transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business. Fast, reliable internet means everything for your business. And even this podcast, that's why I trust Spectrum Business. They keep companies of all sizes connected with internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, mobile services, plus 24-7 US-based support. Millions of business owners already trust Spectrum Business. So visit spectrum.com/business to learn more. Restrictions apply, services not available in all areas. This episode is brought to you by Viori. Look, I'm not a big, let's hype up workout clothes guy, but Viori, I got to say, total game changer. Been wearing a lot. If you see me power walking around Los Angeles, probably going to see me wearing some Viori. Sunday Performance Joggers that they have, it's made with four-way performance stretch fabric. One of the most comfortable things you own. You will wear them everywhere, I promise. All you have to do is go to viori.com/simmons, and you get 20% off your first purchase with Viori. vuori.com/simmons. Enjoy free shipping on all US orders over $75, plus free returns, exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions.

Speaker 2:
[01:37] We're here to talk about the Netflix series Beef, episodes one through episode three. So if you've not watched episodes one through episode three, we recommend you watch it before you listen to us talk about it. But we also know that some of you just listen to us talk about shows you're not watching. And that is your prerogative if you want to do that. But Beef's a great show, so you should watch episodes one through episode three before we start. I feel like that is a good way to start. I think it's a good way to start.

Speaker 3:
[01:58] I feel like that is an acceptable dietary allotment of beef, right? Three episodes feels reasonable for people to lock in.

Speaker 2:
[02:05] A triple patty on a burger.

Speaker 3:
[02:07] Maybe a little less than that. Triple's maybe a little intense.

Speaker 2:
[02:10] It's a lot. Okay. This is how we're dividing the season. So if you're listening to this on Friday, the pit finale episode already dropped.

Speaker 3:
[02:17] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[02:17] So that already happened. The Euphoria episode two podcast will be coming sometime next week.

Speaker 3:
[02:26] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[02:27] And then we will have Beef episodes four, five and six. And then at last, we'll have Beef episode seven and eight, the two final episodes and that's it for the season. So three podcast episodes about one, eight episode season of television that's dropping as a binge on Netflix. What could be easier to understand?

Speaker 3:
[02:48] Don't you love to binge?

Speaker 2:
[02:49] I hate to binge.

Speaker 3:
[02:50] Which of these three Beef podcasts will be most unhinged from us? Do you think it'll be here at the start? Do you think Empire Strikes Back is in the middle or are we just going to go fully unraveled by the end of it?

Speaker 2:
[03:00] It's Rise of Skywalker time for us. Stay tuned for some of the names.

Speaker 3:
[03:04] Somehow Steven Yeun returns for the finale.

Speaker 2:
[03:06] Oh my god, I would love that. Honestly. Okay. So here's what we're here to talk about. Episode one, all the things we're never going to have, written by Lu Sing Jin, episode two, A New Starting Point for Further Desires, written by Anna Munch and Li Sung Jin, episode three, The Increasing Flimsiness of Any Certainties About the Future, written by Li Sung Jin, Anna Munch and Jean Hong, and all directed by Jake Schreier. Justice for Thunderbolts. I'm a huge fan.

Speaker 3:
[03:32] Quite good.

Speaker 2:
[03:34] How do you feel about having the complete opposite of the pit titles here with the beef episode titles?

Speaker 3:
[03:38] I'm quite enjoying them.

Speaker 2:
[03:39] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[03:39] I'm enjoying the titles. I'm enjoying the painting aesthetic that we're introducing these episodes with.

Speaker 2:
[03:45] Very white lotus.

Speaker 3:
[03:45] It is very white lotus, but I'm having a lot of fun.

Speaker 2:
[03:47] Okay. So we're going to have like a light general discussion about beef as a concept, not the food, but the show. And then we have categories that we've come up with. Just like this is the best way we figured out to talk about three episodes at once because I hate a binge drop, but this is the best that we can do. So just for some context, season one of Beef was on Netflix three years ago.

Speaker 3:
[04:10] Was it really?

Speaker 2:
[04:11] Uh-huh. Eight Emmys, including Outstanding Limited Series and Acting Wins for its leads, Ali Wong and the aforementioned Steven Yeun.

Speaker 3:
[04:18] Both spectacular.

Speaker 2:
[04:20] I love them both. Steven Yeun is one of my top tier all-time guys, very important. Three Golden Globes, it was a smash hole hit. Okay. I know we did not re-watch season one before watching season two. You don't need to. It's a whole new cast. Who cares?

Speaker 3:
[04:35] Pure anthology.

Speaker 2:
[04:36] But vaguely, how did you feel about season one?

Speaker 3:
[04:39] I remember being delighted by the leads. I remember kind of like I've very little little recollection of the way the series actually unfolds. It gets increasingly insane. And I think my grasp on that sense of reality has slipped somehow with time.

Speaker 2:
[04:53] Right.

Speaker 3:
[04:53] So I remember having a nice time watching it, but ultimately it's not a show or a series or a season that I spent a lot of time thinking about since then. It did feel kind of like digestible in that way.

Speaker 2:
[05:02] Yeah, it's interesting. I remember, so the screeners dropped on Netflix, and since I'm such like a Steven Yeun head, and I love Ali Wong as well, like I watched it all and I was like, I don't think this show is going to be huge because it gets so weird at the end. And then I was very wrong. This is a smash hit, won a bunch of awards. So sometimes, very rarely, I'm wrong. No, I'm wrong a lot. But the ending, I didn't really love the ending of Beef. I loved the performances in the show. I love the concept of it. And the same themes and concepts are alive and awake here in season two.

Speaker 3:
[05:36] In particular, the travails of a certain kind of comfortable, suburban, affluent lifestyle meeting with people who are scrappy and feeling exploited for various other reasons.

Speaker 2:
[05:47] Well, it's interesting because I think of season one as the haves and the have-nots. And then this season is very much the have-nots and the almost-haves, the pretending to haves. It's a slightly different calibration of it. When season one came out, there were a lot of White Lotus comps. And that's highlighted even more this season, I would say, with the Country Club setting. And the art we get in the opening title cards is very reminiscent of some White Lotus. Was that on your mind while you were watching this season? Or what do you think?

Speaker 3:
[06:15] I think not, just because there's so much film and television these days dedicated to some version of this topic. So it's like it's of a world with things like White Lotus, but it can't be the only calling card for this sort of, not even Eat the Rich, but interrogating the rich kind of content.

Speaker 2:
[06:31] There's a tonal similarity. It's not just like the subject matter. I think there are many ways in which Beef has a lot more on its mind. But there is a dry and then lack of self-awareness in your character's aspect to it that feels very similar, complementary. I don't think it feels like it's imitating. It's just sort of like operating in a similar milieu. I love both shows, so I'm not upset about it. Originally, Lee Seung-jin, the creator, had a three-season plan. And this is what he said sort of originally. There are a lot of ideas on my end to keep this story going. I think should we be blessed with a season two, there's a lot of ways for Danny and Amy, that's Steven Yeun and Ali Wong's characters, to continue. I have one really big general idea that I can't really say yet, but I have three seasons mapped out in my head currently. So the original plan was keep these same characters around, perhaps bump some side characters, like Young Mazzino's character up to Lake Manor, something like that. Something else entirely is going on here. We are a completely new cast. Oscar Isaac is here, Carrie Mulligan is here, Kayleigh Spani, Charles Melton, et cetera, et cetera. There are some overlaps though. I would say William Fickner's character, Troy, who we get a lot of in these three episodes, is very similar to Maria Bello's character in season one. And I would say Young Mazzino, who played Steven Yeun's younger brother, I would say Charles Melton's character reminds me. So I think there's just ways in which I could see this being the bones of an extension of the first season, but we've just sort of slightly redressed some of the characters. Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 3:
[08:06] I mean, it's kind of like Fargo in that way a little bit. It's like the characters are sharing a world so much that you see these common traits between them, that you see the way they could just be kind of transposed on one another. And I think a lot of the conflicts here, yes, could come from White Lotus, yes, could come from season one of Beef, but also just feel very true to life in a very heightened way, admittedly. But you can see the germ of the idea for sure.

Speaker 2:
[08:28] Yeah. And we should say, the way we're rolling out these episodes, I think it won't be until the finale that we'll really get to dig into listener emails. But please always email us, PrestigeTV at spotify.com, if you have some thoughts or feelings or questions or comments or concerns about Beef, we would love to hear them. We're not going to do a show-specific email for this one because it's going to be here and gone. It's going to come and go.

Speaker 3:
[08:49] But how do you feel about Country Club admin's fees? How do you feel about Squash Blossoms that have gone a little limp in your salad?

Speaker 2:
[08:56] Soggy Squash Blossoms at gmail.com.

Speaker 3:
[08:58] Unacceptable.

Speaker 2:
[08:59] Very good. Very, very good. Originally, Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway were supposed to be the leads in this show, the Oscar Isaac Carey Mulligan roles. I saw Anne Hathaway do literally this character in We Crash, so I'm okay. I didn't need to see it again.

Speaker 3:
[09:14] Yeah. What about Jake?

Speaker 2:
[09:15] I love Jake. Honestly, I'm a huge Jake fan. I think Jake would have crushed this role. Oscar Isaac is fantastic. I mean, all the leads are fantastic in this, but I could definitely see especially like Jake's night crawler intensity sort of energy in that opening drag out fight that they have.

Speaker 3:
[09:33] Even just gradually more and more unhinged country club general manager, very much in his wheelhouse.

Speaker 2:
[09:39] I could see it, but I do think that the show, as did season one, has some interesting things to say about racial dynamics. So the fact that both couples here are interracial couples, which Kayleigh Spaniard's character in episode three is like, I've never thought of us as an interracial couple. But the fact that those dynamics are in play and you have things like the character of Troy William Fickner's character, like speaking Spanish to Oscar Isaac's character, that's an added dynamic that you wouldn't get with Two of the Whiteest People Alive, Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway.

Speaker 3:
[10:10] Very true.

Speaker 2:
[10:11] I didn't prep you for this question, but do you have a favorite performance from the core four in other projects?

Speaker 3:
[10:16] Oh, my gosh. I mean, it's a pretty rich text. Buy me some time. Where do you want to start?

Speaker 2:
[10:21] I will say, so Kayleigh Spaniard, I am a huge fan of. Like I think she's one of the most talented young actors working. I think she's phenomenal in this show. She really blew me away in Civil War. I thought she was like, Civil War is like the, and this is often the truth with like an Alex Garland joint, but like the more time passes, the more relevant it feels and the more I think about it. And there's a ton of heavy hitters in that movie. And she just like really stuck out to me as, she just, you know, she has this like beautiful, innocent, elfin, young face, and she's capable of these really complicated, sometimes scheming emotions behind it that are always, always catch me off guard every time.

Speaker 3:
[11:02] I mean, I think that's why her appearance in Knives Out, the Wake Up Deadman one was like so underwhelming. She had so little to do.

Speaker 2:
[11:10] And she's got to, a lot of wasted potential in that movie.

Speaker 3:
[11:12] But you see her in Civil War, like you see her in these various contexts, like Priscilla, she also blew me away. I think just that like interiority of somebody who has that much going on, always captivating. I am squarely an Oscar Isaac guy. He might be my Steven Yeun, ultimately. So like Inside Lewin Davis feels like an almost too easy a poll.

Speaker 2:
[11:30] It's kind of my answer for both Carey Mulligan and Oscar Isaac. I love Inside Lewin Davis. It's like my, I watch it every Christmas. It's like a holiday album that I put on is my feeling about Inside Lewin Davis. Like genuinely, I know that sounds very dark and depressing.

Speaker 3:
[11:45] Just a little despair about your place in your chosen line of work and the cycles that create and destroy you.

Speaker 2:
[11:51] I think it came out at Christmas and so I just like, every Christmas I get a hankering for it.

Speaker 3:
[11:55] I mean, there's scarves and coats galore in that movie.

Speaker 2:
[11:57] Absolutely. Cats. Shame also for Carey Mulligan. Incredible performance.

Speaker 3:
[12:00] I did see in the junket to promote Beef Season 2. I don't know if you saw Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan were going on together. The fine folks at Letterboxd gave them the blank prompt of like, this is a review of one of your movies. Guess which one it is. It was a casting call looking for a sad, quiet woman who has deep trauma in her background. The answer to every role apparently is Carey Mulligan, it turns out.

Speaker 2:
[12:23] Then Charles Melton.

Speaker 3:
[12:24] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[12:24] Where are you on Charles Melton?

Speaker 3:
[12:26] I'm a big May December guy.

Speaker 2:
[12:27] May December, really good. His episode of Poker Face, also great. I did watch him on Riverdale as well, so I've been there for a while with Charles Melton. These are four incredible performers in general, and then this is an A24 joint, and we're going to talk about that, but they are very much in that sort of field, obviously. They're incredibly good in this. And then Yunyun Zheng plays Chairwoman Park, Oscar-winning runaway star of Me and Arie, so this is an incredible cast. Just really, really, really good. But yeah, I'm really excited for folks to watch this. I think it's so good. I want to highlight something that happens in Episode 1 that I was so impressed by. Josh and Lindsay have this, like, huge, massive fight where they're horrible to each other. It's the inciting incident for the whole plot because we get Austin and Ashley to, again, I'm going to speak as if people haven't watched these episodes because I know sometimes they don't. Josh is the manager of a country club. Lindsay, his wife, is an interior designer sometimes when she wants to be.

Speaker 3:
[13:36] Also a little Patrick Bateman in there. I'm like, this is ivory, not bone. You know, it's like, okay.

Speaker 2:
[13:42] Deb was like, excuse me. Okay. Austin and Ashley are staff at the country club, and they come to deliver Josh's wallet to his beautiful would-be B&B house, I believe we were in Ojai, and they stumble upon this marital argument that is quite ferocious, and Ashley takes cell phone footage of it, and then some drama ensues from there. During said fight, which is not only integral to like kicking off the whole plot, we get so much exposition packed in there about their relationship, their dynamics, their financial status, their hopes and dreams, where they started and where they ended, and all this sort of stuff like that. And it is so well-acted and well-written and well-performed that it's the kind of thing that usually bothers me, that they're packing so much exposition into something else. And it just like completely went down smooth as silk. I thought it was so good.

Speaker 3:
[14:40] I think the writing is really sharp, but that's pure performance to me, right? It's just like, if you have these sorts of magnets on screen, especially doing something big and emotional and evocative, it's amazing how much you can sneak under the rug. And setting up really the whole show in that way.

Speaker 2:
[14:54] The wine soaked glass shard rug.

Speaker 3:
[14:57] I mean, guitars smashed by the end of it. There's a lot happening in terms of the action of that moment, and certainly inside and outside the house. But you're just learning about these characters and their dynamics. And I think how quickly they metabolize them, right? How quickly one couple moves on from that fight, at least in terms of the emotions of it, and the other one's lingering in it because they don't know what to do with those sorts of big feelings.

Speaker 2:
[15:18] A young couple at the beginning of their relationship. And as Lindsay later says to Austin, he's like, oh, you haven't had a fight, you need to have a fight. And he's like, great, let's have one with Ashley. It's really good stuff. Anything big picture theme wise, either in this season or across both seasons of Beef that you want to call it, obviously, questions of class, which we already mentioned, race, sex, who's having it, who's not, who's paying for it, et cetera. But I think no matter what, I think the bigger umbrella, which is present a bit in White Lotus, but much more drilled in here, is just sort of the, I mean, I think it's reflected in some of the episode titles, this like constant restlessness of I don't have enough, or am I who I want to be, or is that person who I want to be, or how can I be that person? The moments we get both in Episode 1 and 3 of Josh seeing himself, either as Troy or as Lindsay in a photo, it's just really animating this idea of just sort of like, who was I born as, who can I become, what does upper mobility look like, is there ever anything that would just sort of like satisfy you inside of a system like that?

Speaker 3:
[16:33] Well, I think in tying those ideas together, just these ideas that they're playing with on the show, like everyone is a scammer in some respect, and everyone also, to inspire that and motivate it, seems like they feel as if they are a victim of the system. Even So Kang Ho, who pops up in just like a support capacity, at least so far, through these first three episodes, he gives a poor pitiful me routine about being married to an ultra wealthy woman and also a highly accomplished plastic surgeon in Korea.

Speaker 2:
[17:00] What will happen to me if you leave me?

Speaker 3:
[17:01] This is what I'm saying. Everyone has some reason why they feel like, as you said Jo, they don't have enough, they're unstable, they're always grabbing at something nearby, even if it's their own partner, hoping for more security. And then some people are just wallowing and blaming late stage capitalism for literally everything in their life.

Speaker 2:
[17:17] And this is much more than season one, a generational divide. We've got, as my pal who was watching this show, talking to me about it, she's just like, elder millennials left for dead. And we are both elder millennials. She's like, we're just dragged to filth inside of this show.

Speaker 3:
[17:37] I feel like Gen Z is maybe given a raw end.

Speaker 2:
[17:41] I think they're both being, I think they're both given equal short shrift. It's like, as you said, everyone's a scammer. Everyone's blaming the system. And it's just, it is interesting to watch millennials who became so accustomed to the, we were screwed by the system role. The 2008 financial crisis, we never had a chance. In this sort of older role of they're like, kids today have no initiative. They're ungrateful, they're entitled. This is how the worm turns for every generation.

Speaker 3:
[18:12] How does it make you feel us aging into that bracket more and more of like, these are, these are, I will say, I've never felt time so acutely as watching Carey Mulligan go from like, the babe in the woods to now the woman who's obsessing about every wrinkle on her face in a role like this. But how does it hit you to for us to be kind of like, parodied in such a way?

Speaker 2:
[18:32] You know, so I am like a very cuspy elder millennial and I've always wanted to claim Gen X, which I can't really, but I always wanted to, because Gen X is usually left out of this conversation. People forget Gen X exists, and isn't that the better place to be?

Speaker 3:
[18:46] It really is.

Speaker 2:
[18:46] To sort of like, leave us out of it. But as an elder millennial, you know, and the phrase elder millennial is just tough. That already makes you feel like you have dust in your bones. You know, so I like it when things, when you feel skewered by something, but it's very accurate.

Speaker 3:
[19:05] It's a good kneeling.

Speaker 2:
[19:06] I just enjoy it.

Speaker 3:
[19:07] As soon as they said the words hot chip, I'm like, oh, this isn't me, but I know. I'm aware that I'm being pointed at.

Speaker 2:
[19:13] I did think of you with the LCD sound system, maybe think of you.

Speaker 3:
[19:16] Yes and no. Never as big in my life as maybe some other people of our generation. I would never go as far as to say the day I saw LCD sound system was the greatest day of my life. I don't know.

Speaker 2:
[19:26] It depends how much mall you were on at the time.

Speaker 3:
[19:28] That's really the variable.

Speaker 2:
[19:29] Yeah, absolutely. Last but not least, something that we like to track across these shows is, I think, use of technology to tell a story. This is a very like text message, social media app, heavy kind of storytelling that we're getting here. I think they're doing a really great job. One of my favorite iterations of it, and they did this in a show that you didn't watch, Heated Rivalry. But is all the times that Charles Melton's character, Austin, types out something and then deletes it. So we as an audience, there's this really famous scene in Heated Rivalry where, at one point, a character types like we didn't even kiss and then just sort of like deletes it and it's just you're like, uh. But like, all the time we get a glimpse inside of Austin's actual thoughts and then it's deleted and then he just says something very like Mild Manor and Anna. Like, I just think that that's really funny and well done.

Speaker 3:
[20:19] I would pay lots of money to hear all of his thoughts. Yeah, absolutely. Every thought in this man's head.

Speaker 2:
[20:23] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[20:24] I mean, just a phenomenal performance, a great character.

Speaker 2:
[20:26] In plenty scenes we do. In plenty scenes we get him just sort of rambling and you're like, the filter is quite porous for him.

Speaker 3:
[20:33] A lot is eken out into the world.

Speaker 2:
[20:35] I think, what's your favorite? I mean, we have a whole himbo category for him. But my favorite ramble has to be the sort of the misc versus mist speech that he gives Eunice.

Speaker 3:
[20:47] That is my himbo moment.

Speaker 2:
[20:48] I mean, we'll come back to it. Okay. Anything else you want to say before we get into some of our categories here?

Speaker 3:
[20:54] I'm really enjoying the season so far. I also just love kind of like the Rube Goldberg machinations of a show like this, where it's, you know, there is this inciting fight that then leads to Ashley getting this job at work, that then leads to her wanting Austin to have this PT job, which then leads to Austin seeing like these these invoices and like connecting all of these dots and the way that we just have this like comedy of errors type build. I think it's just like great TV.

Speaker 2:
[21:19] It'll be interesting to see. I haven't seen episodes, I have watched through episode six just to like prep for everything we did, but we won't be talking beyond episode three, but I haven't seen seven and eight, so I don't know how the season ends. And again, season one really kind of ran off the rails at the end for me, so I don't know how season and eight will land on season two. But it does move so quickly. So like when we see Josh embezzling under his dead mother's name, you're like, oh, that's going to be a season. Like no, immediately is found out and then roped into a different embezzlement scheme. I just love how quickly everything turns on this Rube Burg as you put it.

Speaker 3:
[21:58] Even Ashley's like, I don't know all the what's happening here, but this is definitely a crime. Like this is definitely weird that this money is being like funneled from one place to the next. So I'm with you. Just the way that the breadcrumbs are followed to like very quick conclusions. And then that leads to a dramatic change in some of these other characters. There's just, I mean, this is why it's beef, right? It's like confrontation, confrontation all the time between not just our four leads, but like the Korean overlords who are running this club, like all of these different elements.

Speaker 2:
[22:27] Ava, a piece of work, Ava.

Speaker 3:
[22:28] Just there to be like a professional hot person, I guess.

Speaker 2:
[22:31] I guess so.

Speaker 3:
[22:32] Good work if you can get it.

Speaker 2:
[22:33] Absolutely. Anything else?

Speaker 3:
[22:34] Let's get into it.

Speaker 2:
[22:35] Okay.

Speaker 4:
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Speaker 1:
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Speaker 2:
[25:06] This is the beef top 13. A combination of Superlatives and other sundries. All right. So each character's worst decision is how we're starting. We're just going to go with the four, the four mains here. So for Josh, what's your worst decision for Josh?

Speaker 3:
[25:21] I think it's got to be the wee little embezzlement. And specifically using your dead mom's name, which is just way too close to your name. Very close and entirely too transparent. I will also say embezzling specifically $4,999 because it's under the limit. It's so blatant and obvious.

Speaker 2:
[25:40] What would you go for? $3,800 or something like that?

Speaker 3:
[25:42] I think you got to mix up the amounts for one. It can't be static. It reminded me a lot of George Santos at that shady Italian restaurant just racking up these random charges. You got to mix it up.

Speaker 2:
[25:53] It has to be a George Santos Season of Beach, Woodwatch. Definitely embezzlement. Not a great decision. Firing Deb, I just don't think you should ever fire a Deb in general.

Speaker 3:
[26:03] It's a great call. She seems like she was holding that office together.

Speaker 2:
[26:06] She had it all up here, unfortunately. I think that's a mistake. Not quitting when Lindsay suggests it, that's a real fork in the road moment. If she's like, we could just quit and we would be happier if we just got off this wheel. And he's like, no, let's keep going.

Speaker 3:
[26:22] Would that have solved as many of their problems as they in that moment believe?

Speaker 2:
[26:26] No, but I don't think it would have led them like barreling head first into a thicket of other problems. That's true. How do you feel about the micro bullet that Josh is rocking this season?

Speaker 3:
[26:36] Could anyone but Oscar Isaac pull it off?

Speaker 2:
[26:38] I don't know, it looks great on him, but I have some questions.

Speaker 3:
[26:40] Yeah, it really works for him. I mean, the man can rock almost any hairstyle and or facial hair and I'm kind of on board for it, but in concept, I'm skeptical.

Speaker 2:
[26:49] I'm trying to figure out if there's an exception and I would say maybe the makeup he wore as Apocalypse in the X-Men movie is my one exception, but could that be his fault?

Speaker 3:
[26:59] He didn't seem like he enjoyed it.

Speaker 2:
[27:01] And then, what genre would you put the podcast that he listens to in? Is that a Manosphere podcast?

Speaker 3:
[27:13] I thought of it more as like an explainer, faux scientific podcast, but I have it for one of our other categories. So let's return to the pods.

Speaker 2:
[27:20] Lindsay, worst decision.

Speaker 3:
[27:22] I think for Lindsay, it's, she's not the only person involved in the fight that starts all this, but specifically the decision to pick up the golf club escalates the video in a way that basically nothing else in the plot does. So it's just like, it's not all her fault. Obviously, like it's taking two to tango there, but she is the guitar smasher of the two of them, it seems like.

Speaker 2:
[27:43] Yeah, that's fair. Who threw the wine glass first?

Speaker 3:
[27:46] I think she throws it first and then he falls in, there's already glass shards, let me also throw mine.

Speaker 2:
[27:52] Okay, he was also holding his wine glass by the bottom, which like you're supposed to do to not like, but I was just like, that's a really douchey way to hold a wine glass, my guy. Okay, I would say, so we're in the midst of an embezzlement scheme, and we're embezzling in order to, you know, kickstart our dreams of a B&B and B, the brilliantly named.

Speaker 3:
[28:14] It's a very clever idea, we're told.

Speaker 2:
[28:16] Bath and barn, brilliant idea. We see, as the embezzlement is going on, the purchases strewn about the place. And like, in theory, Lindsay is sort of like figuring out how we're going, like what pillows we're going to have, you know, we can't have $500 pens, we're going to have certain pens. But you're looking at some of these boxes, and it's like, there's a Dyson box, there's a Louis Vuitton box, and I'm like, why did you buy something from Louis Vuitton? It seems to me that Lindsay is just sort of like, the money's flowing, I'm going to spend it. That seems, and it seems like not a great idea. Despite her attempt to Google debt, can I get a loan?

Speaker 3:
[28:55] She's trying to get to the bottom. She's trying to refi. Yeah, there's a lot there. Just the pillows alone, the inventory is ridiculous. And I'm with you, the luxury LV style stuff that is stocked there doesn't seem to really fit the bed and breakfast aesthetic that they might be going for. I don't want to assume too much about her design sensibilities, but at minimum we're told they're colonial.

Speaker 2:
[29:16] She loves some by Joanna. Okay, Austin, what's Austin's worst decision?

Speaker 3:
[29:20] I think for Austin it is, I think most of his transgressions are somewhat minor so far. It's more just like being a dumb dumb in really delightful ways. But being so weird about the Eunice stuff immediately.

Speaker 2:
[29:33] Lying about Eunice is my answer.

Speaker 3:
[29:34] Right out of the gate.

Speaker 2:
[29:36] He didn't need to, like he could have just come home and said-

Speaker 3:
[29:38] I gave her a session.

Speaker 2:
[29:39] Yeah, the chairwoman was not available, so Eunice, he doesn't have to talk about how flexible she was and how close-

Speaker 3:
[29:47] Unusually.

Speaker 2:
[29:48] Do you think that actress is that flexible or was there a fake leg involved in that?

Speaker 3:
[29:55] I'm just going to give Soyeon Jung credit that she is that flexible, whether she is or not. I'm also just like, I'm dialed in on the entire Eunice situation in this evolving plot line. It's so much fun having them- I mean, you talked about it in terms of the cultural balance that Austin has kind of strung here, not just as an Arizonian, but as someone who's partially Korean. And having Eunice come in who, I mean, look, she wants to be therapized physically, right out of the gate, he wants a job. And here's the thing, if it's not him lying about the Eunice situation, it's him agreeing to take on this responsibility for this entire wellness center when he, more than anyone knows, he's not even a physical therapist.

Speaker 2:
[30:35] Without even talking to Ashley about it first, his, like, his interesting moral, you know, he's like, it's wrong to buy clothes from H&M and leave the tags on and return them, but I will agree to this larger fart. It's wrong to forge a document saying I have a PT license, but I will agree to this $50 million endeavor inside of the club.

Speaker 3:
[30:57] His ethics are not airtight.

Speaker 2:
[30:59] How did you feel about him dropping the term epigenetics when he was talking about his relationship with Eunice?

Speaker 3:
[31:05] Just the endless string of things that he's saying or using incorrectly throughout these episodes. I mean, I fucking love it. Charles Mellon, he's so good. And May, December, he's playing a kind of naive and dumb for sure, but also a guy who knows more than he lets on and is kind of repressing a lot. This guy is a totally different animal, and it just plays for such great comedy through these three episodes. I'm sure there will be more to it because Charles Mellon is gifted in that way, but I'm having a great time.

Speaker 2:
[31:33] Last but not least, Ashley. What's Ashley's worst decision?

Speaker 3:
[31:37] I hate to say it, but I think Austin is right that she should have negotiated for more. He's a little fussy because he didn't get a treat when they negotiated.

Speaker 2:
[31:45] This is just not occurring to me.

Speaker 3:
[31:47] How come this is all for you?

Speaker 2:
[31:48] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[31:49] But they do have this quite compromising video that looks terrible regardless of what the truth of it is. And she comes out of it with a 45K salary in California, at a country club, 10 days PTO and health insurance. I'm sure that's like, it's good, but I think she could have squeezed them a little bit.

Speaker 2:
[32:06] Yeah, I don't want to be like 45K. It's not bad. No, no, but it was the health insurance thing, which we will get to, we have a whole category for this, but I had to Google, because it was my experience, when I worked minimum wage full-time jobs, it was my experience at all the making no money bookstores that I worked at in San Francisco, if you worked full-time, they had to give you health insurance. I don't know if that's, but I was Googling California law.

Speaker 3:
[32:31] The landscape has changed, Jo. We're contractors through and through these days.

Speaker 2:
[32:35] Well, yes, no. They tried to get away with that. They would try to hire people to be many part-time workers, but if you were full-time, which Ashley already was, then she was already full-time at the club, so I was confused why she wasn't getting. But I think California law, I looked it up. California law says, if you have under 50 employees, you don't have to give them, which is not the case in the bookstores I worked at, but if you have under 50 employees, you do not have to provide health care for even your full-time workers.

Speaker 3:
[33:06] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[33:07] Fucked up.

Speaker 3:
[33:08] This does seem like under 50 based on the all-hands attendance.

Speaker 2:
[33:11] Yeah, I believe that that country club is under 50. So thank you to all the bookstores who gave me health insurance when they didn't need to. Appreciate you. But yeah, I was a full-time employee at all the bookstores I worked at, but most of the staff would be part-timers so that the bosses could get away with not giving them health care, which is fucked up.

Speaker 3:
[33:28] Especially this kind of employee, like if you're working the BevCard on a golf course, it does seem like that specific sort of gray area where they will just nickel and dime everything they can get from you.

Speaker 2:
[33:37] I think you want the BevCard girls in an ironclad HR contract. That's true.

Speaker 3:
[33:42] If anyone should have an NDA, it's whoever's working the BevCard.

Speaker 2:
[33:45] It's the BevCard girls, by the way. I fell down a rabbit hole about this because when I was, which was several years ago during COVID, when I was still on TikTok, I found this BevCard girls account. Don't laugh at me. I found this BevCard girls account.

Speaker 3:
[33:59] I'm glad you got clean. I did.

Speaker 2:
[34:01] I'm just on Instagram reels now. You're heavily on Instagram.

Speaker 3:
[34:04] I'm online.

Speaker 2:
[34:05] You have nothing to talk about, but I found this BevCard girl had this whole, very popular TikTok account, and I was just interested in this whole world because she was squeezing these guys for so much money, and she would just give these confessionals from her cart where she would just talk about how, she's like, I put on the smallest clothing I could possible and I squeeze these rich old guys for all this money, and I get them drunk and I take all their money, and I'm like, great, good job, girl.

Speaker 3:
[34:34] Power to you.

Speaker 2:
[34:35] I love it for you. Ashley does not want to do that. She wants something else. Our next category is whitest white nonsense.

Speaker 3:
[34:42] What was your pick for Ashley's worst decision?

Speaker 2:
[34:44] Thanks. Thanks so much for asking. I would say either getting Austin involved with a club at all, so I understand that he's like, hey, what about me? And she's trying to help him, but her roping him into this is not going to be, it does not seem to be turning out well for her. Or throwing herself out of a moving car.

Speaker 3:
[35:01] Lady Birding it.

Speaker 2:
[35:02] Lady Birding it straight out of, and then was it Uptown Funk that she was like, Uptown Funk as mantra. A very Mel King sort of like self-soothing with Bruno Mars moment.

Speaker 3:
[35:14] At least like Megan Thee Stallion, I can understand where the empowerment is coming from. Bruno.

Speaker 2:
[35:19] Not so much. All right. White-est white nonsense. This is, I have a long list here.

Speaker 3:
[35:25] So I think we came out of the gate pretty strong with Save the Frogs.

Speaker 2:
[35:28] A hundred percent.

Speaker 3:
[35:30] Save the Frogs gala basically at the country club.

Speaker 2:
[35:33] $100,000 raised for the frogs.

Speaker 3:
[35:35] Great work for the frogs. I'm sure they really appreciate it. But I do think the definitive answer to the whitest thing that's happening on this show is going for a run and listening to a podcast about porn research. That feels like about as white as it gets. Or maybe it's just even having a man cave slash jerk off dungeon in the first place, right?

Speaker 2:
[35:54] I mean, I think jerk off dungeon is reductive because that's also where all of his sports memorabilia is. It's true.

Speaker 3:
[35:59] There are many kinds of jerking off.

Speaker 2:
[36:01] He contains multitudes in there. I also had, I asked for eggshell, this is bone, obviously, literally whitest, white nonsense. Lindsay talking about her brother's book, Bloomskully, which won the Bullets surprise.

Speaker 3:
[36:16] It's right up there with Past Lives, the novel called Boner. I'm like, all right, this is straight off a bookshelf. I don't know what to tell you.

Speaker 2:
[36:22] When my brother wrote a little book called Bloomskully.

Speaker 3:
[36:26] Pause for applause.

Speaker 2:
[36:27] No reaction. Troy, William Fickner's character in the mala necklace, the wooden beads, and also saying to Troy, I appreciate you, mi amigo, see you manana. Really tough stuff. The dog's name is Burberry. Is that not the whitest white nonsense?

Speaker 3:
[36:44] It's quite white. He's also a fucking star.

Speaker 2:
[36:47] You can support Burberry without supporting the name.

Speaker 3:
[36:51] I do, and the brief moment where Burberry went off the map, it's like, oh my God, did something happen to Burberry? I was as panicked as I've ever been watching television.

Speaker 2:
[36:59] How do you feel about Burberry's extensive wardrobe? A sweater for every occasion. Why not? Okay.

Speaker 3:
[37:04] I mean, better than the pillows. Like, how many pillows does one need versus a dachshund? You got to keep them warm, you know? Like, they just don't really have a lot going on.

Speaker 2:
[37:12] Okay. All right. This is fun. You're pro clothing on dogs.

Speaker 3:
[37:15] Depends on the dog. I don't do it personally.

Speaker 2:
[37:18] But you would.

Speaker 3:
[37:18] My dog will selectively have, like, maybe a bandana, you know?

Speaker 2:
[37:23] Okay. Like a jaunty bandana?

Speaker 3:
[37:26] Define jaunty.

Speaker 2:
[37:27] I don't know if a bandana can be unjaunty. For what occasion does the bandana come out?

Speaker 3:
[37:32] Usually a birthday, a holiday, you know? Very festive specifically.

Speaker 2:
[37:36] Okay. Are the bandana, like, if it's a holiday, if it's like Christmas, is the bandana, like, Christmas themed?

Speaker 3:
[37:41] Of course. Why else would you be doing it?

Speaker 2:
[37:43] Got it, got it, got it.

Speaker 3:
[37:44] Who do you think I am?

Speaker 2:
[37:46] Very special person.

Speaker 3:
[37:47] That fits right into the whitest shit category. Let's keep it moving.

Speaker 2:
[37:51] Three last things. Vesper dropped a glass on the patio, which is one of the text messages that Ashley receives. Strikes me as very white people nonsense. And then Ashley asking Eunice out to Chinese food.

Speaker 3:
[38:02] That was tough.

Speaker 2:
[38:03] Because she's Korean and in America.

Speaker 3:
[38:05] I'm going to book China bamboo house. That's real rough.

Speaker 2:
[38:10] All right.

Speaker 3:
[38:10] Eunice, though, very well-natured about it, you know? She's rolling with the punches. These American weirdos.

Speaker 2:
[38:14] Pass me the mung-bo-ling beef. I'll eat it.

Speaker 3:
[38:17] Look, she's a woman of the world. She's lived and studied internationally. She's familiar with all this shit.

Speaker 2:
[38:21] That's it. All right. This is an A24 show, A24-iest moment.

Speaker 3:
[38:30] Less a moment and more a fact. Like, I think just getting Yoon Yeojung on this show to begin with after Minari, like, that... I know she's on other TV, but this feels like exactly the kind of thing where you can connect the dots and see the pipeline of how it came to be.

Speaker 2:
[38:42] Yeah, this is different from doing Pachinko on Apple. I agree. Score by Phineas?

Speaker 3:
[38:47] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[38:49] Um, what about the bug motif? We have like ants, bugs in light fixtures, the dead bee, which we'll come back to, Lindsay flicking ants off her phone, ants on the oranges of the club. There's just like bugs everywhere. I mean, it made me think of Counterbug from Disclosure or Deer Departed, but also it just like felt very A24 to have like a bug motif.

Speaker 3:
[39:09] It's exactly like you can see when the A24 logo comes up on the trailer and it's just the ants crawling in the shape of A24. This is their whale house. But I think a lot of it speaks to just like the infestation in these specific like rich spaces, right? It's like it's all veneer. It all looks very nice. It feels very nice. And then you look closely and the orange is covered with ants.

Speaker 2:
[39:28] Oh, no, of course. But like that's an A24 thing to do. Do you see the rot? There's bugs everywhere.

Speaker 3:
[39:33] Oh, my God. The metaphor literalized. Are you kidding me?

Speaker 2:
[39:37] Speaking of which, there's a coyote on the property. Very, I mean, very pluralistic animal encounter. All right. Diabolical manipulation in these first three episodes.

Speaker 3:
[39:46] I got to be honest, I don't find anything that's happened so far to be like super diabolical.

Speaker 2:
[39:51] So define diabolical for me then, not in an Austin way, but in a Rob Mahoney way. What does it mean?

Speaker 3:
[39:57] Kidnapping someone and imprisoning them and torturing them.

Speaker 2:
[40:01] So you mean like extreme. So I sort of meant like in terms of like twisted morally.

Speaker 3:
[40:09] For sure, but like where's the Machiavelli here? Like who is really pulling the puppet strings?

Speaker 2:
[40:13] So I would say Lindsay in her conversation with Wouche when she's like, does the chairwoman know you're making all the other women here at the club uncomfortable? You're making me uncomfortable right now. When she was just engaging in like smearing sunscreen on his half-naked body. You know, that seems to be diabolical manipulation to me.

Speaker 3:
[40:34] See, I agree that inciting incident feels diabolical, but then nothing so far has come of it, right? Like the doctor chooses to visit and get, like where's the follow through?

Speaker 2:
[40:42] You want this to be in a very like intricate, long-ranging plan.

Speaker 3:
[40:47] You may have heard this before. I want schemes on schemes on schemes.

Speaker 2:
[40:50] Hat on a hat.

Speaker 3:
[40:51] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[40:51] Rube Goldberg it up. I was thinking more like morally reprehensible. Right. Which is a lot of the show, but I just think like I think Josh making eye contact with Ashley and saying, is your job safe in episode one?

Speaker 3:
[41:04] It's not good.

Speaker 2:
[41:05] The woosh, I mean, woosh himself taking his shirt off for her to apply the sunscreen.

Speaker 3:
[41:09] That's morally reprehensible.

Speaker 2:
[41:11] He's been trying to manipulate her into skincare. Like he's doing his skincare.

Speaker 3:
[41:15] Look, if those ads are diabolical.

Speaker 2:
[41:18] I don't want to be right.

Speaker 3:
[41:20] I just think, look, there's a lot of bad behavior on display. Is any of it so far like beyond the pale?

Speaker 2:
[41:26] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[41:27] It's not good. I'm not going to defend what people are doing. Blackmail and embezzlement and extortion, it's all bad.

Speaker 2:
[41:34] Yeah. It doesn't rise to the level of diabolical for you yet.

Speaker 3:
[41:37] I'm still waiting for the diabolical stuff.

Speaker 2:
[41:39] Stay tuned. Realistic shot fired during an argument.

Speaker 3:
[41:43] We can just skip past the part of what this says about me, but there's something specifically about when Lindsay says, you're very good at your job and doesn't mean it as a compliment. I'm like, oh boy.

Speaker 2:
[41:55] I think it's, yeah, listening to your podcast in your little shed isn't working on shit, Josh, is a pretty good one. But for me and your own wife had to remind you it was her birthday. But The Herb Garden has been our to-do list for five years. The runner about spreading the mulch.

Speaker 3:
[42:15] He spread the mulch. He finally did it.

Speaker 2:
[42:17] He did it, but there's rotten the mulch. But The Herb Garden has been our to-do list for five years. That strikes me as very...

Speaker 3:
[42:25] Can we start using there's rotten the mulch as like are something rotten in the state of Denmark? Anytime there's an 824 movie, there's real rotten the mulch.

Speaker 2:
[42:33] Anytime you haven't done something, but you do, you're very responsible, you're very good at your job, Rob.

Speaker 3:
[42:37] See, now I can't hear it the same way. This is the problem.

Speaker 2:
[42:41] But anytime you don't follow through, I'll be like, That Herb Garden has been our to-do list for five years. All right. This is the time to shine. This is probably our wealthiest category, which is himbo-iest moment.

Speaker 3:
[42:53] Charles Melton, stand up.

Speaker 2:
[42:54] They all belong to Charles Melton except for Dr. Kim at the golf course.

Speaker 3:
[43:00] Oh my God, he's so good.

Speaker 2:
[43:02] He's apparently a very talented surgeon before the tremor. I don't think he's a total himbo, but he's such a dingbat in that moment.

Speaker 3:
[43:12] I'm really hitting well today after four consecutive swings and misses.

Speaker 2:
[43:15] His wife and their legal counsel who are actively discussing his medical malpractice are like, very good, you're doing so well.

Speaker 3:
[43:24] Polite clapping.

Speaker 2:
[43:25] That was the only non-Austin moment on my list here.

Speaker 3:
[43:28] I think they're predominantly Austin moments. But I want to float the idea that almost every character on this show is kind of a version of him. This is not the brightest group of characters. I would say the exceptions to that are, the chairwoman seems on top of it. Eunice seems pretty plugged in and knows how to work people, and also understands how these worlds work. Also by the end, like I mentioned with Ashley, she's at least seeing something that other people are not as far as the crime in her midst.

Speaker 2:
[43:55] She's got most of the picture in place.

Speaker 3:
[43:58] For sure. But everybody else feels obliviously sort of dumb, maybe just too comfortable to be perceptive is what it is.

Speaker 2:
[44:05] Yes, I agree. Except for Deb. Shout out Deb.

Speaker 3:
[44:07] Yeah. We need more Debs around here.

Speaker 2:
[44:10] Any particular Austin moments you want to shout out here?

Speaker 3:
[44:13] I think it is the extended missed bit, the bit that keeps bidding. Because it feels like it's going to be a throwaway gag, and he just keeps bringing it up, and specifically does Mark to have a missed team. That's where I really broke.

Speaker 2:
[44:27] He's like, I can really see it in the morning.

Speaker 3:
[44:30] They do great work, but does she need that much personnel?

Speaker 2:
[44:33] Straight, like when we first see him, he is flexing for Ashley, and that's a great himbo moment. But I think the moment that his golden retriever himbo-iness really first shines is when he texts her and says, a bee died in the house, I cried.

Speaker 3:
[44:55] He tried his damnedest to save that bee.

Speaker 2:
[44:58] When he shows up to Lindsay, who's sorting pillows, and says, Miss, Miss, Miss, you're not alone, trying to save her, and all of his Reddit searches, fiance, weird sex, why, all of that. It's just all good.

Speaker 3:
[45:16] I think overall-

Speaker 2:
[45:17] Yes, I'll cancel our celebratory CPSK dinner.

Speaker 3:
[45:20] That contrast of the Gen Z person trying to solve all their problems on Reddit, and the elder millennial trying to Google and having to scroll past all the trash listicles to find some semblance of an answer, I mean, direct fucking hits.

Speaker 2:
[45:32] What does it say about me that I do often search in Reddit for questions that I have?

Speaker 3:
[45:36] You're young at heart. You're tapped into a different generation like that.

Speaker 2:
[45:40] I think we've talked about this before. It really depends. If you're trying to find the best socks or mattress or whatever.

Speaker 3:
[45:47] Hyper-specific, I find it to be actually quite good.

Speaker 2:
[45:49] It's like a product sort of thing. You're going to get, hopefully, because I can't trust a single bustle list of best of whatever. That's all SponCon. But if you go on Reddit, you're looking for the best whatever. You're going to see some comments that are clearly copy pasted from Casper mattress or whatever. They're like, this stuff is great. It's not. But then you're going to get some real real, some true true.

Speaker 3:
[46:13] I think that's the huge part of it. Not that there aren't bots on Reddit, but it does feel like one of the corners of the internet where some real people still inhabit it. So we'll take it even if the advice is sometimes kind of dog shit. And largely everything is a cesspool. So what's this little cesspool that at least has people in it?

Speaker 2:
[46:28] Next category is name drop slash celebrity cameo. And I was wondering, like I gave you these categories before you had watched all the episodes. So I don't know if you were like, what do you mean?

Speaker 3:
[46:40] I had already seen it. And there's really only one answer for me. And it's Baron Davis.

Speaker 2:
[46:43] Oh, it's Baron Davis. It's not Michael Phelps.

Speaker 3:
[46:46] The Michael Phelps bit is funny.

Speaker 2:
[46:48] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[46:48] And the whole Venmo exchange. And I mean, really just the idea of being like in over your head based off a bullshit bed involving Michael Phelps is funny, but.

Speaker 2:
[46:56] Tell me, give me the context for Baron Davis that I'm missing.

Speaker 3:
[46:59] I mean, Baron Davis is like an amazing of his time player. A classic like, oh, if he didn't get injured at this one wrong time, everything would have been so different for him. He has this like signature moment, one of the greatest upsets in NBA history. Also like, has tried to be an actor maybe like 10 years ago or so, it never quite popped. Dated Laura Dern for a while. It's just like a larger than life personality who I love seeing in basically any context. Clearly Laura Dern, at least somewhat agreed at the time. I can't attest to what she thinks now.

Speaker 2:
[47:30] And then Mr. Selena Gomez, Benny Blanco is also here. Great stuff. Okay, most cutting critique of Gen Z.

Speaker 3:
[47:37] I think it is in terms of what's really cutting. There's a lot of stuff that is accurate and feels like it is pointed directly at Gen Z. I think the thing that is really like, like you're really going deep with this is Austin and Ashley's inability to handle like even the bare minimum of conflict. Where it's like anytime there's any friction.

Speaker 2:
[47:56] Let's never fight like this again.

Speaker 3:
[47:57] Let's never ever fight like this again. There's a lot of talk about emotional openness. And then anytime any emotional openness is expressed, it's like, Ashley can't even look at him. She has to stare out the window and then jump out of the car. So it's like, maybe not true of everybody, but there is a generational divide in terms of that kind of conflict avoidance, especially juxtaposed with a golf club guitar swinging all out fight.

Speaker 2:
[48:20] I think you're right about that because I think the whole part where Austin's talking about the system, right? The people in charge have made it impossible for us. Everyone grabbed the bag before we could. It's unfair globally. And then he's like, I heard antitrust laws might help. Like all that stuff. But that, again, I feel like I remember that being the millennial cry. You know, that's just sort of like generational turnover, a generational sort of moment. Interestingly, as much as I said that Gen X is usually left out of it, I think Ashley is conspicuously absent parents, absent Gen X parents. I thought, you know, like her dad, just like her stepmom not inviting her to whatever game they're watching, and her dad just like not, she's like in the hospital waiting room and he is not able to, you know, make a second for her.

Speaker 3:
[49:08] So yeah, her home situation, we haven't really seen or heard much about her mom yet, but she does try to call her dad, who it seems like basically just has a whole new family and a whole new life, and she's unfortunately not a part of it.

Speaker 2:
[49:19] Another thing, Josh copying a different fitness influencer's content to create his own fit, like word for word, to create his own fitness influencer content, I thought was like, I mean, I don't know if that's specifically generational, but it is very like something you see all the time, so I thought that was really good.

Speaker 3:
[49:34] They're just collecting data from lots of different sources.

Speaker 2:
[49:38] Just trying to build those glute bridges, you know what I mean?

Speaker 3:
[49:39] I mean, aren't we all?

Speaker 2:
[49:40] Stack them, you know? All right, similarly, elder millennials, what dragged them the most?

Speaker 3:
[49:46] I think this one was just the, like blaming all of your shortcomings and the entitlement of younger people. And the show also feeds into not entitlement, but like Ashley said a bit about like, I worked nine whole hours yesterday.

Speaker 2:
[49:57] I worked nine whole hours, it's really good.

Speaker 3:
[49:59] They're playing both sides of this divide. But yeah, I think the way, like the way that Josh and Lindsay are trying to navigate how to even interact with these people, how to manage them, how to manipulate them, how to be a little more diabolical and in ultimately how they're steering this situation. And really all they can come up with was like, these fucking entitled kids.

Speaker 2:
[50:19] Right, these young idiots and then Ashley and Austin are like these dumb old fucks, right? Like that's what we're dealing with here. I will add to that, the whole sequence with the foam roller. Oscar Isaac rolling out the QL muscle on the foam roller while talking about how entitled these kids are was pretty phenomenal stuff.

Speaker 3:
[50:38] Why do you gotta do this to us?

Speaker 2:
[50:39] Also Lindsay with the MySpace angle and the face tuning, you know, for her selfie, obviously.

Speaker 3:
[50:44] She is quick on the trigger on that touch up, like really impressive stuff.

Speaker 2:
[50:50] Yeah. And then LCD sound system at the bowl.

Speaker 3:
[50:53] You cried through the entire Encore.

Speaker 2:
[50:57] Needle drop. That's needle drop.

Speaker 3:
[50:59] I think for me, it is the combo of Red Wine Supernova and Clarity, kind of like the his and hers moments at the household in terms of like, you got a chapel girl and an EDM guy. It's like, honestly, maybe this just won't work out.

Speaker 2:
[51:13] Ashley just really is a chapel girl.

Speaker 3:
[51:15] She is a chapel girl.

Speaker 2:
[51:16] Absolutely.

Speaker 3:
[51:18] I'm not a chapel girl.

Speaker 2:
[51:19] I'm also a chapel girl.

Speaker 3:
[51:20] I would say of the hits, Red Wine Supernova is definitely my favorite.

Speaker 2:
[51:23] Very good.

Speaker 3:
[51:24] More of a kaleidoscope guy, but we got to be sad sometimes.

Speaker 2:
[51:26] I thought you were going to do the AAS. The AAS felt like a real Rob call. I would say it is, I mean, thank you, Phineas, the Billie Eilish, what was I made for? Then Josh was just like, damn.

Speaker 3:
[51:39] Speaking of you have to be sad sometimes. Yeah. Moping on the couch to what was I made for.

Speaker 2:
[51:44] Really good. Then there's the Acoustic Tame Impala cover. Really, really good. I can't remember if I said this category over to you, pop culture reference, did I send that to you?

Speaker 3:
[51:53] Yeah, you did.

Speaker 2:
[51:54] Okay. What do you have?

Speaker 3:
[51:55] I think for me, it's like, it's just shoehorning in another himbo moment, but thinking that Kim Jong Un was a member of BTS, really great.

Speaker 2:
[52:04] You just did really roll with that graceful way.

Speaker 3:
[52:05] This is what I'm saying. She must want him real bad, because she is putting up with a lot.

Speaker 2:
[52:11] He's like, therapy is the place. And Charles Melton is shirtless for half of these episodes. And honestly, I didn't do a lot of research into actor interviews, but I forget what I was... Genuinely forget what I was doing.

Speaker 3:
[52:26] Just glue bridges.

Speaker 2:
[52:27] I was doing something for Charles Melton, and it was just all what his fitness routine was for this season of Beef.

Speaker 3:
[52:33] Many people are wondering.

Speaker 2:
[52:34] I think it's the Anthony Edwards goose slash doctor from ER Exchange. This will come up a bit more in later episodes, but Josh is really one of us, honestly.

Speaker 3:
[52:45] Well, I mean, in this episode, to make the dual Anthony Edwards ER Top Gun NBA reference, it's about as direct hit as you're going to get from me.

Speaker 2:
[52:54] Welcome to the Ringer, Josh Martin.

Speaker 3:
[52:56] We're just coming off the pit. There's just a lot in the sauce here.

Speaker 2:
[53:00] Yeah, okay. Eat the Rich. The moment where you were like, let's eat them up.

Speaker 3:
[53:09] I honestly, I know there's a lot of exorbitant throwing around of money, but I didn't feel like a real inspiration to Eat the Rich. Did you feel that acutely at any point?

Speaker 2:
[53:20] You think saying, Monet, Manet, making money?

Speaker 3:
[53:23] Actually, this is the one. Not just saying it, but the whole idea of art investment as a replicable strategy, especially for a country club GM, that's a great call.

Speaker 2:
[53:34] The Dracula Orchids at the other B&B.

Speaker 3:
[53:36] The $500 pen.

Speaker 2:
[53:38] Yeah, the $500 pen.

Speaker 3:
[53:39] Honestly, this is the one. B&B culture more broadly, specifically luxury B&B culture.

Speaker 2:
[53:44] Something I'm not dialed into at all, but yeah, this idea of like, because I've stayed in quaintly shabby B&Bs.

Speaker 3:
[53:55] I stayed in a lot of teapots.

Speaker 2:
[53:56] Yes, and so much ruffling.

Speaker 3:
[53:58] Maybe a room full of dolls.

Speaker 2:
[54:00] Have I told you that story?

Speaker 3:
[54:05] How do they all have a room full of dolls?

Speaker 2:
[54:07] This goes back to when I was working in the bookstore and there was a film festival, the Napa Valley Independent Film Festival were showing films in one of our stores in Calistoga. So they wanted me as a representative of a larger bookstore company to oversee those screenings at the Calistoga bookstore. And then they wanted me to drive back at night over the mountain to where I lived. And I was like, you can't put me up somewhere in Calistoga. And the company's like, could she stay in a cot in the store and use the public restroom in the store? I did have healthcare, but I didn't have a lot at this bookstore. And I was like, you want me to take a horse bath in the public restroom in Calistoga over the course of this weekend? So then they finally agreed to, they booked me an Airbnb, like not Airbnb, a B&B. And I went in and I had not been there yet. It was late at night. It was like my only option. I walked in and the room was full of haunted dolls.

Speaker 3:
[55:11] The fact that you had no expectation, this wasn't like a thing you booked on Kitsch. You know, it's like, you just walk blindly into a doll room.

Speaker 2:
[55:18] Haunted, like porcelain cracked face dolls.

Speaker 3:
[55:21] Oh my God.

Speaker 2:
[55:22] I stayed there that night. The next night, I just did the drive home. I was like, you know what? I will risk life and limb to drive over this mountain. If it's a caught in the back of the bookstore or haunted doll B&B, I'll risk my life driving.

Speaker 3:
[55:33] There are worse things than driving into a ravine.

Speaker 2:
[55:36] Okay. And then last but not least, this is a crossover from The Pit. We're calling this Libbin Out with the Beef. Ashley has a serious medical condition. Some torsion, which we experienced this season on The Pit, actually.

Speaker 3:
[55:51] Big moment for ovarian cysts.

Speaker 2:
[55:52] Yeah. Great stuff for ovarian cysts. What about this storyline did most ping this for you?

Speaker 3:
[56:00] I mean, just the health insurance situation we've been talking around more broadly. That is like the dividing point between levels of income, levels of status, I think is, for one, very true to life, but also, I mean, clearly, the show living out.

Speaker 2:
[56:13] Ashley being like, can they bundle something? Do I have any weird moles that I can have removed while I'm getting this surgery? And also being like, you have one near your scapula. But I love that thought process of like, what can I bundle inside of this surgery? Is like, yeah, living out with me.

Speaker 3:
[56:32] That was literally a plot line now that I'm thinking about it on Adults, where somebody went in and was like, having to get a procedure done. And it's like, how many other major procedures can I double and triple dip while I'm under?

Speaker 2:
[56:41] Yeah, the anesthesia will work for all, like just blanket anesthesia for all of it, right? Okay, anything else that we haven't mentioned that you wanted to call out?

Speaker 3:
[56:49] I mean, there's so many great like, running bits or just like one liners in the show. I can find myself or imagine myself saying, the slops are smelling great, just many times throughout my life.

Speaker 2:
[56:59] What is, I didn't understand that.

Speaker 3:
[57:01] Oh, he was making sloppy Joes.

Speaker 2:
[57:02] Oh, sloppy Joes.

Speaker 3:
[57:04] He was grilling the buns.

Speaker 2:
[57:05] I was like, are those little pecan pies? I didn't understand what they were.

Speaker 3:
[57:09] No, those were warmly toasted hamburger buns.

Speaker 2:
[57:12] But the slops are smelling great.

Speaker 3:
[57:14] The slops are smelling great. I'm not making slops, but I might make slops just so I can say this.

Speaker 2:
[57:20] Would you call them, you would call them slops?

Speaker 3:
[57:21] I think you have to now.

Speaker 2:
[57:22] Okay, great. Anything else?

Speaker 3:
[57:24] I would also go for a celebratory dinner at the California Pizza Kitchen. I'm not above it.

Speaker 2:
[57:29] Would you throw a dijonno or two in the oven as we did well today?

Speaker 3:
[57:33] I mean, only triple meat. If we're gonna do it, we're gonna do it right.

Speaker 2:
[57:36] Are you cheese in the crust or no?

Speaker 3:
[57:38] Why not?

Speaker 2:
[57:39] Okay, wow, wilding out. Triple meat and cheese in the crust?

Speaker 3:
[57:43] Again, if we're flexing, you gotta flex. You really have to treat yourself now and again.

Speaker 2:
[57:47] CPK is the way. All right, that's the beef, episodes one through three. This is the diabolical way that we decided to cover three episodes of television. We'll be back with four or five, six. Will we do the exact same format? Who's to say? Probably, but we'll see.

Speaker 3:
[58:01] I also, I want to put out our services for something on this show. I know it's a little late in the game considering they're binge dropping it. The Photoshop work that was done to put young Oscar Isaac and young Carey Mulligan in a wedding photo together, I think we could do better.

Speaker 2:
[58:15] It's the way in which they're so clearly, like he's supposed to be looking at her, but he's looking like in opposite directions. Basically, to the left of her. Yeah, it's tough. I would say the Photoshop of younger Oscar Isaac and young Oscar Isaac is better than the one of young Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan.

Speaker 3:
[58:33] Now that I think about it though, the young Oscar Isaac and A-Rod might be the worst of the Photoshop.

Speaker 2:
[58:37] Yeah, I was like, do you want to lend your sports expertise to any of the sports memorabilia that we see? We get the Tiger Woods driver, like anything else that you want to shout out that you noticed in the background.

Speaker 3:
[58:47] Tiger Woods bit is great, especially after the Golf Club debacle and the fight. Overall, I find the argument that Ant is the future and thus you should invest in the sneaker now to be quite persuasive. It's not like a Victor Webonyama level version of the future, but if you were going to make a long-term investment, actually I think it's a pretty savvy play. Maybe more savvy than like buying a bunch of super expensive audiophile equipment perhaps.

Speaker 2:
[59:09] Or money, mone.

Speaker 3:
[59:12] Money.

Speaker 2:
[59:12] Money. All right.

Speaker 3:
[59:14] Thank you. How dare they, how dare us.

Speaker 2:
[59:16] Thank you, Devon Renaldo. Thank you to Jacob who's working on this episode. Thank you to Kai Grady. Thank you to the beef itself.

Speaker 3:
[59:22] Kerry Mulligan.

Speaker 2:
[59:23] Kerry Mulligan and Oscar Isaacs Mullet. Yeah. We'll see you soon. Bye.

Speaker 6:
[59:40] You can't reason with the sun. Trust us, we've tried. This summer, it's time to put that angry ball of fire on mute. Columbia's OmniShade technology is engineered to protect you from the sun's harsh rays that can burn and damage your skin. The sun is relentless, but so is our gear. Level up your summer at columbia.com to spend more time outside and less time slathering on aloe lotion. You're welcome. Columbia, engineered for whatever.