that really shitty disasters and there's a chance it'll go
viral and someone will put it on social media. So
I do think they actually work to make the closed
look as bad as possible when they present that.

Speaker 2 (49:54):
They definitely want drama.

Speaker 1 (49:56):
Yeah, so again, designers, don't try out for this show
because it is not good for your career and they
don't have your best interest at heart. They are producing
a reality TV show and they're going to do everything
they can to make sure that you make shitty, shitty clothes.
That's the show. They're very open about it.

Speaker 2 (50:14):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (50:14):
Anyway, all right, we've beaten that horse to death. Let's
take another short break and we'll be right back. And
we're doing and just like that, we're back and we're
going to talk about that flop of a show. And
just like that. The news came out this week that
this is the final season of Be just like That,

(50:35):
and it will end with the next week's episode, and
I think we're going to skip looking. We're going to
skip that. I think next week's Yes Podcasts will just
be devoted entirely to this show, and we'll do a
whole sign off. What went wrong, what went right right?
That sort of thing let's focus on, especially since this

(50:56):
podcast is already running a little long. So Carry's sad,
It's Carrie sad because she's sixty years old.

Speaker 2 (51:03):
Does that have a man?

Speaker 1 (51:04):
Then, I don't mean to be Look, I'm happily married,
and they might sound really smut. I'm not single at
that age. However, I just think it's I just think this.
I'll read her at a point I keep making. I
just think this show had an opportunity to show women
having vibrant, happy lives regardless of what you know. But no,

(51:25):
it really it bought fully into if I'm not with someone,
Oh you know, is there any little And I know
that people in our age group have these thoughts. I'm
not suggesting that if you're single and sixty that you
should just be fine with it. I understand all of that,
But Carrie's entire arc, her whole character, is nothing but

(51:46):
pursuing her next love and worrying about whether she'll ever
find her next love, and then being sad that her
last love failed her. It's just the same cycle with
this character, and literally no growth at all.

Speaker 2 (51:59):
I actually love when she says, oh, I've been having
feelings of a lot of feelings.

Speaker 1 (52:04):
No shit, that's all you do.

Speaker 2 (52:07):
That's all you do, walk around.

Speaker 1 (52:09):
It's fine. Expect Carrie to be a little self centered
and that sort of thing. That's why we love her.
So you kept saying, You're like, she's going to move
back into that apartment. She's going to move back to
that apartment, and I was like, no, they're not going
to do that. They're not going to do that. And
then suddenly she's walking down the street and wandering. And

(52:29):
then now that I will say, like, I feel like
I need to be careful disparaging her for being lonely
at sixty or whatever, because people are lonely at sixty.
But I will disparage anybody who's sixty and pining for
the apartment she had in her twenties and thirties, like, oh,
I wish what's wrong with it? And I would literally

(52:49):
say to someone in my age group, what.

Speaker 2 (52:50):
Is wrong with you? No, nobody, come on please.

Speaker 1 (52:53):
That is such a major like regression moment.

Speaker 2 (52:56):
Why bullshit? And it's stupid, You're really ru I mean,
you have to live in New York to understand what
she has now and what she has I.

Speaker 1 (53:04):
Know, people come on not only that. And that's the
other thing is that the show still insists on pretending
that the last twenty years didn't happen. I know, so
that we're supposed to forget that she spent the last
twenty years living in a massive, massive penthouse with essentially
Donald Trump. But now she wants to move back into

(53:25):
her old apartment. Like, no, she doesn't. She's been living
as a very very wealthy lady now for twenty five years.

Speaker 2 (53:31):
And drink every time she says that she's been together
with Eaten for twenty years.

Speaker 1 (53:34):
Then well that was one of the thing she ran
into Lizette, the girl to whom she sold her old apartment,
and Lizette. I actually like this character.

Speaker 2 (53:41):
I like her.

Speaker 1 (53:42):
I wish the show had spent more time with her
in whatever I think it was. I think Carrie is
a mentor to a young woman. Is such a great
idea for her. It's such a great idea for that
character as shape is actually good in scenes like that,
and I do I like the She's very much of
her generation, and she really injects the show with something

(54:04):
that feels because you know, they had Carrie's like podcast
friends in the first two seasons, and that was the
show trying to inject some youth into it, and it
just didn't work because I was like, Carrie would never
be friends with any of these people. That's just not
who she is. But Carrie would be friends with her, Yes,
and I do. I like their scenes together and everything.

(54:24):
I was going somewhere with this and now I can't remember,
but yeah, so she's spending a lot of time with
this walking down the stair. Oh, she was buying pies
for Thanksgiving. As I said, we pegged that when we
featured those scenes, and then I just could not believe
that they were going to write her as pining for
this apartment. And so then she goes to Lazette for

(54:46):
Friends apartment for friends Giving because she was invited to it,
and is immediately shocked to see that Lizette has a
roommate and that they have divided the apartment into two.
It's a strange living situation because the one guy's version
of the apartment has a kitchen but no bathroom. In

(55:07):
her vision of the apartment has a bathroom but no kitchen.
But listen, It's New York. Young people have lived in
some crazier situations than that.

Speaker 2 (55:14):
No, it's just no, it's and just like that, that's
what it is.

Speaker 1 (55:17):
So I am hoping that that scene is a you
can't go home again scene for Carrie, because otherwise what
She's gonna kick this girl out, buy the apartment back
and tear down the wall.

Speaker 2 (55:29):
Isn't the apartment downstairs available or something like that?

Speaker 1 (55:32):
The apartment in her Grammarcy Park? Oh yeah, let's unpack this,
Oh dear.

Speaker 2 (55:38):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (55:39):
Part of what spiraled her down is uh Sema. She
and Sema had drinks and Sema had sold her the
upper part of the Grammercy Park townhouse, but apparently the
apartment downstairs that Duncan was living in was oh by
someone else. And then Sema told her that whoever owned

(55:59):
that apartment was willing to sell it to carry and
that spiral carried down because that means Duncan's not coming back.
Oh I see, So if Duncan and now and I
mean they they they did try and give her she
like she was embarrassed and a little weirded out that
she was feeling this way like that, you know that

(56:20):
Duncan the Duncan thing apparently meant more to her than
she thought at the time, and that's fine. I actually
got that impression last week. I thought they were going
to bring him back. If there was another season, I'm
pretty sure they would have brought him back.

Speaker 2 (56:33):
She's going to London?

Speaker 1 (56:34):
Uh God, no, yes, I don't think so. We would
have heard if they shot any scenes in London. Lorenzo
they that's true. Yeah, they did not shoot any scenes
in London.

Speaker 2 (56:46):
So there you go, see spoilers. Spoilers again.

Speaker 1 (56:50):
But no, she's not going to London. I do know that.
Michael Patrick King said, and we'll unpack this next week
after the finale. He made it sound like they always
knew that this was the final season and we've decided
that of course. But then Kristin Davis came out and
she was like, I'm heartbroken over this news, and I'm like, yeah,
someone didn't give Kristin Davis the script. So I think

(57:10):
it's bullshit that they they're acting like that they that
this was they're wrapping everything up. It's so very clear
that everything that's going on right now is not going
to be effectively wrapped up in the final episode or not.
Or they they just tried to wrap it all up
really quickly because they were afraid they were going to
get canceled. Like, okay, Anthony and Giuseppe got engaged in

(57:31):
this episode, and then before the episode was over, Anthony
was having doubts, right, and they're going to wrap all
that up in thirty minutes, remember they're God, I thought
of this this morning. Remember Anthony in Stanford's wedding with
Eliza Minelli. It was this massive, massive thing. Like when
I think about that, I'm like, oh my god, they

(57:53):
ruined this brand. Yes, fifteen years ago.

Speaker 2 (57:56):
No movies, no movies, no, not thing should have existed.

Speaker 1 (58:01):
So okay, Yeah, Anthony's engaged to Giuseppe and now he's
feeling second thoughts because he feels like he's just a
caretaker for this kid and whatever. I mean, that's a storyline,
I guess, but I'm okay.

Speaker 2 (58:13):
And they yanked the mother out of frame that she's
not she's.

Speaker 1 (58:16):
Not in it anymore like that, you know, Patty Lapone.
What else Charlotte, Oh, Charlotte, she wants a daughter again?
Not this non binary tea Rock puts on a wig
in some makeup in Charlotte spirals listen. I actually I
don't think that was a bad I don't think that

(58:38):
was a bad I think a parent would have that moment. Yes,
I actually a parent.

Speaker 2 (58:41):
Like her, Yes, when she's in the theater and she's
so emotional about seeing her daughter as I know, saying
her child as a Yeah, as a I guess, I
don't know, as the.

Speaker 1 (58:52):
Person she always thought her child was up until a
few years ago. That's a process for a parent.

Speaker 2 (58:58):
I actually liked that. I was like, you know, we
have they had to explore that more.

Speaker 1 (59:01):
Great they aren't going to Yes, they aren't going to
explore it.

Speaker 2 (59:04):
I actually like that. And I think they.

Speaker 1 (59:06):
Dropped the ball on that family so bad.

Speaker 2 (59:09):
Right, because I mean we all talk. The only thing
we talk about now is his balls and.

Speaker 1 (59:13):
His balls, his erection, his peeing his pants, and it's
so it's so awful. And yeah, I mean when when
they first introduced Rock, it was in this flurry of
we have to have a non binary, we have to
have you know, we have to have a Latin woman,
we have to have a black woman, we have to
have an Indian woman. So it just felt like a

(59:35):
lot of stuff being thrown at the show. At once,
But actually it's one of the things I wish they
had explored more. Yes, uh, you know, living if you're
if you're a kid in Manhattan and you've got parents
like Harry and Charlotte, in other words, wealthy ones. H

(59:55):
those kids are more likely to explore things like gender
expressions because they don't have a lot of you know,
they don't have a lot of problems in their life.
They have more so, yeah, they have more freedom, they
have more creativity, they have parents that are going to
allow them to do that sort of thing. So my
thinking is, yes, a Manhattan kid in this million, yes

(01:00:17):
one of them would probably be exploring this right now,
and yes Charlotte would have a problem with it, and
Harry might as well. And they did. They slightly explored
that earlier in scenes earlier where they were arguing with
teachers over it. But Charlotte in particular, who was the
girliest out of all of the women on this show
to have a daughter who has expressed non binary identity.

Speaker 2 (01:00:40):
There was never a conversation with her friends about it,
not much of one, not as serious, and I think
they were afraid to make Charlotte look bad or something.

Speaker 1 (01:00:48):
But any most parents, even the most liberal, gay friendly,
queer friendly parents are, would struggle mightily with that, and
it would be fine to explore that it wouldn't turn
her into a transphobe, which be an interesting instead of
constantly Harry talking about his balls and wetting his pants,
it would.

Speaker 2 (01:01:07):
Have been an interesting conversation to have how to adapt,
you know, and what to do, what not to do,
things you learned in the process.

Speaker 1 (01:01:13):
Right as a parent. They dropped it completely, completely, yeah, yeah,
and then they just brought it up in this episode
only to remind you, oh yeah, this was a storyline
that they never actually went anywhere with. Similarly, Lisa Todd Wexley,
I guess she doesn't have a crush on her coworker
anymore because he hasn't been in an.

Speaker 2 (01:01:29):
Episode because it's not important anymore. Now the sketch done.

Speaker 1 (01:01:33):
Yeah, that vignette is done, and now the vignette is
he lost his Oh, and the whole thing about him
trying to diet, that was literally one scene and that
I was never mentioned again. And now he's just cranky
because he lost an election, and that will go nowhere.
It won't go anywhere. No, I mean, we only have
another thirty minutes left to this entire show. They're gonna what,

(01:01:55):
she's gonna have an affair, They're going to it's not
gonna go anywhere.

Speaker 2 (01:01:58):
We're gonna run again.

Speaker 1 (01:02:00):
Miranda continues to be completely insane.

Speaker 2 (01:02:03):
I don't, oh my god, inviting the woman to the
and then acting like her son is out of line
for getting mad at her, and I was.

Speaker 1 (01:02:11):
He was the only brain. He was making sense in
that scene, right, like even if.

Speaker 2 (01:02:15):
He thought about it, talk to him about it, you know, like,
don't just invite her.

Speaker 1 (01:02:19):
Everything about that scene was terrible. And I get it.
I get that her friend, I'm sorry, her girlfriend.

Speaker 2 (01:02:24):
What is her? Joy? Joy?

Speaker 1 (01:02:26):
And then the actress's name is Dolly, But I always
think it's the other way. Well, Joy and Dolly are
like anyway.

Speaker 2 (01:02:33):
Who does nothing, just sits there with me.

Speaker 1 (01:02:35):
She was uncomfortable in that scene, and she did seem
to be reacting as if she thought Miranda was completely insane.
But again, is that gonna go anywhere? Is that really
gonna go? Like, we just had a whole two seasons
of Aiden being an absolutely just a cold a field
of red flags, just a terrible idea all together, and

(01:02:57):
nobody talked about it, and we couldn't even tell if
the writing was deliberate or not until they finally wrote
him out of the show. And oh yeah, he was
really problematic. And it sort of feels like the same
thing here is this kind of got any were are
they going to do anything with this?

Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:03:10):
Probably not.

Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
And what about the two of them going through the
steps of a new relationship, and you know, we talked
about it a little bit. Now they look like they've
been together for forty years. Yeah. Yeah, it's like there's
no tension anymore. There's nothing fine.

Speaker 1 (01:03:22):
I don't even know this woman all that well. They
never really gave us a chance to know her. We
don't know anything jin And she's kind of sarcastic.

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
I like her. I know she has an accent. That's
all about. That's all I know about her life.

Speaker 1 (01:03:33):
It's so not weird. And Miranda, I just again, who
is this person?

Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
You?

Speaker 1 (01:03:40):
Did you ever watch the show?

Speaker 2 (01:03:42):
Did you ever?

Speaker 1 (01:03:43):
Do you remember anything about that character? When you later?

Speaker 2 (01:03:45):
The last time they woke up Steve for five seconds.

Speaker 1 (01:03:48):
Well I knew he wasn't coming back.

Speaker 2 (01:03:50):
They're just like, oh my god, I just.

Speaker 1 (01:03:52):
Don't get it. Yes, yes, parents they can sometimes react
badly to when their kids, you know, surprise them with
a mistake like this or or whatever. I wouldn't I'm
not saying that Miranda wouldn't struggle, but she's acting like
a complete asshole. Like this whole thing with the girl
is just crazy. And they also just don't write scenes

(01:04:15):
that need to be written. The last time we saw
this girl, she was spraying water in Miranda's face and
calling her a fucking nut job. And now she's coming
for dinner and we never saw this transition. We never
saw the follow up conversation. It's just bad writing all around,
I know.

Speaker 2 (01:04:29):
Like, and the excuse is like, oh, I found her
on Instagram or something like that, you know, I contacted
her whatever, invited to apologize. Huh.

Speaker 1 (01:04:38):
I don't know. Seema is in love and actually I'm
okay with that. It's cute, like I do. But they're
very cute together. I don't really think again, though they're
not giving it. There's not much there. It's sweet, okay, there's.

Speaker 2 (01:04:54):
How much theare in her career is? We know nothing
about her career, sold anything. No, Yeah, it's just like man,
it's oh oh right, we didn't get to carry in
her agent. Who oh about the book.

Speaker 1 (01:05:10):
Yeah, I'm not even going to get into the book
the way they Oh my god, I pick the publishing
world on this show. I won't even touch that. But
that's the other That is the thing that really caused
character spirals because the agent thought that the unhappy and
this is a thing I thought was I thought it
was kind of interesting that they were tackling this because

(01:05:30):
this is a thing in the romance community about happy
endings and whether you can write a romance novel and
have a unhappy ending and whether that is considered romance.
And there's been a lot of discussion about this over
this over the years in the romance community, and some
of it has gotten quite heated. So I was like, oh,
this is interesting. At least it's topical within this milliare

(01:05:52):
but and yes, I can understand an agent or an
editor looking at that and going this is great, But
I don't think there's a market for an unhappy ending here.
Like all of that was okay, real, But Carrie took
it personally and I'm just, yeah, what are you twenty two?

Speaker 2 (01:06:11):
Like? Grow up?

Speaker 1 (01:06:12):
Like That's the thing about Carrie is what I don't
mind that she gets in her feelings. That's who she is.
But sometimes nobody can question in anything that's helf indulgence.

Speaker 2 (01:06:21):
You'm not talking about the apartment. She has a mailtown.

Speaker 1 (01:06:23):
She has a mailtown. Yeah, yeah, I'm a bad friend.
She's a bad friend anyway. So she's upset because the
book ends with the woman who has no name alone
in her garden. And you know, because the woman is
so clearly modeled on her, she takes it personally that
it's considered a tragedy that she's alone. I get it,

(01:06:44):
I get it, But I really think you could write
Carrie Bradshaw on twenty twenty five and have her say
you know what, fuck that and and have a much
more healthy attitude instead of spiraling. But no, they had
to have her spiral because love and romance and you
know whatever, have we touched on everyone? Seema, Miranda Anthony. Yeah,

(01:07:10):
that's Yamantha, Samantha.

Speaker 2 (01:07:12):
I wish Carrie. That's it. Yeah, So we have one
more episode to wrap all this mess ups.

Speaker 1 (01:07:18):
And it will not be satisfying, I'll tell you that,
and we will do a whole retrospective. I think say
our goodbye to these characters. But I know one thing.
Every time an episode on HBO Max ends, the first
episode of Sex and the City pops up, if you
want to watch it next, And I'm like, I wanted
these and I'm gonna wait until this show is over,
but I need to watch when when I need to

(01:07:38):
rewatch and remember who these characters were.

Speaker 2 (01:07:40):
When was on Netflix. I don't know if it's still
on Netflix, but when it was, I watched the entire
first season and I'm like, wow, yeah, still great. I
have thoughts, but I'll hold them up in t pblemmatic.
I mean, there are a lot of things that you
make you cringe now, but to do a great.

Speaker 1 (01:07:54):
Show, yeah, that is my main problem with and just
like that is that it is such a defensive response
to the original series.

Speaker 2 (01:08:01):
That's the thing.

Speaker 1 (01:08:02):
That's the thing.

Speaker 2 (01:08:03):
They worried too much about being, you know, current not a.

Speaker 1 (01:08:08):
Fan, so everyone feels really defensive.

Speaker 2 (01:08:10):
Now it's just yeah, it's just all wrong.

Speaker 1 (01:08:12):
So Carrie's love for Aiden lasted twenty two years. She
said that at one point, again, I had twenty two years,
so you didn't. And you're lying to your viewership. Why
are you lying to us?

Speaker 2 (01:08:22):
Bill went all the way to Bill not Big, Big
went all the way to Paris, look like for you,
look for you, I mean all that stuff, I mean
all that and.

Speaker 1 (01:08:30):
Then you married him and lived with him for twenty years.
Why are you doing I don't understand why they're doing.
And again we'll get into this next one character unit.
It's defensiveness because chrisnov turned out to be a problematic character,
but the actor and much has been written about how
that relationship. You know, he was withholding an emotionally manipulated

(01:08:52):
and she was co dependent and so on. Reens have
been written about that relationship over the last twenty years.
So they just want to protect and that none of
that happened because you know, Carrie just loved Aid and
that whole time.

Speaker 2 (01:09:03):
It's so weird. It is weird because there's a way
you can acknowledge all that, but at the same time
recognize that that happened. You can't erase it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:10):
They don't talk about Big at all. That's right, and
that is something I'm like that he was the driving
force of that of her for six seasons. If she
wasn't with Big, she was talking about Big, or trying
to get away from Big, or trying to forget Big. Yes,
and so dropping him from the conversation completely.

Speaker 2 (01:09:28):
Is I know that.

Speaker 1 (01:09:29):
You know, for a few episodes after he died, she
went through a morning period where she talked about him, but.

Speaker 2 (01:09:33):
Then that was it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:34):
It was done, done, and you would never know looking
at Carrie the way she acts, you would never know
she is a widow and that she had been happily
married for two decades. This whole I'm lonely, Well, okay,
you're lonely because your husband died. There's no picture of
him in the house, there's nothing, nothing, nothing not bizarre.

Speaker 2 (01:09:52):
Yeah that is I mean what? No?

Speaker 1 (01:09:55):
All right, we will wrap it up there, yep, and
next week it'll be all complaints about this show unless
something really explosive happens, and we'll be back next week
with whatever else. If there is anything else, crosses the
rise acrosses our desks. Until then, take care of yourselves,
love you mean it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:10):
Bye bye bye