Thunderbolts*: What Happens When Trauma Gets Superpowers?

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Welcome to Popcorn Psychology, the podcast where we watch blockbuster
movies and psychoanalyze them. My name is Brittany Brownfield and
I'm a child therapist and I'm joined by Ben Stover,
individual therapist, Hannah Espinoza, marriage and family therapists. We're all
licensed clinical professional counselors also known as therapists, who practice
out of Chicago. Even though we are licensed mental health professionals,
this podcast is purely for entertainment purposes and to fulfill

(00:37):
our love of dissecting pop culture and all forms.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Please remember that, even though we are all licensed therapists,
we aren't your therapist.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
If you are struggling with mental health symptoms, please find
a local mental health provider. Sometimes there's a movie so
good that we have to record it right away. Thunderbolts
is that kind of movie so huge spoiler alert if
you haven't seen it yet. We will be discussing our
favorite parts of the movie along with our normal treatment
and final thoughts. The plot of the movie is after

(01:05):
finding themselves ensnared in a death trap, an unconventional team
but manti heroes must go on a dangerous mission that
will force them to confront the darkest corners of their past.
And I guess we should put a caveat here that
we are really going to try to only talk about
this movie in the context of Thunderbolts, and what I
mean by that is them see You is huge. We're

(01:27):
not I'm definitely not keeping up with it. So we're
gonna talking about all the characters as they see in
this as we see them in this movie, just in case.
I don't know. I guess I'm getting I'm hedging our bets,
which is not gonna happen.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
But this movie was specifically created with the idea in
mind that people shouldn't have to be doing homework anymore.
Oh yeah, in order to watch a film. That's what
Figi said. It was like, we need to start making
films so people don't have to do homework to watch them.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Yeah, which is true. Actually, I can commend the movie
for this off the top, because I am not an
ant Man movie watcher. It's just not for me. I've
seen the first movie once and then I don't think
I've seen any of the others. If I have, I
don't recall. So even like thinking about the ghost character,
I didn't need to like remember who she was from

(02:24):
those movies to watch this one. So you're exactly right. Yeah,
so I Ffiggie pulled it off.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
After a period of very much not pulling it off.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
Yeah, I wasn't gonna watch the Secret Invasion to watch
this movie. I did not watch Secret Invasion. I also
did not watch Secret Invasion.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
There was a great many things that started to feel
very tedious. Yeah, and this movie reset a timeline yet
again that very much needed to be reset. And this
movie was exactly what it needed to be, not a
thing more or less.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Oh yeah, this movie was a breath afresh. So this
movie definitely felt like the punch in the arm that
the Marvel universe needed. And why we particularly want to
talk about this movie is because this movie is about
mental health. You could argue that the villain of the
movie is a mental health I would agree with that.

(03:19):
I feel like a part of the reason why we
wanted to do this film so much is because it
does it so beautifully as well, which is what I
feel like we just don't often get. I know that
we've talked in the past about a lot of different
Marvel movies and how they often are able to do
a good job of showing mental health. But this one
felt particularly poignant in a little bit different way than

(03:41):
I feel like it normally it normally hits, and I
think that was a really, like you said, truly just
nice to see something a little bit different, but something
that was focused on a real experience that people have. Yeah, So,
like you said, we're going to more group this episode
by character, which is kind of the point of the

(04:01):
movie itself. It's about about a gaggle of misfit toys
that come together to try to play nice with each other,
because as the movie starts, they're actually being plotted against
each other. Yes, by Valentina. I know, she makes a
point of her last name. Oh it's a really long name.
I don't recall d something or other. Yea, yeah, something

(04:26):
like that, de la Fontaine, not Fonteine, right, as she says,
right of course, yes, yeah, But she's basically like a
corrupt politician question mark.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yeah, she's a cabinet member or forman, a cabinet member.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
Right, and she is trying to clean up her mess,
and part of her mess is all these little assassins
that she's collected, which is basically all the characters they
named with the exception of Bucky.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
Correct who is now a congressman.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
Yeah. So, I guess we'll get into that in a
little bit, But first we wanted to talk about Alexa
and Yolena. As you Lena is, I would consider her
the main character of this ensemble cast. Yes, I would
agree with that absolutely. Yeah. So the movie starts with
Yolena just basically monologuing about how she's a depressive episode.

(05:15):
And as you pointed out, Hannah, when we watch it
the first time, she is going about her life like
she's going to work in sweatpants, which I didn't even
think about but is such a good detail, and demonstrating
that she is someone who is going through the motions.
She doesn't care about what she does anymore, she doesn't
feel like worked up by what she does anymore. And

(05:36):
even though she is doing it's kind of comical. Actually,
even though she's doing assassin work, she looks bored. Yeah,
I feel like she looks I think you hit the
nail on the head, Like she looks like she's not
interested in in any of it. She's not engaged in
any of it. She's literally going through the motions. When
people experience depressive episodes, a lot of time that is

(05:58):
a big part of their experience of not finding joy,
not founding meaning and different things in their life. And
so I think that's definitely where we see Yelena in
the opening of the film, and just in general, her
attitude throughout the beginning of the film is very She
very much is in that depressive episode. Well she is.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
She's actively monologuing about how she's not getting anything at
all from what she's doing. She's just mah, you're gonna
do the thing now, and I'm gonna do the thing
and then you're gonna try that thing and it's gonna
go bad, and yeah why. And she's actively questioning the
meaning of her life, yeah, which is not just a

(06:43):
depressive episode, but she's having an existential crisis.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
Yeah. And also she's doing the same thing she's been doing.
You know, she's been stuck in this identity where when
she was brainwashed, she was doing the same thing she's
doing now, just for different team. Basically, Yeah, it's just
a different boss. So she's never what it is. Yeah,
So she's never really figured out who she is. She

(07:09):
kind of just went right from being a black widow
to being another version of a black widow for the
American government instead of the Russian government, but not even
the real government, a shadow government.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
Shadow aspect, Yeah, totally. That leads to her feeling like
a shadow of herself, just a what am I?

Speaker 1 (07:32):
Who am I? Do I have an actual identity? Or
am I just this m and she's I mean she
calls it a void, which obviously plays into the bigger
story later, but she refers to her depression as a void.
And why I really feel for her too, is how
lonely she is. I think that's something you notice with

(07:54):
her right off the bat. She's by herself, she's talking
to a guy. She has tied up about how she's feeling.
And also I assume because the nature of her work
isolates her too, like she has so many secrets, not
just about her past, which obviously, as we see later
in the movie, is really sitting inside of her infestering,

(08:15):
but also her life is a secret. Her past is
a secret, so it creates this isolating factor that would
only exacerbate, if not cause itself, the depression she's feeling.
Absolutely a big part of experiencing a depressive episode is
being very lonely and feeling very disconnected and really and

(08:36):
also not really having the motivation to be connected to
anyone either because it feels like it's too hard, because
everything feels so exhausting when you're in that state. Well,
and also for her, how would she start, Well, she
has this pseudo childhood that gets blown to fucking smotherings,
then she gets raised in a military situation, and then

(09:01):
she just gets thrown into the world, and then the
only lifeline she has too a functioning world is her
sister who died. And we also don't even think about
the fact that she was in the BLib too. Oh God,
So she's like so removed from the world period in
so many ways.

Speaker 2 (09:21):
Which tends to create a question about which version of
me is real? Oh yeah, but she's struggling with should
I have died? There are a lot of people who
go through things like she's gone through in reality without
the magic of a BLib that will question am I
supposed to be here? Am I actually here? Did I

(09:45):
die in the war? Did I die in the fire?
Did I die in x y Z the car crash?

Speaker 1 (09:51):
Yeah, which is why she ends up at fucking Alexei's house,
her fake dad's house, just trying to feel something I
think that she really feels like it kind of reminds
me of Thor in an endgame, Yes, an endgame, when

(10:15):
we see Thor needing to have somebody who knew him
from before to help him remember who he was, which
is when he ran into his mom and that whole
time thing that happens. And so what I feel like
for Yelena is that this is the only person that
she knows. This is the only person that knew her

(10:37):
as a kid and just knew her in a different
context basically, And it makes a lot of sense to
me that she goes to Alexi even though she kind
of doesn't know how to ask for what she needs initially,
and she's really just showing up, I think, to see
if anything happens. Well, I think she's just trying to

(10:58):
find a parent, the way that we're all trying to
find a parent in different ways, no matter how old
we are. And her closest parent is this deadbeat piece
of shits who is I mean, I don't feel bad
saying that, because that's how he's portrayed. Like literally, how
he's introducing this movie is robe open boxer shorts eating

(11:22):
I can't even remember what garbage she was eating watching
old videos He's basically watched. He's basically a guy watching
old football footage from when he was in the NFL.
He's Uncle Rico And he's the closest I was sinking
the same thing, Ben, And she's the closest thing she
has to a parent who is greg and white lotus.
And I I get why she keeps going back to him,

(11:48):
you know, because she needs something that feels like you're saying,
of the feels real, and she needs someone to care
about her. And you can't. You can't get rid of
that within yourself, none of us can. Yeah, And I
feel like she needs she really wants someone to tell
her what to do, which is also something that people

(12:11):
feel when they're experiencing a depressive episode like this, is
that they don't because they feel so overwhelmed all the time.
They don't. They just have a really hard time being
able to follow through with things or being able to
do things, and having somebody tell them what to do
just feels so it's just something that they're grasping at
because they're so overwhelmed, but also confused. Well with her, especially,

(12:35):
she was not raised to have an individual identity she
was raised to be obedient and compliant, a be good soldier.
So of course she would want that because she was
never encouraged to be herself, I mean not even to
be yourself, Like she wasn't encouraged to have a self
at all. And so of course she's wandering around that

(12:56):
the world is an adult feeling a purposeless empty How
much is the depression, how much of it is like
not having a sense of self one in both? I
mean it's a clusterfuck. And so she's going to the
fucking idiot and he doesn't even know who he is
either his red guardian who he is? I really, I

(13:18):
know it would have been trued to his character. But
when she asks him, like she asked him something onlines
when they earned that house in the beginning scene of
like when did you feel like yourself? Or when did
you feel good? And I wish he would have said,
but I know this would just movie magic. This isn't
a real answer. I wish she would have said, when
I've pretended to be your dad, But I know that
wasn't the rural answer because he was so psyched when
they got out of a situation black Widow. So if

(13:38):
that had been his answer, it would have been definitely bullshit.
But I'm like, you couldn't have pulled that out of
your ass and gave that to her. But he doesn't
know how to do that for her at all.

Speaker 2 (13:48):
Because he's an actual soldier whereas she's an assassin, and
the difference in the training between the two. Even her
entire function is to disappear into whatever she's told to do,
whatever her mission is, and by whatever means necessary, whatever
deception necessary. He, on the other hand, was the Captain
America of the USSR, so his goal was to be

(14:13):
out in front and restore himself to the sense of
glory and importance and purpose that he gained from being
a figurehead, whereas she was supposed to be invisible.

Speaker 1 (14:26):
I actually think it's more that he was her dad
and she was never his child, because he was an
adult when they did that yeah undercover stuff, so he
always knew she's not really my kid. I'm playing this
stupid part for a while until I can go back

(14:48):
to being the Red Guardian and have all the glory.
And like she says in the Black Widow movie when
they're having that fight at the table and she gets pissed,
and she says, you were my mother. She's going to
him wanting her dad, and as they talk more in
that kind of fight ish touching moment they have in
the street later in the movie, mm hmm, Yeah, she's

(15:09):
looking for her dad, and unfortunately he doesn't really get
that until she explicitly says, I was looking. I'm looking
for my dad. I've been looking for my dad. Where
the fuck have you been? And he says, I didn't
think you wanted me, which I read I think you
and I have different opinions. On his hand, we do.

(15:31):
I read that in a more uh generous way, and
that I read that as he he is not he
I think he has low self esteem. But where am
I going with this is I don't I think he
meant like, I really didn't think that I would be
the person you would want to come for you. Because

(15:52):
she makes a big point in like the Blackwood movie
of like I fucking hate you. She punches in the
face like she does a lot in that movie to
tell him to go fuck himself, So I can see
where he would think like the last thing she wants
to do is deal with me, like she doesn't like me,
and I don't think he's emotionally sophisticated enough to get
to the more parental inference level, which is that she

(16:16):
doesn't want me, she's just mad at me. Yeah, And
I looked at it more as of course he didn't
think about what Elena wanted because he sucks well. And
you kind of read well, you read that he didn't
want I didn't think you wanted me, lying is like,
if it's not about him, then he's not thinking about
it at all. Yeah, And I read it more from

(16:37):
maybe because David Harbor is such a good actor and
I think of him as like Chief Hopper with his
other is. I read it more as like, I really
didn't think you wanted me to be the person with you.

Speaker 2 (16:50):
I saw it the way Brittany sees it, just.

Speaker 1 (16:53):
Because the other tones of that conversation is he does
seem very surprised and emotional that she's so emotional, Like,
I really don't think he realized how much he means
to her in that context. I think he locked it away.

Speaker 2 (17:13):
I think it meant a lot to all of them,
and that even though they were playing family on TV
and were on a mission and doing all this stuff,
that they formed very real bonds and became dependent on
each other, and all of their bonds were more real
than they ever felt or acknowledged because they weren't supposed to. Yeah,
and that they limited it within themselves and kind of

(17:35):
fractured it off. But when they got into these periods
of being lost and empty and their old identities no
longer meaning a damn thing, which means all this pain
that they're going through doesn't have anywhere to connect to.
Now they're searching for the only thing that ever was real,
which was each other.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
Yeah, because he still does have that photo of him
coaching her team. It's just so fucked up to do
that to a kid, to put him in this position,
to put both of this position when you really think
about the fact that they were like in pee wee
they were in like pee wee leagues where he was
coaching them. Like can you imagine that she thought he
was her dad until she was six years old? Like

(18:20):
that's crazy work. So that means he is her dude? Yeah,
he is her dad truly. Truly. I don't know. I
don't give Alexi that he has the ability to have
that much fucking insight, But uh, maybe I don't think
what you two are saying is necessarily wrong in any way.
I just he just doesn't seem like he gets it.

(18:42):
I think by the second conversation he does, But the
first one really felt like he was really still it
was still all about him. Well, yeah, he's definitely a narcissist. Yes,
I don't think you can argue about that. Yeah, like that,
he's still talking about himself when Yealinge is there talking

(19:03):
to him in the beginning of the movie, He's like,
can I be on the team too? Look at this
stupid fucking limo service I'm doing, Like he wants to
be the hero. The fact that he takes all that
time to drive out there way after the fact and
is so loud and yelling. I do love that when
she's like embarrassed, like her dad's picking her up from
school and she's like, shut the fuck up. But he

(19:27):
is limited by his narcissism, and so yeah, it becomes
that situation when they have that argument on the street
where she has to spell it the fuck out for
him for him to finally be like, oh okay. Which
is frustrating about having a parent like him in real
life is having to be so so so concrete and

(19:51):
direct about what you need from them, and you can't
just rely on them to understand.

Speaker 2 (19:58):
I think he gets there when he starts talking to
her on the street, when people are disappearing into the
shadow realm, her tears are real that Okay, that was
really good.

Speaker 1 (20:14):
You're dying to do this accent the whole time. He
can do many eccents. This is one of them.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
It's a terrible, but it will come out. I think
really she really was touched by what he said, and
it was clear that he was letting that out of
whatever compartment he had been keeping it in, that their
connection is real, and the feelings that they had depending
on each other and doing all those things weren't just
for pretend. They were real, and even if they started

(20:41):
his pretend, they became real and became treasured memories. And
him letting that out really activates Selena into becoming a
more engaged, trusting version of herself. She becomes the light
in the story at that point.

Speaker 1 (20:59):
Yeah, like trusting her intuition to go into the void again.
I think one of the things that I wanted to
point out about the conversation they have in the street
is that a lot of times when we are able
to be vulnerable with someone, a lot of times they
are able to be vulnerable back. I'm not saying pick

(21:19):
the person who you have the most disconnection from and
try it with them. What I am saying is trying
to do it with people that you feel comfortable with.
It is clear that she feels comfortable with being vulnerable,
even though she I think kind of has to push
herself to really get all of that out. That she

(21:40):
is able in that moment to be vulnerable. She is
able to ask for what she needs and say what
she needs, and I think that pulls at him of
those real parts that I think you are right about Ben,
that he had, you know, kind of tucked away of
like I'm not supposed to feel this. It's not supposed
to be like this. Yeah, the conversation I have on
the street, I think is the conversation she maybe was

(22:03):
trying to have, maybe had the intention to have when
she visited him in the very beginning, but it would
have been too hard to do it.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
Then she did also show up out of nowhere. To
be fair, he was in the midst of feeling all
his own feelings and stuck in his mess. Was that
what she was looking for, what she got in the
street when she showed up, of course, it was could
he have possibly delivered that at that moment, I don't

(22:32):
think so.

Speaker 1 (22:33):
Yeah. And she was also kind of non intentionally testing him,
like she brought up a few times, you haven't called
me and over a year we haven't seen each other.
You haven't reached out to me since Natasha died, Like
there was a part of her that was keeping obviously
keeping track of that. So when she shows up out
of nowhere for her, it's not nowhere because she's like,

(22:56):
I've been waiting, like, motherfucker, I guess I have to
come to you to talk to you, and you should
be ready to talk to me. I think, is what's
the child in her? I think is having that thought.
I don't think consciously, but she brings up many times
like we haven't seen each other in a while and
called while care about me. Basically is what she keeps

(23:18):
saying to him, and he is not hearing it.

Speaker 2 (23:21):
No, he's not. I'm not saying he didn't fail. I'm
just saying there was no chance he was going to pass.

Speaker 1 (23:26):
Oh no, and he was. He was locked up in
his whole his own imagery stuff because he's trying to
clean his place, uf he's trying to look like he's
trying to look like less of a piece of shit
when she rolls upon his house. So he's also locked
in trying to uphold the version of himself. He's always
trying to uphold this like shiny cool guy version of himself.

(23:47):
So her also showing up when he is in his
active trash heap of an apartment is putting him on
his back feet. And so in this one when they
find on the street too, even th there's a lot
of chaos going on. He's also been a superhero and
so he's wearing a red Guardian outfit like he's feeling himself.
And so I think he's finally able to have this

(24:08):
conversation with her because he's feeling good and grounded.

Speaker 2 (24:12):
And getting what he needed, yeah, from his own identity.
I mean, it's important to recognize one of the things
this script did beautifully was put out for us that
people want to give you the best version of themselves.
They want to care for your knees. They really do,
but when there are barriers preventing them from doing so,
it is harder or impossible and having some empathy and

(24:36):
understanding that giving people the opportunity to get in a
position to give you what you need makes it go
a lot better.

Speaker 1 (24:46):
And I think for you, Elena, I could see from
her perspective too, because they already have that exchange in
Black Widow where she tells him you are everything to me,
And so I could also see her sitting in her
apartment being like, I've told him he means everything to me,
and he's still not calling me. He's the kind of
parent that if I was working with her as a client,

(25:08):
I would ask her like, are you are you caught
up in who he actually is? Are you caught up
and who you want him to be or the kind
of dad you want to have? And so you're like
putting this idea of him around him, but that's not
actually him. So you just keep breaking your own heart,
like he's not the dad you had in Ohio. He's

(25:29):
not that guy, and to keep expecting him to be
that guy is hurting you. You have to acknowledge the
person he is. That's not to let him off the hook,
but it's just so that she can stop putting herself
in that position of why isn't he calling me? Why
am I? Why am I not worth calling? Why doesn't

(25:50):
the last faux family member I have give a shit
about me?

Speaker 2 (25:54):
Because the world doesn't give a shit about him, which
was how he was socialized to have meaning, and that's
where having empathy for it. No, we're not excusing it
or not excusing his failure. But if you cannot understand
that every single human is their own dynamic, complex web

(26:15):
of identity and all the things that happened to them
to form it, voluntary or not, you are missing the
point and you can never get your need met by
that person. You have to see them in the context
that they are in presently versus the one that they
were in when you knew them or whenever, you know,

(26:36):
for her, going back to that Ohio version of him
that was never.

Speaker 1 (26:40):
Real, like she needs to grieve that dad.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
But also keep from it what was real Like there's.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
Yeah, but I mean like grieve that idea she might
be holding on to so that she can actually see
the sort of dad that's still in front of her.

Speaker 2 (26:56):
But also understand his flaws and how they got there,
because you do if you're going to have an ongoing
relationship with someone you have to create space for them
to be imperfect because they are. We cannot live in
this space that I fear social media is trying to
create for us where people are either this perfect being

(27:17):
that's always everything, or their shit and we should cut
them out.

Speaker 1 (27:21):
It's not real.

Speaker 2 (27:22):
But where people need to be looking at is that
people do have flaws, They do make mistakes, and we
have to create space and understanding and empathy for them
while also still holding our own boundaries. And sometimes we
can hold empathic space for somebody away from us, it
no longer get access.

Speaker 1 (27:41):
Yeah, she needs to read Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents,
So I feel like that would really help her with Alexi,
which talks about this stuff that you're bringing up, which
is if you are choosing to have this person remain
in your life, then you need to figure out what
your objectives are when you're around them that have to
do with what you have control over. Correct not changing

(28:02):
their mind, not making them magically different person where they
just go, oh, yeah, you know what, you were always right?
You know, you have to figure out, like what's what's
the level of acceptance of who they are that I
can deal with? And if I can't then I have
to stop waiting for him to call or dropping by
his place. And I don't think that she's at a

(28:27):
place where she can and should. I mean, I think
what's going to be interesting now going forward is that
they now work together. That's a mess. I'd be like
if I was a therapist, to be like, oh, now
you guys gonna be working together? How's that going? Yikes?

Speaker 2 (28:46):
Avengers with a Z, That's how that's going.

Speaker 1 (28:48):
He's just being such like an Eastern European dad, which maybe,
honestly in some ways is healing for her that he's
being such an embarrassing.

Speaker 2 (28:57):
Dad nice like I mean sort of days being a
middle aged bro in attraction.

Speaker 1 (29:03):
He's a douche. We can just say it. He is
a douche. He's putting z's on things. He is putting
behavior that's like in a good place when they do
a little checklists on that TV show about like what
gets you into the bad place? And one of them
is having vanity license plates. The other one would be
have you ever put a Z on something where there
should be? In us? Is there anything else that we

(29:27):
want to say about Alexi and Yelena? You should take
a break here. So the next person that we're going
to talk about is one of our faves, Bucky Barnes.
Yay barn to see his handsome face back on the
screen playing one of my favorite characters. Also says a
lot about how fucking Looney Tunes the world is right now.

(29:48):
That honestly, like ten years ago, if you've been like,
he's going to be a congressman, that's crazy, But now
I'm like, you know what, why not? Yeah, an ex assassin,
military public assassin becomes a congressman.

Speaker 3 (30:00):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (30:00):
I really love that. How we're introduced to him as
a congressman is he has to give that snippet in
that interview. He gets that mic shoved in his face
and he is not good at it. And I liked that,
Like it would have felt fake if he was all
of a sudden, like charismatic and well spoken and like articulate.

(30:21):
He ain't. And I like that it seems like he's
learned like five words that you're supposed to use, Like
he's had some media training where they're like, just use
the words on this list, and those are the only
words he uses, and they're like, you don't have to
use just the words on the list, and he's like, what,
well it's concerning I do like that he's I agree
with you. Clearly, this is new. Clearly he is trying

(30:43):
to figure out how to do this in a different way.
But I also really enjoyed that there were some parts
of the opening of the film where his old tactics
and old behaviors he can he in some ways can't
escape them, and I think that's very, very realistic. I
think that made me feel like, I'm really glad that

(31:04):
they're showing that even though he's done so much work
and he's healed in so many different ways, and he's
still he still has to learn how to how to
engage in the world in a different way. And that's
not something that he's had a lot of experience with.
Not in this way, yeah, not in the light. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:27):
Bucky has always been a shadow operative since World War Two.
He joined World War two and got onto special ops
type teams doing special ops type shit where he's out
doing secret stuff with the Secret Squirrel Club that the

(31:49):
government doesn't talk about, and then he got caught and
turned into a way worse version of that.

Speaker 1 (31:55):
Of the most Secret Squirrel, the most.

Speaker 2 (31:58):
Squirrel that there ever was for the wrong government.

Speaker 1 (32:04):
Yeah, for like many many, many, many decades, really.

Speaker 2 (32:10):
Really complicated stuff for him to work through and to
feel resourced in this world where Tony probably would have
been better, even Steve wasn't good at this.

Speaker 1 (32:25):
Yeah, Pepper would have been a good congress person. Pepper
would have been great. Yeah, Pepper would have been great.
She would have been reading those packets, baby, she'd have notes.

Speaker 2 (32:33):
Yeah, Yeah, Tony would be good at the interviews. Pepper
would be good at like the actual job.

Speaker 1 (32:39):
Yes, Yeah, Tony would be putting those packets into whatever
version of jet Chat GBT he uses or has created
himself to tell him what he's supposed to know. Yeah,
while he's doing something else.

Speaker 2 (32:51):
And he still would do it whatever way, because we
saw that go through when he went I'm iron Man.

Speaker 1 (32:58):
Yeah, but I really like that the movie, like you
were saying, Hannah, it's really he's really well written in
it would have also felt unfair to his character development,
similar to as of what we do not speak black
Widow not black Widow, Scarlet Witch and how they fucked

(33:18):
her shit up from WandaVision to the next movie that
she was in Multiverse of Badness. Yeah, rude, whereas this
one could have done that. Yeah, because when you watch
the trailer, you're like he was in therapy, trying to
be a human being period in the Falcon Winter Soldier,
and now he's a congressman. How I do like that

(33:39):
in the movie, he's not very good at it. Yeah,
like they decided that optically, someone decided they were gonna
run him as a congressman, and he got the votes.
But he is not really good at it. He doesn't
know how to do it very well. And like you
were saying, Hannah, he's trying to do the Winter Soldier stuff. Yeah,
he's trying to find an in with Mel. He tells,

(34:02):
I do like when he pulls that congressman over the
side of the congress, is like, what the fuck? Like
he's trying to make other the other congress guy like
an avenger with him or something, and the other guy's like,
this is the real world, guy, like send me, catch
me in the corner, catch me in the corner to
be like, I got Mel. She's tactile. Tactile, He's like,

(34:23):
what And I do like that. It shows this like
awkward moment where Bucky is trying to communicate with him
the way that he would with like Steve or Sam
or anyone on that team, how they would deal with
someone like thou, which is they The movie does show
like if that was happening in the real world, he
would look bonkers. And that's when the Congressman responds to him,

(34:46):
is that she's like, the fuck are you talking about?
What are you? What are you talking about? What we're
gonna infiltrate via the assistance, like read the package, bitch,
send me an email, and I'll see you in the
fucking hearing. And Bucky's like, that's not good enough.

Speaker 2 (35:01):
Bucky is struggling with trying to be someone isn't. Yeah,
Bucky is someone who belongs in the Secret Squirrel Club
doing the real shit, but he also even does that
as kind of an outsider, as the guy that kind
of comes in and does the thing.

Speaker 1 (35:19):
Well. He is, as we called him, I think in
one of our last episodes or past episodes, he is
like the stepchild in every situation he's in kind of yep.

Speaker 2 (35:29):
But where he's struggling is because now he knows so
much more.

Speaker 1 (35:35):
Everything.

Speaker 2 (35:36):
Yeah, that this bullshit that's happening right in front of
him is how the bullshit happens, how all of it happens,
and whatever she's doing is really bad and it's going
to go so bad and it's going to stack bad
upon bad upon bad, and we need to actually do
something about it. Not this decorum bullshit. You can read

(35:57):
all the package you want.

Speaker 1 (35:59):
It's yeah, he's not used to the galacial speed that
going through the system. Is well also because he knows
that that's not the actual shit and that she's mocking it. Yeah,
m hmm, she's mocking it. Yeah, totally, totally.

Speaker 2 (36:20):
These people will sit in committee meetings and say whatever
you want and play the game and deflect and defend
and go, h miss de la la Fontaine.

Speaker 1 (36:31):
Were you here at this day? Well, how do you
define date? And how do you find here? Not endless nonsense, truly,
it's just all distraction. But I do think this movie,
what do you guys think of him now being able
to be the de facto leader of something? I know

(36:53):
when because it's like he does get the like we've
talked about corrective experiences like him coming in on the
motorcycle and blowing up the tanks and getting the thunderbolts
even though he's getting them initially for evidence against val
It's allowing him to use his skills as the Winter
Soldier without having to be the Winter Soldier, and getting

(37:14):
to use them in a more heroic way on his
own in some ways, on his own terms, because even
all this stuff with like endgame and stuff, it was
still kind of like happening to him. Yeah, and this
seems like the first time that we've seen in these
movies where he's choosing to go after something.

Speaker 2 (37:34):
I mean, he resigned his role in Congress to go
do that.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
Yeah. Oh yeah, I didn't know that. Well, I guess
I assumed I didn't. I don't think he can come
back from that behavior.

Speaker 2 (37:46):
I guess that there's dialogue Valentina says like, wow, congressman,
you her like you made it a month before you
resigned or whatever, Like.

Speaker 1 (37:57):
Oh, I think she just I thought she said you
made it a month before fucking it all up. Like
I thought she was just saying, oh, you're here, well
your career is done now.

Speaker 2 (38:05):
No, she put in the dialogue that he resigned. Okay,
something along in those science But yeah, she had that
air of your fucking it all up because it's her
world and she's you idiot.

Speaker 1 (38:16):
You had to literally do nothing. You got a golden
ticket to like you can't play the game.

Speaker 2 (38:21):
Yeah, no, you're playing the wrong game. And I'm going
to beat you at this game. And of course she
does for now. But Bucky stepping back into that as
a corrective experience of being able to be the leader
he always was going to be now that he was,
I'm sure he was the neighborhood leader and Bucky getting
the chance to be that guy instead of this assassin

(38:46):
villain and back to this guy that was taken from
him after war was missing an action and god brainwashed,
but he used to be who he always was and
do that on his terms, Like you're saying, yes, that's
a corrective experience, and I think we will see him thrive.

Speaker 1 (39:01):
It is interesting that he grows his hair back out,
which is probably fan service. That does feel like fan
service to me, Yeah, because I feel like him cutting
his hair short and fucking the Winter Soldier and keeping
it short is him more like reclaiming himself post Winter Soldier.
But maybe he liked the long hair and he wanted

(39:21):
to have it back on his own terms. I don't know,
who knows.

Speaker 2 (39:25):
Maybe yeah, But I like that we get to see
him step up. He was never gonna be the paladin.
He's never gonna be the white Knight. That's not his role.
He's not the face. He's not the one who's committed
to the cause and is That was Steve Buck He's

(39:47):
the one who knows the things. He's the reluctant leader,
like I know the area.

Speaker 1 (39:55):
He's he's an antihero, he's a ranger. Yeah, he's not
the one given speeches. No, yeah, yeah, No, that was
stage was Steve. It was always Steve. Steve loved to
speak with his hand and on his hips.

Speaker 2 (40:09):
But he's trying to be Steve in honor what Steve.

Speaker 1 (40:11):
Asked of him. Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 2 (40:14):
When he lets that go and his acts like Bucky,
he escapes out of his existential crisis seeing going, this
is not my jam.

Speaker 1 (40:21):
I don't know what to do with this. I can't
create any change of this.

Speaker 2 (40:24):
When he says, fuck it, I'm getting on my motorcycle
and going and fucking stuff up and saving these fucking idiots. Yeah,
and just solving his problem. I'm not doing this bullshit.
This is bullshit. I've seen this before.

Speaker 1 (40:36):
Yeah, he needs a compromise because Yeah, him sitting in
the hearing in the beginning and trying to take deep
breaths because he's so frustrated and Nancy. It's like he
went from like one hundred to zero and he needed
to find a more realistic compromise, which I guess he
kind of does in this movie. I feel like he does.

(40:58):
I feel like he's very I feel like we see
him be very comfortable and very sure of himself in
a different way than I feel like we've seen him well.
I think as we see in the post credit scene
when they're like the official Avengers ish copyrighted right, because
Yolena becomes sort of the de facto leader, but he

(41:21):
is sort of mentoring her when she's trying to make
a decision. He's will put it on the screen like
he's like gently guiding her on how to do stuff.
But he's still letting her do it, like he's not
taking it over from her, which is nice. Yeah, because
I don't think he needs that either. He's someone who's
gone through a lot of shit. He's not like Alexi

(41:41):
where his personality is wrapped up in how great he is. Yeah, No,
he's her, Oh that's true.

Speaker 2 (41:48):
Yeah, they're more like he understands her probably better than
anyone there, because they're pretty similar.

Speaker 1 (41:58):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, definitely true. I mean something we
didn't talk about with Elena is like a big part
of her stuff is not sheer remembers of a horrible
thing she's done. Which also he has the same experience too.
They both remember every bad thing they've done. Yeah, as assassins.
As it turns out, we don't tend to forget a
whole lot. I don't think I have anything else to

(42:19):
say about Bucky anyone else. Nope, sounds like we should
take a break here. We'll come back and talk about
John Walker. So part of the reason why I put
John Walker on the list was just because I just
wanted to touch on the fact that he's still in it.
He's still kind of in his shit. He is still

(42:40):
not really being honest with people around him about what
his life is like. He is kind of still stuck
in this. I have all the answers, I have all
the strength. I can just do it myself. Yeah, he
is so in his ego. Yeah, that's the chill way
to put it. But not like even a narciss stick away.

(43:01):
He's just his ego has him by the neck where well, one,
I guess I just want to say I love how
they portray him in this movie in that it's like
some guy you knew from college got the serum. Yeah,
like just like an amplified version of that guy. You
know'd be like that guy. And when I say, Ego

(43:22):
is killing him, like the flashback, well this is not flashback,
but the void scene he has is he's supposed to
be watching his kid and he can't get off his
phone looking at think pieces about him. He is stuck.

Speaker 2 (43:36):
Yeah, he is similar to Bucky in that he is
used to just getting in there and doing the stuff
and being the best and being the most skilled.

Speaker 1 (43:48):
But he's now entered a world where he can't ever
be any of that.

Speaker 2 (43:53):
And he's got the serum now which helps him be
some of that, but he has not learned to not
be a douche.

Speaker 1 (44:01):
Yeah, I mean he You're right, like he I'm sure
was golden star boy. I mean that's why he got
chosen right to be Captain America. Absolutely was the Golden Boy,
and he fucked up so fucking royally. I don't know
how you can do it worse than decapitating a person
with the shield in broad fucking daylight. Yeah, in front

(44:24):
of a bajillion people, and then get fucked over by
the organization. Like that speech he gives in the show
when he has to go testify or whatever. He's in it.
It's been a while since I've watched it. He's in
his like uniform. Yeah, he's like, you fucking do this
to me. He's not wrong. It's like the guy that
peaked in the high school got the serum, and so

(44:46):
that part just gets amplified.

Speaker 2 (44:49):
It's that energy multiplied by Yeah, went to West Point,
which is among the hardest colleges to get into in
the nation, became an officer, and is he is a
metal of honor?

Speaker 1 (45:03):
Right, Yeah, because he's wearing that and you're talking sure, yeah,
I'm sure.

Speaker 2 (45:08):
Not only did he do all the things in high school,
but he kept doing that.

Speaker 1 (45:12):
He just kept succeeding. He kept succeeding it like the
hardest wall and then fell off a cliff and then drowned.

Speaker 2 (45:19):
Well, because he ventured into the realm of gods.

Speaker 1 (45:22):
Yeah, yeah, he he got too big for his breeches
and then he took this serum.

Speaker 2 (45:29):
He well, he wasn't too big for his breeches. The
problem was he they wanted him to join these gods. Yeah,
that's true, where he could compete in the realm of
mortals as a you know, god among men and Achilles type, right. Yeah,
but then all of a sudden he's up against Thor
or Steve.

Speaker 1 (45:49):
Which we do see in real life when someone is
really popular or successful in a small version of whatever
they're doing, like they fish, little pawnshit.

Speaker 2 (46:00):
Yeah, that's where he's at because he's become the big
fish in each of these ponds that he's been. He's
always been too big for something until he started venturing
into this realm of the Avengers where these people are
boosted to levels that he can't compete with. So he
gets so jealous and angry and stuck that all his

(46:22):
trauma from all the things that he dealt with start
impacting him, and his ability to regulate, a control and
be that completely restricted, focused person he is got taken
from him, ripped, and now he has no armor to
deal with all his wounds.

Speaker 1 (46:42):
Bad combo. And then I'm sure the stuff with his
home life, well, when he's stuck, like we said, but
also to have had a kid at that moment, you
know what I mean, where he's just not available, and
then she probably just wants him to show up as
a partner, and I'm sure he wants understanding from her
about where he's at, but there's not time or room

(47:05):
for that because they just had a kid. So it's
this horrible situation.

Speaker 2 (47:11):
Right, And the thing that is usually true about that
guy is that he's usually kind of a prick m hmm.
And Walker is clearly ugh an intolerable, self aggrandizing prick.
But now others aren't seeing him that way, in the
way that he's used to seeing them and used to

(47:32):
running his shit, and now none of it works. So
it becomes his deep seated need for that to work again,
and he just keeps trying to prove it. Prove it,
prove it, prove it, prove it, prove it by going, fine,
I can't trust any of you, none of you will
get it done. I'll just do it myself and fuck
it all up.

Speaker 1 (47:49):
Yeah, he can't shut the fuck he can't. Oh my god,
Like when they're in that tower, well, well no, when
they're in the elevator shaft and he does that thing
that could have killed them, But he's like, but it
we're done, it's like up. But that's such a good
example of that. Oh that'd be the high school guy. Yeah,
see it worked out, it was fine, the big deal.

(48:09):
But did you die? Yeah, exactly. Something that I wrote
down about about John is that he can't be honest
with himself yet. Oh hell no, he's not in a
place where that's even something that he can think about.
He's so stuck in the narrative that's been created about
him to the world that he can't He just can't

(48:32):
fucking see out. And so a person like him can't
get help because they won't admit getting to themselves that
they need help. Yeah. Like John Walker would have to
be mandated to.

Speaker 2 (48:42):
Treatment and he still wouldn't be honest, and he still.

Speaker 1 (48:45):
Wouldn't be honest. He'd be like, so you're telling that
your wife? Well, I mean, I mean it's just finally
like he would just like Spinner, like you would just
be chasing him around. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:54):
I think the only one who really clocks him is Ava,
and just because she does not give off fuck who
he is.

Speaker 1 (49:01):
He hates when he's in that scene in the beginning
when he's trying to be like the big Biggahona in
the room when they're trying to escape, and like Ava
and Yolena like just laugh in his face.

Speaker 2 (49:13):
Ohyeba particularly doesn't give a fuck because she's British and
she can literally walk through walls. Can she just does
not care about anything that he's saying, Like whatever you're
talking about, I I don't.

Speaker 1 (49:29):
Have time for him, Like is that gonna help us
get out of here? No, so shut up. Even that moment,
that kind of odd moment in the movie where he
points out this cactus they can eat. It's a weird moment,
but I could I see that though from this as
we're talking about him, like that is a moment where
the story is showing us like he has to show

(49:49):
his worth all the time. Yeah I know this thing,
Yeah you can eat it. Aren't you happy? Aren't like
you're welcome? Then he has to immediately correct one of
them right after about doctor Phil. It's like, shut up up.
He cannot shut the book up. And it's so interesting
how once they find out that his wife and his
kid left him, that that takes all the wind out

(50:11):
of his sails, and like he stops, he kind of
stops being a prick he stops being much of anything. Yeah,
he kind of just shuts the fuck down and is like, Okay,
well now everyone knows like my dirty secret, and I
can't really live in the reality where that's true.

Speaker 2 (50:27):
Right, Because John is the Pelatin. He's the Pelatin. He's
the white Knight who's committed. And he fell.

Speaker 1 (50:36):
He fell.

Speaker 2 (50:37):
He is now an oath breaker. He broke the promises
in the most public way. He became this symbol. He
became everything.

Speaker 1 (50:49):
Like, that's his worst namemare is the think pieces he's reading.

Speaker 2 (50:52):
Yeah, truly, And why he struggles so hard is because
his identity is formed around being the opposite of that.

Speaker 1 (51:00):
Yeah. And he lost his best friend, his wife's left him,
his best friend's dead. Yeah, that's also true. He is
nothing grounding star or something wasn't his battle star.

Speaker 2 (51:10):
It's an interesting dynamic to watch.

Speaker 1 (51:12):
John is.

Speaker 2 (51:15):
Closest to Alexi for but.

Speaker 1 (51:18):
Yeah, yeah, totally, yeah, at vastly different points of acceptance
of it, because Alexi's government like crumbled. Well, here's the thing.
Steve is an anomaly. Steve is this shiny miracle person, yeah,
who just happens to be innately good. And the serum
makes me even better, Whereas I think Walker and Alexi

(51:39):
are what an actual real life version of Captain America is. Yeah,
like a shiny guy who's too wrapped up in being
shiny and doesn't know how to be anyone but shiny.

Speaker 2 (51:52):
But will eventually fail because the demands are too great. Yeah,
and the things that are propping you up the world
will find a way to crack them and knock them
out from under you. Only Steve could have stood up
through that, because that's why he's Steve, and you can
give a.

Speaker 1 (52:08):
Shit about that stuff, Like during like the nomad years,
he went off the grid, yeah and did his own thing,
Like he's not worried about how he's perceived. The way
that these two guys are driven by the way they're perceived, right,
which also is probably just a side effect or consequence
of the fact that, like, Steve was a little guy,

(52:32):
you know, a puny little guy before he got the serum,
so his identity had nothing to do with that.

Speaker 2 (52:37):
Stuff, correct, Whereas Walker was quick to tell us that
he was a three time All American quarterback.

Speaker 1 (52:45):
Whatever he was. They start all telling stories from their childhoods.
They're like, oh, okay, so we're all telling each other
about the sports who played his kids, which I thought
was such a good retort. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (52:56):
Same, But it's clear where his identity. He is very
much a fallen palette and that's what he is, Like
I was all of these things and I want it
all back, and it's it's gone. Whereas you know, you
look at all the anger and things that he shows.
You see Alexei who is just embraced that he's your
barbarian FYI that he just goes, Yeah, I just get

(53:17):
really mad and start breaking shit. That's my thing. Once
we hit that point that it's time for that to happen,
I'm your man, Like you need somebody to do the
dumb strong thing, got it in a tracksuit.

Speaker 1 (53:31):
What I love about this movie is how well written
all the characters are and realistic because at the end
of the movie, he's still this guy. Yeah, like when
he's then we're in that barret. I can't remember exactly
what it says, but he still said something where I
was like, shut the fuck up, Like he's still that
guy that if you were bopping around the Adventures Tower
and he was the only one in the room, I'd

(53:53):
be like, oh before he noticed me and then they'll
come back later, right, he is your best fighter.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
He is your best fighter, there's no question.

Speaker 1 (54:02):
But I'm trying to hear him talk.

Speaker 2 (54:06):
He has no charisma, and he keeps trying to have
the charisma and be like, Oh.

Speaker 1 (54:11):
There's nothing worse than a guy who thinks he's charming
who isn't, especially if they're conventionally attractive. Oh, and it
is kind of why A Russell plays him so well. Yeah,
he really does. And I'm like, I wonder if his
experience as being Kurt Russell's son, being around probably guys

(54:32):
like this his whole life, and just being this guy
like too. He's so good at being this guy that
I want to punch him in the Free book. It's
like he's it's so well done. Here's a professional hockey player.
Oh okay, there you go. So yes, oh yeah, before
he got injured and then he became an actor. So

(54:55):
so he's been around a lot of this guy. He's
been this guy. Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 2 (54:59):
I almost guarantee he's been this guy, except that he
had some substantial Hollywood pull to have another career. But
the number of guys that he's channeling that would have
been that guy that.

Speaker 1 (55:12):
Make the NHL.

Speaker 2 (55:13):
It's a perfect casting because guys that make it to
that point are all that guy somewhere. You think about
the odds of making it to be one of twenty
guys on thirty teams out of all those people whose
parents have been pushing them and going to all those tournaments,
and there's one kid that keeps beating everybody's ass. But

(55:34):
now everybody on the team is that kid, and there's
still guys who are better than you. That's what pro
sports is. These kids who have been kicking everybody's ass
everywhere up and down the field or the ice or
whatever for years, all of a sudden get smaller and
smaller and smaller groups. So they suddenly realize like, oh

(55:57):
there's some very very big fish here, and oh shit,
those in football a cal him like the welcome to
the NFL moment, like oh, I've been I'm an All
American in college and then here comes the all pro
the best of the best, that just kicks the living
shit out of them in the first play, and they.

Speaker 1 (56:15):
Go, what just happened?

Speaker 2 (56:18):
Yeah, it's he would have seen that. Why Russell would
have seen that, because he lived it. He was that
guy to make it to that room with those guys
and still got his ass beat and then got hurt
and lost it. Think about what that it would all
mean and how well that works itself into John Walker. Yeah, truly,
because now you can't play.

Speaker 1 (56:38):
Yeah, that's a whole other that's a whole other ball.
If we're going to wax, Yeah for sure. But a
guy like Walker, when it comes to therapy and getting
out of this stuck place like truly his own worst enemy,
because what he needs to acknowledge is what's the hardest
for him to admit. It's like he's stuck at the
start point.

Speaker 2 (56:56):
Yeah, the thing he has to acknowledge first is that
he's fallible.

Speaker 1 (56:59):
Yes, yes, yes, the end, And that's that's all I not.
That's tough stuff. It is because I think Alexi knows
he's a piece of shit, yeah, and probably would say
every once in a while, I know a piece of shit,
you know what I mean? But I think Walker would
be like, I'm not a pizzait until his like head exploded. Yeah,

(57:22):
basically airs heart all the rest.

Speaker 2 (57:25):
You just keep sucking and fucking out all the plans
that I would have You guys didn't fuck up everything
that I did, it'd be fine.

Speaker 1 (57:31):
He's the kind of guy, well you can't get drunk anymore.
He's got the serum because he's the kind of guy
that would get ship faced on like Thanksgiving Eve and
be like, I know him, a piece of shit, my
wife looking eats me like and then he'd finally have feelings,
but the next day he'd be like, I blacked outlaws
and I brough. I don't even know what we're talking about. Yeah, yeah,

(57:53):
anything more I want to say about I don't think so.
I think that's it. I think we should take another
break here. And now we're going to very briefly talk
about the character known as Ghost, but her real name
is Ava. Mostly just what I wanted to say about
her is I barely remember her from the other movie

(58:14):
she was in the character, and I think one of
the reasons why she fits in the group is because
she's had some very similar experiences to Bucky, Elena, and
maybe even kind of John.

Speaker 3 (58:27):
Well.

Speaker 1 (58:27):
She's in the situation where the people that we're supposed
to because her dad, right, the people that were supposed
to take care of her. I know her a little
about her story, but people are supposed to take care
of her are the ones who experimented on her.

Speaker 2 (58:38):
You'd have to watch the I think second least popular
movies she I think she was only an ant man
in The Wasp.

Speaker 1 (58:45):
Oh, I don't think I saw that one, which I
don't know who she is.

Speaker 2 (58:48):
I don't think she's this movie. I don't even think
she was in Quantum Mania. Oh, okay, because Yellowjacket was
the villain in the first one.

Speaker 1 (58:55):
Haven't seen that one either. Yeah, Man and man it's funny.
It's yeah, I don't find it Aman that funny. Me
neither A man's funny. I was surprised. Amen's not for me.
That's a better way to say. I probably it's it's
Paul Rudd being Paul Rudd. Yeah. So mostly, just what
I wanted to say is that she fits in the
group easily because she's had similar experiences. And that's a

(59:19):
part of why, even though she seems like a weird
character to bring in in some ways that I think
it works that she gets it and I think she's
someone that'll keep fitting into the story too. Yeah, as
part of the Avengers, I'm interested to see where she'll
go and develop as a character. I'm glad we touch
upon her. But yeah, she is a character that just

(59:40):
kind of plays the tough in a lot of ways. Yeah,
And so we don't get a lot of introspection into her, Yeah,
even though she is in the whole movie.

Speaker 2 (59:50):
Yeah, she's She's the one who's acknowledging fully how fucking
weird her life is and how different she is, and
is sort of something I think the others start to
look up to. She's embracing what makes her so strange
because she needs her suit to keep herself, like her

(01:00:16):
entire body together, Otherwise her cells will break apart and
she'll just dissipate into nothing. That's kind of her curse.
That suit that she's in keeps her body together. Something
went wrong with her the pin particles for her. So
if she loses that suit, that's why the sound destabilizes
her so much, because it, yess not good.

Speaker 3 (01:00:41):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:00:42):
So she's simultaneously the most comfortable with herself and the
most vulnerable.

Speaker 1 (01:00:48):
Yeah, which also I think could be a metaphor for
the fact that she's also the only person of color
right on the team, Yeah, which I think could. I
don't know if that means anything in the casting or
the storytelling, but that she's the least relying on them,
she's the most like, I'm gonna do my own thing,
and you're right, like she's the most guarded. Understandably so,

(01:01:13):
and also because yeah, she is the strangest in terms
of her abilities, Like she can't really hide them the
way that everyone else could. She can't pass as a
regular person.

Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
Nope, but she can be invisible.

Speaker 1 (01:01:31):
Yeah, which is so. I mean, I'm glad they all
have each other. Now, I know me too.

Speaker 2 (01:01:38):
You have the opportunity to dunk on that, Brittany. Oh no,
you're going through like recognizing you have an actor of color. Yeah,
who can be invisible vanish?

Speaker 1 (01:01:51):
Oh, to take the metaphor further in that, the only
way she's safest is to go unnoticed. Oh oh okay,
it makes sense. That makes sense. Like that's the closest
she can get to passing is become invisible. Yeah, and
stay off the radar. Yeah. Thanks.

Speaker 2 (01:02:12):
But the more she owns herself, the more the serious
problems she can solve.

Speaker 1 (01:02:18):
They would be dead. Oh yeah, many times over. She
really comes and clutch multiple times, which is telling. I think,
not to be corny, but we all want to be
part of a community and so she finally gets this
opportunity to be part of a team, and even though
she wants to pretend like she doesn't want to do that, she.

Speaker 3 (01:02:39):
Keeps showing up she could when she could have.

Speaker 1 (01:02:43):
Just saved her own self, and luckily she doesn't. Luckily
she doesn't get punished for that. With Walker, Yeah, she
raised a lot of pranks on him. That's what I
would do if I was her, I was invisible with
that turnaround. I mean, there's no way with her character that.

Speaker 2 (01:03:01):
At some point he goes to the bathroom and she
just pops up, and it's like wow, even more disappointing
someone like him.

Speaker 1 (01:03:10):
What you do is you move his toothbrush all the time.
You don't do anything to it, but you move it
a lot, so you can't ever trust it, you know,
small things. Just watched him, he'll know he's like slowly
going insane. Yeah, Brush, I think she's too forward for it.

(01:03:30):
I think she would want him to know was her pick.

Speaker 2 (01:03:35):
That's true, but she also is very dedicated, and she
does go against her instincts to disappear and keeps showing
back up at great risk to herself.

Speaker 1 (01:03:45):
Just pretty impressive.

Speaker 2 (01:03:46):
She must be committed and feeling something for make her
do that, because she could have just hopped in that
truck and been like deuces, drove the truck thirty feet
to where people weren't looking anymore, hopped out and turn
a visible disappear.

Speaker 1 (01:04:00):
Yeah, gone into the night, because what this movie is
really about is a bunch of lonely people.

Speaker 2 (01:04:05):
Finding a family. Yeah, because humans are pack animals.

Speaker 1 (01:04:08):
Yeah, so I guess on that note, we can take
another break here and talk about Bob. All right, So
Bob slash the century century Void Central three all three,
all three, I would say, our boy Bob, which we
haven't even referenced Bob yet, which is kind of wild
because he is the main antagonist. Ish, Yeah, Valentina is

(01:04:33):
the main antagonist. But yeah, like Bob is just I mean,
I guess he is bipolar disorder. They do have the
job of the movie I think of never officially giving
him any diagnosis, maybe out of caution, but they describe bipolar.
They do describe bipolar. But I think that he has
complex PTSD mm hmm with psychotic features.

Speaker 2 (01:04:58):
Okay, and he formed some pretty significant parts.

Speaker 1 (01:05:03):
Well yeah, he definitely dissociates. Like they do make a
point of he loses time for his things.

Speaker 2 (01:05:09):
Yeah, I don't think they Yes, they correct. They reference
things that could very well point to a polar disorder,
with being dichotomous and having kind of different versions of himself.
But I think the more we learn about his history,
the more it makes sense that we're looking at complex

(01:05:30):
PTSD or dissociative identity disorder, then we're looking at bipolar disorder.

Speaker 1 (01:05:35):
He may have both. I think the only thing that
makes me still think about bipolar is the delusions of
grandeur that gets talked about pretty on the nose.

Speaker 2 (01:05:46):
I think he has more than one or diagnostic thing
going on. Something is causing those delusions of grandeur. But
also we see quite clearly that he would have had
to create alternate worlds to survive the one he was in,
much like Moonnight does.

Speaker 3 (01:06:09):
And even though that was a bit flawed, hugely flawed,
hugely anyway, go on looking.

Speaker 2 (01:06:19):
At the uh looking at there. The diagnosive picture of
Bob is that it's I think it's deliberately unclear.

Speaker 1 (01:06:29):
As to what it is. I think they did that
on purpose.

Speaker 2 (01:06:32):
Because they don't want to stigmatize something that's real. But yes,
you see this investment in an identity of version that
just wants to be good enough. He just wants to
be happy, and he takes to that like he does
a drug.

Speaker 1 (01:06:46):
Yeah, because I guess we can say like Bob's introduced
as just a regular guy ish who's down on his
luck or has had really trouble being a functioning adult
due to mental health symptoms at which lead to drug.

Speaker 2 (01:07:00):
But the deeper we go, the more we learn the
layers and depths of his trauma and that those things
were formed by things hurting him, yes, and him perpetually
not having his needs met, which, to Hannah's point, is
house hep just deforms. I don't think bipolar would remotely

(01:07:21):
cover it alone. Is it there and depicted?

Speaker 1 (01:07:25):
Sure?

Speaker 2 (01:07:25):
But I would take some serious convincing.

Speaker 1 (01:07:30):
To believe in that one. Yeah, because they think they
do that thing we've talked about on the show many times,
which is they give him kind of he gets kind
of like mental health soup diagnosings, like symptoms where they
talk about high highs and low lows and illusion of grandeur,
but then also dissociation and this trauma piece. It's this

(01:07:50):
kind of yeah, like a gaggle of symptoms where if
he's like a real life person. He'd be someone that
you'd have to like work with for a while to
kind of get real sense of like what's happening where
and from what? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:08:05):
Right, And working with people's cphisd is like that, because
what it was is attachment trauma that formed by their
knees not getting met repeatedly, which led to the drug
use to escape the feelings created by the chronic abuse
and feeling of being trapped and stuck, which led to
more traumatic experiences, which led to more negative self identity,

(01:08:29):
which leads to more parts forming to tolerate them, but
the other parts that formed in the first place still existing,
and eventually they collide and crash, and this person feels
like they let themselves down all the time and don't
even trust themselves. Working with someone like Bob, you're gonna
get that. And it was acted beautifully.

Speaker 1 (01:08:49):
Yeah. And then also with considering the fact that he
was doing drugs like meth, which are not a joke,
that would also influence your diagnostic assessment of him him
Like when he's talking about this mood stuff, how much
is this correlating to substance use? What is he actually
experiencing when he's clean, has he been clean long enough
to know, like, is his mood happening regardless of substance

(01:09:13):
use or in like correlation with substance use, Like it's
a lot of stuff you have, Yeah, yeah, like a
lot of stuff you'd have to peace out.

Speaker 2 (01:09:22):
It takes a long time to get a clear diagnostic
picture and something.

Speaker 1 (01:09:26):
Like Bob, Yeah, for sure, because of the presentation, it's
so layered. It's just a layered experience, and depending on
whatever his symptoms are at the time, is kind of
what you have to go with until you find out
more about him. He's until he's able to open up
more doors for you, which could take some time, and

(01:09:47):
you never know what's room you're going to get. Yeah, well,
if him is also this x factor of being a
labrata that's given these crazy powers and how much I
don't even know how much that could eventually be influencing
his psychology too, like his literal brain immensely truly, and
how it might be blowing up these characteristics of what

(01:10:11):
he's doing, which obviously does because that's the point of
this movie, yes, is that he brings everybody into the
how his brain's been pieced.

Speaker 2 (01:10:21):
Up when you can't factor out Valentina correctly clocking him.

Speaker 1 (01:10:29):
Ugh, she's such she's so disgusting. Buckle up, kids, I'm
about to use this word. She is such a cunt.
And I don't use that word a lot professionally, truly.
But the scene, maybe that's not the DSM being a cunt.
Maybe for Valentino we would create it. But the scene
where she is putting on that shawl or thing so

(01:10:52):
that she can look more maternal, so she can fuck
with him. Oh, never been so pissed off at a
character in one of these movies.

Speaker 2 (01:11:02):
Yeah, Yeah, that's where you get the ick, because she
knew exactly what to do to bring sentry out of him.

Speaker 1 (01:11:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:11:11):
I don't think she knew about the void, no, but
she knew she had either wimpy little like I'm just bob,
I'm here, which isn't that useful to her, but a
good boy that now, that's very useful, A good boy

(01:11:33):
who's a god, very very useful.

Speaker 1 (01:11:38):
Yeah, and her and her hubris to think that she
could contain that, and that if she couldn't, she could
easily neuter it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:45):
Of course, because she's Amanda Waller. This is a very
very obvious Marvel rip of I mean, they do it
to each other all the time, but this is a
very obvious Marvel rip of Suicide Squad.

Speaker 1 (01:12:00):
Better than those movies, way better. Those movies are absolute garbage.
The second one hilarious. I'm not a James Gun. I'm
not a James Gun Gurley. Yeah, so yeah, it was
neither of was this is what I wanted Suicide Squad
to be. Yeah, this movie.

Speaker 2 (01:12:19):
Yeah, and when you encounter them, that's typically what they are,
not this emotionally intelligent. But it's way way better than
that bag of fucking garbage that was the first one.

Speaker 1 (01:12:33):
We won't discuss that as that is.

Speaker 2 (01:12:35):
In the wrong universe for the moment. Yeah enough, the
Batsman universe as it were. Ye, but that one was
pure trash. The second one was mostly the lampoon the
living fuck out of the first one. Mm hmm, And
it was much better. But then it was randomly a

(01:12:56):
Kaiju movie, which is where it lost me of going
like why. I think the answer to it was because, yeah,
where this one was on a set mission the whole
time to be an emotionally intelligent film and tell a
story that corrects a bunch of bullshit in a narrative.

Speaker 1 (01:13:14):
Yeah, really well, in opposition to what you just said,
a Kaiju movie, this movie is purposely small, right. The villain,
the quote unquote villain is like small in context, and
the way that it gets resolved is like a very grounded,
contained thing. There isn't a goofy villain starfish or like

(01:13:39):
even in that New Captain America, that dude with that
brain head. Yeah, you know what I mean, Like, there
wasn't anything like that. Like even the way that void
is shown was so cool and eerie. Yeah, just being
like blackness, like true nothingness, except for like his eyes
and some names his teeth. Yeah, because really what the
void is a shame and hopelessness. It is like depression

(01:14:04):
personified and just sucking up everything, which is the how
the like we were saying in the beginning, Yolena talks
about the void and that's how she describes the depression
that she's going through as a result of her trauma.
And then she links up with Bob, that's what they
have in common, that's where she finds connection with him.
And so this is just also a personification of what

(01:14:28):
if your sad as the lowest point became literally your
not only your identity, but a like super villain. What
if it was empowered? What if it won? And how
it and the idea that it just pulls everyone in
is when we talk about like suicidality, that what's the

(01:14:51):
point of being here, Let's just go away and why
are we even trying? Just like true hopelessness, and also
may be feeling like doing everybody a favor by just
push pushing them out of existence and not realizing that.
I mean, obviously they weren't push out of existence. They
were blasted into his void space to live all the

(01:15:12):
worst memories out. But it truly is like mental health personified.

Speaker 2 (01:15:18):
Which is what made it so incredibly powerful and effective,
is that we all know we all have rooms inside
of our heads where things live, and some of them
we have access to and some of them we do not.
But there are things that can come forth into the
world and find them for you.

Speaker 1 (01:15:41):
Well, what did you guys think about the Rooms? I
thought the rooms were such a cool visualization of trauma.
I really thought that it was a very good example
of what people who have a lot of trauma experience.
It's often replaying the worst moments of their life. It

(01:16:04):
is often experiencing the same scenario. It is often a
recurring nightmare that they've had for most of their life
in some kind of way. And so I really felt
like the way that they showed how all of the
energy in each room was kind of set up really

(01:16:25):
shows that that's really what it feels like for people
who have experienced that many traumatic things. And so I
thought it was a really beautiful way to show not
only what someone's experience can be like, but also how
there's just a door that just opens and now you're
in it and people can get and that's a part

(01:16:47):
of why people lose time and experience dissociative identity disorder.
That's a part of why people are so disconnected from
themselves or whatever the case might be. Like, I thought
it did a really good job of showing also how
real and how vivid those traumatic experiences are, Yeah, if
that makes sense. And we see it most with Yolena

(01:17:09):
because she's the one that actually she's the one that
we follow even more than Bob, Yeah, through those memories
and how she is trying to do something sweet, which
is be compassionate to her younger self, like the scene
where she holds her younger self's ears. I really love
that scene and how much she's thinking about, like, I

(01:17:31):
don't want you'd have to go through. This is such
a therapeutic, yeah, thing that she does taking care of
your little self, which.

Speaker 2 (01:17:40):
Is really beautifully done. And I think the only thing
I would build on to where Hannah was going with
this because it's all right, is that the idea of
there being a what EMDR calls a touchstone. All the
rooms for Bob connect back to that floor beneath Bob

(01:18:04):
says sometimes aren't so bad. Yeah, but that one memory
is trying to break through in the dining room or
living room, whatever it is. But yeah, yeah, that one,
that's the one, that's the one.

Speaker 1 (01:18:21):
Well, you can see where it forms a lot of
his core beliefs about himself, like where his mom says
you're not a hero, Like no, his dad says you're
not a hero, and then his mom says, you just
make things worse. Yes, when he tries to protect her.

Speaker 2 (01:18:36):
Yeah, correct, And watching that spill over into everything, and
even moments where he has glimmers that are the opposite
of that that help him feel like he can do things.
He still operates with the fear underneath that that he

(01:18:57):
in fact just makes it worse that he is helpless
and he makes it worse. He's not a hero, he's garbage.
That he formed that whole thing, and everything ties back
to that no matter what, because that was real and
you can't convince him that it wasn't real because it was.

(01:19:17):
And understanding that that is what a touchstone is. That
is its power, that it sits in there, and no
matter what you do, every fear you have is rooted
in that because that's the real fear, which.

Speaker 1 (01:19:30):
Is then makes sense when you think back on the
first scenes of the movie, before we know really anything
about him, how he keeps volunteering to be left behind
and like I'll just get in the way. You should
just leave me, because when we're introduced with his character,
there's nothing we know yet about him where we'd be like,

(01:19:51):
why would you just like volunteer to get fucked over?
But now that we know, like watching the movie like
a second time, you get all this insight into like, oh,
because this is this is where his core beliefs are
just coming up to the front, and not just his
core beliefs.

Speaker 2 (01:20:07):
A proven validated experience by many things, proving it correct
because the filter he has on it ties back to that.
So it's the way he sees it. It's that plus awful.
It's really really powerful.

Speaker 1 (01:20:29):
And then unfortunately, in this situation, Yolena keeps validating that
belief because she won't let him help and she's like,
just stay behind me, I'll take care of you, don't
get involved, don't make it worse. And so she's unfortunately
playing into this thing he already feels, even though she's
coming from it. I mean, that's a great example of

(01:20:50):
how she is communicating something different than what he's probably
hearing because she's just doing that to take care of him.
But also but also is showing how what I really
appreciate about it is that it's also showing how people
can be triggered by activated by so many different things.
Oh yeah, and that even though you may think that

(01:21:11):
you're doing something helpful, just like the way John Walker
calls him Bobby, Like, I know, John Walker is just
being an asshole, right because that's we already talked about him,
But that being called that name is a trigger for
him experiencing what you just brought up that I already
forgot somehow helplessness. No, I don't know what it was,

(01:21:33):
forget it, just that people are triggered by all different
kinds of things. And I think they did a really
good job of showing of us kind of after we
see the core memory that is the time that he
experienced the biggest trauma, I think makes a lot of
I lost my train of thought. I don't know what
the fuck I was trying to say. No, I think

(01:21:55):
what you're saying is well, Walker triggers him a lot too,
I think also because he has about the energy. But
I feel like it just what I really want to
point out is that you don't really understand how often
people can be activated and really having a little bit
more awareness about how we talk to people and approach them,

(01:22:21):
and there's so many, so many people have experienced so
much trauma in general. Having some awareness from this film
of seeing how just by being whoever, this guy is
being triggered in multiple ways throughout this throughout the film,
and it makes sense that we see the most angry

(01:22:43):
version of him in the beginning of the movie in
reaction to John, like John's the only one he kind
of cops an attitude with. Yeah, because John is probably
reminds a lot of his dad. Yeah, and so he's
the only one where he's like, you're a dick and
then like picks a fight with him. Probably what you
could argue is that like the protective part of him. Yeah,

(01:23:05):
you know, because in a lot of ways, you could
argue that the void is that part that thinks it
is helping Bob by keeping his foot on his neck.

Speaker 2 (01:23:20):
It's helping him by not letting him expose himself to pain,
by thinking he's anything more than the voice.

Speaker 1 (01:23:27):
Keep yourself in a box, and you will be miserable,
but safe, things will not get worse. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:23:35):
It's not there to keep him safe. It's there to
prevent things from getting worse.

Speaker 1 (01:23:38):
Yeah. So when I watched movie the first time, I
was nervous because it was doing a pretty good job
up to that point that Bob was going to beat
the bad guy was by literally beating him to death.
And I really loved that the movie didn't end that way,
that it actually went the opposite direction, which is because
as a therapist watching it, I was like, no, no, no,

(01:24:00):
you can't beat this part of you into submission. You
cannot approach this part of you with hate and anger
and violence, because that is also you. You have to
approach that part of you with love and or let
that part go.

Speaker 2 (01:24:15):
Same reason Batman can't kill the Joker.

Speaker 1 (01:24:19):
Swudzie loves him so much.

Speaker 2 (01:24:22):
Kiss Kiss, Kiss, But it's it was beautifully done that
showing that he can't win that way. He can't because
by proving that he's a piece of shit yep, just
like his dad. Ye, then he proves the Void was
right the whole time, which is why he starts turning

(01:24:46):
dark and thus completely colorless. As he's beating that, it's
taking him over by going see I told you.

Speaker 1 (01:24:57):
Yeah, Like we're repeating the cycle, and and how that
just adds to the shame and it creates that stuck place.

Speaker 2 (01:25:04):
The Void tries to tempt him into being self validating.
I am right, You're a piece of shit. Stop fighting
against it. Just accept it, and things will be better
because they'll be consistent. You'll just be the consistency of shit,
which is what you always were.

Speaker 1 (01:25:21):
I feel like a part of such a big part
of healing from trauma is someone witnessing your pain and
validating and understanding. And I feel like what was so
beautiful about the way that they defeated the void was

(01:25:44):
by allowing the person to experience the pain that they
needed to and by witnessing it. And that is such
a big part of healing from trauma and such a
real part of healing from trauma. And I felt like
they did such a beautiful job showing that even though
it's really really hard and can be really intense, that

(01:26:05):
we can get through those experiences well. And also that
even though your void is what's gotten into us into
this mess, we're not punishing you for that. Yeah, Like,
we're not trying to kill Bob so that we can
kill the void. We're embracing literally Bob, so that we

(01:26:28):
disempower the void, and we let him cry it out
well being held by his friends. We don't reject him
when we were the truth. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:26:41):
We hold you through it and say you are not
that we understand. Look at all the things that made
that happen, that was not you by yourself. Yeah, you
hold some piece of that, but we recognize all the
rest of it in content text that it can't have

(01:27:01):
been just you being a failure, being a piece of shit,
being something bad that deserves to be bad and beheld
as bad.

Speaker 1 (01:27:11):
Forever.

Speaker 2 (01:27:12):
Elena is the light in this it is the light
that casts out the darkness. It's literally the Martin Luther
King speech. Yeah, activated darkness can't drive out darkness. Only
light can do that. That was the point of Elena
in that scene, to be the light. She is the cleric.

(01:27:33):
She is the one who is showing love and acceptance,
witnessing the pain but then welcoming him in through it.

Speaker 1 (01:27:46):
Yeah. I think it's was a good storytelling too. I mean,
I'm not surprised that Elena was the first one to
hold him because that's been the narrative we've been following
through the movie. I do think it's really cool that
Bucky was the second because, as we were saying, like
Bucky and Yolena, I think are the ones who can

(01:28:08):
find the most connection to Bob and the void and
that they have also been bad, like done bad things
and want to be forgiven for having done bad things
when they were in a bad situation, and so I
think they are the most able to recognize that it

(01:28:29):
is happening. And I think the ones that are still
a little farther behind, like Walker and Alexi, they can
get on board because everyone else is doing it, But
I don't know if they would have been the ones
to be able to see to do that. If it
was just the two of them, I think they might
have adopted a little bit too much of the yeah,

(01:28:51):
we should ground and pound the void like. I think
it's a good sign of like who's of where everyone's
progresses on their journey, of like figuring themselves out.

Speaker 2 (01:29:04):
I think all of that is true, and it makes
me realize that the story we don't have yet as
we were mapping this all out, is who's the foil
to Bob or the complete part to Bob? And by
definition here it has to be Ava. Ava is fractured

(01:29:25):
and separated from herself, trying to keep herself whole. Bob
is the opposite. He's trying to keep himself fractured. Alexi
and Walker our two little peas in a pod, Bucky
and Yolena.

Speaker 1 (01:29:44):
The two peas, our.

Speaker 2 (01:29:45):
Two little peas in a pod. That means we have
two left out.

Speaker 1 (01:29:49):
It'll be interesting if where they take that in the
next movie.

Speaker 2 (01:29:53):
I'm gonna go ahead and bet my bottom dollar that
she was deliberately kept a little on the outside of this,
because that's what's going to happen in the next one.

Speaker 1 (01:30:05):
Yeah, she also has a Bob haircut symbolism in the
aftergross she did also true, and that's also something I
did like a lot too, is that when we're seeing
them like a year later, a little over a year later,
fourteen months, what they said that Bob is still healing.

(01:30:28):
He is just concentrating on being well, and they're letting
him just concentrate on being well. He just does. He's
just self caring. He just says the dishes, he's doing
his ad ls mm hmmm, and he's reading in the
corner looking out the window in a robe and I
love that. And it's a year over a year later

(01:30:50):
and he's still doing that. Like, That's something I don't
think we would have seen in an earlier movie of
this kind. Definitely not There would have been more of
a magical like now can be I don't know, super Bob. Yeah, yeah, totally,
especially over a year later.

Speaker 2 (01:31:05):
Come on, you mean like thor four that steaming pile of.

Speaker 1 (01:31:09):
Garbage of which we do not speak, Yeah, yeah, I
think that's really hard at it. Yeah, yeah, but I
think this is a way more realistic version, which is
going to take a long time. Before if Bob can
ever be a superhero because it requires him, Like he
was saying, I have to figure out how to manage

(01:31:32):
my parts that get activated when I do this stuff.
And he's practicing like humility around that instead of shame,
and it is gonna take time.

Speaker 2 (01:31:41):
You're right, that takes time and healing and self care
and deliberate.

Speaker 1 (01:31:47):
Uh uh.

Speaker 2 (01:31:48):
If I open that box, they both come out.

Speaker 1 (01:31:51):
I think a lot of that must do with the
influence of Yolena and Bucky. I'm sure they're the ones
that are like, Bob's fine. Well. I think Lena even
kind of says that it's fine over there. Don't worry
about him. Yeah, he doesn't need to do anything, whereas
I feel like, well, we do see that with Alexi
and stuff, like they would start pushing him to do

(01:32:12):
before he could because they're not as emotionally keyed in.

Speaker 2 (01:32:17):
Oh, Walker and Alexi would have him activate.

Speaker 1 (01:32:22):
They'd be like living through him, especially Walker, m we're
gonna be pussy. Come on, it's been like a year.
You'll be fine. Let's just try one vish to see
what happens. That's exactly, and I think Elena and Bucky
they both know like this when you're actually doing it,

(01:32:44):
it's a long time between knowing what's going on and
actually feeling healed enough from what's going on to be
able to put yourself back in situations that are going
to be really difficult for you. Yeah, because also Bob
doesn't have the experience that Bucky and Elina have of

(01:33:05):
like living in both those worlds, like he was a
regular shmegular person with a lot of stuff. Yeah, so
he doesn't know how to switch gears either the way
that they do, where they can kind of still do
the same shit while also trying to like heal themselves.
But even that's not necessarily true because Bucky took himself
out of it. Like the all Fouk of the Wentres
Soldier is about is him taking himself out of the

(01:33:28):
game doing the thing Bob is kind of doing, which
is like just going to be in my apartment, go
to the same bar down the street, have dinner with
that guy, old guy I know, and try to stay
out of trouble and go therapy.

Speaker 2 (01:33:40):
When Steve and Tony had their big fight and had
all this stuff, Civil War is about the Registry and
all that Bucky fucked off and went to a con.

Speaker 1 (01:33:51):
Yeah, that's true. What he's had many moments of like
going off the grid and having downtime, and so I
think he can recognize the important of that. And I
think Elena respects it too obviously. Yeah. Yeah, she sees
herself in Bob totally hard, totally I think we all do. Yeah. Yeah,

(01:34:15):
well treatment after a break? What about Bob? What about Bob?
I can't fuck that movie is like the secret mascot.
We have tried to do it for two years, and
it's also the movie we talked about since we started
this podcast. It's like our little mascot that we just
will never do. Basically our very last episode about Bob.

(01:34:39):
Yeah maybe maybe so I'll go first for treatment. So
when I was thinking about treatment, of course, I was
thinking about working with Alexi and Elena. There's a couple.
There's two different things I would want to do with them.
So one thing would be really talking to them about
what kind of relationship they want to have going forward.
Do they want to continue to have like a father

(01:35:01):
daughter relationship? Do they especially if they're going to be
working together, Like what kind of relationship are we looking
at here for both of them? Because I think they've
never gotten to choose what kind of relationship they were
going to have with each other, and I think it
would be very important to help them come to that conclusion.
I think the other thing that would be really important
to do with them is doing some like in session

(01:35:25):
in the present time, some kind of activity where they
have to rely on each other. In terms of communication.
There's all different ways to do that. I have a
couple of different things. One example is showing someone a
piece of paper where there is a line errow going
right and an errow going left, and one person having

(01:35:46):
to describe to the other person where the arrows are
on the paper and what direction they're going in without
I can't remember exactly actually now that i'm thinking of it. Fuck,
and just to see how to or their communication is
so one person will take a turn one time, and
then they'll switch and the other person will have to

(01:36:06):
do it, and then they'll be able to see how
hard it is to communicate something. And that's how we
help people learn about communication. What it helps is helps
them both knowing that I wish you would have said this,
I wish you would have clarified this. I wish you
would have given more descriptive information, like it's a way

(01:36:27):
to really simply show how important it is to really
understand what a person is saying to us and to
be able to get it. And so I think that's
something that'd be really helpful for them to learn. So
that's what I would do with Alexi and the Yolena.
I guess if I worked with Yolena, and I think

(01:36:49):
she's actually getting this with the Avengers. That she's doing
is that she clearly is someone that is very isolated
and bloss when she has people that she can take
care of, and which could also be a product of,
if nothing else, when she was a black widow, she
was always around other peers doing stuff, working together, So

(01:37:13):
she might be ironically like, being this alone might be
not what she's used to and bad for her. I mean,
it's bad for anybody, but I wonder for her if
she's used to being part of a group and being
so alone working alone, even though quote unquote's better for her,
it also might be tremendously lonely, which I guess is

(01:37:35):
something I didn't think of till now. Obviously why she's
going over and barking up le X Street. But anyway,
so with Elena. Let's say if she didn't join the Avengers,
Let's say that she just got out of it but
was still spend a lot of time alone and wanted
to work with me. She's someone that if I thought
she was stable enough to like not cause problems into

(01:37:55):
personal with other people, I might recommend her to do
community work, to maybe be like a big brother big
sister kind of thing, or to I don't know, teach
a self defense class, like do something where she can
be around other people, maybe put her skills in a
different way, like reframing her strengths in a way that

(01:38:17):
feels positive and good, like I said, like mentoring other people. Like,
She's someone that I'd be like, Well, tell me what
it was like to be black widow. Are there things
that you miss? And then are are there different ways
to do those same things in a healthy, empowering way
where you are choosing to engage in those skills and

(01:38:39):
engage in those environments. And I do that with people
like I've worked with people where a lot of their
identity is like fighting their parents, for example, and then
their parents no longer in their life, and they have
all this like restless agro energy and I'm like, put
that into social justice, go to a protest, you know,
figure out what you care about, and try to think

(01:39:01):
of those parts of you as skills that you can
put in a different way. So I think she would
be someone that could do really well with that. Also,
it helps build self esteem obviously to do something esteemable.
So helping other people I think would help her feel
good about herself and feel connected to other people. And
she's because she's obviously, as we even see more with

(01:39:23):
like the Hawkeye Show, she's someone that likes to banter,
she likes to quip like, she is looking for connection,
she's looking for siblings. And so if she didn't have
the Avengers, I think that I would want her to
do something like that but low risk too. Like I
think if I was a therapist, I wouldn't love the

(01:39:43):
Avengers thing because it's so high risk and so high stakes.
I'd be like, Oh, I love that you're feeling, you know,
maybe more empowered or maybe more positive about this stuff
and you get to be a good guy, which she
talks about in the beginning of the movie. And I
wish this was more like local self defense or the
Neighborhood Watch or something like not something where you feel

(01:40:08):
like I could I could fuck up really badly. And
then also I wouldn't love that she's necessarily doing with
her dad, like I'd want it to be her own
thing that she can kind of create a new community
around of people that maybe didn't know her before, so
she can kind of be who she wants to be
and figure that out too, because that's a big part
of like when she talks about black Widow, I've never

(01:40:30):
bought clothes for myself before, and so finding ways for
her to expand that in the world. So that's what
I would do with Elena.

Speaker 2 (01:40:41):
She guess leaves me and probably the surprise of no one,
Bob is pretty much with the universe finds for me
as a client pretty routinely.

Speaker 1 (01:40:52):
Working with Bob would be.

Speaker 2 (01:40:56):
Just absolutely the right call of all these characters, because Bucky,
he's already done quite a bit and probably doesn't need
the degree of stuff that we do. He's already done it.
But Bob is early in his journey. Bob is somebody who,
though may benefit from something like EMDR right now, he
does not have adequate coping skills and resources and trust

(01:41:18):
in himself that I would follow that path just yet.
I think I'd be doing a lot of what we
refer to as resource building, which is what he is
doing at the end of this film, and why the
people that have been there and done that are like
Bob's fine. Bob is doing what Bob needs to do.

(01:41:39):
Bob is starting to realize, and what I would be
guiding him through is that we're going to be reinforcing
this idea that you can be enough just hanging out,
that you're helpful, and you don't have to have a supersuit.
You don't have to be the Golden Boy to be enough.
And if right now doing the dishes and kind of
being a positive energy is enough and that feels good

(01:42:01):
to you, then we're gonna go ahead and sit in
that space and feel like enough for once being around heroes,
even though we all know that that's a really complicated thing,
because when some shit's going to go down and he's like, no,
I'm gonna make it worse, that's going to start reinforcing
the bad narratives. But with someone like Bob working the
ideas that come from somatic experiencing in of recognizing that

(01:42:25):
it's not just about the negative thoughts it's not just
about the bad beliefs he has about himself that are
clearly tied to these bad experiences. It's the body activation
that comes along with it. When you activate one of
those old memories that Bob tends to dissociate into that

(01:42:46):
we see constantly trying to break through into every other
room in the void. Is because those things still feel
like an active threat.

Speaker 1 (01:42:57):
Our mind doesn't have any use for time.

Speaker 2 (01:43:00):
When our right brain is activated, when our survival system
is activated, there's no relevance to time because the threat
is still present. If you don't survive the threat, you
don't survive there's a tiger in your house. It's going
to eat you, or it's not. You live, you die.
That's it.

Speaker 1 (01:43:18):
So it doesn't matter how long it is.

Speaker 2 (01:43:19):
As long as your body can activate a memory where
the tiger is still there, it's still going to think
it needs to respond to the tiger. And that's what
Bob is going through. And helping Bob go through constant
deactivation and awareness of what's going on in his body
when he perceives the tiger present, is what phase of

(01:43:40):
treatment he's in right now where we need to build
that recognition, that awareness and ways to deactivate it without
necessarily flooding him with all the bad memories and trying
to work through that. He needs resources to know he
can deactivate it before we're going to try to teach
him to flood and deactivate working with Bob. Bob Scott

(01:44:01):
years and years and years of work to do. But
a competent therapist won't just be like, hey, Bob, we're
going to kick open the door to that thing you've
been trying to keep partitioned off for yourself so you
don't destroy the entire world. A person who's going to
be a competent therapist first, person like that is going
to recognize that the darkness is that bad and he
may in fact blow up the entire world. So let's

(01:44:23):
go ahead and respect the protective walls he put around
that and help him realize he doesn't need them anymore.
He may have needed him before, but he doesn't need
them anymore, and let's help him believe that so that
he doesn't.

Speaker 1 (01:44:36):
That's what I do. Bob, all right, we'll take our
last break care and be back with final thoughts. Final thoughts, guys,
we all have the same final thoughts. We loved it
loved it, loved it, loved it, Gotta watch it more. Oh,
this is gonna be my new Winter Soldier watch Like,
oh yeah, I watch over and over again.

Speaker 2 (01:44:54):
Oh yeah, yeah, this is perfection.

Speaker 1 (01:44:59):
It's really well written. Even now I was talking about it,
it's making me appreciate the script more and how things
line up in the beginning pay out in the end. Like,
it's a really well contained script. I wonder who wrote it.

Speaker 2 (01:45:11):
I don't know, whoever did, did a fucking awesome job.

Speaker 1 (01:45:15):
Yeah, three therapists give it three thumbs up. Up. Watching it,
there was really nothing that I saw on the screen
that put me off in terms of like, ooh, that
wouldn't really be other than the kind of like the
diagnostic soup that is Bob. But as we were saying,
like that could that is a way that sometimes people
show up though with his complicated of a background.

Speaker 2 (01:45:34):
Absolutely absolutely all day, I don't know, nothing put me off.
Watching this made me really excited to watch The Fantastic Four.

Speaker 1 (01:45:44):
Yeah, I was like, well, like, it really made me
feel like Marvel movies used to make me feel, yeah,
which is pumped. Yeah, yeah, and I want to watch
this again.

Speaker 2 (01:45:53):
Yes, I think by allowing Ryan Reynolds to troll them
and say, hey, you kept trying this multiverse thing, nobody
liked it. Fucking stop that they admitted it, and then
they did this movie of like, yeah, you're right, though,
we're still gonna do it multiverse thing, but we're gonna

(01:46:14):
stop sucking it up because here come the Fantastic Four
from the sixties into rocket Ship.

Speaker 1 (01:46:19):
Well, this isn't more in. It's kind of the way
that like the Spider Verse does it, which is if
you're gonna do multiverses, like do like this is interesting,
like just like really different styles, really different vibes, right,
instead of just like I don't know, just making it
complicated but not fun.

Speaker 2 (01:46:39):
I'm king, but I'm not king, but I'm king. You're like,
all right, you have to.

Speaker 1 (01:46:42):
Make it like stylistically interesting and exciting and surprising.

Speaker 2 (01:46:49):
And able to make it differentiate.

Speaker 1 (01:46:52):
Yeah, because what feels exciting about the Fantastic Four movie
is it looks so fucking different. It's like the Jetsons. Yeah,
like it looks cool. I'm like, oh, that's finally, I mean,
and that's why I'm like one of the few people
that liked Eternals because I was like this looks different.
This feels different than Marvel movies have been looking and feeling,
and so that's why I liked it, And so I'm

(01:47:13):
glad that it seems like they're starting to go that
direction again of like letting like letting people play with
this content, like the fact that everyone who made this
movie is like an A twenty four person, like the cinematographers,
the editors, the composer, the director, like the writer. Actually

(01:47:34):
the writing director is the same writer director as Beef,
which is also a good show on Netflix if anyone
hasn't watched it yet. And that's a very different vibe
than someone I would pick to do like a Marvel movie.
And I think they really came in and brought that
vibe to this movie.

Speaker 2 (01:47:52):
Yeah, sometimes letting someone come in with a weird vibe
on something works really really well.

Speaker 1 (01:47:57):
Which is why thor Ragnrock worked really well before it
went too far and went so far in the other
direction that like came back on itself. Yeah yeah, four
was yeah, but three D he was brilliant. Yeah yeah,
but this movie really, like I loved, like I said,
I loved how that the power of friendship. Yeah, it's

(01:48:22):
how we won. Yeah, and that it wasn't just like
a lesser movie would have just had like Bob defeat
the void by submission instead of like, no, baby, you
just gotta cry it out. Yeah, all your friends right,
or Bob would have killed yeah and then been like

(01:48:43):
ha ha I finally dominated.

Speaker 2 (01:48:45):
Yeah said, now we have this super complicated dynamic where
they all know but it for survival they must.

Speaker 1 (01:48:52):
Well, now it's like Chekov's gun, Bob over there waiting
to see if he gets fired, and a point any
other final thoughts, No, no, you should probably cut half
of those. I liked it all right. Well, if you
also love Thunderbolts, send us an email about it or
on Instagram DM. You can find us at all social

(01:49:15):
media platforms at Popcorn Psychology except for Twitter slash x.
We're no longer on there, but you can find us
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us at popworn psychologygmail dot com. If you would like
to support us with a little bit of moolaw, you'd
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you're a fifty dollars or more patron, you can pick

(01:49:36):
the subject of a movie which is exciting. If you
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