Check out what a psychiatrist and therapist have to say about what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Check out what a psychiatrist and therapist have to say about what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, Portia shares her unforgettable experience at Taylor Swift’s "The Eras Tour" in Dublin. From the stunning stage design to the powerful performances across all her musical eras, we cover the night’s most exciting moments. We delve into the mental health themes woven throughout Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. From self-discovery to resilience, we examine how Taylor's evolving music reflects personal growth and emotional healing, highlighting themes of self-empowerment, overcoming adversity, and embracing change. We discuss how Swift's lyrics resonate with listeners' own mental health journeys and offer a sense of connection and understanding. Tune in for an insightful discussion on how the Eras Tour not only entertains but also provides a meaningful exploration of mental health and emotional well-being. We hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer: This podcast and its content are for entertainment and educational purposes only. They do not constitute medical or psychiatric advice. Please call 911, 211 or go directly to the nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergency.
SOCIALS:
DR. FUREY:
Private Practice - Sound Psychiatry, LLC
PORTIA PENDLETON, LCSW:
Private Practice - In Touch Therapy
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we explore Netflix's "A Family Affair," a film that delves into the complexities of family relationships and mental health. We dissect how the film portrays generational trauma, coping strategies, and emotional healing within a family setting. Plus, we get to gawk at Zac Efron's arms - win, win! Join us for a thought-provoking discussion on how "A Family Affair" captures the nuances of mental wellness, family dynamics, and narcissistic personality disorder vs narcissistic traits. We hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer: This podcast and its content are for entertainment and educational purposes only. They do not constitute medical or psychiatric advice. Please call 911, 211 or go directly to the nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergency.
SOCIALS:
DR. FUREY:
Private Practice - Sound Psychiatry, LLC
PORTIA PENDLETON, LCSW:
Private Practice - In Touch Therapy
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
SURPRISE! Today we are dropping a bonus episode in the feed! Hope you enjoy Dr. Furey & esteemed child and adolescent psychiatrist, Dr. Willough Jenkins, totally fan girling over "Inside Out 2." Watch the full episode on YouTube now! We hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer: This podcast and its content are for entertainment and educational purposes only. They do not constitute medical or psychiatric advice. Please call 911, 211 or go directly to the nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergency.
SOCIALS:
DR. FUREY:
Private Practice - Sound Psychiatry, LLC
PORTIA PENDLETON, LCSW:
Private Practice - In Touch Therapy
OUR GUEST'S SOCIALS;
DR. JENKINS:
IG: @drwilloughjenkins
Tik Tok: @Dr Willough Psychiatrist
Youtube: @drwilloughjenkins
PRIOR EPISODES REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE:
Episode 88 - "Inside Out 2" (Adolescent Anxiety)
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are preparing you for our upcoming episodes in August 2024. We are excited for you to watch along with us!
August 5th - A Family Affair (Netflix)
August 12th - Portia at the Eras Tour
August 19th - It Ends with Us (Movie Theatres) Based on the book by Colleen Hoover
August 26th - Tell Me Lies Season 1 (Hulu)
SOCIALS:
DR. FUREY:
Private Practice - Sound Psychiatry, LLC
PORTIA PENDLETON, LCSW:
Private Practice - In Touch Therapy
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are wrapping up our analysis of The Bear season 3. Our focus shifts to the main characters and their struggle to keep up with the high demands of restaurant. Richie makes us think he is going to therapy with his ability to spot "emotional dysregulation" and "sublimation." Him and Carmy are NOT practicing good communication skills this season and it shows as both the front and back of the house are filled with chaos. Sydney grapples with the decision to leave The Bear and ends the season with a panic attack. Carmy's anxiety is palpable with some obsessive compulsive behaviors appearing and reliance on pepto bismol to manage the effects of anxiety on his stomach and digestion. Learn about Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder, panic symptoms and overworking in this latest episode. We hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer: This podcast and its content are for entertainment and educational purposes only. They do not constitute medical or psychiatric advice. Please call 911, 211 or go directly to the nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergency.
DR. FUREY:
Private Practice - Sound Psychiatry, LLC
PORTIA PENDLETON, LCSW:
Private Practice - In Touch Therapy
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are thrilled to bring you our analysis of the Emmy winning "The Bear" season 3. In this first installment of our season 3 coverage we deep dive into Tina, Marcus Donna and Natalie. We are lucky to see Ayo Edebiri's directorial debut for the episode titled, Napkins. The challenges middled aged women face both with employment and feeling seen are discussed. As we move to Marcus we follow his journey with fresh grief for the passing of his mother and us of work in coping. Finally, we spend time talking and processing the mother/daughter dynamic between Donna and Natalie as Natalie goes into labor with her first child. We explore that challenges that untreated substance use, borderline personality disorder and narcissistic traits can have on relationships. Join us next week for part 2 to hear about Carmy, Sydney and Richie.
You can stream all of "The Bear" on Hulu.
Disclaimer: This podcast and its content are for entertainment and educational purposes only. They do not constitute medical or psychiatric advice. Please call 911, 211 or go directly to the nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergency.
SOCIALS:
DR. FUREY:
Private Practice - Sound Psychiatry, LLC
PORTIA PENDLETON, LCSW:
Private Practice - In Touch Therapy
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are re-releasing our episode analyzing "The Bear" season 2. Stay tuned for our episodes on 7/22 and 7/29 where we'll be analyzing season 3! Season 2 was a standout with food, relationships, and understanding the characters' histories. We could not have asked for more amazing mental health content to discuss. Richie wins Dr. Furey over (he is a swiftie?) and Jamie Lee Curtis playing their mother, Donna, was an unexpected gift. We see depictions of borderline personality disorder, addiction, and what can happen when complex families get together over the holidays. We also give you some tips on how to manage stressors that can arise when family gathers. Overall, we give this season a "chef's kiss!" We hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer: This podcast and its content are for entertainment and educational purposes only. They do not constitute medical or psychiatric advice. Please call 911, 211 or go directly to the nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergency.
SOCIALS:
DR. FUREY:
Private Practice - Sound Psychiatry, LLC
PORTIA PENDLETON, LCSW:
Private Practice - In Touch Therapy
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are excited to cover Not Dead Yet season 1 which premiered on ABC but can also be streamed on Hulu. The best part of this episode is that we are joined by @differentspectrumspodcast Dr. Naz and Spencer! In this episode we analyze the depiction of Autism Spectrum Disorder and focus on Edward played by Rick Glassman, an actor with autism. Autism has notoriously had some pretty poor characterizations in the media so we are thrilled to see autism depicted this way additionally with a person who has lived experience. Edward is an environmental lawyer who lives with Nell, played by Gina Rodriguez, who guess what, sees the ghosts of obituaries she is writing. The characters are fabulous, the conversation with Dr. Naz and Spencer is even better! We can't wait for you to join us!
DR. FUREY:
Private Practice - Sound Psychiatry, LLC
PORTIA PENDLETON, LCSW:
Private Practice - In Touch Therapy
Disclaimer: This podcast and its content are for entertainment and educational purposes only. They do not constitute medical or psychiatric advice. Please call 911, 211 or go directly to the nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergency.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are re-releasing our episode analyzing "The Bear" season 1. Stay tuned for our episodes on 7/22 and 7/29 where we'll be analyzing season 3! In this episode, we meet the chefs and other restaurant staff and WOW, was anyone else's heart racing? We root for Carmy and the restaurant to be successful but see poor interpersonal skills, trauma, grief and trust issues impact everyone. Mikey's story line is tragic and unfortunately a common reality when mental health issues combine with substance abuse and financial troubles. Be sure to watch this show with some snacks, we hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer: This podcast and its content are for entertainment and educational purposes only. They do not constitute medical or psychiatric advice. Please call 911, 211 or go directly to the nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergency.
SOCIALS:
DR. FUREY:
Private Practice - Sound Psychiatry, LLC
PORTIA PENDLETON, LCSW:
Private Practice - In Touch Therapy
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are THRILLED to dive into the smash hit "Inside Out 2." We think this film expertly depicts puberty and how friendships become so important in adolescence. We loved meeting the new emotions - ennui, envy, embarrassment, and, of course, anxiety. In this episode, we discuss the movie's amazing portrayal of rapid, frenetic anxious energy, catastrophic thinking, panic, and grounding techniques. We hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer: This podcast and its content are for entertainment and educational purposes only. They do not constitute medical or psychiatric advice. Please call 911, 211 or go directly to the nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergency.
SOCIALS:
WATCH on YouTube *edit this hyperlink to match the youtube episode link
DR. FUREY:
Private Practice - Sound Psychiatry, LLC
PORTIA PENDLETON, LCSW:
Private Practice - In Touch Therapy
PRIOR DISNEY EPISODES:
PUT IN INSIDE OUT RE-RELEASE
Episode 8 - "Encanto" with Christina Arredondo, MD
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are re-releasing our episode about the adorable 2015 Disney/Pixar animated film "Inside Out." We love all of these characters and were so impressed at how well this movie depicted the development of psychological ambivalence in a pre-teen. In this episode, we comment on the humorous portrayal of various cognitive processes including memory, dejavu, and dreaming. We also touch on neuroplasticity and resiliency as it relates to trauma experienced in childhood. That leads us to reflect on what it's been like to work with patients of all ages through the COVID-19 pandemic, and our plea to Disney to release a sequel - SPOILER ALERT, THEY DID! And our episode about "Inside Out 2" drops next week! We hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer: This podcast and its content are for entertainment and educational purposes only. They do not constitute medical or psychiatric advice. Please call 911, 211 or go directly to the nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergency.
SOCIALS:
DR. FUREY:
Private Practice - Sound Psychiatry, LLC
PORTIA PENDLETON, LCSW:
Private Practice - In Touch Therapy
OTHER DISNEY EPISODES:
Episode 8 - "Encanto" with Christina Arredondo, MD
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are preparing you for our upcoming episodes in July 2024. We are excited for you to watch along with us!
July 1st - "Inside Out" 1 *rerelease (Disney+ & fuboTV)
July 8th - "Inside Out" 2 (Theaters)
July 11th - "The Bear" Season 1 *rerelease (Hulu)
July 15th - "Not Dead Yet" Season 1 (Hulu) w/ @differentspectrumspodcast
July 18th - "The Bear" Season 2 *rerelease (Hulu)
July 22nd - "The Bear" Season 3 Part 1 (Hulu)
July 19th - "The Bear" Season 3 Part 2 (Hulu)
SOCIALS:
DR. FUREY:
Private Practice - Sound Psychiatry, LLC
PORTIA PENDLETON, LCSW:
Private Practice - In Touch Therapy
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we continue our analysis of the Harry Potter series with "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" featuring our dear friend and Yale and Harvard affiliated child and adolescent psychiatrist, Dr. Zheala Qayyum (@zheeque). In this episode, we talk all about adolescent development and watching the characters navigate crushes and their first school dance. We also continue exploring the film's astute depiction of development, focusing on Harry's evolving ability to connect with the good and bad parts of himself. We also wonder if Harry meets criteria for PTSD yet?! And discuss our feelings about the adults' role in the trauma unfolding at Hogwarts. We hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer: This podcast and its content are for entertainment and educational purposes only. They do not constitute medical or psychiatric advice. Please call 911, 211 or go directly to the nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergency.
SOCIALS:
DR. QAYYUM'S INSTAGRAM:
https://www.instagram.com/zheeque
DR. FUREY:
Private Practice - Sound Psychiatry, LLC
PORTIA PENDLETON, LCSW:
Private Practice - In Touch Therapy
PRIOR EPISODES REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE:
Episode 75 - "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban"
Episode 57 - "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets"
Episode 42 - "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone"
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are joined by The Affair Consultant, Lauren LaRusso, LPC. Lauren helps us break down some of our biggest questions about infidelity: Why do people cheat? How can they stay after their partner cheated? Can trust ever really be restored? We analyze the new Netflix documentary based on the rise and fall (and rise again) of Ashley Madison, an online dating website for married or attached parties to meet anonymously. You don't want to miss this episode!
SOCIALS:
DR. FUREY:
Private Practice - Sound Psychiatry, LLC
PORTIA PENDLETON, LCSW:
Private Practice - In Touch Therapy
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are covering the new Netfix hit, Baby Reindeer. This show was especially interesting since it was based on a true story which writer and actor Richard Gadd depicts in this minis series. Donny, played by Richard Gadd is a wannabe comedian working at a local bar when Martha, played by Jessica Gunning, finds herself as one of his patrons. The series takes a dark turn when Martha begins to stalk Donny and harass his current and past love interests. We analyze Martha and discuss why people stalk as well as co-occurring pathology. In episode four we learn about Donny's traumatic past and discuss the impact sexual assault can have on future relationships and sexuality. This episode covers some upsetting themes so please take care.
**TRIGGER WARNING: This episode discusses potentially triggering topics that may include, but may not be limited to, abuse, harassment, substance use, disordered eating, self-harm, and/or suicide.
PRIOR EPISODES REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE:
RESOURCES REFERENCED IN EPISODE:
https://www.stalkingawareness.org/
https://victimconnect.org/learn/types-of-crime/stalking/
SOCIALS:
DR. FUREY:
Private Practice - Sound Psychiatry, LLC
PORTIA PENDLETON, LCSW:
Private Practice - In Touch Therapy
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
TRIGGER WARNING: This episode discusses potentially triggering topics that may include, but may not be limited to, abuse, harassment, substance use, disordered eating, self-harm, and/or suicide.
Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, as part of the final week of our fundraiser for the Catherine Violet Hubbard Foundation, we are thrilled to be interviewing Dan O'Brien (@bydanobrien) about his recent play "Newtown." In this special episode, we explore Dan's use of writing, theatre, and other creative outlets to process his own childhood trauma and, in sharing his story, giving others a way to feel less alone in their own struggles. We also hear about his experience creating a play based on real life tragedy and explore how all involved were able to support their mental health along the way. Finally, we also answer the hard hitting question - what IS a dramaturge?!? We hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer: This podcast and its content are for entertainment and educational purposes only. They do not constitute medical or psychiatric advice. Please call 911, 211 or go directly to the nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergency.
Dan O'Brien Links:
LINK TO FUNDRAISER FOR CATHERINE VIOLENT HUBBARD FOUNDATION (live until June 8, 2024 to honor the birthday of Catherine Hubbard, a victim of the Sandy Hook shooting):
Click to Donate to CVH Foundation
SOCIALS:
DR. FUREY:
Private Practice - Sound Psychiatry, LLC
PORTIA PENDLETON, LCSW:
Private Practice - In Touch Therapy
PRIOR EPISODES REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE:
Episode 80 - "American Horror Story: Murder House" Part 2 (The Langdon Family)
Episode 79 - "American Horror Story: Murder House" Part 1 (The Harmon Family)
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are preparing you for our upcoming episodes in June 2024. We are excited for you to watch along with us!
June 3rd - "Newtown" (Processing Trauma Though Art) with playwright Dan O'Brien
June 10th - "Baby Reindeer" Netflix
June 17th - "Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal" Netflix with Lauren LaRusso, LPC
June 24th - "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" HBO MAX & Peacock with Zheala Qayyum, MD
LINK TO FUNDRAISER FOR CATHERINE VIOLENT HUBBARD FOUNDATION (live until June 8, 2024 to honor the birthday of Catherine Hubbard, a victim of the Sandy Hook shooting):
Click to Donate to CVH Foundation
SOCIALS:
DR. FUREY:
Private Practice - Sound Psychiatry, LLC
PORTIA PENDLETON, LCSW:
Private Practice - In Touch Therapy
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are analyzing the recent extended episode of the adorable children's show Bluey called "The Sign." Grab your tissues because this episode about moving and what makes a home a home is a real tear jerker! In this episode, we discuss what we (and everyone else!) loves about using this puppy family to depict good enough parenting. We hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer: This podcast and its content are for entertainment and educational purposes only. They do not constitute medical or psychiatric advice. Please call 911, 211 or go directly to the nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergency.
LINK TO FUNDRAISER FOR CATHERINE VIOLENT HUBBARD FOUNDATION (live until June 8, 2024 to honor the birthday of Catherine Hubbard, a victim of the Sandy Hook shooting):
Click to Donate to CVH Foundation
SOCIALS:
DR. FUREY:
Private Practice - Sound Psychiatry, LLC
PORTIA PENDLETON, LCSW:
Private Practice - In Touch Therapy
OTHER FAMILY FRIENDLY EPISODES:
Episode 8 - "Encanto" with Christina Arredondo, MD
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are spending time with the incredible Jennifer Hubbard, founder and president of the Catherine Violet Hubbard Animal Sanctuary. Jenny takes us through some of the many parts of CVH like their seniors program, animal adoption events, education opportunities and their belief in creating compassion and healing through the human-animal connection. Jenny reflects on noticing Catherine's love for animals early on and her curious spirit that can be seen in Pippi Longstocking. Catherine lost her life tragically and publicly in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, this June would have been her 18th birthday. To celebrate her birthday and the wonderful work that CVH is doing every day, across the country, please consider donating through the link below, in our Instagram bio or on our website. Donations will go directly to the organization and you will be provided with a receipt for records and tax purposes. We hope you enjoy this special episode.
LINK TO FUNDRAISER FOR CATHERINE VIOLENT HUBBARD FOUNDATION (live until June 8, 2024 to honor the birthday of Catherine Hubbard, a victim of the Sandy Hook shooting):
Click to Donate to CVH Foundation
SOCIALS:
DR. FUREY:
Private Practice - Sound Psychiatry, LLC
PORTIA PENDLETON, LCSW:
Private Practice - In Touch Therapy
Disclaimer: This podcast and its content are for entertainment and educational purposes only. They do not constitute medical or psychiatric advice. Please call 911, 211 or go directly to the nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergency.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
TRIGGER WARNING: This episode discusses potentially triggering topics that may include, but may not be limited to, abuse, harassment, substance use, disordered eating, self-harm, and/or suicide.
Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we're release part 2 of our analysis of season 1 "American Horror Story: Murder House" focusing on the Langdon family played by Jamie Brewer (Adelaide, the daughter with Down Syndrome), Jessica Lange (Constance, the mother), and Evan Peters (Tate, the son). We use these characters to (once again! it's everywhere!) explore narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, and the narcissistic family structure with Constance as the matriarch. We also discuss Down syndrome and spend some time at the end reviewing the latest data on characteristics of mass shooters. We end the episode with a special announcement about our ongoing fundraiser to benefit the Catherine Violet Hubbard Foundation, an animal sanctuary founded in honor of Catherine Hubbard, one of the Sandy Hook victims, by her mother, Jenny Hubbard. Stay tuned for an extra special episode with Jenny Hubbard later this week. We hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer: This podcast and its content are for entertainment and educational purposes only. They do not constitute medical or psychiatric advice. Please call 911, 211 or go directly to the nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergency.
LINK TO FUNDRAISER:
SOCIALS:
DR. FUREY:
Private Practice - Sound Psychiatry, LLC
PORTIA PENDLETON, LCSW:
Private Practice - In Touch Therapy
PRIOR EPISODES REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE:
Episode 79 - "American Horror Story: Murder House" Part 1 (The Harmon Family)
ARTICLES REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE:
Characteristics Shared by the Young Men Committing Mass Shootings
Gun violence expert speaks on prevention, shooter characteristics and mental health implications
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
TRIGGER WARNING: This episode discusses potentially triggering topics that may include, but may not be limited to, abuse, harassment, substance use, disordered eating, self-harm, and/or suicide.
Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are releasing the first part of our analysis of season 1 of "American Horror Story: Murder House." This episode focuses on analyzing the Harmon family as played by Dylan McDermott (Ben, a psychiatrist), Connie Britton (Vivien, Ben's wife), and Taissa Farmiga (Violet, the Harmon's teenage daughter). We have a LOT to say about the show's portrayal of a psychiatrist working inside their home, the depiction of psychotherapy, and Ben's infidelity. We use Violet's character to discuss common signs of adolescent depression and Vivien's character to explore perinatal mental health issues and the distinction between psychosis and the supernatural. We also discuss trauma disorders and our views about living in a haunted house. Tune in for part 2 analyzing the Langdon family next week! We hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer: This podcast and its content are for entertainment and educational purposes only. They do not constitute medical or psychiatric advice. Please call 911, 211 or go directly to the nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergency.
LINK TO FUNDRAISER FOR CATHERINE VIOLENT HUBBARD FOUNDATION (live until June 8, 2024 to honor the birthday of Catherine Hubbard, a victim of the Sandy Hook shooting):
Click to Donate to CVH Foundation
SOCIALS:
DR. FUREY:
Private Practice - Sound Psychiatry, LLC
PORTIA PENDLETON, LCSW:
Private Practice - In Touch Therapy
PRIOR EPISODES REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE:
Episode 45 - American Horror Story - Delicate - Part 1
Episode 62 - "Shutter Island" with Forensic Psychiatrist Dr. Tobias Wasser
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
TRIGGER WARNING: This episode discusses potentially triggering topics that may include, but may not be limited to, abuse, harassment, substance use, disordered eating, self-harm, and/or suicide. Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are returning to the the explosive documentary "Quiet On Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV" to discuss grooming and Drake Bell's story. In this episode we take you through the steps of grooming explaining how some of the most horrific crimes can occur. We continue to implore studios and production companies to protect children on sets across the world. We encourage listeners to check out one of our resources for the episode RAINN which provides incredible information and resources for assault, harassment and grooming.
Disclaimer: This podcast and its content are for entertainment and educational purposes only. They do not constitute medical or psychiatric advice. Please call 911, 211, 988 or go directly to the nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergency.
SOCIALS:
DR. FUREY:
Private Practice - Sound Psychiatry, LLC
PORTIA PENDLETON, LCSW:
Private Practice - In Touch Therapy
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
TRIGGER WARNING: This episode discusses potentially triggering topics that may include, but may not be limited to, abuse, harassment, substance use, disordered eating, self-harm, and/or suicide. Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are covering our first part of the very disturbing documentary "Quiet On Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV." In this episode we will be discussing the role of children in TV and movies, attempting to keep child actors safe on sets and in the industry. We discuss Dan Schneider and the environment he created on set that enabled inappropriate actions and people around. We also share personal experiences that came to mind watching this series. If you or someone you know suspects grooming or any other inappropriate or uncomfortable environments in the work place or other please seek resources like the ones listed below.
https://rainn.org/
https://leanin.org/sexual-harassment/individuals
https://legalvoice.org/sexual-harassment-at-work/
Disclaimer: This podcast and its content are for entertainment and educational purposes only. They do not constitute medical or psychiatric advice. Please call 911, 211, 988 or go directly to the nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergency.
SOCIALS:
DR. FUREY:
Private Practice - Sound Psychiatry, LLC
PORTIA PENDLETON, LCSW:
Private Practice - In Touch Therapy
PRIOR EPISODES REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE:
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are preparing you for our upcoming episodes in May 2024. We are excited for you to watch along with us!
May 6th - "Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV Part 1" Child Actors & Power Imbalances (HBO MAX)
May 9th - "Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV Part 2" Grooming & Surviving (HBO MAX)
May 13th- "American Horror Story - Murder House" The Harmon Family (Hulu)
May 20th- "American Horror Story - Murder House" The Langdon Family (Hulu)
May 23rd- "Pippi Longstocking" with Jenny Hubbard, founder of the Catherine Violet Hubbard Animal Sanctuary, Newtown, CT (Amazon Prime, Tubi)
May 27th- "Bluey - The Sign" Good Enough Parenting (Disney +)
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
TRIGGER WARNING: This episode discusses potentially triggering topics that may include, but may not be limited to, abuse, harassment, substance use, disordered eating, self-harm, and/or suicide.
Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are diving in to the 2023 Oscar winning film by Yorgos Lanthimos film "Poor Things." This one's a wild ride! Beyond the beautiful award winning costuming, stunning sets, and all-star cast including Oscar winner Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe and Ramy Youssef, this film is rich with psychological content for us to analyze. We focus on using Bella Baxter's development to discuss Erik Erikson's theory of personality development using eight psychosocial stages and discuss how we see these stages unfold in the film. We also explore our feelings about the (surprising to us!) amount of nudity and the film's depiction of the role of female sexual pleasure. We hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer: This podcast and its content are for entertainment and educational purposes only. They do not constitute medical or psychiatric advice. Please call 911, 211 or go directly to the nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergency.
SOCIALS:
*Add the youtube link that uploading the video gives you to the exact episode.
DR. FUREY:
Private Practice - Sound Psychiatry, LLC
PORTIA PENDLETON, LCSW:
Private Practice - In Touch Therapy
PRIOR EPISODES REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE:
Episode 24 - "Everything Everywhere All At Once"
Episode 63 - "The Iron Claw" w/ Dr. Sulman Mirza @thekicksshrink
Episode 73 - "The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping"
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are back again with our friend and child/adolescent psychiatrist, Dr. Zheala Qayyum, MD MMSc to continue our Harry Potter series journey! In this episode we analyze book three which is a fan favorite. We see so much development in the trio as they come face to face with dementors, bullies and time?! The books get progressively darker as the trio age and face a different kind of threat. We explore depression and trauma symbolism as we analyze the dementors. New relationships emerge for Harry and we explore the role of friendships and supports during “pre-teenhood.” We hope you enjoy! -Katrina & Portia
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are analyzing the hit 2016 Disney movie “Moana” starring Auli'i Cravalho and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. We LOVE this movie!! In this episode, we break down why we think Moana is one of the best disney princesses ever and we use her character to discuss the portrayal of a healthy, secure attachment style. We question whether Maui’s action are related to narcissism or early childhood abandonment, and discuss how beautifully the ending explores the ability to accept both good and bad aspects of ourselves. We can’t wait for the sequel! We hope you enjoy!
Articles referenced in episode:
https://www.grunge.com/469003/why-walt-disney-felt-responsible-for-his-mothers-death/
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are discussing and advocating for the children and teens who have been impacted by the Troubled Teen Industry. The three part series on Netflix, “The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping,” directed by Katherine Kubler, follows former classmates from the Academy at Ivy Ridge which was falsely marketed as a boarding school that supports “troubled” teens. These programs do anything but support their residents with abuse, trauma and deaths occurring regularly. Katherine confronts past staff and provides a paper trail of money leading to nefarious, UNLICENSED and UNEDUCATED people at the top of these organizations. We discuss notable differences between residential/inpatient centers that promote healing and those that abuse. Help us support those who have been impacted by these programs and regulate current programs to promote safety for our most vulnerable populations #breakingcodesilence
Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act
https://www.breakingcodesilence.org
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we revisit Seattle Grace Hospital as we analyze the first season of “Grey’s Anatomy.” Although the show gets some obvious stuff wrong (no intern sees the light of day!!), we were both impressed at how well they captured the emotional intensity of intern year, the first year of work following the completion of medical school. In this episode, Dr. Furey revisits many memories from her own intern year and we also discuss the high rates of mental health issues in resident physicians with a specific focus on surgical residents. We also explore the depiction of power dynamics, workplace romances, and gender stereotypes while feeling all kinds of nostalgia. We hope you enjoy!
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are preparing you for our upcoming episodes in April 2024! We are excited for you to watch along with us!
April 1st- "Grey's Anatomy" Season 1 (Netflix & Hulu)
April 8th - "The Program" (Netflix)
April 15th - "Moana" (Disney+)
April 22nd - "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" with Dr. Zheala Qayyum @zheeque (Peacock, Max, Hulu)
April 29th - "Poor Things" (Hulu)
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are super excited to analyze one of our new favorite shows “Beef” created by Korean-American director Lee Sung Jin for Netflix. This series swept the 75th Primetime Emmy Awards with individual awards going to Ali Wong and Steven Yeun for portraying the main characters Amy and Danny, and the show being chosen for Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series. We get the hype! In this episode, we explore road rage and the difference between anger and rage. We also explore why humans feel angry and which areas of the brain get activated and deactivated when we feel this emotion. We also discuss how to appropriately manage these intense feelings using anger management, grounding, mindfulness, and dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) principles. We hope you learn how to manage your anger better than the characters on this show, and that you enjoy this episode!
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are covering the 2024 Oscar Winner for Best Picture, Oppenheimer. This movie had stunning cinematography and world class actors, Christopher Nolan was fantastic at casting (shout out Josh Peck) for the leads and supporting cast. In this episode we discuss the moral and ethical dilemma the scientists faced who built the atomic bomb. We also discuss some historical information we came across outside of the film that speaks to the mental health of the main characters like Oppenheimer, Jean and Katherine. We see pretty significant alcohol use and some interesting relationship dynamics to be discussed. We hope you enjoy!
You can find "Oppenheimer" currently streaming on Peacock or rent/buy on Amazon or Apple TV.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are diving into our analysis of Love is Blind S6, a popular reality TV show on Netflix. In this episode we focus on the ethics of the self proclaimed "experiment" that arguably only could get it right once, i.e. Lauren and Cameron and Barnett and Amber of season 1. We debate the idea of any current reality show's ability to be anything more than manipulative editing. The alcohol use and access, the desire for fame and how these shows screen their contestants are all discussed as well as some of the relationship dynamics between Jimmy and Chelsea, AD and Clay, Laura and JerAmey, Kenneth and Brittany and finally our "successful" wedding of Johnny and Amy. Of course we also discuss Jess, Trevor and Sarah Ann.
Articles Mentioned in this Episode:
https://www.indiewire.com/features/craft/netflix-love-is-blind-casting-1234888877/
https://www.businessinsider.com/love-is-blind-danielle-ruhl-netlfixs-mental-health-approach-casting-2023-4
https://www.apa.org/topics/marriage-relationships/brain-on-love
https://theanatomyoflove.com/relationship-quizzes/the-passionate-love-scale/
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are diving into our analysis of Love is Blind S6, a popular reality TV show on Netflix. In this episode we focus on the ethics of the self proclaimed "experiment" that arguably only could get it right once, i.e. Lauren and Cameron and Barnett and Amber of season 1. We debate the idea of any current reality show's ability to be anything more than manipulative editing. The alcohol use and access, the desire for fame and how these shows screen their contestants are all discussed as well as some of the relationship dynamics between Jimmy and Chelsea, AD and Clay, Laura and JerAmey, Kenneth and Brittany and finally our "successful" wedding of Johnny and Amy. Of course we also discuss Jess, Trevor and Sarah Ann. Part 2 will out be released this Thursday - stay tuned and we hope you enjoy!
Articles Mentioned in this Episode:
https://www.indiewire.com/features/craft/netflix-love-is-blind-casting-1234888877/
https://www.businessinsider.com/love-is-blind-danielle-ruhl-netlfixs-mental-health-approach-casting-2023-4
https://www.apa.org/topics/marriage-relationships/brain-on-love
https://theanatomyoflove.com/relationship-quizzes/the-passionate-love-scale/
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are analyzing both the 2004 and 2024 films. We diagnose and discuss Regina George, Cady Heron, Karen, Gretchen, Janis, Damian and of course Regina's mother. We also talk about how some of the characters would show up to therapy and some recommended treatment interventions. Teen's mental health in general is discussed and you'll hear us share some of our own *traumatic* stories from high school. Finally, we compare the two films and comment on what has changed for the better and what we think has changed for the worse since we were teens in the 2000s. We hope you enjoy!
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are preparing you for our upcoming episodes in March 2024! We are excited for you to watch along with us!
March 4th - "Mean Girls" vs. "Mean Girls" (stream & theater)
March 11th - "Love is Blind" (Netflix)
March 18th - "Oppenheimer" (theaters or Peacock)
March 25th - "Beef" Season 1 (Netflix)
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TRIGGER WARNING: This episode discusses potentially triggering topics including suicide, self-harm, and eating disorders.
Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are rereleasing one of our favorite episodes. As two dancers, Dr. Furey and Portia were thrilled to revisit the 2010 psychological thriller "Black Swan" starring Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey, and Winona Ryder. In this episode, we analyze the masterful depiction of Nina's first psychotic break and wonder if the character Lily was real or a hallucination. We also discussing toxic dance culture and discuss the differences between anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorder. We hope you enjoy!
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TRIGGER WARNING: This episode discusses potentially triggering topics that may include, but may not be limited to, abuse, harassment, substance use, disordered eating, self-harm, and/or suicide.
Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are analyzing the 2023 Netflix film "May/December" starring Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore, and Charles Melton. This was a tough film to watch and a tough episode to record. In this episode, we put our minds together to try to figure out why Gracie and Joe were attracted to each other and explore the differences between sexual fetishes and paraphilic disorders. We also use what see of Gracie's background to try to figure out how she became who she is, and discuss whether we think she's capable of feeling remorse. Finally, we ask about Elizabeth's draw to the project and wonder how different (or not?) she is from Gracie based on the twist we didn't see coming. We hope you enjoy!
Link to Rolling Stone article exploring the case that inspired the film: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/mary-kay-letourneau-may-december-true-story-1234918355/
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. In this rereleased episode, we are on the edge of our seats discussing Season 3 of "You," especially that Taylor Swift song at the end! This show just gets better and better! In this episode, we explore Love and Joe's early attachment with baby Henry and wonder if Joe is showing signs of postpartum depression. We also analyze the depiction of couples therapy, which Portia rates as 8/10! We further explore Love's unraveling, again asking ourselves if we think she's more of a sociopath or a psychopath. We also get to know Sherry and Cary Conrad, who become two of our most favorite characters ever. Give them a spin-off! We hope you enjoy!
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are joined by triple board certified psychiatrist, Dr. Mirza. We collectively cried while watching The Iron Claw over the holidays while it was in theaters. This movie tells the mostly true story of the Von Erich family who rose to fame through their family's wrestling talents. Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson and Stanley Simons were incredible in their preparation for the role. The history of this family is tragic and we do include a trigger warning for serious mental health themes. Join us to discuss generational trauma, the impact of family pressure, steroid use and celebrate the resiliency of Kevin Von Erich. We hope you enjoy!
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. In this rereleased episode, we are thrilled to be joined by Dr. Tobias Wasser, a forensic psychiatrist from Yale University, in analyzing the 2010 film "Shutter Island." Dr. Wasser explains how forensic psychiatry bridges the gap between the criminal justice and mental health care systems. He describes what it's really like to work on a forensic psychiatry unit and compares his experience to that depicted in the film. We also ask him to explain the difference between competency to stand trial and the NGRI (not guilty by reason of insanity) plea. He also shares his opinions about our favorite narcissistic psychopaths - Joe Goldberg, Logan Roy, and Tom Wambsgans. We learned a ton and hope you enjoy!
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we're absolutely annihilating the 2004 film "The Notebook." I bet we all remember where we were when we saw Rachel and Ryan reenact that steamy kiss at the MTV Movie Awards! As adults with fully formed frontal lobes and years of therapy experience, we have a LOT of criticisms about this movie. We dive into the toxic relationship dynamics between Noah and Allie, criticize some inaccurate depictions of medical treatments, and shame the film for romanticizing dementia. Sorry to release such a downer for Valentine's Day! We hope you enjoy!
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are rereleasing our episode analyzing "White Lotus" Season 2. In this season we follow Tanya and Greg to beautiful Sicily where the water is a dreamy blue and the passion red hot. This season has received 23 Emmy nominations and we think they deserve them all! We continue to analyze Tanya for a personality disorder, discuss the power and currency of sex, and talk all things complicated relationships. If you are missing this season come along with us to admire the clothing, food and of course their mental health. We hope you enjoy!
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are thrilled to speak with Dr. Z, an expert in the field on narcissism. We look at Oliver Quick through our mental health lens and debate sociopathy versus narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). Elspeth, Farleigh, Felix and Venetia are discussed, too, as we see how extreme wealth can lead to their own set of personality traits. Finally, Dr. Z convinces Dr. Furey she does not have NPD, (Portia already knew this). We hope you enjoy!
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are rereleasing our episode covering "White Lotus" Season 1. Who doesn't love this show?! In this episode, we dig into the toxic interpersonal dynamics depicted in all of the relationships amongst the main characters. We spend a lot of time analyzing Tanya's manipulation of Belinda and discuss which behaviors are consistent with borderline personality disorder (BPD). We also explore what keeps Rachel and Mark connected to Shane and Nicole, respectively, and poke fun at Olivia's "wokeness." We hope you enjoy! PS RIP Armond.
[00:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fury, a psychiatrist.
[00:12] Portia Pendleton: And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker.
[00:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows.
[00:23] Portia Pendleton: Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriend.
[00:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: There is so much misinformation out there, and it drives us nuts.
[00:32] Portia Pendleton: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like.
[00:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: With a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better.
[00:39] Portia Pendleton: So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn.
[00:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: And your DSM Five, and enjoy. Hi, welcome back. We are so excited you're joining us today to talk about the hit HBO show White Lotus Season One, as part of our Jennifer Coolidge July Celebration. We hope everyone had a really wonderful July 4 weekend, and we hope you ate all the hot dogs you could get your hands on. Yeah, I did. Porsche. I want to start a little differently than usual because something just really interesting happened to me during my July 4 celebration. Okay. I went with my family to Legoland, which is a really wonderful place for little kids. And on July 4, they had this whole celebration. They had really cool fireworks with 3D glasses, where when the fireworks exploded, they looked like Legos. I thought that was really cool, and I was really trying to figure out the science because not every light was connected to a Lego. So it had something to do with the frequency and the electrons, and I just get really nerdy about these things. But then they also had a fire dancer, right? Like, would you expect that at a child theme park? No. And so we Legoland.
[01:58] Portia Pendleton: Maybe like Disney World.
[01:59] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, they had a fire dancer. They were really pulling out all the stops. They also had the Brick Street Boys, because everything is like brick themed with the Lego brick, everything's brick tastic. And, you know, I love the Max Tree Boys, so that was titillating. But this fire dancer, we stumbled across her as we were leaving, and obviously we had to stop and watch her and just imagine she is like five foot zero at the most. Like, on a good day. She's itty bitty, teeny tiny, wearing a full on white unitard, like full on bodysuit with red and white horizontal stripes, so she looks like a firecracker. And then she had this beautiful bleach blonde hair, but with these long, long bangs and these bright red lips.
[02:49] Portia Pendleton: Oh, no.
[02:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I kept worrying, like, is her hair going to catch on fire? Right? I was just like, I loved her look, her hair is wonderful.
[02:56] Portia Pendleton: Or it is.
[02:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't know. I would think your hair would catch on fire. But then I think also, like, the fire they use has got to be not real fire because then she starts, like, eating it. So she's also maybe a fire eater.
[03:08] Portia Pendleton: Okay.
[03:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: So I just thought it was really fascinating because she's, like, in this awesome outfit, a little sensual for Legoland, the theme park and doing these moves that are not, like, seductive per se, but sensual with fire. It was just really interesting to see all these children watching this. And what I loved is the music she picked first, obviously. Miley Cyrus partying in the USA. Getting her fire going. Sometimes the flames would go out because it was a little windy and she had, like, all sorts of different fire sticks. And then do you know this song that's like the grand finale song. It was like, Partying USA. Yeah. She's, like, dancing around with her little fire sticks, and then she transitions to the fans. It's like a fire fan. And she lights each one slowly and kind of seductively to that song that's like, light them up, light them up, light them up. And it was just like, wonderful. I don't know, it was just really interesting.
[04:08] Portia Pendleton: That's making me think of the yes.
[04:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: The hula dancing in white Lotus. I know. And I was just like it didn't feel like cultural appropriation, I guess, in this case. Although in White Lotus it kind of does, right? So I don't know. It was just really interesting having a fire dancer at a child's theme park. Kind of very sensual, really. Like maybe pushing the line, but not quite. And then I just kept worrying her hair was going to catch on fire. My children would see this awful, traumatic thing. And then she ended by eating the fire. And then my son was like, does she **** fire? And I was like, great question, great question, great question. Right? And then I was like, does her esophagus get burned? What are the ins and outs of being a fire dancer? What are the hazards of the trade?
[05:00] Portia Pendleton: There's got to be I mean, there's a risk of being burned, right?
[05:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. Is it like, just real fire or is it some sort of special fire for fire dancers that's safe to consume?
[05:12] Portia Pendleton: I have no idea.
[05:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: No idea. So if anyone knows, DM us and let us know.
[05:16] Portia Pendleton: Fire.
[05:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: Speaking of things that are hot, white Lotus, super hot show.
[05:23] Portia Pendleton: Jennifer coolidge.
[05:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: Super hot. Like, at all stages of life, she is the queen. So, yeah. Where do you want to start?
[05:31] Portia Pendleton: I think we have to start with Tanya. I mean, all weekend, it's just so relevant. I kept wanting to do the on.
[05:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: A hot dog real bad. Yeah. Which I think is from legally blood. Yes. But we'll cover that next time. Gosh. Jennifer coolidge.
[05:52] Portia Pendleton: So we see her making her way to the White Lotus resort by herself, and then we learn that she has her mother's ashes in tow. Seems like it was a recent death from how she's acting appropriately during grief. It's coming in and out. Sometimes she's fine, other times she's really upset and her idea is to kind of leave some of the ashes in the water off the coast of Hawaii.
[06:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. Which sounds beautiful. And I feel like people do that. People do that. But we see her sort of disembark that little tiny boat that's coming to the white Lotus with all the employees just waving and smiling. I loved how this series ended with them doing that again, except now we know more of the backstory and that made me really sad to see they're all there fake smiles, and she's just kind of a mess from the jump.
[06:46] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. We see her pretty quickly at the spa right down there. And she really wants an appointment.
[06:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: They don't have any. She's kind of freaking out, kind of pushy. And then Belinda, the lovely spa manager, or maybe just employee, makes room for her. Right. So right away we see some boundary pushing and crossing with Tanya McQuad and Belinda, which we just see continue.
[07:14] Portia Pendleton: So it kind of starts their relationship. Right. I mean, again, I'm using relationship with air quotes right now because relationships are really two ways.
[07:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: Exactly. But I think, as we see with Tanya, this is a one way relationship. And I think that's a theme we see carried through for a lot of these different characters.
[07:32] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. So Belinda provides a service to Tanya that Tanya believes is like, life changing. And she's healed now immediately. And she wants to spend as much time as possible with Belinda, who is doing her job and becomes pretty pushy and almost so manipulative. It doesn't get sooner right off the bat with the money right. And her opening a spot together that comes a little later, like midway through the season. But you can just see Tanya's needs very needy, trying to kind of do whatever she wants, crossing inappropriate employee guest boundaries. You can see Belinda feels uncomfortable but.
[08:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: Goes along with it.
[08:15] Portia Pendleton: A really high end place where I'm like, I feel like this probably in some ways is a norm. Like, you go above and beyond for a guest.
[08:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: There's probably a lot of entitlement, which I think we see maybe especially with Shane kind of with all of them, though, there's a huge sense of entitlement. And we see Belinda sort of bend over backwards to make room for Tanya right at the start. And then Tanya idealizes her right away. Belinda is the be all and end all. The greatest thing that ever happened to her. She wants to shout it from the rooftops. And how did you feel, Portia, watching that? Did you start to get icky feelings or nervous feelings?
[08:55] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I mean, I was very uncomfortable with her immediately making room for her at the spa.
[09:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: Me, too.
[09:02] Portia Pendleton: Again, I mean, the show I'm like, okay, this is clearly intentional. And I think it was hard, just as a side note, to separate Tanya from Jennifer Coolidge, because I love Jennifer Coolidge so much.
[09:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't like that for real.
[09:16] Portia Pendleton: Tanya, you do you but, yeah, Tanya definitely made me feel like icky.
[09:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: Do you think that's because we're in mental health and so we're picking up on the splitting and the idealization and we know the devaluation will come, do you think the average person without that point of view would necessarily pick that up right away?
[09:35] Portia Pendleton: Not in the same way. They might be turned off by her. Just from, like, entitlement.
[09:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. And, like, the pushiness right.
[09:42] Portia Pendleton: Versus, like, maybe the why or, like, you know, it being idealization and then waiting, like you said, for their to come devaluation, which sucks. And and Belinda was very, like, devastated at the end.
[09:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: So I think, you know, they talk.
[09:56] Portia Pendleton: About which we'll get into more, but borderline personality disorder. Tanya feels a little borderline to me.
[10:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right as I was watching it, I got really nervous for Belinda because I just already was getting that borderline personality disorder flavor from Tanya. And that quick idealization is like a telltale sign. Even if you don't meet full criteria for a Bpd, which is the acronym for borderline personality disorder, often that quick idealization, I think we learned pretty early in our training, like, when you have a new patient who's just like, oh, my gosh, no psychiatrist has ever helped me in the way you're helping me. You're the better, amazing. Can I pay you more? Can I write you a good review? Blah, blah, blah. You learn to think, oh, there's something up here. Right.
[10:43] Portia Pendleton: And it's hard because sometimes I think people's traits are more what do I want to say? Like, hidden, where it's like you might always see the positive side. You might be always idealized by someone for years yes. And have no idea. And all of a sudden, there's like, a switch flip, as, again, happens throughout the six episodes that we see with Belinda and Tanya. But sometimes we have no idea, and other times it's so big, it's like fast friends and people can be fast friends, but sometimes fast friends is really.
[11:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: Just like some love bomb a little. Yeah, exactly.
[11:19] Portia Pendleton: Personality disorder.
[11:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: And you're so right. It really depends on what side of the split you're on. So, again, people with Bpd traits or borderline personality disorder, much like we see here with Tanya, really see things in a black or white way, and they feel things that way. That's sort of their thoughts. We've talked about that in prior episodes, so you're either all good or all bad. It's hard for them to sort of see you as a mix of both, and that reflects their inability to see themselves as a mix of both. So if you're on the good side of the split, like you said for years, you can be like that, and then something might happen, like a late fee or a perceived insensitivity to something they're saying. Or it could be something big, it could be something small. Then you're very quickly devalued and on the bad side of the split. And that sucks. That feels real bad. Sometimes you're on the bad side of the split right away and you know it. And that's why it's very helpful to treat patients with these traits as a team. So then all team members can kind of support each other and also see sort of the clinical pathology and a fuller view. But we see that right away with Tanya idealizing Belinda. And I was just waiting for her to meet a man and drop Belinda as quick as possible. And unfortunately, we see that happen.
[12:36] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. And I think, too, I was curious.
[12:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: Of who?
[12:40] Portia Pendleton: Jennifer Kuf. Tanya. Tanya.
[12:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: Tanya.
[12:43] Portia Pendleton: Tanya would also interact with, like, of the other guests.
[12:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
[12:48] Portia Pendleton: And then, you know, that's a great point. Her her lover Greg kind of came out of nowhere. You know, he wasn't like, one of the main cast members. So I think that was just, like, interesting.
[12:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: But her and Wise writing right. That it wasn't like someone she met on the ship or it wasn't anyone she'd even formed a minimal connection with. It was like, accidental by chance. Really quick, hot and heavy. That's how it goes.
[13:10] Portia Pendleton: Very intense. So intense emotions are, again, pretty common with a lot of personality disorders, but specifically with Bpd. And also just thinking about what we learn from Tanya's past, she alludes to her mother having Bpd. Yes, there are some genetic markers of Bpd, but also it's just really hard. Again, with attachment. Yes, there's a lot of attachment trauma in patients who have borderline personality disorder.
[13:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. And so right. So if Tanya, when they're on the little boat, she's supposed to spread the ashes and they're with Shane and Rachel. I love that so much. And she's, like, kind of given a eulogy of sorts and talking about her deceased mom, I was like, all of this tracks again, a plus. Writing like this track, this sort of upbringing would potentially lead to someone displaying behaviors and traits that Tanya is. So her mom, who was obsessed with men, and it sounds like, would often prioritize her romantic relationships over her relationship with Tanya. And then we see that play out when she meets Greg and she even says, like, you said that her mom has Bpd. And you do sort of learn how to behave as an adult from your early attachment figures and what's modeled for you. So why wouldn't she display some of these traits? I would imagine that her mom would have been a bigger personality disorder, and Tanya still has those traits, and we see them, but maybe I'm imagining her mom would have been even more big.
[14:41] Portia Pendleton: I feel like, also maybe more cruel. Yeah. Tanya, I think it's almost like, has the lacking self awareness, and it's really, like, self centered. It's like only her needs are the most important. I also don't think that that's intentional. I think she's just, like, moving through.
[14:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: Life, like, trying not malicious. Right? Yeah, I totally agree. It doesn't feel like logan. Roy.
[15:01] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[15:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: But I wonder if her mom did or if her mom was like the mom from succession. That's a great point, Portia. And again, what you just brought up I thought was really interesting. Like, which of the other guests did she interact with? Now that I'm thinking about it, I feel like it was the ones who were younger than her. It wasn't like the Moss Bach or family parents.
[15:18] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[15:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: It wasn't really Armand, except to get Belinda. Belinda. It was like Belinda was the only adult she interacted with to get her needs met. There was also a racial difference, which I thought was important and interesting, and.
[15:32] Portia Pendleton: A socioeconomic difference huge.
[15:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: And again, I feel like Tanya ends up connecting herself to people who use her while she's using them. So her relationships are very transactional. Right. And I just think that makes a lot of sense. Even if she's not maliciously using people unconsciously, she is, but then she's also picking people who are like belinda was kind of doing that with her, too, right. Like, she was like, oh, maybe I could get my own spot and finally living out that dream. Yeah, it was really interesting.
[16:07] Portia Pendleton: And then Tanya interacts with Olivia and Paula, just, like, commenting on their appearance and their skin.
[16:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[16:14] Portia Pendleton: So it's so porcelain. She's, like, trying to feel their faces, and they're like this ladies.
[16:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. And they're, like, young and beautiful and yeah. Again, just interesting people to try to attach to. It makes me wonder what psychological age Tanya is. Yes. We often think of chronological age as being different from your psychological age. And sometimes I feel like I hear this in society and in the media of child stars, you kind of get stuck at the age you became famous, and I think that might be related to the trauma of fame. And I feel like we do see that. Right? Do you see that? That people seem sort of psychologically stuck at the age of trauma occurred or something like that?
[16:56] Portia Pendleton: No, definitely. And I think, too, in Tanya's character, it feels way more, I don't know, intense where she's stuck, like, in childhood versus maybe some other patients I can think off the top of my head that I've interacted who have Bpd, where she just even, like her temper tantrums.
[17:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[17:16] Portia Pendleton: It's like she's so good at playing being a child when she's seeking reassurance so frequently, she's, like, following Greg around, literally hiding. I was like, I mean, it's comical because of the show, but it's like she is acting like a child.
[17:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes. Like a five year old, maybe. Yeah, 100%. And even with Greg, like, when she was finally like, I'm going to peel.
[17:36] Portia Pendleton: Back all the layers of the onion.
[17:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: And really let him see it. And she did. She let it all out. And I felt like that was a great depiction of the sort of core fear of patients with Bpd, of abandonment and loss and attachment. This sort of I hate you, but don't leave me. Like, I'm going to leave you first because it would hurt too much if you left me, but don't leave me.
[17:58] Portia Pendleton: Or I'm going to give you an excuse to leave.
[18:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
[18:00] Portia Pendleton: By acting. Right? I'm acting in this huge way. I'm pushing you away intentionally. So then I have a reason. Okay. I know why.
[18:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. Or sort of like a test. Right. And Greg stayed. And I think she interprets that as like true love. I think he just wanted to have sex.
[18:16] Portia Pendleton: I think he just wanted to have sex. I'm not sure if he saw it going anywhere further than that night. But then I'm thinking and I have not watched season two, so I'm saying this kind of blind, but I also think that based on what he had done for a living, which is not being an activist for Black Lives Matter.
[18:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: But I loved that. Hilarious.
[18:36] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, it was so funny.
[18:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: Belinda. He's with the BLM. And then Belinda's like, okay.
[18:42] Portia Pendleton: Because in her face while he's telling her that, she's just like, oh, how'd.
[18:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: She get into that? I love that whole dinner conversation. We're just like, how'd she get into activism? And he's like, what? Yeah.
[18:53] Portia Pendleton: So he's in, like, wildlife, it seems, management, fisheries, something like that. In Colorado, in the west. Because then she's like, oh, well, when I'm in Aspen, let's meet up. And I think then for him, he's seeing, in my opinion, this opportunity to be with someone who seems a little damaged to him. He now then maybe can take advantage.
[19:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: Of for her money. Right. In hearing that, he was like, this got money. There's something up here. I was really worried about Greg and all his coughing fits. Yeah. And I'm like, do you have COPD? Do you have a lung tumor? Why are you coughing? Do you have asthma? What is going on?
[19:29] Portia Pendleton: I forgot about that.
[19:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: I kept being really nervous he was going to drop down, like, while they were having sex or soon after or.
[19:35] Portia Pendleton: Right after they were connecting. Right. And then another person leaving her in the ultimate way.
[19:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. I was really worried about that happening. So I wonder if the writers were always, like, teasing us with that or if that might come later. I don't really know. But again, she quickly attaches herself to Greg, who doesn't feel like a secure, healthy attachment figure. And again, it's like, I can't really put my finger on why I'm just getting a vibe. He's not it.
[20:04] Portia Pendleton: He doesn't seem safe for her.
[20:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. But she is immediately attracted to him, like a magnet. And I think for me, watching this whole series that was like the thing that kept crossing my mind is like, why are these characters attracted to who they're attracted to when it's so clear that these are kind of like unhealthy relationship dynamics, but they don't leave. And I think we really see that with Shane and Rachel.
[20:26] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. So yeah, I mean, with Rachel and Shane Patton, I feel like I have a hot take with that. I don't like Rachel and I prefer Shane.
[20:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: What?
[20:40] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I know.
[20:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, your team Shane? Yeah. I don't think anyone's team Shane.
[20:46] Portia Pendleton: I know, and I don't know what that says about me, but that's okay. So I just think that Rachel needs to get her stuff together and it bothers me. And maybe this is something I can talk about in supervision or therapy, why it bothers me so much, but I'm just like, come on, girl. Shane is not hiding himself that well.
[21:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's true.
[21:07] Portia Pendleton: This sociopathic, malignant narcissist, he's a **** up, rich, spoiled brat boy who married her because she's beautiful and has a lot of money. And it's just like now all of a sudden she's like seeing it and I'm just like really?
[21:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. I don't think it was hidden before, although I guess sometimes I have heard of some relationships and again, I don't think this is uncommon, where you think you're marrying one person and then it's like the mask falls off. So maybe that happened, but Shane doesn't seem smart right, for that to have been the case.
[21:38] Portia Pendleton: And he seems like he has zero.
[21:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like a frat boy, like he's wearing his, what, like Cornell hat or something, which I'm sure he got in by having a legacy generational tie. Yeah, I don't think he doesn't strike me as the kind of narcissist to be smart enough to hide that very well. It's really out there again, he's like living his authentic self. I guess. So maybe it sounds like maybe that's why you're annoyed with her.
[22:04] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I don't know. And then you told me about his mom.
[22:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: I love Molly Shannon so much and everything. And then when she showed up, right, like he'd called her over and over and over, being so annoyed. Get the pineapple sweet.
[22:20] Portia Pendleton: Even though they got like this other.
[22:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: Beautiful sweet, and just like a child having a temper tantrum, going to mommy, then she shows up. Can you imagine if your mother in law showed up on your honeymoon?
[22:32] Portia Pendleton: I can't think of how that would ever be okay.
[22:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: You know what I mean?
[22:37] Portia Pendleton: And he's just like, mom, her face is just like, this is not happening.
[22:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right?
[22:42] Portia Pendleton: Is this real? Is this a mirage from being in Hawai or in the sun?
[22:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: All the pina coladas? Yeah. And then it's just like you get the sense that Shane and his mom Kitty are enmeshed and then you really see just how enmeshed they are. Yes. And she's like, well, I'm going to this other place with my best friend from all time, but I thought I'd stop here first. I hope that's okay. And you can see Rachel's just like, I have to say it's okay, but it's really not.
[23:06] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, and her face is so obvious, too, which maybe she is, but again, you're not even trying to hide your disdain, which I get. Again, that's like super appropriate, but within their context. Again, that's why I'm like, come on, how did you not see this?
[23:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know, but maybe it's like, now she's really seeing it. Maybe there was some shred of suppression or denial that was keeping her in the relationship with Shane. Again, with this series, I'm so curious about why do they stay connected to these people? And it's like, I think Shane was connected to her for her beauty. That's her power. And then she, I think, is connected to him because of his money and the privilege and the access. And she says that bopping around New York City was really fun, and now she's realizing there's like a price to pay for that privilege. It's like golden handcuffs and Kitty's part of the deal. And I also thought that the actresses portrayed that mother in law, daughter in law competition so well, more so from Kitty's perspective, you could tell that the fact that she was beautiful really bothered her. Right. That now she's not the number one woman in his life.
[24:13] Portia Pendleton: I want to know if there's a dad.
[24:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: Divorced, if he's alive, or if.
[24:20] Portia Pendleton: She had always the money.
[24:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: So she said she had family money. I remember she was telling Rachel that that's why, like, if she and her husband ever split up, she'd be okay because she did have family money to fall back on. Sort of like bragging, because she knows Rachel doesn't. But then it sounds like whoever the dad is had more money. Yeah, I don't know. Actually, that's really interesting that there was no mention of him at all, especially.
[24:41] Portia Pendleton: With just like mother son dynamic. Then. Is that why they're so enmeshed? Would they have been less if there was like a third family member? He seems again, I don't think there's other kids. He seems like an only child, or.
[24:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: At least they don't talk about him if there are.
[24:55] Portia Pendleton: I mean, that too can just happen to a parent child. It's a different type of relationship than if you have two parents or siblings.
[25:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: Or things like that. Yeah, that's actually a really interesting point. But they were so funny, though, when Kitty and Shane and Rachel are all at that dinner and Rachel is already having an identity cris, and now here's her mother in law, who's like I think she's like, oh, God, this is what I'm going to be, or what Shane wants me to be. And I don't know if that's who I want to be. And they're all like, why don't you want to be this? This is great. And they're doing like that money, money dance while the Hula people are hooling in the background. It was so sickening. And you could see on rachel's face. She's like, oh, my God, you guys are doing this in public. But that's who they are, right? And they're also not hiding it like any shred, right? Any shred.
[25:42] Portia Pendleton: So that juxtaposition. Juxtaposition. After we talk to and meet Kai and knowing that the land was taken and that a lot of them work there and that his family is mad because he works there, because some people don't and protest so and so forth, we have that whole storyline kind of going off to the side. And then the patent family are just like, money, money. Watching the people who live there, that it's a part of their culture and meaningful, this performance that they're just like singing to. Money.
[26:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right? Yeah. Again. Beautiful Juxtaposition. Beautiful writing. Definitely makes you feel icky.
[26:16] Portia Pendleton: But yeah, I mean, Shane is not lovable, right? Like, he flirts with underage girls in front of Rachel, literally on their honeymoon. Like, that's gross.
[26:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's gross. And such a power move. I can't remember now if she was already sort of expressing some hesitations or some unhappiness on the honeymoon, if he was sort of like showing her like, whatever, I'll be fine, kind of thing, or if he didn't know, if he really couldn't comprehend why she'd be hurt by that.
[26:42] Portia Pendleton: Right. It was weird. And then when she's telling him, I mean, again, I don't know if anyone else felt this way or if I was the only one in the world watching, but I felt sorry for him. He had no idea from this point because he has zero self awareness. He had not a clue, which is, again, like, shocking because it's so obvious, right.
[27:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: He wasn't picking up any and so.
[27:05] Portia Pendleton: When she's telling him, basically, I don't like you, and I just I think.
[27:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: I made a mistake. Yeah, like, he's sad because, like, again.
[27:11] Portia Pendleton: Like, duh, you are going to be sad. And he's just like, Why? What do you mean? And it's funny. I mean, it's comedy not but his just whole and then he's being gaslit by Armand because he's right. Like, they did book that room. Armand is kind of messing with him.
[27:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's true.
[27:27] Portia Pendleton: He gets a free boat ride. It was Jennifer Tanya. It was Tanya paid for it. That's why he said it was free. It was not free.
[27:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[27:34] Portia Pendleton: And then he knew that she was having this, like, a moment.
[27:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: Well, he did that on purpose to get back. Exactly. Driving him nuts.
[27:40] Portia Pendleton: Exactly.
[27:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: But again, you're right. Like, Shane was correct. They didn't get the correct room. They did pay for it. They should at least get, like, the refund. But the fact that Shane is, like, so checking over and over, it's so annoying to me. And entitled and like, dude, just enjoy your honeymoon.
[27:57] Portia Pendleton: But he can't.
[27:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: He can't if he doesn't get what he feels like he deserves. I mean, it's like the perfect depiction of entitlement. And then that just dynamic between. Armand and Shane just keeps continuing. And they keep shane, I feel like, just keeps up in the ante. Up in the ante, up in the ant. Like, he just won't let it go. And he's just really getting under Armand's skin. And you imagine Armand's probably worked there for a long time. He's what, five or six years sober until he falls off the wagon because he finds the bag with all the.
[28:28] Portia Pendleton: Drugs in it after Shane.
[28:31] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's just Shane pushing and pushing and pushing it.
[28:33] Portia Pendleton: But Shane is a trigger.
[28:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes. And I would imagine he has dealt with Shane day in and day out, like for years. And he just can't take it anymore. The last Shane, the last straw. And it literally is the last Shane. Because unfortunately, Armod dies at the beginning.
[28:49] Portia Pendleton: Do you see that coming?
[28:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: I mean, obviously we knew someone died because it opens with I thought it.
[28:55] Portia Pendleton: Was Rachel because of Shane in the airport was like, no, I'm alone. I was like, It's Rachel.
[29:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: But I was worried she maybe committed suicide or something. I didn't see it coming until the final scene where he's like pooping in.
[29:08] Portia Pendleton: Suitcase after the dinner service.
[29:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right?
[29:11] Portia Pendleton: He's like, he's so manic from drugs and doing cocaine all night.
[29:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: And that's my favorite line of the whole show when he comes back. And he's like, that was the best ******* dinner seating of all time.
[29:22] Portia Pendleton: They're like, yeah, the orchestra was playing while he's managing it.
[29:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, it was just you were really feeling it. Like, you're really in Armand's mind. But again, for Shane to get him fired, right? To just really go that far is why I don't like it.
[29:39] Portia Pendleton: Like, you're ruining people's livelihoods.
[29:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: Their livelihoods. Like, okay, they made a mistake. Like, let it go. My God. He can't. But I mean, to just keep really and he doesn't care that someone's going to get fired. He doesn't care that Rachel's like a shell of a human. Maybe Rachel hadn't seen it to that degree.
[29:58] Portia Pendleton: I would have to assume.
[30:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: We got to give her the benefit of that, right? Oh, my god. And then when Armand is pooping in.
[30:05] Portia Pendleton: The luggage, I laughed out loud watching that scene.
[30:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: I was like, oh, my god.
[30:11] Portia Pendleton: My husband hadn't seen it at all. And I was like, come look at this. He's like, this is weird. And I was like, It's Armand.
[30:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: He's pooping in this because he just can't take it anymore.
[30:21] Portia Pendleton: He didn't like wipe. He just pulled his pants up.
[30:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. That's gross. Yeah. I mean, I think he was high, so I don't think he really knew he was doing what's he going to wipe with the shirt. He should have wiped with the shirt. Oh, God.
[30:38] Portia Pendleton: That would have been like the nail in the coffin just smearing your feces all over.
[30:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: And what a primitive form of payback. Which, again, all of these characters and their personality traits are so primitive. And they're all having temper tantrums in their own way, even Armand. But I have so much sympathy for Armand because I feel like they just pushed him to a break, literally. You're going to get fired for this. It just makes me sick.
[31:05] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[31:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: Armand is like I loved him.
[31:08] Portia Pendleton: I loved when he was, like, lying about finding the bag, like over and over again. We'll have to keep looking. We haven't seen it.
[31:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: So Armand does lie? Yeah, from the jump. He lies and can't admit wrongdoing. But then I'm like, maybe he's like, coached to do that. Maybe they're not supposed to admit fault because then they could get sued or like, who knows what. I don't know.
[31:29] Portia Pendleton: I don't know.
[31:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: I just feel like that stuff happens.
[31:30] Portia Pendleton: All the time, though. A reservation gets missed and then it's like then if you're at a nice place, they should then take care of you. If you're paying thousands and thousands of dollars, it's like then they should have been like, yeah, you're right. We'll comp a night for the inconvenience. Or yes, of course we'll give you the difference. Give them a difference, that's all.
[31:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: But I think I think they said they would. It just didn't clear right away. But that doesn't usually clear right away. Right.
[31:54] Portia Pendleton: It's just like when you go to.
[31:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: Any hotel and there's like a security charge, it takes a couple of days to come off. Right. Interestingly, though, like, the Mossbacher family does get comped. Yes.
[32:02] Portia Pendleton: Well, I would hope so.
[32:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's a little more than a room mix up.
[32:07] Portia Pendleton: I guess.
[32:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: It'S.
[32:15] Portia Pendleton: So we have Nicole and what's, her husband Mark, and then Olivia and Quinn, and then Paula is the friend. So what do you think of initially Olivia and Paula?
[32:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my God. I just loved how woke they were, especially compared to their parents. It was just so humorous. I just felt like it was such a perfect depiction of the current generation versus the former generation and the tensions there. Totally accurate, given the political, social, cultural climate we're in. And I just loved love in terms of hated, but found humorous. Nicole's huge sympathy for the white man. Yeah, right. And I'm just like, oh, God.
[33:00] Portia Pendleton: And and I love it so interesting because she's this powerful, like, business CEO and it seems like Mark is like, you know, almost like a stay at home dad. So it's interesting that within that nontypical.
[33:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: Role, she is so sympathetic, but she has a white male son and I don't know, I just feel like she is just such a perfect character. Right. Like you would think as a female CEO and I'm assuming a male dominated industry, because we all are, you'd think she would be like this feminist icon.
[33:31] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[33:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: And again, I feel like this is maybe what Rachel's article was saying. Like, well, she's not really she kind of rolled the wave of me too to get to where she was.
[33:41] Portia Pendleton: Maybe that was what it was about.
[33:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: Maybe that's true, but she's not really a feminist icon, and I find that interesting. Like, is she insecure in her own power? I don't know. I don't know what to make of it. But I loved when they were at dinner and Olivia was like, mom, good news. I looked and I checked. All the white men are doing just fine. That was funny.
[34:01] Portia Pendleton: I didn't really like Olivia and Paula. Just like, they were mean girls. I mean, besides their woke nature. And Olivia's felt really just hark toward her parents.
[34:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes. And I think sorry to interrupt you, but I did think the mom and dad were pointing out something accurate. Like, you are so mad at us, but our privilege gives you life, and you're just, like, so unappreciative.
[34:22] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, no. And I think, too, olivia and Paula's relationship felt, like, gross to me right off the get go. And just, like, they weren't really telling each other things. Olivia seemed really suspicious of Paula, and then Paula was really also suspicious of Olivia with knowing about Kai. Like, lying, hiding. No, I didn't go out. And Olivia literally she didn't say, though, I followed you. She kept a lot of that secret. I also was very upset with how they treated Quinn.
[34:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
[34:50] Portia Pendleton: Like, really, really mean.
[34:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, he was a dog here. Yeah, like, really mean.
[34:53] Portia Pendleton: Sleep in the closet, constant putting him down. He felt a little like he could have been on the spectrum. I could have a little bit of some traits. In other ways, he seemed, like, pretty typical. But some things that Olivia had pointed.
[35:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: Out, I was like.
[35:08] Portia Pendleton: And then that made me even more mad that she was treating him like that.
[35:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, I could see that. Maybe what we used to call asperger's or something. I think with Olivia and Paula, at first, I thought they were good friends. Like, oh, they met in college. And I did think it was interesting that Paula was a woman of color on this trip and just really curious what's her take on all of this? I don't know how they got all those drugs there. Did they buy them there? Did they smuggle them somehow?
[35:40] Portia Pendleton: Some were not prescribed. Like, a lot of them were prescription.
[35:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: Based, but not like the ketamine was the pipe. I loved, though, when someone pulled out, like, how they just kept being like, oh, I forgot. I have this drug. Oh, wait, I have this drug. Oh, my God, I forgot to have my pipe.
[35:55] Portia Pendleton: And you can't fly commercially with that. And they did.
[35:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: Maybe they didn't, though.
[35:58] Portia Pendleton: That's a good point. They got, like, on a commercial flight leaving. So, I mean, I'm making an assumption that maybe they did. Maybe they took a PJ down, but we're flying commercial on the way back.
[36:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: But try and save some money.
[36:10] Portia Pendleton: I think Paula, initially you like her because she is kind of calling people out but then I think she really kind of chooses her privilege with Kai. She does not call him when they're going back to the room, and that's, like, a big question of why. I was listening to the HBO podcast covering white Lotus, and they talked about that a lot. Like, she had her phone with her.
[36:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: And she had Kai's number, and she.
[36:34] Portia Pendleton: Did not contact him. She just looked scared. And then she put her the necklace that he gave her, she threw into the water, and it was just like, what are you doing?
[36:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. Oh, I didn't make that connection about, like, she could have called him to warn him or say, like, get out.
[36:48] Portia Pendleton: That was all her idea.
[36:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes. And he really didn't want to do it, but then pushed it. And again, I think it's because, again, I feel like Olivia and Paula is another transactional relationship. I feel like Olivia uses Paula to be like, see, look, I'm woke. I have friends of color, blah, blah, blah, but not really. Right? And then we learned that I think maybe Paula's with Olivia to go on the trip. Maybe she probably went for free. I don't really know what else they're attracted to each other with in terms of their friendship, because then we learned that Olivia stole Paula's boyfriend. Right. So it's like, why do you see friends with her? Right? Like, why? And then I think that's why Paula didn't tell her about Kai, because she was worried it happened again, rightfully so. And we see that it kind of does start to happen again. And then I think Paula gets so ****** that she concocts this whole plan.
[37:41] Portia Pendleton: Which, again, is not okay. I mean, not okay. Like, it's huge risk.
[37:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: And Kai even says he's like, the mothbacher family didn't take our land like white people did, but they didn't. So this is just, like, stealing and stuff. But then she does kind of get in his head. And is that manipulative or, like, a vulnerable person?
[38:00] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, it is manipulative, because Paula is then leaving, right? And he stayed. She's like, no, I'm going back.
[38:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: I have college to get to. I have a life to get to. This is just like, a little fling. But then, yeah, she's using Kai to get back at this family who, again, has taken her on this trip. They're very problematic in their own ways. Like, not to give them a pass, but it hurts everyone. I do think we see remorse. Like, she seems genuinely remorseful and sad.
[38:26] Portia Pendleton: But then I don't know if this I'm sure everything is intentional, always, because they're good writers, but on the last boat trip that they all take, paula is, like, sea sick, and she's just, like, vomiting. And Olivia's just looking at her because she knows what happened. She knows that she did that, and she's just like, oh, yeah, maybe she should have a soda. They are not at that point, interacting really at all. Olivia is realigning with her family, which again in the show seems good, right?
[38:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: That she's finally hugging her mom and reconnecting and things like that. She's maybe seeing her parents as some good and some bad. Not all good or all bad. I did think it was hilarious when Nicole was like coaching Olivia on how to hold her friend's hair back while she's vomiting. As if Olivia doesn't know how to be there for a friend. She's like, pull that piece up, pull that piece up. Paula, I'm going to get you a ginger rail, honey. And I loved how every time Paula needs Tylenol because she's allergic to ibuprofen, paula has this allergy. Paula is just paula's, like she needs.
[39:31] Portia Pendleton: Her out of van.
[39:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. She's just so high maintenance, this Paula friend. It's just so ridiculous in an over the top way.
[39:37] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I mean, they're such a funny family. And we see Quinn stay in Hawai.
[39:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: I was like really happy for him. I don't know. How did you feel about that? We ran back.
[39:45] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, like the show wise, I feel like it's great for him. It makes me think of this interesting little fun fact. So Hawai actually does have a problem with young people, like young runaway land going there and then becoming homeless. Do you know what woofing is?
[40:02] Dr. Katrina Furey: No.
[40:03] Portia Pendleton: It's like work on farm. I think there's another word in there, but a lot of college kids and people do it. So you get free room and board, typically food as well. And you can work at a farm, like for the summer, for like a.
[40:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: Marijuana farm or any farm.
[40:16] Portia Pendleton: Any farm.
[40:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: Okay. I said marijuana because I've heard of something like this in Hawai, specifically on a marijuana farm. So I didn't know if it was specific to that or like any farm.
[40:24] Portia Pendleton: So the person that I know went to Maui through a wolfing program was not marijuana farm, it's just like a regular farm. But they asked this person, made sure that they were returning to college. They had all these stipulations because so many people go down there to wolf and then don't leave and then become like homeless. And then there's limited resources. There's limited resources. I thought that was just interesting.
[40:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: That is interesting. I think they go and fetch him. This isn't a home alone situation. I think they have the means and they will go find life there.
[40:55] Portia Pendleton: I know. You go row that boat or canoe.
[40:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: I loved Quinn in the technology, right, where they're like he's like freaking out because they lost all the technology. And then finally he's like, wow, the ocean is really beautiful.
[41:08] Portia Pendleton: He's out there. Yes, he's sleeping. And then that group of men who are doing the paddle, like the rowing around the island really take to him and are really kind, which he seems to not be getting from his family.
[41:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, you can see why he felt wanted and needed and included and that seemed really important to him. But I guess he's only 16, so I can see why his parents wouldn't want him to stay.
[41:33] Portia Pendleton: It makes a lot of sense. And then Mark so we see Mark be, I think, just like inappropriate a lot.
[41:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: Again, talk about boundaries or lactose too.
[41:43] Portia Pendleton: Much with Quinn, with everyone talking about.
[41:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: His swollen testicles, you could just leave it at like, I got a medical.
[41:48] Portia Pendleton: Issue, finds out about his father, who's.
[41:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: A really big reaction to it.
[41:52] Portia Pendleton: He's questioning his life. He seems like in a little bit of a midlife crisis based on all those things he finds out about his dad. And then he also finds out that he does not have cancer. He's just like, cancer scare.
[42:02] Dr. Katrina Furey: There's a lot going on. And then he's like I can see, though, how learning that about his dad makes him feel like, did I really know you? And then he wants his son to really know him, albeit in an inappropriate way. And I felt like that conversation between him and Nicole was really well written and that she was like, you didn't think about how this would affect me now. I was originally hurt by your actions and now you're hurting me again because you're telling her children I didn't want them to know. And now I'm going to have to explain why I stayed. Why did I stay for these $75,000 bracelets? Yeah, it was really interesting. I loved when Mark was just getting drunker and drunker and drunker and seeing all the guests and just being ridiculous and then asking Armand what's that like to have sex with a man. And Armand's like, you want to find out? Yeah.
[42:49] Portia Pendleton: And he was like he went too far. I just also couldn't I couldn't take him, like, beating on his chest.
[42:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: But it was perfect, right? It was just like so just the white man, he's got to beat his chest and feel powerful when his wife is the one carnal with the power in the relationship. But then he gets the power by.
[43:09] Portia Pendleton: Tackling Kai and saving them all.
[43:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know. And then finally like, oh, now we're happy again.
[43:13] Portia Pendleton: It's just trauma bonds people.
[43:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: Trauma bonding. Yeah. So what do you think kept Nicole and Mark together? What do you think attracted them and kept them together? Sort of how we've talked about, like, Tanya and Greg, shane and Rachel. What do you think it was with them?
[43:30] Portia Pendleton: I feel like I want to say that they probably started out pretty even and I'm, again, making this all maybe.
[43:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: They met in college. Yeah.
[43:37] Portia Pendleton: The same kind of power dynamic, I feel like. And this is very stereotypical that he cheated as Nicole probably got more and more and more successful. Successful and maybe, like distant, like working, like gone all the time. Not in my opinion, not a reason to cheat. But I think that's maybe what kind of was the worst part of their relationship. And maybe they chose to stay because of their kids, maybe because it was convenient. Maybe they just chose to kind of have a different kind of partnership moving forward. And then now it seems like after, again, this traumatic event with the stolen goods, they feel more in touch with.
[44:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: Each other, like, more connected and more maybe even well, I guess tackling someone is such a masculine, heroic thing to do. And she was so mad at him, and then he came after her, so he didn't just leave her alone in her sorrows. And then he sort of did, quote, unquote, save her. Right.
[44:35] Portia Pendleton: I don't think Kai was going to hurt her. I think he was just like, please.
[44:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: Stay there so I can get out.
[44:40] Portia Pendleton: Of here situation that then got worse. It's not even like he got caught stealing. It's like then there was like, I'm sure it's all word going to get thrown in there.
[44:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, I know. He probably went to jail for a long time. He lost his job, went to jail, like this whole thing backfired. You know who didn't get in trouble? Paula. Yeah, probably. Maybe, though. I don't know. And Olivia just kind of like, using it to really get under Paula's skin. Like, well, hopefully there's no text messages. Right?
[45:05] Portia Pendleton: But can you guys just stop being friends? Maybe that would be it's a toxic relationship choice.
[45:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: I mean, were any of the relationships we saw healthy? No. Silence. I know.
[45:19] Portia Pendleton: I really don't I don't think so.
[45:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think the last thing I wanted to end on is Belinda, who I loved. But what do you think it is about Belinda where she gets used over and over?
[45:33] Portia Pendleton: I think it's got to be like a mix of environmental so her role, right. Like working even specifically in a spa where you're doing different kind of healing things.
[45:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: And specifically a spa at the White Lotus, like a very bougie, high end place with a specific type of clientele, maybe.
[45:51] Portia Pendleton: So then there's the environment piece. And I think also, maybe she's really just on the simple side, like a really good listener. And a lot of people aren't used to that or a lot of people are. Like, she seems really awesome.
[46:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: She seems very maternal, too.
[46:07] Portia Pendleton: Real. And a lot of yeah. So maybe that's unexpected from for some, especially Tanya. Like, Belinda, even though I think was younger, was still more maternal.
[46:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: Maternal.
[46:19] Portia Pendleton: Same with Rachel. Rachel kind of went to her. Then Belinda, again, was being really appropriate. Gave her a tissue, asked her if.
[46:25] Dr. Katrina Furey: She was all right, but then gave her cell phone number. So it's always like with Belinda, yes, there's some institutional boundaries right, that are loose because you're catering to this clientele. But then why should give her your cell phone number? Is it because you're worried about her? I think she could really do some work in therapy. As to be holding on to, like, yes, you're worried about her because you're a compassionate human and you're not responsible for her.
[46:53] Portia Pendleton: Maybe there's something in her life with feeling overly responsible, and that's not a diagnosis by any means.
[46:59] Dr. Katrina Furey: But that happens a lot with it does.
[47:01] Portia Pendleton: Patients who are so kind and so giving, they often have the worst boundaries.
[47:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
[47:07] Portia Pendleton: And they get used and they don't take care of themselves.
[47:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: They don't prioritize themselves in big ways and then small ways. So I feel like Belinda could really use some good quality therapy, and I.
[47:20] Portia Pendleton: Think she could be in an amazing place.
[47:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[47:24] Portia Pendleton: I think the others could get therapy and make changes. But Belinda seems like right on the.
[47:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: Cusp where she just I feel like she has the most potential to me absolutely. Than the others.
[47:32] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. We also didn't I'll just briefly mention we saw the substance use. So Olivia and Paula kind of playing around with that. And then we obviously see Armand. And then I would also take a gander that Tanya seems like she's probably on a Benzo, drinking out kind of out of it.
[47:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, really out of it. Kind of dazed and detached on the cusp of slurring words, but not quite there. Yeah. No. She strikes me as someone who's been on, like, Bendy's a long time and now in her time of grief is freaking out, which happens. Like we've said before, we all regress when you're under stress or grieving or things like that. And I thought the show just did such a good job displaying such interesting interpersonal dynamics and such toxic and unhealthy relationships. Also, at this point in time in our culture, it was the perfect time for it to come out. I felt like it touched on really big cultural themes, political themes, societal themes in such a smart way where I would like to rewatch it in like, 20 years and just see what do I think then.
[48:44] Portia Pendleton: I'm super excited for White Lotus season two.
[48:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. What do you think happens? Well, I know that Tanya stayed and.
[48:52] Portia Pendleton: I know that it's all new characters. I did hear that season one has just, like, the theme of money and privilege. And obviously there's privilege in season two, but season two is more like sex.
[49:02] Dr. Katrina Furey: So we'll have to see.
[49:05] Portia Pendleton: Stay tuned. It will be coming up this next month or this current in a couple of weeks.
[49:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: So after this, we're going to release Legally Blonde, another fun, light hearted episode paying homage to Jennifer Coolidge. Is it homage or Maj? I don't know. I'm not that fancy. And then after that, we'll do White Lotus season two.
[49:24] Portia Pendleton: Awesome.
[49:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: So thank you for listening. Please rate review and subscribe and you can find us at Analyze Scripts on Instagram and Analyze Scripts podcast on TikTok. Thanks.
[49:35] Portia Pendleton: Bye.
[49:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: See you next Monday. Bye. This podcast and its contents are a copyright of Analyzed Scripts. All rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited. Unless you want to share it with your friends and rate review and subscribe, that's fine. All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are preparing you for our upcoming episodes in February 2024. We are excited for you to watch along with us!
February 5th - "Saltburn" w/ Dr. Jaime Zuckerman PhD @dr.z_psychologist (Amazon Prime)
February 12th - "The Notebook" (Hulu)
February 19 - "Iron Claw" w/ Dr. Sulman Mirza MD @thekicksshrink (Movie Theatre)
February 26 - "May December" (Netflix)
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are happily joined once again by Dr. Zheala Qayyum, child & adolescent psychiatrist extraordinaire and medical director of Emergency Psychiatry Services at Boston Children's Hospital, to analyze the second "Harry Potter" movie. In this film, we begin meeting some extra special supporting characters like Dobby, Moaning Myrtle, Tom Riddle, and the Malfoy family. In this episode, we explore the themes of tween development and self-identity, specifically as it relates to Harry grappling with the "good" (Gryffindor) and "bad" (Slytherin) parts of himself. We also discuss narcissism as it relates to Gilderoy Lockhart, parental expectations as it relates to the Malfoys, and bullying as it relates to Moaning Myrtle, and classism and racism as they relate to Dobby and mudbloods. We also reflect on one of our favorite Dumbledore quotes - "It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” We hope you enjoy!
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Dr. Katrina Furey: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fury, a psychiatrist.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker. And this is analyze Scripts, a podcast.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and tv shows.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends.
Dr. Katrina Furey: There is so much misinformation out there.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And it drives us nuts.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like with a lay flat airline or a.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Major beauty brand, even better.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And your DSM five, and enjoy.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Hi.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Welcome back to another very special episode of analyze scripts, because one of my favorite attendings and teachers from residency, Gila Kayum, is joining us once again to discuss the second Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter in the Chamber of Secrets. If you haven't listened to our last episode with please, you know, go back in your feed a little bit to find our first episode about Harry Potter and the sorcerer's Stone, because we're going to rebuild on that. And just to remind you. So Gila is the attending psychiatrist at Harvard. Basically, she's the medical director of the emergency Psychiatry Service and the director of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship program. She also remains on staff at Yale University, which is where I met her as my inpatient attending on the child and adolescent unit. So we love her because she's awesome and because she's so good at using fairy tales like Harry Potter to talk about development and themes about child and adolescent psychiatry. So we're just thrilled to have you back.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: No, thank you for having me. And I'm so excited that I get to do something that's dear to my heart and has fascinated me since I was in medical school, so that I'm kind of giving my age away. That's when I read Harry Potter. But to do it with some of my favorite people, so I think there's nothing better.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Awesome. Well, so where do we get started, Portia?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I don't know. I mean, they're back for year two, right? So I think the shock to Harry maybe isn't entirely over because there's, like, new monsters and people that he's meeting every year, but the fact that there is magic out there, I guess I would start with him returning home to the Dursleys, which I have never been happy about. I think we learn later kind of why, but now seeing him being so mistreated and kind of brought all back with the trauma, like, here we are. Know, you don't know Dudley is so amazing. Your parents were bad. It's like all these messages kind of return. So I think we should start there.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I do think it's so realistic, though, unfortunately, right, that know Harry finally finds his place in Hogwarts and these people where he feels safe and loved and special. And what's awesome about Harry is the specialness isn't really what he loves, the know, like, seeking that part out. He just likes feeling secure and loved. And now he's to go back for the summer to this abusive environment. And I just think, unfortunately, that does mirror a lot of kids who are growing up in abusive households that you hope they have a place to go where they can see, like, the world won't always be like this, but he does have to go back, and it totally sucks.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, it's like school, I guess.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Yeah, exactly. And I think similarly we see what happens in many abusive relationships, although this was not intentional and Dobby had a role to play in it, is that you get cut off from your supportive relationships, right. That we're going to bolt your window. You're not going to do the things that bring you joy or magic is not allowed. Your friends don't even care about you to write to you. And all those things that he felt like he got in the first year were just suddenly taken away. And he sort of started believing it when he was like, maybe my friends won't come back, or I'm my own.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Why haven't they written to me?
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: A lot of self doubt, a lot of like, he's still growing in confidence, still thinking about what is real and what's not. And I think the other thing, which sort of contrasts is you go to the jerseys and everything is so proper and everything has to be done this way. I will come and greet them. And then I think one of the stark contrasts is we get introduced to the boroughs, which is a whole different world, and it's still a family. And then it gives you a contrast of the sort of the orderliness, the rigidness, the regimentedness at private drive. And then you go to the chaos of boroughs that is full of love and caring, and yet it has room for the unexpected. Each kid is different and accepted for being dragon trainers and whatever else that they're doing. I think we talked a little about this in the last one, where in such a big family, Ron is a little lost that his attachment style we talked about is a little like, anxious. He doesn't know if he'll get looked over in all of this chaos. But there is just so much curiosity. I think that was one thing that is so starkly different between those two households where the adults in boroughs are fostering curiosity and modeling curiosity for their kids. Like, what is this function of this rubber duck? Yeah, we're so fascinated, and yet there is no room for curiosity or thought in private drive.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I think different types of torture.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: For a young child.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Totally.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And I think even in maybe a more stable, non abusive home, we see that, right, in kids who maybe their parents have high expectations for them or want them to turn into x, y or z and don't leave room for the child's unique personality or individuality or interests. That can happen even if you're not being abused or neglected. Right. Like Harry. So I thought that was also just a beautiful addition to the story that I think matching kids watching it, even adults watching it, it'll resonate with them.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think it's funny and a little like, well, what else is Mr. Dursley supposed to say when Harry has the cake and it looks like he's doing it and then it goes over his client's wife and then he's, you know, that's my nephew.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: He's very disturbed.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: We didn't want him coming down to non magical people, Muggles. I think sometimes what we don't know is scary or disturbing. But I just thought it was, like, an interesting word choice, disturbed. I guess it fits from a Muggle's perspective of what's going on. And then also just like, they think he's disturbed and they think he's unwell and weird and crazy and bad, too. But I felt bad for Hedwig. We talk usually about people, but being stuck in her little cage, not being allowed to be let out. But, yes, we are introduced to Dobby, and he doesn't seem so great at first, right? He's like all this mischievous stuff. He's this new creature and he's starting to. Right? Like every time he says something not nice about his master or the family he works for, he kind of like self harms, right? So he's like hitting him up on the head with a lamp, banging his hand down. And Harry's like, what are you. Stop. Stop. And I think it's so telling to. Harry's so kind and nurturing, just spirit that we see again through the rest of the movies, especially with Dobby, that he's like, please stop. What are you doing? Please don't do this.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Makes him uncomfortable.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I'm dying to hear what you think of Dobby, Dr. Q. I think Dobby.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: And I think it evolves more over the next book movies is. I think it's a bigger question of representation of race and otherness in the books because there's not a lot of focus on race per se. And yet there is in the pure bloods and the Muggles. And then there's even the people who sort of are very thoughtful about how Hagrid and the Weasleys support Muggleborn wizards and witches. There is in wizarding families. There's this neglect and oversight of these elves like nonexistent and invisible. And I think we see in the future books, too that there are characters who really take a lot of issue with sort of this thought about pure bloodedness and yet they're perfectly fine with elves working in their homes. So I just think it's interesting that there is even despite a lot of awareness there's sort of blind spot that Hermione picks up on later in the later books about these elves are being mistreated. But then also you see someone being restricted in what they can do and genuinely care about someone and just how their methods are.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right, but that's such a great point. And I thought of that too, in rewatching the movie again and perhaps especially now that I'm older and the times we're living in. It was such an interesting commentary on race and identity. That's like the whole plot of this movie, right? That, you know, Salazar Slytherin left this chamber of secrets with the basilisk that's meant to wipe out all the mudbloods, right? It's basically like the goal is genocide here, right? And we start to see what characters are for this, which ones are against it, who is a Mudblood, but even within that, exactly like what you're saying there's this blind spot to the elves and it's almost like, could be a parallel to what we might call these days, like microaggressions. Like, even if you mean well, the stuff you've grown up with could still be deeply rooted and you got to open your eyes to it. And it's a really interesting way to start introducing that concept to little kids or anyone.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But I think it's really fascinating in terms of storytelling and fairy tales how this big, sometimes difficult topic is presented.
Dr. Katrina Furey: So well in this movie.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And it's so clear. And then you see, we see Draco seeing Harry getting all this attention when he. Lockhart. Right. We'll talk about him. Oh, my God. And Draco's so angry that. How dare Harry be getting all this attention, like, I'm a pure blood. I've been taught that I should be. Right. Like on stage with Lockhart. Why aren't then? You know, then he's terrible to the Dursleys. And then you see his dad walk in, you're like, oh, well, this is why. But you see. And good acting, I guess, with Tom Felton, like as a child, but the rage, he's so angry.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, right. And we really get to meet. Or we start to meet the Malfoy family, right? We don't meet the mom yet whose name is Narcissa, which I always think is interesting. But again, Giela, I'm dying to hear what you think about the depiction of the Malfoys in this.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: It is, actually, I'm really intrigued by that sort of dynamic because I also think, interestingly, I think given my own south asian background, the whole colonialism and the british aristocracy and this sort of eliteness and classism that comes in and sort of, if that's the norm, how awful not to feel special.
Dr. Katrina Furey: For Draco.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Yes, right. If this is part of your identity and this is what you've been brought up with, and then suddenly someone comes and challenges what you know. I think one of the most interesting things I was told about child development was if parents do it right, every little child should have a little bit of narcissism going into school, knowing that they're special and that they're the kings and queens of their own little kingdoms. Then they come to school, and now you have to navigate other kings and queens. And I kind of see that happening a little later. For Draco, we would expect that happening earlier in school age, but now he's sort of met someone who can actually, he can find threatening.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And so it sounds like what you're saying, too, is that hopefully, if you have good enough parents, they've instilled that healthy degree of narcissism in you, right, where you are confident, you do feel special, you feel unconditionally loved. And they're not the ones challenging it. Maybe at first, but then hopefully they can help you wrap your head around it and say, like, you are the best to us and there's other people around and their needs matter too. Right? You have to balance that with some empathy, altruism, integrity. And it's when those things are out of balance that I think we start to see personality pathology either way, whether it's more the narcissistic way or it's more of the know avoidant kind of way.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, no, that's true, because we see it again later in the movie with Hermione and Draco when she's challenging him a. She challenges him academically and know a mudbud, but we also see her directly challenge him about his father buying the team all brooms and like, well, that's how you got on the team. And harry didn't need know, like, how dare you call me out and take my crown off my head? And you're right. Like, someone who I consider lesser. And I think then we see them really kind of throughout the movies, which we will cover go head to head a lot. But I think she really grinds his gears.
Dr. Katrina Furey: That scene was hard to watch, even now. And just, you could tell, like, the word mudblood is like a racial slur. And they were all just really shocked he would even say it. It's one of those things where it's, know, maybe they all kind of sense. He thinks that. But then to be so. Just willing to say it so aggressively and in such a mean way. And then you see Harry not really understand, which, again, what a thoughtful way to introduce that concept, right. For him as a real outsider, not to get it. And now they're having to explain it to him again, really, I think mirrors trying to start to explain hard facts about the reality of the world to small children as they start to see things and ask questions.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: And I think that's actually one of the loveliest things about the Harry Potter movies and books, is that it parallels real life so well. Like, these kind of growing pains and experiences are so normal for kids in schools, and it is developmentally appropriate. Like, kids who have seen racism or racial slurs being modeled in their homes would have no qualms about saying it outside.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: I think that's kind of where Draco is coming from, is we know that the father put the book in the cauldron, so he's been exposed to these, so it's not different for him. But like you said, for Harry, it's completely unknown. And then just how kids navigate this, like, their groups and their rivalries and their exams and their classes, I think because it's so close to real life, that it really resonates with. It may be a different school, but a. It exists in our world, even if it is magical. But I think the relatability of all the challenges that these kids are seeing and experiencing is just so relatable for kids.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, no, I agree. Even thinking of just being silly and wanting a letter, I don't think I wanted or thought that I would be in Narnia. Right. You were saying this before, Sheila, or I didn't think that I was going to be in the Lord of the Rings, but I feel like Harry Potter is so different because it is in the real world. Right. And I was like, well, maybe I could get a letter.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I could go to the school. And I think, again, that resonates. And especially watching them grow up, like, we all can reflect back on childhood moments and betrayals in friendships early on and kids being not so nice on the playground. It's like that's all so real. And whether it's playing Quidditch or playing soccer, it's like it's the same feelings.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Exactly. And it's interesting. In Harry Potter, I think, Jaylee, you were saying this before we started recording a little bit. Know the world of Hogwarts and magic is existing in parallel to reality or like the Mudblood world. And in this movie, we start to see what happens when these two worlds start to collide. And it's almost like an interesting metaphor maybe, for what it's like for Harry to be going back and forth, or maybe for any of them to go back and forth but know, dangerous it is for other people to start to recognize that there is this magical world. It kind of reminds me of how we talk about aliens. Are they there? Are they not there? And just all that stuff.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: You. We'd probably think they were an alien, right? Someone doing magic or seeing a car.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Flying through the sky.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Seven muggles saw that.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. So they were, I'm assuming, right? Probably like obliviated, which makes me think of our dear friend, which I know. Katrina, you are dying to talk about Lockhart. And his best skill is apparently obliviating all these witches and wizards who he's stolen stories from to make him.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Sheila, please, please share with us your deepest, darkest thoughts about him.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Well, I think when I first see him, the most interesting thing is just how in awe Hermione is and all the girls and the little ones. And when he comes to know, Gildray Lockhart aside, I thought it was just very interesting to see how in this book, you see crushes develop a little. And even for Ron and Hermione, at the end, when she gets unpetrified, she goes, Harry. But there's this awkwardness between Ron and Hermione, which was really adorable.
Dr. Katrina Furey: They just, like, shake hands. They're like, I don't know what to do.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So cute.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: So I just felt like this was very interesting about narcissism that we were thinking about narcissist. But really, Gildoria Lockhart is. Remember, there was one classification somewhere in one of the papers about different types of narcissists, and there was the exhibitionistic narcissist, which was all about, look at me, I'm performing, so I kind of see him that way 100%. But also you see the compensatory narcissism of I'm not good enough. So how can I make myself be more likable, more inflated, more worthwhile? Clearly, he can't even do simple dueling spells.
Dr. Katrina Furey: No, right.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Well, I could have stopped you if I wanted to, but for the purpose of instruction, I chose not to. It's like fun.
Dr. Katrina Furey: But honestly, though, what a classic narcissistic defense, right? That's exactly what someone with these traits or full blown narcissistic personality disorder, that's exactly how they would respond, right? The fact that in the film, he is so handsome and showy, and there's a big crowd, and again, he can only associate with Harry Potter, right? With other fancy, special people. Not Draco, even. He's not special. Know, it's just like so on point. And then when we learn that actually it's all a big farce, actually, he's been stealing other people's ideas and then obliviating their minds, that's like the ultimate gaslighting, right? It's just so perfect. I just loved the depiction of this. As we keep doing this podcast, we keep talking about narcissism so much, and I'm like, why are we seeing this everywhere? But we really are seeing it in so much different types of media. And this was just such a good spot on, I thought, representation of it, and even, like, the common defense mechanisms and the inner wound, it was just perfect.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: And the most, I thought cute part was when he gets obliviated himself. He's so nice.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I know.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Imagine someone without that narcissism if you take that away from him. He was lovely.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I know. And it's so interesting, right, that it's like children who are taking it away from him, right? Who can finally challenge him. And I think that does maybe even speak to. There's always good inside, I hope maybe.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: You see, I think.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: I don't want.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: To say, like, the good side of narcissism. You see the likable side of narcissism through the whole movie, and you're like, oh, well, it's not that bad. But then when he, all of a sudden, it's like his mask comes off when he is about to obliviate them and take credit. And it's so ugly and different from before, just being showy and almost. And then there it is. There's the calculated kind of manipulative place that, I don't know, expectative side.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Exactly.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yes.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And that's the side that I think people who are in relationships with people with narcissistic traits see that other people on the outside don't see. And I'm sure in all of our work we have worked with children, adolescent adults who are coping with and trying to process the pain of that. Right. Because then it's not just when you're relating to someone like that. They manipulate you to start doubting your own sense of them and sense of reality. Then you start doubting it and then it's like everyone around you unwittingly contributes to that because they don't see the real person. Right. So again, just like beautiful representation of that.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: And I think it also points to the difference between adults and children in this, how they approached it. Because you see Snape, he knew what this guy was about. I mean, he did his way of sort of showing what it was like, but he never confronted him. And then you say McGonagall going and say time has come for you to do what you're best at, right? And then he tries to run away. But none of the adults, even if they know what he's about, confronted him, kind of played along. And I think that is also very relevant to people that you are around who might have narcissism. And people just tend to appease them and work with them because what else are you going to do? And yet they can anything to lose and they were able to call him.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Out and maybe even building on that. That's so fascinating. I think it also speaks to the danger in confronting someone with these traits. And I would say he also has some sociopathic traits. Perhaps if you're going to obliviate children for your own gain, there's a danger that comes with confronting someone like this. Right? It's going to provoke what we call a narcissistic injury or narcissistic rage. Sometimes all that means is they yell at you or they stonewall you, they never talk to you again, but sometimes they could actually hurt you, like we see here, where he's then going to obliviate all of them. And maybe Snape and McGonagall as adults with fully developed frontal lobes somewhere in there, appreciate that. So they know how to toe the line, but children don't right especially maybe at their age they're still coping with I would think like that very rigid sense of right and wrong and maybe they're struggling to see like well why don't you understand this is wrong so stop doing very. That can be dangerous to confront people like, yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I think it's interesting that Dumbledore who's kind of to me like all knowing goes along with it and I think the other professors take their cues from him and I wonder if Dumbledore in that moment was like leave or we're done with you. I think the other professors would have jumped on and been like yes, we don't like you or you're a fraud. But he had a very interesting, he didn't really say anything. Yeah. And he's powerful and certainly more powerful and is the person that I think could absolutely send him on his way without really repercussions and he didn't.
Dr. Katrina Furey: He also probably hired. Exactly. Were they desperate?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Maybe that position, right.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: It's cursed.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And Lockhart probably thought well I could do it because I'm the best that.
Dr. Katrina Furey: There ever was and I could imagine we've come to find out. I don't think we know it yet but how much Snape wants it and I bet there's some tension there with Dumbledore not letting him take know. We see that tension with Snape come out with every single defense against the dark arts teacher over time.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: True.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: And then to Dumbledore's point there was a lot more stuff happening that I think he was tied up in maybe like that children getting know being sent to Azkaban his own position being threatened. And I think that's the other thing. I draw the parallel of Lockhart's popularity to social media which is like if someone this popular says something about you at this juncture it's going to really impact your credibility because we have so many followers.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: True.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh that's a really good point. That's a really good point. I thought the supporting characters in this movie were all so fascinating in their own ways. Like we've talked about some of them already. Dobby Lockhart, the Malfoy family. I also want to make sure we leave time to talk about moaning Myrtle, Fox, the Phoenix and Tom Riddle. But before we get there, Gila I was hoping you could speak more to the father son dynamic between Draco and Lucius Malfoy. And again I think probably intentional that they're know, white blonde british men.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey: As you're speaking to these cultural and racial differences like perfect casting it was lovely.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: I think the way they selected both of them and sort of Lucius's haughtiness and arrogance that comes through. But it also shows you his narcissism. Like the minute he finds that he was scammed by Harry for Dobby, his wand comes out.
Dr. Katrina Furey: There's that narcissistic injury. There's. It is.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: You took something from me without my permission. How dare you? And then you also have this underlying dynamic of the Slytherin family their sort of loyalty to Salazar Slytherin, Voldemort being Slytherin's heir, who had opened the chamber of Secrets. It is all this loyalty and alliance and the way I would see that dynamic of it is something like father son passed on. But I think in the later books you also see the tension the Malfoy parents have in trying to keep their son. The dilemmas that they're sort of poor Draco is put in and this challenging situations that they are sort of stuck with, this alliance that they've formed. I also sort of draw the parallel of these are sort of the loyalties and belonging that people form to different groups that families can sort of inherit. I think one of the very poignant quotes I once read was that when we're born, we're given our name, an identity, a religion, a race, and we spend our whole lives trying to defend them. We chose none of it.
Dr. Katrina Furey: That's so powerful and so true. I was just thinking too, like gender, even in this.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: And you have no control or choice in the matter. So there is a lot of, I think, modeling for Draco from Lucius. But I think later on, maybe not in this book, you kind of see their struggles of trying to know that your son belongs in this circle and how are you going to keep him safe knowing it's dangerous and all those things can be potentially fatal for him. And I think similarly with Voldemort and Salazar Slytherin, that whole thing about true blood and belonging to the true blood family. Similarly, Salazar Slytherin created the chamber of secrets for that reason. All of that just points towards this sort of propagation. Yet it is very covert, it is hidden, it is done on the sides, which is just such a lovely parallel to what happens with racism that, yes, when you give it permission, it becomes very overt and yet there are so many people who have it and maybe are just acculturated and this is their norm that they don't realize it and when given the opportunity, it comes up. But in other circumstances, it's very hidden.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And even it's just such a beautiful visual representation of that. Right. Even the fact that it's, like in the bathroom. Right. Like, you can turn on the faucet and it'll flood or you can turn it off. It can trickle or you can go down the tube. Right. It's so beautifully masterfully done.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: What do we think about snakes, right. And, like, the symbolism of just, like, the monster being a snake. The symbol to talk to snakes, Harry. And then in book one, we see that right away kind of with him hearing at the zoo.
Dr. Katrina Furey: At the zoo.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It's a good animal that they chose.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Because snakes are kind of like. A lot of people are scared of them. They're slimy, they're slithery. They kind of catch it by surprise. They can bite you and hurt you sometimes they're totally harmless. A quote that really stuck out to me in this movie was when Hermione told Harry hearing voices no one else can hear isn't a good sign, even in the wizarding world.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: True. Which is why I think that's the parallel of how close to reality that whole place is.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Imagine hearing them.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Right?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like, Harry. I mean, like, all of a sudden you're hearing this whooshing through the wall and then you're hearing this voice and everyone else is just like, what are you talking about? I mean, what a challenging ordeal to go through. And then it is real, right. Which is kind of like, thank goodness. Because then there's maybe other concerns going on if it's not. But that's hard shouldering again. It's like he's out on this island, right? He's Harry Potter.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: He's unique.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And now it's, again, like this thing that makes him unique. Not really in a good way in this movie.
Dr. Katrina Furey: In a scary way. And I think we start to see him grappling with the good and bad dark parts of himself which it seems like he shares with Voldemort. Right? And we start to see that inner tension he has. Like, should I been a slytherin? Am I a Gryffindor? As if it's so black or white. We start to see that such a beautiful representation.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: And I think similarly to your point, like snakes, I know, from a psychodynamic perspective, have a very different meaning. But I think the one thing about it is that the places they can penetrate and go. And I think that was with the basilisk that you have Hogwarts, the safe space of where magic is. This is sort of this magic central for education and learning and yet it is penetrated by evil. Forces from within and they're lurking. They're again, in the shadows. I think that's about snakes, is they hide in dark places. So I think there is this whole veil of. I read an article about this veil of concealment and deceit and deception that is very prevalent throughout all of the chamber of secrets because it's a chamber of secrets, right?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It's in the name, literally.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: The deception, like the diary, deceives Jenny and it also kind of speaks to the power of words which can really influence people. Then the deception with the polyjuice that they're able to get some information, but they have to conceal, know, deceive, concealment under the invisibility cloak and concealment in a way of like Gildor Lockhart concealing his real identity and the truth about himself. So a lot of general themes about deception and concealment. And then I think the symbolism of the snake is also in the Garden of Eden about deception. So I think there are a lot of different themes and motifs and parallels around that. But to your point about the sort of ambivalence around your identity and belonging and I think between him and Voldemort, the core of the wands are the same. They are both parcel mouths. They are both, like, raised somewhat by Muggles. He was in an orphanage. He was with the Dursleys. So very similar life experiences that they start showing to where Dumbledore will say that it's the choices that you make that make all the difference. You can see that with all these similarities you can actually show kids and adults that really, just because we say someone had a very different upbringing or a difficult start or has certain traits, it's not a life sentence. And what a beautiful message to give that even if the things are against you and you have seen other role models or people that you sort of can identify with have very different paths that are not ideal, you can still carve a different one with the choices that you make.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. That's so beautiful. And I think it's so important. I'd imagine, especially when you're working with kids and adolescents who are coming from difficult backgrounds, whatever they might be, even adults. But I think maybe especially when you're still forming your identity to know that you don't have to follow this path, you can make different choices. And that even though there might be parts of you that remind you of. I'm just thinking about, like a parent, maybe an abusive parent or you get angry and lash out, that doesn't mean you're just like them. And I think that's something that's so painful for people to process and work through when they're trying to recover from an upbringing like that.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: And I think that also speaks to corrective parenting like you have McGonagall and Dumbledore in a way that is a very stark contrast to Molly Weasley and also Petunia Dursley and Uncle Vernon where when they think they're going to get expelled and Professor McGonagall's response is, you're not getting expelled. But I must impress upon you the seriousness of what you've done. So they are really sort of the modeling of good parenting of they are trying to protect their kids but they are not fighting their fights for them. They are not going and intervening in every conflict. They are giving them their space to have their own adventures, come to their own conclusions, figure things out but still being sort of neutral, supportive, guiding, wise.
Dr. Katrina Furey: But they don't give the kids the answers right.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And still.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Think.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I wish that we got a little window into where when Ginny, I'm assuming, goes and meets her family or maybe sees her parents after the chamber. And just like I would imagine the support that she receives because she goes on to be appearingly a secure person. And I think it's even thinking of the build up before. I'm sure she's felt loved and important in the way that she can with so many siblings. And she's the only girl that she's okay. Even though dealing with this traumatic experience and having this relationship with Tom Riddle. Right. For almost the whole school year where she's writing and just thinking about all. I'm just so curious about how that affected her and why she was so susceptible to it. I think she got this special book and finally she had her own thing and this person wanted to talk to her. And of course, for her, I think it's just like a smart match which Lucius, I'm sure, knew.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes, he did. These people can sniff it out, I always say.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: And it also kind of sort of parallels how Draco is trying to put Harry and Hermione down how Lucius was trying to put the Weasleys down by sort of planting that book.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Book.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: And he knew he would get Arthur Weasley into trouble because of all of this. And that was sort of the goal of if Jenny gets into trouble so there's bigger players and yet you have the little ones who have to go through these experiences.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Again, like you said, very covert and sort of maybe playing like a long game and using the children really? As pawns in his own game, which is pretty nasty.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right in line with narcissism. Right in. So, you know, before we wrap up, Gila, I'm also dying to hear what you think about moaning Myrtle. One of my favorite characters of all time.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Love moaning Myrtle.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Love her.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: I just love the morbidity. Like, I was in my cubicle thinking of death.
Dr. Katrina Furey: It's like, I don't know if you saw the Barbie movie that came out last summer.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Did you see it when they're all.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Dancing and she's like, y'all ever think about dying? And everyone's like, we can't go there.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: But what I took from Morning Myrtle was sort of this invisibility of not being seen even after death. Like, just come and throw another book at me. Imagine the distress in which she died was crying. Like, she didn't even see who it was because she was crying and she was distraught. And just how lonely she is in that bathroom that she says, if you die, you can come.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And so different from nearly headless Nick, who's also a ghost and walking around, but almost revered. Right?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like the crazy one who's up to no good. She's just in her bathroom being sad. But I really do want to say Harry's response, and I caught it this time, that I watched it with my mental health cap on. Ron is like, ew. And Harry's like, okay, sure, myrtle. Like, that's great. And he's just so kind and so just. I don't know. It's amazing, resilient.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And I think he can tolerate that because he knows what that feels like. Right. Like, he just naturally, I think, will be more open to that. Maybe not even realize it's a strength.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: The rejection, the isolation. And I think it's just such a close parallel to kids who are being bullied, school, who go and hide in the bathrooms. It's just so real. But it also kind of tells you that that is such an impressionable time in someone's life that these insults, she could not get over them after death either. So that was part of her sadness. And the Persona she carried was she wasn't seen. Or if she was, it was not in a very positive way.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And those words really leave a mark indefinitely in her case.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, it's sad again, but an important.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Message for kids to learn, maybe, like, as you're watching the movie, the kindness.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: And also, I think that's the other theme that comes up through the movie where you talked about Hermione sort of standing up to Draco is that kids facing bullying, how do you do that? How do you stand up when to walk away versus when to actually address it? I think they're just beautifully highlighted in a very subtle way, but it is modeling for kids and this is one adverse outcome. And yet here are some good, strong role models for you to see who are going to come across that bully.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I think even a good role model for parents as I'm watching it now as a parent with my children who are younger than these kids in the movie but are already starting to face some of these issues. We don't live in an ideal world where you can just resolve conflict with your words alone or there's always an adult around who can intervene. Like, yes, that's the hope. But when it's not, you have to start talking to your kids about, well.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: What do you do?
Dr. Katrina Furey: And those are hard conversations to have as a parent.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, but you're good at it, Dr. Fury. Yeah, I hope so. We'll see.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Come back in about 15 years. We'll see how everything's going.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Well.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Before we wrap up, are there any other lingering thoughts or themes we want to make sure we address? I think the only other one on my mind was Fox the Phoenix and how I'm going to call her a she. I don't remember Fox's gender. It doesn't really matter. But I've decided it's the girl like us. How she saves the know.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And Harry being a true Gryffindor, right? And that's what Dumbledore kind of reminds him of with the sword and then you called Fox, which means you must have been, I think it's like true of heart or you are putting yourself before someone else's needs to save. You know, thank goodness for Dumbledore because I think he really anchored Harry. And I did make the choice, right, to be in Gryffindor. I asked the hat and he was like, that's the difference which we mentioned before about the importance of our choices, despite what's sometimes in our environments or sometimes traits that we might have. And Fox is know, I love that they grow old and kind of like turn into ash and Harry's like, oh, my. Like, what's happening? Then the of out of death and darkness comes life and good things and rebirth.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, it's really beautiful.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Thanks for reminding us of that. That's a better way to end than exactly some think.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Yeah, I think too.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Just again, this movie and all of Harry Potter really touches on the good and bad parts in all of us. How we all have good and bad parts, and that's okay. And that, like, if you look up the traits of a slytherin or a Gryffindor, which, you know, so slytherin, they know ambition, resourcefulness, determination, cleverness. That all sounds great when you channel it in the right way, but you could channel it in this sort of elitist, villainous way that Salazar, Slytherin and some others have sort of evolved into. And same thing with, know, bravery, honor, loyalty, boldness. Again, channel it in a good way.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Or you could kind of become reckless.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Self righteous, have a short temper, always.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Want to be the hero.
Dr. Katrina Furey: That can get you into trouble sometimes, but it's like a double sided sword. Is that a thing where it could be good or bad, depending on how you channel it. And again, that speaks to the choices that we make and so important for kids to hear, and I think I heard a quote somewhere, I'm going to butcher it now, probably where I think we're not responsible for the trauma we might be born into or grow up in, but we are responsible for then kind of what we do with it and how to move forward. And that's a really important point I think we all probably use in our work with people and maybe just as humans walking the earth.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Exactly.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: And I just know, to your point, the fact. Well, I'll say two things. One is not all slytherins are bad, which is, I think, something Harry bought into when he was like, please don't put me in Slytherin when he was under the sorting hat. But really, I think that to your .1 of the biggest things about the loyalty, the sacrifice, and I think that was one of the things that, throughout the whole series, helped Harry differentiate himself from Voldemort, is the sense of love we've internalized, which is so important for kids and us as adults and human beings, is to know we were loved, even if our parents are not around, even if those people who loved us are not in our lives. Just that sense of being loved can really change the life of a human being, which is something Voldemort did not just helps anchor him into. Yes, if I was loved, I can sacrifice my love for others. I can be loyal to others.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: And I think every child just wants to belong to Hogwarts.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. And I think Harry, although he lost his parents so early, I think it's deep down he knows he was loved. And he's constantly told that over and over. Right. About his life story. So even though he didn't have it for very long. Somewhere in there, he knows it, and he's reminded of that, which is so important for kids.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And when you don't have it, you're really vulnerable to nefarious people out. Oh, gosh, what a great way to start my day. This is just such a treat. Thank you so much for joining us, Sheila. We love you for all the.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I guess, you know.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Do you want to tell everyone where they can find you on instagram?
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Sure. It's zheeque and hope to be part of these in the future.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my gosh, yes.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: We would love to have Harry Potter journey.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes, we're on a journey, too. And again, thank you so much for listening to this episode. You can find us at Analyze Scripts podcast on Instagram, TikTok, and on YouTube. Now if you want to watch this episode. And we will see you again next Monday for our next episode.
Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Great.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Bye.
Dr. Katrina Furey: All right, bye.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: This podcast and its contents are a copyright of analyzed scripts. All rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited. Unless you want to share it with your friends and rate, review, and subscribe.
Dr. Katrina Furey: That's fine.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings, or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are rereleasing one of our favorite episodes where we were joined by one of Dr. Furey's favorite teachers from residency, Dr. Zheala Qayyum. Dr. Qayyum is the Training Director for the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship Program and the Medical Director of the Emergency Psychiatry Services at Boston Children's Hospital. She has published on the use of fairy tales in teaching child psychiatry and joins us to discuss the first "Harry Potter" movie. In this episode, we discuss many interesting themes including the psychological effects of early childhood trauma and neglect, the attachment styles of the three main characters, and the importance of friendship in identity formation. We also reflect on the mirror of Erised and the importance of exploring dark feelings and themes in childhood from a safe space, such as through this magical film. We hope you enjoy as much as we enjoyed speaking with Dr. Qayyum!
[00:10] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fieri, a psychiatrist. And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker. And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows. Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends. There is so much misinformation out there.
[00:30] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And it drives us nuts.
[00:31] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like with a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better. So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn and your DSM Five and enjoy.
[00:50] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Don'T.
[01:17] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: For a very special episode of Analyze Scripts, because one of my favorite attendings for my residency training is joining us to talk about one of my favorite movies, harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, or The Philosopher's Stone, depending on which country you're watching it in. So today we have Dr. Gila Kayum, the training director for the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship program and the medical director of the emergency Psychiatry services at Boston Children's Hospital. She holds faculty appointments at Yale School of Medicine and Harvard Medical School, and she's the associate director of medical student education and Psychiatry. She's also serving as a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army Reserves Medical Corps and deployed to Afghanistan and was later mobilized in support of the COVID-19 response to New York. Dr. Kayoom has published on the topics of medical education, autism spectrum disorders, inpatient treatment of early psychosis, and LGBTQ, plus youth, the use of fairy tales in teaching child psychiatry, and the risk of youth suicide and firearms. She has a particular interest in the areas of supervision and mentorship, which she's so good at psycho oncology and palliative care. And I feel like we always called her Dr. Q. I guess I'm allowed to call her by her first name because I'm a grown up now, but I still feel kind of funny about it. But you were one of my favorite mentors, and I feel like you're really special because sometimes when you have a mentor, it kind of feels like they're trying to mold you in their image. But I always felt like you just wanted what was best for me, and you were so encouraging, and I just always loved working with you, and you hold a really special place in my heart.
[02:58] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So this is really fun to talk about.
[03:00] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Harry Potter no, this is, like, making me teary. This is just a lovely intro I have gotten. And it's just such a thrill that the people that you invest in grow up to be such amazing child or adult or psychiatrists, but more so, just people. And you're very dear to me as well. The best part of being an educator and a clinician is that not only are you trying to sort of transfer your skills or your wisdom, but you get to see your kids grow and become they're meant to be and their best versions. And if you think you're a part of that journey, I think that's just the most amazing privilege.
[03:50] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Well, I know you were for me, and I know you were for a lot of my co residents, so it's so true. So I am dying to talk to you about this movie, given your interest in using fairy tales to explore development. So I just kind of want to jump right in and hear what you think about the first Harry Potter movie and kind of what jumps out at you.
[04:13] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: So I think one of the loveliest things about Harry Potter was that it was a modern fairy tale, and we've had a lot of lovely fantasy series, but there was something very special about Harry Potter that just captured everyone, whether it was kids or adults. It's interesting, whenever I ask people what their favorite children's book is, inevitably, for a lot of them, it's Harry Potter. And I read it in med school. So I was much older, but I still stood in line at midnight yes, where I was standing next to like, ten year olds in their robes, and I was like, Am I in the right place? But you felt like you were in the right place. And I think that's what it communicated was it was or is a modern fairy tale for all ages. It just has that essence of a fairy tale, that it means something different to different people at whatever stage of development or life they're in. So a child can interpret it in their own way and have things that they resonate with. And as adults, we might find things that resonate to us, whether based on the hero's journey, these ordeals and call to action and your helpers that bring you along, but also the trepidations, the challenges, the times you doubt yourself when things are there. How do you overcome challenges and this power of transformation through a journey and a story that you're not the same person that you started off as, but with all of the things that you've had to experience? How does that evolve and transform you till you come full circle in some way? Not the same person that left, but so much more wiser grown. I think it's the transformative journey that we see from the first book that started, but there are these just themes that just feel like so relevant to today about loss and difficulty and when you're seeing this drive for power around you and how do you fit in the whole picture. And we usually have a reluctant protagonist in many stories that is not fully sure they want to take on the adventure and the call for action, and yet they do. But I think most importantly for me, the biggest thing was the importance of hope and friends.
[07:04] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah, I totally agree. And it's funny you mentioned hearkening back to standing in line at midnight at, like, Borders Books or wherever you were. I totally did the same thing. I think I was in middle school and then high school. But it is really fascinating how Harry Potter and other fairy tales like it. But I feel like especially Harry Potter, it is such a cultural, communal enjoyment and not just in American culture, but certainly worldwide. It's just such a really cool thing that it just really spans ages, genders, cultures, nationalities, languages. Everyone loves it, right? And I feel like this movie rewatching it now as an adult with my children was so meaningful and fun. So I have a seven year old and a four year old and they were just enraptured by it. They wouldn't stop talking the whole time. They wouldn't take their eyes off and this isn't like a cartoon, so they're still at the ages where really it's cartoons that catch their attention for two and a half hours. But this one did, and that was really interesting to me and really special. And I love some of their commentary. Like, with her, MayAny always raising her hand. My daughter, which I was so happy, said she's got a really big brain. And I was like, yes, she know. And then when Draco came on the scene very early on, my son was like, oh, he's a bully. And I was just you know, it's just really cool to kind of see kids watching it too.
[08:40] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. I think it's worth mentioning something interesting. When I was starting to read the books before the music, the movies had started kind of coming out. I remember very distinctly the religious organization that I was a part of at the time was very split with people thinking that you shouldn't be reading it. It's magic. It's witchcraft. Witchcraft. And then the other half being like, if you know the story, it's like this good versus evil. Good always triumphs. There's hope. There's, like you were saying, friendships. I mean, it's such a positive message. And there's so many interesting.
[09:23] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: I don't.
[09:23] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Know, like, spiritual parallels and parallels throughout all of the books. But I think it was just an interesting time to be know, hearing this spoken series is bad or evil and then reading them. Know, in my family, we were very pro Harry Potter and loving the messages. And I think that was just like I don't know. I'm sure some other people might have had that experience.
[09:45] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Oh, I totally remember.
[09:48] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Right.
[09:48] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like, we come to see this boy in, I would say, a pretty abusive home with a lot of neglect. And I think it's funny watching it or thinking about it now versus in. Like, I'm curious what even your kids picked up of the scenes. The parents certainly seem mean and right dismissive. And you picked that up even as a child, like something not right. Why does Dudley receive all of these gifts and Harry not his clothing?
[10:18] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah, my kids were asking about that?
[10:21] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like why are they so mean to?
[10:22] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Why is he living under the stairs? They certainly were asking those questions.
[10:29] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Yeah, no, I think it's a really lovely depiction of how prevalent and difficult it is for kids that have neglect. And I think also it really sort of from starting from him being under the stairs and just watching Dudley get 36 presents and counting and him thinking about, like he has to get hand me downs to go to school and what that would be like. Just that differential that was created and that sense of otherness or I don't belong or I'm not good enough. It really, I think, beautifully highlights how a child will internalize that, because you see that then play out throughout, which partly keeps him humble when everybody thinks he's this amazing everybody knows him, but he's coming from where? Nobody. Knows anything about him. And he held on to that for a very long time and it really changed his I think we see him work through it, but his sense of belief and faith in his own abilities and his self because they told him he wasn't good enough for a good eleven years. And that sense of feeling like you're worth something that he didn't get initially. And how does one young child actually grow to develop that? Partly it kept him humble in the face of, I don't know, magician dumb or stardom or whatever that was that he got later on. But also, it really impeded his ability to rely on other people. And we see. This in the later books as well, but whenever he has to do something, he's very like the avoidant attachment style. I can't trust people to be there for me. And we know later in the books there are other losses that sort of reinforce that for him. But he embarks on everything on his own and working with others and trusting others comes very, very it's very challenging for him, comes much later.
[12:52] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And I like that you brought up his attachment style. Can you explain a little bit what avoided attachment is or the kind of kids or adults we might see that in and how Harry either fits in or doesn't quite fit in.
[13:09] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: So the avoidant attachment style is when a young child has inconsistent caregiving where their needs may not be consistently met. And so rather than clinging to their caregiver to get their needs met, they're like avoiding contact with them because they don't know are they coming, are they going, or are they going to be there. So the child starts to avoid that contact and doesn't get need or avoids contact with the caregiver to get soothed and self regulated. So we see the same thing, that since the Attachment is our template for forming relationships, that we carry on in life, we see Harry particularly later on as he's growing older, that even in adolescence, whenever there is a challenge, he goes off on his own rather than relying on anybody else because he doesn't know. Are people going to really be there for him or not? Are they going to leave? Are they going to neglect him? So he might as well do that for himself and just go off on his own. So that sense of avoiding closeness with people because they might leave or not be there for you, is that sense that avoidant children internalize and so they don't keep looking for closeness with people. It's good that we see Harry work through this over a great many books, which also tells you that it runs in parallel with the life experience of a young child who's had early life neglect and avoidant attachment style might need a lot of reinforcement of positive interactions to say, no, you can rely on other people. If you do get close to people, it'll be okay. And yet loss is a very, I think, integral part of our human experience and life. And for an avoidant child, there is that risk that it just might reinforce that belief that people are not going to be there for them.
[15:18] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And in addition to Harry having that early childhood neglect and abuse, he also had early loss of his parents, who seem like lovely caregivers, who were likely very attuned to his needs, at least as far as we can tell, and that he was present for their murder. And so I was really curious about your take on that, given around the age they depict that and then what it must have been like for him at age eleven to start learning the truth about that loss at the same time as he's learning their loss is why he's famous or special. I just imagine that's got to be so confusing.
[16:03] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Absolutely. And I think that's such a lovely point of there's so much magic instilled in that power, of that parental love that he carried with him that it literally burned. Professor Squirrel.
[16:22] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right.
[16:23] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: It was so powerful. I think it does show, though, however, that it was at a very sort of vulnerable time period in his life when that death occurred. He was still a baby, and we're thinking, like, till from infancy to toddlerhood, maybe the first part went well when his parents were attuned and taking care of him, but later on, and still in that very vulnerable time frame, he had a lot of neglect. And so as you're entering into your preteen years, your sense of, how do I relate with my peers? Who am I in relationship with them? Will they accept me as? We're thinking about later, latency age and early preteens going into your identity formation, who you are is so sort of determined by who are the people in your life? Who brought you here? What is your story? How did you start? And I remember as a child, my mom would tell me stories about, well, when you were little we did this things I wouldn't remember. But still you create these memories based on the things that your parents tell you as well when you're younger. But those things are so important in our development, and now he had to figure that out on his own. Who was he? What were his parents like? That question of when he goes and sees his father's name on the trophy room and he's like, I didn't know he was a Seeker. There's just so many knowns for him to figure out who he is because he doesn't know where he's coming from, and your legacy or your lineage or what are the wonderful stories about how amazing you are. Your parents tell you he never had that. And now he has to create his own narrative about who he is, which is the whole process through the book.
[18:26] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And speaking of like, identity formation, he went from being told that you're such a burden, you're unwanted. Your parents were horrible, they were weird or strange, to being praised or whoa, Ron's reaction to it's. You with the scar on the train, know, having all of this wealth suddenly and this importance in this world, it's just so interesting. You had written down with Hagrid, like him just going with that to this magical place that if somebody had told an eleven year old me, I think, and I'm hopefully that I'm securely attached, I would have been afraid to go with Hagrid.
[19:08] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right.
[19:09] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: This big, burly, giant, half giant man who's telling me all these things that we're going to go to this magical place. I think for a securely attached child, they probably wouldn't have gone. But he didn't have any attachments. And then I think anything is better than living with the directly to finally.
[19:29] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Take him out of that situation.
[19:31] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Right.
[19:31] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It's like almost like this savior has come to rescue him. What were your thoughts about that, Dr. Q? The way he so know, latched onto Hagrid?
[19:41] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Yeah, I think just like Portia said, it's like that insecure attachment, there's nothing to hold him there. But he's also, I think, like you talked about at a point where he's thinking about things and his life. If he's going to go to the same school as Dudley, what is that going to be? He's getting into trouble constantly. And imagine the message you internalize after you're told that everything you do is wrong or you're a bad kid, and you get told that long enough, you start believing it. So maybe it wasn't such a far fetched thing to say, I'm going and I'm taking off.
[20:19] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right.
[20:20] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: What's the worst thing that can happen whenever anything I do isn't good anyway?
[20:27] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right? And I think we see that in clinical work. And probably you see a lot more, given your line of work, in kids who maybe will go off with not safe people. That sort of increases their vulnerability for those very situations.
[20:43] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Because at the core of it, every kid just wants to belong.
[20:48] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah.
[20:49] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: And so if it was what Hagrid said, is that's where you belong? He hasn't had that sense of belonging at the Dursleys. So he will try. And go and find if he belongs somewhere else and what other people.
[21:09] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And he does find.
[21:10] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: I feel like I'm going to cry.
[21:11] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Talking about Harry Potter and also just thinking about Hagrid is like, I just love Hagrid. He's such a gentle giant, but I couldn't think of a better person to come scoop up Harry. Right. Like, even just imagining him sort of putting him in the little sidecar, he's, like, nice and cozy and secure and contained and I hope just feels safe next to this big old guy who.
[21:40] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Stood up to the dursleys, right? Chased found him. I remember my blood boiling even watching the movie again or rereading the book when they keep taking his know you know, it's such.
[21:58] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: His letter.
[21:59] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, that's the one thing he has.
[22:02] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: But then Hogwarts is like, well, we'll send you more. We're not going to give up. And I would imagine for, like, how wonderful. That must feel like, wow, they really.
[22:12] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Are trying to get to me.
[22:13] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: No one has wanted me like that before. And they're being like Hogwarts or whoever. Dumbledore's love for him is so transcendent and powerful that it wins. Out against the neglect of the know.
[22:29] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Just beautiful and sort of how teary Hagrid was when he was first dropping him off when he was a baby and dumbledore saying it's not goodbye for.
[22:42] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Oh my gosh I feel like, that's how I am. Every year the new school year starts, you're just like, oh, my gosh, they're growing up.
[22:51] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then hermione I think it's worth mentioning. So she has, it seems, securely attached, supportive parents. But is living as a muggle her whole life until receiving these letters and going to Hogwarts and then learning that she is like a mudblood and that she is not good enough. Her blood is like, dirty. And yet she is so brilliant, and I think that's such an interesting reversal of her and Harry's experience. She's still really smart, but it's like it's not good know are calling her names like Draco. And I don't think that she experienced that. Prior know the little bits that we get of her pre hogwarts.
[23:40] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And interesting to think about her parents. Like getting this random letter and sending her. Right?
[23:47] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
[23:51] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: That's the wonderful thing about secure attachment and great parenting is know, we're all about you. So if this is who you are and this is your success and this is where you're going to thrive, sure.
[24:03] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: We don't know anything. Go for it.
[24:06] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: And I think that is part of Hermione's own resilience as well is that that secure attachment, as difficult as those interactions with Draco are, allows her to stand up for Harry and Ron and build friendships and sort of extend that beyond the parental unit onto her friends, new people and say, because I have a good sense of attachment and security and I know people will be there for me, I can be there for other people, too. And then you can carry it forward. So I think Hermione is a really nice example of a secure attachment. And then I think you see that play out a little bit more. Not in the first book, but later on at the Yule ball, where she can put Ron in his place for not asking her out and sort of take ownership of her own. Know, next time you want to do this, pluck up the courage and ask, right?
[25:10] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Boundaries.
[25:11] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: I think that's a really nice illustration of how important attachment is as a child is growing and then into adolescence that the same things play out in your other relationships.
[25:25] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And how amazing to have a girl character like Hermione, right? Like, I think all the things you just said, like her bravery, her intellect, her self confidence, her boundaries, I just think so lovely to have a girl character like this for girls and boys and adults to read about and identify with. And she can maintain that sense of herself in the face of draco and the slurs and the comments, even when people even know who she goes on to marry down the road. Spoiler alert. Even as he's kind of putting her down for being smart, she doesn't stop raising her, know? And I remember as a middle school girl who loved school, just loving that, just loving that. And I loved watching now my daughter, watch her, and I'm just like, soak this up, soak this.
[26:20] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Yeah, such a lovely little bottle for girls. And then since we're on the topic, like, you think about Ron, who is like this lost soul in this big family of redheads. And so you kind of see his sort of anxious style come through that, particularly when he was asked to relax and he couldn't.
[26:44] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yes, he's like, I don't know how.
[26:49] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Right? And all the hand me down. Not that he got, but also the same sweater that he gets every year, that there is love in that family, there is care, but also with so many kids, they're kind of lost until they get into trouble, that they get into parental they get parental attention and you hear about their concerns. And so even though there is not a lot of any mal intent anywhere within the Weasley family, but you can see where Ron's anxiety and anxious attachment style comes in and you see the same thing in the Eubolic. And the anxious attachment style is, you know, the child that doesn't know how to get through, they're like, all right, please pick me up. No, now put me down. No, pick me up again. I'm not sure. They're just taking time to self regulate and self soothe and sometimes they can get pretty irritable and upset too, and so they might lash out. And you see that in the U ball scene, too, where I know I'm jumping ahead, but rather than asking Hermione, he gets really sulky and irritable rather than owning up, but he wants it, but he doesn't know how to do it. So you kind of see that tension and that sort of clinginess but not sure what to do sort of thing. So I think the whole series really highlights these attachment styles really nicely.
[28:19] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Isn't that amazing? How did JK. Rowling do that? And I thought the fact that they're all eleven, it was just perfect, right? Like at that age and kind of with all the books following them through is just really beautifully done, I think.
[28:39] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: And you can kind of play out in the carriage scene when they're first on the Hogwarts Express together, where I think Hermione comes in looking for Neville's Frog frog. And you see how confident she is and she's you're and who are you and have you done this? And so self aware, self confident. And then you have Harry just sitting by himself, not sure he wants to talk to anybody. And poor Ron, who's trying to get his presence known again, just like a young child in a big family would feel lost, that I have to make my presence known, otherwise I won't get the attention I need. And poor Scabbers that he's trying to turn yellow and that's not working out. So you kind of see it play so nicely in a very simple scene.
[29:36] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Definitely something that I noticed, and I think it's just my interpretation of things, is that Ron seems to have the most obvious shame about his finances compared to the other siblings. I don't really notice or even Jenny's younger in this book, but being so visibly upset, I know that there's the interaction in the robes shop with Draco and then on the train, even with his little sandwich, right, he can't buy the treats. And then there's like whoa when Harry has those gold coins. And it really does seem to impact him even throughout the rest of the story. Just that intersectionality. He's a pure blood, but he is poor. And then how that really goes up against Draco and his Pure Blood and wealth family.
[30:34] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I think that's an interesting thing to think about the intersectionality of all their identities in this sort of fantasy world, right? There's so many parallels. Like even if you think about different intersectional identities in our culture today, and it's just interesting to think about it's an older book.
[30:55] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I mean, again, it's so easy to talk about these more seemingly popular nuanced ideas. They've been around for a while, but everyone kind of talks about their intersectionality or different identities. And it's so clear in the book, right?
[31:13] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It does seem like the type of series where you'll always get more from it. I reread the series I think, last year, and I loved it, and I feel like I got more from it as an adult than I did as a kid. And it's one of those things where I feel like every time you read it, you'll get more and more from it.
[31:31] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: It just means something different. Yeah.
[31:35] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: So one thing I was hoping we could talk about is the mirror of Irisev, which is desire spelled backwards. I totally choked up watching this part again, as an adult, I was curious to hear about your experience.
[31:52] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Yeah, I had so many thoughts about that. I mean, it's such a powerful thing. And the fact that if you're truly content, then you can see yourself as you are, only the happiness, and if that is the measure of happiness. And it was like, wow, just the visual illustration of happiness, that you could see yourself and just see yourself as you are. Because I just felt like, yes, it is desire spelled backwards, but it is so prevalent throughout with starting with those 36 presents that you want more, and Voldemort wanting more, that defeated and needing to come back and needs to get more and more power and even kills a unicorn for it.
[32:46] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Oh, my gosh, that was devastating for my four year old daughter. I regretted that part horribly.
[32:51] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Like, yes, moving but jarring scene. And then the fact that your heart's deepest desires that you're desperate for and you'll see that, but anything that's too much is going to consume you. And those people who sort of run after the things that they really, really want, I think it was a very powerful way of giving that message of too much consume you and there'll be nothing left. Like it does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live. So I just thought it takes so much courage, though, to ask yourself what it is that you really want in life. I mean, a lot of us may want all these things, but what is it that you truly, truly want? I think that's a very powerful question to ask. And how many of us really can look at ourselves in the mirror and say, this is what I really, really want in life, and to be able to face that and own it.
[33:59] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It's a good question to ask a client, even, because I think you can always get to the feeling right under it. So if someone's they're saying that their deepest desire is financial gain, it's like, okay, but what does that mean? Does that mean you want to feel secure? Does it mean that you want to be powerful in a sense of authority? Do you want people to look up to you? It's always like a feeling.
[34:26] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And why? Where does that come from?
[34:28] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, it's a good place to explore with yourself and maybe with a patient as well.
[34:33] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Can you imagine, like, starting off a session, they come to see you. For the first time. And you're like, here is my mirror of IRISET.
[34:39] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Yeah.
[34:40] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Looking at what do you see and.
[34:42] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: What does that mean?
[34:45] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: It'll make our job so much easier.
[34:47] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I know, right quick, right real quick.
[34:50] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: We'll get to the deep rooted issues in 10 seconds.
[34:54] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Easy peasy. Managed care will love it. So we see what Harry wants, which is his parents. And again, I was so struck by him going back to that mirror repeatedly and I was just like, of course he is, right? Like his parents are moving. You see his mother, his father touch his shoulder. I was just like, oh, I so feel that for him. Then we see him drag ron so excited to share that experience of his parents with him. But Ron sees himself as head boy and winning the quidditch cup. And again, that totally makes sense based on everything we just talked about with Ron's family. We didn't see hermione. And I was curious what you guys thought. What would hermione see, if anything, or would she see herself?
[35:46] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think maybe if anyone would be seeing themselves, it would be her. Especially like in book one. I think she does seem so content and excited and authentic that I think it might be her. Maybe it's her being top of the class.
[36:04] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: I think she is.
[36:05] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: She already kind of is.
[36:08] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: I have a feeling that the one thing she grows to develop were friendships. That I wonder if she might see herself surrounded with friends.
[36:17] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah, I think at her age again, I agree. Portia of the Three know. Harry rod hermione. I feel like she would be the one closest to seeing just her true self. But I wonder if at that age of eleven, as a girl, if there's something deeper she's not able to articulate yet that we might see like friendship.
[36:38] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, I think that's accurate. I think sometimes you get the books confused or what's, like maybe a fan fiction thing online or something. But I am pretty sure that she does say that she did struggle with friends and so to have these deep friendships build at Hogwarts, I think that might be it.
[37:00] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Yeah. I'm just thinking know, she is very brilliant. So seeing herself as like the know, graduate or something of her class probably isn't far fetched. But if that intimidates other kids when she's correcting them over livio saw yes, that might rub kids the wrong way. That maybe that peer acceptance and those close friendships might be something that we see sort of develop over time as well.
[37:33] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And so as we start wrapping up our wonderful episode today, let's talk a little bit about their friendships. Because I just feel like, gosh, I thought the movie did such a good job explaining the book, which has so many concepts, so much magic in it. It's had to do so much in just two and a half hours of just like background, like this is where we find ourselves. This is Hogwarts. This is Quidditch. This is Voldemort. Like here it is. And capturing all these complex concepts in such like a beautifully visually appealing way. The music is wonderful but we certainly see the triad between Harry, Ron and Hermione starting and forming and we know that just grows and grows and gets more complex over time. And I was really curious Dr. Q about your thoughts about first of all that it's a triad. There's three of them, two boys and a girl and what do you think of all that?
[38:36] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: I just love the idea and particularly since you have the girl be somebody like hermione and I thought it's really nice to see their parallel processes. Each one of them is trying to sort of discovering that they're each really good at something but not good at everything. Like Hermione realizes she's not good at quit it. How humbling for someone who's really good and smart to know quidditch is not for, you know, Harry discovering that's what he's really good at and very early on know Ron playing chess and how it was reinforced with all the points even Neville's like standing up to your. So I felt that that was such a lovely way of saying that some of the reasons why friendships are important is that no one is whole in themselves and so much stronger when we all complement each other. But how do you explain that to an eleven year old? But if they saw the movie they would understand that we are so much more when we're all together and how those friendships last over years even for many of us. And I also felt like the complexity that you talked about. I think another movie that highlights it really nicely is Inside Out.
[40:06] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yes, we love that movie.
[40:08] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Our emotions are one color when they're younger and as you grow older they get more complex and those marbles are multicolored because emotions are more complex than just feeling sad, mad and glad. And similarly as we're thinking about I think this goes very nicely in a parallel of fairy tales and development that when children are younger they can only see good and bad. As long as you're giving me what I want you're the good parent. When you set limits you are not.
[40:43] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Oh I feel this every day older.
[40:46] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: You can hold the things together in the same person that there are things that are great about them and there are things that are some weaknesses. And when we're children we look at our parents as these idealized giants and as we grow older we see them for human beings that have wonderful strengths and flaws that we can still accept and love them still the same. So I think that is a big developmental challenge but I think the books highlight that really nicely with them being able to sit and tolerate that complexity.
[41:29] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: That nothing is so and again with them starting this journey at age eleven. I feel like that's the perfect timing for all of this to start. And I wonder if even the darkness of Harry Potter in watching the first movie, I was like, all right. I think it'll be several years before I show my kids the second movie because each one gets a little darker, a little grittier. But I think that maybe contributes to why it sort of captured all of us. And it is darker than the Disney version. Like, Inside Out is a great example, but I think that just speaks to the reality.
[42:12] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like, the books get more complex, the books get darker, the characters get more complex, the characters get know. I think it was just such an interesting time to read it as a child as they came out, because it really kind of aligned perfectly with my own development.
[42:28] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah, exactly.
[42:29] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I remember my mom read me the first book, and then I remember the last one coming out, and I think my grandma said it to me. It was like raft in the Muggles, right? Like Muggles can receive on whatever date, and then I read it for myself. So I think it's so uniquely that way that led to so many people being a part of it for years and still feeling really connected to it now.
[42:53] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And now getting to share it with your own children, like I'm starting to do, is so special.
[42:59] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Yeah. And that's the power of fairy tales, is that even if it may be really dark, it creates this metaphorical, imaginary, special place where you can still explore this darkness in a very safe way.
[43:13] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yes.
[43:13] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Go process it. Look what it's like to be angry. Oh, my gosh. Cruel people, mean people. And then you come back to the safety of reading this with your mom and everything's going to be okay.
[43:27] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
[43:27] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It's so beautiful. It is. It's very special. Very special. Well, Dr. Q, is there anything else you were hoping we could touch, know, talking about Harry Potter, the first it.
[43:42] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: I think it's just a wonderful part of my life. I wish I was in Hogwarts, and that was the life I lived. Sometimes I'm looking forward to having a real Harry Potter birthday someday. But I think the thing that resonates most with me is this quote from Neil Gaiman that says, fiction is a lie that tells us true things over and over. And I think that's the power of Harry Potter is that the reason it spoke to so many of us is that we all connected at some level with something that was very true for each one of us.
[44:18] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I like that.
[44:20] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: That is a really beautiful place to leave it. Well, Dr. Q, thank you so much for joining us. We would love to have you back for the next seven movies over the course of time. It was so nice to personally reconnect with you again, thank you all for listening to this very special episode of Analyze Scripts. If you'd like to hear our take on Inside Out, we do have an episode about that from several months ago. I don't know. Dr. Q, did you know they're making a sequel? I think it's supposed to come out in the next couple of years, so that's really exciting. I hope it's about Riley's adolescence. Yes, and we really hope it also shows her living through COVID. Like, we could really use that for all the kids. We could, right? But you can find us at Analyze Scripts podcast on Instagram and TikTok and catch us next Monday for our next episode. Thanks so much.
[45:24] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: See you next time. Thank you for having me.
[45:32] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: This podcast and its contents are a copyright of Analyzed Scripts. All rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited. Unless you want to share it with your friends and rate, review and subscribe, that's fine. All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings, or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are releasing a short bonus episode where Dr. Furey discusses her recent THRILLING experience as a guest on Bitch Sesh/Garbage Sesh. Discussing mental healths themes as depicted in the "Real Housewives of Salt Lake City" season finale with her favorite housewive scholars, Casey Rose Wilson and Danielle Schneider, was a dream! We hope you enjoy!
[00:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fieri, a psychiatrist. And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker. And this is analyze scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and tv shows. Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends.
[00:28] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: There is so much misinformation out there.
[00:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: And it drives us nuts. And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like with a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better. So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn.
[00:42] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And your DSM five, and enjoy. Portia, you will not even believe what I got to do this week. I mean, you will because I've already told you about it, but I don't know details. I know. I've been waiting and waiting to share them with you today. Okay, so, as you know, I have been a scholar of the Real Housewives of everywhere as long as I've been a scholar of medicine, like, legit. I looked up, when did the Real Housewives franchise premiere? And it was 2006, the same year I entered medical school. So it's the same. I've been in parallel studying both. And my favorite podcast in the world is called ***** Sesh, and it's hosted by Casey Wilson and Danielle Schneider, who are like. Like Hollywood actresses. Writers like. Casey wrote bride wars. She was on SNL. Danielle wrote a bunch of different things. She was in stepbrothers. She was the assistant who saw them back to Seth Rogen for that job interview she's written for the Oscars. They had their own real housewives parody show on Hulu, so they're, like, legit. And last week, I know you don't watch the housewives or broadcasting out. You totally are. Like, you really are, because it's so good. And I feel like, honestly, I can say without a shadow of a doubt, I have learned so much about personality disorders, personality development. I also remember, literally, on my first inpatient psychiatry rotation, we were having a family meeting, and it was with a gentleman and his wife, who now I realize further out in my training, had very histrionic traits. We were trying to navigate a family meeting with them, and I literally, the night before, had seen an episode of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills with a couple's therapist and just mimicked what he was doing because I didn't know what to do. And I remember my chief resident being like, wow, that was really great how you mirrored it back to them, and he's like, how'd you know that. And I was like, it's just natural. Yeah. I don't know. I'm so good at this. But, like, legit. That's where I got it anyway. And we've seen all sorts of really bad therapy on these shows. Yeah. But long story short, there was an explosive finale of the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City last. Just like, I was just like, oh, my God. Oh, my God. Just so energized by it, as was the rest of the world. Jennifer Lawrence. Yes, exactly. I just had this know. I was just like, you know what? I'm going to go for it. I'm just going to email them, and I'm going to be, hey, like, I'm a psychiatrist. I trained at Yale. I know what I'm talking about. I'm dying to analyze this with you guys because they're really open about their own mental health in a really positive way. Like, they talk about their therapists and their psychiatrists really positively, which as a shrink, I appreciate. And they got back to me and they were like, okay, do you want to come on? And I was like, yeah, are you kidding? I didn't think you'd actually get back to me. It was so wild, portia. So anyway, so I joined them, and we talked about mental health stuff relating to the housewives. It was so cool. So let me ask you, is Salt Lake a good. Because to my limited knowledge, they haven't been around as long as four seasons, and you should. It's a good way to get into it. Okay. It's not like New York, where you'd have 20 years. Right? You have to watch. Like, this is pretty new, and it's explosive because one of them is now in prison, federal prison for six years for defrauding the elderly or this stuff. They caught it on camera. They didn't mean to. When the FBI came and raided their sprinter van, as they're all trying to go on a cast trip to look for her, you see all this unfold. So it's wild. It's wild. And then you see her profess her innocence and how all of them believe her, and then she pleads guilty. And as a mental health person, your wheels are turning, right? And all this stuff we talk about in our podcast, in terms of analyzing, is this person a narcissist? Are they a sociopath? What's the difference? It was just such a parallel to the finale. And so it was just so cool to talk to them for me personally, super selfishly, because I love them. You're a patreon member right? I'm what they call a bougie *****. I pay my, like, $12 a month, and I love that. They are the highlight of my week. I save it to listen to when I'm jogging and I'm giggling to myself. And it's such a good podcast because it's funny. I love the content. Their guests are amazing. But then it also has moments of being really sweet and poignant and moving. I just love that. And I think one thing that was so cool is that they were just as nice and warm and humble as they seem. And I feel like you don't always get that right sometimes they always say, don't meet someone you really want to meet because they could let you down. Right. And so I was kind of waiting for that, and it didn't happen. We sign onto the zoom, and I'm like, I can't believe I'm in this zoom. Of course. I'm so neurotic. I showed you, I had, like, four pages. You wrote so many notes. But you're also, like, a prepared queen who does research, and that's why you know what you're doing. I know. I think I probably drove the producer crazy because I was like, let me know what you want me to prepare. Do they have any specific questions? Otherwise, here's what I got, and I showed it to her. They were probably like, wow. But I wanted to be prepared. I wanted to really know what I was talking about. And then I feel like it totally kicks up my own imposter syndrome, where then you're like, maybe I don't really know what I'm talking. We log into the zoom. They let me in, and they introduce themselves. Hi, I'm Casey. Hi, I'm Danielle. And I was know I was, uh, I am fully aware, but that's just nice. I like that. That's nice. And it was a great conversation. It was really cool to see how does, like, I think we're a legit podcast, but, you know, one with membership ears and a producer, multiple producers, and they do live shows. They've been doing it for eight years. How do you do the tech? What's your tech set up as we're trying to figure it out ourselves? That was cool. And mostly, it was just so cool to talk about something I'm passionate about. Two things I'm so passionate about with these women I think are so funny. And that's your intuition, you know what I mean? That's your two worlds colliding. It was like, I don't know how I feel like it's all downhill from here in terms of 2024. We just started at the top. It's like the opposite of that Drake song. Yeah, there's nowhere else to go down. But, no, I hope that people enjoy it. I hope that we get some listeners from it who might be interested. I tried really hard to be like, yeah, we kind of talk like this, but more freely on our own podcast. They were so nice in terms of mentioning it and saying they were going to listen to it. And then I tried to plug us, and I said, like, hey, if you ever start your own podcast network, let us know if you're interested. We're here, and that's true. Producer Kate or producer Renee, if you're just. It was so cool. It was so. I'm. I'm so I'll. I'm obviously going to listen to the not. Well, I don't know if I can. If it's, like, a member, but you can share it with me. I want to hear that one episode. Yeah, well, I guess I'd pay for it because I'm a woman who supports other women. Yeah, we are women supporting women, as they say on the housewives, but usually they're not actually women supporting women. But we really. So thanks for having Katrina on. This is our life dream. It was so cool. It's just, like, such a cool, funny thing that I feel like only I would love so much. It's just such a funny thing, so unique to me. That was just like, yeah, I don't know. It's just, like, the coolest. I was talking to my mom when I was driving home, and I was like, it was so fun, and it was so cool to just be so present in such a fun moment. Right? Like, to just soak it up. So thank you to ***** Sesh for having me on. I took pictures of it on my calendar. I wrote it down in my paper calendar, so I have it for the whole year. It's just, like, so fun. It's so cool. That's a highlight. That's a highlight. That's a highlight for me, for sure. All right, well, thanks for sharing your story. I want to post this, so we got to keep it a little bit short, but I know we could literally talk forever about it because it's so cool. Oh, my God. And we'll talk about it maybe again. So listen to our other episodes. Yeah. Find us on Instagram and Ali scripts, podcasts on TikTok and YouTube. And welcome if you're coming over from ***** Sesh. We're all welcome here. We are a welcoming community. All right, thanks. Bye bye. Okay, it was.
[10:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: This podcast and its contents are a copyright of analyzed scripts, all rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited. Unless you want to share it with your friends and rate, review and subscribe, that's fine. All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings, or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
[11:39] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Our channel. You don't close.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are diving into the controversial 2009 movie, "The Blind Side." This movie tells the story of pro footballer Michael Oher through the Tuohy's perspective. The content of the film has recently been revealed as an inaccurate and harmful narrative that conflicts with other's accounts including his own. Zerrell Stallings and Qur-an Webb, co-founders of the Association of Black Sports Officials (ABSO), join us with their expertise on sports trafficking, conservatorship and the impact high pressure can have on young athletes. We hope you enjoy!
Association of Black Sports Officials
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are covering two popular documentaries that have recently been getting a lot of attention, "Escaping Twin Flames" on Netflix and "Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God" on Max. We discuss how cults prey on vulnerable people, some red flags to look out for and discuss similarities between these two cults as well as others. We hope you enjoy!
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Furey, a psychiatrist.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And this is analyze scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and tv shows.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: There is so much misinformation out there, and it drives us nuts.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: With a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And your DSM five, and enjoy. Welcome back to another episode of analyze scripts. We are doing something a little bit different today. Usually we focus on fictional tv shows and movies, but we have decided to take a stand against cults. And we have decided that we will make an exception and talk about cults when they're in the media, because they are honestly just so atrocious. So we're going to try to walk a really fine line here and still be ethical. We're not trying to analyze anyone specifically in terms of the people that are talked about and the two documentaries we're going to be talking about today. But we want to use this material to talk more broadly about cults in general, again, because it is really pervasive, it's really dangerous, it's heartbreaking, and we see it a lot in the media, but there's still so much confusion about it. So, again, if you want to hear more, you can also revisit one of our older episodes about yellow jackets season two with Dr. Jesse Gold. We talk a lot about Lottie's cult. And so, basically today what we're going to do is I watched a documentary about a cult. Portia watched a different documentary about the cult. A different cult. And we didn't watch each other's documentaries. And we're going to tell each other about the different cults. Right? Did I explain that? Yeah. Okay, so do you want me to get started, or do you want to get started?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Portia, why don't you intro yours and get started?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah, not my cult, but the cult. Too short. Okay, so I'm going to be referring to a recent Netflix documentary called escaping Twin Flames. I think that's what it's called. It was only about three episodes. They're about an hour long each. Interestingly, I watched them on an airplane when we were flying down to Disney World. So it was like an interesting juxtaposition, like going to the happiest place on earth and then watching all of this sadness and heartbreak and intensity sitting next to my children. It's interesting. This documentary follows an organization which obviously they don't call themselves a cult, but they have some experts kind of weighing in who do call it a cult, or also a high control group is like another phrase used to describe cults these days. And basically it's run by these two people, Jeff and Shalia, who I was just looking up their Wikipedia before we got started, Portia. And they both have had different names throughout their lives, according to Wikipedia, which I just think is interesting. And they run something called the Twin Flames University. I had never heard of twin flames until Megan Fox and machine gun Kelly. Right. Like, weren't they all about twin flames? Had you heard of this before? A little.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like, it's like an extra. Like, that was my understanding of what. Or, like, not an extra, a soulmate to the right.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right. Yeah. So I again looked it up on Wikipedia, because doctors use Wikipedia, too.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Did you donate?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: No, it's Christmas time. I'm a little stressed. But basically, according to Wikipedia, it says, the term twin flames was coined by the english novelist Marie Corelli in her novel of romance of two worlds. And since then, it has sort of evolved into a lot of new age spiritualism. Kind of focuses on twin flames. It's kind of like, it's my understanding it's like your soulmate, but even greater than that. So it's almost like meeting your counterpart and that you have to find each other in order to both achieve your full potential. That's kind of what it is. And then I guess these two folks started this twin flames university where you could take classes about bettering yourself and finding your twin flame. And again, like we talked about in our yellow jackets documentary, always be very careful when someone calls themselves a guru. Someday we'll have merch that has that slogan on it. Right. But just always be careful. And I was looking, and their class that they sold was over $4,000. That's a lot of money. A lot. But again, I see this. I don't know if you see it in people you're treating or evaluating, but I see a lot of people coming to me who are paying a lot of money out of pocket. They don't take insurance. They're also not advertising themselves as clinicians. They might advertise themselves as, quote unquote, life coaches or a coach of some kind, but you can charge whatever you want for whatever you're selling. And it's just interesting to me how some people get hooked and some people charge so much money. Anyway, what the premise of the documentary, Portia, is, is know. So these two people start this twin flames university, and they kind of use themselves as, like, we found our twin flame and this is how we did it. And look at how successful we are and how happy we are and stuff. And then people start joining, and it kind of becomes. I feel like they always become these MLM type things, right?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Where it's like you buy in and then you become the teacher. Did you watch that documentary about the Nexium cult?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Not that one, but Portia, I think I did the Lululemon. Not Lululemon, the Lula Rowe similar.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: So the nextium was really good. Also, like, heartbreaking and awful, but it's a really good expose about typical cult psychology. But again, it's like we are up here on a pedestal. Typically, cult leaders are like, malignant narcissists who want to be idealized, and they want people to obey them no matter what. And they have this sociopathic flair to them. Again, I'm not analyzing anyone specifically or individually. I'm just talking about, in general, what we see. They have this sociopathic flare where, again, they kind of get off or get a rush from controlling people. So those tend to be the people at the top of a cult, and then below are people who are vulnerable to this type of influence. And I think that's where the psychology is really fascinating. Like, how do people get hooked and kind of. It's not always like someone waiting on the end of the road, like, hey, come sign up for my cult. No one would do it. Right? So it tends to be people who are vulnerable in some way. Whether there's been a history of trauma, I would say really common. If there's developmental or intellectual disability, if there is some type of mental illness that can be exploited. Like, I remember in my training, a colleague of mine was treating a patient with psychosis who was getting sucked into these cults. And for someone like that who's already struggling to tell reality from not reality, you can see why you're vulnerable to this. And other times, I think you can just think of it as an unclear sense of self, like someone who maybe is feeling a little lost or who's looking to feel connection or community or love. I think those types of people might be more apt to, I don't know, just, I guess, feel, like, enticed by someone saying, I have all the answers. Look how great my life is. Like, you can have this, too. If you pay me $100 million and do everything I say and change everything about yourself, isn't that great? I think people who have a really strong sense of self, who have more of a secure attachment style, probably will sniff out the bs and turn away and not be as easily manipulated as other people who maybe are struggling with that. I don't know. What do you think?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think that's pretty true. I mean, I think a generalization would be that people who tend to kind of fall into cults or even like mlms, it's like you're looking for something and then this organization is promising to deliver, and then there's this added layer of like, you're a family. And obviously that feels really strong in a cult as we know it. And then also we do see that show up in Lularoe and your team and your girl boss thing. So it can be obviously different levels of it, but totally.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I found a really interesting article that we're going to link to in our show notes because we know how to do that now on psychology today, that really explains cults, written by Stephen Hassan, a PhD I thought was like a really good, easy to digest description. And they also say you can see these dynamics not just in cults, but you can see it in mlms, you can see it in religious organizations, you can see it in schools, you can see it in families, you can see it in the workplace. Again, it's not like this phenomenon is unique to cults. I think it's just from the outside. Like when you're watching a documentary like this, you're just like, what? How on earth did these people stick around? And it's because it's so insidious and slow, right? Like we're seeing it in a three hour documentary. This has been going on for years. I think these people started this organization like 2007. It doesn't happen overnight, right? So usually the leader is really charming and charismatic and captivating in some way, but then there's a lot of nefarious things going on underneath. So we'll link to that because it's really interesting. And I think it's important just to note that these dynamics exist other places. And that's one reason we want to talk about it again, to sort of help educate and push out some information. So I guess with this one, with the twin Flames university. So again, the whole goal is like, sign up for this class. You'll become self actualized. I feel like that's another thing. All these cults sort of advertise like, you'll be your best self, and then that's confusing. Because I feel like Weight Watchers advertise this, too, and other types of self help advertise that. So how do you draw the line? But then you pay for this. And then as this documentary goes on, Portia, you meet different characters in it, and you meet, like, there was one. I was trying to just look up their names again really quick.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So is this online mostly, like, the university? Like, I could sign up and take the class.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: You could go right now. I went to the website, actually, to see if it's still there. And it is. So it is online. And then they started having in person meetups, which I think once you do that, then those connections are even stronger. Right? Like, now you're seeing each other in person, and it's like, this is our community. This is our. He did, the leader, Jeff did have a goal of eventually having an actual community. Like, we're all going to move to this place. I don't know if that ever happened or not, but so we meet a lot of different people involved. And one person involved that really struck me was this young girl named Marley. I think she was in her late teens when she got involved. And again, I feel like that's, like, the perfect person who's susceptible. Like a 17 year old with an Internet connection.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: You're really figuring out who you are.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right, exactly. You don't have a fully formed identity yet because you're so young and you're just trying to figure it out. And we don't know anything about her background, so I'm not going to speculate, but basically, she was super young going to these classes. I don't know how she's paying for it. I'm not sure. And then what really struck me is basically, like, jeff and Shalia, the leaders would tell their participants, like, we know who your twin flame is. So, like, once you're self actualized enough, we'll let you know. Or we're going to help make the map. Yes, exactly. Like this ultimate puppeteer, right? This ultimate. And, like, they showed this scene where they were at the in person meetup, and they're all meeting for the first time, and they're talking to Marley and saying, like, well, is there anyone special in your life? Right? You know, they're showing this stuff, and somehow they have footage of it in real, like, they have the old footage. So someone was, like, filming all this, but then they're also showing Marley, like, present day, reflecting on the experience, and they're asking her, is there anyone special in your life right now? And she's kind of shy because she's like a kid and like, well, not really. And then Jeff's pushing her, like, are you sure? Are you sure? Sort of like, suggesting, like, he knows. And then she says, like, well, this guy has been texting me. And he's like, oh, that's it. That's it. This random guy who's texting her, and then that's her twin flame. Over time, she starts having a relationship with this guy. She moves in with him when she's really young. I can't remember the age difference, but there was a pretty significant gap. Not like 20 years, but maybe somewhere between five to ten years. And he had a criminal past. He was doing a lot of drugs. That's all we know. We don't know if there's any other trauma going on in the home as they're living together. I wouldn't be surprised if there was. And it just broke my heart that this young girl gets sucked in to thinking this is the person she's supposed to love, right? And you're just so brainwashed by it. So that was really captivating and sad. And then the other things that we see in the twin flames universe is we see a woman named Keeley, who's a key character in the documentary because she got in early and became, like, one of the teachers. So she was someone who was know. Jeff and Shalia are here. She's like the next level and trying to train other people. And how do you do the classes and stuff? And by the way, all these people are working for free. No one's getting paid. Eventually, Jeff and Shalia somehow incorporate to be a religion so that they don't have to pay taxes. And it's just like, again, all of this stuff is messy and very classic for so. But what's interesting about Keely in this documentary is that she comes in, she finds her twin flame very early on and is sort of put on this pedestal of the ultimate example of, like, look, it's not just us, Jeff and Shalia, who found our true love. These people also did using our methods, and now they can teach you. So they're like the ultimate teachers. And over time, she starts to kind of doubt what's going on. She eventually leaves, and you really see her grapple with the shame and guilt of what she did while she was part of the cult. And there's a scene at the end where she meets another former cult member who she used to be, like, the teacher of and would really push to do unhealthy things. And they just have this moment, this conversation where she's so genuinely apologetic, and it's really heartbreaking. You really see how that whole thing about how someone who's been abused becomes an abuser, and it's really heartbreaking to witness. So she's a really compelling character. And then the cherry on top of this awful Sunday, Portia, is that.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Just nervous.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I know. You should be like, hold on tight. So as if all of this wasn't bad enough, as they know, Jeff and shalia start morphing their teachings to include that everyone is either a divine masculine or a divine feminine. Okay? So they're saying you're either a divine masculine or a divine feminine. You don't have both characteristics of both. And you have to find, like, if you're a divine, if you are a divine feminine, you have to define your divine masculine and vice versa. Like, two divine feminines, two divine masculines can't be together. Okay? So then they start telling people whether they are a divine masculine or feminine, whether or not that matches with that individual's own sense of their gender, okay? And it's also not based on the person's outwardly appearing gender. So they're not telling all the outwardly appearing girls you're defined feminine, and all the outwardly appearing males, you are divine masculine. The reason why is because they had way more women as students than men. So I think they started running out of men to pair with people. Honestly, it seems like. So they started telling certain women, like, you are a divine masculine, and this divine feminine is your twin flame. You need to be in a relationship with them. And some of these people now who are being interviewed are like, I'm not attracted this person. I don't feel like I'm trans or anything like that. In Portia, it goes so far that some of the people got top surgery. I know. And so abuse 100% across the board. This is why I feel like we can make the exception and talk about cult like this, because it is so atrocious. It's like a human rights violation, I feel like. And what I really liked about this documentary, actually, is that. And I was, like, talking about this just socially with some of my friends who aren't in the mental health field. And they agreed that they really appreciated how in this documentary, they had someone who is, I forget exactly what their title was, but they work at, like, a university and gender studies and do a lot of advocacy for transgender rights and things like that. And they very clearly said, this actually is anti trans. Like, twin flames university is advertising itself as pro. Like, we support this. We'll support you when no one else in your family does. We'll support you getting your surgery and things like that. But they're like, this is actually completely anti trans because you are telling someone what they are and how their body should look, and you don't care if that matches their own inner experience. Right? And that is like, bad. So bad. And so this documentary does follow a couple of people in particular who ended up getting surgeries. And one of the most heartbreaking scenes is when they follow a group of mothers who have been disconnected from their children, who have joined this cult. And one of them is watching her daughter talk about getting top surgery because she was told she's a divine, masculine, and it's just so heartbreaking to see. And then the other two pieces of the documentary that just blew my mind were at the beginning, they advertised having, and there was a psychologist involved, okay? Like someone with real training. They advertised having some sort of treatment for PTSD, of all things. And I just think that is disgusting. It is egregious. It should be reportable to whatever medical or psychology board this person is licensed by because they're advertising like, we have this treatment. And really they're just like indoctrinating people. And so that was really disgusting to me. And the last thing I wanted to tell you about was we saw one of these moms as she's talking to the camera about basically her child cut her off. And she keeps trying to reach out. She's not hearing back, but she keeps trying. And I feel like that's a message I want to get out is like, if you have someone you love in one of these cults or high control groups, just keep reaching out, even if you're getting nothing back, because you just have to keep that thread of attachment going so that when the person is hopefully ready at some point to leave, they know you're still there. So this mom kept reaching out, kept reaching out even though she wasn't getting anything back. And then as she's talking to the camera, her child text messages her. And you see her very genuine reaction, just like. And all the text said was like, mom, it's me. I need help getting out of this relationship. And she's just like, I just got chills trying to tell you about it because it's so moving and it's so sad. And you see just such a genuine reaction of her saying, like, oh, my God, she got back to me. I want to say something, but I don't want to push her away. I want to keep this going, but I don't want it to be too much like what do I way? And then you see her telling the other moms that she heard from her child and how they're supporting each other. Oh my God. It's really intense. And I would say this documentary is very hard to watch because you really see how so many people have been exploited and traumatized and how they're trying to pick up the pieces and how there's still so many people in it. But I think it really speaks to cults and kind of what it's like. And I feel like twin flames to me always sounded like ludicrous. It just sounds like something that's so ludicrous. But I think that's also an important point is that to some people it's not ludicrous. Yeah. And it just depends on what you're searching for. Right. Whether it's like love or a family or money for MLM schemes.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right. So that key part, I think in your cult and that what you not.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Dr. Fairy's cult, I do not have one.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I am not a guru. Right. So in love has won, which I watched, which is on HBO or Max, three parts, 3 hours. It sounds like there's a lot of people who are in general prior to joining are kind of like anti establishment. Some the government isn't working for us anymore, which a lot of people feel that way.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Exactly.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So there's these know, I think sometimes really normal thoughts or feelings somebody could have.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And then it's like the kind of.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Takes that and it's like, oh, yeah. So like we also believe this. And then they kind of continue to pull you in. I think we saw that a little bit with QAnon stuff. It's like some of what I'm sure they had out there is pretty believable. So that kind of draws the person to do more research and then all of a sudden you're in a cold.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right. And again, it's like, I feel like it's certain types of people who are going to keep getting sucked in. And the leaders have an uncanny ability to sniff that out and they know who they can manipulate and exploit, right.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: No, totally. So speaking of that. So Amy Carlson or mother God.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Oh, mother God.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Or mother Earth or divine mother was a young, I'd say attractive woman who had three husbands and some children who she ended up leaving all for her own kind of spiritual journey. So her mother and sister describe her as being really charismatic. She worked at McDonald's and was kind of immediately, like in a leadership role, she was constantly being promoted. Her team loved her. She had this way with people. During that time, she was with a partner, and she had several children, et cetera. So then she starts to kind of join these online chat groups, which I feel like is a pretty common start to the depths of the Internet. So she started with spiritual singles, and she ended up meeting this man who was much, much older than her, or at least he appears much older than her on lightworkers.org. So they were, like, messaging back and forth. It's basically just people who are, I would imagine, interested in spirituality, and you can chat with each other about the divine and mutually interesting things. So she meets Amorith White Eagle, and she ends up meeting him.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: What's that name again?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So it's amorous white eagle.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Is this person, like, indigenous?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I don't know. Okay, so this all kind of then takes place in the Pacific Northwest, it appears Colorado, Oregon, kind of back and forth. So she meets him. They end up getting married. I'm not sure if it's a legal marriage or they just have a ceremony, and they start putting their message out online. So they're interviewing him. He appears, I don't know, like, 70, and she's, like, 30. But funnily, that is. She, though, seems like she's running the show still. So he's very peace and love, and he's kind of going along with whatever she's saying. So she wants to put more on social media. He's like, okay. And then she ends up leaving him eventually, I think, like, after a year, to kind of start an organization with people that she also met online who are then more close in age to her.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Did she use his money or something?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: No, it seemed kind of like they lived in nature. He didn't really have much. He seems like this is an opinion, like, sweet. Like, just like a hippie. Like, living on the land.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: New ag.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Okay.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And so she then he, like, compost. Yeah, totally compost. She takes that and runs with. She gets. She meets this guy who she, um. So this is a big kind of part of her. So she heals him of cancer.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: They always are healing people of cancer. Jeff and Shalia said they could do that, too, by the way. And they also call themselves the divine father and the divine mother. And they went through ivf to have a daughter who's the defined daughter, and I worry for her. But sidebar. Anyone who's calling themselves divine father or mother, run away. Run away. Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And that always seems to be a theme of healing people.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yes.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So he comes to live with her, works with her, and then there's this other person who comes in who then becomes, like, the second father God, who he appears to not be in the cult anymore as he's being interviewed for the show. So he kind of has, like, a different stance than everyone else who is interviewed who appear to still really believe some of her messages. So this is not even the crux of the story. So she gathers these group of people who they talk about have pretty significant trauma histories, and then these beliefs come out where. So they believe that they are being led by, like, Robert Williams, St. Germain. Most of these people who are deceased, there's only one living person who is Donald Trump. So they have this board with all of their pictures, and she's constantly getting messages from Robin Williams and has been. So she's God who's billions of years old. She has been Marilyn Monroe, she has been Cleopatra. She's been all of these kind of famous women throughout history who've done different things. So I was like, you're Marilyn Monroe and you're like Joan of. Oh, okay. They're just different.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Like reincarnation or something.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Only for her, it's not.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Ultimate exception.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, so Robin Williams is telling know, I'm kind of skipping some things, but basically that she needs to be at a really low weight to be picked up by the starships. So she starts restricting her food intake, which is just interesting because that's what I do in my private practice. I was like, oh, here we go. And to be, like, 103 pounds, she has to be under 103 in order to be picked up. So other people in the group as well start restricting nutrition. The lighter you are, the higher frequencies you can tolerate. So they also believe that marijuana and alcohol are, like, tools of healing if used appropriately, which they do say, which I was like, okay. But apparently her use of alcohol combined with her food restriction seems to lead to her downfall. So she gets really sick, like, pancreatitis. I think her liver is failing, probably. And so she's very small. They go to Hawaii to try to heal her. She gets Kauai. They get literally driven out of Kauai by the people who live there because she is now saying that she is, and I'm not remembering it at the time, but she's like, there this goddess that they believe in, and she's saying that she's that person or that spiritual leader, and they're like, no, you're not. That's really disrespectful. So they leave Kauai go back to Colorado, and she's dying. And meanwhile, this whole time they're trying to save her, and she's ingesting high levels of colonial.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Oh, just try to heal her.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Quote unquote.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah, okay.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And so she ends up passing away. And meanwhile, her family, before this, has put her on Dr. Phil to try to point out that she's a cult. Dr. Phil is involved. It doesn't work. She presents as just, I'm really spiritual and not giving culty vibes at all. Doesn't do anything. Meanwhile, they interview her daughter, who's just sad watching it. She feels abandoned by her mom. So Amy dies, and they are convinced, per her, that she is going to be picked up by the starships. So they have her body at home, or it happens in a hotel, and they are, like, holding up these freak.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: These.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: They use them in the ghost stories where you hold up this instrument and, oh, the thing goes crazy. The frequency. So they're, like, holding it up to her dead body. Meanwhile, all of this, they have filmed. They've filmed and written down everything that she's ever done. She sleeps five times. She did this because she's God.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And so they have a dead body.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: With them for a week, like a week or two. They end up leaving the hotel because people are really confused and concerned. They go back to the house in Colorado. The police end up coming. She's modified.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah, that's what. Oh, my God.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And it was never taken. And they still kind of were saying that they believe to this day that we are so curious what her autopsy showed. She has three hearts. I'm sure all the medical people were blown away and everyone still believe it. To kind of branch off and do something with spirituality. Again, it was a pretty small cult. There was, like twelve to 20 active members who were living there. Then again, they made over $350,000 that one of the members then stole after she died and took because all of it was in his name. Because there's always a theme of money, greed, power in a cult, in my experience. So I think we saw all of the key themes of a person with a really unique ability to have charisma and charm. It just seems like there's always common themes with cults which we see over and over again. And I think really what I was keeping in mind while watching this documentary is there can be such a fine line between spirituality and just having different beliefs that maybe are not mainstream, and that's okay. But there becomes this little line that gets crossed where there's like abuse and someone taking advantage over someone else. And it's like that, to me, is really the difference between anything you want to believe in or do or how you want to live. But when you're harming others or being harmed, it's like that's when it's not.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Okay. Right. And I think I had a friend recently ask me, how do you tell the difference between someone who's psychotic and someone who is running a cult but not psychotic? So the woman you were just describing to me, Portia, the mother God person, sounds like she may have had elements of both, which is possible, although I would imagine, although I don't know for sure, more rare. But again, I would say people who are cult leaders tend to meet criteria for what we call malignant narcissism. So, again, as we talk about with narcissistic personality disorder, they really elevate themselves into this God role. They believe God is talking to them, but then they also take advantage of other people, whereas I think someone who is just struggling with a psychotic disorder, who may have religious delusions, again, they might also believe that God is talking to them, but then they're not using that to their advantage and exploiting people to make money or for sex or some other kind of secondary gain. So I think that's something important to note.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, no, I would agree. It's so hard. And I think we should, like you said, create some merch. We need, like, a clear checklist to ask yourself to disseminate to everyone. Like, is this a cult or not? Where are the red flags?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Seriously? Seriously. Again, I would say be very wary of anyone calling themselves a guru or using words like that who doesn't have the applicable training or credentials. That even goes, I think, for getting medical advice online, like on Instagram and TikTok, be really cautious and look into what is this person's credentials? Are they really qualified to be telling me these things? Be mindful of how much are they charging? What are you getting from it when they're charging you? And what does your gut tell you? If your gut red flags are going off, you got to listen.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, that's a good one. I like the part about the cost, because things should feel balanced. If you're getting a worksheet or if I'm paying an insurance via insurance for therapy and I'm paying, I don't know, it can be anywhere from 90 to 150, depending on an insurance rate, for an hour. And that person is credentialed. Right. If you take insurance, you have to be a certain quality of practitioner. And so if you're seeing someone who's like a guru or a coach and you're paying privately and they do not have the credentials, and I'm paying maybe $800 for an hour sessions, it's like.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: That just feels off.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I'm not talking about private pay or for someone who does have credentials, but if you can get therapy from a certified, licensed practitioner that generally, sometimes insurance covers, sometimes it doesn't, for around $100, depending where you are and someone, a coach is asking for hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars, that just feels off.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right. And that is a theme we've seen, at least in these two documentaries we're talking about today, is the cost of the classes or whatever it is you're buying seems exorbitant. I mean, like at twin Flames University, I read they were charging $4,000. That's crazy. That's really a lot of money. So you really just have to be mindful of what are you getting out of it. And as soon as you start to get a whiff of someone trying to change who you are or someone trying to convince you that they know you better than you know yourself, huge red flag. Run away. If you're feeling devalued around them and they're always putting themselves on a pedestal. Run away. If everyone's fawning over them and the people who bring up a criticism or have a question get ostracized. Run away. Run away.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, that's a good point. That's on the sweatshirt.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Run away. Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So you can find both of these documentaries. One of them, the one Katrina watched, twin flames, is on Netflix. And then the one that I watched, love has won, is on Max, both short kind of docuseries, which I loved that it wasn't 8 hours. Both sad and just the after effects are sad. And cults obviously can be so dangerous and abusive. There's many practitioners out there who specialize with treatment of people who have been in a. If you're. If you have more interest in it, like Katrina is going to link that psychology today article and then know, I think our biggest theme is please reach out.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So in the one I watched, there was a mother who continuously was kind of getting police involvement and calling her daughter and contacting her, and they ended up reuniting at the end. And just as painful as it is, please don't give up.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Don't give up. Don't give up. Yeah, that's a big theme I want to get across, too. And we'll keep covering cults I think moving forward, again, we want to be mindful and be really clear. We're not analyzing any one person in particular. We're just using this media to talk about this phenomenon in more detail because it is so dangerous and so many people are getting hurt by these things. And I would imagine like coming out of COVID with so much more happening, think, you know, it's reaching more people these days, like cults, and all you need know, you can be in a cult of one. It doesn't have to be huge. So that's another thing to keep in mind is these dynamics can play out in smaller communities, smaller relationships, even within families. So we're hoping to try to shed some light on these toxic dynamics so you can protect yourself totally.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Well, thank you for joining us today, and we look forward to catching up with you next time as we cover another movie or tv show.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah, and find us on TikTok and Instagram and YouTube at Analyze Scripts podcast. Please rate, review, and subscribe and let us know what you think. And let us know what you'd like to hear us cover. Next. Bye bye.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are kicking off 2024 with Disney's 2013 smash hit "Frozen." This film has taken the world by (ice) storm, and we'd argue for good reason! In this episode, we spend time discussing perfectionism and "eldest daughter syndrome" while analyzing Anna and Elsa's sibling dynamic and their different reactions to early childhood trauma. It's so fascinating and fun to use these characters to explore anxious-avoidant attachment (Elsa) and disinhibited social engagement disorder (Anna). We also (once again!) discuss a character with nefarious intent and ASPD (antisocial personality disorder) traits - Hans! We talk about why people like Anna are more vulnearble to sociopathic manipulation and exploitation, and how you can protect yourself if you find yourself interacting with people like this. We are so stoked Disney depicted such complex themes for a new generation and we hope you enjoy!
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[00:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Furey, a psychiatrist.
[00:12] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker. And this is analyze scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of.
[00:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: Mental health in movies and tv shows.
[00:23] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends.
[00:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: There is so much misinformation out there, and it drives us nuts.
[00:32] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like.
[00:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: With a lay flat airline or a.
[00:37] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Major beauty brand, even better. So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn.
[00:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: And your dsm five, and enjoy. Let it go. Let it go. We're so excited to talk about Frozen today. If you couldn't tell, that was not Adina Menzel. That was me.
[01:05] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Wow.
[01:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know she's basically my doppelganger when it comes to singing, but I know it's quite a shock.
[01:13] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But.
[01:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: No, in all seriousness, I'm really excited to talk about Frozen. It's January when this is being released. It's very chilly in the northeast where we live, and it's just such a classic movie. I believe it's like the ten year anniversary of it being released, right?
[01:32] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
[01:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: And obviously there's been a sequel, and there's going to be a third one coming out, I think, in a year or two. I can't remember if it's 2024 or 2025, but there's definitely a third one coming out. So if you've been living under a rock, this 2013 mega hit Frozen is a Disney movie inspired by Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tale the Snow Queen. Again, I just love using fairy tales to talk about mental health stuff and development and attachment and all the things. And it won, like, a bazillion award. It won an Oscar for best animated feature, best original song, which, you know, gave you a little preview of. It won a Golden Globe. It won a BAFTA award. It won two Grammy awards. I mean, just huge. And have you seen this before, Portia?
[02:22] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yes, I have. And I do really like it. Yeah. I really like frozen. The music is wonderful.
[02:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: I do, too.
[02:28] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
[02:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: So good. It's so good. The music is right on par for me with Encanto, where I don't mind listening to it. It really gets in your head. And I know I keep talking about my recent Disney trip, but it's just because it was so much fun, and there's just so much, like, frozen paraphernalia everywhere.
[02:51] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Oh, yeah.
[02:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: And it's great, right? Because everyone loves frozen, I think, also because it was, like, the Christmas time. So it was easy to incorporate. But, like, at Hollywood studios, they have a whole frozen sing along, which is great. There's some characters, and then there's some funny narrators, and then you get to sing some of the songs with the kids, and Elsa comes out, and all the little kids go crazy. You can meet Olaf, and it's just, like, adorable. And I just think one thing I love about this movie is it's just so different from the classic Disney movies where it's not like the girl finding her true love in a male partner. It's like the sisters and their love between each other is, like, what saves the day. It's so beautiful.
[03:45] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I didn't watch it, I think, for, like, a year or two. But it's so funny because I was like, oh, at the end, her sister saves her, not the guy. And I was like, oh, I wish that her sister could save her. So, obviously, that memory had stayed with me, but I don't know why I thought it was, like, my idea or I had this epiphany that, oh, it could be, like, family love or friend love, but obviously, Disney knew what they were doing, and I love that twist to it. I think it's, like, such a difference from the traditional Disney princess movies.
[04:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. And it's like one of those messages that, like, so glad children are seeing and internalizing these days. So I wanted to start, if it's okay if I take the lead, um, just talking, know, once again, their early childhood attachment styles.
[04:39] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I know.
[04:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: Total shocker that we want to analyze the attachment styles of Elsa and Anna.
[04:45] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right.
[04:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: Did that cross your mind at all?
[04:48] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, it crossed my mind with Anna, with. And you're going to talk more about the types, but her disinhibited social. Right. She'll go with anyone.
[04:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my Gosh.
[04:58] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: You guys are the best, or I'm in love with you. And they just.
[05:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes, yes, exactly. So, again, we see. Okay, so Elsa is older than Anna. We don't exactly know how much older, but I think, like, nicely displays, like, eldest daughter syndrome, which is not a real syndrome, but funnily enough, have you been seeing that thing floating around on Instagram? I love it. It's like, we do need to add it to the. It's just so funny. But anyway, we kind of saw that again with Kanto, with just. It's funny. So Elsa is a little older than Anna, but they're still pretty close in age enough to be, like, playmates and stuff. And we see early on that as they're playing Elsa has these powers that she doesn't know how to control, and it hurts Anna. And so, very early on, we see her parents take them to the trolls, which are really cute. I guess they're almost like the medicine men of Arendelle, who give them the advice, know, in order to heal Anna, they have to remove that part of her memory. And interestingly, it leaves that wisp of white hair. So there's always, like, a trace of it, right? It's always a trace of the trauma, even if you can't remember.
[06:12] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It's a good metaphor.
[06:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes, for repression, right? But then she forgets that bond with her sister, and then it's almost like the parents lock Elsa away from everyone because she can't control her powers. And I always just thought that was so interesting and so sad. And, gosh, really sends the message to Elsa that you hurt people you can't control. Right. Like, how did you interpret that?
[06:49] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I loved watching it, knowing that we were going to record, because I felt like I thought about it in such a different way. And with her, it was just like, exactly what you're saying with repression. But it's like, Elsa has to be so perfect and feel nothing, like a shell, which we're not wired to be, in order to not have any emotion, which will then kind of send the ice and snow all over the place. And so I think that's often, like, a message that some people get. You can't be yourself or your emotions are too big, and so then we tuck that all away, and then what happens? We explode.
[07:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right, exactly. And also. Great. I just was thinking, like, I wonder if Elsa struggled with disordered eating and perfectionism. Maybe OCD.
[07:35] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Again, we don't profile with those kind of disorders.
[07:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. She's at risk for those things. And even with wearing her gloves to prevent the ice, I could just see some OCD type behavior she could develop. We don't see that in the movie, but, again, being super analytical. But, yeah, just, like, even if you just use the ice as a metaphor for emotion. Oh, it's beautifully done. It is, right? It's so beautifully. So, like, basically, Elsa's emotions trigger the ice, which hurts her sister. And I think all siblings can relate to this, that sometimes they hurt your siblings. There's conflict. But, like, gosh, it must have been so hard for Elsa to be so locked away and so scared and to be trying to control it but not being able to yet. And it's like, girl, she just got to just let her grow up.
[08:33] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And the blame. Right.
[08:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: The self blame the shame. Really intense. And then we have Anna, like, on the other end.
[08:41] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yes.
[08:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: Who's also isolated but in a different way.
[08:45] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right. She doesn't know. Right. Like, she doesn't know why. It's just, like, everyone's treating us this way. That's just how it is. No one's explained it.
[08:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: You don't get the sense, like. So they weren't let out of the castle either. Like, the doors were shut. They're all in.
[09:01] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: The windows were shut. It's dark. It's, like, empty.
[09:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's cold.
[09:05] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Which I just think is whole movie's way of talking about isolation.
[09:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes. What that feels like. And so then even you have Anna. I'm like, did they each have a separate tutor? They don't have any friend. Did Anna at least get to talk to the staff? She at least would talk to the. Like, she could at least use some make believe or. But, like, she was also isolated but not alone in a room. She was, like, in a big old castle. But I got the sense she had more interactions with her parents or stuff. Like. But, like, not enough, I think, to develop secure attachment style.
[09:44] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Definitely felt neglectful after Elsa had hurt her. And then when the parents.
[09:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, the parents always have to die in Disney movies. And at that little show I was just talking about, the frozen sing along at Disney. That's one of the funny things they mentioned. They list off all, really, movies where the parents died. It takes him, like, ten minutes, all of them. Right. And I was trying to figure out how old were they when the parents died? It seemed like at least adolescence or young adulthood. But it's tragic. It's unexpected. It's in a shipwreck. It's really sad. So they barely had any social connection. Their parents were like, it, and now they're gone, and now they have to figure out what to do. Right.
[10:41] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I'm wondering if the parents had been alive, still would know, and maybe any parents. No one gets it perfect, but I wonder if they would have helped Anna or, I'm sorry, Elsa later on with maybe taking her to the trolls again when she's an adult helping her. But it's like, regard will never. So, like, she didn't get any help in kind of trying to regulate her emotions. So first the message was right. Like, I'm bad. I hurt people. There's something wrong with me. But then the loss of the parents, which was obviously wildly impactful, but then there was no opportunity for her to receive a different, like, she.
[11:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's like, just, like, compounded psychological isolation and alienation. Right, yeah. And then we see how each girl, Elsa and Anna reacts to then interacting with society, and they take such wildly different approaches. Right. So do you want to speak to that a little bit?
[11:45] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, I thought. And again, the music is just so wonderful. I loved the whole song. When Anna is watching them open up the castle, right? She's running around, she's seeing the light. She's going through the gates. She's, like, dancing around everyone. She's so excited to finally get her needs met and be around a million people and talk to everyone and look at everyone, and then obviously, like, polar opposite. Elsa is so terrified of what she might do, what might happen. It's visible, which I think is great for kids. Like, Anna's like. And then Elsa's just, like, there with her gloves so tight, like, her chest, her body language.
[12:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. Just trying so hard to not feel anything, but actually feeling a ton of.
[12:32] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, yeah. And I forgot that the guy who Anna meets was bad Hans. Yeah. Oh, my God.
[12:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: Again, not to go back to that little show, but it was so funny in that little show at, like, they run through the plot and everything, and they put Hans up on the big screen, and the man narrator was like, he's literally wearing a red flag because he wears, like, a red. Oh, my God. I thought that was so funny.
[13:02] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I was like, yes, that's hilarious.
[13:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: He's such a good example of love bombing, right?
[13:11] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. Like, a perfect example.
[13:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: Perfect example of just, like, again, when we say love bombing, that's not, like, a technical term. Like, we don't use that diagnostically. It's not in the DSM. But it's, like, this way of interacting that people often with malicious intent, whether they're fallen, the narcissistic spectrum, the antisocial spectrum, or they're just manipulative. This way they relate to you to really suck you in. So love bombing might be really quickly praising you, idealizing you, buying you gifts, flying you on a private jet, proposing you love.
[13:48] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yes.
[13:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: Mirroring back whatever you're interested in, they mirror it back to, like, oh, my God, me? Like, you feel like you've met your twin. Know stuff like that. Such a perfect example. And again, I was stoked that Disney is displaying this, as hopefully, all the children watching are internalizing this as a cautionary tale. Right?
[14:10] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And Elsa even says, like, you can't.
[14:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: Marry someone you just met, which is.
[14:14] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Totally accurate, like, day of. Right. Like, we shouldn't be doing that. And I think it speaks, know, on polar opposite ends of the spectrum, I think that's an appropriate advice to give. However, it's also Elsa giving that advice who's like, I don't know. She would never want to be with a partner, or that could never happen. And then Anna is so vulnerable to someone taking interest in her and talking to her that it's so easy for her to be swooped up, which people who are malicious often can pick up on.
[14:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: They can sniff it out. Right. I think that's like, you just got to be so careful. And I think if you have a personal. This is not medical advice. I have to give that disclaimer, but I might recommend, if it were, that if you have a personal history of attachment, trauma or neglect or abandonment or abuse, just know that you might be at risk for really craving that love and attention and validation and approval. And people with these traits and malicious intent, they can sniff that out.
[15:18] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Totally.
[15:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: I just think you're more at risk for being exploited or sucked up in that way. I just see this all the time with patients.
[15:30] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right.
[15:31] Dr. Katrina Furey: Especially I'm thinking of children, adolescents with early childhood trauma, or even certain types of intellectual disabilities or things like that. People who have nefarious intent will prey on vulnerable people whose defenses are lower. That's just like, how it happens, right?
[15:51] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I wish there was. I'm curious, the science behind is it the body language that I guess classic, maybe like, I'm thinking narcissist or sociopath is picking up on? How do they know? What are they reading? Is it like, not in my heart body language.
[16:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: But I think also another thing that I read somewhere along the way in my training or readings or whatever, is that people who have a secure inner sense of themselves feel like they are worth being treated with respect and are worth having their own boundaries and know that they can say no or are able to stay in touch with things that don't feel good and know, like, I don't like that I'm going to pivot and move a different direction.
[16:41] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right.
[16:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: So the person trying to get to you isn't going to get to that person, right. Because they're going to turn away from them. But the person, maybe who doesn't have that secure inner sense of themselves or who struggles to set boundaries because it wasn't modeled for them or their own boundaries were violated in childhood, it's going to have a harder time naturally turning away from them. And I think that's when those people are like, aha, I might be able to get you. So let me lay it on thick and really try to get my claw. Does that make sense? I think that's at least part of it.
[17:19] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I was just thinking of, like, I don't know if it's him, but I think Ted Bundy really, truly, classically, like a predator out there kind of at a bar or somewhere, and it's like, just kind of scanning the room. And I think somebody has spoken about being surviving because they didn't go with them or something like that. And this is so just not maybe true at all. But I wonder if they had a secure attachment or, like, oh, I don't really want to.
[17:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: They didn't.
[17:50] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Versus noticing someone who's maybe seems really uncomfortable or insecure, kind of looking around and like, okay, that person looks like I can be really nice and make. Yeah.
[18:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: Even as you said that, portia, you sort of hunched. Like, even your own body language as you're describing what you imagine it might look like. I think you're right. And I think these people are really good. I think especially sociopaths or people with antisocial personality disorder when it reaches that level. Like with Ted Bundy, he purposefully feigned illness or injury to lure his victims in. So it's only going to be the people who have a kind enough heart to go help that he's going to get. So already, there's going to be other people who are like, I'm too busy for this, blah, blah, blah, blah. These other people with a kind heart could also be busy, but put someone else's assumed needs ahead of their own and then get sucked in. Right? Yeah, but people with really pure, really nefarious, antisocial personality disorder are experts at mimicking human emotions and behavior without actually feeling any of it. So you've got to imagine they have been studying this in other people in a way that other people aren't. And again, this is just my opinion. This isn't like, I don't have data to back this up, but I think that they're just really astute at picking that up. And I always say, just, like, sniffing out the vulnerability.
[19:28] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Which, again, Elsa was right, or Anna was right in front of him, but there was no way he was going to be approaching Elsa.
[19:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: He might have wanted to, right?
[19:37] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But she.
[19:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: Wouldn'T even. Again, Elsa's not even out there in the crowds trying to make friends.
[19:47] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right?
[19:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: Anna's, like, everywhere. And then I bet Hans, when they fall into the boat together, could quickly pick that up, that she's so eager for attachment or friendship, that she has that vulnerability that he's going to use it and exploit know. Yeah, it's a really interesting, he's, you.
[20:07] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Know, the red flag guy. I love that. I wish people could walk around with their red flags because some red flags are just red flags. For some people, it's like, oh, that's not a good thing for me. But other red flags are like, danger, danger, avoid.
[20:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think the thing is that people who, again, their early needs are not met or their own boundaries are violated or things like that. People who struggle with their own types of boundaries for whatever reason, whether it's something as severe as early childhood abuse or neglect or it's just like you grew up in kind of a dysfunctional family. I just think when you're vulnerable to this, you're almost, like, good at talking yourself out of your fear response.
[20:51] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yes.
[20:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: And we've talked about this before, too, how in our american culture, women are kind of just, like, conditioned to do. Right?
[21:02] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, I think we talked about Barbie.
[21:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: With Barbie. We've talked about it with you when she's being stalked.
[21:09] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yes.
[21:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: You talked about a lot how in our society, women just walking around over the course of their life will face sexual harassment, sexual assault, like things like this. And you're just sort of told to like, well, that's boys. All of those messages get internalized. And I think people who maybe fall victim to these situations, again, it's not their fault by any means, but I think someone who can stick with that fear response and internally validate it and listen to it and get out of there is very different from someone who might feel it but then has been conditioned to undo it or minimize it and validate it for themselves. So then they're like, well, I'm probably overreacting, rather than being like, no, this is my gut telling me to get out of here.
[22:02] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, no, I agree. And I think it's so like Anna was in love with Hans when she meets Christophe. Yes. And so I think it's nice because they got to develop this friendship where, like, did have boundaries, and it was like, friends. And we don't do this. And I'm being more direct with you and I'm kind of being more myself, whereas that, again, within the context of the movie, I think sets, like, a good groundwork for it being safe, even when then they are in love. I'm hopeful about that relationship because it started that way where it was like she throws the carrots right at his head because she buys them this stuff and he's helping her, but she's like, oh, get away. I just think it's good. They're evenly matched then. Because she's in love.
[23:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right, exactly, but. And she's not. Like, I could see Anna, like, with Hans. Like, at first it seemed like when they're singing that song together about finishing each other's sandwiches, she's saying things and he's mirroring it back. But I could also see it go the other way where when she feels like, oh, this is it. Yeah, I'm finally in love. Like, I've always wanted to be in love. I could see her kind of, like, changing herself to mirror his interests and needs so she doesn't lose. Like, I think she has attachment trauma and she's going to be afraid of loss. So anyway, then we see. Where do we go to next? I mean, I want to get back to Elsa and how she banishes which.
[23:43] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Which. Which makes sense, such in the context of her greatest fear. So she loses her gloves, and then she loses her emotions, which are normal emotions to have at that time. Like, this is scary. Coronation. Like, all this is pressure. And then she puts up that wall and everyone sees her. And then that mean little man, weasel man, is like, she's a witch or.
[24:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, she runs away. Like, who wouldn't run away? Like, so much pressure. She's got no model for how to do this. No one's ever really helped her regulate her own emotions. Elsa needs some good old DBT, but. So she runs away. She's avoidant. And she just, again, is, like, really good depiction, I think, of avoidant attachment style. Right?
[24:30] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, that way. And it kind of is physically, but it is also for her, too.
[24:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I just love in the iconic musical sequence of let it go, how she just. You see her feel so comfortable with just shooting out the ice, building the wall. She takes her hair down. She changes her outfit. Right? You see her just grow into herself. And the lyrics of the song are actually so moving when you think about it, as you could apply it to anyone, maybe especially girls, just being like, shed this image of perfection. Just like, be yourself. And then she's like, the cold never bothered me anyway. It's like, yeah, you can feel all these negative feelings.
[25:22] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: You're a snow queen.
[25:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: You're a human. We all have negative feelings. It's okay. It's just really beautiful. But then you still see how it creates such interpersonal conflict with Anna, who, despite everything, still wants to be her sister and is worried about her and goes after her. Anna's not like, okay, I'll be queen. Right, bye, Elsa. Like, I'll do know which maybe some people, like one of the succession siblings might have know, but she wants to go find her and she loves her. And I think that is that thread of that early connection they had. And again, playing with the snowman back when Elsa had the powers and they were kids and they'd sneak into the ballroom and play with them and it was not dangerous yet. And then I just thought it was really beautiful that then Olaf is this concrete depiction of that bond they have that helps bring them back together.
[26:16] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. It is a happy ending in the sense that I think of Anna kind of, kind of repeatedly, even throughout childhood, trying to get Elsa to play with her after, like, kind of banished as, like Charlie Brown continuing to kick the football and getting it pulled out over and over and over again and how painful that. But, like, at least in this scenario, it does work out. Her consistent kind of, I'm here. I want to be your friend. I want to be your sibling. I want to be your sister. I want to love you works, but in other ways sometimes not in this movie, but it doesn't. And it just really painful.
[26:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: It just reminded me of totally different vibe. But in the bear season two and the finale, when Richie is outside the freezer or the fridge that Carmen's stuck in and Carmen's just spewing all this hatred and venom vitriol at him and Richie stays constant and is like, I love you, I love you. It's just like that's sort of the same thing. And also is trying to push her away, know, building the ice castle, making that big snowman guy and trying to keep her away. But Anna keeps coming. Again, could it be at her own detriment? Like, she could have gotten really right? Yeah. Again, like, Anna's vulnerable to continuing to seek out people who might be hurting her, but in this way, it has a good ending.
[27:45] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. Which is why it's worth it. But sometimes it doesn't work out that way.
[27:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: Sometimes it's not worth it. And that's really hard when you're faced with a situation like that, when it is your sibling or it is a family member or something and the hurt that they're giving to you exceeds the love or the connection you're able to share with them. That I think can be when at least with my patients, we start talking about some hard boundaries to set.
[28:17] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, that's true. I know we talked about it a little bit, but even just like, the grief, I were wondering if the staff could have been there for them. But I mean, man, like, someone needed to step up in that castle, whether it's like, the chef, the nanny, the teacher, just to give them some kind of connection. Because the song that Anna sings when they're opening the gates, it's really sad. It literally sounds like it's dark. Like they never are able to see outside. Like, ever.
[28:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: I was wondering, did she ever feel the ever, like, what is her vitamin D level? How's her bone?
[28:59] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like, I know.
[29:02] Dr. Katrina Furey: And it's really interesting, right. That even if you look at those lyrics without Kristen Bell singing it in such a animated, happy way, it is pretty sad the first time in.
[29:14] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right?
[29:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: Whoa.
[29:17] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
[29:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: Whoa. But then neither of them is showing, like, a reactive attachment style, which we talked a little bit about in our episode last month about the Grinch. So they had some thread of connection. I do think it's like those early years with their parents playing together. The gates were open. They were out and about. So that did, I think, help set this stage. But then it got disrupted. And I just wonder, will they feel angry toward their parents at some point for keeping them so far to how are they going to bridge that know.
[29:51] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right. And then we see Kristoff with his enormous family of the trolls. Trolls I know, like, adopt, talking about, which is silly, but, like, embarrassing him in front of Anna about, like, you should date. You guys should be together and why not? And I thought that was, like, a silly, fun part. I also liked that it wasn't that they were trolls and he was in the family. I thought that was just, like, a cute way of showing different versions of families and what that means.
[30:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. And that you can be family and not look the same in that. Again, there's such interesting parallels with the Grinch in this. Know, that was just, like, totally cool there. But in the was, he was totally ostracized for looking different.
[30:39] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right. Yeah. And then there's more trauma with Elsa being arrested and sentenced to death and then Hans telling Elsa that Anna was dead and vice versa. Him leaving Anna to die after she thinks that that's the love of her life.
[30:59] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's what's going to save. Yeah. Yeah. Hello. But that's what people like Hans do. Have we seen you, like. Hello.
[31:08] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. Literally. Literally being chained in a.
[31:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's what. Again, Hans has one goal in mind, and he wants the power at any cost, and that really displays it. Getting back to, like, I did find myself wondering, why is everyone pushing on like, he doesn't have to like her.
[31:30] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
[31:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: She wasn't that nice to him at know.
[31:34] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Whatever.
[31:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's a Disney movie. Okay. But I was like, why? We don't have to fall in love.
[31:39] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It's okay.
[31:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: We can just be friends, but. Okay.
[31:43] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, it seems like maybe. So what made him come back? Was it the donkey?
[31:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right?
[31:51] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like the. Yeah, because she's in love with Hans and happily ever after. Yay. But why does he come back? He finds out what's going. Forget.
[32:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: Well, like, how did he meet Anna?
[32:03] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: No, when they. So, like, he takes her back to Hans or to the castle to be like, hans, save her, like the love of your life, and then he leaves, and then why does he come back to save her? He finds out that she's not being saved or something. I can't remember because I'm wondering if that's the. Like, when does he move? Oh, like, she's. He. She's. He's going to get a new sled, apparently, or she bought this stuff for him. I don't know.
[32:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know Christoph took her to the trolls when it started to freeze because Elsa's powers, like, her heart, and that's when the trolls said only an act of true love will save her. So then he's like, okay, I got to get her to Hans. So he takes her and delivers her to Hans, and then that's when Hans also has Elsa and is locking her away and telling them different things. And I think as they're trying to escape, somehow, I feel like, if I remember correctly, Olaf got involved and helped shed light on it somehow. And I think somehow in there, when Elsa escapes, he runs into her, and that's when the plot gets.
[33:19] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Two days ago. And I don't know why I can't remember, but it's just like a switch, right? It's, like, sudden, maybe thinks she's cool, but then all of a sudden, they're in love, right?
[33:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. It's Disney. So, again, I'm like, well, it's healthier than. But healthier.
[33:35] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
[33:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: And maybe we'll just kind of, like, see where it goes. Have you seen the second one?
[33:39] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I haven't.
[33:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, well, maybe we can cover that one next if people like this. Any final thoughts as we wrap up?
[33:47] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: No, I think if you haven't seen the meme kind of going around about the older sister syndrome, I think you should check it out. I think it's hilarious.
[33:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's so funny and just speaks to.
[33:57] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Elsa, kind of type a, and just like, all the things that come along with. True. It's so true.
[34:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: Well, thank you so much for listening again to our first episode of the new year. We're excited to kick off our second year podcasting and couldn't think of a better movie to start with. Please rate, review, and subscribe if you're enjoying our content to help us grow, please follow us on Instagram and TikTok at Analyze Scripts podcast we love interacting with people, so if you have any recommendations, we'd love to hear them and you can find us on YouTube as well. I forgot about that.
[34:31] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
[34:31] Dr. Katrina Furey: All right, we'll see you next time.
[34:33] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Bye.
[34:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: This podcast and its contents are a copyright of analyzed scripts. All rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited unless you want to share it with your friends and rate, review, and subscribe. That's fine. All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings, or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are rereleasing our most popular episode of 2023 - Greta Gerwig's BILLION DOLLAR HIT "Barbie." We analyze the film's smart, timely, and campy explorations of femininity and masculinity. We loved exploring Barbie's evolution through a developmental lens and decided that therapists are basically "weird Barbies" helping our patients grow into their most authentic selves. We loved the sprinkling in of so many dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) principles, and the tender moments depicting evolving mother-daughter relationships. Plus, we could watch Ryan Gosling beach all day. We loved this movie and hope you enjoy this episode!
[00:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Furey, a psychiatrist.
[00:12] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker.
[00:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows.
[00:23] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends.
[00:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: There is so much misinformation out there and it drives us nuts.
[00:32] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like.
[00:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: With a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better.
[00:39] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn.
[00:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: And your DSM Five and enjoy. Welcome back to another episode of a podcast hosted by Two Wise Trees. If you didn't catch that reference, we are obviously talking about the new Greta Gerwig film, Barbie. And that was a line in the film at one point, and I just chuckled. Know, we have a podcast now and we're covering it. And we went to the movies all for this. And it was just funny.
[01:17] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And we are two trees basically rooted.
[01:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: Firmly into the ground.
[01:21] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Secure.
[01:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: Secure. Stable. Nourishing. With our branches.
[01:27] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Fruitful.
[01:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: Fruitful. Nice. With our branches just growing and blossoming into the sky where it takes us. I know it could have been a haiku. So anyway, we are really excited to talk about this film today. As it stands right now, we are filming or filming we are recording this episode in late July, and I checked the stats yesterday. Barbie has grossed already over $500 million worldwide.
[01:55] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That's incredible.
[01:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: Incredible. Especially because it's like double what Oppenheimer has grossed. We will also be covering that film a little later on. So that makes me really happy. Yeah, I was really excited when we went to the movies, Portia. And it was packed, packed, packed. Mostly women, but some men as well. And it was a matinee. We went at 01:00. And I just was like, see, Hollywood, you can make female driven material and you will still sell tickets.
[02:29] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Everyone was so excited. There was a ton of people wearing pink. It was just so fun. And I felt connected to people in theater.
[02:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know, right?
[02:38] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Which I feel like I've never well, I did when I saw the last Harry Potter.
[02:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: I was going to say Harry Potter.
[02:46] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Everyone was clapping, everyone dressed up. It was emotional.
[02:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: It was an experience. Right. And that's like the joy of going to the movies. And I think you had said to me that you hadn't seen a movie since before COVID and probably then two years before that. So long time. But totally, as you were saying that, it reminded me of when I would go see Harry Potter with my friends, like in high school and yeah, it was like a whole event. And this is totally what that felt like. We were a little bummed that there wasn't the Barbie box.
[03:17] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, I think it's because we weren't.
[03:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: In a major city.
[03:22] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. Or even just like a big mega theater, because I know some people who went in another part of our state and they did have the box, but it was like a big complex, like.
[03:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: Next to a mall, all that stuff. Yeah, well, it was still great.
[03:36] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I was bummed. Sorry.
[03:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: I did bring a couple of my daughter's Barbie dolls, which was an interesting thing to be carrying around as an adult woman. We went to lunch beforehand and we had them and it was just interesting, I'll put it that way. Content.
[03:52] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And it was silly, but we were probably the youngest people at lunch by like 30 years.
[03:59] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes, at a minimum. And I was just curious what they.
[04:01] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Were thinking 100%, because I don't think.
[04:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: It was on their radar that Barbie was coming up. Although maybe, but I don't think so. And then here I am, just slept around with some Barbie dolls in my purse and we're trying to take pictures of them with our drinks. And I did feel weird.
[04:18] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
[04:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: But you tell me this is what content is and we're really trying, and you held them.
[04:24] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I was like, yeah, it's fine. I'm not holding them.
[04:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: But they were cute.
[04:28] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That's funny. So, first impact of the movie, what did you immediately think? Leaving it, just feeling wise?
[04:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my gosh. Well, I mean, I think I was so excited for this movie because I had a feeling it wasn't going to be like Stereotypical Barbie, right. Just because Greta Gerwig was attached. And I had a feeling it was going to be really smart and kind of meta. And that was what I was hoping for, was it would be a commentary on the female experience. And I felt like they totally delivered. I just loved the opening. I loved all of it. But I really loved The Know, where they show all the little girls playing old fashioned dolls and playing mommy and all this stuff. And then all of a sudden there's this big Barbie in her swimsuit and they just start smashing the **** out of these baby dolls. And I just was like, all right, I'm going to like this movie right away. It caught. I just I don't know. I thought it was so campy and funny, but also really know. I cried at the end when Ruth and Stereotypical Barbie were talking and like, wanted to become human, and they were talking all about the complicated human experience. And she said the thing about mothers, stand still so their daughters can see how far they've come. That's when it got me. So I just felt everything and I want to see it again. I already want to see it again.
[05:58] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I thought about it a lot after we left.
[06:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: Me too.
[06:01] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I felt like all sorts of emotions, which I think was I wasn't expecting that. I thought it would be like touching, maybe, and silly. I thought I'd laugh and maybe cry. But I thought about it for the entire weekend. I do want to see it again and I was just really touched and really moved, thinking of different parts. I think that's also why I want to see it again, because I think I'll pick up on maybe some more things or some moments, some things that I didn't catch.
[06:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. Yeah. I mean, I am astounded by the writing and the dialogue and how it is just so I feel like just really spot on in exploring the female know, by going from Barbie world to the real world, then back to Barbie world and just the way it sort of touches on the idea of feminism. And I was really surprised that they did such a good job because I think Barbie is so polarizing and they sort of addressed it in a really direct way, but then also just addressed the complex human experience that comes from being a woman in today's world. And I just thought especially right now in the political climate with the overturning of Roe versus Wade, it's just so great, I guess, to have something in your face on the screen that the masses are consuming. Right. I just really loved, you know, this.
[07:27] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Movie has been being worked on for years and so one of the things I thought was kind of funny was the Supreme Court justices all being female and then in real life, Supreme Court Justices making some decisions that would probably not happen in Barbie land.
[07:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right, exactly. And just it was so the it was just so witty and humorous, but so spot on. And I just am always so impressed, know, writers, directors, actors can really do like I feel like that's really hard, but is like a really smart way of using a mature defense mechanism, humor, to explore really difficult, complex, gritty issues. Right. And so for them to be able to do that also in such a visually appealing, campy, fun way was just really smart. I feel like there will be college classes analyzing this movie.
[08:32] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: No, I agree. That's a good so I noticed a little flavor of dialectical behavioral therapy in something that Greta Gerwig had said in an interview that she said about the movie. So I'm going to read it. I'm interested in how life is complicated and messy and that there is nothing that's either or either good or bad, but it's mostly both. It can be all these things at once. And I think that is a what you said before and kind of narrates the human experience.
[09:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[09:01] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It's like everything we feel, all these emotions, everyone will experience know, excitement. And it's like that was that end scene where she's like, you just have to feel and it's like everything it's so overwhelming, right.
[09:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: And also just so overwhelming to see stereotypical Barbie or Margot Robbie's character, right. Main Barbie, see that evolution, right. From feeling just good at the beginning. Like in Barbie.
[09:27] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Everything's perfect.
[09:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: Everything's perfect. And that's it. That's all, you know, to starting to realize something's off, like when her feet are flat, to becoming human and choosing that life. Right? Whereas initially, she wanted to go back to where things were just all good and everything was perfect. And then eventually she came to see, like, no, actually, I do want that richer experience. So as we were in the movie, I was jotting down some quotes because I'm a reporter, I guess you could say. And so some of these quotes that they said, I think, really speak to what you're saying. Portia when Margot Robbie said something like that felt achy but good. I think she was trying to describe crying and sadness. And at one point, she's and the release, the release of it, and she was I i just started crying. Like, first one tear came, then a whole lot came, I think, as people are trying to talk to her about what it's like to be human and she's really scared of change, I feel like, is everyone or just people with anxiety?
[10:26] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think everyone is.
[10:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think everyone. And then if you have an anxiety disorder that's probably a little higher or you might feel that a little more deeply, but at some point, someone says to her that's all life is, is change. And she says, that's terrifying. And I was like, whoa.
[10:42] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
[10:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: I was like but I just loved watching her evolution and becoming a human and that whole video montage of women and their children and just women over life. And I guess I was reading that comes from the casting crew. Those are all, like, home movies. How beautiful.
[11:03] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I've watched that scene, obviously, I guess, Pirated online, like, multiple times where she's crying.
[11:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: I have to emotionally prepare to rewatch it.
[11:12] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. So like you've mentioned before, when Margot Robbie stereotypical Barbie is in Barbie land, at the beginning, it's all very happy, right? Like, Good morning, Barbie. Morning, Barbie.
[11:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: Morning, Barbie.
[11:24] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like, you know, everyone's smiling. Everything is working perfectly. The outfits are immaculate and stunning, and I want them all in my you know, you see her kind of getting up for the day, getting ready, going, everything's falling into place.
[11:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: I did love that there was, like, no water. There's nothing in her cup. It's just so funny. It's like she is the doll, right? And she's being played with. It's just, like, so funny.
[11:45] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: No, that's so true. Because later we right. Like, the milk goes sour, and then when she's in the real world, the water goes all over and she's like.
[11:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, I'm not used to anything coming out of that yet. When she was talking to Will Ferrell as the CEO of Mattel, that was funny. Yeah. But what was your thought from the get go of seeing all the Barbies?
[12:04] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It seemed really joyful and peaceful and like everyone's just saying what they think everyone's saying it in a kind way, but right when we see the scene in the Oval Office when somebody's complimenting someone else, they're not like, saying thank you or oh, no, that's not true. They're just saying, like, yeah, I worked hard, right.
[12:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: When the Barbie won the Nobel Priest prize, she was like, I deserve this. I thought that was really interesting, too. There's a lot of diversity in the cast in terms of race, nationality, skin color, body type. Less so with body type, but it was there. I loved midge. I loved how they did pull in these random Barbies from the past that probably none of us have heard of but really did exist. And they were so funny.
[12:54] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like midge, the pregnant Barbie, total tongue in cheek because they're like calling out themselves, which everyone who was on the film, including Will Ferrell, I think he was like, this looks like a great script, but Mattel's never going to let us do this, right? And they did, and it was so like, I think what a huge risk that paid off for Mattel to let them kind of be poked fun at. And ultimately, I think it really landed well for them. Right?
[13:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: But I just thought that was totally and so we had like midge, the pregnant Barbie, and they were like, oh, she didn't sell well.
[13:30] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Pregnant dolls are just weird.
[13:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: And then we had Alan played by.
[13:34] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Michael Stera, who just right.
[13:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: I guess it was like Ken's friend, who also didn't really sell well. But you see him just like popping in and out here and there and he's so funny.
[13:43] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: There was a know, I think, hint maybe of that, like he could have been like a gay character. He also seemingly, at least throughout the film, it was very clear that he was like an ally to the Barbies. So I just thought that was clever. And I also just love his. I love Michael Cera.
[14:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know.
[14:01] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So funny.
[14:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: He's so funny.
[14:02] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then I thought another risk that they kind of called out, but again, it landed in a really good way, was weird Barbie.
[14:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right?
[14:09] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So, like, weird Barbie had been played with really know, haircut dyed, which I think everyone can relate to Barbie.
[14:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: I was surprised there was only one weird Barbie and all these other normal Barbies, but again, I thought that was so funny and how they were able to start telling the story about how these Barbies are like being played with. There is this connection between Barbie land and the children playing with the Barbies in the real world.
[14:34] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yes. And Kate McKinnon's. Hilarious. I love that she's always stuck in splits, which again, you do that with your just I don't know how they got that so right. Of course, because people played with Barbies who wrote the Barbie movie. But that was the stuff that I was just laughing at and then them, like, whispering, like, weird barbie, like, you don't want to be like her, but if you were down, you have to go see her.
[14:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right? So then they were kind of mean. Right? So in Barbie land, it's all, like, kind of perfect, but very superficial.
[15:02] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But if you're not perfect, then you're like othered.
[15:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I feel like isn't that the major criticism of Barbie? Right, that she has this unattainable body type and makes little girls feel bad about themselves? Right? Right. And so that sort of is already touching on that in a really smart way. And then when Margot Robbie's Barbie, she loses her high heel feet, they become flat, and she starts falling, and everything's starting to go wrong and she doesn't like it, then she has to go see Weird Barbie. And here I feel like if we really zoom out and think about Margot Robbie's development in this film as being parallel to the psychological development from childhood to adulthood I feel like when she first goes to see Weird Barbie and is presented with the two shoes, the stiletto or the birkenstock, which I thought was hilarious I feel like that is Toddlerhood. It's like one or the other, right? She can't integrate both yet whereas at the very end, when she's fully actualized and a full mature human, she's wearing pink birkenstocks, right? So it's like, even just this silly but concrete way of depicting incorporating both elements into your personality as Weird Barbie is trying to tell her, like, no, you got to pick the birkenstock and go to the real world. I felt like it was like negotiating with a toddler, like, presenting them with a choice, but there's really not a yep. And I was just like, this is perfect. We see her as being in the all good land, having some negative feelings. I died laughing. When they're like, at the dance party, she's like, do you guys ever think about dying? And everyone stops and she's like, oh, just kidding. But she's starting to dance or something. Yeah, it was so perfect. And then she doesn't know what to do with these negative things, so she has to go to Weird Barbie, who's giving her this choice, but it's not really a choice. And then she's on this quest to the real world. And I was just like, oh, my God. This fascinating.
[17:05] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It's also why we can't ignore, right? Like, when things aren't going well, right? Ignore anxiety. You can't ignore poor family dynamics. You can't ignore a mood disorder brewing. Like, you have to kind of go see someone. I am Weird Barbie. You come see me. So are you. And we then sit in it with you. Sitting it with you. We go on this journey with you. It's so beautiful so that you can be well and then make a choice at the end that is authentic to you. Authentic. And then you are like, your best self, which means you experience all emotions. That doesn't mean that you're perfect and you're never sad.
[17:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know. Or that you never feel anxiety again, or you never feel sadness again. 100%. And even thinking about that portia the journey to the real world, how they have to go in the little car and then on a spaceship in the camper, she goes in all of her Barbie vehicles. I thought that was so cute. But also, if we're staying with this theme, that we are the Weird Barbie. As the Therapist Barbie, you do go on a journey, right, to try to become your most authentic self, your most well self. Which, again, doesn't mean you never have bad days or episodic episodes of difficult feelings and stuff like that. But you do kind of go on this journey. What did you think of Ken in Barbie land initially?
[18:36] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So if the Barbies were one dimensional already in that land, like, the KENS are I don't even know, like zero one dimension, where are they?
[18:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right? Where do they live?
[18:53] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Where do they sleep at night? No one knows.
[18:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: No one cares.
[18:56] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: No one knows. But I would say that I thought it was so funny how so much of what Barbie said impacted, you know, Ken number. Gosling.
[19:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: Really?
[19:05] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Really? It seems like, likes, loves I don't know, Barbie.
[19:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's unclear. Is it genuine, or does he just feel like that's what his role to play?
[19:14] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So she gives him some feedback, right? That's, like, positive. And he's like he lights right up.
[19:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: He's like, really? Wow.
[19:20] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: His whole day is made. His whole life is made. And then he tries to show off even more for her, which I think is also kind of like a real life thing. Sometimes we get a little over our heads trying to impress someone, like when.
[19:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: They'Re at the dance scene, but then all the KENS come in and start dancing, and he feels really threatened.
[19:37] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then the beach scene where he goes into the rock wave, and then all the Barbies come and they help him, and then he's fixed right away.
[19:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: Which, again, it's like Barbie land.
[19:47] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: You just snap their leg back into place, and they're know. Ken. Ken's were just like I was curious how they were going to fit in or how it was going to become more in depth or important to the story. It felt, like, really silly and just, again, kind of like flat, like no dimension, which I think is what Ken.
[20:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: Brings to the table in original Barbie land. Right? He's just the sidekick I loved when I mean Gosh, Ryan Gosling, like, playing this. Like, I think we all love Ryan Gosling all the time, no matter what.
[20:15] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So listen to this. I heard on Hoda and Jenna, I was watching that yesterday, and they were kind of laughing because Ryan Gosling had initially, before the movie came out, gotten a lot of feedback for, like, you're too old to play. Not they were envisioning.
[20:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: You're not like the hot guy anymore, right?
[20:34] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Who played Austin Butler, who was Elvis Young. That guy. A guy who's in Euphoria who's like the hot guy, either of them. And it was funny because it was the first time that a guy had been called out publicly too old for a role. And how interesting is it in the movie Barbie? There's all these other themes. So anyway, though, they said, I think it landed really well, everyone who had said that was like, I was wrong and I think perfect.
[21:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: I also think those young guys I don't think could do it. I feel like you have to have the life experience and be able to wrap your head around it in a different way, to have been able to perform the role the way Ryan Gosling did. Which, again, was like, perfect comedic timing, but, like you said, had all these elements of tenderness and insecurity and codependency that just shine through despite the again, like, how do they put this together.
[21:36] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: In such a perfect all he says is, hi, Barbie. But you can just see his urgency for her to pay attention to him and him trying to catch her eye and bolstering his chest, all of that. Yes, I think someone could attempt to do. But Ryan Gosling just nailed it on the head.
[21:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right? And again, the comedic side, but also the tender, authentic, insecure side at the same just I was so impressed. And he's like, so handsome. So that never hurts to objectify him since women have been objectified for decades and centuries and will continue to be. But that is a really interesting point. I hadn't read about that.
[22:15] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So he kind of goes along with her right, for the ride, which ironically, it was just interesting. If you're thinking he's codependent on her, of course he needs to go because he can't be alone in Barbieland without her.
[22:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right? And I just have to address the scene where he wants to have a sleepover. He's like, well, boyfriend girlfriend, I should sleep over. And she's like, why? And then he's like, well, I don't know what we would do, actually. It's just so funny. And then I loved when she was like, but this is my dream house every night's girls night, so I'll see you tomorrow. Yeah. And then she goes into her dream house and they're all like, woohoo Barbie. And it's just like you get the sense it's like a sleepover every single night in Barbie land. And isn't there a part of you that would love yeah, right.
[22:53] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And she does it in a way that it's like dismissing Ken, but it's kind and it's direct. And there's not all these millions of sorrys. And it's not mean. It's not like, no, I don't want you here. It's just like, I'm with my friends and I'm going to go now because this is my house, really firm. And I think when we see later in the movie. The Barbies are never mean cruel. Putting the KENS down intentionally. And then we see the KENS do that when Kendom comes to be that's a great point.
[23:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. She's, like, turning him down in a direct, assertive, but kind not aggressive way. She's just, like, speaking her truth. But he does take it really hard and feels really dismissed and brushed aside. And that comes up later in Kendall. Right. So that's just sort of this interesting dynamic. Right away, I did feel like he was really codependent on her, like he didn't have his own identity outside of her. It was always, like, trying to rise up and be good enough for her or feel like her equal. And I just think that's so funny because Barbie is about Barbie and Ken's just like the I guess there's, like that was in all the marketing. And it's just really funny because we.
[24:09] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: All know at least I did, like, a million Barbies. I think I maybe had one.
[24:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: Maybe one ever. And I think maybe Ken had a little brother. I don't know. Then there's Alan. Who knew? Who knew?
[24:21] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I would love to have Alan now.
[24:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: No, me too.
[24:23] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I wonder if there I know there's I'm sure tons of Barbie collectors. I have a lot of Barbies in boxes still.
[24:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: You didn't bring them to the movies?
[24:30] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Well, it'd be huge. I think I got one every year for Christmas. They're all, like, the anniversary ones. You did not take them out of the box.
[24:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: Big dresses. Yes.
[24:38] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And so I'm wondering who has the Allen one? Is anyone out there?
[24:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: I bet it's worth a lot. Like, right now, I had one of those, too, that I did take out and give to my daughter.
[24:48] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Oh, that's nice of you.
[24:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
[24:49] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But I'd probably be able to do, like I don't know.
[24:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: I guess I'll have to make that decision. Yeah. It was like the Christmas Barbie, I guess, in your defense, the box broke, so it was already open. It's a much easier choice.
[25:04] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But anyway, so when we get to the real world, which is where we all yes.
[25:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, they see the billboard of Miss Universe and Margot Robbie's like, oh, look, the Supreme Court justice is just like all of that stuff was so funny to me. And then when she's, like, looking for somewhere safe to land, and she's like, oh, construction site. That's where I'll find the women. And I was just like, oh, no, here we go. Here we right.
[25:29] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
[25:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: And, like, right away, I wrote it down. They get there, and they're walking down. Where are they?
[25:35] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Roller skating. Roller skating.
[25:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: And the way they're able to bring in all the little Barbie props are so funny. And they're roller skating, and everyone's know Leering at Barbie, and she feel I feel ill at ease. And Ken goes, I feel admired, but not oggled. I was like, those two sentences speak to the difference of living in the world as a female versus living in the world as a white man, too.
[26:04] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And it's not right. It's not most of the time, overt. So I think that's where a lot of people who don't experience this have a harder time understanding, well, they didn't come up to you and slap your behind. It's like but you can feel people oggling you in an icky way.
[26:25] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[26:26] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And, yes, you could be like, yeah, of course this didn't happen directly to me. It wasn't over. But there's so much covert ickiness out there, and I think that that's what that moment really, for me encapsulated, because Ken just felt right, like, good and finally was yeah, exactly.
[26:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: She had started feeling, like, some complicated feelings in Barbie land, and now that just continues. And then there's like, what I'm sure will become the famous lines about the genitals, where she's just like, we have no genitals.
[27:00] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But why did she think to say that? Right?
[27:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: Probably to disarm these oggling men, but she knew, push them away.
[27:12] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I'm taking leaps here, but as this doll knew right away that that's what was being looked at, leared at, thought of.
[27:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: So then eventually, we see Barbie finally ends up at the school where Sasha, played by Ariana Greenblatt, is sort of having lunch with her friends. And leading up to that, we started to see some flashes of Sasha playing with her Barbies over the years. Right. And I think that was what weird barbie was trying to tell her is like, you have to go find this little girl and make it right. This little girl, the reason you're feeling these things is because that's what the child who's playing with you is feeling, and you have to go and make it right and come back to Barbie Lamb, put it all back to how it was. So she comes up to her at school, which I thought, first of all, there's going to be, like, a security guard, a metal detector, hopefully, at school these days, we can imagine this woman dressed like a pink cowgirl, barbie. Just like, walking up to you and Sasha being like, who is this woman with a delusional disorder that she's Barbie. Right? And Barbie just goes off into this monologue and, like, slings it right back at her and I think really delivers all the criticisms of Barbie through the years very quickly, in a succinct way. Right. And then we see, like, react to it and be like, what we didn't fix like I thought we did. I thought we showed women you could be whatever you want. You don't just have to be a mother and a wife, but if you want to do that, that's fine. But you can be a doctor, you can be a lawyer, you can get the Nobel Peace Prize, you can be a teacher, and then you're kind of huh. You're right. Yeah.
[28:49] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then Barbie starts to. Continue to be more and more emotional, right? Starts to cry, leaking, which made me think of, like, the grinch.
[28:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: What is um and then she's really upset. And during all of this, Ken is discovering the patriarchy at the school library, gets books on horses, and he sees all these men. He's, like, imitating their arm gestures and stuff like that. And I was like, oh, my God, this is hilarious. But I see where this is going, and this is perfect. And he's just discovering this whole new world where men rule. And he goes in, right, to all these different places of work. I was obviously struck when he's talking to the female doctor and is like, I need to do a surgery. Give me the tools. And she's like, you didn't go to medical school. You can't do that. And he's like, Show me the real doctor. Let me talk to the boss. And she's like, I'm the boss. And he just walks by her. And I was like, security. But oh, my God. Portia I'm sure you can imagine as a female physician, all the times you just get assumed you're not the doctor. And any man walking know, people look at with this reverence and authority automatically just because they're a man. It just spoke to that so perfectly.
[30:07] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I bet.
[30:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: And then he's like, going into the office building, and I want a high.
[30:11] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Paying position of power.
[30:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: And the guy's like, well, you don't have an MBA. You don't have a degree. We can't just give you that. And he's like, I thought this is the patriarchy. And he's like, well, yeah, but we just have to do it a little more fly these days.
[30:25] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I thought that was funny.
[30:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my God. And so then eventually we find that Mattel gets word that Barbie escaped, right? And then things are like, up in arms, and it turns out the other main character, America Ferrari's character, who's the mom, Gloria in the film. This is where we meet her. What did you think about her character?
[30:45] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I liked it. I didn't know where it was going at first. For some reason, I thought she was like a Barbie creator because she was drawing the sketches. It seems like maybe she was in more like of a secretarial position. And then we find out that she's the one who's connected to stereotypical Barbie memories. And then I loved that it kind of was showing us that scene again, all from her perspective. So now she's in it again.
[31:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: I thought that was really sweet, and.
[31:11] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It was sad because of her emotions, but it just spoke to the transitions of motherhood, I would imagine, right? From having a newborn where you're their lifeline continuing all the way up to an adolescent who's kind of pushing back and having more autonomy and pushing you away and rejecting you.
[31:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know. That was really beautiful. And then we come to find that there's this parallel process going on between her existential crisis, raising an adolescent, and sort of trying to figure out who she is and where does she fit in now, and Barbie's existential crisis and that they're actually the ones that are connected. And it's almost like Barbie's starting to feel all the emotions the mom's feeling, and I guess kind of weird for, like, an adult woman to start playing with Barbies again, but makes sense for, I guess, the plot of the film.
[32:02] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, no, that's true, actually.
[32:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: Maybe that's kind of like me bringing Barbies to lunch and not really, but.
[32:08] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think she said that she was cleaning out the basement or something, and she found some and she kept it donated or throw it away.
[32:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: Okay. And she's the one who's been drawing, like, Deaths Barbie, right. Like, what did she call it? Irresistible thoughts of death. Cellulite. Barbie depressed thoughts of cellulite.
[32:32] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Which was interesting, which we didn't comment on, which was part of Weird Barbie's.
[32:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[32:36] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like, push. He's like, well, if you choose the birkenstock and you fix this, you won't have cellulite.
[32:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. And it's like, okay, fine. Now I'll go which, again, I think is a tongue in cheek sort of reference to Barbie's, like, perfect body and how that's so important to Barbie. Right.
[33:00] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So then Mattel is really upset that Barbie is in the real world. So why do you think that? Is? It because you do you think that Mattel, besides the obvious ways that they're being nefarious, is nefarious with kind of, like, the patriarchy? Did you get that vibe? I did, a little bit, 100%.
[33:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: I mean, they're all men, like, on the board, right? The only woman we see is Gloria, who does seem like a secretary. She's kept out of the big, important meetings that only the men can go to. I think when Barbie finally gets there, she's like, where's your boss? Let me meet her. Where is she? I can't wait to meet her. And they're like, well, I'm the boss. And I think they say, like, well, we did have one CEO, I think, like, a long time ago. Right. I loved that scene where she's like, well, who does the money? Me?
[33:48] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: This man?
[33:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: And all of it is run by men. I, first of all, love Will Ferrell more than anything in the world, so anything he's in, I love it. And I thought he did a really good job. It's really funny, but yeah, they really wanted Barbie back in her box. I feel like that is just, again, not wanting Barbie to be more complicated than they want to see her and.
[34:11] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: In control of her.
[34:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: They want to be in control of her. And I do think one interesting sort of criticism I've been reading about this movie is, if you think about it right, like, yes, it's doing great in the box office. Lots of themes about feminism and the female experience. Again, still from a white woman's perspective, which I think it's important to acknowledge. And at the same time, Mattel is making so much money from doing this. They have all these other movies in development, like one about polypocket that's going to be directed by Lena Dunham, I.
[34:47] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Think, with Lily Collins.
[34:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yep. And so they have a ton of things in development that I'm sure are going to move ahead now that this was so successful. And there's been some criticisms, like, okay, so Mattel is this huge corporate giant, right? Like, how many female filmmakers have been trying to push forward stories and movies and ideas about the female experience, but no one wanted to listen until there's this big corporate company that's made all this money from a doll who's a stereotypical female, right. Only now we can listen to women and learn about the female experience. I don't know. I just think it's an interesting thing to think about, and I feel like it is a valid criticism. But then you kind of see that tension here. So I kind of agree with you, Portia, that I felt like the film as a whole did a good job addressing the tension about this Uber. Maybe not Uber, but this film really touching on difficult topics about feminism, using Barbie. But again, that's like, the whole point.
[35:53] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think it would have flopped if.
[35:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: Was.
[35:58] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Shown in a good, positive light in the you know, and I think one of the reasons that it's, like, based on what you're saying is because the movie, in an unironic way, slams Mattel. But I'm curious now. Okay, show me your board, Mattel.
[36:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. That's what I mean, right? It's like, is this are you the same board that we're seeing in the how exactly how much is art imitating life? Like, what is Mattel doing behind the scenes? What have they not I don't know. That's not common. Just but again, it raises a lot of interesting questions.
[36:39] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I got anxious when she was standing. She was like, happy to go back.
[36:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: In the put those little plastic ties.
[36:46] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: She goes in the box. And again, those were so funny because that's how your Barbie comes, right? And they start twisting them, and it's getting tighter. See her hands? And she's like, something about this doesn't feel good anymore.
[36:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: Good for ghetto. Ghetto good for you. Like staying in touch with your inner.
[37:02] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Authentic feelings Barbie and picking up on which is a female experience because of our life experiences. Having that third eye, right? Like being a woman. And something about that table over there is giving me weird vibes. Or having to cover your drink or having your key in your hand when you're walking to your car. It's like she started having zero ever experienced that in Barbieland to pick up on that. And I quickly that's just how I interpreted that scene.
[37:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: But I totally agree. And that she had the confidence to listen to that and not I think maybe because she came from Barbie land, where you are just confident and you're not apologizing for your feelings. They just are what they are. She didn't start invalidating herself, which I think a lot of women are socially conditioned to do. Right? Like, you might feel something's off, but then you're like, oh, I'm just being sensitive, or, that can't be. There's something wrong with me, when it's like, no, you're picking up on something accurate in your environment. So then she escapes and hijinks ensue and her and Gloria and Sasha go back to Barbie land and what do they see? Ken has already returned and taken over. The patriarchy is flying high.
[38:22] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Horses are everywhere.
[38:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: I love that they put TVs in every room of Barbie land with horses on them. And then this is like, oh, no, Barbie land is turned into the real world. Like, all the Barbies are being objectified and wearing really tight clothes and serving the men and brainwashed almost. Right. And it happened so quickly. And we see Barbie and Gloria and Sasha just like, dumbfounded. Right? And what did you think about Kendom?
[38:50] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I thought it was really in a silly way, like really know, like the TVs and just like their interest being so stereotypically, like know. Let's also say that there's many men who are wonderful and allies and not objectifying women and so on and so forth.
[39:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like Alan.
[39:10] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like Alan, but in the real world. But this was just like such a silly way of calling it out.
[39:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[39:17] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I loved the horses being the yes, but like and it wasn't like it could have been Ken's, and that would have been the same thing, right? Like, they replaced the Barbie, so it was like horses. It was like really and the hummers and everything's tricked out and lifted and so big. Yeah.
[39:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: And they got a mini fridge full of their snacks and they got the saloon doors. It was just so funny and over the top. But you just see how he just starts to really relate to Barbie in this icky way. And interestingly. I felt like he was still so co dependent on her, but now it was like the roles are reversed. Right. Like before, in original Barbie land, he just wanted her approval to feel good enough, and now he has to put her down to feel good enough. So it's still kind of the same dynamic, just like two different sides of the same coin.
[40:05] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And commenting on, I think, right. That idea of, oh, he's mean to.
[40:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: You because he likes you.
[40:10] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right. So it's like we even see that when she's faking to go to the beach and have him play the guitar for her and he walks away.
[40:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right?
[40:18] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: He's like, oh, maybe, or you're my what does he call her? You're my part time sometimes there whatever.
[40:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: You're my friend. Yes. And then you're like my long term low commitment girlfriend.
[40:28] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Low commitment. But he is excited, right? He goes away and he's like sublime. And that does happen even with, I think between both. Men can do it to women, women can do it to men, so on and so forth. Everyone does it to each other. It's like little games. It's like the gamey thing with dating, right? Like, I'm not going to text you for three days, which just it's hard because if someone's playing the game, it's hard to not but I think just no one should play the game. If you really like someone, text them when you get home. I had a great time, let's go out again. If you don't say, I think you.
[41:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: Had a great time, but let's stay friends or something. And in that way, in original Barbie land, communication was more direct and innocent. And now things are getting all warped and topsy turvy, and then they decide they have to get all these Barbies back. And I was a little disappointed that it did involve, again, using themselves as sexual objects to kind of distract the KENS to turn them all against each other. I don't know what was your thoughts about that?
[41:31] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Definitely was like, icky. I wish there'd been a different right?
[41:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
[41:37] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Why did they choose that way? Is it commenting on that? That's like currency, right? We talked about white lotus last week, and sex is currency. And that's where in now Kendom, like Barbie, you do have power. And we see that in the real world of but like, I'm wondering if it was intentionally supposed to be cringy, right?
[42:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, if it's like yeah, in the real world, that is your only power. Now Barbie is to use your body and your sexual power to distract them in order to have the vote and turn it back to Barbie land. That was the part I was like, oh, I wish they'd been able to get it back some other way.
[42:19] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right.
[42:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: But I did love when they're all strumming their little guitars and I don't know the song that they picked.
[42:26] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I did.
[42:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: I recognize it, but I don't know.
[42:29] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: The name of it.
[42:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't know who sings it, but it was like, I want to push you around. And it's like aggressive if you think about, like, a man singing that to a woman. Right.
[42:40] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It's not like a romantic song.
[42:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's aggressive.
[42:43] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Don't do that.
[42:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: But perfect for Kendom and all the horses.
[42:48] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So all the Barbies seem to be brainwashed and they get pulled out of it through Gloria, right. So Gloria has this monologue that she talks about, which I think resonated with a lot of people. We heard some, like, woohoo in the theater.
[43:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: Sure.
[43:02] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So I thought that was nice. I did really like and we kind of made eye contact when she was talking about body image, and I really, really liked that because before right. They were kind of like I think, again, just pointing out not aging and not having cellulite before. And that's why kind of Barbie Land was like, oh, there's old people in the real world. What is you know, the woman then is like, you're beautiful. And she's like, I know.
[43:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: I really like woman at the bus stop.
[43:31] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So one of the lines is you have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin. You have to say you want to be healthy, but you also have to be thin. It's just impossible thinking of every single person, really. Especially, I think, for women, the expectations of your body in the real world is just so hard to live with and so challenging.
[43:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
[43:55] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And the messages come early from Barbie, right?
[43:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know.
[43:59] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And from TV and everything that's around you and from even parenting.
[44:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[44:03] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like, a lot of if your parents are making comments about their bodies, even if they would never know their kids, it's all such a message that I think it's right. Like, you can't be too thin, but you can't be too fat and you can't talk about your weight if someone compliments you.
[44:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right?
[44:18] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: No, I'm fat and I'm feeling so bad about myself. You're fishing for those. No, you're fine. I think we could have explored that in a whole movie of its it.
[44:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: You know, it was necessary given, like you said, the criticisms about Barbie and her unattainable body type all along. And I was glad they didn't shy away from that. I was also glad in that monologue, which was so moving, that they also drew comparisons to just the female emotional experience.
[44:48] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right.
[44:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, that is a female experience. You can't be to this or to that. You have to just be this version of a woman. And it's just an impossible standard. And why can't you just be angry or be sad or be anxious or be happy or be confident? Like you said in original Barbie Land, no one's apologizing and then they start to and I just feel like that so speaks to what it's like to be a woman. And it's annoying.
[45:14] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I liked you're supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you're supposed to because of sisterhood. You're supposed to always stand out and always be grateful. It's impossible just going back and forth. But I think too, I just watched the documentary on Amazon. It came out a little while ago about the family that used to have a show, 18 kids and counting, or 20 kids and counting. And it's a lot of kids they talk a lot about, just like in a lot of religious organizations. Right. You have to be careful of your dress code so that you are not tempting men.
[45:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, I think that's even like in public school.
[45:55] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Oh, yeah, the straps and the shorts length, all that stuff. And it's just like, it's not our responsibility to make men feel like they don't want to sexual assault someone or keep your thoughts to yourself. We all we all should also they.
[46:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Should also learn how to manage those feelings. Right. It's okay, right? And girls are going to have those feelings about boys or other girls, too.
[46:19] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, you can think, wow, that person is attractive, and move on. And then if you feel bad about that, take that up with your God and be sorry for it. But it's not your fault. It's not that person's fault that you found them attractive.
[46:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[46:30] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Anyway, back to Barbie.
[46:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: No, I mean, I feel though I think we touched a little bit about this when we were covering you, which is like, all roads lead back to you because that's such a good show. But when we were talking about stalking and sexual harassment, oftentimes when women finally do seek help, they're often shamed or told, like, well, you kind of asked for it. Or I remember when I was in college, I had, I guess, a stalker. It was kind of weird. And I went to the student police, and their only advice was, when you go to class where that boy is in your class, you should wear really baggy clothes and don't wear makeup. And that was it. That was the advice to keep me safe. It wasn't like, oh, yeah, we should take this one out of your class. We should maybe move him to a different dorm, anything like that. It was like, you need to change your appearance. And so I think that perfectly speaks to what you're saying.
[47:26] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And again, it's just not that hard. We talked about consent in American Pie, that episode, and it's just really not that hard of an idea to come around. Someone might be into you at one point, and guess what? They might not be into you in another. And, like, you have to deal with that.
[47:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I loved that. With Barbie, it finally know as we come to the end of Know, the Barbies vote in Congress because they've distracted the boys and they get Barbie land back. But then at the end, Margot, Robbie's character wants to be human. She wants more than just Barbie. She wants to feel all those human experiences. She doesn't want to leave Gloria and Sasha. And she talks to the creator of Barbie, played by Ree Pearlman, who was just like, it was so sweet to hear her talk about and I loved how she was like, yeah, they had some tax evasion issues, but that's another movie. But just saying, like, are you sure you want to be human? Are you sure? And then it comes out when she tells Ken, I don't love you. I don't like you. You're a great person, but I don't feel that way toward you. And they could have an honest conversation about how he felt kind of rejected and dismissed and stuff like that, which was, I thought, great for a man character to be able to say right. To be honest about that in a direct, also respectful way, rather than the way he was treating her in Kendom, which was, like, icky and passive aggressive.
[48:52] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And demeaning and I think really contradicts the kind of general critique of a lot of people that I'm irritated with on the Internet, saying that Barbie is demasculating. And I think the end really does the opposite of that. Right.
[49:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: If you have an open mind. Right.
[49:15] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Well, to me, it's really clear she's apologizing for him feeling dismissed. So it's like, I see that we were maybe treating you like you felt like you didn't matter and like, you do, and I don't love you.
[49:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's okay. And both can be true.
[49:31] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But I understand that people have a hard time opening their mind to different things, but just to me, it's like that scene contradicts their criticism of so, like, did you stay for the whole movie?
[49:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. And also, I think it depends on your definition of masculinity, which, again, this film isn't only sort of addressing feminism and the female experience, although I feel like that's the main point, which is, you know, Ryan Gosling's depiction of Ken really touches on the themes of masculinity so well. And I feel like at the end, he comes to find that he can be sensitive and have those types of feelings and express them directly to someone who will listen and validate. Right. He doesn't have to be like a macho man like he was in Kendom. He can just be himself. And maybe he doesn't want his job to be beach. Okay?
[50:24] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Maybe he wants to ride horses.
[50:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: Maybe. And that's what he says. He's like, I just really like the horses. But in that way, I think that is isn't that also part of masculinity? Can't our boys be sensitive and sweet and not feel like you have to lose all of that to be a man in today's society? I feel like that's another issue these days that they did touch on, I thought, in a really thoughtful way.
[50:50] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: No, I agree. Yeah.
[50:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: And so at the end, Barbie chooses to become human, right. She assumes the name of the original creator of Barbie's daughter, which I thought was sweet. We see her get out of the car in her pink birkenstock, so she is fully, actualized, holding on to good and bad, conflicting all the parts of herself. All the parts of herself. It's so great. And we see her going in to sign in for something. What did you think she was going?
[51:17] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I thought it was a job interview.
[51:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: I thought it was a driver's license.
[51:20] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Okay.
[51:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: It was the gynecologist. And I could not, because she now has a ******, an agency, an autonomy. And I was just like, perfect ending. I just died.
[51:32] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And so unexpected that I think laughs you're like, what? I'm so funny.
[51:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: So funny, but perfect. She was so happy to be there, right? And again, I just think in today's political climate, great job, Greta Gerwig.
[51:46] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And everyone like, I am getting my womanhood taken care.
[51:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right? So any final thoughts, Portia? As we wrap up this episode a.
[52:00] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Little bit, I just wanted to comment on the Depression Barbie commercial.
[52:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: How did we forget about depression, Barbie?
[52:10] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So many people on the Internet were like, why did they call me out? So we see. You know, loose terms on the Internet were binging on sweets. It wasn't really binging. It was eating sweets.
[52:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: It said an entire family sized starburst.
[52:24] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yep. And then watching reruns of BBC's Pride and Prejudice, and she was like, scrolling.
[52:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: Instagram, looking at her estranged BFF's engagement photos. It was so funny. And then they were like, anxiety OCD and panic attack.
[52:37] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Barbie sold separately.
[52:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I was like, that was funny. I loved it. And then Gloria finally at the end pitching to Mattel, like, what about just, like, average, like and then again, there's another beautiful monologue by American Ferrara about just, like, the experience of a woman. And I feel like that is she was, like, describing her own experience in a way. And again, Mattel was smart when at first they were like, oh, I don't know if that's going to go well. And then the finance guy's like, those sales will be huge. And they were like, okay, yeah. And I felt like that just also signified. Like, there's still a lot of room to go. We still have a lot of road to cover. But overall, I really loved it.
[53:15] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It gives you a lot to think about.
[53:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
[53:17] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And take what you want from it. I think there's a lot of funny themes, and I think it's worth seeing more than once over time. And I'm excited to see it again. I mean, I'm wondering maybe there'll be more tears because I'm already primed, but we'll see.
[53:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: It was so good. Well, thank you for joining us for another episode of Analyze Scripts. Please rate review and subscribe and share with your friends if you're enjoying our content. I did carry around two Barbies as a middle aged woman, so please make it worth it. Make it worth it. You can find us on Instagram at Analyze Scripts and on TikTok and Analyze Scripts podcast and on threads at Analyze Scripts podcast. And we will see you next Monday. Yep.
[54:02] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Bye bye.
[54:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: This podcast and its contents are a copyright of Analyzed Scripts. All rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited. Unless you want to share it with your friends and rate, review and subscribe, that's fine. All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings, or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we wrap up 2023 with a special Christmas-themed episode analzying the Griswold family in "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation." We have a lot of fun revisiting this holiday classic and trying to figure out what exactly is going on with Clark Griswold!! And building on our holiday theme this month, we end the episode with our top tips for maintaining your boundaries and sanity during this cheerful (and stressful!) time of year. We hope you enjoy!
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Unknown Speaker: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fieri, a psychiatrist. And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker. And this is analyze Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows. Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends. There is so much misinformation out there, and it drives us nuts. And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like with a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better. So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn and your DSM five, and enjoy. Ho, ho, ho. Welcome back to this very special Christmas episode of Analyze scripts, where we're going to be covering the 1989 classic National Lampoon Christmas vacation. Portia, you have seen this movie? I have, many times. It's my favorite Silly Christmas movie. Okay, good. Yeah. Okay, good. It's a must watch. No, I have to say, watching it once again, I was like, I would be Clark Griswold with my crazy family, and you and Brian would be, like, over there. Happy, Margot. Yeah. Thank you. I love Margot, and I also just love Julie. Drive us so much. I just like how they're know, having their Margaritas. They're having their know. They don't have kids. They're just, like, hot trotting, know. And then there I am trying to hang Christmas lights. Well, I would say as a couple, sure. But then the family chaos, right? True. We do deck our halls here. So we are the brightest house in the neighborhood. I'm excited to see that this year. It's very fun. We do love the holidays. Invite everyone over. So I feel like Margot's a little, know, colder. I love when her and Tod are talking about, like, should we have gotten a, like, it's a little late, but go for not. I don't know. It's just like, the two houses are so paralleled opposite. Yeah. And the fact that they're, like, neighbors, like, they just must hate each know. Seems like there's a lot of. Oh, so we wanted to cover this episode because with the holidays, like, spoiler alert. Holidays are stressful. Did you guys know? But I looked up some quick stats because we're professional podcasters now. And NaMi, the National alliance of Mental Illness, estimates that 24% of people with a diagnosed mental illness find the holidays make their condition a lot worse and 40% somewhat worse. Let's talk about why that is. Yeah. Why do you think? I think that families often highlight things that are wrong, typically because there's so many people. Right? I'm going to use, I guess, depression. Maybe for an example, if you were going home for the holidays and you had pretty significant depression, but you were just going home to your parents and they were relatively supportive, it would be fine because it's just them cooked me. You're going home. You can chill on the couch. You don't have to really do anything. But it's like, no. If you're going to Aunt Sue's house and there's going to be 20 people there, it's overwhelming. Everyone is heightened. There's always tension. There's always some family member that someone's not getting along with, which impacts everyone. There's always stress, oh, we need to clean everything. I love that video. I don't know what social media site it's been on for years. It's like this guy dressed up as a mom and he's like cleaning everything and saying, we have to make it look like we don't live here. Like, oh, it's dirty, throw it away. It's like these people get so intense about patience are so high, so high. And we see that with Clark Grisml just like really wanting this unbelievably high, perfect version of the holidays, which is just impossible. Right. But I mean, just the expectations for the cooking, the cleaning, the finances, the gifts, like the travel behavior. Yeah. Children behaving like all of that. And then let's throw in some alcohol. Right. Which flows freely at most holiday events. And so then everyone's a little bit more loose lipped and we miss things, I think, when we're intoxicated. Right. So we make assumptions. It's kind of a recipe for diSaster. And I think, right, or the perfect SNL skip. Well, that's true. Or the perfect show, like the Bear. Right. So the Bear did an excellent portrayal of chaos on a holiday. If you haven't seen that show, please do watch it and then listen to our episodes about it. So I think, isn't it Thanksgiving or the 4 July or one of them that has the most, like, er visits? Maybe it's Thanksgiving because of the frying, the turkeys. People get stabbed. Like, there's family together. There's so much drinking, there's football. It's like Thanksgiving, I've heard, has like a higher ER rate. I know 4 July does for firework injuries, fire blowing, stuff like that. But yeah. And then, so you just add to it. That's just like baseline stressors, I guess. And then if you add into it, like, someone's struggling with a substance use disorder or anxiety, depression, eating disorder. Eating disorder. Like any of this stuff, grief around the holidays is really hard, especially if you've experienced significant loss around a holiday or let's say you don't have a lot of family. It's a reminder. Isolated. Yeah. It's a reminder of what you've lost. So holidays are really stressful, and it can be really hard to set healthy limits and have healthy boundaries with yourself, both in terms of concrete things, like how much money you're spending on gifts or stuff like that, and then also just, like, emotional boundaries with interacting with people in the family who might be hard to interact with. No, totally. The scene that the movie kind of, like, opens up with is them getting their Christmas tree. Right. So Clark, Ellen, and then the two kids, Audrey and Russ. So John Paulecki, who is in, you know, is little Russ. And then we have Juliet Lewis, who is now in one of our newer favorite shows, Yellow Jackets. Great cast. And then Ellen Griswold, Beverly Angelo. She was a bigger star at a reoccurring role in Entourage as herself now. And she's kind of this rough woman who's like a boss of a competing company. Nice. So obviously, Chevy Chase has been a lot of things, but we immediately see just, like, Chevy Chase's Clark Road rage and just, like, reactivity. Yeah. And, like, selfish streak. You're putting your family in danger. Yeah, exactly. And just, like, impulsivity, too, like, not thinking ahead or thinking things through. Like, they get there and no one has anything to cut the tree down with. And then they get it home and it doesn't really fit. Then we just cut it in half and we get the chainsaw out. It's just really interesting. He's an interesting character, to say the least. Yeah. Ellen seems to be always kind of trying to level head in, make him more aware of what's happening and his choices. And one of my favorite scenes for just comedic reason is when they're in bed that night and they have the sap stuck to their fingers and everything is sticking and just pulling like I just did. They're pulling the lamps and touching paper, and it's just so ridiculous. But if you've ever touched sap, it is impossible to get off. You can get it off with sugar. Oh, good to know. Yeah. Hot tip. But even then he's struggling. He can't do it himself. So he grabs it and takes it on, and then she gets to stop on her. And that's, like a perfect metaphor, I feel like, for that relationship, I don't know how she puts up with him. No, it's a lot. Yeah. All the characters kept saying, like, you're such a good dad. Just calm down. He needed a lot of reassurance. He did need a lot of reassurance, which I don't know what that's about. It seemed like he had some happy memories of childhood. Right. So he has two, you know, still married. They seem. Of the two sets of grandparents, they seem nicer and, like, less. Yeah. So Ellen's parents are very judgy. Francis and. What is his name? Frank. So Francis is played by Doris Roberts. So we've seen her in many, many things over the years. Like, something. Raymond. Everybody loves Raymond. Yep. The mom in that. So she's just like, immediately like, oh, you cut your hair. Oh, you smoking again? And we see Ellen responding to strEss, so she starts smoking. She also, before they even got here, was, like, in bed. In that scene in bed at the beginning, like, I heard everyone's coming. We could tell them all not to. And I was like, listen to that instant. Yeah. Would it be rude to ask them to stay in a hotel? You could just tell they were, like, bracing for it. I loved when all the grandparents got there, how they're just filling everyone in on their physical ailments. I got a bunion. Can you rub my feet? And Russ is like, ew, he wants to die. And then Audrey being like, I don't want to share bed with my brother. It's just, like, so funny. But, like, classic having everyone under the same roof. Oh, my gosh, the grandparents. I just love grandparents. And I personally can't wait to be older, I think. I don't know if I've told you, but I have three careers lined up in my mind. Tell our audience an elder one is to be an actress and be like the elderly grandma in all the movies. Like Doris, right? That's her name, yes. Another is to go hold babies at the hospital. Just be the person, like, in the NICU holding the babies. And the third, my favorite idea is I want to go sit at wedding dress shops and just tell all the brides, like, how beautiful they look every time they come out, just like, really sweet. That's either going to be creepy or sweet, right? Yeah. We'll depend on the bride. Yeah. And their personal history. Right. And I think if I can just be, like, the token loving grandmother with, like, muffins. You look beautiful. Cottage core, your little sweaters. Yeah, exactly. That'll be very nice. But watching this movie, I was like, ooh, I don't know. Yeah. All the grandma a little rough, and they seem to not like each other. It seems like the two grandparents don't get along. Yeah. And that creates a lot of stress for everyone, which I would imagine that being stressful. And also, I think it's lovely to invite people to stay at your house if you have the space, but if people have the means and if you don't, sometimes we got to make things work, and that's lovely, too. But if people have the means, we don't need to sleep on the floor. I don't know. I mean, I know that it's fun to wake up on holidays in the morning with people, but just come over. But is it fun? Yeah. Well, I think you really have to ask yourself that question. I think in this household, it's a no. Yeah. What about, like, Cousin Eddie showing up in the RV? So that was a twist. You could see, like, almost trauma. He's like. He can't believe it. He's just, like, speechless. He's kind of turning his head back and forth, back and forth. So they're all admiring the lights, which seems like it was a very stressful situation for Russ, who's one of his favorite lines of mind that I say frequently when, like, don't want to do something. So he's like, yeah, Dad, I got to do my homework. I got to feed the hog. He recites all these things that they don't have, and I just say that with my partner. We say it all the time. We don't want to do something. So he kind of backs out. And you see Clark lose his mind when the lights are not turning on. Right. He's kicking the Santa. He's having this big reaction, a little childlike. Right. It's kind of a temper tantrum, which makes me think that he doesn't have a lot of distress tolerance or, like, coping. Emotion regulation. Regulation. Strong point. Yeah. Also, it was a lot of lights. A lot of lights. Almost felt a little hypomanic at times. Right. Or, like, impulsive. Like, one thing you had mentioned, hyper focus. Yeah. Is like, does Clark have ADHD? Yeah. I mean, the data is. Think I'd love to do a Vanderbilt with him. Yeah. You added an additional symptom that I didn't see online, but I think it's true. Right. He's very impulsive. Very impulsive. Yeah. Like, with the road rage, with deciding to do this or to do that or just really going with it. The hyper focus. So he can't stop doing something, even at the risk of getting hurt. So that's when kind of some more potential traumatic brain injuries or TBIs come into our count of, I think it was nine head traumas during the entire movie. So he doesn't really give close attention or details. He makes careless mistakes. You see him stapling his little. Stapling his glove. He has so many. But then he doesn't just take his hand out of the glove. He's trying to rip the glove off. So again, decision making, trouble keeping attention or tasks. Doesn't seem to listen when spoken directly to. I can see that sometimes with his kids, he's just kind of looking away or like, how we would say, like, maybe La la Land. He doesn't name misses important details. He doesn't call his daughter Aubrey ever. He's like, oh, yeah, she's over there. Something. It's just weird. And is he being a jerk or is that inattentiveness? Trouble organizing, loses things, all the gifts. Right? He is digging around in the ceiling attic, and then he finds, like, ten gifts from years past. Distracted, forgetful. So there's a lot there where he very well could meet criteria for that. And I think he's also, at least in some ways, kind of a jerk. So, like, you can have ADHD and be a jerk. You can have ADHD and not be a jerk. So it's like a jerk and not have ADHD. Exactly. Diagram. Exactly. Yeah. No, I totally agree. It's interesting to think about does he have ADHD, and is this part of why he's trying to overcompensate? Right, because sometimes I think people will try to do that to make up for it in some way, but then the stuff they're trying to do to overcompensate, like, in this case, requires a lot of planning and organizing and execution, which is hard for anyone, but especially if you add in, like, an inattentive ADHD, he's also really hyperactive, so he's probably bumping around. Yeah, definitely. Even, like, the impulsive things he says to people and some of the altercations he would get into verbally, I think, could meet criteria for that, too. So he's this big family man, right? So there's a lot of things. That's how he kind of identifies himself. But then he's, like, flirting with that woman, Mary Lingerie place. I was, like, so turned off by that. Because then it's gross behavior. When his son comes over, he's like, suddenly like, oh, yikes. Because you don't want your son to see that, right? Because it's bad. I know. That's why he's, like, not, oh, I'm not married. Oh, she. That's Ew. Ick. Yeah. So back to Eddie. Seems like he's had some TBIs. I would say so. And he has some, you know, he refers to some sort of, like, surgery, right. Where he had a meta plate in his head. He refers to the VA. So it sounds like he's a veteran now. He's just, like, living on the road in the RV with his kids. Who. Financial problems. Yeah. He gave his money away to some minister online, it sounds like. Or on TV. Oh, no. Yeah. His kids also have had to TBI. Right. They referred Mary Lou. Oh, her eyes aren't crossed anymore. Right. Well, she got kicked in the head and they cross, and then she got kicked in the head again and they uncross. Spoiler alert, that's not how it works. But in this movie, I guess so it seems like they're kind of really down on their luck. And I'm like, do the kids go to school? Are you trying to convey. They don't go to school. They're just in the RV. And one older daughter's, like, in alcohol rehab. The other one's going to be in the carnival circus or something. So they're just a hoot. And they show up. Surprisingly, you can see everyone's thrilled to see. And it's almost like it's a little sweet because despite their quirks and very obvious comedic role in the movie, it's like, it's sad. They're definitely, like you said, not having any luck right now. But one of the sweeter moments in the movie is when Clark is downstairs with Ruby sue, right? She thinks he's Santa, and he has a sweet moment with her about Santa. And then when they're at the Christmas Eve, they're like, oh, we saw there was Santa sighting over this, and they all get really excited. Like, that's sweet. It was sweet. And that was a cute Christmas Eve with all there and waiting for Santa and stuff. So there are some sweet moments in the movie. That's probably why it's so successful is because it is funny. It is sweet. And I think it also still portrays these family dynamics that I think everyone can relate. Uncle sue just showing up or so and so having a little too much eggnog, right. Or Grandma over there singing the Star Spangled Band or Grandpa lighting the tree on Foster. He's just always lighting a cigar, like, all the time. So speaking of Margot and Todd, in a non psychological way, because this isn't really, like, a diagnosis, but they could use a little holiday spirit. They seem a little like curmudgeony, which is not. And it's only because they are, I think, maybe traumatized by having Clark as a. So. Right. Like, he's cutting down the tree because. Right. As we said, the grandpa, I think it's not Francis, but, like, burns it down. Clark freaks out. Right. Because it's ruining, like, which, again, if you had a fire in your house on the holiday, I would be reactive. But it's not about the fire. It's about, like, we don't have a tree. Yeah. So he goes into the yard. He goes out there with the mask. I know. And just chainsaws it down. It goes through the neighbor's window. Exactly. Smashes it. Meanwhile, they're getting TBIs, falling down the stairs. A lot of concussions in this movie. A lot of window smashing, too. Like, at the end, when the SWAT team shows up to rescue their boss, Todd won't go over and confront. So Margot does. She's ****** about it, like, banging on the door, opens it, and the squirrel attacks her. And then the dog jumps on her. What did you think of the squirrel? So symbolic with chaos. I think it's one of my. I know I've said this ten times already, but it's just such a good scene. It's running around the house. They're all running around with it. They're, like, freaking out. It's like. I don't know. It's a squirrel. But have you ever had a squirrel in your house? I've had, like, a bird. I had a squirrel once. Were you freaking out? Yeah, we were in an apartment at the time. It was a second floor apartment, and we had noticed we were renting it under this sink. There was, like, a hole that was getting bigger and bigger. And I was like, that's never good kitchen. Yeah. I was like, that's weird. And then one day, I just heard this scratching noise. I was like, is that a mouse? And I go and open it. A squirrel darts out. Like. Just like that. Just like the squirrel girl in this movie. Yes. Darts out. And luckily, I'd had the door opened at the balcony, and it ran out there, and I just slammed the door, like, as fast as I could. But it was terrifying. It was shocking. Yes. Just like this. So I was like, oh, my God. I know that feeling. Like, all of a sudden, I thought it was a bird at first in the tree, but then, no, it was crazy squirrel. Yeah. My in laws had a squirrel like infestation in their attic years ago. They have it all fixed now, but squirrels kept getting in. They kept covering the hole or whatever. They kept chewing through it. It was a nightmare. It was so hard to get rid of. And they kept appearing. They'd wake up and hear the scratches in the ceiling. So I guess this is common. Another family member of mine had, like, flying squirrels in his house. They would come in through the light fixtures. They're a little smaller. Yeah, it's just like, what is this? All these squirrels. You know what it also made me think of? Cruzfeld Yakov disease. Do you know what that is? I knew you weren't going to know this. I'm really excited. So random. So say it again. Kruzfeld Yakov disease. CJD. Because this is one of the most interesting things I ever learned in medical school. So there's a class of disorders called prion diseases, where prions are like misfolded proteins that lead to basically bigger cells and stuff, like can't function. So Cruzfeld, the AOC of disease, is something where it's a prion disease, and it's really sad because it's very fatal very quickly, and there's really not a lot you can do for it. So it's people who all of a sudden develop memory loss, trouble walking, muscle weakness, personality changes, they stop eating, and then they die pretty quickly. There's a variant of this that comes from eating squirrel brains. Yeah, that is why I thought of it. I believe it's called kuru kuru. And they discovered this back in an island in Papua New guinea where culturally, people would eat squirrel brains. If you remember back in the day, mad cow disease in London, that's a prion disease that people got from eating infected cows that had the prion disease. So it's very transmissible, which is scary if you eat, but you have to eat the infected meat, basically. So you can't get like Kruzfeld Yakub from sneezing or saliva or anything like that. You get it from eating the tissue. Another reason to be vegetarian. Or there's a random variant, which is what a lot of humans randomly get, and then there's like a genetic variant to where it could run in families. Anyway, so, yeah, in medical school, I learned about this prion disease that came from eating squirrel brains. And I was like, what? But then I thought, what if Uncle Eddie ate that squirrel? Like, I could see him doing that. Well, they've said that they eat squirrels. I know. That's why I started thinking about the preon disease. But no, I don't think Uncle Eddie has the prion disease because he's functioning too well, despite how he's actually functioning. But anyway, just a fun little tidbit that's interesting. Well, if I'm ever in the wild, I will not. Brain. Yeah. Don't eat squirrel. Brain. Yeah. Okay. Fun fact. I think in some cultures, it's like a delicacy. In other cultures, there's some cultures where there's some cannibalism as part of funeral rituals and things like that. And that can lead to pre owned disease. So try to avoid it. Now you know. Now you know, the more you know. So another stressor in this movie is finances, right? So we see Clark kind of planning on this bonus, which a lot of people do have anticipatory kind of regular guaranteed bonuses. And it's like a part of your salary because at first, I remember watching this as a kid and being like, well, why would you overspend, silly. But now I said, he's gotten it for, like 17 years or something. It's a part of your kind of guaranteed schedule income. And so he's planning to, again, have this perfect moment where he has this pool and he's, like, envisioning, right, this pool party with Mary there, which is weird, but whatever. And so then he finds out, right, that he doesn't get it. And he's waiting. And he's waiting. You can see him getting more and more because he already put the deposit down. Exactly. And it sounds like he doesn't have the money to do that, which is without the bone. It's a little risky. But then he finally gets the letter and announces to the whole family, before he opens it, I know what he's going to do with it. Everyone's excited. Everyone can't wait to see it. And then it's the jelly of the Month club. And he, which rightfully so, but loses it, right? He goes on that rant that is bleeped out a lot if you watch it on live TV. It's not if you watch it on the streaming service, but it's like. And it's, again, one of the iconic moments of the whole movie. Eddie, which is super sweet, sees how upset he is, wants to do something about. And he know he doesn't know what to get Clark. And Clark says, all I want is for the boss to be here wrapped up in a bow. And so Eddie's like, oh, light bulb. Oh, my God, he does it. So he goes and gets him, kidnaps this man puts a bow on him. I'm like, where'd you get the bow? Not important. Brings him back from what? Car dealership, literally. And then they find out and then they all crash through the windows. And of course, Ellen's like, frozen, holding. So funny, though. Private party, said, like, freeze. That was like, really funny. And then even the boss is frozen. They're like, not you. But then the wife learns that he went back on his word and did jelly of the Month club and she chastises him for it. She's really upset. And then they learn that everyone's getting more money this year and it's going to be great. And then they're all happy, and I'm just like, whoa, then what happens? ANd then Aunt Bethany sings the national anthem as the know because Eddie put all the nasty stuff in the sewer and Lewis lights it on fire. So they're all singing and it's just like the best moment of Christmas of all. It's perfect. That's what Christmas is really all about, Clark. Family connection, family veterans and fire. God bless America. God bless America. Oh, my God. It's wonderful. It's so funny. It's so funny. But it's so true. Like, the financial stress that can come from the holidays is insane, right? I think just with the capitalist society we live in, the materialism. And you really do lose sight of what the reason for the season, and that's different for everyone. But it's not just presenting money. I think everyone can agree it's not about that, right? I think it is about giving, but within reason. And so, yeah, I think that's a nice spot to sort of start wrapping up, is like, yeah, it is about giving. And some tips I think that we have as therapists for managing stress around the holidays. I think one little catchphrase I really like, which ties in nicely to the fiery end to the movie, is don't set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm. And by that, it sort of reminds you, like, it's okay to have healthy limits and, like, don't overextend yourself. Especially, like, I think moms tend to do this. You see Clark doing this. Don't try to be a superhero to make everyone else happy and just don't. Or if it's too much to go to this house on Christmas Eve, then this house on Christmas Day and then grandparents on Christmas night, don't come up with a new plan. And keep in mind that you're allowed to enjoy your holiday, too. And that, again, trying to keep in mind, like, what's your reason for the season? Yeah. And I think trying to take a step back and figuring out what is your favorite part. Right. Like, what's important to you. Is it being all together on Christmas morning and staying in matching pajamas? Like, great. Is it the food great? Is it seeing certain people great? But it's like, which part brings you the most joy and how can you invest in that and let some of the other things. Exactly. Exactly. And I think one thing I always encourage people to do, especially if you run more on the perfectionistic side or you're really going above and beyond, like we see Clark doing is okay, like, what are your expectations? And then reduce it by like half and just settle into, like, well, how would I feel if only these things got great? Like, try to just take the pressure off yourself a little bit so that you're not just doing and doing and going and going, but you can actually be present in the festivities or the events and you can find some enjoyment in it. Right. One podcast I love to listen to called the Deep Dive, I don't know if you've ever heard of that one, but they always talk about something called, like, tree time, where one of them in her iPhone calendar has like a half hour every day where it's tree time and she and her kids just sit in front of the tree and just look at and connect. Isn't that beautiful? Because they used to spend all this time getting the tree, decorating the tree, putting presents under the tree. But how often do you actually just sit in front of it and take it in and sit there with your kids with no distractions and stuff like that? So I think it's important to build that stuff in. Yeah, no, I think it's really just about connecting with your values and what's going to make you feel connected. I mean, we have typically not for everyone, but like time off. So how can you spread things out? I love spreading things out. It's like, what's better than having three Christmases? So we don't need to fit everything in in that 24 hours period. Right. But I don't know. I like the idea also of you had mentioned just like volunteering and how can you give back in any way, big or small, around that time of year? What does that look like? Can you turn that into like a family tradition and then for managing the stress that comes from family dynamics? I think if you can use humor as best you can, that's always really helpful, especially if there's just that one person who, no matter what, gets under your skin or creates a scene or just stuff like that. You have to keep in mind you're responsible for your own behavior, and that's it. You can't control other people's behavior, their feelings, or how they're going to react. So there's just that one nudge. Is there a way with your partner or someone to kind of turn it into a funny little game? Or how long is it going to be till so and so does this, or till so and so does that? Is there any way to try to just accept what you anticipate will happen and try not to take it personally? This is where I also love to encourage people to put on their. What I call **** raincoats. You just imagine you got your **** raincoat on, and whatever's thrown at you just rolls right off. Crude. It is helpful, though, to have some anticipation, right? So whether you are in therapy, perfect time to talk about it with your therapist. If you have a partner, talk about with them or whoever you are attending, maybe an event with or even yourself you can do this with. But just, like, what do you expect? What do we know about your family? What can you anticipate is going to happen? And just preparing for yourself, right? So if I was going into this holiday event, and I was a guest and I was another cousin coming, I might say if I knew everyone who was there, that cousin Eddie is a little interesting, and he might say some off color things, and he's Eddie. And I'm either going to make light of it, or I'm going to walk in the other room and take some space. And if Clark is saying unkind things to someone or beating himself up, like asking myself, knowing Clark, is it appropriate to get involved? Do I offer him positive feedback? Will that make it worse? We know so much about our families, more than we often think we do, that you just have to spend maybe five minutes going through the people who are going to be there. What do you expect? And then what can you do about it, right? And how can you handle it? How can you maintain your own sense of wellness and your own boundaries? And it's okay and healthier to walk away, to take some space, go for a walk, stay in a hotel, than to find yourself engaging in these toxic dynamics or fighting or things like that. So sometimes even just having, like, an exit strategy or a game plan can be really helpful, even if you don't have to use it. Just knowing you know what you do is really helpful. Really helpful. So good luck. Good luck. I hope you enjoy the holidays. Thanks for tuning into this episode as we wrap up our first calendar year of podcasting, which is really exciting again, follow us on analyze Scripts podcast at Instagram and TikTok. If you're enjoying our content, please please rate, review, subscribe, and share. We're hoping to really grow in the new year and we will see you next Monday. Yeah, take care. Bye. This podcast and its contents are a copyright of analyzed scripts. All rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited unless you want to share it with your friends and rate, review, and subscribe. That's fine. All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings, or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are covering one of our most favorite Christmas films, "The Grinch." This version came out in 2000 and stars Jim Carrey. In this episode we cover Reactive Attachment Disorder, Season Affective Disorder, Antisocial Personality Disorder and the impact of trauma and bullying in early life. We don't leave you feeling hopeless so we also share effective therapy for early childhood disruption and stories of healing. We hope you enjoy!
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fieri, a psychiatrist. And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker. And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Where two shrinks analyze the depiction of.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Mental health in movies and TV shows. Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: There is so much misinformation out there.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And it drives us nuts. And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like with a lay flat airline or a.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Major beauty brand, even better.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And your DSM Five and enjoy. Hi.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Welcome to our December edition of our podcast.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Happy Holidays.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Happy holidays near and far. If you are an international listener, which we did just get Spotify wrapped info, right? We're global, so thank you.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: We are global. Guys, it's official. Our top three countries on spotify were America, Canada and Norway.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Who knew? So loving the northern European aisles. So we are really excited to kind of continue the December edition of some holiday classics. So today we're going to be covering The Grinch, the Jim Carrey version. So there's many versions, obviously. I think at least I'm more familiar with the Jim Carrey one. Then there's the cartoon, right? The original. And then there's the new cartoon, which is really funny and silly, too.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And the new cartoon has some pretty sick beats, has some good music. And, of course, I think we were, like, going back and forth about, do we cover the original or the Jim Carrey version? And I was glad when you agreed we should do Jim Carrey version because it's so good.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah. And there's a lot there.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, just like the costuming, the makeup. Every time I watch it, I'm just looking at The Grinch, like, did he just take 10 hours to get in this costume every day?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Probably. I mean, that is a fun fact. All of their facial constructions, the nose for makeup every single day. So I went to at my dance studio growing up, the girl I don't know her name, I should have walked who was climbing up the mountain at the beginning with the boys to, like, the grim. Yeah. So she went to my dance studio.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: No way. Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: So I don't know if she's been in things since, but that was always so exciting.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That's like a hot take.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah. Anyway.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And Taylor Momson was so adorable as Cindy Lou. I know. And that's obviously, like, pre Gossip Girl, but then she went into Gossip Girl, and then she was, like, the lead singer of that really intense heavy metal band. And I'm not sure what she's doing now, but she's just so adorable and was really perfect for the role. And I just loved all their hairstyles, and I'm assuming they were wigs, but just super cool. And then molly shannon, of course I know. Who doesn't love her?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Some of the people when I looked up the cast list, I was like, oh, yeah, duh. That's them. But their makeup and costuming was so good that it just never even crossed my mind that that was my Shannon. But, like, hello, superstar.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Hello. Oh, my God, we should do Superstars, by the way, side note.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then I vividly remember this movie coming out. I think I was in late middle school, early high school, and it was like a year when my family was having a hard time and that Faith Hill, Where Are you? Christmas song came out. And it really was like I remember just being like, this is how I feel this year. And even still, it really gets you and I think really speaks to how emotional the holiday season can be as we keep talking about and emphasizing in our holiday episodes. That is a fact that holidays can be hard for people of all ages and backgrounds. And I really loved that this movie and the Grinch story in general really speaks to the meaning of the holidays and that beyond the commercialization of it, it stirs up a lot of big feelings for people. And that's yeah, yeah. Vividly remember hearing that song as a kid and being like just like, oh, speaks to Know.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I mean, Faith Hill is such a wonderful artist. And I think know it came out with the album because Cindy Lou, right? Like, sings in her little beautiful voice, too, in the movie. But then the Faith Hill version, I think, was just like a tear.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yes. And it reminds me of that song. My grown up Christmas list. Have you heard that one? Yeah, similar, right, where you're just like it's just like really I don't know, something about Christmas music really gets me.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I'm a music crier, so if it is hallelujah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, I can easily a lot of the Christmas, even a lot of the church hymns, even not for a sad reason, they're just, like, really moving. Yeah, right. They're so moving.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I was just going to say that reminds me. I recently was at Disney World, and they're doing a lot of their Christmas stuff right now. And I went to what they call the candlelight processional show. I don't know if you've ever heard of it's, at Epcot. So it's this big show that's been going on for 60 years, and they have a big choir, a live band, and then there's always a celebrity narrator who basically narrates the Christian Christmas story, right. And then they sing all the classic Christmas songs with a huge choir. So it's like really emotional, really beautiful. And when I was there, Chrissy Metz from this Is US was the celebrity. Narrator do you know who she is?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I loved. This is us. I feel like in our giveaway, which we'll talk about then in our episode, a lot of people have recommended that to us over the years. But anyway, she was like, balling. She was just, like, so moved by the Christmas story and the big choir. And I think it's just like the music, right? It's, like, so moving.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I attended the online version, but a conference for eating disorders. And it was in the Renfro conference. Yeah, she was one of the keynote speakers, just talking about her experience. And it was like, a couple of people who've been very open about their experience in a larger body and just, like, fat phobia and being an advocate.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Oh, wow.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah, I was really impressed with what she had to yeah. We both kind of just saw her in two different ways than this is us. So she's getting around everywhere.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That's awesome. And actually, I just saw on her Instagram she's coming to New Haven with I guess she's like obviously she's a singer, but I guess with her band or something. Cool. Hey, Chrissy. Matt's, like, we love you. Okay. Anyway, back to the grinch. There's a lot we could talk about. So what jumps out to so I.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Was, you know, using Google as one does when they're looking for movie fun facts and something that I didn't see, but did pop out at me when I was watching the movie. Which is kind of a controversial disorder in the DSM and kind of in I don't know its use, its treatment, but it's a reactive attachment disorder. So I thought of him kind of immediately the Grinch with attachment.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Like, he kind of came from somewhere. We don't know.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: The storks in the sky. Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And he landed outside and then he was cold and alone. I don't know for how long, not a long period of time. But it makes me think of some disrupted attachment and some neglect. And then the two sisters kind of take him in. And then he kind of goes on to continue, though, to not fit in and not have these connections with his peers. And so I thought, just for educational purposes, we could talk a little bit about reactive attention. I've worked I think that's a great idea over the years with it. And again, it's not common. But unfortunately, with the DSM, the current version of it, we only really have two disorders that we can diagnose and bill with. So it's reactive attachment disorder and then the disinhibited social where did it go? Disinhibited social engagement disorder. So everyone really wants there to be way more attachment based disorders. It would be more gentle, I think, with explaining some behavior.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So anyway, like, from childhood to adulthood. Yeah, I think totally.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And we've talked a lot about borderline disorder throughout our movies and TV shows. And there's a lot of talk about borderline often, but not always stemming from attachment issues. DSM, I think Sick should work on that.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. And I think, too, there's so many different schools of thought in terms of psychological development or schools of thought in terms of how do you do psychotherapy? What's sort of your lens that you see things through? And attachment is a big one. That's one that I find myself just naturally gravitating towards. And I've noticed we talk about it a lot on our podcast, almost every character. You and I are really curious about their attachments. Like with the morning show, we were like, oh, finally we saw Corey's mom. We're just constantly wondering, how did people get to be this way? And I think those early years are so important, right? Like between ages zero and five. That really sets the stage psychologically for how you will relate to adults. Really. Like, those early attachments we talked about in our Harry Potter episode with your caregivers are incredibly important. And, yeah, we see the Grinch as a baby, but like an older baby, like six to twelve months, I'd say, based on his head control and vocalizations and things like that. Dropped off on the stoop. So what happened before then? If anything, it's cold. And then he looks totally different from everyone else. And he's super bullied. Like all those scenes with Martha May when he's so excited to give her the valentine or not the valentine. The Christmas angel.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And even the teacher.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I know everyone's like that one scene. Slow laughing, right?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: They're like, yeah, even the teacher. It reminds me of Stepbrothers when the mom gets involved singing songs. Brennan has a know where. It's just like even the adult who's supposed to be protecting you in that.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Space is like adding to it.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think a lot of people, even if you have solid, secure attachment, can relate to feeling bullied or laughed at in school. But he really got it. And we really saw how that made him isolate. Totally. Right. Totally isolate. And it's interesting, right? I think comparing how the Grinch responds to that type of early experience know, in a future episode, we're going to talk about Frozen, how Elsa responds and then isolates herself. It's interesting parallels to me.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah. And a common theme in some child movies. I just think it's know something bad happens, which I guess is just a good story. And then how someone responds to that something bad happening or hard or, you know, how they kind of manage to do it. And ideally, if it's a Disney movie, they coped well and kind of come out the other side. But we see that with a Grin.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So, again, when we talk about attachment, again, it's a term used to talk about the connection between an infant and their early caregiver. Usually it's a parent, but not always. It can be a grandparent. It can be someone at an orphanage. Hopefully it's someone that's a good place to start, is we hope there's someone. Right? Hi, scribbles. So then we think about and we've talked about in a lot of our past episodes, like Harry Potter, you a lot of different ones about the different type styles of attachment. We think about secure attachment versus insecure attachment. And then in that umbrella of insecure attachment, we think about avoidant attachment styles versus anxious avoidant attachment styles versus a reactive type of attachment style, right? So when you have a secure attachment, the child knows and feels secure in knowing that their needs will be met by their caregiver. And this develops over time, like for human babies, when you cry, your mother comes to feed you, to change you, to hold you. As the baby gets older, the child begins to be able to tolerate waiting for mom because they've been able to internalize, like, even if I'm crying, I know she will eventually come to me. It's something called object permanence, where I believe it's around 18 months old, where kids can realize, like, okay, even if I don't see my mom, I know she still exists, and when I need her, I know she will hear me and come to get me, even if it's not immediate. So you develop this secure feeling like your needs will be met. When you have insecure attachment, you don't develop that. You can't count on your needs being met, and you react to that in different ways. If you have an anxious attachment style, you're always kind of like wanting it to be met and not really being able to trust, like, will it be met or not? You're always anxious about it. If you have an anxious avoidant attachment style, you have that anxiety and then you kind of avoid social interactions in adulthood, you might not pursue romantic partnership, you might have a hard time making long term friendships, things like that. If you have a totally avoided attachment style, you don't interact with anyone, and you're just like, I can't trust anyone. And then this reactive attachment style is having a really hard time soothing yourself. So I remember seeing this in some kids when I did inpatient child psychiatry rotations who maybe grew up in I specifically remember one case where the child grew up in an orphanage in Russia or somewhere like that and was adopted by a family who'd also adopted like eight other kids but adopted them at like age nine or something. And the kid was having a really hard time adjusting, and it was just like a lot of emotional dysregulation, really hard time feeling soothed, really hard time trusting that anyone is safe to soothe them. It's really sad to see. And so we think that kids with reactive attachment disorder have a really disturbed internal working model of relationships. It's like the most severe version of an attachment disorder. And so that leads to a lot of interpersonal and behavioral problems later in life. Most of them have early childhood neglect, abuse or both especially in that ages zero to five range. Or early loss, like early tragic loss, which then leads to neglect or things like that where their needs aren't met. And I think it's been connected to I don't know the date off the top of my head, but things in adulthood like substance use disorder, mental health disorders, trouble maintaining jobs like stuff like that. But what's been your experience with it?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Similar, just kind of working. I think it's been some of the saddest cases I've worked with and just some of the ones that I feel like really sit with you and I won't forget. And I think that just speaks to how many painful and terrible things that we see and work with families for. It's like this, just for me, has really taken the cake, I think, because treatment feels really difficult and challenging because so much of it has to do with the caregiver. And the caregiver really should be in their own therapy because it's so difficult, really. You have to almost be like it's almost like an impossible expectation which no one's asking the parent to give or the caregiver to give. But you have to really be kind of coaching constantly. Everything's kind of a goal, everything's even a hug. Like a lot of kids with reactive attachment disorder don't like to be touched. So it's like how can you show important love?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Regulate them. Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It's just hard. So there's like attachment therapy, play therapy, of course for little ones. There's some residential that they do rad. Sometimes they send them home with a puppy I've seen to develop a bond with something.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, because I was just thinking, as you were saying, that so much of therapy, at least in adults, focuses on the therapeutic alliance which means the connection between the patient and their therapist. And time and time again studies have shown that is the strongest predictor of positive outcomes in therapy is having that connection with your therapist. And for so many patients. If not, I would argue all of them who have attachment struggles, whether they meet criteria for a full fledged attachment disorder or they just have some.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Interpersonal.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Stuff with their parents that they're trying to work through, that gets replicated in the therapeutic relationship. And that can be, like, a great way to work on healing those wounds and learning how to trust other people, at least in the psychodynamic work that I do. And that's going to be so hard with someone with a reactive attachment style because they're going to really struggle to form that alliance with their care with a therapist. And I think that's like the whole goal probably for a really long time in the therapy is just to connect and be a safe place. Right. And similarly if you're adopting a child with this kind of attachment style, I think, but I'm sure we could do a better job that adoption agencies and stuff like help parents learn how to relate to these kiddos and over time but I don't actually know how much support parents get who are adopting.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah, I think that's hard. I guess, even thinking of some of the cases where the belief is that some were from the kind of the international adoptions from places in Eastern Europe where we kind of know historically there seems to be a lot of neglect and then other just like horrific cases of child abuse and neglect here right. Early on adoption. So when we think of the Grinch, the point of kind of bringing up reactive attachment disorders, there's so many things. So people there's like antisocial personality disorder people have kind of talked about with him, depression, trauma, of course.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But it's like I think this was.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Just like a little bit of a unique one. But he does demonstrate some of the criteria. So not liking physical touch, he wants to kind of be on his own, being unhappy or sad, it says, without a clear cause. I think we could take the trauma approach that there's always a clear cause with abuse in the case, it's always coming from somewhere but not really expressing emotions. So having a conscience, like struggling with remorse or guilt and then the detachment, withdrawal, kind of all of that.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. And in terms of the DSM Five how, they also include some other symptoms that you might see in children with a reactive attachment disorder, which includes things like poor hygiene, not meeting motor milestones, having trouble with eye contact or social interactions, having blank expressions, appearing like unfocused, not responding socially appropriately to an interpersonal interactions, and stuff like that. And kind of all of that makes sense. Right. Because you learn how to groom yourself from your caregiver, right? Like your caregiver brushes your teeth, brushes your hair, gets you dressed before you know how to do that. So if no one's doing that for you, you don't know to do it for yourself. Right. And so I think you could also see how I just think, like, a trauma informed approach is so important because you could see how someone with this attachment style could be misdiagnosed as like ADHD, odd conduct disorder. And sure, I think there might be a proportion of people with this early childhood trauma and attachment style who go on to develop those things, but it might not actually be that. Right?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That's important to emphasize.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: The big years that I feel like that kind of comes out is more which is where the research with reactive attachment disorder is lacking and why it can be a little controversial because there's no long term studies, really about what it turns into. They know a lot from zero to five. But then after it's like, are the kiddos kind of getting a secure attachment, working on it, developing the ability to have close, safe relationships? Or is it kind of taking that other route where it's still not having any relationships and then the behaviors kind of naturally come out of that. It's not like the behaviors first, it's like you're kind of on your own in this big social world.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Exactly right. It's like the former way you described it is like what we see in this movie with the grins who he can develop this secure feeling with. Cindy Lou. Interestingly. A little child. Right? And we always think like children are very pure and kind and so innocent. Right. And as adults, we often say like, gosh, when do we all become know when you're looking at little kids and interestingly, as you were saying that, Portia, I was just thinking like, well, in order to do a long term study, your participants have to keep participating, which in of itself is an attachment. So these people are not going to do that, right, if their attachment isn't healing righteous.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah. And I thought his heart growing was to me just like so symbolic of him being and again, it's a movie and it's fast, but his healing and his ability to then connect and he kind of learns that through Cindy Luhu. And then it's safe to kind of try other attachments with his his caregivers. He kind know, reunites with and they put the sweater on him that's like itchy looking.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, but he can tolerate even that. Know, it is like such a beautiful like for therapy in some, right? Like, I guess if Cindy Lou and the Grinch are engaging in play therapy, I guess if you're following my drift, that if you can develop that connection and it can feel safe and if someone in your life can see past all the acting out behaviors, stealing the present, stealing the you know, stealing all the lights. All this stuff the Grinch is doing in anger, which is sort of his way of projecting out all the pain he's holding inside from all his early life experience. If there's someone in your life again, hopefully an adult, not a child, hopefully someone will train someone in your life who can hold on to and keep mirroring back to you that you do have goodness inside. You are worthy of love. I see you for who you are despite all your acting out. I'm not going to leave you, baby. Is that powerful? And don't you wish everyone could have a person like that in your life? I'm just thinking of all the teenage boys I've seen in my work throughout the years who are just really acting out. And you're just like, god, you just need someone to love you. And it's tough. And these behaviors make it hard to do that consistently. Right. But you really need it because they.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Are so naturally kind of pushing others away. But it's like the core purpose of that is to protect. So it's like while others are kind of getting hurt or like, oh, yeah, he's a jerk. I can't believe he did that. It's like obviously some peers, I'm not asking them to have the capacity to do that, but like the caregivers or the adults around or the teachers or the supports, the therapist, it's like, well, why is this happening and how does it benefit him? But he also does have a dog. So now, thinking about animals, was that a tiny little way that even while he was by himself, he was able to develop an attachment with an animal, and that made it easier for them with Cindy Lou, who's also like a little bit, in a way, children are like animals. If you could go with me giving you that positive, unconditional, like, just the consistency. I feel like children in a way, are predictable in that way with just sometimes emotions. And so maybe that was the little crack that opened, allowed Cindy to kind of open the door.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I think that does speak to why could his heart grow? Why could he start to develop this? I think because there's some ability there for that. Right? He must have had some, however small thread of attachment that he knew it was possible there was something in there, whether it was those two sisters that he learned to trust, whether there was something there that led him to getting the dog. Right. And I mean, I've seen so many adult patients with a lot of attachment issues or trauma who really rely on their pets, right? And then there's all of the emotional support animals, which can be exploited, but when it's appropriate, it makes so much sense, right. Even if it's hard to attach to humans, because humans can be cruel sometimes animals, you can develop that attachment. So I think it does speak to the Grinch's ability to develop an attachment. However, it takes time, and it has to be in the right situation. But I think if he had been living alone like a hermit, with no dog, with no desire, then a there wouldn't be a story, there wouldn't be a movie. Right. He just wouldn't go to the Hubilation. He would just kind of be a hermit. Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I had a question for you, similarly, and I'm curious to hear your perspective about medication. So when I worked with some kiddos who had the diagnosis of reactive attachment disorder, it felt like a similar medication mix for borderline, right? Like an antianxiety, like a risperadol sometimes with respiradone, with aggression. So what else do you see? Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So, again, I'm not a trained child and adolescent psychiatrist, but I would agree with you. In my brief training in child and adolescent psychiatry, during my adult residency training, it was hard because for a while I thought about pursuing child and adolescent, but then I didn't. And one big reason was because I felt like a lot of times as a psychiatrist, it was expected that you would medicate symptoms that at least like on the inpatient settings. I kept thinking, like, they're acting this way because of their home life or because of their parents or they're behaving and totally medicine isn't going to fix that. I would always say to my supervisors, I wish I could just prescribe them new parents. I just want to give them a loving parent. And Dr. Q, one of my favorite teachers of all time, when she would be interviewing kiddos and stuff, who were coming on the unit, she would get a good sense of what's their relationship like with their parents and then also ask them questions like, what do you go to when you're sad? Or who can you talk to when you have a question? Trying to gauge, like, is there someone else in your life? A coach, a teacher? Is there someone? And if there was someone kind of like the Grinch, there must been someone that you hope you can foster that relationship. But I would agree with you. I feel like in terms of the medication side, I think you often end up medicating certain symptoms in hopes it'll help keep the kid in, quote, unquote, behavioral control. And that always just rubs me the wrong way, because it feels like we're not treating the deeper thing or, like, the root cause, but then it's also like, well, how do you get to the root cause if the behaviors are interfering? It's really complicated, right?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But yeah, I would agree with you. I think we see. And sometimes that's appropriate. Sometimes when you have patients with something like borderline personality disorder, it is helpful for them to be on a couple of different medications to help treat the different symptoms so that they're in a place of emotional stability, where they can make use of DBT or play therapy if it's a kid. It's just, I think, really hard with kids when the medications we're using can have so many side effects. So it's a really nuanced decision.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah. And I think it just makes it hard. And I think we both have said ten times today, but attachment is so tricky, and I think the most vulnerable people are kiddos, and it just can be heartbreaking. When basic needs aren't met, there's abuse, and then, of course, that they're still not in a good place, and I don't know. But another totally agree, kind of just quick note about the Grinch is I thought it was funny someone it made me think of, like, what is it? Sad? Seasonal effective seasonal affective disorder. And it's like, it's always winter there. It's always holiday stress, right? So it's like, it's this perpetual can you imagine?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like, on the one hand, it's like, wow, it might be nice to live in Christmas time all the time, but then on the other, it's like such that's so much pressure, like, such high expectations. And we see that with the competition.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Between the neighbors, with how many lights.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: You get on your house. And then there's even the mayor's wife, who has, like, a Barbie body, right, who's using that light gun to get off. That's why loved this version of the movie, because it. Just speaks to that stress in such a comical way.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And it's also for adults with right seeing, like, doing the gun, it's shooting in that little bit, like, sensual way. It was funny. Yeah, it's funny. And it's definitely a part of the must watch list for me, at least for the holidays. Yeah, I love it.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I love this version. I just love Jim Carrey. Like, who doesn't? Yeah, but he's such a good Grinch. It's so good.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah. Ten out of ten recommend. So thank you for listening today. I think we're going to wrap up.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: We'd love to hear your thoughts about this classic movie. What do you think about the Grinch's attachment style?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah, so definitely let us know. You can reach us on many social media accounts like TikTok or Instagram at Analyze Scripts podcast. You can also leave a comment if you're watching this on YouTube. Or you can always email us at Analyze scriptspodcast at gmail. We'd like to hear your take. This was a little bit of new info.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, let's talk about the giveaway. I believe this episode is going to come out before the giveaway. Let me double check.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Monday. I think it won't that Monday. Well, sorry.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I mean, it could well, can we cut this out?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: You should check our instagram. And if there is the still giveaway going on, we're giving away $200 of an Amazon gift card as a way to say thank you to our listeners. If it's not, we'll probably maybe do it again at some point.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Maybe next do it again another time.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Make sure you're following us. You could see the opportunity to give us some feedback, and we'll definitely be taking some of the suggestions that have.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Been on that post.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And again, please leave us some. We'd love to hear your feedback, but thanks for joining us.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: We're having a great time and we love all the interaction and catch us next week's. For our last episode of 2023, we will be covering Christmas Vacation, which is just such a classic. It's one of Portia's favorites. It will be released on Christmas Day. So if you need a little mental health break from all the festivities and you want to give it a listen, that's great.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah, no, good note. All right, take care, guys.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Bye.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: This podcast and its contents are a copyright of analyzed scripts. All rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited. Unless you want to share it with your friends and rate review and subscribe, that's fine. All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings, or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening, and see you next time.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are joined by our friend Dr. Sulman Mirza (@thekicksshrink) to discuss his favorite holiday movie "Gremlins." This campy 1984 thriller comedy horror follows the Peltzer family as they unwittingly adopt (?steal) the mogwai Gizmo at Christmastime. As a father and child & adolescent psychiatrist, Dr. Mirza shares his interpretation of this movie as an allegory for parenthood. We also explore themes of trauma, gender roles, and consumerism. We hope you enjoy!
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[00:10] Unknown Speaker: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fieri, a psychiatrist. And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker. And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows. Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends. There is so much misinformation out there, and it drives us nuts. And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like with a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better. So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn and your DSM five, and enjoy. Welcome back to another episode of Analyze Scripts. We are really excited to be joined again by one of our favorite guests. Don't tell the others. Maybe Solman Mirza, who is a triple board certified physician in Adult psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry and addiction medicine. Just in case you didn't catch our last episode that he was on, I'll share a little bit about him. He works with the largest healthcare system in North Virginia as the staff psychiatrist for an adolescent partial hospitalization program. He sees children and adolescents as outpatients there as well. He also has his own private practice, Luku Psych, where he sees adult outpatient patients with a focus on ADHD, autism, substance abuse issues, as well as being Blue Duns County's first Loudon, I was like, we're in the Northeast here. The first certified provider of bravado, the FDA approved intranasal eschetamine product for treatment resistant major depressive disorder. Dr. Mirza is also a certified provider in the National Basketball Players Association Mental Health and Wellness Program for the Washington Wizards. Begrudgingly realizing that the only way he was going to make it into the NBA was by being a doctor, which is super cool. That's a tough realization. Way to spin, know, way to find positive reframe. Yeah. And then, in addition to his clinical work, Dr. Mirza has a growing social media presence, which is how we found hiM. You can find him at the Kicks shrink with a following over 85,000 across TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, with an accompanying podcast as well, where he creates educational, entertaining videos and content with the goal of breaking down mental health stigma, combating mental health misinformation, which we also agree is really important, and rehabilitating the often negative image of psychiatry and psychiatrist. Often in movies, which we see really frequently. Yes. So he interviews leaders in the field, all while hoping to make viewers laugh and learn something, but also really like sneakers. Yeah. I'm curious, are you hoping for a special sneaker gift this holiday season. Well, it was my birthday recently, and I know. Birthday. Thank you. It's been like a month. Plus now it kind of flew under the radar because I was, like, bugging my wife. I was like, where's my gift? Where's my gift? And she's been like, along the way. She's like, sending me Instagram posts of this Pakistani artist who does custom artwork on Air Force ones. So she's like, oh, if you were to get a shoe like this, what kind of artwork would you like on there? Theoretically. Theoretically. And I was like, I'm still wondering because I haven't gotten it yet. And now it's like six weeks, seven weeks later, I'm like, what's happening here? So it's going to be like some Pakistani truck art on these Air Force Ones. I'm kind of excited for that. Yeah, that's really cool. Yeah, I love that. Do you have a big sneaker collection? Oh, Porsche. Do I have a sneaker closet? I have a sneaker wall in my basement. It's like over 100 pairs of sneakers. So people come down to the basement and they're like, whoa. And I have to tell them. I was like, I have some more hidden away in another closet, so don't worry. Do you actually wear them or are they for display only? No, I try to rotate through them. I try to spice up and wear a different pair every day or so. Cool. But I have my go to. I go to on a regular. And I bet you have a way of keeping them really clean. Yeah. So I've got the cases for them. So they come in the clearish display cases. Like a Beanie baby. Yeah. Container store has these boxes, essentially. So they sell them by the six pack, essentially, of them. So you end up spending just as much on the storage as you do on sometimes the shoes. I love the container store. Yeah. It's trouble. They have containers for everything, every shape, every size. Every now and then I go through these fantasies of just organizing my whole house. Right. Like a place for everything. And I have this fantasy, like, the rest of my family members will just do it and they won't. Of course, they won't make a good point about the Beanie babies, but I think we also used to store, like, furbies in those glass containers as well, which leads us to our movie today. Yes. So we're talking about the 1984 movie Gremlins, which was a smash hit at the time. It still is. It's like one of those classic movies, but totally. Every time I watch this. I think about furbies, which came after Gremlins, but I always wonder, how did that fly? Because they look identical. And I think they actually even came out with a gizmo. Furby at one point. That's, like, super hard to get now. Yeah, they were creepy. Esop. Furby's were creepy. Yeah. One of my friend's fathers, when we were eight years old, got really annoyed at her furbies for not being turned off, and he threw them all over the balcony. Down. Obviously, that was probably. He maybe had something else going on issue. But I remember she was devastated. So what I think about when I think of Furby's hope she therapy today, but I don't know. Talk about a core memory. Yeah, I'll say there's some issues going on there. I think that explains plenty of stuff there, but. So, Sullivan, give us your hot take on this movie. Why do you like it so much? What made you want to revisit it? Yeah, so Gremlins is one of my know, I remember way back when we had. When I was growing up, me and my sister in upstate New York and Summertime, our parents weren't big on doing stuff, so they're like, you guys just stay in the. Just, like, do nothing. They're like, here's some math books and some books to read and stuff. And then we'd be like, me and my sister hanging out. Be like, let's just watch some movies. And so we'd go through the whole VHS tapes that we had at home, and my dad would always tape stuff off the TV, so we'd have to fast forward through the commercials and blah, blah, blah. For the people who remember VHS tapes. Do you remember the rewinding machine? Did you have one of those, or did you do it by. We just rewounded in the VCR itself. So after a movie, you have to be like, all right, guys, let's wait around for another five or ten minutes to rewind this movie. But Gremlins Two was always in the rotation. Gremlins Two, which is, like, the worst of the movies. It's very cheesy and crappy, but I always kind of liked it for whatever reason, that was our rotation. Mighty Ducks Two was in our rotation, and Star wars was in our rotation. Sequel, not the original. It was very bizarre. But for whatever reason, that was the one that was there. And then I remember watching Gremlins one. I loved Gremlins Two, but I remember watching Gremlins one later and being like, oh, my God, this is so much better. And fantastic. And it's amazing. And then I watched it again a few years ago, and I was like, oh, I have a different appreciation for it now. And then I watched it again over the weekend. I was like, oh, another different appreciation and interpretation viewing on it. The other thing, too with it is when people always ask me, like, oh, what's your favorite Christmas movie? It's always, like, the time of year. We're getting there. Right? I don't celebrate Christmas. I'm a Muslim. We don't celebrate it. Kind of growing up. So for me, it was always like, my favorite Christmas movies are Gremlins, Die Hard, and Home Alone. Right? Yeah, Home Alone is universal. We all like that one. But that was, like, my thing. So I always appreciate it as, like, a non Christmas Christmas mOvie, I guess. Yeah. And there's a lot of controversy about diehard, whether it's a Christmas movie or not. I hear this in the ether. It's a Christmas movie. Yeah. I think we can agree. So what do you love about this movie? I liked it because one of the things I always like about movies is the practical effects. So this is, like I said, 1984, and I was two years old at the time, so I don't remember when it came out, obviously. But I love the class, the practical effects of it. I love that you created these creatures who are iconic. Right. What is it, 30 years, 40 years later? 40 years later. Oh, my God. 40 years later that we're still talking about them, that people are still clamoring for, like, a Gremlins three. I think there was just, like, a cartoon series on Max that just came out in the last year. Gizmo was super cute. Oh, my God. The cutest picture that's out there. I guess there's probably a lot of Shih tzus out there named Gizmo. Yeah, my cousin had one, and now I get it. Yeah. So that was, like, the appeal of it, and it was a great kind of send up of a lot of these classic kind of Christmas stories, too. Like a very obvious kind of send up of, like, it's a wonderful life. And just like, that dark kind of humor that's in there that was always appealing to me. And then more recently, I think we're talking before the idea of, oh, this is kind of like a metaphor for parenting and getting into adulthood and all that stuff. So say more about that. Yeah. When I watched it again over the weekend, and I watched it with my eldest son, my only son, but I have four kids. Right. So this was like, let me just watch it again. I always kind of originally thought of it as just a basic kind of horror movie, but like a comedy horror movie. Not a comedy horror, but a horror comedy, right? Yeah. And then nothing more. I thought it was a very superficial, pop, kind of culturish movie. And there it is. When I watched it again with the kid, right. I was like, oh, this is hitting different because it's a story of parenting. IT's a story of the ideas of what we're supposed to do, the rules that are there. And then what happens when you break the rules of parenting? You have the old grandfather in the beginning, and it's very kind of straightforward as a grandfather who's very wise. And these are the rules of here's your new baby, right? Here's Gizmo being the baby and a child. And he's like, this is what you're supposed to do. Again, the three rules are like, don't feed them after midnight. Don't get them wet and keep them out of sunlight or else they'll die, right? And we see this when you become a new parent, right, and have gone through it the four times, it's like everyone kind of telling you this is what you're supposed to do. And your own parents, right? The grandparents of the child telling you, these are the rules. These are the things you're supposed to do. Funny enough, sorry to interrupt, but our rules are the direct opposite. Feed them whenever they want, get them outside, except your parents maybe, who say, stay inside all summer and make sure you bathe them. Yeah. So it was interesting from that point of view. I hadn't thought about that before. And then as kind of this journey through, like, we're going to be cute and cuddly. Gizmo is fantastic. And we love him. And he sings these songs. He's like cooing and it's, know, he's so super nice. He's like, better than the dog, right? We think he's going to replace the dog, right? So it's like a new baby, a new child in the household. And then we get into adolescence, right? We get into adolescence, or even the terrible twos or whatever you want to say, where it's like, now we've broken the rules and now they are these gremlins, these terrible monsters who are just destroying everything. So that was what really struck me upon this more recent viewing. It was like, oh, this is what it's kind of like an allegory for. Wow, I never thought of that, but I can totally see that now. And I'm just thinking now about this scene where the mom, Lynn, I think was her name, is trapped in the house with the Gremlins who are trying to hurt her, and she kills them one by one in these very graphic, violent ways. And as she keeps doing it, you see this pleasure in her face that she's doing that. And I thought that was a really interesting depiction of her finding this sadistic joy in killing these creatures, given her role as the stay at home mom who doesn't really have a say and has all this husband who's off all the time with these wild inventions that don't really work. Terrible invention. And she's just like, yeah. She's just, like, stuck at home alone. I don't know. I thought that was interesting. Yeah. And it's interesting, too, because Billy, the main character, he's portrayed as, like, the perfect all American boy. He's, like, living at home, being there, works at a bank, has a dog, and he's hanging out with Mom. They're getting ready for the holidays together, super supportive, while dad is again, out being a terrible inventor on these road trips and absent all the time. And then again, all this stuff happens to him and the world. Kingston Falls gets burned to the ground. That felt like a little neglectful, just like with his even dismissing of the instructions when he kind of, I guess, stole his totally, and then laughing about it, like, oh, well, I think you got to do these three things. I was like, wow, you remembered them. I was impressed that he could then tell his son how to kind of do it. But then if you think about it in kind of, like, not the context of a movie, it's like you've got this bizarre creature that is not a dog or a kitten or a bird or a toy or a toy, and you're like, leaving it with your son, giving these random instructions that seem ridiculous, and then you're going off again, and it's like, well, right. Any danger? Oh, I probably shouldn't do this. Oh, this is a bad idea. It's like, there's none of that. I don't know. I think we see that, though, and I think stereotypically we see that with the busy working dad, who's not really physically or emotionally present, but will shower the children with gifts as sort of like a token of their affection, but then isn't even around to appreciate the children with the gift. And I think even beyond that, I would imagine a lot of parents feel that this time of year, at the holidays, there's just so much pressure and chaos and busyness. And it's like, does anyone sit in front of the tree and just be together? Right? It was always the competition of who's going to get the biggest gift, the best, and, like. And then even then, when he gives the gift or he gives Gizmo to his son, to Billy, he's like, I need to find a way that I can make more of these. And this is going to replace the dog. This is going to be like the pet of America. And he uses his last name, right? The Pendleton or something, like pet. And it's just like, he's so. I don't know. It's just like, that's really only where his brain goes. It's like if we think about just priorities, it's like his priority is to almost a little bit of self importance versus, like, financial gain. Like, he wants to be celebrated. He wants to be known. He wants to be important. Famous. Famous. I was just going to say. And even within the home, right? So all the stuff is in the home, and the orange juice maker doesn't work, the coffee machine doesn't work, and the phone thing doesn't work. And it's funny in a way, it was kind of mean and self granditizing. Like you're saying, it's like, even when the mom picks up the phone and talks on the regular phone and he's asking, he's like, well, you're using the device, right? You're using the thing, right? You can tell that he's always still just like, even if this terrible thing, nothing works. He's like, we're still going to use it. And she goes along with it. She totally plays into it. And I think that scene you're talking about in particular, we don't even hear him say that dialogue. We just hear her response where she's making an excuse like, oh, no. I was out on the porch. I couldn't get to it or something. But we saw her try to use it, and it failed three times. And that is so interesting to me that everyone has this almost, like, shared delusion. It's too strong of a word. But we're all, like, boosting his ego up and his image up, even though none of his stuff works. And I can't imagine it's lucrative. I kept wondering, how do they afford their travel? It's upstate New York, so upstate New York is, like, extremely cheap. So there you go. Yeah. So then we meet. We saw the little boy who's, like, Billy's friend, who's in my favorite movie ever, Goonies or the Goonies, which I was just like a pleasant surprise of. So did more movie question, did the same director directed both of those, right? Or there's the same something that brought him over. I know, like Spielberg, Steven Spielberg produced both of them. At least I think I know he was a producer for Gremlins. I can't remember if he did Goonies. I think I want to say he did Goonies, but he was a producer at least for it probably. Yeah. Because he really liked. And then Goonies is where he kind of like blew up on. Yeah. So you had shared a little fun fact also before we got rolling, which I think the viewers would love to hear about the rating of the. Oh, yeah. So, so Gremlins was rated PG and I was kind of like doing a little reading on it and I saw that there was so many families that were going into the movie expecting cute Little Gizmo. I think the advertisement was around Gizmo and how this was going to be like a Christmas movie and a family movie. And finally it came out in the middle of summer. I think it was like that. And Ghostbusters came out on the same weekend and it held its own. This was like one of the top three or four grossing movies of the year with Ghostbusters and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which we'll get to in a like. So this came out and then everyone was like, oh, this is going to be a fun little movie, family movie, right? Oh, my. This devolves into this terrible mess of horror and gore and violence. And families were like walking out because they're like, oh, my, can'T. My children can't see this movie. So that was happening. Indiana Jones and Temple of Doom came out that year, I think, as well. It was rated PG as well. And of course, we all remember Indiana Jones's Temple of Doom with Galima and the guy ripping everyone's heart out and eating monkey brains and all that fun stuff. And we're like, oh, my God, what is going on? So those movies, it led to the formation of the PG 13 rating because people were like, we need to find something that's in between PG and R to kind of have this there. So I think it was important historically from that point of view as well, too. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's definitely not like a PG film. And I think that I saw online that they toned it down a lot, actually. Mom was supposed to die and there was supposed to be a shot of her head rolling down the stairs and all of this other stuff. And they were like, no, it needs to be more marketable for a wider audience. And so thinking of it even then, in that context, it's like it was a horror movie that they kind of made more globally. It will just be seen. But that's really interesting. The things you learn on. She kind of, for me, came out of nowhere with just, like, this really tragic story that I was not expecting at all. Yeah, Phoebe Cates again, who, for a lot of guys in the 80s, turned them from boys into men. But, yeah, she has these two scenes, right? Like, these two major scenes in the movie, the one where they're walking and then the other part where they're randomly just spills her beans about her father and how had this tragic thing happen to him and why she hates Christmas, which I thought was really interesting from a point of view from us in the mental health field, right? Like, when we're with patients, clients, and when we're around this time of year and we're like, well, Merry Christmas, or have a good Thanksgiving, or have happy holidays, and we say it very cheerfully and we assume that everybody loves the holidays and this really great for them. It's like the best time of the year. And it's like, not always. It can be really painful time of year for enough people, right? They're very difficult times of year. Sometimes there's a lot of family trauma that's there, and then they're forced to be around other family members or they're potential abusers or again, there's other memories associated with the holidays. And so when we thrust upon our idea of, like, it's the holidays and you should be happy and just get the Christmas spirit, we can't do that. So it was something that I've changed over the course of my years has been like, well, when I asked people, I was like, well, how are the holidays for you? How is this time of year for you? So you have an idea of how to approach it or how to kind of sign off or even just talk and process about it with them. That's a really helpful point. Even just like, if you're not in the mental health field, like, asking, what are your plans? And I think even in that way, you can get a little bit of an, oh, well, my plans are you're like, okay, you seem a little bit more happy. You're like, oh, I'm not really sure even in the little kind of subtext can give you a clue. But, man, I mean, there's a lot of substance use this time of year. It's really hard, I think, especially with all the family gatherings. I think we all assume holidays are a time for family gatherings, but a lot of people don't have big families or any family to go to, so there's a lot of loneliness or they might be housebound. And there is a lot of substance use this time of year. Yeah, we see so much drinking just because it's, like, normalized or encouraged a lot of times, too. So we have a lot of issues with that. I was working with a patient recently who we've been working with her on their alcohol use and getting it down, and they've kind of reintroduced drinking a bit, right. And I was like, okay, cool, we'll keep an eye on it. And it becomes the whole thing of like, well, it becomes special occasions, right. On special occasions, we'll have a drink or two, and then it's like, we're getting to holidays time, right, where it's a lot of special occasions. And then does every little thing, every family gathering become, like a special occasion? And then I was going to start that. I tell them, I was like, let's keep an eye on how often those special occasions are occurring. And if it's like, is Friday becoming a special occasion? Is coming home from work a special occasion? Now, let's just keep an eye on that as a whole. And I think the same could translate to food as well, either. Overeating, undereating people's relationships with their bodies, with other people's bodies, especially if you grow up in a family with sort of that toxic food culture. Same thing. I think we see a lot of this stuff around the holidays. Eating disorders, too. Right? So whenever I have patients, clients with eating disorders, again, it's like Thanksgiving is seen as like, oh, my God. It's like this culture of celebrating food in Turkey and all that fun stuff. Overeating. Yeah. It's like gluttony is very much like, this is what the plan is. We're going to eat too much and we're going to pass out and go to sleep. And the comments of, like, the normalization of the comments of like, oh, well, I'm going to skip all of the meals except Thanksgiving dinner. And it's like, okay, well, then of course you're going to overeat. And it's encouraging people to eat as you normally would throughout the day. And it's a way to help you keep a little bit more regulated. But it's so hard. It's a hard time of year. But that scene with Billy and Kate walking home in the snow, where she know. Starting to talk about her negative feelings about the Christmas time of year. And she mentions, like, well, it's the know. It's the time of year where there's the most suicides. I thought it was important to point out that that's actually not true. I think that's a common misconception and it makes sense. Right. For all the reasons we're talking about, all the stress and everything. But the CDC actually consistently reports that the time of year with the highest suicide rate is between April and June, which a lot of people wouldn't think. I think we often think it's like between Thanksgiving and Valentine's Day. But there's some thought that perhaps there is something to that. Increased light exposure, people getting outside. I think there's some thought that there might be a correlation with the increase in manic episodes that happen during the springtime. Again, more impulsive, taking more risks and things like that. But the suicide rate is actually the lowest in the winter. So I wanted to hear both of your thoughts about that and your thoughts about this movie sort of portraying it incorrectly. Portia, you can go. I mean, I can see why it's common. I think we think of the winter, we think of seasonal depression, and especially in certain parts of the country, like the Northeast, where there's more seasons, it's like dark. We have less of that vitamin D. We can be more isolated, which I think, again, is why we might think that there'd be more death by suicide. But I think what's interesting, too, is there's also, and I don't know if this is related at all, but I'm just thinking of the crime rates, how they kind of spike in the summer, too, and it's just like the heat or you're out more, you're exposed more to things, maybe to more like. I don't know if that has anything to do with it. But that's just what that made me think of. I was a little bit surprised when you were saying that, that it's higher in April, June versus the winter. I think I was kind of like before I was kind of working under that assumption that it was also higher during the winter, not necessarily just based on gremlins. Maybe it's a left, maybe a lefty mark, who knows? But yeah, there's that aspect. I think it is just interesting that when we do kind of, like, research and stuff and see what are the statistics, what are the kind of evidence of when these things happen. When I work with kiddos, I reference a lot of the work of Dr. Tyler Black a lot, who's done so much kind of research into suicides and suicide rates with children adolescents. The highest suicide rates are always Monday through Friday and then highest during the school months. And they always take a dip during the school years. And I think the takeaway is that school drives a lot of suicides for children and adolescents. So it's that aspect, that other part of it that I always kind of bring up and say, so it was interesting. I think I hear that from a lot of. Yeah, and I hear that from a lot of my friends who are child and adolescent psychiatrists, that the summers tend to be a little slower, and then it's, like, quiet. As soon as you get to that first parent teacher conference, it's know everyone wants to come. And like, Portia, you were saying in the, like, I do PHP partial hospitalization work in the summer, it's, like, barren, right? I'm always like, everyone's like, they're encouraging you take your vacations during the summer. You want to take extra week off, take an extra week off. It's really quiet. And then end of September, October starts, and it's like, PHP is full. It is full until June. Yeah, that's really interesting. And gosh, what a commentary on how stressed kids are by, like, that sucks. Yeah. So when people discuss, it's funny because you get into the debates about people who will be like, oh, it's social media, and it's like, Instagram's fault and TikTok's fault that kids are suicidal. We didn't have this when we were growing up. I was like, yes, of course you did. But nobody talked about it. But I was like, you can access TikTok and Instagram during the summer, right? You have plenty of that stuff during the summertime. Might even access it. You can have it on the weekends, right? You can get it on Saturdays and Sundays, right? But data is dramatic. It is like, significant differences that occur between school days and school months. That's really interesting. It's sad. That makes me sad. I think it's hard for scheduling. This is just like a me problem, not a patient problem, but it's like, we'll meal you if you're in a group dynamic drops so drastically in the summer. And same with, I have all of these openings, but I'll see someone monthly. And then all of a sudden, September hits, and it's like, we need every week, and it also needs to be after soccer, and it also needs to be before we have tutoring. And it's just like. But then if you think about it, it's like, okay, now the kids are in school all day, and then they have an after school activity, and then they have sat prep, and then they have this, and it's like, well, maybe that's why they're stressed. They're kind of being pulled in a million directions and maybe feeling like a failure, and it's just poor case. One of the greatest interventions I do is tell people to do less. I was like, is there one thing that you can drop? And they're like, oh, my God. It made a huge difference. Oh, 100%. And it is like, I think I try to keep that in mind as a parent myself, not to over schedule, but it's hard because there's so many activities going on, and you don't want your kid to feel left out or you want them to participate. But then it's kind of just like the holiday season, too. It just gets to be too much. We all just need to take a deep breath and sit down. You need to chill. Yeah, yeah. As Taylor Swift says, you need to calm down. So talk about trauma with finding her dad deceased for days with a smell, and he was dressed as Santa. I mean, what a obvious reason to not like Christmas anymore. Yeah. So that was like this terrible story that, again, comes out of nowhere. That was one of the kind of the criticisms of the movie as well. I could imagine all the families going to see the movie and then being like, oh, my God, dad is trying to be Santa Claus and come down the chimney. And he gets stuck and he dies. And then they start being like, oh, what is this weird smell? And then doom. There's dad in the chimney, and that is a smell. I don't know if you ever rotated through forensic pathology. Solman I did, because I'm just a morbidly curious person, I guess. THat's a distinct smell. All the true crime shows say that. And it is true. There is the smell of death that's there. That is not fun for anybody. But also, why wasn't anyone looking for him for days? I can't remember. I think they were, but everyone was like, they just, oh, they were. I mean, nobody could find them, right? Because they're like the work, I think they called like work, and they're like, he's not here or something. Okay, that makes sense, actually. No one would think to look in the chimney. No one thinks to look in the chimney. Hot take. If you can't find someone, check your chimney. I think maybe this is why chimneys are much narrower now. But no, this is a very obvious trauma. And for some reason, I don't know why, but I knew that there was a twist of something that happened with dad. And for some reason I was thinking that it was like an assault or abuse that occurred to her. And then it was like, oh, yeah, it was the dad gets stuck in the chimney. So I remember there was like a trauma that occurred. The thing that we're talking about before is that there is these moments that occur, right? These associations that occur again, we see so many times with sexual abuse, incest kind of situations that occur, like it's the creepy uncle or the aunt or somebody like that. And again, what are you supposed to do in family kind of gatherings when they get invited and whether parents may know or not know, they still. Or they kind of decide to not do anything about it or let's not talk about it. I think a really good kind of reference for this was that Indian movie that came out many years ago. I can't remember the name of it. It was like some wedding. Monsoon wedding. I think it was right. And I don't remember. I don't know if you guys watch or not, but that was kind of the premise is like, the uncle had assaulted one of the girls as a child and everyone was like, we're not going to talk about it. Let's just leave it alone. And then she couldn't take it anymore and then had a big fit at him. And the family members are like, why are you yelling at him? Why are you still talking about this? It happened like, 2030 years ago. Why are you bringing this up right now? But this happens all the time. All the time, all the time. So many times, right? And then people are just supposed to just pretend like nothing happened, right? Keep the peace, just go along with it. And it's like, gosh, not only was this person traumatized and violated in such a major way, now we're all perpetuating it by telling them, don't talk about it, just suppress. We're retraumatizing them. It's so awful. So then when bringing it back to Phoebe, Kate's character, we see every year, like, oh, Christmas stories and families and Christmas cards and dad being sit on Santa's lap. And it's this. All the stuff that goes along with Christmas time. And how else can you. Well, like, where you're supposed to be with your family and Santa's this wonderful character and he's popping down chimneys and dropping off presents with kids and it's like oh my God. Can you also like Santa? If you really think about it, it's kind of creepy. Like this old man, stranger, you don't know, like you sit on his lap and ask for things and then he just comes in your house. Are you good? Are you noding your. When you're. Sees you when you're sleeping? It's like kind of creepy. Very creepy. Kind of creepy. I think too, in my work as a reproductive psychiatrist, I see a lot of grief around the holidays, at least in our American culture. From a know religious standpoint, with all the focus on the baby, baby Jesus and family and growing your family and gatherings, there's a lot of grief for women who've lost children or want one so badly. And I think that applies to whatever your family system or structure is. If there's been tragic loss or even untragic loss, like, loss is hard no matter what, but especially this time of year, the first holiday after someone died, or now we're doing things differently. It's just hard. And I don't think we leave enough space in all of our busy schedules to just allow ourselves to feel that or to even kind of accept that other people have different experiences. Right. Still get into the Christmas spirit and still have your pumpkin spice lattes and continue on. Yeah, like, go sing a carol. It'll make everything better. Yeah. You see Billy do that a little bit until she shares her story. But she's really kind of like pushing her to be like, well, what do you mean? And it's the best time of the year. And why that's weird. And then she kind of like, whether she wanted to or not, I would imagine, felt inclined to be like, well, this is why. And I think a lot of people also, it's like when they are being pushed or encouraged kind of forcefully to get into the spirit, it does really feel kind of like non consensual. And oftentimes you're kind of forced to share something that maybe you don't want to or you're not ready to. Or some people like, again, I do sadly see the same example you mentioned about there being some sort of abuse or violation in the past and having to see that extended family member. And often it might be this type of situation coming up that finally leads to someone disclosing it for the first time to, like, parents and how unfortunately, some parents might be upset. Like, why'd you have to tell me now you've ruined Christmas. Ruining the holiday. Christmas. Yeah, exactly. It's like, holy moly, come on. Yeah, I do think, though it is possible, even when the holidays are hard, it is possible that maybe they won't always be hard. And I like to encourage my patients when they're at that point to. Also, something I use is thinking about, like grief and love can be like two sides of the same coin. And sometimes when you've experienced a lot of loss or grief around a certain time of year, a certain anniversary, whether it's holidays or otherwise, when you can make room to sit with it and accept it and let yourself just process it, how you process it, you can also open yourself up to feeling that love for that person or for other people, or you can appreciate life in a different way sometimes if you can just allow yourself to hold on to all of those complicated, big emotions. Yeah. Also with trauma. Talking about that a little bit, too. There is also the community trauma that occurs, right. Which we don't get much of in the first movie, but it gets referenced to a little bit in the second. Gremlins or Gremlins, too. So you have this small, idyllic postcard town that gets totally destroyed and ravaged by the Gremlins. Right. Theater gets blown up, everything else, people get killed and all these things occur. And you see what happens to a little bit in the second movie. Not too much, right. They moved to New York City. Right? That's where the main setting is. And they're like, we had to get away from there. We had to get out of that place. Right. We had to run away from there. And it is that aspect. We have to remember that communities, places we live are like people as well. They can have a trauma occur to them that doesn't go away. I think we see it with things like New York City and 911. Right. That's, again, we never forget kind of thing. Right. That's never going to be forgotten. So when tragedies occur to areas, that's a thing that we have to kind of remember. And collectively, society wise, community wise, have to remember, too. It makes me think of towns who experience school shootings. I was just thinking like, sandy hook holiday time or like. And it's like there's so many families with a huge loss and what do the holidays look like? And that almost like too, just like survivors guilt, like, your kid is alive and it's very complicated. And I think you're right. That community aspect is totally not to be forgotten either. So I was thinking that either of you two could kind of talk a little bit about delusions or hallucinations with just like we see that scene where Billy's at the police station and telling them that this is going to happen, all these terrible things. And he shows them Gizmo like, he's super cute and they don't believe him because it Sounds. Right. Like, not true. Unbelievable. Yeah. So what is a delusion? If a patient told you this, what might you ask them? What are some other questions or assessment tools that you could use? Yeah. So delusion is a fixed false belief. Right. That's kind of the boilerplate definition of it. So fixed in regards to no matter what you do, no matter what you say, there's no way that you can change that person's mind. And then false is that it's obviously false. It's not true. And these are, I do mostly child adolescent work, but I have some adults and I have, I would say, like, one patient, I would say that has delusional disorder. And there are some of, like, I want to say, the hardest but most challenging kind of patients to work with. I would agree. Again, it's fixed. Right. That belief is not going to go away. And there's a recent kind of discussion on Twitter that was coming up about how do you approach a delusional patient? And there was this old school of thought, I want to say maybe where you kind of challenge it. And then I think that really has fallen away to be like, you kind of go along with it. You say, like, okay. And then we try not to put too much stock in it into that fixed false belief. Right. Like, you don't want to go along with it too much. Okay, well, this is a thought. Let's kind of see what else is going on or how else we can help out and try not to challenge it or fight it either, or kind of convince the other person that, no, this is wrong. So that's like, what's it called, the aspect or definition of what a delusion would be, bringing it to the movie. And it's important to keep it in the cultural context. We saw this with the movie side effects, that there was a man who identified as Haitian who was in the ER, who I guess this was more of a hallucination, but thought he saw a deceased relative and they were like, oh, he's got to be hospitalized. And then it's like, oh, no, actually in that culture, that's accepted. So it's important to have that framework, and that's hard because I don't understand every single culture in the world. Right. So if I'm in the New York City er, it's a lot. So it's kind of that something that's going to be totally bizarre ish. And then there's that, like your family, that people doesn't believe. People around them are less like, no, this is new and this is different, and this is not okay. This is not normalish. So that's what a delusion is from the movie point of view, kind of bringing it back to the parenting. There's again, like this delusion where people around when you have this baby, right? They're like, this is going to be a perfect child and nothing could ever go wrong with them. What are you talking about? That they're going to grow up and become terrible teens or terrible adolescents or adults, right? They're going to be perfect little kids just like you, little gizmo, forever. And then we know that that doesn't happen because there are terrible people out there. People do terrible things. So people make mistakes. People make mistakes even if they're not terrible at their core. But some people are having antisocial personality disorder. Yeah. And I think we saw this, too with our recent episode on American Horror Story. Delicate. That if it hadn't actually been happening, these people would be delusional. And yet it is happening because we're in this fantastical story. But you even see how people react to it, like how the police officers in this movie reacted. And it's not really in a supportive way and how you just have to be so careful. Because I think if we're talking about people with clinical delusions or a delusional disorder, I think, at least in my experience, it's very hard to get people with these disorders into psychiatric treatment. Usually it's other providers. I'm thinking of delusional parasitosis, which is where you think you have an infection or a parasite or a skin. A lot of times it's skin rashes, bedbugs, things like that. So these people show up to the dermatologist over and over, the pathologist over and over. And, I mean, it can get pretty severe in terms of. I've seen people who've taken their own samples, like cut off some of their skin to bring or traps the bugs in a container, and there's nothing in it. But to try to get someone like that into psychiatric treatment is incredibly hard. And we don't have great medications for it. Maybe an antipsychotic, but it's tricky. Another thing is like MRIs, right? Because they'll be like, I'm convinced I have a tumor in my brain, or they have the whole body scans, right? So they get a lot of imaging, they're convinced something is there. And every time it's coming up, like it's normal. Nothing is there. Or even right. There's pseudosyesis, which is a delusional belief that you're pregnant when you're not. I saw a case of that in my training, which was fascinating. And it's just fascinating to me that our brains can do this. Yeah, we see this. I was going to say we see this in Parkinson's. Right. One of the more common delusions in Parkinson's is, like, the spouse is cheating on. And again, there's no evidence to this that's there, but it's like a unique kind of, like, Parkinsonian delusion. Yeah. And then, of course, we think about erotomanic delusions, which we've talked about a lot on our podcast, specifically with the show you, which we love. But, Portia, like, you'll appreciate this. I remember one time I had a patient, an elderly man, who had a neurotomanic disillusion about Taylor Swift and would listen to the radio all day long in his hospital room, waiting for her song to come on. And it would come on a lot, and he would be like, that's my girl. She's sending me a message. That's my girl. For real. And he was in the hospital for a totally non psychiatric reason. But when the team picked this up, they asked us to consult. I was on the consult team at the time, and we were like, well, he's not hurting anyone. He's not stalking her. We can't really change it. Yeah, there's an aspect of, like, we have to go along with it. We have to kind of keep an eye on it until it becomes problematic. Right. Until it crosses over into be like, oh, it's a problem. Right. And again, one thing we all want to keep emphasizing is that people with psychiatric conditions are much more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of violence. But at some point, I think, especially with more erotomanic or violent delusions targeted toward a specific person, that's when your red flags go up, and you have to be really careful in your assessment. I know. So poor Billy, seeking some help, and just really, his dad's not there. The cops aren't helping him save the day, the vet or the school teacher. God, that was so graphic. Yeah, it was a good movie. I have not seen it before, ever. So I enjoyed, thought. I didn't know what to expect. I think I thought it was going to be weirder. It was pretty weird, but I thought it was like, funny. It is funny. Yeah, it is pretty funny. And now, like Katrita says, which I thought was a good word, it's like, know. I wasn't scared watching it. It was great. Like the scene, they spent a lot of time when the gremlins are at the bar and they're just, like, doing all this stupid ****, right? They're, like, drinking, they're smoking. One of them has, like, a gun, like, just randomly shooting the other grandma's. And it's like, oh, this is all not, like, ideal teenage behavior, but not, ideally, not shooting each other. But this is what teenagers sometimes, right? Unfortunately, this is the idea. This is what teens do. They do stupid ****, right? They just get together and they act stupid around each other. They drink, and they make poor decisions, and things happen. And that was the thing, again, on this recent reviewing, I was like, oh, my goodness, I didn't see this before. I know. It's so interesting to me when you can rewatch movies as you grow up and take different things from them based on your own personal experience. And I always wonder, the people who made Gremlins, was that their goal, or is it just like an interesting coincidence? No, I don't think we'll know. I don't know. Well, someone, thank you so much for joining us today and for recommending holiday favorite holiday classic. Can you let us know where we can find you and follow you and join your TikTok Instagram? Follow Kick Shrink on, like, what's it called? Instagram and TikTok and YouTube. I'm trying to put a lot more effort into the YouTubing nowadays because that's where the money is trying to retire from know, but it's fun, too. And then Twitter is my old high school nickname, Sol Money, S-U-L money that I've had like that. I like that. Well, again, thank you so much for joining us, and we can't wait to see those cool sneakers whenever you get them. Thank you guys for having me. And you can find us, as always, at analyze Scripts podcast on TikTok Instagram, and now on YouTube as well. And we will see you next week for a new episode. Take care. All right, bye. This podcast and its contents are a copyright of analyzed scripts, all rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited unless you want to share it with your friends and rate, review, and subscribe. That's fine. All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings, or products is intended or should be inferred this podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are in our Holiday era with the movie "Love Actually." We are joined by Julia Israelski, LCSW for this episode as we spread some holiday cheer by analyzing family dynamics, couples of course and any mental health disorders or themes we pick up on. You can expect our narrative on some eyebrow raising comments about bodies, love bombing and infidelity. Oh, and did we mention the cast!? We hope you enjoy!
Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fieri, a psychiatrist. And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker. And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows. Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends. There is so much misinformation out there, and it drives us nuts. And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like with a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better. So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn and your DSM Five and enjoy. Welcome back to another episode. We're so excited. Today we have a guest, my supervisor, who gives me great supervision, and another therapist in our community, Julia Israelski. And today we're going to be talking about Love Actually. So they've both seen it. I have not. Until now. I did watch it for the you had not seen this movie? No. Portia. Oh, my God. How? It's, like, one of the best movies of all time.
There's so many people in it. It's, like, amazing.
I I know. Know. Portia oh, my gosh. Yeah. I feel like this podcast has been, like, a journey for me to explore new classic genres and but all right, so I'm going to share a little bit about one of our co hosts today, Julia, before we get started, so you can know a little bit about her and all the amazing things she does. So Julia is Rilsky is a licensed clinical social worker, certified EMDR practitioner, and certified perinatal mental health professional and nearly 20 years of clinical experience. She currently has a private practice in Connecticut, where she specializes in interpersonal trauma, eating disorders, perinatal mental health, and parental stress. Prior to being in private practice, Julia was a clinical supervisor and oversaw the trauma program at a local community health center. Additionally, she has experience conducting forensic interviews and volunteering as a sexual assault crisis counselor. Most recently, she has been trying to spread her wheel of identity, which she created, which is really cool, to depathologize pathologize. Wow. Yeah. I can't seem to get it right. People that surviving these stressful times and to increase compassion for ourselves and others. So welcome.
Thanks.
Glad to be here. Welcome. Love act. Julie 2003. It's a little old. Amazing cast. Where should you start a rom.com? Yeah, right? It was kind of like coming out in the era of rom coms, I think. We haven't covered a rom.com yet, except maybe Legally Blonde. But I love this movie. I'm, like, in shock over. I'm having an acute stress response to Portia never having seen this movie. Oh, my gosh. It's so cast. I mean, I know that we'll get to our themes, but the cast was Rickman Rip, Harry Potter. Snape. Loved seeing him. Even though he's not a great character, he's good at playing the not great characters. Yeah, like villain era and then Emma Thompson, like, amazing. I was shocked to see her. Who else did you guys notice? Or who else? Liam Neeson. Yeah, I always love Liam Neeson. Laura Linney. Colin Firth. Just Keira Knightley. Yeah. And the little boy and the little girl were just adorable. Sam and Olivia, right? Was her name? I don't think it's Olivia. Oh, no. Did I get the name wrong? Oh, her real name's olivia. Her real name is Olivia Olsen. Gotcha. Anyway, but no, it is an all star cast. Sorry, Joanna. That's it. That's it. That's it. Thank you. And then, of course, we have Bill Nynee playing Billy Mac, which we just talked about him in a recent podcast episode about the best exotic Mary Gold Hotel. He was also in that movie, so it was fun for me to see him again in this movie, but, like, a totally different character. And I just loved him as, like, the aging pop star. Yeah, I didn't make that connection. So that's good. All right, so should we talk about couples? Should we talk about themes? What do we think? What's a good well, I think the whole premise of the movie is love, right? And I love how the movie begins and ends with those scenes at the Heathrow Airport, which I believe are all real. I don't think any of that's acting. I'm pretty sure that's all real. And I don't know if you guys knew this, but I think it was, like, 2021. I believe Britain recreated those scenes to talk about the pandemic kind of people being able to travel again and see their loved ones. And I know, right? It really gets you. And it was just interesting to watch all of that love. And it's just I don't know, like, Hugh Grant, we forgot to mention, like, the words he says at the beginning are just so beautiful. And I feel like it's just really timely to be talking about this movie and just the message in light of what's going on in the world right now.
I think that was one of the things I wrote down, was like, that quote in the beginning and can't remember what it was right now, but it's something about going through most people see the hard and the pain and the bad, but there's always love and there's always good. And yeah, I think it's super important right now with everything going on right.
To keep thinking about I think he says love actually is all around. And it reminds me of that Mr. Rogers quote, like, in times of stress, look for the helpers. Right, exactly. And so I just thought it was really poignant that we're talking about this movie kind of at this time in the month of December, as I think about Christmas and the holidays and families. And I think this movie does a good job kind of capturing people at different phases of life. All the complex interpersonal dynamics and relationships and so different forms of love, right?
Like friendship love, parent child love, romantic love. Like, just so many different forms of love, which I thought was great.
Right, exactly. Which we'll all see over the holidays whether we want to or not. So one thing that I had noticed, and I was kind know, texting a little bit with Julia and I don't know, Katrina, if you thought of this as watching it again, but I was just line after line, point after point of a lot of fat phobia. I thought that's why you wanted to cover this portia. Yeah. No, I know. No, I was like, no idea. I thought when we decided on this that that was one of the reasons you wanted to talk about it again. Because it's a lot directed at Natalie, who is not.
Really in a larger.
Like and I guess this is all subjective, of course, but it is weird to think like, oh, she's like the token, like, fat girl, but she's not.
Yes. I didn't remember that at all from having seen the movie in the past. But then this time I was like, oh, wow, it's like all over the place.
There's comments and I think that happens watching it, right? It's on you're playing with your kids or you're wrapping gifts or you're doing whatever, and you're not sitting down and watching it through a mental health lens. And after doing that with some things, we're like, oh, kind of over and over again at all of these icky moments. I think, unfortunately, it's a little bit to the times. I don't think that fat phobia by any means has gone away currently, but I think that's wildly inappropriate to have in a movie now. Even if it was a person in a larger body, it's just like it was just constantly happening. I don't know, I kept laughing and be like, are you guys did you know I so when this movie came out, I was in high school, so I think I picked it up because you're a high school girl, you're body conscious. And that was the time, I think, of maybe a little after the Kate Moss era, but not that much know. I think that was the time of Lindsay Lohan being in the news. Hillary Duff and Britney Spears. Like a lot of comments on women's bodies. Jessica Simpson. Like who's? Skinnier? Who's bigger? And so I feel like it is of the times that someone like Natalie would be called big or she kept talking about her legs being like tree trunks. I was like, we don't even see her legs. They're always in skirts. Like, what is going? But so I feel like it's like right on the times. But again, so icky to revisit, right? And then we even see Billy Mac talking about his manager. He keeps talking about how fat he is. It's just so weird, right? And then I think you even see that with Emma Thompson's character and then the hot young receptionist who's know flirting with her husband. They have different bodies, obviously. They're different people at different stages of life, different ages. But it was really interesting in way.
Yeah.
I think it's definitely within the times, even seeing Kara Knightley, it wasn't about her body per se, but I think with the comments and then just noticing her body, I know that obviously she's a very small person in a smaller body, but also one of the people who are highlighted at the time right. For being like maybe too or this is the ideal body. So I think it was just like an interesting comparison with the two. I know her, obviously from right, like Pirates of the Caribbean and stuff. Like the cast is mostly yeah, yeah. I think except for the American ones. And even when Colin goes to America to meet the hot girls, they're all like legit supermodels, right? But they all have similar bodies and everything. And I was just thinking like Aurelia, the Portuguese woman who Colin Firth's character falls in love with, like when he finally shows back up to propose, remember, the dad thinks he's wanting to propose to the other sister, who of course has to be know be in a larger body. So there is like a lot of fat phobia leading into this otherwise like super lovely movie. I feel like I also caught some homophobia, especially with Billy Mac and the manager. I couldn't tell if he really was in love with like in a romantic way or more like a familial way. And I wasn't really dad. Sorry, you go, Julia.
No, I was just going to say the relationship was a hot the manager.
Jerry, to say the least. Yeah. So Daniel to know stepson sam was initially, or know initially because it didn't change with him, but was like, I think really open to the idea if Sam was gay. Right. He was like, who do you who are you interested wear girl? I thought that feel so great. Also for 2003, which probably the movie was made in 2000, so that felt great. And then a couple of scenes later, an hour later, it was like, oh, now that we're a little bit homophobic, but again, feels kind of appropriate to the time. And maybe Billy Mac in that generation would have been more like that. Yeah. No, I agree. That's true. So I think we should spend a little bit of time on Sarah. So Sarah is at work, right. And she works with Carl. Carl. And Harry is her boss. That's like character played by Alan Rickman. So there's all these connections. So Harry is like trying to get her to talk to Carl, to hang out with him because she's in love with him and the whole office knows. I feel like that was inappropriate for a boss to intervene. Right. At first I thought maybe they were related like, is that his sister or something? And then I was like, oh, no, that's just her boss.
Yeah, super inappropriate. I thought it was really, like, a nice little foreshadowy. I told Portia, like, I'm obsessed when I think of that movie, all I think about is the cell phone ring like, that, like and when he first goes over to her to say something about how she loves Carl, he's like, turn off your like, that was the first thing he said. And I thought that was just like so it just speaks to how long this pattern with her brother has been going on and how intrusive it is in her world. I just thought it was an interesting little hint to that.
What do you think her brother has schizophrenia, by the way. She's sort of talking to him when he calls and saying, like, well, I don't know if I can talk to the Pope. Let me see. I don't know about the aliens. And I just think it's got to be incredibly hard to be the only surviving family member for someone with such a serious mental health condition. We see her go visit him in the psychiatric hospital. Almost looks like he's institutionalized, like he lives there. I think she alludes to her parents, no longer being around. I just think that's, like, an immense amount of pressure, and you can tell that she feels like she can't not answer or hang up the phone or we even see her, unfortunately, feeding his delusions by saying, like, well, I don't know if I can get a hold of the Pope. Let me see. And I think that happens, but it's such a tricky line to walk. I think, even for providers, that's tricky to walk. How do you maintain the sense of reality without challenging the patient too much, where they get upset and feel alone, but then it can be risky to sort of go along with kind of, like, collude with their delusion. So I really felt for her, it.
Was like, Julia, what do you the when she had her moment with Carl and then the phone ring, and she's, like, sitting, trying to stay in the moment, but not and then she gets.
Off the guy, and it was just so sad.
I just felt so bad for her. It's like, you know, that pull of family versus your future and kind of where you like, the past and the future pole thing. It was sad.
What would you work on her with in therapy? If she was your patient hungry? How would you do it?
Well, I guess I would want to understand her history more. Where did she learn that she's responsible for all of this, and where does she learn her kind of people pleasing prioritizing everybody else? And then just how does that serve her? How does it not? And if there are other supports that could be involved with her brother's care that she could utilize more and just trying to help her feel less alone in it and see that she's a person too. Because I think that often, especially women grow up feeling like they're not seen right, like, in the world, in a lot of places. And it's easy to be easy to just go along with the flow and just do what people need you to do. And I just feel like that's sort of she's filled this role for her brother because no one else is there to do it. And she loves him, and it's like she doesn't even see that she's a person too. And I feel like that happens so often with women. So that's what I would kind of want to work with her on. It's like seeing herself as an individual also. And who is she and how can she exist and support her brother without one being more important? What about you guys? How do you approach it?
That sounds good to me. Yeah, no, I mean, I think really just trying to see herself as your needs are also important, or you're allowed to do both. I think that's really hard for people who are taking care of a sick loved one in any terms of the word sick is just like, how can you also live your life and have needs and wants fulfilled while also assisting in a way that is helpful and beneficial to you and the person you're providing support for? Otherwise it just leads to burnout. And I think she is more than burned out, but it's like her life kind of doesn't exist. Yeah, it's like being his sister is her whole identity. When you try to think about her identity, that is 95% of it. And in situations like this, I also start to think about what is she getting out of it? Is there something where she's feeling important, she's feeling powerful, she's feeling altruistic, she's feeling good. Like, this is how she's feeling good. We don't know what her early relationship was like with her parents or if there was some talk about estate planning or what will happen to him when they're not here. I talk to a lot of adult patients who might have a sibling with special needs or some other medical or mental health condition as their parents age. Like, okay, what's going to happen? And that's a lot to take on. And I think with her, I don't know if she would show up to therapy. Right. I don't know if she wants to change. It kind of seems like she doesn't. She had Carl right there, and he is like, whoa, she's been pining after him for what, two days, seven months, 6 hours, two minutes, or whatever it was. He's there. And that pull to her brother in that whole situation so powerful. I don't know if she'd show up a, but I think I'd also work with her in addition to the boundary stuff for sure, like, normalizing all of the negative feelings she might be suppressing related to sort of being expected to fulfill this role and just kind of normalizing it.
You see it in that moment when she gets like he leaves when they're in the office and what's his name, carl walks out and then she's having her moment of being upset. And then the phone rings.
She's like, hi. It's just so I know. I thought it was also kind of weird how she would refer to her brother, like darling or it seemed almost like, romantic. And I don't think it I'm not trying to imply it was, but it doesn't seem like a way you'd call your sibling. I don't know, there was something about that that to me spoke to how their relationship is really enmeshed. Bigger. Yeah. Really enmeshed. That's the word. Yeah. It rides the line between almost appearing right, like inappropriately romantic or parent child.
That's what I found.
Darling or sweetie. Or sweetheart. But I think she also did say babe. Did she say babe? A babe, yeah. Which was like I mean, again, it felt really like parent child. And then when she's in the institution, hospital, home with him, and I thought that she, on the other hand, does a really good job at deescalating him so he kind of becomes physical. A person comes out to kind of assist and she is able to kind of talk him down and seemingly to bring him back into the moment. Which I'm not surprised because she's probably been doing it for years and knows everything on how to assist him, but really hard. I also didn't love that the movie is perpetuating this false narrative that people with psychotic disorders are violent towards others, which sometimes that happens, but we know far and away people living with psychotic disorders are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators. And again, I think as much as I love this movie, as a movie, there's a lot of criticisms I have from mental health viewpoints, and that's a big one for me. Yeah. Do you think people were institutionalized, as we talked about in other episodes with the 1850s, 1940s, but do you think in 2003 someone would be living somewhere long term with schizophrenia? It's like right. They should be able to kind of manage it on their own with outside supports. It's a different country. I don't know. But it felt like I don't know. Yeah. I'm not sure what the landscape is like in the UK, but I mean, even now, even after the deinstitutionalization movement, there are still people who are ill enough where they do require group homes or things like that. We don't know.
It looked a little institutional for a residential.
I felt like it was trying to.
Be both, but it felt a little hospitaly.
Yeah. I was like, Is this a forensic hospital? Has he been violent or in the past? Is that why he's here, we don't really know. Yeah, but I think the clearest on the surface mental health right. Like coupling of the movie. So I don't know. I mean does she ever end up with like no. Yeah, I don't think moving on. Yeah. That final lingering glance between the two of them was so sad to me and as he should. Right. Like if I'm Carl's therapist, and you're kind of also secretly pining over this woman for years and, you know, make your move, do something which is awesome, and then you kind of see that it's just probably not going to go anywhere. And this is the case processing with him how to move forward and find someone else who can be more available currently to him. And obviously I hope Sarah gets there but it doesn't seem like it's going to be quick. Yeah. I mean that's such intense rejection to literally be like half naked in the bed and she can't stop answering the phone and you're just sort of finally connecting. I mean that's just such intense rejection. Right. I think it's healthier for him probably to process that disappointment and move on. But I think that's a great segue into us also talking about all the times we see people trying to make romantic love connections in the movie. Right. There's so many of them and it just I think really highlights how vulnerable you have to be to put yourself out there and how do each of them cope with either someone taking them up on it or rejecting them and how that's so dependent on their individual personality styles. Makes me think of the naked couple yes. Just how they're like naked and are they sex? Yes. *****? Yeah. I don't think it's a *****. I think it's like an R movie. I don't know. I mean maybe it's ***** but I saw someone talking on TikTok about how that does happen. But they're not naked. So when you are using stand ins to do cues and stuff like that, they might be doing the same moves though on top of each other or kind of like humping each other. But they wouldn't be nude. And so I thought it was so funny right. He alludes to having a hard time asking people out or being shy and first of all I'm like how did you get comfortable in this role? But I was great.
It just seems so hot their personalities.
To be both so funny. I know. They're both so quiet and polite. Let me warm up my hands for you. Is this know? It's so like it's also kind of a nice I don't know I think consent is too far but you know what mean like it's kind of a nice depiction of checking in with your partner and it was such a funny juxtaposition know as he's saying what Portia was just saying, they're like totally naked simulating a sexual know yeah. And he's just I was finally able to ask you. It seems like maybe he just needs to be naked from now on in order to ask people out. I think emotions, of course, are vulnerable, but it's like, also what's more vulnerable?
Exactly.
Unclothed. Like your body's on display. I think there's even, like a reality show out there now. Have you heard of this reality show? It has multiple seasons where you have I forget what it's called, but it's like the whole premise is you start by looking at each other's genitals or like you're dating naked. Yeah, you're like dating naked before you even start to get to know each other. And that's the whole quote unquote premise that let's just be as vulnerable as.
We unveiling is just a shot at the genitals.
I heard this. It's from the UK. So another UK show.
That's fascinating.
I think it's in multiple seasons. It's in like season four or six or something. So I heard someone else talking about on another Rick podcast. So I don't know, the fact oh, my gosh, I have to find they were I wonder if we heard the same podcast. I'm laughing now because I was like, they were saying how people are getting rejected for just obviously face value genitals. And they were talking. The one I heard was about the person searching for love is a female. So she's heterosexual. So there's all these men that she's looking at and their penises and one's too small, but one's too big. But then they say what they were kind of critiquing the show for is that they're not being honest with like, no, your ***** is too small or your ***** is too big. They're like, oh, yeah, I just didn't really get a good vibe. And it's like, no, you only saw his *****. Say what you're going to say about I don't know. Anyway. Another UK show. Isn't that wild? It's so wild to me that someone had the idea for this show and someone like, a lot of people ran with it and that people are consuming it so much that they've had multiple seasons. And then portia, I think your point is totally valid. But then I'm thinking about this woman. Like, what are you supposed to say? I know. And the podcast I was listening to was like, a woman commenting on an episode where a man who is heterosexual is looking at a bunch of vaginas. And the woman was like, I had no idea. They look so different.
In a way, I feel like that part is kind of normalizing and helpful because I think that that's something a lot of, like, I don't know. I had clients talk about that and feeling self conscious about that aspect of their so, like, I feel like there could be some normalization that happens, but sure, right.
I don't know how you like, what is it on? Like, is this on HBO? I was like, I think even streaming has it can't be, like, just on basic cable, right? I hope in the news, especially, I would think in Britain, where they're a little more buttoned know, stereotypically than Americans. Maybe not.
I don't think that would fly.
Maybe we're like shattering stereotypes. Yeah, maybe. But anyway, back to love, actually. So let's talk about Karen and Harry. That scene where she's so excited to open her present.
I know.
And it's the CD, which, if she hadn't seen the necklace, maybe it would have been really thoughtful. Right. But she did see and like, just when she goes away and cries and then has to come back and rally the kids and be excited to protect.
Her in that moment.
Every time I see that, I cry, every time, I just think, like and I just think that it's such a great depiction of what it's like to be a mom. I was going to say try to have your own experiences, but then be putting your kids first. So powerful. It really is. Just I tried.
Yeah, me too. She really it's so raw and real, and you could just feel it.
I saw a video that was saying or she was interviewed, emma Thompson was about that scene and why it's so powerful. And I guess that at the time, she had found out that her current partner was having an affair with the woman who plays Bellatrix in Harry Potter. I forget her name. Elena bonham Carter. Yes. Yes. And Emma Thompson is also in Harry Potter. She plays Professor Trelawney. So I just thought that was interesting. And now they're, like, friends, but they went on to have, like, a five year relationship, helen and her ex. So she says that it was so real, which is why I think you can watch the movie multiple times and still feel it. Feel it's so raw. And I think what beautiful art, right? Like, you just said, Borsha to watch it multiple times and still feel it. Because whether we all face betrayal in our lives in one flavor, or, like, even if it's not like that, like, you just get it and you just feel it with and like, just seeing her cry to Joni Mitchell, the CD he just gave her, and then tap your tears. Let's go with the Christmas lobsters. It's just and I feel like even.
If you don't have, like, that feeling of, like, you have to button it up and go back out into the world, I feel like is something that everybody kind of experiences, even, like, going.
To work after getting bad news. I think one of the hardest things we as humans have to do, which feels, to me very Western culture, like, up. You got to go to work, though. We have to kind of shelve our humanity and kind of get back on the wheel. And I think as mental health professionals, I think it's having something tragic happen in your. Life and then kind of trying to figure out when to come back to work or how you can show for your patients or what patients are going to be triggering because maybe a similar thing just happened to you. I think I'm not going to say it's especially hard because I don't want to quantify it, but I think it's very difficult to do, which I think we ask too much of people to do that. I totally agree. And I'm not sure, again, in our culture, which if you're working for a corporation and your mother dies, maybe you get 48 hours leave to go to the funeral and come back. Right. There's not a lot of room for grief in our culture. And I'm just thinking now of in the British culture, I'll never forget seeing William and Harry playing to the crowds at their mom's funeral when they were kids. Right. I just think it's like we're not good at grief in general and these cultures we're talking about. But yeah, I think especially as therapists or mental health professionals, you do want to show up for your patients, and at least I feel like responsibility to be there for them and be consistent as much as you can. And you have to keep your own humanity in mind, and knowing where to draw that line is really hard and I think comes with time and experience and from modeling. Right. Like, you have to have good supervisors or teachers who also model that and keep sending the message like it's okay and healthy to have your own boundaries and to recognize your own thought.
The little kid Sam, did a good job when he was like, I know I'm supposed to be thinking about mom, but I'm thinking about I'm in like, I think people feel so guilty feeling anything other than know and like, there's a lot of feelings at once and that's okay.
Yes. Did you, Julia, watch the show Shrinking, by any chance? Yeah, we love that show. But also there was a scene there with the daughter who she had that moment where she was, like, looking at a picture and noticed how happy she looked, and then she felt instantly guilty. How can I be happy when my mom's it's like forgetting them. That's so common and complicated. And you're right. I think this was another scene that really nailed it on the head. Yeah. Their relationship was beautiful. I thought, like, Sam and his stepdad, his mom had we don't know about.
Do we know about dad?
I don't think so. Or at least I didn't catch it.
Catch anything on it.
He just, like, shows up for one. I don't know, just like in a beautiful way that I feel like we couldn't even try to make it better as a therapist. Oh, well, he could have done this. It's like he just hits in every way, like giving him space, like letting him drum, respecting his signs. And then really fostering no, it's okay to be excited about something, too, or yeah. Let's focus on your love. It was just so beautiful as, like, a step. It really was.
It really was. And I love how he like, you put it in the notes, like, something about how awful love is, or the most painful total agony of total agony of falling in love.
Right. Like, Liam Neesa's character, I think his name's know they're sitting on that bench, and he's like, Something's wrong with Sam. He won't come out of his room. His mother just died. We don't know how long he's been in the picture. Like, if it's a short, it's if he's, like, raised, and we don't really know. I think it's clear he's adopted him, but you can tell he's not sure what to do, and of course he feels that way. And then they're on the bench, you can tell. He's like, oh, my God, what is going on? Are you doing drugs? What's going on? And then he says, I'm in love, and he's so relieved. But then the little boy is like, how can you be relieved? This is so agonizing. And it was just so beautiful and funny, and he was so valid.
Yes, you're right. Just it was really sweet and, like.
Young love is just beautiful and an important way that we learn right. About feelings and heartbreak and how to tolerate when someone doesn't like you back. I don't know. It's so important for us to learn. But then I think I would imagine also just wanting to protect your kids from those really hard feelings. Yeah. And so how beautiful that he encouraged him to go for it. Even though Joanna was leaving, he wasn't like, oh, what's the point? She's leaving. He was like, no. And I have to imagine that was influenced by his own grief. I was about to say I know you said that. I thought about the grief parallel, that he's like, no, you still love even if you're going to lose. Yeah. What a beautiful message to send a little boy who's somewhere in there grieving himself. Yeah. And then Emma or Karen after the play, when she like, what would you do? And then she kind of says, when you like the necklace. And I was so happy that she brought it up that, yes. And quickly. I don't know. I mean, it's kind of an impossible situation of knowing what to do, but it seemed like it was best for her to kind of just bring it up. And then he was obviously taken aback, and then, I'm such a fool, and she's like, no, but you made a fool out of me. And I was like, yes, that's like the ultimate betrayal. Or that, I think just quantifies her emotions of feeling foolish. Right. Like, I trusted you. You made little of our relationship, et.
Cetera, like a sense of humiliation, like, after that kind of yes.
And the fact that he was looking at the necklace with Mr. Bean, wrapping it up in such a funny, dramatic way while she was off Christmas shopping, probably for their kids or probably his mom or something, and he's doing that that's rage. And you have to know that as she gets the CD and she's putting it all together, she probably realized what was going on. And so cruel. You don't have to do that. It's like bad enough to be like, having an affair or an emotional affair, whatever you want to call it. I don't know how if it got physical with this secretary or not, but you have to do it when she's there with you. Like, go to the store later by yourself. Yeah. It's like so Mia I think that's her name, mia, I think was she was very overt with her advances. Right. Like sitting in the chair, like opening her legs. Okay, that's definitely a visual. And then I thought, which was really bold for both Harry and Mia was at the Christmas party, right. Karen is there, and she's like, asking him to dance. And I was just, wow. Like and Karen seemed to just be trusting the whatever she makes a comment of something like that. But it seems like then she really trusts know this is, you know, making advances, and it's inappropriate. Sure. But she trusts Harry. And then the fact right. To then find out that that's not the case, I think was obviously just like and again, like so humiliating to do that in front of everyone in a like it's just so cruel. It's so cruel. So I'm dying to know what you guys would do if the couple came to you for couple therapy or if each individually came to you, how would you help them navigate it? Because at the end, we see harry comes back from traveling somewhere. They're greeting him at the airport. And Karen isn't like, super warm and kissy kissy to say hello to him, but she's there picking him up. So it's not clear to me. Are they staying together? Are they working on it? Are they going to separate? How is it all going to unfold? Yeah, I don't know. I would imagine I don't work frequently or ever really with couples, but it would be just seeing what are their goals? Do they have a goal? Are they even in a place to say, we'd like to try to get past this, or are you getting to a goal and you're just kind of processing what happened? I feel like I've worked separately with both parties. Someone who has been unfaithful in our relationship and someone who has been the Karen. And it's really interesting, I think, to work with both just because I don't know. I think it just helps you understand why it happens. And it's not really like to excuse the behavior. Ultimately, it's a betrayal of trust, and it's lying but I think it's really just about getting people to see if there can be a repair or where they want to go next and if they can get through it, or what does it mean? Does it mean that the relationship is over? Or does it mean that something's going on that can be fixed?
I don't do couples either, but I feel like I would start with, what do you think you want? What are we working towards? But I don't do couples, so maybe you wouldn't.
Yeah, you in situations like this, like you want to say it's so clear, like, you should leave him. That's awful. But it's rarely that clear or that easy, especially when you have kids involved. You could be so mad at him, but still want the kids to love their dad. And I think Karen would be the kind of mom where she would walk that line. Right. Like, we saw it, the way she sort of pulled herself together and got those lobsters to the school, that she's not going to batmouth him in front of the kids, nor should she, but it's just not that simple to be like, oh, I'm just going to leave. And sometimes people feel a lot of shame when they don't want to leave and when they want to stay. And how do you work through it? It's just so tricky. No, I agree. And I think it's also important right, to keep your own judgments, which we do, but to ourselves, how could you do that? Not saying that. Or why don't you just leave him? Not going to say that. It's like having that place of not being a friend or like a family member, but like therapist who's really just exploring feelings. Sometimes it's hard. It's so hard. I think, especially with even sometimes, I always have to keep in mind, even if you're not saying it verbally, sometimes your facial expressions or reactions can rat you out. Right. And you want to just stay neutral because you don't know which way they're going. And you want your patient to feel comfortable and that they can be totally open. And sometimes they're really pulling for you. They really want to know what you think. It's almost like they want to relinquish their responsibility on you, and they want you to make the decision for them. And it gets tricky. That's why I think couples therapy is so yeah. So hard. We have to find someone a good one, I guess. Good one, but someone to have on here. I have a lot of questions for them. Yeah. We should do, like, a movie, I guess. All right, who else do we want to cover as we wrap up? Anyone hit on? I think definitely Natalie and the prime minister and harassment and the US. President.
Yeah.
Billy bathroom was so.
Everything about him just made my skin crawl just perfect.
And I was like, I feel like this is how people see Americans as just, like, takers in a lot of ways, I feel like he's not doing us any favors here. Hugh Grant or what's his name, his character?
Prime Minister.
Yeah, I think it's just Prime Minister. So he sees past Natalie's large body and allegedly be with her, and I think it's sweet. He obviously is very work oriented, and he kind of notices she's really nice, and he kind of doesn't realize that he's into her, I think, until he sees her being sexually harassed or assaulted by the US president. And then he kind of intervenes and has that big moment where he stands up to him. And it seems like all the staff and the UK are all really pleased. So I don't know. What did you guys think of his chase of going out to her neighborhood? I thought it was kind of inky that he fired her at some point and then found out where she lived and swooped her off her feet. Again, it's like, okay. On the one hand, it's like, oh, he really loves her so much that he's knocking on every door trying to find her. It's humorous, but it kind of was icky and maybe some red flags. Again, I didn't get the sense that his character is like a true Malignant narcissist, but it could go that way. I don't know. A little bit of love bombing, maybe. Out of nowhere, he's in a position of power over her. They're hot and heavy really quick. I think I'm overanalyzing it. But there was something right. They reminded me of the other couple. Right. So Kira Knightley and her recent husband. And that's an interesting you know, I think everyone probably assumes that he's going to be into husband Peter, and when he's not, I was like, Whoa, kind of shocked, but I just thought it was icky. Yes. I feel like this movie, there's a lot of relationships where it's like, is it sweet or creepy?
But I feel like it's not sort of not love is not creepy, but the challenge of love.
Right.
What feels really romantic to one person can feel really invasive to another. And that balance of what is appropriate, what's not, how does this land on this person versus what is their intention? And I think it does a good job of kind of depicting the complexity of that.
Definitely. Especially, I think, the scene when he has the cue cards, which is like, such a famous scene now, so iconic. And I remember watching in high school being like, oh, my God, that's so sweet. It was so creative. This was like back in the day when you'd ask someone to go to prom, it was like this big thing. But now as an adult, when I'm rewatching it, I'm just oh. Like, I tried to imagine being Kieran Iley's character, like, watching the wedding video, and it dawning on you that it's all you, and you're just like, oh, I thought she'd be admiring me. Like, you could see her face go.
From a really genuine smile to.
Yeah. And it's like, are you going to now capture me in your basement or can I get out of this house?
I was confused by her running after him, though.
Me too.
I didn't get that. And they never really explained it and I didn't really right.
Was it a goodbye acknowledgment? Almost. Did it kind of put a period at the end of like, oh, that was sweet, and like, I don't know, I think a little inappropriate, but like, did it end there or are now they going to go off and kind of have this secret affair together? It just didn't make sense with the context because she had always thought that he didn't like her, but now she's interested or in love. It was just kind of confusing. I didn't know what it meant. Yeah, that's actually such a great example of reaction formation, where you behave opposite, I think, than how you're really feeling. The guy's doing that, right. He really loves her, so he's so rude and cold to her and she's like, oh, he really doesn't like me. I know, I didn't understand. And she just got married and she could have just hooked him, right.
The fact that it was a kiss and the way she ran out, it just left me like, are they going.
To go back to this?
But it's funny when you say how when you were in high school because I remember that scene in my mind, I always thought it was so sweet. It was like this love moment. And then this time when I watched it, I was know your best friend's.
I know. Like, on Christmas Eve or something. And I know I feel so bad for Peter that he has no idea all this is going on. It puts Peter and Julia in such a weird but especially really, it almost seems like punishment for her. And I don't think he means it that way. But now she knows this about him.
What does she do with this?
Right? But then she goes and kisses him. So I'm really confused. I would love them to do like, a sequel now and just see all the same actors and actresses except Alan Rickman Rip, and just see where'd they end up. People would watch. That's our free movie advice of this episode. They can make a part two sequel. Yeah. And hopefully it's less fat phobic and we'll take it from there. Or we'll see. I don't know. But anyway, as we wrap up, we want to just thank everyone so much for joining us today. In this month of December, we hope you are going to have a good holiday season if you celebrate the holidays. And we do give a little bit of tips throughout these episodes of just like, having boundaries with family and friends and kind of how to navigate some difficult potential situations with gatherings and sometimes alcohol and all the things that can happen with that. Holidays are notoriously stressful for everyone, whether you struggle with your mental health or not. They just are. So, yeah, keep tuning in to hear more about our take. We're so grateful you joined us today, Julia.
Thank you so much.
It was super fun. And we will catch you next Monday with a new episode and you can follow us on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. You can watch our videos now at Analyze Scripts podcast. Thanks. Bye. All right, bye.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are joined by WFSB morning show anchor, Nicole Nalepa, to discuss season 3 of "The Morning Show." In this season we see a different Alex Levy and discuss if people with narcissism can change. We get to see Cory's mom which gives us such great information for answering the age old question of nature versus nurture. Bradley and her brother continue to give us strong family dynamics to discuss and we finish up with the impact of power and money on a person's personality. Nicole answers all our questions about what goes on behind the scenes at a morning show (like what time she wakes up and if she does her own hair and makeup). Nicole also shares how she practices self care while covering traumatic stories and events. We hope you enjoy!
Dr. Katrina Furey: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fieri, a psychiatrist.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends.
Dr. Katrina Furey: There is so much misinformation out there and it drives us nuts.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like.
Dr. Katrina Furey: With a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And your DSM Five and enjoy. And welcome back for another episode of Analyze Scripts. I'm Dr. Katrina Fury. Of course, I have my friend and colleague Portia Pendleton here and we are so excited to welcome a very special guest, nicole Nalapa, who is the anchor of Connecticut's number one morning newscast, Eyewitness News in the Morning, and the co host of WFSB's newest lifestyle TV show, great Day at Nine A. She came to WFSB in December 2013 and has been waking up Connecticut every weekday morning since. She wears many hats at channel three. Her newest role began in September 2022 when she was named the co host of Great Day at Nine A. Alongside Scott Hanley. She also hosts the weekly franchises, including Family Friday, What's Going On, the Bright Spot, and Three Things You Need to Know. And when you don't. She also has a podcast called Mommyhood Unscripted, which is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, where she tackles some of the biggest topics and least discussed issues surrounding motherhood, which, as a reproductive psychiatrist, I totally love. She's a mama, too and takes listeners along for the ride. And before coming into Connecticut, she did a whole bunch of things. She worked in Springfield, she did a lot of live on scene reporting, she had an Emmy winning newscast aired on CNN, and she also spent several months at CBS in New York, interning for the evening news with Katie Couric. Is that right?
Nicole Nalepa: Yes, that's right.
Dr. Katrina Furey: So we are so thrilled that she's here, a, because she's super cool, and B, because we're talking about one of our favorite shows, the Morning Show season three. And this is just, like, so exciting to talk to someone who's actually on a morning show, right? Like, I'm just dying to hear what is that? Like, how do you wake up so early? Do you like getting your hair and makeup done every day? Is it like the kardashians where you sit there on your phone and they're just fluttering around you? Do you do your own investigative work? What do they get? Right? Basically, I want to know all the things.
Nicole Nalepa: Well, thank you so much, ladies, for having me on your podcast. I'm so excited to be here. And, yeah, it is exciting to talk about a show that has to do with this industry because so often I always say to my coworkers we have had so many laughs and so many funny moments and also emotional moments both in front of the camera and behind the scenes. So I always say this would make a great reality show but it's hard to right? Because in the news industry you need to be as unbiased as possible. But I swear we are real human beings. We go to the bathroom, we do everything else that you guys do.
Dr. Katrina Furey: No way.
Nicole Nalepa: But no, it was fun. I loved in The Morning Show came out, I was really excited. And of course, I Have to Admit, I Had a very hypercritical eye, too, because whenever you see I mean, obviously the process of how things happen, but whenever you see people who are trying to portray anchors or reporters, you have that anchorman like, Good Morning, San Diego. And that was the one thing when I Got Into business, I look back at my Old reels and old clips and stuff when I First Started out, and I said, oh, little Nicole, she was trying to be older and tried to get that news voice, and we were all feeling it out. Everyone does when you're starting out in the business. But I remember at Some point, something clicked. I think it was when I got here to Connecticut. At that point, because I had a few reps in, in Springfield, I was actually hired as a traffic anchor. Technically, here in Connecticut, I was going to be a reporter. But then their traffic anchor was leaving, and then they said, hey, you should work with this guy, Scott Haney. You know, the guy that ate cat vomit off the bottom of his shoe, alive on air. And I'm like, what? Well I've never heard of this guy but he know the most beloved meteorologist and on air talent probably in the state of Connecticut. I had no idea of his legacy until I got here from Massachusetts and I said wow, now I get know this is like the magic and at that know, doing traffic it was all ad living. I didn't have a teleprompter so I really had to think on my feet and working alongside him he's so zany and crazy and unpredictable in the best way possible and definitely in an unconventional news way. I would say that nothing is rehearsed, nothing is fake even in the newsroom excuse me, in the morning show and the newsroom, that's another great show too. They also have those fake laughs you see they're trying to elicit those emotions but they schedule it in I remember saying to myself I never want to fake anything. I don't want a news anchor voice, I just want to be me and it's work.
Dr. Katrina Furey: That's so cool. Tell us a little bit about your take about the morning show like what it's getting right, what it's getting wrong?
Nicole Nalepa: Yeah well so the morning show, that's from a network standpoint so that's big time right. That's new York. You're seeing all of these operations. There's a job for everything. There's a person behind the camera, there's a person that's running scripts. There's a person that's running you scripts. There's someone what was it? The anchor producer. Right. Someone's set to just produce the anchor.
Dr. Katrina Furey: There's someone there's a junior and a senior one.
Nicole Nalepa: Yeah. There's a big hierarchy. Yes. The booker. I wish we had a booker here on a local level, local TV news. It is quite the opposite. And just by way of we basically do five different jobs. That's just kind of how we've adapted into this industry, provided it's changed over the years. Like the that was definitely the heyday of before the World Wide Web really took charge and came through. And these phones, too, right. Have changed the way we get our news. So there were more bodies, I would say in, but I don't know even if you could see in our studio here, I'll turn you around, but we have robotic cameras. We don't have camera guys in our studio. We have literally a system that will tell the camera where to zoom in and who to zoom in on. So we don't have camera guys like the morning show. But obviously in New York, at CBS News, when I was interning there, they have camera that was that was accurate, I would say. And seeing the process. Right. And when breaking news comes in and how they're all kind know, just huddling up really quick. Yeah. How are we going to figure this out? We got to get it on. We got to get it on. That's very accurate. Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: How do you wake up so early?
Nicole Nalepa: So that's one thing I love, seeing the morning show and how they portray the alarm clock. Right. They're always like and trying to hit.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Snooze and they have to get out of bed.
Nicole Nalepa: And I love the shots. Right. The close up shots of them trying to put their shoes in the slippers and making their coffee. And that's very accurate as well. I think to work on a morning show, to some degree, you have to be a morning person. Whether you feel like you're a morning person or not, to some degree, you have to there are some people that can do it, probably, and some people that can't. Some people are more night owls. I worked overnight when I started in the business, and then when I came here to Channel Three, I ended up my shift was shifted. So I think I was working four to twelve when I first started here and then shifted back. And I don't know, to me, going from overnights to getting up early in the morning, I actually got to sleep finally, like when everyone else sleeps, when it starts out. So that was an upgrade for me. It's still tough, though. My alarm goes off at 230, so no 330 alarm like Alex Levy or.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Bradley jackson extra hour of sleep.
Nicole Nalepa: Wow. Yeah. And she probably has a driver, too. Most networks, they have a driver. They send a car and they drive you to the station. No, I'm driving myself. And I'm doing my own hair and makeup, too.
Dr. Katrina Furey: No, it looks great. Yeah, you're really good at it.
Nicole Nalepa: Thanks. That's another thing, another little myth I'll dispel. So we don't have any makeup or hair artists. Most local news stations do not. I think New York may still have hair and makeup. Maybe La. And I don't even know if Chicago does anymore. When I was interning in Boston about I mean, this is a little while ago now, but they didn't have hair and makeup. You that was, I think, probably one of the big expenses to go.
Dr. Katrina Furey: That takes skill to do on air quality hair and makeup that's different from your everyday hair and makeup.
Nicole Nalepa: It is.
Dr. Katrina Furey: That's expecting a lot of you to be able to do that and be a journalist.
Nicole Nalepa: I call it your clown makeup. I'm like, I have my clown makeup on stronger. Right? Exactly. Because these lights are very bright and you don't want to get washed out, but that's a skill. We do have these image consultants, most stations do, where they'll say, hey, this shade looks really good on you. And they'll show us some makeup tips and just recommendations, which is really helpful. Right. Because it's accentuating the parts right. And the features in your face. So I've learned over the years from multiple consultants at my stations, and it's been really helpful. But you have to have a thick skin, too, because you're looking at your face really early in the morning every day. And I learned that my face is not symmetrical like I always thought it was when I drew myself portraits in school.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I think it's pretty rare to have a symmetrical face.
Nicole Nalepa: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: But I also appreciated that they were really honing in on how early the characters wake up, because that is hard. I remember in my residency training, doing, like, 24 hours shifts, night shifts, shifting between night shift and day shift, it was so hard on your body. It's just like your circadian rhythm isn't meant to do that. And I remember working overnight in the Er, and it was like, every night right around 03:00 A.m., I would get so cold and tired and hungry, and I had some senior attending tell me, like, well, yeah, your cortisol level drops around this time, so naturally you want to kind of hibernate. And so just thinking about you and watching the show, I'm like, It must be extra hard to wake up at that time.
Nicole Nalepa: Yeah. I think before kids, I made it work and didn't get a lot of sleep. And then when I became pregnant, and then after my second pregnancy, I'm like, oh, God, I wasn't sleeping at all. That was the hardest I've ever experienced. So I appreciate my sleep now more so than I did in my 20s, when you remember being in your twenty s and just we can ride this out. We'll catch up on the weekend. I can take a nap when I get home.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. Well so one thing that we thought would be interesting and portia, please chime in. Is, again, one thing that we or I find myself often telling my patients these days. I would say kind of always, but especially since 2020 with COVID and the election and the social unrest in our country and everything going on, we would talk a lot about limiting your news consumption to help limit how much traumatic material you were being exposed to that you're already thinking about throughout the day. And even, like, our diagnostic manual called the DSM, the way they define PTSD or post traumatic stress disorder, changed from version four to version five, which actually came out many years before 2020. But they adjusted it so that people who before then, you had to actually experience the trauma directly to be able to be diagnosed with a trauma disorder. Now they've changed it. So you can either experience it directly, witness it, like, via bystander, or experience it vicariously. And I believe that was done in part to capture a whole lot of other people who are being traumatized. And I know especially, like, in my training, we talked a lot about people in certain professions, like police officers, firefighters, journalists, newscasters, photojournalists, who are like, in the thick of it, like, we see Andre in season three. But I was wondering if you could kind of speak to that, because I feel like you can't limit it. You are reporting on it, and I just think that's got to be so hard. And I wonder, how do you guys take care of each other? How do you take care of yourselves? Is that talked about in the field? Is anyone looking out for you guys in terms of your own mental health? I feel like I hope so.
Nicole Nalepa: Yeah, that's a great question. And I think that that's probably a question we don't always get. We always get the what time do you wake up in the morning? But of course, when we think of the serious and the more traumatic things that we cover, we don't always want to go there asking people those questions. Right. But I am so happy to answer that. I can only speak, obviously, from my experience, but from what I have experienced in covering some traumatic stories in particular, actually, the one that comes to mind when you were talking about this is the Boston Marathon bombings. I was there, maybe less than a mile from where they ended up finding the brother underneath the boat that was hiding at the you know, from the moment the bombs went off at the finish know we were wall. To wall coverage, obviously from up until when I got a call in the middle of the night from my news director at the time saying, we're sending you to Watertown. And that's where the staging area is. The brothers know, throwing Molotov cocktails at everyone. And it was just such a scary time knowing, like, okay, well, this is my job and I'm going into it. And I remember sitting at the kitchen table that night and going, I'm going to let my parents know where I'm headed now, because we really didn't know what we were going into. I remember I had my insurance card and really quick before I left in the middle of the night, which, I mean, I was in my mid 20s, little over prepared, I guess I was thinking a little bit ahead, god forbid something were to happen, but you don't know. Yeah, it's very scary. And I remember when the movie about the Boston Marathon bombings came out. I still to this day, haven't seen it. And I'm from I just I feel like I've been there. I lived through it, know, to experience, know what it was like. I don't really want to see a Hollywood adaptation to watch it, but I think that it is so important to keep your mental health in check. That was kind of something for me at the time. That's how I was keeping things in check. I didn't want to expose myself to something that maybe wouldn't make me feel happy watching and reliving again. Right. So I think that in this business, overall, we compartmentalize because that's kind of how you do survive. Some of those tough stories when you're doing those doorknocks, those awful stories where a mother has just lost her child or just awful. I mean, the list goes on. And I think that we tap into a place where we get the facts and we do our darndest to deliver everything that we know and what information is going to help the public. And then I think what you do with that when you go home is really like the ultimate test there. So, for example, with the pandemic, the start of season two on the morning show when they were taking the drone image, my husband and I, he used to be in the news business, too. He was behind the scenes and we both looked at each other and I'm like, I don't want to watch this right now. I love this show. We loved it. And I'm like, I just can't watch it right now. For everyone in their right, that makes me feel so good because I said, what's wrong with me? I love this show. I know that. It's okay. We're here right now. We're okay.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Why don't I good grounding, Nicole.
Nicole Nalepa: Good grounding. I try, but yeah, I think it's just important to listen to what's not going to make you feel good in your own time, because that's your time, right. And that goes for any job, right?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Totally.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't know if any workplaces talk about it enough. Like, I know I only know my own experience in medicine, where you're working in the ICU and there's really sick people. You're giving awful news. People are dying. There's codes, and then you just go to lunch, and then you go to the next one. And then even within medicine, there's not a lot of room for, like, who you just witnessed a lot. How are you going to process if there isn't a lot of modeling or anyone kind of checking in? I think, and I hope that that culture is changing. But as I think about that, of course, as a psychiatrist, I'm always thinking about these things. I wonder about other fields and the news in particular. I can never watch the news because every time I turn it on, it's like, happy, happy shooting. Happy, happy fire. It's just like it catches me by surprise. So it's hard. And I just always wonder about when that's your job. That's just got to be hard. And I hope your field also emphasizes that, or is starting to.
Nicole Nalepa: I've been very blessed where I've worked for news directors who have checked in on us when we have covered horrific stories, offering support if anyone needs counseling. We've had even comfort dogs that have come in through. I wasn't here in Connecticut when the Newtown the Sandy Hook shootings happened, but I was at Springfield at the time, but I wasn't sent there. I was producing that newscast and anchoring, but I know my husband was sent there as a photographer to cover that. I also know that the photographers here at Channel Three, they were offered anything that they need, any kind of services, because, great, well enough, we don't even need to mention what that can do, right. For anyone who experienced it on any kind of end directly, indirectly. So that is definitely mental health is, I think, like you said, definitely something that's coming to the forefront more. I think the pandemic really opened it up for people who may not have realized that they've been affected by things.
Dr. Katrina Furey: We all that trauma, right?
Nicole Nalepa: Exactly. It was such a shared collective experience. So I think one of the things that I did to kind of ground myself, because it got to a point where all we were doing right, because everyone was home, nothing was going on. We were just reading the numbers, too, recording what was going on from that standpoint. So there you were, right, like, in the ICU and the medical front of things, seeing the people die, and then we're getting the numbers to report it. So we were, like, both working from different angles, which is crazy when you think about it, right. But we were informing people and helping people in a way. And just with all the heaviness, just that these kinds of things bring, I wanted to create something positive. So I created this segment at the time that was born out of the pandemic called the bright spot. It was all about trying to focus on, okay, let's take a moment now and see what good is going on. This is awful, but what is going on? What good is happening? Anything from the little kids doing these drives or sending messages to the healthcare workers? Everything. There were so many amazing stories, so that kind of helped ground me, too. At least that hard news time as well. And that was like my little baby. And every day I worked really hard to turn out the best positive stories that I could find here in the States. So that was really cool. I hope I'm answering your questions.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Definitely. And I think that's so important that, again, it reminds me of the Mr. Rogers quote that, you know, in times of suffering, look for the helpers. Even when things are atrocious, you can find a glimmer somewhere. It can be harder at certain times than other times. But if you can try to find that and hold on to it without forgetting what's going on right. Without repressing that or ignoring it. But you need that as a human to kind of soldier on.
Nicole Nalepa: Yeah, absolutely.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And we see kind of a tragic way in which Hannah from season one was not given help and her helper ended up being harmful. But I thought it was beautiful. In season three, in one moment, they all kind of got together and were, like, meeting in the and I was like, oh, why? And then they were all kind of sharing a moment of tribute to Hannah. And I was, you know, that family kind of aspect of being a team in the newsroom, the all of the people who were kind of connected with her. I thought that was just like a really nice moment that they kind of continued to bring her story through season three.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, I was really glad they showed that. And I think, too, with season three, as we sort of transition into talking about that with Nicole. I didn't love season three, I'll be honest, as much as the first two. And I kind of felt like the plot was really similar to succession with the big, rich, fancy tech guy coming in and then all the shenanigans with the shareholders and the board meetings and all the stuff I don't understand. Still great. Love it. But I thought it really spoke to the importance of the news being neutral and for people being able to trust and rely on the news to get their information and how that is something I think, even with all the discourse about TikTok and what's shown on TikTok versus what's shown on your TV. And how do you figure out who to trust and what happens when Elon Musk buys you know, this tech giant buys the news? It really got me thinking. Really? I hadn't really thought about that in any great detail. So it was really interesting commentary on all of that this season.
Nicole Nalepa: I like seeing Don Draper.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I know.
Nicole Nalepa: I love him.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Jen Aniston. I was like, they're just beautiful.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I really like the couple like themselves. I was like, they are a good match.
Nicole Nalepa: I know. I love to see them. Wow.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah, it was great. Like casting.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, for sure.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So what do you think about because they talked a lot about streaming in season two and three. As right is really on streaming. He believes in it. He wants the streaming service for, like what's it been like for you guys? Kind of navigating having Instagram TikTok even like Facebook. I do follow WFSB. I really quickly love you and Scott Haney. My mom's very excited today that I'm talking to know it's just been a huge shift with news, and I think you guys do a great job. But I imagine the transition after transition, first with COVID like filming at home wearing masks, like having visors up and then having to do more reels, how I think of them on social media.
Dr. Katrina Furey: What'S that been like for you guys.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: As it compares to the morning show or just in general?
Nicole Nalepa: Yeah, I think in general, just with anything, technology changes things, and you got to keep up with things. And as we saw Right in the morning show, how Corey kept pushing, we got to go to streaming, we got to go to UBS Plus. And he was upset, right. That they waited on that. I definitely think the pandemic, just generally speaking with this industry as a whole, we realize that we can do a heck of a lot more on our phones, right. We can stream live and report live from wherever we are. We have capabilities to do that. Like you said, social media, the Facebook live stories, that was huge, right? Doing all of those live stories. And it's so interesting to see this industry shift again. And it's exciting in the sense that we're keeping up with things. We definitely have our pulse on what's new, what's the latest, what's going to reach people, what's going to help people. It means that there's a lot less downtime, not like there was any downtime before. You go into work every day and it's a brand new day. That's what I loved about this industry. Unless if you're working on a special sweep story or something or like a feature story, it's not the same day after day after day, right. Every day is different. Every story is different than the day before, even if it's an update to a follow up to a story. So I think that this has helped continue the dialogue of stories. So when we have what's on air and then we switch to streaming, it's kind of keeping things going and the dialogue going on stories, and it's making sure that viewers know that, hey, we haven't forgotten about this. We're still asking those questions and we're still following up on it right now, so it's not as much of a to be continued dot, dot, dot. It's kind of like, all right, here's what's new. Here's what's happening now, and here's what's happening next. This is the latest that we have at this point in time, and we're busy doing that with all the streams and stuff. To answer your question, I think that it's giving people what they want. And when you think of all the younger generations, now most of them are getting news from their phone more often than not. So if you want to stay relevant and you want to put the important information out there that people need when they wake up in the morning, that's the way to do it.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. That is a lot, though. It's like you're always on. Right. That was one thing this show really captures, is, like, whenever the news breaks, all right, it's time. We got to go figure it out, no matter what's going on.
Nicole Nalepa: Yeah. I always say I feel like I'm always in transit, but I always had this personality before I got in this business, so I think I was attracted to that, and it was a great fit for me.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, a lot of adrenaline.
Nicole Nalepa: Yes. I always succeeded in chaos, always from a young age.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I get that.
Nicole Nalepa: So. Yeah, I like that. I like that adrenaline rush. I like being able to help deliver important stuff. And I think that there's such a huge responsibility that comes with that. Because like I was telling you before about the anchor voices and stuff, you have such a huge responsibility delivering certain stories to the people and in a way where you have to be an empathetic person if you really want to reach people. And if you're really feeling it, you just got to say it from the heart when you do it. You know what I mean? I almost, like, in a way, I wanted to reclaim that when I got in this business, too, because it's so hard. What am I trying to say? We grew up watching news anchors and stuff, and then Anchorman comes out, the movie. Right? Will ferrell love it. But it's like, I want I just want people to feel like we're just talking to them, and there's no ego. There's no coming up today. I don't want that.
Dr. Katrina Furey: The anchor voice?
Nicole Nalepa: Yeah, because people are letting you literally into their homes every day. You're part of their routine. And I have to be honest, I don't really think about that. Like, when we stare into the camera, I'm not thinking about how many people are on the other side of that lens. I'm literally just, like, talking like I would talk to my mom or to a friend hanging out with my coworkers. It's a very surreal experience, and I realize it's a very wild job to have, and one I guess I don't think as much about. Obviously, I know what I do. And I know it reaches people, but I don't think I understand the extent and how impactful it is. Sometimes until I see a viewer, like when I'm at the grocery store or someone, they'll be like, hey, Nicole. And I'm like, oh, hi. I don't know that person's name. And then I'm like, oh, wait, they probably watch on is like it's still a novelty, I guess, in a way, to me, it's also got to be.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Like a skill to be able to talk to a camera like a robot cameras in such a personable way. Right. Even if there's a camera man or woman behind it, there's a human. So I feel like that's just a really interesting skill to have. And I wonder if you can comment at all about one thing that I think Portia and I were thinking might be similar between therapists and newscasters is you would tell us if we're wrong, but it seems like we see in the Morning show bradley can have a hard time. I mean, she does a good job, but you know her, right? And like, sometimes I think it seems like the network wants her to be more neutral or not talk about certain things or keep it here, don't go there. And I feel like as therapists, at least in our role, it's really important to maintain a sense of neutrality, especially when you're helping your patients navigate COVID or the 2020 election or the January 6 riots. How do you maintain that neutrality so they feel open to talk to you? That's different from what you do. But I wonder if you can comment at all about what that's like to comment on such charged things, and if the morning show your opinion about how they're portraying that.
Nicole Nalepa: Yeah, it is nice to see the extreme example of someone in this industry, what it would probably look like when struggling with that. You see that internal conflict play out outside. Even on her face, you can really see it. Whereas Alex has a better job at just holding things together.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
Nicole Nalepa: I remember her saying, actually, like, I do something control. This is what I do really well.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Like damage control or what?
Nicole Nalepa: This is what I'm meant to do. I'm great at doing damage control. She's good at reeling it in. So you see the two extremes. I think that at least what helps me in those situations. Because at the end of the day, we all have opinions on things, whether or not we make them vocal or not. But I think that just like any job, it's almost like we took this unofficial oath mentally to do this public service and acknowledge that there are going to be people who are on both sides of the aisle and a lot of people who are unsure too. And your job is to not do anything from where you're standing to move their point of view. You just have to stick to the.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Facts to the facts.
Nicole Nalepa: Exactly. I know I wouldn't want someone swaying me, trying to sway me one way if I'm turning on the television, and that's what those editorial shows are for. The news is so different. You just literally stick to the facts and also make sure that both sides are reflected in a story, which is also so important, too, because you have to get both sides of it. Even if someone isn't going to comment on the story, you have to let the viewers know that you tried to get their comment and they wouldn't return our calls. You might hear that in some news stories.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: There's a moment at the end of season three where Chip is, like, making this on air live after he's let Go statement about why Mark's, like, shouldn't buy the network and what the risks are and what I really liked. And again, it feels really relevant just to and this is how we fact check and we get the alert. We call the police officers in this random town. We get the statement from them, then.
Dr. Katrina Furey: We go there and then we fact.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Check on this way.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And it's like we do this whole.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Thing just to get the story, just to be able to promote it. And it's like, I think so many people for the show, the morning show, I never realized that the 40 people yes, it's a big show, all behind the scenes, doing all this work overnight, getting everything right and it's so important. I love that you said kind of taking that oath because, Katrina, like you were saying, we're all kind of in a position of power with our clients, with the viewers know it can go wrong really quick if you kind of know the relationship with your patient or with viewers. And season three just really felt like that was kind of a big message that they were trying to get, really.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And what happens when someone like Paul Marx, who has a proclivity, you could say, for abusing his power, is now being given a lot of power that could sway things in a major way? I thought that was just like an interesting commentary.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: What do you think about Hallmarks, like diagnostically? I mean, obviously we think he's attractive, but I guess there's everything.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I think it's pretty well known that I don't remember the statistic off the top of my head. I think it's pretty well known that when you're in such a high position of power, there is some degree of sociopathy. I don't mean that people in really high positions of power are out, like being serial killers, but there's some sense of stepping on someone else to get to where you want some sort of lust for power that comes from being able to get to those super high positions. Again, it's not everyone in the high position, right? But it's like a higher percentage of people in those uber high positions than the average person. There's some sense of that. And I feel like they could have gone a little more with him and made him a little more cutthroat, like kind of in the succession guess. I don't know if you watched Succession, Nicole, but that was a show we covered.
Nicole Nalepa: I watched like the first episode or two. I've been so awful finding time to watch shows lately. 14 month old, you have a lot of time.
Dr. Katrina Furey: But I feel like they really went there with Logan Roy in a really cutthroat way, whereas Paul Marks was more mild. But you still got enough of that flavor. Like, when they talked about what happened with Stella at Stanford, it seems like he, I guess on paper did compensate her for her programming or whatever she had done. That's where it goes over my head a little, but like, clearly not like he knew it was going to be worth way more than he was offering her those sorts of things.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And that was the NDAs.
Dr. Katrina Furey: All the NDAs. Right. I think it did really just speak to that a little sociopathy, some narcissism, but again, more of like this covert way, would you say? Portia, like trying to portray himself as earthy and very charming. But he had that edge and we really saw that when he threatened Bradley near the end of season three and when she quit. Right. Like, he knew all this stuff. It was clear he was surveilling everyone. I think he was the one who leaked the photo of him and Alex. I think we never really got an answer.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: It seems like that would be accurate.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I was trying to figure out, like, were Paul and Alex really connecting in a genuine way or was it like Alex met her match and it was like narcissists using each other to stay on top the whole time? I couldn't really tell. And then near the end, it really did feel like she was really like I think they did really genuinely care for each other.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah. Because as much as they know, I think her kind of having to make that decision to ultimately betray him, even though he betrayed her, I think was really hard, because I think she had she almost felt it reminded me of. Like, I think Alex felt like he really saw her and she could be herself with him, which was like, this uber powerful woman with wanting to be more and maybe own a network and work really hard, and she's really smart, and she never got that opportunity from some of the past owners of UBA. And so I think she was really hurt by that. And it reminded me of Corey and Bradley's kind of like special, unique relationship where Bradley felt really seen by him and her authentic self. So I think it's almost like Alex was grieving, right, being able to who.
Dr. Katrina Furey: She thought he was rather than who he really was. Which I think a lot of people leaving a relationship with someone with narcissistic traits feel is they're grieving who they thought the person was rather than who they really are. Once they see who they really are, I do feel like, in general, I love Alex Levy, I love Jennifer Aniston. I love her. Just I don't think it's accurate that she wouldn't have been as narcissistic as she had been before. It doesn't just go away, unfortunately, for the most part.
Nicole Nalepa: Yeah. I wonder if there's another character who could have brought that side out that we weren't seeing.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. Yeah. It was just weird to me how for so much of the season, it seemed like quieter to me.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And it was very loud in season one and two.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. In a very big way. And again, I guess it is known that sometimes people with personality disorders peters out a little bit as they get older, but not all the and she's when I say get older, I mean more like elderly age, not.
Nicole Nalepa: Would you see as a personality disorder?
Dr. Katrina Furey: I think if I was diagnosing Alex Levy, I would, based on season one and two. Diagnose her with narcissistic personality disorder based on season three. I feel like we see more empathy than we've seen before. And so from like a mental health perspective, I don't know how accurate that is. Based on season one and two was, at least to me, very clearly NPD, like, in your face. I don't think that just goes away. But I think her as a character is very fascinating and I think they wanted her to have more of this arc. And she does, I guess, sort of at the end come in and save the day, which is great.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Which is also, though, like, self importance. She does get agreement from the other network and she talks to Laura. And I thought that was kind of just I don't know, I felt like, go women and everyone's working together. Yeah.
Nicole Nalepa: Girl power.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: But it's almost like, though, she is like the savior. So it could be maybe right.
Dr. Katrina Furey: But it wasn't in like a icky.
Nicole Nalepa: No.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, I guess I felt like her narcissism was coming back out when she was like, in cahoots with Paul to start her own thing. But you saw how much she was grappling with how it was going to affect the 20,000 employees. And I don't think Alex Levy from season one or two cared about that. We saw her going to see Mitch in Italy kicking off those other people on their plane so she could get right. Like that level of narcissism in reality doesn't just go away. Whereas in season three, we really saw her really wrapped with guilt over going through this and then totally changing her mind when Maggie Brenner kind of reminded her like, Bradley was really there for you and she could really see that.
Nicole Nalepa: Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey: So, again, love it as a show. I think as a criticism, I think, unfortunately, doesn't happen that way, although we always wish it could.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah, I have why we have a podcast.
Nicole Nalepa: Yeah, exactly. From a therapy point of view, could a traumatic event such as the pandemic, it seems like that was almost a turning point for where we saw her personality kind of shift a little bit. Right. She realized, like, she was so grateful to be living. She was so grateful that she was given another chance right at her job, and it opened up the way for more opportunities. Could that kind of water down that narcissism?
Dr. Katrina Furey: What do you think, Portia?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Well, I'm always optimistic and filled with joy, so I feel know at least even if we think about it mechanically, trauma impacts our brain. So structurally, it could have changed her brain. How she processes information at a time, especially like the length of the pandemic and then all of the other collective traumas after that. With everything that was going on, especially considering her job and reporting on it, maybe like I don't know if it would shift her. I think if someone is truly narcissistic, like no, it could change you, how you relate to things like you were hurt by X, Y, and Z happening. You might feel the physical sensations, the change in the worldviews, the other symptoms of PTSD, but at your core, I think it's still going to come back to you being selfish or just grandiose and kind of not looking out for others. A little bit of lacking empathy. But that's why I think it's like, maybe if we think of it as a spectrum, she has maybe a lot of the narcissistic traits, and she didn't really have narcissism, and then the trauma would more so be more likely to impact her.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I think when we think about narcissistic personality disorder, right, when we think about personality development as a whole, we all need some healthy degree of narcissism to have confidence and self esteem and put yourself out there. But what balances that sense of self importance in the world? You probably see this with your children, as we see with many children. When you're younger, you're like little narcissist. The whole world revolves around you. Your parents hopefully cater to your every need, whatever you need that's met, like, at all other expenses that's developmentally appropriate. But then usually as you grow up, you start to appreciate that there's other people in the world too, and the way you relate to them. In psychology, we call it object relations is really important. And that is the part that gets kind of stunted in people who have narcissistic personality disorder, where they have a really hard time holding on to conflicting feelings about themselves and others, like being good and bad at the same time. They can't tolerate being bad at all. And really deep down, the core wound is they feel useless, they feel worthless, they feel really bad, but they can't tolerate it. So they have to project it out onto other people, put them down, put themselves up here to sort of maintain their own inner sense of goodness. They haven't learned how to see other people for who that other person really is and appreciate the complexities that that person's good and bad, and so am I, and we're all okay. They can't really do that, if that makes sense. And so I feel like in seasons one and two with Alex, we really saw that a lot, where it was her, everything is for her. Like the way she treats everyone, the way she treated Chip. Everyone's almost like, right, everyone's like a chess piece. You're moving around for your own agenda. And season three was so different, which great for her. I just think in my clinical experience, when someone's like that degree of narcissism, it doesn't shift that much, even a trauma. And again, maybe you always hold out hope, but I'm not sure. It's very hard to do therapy with people with narcissistic personality disorder.
Nicole Nalepa: So interesting. I just love listening to you guys talk. I love talking about psychology and getting in depth with feelings.
Dr. Katrina Furey: We like it too.
Nicole Nalepa: I love when you guys break it down, like, thanks.
Dr. Katrina Furey: So I want to be respectful of your time. There's so much more we could talk about, but did anything jump out to you, Nicole, about this season or the relationships, the dynamics that really spoke to you or resonated with you?
Nicole Nalepa: I think when you see the camaraderie like you were talking know, at the end there, you are a family, right? You're working with these people day in, day out, some people you're spending more time with than your own spouses. And you're also working through some horrific stories and traumatic situations and some really amazing joyous stories that you're celebrating with each other as well. So it's a very close knit community and I would say that it's a smaller business than you may think. There are a lot of people you never know who is going to advance on in the industry, which is why you should always be kind to everyone. Of course, that doesn't always happen, unfortunately. Let's be realistic, right? In life, there's always those who just struggle with that a little bit more. But I have found and I've witnessed and I've seen enough at this point where I've seen people who I may have known, who I've interned with. You never know, you might find yourself working with that person, which is great. But with that said, people will always remember how you make them feel, always treat people with respect and be kind because that also does come back around too. And there are people that unfortunately, like in any industry and workplace, people hear someone knows someone through someone else. So I think that that is like a huge theme to just never burn your bridges and just always be a kind person. At the end of the day, everyone's trying to do the best they can, and sometimes people struggle in other areas, but you just got to give everyone a little bit of grace yourself. Some grace, too. It's not an easy industry to work in, but if you love it, you can tell you want to stay in it.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: It feels like you love it.
Nicole Nalepa: I do. Yeah, I do. I love helping people. So this kind of helps satisfy that need to reach people and help people. That's always been, like, something I've loved to do. Yeah.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Well, we'll have to see what happens in season four. We have a lot of questions, like, what happens with the network? What happens with Bradley? Is Corey still attached to the network? There's so many places to go. We met his mom this season.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my God.
Nicole Nalepa: Really?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Manipulative.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. What do you think of his mom, Portia?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I feel like, I don't know, like, borderline. I mean, manipulative and cruel. Maybe narcissistic.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I feel like it's exactly who I would have thought his mom would be. Like. You could just sense, like, he brought Bradley there as, like, a buffer, which I think often people with personality disorders, especially narcissism, do better with a crowd because they want to put on a good show. Right. Whereas when you're one on one with them, that's often when you get their cruel side and the real them, like, children of people with personality disorders like this will often talk about no one knows the real them. There's, like, the persona everyone else sees as charismatic, gregarious, bubbly, kind person, and then there's the real one. So I felt like him even just bringing Bradley to me was, like, diagnostic. And then she was so cruel with what she said and it was this interesting dance of codependency needs him to fill this void and he's constantly trying to fill it for her, but then she rejects him when he fills it. Or especially if he has his own need that doesn't align with hers and doesn't keep her in the center of his world. And then she's mad at him for staying away, and it's like, of course he's staying away. Look what he gets when he comes around. I was just like, I'm so glad we met her. And she was spot on who I thought she'd be.
Nicole Nalepa: Definitely.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: A mix of both. I think we didn't get her enough. I want more from her. And I think, though, for sure, we talked about last season, sometimes he appeared manic, but then I was like, or is that just the industry? He's just like, yeah, I think you.
Nicole Nalepa: Got to be ready for anything.
Dr. Katrina Furey: You got to jazz yourself up. And, like, that scene with him and Bradley driving home in the car where she's trying to empathize with him, and he's shutting her out because he just can't go there. I think it's so painful, especially when it's your mother of all people, you still love them. And she's trying to say to him, like, cory, I care about you. And he's like, no, Bradley, we mutually use each other. And I was like, oh, there it is. There's his impaired object. Can't he's struggling too. And just real quick, before we wrap up, we got to talk about the Bradley and Hal and Laura Peterson of it all.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah. So she protects Hal. She's at the January 6 riots. She's filming. She gets, like, pepper sprayed her eye, hiding her identity. So she gets all this great footage, and then she sees her brother there, salting a police officer.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I was like, of course, Hal.
Nicole Nalepa: Yeah, right.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Hal is someone who we would consider kind of diagnostically to be vulnerable to ideas, beliefs, cults. He's in recovery. He's kind of searching for hiding identity.
Dr. Katrina Furey: A purpose for connection, love for community. And just like they portrayed him all along, coming from the Deep South, I just was not surprised. He was yeah, yeah.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So she released the and, like that the FBI investigates, and blah, blah, blah, and Corey protects her, and then Paul.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Threatens her, and it's just like, Laura.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Finds out, right, because she thinks that Bradley is cheating actually on her with Corey. Not anything like the.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right, right. But then she finds out and so quickly washes her hands of Bradley. And I was like, I get it, especially with what we were talking about, how important journalistic integrity is, and it was something like that. But I also get that it was her brother. And it's like, I just feel like Bradley's always in this impossible situation. That's the role she's played in her family, it seems like the whole time, right? Like, they hearken back to when she told authorities about her dad, like, you know, killing the child and the drunk driving, and I just feel like she's always in this impossible position, and I just want to see her in therapy. In season four, I was so sad we didn't see her go to therapy.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And I think Laura tried to get her to go.
Nicole Nalepa: Right?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Laura did.
Nicole Nalepa: She tried.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I know. And that was, like, such a beautiful conversation about how to encourage someone you love to go to therapy. I was so hopeful. And then it was clear she didn't go. Yeah, she's not ready yet, but maybe.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: She ordered because she's walked right the last she's walking into the FBI with Alex as a support, not Laura, and with Hal. And then the season ends, and we'll see.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I know, we know. It's coming back for season four. I'm really excited. I do love the show. And we'll see where they go.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Well, thank you again, Nicole, for joining us today. Do you want to just share where people can maybe find you? Your podcast and stuff like that?
Nicole Nalepa: Sure. I'm on social media at Nicole Naleppatv. N-I-C-O-L-E-N-A-L-E-P-A-T-B-I also have my podcast Mommy Head unscripted. You can find on Apple and Spotify and wherever else you listen to your podcast. And I'm always looking to hear from moms to see what kind of issues and topics that they want covered, because, let's face it, we still have a lot we're discovering, I think, as moms in this era. So we got to keep the conversation going on that too.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Definitely. Well, thank you so much. This was such a joy and a treat. And you can find us at Analyze Scripts podcast on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, and we'll catch you next time with a brand new episode.
Nicole Nalepa: Yes.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Thanks, everyone.
Dr. Katrina Furey: All right, bye.
Nicole Nalepa: Thank you.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are joined by Dr. Devon Gimbel, a retired physician turned points travel consultant who guides us though the journey to India (hopefully in first class seats). As many of us travel this holiday week we hope to offer you some tips on better travel while we analyze these rich characters who find themselves in India at a "new and spectacular" retirement home. Aging, openness versus rigidity and grief are themes in this episode. We hope you enjoy!
For more information on our guest: Point Me To First Class
Katrina Furey MD: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fieri, a psychiatrist.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker.
Katrina Furey MD: And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast.
Devon Gimbel MD: Where two shrinks analyze the depiction of.
Katrina Furey MD: Mental health in movies and TV shows.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends.
Katrina Furey MD: There is so much misinformation out there, and it drives us nuts.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like.
Katrina Furey MD: With a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn.
Katrina Furey MD: And your DSM five, and enjoy. Welcome back to another super exciting episode of Analyze scripts because we have Devin Gimbal joining us. She is a double board certified physician and founder and owner of Point Me to First Class, a business that helps employed professionals, entrepreneurs, and business owners with high personal and or business expenses earn tons of credit card points to travel the world in luxury. And if you're listening to this episode, you might be traveling because it is the week of know, the busiest travel week of the, you know, if you're not in luxury, maybe you'll learn some tips for next time. Devin believes that your expenses are your greatest asset if you know how to leverage them. And she's on a mission to change the face of first class travel and help thousands of women travel more, travel better, and travel often using credit card points. So super cool. Thank you, Devin, so much for joining us.
Devon Gimbel MD: Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
Katrina Furey MD: I first learned about Devin by joining her Facebook group, the point me to first class group, and I have started my points accumulation and journey. I haven't redeemed anything yet, but do you want to just give Portia a little update? I guess because, Portia, I don't think you're quite in the credit card points game the same way I'm trying to.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Enter a I'm a baby.
Katrina Furey MD: You're a baby. Okay. You're in your infancy.
Devon Gimbel MD: Yes, well, it's fine. Everybody starts started. I tell this story in my own communities where I for many years was terrified of credit cards. I didn't have a single credit card in my teens, my 20s, even into my late twenty s, I was very scared of credit cards. I'd always been told that they're dangerous, you can get into debt. And the whole situation around that really frightened me. And I had no money growing up, so I was like, well, I have no money to spend anyway. Get a credit card. I don't know. I'm going to pay it off. So I avoided credit cards for a really long time. And it was only after I had actually completely finished all my medical training, finished my residency, finished my fellowship, that I started to just educate myself about personal finance in general. Just how can I be responsible financially? How do I make that transition from being a forever student, a forever trainee, into having a grown up job and being able to make really responsible financial decisions around retirement and savings and all of these things that they don't teach you, right? That they don't teach us, at least not when I went through school. No one talks about any of that stuff. And I didn't have a personal, familial kind of background in education in that. So it was all personal education. And in learning just about basic personal finance, as one does, you go on the internet, you end up going down all these different rabbit holes, following all these different links. I started falling into these travel blogs and points blogs where people were talking about how you can responsibly and really strategically use credit cards to earn points and then redeem those points, or use them to fly domestically or internationally, use them for hotel stays, and that you could actually save a significant amount of money, not just $100 every few years, but a lot more than that. And I have had a lifelong love of travel, but not the first class travel budget to send myself to all of these places. And so it seemed like this perfect match between. Here's an opportunity, again, very strategically and responsibly to leverage the spend that I was doing anyway, to run my life and to run a business and all of these things, to turn that into an opportunity to travel without having to spend cash on it, so that I could actually use my disposable income towards other things, like paying down my student loans and saving for a house down payment and all of those things. And so that is really kind of the short story about what credit card points are and how they can actually really be used to enhance your travel and your life experience without compromising you financially.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I love that I'm like in my baby phase, but I will say I am very pro, of course, responsibly. But I'm always telling my mother in law and other people, like, stop using your debit card, the grocery store, use your credit card. You're going to get 3% cash back on that card. Difference of points. But I just think it's so funny, too, if you have the means, right to pay off the credit card, if you're using it almost as cash, it's such an unknown, I think. Wonderful resource to be able to use 100%.
Devon Gimbel MD: And you really hit the nail on the head that it really is a hobby to get into once you're already in a place in your life and in your finances where you are comfortable and able to pay off your credit card statements in full every month. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense. The math doesn't math in terms of getting value out of doing this. But I think it's something that anyone can learn about. And then you can take baby steps into this hobby based on what your comfort level is, again, where you are financially. But to not even know about this as an option is one of the things that I'm trying to get rid of. I think in the personal finance world, there are a couple of things that I think people just really accept to be true nowadays. Like, most people would not just leave a lot of cash in a bag in their house, right. Maybe for safety reasons, but also because it's going to lose value over time. Right. You move up a step from that. Most people also wouldn't leave all of their liquid assets in a savings account in a bank, right. Because again, over time, with inflation, you're going to lose value on that money. That's why we have these different vehicles to allow our money to grow over time. Right. There's the stock market, there's real estate investing. There's traditional retirement accounts. There's all these options. And I think in the world of personal finance, it's now very accepted that we would want to take our money, our saved money, and allow it to do some heavy lifting and grow for us. Right. And I don't think yet the same conversation is being had around our expenses that, like you said, to pay things just with a debit card or just with cash. Of course, that's a very responsible thing to do. And if you can also leverage something like a cashback credit card or a points earning credit card responsibly, to me, that's the same thing as really leveraging your money to grow for you on your investment side.
Katrina Furey MD: Yeah, 100%.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And you might be able to go to India with your points exactly right.
Devon Gimbel MD: Places you can go to. But I think today we are going to talk about India in particular.
Katrina Furey MD: Right?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So, have you been, Devin?
Devon Gimbel MD: Yes, I have. And actually, I have been to India twice, and I've never actually been to India using points, because the two times that I went to India, the very first time was when I was in medical school. And we had not a long break, but we had sort of a traditional winter break in medical school around at the end of December. And I remember, I think it was my second year of medical school, they had given us this offer where whatever module we were learning, I think it was like female reproduction or something like that, where if we studied ahead or we took the test early, we could actually have an extra week of winter break. I can't remember exactly what it was. I just remember thinking like, yes, it.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Probably was female reproduction.
Katrina Furey MD: They're like, come on, let's hurry up. Let's get through this.
Devon Gimbel MD: We don't need to know that much about it, right? Let's take a subject that's vitally important that most medical schools ignore or don't pay very much attention to. Let's just cut that one short. Right? But I remember thinking like, well, yes, because if I can have an expanded break, this is going to be a great time for me to travel. And I had always loved travel and international travel. I had just done it on the most shoestring of shoestring budgets possible. And that was absolutely true in med school as well. I was on complete student loan support when I went to medical school, so I had a ton of disposable income, but I could make it work. And so I ended up having a three week winter break in my second year of medical school. And I knew I wanted to go to India. I'd never been before. And so I went to India by myself for three weeks, and it was absolutely amazing. But I flew the economy of economy classes and took trains and buses around, and it was amazing and incredible, but I didn't know anything about points in medical school. And actually, the second time I went was years later. I actually went in early 2016. So I had my first child, my son, at the end of 2015. And when he was around three months old, I was like, I need a break. I need a solo vacation. I need to be somewhere that's just not kind of the routine of having an infant at home because it's very, very challenging and stressful. And like I said, travel has always been a really important part of my life, and I didn't do a lot of travel. The whole know that I was pregnant with.
Katrina Furey MD: Sure.
Devon Gimbel MD: And so I went back to India. Actually, I took my mom because she had wanted to go and didn't really feel comfortable doing a lot of solo travel. So I was like, this is know, let's go to India together. I've been there before. We'll go to some places. I've been some new places. And I knew about credit card points at that time, but I had not yet really developed my redemption abilities, my ability to find really great flights using points. And so I remember this too because I had been out of training for a couple of years. And for me this was a huge splurge because we bought the tickets using cash. And it was the first time in my life I bought an international flight in premium economy, which was like such a huge upgrade to me compared to flying in economy for twelve or 15 hours. And it was way better than being in economy. And I still remember though, on the flight home there was still the traditional three seats together. And I always pick a window seat. I'm a window seat person and my mom had an aisle seat. And this really polite, nice Italian gentleman was in between us like the whole flight home. My mom and I are flying in premium economy. This is very nice Italian gentleman in between us. And I just remember distinctly remember thinking one day, like one day I will be able to take this type of flight in business class. And that is actually exactly what points have done for me. So that actually may have been the last time I flew a long haul international class in economy or premium economy because since then I have only used points to fly internationally. And being able to do that and like I said, really kind of developing my redemption skills, learning how to leverage those points to book business class internationally has changed my entire travel experience. Oh my God. The flight for me always used to be like the thing that you tolerate to get where you're going, right? The destination is the point. And ever since I learned how to use points now, actually the flight itself is part of the journey. It's actually an enjoyable part of the journey, which it never was for me for many, many years.
Katrina Furey MD: That's such a good, oh, nice, nice word choice, Portia. As we were starting this know, we started thinking about, okay, so what are our delusional goals for ourselves? And mine is that one day maybe we won't even need this if we get so good at using our credit card points. But mine is one day we'll get like one of those sponsors that's a lay flat airline. That's my dream is to lay in the lay flat airline. And I always say, like, I don't even have to go anywhere, just take me up, circle around and come on down.
Devon Gimbel MD: But I bet, I bet that just.
Katrina Furey MD: Makes that long haul so much better. And then you start your vacation feeling excited and good and not in back pain.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Absolutely.
Devon Gimbel MD: That has been a big thing for me. I'm not that old. I'm in my early 40s, but I have noticed even from when I used to do, I mean, these ridiculous long haul flights. When I was in my. Remember when I was in residency, there were two years in a row where I was joining projects that were happening in Vietnam. And I remember distinctly flying from Boston, where I was doing my residency, of course, in economy, to Vietnam, where between the time changes and stuff, it ends up being like two days later from the time you left to the time you land, being in Vietnam for three days, getting on the airplane, coming home and then coming, know for residency, like your rotation Monday morning. And I remember at that point in my life flying literally, like around the world in a week. It was a little tiring, but the jet lag didn't really hit me physically. It was a little uncomfortable. It wasn't that bad. But as I've gotten older, and I think especially just the physical toll of the work that I was doing, which was not as laborious as being like a surgeon, which I think is a very physically challenging medical profession to be in. I'm a pathologist, but literally sitting at a desk in the same stature for 8910 hours a day for years and years and years, my body now, especially if I'm sitting in a really cramped space for a prolonged period of time, my whole body just starts hurting. And I think a lot of people can probably relate to that experience. Certainly people who might have chronic medical conditions or other physical conditions with their bodies, it can be very hard to sit, especially in those shrinking airline seats that we have now that are smaller than I remember them being when I was in my do again, like a 1012, 14 hours flight, it can be really prohibitive to people physically. And so, yeah, being able to be in a business class seat where you actually have space, you can actually put your feet up, your legs up. It makes a world of difference. And I think one of the things that continues to shock me, even though I've been doing this now for so many years and really being able to leverage points and flying so many places myself, that what you end up paying out of pocket when you book a business class flight using points because you still have to pay some taxes or fees for the airline, that amount of money ends up still being so much less than the cost of an economy ticket. So the fact that using points you can fly, especially international business class, for significantly less than what I use, the deals I used to search for in economy, it still kind of boggles my mind. This is real and it's legal and it actually works.
Katrina Furey MD: Yeah. And again, you're accruing the points by just using the card smartly for your everyday expenses, which is just cool. It's like, why not get a benefit for living, I guess. Yeah.
Devon Gimbel MD: And to me, it's like solving a puzzle, which I think some of us really like that. Whether you really like word puzzles or number puzles or whatever the case may be, to me, the whole points game is how can I figure out how I can earn the highest number of points again for this money I'm spending already? I'm not talking about spending extra money, but we're all spending money to run our lives. And those of us who also happen to run businesses spend money to run our businesses. So it's the puzzle of how can I figure out how to earn as many points as I can for this money I'm already spending? And then I get to trade that in for something that's really amazing. It's just a fun puzzle to solve. And then the prizes, you save money and you get to travel and have these amazing travel experiences that, again, are things that I otherwise probably would not choose to know cash for the equivalent type of travel.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I'm just thinking of Sonny, our hotel manager in the best exotic Marigold hotel. If he maybe had used points, riGht? So he has this business, the he, because he paid for their airfare, right, to come down. It could have been paid with points. I'm sure it wasn't because he seems a little scattered. Katrina, do you want to intro?
Katrina Furey MD: Yeah. Great segue, Portia. So today we're going to be talking about the film the Best Exotic Mary Gold Hotel, which came out in 2011. It's a British comedy drama directed by John Madden with a screenplay written by Old Parker. And it was actually based on a book, the 2004 novel these Foolish Things by the novelist Deborah Magic. I'm probably not saying her name correctly, but it's a really fun movie. I hadn't seen it before, but I thought it was really fun. You see a great cast of British actors and actresses, like, every single wedd. I was like, oh, my God. Judy Dench, Maggie Smith, just all star cast of retirement age folks who seems like are kind of in a financial pinch for all their different reasons. One's daughters sort of like, invested all their retirement savings in a startup that didn't take off the ground. Another one's know died, leaving all this debt she had to pay. Know. Everyone has their different story, and so they all find themselves going to India to stay at the best exotic Marigold hotel. And then in, like, teeny tiny letters, it says, for the elderly and beautiful. And then of know, the whole point of the film, I think, is that they find themselves at this hotel, which isn't how it looks online. I think a lot of people traveling in Airbnbs these days kind of find themselves in that situation, and then they're totally in this culture shock, and you see how each of them copes with that and you see their stories play out. And it's a really interesting take on traveling, I think, internationally, and seeing how different personality types cope with the hiccups and the speed bumps and the unexpectedness that comes with traveling like that.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I'm just thinking of Jean. So that's the wife of Douglas, who's just really pessimistic the whole time.
Katrina Furey MD: Yes.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So probably not someone you'd want to travel with. Probably is choosing, I'm assuming, not to travel typically. But I thought when you're talking about first Class, right. She's so excited that she can afford a first know. I think she says turning right, she's.
Katrina Furey MD: Going to turn left, which is just.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Know she paid full price because she just came into some money, it sounds like. But I just was laughing kind of thinking about music points for this. But, ooh, she was rough to kind of watch. Just so negative.
Devon Gimbel MD: Yeah. I think this is a movie. I was telling Katrina earlier that I'm the type of person where if I find a movie that I like, I will very easily watch it. I mean, literally, like ten times, 100 times. Don't even ask my husband how many times I've seen this movie. Have it on in the background every other week. It's one of my favorite movies to travel with, to just load up onto my iPad and just watch little bits and pieces of. Because I know the story so well. And I think one of the things that, to me, I think there's so many interesting and compelling points of this movie and the different characters. But speaking specifically about that, one character that you're talking about is, I think that she is such sort of an archetype of what I consider to be the type of person who travel could really benefit, but they don't have any sort of ability to receive that, to be able to go into a place that is very different from what they're used to and to also use that experience to say what is for me here. Right. And I think about all of the different options that are available to us when we travel. And people, of course, have so many different types of preferences, like the places they like to go, the type of travel they really enjoy. And I think one of the things that resonates with me about this movie is that even though I had no background as a child growing up of traveling the world or people really educating me about the differences that the world holds and all of the different people that populate this world. Right. And all the amazing and rich cultures and histories that come from around the world. I think one of the things I've always loved the most about travel is going to places that don't seem familiar to me, that don't seem like a replica of where I grew up. And I actually grew up in Southern California. So that was kind of the center of my universe for the first 20 years of my life. That was what was my frame of reference. And so when I travel now, and even when I started traveling as a late teen and early in my. Never really drawn towards places that I think are sort of American peripheral. Exactly. And I think, I mean, is London amazing? I'm sure it is. I've never been there. Not more than for a. Again, you know, do Western countries know rich cultural histories? Yes, absolutely. And I was never that drawn to going to places that were going to be very similar to the States I was always really drawn to. There's so much more out there. And so I think that's one of the reasons that I love this movie, is because it shows so much about what some of those differences are. And I have such an affinity for that. Like the scene where they finally land. They take this long international flight, they finally land. And the ride that was supposed to pick them up from the airport to take them to their sort of retirement hotel community isn't there. So they all have to get on a local bus and take a local bus to this city. And the scene where there's just so much about that, honestly, that I love and can relate to where it's like, as I remember the very first time this happened to me, the very first country that I traveled in, lived in for a short period of know, way far outside of North America was actually Kenya. I lived there for a summer when I was in Undergrad. And they have these minibuses there, and I can't remember the name of them off the top of my head. I should have looked it up before we did this episode. But I can just so remember, like, literally this picture of me standing on the road waiting for one of these minibuses to come, and it pulls up. And I think this is such a North American way of looking at something where you look at a minibus and you can count the number of rows that are in it, and your head kind of does the calculation of, oh, okay, well, there are nine seats in this minibus. So you look at the line of people and you think, oh, the first nine people are going to get on. We're all going to sit in our little designated seat, and we're going to go on our way. And I remember the very first time the minibus came, and 32 of us get into the minibus, where it's like, you get in and the nine seats are full, and then it's like, yeah, well, there's more people, right? So let's make some room, let's squish. And then there's like a couple of little kids. They fit on our laps. That's great. Some people, the door of the little minivan isn't going to close all the way. And there's places where people can hang on. And it's the same thing with that scene where everybody piles on and there's all the stuff that's tied to it and then the driving. Right. I think this is one of the things that cracks me up so much about seeing, especially seeing North Americans when they travel outside of sort of North American or Western countries for the first time. And some of the things that work very differently. And seeing their reactions and driving is one of those things that in North America, we have a way that we drive, right. We love our lines, we love our rules, we love the stoplights, and everyone kind of knows what to expect. And that's not the way that driving is done in a lot of other countries. And it still works and it's very efficient. Right. So when they're in the bus and the buses are in the quote, unquote, wrong side of traffic to go around other buses. And there's two lanes that you see that are drawn on the road, but maybe there's five lanes worth of cars, and they all know how to navigate around each other. So it works, right? So this is efficient and it works. But you can see the reactions of very kind of traditionally North American or European people who are like, what the hell is going on? We're all going to die. This makes no sense. But it does make sense, right? And I think that's one of my favorite things about travel in general, is getting so far out of your comfort zone the way that you think things are supposed to work. Yeah. Maybe in one place that is how they work. Doesn't mean that's the best way for them to work.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Right. I think we see an interesting comparison between Jean and Muriel. Comes in hot, like. And then she is able to really, you know, she's racist at quite the one you don't like to like at all. And I was like, no, right. I was like, no, Professor McConaughey, no.
Katrina Furey MD: What are you doing being so racist? And that was so interesting to me. And I think this film does such a good job. Exploring that through these different characters is like, I wouldn't have thought she'd be the one, given what we saw from her, to really open up her mind by the end and actually come to work at this hotel and work with the team and be really open even to the woman who was delivering her food. And I did not see that coming, that she would be the one to really open her mind based on those early depictions of her.
Devon Gimbel MD: Yeah. And I think that that's something that is a really good reminder for some of us. I think that when we travel, we're always going to be confronted with some challenges. At least that's been my experience. Right. Not everything always goes according to plan. Or sometimes you end up in a place where some things just don't make sense to you. Right. Or they really make you question, like, wait a minute, why are things done so differently here than what I was expecting? And why am I having a problem with that, if I am right? And to be able to have an example, and these are all obviously fictitious characters, but I think that example of seeing. Okay, so maybe you have an experience where you are not interested, right, in kind of opening up your mind to a different place or a different way of doing things. And at the same time, when you are willing to do that, I think that is one of the biggest impacts that travel can have on us. I think that for better or for worse, all of us, to a certain extent, we are a product of our environment, right? Like, we were all born somewhere, we were all raised somewhere. We were all sort of exposed to certain messages, whether they were implicit or explicit, coming from our families of origin, our communities of origin, our schools, as we. I don't know. This is a personal opinion of know. If you are educated in the public school system in North America, you're not exactly given a completely unbiased view of the world and of, you know, a lot of us carry around these things that we don't even realize that we were know about just how places are and how the world works. And when you travel, I think it's such an amazing opportunity to really confront those things sometimes for the first time, like what was I taught? Or what have I been told to believe about different places in the world or my place in the world, and to be able to confront that and then actually look around you and look at what you're seeing about, wait a minute, I'm in this place that, on the surface, doesn't make sense to me because it doesn't resemble where I came from. But what is actually true about this place, what is true about the way that people relate to one another, about the way that people love one another or take care of one another? And I think at a very basic level, to me, travel is really about experiencing that level of humanity wherever you are. Because I have never been to a place where people were not just genuinely humane. Do you know what I mean? I don't speak languages other than English, so that's my inability sometimes to communicate with people. But I think even when you go to somewhere where you have not educated yourself about how to speak the language of that area, you still have that opportunity to observe just how do people treat one another. And I think that there's just this conserved, again, humanity, no matter where you go in the world. And I think that when you're able to kind of see that and latch onto that, it can really help you to begin to understand that. Like, oh, wait a minute, maybe some ideas I had about this type of place or I had about this area of the world aren't actually that true or that relevant. The invitation to be able to kind of drop some of those preconceived notions, I think is one of the really powerful impacts that travel can have.
Katrina Furey MD: Right? If you're open to it, if you're like one of these characters who wants their boiled chicken and rice and their little cookies, and you're not open to trying the new food or the new drinks or sort of being open to the culture, then it's going to be really hard for you, like we see with Jean. But I think you are so right, Devin. And this film does such a great job of also depicting just such common experiences in humanity and how we all experience it, no matter what culture we're in or where we find ourselves, like grief, aging, love, loss, like all of that that we see depicted in this movie in such a beautiful way. And how even the crop of British characters, they don't know each other, so they're also getting to know each other, like making friends know at that stage of your life and how do you deal with it? And then we know, especially with Graham, who I just loved his seeing the way his sexuality affected his life in both of these cultures and how it was dealt with or not dealt with, and how he's coming to terms with that at this phase of his life and reuniting with his old partner and just how beautiful that was.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I think about travel and intent with travel. Right. I think even thinking about moving or traveling for a shorter time period, I like to remind clients that wherever you go, you take yourself with you. So keeping that in mind, just thinking of travel tips.
Devon Gimbel MD: Right.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So if you are someone who's more anxious, it's like, okay, how can you do things in preparation for this trip to make you have a better experience? So maybe you have to plan more and you have some backup plans, or if this goes wrong, this is how I'll handle this. Or making sure you take your medications with you, extra if you're there for longer. So I think it's just like even trying to know yourself as a traveler can help prepare you. So it's like, Jean, I think maybe I'm leaping here, but seems like she doesn't have super great self awareness, and she also just doesn't want to be there. And it's not, like, a fun experience for her. It's like, oh, this is what we're left then. You know, if we see Evelyn, who is grieving, she had some significant negative stuff to deal with, with learning that there was all this debt, and it's like she is going there, taking herself and her grief and establish kind of a home, and it's like she feels more secure despite grief and other challenges versus just to handle travel, I guess I'm trying to say, yeah, she really.
Katrina Furey MD: Gets her feet on the ground. She gets her first job. Both her and Jean are dealing with financial catastrophe that led them into this situation, but they handle it so differently.
Devon Gimbel MD: Yeah. And I think one of the really fascinating things about travel, I think back on just different trips, I've taken, different types of experiences I've had, and especially when I was younger, so sort of the first couple of times, I really had an experience again to leave the United States and to visit places with very different histories and very different current situations than the United States. I think one of the things that I really noticed for myself was sort of this opportunity, like, the opportunity to hang on to what you know and the way that you're used to things being and whether or not you were going to let other places being different than what you were used to. Is that going to be an opportunity for me? To get really anxious for me to get really frustrated or for me to try to impose what I'm used to on a place that has no interest or no need to be what I want it to be? Or can I really kind of walk into this scenario and say, wait a minute, this place works very differently than what I am used to, and what can I do with that? What opportunity is here for me? And I really remember when I was in, I took an extended period of time off, I guess, at least for a traditional sort of educational pathway. I took about two years off in between being an undergrad and going to medical school. And even though I knew the whole time I was an undergrad, I wanted to go to medical school. I also knew that once I started, I probably wasn't going to have the opportunity to take a lot of breaks, right, to go around and travel around the world for an extended period of time until probably traditional retirement age. And so I deliberately took a couple of years off so that I could go and really kind of wander around the world. And I spent a couple of months living and traveling around Southeast Asia. And I just remember kind of the way of traveling then. It was, for me, a very nostalgic time. It was still kind of pre digital era, like the Internet existed, but everything was still dial up. There were Internet cafes, no one know, cell phones, where you could basically just walk around with Google translating Google Maps and all of these things. And it was very much more of a nomadic kind of time for travel. And I remember that we would just sort of make plans on the fly. You'd hear about a place that someone had just come back from that you hadn't planned on visiting. And it sounded amazing. It's like, maybe we should take a bus there overnight and go and stay in this place for two or three days and never kind of really knowing what to expect again. I consider myself very typically North American in my love of schedules. And if someone says that a flight is leaving at a certain time or a bus is leaving at a certain time, I'm standing there at that time thinking, okay, where's the bus? Where's the train? And just kind of learning how to be very flexible around concepts of things like time, that not everybody has this same worship of time and schedules as we do here in North America. And really kind of seeing, liKe, wait a. Like, I can come in here and get super frustrated that the way I thought something was going to unfold isn't the way that it's going to unfold. And sometimes I did right. I mean, I'm a human being. There were a lot of times I was frustrated or like, I don't know what's happening here. And at the same time, I remember coming home from that specific trip where I spent a couple of months traveling and living in different places in Southeast Asia. And I remember just thinking to myself, like, I have such a greater capacity to be flexible now. And that is one of the things that that trip really taught me, was just the benefit of letting go of that. And my experience was so much better when I finally was kind of able to embrace that invitation to just be more flexible, be a little bit less uptight about every single thing. And honestly, I don't know if I would have learned that in the same way, if I never had taken that trip, if I had stayed at home and worked a summer job like I normally did or something like that. I don't know that I would have gotten that same lesson.
Katrina Furey MD: Oh, that's such a good point. And I think a beautiful way of experiencing something we talk probably, Portia, you do too. A lot about in therapy with patients is knowing yourself and knowing what are your personality traits or quirks that are a positive and a know that rigidity, that planning, on the one hand, probably made you such a good pathologist and doctor and probably makes you so good at this credit card point stuff. But on the other hand, could be an impediment when you're traveling and you need to be more flexible. But what a great way to learn how to do that without also losing that other part of yourself that helps you in these other areas. And how can you marry those two elements of your personality and learn how to foster that skill, that cognitive flexibility?
Devon Gimbel MD: I think that's also reflected in the movie. You had kind of touched on the character Evelyn, where it wasn't actually her plan initially to go and live in this retirement hotel in India. And she did it, like you said, because her husband passes away, she's left with a lot of debt. And so it's not like she jumped in with both feet thinking, oh, this is going to be just an incredible experience. Yeah. And you see her and how adaptable she is. And I think especially for someone, again, I feel like one of the things that was kind of like, more a common message when I was growing up than it is now is just sort of like, you are the way you are. And especially the older you get, the less likely you are to be able to change and adapt. And I love seeing examples of people in their sixty s or seventy s whatever, doing these brand new things and adapting and then getting to a place where they're actually thriving even more right after that adaptation. And I think that's one of the reasons that I really love her character, is that at the end, when she's on the motorbike with Bill Nye's character, and they're just, like, driving through the streets of Jaipur, and she has really kind of undergone that adaptation. And I think that that's a really nice example for us to see. And I think, especially, again, to see that not in someone who's Five, I expect kids to be really adaptable and flexible, but to see that in an adult who can really kind of take on that unexpected challenge and then become. Yeah, exactly.
Katrina Furey MD: It's such a great depiction of that human capacity for resilience if you're open to it and you have those tools in you to be able to do right. And I'm sure her and Douglas kind of drew from each other's strengths. Right. Whereas Jean, Douglas's wife, just wasn't interested. She just wasn't. She wanted to go home, and that's her prerogative. But it was really interesting to see that. And I think as we're thinking about travel, I think some of what we're talking about can translate from international travel to getting in the car and going to see your in laws for Thanksgiving. Right. I think even something like that small can be stressful for a lot of people. Right? Yeah.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Picking up your stuff. I mean, family dynamics, just getting everything in the car, forgetting things. I think what's nice now, just to keep in mind, too, is that if you are going, know, I guess, like a couple days and you're not going into the middle of the forest, I guess, like we have Amazon or there's stores we can get, things know, we forget. But I think, you know, Katrina and I had talked about, and it's coming out later in more of our holiday season, just like setting boundaries for yourself, knowing your limits, having outs. And I think that can be applied, right. To travel for pleasure and just traveling maybe an hour away to see family or friends during this crazy busy time.
Katrina Furey MD: Yeah, it's normal to feel stressed, even if you're super excited. And if you're someone like me who gets such a dopamine hit and such a thrill from planning a trip, I feel like part of the fun for me with vacations is planning it and fantasizing about it and thinking about all the different options. I love to do that. Even if once we get there we don't follow the itinerary. We just do whatever we want. But I still love it. I don't know, I just love that part of it. I think because I am such a planner that it just does something for me. But, yeah, even traveling more closer to home, you can use some of those tips.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So I think we were kind of laughing about even just our own travel experiences. So I, for the first time ever, I'm a very anxious traveler. I'm very interested in going places. I'd like to be open to them, but I had never gone to Europe or anything. Like, I went to Hawaii, but nothing else. Like off the continental us. Only last summer I went to Italy and Greece and ended up at a wedding. So that's kind of why we went. And I was laughing when you were talking about the driving because especially in Greece, we're going like 90 miles an hour. Our luggage is like tied to the top and we couldn't figure out how to get a cab. It was just like chaos, and we were all grinning. I had a great time, but even just noticing where my anxiety would kind of peak or where I was very surprised and proud of myself for managing. Well, I will say that I did walk away with more confidence. So I do feel like I can do it again, but I think it's just like taking that first step and doing it and maybe starting with a more similar place, at least if you're like me, is really helpful in building confidence to now go to Europe, to now know that I can manage my way through. So, but something that I was laughing also about in the movie and I wanted to just bring up, is there a little quick depiction of them all going to the bathroom, like many times after starting just like, to eating the food, I think that's something that is, I guess I'd say common, right. With traveling. Like, we get used to where we are, our guts, and so when we introduce something new, it doesn't mean it's bad or unsafe. It's just like different and different. Our bellies are a little slower to adapt.
Devon Gimbel MD: Yeah, I think, again, especially if you're going to be traveling internationally to a lot of different places, something is oftentimes bound to happen. I'm pretty careful in terms of drinking water. I think when you're traveling internationally, I think it's always a good idea to drink bottled water just because that's usually kind of like the most reliable source. But with food, I've seen so many things happen. I've seen people get sick eating at, quote, unquote really high end restaurants, I've seen people get upset stomachs from eating things that they can pick up at street markets and street carts, which is, like, amazing food oftentimes. And so I think, yes, if you go in there, I think one of the things for me, again, just having had the experience of traveling to a lot of different places and doing a lot of it solo, but then sometimes also traveling with other people, so having that ability to kind of just see their experience, and when it's very different from mine being like, oh, I wonder what's happening here? Why are we having such a different, either physical or emotional experience to the same thing that's happening here? And I think, again, a lot of it comes down to expectation, right? Like, if you have an expectation that things are going to work for you exactly the same way that they do when you're home, then maybe you are going to be disappointed, or maybe you're going to be in a situation where when that doesn't happen, you have a little bit less capacity to kind of manage that and deal with it, because ultimately, like I said, things are going to come up. And I think when you walk into an international travel situation, or like you guys were saying, even a domestic travel situation, and you're at least open to the possibility, like, oh, something may not go exactly the way that I thought it would, knowing that almost all the time, there is a solution to that, right. Even if it's uncomfortable for a couple of hours over a couple of days, oftentimes there is a solution, and it's really not going to be something that has just horrible impact on your life.
Katrina Furey MD: Right?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah, that's a good point. And I think another flight, there's another car service, there's another time you can.
Katrina Furey MD: Talk 100% and just preparing for that. Like you said, framing your expectations appropriately and knowing if you're someone who runs on the more anxious side or more rigid or controlled side, maybe work on that ahead of time and just say, like, okay, so what are my expectations for this trip? Or I talk about this a lot in therapy. Even with planning a birthday party for your child, if you're someone who's more perfectionistic, like, okay, so these are my expectations. Let's drop it down by half and see what does that feel like to settle in with? Or how will I sort of cope with the bumps in the road that come along and to just normalize, like, that's totally normal. To feel stressed or anxious in a new place or by unexpected events or things going wrong, that's normal for you to have those feelings. So how can you cope with it in the moment? And talking about that.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah, that's a good idea to our listeners. If any of you need some extra support during this time, maybe you should talk about it.
Katrina Furey MD: Right.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: With a friend, know, a professional. But traveling, I think it's like, it can be the best and the most is, like, those often come together and can be both. And I do really love and wanted to point out Devin's use of and frequently.
Devon Gimbel MD: Right.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Like, we're holding two things at the same time. So this could be very and different, very dialectical.
Katrina Furey MD: It's very good. Yeah.
Devon Gimbel MD: Well, I had mentioned this to Katrina, but I do happen to be married to a psychiatrist, so while I do not profess to have any psychiatric skills whatsoever, I do think by osmosis, the fact that I've been around him now for 20 years, throughout all of his psychiatric medical training, and just the benefit of hearing somebody who is very skilled and very educated and very wise in terms of language and how we approach situations, I think some of that has probably rubbed off on me just, like, a tiny, tiny little bit.
Katrina Furey MD: That's great.
Devon Gimbel MD: Yeah, I love that.
Katrina Furey MD: So great. I mean, I think a theme that I'm hearing as I'm analyzing our conversation in real time is the importance. Knowing yourself, your strengths, maybe your weaknesses, how they bump up against each other, knowing what kind of boundaries you might have for yourself. Like Portia, you were saying? Maybe you want to be someone who is a really adventurous traveler.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Great.
Katrina Furey MD: But maybe let's start a little smaller. Maybe go with a partner you trust to sort of have that almost, like exposure to international travel to boost your confidence and then go somewhere more adventurous the next time and kind of build on it and just learning how to use positive coping skills in these moments when things happen that are unexpected, everything from deep breathing, grounding techniques, meditative techniques, to. If you're someone who needs medication to fly, like propranolol or something like that, to manage your anxiety. Great. Make sure you bring it with you. Yeah.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I think just, like, touching back to the movie a little bit, we see the capacity in all the characters to change, and I think, right, like most people, everyone, maybe that's a little too generous, but does have the capacity. But it's like, are you seeking that out? Do you want it? Do you know that you can't have it? And I think that's where it's know, I think that Jean can have the capacity to travel and do things, but it sounds like at that, like she didn't want to, but I'm sure she can. And now she's going to have a lovely time flying home in first class and it'll be a magical experience for her. So we got to figure out, I guess, what works for us. But I loved the movie I had never seen.
Katrina Furey MD: I did, too.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: It was and beautiful and touched on loss and grief and aging and being told you can't do something and doing it anyway. The message is just wonderful. So if you haven't watched it, please do.
Katrina Furey MD: Yeah, highly recommend it.
Devon Gimbel MD: Agree. And I think it just really also beautifully highlights India and the specific city in India, Jaipur, which is just such an amazing and vibrant and incredible place. And I love that you actually get to see little bits and pieces of that in the movie as well. So even if maybe you aren't thinking of actually taking a trip anywhere in the near future, but you kind of want to live vicariously through a movie, I think this is a really wonderful movie to be able to get a glimpse of just really how rich and gorgeous another place, another culture is.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Oh, definitely. I love reading and watching things about India. I've read the perfumist.
Devon Gimbel MD: It's a good book.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: It's about like a woman in the early 19 hundreds who lives in England, but goes back to become this wonderful perfumist that all these major beauty brands want at the time. And she spends a lot of time back in her roots in India. And of the flavors and colors and scents is so like, I could feel it reading movie. I'm actually getting right the visual of all the colors and scents.
Katrina Furey MD: Food.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I was like, oh, I really want. Can we get takeout this week? I'm really in the mood, so. Oh, it was just wonderful. Yeah, it was great. It's good to have you, too.
Katrina Furey MD: Yeah. And I think as we wrap up, one thing I did also love about this film is sometimes I think maybe even with traveling, I haven't done a lot of international travel, but I think this concept of cultural tourism is interesting. And I feel like in this film it could have gone that way. They could have gotten all these elderly folks on a van and gone to all the major sites and stuff, but they didn't. It's like they really, whether they wanted to or not, kind of got immersed in the culture they were in. And you saw how some of them, like Evelyn, wanted to immerse and really live in it. Sometimes they would drive and she'd be like, no, I'm going to walk or I'm going to do this. And I just think that's an interesting way to think about it, rather than just like, plopping in and taking everything from the culture, really trying to make it more of like a two way dynamic. I would imagine it just makes it all the richer all across the board.
Devon Gimbel MD: Yeah, I agree. And I mean, that's a topic, honestly, there could be hours and hours of conversation about that. But I agree, especially in countries that have a history, a very strong history, right. Of colonialism, of very imbalanced power structures. And when you are someone who maybe is North American by descent or European by descent, being very mindful of those histories and thinking about, yes, I think it is important to go out and experience the world, and also how can we do it in a way that is less extractive, that is less about our going to place and what do we get out of it? Because I think that is honestly something that those of us who are North American, we are just implicitly raised with that kind of behavior. And I think that we have an opportunity to really be mindful and deliberate about when we want to go out and we want to expand our own experiences in this world. How can we do that in a way that is incredibly respectful of the places that we're going, that also gives back right to those communities that isn't just completely extractive by nature. And I think that that is a topic that deserves, again, I mean, so, but starting from that place of really saying, like you said, what is it like to actually be immersed in a place versus just kind of landing there and then just kind of like picking and choosing what is it that's going to be useful for me. And I think, especially now, one of the things that I really appreciate about travel, when I think about it now, compared to travel that I experienced ten years ago, 20 years ago, is I do think there are more conversations about how can we be responsible in the ways that we travel. Right. How can we be more respectful in the ways that we travel. And I think that those are important conversations to continue to develop and to have with ourselves when we are going to go somewhere, before we make our plans, before we decide what are we going to do when we get to this place is kind of incorporating some of those questions into our travel planning.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah, I'm really happy we are touching on that and kind of landing there. Just kind of thinking of your future travels and where you might be going, and how can you protect everyone as you travel yourself? Of course. But how can you, even if we think about making sure you're cleaning up after yourself, you're you're not leaving yourself.
Katrina Furey MD: You're.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: You're going as a right and being respectful. And I like that tone with where we're kind of leaving it.
Katrina Furey MD: Yeah. Yeah. Well, again, Devin, thank you so much for joining us. This was so fun. I feel like a little starstruck because, like, trying to get into the points game. So this is so cool to talk to an expert and I think like another woman who's used her skill set and now translated it into something totally different and fun. I just so admire it. So I'm so thrilled you were able to join us. I so appreciate it. I hope you had as much fun as we did. And why don't you just let everyone know where they can find you if they want to learn more about the points game and learn more about you?
Devon Gimbel MD: Yeah, absolutely. First, thank you so much for having me. I love the way that you all do your show, the idea for it. It's so fun for me to have the invitation to come here and to talk about travel in a little bit of a different way than I normally do. So I really appreciate the invitation. I've loved our conversation today. And yeah, for anybody who kind of wants to find out more about the points world, the work I do, you can find me at my website. It's just pointmetofirstclass.com. I also have a podcast of the exact same name. Point me to first class. That's where I talk about all sorts of different topics and issues around earning points and using points and just the point of points travel. So you can find me in either one of those places. And just thank you so much again for having me here today.
Katrina Furey MD: Well, thank you all so much. And you can find us at Analyze Scripts podcast on Instagram and TikTok. We are starting to release video podcasts, so if you're listening to this, please check out our YouTube channel for the video version and we will see you next Monday and hope that your travels this week and in the future go well, as well as they can and that you sort of coast along with the road.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Thanks, guys. Take care. Bye.
Katrina Furey MD: This podcast and its contents are a copyright of analyzed scripts. All rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited. Unless you want to share it with your friends and rate, review, and subscribe, that's fine. All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings, or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for enter attainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are taking a deep dive into the newest season of the longtime Emmy winning show, American Horror Story. This season, Delicate, depicts a women, Anna Victoria, played by Emma Roberts, who is undergoing fertility issues. Anna is a famous actor who receives in vitro fertization (IVF) with all the spooky and horror elements that are associated with the show. Listen to our take on Kim Kardashian's performance and the accuracy of their depiction of IVF. Dr. Furey takes this lead in this episode with her expertise in pregnancy, IVF and postpartum care. We hope you enjoy!
CNN article on new postpartum drug
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fieri, a psychiatrist.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And this is analyze Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: There is so much misinformation out there, and it drives us nuts.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: With a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And your DSM five, and enjoy. Welcome back to another episode of Analyze Scripts, the podcast. We are so excited you're joining us for our second YouTube episode. That's right. If you are just listening, you could also watch us on YouTube. Please don't do it while driving, but otherwise, please head on over to Analyze Scripts podcast. Today we are talking about the latest installment of American Horror Story, Delicate. We're going to talk about Part one. Part two is set to come out in early 2024, but I am really excited to talk about this episode. What did you think? Portia, I know you're not super into spooky things. I was really impressed that you watched this just right off the bat. What are your thoughts?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I thought it was intense in the way, I think, because as a woman who goes to the gyn and who potentially will or will not experience the birthing process or the pregnancy process, I felt like it was a little traumatizing. But in a way that I want to hopefully be clear. And I think you can do a.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Better job at this.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: But this is not a normal experience. This is in so many ways horrific. And there were so many moments that she was invalidated, and I thought that that was just, like, bad. I mean, in this whole experience, that's already really scary and sometimes daunting and can be painful just to add this obviously extra fictional layer to it. But it was hard to watch.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Totally. So if you've been living under a rock, American Horror Story is a series on FX that's been around for many years now. I think next Halloween, we're hoping to cover season one because that was a really good season. But it's a really cool show by Ryan Murphy where it's usually the same sort of crop of actors. And the story each season is know, there's been, like, the clown one, there's been like the murder house one. There's. Yeah, you know, so it's all really interesting. And so we see Emma Roberts as the star of this season, she's playing an actress, Anna Victoria Alcott. And the whole plot, to sum it up real quick, of this first part of the season, is she really wants to have a baby, and she's struggling to get pregnant. So we see her and her husband Dex, who previously had been married, and we believe his wife died that now at the end of part one, we're not really sure, but they're struggling to get pregnant, so they're going through the IVF process. At the same time, her career is taking off, she's campaigning for an Oscar, and we come to find out there's something afoot. There's some sort of evil plot at play in regards to her baby. We don't exactly know what it is yet, but we see some flashbacks to someone else agreeing to give their baby away to these people in weird black crow outfits to be able to have power or money or something that they want. And it seems like this is going that way. Like, how much do you want a baby? How much do you want an Oscar? Right, right.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: It's like this cabal that's been around for centuries, apparently. And I don't know. I think obviously, we're missing so much that I hope we get from season two. But I have so many questions. Right? Like, is the husband involved? Is he not? Is the know Kim Kardashian? Yep. Siobhan. Is she involved? It seems like she is with those little supplements that look like blood. Obviously the Doctor is involved. But I have so many questions that I'm excited to hopefully get answered, even though it will be. Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: In part two, I think my biggest question is, why is Kim Kardashian playing? Like, why? It was so Portia. I'm sorry. Like, I thought Kim Kardashian did a pretty good job on SNL. I'm not going to lie. I was like, well, she was kind of funny, but in this, I was just, like, cringe.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And I think it's because.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I also.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Don'T know if it would matter if she was better at acting because she's still Kim Kardashian, which is like, I think her being and persona and aura is just so powerful. And she was playing somewhat of a similar person, so it wasn't this crazy stretch. But I think it's just so hard because we know her from 20 years of reality TV that I can't see past that. So regardless, even if she was, I don't know. I can't tell. Is it poor acting or is it just like, I can't see her in another way.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I think it's both acting, but also why her? I've got to imagine there's so many good actresses out there that could have done a great job in the role. And it's not like American Horror Story has been doing badly as far as I know. Maybe the ratings have been down. I don't think they've been down that much. Why? I just feel like it's to use her for her following and to get eyeballs on the screen. But it honestly annoyed me. I would say of all the stuff we've watched so far, I felt like this was the worst, just in terms of. I didn't like it that, like, in terms of the acting and stuff like that and the storyline, I liked all the mental health themes. I'm excited to talk about them, but I was just, like, even Emma Roberts acting I didn't think was great. I don't.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I mean, I just didn't love it. And I don't know if that's because it's not my favorite genre, but I finished the episode last night, and I started it when it came out. It's been difficult to kind of get through the episodes. I love Emma in other shows, so I don't know, it just kind of fell flat and for a couple of reasons. But I did watch the last episode in which I think it's the last one where she eats the raccoon, and I was literally, like, going to throw up. I couldn't look at it.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: That took me by surprise. Yeah, same with me. It was like. And the episodes weren't that long, so you could just think you'd, like, plow through them, right? Like, morning show succession. You. I am like, can't wait to watch the next one. But this one, I was, ugh. And I just think it's because Kim Kardashian was not very sorry.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: She wasn't.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: She wasn't. I'm sorry. And I get a little angry that she gets all these opportunities when there's probably so many good actresses out there dying for an opportunity. Like, it just.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I feel morally opposed to it. I wonder if it was for shock value. You know what mean? Like, there's been a lot of bad feedback about it, and I think they've had to have known that even, like, she auditioned or in the acting and, like, Kim, you're great at a lot of things, and maybe this just thing isn't for you. Good for you for trying. I don't know.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: She had such so much dialogue. I really thought she'd be in it, but, like, peripherally. And she was really in it, trying to act, and I was like, I don't know if we need that much.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Something that I'm wondering, too, is that this whole thing came out while the sagstrike was. Is going on. So I think that's also interesting because I didn't see any promotions for it from Kim or anyone else. And I just thought that there's been other bigger hits that have still done well despite not having the actors. And so I just. I don't.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Let's.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Let's get into the mental health theme. We both didn't give it five stars.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: It's on our face. Okay.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: But there's a ton of mental health themes, I think, as it relates to IVF and the journey to motherhood and just being a woman. I think. So before I dive in, I want to hear about your perspective, Korsia.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I would say that I felt like they did a good job at portraying just, like, the emotions related to having a miscarriage or the difficulties with getting pregnant and the stress that accompanies that. And ultimately, the loss is different for everyone. I think it's unique to the woman carrying the pregnancy initially and then potentially losing it or carrying a full to term. So I thought that Emma was able to portray that well. I think she is a mom, so I think that she probably kind of pulled on some of her experiences through that process. What's scary, what's exciting, the ups and the downs. So I liked that aspect. I thought that was pretty realistic, maybe. And, like, going to a clinic.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Right?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Like, going to a separate place to receive the IVF procedures. I didn't love the red. Right. Red gloves, red walls. It was like all, like, first of all, why would you ever have a Red Glove? Obviously, they did it in the movie for a reason. But is there blood on it or not?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Do you think the red is for visual effect with the movie? The vitamins were red. No, they're not. I think that's all just for visual effect and very in line with the AHS genre, I would say. But certainly that theme of red and even the progesterone that she was supposed to take, I believe that's what it was that she had to keep in the fridge, came in these glass vials, and it's like, that's not what it looks like. Right. But whatever. It's for visual effect, so I get it. But, like, the vitamins that Siobhan gave her, that look like blood, that's obviously not B. Twelve. And also, why are you relying on Siobhan to know if this is safe in pregnancy? Just call your OBGYN. I mean, it turns out this guy is involved, so you shouldn't trust him. But in general, I was like, okay, I think that it's really important to point out that, and this is like one of those things that goes without saying, and yet we need to keep saying it, that IVF is incredibly stressful under the best of circumstances and capital T trauma in many circumstances. I'm not even going to say in the worst circumstances because I think it just is traumatic. Quite literally, it's very invasive in your body. It's very stressful emotionally. I think upwards of 40% of women going through IVF experience a mental health condition, mostly depression and anxiety. But I also see PTSD and I see OCD happen a lot around IVF. And that makes sense, right? I mean, because it is, like, traumatic to lose a baby, to have a miscarriage, to have a stillbirth. It's very stressful to always be in that cycle of uncertainty and waiting. Waiting to get your period, waiting to not get your period, waiting to take the pregnancy test, waiting to ovulate, tracking everything. I mean, it's just so unbelievably stressful and can be really all consuming. And you can see how it can lead to things like PTSD, how it can lead to OCD after the fact. Right? Because it's normalized to check the pregnancy test, check the ovulation strips, check this, check that, and then when the baby's here, you don't want to lose it. So you're still checking. I see some women weigh their baby obsessively, or sort of, like, obsessively track the baby's eating, peeing, pooping, like those sort of things. It's hard to let go of that and feel secure. So it's incredibly stressful. And I did really appreciate, even though I didn't love it as a viewer, I really appreciated this being on our screens in such a big way. Right. Like, just a woman going through IVF and just showing how stressful. I really appreciated.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah, I think it's important to highlight because it's common. Having a miscarriage is wildly common. Having infertility issues is common. I think one of the biggest. What would I say, like, supports or positive reinforcers of this experience is having a support system, which I feel like she didn't have.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Her husband.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Her husband got worse over the season with, just, like, me being really suspicious of what was actually going on. Especially within the last episode with the conversation with his mom and her kind of coming in. So I initially kind of liked him and then I was like, what is.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: She's like, Anna Victoria has been targeted. I feel like there was this evil plot all along and they're choosing her because she's like this famous actress to somehow have this baby. They're going to make a black crow or something weird and evil. But I didn't find her husband to be that great.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: No. And I think it's hard because I guess you could look at it from two sides. All the stuff that's happening to her from just a black and white on paper perspective seems a little outlandish. Or all of a sudden all this stuff is happening. So it's like, as her paranoia is growing, but it's like you either believe her or you don't. And if you believe her, you're in on the plot that something nefarious is going on and all of this is happening and it's real and she needs to be protected at all costs. And if you don't believe her, she's going crazy. Right? She is, but you're dismissing her and invalidating her and making things worse. Can you maybe speak to, does this happen within pregnancy or IVF due to.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: The hormones and stuff?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Like, do people become paranoid? How does this play out in real life?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: So, no, I was so annoyed. But yet I think it's actually a good depiction because I feel like people say this to women overall. Like, oh, it's your hormones. Even like PMS. Right. We just so invalidate women's experience by chalking it up to hormones. And yet at the same time, it's like, okay, you're not acknowledging, like, yeah, these hormones actually do have an effect. So help me out here. Which is so infuriating, but women are most likely to experience a mental health situation or a mental health challenge during their childbearing years. And why is that? We know that in men, they're most likely to have their first episode, whether it's depression, bipolar disorder, psychosis in their late teens to their 20s. For women, it's a little later. It's like twenty s to thirty s, which is right around the time of childbearing. So it's like, okay. We sort of, in part, think that it's because that just happens to be the time we see first episodes. But we also know, and we're starting to. The medical field in general, is starting to have better understanding that there is something to the hormonal fluctuations. So if you've experienced a mental health condition before getting pregnant. Anything from depression, anxiety, trauma, OCD, psychosis, substance use. Your risk of experiencing it around the time of having children is higher than if you haven't experienced any mental health conditions beforehand. But even if you haven't experienced any mental health conditions beforehand, you're at highest risk over the course of your life during this time period. And we know postpartum depression is incredibly common. One in seven women and one in ten dads experience postpartum depression. The dad's hormones aren't changing. Okay? So there's just a lot of stress that goes into having children. We know that most cases of postpartum depression, if you trace it back, actually start during pregnancy. I think it's like 60% of cases start during pregnancy. The remaining 40% really show up after having the baby, but it's usually not picked up till after having the baby. And unfortunately, 75% of women who screen positive for postpartum depression don't end up accessing treatment, which is awful and way lower than the rates of treatment access for depression outside of pregnancy.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So why is that? I imagine that there's multiple reasons, but.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I think there's a lot of reasons, and I don't think we know exactly why. I think that a, there's not good mental health resources in general. We've talked about that a lot. It's really hard to access care, period. And then I think once you've had a baby, when do you have time to go on Psychologytoday.com and look for a therapist and make all the calls and wait for them to hear back and schedule the appointment? When you have a newborn, it's just so hard. And I think there's a lot of shame and stigma. Right. I think in general, there's a lot of shame and stigma about living with a mental health condition that keeps people from reaching out for help. And then I think, especially when you've had a baby, you're thinking like, this is supposed to be the best time of my whole life. I don't want to talk about this. Right. I think a lot of women, especially when you're having intrusive thoughts of harm coming to your baby, which is really common with anxiety and OCD, a lot of women will feel worried. LiKe, if they're doing the dishes and they see a knife, they'll think, like, oh, my God, what if somehow my baby gets stabbed? Or if they hear a noise, they think, oh, my God, it's an intruder. Or they might think, like, you might have an intrusive thought or flash of an image of, like, throwing your baby out the window. It's really scary to tell someone that if you don't know that this is a super common thing to happen after having a kid and that it's a sign of an underlying anxiety or OCD disorder, you might be afraid that they're going to take your baby, or you might be afraid that you have psychosis. You're losing your mind. So these are really hard things to talk about. And I think one thing I always tell my patients, and I hope that we can tell our listeners and just keep getting the message out there, is that these conditions are really common and they're treatable, and it's important that we improve access to treatment, because suicide is the number one cause of mortality the first year postpartum, and postpartum mental health conditions are the number one complication of pregnancy overall. So this is really important. And so in that way, I'm really happy that this is on our screen, even if Kim Kardashian is in it and the acting is so know I can tolerate it for that reason.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: True. Yeah. So I guess separating, like, write fiction or TV effect from reality, what did you see that was maybe does they did do a good job of this is a typical experience or something that did make sense, and what's something that's like, this is 100% wrong.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yeah. I think what I really liked about her character was I'm also imagining someone of her stature and fame going through IVF would be really nerve wracking. And when Preacher takes her picture at the clinic, she probably would be really terrified of that getting out there. That's her personal, private medical information. She's not going to want it to get out there. I would imagine as a famous person, that would be really accurate. We remember how when we were talking about suCcession, and we said, is it narcissism, or is it just growing up in this environment? I think for her, the same question came to my mind. Was the paranoia aspect, like, is she paranoid in developing a psychotic disorder, or is this her reality? And it is her reality. We see that, right? People are following her. They are trying to get her. It seems like they got her somehow. This is her reality, and we see her being invalidated over and over. And I do think as a woman navigating the health care system, unfortunately, we know this happens, and now there's all these studies out there that women and something even just like pain is constantly invalidated. Right. Like, we're all expected to go to work when we have awful menstrual cramps, it's like, well, just suck it up. And, I mean, we know now that these things affect certain members of the population even more so.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Like, I'm thinking about racial disparities, socioeconomic disparities. We tend to get invalidated more, I think, near the end, the scenes with the physical therapist played by Cara. Right. Maybe it was.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: No, I don't think it was her.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: When they were doing the ultrasounds and stuff. Right. The transvaginal ultrasound, they did show a lot. Right? Like, they showed her in the stirrups. They showed. That is what the wand looks like for the ultrasound. It's not small, and it doesn't feel like it hurts. Under the best of circumstances, it's not pleasurable. And I thought they actually did a good job of showing that and showing how, unfortunately, with pregnancy and everything, it is very invasive, and they're not doing a good job of obtaining her consent beforehand and stopping when she says to stop. And I think, I hope that's not the average woman's experience, but I can't say I'd be surprised if I heard some of this stuff happened. Even thinking about things like, I don't know if you know what a membrane sweep is, but cervical exams toward the end of pregnancy to see how much you're dilated, you should always ask permission before you're doing an internal physical exam on anyone. And I think sometimes people just do it even if the woman doesn't want you to. So there's a lot, I think, especially in obstetrics, that needs to be improved and continues to be talked about. And it did highlight that I was really annoyed when they kept saying, like, oh, it's the hormones you're taking. That's what's causing all of this, because. Sure, I guess any medication like progesterone or anything else, theoretically, I'm sure there's someone out there who's experienced psychosis related to the medication. I would imagine it's incredibly rare. That's not a common side effect for most people. Progesterone is an anxiolytic, which means it calms you down. It shouldn't make you paranoid. I think if she weren't actually being followed and she was hallucinating or having paranoia, she probably is experiencing psychosis, which can be triggered by the hormonal shifts and usually is an underlying indication that the woman has bipolar disorder. So whenever we see psychosis development, pregnancy, or in the postpartum period, it's bipolar disorder until proven otherwise. You of course, would do the normal workup for psychosis. Check labs, check brain imaging. Just make sure there's nothing else going on. But usually, again, this is the first time a woman will experience it, and it is an indication they actually have a bipolar disorder. And it is worth mentioning that postpartum psychosis is a psychiatric emergency, and it's associated with a 5% risk of suicide, a 4% risk of infanticide. So it's pretty scary. And again, I think, important to note that when I am treating women who have these intrusive thoughts about harm coming to their baby, I always try to tell them, like, yes, it's distressing, but it's a good sign if you're feeling distressed by that, because that means you're more likely to have anxiety or OCD. It's when it's not distressing or it feels almost like an altruistic delusion, like, I have to kill my baby because Satan has inhabited their body kind of freedom. That is Psychosis. And what's, you know, you'll often see sleep, know they can't sleep. They're very restless. They're agitated. They'll have delusional beliefs, like what I just mentioned with the baby. Delusional beliefs and broad strokes are somewhat a fixed belief that other people in your culture don't share. But, like, you believe you're getting messages through the radio or through the TV or things like that, and then you can have hallucinations, which are seeing or hearing things that aren't really there. So, again, if Anna Victoria had been having the same symptoms she was having but not been being followed, she'd be psychotic. But this is actually right with the pictures.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I mean, the pictures when she was looking at them. And then she saw Ivy in the background at one like that. Felt like it was a hallucination, but everything else was right. Like, she was seeing her. The doll, the mean, that was real. And then what's her name? Anna? Sonia. Or Adeline. Right? Like the artist or the deceased wife. That's who's bizarre. And then what we're following, right?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Like, a lipstick Ivy doing the ultrasound was real, but no one else knew she was. Like, all this is happening. And I think what helps us realize that it's reality is when Kumal, the driver. Sorry. Kumal sees. Right, like, when he was driving her, right. We see someone outside of her who can confirm, like, no, this is really happening.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So do you think that preacher is that woman that they showed in the flashback, in the think so, too. So she had to deal with it. And now she's trying to warn multiple people. So Anna Victoria and then Dexter's mom.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I was like, was the mom preacher's baby? Are we going to find out who that baby was? Has that baby become part of it? We don't really know.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And what are the babies? Because they are like spiders.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: They're like something and stuff.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah. So do they turn into people or do they turn into things that can look like people?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And is the husband.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Is Siobhan one? Or do they sacrifice them? And that's how they keep the wealth and fame. Right? Because at the last episode, we find out that Siobhan, when she's with that writer guy who she hates but is like, having sex with, he's like, why did you. Who are you? You made me do this movie. You made me cast Anna Victoria. And now it's like, up for Oscars. It was like a terrible script and she's a bad actress. And I was just like, I just want to know what, obviously, and hopefully we'll find out in part two. But what is happening?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: What is going. Yeah, exactly. Like, how are they all in on it? I think they're all in on. Think they're all, I think even, like, Nicolette, the house manager who just had a baby, I'm like, is her baby one of these crow, like, what's going, like, why are they all sacrificing their. Oh, it's just weird. And then also, when the younger actress died, got decapitated. Remember, like, Siobhan. Yes. Babet had called to be like, how bad do you want it? Are you willing to do anything? And then that happens. I was like, oh, yikes.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Right?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Spooky.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: The last episode was a lot there at first when the mom came in. So Dexter's mom, she seemed like, overbearing, rude, inappropriate boundaries. And I was ready to kind of go down that path. And then all of a sudden, to see the way that Dexter dismisses her feels very similar to him dismissing his wife. I'm curious about, is his ex wife alive or his deceased wife alive? What happened with their father?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Is he part of it, going to court against him? Why does she ask him to testify on her behalf? How icky. And I just found that fancy lunch between the two of them so awful and cringey. And the way that she just kept saying, I wish I never had kids, but I didn't have a choice. And you're like, saying that to the kid you had. It's just so awful. But also, I feel like I've seen an iteration of that conversation on the Real Housewives. So I think there are awful parents out there who just don't know boundaries and this awful stuff to their kids.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Right. Because I think there's ways to express things that if you really feel like they need to be expressed without saying it the way that they're saying it.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Right.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Like, oh, pregnancy was really hard. Not, oh, I wish I was never pregnant with you or toddler years were really challenging as a parent. Oh, you were. You know, you were colicky, you didn't sleep a lot. Like, that's not. That's, like, kind of a fact versus. And I wished that I had given you up for an option.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: It's like, right. There's what I think. Right. I think to be able to navigate that difference and see it, you have to be able to empathize with depths in this case, and imagine what's it going to feel like for him if I say this, and maybe I shouldn't, because maybe. But, like, there are people with narcissistic traits, borderline traits, sort of that cluster B personality realm, which, again, just as a refresher, includes things like narcissism, borderline personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, and antisocial personality disorder, where they're missing that empathy chip, so they're really not able to think about that. They just sort of see everything through their point of view, and that's it. And I feel like she's right in line with that.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: No, totally. So that'll be a know to be continued or TBC for part two. But.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I think the last thing that I thought was a really interesting line was something that Sonia said, actually. Again, Sonia is like, I guess, like the artist that Dex is apparently working with, but she looks a lot like his ex wife and even identical. Yes. Like, even Anna Victoria asks her, are you related to her? Do you know her? And stuff? Like, she's starting to pick things up. And Sonia was know my mother was borderline or bipolar or both, who knows? And I actually thought that was such a smart line because those conditions, borderline personality disorder and bipolar disorder, often get misdiagnosed as each other. Sometimes you can have both simultaneously. I'd say that's probably pretty rare. But we're constantly misusing those labels, not only in popular media like this, but I think even, unfortunately, within the field, there can be similarities. And I think I often see people diagnosed with bipolar disorder when really what they have is borderline personality disorder. So I thought it might be helpful to maybe talk about the differences between the two.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah. And I think I just want know our listeners, if you have seen the bear in season two of the Bear, which is episode we released last week, there is a moment where the mom.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Donna, or is it Donna?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So she's having, like, television. She's having kind of, like a moment. But I think that's kind of a good example of when she's, like, cooking and there's chaos of where people do get confused because I think if you're using kind of pop psychology references, it's like, oh, she's having an episode. She's manic. It's like, she's not manic. She's dysregulated. And so we throw that around a lot. And I see mostly now bipolar two constantly paired with borderline. And that is pretty frustrating, I think. Yeah. And it just seems like a label because most people are not borderline one, which is like, you meet full criteria, right, for mania. Yeah, bipolar one. And yes, bipolar one. So it's not common. It's like a rarer disorder. And so we now have this bipolar two, which is, like, less severe symptoms. Right. Which is. But I feel like it's often over diagnosed in teens, young adults who are just having episodes where they're feeling dysregulated. They have a lot of environmental stressors. So it's really frustrating. So, yes, let's talk more about the differences.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I would love to. I totally agree. And especially the bipolar, too. I will say anytime as a clinician, I see someone coming to me with a diagnosis of bipolar Two. I'm skeptical just because of this very phenomenon we're talking about, and especially once I see they have a quote unquote, history of bipolar two, plus trauma, plus substance abuse, plus ADHD. To me, what you're actually talking about are different characteristics of borderline personality disorder. You're just calling it different things again, not saying it's not possible to have all of those things. And sometimes it's not even borderline personality disorder. It's just trauma and, like, the sequelae of maybe living through traumatic experiences or complicated chronic traumatic experiences like child abuse or things like that. But I would love to talk about this topic. So when we think about borderline personality disorder again, revisit our Bear episode, revisit our episodes on succession and White Lotus, where we talk more about this know Roman in succession, and then Tanya and White Lotus again. It's a type of personality traits that are really stemming from know. Fear of abandonment is, like, at its core, and it can definitely have mood labelity. Which means that your mood changes rapidly. It can have impulsivity, you can have self harming behaviors, a lot of things that go along with it. But how you distinguish something like borderline personality disorder from something like bipolar disorder is the episodes, right? So like people with borderline personality disorder or other personality traits or perhaps trauma who have emotional label will have mood swings on the order of like minutes to hours to days, right. So usually their mood swings last short amount of time. Minutes, hours, days. These are the people who will say to you like 1 minute I'm happy, the next minute the world's awful and it's very black or white, very much all or nothing way of thinking. With bipolar disorder, what you have are discrete episodes of Time where for X number of days or more, you're experiencing multiple symptoms simultaneously, right? So the easiest way to think about it is when you have a major depressive disorder, you have symptoms of depression lasting for 14 days or more in a row, right? It's not like you get bad news and you feel really depressed or you lose a beloved pet and you're grieving. This is different. This is 14 days or more in a row. And it's not just the low mood and the anhedonia or loss of interest in things, it's other things too, like disrupted sleep, change in appetite, change in energy, trouble focusing, maybe some suicidal thoughts. Like all of that is depressive episode, right? So same thing applies for the other pole of mood disorders, what we call mania. Right, for mania for at least a week or more. So seven days in a row or more, you have to have a certain number of symptoms persist. That's very different from your baseline. And the acronym that we use to sort of remember, well, what are these symptoms you're looking for is dig fast. So distractability, impulsivity, grandiosity, flight of ideas, activity, increase sleep deficit and talkativeness. So basically these are people who feel like Superman on top of the world, very grandiose, have all these big ideas. They're engaging in impulsive behaviors, whether it's substance abuse, reckless spending, gambling, sexual encounters, flying down the highway on this skateboard, jumping off a roof because you think you can fly, like all of this stuff together. It's really hard to follow their train of thought because they're all over the place and they're talking so fast. We call it pressured speech. You can't get a word in. Once you've talked to someone with this, you know what I mean? But it's like, if you notice having normal conversations, like Portia, if you were to start talking, I would stop to listen to you. These people can't stop themselves. It's like they have a motor running and they can't stop. So that's the most extreme form called mania. Once you have one manic episode, you have bipolar one disorder. Most people with bipolar one disorder will also have depressive episodes, and they might have hypomanic episodes, but you have to have a manic episode, and usually the disruption in your functioning is so severe that you end up hospitalized. What's interesting is that most people with bipolar disorder, their first episode actually is a depressive episode, and it occurs in your late teens to 20s for men, twenty s to thirty s for women. Sometimes when you have mania, you also have psychotic symptoms like delusional thinking, hallucinations, things like that. And again, in pregnancy, if you have postpartum psychosis, that is most of the time indicative of an underlying bipolar disorder. And that's usually the first manic type episode that you're having or psychotic type episode. Bipolar two is a condition in which you have hypomania, so kind of like halfway between normal mood and mania. So maybe you're talking a little quicker, maybe you're not sleeping as much, but you're noticing it. You're having a bit more grandiosity, but it doesn't reach the threshold of mania, and that has to last for four days or more in a row. So again, it's not like you got great news and you're feeling high and on top of the world because of that for a short period of time, or you're having mood labely, it has to last for four days or more in a row. And for bipolar two, you have to have discrete episodes of hypomania and depression. So that's kind of a quick overview. Is that helpful?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah. I think the biggest takeaways are that, I don't know if this is just a really simplified way of thinking about it, but I like to think about borderline or BPD as more of typically, or just environment's effects. So, like wounds from childhood, attachment issues, trauma, and bipolar one, it feels more organic, like it's your brain. It's not happening because you experienced a trauma. Obviously that can trigger things, pregnancy can trigger it, but it's really more organic.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Medical.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah, exactly. And that's why medication is more effective. Right. For bipolar one, it's like it helps your brain kind of regulate itself, and that's why with BPD, we often see, and you could speak to maybe the specific ones, but like, seven different kinds of medication. Who medicating all the different symptoms?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yeah, 100%. I think that's a great way to put it, is that I always think about BPD as the symptoms come out, when there's interpersonal conflicts. So often when you have a fight, you feel rejected, you feel emotionally abandoned, that's when you see the symptoms come out. And again, like, the mainstay treatment for BPD these days is DBT, dialectical behavioral therapy, where it's all about identifying emotions, learning how tolerate distress, learning interpersonal effectiveness to be able to communicate your needs more appropriately and more assertively without acting out behaviors like harming yourself or making threats or things like that. And you're totally right that the treatment for bipolar disorders, you really need medication to keep it under wrap, specifically mood stabilizers, and sometimes antipsychotics or atypical antipsychotics. It's really hard to convince people to stay on these medications because unfortunately, they do have side effects. And a lot of times, part of mania is this grandiosity where you feel like, above everything, you feel like you can handle anything, you feel great, like you don't want to take it, you don't want to come down, because it's, like, intoxicating. So, as you can imagine, it's really hard to get people on board to take these medications. And the crash after a manic episode is usually a really bad depressive episode. And so, as you can imagine, the risk of suicide and things like that is really high, especially when you add substances on board, which can happen. A lot of people living with untreated bipolar disorder rely on drugs or alcohol to either bring them down or bring them up. It's really tricky. But then you're right. With BPD, the best treatment is really good therapy, and we use medications more so to treat the symptoms of BPD. Sometimes there is evidence for things like lamictal, which is a specific mood stabilizer to help with BPD, or SSRIs to help. But usually with BPD, again, you're treating the symptoms. And sometimes, unfortunately, I see in my practice, when you have a patient with BPD who doesn't know it because they haven't been accurately diagnosed or they're in inexperienced hands, they might be told they have bipolar disorder and ADHD and depression and anxiety and OCD, and basically all of the diagnoses possible, which is incredibly rare, to have every single mental health diagnosis possible. So you see someone, I think I've shared with you before, once I see someone's on medications from five different medication classes or more. My suspicion for BPD is pretty high. So usually I see, like, an SSRI plus a benzo for anxiety, plus a stimulant for ADHD, plus an antipsychotic like seroquil to help them sleep, or for their brief psychotic episodes, which, again, some patients with BPD do have these brief kind of, like, psychotic experiences of dissociative quality or things like that. And then the fifth one is, like, dealer's choice, like some random thing like propranolol or gabapentin or some random medication from a class. Again, once I start to see that, I think, okay, we need to step back and think, like, what are we treating here? It looks like we're treating each of the individual symptom clusters of BPD without actually treating the BPD. So that's just sort of what I've seen and kind of developed over time.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah, I mean, it seems to pop up in a lot of TV and movies. It's like bipolar, or in older movies, like Manic depressive and BPD. And narcissism. Of course, we can't forget our friendly narcissists, but. Which I would say is, like, probably Siobhan, right? Like, big, high PR for marketing. Definitely. I think she portrays it, and I think that's probably just, like, a typical presentation, being in that big of a.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Position with power, right, where it's so image focused. And I did not get any with a narcissism from Anna Victoria, which I think is notable, even though she is, like, a famous actress. Again, not saying famous actresses have narcissism, but sometimes they do. So it's just interesting. And I think, even though as a whole, I didn't love it, I do think there were so many rich mental health themes that we keep seeing come up. And I always find it fascinating that in the art and media, this crossover of narcissism, BPD, bipolar disorder, kind of mirrors clinical experience that these things can be tricky to tease out because we don't have, like, a blood test or brain scans. Despite what the Amon clinic and all of their charlatan shenanigans will want you to believe. You can't diagnose this stuff with your favorite. Oh, my God, I just drives me nuts.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah, well, and you just had an article come out with CNN about some of the new medication that is available for postpartum. We will link it in the show notes if you want to check it. You know, I think there's more research being done, more evidence kind of coming out all the time. That's hopefully supporting women and their birth journeys or their pregnancies, IVF journeys. And just like, I think it's been lacking for so long, so maybe even a show, right? That's like it's American Horror Story, so it's supposed to be wild and cringey.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: So it's like, I think it's so great. Let's keep the conversations going.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yes. Love it. Well, thanks for listening. Today we will be releasing part two as it comes out, and I am excited to do at some point, Murder House, just the psychiatrist in it. So that'll be fun. But you can follow us on all sorts of social media, TikTok, and Instagram at Analyze Scripts, podcasts. We are on YouTube now, so if you're watching, thank you. If you're listening and you want to watch, check us out there and make sure to like, share us and subscribe and we'll see you next time.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: See you next Sunday.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Bye.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: This podcast and its contents are a copyright of analyzed scripts. All rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited. Unless you want to share it with your friends and rate, review, and subscribe, that's fine. All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings, or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are covering "The Bear" season 2. This season was a standout with food, relationships and understanding the character's histories. We could not have asked for more amazing mental health content to discuss. Richie wins Dr. Furey over (he is a swiftie?) and Jamie Lee Curtis playing their mother, Donna was an unexpected gift. We see depictions of borderline personality disorder, addiction and what can happen when complex families get together over the holidays. We also give you some tips on how to manage stressors that can arise when family gathers. Over all we give this season a "chef's kiss," we hope you enjoy!
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fieri, a psychiatrist.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: There is so much misinformation out there, and it drives us nuts.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: With a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And your DSM Five and enjoy.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Welcome back. We're so excited to be talking about one of our, like, surprising I don't think anyone else was surprised, but we both found the Bear this year and watched both season one and now two. So if you haven't listened to our episode on the Bear season one, go check it out. It is uploaded to everywhere. You can find all of our other podcasts. But today we are so thrilled to be talking about the Bear season two and all of its intensity and intense emotions. Wow.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I feel nervous, like, even getting started.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah, there's a lot to cover.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Oh, my gosh. I also just want to say, is this the best show ever? I feel like yes.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I like how the episodes are not all, like, hours. One of them was this season, which it was worth it.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Oh, my God.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: But I just love the shorter episodes. I love all of the dynamic characters. I like the scenes, the sets. I like food. Yes.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I want to be a chef. I realize it's, like, such a beautiful combination of art and science. Right. Like, the way they're cooking, and it's so creative. It's so beautiful the way everything's shot. The character development, especially this season, was astounding. It's so smartly written, and I just found myself at the end of it being, like, so sad. It was over and wanting more, and I was like, is this the best.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Show of all time? Maybe. I think so. I also just love a good family s show, like, on TV.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I love succession.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Well, not really you, but he doesn't really have any family. I guess that's the point. No.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yeah. So are you saying you really like the interpersonal dynamics?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yes. Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And obviously we would like that. Right? It's two shrinks. Obviously. That's what we're into. But I feel like this is the reason we wanted to start this podcast, is to just shine light when people get it so right.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yes.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: It's done so well. And I'm just like, how on earth are they tackling such intense topics and dynamics? Like, oh, my God, we'll get into the feast of the seven fishes. But, like, that family dynamic. Grief, suicide, addiction, depression, stress, like, guilt, grief, and then also in this season, resilience and growth.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So much growth.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Like, achieving your dreams and fulfilling your potential that you didn't even know was there. And how being in the right environment with the right leader can really pull that out of people. And how Carmee was so good at that, despite going through so much struggle himself.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Whoa.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: How did they get it was so good.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yes.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: So good. So I think we're going to get started by talking about some of the supporting characters before we really get into the meat with the Feast of the Seven Fishes and some of the more main characters. But I fell in love with Tina this season. What did you think about Tina and her arc?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I loved how her depiction in season one was just like things hadn't changed. Right. They're all kind of set in their ways. That's how we do things. Like pretty resistant to change.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yes, very resistant.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Which is something, again, I think everyone can relate to. When you're working at a job and initially something comes down the pipe and you're like, oh, I don't know how we could do this. No one wants it, really. Everyone's pushing back. Everyone gets grouchy.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Especially when it's like a younger, new hot show and you have all this experience and you're like, you don't know what you're talking about.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Right. Yeah. So she was pushing back. We didn't really get a lot of her backstory.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: We didn't really get anyone's except for Carmen.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Her singing, it was like she goes and does karaoke. Beautiful voice. Stunning voice. Yeah. So then she goes to school. Yes. It's supposed to be her and Ibrahim. And she seems to really flourish and enjoy and kind of soak up all the information. And then her and Sydney have some beautiful moments when Know asks her several times to step up. And Tina seems really moved by that and appreciated. And she totally rises to the challenge and kicks butt. And in the later episodes, she's just rocking the kitchen.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: She totally rose to the occasion. I feel like her versus Ibrahim was such an interesting depiction. Like, they were both sort know, the old guard, you could say, and both kind of resistant to the change that was coming with Carmee and Sydney. But then you see Carmee's, like, investing in his staff by sending them to school, sending Marcus to Denmark. And she was so thrilled and she really lit up. She hugged him. Ibrahim, on the other hand, was really not into it. He was scared. He didn't go. But then he showed up at the end and I loved that they all welcomed him back with open and there.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Was still a place.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: There's still a place for him. How beautiful is you can always come home.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I liked when he was doing the Serve Safe thing online. I remember doing that. It's like, so boring. And I mean, it's good, notable information.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: But it's just like, come on. Yeah, it's one of those certificates.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: It's just so funny. They're like, oh, it's served like, we might not be able to open.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: It was just so funny. But I just loved how Carme gave Tina his knife and then she tried to give it back to him and he's like, I didn't ask for it back. Just all of that just investment in your staff was so beautiful. He didn't just fire everyone and bring in people who are already trained. He believed in them. Right. And then I thought the scenes with her and Sydney were really beautiful. Especially as we got to understand Sydney's background more with her mom right. And how her mom died when she was four. And I was just like, oh, look at yeah.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Like, I wonder what it was like for Sydney to initially be butting heads with Tina in season one and just kind of Sydney being brought on. And Sydney is very educated right. In Chef culture in Chef land. And Tina, I think is a wonderful chef, but just has been doing right the same thing. They've been making these more like sandwich shop type stuff. Sydney was more like of, I guess, an elevated places or had her own. And I think it was hard to watch like in season one, tina, I felt empathy for her being kind of challenged and struggling to kind of get on the ship and having a young woman kind of telling you that your mashed potatoes aren't good and to do it again. And you see that then in season two, Tina kind of checking, right? Like, do you want me to do it again? And then I think it's the second to last episode. Carmen's like no, it's perfect. Yeah. And that all is so meaningful to her. The knife is meaningful. That feedback is meaningful.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And it all started in season one. Remember when Tina was like falling behind and Sydney picked up the slack and then didn't rub it in her know.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: She could trust her.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Right. It was just really beautiful and just so beautifully written. And to see their dynamic unfold, I thought was really beautiful. And I just am curious about that dynamic. Since Tina is older, maybe unconsciously, some kind of mother figure to her. But then Sydney has more of the authority in that workplace relationship. I just thought it was interesting.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah. What did you think of like, reaction? What do you think that was coming.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Feel like I think he was scared. That's the only thing I can think of. He was saying he didn't want to wear a uniform. I also wonder about his background. Does he come from somewhere where uniforms signify something that's.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I think there was a really fast reference in season one to Carmi about him from someone else that he was in the military.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: That's what I was wondering.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: A different country. And he had come mean we could only guess then from that what that means or how he is doing from that experience, but maybe yeah, uniform thing for sure.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: The uniform thing was, like, the real sticking point.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I think he totally had a different reaction than Tina. Like, I don't want to go. Why do I have to do this? And it wasn't like, I'm too old.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: To learn new things.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And he doesn't look too old to learn new things, by the way. You're never too old to learn new things. But it was something about the uniform and conforming. I'm not sure it'd be really interesting to get more of that. But then we don't see him for a while, and then all of a sudden he shows back up and he's, like, excited to work, takeout window. And again, we already said it, but I just love that there was still a spot for him.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah. And I liked how Tina and him had that conversation in the window right, where they were, like, talking about everyone in the third. That was that was sweet. And it was Tina really knowing, I think, how to approach him, knowing that she can't just say things directly, knowing that he needed the space to kind of not be able to talk about himself directly, and then he would come back. That was really just, like, good people.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Right, right. And so, again, we're just seeing, like, really rise to the occasion. We also see Marcus rise to the occasion, which I never doubted he would. He was always so into the desserts, and I was like, even in season one, I was like, I had no idea so much went into making food and desserts. And it's like chemistry, really. But season two starts off with him at I believe it's his mother's bedside. Right?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: So she's ill. I don't think we really understand or.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Learn what exactly seems serious.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: It seems serious. It seems chronic, like it's been going on for a long time, but, like, one of those situations where it's always tenuous. Like it's been going on for a long time, but it could nosedive at any time. So it sounds like she has, like, this round the clock care.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: What did you think about kind of seeing him with his mom, seeing the dynamic between him and Sydney develop in the context of the stuff with Sydney and her mom? There's a lot of moms in season two. A lot of mom stuff.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: A lot. I think that Marcus, in a really nice way, has the capacity to be really empathetic and sweet with Sydney if they get there about her mom and then his mom. I think they just both have grief and loss in different ways about the mother figure in their life at different times, of course, and in different ways. But I think that that's really something to connect on if they again go there. I thought it was funny how I think it was between Carme and Sydney when she was like, yeah, my mom's dead, so we don't really have a relationship and it's hard when she's dead. Yeah. It was just such a normal thing. It's been a long time. It happened when she was four. Of course it still impacts her, but it's that using kind of comedy or to make Levity of a really tough situation, because you can see Carmen be like, kind of, I don't know how to handle this. And she's like, yeah, well, then they kind of chuckle. It's just something that I think a lot of people do.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I think, again, like, so beautifully written because it's so normal, like, at Sydney's age or younger, for people to ask you, like, what about your parents? And they're assuming you still have them. Right. And it's really awkward to be on the receiving end when you don't have both of, like, well, how do I share this with the person without making them uncomfortable? Right.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And, like, having that uncomfortable sense. And she's like, don't say I'm sorry. We can just move on.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Right.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So I thought it was, like, a.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Really interesting way to bring that up.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And the acting I know we're going to say this over and over again, but I just want to point out, for Sydney, it felt so real, and obviously that's what acting should be. But she just nailed the head on making the awkwardness of, oh, someone's asking me this, and I don't know how to say yeah. It was just so yes. So good.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: So good. And when Marcus asks her out at the end, how awkward. I was so happy when he did.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I thought they were totally vibing.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Like, when he was in Denmark, and they were FaceTiming and joking, and they kept pretending to like, I thought they were totally vibing. And then it totally threw her off. Yes.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: What do you think about that? I don't know, because I would say, based on the show, that she had.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: To have been picking up on, that.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: They were, like, silly at least.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Right.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So then for her to be like, did she shut it down? Because she was just so uncomfortable, nervous. You know what I mean? Or was it did it come out of left field? And she was just like, oh, I thought we were being friends. I don't know why it threw her. It seems like it, quote unquote, shouldn't have, but obviously it did for a then and then. Right. Kind of having that awkward kind of explosion right at the end where Marcus then yells at her, well, you're mad at me. And it was just you could tell.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: He was uncomfortable because he took his shot.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: He felt vulnerable.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yeah. Do you think she's in love with Carmee? Do you think that's what it is?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I feel like it could go either way. Like, I could argue yes or no. I feel like yes, because she made that thing about Claire or seemed so awkward when she found out that Carmen was seeing someone. But then right I could argue 100% the other way, too.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: It's just because it's taking attention away.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Right. And then it was just like, why didn't you tell me? And then she's helping him, right. Kind of coaching him how to be a boyfriend or being like, don't be a jerk. You are dating, giving him that feedback. So I don't know. I think it could go either way in season three, and I wouldn't be surprised. I would like to know.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Okay. The scene of them fixing the table. Like in the last episode.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I thought they were going to kiss.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: That's what I mean. That's what I mean is I can't tell the vibe.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: But then, because they didn't, I was like, oh, I just get it. Totally mean. Again, the writers are phenomenal. So I don't think so. But I think we're supposed to think that.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Exactly. I think we're supposed to feel, like, in limbo and not really be able to peg the Sydney love carme in a way that she idealizes him as a chef up to him, and he's really, again, brought her in, believed in her, got her that at the end. Was it from Tom Brown, the beautiful chef outfit? Is that why she loves, quote unquote, him?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Right. Is it, like, romantic or more like ideal mentorship?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: But there's something about it that feels romantic. Like, I did pick up on that jealousy with Claire, and it wasn't clear. Like, is that because she's into Carmen or because Claire's taking his attention away and she's, like, ****** about it and he's know, kind of ******** up. But that was where when Marcus asked her out, I was like, is it because she has feelings for Carmen, or.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Is it because she doesn't want to.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: End up like him by starting to date someone and getting distracted or dating in the workplace? But I would love them together because.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: They kind of did have a date, right, in season one when she made him food. I guess. I wouldn't call it a date. They had a dinner or lunch. I'm not sure which one together that seemed like it could go somewhere.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: They seem like they have a really nice connection, whether that's just friends or like, I would like to see it progress. I really like Marcus.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah, me too. He's sweet. And I think Sydney and Marcus are just in our shrink opinions.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Like a good so they're a good fit. Yeah, I think so.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Neither feel toxic. It doesn't feel like it would be an icky relationship.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Their personalities, like, balance each other. I don't know. I really am rooting for them. I was bummed she didn't take them up on it.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And then she's, like, throwing up, and I was like, is she pregnant?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I feel like she doesn't know just because there's no data right. To like she would have to have had sex with someone that we never saw, we didn't know about. I feel like she was just so anxious. So let's talk about right, like, physical manifestation of anxiety. Like nausea. Sometimes we do actually vomit from the nausea. Could sweat. I mean, they're all sweating because they're moving a million miles a minute, but they all, I would assume, are so nervous. There's so much on the line.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yeah, exactly. Other common symptoms of anxiety would be, like your tingling of your fingers or legs. Your heartbeat going fast. Start feeling like it's skipping a beat. Your blood pressure going up. You might have a headache. You might lose your appetite. You might be really restless. Like, walking around a lot. Things like that. Yeah, some diarrhea.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I think we saw that from all of them. And fun little I was just, like, laughing throughout the whole season with Carmen. Just, like, having Tums and then FAK at one point is like also, he's, like, takes a sip, too. And I was like, first of all, TMI, I can relate. I am a pepto girly. I do drink it regularly. You know what if you need it? I was just, like, feeling very connected to Carme in those moments.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I was like, I feel you.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Anxiety really gets to your stomach. It totally does.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: You know why?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I'd love to know.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Nerd, please tell. So there's also serotonin receptors in your gut. And so that's why when you start an SSRI, which works on the serotonin receptors, the early side effects can be, like, some diarrhea, some upset stomach and stuff like that. So there's totally a connection there.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I didn't know that.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yeah, I guess that's why they always say, right?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Like, mind gut connection. Totally.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And I feel like in medicine, we're still uncovering that connection, but it totally makes sense.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Cool. Yeah. Didn't know.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Anyway, so we have a lot of new characters in this season two, so they all kind of come out in the Christmas episode. The fishes. All of the fishes happening. So is there anything else up until then that we want to talk about?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I guess the only other thing I wanted to touch on was the dynamic between Sydney and her dad. I thought that it was just so, again, well written. What's it called a broken record. But just seeing, like so she still lives with her dad. It sounds like she's tried a couple of things, and they haven't really worked. And I'm wondering now, seeing how nervous she was in the finale, if she gets in her own way, if she's going to be successful. But then her anxiety takes over, and she's like, I can't do this, and I quit. Or if she gets in over her head or things like that. But he's still supporting her. But you get the sense at this point, he's like, okay, I want to support you. And it sounds like you're putting a lot on the line. You're working really hard, you're not getting paid. Like, are you sure about this? Kind of thing, but he makes room for her reaction.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And tries to give her fatherly advice in a way that I feel like she hears and doesn't feel rejected by.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: No, I don't think she feels rejected. I think she puts so much pressure on herself because it sounds I mean, she's so concerned with what her dad thinks about the food. Right. And rightfully so. Of course, her parents proud, but I think based on their conversations throughout season two, it just seems like she really wants to be good for him, and it's not coming from him, though. It's not this pressure that's like, you have to be or you're out. Right. It's like he says, which I think is so sweet, like, you can stay here forever, but I want you to be happy and doing your thing. And then at the end, he's like, this is the thing.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And I was like, so she's throwing up the dumpster, he's leaving, and he's like, Babe, baby, babe. It was so sweet. You could tell that's his little girl like, Are you okay? When he doesn't want to intrude. I thought he did such a good job of toeing that line with an adult child. I kept thinking, like, I could cry saying this. I hope I get to see my kids find their thing someday and get to be there, like, cheering them on. And I'm sure it's just so hard to have those conversations with your adult kid who's kind of floundering for a little bit, and it's like, of course you're going to flounder. Okay. So it's just so beautiful. There were no ultimatums. No, there was no, like, you got to get out.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: You get your **** together. And it didn't seem like she was taking advantage of him either. I think he knows that, and that's why he is more giving, I guess, with his resources. It's not like, oh, you're not doing anything, and you're living here. She's working so hard.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yeah, exactly. And I love that he was there to see it and support her, and even in that spot, like, gave her space. No, definitely. Really beautiful. Loved it. Okay, everyone, take a deep breath. Drink your pepto, take your propranolol. We're going to get into maybe the best episode of TV of all time, episode six called Fishes, where we see the family dynamic in our face, and it's like, guest star, guest star, guest star.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Phenomenal acting, phenomenal writing, phenomenal cinematography. It was so good.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Oh, my God. I hope I doubt they did, but I hope they had a therapist on set to debrief with. Oh, my God, they were doing this. If you want one for season three, reach out. We're here. But holy ****.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So how did you feel watching it?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Let's start there. I felt like I was running a marathon.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: That's a great talking about it again.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: My heart rate, I can tell, is increasing. It was just chaotic. Yes. Chaotic, nervous, confused, excited because we were finally going to meet his mom. I always want to know about people's mom.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I felt like I was there. I felt like I was sitting at the table or in the kitchen just, like, observing it. And what's funny is, I would assume at least unless you have just really good luck, that most people listening and both of us have experienced chaos, right? So whether it's at work in a professional setting, whether it's with your own family, whether it's watching friend stuff, but being present for really intense and poor interpersonal skills and just that feeling you get. You're so uncomfortable, but you're paralyzed, you can't look away. You're feeling all of those kind of physical symptoms that we talked about before. It's just this feeling that I've had before in my life that I had watching this episode, which, again, the fact that they can elicit that through a screen, it just blows me.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Astounding. Astounding, astounding, astounding. I totally agree. And I feel like as you were saying that, I was thinking initially of all of the guests at the table, like, Frozen, when Mikey and Uncle Lee, played by Bob Odenkirk, were going at it and the tension was rising, and they're all just, like, trying to figure out how do you diffuse the situation? And you see everyone's trauma response kicking in, but then also just the know Carmee and, like, just interact with Donna, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, like, what a surprise. But perfect in the role. Just the way they try to navigate her is also the same thing you're talking about.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So the episode starts off with them outside, right?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And, like, Sugar smoking, real nervous, and.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I'm like, okay, what's going on? I really hadn't had any spoilers for this show, so I'm, like, super blind about it, right?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: But I was like, oh, my God, isn't she pregnant?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And then, no, it's actually right. And then you see Mikey, right, kind of talking to her and saying all these things, and I was like, well, who are they talking about? And then it becomes clear that it's their mom. And then Carme comes out, and they're like, don't do anything. Don't ask her if she's don't. And I was like, I wonder what that's going to be about. And then it was like, when you finally see the kitchen, and I can't remember if it's through Carmen's eyes, I want to say it is. It's just, like, chaotic visual representation of their family dynamic. Yes.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: 100%. 100%. Yes.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: There's sauce splattered on the walls.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: There's, like, a million timers all going.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Off, all startle response, right?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: She's, like, drinking and smoking up a wazoo.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: You're like, Are you going to set.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: The house on fire? It's so chaotic.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Sugar is so anxious, and I thought it was just so again, you saw everyone's family roles. So Mikey seems to be kind of, like, aligned, knows how to work with his mom. He's kind of like, whatever, this is how it is. There's probably a better way to explain it.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Almost like learned helplessness. So that's a concept where back in the day, they did some experiment with mice or rats where they would basically drown them. Do you remember reading about this?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Probably in bachelor's level Psych, right?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Learning about depression. They did something where they would basically put mice in some tank of water and not give them a way out and just see how long till they gave up. What a terrible experiment. But it led to this concept of learned helplessness, where it's like when you're in a situation, an environment where you just lose hope that you're going to get out of it, you just sort of give up or accept, like, this is it. I kind of feel like with Mikey.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Maybe that was his know, which we can circle back to and talk a lot, you know, coping with it with substances. And you see then, like, kind of on the other end, continuing to poke the bear, for lack of a better word. She's asking, Are you okay? Can I do anything? Can I do anything? And you just see from the outside that is not working.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: But don't you think don't you think this is my theory as to okay.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So if that didn't work, sugar would.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Have learned in childhood not to do it, but she's doing it as an adult, and she's the girl. There's always something with mother daughter relationships, especially when there's more siblings, and you're the only girl we saw this with. But, like, I would imagine that growing up, there would be times when that would work and that would lead to a connection with Donna, and she would calm down and maybe even express gratitude, like, in a overly familiar or, like, kind of inappropriately, like, parentified. Sugar become parentified and become, like, the caretaker of her mom. And I bet for Sugar, that felt really good. She got her mom's positive attention. She felt good. I bet her mom would say things like, you're such a good girl. I don't know what I'd do without. Like, I'm sure that happened intermittently enough where it would reinforce this behavior.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And I bet it happened when they're alone, right? So, like, Donna has all these guests over. She's making the dinner. No one can help, right? Like, she then wants all this gratitude. She wants to be the center of attention. And so then Sugar challenging that and being in the parent role is like a big no. I'm in the one in charge. Exactly.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Threatening her sense of superiority and competency.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And remember with Sugar partner, who brought, like, a casserole, and everyone's like, she throws it outside, and it's tuna, so it has, like, a distinct smell.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And he's like, It's a fish. He's like, this is the 8th fish.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: That was perfect.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: But so I think that's what's going on with Sugar and. Then Carmi feels like the one who.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So, you know, I think if I picked one word, I'd say, like like, he kind of checks out. He's gone. And then I think it's interesting, and I would be curious to know because he was in New York for a while, but is that because he went with Cousin Michelle, played by know she asked her then, but he seemed really hesitant to or like, that wouldn't be know. He was immediately sucked back into the trauma right. Of his family, which I feel like happens.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Right.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So it seemed like I got the.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Sense that this was happening when he was in Denmark and he came home for the holiday, but I don't think people expected him to. It seemed like people were kind of surprised. You saw that tension between Mikey and Carmee. I get the sense Mikey's older than Carmel.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I think Carmen's the youngest.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: So sugar's in the middle.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Maybe. I don't know why I think that, but I think that I could see that.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: But again, you see that sort of competition, that tension. Like, it was nice of you to show up.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Big. Big.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Um, which is always, to me, so sad when there's, like, a sibling or someone who's done so, like, don't you just wish one of them had Sydney's dad to be like, good? Like, none of them get it right from Donna. We don't even know where their dad is. Right. But yeah. So Carmen comes back and it's like.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: The guilt tripping that he gets from his mom. To your point about just it was just so icky. Like, you're basically saying that you want him to stay here and live with you. She didn't say this exactly, but she's telling him that she wants him to be here with her and almost like, how dare you go and leave me. I need you.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I can't believe I'm not the son.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Exactly. Instead of, wow, you're so amazing.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: God, in Michelin Star, even taking credit.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: For it could be, like, another way in that she doesn't take right. Like, you're my son and you did this wonderful thing. It's like no, it's like that other.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Because you left her. Yes. Yeah. So, Portia, if you had to diagnose Donna with something, what would it be?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Sounds like narcissism and maybe some borderline personality traits. Especially with the fear of abandonment. Fear of abandonment?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Substance use. Really?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah. And especially I'm curious we can talk about this later, but I'm curious at the end when she shows up, is she sober? Has she gotten treatment? Is this a manipulative tactic to use on Sugar's husband? I don't know. Because it could have go either way. I thought it was really interesting, the insight that she had with I ruin everything, because I hear that a lot in substance use land. I hear that a lot in borderline land. So I don't know. Are you sober now and you have all this guilt, are you not? And you're just kind of, again, like, self sabotaging relationships. Instead of going in there and saying, I'm so proud of you, it's like, no, you don't show up, and you make it about you, but you have so much pain. She's obviously in so much pain.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Well, and I think that speaks to what you've said before, is I feel like she leans more in the borderline personality realm than the narcissism realm. But I think there's narcissistic flavors there. But I think with this fear of abandonment, just with the way everyone's walking on eggshells, her quick light switch flip of a mood at the very end when she drove her car into the house.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I mean, just like the self harming.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: In that way, the manipulative way of just like, screaming at everyone and then, oh, my God. It was just shocking.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I wonder if she expected them to come after her. Right. So if I'm thinking of someone who has Borderline who's incredibly in an intense emotional state this is not like your day to day. You're doing okay.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I think she was at that moment, right. She felt incredibly devalued, put down. So someone with these traits can't tolerate that. So she feels like annihilated. And then I think she was trying to commit suicide or a suicidal gesture.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I feel like gesture, if I'm being really picky.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Because I guess she seemed very intoxicated.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yes, exactly. So, like, also, was it a mistake? Did you mean to reverse? Did you mean to hit as far as this rage, we have no idea. But how traumatizing. So I'm wondering, right. Like, if Carme had run after her.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: If he did, Mikey did. He was the one who was like, mom. Mom. I think, if I remember correctly, when the car crashed.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah. So I'm saying before that, right? Like, as she leaves the table, I'm wondering if someone had then pursued her.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: She would have been wanting exactly.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And because she didn't get it, she then had made this big gesture to get everyone's attention back.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And that is very much in line with borderline personality disorder behaviors. Right. Just instigating.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah. I think my knee jerk reaction with all TV characters is always like, no, they are narcissists traits, for sure. But I don't know why I didn't say that first. She displays many traits of Borderline, especially when someone is in a really intensive emotional state.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yes. And just that all the toxic dynamic, the splitting, the pitting one against the other, the manipulative tactics, the rage, the suicidal gestures, all of it is just.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And it's like you keep digging your own hole. And I think when someone's watching without any knowledge of borderline or I don't know, I guess understanding of it, it can be so frustrating. It's like she keeps making things worse. Right. Like, over and over and over again. It's like she keeps pushing everyone far away. Why can't she just come in and be like, you know what it's like. Because she's not capable of it. In that moment, she's so hurt. She feels so, like you said before, like annihilated. So there's no coming back. She can't see that. She could just dot, dot, dot, right. Come into the restaurant. Sam. Sorry.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: She could just because that would taking accountability. Exactly. Being able to hold on to the fact that she has good and bad within her. And people with borderline personality disorder really struggle to hold on to two opposing feelings, two opposing beliefs or views at the same time, especially about themselves. Right? They can't tolerate feeling bad. That's why they project it out on other people. That's why they act out and become the victim or become the martyr or just leave, abandon situations where there's been something that they regret.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So much self loathing.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: So much self loathing. But it keeps hurting everyone. And I thought like, that I was shocked. She showed up at the end to the restaurant.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Maybe in an internal right. I could only imagine what was going on in her head. Part curiosity, part wanting to be a part of it, wanting to be included, wanting to not feel abandoned. But at the same time, maybe the fear that they would reject you, the fear that it would be uncomfortable, the fear that someone would make a comment. And then you could just see the hurt when Sugar's husband accidentally said that Sugar is pregnant and she didn't know. Right. And then she's just like, flustered. But again, she's going to internalize that as right, I'm not important enough to know this. I'm an abandoned life. They're abandoning me, I'm sure. Also, the self loathing of like, they don't love me, they don't want me. I'm so bad.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: But I think often with people who struggle with Bpd, it's very hard to tolerate that amount of self loathing. Sometimes totally for a little bit of time. I think we see displayed in the finale where she's showing up and thinking about going in. But to actually go in would involve reckoning with all the harm you've caused and sort of accepting it and taking some accountability, which I don't think she's able to do because know her psychological limitations so often. Then you project it onto other people, so it turns into, well, Sugar didn't tell me. Well, Carmi didn't invite me. Like, it's their fault they're leaving me. And this is the classic dance we see with Bpd. There's even a very good book out there called I Hate You. Don't leave me. Is that push and pull, that seeking of love or help or attention, then rejecting it. And so she leaves or rejects them before they can reject her.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And she wants I thought it was really interesting and important that they included it in the writing with her repeatedly asking him to tell her it's okay, right, to leave. She's like, you need to tell me it's okay. You need to tell me it's okay.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Because then she puts it on exactly that he's the one.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: He said, it's okay. And she can kind of, like, move past the fact that she chose to leave, right?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: He said, I leave. Can't even hold on to that accountability. Amazing writing. And again, I just feel like the only way you get this so right is if you have lived experience, right? So to the writers, God bless you. I hope you're doing okay. And I just wonder, is it healing to create art like this that resonates with so many people and then other people, I'm sure, watch it and recognize their own family members or their own toxic dynamics. And I got to believe you feel less alone, right. When you're like, oh, my God, I'm not the only one who lives through stuff like this, so maybe it isn't me.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Some of the commentary that this episode received was like, it not sugar coating. And there are some movies that make holidays wildly stressful and ridiculous with crazy family dynamics. Even the movie, I think it's like four Christmases, right? And so there are other ones out there. But some of the commentary on this specific episode was like, this does happen, right? If you have a dysfunctional family, which a lot of people do, the holidays are so intense and stressful and getting everyone together when most of the people have poor communication skills and these intense feelings and they don't know how to handle them, and they're adults and there's no accountability, there's no self awareness.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: There's a lot of substance.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: There's drinking. Exactly. It's just like this recipe for disaster.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yes, exactly. And we see the disaster play out, and it's so true. And I feel like in situations like this where everyone comes back to home.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: It'S like everyone just fulfills their roles again.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And I thought we saw that really well with the three siblings and all the other supporting characters. And I'm sure something that you talk about with your patients like I do, especially around holidays. It's interesting that this episode is going to come out during the holiday season is like, setting boundaries for yourself and really being thoughtful about like, is it in my best interest to go home? What's it going to be like?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Can I bring someone?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Sometimes in a hotel, it's really important to think about. Oh, my God. But Jamie Lee Curtis. Wow.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I mean, the cast was just like, phenomenal.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And then Sarah Paulson cousin Michelle. Then we have John Mulaney playing Stevie, Michelle's partner. That was just such he's such like a non fit. Right? But he loves going the blessing he gave trying to deescalate Mikey.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: He did such a good job at first, and then it was like Uncle Lee made the comment, I think, about the mom, which again, I felt like was also an attempt to acknowledge what everyone is thinking and feeling and validate it and say okay, well, now that's over. And that just escalated. Like, why do you think that was?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I felt like it was in Mikey's mind, like, a slight to. I mean, you could have taken it either way. I think if you were secure and calm and not traumatized by what happened, not drinking, not high, it could have come across as like, okay, this, like, the healing moment. But I think you could totally look at it the other way because of how he's been acting the rest of the night. He was antagonizing Mikey. Yeah. And just, like, doing unnecessary things.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Is he her brother?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I don't know.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: The uncles and the cousins. It gets very confusing. But also, I think that displayed, like, even though Mikey in a lot of ways is really checked out, that's still his mom, and there's always a tie to your totally. Even when they're really awful parents, that's still your mom. And you can get very defensive, and I'm sure there's more backstory, like, where is their dad? What happened? If she's the parent who stayed? Even if she's so dysfunctional to kids, like, well, you stayed. You at least love me enough. Totally stay. So I could see him just like, that was it. And they'd already been at each other's throats, and he's high, and, like, I also thought it just displayed a really awful way to shame someone struggling with substance use. You're not of your whole freaking family. It made me so upset.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: It just felt like, I can empathize with being around someone who is struggling with a substance use disorder. That's one of the hardest things to do. Absolutely.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: 100%.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And some of the things that Uncle.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Lee was doing just felt so unnecessary.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Like, why did you interrupt the story to tell Mikey and everyone, well, we've heard this a million times, and then see the end of it. Why couldn't you have just left the room?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Just leave it alone.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Right. Like, you know, he's using, so what does that mean? People, when they're using, are not making their best choices. They're not really using good communication skills or can sit with things. They're going to react. So it's like, Why were you doing that? I know you've got to have known that that would have happened. So that's where, I'm, like, it felt even with the comment he made after the dinner or after Donna had that explosion, was like, what are you like, just sit there for a moment. It was weird. And just felt like, in that scenario, unhelpful.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yeah. And I got to feel like or got to think he just has so much anger at my at everyone, that it's like he's just, like, fed up, and it's not really clear why. I wonder if we'll learn why at some point, but then don't go.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yes. If he's in therapy with me, it'd be like, okay, this sounds really stressful and really hard for you, so what would it be like to not go? What would it be like to go to someone else's family holiday for that day or do something else? What would it be like to go for an hour?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yes, exactly. And I always will tell my patient, because usually the first thing they say is like, oh, my God, that'll be so hard. I can't do it. And I always say, well, it's going.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: To be hard either way.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: It's going to be hard to just go and follow the same old routines, same old patterns. Like, that's this version of hard. This other version of hard. Listening to your instincts, respecting your own limits, that'll be hard, too. Which hard do you want to choose? And do you want to try this new version and see how it right? But so hard.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So hard.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I know. Last time I said I hated Richie.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Oh, my gosh. I know. I was thinking about you.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I have totally flipped. Yes, of course love him. Like, I've totally flipped, and I love him. And I was so sad to see him so happy in this episode with Tiffany, that was Anderson. And I'm like, what happened? How did it break down?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: He's still so in love with Know, inviting her to the Taylor Swift concert. What's?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: The Taylor Swift song?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Oh, my God. I know. I was like, Is that love story?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: It can't be.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And then I was like, oh, my God, it is.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And he's just, like, jamming out.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And I was just like, this is so, like, everything about and I liked Richie season one, because I felt sorry for him. He wasn't doing things that I enjoyed, but I just felt really sorry for him. And this like, I was so proud of him. I got teary, like, a couple times.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: With was when he was at the fancy restaurant and really just stepped up. Was wearing his to be there.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: It's like he was finally seen, and not in this icky family dynamic where he's like, you know, they know how to do it. Exactly. He was seen as like, no, you're a person who matters and who has a place here, and you're important. Right. And we like you. Yes.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And he saw himself. He finally saw his own self worth. And I loved when he came back, and he just kept saying, I wear suits now.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I wear suits. Richie, you look like a million bucks.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I know.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So for the third person asks him, right? Like, what are you wearing a suit? What are you wearing a suit for? And then to someone, maybe it was FAK. He was like, Because I feel better about myself. And I was like, wow. Also, you're, like, identifying emotions. You're connecting with yourself. You know that this makes you feel better, and you're doing it. Wow.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And again, back with the uniform, the suit.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Like with Ibrahim, how he was so turned off by it. Now Richie's really embracing Chef coat.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: There's so much because wearing it's so funny that you say that. Just thought of it. He has like an orange T shirt on the opening night because know he's doing the but like, everyone else has the know that says or they have the really nice chef coat or they're wearing a really nice suit, which is so adorable. I love when Richie exactly is consoling him because he's scared. Because Richie is handling right. I don't know what that job is called. It seems like the most stressful job I've ever is that like a yes? Yeah. I've never worked in a restaurant where that's a thing.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yeah, you make sure all the plates I only know because my husband did this for a while. But you make sure all the plates are right. They look right. They get there. I don't know if that's expo or.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: If just like calling out these things.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And that girl, remember he was so impressed by her and everything. But yeah, Richie consoling FAK when he needed him in the front and back. It's just like you see the trickle down of Karmi believing in people trickling down. And it's just like beautiful. It's so beautiful. And I totally flipped on Richie.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah, I'm worried about him. And after we say this, we can kind of segue into Carme throughout the show. But I was like, oh, what's going to happen in season three after Carmen says all of those horrible things to Richie when Carme's in the walk in? Like, Richie seems okay because he keeps saying, well, I love you. Well, I love you. Well, I love you. As Carme is saying, like, you're a leech.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: F you.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: F you. I hate you. F you. Like, you have no one, your daughter, all these things. And Richie. Just saying. I love you.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I'm going to cry. But also beautiful because I feel like Richie has probably been in that place and said stuff like that to people when he's in so much pain to push them away. And he knows it's almost like Richie knows what Carmen he's doing.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: His head. He now is this like all of a sudden he's gone through a lot.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I feel like he can stand there and tolerate it because he knows that's not what he really means. He's trying to push me away. He needs to know I'm here. And it's like, how do you get there? How do you get there so fast?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: It was incredible.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Incredible.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I freaking love Richie. No words. Totally. I loved watching him, his moments. I definitely teared up that whole episode.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yes. Yeah. I just loved seeing him step into his power and believe in it.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: It was like a 35 minutes episode that was so incredibly done. Even that one, right? So we've been talking about Fishes forks from the beginning of the episode to the end. Even the imagery of him waking up earlier and earlier and earlier and getting up quicker and doing his hair, it was like those tiny little things was so good.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: This is so good. And it's just like, I want everyone to feel that pride. Right. And it's just like, if Richie can get there, anyone can get right. Like, I just feel like we learned a little bit about his backstory.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I don't know why they separated. That wasn't given.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Sure. I'm hopeful we'll find out.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Because they seem so happy. Again, I have to imagine Richie is kind of like a milder version of Donna, maybe, where you not in like I don't think he meets criteria for Bpd, but I think he self sabotages.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yes.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: So I could based on low self esteem exactly. And just being like, I wonder if he had Add that went undiagnosed as a kid and developed a lot of anxiety about that and just fell into like, well, I'm not good enough. I'm never going to achieve, so this is all I'm good for. And then when he gets close to having good things, sabotages it.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And some dad was in the army. I'm using a really generalized stereotype, but really maybe really strict, really demanding, dismissive, not loving. And again, maybe he was. But that's a trope. Yes.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: That is a you're moving a you know, attachments to friends and stuff are getting disrupted very often. So again, I think maybe he had security and stability with Tiffany, and then it was like too much. Yeah, he didn't deserve it or something like that. I kind of want them to get back together.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I know. Because you could tell he was over. And then she said, I love you. Right. Getting off the phone when she told him that she was engaged.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And she probably does love him, but.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Knows that she at least that version of Richie isn't good for her, which.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Is like I could see him having had a substance use problem. Maybe she went to Al Anon and started setting boundaries and had to say, can't do this. Oh, but I love him now.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: So basically, I totally flipped.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Well, I'm glad you did. I was thinking about you.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Oh, my God. When he's jamming out to Taylor Swift.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I was thinking about you were like, yeah, of course it is. It is the love god, Richie. Yeah. Notable. So Carmee carme has some big, interesting factoids about his past. We see the development with Claire. We see the ultimate breakdown at the just it was fascinating.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: It was so good. I'm glad we left him for the end, because there's so much to talk about. I just really want to give him a hug in that freezer. Yeah.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: First of all, you're, like, cold. So cold.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: You're so cold.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: They never showed that, you know what I mean? They didn't get, like, a shot. Oh, like the cold air coming out of the vent or whatever. So I wasn't even thinking it for a while. It's just like the chaos. He's missing the service. He's doing all this stuff. But imagine they're freezing.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: There's, like, ice everywhere. They're very cold. I was like, how long has he been in here? Is he going to get hypothermia? But before we get to him stuck in the freezer, tell me more about your reaction to him over the season and how we see his character developing and him falling in love.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So I thought it was really interesting, even just the little bits that we got. So learning that he had never been to a party ever, I was like, he seems really almost hyper focused, wise, gets into something. Right. He was in chef school. That's it. There was no partying. There was nothing. He became a little obsessive about it.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And it's like, do you think it's because he likes it, or was it his ticket out of dysfunction?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Either or both.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yeah, it's like, that's all he did.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Like, no girlfriends, no history. He's so kind of like one track minded. One track minded. Is that a coping skill? Right. So in order to not let the chaos in, even that clip, which I think was from season one, which we saw again in the freezer scene, when Joe McHale's, joel McHale role or boss chef, is just, like, dehumanizing him and saying these horrible things to him. It's like, how did he get through that? Did Mikey do that to him? Did Donna do that to him?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Oh, I'm sure Donna did that to him. I feel like he is a great example of an avoidant attachment. Like, knocked it on the head.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I think all along, Donna, I'm sure, talked to him the same way Joel McHale's character did, and he's, like, dissociated. He has maintained an emotional distance and avoidance to avoid so getting hurt.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yes.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And just focusing on your career again. But I think he's just wanting his mom's love and approval by getting the Michelin star. But then he will never get it because it's not about her.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: So he's just doomed, like the poor guy.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And he almost can't handle it. Having an emotional relationship with someone else. First of all, this is a wildly stressful time. Right. Like, he's opening a restaurant. There's so much pressure there's, so much.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Early, so much money.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: True. But I feel like he internalizes that and to be like, see, I can't do this. I can't see someone. Yes. It's bad things. Like, this is a wildly stressful time. You could have forgotten the fridge guy anyway, right. I think Claire is good for him.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I totally do. And I think of anyone who would understand how much work and commitment and time it's taking. It's a resident physician who's, like, living.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: At the hospital for their career.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I think of anyone who could understand it would be someone like her. I don't get the sense she was feeling, like, slighted or jealous or anything like that. Maybe because he had been making time for her, but I feel like she'd understand. I don't think he can imagine someone else, perhaps especially a woman, perhaps especially a romantic partner, could understand that he has his own needs, and that's okay, right? Because his mom has never, ever demonstrated that that was okay. So I don't think he knows how to do, like, even with friends or even with things like that. I don't think he knows how to do that. But I think he's capable of learning.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I think he's capable. I thought it was interesting, the scene with I think it was him and Sydney when she's asking him, like, well, how much do you love her? And he's like, well, I love her a lot. And she's like, okay, then you should be her boyfriend. You love her. Usually I don't know. Sometimes people date before love, right? No, you love her. You've also liked her for years, it seems like. So it seemed like almost one of the I would say more rare cases where it's like the guy is kind of not getting it. I think it's not because he is not that if he wanted to, he would. Right. I think he just has no awareness that you guys are dating and you love her and you should be together. It's like that never even crossed his mind that, oh, I should ask her out. He's like, how do I ask her out? Well, what does that look like? What does that mean? He has no idea.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: No idea. And I think he's so scared of that because even when they bump into each other, he gives her a fake number.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I love that she called him on it, like, multiple times. She was like, why did and finally he tells her, why did you give me a fake number?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yeah, that makes me a little nervous, because I think with someone like him, you need to go really slow and respect his boundaries, and that's going to be hard for him to open up. And so I just hope Claire could be patient with that and not intrusive, which I think would feel more like his mom. It broke my heart when she rushed to the freezer and heard everything he said, and then he heard her voicemail.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: But I really because the voicemail was.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: So like you even see in that scene, he throws the phone down.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: He can't take it.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: It's too much for him. That's what I mean, is I feel like you have to tread a little lighter. Like, it's getting really intense really fast, it seems like. Again, I feel like the timeline is.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Like, over several months, so it's not.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Like in a week. But for him, someone who's never had a relationship, never had friends or anything, it's going to feel like a lot. And so I just am really curious to see how that all plays out. But I feel like, yeah, he just doesn't know how to. Have relationships because they've been so hurtful in the past.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And I don't think he would looking maybe to season three. I think he would need a lot of pushing, which could be good or bad, to apologize to her. Richie, they initiated that fight in the cooler because he's like, what did you do? Like, you finally had something good.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And he kept saying to him, like, you can have something like you're you deserve good. You can have good. And I feel like Carme couldn't even hear that. So he rages against him, and hugely. But that's what he has. That was such a good character.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Back to the fishes episode. Or to Donna specifically.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: But Richie doesn't leave. I know. Richie stays and keeps saying, I love you.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I know. Oh, my God, I'm going to cry.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I know.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I could cry.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I know.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: It's been a long week. I'm a little overtired, so the emotions are free.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: But it's also so beautiful, though, because he's in so much pain. He's so stressed out. You can tell Carmen is just beating himself up.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Oh, my it's a self loathing.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: So huge. And Richie's just like, dude, we got it. We love you.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And they do.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: They have it because of him. He has instilled this confidence in them that is so beautiful, and I just want him to be able to find that for himself and find some balance, and I just really want that for him.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: The little bit lighter moment in that final episode I was just laughing at was when one of the chefs is out there doing math. Oh, my know.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And Marcus is like, I think I.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Have to fire you. Yeah, I'm going to go ask. And then he's talking, and they kind of repair him. And Sydney, in that moment, he's like, I know things are weird, but this is happening. And she's like, that's wild. He's like, I know. I literally said that's wild. And then she's like, yeah, I think you let him go. And it's just such a funny moment. They're like, yeah, right. Yeah, we should fire him. And then there's like, chef, whatever's, 86. And then they're like, yes, chef. Moving on.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: All the guest chefs. I love that Sydney's dad would say, good job, Chef. It's just so nice. I also love that the one doing the meth was like, what?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Over? Yeah, but maybe not in other restaurants that he's worked in, right? We also saw some talk. I was just kind of, like, thinking that we had mentioned, I think talking about the class of drugs with Ambien included. So when Carmen and Claire are at the party in an earlier episode, and that one guy who ends up getting arrested is like, yeah, I do a lot of ambient and steal self.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Again, there is documented cases. Like, there's, like, peer reviewed scientific literature about ambient induced parasomnias that means, like, sleepwalking stuff. Like, when you're moving and doing stuff in your sleep so you don't realize you're doing it. Like eating, having sex. I think there have been some cases of assault.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: What reminded me of the movie name that we talked about this? Side Effects. Side effects? Yes. We talk about more about that in Side Effects. Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: So go check out that episode. Well, Portia, anything to wrap up this episode?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: No. I can't believe I was sleeping on the show. I already said this for season one, but this was probably the best show season for me in 2023. I loved it.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I did too.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I would say a close second for me was you, the part one and part two, I think season four, just because I really liked that show.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: But in succession.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Wow. This one takes the cake.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I found myself saying, is this the greatest show of all time? Is this my favorite show?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: There's something about and this is a compliment. There's something about Italian families on TV. Sopranos. Sopranos. There's food, there's accent. And it just makes for excellent television. Excellent.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And like, a lot of the men are handsome, so it doesn't hurt. Yeah. All right, well, thanks for listening to this awesome episode. We cannot wait for season three to come out whenever it does with all the strikes, and we hope you catch us next time. Follow us on Analyze scripts. Podcast on Instagram and TikTok. And please, please, if you're listening, enjoying our content. The best way to support us is to rate, review, subscribe and share with your friends. All right, see you next Monday.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Bye.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: This podcast and its contents are a copyright of analyzed scripts. All rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited. Unless you want to share it with your friends and rate, review and subscribe, that's fine. All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: You don't.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. In this episode, we comment on the block buster hit featuring the iconic Taylor Swift in her most recent tour. As we go through the Eras we comment on why the movie was so emotional for us and others. Seeing women, and some men, of all ages singing, smiling and dancing together was magic. Listen to us analyze some of her songs from the tour such as "Anti-Hero" and "All Too Well" (the 10 minute version) as she describes such common feelings and emotions that Swifties of all ages relate to. Her lyrics transcend generations and bring us all together at a time when we could all use a little "Peace." We hope you enjoy!
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fieri, a psychiatrist.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Where two shrinks analyze the depiction of.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Mental health in movies and TV shows.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: There is so much misinformation out there, and it drives us nuts.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: With a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And your DSM Five and enjoy.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Welcome.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: We're so excited today. This is our first video, so hopefully it's not like a garbage can dumpster fire, but we'll see.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yeah, we're really excited to be I think Portia, like, our tech has come a really long way in just when did we start recording? I think. Was it January or February?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I want to say end of January.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: End of January. So, like, less than a year. And, like, look at us go.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I've got the lighting, some props. You have some props that may be giving hints today about what we're going to be talking about.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Some paraphernalia here.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Look at that.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Very excited. I'm going to let you intro it because I know you are such a swiftie.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah. So today we're going to be talking about the era's tour movie, which we thought would be just such a cool idea. So typically. Right. We're talking about, like, fiction, movies, TV shows, stuff like that. But we had to cover the Era's tour movie about the tour. Neither of us have seen the tour yet. I think it was a lot, and neither of us had the foresight to see that. You had to log in right, like, the second and buy the tickets because you couldn't afford them if you wanted to buy them after the fact.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yeah. I don't think we should be super hard on ourselves because I think it was impossible for almost anyone to get a ticket.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I do think this was a really nice way for everyone to get to see it who hasn't been able to go. And I kind of enjoyed it. I kind of enjoyed this way.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: It was incredible.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yeah, I told you. I think we should just start there.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I felt like I had a religious conversion, honestly. I was like, whoa.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So tell me about when you went.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Have you seen it more than one time?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I've seen it twice. I saw it the first time with my husband. We went on a very busy weekend. It was my sister in law's wedding. I officiated the wedding. So there was, like, event dinner, breakfast, whatever. And then that night, it was like, we're going to the Arrows tour movie. I don't care how tired you are. I don't care that it's Sunday night. Like, we're going. So I saw it with him, and it was amazing. And I do have a little story to tell tickets, like, when it came out. And so it said that the Era's tour would be only showing in AMC movie theaters. Right? I remember I searched AMC in the movie theaters when I got in, right? It was like, you're in the waiting room. I was like, oh, my gosh, I'm getting tickets. This feels amazing. And so I bought them kind of far away because we have movie theaters closer to us, but they're not the AMC ones are not.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Right?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So I bought two sets of tickets. So I had four tickets, like two different nights. And I did not go to either of those. I didn't end up selling them. I just last minute bought closer tickets. That's like a difference of like an hour, ten minutes.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yeah, it was a cost benefit analysis.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Return the tickets. I have to say that's annoying that there were no refunds.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I know. Because I think someone else would have liked them. Like, they were early the weekend they came out. So I don't know. I just couldn't be bothered again. It was really stressful. So I've bought ticket sets to four, and I've gone to two and they've all passed. So it's not like I could do anything about that. But my husband was, like, laughing by the time because he was like, we spent really a fraction of what the.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Real yes, that's the thing. I bought two sets, and then I did end up selling one of them. I was able to resale them for like $5 less than I bought them for. But I knew someone would be able to buy them because I went with my daughter who's about to turn five. I can't believe it, but she has become a little swifty, like, in the past six months. It started over the summer when she was at camp. I picked her up from camp and she was like, mom, do you know who Taylor Swift is? And I was, you know and then whenever we'd hear a song on the radio, she'd be like, this is Taylor Swift. And I was like, yeah, it's so cute the way she says her know, just in her little girl voice. And then one day I picked her up and a counselor, I think, had shown them some sort of video, whether it was a concert video, music video, but she was so cute. She got in the car and she was like, mom, I saw Taylor Swift today. And she was dancing, and she had microphone and she was singing. She had never crossed her mind that you could do all those things. And in my head, I was like and she plays instruments. Like, wait till you see. Um, and so then she's really gotten into Taylor Swift. And it's so funny because she only knows her new songs, like the karma one, she know. But if like, Love Story comes on the radio and I'm like, oh, this is Taylor Swift, she's like, no, it's not. What are you talking about? But anyway, so I took her and we had like a little Halloween event at their school beforehand. So she was like in her Halloween costume. It was just me and her, and it was like the time of my life. It was so great. She had so much fun. We got the popcorn and was just it was so cool because I felt like I'm there with my daughter, but then we're surrounded by all these women. It reminded me of when we went to see Barbie, how it was just experience and a very female experience. So there were other moms with their older daughters, like tween teens. Then there were like teenagers, early 20s, who were there by themselves, but as a group, all dressed up. There were all these friendship bracelets. A girl gave my daughter a friendship bracelet, which was that's so sweet, cute. And my daughter kept wanting to get up and go dance with the big girls. So then we'd go, like, in the back where all the older girls are dancing, and they all were, like, filming themselves, I guess, for their social media, but it was just so pure and adorable and sweet and it was just so fun. I had so much fun with her, and I was impressed. There were times where she was getting like she wanted to go during the slower sets, but then luckily it would pick up. It was like 1989, and then we would get back into it. But it was just so fun. It was so fun.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah. So when I went, I got a lot, like, teary eyed multiple times because there's definitely people of all ages, right? Like the little kiddos I didn't see, like well, actually, the second time I went, there was really young ones there, probably around your daughter's age and then older, right? So like forty s, fifty s, teens my age, whatever. And women of every age were there singing everything, laughing and just like, loving life, and it was just like so beautiful. So the first time I saw it was definitely more hyped, right? Like, people were singing and dancing and that was great and awesome. And then the second time I saw it, I went with my friend and we were sitting in between this group of women who are in their sixty s and seventy s, and it was like quieter, and I really appreciated that because then the slow songs I just was like weeping during and they were so into it. I forget which one it was. I think it was the song. It was after All Too Well, and then one of the more sexy ones, they were like, Whoa. Like screaming and clapping, and I was like, wow, okay.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I know, I just thought also in the movie. Taylor is having so much fun. You can just tell she is just like loving what she's doing. And I was like, if only we could all feel that way with our I just it was so cool to see her loving it so much. And I just thought it was so cool to I like how she didn't do it chronologically. It seemed like it wasn't chronological right. In terms of which era she was doing. It wasn't like we're going to start at the beginning and go till the present. And I liked that because you got to see all these different eras of her life and just see how she's grown up but in this mishmashed way, right? From love story to the sexy chairs to the man to everything. It was so cool. And the dancing was great. I loved the diversity of her dancers from body type, gender, race, skin color, everything. It was awesome. And that she just highlighted them all. I loved all of the intense walking with all of it. I was like, I want to walk.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I Know.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: What if you imagine you come out to get your patient? Never. But it reminded me back of our dancing days with doing like jazz walk off the floor. I just missed that walk.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Her Shoes. I love shoes. So they're all custom louboutins red bottoms. The boots, I was like, oh, the pink ones, the blue ones, the midnight blue ones. They were stunning. And I wanted to know and then she had loafers that were louboutins and like a new shoe leather. Right. Nice. They typically hurt. Obviously hers were broken in. Obviously they were like and obviously shelted.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Like butter, I'd imagine.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Right form to her foot. And I was like, how can I get a pair? Obviously not one that she wore, because that would be insanely expensive. But I just want one of them so badly. And we'll see.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: We'll See. If anyone else has a hookup, let us know.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah. So the eras were in order of. We started with Lover and then there was Fearless evermore Reputation. Speak now. Red Folklore, 1989. Then the acoustic set, which we got in the movie. You're on your own, kid. And then our song. And then ended with midnights. What did you think about the order? You said that you liked that it wasn't right. Like from debut on?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I did. Because I think I like that they could intersperse the slower sets and then the hits and then some slower stuff. And I think since I haven't historically been, like, a grade A swifty, I just like her music. But I'm not out there. There would be these songs that I hadn't heard before. I'm ashamed to admit maybe, but I was like, oh, that's lavender haze. Or hearing the songs or the albums that maybe I didn't listen to. And then the hits would come next. Or, like, the more upbeat songs, I guess.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: So I liked it. But what about you?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I really loved it. I think it helped me find more songs that I have been really liking of hers. I really like Midnight's a lot. I think I knew her debut album, right? Like the classic, like, our song, her Country More album. And then I don't think I was really in it for fearless and speak now. So I kind of bopped back in after those two. And then I ended up seeing which was, yeah, I knew Red because that was when I turned 22. So that was very fitting. Taylor is one year older than me, so talking about why people feel so close with her is that she's been making music forever. And it's always been luckily for me, which I feel like is a gift. So on brand for what I'm going through and high school. Right. Like, growing up, love, heartbreak into more now. I think some of the slow songs, like, are adult. Yes. They don't have to be, but just some of the feelings and experiences are so fitting now that it's just like.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: But even though from the beginning, I feel like they were so fitting. Right. So she said it spans 17 years, which is astounding. Right? And so she was like 15 writing this stuff. And I was hoping we would touch on this because I think clearly her music and just like, her as a person resonates with the masses internationally. Right. And I find that really fascinating because on the one hand, just stereotypically, she is a privileged, skinny, white blonde girl who's pretty. Right. So on one hand, I feel like we could all really hate her. Right?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I think people do, but not I.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: But do you know what I mean? On the one hand, she kind of was very blessed coming from a supportive family that had a lot of money, who could afford to chase her dreams with her, could afford to move to Nashville, all of that stuff. I feel like you could argue, like, she's starting off with a huge privilege in that way. I don't think you can say that. That's not true. And even if you go back to her early songs, the songwriting and the emotion behind it is amazing. And I really feel like she's like a savant in terms of music and songwriting in particular. And even the way she sings the songs, like the inflections in her voice when she's singing versus kind of talking, the tone of her voice, the way she delivers it. For me, I think it's like all of that together that resonates with everyone. And I just think, what a gift. I think it started all the way back with Wasn't Teardrops on My Guitar her song?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: All the way back with that. To our song to Love story. Like the early ones. They speak to you. Right. And I spend so much of my professional life helping adults find words to describe their feelings. That, to me, it's, like, amazing that a 1415 year old could capture that in a beautiful way. Not just, like, acoustically beautiful, but the words she's saying and the message conveying. Right. It's astounding. And then I think just seeing this movie tour and you see her evolution and how her songwriting all the way to the presenting has gotten so much more complex and evolved and gritty. It's amazing. I'm so amazed.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah. I think her lyrics are just, like, why she's so amazing and well liked and well received. Because I think everyone has experienced everything that she talks about. But the way that she describes it is so it makes you feel, like, seen, I guess I'd say, right? It makes it really resonate with you. It makes it feel like there are words for it. It's like, even if it wasn't a football player, it's still someone in high school who didn't like you back when you really liked.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I think it's so funny to me that it's like, she is the it girl now. So the fact that this It girl, even back then, skinny, pretty, blonde, rich girl, felt like an outsider, it's just interesting. But I think it speaks to, like, we all feel like that no matter what no matter what your background is, no matter what you look like, no matter what privilege you have or you don't, we all feel like that at different times and right. I think she just really speaks to it. And she grew up speaking to her reputation. I love the Reputation album. I love 1989. But those grittier songs about her reputation or about how she handles the scrutiny, oh, my God, so good. And then it's so catchy. Right? It's not just like, the lyrics are great. They just get in your head. Like, it's so catchy. You can't I know. It's amazing.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah. It's hard to get some of them out. I'm not a fan of shake it off. Yeah. It's just not where I am right now. I'm more like Folklore Evermore, some midnights vibe. And I liked Shake It Off when it came out, but it's like a lot of people were like, oh, there's like, other songs from that album that you could have put on there that are better. I think Shake It Off, though, is like a radio hit, right? It's, like, fun to dance to. Everybody likes it. It's so catchy to the point where it's like, can I shake off shake It Off?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I was sad that Wildest Dreams wasn't in there. I love that one.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I know, because it was in the tour.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Right? I think there were a couple that were in the tour but didn't make the movie. And I'm sure they have to cut out at some point.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah. I really wanted to hear The Archer, so when I went, I was, like, elbowing my husband, being like, okay, this is next. This is next. This is next. And I was like, oh, the Archer is next. And it didn't happen. What?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: You knew the order of the songs going in.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah, because it's the same as the tour.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Okay.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And I watched a lot of Lives live streams, and then I have the playlist on my phone, so it didn't come on. And I was like, am I missing something? Like? What was the archer in Lover? Am I totally off? Is it 1980? No, it's not 1989.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Blah, blah.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So it was like the Archer cardigan. Wildest dreams. And then no body, no crime. I don't love no body, no crime. But I was really disappointed about the Archer cardigan and Wildest Dreams, like, bombed.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yeah, no, I think a lot of people were, but I think at some point they have to cut some. Like it's already super long.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: So.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Just also giving her some props. So top grossing music concert film ever already. Followed by Justin Bieber with his Never say never one. And then Michael Jackson. This is it. And then Hannah Montana Best of Both Worlds, which I thought was, like, so funny. I loved Hannah Montana, definitely didn't see it. But it was also a little yeah, but I'm curious to see how Beyonce's tour does Renaissance.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: That's awesome.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I think it's coming. We know it's coming out. Yeah. So she's going to do a movie, another opportunity, which I think is so great for people to be able to see their favorite artists without spending hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: So I appreciate it. For Taylor Swift, like, literally thousands, let alone, like, airfare hotel. And you think there's probably a lot of people out there who maybe just even physically can't get know. And so it is really cool way. I also think it's so cool that this year I feel like it's been like women at the box office. We had like, Barbie and now we have Taylor Swift. And I was reading something that know, they released it independently, not with a major studio. And just this is another thing I love about Taylor Swift is she clearly is. So like, on the one hand, I'm like, what does it feel like to be that powerful? On the other hand, I'm too scared to know. But she's so powerful and she uses it in, I think, some smart ways like this, like releasing it without a studio backing her. At a time when all the strikes are happening and there's so much tension between the studio execs and the creatives, it's just like sort of showing them we don't really need you if our content is good enough. And I just feel like that's kind of smart. And I feel like we know movie theaters and stuff have been so struggling for a long time, and especially since COVID So it's just like injecting a lot of into that sphere. It's just like stuff like that I find really interesting. And I think some of her, I'd say, like, in the past decade. Some of her songs I'm specifically thinking of. You need to calm down. I love that song. But her lyrics that are just very shade, never made anybody less gay. You've just said so much. It's just so smart. And I think she's been more political in the past few years. And it's just like, what a way of using your power. Right?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And we saw that with Antihero, too, right. So antihero is like, right? The radio hit of midnight. And it's just, like, all about mental health. So in case this is your first episode, we are two mental health professionals who typically talk about movies, diagnosing TV characters and talking about mental health themes that we see. But we thought it'd be fun to take a little bit of a detour with this and talk about just, like, her impact on mental health. There's a lot of articles that came out after the Eris tour tour started. One of them I tried to find, but it's like behind a paywall new York Times, the psychologist or psychiatrist was talking about the week and just hearing constantly about Taylor Swift, about the lyrics, about what's going on with her and just how that's impacted our sessions and the yeah, it's amazing, right?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And I think, like you're saying, Portia, she speaks to entire not even just one generation, not even, like, the generation she belongs to, but like, you're saying you see older women there, you see very young. Like, my daughter hasn't been in love yet, except, like, with me, of course, but she doesn't relate to all these words yet. But there's something about her she relates to already. Right. And to me, that's fascinating. And I think sitting there in the movie with her, seeing these other young girls, seeing older mothers there with their daughters, then being at this phase of my life, I just felt very connected to all different phases of my life. And I feel like that's what brought me to tears. That was overwhelming. And I felt like that at Barbie, too, when we went just seeing all the moms and daughters and stuff like like, you just feel connected. And I think that she just does that for the masses somehow.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I know, and I think it's got to come back to her presence. I think she's very relatable and even some of the stuff on the level of the stage that she is so privileged within, right? Like celebrity culture, artists, et cetera. It's like right. We can all remember some of the not so nice things that happened to her. Very Kanye, you know? Then her albums with Scooter Braun. And it's just like it's so interesting watching someone again who does have a lot of power and privilege be able to do something about it. And I think sometimes we don't have that ability. And that feels really bad, which, of course, it does, but for her, to be able to be such a model of resilience, trying to own your power and use your resources where you can I don't know, just, like, own your stuff is so empowering.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I 100% agree. And I think with all of her privilege also comes this huge level of scrutiny and criticism, which I don't think any of us can imagine what that's really like to live through. And for her to have navigated that from the age of, like, 1415 to now as a woman. Right. I think the man really speaks to that in a fun, cheeky, catchy way, but really speaks to it. And it's been really fascinating to watch her evolution as she has tried to manage all that scrutiny. And I think we got some insight into her own sort of mental health struggles, which I don't think we need to fully get into. But with that documentary that came out during COVID what was it? Miss Americana? But it was to see that it does get to her and it's like, well, duh. Of course it does. It would get to any of us. Even that makes her relatable. But even just like, the way she talked about it in that documentary wasn't like it didn't, to me, at least, feel like attention seeking. It seemed more like, this isn't stuff she talks about a lot. She doesn't really want to talk about it, but she's putting enough out there and with antihero and stuff like that to sort of say, I'm going through this. This is how I cope with it. And I think that helps make her relatable. But then to see her still shine and bounce back or rebound or grow from it and make art from it and express herself in a way that connects with the masses again, I think is really inspiring. And I think not everyone can do that. Not everyone would be able to get back up after all of that. Heavy, heavy.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So I was listening to a podcast with, you know, that I really enjoy him and his book, but Josh Peck has a podcast, and he had, like, open invite.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Josh Peck?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah. So they had the guest, Taylor Lautner, on their podcast, know, We Know, dated many years ago. Ironically, he did marry a So Now, which I just think is so hilarious. But anyway, he was talking about Know from them then and just saying how they kind of reconnected because he was in one of her more recent music videos and she's just so nice and hardworking and creative. And now, a couple of days later, Travis, Kelsey's dad, was interviewed about her and just talking about how she was cleaning up trash in this week. And it feels which everyone is saying, right, and I believe, but, like, really authentic. It's not performative. It's not like, oh, I'm putting on this act where I'm so nice. It's just like, she doesn't have that diva mentality, even though she should. Right. It's like she's the number one pop star ever and is so popular and could get away with it. Right. But it's like she's so grounded. And I think taking time off and really not being in the public eye at certain times, maybe in response to some difficult things, has really helped that. And even just thinking, like, I can't imagine what it would be like to be someone of her levels, like therapists. Right. I don't know if she has one. I'm not saying she does, but I can't imagine.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: But I would imagine she does. Or she has at some points, I would hope. Or maybe her parents are just like, astoundingly amazing, like amazing supports. She's had some level of support to help, I think, keep her grounded. And I totally agree. I think she does have a reputation of being nice. And I think you just see that. You just feel it from her. And I agree, it doesn't feel, performative or put on. And then there was an article that came out a while back just saying she gave all of her tour drivers like $100,000 bonus. I feel like she just does stuff like this. And I was like going down a reddit rabbit hole in preparation for this episode and just seeing what do people think of her? Because I'm sure there are people who hate her. I'm sure she's been rude to someone at some point in her life because she's human and we all have, but I think in general, she seems just very nice. And even the stuff with Sophie Turner lately, how she was going through a hard time and all of a sudden Taylor's with her and she kind of swoops in. I feel like for her friends at Important, and maybe there is a bit of it that's for publicity, but I think that's an example of her using her power for what she feels like is right or good or things like that. Right. And I feel like, sure, there's probably been some caddiness in the past, I would imagine. I don't know. But I get that sense that she's just like, nice.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah, I think so.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And I think that it's like, how does that happen? How did you not become a raging narcissist? Right. In our succession episodes, we talked a lot about, well, when you live in that environment, how could you not be? Right? And it's like, how could she not be? But somehow she's remained grounded. It really seems like again, I have no idea. I could be totally off. I haven't.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: It's just that like, phenomenon, right? When everyone is doing something for you all the time and everyone is so happy to what do you need? Or what do you want? Or, you're so amazing. And that's in your ear, it's like people who run in those circles, whether it's just from wealth or it's from fame that changes you, that becomes right. So I think. It's really interesting that that's not ever the case of what we see the public ever. It's like so many artists or celebrities, right. It's like they were rude to a person at a restaurant or she has, which she should. And I think it's similar with the Kardashians, like really good NDAs right. Nothing's getting through, even though there's some pictures lately. But she just seems like she has a really strong support system, which I would know kind of as just a general way to judge it to Britney Spears. Right. So it's like Taylor Swift appears to us to have this strong secure support system where it's like I think her dad people have talked about is into finance. So he did really well with putting her money in places and looking out for her. Exactly. And then we see someone who did not appear to have a good, strong support system to protect around her. And it's know that's not as simple as it is, but it's like that's a good example. Know just the differences or what I would imagine Taylor Swift has and how important it is.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Right. And I think Taylor Swift is an individual person, but she's also like a machine, right? Like it isn't just a know, like she's got her in house management, which again is like smart. I think she's learned to keep it all in house, is what it seems like. We should take a page from her book as our podcast obviously grows to be wildly successful.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So let's go through if you want to. I thought it'd be fun to just go through like the antihero lyrics. Oh my God.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Because there's one line that's my favorite lyric, perhaps, of all time. I bet you can guess what it is.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I can. It's coming up. I think it's like the third verse. Okay. So it starts with I have this thing where I get older but just never wiser. Midnights become my afternoons when my depression works. The graveyard shift. All the people I've ghosted stand there in the room.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Everyone just shut the door, just stop. Like amazing. And also spot on for clinical depression. It affects your sleep cycles. You tend to be up in the middle of the night. You have what we call like a delayed sleep cycle. So you fall asleep way later, and then you have a harder time waking up in the morning hearing that. I'm like, she has experienced depression. That's what it feels like.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And I think it's really funny because when you are experiencing depression, you often are not responding to people. And I have a lot of clients who there's a lot of anxiety about their text or their imessage, their Snapchats growing. And now it's like 100 or 40 or whatever and just being paralyzed with not being able to respond. And that can feel right, even if it's not intentional. Like you're ghosting your friends. So all the people I've ghosted stand there in the room. Right. Like, staring at me, like, all the pressure to respond.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: It's just like, yes, 100% kiss social isolation 100%. And also it speaks to maybe how self critical you can feel when you're clinically depressed episode. Or maybe even some people are just way more critical of themselves. We call that having a critical superego. But it kind of speaks to that too. Like, maybe these people aren't really thinking about her, but she is feeling all this guilt for not getting to them.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Absolutely. All right, so the next couple of lines are, I should not be left to my own devices. They come with prices and vices. I end up in crisis pale as all this time I wake up screaming from dreaming. One day I'll watch as you're leaving because you got tired of my scheming.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: For the last time.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So what do you think that's about? If I'm taking it really directly, I wake up screaming from dreaming. So maybe having some nightmares, like anxiety dreams about what you're doing.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Go ahead.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Some just like, lack of maybe confidence.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Right.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Like, I should not be left to my own devices. I think a lot of people who experience mental health challenges, there's separate ones that you are overly confident or inappropriately confident, but the majority of the other ones we see more typically, there's like a big confidence hit.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yeah. And I think it speaks to when you're feeling more depressed or anxious, it's common in human nature to use unhealthy coping strategies like everything from overeating to not exercising to using substances to maybe something like self harming behaviors. I think it kind of speaks to being stuck in the muck of depression, maybe, and feeling like you can't get yourself out. And also that wondering if the person you love will still be there for you or if this is going to push them away.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I know that's good. That's a good analysis.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And then we come to the chorus. So it's me. Hi, I'm the problem. It's me at tea time everybody agrees I'll stare directly at the sun, but never in the mirror. It must be exhausting. Always rooting for the antihero.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Can she get a Pulitzer Prize, please? Like, this is astounding. This still isn't my favorite line. You know it's coming up.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: You know which one it is? I do. So I'll stare directly at the sun, but never in the mirror I think is so good with, like, you'll hurt yourself, you'll blind yourself, you'll cause pain or whatever, but you won't kind of look at what's really maybe happening about you, the self awareness to get that insight.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And it's like it is so hard to look at yourself, your true self, and own up to or acknowledge the parts of ourselves that we don't like or that we want to change or that we know are getting in our own way so hard. And it just really speaks to that. And that's even harder when you're in the throes of depression or even just like stress. Even if it's not like a clinical mental health issue. Even just like being overwhelmed with stress. Oh my God. Totally. That might be my second favorite line.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So then we come to the part that everybody was like, what does that mean? Sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby and I'm a monster on the hill. Too big to hang out, slowly lurching towards your favorite city, pierced through the heart but never killed. So to me that feels like a little bit of her talking about body image. Right. So everybody's sexy and attractive and I'm this monster on the hill. So I'm this clumsy, lurching, uncomfortable in my body. I don't know how to move it. I feel detached from it, which is pretty common if you're having any type of body image issues, which she's talked about having and then pierce through the heart.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I was just going to say this was the one in the movie right. Where on the screen was like a giant tailor lurking around right. And kind of like an awkwardness and I feel like her awkwardness as beautiful and tall and blonde and skinny that she is, she still has this awkwardness that I think makes her relatable that people latch on to, but I imagine for her has been uncomfortable.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Well, she's tall. I know a lot of people tall women have a hard time being tall. Like it's just with partners, with clothing.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: 100%. I'm sure she has faced so much scrutiny in the media about her body and her changing body from teenagerhood to now. Right. Even watching her dancing, like in the movie, there were parts where she was a little awkward, but I liked know and I think people like it, but I would imagine for like when you are up against Britney Spears or other well, you might feel a certain way. So I totally that can speak to that.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: She's definitely a lyricist and know she's not a dancer. I think she does a great job, but that's why she has amazing dancers.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Right.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So here we go. Yeah. Did you hear my covert narcissism? I disguise as altruism, like some kind of congressman.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: That's it. It's my favorite line.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So we talk a lot about narcissists.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yes, they're I think just like everywhere in America culture, period, but a lot on our screens in terms of TV shows and movies. But holy can I say holy ****. Holy ****. First of all, covert narcissism is such a high level concept. I feel like the average person wouldn't understand. And that is just spot on that a lot of times people who are really altruistic, but in a way that you're putting it out there for everyone to see, that's where it's coming from. Oh my God. Every time I hear that line, I'm floored. And I love that the masses are consuming this because maybe somewhere in there. There's a kernel that makes you think or makes you wonder, like, what is that? Maybe you look into it a little more. Right, right.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And then her comparing it to some kind of congressman. I think it's common knowledge. I don't think it's like a hot take to say that most politicians are Narcissists. I think you have to be, in a way, to believe that you should be a leader of the masses, even if you're a great leader or you're a bad leader. But then I think we've talked about, too, that's where you see the differences between covert and overt Narcissists. We could give examples, but we're not going to because we don't talk about real people or make judgments.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yeah, but listen to our old episodes about succession, about even the Nightmare Before Christmas. We touch on this with the mayor. We've touched on it a lot. Our stuff about you. We've touched on Narcissism a lot. And I think I think of Narcissism much like I think of a lot of different things, especially in regards to personality development, as being a spectrum. And there is like, we all need a healthy amount of Narcissism to be self confident, to put yourself out there, to advocate for yourself. It's like the people who don't have enough of it are often the ones who, like, people please too much, get walked all over, don't put themselves up for the promotion. Right. You need a healthy amount of it, and then you need to have a healthy amount of empathy to be able to keep it in check. And it's when it's all the way to the side where you don't have any empathy, where it becomes, like, a real issue in your relationships. Oh, my gosh. And, yeah, there are certain fields, like politicians, I think any field where you're a leader in some way, there might be a higher percentage of people with these.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah. We katrina loves talking about Narcissism, so if you have an interest in that fairly so the last verses or little dribble of words is just about her saying, right? Like, my daughter in law kills me for the money, which I think speaks to her storytelling, or just like, who knows? I'm making a huge assumption here, but I don't know if I was her I think there's all these people who might be out to get you, right? Like, take advantage. I don't think it's real paranoia. Right. We've talked about this before, too, with succession, and just like, people are out to use you for whatever, for clout, for money, for any kind of gain, and that's really why. Right. She seems to have such a secure network where it feels like it's balanced, right? Like, people are getting paid well to work for her, and that builds trust. And she has a lot of long term relationships. She has Tree, who's I think her publicist, who she's had for decades, and that I think just speaks to people are really rooting for you.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I think that also just speaks to her character that despite being patapulted into fame and everything she's gone through, if there are these people that have been there for a long time and she can maintain those relationships, I think that speaks to her character. Getting back to her grounded, humble nature. I just think that's a good point.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah. So the one other thing that I wanted to cover is kind of the idea of gaslighting. So in the all too well ten minute version, which was just literally a religious experience to watch, this is where.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I was like, I need to watch this ten minute music video. I haven't watched it yet. I hadn't watched it before, but I was like, up googling on Wikipedia on Reddit, trying to figure out what is up with this red scarf?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: What did you find?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Found a lot of stuff about maybe it was about a relationship with an older man that was short lived. Maybe it involved, like, her virginity and stuff. And I was just like I had a lot of feelings about it.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah. So obviously there's iconic lines in this, like, f the patriarchy. And then one of the lines, which is like, as I get older, your lovers stay my or as you get older, your lovers stay my age.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And that was like, after apparently he broke up with her because you're too young, kind of thing.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah, I heard a lot about and I just do in general, a lot of people will throw around the word gaslighting, like, oh, he was gaslighting me, or they were gaslighting me, or blah, blah, blah, blah.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And I think that this song why.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: It resonates, at least for me, and I think some others have said this, too, is because at the end of the song, when she says and she repeats this over and over again, wind in my hair, I was there, I was there. Down the stairs, I was there, I was there. Sacred prayer, I was there, I was there. It was rare. You remember it. And I think that's just such a good example of how and in the music video, which is so good, with Sadie Sink and Dylan O'Brien, who are kind of like acting it out, you see Dylan O'Brien's character, like, gaslighting sink, like, kind of over and over and over again with like, what do you mean? And know the reactions of, well, I can't believe you said about my friends versus no, I'm telling you, why did you drop my hand? And so Dr. Romani, she's like a psychologist. She does a lot of interviews on TV. She was on the red table, like, a while ago, and she talked about the difference between lying and gaslighting, which I thought was really helpful. And I use right, like, so if you give a liar evidence, they will stop lying. So if you Katrina and this is the example she uses, were, like, telling me that you didn't go to this party, and I find a picture of you at the party. I'm like, oh, Katrina, but you were at the party and you were oh, like, yeah, you're right.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I'm sorry.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I didn't want to hurt your feelings because you weren't invited. I'm sorry you found the evidence. Or you could be embarrassed. You could have whatever reaction. But a person who's gaslighting you will double down and be like, I can't believe you would find a picture that's so crazy you would go to all these lengths to do this. So now it's about your mental health, right? You're crazy. And I just love that example of it. And then you're saying, I was there, I was there, over and over again. It's like no, I was there. I remember it all too well, is just so powerful. And the way she repeats it, it's like she's singing it to herself. Is she singing it to me?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Because when you are being gas lit and again, I hate to bring it back to narcissism, but very common psychological abuse technique of people with narcissistic personality traits is gaslighting, which what we mean by that is like, when you are confronting someone with these traits with a reality saying, like, hey, you hurt me. You did something wrong. You're confronting them about something they've done wrong. They can't tolerate it because people with these traits can't hold on to good and bad simultaneously, especially about themselves. They have such a deep sense of insecurity and feelings of worthlessness and nothingness that they can't hold on to it. They have to project it outward and put you down so they stay feeling up here and good about themselves. Some people do this in an overt way, like the grandiose kind of way. Other people more covert. And we have other episodes where we can get into that more. But with gaslighting, when you confront them with something like this, they can't tolerate it. So I have to flip it around and make you the bad guy. Sort of make you start to doubt your own sense of reality and make it seem like, well, did I remember that correctly? Or did I do something to provoke that behavior in them? And that's what you're talking about, and it really is crazy making. It makes you feel really confused. So I think when she keeps repeating to herself, I was there, I was there, it is like her reminding herself, like, no, I was there, and her sort of coming back to her sense of self and reality over and over, which happens when you're in a relationship with someone who's doing this to you. Whether it's romantic, your boss, a parent, like 100%. It's so challenging to recognize and so hard to explain.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah, I think it's a feeling I wish we could bottle the feeling of it because I think it's such a not necessarily. It shouldn't be such a common experience with one person, because if it is, then they're probably most likely a narcissist. But we've all kind of experienced. Someone gaslighting us and it's a feeling, it doesn't feel good, it takes us aback, and then right, it puts all the attention back on you and you feel right. So I don't know. Taylor Swift, her lyricism is amazing.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I think in general, like you just said, at Best Portrait, she bottles feelings, really complex feelings and emotions and life experiences. She can just bottle up and deliver in a catchy way.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: That's the power of it.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Oh, my God, it's just amazing.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Well, as we wrap up, we could spend hours and going through many songs. Maybe we will do a couple of songs here and there. I don't know, maybe we'll get a.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Patreon someday and we can just go.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Through some of them because there's a lot, obviously. But thank you for watching. If you've kind of enjoyed this episode with us, we're so happy to have you here. This, hopefully, is the first of many of our video episodes, but if you are just listening audio, feel free to, like, rate, review and subscribe and follow us on Instagram at Analyze Scripts Podcast as well as TikTok at Analyze Scripts Podcast as well. And we always look for recommendations, right? So send us movies, TV shows, characters you want us to talk about, and anything else you want to add. Dr. Fury?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: No, I think if you're listening to this and not watching the video, it'll be on our new YouTube channel. So we're really excited. If you're listening but you haven't subscribed, please subscribe. We're so close to hitting one of our milestone benchmarks and we're really excited about it. So we appreciate everyone who's tuned in so far. And I got to say, we really appreciate Taylor Swift and how she has been able to put words to really difficult feelings in a way that resonates with so many. Like, it gives me some shivers to think about how so many people feel understood by one person. And I hope she keeps using her power in a good, positive way.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yes, I agree. Thanks for listening.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: See you next Monday. Bye.
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Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Your friends and rate, review and subscribe, that's fine.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening, and see you next.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Time you sam, don't.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are thrilled to be joined by one of Dr. Furey's favorite teachers from residency, Dr. Zheala Qayyum. Dr. Qayyum is the Training Director for the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship Program and the Medical Director of the Emergency Psychiatry Services at Boston Children's Hospital. She has published on the use of fairy tales in teaching child psychiatry and joins us to discuss the first "Harry Potter" movie. In this episode, we discuss many interesting themes including the psychological effects of early childhood trauma and neglect, the attachment styles of the three main characters, and the importance of friendship in identity formation. We also reflect on the mirror of Erised and the importance of exploring dark feelings and themes in childhood from a safe space, such as through this magical film. We hope you enjoy as much as we enjoyed speaking with Dr. Qayyum!
[00:10] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fieri, a psychiatrist. And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker. And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows. Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends. There is so much misinformation out there.
[00:30] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And it drives us nuts.
[00:31] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like with a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better. So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn and your DSM Five and enjoy.
[00:50] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Don'T.
[01:17] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: For a very special episode of Analyze Scripts, because one of my favorite attendings for my residency training is joining us to talk about one of my favorite movies, harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, or The Philosopher's Stone, depending on which country you're watching it in. So today we have Dr. Gila Kayum, the training director for the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship program and the medical director of the emergency Psychiatry services at Boston Children's Hospital. She holds faculty appointments at Yale School of Medicine and Harvard Medical School, and she's the associate director of medical student education and Psychiatry. She's also serving as a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army Reserves Medical Corps and deployed to Afghanistan and was later mobilized in support of the COVID-19 response to New York. Dr. Kayoom has published on the topics of medical education, autism spectrum disorders, inpatient treatment of early psychosis, and LGBTQ, plus youth, the use of fairy tales in teaching child psychiatry, and the risk of youth suicide and firearms. She has a particular interest in the areas of supervision and mentorship, which she's so good at psycho oncology and palliative care. And I feel like we always called her Dr. Q. I guess I'm allowed to call her by her first name because I'm a grown up now, but I still feel kind of funny about it. But you were one of my favorite mentors, and I feel like you're really special because sometimes when you have a mentor, it kind of feels like they're trying to mold you in their image. But I always felt like you just wanted what was best for me, and you were so encouraging, and I just always loved working with you, and you hold a really special place in my heart.
[02:58] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So this is really fun to talk about.
[03:00] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Harry Potter no, this is, like, making me teary. This is just a lovely intro I have gotten. And it's just such a thrill that the people that you invest in grow up to be such amazing child or adult or psychiatrists, but more so, just people. And you're very dear to me as well. The best part of being an educator and a clinician is that not only are you trying to sort of transfer your skills or your wisdom, but you get to see your kids grow and become they're meant to be and their best versions. And if you think you're a part of that journey, I think that's just the most amazing privilege.
[03:50] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Well, I know you were for me, and I know you were for a lot of my co residents, so it's so true. So I am dying to talk to you about this movie, given your interest in using fairy tales to explore development. So I just kind of want to jump right in and hear what you think about the first Harry Potter movie and kind of what jumps out at you.
[04:13] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: So I think one of the loveliest things about Harry Potter was that it was a modern fairy tale, and we've had a lot of lovely fantasy series, but there was something very special about Harry Potter that just captured everyone, whether it was kids or adults. It's interesting, whenever I ask people what their favorite children's book is, inevitably, for a lot of them, it's Harry Potter. And I read it in med school. So I was much older, but I still stood in line at midnight yes, where I was standing next to like, ten year olds in their robes, and I was like, Am I in the right place? But you felt like you were in the right place. And I think that's what it communicated was it was or is a modern fairy tale for all ages. It just has that essence of a fairy tale, that it means something different to different people at whatever stage of development or life they're in. So a child can interpret it in their own way and have things that they resonate with. And as adults, we might find things that resonate to us, whether based on the hero's journey, these ordeals and call to action and your helpers that bring you along, but also the trepidations, the challenges, the times you doubt yourself when things are there. How do you overcome challenges and this power of transformation through a journey and a story that you're not the same person that you started off as, but with all of the things that you've had to experience? How does that evolve and transform you till you come full circle in some way? Not the same person that left, but so much more wiser grown. I think it's the transformative journey that we see from the first book that started, but there are these just themes that just feel like so relevant to today about loss and difficulty and when you're seeing this drive for power around you and how do you fit in the whole picture. And we usually have a reluctant protagonist in many stories that is not fully sure they want to take on the adventure and the call for action, and yet they do. But I think most importantly for me, the biggest thing was the importance of hope and friends.
[07:04] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah, I totally agree. And it's funny you mentioned hearkening back to standing in line at midnight at, like, Borders Books or wherever you were. I totally did the same thing. I think I was in middle school and then high school. But it is really fascinating how Harry Potter and other fairy tales like it. But I feel like especially Harry Potter, it is such a cultural, communal enjoyment and not just in American culture, but certainly worldwide. It's just such a really cool thing that it just really spans ages, genders, cultures, nationalities, languages. Everyone loves it, right? And I feel like this movie rewatching it now as an adult with my children was so meaningful and fun. So I have a seven year old and a four year old and they were just enraptured by it. They wouldn't stop talking the whole time. They wouldn't take their eyes off and this isn't like a cartoon, so they're still at the ages where really it's cartoons that catch their attention for two and a half hours. But this one did, and that was really interesting to me and really special. And I love some of their commentary. Like, with her, MayAny always raising her hand. My daughter, which I was so happy, said she's got a really big brain. And I was like, yes, she know. And then when Draco came on the scene very early on, my son was like, oh, he's a bully. And I was just you know, it's just really cool to kind of see kids watching it too.
[08:40] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. I think it's worth mentioning something interesting. When I was starting to read the books before the music, the movies had started kind of coming out. I remember very distinctly the religious organization that I was a part of at the time was very split with people thinking that you shouldn't be reading it. It's magic. It's witchcraft. Witchcraft. And then the other half being like, if you know the story, it's like this good versus evil. Good always triumphs. There's hope. There's, like you were saying, friendships. I mean, it's such a positive message. And there's so many interesting.
[09:23] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: I don't.
[09:23] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Know, like, spiritual parallels and parallels throughout all of the books. But I think it was just an interesting time to be know, hearing this spoken series is bad or evil and then reading them. Know, in my family, we were very pro Harry Potter and loving the messages. And I think that was just like I don't know. I'm sure some other people might have had that experience.
[09:45] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Oh, I totally remember.
[09:48] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Right.
[09:48] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like, we come to see this boy in, I would say, a pretty abusive home with a lot of neglect. And I think it's funny watching it or thinking about it now versus in. Like, I'm curious what even your kids picked up of the scenes. The parents certainly seem mean and right dismissive. And you picked that up even as a child, like something not right. Why does Dudley receive all of these gifts and Harry not his clothing?
[10:18] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah, my kids were asking about that?
[10:21] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like why are they so mean to?
[10:22] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Why is he living under the stairs? They certainly were asking those questions.
[10:29] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Yeah, no, I think it's a really lovely depiction of how prevalent and difficult it is for kids that have neglect. And I think also it really sort of from starting from him being under the stairs and just watching Dudley get 36 presents and counting and him thinking about, like he has to get hand me downs to go to school and what that would be like. Just that differential that was created and that sense of otherness or I don't belong or I'm not good enough. It really, I think, beautifully highlights how a child will internalize that, because you see that then play out throughout, which partly keeps him humble when everybody thinks he's this amazing everybody knows him, but he's coming from where? Nobody. Knows anything about him. And he held on to that for a very long time and it really changed his I think we see him work through it, but his sense of belief and faith in his own abilities and his self because they told him he wasn't good enough for a good eleven years. And that sense of feeling like you're worth something that he didn't get initially. And how does one young child actually grow to develop that? Partly it kept him humble in the face of, I don't know, magician dumb or stardom or whatever that was that he got later on. But also, it really impeded his ability to rely on other people. And we see. This in the later books as well, but whenever he has to do something, he's very like the avoidant attachment style. I can't trust people to be there for me. And we know later in the books there are other losses that sort of reinforce that for him. But he embarks on everything on his own and working with others and trusting others comes very, very it's very challenging for him, comes much later.
[12:52] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And I like that you brought up his attachment style. Can you explain a little bit what avoided attachment is or the kind of kids or adults we might see that in and how Harry either fits in or doesn't quite fit in.
[13:09] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: So the avoidant attachment style is when a young child has inconsistent caregiving where their needs may not be consistently met. And so rather than clinging to their caregiver to get their needs met, they're like avoiding contact with them because they don't know are they coming, are they going, or are they going to be there. So the child starts to avoid that contact and doesn't get need or avoids contact with the caregiver to get soothed and self regulated. So we see the same thing, that since the Attachment is our template for forming relationships, that we carry on in life, we see Harry particularly later on as he's growing older, that even in adolescence, whenever there is a challenge, he goes off on his own rather than relying on anybody else because he doesn't know. Are people going to really be there for him or not? Are they going to leave? Are they going to neglect him? So he might as well do that for himself and just go off on his own. So that sense of avoiding closeness with people because they might leave or not be there for you, is that sense that avoidant children internalize and so they don't keep looking for closeness with people. It's good that we see Harry work through this over a great many books, which also tells you that it runs in parallel with the life experience of a young child who's had early life neglect and avoidant attachment style might need a lot of reinforcement of positive interactions to say, no, you can rely on other people. If you do get close to people, it'll be okay. And yet loss is a very, I think, integral part of our human experience and life. And for an avoidant child, there is that risk that it just might reinforce that belief that people are not going to be there for them.
[15:18] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And in addition to Harry having that early childhood neglect and abuse, he also had early loss of his parents, who seem like lovely caregivers, who were likely very attuned to his needs, at least as far as we can tell, and that he was present for their murder. And so I was really curious about your take on that, given around the age they depict that and then what it must have been like for him at age eleven to start learning the truth about that loss at the same time as he's learning their loss is why he's famous or special. I just imagine that's got to be so confusing.
[16:03] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Absolutely. And I think that's such a lovely point of there's so much magic instilled in that power, of that parental love that he carried with him that it literally burned. Professor Squirrel.
[16:22] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right.
[16:23] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: It was so powerful. I think it does show, though, however, that it was at a very sort of vulnerable time period in his life when that death occurred. He was still a baby, and we're thinking, like, till from infancy to toddlerhood, maybe the first part went well when his parents were attuned and taking care of him, but later on, and still in that very vulnerable time frame, he had a lot of neglect. And so as you're entering into your preteen years, your sense of, how do I relate with my peers? Who am I in relationship with them? Will they accept me as? We're thinking about later, latency age and early preteens going into your identity formation, who you are is so sort of determined by who are the people in your life? Who brought you here? What is your story? How did you start? And I remember as a child, my mom would tell me stories about, well, when you were little we did this things I wouldn't remember. But still you create these memories based on the things that your parents tell you as well when you're younger. But those things are so important in our development, and now he had to figure that out on his own. Who was he? What were his parents like? That question of when he goes and sees his father's name on the trophy room and he's like, I didn't know he was a Seeker. There's just so many knowns for him to figure out who he is because he doesn't know where he's coming from, and your legacy or your lineage or what are the wonderful stories about how amazing you are. Your parents tell you he never had that. And now he has to create his own narrative about who he is, which is the whole process through the book.
[18:26] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And speaking of like, identity formation, he went from being told that you're such a burden, you're unwanted. Your parents were horrible, they were weird or strange, to being praised or whoa, Ron's reaction to it's. You with the scar on the train, know, having all of this wealth suddenly and this importance in this world, it's just so interesting. You had written down with Hagrid, like him just going with that to this magical place that if somebody had told an eleven year old me, I think, and I'm hopefully that I'm securely attached, I would have been afraid to go with Hagrid.
[19:08] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right.
[19:09] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: This big, burly, giant, half giant man who's telling me all these things that we're going to go to this magical place. I think for a securely attached child, they probably wouldn't have gone. But he didn't have any attachments. And then I think anything is better than living with the directly to finally.
[19:29] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Take him out of that situation.
[19:31] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Right.
[19:31] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It's like almost like this savior has come to rescue him. What were your thoughts about that, Dr. Q? The way he so know, latched onto Hagrid?
[19:41] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Yeah, I think just like Portia said, it's like that insecure attachment, there's nothing to hold him there. But he's also, I think, like you talked about at a point where he's thinking about things and his life. If he's going to go to the same school as Dudley, what is that going to be? He's getting into trouble constantly. And imagine the message you internalize after you're told that everything you do is wrong or you're a bad kid, and you get told that long enough, you start believing it. So maybe it wasn't such a far fetched thing to say, I'm going and I'm taking off.
[20:19] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right.
[20:20] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: What's the worst thing that can happen whenever anything I do isn't good anyway?
[20:27] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right? And I think we see that in clinical work. And probably you see a lot more, given your line of work, in kids who maybe will go off with not safe people. That sort of increases their vulnerability for those very situations.
[20:43] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Because at the core of it, every kid just wants to belong.
[20:48] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah.
[20:49] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: And so if it was what Hagrid said, is that's where you belong? He hasn't had that sense of belonging at the Dursleys. So he will try. And go and find if he belongs somewhere else and what other people.
[21:09] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And he does find.
[21:10] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: I feel like I'm going to cry.
[21:11] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Talking about Harry Potter and also just thinking about Hagrid is like, I just love Hagrid. He's such a gentle giant, but I couldn't think of a better person to come scoop up Harry. Right. Like, even just imagining him sort of putting him in the little sidecar, he's, like, nice and cozy and secure and contained and I hope just feels safe next to this big old guy who.
[21:40] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Stood up to the dursleys, right? Chased found him. I remember my blood boiling even watching the movie again or rereading the book when they keep taking his know you know, it's such.
[21:58] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: His letter.
[21:59] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, that's the one thing he has.
[22:02] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: But then Hogwarts is like, well, we'll send you more. We're not going to give up. And I would imagine for, like, how wonderful. That must feel like, wow, they really.
[22:12] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Are trying to get to me.
[22:13] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: No one has wanted me like that before. And they're being like Hogwarts or whoever. Dumbledore's love for him is so transcendent and powerful that it wins. Out against the neglect of the know.
[22:29] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Just beautiful and sort of how teary Hagrid was when he was first dropping him off when he was a baby and dumbledore saying it's not goodbye for.
[22:42] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Oh my gosh I feel like, that's how I am. Every year the new school year starts, you're just like, oh, my gosh, they're growing up.
[22:51] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then hermione I think it's worth mentioning. So she has, it seems, securely attached, supportive parents. But is living as a muggle her whole life until receiving these letters and going to Hogwarts and then learning that she is like a mudblood and that she is not good enough. Her blood is like, dirty. And yet she is so brilliant, and I think that's such an interesting reversal of her and Harry's experience. She's still really smart, but it's like it's not good know are calling her names like Draco. And I don't think that she experienced that. Prior know the little bits that we get of her pre hogwarts.
[23:40] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And interesting to think about her parents. Like getting this random letter and sending her. Right?
[23:47] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
[23:51] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: That's the wonderful thing about secure attachment and great parenting is know, we're all about you. So if this is who you are and this is your success and this is where you're going to thrive, sure.
[24:03] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: We don't know anything. Go for it.
[24:06] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: And I think that is part of Hermione's own resilience as well is that that secure attachment, as difficult as those interactions with Draco are, allows her to stand up for Harry and Ron and build friendships and sort of extend that beyond the parental unit onto her friends, new people and say, because I have a good sense of attachment and security and I know people will be there for me, I can be there for other people, too. And then you can carry it forward. So I think Hermione is a really nice example of a secure attachment. And then I think you see that play out a little bit more. Not in the first book, but later on at the Yule ball, where she can put Ron in his place for not asking her out and sort of take ownership of her own. Know, next time you want to do this, pluck up the courage and ask, right?
[25:10] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Boundaries.
[25:11] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: I think that's a really nice illustration of how important attachment is as a child is growing and then into adolescence that the same things play out in your other relationships.
[25:25] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And how amazing to have a girl character like Hermione, right? Like, I think all the things you just said, like her bravery, her intellect, her self confidence, her boundaries, I just think so lovely to have a girl character like this for girls and boys and adults to read about and identify with. And she can maintain that sense of herself in the face of draco and the slurs and the comments, even when people even know who she goes on to marry down the road. Spoiler alert. Even as he's kind of putting her down for being smart, she doesn't stop raising her, know? And I remember as a middle school girl who loved school, just loving that, just loving that. And I loved watching now my daughter, watch her, and I'm just like, soak this up, soak this.
[26:20] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Yeah, such a lovely little bottle for girls. And then since we're on the topic, like, you think about Ron, who is like this lost soul in this big family of redheads. And so you kind of see his sort of anxious style come through that, particularly when he was asked to relax and he couldn't.
[26:44] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yes, he's like, I don't know how.
[26:49] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Right? And all the hand me down. Not that he got, but also the same sweater that he gets every year, that there is love in that family, there is care, but also with so many kids, they're kind of lost until they get into trouble, that they get into parental they get parental attention and you hear about their concerns. And so even though there is not a lot of any mal intent anywhere within the Weasley family, but you can see where Ron's anxiety and anxious attachment style comes in and you see the same thing in the Eubolic. And the anxious attachment style is, you know, the child that doesn't know how to get through, they're like, all right, please pick me up. No, now put me down. No, pick me up again. I'm not sure. They're just taking time to self regulate and self soothe and sometimes they can get pretty irritable and upset too, and so they might lash out. And you see that in the U ball scene, too, where I know I'm jumping ahead, but rather than asking Hermione, he gets really sulky and irritable rather than owning up, but he wants it, but he doesn't know how to do it. So you kind of see that tension and that sort of clinginess but not sure what to do sort of thing. So I think the whole series really highlights these attachment styles really nicely.
[28:19] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Isn't that amazing? How did JK. Rowling do that? And I thought the fact that they're all eleven, it was just perfect, right? Like at that age and kind of with all the books following them through is just really beautifully done, I think.
[28:39] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: And you can kind of play out in the carriage scene when they're first on the Hogwarts Express together, where I think Hermione comes in looking for Neville's Frog frog. And you see how confident she is and she's you're and who are you and have you done this? And so self aware, self confident. And then you have Harry just sitting by himself, not sure he wants to talk to anybody. And poor Ron, who's trying to get his presence known again, just like a young child in a big family would feel lost, that I have to make my presence known, otherwise I won't get the attention I need. And poor Scabbers that he's trying to turn yellow and that's not working out. So you kind of see it play so nicely in a very simple scene.
[29:36] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Definitely something that I noticed, and I think it's just my interpretation of things, is that Ron seems to have the most obvious shame about his finances compared to the other siblings. I don't really notice or even Jenny's younger in this book, but being so visibly upset, I know that there's the interaction in the robes shop with Draco and then on the train, even with his little sandwich, right, he can't buy the treats. And then there's like whoa when Harry has those gold coins. And it really does seem to impact him even throughout the rest of the story. Just that intersectionality. He's a pure blood, but he is poor. And then how that really goes up against Draco and his Pure Blood and wealth family.
[30:34] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I think that's an interesting thing to think about the intersectionality of all their identities in this sort of fantasy world, right? There's so many parallels. Like even if you think about different intersectional identities in our culture today, and it's just interesting to think about it's an older book.
[30:55] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I mean, again, it's so easy to talk about these more seemingly popular nuanced ideas. They've been around for a while, but everyone kind of talks about their intersectionality or different identities. And it's so clear in the book, right?
[31:13] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It does seem like the type of series where you'll always get more from it. I reread the series I think, last year, and I loved it, and I feel like I got more from it as an adult than I did as a kid. And it's one of those things where I feel like every time you read it, you'll get more and more from it.
[31:31] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: It just means something different. Yeah.
[31:35] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: So one thing I was hoping we could talk about is the mirror of Irisev, which is desire spelled backwards. I totally choked up watching this part again, as an adult, I was curious to hear about your experience.
[31:52] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Yeah, I had so many thoughts about that. I mean, it's such a powerful thing. And the fact that if you're truly content, then you can see yourself as you are, only the happiness, and if that is the measure of happiness. And it was like, wow, just the visual illustration of happiness, that you could see yourself and just see yourself as you are. Because I just felt like, yes, it is desire spelled backwards, but it is so prevalent throughout with starting with those 36 presents that you want more, and Voldemort wanting more, that defeated and needing to come back and needs to get more and more power and even kills a unicorn for it.
[32:46] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Oh, my gosh, that was devastating for my four year old daughter. I regretted that part horribly.
[32:51] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Like, yes, moving but jarring scene. And then the fact that your heart's deepest desires that you're desperate for and you'll see that, but anything that's too much is going to consume you. And those people who sort of run after the things that they really, really want, I think it was a very powerful way of giving that message of too much consume you and there'll be nothing left. Like it does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live. So I just thought it takes so much courage, though, to ask yourself what it is that you really want in life. I mean, a lot of us may want all these things, but what is it that you truly, truly want? I think that's a very powerful question to ask. And how many of us really can look at ourselves in the mirror and say, this is what I really, really want in life, and to be able to face that and own it.
[33:59] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It's a good question to ask a client, even, because I think you can always get to the feeling right under it. So if someone's they're saying that their deepest desire is financial gain, it's like, okay, but what does that mean? Does that mean you want to feel secure? Does it mean that you want to be powerful in a sense of authority? Do you want people to look up to you? It's always like a feeling.
[34:26] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And why? Where does that come from?
[34:28] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, it's a good place to explore with yourself and maybe with a patient as well.
[34:33] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Can you imagine, like, starting off a session, they come to see you. For the first time. And you're like, here is my mirror of IRISET.
[34:39] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Yeah.
[34:40] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Looking at what do you see and.
[34:42] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: What does that mean?
[34:45] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: It'll make our job so much easier.
[34:47] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I know, right quick, right real quick.
[34:50] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: We'll get to the deep rooted issues in 10 seconds.
[34:54] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Easy peasy. Managed care will love it. So we see what Harry wants, which is his parents. And again, I was so struck by him going back to that mirror repeatedly and I was just like, of course he is, right? Like his parents are moving. You see his mother, his father touch his shoulder. I was just like, oh, I so feel that for him. Then we see him drag ron so excited to share that experience of his parents with him. But Ron sees himself as head boy and winning the quidditch cup. And again, that totally makes sense based on everything we just talked about with Ron's family. We didn't see hermione. And I was curious what you guys thought. What would hermione see, if anything, or would she see herself?
[35:46] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think maybe if anyone would be seeing themselves, it would be her. Especially like in book one. I think she does seem so content and excited and authentic that I think it might be her. Maybe it's her being top of the class.
[36:04] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: I think she is.
[36:05] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: She already kind of is.
[36:08] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: I have a feeling that the one thing she grows to develop were friendships. That I wonder if she might see herself surrounded with friends.
[36:17] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah, I think at her age again, I agree. Portia of the Three know. Harry rod hermione. I feel like she would be the one closest to seeing just her true self. But I wonder if at that age of eleven, as a girl, if there's something deeper she's not able to articulate yet that we might see like friendship.
[36:38] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, I think that's accurate. I think sometimes you get the books confused or what's, like maybe a fan fiction thing online or something. But I am pretty sure that she does say that she did struggle with friends and so to have these deep friendships build at Hogwarts, I think that might be it.
[37:00] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Yeah. I'm just thinking know, she is very brilliant. So seeing herself as like the know, graduate or something of her class probably isn't far fetched. But if that intimidates other kids when she's correcting them over livio saw yes, that might rub kids the wrong way. That maybe that peer acceptance and those close friendships might be something that we see sort of develop over time as well.
[37:33] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And so as we start wrapping up our wonderful episode today, let's talk a little bit about their friendships. Because I just feel like, gosh, I thought the movie did such a good job explaining the book, which has so many concepts, so much magic in it. It's had to do so much in just two and a half hours of just like background, like this is where we find ourselves. This is Hogwarts. This is Quidditch. This is Voldemort. Like here it is. And capturing all these complex concepts in such like a beautifully visually appealing way. The music is wonderful but we certainly see the triad between Harry, Ron and Hermione starting and forming and we know that just grows and grows and gets more complex over time. And I was really curious Dr. Q about your thoughts about first of all that it's a triad. There's three of them, two boys and a girl and what do you think of all that?
[38:36] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: I just love the idea and particularly since you have the girl be somebody like hermione and I thought it's really nice to see their parallel processes. Each one of them is trying to sort of discovering that they're each really good at something but not good at everything. Like Hermione realizes she's not good at quit it. How humbling for someone who's really good and smart to know quidditch is not for, you know, Harry discovering that's what he's really good at and very early on know Ron playing chess and how it was reinforced with all the points even Neville's like standing up to your. So I felt that that was such a lovely way of saying that some of the reasons why friendships are important is that no one is whole in themselves and so much stronger when we all complement each other. But how do you explain that to an eleven year old? But if they saw the movie they would understand that we are so much more when we're all together and how those friendships last over years even for many of us. And I also felt like the complexity that you talked about. I think another movie that highlights it really nicely is Inside Out.
[40:06] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yes, we love that movie.
[40:08] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Our emotions are one color when they're younger and as you grow older they get more complex and those marbles are multicolored because emotions are more complex than just feeling sad, mad and glad. And similarly as we're thinking about I think this goes very nicely in a parallel of fairy tales and development that when children are younger they can only see good and bad. As long as you're giving me what I want you're the good parent. When you set limits you are not.
[40:43] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Oh I feel this every day older.
[40:46] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: You can hold the things together in the same person that there are things that are great about them and there are things that are some weaknesses. And when we're children we look at our parents as these idealized giants and as we grow older we see them for human beings that have wonderful strengths and flaws that we can still accept and love them still the same. So I think that is a big developmental challenge but I think the books highlight that really nicely with them being able to sit and tolerate that complexity.
[41:29] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: That nothing is so and again with them starting this journey at age eleven. I feel like that's the perfect timing for all of this to start. And I wonder if even the darkness of Harry Potter in watching the first movie, I was like, all right. I think it'll be several years before I show my kids the second movie because each one gets a little darker, a little grittier. But I think that maybe contributes to why it sort of captured all of us. And it is darker than the Disney version. Like, Inside Out is a great example, but I think that just speaks to the reality.
[42:12] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like, the books get more complex, the books get darker, the characters get more complex, the characters get know. I think it was just such an interesting time to read it as a child as they came out, because it really kind of aligned perfectly with my own development.
[42:28] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah, exactly.
[42:29] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I remember my mom read me the first book, and then I remember the last one coming out, and I think my grandma said it to me. It was like raft in the Muggles, right? Like Muggles can receive on whatever date, and then I read it for myself. So I think it's so uniquely that way that led to so many people being a part of it for years and still feeling really connected to it now.
[42:53] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And now getting to share it with your own children, like I'm starting to do, is so special.
[42:59] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Yeah. And that's the power of fairy tales, is that even if it may be really dark, it creates this metaphorical, imaginary, special place where you can still explore this darkness in a very safe way.
[43:13] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yes.
[43:13] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: Go process it. Look what it's like to be angry. Oh, my gosh. Cruel people, mean people. And then you come back to the safety of reading this with your mom and everything's going to be okay.
[43:27] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
[43:27] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It's so beautiful. It is. It's very special. Very special. Well, Dr. Q, is there anything else you were hoping we could touch, know, talking about Harry Potter, the first it.
[43:42] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: I think it's just a wonderful part of my life. I wish I was in Hogwarts, and that was the life I lived. Sometimes I'm looking forward to having a real Harry Potter birthday someday. But I think the thing that resonates most with me is this quote from Neil Gaiman that says, fiction is a lie that tells us true things over and over. And I think that's the power of Harry Potter is that the reason it spoke to so many of us is that we all connected at some level with something that was very true for each one of us.
[44:18] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I like that.
[44:20] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: That is a really beautiful place to leave it. Well, Dr. Q, thank you so much for joining us. We would love to have you back for the next seven movies over the course of time. It was so nice to personally reconnect with you again, thank you all for listening to this very special episode of Analyze Scripts. If you'd like to hear our take on Inside Out, we do have an episode about that from several months ago. I don't know. Dr. Q, did you know they're making a sequel? I think it's supposed to come out in the next couple of years, so that's really exciting. I hope it's about Riley's adolescence. Yes, and we really hope it also shows her living through COVID. Like, we could really use that for all the kids. We could, right? But you can find us at Analyze Scripts podcast on Instagram and TikTok and catch us next Monday for our next episode. Thanks so much.
[45:24] Dr. Zheala Qayyum: See you next time. Thank you for having me.
[45:32] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: This podcast and its contents are a copyright of Analyzed Scripts. All rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited. Unless you want to share it with your friends and rate, review and subscribe, that's fine. All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings, or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we have a fun little episode exploring Tim Burton's 1993 film "The Nightmare Before Christmas." In this episode, we discuss our theories about the psychological motivations behind Jack and Sally's behaviors. We use the characters of Oogie Boogie and Lock, Shock and Barrel to explore the diagnoses of oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), conduct disorder, and antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). And we find ourselves wondering - is the Mayor supposed to depict bipolar disorder or a shady politician? We also discuss ways to talk to children after traumatic events like sadistic toys ruining your favorite holiday! We have a lot of laughs along the way and hope you enjoy this spooky episode!
Dr. Katrina Furey: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fieri, a psychiatrist.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends.
Dr. Katrina Furey: There is so much misinformation out there, and it drives us nuts.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like.
Dr. Katrina Furey: With a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And your DSM Five and enjoy.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Welcome back to another episode this spooky month in October. Today we are covering The Nightmare Before Christmas, which is a Tim Burton movie. It came out shockingly in 1993.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't think that's shocking, Portia.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I am shook. Why? I thought this was like, new. I don't maybe like Max ten years old, and this is almost as old as I am.
Dr. Katrina Furey: You didn't watch this in childhood?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Never seen it before. Watching it for this?
Dr. Katrina Furey: You never saw it before?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Not once. What? I just never got the draw.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't know.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It's always shown right everywhere. Like the holiday season.
Dr. Katrina Furey: That's why we're covering it. And it's a classic Halloween and Christmas movie.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So my childhood, because I guess this is a childhood ish movie are like Pumpkin town. Do you ever see that? It's on Disney.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Okay, so I like those one through three. Hocus pocus pocus harry Potter yes.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Which we'll be covering in a couple of weeks. Maybe next week.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Maybe it's already out.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't know.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Stay tuned. So I don't know, I've never, ever seen it.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Wow, that's wild. I thought for sure when I recommended this you had seen it. Wow. Interesting. A lot of questions. I've seen it a bunch of times in childhood. And now, as a know, we watch it every year. When we went to Disney World recently at Halloween time, they have a whole Mickey's not so scary Halloween party with Skellington. Like it's like a big deal.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Scary though. Like your kids aren't scared of the movie?
Dr. Katrina Furey: I think at certain parts a little bit, but not really. Which I also think is interesting because I also think it is like a spooky movie. And there's also now we have a couple of the children's books. People would gift them to us over the years, and one of them talks about Jack's Sleigh getting shot down. And I always make up a different word for that at that point because I feel like that's a little too much. But there's certainly spooky elements to this movie and scary elements like kidnapping the nefarious, sadistic know. So it is really interesting that kids aren't globally, I know, terrified of it.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And like, Jack, at one time, I think he's honestly the least scary, but he bears his teeth, right? And does a scary face. And I was like, oh, yikes.
Dr. Katrina Furey: It's very Tim Burton. It is.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It's just not my huh.
Dr. Katrina Furey: So what are some of your questions? Like, why did I make you watch.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Are we talking about this? No, I'm kidding. I guess just why is it so popular? I know I'm very well aware that other people can like things that I don't. And I'm probably honestly in the minority, maybe minority for this movie, but I just don't understand the draw, really. I think it's scary.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Were you scared of sin at all? I don't know.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I just felt like a little watching it. Really? I watched it at night, which doesn't help anything. But I don't know.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I think it's like a short movie. It's a cartoon. The animation, I think, is unique. And I would imagine back in the 90s, especially unique. When you think about Disney animation at that time with Beauty and the Beast, Ariel Aladdin, it was just very different. And again, kind of like we talk about in our Harry Potter episode, there's something about the darkness that I think people are drawn to, even children, right? Like, you experience dark feelings as part of being a human. So maybe there's something about it. Where? In Halloween town? I mean, all kids celebrate Halloween, unless maybe you're very religious and you don't dress up or something. But most American children in our culture celebrate Halloween, and kids love it, but there is a spooky element, but that kind of adds to the fun. So maybe there's something about that darkness that resonates with you even as a child. At the beginning, they're all just like being their old Halloween selves and just like, really out there.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I mean, I'm easily scared. I am not a fan ever, even in young 20s, late teens, of going to a pumpkin. Right. What are they called? Like a haunted hayride. I don't like that because I think the actors always know who in the crowd is, like, the best victim. And it's always me.
Dr. Katrina Furey: It's always you.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I've been traumatized at people jumping out at you theme parks. Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey: They have Halloween things like, it's scary.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I've been chased and I hate what do you think you cut down trees with?
Dr. Katrina Furey: No, like, axe murderers, shovels chainsaws. That is really scary. Yeah, no, I'm not into that either. I wouldn't volunteer to go walk around and be scared. But I do like this movie. No, I totally hear that. So you're not maybe an adrenaline junkie? Like you wouldn't skydive maybe?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: No.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, I think some people get a thrill from it, like their dopamine, and adrenaline is just, like, pumping.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It's, like, good for them. I think it is a safer way, right. Getting it in, like, a risky way.
Dr. Katrina Furey: That's true. That's true. So I guess I thought this would be a fun movie to talk about. A, because it's a classic, apparently, this news to Portia, but allegedly it's a classic. It has, like a really interesting. Like, I didn't realize until just now that Catherine O'Hara is the voice of Sally. I think Sally's a really interesting character. I feel like even if you walk around home goods nowadays, you see Jack and Sally coffee mugs, jack and Sally salt and pepper shakers. Like it's in our culture that's always like a cool Halloween costume to dress up as Jack and Sally as like a couple's costume. Now you're in on it. Maybe you'll be Sally for Halloween. We'll see danny Elfman is the singing voice for Jack Skellington, who's the main character. And then Chris Sarandon is his speaking voice. I didn't know they were two different people. Me know peewee herman. Paul Rubens plays one of the little boys.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Locke.
Dr. Katrina Furey: We'll get into lockshock and barrel in a little bit, like stuff like that. Like the names of the little boys, right, are a know. But I thought this is just such a cool movie, I guess because A, I love Halloween, I love Christmas. It combines them. And I just feel like it's all about being yourself and being happy with like we see Jack, he's the what is he? The Pumpkin King of Halloween town. And it starts off with know, they're celebrating another great Halloween. And you see him rise up from the fountain in that initial song. I think the music is really good.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think the songs were clever and catchy and sweet, some of them. Yes.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And I think the music has likely contributed to why it's so popular because it's just beautiful music and we see everyone celebrating. But then Jack goes back to his haunted house where he lives with his ghost dog, Zero and seems kind of like, okay, do it all again next year. He seems kind of bored and not really into it. And then all of a sudden he discovers Christmastown and wants to become Santa Claus, basically. And tries but does a really poor job.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I thought it was like I mean, again, I'm not trying to be a hater, and I'm really not, but I thought that when he's dropping off all the presents, it's like traumatizing.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my gosh.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: He thinks he's doing this wonderful you know, at his core, he is not Santa.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And so he's bringing all of these literally terrifying gifts to the people of.
Dr. Katrina Furey: The world, the children.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I know, they're literally like running after.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Them, trying to eat them, trying to strangle them. It is pretty frightening. But he thinks he's doing good and his intention is good. So it is, I feel, like, an interesting commentary on how our intent might not match how our actions land and how that's important to acknowledge for the other person. And then he sort of comes back to himself and accepts that that's who he is.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And Santa says Happy Halloween. Which is sweet when he's flying over them. Yeah, that is they kidnapped him and attempted to murder.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, yeah, I know. And I guess that's where Jack did order that, right?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: No. Was it?
Dr. Katrina Furey: Oogie boogie? Who was it that ordered them to go capture?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Capture? I think he just wanted to meet him, right?
Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, I thought he wanted them to hide him so he could be Santa.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Oh, I thought he just was getting, like, tips and then Jack or Locke's Shock and, like, took it know?
Dr. Katrina Furey: Um, so it's just I don't know. It's interesting. What do you think about the dynamic between Jack and Sally?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Interesting.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I wanted more of a backstory on both of them. Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: She seems like she cares a lot about him, and it's like, why? Did you previously have a relationship? Are you just kind of admiring him, as everyone in the town seems to do? He was caught kind of off guard, it seemed like, because she was showing him a lot of care, a lot.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Of affection, and she was always there when he was in a bind and needed some help. I was confused by that too. Like, at the end, when they kiss, I think that's a classic scene, but I was like, oh, they could have just been friends. They could have been siblings. Like, I don't know. But it was surprising that now they're in love. I think it is also kind of classic for the time. But Sally, we see her literally take parts of herself off to protect him, which I also think is an interesting commentary that the girl is sacrificing parts of herself to be there for the guy.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think you could talk about internal family systems with that, right? Like, parts theory that's not really about your body parts, but, like, internal parts.
Dr. Katrina Furey: But I think it's, like, just the.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Symbol of her sacrificing parts and herself and going to great lengths, like, throwing herself off the tower, sewing herself back.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Together, poisoning her father, the Doctor Finkelstein, aka Frankenstein. Yeah. Who I guess was the father. I didn't pick that up until we were reading a little bit about it. I thought he was just, like, an evil scientist who was holding her captive. It now really creeps me out if he was her dad.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, that's what it says. Like, I don't think that's clear at all in the movie, so you're right. I think it feels more strange and.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, dark if it's her dad.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: But I think Sally is like a character that's just really, again, popular in our culture and helps Jack out, but also tries to caution him. He sort of wants her to make his suit. Jack's very demanding, now that I think about it. But she's like, Jack, this isn't like you right. You don't look like know when he puts on the beard, and he doesn't.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Look like that sense of impending doom. And I'm like, is that anxiety.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Or like yeah, you're listening to your gut. Very unclear.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. So she does not want him to go to the world and be Santa. And he is taking charge of Halloween Town, so he know everyone in on it. Everyone's making toys or an aircraft of.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Trauma and torture, but what they think are toys because they're spooky and creepy to them, these are funny. These are toys. But it's interesting how I don't know. I guess you could even interpret this through maybe like a cross cultural lens. Like if Halloween Town is one culture and Christmas Town is a different culture, and what it's like to try to.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Assimilate I like how they accidentally captured the Easter easter Bunny. And unfortunately, the Easter bunny. Right. Like, didn't they just take him to Oogie Boogie?
Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, they didn't send it back. In my mind, they send him back. I don't know. Maybe I'm rewriting that story because it's too dark.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, I don't know.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Either way, what did you think about Oogie Boogie?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: He was scary. I thought it was interesting at the end that he's just like all bugs.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I know. That's the part that really creeps me out. Even to this day when I watch.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It, I'm just like, oh, he was definitely dark. And again, yes, I'm aware that children's stories, especially fairy tales right, can be dark. My favorite being Harry Potter, which gets progressively darker, which I think is as I get older. We've talked about that on the episode, so feel free to check that one out. But it just felt like really spooky. Like he's bad. He's a bad guy. Also made me think of the Grinch. Right. Because of where he is. You get to him through all these pipes. He lives away from everyone garbage. Not really, but in a sense, yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And why in a town like Halloween Town, where everyone is spooky and creepy and you might say weird, you might say different. I did like how they all just look so different from each other. Like, you got the vampires, you got the kids, you got Jack and Sally. There's just like all these different types of people all living harmoniously in their creepy way. So why is Boogie, like banished? I don't know.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Maybe he took it too far. Somebody always know.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Maybe he's the criminal of the town or something. Like maybe he would jack's nemesis, too.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I wonder if they grew up together. I wonder if Okie Boogie's kind of like in the jail of he. To me, I feel like is really a good depiction of sadism, or just being very sadistic. Like putting all the people he captures on that. What do you call that circle thing that's like spinning and they're going to die and it's like very table. Yeah, that's what it looks like hanging them.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I mean, it's like it's really sadistic.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Talk about antisocial personality disorder. Yeah, there it is.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right? Like an oogie boogie. But then he's also kind of like mesmerizing when he's like singing and dancing and serial. Yes, he totally sucking you in. Yeah, he had a beautiful singing voice.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: With you before you ultimately get killed.
Dr. Katrina Furey: For his own pleasure. Creepy.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So then we have the three little.
Dr. Katrina Furey: The three little kids. Lock, shock, and barrel. What'd you think about that?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: They were like, naughty, to say the least. I think we have both criteria kind of laid out of conduct disorder and Odd.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Oppositional defiant disorder.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That first word always gets me oppositional, which and there is a difference. So it feels like meet more criteria for conduct just because there is that level of physical cruelty to people, physical cruelty to animals. It's a step further with actions often and intent than Odd. So, like, just a little rundown. Oppositional defiant disorder, it's like behavior lasting about six months. It's not just a temper tantrum.
Dr. Katrina Furey: This is in children, right, is when we diagnose it.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Children and teens, they lose their temper. They often argumentative with adults. They defy or refuse to comply with rules or requests. They can deliberately be annoying. They blame others for their mistakes. They can be easily annoyed or touchy. They get pretty angry or resentful, and they can be spiteful or vindictive. So where it kind of becomes conduct disorder, so often there's first a diagnosis of Odd, which in its path to ultimately, I'd say, like antisocial personality disorder is an important diagnosis just because it kind of lays the groundwork. However, there is a big shift in the field with just overall less diagnoses of Odd. So you see a lot of typically, like, black youth coming into treatment with an Odd diagnosis, I think, like overly diagnosed and misdiagnosed.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Exactly. In certain patients of certain backgrounds. Some might call this racist, and I think it does get over diagnosed misdiagnosed in certain situations. Like when perhaps there could be some trauma going on. Absolutely. There could be add. Sometimes Add and Odd go together. So it is important to get an accurate, well rounded the child could be going through a big transition.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Maybe their parents parents are getting divorced or something.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So it's good to ask why. Right. When did the behavior start? And maybe asking the child or the teen right. What's going on in your life? Not just like, oh, wow, you seem really kind of jerky right now and you're not listening to anyone. There's always really a reason. 90% of the time there is another better diagnosis than Odd explains the behavior or there's just like changes going on right. That they're reacting to. So that's where in the smaller, more rare cases that Odd then goes on to become conduct disorder. It's really what I would describe, at least in my understanding and experience with it. It's kind of like you get that icky feeling, your feelers go up. Yeah. This child, and I hate to say this or this teen is off in.
Dr. Katrina Furey: How they see the world and how.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: They view others with their empathy or lack thereof. Oh, absolutely. Lack thereof. We talked about this in our episode.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I think we've talked about a couple on you. I think it came up.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: We talked about this on the whale.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Kind of with the daughter, back and.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Forth with his daughter because there is some, we think, like alluding to animal cruelty.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So that's a big one.
Dr. Katrina Furey: That's a big symptom with conduct disorder. And I sort of think of it as like when you have a patient who is committing crimes, often we will look to see, does that person meet criteria for antisocial personality disorder? Which unfortunately, I think increases their chance of committing more and more crimes because they don't have empathy or respect for how their actions affect other people. And a lot of times they get off on hurting other people, so they're not going to stop. And then if you trace it back, you will often see they did meet criteria for conduct disorder in later childhood, teenage, early adulthood, and then earlier than that probably met criteria for oppositional defiant disorder. So it's like most people with antisocial personality disorder will meet criteria for those things.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: The other way is not correct. True. Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Like if you maybe meet criteria for oppositional and defined disorder, that doesn't mean you're without a doubt going to meet criteria for antisocial personality disorder or be what we call like a sociopath. But once you get to conduct disorder, you start to get more nervous that that could happen. In my experience, when you see teenagers harming animals, like cats, birds, dogs, when you see them setting fires, when you see them also kind of like playing games with their peers, but pitting them against each other, they just start to sort of do these things that make you feel uneasy, and you start to see that they really struggle with empathy. And by that we mean like being able to put themselves in someone else's shoes and imagine or understand what it would feel like to be on the receiving end of an action. And they might get off on hurting people or animals.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And there might be there oftentimes is like a trauma underneath that. And I would say noting kind of back to the odd over diagnosis is like, you could argue that someone who is in a gang could meet criteria for conduct disorder. That's not the case. I wouldn't diagnose someone who's in a gang with conduct disorder. But you could be doing the same thing. So it's like that same question of like, okay, what's going on in your environment culturally? What's happening around you? How do you survive? Right? And so a lot of people sometimes have to do horrible things to survive because they think they have to do that to survive. That's not conduct disorder, right?
Dr. Katrina Furey: And that's where I'm like do Locks, shock and barrel meet criteria for conduct disorder? Or is this just like the norm in their culture of Halloween town? Right?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So some of the great point.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Criteria for conduct disorder are frequent bullying, often starting physical fights, using weapons, physical cruelty to people and animals, theft with confrontation of the victim. So it's not like stealing gum from the store.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That's a good one.
Dr. Katrina Furey: It's like armed robbery, being out late without permission, truancy from school, vandalism, breaking and entering, frequent manipulative, lying, covert stealing, forced sex, deliberate fire setting to cause harm, and running away from home overnight. So this is pretty severe. This is pretty severe stuff. And again, I don't remember off the top of my head how many criteria you have to meet or for what period of time, but I'd imagine, like, odd. It's persistent. So just like odd. Again, there's that time criteria of six months. It's not like a child going through a hard time or having some tantrums or just bullying.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: We should not be doing it's, obviously, of course, unkind. And some people bully and they absolutely do not have conduct disorder.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. And I think, again, a lot of people or children with conduct disorder have also been abused themselves. And they sort of become the abuser because that's what they've seen. That's what they know. That's how they finally feel powerful over someone else when they have felt so victimized themselves. So it's so complicated and complex and hard to treat and hard to sit with, I think, as a provider, trying to help patients with these sorts of things.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Totally. So we also have the mayor of Halloween Town. He's a silly one, so he has two faces.
Dr. Katrina Furey: This is really interesting. They sort of flip back and forth really quickly depending on it seems like what he's feeling, right?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. So it's like happy or distraught. And it's almost like what comes first, right? The feeling or the spin? And then he reacts that way. I think I'm using almost in a way that we kind of often critique people talking about bipolar, but I don't know, he has these two moods that kind of go back and forth sometimes. Maybe lasting the full day, maybe lasting.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Two weeks, maybe lasting rapidly, spinning back and forth. Some mood label. And also, I think he's the mayor, so he's a politician. And I think a lot of people feel like politicians are two faced.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That's kind of like a funny little jab, I guess. Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: But he's an interesting it's like I guess he's the one in power, but it just seems like Jack is all.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: The jack is like the king and then there's the mayor almost, like in.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Like is this like Parliament versus the royal family?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Seems like it like the royal family is in some ways differently beloved to them. And then Parliament is like, you know, the nitty gritty, who you're voting for? So I don't know. Jack's probably always been around. I wonder who was like, do they go on to rule together?
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. Is that like William and know? Maybe.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Could be.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Maybe. And who came before. Like, what do you think was Jack's backstory if you had to fill in the gaps?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I don't like was he ever alive or was he always a skeleton? You know what I mean? You see a reef yard and then you see his dog who's a ghost. Who's a ghost. But were these ever I mean, they must have if I'm thinking scientifically. Or is this where you go? Is Halloween town like an afterlife place?
Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, that's an interesting idea. Or is it just like a different world? And that's just what they are, right?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Was he ever a child or was.
Dr. Katrina Furey: He always just a full on adult skeleton? Right. I don't know.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Because you do see the kids there's the kids here that way forever.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Where are the kids parents, right? Why are they, like, running around with Okie Boogie and acting kind of like being taken advantage of? Which, again, I feel like getting back to kids with trauma or odd or conduct disorder, they can also be victimized at much higher rates, right. Because they're just at risk. They're in more harsh situations. Again, a lot of times, even if they meet this criteria, they have a history of abuse and so they might be drawn to feeling cared for or even just like, given attention, even if it's bad. Right. Sniff that out. Kind of like the chainsaw wielding people at the haunted hayrides could sniff out. You were the one to scare. A lot of times nefarious people, like sociopaths, can sniff out who is vulnerable to getting pulled in and they really get off on that. So it's like it makes me nervous. Like, where are their parents?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So let me ask you this. If you are living in what we know as kind of like regular world and Jack comes by for Christmas and drops off some of those gifts, how are you and your family coping with.
Dr. Katrina Furey: The aftermath of oh, my gosh. Right? I mean, I think I would normalize my children's reaction to being given, like, a duck that looks cute but then runs after you with fangs and is trying to eat you, or like a wreath coming out trying to strangle you. I would just be present with validating their fear. Right. I would hear what they have to say first, try to put words to their feelings and also say, like, gosh, if I were in that situation, I might feel scared or nervous or worried or I totally get it. Try to help them with that. Lot of reassurance that that's over. Things are safe now. I'm here to protect you. They might be mad at me if they felt like I wasn't there to protect them and I should have been. Make space for that and sort of sit with it. That can be hard, I think, as a parent. And then I would imagine they'd have some symptoms of an acute stress reaction. Right.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Might be a little afraid of going near the fireplace. Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Or the Christmas tree.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Oh, my God.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I hope it wouldn't ruin Christmas forever. They might have trouble sleeping for a little while. I might sleep with them for a little while and kind of I would probably tell their school so that the school counselors and stuff could check in on them, tell their teacher or other important adults in their life. And then I'd have a very low threshold to seek out some type of therapy to kind of help them and help me help them and then kind of see what happens. And I think a lot of many children are very resilient. Absolutely. So the hope is that with time, they can process it and move through it and then in future years, for future Christmases, if they were showing some avoidance, I would try to challenge it in, like, a gentle way. But to again keep reinforcing, that they are safe now in hopes of mitigating any risk for a PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder kind of thing. I hope that's the right way to handle. Great answer. Oh, my God. Thanks. Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I think the most important piece being is just, like, acknowledging them and their concerns and not dismissing them. Right. So instead of saying, like, that didn't happen, or, that's not scary at all.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Everything's fine, everything's fine.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Get over it. You're taking the time to be like, yeah, that was really scary. Let's talk about it if you want to. And then typically, like you said, most kids are okay.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And if they can't talk about it yet, depending on how young they are, depending how upsetting it is, drawing with them is really helpful. So I learned this cool technique in my training from a child psychiatrist where he would sit with a kid, and I always was like, Child psychiatry looks so cool because you basically play that looks cool. But he would sit with a kid, and they'd share a piece of paper, and he'd draw a line, and he would have the child make one drawing, and then he would do the next move, and they would make a picture together, kind of. And as they were doing it, he would talk with them and ask, like, well, why did you do this? Why did you use that color? Why that shape? And just over time, it's like a nice way to do something, like, basic and safe and something like all kids kind of know how to do, like, drawing together. You get a lot out of the child. It's really hard to just sit and do, like, talk therapy with little kids, so that's an interesting way. Or just asking them to draw something and just sort of being curious about it together, I think, can be also helpful and a good way of processing.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Using figures, whether it's, like, little animals or dolls or Lego characters to act out what they're feeling, they might be able. To do something with the little doll that they are not going to do themselves. Wow. Okay. Now I'm understanding more. There's so much within child therapy, psychiatry that is so special and unique. And also sometimes we use it with adults oh, 100%.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And with play, children playing. There's so much going on within their play. And I think it's really interesting to just kind of be attuned to what they're talking about, what they're acting at, what they're trying to work through or sort through. It can be really fascinating, sometimes disturbing. And I think we see with other horror movies when there's like the child with the dark drawings and they're possessed, it does come out.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. Cool. Well, thanks for listening to this episode. I certainly had fun being by being open now to this new holiday movie. So keep with family. We have a lot of fun content coming also over the next couple of months. So doing some silly maybe travel stuff with movies and family.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Home alone.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Chaos. We have certainly some more, I guess, traditional holiday movies coming up in December, but thanks for listening. Be sure to like us on TikTok and Instagram. We make some content there with just some extra info. If you want to check us out over there at Analyze Scripts Podcast. We do have a website and an email. If you're looking for more of a professional inquiry, we are happy to provide some information or cross podcasts.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. So check us out and please reach out and let us know what you'd like us to cover next and what you think about this movie.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: If you're like.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Portia is totally freaked out. If you're like me, who can't wait to watch it every year. All right, see you next Monday. Bye.
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Dr. Katrina Furey: All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings, or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time. Don't.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are analyzing the 2007 film "Awake." This movie stars Hayden Christensen, Jessica Alba and Terrence Howard. There is a nefarious plot to kill Clay who finds out during surgery. According to our guest, Dr. Gonzalez from the Yale Anesthesia Department, Clay experiences intraoperative awareness AKA "awareness" during surgery. The movie is filled with plot holes and some pretty inaccurate medical information. We learn so much from Dr. Gonzalez about anesthesia and patient pain. PTSD, medical factiods and financial stressors are topics in this episode. We hope you enjoy!
Dr. Gonzalez Podcast Episode on Interoperative Awareness
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fieri, a psychiatrist. And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker. And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows. Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like you're chatting with your girlfriends.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: There is so much misinformation out there, and it drives us nuts. And if someday we pay off our.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Student loans or land a sponsorship, like.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: With a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better. So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn and your DSM Five, and enjoy. Welcome back for another very exciting episode of Analyze Scripts. As part of our Halloween month today, we are covering the 2007 thriller mystery movie called Awake with our wonderful guest, Dr. Antonio Gonzalez. And I cannot think of anything scarier than being awake during a surgery, so this is perfect for our Halloween month. But just as a quick bio, dr. Gonzalez is an associate professor of anesthesiology and the director of the Obstetrics anesthesia Fellowship at Yale New Haven Hospital. He completed his residency program at Rutgers in New Jersey and decided to pursue a fellowship in obstetric anesthesia at Columbia University in New York. And I will actually be joining one of his podcasts in the near future to talk about eternal mental health and anesthesia, which I'm really excited about. But thank you so much, Dr. Gonzalez, for joining us.
Dr. Antonio Gonzalez, MD: Thank you so much for the invitation. I'm really happy to be here with you today.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: So, Portia, where do we even get started with this movie? Have you seen it before?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I have not seen the movie ever. I think that something like this would probably have been a little scary to watch. Yeah, I think a lot of people who are not in medicine and maybe people who are in medicine, I think it's a common fear to wake up during surgery. I think a lot of people going in get really calmed down once talking to the anesthesiologist or telling them that this is their process or this is.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: How it's going to be.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And all of the machines and monitors that they now have, you were saying a little bit before we got started today. So I think this is just like a pretty common fear that people have going into surgery.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: What do you think, Dr. Gonzalez?
Dr. Antonio Gonzalez, MD: Yes, I think that definitely introvertive awareness. It's definitely a fear of our patients. And unfortunately, this movie actually may have hyped that fear. But fortunately, the reality is that introvertive awareness is relatively rare, particularly these days. We have way better medications, way better monitors that help us to prevent intraperative awareness. The incidence has been documented to be somewhere around 0.1% to 0.2% in the United States.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: So what is that, like, one to two out of 1000 cases? Something like that?
Dr. Antonio Gonzalez, MD: That is correct, yeah. Because there are so many surgeries in the united States, that's about 20,000 to 40,000 cases a year, which still a lot. Right. The consequences of interoperative awareness can go from just having fear of future surgeries, even withholding surgeries for some of their relatives, particularly their kids, because they are so scared of what happened to them, they may actually be very fearful of letting their relatives go through surgery. Yeah. So that is one of the consequences. But, again, it's relatively rare these days.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Okay. Dr. Gonzalez.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Is there anything in common.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: That the people who this happens to.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: With each other, or is it just kind of like yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Is there, like, a way to predict it that it could?
Dr. Antonio Gonzalez, MD: So we don't have particularly great ways of predicting who will have operative awareness. We do know that there is a certain patient population or certain surgeries. So there are surgeries like trauma, cardiac surgery, and Obstetric. Anesthesia. Obstetric cases seem to be and when I mean Obstetric cases, Caesarean deliveries, particularly. These are cases that are very well known to have an increased risk of intraperative awareness. The reason behind it is because trauma patient and cardiac patients have a very delicate hemodynamics, meaning their blood pressure, it's low, tends to be on the lower side. They have a high risk of coronary vascular disease. So having their blood pressure too high or too low, it's at extreme risk. So in order to maintain that balance between the anesthesia that it's provided and the hemodynamics, those patients tend to be at a higher risk. And that implies for both trauma patients and cardiac patients. Now, the Obstetric patient population is at increased risk because of the risk that the anesthesiologist may perceive from the drugs transferring to the baby. So all the medications we give to mom will go to baby, and that increase in medications has been thought to be pretty dangerous to the baby. So anesthesiologists at some point, we're very scared of giving extra medications to mom nowadays. Again, I think that because our monitoring and the drugs that we have available and the awareness that introvertive awareness in this particular patient population, it's higher, we have improved the techniques that we have for providing general anesthesia. Now, that being said, we do a lot of our anesthesia under regional, and having pain during a surgery, even with epidural or a spinal, can be equally as scary, if not even more scary than having introvertive awareness while asleep.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I was wondering that. So, before we get into this a little further, I just want to give a quick recap of the plot of this movie. So, in the movie Awake, we see Hayden Christensen playing the main character, Clay Bearsford Jr. Who is, like a fancy pants financial person, super uber rich. He does something with stocks, probably, that I don't understand. And you see this interesting relationship with his mom early on, who's played her name's Lilith, and she's played by Lena Olin. And then we see Jessica Alba. This is one of her big roles, playing Sam Lockwood, who's his fiance. They get married very quickly because he is waiting for a cardiac transplant due to history of cardiomyopathy, which is something that happens. That seemed pretty accurate. And then we see Terrence Howard playing his friend and surgeon, Dr. Jack Harper. And spoiler alert, turns out all of the medical professionals on the team, including his fiance, were in on this plot to murder him during the transplant in order to inherit all his money and pay off some malpractice debt. Luckily, I think it was the anesthesiologist. The original one backed out. So this other guy was there, and somehow he figured out the plot, and he alerted authorities. And eventually, I think Dr. Harper injected the heart with adriamycin. I believe the Clay did, I guess, technically die on the table. When they delivered that news to his family, the mother committed suicide. I can't remember what she overdosed on. I'm assuming maybe Digoxin, which was in his bag. And then they wheeled the mom in and gave him her heart. And so he survived, and all the people got arrested. The end. That's basically the plot. Really quick. So getting back to what you were saying, Dr. Gonzalez, about the intraoperative awareness. So when you were saying that with these certain cases, trauma, cardiac, and OB with regional anesthesia, I'm thinking like an epidural, like for a C section or something like that. Like, if they give the epidural and it fails either in a C section or a regular delivery, vaginal delivery, would that be considered interoperative awareness?
Dr. Antonio Gonzalez, MD: Well, if the patient is experiencing pain, yes, that can be as traumatic as experiencing intraperative awareness, because the patient mentally is completely there, but the patient is completely feeling the experience of the pain. And the definition of pain, actually, it's not only physical, but there is an emotional component to pain. Right. So what you describe as pain, you can only be the person that knows what pain is for you. So what we've learned through the years is that we are not the best judge of what pain is. The patient is the best judge of what pain is because pain is what the patient tells you pain is.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I'm so glad you said that.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I think that's really important and to keep in mind the emotional side of it.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I like that also, just as I don't know a similarity right. In mental health, like pain mental pain, emotional pain is, like, what the patient is describing versus my definition in the DSM. But I really like that. Or just validating their experience. Well, this is what they experienced. Maybe someone else's was different.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I really like that.
Dr. Antonio Gonzalez, MD: Yeah. I think that it's a great opportunity, because, as you mentioned, sometimes if, as physicians, we try to give an explanation to pain, right. We may actually minimize the patients. And at the end of the day, what ends up happening is that the patients feels that their feelings, they're being gaslighted. So the patient is telling you, this is what I feel, and you say, well, it's not that big of a deal. Right. But it is to the patient, it is. So pain is, again, what the patient tells you pain is.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: No, I think that's great. And in my line of work, in private practice, I do end up seeing well, I see primarily women around pregnancy and postpartum. So I've heard many cases where the epidural failed, or it only took on half the side, or someone had a history of back surgery, so they met with the anesthesiologist ahead of time to talk about pain management options. And it is a super important aspect of prenatal care, especially delivery, and I'm sure that extends to other surgeries as well. So, Dr. Gonzalez, what are your thoughts about the way anesthesia was depicted in this movie? What they get right, what they get wrong?
Dr. Antonio Gonzalez, MD: Well, there are so many things that they well, the one thing that they got right was to select the patient that was having a cardiac surgery. As we mentioned, patients with cardiac surgery have an increased risk of having introvertive awareness. So they got that one part right. Then the other thing is that it seems like they have a substitute anesthesiologist that's coming from another institution. It doesn't quite happen that way. You need to have privileges at that place. It's a little credentialed. Yeah. Unless he's a traveler. Sometimes we have anesthesiologists that are considered what is the term? Locums. That's correct, yes. So locums might have been a locums that they call in to substitute, but it's actually quite hard to find locums for very specific cardiac surgery. So I think that the other thing that I think was very wrongfully depicted was how easy he may look. The induction. The induction was basically he took this three CC syringe or four CC syringe. He gave it to the patient. He said, count back to ten. Cardiac inductions are very complicated. It requires a balance of many medications. Again, because there is this hemodynamic balance that you want to maintain. You don't want the patient's blood pressure to go too high. Do you want the patient's blood pressure to go too low? So that also it seems like it was completely off. And there is a point where the surgeons are discussing, like, well, we won't need you for a little bit, so go get a drink. We never leave the operating room.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right.
Dr. Antonio Gonzalez, MD: I know there is always somebody from anesthesia in the room that be like the anesthesiologist or anesthetist, but we just don't leave the patient in the or. Just because the surgeon tells us that they're not going to need us for a bit. So that was totally wrong.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right. In my experience in medical school, rotating through that's exactly right. Even these long cases like cardiothoracic surgery, the anesthesiologist, maybe a resident, maybe the nurse, anesthetist. These words are hard to say. Someone's always there watching the monitor. They might be doing something else at the same time. I remember one time there was a resident practicing his golf swing, and I was like, this seems pretty unprofessional. But they're always watching the monitors. And I would imagine like this, especially watching the blood pressure, the heart rate, things like that. And they're always checking. They kept checking, at least in the cases I would be in, they would do things to check. The patient was still under enough. Not too far under. Not coming out of it either.
Dr. Antonio Gonzalez, MD: Yes. And as you mentioned, sometimes the anesthesiologist, a lot of what we do, we may not be actually looking at the monitors, but because we're actually trained for so it's a three year program. By the sound of the machines, you actually know what is wrong. Like the pulse oximeter has a very typical sound. When the saturation drops, the alarms on the monitors are set off to go at X levels. Right. So you can set up your alarms. So even if we're like, let's say, fixing our medication drips or we're working on something that it's not necessarily looking at the monitor, just hearing the monitor, we are aware of what actually the vital signs are, and of course, the alarms are ever present. So we're always very aware of these alarms and everything that surrounds. We use pretty much all our senses when caring for patients.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: That makes a lot of sense.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It's interesting. I think there was an episode on Grey's Anatomy years ago about the anesthesiologist at the hospital was like, has a substance use disorder. And he was, like, falling asleep next to the patient. And of course, it's a drama, so the young resident had to do something and didn't want to get in trouble by the attending or something. But I feel like I've seen not a lot of medical dramas. I mean, that's not like my jam. But the couple that I have there seems to always be the anesthesiologist is like sometimes a villain. I don't know.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Is that a stereotype? Yeah. Is that a stereotype?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Or like, maybe just in TV, the.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Psychopath is often the villain too, so we can empathize.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, it seems like it's a lot of risk with that job.
Dr. Antonio Gonzalez, MD: I think that psychiatrists, dentists, and anesthesiologist seems to be the highest the physicians with the highest incidence of substance use.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Disorder, I believe that's right, yeah.
Dr. Antonio Gonzalez, MD: And suicide as well, I think. Yeah. Maybe media has picked up on that. Maybe.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Interesting. I think in my training, I was taught that in those specialties, you have the easiest access to controlled substances in terms of the risk of substance use disorders. So that's one reason the rates are higher. And then suicide. I didn't know anesthesiologists also had a high rate of suicide.
Dr. Antonio Gonzalez, MD: Yeah. I haven't reviewed the statistics on this, but I think that it used to be that way. I think actually, dentists might be number one. For some strange reason, anesthesiologists are high up in there.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: One big issue I had with this movie was the plot, because I feel like they went to great lengths to pay off a prior malpractice lawsuit. And I feel like they'd all have malpractice insurance, right? Even if I know there's certain specialties. Like, I think OB, for example, has a really high rate of malpractice insurance. Wouldn't they have malpractice to cover any claims?
Dr. Antonio Gonzalez, MD: Yes, they would.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Think. And Portia, I think you were reading some criticisms of the movie. I think the general public also caught on to that, like, wow, this is like a really intricate plot to go through to pay off prior lawsuits.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I don't know. Murdering someone, you have to be so backed into the corner hopeless, like no other options. And it's like, I mean, A, yeah, like, you're right about the malpractice. You should have an insurance through the hospital. You're not even in private practice paying for your own, and that maybe you cut corners with that. It just seems OD that they taking going to these lengths of murdering a patient that Dr. Jack Harper was, like, friend. And it's like, at what point did the friendship turn into this? Was it fake? The whole, like, I think that's know, I watched the movie, you know, taking.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Notes because we're professionals.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: We're professionals at watching TV here, and I was just lost with a lot of the line, so I'm glad to hear it know, I guess just me, but pretty gaping holes in some of it.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah. And what did you think about that relationship of the friendship between Dr. Harper and Know? Because at least in psychiatry, we are big and not just psychiatry, but mental health in general, we are big boundary people. We really talk about boundaries and how to maintain them, especially in professional settings. I think in some other fields of medicine, I'm thinking more like primary care pediatrics in the old school days when you'd have the family doctor who took care of everyone in the town, I think the boundaries would have been a little different. But I always thought, especially when it came to things like surgery, it was really important not to operate or doing a seizure on people you're close to. Is that still the case?
Dr. Antonio Gonzalez, MD: Well, I think it's probably the right thing to do because your feelings for your significant other or friend may actually interfere with your judgment. But again, I think it's more of a judgment call than a set rule. I do think that there are certain surgeries and certain procedures that we probably shouldn't be doing for our family members or for close friends, because, again, our judgment may be cloud by our feelings for that person. You may not necessarily take the best decision when you're put in that place.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah, I think suturing up a superficial wound like your child cuts their knee. Oh, I can suture that up real quick. Feels very different to me than doing cardiac anesthesia or surgery on your buddy that you go fishing with. Yeah, right. Yeah, I would agree.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I could see I was thinking just, like, what would I be comfortable with a friend doing? But maybe I don't know. I mean, I'm thinking of specialties, like, ortho I could see a friend doing but not OB. It's, like, all private, and then definitely not psychiatry, but I don't know. Cardiac surgery? I don't think cardiac no, it's like your heart opening my chest. I don't want you I think it's.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Important you feel like you trust the surgeon and the anesthesiology team, but to have it be like your buddy, that's risky. And what an ultimate betrayal.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I mean, he trusted this person. He chose to have this procedure done by, I guess, at least rating wise, like a doctor with a lower success rate than right. The mom brought in this specialist who was operating on presidents and had all.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: This prestige play picked Dr. Harper.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then right. To have this nefarious plot going on was just I was really shocked. I was also really shocked that Sam was in on it, his fiance, because at first, I think the movie kind of sets you up to not, like the mom. Right. Like, Lilith seems, you know, like, she doesn't have his best interests at heart.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It's controlling. Maybe they're enshring and not letting him.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Live or be independent. Right. But then know, I was like, wow, really weaseled her way in. So I don't but she was a nurse, I think, so she had some info about his medications, which the mom, Lilith, was first, really surprised and pleased. Like, wow, like, you really have been taking care of him. I see all the medications in your bag. But then that's also ultimately how she found out that Sam was in on it. Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: She saw, like, I think Sam left her purse behind, and the medications fell out. And when she went to go put everything back in the purse, she saw some mail where the name didn't match up, and then somehow she put it.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Together, but that wasn't clear.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: But again, also like, okay, so the names don't match up. That wouldn't automatically make me think, like.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Oh, no, you're in on it to.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Murder my son while he's in this heart transplant. The plot was a little far fetched, but I did think it was entertaining, and I did know with Clay on the table, often the anesthesiologist is, like, the first person you meet when you're coming in for surgery that day and.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: The first person you see when you wake up.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: So I think that's very important, as well, to your whole experience of surgery. And can you tell us a little bit, Dr. Gonzalez, about in your role, what that entails and how you sort of take care of the patient in broad strokes. And if this movie we've already talked about how the induction was totally off, but what the movie sort of got right and wrong.
Dr. Antonio Gonzalez, MD: Yeah. So I think that the role of the anesthesiologist is very important. And I think that as anesthesiologist, we realize that, as you mentioned, unfortunately, the way our system is, we usually meet our patients just the day of surgery, right? So what that entails is that we actually need to create rapport with our patients very quickly. We know that the patients are coming in for a very stressful moment in their life. Sometimes it's very big surgery, sometimes it's very minor surgeries, right? But independently of what type of surgery the patients are coming for, we need to create that rapport and we need to bring the confidence to the patient. And as anesthesiologist, I think that we try to do that the moment we're talking to the patient. The first time we talk to the patients, it's all about creating rapport and creating a team experience in which you let me know what are your goals and we can try to meet those goals and expectations. What are your fears? Some patients tell you that their major fear is pain. Some patients tell you their major fear is throwing up because all the nausea, they've experienced so much nausea after. So then you can reassure the patient, okay, so this is our plan. This is going to be our plan to address the pain. This is going to be our plan to address the nausea. And again, we do this for all types of surgery. And I think that's very important as anesthesiologist to try to create that rapport and always be, when talking to the patient, basically addressing what are your major fears and how this is our plan to address those.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That's such an important question. I think such an important part of the team. I think other people are just kind of part of the team, which makes sense. Like, okay, this is a surgery. They ask you a million questions like why are you here? What's your name? What's your birthday? Over and over again. So they're doing the right thing. But then for someone to ask, right, what are you scared of?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: What are you scared of today? How can we help you? Do you have any questions? Is really helpful. And I think just lets see the patient feel like they're a part of the team, like they're being validated, listened to, important, which of course they are. But I think in the system when you have maybe two to five, maybe surgeries that day, it's just like it becomes for everybody that's working, there just procedure. So I think those questions just stand out as really helpful and nice, good patient care.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And the anesthesiologist is the person who you really meet at the beginning, who asks you all these questions, checks on your allergies, looks in your mouth to see like, okay, how big are those tonsils? How are we going to sort of intubate? You most comfortably asks you what you're worried about, and then they walk with you in most of the time, and they're with you, getting you on the table, getting you positioned, making sure you're comfortable, saying, okay, it's going to be cold in here, let's put a blanket on. They do a lot of that caretaking right away. I think when people are really scared, even if it's a minor surgery, I don't know who's not scared when they're going into a surgery. And of course, the surgeon comes in and they're really focused on the surgery, and of course, they want to make the experience good, too. But you're usually, like with the anesthesiologist, I think, the longest as you're consciously awake and then coming out of the surgery, that's who's also waking you up and making sure you're okay. That's who's checking on you in post op and things like that. So it is interesting that such an important member of the team and you're right, you really meet them that day and then you don't see them again, right? Like at the follow up for the surgery and stuff, you never get to see them. Is that a part of the job? Do you mind that, or do you wish that you could check on these people again?
Dr. Antonio Gonzalez, MD: Well, it's actually very interesting that you ask because one of the things that actually inspired me to become an obstetric anesthesiologist, particularly, was I sometimes felt that I was in these very long surgeries, and when I went to see the patients post op, they would not remember me. And there wasn't really a problem with the patient not remembering me. It wasn't really an ego thing. It was more like, I don't feel like he thinks I'm part of this team taking care of him. I didn't feel like I was part of the team again. But on the other hand, I just happened to see a patient in a hallway and he's like, oh, you did my epidural for labor. And I'm like, oh, I did. And that was like, oh, these patients do remember me. Do appreciate what we're doing. And although, again, it's not an ego thing, but it's just that feeling of being part of something more, like, you know, that you help somebody and they actually remember that you were part of that, alleviating the pain, and it just feels good. It makes you feel like you're really part of a team that addresses the patient's pain and all this. And that's what really brought me into obstetric anesthesia. Going back to what we were talking about, the patients, the pre op part. Again, because of my obstetric anesthesia background, most of the literature that I've reviewed is on that field. And there is a very interesting article that has changed the way I practice that basically addressed what we were just discussing, which was basically, you ask the patients would you rather have better analgesia or more side effects, depending on the dose? And the interesting thing it's a very interesting study, but the outcome of the study was that patients actually knew exactly what they wanted. The patients that were overly concerned about pain ended up consuming more pain medication. And the patients that were overly concerned with the side effects did not consume as many medications. So the patients always know. And that's why always asking your patients, what are your weigh the risk and benefits, or what are your main outcomes? What do you want to experience here? More pain, slightly less pain, slightly more side effects of the medications, or you're okay with pain knowing that your side effects are going to be less?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: The patients know that's actually really interesting and really important to keep sort of their autonomy and their preferences. So, Dr. Gonzalez, I know you're not like a transplant surgeon, but I thought it was pretty unlikely that the mother would just be, like, wheeled in, especially after having overdosed on something and her heart would be given right to her son.
Dr. Antonio Gonzalez, MD: Yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: What do you think about that?
Dr. Antonio Gonzalez, MD: Yeah, absolutely. I think you're absolutely right. And at some point, I was hoping to bring that up. First of all, as you mentioned, there is a battery of tests that the donor needs to go through before they can be a donor.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That's number one blood type, right?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It's not just like, oh, it's a blood type match. There's like, so many more things they have to check.
Dr. Antonio Gonzalez, MD: There's so many more tests. And it seems from the movie that the mom have actually taken the purse from Sam, right? So presumably she took medications that could have actually make her heart stop. Right, which means that the period of ischemia of the heart may not have make her a good donor for her heart. She might have been able to donate her cornea and other things that actually don't have a very specific ischemia time. But there are organs that have a very limited ischemia time, meaning that the time that the organ is without perfusion or without oxygenation, without blood flow. And that is very important. The heart is one of the organs that needs perfusion for very crucial timing. It's a very small window of ischemia for the heart yes.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: That she'd take, again, cardiac medication that likely stopped her heart. It does seem like she called her surgeon of choice ahead of time and was like, get here now. We only have so much time. But still, it's just completely unlikely that that would have happened. It was kind of a beautiful, I guess, part of the story that they could both, in this other realm, connect with each other and she could talk to him and they got to say this goodbye. That was pretty beautiful. But in terms of accuracy, there's no way that would have happened. And so getting. Back to the title of the movie Awake, and the whole premise that he's awake in surgery and aware of everything that's going on. I think a fascinating question that comes to my mind is like, how do we define awake? Is it consciousness? Is it memory? Is it feeling? And then how do you assess it during and after something like a major surgery?
Dr. Antonio Gonzalez, MD: Yeah, that's a very interesting question. And I was thinking myself the same thing throughout the movie. And at the end, I'm still not even clear that either he was awake. We probably will never know the answer, according to the movie. But interoperative awareness, it's basically the incidence of a failure to suppress arousal, experience and episodic memory. So for you to have recall, in order for you to have introoperative awareness, there has to be recall. There are some incidents of patients actually hearing things, but they may not have necessarily distress about it because hearing and depth of sedation, the depth of sedation goes anywhere from hearing to actually not even being able to have recall. So you're going to see the worst cases of interoperative awareness when there is recall, and the patient can actually tell you how stressed they were about the experience. So they've come up with some classification. It's called the Michigan Awareness Classification, and it goes from zero, class zero, which is basically no awareness, to class one, which is auditory perceptions, class two, which is tactile perception. So they feel the surgical manipulation, they feel the endotracheal tube. And then there is class three, which is they actually feel pain. Class four, they actually have paralysis. And this is what seems to actually be happening here. He's experiencing paralysis because he said, just move something, right? He's trying to move something. He can't move anything. So he probably is there at a class four. Later on, we know that he's definitely at class five, where he's probably experiencing pain and paralysis. And then you can actually assign a D if the patient tells you that it was very stressful. They have the fear, they had fear, they had anxiety, a sense of suffocation or doom. So basically all these classifications, you can actually add a D to them. And the higher they are, and especially if they have a D next to them, the more likely these patients will have sequela. As in your profession, you can probably talk about what happens to these patients that have interpreted awareness. Right? And you were talking about moms that have pain during surgery. So that could lead to post traumatic stress disorder. But I'm not the expert there.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I would imagine it would. Right. I would imagine when we think about post traumatic stress disorder, I like to think of that as a disorder of Stuckness. And I always tell my patients, like, it's normal after you've lived through something traumatic, to have the symptoms of PTSD, the hyperarousal, the hyper, vigilance, intrusive thoughts, altered avoidance, altered mood, altered line of thinking and things like that initially, because who wouldn't? We sort of call that an acute stress response. But then once it persists, usually after, like, a month or continues beyond that, then we start to think of it as something called PTSD or post traumatic stress disorder. And there's some really great treatments out there for that, including things like cognitive processing therapy or CPT, EMDR, different types of psychotherapies and medications, and patients can really get a lot better. I love treating PTSD for that reason. But I would imagine the first criterion to meet diagnostic criteria for PTSD is to have a life threatening situation happen to you or to be vicariously exposed to it, which I think is really important as a new addition to the DSM criteria. I think this will qualify.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, I'm just even imagining a patient coming in and describing this. I would expect a person to develop PTSD from it, and then it's like.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Is that a disorder, or is that, like, a normal human response to being consciously awake but paralyzed during cardiac surgery? Right.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That's where you're like, well, like, trouble sleeping following. I would imagine maybe some nightmares. Might be afraid to fall asleep 100%. Or obviously, like you were saying before, Dr. Gonzalez, afraid of returning for future medical care or surgeries or telling loved ones to not do it, or their experience. So it feels really serious. And obviously, many traumas can be, but also unique. I haven't worked with someone that this has occurred to, obviously, because it is rare, but I'm just imagining, like, poor Clay when he wakes up, and if he does recall at one of those levels that you described, then what? And also write the murder plot. I mean, that was like taking the cake, let alone feeling pain.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I know. Like, such intense pain, right. And being so paralyzed and helpless. I almost can't imagine anything worse.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: He's standing up. We talked a little bit about the dissociation. That being an interesting way to show it. So sometimes when somebody's experiencing a trauma, they might dissociate and kind of see.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Themselves from up above. And they did show that when he sort of zoomed out, then it took a turn where he's then solving the.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Plot, like, walking around, figuring it out.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Like, I don't think yeah, that's not quite dissociation, but up until that point.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It was a great depiction of.
Dr. Antonio Gonzalez, MD: It.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Just it was wild.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It was wild. What a wild movie. Dr. Gonzalez, as we wrap up, is there anything else you'd like to add or anything we haven't touched on that you think is important?
Dr. Antonio Gonzalez, MD: What it's really important here is for the patients to really voice out their experience. Right. One of the things that we see as physicians, we're not necessarily, particularly not psychiatrists or psychologists, we are not necessarily very well versed in how to deal with the consequences of what happens interoperatively. And it's important for the patients to say, hey, this is what I felt. But equally as important is for physicians to actually avoid minimizing what the patient felt and actually acknowledge that something happened and say, hey, I'm really sorry that you went through this. Let's try to figure out what resources we have to help you to get better, to get through these. It's actually something that I've always wondered is when is the best time to reach out for the patients? When, for example, in our case, we do C sections, right? And the patients are telling us that they're feeling pain, so they actually quickly voice out their experience so we can quickly do something about it. And even then, it's hard to figure out if you should approach the patient, shouldn't approach the patient, because not every patient won't consider a short time of discomfort or pain as traumatic. So it's a thin line in which basically we rely on the patient telling us, this is what I felt, this is how I feel now, so that we can actually look for help again, because as anesthesiologist or, surgeons may not be the best person to deal with it, but we can look for the resources.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And I do think, actually, at least in my clinical experience, given what I do, it has been I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt, it has been so validating and healing for my patients who have experienced trauma within previous childbirth deliveries or IVF procedures or other things like that, who felt minimized by the team at the time when they go in for the next thing and their anesthesiologist is the one who asks them just the questions you're mentioning. Now, I'm wondering if it was you.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Or if you've just trained, like, some.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Really good team members. But when they ask them about these things and they share their prior traumatic experience, which is very hard for them, right, like, to even share, period, but then, especially if they've felt minimized or invalidated in the past, when they share it this time, and it's met with compassion and validation, it goes so far in their healing. And so I think you're spot on, and I hope this can serve and your continuing education can serve to just keep reinforcing that to the anesthesiology team that that is really important and such a crucial time to give that validation to patients who might really need it. And I think that would go for any patient, but especially any patient with a history of PTSD prior to that. And that's a hard thing to ask about.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, I could definitely see it in pregnancy traumas. I think it's a pretty common experience with just, like, whether or not it's their perspective of something happening. Everything moves fast sometimes, as both of you know, I'm sure if it's supposed to be a regular delivery and all of a sudden it's not like that can be scary. And sometimes you have to prioritize saving a patient so things aren't explained slowly. It's the after of, like, okay, I know. That was really scary.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Kind of debriefing.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, the debrief I would imagine being really helpful.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And we always I think in mental health, we always assume our patients have a trauma history rather than assume they don't. And I don't think that's because there's like I mean, maybe there is a higher incidence given the patients we're seeing. But I think then if you can just sort of approach it in more of like a trauma informed framework and just assume, like, okay, let's just assume this person has had some experience in their life where they felt helpless or stuck or not heard. How do we approach them here so that they don't feel that you don't even have to ask, do you have a trauma history? You could just assume. And then I think that just goes a really far away. So I'm so glad, Dr. Gonzalez, to hear that you're just doing know that makes this psychiatrist very happy.
Dr. Antonio Gonzalez, MD: Yeah, well, I think that a lot of it has to do with the fact that some time ago, we actually read this very nice article that came out that was titled Failure of Communication, and it was actually written by a patient who experienced interoperative pain. I actually had the pleasure to have a podcast with Susanna Stanford, who is a patient who experienced introvertive pain, and she shared with us through that paper that was a couple of years ago, her experience. And from the time I read that paper, I started realizing how important that communication part is and not minimizing their pain and actually trying to address the situation in the moment and offering alternatives. Right. The most important thing, as you mentioned, is the patient needs to feel that first of all, they're being heard and that their concerns will be addressed. The worst we can do is tell them that it's not that big of a deal. Baby is okay. That's usually what we hear. Oh, the baby's okay. So it's going to be fine. The means doesn't justify the end.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Well, that's wonderful. Thank you so much, Dr. Gonzalez, for joining us today. I think we will try to link to that paper in our show Notes. If anyone is interested in reading that.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Further and maybe also your podcast, if you want to tell us, give us.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: A little shout out yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Where they can find your podcast.
Dr. Antonio Gonzalez, MD: Yes, the podcast is Yale Anesthesiology, and I will share the link as well.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Thank you. And we want to thank all of our listeners for joining us today. You can find us at Analyze Scripts podcast on Instagram and TikTok. We recently updated our Instagram handle, so now it's Analyze Scripts podcast across the board, and we hope that you will join us next week as we cover the Nightmare Before Christmas on our Halloween month.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yes.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: So we'll see you next Monday.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Thank you so much for joining us.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Bye.
Dr. Antonio Gonzalez, MD: All right. Thank you so much for having me. This was great. Thank you.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: This podcast and its contents are a copyright of analyzed scripts, all rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited. Unless you want to share it with your friends and rate review and subscribe, that's fine. All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings, or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Our don't.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we review "The Morning Show" season 2. This season is pretty heavy with themes of substance abuse, toxic relationships and Mitch Kessler's [SPOILER ALERT] death by suicide. We spend time discussing cancel culture and the complexities of the human experience. We also explore Cory's charcter, is he hypomanic? Or is it more of an ADHD presentation we are seeing? Who does Bradley choose? Is everyone in love with their mother? Listen now to your favorite TV loving shrinks for our full break down. We hope you enjoy!
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fury, a psychiatrist.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: There is so much misinformation out there, and it drives us nuts.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: With a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And your DSM Five and enjoy. We get started. We just wanted to include a trigger warning for this episode. This episode could include discussion about some themes and topics that might be upsetting, including, but not limited to things like substance abuse, suicide, self harm, disordered, eating, and harassment and assault. So if any of those topics are too upsetting, we totally get it. Please feel free to skip this episode and join us next week. Otherwise, we hope you enjoyed.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Thanks for joining us today to cover the Morning Show season Two. If you have not listened to our take on season one, feel free to scroll back a couple episodes in our feed. Season two did come out in September of 2021, which was kind of in, like right. The throes still of COVID I mean, not like the Lockdown, which this show oh, my God. With that visual of New York City, which was eerie, to say the least. But did you watch this in real time?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: No, I think I watched it last year, maybe, but rewatching it again. I had, like, a visceral reaction to all of the COVID stuff. What about you?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It was weird. I really like and we talked about this about season one, how they show, right? Like, real time things. And it's so funny thinking back to hearing about, you know, it was like, in more of the Asian countries in Asia. It was kind of, like, sprinkling through. And I remember having some friends traveling internationally and being like, yeah, it was weird. Like, a lot of people are wearing masks, not domestically. And then all of a sudden, it was here, right? And it was like this very March white. I don't know, like, the grocery stores were full, and then they were empty. Schools were open and they were closed. It wasn't a smooth transition. Oh, this is coming. It was just like, okay, we're making this decision.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Oh, my gosh. I remember I'm so ashamed to admit this, but I was supposed to go on a bachelorette party to New Orleans, like, right in mid March, and it was for my very good friend, Dr. Kristen Heisel, an infectious disease physician at Mass General Hospital, so you can imagine what her March 2020 turned into. But as the news of COVID was, like, trickling in, I remember sitting in the psychiatrist talking to a colleague being like, this is just going to be like ebola where we all freaked out. And then it was fine. And I was like, trying to tell myself this because I really wanted to go on this Bachelorete trip and I feel so selfish saying that. Should we cut that? Like, does that make me look at.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I can share a similar thing.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: But then my friend kristen called me after they had this super secret meeting at MGH and was like, we're not like, you need to go to the grocery store immediately. This is like a really big deal. Harvard is preparing. They've talked to like, this is going to be a really serious thing. And I was like, oh, my god. And then two days later, yeah, everything shut down.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It's funny because I was in DC. In February, like mid February, and there was still nothing. I don't know which speech I know that's not the right word for it was happening, but everyone in congress and the senate were there and it was really busy and it was fine. The airports were all good. But then I ended up having to come back from puerto Rico early. So I've told this story, obviously to my friends, but for my new friends out there listening. So we had been here and meeting family down in puerto Rico who had missed it by three days of what was kind of happening. And we were like, should we go? Should we not? And we're on the airplane, it's about to take off. They shut the door and everyone's like, phone alerts start to go off if you have news alerts. And it was that all international travel was stopped and we weren't going internationally. But I was immediately like, I need to get off this plane. Obviously I couldn't. So we went to Puerto Rico. We told our family that was down there and they just did not get it's. The like, this isn't a big deal. Why is everyone up there freaking out? Brian were like, my partner and I were like, how can you not understand? The grocery stores are empty. So we ended up flying home early and thank goodness we did because the island closed down. There was a ship in the port there from Italy that had some italian travelers that were sick and so it was just chaos. And then I remember coming back to work on Monday and we closed, right? So we had this meeting of how we were going to handle it. Everyone took their laptops and we went home. And then I never went back to that job.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah, it was scary. I don't know, I feel like triggered watching this show and all the COVID stuff. It's like hard for me to watch. I notice kind of like not looking at the empty street. It's just like really hard for me to watch. I thought they did a magnificent job, though, covering it and how they had Daniel, the lone wolf, sort of like raising the alarm and seeing how Mia, who's now in Chip's old role, is kind know, not covering, know, choosing other stories to cover instead. And then they send him to China, right?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And he is just like in the throes of it being like, this is serious. They keep giving him a short segment, they cut his segment, he's like but.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It'S so symbolic of how we were all thinking about it until it was really serious, right? And then we sort of see the COVID sprinkled in, I thought, even starting with New Year's Eve and how joyous it all was, like, woohoo.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: 2020.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And now as we watch it, you're just like, if we all knew what was coming. And then they still sort of sprinkle in COVID throughout the whole season as it builds. And I enjoyed how they kept reminding us of the date. Like, oh, Alex comes back February 20. And I was like, oh my God, that's like three weeks before it's going to start. And then her last day was like March, I don't know, like 14th or something, right? Like, it just kept building and building and building till we see Alex with COVID and we see Bradley, like, rushing into the Er to find her brother in the chaos of the emergency room with COVID cases. And it was just like, we see them all go home and trying to figure out contact tracing and Corey with.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: The and being silly with like, I don't know what that know?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Well, we didn't know what it meant. And Corey's like, can you stand can you step back? 6ft, right? Oh my God.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It was such like an awkward time because I think everyone it was new social norms that we all had to just adopt and everyone had their own length of time for getting on board with specific social norms or not. And I think it was just like, there's a lot of awkward interactions with people.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I think what I found personally interesting as a physician and as a psychiatrist, as the time when it all hit, I was still doing some moonlighting at a local hospital and fortunately that was like extra work. And so as soon as I started to feel unsafe, I stopped. And I had a lot of guilt over that, but certainly I had a couple of shifts. I never will forget how scared I felt because I didn't have enough PPE. And I remember nurses coming in and smuggling in masks to each other and saying, don't tell the supervisor. And we were trying to figure out, as a psychiatrist, what do you do when there's a code and you don't know if the patient's COVID positive? Like a behavioral code, agitation, delirium, things like that, that you get called for in the middle of the night, like, how close do you get? How close do you not get? We didn't know yet how is it transmitted? How does it affect if you have history of asthma, how does it affect you? How does it affect kids? All of that stuff. I just will never forget being so scared. And I remember leaving one of those shifts and realizing, like, I can't do this right? Like, I'm terrified. And one of the nurses being like, Dr. Fury, are you okay? And I was like, no, I'm really not. And then I think as a physician, realizing this is really serious, during that time when everyone was trying to figure out, like, do we really need to stay home? Do we really need to stock up? And when people were like, oh, it's just 60 days lockdown. And I was like, this is going to be years, and it's just hard to watch.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It was an interesting theme, like, you said that even I know one of the producers who went up to Mia with one of like it was a COVID story about a number going up, but there was also, like, three other things happening that day. And she was like, Nope. No, we're not running that story. And it's just right. Like, they didn't and then all of a sudden, it was the most important thing, right? Like, in mid March, everyone that's all anyone could talk about. And I remember, funnily enough, with the morning show being like, right, a news network. I'm just not, like, a news watcher. And I watched the news, right, for like, 72 hours when things had locked down. And then I was like, this isn't.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: So great for my mental mental health.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, but it was wild.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It was wild.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Dr what was it? Fauci. And then that woman with the scar, Deborah.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And just watching them try to keep their composure. I'll never forget that. Meme going around with Dr. Fauci, like, touching his forehead in frustration and being like, you know, it's bad when the man telling you don't touch anything is like touching its head in frustration, right? And they showed clips of Dr. Fauci in this. So the season does culminate with COVID and I'm really interested to see now that we know season three is about to come out, like, how does that evolve? But there was a whole lot more in season two, and I have no idea how we're going to cover it.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: All in this know? So so we have some new characters. We have Stella, who's the new president of the news division.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I think she took Cory's job.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yep.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And then Corey took Fred's job, right, because they fired Fred.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, that was a little I mean, it became clear, but right at the end of season one, it seemed like Corey was going to be let go, and then they ended up letting Fred go. And then Corey stepped into that role, which is what he wanted, right. And I think he kind of set some things up so that happened.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And I think also we come to find out he's kind of in cahoots with right? Like, it kind of sounded like I was a little confused by this, but it kind of seemed like Bradley thought she walked in and said, I'm not coming back if you don't rehire Corey. And then they did. But then we sort of found out later on that Fred was like, corey should be my successor and give me all this money. And then he's maybe pulling some strings in the background. So he's like gone but not really gone. That kind of confused me.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. Corey is an interesting guy.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Do you think he's hypomanic?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: He is something. He is so animated and constantly hyper and activated. I just want to know his routine off when he's not at work. We saw some of his exercise routine.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: When I saw that I was like, I think he's hypomanic constantly on the go. But explain that a little bit.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: So when we think about hypomania, what we mean by that clinically is when you think about depression, we think about people who have clinical symptoms of depression for two weeks or more. That's where your mood is lower than your average baseline. We all have mood fluctuations over the course of our life, but when you're feeling depressed, your mood is way too low. Now, the flip side of that is something we call mania. This is what we see when you have something called bipolar disorder where not only do you have the depressive episodes, but then you also have the manic episodes where your mood is way too high, right? Like, you don't need sleep. You're talking a mile a minute. You have all these big grandiose ideas. You're really impulsive.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And people can tell.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: People can tell when you are fully manic. That's a psychiatric emergency. You need to go to the emergency room. A lot of times people end up getting hurt either because they're doing something really risky like skateboarding down a highway or something or because they're using substances or sex, gambling, spending money, things like that. There's something in between what we call euthymia, which is like a typical normal baseline mood. You still have fluctuations because you're human, but it's all within a controlled range of feelings. It never dips too low or too high. Mania is like the highest you ever get. Hypomania is kind of like halfway in between. And some people with hypomania function really well in society. Like maybe corey, right. Like, maybe he only needs 4 hours of sleep. Cool. He can get a lot more work done. Maybe he has boundless energy, but he's not like, talking way too fast or having really big ideas that are people with mania might write their memoirs on postit notes and put them all over their room, for example. He's not really behaving like that outside the norm. But sometimes people with hypomania are really successful and productive because they just don't need as much sleep, and they have more energy than the average person. He also could be abusing stimulants or something.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: He could be and sometimes I think there's that little edge or overlapping, also, potentially, of ADHD, just like, really hyperactive. You know, what if you have ADHD? Some of the symptoms with mania are not presenting, though. But just that on the go. And we think about people who, in adulthood often find careers that do fit better if you have attention hyperactive or you're inattentive. It's hard when you're a child. I know I'm taking a little bit of a left turn here because school is pretty much the same. Right? We have expectations for everything. But when you get into adulthood, there's so many hands on careers. There's so many careers that you can be on the go that we see people typically be able to function a little bit better with that. So even I'm wondering for him, right. He's constantly being stimulated. He's constantly thinking of these things. So it's like that's a great point. He's got something, though.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Man, I'd love to evaluate him. He also has a history with his mom, which we won't get into all the details. Please watch the show. But which clearly influences his behavior and his love, it seems like, for Bradley. One thing I thought season two did a really interesting job of is, like, depicting how they're all falling in love with who I imagine their parents were. Right. I don't know. What did you think? Did you pick up on that at all?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. Or, like, with Bradley. Right. It's like, for me, I felt like Laura was someone she never had. Right. Like, safe. She was really empathetic, really nurturing, really sweet, kind, really good advice, really validating, not dismissive. And then it's just, like, interesting now with, like, in the mix. It's like, who know in season three, I guess, where does and it's like it depends on, I think, where she is with herself and doing work or not. Because I would say and again, this is just like a guess if she hasn't done work on herself, I could see her picking Corey, and if she has, then it's like Laura.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: So I think it's going to be Cory.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: What did you think about that scene with Laura and Bradley where Laura was encouraging Bradley to go to therapy?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I thought it was excellent.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right. I thought it was so gentle. Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: You're crazy. You need to go to therapy, or you need to get over this, so you should go to therapy. It was just, like, very like, it seems like you need to talk about this, or you need some support, you need someone to help you figure this out. Stuff with your brother.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yes. After her brother Hal. And we'll get into this a little more later. That depiction of being the sibling of someone with an active addiction coming from a dysfunctional home life, we'll definitely get into all of that. But I thought the way Laura so, like, validated how hard all of that was for Bradley and said, I think you need some help figuring this out. Have you tried? Therapy was just such a nice way to bring it up. And then I thought it was so honest when Bradley was like, I think they're going to tell me I'm crazy, I'm scared. And I was like, girl, me too. I hear you. I think we all feel like that, right?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And what a great Know line for her to say, right?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I thought that was such a beautiful depiction of sort of like a nice way to encourage someone you love to seek help and a really nice way to introduce a really tough concept of boundaries and when is it time to walk away? That's hard.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That's hard. And I think in the spirit of therapy, everyone could use it on the Know. I think Mia certainly needs some support. I mean, what a complicated loss she is experiencing. Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It's like Mitch, you mean?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. And even just of this distance, right, of just know, fall from grace as a loss, his loss of the show and then ultimately, right, like his death and then reporting on it and you can see her tearing up. But knowing that he also did all these horrible things and know had come out in this episode, these questions around, like, was he praying specifically on black mean? I just was like, Mia, I would love to I don't just I really like her character. I really empathize with her and I would love for her to get all the support she can. She seems like she's throwing herself into work, which is the job. I mean, I think it just is what it is.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: At the end of season one, he looked so haggard and disheveled and exhausted. And I was like, you are like, going to collapse at the beginning of season two. He looks great. He's like well groomed. He's engaged. He's got this beautiful little house.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: He's driving a Subaru.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: He's probably getting 8 hours of sleep a night. He's probably exercising. Maybe he's playing pickleball. Like, he looks so good. And it was fascinating to me how he so early on told Bradley, like, if I ever talk to Alex again, I got a lot to say to her. But then when she shows up and asks him to come back, he's like, okay, yeah. Why do you think he did that?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I don't know if it was a selfish, not like, self seeking, self serving thing where it's like, I do want to be a bigger producer, right? Like, I'm this little smaller station and this is really my world. Or was it his connection with Alex? Does he think he owes her? Is there, like you had mentioned before, a trauma bond with like I don't know if it was for I mean, it could be all of those things at the same time. So what about you?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I think my theory is that I do think, like, near the end when they have that knockout fight in the car where they're really raging at each other and she mentions that she feels like he's in love with her and she doesn't love him like, that that got me thinking, like, is that true? Especially because then when he was making out with his fiance and was like, let's go do it in Alex's office, and that is kind of creepy.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It got me thinking, like, was his mom, like Alex? Did he have a self centered, narcissistic mother who was constantly absent or critical? And is he seeking that validation unconsciously?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: But is he seeking that approval, that acceptance, that validation in a super unhealthy way? That's what I think. So I'd love him to get some therapy too. And I think what we were talking.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: About with who Bradley will choose based on her own internal path, I think same with like, if he is a well self, he's going to choose his current right like life, right. Working at the smaller station with his this this quiet, healthier, seemingly life, but maybe not so big and showy, right? Like you could see him kind of being pulled back and back and back into this abusive relationship.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right. And we see that with how in that final scene or the final episode when Alex is on air with COVID which was weird that he lied and said he tested positive too. So he's like, totally around her. He could have just put a mask on if he could find one. I guess back then they were hard to find, but we see his fiance call and he declines it.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: He also then puts something on the prompter that Alex wasn't expecting, which is like, so are you getting back at her or you just like it was confusing of where they're going to land.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: 100% because in so many ways, their relationship continued evolving in a very raw, honest way. But then we continued to see the power dynamic stay the same when she FaceTimes him.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right. Initially from bed and after, they are still not okay. They had just had that big fight in the car. And then she's like, very sick. He's being kind, but he gets sucked.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Into her again and again. And she keeps using him as a narcissist will do again and again. And I felt like at the very beginning of season two with Alex, she's in her little chalet. It looks so cozy. She has a dog now. She's writing her memoir. And you see when she comes back to the station, that dinner party at Corey's house, I felt like she put on such a good mask of like, I've really done a lot of self reflection. I want to be different. And then as the season progresses, under more and more stress and scrutiny, I just feel like she's the same old narcissist she's always been. And we see it in such a big way that she goes to Italy to get this letter from Mitch as if he's not again, she doesn't care what he's dealing with. She doesn't care that know, at that point, we knew COVID was spreading. She doesn't care. We see how much she doesn't care about other people. She kicks them off the private jet so she can get back. She goes back to work despite knowing she was in it. She doesn't answer chip's phone calls for like weeks. She's just so utterly selfish and it's.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Just such a big and telling Mitch's wife, right. I think she thought that she was being so kind, like, I'm going to tell her, look at me.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I'm such a person. Look at me. But it's like, no. And I loved when Mitch's wife really put her in her, right?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Well, because her whole world was shattering then. Because it's like other people know, right? She had been so desperate to protect that secret that her and Mitch had know consensual sex. And now it's like, well, actually, other people do know, or other people. There were whispers. And then when Bradley got the excerpts from the book and she's interviewing Maggie, it was just so fascinating to watch Alex unravel, right? Because her whole world had changed. She's no longer in the driver's seat. Her world is falling around her. People are starting to not like her.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Because people are seeing the real her. And the whole world was about to see the real her. Like, we saw Daniel's reaction to the real her. And I was really proud of him again, in that early scene at the dinner party, that he didn't just let her off the hook and like, because that's what he's supposed to do. He really held her accountable. And you see how much he does not like that.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Daniel may be doing some work therapeutically. He is starting to stand up for himself more. He's setting is he is doing what feels authentic to him. You know what?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: He has the it factor.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Okay.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I agree with his grandpa.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. Okay.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I didn't love the cringy song and dance for Alex, and I'm sure that was humiliating for him, but he's got the if factor. And I would be ****** if I were him that I almost got the job at the other network and I agreed to stay. And then Alex just like, stabbed. He just uses people. We really saw that in that scene with Laura when they talked about going to see Bring into Noise, bring Into ****, we see how even with like and I thought this was actually really smart of the writers because it shows that Alex has always been this way, that she was new on the scene. Laura was like know, she was like the lead anchor. She was closeted at the time, but she had some close friends who knew. And it sounds like we're accepting, but it wasn't the kind of thing you just shouted from the rooftops back then. And then soon after, Alex coming into the social circle, all of a sudden it leaks and all of a sudden she gets fired. And then Alex disappears but rises up the ranks. And it was just really interesting to see Alex try to get on Laura's good side and sort of remember that whole scenario so differently from how it actually happened.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Do you think that there was malicious intent or do you think Alex just had no, no. It was either malicious intent or zero self awareness at that time.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Honestly, I feel like for someone with narcissistic personality disorder, how do you split the difference? I really feel like Alex meets criteria for that and she's always just it might not be conscious, but unconsciously thinking for herself and putting her own needs first. And the whole world revolves around her and quite literally it does. Being in such a powerful position in the media, we see again, people kick people off the private jet so she can get home. Chip comes in and exposes himself to COVID so she can go on the like, quite literally, people do revolve around her. So it's hard to like, was it malicious or was it just selfish? But where's the line?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I saw a really interesting TikTok with Alison Stoner. So she was a child star and so she just made this video. It's from September 1, if you want to watch it. And she kind of speaks on how in the film industry, especially starting out with in childhood, how narcissists are kind of grown, even if it's not like rightly. You're born with the trait. And so I think what we've talked about also with Succession 100% is just like how do you have developed drive, right? This internal drive that maybe separates you or you have what do you call it? Like predestined predetermined. Pre, whatever that word is. I'm not saying it predisposed to something that maybe comes out in some people, not others. I don't really see it in Daniel.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right. But maybe is that why he's not so as successful?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Because he's not so brutal?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: That's the thing, is you have more empathy and you think about others.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And so that kind of holds him back.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Exactly.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Whereas Alex was thinking for herself and wanted what she wanted and was going to get it at and then she.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Did and then she did and then she did over and over and over again doing it. And then there are her expectations. I mean, even her family we saw in season one way more, but the facade with her partner, they did that because of her career, because she asked them to. It was expected.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And when you're on her good side, when you're on the good side of the split, she is so charming and funny and. You feel special being in her orbit, right? Like, we see that time and time again with Chip. And I feel like that's how she keeps sucking people in to help further her own agenda, though. That's the thing. Even Bradley again, I think because Bradley hasn't done the work, she's getting sucked in in a way that they I don't even think consciously realize. But Bradley's getting sucked in, too. And in many ways, we see that Bradley's mom, although very know in terms of not being successful, not being wealthy, but is still very critical, dismissive and invalidating. Much like Alex's, when you're on her bad side, like when you try to confront or criticize or point out that she's done something wrong, quickly flips on you. But I think that's why Bradley keeps getting sucked, why all these people get sucked into her orbit and she just uses them to get what she wants.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So what do you think? Do you think it was Bradley being sucked in? What do you think about the interview with Bradley? And, like, what was Bradley's angle? I mean, I liked it. I know a question I'm saying to me. I liked it in the fact that I don't like Maggie, really. And I don't know if that's because I'm in Alex's. I just thought as a woman, instead of being about Mitch, which I'm not saying that in the way that it dismisses, because Alex is not like, a good person, really, but the fact that she kind of lied the whole time about what the book was. And it's like, I remember when Bradley was scrolling through the pages, gets in the back, right? She see her name twice. And then Alex, it's this huge thing. She's on the COVID And I thought that was a really I liked how she challenged her on some of like, why isn't this about Mitch? This was supposed to be about all of the guys and whatever. And yes, Alex is a part of that, which she doesn't want to admit. But I did appreciate kind of the pushback on, too.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I did too. And I think I would imagine Alex has really hurt Maggie. She must like I feel like this was Maggie's way of calling her to the carpet. Is that a saying? Maybe we'll go with know, like, holding her accountable and being, like, exposing who she really is to the world. But I think what Bradley was saying was, like, was that your right?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Why'd?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: You do know, why did you do this? Especially when she came to you and begged you not to. And that is true. She did. It was interesting. Yeah, I think it was really interesting. I don't think Alex expected it at all. I don't think anyone did. And then I'm wondering, why did Bradley do it?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And again, is it like.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Corey keeps putting her in these interesting, like, of, well, you should do it because you're fair. And it's like what does that mean? Remember when he's like, can you do the interview? And she's like, well, why? I don't know. This might be difficult. And he's like, I just know that you'll be really fair. But it was a drawn out it was intentionally that we heard that moment. What does that mean?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And I feel like especially in season two, we see that I hate this about professional settings, when people are saying one thing but really meaning something different and you have to learn the lingo and the undertones and what's being implied. I feel like we saw that a lot with season two. So just that when he's saying fair, does he mean, don't hurt the network. Let's keep us in a good light? Is that what he really means or does he mean, you'll be fair?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think it's almost both. But I'm only saying it's both because I think the fact that he likes her complicates things for him. I don't think he's used to that. I don't think he knows what to do with Bradley initially. He likes her. He keeps giving her all of these things. He keeps promoting her, promoting her, promoting her. Is it because he truly right, has this almost fantasy of how amazing she is as a career woman? Or is it that love piece? Is it infatuation?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: But then he's the one who outs her. So he also loves her, but he's hurting her. And that makes me want to know more about Corey's mom. We learned just a little bit how he was taking care of her and he's kind of taking care of Bradley in terms of giving her the job, giving her a place to stay, rising through the ranks, giving her even Laura, like sending Laura into her life. Can you please help her?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But with her in a really weird way? Permission. I think he made it in his head, okay, for him to do that when he outed them. Because Bradley he made Bradley say, right, he set her up to be like.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: You have to do whatever it takes to protect.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And, like, I think I don't know, maybe Bradley would at the end of the day, if it was super black and white or she knew the outcome later on, that she'd be like, maybe she would have given permission for that. I don't know. But in his head, I think he got permission from her. And that absolves him of the guilt. Yeah, guilt. Maybe it comes out in season three, maybe.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Because I don't think he ever told her that it was him.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I thought he was going to at the end, but then he said, I love you. And then I was like, can he not sit with the guilt of telling her this? So he says he loves her instead, right? He's fascinating. I really hope we see a lot more of his development. I really hope we see Bradley in therapy in season like, I really, really hope we do.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think that would be a great line of whatever, to see Alex and.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Bradley in therapy together, almost like couple therapy or family therapy.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And maybe she did she would go to therapy twice. Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And she's good. That's right.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: She talks some of the external problems, like the network or the cancellation. Right. But it's not about her. It's not deeply rooted in her Psych for interest.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And then she'd be good. She'd be like, I'm good. Or it would be like we saw in succession with the family therapy, right. Where you can't actually go anywhere substantial or honest.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: So rewatching those episodes with Alex and Mitch and watching Mitch's death by suicide was really emotional for me. But what about for you? What did you think of all that?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It's interesting. Bringing then in paola paula. Paula because I feel like I was just feeling many different feelings towards Mitch. At the one hand, I obviously don't like his character. I think he's like, a crappy person.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Really hard to see Steve Carell like this.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yes. Right. But 100% such a good job.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And he's also such a good choice because I think it automatically makes you, like, ambivalent.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yep.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And he is right from the office like this. Like everyone loves my favorite boss. But then, obviously, this is also another character. But it's like, oh, it's a perfect character based on his other fictional characters.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: 100%.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Because he's just, like, beloved. He's funny, rodeo virgin. There hasn't been bad press about Steve Carell, as far as I know. So him being in the role, it just automatically, I think, plants that seed of ambivalence in our minds.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yes. So when he was in Italy and that woman kind of came up to him right. And was, like, saying those things to him, and then we know her friend is filming it. Yeah. Paula come in and kind of interject. I didn't know how to so Mitch was like, right. He's excommunicated. He's living in Italy. He's by himself again. I think at that moment, he doesn't still have self awareness. I think he has more than his mentor. I think there's lines that Mitch won't cross that mentor did, but he still, I think, is lacking self awareness or really kind of understanding. He's still trying to, I think, come back or liked again. But I was again torn with that woman kind of saying those things to me. He's like, he's here minding his business. He's a hat on. Like, he's not right.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Exactly.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Clear the restaurant for me.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And I thought it also brought up this idea of cancel culture and that exploration in a really smart way, how, like, yeah, he's done something many things that are awful and egregious. But, yeah, he's alone. He's not doing anything egregious right then. And we're just going to provoke him in hopes of filming it, that it'll go viral for that person's. Personal gain. That was.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I i the one thing that I liked Paola said to them was kind of just the pointing out of, like, you're doing this to post it. And I was, yeah, like, this isn't you kind of coming up and having a conversation and being like, I just feel like I need to say you whatever. Like a small thing, which, again, still is unprovoked, but whatever. I think just like, people do that, right? People do that. She would have gone viral and had her moment and that feels just a little icky. So anyway, moving through that, I think, just because I always am. So I don't think it's naive, but, like, go lucky, optimistic, never ending. But I feel like Mitch, in his way, on his path, which is not mine or other people's, was kind of exploring what he did.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: He was I thought so, too, way more than exactly.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like, I think he, with time was changing, maybe with more support. I think that documentary that he did with Paolo was powerful or learning of that survivor in Italy that she was talking about or trying to film or make the documentary about. I think he was learning. And so I'm wondering if because he was it was like all of a sudden there was this guilt or like he couldn't handle the fact that he was this person who did these terrible things because he wasn't suicidal before. It was on his journey almost to changing that he took his life.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It was so sad. Like that scene where he swerves and then you see his hand let go. I was like, oh, it really gets him. And he shuts his eyes like he's at peace.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Oh, so sad, portia I mean, he's a children. I don't know. I feel like he had the capacity for change and you have to want it, and he didn't want it before. I don't think he wanted to be.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Alone, away from everyone. COVID, like, thinking about your life, I do think I was seeing more and more capacity for reflection and introspection and ability to change, and I wasn't seeing that from Alex. To me, it was a fascinating juxtaposition of her coming out to Italy, won her letter from him, really railing on him, saying anything she could to get what she wanted.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then them being good and then them not being good.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It was like this whiplash and then them dancing and having these really tender, loving moments and then parting ways, it seemed like, on good terms. And then that happens. But then in between, I guess, then he is intimate with Paola, who he's.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Very upset by the allegations about it being like, preying on black women.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yes.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I don't know. It was sad. It was definitely sad and unexpected for me. I did not see that coming.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And one thing we've talked about in some previous episodes is that humans are complicated and flawed and complex and you can be a perpetrator and a victim. Like, we talk about this a lot with children who grow up in really abusive households and then, unfortunately, become abusive as adults, but I feel like we see that with Mitch here. And again, I'm not trying to be a Mitch Apologist or anything, but he did awful bad things, and now he's being treated so and, yes, he should be held accountable and be fired and maybe arrested or charged with things like all of that. And I think this show, we see what could happen to a human soul going through that and then being just, like, piled on, piled on, piled on top of it, as he does seem to be trying to figure it out or figure out how do you move forward? Right.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think it's also, like, the power of cancel culture, which is what I heard you kind of saying, but not saying those specific words just now. Because I think when some things are very clear, like taking absolutely social media or any kind of presence out, it's like, okay, you do something bad, maybe you do get convicted. Like, you actually are part of the criminal justice system, and you go to jail. It's like you are then treated poorly and in this terrible system. But it's clear then it's like the world, everyone hates you. They are death threats, making things about your kids. It's so interesting to hear people talk about cancel culture or being canceled because everybody says it's, like, the worst thing, because it's so unique. I don't know. It feels nuanced. I know it's not super new at this point, but it's just this weird thing.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And I think, too, with social media, I feel like that has to add to it. It's not just like you're being canceled at your place of work, in your immediate family, or even in America. He was canceled internationally, and again, in some ways, he deserves it. 100 million%. And then all the piling on at the same time. You just think about that is a human at the end of the day, too? And this is really tricky. I feel like this is really hard for everyone, humans, me to wrap my head around. The show just does such a good job portraying really difficult topics. And as we wrap up, I do want to make sure we talk about Bradley and Hal. What did you think of this?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I thought it was was because I was so moved and I was so angry at him when he know, I'll make it really simple. He's describing how their mom has impacted him right. By being threatening, manipulative, all of these things. And he does it exactly to Bradley, like, within the same sentence. And it's just like I was speechless at how well they got it. Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I know.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then Bradley, the guilt tripping, the threatening, the putting it it's on you. My substance use is on you. Showing up and hurt me. Job horrible.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: All of it. You can just see how much she is struggling with wanting to help and support him. Especially now that she has so much money, like more money than they ever had and she can't help him. But then being totally like, what are you doing? Like, why are you showing up here? Are you using? She looks through his bag and then he notices. But then it's like, of course she right. And it's just they perfectly demonstrated that dance. And that scene when she's dropping him off at rehab and trying to set those boundaries like Laura was encouraging her to, was heartbreaking. But I felt like if I was her therapist, I would say you have to set boundaries.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I would have been very proud of her for how she was when she dropped him off. I can't do this for you. This is your decision. Go in or go out. I can't make you sober. And then sucked back in again later on.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: But Manipulatively leaves all the money and disappears again. It's like just like Alex disappearing with her back and not answering anyone's calls. It is such a primitive way of getting someone's attention, right? By scaring them, being like, oh, you don't want anything to do with me? Well then look what's going to happen. And it totally worked.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And it's so hard to not be impacted by that. People do it 1000 times over and over again. Sometimes they never stop and sometimes they do, but it just breaks you as a person and having to do that over and over and over again.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: You really need help navigating that. And that's where support groups, even like Alanon, your own individual therapy can help with that. I don't think there was any way for Bradley to stick with her boundaries in that situation. I thought her reaction was really accurate and human and you just saw all the desperation and remorse and guilt and everything that she was feeling. And I feel like, unfortunately, people who love someone affected by substance use will totally relate to that.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And the people who know in a relationship like Laura with Bradley, because I think that can oftentimes alienate the person like Bradley even more. Because as things are happening, as Hal is pushing Bradley and kind of like making her unwell, there's the people around Bradley like Laura, who then even more so will start to be know, you really can't do this anymore. You really need to set a boundary. And sometimes that know, break a relationship, right? And so then it's like, then you're more know, you're without more it's so it seems know, okay, it's just between Bradley and it just the spider web goes out so far with how substance abuse impacts families.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: That's what we always say, right? It's a disease of the family. It affects everyone. Which I guess you could say about most mental health conditions. But we really see it with substance use. And it was just what a portrayal. And I mean, so expertly done and so heart wrenching. I was so glad she did finally find him, but I'm really worried they're both going to get COVID now. Or I was like, Bradley, what if you have COVID and you're running in exposing all these other people? And it's just like the chaos, right?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And it's still so at the beginning. So they hadn't shut down, no visitors yet. It's within all the chaos of her own life. And then it's like you're seeing which we love, the parallels of all the chaos that now the world is being pushed into.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: So where do you hope season three goes?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I'm sure there'll be at least a couple episodes, right, with them working from home. And I'm curious how that is. But then I'm wondering where season three ends. I know I'm getting way ahead of myself, but because will Cobra be, quote unquote, over? Are they back into the office? Does anyone die? Are Corey and who does Bradley end up with? Is anyone fired? Is Alex ever able to gain anything? Does she keep doing her?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: No, I don't have any hope for her. I'm sorry.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think it's interesting because the show, or maybe not the writers, but the producers or the directors in an interview had talked about how they really wanted to give Alex her redemption at the end of season two. And I feel like maybe a person without mental health background would think she did.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Were you watching, like, the stay tuned for the show? I did watch that for a couple of episodes, including the last one, and I think they touched on, like they were trying to say, like, Alex is human. And I'm like, yeah, and really far on the narcissistic spectrum, like, really lacking empathy and ability to appreciate how our actions affect others. So I just don't think that's going to magically develop.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. And if it does, I don't know. I think the writers, like we've talked about a million times, are wonderful and have they must have mental health experts they have to, helping them develop these characters.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: If you want some more, you can find us at Analyze Scripts podcast.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Exactly. So please reach out to us anywhere. You can find us on Instagram or TikTok at Analyze Groups podcast or check out our website. You can also email us if you'd like to get in touch with us on a more of a professional level. But stay tuned for more of our episodes and check out the ones that we have back in the feed. There's a lot.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: There's a lot. All right, thanks for listening and we'll see you again next Monday.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Bye bye.
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Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we're analyzing one of Dr. Furey's favorite movies - the 2008 comedy "Step Brothers" starring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly. In this lighthearted episode, we use the comedic depiction of two 40-something year-old men living with their parents to discuss failure to launch syndrome and common difficulties encountered when blending families. We also explore the depiction of an enabling vs dismissive parent, the thrapist-patient dynamics between Brennan and Denise, and the classic narcissistic traits embodied by evil older brother Derek. We hope you enjoy!
[00:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fury, a psychiatrist.
[00:12] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker.
[00:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows.
[00:23] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends.
[00:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: There is so much misinformation out there, and it drives us nuts.
[00:32] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like.
[00:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: With a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better.
[00:39] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn.
[00:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: And your DSM Five and enjoy. Welcome back for another episode. I am personally thrilled to be talking about one of my favorite movies of all time, the 2008 smash hit Step Brothers. I feel like in rewatching it for this podcast, I didn't even need to. I know every single line of dialogue, but I still love it so much.
[01:20] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think my husband's favorite movie of all time.
[01:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes. This movie also happens to always be on every time I'm in a hotel on TBS or where they're censoring a lot of the dialogue. It's still funny.
[01:34] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. This movie is just, like, iconic. The cast is ridiculous. Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Adam Scott. We have Mary Steenbergen, who's also the mom and elf.
[01:46] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yes.
[01:46] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Which we're going to be will Ferrell. So it's just like I think he likes working with her. She likes working with him. It's just they're great.
[01:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: I love it. Yeah.
[01:54] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Her voice and her mannerisms, I just love.
[01:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: She was so good in this role. Like, all the times when her and Richard Jenkins, who plays Jobak, like, when you can tell he's trying to lay down the law, and she's like, Robert thinks we agree. It's time for you to move, know. Or like, when he's so mad they destroyed his boat with the boats and host thing. And she's like, I am so upset that you two destroyed his boat. That being said, I thought you showed a lot of enthusiasm and inventiveness. And I was like, in some ways, you're so enabling them, but in other ways, that's so loving.
[02:33] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: She reminds me a lot of the actress herself and the roles that she's playing reminds me of the wife in What About Bob?
[02:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
[02:44] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: She plays similar roles. She has a very similar cadence.
[02:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: The way she sort of like light, airy voice. I totally agree. Totally agree. And then we have Catherine Hahn as Alice, who is Adam Scott's wife. What do you think about the scene with them in the car with their children singing?
[03:04] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I sing along every time. It is so funny. I think I sing this in the car sometimes with know, I'm not a great like, I can tell that I'm not good, so I have an ear.
[03:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I know you're not the little boy's role.
[03:20] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: No.
[03:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: You might be Catherine. I think I'm her.
[03:22] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And someone can yell, flat.
[03:24] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Flat.
[03:25] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: One $200 voice lessons a week. Offer this. And I was like, wow, that is so mean. So mean.
[03:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: He is so mean to everyone. Right?
[03:35] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like, brutal, slurs aside. Like, mean.
[03:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: Do you think he is a narcissist?
[03:47] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think that he is a not human person. I don't know. Yeah, I guess I'm trying to think of something else. I was even thinking of animals to compare him to. He's just so gross and obsessed with putting other people down and himself. And sometimes I think, too, I wonder if he is, because he's so homophobic.
[04:11] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Maybe he.
[04:14] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Pushing something down.
[04:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: Repressed energy.
[04:16] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah.
[04:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: To be clear, we are talking about Adam Scott's character, Derek, not Scott himself.
[04:22] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right?
[04:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. Who I don't think is, like, this character at I thought, you know, again, this movie is so funny. It is a comedy, clearly.
[04:32] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So they're pushing they're pushing every character to the max.
[04:36] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right.
[04:36] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So it's so ridiculous over the top.
[04:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: And yet I still think displays some really interesting topics in a really accurate right. Like, I really think Derek meets a lot of criteria for narcissistic traits.
[04:53] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right.
[04:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, he's constantly putting other people down to make himself feel better. I loved all the family dinners where he's, like, bragging about going fishing with Jay Z or whatever he's doing. And then by the end, they have to be like, okay, Derek, that's enough. They have to cue him, let other people know.
[05:10] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But then Robert is so enamored with.
[05:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: Derek, which people can be, and his.
[05:18] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Own son, Dale down in such a mean way that the stepmom Nancy has to tell him to stop.
[05:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: But then also, Nancy also chimes in with Brendan has a mangina.
[05:33] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I know, right?
[05:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: But this is what these sorts of people can do. They can pull this out of you.
[05:39] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right.
[05:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: They can make you feel.
[05:42] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: When she's yeah, like and then I joined in.
[05:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's just like what? But the whole scene with Will Ferrell dressed like a pirate doing his dancing on the stage is just and the.
[05:54] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Fact that he is so clearly like, a middle aged man, even.
[05:58] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah.
[05:58] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: They're playing, right? Like, you know, in real time. But, like, the flashback, it's, like, still.
[06:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: This middle aged so funny. But that's what mean. Like, these sorts of little things. I'm like you're kind of hitting the nail on the head, though. You see Derek splitting the family, right. Even his new stepdad. It's really interesting. He's so mean to his wife and kids. You can tell they all have to be perfect. They're all there to play a role and fill his own need. Of course. He's a real estate agent on the side, right? I just have my license on the side. I had one supervisor once say that. I don't know if there's any data to back this up, and I don't want to offend our listeners who are real estate agents. But she said in her clinical experience. And she's been doing this for decades and decades. There's a lot of narcissism in real estate. And I was like, that's interesting. And she's like, yeah, if you think about it, part of their job is to form relationships quickly, often superficially, and to sell things. And I was like, that's interesting. Yeah, so I just thought for him, it tracked. And I just thought, even though this is so over the top, they did depict this. I don't even know if back in 2008 this was as much of a thing, but this whole notion of failure to launch.
[07:18] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right. Because that's a movie too, right?
[07:21] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It is.
[07:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: And even though there's like that new Jennifer Lawrence movie, it's kind of about it. Maybe I haven't seen it yet, or maybe it's just they want to prep their son for.
[07:33] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Mean. Failure to Launch, I think is an interesting phenomenon that there's a lot of books out now and yes, like comedic movies as well, but it's really like.
[07:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: This interesting cultural, societal thing that's happening.
[07:48] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It seems to be happening more to males than females with just like a anecdotally movies, books. It seems to be more about males that's true. Launch than females.
[07:59] Dr. Katrina Furey: Actually, in every single movie we just mentioned, the quote unquote identified patient is a male.
[08:05] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right.
[08:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: And in this movie, they're both men.
[08:08] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. And I'm just curious what that's about. I wish I had read one of the books that I'm referencing now.
[08:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: Well, we have full time jobs and we're watching a lot of content to do this. So again, if anyone wants to sponsor us, dear Media, feel free and we could really dive into the research.
[08:25] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So it happens when the term has been coined, when your adult children are not kind of leaving the home, having independence, able to support themselves financially, emotionally. And you see a lot of I think this is kind of just like the funny end of it. Like basement dwellers who are just kind of living at home. I'd say there also is a difference in my kind of opinion, in practice with today's current housing market and so many people returning home after college or just for whatever reason, after a couple of years, because they just cannot afford to live outside the home. So I'd say, like, if you're living at home and you are working however you are, whatever that looks like, whatever field you are in and contributing to the household in any way that your family is asking you to, and maybe they're not, and that's okay, but that feels different, really. Failure to launch.
[09:21] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah.
[09:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think that's a really important distinction to make. And I feel like you're right that there's just so much economic stress for young adults these days in terms of student loans and then housing market and wages and how do you get on your feet? So that, I feel like, is a difference, right? Like sort of living at home until you can launch, but like prepping for the launch and fostering independence along the way. Very different from what we see going on with Dale Brennan. Dale, yeah. Very different. Right?
[09:57] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So childlike. Right? Like so childlike.
[10:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: Toddlers.
[10:00] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Toddlers.
[10:01] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Toddlers.
[10:01] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I was laughing with what they're eating. So, like chicken nuggets and French fries. A lot of ketchup, which is like a kid meal, right? Kids eat chicken nuggets and they really like ketchup.
[10:11] Huff & Doback: Yes.
[10:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: They just freaking love ketchup.
[10:13] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It's like the best condiment ever. It's how kids start learning about condiments. Then we move to a balsamic vinegar.
[10:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's the gateway condiment. You got to be careful. It's a slippery slope getting started with that ketchup.
[10:27] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. So that was just funny, like in all ways, right? The movie is highlighting them as really just like children.
[10:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: They're like into Shark Week. Like just every single thing dealing this drum know, just like being like, you can't come over here because this is like my area. Just like so childlike. And the way that Nancy talks to them is just like how I imagine or do talk to know where she's just you just couldn't hold the fart in or what happened there. I heard you interviewed together for that job. Or maybe take the long way home. Just too much.
[11:08] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right?
[11:08] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I just imagine her being like that in real, you know, in this kind of bad way that we're going to get to with enabling. But I just think that she's so soft and kind and open that I just feel like that's her in real life.
[11:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: Just like how everyone thinks Jennifer Aniston is who we think she is in real life. But then I'm like, what if they're like raging jerks, right? Could you imagine? What if there were all these blind items that turns out were all about Mary Steenberg? That would be shocking, right? She would tell you to F off, but in a really nice, weird way.
[11:48] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Toned. Right?
[11:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: Which is like worse, right? Like maybe even more dangerous than the people who are really in your face.
[11:56] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right? And it's funny because Robert seems to be irritated with Dale, but it's like you still made him this way, right? And so he gets mad more easily or frustrated with them more. And it's like but you both still have 40 year old sons living with you who are not doing anything. And they both only eat chicken nuggets. They both have their own space. They both are childlike.
[12:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: They both wear chewbacca masks.
[12:24] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Why are you now getting mad? I get you're probably been frustrated for years, but it's funny, like his response.
[12:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: All of a sudden I get the sense that he checked out, right? Like that he's frustrated and he just threw his hands up and was like, I give up. Whereas she is just taking care of Brennan for her own needs, wants to be a mom, right. And is really struggling with letting him go.
[12:51] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So more like codependence there. She needs him.
[12:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: Even though right. We do see in this movie a lot of very quick and heavy romantic connections, right? Like Robert and Nancy, like, right away lock eyes at that cochlear implement conference.
[13:11] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I love to know what she's doing there.
[13:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: I was like, I wonder if she's like a rep, like a sales rep of some kind. That's the vibe.
[13:19] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I was she's not called Doctor and he is.
[13:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: He's the doctor.
[13:24] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right.
[13:24] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That's like, the point.
[13:25] Dr. Katrina Furey: I love Dale wanting to go into family business.
[13:29] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
[13:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: And he's like, Trust me, I've tried to tell him that's not how it works, but it's just so funny. Like, at the beginning, they're being intimate and then she tells him, she's like, I have to get this off my chest. And then he's like, Me too. And then that's it. That seals it's like a trauma bond, right? They're like, quickly bonded. And then we see Alice, Derek's wife, fall hot and heavy for Dale very quickly. What did you think of that?
[14:00] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Well, besides feeling gross about it and just write the, like, gross open mouth, like, lapping of each other's faces was just like, making me one of them.
[14:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: Can you imagine if that's like, your job as an actor? Like, all these people around you, and they're like, okay, do it again.
[14:19] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And do it in a way that will disgust people.
[14:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: Do it more. Do it like more slobbery. Like, okay, we got to get it from this angle.
[14:29] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: The scene where they're like, in the forest, right? And she's like, running after him. She sees him, and then it's just so cringy and funny.
[14:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: But if the roles were reversed, like, if it was Dale coming onto her with that intensity, don't you think it.
[14:43] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Would feel more I also just think because of their body stature, right? She's like, small, he's really tall. And so when she kind of assaults him in the bathroom and climbs on top of him with zero foreplay and zero consent right. Asking any questions. And then they finish together after 4 seconds, it just feels like right? Like she's the girl, she's small, he could get off her, he could leave if he wanted.
[15:13] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right.
[15:14] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But yes, 100% the other way. If the roles were reversed, even just for body structure, I think it would be more like assaultive.
[15:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, it would feel more I mean, it is uncomfortable to watch, but it's also a comedy. But you're like, well, Dale's kind of speaking like Attack.
[15:30] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And Dale is also like a child, right? So I don't think he knows what's going on, really, what you do in those situations. Besides, there's a lot of masturbation. They have a lot of the nudie mags. And he has this collection that's from like seventy s, eighty s and ninety s and Brennan's crinkling a page because there's three lower body parts with hair on that page. And it's like a classic and it's.
[15:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: Just like so funny. I know.
[15:56] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Oh my God.
[15:57] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And their favorite magazine to ********** to. That's not a nudie. Good Housekeeping. When they're like, aligning finally and have all of these things in common.
[16:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my God.
[16:06] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Combining families is hard.
[16:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: It is portia.
[16:10] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It is typically less hard for very obvious reasons. And it doesn't make it not hard, but it's less hard when your children are older.
[16:19] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right.
[16:20] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So it's like harder to combine families. I'd say the hardest time I find is when you're in teenhood. So I'd say like ten, I don't know, eight to 18 feels because life is so hard those years.
[16:38] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah.
[16:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: I do just want to point out, like eight to 18 is like a good chunk of childhood. So just to point out, most of the time it's hard.
[16:45] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right.
[16:45] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So, like, babies, I would say, don't really know anything different till like three.
[16:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's it.
[16:53] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Three to 18. All of childhood. It's really sounding when you're aware.
[17:01] Huff & Doback: Once.
[17:02] Dr. Katrina Furey: You have awareness, it's really hard because.
[17:05] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It is so different.
[17:06] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right.
[17:06] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I think one of the hardest things is really not always the siblings, but the parents. Like this guy or this girl who's an adult is coming into your house and you could have the most self aware stepparent who's doing their own work, who's so kind, who's communicative, who's asking questions, and it's still hard. There's boundaries that are supposed to be kind of coming together, but it doesn't feel good at first, and they can't tell me what to do and it feels weird. And what are the other parents? Are they around? It's very challenging, even in the best of circumstances with the best kind of adults.
[17:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: And the adults, I feel like, have.
[17:44] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: To be able to tolerate the pushback.
[17:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: From the kids and not take it personally and just be like, this is to be expected and you have to weather the storm. But I think you do have to have a degree of psychological mindedness and total awareness to be able to do that.
[18:00] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. So I think when you have adult children who are 40 plus, who a shouldn't be living in the home real.
[18:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: It shouldn't even matter.
[18:11] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It really shouldn't matter. That's why it's so unless right. The partner, your dad is dating this woman and she's horrible.
[18:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: Take advantage of him.
[18:19] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah.
[18:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: But I think that's what makes this movie so funny. And it's like if this movie were done with children between the ages of three and 18, you could still do it.
[18:31] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Exactly.
[18:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: What would happen?
[18:33] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Maybe testing, maybe splitting.
[18:36] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right.
[18:36] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like I'm going to ask now, Stepdad, because he's probably going to say yes. I think it's just like it's interesting when Dale is testing Nancy about know, I like to have a lot of fresh fruit around and I like, whatever in my pancakes or something.
[18:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: And she's like, okay, that sounds great.
[18:54] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Great stepmom, if anyone's going to be a stepmom. Nancy is the way to go. So supportive.
[19:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know, but again, where does it tip over from support to enabling, right? And I thought it's crossed. Where do you think it got crossed?
[19:12] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Maybe at the mangina moment.
[19:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: Maybe she just feels so guilty that now from then on, whatever.
[19:19] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Maybe I don't know Dale and Robert. But I'm also curious, just as a side note, and we have no information like what happened to the other parents.
[19:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: So are they deceased?
[19:29] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And did that have anything to do right. With kind of enabling or not parenting kids anymore? Maybe, but we don't like I thought.
[19:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: They said that Nancy and her husband got divorced and she said what's harder on Brennan? I'm blanking on what happened. Know Mrs. Doback number one, or who knows if there was more than one before Nancy. Maybe she didn't, I don't know.
[19:55] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I feel like she did and I don't know why. Maybe they said that really quickly, but.
[20:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think she did. But again, I get the sense Brennan's younger, like Derek's doing okay and then Brennan is stuck at home. But again, I think isn't that what we see in family structures like this? That usually it is the youngest with the parent if there is some codependency.
[20:18] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right.
[20:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: At least in my experience. That's what I've seen. Again, I'm not like a family structure expert by any means.
[20:25] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: No. I think it's hard to be in any family system who is merging with another family system.
[20:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, and it's just like they just really touched on some of the, I would say, like common roadblocks in a really humorous way. And I think you could do it because they're like full on adults and they're hilarious.
[20:48] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like space.
[20:49] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right.
[20:49] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So having your own space or having conversations about space is so difficult if you're merging a family. And what if everyone can't? What if you don't have the money for a 5000 square foot home where one has their own bathroom and bedroom? It's like sometimes people do have to share and that feels there's not always.
[21:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: Enough room for activities.
[21:07] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Really difficult. And Dale's drum set should have been moved. It needed to be.
[21:15] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right.
[21:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: And that's another place where they're enabling him and they're not helping the families merge by being like, okay, fine, you can keep your drum set. You do have to make but then again, it's like but it's also hard on Dale.
[21:28] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: This is his space. It's so delicate. And you just said but it's a comedic way of pointing out really challenging things that this happens all the time, right? Like family. Unfortunately, the divorce rate is high. And as we know, evidence says that it's better to have an amicable divorce than to stay in a bad relationship for your children. So a lot of people will stay married because they think that's what's best. Even though they're constantly fighting. It's tense, it's bad, it's like it's actually better to have. Not everyone can do this. Like an okay divorce where the parents.
[22:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: Can co parent supportively.
[22:11] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That is great. Kids turn out great. But it's like these really messy things where there's a lot of **** talking. The other parental alienation. That's when things go really go south.
[22:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. So then in terms of other common roadblocks, when people are merging families, what are some other things that you noticed this film depicted? And again, like a hugely ironic, funny way, but pretty accurately.
[22:45] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It felt like Brennan and Dale hadn't met before. They just got married really quick and they both had this big reaction at the wedding. And again, because it happened really fast, which again, they should be able to do because you have two, three. But like very adult children, that should be fine.
[23:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: But for younger kids, it is nice to have a transition period where you.
[23:11] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Slow process, get to know each other.
[23:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: You don't just move right in, right?
[23:15] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: This is like mom's special friend who's coming for dinner a lot. And then there's these nice moments where there's like play and you're not in a parent role. You move slowly. Sometimes the snails pace, sometimes backwards. But it should be like friend and fun into kind of both into then like the caregiver role, right.
[23:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: But you don't just jump in and.
[23:40] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Expect and then make demand. Listen, right? Exactly. Never going to work.
[23:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[23:46] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But they should meet many times and do some fun things, right? Like go to the movies, go see a show. It's easier. And even this in general is good advice for people who are a little uncomfortable. Maybe like if you have some social anxiety, it's good to do things that you can talk about, right? Like go for a hike, go to see a movie, go get a pedicure. And don't just stare at each other and all hang out in your living room.
[24:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: Go for a walk, play with something.
[24:12] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That'S so much easier to do than just having to talk to each other. So they should have done some events.
[24:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: And it's hard, too, right, when two parents are falling in love and creating a relationship and they have children of their own, then you're like, well, the kids, you want the kids to get along. And what if they just don't? Right? That's got to be really challenging.
[24:31] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I think it's difficult and there's not really anything you can do about this. But when kids are really the same age so if your mom starts dating your dad and you guys are in the same grade at school and then you move in together eventually, even if it's like the grade process and it was slow, it's like all of a sudden your step brothers in your class. That's hard. I think. Again, maybe not none of this is easy, but if you're like 15 and your new stepsister is seven, it's like that feels a little bit easier because the roles are so clear. You have your own identity. You're not having to mix friend groups or these expectations.
[25:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. Or like, what if you were attracted to your new stepsibling or something? Like, if you're both teenagers, I mean, that is a I feel like that happens.
[25:35] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Do we also see a therapist patient depiction in this movie?
[25:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: Which I forgot about, but then I was like, oh, this is perfect.
[25:44] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right?
[25:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: So we see that when Nancy and Robert are trying to push them out of the nest. They're like, we signed you I loved when they're talking to them and they're like, we put enough money in your account for security deposit, and we're going to give you another kind of support. We signed you up for therapy. And I was like, that was a really thoughtful way of introducing this idea. So we see Brennan in therapy with his therapist named Denise. What did you think of this, Portia?
[26:14] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So also, just like right? Playing on this other trope of right, you you have sexual relations with your therapist. They end up falling in love with you. They come on to you. They're obsessed with you. I think it happens with other providers, too. I don't know.
[26:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's always a female therapist, though. I mean, this is just like such a Nick Rope or Nick with you. But I'm just thinking, like, in suits, this happened. It's just in The Sopranos, we see this. I'm like, is this like a fantasy? I think it is, because it's teacher, too.
[26:48] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: You see a lot.
[26:49] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yes.
[26:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: You see that like a woman in power. But I just thought it was so funny. Again, looking at her office pretty good. That was pretty good. She's not wearing suggestive clothing. She's in, like, a business suit. And it's just so funny that she reflects something back to him. So basic. I think she's like, that must be hard. And you see Brennan go. Yeah. Yeah. And then that's it.
[27:16] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: He loves know. He feels so seen. She's the only one who can understand him. Like, wow.
[27:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: He's like, oh my God, we're in love. And then throughout the rest of the movie, remember when Nancy's like, oh, Denise called and she said she's not your like, stop asking her. And he's like, did she say that?
[27:36] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That rascal. And he's like, no, she's not your girlfriend.
[27:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: But then she shows up at the end.
[27:42] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Of course she does, right? And is so moved by his singing. She's like and everyone is right. I mean, his singing is excellent. And also the song choice is just so funny. Perfect. Like it had to be Italian, right? He can sing in Italian. Like, he knows all the words. Of course it had to be and Dale is an excellent know it's like, you guys are great. You're actually very talented.
[28:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: And when finally pushed lovingly or hopefully lovingly, they can rise to the occasion. They're both working on their feet.
[28:15] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah.
[28:15] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It seems like Brennan had planned the Catalina Wine Mixer, and Dale is working as a chef.
[28:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my God. Mark my words. Portia, remind me when I turn 40, I want to have a Catalina wine.
[28:28] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think that's an excellent party theme for a 40th birthday. Right. I feel like this should be normal.
[28:35] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah.
[28:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: So just remind me in a couple of years.
[28:38] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I'll put in my calendar.
[28:39] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Thank you.
[28:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, but oh, my gosh. I mean, it was so funny, though, when she's showing up and Nancy's like, oh, hey. And again, it's like, oh, my God, these are such inappropriate boundaries. You're all calling her by her first name. Some therapists are fine with that, but I just feel like in this situation, probably not. And she's like, I had to come. I had a legal obligation because he threatened to harm himself. Back up. That doesn't mean you as therapist, show up.
[29:04] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right.
[29:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: Which again, this is a comedy. It's funny, but you call the police or things like that. But again, it is just depicting that Brennan has some problematic behaviors and boundary problems.
[29:18] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then Denise gets really angry and just starts calling all out the parents.
[29:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: You're enabling.
[29:23] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And she has this moment, and you're like, wow. But yeah, guess. But maybe we could have said this in a way where everyone could have heard it in a session where you're being paid and it's like real then there's boundaries around that. Not at where I'm assuming people have had a couple wine mixers and then we see.
[29:46] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right.
[29:47] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Derek try to be emotional with Brennan. And he can't. They're trying to hug and they're just like, leaning on each other, and it's so then, you know, Derek has this outburst, again, because he can't be nice to just it's funny, but it's so ridiculous.
[30:06] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah.
[30:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: And it's also like derek probably does have a lot of repressed emotion, like you're talking about. He does use the F word slur a lot, which is hard to watch nowadays. Looking back at some of these old movies, we're just like, oh, gosh.
[30:21] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Because it's like the go to slur for any guy.
[30:25] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right.
[30:25] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It's like such a put down with.
[30:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, oh, you're being this or you're being that.
[30:29] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And it's like, we don't have any.
[30:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: Other creative ways to being like you're.
[30:33] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like a girl or you're gay. And all people said and I do think it's interesting because I think the F word is so much more shocking than like, oh, that's so gay. Right. I think that was really common. And everybody I'm not going to throw everyone under the bus, but that was something that I think most people said in the early two thousand s and.
[30:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: Ninety s too much.
[30:54] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah.
[30:55] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But really, I think still, the F slur was still reserved for more.
[31:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: It feels a little more aggressive. It does. It feels like more aggressive.
[31:06] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It does.
[31:06] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And so now it feels really. Horrible, and I just think it was, like, a little bit of the times. But also, I do know that with my young adolescent clients, people still do say this. I think we're just also removed from it. I think it has changed a little bit, but I think it's still happening, and I would just love it to not.
[31:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. No, I totally agree. All right, well, so as we start wrapping up this episode again of one of the greatest movies of all, know, slurs aside, which, again, I don't want to minimize how awful it is to.
[31:40] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Use language like some just putting this out, there like, a little bit of racism thrown in there. When Derek is showing that couple the house, and he's, like, talking to them, and they're like, Why are you saying it like that?
[31:53] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yes.
[31:53] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Just call just call us, like, mean, I just think that's not funny know?
[32:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't know.
[32:02] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah.
[32:02] Dr. Katrina Furey: No, I hear you.
[32:03] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I don't think it ever should have been, but it feels so much more.
[32:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like it feels dated.
[32:07] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah.
[32:09] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Let's be more creative.
[32:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. Do you think they were doing that to point out this kind of behaviors from Derek?
[32:18] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, I think it was to point out that he would be like, um.
[32:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: And that it's, like, not um. Okay, but as we wrap up, I do think as budding entrepreneurs, I'm really curious to hear what you thought about their pitch to everyone at Derek's birthday party about Prestige Worldwide, because we keep talking about what can we do to get the word out about our podcast.
[32:45] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right?
[32:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I was like, well, this is a creative idea.
[32:47] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah.
[32:48] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Maybe we should make a slide music video combined with a music video of a boat and show it at a party. Right. Can we do it really fast? I'm having one this weekend, and we could just show it.
[33:02] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think, though, the thing is that they showed it at a party with new people. Like, these weren't people they knew. Right. I think all of the people we know are already supporting us, which is great. So I'm like, okay, so what entrepreneur tips can I take from this video presentation? A music videos with a catchy song stick in your head. Like, I know all the words. The Santa, the Zena Maria do in the back while I'm drinking sangria. Like, we all know the words. Okay, so maybe that's an interesting tactic. Again, like, you keep saying we got to go viral. It's kind of similar. Right. And then pitching it to strangers with money, I guess, and wanting investments.
[33:44] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I think that they just do such a good job of being bold. They are unashamed of who they are and what they're promoting. And at the end of their Know serenade at the Catalina Wine Mixer, I love how Dale in the background is saying potent hose, and then it's like Prestige Worldwide. So we have to do things like that.
[34:06] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah, we do.
[34:07] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Maybe we should do it at the end. This is a joke for people listening. At the end of our sessions, I'm just going to start saying, analyze Group.
[34:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: I'll see you next week. Because people are leaving, like, their hands on the door. You know how in our field there's always like the doorknob comment we talk about when people are leaving therapy and they're like, by the way, you're never going to make me cry.
[34:28] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right?
[34:29] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: By the way, I'm getting divorced.
[34:30] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah.
[34:30] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: By the way, this by the way.
[34:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: I had this repressed memory. Come back and then, bye, see you in two weeks. I hope you enjoy your vacation. But this could be ours where people leave my script.
[34:40] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: What?
[34:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: And you're like, oh, nothing.
[34:41] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, psychologically, which is not ethical. I'm going to implant these little whispers.
[34:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: Of the podcast, like subliminal messaging.
[34:50] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like you're going to play in the.
[34:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: Waiting room, but like, backwards somehow.
[34:55] Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right.
[34:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: So it just gets in your head. Our theme song. Oh, my God. I just love it.
[35:03] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Speaking of being supportive, because we are entrepreneurs, we would love for you to follow us on Instagram at Analyze Scripts, on TikTok, at Analyze Scripts podcast and just follow along. Give us some recommendations like this. Rate us subscribe. Thank you for subscribing. We do have a lot of subscribers. It's awesome and we are so thankful for you. It's going up every week and we're reaching for the ride.
[35:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think we've reached every continent, which is like, wild. We have at least one fan in Kazakhstan, like, who knew? What's up, Kazakhstan? So, yeah, we love the interaction. Let us know what you want to hear. Let us know what you think about this movie. Let us know. Do you enjoy throwback movies like this? Or current stuff? Just let us know.
[35:44] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, we'd love to hear from you.
[35:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: And hopefully if we can find it, we'll send you out with some boats and hose. See you next time.
[35:52] Huff & Doback: Boats and hose I got to have me my boats and holes boats and hose boats and holes I gotta have me my boats and hose boats and hose boats and hose I gotta have me my boats and holes I'll do you in the bottom while you're drinking sangria Nachos lemon heads my dad's boat. You won't go down cause my **** can float. We sail around the world and go port to port? Every time I come I produce a quad put on your life best lunch jump anchor there's a nice lady who I like to swank boats and holes boats and holes I got to have me my boats and hose boats and hose boats and holes I gotta have.
[36:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: Me my boats and HODcast and its.
[36:45] Speaker E: Contents are a copyright of analyzed scripts all rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited unless you want to share it.
[36:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: With your friends and rate review and subscribe, that's fine.
[36:59] Speaker E: All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time. Don't.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are analyzing "The Bear" season 1. We meet the chefs and other restaurant staff this season and WOW, was anyone else's heart racing? We root for Carmy and the restaurant to be successful but see poor interpersonal skills, trauma, grief and trust issues impact everyone. Mikey's story line is tragic and unfortunately a common reality when mental health issues combine with substance abuse and financial troubles. Be sure to watch this show with some snacks, we hope you enjoy!
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fieri, a psychiatrist.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: There is so much misinformation out there, and it drives us nuts.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: With a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And your DSM Five and enjoy. We get started. We just wanted to include a trigger warning for this episode. This episode could include discussion about some themes and topics that might be upsetting, including, but not limited to things like substance abuse, suicide, self harm, disordered, eating, and harassment and assault. So if any of those topics are too upsetting, we totally get it. Please feel free to skip this episode and join us next week. Otherwise, we hope you enjoyed.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Hi. So we are back again with another episode, and we are going to refer to each other today as, like, yes.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Drink, yes shrink, yes, chef, cousin, cousin.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Whatever kind of comes to mind. We're not going to be swearing and putting each other down.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Hopefully not kind of abusive, which we.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: See a lot in the show. The Bear, which you're coming today. Season one, kind of blew up recently over the summer. I definitely had not heard about it last year.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I hadn't really either.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It was all over, like, TikTok. A couple months ago, Jeremy Allen White.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Is all in the news because he got a divorce. And I don't know all the details about it, but it seems to be, like a hot.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, yeah. People really like. So what how do you want to start talking about this? First, I would like to say that my blood pressure was so high, I'm making this up.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Okay. You weren't, like, checking it?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: No. Watching some of these episodes, this level of stress that I was feeling, and my heart was racing, I was like, I feel like I'm back in a restaurant, and I'm not. Okay.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah, you worked in a restaurant too at some point, right? Yeah, I did too. Only for, like, six months. Like, in between college and med school, I took a year off to apply, and it was really stressful. I worked in a Mexican restaurant. It's closed now, unfortunately, one of the owners embezzled money and went to federal prison. Fortunately. But I was trying to get out of this other job, and so when I applied, I said I was available for all shifts. So I got all the lunch shifts and made, like, no money, and I would have to come in early and clean, like, literally move the heavy tables, clean the windows. It was, like, a lot of hard work.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It's like, labor, labor, physical labor.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I lost a lot of weight because you're, like, running around all day. And I'll never forget my last day was Cinco de Mayo. I was like, I have to work Cinco de Mayo. Right? I'll never forget. The floor was, like, so sticky with tequila. It was a good restaurant. The food was really good. But at the pre shift meeting, one of my coworkers was like, hey, guys, I got Adderalls. Does anyone want one? And all these people took Adderall. And I was like, I'm good. I'll be okay. I don't know. It really shocked me. But then I guess in watching this show, and I don't know if in your training, you learned that there's a lot of mental health issues in the restaurant industry. Because I learned that.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. I mean, I think it seems like and of course, we're generalizing here, but in my experience, and even hearing from clients who work in the restaurant industry, there is so much substance use.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yes.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And with that often comes mental health issues. I'm just curious about who ends up in the restaurant industry. Right. I think you have to be really personable. You're really friendly, energetic. Energetic, I would say. And I think this is like, a little bit of just like anecdotal information. I feel like it's often kind of you have a little bit of ADHD. You're good, right? You can BOP brunch the 100% environment for you because it's so stimulating and.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It'S so quick, fast moving. I totally agree. And I think a lot of young people, I think, work in restaurants or bars or things like that when you're younger. But then I think you're right that there is a lot of substance use. I think there's, like, erratic hours does.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Not help mental health, sleep. And then I think people often might, in that example that you provided, will take something to help stay up.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And then oftentimes, once the restaurant closes, shifts over, I think people go out for drinks. Or then there's, like, substance use with downers, kind of. I think, like we said, it is really hard work. Like, physically demanding. I think the pay can be good, right?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Depends.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Depends. It fluctuates, and you don't really get benefits, so there's a lot of stress. It's certainly like, when we think about what are, like, risk factors, I guess, for mental health conditions, there's a lot of environmental risk factors just right there. And then you're also dealing with people who are hard to deal with. Right? Like, you have demanding customers, people complaining you're not doing it fast enough. There's a mistake. I can't imagine, right? Like, just all the complaints you have to deal with in a personable, happy way.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And now I always think about everyone having sensitivities or allergies right to foods and how many requests we're making. I do make one request, but I'm just thinking about how complicated things are now. Everyone at a table could be like, okay. And I've been at a table before where it's like, every single person has a something, and I'm just like, oh, man, it's just so much more work.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Than just accommodating like, a regular taco salad.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It's like, no cheese on this one, no meat on this one. We have to leave out the taco because it's corn based so much. It's a lot, and I think the pressure for certain people gets to them, and I think that's why we see.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Also just, like, a lot of abuse yes.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: With the hierarchy within the kitchen, and it can get really ugly.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah. So when I started watching the Bear preparing for this, unfortunately, Hulu just, like, auto played the last episode of season two. I didn't get through the whole thing. We got through maybe the, like, ten or 15. No, I know. And then we're watching it, and I'm like, am I supposed to understand who these characters are and how they relate? And then all of a sudden, my husband noticed, and I was like it.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Was like, s two, like, episode ten or something.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I was like, oh. So I felt like I had, like, a preview. Not in a great way, but then it's like, I don't think it's going to spoil all that much. So then we restarted it. But even in season one, we sort of see these flashbacks of Carme right. Played by Jeremy Allen White, the main character who worked in a really fancy like, they kept saying, the best restaurant in the world, and we saw Joel McHale. I was surprised to see in, like, a dramatic role. Do you know who Joel McHale is? Did you ever watch The Soup? No. Okay. Again, I'm older than you, but I.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Know I didn't like.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I don't love him. No offense. That's okay to him. If you're listening, that's okay.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Does he have any weird outcomes?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I just don't think he's funny. No. To me. And maybe he is now, but I remembering watching The Soup and being like, not your thing.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: That's fine, but yeah, dark, like, abusive. And it was very hierarchical, like, almost like the military. It kind of reminded me of and you have to go up the chain and sort of that kind of thing. In prepping for this episode, I did some quick research, and it does seem like the restaurant industry hospitality has very high rates of depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and harassment, which I think makes sense, like, if you've ever worked in one. And then I think this show really accurately portrays that. Like, you were saying in watching it, your heart rate is high, your blood pressure is high, you feel stressed, and you're like, God, it is a lot. It's a lot.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I mean, when they had finally implemented the to go, oh, my gosh, and they didn't notice that they had done, like, preorder selection, and it was just, like, coming out of the machine. I was just I felt like, I mean, a good acting, good storyline sucked me in. I don't know if it's because I can, like, I have some restaurant experience, but I was just like it's like a trauma response. So some people freeze, some people flee, and other people freak out and fight. Whoa.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Interesting to see everyone's individual response. And carmi just freaked. Like, it was almost I felt like his explosion of pent up emotion. Right. I feel like his sister Sugar had been saying, you're not expressing things. And he wasn't really he was really holding it in, and then it just all exploded. Like, he couldn't take it anymore. I was really proud of Sydney and Marcus for walking away and being like, we don't tolerate know I didn't see that coming, but I was really proud of them for doing that.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I think what I thought was interesting was when we see Carme working at that Michelin star restaurant, and he's being right, like, verbally berated saying all these horrible things to him. I thought it was so interesting because Sydney and, like, have a similar experience with working at higher end places. They know, yes, chef. Behind you, chef, all that stuff. So Sydney, in one of the later episodes when she is accidentally a stabs richie in the behind. But also, you see her absolutely berating him. Right. She's like, you're a loser, your kid, your partner. And I think for her, that almost felt like she was so horrified, almost, that that's how she had become in this place. Right. Because her and Carmen talked about how horrible that was, and then she did it, and it's like, place brought it out of her. Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It's like the abuse becomes the abuser, which we see. I'm thinking more along the lines of children who grew up in abusive environments and then sort of take on those behaviors in adulthood. It's reminding me of that. Yeah. And I feel like she couldn't it was really sad. And when she was sitting there at the lockers, and he was like, are you okay, chef? And she's just like, no. And it's like, no, you're not. You're right. And she has to walk away. And I think you're right. I think it was a combo of Carmen berating her, but then her doing that too.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right. And losing it, and right. They are these experts, and she's holding the knife right out. No intention right.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Of like yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: First she's waving around, but then she's pointing it out, and he just, like, turns like, you don't ever walk with a knife pointing out. That stuff can happen.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Exactly. Right.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And you can stab someone in the a fatty tissue place where it's, like, less right, right. Whoa.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I know.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And so, again, it's just like, how did all that come to be? Was it, like, stress? Was it trauma? Probably a mix of everything. Also, like, Richie I don't like him. There have been very few characters so far in all the shows and movies we've watched, which is quite a bit by now, where I really don't like them. Like, the whole time I'm watching it, I'm trying to find something redeeming. And since I did see the first.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Ten minutes of the final episode of.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Season two, and I see what role he assumes and he's behaving a little differently, spoiler alert. It's not much of a spoiler, but still, I kept trying to find something redeeming about him, and I had a really hard time. What about you?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think that I really did not like him until the last episode, and I wouldn't even say I like him. I feel like I just have empathy for him. I feel sorry for him.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Why? That's where I struggled.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I feel like he is so broken.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I want to know nothing story. Maybe we learn it because they said in season two read an article that was like, season two gets right with the only thing that season one got wrong, which is like, there was no backstories for anyone. We didn't know anything about anyone. And so I'm wondering if we get his because I'd be so curious.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It just seems like he's.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And why he was really hearing what Sydney was saying when she's calling him a loser.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I feel like he feels like he's.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: A loser, and he's a loser in every way. And then he talks about his daughter saying to his ex or her mom, right. Like, he's bad news, Richie or something.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I just feel like that's more.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I feel bad. I don't like him. I don't want to be his friend by any means. I don't want him to be around him. But I just feel sorry for yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I kept wanting to feel sorry for him and trying to access that empathy, but I had a really hard time. And again, I hear what you're like. It seems like before Mikey died by suicide, richie was, like, the head guy, like, maybe the manager, or like, he was, like, running the show. And then I think to have Carme and Sydney come in, like, out of Sydney, a younger girl, a younger black girl, which, again, maybe that's not intentionally getting under Richie's skin, but maybe it is. We don't really know yet. But again, I could see how that would threaten his ego, because this is.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: All that he has. And then he kind of says that at the end, right when Carmen picks him up from the jail, which I thought was really interesting. And this is a little bit of a sidebar, but I think it's so risky, little PSA, to ever be in a fight with someone that's physical, because we all talk. Oh, someone says something to you. Everyone's drunk in a bar. A bar fight, right? Someone gets punched in the face. It doesn't seem crazy, but it's like the wrong hit you could fall. You hit your head, you can die. And it's like now it's literally manslaughter. And it's like things can escalate so quickly where it's like it's not just like right, a punch in the schnaws or getting pushed.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It's like hitting your head wrong on the curb.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yes. I'll never forget and I'm going to talk very loose circumstances here, but witnessing someone hit someone and they fell and they hit their head on the curb, that's scary. They got up. But I know another instance that I did not witness but happened at my college.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Even like if you're super intoxicated and you fall the wrong way right. You could die.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, it's really know. And I don't know if it's just like I respected and this is such a stretch. I respected Richie for completely owning that he was the one that did he there was, you know, because it was messy. Right. Everyone's pushing, pushing. And there was no question he was going to take the and I think that's also when he comes out, he's like, no, this is all I have. I would do anything for you. It seems like they connect. I'm curious to see in season two how that plays out. I'm hoping that that's like a change then for Richie.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But up until that episode, I was so irritated with him. He just kept messing everything over and over.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: That's what I mean. And I do think that's like the perfect depiction. And I'm like I am really curious. And I hope we do learn more about his backstory because I wouldn't be surprised if he had, like if I'm making it up. Really critical parents, like one parent who's really critical, one who's absent, whether it's because of substance abuse or like a father left or something like that, that's setting him up to never feel good enough. So he's going to keep trying, keep trying. And then he just gets to the point where it's still never good enough and he starts getting in his own way.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Like he just kept messing up. Yes. Like when they did the kid's birthday party and he doesn't bring the ketchup. Right. His Xanax.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Oh my God.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And the drink and all the kids pass out and no one calls the ambulance.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I was like, waiting for your take on that. I was just like, dying.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: When they just show, all the kids.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Pass and the guy right? They're like mobster uncle is like, well, this is preferable, to be honest. Because he's like annoyed, right? Kids suck. Kids are annoyed.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Kids are annoyed. At least they're quiet.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But I was like, are they breathing?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Has anyone put their fingers under their nose to see?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Is their breath?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Oh my God, I can't believe no one called the police or the is.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Such a bare minimum, and you're going to be like, you're crazy. But I was kind of pleasantly surprised that Carmen told him. Right? I feel like, it could have been like, oh, because you could literally go to jail for that. Again, not intentionally, but you could go to jail.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Maybe you should. Right?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So the fact that he told him.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I was like, okay, at least have.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: A moral compass in there.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Get somewhere in there, I guess. Yeah, but then no one does anything.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But I was thinking would have been in there, right? Let's talk about that. Because it looks like it was one bottle. So were they like, bars?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: That's how Xanax comes, right? I don't remember what the dose was. So Xanax is the trade name for Elprazolam, which is a very short acting benzodiazepine. Incredibly addictive, right? That's why most people don't prescribe it, hopefully, except in very specific circumstances, like flight phobia or something like that, where you only need a little relief for a little bit of time.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: You're not getting prescriptions every month for it. It's like you're getting ideally, right? Like, once a year should be enough. I think providers feel comfortable with that.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Depending on the situation. I think, unfortunately, it is really abusable. And the reason it's so abusable is because it is so short acting. So it hits your system really quickly, like, within 30 minutes or so, you feel so good, you feel a lot calmer, but then it's out of your system really quickly, too. So then you're like, oh, I need more, I need more. And thus starts the cycle of dependency and addiction. And again, I specifically use those words because there's a difference, right? You can become physically dependent on a medication like this. Like, your brain gets used to it. If you don't have it, you develop withdrawal symptoms. You need more. You can have that without perhaps being addicted. But again, they kind of go hand in hand, I guess. But with addiction, you also think of it as like, okay, then you start doing riskier things to obtain it, right? Like, you might start stealing, or you might start obtaining it illicitly, like, on the street, or you might be spending a whole lot of time trying to find it at the expense of work or spending time with your family. There's a lot of criteria that go into addiction, but you can also be physically dependent on I mean, that is like, one of the main criteria, too.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I believe right. You can die from the withdrawals from.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: A benzo 100% class. Yes. Benzos act on the GABA receptors in the brain, very similar to alcohol. So it's also incredibly dangerous to mix benzos with alcohol. When you're intoxicated with both, what can be fatal is the respiratory depression. Basically, you start breathing so slowly that you could stop breathing. And that's what I was worried about with these kids, just, like, sleeping. I was like, is anyone making sure they're breathing and they're getting enough oxygen to their brains? Like, these little kids getting whatever the adult dose is. I mean, it looks like the whole bottle got in there somehow. Who knows how much is in there was so dangerous. And then if you are addicted or physically dependent on alcohol or benzos and you just try to quit cold turkey, that's also potentially fatal because you can develop seizures and cardiac instability. So, like, really high blood pressure, really high heart rates, you could have a stroke, you could die. So it's really dangerous. I was very uncomfortable with that whole.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like, you need a medical detox, right, versus, like opiates. It's a horrible detox, but you can stop. You won't be very sick, you won't die. But a couple of kids, and I say kids because they were under 18, who I worked with in a residential program, if they were abusing benzos, they would still be on them, right? So they would come in and they'd receive a lower and a lower dose versus some of the kids who were on opiates, they would be very sick or they would have been in a very fast detox like in the hospital.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah, I did a lot of detoxing when I worked at the VA in residency, and I did a lot of time in the emergency room there. So that was like one of the main things we saw. And you're totally right that alcohol or benzodiazepine detox is medically necessary. Like you could die. And that was like one of the hardest conversations to have with patients when they would get to day two. And of course they're waiting for a bed because we don't have enough access to treatment in the whole country. We've already talked about this. But by day two, they're starting to feel cravings. They want to get out of there and we have to have the discussion like you're just starting the detox. We still don't know which way it's going to go. There's like risk factors and algorithms we can keep in mind to help predict it, but we just don't really know. You could get delirium tremons, which is potentially fatal. I mean, it's really scary and a lot of times they would leave against medical advice and probably start drinking again, which is very sad. But then in other ways you're like, well, I guess it mitigates the risk of death from an unsupervised detox, but it's really risky. But you're right. With opiate withdrawal, that's where the phrase cold turkey comes from. It feels like the worst flu of your life. It's incredibly painful to go through, but it's not medically dangerous. So in either way, like with benzo or alcohol withdrawal, we do taper using the benzos. And then you can also give other medications to help with other symptoms to help make people more comfortable. And then with opiate withdrawal, some places will start, like Suboxone once you're a couple of days out to make sure there's enough out of your system where it doesn't plunge you into a worse type of withdrawal. But then you also give other agents to help make people feel more comfortable. So that too, it's like ideal if you can do a medical detox, but not medically dangerous if you're just trying to quit, like, on your own.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. Circling back now to restaurant employees right. Often not having insurance.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yes.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And being or I think, too, what's interesting now is with a lot of credit card tips right. That is on the books versus cash tips. So it's like they pay taxes on right. So you could be, I think, right on the line with, like, you don't make a ton, but you also don't qualify for Medicaid or full Medicaid. So I just think there's a lot of people that are underinsured or not insured who specifically work in this field of know with with sometimes raging substance use issues and mental health issues. It's just like a perfect storm.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah. And I mean, most detoxes would be at least five days. So when you're imagining, like, in restaurants, you often do, I think, live day to day in terms of your income. It's not predictable. You're not going to have short term leave or things like that. It's really hard to think, like, I'm going to take five days away and somehow pay for this treatment and make up for not and then come back. The same environment.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It's really tough.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. I was just thinking about Mikey in that and just like, it seemed like he was struggling for a while with opiate abuse, and some people knew, some people didn't. And that was kind of really eating at Carme for not knowing.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah. So what did you think about Mikey's story and then this show's depiction of addiction and grief and people reacting to someone's suicide.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I thought it was good. I thought it did a good job of showing multiple reactions and responses, which I think hits the nail on the head with everyone will respond differently. I think if we look at it in kind of a black and white way, like, some people shut down, other people have really big reactions immediately. So it's like right. Someone if you're picturing at a funeral, which is kind of morbid, there's people who are, like, wailing and visibly upset for weeks. Tanya from Lettuce. Yes. And then there's people who are just totally shut down right. Haven't cried at all. And that doesn't mean that they're not processing it or grieving, but I'd say because they might be doing it at home. But if you're not doing it at all, I think then sometimes there's a bigger reaction that comes out later, which we see with Carmen kind of starting to lose it or some of his other symptoms, which I was curious to get your take on with some of the nightmare being sleepwalking. Right. And in his apartment earlier on, it seems like he's having a horrible time sleeping, which isn't helping any of his symptoms. And then at the end, we see, right. Him kind of what appears to be maybe he's, like, dissociating when he tries to light a cigarette and then the whole stove catches on fire. Two different things, I feel, like, all around fire, too.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah, I mean, I think you're totally right. Portia this show, I thought, again, another expert portrayal of grief, and I think the complicated grief that comes from losing someone to suicide, of all things. Like, just how many questions are know Carmen? No one saw a note until the very end, and it's still in my mind. It's like, Was that a suicide note? I think so.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think it was meant to be, but it wasn't, like, by the know, maybe not by Mikey, but it just.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Wasn'T it wasn't clear. And I think in the know, it sounds like Mikey and Carmee, they were brothers, right? They sort of bonded over cooking. And then Mikey goes on to open the Bear, but then won't let him.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Eat the beef store.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Sorry, the beef, but then won't let Carmen work in it. And that created a really big rift in them. And I think we still don't really understand why he wouldn't let him in. I started wondering, was there some connection to organized crime? It seemed like Richie maybe had a connection. And those feuding groups on the corner that Sydney placated with the sandwiches and even, like, the Uncle Jimmy, I was like, Is he a like, is that why Carmen wasn't he was trying to keep him away? Or was there something like, is that how Mikey got introduced to Opiates? There were a lot of questions for me, but then that was, like, a real wedge in their relationship. And it sounds like in the very last episode with Carmen's Monologue at Al Anon, first of all, how moving was. But then we finally start learning some of this backstory, and it sounds like that almost, like, fueled Carmen's desire to show, like, just achieve know, really escalate to the best of the best, to be like, you're lost, dude, and then gosh, how complicated and confusing for carme to lose your brother in that way. And then learn that he left the restaurant, that he'd never let you work into you, and you have to leave your position at this best restaurant in the world to come here. Like, Whoa.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And also was and maybe it didn't feel like a choice, but that was his choice, that a lot of people were like, what are you like, you didn't need to come back. I think Richie was upset that he was coming back and taking over. I think the staff initially were all.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Upset that he was, because it seemed like the like, Tina Ibrahim, like, all the staff, it seems like, had been there for that. They forever, right? And then all of a sudden, you have Carme coming in out of nowhere again, this white guy. A lot of the staff. Were people of color. And then he hires Sydney, this young girl, and they're like cleaning everything up, operationalizing things. And I could imagine and we see how the old crew reacted and we're like about it. Yeah, exactly. But then eventually they do warm up to it. And I did think at the beginning, Carme was really respectful in terms of saying, we call each other chef. We have high standards. This is what you need to do well. And at first, they weren't really believing it. Like the family dinners I thought were so I never had that at the.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Restaurant I worked at. Right. I was like, Where did this come from?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: This is really nice. We all have dinner before it's. Like, that's really nice. I think eventually it did help them sort of get on board.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: But it took a while, especially with Tina.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And know, it seemed like Tina kind of bought know after a little bit with Carmee, but then it was really like an interesting dynamic watching her and Sydney, and then Tina pretending not to speak English, like, here and there. And Sydney's like, I know you can you just were doing it and calling.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Carme Jeff instead of Chef. Just all these slight jabs. I can't remember what it was that finally got her to come around, but eventually she did with Sydney.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It was something with the potatoes, right? So, like, Tina didn't burned something or something and then Sydney already had it going, but didn't criticize. Tina was like, just get it over with, do it. And Sydney was like, no, it's fine. And then she complimented her later. And then I think Tina was like, okay, we're good.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah. Sydney kind of like, helped her out instead of rubbing her nose in it. But getting back to, I think what you originally asked me about grief, I also thought it was interesting that I was like, is there a gender dynamic here? Because his sister seems to be more openly grieving or at least talking about the death. She's like, trying to get him to go to Al Anon, which to me suggests she's going to Al Anon and then Carmi is really closed. And I I think you could say that might be a more stereotypical man reaction.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I'm sure it depends on generalizing, super.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Generalizing, like, depends on different families structures and dynamics and stuff like that. But I think what is that old phrase? What is it we talk about a lot with trauma? Like what you won't remember eventually comes out or something. What you try to avoid thinking about eventually comes out, whether you like it or not. Death of anyone can be very traumatic, but I think a suicide in particular is very traumatic for all the people involved. And it sounds like in Mikey's case, it's like, was it planned or was it impulsive? Right? Like, was he intoxicated and had a mean it's not really clear until we find the note, right?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I don't know.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: What did you think?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think it was unclear. I mean, I think I could go on the one hand with him stashing the money for so long. Was he planning on ending his life for that time, or was that just like a side project of him? Just like, stashing all this money away to avoid taxes? To avoid taxes or in the end to give to Carme? I don't know. Was his plan like, okay, Carme is going to be this amazing chef, and then we're ready for him, we're going to have all this money? Or was it like, I know I'm going to die? I don't know.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It's a weird spot to leave a suicide note, right? Usually I feel like if someone does leave a note, it's with the body, like it's nearby.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Do you think it was maybe, though, supposed to be in a locker and fell out? Like, maybe, like, Carmen's locker from years ago? Because that was my question. Why was it behind lockers, the lockers on the floor? Had it fallen somewhere? Was it supposed to not be there? I don't know. Did he mean to bring it with?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: That's what I mean.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: How could anyone find that? Someone could have easily thrown it away, could have easily gotten damaged by water or something. It just was so risky. And also right. If you're leaving someone, like, $300,000, you want that to get to them. So that was just strange.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It was strange.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Why do you think Richie put it back?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I think at that time, when he first found it, he was still really mad at Carmen for coming in. In this season, we really see how the landscape of Chicago, the landscape of their neighborhood, the landscape of the restaurant itself is changing.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Gentrified.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yes, exactly. And I think Richie's like having an identity cris and not on board, and I think he was just at that time, really mad at Carmen, didn't want to help him along.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I guess this is where my little thread of empathy comes out. It's like he could have thrown it out.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: That's very true. Why did he put it back?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Put it back.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: That's actually a nice point, Portia.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I don't and there's million different reasons why, but I'm thinking maybe it was because not right for Carmen. But he couldn't do that to not. He's he wasn't just being this huge. Ahole.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: There was just something in there. I don't think it was he was looking out for Carmen. He didn't think Carmen was ready.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I don't know.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Maybe. But there was something.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: You're so right. He could have thrown it. Oh, okay. Now I'm feeling something for him.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: You're right.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Like, he definitely could have, and he didn't.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Just interesting.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah. That's really making me think. Really making me think.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So we know from past episodes how important sleep is, right. And how the lack of sleep can literally bring someone right to have some psychosis.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah, and mania like sleep is the biggest trigger of a manic episode. Psychotic episodes, for sure. I've seen a lot of first breaks in college. Students who were flying internationally didn't sleep on the plane. That's what brought it out, finally, which.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Is what you said, that I am good because I went to Europe and I was up for like 48 hours and I'm fine. I was like, that's a really good sign. You don't bipolar disorder in Portia winning in some ways here, but also in.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: The restaurant industry, like other industries, too, like if you're working third shift or other things like that, it is so disruptive to your sleep. And I think the high energy, fast paced environment of restaurants makes it really hard, even when you get home to fall asleep. I think that is why so many have a drink after work or take another substance like Xanax to try to calm their brain down.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It's also so bright in the kitchen. You know what I mean? It has to be, but the lights are so fluorescent. It's so bright and shiny in a cleaner restaurant. I was impressed at how much they were cleaning.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I was very happy. I think, again, that's, like, where Carme comes in and is like, this is unacceptable, even if we're like a sandwich, like, let's have high standards for ourself. And I thought, that's a nice way to live as long as the standards aren't impossibly high. But I think it does. And we saw that it did lead to feelings of self efficacy and pride in your work. But yeah, certainly you hope all the restaurants are that clean. I sort of doubt they all are.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think it's so funny, like, being kind of near New York and going and right. And seeing the know, just kind of how they showed in Chicago, because they don't do that in the like I'm sure there's, like, a public health infected, but they don't have that in the.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Window, which I just think is so, like and it was interesting, like, when they didn't get a good grade, and he's, like, blaming Richie, but then it turns out it was his fault. That's like another time where he was sort of like kind of I did, I think at least in the initial time where he was setting his apartment on fire, they both felt dissociative to me. And I think that's part of his trauma response.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Just like trying to keep putting 1ft in front of the other, but you're not processing what you're feeling, and it will inevitably come out and sort of that's how it was coming out at the end with the fire in the kitchen. At first I thought, is he going to intentionally let the restaurant burn down and be like, okay, now it takes care of it. But then everyone sort of grabbed the fire extinguisher and took care of it.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, that was an intense scene. So, like with Mikey's suicide, I think we kind of talked a little bit around the edges here. But suicide, I would consider is like a complicated loss, right? So there's some losses that are really uncomplicated. Like losing a grandparent in a natural way, right? It's like it's sad and can be really life shattering, but it's expected. It's like the natural way of life. And those losses are typically more easy to process, just like as a human. But then these complicated losses, like losing a child as a parent or losing a parent when you really suicide exactly. Or really unexpected deaths are complicated. And it doesn't mean that this is way harder or it's a much bigger loss, but it's just a different loss. And I think it can make it harder to process. And I would really say specifically with suicide, because there are so many times that people somebody does die by suicide, the people who are left right, are often like, what did we miss? How did I not see this? How could I have stopped it? And there's so many of those lingering questions that we don't ask ourselves when again, it's like a grandparent has an attribute loss.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And sometimes you ask yourself those questions right. In the grieving. Like, when we think about grief, that is a common, universal human experience right.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: There'S the what stage would that be like? Bargaining. Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: So there's Elizabeth Kubler Roth has her five stages of grief theory shock, denial, bargaining, anger, acceptance. We don't think of people as moving through those stages linearly. Like, you can feel things at the same time. You can go back and forth. But those are like, the universal emotions all humans feel. When you're grieving in the field of mental health, then we sort of think about, okay, what's like a typical grief reaction versus, like, a complicated grief reaction? And again, it's not because we're trying to have grief Olympics where one person is worse than the other. It's just grieving. A suicide is very complicated, and I think it is traumatic. I think a lot of people develop trauma reactions or even post traumatic stress disorder when these things happen. And I think you hit the nail on the head portia that it leaves so many questions and people when you're faced with an unimaginable trauma, you try to make sense of it. And a lot of times that leads you to blaming yourself. And that's where really good therapy is important. And sometimes you can find that, like in Alanon, which is the sort of what would you call it?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It's for people who have been impacted by people with substance use. So someone who is struggling themselves currently or in the past, who goes to know that's typically for them, and then maybe their brother, their sister, their parents would go to Al Anon, right?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Exactly. And it can be a really healing, helpful place. And finally carme started. I was I remember, like, midway through the season when things were really stressful. He's like, I have to go. I have to go to a meeting. And then Sydney was like, you just left us here. And they finally sort of connected over it, remember? And then she was like, Chef, that's too much.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And he's like she's like, I'm just kidding. But yeah. I think to lose anyone by suicide has got to be devastating and traumatizing and so hard to cope with. So there are resources out there. I mean, in terms, of course, your own individual therapy, but Nami, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, certainly has a lot of resources available to people who have lost loved ones by suicide. I would imagine that feels lonely, right. Hard for someone to talk to their friends about, or their family about, if they haven't gone through it.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think there's a lot of perceived and it might not be real or not, but like, perceived judgment from others. I know that a lot of parents who have lost teens to suicide really feel like there's a lot of judgment on them for they should have known, they should have stopped it. So I think it's really hard to reach talk to people who haven't experienced it, and what a wonderful way for a very horrible thing to occur. But if you can find a group with other shared experience, it can be so helpful and such a safe space. Right?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And I think it's really scary to start attending a group. Whether it's group therapy or a support group, I think it can be really scary. And that's totally normal if you're feeling like that. I always try to encourage my patients, just go sit in the back and just see, test it out. You don't have to say anything, just see what it's like. And I always say not everything's going to stick. Especially things like AA. There's a lot of resistance to it from different people. And some people don't identify with the religious aspect. There are non religious AA groups out there these days. But I always try to tell people, like, go take what works and leave the rest. You don't have to accept everything to find some healing or benefit from some of the things. But there are, I think, nami, and I'm sure, other groups out there with support groups or people who've lost loved ones to suicide. I think that's a uniquely terrible way to lose someone you love. And especially when there's substance abuse, too. It's just even murkier, right? And you could see these characters really be like, how did we not see it? Should I have done more? And it's just I think a lot of the healing and therapy comes from just exploring that with people and trying to help people not blame themselves. But it's really it is really hard.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It's heartbreaking and it's hard. And not to deter anyone from going to see a therapist, but it's hard as a therapist to sit in that. I think grief is hard because there's no really clear treatment plan based on time, right? It's like, okay, well, we should be processing this better now. Sometimes it's shorter and other times it's so long and grief is challenging. And I know even additionally to that, a lot of clients who are a support for someone who is going through grief, it's so hard just to sit and be there because we want to make people feel better, right? We want to get people okay and feeling happy and positive and sometimes it's just not we can't do that yet and we just have to wait.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And that's hard.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It is hard as a provider and it's hard as obviously a person who's not a provider.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And sometimes when people do die in very tragic ways, it is hard to bear witness and sit with someone in that suffering. But it's so important. And again, I think that's where it's really important for therapists to also know their own limits or have their own support system, right? We're all supporting each other. But you're right, it is really hard to bear witness to grief, I think, as we wrap up. Isn't it interesting that thus far in our podcasting journey, there have been some common themes of shows that are big hits in society and a lot of them are about like, we talked about shrinking, we talked about succession season four with Logan's death. Now we have the like I think, again, that just speaks to how grief is such a universal experience and we all can connect to that. Yeah, that's a good know.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think a lot of people resonate with tough topics and whether it's we're seeing it done in a comedic way or really dramatic and intense way, it's like everyone knows someone who knows someone or themselves who struggled with substance use. Everyone knows someone is someone who struggled with grief. And it's just like, again, these universal experiences that I think it can be really helpful to have a media or write some content out there that helps you cope, whether you're crying through a show or laughing through a show 100%, right?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It's like a way of connecting and experiencing it or feeling less alone, right. I think we're all wanting to feel like someone out there understands what we're going through. And even if it's not, or most of the time it's not the exact same experience, but these shows really let you know, like, okay, the writers, the creators, the actors, they're all doing such a good job because they know in some intimate way and then whoever's watching it can also feel understood. Even like the whale, everything, everywhere, all at once. Like everything. These themes are coming up again and again and I think these expert portrayals of it are just so great to have.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And that's why they're nominated, right? That's why also these are successful.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: So it's really interesting. I'm excited to see where season two.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Leads now that you have maybe a little window into some things. I'm excited to watch it too. I'm looking forward to it. I was laughing because I started episode one, season one, and I was like, trying to get my husband to come watch it. And he was like, oh my gosh. And he has restaurant experience too. And he was just like, I don't know if I can watch this. And I was like, it's really intense. I don't know. Anyway, but thanks for listening to our episode today on The Bear, season one. We will be covering season two at some point, so stay tuned.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I think next month.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, so we're excited. Make sure you follow us on Instagram for some more content at Analyze Scripts and on TikTok at Analyze Scripts podcast, and we will see you next time.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Bye bye. This podcast and its contents are a copyright of analyzed scripts. All rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited. Unless you want to share it with your friends and rate review and subscribe, that's fine. All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Sam our channel.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we're diving in to analzye the Amazon Freevee breakout hit comedy "Jury Duty." We sincerely enjoyed how funny this show was and how much planning went into it. AND YET, IS RONALD GLADDEN OKAY?!? As mental health professionals, we couldn't help but think about the ethical considerations of throwing someone into a real life "Truman Show" situation. We can see how something like this could totally backfire if there were a history of trauma or genetic predisposition to psychosis. It seems like Ronald is doing okay from what we can find online, but we're quite concerned about him! RONALD IF YOU'RE READING THIS - PLEASE SEND AN SOS IF YOU NEED HELP! ALSO WE'D LOVE TO HAVE YOU ON THE PODCAST! We hope you enjoy!
[00:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Furey, a psychiatrist.
[00:12] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker.
[00:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows.
[00:23] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends.
[00:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: There is so much misinformation out there, and it drives us nuts.
[00:32] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like.
[00:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: With a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better.
[00:39] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn.
[00:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: And your DSM Five and enjoy. Welcome back to another episode of Analyze Scripts. Today we are throwing a curveball at you, and we are talking about a funny little show on Amazon's freebie called Jury Duty. Have you heard of it? Have you heard of it? I hope the answer is yes, because it's hilarious.
[01:10] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Wild show that I obviously was very I missed a couple things when I was watching it. I had a very different experience.
[01:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: So, Portia, please share with the class.
[01:22] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So I must have missed the scene, the word, the moment, and maybe it was minutes, but I don't know what I was doing where at the beginning of every episode that Ronald was the one who was real. So I had no idea. I thought that I didn't find out until he was literally called up and the judge told him.
[01:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: So you found out along with him.
[01:45] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: In a way.
[01:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: You were watching it along for the ride.
[01:48] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It was wild. I knew it was a documentary. I thought it was like you were.
[01:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: Watching it like a murder mystery, like trying to figure out which one's the real person. But everyone else was watching it and caught the big message in black and white at the beginning of the first episode and at the beginning of every.
[02:08] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Other episode, because I was fast forwarding, like, maybe preview and maybe like, yeah, I've seen that already.
[02:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, that says, like, everyone's an actor except Ronald.
[02:17] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I saw every view, the bold letters, and then except one person.
[02:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: See, ronald.
[02:24] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: The word ronald. So I had a wonderful time watching.
[02:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: This show, trying to figure out who was the real person.
[02:31] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I really want to rewatch it because now that I know that, which is.
[02:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: The last episode when they're so funny.
[02:38] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Showing him all the things, I was like, how on earth did this person think this was all real when this was so ridiculous? And he said, right, a lot of times, said, this is like a reality TV show. Like, this is insane.
[02:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my God. So before you figured out it was Ronald, did you think someone else was the real person?
[03:02] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: No. Maybe I knew it wasn't the plaintiff or the defendant, but I don't know what I was thinking.
[03:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think I was just, like, watching.
[03:10] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I was trying to watch it fast. It was very reminding me of The Office with the cuts and how it was a documentary, almost, which was right. I laughed out loud. My husband does not like The Office at all. Or like Parks and Rec. He doesn't like that vibe at all. And I think he would. I'm always like, you have to watch season one. You have to get into it and get to the characters. Because I get the first episode of.
[03:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: The Office I watched.
[03:37] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I didn't like, but this was so funny right away.
[03:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: But I laughed out loud when you told me you missed that it was Ronald. The whole I'm also kind of jealous. I wish I had watched it. Trying to figure out who was the mole, like, who was the real person who's on The Truman Show, right? It's so funny to me for.
[04:01] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I really don't know how that happened.
[04:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: I really find myself wondering if he thought Todd was the real person, the.
[04:08] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Inventor, I think, just because I was.
[04:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, there's no way.
[04:12] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, but maybe like I don't know. I really wasn't thinking about it a lot. I was just, like, laughing at how absurd everything was.
[04:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: Absurd is a great word. So, again, if you haven't watched this yet, please do. It's so funny. And it's a quick watch. It's funny, it's enjoyable, it's lighthearted, it'll make you laugh at the end of a long day. It got nominated for four Emmys, which I think surprised everyone, maybe, especially James Marston, who got nominated for an Emmy. He cracked me up, right? Like, just such a perfect portrayal of what we think ****** actors would be. Even when they're know at the beginning trying to select the jury, and they're asking him, have you ever served on a jury? He's like, yeah, I can.
[05:03] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Judge is like, what?
[05:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, no. He thinks everyone knows him. And they kind of do, but they don't. I forgot he was in the notebook. I didn't remember that.
[05:13] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right?
[05:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: You just think of Ryan Gosling. It's so funny. And I loved how Sonic the Hedgehog kept coming up. You probably haven't seen that movie Portia, but I have. It's like the worst movie ever. And it's so long. It's like 3 hours long. But he's in it. Jim Carrey's in it. So it I was like, Love promise.
[05:32] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, right?
[05:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: Kids love it. But for like, it's like nails out chocolate. It's so long and it's just not that good. But kids love it's. A blockbuster hit. But it was so funny how they were talking about Sonic.
[05:48] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And Ronald. It was so funny, him playing. He's so nice.
[05:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: So nice.
[05:57] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That's what everyone just kept saying. They thought that he would be mad. I liked how they referred to him as hero on the script. And so when James was mad at him know, from the early on, and then he brings the cake in and it was like it was really important that Ronald and him repair yeah, just.
[06:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like at the birthday party for Ross when James, I don't want this party. And everyone's like, It's not for you. Oh. I loved, I guess, in the final episode, seeing all the behind the scenes stuff and how it was almost like a choose your own adventure, like, okay, if he reacts this way, we're going to do this, and blah, blah, blah.
[06:33] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then high fiving, like when he would do something or I loved the fact that they could not believe that he took the bait from Noah first episode asking, how do I get out of this? And that he said, which is like, a ha ha, funny known thing, like, to say something horrible, right, to get off jury duty. I'm a racist. I'm a like, it's like, you have to see this. Unbelievable does. And they're all, like, dying in the.
[07:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: Back because he says and then Noah.
[07:06] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Obviously is acting, but then says it to try to get out of it. And you see Ronald looking around.
[07:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: When they all have to be sequestered. And then James Marsden's like, oh, you know, I got this cop I'm going to pay to stay with me so I don't have to go with you guys. And it's like, his fault. Oh, my God. I just can't. I just can't. I mean, I think all along the way, the whole thing is like, how did he not figure it out? But it seems like it was really well done. And maybe Ronald, I mean, he does just seem like a really nice person. So then it's like, did anyone feel bad that we were doing this to thought? I felt kind of weird at the end. In the final episode, when they're revealing it to him that Ronald looks shocked and his whole world has been turned upside down, which it has been, but then everyone around him is, like, smiling and high fiving and like, ha. Wasn't that funny? And we did it, guys, and just a lot of camaraderie. But then that was weird to me.
[08:13] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It was. I think the $100,000 needed to make it sweet, right? If they were just like, ha ha, jokes on you. Bye. See you. But I think it's like you're being paid not off you're being paid off to have tolerated this. But then it's experiment, a social experiment.
[08:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's what it is. And that's where I was like, how could they do this legally? When we do scientific experiments, you need informed consent. And I would imagine when you're agreeing to be in a documentary, you sign paperwork.
[08:49] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And maybe it wasn't in there, as in, like, it explicitly said, but I'm sure there was language in probably vague enough.
[08:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, but then it's so clear that you're tricking him. That's the whole point. So they also had to make sure he didn't get really mad at them because it's also like, what, two weeks of your life away from your family and your job and everything, and I don't know. How does it sit with you? The psychological side to me is like, how did they get away with this?
[09:23] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I don't know. Which is so important? I mean, they said right, out of 2500 people who applied, they picked him. And I'm wondering if there was any psychological evaluation or person kind of helping that, because I think A, you needed to pick someone who would be good on a show.
[09:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. But B, I feel like you also.
[09:47] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Had to pick someone who could take it.
[09:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[09:49] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And how do you know? I just think that's interesting, like, how they landed on him specifically, and they picked right? I know. So all of the actors were just shocked at how kind he was at times and how helpful and nice and stepping up and doing things he didn't want to do. He didn't want to be the four person he knew that no one else. So he did. It was just, I think, really interesting and maybe what you're alluding to in a messed up way, but how Ronald was put in this environment and then manipulated and rose to the occasion as this amazing person and could it also have gone a different way?
[10:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: Totally. And they still would have aired it, right? Like, if it had come out that he was, like, a major *******, they still would have aired it. Right. And then it's like, Whoa, I don't know. It's a real life Truman Show. And I'm just like, Good call.
[10:44] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
[10:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: Real life Truman Show. And also potentially psychologically damaging. It totally messes with your view of reality and your safety. And I was reading somewhere, I heard on some podcast or something that he was kind of paranoid afterwards and kept calling the producer someone to be like, are you sure it's still seriously, is he okay? Ronald, if you're out there listening, send an SOS. Send me a Morse code signal. Like, Are you okay? Do you need some help? I hope he's processing this. I'm really worried for him. I know. What if he had some trauma history or something that this reactivated? Did they screen for that and rule that out? Or was it just a random Craigslist ad they picked for?
[11:37] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I, you know, certainly didn't think about it to this degree. And I'm glad that we are now talking about it because yeah, of course you're paranoid after everyone was lying to you. Literally everyone.
[11:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. I feel like they tried to wrap it up by showing pictures of them hanging out after the fact, but then it's like, does he trust that they're friends or is it still going on? I feel like in the wrong hands, he could have had a psychotic break or something.
[12:11] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right.
[12:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: Because your version of reality is not what's actually happening to you. That's, like, super messed up. Or he could have gotten really angry, or he might sue them. Maybe he will still I don't know.
[12:23] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I don't know. These are excellent questions.
[12:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, I'm just ronald, if you're listening, we'd love to have you on the show and ask you all these questions. And also, I hope you're okay.
[12:34] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. And now that I'm thinking about sorry.
[12:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: To be such a dark cloud.
[12:40] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I'm just, like, really worried about yeah, that interestingly. Did not cross my mind.
[12:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: Maybe because you didn't know it was him the whole time. Yeah, that's a good point. Some distance. Whereas I'm watching, like, oh, my God. He's really forming what he thinks are, like, genuine connections. He is, like, a really nice person. He's really trying to figure out the case.
[13:02] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: He's really trying to figure out that they said in that last episode, because they said that they had to come up with so many things so quickly based on his questions and being an interest in being like, well, this doesn't make sense.
[13:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right? He's taking the job of juror super seriously. Which it's like, you hope people do, but then you're kind of surprised people do, especially with a case like this.
[13:26] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Now that you're saying this, I have a good example of also feeling icky about the manipulation. So when in the last episode, they're showing him even the day one room when they're all sitting there and they go say, we left four seats open, so we had four opportunities and rehearsed four scenarios of where you would go first. And that's weird. That makes weird.
[13:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: It all makes you feel weird. Exactly. It was so thoughtful.
[13:55] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And they were getting calculated at Margaritaville, right? If he drank, they could all have one. And then it was all fake and.
[14:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: They all wanted know you're the four person. You gotta get it first. Yeah. It's just weird power of I mean.
[14:11] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: This is like think, right?
[14:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's great.
[14:14] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Think.
[14:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: It reminds me this is so different. But do you remember learning about this Stanford Prison Experiment? So if you haven't heard about this awful experiment, this is one reason we have institutional review boards and stuff like that, to make sure scientific experiments are ethical, that people don't get hurt psychologically or physically, all of it. So, like, in the Stanford Prison Experiment, I think it was like, college kids or medical students or someone who needed a $100 or something to participate in this experiment where half of the people were prisoners and the other half were guards. And then they just sort of put them in this environment that looked like a prison and watched what happened. And it was atrocious the things that people ended up doing with the guards being in positions of power. There was awful. Look up the details if you want, but it reminded me of that. Again, not like, luckily no one was getting hurt, I guess, physically in the same way, but really displayed the power of psychology. And I'm just worried for Ronald. I don't know.
[15:23] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I was not expecting this episode to go in this direction. It should it's a necessary again, it's.
[15:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: Probably legal, but was it the right thing to do ethically? I mean, like, everyone's thrilled. Again, it's funny. It's funny to watch. They got Emmy nominations. I feel like Ronald should have gotten one.
[15:43] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think so. I think that would have sweetened the deal. Right. And I think they should all be still his friend, but to help heal him, almost.
[15:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: But now he has to get to know them for who they really are, not who they're pretending to be.
[15:58] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Nikki called Vanessa her real name, right? It was like Catherine or Cassandra or something like that. And then they had to do this whole thing where she then later said it called the stenographer or something like that, or the other. Right.
[16:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: They had to fix it.
[16:10] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right.
[16:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Because there was some who's cassandra. Yeah. So, again and the fact that then they take it to that level to keep up the charade, like, okay, but what's the cost to this poor guy? And why did he want to do it in the first place? Was he in a vulnerable position for some reason? Were they offering some sort of monetary compensation to be in this documentary or not? I have so many questions.
[16:43] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And no outright like zero contact with any outside I mean, which I get why? But from A, a jury in real life standpoint, b, the show him needing to be isolated, and then C, though I know no reality.
[17:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: Exactly. So it's like, I feel like they couldn't have picked someone who had children. Maybe they could have. Were they considering people with children or partners?
[17:14] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I would have to say no.
[17:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. How deep does this go? How nefarious is this? But yeah, when you think about it, it's like he was kidnapped. Yes. Or held hostage against his will.
[17:30] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And someone came up with a number. Right. It wasn't $50,000. It wasn't $200,000. How did you land on 100? And is that, like, illegal? Right. Was there some back room meetings about.
[17:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, this is does he get residual?
[17:45] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right.
[17:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: He should. How did you decide that taking him away from his life for that long was worth that much versus something else?
[17:52] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right.
[17:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: Does he agree? Again, it was just like that final episode where they're like, ha, we're all high fiving. Like, we did it. And he's just sitting there, like, totally shocked. It's like, what has he spoken out at all? I think all that I've seen is when he was saying or someone was saying that he said that he was messed up for at least a little bit of time and calling and asking, is this over? You have to tell me it's over.
[18:19] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right?
[18:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I'm just like, did no one anticipate that this would be psychologically troubling.
[18:26] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: To say the it's he currently still.
[18:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: Works at his regular job.
[18:32] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: He's a project manager at Home Depot. Per his LinkedIn profile and said, even to this day, I haven't really changed my life, because I didn't know, quote, jury duty was even going to be anything. So I've kept my day.
[18:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, I really want to reach out to him. We'll see if we can get him on the podcast. Yeah, that'd be really cool.
[18:51] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: He's still friends with James Per. His social media account, New Famous Friends, including it's it's it's interesting to think about like, of course there's two sides of the coin and of course there were some absolute clear benefits to this. But did he want any of Ryan Reynolds?
[19:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: Is that enough that he's his friend?
[19:14] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Does that compensate for what happened?
[19:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: And Ryan Reynolds isn't his friend for who Ronald really is he's his friend because he was on this show and it was funny. But it's like, does he feel like we're all laughing at him and not with him? I just have so many questions.
[19:33] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I think though, if I was Ronald, I think there's been a lot of commentary, which I just literally said as well, of like, how could you not know, right? It's like, so some of the stuff that happened was so ridiculous, but so.
[19:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: Is life, of course. That's my question.
[19:53] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Is any of that feedback getting to him? Does he feel stupid? We're laughing at him or with him? I don't know. That's a good question.
[20:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: Or and even how were there points along the way where he had a gut feeling something was up and then he didn't listen to it and now that really messes with your sense of your intuition or it can really have really long lasting effects that I don't think the creators and all these people really thought about. I think we're probably thinking about it because we're in mental health field. I'm just a little concerned for him.
[20:28] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I mean, there's all these extreme characters, right? So we have Todd who's like, socially awkward.
[20:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: The chair piano brings all of these.
[20:37] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Absurd inventions to court. I mean, the scene where he is trying to sit down in the jury box and first of all, how do they not break face? It is wild. I cannot imagine being in the control room because I'd be like, don't break free. This is like the most amazing scene.
[20:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know. But then also, it was so nice because he's like, there's never enough chairs for anyone, so I brought my own. That's really nice. And Ronald was so encouraging of his weird invention.
[21:02] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And he was like, we sometimes take a risk and it doesn't go well. He's so nice, such a good guy. There's Tod, then there's Ken, who had to talk really slow, had to talk with an accent, who manages two gumball machines. I mean, like, again, so ridiculous.
[21:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: And he clearly has a gambling know, which is really interesting to see. And he's like making up the rules of this weird. Then but then Ronald's like, no, no, man, you don't have to pay me. It's totally fine. He's just, like, so nice, and then I'm like, Is he in on it? Is Ronald really not?
[21:44] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: He maybe that's the big twist, and.
[21:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't maybe, like, we're all falling for it, right? When you're thinking of groupthink, or, like, are we all falling for, like, is he in on it in some way? Unclear.
[21:58] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So if you don't know, groupthink is this phenomenon that happens when you are in a group of people and you kind of end up thinking or believing something that you probably wouldn't have without being in the group. So it's just like the impact of others on what we do, what we say, what we think. And we see that in the Stanford Prison Experiment. We see that in even in groups.
[22:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like a therapy group or, like, Taylor Swift fans, maybe. Yep, yep.
[22:28] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So it's just this phenomenon when a group of people get together, like, what can happen with the power of just.
[22:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, I think we see that just like, normal development with teenage peer pressure, stuff like that, and it really can mess with you when it's taken to the extreme, like something like this.
[22:48] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So what I thought was interesting too, is that the judge, the Judge Rosen and Trevor's lawyer are real lawyers.
[22:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: But I think the judge was an actor and then became a lawyer later.
[23:01] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: In The Other Guy. But they both were real attorneys who had histories so great, and they just did it so well. And I know that the defendant's lawyer was laughing because they were, like, begging him to do it. Because they were like there's literally, like, no one you are the only person.
[23:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: With this unique experience who could straddle the fence. I loved that lawyer so much, and when he tried to show that video, that was like, that would be like if I had to make a video. But it was just like I died every time I watched it. It was so funny.
[23:35] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But again and I think if there was one other singular person on the jury who was questioning things too, I think Ronald would have been like, this is ridiculous. Yeah. But I think because no one else was kind of swept up and because, again, the whole thing was so absurd, so ridiculous, such a sham, such, like, the craziest thing I've ever seen in my life. But it was so normal for everyone else.
[24:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: Hundreds.
[24:06] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So it had to be normal for Ronald.
[24:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right? Exactly. And that's where I think I hope Ronald's okay. Because when you're in an environment like that and you start to not listen to your own inner voice, that's dangerous. That's how people get sucked into colds.
[24:25] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I'd like to follow up with Ronald in, like, ten years and hopes and prayers for him. I don't know, I feel like this could change the trajectory of your life.
[24:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: Not a good way. Yeah, I feel like everyone's like, oh, this is great. Here's $100,000, by the way. They're going to take out a bunch of taxes from that. And then now you're friends with these famous people. Okay. Like, Ryan Reynolds isn't, like, inviting him over for Thanksgiving, okay?
[24:48] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right.
[24:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, James Marsden, maybe they text here and there, but I'm not sure that James and him are like vacationing or I'm not sure Ronald's going to break into Hollywood or what is his real life like?
[25:03] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And the fact I and we watch a lot of TV, right, and movies.
[25:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: Well, because we are like podcasts.
[25:10] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But I was laughing because just thinking about all of these actors now, having read this article where it says what else they've been in, I'm like, oh, I recognize a lot of them. So I really the woman who played inez she's in Teen Wolf, she's in a lot of shows. The guy who played who was Up Ross, he was in Parks, and, like.
[25:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: He was in a ton of stuff. And I think didn't they say Ronald was a Parks and Rec fan or there was something where Ronald was a fan of something that I think one of the producers or writers had done. So they got nervous that he was going to pick up on it. I thought they purposely picked people you wouldn't be able to recognize was in.
[25:53] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: A bunch of stuff. So he's the guy who tried to get off having his C four and C three in his lower back instead of where it really is, which I just thought was hilarious. And he's in a lot in the article. He's, like, the most recognizable under James Marsden.
[26:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's so interesting. But yeah, I mean, all it would have taken was for Ronald to have been able to pick any of them. I'm I'm fascinated by the casting. How did they pick like, they must have done at least some preliminary, hopefully background checks, psychological assessment to guarantee he was okay to do this.
[26:31] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I mean, Ronald took one for the team for James with the ****.
[26:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know.
[26:38] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then they showed them how it was all fake, and it was just wild. And so Jeannie and thought, you know, were an interesting character. Just know, Noah seems really he's he's clearly being manipulated. Obviously it's acting, but he's being manipulated by Jeannie about questioning his girlfriend. It seems they never said it, but it appears that Noah is a part of the Church of Latter day Saints based on his section when he said, we've never been able to be alone. That's why this vacation was really important. And then the soaking, which is something that people do to kind of get around the fact that you're not allowed to have sex, so they'll have someone else, like, kind of moving the bed. Right. Jumping on the bed.
[27:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: I didn't realize that was a real thing.
[27:28] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It is.
[27:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: How did you know that?
[27:32] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I feel like I've known that forever, but from online, like, it's a thing.
[27:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: So, Portia, let me get this straight. You knew about soaking being a real thing forever, but you missed that Ronald was the real person in this show? I just want to get that straight. That's why we're a good team. Yeah. We each bring something.
[27:58] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
[29:04] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Which is so strange in my opinion, to me, based on my upbringing. I don't know, I think it feels like, weirder because you're bringing this third person in that makes it feel less to me like, I don't know, religious, spiritual, whatever.
[29:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: Just between you and your partner. Exactly. So that feels like that's why I'm just fascinating to me too. Can you imagine these actors, like, reading this and James Mars and being like, oh, my God, I got to go jump on this bed. And then they said they filmed it because they were like, such a kick out of one point in the last episode when they said they had to pretend there was a COVID scare so they could all rehearse, but so he.
[29:46] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Would be kept in his room just.
[29:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like this poor guy. I think we have to talk a little bit about inez because I loved her, and I just loved how much she wanted to be the four person and ordering lunch and getting those menus and then getting it wrong. And it seemed like there was so many logistics that went into their lunch, ordering even like, behind the scenes, they.
[30:07] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Eat like, twice sometimes.
[30:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: I was so confused by that. But I wouldn't mind eating twice for work. But also, I think I'll make that sacrifice.
[30:16] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Such fun at jury duty. And we're constantly breaking you like you're eating more than you're listening to. And I think that's the people laugh about that. Like, jury duty are just like going for there's constantly breaks, and it's just.
[30:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, let's get this over with. The last time I went for jury duty, Portia, I had just had my first child. Well, actually, I got summoned for jury duty when I was like, eight months pregnant. It was my. First child, and I was so terrified that I was supposed to, I don't know, go, like, two months postpartum or something. I was so terrified that I was going to forget to tell them I couldn't go, or I was really nervous I was going to get arrested if I didn't show up for jury duty. So I remember it caused me a lot of angst. Okay. And then they eventually let me postpone it, like, six months. So then I go and I have.
[30:59] Dr. Katrina Furey: A newborn baby at home.
[31:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: And it was like, the greatest day ever because I was all by myself. It was quiet, they had free coffee. It wasn't good, but I had a break, I had space. No one was touching me. I remember feeling so fondly about jury duty that day that I didn't get picked was probably good, but I just had this lovely day all by myself in the quiet. I got to read a book, had free coffee. It was like, what did they ask you? I didn't even get asked.
[31:29] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: You didn't get asked?
[31:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: No, I got dismissed. Like, I just spent a day there and it was like I was like.
[31:34] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think I've been summoned six times.
[31:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: Wow.
[31:39] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It's like a joke in my friend. They really want you get summoned all the time. And I've never actually had to go, so I got summoned a bunch where I used to live, like, in that county, and then I moved to a new county where there's another court, and I've gotten summoned twice here, and once I was summoned and I delayed it because I was away. And then if you delay it, you automatically you're in a different pool where.
[32:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: You'Re like, you have to come now.
[32:11] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. And so then I was really summoned, and I was freaking out because I'm in private practice. I think you can get out of it. But I was freaking out. So I called, and this woman was lovely on the phone and was like, okay, don't ever delay it again because you automatically will get called. And you oftentimes have to come in. But because of what you do, that's.
[32:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: What happened to me when I delayed it, because I was eight months pregnant. Then I had to go, yes.
[32:39] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And so she was like, just call this number or whatever every time you get summoned and you'll get out of it. Just so that it's not like a waste of time for you or for them, because you're not. Going to get I feel like they.
[32:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: Don'T like to pick therapists or psychiatrists exactly for that reason.
[32:56] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then I think they're not going to make you do that. If you're like the primary, if there's.
[33:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: All the that's what? I don't want to say this out loud because I don't want the jury duty powers of me to hear and be like, you have to serve Dr. Fury or else. But another time I know of a friend who got summoned and said that they were, like, the sole private practice person, and they treat X number of patients every week. And there's risk if you have to serve that these people are going to go without their mental health care, and then they got dismissed. I heard this about a friend. I'm just reporting someone not related to.
[33:34] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I just don't think that they would want a therapist.
[33:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't think so. To analyze.
[33:40] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And also, I think specifically for being a psychiatrist, I would say without intention. I feel like you're powerful, right. You're like a dear doctor. You have influence on people, and I think that that's something that they would be aware of with you deliberating with this group of your peers, so to speak. I feel like in some ways, there is a power dynamic there of people's perceptions of doctors and then mental health. I don't know. I think that feels specific to being a doctor. Of course they're not going to have a lawyer on the jury duty, but it's interesting.
[34:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: But so it is interesting. And I thought this show also made me think about the jury selection process.
[34:22] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Available for jury duty and who the.
[34:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: People who are picking the jury are doing it intentionally.
[34:30] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right.
[34:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's not random, and it isn't always like they cut people out for reasons, and then you're like, well, so is that fair?
[34:38] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, because it's really not of your peers. It's of, like, a specific group of people that the defense and the prosecution believes will benefit them 100%.
[34:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. And it's like, is that really what the spirit of jury duty was unclear?
[34:52] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It is.
[34:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: So, I mean, as we start wrapping up, this show really makes you think about who would have thought about some really major topics. I think a lot of ethical questions come from know, like, the ethics of poor Ronald and the ethics of jury selection and the whole shebang.
[35:15] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. And I think that's our know, if we didn't title our episodes with just the name, I think it would be like or maybe we should with this one, the Ethics of Jury Duty. Like the show, because the show versus the real thing. And I'm sure, of course, there's something out there already, but I think this is just also, like, a unique perspective besides just all the ha ha's or, like, the love people love know, and good for him.
[35:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: He deserves.
[35:38] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But, like, I just think it's is.
[35:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: He ronald, please, please reach out. You can find us on Instagram at Analyze, scripts or TikTok. Analyze scripts. Podcast. Ronald, like, please reach out. Let us know you're okay.
[35:50] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
[35:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: We'd also just love to talk to you.
[35:52] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. What was your experience like? Space. And we are real, and we are not.
[35:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my God. No.
[35:58] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
[35:59] Dr. Katrina Furey: Poor Ronald. I hope he's okay.
[36:01] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Well, thank you for listening to this really interesting, I think, episode of I almost said of jury duty of our podcast analyze scripts. Be sure to rate, review and subscribe, please. We appreciate all the streams and of course, the subscribers, and please interact with us. We'd love to hear your thoughts. What do you think? Do you think after listening to this episode there's some ethical considerations wrong?
[36:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: How would you feel? If you like, if you were Ronald.
[36:27] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: How would you feel? We'd love to hear from you. So thanks and we'll see you next Monday.
[36:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: Bye.
[36:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: This podcast and its contents are a copyright of analyzed scripts. All rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited. Unless you want to share it with.
[36:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: Your friends and rate, review and subscribe, that's fine.
[36:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings, or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are analyzing season one of "The Morning Show" on AppleTV+. This series stars an all-star cast including Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, Steve Carell, Billy Crudup, Karen Pittman, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and Mark Duplass, to name just a few. We examine this season's expert and thoughtful portrayl of sexual harassment and assault in the workplace by comparing and contrasting the complex power dynamics between Mitch and Hannah, Mitch and Alex, Mia and Mitch, and Yanko and Claire. We discuss that the "freeze" response is one of the most common reactions to trauma, and analyze how this may contribute to shame, guilt, and confusion experienced by victims (as well as broaded misunderstanding about sexual harrassment and assault). We also explore depictions of narcissistic personality traits (once again! seems like Americans can't get enough!), substance abuse, and grief. We really enjoyed this drama and hope you enjoy this episode!
[00:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fury, a psychiatrist.
[00:12] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker.
[00:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows.
[00:23] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends.
[00:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: There is so much misinformation out there and it drives us nuts.
[00:32] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like.
[00:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: With a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better.
[00:39] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn.
[00:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: And your DSM Five and enjoy. We get started. We just wanted to include a trigger warning for this episode. This episode could include discussion about some themes and topics that might be upsetting, including, but not limited to things like substance abuse, suicide, self harm, disordered, eating, and harassment and assault. So if any of those topics are too upsetting, we totally get it. Please feel free to skip this episode and join us next week. Otherwise, we hope you enjoy.
[01:31] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Welcome back to another episode of Analyzed Grip.
[01:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: Woohoo.
[01:35] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: We're really excited to be talking about The Morning Show, season one for this episode. I feel a little late to the game as this came out in November of 2019, and I'm just discovering it and it was phenomenal.
[01:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: It is phenomenal. It really is.
[01:49] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Did you watch it earlier?
[01:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: I watched it earlier, but only like, last year. I wasn't watching it in real time, but I did watch it. I feel like the three COVID years are kind of a blur, but I remember watching it and doing a puzzle and so I think that must have.
[02:08] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Been during COVID Yeah, there were a lot of puzzles. I don't know if that's a trauma memory memory in a long time.
[02:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I think it's just like, I can't that makes sense. But no, I mean, the Morning Show is such a good show, so we're excited to be covering seasons one and two ahead of the release of season three this fall. And of course, we'll be covering that as well, like, in real time. But gosh, what an all star cast. One thing I love about it is that a lot of the main know jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, Steve Carell are like, known comedic actors.
[02:47] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Lighthearted.
[02:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, sure, they've all done some serious stuff here and there, but like, man, they all really pack a punch. And they're so good. And I love seeing them in these bigger, grittier, more complicated roles. I love seeing Jennifer aniston like this.
[03:05] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I was shocked. We were talking a little bit about this before we started recording, and I have no idea how I was sleeping on the show. I think we kind of said it's like Apple's probably, unfortunately, like one of the last streaming services people think of.
[03:25] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, it's like you get like Netflix, right? And then you probably get Hulu and.
[03:29] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Then you're like, do I really want.
[03:31] Dr. Katrina Furey: To pay for Apple or not? By the way, Apple, if you want to sponsor us, feel free. We love you. We're both paying. You know we love it.
[03:37] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: The morning show.
[03:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: They have a new beanie baby movie out. Yes.
[03:41] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: With Sarah Snook. Yes.
[03:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: And Zach Gallifinakis, which I read the book it's based on. Because obviously yes. I feel like that would be a fun one for us to cover. They have really good content. But I think you're right, Ted Lasso. But I think it's just not quite as popular for some reason. So maybe that's why. Did you have Apple back in 2019? No, probably not. It's just fabulous.
[04:05] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So I have not seen season two yet. I cut it off. I had to restrain my arm from hitting next because I was going to not sleep this week watching season two. And I was like, slow down. You don't need to watch it yet. But I'm like at the edge of my seat. What happened?
[04:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes. And I think when we started this podcast, Portia, we had some major shows in mind that we wanted to cover. You obviously. The morning show, obviously. White Lotus obviously. And then there's a couple more like, Devil in Ohio and Tell Me Lies, which we want to cover at some point. But I feel like we're getting close to the end of shows. I have to rewatch for the podcast, which I'm appreciating. So I have seen seasons one and two, but it is still so fascinating to rewatch. Like, even though I know what's coming, I miss little details the first time around. Like the button under the desk that shuts the like, somehow I missed that the first time I watched it. And even knowing the ending, like with Hannah rewatching, it is just really interesting to then see how do they portray that character's evolution. And I always wonder, do the actors know the ending when they get started filming, or do they not? And I bet it's different by show.
[05:23] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think it depends. And it's so funny that you said that because I just saw this morning that Sarah Snook read, like, the week of them filming the last episode. That tom wamscams. Spoiler alert for succession. Season four, pause becomes the succession. I read that, too.
[05:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: I read that she was shocked and.
[05:45] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I was just like, wow, she didn't know. I think they want some of that to be organic right. In their emotions of like right.
[05:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: And also so fascinating.
[05:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[05:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: Because then it's like she has portrayed this character all along, not knowing that's going to be the outcome. And that probably does influence how they portray the character. Right. It's so fascinating. Someday when our podcast is really big, I so hope we get to talk to the writers and stuff and just pick their brains, analyze them analyzing their work, and just make everyone uncomfortable by being super analyze.
[06:20] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. How did you get this so right?
[06:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: Tell me about your childhood.
[06:24] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Tell me about your mother. But we see Alex as a mother, as a partner at home, and she seems would you like to take it from here? As.
[06:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: Again, Jennifer Aniston in a role like, as I was thinking about getting ready to record this episode. I was like, I feel like I think I know who Jennifer Aniston is, but I don't, obviously, right? But she is, like, America's sweetheart. I think we all think of her as doing yoga and drinking a green shake, but being really nice and like a girl's girl and having some dogs that she takes really good care of, right? And just like, an all around good person, right? Doesn't cheat on her taxes, eats healthy. I have no idea if that's true. What if this is her? Right? We don't know.
[07:22] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I know, but I just say that.
[07:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: Because this was such a different role for her and she did a really good job, and I loved watching it a second time. And as we get toward the end, still wondering, is any of this genuine or is she just like a huge, raging narcissist, like, clinically a narcissist? What were your thoughts?
[07:47] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think I was back and forth. And as we often wonder, was that intentional? Was it intentional in writing or did she her acting just kind of come up with that organically? Because I think back and forth, I really was rooting for her or felt sorry for her. And then the next moment, I was furious with her. The next moment I was like, you're terrible. So I don't know. I think where I left off at the end of season one, I was really proud of her. It seemed like she finally pulled the wool from her eyes, which maybe she put there intentionally or not. I think that was the question. And decided to maybe get fired. I don't know if she also, though, right, sensed the sinking ship and decided to be on, quote unquote, the right side.
[08:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't know exactly. I don't know either. And I think that's fascinating and probably exactly where we're supposed to end up. And Jennifer Aniston did such a stellar job in this role and all the writers and everyone in sort of crafting her character, right? So to sort of back up, if you haven't watched season one of the morning show, first of all, go watch it. Second of all, the main plot is know there's these two news anchors on the major morning show in New York City. Mitch Kessler, played by Steve Carell, and Alex Levy, played by Jennifer Aniston. And the show starts with Mitch, Steve Carell's character, getting fired for sexual misconduct. And it's set in the era of MeToo, I believe. It started going into production in 2017. It was released in 2019 all around the time when the MeToo movement was really catching ground. On Twitter, on Instagram social media with actors and actresses, like, really coming forward about Harvey Weinstein, but then other major heavy hitters in Hollywood. We both did want to just make note that the MeToo movement and Hashtag had been around for far longer than that, about nine years ahead of that. Tarana Burke had started using it on her own social media back then, MySpace in 2006, to talk about her experiences as a sexual assault survivor and to really start pushing forward, like, congressional legislation and other sort of political and activist movements. And then it really took off when Alyssa Milano and other actors and actresses were using it. So that's like the setting where this is all created and interestingly right around the time Matt Lauer got fired for sexual misconduct, right? And I kept wondering, like, is this Matt Lauer or is it not?
[10:31] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And, like, you know, I think the producers and writers or the showrunner had to deny it on record, but I think there's a lot of speculation that it's that whether or not there was specifics or, like, that's the general sense of what happened. And I think what I really actually liked about their depiction of the morning show is that they were covering all of the real Weinstein was there was that episode where Alex is watching a segment on him, and she's like, oh, what a pig, right? And then the fires, Malibu, like, all of that, and then the hired firefighters, all of those things were actually happening in real time. And I loved that component because it felt so real and sometimes not like I was watching a show. I was actually watching a morning show.
[11:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right?
[11:20] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And so I think some of that makes me think it is kind of based I feel like mean, we have.
[11:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: No idea, so Matt Lauer, please don't sue us. This is all alleged, but it seems like I mean, I think we were reading some article this morning that the button in the dressing room is a thing that he had, like, how sick? How sick?
[11:41] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That gave me full body chills. And I can't remember who it was.
[11:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: Mia.
[11:46] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Mia who went in there, and she pushed the button and the door slammed, and I was it just it really.
[11:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: Does send a chill down your spine. So, like we've talked about before, sexual misconduct, sexual assault. Sexual harassment is unfortunately incredibly common. The World Health Organization estimates that the prevalence of sexual violence affects a third of all women. Insane. Like, it's like insane because I'm not surprised, but it's also insane that it affects so many of us just walking around and it's just so normal, right? And I think when stuff like that is normalized and this is worldwide this isn't just in American culture, but worldwide when it is normalized, it's hard to discern if what you're experiencing and those inner icky feelings are because of that behavior or because of your own quote unquote sensitivity or overreaction. We have a tendency to say about women. And so much of this stuff is not overtly out there until it is.
[13:00] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right.
[13:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: But there's usually, like, a long progression we see that depicted in this show.
[13:05] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And there were some I read a couple of articles and comments that were unhappy about that. There was some criticism on some of the grayness that the morning show took with kind of how it landed. And I think from my perspective, as someone who works with people who have experienced this, I'm torn, because on the one hand, it's like I think they did a really good job of showing the grayness. That makes it so hard for someone who experienced it to delineate, like, wait, did that really happen? And was it really sexual assault or not know? And then people around you also being kind of, like, confused or but because I think they wanted it to be.
[13:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: Really black and white, especially with Hannah.
[13:55] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: With Hannah. And I think, like, it was intentionally not her getting dragged into a bush by Mitch and she screamed because, again, as we talked about in earlier episodes, that's not common. That's actually more rare. It does absolutely happen. But I think they kind of hit the nail on the head.
[14:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: This is what happened. Right.
[14:21] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I don't know. I appreciated it, but I could also understand some of the criticism, just wanting.
[14:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: To really be what's the criticism exactly?
[14:33] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Kind of going back and forth right. With Hannah, quote, unquote, making the decision while after it was initiated without her consent to kind of go with it, as she says. She says that in the interview with Bradley that she kind of just decided to do it after obviously being distressed and not I think that they wanted it to be more clear so people who don't understand it would right.
[15:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: I was just thinking that's such a good point, because I think in that scene so what we're referring to is this is near the end of season one, right? We see. So, like, Mitch gets fired and then he's all angry that these are all consensual affairs. How could anyone accuse me of these awful things? And we see he's out on a quest to clear his then, you know, there's this chance that now Alex might be fired. She's getting older. People are bored of her. There's all this backstabbing and stress going on in the network with the higher ups and all the businessy things. And then we see her spring on everyone that she's decided that Bradley Jackson, this new nobody from Nowhere, is going to be the new Morning Show co host. Right. And then Bradley Jackson is this truth teller, and basically, eventually it comes that Bradley wants to uncover the truth of who at the network knew who was covering it up. And that's all really interesting, and we'll get into it. But near the know, there was this thought that maybe Bradley would interview know they'd already interviewed one of his other victims. Maybe they'd interview Mitch for ratings and all this stuff. And everyone had a different goal with that interview. And as they're getting to that, we see what happened between Mitch and Hannah unfold. And until then, Hannah was just this sort of background character, and then all of a sudden, we really see that she was another one of his victims. And so I thought the depiction of this perfectly displayed the power differential between the white male head anchor and the black younger female. I don't even know what she was. She was like a booker, a junior booker. Right. So she's, like, fresh on the scene. He liked her. Right. So then asked that she be brought out to Las Vegas to cover that shooting. Again, another real event that happened.
[17:09] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: He complimented her before that, like, in front of and, you know, so that made her feel really good, really special. And there was know, I think keep going.
[17:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: I'll say this later, but again, just a compliment. Not about her appearance, not about what she was wearing, just, like, about her work. Right. But it's like it's already starting. It's already starting. He knows what he's doing. That's exactly what it is. It's grooming. He asked for Mia to be taken off because that was who he'd had an affair with leading up to that. Mia had recently broken it off. Mia is also black, but she's older. She's been around longer. So there's still a power difference, right. And a racial difference, but different from Hannah. I thought that was really interesting, that they kind of show both of those piggybacked, and then we see him just take advantage of Hannah, who is clearly struggling with covering this awful trauma. So Hannah's already traumatized, right. Who's not, like, covering a mass shooting. Right? She's, like, vicariously traumatized, sort of coping with that. And he sort of is showing interest in her and things unfold.
[18:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[18:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: I can't remember the exact sequence of events, but it was like they bumped into each other. They were walking around. Maybe they got a drink. She's sad. She's sad.
[18:31] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: He's giving her some advice.
[18:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right? She's thinking of him as, like, a mentor. She's young. Of course you want to be mentored by the head honcho. And then he invites her up to his hotel room, and that's where I think you're like, Why did you go?
[18:46] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But again, it's like and he's this right?
[18:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: Dad fatherly figure. He's like America's, dad. And they say that a couple of.
[18:54] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Times, which I think is, for me, so important, because, again, it demonstrates, like, he's not, I guess, to the outside world. And Hannah, like, creepy, right? So it's, you know, he's jolly, he's kind, and, you know, he invites her.
[19:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: Up to watch a movie that he likes to watch when he's feeling like, okay, you know, I could see how you might go again. I feel like I could see why you shouldn't go. Right? But I could also see how Hannah, not being in her most stable state of mind, could feel like, this was nice. She's so upset, she's so traumatized. This well seasoned, successful person who's recently complimented her work, asked her to be here, is showing interest in her and comforting her. You also don't get Icky vibes. Full on no. Until they're there and until it gets to that point. But then she's being traumatized again. Right. And we often think about, like, when trauma is happening, that fight or flight response, but included in that is the freeze response, right. Where you kind of play dead, right? And you see this in Animals in the Wild, too. And I think that's what happened.
[20:11] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I was, like, playing dead. And I'm sure there's maybe a research article on this that it would be helpful to have, but in my experience, freezing is the most common response.
[20:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: Most common sexual 100%, it is. And what's really confusing, I think, for survivors of sexual assault like this is that psychologically, you're freezing. But biologically, in terms of arousal and things like that, that will biologically happen whether you necessarily want it to or not. And so that's where it gets really confusing, at least in my work with survivors of things like this, right. Because they might have biological reactions that you might have if you're having consensual sex.
[20:57] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then the shame, right? Super shame. How could I have reacted in that.
[21:02] Dr. Katrina Furey: Way if I didn't want it? And it's like because it's biological, you can't control it. Just like you can't control when you're going through something traumatic. If you fight flight or freeze, you can't always control it. You're being traumatized. It's like your body's most primitive way of protecting itself. Right. So I just feel like you can't blame her. You can't blame her.
[21:24] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right.
[21:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: She may have felt like who knows, right? That's just what happened. She was traumatized. I found that really hard to watch.
[21:37] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That whole episode, really, I think, was so imperative to the season, because up until then, I think it wasn't clear if it was just abuses of power with Mitch. And it was, I'd say, besides the abuse of power and power dynamics and stuff like that, like consensual, where everyone's an adult here, but just affairs, right?
[22:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: And up until that point, they had showed, like, Mitch relating to ****, played by Martin Short, in a way of being like, all these women are so sensitive these days, you can't even compliment a woman anymore, right? But then as they're talking at his house when he's trying to pitch, let's make a documentary where we get interviewed and tell our side of the story. And then he realizes, like, oh, this guy's like, legit a pedophile. He doesn't see there's anything wrong.
[22:34] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And he's like, Well, I'm not like, or like you're this, and I'm like, it's so interesting that he right. He separates himself from ****.
[22:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: And again, yes, I think it's fascinating that he still thinks he's special or different. He's not that bad of a predator. He can't see his own action. He's not appreciating what he actually did.
[22:59] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But then he's so good at manipulating Hannah later on that I'm like, you do know that's what I mean.
[23:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, exactly. And it's like, he knew what he was doing. She doesn't have to say, like, no or stop. Even though she tries, he keeps going. Right. So it's like, at what point is it on? Why does a woman or whoever's being victimized have to keep screaming no from the rooftops? And why aren't you held accountable to just know that this is wrong. You should know.
[23:34] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: She says, I wasn't expecting this when I came up here. And, okay, so maybe pull back and be like, okay, well, what were you expecting? And then just talking. Okay, now we're just going to talk, of course, what he was doing. And then he says to her right, to get her to talk. That whole part was so sick, so horrible to watch. Like, well, you manipulated me to get the job. You used me. Well, this is going to come out.
[24:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right, whether you wanted to or not.
[24:03] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So, again, that's another trauma and abuse of power and not consent. What did you think about Bradley's interview? Her conversations with Hannah kind of at that part.
[24:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: So Bradley Jackson as a character, I find I have mixed reactions to, like, on the one hand, I love Reese Witherspoon, and I think she's a great actress. Some parts of Bradley I felt like were a little too try hard, if that makes sense. Like, yeah, she's a truth teller, great. But some of it was, like, a little too much for me. I thought her backstory was really compelling, like, about her dad and how he had apparently killed a child by drunk driving, and she had been the one to turn him in. And then her own brother's struggling with addiction and how she seems to be bearing the responsibility of that, both financial and emotionally, and her mom is kind of struggling to put it lightly. I found all of that really interesting. I believe we see more of that in season two, so I'm excited to revisit that. But in general, I felt like when Bradley was interviewing both the initial victim, they had come back on the air. And then Hannah, some of the things she was saying I thought were good things to say, like, kind of like therapist things to say, know, echoing back, like, oh, I hear you're saying this. That's hard. No, it's okay to cry. Take your time. Let me get you a tissue. She was very humanistic and relatable and could say things like that. When we got to this stuff with Hannah, I was just like it made me so uncomfortable because we already know at this point that Hannah is, like, uber traumatized. We see that she's abusing drugs. I think in Vegas. That was when she had offered to her coworker, like, we're going to be up for the next 36 hours.
[26:00] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Do you want Adderall California fire thing.
[26:02] Dr. Katrina Furey: Or that was in the fire. There was something earlier on where, you know, she has Adderall. She seems to be abusing it. Who knows what Hannah's backstory is? I wouldn't be surprised if there had been earlier traumas in her life or something like that. And then we see that she's not kind of she's been super triggered by this whole thing with Mitch and all this stuff coming out. And I feel like him just showing up at the morning show that day and talking to everyone and everyone's listening, but also looks really scared. I was so afraid he was going to pull out a like, I was just like, oh, my God, this is like a bad situation. Disgruntled, powerful man just, like, showing up. I was really worried. And then with Hannah in that interview with Bradley, I feel like I'm going off on a tangent, but it just felt like people kept re traumatizing her by pushing her or insisting she do things or like, forcing it on. Like, it starts with Mitch again. And it ****** me off. I was like, you've already forced yourself on this poor girl. You're doing it again. You are so manipulative and it's disgusting and you're just twisting it all around, unannounced, unwanted. It's just like, you are retraumatizing her. But then for Bradley and everyone else to push her to go along with.
[27:25] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It, they're doing it too. I was so angry at Bradley because you could see that she was aware, because she was like there was some hesitation or there was some know, when Hannah kind of finally, quote unquote, loses it and goes on that monologue of what happened and how she's feeling, Bradley's like, Whoa. And it's are and then she kind of walks back and it's like, well, we don't need to do this. You're clearly upset. And it's like, but you made her feel this. Like you forced her to do the moral thing, which I think oftentimes is something that we do put on victims of, like, right, well, it's the right thing to do to press charges or like, you don't want this to happen to someone else. It's not your responsibility.
[28:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: 100%. And I think it's so important that we keep pushing that message out there that when you are the victim of something traumatic or like an assault or something like that, you get to decide what you do next. Right? And it is so retraumatizing to tell victims, like, well, you have to report it. You have to do this. Because, again, the whole trauma was forced on them, something they don't want, they didn't consent to it's so intrusive and now you're, like, doing it again. Right. And I think loved ones, family members, society can be well meaning in wanting. I can see how people around you might want to support you by helping you step into your power and get retribution and stuff like that, but it's on that person it happened to to decide what is best for them.
[29:02] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right?
[29:02] Dr. Katrina Furey: Because, like we've talked about, the system isn't super welcoming to victims and just believes you right. That whole thing can be really traumatizing too. And again, it's like, Bradley, this whole time is like, I just want the like, I just want the truth. But then I feel like we saw her selfishness and own thirst for power there, and it was, you know, and it's like, Hannah doesn't want this. Like, she I'll tell, I'll do whatever you want. Just leave me alone and don't use my name. And again, it's like she feels, like, coerced to do that. She doesn't want to, but then they all just keep pushing her, pushing her, pushing her, and the network reaching out.
[29:45] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And offering her this job.
[29:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: I mean, it's, like, so sick. But this stuff happens. It happens. And then, sadly, we see that eventually she dies. And it's unclear. Was it an accidental overdose? Was it intentional? What were your thoughts?
[30:03] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I don't know. I mean, it seemed like she was abusing Adderall. Of course, we don't know what she took, right. When she OD.
[30:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think Opiates is what I'm guessing, because there was, like, vomit and stuff like that, and it's so lethal.
[30:20] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right. And maybe we know that we often see some mixing. Right. If you are using a stimulant to stay up, it's like, typically sometimes then you need a downer to go to bed or something like that. And those are when things get really dangerous. So it might have been in that way, accidental. Right. She was like, abusing Adderall and then needed to go to bed, and then she was anxious or upset, and then she was like, oh, I'll just take something to help me sleep, a sedative or something like that. And then that happened. I don't know. I mean, I think it could have easily been either one.
[30:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. I feel like I'm leaning toward accidental just because I say that. Because she accepted the new job. She wanted to get out of there. So she seemed what we call in the field, like, future oriented. She had plans. However, all of this turmoil is going on. She is so retraumatized with no support.
[31:14] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And her friend Claire, right, they just had a fight.
[31:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: They just had a fight, a falling out where Hannah thought she was doing the right thing. She saw Claire with Yanko, who's the weatherman, and was, I think, concerned for her friend that the same thing was happening. So she went to HR, and we'll talk a little more about that whole portrayal. But so she's alone. She's abusing substances. Also, in those moments when. You're intoxicated or high or not in your sober mind, you can make decisions that you can make such a split second decision. Just be like, you know what? This is too much. I'm done. So it's so unclear. It's so unclear, but it is so sad and devastating. And it's like, that's what it like. That's what it took to finally get people to wake up, right?
[32:05] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That scene, you know, I thought was so well done with Bradley getting the phone call from Claire, right? So it's like the new guy, Malcolm, is, like, giving the speech, probably, you know, we're all family, even though everyone hates you. And then right? It's like then you don't hear anything. We're just hearing kind of the music. We're just seeing them mouthing. And then you see Bradley, like, walking up to the front, and then you see her turn, right? It's all kind of slow. And then she clearly says that Hannah has died and everyone falls apart. And it's just like I mean, the whole last episode was just like, I wanted more, like, of every scene, I wanted more shots. I wanted more.
[32:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: Know. I know.
[32:51] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Chip, you know, beating up Mitch.
[32:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: I was, oh, finally. So Chip is like the producer or the showrunner, and he's played by Mark Duplass. And then we also have the other people in power are Fred, who's the president of UBA, played by Tom Irwin. And then we have Corey, who is the president of the news division of UDA, played by Billy CrudeUp. He was like, my favorite character in this scene.
[33:17] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: He was so eccentric and quirky and I don't even know oh, my God.
[33:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: And midway through, when he was helping drunk Bradley get back to her room, and that episode ended with the elevators closing, I was like, no, is it going to happen to Bradley? And it didn't. It seems like he was, like, just made sure she was safe, slept on the couch. But it totally leaves you wondering, oh, my just again, I felt like I was sort of back in thinking about succession in terms of trying to figure out, like, okay, so who has all the power and who's trying to overthrow who? And again, we have this board of board people with all the power everyone's afraid of and, like, ratings and all these things.
[33:55] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: When Alex meets with that board, right, and they're expecting her to apologize, right. And she just kind of goes off on them and she's like, well, this isn't the apology you expected, was it? And it's like, it's all men, right?
[34:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, all white men. Yeah. So getting back to Alex, I'm curious to hear your thoughts about her.
[34:14] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So the scene with her and her daughter, I mean, obviously came later, but I think to me, helped me understand.
[34:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: Her more, like who she authentically is.
[34:27] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It seems like she was a little emotionally and physically neglectful, unavailable to her family. It seems like she did, I guess, prioritize her career. That's how they felt. I thought it was interesting, her relationship with her husband. It seems like they were very clearly separated, but then would put on this show, A, in front of their daughter, and then B, also in front of.
[34:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: Just like the public. Public, yeah, like when they were going to that awards ceremony and then her.
[34:56] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Hosting the party, she definitely, I think, dismissed him a lot. I think she was more aware of that with him. I think that she thought that she was a great mom and really present and there in the fight. I think it was interesting how she was like, I've done this all for you.
[35:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: Not true.
[35:21] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It was interesting.
[35:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: And she takes the pizza back. I thought this was a great portrayal of narcissistic personality disorder. I mean, I just thought it was.
[35:31] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So good that back on the daughter, I thought it was so funny when she mentioned therapy, she's like, oh, I can tell you.
[35:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: That I paid for. So if we zoom out, I think, like, classic narcissistic personality disorder. I think her husband accuses her of that at some point or points it out, but so we see. Alex is the center of her world, and she is famous and gets all this attention for being on the show. You can tell that her whole family unit of her husband and daughter serves her. She is the center. Her husband and daughter fall into place. They know how to play their roles, and they just do it no matter what. Right. And I thought we saw that really clearly when they were driving to that award show. And she's clearly upset about everything. But then her daughter starts to get really upset, and Alex, it just doesn't feel genuine that she cared. It's like, I feel like everyone in her life is there to serve her, even her daughter. And I just her daughter points that.
[36:37] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Out in the fight.
[36:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. And then Alex can't take it as a narcissist would not be able to take it or be able to see and be accountable for their own behavior because that threatens their already fragile inner sense of self. So they have to flip the switch.
[36:55] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Which she does in a really big way and comes back with. Right. Like, your head broke my body. I had to be stitched up after you didn't know that to say to your child.
[37:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: And she says, like, F you, I'm taking this pizza. You don't come back from that stuff. But I felt like that did give us insight into who she authentically. And do you think that because maybe.
[37:22] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It was really clear to others, but not me. Was Alex assaulted by Mitch?
[37:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: I still think it's it's I don't think, like, are you talking about the scene where she's talking to Mitch or just overall?
[37:39] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That scene was the only reason I thought she wasn't right, because it seemed manipulative manipulating him. Or she could say that.
[37:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: But then all of this other stuff.
[37:48] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then in the last episode, there was some point where it did come up again, where in a way that really made me think that she was.
[38:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: Well, I think she was certainly harassed. Like, we saw that in that throwback episode know, he's commenting on the other anchor's dress and her body and like, well, you'd look great in that dress, Alex. Because then she wouldn't be wearing blah, blah, blah. I think certainly that was going on. And maybe now that we're talking about it, it seems like that's another gray area. Right. You don't always have to be victim or perpetrator. She probably was a little bit of both, I think. So in she probably was a victim and turned the other know, do I think she was as victimized as Hannah? I don't know. But I would be surprised because she has more power than Hannah. But certainly could be. Yeah. I mean, she would be, like, almost like the ultimate this is gross. But putting myself in Mitch's mind, like the ultimate conquest for him because of her, like, if he could get her, then I don't know. What do you think?
[39:08] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I feel like it happened early on, 1012 years ago, and then she maybe forgot it kind of intentionally and then turned the blind eye to everything else. Or kind of told herself that it was more concerned. I don't know.
[39:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's actually really interesting to think about, because I think they talk about there were, like, two times maybe they allude to having sex, but it's not clear when that happened. What were the circumstances? Were they both co anchors then, or were they not? What was the power differential with them? Yeah, that's a great point.
[39:47] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And was it also just know, Mitch being like even just like maybe Alex was really down. Maybe she was having marital problems and he was just there. And they have this, like a that's something that I would like to know because I think it would help me frame her a little better. But I thought it was interesting, too, the shot of her daughter watching Bradley and Alex kind of doing that. I feel like that made the daughter feel more empathetic connected.
[40:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: Sorry for yeah, and I can't decide where I fall with that. At the end, was that Alex finally doing the right thing? Or was it her again, trying to just preserve her image? I feel like the pessimist in me thinks, like, a narcissist doesn't change their stripes. And I think she's just, like, trying to preserve her image at all costs. And this time it worked in her favor. You hate to say, but then there's another part of me that wants to believe in the good in people. I bet you believe in the good in people, Portia, because she was so.
[40:59] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Unwell at that mean again, they just learned this happened and all of this is going on behind the know. I think this whole thing was, like, changing her view on Mitch, and I think she know that back. And, like, she had this closeness with him. She couldn't see him in that way. She couldn't really believe it. And then this thing with Hannah was like, oh, my God.
[41:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: Shattering.
[41:21] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like, he know a horrible monster like Harvey Weinstein. Right. That was so quick for her to be like, oh, he's a pig. And it's like, no, Mitch is too.
[41:31] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[41:31] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I don't know, you see her walking around the set, she's just like she throws the water in that guy.
[41:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's all so, like, intense and organic.
[41:42] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think narcissists also can do things. It's not that they don't have a moral compass. They're just there the circle of their moral compass.
[41:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: Exactly. That's a good point. Again, maybe it's not one or the other. Maybe it's both. Maybe it's the right thing, and it's serving her. So at that point, because it is serving her, it's easier to do. I mean, she's a compelling character, to say the least. And Jennifer Aniston does a remarkable job portraying her, which makes me a little worried. Like, I hope that's not who Jennifer Aniston.
[42:21] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I don't think it is.
[42:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: It can't be. Right.
[42:23] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I saw her talk Adam Sandler's like Kennedy Awards.
[42:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: Okay.
[42:28] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: They've done so many movies together, and she just seems so funny and silly.
[42:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: And down to earth.
[42:33] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Down to earth. And her and Drew Barrymore were just, like, laughing about who's more close with him. I don't know. I think she's I know.
[42:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't see her like that. You know, it's her acting skills. It's great. Yeah, good for her. She's so great.
[42:48] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So what we also wanted to talk about is kind of comparing Yanko and Claire, their relationship and Hannah.
[42:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. So again, we see claire is I don't know what her role is, like intern or something, but she's, like, from a really rich family. It comes out. But she wants to be in the biz, and Yanko is the weatherman. I just love how much he loves the weather. That's how I feel about science sometimes. I just want to tell people things about fireworks and the electrons and everyone's face glazes over, but I think it's so cool. So I just love how much he loves the weather. But anyway, so they're like, in a consensual relationship, and it's like it seems so sweet and right. It doesn't feel icky. No, it doesn't.
[43:37] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: None of it does.
[43:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: None of it feels icky to me.
[43:41] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: He seemed really kind of caught off guard and hesitant when we see the flashback of her kind of going up to him and complimenting him and then being really direct with a little bit more of a flirtation right. And him being like, whoa. And kind of walks away.
[43:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: I feel like he's probably not used to getting a lot of girls because he's just, like, so into the weather. Right. But there's a part of her that digs it. Right.
[44:03] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Tell me about I think he would have immediately then been like, oh, a compliment back, or something like that. And the fact that he didn't and was so caught off guard. I mean, again, if we're just based off the scenes that we see, it does feel consensual. She also seems really kind of comically in charge in the relationship. So I think it was a good highlight, too, of, like, there's also policies in the workplace for a reason, just because of a breakup. Again, like, you're two consenting adults, maybe even within the same role.
[44:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[44:42] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But it's still, like, workplace and things can sometimes end well or not go well. So that's why there's stuff in place. But it seemed overall not really impacted by dynamics. And maybe it did help that she was very wealthy and she doesn't need to be doing any of this, or.
[44:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: She'S not doing it to further her.
[44:58] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Career and have him fired.
[45:02] Dr. Katrina Furey: I loved when she said that, but it was just so interesting to watch their relationship unfold as this is happening, because they've been, like, dating in secret and stuff. And again, it's like when you first start dating someone, it's not that it's like, secret, secret, but you're not like, hey, guess what? All the time. Right? Right. So you could see why they want to take their time, really suss it out and feel it out. But you see them getting closer as all this is unfolding, and you see Yanko genuinely reflecting and being introspective and checking in with her. And that is why he's not a narcissist, why he's not icky like Mitch. Right. And then we see that eventually Hannah sees her going into his room with the whole when they were in California for the Wildfires and the interviews by HR were just what did you think of those?
[45:57] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like, bizarre. I mean, I was confused why, if she is the one that they're really kind of concerned about, why it's such a horrible interview and why him being the one who I would assume them being concerned of being like, the perpetrator of it was like, great. I know it should have been reversed.
[46:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: And it's also like, is this, like, the gender dynamic? But then it's like, yeah, why aren't they going harder on him? It's almost, again, like, no one believes women. Claire is saying, like, no, I wasn't coerced. I really like him. We're in a relationship. I don't want to tell you about our sex life. And they don't believe her, and they keep pushing and pushing and pushing. And I guess on the one hand, it's like, okay, you want to have some degree of skepticism because if someone is being coerced and the other person is in a more powerful position, maybe they're not going to feel comfortable to tell you. But you have to have some tact, right. And have some gut instinct know, when do you push? When do you pull back? And they just kept pushing her and made her so uncomfortable.
[47:04] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Hannah not going to Claire, which I thought was a really good point first, and just, like, asking her, being like, hey, I saw you go into Yanko's room. What's going on? And then, like, I mean, there's two ways to look at it, but I think, like, for, like, that was a violation. Right. Like, her personal sex information is now being shared in a, you know, starting at the process and then the questions and then how it was left.
[47:31] Dr. Katrina Furey: It was just, like, so intrusive bad.
[47:33] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I think that's, again, we need to do better, because I can also.
[47:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: See yeah, I can also see it from Hannah's perspective, why she would go and be afraid of her friend, and she's already triggered herself. So there's some level of projection and fear, and sometimes when bad things come out, you feel like and sometimes it is the right decision to go to the authorities who can help you rather than talk to the victim themselves or something. Right. It just gets so sticky and confusing. But it was just a really interesting portrayal of, I guess, how HR might handle it. And you want to think it wouldn't happen, but I don't think I'm naive enough to think and I'm pretty naive to think that this kind of stuff doesn't happen.
[48:21] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I also think it's not and I don't know whose role it is, but I think it feels just like it shouldn't be HR's role because it feels so personal and delicate, and it's like these people you're in HR. I feel like there should be a line where it's like, if something like this is coming up, you're bringing in, like, a consultant or it's like, yeah.
[48:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: Or it's like an EAP therapist. It's like, okay, let's keep it to.
[48:47] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: From HR, who, you know, their job.
[48:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: Should be like, okay, do you feel threatened? Like, you should ask the questions, and if they say no, you believe them, and then you say, if anything changes, here's who you call.
[49:02] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[49:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: Or like, we have this therapist. I just want you to meet with them once and see where it goes. Right. Like someone else who can suss it out a little better. Right.
[49:10] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Who's not then at work with you.
[49:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. Yeah.
[49:13] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That just feels really weird. And in all sorts of sizes of companies, it's like sometimes HR I know the last place I worked, we probably had, I don't know, like, 250 employees, 200 employees, and there was, like, two people in HR, and I knew them, and they were funny, and they're desperate. It's a conflict of interest. It's a huge conflict of interest for these matters, not for the other stuff that people who are lovely in HR do.
[49:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. But again, it's like this portrayal of HR I feel like HR went too far. They were intrusive and invasive, and I felt like asking really inappropriate questions of her when she had said, I'm good, I'm fine. I wish we could have an HR professional on sometime to sort of let us know what's it like, because this also seems really stressful for them.
[50:06] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, and maybe there should be maybe the answer is, like, really significant trainings around this specifically and how to be delicate and who to call and when to bring other people in.
[50:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: I feel like some people I don't.
[50:23] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Know, that would be a question for them. Are you trained in how to manage a sexual misconduct issue at work? Or is it like just you kind.
[50:31] Dr. Katrina Furey: Of going by the book and from the legal sort of side? But what about the psychological side and human side? And I think clearly, obviously we're interested in that side, but it's a really good point. And sadly, I was so sad when it was really interesting to see both of their reactions. Yanko was like, Yay, let's shout it from the rooftops. I can take you out to a real dinner. I'm going to buy you a steak. And Claire's, like, that was the worst experience of my whole life. And then it makes her really doubt the relationship. And I think she starts to think like, well, even if it is consensual, what is everyone going to think? And is that what my whole identity is going to be in this company? Exactly. And so they sort of stopped seeing each other and they were both so sad. And then at the end, when she comes to him and he hugs her, I was like.
[51:27] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: They did a really good job, I think, of portraying multiple women of multiple ages in multiple from different races, consensual to consensual dynamics. At know it was like Hannah mia maybe alex claire like, it was just Bradley. Really interesting to see all of it unfold.
[51:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: I totally agree. I thought it was fascinating. I'm excited for us to cover season two. Start watching it. Now that we've recorded this, are there any other final thoughts for our episode today?
[52:05] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I don't think just maybe Mia. I mean, I think we didn't talk about her enough. I wanted to discuss that one scene at the birthday party at the bar when Mia and Hannah and Claire all kind of like, get into it about Mitch. And it was just so interesting. Now, having watched the whole show and knowing all the details, like all of their reactions. Right. Claire is like, they've all been drinking and, you know, like, F, Mitch, we should burn his genitals. And then Mia has a strong reaction to that point. Things can be and Hannah's like, then asks Mia a question. I forget what it was, but that makes Mia then reactive and leave. It was just so interesting then being.
[52:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: The three of yeah, yeah. And I feel like mia loved. Like, I feel like they had a relationship, not just an affair. I feel like they were in a relationship. And you even got the sense from his wife that she knew that, too. So I feel like like loves him, and she must feel really mixed up about that.
[53:10] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: How did I want to know? How did it start? Because she knew about the know. I'm glad. I think Mia is know the season want.
[53:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, I want to see more from Mia. She was such a compelling character. Her character arc, I think, displayed the retaliation and retribution that anyone but women can face in the workplace with something like, so clearly. And we saw that in the past when Mitch wanted her off his team, and then in the future when Chip is trying to do the right thing, so to speak, and fires that guy for being rude and saying something inappropriate. And then she's like, you can't do like, I don't want this to be my whole identity forever. And it's just so complex and complicated. Right?
[53:56] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then she kind of speaks into the mic right. The whole studio. And after another person makes a comment, and I'm hopeful that's kind of where it ends. And also then at the end of the day, with the situation with Hannah, and then with, obviously, Alex and Bradley giving that breaking news story, and then it gets cut.
[54:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: I loved how it ended like that.
[54:16] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I thought it was great to see how everyone was watching it. Right? Like, Fred's, like, running down. Mia locks the door, she locks him out. Chip is outside watching it on Square, and so disheveled. And just Mitch is watching then and then it ends, which I thought was such an interesting scene. It's Mitch, right, sitting at the table, and the camera is, like, at his house, I think. And the camera is just, like, pulling back from him, and he's just sitting there. And it was like, 10 seconds, which is a long time for one scene of him just sitting. And I was like, that's how season one ends.
[54:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: Wait till you see season two. That's all I have to say.
[54:52] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: All right, well, we should wrap it up now.
[54:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: But this was I feel like we could do ten episodes on this season. There was so much to talk about. I'm impressed with us that we got through so much so quickly. But for anyone out there listening, please interact with us. Let us know. What do you think about the show? What do you think about the themes portrayed? Do you agree with us? Do you disagree with us? We would love to engage with you and hear what you have to say. So follow us on Instagram at Analyze Scripts TikTok Analyze Scripts podcast, and we will see you next Monday with our next episode. Great. All right, bye.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are joined by triple board certified psychiatist Dr. Sulman Mirza AKA @thekicksshrink. We are blown away by the lasting impact of this movie from 1975 on the field of psychiatry and psychology. We discuss the sociopathy of Randle McMurphy and the iconic villain, Nurse Ratchet. We wrap it up with our frustration in the field, both in the past and present...like with lobotomies, ETC depictions, ODD diagnoses and more. We hope you enjoy!
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fieri, a psychiatrist.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: There is so much misinformation out there and it drives us nuts.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: With a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better. So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn and your DSM Five and enjoy. Welcome back to Analyze scripts. We are so excited you're joining us today for an episode about the classic, I guess I think in a Bad Way film, one Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. We're thrilled to be joined by Dr. Sulman Merza, who is a triple board certified psychiatrist with expertise in psychiatry, child and adolescent psychiatry, and addiction medicine. I would call that a triple threat. He completed his psychiatry residency at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. His Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship at the University of Maryland and Shepherd Pratt Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. He's had the privilege to work in a variety of settings, from inpatient psychiatric units with medical capabilities to the classrooms of Baltimore City Public schools. He's learned from some of the leaders and pioneers in the field of psychiatry, and his experiences have allowed him to develop a deep understanding of neuropsychiatric conditions in both children and adults. And he has a keen knack for the Internet, and you can find him at the Kick Shrink on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. And I have to say, Sulan, I love your videos. I feel like they're very visually appealing. But also the content is so great. You really have a way of putting out a lot of really accurate, detailed information in a really entertaining, easy to digest way, and I think that is really hard to do. So I just want to give you some props for that. I don't know if we still say props, but I feel like I'm really impressed. We can still say that. No, I'm really honestly impressed. I feel like you have themes where you do medication. Saturday, I'm not going to remember all the names off the top of my head, but then there's like, historical lessons. There's a lot of good info about ADHD I've told you offline. I love your stuff about WWE. I think it's really great. So I hope everyone goes to check them out.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: Yeah. Thank you both for having me on here. Really excited I came across you guys, I was like, oh, my God, I love the movies and entertainment and pop culture. And I was like, this is and I love kind of bringing psychiatry psychology into all of that because so much of that is present. So I was like, let's see if we can collaborate on something.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yeah. No, we're thrilled.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And we chose this movie and book. So the book came out in 1962 with the movie 1975. I had never seen this movie, but I had heard of it, which I think is part of our discussion with how powerful this was that kind of shaping people's views of psychiatry inpatient care and treatments.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Right, right. I think it's so true. We were talking about with Dr. Jesse Gold in our most recent episode about season two of Yellow Jackets, which has another awful scene about ECT. Again, just how this film has permeated through our culture. Even if you haven't seen it, like, you're saying you haven't seen it, but you know of it, and it's like it's had this really long lasting, unfortunate impact, which is ironic because apparently it won a Bazillion. Academy Awards, made a lot of money, it was very well received, it won all these awards, and yet it was awful in terms of its portrayal of mental health care.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: Yeah. The history of film, it's one of the few movies that has gotten has won the big five awards, right. Best picture, best director, best actor, best actress and then best adapted screenplay.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Right.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: In history. I think there's only this and I think maybe one or two other movies that have won all of those big five. And then I think when AFI American Film Institute does their top hundred films, or top hundred, whatever, this is always one of those top movies. I think Nurse Ratchet will talk about her in a bit. She's gone down as one of the top ten villains in film history of all time, right up there with Hannibal Lecter and another psychiatrist and Darth Vader. So it's like Darth Vader and Hannibal Ectos. You can see how powerful this is in our culture and our history.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yeah, that's so true.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And the name so right.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Like, people say things are ratchet, like, oh, that's so ratchet.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And I was like, Is that from this?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: That's a great question.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I don't know, like, Nurse Ratchet or like, even again, like, not seeing the film. It's pretty old right.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: At this point. What's, 30 coming up in 50 years?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: It's still impacting today in some very strange ways that I think people have no idea about.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yeah. Isn't that fascinating that it's had such a long lasting effect?
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: Yeah. So again, when I watched it the other day, I was like, man, first of all, I was like, this movie is like almost 50 years old, right. Seeing the cast members, I was like, oh, my God, this person is gone. This person is dead. This person is dead. And for a lot of these actors in there, some of them were like christopher Lloyd, I think, made his view in this movie.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yes.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: Billy the character, Brad Durh, who played Billy Bibbitt, that was like his movie debut. You see a young Danny DeVito in there.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I didn't even catch that until the end credits, I was like, oh my God, that was Danny DeVito.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: That was Danny DeVito. Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Was this Jack Nicholson's first movie or.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: I'm imagining was I think he was pretty established by that time, but I think this was the one maybe he won his first award for and the one that really was like, oh, this guy is a superstar now.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So first impressions?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: You said you were not pleased.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I mean, I don't think very much.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: You know, what's interesting is we just recorded and we'll have released an episode about Girl Interrupted, and then we're watching this one and I was like, oh, this is so fascinating because it's like similar time periods and they're both on inpatient hospital units. And I thought it just is interesting, the timing. Know, with Girl Interrupted, we really focus on borderline personality disorder and Winona Ryder's character, know, some antisocial personality disorder discussion with Angelina Jolie's character. And again, here we're finding the male view of antisocial personality disorder with Jack Nicholson's character, Randall McMurphy. So it was just interesting to sort of see again how they depicted an inpatient psychiatric unit, which I thought the environment was pretty accurate for those times. And still today it hasn't changed much. But I was struck immediately by, again, the nurses wearing their white clothes, which again, accurate for the time, not so much these days. All the orderlies I felt like were going to burst into a barbershop quartet song or serve me some ice cream with their little bow ties and stuff. But I feel like overall, when I rewatch this movie, it just makes me so sad to just see sort of how they portray the coercive nature of mental health treatment, especially ECT, the medication, so everything feels so punitive. That I think makes me really sad watching it as a psychiatrist and I don't think is accurate based on my experiences inpatient units.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: Yeah, especially for today. Again, this was before my time. This is before I was born that this movie came out. No way to really tell what it was like, but it's this bizarre feeling of like, man, this is the image that has been there and permeated the culture of what this was. And I think when we were probably before enter our residency, and we're like, you get a little bit scared of going on the psychiatric floor for the first time as a med student, you're like, oh my God, what's it going to be like? Again, for those of us who have not been on an inpatient psychiatric floor, you're like, what is it going to be like? How are people going to be? Is it going to be like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest? And then you get in there and you're like, oh, wait, it's not like that.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Right? Yeah. I thought even the patients on the unit, the way they were depicted, I just thought was very stigmatizing and inhumane. And inaccurate. It felt like I had a hard time figuring out what each of the people like, what their diagnoses were, and they just sort of came across as being I don't know, how would you describe them?
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: Some of them were caricatures, right? I think we had the one patient who had been lobotomized who was just kind of there as the quote unquote vegetable. And then you have the know, the one guy, older guy who's just kind of dancing the entire time. You have Mr. Harding, I think is the closeted homosexual. And then you have some know, Billy Bibbitt is like the Stutterer. So again, you have these kind of caricatures that show up in you know, it's like, is it good? Is it bad? And not always. I think something from the book that's always just kind of lost in people is I think, if I remember correctly, I read the book, like, in high school, and I quickly did like a Wikipedia before this, just to kind of refresh a little bit. Yeah. And I was like, the book is told from the point of view of Chief, right, who in the book is a paranoid schizophrenic. Right. You have all this other he's got these conspiracy theories and this kind of bizarre delusions of how the world is being run, which none of that comes.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Across in Totally Lost.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: Yeah, he's totally depicted as like, oh, he's just this quote unquote Indian, right, native American that can't talk. And it's one of the worst kind of things I think we've seen as psychiatrists or in the field is you get consults on people who are non English speaking and people are like, what's wrong with this person? They're not understanding what I'm saying. You know what? Again, it's just like, oh, you just didn't use the interpreter line. You didn't take the time to bother to find out how they communicate. But that was kind of the image in my mind. I was like, wow, this poor guy. Chief got thrown into the mental health or into the psychiatric unit because nobody could communicate with him. And that's what he's here for and he's just kind of gone along with it. There's no way to tell at all that he's schizophrenic in the movie at all. Right?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Whereas I think in the book I also read it a long time ago, so I don't quite remember, but I believe there was a lot more dialogue about his paranoid thoughts, even if he wasn't saying them. You were getting that background, whereas even in the movie, you just see him sweeping a lot. Like, he doesn't seem especially paranoid.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: No, not at all. Again, in the movie, he's depicted as like this, again, totally normal person who just ended up there for some reason because he's, quote, deaf and dumb. And again, nobody can communicate with him.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And it's like, I don't think that's how you end up on a psychiatric unit.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: Right. That's sometimes how you hopefully, again, you may get that random psych consult just because, again, some surgery resident will be like, I can't talk with the person.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: They must be bipolar.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: Yeah, they must be a bipolar. Or they must be like something. Or they're just like, no, they just don't speak English. Which I think we all have our stories.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: We saw that in Side Effects right at the beginning.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: So there's a gentleman who's brought into the Er who had attacked, they said, like a cab driver because he thought.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: He had seen his father. And in that culture, there's a lot of ghosts and seeing relatives and elders. The psychiatrist in that movie, this is a good depiction, started speaking, I think, French or Creole and was able and then was able to understand what actually happened then was like, you don't need to keep him cuffed, so on and so forth. So that was a good depiction. Know what we didn't see here, maybe, right?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yeah. What were your first impressions, Sulman, about Jack Nicholson's character?
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: It's interesting because he's the main character. He's the hero of the film, per se. Right. The main protagonist of the film is this guy who's going to come onto the unit and rabble rouse and free all the patients who are there. And he has this idea that, again, these people are held there against their will, when actually he's the one who's being involuntarily committed. He's the one who's being held there. They have that moment in therapy where everyone was like, oh, I'm actually here because I want to be here. And it's kind of eye opening experience for him. And I think people kind of like in the beginning, or people will kind of forget that he's really a terrible person. Right? He's there because he's done these terrible crimes. He's a pedophile, for lack of a better term. He's committed statutory rape. And he's kind of reveled in the fact that he's being very graphic in describing the situation that occurred with this 15 year old girl. And you're just like, oh, wow, this guy is really a dirt bag. He's really not a good person. And he's committed all these crimes and he's lying to get out of prison so that he can be in, again, this vacation, quote unquote, that he thinks he's going to be on the mental health ward and he's going to dupe everybody. And you're like, wow, this guy is really antisocial.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Right?
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: But then he's portrayed again, this charismatic person who's going to free all these people. So he's, again, not taking into consideration the impact of his actions and how Billy ends up not spoiler, but ends up completing suicide at the end of the movie. So by kind of accidents of what happened during the course of the film and that last night that they were there, right? Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I mean, I thought this was a good depiction of antisocial personality disorder in terms of the fact that people with these traits can be very charismatic, right? Like, that's how Ted Bundy lured all his victims, right. And I thought also that initial scene between McMurphy and the psychiatrist, who again, was an older white man, I thought his office was pretty spot on for what a psychiatrist's office probably looks, know? But you even see, like, trying to weasel his way in by commenting on the photos yes. About the fish he won and all this stuff. And you just see his true lack of remorse or empathy right away when the psychiatrist says, well, you've been in jail for five assaults, and there's this rape charge. And just the provocative, uncomfortable way he talks about that whole thing, I think gives you all the info you need to say, like, I think you got antisocial personality disorder and you're malingering. I don't know what more they could have done for him. And yet they keep him there, and it's like they want to help. But do they? It's unclear. And I wonder at the time of.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: The movie, too, now, I mean, how his description of the child that he was with was so gross that that stayed with me for the rest of the film. But I'm wondering, too, even at the times, I think, why he won. And part of the reason why the movie did so well is because you kind of go back and forth with hating him and liking him. He wants to free people from their oppressed system, nurse Ratchet. And I think it's kind of interesting. He's like this horrible person, but then you're like, I would imagine some people, even maybe more so in the 70s, are like, rooting for him to free the patient. And it's interesting.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: Yeah, absolutely. He is portrayed like he is the protagonist of the film, right. He is the hero. He's like the guy that, again, you're rooting for him and at the end, again, not to go into spoiler territory, but when he gets lobotomized, you're like, oh, I feel bad for him, right, a little bit. But at the same time, again, you are rooting for him and you're going along for him during the whole movie. And yeah, it is problematic. Absolutely. And it's really interesting when you look at it from when the book was written and the author, Ken Kesey is his name, right. He goes, know, again, a lot of what he was doing was a lot about how the themes are like, you're supposed to be against society, against this oppressive society, and about being the individual and being a real man, quote, unquote. So, again, all the masculinity aspects that come up in this and how society has castrated the man of today, right. That's some of the themes that are in the book, in the movie. So that's there and Ken Kesey goes on to in his life become this proponent of psychelic drugs and how we have to use again these substances to find this other sense of reality individuality when it's like you're kind of talking about a psychiatric facility and medications and then you're like, but no, we're going to use LSD and we're going to use still all the hallucinogenics and psychedelics to reach this altered sense of being too. So it's double standard, double that comes out.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Which interestingly, I think is still attention in the field today, right? Like I still think we encounter this a lot, people maybe who've had negative experiences with mental health care or haven't felt fully helped or fully heard or understood. And there is more and more research into psychedelics and the tools, how they can be helpful, but it's still a big gray zone and I think that tension is still felt even 50 years later.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: Yeah, absolutely. Again, I'm very much keeping my ear to the field of this in my own clinical practice, like I do at my practice we do Spravata, which is the intranasal ketamine, and I've seen fantastic results from it. So it's really kind of been like, oh, there's something to this, right? There's some legitimacy to what this is. And I think as a field and as a society, we're absolutely robbed of decades of research, what could have been done when we criminalized all these substances. So I think there's some truth to it. But at the same time, just as many success stories we hear there's so many horror stories of things and just because everything is because everything is regulated so much, we're not able to, again, do proper research and get, again, really effective dosing the quality control that comes when you're buying illicit substances or black market substances, right? That's where the problems come. Because then you get people who are like, well, I'll just go do shrooms on the weekend and I'll be all good. Why do I need to microdose prozac? Right? I'll do this and so and then things, right?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Exactly. So one thing I found myself wondering while watching this movie is that relationship dynamic between Mick Murphy and Nurse Ratchet is really central to the film. And at first I found Nurse Ratchet to be so comforting, like the way she spoke and the way she just looked at you and she seemed so gentle and so well put together. But as the film goes on, you see this more sadistic side to her. And first of all, I don't think the nurse runs the therapy sessions on a unit. Usually that's done by a trained therapist. So that was a really interesting, huge error in the film. But then also she had so much control and is really depicted as being a pretty sadistic person and using all these types of severe punishments like ECT and the lobotomies, even the medications in a manipulative, cruel way. And I found myself wondering, is that who she really is or did he pull this out of her with his own behaviors?
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: I think this was who she was, because I think we see it even in that first group therapy session where she's weaponizing these people, the patients kind of their insecurities. I think she's like one of those people who, again, has a little bit more therapeutic training than a typical nurse on the unit may have. But she's really weaponizing it against some of the kind of defense mechanisms, some of the what's it called? I can't even think of the word right now.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: But she's weaponizing their vulnerabilities.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: Yeah, she's weaponizing their vulnerabilities against them. And again, it is this aspect, again, when we come to the and this was there from the first scene, from the first group therapy scene, you see it like she picks on I think it was Mr. Harding, and that's with his wife being your wife, why do you think your wife is cheating on you? And then they have the whole discussion, and then it's like, well, actually, I think this is the reason why, and this is what's happening, and cuts really deep to the core. And I think you see McMurphy picks up on that. He's kind of there as a passive bystander observer in the first group therapy session. He's like, let me kind of see what the situation is and let me see who the characters are and what everybody is. And then I think he picks up, they're like, oh, this person is evil, too, in her own way. And he's like, now we're going to kind of compete a little bit to see who's really running really going to run the unit. She's got the one who's got, again, the backing, the strength behind her as well.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Right. It's almost like he's found his match. He could sense, like, they both share this sadistic side, and it just comes out in these different ways. And again, I think very gender normative type of ways, perhaps. But I think you're right from the beginning, nurse Ratchet can pick up those vulnerabilities in the patients and does use it to her advantage. And then that made me wonder, like, are these people really here voluntarily, or does she have this hold on?
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: Yeah, because I think there's that aspect, too, where, again, they all say, we could we can leave at any time, but they've been conditioned to feel like they're not ready to go. Right. Especially, again, Billy is one of the kind of the main characters, in a way, in that she's like, oh, me and your mom are old friends. What would she think, again? Which, again, leads to his fate, in a way. Well, directly to his fate. But again, it's the things that she does, again, grabbing onto these vulnerabilities and really kind of keeping all the patients where they're at.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Right.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: Not allowing them to progress.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Right, exactly.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: You see that in the group dynamic. It makes sense why, but she seemed to be kind of like, rationing everything up instead of kind of rationing everything up. That was not intentional, but afraid there.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Instead of removing right.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: A group member.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I've run a good amount of groups. It's like, okay, if someone seems like they're getting dysregulated, sometimes it's like, okay, maybe go meet with this person and come back. Or let's try to de escalate the group.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Like that scene with the cigarettes.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Yeah. And she's, like, continuing to dig at each one of them and kind of.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Pit them against each other. Yeah.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And that was not what group therapy is at all. And I think, again, just another depiction of it being really out of control and unsafe and scary and chaotic versus trying. The point of group work right. Is to feel safe or feel like.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Other people get it. Yeah. Learn not just from the group therapy leader, but also from each other in a healthy, safe way, and exactly. It was like that whole scene with the cigarettes where everything unravels. It's almost like she kind of knew what she was doing. And then, because they behave so crazy, now we can send these three troublemakers to get ECT.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: How do you feel about that depiction of ECT?
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: If nothing else, the lasting legacy of the movie is the depiction of what ECT is in the mental health field. Which at that time again, I don't know what it was like, but that movie was in the mid seventy s and it was placed in the 60s or the time was in the 60s. So sure that that was even outdated kind of experience of what act was. ECT, that we do now, or at least I haven't done act in ten ish years, I think back since my residency training. 910 years. Yeah. That it's. So different, right? ECT so different. All the research is the most effective, safest kind of treatment that we have out there. Are there people who are going to have issues with memory and headaches? Sure. But those are, again, very small. And when we compare that to the medications that we have, which we know our medications are dirty in a way. Right. There's a lot of side effects that come a lot of times when we're doing med check visits as, like, a psychiatrist or an outpatient or going forward, it's like, Are you having side effects? Are you having side effects? What side effects are you having? Right. That's the majority of kind of, like, our sessions. It's like, well, how do we manage these side effects? And then, by the way, are you feeling less depressed or less anxious or something like that, too? But let's deal with the side effects.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: First, especially for things like antipsychotics.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: Yeah. Which are just like, again, very dirty medications. In a way. When we find a medication that has minimal, mild to minimal side effects, we're like, okay, we can deal with this. Right. We can work with this. Now, we've found the thing that worked for us, an act, for the most part, again, super clean. Right. People do really well. The memory loss, again, can it occur? Sure. It doesn't happen often. Not so much. Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And usually isn't it for the memory loss that you experience? Isn't it for the time, like right around getting the treatment? It's not your whole life you forget or you can never lay down in a memory. Isn't it like just around the time you're getting the treatment?
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: That's the most common is, again, just the amnesia that occurs around the treatment. Of course. Are there people who have more severe memory loss or have other kind of injuries that occur? Sure. But again, those are the exceptions, more so than the rule. And again, not to minimize what they've gone through, but again, we always look at things as a risk benefit and a big picture kind of thing, right. But ECT works, right? It's got a greater success rate. It's again, super safe in pregnancy. It is the treatment of choice in pregnancy a lot of times, and then it can help for so many people, for things like catatonia, it is, again, the treatment of choice that works really well. So it's something that, again, when we try to recommend it to people, I'll have patients and I'm like, hey, I think we're at a point where we need to look at something like TT and they're like, one flu with Google's Nest. What are you talking about?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Every time, almost every single time, it.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: Becomes this Pavlovian response, almost, where people are like, one flu over Googleness? What are you talking about? Nothing's wrong with I'm not crazy, I don't need to do that. And you're like, no. And you have to kind of undo what this movie has done because you're like, it's totally different. It's a controlled environment. It's totally voluntary. You have an anesthesiologist, you have a psychiatrist. You're going to be going under really briefly. The seizure is controlled. You have a muscle relaxant or you have what's it called, the medications that are there so that the seizure is just localized just to your ankle.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Sure.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: And somebody's there with you. And it's a very comforting thing. Right. You're not going to experience anything and you'll feel better. Right? And they're like, no, I could never do that. They're going to make me bite on this thing, and I'm going to shake and I'm going to break my bones, and I'm going to forget everything, and I'm going to be like a vegetable when I come out. And it's like, no, please just erase that from your memory.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I know. I wish we could erase that from our conscious memory.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And even just like him going in there and there's like ten people in there, right? Like all the orderlies are in there ready to kind of restrain him, hold him down. Yeah. So even just like seeing that walking in the room again now, it's very.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Different, and he didn't know what was happening. I think that's what really jumped out at me the most this time is there was no informed consent. There was no explanation. It was like sending your yeah. In such a scare, like, they're just like, oh, we're going to put this conducted on your head, and we're here. Bite down on this. You could see how scared he was. And again, it's like, who wouldn't be, right? Who of us wouldn't be scared? If you walk into a room with all these people holding you down, of course you're going to freak out, but that is not how it's done at all.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: No, at all. It was really striking, too, because, again, he's portrayed as this really bad tough guy, right? And then you see it in Jack Nicholson. Again, his performance is fantastic in the movie where he grounds the corner to see the door, to walk into the door, where this like, he catches himself, and you're like you see the terror come over him, and you're like, he has no idea what's happening. We know from the field and just from having watched the movie before, like, oh, this is what's going to happen. But he has no idea. There's no mention of this at all. So it's a total surprise. And again, all these people are there, and he's like, what is going to happen? So this extreme moment of vulnerability for this person who's been portrayed as this big, bravado, tough guy the whole movie, right?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And I think the only clue he has is watching Cheswick get the treatment before him, right? You see them dragging him against his will to get it, and then he comes out like a vegetable on the stretcher. And then it's like, okay, you're up. And it's just so unfortunate. Again, I also haven't performed ECT myself since residency, but from what I remember, it can be an outpatient procedure, right? It's not something where you have to be institutionalized to get you come in, it's almost like having a day surgery get not even as invasive in a lot of ways. And again, I feel like that doesn't make sense to the average person to think like, you're stalking my brain. How is that not invasive? It is. I'm not saying it's not, but you come in, you talk about it, they sort of explain to you exactly what's going on in a very respectful way. There's a couple of people in the room. You have the psychiatrist, you have the anesthesiologist, you have a nurse. That might be it. Maybe there's a tech or someone like that. It doesn't take very long. They usually do unilateral. You pick one side first, and then as long as that works, you don't have to do bilateral, which means putting the things on both sides of your head that can lead to more side effects. So we try to avoid it. You're right that you have anesthesia and a paralytic so that your body basically stays still. You look for the twitch in the ankle. That's it. We're not thrashing you around, we're not holding you down. You're not biting your tongue. It's very quick, very mild.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And then I think it takes maybe.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: An hour or so, like in recovery, maybe a little longer, probably less, but I think you're observed for a period of time, but it's not that long. Then you go home and you do a couple of treatments.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Maybe at first you do two to.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Three a week for a period of time to get you into remission from whether it's depression, psychosis. You're 100% right that this is such a good treatment for conditions in pregnancy because there's no risk of medication effects on the fetus. Right. And then as you start to feel better, you space out the treatments. And then some people might get maintenance ECT to keep up the effects. And that's it. And, I mean, I had an attending psychiatrist, which is like your teacher in residency always say it would really frustrate him when we were on the inpatient unit, that we would have to petition the courts to get something like ECT. When he's like, all of these antipsychotics we're giving people have so many side effects, like diabetes, tartar, dyskinesia, anesthesia, all of these things that are so hard to control, and yet it's so much easier to give people these medications and not ECT. And I really wonder how much of that comes from this movie how much of that comes from the long lasting negative effects of this film on our society at large?
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: Yeah, I would very much say that they're directly tied because, again, invariably, almost always gets brought up. And this is around the time of Deinstitution, the book and the movie, around that time where we ended the asylum system, for the most part. Right. And we have this massive decrease in the amount of people who are in mental health institutions or mental facilities, and where do they end up? They ended up in prison. Right, right. It's not like around the streets or anything like that. And a lot of those again, a lot of people who will end up, like, unhoused will end up in prison because it's a safe place. You get your three hots and a cotton and these things occur. And they get better care a lot of times. Or they get care yeah, right. At all. While they're in these facilities or in prisons as opposed to the facilities. Because everyone was like, oh, let's deinstitutionalize. And we'll put people into community resources.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Then no one paid for the community resources. We forgot that part. Yeah. We forgot that part.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: Yeah. So everyone was like, again, it was putting the carriage before the horse kind of deal, where it's like the resources weren't there. It would have been perfect if they were. And we put funding there and research, and we really put all the resources that were there. It could have been a great system, right. But it just couldn't it hasn't sustained it.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Right. It hasn't panned out. And I think the film does bring up in a lot of ways, maybe not all of them in positive depictions, but about how do we treat vulnerable people in a humane way and what are examples of that going wrong, which I think this film has a lot of examples of it going wrong. And I think, unfortunately, that drive to deinstitutionalize, I like to think, came from a good place, and yet we forgot to invest in the community infrastructure to really make it effective. Right. I don't think anyone wants people to live their life on an inpatient unit, but for some subset of patients who are really having trouble functioning without that support, where do they end up? You're exactly right. That is where they end up. They end up unhoused. They end up in prison. That is our institution these days. And it's just so heartbreaking.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And we see that in group.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: Just put a different name on that again, at least.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I don't know about Maryland or Virginia, but maybe like ten years ago now, there was a lot of group homes closed residential facilities in Connecticut, and a lot of those at the time I was working in residentials and they had kind of made their way still to institutions. But whether it was juvenile incarceration or substance use treatment facilities and again, I get the idea is, yeah, who wants to grow up in a group home? No one. That's not ideal at all.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: But also, what do we do with.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: These teens and kids who have nowhere to go, right.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And who need that support to a lot of times maintain your safety, not just from kind of like a psychiatric self harming perspective, but also from not being taken advantage of by other nefarious people out there, all the Mcmurphys of the world, who will all the Mcmurphys of the know.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: I know.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: So what we don't see kind of continue is lobotomies, right? So thank God they stopped around the 1950s. And I guess there was one the last one that was recorded in the United States was in 1967, and it actually ended up in the death of the patient who it was performed on. So that has not we've stopped that practice while ECT has become really safe, really effective, really studied, really specifically done. And I just thought that's kind of interesting that they're both shown in the movie a short period of time and kind of right.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Like, at the very end, they don't ever say, like, oh, he got a lobotomy, or that's what happened. You just sort of make the assumption. And I do think as much as we are criticizing this film, it's also important. I'm sure you all agree that we not like us, we did this personally, but as a field, have to acknowledge there have been some bad things that.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Have happened, so we don't do this anymore.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: Yeah, it's one of the things I know you'd referenced it before, but every Wednesday I do what's called like a WTF Wednesday right. Where it is kind of like looking back on history, some of the dark sides of the field, and not just the mental health field, but primarily the mental health field, to be like, this is what we did. This is the stuff that we did. Like, what the ****? Right? Sorry.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: That's okay.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: I was like, what were the things that we were doing that was normal at the time? And a lot of it came from just the lack of understanding and just not knowing what we know. We go back and when I was talking about know, we did bloodletting and purging treatment, that was the father who's the I think he's on the seal as the APA, as the father of psychiatry. And he did this therapy where he would put people in chairs and spin the psychosis, the crazy out of them, quote unquote. Right. And I guess those are the things that we were doing. And then again, the shock therapy without anesthesia, that was, again, kind of like how it was depicted in one flu, the Cooper's Nest, without knowing that, hey, we can do this, but do it a lot safer. So very much a lot of ugly, ugly stuff that occurred in the history of psychiatry. And know, again, not even talking about, I think, Samuel Cartwright and some of the people who did a lot of the terrible stuff, like in the history of gynecology, so much stuff there's. Like, you can have a whole discussion on the terrible history of gynecology in.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: American Threat as well, 100%. And I think it is important as present day providers to keep all that history in mind and also keep that healthy degree of skepticism like in the stuff we do these days to think just to stay ethical and humane. And I think also looking back on all those practices, there unfortunately is a lot of racial discrepancies, socioeconomic discrepancies about which patients were getting these treatments or these experimental treatments or things against their will or even against their knowledge. And that's terrible, but we have to keep it in mind to hopefully turn the tides and keep working toward better, more equitable, more open types of treatment.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: Yeah, again, when we really look at the racial history of it and again, we saw it kind of in the movie, but not so much all of the black individuals were the orderlies. There were no black patients that were there. I know Chief is again the Native American, but he's a patient as well. But everybody else was white, all the people in power. Yeah, the one white doctor there was, I think, like the Indian doctor and maybe there was some other doctor that was there when they had like, their rounds for that one, during that one scene of rounds and discussing stuff. But again, it's a lot of the white people, but we know that historically, or even not historically, but currently too, black individuals get diagnosed with schizophrenia four times higher than non or than white individuals. So that's something that and we know that these rates are not true. It's not like people are four times more likely to be no, it's just a lot of this goes into the biases that occur. We know that, again, non white kids get diagnosed with ADHD less than white kids. We know that, again, non white kids are having more odd, odd more conduct diagnoses than white kids. There's that aspect of, like, oh, this is just how they are. So, again, we don't look at trauma disorders as much in non white individuals. We're like, oh, this is just characteristically or character logically. This is who they are. And again, these are the biases that come out, and we see them. And a lot of, like, when I'm seeing patients, I end up undiagnosing so many of these diagnoses that are misplaced that I'm like, clearly this kid has trauma, right? Clearly this teenage girl has PTSD. She's not bipolar. Clearly, this kid has ADHD. They have a learning disorder that's never been recognized, right? Because somebody didn't take the time to really sit down with them and discuss them or see what's going on there 100%.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And even we've seen you commented on one of Dr. Callie's videos on you know, I'm just thinking back, I guess, eight years ago, working at a teen male adolescent substance use unit, every single one of them had Odd, like, coming in. It was almost like a prerequisite to be on the unit. Like, you had a substance use disorder, sometimes a couple, and then you had Odd, and it's, like, literally just kind of reflecting back on it. I don't know, 99% of them I'll leave 1% just for room had trauma, like, significant trauma, whether it was chronic or just, like, singular traumas. And that really even eight years ago wasn't really addressed. So I think even now, I think we're doing a better job of just sharing information and kind of deconstruct some of it. And of course, there's always tons of room to grow and keep going. But I think even we've done a lot of work in the past couple of years.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: And I hope that as we keep trying to better understand our patients and the human condition at large, I think we're also starting to talk about that trauma. That different subsets of the population experience is directly tied to the experience of being, like, a black person in America today, for example, that, yeah, there's a lot of trauma that comes with that that you might not call PTSD, but it's there. And it's directly tied to politics, economic, like, all of it. And I think it can feel really overwhelming. And like, you get swallowed up to see that in clinical practice day in and day out. But it's so important to acknowledge rather than saying like, well, you're just oppositional or you're just psychotic or it's so much more complicated than yeah.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: And to kind of give a story with know, I work in Loudoun County in Virginia, which is like the richest county in America. And our neighbor is Fairfax County, which is the second richest county in a certain the patients that we see are certain demographics, I guess you can say, right? Predominantly white. Vinya is predominantly white. There's a shift with it as it's become much more like technologically, a leader and we have a lot of it stuff. So then there's a changing demographic that's kind of there. But I'm always struck by this one patient counter. I'll try to hide details and things, but it was a little African American kiddo, and he had punched one of his peer at school, and he got in trouble for that. Right. And I was trying to see how do I tell this story a little differently? The question I asked is, when they come to me, I'm like, well, why'd you punch the kid? Right. What happened that led to this? Right? And he's like, well, he called me the N word, right? And then I'm like, well, I'm not mad at you. Right, right.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: So what is the right way to.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: Handle that, to respond to this bully called him the N word and he punched him back, and then he's the kid who gets in trouble for it.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Right. Did that kid come into the psych unit too? The other kid?
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: No, of course not.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Of course not.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: Right? Yeah. So it's like this is how we kind of weaponize racial identity and how our cultural background against people. It's like Kiddo had a perfectly totally normal response. Again, are we condoning violence?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: No.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: But at the same time, do I understand why he punched the kid? Absolutely.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yeah. Right?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And now, though, he's reactive, he's dangerous, he's violent, he's aggressive.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: He's one of those kids.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: He's one of those aggressive black kids. Right. Again, the narrative that's created that he's a troublemaker and a fighter and blah, blah, blah.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Right. That's a really positive note to leave, to end on. But it's so true. I mean, I think it's heartbreaking, but I think if we just sort of keep our head in the sand and we don't acknowledge these whatever you want to call it, microaggressions, macroaggressions, racism, misogyny, trauma, poverty. If we don't acknowledge it, nothing will get better.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: It's funny. I laugh when you said microaggressions because I just posted like a video recently I talked with Isra Nasser. She's a Pakistani immigrant, and she's become a very much a leader in mental health and the field of in it in the community. And she's a therapist, counselor and stuff. And I posted a clip about microaggressions that she had faced when she came over, immigrated from Saudi Arabia to over here or Canada and then over here. It's a common thing I joke about, like, oh, you speak English? Really? Again? Like, yeah, you're having the reaction that you understand that that's not a cool thing to say. And I posted on YouTube, and then I'm getting all these comments from people being like, again, white people who are being like, people are just being nice to you when they say that. How dare you have this victim mentality. And it's like, you understand you're proving the point by saying I know. Saying that these people are being nice to you by saying that you speak English really well and you are different and you are this and that, and if you have this victim mentality your whole life, this is how you're never going to get advanced in life.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: It's still her fault.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: Yeah, it's still her fault. I was like, you understand, you're just gaslighting, and you're continuing the microaggressions that are going on by telling people to just be okay with it.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: I know. What am I proving the point?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: And it's like, nothing, maybe nothing. You don't need to comment on that. And I think people love commenting on everything, and I think we could do a better job of just keeping some.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Thoughts in our head or just being a little more introspective and even just being able to say, like, oh, wow, I didn't know about microaggressions, or that was a microaggression, or how that landed for this person, given their experience. Maybe I should think about that and maybe reflect and maybe it's okay, I feel remorseful or embarrassed about it, and I could try to do a little better. Maybe I should listen to them. Maybe they are really like the authority on their own lived experience.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: Exactly.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Radical idea. Yeah, radical idea.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: If you don't have the insight that's true. Open to thinking about things a different way, then, right? That's true.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: That's true. Anyway, well, this was great.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: I mean, is there anything else we want to talk about with the movie or just, like the commentary on it? I think the big themes that I think we covered are, like, it's a lot different now in a lot of different ways. Are there still hospitals and units and therapists and psychiatrists who do a better job than others? Of course. Are there some people who maybe shouldn't be in the field? Of course. But I think it's just reminding yourself, even as a patient, like, you should have informed consent, it's okay to ask questions. You're allowed to say, what is this? I'm interested in something else, or can you talk me through this?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: What are my options?
Portia Pendleton LCSW: If you're recommending prozac, it's okay to ask, well, what about Lexapro? Like, you're allowed to ask questions to, your know, ideally right. The gold standard of care would be that they're listening actively.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: Yeah, I think kind of like, the takeaway I appreciate the movie the way I don't have this. I think you were saying, like, you have this this gut visceral reaction to the movie. I think it's necessary viewing for all I think it's necessary viewing, right, for a lot of people. If you're in the field, again, from the fact that you have to look at it from a lens of history and a lens of, like, this is what not to do, and this is how we don't do things anymore. This is how things may have been. Again, some of this stuff is absolutely dramatized for the sake of great storytelling, and it is a great movie if you look at it from the point of view of just a movie, somebody who's watching the movie, it's earned its accolades and its place in history. But from the mental health field, it's an important movie still, and it has a lasting impact 50 years later. And we have to know that our patients are aware of this. Our clients are aware of this. They know its history. They know what it is. They have a lot of misconceptions about the field because of this, right? So we have to know that going.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Into it as a whole, 100%. And I'm curious we can cut this out if you don't want to talk about this, but you did mention watching this with your children, and I'm just curious what they thought.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: Yeah, so I watched it with my eight year old son and my seven year old daughter because I was like, oh, they wanted to do movie night. It's summertime. And I was like, cool. I was like, oh, I have to watch this movie again because I have to talk about it. And they're like, oh, by the way, this was, like, what Baba does for his job, right? He's a psychiatrist. He's one of the people who and these are the people I work lot of it was interesting because they had a lot of questions about what's wrong with this person? What's wrong with the birth, and why are they dancing? What's like, to be like, well, teach them. I was like, well, some people are different. Some people have things that are going on in them that they may act or look or think a little bit differently. And I'm open in saying it. We have someone in our friend community who is like, quote unquote, level three autism. They have intellectual disability communication issues. He's a little bit older, and they play with him and everything like that. And I was like, oh, you know, this guy something's a little bit different with him. Not something's wrong with him, but something a little bit different. And I was like, oh, these are the people that Baba kind of works with a little bit and helps them out, hopefully helps them out. And they're like, oh, okay. And then again, there was a lot of questions. They're like, oh, Baba, they're using a lot of bad words. There's so many bad words in this one, being like, oh, why are they naked together? What's going on? I was like, Guys, close your eyes.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Once the girls come in, you're like.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Oh, well, this is not what Baba does at work.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: I was like, I forgot about this. Again, they're not going to obviously understand everything that was going on in there, and then they enjoyed it. Some stuff they're like, okay, but they're not going to be watching it again and telling their friends that they watched. Right. It's not Transformers or something like that.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Didn'T necessarily grab their attention in the same way. Yeah, but I think that's also just.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Like, a great anecdote of changing language and how important and powerful language is of well, there's a lot of different people. That doesn't mean that they're bad or weird or strange or scary.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Well, thank you so much for joining us today.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: Absolutely.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: We hope you just had a blast revisiting this movie with your children, talking about it with us.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: Well, thank you. I appreciate yeah. Again, that's the main thing is we have to and a lot of this kind of came from a conversation I had with Dr. Gold as well. Who Jesse? We all love Jesse. She's great. But when we go out, we publish things. If we work our whole life and we get something published in right. Or the New England Journal of Medicine, again, not everybody very rarely that these things occur. This is like the pinnacle of scientific, academic, medical kind of publishing. The layperson just read it. How many people are reading?
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Right, right, exactly. And if they try to read it no, I can't even understand half the time.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: Yeah, I don't read this stuff half the time because I'm like, I have to really think about this and, like, statistics. I have to think. I have to use my brain reading this. But we know that, again, people are going to get their information from YouTube or they're going to get it from Twitter, they're going to get it from TikToks or they're going to get it from whatever. It's going to be Vogue magazine and Time magazine. So it's like, it's important for people who have legitimate voices and backgrounds to be in those worlds as well. So that versus the people who we know are misusing those to kind of push out BF.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yes. Right. Well, keep fighting the good fight. Keep buying your sneakers. I love to see them.
Portia Pendleton LCSW: Well, and just to remind everyone who's listening, you can find Solman at the Kicks shrink Instagram. So it's Kick Shrink, as in, like, shoes, and then shrink on Instagram and TikTok and YouTube and find his content there. We certainly like it. So I think you will, too.
Dr. Katrina Furey MD: Yeah. And thank you once again for joining us, and you can find us again at Analyze Scripts on Instagram. Analyze Scripts podcast on TikTok and threads and we will see you next Monday with another episode. Yeah, thanks. All right, bye.
Dr. Sulman Mirza MD: Thanks for having me.
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Dr. Katrina Furey MD: All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are discussing "She's the Man," a 2006 film starring Amanda Bynes and Channing Tatum. Did you know this movie is based on the Shakespeare's play "Twelfth Night?" This is arguably one of Amanda Bynes' best performances. She is hilarious, captivating and witty. We discuss gender identity and sexuality at great lengths in this episode. Dr. Furey provides us with some medical facts about sex organs and we talk about where a person can fall on the gender expression spectrum. You don't want to miss this one, we hope you enjoy!
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fieri, a psychiatrist.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: There is so much misinformation out there, and it drives us nuts.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: With a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And your DSM five, and enjoy.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Welcome back to another episode of Analyze Scripts. We are so excited to be covering the movie she's the man, which came out in 2006 and starred Amanda Bynes and Channing Tatum.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Whoa. I'd never seen this movie before. It's almost 20 years old. Isn't that crazy to think about?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I've seen it many times.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: That's interesting. Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like, loved it. One of my favorite movies from, like, teenhood.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Nice. I think this is, again, where I feel really old, but that's okay. So, this movie was based on a play by Shakespeare the 12th night. Right.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So I didn't know that until I did research for this podcast episode.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Because we're professional.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. Because we want to plan things out. But apparently it's based on the Shakespeare's play, and it's about even by name. Viola and her twin brother Sebastian, they're shipwrecked. They believe that each other drowned. So Viola disguises herself as a young man in order to get a job as a servant for Duke, the Duke of what is it? Or Sino. And it's, like, funny because Duke is played by Tatum. So I had no idea that there were all these references to this.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right, right. And I think it's just interesting. Right. Like, a girl dressing up as a boy, how that has been in culture and society forever. Right. Really interesting to talk about this movie now, just, again, in the political climate of today and everything going on in terms of gender identity.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. So we see. Amanda Bynes did a lot of work at this time in some other movies that I absolutely loved. One of them, she goes to, I think, like, England or something to find her long last dad, and then she's absolutely a gem. So she was 20 when this was filmed. Channing Tatum was 26, which I think.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Is we always kind of laugh at.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: People who play high school role.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right. They were totally in high school. Yeah. And he was 26. Yeah. It was funny to see Channing Tatum as, like, a youngster and just be like, he really bulked up for magic Mike. Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: This was even pre, like, the dance movies, not magic. Step up. Step.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yep. And I did find it hard to watch. I'll be Amanda Bynes, like, in her quote unquote prime, given what we sort of have seen happen to her. And again, we're not here to offer any thoughts about someone's personal mental health issues, but I think, Portia, you were pointing out that she's 20 years old in this movie, and around age 24, things started to change for her, which we do see in terms of when women tend to develop significant mental health issues.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. And something that I learned more recently as well is that Amanda Bynes actually really lobbied to have Channing Tatum in this role. And it was his first role where he was like a main character.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I think I did read that somewhere. I think you recently said that or was giving an interview about that, how we really appreciated that.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, so that was sweet. And then we have some other cast members who I thought most notably Daphne, who plays Viola, and Sebastian's mom, played by Julie Hagerty, was also the mom and wife in what about Bob?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And she kind of played the same kind of like a loop, stitzy, disconnected character. I thought it was really funny. The whole thread of the debutante ball is that something that happens up here in the Northeast. So growing up in the south, this is like a thing. And it seemed know, I believe, like, debutante balls back in the day were for maybe even still presently. Like, I remember a couple years ago, reese Witherspoon's daughter was like, in a debutante ball, it's supposed to be like the way high society girls are introduced to society and maybe meet a suitor. Interestingly. Just yesterday I saw a New York Times article about debutante balls or like, debutante societies, but in an African American community, I believe in Detroit or somewhere in Michigan, and how those women really appreciate the balls because it helps them find mentors. So it's interesting because I always thought it was like to find a husband, but it sounds like at least in this community, it shifted a bit to find mentors, which I thought was really positive growing up in the south. I did go to something called Catillion.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Okay.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Have you heard of what that is? Which they sort of depicted, like, when Amanda Bynes'character is coming in and they're all eating on china and stuff like that. I just remember I had to wear these white gloves and learn how to handshake and how to curtsy. And we had homework assignments in between the sessions where you'd have to shake certain people's hands and they'd have to sign off and you had to learn all these fancy dances like the foxtrot.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I mean, that's exactly what I envisioned it being.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah, I hated it. I remember I used to pretend to have stomach aches so I wouldn't have to go. And then the final dance, you're supposed to dance with all these boys and it was like in 6th grade or something. I just hated it. So sorry. Mom, if you're listening, I just really didn't love it. But that's sort of spot on depicted, I think, in see.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So it's kind of just the plot is that Amanda, bynes Viola's character, learns that her high school women's soccer team is being cut, but due to low.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Participation numbers and she is really into soccer.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right. We see the opening scene. They're playing on the beach. She seems like she has a good relationship with her boyfriend and her friend. He seems supportive in the moment. So they are really upset and they kind of go up to the boys soccer team and they want to play, and the coach is kind of like, laughing. Like, that's absurd. You can't do that.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Can't play with the boys.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Exactly. And so girls aren't fat. Initially, it seems like they're not even going to let them try out, which, per Title IX, if there is not an alternative sport, then they have to be allowed to try out.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Can you explain portia for our listeners what Title IX is?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So Title IX basically is for education systems and kind of guarantees equal treatment. And what we're seeing now is a lot of Title Nine being brought up with gender identification in sports. So basically it guarantees an equal amount of so I'll just speak to it with sports. I know that it's bigger, but it guarantees an equal amount of sports per school. So, for example, if there's six boys sports teams, there has to be six girls sport teams. If there is a 7th sports team, it has to be coed. So, for example, a lot of I'm thinking about in my high school team, like, golf was coed, and then there was like, boys and girls tennis, football, field hockey. So that's the kind of counterpart. But there has to be an equal number.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Okay. And I think aren't there also, like, I think at colleges and stuff now, they have like, Title IX offices, title Nine coordinators. And I think that's also maybe where you go if you've experienced like a sexual assault or there's some concern about harassment or things like that.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right, yeah. So it prohibited sex based discrimination in any school or education program that receives any funding from the federal government. And it started in 1972.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Oh, I thought it was like, recent.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So they've made amendments to it, I'm sure, over and over since then. But that's when it started.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: So this initial school would have been in violation of Title Nine then. Okay, good to know. I thought maybe that came about after in the past 20 years, but I guess not.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: No.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Okay, good to know. But so they won't let her sort of try out or play. Her boyfriend is really icky and dismissive about her feelings, so she breaks up with him. Good. And then she has this idea that she's going to dress up like her brother and impersonate him at his school for two weeks so that she can make that male soccer team and kind of beat her boyfriend's team. Yeah, it's Cornwall and Illyria Illyria, which was a funny name, but I bet those stem back to the Shakespeare play, right?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That makes sense, I think.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: So that makes a lot more sense.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Because they're kind of OD.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: So basically, that's the premise of the movie. And we see Amanda Bynes portray stereotypical gender roles and mannerisms in a comedic way. And she's always been known for her comedic timing and the slapstick nature and the physical comedy. She's always been known for that. So you definitely see that here. But what were your thoughts, Portia, about the way she sort of portrayed masculinity versus femininity?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So I think she also let's first remind ourselves that this film was probably made in 2004, right? Came out in 2006. So some of the things that they were even just saying when she's in the shower room with Duke and she's just like, calling Brosif broski G money, a lot of those things are also just like from then. And people did say, you know, it's not that outrageous, but I thought she first of all, which we already said, she is just phenomenal at that kind of humor. And so I think ironically now, looking back, though, she in this role is bringing a lot of gender issues and questions up onto the surface in a really big way. Again, that we did not see.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah, and again, using humor, which we think of as a mature defense mechanism to explore really complex, difficult topics, much like we talked about with our Barbie episode, but in a different way. And I'm like, was that intentional or was that like, it just happened.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And they take it even further with you see her because they could have easily just thrown a wig and write the sideburns on and just had her wearing like a tightly fitted sports bra. But you see them like, they take the espinage and they're like binding, which is a pretty common practice if someone's trans and they are trying to have like a flat chest. You see her kind of packing like a filled sock to look like a ***** to use in her pants. And again, that's something that is used. So I thought even that could have easily been left out and I don't think anyone would have noticed.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right, I totally agree. And I thought before we continue, I did just want to give a couple of definitions for our listeners because I think as we start talking about gender dynamics, sexual dynamics, trans, cisgender, like, things like that, it can be really confusing. So, again, I want to just give a couple of standard definitions. So when we use the word sex, like in the medical field, the definition of sex is a biological category based on reproductive, anatomical and genetic characteristics, generally defined as male, female and intersex. So something I hear a lot in the popular press and media is like, you're born a boy or a girl that's it. And actually, that's just not true of the human species and a lot of other species if you look into different animals and things like that. So there are several medical conditions where a child isn't born at birth with what we consider male genitalia or female genitalia. Those things can include things like Kleinfelter syndrome, turner's syndrome, and androgen Insensitivity syndrome. And these are complicated things, and we won't get into all the details, but in those different know, the anatomical chromosomal or gonadal, sex varies in some way from what we would typically call male or female genitalia. So for people who are constantly shouting, like, you're either a boy or a girl, that's just not true. Like, there are humans again, it's rare, but there are humans born who, for example, like their internal organs don't match the external genitalia or vice versa. And so, again, usually at birth, parents are kind of advised, like, you can pick the gender. Now, it might change for some of these conditions. Other times, maybe the parents just maybe especially today, like, don't pick and sort of see what the child chooses. But that can change over the course of a child's life. And sometimes people with these conditions prefer to be called intersex. I think back in the day, we used to call people with these conditions hermaphrodites. And that, I think, can have a really negative connotation attached to it. But I think that is important to just point out that not everyone is just born a boy or a girl. So that is sex. That's medical based on these factors, gender is different from that, right? So when we say gender, that refers to socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes that a given society associates with being a woman, man, girl, or boy, as well as relationships with each other as a social construct. Gender varies from society to society and can change over time. I think that's really important that we understand that that's what gender it is. I think we see Amanda bynes'character Viola sort of display that right? And so someone's gender identity is an individual sense of being a man, woman, boy, girl, genderqueer non binary, et cetera. And this doesn't have to be visible to other people. What you see from the outside is what we call gender expression. That's how someone chooses to convey their gender identity through their behavior, clothing, or other external characteristics. And not everyone feels safe to do that. And so I just thought it was important to sort of bring up those topics and give those legitimate definitions to help us as we conceptualize this movie and the effects it's had.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So if we also think about gender kind of being on a spectrum, I think we have either end where you are highly feminine appearing or highly masculine appearing, and then we see kind of people forever, right? Like, kind of being in the middle. Like, that would be a tom boy. So a girl who feels more masculine, maybe plays more with masculine toys. They might be more like, I'm just envisioning a little girl who has braids and overalls and is like playing in the dirt with a monster truck, like.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Roberta from now and then. I don't know if you saw that movie. Oh, my. Again, I'm it's so good.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Portia but I will also add that I think it's always been way more.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Acceptable to be a tomboy than a.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Girl to be more masculine presenting than for a boy to be more feminine presenting.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So, again, we just see there's this really long range of how you present yourself. And I think what's interesting that you just kind of spoke to, though, is it's different in culture to culture, right. So if I'm thinking of, like, we also covered the movie Barbie. If we think about that Barbie feminism, it's like I'm thinking of someone who might be all the way on one of the spectrum who's wearing, like, all pink, driving a pink car and is, like, in this pink role and likes everything that's feminine.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: But that's what that culture calls feminine.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Exactly. And another one might be entirely different of they're all the way at that end. Femininity right.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And again, their inner gender identity might not be the same as what they're expressing outside their gender expression. And I think that is where, as people grow up and you start to figure out who are you, really, things can change. And speaking to that in different cultures, again, how gender is such a social construct, I was really interested to learn recently about the concept of two spirit in the Indigenous culture. So Indigenous people I didn't know this before doing a little research before this episode, have kind of always had this concept of two spirit which they sort of define as a person who identifies as having both a masculine and a feminine spirit. And this term is used by some Indigenous people to describe their sexual, gender and or spiritual identity. I thought that was just really interesting. Like, other cultures sort of have lingo to talk about these difficult concepts. And I'm sure it varies from culture to culture, too. Right.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And even, I think as simply as like in, I don't know, I guess American culture, it's like there's some women we could think of it just as this, who don't ever want to wear a dress or a skirt, and they just feel more comfortable always wearing pants or shorts or something like that. And that's such not a big deal. But again, I'd say that is someone who's on a different place of the gender spectrum than someone else who does feel more comfortable or wants to do that because they think of it in a feminine way. So I just think it doesn't have to be that huge. Right. Which I think that's the big kind of conflicts going on. It's like we all land somewhere on it. And I think everyone would be surprised that they're probably not on the end.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right, exactly. Right. Yeah, exactly. And I think like you're saying, how you define masculinity or femininity is really determined by the culture you're growing up in and how you're reacting to that. Right? Yeah. And sometimes I like that example about the dresses or the pants. Just because you like to wear pants, that doesn't mean your gender identity is male. It could not always. Like a lot of women like wearing pants too. It's different. Again, exactly. I think the way you're expressing yourself is different from your gender identity for some people. So given that example, why don't we also define what transgender means? Because that is a term that we use a lot in our American society. It is hot in politics right now.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Also a lot with title nine, specifically in sports.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah. That has been everywhere these past few years. So the official definition of transgender is someone who identifies with the gender other than the one that was assigned to them at birth, period. Okay, guys, that's it. It has nothing to do with your genitalia. It has nothing to do with your anatomic, chromosomal, gonadal, sex organs. That is it. It means that the gender you identify with differs from the one you were assigned at birth. There is a lot of discussion, I think, about this term because in some ways it feels outdated or there's some criticisms about it because it sort of implies that there was a point at which someone was cisgendered, which means that your inner gender identity matches the gender you assumed at birth. The word trans in some ways, some people, some critics of that word will say like, implies that you were cisgendered than you became transgendered, I think, which can be really harmful. But it does give us a language to use. So often when someone identifies as a trans man, that would be someone who perhaps or who at birth was assigned a female gender or identified female gender and finds that they identify more with being a man, a trans woman would be the opposite. And a lot of people don't like those terms. And so they might use something more broad like gender non conforming or non binary.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So in the know, we're seeing viola by definition cross dressing. Right. So it's like she is putting on male clothes. She hasn't said anything that she's feeling like she is thinking of having an identity as a man or anything like that. So by a definition, using just like language, that's what she's doing. But in it, it expands this whole question of like well, and again, we're pretending to know her inner thoughts as viola. It's like, is she does she have some thoughts of maybe wanting to identify more with a male persona or does she feel more comfortable that way? Where does this go in the, like I think it's just really interesting because she can still know attracted to Duke, right. That has nothing to do with how you express your gender, but is know kind of throughout the end of the film exploring this, and does it feel good for her and is that something that then she might choose to do?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right? And I personally don't think so. I don't think Viola is trans. I think that she had a goal in mind. She wanted to play soccer, and that is why she's doing this. It didn't seem like she was having confusion or what we might call gender dysphoria, which is a lot of distress about the gender you feel like you have to express. I didn't get that from her. I got that she just wanted to play soccer, but the whole time felt female. I think you could see that, like when she would slip back into her girl voice or these girl mannerisms and things like that. But I do agree that this film does open that up and it does show someone in adolescence exploring their gender. Now, again, what we know about people who identify as trans or non binary is that this starts really early, just like someone else walking around who identifies as cisgender and they say, like, I've always known I was a girl. These people have always known that this is where they fall. And it's even normal in toddlerhood, right, for boys to wear dresses or girls to pretend to be boys. This is normal as you're trying to figure it out. But then, typically, people who identify as trans keep wanting to if you're born of boy gender, you might want to play with dolls, you might want to dress up. That starts really early and tomboys start.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: To not be enough. Right. This is why it's a spectrum experience. Exactly. So it's like you're kind of portraying a little bit more of a masculine expression and then that's not enough. Right. And you still are having kind of this gender dysphoria. You still feel distress, and then you kind of keep following along the spectrum until you land somewhere that feels good. Sometimes that is with surgery, and other times it's not.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right? And I think it's really important that we also talk about that. These are real things, right? And this type of dysphoria that stems from a mismatch between your inner gender identity and the outer gender expression you've sort of been raised to abide by or is socially acceptable, is really significant. And it's been around forever. Like, this is just a thing. This is real. This has happened. And what we know is that trans youth and trans adults have significantly higher rates of mental health conditions, substance abuse conditions, and suicide compared to people who identify as cisgender. And I think that's really important that we talk about that because studies have shown that 40% 40%, that's almost half of transgender adults have attempted suicide in their lifetime, not just thought about it, but tried it, and that 30% of transgender youth have attempted suicide in the past year, that's huge. Those rates are so significantly higher for any other mental health condition that I can think of. And add to that if these transgender youth, for example, also, I mean, being transgender, you already are facing a lot of stress from being a minority, like in that way. But if you add other intersectional identities to this in terms of race, socioeconomic status, religion, family structure, poverty, like things like that, your rates just go up and up and up and up. And what we have found is that by providing gender affirming care, which again is a spectrum, right, it runs all the way from gender affirming psychotherapy to explore your feelings, to hormonal treatment and puberty, which again can be reversed. There's this big fear like, oh no, we're going to do something that is permanent and we can never fix it. The hormonal therapies basically stop puberty from happening. And so it gives a child who's experiencing this the chance to sit with it and really figure it out. And there are so many guidelines that you have to wait a certain amount of time. Someone has to live in their well, I think that's actually for surgery, but there's a lot of guidelines before you just do that, before you stop puberty. But then if this person sort of changes their mind down the road, which is incredibly rare, but does happen, it is easy to reverse and then sort of start puberty in the gender you were assigned at birth anyway, all the way to gender confirming surgeries, which, again, a lot of rules around qualifying for surgeries like that, at least in our state. You have to live in your gender identity for at least a year. You have to express that outwardly. And then you also have to have psychiatric evaluations and be cleared from a psychiatric standpoint by more than one physician. There's a lot of hoops you have to jump through. And what are your thoughts about that, Portia? Do you think that's helpful or do you think that is kind of further stigmatizing or a barrier?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think it really depends on the like I think it can be, I think I guess I'd say as a whole, I don't know. I think it can go either way. I think there's positive experiences where it's just like it is catching people, making a secure choice in something that they've always known. But surgery has risks and I think it's just to really prepare you for that. I guess we're kind of going, I'm going to bring up something totally different. But it's like if an 18 year old female would want to have their tubes tied, right? It's like if a 30 year old is coming to you and want to have their tubes tied, sure be done. But it's like, okay, we need to give you information. Do you know, because I'm actually unsure of permanent for the most part.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I think there's some that you can.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Reverse, but yeah, some more permanent options. I think it's just important to educate, write the risks, if this is something that you really want to. So it's thoughtful and I think most of the time, again, it is like it's been years and decades of wanting or not feeling comfortable in the gender you were assigned at birth. So I guess, I don't know. I think in some cases it can be useful just to prepare yourself for a very significant surgery.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Just like any surgery, huge change.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right. But I also do think there's absolutely aspects of it that can be super harmful. Like really navigating it with insurance, which I think if you are paying privately, I think it's a much quicker process. Right, so I think that's true. That's always just like something to throw in there, right?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: True, very true. And also, I think we know that people who identify as trans face so much stigma and violence. Like trans youth, trans adults are so much more likely to be victims of physical violence, assault, murder, things like that, than cisgender people.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Especially when they are presenting a gender and they're not passing. Right. That's the highest risk time for them. So you're asking them to stay in the year. Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: That's the part where I'm like, oh, on the one hand, I get it. It's like you want to make sure you're sure. On the other hand, it really increases I think I don't know this for sure. I don't have the data to back it up, but I worry that it increases their risk of harm coming to them. And there is something just so stigmatizing about the system being like, well, you.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Have to really make sure that you're sure before we help you and offer.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: You this care that's been shown to significantly decrease your risk of suicide. Again, I don't pretend to know all the answers or have a better system option in my mind, but I just think these are really complicated issues. And coming back to the movie, she's the man, we see her kind of dealing with that as she's trying to pass. Portia, can you define what passing means for our listeners?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Sure. So if somebody's passing, that means they appear, I'd say, I don't know, to 99% of people the gender that they're intending to pass as. So if somebody is making a transition from male to female, they look like a female. Like, you would never question it. And I also would just ask people to know that there's a lot of people that you don't know who are 100% passing and you're feeling safe with them. So it's like the people who are not passing yet who are coming in. And I'm thinking this is the big issue to a bathroom where you're still kind of looking like a guy, but you're dressed as. A female. That's where people get really scared and it feels but again, that's where the danger comes for them.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Not 100% you.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That's just what the data says.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And again, the data says that people who identify as trans are not sexual deviants or aggressors or pedophiles or things like that. That's just not true. That's like an really unfortunate stigma and bias that just keeps getting perpetuated and.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: All the way know. I think we've seen we see this date back centuries is like people performing, right? Like drag queens are going to shows where people are cross dressing like Shakespeare around forever. The idea that it is this harmful, right? Sexual deviant going to corrupt children is.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Like this new thing ridiculous, right? And again, we see this in other animals too. I can't think of anything off the top of my head, but I do remember in college, in my animal behavior class with Professor Wasserman, learning about different species where the women would pretend to be men to protect their young and vice versa. So we see this in other species. We've seen this in humanity dating back centuries, like forever. This is just a thing.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yes. So you brought up you before, right? Or was that in another so so getting back to she's the man worth noting that we see Malcolm, who's just kind of like this annoying guy, right, who's trying to figure out what's happening with Viola and Sebastian, like expose her. He is stalking Olivia. Like, he has pillows with her face.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Creepy.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: He's always trying to talk to her. And I was just just just also keeping in mind, like, yeah, that seems silly in the movie, but it's not. Right. Stalking is the opposite of funny. It's the most terrifying experience. Per again, all the data to go through. So it's just like Malcolm is you're. Gross. Yeah, we don't like you.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But a little bit of stalking we see in this movie and then we see right.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Olivia too.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So Olivia, initially we're introduced to her because Duke really likes her. And then she develops feelings for Sebastian. Sebastian played by Viola. Right. I thought that is so interesting for Olivia. Like, how does she feel knowing that she wanted to kiss and was really into a girl playing a guy, right. And then she ends up being with the real Sebastian.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I know.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So I'm just curious about like that was just interesting.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And I think that brings up a great point, again, Portia, that there is a difference between your gender identity and your sexual identity. Right? So we've talked about gender identity. Your sexual identity is who you feel attracted to. And that is under the umbrella of things like heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, asexual and again, I was like, is this movie a little homophobic? Like Amanda or Viola when she's playing Sebastian, wouldn't kiss the girls and stuff. Maybe she doesn't want to. Right. But I also thought it sort of did play off of that like you're saying. And it was interesting that it seemed like Olivia was attracted to the feminine aspects of Viola playing Sebastian's character, right.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And not Duke, who presenting to outside people, is not that sensitive guy, but he is closed doors to other guys, right.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: So, again, it explores these themes of gender, sexuality, and just how you kind of express yourself and move through the world in a really interesting way. But again, if you are a trans person, that doesn't mean you are homosexual or bisexual. And so that is something important to keep in mind that you can be a trans man and still be attracted.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: To whoever you are attracted to.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: They're not like mutually exclusive, one doesn't lead to the other or anything like that.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And we see Amanda Bynes really come to life when she is at the carnival and performing the rapid gender changes, code switching in how she's talking and how she's walking. And it's just a being a good actor. And also I think it's part of the humor that they pulled from the play. Yes, the play. I think it's like carnivally. It's silly. It's again, it's supposed to give that gender ambiguity which I think is just interesting.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Shakespeare's from a long time ago.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And can you again define code switching for our listeners?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So we also talk about code switching with people. Describe it as going to different groups of people. Right? So you might have a way that you speak at home and then when you're in a certain environment, like maybe work or like a classroom, you become kind of different. And you say words differently, you use different words, you carry yourself differently. I think I was more thinking of it or I've been aware of it more from black Americans kind of identifying their experience with being home and then being in a colleges are historically white places. So kind of having to adopt a white code when going to them to appear, right. Like the norm, which is like professional. You can be an educated black person in your home code, but in order to be perceived as educated in some of these other environments, you need to adopt the bigger code all the way.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: From what you wear to the way you do your hair to do you have tattoos or not, like all of those things.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So we see in the movie where I don't want to say it necessarily gets wrong. I just think it's like the times and it's not them continuing to educate the masses, but right when they identify their gender by showing their body parts at the end. So it's like we see Sebastian pull his pants down. Which also that's I feel like we don't get arrested.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It's indecent exposure.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And everyone's like, oh. And then they're all kind of joking because seemingly he has a large *****. Right?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It seems like.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then we see Viola later on lift up her shirt to prove she's a girl.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: So, again, even in the movie, they're mixing know, anatomical sex parts and your gender. I also thought the principal just like, calling out this issue in front of everyone. Weird stopping the game. There's title nine violations all over the place here, and that's just like, not the way you do it.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: He's also just like a weirdo.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Remember when he's like, over identifying and assuming that Viola as Sebastian's experience is the same as his? Yeah, kind of crazy.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Did you recognize him?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: No, I did.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: He's in a lot of things, actually, when I clicked on his name. But I think I recognized him from Men in Black. He's in the first movie, I believe. And I used to really like that movie and I watched it a lot.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: But I was like, how do I know this guy? Probably from then.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: So, yeah, in general, I thought I wasn't expecting all of this. Like, when you said we should cover this movie, I was, huh. Okay, amanda bynes cool. It's a throwback. All right. But it really did bring up a lot of big themes about gender identity, sexual identity, girl versus boy. Why do we divide sports all the time? Just like all of these sort of gender archetypes really brought it out. And again, thinking that this movie is 20 years old, it's really interesting, again, that so many of these themes are still something we're trying to sort through in our culture today.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And really, I think it was just kind of dismissed probably as like a teen movie. But I think The Band of Buys, she was excellent in it, I think, based on the Shakespeare, twelveTH Night was excellent. I think I'm almost comparing it. And we're laughing because we also recorded Barbie on this day. And I think it's very similar to Barbie in some ways, right? Where I think, yes, of course the movie could have been better. It's also almost 20 years old. But I think that she didn't get the credit that she was owed for playing this role and for the writing. And again, I just think it's a really clever idea for a movie and people like me loved it.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And you were saying there's been a lot of discussion about it, even in the present day, where they're really sort of analyzing the gender roles and the way she portrays it, the way she's code switching, people are still talking about it. And so I think that is what makes art beautiful, is that it can provoke these feelings. These thoughts give you a means to discuss these bigger issues, especially when you might not agree with the person you're talking about it with. But it's like a maybe safe, neutral place to talk about it. And we're still talking about this stuff. So it was interesting.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. So of know, I think it's worth saying we wish Amanda finds well. She's iconic and I selfishly would love to see her back in theater, but I don't know if that's good for her or know, who am I to say? But I love her. She was through my childhood and stay tuned. Maybe we'll do another one of her things, but thank you for listening today to our podcast. If you would like to follow us, you can follow us on Instagram at Analyze Scripts or TikTok at Analyze Scripts podcast threads at Analyze scripts podcast, and you can check us out on our website to get more information or continue to search through some of our older episodes. They're great.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah. All right, we'll see you next Monday.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Bye bye.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are analyzing the '90s movie "Girl, Interrupted" based on the memoir by Susanna Kaysen. This film depicts two years of a young adult woman's life at McLean Hospital in the 1960s where she was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD). This episode analyzes everything from why it's so hard to talk about BPD, psychoanalytic vs behavioral treatment methods, the deinstitutionalization movement, antipsychotics, and our opinions about Angelina Jolie's portrayal of sociopathy. We hope you enjoy!
[00:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fieri, a psychiatrist.
[00:12] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker.
[00:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows.
[00:23] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends.
[00:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: There is so much misinformation out there and it drives us nuts.
[00:32] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like.
[00:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: With a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better.
[00:39] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn.
[00:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: And your DSM Five and enjoy. We get started with this episode. We just wanted to add a trigger warning. Some of this content could be disturbing to listen to. We're talking about the film Girl Interrupted, and there are some themes of suicide, disordered eating, and I would say institutional traumatization. So again, if any of these themes hit too close to home or could potentially be damaging, please feel free to skip this episode and join us again next time. Otherwise, enjoy. Hi, thanks for joining us. Today we are going to talk about the hit movie Girl Interrupted. A real blast from the past from my favorite decade, the 90s. This movie is based on the 1993 memoir by Susannah Casey, who wrote about two years of her life spent at McClain Hospital in the 1960s in Massachusetts, where she was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Portia so when I recommended we covered this movie, I totally didn't remember the plot. I don't actually know if I saw the whole thing. I was just like, oh yeah, there's a movie with Angelina Jolie and she got an Oscar and it's probably really good. I totally forgot that the main character was diagnosed with Bpd, which I actually think is great for us to talk about because we've alluded to this diagnosis and some of our other know, I'm thinking like, what about Bob Succession White Lotus? And I still find that this is a tricky diagnosis to talk about with patients to explain to patients to explain to other. I thought, you know, Winona Ryder's character like, did a great job being like, what is it? On the borderline of what? What are you talking about? Right?
[02:38] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. And at the time, though, this was newish. Marsha Linehan hadn't written her book yet on DBT.
[02:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't even think there was DBT yet. Thinking about the 1960s, I thought this film did a great job depicting what it probably was like to be psychiatrically hospitalized in the 60s, which is so different from what it's like today. Place that is very true. So this film was filmed at Harrisburg State Hospital in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It was filmed in 1999, but it was based on McLean Hospital, which is probably the number one psychiatric hospital in our country for a long time. I think it is affiliated with Harvard, and I think they do still have some longer term units like this, but you see a lot of treatment. You know, she goes to therapy many times a week. She's sitting on the couch. Her therapist is sitting behind her. Unfortunately falls asleep at one point, which I don't think actually happens in real life, but speaks to how she felt probably like there was a disconnect and you hear about how she's there for two years. That just doesn't happen anymore. But in the did, that was the treatment. People used to be admitted and stay for a really long time until in the mid 1960s, in the Reagan era, there was this big move not just in our country but internationally to deinstitutionalize patients, right? So sort of close down these long term hospitals which we called asylums and invest more in community mental health centers. And I think I don't know this for sure, but I believe that coincided with the invention of modern day antipsychotic medication like Thorazine and the other medications that came from that, like Haldol, basically medications that could treat schizophrenia and thereby treat these patients in a way that hopefully they didn't have to live in an institution. Sadly, we haven't invested enough in the community mental health centers that were supposed to be created to sort of support patients and we've had some really awful side effects from that. Primarily homelessness and institutionalization in jails. That is the number one provider of mental health treatment in our country. How awful and disgusting is that? And again, it's because not enough money goes into these community mental health centers. So nowadays you might be admitted for a couple of days to really stabilize you, tweak your meds, but you're not getting this type of intensive, insight oriented therapy anymore that we see depicted in this movie. And I think that's really sad. You can get that if you can pay for.
[05:29] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I mean, it's wildly expensive.
[05:31] Dr. Katrina Furey: Wildly expensive. And I think some places, like other, you know, hospitals might take insurance. I don't know if insurance would cover it.
[05:41] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, they take some and especially for some programs. Like, I've had some people go to McLean, I've known some people to go to Silver Hills. Those two places over the years have definitely taken more of an insurance route for some of their programming and other tracks that they have. Other parts of their residences or programs are not insurance based.
[06:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I think that also just speaks.
[06:04] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: To like there's not a lot of people who can afford to be somewhere for a year and pay that. So I think they've also just had to do that where it's like some of their income is insurance based and others they are able to get private pay.
[06:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I would like to think that they would take insurance for more situations if insurance would freaking pay, right? But insurance is the worst. That's a whole nother tangent for another day. But they don't pay. They don't even pay know, short just it's really an abomination. Yeah. So anyway, getting back to the movie, we have an all star cast. So Winona Ryder is playing Susanna, the main character. We have Angelina Jolie playing Lisa, the woman with sociopathy. She won an Academy Award for this role. I think Winona Ryder did too. Or maybe she was nominated. I can't remember. We have Whoopi Goldberg playing Valerie, the nurse. Elizabeth Moss playing Polly, the girl who was a burned victim from childhood. Clea duvall is played. Georgina susanna's roommate.
[07:12] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And she is in the show Veep.
[07:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: That I really love. I haven't seen it before, but I've heard really good.
[07:17] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I was like, oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh, it's her. Yeah, I couldn't believe it.
[07:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: And then we had Brittany Murphy, who played Daisy. Who. That's just a tragic death and weird circumstances on its own. But I loved her, and I loved her roles in the then we had Jared Leto, who knew? Playing Toby.
[07:36] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I was like, who? Before I looked at the cast list, I was like, who is that? Why does he look so familiar? I couldn't believe it. So young.
[07:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know.
[07:43] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like a baby.
[07:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: They all look so young. And then we have Jeffrey Tambor playing Dr. Melvin Potts, her first psychiatrist. And then we see Vanessa Redgrave playing Dr. Wick, the female psychiatrist. And there's a lot of other characters too, but those are just some of the main heavy hitters.
[08:01] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
[08:02] Dr. Katrina Furey: So what did you think, Portia, about the opening?
[08:07] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: A little confusing. I mean, I was like, Is this present know? And then I was confused because it starts with her in the hospital, right, getting her stomach pumped.
[08:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: Then I think the very first thing is you see, like, a broken light bulb in a syringe, and the girl's like, in the psych hospital, and you're like, what's going on? And then it flashes.
[08:24] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So then she wakes up.
[08:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I was like, okay.
[08:27] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So was that a flashback? Was that a memory? Is her stomach getting pumped real? I was confused with those two first scenes.
[08:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, totally. And I wonder I would imagine that was kind of intentional. And then we see her being pretty aggressively restrained. We see the tube down her throat, I think, pumping her stomach. And my first thought was, what did she overdose on? This looks like they're trying to treat her for an overdose. And then someone screams out, oh, she's a wristbanger. I was like, what does that mean? And she said something about, there's no bones in my hand. And I was like, what is going on here? But I think it did give a pretty good snapshot into her mental state at that point in time. I was like, okay, she's overdosed on something that's dangerous enough where they have to aggressively pump her stomach. Now, we can't wait. We have to hold her down before we even get a sedative in her. Maybe back then they didn't even really have sedatives. Honestly, I'm not sure when things like Adivan and stuff were invented. And that thing about not having bones in her hand made me think, is she psychotic? Is she not? What's going on? Then we see her lock eyes with that man in the hallway, who we later learn is, like, her dad's colleague who's married, and she's had some sort of sexual relationship with him. And then she's pretty quickly seeing a psychiatrist in his home. You see her looking out the door, seeing his family and looking out the window and seeing her mom unpacking a suitcase. And I was like, Uhoh, yeah.
[10:04] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And still does happen. But I think it was more common in the past with these kind of, like, voluntary, but involuntary getting someone to treatment. Right. So it's like, whether you're an adolescent, and it's not voluntary at all, and your parents are taking you there, so it's under their voluntary, but not telling them where they're going. So, hey, we're going to go for a car ride. They don't know their suitcases packed, and then we're taking you to treatment. Or the horror stories of those wilderness camps where you're, like, abducted in the middle of the night. I was kind of thinking of that with Susanna being an adult. Right. It's like, in my head, I'm like, at any time, she can kind of.
[10:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: Back out of this. Well, can she? It turns out she couldn't. Right.
[10:45] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That was also my question was, why.
[10:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: Was it different in the so I don't know the full rules, but I do know that a lot of things they depicted in terms of getting her to the hospital don't happen these days. So she's seeing this psychiatrist. So an old white man, by the way, and he doesn't do this anymore. He very readily volunteers that way to instill confidence in your patient. I thought he was very shaming. I didn't like the way he spoke to her. He was not connecting with her. It was very clear she was, like, a bother to him in that the way he was saying, like, I'm just doing this as a favor to your dad. Why are you doing this to everyone around you? I just thought it was awful. What a terrible way to treat someone who is just clearly attempted suicide, even if she's saying, I always just had a headache. I didn't mean to take that much. It's clear what was going on. And then he just puts her in a cab and trusts the cab driver to take her to the psychiatric hospital. Okay. Yeah. Okay.
[11:49] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That's his responsibility.
[11:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: We 100% don't do that. If you need to send someone to the psychiatric hospital, hopefully you can talk with them and talk with their family and come up with a plan where they're on board. That's the ideal way, right, to sort of have their family bring them, and they're voluntarily seeking help. Sometimes people aren't willing to go and they need to go for their safety. And that's when, at least in the state of Connecticut, a psychiatrist can involuntarily hospitalize someone by signing what's called the Physician's Emergency Certificate or a PEC form. There's only two conditions in our state where you can basically take away someone's civil liberties by saying you have to be institutionalized against your will. That would be if you are an imminent threat to yourself or someone else. So in terms of like suicidality or homicidal threats or if you are so gravely disabled from your mental illness that there is fear of your being able to survive without immediate intervention. So people who unfortunately have something like a psychotic disorder, who aren't eating, who are harming themselves in some way but might not realize it like if they have diabetes and aren't taking their insulin, things like that. But it has to be really severe in order for you to be able to check that box. You can't check it for things like substance abuse. That's a different type of involuntary commitment and that one's really hard to get.
[13:12] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: You can also send people involuntarily to the hospital just for the eval. You know what I mean? Like cops can do that.
[13:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: You're right. Sometimes people will voluntarily sign themselves in. Once you do that, though, you can't voluntarily sign yourself out. Usually the team does have to kind of be in agreement that you're ready to leave. If not, then they could petition the courts to then involuntarily commit you to sort of see out your treatment. But it's not like, for two years anymore.
[13:44] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. So we learn later in the movie. But that Lisa has been there for eight years.
[13:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: Not surprising, right, given her personality pathology. And it seems like she frequently elopes, which is the fancy word to say.
[13:59] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: You know, my question was just thinking about is she making herself known? Is she kind of coming back? Is she presenting in a hospital somewhere? Like, how are they finding her?
[14:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. Are they finding her or is she finding them? Does she have some sort of tie of dependency to the institution that's been taking care of her? Because it seems like she's like the leader in some ways. Right. And I thought that I mean, what were your thoughts, Portia, of Angelina Jolie's depiction of Lisa with antisocial personality disorder?
[14:27] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I thought it was good because you can see how those people can kind of suck others in yes.
[14:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: That charming.
[14:37] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And appear really interesting and powerful and fun and light and it's almost like they know what you need. So she was all these things to different people.
[14:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes. And then knows also how to get under people's skin. Like we see with Daisy in a really sinister way.
[14:57] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Oh, yeah. Like horrific. I mean, I didn't really, I guess, get the flair of oh, my. Like, I really don't like her. She's horrible. Until that moment.
[15:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. Right.
[15:10] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Until the because she doesn't let it go. It wasn't just like, oh, I kind of threw this out there. Maybe someone may do that. I'm thinking maybe who has, like, a borderline personality disorder. They're kind of pushing the limits a little bit, but take it that far is not typical, right?
[15:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I thought at first in seeing her on the screen, I thought she was depicting Bpd because she comes in very provocative. You can tell, like, the staff is all up in arms, right? Like, Nurse Valerie, played by Whoopi Goldberg, I think is helping Susanna settle in and then gets some kind of someone comes in, like, whispers in her ear, like and then you see all the staff is ah. Some of the patients there get really nervous, but then some of them are excited to see her again. I think that actually displayed the concept of splitting really well. That these types of patients tend to rile people up. And some people are on the good side, some are on the bad side. And then you pit them against each other.
[16:05] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Really manipulative.
[16:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: Really manipulative. And so at first, I thought that was the type of character she was portraying until the movie went on. And you'd see her get under people's skin and then not let go. And you could sense she got off on that. Even in the rolling chair when she steals the nurse's pen and has it at her throat with that sort of suicidal gesture. You got the sense they've done this before. You knew that this nurse had opened.
[16:32] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Up to her, which huge red flag.
[16:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: Don't do that.
[16:37] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And also, though, it's like that is most likely to happen with that kind of a patient, 100%. They're really good at getting under your.
[16:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: Skin and getting you to open up to feel safe and comfortable. This is how serial killers abduct people. This is how it happens. So I thought she did an amazing job portraying both sides of that. Like, both the charming, fun, playful nature that attracts people and then that sinister, manipulative, sadistic side.
[17:07] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I mean, not being impacted by Daisy's death. So, like, Susanna is very appropriate reaction. And again, I'm saying this like, ha ha. But even someone with a personality disorder.
[17:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: It'S like, yeah, because she has appropriate.
[17:25] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Emotions that maybe are extreme. But like, wow, you see someone who a dead body, someone who's hanging very disturbing. And you have this emotional reaction because you're a human with you know, Lisa.
[17:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: Is not she takes her money and she goes I think, again, that was just such smart writing and depiction. I guess I was reading that didn't actually happen. Like, they didn't escape together. I was reading a little bit on Wikipedia about the author's take on this movie and I think she actually didn't love it. But there were some things that didn't actually happen like that scene. So whether it happened or not, I hope it didn't for daisy's Sake. But it was really smart writing to portray these two women who are both struggling psychiatrically, but with different personality flavors. And I think you do see some overlap between the Bpd and ASPD antisocial personality disorder, which, again, are all under the same cluster of personality development, like the provocative nature, the splitting, the intense mood swings, the all or nothing way of thinking and feeling and relating to people. But you see how antisocial personality disorder is different, right?
[18:36] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: There's lacking empathy, there's lacking people with Bpd can relate to others. They do experience emotions appropriately and sometimes extreme. It's not a lack of in most cases, it's intense.
[18:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: Exactly.
[18:48] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Too many emotions.
[18:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. It's a very intense emotions for the situation, but you still experience them. And they're not always, quote unquote, too intense. Sometimes they're totally accurate. But even, like, the scene with Susanna and Valerie where Susanna's in the bathtub, and she says awful things to thought. I don't know about you, but I felt like that was the scene where I really saw the Bpd side of Susanna. Kind of like until then, I was like, I don't really know if I buy that she has this diagnosis or if she's just, like, a struggling. Like, maybe it's a little too early to diagnose her with something like this, but then she really throws out, like, racial slurs, really derogatory things. Because I think Valerie was trying to connect with her. And I think for someone with Bpd, that feels very scary. Right. It's like you crave attachment, and you also fear it because you might lose it. So I felt like that was her trying to push her away in a really extreme way. And then later, though, you see that Susanna has a lot of remorse and guilt for what she said, whereas someone like Lisa would not. Daisy's character as well, is very you.
[20:04] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Know, I think there's a lot there. I think also, if we're going on what Lisa said is true, which sounded like her dad was molesting her for.
[20:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: And again, like, no one else had kind of brought that up. And I do feel like people with sociopathic traits have this uncanny ability to sniff these things out and pull them out. Right. I don't know how, but they do. They can sense this stuff and pull it out and really dig at you. Yeah.
[20:34] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: We didn't know that until that scene where she was kind of pushed over the edge. But she talked about being wealthy a lot. It seemed like she was abusing laxatives. They were kind of trading colase for Valium, which can happen at residential or inpatient places. That's why you're typically supposed to show your mouth. You lift your tongue, move it around to show that you're not tonguing meds.
[21:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. Or cheeking them or throwing them up afterwards before they've been metabolized. Yeah.
[21:07] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So that's a part that's just I mean, it can happen, and it is.
[21:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: What it is, but it does happen.
[21:12] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: The trading is just so unhelpful, right? Because it's like you don't know what drugs you're trading something for that then you're taking could be interacting with something else that your prescriber is giving you that they don't know that you're doing this. Very dangerous do not do thought. And maybe you can speak on this a little bit. It was interesting, which I know would never happen.
[21:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[21:30] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So before she's seen by a medical and I'm talking about Susannah before she's evaluated or sees any psychiatrist, she's already taking medication and they're giving her laxative. Why?
[21:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: I thought they were giving her sleeping pill at first. Well, I guess they also give her choli. Right?
[21:45] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Well, anyway, but any medication.
[21:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. So there were definitely, I would say, some positive elements of the movie about the way they depicted mental health treatment back at that time. As it was. It could be at these beautiful institutions where you would have, like, a nurse's station. Then the patients would have their rooms. There'd be a common area. There would be other rooms like the art room, the music room, stuff like that. I think even nowadays, at more residential type places, you try to have that stuff so that during the day, you're not just sitting around, there's some therapeutic intervention. Right. So that I thought was pretty positive and spot probably, I would imagine McLean still might kind of look like that. The things that I thought were not great was that, like you said, she didn't see a psychiatrist at all and she's already taking medication. Like, that doesn't happen nowadays, and she.
[22:34] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Wasn'T already on it.
[22:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. It's not like they were continuing what she was on. But even for that, if you're admitted to a psychiatric hospital and you get to the unit at 03:00 in the morning, there's a psychiatrist on staff who will at least come and do a physical exam. Listen to your heart, listen to your lungs, check your blood pressure.
[22:52] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: You're getting labs.
[22:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: You're getting labs done. Maybe you need an EKG just because they might have hurts like a murmur or you're on a medication, they want to make sure that your heart is functioning okay, especially her, who just had a recent overdose. And then you go through like, do you have any allergies? What other medications do you take? Do you have any dietary preferences? Nowadays they also ask you what are your pronouns? All of this stuff happens the second you hit the floor. It doesn't wait till the morning. You might not meet your primary treater and get into the therapy side of things at 03:00 in the morning, but you would have that done, and you would talk about what medications they were going to prescribe or not and why and why. So I didn't like that. And you can't force anyone to take medication. That's the other thing that was inaccurate and made me upset, is like when susannah would express, like, I don't want to take this. You can't force them. That is totally coarse. If you can't do that, you need a court order to give anyone medication, which sometimes you do have to apply for, and sometimes it is granted. Like, if you have a patient with really severe chronic schizophrenia who needs their injectable antipsychotic to maintain wellness, that gets really tricky. But for stool softener, no one's forcing you to take a stool softener, okay? And like you said, they do like, tongue and cheek checks and make sure you are taking your medication. And they depicted that sometimes, but not all the time. But yeah, the chicken carcasses. What do you think about that? Interesting.
[24:20] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I mean, it seemed like she does like, purge, right? So either laxative use or there was some alluding to maybe some binging, like some little bit of bulimia both at the unit and then when she was in her apartment. That made me think that again, I mean, I'm going very loosely making that diagnosis. I also would say that the other patient on the unit who appears to have anorexia, which the weird comment of she's like, yelling about wanting her clothes, and then the nurse says, then you'll have to eat something, does not happen.
[24:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: Now you can't manipulate people to eat.
[24:52] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And also that's typically why there are now so many separate units. It's very unhelpful and doesn't happen frequently to have eating disorder patients within a general psych population. They are, I think, inpatient like, in a hospital can go to like a medical but even then there are very specific and I think there's really only like a couple in the country, but there's a Cute out west, and then there is Walden and McLean out east, where they have inpatient units specifically for that. Because I think it's so important for staff to be trained in a very specific way.
[25:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: I did think some of the stuff they portrayed, like not giving you your clothes until you eat doesn't happen. Other stuff, though, that they portrayed, like her exercising all the time on the unit, super accurate. And that's one of the things that the staff get trained in is like, being able to pick up these subtle ways of exercising in an attempt to burn calories and things like that.
[25:53] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Well, a lot of patients will share that if they are admitted into a general hospital and they do have primary ed, it's often like the worst time, which, again, is probably for many different reasons. One, they're so medically compromised. Two, this is like the beginning of the long road of often. Then maybe you're switching to an inpatient ed unit and then residential and then PHP and then IOP. There is some controversy in the community with the ethics around tube feeding. There's even more controversy within it if you are being tubed placing and pulling same day or for each meal to get you off the tube, they want you to eat, and typically you're tubed if you're really malnourished or if you're refusing. Again, I don't think they can make you without a court order, but they'll do that if you're refusing.
[26:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, I think that gets really tricky. And it's probably when they call for a capacity evaluation where a psychiatrist I would believe a medical doctor could do it too. Medical doctor being like internal medicine, someone who's not a psychiatrist, but still a physician would evaluate, does this patient have the capacity to refuse meals when they're this malnourished? Or is that malnourishment causing impaired cognitive what is the ethical decision of like can you make this decision knowing it's going to hasten your death or not? I mean, that's probably a huge ethical.
[27:18] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And there was a case and the judge sided with the patient and the patient went on to die. They went into hospice. Just it's really horrible. Do not recommend. But these places are there for you because you are that know, you really need support. So anyway, Janet should be, I think, in a more specialized unit where she's getting meal coaching other than just being threatened or withholding other things.
[27:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[27:45] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think there were some eating disorder places around Renfrew's really old. They started in Philadelphia. They're all over now, but they're like the oldest big center for eating disorder. So if they were open then she should have been there. I think she probably would have gotten better care and more specialized care. So she should transfer if it opens soon.
[28:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: Well, and I'm just thinking too, back in that time, in the mid sixty s, I feel like a lot of the treatment was still very psychoanalytic. Right. So I don't know how much about.
[28:16] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Your mother, let's lie down and talk about your mom.
[28:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: And as a psychodynamic, psychotherapist I so fully believe in, there's huge connections cases in certain instances. Right.
[28:30] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But we need meal coaching, we need behavioral treatment, which often is DBT, and we absolutely need but I will say, too, like at that level of care, it's really hard, I think, when you're also that malnourished to exactly do that.
[28:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's what I was going to say. Right. Like at the right time for the right patients. I feel like back then and again, I don't know, I wasn't alive in the 60s, but I feel like that's what everyone got.
[28:54] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
[28:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: And maybe that was like all we really had back then. We didn't really have the antipsychotics and stuff were just starting to come out. Maybe like CBT, DBT, these things, I don't think they were really out there yet. So yeah, I would imagine Janet was getting substandard care based on today's standards. And then it's like, well, I think Susannah was getting really good care based on today's standards. The difference in the comparison is really interesting.
[29:23] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I wanted to just if you haven't listened yet, check out our episode on Shutter Island. Because that was in, I think, around the same late fifty s the mid to early 50s. So that's not that far off from this movie. Maybe, though, ten years can make a difference. However, I think this is also, again, like a private institution versus a forensic state forensic unit. Right.
[29:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: But you're right, it's really interesting to sort of watch both of those and kind of compare and contrast them and they do get some of the historical points accurate. And I feel like back in the 60s, again, that was when a lot of these hospitals were being shut down in an effort to have people be treated in the community. Which again, is like, great, let's do it. But the money to actually do it, guys.
[30:08] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, no, totally. That's a huge problem. Anyway, there was a lot of other things wrong, like the orderly having oh.
[30:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: My God, sexual relations. Even like them allowing her to make out or have sex with her boyfriend. No, you're not letting when people come to visit you, you don't just get to go behind closed doors and have a conjugal visit.
[30:27] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It's like a therapy session or you're playing a game. It's out in the open visiting time.
[30:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: There's boundaries, especially for a patient like her. And how did the girls keep escaping and going to the basement all the time? There's people on staff overnight. The room check thing was accurate. You do come in and do checks at first, they are every 15 minutes. So I think that's really disruptive to your sleep. And we know how important sleep is to your mental health.
[30:51] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So I've done checks. I only had to do one, thank goodness, because I'm not an overnighter gal. But when I worked at a residential, I did get mandated to stay once overnight. And having to do ten minute checks on a new patient, because typically when they're new, they're on the highest level of watch.
[31:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[31:10] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So it just sucks, a, because I wasn't used to being on night shift, but yeah, it's really hard to do as an employee or as a mental health professional. And then also, I'm sure the patient didn't love it either, right.
[31:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: Because they're not just like opening the door to see if you're there. They have to make sure you're safe. Right. So if you're turned and facing the wall and sleeping, they have to shine the light in your eye, make sure not only are you breathing, but you're not hoarding some sort of weapon or things like that. So that actually was accurate. But then I was like, if they're doing the checks, there's no one in the hallways. That's just not how it happens. I don't think they would have been able to escape. I thought this scene with them all reading their files was fascinating. And to me, it kind of reminds me of like, nowadays when patients have access to their notes and stuff like that, and how that is interesting and I think different for someone reading their note from their primary care annual physical and their therapy work. Right. What were your thoughts about all that?
[32:11] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, I think we talked about this in another episode, but I'm going to bring it up again. You're supposed to write your note like there's a lawyer on one shoulder and the patient on the other. So I think though, with more electronic medical records and with more open chart things like we have my chart here, maybe that's international, maybe it's national. It's basically where you can log in, send a message to your provider, look at your lab work, et cetera, schedule appointments, also see the notes. And so there are some questions around is it helpful or not for that to be in the mental health world? And is there like a level of notes that should be shared versus not what's helpful?
[32:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: What do you think?
[32:52] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think that patients should absolutely have access to treatment plans. I think that having access to all of your notes all the time, reading them on your own, is unhelpful. I totally agree. I think if you need to see the notes, you should be going over them with the provider so you can explain things. So if there's any questions or context, they can ask questions and not feel any kind. It shouldn't be negative. And they might be like, oh, well, what is that? What did that mean? And then you're there to explain exactly what that meant.
[33:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. I think, though, kind of like these women reading their files, it can be jarring. I don't think I'd want to read my psychological assessment of myself by myself. I feel like that's like really I.
[33:43] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Think it's more damaging it can be.
[33:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I think it can really damage the therapeutic alliance with your provider too, because not everything you're observing the patient's going to see and that's going to.
[33:55] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Be it might not be ready to see.
[33:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[33:57] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I'll just say too, just for clarity, we're not talking **** about you in your notes, we're writing things from our perspective, from our professional perspective of what's happening. Sometimes maybe we're wrong too, interpreted something wrong. So it's really for documenting purposes, it's for billing.
[34:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
[34:17] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And sometimes we might not do it perfectly. So I think that's I would lead.
[34:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: With that preference and I think with, again, notes and stuff like that being more and more open, I feel like they've just become less and less helpful. I guess you leave so much out and you just have to keep it in your head, right, that it's kind of unfortunate. I do find myself being like, well, if this person ever read this, how would they feel about this? And I do think that can go both ways. On the one hand, I think it can help you remain not compassionate, but help you stay in a neutral space. And a lot of times be mindful of your own unconscious biases and be like, well, why am I putting this word in? Does it really need to be there or not? And on the negative side, it can make you withhold things that really should be there, but you're worried about if they read it before they're ready, how is that going to affect them? How will that affect our therapeutic alliance and their future treatment? And is that worth it?
[35:23] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right?
[35:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: Is that potential negative effect worth it? It's real tricky.
[35:27] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It is. No, I totally agree. It's nuanced. I think most providers feel the same way we do.
[35:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: But I did think how interesting that this film, filmed decades ago, based on a time even further in the past, is still, like, on the pulse with something really active, like, in the mental health field presently. And I also thought it amazingly depicted how mental health providers really struggle to tell people their directly. It seems like none of these girls really knew, what am I here for? What am I being treated for? Some of them did. They were like, oh, Elisa, you're a sociopath. We all know know. But, like, Susanna being like, borderline personality disorder? What is that?
[36:19] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then when she's in her family therapy session, she's like, what is that? And apparently the doctor's been telling her parents, but not her.
[36:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right? And she is an adult. This isn't like a 14 year old. And especially, I don't know about you, Portia, but I feel like in the mental health field, we tiptoe around this diagnosis, and so we're so hesitant to talk about it and share it with people. And why do you think that is?
[36:44] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think because societally, there are negative connotations with it. And I think that at least that's my discomfort sometimes. Versus I think the more we accurately diagnose people who have Borderline and talk about it, the better care they will get, because then we know the treatment plan and they can get better. We have more than people to participate in studies, there's more research. I think we really should be accurately diagnosing the disorder and also teaching clients about it and giving them education is, like, best practice. But I think in our society, like, Bpd has a lot of negative even I think it's even, like, joked about, you're crazy, and it's females. Obviously, we're careful of that, but I think ultimately, it does more damage, not sharing or being, for sure, hesitant. But again, diagnosing someone with a personality disorder does not happen immediately. One assessment, you're getting there with tons of data and information, and over time, it's like, you're probably there, right?
[37:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: Let's just call it what it is, right? But yeah, I think that reminds me of, like, early on in the movie. I think it's in this scene when she's reading her file and she sees a cluster of diagnoses at the beginning. I can't remember what they were. Do you remember what they were. Yeah, they're not accurate today anymore. We call them different things now.
[38:09] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So it says Psychoneurotic Depressive Reaction, personality Pattern Disturbance resistant, mixed type, and then undifferentiated schizophrenia.
[38:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: Those were yeah. And then all of a sudden, at the bottom, it's like, final diagnosis borderline Personality disorder. So can you imagine? Again, it's like, okay, she's reading all these words. Like, even as a psychiatrist, I don't understand what those early diagnosis mean because we don't use them anymore. They're a lot of big words that are confusing. So it's really hard for her to make sense of, like, what does that mean? And she goes and grabs it, looks like a DSM or something, and starts reading about it and is, like, all up in arms. And I just think, what a sad way for her to find out and then to also hear it in the family therapy where her parents know before she knows, but we're all keeping it.
[38:55] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Quiet, like talk about it.
[38:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I think I loved when she said borderline of what? Like, what does that mean? And, you know, the way I was taught to think about it and where I think the phrase comes from. And again, I will say I don't love that we call certain things personality disorders. I feel like even that phrase is really stigmatizing. I don't know of a better one, though.
[39:21] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So much of we find in patients who have borderline personality disorder, there typically is some sort of attachment trauma.
[39:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
[39:28] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And so I would love for there to be a more specific trauma diagnosis other than PTSD or complex PTSD that talks more about attachment and how that then impacts relationships. I think that would be so much more helpful, better fit for people to understand.
[39:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right, 100%. And I think when we use the word borderline, I believe where it came from is, again, harkening back to those psychoanalytic days, which we see in this movie of thinking about what are the defense mechanisms different people with different illnesses tend to use to live with and cope with their illness. And when we think of people in broad strokes, we think of people falling into what we call, like, the neurotic realm of personality development. These are people with, like, anxiety disorders, OCD, things like that, eating disorders. And then we think on the other end of the spectrum are people with psychotic disorders who use different types of defense mechanisms that are disconnected from reality, whereas people with neurotic disorders are maybe like uber connected to reality or a little too in their head. Borderline falls in the middle, where you sort of display some neurotic defense mechanisms and some psychotic defense mechanisms that doesn't make sense to the average person. And even as I'm trying to explain it, it's really confusing. But these are patients she did say in the movie, which was accurate, with an unstable sense of self, unstable moods, like a lot of mood swings again, some safety concerns in the most severe cases, which we see with her right at the beginning. But, again, it's like what I also loved about this movie was when they captured her at this age because some of these personality traits, again, not the safety concerns, like, we'll put that over here on the side. But some of the other stuff, the big mood swings, the idealization devaluation, the splitting that is normal in development from when you're very young, like, born to as you're growing up into adolescence. And then as your brain matures and you mature, you're able to sort of hold on to good and bad feelings and thoughts simultaneously. But that takes time. It does. And so a lot of people are also really hesitant to make this diagnosis, I hope, in a teenager or young adult, until you really see these traits and these issues sort of being persistent and present across all different facets of someone's life and over a long period of time. Otherwise, it does raise the question of is this just quote, unquote, like normal adolescent angst, like the suicide attempt? No, but some of her questions to Dr. Wick, like, well, how many partners is promiscuous? And what is it for a man, like, totally trapped, right?
[42:21] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And for the time, just thinking of being in the think thinking of Susannah and then her mom, I would say probably very different expectations for how to behave. They talk the Vietnam War. There's a draft going on. So I think this is also just like, a very culturally changing time for so many behaviors might seem so unsafe besides the safety safety issues, like the promiscuity that they keep talking about to even the doctors, right? Because they're of that other generation as well, that maybe is having just more of that judgment or thinking it's more of a behavior than her. Just like right in the 60s as a young adult, like, expressing herself and her sexuality, right?
[43:02] Dr. Katrina Furey: And then it's like, well, yeah, and having sex with an older man who's married. Again, I felt like there was so much almost blame put on her. But it's like, what about him? Right?
[43:15] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: The mom are there at the ice cream store for that scene, and that wife and daughter come in, and Susanna susanna's trying to kind of hide herself initially. And then the mom sees her, comes over and is like, It's her fault. And it's also like, okay, but of course, right, like, you're so you're not blaming the adult in the situation, your husband, who's and, you know, she's single, she's young. Of course it's her fault, right?
[43:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: There's all these assumptions and a lot of blame on her. But it's like, what about him? And taking advantage of a younger girl. And again, not saying that there aren't cases where maybe the younger girl is more of the instigator, I guess you could say. But still, I was like, I see her point here.
[43:58] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Well, and then he was continuing to want to follow up, and she remember at the beginning like, no. And kind of shuts the door on him. So even that felt like it was a little bit more on him, or else it was going to be more on him. But at the ice cream scene, I do think that that is when Susanna does kind of or Lisa's actions to kind of save Susanna is where Susanna does really align with her, and that's how that then, you know, then Lisa gets her trust on her.
[44:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I think Lisa, with her sociopathic traits, can sniff out who's vulnerable. And I do think people with Bpd are vulnerable to attracting toxicity or finding themselves in these toxic relationships. Like, hearkening back to Tanya from White Lotus. As we're talking now, I'm wondering if that suicide attempt was somehow connected to that relationship with that man. Like if in some way she felt rejected and then attempted suicide. And if somehow, maybe the doctors knew that and we didn't quite hear that as a viewer. But that, to me would give more of more evidence for a true Bpd type of diagnosis where really the core inner wound and fear is related to attachment and feelings of abandonment or rejection are really hard to navigate, I think. As we wrap up, I wanted to just ask you, do you think Lisa would have actually been crying at the end? I did think her and the four point restraints were those are what restraints look like. Even these days, restraining someone is like the soul crushing thing that you have to do sometimes as a psychiatrist on inpatient units like this, when there's a real safety issue happening, we try to do it in the least restrictive way as possible. You do see another character earlier in the movie in a straitjacket. We really don't use those anymore, but what you saw depicted is what strait jackets looked like, and they were used back then. Do you think Lisa would have cried with Susanna's departure?
[45:57] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: If the tears were real, they would.
[45:59] Dr. Katrina Furey: Have to be about she's.
[46:03] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
[46:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't think she's feeling sad to lose her friend. I think she's being manipulative. The tears are real about her to make Susanna feel bad for saying all those things. I think that is what it is. But I don't think a true sociopath is capable of having tears or really know if someone's coming or going. Right.
[46:23] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I also think, just like to add to Lisa is that the reason that we wanted to deinstitutionalize people is because you can become institutionalized, where you get used to living in a state like that, which I would also say you're around trauma a lot, and chaos. It's scary setting things. So I think that also, after eight years, I would imagine changes someone, and.
[46:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: You become dependent on the institution.
[46:50] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like, why she's there, sure. But for her to be there for eight years, I think also must impact her everything. So I'm just curious, even just thinking about what has that done to her? That's why we like to keep people in the communities, in their communities. It is what's best when there are enough resources. So I think that's also just something to think about, like, how have the eight years been there for her, impacted her?
[47:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. It's kind of like what we see when people are in the criminal justice system for a long time, then they get released and they reoffend and come back. Sometimes they don't know how to survive anymore, like, outside of an institution like that.
[47:32] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: All right, well, thanks for joining us today. We hope that you enjoyed today's episode. If you did, please feel free to rate the episode with five stars and then check us out on Instagram at Analyze Scripts and TikTok at Analyze Scripts podcast. And we would love for you also to subscribe. We have gotten a little bit of a bump this week and we're really.
[47:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: Excited about it, so we do see.
[47:53] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Every subscriber add on. It brings us joy. So if you'd like to participate in.
[47:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: That, feel free and spread the news. All right, see you next Monday.
[48:00] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Thanks.
[48:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: Bye bye.
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[48:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: Unless you want to share it with your friends and rate, review and subscribe, that's fine.
[48:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings, or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time. Don't.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are thrilled to analyze Greta Gerwig's BILLION DOLLAR HIT "Barbie." We analyze the film's smart, timely, and campy explorations of femininity and masculinity. We loved exploring Barbie's evolution through a developmental lens and decided that therapists are basically "weird Barbies" helping our patients grow into their most authentic selves. We loved the sprinkling in of so many dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) principles, and the tender moments depicting evolving mother-daughter relationships. Plus, we could watch Ryan Gosling beach all day. We loved this movie and hope you enjoy this episode!
[00:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Furey, a psychiatrist.
[00:12] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker.
[00:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows.
[00:23] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends.
[00:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: There is so much misinformation out there and it drives us nuts.
[00:32] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like.
[00:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: With a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better.
[00:39] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn.
[00:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: And your DSM Five and enjoy. Welcome back to another episode of a podcast hosted by Two Wise Trees. If you didn't catch that reference, we are obviously talking about the new Greta Gerwig film, Barbie. And that was a line in the film at one point, and I just chuckled. Know, we have a podcast now and we're covering it. And we went to the movies all for this. And it was just funny.
[01:17] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And we are two trees basically rooted.
[01:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: Firmly into the ground.
[01:21] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Secure.
[01:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: Secure. Stable. Nourishing. With our branches.
[01:27] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Fruitful.
[01:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: Fruitful. Nice. With our branches just growing and blossoming into the sky where it takes us. I know it could have been a haiku. So anyway, we are really excited to talk about this film today. As it stands right now, we are filming or filming we are recording this episode in late July, and I checked the stats yesterday. Barbie has grossed already over $500 million worldwide.
[01:55] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That's incredible.
[01:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: Incredible. Especially because it's like double what Oppenheimer has grossed. We will also be covering that film a little later on. So that makes me really happy. Yeah, I was really excited when we went to the movies, Portia. And it was packed, packed, packed. Mostly women, but some men as well. And it was a matinee. We went at 01:00. And I just was like, see, Hollywood, you can make female driven material and you will still sell tickets.
[02:29] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Everyone was so excited. There was a ton of people wearing pink. It was just so fun. And I felt connected to people in theater.
[02:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know, right?
[02:38] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Which I feel like I've never well, I did when I saw the last Harry Potter.
[02:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: I was going to say Harry Potter.
[02:46] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Everyone was clapping, everyone dressed up. It was emotional.
[02:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: It was an experience. Right. And that's like the joy of going to the movies. And I think you had said to me that you hadn't seen a movie since before COVID and probably then two years before that. So long time. But totally, as you were saying that, it reminded me of when I would go see Harry Potter with my friends, like in high school and yeah, it was like a whole event. And this is totally what that felt like. We were a little bummed that there wasn't the Barbie box.
[03:17] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, I think it's because we weren't.
[03:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: In a major city.
[03:22] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. Or even just like a big mega theater, because I know some people who went in another part of our state and they did have the box, but it was like a big complex, like.
[03:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: Next to a mall, all that stuff. Yeah, well, it was still great.
[03:36] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I was bummed. Sorry.
[03:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: I did bring a couple of my daughter's Barbie dolls, which was an interesting thing to be carrying around as an adult woman. We went to lunch beforehand and we had them and it was just interesting, I'll put it that way. Content.
[03:52] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And it was silly, but we were probably the youngest people at lunch by like 30 years.
[03:59] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes, at a minimum. And I was just curious what they.
[04:01] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Were thinking 100%, because I don't think.
[04:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: It was on their radar that Barbie was coming up. Although maybe, but I don't think so. And then here I am, just slept around with some Barbie dolls in my purse and we're trying to take pictures of them with our drinks. And I did feel weird.
[04:18] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
[04:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: But you tell me this is what content is and we're really trying, and you held them.
[04:24] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I was like, yeah, it's fine. I'm not holding them.
[04:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: But they were cute.
[04:28] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That's funny. So, first impact of the movie, what did you immediately think? Leaving it, just feeling wise?
[04:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my gosh. Well, I mean, I think I was so excited for this movie because I had a feeling it wasn't going to be like Stereotypical Barbie, right. Just because Greta Gerwig was attached. And I had a feeling it was going to be really smart and kind of meta. And that was what I was hoping for, was it would be a commentary on the female experience. And I felt like they totally delivered. I just loved the opening. I loved all of it. But I really loved The Know, where they show all the little girls playing old fashioned dolls and playing mommy and all this stuff. And then all of a sudden there's this big Barbie in her swimsuit and they just start smashing the **** out of these baby dolls. And I just was like, all right, I'm going to like this movie right away. It caught. I just I don't know. I thought it was so campy and funny, but also really know. I cried at the end when Ruth and Stereotypical Barbie were talking and like, wanted to become human, and they were talking all about the complicated human experience. And she said the thing about mothers, stand still so their daughters can see how far they've come. That's when it got me. So I just felt everything and I want to see it again. I already want to see it again.
[05:58] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I thought about it a lot after we left.
[06:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: Me too.
[06:01] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I felt like all sorts of emotions, which I think was I wasn't expecting that. I thought it would be like touching, maybe, and silly. I thought I'd laugh and maybe cry. But I thought about it for the entire weekend. I do want to see it again and I was just really touched and really moved, thinking of different parts. I think that's also why I want to see it again, because I think I'll pick up on maybe some more things or some moments, some things that I didn't catch.
[06:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. Yeah. I mean, I am astounded by the writing and the dialogue and how it is just so I feel like just really spot on in exploring the female know, by going from Barbie world to the real world, then back to Barbie world and just the way it sort of touches on the idea of feminism. And I was really surprised that they did such a good job because I think Barbie is so polarizing and they sort of addressed it in a really direct way, but then also just addressed the complex human experience that comes from being a woman in today's world. And I just thought especially right now in the political climate with the overturning of Roe versus Wade, it's just so great, I guess, to have something in your face on the screen that the masses are consuming. Right. I just really loved, you know, this.
[07:27] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Movie has been being worked on for years and so one of the things I thought was kind of funny was the Supreme Court justices all being female and then in real life, Supreme Court Justices making some decisions that would probably not happen in Barbie land.
[07:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right, exactly. And just it was so the it was just so witty and humorous, but so spot on. And I just am always so impressed, know, writers, directors, actors can really do like I feel like that's really hard, but is like a really smart way of using a mature defense mechanism, humor, to explore really difficult, complex, gritty issues. Right. And so for them to be able to do that also in such a visually appealing, campy, fun way was just really smart. I feel like there will be college classes analyzing this movie.
[08:32] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: No, I agree. That's a good so I noticed a little flavor of dialectical behavioral therapy in something that Greta Gerwig had said in an interview that she said about the movie. So I'm going to read it. I'm interested in how life is complicated and messy and that there is nothing that's either or either good or bad, but it's mostly both. It can be all these things at once. And I think that is a what you said before and kind of narrates the human experience.
[09:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[09:01] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It's like everything we feel, all these emotions, everyone will experience know, excitement. And it's like that was that end scene where she's like, you just have to feel and it's like everything it's so overwhelming, right.
[09:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: And also just so overwhelming to see stereotypical Barbie or Margot Robbie's character, right. Main Barbie, see that evolution, right. From feeling just good at the beginning. Like in Barbie.
[09:27] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Everything's perfect.
[09:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: Everything's perfect. And that's it. That's all, you know, to starting to realize something's off, like when her feet are flat, to becoming human and choosing that life. Right? Whereas initially, she wanted to go back to where things were just all good and everything was perfect. And then eventually she came to see, like, no, actually, I do want that richer experience. So as we were in the movie, I was jotting down some quotes because I'm a reporter, I guess you could say. And so some of these quotes that they said, I think, really speak to what you're saying. Portia when Margot Robbie said something like that felt achy but good. I think she was trying to describe crying and sadness. And at one point, she's and the release, the release of it, and she was I i just started crying. Like, first one tear came, then a whole lot came, I think, as people are trying to talk to her about what it's like to be human and she's really scared of change, I feel like, is everyone or just people with anxiety?
[10:26] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think everyone is.
[10:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think everyone. And then if you have an anxiety disorder that's probably a little higher or you might feel that a little more deeply, but at some point, someone says to her that's all life is, is change. And she says, that's terrifying. And I was like, whoa.
[10:42] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
[10:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: I was like but I just loved watching her evolution and becoming a human and that whole video montage of women and their children and just women over life. And I guess I was reading that comes from the casting crew. Those are all, like, home movies. How beautiful.
[11:03] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I've watched that scene, obviously, I guess, Pirated online, like, multiple times where she's crying.
[11:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: I have to emotionally prepare to rewatch it.
[11:12] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. So like you've mentioned before, when Margot Robbie stereotypical Barbie is in Barbie land, at the beginning, it's all very happy, right? Like, Good morning, Barbie. Morning, Barbie.
[11:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: Morning, Barbie.
[11:24] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like, you know, everyone's smiling. Everything is working perfectly. The outfits are immaculate and stunning, and I want them all in my you know, you see her kind of getting up for the day, getting ready, going, everything's falling into place.
[11:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: I did love that there was, like, no water. There's nothing in her cup. It's just so funny. It's like she is the doll, right? And she's being played with. It's just, like, so funny.
[11:45] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: No, that's so true. Because later we right. Like, the milk goes sour, and then when she's in the real world, the water goes all over and she's like.
[11:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, I'm not used to anything coming out of that yet. When she was talking to Will Ferrell as the CEO of Mattel, that was funny. Yeah. But what was your thought from the get go of seeing all the Barbies?
[12:04] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It seemed really joyful and peaceful and like everyone's just saying what they think everyone's saying it in a kind way, but right when we see the scene in the Oval Office when somebody's complimenting someone else, they're not like, saying thank you or oh, no, that's not true. They're just saying, like, yeah, I worked hard, right.
[12:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: When the Barbie won the Nobel Priest prize, she was like, I deserve this. I thought that was really interesting, too. There's a lot of diversity in the cast in terms of race, nationality, skin color, body type. Less so with body type, but it was there. I loved midge. I loved how they did pull in these random Barbies from the past that probably none of us have heard of but really did exist. And they were so funny.
[12:54] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like midge, the pregnant Barbie, total tongue in cheek because they're like calling out themselves, which everyone who was on the film, including Will Ferrell, I think he was like, this looks like a great script, but Mattel's never going to let us do this, right? And they did, and it was so like, I think what a huge risk that paid off for Mattel to let them kind of be poked fun at. And ultimately, I think it really landed well for them. Right?
[13:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: But I just thought that was totally and so we had like midge, the pregnant Barbie, and they were like, oh, she didn't sell well.
[13:30] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Pregnant dolls are just weird.
[13:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: And then we had Alan played by.
[13:34] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Michael Stera, who just right.
[13:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: I guess it was like Ken's friend, who also didn't really sell well. But you see him just like popping in and out here and there and he's so funny.
[13:43] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: There was a know, I think, hint maybe of that, like he could have been like a gay character. He also seemingly, at least throughout the film, it was very clear that he was like an ally to the Barbies. So I just thought that was clever. And I also just love his. I love Michael Cera.
[14:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know.
[14:01] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So funny.
[14:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: He's so funny.
[14:02] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then I thought another risk that they kind of called out, but again, it landed in a really good way, was weird Barbie.
[14:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right?
[14:09] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So, like, weird Barbie had been played with really know, haircut dyed, which I think everyone can relate to Barbie.
[14:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: I was surprised there was only one weird Barbie and all these other normal Barbies, but again, I thought that was so funny and how they were able to start telling the story about how these Barbies are like being played with. There is this connection between Barbie land and the children playing with the Barbies in the real world.
[14:34] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yes. And Kate McKinnon's. Hilarious. I love that she's always stuck in splits, which again, you do that with your just I don't know how they got that so right. Of course, because people played with Barbies who wrote the Barbie movie. But that was the stuff that I was just laughing at and then them, like, whispering, like, weird barbie, like, you don't want to be like her, but if you were down, you have to go see her.
[14:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right? So then they were kind of mean. Right? So in Barbie land, it's all, like, kind of perfect, but very superficial.
[15:02] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But if you're not perfect, then you're like othered.
[15:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I feel like isn't that the major criticism of Barbie? Right, that she has this unattainable body type and makes little girls feel bad about themselves? Right? Right. And so that sort of is already touching on that in a really smart way. And then when Margot Robbie's Barbie, she loses her high heel feet, they become flat, and she starts falling, and everything's starting to go wrong and she doesn't like it, then she has to go see Weird Barbie. And here I feel like if we really zoom out and think about Margot Robbie's development in this film as being parallel to the psychological development from childhood to adulthood I feel like when she first goes to see Weird Barbie and is presented with the two shoes, the stiletto or the birkenstock, which I thought was hilarious I feel like that is Toddlerhood. It's like one or the other, right? She can't integrate both yet whereas at the very end, when she's fully actualized and a full mature human, she's wearing pink birkenstocks, right? So it's like, even just this silly but concrete way of depicting incorporating both elements into your personality as Weird Barbie is trying to tell her, like, no, you got to pick the birkenstock and go to the real world. I felt like it was like negotiating with a toddler, like, presenting them with a choice, but there's really not a yep. And I was just like, this is perfect. We see her as being in the all good land, having some negative feelings. I died laughing. When they're like, at the dance party, she's like, do you guys ever think about dying? And everyone stops and she's like, oh, just kidding. But she's starting to dance or something. Yeah, it was so perfect. And then she doesn't know what to do with these negative things, so she has to go to Weird Barbie, who's giving her this choice, but it's not really a choice. And then she's on this quest to the real world. And I was just like, oh, my God. This fascinating.
[17:05] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It's also why we can't ignore, right? Like, when things aren't going well, right? Ignore anxiety. You can't ignore poor family dynamics. You can't ignore a mood disorder brewing. Like, you have to kind of go see someone. I am Weird Barbie. You come see me. So are you. And we then sit in it with you. Sitting it with you. We go on this journey with you. It's so beautiful so that you can be well and then make a choice at the end that is authentic to you. Authentic. And then you are like, your best self, which means you experience all emotions. That doesn't mean that you're perfect and you're never sad.
[17:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know. Or that you never feel anxiety again, or you never feel sadness again. 100%. And even thinking about that portia the journey to the real world, how they have to go in the little car and then on a spaceship in the camper, she goes in all of her Barbie vehicles. I thought that was so cute. But also, if we're staying with this theme, that we are the Weird Barbie. As the Therapist Barbie, you do go on a journey, right, to try to become your most authentic self, your most well self. Which, again, doesn't mean you never have bad days or episodic episodes of difficult feelings and stuff like that. But you do kind of go on this journey. What did you think of Ken in Barbie land initially?
[18:36] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So if the Barbies were one dimensional already in that land, like, the KENS are I don't even know, like zero one dimension, where are they?
[18:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right? Where do they live?
[18:53] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Where do they sleep at night? No one knows.
[18:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: No one cares.
[18:56] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: No one knows. But I would say that I thought it was so funny how so much of what Barbie said impacted, you know, Ken number. Gosling.
[19:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: Really?
[19:05] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Really? It seems like, likes, loves I don't know, Barbie.
[19:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's unclear. Is it genuine, or does he just feel like that's what his role to play?
[19:14] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So she gives him some feedback, right? That's, like, positive. And he's like he lights right up.
[19:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: He's like, really? Wow.
[19:20] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: His whole day is made. His whole life is made. And then he tries to show off even more for her, which I think is also kind of like a real life thing. Sometimes we get a little over our heads trying to impress someone, like when.
[19:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: They'Re at the dance scene, but then all the KENS come in and start dancing, and he feels really threatened.
[19:37] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then the beach scene where he goes into the rock wave, and then all the Barbies come and they help him, and then he's fixed right away.
[19:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: Which, again, it's like Barbie land.
[19:47] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: You just snap their leg back into place, and they're know. Ken. Ken's were just like I was curious how they were going to fit in or how it was going to become more in depth or important to the story. It felt, like, really silly and just, again, kind of like flat, like no dimension, which I think is what Ken.
[20:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: Brings to the table in original Barbie land. Right? He's just the sidekick I loved when I mean Gosh, Ryan Gosling, like, playing this. Like, I think we all love Ryan Gosling all the time, no matter what.
[20:15] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So listen to this. I heard on Hoda and Jenna, I was watching that yesterday, and they were kind of laughing because Ryan Gosling had initially, before the movie came out, gotten a lot of feedback for, like, you're too old to play. Not they were envisioning.
[20:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: You're not like the hot guy anymore, right?
[20:34] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Who played Austin Butler, who was Elvis Young. That guy. A guy who's in Euphoria who's like the hot guy, either of them. And it was funny because it was the first time that a guy had been called out publicly too old for a role. And how interesting is it in the movie Barbie? There's all these other themes. So anyway, though, they said, I think it landed really well, everyone who had said that was like, I was wrong and I think perfect.
[21:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: I also think those young guys I don't think could do it. I feel like you have to have the life experience and be able to wrap your head around it in a different way, to have been able to perform the role the way Ryan Gosling did. Which, again, was like, perfect comedic timing, but, like you said, had all these elements of tenderness and insecurity and codependency that just shine through despite the again, like, how do they put this together.
[21:36] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: In such a perfect all he says is, hi, Barbie. But you can just see his urgency for her to pay attention to him and him trying to catch her eye and bolstering his chest, all of that. Yes, I think someone could attempt to do. But Ryan Gosling just nailed it on the head.
[21:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right? And again, the comedic side, but also the tender, authentic, insecure side at the same just I was so impressed. And he's like, so handsome. So that never hurts to objectify him since women have been objectified for decades and centuries and will continue to be. But that is a really interesting point. I hadn't read about that.
[22:15] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So he kind of goes along with her right, for the ride, which ironically, it was just interesting. If you're thinking he's codependent on her, of course he needs to go because he can't be alone in Barbieland without her.
[22:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right? And I just have to address the scene where he wants to have a sleepover. He's like, well, boyfriend girlfriend, I should sleep over. And she's like, why? And then he's like, well, I don't know what we would do, actually. It's just so funny. And then I loved when she was like, but this is my dream house every night's girls night, so I'll see you tomorrow. Yeah. And then she goes into her dream house and they're all like, woohoo Barbie. And it's just like you get the sense it's like a sleepover every single night in Barbie land. And isn't there a part of you that would love yeah, right.
[22:53] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And she does it in a way that it's like dismissing Ken, but it's kind and it's direct. And there's not all these millions of sorrys. And it's not mean. It's not like, no, I don't want you here. It's just like, I'm with my friends and I'm going to go now because this is my house, really firm. And I think when we see later in the movie. The Barbies are never mean cruel. Putting the KENS down intentionally. And then we see the KENS do that when Kendom comes to be that's a great point.
[23:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. She's, like, turning him down in a direct, assertive, but kind not aggressive way. She's just, like, speaking her truth. But he does take it really hard and feels really dismissed and brushed aside. And that comes up later in Kendall. Right. So that's just sort of this interesting dynamic. Right away, I did feel like he was really codependent on her, like he didn't have his own identity outside of her. It was always, like, trying to rise up and be good enough for her or feel like her equal. And I just think that's so funny because Barbie is about Barbie and Ken's just like the I guess there's, like that was in all the marketing. And it's just really funny because we.
[24:09] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: All know at least I did, like, a million Barbies. I think I maybe had one.
[24:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: Maybe one ever. And I think maybe Ken had a little brother. I don't know. Then there's Alan. Who knew? Who knew?
[24:21] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I would love to have Alan now.
[24:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: No, me too.
[24:23] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I wonder if there I know there's I'm sure tons of Barbie collectors. I have a lot of Barbies in boxes still.
[24:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: You didn't bring them to the movies?
[24:30] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Well, it'd be huge. I think I got one every year for Christmas. They're all, like, the anniversary ones. You did not take them out of the box.
[24:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: Big dresses. Yes.
[24:38] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And so I'm wondering who has the Allen one? Is anyone out there?
[24:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: I bet it's worth a lot. Like, right now, I had one of those, too, that I did take out and give to my daughter.
[24:48] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Oh, that's nice of you.
[24:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
[24:49] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But I'd probably be able to do, like I don't know.
[24:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: I guess I'll have to make that decision. Yeah. It was like the Christmas Barbie, I guess, in your defense, the box broke, so it was already open. It's a much easier choice.
[25:04] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But anyway, so when we get to the real world, which is where we all yes.
[25:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, they see the billboard of Miss Universe and Margot Robbie's like, oh, look, the Supreme Court justice is just like all of that stuff was so funny to me. And then when she's, like, looking for somewhere safe to land, and she's like, oh, construction site. That's where I'll find the women. And I was just like, oh, no, here we go. Here we right.
[25:29] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
[25:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: And, like, right away, I wrote it down. They get there, and they're walking down. Where are they?
[25:35] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Roller skating. Roller skating.
[25:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: And the way they're able to bring in all the little Barbie props are so funny. And they're roller skating, and everyone's know Leering at Barbie, and she feel I feel ill at ease. And Ken goes, I feel admired, but not oggled. I was like, those two sentences speak to the difference of living in the world as a female versus living in the world as a white man, too.
[26:04] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And it's not right. It's not most of the time, overt. So I think that's where a lot of people who don't experience this have a harder time understanding, well, they didn't come up to you and slap your behind. It's like but you can feel people oggling you in an icky way.
[26:25] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[26:26] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And, yes, you could be like, yeah, of course this didn't happen directly to me. It wasn't over. But there's so much covert ickiness out there, and I think that that's what that moment really, for me encapsulated, because Ken just felt right, like, good and finally was yeah, exactly.
[26:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: She had started feeling, like, some complicated feelings in Barbie land, and now that just continues. And then there's like, what I'm sure will become the famous lines about the genitals, where she's just like, we have no genitals.
[27:00] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But why did she think to say that? Right?
[27:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: Probably to disarm these oggling men, but she knew, push them away.
[27:12] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I'm taking leaps here, but as this doll knew right away that that's what was being looked at, leared at, thought of.
[27:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: So then eventually, we see Barbie finally ends up at the school where Sasha, played by Ariana Greenblatt, is sort of having lunch with her friends. And leading up to that, we started to see some flashes of Sasha playing with her Barbies over the years. Right. And I think that was what weird barbie was trying to tell her is like, you have to go find this little girl and make it right. This little girl, the reason you're feeling these things is because that's what the child who's playing with you is feeling, and you have to go and make it right and come back to Barbie Lamb, put it all back to how it was. So she comes up to her at school, which I thought, first of all, there's going to be, like, a security guard, a metal detector, hopefully, at school these days, we can imagine this woman dressed like a pink cowgirl, barbie. Just like, walking up to you and Sasha being like, who is this woman with a delusional disorder that she's Barbie. Right? And Barbie just goes off into this monologue and, like, slings it right back at her and I think really delivers all the criticisms of Barbie through the years very quickly, in a succinct way. Right. And then we see, like, react to it and be like, what we didn't fix like I thought we did. I thought we showed women you could be whatever you want. You don't just have to be a mother and a wife, but if you want to do that, that's fine. But you can be a doctor, you can be a lawyer, you can get the Nobel Peace Prize, you can be a teacher, and then you're kind of huh. You're right. Yeah.
[28:49] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then Barbie starts to. Continue to be more and more emotional, right? Starts to cry, leaking, which made me think of, like, the grinch.
[28:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: What is um and then she's really upset. And during all of this, Ken is discovering the patriarchy at the school library, gets books on horses, and he sees all these men. He's, like, imitating their arm gestures and stuff like that. And I was like, oh, my God, this is hilarious. But I see where this is going, and this is perfect. And he's just discovering this whole new world where men rule. And he goes in, right, to all these different places of work. I was obviously struck when he's talking to the female doctor and is like, I need to do a surgery. Give me the tools. And she's like, you didn't go to medical school. You can't do that. And he's like, Show me the real doctor. Let me talk to the boss. And she's like, I'm the boss. And he just walks by her. And I was like, security. But oh, my God. Portia I'm sure you can imagine as a female physician, all the times you just get assumed you're not the doctor. And any man walking know, people look at with this reverence and authority automatically just because they're a man. It just spoke to that so perfectly.
[30:07] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I bet.
[30:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: And then he's like, going into the office building, and I want a high.
[30:11] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Paying position of power.
[30:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: And the guy's like, well, you don't have an MBA. You don't have a degree. We can't just give you that. And he's like, I thought this is the patriarchy. And he's like, well, yeah, but we just have to do it a little more fly these days.
[30:25] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I thought that was funny.
[30:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my God. And so then eventually we find that Mattel gets word that Barbie escaped, right? And then things are like, up in arms, and it turns out the other main character, America Ferrari's character, who's the mom, Gloria in the film. This is where we meet her. What did you think about her character?
[30:45] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I liked it. I didn't know where it was going at first. For some reason, I thought she was like a Barbie creator because she was drawing the sketches. It seems like maybe she was in more like of a secretarial position. And then we find out that she's the one who's connected to stereotypical Barbie memories. And then I loved that it kind of was showing us that scene again, all from her perspective. So now she's in it again.
[31:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: I thought that was really sweet, and.
[31:11] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It was sad because of her emotions, but it just spoke to the transitions of motherhood, I would imagine, right? From having a newborn where you're their lifeline continuing all the way up to an adolescent who's kind of pushing back and having more autonomy and pushing you away and rejecting you.
[31:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know. That was really beautiful. And then we come to find that there's this parallel process going on between her existential crisis, raising an adolescent, and sort of trying to figure out who she is and where does she fit in now, and Barbie's existential crisis and that they're actually the ones that are connected. And it's almost like Barbie's starting to feel all the emotions the mom's feeling, and I guess kind of weird for, like, an adult woman to start playing with Barbies again, but makes sense for, I guess, the plot of the film.
[32:02] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, no, that's true, actually.
[32:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: Maybe that's kind of like me bringing Barbies to lunch and not really, but.
[32:08] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think she said that she was cleaning out the basement or something, and she found some and she kept it donated or throw it away.
[32:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: Okay. And she's the one who's been drawing, like, Deaths Barbie, right. Like, what did she call it? Irresistible thoughts of death. Cellulite. Barbie depressed thoughts of cellulite.
[32:32] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Which was interesting, which we didn't comment on, which was part of Weird Barbie's.
[32:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[32:36] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like, push. He's like, well, if you choose the birkenstock and you fix this, you won't have cellulite.
[32:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. And it's like, okay, fine. Now I'll go which, again, I think is a tongue in cheek sort of reference to Barbie's, like, perfect body and how that's so important to Barbie. Right.
[33:00] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So then Mattel is really upset that Barbie is in the real world. So why do you think that? Is? It because you do you think that Mattel, besides the obvious ways that they're being nefarious, is nefarious with kind of, like, the patriarchy? Did you get that vibe? I did, a little bit, 100%.
[33:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: I mean, they're all men, like, on the board, right? The only woman we see is Gloria, who does seem like a secretary. She's kept out of the big, important meetings that only the men can go to. I think when Barbie finally gets there, she's like, where's your boss? Let me meet her. Where is she? I can't wait to meet her. And they're like, well, I'm the boss. And I think they say, like, well, we did have one CEO, I think, like, a long time ago. Right. I loved that scene where she's like, well, who does the money? Me?
[33:48] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: This man?
[33:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: And all of it is run by men. I, first of all, love Will Ferrell more than anything in the world, so anything he's in, I love it. And I thought he did a really good job. It's really funny, but yeah, they really wanted Barbie back in her box. I feel like that is just, again, not wanting Barbie to be more complicated than they want to see her and.
[34:11] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: In control of her.
[34:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: They want to be in control of her. And I do think one interesting sort of criticism I've been reading about this movie is, if you think about it right, like, yes, it's doing great in the box office. Lots of themes about feminism and the female experience. Again, still from a white woman's perspective, which I think it's important to acknowledge. And at the same time, Mattel is making so much money from doing this. They have all these other movies in development, like one about polypocket that's going to be directed by Lena Dunham, I.
[34:47] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Think, with Lily Collins.
[34:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yep. And so they have a ton of things in development that I'm sure are going to move ahead now that this was so successful. And there's been some criticisms, like, okay, so Mattel is this huge corporate giant, right? Like, how many female filmmakers have been trying to push forward stories and movies and ideas about the female experience, but no one wanted to listen until there's this big corporate company that's made all this money from a doll who's a stereotypical female, right. Only now we can listen to women and learn about the female experience. I don't know. I just think it's an interesting thing to think about, and I feel like it is a valid criticism. But then you kind of see that tension here. So I kind of agree with you, Portia, that I felt like the film as a whole did a good job addressing the tension about this Uber. Maybe not Uber, but this film really touching on difficult topics about feminism, using Barbie. But again, that's like, the whole point.
[35:53] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think it would have flopped if.
[35:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: Was.
[35:58] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Shown in a good, positive light in the you know, and I think one of the reasons that it's, like, based on what you're saying is because the movie, in an unironic way, slams Mattel. But I'm curious now. Okay, show me your board, Mattel.
[36:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. That's what I mean, right? It's like, is this are you the same board that we're seeing in the how exactly how much is art imitating life? Like, what is Mattel doing behind the scenes? What have they not I don't know. That's not common. Just but again, it raises a lot of interesting questions.
[36:39] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I got anxious when she was standing. She was like, happy to go back.
[36:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: In the put those little plastic ties.
[36:46] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: She goes in the box. And again, those were so funny because that's how your Barbie comes, right? And they start twisting them, and it's getting tighter. See her hands? And she's like, something about this doesn't feel good anymore.
[36:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: Good for ghetto. Ghetto good for you. Like staying in touch with your inner.
[37:02] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Authentic feelings Barbie and picking up on which is a female experience because of our life experiences. Having that third eye, right? Like being a woman. And something about that table over there is giving me weird vibes. Or having to cover your drink or having your key in your hand when you're walking to your car. It's like she started having zero ever experienced that in Barbieland to pick up on that. And I quickly that's just how I interpreted that scene.
[37:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: But I totally agree. And that she had the confidence to listen to that and not I think maybe because she came from Barbie land, where you are just confident and you're not apologizing for your feelings. They just are what they are. She didn't start invalidating herself, which I think a lot of women are socially conditioned to do. Right? Like, you might feel something's off, but then you're like, oh, I'm just being sensitive, or, that can't be. There's something wrong with me, when it's like, no, you're picking up on something accurate in your environment. So then she escapes and hijinks ensue and her and Gloria and Sasha go back to Barbie land and what do they see? Ken has already returned and taken over. The patriarchy is flying high.
[38:22] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Horses are everywhere.
[38:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: I love that they put TVs in every room of Barbie land with horses on them. And then this is like, oh, no, Barbie land is turned into the real world. Like, all the Barbies are being objectified and wearing really tight clothes and serving the men and brainwashed almost. Right. And it happened so quickly. And we see Barbie and Gloria and Sasha just like, dumbfounded. Right? And what did you think about Kendom?
[38:50] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I thought it was really in a silly way, like really know, like the TVs and just like their interest being so stereotypically, like know. Let's also say that there's many men who are wonderful and allies and not objectifying women and so on and so forth.
[39:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like Alan.
[39:10] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like Alan, but in the real world. But this was just like such a silly way of calling it out.
[39:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[39:17] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I loved the horses being the yes, but like and it wasn't like it could have been Ken's, and that would have been the same thing, right? Like, they replaced the Barbie, so it was like horses. It was like really and the hummers and everything's tricked out and lifted and so big. Yeah.
[39:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: And they got a mini fridge full of their snacks and they got the saloon doors. It was just so funny and over the top. But you just see how he just starts to really relate to Barbie in this icky way. And interestingly. I felt like he was still so co dependent on her, but now it was like the roles are reversed. Right. Like before, in original Barbie land, he just wanted her approval to feel good enough, and now he has to put her down to feel good enough. So it's still kind of the same dynamic, just like two different sides of the same coin.
[40:05] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And commenting on, I think, right. That idea of, oh, he's mean to.
[40:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: You because he likes you.
[40:10] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right. So it's like we even see that when she's faking to go to the beach and have him play the guitar for her and he walks away.
[40:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right?
[40:18] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: He's like, oh, maybe, or you're my what does he call her? You're my part time sometimes there whatever.
[40:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: You're my friend. Yes. And then you're like my long term low commitment girlfriend.
[40:28] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Low commitment. But he is excited, right? He goes away and he's like sublime. And that does happen even with, I think between both. Men can do it to women, women can do it to men, so on and so forth. Everyone does it to each other. It's like little games. It's like the gamey thing with dating, right? Like, I'm not going to text you for three days, which just it's hard because if someone's playing the game, it's hard to not but I think just no one should play the game. If you really like someone, text them when you get home. I had a great time, let's go out again. If you don't say, I think you.
[41:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: Had a great time, but let's stay friends or something. And in that way, in original Barbie land, communication was more direct and innocent. And now things are getting all warped and topsy turvy, and then they decide they have to get all these Barbies back. And I was a little disappointed that it did involve, again, using themselves as sexual objects to kind of distract the KENS to turn them all against each other. I don't know what was your thoughts about that?
[41:31] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Definitely was like, icky. I wish there'd been a different right?
[41:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
[41:37] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Why did they choose that way? Is it commenting on that? That's like currency, right? We talked about white lotus last week, and sex is currency. And that's where in now Kendom, like Barbie, you do have power. And we see that in the real world of but like, I'm wondering if it was intentionally supposed to be cringy, right?
[42:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, if it's like yeah, in the real world, that is your only power. Now Barbie is to use your body and your sexual power to distract them in order to have the vote and turn it back to Barbie land. That was the part I was like, oh, I wish they'd been able to get it back some other way.
[42:19] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right.
[42:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: But I did love when they're all strumming their little guitars and I don't know the song that they picked.
[42:26] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I did.
[42:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: I recognize it, but I don't know.
[42:29] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: The name of it.
[42:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't know who sings it, but it was like, I want to push you around. And it's like aggressive if you think about, like, a man singing that to a woman. Right.
[42:40] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It's not like a romantic song.
[42:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's aggressive.
[42:43] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Don't do that.
[42:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: But perfect for Kendom and all the horses.
[42:48] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So all the Barbies seem to be brainwashed and they get pulled out of it through Gloria, right. So Gloria has this monologue that she talks about, which I think resonated with a lot of people. We heard some, like, woohoo in the theater.
[43:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: Sure.
[43:02] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So I thought that was nice. I did really like and we kind of made eye contact when she was talking about body image, and I really, really liked that because before right. They were kind of like I think, again, just pointing out not aging and not having cellulite before. And that's why kind of Barbie Land was like, oh, there's old people in the real world. What is you know, the woman then is like, you're beautiful. And she's like, I know.
[43:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: I really like woman at the bus stop.
[43:31] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So one of the lines is you have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin. You have to say you want to be healthy, but you also have to be thin. It's just impossible thinking of every single person, really. Especially, I think, for women, the expectations of your body in the real world is just so hard to live with and so challenging.
[43:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
[43:55] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And the messages come early from Barbie, right?
[43:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know.
[43:59] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And from TV and everything that's around you and from even parenting.
[44:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[44:03] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like, a lot of if your parents are making comments about their bodies, even if they would never know their kids, it's all such a message that I think it's right. Like, you can't be too thin, but you can't be too fat and you can't talk about your weight if someone compliments you.
[44:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right?
[44:18] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: No, I'm fat and I'm feeling so bad about myself. You're fishing for those. No, you're fine. I think we could have explored that in a whole movie of its it.
[44:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: You know, it was necessary given, like you said, the criticisms about Barbie and her unattainable body type all along. And I was glad they didn't shy away from that. I was also glad in that monologue, which was so moving, that they also drew comparisons to just the female emotional experience.
[44:48] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right.
[44:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, that is a female experience. You can't be to this or to that. You have to just be this version of a woman. And it's just an impossible standard. And why can't you just be angry or be sad or be anxious or be happy or be confident? Like you said in original Barbie Land, no one's apologizing and then they start to and I just feel like that so speaks to what it's like to be a woman. And it's annoying.
[45:14] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I liked you're supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you're supposed to because of sisterhood. You're supposed to always stand out and always be grateful. It's impossible just going back and forth. But I think too, I just watched the documentary on Amazon. It came out a little while ago about the family that used to have a show, 18 kids and counting, or 20 kids and counting. And it's a lot of kids they talk a lot about, just like in a lot of religious organizations. Right. You have to be careful of your dress code so that you are not tempting men.
[45:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, I think that's even like in public school.
[45:55] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Oh, yeah, the straps and the shorts length, all that stuff. And it's just like, it's not our responsibility to make men feel like they don't want to sexual assault someone or keep your thoughts to yourself. We all we all should also they.
[46:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Should also learn how to manage those feelings. Right. It's okay, right? And girls are going to have those feelings about boys or other girls, too.
[46:19] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, you can think, wow, that person is attractive, and move on. And then if you feel bad about that, take that up with your God and be sorry for it. But it's not your fault. It's not that person's fault that you found them attractive.
[46:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[46:30] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Anyway, back to Barbie.
[46:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: No, I mean, I feel though I think we touched a little bit about this when we were covering you, which is like, all roads lead back to you because that's such a good show. But when we were talking about stalking and sexual harassment, oftentimes when women finally do seek help, they're often shamed or told, like, well, you kind of asked for it. Or I remember when I was in college, I had, I guess, a stalker. It was kind of weird. And I went to the student police, and their only advice was, when you go to class where that boy is in your class, you should wear really baggy clothes and don't wear makeup. And that was it. That was the advice to keep me safe. It wasn't like, oh, yeah, we should take this one out of your class. We should maybe move him to a different dorm, anything like that. It was like, you need to change your appearance. And so I think that perfectly speaks to what you're saying.
[47:26] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And again, it's just not that hard. We talked about consent in American Pie, that episode, and it's just really not that hard of an idea to come around. Someone might be into you at one point, and guess what? They might not be into you in another. And, like, you have to deal with that.
[47:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I loved that. With Barbie, it finally know as we come to the end of Know, the Barbies vote in Congress because they've distracted the boys and they get Barbie land back. But then at the end, Margot, Robbie's character wants to be human. She wants more than just Barbie. She wants to feel all those human experiences. She doesn't want to leave Gloria and Sasha. And she talks to the creator of Barbie, played by Ree Pearlman, who was just like, it was so sweet to hear her talk about and I loved how she was like, yeah, they had some tax evasion issues, but that's another movie. But just saying, like, are you sure you want to be human? Are you sure? And then it comes out when she tells Ken, I don't love you. I don't like you. You're a great person, but I don't feel that way toward you. And they could have an honest conversation about how he felt kind of rejected and dismissed and stuff like that, which was, I thought, great for a man character to be able to say right. To be honest about that in a direct, also respectful way, rather than the way he was treating her in Kendom, which was, like, icky and passive aggressive.
[48:52] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And demeaning and I think really contradicts the kind of general critique of a lot of people that I'm irritated with on the Internet, saying that Barbie is demasculating. And I think the end really does the opposite of that. Right.
[49:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: If you have an open mind. Right.
[49:15] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Well, to me, it's really clear she's apologizing for him feeling dismissed. So it's like, I see that we were maybe treating you like you felt like you didn't matter and like, you do, and I don't love you.
[49:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's okay. And both can be true.
[49:31] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But I understand that people have a hard time opening their mind to different things, but just to me, it's like that scene contradicts their criticism of so, like, did you stay for the whole movie?
[49:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. And also, I think it depends on your definition of masculinity, which, again, this film isn't only sort of addressing feminism and the female experience, although I feel like that's the main point, which is, you know, Ryan Gosling's depiction of Ken really touches on the themes of masculinity so well. And I feel like at the end, he comes to find that he can be sensitive and have those types of feelings and express them directly to someone who will listen and validate. Right. He doesn't have to be like a macho man like he was in Kendom. He can just be himself. And maybe he doesn't want his job to be beach. Okay?
[50:24] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Maybe he wants to ride horses.
[50:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: Maybe. And that's what he says. He's like, I just really like the horses. But in that way, I think that is isn't that also part of masculinity? Can't our boys be sensitive and sweet and not feel like you have to lose all of that to be a man in today's society? I feel like that's another issue these days that they did touch on, I thought, in a really thoughtful way.
[50:50] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: No, I agree. Yeah.
[50:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: And so at the end, Barbie chooses to become human, right. She assumes the name of the original creator of Barbie's daughter, which I thought was sweet. We see her get out of the car in her pink birkenstock, so she is fully, actualized, holding on to good and bad, conflicting all the parts of herself. All the parts of herself. It's so great. And we see her going in to sign in for something. What did you think she was going?
[51:17] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I thought it was a job interview.
[51:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: I thought it was a driver's license.
[51:20] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Okay.
[51:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: It was the gynecologist. And I could not, because she now has a ******, an agency, an autonomy. And I was just like, perfect ending. I just died.
[51:32] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And so unexpected that I think laughs you're like, what? I'm so funny.
[51:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: So funny, but perfect. She was so happy to be there, right? And again, I just think in today's political climate, great job, Greta Gerwig.
[51:46] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And everyone like, I am getting my womanhood taken care.
[51:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right? So any final thoughts, Portia? As we wrap up this episode a.
[52:00] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Little bit, I just wanted to comment on the Depression Barbie commercial.
[52:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: How did we forget about depression, Barbie?
[52:10] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So many people on the Internet were like, why did they call me out? So we see. You know, loose terms on the Internet were binging on sweets. It wasn't really binging. It was eating sweets.
[52:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: It said an entire family sized starburst.
[52:24] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yep. And then watching reruns of BBC's Pride and Prejudice, and she was like, scrolling.
[52:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: Instagram, looking at her estranged BFF's engagement photos. It was so funny. And then they were like, anxiety OCD and panic attack.
[52:37] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Barbie sold separately.
[52:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I was like, that was funny. I loved it. And then Gloria finally at the end pitching to Mattel, like, what about just, like, average, like and then again, there's another beautiful monologue by American Ferrara about just, like, the experience of a woman. And I feel like that is she was, like, describing her own experience in a way. And again, Mattel was smart when at first they were like, oh, I don't know if that's going to go well. And then the finance guy's like, those sales will be huge. And they were like, okay, yeah. And I felt like that just also signified. Like, there's still a lot of room to go. We still have a lot of road to cover. But overall, I really loved it.
[53:15] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It gives you a lot to think about.
[53:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
[53:17] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And take what you want from it. I think there's a lot of funny themes, and I think it's worth seeing more than once over time. And I'm excited to see it again. I mean, I'm wondering maybe there'll be more tears because I'm already primed, but we'll see.
[53:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: It was so good. Well, thank you for joining us for another episode of Analyze Scripts. Please rate review and subscribe and share with your friends if you're enjoying our content. I did carry around two Barbies as a middle aged woman, so please make it worth it. Make it worth it. You can find us on Instagram at Analyze Scripts and on TikTok and Analyze Scripts podcast and on threads at Analyze Scripts podcast. And we will see you next Monday. Yep.
[54:02] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Bye bye.
[54:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: This podcast and its contents are a copyright of Analyzed Scripts. All rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited. Unless you want to share it with your friends and rate, review and subscribe, that's fine. All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings, or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, our summer party continues with "The Hangover." This 2009 comedy is the first of three and where we meet Doug, Alan, Phil, Stu and of course Mr. Chow. While the sound track is nostalgic, some of the jokes are a little *yikes.* We discuss Alan's behavior and social challenges as well as the abusive relationship between Stu and Melissa. Dr. Furey gives us the schoop on drugs and alcohol and we discuss serotonin syndrome. Sit back, grab some popcorn and your old "NOW" album from 2009. We hope you enjoy!
Dr. Katrina Furey: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fury, a psychiatrist.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker. And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Where two shrinks analyze the depiction of.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Mental health in movies and TV shows. Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends.
Dr. Katrina Furey: There is so much misinformation out there, and it drives us nuts.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like.
Dr. Katrina Furey: With a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Your DSM Five, and enjoy.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Hi there. Welcome back to another episode of analyze scripts with Dr. Katrina fury and portia pendleton licensed clinical social worker. We are going to dissect an interesting throwback movie today, the Hangover.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: You've been really excited about this one.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, it's from 2009, which is kind of a little bit nostalgic for both.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Of us, like, almost 15 years ago.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Wow.
Dr. Katrina Furey: It's hard to believe. It feels like just yesterday people were wearing Allen Halloween costumes with a baby and a baby beyond.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I went to Las Vegas in 2000, and maybe, like, eleven, and I have a picture with a street performer, model performer of being Alan, like, holding a baby.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Did you go there because of this movie?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: No, I didn't. I went there with my in laws, so not for we actually went there for Thanksgiving.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, that's an interesting Thanksgiving destination.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Oh, I like that. Yeah, it was totally different. It was hot. The food was delicious. We went to, like, brunch somewhere.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Was it like a buffet?
Dr. Katrina Furey: Brunch?
Dr. Katrina Furey: Vegas has a lot of those.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I don't think it was a buffet, but I think it was just, like.
Dr. Katrina Furey: A nice just nice.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: The only times I've been to Vegas were in childhood for dance competitions, like nationals. We went twice. So it's like, me, my family, my grandma was there both times, and we're just, like, trucking along. She's in her walker, and we did, like, children things.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Interesting.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Wow.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, we we I was just, you know, of age or a little, you know, a little bit after, but it was it was a pretty typical Vegas experience.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: You know, unfortunately drank too much of the Kool Aid and felt so horrible.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Like these characters.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like these characters. It was obviously a little bit more embarrassing because I wasn't there with friends.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, yeah, you're in love.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Fun story. I remember calling my mom because, of course, this is just how it goes. You tend to turn up the most the night before you have to go home. Don't do that, please. And so I remember there was a lot of vomiting.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, God, Porsche. You love that.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I know.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It's my favorite thing. And I called my mom from the airport crying because I was so upset. I felt so horrible, and I was sick, and she was so mad at me. I guess as one would be of your daughter who's away with like well.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, I guess back then they weren't your in laws yet, probably, right?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: No, it was like maybe two years in.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Was this like your first trip with them?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Second.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Was it your first holiday with them?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I don't think so. Okay.
Dr. Katrina Furey: But yeah, I wonder if they were testing you. Let's go to vegas and see what happened.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I don't know if I passed or failed.
Dr. Katrina Furey: You know what?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I might have passed with flying colors.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Wow.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: She can really have a good time. But I actually was ill for two days after. I think it was pretty serious. Like we see in the movie and we should not do.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, we'll talk about a little bit.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I wonder if you got a roof feed.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I don't think so.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I had memories. You were like, I remember every drop.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Of every drink, so don't do that.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I know I've never had like a typical vegas experience, but now with all these singers and stuff having residencies there.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I know I always want to go.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And not really like I mean, I'm like old now, but it would be fun to like I don't know if it would be fun anymore to go to a club. I think I'd like to go and just people watch for a little bit and then go to sleep early in a really comfortable circle bed. That's my goal at this phase. But if vegas wants to sponsor us, caesar's palace, feel free.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: The real caesar live here. So many good lines from the hangover. Like there's so many one liners, so.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Many zach galifinacus, was this like his first big movie? I feel like he probably did other.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Stuff before, but this is like memorable.
Dr. Katrina Furey: For me, for the general population. But he is so funny. Just like you said, like a lot of one liners. As he's saying it, I was like, oh, my god, I forgot about like, well, yeah, you can't ********** on a plane anymore since 911 or all of.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: A sudden him saying that he can't be within 2200ft of a school. Okay, is that from the masturbating on.
Dr. Katrina Furey: A plane or that would do it. Yeah, that very well could do it. But yeah. So many funny, funny lines. It is really funny.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So just kind of being a little bit nostalgic. It was released in 2009. We both kind of pre just sitting down now. We're like the music. There's so many good throwbacks.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I know. Like all the songs they picked, like the ti and rihanna song, a lot of kanye west songs. A lot of the music was so I loved at the end, the band at the wedding.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, yes.
Dr. Katrina Furey: What song were they singing? Candy shop. Is that like a $0.50? But I just love how he's so into it and all up in the elderly people's space. I just love that sometimes. I love a good wedding movie like this. I was like, we should watch Bridesmaids sometime and talk about it. Totally. Some of them are just so good.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my God.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So we did want to kind of just add in that a lot of the comments also have not aged well.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And we do not support using slurs any kind.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I mean, there's a lot of racism.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And ableism and homophobia. Phobia. Yeah, a lot. Like, really? Right in your face. Right from the jump. And I was like, oh, I don't think you could make this movie today.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I'm used to catching it on TV and seeing 20 minutes. Here they are laughing hysterically. And I think they do also edit some of this stuff on TV when it's shown.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, you mean you're used to catching the hangover on TV? Yes. Like on TBS or something. Where there's commercials. Yeah, for sure. I think they'd edit it out.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So watching it on Netflix, and we were excited because it was released to Netflix. I think they got all three of them. And so that's why we were like, let's do it. And then I was like, wow, okay, I'm taking some notes on it. And I'm, like, feeling a little uncomfortable.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I know. Yeah, 100%.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: So that stuff we do not support, we will come out and say wholeheartedly yes.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So the movie, we were like, how do we even talk about this? We kind of wanted to just spend time on relationship and then like, substance use, drug use, just like some maybe like educational info on that. And then just like, obviously the hilarity of waking up and having a tiger.
Dr. Katrina Furey: In your I know, it's really, really funny. And I kept thinking, like, was this the one where Stu gets the tattoo? But I guess not. I guess that maybe is the second or third one.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I thought it was for a moment because Mike Tyson is in it.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. But I think that's like, maybe the next one.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't know.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Maybe we'll have to watch it. Yeah. So to give a rundown of the characters, in case you haven't seen this movie in the past 15 years or so. So we have Doug, who is played by Justin Bartha. Is that his last name? I can't remember. He's like the groom who's set to be married. Side note, do people actually have bachelor parties that close to their wedding day? That seems like a terrible idea.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, no, not that I've ever been right.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Usually it's months ahead. And I think this is why. This is like a cautionary. So we have he's going to be the groom. Then we have Alan, who's played by Zach Alfanakis, who is the brother of Tracy, I think is the bride's name. Oh, my God, he is so funny. I'm sure we'll talk more about him.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Then.
Dr. Katrina Furey: We have Bradley Cooper, looking beautiful. Such a snack, as they say in the role of Phil. I love that his name is Phil, too, but he's, like, really beautiful, and he's a teacher.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It makes it just funny, like, everything about him, his beauty, and then that's what he does. And then he seems like he doesn't really like his life, or so he says. Steals money from the kids, field trip.
Dr. Katrina Furey: To go to Vegas.
Dr. Katrina Furey: But I don't know, at the end.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: He was, like, super stoked to see.
Dr. Katrina Furey: His family, so that was nice. And then we have Stu, played by Ed Helms, who's hilarious. I thought he was so funny. I'd never seen him in anything before, the Hangover, and now I've seen him in a lot of different things.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Tell me what he's been in since.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, Porsche. He voiced the particular role of The Lorax and the animated film The Lorax, which, again, you would not have seen.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But I have seen many times. Yeah, I've seen the original.
Dr. Katrina Furey: There's an original lorax.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: From, like, childhood. It's like a cartoon. I mean, I've saw it when I was a child.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, but you haven't seen the modern day correct spin off, right?
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And he sings, like, all the songs. Yeah, I've listened to them ad nauseam. And I choose that phrase deliberately.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I feel like I'm picking up what you're putting down.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And then we have Ken Jiang, who plays the role of what was his leslie. What was his last name? I don't remember Leslie.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: He was just, like, a funny little.
Dr. Katrina Furey: What did you think of his character? Side note again, doing a lot of side notes this morning. He was originally training to be a physician. I don't know if he was a physician or if he then broke away and decided to pursue acting in comedy, but I always remembered that because I think this came out right as I was applying to medical school, and I was like, that's interesting.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, I've seen a couple of his comedy specials.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh god. Netflix.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, they're hilarious. I think he's so funny, and I believe that he was like he went all the way through. I think he is like a medical doctor and was just, like, basically for.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Me, basically, he's in my music. I picked up a lot of racism with his character, which I wasn't loving.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, what else did he not in.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It for that long. Again, he's so funny. His comedy specials are hilarious, and he's been in way more since then.
Dr. Katrina Furey: But I think he wasn't in it long. But he was like a broke breakout star. And him jumping out his voice trunk of the car and just, like, all the little things he was saying were really funny. And then in one of the sequels, I think he has a much bigger role than the sequels, if I remember correctly. But so he's hilarious.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Mike Tyson makes Mike appearance, which is.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Hilarious random, but then it made sense. Like, oh, that's Mike Tyson's, tiger.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't know.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I really liked how the whole movie unfolded. How it starts with the wedding day and you see they're all disheveled, and you're like, oh, my God. And then the flashback is they're, like, trying to piece together their night.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't know.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I really liked that.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So basically, you see them take the car, right? So Alan's father's car, he lets Doug take, which is a classic.
Dr. Katrina Furey: It looks beautiful.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And there's all these rules around. Don't let Alan don't have a tiger destroy the leather seats.
Dr. Katrina Furey: He forgot to mention that rule. Yeah, he didn't specify that rule.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Don't get T boned by people who are trying to kill you with guns.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Didn't specify that either. He didn't let Alan drive. Correct.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So we have to be really careful with directions we give.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: It's really important to communicate clearly, effectively and deliberately. Right. We talk about this all the time. We can't read mines.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right away.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: We also see that Stu is lying to his partner.
Dr. Katrina Furey: What do you think of Melissa?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I mean, she sounds abusive and best. Like, horrible.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Horrible.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I just loved I rewound and watched their first scene together twice and I could do it many times because it was so funny.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
Dr. Katrina Furey: She's like, don't forget the rogue.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Don't forget to use it.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And just, like, the way she enunciates everything. And I loved her banks and her glasses and the way she would move away from him when he tried to give her a kiss. And just all the things. It was so funny to me.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then Stu just drops these little things on the trip that are just.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Like everyone's like, what?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: What do you mean? You're not allowed to do this? Or like, she doesn't like this.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Or it's it's like pretending to talk to the proprietor. Bed and breakfast and napa.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And, like at the wine tour, when.
Dr. Katrina Furey: He'S like, I can't put my card down, she checks. All these things are like red flags for an abusive relationship. And I did think it was interesting to see it where the woman is the abuser and the man is, like, the victim in this domestic violence relationship. Because usually we see it depicted the other way. Again, it's a comedy. But they were, like, spot on with a lot of the things.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think toxic relationships beget toxic relationships. So it's like, it starts off as these rules, right? But then there's lying, because you can't break a rule and then there's worse consequences because you lie. I mean, it snowballs down the hill and gets to this huge thing. But, yeah, I think everyone obviously doesn't like her. And then Phil reminds everybody that she went on vacation and had sex with Carnival Cruise Line.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Of course.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Bartender.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right?
Dr. Katrina Furey: It is the bartender. At first he says bellhop, then it's bartender, then it's waiter. Then I just loved how throughout the movie, they kept calling him different things. And it was like, I don't know, I just thought that was funny.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And why was it okay?
Dr. Katrina Furey: Because she didn't because he didn't come inside her. That's what Stu said.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And she was really drunk.
Dr. Katrina Furey: She's really drunk. Right. And then Phil's like, do you believe her? And there's the cashier in the convenience store that's just, like, listening yeah. Listening to this.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Interesting.
Dr. Katrina Furey: You can just tell that that's the logic Melissa had used to get out of this. Right. To not have any responsibility here. And he's sort of internalized it, and then he wants to propose to her, which, again, unfortunately, this grim runner ring that she had, the Holocaust. Oh, my gosh. But then I was like, you're going to propose at your friend's wedding? I didn't like that. No, I didn't like that. I loved that. He actually did get married to someone else instead, played by Heather Graham, the stripper who has a baby who they.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Then find didn't take care of in a very unsafe and oh, my God.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Every time they showed the baby, like, in the car, in a seatbelt, I was just, like, felt, like, uncomfortable.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And didn't Alan say he was like, oh, I've done this before.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And we were like, the first baby I found. The first baby I found.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: All of these really concerning children stories of his. Right. Like, can't go into interview of a school. Oh, my God, baby before I know.
Dr. Katrina Furey: What is up with Alan? The whole movie, even his dad at the beginning suggested, like, there's something wrong with him, but no one really specifies what is it or is.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It not hard to know if it's, like, organic or if it's almost like.
Dr. Katrina Furey: An intellectual disability kind of thing or.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Learned or I don't know. Or like a little bit personality.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Like kind of like Schizophel or Schizoid or something. Like in a cluster C realm. Yeah, 100%. He's hilarious. I feel like he carries the movie. He is so funny.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Never breaks character.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Never.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Always like deadpan face.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And I'm always like, how did they film this and not crack up laughing?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, I'm sure they did. I would love to see I love when they do that.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Me, too. But how are they so straight faced? When he comes in, he's like, you ready to let the dogs out? And he's wearing his, like, wolf shirt and his his Indiana Jones natural.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I just love that.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And the speech that he gives. I love before they all do a shot of Jaeger.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I love it when he's like, how about that rider? I guess that's why they call it.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yes.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And I'm like, Is he on the spectrum? I don't know. But oh, God, he's so funny. He's so funny.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And he just adds exactly what the movie needed.
Dr. Katrina Furey: 100%.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: He makes me think of well, this movie in general makes me think of, like, super bad. All those movies that kind of came out along the same time that are just almost the same group of comedians.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Or, like, Will Ferrell back writers. Oh, my God, it's so fun.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: They're like bathroom humor.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I think it was. Humor is, like, putting it mildly.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like teenage humor, when you don't know better than to say horrible things.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Katrina Furey: But you're adult men. But again, I think this tracks for bachelor parties.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right?
Dr. Katrina Furey: I mean, I've never been to a bachelor party, but I'd imagine this might happen in a smaller way.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, I mean, I feel like I've heard through the grapevine that is the gossip line of bachelor parties that look exactly like this. Not in the sense of, like, there's maybe people with guns and a tiger, but going to Vegas and having strippers and also doing pretty nasty things that I would, as a partner, be very not okay with, and I just don't like that culture.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I was wondering, with Tracy, I felt so bad for her, and I was like, is she going to go through with the wedding? Right. I felt so bad if she's, like, waiting there to see if he's going to show up. I don't know if I'd go through with that. Right.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That would be a huge red flag.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Huge red flag. Right.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then her never communicating with him. It's not like something he went around the way there. Yeah, he's like, oh, I know we broke down, or, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, the alarm didn't go off, or something like that. It's just like, no, you were so irresponsible. Right. But also, then they did get drugged without their consent, to be quite honest.
Dr. Katrina Furey: To be fair. Right. Yeah, that was a twist. But then it turns out he thought he was slipping everyone ecstasy, which, again, not great. Still not great to do, like, without consent. But then turns out it's roofies, roofies all his friends, and that's why they can't remember anything.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I remember hearing that line over and over and over again of, like, why don't they call it Flories? Because you end up on the floor. Obviously. Super funny. But yeah, it's from the movie. Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Do you mean you heard the line after the movie? And that finally cute, Stew, to realize, like, oh, he's on the roof. Oh, my God. And, like, when he when Alan is, like, doing the Blood Pact yes.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And they're like, what are you doing? Cutting himself on top of the roof. Like.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I didn't love that. Like, the only black character was the drug dealer. Like, stuff like that. I'm just like.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Besides Mike Tyson. But Mike Tyson That's true.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, that's true. That's Mike Tyson. Right.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And the drug dealer's name, of course, is Doug. Right. So that's why they ended up getting.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Confused and all the things.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I did think the plot was really funny. I liked all the twists and turns, but how they did, like, add up. And I loved at the end with the credits, how you saw all the photos that kind of explained it. At the end, I was like, okay.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: You see Stu pulling out his tooth because so Stu is a dentist, which I think the joke throughout the whole thing is like, that he's a doctor, but he's a dentist. He's not really a doctor, I have to say.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Okay, so when I came to residency, our landlord was a dentist, which fine, I love dental professionals. I appreciate what they do for our oral health and everything, but he really wanted us to call each other doctor. Like, when we moved in, he was like, so I'm going to call you Dr. Fury, and you call me Dr. So and so. And it just was weird. I was just like, you could just call me Katrina.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: So I don't know. I thought of him when I was watching.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think in that way there's like a little bit of, like a stereotype maybe, for a reason.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Even if there's one person. But I feel like I get that.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Sometimes when people are like, oh, you're a psychiatrist. But I'm like, Well, I at least did go to medical school. Okay. But no, I really liked that when they were this is under doctor stew, whatever. Like, at the hotel.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then when they go to the hospital yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And it's like, HIPAA, HIPAA violation.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: HIPAA violation everywhere.
Dr. Katrina Furey: With, like, the old man.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: They're just, like, in there performing an exam.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, that would not happen. But yeah, when Sue's like, oh, let me read that. I'm a doctor, too, and then the actual doctor is like, you're a dentist. You told me over and over last night.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then he takes a bribe right, to give him a chart.
Dr. Katrina Furey: It's really funny.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I like that actor, so I really enjoy the show Veep on HBO.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I always wanted to see that show.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It's hilarious. It's such a good political, like, satire comedy. And so I don't even know his real name for being a person on the Earth. I know his name in Beep, which is Mike McClintock, and he's the press secretary. And he is so funny and all seven seasons. So I was like, oh, my gosh, there's Mike. Yeah, that's cool.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Before he was the doctor.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I love it. I love it's. So funny.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Let's talk about drugs a little bit. Okay, so they wanted to do ecstasy, or that was the I'm sorry, alan wanted them all to do ecstasy, which is more of a hallucinogen. Hallucinogen. It's typically not supposed to cause a blackout, like, if taken correctly, quote unquote.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I feel like the biggest risk is, like, dehydration, right? Like, you dance a lot. It's like the love drug. And you sweat a lot, you get dehydrated, which can have, like, electrolyte issues, heart issues, seizures. But this is, like, what people do at Coachella. Yeah, I think I've never been to Coachella again, but I feel like that's yeah. Like, any rave or coke.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I mean, it's it's pretty popular. Yeah. I think the biggest kind of consequence of ecstasy is just like when you're coming off it so you then are really going to crash serotonin and you.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Can feel really depressed.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It's worse for some than others, depending on your body, depending on how much you take, depending on how your serotonin levels are to begin with. So I know that that can be problematic for people because then sometimes there's like a compensation where you either want more or you might take another substance.
Dr. Katrina Furey: To feel better than ever. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And also, I think it's really risky if you take a serotonergic medication like an SSRI or an antidepressant that increases your serotonin and then you're doing this, you would run the risk of a really dangerous condition, serotonin syndrome, which is where you have way too much serotonin. So you're like, sweating. Your blood pressure is really high, your heart rate is really high. You have diarrhea, you're vomiting portion your favorite thing, but that can be life threatening. So I think that's another big risk of using these party drugs.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. And also just like, if we're going to partake in a party drug, you really don't want to mix things. People who I think they're probably not Attic rave are typically only doing like, ecstasy or MDMA and there's waters there. And again, obviously there's risks because we don't know where it's coming from or what it's cut with, so on and so forth. However, I think people, if you're trying to be more responsible with it, you're not mixing substances.
Dr. Katrina Furey: That reminds me, I was giggling because I'm just, like, so naive in so many ways that I went to a Fish concert with my husband. I've been to a couple now, and at one of them, they were like, passing out water, and I was like, oh my God, that's so nice of Madison Square Garden to be just, like, passing out free water. They could charge like $10 a bottle here. And my husband just like, shook his.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Head, especially at a Fish concert.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I know, but I was like, oh my God. I answered Steve. That thing?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. That's really great of you. That's sweet.
Dr. Katrina Furey: But that's also nice of them trying to help the public, I guess, right?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Because they don't want ambulance lines taking people out. But again, and this is my own stereotype, I guess, I feel like there's certain artists or concerts where people are responsible drug takers, if that makes sense. Like, I would suspect at a Fish concert, you're a little bit older, you're not 16, typically going to a Fish concert.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Sometimes you are maybe with your dad.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: These people typically kind of know what they're doing.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, they've been around the box, like.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Their 40th Fish concert. They have their outfit and they're just feeling good, swaying. And the stadiums or the arenas know that. So they provide water.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I know.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I was shocked. I was like, wow, this is really I am thirsty. It's so nice.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I don't think it was foam, but there was like a tour of Raves when I was in college that would kind of go around and they'd play music and have a lights show and a lot of people would take ecstasy or MDMA and go and it was almost school sponsored. You know how artists would come for spring concert or something like that? So there was one and I went and I don't think I'm as naive maybe as you. I don't like to take substances that I don't know exactly where they're coming from just because of my anxiety.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I don't think I could ever have a good time.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't like feeling out of control.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, shocking. So a lot of people I know were rolling and took something and just they had bottles and big buckets of water there. So I think it's a thing just to kind of reduce the risk and the liability at the concert. That's what it's about, I think.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: They don't want to get sued. And then I'm like but then it's like enabling this. And how do we feel about that as a society? I don't know.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, but mixing alcohol with anything is so much more dangerous. You know what I mean?
Dr. Katrina Furey: It's risky.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It's not something that you really want to be doing. I think besides Rufalin being a drug that literally makes you black out scary, they are also drinking on it and it seems drinking excessively from the pictures and they're spotting.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Maybe they were doing cocaine, too. There were some pictures of Carrot Top doing some lines. I get another throwback. That's so funny. I wonder what he's up to today.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I know.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Hopefully he's good, clean.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Maybe he's listening.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: What's up, Caratop? We did want to talk a little bit about date rape drugs of which Rufalin or GHB gamma hydroxybutyric acid is like, one of the most common ones. And then there's Rohipnol, which is another one. So these are like super dangerous, mostly because they're clear, so you can slip it in people's drinks. I think that's, again, how Alan did it. I think that's sort of what we remember from our college days of being really careful. Like, don't take a drink from a stranger. Don't leave your drink somewhere. And it is really dangerous and it happens still.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: This is not something that has gone away.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Listen to any true crime podcast. You will find an episode about someone being drugged like this and taken advantage of. It's really scary.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I think you might believe or have this dance of, like, it's not going to happen to me, or group of people are fine. And it's like you really don't know people.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Just like how this movie shows. Yeah. Like, none of them suspected. Alan would.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: You can be at a party and know. 35 of the 40 people and one of the 35 that you know, can do it.
Dr. Katrina Furey: It's really scary.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Something that, you know, there's a lot of things that have come out about or like what am I trying to say? Like, somebody created a thing that you.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Can put over your dress and write.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like, a scrunchie that then turns into.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, a little cat. That's what I was going to say. This stuff was not available when I was in college. But they have, like, test strips. There's a lot of stuff coming out on the market or that's already out, which I definitely think is helpful, maybe. I mean, for everyone to be mindful of, but I think especially women to just be mindful of. Never accept a drink from a stranger or like an open drink. It's just scary.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think the best thing that you can do is make sure that you are at a party or a bar with a friend and at least one a group of people is best.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And don't leave without each other.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: There's no way you're leaving. Set the precedent at the beginning of the night. It doesn't matter. Like, oh, well, I want to go home with so and so. You can do that another time. You can meet up another time. But just like, not letting people leave alone or get left. I've heard stories of bartenders participating.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Exactly.
Dr. Katrina Furey: People.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So even if you're doing all the right things, it still can happen to you. So the real fail safe is having friends who you absolutely trust will get.
Dr. Katrina Furey: You out safe safely. Yeah, exactly. And getting things like a bottle of beer or a white claw or something you have to see them open is probably the safest thing. Too scary out there? Yeah, it is.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And of course, the movie is a comedy, so it's going to make light of it and kind of joke about it. But obviously without this movie, it's not funny.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. But again, a lot of the medical information was really accurate. The way they depicted them, like waking up with no memory super common. You totally don't remember anything. I think that's where it gets really scary is like when you wake up and your clothes are disheveled or you don't remember even when they were at the Er and the doctor was like, oh, I think you were raped last night. And they were like, oh, my God. Was I? Yeah. That's how scary these drugs are. You really have no memory. So some signs that you may have been roofied is if you start to feel like, really out of it, kind of dizzy, really sleepy. Like if you're worried about a friend or something that they might be a little stumbly, their speech might be slurred, they're just out of it in a way that seems different and I would say more pronounced than having too many drinks. It's really, like they said should be called a floor. You end up on the floor and then you can't move. Right. Some people might experience some psychotic symptoms, like hallucinations, seeing or hearing things that aren't there. It can affect your heart rate and blood pressure. It's really dangerous, but basically it does knock you out. You're breathing, but you're kind of unconscious, like you're just not with it.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I think it's good to know if you are kind of on the party scene, like how drinking affects you. You know what I mean? If you know, after one drink, three drinks, five drinks, this is how you typically feel and you were feeling very different, that's a bad sign.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think also typically with drinking, there's stages. You might feel a little bit of body relaxation, then you might be a little bit tipsy.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Things start to get a little fuzzy.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Or you start to get a little more animated and loud. And then you might hit the drunk stage where a little bit more slurring, a little bit more out of control in whatever way it affects you. And then we see kind of people really out of control, whether you're passing out, whether you're falling, being I don't want to crazy, like just like running around and then kind of passing out. Right. Like slurring obviously happens early on.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And like, with a roofie, the timeline to passing out is like way quicker and more pronounced and more dramatic and it's less of the slurry giggly or irritable drunk person. It's more like, I don't feel very good. So, yeah, these are sort of the things to look out for and be mindful of with your friends.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think we talked about this when we went over the show. You Netflix with Joe Goldberg. We really got roofy to come.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: We should just not be obviously don't roofy anyone. Duh. But also don't give your friends drugs without them knowing it because you think it's funny or like they're going to like it. It's actually like a crime.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, it is a crime. Porsche it is. And also, like, you don't know. These are like middle aged men. Like, what if they're on heart medication, blood pressure medication? They could have stroked out or had a heart attack. But Alan, I don't think is all there. So he's not thinking about all this stuff. He just wants to have a good time with his buddies. I love that he was the one who ended up, like, winning all the money back.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I know that he's this card shark, but again, it tracks. Kind of like a savant, right? Like having a really high level gift for me. It's kind of a little bit more spectrumy, almost.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, exactly. So I think when they're like, oh, he's not all there, and then we think, okay, so we came out in 2009. So how old would Alan have been in childhood? How much were we screening for these things? If we really think about it. It seems like he comes from a family of means, so they could have pursued whatever they needed, and there's just something off about him. But I think, again, that kind of tracks with this character. He does seem really intelligent in some ways, but then social cues are really hard for him to read. Right. Which tracks.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. Right?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. So another thing that we kind of see them go through is their experience with the police.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my God. When I was rewatching this with my husband, he was like, oh, my God.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I forgot about the fault scene.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And I love sorry to interrupt. I'm just getting, like, really excited when they pull around the car for the Valley.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I know, it's a cop car. And then, like, Phil is just living his best life, taking advantage of this moment, and then it's on the sidewalk telling all these people to move, commenting on this woman's *******. Meanwhile, they're like, everything that we're doing right now is literally a felony. Like, please pull over. Please stop. Stew is kind of panicking. They have the baby in the back, just, like, strapped in. Not in a car, not sitting there.
Dr. Katrina Furey: It was so funny. Yeah. And then I loved those two cops. I thought they were hilarious.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: The man looked familiar.
Dr. Katrina Furey: He did. I think he's been in maybe, like, parks and river, like a show. Oh, my God, they were so funny.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So one of my favorite laugh out loud moments is when Alan gets tased and doesn't go down. And he's just, like, coming towards the kid still that he's, like, mad at because the kid gave him a bad look later. And so then the cop shoots him in the neck, and he's like, Sometimes these big guys need another charge. And then he was, like, down. And that's how they get out of their charge. They are tased in front of kids.
Dr. Katrina Furey: In front of children.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And the kids do it.
Dr. Katrina Furey: It's so funny. Oh, my God. No. And that's when they all realize why they're there. And they're like, Wait, what? I didn't agree to be caged. It's so funny. It's such a funny movie. It is.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I really enjoy it. It parts I didn't love.
Dr. Katrina Furey: All the fat shaming of Alan, all of that stuff. Yeah. You know?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But such also, like, I think just a depiction of the times.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Exactly.
Dr. Katrina Furey: You know, say, like, in 2009. That was cool. Yeah, that's fine. God, it's so funny. Bradley Cooper is just gorgeous.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. I don't know what else to say.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Him and Matthew McConaughey. Sometimes I even get them confused. Yeah, they have a similar vibe. But I really do enjoy watching Bradley Cooper.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Both of them.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I will say it was really interesting. When I was watching the movie, there was a scene where Stu is, like, without his lateral incisor, which I love that he was like, My lateral incisor. And he's, like, singing at the piano.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I was like, oh, yes.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I was like, I find you attractive right now.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't know why.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Who has that same missing, too?
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, okay.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, we all have a type.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Unclear. Yeah, apparently.
Dr. Katrina Furey: That's fine.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That song is hilarious. I feel like I wrote down I don't think I wrote down exactly, but just like, it made me laugh. His rhyming.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I think maybe it's like, what do.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Tigers dream of when they're taking a little snooze? And I was like, wow, you're a great pianist.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I was like, wow, you're a real renaissance man dentist.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Who deserves a better partner.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I know.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I kind of did want to see and I can't remember in movies two and three, like, does Heather Graham's character come back?
Dr. Katrina Furey: No.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So he's with someone who's new. Yeah, totally new. The second movie is Stu getting married to a new person and they go.
Dr. Katrina Furey: To Thailand for his party.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Then he has the tattoo.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Okay. Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Watch that again. We have to just do a whole Hangover series. Yeah. I was really proud of him when.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: He broke up with me, and I.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Was like, glad others witnessed it because she is so awful and mean to him and just puts him down.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then Alan kind of flirts. I was like, Are they going to get together?
Dr. Katrina Furey: Interesting. What did he say? He's like, what did he say? Like, I'm in school to be a dentist. Or he said something that was really funny.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: She was like, Are you farting with me?
Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, gosh, she's so mean.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: She's just like an ugly person on the inside.
Dr. Katrina Furey: He said that? And I was like, yeah, that's how you yes, that's true. Say you're a piece. So, yeah, I was glad when that relationship unraveled.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then we see Doug, he's like, burnt to a crisp. Everything hurts. Which I think most people have been in the sun too long, but you're not burned all day, like, on the road.
Dr. Katrina Furey: He must be dehydrated. Like, he needed fluid. Oh, my gosh. He needed some food. But yes.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I mean, The Hangover is just like a funny throwback movie, I think. Take what you can from it. Like a silly story.
Dr. Katrina Furey: But again, despite being silly, despite some a lot of content that hasn't aged well, there were good depictions of some medical things, like getting roofied, toxic relationship dynamics, bro, friendship culture, sort of dynamics. And then maybe like Alan. Yeah, I thought there was a good depiction overall. And again, I don't know what to diagnose it with, if anything, maybe that's just him. But I am kind of leaning more toward maybe on this spectrum. Like, again, having some sort of Savanti type skill with math, it seems.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, I think that and the speech that was like the drive in, I think, to me kind of feels a little bit more like autism. I think so, too, but he's pretty high functioning through life just fine with all of his contacts.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, exactly. All right, well, thank you all for listening. We hope you enjoyed this little episode. Please feel free to rate, review, and subscribe. Follow us on Instagram at Analyze Scripts. Send us an email, analyze Scriptspodcast@gmail.com, visit our website analysescripts.com, and let us know what you want to hear us talk about next. Yeah, and if you are, I guess, like Netflix or one of these wellness spas, you want to sponsor us, like.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Shoot us a DM or an email?
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, one of those things. We'll see where that goes. Yeah. All right, see you next time. Bye bye.
Dr. Katrina Furey: This podcast and its contents are a copyright of Analyzed scripts, all rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited. Unless you want to share it with your friends and rate, review and subscribe, that's fine. All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings, or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are analyzing "White Lotus" Season 2. In this season we follow Tanya and Greg to beautiful Sicily where the water is a dreamy blue and the passion red hot. This season has received 23 Emmy nominations and we think they deserve them all! We continue to analyze Tanya for a personality disorder, discuss the power and currency of sex, and talk all things complicated relationships. If you are missing this season come along with us to admire the clothing, food and of course their mental health. We hope you enjoy!
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fury, a psychiatrist.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: There is so much misinformation out there, and it drives us nuts.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: With a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And your DSM Five, and enjoy.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Welcome back to another episode of Analyze Scripts. Today we are covering White Lotus, season two. I'm so excited. The scenery is beautiful. They're in Italy.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Oh, my gosh.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I just want to be there.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: You've been to Italy?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I have that part or a different no. So I think this is in Sicily.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yes.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So I visited Naples and then Positano and Capri.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Oh, wow. Oh. Was it like this?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It was literally everything of the sort. Like, stunning, beautiful, incredible. The food I could write home about every day. Just the most beautiful, stunning place ever I've been.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I mean, that reads true in this series. It looks so beautiful.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I definitely want to go there. I noticed, too, in season one of White Lotus, right, there's a lot of cuts of the water, the waves crashing, that the water scene often either comes out of or into another scene of a person. It kind of fades into the scene of underwater or something. So I think that's like an interesting.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And sometimes it would be like the waves are slowly, gently crashing. Other times, there's a big crash. And I feel like that was purposeful and sort of played into the scene or what's going on with the then, you know, spoiler alert. Tanya eventually dies in the water.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: The water takes her.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: The water takes her. She almost made it. Like, I thought she was going to make it, and then she slips.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think that was they said the writer director was commenting on how it was so important for him that Tanya did not die at the hands of someone else, that she still was kind of able like, she still was in charge even though she slipped and died, but he didn't want her being killed. Know the quote unquote gaze?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yes.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Oh, my gosh.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: So let's just jump right in, I think, with Tanya. Yes. So we talked a little bit about our feelings toward her last time we recapped season one. We talked a lot about how she displays some traits and characteristics of borderline personality disorder and how the character talks about how her mother actually also had borderline personality disorder. Did you feel, Portia, like that was consistent in season two or I think so, yeah. What did you notice?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So I think, again, her interpersonal experiences with both Greg with know, fun to see my name in the light, for one. She just seems to really be only thinking about. Right. So, like can't hear Portia. They were having a conversation. We were talking about this before the podcast. And it's like she almost like tunes her. It's kind of is talking over her. Just goes back to her. Right, right. She can't even hear Portia. I think she's asking for a day off to Albie.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah, there was that scene where Portia was like, I know I'm kind of on the clock, but could I take the day and hang out with Albie? And she sort of tries to make a case for it, and there's like a pause. And then Tanya just keeps talking about her own issues. Like doesn't even acknowledge that Portia said anything. Almost like Portia didn't say anything. And I think that actually so tracks with people with cluster b traits, whether it's borderline narcissistic histrionic that the way they relate to other people is almost like other people in their lives are objects that are only there. To serve a purpose in relation to really? They can't see these people as their own independent humans who have their own wants and needs, who are both good and bad. Right, exactly. And so Tanya couldn't even hear it, didn't even register in her consciousness that Portia was asking for some distance from her. And I think that probably played into her intense fear of abandonment. And she just didn't even acknowledge it. I thought that was such a smartly written scene. And I wonder if the writers were really going for that, if they knew, or if that just happened, if that's just the way I'm interpreting it.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I feel like it's got to be intentional just because it's so perfect, you know? And Greg also says to her at one point, I think at the beginning when he sees that Portia is there, they get into a fight and he says, you discard people. You drop people on a dime, you fire people. And then she calls him a full of ****, man. And then she says, I hate so. Like, I think that even their dynamic you see over the couple of episodes that he's there in Italy with her for, she's really easily know. She's really emotive. Which again, if someone was on vacation with me, like my partner, and all of a sudden they were like, oh yeah, I'm going to leave you for two days, I might have a reaction to that as well.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It was unknown. So again, maybe that's why she brought Portia, because she had a feeling he was going to leave and she didn't want to be.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So my question is the ultimate kind of problem or issue, I guess I would say with Bpd is right, the fear of abandonment. And so is Tanya picking up on Greg's right like other relationship, his obviously very nefarious plan to have her murdered know, I think this is hard talking with clients. It's like, are you picking up on something that's real or not?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Or are you projecting such a difficult question?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Exactly.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: That is such a hard question. I also think as a therapist, it's really hard when you only have your patient's perspective. I wonder if that's easier to pick up in couples or family work. But I think that's part of the therapy is learning where your own baggage ends and where the person you're interacting with begins. And that is almost like the definition of an interpersonal boundary which people with these personality disorders really struggle with. And we see that displayed so know throughout this series with Tanya. And I think you're totally like, at first when I was watching this, I thought Greg was upset Portia was there because he wanted to just be on vacation with her. Then I realized it's because he was planning to murder her and didn't want a witness. But yeah, why did she bring Portia? Like a why does she have an why? Um, but I wonder if she was picking up on, like, pulling like, we easily see that. We also easily saw that in season, like, from the yeah. And we talked about how, like, isn't a safe attachment figure for her, but that's probably what she's used to. So for her, that feels like it's, you know, and we just see how mean he is to her, like, with the macaroons. Right?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, totally.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: So mean. He's just always putting her down, always criticizing her. It's just mean.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And in some points, I was like, it's interesting, Tanya's interpretation of that. Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: She said to herself, like, oh, he.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Cares so much about me. That's why he's saying that. And it's like, no, he just said something mean to you. But then, on the other hand, she has a quote unquote inappropriate reaction to something that isn't that bad. So it's just like her it's skewed where and again, I'm a third party. I'm also a therapist. It's also a show, but I'm watching. I'm like, Tanya, you should have had a bigger reaction to him, like food shaming you and a lesser reaction over here, right.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And a bigger reaction when you overhear him in the bathroom saying, like, I love you. I'll be there soon. And I know, right?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That's what was just, like, interesting, confusing, and I think maybe difficult for someone who doesn't know or isn't thinking about her in terms of Bpd.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah. But I also wonder if that is just, like, a really accurate portrayal of the inner world of someone with Bpd. She was saying at one point to Portia later on in the season, basically saying, like, Portia, you remind me a lot of me when I was younger, and you could see Portia, like, recoil inside, like, no, no, I don't want to be like you. But then she said to Portia, when you're empty inside and you have no direction, you'll end up in some crazy places, but you'll still be lost. I think she said that to her after Portia and Jack sort of, like, dined and ditched, and Portia was, like, sort of high off the thrill of that. And Tanya was like, Aaron, teeny balls are like a like, what are you doing with this guy? And I just thought that spoke to another core feature of borderline personality disorder, which is this pervasive inner sense of emptiness. And I think that's exactly what Tanya was speaking to. And I thought that was just, like, a really beautiful way to put words to a really difficult experience. And I just thought in general, we've really got a feel for the chaotic inner world of, like, in all of her big reactions, her small reactions, where you think they should have been bigger, and just kind of all of it. Like, her whole character, I thought, really just portrayed the inner emotional chaos people with Bpd often feel and how, again, that's in such discrepancy to also their inner emptiness. And that goes right back to that old sort of, like, splitting defense mechanism. Right. It's just fascinating and just really well written, really well portrayed.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. I think Tanya I wish that she could go on to season three. I know I'm definitely disappointed that she's not going to be, but also, I think that was intentional. This was the end of her story, and we'll see if there's some talks that maybe Portia is in season three.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I would love that.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That was a cliffhanger. Like, what does she do with this? You know, is in this weird position of being scared and not sure if it was Tanya. Right. She learns from Albie that a guest was found dead in the water, and then there was this ship with all these gunshot weddings, and that's kind of all she knows.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And I just think I hate I.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Just how dare you?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: How dare you? Greg and I just feel like he's going to get off, like, he's going to inherit all the money. He just used everyone he used. Right. Like, we come to find that Greg was like, the cowboy from the past that Quinton was in love with. And it sounds like I didn't quite understand why Quentin felt such loyalty to Greg, but he's, like, doing his dirty work, I think for financial reasons, too. Like, Greg's like, I'll give you some of the money. It sounds like Quentin really needed it. He's kind of spent all his money, but he used that love from Quentin to get rid of his wife so he could get the money. And he also knew that Quentin and his friends could suck Tanya in, and she would quickly idealize them, which she does with everyone, and she did. And they knew how to make her feel exactly how to manipulate. I was like, is he trying to give her make the last week of her life the best ever. Like, even when they play out her fantasy in Italy on the Vespa, which I thought was hilarious, I was like, on the one hand, you're like, is that kind of nice? But then you know you're going to kill her, or is it just like you're getting even more over on her?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Well, and how do you do that as a person, right? Like, if we try to diagnose Greg, what does that even look like? I mean, you come into someone's life and have the gall to take their family money after being married to them for a year. It's just so gross. How do you think you can do that?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I think he's, like a know, and I think he just is so and again, like, is looking and relating to Tanya as just like a means to an end for like, she's an object to him, and now he's ready to discard her and kill her. And I was just so sad that it took her so long to figure it out. And even as she is shooting the gays, as she calls them, she asks, is Greg having an affair? And again, it just speaks to that is the core fear of abandonment. Like her life is in danger, and she still wants that answer. Right.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Because that's more heartbreaking.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right? It's just so heartbreaking because it's almost.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like the money isn't about her, but him cheating on her is about her.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right. And her just being so rejected and unimportant, and yet he treats her as unimportant, and he rejects her all the time, and she's constantly coming back, wanting to feel good enough, and she's just not. Like, she'll never get that with him, but she doesn't have a secure sense of self enough to be able to walk away.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: No, totally. I think, too, there was some question of were we seeing more borderline traits with her or more histrionic traits, right, yeah. So histrionic just a little bit of background is in the same cluster as borderline. You experience discomfort when you're not the center of attention. You might engage in provocative or dramatic behavior. There's, like, mood swings, over the top, displays of emotion. So some of these sound, like, pretty in line with Bpd, seeking reassurance or validation. Extreme sensitivity to criticism. Impulsive behavior, easily influenced, but also, like, a lack of concern for others, which I think in some ways, Bpd, it's not a lack of concern of others due to being how do I say this? Because you want to. It's almost like you have deep concern for others. You are often just so stuck in your head about you because your emotions are so intense. A lot of people with Bpd have care. Loved ones do have great relationships, are often used or often vulnerable. So I think that was just, like, a little bit of a difference.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Where do you think Tanya falls?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think more in Bpd, especially just primarily because we know of her trauma history, and we know we think of her mom's diagnosis. There's less research with histrionic personality disorder, so maybe they also have strong connections to childhood attachment trauma, but the research is more so currently with Bpd.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And like you're saying, Portia, there's so much overlap. And that is why we sort of lump or think about personality development when we're trying to organize such a complicated, convoluted topic into more concrete ways of understanding it. We've sort of come up with these clusters, like these buckets of, like well, people with these types of personality traits tend to have one of these personality disorders, but often there's some overlap. So she very well could have traits of both. And sometimes some traits might be louder, others are softer. And it can go back and forth. Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: No, someone I saw online, the main difference between histrionic and Bpd is that Bpd with I'm sorry, that histrionic personality disorder are motivated more by receiving and their desire for attention, while people with Bpd are more motivated by fear of abandonment and rejection. But I would ask, like, okay, but why do people with HPD need this desire for attention and different from narcissism? Exactly. So I think there's some questions that I have with HPD.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah, I feel like HPD we don't talk about as much. It doesn't get as much airtime, I guess, in the media or even clinically. Maybe we kind of leave it at like, oh, those are histrionic behaviors. Yeah, I would say. And then what.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Do we come from?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right. And how is that different from someone with narcissistic traits also needing to be the center of attention? Or else they feel like nothing.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Is that what's similar? And people with histrionic personality disorder just really act out in a more behavioral, attention seeking way?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It just feels unclear to me.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It does feel unclear, and it's murky. And again, I think it is unclear because personality development is so complicated, and sometimes this is just us trying to put words to such a complicated topic.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: No, I agree. And some of the parts of thinking back to attachment trauma, childhood trauma, maybe, is when Tanya is having sex with Greg, right. And she says that she is disassociating.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Disassociating. I just want to put this out there. The word is dissociate. Dissociate. I hear so many dissociating. It is a tricky word with all the S's and C's, but I don't think it's disassociate. But I hear a lot of people say it that way. I don't know why. Maybe this is just splitting hairs, and I'm just being a snob, but I thought that was hilarious. Right. And again, so well written and perfect. Right. Like, her and Greg are finally having sex. She had come in in her beautiful lingerie, beautiful. Trying to get his attention after he'd really shamed her for all the macaroons. He's so mean to her and so dismissive. Like he's just constantly rejecting her. But finally he's like, okay, let's do it. And then as they're having sex, she freaks out, right, and pushes him away. Pushes him off of her. And he gets offended and annoyed. And she's like, I'm sorry. I was just disassociating. Do you remember what she was imagining in that moment?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Well, it kept, I thought, showing, like, one of those statues or those heads.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then she tells him she's like, this head was on you and then you were gone and you were right in my face. And he's just, like, looking at her like, she has three heads. And then he's I didn't I didn't get off. And she's like, okay. I was proud of her for know, getting him off.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Me too, Portia, because it was so interesting. Right. They're finally connected in a very physical, intimate, sexual way. And then she dissociates and pushes him away. And I wanted to be like that. Is your gut instinct telling you, Get away from him. He is dangerous, but she can't stay there too long. But she did stay there enough where she didn't just get right back to having sex. Which, again, I was proud of her for, but only further pushed him away.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: What a fascinating scene. I would love to interview Mike White and just pick his brain and figure out how did he get these complex interpersonal dynamics depicted just so perfectly. I'm just now realizing also, his name is in the title White Lotus.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That's funny.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Interesting.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So then we know around Tanya, Greg and Portia's kind of dynamic, we see.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Portia and Jack develop who's the alleged nephew of Quentin. And then we find them having sex. So we sort of come to find out he's not actually the nephew. He's also being used. That was sad to me. That was really sad. And to see that actor really portray the heartbreak when he was really drunk and talking to Portia near the end.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: How did you feel with all that? I thought it was really sad. My guesses are maybe that he was struggling either with contemplating suicide when Quentin came about him. Maybe some substance use, maybe being unhoused.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: He probably had his own trauma history.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Seems like he was in a really dark place. I mean, he says, then he cries. Which is so different from this character that Jack, the character, is portraying as this macho man who's very appealing to Portia after she has been having some fun with Albie, who we will cover. You know, Albie seems more like kind, soft spoken, very aware of using consent. And Portia is then all of a sudden very taken by Jack who kind of comes in and kisses her. And it's more like a little bit aggressive and hot and sexy to her. But we see this downside to it, which, again, is not typical. Typically, if someone's kind of like taking swept off your feet in that way, you don't end up in a murder plot. But know, I think just Jack's story was like it made me sad.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It made me sad too. I found him really obnoxious, and as soon as he came into the show, I was like, oh, no, Portia, you've been talking about how you want to make better decisions. Albie's right here. He seems really sweet, but you're noticing, like, he's not chaotic enough or bad enough. And then here comes this guy. And I was like, oh, no, she's totally going to go for him, and he's going to be such a bad choice. But I still feel like she's, like, young and learning these things and making these choices and mistakes, and it all.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Feels very appropriate, to be honest.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah, this feels like kind of like appropriate development. I did find her costumes really interesting. I felt like she was such a great character that just embodies the early 20s person of today. I actually thought her dialogue with Albie on the pool chairs just about how struggling through COVID and how it affected her mental health. And now she's feeling lost. She doesn't know what to do for a job. She has this awful boss. I was like, this is all so accurate, and she's really putting good words to it. But then she's opening up a lot to him and dumping a lot on him, and he's, like, just listening. That didn't feel like a really equal relationship right away.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Well, maybe that was part of her discomfort, maybe after a while with Albie and then why Jack felt so good because he didn't know anything about her. Right? It was just purely physical. She hadn't shared anything emotional with him. It was just like, based off having sex and being hot and sexy and doing these wild things, and there was no nothing deeper emotional vulnerability.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And in that way, I kind of did find myself wondering, is Portia like, a younger version of Tanya? Is this sort of the development of something like Bpd or attachment? Like, she's opening up to Albie so quickly, but then pulls away so quickly? Is that more in line with a personality disorder brewing, or is this also just like, normal development and she's figuring it out and just like, what an interesting character. I felt like she some of her clothes I loved, and then some of them reminded me of limited two. And I think, again, that was probably intentional to just play up, like, how she's so childish and immature in some ways. But again, she's like a young person.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And they did intentionally include her talking right about COVID being alone. And I think we've seen both littles adults and really specifically, at least for me, adolescents, and how COVID and the social isolation and not being around your peers has impacted them. I see a lot of more immature behaviors that shouldn't be, quote, unquote, happening. So I think even so, if we picture her more as maybe like she's a little stunted 18 instead of maybe 22. I'm thinking, right when you get out of college, she feels more appropriate.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And again, like we talked about last time, we've talked about before, you can get psychologically stunted when a trauma has occurred and COVID is a trauma. We have all lived through this collective trauma, but it affects us all in different ways. And we are seeing just skyrocketing rates of youth and adolescent mental health issues also in adults, but I think especially in that population, it's huge. And that social isolation was a really big deal and it was a really scary time for people and for the youth. So I totally agree. I was really glad that they touched on that. I also thought it was interesting that I guess the first season of White Lotus was filmed in 2020, and that was partly why they were restricted to the resort. Remember? I was always like, why doesn't anyone go explore Hawai? And I'm like, oh. And then season two was still in COVID y times, but things were loosening up so they could film elsewhere and leave the resort a little more. And I was like, oh, that makes a lot of yeah, but that scene when Portia's like, starting to put together that something really bad is going on and then I couldn't tell if she was supposed to be killed too, and then Jack spares her or if he was just supposed to keep her away. What did you think of that?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think it's left intentionally kind of like, unclear. There was some talk of why didn't he kill her? And it was just more people were talking about it's not because he loves her at all. They developed this connection. It's just because of his character. He's not a murderer. Yes, he's capable of other things, but we saw how it feels like all this world that he's in is so destructive for him. And he's kind of holding the line at like, and I'm not a killer. He seemed torn for that know, he was angry, which I think, you know, coming off to Portia, which again is so like, he seemed scary. Yeah, he might kill, but like, I don't know, maybe there's some inner conflict at that, like, what to do? And then he drops her off right kind of near the airport and just go to the I thought, you know, that to me was like, he's a victim of his circumstances, but still has like a moral compass.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right? Yeah. And I thought, did he end up having sex with Quentin to spare know? Was that happening all along? I bet it was happening all along, but he really seemed so distraught. And I really didn't know until he drove away if Portia was going to be okay until we saw her in the airport again. And I don't know if he knew. I don't know if he was supposed to bring her back or not, or if he was going to then get hurt because he didn't follow through with the plan, or I just really felt for him by the end. I found him really obnoxious at first, and then learning about his whole backstory, he's just so vulnerable and was just taken advantage of. It's so sad.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. I mean, I think Portia's character, people like, I wouldn't say maybe loved, but some people had really big reactions to her. Didn't like her at all. Thought she was, like, the main villain.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Of the that I find shocking. Yeah. The main villain. Right. Like, whoa.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think that's more and this know, my opinion. I would imagine that's probably coming from a little bit of an older commentator who's watching, because I think if you are a working with Gen Z or if you are in Gen Z, she feels really normal, feels so relatable. And I think she's actually not the villain. She's trying to find herself. She's, like, in Italy with her boss. She doesn't know what to do with. Like, it all makes sense. So she actually had come out with a quote, which I thought was interesting yeah. About commenting on people not liking her. And she said it. The one thing that I thought was actually kind of unfair and warped was the people who were saying that she was awful or that she was the real villain of the season. There's no way that you can look at that young woman and be like, she is the most awful one on this show. People who think that way should go to therapy. And I was like, or maybe just spend some time around the yeah, yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I totally so, you know, expanding out from know, we talked a little bit about Albie and just the stark difference between Albie versus Jack and how they were so different and how you sort of saw both cute.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, of course.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Both, like, physically know. But yeah, albie went to Stanford. He seems really modest. He humble, he's really sweet, sensitive, and it's like, you can tell she kind of wants to be attracted to that guy, but there's something missing for her, like that spark and that sexiness. And I think all people maybe can relate to that or I think a lot of people have felt that at different points in their life. Probably in their early 20s. Yeah. And then here comes Jack, and she's just, like, totally taken by him. What did you think of Albie's character?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I thought that he was so interesting in how season or episode one portrayed him. And then the final episode, episode seven, did. So it's like we learn that he is kind of stuck in the middle of this family dynamic, where he's often the moderator. He often, it seems like, also has power in the family. He can kind of go to mom or dad and make changes or make.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Them move things over.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, exactly. So he seems initially really sensitive, and I think he still is, but he's sensitive. He does not like what his dad, Dominic, is doing to his mom. It sounds like Dominic has chronic issues with cheating. Maybe some kind of sexual addiction. I don't know.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And the kids know at this point, it sounds like he has a sister who's not on the trip. The mom refused to come because of his dad's actions, but he came. And his grandfather oh, my God, what a character and what a stereotypical caricature of older man.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And it seems like so Dominic has contacted Lucia prior to going, that was my interpretation. And then she meets up with them there know, Lucia is like a sex worker. And then we kind of go through all the stages of Lucia and Mia being with or a part of the evening for Albie, Dominic, and Burr, all in different ways. And then at the end right. So his arc from episode one to seven with Albie, it's like, we see Albie, Dominic, and Burr all kind of their heads turn as this attractive Italian woman is walking by in the airport. And I don't know. Would that have happened at episode one with Albie? I don't know for sure. For Burt and Dominic, burt is like this flirt ladies man.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: The scene where they're arriving, and the young receptionist walks him to the room, and he's flirting with her, and then he farts.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Ever.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Just the look on his face, like, pretending it didn't.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And the employee is so professional, she's just, like, ignoring it.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: But he's so trying to hold on to his suaveness and his ladies man vibe, but then he's, like, farting and falling, and he's older. It's too much.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. So I thought what I really liked hearing about this family was when Dominic challenges Bert about Bert's relationship with his wife, who is deceased, Dominic's mother, where Dominic knew that Bert was cheating on his mother. It seemed like she knew. And he kind of talked about her as like, she's either a martyr or she's like, I forget what. It like really resentful, like a bitter woman. And Bert seems so taken aback.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: That his son. Yeah. And that's new.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: All his experience or that he sees Bert's love of his life.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So Bert has this image of his wife, his deceased wife, who's like, that's everything to him. And then we learn of these actions that kind of say differently. It's interesting him being challenged on that.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And it's almost like speaks to Bert's own defensive reactions to keep all of that out of his consciousness and just think, like, wow, we have a great life, and, you know, my girlfriend's on the side, and no one's the wiser. And then Dominic's, like, really in his face, like, we all knew, and this was really hard. And then Dominic, though, is repeating it.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And then in that generation, it's like everyone in the family still knows, but in an even more open way, know the earlier generation. And then we at first think Albie's not going to repeat it, and then the question for me is, does he or was he sort of taken advantage of by Lucia, right? Like, was he really developing strong feelings for her or not? What do you think?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I don't know. I think it could go either way, and I think the writers and they do that intentionally. They totally do that intentionally, because I think it could go 100% either way. I think also I'll be learning that Lucia is a sex worker. I think that then was where I see his path to go either way. He was either, okay, this is something that we do, and I care about.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: You and accept that about you and sort of kind of love you, want to move forward with you, or then he's like, okay, I can use that to my advantage.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right? Is that what you're so I think, you know, albie still feels like the better choice than Jack, but I think that I don't know. I guess what happens in Italy stays, or does the question yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And I think, like, asking his dad for all that money and phrasing it as how did he phrase it, it's.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: The least you could do, or think.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Of it as, like, retribution for all your prior actions. And they were both so manipulating each other that I found it really interesting, and that's when I thought albie really did care about Lucia, and they had that whole scene where her pimp is, like, following them, and she has to go with him, but then that's fake. Oh, was it? Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So then at the end, when it's showing, her and Mia, like, last five minutes of the movie, and they're walking down the street, they stop, and they kiss and hug her pimp who's working at some other place I think it was a friend.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Maybe that's her boyfriend.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think it was a way to get more money. That's what I interpret it, because we saw him, and they were cheek to cheek, kissing, smiling.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah. Oh, I didn't know that was the same person. Wow. Whoa. My mind is whoa, whoa because I kept wanting Lucia to, like she was fascinating. She was a fascinating character to me, too. If we want to move on to know the, like, the depiction of a sex worker, is that the politically correct way to sort of refer to her? Not it's not clear to me if that's legal or illegal in Italy, but you certainly saw all the shame coming from Valentina, the manager of the White Lotus. At first, you see Lucia talking to Mia about it in terms of sort of the way they both view money and sex. I just thought it was really fascinating. What was your take?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, it seemed also like Lucia at times, though, was really ashamed of what she was doing. She didn't want Mia to be a part of it. And then there were times where she's like, I don't like this feels not okay. And other times where she felt like, really manipulated and also in charge, right? Like, she was manipulating these men to make a lot of money. I was like, wow, get your bag, girl.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: That's a lot. But then I thought she just wanted to make enough money to get out and open her own store. But then by the end, I wasn't sure if that's really true or if she's just happy and fine doing this job right.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I would have liked to know. And again, it seems up for interpretation. Like, as her and Mia, I thought that after I saw that that was not her pimp, I thought that she was going to show. Like, this is the store I bought with the money from Albie because they didn't I was this is this something that she does frequently. And it wasn't this one time opportunity with Albie to get this huge amount of money. So then I was like, I don't know. Again, I think it's ambiguous on purpose.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Exactly, and I think they do that on purpose, ending with them strolling down the street, looking in the windows, but not being like, okay, this is the store I bought, and now I can have this new life. And again, I think that speaks to just the strong feelings. The whole concept of sex work, I think, stirs up in everyone, and it's so different for everyone. And I think it perhaps is also different culturally. Like, I'd imagine there's some cultures where it's more accepted than it is in our American culture. And I thought Lucia's influence over Mia was also really interesting. Right. On the one hand, she's, like, bringing Mia along at the beginning, and Mia's, like, not really wanting to, and she's pushing her she's kind of pushing her to like, let's go have a threesome. Like, come on, come on. And then when Mia starts to participate with the original pianist, and then eventually with Valentina and sees like, oh, I can know sex as currency, know, use that power to my advantage to get what I want in the world. I feel like Lucia has mixed feelings about it, kind of.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, no, I thought that was an interesting dynamic, the two of them, because as I thought initially, like, Lucia seems like she's getting out, mia's getting in. Yeah, but then I think they both were.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: But it seems like kind of they want to be. I think it was sort of like thinking, like, oh, poor Lucia. She has this pimp. She can't get out no matter how much she wants to, but maybe not. Like, maybe she is fine with it.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And is that the intent, right, to have this question in your mind when you finish of, like, this isn't a clear cut visual of sex work in a really vulnerable way. It's more like they're in charge of it, and they actually got some nice things. Mia, her music career. She gets to sing here, it seems like, too. At least they showed besides the pianist. And I think that was also just like Mia's discomfort, maybe because it was like the first time she was doing something like that. But all of the experiences seemed consensual.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right? Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And like, gross or where they're feeling or being portrayed as like a victim. They seem very much in charge. And I think that's even more clear when I think you learn that that's not her pimp.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yes, I agree. I totally agree. And I'm sure all of that was intentional. And it does stir up important, I think, questions. And then also with Mia and Valentina. I loved the character of Valentina. I loved how quick witted and strong she was. I loved her initial commentary when everyone's getting off the boat and she's saying to Bert, like, well, you're so old, right, but you're like just some of the things she would say was so funny. But wow, it really turned it on its head. Right. Because you really saw how she was shaming Lucia and Mia at the beginning, throwing them out, like just being so derogatory toward them, treating them like they're subhuman, which, again, I think a lot of people in the sex work industry, that's probably how they're treated. Right. But then by the end, it's like Valentina's a willing participant. And Mia is it's like, in some ways was that kind of beautiful that Mia was finally helping, like, explore her sexuality, which had been so repressed and unsafe for her to explore? That actually seems like take the sex work out. That seems like a beautiful way for someone to explore their sexuality, finally righteous. I don't know. It stirs up a lot of mixed feelings for me. It does.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I think also interestingly, just her character being gay, I know historically and I don't know, like anecdotally that Italy. There's a lot of gay men in Italy. You have been allowed to have a homosexual relationship there since the 18 hundreds.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Wow.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: In parts. So they've been historically progressive in that way, especially with men. And there's like parts of Italy where there's like a lot of gay beaches.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I mean, look at the gay posse around which is sidebar. I feel like part of that posse was like Borat and Albert Einstein. Like, I couldn't stop thinking that when I was watching.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That's so funny.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: But then yeah, compare that to Valentina's experience as a gay woman, and she certainly seems like it was not safe at all to know give any ounce of it was so repressed.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: She also seems to really not like men.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yes. Like in that coffee shop.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, the coffee shop. And then she's really like it's so funny.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Rocco. Rocco.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, she makes Rocco go and work down at the beach. And then she's so, I think, trying to almost use her not 100% fluent in english to challenge and shame Dominic when he's asking for lucia and Mia to be added to his room. And she's like, I don't understand. So they'll also be sleeping with your dad?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And he's like, no, you'll all be.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: In the same bed. Yes. That was funny. And I think, like, her doing that purposely.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yes.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Oh, I think so.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I think she has, like, contempt for men, and that makes me wonder why. I'm sure there's a lot of background there we didn't get to learn about, but watching her evolution, I also thought was really fascinating. I kind of just wonder how she felt at the end of the like, did she feel, like that relationship with mia, if that was, like, did it end there, or did it continue? Did it feel okay to, like, how is she doing?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I and I think that's another right. Like, because she ends up after her and mia had spent the night together, kind of unmia. Didn't ask her, but obviously she made it known that she wanted to sing there. But valentina dismisses the other guy, the other pianist, and he's very upset by it, and she's just like, no, we're moving forward with this. And then she kind of, like, smiles at mia and then goes about her day. So it's like, again, right.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Like, sex is passed.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: What happens next? Do they have another night together, or is Valentina now, like, this confident woman?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I think she's going to go meet someone else to have another night. I think she had said, like, if you're not busy, but how long does that continue? Right. I loved mia. She did have this sort of naive innocence, in a way. All she wants to do is sing, and then she's finally singing, and she's so happy, and I was so happy for her. I did think she was a lot better than the guy. Yeah. The scenes with her and the guy trying to have sex in the chapel, I did feel grossed out by oh.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And she kept turning her head, and there's, like, right, jesus, there's mother mary.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And I was just like, oh, my god. And I thought it was humorous when she gave him the wrong pill, and that can happen, so you have to be really careful. As I put my doctor's hat on, be really careful what kind of pills you're taking. Don't take your friends pills. They can interact.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: ****** can interact with blood pressure medications and lead to really serious problems, which I think is maybe what happened with him. But just be careful. We do see in this season a lot of talk about prescriptions, like, there, and then we see harper and her ambient and kind of sharing it around. Ambien is also not something you should just be sharing around. Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And she seems to think like it's so normal for everyone to take. And I'm like, Ambien is often, like, a last resort.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It should be, I think. Unfortunately, it can be quickly prescribed, but it's really powerful. Do not mix it with alcohol. Do not mix it with other drugs. Please don't. You could get really hurt or stop breathing. It's really serious. But yeah, maybe that's a nice segue to our last crop of characters, who I found perhaps the most fascinating of know we have Ethan and Harper, who seem to be married, no kids yet, maybe I think they're thinking about starting to have a family, but they haven't really yet. And it seems like Ethan has come into this.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right? Right. It seems like he's in tech. Maybe he just sold some that he created.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah, harper's a lawyer, right? She's a lawyer, so she has her own career too. But they were, like, all of a sudden, like, uber wealthy. And they're on vacation with Cameron and Daphne, who are also uber wealthy, but it seems like he's in finance. I think they live in Connecticut, and she's, like, sort of a stay at home mom. And we come to find out that Cameron and Ethan were roomies at Yale. Right. And then it seems like their dynamic was always like, Cameron always had to be, like, the big guy on campus and was threatened by, like, quiet power. And so I think Ethan was saying whenever he expressed interest in a girl, cameron would swoop in. Which reminded me of Olivia. Yes. Right. From season one. It's just like, in, like, Olivia and yes, yes, kind of fast forward, and now let's switch up the gender roles. So what were your first impressions of these folks? And I can't wait to pick your brain about Daphne.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Well, I think intentionally, right. Like, Harper is made to appear as, like, oh, I know she's fabulous as, like right. Like, I'd say, like, really liberal woke and not in an icky way.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Like Olivia from season one.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right. Like, in a really smart way.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yeah, like, she's a lawyer and she's, like, fighting for the employees and all that stuff. Yep.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It sounds like she's either fully or, like, half Puerto Rican, so she has that kind of experience and knowledge base.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: But, like, white passing.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Ethan seems like he's Asian to some degree. So again, not white, but also, I'd say, like, what do they call what's the phrase?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Model minority.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. So so Ethan might also be considered right. Like, part of the model minority and also very stereotypical in tech. Made a lot of money, very smart. Right. So just interesting that dynamic then kind of pushed against Cameron and Daphne, who seem opposite in some ways. Right. Like, more clear gender roles with, like, Cameron makes the money, daphne stays at home with the kids, and then the conflict or how, like, tolerates that comes.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Out that I thought was I I sort of, from the jump, had this feeling like, okay, so Cameron and Ethan were friends. Our friends, I don't know. And they're like, on this vacation together, harper was spot on to say, like, he invited you because he wants your money, so just be ready for it. And like, yep, that's what happens, right? It totally blindsided me. I knew Cameron was cheating and stuff. I didn't think Daphne was also getting back at him, but in major ways, like, almost like she has the power. And again, it's like she is using Cameron's fear of abandonment to her advantage. What did you think of that? Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And also I was just wondering, like, chicken or the egg, right? Like, who pushed who first?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And they get off on pushing each other. Right. It's like, real toxic, but, like, hot.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And we're going to spend some time talking about them, but I think, again, where we're left to wonder, right, is it's not entirely confirmed, but, like, did Harper and Cameron have sex? And did Ethan and Daphne have sex?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yes. And the final scene of them waiting at the airport where Cameron and Daphne feel kind of distant, but then Harper and Ethan are way more connected, and.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: They know sex back in the hotel room.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Finally, it's like, finally that spark is reignited. Right. It seems like they were married and maybe going through, like, a dry spell. And they were so openly talking about how well, Ethan watches **** all the time. He wants to have sex in the morning, I want to do it at night, all this stuff. And you could see how when Harper's trying to seduce him, he's, like, pushing her away, and then it's like the flames rekindle.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right. And so right. The question is why. Is it because they both had sex with others and now they're in this relationship similar to Cameron and Daphne, or did they not? And they are now feeling really close and connected to each other because of that? I don't know.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I know. I don't know either. And I could see it go both ways. Did they redefine the terms of their relationship and they're both on board with it, or did they resist and that made them realize how much they really care about each other, and that's what reignited the flame? It's so ambiguous. It is clear. I don't know either. I don't know either.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So we see them have so Daphne and Daphne tricks Harper to go spend.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: The night somewhere, some palazzo or some fancy thing. I was like, who wants to do that? It seemed kind of boring, right?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: They were, like, in this know, beautiful.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Space, but, like, by yeah, like, where do you get dinner? I don't know. I don't like she could find one strand.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: They took an edible yeah. To relax.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: But I would feel like yeah. Like Harper felt like she was trapped.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And she was and then Daphne's like, well, don't call Ethan. I want to call Cameron first. Right. Like, she needed to call Cameron first to let them know that they just got so swept up and are just going to stay here now.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: But that wasn't true. She knew the whole time that she was going to stick it to him in this way. Is it because she knew he was bound to cheat on her, or he has before and she's spending his money.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And this is her okaying. It because if they had never left, they never would have had the opportunity to do that.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Never crossed.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: She left intentionally, like, giving him this, which, again, he obviously didn't need to do it, but she gave him this space to have this day that could have just been jet skiing.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Oh, that never crossed my mind. I always thought she was mad at him and getting him back, but this is also like she's giving him an invitation. Yeah, but it's also like this is where their toxicity plays off each other because she knows it's going to hurt him. And she says that to Harper, like, oh, he has this fear of abandonment. I think she even calls it that.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And fear of missing out, having this phone experience.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right. And she was like, yeah, they're going to stick it to him and spend his money to rent this place, but then maybe she knows that's going to make him mad enough to be unfaithful to her, but then maybe somehow that justifies her. And the scenes between Harper and Daphne where Harper's trying to bring it to her attention, what did you think of Daphne's responses and the actress's responses?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I would say first, not typical. Not what know, I guess the knee jerk.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Not what I was expecting at all.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And she kind of initially gets pretty severe with Harper insisting that she is not the victim.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yes. She gets very hard and defensive very quickly, like when they're still in that palazzo or something, and she's like, I think something happened with them. Right. And when Harper's like, do you think he cheats on you? And she's like, once or twice, like.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: A year, a month.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And I think at first you're left to think like, he does that, and she accepts it. And then it hit me out of left field when she's talking about her personal trainer. Right. Did you pick up on the kid that it's like his kid? Yes. Right. Yes. And that's like the ultimate sucker punch, I feel like, to Cameron. Right.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Because she describes and this was very, in my opinion, intentional. She describes the trainer as like he looks this blonde haired, blue eyed guy. And then she shows them a picture of her two kids and the one that I zoomed in on, which again, it was probably edited, so I would do that was this blonde haired, blue eyed boy. And Cameron has brown eyes and Daphne has blue. That's possible. But I just thought it was like.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: No, she's trying yeah, and she was allegedly trying to show Harper a picture of the trainer, and then Harper's like, oh, this is a picture of your kids. And she's like, oh, is it? And that's like, Daphne leaves so much she says so much by saying so.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yep.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And I feel like that is her power and just like, what a thing to hold on to. And does Cameron know, or like, I.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Think no, I think he thinks that he is the one who's getting away or being hot shot, but I think it's like, Daphne is the one, ultimately, and she knows it, and that's how I think she can tolerate and that's.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: How she gets, I think oof, icky. Yeah.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And not expected.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Right.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: When we meet her, she's like, oh, hi.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: She's always so fun. I think I voted last year. When I get drunk, I donate to know. I didn't see that coming. Like, what a fascinating character. I kind of want Daphne to be in season three. I want to see where Daphne goes. I never liked Cameron. He gives me the like right away.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Well, in her comments, daphne's of not having a lot of female friends or having a hard time with that. I was like, well, is it because Cameron's, like, touching them? Is it because he's trying to have sex with all your friends? Or are they picking up on just, like, your toxic relationship and don't want anything to do with it?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Just icky. Yeah. And then it's like, look how she relates to right. Like, at first, she's really complimentary and seems kind of sweet, and one of those like, at first I was like, you're just one of know, people who can just see the good and block out the bad news and stuff like that, whereas Harper and Ethan are more based in reality. But then this whole other nefarious side to Daphne came out, and I'm just left wondering, is this who Daphne is? Or has she turned into this in relation to Cameron?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And this toxicity. I don't know. It's fascinating.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It is. It's so fascinating. I mean, I thought the four of them were a really interesting storyline to follow. I think also, just, like, it seems to be that if there's something that you're trying to get away with, it's, like, the truth seems to always come out right. Of course, Harper finds the condom, and then she starts pulling all this other information out of Ethan, which I was like, ethan, come clean earlier. It's like you kept adding things in over time, over and over, and it's like, I understand that you still, by sharing what happened, are going to make Harper uncomfortable or upset, but she thinks that you had sex with someone.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And on the flip side, Harper didn't bring it up right away. Like, she found it. She kind of kept it. They went to dinner as if everything's okay.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: She kept asking him questions about last night, and he was really evasive.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I know. I was just like, you guys communicate directly, right? Like, come on. But I don't think they really know how to and then they really start to mistrust each other.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And it seems like it's all because of cameron and right.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Like I blame for yeah, for sure.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It's like he's the one who's stirring the pot.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: And I think ethan touching her leg is right.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Flashing back to college, where it seems like he actually really doesn't like cameron, and cameron took a lot from him, and that's why then he becomes really paranoid, which may be rightly. So about cameron and harper. And then he beats him up in the water, which I loved. And then they're all, like, dining together.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Oh, my know, I don't even know I know. And then it's like, I felt like harper was seeing ethan maybe like, is this why we're on the trip? Because you want to show him? Like, you finally win it's like, again, them on the jet skis was so perfect. They're just having, like, a man contest, like, who wins? And he want to rub it in his face. But then it's like you see cameron for who he is, and he's always been that way. Right? Oh. It's just really, you know, and we.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Saw power dynamics as well in season one, but it's like the power of yeah. The power of relationships manipulating each other. It just was a really interesting season in that way.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It was really interesting. I mean, I totally see why it swept the emmy nominations right. Under succession. All of the characters in that forsome were nominated for emmys. So was just it was such a good show.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And lucia and mia, which I loved, the fact that they were I think.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: It was actually lucia and valentina.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Valentina, yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: But just really remarkable. And I thought, again, right up there for me with succession and you and just getting it so right in terms of the dialogue. But even more than that, everything else besides the dialogue when they're acting and staging and their body language and what's not said and the silences and the facial expression, all of it is so good, so compelling and so accurate.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And even the more quieter characters on this show, like jack, like know, maybe he's a little bit of a bigger character than but, like, I think they're also such good actors. We felt so many different emotions towards all of the characters, all at different times, and I feel like that to me, really speaks about someone's ability to be an actor. Yes. And we also have coming out next month, one flew over the cuckoo's nest, and we talked, too, about jack nicholson's performance in that where it's like his character is set up so that you automatically should not like him. And then there's this weird dynamic in the show where you're rooting for him. And again, I feel. Like, I see that with Jack, right? Like he's participating in this horrible scheme, but I feel really sorry for him and know, have empathy and I think, well, most people can feel empathy. Empathy.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Sociopath. It's confirmed.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, confirmed today. But I just think all of their characters are so well written and so well acted. I know we just said that, but I'm repeating it because I'm just such a fan.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yes. Mike White, please come on our show.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I'd love to pick your brain. It must be an amazing place to be in your brain.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: I know, right?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So what is your prediction for season three? So we saw an emphasis on money. There's an emphasis on sex.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: What could be greed?
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I mean, I'm thinking maybe of like the seven deadly seven deadly sins.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Like gluttony, like sex. I'm fascinated by like I would actually love it if Portia's the one who we sort of follow next. I think that'd be really interesting. I found Daphne really fascinating. I don't know Portia. I have no idea what to expect. I bet all the writer strike and the SAG strikes, which I fully support, but I think that will sort of delay.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, that's such an interesting thing to think about. I was watching a rerun of a show that I like, I watch Big Bang Theory sometimes at night because I've.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Seen all the episodes fun, silly, soothing.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I was like, this is what we're going to have to do, like watch all these reruns because everything is going to be delayed, right?
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Yes.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I'm sure they can throw out some Hallmark movies because they're really good at producing and getting those ones out fast once this is over. But some of these shows we know yellow Jackets, White Lotus, you.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Know, like.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: You said, I'm supportive, but I just want the content. I know.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: So if these corporations could just get it together, that'd be great. But in the meantime, if you're enjoying this content, please rate, review and subscribe. Our show is doing better than we expected, but if you're listening and you haven't subscribed yet, please do follow us on Instagram at Analyze Scripts. Follow us on TikTok at Analyze scripts, podcast. Follow us on Threads at Analyze scripts. Podcast. Let us know what you want to hear us analyze next and we'll see you next Monday.
Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, thanks for listening.
Dr. Katrina Furey, MD: Bye bye. This podcast and its contents are a copyright of Analyzed Scripts. All rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited unless you want to share it with your friends and rate, review and subscribe, that's fine. All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider. If they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we're analyzing the 2001 rom-com "Legally Blonde." Although some parts of this move (particularly the lack of diversity) haven't aged well, it was fun to revisit the '90s. We admire Elle's strong sense of self and the way she was able to use it to help others like Paulette. We enjoyed the way this movie tackled serious topics like sexual harrassment, imposter syndrome, and emotional abuse in the context of the broader comedy. We hope you enjoy!
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[00:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fury, a psychiatrist.
[00:12] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker.
[00:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows.
[00:23] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriend.
[00:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: There is so much misinformation out there and it drives us nuts.
[00:32] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like.
[00:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: With a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better.
[00:39] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn.
[00:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: And your DSM Five and enjoy.
[00:55] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Hi, thanks for joining us today. We are going to recap a little bit before we get into the movie that we're covering, Legally Blonde. So stay tuned. We have so much Emmy news.
[01:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, we have a ton of Emmy news. The Emmy nominations came out last week and a lot of the shows that we have covered over the past few months were heavily nominated, including Succession, White Lotus, Yellow Jackets and Shrinking. So if you hadn't had a chance to listen to all those episodes, please go back and take a listen.
[01:25] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, I mean, I think none of them were surprised.
[01:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: No, but I was surprised. I mean, I wasn't surprised. Succession got 27 nominations. White Lotus got 23. White Lotus season two, which we're actually going to release an episode about next week. I thought that was like a great season, but I was a little surprised it got so heavily nominated. And I don't know if you notice, Portia, but in the supporting actor in a drama category, it's all White Lotus and Succession actors.
[01:54] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That's it.
[01:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: No one else from anything else. And I was like, whoa, they're going to duke it out.
[01:58] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, they're all so good. So it's just like, how can you even I don't know. They're all good for different reasons, right?
[02:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: How do you pick one? And also the best supporting actress is very heavily White Lotus and Succession, including the two actresses whose names are escaping me right now, but they play the two native Italian girls in White Lotus season two. I was really glad that they got nominated. And our BFF, Jennifer Coolidge got a nomination. So that's exciting.
[02:26] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, really excited. And I was most excited to see Jessica Williams for shrinking, too.
[02:31] Dr. Katrina Furey: I hope she wins. Gabby, gabby.
[02:34] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Gabby character.
[02:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: We love her. We love her water bottles. We love her energy.
[02:39] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think people are also finding shrinking right now, like later. Yeah.
[02:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: So again, if you haven't listened to our episodes yet, I think we have like four episodes about shrinking because we tried to split it up and there.
[02:49] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Was so much to talk about.
[02:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: But it's also really funny. I thought Yellow Jackets might have gotten more nominations. I was a little I mean, again, great. They got nominated for outstanding drama. Melanie Linsky got nominated. But I know everyone was really pushing for Sophie Nielsen. I don't know if I'm saying her name correctly as Young Shauna. I didn't see her name there. That's kind of a bummer.
[03:11] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I don't know. Thinking about yellow jackets, like, not a lot of people I know have seen it. I think there's another person who I interact with who watched yellow jackets because I told them about it.
[03:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: Are you basically saying we're influencers?
[03:25] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Basically, I'm an influencer at the couch.
[03:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: Basically, if Showtime or HBO wants to sponsor us, feel free.
[03:31] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. So I'm spreading the news. But I think that's the problem with that show. It's on Showtime, which, again, is like HBO Max or Max. But I don't think Showtime is as big. I feel like I'm using air quotes. Like, everyone has Max. Yeah, but not everyone has Showtime.
[03:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, no, I could see that. But then with these awards, at least with the Oscars, I feel like a lot of times more obscure things do get a lot of nominations or end up winning. I don't know if it's that way for the Emmys. I'm not really hip to that insider info. I will say I was really happy to hear Vanderpump Rules got nominated. Just as a tangent, I thought, again, I love trash reality TV, but I do think this season was really good and they totally deserve it. And the editors got nominated, too, which I think is super well deserved.
[04:21] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I wonder if that's, like a precedent.
[04:25] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, sorry, what were we going to say?
[04:27] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: No, just like editing reality TV. We see producers or writers or editors for all these fictional, amazing shows, but they're working hard, too.
[04:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. And I think it is interesting that I feel like in the Bravo sphere, vanderpump Rules has always been seen as kind of like the little sister to maybe like The Housewives or all these other shows. But they got nominated, so I kind of feel like it's like the underdog coming out, which, again, kind of reminds me of Elle Woods being the underdog that no one saw coming.
[05:00] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. That's a great segue.
[05:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: I like you. Thank you. It just came naturally.
[05:04] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That's when you know it's better. So yeah. So, Legally Blonde, we're going to be discussing today, it came out in 2001.
[05:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: Wow.
[05:11] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So it's pretty old.
[05:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: Just like us.
[05:14] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Just like us.
[05:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like me, at least.
[05:17] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Did you watch it when it came out?
[05:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, yeah.
[05:21] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Monumental. Yes.
[05:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: I've seen this movie a bazillions of times.
[05:25] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I've seen it on TV. Every time it's on, I think I just have it on in the background.
[05:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: You didn't go to, like, the movies with your friend? I didn't go to movies. So, again, I feel like I'm not that much older than you, but in this context, I am reminded that I am. And again I feel like am I the Paulette to your l? No.
[05:43] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Maybe if you can teach me how to Bendon's now. Yeah, I totally can, but no, I think those couple of years, though, matter based on where we were at during those years. I was in heightening, I was twelve. That makes a big difference for TV and shows at that time.
[06:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I love watching this movie because I think it reminds me of my younger years seeing it with my friends from Dance. We all had those little heart necklaces, the knockoff Tiffany necklaces. I love the bubble letter font and all the colors. Yeah, exactly. Like all that stuff. It's really nostalgic in that way. But when I rewatched it in preparation for recording this, I was like, oh my gosh, Elle Woods is such an amazing character. I don't know what was your reaction to kind of rewatching it as an adult?
[06:39] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think when I've rewatched the movies that we've covered that are older, I continually am cringing at some of the.
[06:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: Things like diverse they are true. Or how some of the language, they.
[06:54] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Still say things that I'm just like, OOH yikes. And I will say some of the things that I've heard are words that they've used in Legally Blonde in The Hangover. They do edit them out.
[07:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like when you see a TV now, like, I'm thinking when Jennifer Cool just character says the R word, maybe.
[07:11] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yes. So when they're replaying on E, those parts are not on TV. So I did.
[07:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: Watch this.
[07:18] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like I think I forget. Where Amazon Prime? I think I did too. And then it's the full movie with all the glory and I was just like I think it's because I'm being more analytical and nitty gritty and looking for things.
[07:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: Well now, Portia, we are like scholars of film. We are we're not only scholars of mental health and psychiatry, we are scholars of film and we're combining these interests. So of course we are watching it with an analytic lens.
[07:43] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: A little bit of a disappointment, to be honest.
[07:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: I noticed that too, with some of the language and also in terms of diversity, I think I saw like one black person and it was the student that Professor Stramo like, hit in the head with the pen. And I was like, really? The whole movie? The whole movie. That's the one black person, they get hit in the head with a pen. So I think that's speaking to exactly what you're saying.
[08:05] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, and then also, just like it was funny watching it on Greek Life, all the stuff on every fall now on TikTok, and I think it was a big disappointment. But the HBO Max sorority, it was supposed to be this big exposure of Alabama sororities and ended up not doing any of that. So I think everyone's interested in Greek life. And I think this again. I mean, legally, Bomb is like, really stereotypical Greek life.
[08:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: A lot of girls exercising, like they were depicted exercising constantly.
[08:37] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Dieting, dieting.
[08:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: They're all skinny, all same body type super cute, but I definitely noticed that too. And I wasn't in a sorority or anything, so I have no idea if that's really what Greek life is like or if that's like a fantasy. Probably a fantasy.
[08:52] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think it depends. At least I've heard that it also depends where you are, like, if you're in a sorority or fraternity in the Northeast, it is very different than, like, the south. From the south.
[09:02] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
[09:02] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Where I don't know. I also was not a participant in Greek life. I know of some people who have had wonderful experiences and some people who have had horrible experiences, and then rumors of, again, some stereotypical things happening with hazing or weight checks and stuff like that. So I don't know. I mean, I think, again, it depends where you go to school and the culture of that specific chapter there in.
[09:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: I mean, I liked the Delta News. I loved Elle's. Two little best friends. Again, it's like the comedy. Yes, the one who got banks. But it's a comedy. It's over the top. But I did feel like they were so supportive of her desire to go to law school, and they were helping her study, and they were all so excited when she opened her LSAT envelope.
[09:52] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Very lifting her up.
[09:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, I loved that. And I think also watching it now in this phase of my life, I just connected with her in every step of the way to get to law school, and I was like, this does hearken back to how hard it is to take the MCAs. Like, getting into medical school, finding yourself, a lot of it just made me feel really good. Yeah, exactly. My interviews for medical school were not.
[10:17] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: A tape you had to fly right?
[10:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: Or go to yeah. Back in the day before Zoom. Yeah. You had to gosh. I mean, I think I took the MCAT twice. It was really hard. I took an MCAT prep class that I won in a raffle. I never would have been able to afford that if I hadn't won in a raffle. And then yeah, you had to fly to each school to interview, and it was really scary. They were really interviewing you and expensive.
[10:43] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I mean, expensive to other parts of the country where you might get in and might need to go there or might not.
[10:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, it was expensive. I remember for applying for residency, I took up more student loans to be able to afford to fly around to the different places to interview. I mean, on the one hand, it's nice to get an actual feel for the place you're going to be living, the people you're going to be either going to school with or working with. On the other hand, having the Zoom interviews would have saved a ton of money.
[11:15] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
[11:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: But I guess you don't really get as much of a feel for culture. No, I couldn't. No, I could. I don't think it would have been really as received as well as at Harvard Law.
[11:26] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I did like the scene where it was like eight white males who were looking at her tape and I liked that they were like, let's give it a shot. This is so different.
[11:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, that never would happen in real life. But I thought they were really playing tongue in cheek in this desire to have a more diverse class. Again, kind of disappointing given how undiverse the movie was. I guess. Just interesting.
[11:54] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It was really about, I think, when she got to Harvard, like, being literally blonde. Right? So even at the last scene of the movie when it's that they're all in their caps and gowns. It's like it's spanning everyone and there's like it's just brown hair, brown hair.
[12:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: Brown hair, brown hair, blonde. And I loved that Elle Woods had this sense of self confidence and assurance in her own sense of self.
[12:17] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like, I can do this. What do you mean? I'm going to study hard. And she worked hard and she did.
[12:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: Do it, but I was just like, wow. I actually really admired that about her character. And I think you could totally hate this character because she obviously has a lot of privilege, a lot of money, these things. Like, she's not taking out student loans to apply to law school. But you don't hate her, I think, because she's also really kind and sweet and genuine and she is working hard. And I thought all the people around her who were so judgy were just, like, so mean. They're just so mean.
[12:50] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And in the context of like, they all also have a lot of money. It's like everyone in the same group. She's the nicest and sweetest and seems really kind and open and she's maybe more wealthy even than they are. But it's not like we're seeing a vast array of socioeconomic. Right?
[13:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: We have Warner Huntington II and Vivian Kensington from Connecticut, of course. But yeah, I mean, I think also the currency at Harvard Law is probably intellect in your brain, maybe rather than money. Although probably everyone does have a lot of money for the most part.
[13:29] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It comes like legacies and stuff like that.
[13:31] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like Warner Huntington II with all of his senator brothers and stuff. But yeah, I mean, that scene where she just gets there and they're going around introducing each other and everyone's like, not even humble bragging, just bragging about all their stuff. I was like, oh, my God. I have been in situations like this where everyone's introducing yourself and you're talking about like, this is what I did, and this is what I did, and this is what I did and it's so uncomfortable.
[14:03] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: What is your take with mental health in this movie?
[14:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: I guess I'm thinking about mental health. I mean, stress comes to mind. Like the stress of getting into law school and then trying to fit in and trying to succeed. I feel like the dynamic between L and Paulette, played by Jennifer Coolidge, is really sweet. And I almost feel like Paulette draws from Elle's own sense of self assuredness and security to take some major steps in her life, whereas before meeting, they kind of help each other. And I just really liked that. And then I think the sexual harassment with Professor Callahan but what about your take?
[14:48] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I was thinking of it in terms of relationships and young relationships transition. So Elle is so convinced that Warner is going to propose to her.
[14:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: She's so in love with him and that puppy.
[15:01] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Their whole life planned out together, and everyone thinks that it's going to happen. And then he breaks up with her and it's like her whole world, because it is her whole world collapses, turned on its head, and it's like she doesn't know what to do with herself. She's lost. And then she makes this decision, which ultimately is excellent for her, but initially it's just she's following him. I'm going to go to Harvard Law School just to try to get back with my boyfriend kind of a little out there. And not everyone can do that.
[15:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[15:31] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But I think that just speaks to being young and lost and how much a breakup can impact you.
[15:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, exactly. And I think we see that and maybe some of us have even experienced that in our own lives around that time frame. Like in your early twenty s. I think we talked about this and I can't remember which episode recently, but I think everything everywhere all at once. That time in your life can be so confusing and hard and really emotional because you don't really know what's next. And it sounds like for L, she was so attached to him, admiring him and being his wife and just being 100% supportive of him that she was really devastated when he kicked her to the curb. What did you think about Werner Huntington II?
[16:18] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I just can't stand him. I love that he called. I didn't love it, but like Pooh Bear. And then she saw that he was also calling his ex now fiance.
[16:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: Same thing.
[16:30] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Pooh Bear. And then he wants her back after she wins the case because she's like enough now for his family. Right. She's like serious. That was kind of her attempt. The whole movie is to be serious and for him to value me. So I think he's just like a narcissist, scummy, entitled, bratty riddle.
[16:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, but I think actually portrays some really classic signs of a narcissistic partner exactly like you're describing. Like having the same pet name for each of your girlfriends, like they're interchangeable. And then wanting to go back to the shinier winning object when the other one isn't shining and winning anymore. These are actually really classic signs of someone with narcissistic traits, wouldn't you say?
[17:16] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, I think also I would guess and you never want to predict this, but that if he had married Vivian or Elle that he probably would cheat on that with younger assistants, people with.
[17:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: Less power, like Professor Callahan. Yeah, exactly. What did you think about that dynamic between L and Professor Callahan?
[17:38] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think for such a silly movie, I think it really was an important part and it was serious and it happens. And I think that they portrayed it really well within the comedy context, right.
[17:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: Within the context of the movie and the spirit of the movie.
[17:57] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then Vivian thinking that that's how she was getting all of these opportunities and she might not have been wrong in another context. And then she's horrified to find out that it was unwanted and then really kind of lets her see L differently and then they kind of become friends.
[18:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: I feel like Elle is so forgiving. I don't know if I would have been so buddy buddy with Vivian after everything she did to me.
[18:22] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like right.
[18:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: Cruel, mean, like with the party. That's what I mean is they they do a good job of depicting all these, like, fancy smarty pants at Harvard. They were so mean to her. Like, everyone was so judgmental. I think I resonated with that because I remember I went to college in Boston and I didn't grow up there. And when I got there, I have this vivid memory portrait of riding the t the subway in Boston wearing like a hot pink skirt and a lime green shirt. Right. I'm like 17, going to college, and everyone else on the subway is in black. And I just remember looking around being.
[18:55] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like, that's also just like so accurate for New York and Boston. We're drab like northeast, cold, not friendly, wear a lot of black and neutral.
[19:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I remember getting on the subway, paint my little fair and saying hi to every single person because I come from the south where you say hi to people and everyone's looking at me like, I'm going to ask them for money or I want something from them. I have this vivid core memory of this experience. And so seeing L, like, arrive to Harvard, I was like, yes, that's what it feels like. Luckily, no one ever told me or invited me to a costume party that wasn't a costume party. Like, how embarrassing.
[19:35] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So Elle takes it such in stride.
[19:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know.
[19:38] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And she obviously is embarrassed and hurt. And then she's like, okay, well, you know, I look hot. And she did, and you all are lame and I'm going to go talk to Warner in my little bunny outfit.
[19:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. Then she goes to get her laptop again. I loved the colorful MacBooks, right? Like, I always wanted one of those.
[19:57] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I remember in middle school having the big computer lab and they were all clear and you could see in it, and we had game boys that were clear and it was all a clear.
[20:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: Those little phones with the cords and.
[20:12] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Then the blow up furniture, everything was clear. We want to clear.
[20:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: And you could see the inside. Right. I wonder if that appeals to us as therapists. Right. Like, really wanting to see the inside of things, how do these things work and things like that.
[20:28] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Weird. Anyway.
[20:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: Weird.
[20:30] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But so I also, you know, we could talk a little bit about of mental health with Paulete and her ex husband.
[20:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
[20:36] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: He seems with not using therapy words, like kind of an ahole. Yeah, that you're right.
[20:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: That is not a diagnostic term.
[20:43] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Not, but definitely powerful. Paulette seems, like, intimidated by him when they go to pick up the dog. It's like immediately after being gone for so long, they're back in the same exact dynamic, which feels abusive.
[20:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. At least emotionally, on the surface, if not worse.
[21:01] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And she kind of backs down. And then L comes in with her legal L one jargon, using, like, pulling.
[21:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: It anywhere you can. Right.
[21:10] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And he gets the dog, and it's great. Yes. And that was really a win for Paulette. But just, again, in a comedy tough scene, though, like, a lot there within this funny context because I'm taking the **** dog. Like, that's an iconic line. But it's like, again, it seems like it's an abusive relationship. Paul seems very scared and disempowered victim in that space.
[21:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. She's, like, tripping over her words. She's having a hard time making eye contact with him. You can tell she's so nervous. And then, like, Elle comes in again, like, putting on her lawyer hat and using whatever word she can think of to help her. And I feel like that was almost the first time she realized her power. Like, I can do this. I can help someone. And that feels really good. And I think similar to the scenes with Professor Callahan after he comes on to her, this movie does actually a pretty nice job of addressing these really tough, serious topics that do arise in the course of a woman's life really well.
[22:11] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. And then, too, this is where it's a little gray. So, Emmett, who's Luke Wilson? He's never her teacher.
[22:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. I think he's a third year.
[22:25] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: He writes for the paper.
[22:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. But then he also seems like maybe a lawyer already. I think he represent her. Maybe he's, like, fresh out of law.
[22:35] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: School, and he doesn't clerk. He works for Callahan, and he's just, like, around Harvard, because I think Callahan's, like, firm is probably there.
[22:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: Well, I don't know how that works.
[22:48] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But it felt like I think if I'm being really critical, I was maybe.
[22:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, there's a little power dynamic there too. Yeah, no, I can see what you're saying, that he's older, he's already employed, he can help her.
[23:04] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I didn't see him right.
[23:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: I didn't see him take advantage of that. Right. Whereas we see Callahan purposefully knows what he's doing and puts his knee or not his knee, his hand on her knee in an attempt to try to take advantage of her. And again, unfortunately, that happens. And again, for Elle to know that that was wrong and to stick up for herself takes a lot of self confidence when you're in a vulnerable position like that.
[23:29] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, because he could cut her right from the internship immediately and mess with her career.
[23:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: Exactly. And unfortunately, it does happen. And I thought it was nice to see the other characters sort of come to her defense. I would have liked to see more consequences for Professor Callahan. Didn't seem like there was a whole heck of a lot.
[23:53] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And also not surprising, I know tenured probably that's I think a magical word in academia for kind of doing whatever. Great movie. I did want to comment a little bit on. We spoke about it earlier, but a lot of unhelpful gross body stuff, and especially just like the whole court case being around a Delta new sister who didn't want to tell people that she had lipo.
[24:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right?
[24:26] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But she's like this workout guru who can make change a woman's body like that. And Elle's like, I took her class and I lost three pounds, and it's like, hey, you probably were dehydrated after.
[24:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: You went from a six to a four.
[24:39] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right? So just, again, really appropriate for the times. And we've moved it's, what, 22 years later? I'm not great at math. I'm not good at math.
[24:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: I feel like we've moved a little bit in the right direction, but still not that far. And now, especially with, like, Ozempic, I feel like we're sliding back decades. But you're right. I mean, this does depict Brooke, played by Allie Larder, being unwilling to give her ally.
[25:10] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: She'd rather go to jail, right, than.
[25:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: Lose her reputation and say that she needed liposuction to look the way she.
[25:16] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Looks, which is so current. 100% celebrities refuting the fact that they have had plastic surgery, that they're on Ozembic, that they have guests, personal chefs, personal trainers who are at their beck and call 24/7. They're also editing their pictures like it's just like we know that. And I think I talked about this in an earlier episode, but I'm going to bring it up again, because it's interesting is that they've done studies where even if you know that a picture has been edited, like on Instagram, now it'll say edited with blah, blah, blah filter. It doesn't matter in our brain, we still will then compare. We still will feel dissatisfied. So we can take all these steps forward with even acknowledging, okay, I've had work done. If I say that and you still are comparing yourself to me and still feeling dissatisfied, you still feel bad, right? Like, it doesn't matter that, you know, I've had work done, which is just so interesting.
[26:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, I think also because you still want to look like that and maybe you're even sad that you don't have the means to have the work done right if you wanted to have it.
[26:17] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. So, I mean, I think all these companies, Meta, TikTok, Instagram are all trying to do things to help body image. They always have filt leave. You can't say some things online, they block hashtags, they will let you know with a filter. But at the end of the day, it's so hard to it's not about that. It's about changing how we interpret bodies.
[26:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. What our society thinks is important.
[26:42] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Correct. At the inner level, it's like we value beauty, we value thinness, we value wealth, we value all these things that are not attainable for some people, for most people. And that message, though, has been around for so long, and I don't know what it's going to take to have it reduced.
[27:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, I don't know. And I wonder if I'm sure other cultures, other countries experience this too.
[27:08] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Absolutely.
[27:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: By the way, we have so many international listeners that if you want to DM us and let us know what it's like in your neck of the woods, that'd be cool. But I'm sure other countries and other cultures face this issue too. But I feel like in America, you're right. We really focus on the Britney Spears body type. Even now. Even now that is like or maybe now it's more the Kardashian body type. But it's still unattainable. Right. The beauty standards are always unattainable.
[27:37] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It's just hard to police it. There's a creator online who's really controversial. I believe they have come out and said that they have anorexia and they are very emaciated and they do lives and they're known, they're very popular. They have twitch and all that stuff.
[27:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: Do you feel comfortable saying who it is or not?
[27:58] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think it's eugenie. Eugena? Yeah. I mean, I think people know she's very popular and I think also because she's like fascinating because she looks very sick. But it's this moral, I guess, ethical question of, like what she's doing is not illegal. Right? You can't livestream on drugs, you can't livestream doing speeding in a car. You can't livestream naked. Yeah. There's all these things that you can't do that maybe necessarily aren't illegal but are harmful for others to see. So it's really just this ethical question of, like well, her live streaming, I might say, is doing more harm than some other things. But what would you call then? Why isn't she allowed to be in her body broadcasting? Because she's not talking about anything. She's not talking about ed content, she's.
[28:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: Not talking about food at all.
[28:53] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So it's like is that the reason that it's fine?
[28:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's a really ethical gray line.
[28:59] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But I think bodies continue to be political. And I went to a training where it's like living in a larger body is like being a part of political warfare. And it is. So this movie definitely does not help offer that. Body diversity.
[29:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: No, it doesn't. And I noticed that, too, like, right away. And I also think, though, maybe to end on a positive note, the one nice thing it offered was like at the end when she had just been sexually harassed by Professor Callahan, she was going to say goodbye to Paulette. She was really, really tearful, then turns around Professor Stromwell, who was there, like, getting her highlights. And I thought that was kind of like a nice model for her to see that you can be smart and a lawyer and still get your highlights.
[29:52] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right.
[29:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: And when she said, if you're going to let your whole career go for this one, man, you're not who I thought you were. And again, I'm like, well, you were kind of mean to her first, too. You kicked her out. But I guess we can brush that aside. But I thought that was kind of a nice model to show. And I think that is important, maybe, especially for women to embrace that you can have all these different facets of your identity. And I know that's something that I don't know if I'd say I struggle with, I wouldn't use the word struggle, but definitely like this impostor syndrome. When you're at a fancy schmancy institution, you're like, well, can I still wear color or will you take me less seriously? Right. I think we've talked about that with this podcast. I'm a little nervous, like, will people think I'm not as smart or will they laugh at me or as serious or like, I know what I'm talking about. So, in that way, I did really appreciate that part of the movie.
[30:48] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, I think it's great. Again, there's so many lawyers out there who have been inspired by L Woods.
[30:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: I wanted to look up the statistics, like, was there a surge in law school admissions afterwards?
[31:00] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think a lot of people saw being really feminine in the field and then were able to see themselves. Which is why it's so important, right, to broadcast diversity. Because if you see yourself or somebody who looks like you doing something, you're more likely to do it.
[31:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: And so, to wrap up getting back to the Emmys, so Reese Witherspoon has had a really great career. She's played so many diverse roles. She had a career before this, but I do think this really catapulted her star. And now she has her own production company, hello Sunshine, which a couple of those shows, I think the Daisy Jones in the 6th and Tiny Beautiful Things were also nominated for Emmys. And she was saying this was my goal with starting this production company, was to highlight female voices and movies and TV shows from the female perspective. Because I think given in her career, thinking back to that movie Fear with Mark Wahlberg, she's come out and said there was a scene on a roller or a Ferris wheel or something. I don't know if you saw that movie Portia that she was really uncomfortable with, but she didn't feel like she had a voice to say anything. So I think that's really cool that people are again, she has a ton of privilege to be able to do that, but that the people with the privilege are doing it to try to pave the way for future generations.
[32:18] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But stay tuned, because we'll also be covering Reese in the Morning show, which is a serious, more serious role for her. So stay tuned.
[32:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, and then we'll see you again next Monday with White Lotus Season two to sort of wrap up our Jennifer Coolidge July. And as always, if you could please rate, review and subscribe. We have gotten a lot of new listeners and subscribers, so we really appreciate it, but please take a minute to rate and review. If you want to support the show, you can find us on Instagram at Analyze Scripts TikTok at Analyze Scripts podcast. And now we're on threads. Yeah, I don't know what the name is, though.
[32:56] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think it's just Analyze scripts.
[32:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: Okay, great. You can tell which one of us manages the social media, and we'll see you next time. Take care. Bye.
[33:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: This podcast and its contents are a copyright of analyzed scripts. All rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited.
[33:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: Unless you want to share it with your friends and rate, review and subscribe, that's fine.
[33:25] Dr. Katrina Furey: All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings, or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, "Jennifer Coolidge July" continues with "White Lotus" Season 1. Who doesn't love this show?! In this episode, we dig into the toxic interpersonal dynamics depicted in all of the relationships amongst the main characters. We spend a lot of time analyzing Tanya's manipulation of Belinda and discuss which behaviors are consistent with borderline personality disorder (BPD). We also explore what keeps Rachel and Mark connected to Shane and Nicole, respectively, and poke fun at Olivia's "wokeness." We hope you enjoy! PS RIP Armond.
[00:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fury, a psychiatrist.
[00:12] Portia Pendleton: And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker.
[00:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows.
[00:23] Portia Pendleton: Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriend.
[00:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: There is so much misinformation out there, and it drives us nuts.
[00:32] Portia Pendleton: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like.
[00:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: With a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better.
[00:39] Portia Pendleton: So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn.
[00:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: And your DSM Five, and enjoy. Hi, welcome back. We are so excited you're joining us today to talk about the hit HBO show White Lotus Season One, as part of our Jennifer Coolidge July Celebration. We hope everyone had a really wonderful July 4 weekend, and we hope you ate all the hot dogs you could get your hands on. Yeah, I did. Porsche. I want to start a little differently than usual because something just really interesting happened to me during my July 4 celebration. Okay. I went with my family to Legoland, which is a really wonderful place for little kids. And on July 4, they had this whole celebration. They had really cool fireworks with 3D glasses, where when the fireworks exploded, they looked like Legos. I thought that was really cool, and I was really trying to figure out the science because not every light was connected to a Lego. So it had something to do with the frequency and the electrons, and I just get really nerdy about these things. But then they also had a fire dancer, right? Like, would you expect that at a child theme park? No. And so we Legoland.
[01:58] Portia Pendleton: Maybe like Disney World.
[01:59] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, they had a fire dancer. They were really pulling out all the stops. They also had the Brick Street Boys, because everything is like brick themed with the Lego brick, everything's brick tastic. And, you know, I love the Max Tree Boys, so that was titillating. But this fire dancer, we stumbled across her as we were leaving, and obviously we had to stop and watch her and just imagine she is like five foot zero at the most. Like, on a good day. She's itty bitty, teeny tiny, wearing a full on white unitard, like full on bodysuit with red and white horizontal stripes, so she looks like a firecracker. And then she had this beautiful bleach blonde hair, but with these long, long bangs and these bright red lips.
[02:49] Portia Pendleton: Oh, no.
[02:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I kept worrying, like, is her hair going to catch on fire? Right? I was just like, I loved her look, her hair is wonderful.
[02:56] Portia Pendleton: Or it is.
[02:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't know. I would think your hair would catch on fire. But then I think also, like, the fire they use has got to be not real fire because then she starts, like, eating it. So she's also maybe a fire eater.
[03:08] Portia Pendleton: Okay.
[03:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: So I just thought it was really fascinating because she's, like, in this awesome outfit, a little sensual for Legoland, the theme park and doing these moves that are not, like, seductive per se, but sensual with fire. It was just really interesting to see all these children watching this. And what I loved is the music she picked first, obviously. Miley Cyrus partying in the USA. Getting her fire going. Sometimes the flames would go out because it was a little windy and she had, like, all sorts of different fire sticks. And then do you know this song that's like the grand finale song. It was like, Partying USA. Yeah. She's, like, dancing around with her little fire sticks, and then she transitions to the fans. It's like a fire fan. And she lights each one slowly and kind of seductively to that song that's like, light them up, light them up, light them up. And it was just like, wonderful. I don't know, it was just really interesting.
[04:08] Portia Pendleton: That's making me think of the yes.
[04:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: The hula dancing in white Lotus. I know. And I was just like it didn't feel like cultural appropriation, I guess, in this case. Although in White Lotus it kind of does, right? So I don't know. It was just really interesting having a fire dancer at a child's theme park. Kind of very sensual, really. Like maybe pushing the line, but not quite. And then I just kept worrying her hair was going to catch on fire. My children would see this awful, traumatic thing. And then she ended by eating the fire. And then my son was like, does she **** fire? And I was like, great question, great question, great question. Right? And then I was like, does her esophagus get burned? What are the ins and outs of being a fire dancer? What are the hazards of the trade?
[05:00] Portia Pendleton: There's got to be I mean, there's a risk of being burned, right?
[05:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. Is it like, just real fire or is it some sort of special fire for fire dancers that's safe to consume?
[05:12] Portia Pendleton: I have no idea.
[05:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: No idea. So if anyone knows, DM us and let us know.
[05:16] Portia Pendleton: Fire.
[05:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: Speaking of things that are hot, white Lotus, super hot show.
[05:23] Portia Pendleton: Jennifer coolidge.
[05:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: Super hot. Like, at all stages of life, she is the queen. So, yeah. Where do you want to start?
[05:31] Portia Pendleton: I think we have to start with Tanya. I mean, all weekend, it's just so relevant. I kept wanting to do the on.
[05:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: A hot dog real bad. Yeah. Which I think is from legally blood. Yes. But we'll cover that next time. Gosh. Jennifer coolidge.
[05:52] Portia Pendleton: So we see her making her way to the White Lotus resort by herself, and then we learn that she has her mother's ashes in tow. Seems like it was a recent death from how she's acting appropriately during grief. It's coming in and out. Sometimes she's fine, other times she's really upset and her idea is to kind of leave some of the ashes in the water off the coast of Hawaii.
[06:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. Which sounds beautiful. And I feel like people do that. People do that. But we see her sort of disembark that little tiny boat that's coming to the white Lotus with all the employees just waving and smiling. I loved how this series ended with them doing that again, except now we know more of the backstory and that made me really sad to see they're all there fake smiles, and she's just kind of a mess from the jump.
[06:46] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. We see her pretty quickly at the spa right down there. And she really wants an appointment.
[06:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: They don't have any. She's kind of freaking out, kind of pushy. And then Belinda, the lovely spa manager, or maybe just employee, makes room for her. Right. So right away we see some boundary pushing and crossing with Tanya McQuad and Belinda, which we just see continue.
[07:14] Portia Pendleton: So it kind of starts their relationship. Right. I mean, again, I'm using relationship with air quotes right now because relationships are really two ways.
[07:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: Exactly. But I think, as we see with Tanya, this is a one way relationship. And I think that's a theme we see carried through for a lot of these different characters.
[07:32] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. So Belinda provides a service to Tanya that Tanya believes is like, life changing. And she's healed now immediately. And she wants to spend as much time as possible with Belinda, who is doing her job and becomes pretty pushy and almost so manipulative. It doesn't get sooner right off the bat with the money right. And her opening a spot together that comes a little later, like midway through the season. But you can just see Tanya's needs very needy, trying to kind of do whatever she wants, crossing inappropriate employee guest boundaries. You can see Belinda feels uncomfortable but.
[08:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: Goes along with it.
[08:15] Portia Pendleton: A really high end place where I'm like, I feel like this probably in some ways is a norm. Like, you go above and beyond for a guest.
[08:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: There's probably a lot of entitlement, which I think we see maybe especially with Shane kind of with all of them, though, there's a huge sense of entitlement. And we see Belinda sort of bend over backwards to make room for Tanya right at the start. And then Tanya idealizes her right away. Belinda is the be all and end all. The greatest thing that ever happened to her. She wants to shout it from the rooftops. And how did you feel, Portia, watching that? Did you start to get icky feelings or nervous feelings?
[08:55] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I mean, I was very uncomfortable with her immediately making room for her at the spa.
[09:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: Me, too.
[09:02] Portia Pendleton: Again, I mean, the show I'm like, okay, this is clearly intentional. And I think it was hard, just as a side note, to separate Tanya from Jennifer Coolidge, because I love Jennifer Coolidge so much.
[09:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't like that for real.
[09:16] Portia Pendleton: Tanya, you do you but, yeah, Tanya definitely made me feel like icky.
[09:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: Do you think that's because we're in mental health and so we're picking up on the splitting and the idealization and we know the devaluation will come, do you think the average person without that point of view would necessarily pick that up right away?
[09:35] Portia Pendleton: Not in the same way. They might be turned off by her. Just from, like, entitlement.
[09:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. And, like, the pushiness right.
[09:42] Portia Pendleton: Versus, like, maybe the why or, like, you know, it being idealization and then waiting, like you said, for their to come devaluation, which sucks. And and Belinda was very, like, devastated at the end.
[09:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: So I think, you know, they talk.
[09:56] Portia Pendleton: About which we'll get into more, but borderline personality disorder. Tanya feels a little borderline to me.
[10:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right as I was watching it, I got really nervous for Belinda because I just already was getting that borderline personality disorder flavor from Tanya. And that quick idealization is like a telltale sign. Even if you don't meet full criteria for a Bpd, which is the acronym for borderline personality disorder, often that quick idealization, I think we learned pretty early in our training, like, when you have a new patient who's just like, oh, my gosh, no psychiatrist has ever helped me in the way you're helping me. You're the better, amazing. Can I pay you more? Can I write you a good review? Blah, blah, blah. You learn to think, oh, there's something up here. Right.
[10:43] Portia Pendleton: And it's hard because sometimes I think people's traits are more what do I want to say? Like, hidden, where it's like you might always see the positive side. You might be always idealized by someone for years yes. And have no idea. And all of a sudden, there's like, a switch flip, as, again, happens throughout the six episodes that we see with Belinda and Tanya. But sometimes we have no idea, and other times it's so big, it's like fast friends and people can be fast friends, but sometimes fast friends is really.
[11:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: Just like some love bomb a little. Yeah, exactly.
[11:19] Portia Pendleton: Personality disorder.
[11:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: And you're so right. It really depends on what side of the split you're on. So, again, people with Bpd traits or borderline personality disorder, much like we see here with Tanya, really see things in a black or white way, and they feel things that way. That's sort of their thoughts. We've talked about that in prior episodes, so you're either all good or all bad. It's hard for them to sort of see you as a mix of both, and that reflects their inability to see themselves as a mix of both. So if you're on the good side of the split, like you said for years, you can be like that, and then something might happen, like a late fee or a perceived insensitivity to something they're saying. Or it could be something big, it could be something small. Then you're very quickly devalued and on the bad side of the split. And that sucks. That feels real bad. Sometimes you're on the bad side of the split right away and you know it. And that's why it's very helpful to treat patients with these traits as a team. So then all team members can kind of support each other and also see sort of the clinical pathology and a fuller view. But we see that right away with Tanya idealizing Belinda. And I was just waiting for her to meet a man and drop Belinda as quick as possible. And unfortunately, we see that happen.
[12:36] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. And I think, too, I was curious.
[12:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: Of who?
[12:40] Portia Pendleton: Jennifer Kuf. Tanya. Tanya.
[12:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: Tanya.
[12:43] Portia Pendleton: Tanya would also interact with, like, of the other guests.
[12:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
[12:48] Portia Pendleton: And then, you know, that's a great point. Her her lover Greg kind of came out of nowhere. You know, he wasn't like, one of the main cast members. So I think that was just, like, interesting.
[12:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: But her and Wise writing right. That it wasn't like someone she met on the ship or it wasn't anyone she'd even formed a minimal connection with. It was like, accidental by chance. Really quick, hot and heavy. That's how it goes.
[13:10] Portia Pendleton: Very intense. So intense emotions are, again, pretty common with a lot of personality disorders, but specifically with Bpd. And also just thinking about what we learn from Tanya's past, she alludes to her mother having Bpd. Yes, there are some genetic markers of Bpd, but also it's just really hard. Again, with attachment. Yes, there's a lot of attachment trauma in patients who have borderline personality disorder.
[13:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. And so right. So if Tanya, when they're on the little boat, she's supposed to spread the ashes and they're with Shane and Rachel. I love that so much. And she's, like, kind of given a eulogy of sorts and talking about her deceased mom, I was like, all of this tracks again, a plus. Writing like this track, this sort of upbringing would potentially lead to someone displaying behaviors and traits that Tanya is. So her mom, who was obsessed with men, and it sounds like, would often prioritize her romantic relationships over her relationship with Tanya. And then we see that play out when she meets Greg and she even says, like, you said that her mom has Bpd. And you do sort of learn how to behave as an adult from your early attachment figures and what's modeled for you. So why wouldn't she display some of these traits? I would imagine that her mom would have been a bigger personality disorder, and Tanya still has those traits, and we see them, but maybe I'm imagining her mom would have been even more big.
[14:41] Portia Pendleton: I feel like, also maybe more cruel. Yeah. Tanya, I think it's almost like, has the lacking self awareness, and it's really, like, self centered. It's like only her needs are the most important. I also don't think that that's intentional. I think she's just, like, moving through.
[14:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: Life, like, trying not malicious. Right? Yeah, I totally agree. It doesn't feel like logan. Roy.
[15:01] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[15:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: But I wonder if her mom did or if her mom was like the mom from succession. That's a great point, Portia. And again, what you just brought up I thought was really interesting. Like, which of the other guests did she interact with? Now that I'm thinking about it, I feel like it was the ones who were younger than her. It wasn't like the Moss Bach or family parents.
[15:18] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[15:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: It wasn't really Armand, except to get Belinda. Belinda. It was like Belinda was the only adult she interacted with to get her needs met. There was also a racial difference, which I thought was important and interesting, and.
[15:32] Portia Pendleton: A socioeconomic difference huge.
[15:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: And again, I feel like Tanya ends up connecting herself to people who use her while she's using them. So her relationships are very transactional. Right. And I just think that makes a lot of sense. Even if she's not maliciously using people unconsciously, she is, but then she's also picking people who are like belinda was kind of doing that with her, too, right. Like, she was like, oh, maybe I could get my own spot and finally living out that dream. Yeah, it was really interesting.
[16:07] Portia Pendleton: And then Tanya interacts with Olivia and Paula, just, like, commenting on their appearance and their skin.
[16:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[16:14] Portia Pendleton: So it's so porcelain. She's, like, trying to feel their faces, and they're like this ladies.
[16:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. And they're, like, young and beautiful and yeah. Again, just interesting people to try to attach to. It makes me wonder what psychological age Tanya is. Yes. We often think of chronological age as being different from your psychological age. And sometimes I feel like I hear this in society and in the media of child stars, you kind of get stuck at the age you became famous, and I think that might be related to the trauma of fame. And I feel like we do see that. Right? Do you see that? That people seem sort of psychologically stuck at the age of trauma occurred or something like that?
[16:56] Portia Pendleton: No, definitely. And I think, too, in Tanya's character, it feels way more, I don't know, intense where she's stuck, like, in childhood versus maybe some other patients I can think off the top of my head that I've interacted who have Bpd, where she just even, like her temper tantrums.
[17:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[17:16] Portia Pendleton: It's like she's so good at playing being a child when she's seeking reassurance so frequently, she's, like, following Greg around, literally hiding. I was like, I mean, it's comical because of the show, but it's like she is acting like a child.
[17:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes. Like a five year old, maybe. Yeah, 100%. And even with Greg, like, when she was finally like, I'm going to peel.
[17:36] Portia Pendleton: Back all the layers of the onion.
[17:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: And really let him see it. And she did. She let it all out. And I felt like that was a great depiction of the sort of core fear of patients with Bpd, of abandonment and loss and attachment. This sort of I hate you, but don't leave me. Like, I'm going to leave you first because it would hurt too much if you left me, but don't leave me.
[17:58] Portia Pendleton: Or I'm going to give you an excuse to leave.
[18:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
[18:00] Portia Pendleton: By acting. Right? I'm acting in this huge way. I'm pushing you away intentionally. So then I have a reason. Okay. I know why.
[18:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. Or sort of like a test. Right. And Greg stayed. And I think she interprets that as like true love. I think he just wanted to have sex.
[18:16] Portia Pendleton: I think he just wanted to have sex. I'm not sure if he saw it going anywhere further than that night. But then I'm thinking and I have not watched season two, so I'm saying this kind of blind, but I also think that based on what he had done for a living, which is not being an activist for Black Lives Matter.
[18:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: But I loved that. Hilarious.
[18:36] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, it was so funny.
[18:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: Belinda. He's with the BLM. And then Belinda's like, okay.
[18:42] Portia Pendleton: Because in her face while he's telling her that, she's just like, oh, how'd.
[18:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: She get into that? I love that whole dinner conversation. We're just like, how'd she get into activism? And he's like, what? Yeah.
[18:53] Portia Pendleton: So he's in, like, wildlife, it seems, management, fisheries, something like that. In Colorado, in the west. Because then she's like, oh, well, when I'm in Aspen, let's meet up. And I think then for him, he's seeing, in my opinion, this opportunity to be with someone who seems a little damaged to him. He now then maybe can take advantage.
[19:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: Of for her money. Right. In hearing that, he was like, this got money. There's something up here. I was really worried about Greg and all his coughing fits. Yeah. And I'm like, do you have COPD? Do you have a lung tumor? Why are you coughing? Do you have asthma? What is going on?
[19:29] Portia Pendleton: I forgot about that.
[19:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: I kept being really nervous he was going to drop down, like, while they were having sex or soon after or.
[19:35] Portia Pendleton: Right after they were connecting. Right. And then another person leaving her in the ultimate way.
[19:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. I was really worried about that happening. So I wonder if the writers were always, like, teasing us with that or if that might come later. I don't really know. But again, she quickly attaches herself to Greg, who doesn't feel like a secure, healthy attachment figure. And again, it's like, I can't really put my finger on why I'm just getting a vibe. He's not it.
[20:04] Portia Pendleton: He doesn't seem safe for her.
[20:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. But she is immediately attracted to him, like a magnet. And I think for me, watching this whole series that was like the thing that kept crossing my mind is like, why are these characters attracted to who they're attracted to when it's so clear that these are kind of like unhealthy relationship dynamics, but they don't leave. And I think we really see that with Shane and Rachel.
[20:26] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. So yeah, I mean, with Rachel and Shane Patton, I feel like I have a hot take with that. I don't like Rachel and I prefer Shane.
[20:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: What?
[20:40] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I know.
[20:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, your team Shane? Yeah. I don't think anyone's team Shane.
[20:46] Portia Pendleton: I know, and I don't know what that says about me, but that's okay. So I just think that Rachel needs to get her stuff together and it bothers me. And maybe this is something I can talk about in supervision or therapy, why it bothers me so much, but I'm just like, come on, girl. Shane is not hiding himself that well.
[21:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's true.
[21:07] Portia Pendleton: This sociopathic, malignant narcissist, he's a **** up, rich, spoiled brat boy who married her because she's beautiful and has a lot of money. And it's just like now all of a sudden she's like seeing it and I'm just like really?
[21:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. I don't think it was hidden before, although I guess sometimes I have heard of some relationships and again, I don't think this is uncommon, where you think you're marrying one person and then it's like the mask falls off. So maybe that happened, but Shane doesn't seem smart right, for that to have been the case.
[21:38] Portia Pendleton: And he seems like he has zero.
[21:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like a frat boy, like he's wearing his, what, like Cornell hat or something, which I'm sure he got in by having a legacy generational tie. Yeah, I don't think he doesn't strike me as the kind of narcissist to be smart enough to hide that very well. It's really out there again, he's like living his authentic self. I guess. So maybe it sounds like maybe that's why you're annoyed with her.
[22:04] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I don't know. And then you told me about his mom.
[22:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: I love Molly Shannon so much and everything. And then when she showed up, right, like he'd called her over and over and over, being so annoyed. Get the pineapple sweet.
[22:20] Portia Pendleton: Even though they got like this other.
[22:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: Beautiful sweet, and just like a child having a temper tantrum, going to mommy, then she shows up. Can you imagine if your mother in law showed up on your honeymoon?
[22:32] Portia Pendleton: I can't think of how that would ever be okay.
[22:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: You know what I mean?
[22:37] Portia Pendleton: And he's just like, mom, her face is just like, this is not happening.
[22:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right?
[22:42] Portia Pendleton: Is this real? Is this a mirage from being in Hawai or in the sun?
[22:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: All the pina coladas? Yeah. And then it's just like you get the sense that Shane and his mom Kitty are enmeshed and then you really see just how enmeshed they are. Yes. And she's like, well, I'm going to this other place with my best friend from all time, but I thought I'd stop here first. I hope that's okay. And you can see Rachel's just like, I have to say it's okay, but it's really not.
[23:06] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, and her face is so obvious, too, which maybe she is, but again, you're not even trying to hide your disdain, which I get. Again, that's like super appropriate, but within their context. Again, that's why I'm like, come on, how did you not see this?
[23:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know, but maybe it's like, now she's really seeing it. Maybe there was some shred of suppression or denial that was keeping her in the relationship with Shane. Again, with this series, I'm so curious about why do they stay connected to these people? And it's like, I think Shane was connected to her for her beauty. That's her power. And then she, I think, is connected to him because of his money and the privilege and the access. And she says that bopping around New York City was really fun, and now she's realizing there's like a price to pay for that privilege. It's like golden handcuffs and Kitty's part of the deal. And I also thought that the actresses portrayed that mother in law, daughter in law competition so well, more so from Kitty's perspective, you could tell that the fact that she was beautiful really bothered her. Right. That now she's not the number one woman in his life.
[24:13] Portia Pendleton: I want to know if there's a dad.
[24:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: Divorced, if he's alive, or if.
[24:20] Portia Pendleton: She had always the money.
[24:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: So she said she had family money. I remember she was telling Rachel that that's why, like, if she and her husband ever split up, she'd be okay because she did have family money to fall back on. Sort of like bragging, because she knows Rachel doesn't. But then it sounds like whoever the dad is had more money. Yeah, I don't know. Actually, that's really interesting that there was no mention of him at all, especially.
[24:41] Portia Pendleton: With just like mother son dynamic. Then. Is that why they're so enmeshed? Would they have been less if there was like a third family member? He seems again, I don't think there's other kids. He seems like an only child, or.
[24:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: At least they don't talk about him if there are.
[24:55] Portia Pendleton: I mean, that too can just happen to a parent child. It's a different type of relationship than if you have two parents or siblings.
[25:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: Or things like that. Yeah, that's actually a really interesting point. But they were so funny, though, when Kitty and Shane and Rachel are all at that dinner and Rachel is already having an identity cris, and now here's her mother in law, who's like I think she's like, oh, God, this is what I'm going to be, or what Shane wants me to be. And I don't know if that's who I want to be. And they're all like, why don't you want to be this? This is great. And they're doing like that money, money dance while the Hula people are hooling in the background. It was so sickening. And you could see on rachel's face. She's like, oh, my God, you guys are doing this in public. But that's who they are, right? And they're also not hiding it like any shred, right? Any shred.
[25:42] Portia Pendleton: So that juxtaposition. Juxtaposition. After we talk to and meet Kai and knowing that the land was taken and that a lot of them work there and that his family is mad because he works there, because some people don't and protest so and so forth, we have that whole storyline kind of going off to the side. And then the patent family are just like, money, money. Watching the people who live there, that it's a part of their culture and meaningful, this performance that they're just like singing to. Money.
[26:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right? Yeah. Again. Beautiful Juxtaposition. Beautiful writing. Definitely makes you feel icky.
[26:16] Portia Pendleton: But yeah, I mean, Shane is not lovable, right? Like, he flirts with underage girls in front of Rachel, literally on their honeymoon. Like, that's gross.
[26:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's gross. And such a power move. I can't remember now if she was already sort of expressing some hesitations or some unhappiness on the honeymoon, if he was sort of like showing her like, whatever, I'll be fine, kind of thing, or if he didn't know, if he really couldn't comprehend why she'd be hurt by that.
[26:42] Portia Pendleton: Right. It was weird. And then when she's telling him, I mean, again, I don't know if anyone else felt this way or if I was the only one in the world watching, but I felt sorry for him. He had no idea from this point because he has zero self awareness. He had not a clue, which is, again, like, shocking because it's so obvious, right.
[27:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: He wasn't picking up any and so.
[27:05] Portia Pendleton: When she's telling him, basically, I don't like you, and I just I think.
[27:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: I made a mistake. Yeah, like, he's sad because, like, again.
[27:11] Portia Pendleton: Like, duh, you are going to be sad. And he's just like, Why? What do you mean? And it's funny. I mean, it's comedy not but his just whole and then he's being gaslit by Armand because he's right. Like, they did book that room. Armand is kind of messing with him.
[27:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's true.
[27:27] Portia Pendleton: He gets a free boat ride. It was Jennifer Tanya. It was Tanya paid for it. That's why he said it was free. It was not free.
[27:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[27:34] Portia Pendleton: And then he knew that she was having this, like, a moment.
[27:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: Well, he did that on purpose to get back. Exactly. Driving him nuts.
[27:40] Portia Pendleton: Exactly.
[27:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: But again, you're right. Like, Shane was correct. They didn't get the correct room. They did pay for it. They should at least get, like, the refund. But the fact that Shane is, like, so checking over and over, it's so annoying to me. And entitled and like, dude, just enjoy your honeymoon.
[27:57] Portia Pendleton: But he can't.
[27:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: He can't if he doesn't get what he feels like he deserves. I mean, it's like the perfect depiction of entitlement. And then that just dynamic between. Armand and Shane just keeps continuing. And they keep shane, I feel like, just keeps up in the ante. Up in the ante, up in the ant. Like, he just won't let it go. And he's just really getting under Armand's skin. And you imagine Armand's probably worked there for a long time. He's what, five or six years sober until he falls off the wagon because he finds the bag with all the.
[28:28] Portia Pendleton: Drugs in it after Shane.
[28:31] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's just Shane pushing and pushing and pushing it.
[28:33] Portia Pendleton: But Shane is a trigger.
[28:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes. And I would imagine he has dealt with Shane day in and day out, like for years. And he just can't take it anymore. The last Shane, the last straw. And it literally is the last Shane. Because unfortunately, Armod dies at the beginning.
[28:49] Portia Pendleton: Do you see that coming?
[28:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: I mean, obviously we knew someone died because it opens with I thought it.
[28:55] Portia Pendleton: Was Rachel because of Shane in the airport was like, no, I'm alone. I was like, It's Rachel.
[29:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: But I was worried she maybe committed suicide or something. I didn't see it coming until the final scene where he's like pooping in.
[29:08] Portia Pendleton: Suitcase after the dinner service.
[29:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right?
[29:11] Portia Pendleton: He's like, he's so manic from drugs and doing cocaine all night.
[29:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: And that's my favorite line of the whole show when he comes back. And he's like, that was the best ******* dinner seating of all time.
[29:22] Portia Pendleton: They're like, yeah, the orchestra was playing while he's managing it.
[29:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, it was just you were really feeling it. Like, you're really in Armand's mind. But again, for Shane to get him fired, right? To just really go that far is why I don't like it.
[29:39] Portia Pendleton: Like, you're ruining people's livelihoods.
[29:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: Their livelihoods. Like, okay, they made a mistake. Like, let it go. My God. He can't. But I mean, to just keep really and he doesn't care that someone's going to get fired. He doesn't care that Rachel's like a shell of a human. Maybe Rachel hadn't seen it to that degree.
[29:58] Portia Pendleton: I would have to assume.
[30:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: We got to give her the benefit of that, right? Oh, my god. And then when Armand is pooping in.
[30:05] Portia Pendleton: The luggage, I laughed out loud watching that scene.
[30:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: I was like, oh, my god.
[30:11] Portia Pendleton: My husband hadn't seen it at all. And I was like, come look at this. He's like, this is weird. And I was like, It's Armand.
[30:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: He's pooping in this because he just can't take it anymore.
[30:21] Portia Pendleton: He didn't like wipe. He just pulled his pants up.
[30:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. That's gross. Yeah. I mean, I think he was high, so I don't think he really knew he was doing what's he going to wipe with the shirt. He should have wiped with the shirt. Oh, God.
[30:38] Portia Pendleton: That would have been like the nail in the coffin just smearing your feces all over.
[30:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: And what a primitive form of payback. Which, again, all of these characters and their personality traits are so primitive. And they're all having temper tantrums in their own way, even Armand. But I have so much sympathy for Armand because I feel like they just pushed him to a break, literally. You're going to get fired for this. It just makes me sick.
[31:05] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[31:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: Armand is like I loved him.
[31:08] Portia Pendleton: I loved when he was, like, lying about finding the bag, like over and over again. We'll have to keep looking. We haven't seen it.
[31:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: So Armand does lie? Yeah, from the jump. He lies and can't admit wrongdoing. But then I'm like, maybe he's like, coached to do that. Maybe they're not supposed to admit fault because then they could get sued or like, who knows what. I don't know.
[31:29] Portia Pendleton: I don't know.
[31:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: I just feel like that stuff happens.
[31:30] Portia Pendleton: All the time, though. A reservation gets missed and then it's like then if you're at a nice place, they should then take care of you. If you're paying thousands and thousands of dollars, it's like then they should have been like, yeah, you're right. We'll comp a night for the inconvenience. Or yes, of course we'll give you the difference. Give them a difference, that's all.
[31:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: But I think I think they said they would. It just didn't clear right away. But that doesn't usually clear right away. Right.
[31:54] Portia Pendleton: It's just like when you go to.
[31:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: Any hotel and there's like a security charge, it takes a couple of days to come off. Right. Interestingly, though, like, the Mossbacher family does get comped. Yes.
[32:02] Portia Pendleton: Well, I would hope so.
[32:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's a little more than a room mix up.
[32:07] Portia Pendleton: I guess.
[32:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: It'S.
[32:15] Portia Pendleton: So we have Nicole and what's, her husband Mark, and then Olivia and Quinn, and then Paula is the friend. So what do you think of initially Olivia and Paula?
[32:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my God. I just loved how woke they were, especially compared to their parents. It was just so humorous. I just felt like it was such a perfect depiction of the current generation versus the former generation and the tensions there. Totally accurate, given the political, social, cultural climate we're in. And I just loved love in terms of hated, but found humorous. Nicole's huge sympathy for the white man. Yeah, right. And I'm just like, oh, God.
[33:00] Portia Pendleton: And and I love it so interesting because she's this powerful, like, business CEO and it seems like Mark is like, you know, almost like a stay at home dad. So it's interesting that within that nontypical.
[33:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: Role, she is so sympathetic, but she has a white male son and I don't know, I just feel like she is just such a perfect character. Right. Like you would think as a female CEO and I'm assuming a male dominated industry, because we all are, you'd think she would be like this feminist icon.
[33:31] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[33:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: And again, I feel like this is maybe what Rachel's article was saying. Like, well, she's not really she kind of rolled the wave of me too to get to where she was.
[33:41] Portia Pendleton: Maybe that was what it was about.
[33:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: Maybe that's true, but she's not really a feminist icon, and I find that interesting. Like, is she insecure in her own power? I don't know. I don't know what to make of it. But I loved when they were at dinner and Olivia was like, mom, good news. I looked and I checked. All the white men are doing just fine. That was funny.
[34:01] Portia Pendleton: I didn't really like Olivia and Paula. Just like, they were mean girls. I mean, besides their woke nature. And Olivia's felt really just hark toward her parents.
[34:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes. And I think sorry to interrupt you, but I did think the mom and dad were pointing out something accurate. Like, you are so mad at us, but our privilege gives you life, and you're just, like, so unappreciative.
[34:22] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, no. And I think, too, olivia and Paula's relationship felt, like, gross to me right off the get go. And just, like, they weren't really telling each other things. Olivia seemed really suspicious of Paula, and then Paula was really also suspicious of Olivia with knowing about Kai. Like, lying, hiding. No, I didn't go out. And Olivia literally she didn't say, though, I followed you. She kept a lot of that secret. I also was very upset with how they treated Quinn.
[34:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
[34:50] Portia Pendleton: Like, really, really mean.
[34:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, he was a dog here. Yeah, like, really mean.
[34:53] Portia Pendleton: Sleep in the closet, constant putting him down. He felt a little like he could have been on the spectrum. I could have a little bit of some traits. In other ways, he seemed, like, pretty typical. But some things that Olivia had pointed.
[35:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: Out, I was like.
[35:08] Portia Pendleton: And then that made me even more mad that she was treating him like that.
[35:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, I could see that. Maybe what we used to call asperger's or something. I think with Olivia and Paula, at first, I thought they were good friends. Like, oh, they met in college. And I did think it was interesting that Paula was a woman of color on this trip and just really curious what's her take on all of this? I don't know how they got all those drugs there. Did they buy them there? Did they smuggle them somehow?
[35:40] Portia Pendleton: Some were not prescribed. Like, a lot of them were prescription.
[35:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: Based, but not like the ketamine was the pipe. I loved, though, when someone pulled out, like, how they just kept being like, oh, I forgot. I have this drug. Oh, wait, I have this drug. Oh, my God, I forgot to have my pipe.
[35:55] Portia Pendleton: And you can't fly commercially with that. And they did.
[35:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: Maybe they didn't, though.
[35:58] Portia Pendleton: That's a good point. They got, like, on a commercial flight leaving. So, I mean, I'm making an assumption that maybe they did. Maybe they took a PJ down, but we're flying commercial on the way back.
[36:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: But try and save some money.
[36:10] Portia Pendleton: I think Paula, initially you like her because she is kind of calling people out but then I think she really kind of chooses her privilege with Kai. She does not call him when they're going back to the room, and that's, like, a big question of why. I was listening to the HBO podcast covering white Lotus, and they talked about that a lot. Like, she had her phone with her.
[36:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: And she had Kai's number, and she.
[36:34] Portia Pendleton: Did not contact him. She just looked scared. And then she put her the necklace that he gave her, she threw into the water, and it was just like, what are you doing?
[36:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. Oh, I didn't make that connection about, like, she could have called him to warn him or say, like, get out.
[36:48] Portia Pendleton: That was all her idea.
[36:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes. And he really didn't want to do it, but then pushed it. And again, I think it's because, again, I feel like Olivia and Paula is another transactional relationship. I feel like Olivia uses Paula to be like, see, look, I'm woke. I have friends of color, blah, blah, blah, but not really. Right? And then we learned that I think maybe Paula's with Olivia to go on the trip. Maybe she probably went for free. I don't really know what else they're attracted to each other with in terms of their friendship, because then we learned that Olivia stole Paula's boyfriend. Right. So it's like, why do you see friends with her? Right? Like, why? And then I think that's why Paula didn't tell her about Kai, because she was worried it happened again, rightfully so. And we see that it kind of does start to happen again. And then I think Paula gets so ****** that she concocts this whole plan.
[37:41] Portia Pendleton: Which, again, is not okay. I mean, not okay. Like, it's huge risk.
[37:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: And Kai even says he's like, the mothbacher family didn't take our land like white people did, but they didn't. So this is just, like, stealing and stuff. But then she does kind of get in his head. And is that manipulative or, like, a vulnerable person?
[38:00] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, it is manipulative, because Paula is then leaving, right? And he stayed. She's like, no, I'm going back.
[38:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: I have college to get to. I have a life to get to. This is just like, a little fling. But then, yeah, she's using Kai to get back at this family who, again, has taken her on this trip. They're very problematic in their own ways. Like, not to give them a pass, but it hurts everyone. I do think we see remorse. Like, she seems genuinely remorseful and sad.
[38:26] Portia Pendleton: But then I don't know if this I'm sure everything is intentional, always, because they're good writers, but on the last boat trip that they all take, paula is, like, sea sick, and she's just, like, vomiting. And Olivia's just looking at her because she knows what happened. She knows that she did that, and she's just like, oh, yeah, maybe she should have a soda. They are not at that point, interacting really at all. Olivia is realigning with her family, which again in the show seems good, right?
[38:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: That she's finally hugging her mom and reconnecting and things like that. She's maybe seeing her parents as some good and some bad. Not all good or all bad. I did think it was hilarious when Nicole was like coaching Olivia on how to hold her friend's hair back while she's vomiting. As if Olivia doesn't know how to be there for a friend. She's like, pull that piece up, pull that piece up. Paula, I'm going to get you a ginger rail, honey. And I loved how every time Paula needs Tylenol because she's allergic to ibuprofen, paula has this allergy. Paula is just paula's, like she needs.
[39:31] Portia Pendleton: Her out of van.
[39:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. She's just so high maintenance, this Paula friend. It's just so ridiculous in an over the top way.
[39:37] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I mean, they're such a funny family. And we see Quinn stay in Hawai.
[39:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: I was like really happy for him. I don't know. How did you feel about that? We ran back.
[39:45] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, like the show wise, I feel like it's great for him. It makes me think of this interesting little fun fact. So Hawai actually does have a problem with young people, like young runaway land going there and then becoming homeless. Do you know what woofing is?
[40:02] Dr. Katrina Furey: No.
[40:03] Portia Pendleton: It's like work on farm. I think there's another word in there, but a lot of college kids and people do it. So you get free room and board, typically food as well. And you can work at a farm, like for the summer, for like a.
[40:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: Marijuana farm or any farm.
[40:16] Portia Pendleton: Any farm.
[40:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: Okay. I said marijuana because I've heard of something like this in Hawai, specifically on a marijuana farm. So I didn't know if it was specific to that or like any farm.
[40:24] Portia Pendleton: So the person that I know went to Maui through a wolfing program was not marijuana farm, it's just like a regular farm. But they asked this person, made sure that they were returning to college. They had all these stipulations because so many people go down there to wolf and then don't leave and then become like homeless. And then there's limited resources. There's limited resources. I thought that was just interesting.
[40:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: That is interesting. I think they go and fetch him. This isn't a home alone situation. I think they have the means and they will go find life there.
[40:55] Portia Pendleton: I know. You go row that boat or canoe.
[40:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: I loved Quinn in the technology, right, where they're like he's like freaking out because they lost all the technology. And then finally he's like, wow, the ocean is really beautiful.
[41:08] Portia Pendleton: He's out there. Yes, he's sleeping. And then that group of men who are doing the paddle, like the rowing around the island really take to him and are really kind, which he seems to not be getting from his family.
[41:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, you can see why he felt wanted and needed and included and that seemed really important to him. But I guess he's only 16, so I can see why his parents wouldn't want him to stay.
[41:33] Portia Pendleton: It makes a lot of sense. And then Mark so we see Mark be, I think, just like inappropriate a lot.
[41:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: Again, talk about boundaries or lactose too.
[41:43] Portia Pendleton: Much with Quinn, with everyone talking about.
[41:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: His swollen testicles, you could just leave it at like, I got a medical.
[41:48] Portia Pendleton: Issue, finds out about his father, who's.
[41:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: A really big reaction to it.
[41:52] Portia Pendleton: He's questioning his life. He seems like in a little bit of a midlife crisis based on all those things he finds out about his dad. And then he also finds out that he does not have cancer. He's just like, cancer scare.
[42:02] Dr. Katrina Furey: There's a lot going on. And then he's like I can see, though, how learning that about his dad makes him feel like, did I really know you? And then he wants his son to really know him, albeit in an inappropriate way. And I felt like that conversation between him and Nicole was really well written and that she was like, you didn't think about how this would affect me now. I was originally hurt by your actions and now you're hurting me again because you're telling her children I didn't want them to know. And now I'm going to have to explain why I stayed. Why did I stay for these $75,000 bracelets? Yeah, it was really interesting. I loved when Mark was just getting drunker and drunker and drunker and seeing all the guests and just being ridiculous and then asking Armand what's that like to have sex with a man. And Armand's like, you want to find out? Yeah.
[42:49] Portia Pendleton: And he was like he went too far. I just also couldn't I couldn't take him, like, beating on his chest.
[42:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: But it was perfect, right? It was just like so just the white man, he's got to beat his chest and feel powerful when his wife is the one carnal with the power in the relationship. But then he gets the power by.
[43:09] Portia Pendleton: Tackling Kai and saving them all.
[43:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know. And then finally like, oh, now we're happy again.
[43:13] Portia Pendleton: It's just trauma bonds people.
[43:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: Trauma bonding. Yeah. So what do you think kept Nicole and Mark together? What do you think attracted them and kept them together? Sort of how we've talked about, like, Tanya and Greg, shane and Rachel. What do you think it was with them?
[43:30] Portia Pendleton: I feel like I want to say that they probably started out pretty even and I'm, again, making this all maybe.
[43:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: They met in college. Yeah.
[43:37] Portia Pendleton: The same kind of power dynamic, I feel like. And this is very stereotypical that he cheated as Nicole probably got more and more and more successful. Successful and maybe, like distant, like working, like gone all the time. Not in my opinion, not a reason to cheat. But I think that's maybe what kind of was the worst part of their relationship. And maybe they chose to stay because of their kids, maybe because it was convenient. Maybe they just chose to kind of have a different kind of partnership moving forward. And then now it seems like after, again, this traumatic event with the stolen goods, they feel more in touch with.
[44:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: Each other, like, more connected and more maybe even well, I guess tackling someone is such a masculine, heroic thing to do. And she was so mad at him, and then he came after her, so he didn't just leave her alone in her sorrows. And then he sort of did, quote, unquote, save her. Right.
[44:35] Portia Pendleton: I don't think Kai was going to hurt her. I think he was just like, please.
[44:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: Stay there so I can get out.
[44:40] Portia Pendleton: Of here situation that then got worse. It's not even like he got caught stealing. It's like then there was like, I'm sure it's all word going to get thrown in there.
[44:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, I know. He probably went to jail for a long time. He lost his job, went to jail, like this whole thing backfired. You know who didn't get in trouble? Paula. Yeah, probably. Maybe, though. I don't know. And Olivia just kind of like, using it to really get under Paula's skin. Like, well, hopefully there's no text messages. Right?
[45:05] Portia Pendleton: But can you guys just stop being friends? Maybe that would be it's a toxic relationship choice.
[45:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: I mean, were any of the relationships we saw healthy? No. Silence. I know.
[45:19] Portia Pendleton: I really don't I don't think so.
[45:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think the last thing I wanted to end on is Belinda, who I loved. But what do you think it is about Belinda where she gets used over and over?
[45:33] Portia Pendleton: I think it's got to be like a mix of environmental so her role, right. Like working even specifically in a spa where you're doing different kind of healing things.
[45:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: And specifically a spa at the White Lotus, like a very bougie, high end place with a specific type of clientele, maybe.
[45:51] Portia Pendleton: So then there's the environment piece. And I think also, maybe she's really just on the simple side, like a really good listener. And a lot of people aren't used to that or a lot of people are. Like, she seems really awesome.
[46:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: She seems very maternal, too.
[46:07] Portia Pendleton: Real. And a lot of yeah. So maybe that's unexpected from for some, especially Tanya. Like, Belinda, even though I think was younger, was still more maternal.
[46:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: Maternal.
[46:19] Portia Pendleton: Same with Rachel. Rachel kind of went to her. Then Belinda, again, was being really appropriate. Gave her a tissue, asked her if.
[46:25] Dr. Katrina Furey: She was all right, but then gave her cell phone number. So it's always like with Belinda, yes, there's some institutional boundaries right, that are loose because you're catering to this clientele. But then why should give her your cell phone number? Is it because you're worried about her? I think she could really do some work in therapy. As to be holding on to, like, yes, you're worried about her because you're a compassionate human and you're not responsible for her.
[46:53] Portia Pendleton: Maybe there's something in her life with feeling overly responsible, and that's not a diagnosis by any means.
[46:59] Dr. Katrina Furey: But that happens a lot with it does.
[47:01] Portia Pendleton: Patients who are so kind and so giving, they often have the worst boundaries.
[47:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
[47:07] Portia Pendleton: And they get used and they don't take care of themselves.
[47:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: They don't prioritize themselves in big ways and then small ways. So I feel like Belinda could really use some good quality therapy, and I.
[47:20] Portia Pendleton: Think she could be in an amazing place.
[47:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[47:24] Portia Pendleton: I think the others could get therapy and make changes. But Belinda seems like right on the.
[47:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: Cusp where she just I feel like she has the most potential to me absolutely. Than the others.
[47:32] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. We also didn't I'll just briefly mention we saw the substance use. So Olivia and Paula kind of playing around with that. And then we obviously see Armand. And then I would also take a gander that Tanya seems like she's probably on a Benzo, drinking out kind of out of it.
[47:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, really out of it. Kind of dazed and detached on the cusp of slurring words, but not quite there. Yeah. No. She strikes me as someone who's been on, like, Bendy's a long time and now in her time of grief is freaking out, which happens. Like we've said before, we all regress when you're under stress or grieving or things like that. And I thought the show just did such a good job displaying such interesting interpersonal dynamics and such toxic and unhealthy relationships. Also, at this point in time in our culture, it was the perfect time for it to come out. I felt like it touched on really big cultural themes, political themes, societal themes in such a smart way where I would like to rewatch it in like, 20 years and just see what do I think then.
[48:44] Portia Pendleton: I'm super excited for White Lotus season two.
[48:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. What do you think happens? Well, I know that Tanya stayed and.
[48:52] Portia Pendleton: I know that it's all new characters. I did hear that season one has just, like, the theme of money and privilege. And obviously there's privilege in season two, but season two is more like sex.
[49:02] Dr. Katrina Furey: So we'll have to see.
[49:05] Portia Pendleton: Stay tuned. It will be coming up this next month or this current in a couple of weeks.
[49:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: So after this, we're going to release Legally Blonde, another fun, light hearted episode paying homage to Jennifer Coolidge. Is it homage or Maj? I don't know. I'm not that fancy. And then after that, we'll do White Lotus season two.
[49:24] Portia Pendleton: Awesome.
[49:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: So thank you for listening. Please rate review and subscribe and you can find us at Analyze Scripts on Instagram and Analyze Scripts podcast on TikTok. Thanks.
[49:35] Portia Pendleton: Bye.
[49:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: See you next Monday. Bye. This podcast and its contents are a copyright of Analyzed Scripts. All rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited. Unless you want to share it with your friends and rate review and subscribe, that's fine. All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are discussing the 1999 cult classic "America Pie." Woof, watching this movie was super cringey. It is rated R for a reason, there is a lot of sexual content and while we use pretty professional language to discuss it, make sure to listen away from little one's ears. We reminisce on the actors, clothing and music, while the movie draws some laughs there are also some serious topics discussed such as consent, rights to privacy and dare we say "female empowerment," (I know, just listen to the episode for the context). We hope you enjoy!
[00:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fury, a psychiatrist.
[00:12] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker.
[00:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows.
[00:23] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends.
[00:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: There is so much misinformation out there, and it drives us nuts.
[00:31] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like.
[00:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: With a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better.
[00:39] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn.
[00:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: And your DSM Five and enjoy.
[00:57] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Welcome back to another episode of Analyze Scripts. We are so excited to talk about little little interesting movie, some some deeply problematic themes. But American pie.
[01:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: American Pie. Do you guys remember that movie? When did that even come?
[01:13] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: 99.
[01:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: I was definitely in, like was I in middle school? High school.
[01:18] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So I was in late elementary school. And I have a little story for you.
[01:25] Dr. Katrina Furey: Okay.
[01:25] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So if you are listening to this later or listening to it right when it comes out, the idea is that it's summer. We're releasing this in July. This is also a part of our Jennifer Jennifer Coolidge. So if you like Jennifer Coolidge, be sure to catch more episodes that should be near to the release of this one. But so american Pirates, released in 1999. I was definitely in elementary school, but older, and I was not allowed to see the movie. I was going to say, obviously rated R for sure. Lots of sexual content. So I went to a friend's house after school, and they had a nanny and who was like, an older woman. It wasn't, like, a teen. And she was going to take us, three of us, to American Pie in theaters. And I remember calling my mom, like, I didn't know what it was. And I called her, and I was like, yeah, we're going to go to the movies. We're going to see American Pie. My mom was like, what? No, you're not. No, you're not. And I was so mad because she came and picked me up. And everyone else got to see it.
[02:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: They're watching it.
[02:29] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I don't know. I don't think so.
[02:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: Okay, we'll give them the benefit, maybe.
[02:34] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I don't know.
[02:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: Okay.
[02:36] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I remember being so mad, like, furious that I didn't get to see American Pie and now watching it back as an adult. So I haven't seen this movie fully in years.
[02:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, maybe decades, honestly. Right. This movie is can you imagine if you saw it as like, a fourth.
[02:52] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Grader or fifth grader for the most part? I think 90% of it would have gone over my head. But some of the scenes where Jason Biggs, aka jim, is humping the apple pie and you see his buttocks. And then the other scene where you do with Nadia full *******.
[03:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
[03:15] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And and you know hands going under clothes.
[03:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, it's you know that masturbation scenes.
[03:21] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
[03:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: You know, that you'd see.
[03:23] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. And I'm just curious, like, at what age do you even know what that is? Because, like, little kids, you're exploring your body, stuff like that. But if I was, like, four watching the movie oh, my God.
[03:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: Hopefully PSA. Don't let a four year old watch this.
[03:39] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But it's like, when is the line where it's, like, you start to get actually what's going on and how inappropriate it is?
[03:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: Probably, like, middle school, like 7th grade, 8th grade. But, like, in in these in this day and age with, like, technology and stuff, I feel like kids are exposed to sexual content so much earlier. It's, like, the thing that keeps me up at night. I think there was a study that came out, or maybe not a study, but, like, an article that said a lot of children these days are exposed to ****, I think as early as, like, fourth grade.
[04:11] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Oh, yeah.
[04:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: Which is really scary. And I might not be quoting that accurately, but it was, like, four years earlier than I would have naturally anticipated. And that's so scary. Like, you're saying, how do you wrap your head around that and make sense of is that quote unquote, like, normal sexual interactions or ways of showing intimacy when so much of it, even in this movie, crosses the line, and oftentimes at the expense of women.
[04:41] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Oh, yeah. I mean, just thinking of the one thing, which I will you know, we'll start with the positive okay. That I was like, wow, watching the movie is that every teen, even though they're playing their 20s, filming looks like a teen. They have textured skin, there's bumps. You can tell there's makeup over some acne. They're shiny faces. Their teeth have they're not chiclet, perfect veneers. They're real teeth that are not I think they're probably, like, whitened, but they're very normal, appropriate teeth. Bodies still feel like 90 big ***** guinea waist. But still, even with that being said, I feel like a little bit more normal than what you might see today.
[05:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, for sure.
[05:30] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That was like a breath of fresh air and then just reminded me of all the content that we see now. Even, again, like, an appropriate show for kids that's not animated. It's like, the people are so airbrushed and have veneers oftentimes, and it's just so unrealistic. And that's what's everywhere. Even if it's a good kid show that is positive, that is message. Right.
[05:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: I remember Miley Cyrus, I think, has talked about her time on Hannah Montana, and I think she I forget, like, the word they use, but I think it's called, like, flippers or flappers. Like the type of fake teeth that they make these kids wear. And again, just how curated and perfected these people are on TV. And also, it just creeps me out to think about what old white man executive is deciding what these young children should look like or what these early 20s actors portraying teenagers should look like. I can't think about it too deeply.
[06:36] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. And I mean, really recently, all the stuff that has come out about Dan Shriiber from Nickelodeon and all of his.
[06:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: I haven't heard about that.
[06:44] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That people cannot speak on. And then also just thinking of so the new show The Idol on HBO just came out and a lot of people are like, criticizing Sam Levinson's.
[06:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: He did euphoria right.
[06:55] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. Which we're going to cover Gross with women and then Stan Schineider with women. With kids. Anyway.
[07:02] Dr. Katrina Furey: But yeah.
[07:03] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So the movie American Pie kind of opens with a scene about masturbation. So the parents kind of walk in on Jim masturbating. And then that leads to some pretty awkward and comedic it's a comedy conversations about masturbation and sex and sex between.
[07:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: Covad Jim and his dad, played by Eugene Levy, who I love. And I love his eyebrows. But oh, my gosh, all of those scenes with him giving him the nudie magazines and being like, okay, extend this center fold. And this is a ******. And just like really going to town. You could feel the cringe. It was perfect.
[07:47] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
[07:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: Really good. It's so funny. And I'm sure every parent and child feels cringey when you're having those discussions. At least they were having them, though, right? Like so many people go through life having no discussions. And that's got to be confusing.
[08:03] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. Or you're getting only your information online.
[08:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. Like from **** or from some other source that isn't reliable, I guess, is the word.
[08:13] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, like real. That's true. So basically, Jim and his friends so Jim, Oz, and the other, the third male, decide to all lose their virginities prior to going to prom. Right?
[08:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: Well, I think they wanted to lose it before going to college. And then maybe they all decided, like, promise something like that.
[08:37] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: One of the lines during the scene was so gross, I have to pull it up. So get it right. It was let me see. We're going to fight for every man who deserves to get laid and doesn't.
[08:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, wow, what a cause to take up arms.
[08:55] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So basically, men deserve to be laid whenever they would like to be, despite consent of the other person, however horrible. Icky line. Then one of them says it needs to be valid, consensual sex. Good. So it cannot be from an escort or prostitute, and it cannot obviously be.
[09:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: An assault non consensual.
[09:19] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But I liked that even in 1999, they did say that very specifically.
[09:25] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think that's pretty big.
[09:26] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: There was some manipulation we see throughout the show of trying to get laid or have sex. So anyway, one of the many and.
[09:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: I feel like gross. Yeah. I feel like teenage boys trying to get laid by prom seems like a pretty stereotypical storyline, right? This isn't the first movie to have this goodness, groundbreaking plot, but for some reason, this one really was successful and jumped out. And it was, even all these years later, still pretty funny. It was a pretty entertaining movie to watch, even decades later. So I wonder what contributed to the success.
[10:07] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I looked up a lot of the cast just to get their names, and many of them have not done really anything else that I think that they would like. Stiffler hasn't jason really biggs. Really only did his cameo kind of in Orange is the New Black. He hasn't really done much that's they.
[10:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: Have a lot of sequels, too.
[10:27] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Oh, yes. And that's what is giving them the paycheck still. And then, obviously, Eugene Levy has been in so many things. Schitt's Creek. Love it. And then his newer show, which is.
[10:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: I watch oh, yeah, the traveling one, right?
[10:41] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: He's like the anxious traveler.
[10:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: Is he really nervous?
[10:44] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Oh, yeah. It's such a good show. You could watch it with your family. It's beautiful places that he's exploring. So, anyway and then some of the other people.
[10:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: But Jennifer coolidge, man.
[10:56] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: It was a lot.
[10:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: I mean, I feel like there was a gap. And she's had a real renaissance.
[11:01] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Natasha Leone was in it.
[11:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: I forgot that she was in it. Like, Tara Reid obviously was in it, but so a lot of them haven't really been in big blockbusters since then. I mean, Tara Reid was in Sharknado, like, one through 100, probably. Yeah, it seems like they've all had careers, but maybe nothing has really escalated except maybe Jennifer Coolidge. She's really having a heyday right now.
[11:25] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: John Cho isn't a lot.
[11:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: He plays John in the movie.
[11:28] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: He is in Harold and Kumar. A lot of them were just also, like, actors of the time. Teen stoner or sex movies. But anyway. So did you have any moments in the movie where you were just like, I literally want to cringe and throw up? Besides the whole movie that was really disgusting.
[11:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: The one where the girl was being filmed without her knowledge.
[11:58] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: That's disgusting in a different sense.
[12:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: Okay, what are you thinking?
[12:02] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: The one scene that I just had to look away was when.
[12:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: The other.
[12:09] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Guy that I can't think of, his name is with his girlfriend.
[12:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: Do I look up the name on.
[12:13] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: The bed and she is giving him oral sex, and he ********** into the beer cup.
[12:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: And then Stifler drinkler comes up with.
[12:22] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: The girl to try to have sex. And then she keeps almost drinking it.
[12:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: And then he finally does and he knows frothy.
[12:34] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I can feel my stomach just churn.
[12:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: That was disgusting.
[12:38] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Repulsive.
[12:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, shocking.
[12:40] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I mean, again, like, picture an eight year old watching this, which is why.
[12:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my God, please shouldn't yeah, exactly. Even like a mid 30s year old, it's, like, really gross. And you kept being like, no, don't drink it. Yeah, that was disgusting and cringe. Like, in a legit. Disgusting. Like, gross. Like potty humor. But then there were definitely parts of this movie that just I don't think would fly today. Like that scene with Nadia. Well, first of all, so she's coming over to Jim's house to study.
[13:15] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right?
[13:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, she wants to study. This is, like, the exchange student.
[13:18] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. I think she says interior motive.
[13:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, she does?
[13:21] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Oh, I thought she really wanted Jim.
[13:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's where I got really confused. I was like, Why did oh, no. Because she had ballet and then wanted to change undressed. Right. I was really confused.
[13:36] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then they studied, which I think Jim would have loved, too. He was at their house. Maybe he sits near her. He seems really nervous and shy.
[13:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. And then she masturbates, and then somehow it's broadcasted on a webcam.
[13:52] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. So Jim had the idea, which, again, this is illegal, in case anyone didn't know, to film him and Nadia potentially honestly doing anything.
[14:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. I think he was hoping maybe they'd make out or maybe hoping it'd go all the way. But, yeah, fully illegal. Jim and the rest of humanity don't do that. And even if it weren't illegal, it's so icky and, like, gross. Right.
[14:13] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I mean, it's not consensual.
[14:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: Non consensual. That is the definition. Right.
[14:18] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So, accidentally, right. The total dream is sent to everyone in the school. So what I think is how it gets comedic relief is that because then Jim goes back. They're like, oh, man, she's in your bedroom literally naked. Like, come on. And he goes back, and then she makes him, which is, like, the differential power then which makes it then funny, like strip. And he knows that he's being recorded. So you see him trying to throw the shirt and cover it because God.
[14:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: Forbid ye be exposed in that way. Right. Yeah. With knowledge, at least. Right.
[14:53] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So, yeah. Gross. Consent is very important. I think that should be really the biggest part of parents Caregivers, whomever talking about and schools, maybe in sexual education talking about sex.
[15:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think it starts even hello earlier than that. I feel like all the way to daycare preschool. Exactly. Personal space. Even with, like, tickling. When someone says stop. Stop means stop. When someone says no, no means that. Like, you can start teaching that to really young kids super early and just laying the groundwork. And I feel like at least what I see of society these days is sort of hedging that way compared to maybe back in the 90s. But definitely that's a good groundwork to lay. And then when you talk about sexual consent, super important. And yeah, so this movie had, like, mixed messages. Like, sometimes they were on point, maybe even ahead of their time with thinking about consent, and other times, they really missed the mark. And we're kind of trying to make a joke of it. And again, it's like, well, this was a really successful movie. I guess people thought it was funny. But now when you watch it, or at least me, I'm just like, well.
[16:04] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And I think if we think back to 1999, you know what I think of in 1999?
[16:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Backstreet Boys Millennium album. That's what I think of.
[16:12] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: You love them?
[16:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: I love them.
[16:14] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I was more of an in sync gal.
[16:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's okay. We're showing you we can reach across the aisle.
[16:20] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So in 1989, I think recording on phones, personal cameras, right. Was very nuanced.
[16:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: And again, you see that Jim's probably pretty privileged to have a webcam. This wasn't, like, a normal thing. Right.
[16:37] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So I think if even thinking back to the earlier 2000s with flip phones and just, like, recalling our own experience with when did you get a phone? When did your phone have a camera? And then thinking back to middle school, high school or college, wherever you kind of land with nude pictures going around. And again, I think that it was really nuanced and people didn't know or have expectations of what could happen. And I think one of the biggest differences is now we do know, and there's so many laws now that have been put into act to really deal with the technology.
[17:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. And again, what really bugged me about this part of the movie is not just that it happened, but then that she was punished. Like, she was sent back off to wherever she came from as an exchange student. And it seemed like Jim could just go school. Right.
[17:25] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Made fun of him, but not really.
[17:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: They also were like, yeah, man, you're the best. But he didn't get expelled. He didn't get suspended. He didn't get charged with a crime, which, like, he certainly could nowadays. So that was disappointing. But again, maybe on par with 1999. I think so, probably. Unfortunately, I still think people can get away with things.
[17:49] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Oh, yeah. No, I agree. I just think it was like, ha ha. More of the Boys Club, certainly, then it was.
[17:59] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. Even the fact that this was, like, in the movie and the movie was wildly successful, I don't remember there being a lot of outrage about this part.
[18:07] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And the new I think they thought that they were doing well at this, and maybe they were at the time, but so if we think about Band Camp Girly so it's the dynamic between Jim, right, initially trying to have power over Nadia. Right. So, like, having the male role, I'm going to get her to have sex with me. It's like then Band Camp Girl at the end is right. Like, she's had sex many times.
[18:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[18:33] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: She is teaching him, but he kind.
[18:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: Of, like, gravitated toward her because he thought maybe that she'd be she's, like, so demure. She plays the flute in the band. Like, she might be what you might have called back then, an easy lay or something, and that she would be.
[18:50] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So lucky to have sex with him.
[18:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[18:52] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Versus then it being kind of the other way around. I think they started to and I don't know if this was intentional or.
[18:59] Dr. Katrina Furey: Not, but they started exploring that dynamic.
[19:03] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Conversation of we're going to make fun of really gross things, but then we can make it funny because we're like switching female. She's actually the one who has all.
[19:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: More experience and she's the one who leaves the next day. All of a sudden he's really into.
[19:19] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, and that's not a typical reaction. Right.
[19:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: But then you see it sort of like sparks his interest. And I think we know they go on to get married in, like, a future movie. What do you think about Stifler's mom?
[19:34] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So she is definitely portrayed as, I'm assuming, this cougar who allows wild drinking parties, which again, you're not allowed to do, can be.
[19:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: But I think there are still parents who do that. But yeah, again, I don't know because I wasn't really hip on the laws back in the 90s, but I know there are at least some laws in some states nowadays where parents can get in serious trouble for having parties where kids are drinking underage.
[20:05] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Right. And instead of like I think they can trace it back now better. Like before, if my parents allowed me to have a wild party and then someone on their way home died, right? Like from a drinking and driving accident. It's like before, I think in the so on and so forth, it was like they made that mistake, that person. But now it's like they will go back to who bought the booze? What adult did this and press charges? So, anyway, so Stifler's mom is definitely a cougar. She is a divorcee, having some it seems like money. She's got a lot of lake house.
[20:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: She was like at the party, though, I forgot that part, that she was.
[20:47] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like there.
[20:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: In the basement drinking her scotch.
[20:52] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah, that is as she said it, she likes her scotch just like she likes her partner's, men, whatever, 18 years aged.
[21:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: You're, like, feels really gross.
[21:06] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But again, she's a woman. Right. And intentionally, I think even then, if.
[21:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: It had been a day, a man.
[21:13] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Coming onto a girl, that would have been like, gross.
[21:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: It wouldn't have been funny at all.
[21:18] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: But this is, like, funny because Stiller's mom is a milk, as they talk about and learn the lingo, what's a milk? So I thought that was funny and I was like, did we learn what a milk was from this movie?
[21:31] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, because we all know what a milk is. Maybe explain it. I wonder if that was even a.
[21:38] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Term before that's what I mean.
[21:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: Someone looked that up on Urban Dictionary and send us a DM. That's interesting.
[21:53] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So anyway, it seems like she goes on to have sexual intercourse with another male character whose name I cannot recall.
[22:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: Is he the one who was afraid to **** at school, though.
[22:03] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
[22:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: So I thought that was interesting that the guy with the phobia about using public bathrooms gets with Stifler's mom. It was just like and pre that.
[22:14] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: He has started all these rumors with the help of Michelle Leon's character to talk about how cool he is.
[22:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: So he gets laid. Oh, yeah, that's right.
[22:25] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: One of the rumors is that he beat up Stifler. So Stifler gives him some sort of a laxative.
[22:31] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
[22:32] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then he ends up having to use the bathroom at school and oh my goodness.
[22:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: No other I mean, what a type of inadvertent exposure therapy, I guess, right?
[22:41] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: ERP just no one no therapy again, would non consensual.
[22:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: It was interesting. As I was watching this, I did find myself wondering does Jim have social anxiety disorder? I don't know. What are your thoughts about that? He always just seemed really nervous in social situations.
[22:57] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Like fear of judgment more so than others. And then thinking also like that it is really common for teenagers to have more of a focus on what others are thinking of them. But he feels I'm sure all of them felt that way, but he felt more intuitively, so could be diagnosable, but worth exploring.
[23:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. And I liked the relationship for the most part between Tara Reed's character and her boyfriend and how it seems like they'd been together for a while and it seemed like she really wanted their first intimate moment together to be perfect. That was kind of like the stereotypical desire of losing your virginity on prominery, wanting it all to feel great and then sort of hearing her perspective about it compared to his perspective, where he just wanted he was like eager to get it, to do it and keep doing it and then go to college again. I thought was pretty stereotypical of, like, this is what girls want. This is what boys want. That's not always true, but at least it was sweeter than some of the other relationships or dynamics we were seeing depicted. Remember Oz was like the jock, the stereotypical jock who played I think it was lacrosse. And then it seemed like he only joined the show choir hoping to hook up with Heather or with someone, maybe. Again, this power dynamic that you identified portia, I think, keeps coming out over and over that they're trying to pick like the quote unquote nerdy girls thinking they'll have a better chance with that and like, I don't appreciate that.
[24:31] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
[24:31] Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't appreciate that depiction very much.
[24:34] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah.
[24:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: And by that I mean I don't like it.
[24:37] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: No, but they did feel like the most consensual Heather and Ozone.
[24:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I don't think they even had sex. I think they just spent that night together and he was falling for her. But again, I just feel like that's just so stereotypical. It's like I don't know.
[24:58] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Yeah. I mean, the movie was I think I laughed. Not that often, and most of the time I just cringed and was like.
[25:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: OOH, yeah, yikes, yikes. And just yeah, thinking about like, way back then, it was so popular. It was, like, wildly popular.
[25:14] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Ten of them.
[25:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
[25:16] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So they kept making three American Wedding, american Vacation or something like that. I think there are talks of like.
[25:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: A reunion movie or something. Yeah, I could see that. Especially nowadays with all the reunions being really popular and like, bringing back stuff from the past into the present day. I could totally see that happening.
[25:34] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Just I'm scrolling Google right now. People magazine came out with in April 18, 2023. So a couple of months ago. American podcast. Where are they now? So it's like People still it's definitely piece.
[25:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's definitely part of our culture, for sure. And it's just interesting. Like, why?
[25:56] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think because part of it was like nuanced, right? It was, like, weirdly in a really back ended, not at all appropriate way now, but I don't even want to say it because it's not true, but like, oh, like female empowerment. Like, these guys learned, right? Like, that the girls were the one who were, like, running the show or they actually were their own sexual people.
[26:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: They had, like, autonomy, they had their.
[26:23] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Own consent, they had their own dreams.
[26:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: Urges, urges, fantasy, all of that.
[26:31] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I thought you were like, no, because you're right, it's not.
[26:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: But I can see what you're saying. Yeah, it's kind of like the narrative a little bit. Like we're tiptoeing toward female empowerment. I feel like that's a strong phrase, but I get where you're going with that.
[26:48] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: You're like, let's talk about American Pie and female empowerment. That'll be the title of this episode.
[26:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: But no, I see what you're saying. And maybe especially for 1999, that the era of, like, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and all these other sexualized females. Yeah, maybe that.
[27:06] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And there's so much now. I mean, we could go on a four hour rant just about how so much has come out now of the media treatment of the pop star females at the Times. And I think even uniquely Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake's breakup and everything, all the negative stuff was put on Brittany and even the questions journalists asked, et cetera, et cetera.
[27:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: And at that time, there was a huge emphasis on the female pop stars maintaining their virginity. Right. That was a big thing that was talked about and then soon ish after that. Then it was like the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus with their purity rings, and that was like a big emphasis and yet right juxtaposed to how sexually they were dressed and viewed as sexual objects in that way. So, yeah, you're right. I think even just thinking back to the female characters in this movie, like, the clothing they wore, I didn't think for the most part, I didn't think of it as overly sexualized. It seemed like pretty normal like skirts and polo shirt.
[28:08] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Really high school typical of the time. Even trends, right? That's what was in cardigans.
[28:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, exactly. But not like super low cut or super, super short or anything like that. And then as everything plays out, the women do end up having a lot of the power all the way from Stifler's mom all the way down to bandcamp girl Michelle. Michelle yeah. And I do have to say, I know everyone remembers her comment about bandcamp, but I forgot that she said at some point one time at bandcamp, we all thought it'd be funny to play our instruments upside down. And I was like, I actually think that'd be really funny and kind of fun. So I appreciate that.
[28:49] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I loved how she just kept saying, this one time of Bangkok, this one time of Bangkok.
[28:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: And you see like, he's getting so really tired.
[28:54] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then she makes the comment about.
[28:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: Where she put the and he was like, what?
[28:59] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then all of a sudden, right, it's like and that's where the tide switch. That's when she's like, come on upstairs.
[29:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. She's like, oh, yeah, that's what Pink camp is. It's like 5% playing your instrument and 95%, like having sex and none of the counselors know.
[29:14] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Oh, the other scene that I was just thinking of is pre stiffler drinking the beer. Is that when she's like, oh, but I don't want you to tell anyone. He's trying to convince that girl to have sex or whatever. And he's literally which, again, I thought they just did such a good job covering this. He's like rolling his eyes, being like, yeah, I just want to have sex with you, and then I'm going to talk to everybody about it. And he's like, no, I would never tell anyone about this. This is our time. This is special.
[29:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: Such a liar.
[29:45] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So gross.
[29:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I feel like that happens, at least back then. I hope now it doesn't happen.
[29:52] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Up power, we talk about a lot of non consensual. Sex is mostly not being attacked, right? It's mostly different power dynamics. It can just be a person with social popularity or more social standing in school who you feel like you really want to be liked and you really want their approval. And that's, I'd say, the most common form of non consensual.
[30:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, I think that's a really important message to get across. Portia that I feel like the stereotype of a non consensual sexual encounter or assault or rape is like being attacked by a stranger in the stairway in a parking garage or something like that. And that does happen. It's terrible. But way more often, it's what you're describing, where it is someone you know, someone maybe you feel like you can trust or you want to trust or you want to be liked by. And there is this power dynamic, whether it's age, social status. I'm thinking of like at your place of work. Like a boss or someone with some sort of power or authority over you. And it can go both ways, which we see portrayed with stiflers.
[31:01] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think just again, we were kind of like, what are we going to talk about with this movie? And there's some good social commentary, I think, of the times, which is always interesting to reflect on. But also, just like I mean, a big theme of it is consent.
[31:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
[31:14] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And with sex comes consent, and teenagers are having sex.
[31:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's happening. It has happened since the dawn of time. It will continue happening. Yeah.
[31:25] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: So kudos to Eugene's attempts at talking about the birds and the bees with Jim and just pointing things out. Again, I don't think he really shared ultimately helpful, this is what you should be doing, this is how it's safe, et cetera. He just gave him some magazines and then was like, so the pie. Let's talk about that.
[31:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: But how terrified would you be if you came home and found your son having sex with the pie? I guess it's better than some things.
[32:00] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I think it is. I'd still just being a therapist. I'd probably be like, let's come from a place of curiosity, and maybe you don't feel comfortable talking to me about it. I'm going to have you talk about it with someone else. And maybe it's only one session, but I just want you to talk about.
[32:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: It and get some facts right.
[32:18] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: And then that can be one session. Or maybe you want to go back, and then there can be more.
[32:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. Really interesting.
[32:25] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I remember having the conversation.
[32:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. Not ignoring it, not brushing it under the rug. Not saying, we'll just tell your mother we ate it all so good. Oh, my gosh. Again, it just really personified. Just, like, teenage awkwardness and angst and cringiness and wanting to be like and.
[32:42] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Wanting friends and nervous about the transition after high school. I know some of it, again, is, like, super normal. And still, till the dawn of time, or until something crazy happens and changes how we should, this will always continue to be right.
[33:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: Any final thoughts as we wrap up?
[33:04] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: I would say watch or beware. And don't let eight year olds watch this, please.
[33:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Dear God, don't. I think it's rated R for a reason. It's very R. Yeah, it's very R. All right.
[33:17] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Cool.
[33:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: Well, thank you for tuning in to another episode of Analyze Scripts. Please rate, review and subscribe and share with your friends near and far. Follow us on Instagram at Analyze Scripts and on TikTok at Analyze Scripts podcast, and we'll see you next Monday for White Lotus Season One, and continue to.
[33:35] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Follow along with us all month long with Jennifer Coolidge.
[33:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: Jennifer coolidge. July. If she wants to come on the pod, you are welcome.
[33:43] Portia Pendleton, LCSW: Okay, bye bye.
[33:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: Content are a copyright of analyzed scripts. All rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited. Unless you want to share it with.
[34:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: Your friends and rate review and subscribe, that's fine.
[34:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are joined by Dr. Jessi Gold to analyze season two of "Yellowjackets." In this episode we discuss cults, schizophrenia, catatonia and the ghastly depiction of ECT. We see many different depictions of trauma responses in this season, some from psychological stressors and others from their worsening physical state. Were you as shocked as we were to learn the mouse is actually dead? Was that a hallucination due to starvation or psychological trauma, the answer is probably both. "Yellowjackets" keeps us guessing and cringing through all nine episodes this season, but we are ready for a break and hope the actors are practicing some self care! We hope you enjoy!
[00:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fury, a psychiatrist.
[00:12] Portia Pendleton: And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker.
[00:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows.
[00:23] Portia Pendleton: Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends.
[00:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: There is so much misinformation out there, and it drives us nuts.
[00:31] Portia Pendleton: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like.
[00:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: With a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better.
[00:39] Portia Pendleton: So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn.
[00:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: And your DSM Five and enjoy. Back to another episode of Analyze scripts. We are so excited to once again be joined by Dr. Jesse Gold today to talk about the second season of Showtime's hit show Yellow Jackets. Thanks so much for coming back, Jesse.
[01:12] Dr. Jessi Gold: Thanks for having me.
[01:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: I do have to say, this show is really messed up. I feel like season one was a lot, and then we sort of watched it really quick to record our first episode and then watch season two really quick. And I was like, I had to take some breaks, I'll be honest, along the way, because it got really intense really fast.
[01:34] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[01:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: Maybe like a two out of ten on a scale of one to ten. So not like fully this season.
[01:43] Dr. Jessi Gold: I think it was like last season, they were like, this is a show about cannibals, but you never saw it.
[01:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right?
[01:50] Dr. Jessi Gold: This season was like, remember when you're walking?
[01:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: Here it is. Yeah, here it is.
[01:58] Dr. Jessi Gold: They danced around it in a way that was like, fine last season. And this season they were like, all.
[02:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right, here you go.
[02:06] Dr. Jessi Gold: And there are definitely parts where you're like, yeah, I can't watch it.
[02:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes, I know. I told Portia when we were watching it, I stopped right around when Shauna was about to deliver the baby because I was so scared they were going to eat the baby. I was like, I can't watch that. And I think you actually had to tell me. They don't I looked up the spoiler.
[02:28] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, they post on their TikTok, right? Like, the cast being like, we do not eat the baby. You can watch it, I guess, trigger non warning. And I was like, we do a.
[02:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: Lot of things, but that's where we draw the line. Gosh. So, I mean, I think we have to get started since this was really early in the first episode, ECT and the depiction of ECT. Right. Like, you probably felt as good about that as I did, which is not very good.
[02:57] Dr. Jessi Gold: It is the first time I was disappointed.
[03:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, right.
[03:02] Dr. Jessi Gold: Last season, I was really excited about all of their mental health portrayals, and I thought they were really thoughtful, and their trauma portrayals were really thoughtful. So I was super excited for this season, despite yes, I'm not, like, a creepy show person, so it's not like surprising that that wouldn't be my genre of choice, but I really liked it for a lot of the reasons I was talking about health wise. And so watching that and seeing that so early on, I was like, oh no, taking such a wrong, unnecessary turn. And yeah, I think inherently if you came back from something catatonic possible, you got ECT, right?
[03:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[03:44] Dr. Jessi Gold: The actual treatment of choice for being like catatonic, I think who has schizophrenia or some version of a psychotic right, comes back catatonic. It seems we have like a tiny, tiny, tiny glimpse in that.
[03:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: I was going to ask you. I thought it was catatonia as well. Porsche, are you familiar with catatonia as much? How would you describe catatonia, Jesse, to someone who doesn't know what that word means, they're different forms.
[04:09] Dr. Jessi Gold: Some people have hyperactive, completely not moving.
[04:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: Speaking kind of like Lottie, like Lottie.
[04:17] Dr. Jessi Gold: Looks like she had it can be a reaction to a lot of things, like medication, like psychosis, like some medical issues inside, internally, like a medical issue. I haven't seen it a ton of times, but I have seen it sometimes it amazingly responds to just like an act.
[04:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: Have you ever seen that? Because that is amazing. So portia. Sometimes when you're catatonic, these people are usually brought to the Er and people are either like they're not moving or eating or they're going to the bathroom on themselves. They literally can't move from here to five inches away, or they're like they're being really bizarre and bouncing off the walls and making weird noises and just such a drastic change in behavior really acutely quickly, like for an unknown reason. And then eventually catatonia gets on the differential and you think, let's give them a little Addivan. And so you'll give them like a push of ivy. Addivan, wait a couple only like 2 hours and a lot of times they start to wake up. Then you give them another one if it's working. And that's one of the coolest things in psychiatry is you can see it work so fast. I feel like in mental health that's so rare. Maybe like Add and Stimulants, you see work really quick. But this is so drastic. Like, I remember one woman in the ICU, wasn't eating for days, couldn't move, had something called waxy flexibility where if you put their arm up, it stays. They never bring it down. Or you can position them in an odd position, they stay there. That's part of catatonia. That's one of the telltale diagnostic signs. We give her the Adavan, a couple of hours later she's eating. It's wild. Anyway, so I do think lottie was catatonic. I think that's what they were going for. And even if they weren't, they did.
[06:02] Dr. Jessi Gold: A good job in an offshoot. But I do think that as far as things you see in psychiatry, it's interesting, but I have heard from the perspective of a patient who was catatonic, that they understood everything that was going on but couldn't speak or function. And wow, sometimes when people were learning from them because they had certain symptoms, like there's this thing called echolalia where they eat everything that you're saying that they knew. They saw that and didn't like that but couldn't say anything. So after that, I've been hesitant sometimes to actually teach some of it, even though it's rare and interesting. And again, one of the few things you see really get better, which is really nice. But I would assume, who knows how long she wasn't speaking and functioning in the wilderness.
[06:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know now she's trapped like that. Can you imagine?
[06:59] Dr. Jessi Gold: And I would assume her parents were already thought she was dead, but on top of it, we're like, oh, gosh, she's been off meds for like two years. No, I think ECP is a treatment of choice for catatonia. ECT is a very successful medication or.
[07:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, treatment super successful, which is unfortunate.
[07:21] Dr. Jessi Gold: Psychiatry because everyone flew over the cuz nest, really. And I think that book and that movie and that portrayal have really continued so much that even, like, generationally people who have absolutely never read the book.
[07:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: Or true know about it.
[07:41] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[07:41] Dr. Jessi Gold: In that movie, I don't know if parents told them or what, because, you know, they didn't see some old school Jack Nickson movie.
[07:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[07:49] Dr. Jessi Gold: There's something where you mentioned ECT to people and their faces so concerned and they think it's the worst thing you can possibly tell them, but it's by far one of our most successful treatments, especially in situations like this. But in acute suspitality in pregnancy.
[08:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[08:06] Dr. Jessi Gold: Postpartum psychosis wouldn't imagine it's as good as it is. And that stigma that exists for a very long time, very much created by the media, to be honest, really has made it hard for us to sell it as a treatment, despite how successful it is. And so for this show, which is new, to bring it back into the fold. And bring it back into the fold. So almost like quickly flashes, but the flashes you get look really and it's not the ECP. Even in the what would that have been like the 90s, right?
[08:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: Exactly. It wouldn't have been like that.
[08:47] Dr. Jessi Gold: Some of the things from what blew over the cuckoo sense is like, the technology was older, anesthesia wasn't as good. There's things where you can tell that things have evolved for sure since then. But even in the 90s, it didn't look like what they're showing. What they're showing looks like probably the equivalent of the fact that they still go clear with paddles in medical shows. Like these little pads that are stick.
[09:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: On and so dramatic and heavy going to hurt you.
[09:17] Dr. Jessi Gold: I know that Er doctors think that's ridiculous because they have most of them never even saw it ever done like that. I feel like what they show for ECT is like that version the OG when ECT was discovered version.
[09:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: Also when they say seize, that's not what actually happens.
[09:40] Dr. Jessi Gold: The purpose is to induce a seizure in your brain. But it's like so minor and the only way you really even know there's.
[09:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: A seizure is like your toe brain.
[09:50] Dr. Jessi Gold: Activity or your tone. You would never see someone actually seize. If you did.
[09:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: We probably messed up, right.
[09:59] Dr. Jessi Gold: Only they test where to go based on just if your finger moves when they get there, they know where different parts of your brain are and they're.
[10:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: Targeting a specific part. Right. You're never like lashing or thrashing around, rolling over like Lottie did. And it's also very rare these days to do bilateral ECT on both sides of the head. Usually you start with unilateral and it's been so long since I did or saw ECT, I can't even remember which side you usually start with. But that's also not super common to do bilateral. Sometimes you have to right.
[10:34] Dr. Jessi Gold: Then when one's not working as well, you add the other or you try the other and then you do bilateral.
[10:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. Oh, really? Like Barbaric bike guard, right?
[10:43] Dr. Jessi Gold: Like a bike guard. She has an aggressive actual seizure. As a viewer, you actually don't know what is going on because they don't say the name. They don't going on anyway. So all you see is like this barbaric looking psychiatric treatment. And don't get me wrong, we have screwed up over and over. We were doing treatment wise. But again, so did a lot of medicine that felt like bloodletting was a way to free spirits of stuff. Right. So we're not the only specialty who tried very dangerous things on people.
[11:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[11:15] Dr. Jessi Gold: We have a reputation for that and I think that has continued. NPT has basically been this, I don't know, representation of that in modern psychiatry.
[11:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[11:26] Dr. Jessi Gold: Though it is so effective and I don't know, I wish there was more context to that. Even though I know it was sort of like intentionally vague. But I wish there was more context to it. I wish it was more thoughtful.
[11:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: I wish it was more updated and more accurate.
[11:42] Dr. Jessi Gold: It was more accurate. And with Lottie they have a lot of potential to talk about humane treatment.
[11:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know. And we see such bad mental health treatment with Lottie this whole season and that's like the only mental health treatment we see.
[12:00] Dr. Jessi Gold: Yeah, I mean, I think I worry not to get too far ahead that next season too, that she's going to.
[12:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: Be inpatient, it's going to be awful. Let's show some good treatment that's struggling.
[12:12] Dr. Jessi Gold: Like this, you can go back to.
[12:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: Functioning and doing your work and your.
[12:16] Dr. Jessi Gold: Life, but this is maybe what you need. Sometimes this is impatient can look like and they have the opportunity to demystify destigmatize.
[12:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's just so far from what I saw in my training in what actual ECT is, which can be so quite literally life saving for so many patients. And it's just such a shame to have such yet another negative depiction of such a life saving treatment and of schizophrenia.
[12:47] Portia Pendleton: I mean, she's going to go inpatient one of the most interesting things in my graduate program was we had this I don't know, because you guys both interfaced with Yale. She was a lawyer, like down in New Haven, and she's an author and she has schizophrenia.
[13:02] Dr. Jessi Gold: It's called the center cannot hold with Elon Sack.
[13:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
[13:05] Portia Pendleton: So she does a lot of talks about her experience with hallucinating, being on medication, not being on medication, how powerful medication is, and how you can really lead a wildly productive I mean, she went to law school. She's a very well known fighter and person lawyer. And that was just, I think, really helping too. I mean, the whole point is to destigmatize schizophrenia. So then we see Lottie here not doing a good job of that. And then we were just talking about future season predictions with maybe her being on inpatient unit and probably not looking so good.
[13:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. I do think as much as I was disappointed with the depiction of ECT, I do think this season had some good moments that I thought very, I guess, helpfully displayed the difference between hallucinations dissociation and like a dissociative fugue state. Right. I feel like those things are challenging to wrap your head around, challenging to educate people about, and then I would imagine even more challenging depicting in an accurate way. So when we say hallucination, what we mean by that is when someone is seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, or smelling something that isn't actually there in reality, so what other people around them aren't experiencing. The most common hallucinations are auditory and visual. So things that you see or hear, although other senses can be affected too. When we say dissociation, what we mean by that is it's psychologically when there's a separation of some aspects of cognitive mental functioning from your conscious awareness. So it's often a response to trauma. And it's like your mind's way of trying to protect yourself and disconnect from an extreme psychological distress. And then kind of even further than that is what we call a dissociative fugue state, which is another rare occurrence. I did see a couple of these in the Er in my training, and that's a temporary state where a person has amnesia for their personal autobiographical information and then travels to an unexpected place, kind of out of nowhere. So these people kind of show up in your Er, don't know who they are, don't know where they are, don't know why they're there. And it takes a while to figure out what exactly is going on. And you don't often jump to like, oh, it's a fugue state. You might think like, oh my God, is there something medical going on? And things like that. But sometimes these patients do end up creating a whole new identity so I thought this show did demonstrate these different aspects of psychological functioning in response to trauma in a really amazing way. I was thinking of Shauna and Jackie, like those hallucinations early on, lottie and her psychiatrist, which we'll get into, I'm sure, in a minute. With the Dissociating, we see that a lot. With Ty, we see that with Shauna kind of forgetting or dissociating about her baby being stillborn. And then the fugue we see with Ty sleepwalking all the way to Ohio and hitchhiking to see Van. So I don't know, what did you guys think about those different depictions?
[16:20] Portia Pendleton: I mean, the Dissociation one where Shauna is seeing Jackie, I feel like feels really to me like the most common potentially experience someone might have with, like, a loss, even.
[16:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: You mean dissociating or hallucinating?
[16:34] Portia Pendleton: Dissociating.
[16:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: So this is a great example of how confusing these different conditions can be. Right. Because so Jackie was dead by that point, but she's talking to her. She's seeing her Jackie's moving around. So I would call that, I guess, maybe a little both.
[16:48] Portia Pendleton: Okay.
[16:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: But definitely visual auditory hallucinations that aren't actually happening.
[16:53] Portia Pendleton: I mean, I'm just thinking of like I guess no one's really typical, but like a typical trauma patient who has dissociative features, usually I think, then just seeing them. Right. Like, you say you're like, outside your body or maybe you're in another place, but you're not seeing another person who then you would say isn't there.
[17:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. So I think of dissociation as like, having gaps in your memory for the traumatic event, forgetting certain things about it. Sometimes they do describe sort of like hovering above and sort of witnessing it rather than experiencing it. I think what you might be describing is, like, maybe someone who's even something not as severe as trauma, like grief, and you're walking around and you think you see the person, and then you realize, oh, no, that's not really them.
[17:39] Dr. Jessi Gold: These are so specific and very hard to know the difference. And they're all sort of in this spectrum of psychological responses that can feel like psychosis, but also are trauma.
[17:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, exactly. There's a big overlap.
[17:53] Dr. Jessi Gold: All of them were interestingly done. I think it's different people's responses to extreme stress, if you want to call it that, on sort of like the Wispy scale. Just a ton of trauma. I don't know how most people would react. And on top of it, also, they're starving.
[18:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
[18:12] Portia Pendleton: Right. I was interested in the medical.
[18:14] Dr. Jessi Gold: That part is also complicated. If they're, like, are they hallucinating? Are they struggling because they act Harding.
[18:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: And their brain is not functioning well?
[18:23] Portia Pendleton: Yes. The mouse, it's like you can convince.
[18:26] Dr. Jessi Gold: Yourself that that's real because you can't tell the difference. Or the coach very actively hallucinating, but they're sort of like vivid dreams that happen to be while he's awake because he's not really fully functioning, because he's not eating right. I think there's a lot of blurring. And I also think that they use that to the advantage of the show writing, to put in the mysticism. They don't know. They're all sort of broken from reality in some capacity, some more than others for other reasons. But what is real and what is not is confusing. And I think that's also confusing for viewers and purpose.
[19:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, right. And I wonder, like you're saying, if that how much of that was purposeful. Because as we're seeing them all cope with and respond to trauma and try to survive, they're also telling the story through a lot of flashbacks and flash forwards. And so you kind of are also off kilter, which might just kind of be like in parallel to what you could imagine the characters are experiencing.
[19:27] Portia Pendleton: I was thinking about just like I work with a lot of eating disorder patients, right? How important eating and nourishment is glucose, obviously, this is a pretty extreme example, but our brains need nutrition so badly.
[19:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: To perform well, to function.
[19:46] Portia Pendleton: And even, you know, if you're not starving in the wilderness with no food for weeks, living on soup made with mushrooms, I mean, you can tell. And that's where body disturbance comes in. People have a really hard time judging their body and comparing it and really do believe that they're in a larger body or a smaller body, et cetera. But I just thought what? Just like a little fun fact of how much we need food and how it can really change our experience with reality.
[20:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, 100%. And also how some of the dissociation can be protective. Right. When you're trying to survive in the winter in the woods with no idea if anyone's going to find you, it's probably protective to survival, to be disconnected to some degree. Right. Otherwise, like, God, what do you do?
[20:33] Portia Pendleton: Right? The mouse seemed really important to her and just like a little creature. Who she's talking to? I mean, I was really shocked when it was dead.
[20:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: Me too.
[20:42] Dr. Jessi Gold: I'm not going to lie.
[20:43] Portia Pendleton: Of course it's alive.
[20:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: But then creature, did you wonder if she's going to eat it?
[20:48] Portia Pendleton: I think she did.
[20:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: Did she eat it?
[20:50] Dr. Jessi Gold: Maybe I'm thinking about the ear and was like, no.
[20:56] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I'm thinking of the ear.
[20:58] Dr. Jessi Gold: I think it was hard enough to even see the mouse situation change, but I think it's I don't know. It's a cool storytelling technique to use to be like, what's real, what's not? How do you know? And I think they use the same technique. I mean, with the baby situation, guys and the fans all were worried they ate the baby. Yeah, they have her basically hallucinate that people eat the baby and you believe it for a while, thought it could be a possible outcome. The writers knew it could be what people think is a possible outcome. And so they sort of play on that. I don't know, break from every like no one knows what's real and what's not. And I think as a viewer, it allows you to sort of maybe get more in the headspace of what it would be like to be doing that. And then I also think it makes things hard to follow. And you don't always trust the narrator. So interesting from a storytelling perspective. And I also think the food thing, it's like dissociation, if you want to use that term, being connected to your body that is not functioning and hungry and not eating. I understand all of that's. Protective, consciously dissociate. I mean, people who have had trauma sometimes can consciously dissociate as they get older because they learned it as a big skill, but they might not even realize they're doing it conscious, but they still don't even realize they're doing it. And so it's like an evolved coping skill to basically say, my body is not safe where my body is. Let's take a vacation from that, right? It's hard to picture, but it's a logical and important way.
[22:49] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[22:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I think, too, this show is doing a nice job demonstrating how like you were saying, Jesse, a lot of times when you're faced with trauma, let alone a chronic trauma, that's not letting up, especially in your early years. Like when you're a teenager or even younger, you develop these coping strategies like dissociation. Not consciously or intentionally, but then how that can persist into adulthood. And we see that with Ty, I think especially how when she's under the stress in season one of Running for Office, she's unconsciously reverting back to some of these coping strategies, like eating the dirt or setting up the altar and things like that. And how we see in season two as the stress keeps escalating, now she's maybe losing her family hallucinated. Sammy, it seems like before she got into that awful car accident where Simone got hurt. Then we see the dissociative few coming. And I think, again, that's a pretty intense depiction, but also really accurate. Like, I treat a lot of patients in adulthood who have a trauma history who find themselves dissociating or and that can be as simple as when faced with some reminder of what you went through, you all kind of feel like you're losing touch with your body. Sometimes I have patients describe it as like a zoom out or something. It can be as, quote unquote mild as something like that all the way to something as severe as, like, a fuke state. And you're right, I think, with the way they're telling the story and how smart is this? You do start to doubt. Like, I found myself wondering, was Misty's friend Crystal real until she died? And so thinking about lottie in the woods, but then also as an adult with her psychiatrist, I'm curious, Jesse, what your thoughts are about that whole depiction.
[24:42] Dr. Jessi Gold: Isn'T real. Yeah, again, that sort of was like, whoa. It was interesting to me because I was like, why don't you keep saying her psychiatrist is on vacation? I thought that was the weirdest addition to the conversation because it was irrelevant. I don't know. It's interesting because in a way, it's like she thinks she's asking for help and she wants to ask for help, but she's asking for help in her world, not real world, but then her help asking in the real world is like this very dangerous mysticism.
[25:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I thought it was so, like, before I realized the psychiatrist wasn't real at first, was like, I like the psychiatrist's office. Overall, I liked it. But then the psychiatrist said something like, when Lottie is coming and basically asking for medication or to go up on her medications because the hallucinations are coming back. And again, patients with that awareness of their psychotic disorder or their bipolar disorder with psychotic features or what have you can realize that and will come and seek help. And I think that's amazing when that happens. I was so disappointed when the fake psychiatrist said something to her, like, well, maybe you should listen to your hallucinations. I was like, no. And then when we realized she wasn't real, I was like, oh, Portia, I don't know. When did you catch on?
[26:00] Portia Pendleton: I didn't until now. And not that she wasn't real. The last time we see the psychiatrist, she like, disappears, right, from Lottie's home, our office, whatever it was. And so I was like, oh, that was a hallucination. But I thought that that was the.
[26:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: Only time she hallucinated her. But like, the other time she went, she actually went? Yes.
[26:21] Portia Pendleton: And she was just getting, like, unhelpful, unhelpful help.
[26:25] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, maybe. You know, oftentimes with psychosis, at least I learned in my training. And I think this tracks if I sort of, like, reflect back, it's the auditory hallucinations that are the most common. And then I remember, like, visual hallucinations are more common with, like you said, like a medical issue or like alcohol withdrawal, UTI, stuff like that. And it is more often like whispers or hearing a voice, but it might not even be that the voice is saying something that's really clear to understand, but it sounds threatening or scary or could be a command hallucination telling them to harm themselves in some way. But, yeah, the idea of a friend or this whole external person, I haven't seen as much in real life.
[27:15] Portia Pendleton: Well, I wanted to bring up just your article for the Slate. So just thinking about trauma, and we mentioned this like a couple of minutes ago. I think it's so important for people to know that if you're doing something like an EMDR or an art trauma treatment, you are opening the bag up, you are recalling really specific memories. And I like how you said you have to be prepared for that. And sometimes things get worse before they get better. And thinking about the characters on the show, it's like their trauma was so chronic and pervasive. And then continues at Post Wilderness that for treatment for them even thinking of Lottie, they need to be in really.
[28:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: Safe, really good care, really safe.
[28:02] Portia Pendleton: And environment providers really know what they're doing, who can hold them. And just thinking of all their dissociations as really, really coping, I mean, I don't know if it's safe for them to open the trauma jar altogether.
[28:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: Especially, I think we see what happens, right, how the hunt happens again near the end of the season.
[28:24] Portia Pendleton: And you can see Shauna and Misty being so shocked that Ty and Van did not end up or they called off lottie getting taken at that point. And they really started in the fear that Wright comes up for Shauna and Misty again with, like, Van and Ty allowing the hunt to happen. I don't know. I mean, I think just trauma, oh, there's great trauma treatments now and everyone should work on their trauma.
[28:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: Sure.
[28:47] Portia Pendleton: But you have to be safe to do it.
[28:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: And you do need to be with a very skilled provider who knows what they're doing and knows how to handle when dissociative features might come up or when a panic attack might come up, and help you sort of stay present and feel safe is like the most important thing.
[29:05] Dr. Jessi Gold: I think it's important for people to know that if you seek out trauma therapy, you're not going to dive immediately into it too, and you don't like this fear that you're going to say, Hi, nice to meet you. Tell me about that time in the wilderness when you're like, we don't do that.
[29:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right?
[29:20] Dr. Jessi Gold: Like, if you're trained in it, if you see the right kind of people, you get used into it. You will have those conversations. That's why you chose to have that therapy. But the purpose is not just to expose you and make you feel miserable. And so knowing that, I think, is important.
[29:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: Some forms of trauma therapy now, like CPT, cognitive processing therapy without the trauma narrative, where you don't have to recall and detail the whole trauma narrative to do the therapy, how that's also been shown to be equally as effective as the version with the narrative. And I think that's really helpful for patients to hear because I think that is a big barrier to seeking it out is this fear that you're going to have to retell it and relive it over and over and over and over and that isn't always the case.
[30:05] Dr. Jessi Gold: Yeah, there's a lot of fear in them telling their story, which you can tell even probably one of the better scenes is all of them as adults, kind of like talking about how messed up their lives actually are, listening to music and dancing and drinking yeah. Around the fire and it's kind of fun, but you're also like they're just like, telling each other how bad their lives are, but they don't tell anybody. Else. They don't trust anybody else. It's like a weird, sort of, like, peer support system that protected them for a long time. It has made them all really safe.
[30:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. And the only time they could connect in that way again is when they're, like, out in the wilderness around a fire, which is so similar to the time they were stuck.
[30:50] Portia Pendleton: It just feels re traumatizing.
[30:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
[30:55] Portia Pendleton: And I didn't like watching it the whole last episode. I felt nervous when they started doing.
[31:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: The stuff with the cards and then lottie's like, the Russian roulette with the poison, and I was just like, oh, no. But I did think it was amazing storytelling to have that going on in parallel to when they started doing that in the wilderness and how you could see again. You think of the coping skills you develop to survive in such a traumatic situation like that, and how they're sort of bubbling up again now in adulthood.
[31:27] Portia Pendleton: And Natalie, is substance use certainly a coping skill? A way for her to kind of detach and then just her arc? I was sad to see spoiler alert. I had to see her go.
[31:40] Dr. Jessi Gold: I'm really excited about hoping that they tell the future, too. Is this, like, sort of passing on of trauma to the next generation?
[31:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes, with Callie, because there's, like, something.
[31:52] Dr. Jessi Gold: Where she's known her mom is not okay for a very long time, but her mom won't talk to her about it. And you see in her mom's interview with the cops and stuff that she didn't really think she should be a mom. Not really worthy of it, not really able to do it correctly. You grow up and you know there's something there when you get older and you're able to have more of a sense of things. And they don't talk about it. The parents aren't talking about it. They disagree a lot, or they're not getting along. Well, you see that, too. And then she just wanted to be let in. She's been waiting to be let into the story her whole life. And I feel like she's been defensive and protective of her mom in ways that she wouldn't have been otherwise. But she's clearly been traumatized from the whole thing, too. I know. Even the stuff she thinks of doing for the cop and all that stuff, manipulative and whatever, but it's like, I.
[32:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: Guess this is what we do, right? Yeah. Gosh. And I think a lot of people can probably relate to that, hopefully in a different way. But when you yourself have grown up with some sort of trauma or something, how and when do you share that with your kids in a way that keeps them feeling safe, but also promotes connection rather than this vibe that we don't talk about hard things? I have no idea. But this show, I think, depicts that like you're saying in a really intense way. Jesse, again, getting back to your article. What did you think about the depiction of Lottie's, what seems like a cult, and yet it didn't seem like Lottie had, like, a nefarious intent. Right. That I feel like a lot of cult leaders, there's usually a nefarious, selfish intent there.
[33:36] Dr. Jessi Gold: I mean, it's a cold article for Slate on that, and part of it was because I was very curious about what the draw for people with mental illness and trauma is of colts. Yes, there's a lot of draw. The support and the understanding and that somebody listening to you. The acceptance attempt at finding a solution, which I think happens for a lot of our patients. And they turn to supplements and they turn to things that maybe feel quicker because somebody maybe gave them an answer, CBD something. And there's not a lot of great treatment or fast treatment for some of this. And it's nice to think there could be. I think there's some version of Lottie who is like her purpose in her mind is to help the wounded souls of the world without realizing that there's negative to what she's doing. And that's a lack of insight. Some of I don't know how much is purposefully hurtful as much as it is what she believes is right, but what she believes is right is unfortunately not really right. So you kind of have to say maybe her insight into right and wrong is not 100% there.
[34:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: And again, why would it be, given what she went through? Right.
[35:00] Dr. Jessi Gold: Yeah. I mean, given, like, that she wants to kill someone for the wilderness or give it blood.
[35:07] Portia Pendleton: Right. And if she were to die, who then takes care of her? Right. Who then leads her people followers?
[35:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: If she drinks the cyanide, what happens? Maybe it's Lisa. That girl. I don't know.
[35:22] Portia Pendleton: I think it's definitely the lack of insight and just not I think she's ultimately that demonstrates to me selfishness because you're not thinking about all these people who you have living in this commune, taught to be here, where they're kind of surrounding you and your ideas. It's like, well, if I'm gone, you're not thinking about them.
[35:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. No, that's a good point. I think I was comparing her this time to Keith Ranieri of the nexium cult. I don't know if you watch The Vow, but how they're again, clearly it's a cult. Right. They're not communicating with the outside world, even though they could. They all just choose not to. Right. They're all wearing purple. They're all doing sort of these woo woo things she holds onto the files. Yeah. And, like, the info. Right. So maybe there was more to it than we saw about what's she getting.
[36:12] Dr. Jessi Gold: Out of it, being each other's family.
[36:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: This is what works, and maybe that's enough for her. Maybe that's what she gets out of it, that community and belonging and sense of importance.
[36:22] Portia Pendleton: And then it's for her, right?
[36:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: For her rather than for everyone else. I did think it was interesting as we start wrapping up the way that the show and it seems like the characters maybe led by Lottie, but then they all kind of accept it to some degree, keep talking about the darkness within each of them and then the role of the wilderness or that mysticism role. And it made me think of is this how they're trying to externalize in some way these dark parts of themselves that they ended up using or relying on to survive? And I think we just sort of see that unfold as they grow into adulthood and as they all get back together and kind of redo another hunt at Lottie's psychotic urging. Quite frankly, at that point, I think she's like, fully psychotic.
[37:21] Portia Pendleton: And I think it's just interesting. They all name it, though, right?
[37:25] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, they all have the same name.
[37:27] Portia Pendleton: Misty and Shauna all decide prehunt that they are going to go along with Lottie and her really psychotic ideas about.
[37:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: One very dangerous yeah, very dangerous.
[37:38] Portia Pendleton: And then I think it's so, like, why Ty and Van?
[37:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: I was shocked.
[37:44] Portia Pendleton: Van seems terminal.
[37:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: She's a terminal illness.
[37:48] Portia Pendleton: So is that her way you said before, of trying to be saved by Lottie?
[37:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: Because it seems like Lottie has, like, quote unquote, saved Van in the past, or the wilderness has saved Van from all the time she should have died in the woods but didn't. And so I was stumped as to why they would call off the emergency medical personnel to take Lottie into treatment or traditional psychiatric treatment. And that was the only thing I could really come up with, was like, did Van think in some way Lottie could once again save her? I don't know. What do you think, Jesse, about all that?
[38:22] Dr. Jessi Gold: I don't know. Or I feel like Van thought she would be chosen to sacrifice herself for people. I don't know. It's too obvious, too just like she would be the one to go and.
[38:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: She was like, okay with it because she had a terminal illness or something.
[38:38] Dr. Jessi Gold: It felt like a chicken thing that they all failed at stopping. Okay, someone's going to stop this, right? And maybe they thought Lottie would, because it's hard to see, like, in what we know about the past, we don't know how much Lottie is involved in the like, they start that game, like that game. I know people with card game. It's hard to know how much of that takes a life of its own, and it's not actually Lottie's life. And so maybe they were like, this isn't really what Lottie like, Lottie is going to be like, this is a bad idea. I don't know. And so it felt like to me, either Van was ready to self sacrifice or that they were all playing a game of chicken, that they were hoping someone would stop, and nobody did. And it felt like that as kids, a little bit too right. Someone's not going to kill Natalie. Right? And then they were like, oh, he fell in.
[39:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my God. Right.
[39:43] Dr. Jessi Gold: Super traumatic and very parallel to that.
[39:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: Moose, the white moose.
[39:49] Portia Pendleton: Yes.
[39:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: I also wondered if that was real, that white moose or hallucination.
[39:54] Dr. Jessi Gold: It's hard to know that if they thought it would actually go through. It's pretty clear. Shauna didn't.
[40:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: She's like, oh.
[40:01] Dr. Jessi Gold: She was like, what the serious?
[40:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: Are you really seriously, guys?
[40:05] Dr. Jessi Gold: Yeah, this is what's going on. And turn around and I don't know.
[40:12] Portia Pendleton: And Ben's refusal. We talked about him really briefly before with his hallucinations.
[40:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: At first I thought that was a.
[40:20] Portia Pendleton: Flash forward and he made it home.
[40:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: And he was with his boyfriend and it was all beautiful. And then I was like, oh, no. The season ends with Natalie's death at Misty's hand. We didn't get into Misty and Elijah Wood, but I just loved that pairing and their little caligula dance when she was in the sensory deprivation tank. So just shout out to that. But then we also see Ben burn down the house and it's still winter. Right? Aren't you terrified for like, oh, no, what are they going to do now? You know? It's got to be worse than what we've already seen because they survive. So, yeah. I'm just very nervous about this show.
[41:01] Portia Pendleton: And time wise, I feel like someone has definitely figured it out on TikTok. I want to know when season two ends. How far are they into the 19 months?
[41:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: Are we only like a third of the way in?
[41:14] Portia Pendleton: Is this soon?
[41:15] Dr. Jessi Gold: There are things that in this very meta, writers shout out to writers on.
[41:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[41:21] Dr. Jessi Gold: But in this very meta, very awesome way of writing, the reason we don't know what's real or not is because they don't want us to, because the people don't. And the reason they have not given us any time clues except for seasons changing, is that's all they know, too?
[41:38] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, that's a great point, and I.
[41:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: Appreciate that about this show. The way they're telling the story and how the way they tell the story is so mirroring, I think their own traumatic experiences, like we're talking about with the hallucinations, the dissociating, the difficulty figuring out what's reality, what's not, I think that is exactly where they all are. But I'm, like, so scared of how are they going to survive without shelter now?
[42:05] Portia Pendleton: And the season we had mentioned even last time is going to be delayed.
[42:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[42:11] Portia Pendleton: Season three, because of the writer strike. And I think prior we said that last time. I don't know how we knew that if the writer strike was happening, but it's going to be a while, I think, until I feel like I need.
[42:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: A pause because it's so intense.
[42:26] Dr. Jessi Gold: Bonus episode again, I stay off the fan theories, but the showrunner confirmed it, so they have some bonus episode for the season that like Jason Ritterson that they will give release at some point, given that their showrunners very into the strike. I think she rightfully so.
[42:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: Rightfully so.
[42:49] Dr. Jessi Gold: Out of respect. I also think they only got, like, one writer's room for season three or something before this strike. So, yeah, I will get a break.
[42:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: But yeah, these shows and the writing is just so astounding the way that they get it, right.
[43:01] Portia Pendleton: Like, so much content to talk about. I mean, we feel what they feel, right? We feel anxious, we feel joy. And I think that's just like that's because there's these amazing, talented people working on all these shows, and that's why we're talking about them.
[43:13] Dr. Jessi Gold: Right. I really hope that young Shauna gets some awards. Yeah, that's one thing I've been thinking about. Another thing I've been thinking about is how hard it must be to do that role.
[43:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: We talk a lot about how I hope there's a therapist on set for the actors, for everyone who is part of this. Because even acting or pretending or assuming the role has got to be traumatic in its own way, right.
[43:44] Dr. Jessi Gold: I mean, it has, right? To be basically like you're living wherever he gets filmed in Canada. I think you're taking the content in and embodying it. And some of that content is like I mean, all of that content is horrible. Right. They're all disturbing traumatized and starving or whatever. But, like, the people who have these really horrific storylines and need, like, extreme emotions, like, Shauna goes through, like, she beats the **** out of audience. Her emotions are very regulated in a way that somebody's actively experiencing trauma and years later experiencing trauma, we experience and embodying that in such a visceral way as, like, I don't know, she's in her 20s. Right, right.
[44:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: Where can they pull that from?
[44:35] Dr. Jessi Gold: Sitting apart, because you have your own story, your family has their own story. Whatever. You could have never gotten help for it before, and you're just doing the role and you need help later, but you just see that stuff and you're like, this is hard enough to watch.
[44:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, definitely.
[44:53] Dr. Jessi Gold: How many takes do they have to do? I don't know. I think that's just really hard. I do hope that they realize that that's okay. Right.
[45:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: Well, Jesse, thank you so much for joining us once again as our Yellow Jackets correspondent in the field. We really appreciate it. Can you tell everyone where they can find you?
[45:16] Dr. Jessi Gold: Sure. At Dr. Jessebold on TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, or Dr. Jessebold.com works too.
[45:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: Awesome. And you can find us at Analyze Scripts on Instagram and Analyze Scripts podcasts on TikTok. And we will see you next Monday. Yeah, thank you. Bye.
[45:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: This podcast and its contents are a copyright of Analyzed Scripts, all rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited. Unless you want to share it with.
[45:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: Your friends and rate review and subscribe, that's fine.
[45:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
[46:39] Dr. Jessi Gold: Our channel.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we're analyzing the Oscar-winning film "Everything Everywhere All At Once." We discuss how the main plot line of jumping between different universes could be interpreted as representing themes of trauma, immigration, midlife crises, and parent-child relationships, particularly if one or both parties are suffering from a mental illness like depression. We hope you enjoy!
[00:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fiori, a psychiatrist.
[00:12] Portia Pendleton: And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker.
[00:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: And this is Analyzed Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows.
[00:23] Portia Pendleton: Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriend.
[00:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: There is so much misinformation out there, and it drives us nuts.
[00:32] Portia Pendleton: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like.
[00:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: With a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better.
[00:39] Portia Pendleton: So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn.
[00:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: And your DSM Five and enjoy. Hi.
[00:56] Portia Pendleton: So welcome back to another episode of Analyze Scripts, the podcast. Today we will be talking about the Oscar winning awards, you know, receiving all star cast again.
[01:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think we could call this a film.
[01:10] Portia Pendleton: Film. Yep. Iconic, interesting, curious.
[01:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: Can you guys guess what we're going to talk about?
[01:17] Portia Pendleton: Or it starts with an E. We're just, like, really teasing it everything, everywhere, all at once.
[01:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's also a lot of every word starts with a vowel. It's just interesting.
[01:27] Portia Pendleton: I actually used the title in therapy a couple of times, just talking about how an intrusive thought feels or someone experienced anxiety.
[01:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: And it being like, everywhere, everything, everywhere all at once. Oh, my God, porsche, that's a genius. You are a good therapist.
[01:47] Portia Pendleton: That's really fitting because that's how it feels.
[01:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: Especially I could imagine people with OCD with these intrusive thoughts and trying to resist the compulsive behavior. That's how it feels. Wow. Good for you.
[02:01] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. And so I don't know, what does that say about the film? Or how did they pick that title.
[02:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: And what do they mean by that? Is that like, a reference to all the dimensions? I will say I watched this movie one and a half times. I tried to watch it again, but I just couldn't get through it before we recorded this. And I'm like, is this what it feels like to do acid, this movie? Or weren't you just sort of, like, really like, whoa, what is going on? At least that's how I felt watching it the first time, just kind of confused.
[02:36] Portia Pendleton: I felt like it was confusing until I had the storyline with Joy and her mom to latch onto and mom trying to help or save her daughter. And then I was like, okay, now I'm in the movie. Now I get it.
[02:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: So do you think there really are all those dimensions or that's, like, some say there are? Oh, you mean like some real people say they are? Oh, tell me about that.
[03:04] Portia Pendleton: I don't know. I just think that a lot of people maybe it's even a little bit similar to spirituality, like, helping you view the world from a different perspective that's less pressurized. Or there's all these different versions of you. There's all these different universes. What could be happening? It's not that serious.
[03:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, wow.
[03:24] Portia Pendleton: I think it's just like a way of thinking about yourself. And some of my clients, when they're experiencing intense emotions or something that is irrational but feels really hard, it's like, okay, and we're just floating on a rock. Let's kind of shift the perspective a little bit, if you can, not to diminish your problems and feelings. But sometimes I think it's helpful to think of things like that. Other times, for me, I think it's overwhelming and a little scary.
[03:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, I feel, like, really anxious about that idea. That's really fascinating.
[03:57] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[03:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think we were trying to think about how to structure this episode, and we were struggling, which I think also just reflects the film.
[04:06] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[04:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: That it's so all over the place. You really can't predict what's going to happen next. She pushes those little headphones, and you're in the next place, and you're jumping from here. You got to be a gymnast to go here. And it's just, like, all over the place. But I think it's really fascinating, and I would like to watch it multiple more times, because I bet it's the kind of film where the more you watch it, I bet you get something different out of it every time. And I think from a mental health perspective, there's so many different lenses that you could analyze it through, which is just really interesting to me.
[04:43] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I mean, I think looking at it just from the storyline, I was laughing about just, like, the IRS looking so accurate. It's just so bland.
[04:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: It just makes such, like, a headache.
[04:55] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[04:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think we can all relate to taxes. And Jamie Lee Curtis, as Deirdre did such a good job in her costumes. And the second time I watched it, I noticed she has all of her little IRS awards lined up on her desk, and they all look very phallic.
[05:11] Portia Pendleton: Yes.
[05:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I'm just like, that makes sense because she's just, like, ******** people over left and right. It was just like those little details. And then when she eats the donut or she eats something, and it's really messy and all over the place, and it's just I don't know, it's just really interesting.
[05:30] Portia Pendleton: And it's like she's the villain, but she's also the villain in their tax story. So it's like, is this even real? Is this all just a dream that Evelyn's having? Because Deirdre is the bad person and Joy is struggling. Joy is detached, and it's like, again, another lens to look at it through. Was this a dream? Is this a trauma response?
[05:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: Is she disassociating? Did she take drugs? Is she having a midlife crisis? Yeah, you're right. Like, Deirdre is the clear villain, but then also, it's like Joy becomes the villain, and I think probably a lot of mothers feels that toward their teenage daughters, perhaps, or that you really get the sense, like they are just at odds, like they are just butting heads.
[06:20] Portia Pendleton: And Evelyn, I think you get like they really feel disconnected. Evelyn's having a hard time understanding Joy or Jobu, and vice versa, like the depression, the drive, the relationship that Joy has with her girlfriend. And I think it's interesting. So, again, there's another storyline.
[06:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: Is this just all about the mother struggles relationship? And also there's a clear cultural dynamic. And so I also thought, is this a commentary on immigration?
[06:54] Portia Pendleton: Right?
[06:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: Because we see they're, like, trying to have this big celebration for Chinese New Year, I think, in their Laundromat. And you see through flashbacks how Raymond kind of convinced her to come to America with him. And then her parents, it sounds like, disowned her. And I don't think they would, like, answer the phone and all this stuff. And then somehow now her dad, I think his name is Gon Gong, is that right? Is visiting or living with them in his older age. It's not really clear. And you just see her so flustered trying to please him. Like, he likes his rice this way, don't overcook it. And, oh, no, now he's awake and he's going to criticize this. Raymond, stop with the googly eyes on the laundry. You just get the sense that she has felt so criticized for making her choices. And then she in turn is very critical of Joy.
[07:44] Portia Pendleton: Yes.
[07:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. And even like, in that early scene when Joy and the girlfriend are, like, leaving the laundromat and her mom, Evelyn, comes up to her and is like, you need to watch. What do you read? You're getting too fat. You're just like oh. Ouch. Yeah, ouch. And like, why did she say that?
[08:05] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, and I think she, like, afterwards didn't like that.
[08:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: She said that, right? Yeah. And I think, like, at least what I interpreted from the film is like, at the beginning, you really see those struggles between Joy and Evelyn, and you see how Joy is really struggling to introduce her girlfriend to the grandfather and their native language. And Evelyn steps in and introduces the girlfriend as a friend. And that's, like, again, really damaging to Joy. But then it feels like by the end, evelyn has come to this place of better understanding and more acceptance. And in that way, I was like, this could also be a commentary on intergenerational trauma or even just like the way you communicate in your family and how you can shift that for the next generation if you're willing to be open and understand where your kids are coming from and work on it.
[09:00] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I mean, the theme through it a lot was like, nothing matters. And that's a common feeling when you are experiencing depression.
[09:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: And maybe for teenagers.
[09:12] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, no, absolutely. And so one of the lines in the movie is, if nothing matters, then the pain and guilt you feel goes away when they're like universe hopping. Some of the other things that they say, you're so capable of everything because you're so bad at everything. What else? You're not unlovable. There is always something to love. Joyce says I'm useless and alone. Evelyn we're all useless and alone. There's just a lot of again, that perspective taking.
[09:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: And it's being like we all feel this way times. I think she's out of high school. She's I would say, like, early 20s.
[09:54] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, maybe.
[09:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: But still in that early adulthood phase, which can be so hard and scary and isolating. Especially if you feel so different from your parents or from your family of origin, which I think a lot of second generation Americans might feel. Right. Like if your parents are trying to assimilate into American culture, even, like, the language in the house or with Joy having to come to the IRS to translate and all this stuff, I feel like I do hear this from a lot of my patients whose parents immigrated but who've been in America since birth, that there is this tension. And of course there is.
[10:37] Portia Pendleton: And there's also an inappropriate parentification, almost.
[10:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: Of the child because you can navigate the culture exactly, language in a different way. And even, like, in the clothing they chose for the characters and stuff like that. Joy, before she's, like, the evil person and all dressed up, looks more like, quote, unquote American in her jeans and stuff like that.
[11:09] Portia Pendleton: How long would you say the first time you watched it? Did it take you to kind of get in and connect with any storyline?
[11:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: I feel like I had this reverse thing where I felt connected and in it more in the beginning. And then as we kept jumping from universe to universe in the middle, I was really confused and having a hard time following it. And then near the end, like, when Evelyn and Joy are really coming back together, I was like, okay, now I'm back. But it was hard for me to follow, I think, just because it's such a different movie than I'm used to watching. And it's cool. It's just different. Really unique.
[11:47] Portia Pendleton: Which, I mean, I think also speaks to why they won. I mean, what a concept. How do you come up with that? And I'm curious about the writers. Are we close or are we way off?
[11:59] Dr. Katrina Furey: What was the message they were trying to send? Yeah, I don't know. And I loved the actor who played Raymond Gosh. Now, of course, from The Goonies and from Indiana Jones. And then, I guess, at the Oscars. Harrison Ford gave him his Oscar, which is like, what a full circle moment.
[12:19] Portia Pendleton: So beautiful.
[12:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: Really cool. And, yeah, he was just really great in his role, too. Yeah, he did a great job.
[12:32] Portia Pendleton: So one of the moments that I actually cried at was when they were rocks. Do you remember that?
[12:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes. And how they kind of held hands as rocks.
[12:42] Portia Pendleton: Yes. And they kind of, like, rolled over to each other. Yeah.
[12:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I think Joy was like, mom, you don't have to be so close. Am I remembering that right?
[12:49] Portia Pendleton: The commentary between the two of them while they were rocks was, like, so beautiful. And I'm wondering if it was because there was nothing, right. It was devoid. So it was a universe where there was no light, there was no culture. Yeah. There was no barrier, no pain, just literally like, you're rocks, you're a rock. And is that why they were able to have the conversation that they were.
[13:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: Have they just connect?
[13:14] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, because there was just nothing in the way. There were no barriers. There were no expectations. It was just so beautiful. And then I was like, I can't believe I'm crying at rocks, but that's how powerful the writing or the context or what kind of put that up to that moment for me. I was laughing after.
[13:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: No, I agree. I had forgotten about that till you brought it up. But I did really love that moment, too. And then it's like, did all of that or any of that actually happen? Or was that like a journey Evelyn was going through in her mind, in a way, to try to connect with Joy? And was there something about Evelyn's dad being back in her life that sort of rocked Evelyn and made her rocked Evelyn? We were just talking about rocks and made her realize, like, it's now or never, like, I have to figure out how to connect with my daughter. I'm going to lose her, like, the way I lost my dad or, I don't know. Portia, what do you think? Do you think they really were in these universes, or is it a metaphor?
[14:21] Portia Pendleton: I think it's got to be a metaphor just because some of it's so unbelievable and in a good way. Like when they have the hot dogs for fingers in one of the universes, in that universe, Evelyn and Didro together. Yeah, like romantically. And then they're playing out all these other interesting things that Evelyn does get a little caught up in someone in some ways. Like, one, she's this actress. Another one, she's an opera singer. Another one she I don't know, had stayed with her family. And then in another way, Waymond is like, rich, and they are together and then they're not. Or then they meet and they used to be friends, and she gets stuck a little bit and then it says Waymond.
[15:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: No, I think that's right. I mispronounced.
[15:08] Portia Pendleton: Okay. Because I was like, I'm not just having a hard time saying my r yeah. So he is like, don't get stuck here. He's like, snapping her out of it, like trying to get her to jump again. I thought how you jump was interesting. It's like you needed to get it.
[15:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: Was either, like, a little bit of.
[15:23] Portia Pendleton: Pain and almost like a body shock. One time it was a sneeze paper cut. That's what happened. Or that's what helps you jump universes.
[15:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: But also it's like, those sort of experiences or emotions that come from the experience of, like, a sneeze, a paper cut, like she was saying, you can't intentionally correct feel. So somehow you have to be present with the feeling that comes from this natural, random thing. Fascinating. And then there was the time where she had to say to Deirdre, I love you, but really mean it. And so it was really tied into deep, authentic emotions, being able to jump from universe to universe, which maybe she.
[16:03] Portia Pendleton: Hasn'T been able to feel.
[16:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's where I kept seeing this as more of, like, trauma or even just thinking about Evelyn. She's probably what, her 40s or 50s, been married now. Her daughter got her through school. Now she's a young adult. They're struggling to connect. I was like, I feel like this is her kind of being like, this is my life, like, taxes and this laundromat, and this is it. And then these universes as being, like, alternative realities, like, well, what if I'd made this choice? I could have been here. What if I'd done that? I could have been here. And she's just sort of, like, so in her head about it. And I think that's when Wayman is like, I can't connect with you unless it's, like, a crisis. And so he has these divorce papers. I thought it was fascinating when the divorce paper but on the other side of it, at the beginning, was, like, the directions for how to jump from universe to universe. And when she was like, You've seen this before? Yeah, when he's just like, yes. It's normal, I think, to think about stuff like that as you are at different stages of your life, probably when you've been in a committed relationship for so long, I think it's pretty normal to have points where you're like and.
[17:20] Portia Pendleton: When things just get really predictable. This is what I do every single day, and there's nothing that deviates from it besides going to the IRS, which is a soul sucking I didn't even.
[17:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: Know you could actually go. Right.
[17:37] Portia Pendleton: Can you? I know there's buildings where people work.
[17:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: But I was like, God, how scary to go do your taxes like that in person. That just sounds so scary to me. When they had to bring her dad and then Waymond, though, when they're walking and he sees an older couple who clearly is still in love, and you can just really feel that yearning in him that I think he does love her, and he's kind of like, why are you so disconnected? And maybe Evelyn's depressed.
[18:11] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, because I think Waymond is so silly and lively eyes. That's how he keeps it lively. And I think at some point, I would guess that Evelyn was matching him or thought was commenting on his silliness or enjoying it. And it's like she's so kind of, like, deadpanned flat, like, nonreactive not, like, interacting with him or being like, oh, that's funny. It's like, stop doing that. That's annoying.
[18:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: But also, she's the one doing the taxes, so you're like, is he the silly, fun one? But then he doesn't pick up the responsibility side of things on her, and so maybe she is feeling resentful or frustrated with him. Right. Maybe she is sick of the googly eyes because they're in debt, but then it's like they're in debt because she was, like, putting karaoke machines and stuff, like, on the business. Yeah.
[19:05] Portia Pendleton: All right, portia.
[19:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: Well, you know, we don't have, like, sponsors or or anything like that yet, but maybe someday we will. And if we did, this is where they would go. So what kind of sponsor would you like to see?
[19:18] Portia Pendleton: I think really anything that is, like, I want to use, like, spindrift, sparkling water.
[19:25] Dr. Katrina Furey: I would love for that to sponsor us.
[19:28] Portia Pendleton: You love that you have them all the time. All the time. So what else would I like? I feel like I don't wear a lot of makeup daily, but I am like a makeup. Get ready with me, girly. I love watching that stuff. So any makeup brand want to send me something? Even though you can't see us, that maybe is problematic.
[19:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: What else? Again, like, on the delusions of all grandiose delusions on our vision board is an airline with the lay flat seat. I really want to take a flight and lay down.
[19:57] Portia Pendleton: I mean, if you're going to go big, maybe you should just do Emirates.
[20:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: And you don't actually have to take me anywhere. We'll just lay down, go up in the air, circle around a couple times, and we can come down. But that's my ultimate sponsor dream. So this is where you'd hear a commercial. If we had them so far, we don't, but keep subscribing if you don't.
[20:26] Portia Pendleton: So then we have this, again, like, metaphor of the everything bagel.
[20:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
[20:34] Portia Pendleton: And so Jobu is kind of like it seems almost jobu, the evil joy. Yeah.
[20:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: Okay.
[20:42] Portia Pendleton: She has this, like, almost what I would call it palace. Castle. Whatever. You see it. But this bagel is, like, in this room that's, like, special, and it's, like, behind this curtain, and it's raised, and.
[20:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: It'S like the wizard of Oz.
[20:58] Portia Pendleton: Again, it's trying to suck Jobu in, or I'm thinking of it this way, depression. It has already taken joy, and now it's Jobu, because Jobu looked at it. Right. And she's trying to get Evelyn to and if you look at it, you go in, it changes everything, sucks everything it sucks everything out of you. Jobu can now be in every single she sees right. Every single dimension at once, which is really overwhelming and problematic, but she got too close to the fire, so she's kind of trying to suck her mom into it. I don't think she maybe even sees that. That's her mom. That's confusing. Evelyn's trying to get her back out of it to pull her out or she's like, I'm going to go in there with you. Which again, I mean, it's just like that whole narrative is really, I thought, beautiful.
[21:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: Gosh. It really speaks to, I think, being the parent of a child with serious mental illness.
[22:02] Portia Pendleton: Right, yeah.
[22:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like how desperately you want to pull them out or be in it with them so they're not alone. Try to save them and the lengths.
[22:10] Portia Pendleton: That you'll go jumping universes to try.
[22:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: To get into that dimension, try to connect with them.
[22:15] Portia Pendleton: So they're holding on to Jobu at the end where she's kind of, I think, going to throw herself into the bagel and Evelyn is saying to her, like, no matter what, I want to be here with you, I always want to be here with you. Which sounds like probably not what Joy feels. Jobu says something like you could be anything anywhere. We only get a few specks of time where it makes sense and then I'll cherish this. Again, I think it's like if you are depressed, you kind of have this perception or your reality is that everything's bad and you might get a few moments here and there that are okay and is that good enough? So the bagel was interesting and again.
[23:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: How did you come up with that and everything? Again, like that word everything, which is like in the title. And they just keep alluding to that and how I think when people are feeling really severely depressed, I think there does have to be almost like, I want to say like a healthy amount of cognitive dissonance to just get through life. Right. Because life is hard.
[23:25] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[23:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think we all felt that and maybe continue to feel that coming out of the pandemic in those days where you're just really trying to survive and you don't know how this is going to end, if this will end, if we're all just going to wear masks forever. It's almost protective to have a healthy amount of cognitive dissonance or be able to hold on to optimism. And I feel like when you're really severely depressed, you lose that and in some ways you're more in touch with the harshness of reality but in a way that really keeps you down. And that kind of reminds me of Joy, like being in the everything bagel and seeing all the universes and almost like having all the answers. But it's overwhelming and depressing.
[24:06] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I agree. I've talked about from patients bringing it up, nihilism. Yeah, right. So it's like kind of the way of thinking that nothing really matters, we're.
[24:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: Really small and I think point.
[24:21] Portia Pendleton: Right, exactly. And how fitting is that with depressive thoughts? And I think it almost goes hand in hand and it's a little bit of like chicken or the egg. What came first. It's like is your overthinking and too much self awareness leading you down this path where you're just so affected by things and constantly overthinking and thinking of all the worsts and feeling it so deeply versus the cognitive little bit of like and we're also on a rock that's moving X amount of speed. And it doesn't really matter. You need to have a either way.
[24:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. Because I think you're totally right. If you are viewing the world as like, none of this matters, nothing matters, what's the point? If you are sort of experiencing that through a depressive lens, then you're really nihilistic and suicidal or not getting out of bed or just really like I'm imagining, like, slow lethargic, really detached. On the flip side, if you had the same thoughts but you were feeling manic, you might be impulsive and thrilled.
[25:32] Portia Pendleton: Nothing matters. I'm charging hundreds of thousands of dollars. Exactly.
[25:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: I'm going to go down this crazy vacation. So it's just interesting sort of which flavor which view you have, right?
[25:42] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[25:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: And interestingly now that we are saying that this movie kind of targets both, right? It does very much feel like a commentary on depression and Joy and maybe even Evelyn. But then it's portrayed in such a colorful, exuberant all over the place way that it's an interesting I think that's a really interesting juxtaposition.
[26:09] Portia Pendleton: And just thinking of Joy's age, she's at a transition time. I think a lot of young people can be situationally environmentally transitionally, depressed, 100%, or just starting to think of their whole life ahead of them and how's it going to be. I think a lot of teens throughout COVID and also just like with things being so expensive, it's just a little student loans.
[26:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: There's no jobs available. It's heavy inflation, and you feel stuck.
[26:41] Portia Pendleton: And I think that leads to a lot of us thinking about these things of what does it really matter? Or I'm never going to be able to do this, never going to be.
[26:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: Able for it to move out anyway. Yeah, but then also Evelyn might be feeling that too, at that point of transition in her life, or maybe even doing like a life review and kind of reflecting or seeing her father aging and wondering about the decisions she made. It's like they're both going through it in their own way. And it's just so hard for them to connect until these universes and all of this sort of like, mystical, magical stuff comes up and now they can finally understand each other. So interesting. And then it's just like, I don't have personal experience here, but I wonder is that kind of emotionally what it feels like if your parents have immigrated and so they're in this new place, but for you, this is what you know. Right. Is that kind of what it feels like, that you guys are in these different universes, different worlds. It's hard to connect and you can't quite reach each other. I don't know.
[27:50] Portia Pendleton: It brings up a lot just the movie. And again, I think the cast is so interesting. Jamie lee Curtis. It feels like random, but it's so perfect. Yeah, it couldn't have been cast better. I'm just laughing about I feel like I need to watch it again in like, a year. Yeah.
[28:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: I feel like every couple maybe just like, check in with yourself. Maybe it will give you some insight as to the state of your mental health. Like, how are you feeling as you watch it?
[28:20] Portia Pendleton: It made me think a little bit of manifestation in the little more way that I don't really subscribe to. I think I like talking about manifestation of, like, what you do leads to where you end up. So, like, if I'm manifesting this podcast taking off, I am going to talk about it with people. I believe in it. I'm going to hand our cards out. I'm going to continue going to force TikTok.
[28:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: TikTok. Exactly.
[28:46] Portia Pendleton: And if I don't believe in, I'm not going to do those things, then I'm not going to get anywhere. So that's my kind of version of manifestation.
[28:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: But there are especially, like, celebrities for.
[28:55] Portia Pendleton: A lot of people, it's a little bit more of speaking it into the universe. The universe then kind of makes it.
[29:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: Happen, really feeling it with your vision.
[29:05] Portia Pendleton: Board.
[29:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: That kind of manifestation and the.
[29:11] Portia Pendleton: Layer, then that becomes a little mystical. So that just made me think of this and the different dimensions and what do people think really exists out there? And are there different versions of ourselves? I think it also brings up the question of, like, every day we make countless choices that lead us to where we currently are.
[29:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: And what if you did this thing different?
[29:36] Portia Pendleton: I'm trying to think of something super crazy right now. I could just lean to my right and break this window, but okay, that would lead to a series of events, but I'm probably not going to do that. That might hurt, et cetera. I have some clients today that I need to see. But it's like we could do anything anytime, and yet we make these decisions, hopefully, that are positively getting us to our goals and what we want out of life and that are associated with our value systems, et cetera. But it's that interesting way of thinking kind of too big sometimes. And one of my supervisors just gave me kind of a helpful way of thinking about people's symptoms. Sometimes we are too far out with our thinking. So it's like thinking of a bicycle wheel and the spokes. So sometimes we have, like, a spoke. Those are way up there. The straight things that kind of go around.
[30:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: Okay, got it.
[30:33] Portia Pendleton: So sometimes we're thinking way too out there and we need to kind of be brought back down with, like, mindfulness, where am I? What are my goals? What am I doing? Other times, we're way too small, so we're thinking way too closely about things. We're overthinking things. We need to kind of take a couple of. Steps back, look at bigger picture, challenge things like, is this really that bad, et cetera. So I think this movie is a lot of the times for people who are like, what? The focus is way up high, and we need to kind of be brought back safely so we can go on our life. I don't know.
[31:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: That is really interesting.
[31:07] Portia Pendleton: It brings up a lot of theories, and I think it'd be interesting if we had someone here who was more into dimensional stuff, because I'm just, like.
[31:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: Not I didn't know those people were out there. Maybe they could DM us or send us an email. We could do, like, a follow up.
[31:27] Portia Pendleton: That's fascinating.
[31:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. And I'd love to know, is there any science behind it? Is there physics about different universes or.
[31:36] Portia Pendleton: The black holes and all of that stuff?
[31:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: The Bermuda Triangle?
[31:44] Portia Pendleton: Are there windows or points in our life where we some people talk about this. Like, they they're able to kind of, like, see themselves. Or, like, some people talk about deja vu. Like, is this you crossing over with another dimension? It's fascinating to think about different fun theories.
[32:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: Wow, that is fascinating and kind of scary for my neurotic brain.
[32:05] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. So I think it feels if I'm diagnosing you not with a disorder. But I would say we both probably run too short with our spokes where we're overthinking, things are a little bit more anxious related. Well, same. I don't think you have that problem where I need to bring you back in.
[32:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, no, you need to go out.
[32:31] Portia Pendleton: A little bit more.
[32:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: I need to open my mind a little bit, like, be a little more open to the deja vu. But even thinking about that does make me nervous. Like, I really like routine. So the thought of, like, other Katrina's out there doing this and that and this and that is, like, whoa, I need a minute to think about that.
[32:54] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, well, take the year and then.
[32:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: Rewatch the film maybe, too. Just, like, with our own personality makeups. Maybe that's why, for me, I was so confused by this movie and kind of a little nervous while watching because I didn't know what to expect. And then, like you said, the hot dog fingers, and then this is happening, and then this. And I was just like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I can't get my bearings. What is the plot? What am I supposed to take from this? Are we all going to be okay at the end? What is going on here?
[33:25] Portia Pendleton: Which is probably why, again, this one, because it's so unique and makes you have all these questions, and I think it's fresh. This is a fresh film. This is a unique idea, and I.
[33:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: Love it, but can you imagine who pitched this to whatever film giant made it? Can you imagine? And I wonder, did they just pitch it or did they try to, like, this is what I would have done.
[33:55] Portia Pendleton: Portia yeah.
[33:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: I would have been really sneaky and maybe a little bizarre and tried to create these alternate universes around whoever I'm going to be pitching and kind of freak them out a little bit. And then they would realize that was all part of my game plan to show them what this might feel like. Does that make sense? Yeah, that's what I would have done.
[34:14] Portia Pendleton: Well, maybe you could. There's still time. So it was directed by written and directed by Daniel Quan and Daniel Shinert, known as the Daniels.
[34:25] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, the Daniels.
[34:26] Portia Pendleton: So they wrote it and produced it.
[34:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: Interesting, too, that they both have the same name.
[34:31] Portia Pendleton: Oh, it's an independent studio. A 24. That did it.
[34:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, they also did the whale.
[34:36] Portia Pendleton: I knew I recognized it. Yeah.
[34:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: Wow.
[34:38] Portia Pendleton: They had a fantastic dominee. Yeah.
[34:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: I was just thinking, too, though, as we were talking about the emotions that get stirred up by this film. Similarly, The Whale, how it stirs up such intense, big emotions. Wow. Good for them. If they want to come on the podcast, feel free. We would even send you, like, your own microphone, but you probably have one.
[35:00] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, they probably do. We'll send you a gift bag of therapy coping skills.
[35:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, you might need it.
[35:08] Portia Pendleton: They might need to come down a little bit, but maybe that in the right context, if you have the ability, the privilege, et cetera. People who are way out there can stay. But a lot of the times, sometimes it's not safe or it's not, unfortunately productive to survive in this culture. So I think that's, again, oh, man.
[35:31] Dr. Katrina Furey: I really want to read about them. I wonder if they have biographies or maybe at least a Wikipedia page that I can look at. Well, so as we wrap up, it's also making me think that next time we will be talking with Dr. Jesse Gold about Yellow Jacket season two. And I think we're going to talk a lot about lottie and cults. And that's another example of someone way out there. And again, in some ways, like when you were in the wilderness, that was beneficial to your survival. But now back not in the wilderness. She has sort of found a way to kind of make it work, until it doesn't. It's just interesting how these themes are connecting across our episodes. Cool.
[36:11] Portia Pendleton: We'll definitely catch us. We have a fun summer ahead of awesome episodes. White Lotus, Euphoria, some movies. Barbie, we're going to oh, yeah. When it comes.
[36:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: We might even do, like, an Instagram live at the movies for Barbie. Tell us what you'd think about that. Yeah, I don't know how to do TikTok live. Can you go live on that? Wow. That's why I watched all the concerts. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry, Portia.
[36:36] Portia Pendleton: I'm still grieving.
[36:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: Maybe in another universe you were there.
[36:39] Portia Pendleton: I think in most universes I was there, except for this one I'm going to take solace in that.
[36:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
[36:46] Portia Pendleton: This is the only universe that I wasn't there. Great.
[36:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: Well, don't think about it too much. Don't overthink. No, you're going to find yourself sucked into that everything bagel.
[36:56] Portia Pendleton: And it was easy to do that weekend that she was close, but then now I have kind of reined myself back in closer to the bicycle wheel and I'm good.
[37:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, good for you. That's some strength right there in action.
[37:11] Portia Pendleton: Well, don't forget to rate, review and subscribe, follow us on Instagram at analyze scripts and on TikTok at analyze scripts podcast, and we'll see you next time.
[37:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: We'll see you next Monday.
[37:21] Portia Pendleton: Bye.
[37:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: This podcast and its contents are a copyright of analyzed scripts. All rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited, unless you want to share.
[37:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: It with your friends and rate, review and subscribe. That's fine.
[37:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings, or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time you sand.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we analyze the final season of "Succession" with a focus on the (lack of) psychological development of the adult siblings (initially we wrote "children" - Freudian slip!). We also discuss the masterful portrayals of grief related to Logan's death, as well as the expert depiction of ecalating attachment issues and maladaptive externalizing behaviors in the face of such significant loss. We pay homage to some of our favorite supporting characters, including Greg, Caroline, and Willa, and the amazing music. We hope you enjoy!
[00:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fury, a psychiatrist.
[00:12] Portia Pendleton: And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker.
[00:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows.
[00:23] Portia Pendleton: Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriend.
[00:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: There is so much misinformation out there, and it drives us nuts.
[00:31] Portia Pendleton: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like.
[00:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: With a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better.
[00:39] Portia Pendleton: So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn.
[00:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: And your DSM Five and enjoy. Gosh, Portia. I don't know about you, but I'm really going to miss this song.
[01:26] Portia Pendleton: I know.
[01:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: I really want to make it my ringtone for When You Call me. But then, like, what will other people.
[01:33] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, they'll be like, who's calling you sociopath?
[01:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know, but it's such a good.
[01:39] Portia Pendleton: Song, a raging narcissist.
[01:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I don't know if you noticed, but somewhere, like, halfway through season four, when Kendall's, like, amping himself up to go into the office, the intro song was a little different. It had more of, like, a rap undertone. And I just thought that was so fascinating. I just think the music in this show is so good. And even, like, near the end with the Meal Fit for the King, they're sort of playing it, but in a more playful, childish way. It's just so good, and I'm really going to miss the song.
[02:09] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, you hear it, like, softer, more sad, more exciting throughout, especially season four. I don't recall hearing it differently prior.
[02:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: To and the other season, it's just so, so good. But we have a lot to talk about with season four. I don't even know exactly how to get started because so much happened.
[02:28] Portia Pendleton: I know. Yeah. At the end of season three, right. We talked about Tom and kind of the whoa. Like wolf and sheep's.
[02:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: Well, for you, not for me. I knew it. I knew it.
[02:40] Portia Pendleton: Tom just still feels like I don't even know. Like, I'm still not mad by him. I don't know why.
[02:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think because he's charismatic. Like a true sociopath would be.
[02:51] Portia Pendleton: He could be, like, a cult leader.
[02:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I'd be like I'd be, like, 100%. He reminds me of Tom Sandoval in the whole Vanderpump Rules scandal. Another Tom. Oh, my God. You're right. Never name your child Tom. If there's anything we can warn you against from this podcast, do not name them Tom. That's so funny. But yeah, I think he's such a snake. He is so slimy. He is so narcissistic. However, he's also charming, and he's definitely, like, more of a covert flavor where you might not pick it up as much as, like, Kendall, like, throwing himself a big party, just being ridiculous l to the OG. Stuff like that is way more obvious. But I think that's what makes Tom so freaking dangerous. And the fact that he can really just plow over anyone to get what he wants at the end of the.
[03:46] Portia Pendleton: Day, and why he's successful 100%, and why the kids, which we will continue to call them, are not the children.
[03:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: The adult, fully grown, forty s. Thirty.
[03:58] Portia Pendleton: S, like fully adults.
[04:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: But they are children. The kids ultimately aren't successful. It's so funny, right? Because I feel like everyone in the world has been waiting for the season finale of succession to see who finally gets waste arm Royko, who gets it, and then it's Tom. And of course it is, right?
[04:19] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[04:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: But we all thought one of these.
[04:21] Portia Pendleton: Kids would finally or no one at all, right?
[04:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: That all of them. It would just be Matson or something like that. But of course it's Tom. And it's so, I think, scary because I bet this is how it really works in politics and in the world. I bet people who are like the figurehead of power probably have these underlings that report to them and do their dirty work, right?
[04:51] Portia Pendleton: Like Hugo.
[04:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. Hugo carl. Frank. Right. We saw them all kind of unravel a little bit with the threat of losing their job or with Matson taking over, like, again, trying to play the field, to hold on to their own power. But then we really see it with Tom and Matson and, like, that dinner conversation they had.
[05:12] Portia Pendleton: And it seemed so, like, crazy to me when Tom was talking to Carl Frank and Jerry in the pantry, right, at the small funeral, after part, after party party, after reception at Logan's residence, where Tom's like, well, I'd like to throw my hat in. And I'm like, yeah, whatever, you sound crazy.
[05:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: And then there you go.
[05:39] Portia Pendleton: And they're all bowing down to him in the last but he can do that. I was thinking if Kendall got it, I think they all know that Kendall.
[05:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: Is a little tapped.
[05:50] Portia Pendleton: Like, he's unwell, he's unstable and impulsive.
[05:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: Risky, and he's not smart. What business savvy does he have to be in charge? Like, none. Right. Again. And even, like, earlier on, wondering with Kendall's name underlined or crossed out? Underlined or crossed out.
[06:09] Portia Pendleton: I saw some people got, like, tattoos of that. Yes.
[06:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: What?
[06:13] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I saw it online. Like, couple people got, like, tattoos of because I didn't know what the line because I was like, oh, the line's off.
[06:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. And I was like, that's a bad tattoo.
[06:22] Portia Pendleton: But it was not.
[06:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: It was a perfect tattoo, I guess. Wow.
[06:26] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[06:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: Gosh. Wow.
[06:27] Portia Pendleton: Getting tattooed committed, really session.
[06:31] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's also, I think, what just fascinates me about the writing of this show, because they get it so right. I think we've talked about some other shows like you, where they get it really good, really right. They can really nail down these dynamics. But this show is, like, in a different stratosphere of accuracy, and not just with the dialogue, but the body language, the interactions. Every time those kids are around their mom, it's just perfectly acted and written, and it's like, I feel so bad for whoever on this team has a mother like this, because that's the only way, you know, I think, honestly, how to get it so spot on, and it just translates so well. You just feel it through your screen. And I think that's why we end up rooting for these kids, even though they're also awful. Yeah, it's wild to me, you're on.
[07:23] Portia Pendleton: This ride where it's just like, I don't know, the highs and the lows. You hate, and then I'm rooting and then I hate, and then I'm rooting for them over and over and over.
[07:31] Dr. Katrina Furey: And over and over. And also, the show is so intense and hilarious. It's so good with the wasabi in the eye on election night, and then.
[07:41] Portia Pendleton: The lemon salts are burning.
[07:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: And was this the season where Tom and Greg were the disgusting brothers? Is that starting at the end of season three?
[07:52] Portia Pendleton: I don't remember.
[07:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: But it's just so good.
[07:56] Portia Pendleton: It is.
[07:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's just so good. And I think, again, we end succession, and I feel like every single character is still exactly who they were at the beginning of season one. There's been no psychological growth, personal growth. If anything, they're all like a more externalized, ickier version of themselves, all the way down to, like, Jerry, Frank, Carl. I feel like the only ones who grew a little is, like, Jess, the assistant who quit, rava, who left, and maybe the girl with the bangs who was like, Logan's girlfriend.
[08:35] Portia Pendleton: Carrie.
[08:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: Carrie, yeah.
[08:36] Portia Pendleton: Maybe she's doing well. Maybe she's in therapy and, like, doing some work.
[08:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. I could see that she was the like, what? I know we're jumping around a lot, but at Logan's funeral with the four women in the front, like, what did you think of?
[08:49] Portia Pendleton: I thought that was so unexpected and just, like, such a fabulous scene. I love that. Obviously, Marcia was so cruel to Carrie, and you get it. And then Caroline being like, this was.
[09:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: My Carrie, and then they all kind of bond over it, and they're sitting in the front row altogether again. All those spectators can see all of those women together, and they can figure out what's going on. But then Marsh just like, lucy's not going to snort. Right. And they can all bond over it. It was just, like, so icky, but perfect and so humanizing and just like, wow, really interesting that they could all bond in that way. Yeah.
[09:34] Portia Pendleton: So I think we should start with Kendall.
[09:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: Okay.
[09:37] Portia Pendleton: He and the other two siblings are kind of working together post betrayal with Tom with their $3 billion and just trying to come up with all these companies and these ideas. The 100.
[09:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my God, what a lame idea.
[09:52] Portia Pendleton: It was kind of comical to me.
[09:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: Because I was just like, just take.
[09:57] Portia Pendleton: The money and go live on board, start a little business. Why do you guys have to work together?
[10:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: Don't just go live your life. Right?
[10:08] Portia Pendleton: And they still want so desperately to get back at their dad at this point. They're going to somehow kind of come in the back door and make the offer. They're working with that family to buy that other news station, and they're kind of going back and forth about it. Kendall seems to be trying to sabotage that deal. So Kendall's already starting to backstab Sharon and Shiv so they can't work together. And it's like, really?
[10:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: Again, it's like they always get in their own way. Yeah, right. But again, that is exactly what happens with people with these personality traits. Like no, Kendall is a raging narcissist. He can't be on a team of three, even if it's his siblings, even if it's in his best interest, even if that's what will lead to further generational for his children. He cannot he has to be number one. He is the eldest boy, after all, right? That is who he is through and through. So even here again, and it's notable that the only time the three siblings are like the Three Musketeers is when.
[11:06] Portia Pendleton: They are totally.
[11:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: Ousted by their dad or totally exiled on the outside. That's the only time.
[11:14] Portia Pendleton: And even with that, I would say they're only really on the same page when it's an intense emotion that they can all share. Right, so it's like betrayal. They are all betrayed by their dad, who sold is selling their company and their mom, and then they are all together in grief when dad dies.
[11:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's such a good point, Portia.
[11:36] Portia Pendleton: But it's like these little moments they're all together for when at the end, Shiv finds out that Matson is betraying her. And then they are like, no, we're going to vote. We're going to take it back. We're team Kendall. They're all together in that moment, but it's like such short lived. And then one of them can't do that, can't tolerate for whatever reason, but it's like something always happens. They can never be on the same page, actually.
[11:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right, Portia? And what a good observation that they can only align when they're each feeling the exact same emotion almost in the exact same way. But once sort of like that wave of an emotion starts to crash down or subside, and maybe other emotions start to bubble up or it becomes less black or white, and they're not totally seeing it and feeling it the exact same way, that now they can't be aligned, and it's very extreme. That's a really good point because it's.
[12:31] Portia Pendleton: Like someone always sabotages it for whatever reason. And it's just like you guys can't ever just get it together. You can't ever get it. They can never either be empathetic towards the other one and do something without personal gain involved, which we know why, but there's no empathy.
[12:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: No, it's so extreme. They are all such extreme. They have such extreme flavors of narcissism that you're right. They really can't like, Roman and Shiv cannot tolerate Kendall being the leader. They've never been able to from the beginning. That has been their downfall. You got to just pick one, right? And they just can't it has to be even like, when they were at the moms and Shiv was like, quote unquote, joking about murdering Kendall, I thought they might I would not have been surprised if they had. I really was like, they're going to do it. And I don't think she was joking. I think that's, like one of those.
[13:26] Portia Pendleton: Times where she's already in slip in.
[13:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: The waters to see, like, will Roman go along with that? I bet if he was going to go along with it, they would have done.
[13:36] Portia Pendleton: Or if it would look good for the board, it would do something for Shiv and Roman, like, and maybe they, in that moment, were like, no, that would be like, another crisis and that would be bad.
[13:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: Well, I think, like, what they realized was it'd be really it's really hard to clean up a dead body. So unlike Goldberg, they did have that forethought. Right?
[13:54] Portia Pendleton: So let's think about Kendall's reaction to grief.
[13:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: That episode, I think it was episode three, where Logan dies on the plane, like, of all places, with Tom, of course.
[14:06] Portia Pendleton: I know. So he gets to be there, right? Like, he gets to be a part of that. The chaos which all of his siblings, I think, would die to be a part of.
[14:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: I have to say that was the only time in this whole show where I thought, maybe Tom is a good guy. The way he called them and was being so calm and telling them, I'm going to cry thinking about it, telling them to come to the phone. And I thought, like, wow, does he have any shred of I think he.
[14:35] Portia Pendleton: Does, because I don't think he's like, sociopathic psychopathic. I think that he can understand those emotions. I think he does love Shiv. I think he just loves himself more, you know what I mean? So it's like he can produce empathy and care, but in that moment, that was also the right thing to do. You know what I mean? It looked good. And I think it aligned with this is the right thing to do and it benefits me.
[15:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: But also yeah, I did feel, though, like there was more of this is the right thing to do than just, it benefits me. Yeah. Yes, totally. You know, until I think it was in the last episode, he he like, really threw it in Shiv's face when he said something about, well, I did say goodbye to Logan, and they were arguing about something and it was like a smaller comment. It wasn't as big as their explosive fight on the balcony before the election, but I thought, like, what a dagger to throw. Like, what a dagger. Remember? Because they didn't get Shiven time. Oh, God. It was just heartbreaking. But the portrayal of all three siblings, like, the shock of getting the news and trying to figure out how do you say goodbye to a parent you love because it's your father, but you hate because he's been a terribly abusive, awful parent to you. Like, how do you say goodbye? And I was actually so glad that they depicted how hard it was for them to figure out what to say and that they didn't all just kind of, like, let Logan off the hook. Right.
[16:10] Portia Pendleton: So Kendall was, like, upset and then I'm not remembering, which I wonder if this is interesting, his actual reaction. Reaction. Because I'm remembering Roman very clearly.
[16:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: I remember **** really clearly. I think Kendall was, like, kind of stunned and shocked, but then knew he had to take care of business. Right. I think he was the first one who heard. Right. Like, I think Tom called him and so he got to say something to Logan first. And then he was like, we need to get Roman. We need to get ship. This is Connor's wedding. How are we going to tell him? His wheels started going and again, that's where you're like, so he should take over the company because he can do that. Stay cool under pressure and kind of dissociate from your own feelings in order to there's some people who are really good under pressure like that. But yeah, I don't remember him having he was tearful, but not in the same way. Roman just was so raw.
[17:11] Portia Pendleton: Right. Kendall kind of jumped into action and was already thinking about what the voting wanted him to stay up in the air. No. Kendall was like, can we maybe? And Shiv were thinking about, can we have the plane circle for a while? Right. So that the end of day would come so that they didn't have to tell the markets and they would have the weekend. And Roman was like, no, absolutely not. He needs to come down and receive medical care. Roman had the hardest time admitting what was happening. Kendall, I think, was first, too, and then Shiv was second. But Roman had struggled a lot.
[17:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my God. Kieran Culkin's whole acting, like, in this whole series, especially season four, was just astounding. I also find myself so attracted to him, which we talked about last time, and like, why? This is a terrible character.
[18:00] Portia Pendleton: I'm more attracted to Tom. Why?
[18:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: We got that interesting. Analyze that about yourself. What does that say?
[18:11] Portia Pendleton: Definitely not Kendall or Connor.
[18:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: No. Right.
[18:14] Portia Pendleton: Logan.
[18:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: No. Maybe Greg. Intermittently. Just I think Greg's so tall. I find that fascinating. Well, I'm attracted to Roman, so that is true. Makes sense. But no Roman's reaction. So raw.
[18:32] Portia Pendleton: I cried.
[18:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: I did too. With all of them. Oh, my God. And then when Shiv came and was like, I just can't like so shocked and was like, why didn't you come get me? And they're like, we try. Oh, my God. Just so heartbreaking. And the fact that Logan died when they were in such a big fight, I feel like that's almost everyone's biggest.
[18:52] Portia Pendleton: Fear in the world.
[18:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, when you fight with your parents, and it's a really big one that they're going to die before you can make up.
[18:58] Portia Pendleton: And that's why I think so many people do have different ways of handling it. So it's like you don't ever confront, you know what I mean? Some people never confront because of that. Other people, it's almost, like, easier to have it be constantly conflictual because we can't tolerate the thought of being on.
[19:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: Bad terms or like, oh, it's just heartbreaking. And then sort of rewinding and thinking about that final scene with them all together at the random karaoke place for Connor's bachelor party when Willa's like, maybe cheating on him unclear. And like, the stuff Logan was saying to them that was so despicable and disgusting, and then he dies.
[19:40] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[19:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: And like, oh, I'm just like, are they mad at him? Because I I could also see and I have, you know, seen patients who have parents like this and then they die in the middle of a conflict. A lot of times the children are so mad at their parent, they're like, okay, and now you die on me when this is happening. This is just like this is track. I don't know. It was so intense. I thought medically, their depiction of I think it was a pulmonary embolism that he died from makes sense. That happens so quickly, it can be fatal so fast. So that depiction made sense. I can't even imagine. I kept thinking of, like, the flight attendants doing CPR for hours and hours and hours right. Because I think that you have to until you land, and that's so traumatizing for them. And then like, the team, Carolina, Hugo, all in the back room, like, let's just start the press release.
[20:38] Portia Pendleton: But it's like, that's who should be doing that, you know what I mean? Yes, they have a relationship, they have a friendship, whatever you want to call it, with Logan. But I think that feels appropriate. Carl and Frank, they're all taken off guard and upset and they kind of can pivot because they're not his kids. Right.
[20:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: And in some ways, that is the best way to honor Logan is to get your ducks in a row, you know what I mean? As you were saying that, I just had a flashback, too. Was it that flight or another flight where Carl and Frank were putting on their compression stockings?
[21:15] Portia Pendleton: Oh, I don't remember that at all.
[21:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's like a really interesting now you think about, like, foreshadowing, because that's often how you get a pulmonary embolism is you have a clot in one of your deep leg veins and it travels up, unfortunately. And a pulmonary embolism is basically a blood clot in your lung vasculature that leads you to stop breathing. Just wish Logan would have put on some compression socks, especially with his history of stroke and all these things, but just interesting. I bet they'll all wear them now. Yeah, I will.
[21:43] Portia Pendleton: I know. Now I'm like another thing to be anxious about while I fly.
[21:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: When I was an intern, like on my medicine rotations, I was always so anxious about a PE. That is like, the thing that can happen when you're really sick and all this. I was always so anxious that people were going to have PE's, and one time I caught one, so that's good for me. Yeah, but like, God, I lived, like, in such a state of hyper vigilance, like checking people's pressures, checking people's heart rates, checking their breathing, check at this, making a move and squeeze your leg muscles if you can't walk around. Like, it's just so scary.
[22:20] Portia Pendleton: So then we see him at the funeral. So we see him and, you know, we're going to talk about Roman more, but, like, we see him taking over for Roman because Roman cannot go through with the speech.
[22:31] Dr. Katrina Furey: Of course he cannot.
[22:33] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[22:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: He should. You should.
[22:34] Portia Pendleton: Like, he pregrieved. He pregrieved. So he's fine. Roman's fine.
[22:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: And also, I get that people try to pre grieve. You wish you could grieve before it happens so it won't hurt so bad. It just does. Yeah, I see that a lot. Especially when people have family members with, like, a neurodegenerative illness or something like that. Yeah. I feel like Roman just displayed, like, all five classic stages of grief. Denial, anger, sadness, bargaining, acceptance. So well, yeah, he really went through the different ones. And again, it's not like a linear thing. You can bounce around and feel things at the same time. But he really displayed that so well. And again, it was like he was really hoping this was going to be his moment to shine. He's going to give the eulogy and then he just can't. And did it break your heart?
[23:22] Portia Pendleton: Yes.
[23:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: When no one went to comfort him? Yeah. Those four women in the freaking front row. Your own mother does not go up to Jerry, doesn't go to give him a hug.
[23:33] Portia Pendleton: I think he was really feeling the loss of Jerry, not being comforting, but he had just I was going to.
[23:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: Say this fired her. But still, I mean, again, it's like, that's who Jerry is, who she is. Right.
[23:51] Portia Pendleton: But also, like a lesson in some way. If we look at it really black and white, if you do something horrible to me, we're done. It's a really clear boundary. Like, you just fired me and we had an inappropriate relationship, but I'm not going to do that. And his expectation, I think all of their expectations because they haven't had solid, secure attachments are so skewed. But it's like if you hurt someone and if that person is healthy, they will put up a boundary, right? So you can't hurt them again.
[24:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: I mean, that's normal, right? And again, it's like, the mom really should have been the one to 100%, right? And she just sits there. Just sits there. And then you think is like, maybe quote unquote, comforting them by inviting them to her Caribbean villa or whatever. And then it's like a sales pitch, of course, for her husband.
[24:43] Portia Pendleton: Don't eat his cheese.
[24:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, don't eat his cheese. We have no food in this house. Here's the frozen knobbies I keep. And I was like, this track. This woman doesn't eat despite all of her money and access. Of course she doesn't. And even you know that Shiv's pregnant and you still don't have any food.
[25:03] Portia Pendleton: You have your knobby ends.
[25:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: Knobby ends that freezer. And it's like, you know what? That's what she's done to these kids their whole life. Just tossed her frozen knobby ends at them and said, that's all you get. That's good. Yeah, that's a good picture.
[25:17] Portia Pendleton: Even there in this silly little moment is so deep. We could analyze that for a while, right?
[25:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: And again, they all bond and are aligned because they're feeling something toward their mom in that moment. Right? And like, that scene with them making the meal fit for a king and just how silly and playful. I loved it so much, and I did really feel like this might be it. They might get it together. And then I was like, why did I think that? Why was I optimistic?
[25:49] Portia Pendleton: They just can't.
[25:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: They can't.
[25:51] Portia Pendleton: So then we see, ironically, at the funeral. So Kendall then takes over. He does, I thought, a well job on the fly, and he responds to Ewan information. Ewan, I thought, was interesting because some of the things that he was saying really humanized Logan.
[26:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: His whole backstory. It was like, finally we learned about Rose and this oppressive guilt that Logan carried with him that it was, like, his fault. Even though finally we got some backstory. And even you and going up to the podium was like, I can't believe my own family would prevent me from speaking at my brother's funeral. Because you're worried about the stock price or whatever. And it's like they would yeah, they're trying.
[26:34] Portia Pendleton: And you could see them all. They're like, motioning to Greg to try to pull him back. And it's like, also, what are you tackle you and Logan's brother as he's going up? First of all, in front of, like, press.
[26:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's what I'm going to say. As if no one can see you guys, like, finagling, and you just look like idiots.
[26:51] Portia Pendleton: It's like, oh, my gosh. And then I thought Shiv's words were pretty sweet. That was nice that she was able to do it. I don't have a strong memory of it, but what I do remember is that Connor didn't say anything. And I was like, how fitting.
[27:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: That is really fitting. I feel like again, though, he had a speech prepared. I didn't remember that. I just forget everything about Connor. And I think that's like, that's how you're supposed to, right? But also, it was so heartbreaking at the karaoke thing, his little bachelor party, when he was able to say to the siblings after Logan storms out, like, well, my superpower is I don't need love. That's your problem, guys, is you want dad's love and approval, and I just don't need it. And I was like, oh, but yeah, that's how he has survived. And we learn about his mom going to a mental institution. And my thoughts are like, did she really need to go? Or did Logan have so much power that he was able to pull those strings? And we see Connor's trauma reaction to the wedding cake, reminding him of the cake he ate when they told him his mom went to the fight, which.
[27:54] Portia Pendleton: They all are joking about.
[27:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's not funny.
[27:56] Portia Pendleton: I mean, they joke about Roman being in the cage. They joke about I mean, it's like these horrible, really, really abusive things that weren't just like, oh, one time I locked my brother in the dog crate, like lol, and then I opened the door. No, he was in there for hours. This happened multiple times.
[28:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, that's disgusting. But also, humor is a more mature defense mechanism right, than a lot of.
[28:19] Portia Pendleton: The naming how horrible everything was. It's like they can't even go there.
[28:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: No, they can't. Right? They would just be psychologically annihilated. How can you it's totally not safe, right? Totally not safe. I hope that they eventually could if they get into some good quality therapy. I think the only one who maybe ever would would maybe be Roman. And I hope Carrie I hope Carrie, the latest mistress, is able to get into some good quality therapy and heal again. She had a very humanistic, normal reaction to being on the plane with Logan and then trying to grieve.
[28:57] Portia Pendleton: Right, I forgot she was on the plane.
[28:59] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, and trying to grieve and also deal with the shame and sort of like public view of her as the mistress. And they threw her out of his apartment when she came to get some of her stuff. And it's just sick. Super sick.
[29:14] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. So we see kind of Kendall Shiv and Roman bond again, I'd say, like immediately after the funeral, at the funeral, and then we see them all kind of starting to have their wheels turning about what we're doing. They go on that trip to see Matson at that retreat, and again, they.
[29:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: Screw themselves, right, because Roman loses his cool and lets it out that they're not going to actually sell to him. Again, if they could have just kept it in, right, maybe they could have gotten the right amount of votes or whatever to thwart the deal. But again, it's like, I think he said what it was, like, three days after died. I feel like season four took place in, like, a seven to ten day period. And of course, they're not functioning at their best. They have so many raw emotions that and maybe Matson could sniff that out, because he is a total narcissist in his own raging way.
[30:13] Portia Pendleton: And I think he's very eccentric, very egotistical, but also, like, that woman blood. And she was like, maybe just don't do that.
[30:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: Don't send, like, your biological fluid. That's also just so weird. Porsche, what did you make of that? What is the point? What do you think she wants with your blood?
[30:34] Portia Pendleton: Maybe he was like, I don't know. It's like a part of him. It was a process to give he's so rich, he can give her whatever, but it's like, no, I'm going to give you my blood. That's so much more intense than, like, oh, I'm giving you a bracelet. But it's like, I'd rather have the bracelet. And it seems like Ebba Too would rather have the bracelet.
[30:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: Maybe she could make a bracelet out of his blood.
[30:56] Portia Pendleton: She could make a little necklace.
[30:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: She can also hold onto it for a major lawsuit in the future, which maybe you should have thought about. But creepy. That's like serial killer level creepy, right? You call the police when someone's, like, sending you their blood.
[31:13] Portia Pendleton: That is wild to me. Matson is, like, so smart. He's too smart where it's like he is detached from the real world reality, what it's like to be a human. I think he's just brilliant. He created this code.
[31:31] Dr. Katrina Furey: I thought at some point in there, they said he actually didn't. It was these other people, and he's taking the credit.
[31:36] Portia Pendleton: Well, maybe he's smart enough to do that.
[31:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: Maybe smart enough to do that.
[31:39] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[31:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: So we see Matson Alexander Scarsgard again. I always love to see him, and he's great, even if he's sending people his own blood, which tracks he is.
[31:49] Portia Pendleton: A vampire and true blood.
[31:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: There you go. Totally tracks. And I always imagined it as, like, a huge IV bag full of blood, but maybe it's like a vial.
[31:58] Portia Pendleton: I think it was frozen, and I think I don't know why.
[32:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: Multiple times. Just so bizarre, so weird, and also so dumb. Okay, we don't have to keep talking about the blood. So we see again, Roman, and really, Roman get in his own way by revealing their evil plot to Matson, who now knows the evil plot and can take steps to continue to win in the situation. I feel like Matson probably was getting a sense of something going awry and was like, knows what to say to sort of provoke people to figure out their real motives. Like, we see that with him and Tom Too.
[32:41] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[32:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: And what a creepy superpower to have.
[32:46] Portia Pendleton: And I think he poked Roman in a way that he saw roman being impulsive unstable again. I mean, your dad just died three days ago.
[32:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: But of the two, Roman 100%.
[32:57] Portia Pendleton: And Kendall is, like, backdooring still. Everything at that time. He's talking to Hugo, he's trying to put out some numbers that then Shiv and everyone's really ****** about how that got out. And then he says whatever matson says whatever makes sense to Shiv to get Shiv on his side.
[33:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. And she takes that bit because she always does. Again, she gets in her way. Oh, and it drives me nuts. It drives me so nuts again, because I feel like at the beginning of the show, I thought she was the smart one who just wasn't getting her comeuppance because she's a girl. And then the more we've seen of her, I feel like she's just so annoying. I love the character, don't get me.
[33:37] Portia Pendleton: Wrong, but I think they had to have written that because there were points in the last episode of season four that when she's talking to Matson that I was like, you are so annoying right now. And Matson was annoyed and I think we were supposed to feel that.
[33:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right? And that's why, again, this is how Shiv gets in her own way.
[33:55] Portia Pendleton: She was annoying with her dad in that episode when he yells at her before the big board meeting or shareholder meeting. He yelled at her and was like, you're stop. And again, she was, to me, like, grating in my ear.
[34:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: She has this obsessive reassurance seeking, which of course, she has that based on her life and how you can't trust anyone and people always screw you over. But she hasn't figured out that by continuing to do that, you push these people away at your own detriment. Right. So she just thinks that she's so suave and such a good communicator that she'll be the one to go in and smooth things over and figure it out, even when she was in the company now and sitting in on the meetings. And it's just like everyone thinks you're a joke. And it's so sad that she can't see that. Right?
[34:50] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. And I think her reaction on the phone to her and Tom are not speaking. They're actively trying to get divorced.
[34:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: He gets all the lawyers based on Logan's advice.
[35:02] Portia Pendleton: And then he's the one who's, like, telling her to say goodbye to her dad, even. That was really, I'm sure, obviously hard for her, besides the fact that she had to say goodbye to her dad. But it's like, Tom is the one who's telling you. I mean, maybe on one hand it was, like, comforting because there's still maybe a little bit of feelings there. I don't know, I just can't imagine that. And then she kind of went a little bit childlike, like, Daddy, please don't die. Same with Roman. Roman became more childlike.
[35:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: That is what happens. Like, you regress in times of such intense emotional trauma. Right. And I think she was like, that's him there in the coffin. But all that is so true. Grief is just such a mindfuck that a lot of times you are in such extreme denial. Yeah. What did you think about the scene between Shiv and Tom at their fancy apartment the night before the election?
[35:55] Portia Pendleton: That was a big fight, I think. It was like they had so much hurt at that point, in pain, and had hurt each other so specifically, wildly up until that moment. And it was like, this has to happen. When is it going to happen? I thought Tom again, just because I still like Tom, he's, like, telling everyone how bad he needs sleep.
[36:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[36:19] Portia Pendleton: He's, like, preparing. His face has to be up. He's, like, so obsessed with I loved.
[36:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: When he came in and he was like, all right, party's over, everyone go home. And I'm like, that's always how I want to end the party. Just be like, okay, please leave. I don't know if you ever see it online. Like, those memes with party decorations. That's like a big banner that's like, welcome to the party. Please leave by eight. Yes, that's true.
[36:42] Portia Pendleton: And if you don't, I will ask you to ask you, and then it's awkward and weird. Yeah. So some of the things that they said were obviously so horrible and hurtful, but, like, true. Like, really? I don't know hard truths because it's finally horrible, people. But, like, you guys needed to say.
[36:59] Dr. Katrina Furey: That, and this is how you really feel about each other. It was so big and explosive and disgusting, but also authentic and true. And they were both so angry and betrayed by each other. And that's when she told him that she's pregnant. Right.
[37:15] Portia Pendleton: And he was like, Is that even true?
[37:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: Which I could see why action. Also, like, the way she brought it up, it does seem provocative and manipulative. And at that point, I wasn't sure if she still was, because we saw earlier on. I will make a note that Shiv calls the doctor by her first name.
[37:31] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. Which I'm not surprised about.
[37:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: Exactly.
[37:34] Portia Pendleton: It was probably a personal doctor.
[37:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: But also, I feel like people with narcissistic traits don't respect sort of professional boundaries or I can't imagine Shiv giving that professional deference to someone else. Right. They don't. They just call you first name.
[37:53] Portia Pendleton: That tracks. Even when they were trying to get Logan into better care earlier, earlier when he did not die, they were all just like, we need the best of the best. And I think even if they still.
[38:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: Would have, even when he was dying on the plane, they were like, we need to get this one on the line. He needs to go here. And it's like, guys, but so we learned she's pregnant, that there was some sort of testing to be done that showed everything was okay. But then we see her drinking throughout the season, and I wasn't sure if she was still pregnant and drinking, which, again, I could see her doing, or if she'd had an abortion. And I wasn't sure how it was all going to shake out. And then I mean, my God. What do you think about Shiv being a mom?
[38:36] Portia Pendleton: Well, having watched all of the season, I think she is the new Caroline and she's going to do exactly what Caroline did to her. I think she's going to be cold and kind of detached.
[38:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: She already is. She's already talked about all the nannies and she's never going to see the kid. And on the one hand, I was like, is she just saying that to Matson? So she gets to be the American CEO, but I don't think so. I think that's all she knows.
[39:01] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[39:02] Dr. Katrina Furey: Awful. And I kind of like that we didn't find out if she's having a girl or a boy. What do you think?
[39:08] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I think both are screwed. Yeah, I think girl, that would be worse in my.
[39:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: Again, now, by sort of maneuvering the way she did at the very end, she has sort of maintained the closest tie to the power right. By staying with Tom and that flaccid handshake.
[39:34] Portia Pendleton: I know that was like iconic.
[39:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: So iconic and uncomfortable and perfect. But she's staying with him. It seems they're going to have the baby, but I still feel like it's going to be a girl. And so still not really quite the heir, as you would think, right? Like, if she had the son who was like the bloodline, as Roman was saying. This all starts to remind me of.
[39:59] Portia Pendleton: The British royal family, too.
[40:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: I was kind of like as I watched the show, I also read Prince Harry's memoir, sort of at the same time, and I was like, is this what their life is like?
[40:10] Portia Pendleton: There's definitely parallels, right?
[40:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
[40:13] Portia Pendleton: Rules, expectations, pressure, public eye out for yourself.
[40:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's just so weird.
[40:20] Portia Pendleton: Distrust, probably betrayals along the lines. So, yeah, no, that makes sense. But I felt sorry for Shiv and really kind of aligned with her when she was at that board meeting, finally kind of giving the vote because I think she's so on the one hand, she knew that Tom was going to get it and I think knew that she would be closer to power if Tom did. But I think really, on the other hand, she doesn't think like, she said that Kendall can do it, right? Yes, 100%. Like, even his reaction, I mean, that just then proved and that's what she left and then just did the vote.
[41:02] Dr. Katrina Furey: Even when they were like, you killed someone and he was like, well, no.
[41:06] Portia Pendleton: It sounded like he had killed more than one.
[41:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, right. It did. It left their room open, like with.
[41:11] Portia Pendleton: And that's what Roman was like, what do you mean? Multiples or others or plural when you said that?
[41:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: And then when he is like, well, no, that's a misunderstanding. That didn't actually happen. It was like, dude, again, two seasons ago, or whatever, that was when you all bonded again over this.
[41:30] Portia Pendleton: And so both would have been hurtful.
[41:31] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[41:32] Portia Pendleton: Like, on the one hand, if that was a move and you lied, which they were like, which one is it? Or that you have killed someone and potentially others. I think he kind of drove himself.
[41:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: Into the and he did make the decision about menken in the election.
[41:49] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[41:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: So, again, there's just these character, like, this is him, this is who he is. And he makes these bad decisions impulsively based on really intense emotions. Which totally makes sense, right? Because we know that people with different personality disorders under stress. That gets bigger, as it does for all of us. Like, if you have an anxiety disorder and you're under stress, your anxiety goes up. If you struggle with depression and you're under stress, that can be a timeous trigger. This tracks. But you see that with Kendall in such a destructive way, like also Roman, but with Roman it's more masochistic, where it's like self destructive. Like when he goes into the protesting or he gets hit by someone, or he seeks out love from Jerry only to be rejected, it's always he's the one getting hurt, but Kendall hurts. Like, people have died and then the whole country is now at risk. Your own children are at risk. Right.
[42:48] Portia Pendleton: He seems the least self aware. Yes, I think they all have self awareness issues, but I think he seems like the most he has no responsibility.
[43:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: I have no awareness he has any self awareness. I feel like zero.
[43:07] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[43:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't think he does even like his whole big birthday party.
[43:11] Portia Pendleton: No, 100%.
[43:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: But I think Roman, interestingly, has the most self awareness of the kids. Maybe Connor. Maybe Connor wins that. Then Roman, then Shiv, then Kendall. Right? Is how I would rank them.
[43:33] Portia Pendleton: So we see Kendall, though, like, he's just not self aware about anything. He he gets so wounded so quickly, and then he reacts. And it's just like that impulsiveness to have this huge reaction and change everything with Rava.
[43:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. The kids. And as you were saying that, it reminded me of like back in season one or two, where he stole the batteries. That's like a perfect example of like in the vapes. Yeah. He's just having such big feelings. I think he'd felt really rejected by his dad and was angry. And so he's like, I'm going to steal this. He doesn't need to, but he does. So that's like a little way. And then there's these huge ways, and we really do see that with the way he abuses Rava and his assistant Jess, and then his new assistant he calls new Jess. But that scene with Rava trying to leave with the kids was so chilling to me, and also, again, just like spot on. And it really shows you, like, I bet there's been a lot of domestic violence like this in their relationship. And it's a miracle that she's able to leave him at all, right? Because, like, someone with his power and money and access to lawyers and blah, blah, blah. That's so freaking scary.
[44:45] Portia Pendleton: Self awareness. Like, should my kids be with Nannies 24/7, or maybe with their mom and me sometime?
[44:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: You know what I mean? What's best for your kids?
[44:55] Portia Pendleton: It doesn't matter because it's not about them, it's about him.
[44:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: And even hearing about like in season three, right, where the daughter was scared, so he hires someone to track them.
[45:02] Portia Pendleton: That's not how you and then doesn't tell them that. And that's what they're being followed.
[45:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's not how you handle it. And then even all of that happening, we come to learn. Maybe some people picked this up earlier. I did, until Roman really says it at the end in that big fight that his daughter's adopted and then that his son maybe isn't biologically his, we're not really sure. But then the whole thing with the election just really, to me, epitomized his character. Again, Roman doesn't care about anything, so of course he's like, let's do Minkin, because then we can squash this Gojo deal. And again, none of them are smart enough to see that Minkin is also out for himself and using you. You can't trust that he's going to come through. Why would you? But they always do. They have this thread of trust that.
[45:49] Portia Pendleton: Always similar with Jerry. I see Jerry and Roman and then Roman and Menken is connecting with Roman on some level that makes Roman feel attached and into him and blind, can see nothing wrong.
[46:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: And again, Menken probably knows that. Just like Matson.
[46:08] Portia Pendleton: Yes.
[46:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. That this is the weak link. That's why he goes for that rather than Kendall. It's just so classic. But and again, it's just like I think it also just speaks to how it's just human nature to want to be able to trust and to try to attach to something anyone around you, I think, especially when you've had such disrupted early attachments like they've had, that you don't know how to tease apart. What are early characteristics of a trustworthy person?
[46:41] Portia Pendleton: They have no idea because they don't have really anyone in their life.
[46:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: No idea. And so the people that they feel most comfortable with are going to be people who are just like their parents, who are going to screw them over. And it happened again. But also, I wasn't surprised with Roman in the election. I was with Kendall. I really thought he might not do it. And then I really thought Greg might pause long enough to keep it from happening. And they all did it. They just went for it.
[47:10] Portia Pendleton: Porsche and so that that scene or that episode about the election was so chilling. Well, I guess this does affect people's mental health, but, like, I thought it was just such a testament to, you know, what many I wouldn't call them conspiracy theorists, but people believe like, does happen. Like, I do think it kind of there's powerful people who control, you know, who gets elected, so on and so forth. These news people calling it the news stations, though I was and maybe this is true or not. I feel like that is something that I never thought of, how important networks are in calling states for different right. Politicians. Exactly.
[47:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I was like, wow, this is.
[47:57] Portia Pendleton: Interesting, just on, like, a factual side. But I thought it was so chilling. I think there were absolute parallels right. To reality and people's fears with the.
[48:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: Balances catching on fire. And they're like, well, there's nothing precedented for this. Let's call it for mango. Oh, my God.
[48:17] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[48:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: It was eerily. I'm afraid to say accurate because I don't know if that's actually true. Right. I'd like to think this doesn't really happen, but it definitely made you go, yeah.
[48:28] Portia Pendleton: And Romans just like he said, to shift something like, well, it doesn't matter. Nothing's going to happen. And she was like, Things do happen, Roman.
[48:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: Roman, things do matter.
[48:38] Portia Pendleton: And then you see kind of the next episodes with all the protest, right? That's why Rava is afraid to take the kids to the funeral, because there's a lot of protesters and a lot of people don't like the Roys because of ATN and so on and so forth. So it's like, that all kind of came to be because of the election. And then Roman running in the streets, which is so interesting. He seeks them out. He's fighting with them. He's egging them on.
[49:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: And he was I also pushed that as like, he's so angry that his dad died and then this happened, and he's just so full of rage, and he just climbs over the hurdle and gets in it. And I was like, Are they famous enough in society for those protesters to know that's Roman Roy and ATN just called it? Would they know that? Or is it like, if I saw a Murdoch on the street, I wouldn't.
[49:29] Portia Pendleton: Know who they were?
[49:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: You know what I mean?
[49:31] Portia Pendleton: His suit, right? It was perfect.
[49:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: And then how he's getting totally pummeled and then trampled over, and I was like, this is Roman. This is him. And then again with Kendall. This is Kendall. This is who Kendall is. And his character, his authentic character with not being able to I just can't fathom it, Portia, that this election is already affecting his family, his children. And even knowing that he still can't put that in front of sticking it to **** after he hears what she's doing in order to get what he needs, he still can't appreciate how terrified his family is, where they wouldn't go, the funeral, where he's only thinking, what's the world going to think if my family's not there? And I'm about to ascend to power. It's just so sick.
[50:28] Portia Pendleton: Right. And another reason why he can't he is trying so hard to be Logan, and he is not.
[50:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: That that's a good thing.
[50:38] Portia Pendleton: Right. If he could go to therapy and.
[50:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: Realize that's a good thing, let's harness those parts of you that aren't like him and just stop trying, Kendall, and take your bazillion dollars. Take, like, two years off. Get really good therapy, get sober, and then get into music. Do what you want, Randall.
[50:59] Portia Pendleton: Be a rapper.
[51:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[51:01] Portia Pendleton: It was really hard to watch. I think at the end, I felt sorry for Kendall, but I was kind of, like, done with him until he.
[51:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: Again is, like, walking toward the water. And once again, we're thinking, will he or won't he?
[51:14] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[51:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: Will he or won't he? And then the bodyguards, like, lurking in the back, because I think he knows what's about to happen. I think a lot of people think he did. I mean, I kind of think he did. Like, after it cut to black, it remind me of kind of like The Sopranos, where it cuts to black, but if not, then I feel like.
[51:34] Portia Pendleton: Without help or without some shift, we see kind of like an overdose. Accidental, maybe more intentional or something with water, which he seems to really like.
[51:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, he's like the theme of water in Kendall throughout the whole show has been so interesting. Right. And I'm sure that's intentional.
[51:55] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. The pool and then him kind of walking out, even when they were at.
[52:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: The Mom's Island, and he's, like, swimming out to the raft, and they're thinking about murdering him. It's in the middle of water. Drowning with the waiter at his wedding within water. Then he takes that bath. Like, there's something about water. It's like, maybe Kendall, take some time off, get some therapy, and then become a swim instructor.
[52:21] Portia Pendleton: Do something with water.
[52:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: Do something with water. Like aqua therapy or help other people in the water. But he's not he can't possibly.
[52:32] Portia Pendleton: And then so we wanted to briefly talk a little bit about Tom and Greg.
[52:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: And then I decided I also want to give Willa a little do, because, God, I love Willa. But yeah. Tom and Greg, the disgusting brothers. How did you feel when Tom put that purple sticker?
[52:49] Portia Pendleton: Oh, my gosh.
[52:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: Forehead.
[52:51] Portia Pendleton: I really liked it.
[52:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: I almost cried.
[52:55] Portia Pendleton: I want you first of all, that he kept the stickers right from he just happened to have it, and then he put it right on his head. And I really like Tom in Tom and Greg. Me too. Greg is like greg was just, like, bothersome to me. I thought he was so irritating within the funeral. Like, he was dynamic and the grief and being sorry and trying to hug them, and they were like, Greg, get out. Like, you're so annoying. Like, you don't care. It's so clear that you're trying to attach yourself to someone.
[53:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. But again, it's like, that tracks for him. Oh, yeah. I kept hoping that Greg was going to be kind of normal and might save the day, especially with the election, when he was like, It's my job. He was talking to that girl that I think he was kind of seeing, but, no, he just falls right in line. He wants the power, too. And again, it was like that sticker scene with Tom and Greg was so endearing, but also not right, because I think Tom is like, I need Greg.
[53:57] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[53:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: And Tom needs someone to beat up on the way he's beat up on metaphorically by everyone around him. He needs someone to quite physically beat up on when he gets upset. Right. And that's the purpose Greg serves. So then it's kind of icky.
[54:12] Portia Pendleton: I felt like Greg evened the power dynamic a little bit by slapping Tom back in the bathroom. I think if Tom had just done it, it would have felt like obviously, but worse. But by Greg kind of coming back, it was then more just like a slap fight. And maybe Tom likes I think so he's proud of him, right, when he backstabs someone or when he's, like, blackmailing people. So I think he was happy to see that reaction.
[54:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. And that way it's weird because you might think that Tom wants someone below him who's just like Tom, who he can just totally abuse and manipulate and.
[54:52] Portia Pendleton: Will do whatever he says.
[54:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: And Greg isn't quite like that. Like, Greg held onto the documents. He slaps him back. He has backstabbed him and stuff. And Tom kind of likes that. Just like in Shiv, actually, if you think about it, tom's, like, attracted to that. And in that way, Tom kind of reminds me of Roman and being attracted to these people who serve a purpose and hurt you. Yeah.
[55:16] Portia Pendleton: He gave an interview, Matthew, and he was talking about some of just the voice tones. And when he is talking to Greg, there's like a lot of pauses. It's more blunted or loud.
[55:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: And then when he's talking to Shiv, he gets a little bit of a high pitched voice. And he said that was out of, like, fear. Oh, this is so interesting. I want to watch that interview. That is so fascinating. Because Shiv has the power until now, right? Yeah. God, what a fascinating character. I want to see what happens with Tom and Greg. I would like a snap of them. Also, I just thought it was so interesting to me how Greg was so tall. I think I looked it up and he's 6ft, seven inches, so he's way tall. And just the whole dynamic of him being this random cousin with no power, he's trying to warm his way in, but he has this height and this stature and how that just lends him to having this power in the room that other people blow him. Don't have. It's just fascinating.
[56:16] Portia Pendleton: It's like he's hard to miss.
[56:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: Exactly.
[56:18] Portia Pendleton: Always kind of notice.
[56:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right? Exactly. And then Willa, God bless Willa, she's going to live in Logan's big house with her cow print couch all by herself because she's found a way for Connor to be some ambassador somewhere or something.
[56:36] Portia Pendleton: Slovenia.
[56:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: Or even if that doesn't pan out, which it probably won't, let's be honest, she'll find a way for him to go back to Montana or something, and she's just going to live it up.
[56:48] Portia Pendleton: Willa and Greg are clever and in different ways.
[56:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
[56:56] Portia Pendleton: I think they're both good at getting their needs met. I think they have different personalities and stuff like that. But I think they know how to play the game, know how to ultimately get what they want. I think I see Willa as a little bit more likable than Greg. Maybe some people feel the other way around, but I just think it's interesting.
[57:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. This show, man, what a great show. I'm really going to miss it. I'm really sad it's over, but I also feel like this is the ending. Yeah. This feels like, okay, this is the ending.
[57:29] Portia Pendleton: Roman we both have the most hope.
[57:31] Dr. Katrina Furey: For getting into therapy.
[57:33] Portia Pendleton: He's having a martini, which we think could be related to as a cheers to Jerry or Shiv.
[57:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[57:41] Portia Pendleton: And he's out.
[57:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: He looked like, peaceful and content. I don't think he'll get therapy. I don't think he'll get DBT or anything.
[57:51] Portia Pendleton: But maybe he'll stumble across on his world journeys.
[57:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: Or sucked into a cult.
[57:58] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I was going to say, which is funny. Or joined some wellness center, which is also known as sometimes they're a little culty.
[58:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
[58:09] Portia Pendleton: But I could see that him kind of accidentally stumbling into something that's actually helpful. Shiv, she is. I have attached to ATN and Royco.
[58:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: I feel like she is just going to live such an empty, sad life and she doesn't have to. Right? Like, she could make different decisions and really learn to heal and do some attachment parenting with her child. The wealth, you know what I mean? But it's not about the money. Exactly. The money is not the thing for them. It's the power. And like, the getting one over.
[58:46] Portia Pendleton: And then Jeremy Strong talked about an alternative ending where he felt compelled because he's a method actor, as we've talked about, to almost act a scene where he kills himself. So he's, like, climbing over the edge and he gets stopped by someone else on set.
[59:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think it was the bodyguard. Yeah, I could totally see that happening. Or, like we said, an overdose in the next year or two, whether intentional or not. I don't know if he'll ever see his kids again after that whole thing. I kind of hope not. That scene made me so uncomfortable. Or he's, like literally getting in the way of the car and the kids are watching all of this. You're just. Like, if this is what you're doing in broad daylight in front of people, what did you do to this family in the privacy of your home? Makes me scared. Yeah. And Connor, I think he'll be okay. Yeah.
[59:40] Portia Pendleton: He'll either be a diplomat somewhere no, that will happen.
[59:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: He will be go back to his.
[59:45] Portia Pendleton: Little ranch in the middle of nowhere, conserving water and having a little empire. I think Carl and Frank, as they kind of giggled to each other, what do you think? Do you want to stick around? And they were both like, maybe so I don't know if they can detach themselves.
[01:00:02] Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't know if Tom will keep him around, though.
[01:00:05] Portia Pendleton: He said that? No, he said goodbye, but I thought that was funny how it's like you guys have been trying to get this golden parachute forever and yet you're thinking.
[01:00:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: About staying for till I all of you just like, go on your merry way. It's wild.
[01:00:20] Portia Pendleton: The power of power. So stick around. We will be covering more Max shows, hopefully that have also good intro music as well.
[01:00:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: White Lotus is coming. Exactly.
[01:00:32] Portia Pendleton: Euphoria.
[01:00:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: Speaking of cults, we're going to be talking about Yellow Jacket season two in the next couple of weeks. Yeah. And find us on Instagram at Analyze scripts. We're on TikTok now at Analyze Scripts podcast, and please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe and share with your friends near and far.
[01:00:50] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, thanks for listening.
[01:00:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: All right, see you next Monday.
[01:00:53] Portia Pendleton: Bye.
[01:00:59] Dr. Katrina Furey: This podcast and its contents are a copyright of analyzed scripts. All rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited. Unless you want to share it with your friends and rate, review and subscribe, that's fine. All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time. Our channel.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are thrilled to be joined by Dr. Tobias Wasser, a forensic psychiatrist from Yale University, in analyzing the 2010 film "Shutter Island." Dr. Wasser explains how forensic psychiatry bridges the gap between the criminal justice and mental health care systems. He describes what it's really like to work on a forensic psychiatry unit and compares his experience to that depicted in the film. We also ask him to explain the difference between competency to stand trial and the NGRI (not guilty by reason of insanity) plea. He also shares his opinions about our favorite narcissistic psychopaths - Joe Goldberg, Logan Roy, and Tom Wambsgans. We learned a ton and hope you enjoy!
[00:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: Our channel.
[00:10] Portia Pendleton: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fury, a psychiatrist. And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker. And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows. Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriend. There is so much misinformation out there, and it drives us nuts. And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like with a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better. So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn and your DSM Five and enjoy. Welcome back to Analyze scripts. Portia and I are super excited to be joined today by Dr. Tobias Wasser, who is an associate professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine. He completed all of his psychiatry training at Yale, including the psychiatry Residency program and two fellowships in forensic psychiatry and public psychiatry. He currently serves as the Deputy medical Director for Community and Forensic Psychiatry for Yale New Haven Hospital and the Assistant Chair for Program development in the Yale Psychiatry department. He's previously held leadership roles in Yale psychiatry residency program and for five years served as the chief medical officer of Connecticut's State Forensic Hospital. And most importantly, he was my chief resident for a whole day at the very beginning of my intern year. So welcome, Tobias. Thank you so much for coming and joining us today.
[01:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: Hi, thank you so much for having me.
[01:49] Portia Pendleton: So interestingly. I'm sure you don't remember this, Tobias, but I remember my very first day of psychiatry residency. I was on the inpatient psych unit. You were observing me do, I think, like, my very first interview as a resident, and I was interviewing a patient with a psychotic disorder. I don't think I'd ever really interviewed someone with one of those before. And afterwards you told me something that has stuck with me ever since, and I think is really pertinent to this movie you were telling me. And you were so nice in the way that you would tell me this criticism, but it's very kind. You were saying, you did a great job, but when you're listening to someone talk about their delusions, try really hard not to nod as they're talking. It's like a very natural thing to do. But if you're nodding, you're kind of confirming for them, like, yeah, this is true. This is true. What a perfect sort of clinical pearl to think about as we talk about Shutter Island today, right?
[02:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: Well, you're right that I don't totally remember saying that to you, but I guess maybe it'll make you feel better to know you're not the only individual to whom I've given that feedback.
[03:05] Portia Pendleton: Good.
[03:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: It is a common aspect of people learning how to practice psychiatry and mental health. So as you said, I think it's a natural reaction. So clearly it helped you.
[03:17] Portia Pendleton: I'm glad it's but I just like that sort of popped in my mind as I rewatched the movie today, knowing you join us because in this movie, they do this whole weird experiment, right? And so I think before we dive in and really pick your brain on what it's like to be a forensic psychiatrist and what you think about this movie, portia is going to give us just a really quick rundown of the plot.
[03:43] Dr. Tobias Wasser: So the movie came out in 2013 by Martin Scorsese, all star cast, all star director. We have Teddy Daniels, who is played by Leonardo DiCaprio. And then we have Chuck, played by Mark Rafalo. And so we see these two people kind of heading to this island where there's apparently this mental institution where the criminally insane are being held. And it opens up with vomiting, which we talk about this a lot.
[04:12] Portia Pendleton: I was like, great, portia hates vomiting.
[04:16] Dr. Tobias Wasser: And so they are going to kind of investigate someone who's missing.
[04:20] Portia Pendleton: And they are state marshals.
[04:23] Dr. Tobias Wasser: Yes, marshals. And so you kind of see them exploring the island. It looks really scary. And there's a few different kind of living arrangements, it seems like. One where more, I would say, like, peaceful patients are housed. And then another one that feels really gross and dirty and more jail like. And the movie does take place in 1954. So it's like post World War II, which I think is interesting with the differences in how we treat mental health. So we kind of see them investigating this crime or this person who's missing, as we have some questions of Teddy's mental status. So he has these migraines. There's some flashbacks to his time during World War II at some concentration camps. Really, really traumatic, it seems like some experiences that he's had. And then also these kind of flashbacks to this family, but then to this other wife without kids. And it's confusing. So I was kind of confused watching it at first. And then we see him kind of continuing to investigate and believe that there are these inhumane trials going on or.
[05:41] Portia Pendleton: Clinical trials or like experimentation, almost experimentations.
[05:46] Dr. Tobias Wasser: Kind of going on that we see, and he doesn't find any. And so the movie kind of arcs all of a sudden to where I initially thought, so this was the first time that I saw it, that he was being kind of like, pushed into insanity, quote, unquote. He was being given some medications. All of a sudden there's this part where it's like, well, have you been eating the food? Have you been taking medications from them? Have you been smoking your own cigarettes? And he starts to kind of feel.
[06:14] Portia Pendleton: Like he was poisoned or something.
[06:15] Dr. Tobias Wasser: Yeah. And so then all of a sudden, we find out that he is the test subject of this really immersive. I don't want to say well done, but well done.
[06:30] Portia Pendleton: Well executed.
[06:31] Dr. Tobias Wasser: Maybe set up for him in order to help his psychosis or delusions in order to kind of have him kind.
[06:40] Portia Pendleton: Of come back, snap out of it.
[06:41] Dr. Tobias Wasser: Which is his wife killed his three children and then he killed her.
[06:46] Portia Pendleton: And so he is actually a patient.
[06:48] Dr. Tobias Wasser: To make someone potentially have a psychotic break or experience some psychosis. So I will say that I'm probably going to take a little bit of a backseat to this episode. I think the only experience I have with psychosis is, like, drug induced. So it's not my poor kid. I don't think I've ever interviewed or come across a patient with non drug induced psychosis. So that's kind of the story of the movie. And I think it leaves off with two questions. Did they trick him? And that was a whole trick to kind of get him to stay there, or was he really a patient?
[07:23] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I think he was the 67th patient that he was looking for the whole time. And then at the very end, I felt like the whole premise, once you figured out what was going on, was they were trying to restore his sanity once and for all with this elaborate hoax in hopes that he could avoid a lobotomy. Right? And then at the very end, you see him sort of slip back into his delusional way of thinking and go off to get the lobotomy. And I think actually he knew what he was doing. I think he sort of didn't actually slip back into that delusional frame of mind. I think he finally realized what had happened and didn't want to live with it. So it was really fascinating movie. I always love Leonardo DiCaprio, especially with a Boston accent. I'm just like, anytime. But one thing that hit me right away was just like, there's like this big, scary mental hospital in the middle of the ocean where you can't get to and we're going to play this big scary music, and there's rocks everywhere, and there's like, police everywhere. And just like this. It reminded me of Alcatraz in San Francisco, which was just a jail, I believe, not a forensic psych hospital. But I was just like, oh, my God. Just like, yeah. It's like, oh, God.
[08:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
[08:39] Portia Pendleton: The mentally we're so scary. It just really right away really knocked you over with that intensity. What did you think, Tobias, about sort of the way they started off.
[08:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. So I think you're right about the ending. I saw Capri a really extreme form of denial, almost like choosing an extreme form of denial that once he knew what he had done, he didn't want to live with it anymore, and choosing surgical interventions to try to keep that out of his mind as far as the depiction of what the place looks like. So I definitely think you're right. It played into all of our worst stigmas about psychiatric hospitals. It's criminally insane and this scary island in the middle of nowhere, and that it has to be surrounded by miles and miles of water to prevent anyone from escaping. And I think also, Portia, your point about this is post night. This is in the 1950s, and so it's a very different understanding of what mental illness is at the time in any case. But I'll say as someone who, as Katrina you mentioned in the brief bio, someone who spent many years running a current forensic hospital, it's a very different experience than how it's been depicted in the movie. I think we often imagine these really horrible, scary places. And I will say there are aspects of it that align with my experience. But for the most part, we've come a long way in the 50 years. If that's what it really was like 70 years ago, we've come a long way. But I definitely agree that it was trying to really I think it was trying to immerse the viewer in experience of being terrified. And I think it succeeded in that.
[10:26] Portia Pendleton: Yes, it did. So what parts of it sort of matched with your experience working in a modern day forensic hospital?
[10:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, so I think part of it is what Portia alluded to with this idea that there might be different parts of the hospital. So that continues to be true today. So not all forensic hospitals are like this, but many of them will have what we call different services. So in Connecticut, for example, the hospital that I was a chief medical officer for, for five years, we did have two different services. We had what we called a maximum security service, which was for patients who are at a higher risk for violence or who may have engaged in more violent behavior before they came to the hospital or currently were engaging in unsafe behaviors. And that is more like a synthesis between a typical hospital or typical psychiatric hospital and a correctional setting. At least on the one in Connecticut. The walls are cinder block and in order to get in, you have to go through multiple layers of security and double locking doors. We call a Sally Port, like you're entering a prison facility. So there are layers of security to it that are similar, and the structure is somewhat similar. When you get on the unit, though, it looks more as opposed to in the movie where people are in jail cells and they're locked up, and it really looks like a jail facility. Once you actually get into the physical space where the patients are living, it's more like an inpatient unit. People have bedrooms, they don't have cells, they don't have bars on the doors. They can enter and exit as they wish. There are group rooms in which therapeutic activities occur. There's a shared dining space, there's television. So there are some aspects that are similar, but hopefully it's a little bit more humane when you actually get onto the unit. The one in Connecticut is a much older facility. It was built in 1970. So actually not long after this movie supposedly takes place. And there are a couple of much more modern facilities that have been built, one in Washington, DC. And one in Missouri, that are really picturesque, very aesthetically pleasing. They really focus on things that are supposed to enhance individual recovery, like access to natural light spaces and all those things. So the more modern facilities have really come a long, long way and they look nicer than some typical psychiatric hospitals. Not for forensic patients. And then the other aspect is going to say, so there is a second service, again, even in our own hospital, for safer patients, patients who have engaged in less serious violence, but for some reason have engaged in some kind of behavior that got them involved with the criminal justice system. And they require psychiatric treatment. And those settings, at least in Connecticut, looks much more like a typical hospital that you'd expect. And those patients actually are given grounds privileges. They can walk the ground, sort of like we saw in the movie, that they can walk around.
[13:17] Portia Pendleton: Are they handcuffed like we saw in the movie? People would be like in shackles, walking around, but like their feet shackled up.
[13:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's a great question. So no, they're not modern day because there's been so much emphasis on patients rights and advocacy movements for all patients, not just these kinds of patients. And maybe I should just take a step back to define what does it mean to be a forensic patient. So forensic really refers to in mental health or in psychiatry. It's talking about the intersection of psychiatry and the law. So when we talk about forensic hospitals or forensic patients, sort of like in the movie, they are typically places where individuals who've been found not guilty by reason of insanity. So they've committed a crime. They've pledged what's anecdotally called, colloquially called the insanity defense, meaning that they're saying they're not criminally responsible for their actions because at the time of the crime, they either didn't appreciate that what they were doing was wrong or they couldn't control their behavior because of a mental illness. They're found not guilty by reason of insanity, which is a horrible stigmatizing moniker, but it's still what we call it. And then they're sent for long term psychiatric treatment in a hospital setting.
[14:30] Portia Pendleton: And then is the goal. We just released an episode about the movie side effects. I don't know if you ever saw that movie, it's also an older movie, but in that movie it seemed like the goal was to restore the character who was found not guilty by reason of insanity to sanity, so then she could go back to them, be tried. Does that actually happen?
[14:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes, that's a great question. It's kind of mixing two different topics in forensics, like two different populations. So we do have the one group who is what I just described, not guilty by visa and sanity. We have a second group of individuals who are found not competent to stand trial, which similar but is different. So being found not competent to stand trial. So for all of us, if we are accused of a crime, we're all presumed or assumed to be competent. Meaning you understand what's going on in court. For some individuals with mental illness or cognitive disorders, they're not able or intellectual disabilities, they're not competent as a result of their capacities. And so if they're not able to understand what's going on in court, they don't know what a judge is, what a lawyer is, or they have delusions that the court is out to get them and they're paranoid about it or because of an intellectual disability, they're just not able to effectively understand what's happening. Or maybe because of mood instability, they're so upset and get so upset so easily and angry and yelling and screaming. They can't really work. A lawyer, they're a court hearing. Those are all reasons somebody might be found not competent to stand in trial.
[16:09] Portia Pendleton: Got it.
[16:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: And that's very much like on here and now at the time you're supposed to show up to court, you will get what's going on.
[16:17] Portia Pendleton: Got it.
[16:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: Whereas the insanity defense is much more about when you did the thing right.
[16:23] Portia Pendleton: Okay, so for this second group, this.
[16:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: Not competent group, it would be more like what you were talking about with Sideways, where they might also come to our hospital and they're going to be sent there for treatment and we're going to try to restore them. So we're going to try to make them better so that they can go back to court and deal with their charges. And that might be through getting medications, group therapies and just education about the court system. Sometimes there's an educational deficit and then we try to send them back so they can deal with their charges. The other group we talked about, the insanity defense, folks, we are trying to make them better, but they're not going to go back and face their charges. They've already been found not guilty and their trial is over.
[17:06] Portia Pendleton: Got it.
[17:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: Now we're just going to re.
[17:10] Portia Pendleton: Got it. That makes a lot of sense. Portia we've been talking about that for weeks. We're discovering and doing this podcast that a lot of the shows we watch and that other people are asking us to cover involve narcissists and psychopaths. This keeps coming up. Yeah, apparently fascinating.
[17:33] Dr. Tobias Wasser: I think also we see, which I think is an interesting shift. In the movie, Dr. Kauley makes a comment that sanity is not a choice. And then also if you treat a patient with respect, you can reach them. So I think that's kind of like the shift into more current times with respecting patients and having them understand what's happening and having a right to choose maybe different medication trials or therapies and stuff like that. And I think that's great and wonderful and it seemed like what he was doing at the time was really kind of like shocking and out there.
[18:07] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[18:08] Dr. Tobias Wasser: And you even see Teddy the Marshall like being angry. Some of these patients are being treated well or, you know, they're not just.
[18:18] Portia Pendleton: Being, um, so cool, like they're being believed. Right. I'm so curious to biased to hear your views about the forensic psychiatrist they depict who is played by Ben Kingsley, dr. Collie. I did write down a couple of quotes that either he said, I think he said them that I actually thought were pretty lovely. So at one point he was sort of telling Teddy Leonardo DiCaprio's character like what they do at Ashcliffe and he said something like this is the moral fusion between law and order and clinical care. And I thought like, well, that's kind of a lovely description of or definition of forensic psychiatry. And then I really appreciated when Dr. Collie would correct the marshals, when they would refer to the patients as prisoners. And he kept saying they're patients, they're patients. And I think Teddy at one point is like, how can you even treat them like knowing these awful things that they've done? And he said something like I treat the patients, not their victims, I'm not the one here to judge. And I just thought like, wow, I don't know. What are your thoughts about his character Tobias and the depiction of him and the other psychiatrists? All of which I'll just point out were old white men, which is accurate probably for the think.
[19:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: You have picked up on some really lovely quotes and some themes in this that I also aligned with, noticed as being really interesting and as you're saying, portion of the time probably were very progressive. And now I think I wouldn't say they're mainstream, but I think they really what's reflected in this is a lot of the tensions that we do see in the practice of modern forensic days, modern day forensic psychiatry that even now working in these facilities. So we've come a long way since the 1950s and there have been this enormous movement around patients rights and giving them the right to choose what does it mean to accept or refuse medication, what abilities do you have to have to be able to do that? Just because you've been committed to a hospital doesn't mean you can be forced to take medications necessarily. And all the things you're saying about in a forensic hospital, about calling them patients, not prisoners, thinking about their illness and their symptoms rather than the criminal behavior they're accused of or been convicted of. And yet we struggle with this all the time still all day working in these facilities. You often find this tension between how he described the law and order and the clinical care you hope for, that the mental health clinician will be the ones really advocating for the treatment component, that they're going to want to think about the person and their illness. Many of these individuals have been horribly traumatized and see an enormous amount of comorbidity in terms of histories of physical, emotional and sexual trauma in their youth that leads them then to enact this kind of behavior when they're older or it's not surprising to any of us. And so we try to get our staff who are demonstrated, like orderlies or the police officers or security guards, whatever they are, to help them understand that these patients are people and that yes, they may have done something really horrible, but that's not what we're going to define them by. But it's still really a struggle and it really falls on those of us who are providing the care or leadership roles in these institutions to keep holding on to that moralistic value and try to keep advancing things forward. And I often found that in these environments, you often see some amount of regression by the staff, meaning that they start to act in more primitive and earlier ways because it can be an unsafe environment. There is more aggression in these environments than the typical mental health setting. And when people start to feel unsafe, they start to regress into these earlier states of being. And so you'll see more interest in punishment than maybe clinical care. They want the patients to have consequences.
[22:18] Portia Pendleton: When they do that right, or sometimes.
[22:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: They'Ll refer to them by their crime as opposed to by their name or their diagnosis. They're just a murderer, they're just a rapist, something horrible like that. And so it takes a lot of work and a lot of effort to continue to hold the line and to not be drawn into that because I think it's kind of a natural human proclivity and it taxes all of us. But it's also our responsibility when you work in these settings to try to keep holding on to that. The role I had running the hospital for the patients, particularly the individuals who have been found not guilty by reason of insanity, they had to have mandatory public hearings every two years in terms to monitor their progress. And if there was ever an effort to try to move them from the hospital to the community and this happens, every state handles it differently. But every state has some process where either the court or a quasi judicial body, like in Connecticut, we have this separate board. It's kind of like a synthesis between a mental health it's sort of like a mental health parole board, essentially, that these folks, as they move through the system to less and less restrictive environments. And whenever you have to have these hearings, families will come, and they have the opportunity, or they have the opportunity at least to give victim statements, the victim themselves or the family of the victim. And it was heart wrenching. It was really awful to hear and really difficult to many of them have been horribly traumatized by what happened to them or their family members. And as difficult and uncomfortable as it was, it was extremely important, I know for myself and others who work in that environment to hear that for two reasons. One, because I think you don't. As much as we're focused on the patients and wanting to get them better, I think as opposed to how the movie depicts it, where it's I don't think about the other things. I just think about this. We have to at least consider that. I mean, one, because it affects their risk, their initial behavior, even if they were really ill at the time they committed some horrific act, we know that's the riskiest thing potentially they could do, right? If they became ill again, if they medicine or they were out of treatment, that could happen again. And so we have to account for that. The second thing is you can become a little too myopic if all you think about is the patient. There has to be some consideration for the impact of this on the community, both just as a human and if you're trying to advocate that this person returns to the community. And that's probably the biggest reason, is if you advocate that this person returns to the community, this is a reflection of what they might experience in the community. The victims will be there, the family of the victims or other victims who have been suffered at the hands of other individuals. And so the patient has to be ready to manage that, and you have to help the patient to be ready to manage that. And so you can't entirely turn a blind eye to it and just say, oh, that's something that happens out there. Because if the goal is to help the patient get back to out there, you want them to be prepared to what that's going to be like. So I think it's extremely difficult. I don't want to pretend like it's easy, but I think it's a really important part of doing this type of work.
[25:33] Portia Pendleton: This sounds like a really hard job.
[25:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's not an easy job.
[25:38] Portia Pendleton: It sounds really hard. Like just thinking about not just being the psychiatrist for patients like this. I think some would argue these might be like the sickest of the sick, but then also managing the whole team, treating them, who every team member brings in their own experiences. And so they're also probably getting triggered by different things, as we all are right in this line of work. And then thinking about the community at large, I'm just thinking like, gosh, that sounds like a lot of pressure to be the one, I guess at the end of the day to decide like, okay, yes, I think you're ready to reintegrate, or no, I don't know if I could do that. It sounds really hard.
[26:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's really tough. And I think raising a couple of points. One is the community. No community wants these individuals in their community. There actually was a New York Times Magazine article back in, I think, either 2017 or 2018, where they interviewed folks who run these types of hospitals all over the country because they talked about the fact that it's so hard to get patients out of the hospital because nobody wants a former arsonist to be their next door neighbor.
[26:50] Portia Pendleton: Right?
[26:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: Arsonist with schizophrenia. I mean, doesn't that sound really inviting that you want to move next door and not to be I don't want to be overly stigmatizing. Maybe that's how people in the community experience this. The other aspect of it that you talk about, the experience of staff who have been traumatized, and so part of it is, as you are saying, they may have had trauma in their own lives that might be triggering when they do this work. As much as I don't want to propagate the idea that individuals mental illness are violent, they're much more likely to be the victims of violence and the perpetrators of violence. But when you have enclosed environments dedicated for individuals who have been accused of crimes, many of who engaged in violent behavior, there is an increased risk of violence in those environments. And some of these staff members will become they will be harmed, of course, their work. And that, of course, can be very traumatizing. And then the final pieces in these environments, the patients tend to stay there for much longer than at a usual hospital. So, I mean, typical, if someone has to go to the psychiatric hospital, they're there maybe seven to 14 days. For our patients, the shortest period of time they're there is usually 60 to 90 days, and the longest is two decades.
[28:02] Portia Pendleton: Wow.
[28:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: People will be there for very long periods of time. And to incentivize, particularly general healthcare workers to work in these environments, they're usually part of unions that are through the state. They have really good benefits, and so they work there for long periods of time. And so you can only imagine the kinds of relationships and dynamics that evolve over the course of years with employees with their own history of trauma, most well trained in managing personality disorders, your psychopaths, your narcissist, your borderline personality disorders, and then you've got those individuals living in an enclosed environment for a decade. It's fraught with all sorts of drama and trauma.
[28:40] Portia Pendleton: Drama and trauma, yeah, for sure. One thing we wanted to ask you, Tobias, is are you able to comment at all about what are the common diagnoses you see or the most common diagnoses you tend to see? Because I think, just like you said, it's really important to us also that in releasing these podcast episodes, that we keep getting the message out there that people with mental illness are so much more likely to be victims of crimes rather than perpetrators of crimes. And yet a lot of these shows depict these raging psychopathic narcissistic. People who are hurting everyone all around them. So I'm just curious if you're able to comment on that or if that was something you noticed in doing this work.
[29:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, so I think this is very much a generalization based on data, statistics or anything, but generally you tend, for the most part to see two kinds of kind of diagnostic profiles. So I think on the one hand, you tend to see individuals who have some kind of a psychotic and or genetic illness schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder with psychotic features. Sometimes they become depressed with psychosis, but mostly it's more in the kind of bipolar and psychotic rain. And their illness is untreated. Either it's been unrecognized or it has been. But they've got off medication for a long period of time. And because of their severe symptoms, their severe mood and psychotic symptoms, they develop either delusional beliefs or they hear voices tell them to do violent things, and then they end up engaging in some kind of risky or violent behavior, whether that's directly being harmful, physical assault, sexual assault, setting a fire, something of that nature. That's kind of one large diagnostic group we tend to see. The second tends to be much more, actually, unfortunately, you said you don't have experience with this, but it tends to actually be probably people you might have been more likely to see, which are individuals who have severe personality disorders and then may or may not develop some. They're usually using substances and may or may not develop a substance induced psychosis. So they're typically, as I was saying, really people with some kind of antisocial personality disorder, which means that they disregard the rights of others. They don't care about rules. They're really only out for themselves. They usually have a heavy dose of narcissism. And then you see a fair number of individuals with borderline personality disorders with this relationship instability and all sorts of other things. You add some substances on top of that, whether it's alcohol, marijuana, coffee, opiates, whatever it might be. And then sometimes they start to develop psychop psychosis or extreme mood instability. And with that group so with the first group we talked about who has a more classic psychotic, manic illness, they actually tend to do it because once they get to the hospital, they get treatment. We know how to treat that group, right? Medicines we have that are tried and true, therapies we have that are tried and true. And they actually tend to get out of the hospital sooner if they're willing to kind of go along with the treatment program. The second group is enormously difficult to treat. And as you guys will know, we certainly don't have medicines because usually what happens is, once they're in the hospital, they're not using illicit substances. So that psychotic or manic illness, dissipates, and all we're left with is the personality disorder, and we don't have medicines to treat it. Our therapies are intermittently or variably effective, depending. Particularly, we don't really have much for antisocial, right? We're a little better with borderline antisocial. But then they're also in these contained environments which are full of law and worship, just like described in the OB. And these individuals don't tend to they don't like it.
[32:39] Portia Pendleton: Lots of rules and law being told.
[32:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: What to do and long term relationships with either their peers or staff who keep showing up every single day. So those individuals are really challenging for the staff, and they're really challenging to reintegrate into the environment.
[32:57] Portia Pendleton: Do you come across a fair amount of malingering?
[33:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: So you do. Where you tend to see more malingering, you tend to see a lot of malingering in those. Not a lot, I should say we see more for the most part, there is not a lot of malingering, but we do see it probably more than other environments. And when we tend to see it, it tends to be in those individuals who not the insanity defense folks, but those people who are found not competent to stand trial. So again, every state is different, but in most states, the legal regulations are essentially that if you're not competent to stand trial, you cannot be tried for your crime, because the courts place this emphasis on human dignity, essentially. And so the idea is, if you're not mentally sound, how can we try you for a crime if you don't understand what's going on? Work effectively to your lawyer. So it depends on the state, but if you're not able to be competent or restored to your competence, you may never face your charges. And so how that's dealt with is different. You may end up in a psychiatric hospital, you may not, but most of those people won't face their crime. And so there's a number of individuals, whether their crimes are significant or more minor, who essentially think, can I fake crazy?
[34:15] Portia Pendleton: Can I fake crazy in order to.
[34:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: Get out of facing my crime and dealing with the consequences. So we do see that more than most things, and most of hospitals like this employ psychologists who can do psychological testing and screen for malinkering as a way of trying to help us substitute that out. That's a big part of the assessment we do, especially if we suspect that somebody might be faking it more than might be faking it, period.
[34:39] Portia Pendleton: When you're getting ready to discharge patients from these forensic hospitals, are there specific community clinics or places that you sort of go to who can sort of do you get to collaborate with them after the patient leaves to sort of make sure they're okay or their check ins. Or if they start to unravel, they can sort of quickly come back into treatment. Or is that just like a fantasy I'm creating in my head?
[35:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: No, you're not far off. So again, my experience is here in the state of Connecticut. So here we tend to work with our state mental health department and almost all the patients receive treatment at community mental health centers that are part of the state mental health system.
[35:20] Portia Pendleton: Okay.
[35:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: They work with those folks and because it's so hard to get them to the community, there are usually prolonged transition periods where they're meeting their community clinicians while they're still at the hospital. They're beginning they have transitional visits if they're going to be in some kind of they're almost always living in some kind of supervised setting, whether it's a supervised apartment or a group home or something. And so they do transitional visits before they actually leave the hospital. And they may spend months, maybe even up to a year, just engaged in a transition process before they actually go and leave the hospital. And then usually in most states, there's some mechanism for bringing us back to the hospital if they're not doing well. So there's a concept called conditional release, which is the idea that they can be released to the hospital, but it's conditional on their safety, good behavior or whatever you want to say. And it can be both. That's why it's conditional if there's some safety related concern and they can be brought back to the hospital.
[36:22] Portia Pendleton: I see. Okay. Wouldn't this be nice for almost everyone needing inpatient psychiatric care to just have more time getting treatment and then have this nice transition period? And it just seems like such a better model overall. And I wonder if that's what it used to be like back in the day where people would not just get two days of treatment and then be discharged.
[36:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think in a world that's less driven by insurance reimbursement, this probably was I don't know that quite this extreme, but I imagine this was the model. And I do think as so much of our health care is now decided by what will be paid for and not paid for, we've really gotten away from this. And I think not everybody needs this, but many individuals for whom they could benefit from this kind of care. And part of what's talked about in public entities, state, county funded institutions, is this idea that kind of like the allocation of resources really depends on what the law requires you to do. And so there's always a limited fund of resources in any state, county, whatever. And so where you shift your resources is what's required. So like, for example, Connecticut is not one of them. But most states have some form of involuntary outpatient commitment for individuals who need to be they're chronically ill, chronically dangerous, and they want something like what you're describing, which is a way to bring them into the hospital quickly if they're not doing well in the community.
[37:47] Portia Pendleton: I think New York has something like that, right? Where if you're not complying with your injectable antipsychotic or something.
[37:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: Exactly, yeah. So New York actually 46 of the 50 states have laws like this but New York was one of the first, called Kendra's Law. North Carolina was an early adopter of this as well. They've done the most research on it, and there's some evidence that it works. But the major concerns with laws like this one is that it tends to be overly representative of minoritized individuals, people who are black, brown, Hispanic, from low socionomic status, that we tend to see more of those individuals. And so there's a significant concern that's been raised that these ideas are built on racist practices and structures, and so it's inappropriately used in those populations too often. The second concern that's often raised, which I think is where I was going before, was that because there's a limited pot or pool of resources, when you construct laws like what I'm describing, for involuntary outpatient commitment, it requires the public entity to give the resources to those individuals usually at the loss of the resources for other individuals who aren't engaging in those same behaviors but might equally benefit from them. Because you're going to kind of shift your focus to whatever you have to do, and whatever you don't have to do, you're less likely to do.
[39:12] Portia Pendleton: That makes a lot of sense. I also feel like that could be really used against patients in an icky way. It's so hard. It's like I understand it, but then it just feels like it could be really coercive.
[39:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, it's not the same, but it's a little similar to when you have patients if you're caring for individuals who are on probation. And then there's this polls as well. Your probation officer is not going to like it if you don't show up. I'm going to call them again. I think it's like this well intended effort to try to keep the person engaged in treatment and engaged and using the interventions that you think will keep them safe and well and out of trouble. But it's really manipulative kind of co opting the purpose of treatment, which ought to be for treatment, and we ought to be giving people a choice. And if they want to participate, great. And if they don't, they may have consequences for those choices, but it's not our responsibility as mental health providers to be enacting those consequences. And that's often the challenge that people find themselves in, that somehow they get drawn into that in a well intended but kind of inappropriately administered way.
[40:18] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[40:18] Dr. Tobias Wasser: And I want motivational interviewing gone wrong, helping them explore the potential consequences and what that might be like versus I'm going to call them myself.
[40:31] Portia Pendleton: It reminds me when I threaten to call Santa Claus on my children when they won't just get dressed in the morning. So Tobias, do you have any criticisms about this movie and the way anything was portrayed? Or I guess on the flip side, did they get anything really right that you really liked?
[41:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: I found myself really struggling with the ending. When you find out that this whole thing has been kind of an elaborate and effort to lean into the delusions. I think back to your anecdote.
[41:17] Dr. Tobias Wasser: There was a part of me that.
[41:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: You don't know why.
[41:19] Portia Pendleton: Right. What are you doing? I learned this my very first day of training.
[41:25] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. And then you don't want to trick your patients. That's not a way of engendering trust and all these things. And then there was another part of me that thought, like, this is really interesting. Would this work? Is there any chance that trying to align with the patient in some way could be effective? I think I reached a conclusion. No, I don't think so. I don't think we want to. It's a tightrope walk, as we probably talked about that fateful day. I think you want to help the patient feel supported without reinforcing that the beliefs that you think are symptoms of an illness are actually happening.
[42:02] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[42:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think that it wasn't surprising to me, I guess, given that this was supposed to be such a novel, progressive treatment model, that they would try to enact this on Shutter Island. But I found myself troubled by it, ultimately.
[42:20] Portia Pendleton: And I couldn't believe it was his psychiatrist who was, like, the other Marshall. Right. Like Mark Ruffalo's character. Like, for a while, I kept thinking, like, was Mark Ruffalo like a hallucination? Was that his part of his mind that was still sane in some ways? And then when it comes out that that's actually the psychiatrist they all said was on vacation, I was like, how do you do that? How is he ever going to trust you again?
[42:47] Dr. Tobias Wasser: Yeah.
[42:48] Portia Pendleton: What did you think about when they were all having their scotch at the end of their night, like, in their big, fancy velvet chairs and thrilling their mustaches? And that one psychiatrist kept saying, I feel like I want to use this in social conversation. Somehow he kept looking at Teddy and going, you have great defense mechanisms. Do you remember that? Wow, these are great defense. But it was like an underhanded comment. I don't know.
[43:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: Was that not part of your training?
[43:17] Portia Pendleton: No, I missed that part. I must have been on maternity leave.
[43:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. I just thought it was so stereotypical of psychiatrists. Who knows? Maybe that is what really happened in the 50s. But it was just this kind of idea of the old boys club, and let's sit around and be very sophisticated and talk about our analytics theory right.
[43:42] Portia Pendleton: And judge and analyze everyone. Right. I feel like I think we all probably get this in social situations, like when you're just trying to make friends or whatever, and people hear your psychiatrist and everyone gets so nervous, and they're like, oh, are you analyzing me now? But I think movies like this sort of perpetuate that when these people are analyzing everyone so quickly. One thing that I wanted to touch on was Michelle Williams's character. I forget her name, but she was basically Teddy Daniels's wife. And she did end up, it seems like well, she did end up killing their three children. And I just wanted to bring it up because it reminds me of postpartum psychosis, which has been in the news lately. And as a reproductive psychiatrist, anytime I can talk about this and sort of just get some info out there, I like to, because it is the most severe complication of childbirth. I mean, mental health complications like depression, anxiety, OCD are the most common complication of childbirth beyond any physical complication. And then postpartum psychosis is the most severe and also the most rare. And if you develop postpartum depression or anxiety, that does not increase your risk for having postpartum psychosis. These are two separate disease pathways. So I see a lot of women in my practice who have had postpartum depression or anxiety, especially lately, I think, with what's being said in the news, who get really scared that if they want to have a baby, does that mean that they could lose their mind, so to speak? So this condition occurs in one to two out of every thousand births. So, again, super rare. About 40% of women have the baby blues after delivering a baby. That's just where you feel like you're on an emotional roller coaster, and it's awful, but it's totally normal. And then about ten to 15% develop postpartum depression, anxiety, OCD. And then, again, one to two out of 1000. I can't do that fraction in my head, but very rare to get postpartum psychosis. Again, I feel like I don't think that's what this character was experiencing because her children look too old. I don't think there was a baby involved. Usually, postpartum psychosis develops in hours to weeks after delivery, so that first, like, two to four weeks is really critical to be monitoring someone. A lot of times, women who develop this condition, you'll have symptoms of hallucinations, hearing or seeing things that aren't there, delusional lines of thinking that aren't in line with the broader cultural beliefs that you're growing up in. And a lot of times, unfortunately, these delusional thoughts are directed toward the baby. You think, like, the baby is possessed by a demon. The only way of helping them is by killing them, for example. Something like that. So the rates of suicide infanticide are really high. Sadly, I think there's like a 4% risk of suicide and around the same for infanticide. And that's incredibly sad. In this movie, it seems like the children were older. So again, postpartum psychosis would develop really early or up to a year. A lot of times, women with this condition end up having an underlying bipolar disorder. So, again, if you have a history of bipolar disorder, you really want to be monitored carefully. Again, it's still rare, but it could happen. But I feel like, if I remember correctly in the movie, the kids were older, so it makes me wonder if the mom had depression with psychotic features or a personality disorder. We don't really know. We don't really get to know anything about her. But I couldn't watch it this time. I had to fast forward through those scenes near the end. It was, like, way too much for me to watch. I don't know about you guys. Yeah.
[47:35] Dr. Tobias Wasser: They had said in the movie and using their words at the time that his wife was insane and a manic depressive. Suicidal tendencies was how they described her to him when he was kind of.
[47:48] Portia Pendleton: Coming out of right. So maybe she had some kind of bipolar disorder or schizoaffective disorder or something.
[47:58] Dr. Tobias Wasser: And I think, too, I was just, like, reflecting on his trauma in the war and then coming home and kind of finding his children deceased. And then his wife kind of really flippant about it. And I think that could make a lot of people react the way he did with killing her in that moment. Emotions are so high because I was thinking it's like, why did he end up here? I might be way off here. I don't know at all. He was there not because of the crime of killing his wife, but because of his then, like, delusion after because I feel like you could kill someone and you go to jail versus, like, a forensic hospital.
[48:48] Portia Pendleton: Maybe he was found not guilty by reason of insanity because they were saying maybe have happened.
[48:53] Dr. Tobias Wasser: I'm assuming then for him to end up on that island versus, like, a jail.
[48:57] Portia Pendleton: Right? No, I think you're right. And I think I wrote down when the team kept talking about Rachel Solano, the brunette woman who allegedly went missing, I felt like if you rewatched it, you could hear their thoughts about Teddy, right? Like, as they're all part of this big hoax. I think they're actually, like, talking to Teddy, and they said something about how the greatest obstacle to recovery is the inability to face what she's done. And I feel like that was him. And I think, like you said earlier, Tobias, it really speaks to is he delusional or an extreme denial? And we kind of saw that foundation laid. I thought with all the flashbacks to war and that he clearly had PTSD, looks like he developed an alcohol use disorder, and then this happened. Why wouldn't he still be using his excellent defense mechanisms to stay in this world of denial? Is there anything else you want to mention before we ask you your thoughts about some of our other favorite psychopaths?
[50:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: No. I hate you guys at all. I welcome your psychopath.
[50:16] Portia Pendleton: So you have seen the show. You right. At least some of it.
[50:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes. I've seen the first couple of seasons.
[50:22] Portia Pendleton: I'm so jealous whenever I meet someone who isn't caught up because it's so good, and, like, season three and four are so good. So we're dying to know your thoughts about Joe Goldberg?
[50:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. And I've heard some of your guys discussions about this, about the episode, the seasons. I have seen that he is such an interesting sociopath.
[50:48] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[50:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: He's got this level of compassion in him that you just don't typically see. And it's confusing. I mean, like his relationship, like with.
[50:59] Portia Pendleton: Paco, the little boy.
[51:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: Exactly. Neighbor boy. Clearly there's some projection identification there, but there are just ways in which he clearly connects exactly in a way that you don't typically get. It makes it almost feel not real. But in my experience working with individuals with social personality disorder, and even the ones who would be identified as sociopaths, I've never come across somebody like that before. You tend to see much more callousness, much more narcissism, self directed interest. And he clearly has plenty of callousness and self directed interest and erotic fantasies and all sorts of other things. But I think that's the part to me that's most notable because it humanizes the character in a way that you almost root for him.
[51:52] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[51:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: Dominique, sociopathic, right?
[51:56] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. What do you think about Logan Roy? Do you watch Succession?
[52:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: I'm just thinking about this in anticipation of today and I guess are you guys convinced that he's a sociopath or a psychopath? I think he's an extreme narcissist, doesn't care about other people. I don't know that he purposely tries to harm me. To me, I view his character pathology as all being about himself and a way of fulfilling his own needs, seeing himself as more important than anybody else. I don't see him necessarily as like I guess he doesn't care about the rules, but it just all seems so self serving. So maybe I'm drawing the lines of distinctions that don't exist, but I don't know what you guys think.
[52:47] Portia Pendleton: I still think he's very, like a malignant narcissist. However, I could maybe be convinced that this was a very intense, complex PTSD and developments of putting his own needs first to survive in a trauma informed kind of way based on the way he was brought up. Like, he doesn't know any better, but then he just does stuff to the kid, to his kids who are adults, but I always call them kids that just feel so icky and like to his grandson, and maybe he's going to poison them or not, where then I'm just like.
[53:25] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, that's fair. Poisoning of the children.
[53:31] Portia Pendleton: That'S usually not cool. What do you think about that?
[53:35] Dr. Tobias Wasser: Is that also learned?
[53:37] Portia Pendleton: Right?
[53:38] Dr. Tobias Wasser: This is how he was hit, or this is how you make a man, or this is how you make someone who's self sufficient views at times like Kendall and specifically, it feels like Kendall is really soft, right. Not hard enough, not like a killer. And I don't know, it's like almost his disappointment in that, because he is, but it's like he was raised that way. I think it is confusing. I mean, a lot of trauma always there seems to be. But does he love does he feel good when he hurts them because he hurts them, or does he not think about it, or does he feel like he's helping them? I don't know.
[54:23] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[54:25] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think I can see that, and I guess I've seen it more as maybe an adaptive behavior. I think that based on the difficult life experiences that we learned recently that he had and upbringing, the challenges he had to overcome, I think both. He literally had to overcome a lot. And it seems like there's this learned aspect that espousing a machado and a machismo. Like, this is the way that you're big and you're tough and you got to get through life to get over these things. And he does some horrible things, but usually it's to achieve some personal, self serving end.
[54:59] Portia Pendleton: Usually the reason, not because he's, like, getting off on hurting someone else.
[55:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. Again. I don't pretend to fully understand logan Roy. It doesn't seem like he hurts for the sake of hurting. He seems to hurt as a means to the end of his own success and survival.
[55:16] Portia Pendleton: Right? Yeah. Right. What do you think about Tom?
[55:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: He's, like, slimy and slithery and will do whatever he has to do to anybody in order to get to that ultimate goal. And it's hard to know. He probably is probably born that way, whatever. But it does seem like it stems differently from this deep seated insecurity about his upbringing and always wanting something grand and great and wanting to feel grand and great. And it seems like he hopes that if he can be in the presence of greatness, then he will be great, and then he will ascend to greatness, and he'll finally, basically, finally convince Mommy to love him.
[55:53] Dr. Tobias Wasser: I had the wool over my eyes for him until recently.
[55:57] Portia Pendleton: That's okay, portia. You have a pure heart. You have a pure heart. Got to watch out. People like him will get you like it for real. Thank you so much, Tobias. This is super helpful. So thanks for listening to another episode of Analyze Scripts. You can find us on Instagram at Analyze scripts. You can find us on TikTok at Analyze Scripts podcast and stay tuned for our next episode, and we'll see you next Monday. Bye. This podcast and its contents are a copyright of Analyzed Scripts. All rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited. Unless you want to share it with your friends and rate review and subscribe, that's fine. All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings, or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems. Or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
[57:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: Our channel.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we're analyzing the third season of "Succession" on HBOMax. In this episode, we continue exploring the evolution of the adult siblings with a focus on different manifestations of a "wounded narcissist" in Kendall and Roman. We also spend time exploring the theme of the Roman and Shiv being drawn to romantic partners who are psychologically similar to their parents. We unpack various betrayals that occured throughout the season, culminating in Tom showing his true colors. We hope you enjoy!
[00:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fury, a psychiatrist.
[00:12] Portia Pendleton: And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker.
[00:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows.
[00:23] Portia Pendleton: Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriend.
[00:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: There is so much misinformation out there, and it drives us nuts.
[00:31] Portia Pendleton: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like.
[00:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: With a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better.
[00:39] Portia Pendleton: So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn.
[00:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: And your DSM Five and enjoy. All right. Porsche, season three of succession. What a doozy.
[01:02] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[01:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: Wow. Wow.
[01:05] Portia Pendleton: Watched it really fast. And then I and then I tried to kind of rewatch it again because there was so much good content and character development and character crumbling and character everything.
[01:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: And some of the lines were so funny, but perfect. I think it was episode five where Logan has the UTI. I think that might be, like, my favorite episode of television. Ever.
[01:28] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, ever.
[01:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: It was so funny. Like, I'm going to watch it again after this.
[01:33] Portia Pendleton: I need to I think you had sent me a text, and we're like, oh, my gosh, have you seen episode five yet? And I was like, no, I haven't, and just kind of, like, seeing all the different shenanigans take place. And even so funny as, like, yes, that he thinks that there's a cat underneath his seat, but then them having to keep running back and forth, giving Frank notes, he's like, stalling the shareholder, and they're just talking nonsense, and Greg's the one running back and forth with the notes.
[02:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: So funny.
[02:02] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I know.
[02:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: I want to watch it again because it's so ridiculous. I feel like that must have been a fun one to film. And I feel like they were owed that. They have a lot of intense scenes. It was nice to see this. And just as a plug, perfect depiction of how UTIs can affect someone's cognitive function. So I had no idea.
[02:25] Portia Pendleton: So please share.
[02:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: Why my gosh. So UTIs, urinary tract infections. As a psychiatrist, whenever you are evaluating, like, anyone, but especially an older person with rapid onset cognitive change, you check a UTI. Most of the time, it's honestly a UTI. It's some kind of infection. It really can affect them cognitively. I can't tell you how many times in training in the emergency room, we would get a consult for an 85 year old with, quote, unquote, new onset schizophrenia. Spoiler alert. That is not a thing. That is, like, less than 1% chance of someone getting schizophrenia for the first time at 85 years old. 99.99%.
[03:04] Portia Pendleton: It's a UTI. So is it the age?
[03:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, I mean, when you're older, your system is just more fragile, like, more vulnerable to things. Oftentimes when you're older, you're on a lot of medications for, like, blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, bladder issues, all these other things which all the medications can have side effects, they can interact, and your system is just more susceptible to an infection. And that's one of the ways it can present. So it's super important to keep that in mind if you have older family members and they start acting differently. I mean, it can also have things like paranoia or hallucinations. Like he displays the cat and all this stuff. I was just like, this is perfect. This is so perfect. And you just need to start some antibiotics. But I just thought that was so just what a funny detail. And I love that episode.
[04:00] Portia Pendleton: And that woman with the long, dark, dark brown or black hair and bangs.
[04:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: Who we see Logan, who's like her new secretary or something.
[04:08] Portia Pendleton: She knows, right? She had she was also like, is she a nurse? Because she seemed so quick and on it with the medications and having them and knowing the side effects. I was like, what is her role? So maybe she has maybe that's a requirement, his assistance or maybe like medical training.
[04:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, or maybe like, she's the only one who knows about his medical stuff.
[04:33] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, she said he didn't want anyone else to know.
[04:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. And again, because I think this show is such a fascinating depiction of a narcissist aging where it's so threatening to your sense of self to be weak or vulnerable or inferior. And again, it's like, yes, he feels that way because of his personality traits, but also there is truth in that, like, in his role as head of this huge company that's, like, having a lot of financial issues, sort of having a hard time keeping up with the times and with streaming and all this stuff. He can't hear weak or vulnerable. We saw that in season one when he tries to go give a speech, and now we're seeing it here where he wants to, again, give a speech, but he's got a UT. And they're like, oh, you can't do that. Literally, I just loved how even then, the siblings are all like, well, dad has to agree with this. And so then Shiv calls off the deal, and then they're like, oh, no, dad is not in his but they.
[05:34] Portia Pendleton: Like, almost I was surprised at how long it took them to get there.
[05:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: To figure out that he wasn't okay.
[05:40] Portia Pendleton: It was like multiple things were happening. And I was like, hello. Hello. Who's going to pick it up? That he's acting very strangely. And Tom is the one who's like, I think there's something wrong with your dad.
[05:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: Maybe that's because Tom is removed enough where he can tolerate again, because it probably hasn't been safe for them to question their dad or be like, hey, dad, are you okay? You know what I mean? That's not like a safe thing to do. Oh, my gosh. So, yeah, just a little plug UTIs. Can have significant cognitive effects, especially when you're older. Always get checked for UTI or make sure your family member is if they're older and have new onset cognitive changes. Like, we could save lives with this. PSA.
[06:27] Portia Pendleton: That was news for me.
[06:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: I was like, yes. Hooray hooray. This psychiatrist is so proud of that depiction. Anyway, getting away from urinary tract infections and back to season three. So quick plot recap. End of season two, I found myself, like, cheering from the balcony when Kendall did a total reverse and my jaw.
[06:52] Portia Pendleton: Was on the floor, right? Yeah.
[06:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: And you were like, oh, my God. Oh, my God. I really didn't see it coming. I thought he was going to take the fall. He was going to be the blood sacrifice, as Logan says. How sick was that, too? In season two, they were all trying to decide who should be sacrificed.
[07:07] Portia Pendleton: I know, but at the end of.
[07:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: The day, I was like, I know it's going to be Kendall. Why are we even pretending? What's this?
[07:12] Portia Pendleton: I think he was waiting for Kendall.
[07:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: To step up or something. That's a good point. That's interesting to think about, too, now that in this season, tom stepped up to say he would take the fall to jail. It's interesting. I was so proud. And then I was like, why am I so proud?
[07:31] Portia Pendleton: This is all so and we both kind of think and agreed that it seemed like Logan, even though he was being royally screwed, he seemed proud of Kendall.
[07:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. Because remember, Kendall was like, just be real with me, dad. You are never going to give me the company. Right? And he's like, you're not a killer. You could do everything you want, but you're not a killer. And again, it's like Kendall will never be good enough for his dad no matter what. So in a weird way, even though Kendall's saying he's trying to do good, he's not. I think he's trying to win his dad's approval by being like his dad. And in a way, I feel like Logan respects it, but can't tolerate it because there's no room for him. Right?
[08:15] Portia Pendleton: Right. I think it has to be that way. It just fits the personality traits. We see Kendall then kind of doing more and more things in season three that just feel so different right. From season one. Kind of see his arc of turning just into seemingly more like grandiose delusional, detached from kind of a reality, in a way.
[08:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. But I feel like that's probably who Kendall really is. I feel like in season one, it started off with him getting out of rehab. He was probably at his quote unquote best, like, trying really hard.
[08:53] Portia Pendleton: He was clean during season.
[08:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: He was clean. He was about to take the reins. He looked anxious a lot of the times, but I think he was doing the right thing. And now that hasn't gotten him anywhere. And in fact, his dad's like, you're never going to get the business because you're not a killer, right? So now he's like, fine, here you go. And I think he's sick of being this taking the fall for everything.
[09:20] Portia Pendleton: And I think Kendall, if we think of him receiving treatment and being his best self, I don't think, as we have said before, it's safe for him to be his best self. So I think he's coping right now with substances because that's honestly what's safer. Unless he wants to totally estrange himself from his family, get out the shares, be bought out, take his money and go somewhere else and do whatever and do the work. Right? Then have the therapy, then kind of reestablish himself, then do the skills if he thinks he needs it, maybe some medications. But it's like, until that happens, if it ever does, which I doubt, I.
[09:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: Think this is his best this is how he survived. Yeah.
[10:01] Portia Pendleton: This is how he's like, okay, right.
[10:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: And just what? Mixed messages from Logan. Right? Because it's like, okay, I go to rehab. I'm clean. I'm doing all the businessy stuff. I'm showing up on time. I'm responsible. You say you're going to give me the company, then you don't. Okay, that's confusing. Like, why not? What am I not doing? Oh, I'm not ruthless enough or vengeful enough or things like that. Okay, so now I'm going to do that and still not getting right. What is it, dad? What do you want from me?
[10:31] Portia Pendleton: And then I accidentally kill someone. And then you give me a hug and you call me your son and you bring me in, and then you abuse me and use me. And it's like he's reached this kind of breaking point where he's just I was himself in the best ability that he can be under substance use.
[10:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think he feels so low and so insecure and so hopeless. I was worried this whole season that he was going to kill himself.
[10:55] Portia Pendleton: So we didn't talk about this, but.
[10:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: In season, I think it was two. I think I know where you're going.
[11:00] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. So he's up on the roof. There's a couple of scenes where he's on the roof and just looking over. And then I think it's the end of season. It's the end of one of the seasons, not three, where he finally goes back up there and there's this long right, clear wall put up, and it's like, who did that watching him? How did they know.
[11:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: He'S thinking about it? I wonder, though, do we pick that up because we're therapists and stuff? Would the average person watching, seeing him look out, think like, I think you're thinking about suicide here.
[11:38] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I feel like some yeah, just because I mean, it seems intentional. Like, it seems like we're supposed to.
[11:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: And then they show you with the plexiglass or whatever it is. When I used to work for Yale, I remember actually, I didn't know this till I worked there, that in college. Mental health balconies and stuff like that are like a hot topic because they pose such a serious suicide risk for people being able to jump off the roof or jump off of this balcony or that balcony that people go around and measure the height and put up those plexiglass things and lock the doors to the roof and all these things that I never knew, but which make a lot of sense. So I don't know. It was interesting. Yeah, I definitely thought of that. And then the whole season, I was just like, again, he has narcissistic personality disorder. Kendall. I mean, they all do to some degree, but definitely Kendall. He has substance use disorder. Those co occur very frequently. He probably has some anxiety, which often co occurs. He might have depression, which often co occurs with all this stuff. His risk for suicide is so high.
[12:47] Portia Pendleton: Given all of that and all of the environmental triggers. Right. It doesn't seem like he sees his kids much. It seems like he is aware that there's a lot of people using him. He's totally estranged in a very dysfunctional way from his family, even though he.
[13:02] Dr. Katrina Furey: Feels that would be, like, the healthiest thing. But he keeps getting ostracized, and it's like, with each season, it's more and more and more, and this season it's really intense, where Logan tells the secretary, block his number for good.
[13:17] Portia Pendleton: The birthday card.
[13:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: The birthday card where he's like, Take your shares and **** off. But then that was all a ruse. That was all manipulative, right? Because then finally, at their mom's wedding, kendall sits down with Logan and is like, okay, I want to take you up on this. I want to get bought out and leave. Right? And, like, you're saying, Portia. I was like, Why didn't he do this earlier? Just get out already. And then he won't let him. I know he won't.
[13:46] Portia Pendleton: I want to keep you close. Or what if I want to keep you close?
[13:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: It was, like, so chilling, that scene between them, and even with Logan making his grandson try the food because he thought Kendall maybe poisoned him, when really the kids thought that earlier in the season. With the donuts, it's just like that degree of mistrust and danger they grew up with that constantly.
[14:16] Portia Pendleton: That's real.
[14:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's real.
[14:17] Portia Pendleton: Had a huge reaction to the donuts, then kind of Roman kind of joked about it. They kind of, like, laughed off. None of them ate that.
[14:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: They were all ate them. They all knew.
[14:25] Portia Pendleton: And then they felt uncomfortable, and then they left and dispersed. It was just such a gesture that had huge implications.
[14:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: And Logan knows what he's doing. And again, I'm like, were they poisoned? We'll never know because no one ate them. But I wouldn't be surprised, would you?
[14:43] Portia Pendleton: No, I wouldn't be surprised.
[14:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: I'm sure Logan has poisoned someone somewhere. Along the way. Why not have kids?
[14:49] Portia Pendleton: And even just something to like right. We're not talking about death, but we're talking about incapacitation. Whether that be having to be in the bathroom all day or like a date rape drug. Like you're just kind of out for a couple of hours.
[15:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: Hypno or something. Right, exactly. Yeah. That's chilling. Just chilling.
[15:13] Portia Pendleton: I thought Kendall kind of broke my heart. Or I felt so bad for him when he was at his birthday party. And Roman, I don't think meant to push him to the floor, but pushes him. I think Pet push him. Like, get goodbye done. And then Kendall falls in front of everyone and it just like where he had mentally, I was like, oh, my gosh. I just felt so sad for him.
[15:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know.
[15:41] Portia Pendleton: Like, he's lost, he's empty, he's surrounded by all of these people, and he feels like he's looking for his kids gift.
[15:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: He didn't find it. I know. Yeah, I know.
[15:53] Portia Pendleton: That was hard to watch.
[15:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. Kendall is just, like, such a compelling character. Again. I just am. Like, I hope Jeremy strong isn't therapy.
[16:01] Portia Pendleton: I know.
[16:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: He's married to a psychiatrist. We learned he's the method actor who's always in character. So I'm just really concerned for him doing this for this long. But I mean, you just really see Kendall unravel and all of that going on that show with Zway and then having this huge 40th birthday party, going to the park and inviting all these big fancy people. It's all so sad to me because.
[16:28] Portia Pendleton: He feels so, like, firing team after team after team lawyers.
[16:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: I loved when that lawyer asked him, like, do you think you're smarter than me? Because he does. He thinks he's smarter than he's not.
[16:40] Portia Pendleton: I thought his response was interesting. It was like a non response. But then he responds by firing her.
[16:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: Exactly.
[16:45] Portia Pendleton: So that is the response. So he does think he's so disrespectful.
[16:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: When he was like, let's just try harder. Yeah, let's just try harder. And it's like, oh, my God, dude, you're the one who's not taking in any feedback.
[16:58] Portia Pendleton: So let's talk about the pool. He was kind of laying on there. So when we saw that, I was like, okay, we're staying here for a while. It was a long scene of seeing him float. And I was like I was like.
[17:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: It'S coming, it's coming.
[17:12] Portia Pendleton: What's going to happen? So it seems like he was on.
[17:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: Substances in his hands. He's at least drinking. He probably has been on substances, right? Like, the whole time. I think it was intentional. I don't think it was an accident. I think especially because he's been so ostracized. And then they get to their mother's wedding and she's like, oh, you can't come to these things because Logan's going to be there.
[17:35] Portia Pendleton: And he's like, so he says your son can't come because of the ex husband who you hate?
[17:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: And she's like, Yep. Because the ex husband, who I hate, can do something right. And, like, my new husband wants those optics. I mean, like, how much more can Kendall be, like, kicked in the ground? How much more?
[17:58] Portia Pendleton: And I just couldn't think, too. It's like the gaslighting. You can tell, wanting to turn to this imaginary person, being like, do you hear you hearing this?
[18:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: This is crazy. Right?
[18:11] Portia Pendleton: And then, of course, this makes sense. It's 4 hours, Ken. It's not a big deal.
[18:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: All the minimization and dismissal, that happens a lot with Kendall. It happens a lot with Shiv, a lot with her. But he's so hopeless. It made me so sad that his kids were right there. That was the part where I was like, I don't know.
[18:34] Portia Pendleton: And Logan was, like, talking to the kids. He made some comment, like, I don't remember exactly, but he alluded to, like, you know, your dad's okay, right? It's fine. And I just thought that that was interesting.
[18:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: Why?
[18:55] Portia Pendleton: I feel like I couldn't tell the purpose. Are you saying that to them so that these kids don't become really screwed up because, again, you're related to them? Is there anything there? I feel like he has a little bit of sociopathic traits, but is there any normalcy of you're, this grandfather figure? They know their dad just, like, almost died.
[19:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: Are you trying to come from Christ?
[19:25] Portia Pendleton: And I feel like he's not a Joe Goldberg. He's horrible and narcissistic, but that's where I was like, what is the purpose here? And then he immediately is kind of making fun of his grandson for that book.
[19:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's like but also, I can't remember the content of the book, but it seemed really on point with what had just happened with the dad. To me, there was a clear emotional connection. There was something about a parent leaving, but then coming back. I wish I and his sister was.
[19:51] Portia Pendleton: Like, oh, he likes to read it sometimes, and it's like it's probably, like, comforting for him because he's so upset.
[19:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: But instead, he's like, so and so. Give me a new book with action. Right? Yeah, give me an action book. This is what boys should read. So I don't know. And then we just remember that was the little boy. He'd, like, punched his face, and then he asked to try his food. Yes. So it's like, I don't god, you.
[20:18] Portia Pendleton: Got to hope that they're getting some balance with rava.
[20:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: I hope so, right?
[20:25] Portia Pendleton: Oh, and then the guinea pig or the rabbit?
[20:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: The rabbit again, because Kendall thinks he knows everything. He's like, Just feed the rabbit the bagel. Just feed the bagel. I think the rabbit, like, dies or gets really sick, and then the kids wrap the wrapping paper in a rabbit wrapping paper. So in that way, it's like, the kids are also, like, knocking him down.
[20:43] Portia Pendleton: And you can see Kendall's again another moment. The whole birthday party was really so sad. But when he's digging through all the gifts and it's so important that he finds the kids gift, and I get that. I feel that he wanted to open he probably wanted to text them or see what they got him that makes him feel good. They got me a gift.
[21:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: But it also highlights how disconnected he is from them that he doesn't even know. Right.
[21:10] Portia Pendleton: I think he was surprised that maybe they got him something and then find it. I was like, I think she wants.
[21:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: To find the gift. I think she said they made it for him, like, it was homemade. And Roman, a lot of times, is always talking about how, like, oh, Kendall can't find his kids again. Oh, where are the kids? And he is absent from their life. And then it's like, well, maybe that's what's best for them. I hate to say it, but maybe I'm hoping Rava's like, protecting them or shielding them somehow. She has to, because he can't do that for them.
[21:44] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[21:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, he can't fully protect them from his dad. Yeah. Like, I just really feel for Kendall. And then near the end when he finally has that breakdown, which reminds us of the little breakdown he had in season two with Shiv where they don't get into the details, but there was, like, a moment of genuine connection between them where you're like, oh, I didn't know you guys were capable.
[22:13] Portia Pendleton: And Shiv seems so caught off guard at first, and it seemed like it took her a lot to be like, oh, no, this is real. I'm not being manipulated. This isn't fake. Someone's not trying to get one over on me. And then she hugs him, and they're in the office, I believe, and he's just, like, crying. And I think she doesn't know what to do with that.
[22:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: From season two.
[22:36] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. And then she hugs him, and he's like, can you just take care of me? And she's like, okay. And I think she's really caught off guard and confused.
[22:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: He doesn't even know what that means. Yeah, I think he was crying to her about feeling like realizing all I'm worth is what I'm worth. That's it. And that's so true, unfortunately, and so sad. And around then, I was like, oh, no. I'm really worried about his safety. Really worried.
[23:01] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. So I thought it was a nice moment. I was really rooting for the three of them. I thought that all of their responses were, like, spot on. I thought the acting like they were awkward because they don't know how to do emotions, trying to joke it off that he's not getting better. You know what I mean? So then she kind of puts his arm her hand on his shoulder. Roman kind of crouches down, and they're, like, in it.
[23:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: And they're like they're getting closer to that physically, their proximity.
[23:35] Portia Pendleton: And then she gets also during this time of that, they're about to lose everything. So then she's getting a call. She has to walk away. They're like, Kendall, we need to we got to go. But I thought it was, like, a nice moment for the three of them. It seemed like they trauma bonded, and then they kind of go off to try to stop what's happening. But I want to rewatch that moment. I don't know why. I just thought it was nice. And I do too.
[24:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: I, like, want to, like, reanalyze it, you know, because I think you're right, I think. And again, it's like, kudos to the creators and the writers and the actors for getting that body language, the staging of how far away are the siblings? And they come close, and then they get pulled away, and it's so good. You are really depicting this so well. I'm just so impressed Kendall has, which.
[24:30] Portia Pendleton: Again, I thought just was so great, them walking away like Shiv. And shiv is still the most put together. Roman's hair, because it always kind of is a little disheveled. And then Kendall, we see him with all the dried, like, mud, right, like, on his pants, and he's just, like, kind of shuffling. And again, he just looks broken. He looks like a broken one.
[24:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: He does. He needs to be admitted to an inpatient psychiatric unit, like, yesterday. I'm just so worried for him. But of course, he gets taken to a hospital and cleared and goes home that day. Right. Because it's probably like, oh, I just fell asleep. I had too many mimosas or lemon cellos or whatever they were drinking. But I'm like, yeah, being intoxicated contributed, but I also think it tracks.
[25:17] Portia Pendleton: Oh, yeah, he's at risk.
[25:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: Super.
[25:19] Portia Pendleton: And we saw that all the way through the beginning, the glancing down the building.
[25:25] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. I'd be surprised if that was the first time this happened for him.
[25:30] Portia Pendleton: So, Roman, in season three, we had two responses.
[25:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, I want to hear about yours.
[25:36] Portia Pendleton: So I liked him the least until I think this is the most, I haven't liked him in a season. So I still thought the moments with Jerry were, like, funny, interesting, ha ha, light. And then I really liked him making the decision to get in the car, to go to kind of to challenge Logan in the last episode. But I felt like his behavior in this season was really disgusting, and I know it has been before. It just really bothered me. I liked him the least overall. I will say, after watching the final episode, I like him again. I don't know that helped, but during all of the inner episodes, I really, really was upset with him, and I.
[26:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: Had the opposite reaction, where I really liked him a lot better than Kendall. I don't know, I guess I felt like he was finally getting a chance. I think Roman probably has the greatest amount of genuine love for Logan. Of all the siblings, I don't think that's healthy. I think they have a very sadomasochistic bond with Logan, hurting him and Roman taking it as like a way of feeling close to him. But I feel like finally with Kendall so ostracized, it was like Roman finally got a chance to kind of shine. And I guess that started at the end of season two when he went overseas. And then there was that weird terrorist breakdown or hold down or whatever, and.
[27:16] Portia Pendleton: Carl was like, I just want you to know I'm having a panic attack.
[27:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: He's like, you would never be able to tell, but I am. When that happened, I was like, did Logan orchestrate this? Is he trying to keep Roman out of here? Is he trying to kill Roman? Is he trying to create some things to get press about, like, oh, Roman Roy almost dies and to take the heat off. But I don't know, I guess I felt like again, the businessy words go above my head a lot of the times. But it seemed like Logan was actually taking Roman's opinions into consideration, and that Roman, it turns out, has good instincts about things, like when he would go to try to make deals, like even that one overseas in season two. And they comes back and he's like, it's not going to happen. I feel like he has a good read on people. So then I started thinking like, is he the surprise smart one? Is he the one who all along should have been listened to and hasn't been? So I think that was the part where I was like and then the way he can talk to the president, he can talk to the fancy people and sort of move things along. I don't know, I guess I was like, good for you, Roman. Like the underdog coming through. But then he is like awful in so many other ways.
[28:31] Portia Pendleton: So the one thing about, I think borderline that I just was kind of recalling when I was thinking about Roman in season three is that your symptoms become more severe when you're activated by uncomfortable emotions or pressure or something that's intense. And I think him being now like the golden child with his dad is so much pressure, so much pressure. He doesn't want to give this up. He's also just like around, it seems like his dad a lot. And so I think that his Bpd traits are stronger where he is idolizing his dad so much. I think he always has. I think it's like we're seeing it so obviously here the devaluation of others, including Shiv, which I feel like they have this, again, kind of gross, but banter. That feels normal for them.
[29:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's like a gross, like old boys club, but it's like their daughter and sister. So it's really gross, right?
[29:29] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, it feels like for me, like Roman more so which again, I don't know why I'm saying this, because then I'm thinking back to season. One, and I disagree. But he crosses the line more. I felt like in season three with doing things and saying things that I was more disgusted with.
[29:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: Do you think maybe it was because in other seasons he'd done that with random people and now it's like his siblings sure. Like the way he treated Kendall at the birthday party was so gross. And shiv was shiv the whole time.
[29:59] Portia Pendleton: So that's when it came out, I think that the company was having Kendall's kids followed and talked to and Shiv was like, what? That's disgusting. And Roman was like, we knew. What do you mean? Yeah, that's what happens, right? There was this weird kind of rift or separation going on, that morality.
[30:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: And again, we were talking about how in some ways it seemed like Kendall's becoming more and more like Logan, even like when they're wearing the exact same navy hat and these little details. But he's becoming like him with being so ruthless, like trying to make that deal with that investor, even when his dad's like, having a medical emergency. That's what his dad would do and wants him to do. But from the outside, that's so gross. Roman is also becoming like Logan in that way of just this really warped sense of morality, of any sense at all. And I think Shiv is really put off by it, but then she doesn't have a great moral compass either. So that's where it's all really interesting to me. What things each of the siblings are like, that's too far, but then the other one's like, no, that's too far. And you're like, it's been too far along, guys.
[31:14] Portia Pendleton: And we see. Just like I thought it was like a funny cultural kind of poking at when they are at the which I'm assuming because Shiv is a liberal and she went to the dark side, quote unquote. So they're at the Republican kind of small convention where all the rich people pick the nominees and Shiv is having a really hard time with one of the people that they're interested in or that Roman really likes because she's like, he's horrible, he's despicable, he's doing all these things and she's like drawing the line there.
[31:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, she doesn't want to get in the photo.
[31:47] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[31:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: And then Logan says to her, are you part of this family or not? And that is like such a veiled threat. Right. Because then you're going to be like.
[31:55] Portia Pendleton: Kendall, right, who's not here. Exactly.
[31:59] Dr. Katrina Furey: But then when they're trying to pick the nominee and the guy they were all thinking about, remember, they're like, he licks his lips a lot. Yeah, just these little things. And it's like, of course that's what they're worried about. Not the guy they end up going with who's, like, supports Nazis and it's really terrible. They're worried about the guy who licks his lips too much. But of course they are. They're narcissists, like, of course.
[32:22] Portia Pendleton: And it's really so clear that they just want someone who can do what they want to because that guy initially right? He's, like, call room service, right, for the coke. And then Roman tips off the other guy to go bring him a Coke. And he does. And then they're like, oh, he's in. And it's just like really?
[32:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: Exactly. But that's what I mean with Roman, where he did tip off the guy. So that's where I feel like he was moving and shaken in a way that I was impressed by. And then I was like, Whoa, gross. Why am I impressed? Right? Like I was like, what's?
[33:02] Portia Pendleton: Kind of attractive?
[33:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I was like, whoa. Whoa. Why am I maybe it felt like.
[33:08] Portia Pendleton: He'S having more control or he's, like, finally getting out from under he thinks he's getting out from under the thumb, but he's still under it.
[33:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: Or, like, even more, I think. So.
[33:23] Portia Pendleton: It'S not because his Bpd treats were coming out more that I didn't like him in this episode. In this episode. I think maybe it's just how he treated Shiv, to be quite honest. Maybe that's what just really bothered me, because it was so I feel like, again, her moral compass is skewed. However, she has the hardest time kind of dealing with politics, some sexual assault stuff. She knows that she's being kind of used as, like, the face where she's a female, so she should go here again, like, morally gray. But then it's like, Kendall's kids. She's like, this is a line. Why are we crying?
[34:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: The family. Yeah, she'll go talk to the whistleblower and convince her not to testify. But the family there's something that seems like it should be off limits, whereas Roman that's not even off limits. Right. I'm so eager to hear your thoughts about the evolution of Roman and Jerry's relationship, if we want to call it that.
[34:23] Portia Pendleton: I was, like, happy for it as it was building. And part of it just because I thought it was, like, comedic relief, totally on the surface, like, not seeing the why or why this is problematic. But I think it was just, like, a funny side story. She almost seemed in this season to be more manipulative.
[34:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: Jerry yeah.
[34:50] Portia Pendleton: So at first I thought it was kind of like, I don't know, maybe she's maybe she's into this a little interesting and likes a young guy and keeps her jumping.
[35:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I kept wondering, she has to have no wife because she's always floating around with them. But then it turns out she's got daughters.
[35:06] Portia Pendleton: I was like, and this boyfriend and boyfriend.
[35:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. I felt like Roman really did want to marry her, be in a relationship, and she's just like, Whoa, Roman, no.
[35:19] Portia Pendleton: Well, and we see him do this with a couple. With one other person or two, I think two other females that he is kind of like, in this relationship with in season one and two. He's like, well, **** it. Let's just get married. They do this and they're like, we've never had sex. No. Or, that's really way too fast. And again with Bpd, it's like, okay, idolizing them. He's impulsive. I think he gets his sense of self through others. I don't think he has a strong sense of self. I think so badly.
[35:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[35:52] Portia Pendleton: Security and attachment in a relationship, and he doesn't really get that.
[35:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right, I think. Exactly. He wants it so badly, but he's also terrified of it. That's why I think legitimate intimacy is unsafe or feels unsafe to him. But he's like, let's just get married, and then I'll have you. You can't leave me. And yet the women he's saying that to aren't the type who just say, okay, yeah, right. They're the type who are like, well, this isn't actually cutting it for me. So in that way, he is attracting women who will then reject him.
[36:24] Portia Pendleton: Which is interesting because thinking of all the women out there who he may come across, who wouldn't just be like, yeah, I'll marry you 100%.
[36:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's what I mean. But again, that's like, where the creators and writers and everyone involved in this show got it so right. Because he's so rejected by his mother and now he's being rejected by Jerry. He's been rejected by all these other people. He's always rejected by his dad. That's what he knows. He could find any number of girl who would like a willa. Exactly.
[36:57] Portia Pendleton: To be honest.
[36:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right, exactly.
[36:59] Portia Pendleton: But we kind of talked about how Jerry, for him, is maybe safe because she's unattainable, the age difference, the position in the company. So maybe he feels like she's safe. They poke fun, which we talked about last episode at how he wants to have sex with his mother, but it's.
[37:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: Frequently it's, like, really legit and really obvious and out there. And he was the only one who was, like, really upset about the mom deciding to get married again and being really concerned about the prenup and everything. Right. So I think that's just really interesting.
[37:33] Portia Pendleton: So how did you react when you saw that he sent Logan the **** pic?
[37:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: Okay.
[37:41] Portia Pendleton: We saw it.
[37:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: I'm going to say I loved the way all that played out, like, comedically. I don't think that's appropriate, but I was like, how did that mix up happen? Did he have Freudian? Was it like right, so someone texted him, well done, Roman. I thought it was Jerry texting him that.
[38:06] Portia Pendleton: So maybe he so badly wanted it to be Logan that that's why he responded. I mean, but then it got so.
[38:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: Someone says, well done, Logan. We think it's coming from Jerry.
[38:16] Portia Pendleton: Well done, Roman.
[38:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: Sorry. Well done, Roman. Write the text. We think it's coming from Jerry. So then he texts back, and he's doing it right there in the boardroom, like, under the table, right there. Not going to the bath. Like, right there. There's still people milling around right and then all of a sudden it shows up on Logan's phone. So I was like, did he get the number mixed up or did he.
[38:35] Portia Pendleton: Just see him sliding down in his chair? He makes eye contact with his dad and kind of like, shrugs.
[38:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I was like he's like stripped away. And then when his dad calls him in and he's like, can you imagine just how humiliating and what are you, a sicko? And it's like, yeah, I don't know. He's like, it's just a **** pick, dad people do, like people do **** picks, whatever. And then when Shiv uses that opportunity to corner Jerry right. I was just like, oh, my God, this is all just but Jerry didn't seem phased.
[39:10] Portia Pendleton: No, because I don't think anything phases Jerry. I think that she is like a secret not secret. She's something.
[39:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: She's a sociopath or something with just like no feelings, I feel.
[39:30] Portia Pendleton: Yes, because I don't know how else or has developed a coping skill to be in here, like you said, for decades. That's not typical to survive. And she doesn't seem like Frank. Where Frank has put himself in positions or challenged Logan, it seems like that's why he was fired and brought on and brought back and then he joins Team Kendall. Jerry is never in that position. She's always the right hand. She always knows what to say. I feel like even in a sense, I've never seen Logan be horrible to her. He's yelled at her and carry it over here or whatever, telling her to f off. But they seem like the most professional they're able to have this professional relationship where I don't see him abuse her in the way he abuses Carl and Frank and everyone else.
[40:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right, I agree with you. And I think I wonder if she is like his female equivalent in a way, because she's the general counsel, so she's like on their attorney, basically. So she knows everything. Right. It's not that she didn't know about Cruz. She didn't know about this. She knows everything. She has known everything for decades.
[40:41] Portia Pendleton: I don't think Logan have had sex. I don't get a roman about it. It seems like.
[40:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. Because she's like his age.
[40:52] Portia Pendleton: Exactly. That's the appropriate man.
[40:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: Exactly. That's what I mean. That's why he hasn't right. He's always going for the younger one, so that's why he doesn't see her as that kind of object. And I bet she hasn't really disagreed with him or she has, like, stuck around. Right. Like, I think what's interesting to me about Logan and thinking about the kids and somewhere in there some character said this and I was like, that is exactly right. Where it's like Logan pits them all against each other to see who's going to stick around, I think, because he's so afraid of trust and loyalty and all that stuff. And then at the very end, when the kids are in the car, they're going I was like, yes.
[41:37] Portia Pendleton: You'Re uniting.
[41:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: You're going to take it over. You're going to throw him out. Like, why haven't you done this earlier, Roman? I was like, I think he's really going to be on board this time. Although I'm a little nervous the dad will get to him and then the dad doesn't get to him. I was, like, really proud of Roman, I think, for being able to with.
[41:54] Portia Pendleton: And you can see that happening in Roman's head.
[41:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, you might see the kind of mental battle oh, my God, so well. And then when they realize that somehow the dad has gone to their mom to get the shares, so now he doesn't need them, and their plan has been foiled. And then Roman goes to Jerry, and on his with her on his knees, right. Again, perfection. On his knees is like, please help us. Help us. And she says something like, what's in it for me? I exploded.
[42:29] Portia Pendleton: If Roman was listening, which I think he was, but if he was listening and actually had a view of a therapist, which he doesn't, she has said that to him throughout this entire time. Right. She said, every decision you make, you have to ask yourself, what's in it for me? She's, like, coaching him on this the entire time. She's talked about, we need boundaries for this. I feel like almost, in a way, it's like Roman didn't see any of that. He didn't want to. He couldn't idealizing her. Yeah. And so then she had the response that I don't think should have been surprising.
[43:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: But that's what they all do, right?
[43:08] Portia Pendleton: They keep coming back, they keep getting kicked. They go to their mom for support. It's like, over and over and over again. They think, these people who should right? She's like a mentor.
[43:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: They should, but they don't. Like, yes, you should be able to trust your parents or the people in the company. Again. I bet they've known Jerry since they were kids.
[43:30] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. Forget Jerry carl.
[43:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: Frank. When they when the adult kid I keep calling them kids, but when the sibling yeah. Walked in and saw all the flutter and chaos of, like, the dad, like, making the deal to get bought out. What betrayal. Yeah. What betrayal? Oh, my God. That really broke my heart. And then we see Tom, and I was like, I knew it, I knew it. I called him from the start, and interestingly, you didn't pick that up right away.
[44:11] Portia Pendleton: No, I didn't even pick it up on the episode. So we talked about this a little bit before we started recording, and I had literally no idea that Tom had anything to do with that. So I don't know what that says.
[44:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: But I think you just really want to see the good in people. And I don't trust anyone, maybe. I don't know. It was like, in this whole season, right? It felt like the Roy family wanted to maintain their company and buy other companies to grow bigger and fix their debt situation, maybe get some private investments. Pick the next president who is like anti tech for a while, but he.
[44:51] Portia Pendleton: Seems so dumb, like, Logan, what are you doing?
[44:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: Well, because he's like in the Dark.
[44:56] Portia Pendleton: Age, not on board. I know.
[44:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: Until he realizes he's got to get on board. And then that Adrian Brody character, that shareholder who they fly out to, points it out.
[45:10] Portia Pendleton: So that's two people so him. And then the guy who is in.
[45:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: Scarsgard yeah, he was in some vampire.
[45:17] Portia Pendleton: Show where everyone was freaking out because you saw him nude years ago. So then he also points out Logan's Fragility and just like where the company needs to grow and stuff like that. And I thought that that was really interesting just for Logan to hear two and the second guy, and I think more so, really successful. He knows that they're next. And I think he kind of comes to the conclusion that Waystar has to do something and they can't just stick to the status quo.
[45:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: But it's sad because his kids have been telling him that, but I know in all different ways he can't hear it from them, I think, because, again, I think that would shatter his sense of self. But hearing it from these other white dudes who are successful on their own and have a stake or something, at least the Adrian Brody character had a stake in the company. This other guy didn't. Right. They wanted to maybe buy his company, then they were going to be co owners and then, oh, actually, we're going to sell somehow he could hear that, remember? And then when he asked Roman to leave, I was like, oh, no. But then Roman doesn't tell anyone.
[46:28] Portia Pendleton: I know. And Roman still acts, which again, it doesn't help him to do these things.
[46:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[46:34] Portia Pendleton: But he needs to have Logan's support and he needs to believe that he is Logan's right hand man. So he's not going to do what would honestly help him and benefit.
[46:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: They should have gotten plan in motion and called their mom then, right? They should have done all that. But I don't think he's capable. Right. In season one, he says at the wedding, like, I have borderline personality disorder or something, he's definitely demonstrating the traits. I don't think he can hold on to both of those things at the same time about his dad. He can't.
[47:06] Portia Pendleton: Right. It's either dad, right, is idealized, or he devalued and it shifts back and forth and it really just shifts at the last second when he's standing in the room. Yes, he makes the decision to get in the van with them. Yes, he makes the decision to go to the meeting, but he has to decide in front of his dad right. To align himself with his siblings.
[47:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: Wow.
[47:25] Portia Pendleton: Logan asks Roman to have Kendall leave and Roman's like, no, right.
[47:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: And that's like, finally you guys are united. Like, I wish they would have united earlier, but then we wouldn't get this great TV.
[47:36] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[47:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: So I think we want to wrap up by talking about Shiv. And it's interesting, right? Because I feel like in all of our episodes so far about succession, we talk about her a little bit, but not a lot. And that's like right. In parallel with her role in this family.
[47:51] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[47:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: She's just also kind of forgotten, like, Connor not quite as much, but she's a girl and yeah. I don't know, I just am so curious. Like, what if she'd been a boy?
[48:02] Portia Pendleton: She plays the role of the girl in the family with all the boys in the patriarchy really well, most of.
[48:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: The time, but she is in a lot more skirts.
[48:14] Portia Pendleton: I think she purposely separates herself right. To do politics, because that way she is respected, she is in power, she is making decisions. And then, of course, she wants to be the CEO or the chairman of Wastar. But then when that seems like it's not happening, you just see her feel so much kind of thrown away more and more and more and more. And I think she can't understand why Roman, who again, has no experience doing anything, it seems like that's why Jerry was like, you need to do the management program. And Shiv has a career. Again, I see her as attending school. I see her as getting really good grades. I see her as just, like, finesse. I might have to come in and finesse.
[48:59] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I'm so shocked she doesn't have an eating disorder. Are you shocked?
[49:07] Portia Pendleton: I feel like she probably binges and purges in secret, and it's just like, not a big deal. It's just like what everybody does.
[49:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know, but I'm shocked. We haven't talked about yet. Maybe we'll get there, but I feel like she would, given the environment and everything we're talking about, but of course, right.
[49:25] Portia Pendleton: Like, such a female. And again, just because she is a female in the family, and I think it's just I don't know how they could have written her character better.
[49:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know.
[49:35] Portia Pendleton: So we see her and Tom's relationship really interesting. I thought maybe you could speak to what you think it's like for Tom being in a relationship with I don't know if you would consider this accurate. Like a bigger narcissist. This is what I think. I think Tom has some stronger attachment abilities.
[50:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
[50:02] Portia Pendleton: And Shiv does not. Whether or not he's narcissistic doesn't matter in the fact that he's still trying to attach to this person. Even if there's an ulterior motive, he still wants a connection. Like, he loves her. I think he wants a relationship, and I don't think she literally can have one.
[50:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
[50:18] Portia Pendleton: I think he does a really good job coming out.
[50:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think, with Tom, I always felt like there's something going on here and even in this season, some people would ask, why are you a Shiv? He kept getting on Greg's case, wanting to ask this girl out, that girl out. And he almost, like, coaching Greg, like, you got to go up. And that's kind of like what he did, right? So I still am dying to know how they met. I wonder if it was, like, in school or if it was, like, online dating, which I could also see, honestly.
[50:51] Portia Pendleton: Like, on what's it called? Raya.
[50:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, that riah, whatever it is. But I think he does a really good job portraying himself as, like, I'm a good guy from the Midwest and, like, a humble guy and stuff like that, but I just don't think he is. From the beginning, when he saw Logan being incapacitated in the hospital and thinking, okay, now is the time to propose, I just think he wants to attach to Shiv because she is Shiv Roy. I don't think he would if she didn't have that name and that potential for power. He wants to be the head of it. And in what world does he have that right? All of these the three siblings are so grossly entitled in an experience that it's laughable. But in what world does Tom from Nowhere have a right and think that because he married Shiv now he's owed? Anytime she's making moves, he's like, well, where do I stand? Where do I stand? Where do I stand? And I think season two, I sort of softened on him a bit because I felt like, well, maybe he does really love her, and now she wants this open marriage, and he didn't want that. He's saying he loves her. I think he can say all the right things. I don't think he means that.
[52:03] Portia Pendleton: You think he can get her hurt? Because that's what I'm picking up on. I guess it's like, I feel sorry for him, or I feel more empathy for him when I feel like Shiv has hurt him.
[52:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, you see it in his eyes, like, when they were having sex or going that way, and they're talking dirty, and she says really cutting things, like, I don't love you, but that's why you love me, like, those sorts of things. And then the next day he says that it hurts him. I don't know yet. I think we need to watch season four and see how it unfolds, because I think part of me thinks he's hurt, but the other part of me thinks he's manipulating her to get what he wants. So I don't know yet. But then at least the way I interpreted the very end was all the siblings were shocked. Like, how did he get to mom? He knew we were coming. Like, how did he know? How did he know? Roman didn't tell anyone. Kendall didn't tell anyone. Shiv told Tom because she thought she could trust him. And then all of a sudden, here comes Tom.
[53:02] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. And we see. So I remember now that you say that, like, then Tom meeting with Greg, right. And like, yes, tom saying these things. And so your interpretation is that Greg then called Logan.
[53:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: Logan. So in the moment before we saw Tom at the end, I thought Tom was telling Greg about the siblings uniting and wanting him to come on that side, like, go with the siblings. And then Greg was like, can you tell me what this is about? And he's like, no. And I thought it was that. But now I think Tom told Greg to tip off Logan so then he could still be sort of distant from it and clean. But I think that's how Logan figured it out. I don't know if you remember, but when Shiv sees Tom walking in, logan pats his arm like, Good job.
[53:49] Portia Pendleton: Which he would never do.
[53:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: He would never do. Except when Tom said he would go to jail. Then he said, good job. You know what I mean?
[53:58] Portia Pendleton: And then when he called him son but he was having udi.
[54:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
[54:01] Portia Pendleton: And then that's when Tom was like something.
[54:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's when something was like, I think he's ill, but in that way, I think what a fascinating depiction of Shiv basically marrying her dad and Roman, like.
[54:15] Portia Pendleton: Being attracted to his mom and Shiv marrying her dad, then ******** her.
[54:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes. And when Tom comes up to Shiv and you see her, like, shudder, I got chills. Just the way that Sarah Snook, the actress, portrayed it. I got chills.
[54:33] Portia Pendleton: I have to watch that last scene again. I feel like I didn't pick up on that.
[54:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: It was so intense. And then the discussion between Shiv and her mom oh, my God.
[54:43] Portia Pendleton: That I think it was such helpful back story gives you just such a good look at the relationship, even for all of them, because it alludes to the fact that the mom left them for money or for the shares or for something like it was a business. They were a business transaction.
[54:59] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes, exactly. They were objects even to the mom. And Shiv was like, Mom, I was ten.
[55:04] Portia Pendleton: Right?
[55:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: I was ten. And she's trying to say, like, oh, I had a really hard time watching that scene. But again, expertly written, someone on that cast must unfortunately have a mother like.
[55:16] Portia Pendleton: That to write it.
[55:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: That perfectly right. Whoever you are, like, I'm sorry, and I hope you have your own therapy.
[55:24] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I thought it was so sad. And also interesting how Shiv has been very firm on no kids. And then after talking with her mom, it's like, now she's considering having children.
[55:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: But only, like, freeze the Empress.
[55:38] Portia Pendleton: Tom seems very into it, which I don't see as him wanting kids. I think he wants, like, ties to Forever.
[55:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, I totally agree. And he was even trying to impregnate her when he was about to go to prison. That's what I mean is I think he's a snake.
[55:54] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[55:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I think it's starting to come out. And I don't think he's genuine. I don't think he actually wants to be with her or have her children and have a family. I think he wants the money and the power and the heirs.
[56:07] Portia Pendleton: Which is so sad for Shiv.
[56:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
[56:10] Portia Pendleton: Because she thought because I think she thought that she had the power.
[56:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
[56:15] Portia Pendleton: Like tricking her all time.
[56:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, I know.
[56:20] Portia Pendleton: But I also don't think that anyone else could be with her. Right. Someone else would have to have that ulterior motive in order to cope with.
[56:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: How she treats exactly.
[56:29] Portia Pendleton: Like she's not treating you well. Which I'm not making an excuse for. But then most years, Tom has stayed.
[56:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. Like, why did he stay after the wedding night? It's because he wants the power, the money, all of it. Right. That's what he wants. And even, like, impregnating her so she can't cheat on him or leave him or whatever. Even if she does leave him, if he went to prison, he'd still be tied. He'd get child support or spousals or whatever. Oh, my gosh. It's chilling.
[57:00] Portia Pendleton: I think it's a good depiction of narcissism and Bpd of showing both sides of the person.
[57:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[57:08] Portia Pendleton: Because people who are narcissistic, people who have, of course, borderline we know this more of but can still get hurt. Still sad.
[57:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: Very deeply. Very deeply.
[57:17] Portia Pendleton: I think we're used to just like narcissistic. Oh, they're a narcissist. Like, they're whole, they're jerks. They don't seem to have feelings. Like no, they're not sociopathic or psychopathic, where it's like there's no feelings. No, these are people who have been deeply wounded and continue to hurt others and continue to get hurt. We see them get wounded over and over and over again.
[57:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: So that's why it's like this, back.
[57:40] Portia Pendleton: And forth, like right. We hate them, we feel sorry for them. We hate them.
[57:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: We feel sorry. Exactly. I totally agree. And just such an expert portrayal in that. And the way they sort of give you more info about their childhoods, about their upbringing along the way, slowly, that helps you really see how they got there. Right. And that's always one of the most fascinating things when I'm watching shows. Like, this is like, how did you get to be that kind of person? And then as we wrap up, as we always do, we forget Connor. He's forgotten. But I just had to acknowledge that scene where he's like, I'm the first born son. I'm the oldest son. It's me. It's not you. It's like he's carried that rage with.
[58:21] Portia Pendleton: Him his whole life, and he can't so, interestingly enough, it's like Roman and Shiv in that moment, have the whatever. Whether you want to call it awareness, whether you want to call it intellectualism. But they are there because of Kendall, right. And they want him to get help with the suicide. And it's. Like, Connor cannot stay there. He makes it about himself. And people still don't say helpful things, but Connor has this huge reaction when they're trying to be there for Kendall because he almost killed himself, right.
[58:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: And trying to say, we love you. We are worried for you. Please get them up. But you're right. Connor can't stay there. And Connor is probably most threatened by Kendall because Kendall is the secondborn son, who then becomes, like, the first in line.
[59:12] Portia Pendleton: And we see Kendall's style shift right throughout season one to three. He's wearing a T shirt with kind of a necklace with a big emblem on it. We see him shave his head. We see the sunglasses, cool sunglasses. And I think I want to hop back onto Connor because Connor and he proposes to Willa. Then he also gets really mad at them. Right. Because no one said congratulations, and I hear that. Right. But first of all, you're paying her. And no one knew that she said yes because she didn't say yes.
[59:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: And then he was like, everyone's looking willow. Can you at least pretend, like, through gritted teeth? It's just all growth.
[59:52] Portia Pendleton: And then the audacity that he has to believe that he can be the president, he's like, oh, well, we have 1%. You know what 1% is? A lot of people when we look at the US.
[01:00:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's a good chunk of people. But then when he is like, they're going to dig up stuff on, you willa remember. And basically using that to bully her into marrying him.
[01:00:19] Portia Pendleton: But there's something to the child.
[01:00:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: Exactly.
[01:00:23] Portia Pendleton: She can leave at any time.
[01:00:25] Dr. Katrina Furey: Exactly. Just like Tom, just like Jerry, just like all of them, but they stay. So it is just this, like, moth to the flame kind of situation.
[01:00:33] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[01:00:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, boy. Man, this show is amazing. It's really good. Really intense. Again, I hope they have therapists on set to cope with playing these characters. I'd be really worried if any of them are just sometimes they're like it's kind of actually me. So I'm just like being myself in this character. Like, I'd be very concerned about that.
[01:00:55] Portia Pendleton: I keep seeing Brian *** do some commercials now.
[01:00:59] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[01:00:59] Portia Pendleton: I think it's like it's funny, like.
[01:01:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: Alcohol commercial or something. I'm like that's spot on. Yeah.
[01:01:05] Portia Pendleton: But I really like what's his name? Culkin.
[01:01:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: Kieran Colton.
[01:01:12] Portia Pendleton: I think he's, like, my favorite actor and character in the show as of season three.
[01:01:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes. Again, I hate him. I love him.
[01:01:23] Portia Pendleton: I hate him. I love him. And let's think about Bpd, right?
[01:01:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's how people feel, 100%. But also thinking about Kieran Culkin personally was always in the shadow of Macaulay Culkin. So that's just fascinating. Like, is any of what he's bringing to the role tied to his personal experience? Like, unclear, but fascinating.
[01:01:43] Portia Pendleton: Fascinating.
[01:01:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: So if you could all just like our podcast and follow us and boost our numbers so we could someday interview him and ask him these hard hitting questions, that'd be awesome, because I just want to pick all their so make.
[01:01:57] Portia Pendleton: Sure if you haven't listened to some of our other episodes, we cover some movies and other TV shows. So scroll down to see if you've watched any of the things that we talk about. And make sure to join us over on TikTok at Analyze Scripts podcast. We make some, I think, funny content over there that is different from that we talk about here and our instagram at Analyze Scripts.
[01:02:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, and we will see you next Monday. All right, bye. This podcast and its contents are a copyright of Analyzed Scripts. All rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited. Unless you want to share it with your friends and rate review and subscribe, that's fine. All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we analyze the 2013 psychological thriller "Side Effects." Did ya'll remember that Channing Tatum was in this movie becauwe we didn't and it was a nice surprise! Too bad he died. In this episode, we explore Rooney Mara's portrayal of what we initially believe is major depressive disorder but then discover is actually manipulative behavior more consistent with malingering of a sociopathic level. We also discuss all sorts of medications and their side effects, including antidepressants, mood stabilizers, and antipsychotics. We hope you enjoy!
[00:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fury, a psychiatrist.
[00:12] Portia Pendleton: And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker.
[00:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows.
[00:23] Portia Pendleton: Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends.
[00:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: There is so much misinformation out there, and it drives us nuts.
[00:31] Portia Pendleton: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like.
[00:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: With a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better.
[00:39] Portia Pendleton: So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn.
[00:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: And your DSM Five and enjoy.
[00:57] Portia Pendleton: Today we're going to be talking about side effects, which I had never seen before, which I think some people might find, like, shocking. This is like a movie about a lot. Therapy, mental health, medications.
[01:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
[01:11] Portia Pendleton: So we're going to be talking about that today. I'm really excited, and I kind of just wanted to say briefly, wow. Like, Channing Tatum was in it, and I was like, is this why everyone watches the movie? Hello, Andrew Law?
[01:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
[01:27] Portia Pendleton: How long did it take you to figure out who was running the show?
[01:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: So I've seen this movie several times. The first time not till the very end. I remember being really surprised. What about you?
[01:41] Portia Pendleton: Same.
[01:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, right. I didn't get it the first time I watched it, I thought I think I thought this was supposed to be a medication side effect. And that was like the whole premise. And then when they got into the insider trading and all this stuff, I was like, oh, whoa. Yeah, I didn't see that coming at all. And then when I rewatched it before recording this episode, I remembered the plot. And so I was really watching Rooney Mars character a lot more closely to see if I could pick up on sort of subtle things that would suggest she was malingering. And they even used that word correctly, which is kind of feigning symptoms for what we call secondary gain, which means, like, to get out of work or to get money in a settlement or to stay out of prison or stuff like that. What did you think about Rooney mara's portrayal of what we think at first is a woman with depression?
[02:41] Portia Pendleton: I thought it was great. I thought it also shows how we can be, like, functional.
[02:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
[02:48] Portia Pendleton: So she's working, she is dressed well, but behind the scenes, like someone who's really suffering with kind of it appears, maybe more like major depressive disorders. She's having these episodes versus kind of more persistent depressive disorder, which would just be like persistent depressive depression with periods that you can also have major depressive disorder popping into.
[03:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. And they allude to again, I think we'll talk about her before the twist. So when we think she's just depressed and I'm saying just depressed, not to minimize the depression, but because there's more that comes out later, but I thought her eyes. She just looks subdued. She looks sad. She looks flat. She's not really super joyful. Even when they get him out of prison, she hugs him and stuff, but there's not a lot of animation there. And again, maybe that's just her personality, but she does have this suicide attempt where she rams her car into a wall in a parking garage, and when Channing goes to the hospital, he's like, oh, I thought we moved past this to suggest, like, this has happened before. And that's where she meets Jude Law's character, Dr. Banks, in the Er as the psychiatrist evaluating her.
[04:08] Portia Pendleton: So what did you think of that?
[04:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: Who was he evaluating before her?
[04:12] Portia Pendleton: Oh, the man who was kind of delusional. No, I'm sorry. He was not delusional.
[04:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: He was Haitian. Yes.
[04:18] Portia Pendleton: And so he had seen the ghost of his father driving a cab, and so he kind of attacked the cab.
[04:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: I'm glad I brought that up, because I remembered that's a good portrayal. I think that's something we do learn about in our training is putting the symptoms of various mental health conditions within a cultural context, because sometimes what we might think of in the American culture as delusional, like seeing ghosts of relatives who have recently died in other cultures, is not it's, like, normal in those cultures. So that was an interesting depiction of that. And again, an interesting depiction of a black man in New York City coming in and speaking a language the officer can't understand and wanting to sort of restrain him or punish him or take him to jail. And the doctor, in this case, being able to apparently speak French or Creole I think it was French and get a sense for what's really going on and keep him out of jail. So that's an example of not malingering. That's not malingering. That's like the law psychiatry or mental health interface, like, working appropriately.
[05:32] Portia Pendleton: That was really great, and I thought it was just, like, a good check mark for him, for his character.
[05:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. And then now that we're talking about it, like a really interesting juxtaposition to him then moving next door, wherever, and evaluating Emily. Again, a white woman, someone later calls her, like, a fragile bird, attractive and just I guess you're right. I do pick up a lot on the background or the setting. I didn't love that. He didn't close the curtain right away. He starts the interview standing over her. I didn't love that. Just, again, like, a man towering over you and you're feeling really emotional and vulnerable. I don't love sit down so you're level. Don't get too close, though. I like that he didn't get too close. I think eventually he sat. Eventually he closes the curtain. I thought his line of questioning was pretty good in the way that she was saying, like, oh, my head hurts. They said I might have a concussion. And he's like, well, we got to wait for the CT scan. How's your head been lately? That's kind of weird. That's kind of a clunky thing to say. He didn't introduce himself as a psychiatrist right away. I'm not sure why or if that was intentional to see again. Maybe he already suspected she'd withhold things. If he did so, maybe he wanted to see if she'd reveal anything before she knew. That. That, to me now that I'm saying it should have been his first sign that something was off here. He says to her, usually when someone's in a car accident, there's skid marks. You try to avoid hitting the wall, but you went right for the wall. So to us, that suggests a suicide attempt. I can't believe she wasn't hospitalized.
[07:27] Portia Pendleton: Well, that was what I was thinking. I was like, she didn't come in with kind of a thought of suicide and now is presenting, after waiting in the air for many hours as safe and has a caregiver or a partner and is evaluated and is sent home and non hospitalized. That happens a lot. Maybe sometimes it shouldn't, but this was an attempt, and this was a really serious attempt.
[07:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like she rammed her car into the wall. I thought, though, that they did a good job portraying what we sometimes look for, which is called future oriented, like having plans for the future. Like, oh, no, I can't be outside. I have to go to work tomorrow. My husband just got home. I can't do that. At the same time, when I was working in Ers with evaluating patients like this, I don't care how future oriented you are, when you ram your car into the wall, you need to be hospitalized. And the fact that she was able to talk him out of it when that was his first instinct to me is, like, in retrospect, red flag number one. Yeah, right. The fact that she's like, you have an office, right? I'll come see you a handful of times.
[08:33] Portia Pendleton: And to me, that was red flag number two, because I don't think that that happens often. I don't know of the ethics behind it, but I just don't think that that's typically available.
[08:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: No. Right.
[08:47] Portia Pendleton: Like, you'd be referring to, like, a PHP partial hospitalization program, tense about patient program through your hospital. You know what I mean? That would be the treatment exit.
[08:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: Not just like, I just ran my car into the walk. I'm going to go see an outpatient psychiatrist. That's not an appropriate level of care for that severe thing that just happened. I think you need at least a couple of days. But again, unfortunately, this should always happen, right? Unfortunately, there's not enough hospital beds. Patients wait and wait and wait in the Er forever. Sometimes insurance won't cover it, even after something like that. I'll never forget my training, working on the inpatient child unit and being told by insurance it was my job to do the peer to peer review because they were denying ongoing a hospitalization for like a twelve year old girl for suicidal thoughts and depression because she hadn't actually attempted anything. So they thought we should discharge her. And it was like, unreal that they told us they're not going to pay for it because she hadn't made an attempt drives me nuts. But anyway, she had made an attempt. She should have been hospitalized. So the fact that she was able to manipulate him into going against his better judgment by appealing to well, I'll see you in your practice. I couldn't tell if he was affiliated with the hospital. It didn't seem like it. It seemed like he was like what we call moonlighting or like picking up.
[10:11] Portia Pendleton: Side shifts, which he does talk about later because he's working all these multiple jobs.
[10:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right, exactly. So maybe he's like, oh, a patient, oh, a couple of times a week maybe it seems like he needs the money. And then we sort of start seeing her meeting with him. And again, the boundary crossings just continue our favorite. So, yeah, we see her starting to open up to him. He starts talking about medication, which again is is warranted. Yeah. When someone presents with significant symptoms of depression status post a suicide attempt, I think that's when she brings up Dr. Seabird's name, which is played by Katherine Zeta Jones, and she gives consent for them to talk to each other about her case, all of which is normal. And then somehow he sees Dr. Sebert at, like it looks like a pharma. By pharma I mean pharmaceutical company, like dinner or talk or something. And Dr. Sebert like, very casually mentions, oh, oblixa, I did write down, being a psychiatrist, the medications Dr. Sebert said she had tried Emily on, wellbutrin, Prozac affects her, and she apparently had problems with sleep and nausea. So that's interesting because those can be common side effects. And we have medications in different classes. We have Prozac, which is an SSRI, effects are an SNRI, and then Wellbutrin, which has a different mechanism of action in which we think of as sort of in this category of medications called like, atypical antidepressants, which just means, like other they work in different ways. So looking at that, my thought as a psychiatrist is did she have adequate trials on any of these? Like, could she tolerate them long enough to see did they really work because these medications take several weeks to kick in? Or did she stop them pretty early because of side effects? Problems with sleep and nausea are really common early side effects that usually go away if you can stay on it and you can prescribe things to sort of help with that in the early stages. It's weird to me that she was only on one SSRI. Then we jump and again, I'm assuming we started with Prozac because that's typical practice, but maybe we didn't. But then you jumped to an SNRI then you jumped to this other thing. It's pretty atypical to jump around so quickly. And then it sounds like she was taking, as prescribed by Jude Lav's character Zoloft, 100 milligrams, which is a pretty high dose. So pretty high to get to 100 so quickly. Those are kind of my thoughts.
[12:47] Portia Pendleton: Is that dosage more like along the lines of an OCD patient?
[12:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: Not quite. That's a great question. So usually, like with Zoloft, you start around 50. You could start lower if you've never been on medication before to help ease the side effects as you're starting them, or if it's like, a young person or really thin person, you might start lower. 100 is, like, a pretty good dose for depression. I think the way it was depicted in the movie, I just felt like they got there really quick, which, again, you might want to given the severity of her suicide attempt, but usually you might go a little slower. But maybe again, I'm just assuming this was, like her first dose was 100. OCD definitely responds to higher doses of SSRIs compared to things like anxiety and depression. So for Zoloft, the therapeutic windows anywhere from 50 all the way to, like, 400 milligrams for OCD. Oftentimes people with OCD end up somewhere between two to 400, depending on the situation, but 100 could do it. Okay. Some other early boundary crossings that we see between Emily and Dr. Banks first, not hospitalizing her. The second, I would say, is when she found him. It looks like in it looks like maybe like some common area. So his office must be near the hospital or something. Almost gave me the vibe of, like, a cafeteria or something like that atrium that's right where he was sitting with his wife, who was preparing for a job interview, and he gives her a Pranal, and I thought, oh, gosh, he doesn't have great boundaries. You should never prescribe for your spouse or for someone you know? I mean, do do doctors do that sometimes? I'm sure proprietary is a pretty benign medication, but I think it just speaks to his own poor boundaries and why a patient like Emily might be able to sort of sniff that out and use it to her advantage. So all of a sudden, he gets a call with Emily kind of rambling on the phone, I think after she had tried to maybe jump in front of the subway train. And then the officer saved her at the last minute. But then she shows up as he's.
[15:09] Portia Pendleton: Trying to his wife staring at a poster of oblixa right in the train station for a while, just like looking at it. And then she kind of walks over.
[15:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: To the edge and then toes it. I didn't notice that, but you're probably right, because we'd heard about Oblixa from Dr. Sebert, like, in the scene before, and they kept talking about how you see the ads. You see the ads, and I will say, I hear this all the time from patients. I remember when I started my training, Abilify, there were a lot of ads out there for Abilify, and I had a patient who was like, I want to switch from this medicine. I've been on and been stable on for 20 years to Abilify. So this does come up. I thought that was I wanted to.
[15:49] Portia Pendleton: Ask you, so if a patient comes in and they have seen like, a new medication on TV and it looks and they're excited about it, does that typically make it work better at all? I think Placebo mentioned that in the movie a little bit.
[16:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, you're right, she did. She was like, I think with your positive endorsement, it could work better. I mean, so certainly we know that the placebo effect is real. So by the placebo effect, I mean, they've done studies and stuff where if you give patients, like a sugar tablet, but you say it's an antidepressant or something, then sometimes the patients start to feel better, like they believe in what you're giving them. And that is part of the art of prescribing medications, I think, is not necessarily using that to your advantage. But it's really important when you're prescribing a medication, whether it's for psychiatric issues or something else, to get buy in, right? Like, if you're prescribing a medicine to someone because they have high blood pressure and you want them to work on it with lifestyle modifications, like with diet and exercise, you want to get buy in that all three methods of targeting the problem are going to be effective. So I think that's the kind of thing where if you come to me and I'm like, well, we could give you Zola, but it doesn't really work, are you going to be like, sure, I'll take that.
[17:15] Portia Pendleton: That makes sense. I feel like even with therapy, I think some protocols actually, I don't want to say require, but really you're supposed to kind of speak to the results that have been studied. You're supposed to really kind of like, I don't want to say Hype up the program, but Hype is effective. This works for people, really, to get the bind. So it sounds like it's almost along that line. It's not necessarily like placebo effect in our practice, right? That's a lot of in research trials and stuff like that. But you have to get people's kind of excited to what you're trying to have them do.
[17:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right? And I think patients will show up having seen ads and commercials and stuff like that for newer medications and wonder about it and some I mean, gosh talk about like buy in. I mean, the the like people like, make these commercials with the goal of, like, kind of manipulating you into wanting to take this specific medication so they can make money from it. And some of these commercials are really intense.
[18:18] Portia Pendleton: So I thought at this point, in the movie, this was where we were going. Right. I thought like big pharma was like trying to kind of push this pill. I almost felt like in a little bit of a way it was going to be like the oxy. We secretly know that it's not effective or there is this really bad side effect. We're brushing it on the rug, don't tell anyone. Prescribers.
[18:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: Push it, push it.
[18:40] Portia Pendleton: But that was not the way this movie ended. But at this point that's what I was thinking.
[18:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, that's what I thought too is it was going to be all about Big Pharma. And I think unfortunately, you're right. There are stricter laws now about you see, in the movie pharmaceutical reps taking doctors like out to lunch or dinner. And they talk about how back they could be a quote unquote spokesperson for a pill and be flown out to some conference in an exotic location, give a talk for 15 minutes and have their whole vacation comped. Those sorts of things did used to happen. I didn't get to do any of that because they have these stricter laws which are good. Which are good because they did find like surprise, surprise, doing stuff like that did in fact influence physicians prescribing practices. Which makes sense.
[19:33] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. And I was thinking same along the lines of this used to be a big practice for residential treatment centers, doing kind of the same thing with big pharma as big Pharma. So they would invite you to come tour their facility in Palm Beach and then you're going to refer your patients with substance use disorders there. It really primarily was kind of a big business with substance use all around this kind of same time.
[20:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[20:01] Portia Pendleton: I feel like this is really popular to do. They want kind of to push patients. And now we are seeing and have seen the effects of this. So specifically talk a little bit about the state of Florida kind of being famous for having a lot of rehab centers. There was kind of in the news, a lot of unethical drug testing. So they'd be billing at really high rates these really expensive complex blood tests and labs and that's kind of how they're getting paid. And all these people have ended up in Florida and then kind of like homeless and then using drugs. Again, like a halfway highland houses. There's this whole pipeline.
[20:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's very interesting that's the thing is, unfortunately, there is a nefarious pipeline. Where? I don't remember all the details, but unfortunately there have been then, like, big business partnerships, I guess, between a rehab center and a halfway house or where the patient would go afterwards, where then the patient does rehab. They pay out the wazoo they charge for these tests, like you're saying. Then they go to this halfway house that's contracted with the rehab center. And then the halfway house, they get reintroduced to the drug, sometimes on purpose. I think that's the most nefarious egregious thing that's come out. I mean, how disgusting is that? And then they go back to the rehab and it's just a cycle, and it's all for money making, and that just makes me want to vomit.
[21:25] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I mean, it's horrible. And I think that's right. And we've seen that with Big Pharma too, and that's why we don't get this anymore.
[21:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: But I thought this was going to be like a movie, like anti Big Pharma. Anyway, we got derailed, but hey, big Pharma. So Emily somehow finds where he is in the atrium again, like, how unclear? And interrupts his combo with his wife. You can tell his wife's annoyed. She's, like, wanting some emotional support from him. This is a really awkward conversation to have in public. Again. He's like, if this just she sort of makes a provocative comment alluding to, like, sort of happened again. And he's like, well, if that's the case, I need to admit you to the hospital. Yes, that's the right step. And then she's like, no, I just need five minutes. I have to get to work. Can we go talk somewhere? And the answer is no. The answer should be no. But she manipulates him or something.
[22:24] Portia Pendleton: I thought that it was interesting that his wife was I understand why she was upset. Like, she needed support, and her husband was kind of getting called to this work duty. But I feel like I'm assuming that this doesn't happen ever. This is a strange thing, right? Like a patient coming up to him. So I felt like her reaction almost felt, like, a little strange. If I was out in public and out to dinner with my partner, and we're sitting there and a patient comes up to me and starts talking about what seems to be, like, active suicidality, that would be not normal. My partner would be like, what the **** is happening?
[23:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: They wouldn't even get up and leave.
[23:08] Portia Pendleton: Right? Sad or mad at me. They would just be like, this is strange.
[23:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: Weird. Yeah.
[23:15] Portia Pendleton: So I felt like her being mad.
[23:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: Just, like, felt off. I think she was mad that he chose to go, but I feel like.
[23:25] Portia Pendleton: Within the context, you have to handle that. You don't need to meet with him. You know what I mean? But you have to handle the situation. Whether it's like talking to them outside and saying, this is wildly inappropriate.
[23:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't know. Asking her wife, can you go get a security guard?
[23:45] Portia Pendleton: Maybe she was pretty.
[23:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's the thing. I was wondering if there was some competition and if that was intentional. I think now we know it probably was to stir up some feelings of jealousy and stuff. And then they have this mini session, like, on some couch somewhere, and there's that Victoria Secret. Yeah. So they're sitting, like, really close together. Their body language was interesting because she's, like, face toward him with her legs up on the couch. You can see her bare legs. She's just sort of talking to him and pulls out, like, a Victoria's Secret bag, saying, like, I'm really trying. And he acknowledges again, I was like, oh, ick, ick, ick, ick, ick. Yeah.
[24:23] Portia Pendleton: And again, the boundary crossing is when he agrees to meet with her also, like, in this public place, so on and so forth, and just meeting with her. But besides that, what he's saying. He's not flirting with her. He's not doing anything, like, inappropriate. Inappropriate in that moment within that context. But I think then we learn later a picture gets taken of them in this moment where she is holding up this Victoria's Secret bag, and they're comfy, quote, unquote, on this couch. But it's like, that is not what was happening.
[24:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right, exactly. That's why you always have to be so careful. Totally. And this is why boundaries are so important. And this is why it's important to listen to your own gut feelings when you're evaluating new patients, because I think you could pick up some of these subtle red flags really early on and see how this could unfold. And so again, he doesn't hospitalize her against his better judgment, and then things really unravel. So he's like that's when she, Emily, asks, can you start me on Oblixa? Like, my friend so and so is on it. I hear it works. And he'd heard that from Dr. Sebert, who then we find out is, like, really pushing Oblixa. I loved what Dr. Sebert was like. Oh, you can have an Oblixa pen. Yeah. I was like, we should make analyze script pen.
[25:49] Portia Pendleton: I have a lot of residential treatment pens.
[25:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: I bet you do, right? It's just so classic. So then he puts her on Oblixa instead of Zoloft. And getting back to one of your questions, certainly there are more and more new antidepressants out there. Oblixa. I thought it was so funny the way they picked this fake name because it was like a combo of Abilify. And I thought, like, Trntilix, which are both too. Abilify has been around longer. What about Selexa and Selexa oblixa? They just sort of, like, combined it all.
[26:22] Portia Pendleton: And it sounds real. It totally sounds like a medication sounds.
[26:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like a medicine name. So I thought that was funny. And then I think it kind of starts to work, but she starts having these quote, unquote, like, sleepwalking episodes, which seemed convincing right at first, and then that's why he eventually prescribes this new medicine deletrix or something, which, again, sounds like a convincing medicine name. And that's where he's now participating as a consultant with a pharma trial being paid being paid, like, $50,000, which, again, sounds like a lot. I would have cautioned Dr. Banks to say, okay, after taxes, how much are you really getting, and is it worth it?
[27:07] Portia Pendleton: And he does disclose that he did it. Again, it seems some things pretty by the book he's with another patient who he's telling about this trial that he's in and that he is being compensated for it. And he gives her this information that she'll receive the medication at no cost. And it's like, that why people agree.
[27:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: To the trial, right? And that's what I think the pharmaceutical industry uses to its advantage. They still provide free samples, which I.
[27:35] Portia Pendleton: Think can be right on the one hand, a way to assist people who cannot pay for it initially, or there's just problems with that, too, but that still happens. People still do get free samples of lots of things. Birth control antibiotics, or, like, Vivams, like.
[27:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: A new Stimulant, which is really expensive, works great. I prescribe it a lot, but it can be expensive if you don't have good health insurance coverage. So they might give you, like, a quote unquote drug coupon where you can get, like, the first month free, and then you have to pay $600 the rest of the time. Anyway, as we're thinking about this, shout out to Mark Cuban's Pharmacy because they are providing a lot of medications at very affordable rates. Mark Cuban, if you want to sponsor the podcast, please feel free. Anyway, so they add in this new medicine, and then it turns out she murders her husband, basically, right? Like, she again has another one of these quote unquote sleepwalking episodes, ends up stabbing him multiple times, and then goes to sleep and he dies. Before we saw the end of the movie. What did you think about that whole scene?
[28:45] Portia Pendleton: I thought that it was I was shocked, but based on another episode of prior episode of her kind of sleepwalking, I was like, I don't want to say, like, it wasn't surprising, but that didn't shock me. Something was going to happen in the movie. I was like, okay, this is it. And then she's going to be like, how are they going to go after her?
[29:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right?
[29:06] Portia Pendleton: Are they going to blame the drug? Are they going to blame her? How will they do this? That's what I was thinking. I was sad to see Channing Tatum go. Martin is his name in the movie, right?
[29:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: He's not a Martin. I'm always sad to see Channing Tatum go. Yeah. I like to watch him walk away. Yeah.
[29:30] Portia Pendleton: But he you know, he did not walk away. He laid on the floor and blooded out.
[29:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: So then she gets shirtless. I know.
[29:37] Portia Pendleton: Like, come on, haven't they seen Magic Mike?
[29:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: What did you think about Rooney Mara's acting in that scene? Did you buy it?
[29:46] Portia Pendleton: I did.
[29:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. Too the first time. Totally bought it. And that's where I thought the movie was going. Let's see what happens here. And I thought, actually, their depiction of the whole legal process, the not guilty by reason of insanity, the NGRI, I thought that was actually pretty accurate. And again, I'm not a forensic psychiatrist. We hopefully will be having one on in. The next couple of months. But I thought overall, that was a pretty accurate depiction of how that process works. And thank God for things like not guilty by reason of insanity so that people who do commit crimes or murders or what have you when they are in the throes of a mental health episode instead of just being locked up in jail, which unfortunately has become how sad is this? The largest place where mental health treatment is delivered because we don't have enough mental health hospitals in the country. That's a whole other episode and issue. But anyway, those patients can go to, like, a forensic psychiatric unit and receive treatment. Unfortunately, I think oftentimes what then happens is once their sanity is restored sometimes, then they're tried again. I'm not a forensic psychiatrist. Do you understand that differently?
[31:01] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. And I think it's interesting why it would go either way. Right. Some people are charged with not guilty by reason of insanity go on to serve their time in an inpatient unit and then are let out right into society. And other people are get off temporarily not guilty by reason of insanity, receive the care and then have to and then are tried.
[31:25] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, exactly.
[31:25] Portia Pendleton: I'm curious what the differences are. I'm sure it's clear. I just don't know it.
[31:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: Well, hopefully when we have her case.
[31:31] Portia Pendleton: It sounded like she got the she was going to get R. Right.
[31:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: And that's the part where I'm not sure. Does that actually happen? When we have dr. Tobias wasser on in a couple of months, we will ask him.
[31:43] Portia Pendleton: And it was a really short time. Right. And I think they also had to kind of convince her because at first she was like, no, I don't want to have to go there. I'm not going to be able to leave. And they were like, no, this is the golden egg. You got the best offer. It's 1% that this actually works.
[32:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: I thought it was really weird that the state and the defense both wanted her psychiatrist to be their expert witness and that he would agree either way. Didn't you think that was weird?
[32:14] Portia Pendleton: So I thought at first, before the twist, that the state was involved somehow with big pharma. I thought it was very strange that he was being approached. That lawyer, that guy.
[32:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: I just felt like that would, like.
[32:31] Portia Pendleton: It seemed like he had some other motive.
[32:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: And that's what I was just like.
[32:36] Portia Pendleton: And I was wondering if they were trying to get him, the psychiatrist on board so that he could speak to that it's not the drug. Right. And try to get the drug off. That's what I was thinking.
[32:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: But again, Dr. Banks, like, what a conflict of interest. I feel like that's pretty like Psychiatry 101 where you should not be you.
[32:58] Portia Pendleton: Can'T be the actions treating and her psychiatrist. You have to be one or the other.
[33:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: Not only her past treater. Like when this happened, but you continue to treat her while she's in the forensic unit. Again, that doesn't track for me. That's not really what happened. No, I think any psychiatrist who would unfortunately find themselves in this situation would a, call your malpractice, who will appoint your defense, and B you're not involved anymore.
[33:28] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[33:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: So the fact that he kept getting involved, I think speaks to how she kind of had her hooks in him and he felt compelled, do you think, to clear his own name?
[33:37] Portia Pendleton: I think so.
[33:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think it was both.
[33:39] Portia Pendleton: I think he wanted to clear his own name because at this point, he was being harassed by people who were really unhappy with him. His wife seems unhappy with the situation. His practice seems unhappy with the situation. I think he was trying in half to clear his name and then on the other half, I think he felt sorry for her and wanted to help her.
[34:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: And he probably felt like some degree of responsibility, having been the prescriber. And I think prescribing something that he's in getting a kickback for. And even though he's, like, upfront about it, I think maybe he had some guilt there. But in the real world, that's not what happens. Actually, this does happen where attorneys will try to get you to be their expert witness. That actually happens all the time. But you're taught pretty early on and pretty clearly that that's a really bad idea because it's such a conflict of interest. Even if it's like your patients involved in a lawsuit and you're not really related, but your testimony, I guess, could support they're getting more damages or something. That's such a conflict of interest because if you do it or you could just affect the therapeutic alliance and you don't want to mess with that.
[34:54] Portia Pendleton: We only really do it if we are like, subpoenaed. And sometimes subpoenas, I think we really only have to follow through if it's like they're from the state. I think you can kind of fight sometimes a subpoena or push back on it for what they're asking for when it's like a private attorney.
[35:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: And that's why you always just call your malpractice and they tell you what to do. So anyway, I don't think his malpractice.
[35:18] Portia Pendleton: Would have advised him to do this.
[35:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: You see his colleagues telling him, like, you need to stop. Get off the case. And then he asks his colleague for Adderall because he's kind of a mess. And I was like, oh, gosh, no.
[35:38] Portia Pendleton: So then this twist happens, right?
[35:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: So then, you know, we love a twist. Like, one day we'll have a boundaries jingle and then we'll also have, like, a twist. Yeah, that sounds like a tornado.
[35:48] Portia Pendleton: So I feel like for me personally, I got a little confused initially. Like, I maybe I was doing two things at the same time. I wasn't totally engrossed in the movie. I don't know. It took me a couple of minutes to be like, okay, so we're going.
[36:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: In a totally different direction here, right? Yeah. It felt like whiplash. Yeah.
[36:09] Portia Pendleton: So Rudy Mara's character is Malingering.
[36:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. Turns out this whole time we see.
[36:14] Portia Pendleton: That she is working with Katherazada Jones's character. Dr. Sebert was her old psychology and love interest. Yes. Which is very inappropriate, obviously. I feel like we don't even need to talk about that. It's obviously inappropriate.
[36:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I feel like Hollywood loves to depict psychiatrists and patients boning. They just do. And it just really drives me nut. Yeah.
[36:37] Portia Pendleton: It's really like any other really horrible thing to happen in any other field. Yes, it happens, but it's so rare, so bad. This isn't the norm.
[36:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: So teacher thing. That's like, less, probably less. Right. But I did not see that coming. Like, the first time I saw this movie that turns out like they've been in cahoots the whole time and to get money.
[37:08] Portia Pendleton: So that's their plan is to get this payout from causing which is kind of wild to think about all of these chain reactions to make them rich. That's how it is. So they apparently have been kind of planning to take down Dr. Banks. Right. They send him pictures. They send his wife pictures of him and her, Emily, together, which looks really sexually compromising. They float this past patient of his into his practice. So they want him out. It sounds like there was, like a death of a past patient. She took her life and she named.
[37:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: Him right, in her suicide note. And he said, this is all delusional. This relationship never happened.
[37:52] Portia Pendleton: Which I don't think it did.
[37:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think he's telling the truth. And unfortunately, things like that do happen. Yeah. And so, gosh, what a lot of planning.
[38:02] Portia Pendleton: It almost seems like too much, too.
[38:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: Far fetched for it all to fall into place that way.
[38:08] Portia Pendleton: But he starts to get, like he starts to figure it out. And he is appearing to be, like, crazy. Right. He's, like, staying up late.
[38:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: He has this whole wall of all these pictures they always do with, like, a red pen and X's and, like, string taped up. And then he does give the sodium what is it? Ambutol? Truth serum. Basically. He supposedly gives her truth serum to.
[38:31] Portia Pendleton: See if and at this point, we still think that he did.
[38:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[38:35] Portia Pendleton: So we find out later that it was just like saline when he is telling the police or the lawyer for the state about it. And first of all, what he did is so unethical. Like unethical. And he can get in a lot.
[38:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: Of trouble for it.
[38:48] Portia Pendleton: So the lawyer is like, I don't.
[38:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: Want to hear this. I don't want to know.
[38:51] Portia Pendleton: You need to delete this. You need to get rid of it.
[38:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: Because he films her. Right.
[38:54] Portia Pendleton: And you can't be tried twice. So the lawyer is like, even if this is true, we have these laws that prohibit double jeopardy, I think it's called. Again, things are moving really fast, and we're starting to see that apparently she has concocted this plan with her old psychiatrist, and they were going to pin.
[39:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: It on whoever evaluated her. It just happened to be him, and he just happened to have this history that sort of helped with their case. And then he's like, oh, no, you're not going to pin it on me. I'm going to pin it on you. And then it turns out that then Dr. Sebert and Emily are sort of pinning it on each other, but he starts lying and deceiving and manipulating almost as bad as Emily was to begin with. Yeah. So it's just really interesting.
[39:37] Portia Pendleton: So it seems like they get her to wear a wire, emily, when she goes and meets with Dr. Sebert and gets her to kind of confess what's going on, and then Dr. Sebert feels because they're going to have sex. So she feels this pack on her back, and then the door opens and the police are there.
[39:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know.
[39:57] Portia Pendleton: And then I'm like, oh, Emily gets away.
[40:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right?
[40:01] Portia Pendleton: You think that she made this deal, she can't be tried again, and that's not the case.
[40:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: So then you see they're all trying to pin it on Dr. Banks. They want her to be restored to sanity so that she can be discharged from the unit and sort of go live her happy life with Dr. Seabird. But she's supposed to keep seeing him to avoid being hospitalized. And she thought it was just going to be like, okay, let's pretend I'm seeing you, but not really. Like, you know the drill. I was malingering the whole time. I don't really need medications, blah, blah, blah. But then he's like, no, I'm going to prescribe you Thorazine and Depicote, both of which are they work. They're heavy hitters, man. Like, Thorazine is really sedating Depicode again, the side effects they mentioned from these meds were spot on. You can lose your hair with Depicode. You also gain a ton of weight. You're really sluggish cognitively. You can get a lot of acne.
[40:57] Portia Pendleton: So who would be prescribed those? Like, what kind of a patient would be prescribed Thorazine and Depicote? Or either?
[41:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. So Depicote is under the class of medications called mood stabilizers, which we use for things like bipolar disorder. You do not use it in women of childbearing age because it has been shown to be associated with a birth defect, specifically neural tube defects, which lead to things like spina bifida. In pregnancy, you always take a high dose Folate, and you can take extra. If you have to be on Depicode, if that's, like, the only mood stabilizer that's ever stabilized your bipolar disorder, then by all means, you need to stay on it. But it's not the first one we use. Also, so many side effects, and there's newer mood stabilizers like lamctal. Lithium has been around forever. But it's like a really good one that's effective. It has low side effects, too. And then Thorazine is an older antipsychotic, which he does acknowledge and is true. It's what we call like a typical antipsychotic like Haldol that is used for psychotic disorders. So things like schizophrenia, we use it a lot in the emergency room and inpatient setting to also help with sedations. Like, if you're so psychotic or manic that you are unable to sleep, you'll often get Thorazine to sort of help promote sleep. So you can imagine how much fatigue goes along with it. Sluggishness. It can be very drying. Like your mouth is really dry. It's not pleasant. So he's basically, like putting her into a pharmacological prison is basically what he's doing and making sure that she has to go get drug tested to show that she's actually taking it or she's going to go back in the hospital. So he gets the final one over.
[42:38] Portia Pendleton: So she is like, no, right, and runs out of there, tries to escape, and that's when she is not then right following. And I think he knows this, that she's going to have this reaction. So she kind of goes to get in the cabin, run away, and the police are waiting for her. He kind of knew all along.
[42:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think he tipped him off that this is going to happen. He probably didn't say, like, I'm going to do this and she's going to do that. He probably was like, she's been acting odd. Can you be waiting? And then she goes back, I think to the forensic psych unit, which honestly, that's where she belongs. Yeah, that's where she belongs. Given everything that happened. Gosh, that movie had a lot of twists and turns, lots of ups and downs. I feel like there's probably so much more we could talk about, but this episode has already been really long. I thought it was interesting, Portia, that you didn't seem as into this movie as I was. Do you think it's because I prescribe?
[43:30] Portia Pendleton: I don't know. What's funny, too, is that one of my friends who's not in the field at all, really loved this movie and recommended it. And I don't know, I feel like.
[43:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: I was a little bored, actually. Yeah, you yawned a lot as we were recording this.
[43:48] Portia Pendleton: I don't know what that says.
[43:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's why I feel like I also.
[43:51] Portia Pendleton: Missed things throughout it.
[43:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: Do you think it's because we've been talking a lot about psychopaths, like with you, and maybe you're just kind of over it for right now. Maybe Tatum died. Yeah. Maybe this Zach grief is too much for you to bear. Maybe, yeah.
[44:09] Portia Pendleton: I have no idea. I think that's interesting though. I was like bored. I feel like, oh, no, pay attention. Pay attention.
[44:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know. And I couldn't wait for us to record this episode and watch it again. And you're like, over here, yawning. And I'm like, and then they got the side effect right, and then they did this right. Then they did this wrong. Maybe someday we'll have a patreon and we can record a bonus episode where we explore that reaction further. Maybe.
[44:34] Portia Pendleton: This felt unbelievable to me.
[44:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think it did.
[44:37] Portia Pendleton: It did. And I think that's where I was.
[44:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: Just like, this wouldn't really happen. No, it's totally I mean, again, I think once the twist came into play, then you're like, oh, God, that's what this movie is. That's so unbelievable. You know what? I think it's important that we do analyze scripts that we don't like. Yeah. All right, well, I don't want to hold you up any longer. We'll wrap up this episode. Thanks for listening. I hope that whoever's listening isn't Yawning. We'll see. Please don't forget to rate, review and subscribe follow us on Instagram at Analyze scripts. DM us. Send us an email, analyze Scriptspodcast@gmail.com and let us know what you want us to analyze next. Put you to sleep. Like this movie put portion to sleep.
[45:23] Portia Pendleton: Thanks so much for listening.
[45:25] Dr. Katrina Furey: See you later. Bye.
[45:31] Dr. Katrina Furey: This podcast and its contents are a copyright of Analyzed Scripts.
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[45:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: Your friends and rate, review and subscribe, that's fine.
[45:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings, or products is intended.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we're diving in to season 2 of "Succession" on HBOMax. In this episode, we explain the core features of narcissistic personality disorder and discuss how these traits show up in different ways in each of the main characters. We also use the main characters to compare and contrast overt vs covert narcissism, and explore the connection between narcissistic traits and early childhood trauma (particularly abuse and neglect). We hope you enjoy!
[00:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fury, a psychiatrist.
[00:12] Portia Pendleton: And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker.
[00:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows.
[00:23] Portia Pendleton: Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends.
[00:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: There is so much misinformation out there, and it drives us nuts.
[00:32] Portia Pendleton: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like.
[00:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: With a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better.
[00:39] Portia Pendleton: So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn.
[00:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: And your DSM Five and enjoy.
[00:55] Portia Pendleton: So here we are today kind of talking about succession season two, and I have a million words, and none like, I yes, very, you know, we we had to kind of meet and break down.
[01:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: You know what's interesting? That's very black or white, all or nothing. And a lot of what we're going to be talking about today is narcissistic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder. That's how people with these traits tend to feel things and see things. Just as I'm analyzing us analyzing this show, I just want to point that out.
[01:24] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. I think the most helpful way that we kind of tried to think about.
[01:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: How to talk about all of the.
[01:31] Portia Pendleton: Things that happened in season two is, like, kind of sticking to some bigger themes.
[01:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[01:35] Portia Pendleton: So we're assuming that if you are listening to this episode, you've watched the season, so you don't need a recap. You don't need to know our thoughts on financial information. That is not our specialty.
[01:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't really have a lot of thoughts. I'm still trying to figure out what is a shareholder and why do they fly to all their private islands? But we're not going to figure that part out.
[01:56] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[01:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: So just to give a quick recap in season two, it opens with Kendall and some fancy pants hot tub, which we're assuming is like some kind of rehab, right? Yes. So his dad offered to kind of COVID up the deaths at the end of season one and return for Kendall sort of backing off the hospital takeover publicly. And he says, I'll cover your rehab. Like, go and get well. And then, oh, just kidding.
[02:22] Portia Pendleton: I need you to come 48 hours.
[02:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: Later to a press conference and sort of tell everyone that you made a mistake. And actually, I am all good. Right. And then the way the rest of the season kind of unfolds is Kendall's arc with addiction, and we'll get into that a little bit more as well as the waste star, Royco tries to sort of make a deal with Pierce Global Media because they have that huge billion zillion dollar debt. And then the scandals at the cruise line come out, and we see them sort of facing a reckoning.
[02:55] Portia Pendleton: So we thought it was helpful to kind of just think about Logan, and we were kind of commenting on why didn't we talk about him as much in season one? We spent a lot more time just talking about the kids chicken, I mean, I think makes sense. But Logan we see in this season, just like he makes me feel a lot of different feelings.
[03:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: I have a hard time watching him. A lot of the times I think Brian *** is a really wonderful actor, but I kept being worried about Brian *** acting in this role and wondering, is he okay? Because he's having to do some really awful things, like physically hurt people, get one over on people. He screams all the time. That just must be a hard set.
[03:41] Portia Pendleton: To be I'm just thinking of his internal, I guess, brian and Logan, the character, like, how high is his cortisol level? Right? He's constantly screaming. Screaming and stressed. And it's so intense. And every decision he makes is worth probably bazillions dollars. It's very stressful.
[04:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: Very stressful. And so I always wonder about this in Hollywood on sets and stuff like this. Do they have massage therapists on staff? Or, like, a quiet room you can go to to decompress or, like, therapists on set to just be like, how does that feel for you? That was a really tough scene and yeah, I'm just always curious about that.
[04:20] Portia Pendleton: I imagine they must you think? I think so.
[04:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: I feel like that's a better use of money than craft services. All the food.
[04:28] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[04:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: Sorry, I interrupted you.
[04:31] Portia Pendleton: No, I think I've heard somewhere about some show or movie that was pretty disturbing and maybe it was even, like, something more along the lines of, like, a sexual assault. And there were therapists on there to kind of pull people out and be like, how are you feeling right now? And ground them in the present that this isn't really happening. Right. Because I think I never thought about that until this podcast of just, like, the really intense scenes for actors and how they manage to cope with them.
[05:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: And even I'm thinking the writers, like, someone, if not all of the writers, have got to have a parent like this or something to get it so right. Get it so right. The dynamics and the ickiness and someone's got to have some sort of personal connection there because it is just so right. And the way that we see the relationship between Logan and his children and the relationship amongst the children sort of evolve and develop over time is so nuanced, but spot on.
[05:31] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[05:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I wonder if that has contributed to why this show is so wildly successful. Again, because it's not a lot to look at. It's a lot of white men in suits.
[05:42] Portia Pendleton: It's a lot of just, like, jargon that I think most people are super familiar with every single thing that they're saying.
[05:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right, exactly. And so I think it is successful because of those dynamics and the emotions. The characters are portraying. And as well, I think, stirring up in the viewer. Yeah.
[06:03] Portia Pendleton: So one thing that we did not talk about, which both of us now are analyzing of ourselves, is seeing Logan in the pool in season one with pretty significant scarring on his back.
[06:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, I know. I thought that was fascinating. As we were preparing for this episode, we were like, okay, let's jot down some thoughts. And that turns out to be like five pages of thoughts because it is a lot to keep track and we really want to focus on our take rather than sort of a recap of the season. And I just thought it was interesting that neither of us brought that up last time. Right. So one thing we've talked about before, specifically in our episode about incanto, again, very different vibe from this show, but this is a different type of portrayal, I think, of intergenerational trauma and the way that gets trickled down from one generation to the next. Right. And so we're seeing Logan, the patriarch of this family, who I think meets criteria for what we would consider like a malignant narcissist. What do you think, Portia?
[07:04] Portia Pendleton: I think so.
[07:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: And we'll talk a little bit about narcissism. When we think about narcissism or narcissistic personality disorder, there's the way we kind of use it in our culture, like, oh, I'm such a narcissist. I love to take selfies, or things like that. But what it really means clinically is something different. The way I kind of think about it is people with narcissistic traits or narcissistic personality disorder have a really insecure sense of self. At the end of the day, that's sort of like the core wound, and they're constantly relying on external feedback and validation to boost themselves up and feel good. So, again, getting back to that black or white way of thinking and feeling, people with these traits have a really hard time sitting in that gray zone feeling good about themselves and remorseful for maybe things they've done simultaneously. It's really one or the other. And a lot of times these people put down everyone around them to keep themselves kind of up on a pedestal. Right.
[08:06] Portia Pendleton: And what better even way to do it than being the chairman of a board? You see it play out in his business role. You see it play out in his family, in personal relationships that seem to kind of go hand in hand with business. But wherever he goes, he is the best guy out there. Everyone wants to shake his hand. Everyone wants to know him. People are afraid of him. He just has so much power.
[08:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: So much power. And again, it might not come as a surprise that there is a high degree of people with narcissistic personality traits or disorder in positions of power. Right. That's how you get there. And there is some thought about even like a subtype of people with these personality traits as being high functioning and using that unconsciously, I'm pretty sure, to their advantage to get where they are. Right. So these are people who, like you said, like Logan, always has to be number one, always has to win, no matter the cost, has very superficial relationships personally and professionally, and really only sees people like his children, like his colleagues, as means to an end. So they're really like chess pieces that he's playing to get what he wants in the end. And we really see that unfolding in this season. And the way he manipulates and plays the kids off of each other for his own game, that's really painful for me to watch.
[09:27] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. I think it can make you have, like, a physical reaction. I mean, some of the things that he does with Kendall, I think specifically, it's like you almost think about it if you put it on paper, it's like, okay, this father is covering for his son, and it's like, okay, but.
[09:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: Why not the goodness of his heart? Because he loves him, to protect him, but because that's how he's going to get what he wants. Right. And you see that unfold in such a sick, sick way.
[09:55] Portia Pendleton: And you see Kendall throughout season two just really be a shell of himself. And I think, again, like, thinking of the narcissistic traits, it's like Kendall has lost his position of power entirely, I think. I thought it was so just like a really good scene where he comes back from making that TV appearance and he hits the nosebleed. He makes the TV appearance, then he goes back to New York and he holds the door for everyone, leaving a meeting. He's just standing there holding it, and no one's really saying thank you. And he would never do that before. Right.
[10:31] Dr. Katrina Furey: He's a less than.
[10:32] Portia Pendleton: He's nothing. And I just thought, like, wow, and.
[10:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: How quickly it can shift. I know, it really gives you chill.
[10:38] Portia Pendleton: It's hard to watch.
[10:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: And that's why I just think I wish I could interview the creators, the writers, the actors. Like, how did you guys get this so well? Because it flips on a dime for Logan. Right. And that is exactly how people with narcissistic personality disorder view people is. It flips on a dime depending on whether they're sort of on the good side of the split or the bad side of the split. And if they're doing what you want them to, then they're good, and you're showering them with attention, and if they're not, they're nothing. And that competitiveness between Logan and Kendall is just so intense. We really see that Logan, I think, is really threatened by Kendall, and yet Kendall just can't take it to the finish line. No, that's like his Achilles heel. He always gets, like, close and then it falls apart. Yeah.
[11:32] Portia Pendleton: And I think it's almost like his I thought Kendall was the character more intelligent right away in season one.
[11:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[11:44] Portia Pendleton: Like, I thought that he was very, very smart.
[11:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, he was the one who maybe had experience compared to, like, Roman and Shiva honor. But now you're like no, I mean.
[11:53] Portia Pendleton: Really, throughout this season, I was just, like, really surprised about how some of the decisions that he makes and I think even more in other seasons, maybe season three, he just came. Across in season one and two. At times, like, really poor at taking feedback while he's not being absolutely crushed by the guilt that he has. But he doesn't really seem that intelligent, actually, to me. Seems like he's just kind of makes decisions quickly. Another kind of narcissistic trait. You don't take feedback well. You don't like people telling you what to do. I think you need to to a degree, which I think Logan, in a way, has figured out a way to have the best of the best around him. And I think maybe he takes not feedback, but ideas from others and then claims them as his own.
[12:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes, exactly.
[12:41] Portia Pendleton: And I don't think Kendall is smart enough to do that.
[12:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. And so I think, again, narcissism is hard to break down. I think it can be hard to explain to people. It's really hard when you're relating to someone with these traits because you really feel like you're in the Twilight Zone and your sense of reality is so warped. And I feel like that just reflects the actual person with these traits sense of reality. But I guess the core features would be this sense of grandiosity, this sense of specialness uniqueness that you're kind of above everyone else and you can only associate with other special, unique people this excessive need for admiration, again, to sort of build up your own sense of self worth. Very superficial and exploitative relationships. People are really just objects, again, that you're moving around as a chess piece.
[13:28] Portia Pendleton: And we see that multiple times. Like season one, the baseball game, all the employees there when Kendall fires that whole falter.
[13:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: Exactly. And a true lack of empathy. However, some people with narcissistic traits, and I think Logan fits this, can display, like, fake empathy, where they make you sort of feel like they're understanding you, when really it's more like this data collection that they're figuring out who you are and what makes you tick in order to then use it against you later. And that's the kind of stuff that gives you the X and sends a chill down your spine. Some other pretty common features of narcissism that we see displayed in the various characters would be identity disturbance. Again, having a really unclear sense of themselves, really low self esteem and sort of their whole goal. I think we see this a lot with Kendall is sort of maintaining their status and really being concerned about the way other people's view them. We see that a lot, I think, in all of the characters. But I think especially with Logan, with kendall very hard time having authentic relationships or attachments. A real fear of dependency, which we see with all of these characters you talked about last time. Like, none of them can really have a secure relationship. I think we'll talk about that more with Roman and Jerry a little later. Chronic feelings of emptiness and boredom. I think we see that with Kendall and sort of even just relapsing and things like that. And then a lot of vulnerability with life transitions, which, again, sort of shakes up your sense of self, I think.
[15:08] Portia Pendleton: Too, with what I just find so interesting is so many of these traits, I feel like are almost in this specific situation or in this family are necessary to survive.
[15:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: Exactly.
[15:21] Portia Pendleton: And really a big piece of it is obviously the parental and the business sense, but also just like, their wealth. Right. So it's like everyone there's nothing they can do or want that they can't have.
[15:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[15:33] Portia Pendleton: So it's like the emptiness and boredom. It's like, if you can have anything you want at any time, that's kind of boring.
[15:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: How do you get a dopamine rush? Right. It has to be a bigger and.
[15:42] Portia Pendleton: Bigger pushing the line. Pushing the line.
[15:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: Or fire a whole sector of a company and like, get off. Right, right.
[15:49] Portia Pendleton: That the issues with relationships. It's like people are using you. People are trying to get you to promote them or be your friend or invite them to something. So it's funny how this plays out interpersonally as well as internally for all of these family members. Because I wonder, just like, thinking in real life, how many people who are mega, mega, mega rich are just like in a narcissistic world, regardless if they have the traits or not. It's like you must develop them to survive, regardless of trauma, family, other narcissists in your life, it seems like. How do you not have it?
[16:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, I think none of these characters can trust anyone on these characters. Like, not even the person you think you can or who you think is safe. They're all, like, manipulating and playing everyone against each other for their own gain. So you're right. It's like when you're Beyonce or some other billionaire or whoever. How do you trust anyone who's trying to come into your inner circle? How? I don't know.
[16:52] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, and I think if we write down the criteria, it's like, okay, well, then you're paranoid. It's like you're not paranoid. You're actually like, these things are real and happening. But I think what I think is sad is that these characters really don't seem to have anyone.
[17:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: Are you talking about the kids? Yeah, we keep calling them kids.
[17:10] Portia Pendleton: They're adults. They're probably older than us. So I don't know.
[17:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: But it's sad. It's so true. And we sort of sense that in season one, right, by not meeting mom until the very end. And then we really see that unfold. Like, these kids have really relied on their dad, who is so flawed. Right. So it sounds like Logan grew up in Scotland, at least for a period of time. We see him go back home in season two, and you see he has such a detached, cold relationship to his childhood home. Remember? I think they pull up and he's like, okay, done. I have no interest in going back. And then somewhere in there, they allude to the fact that I think his uncle actually raised him. And Ewan and their sister, who we still don't know what happened to her, but something tragic, it seems like. And it's somewhere along the way, ewan says to him, like, you have to stop blaming yourself for her death. So we don't really know what happened there, but I think an uncle raised them in the States. And then we see all those scars on his back, and Logan says to the kids, at some point, my uncle would beat me if I ever spoke to him the way you're speaking to me. And we see, like, there's physical evidence of that that's pretty severe. So that sort of gives you an idea of the world he was growing up in.
[18:34] Portia Pendleton: Because he did not grow up in this silver spoon.
[18:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: No. Somehow not at all. Right. He grew up, I think, in poverty, like in Scotland. And so somehow he has risen to this megawealth, mega position of power. And I think oftentimes when treating patients with narcissistic traits or narcissistic personality disorder, there is this early trauma history or these feelings of low self worth of being unworthy. And I think, like a lot of kids who grew up with a parent who's absent, whether it's physically absent, emotionally absent, what have you, will develop this inner sort of sense of themselves as being unlovable or not good enough or things like that. And that is sort of like the core wound that we see with narcissism. And so we sort of see that with Logan. And then now we see how he's relating to his own children, who, like, on paper, he's giving them everything.
[19:27] Portia Pendleton: Right. And that's also maybe why he almost like he doesn't understand that he's doing anything wrong.
[19:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[19:33] Portia Pendleton: He's like you have everything. I so much better.
[19:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: Exactly.
[19:36] Portia Pendleton: How you know, I was being physically abused all the time? I only hit, you know, I only swapped you, or I only did this. It just seems like he has no awareness that he's doing a lot of.
[19:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think he's incapable of having that type of insight and being able to be like, yes, I'm doing all this good for them, and I am hurting them. I don't think he can see that in any way. I think, again, he would feel like his sense of self was totally annihilated, which is I think those are the moments that provoke his narcissistic rage or what we call in the field, like, narcissistic injury, when someone with these traits is, like, faced with criticism or their own deficiency, they explode. And we see that, like, when he slaps Roman, when he hits that little boy from season one. We see it all the time with him. And then later on, we see a lot of examples of gaslighting. Like, him and Roman are in the car and he's saying, like, did I even make contact with your face? And roman's like, I don't think so. And, like, I don't know. What did you think about that scene?
[20:40] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, total gaslighting. And you can just see how almost like, what a norm it is, right? I don't think it happens as common now, where it's like, there's such a big reaction. But all the kids reacted to it. They were all like, oh, my gosh, Roman, are you okay?
[20:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: And then Kendall jumped right in. They've done this before. Yes, exactly. So automatic.
[21:05] Portia Pendleton: And then I think Roman it seems really wounded, right? Like, there's a wound internally in the car. He kind of plays it off like it's not a big deal. And then they just kind of, like, go on their merry way. And those are the moments that I'm, like, so curious and would love to ask Roman because he appears flat, right? Just look at him. But what are you feeling right now? What are you thinking? What's going on?
[21:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't even think he's connected to it. Right? I bet he's, like, so numb inside. I bet he's so numb because I think that's the role he's always played is the one who's getting hurt. Right? Like, we talked in season one about the whole dog cage thing, and then this happens. But then you see Kendall jump in and Kendall and Roman weren't, like, on good terms then, right? But they jump in. And again, I'm like, God, you got his so, right? Writers or actors or whoever's doing it. But then that's what fascinates me with the Roman and Jerry development. Right. We talked a little bit in our last episode about how it seems like Roman is impotent sexually. He can get it up, so to speak. He can't have sex with these women, which is interesting because he totally could given his position in society. He's classically good looking. He's wealthy. Right. You'd think that he'd have no problem getting a bunch of and I wonder.
[22:23] Portia Pendleton: When that first popped up. Has it always been that way, even as a teenager? Hormone raging boy? Or is this something that happened kind of at an older age? I don't know. I'm just, like, curious. Sexual dysfunction.
[22:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: And then so we see. I love how this show can introduce some humor along the way. So I loved when was it Jerry who told Roman, like, you know what would really impress your dad, Roman, is if you did the management training. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. And then they send Roman to Texas or, like, some random place to do the management training program for the parks or something, right? And he's, like, watching the videos, and then he's in one of the videos for a second. Yeah, just for a second.
[23:07] Portia Pendleton: He's so mad. So mad.
[23:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: They cut out his park. But these are the kinds of, like this is, like, the kind of input he's probably received his whole life, just, like, how worthless he is. They can't even include whatever they told him to say, like, what he read from the cue card.
[23:27] Portia Pendleton: And then, again, a little sprinkle of comedy is with that guy, right, who they can get paired up with. And then, of course, they find out who the class finds out who Roman is because of that active shooter at ATN. And then they win, and Roman kind of, like, nods to it. He's like, well, did you think we won before? And the guy's like, yes, I think so. Naive and hopeful and such a good right. Juxtaposition of like, these are regular people, right? I think this was season one where Shiv gives the hand sanitizer to Gil. What are you doing? And she's like, oh. And she makes some kind of comment, really gross comment, and then she's kind of super taken aback, and then she quits, right? Because of the feedback. They're kind of demonstrating a little bit of disgust at her comment, and then she can't take it. She also wants to get in back with a star, right?
[24:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: And so she quits.
[24:29] Portia Pendleton: And then they kind of have this funny which also, Gail politics got to be a little narcissistic. They're, like, going back and forth at each other about like, well, I quit. Well, no, I fired you. It's just funny. And again, fits with what you were talking about with Narcissism.
[24:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. So I just love how they just display these traits as being so pervasive. And that is how it is, right. With personality disorders, you're not having interpersonal conflict with one or two people. It's like everyone.
[24:58] Portia Pendleton: And that's why it's personality and not just like I am sure I have been, which makes me sad. I'm sure I've been cruel. I'm sure I've been angry. I'm sure I've been all these things. But that's not a pervasive personality trait.
[25:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: And the fact that it makes you sad is a really good sign for you that you're right. Because they can feel them both at the same time.
[25:20] Portia Pendleton: Exactly. So everything kind of circles around Logan, right. So we kind of broke down even the kids in the kind of classic right. Narcissistic family dynamic.
[25:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. So usually and again, if you haven't listened to our episodes about the show, you please do, especially season two of you. I think we really get into the Narcissistic family structure of the Quinn family. I just love that show so much. But again, so we think of children of Narcissists. Again, these aren't like their own they're not viewed by Logan as their own humans. Right. With their own thoughts, their own beliefs, their own desires, their own wants, they're really viewed as extensions of himself. And in his eyes, the whole point of them being alive and around is to do his work for him, to get him what he wants. Right. And we see to make him feel good, to do something, to take over his business someday. But then we see how hard it is for him to actually appoint a successor or step back and give them the reins again. Because if he does that, who is he?
[26:20] Portia Pendleton: I was going to ask you, do you think thinking about season two, do you think he's going to kind of go out dead before he appoints a successor or do you think he will appoint a successor in or out of the family? Do you think he's capable of giving that up without a serious right. Medical, mental health?
[26:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't think crisis.
[26:39] Portia Pendleton: I think he's going to go out in a body bag. I don't think he can give that away, especially because I think it's like his child really, it's like another child is a company.
[26:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: No, I don't think he can. I think we've seen that, like when he was planning the step away and appoint Kendall. He keeps coming, but he can't yeah, he can't do it. I feel like it was interesting. I agree with you. I don't think he actually is capable of that because then I think he's nothing. If he's not the top dog, no one's going to check on him. They're all coming to him because they will need something, want something from him. So he's nothing. And then his kids have the power above him. I also think this show is like a remarkable commentary on aging overall. And I think we could talk about that more another time. But what did you think of him appointing Reya and do you think there were ulterior motives there?
[27:31] Portia Pendleton: I think there was. I think that he appointed Reya. I mean, and again, like, after watching the end of season two, maybe in the moment didn't think this, but I think that he kind of appointed her to take the fall.
[27:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think so too.
[27:42] Portia Pendleton: Like solely. I think he kind of battered her up or buttered her up or battered.
[27:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: Both are goodies.
[27:56] Portia Pendleton: That's funny. So either one he did and I think at the same time it's so interesting because he's not going to do that publicly to his kids because then that would reflect poorly on him.
[28:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[28:11] Portia Pendleton: So if he elected Siobhan at that time and then someone's got to go because of all the cruise line stuff, I don't think that that would look good on him. So I think he intentionally did someone outside the family, the Reya who's like this kind of consultant came in. I think he made her trust him. It seems like they had a sexual relationship because Marcia got really upset and made some. Pretty good comments. I thought with just, like, you, this was like, irreparable. Like, you hurt me, you broke something.
[28:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: But then it's like, I doubt that was the first time. No, but maybe they have an agreement or something. It seems like they do. Where she goes up to Ray is like, have you been tested? Yeah, this seemed a little maybe because I think Marsha thought she was going to take over. Remember at the very beginning, like, adjusting the trust so she got more votes. I think she was thinking she'd take over, and then now all of a sudden, it's this race.
[29:03] Portia Pendleton: It's almost like their agreement is something like, you don't miss business with pleasure. So Logan can have sexual relationships, but it's not with the CEO or it's.
[29:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: Got to be with your secretary. I think it's someone lower than you or a prostitute. You know what I mean?
[29:19] Portia Pendleton: Or it's just like something like that versus this other woman who exactly. Raya is like, really rivaling her versus just like yeah, whatever.
[29:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. No, I think so too. I also think it was interesting that it was a woman who he eventually appointed to then take the fall for the cruise line stuff, which was a lot of sexual assault stuff. Right. I don't think that was a coincidental. No, I agree.
[29:44] Portia Pendleton: And then he brought more. He's Shivin at the time, he was kind of making promises to her. And again, I think it's like the Logan's smart. I mean, he made this business, so.
[29:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: He'S obviously intellectual and obviously he knew this was going on. Yeah. Right. He didn't not know. So he probably I feel like he's the kind of person who thinks and can see ten steps ahead, and that's probably why he got so successful. But then I think he was orchestrating the chess pieces just so and now that we're talking about it, I thought in the moment he was so reluctant to sort of announce that Shiv was going to be next in line because he didn't want to give up the power. But I wonder if he was trying to protect her, like knowing what was.
[30:26] Portia Pendleton: Coming, I think trying to protect her. Yes. And like the image.
[30:31] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. Not actually her for her. He's awful to her. Yeah. But she also just keeps coming. But then you can come and be.
[30:39] Portia Pendleton: Like, oh, hey, pinky, and that's great.
[30:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: Wow.
[30:41] Portia Pendleton: In that moment, I feel like it's like right. The black and white, my head whips. Because it's like this cute again, it's all intentional, but it's this cute nickname. It's definitely like an endearing nickname back to childhood. And he doesn't have any nicknames for the other kids.
[30:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: Well, I guess he calls Roman Romulus.
[30:58] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, but I feel like that's like his full name.
[31:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: Or maybe that's also like a jab. Maybe that sounds like a fancy name, but Roman's, like, not really taken seriously. I don't know.
[31:10] Portia Pendleton: And then thinking about the forgotten child, Connor. So I think it's so ironic how they send him to go to the funeral for most lester yes.
[31:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: And the only way to get Daddy's attention is to run for president. Right. And he's really serious about this.
[31:32] Portia Pendleton: And so total grandiose, right?
[31:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: Totally. Delusion. Had a job ever. Yes. I mean, the grandiosity in narcissism is delusional. It reaches the level of delusion.
[31:46] Portia Pendleton: And then having a relationship that you're paying for again, that seems almost, like safe.
[31:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right?
[31:51] Portia Pendleton: Like, I can't get hurt. Like I'm paying this person. I'm also kind of keeping you a little bit at Arm's way.
[32:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. All of the kids in different ways.
[32:03] Portia Pendleton: Because I think you don't think initially all the kids lined up next to each other. I'm not like Connor Narcissism, but he is so much so in a very different flavor.
[32:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes. He's more of, like, what I would think of as like a covert, where it's not as obvious from the outset. Whereas overt narcissists are the loudest one in the room, throwing the parties, bragging about themselves. Those are the people that you can sort of get a read on pretty quickly. Whereas covert narcissists have that same sense of grandiosity, but it's hidden under a layer of self deprecation, sort of like failure to launch. Like not taking the opportunity because you think you'll fail or things like that, but really it's because you think you're so special. And I could see that with Connor. And then now he's like, okay, I'm going to run for president. He doesn't see why this is like an insane idea. And he even releases that video, remember?
[33:00] Portia Pendleton: Just can't and no one so it's like everyone around him well, they try.
[33:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like the siblings try to tell siblings do.
[33:07] Portia Pendleton: But these hires hired willa. He's paying her, so it's doing her play.
[33:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: Remember, Greg gets bit by all the sand. I loved it. But then he's, like, funneling so much money into her play, and then it doesn't get good reviews. Like, shocker. Then asking Daddy for more money, and it's just oh, it's sad. It's pathetic.
[33:32] Portia Pendleton: I really would love to know if Connor had any, like, what his relationship? If there is one with his mom, because I know that he doesn't have the same mom as Shiv, Roman and Kendall, but because he has that different flavor, it's like, why? Right. Did you live with your mom for a period of time?
[33:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: Do you have some sort of good connection? Right. I think it's clear that what's the other kid's mom's name? Caroline. Something like that.
[34:01] Portia Pendleton: I think so.
[34:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: Bad mom. Yeah. I hate to say it, but we also see that really sadly with Kendall in this season when he's like, again, Logan brings him to go talk to the family, like, oh, how disgusting and manipulative.
[34:15] Portia Pendleton: And not in like, we're taking account.
[34:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: Of like, this is good for you.
[34:21] Portia Pendleton: Don't forget.
[34:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know. Don't forget. Don't forget. Kendall. What I did for you. It's so sick. It's so sad. It really makes me sick. But then Kendall wants to talk to his mom about it, wants to tell someone and get some concern. And then her reaction is like, oh, it's getting late, can we talk about it tomorrow, Porsche?
[34:44] Portia Pendleton: And then total dismissal and she's gone to town. We ask ourselves and or clients and or friends who talk to us, it's like, why do you keep going back?
[34:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right? It's like the puppy who gets abused.
[34:55] Portia Pendleton: Like, why do you keep running back over there to get kicked again?
[34:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: The empty well, like you're just hoping.
[34:59] Portia Pendleton: There'S a little drop of and there isn't. And that's so painful to be rejected over and over and over again.
[35:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: But also it's so normal for a child to have a connection to their parents, however awful the parents are. Those are your parents. And so that eternal hope. This is what I try to tell my patients, is like, there's not anything wrong with you for having that. Of course you do.
[35:25] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[35:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's biological, evolutionary. You're supposed to be able to count on that. It is like, I think one of the most painful things when you're repeatedly reminded how much you can right. And we really saw that depicted and it's intense, so intense. But you're right. With Connor, I wonder if he had some sort of better relationship with his mom. I get the sense that maybe Logan was like really young when he had Connor or something and that maybe I wonder if I don't know if we'll ever learn, but this is my fantasy, is that Logan maybe I was going to say loved, but I don't think he's capable of true love. But maybe he really cared about Connor's mom but then was getting big and fancy and needed to be with a big and fancy person, like this fancy British woman.
[36:09] Portia Pendleton: So I think that could be true.
[36:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: But he left them, went with her. Maybe he got her money that helped infuse his business and grow. And I have a feeling that he wasn't around a lot for Connor. Like maybe saw him at Christmas or sent him presents or sent him money but wasn't really around. So I feel like the money is the only connection they have. Yeah, that's my fantasy.
[36:32] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I think that's pretty accurate. I would love to know and I feel like not necessary, but I think.
[36:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: It would just be like an interesting story.
[36:38] Portia Pendleton: And then we see Logan kind of going back and forth with the other three here and there. This one's, the Golden Child at the moment. And that seems like they're always chasing that, right?
[36:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: So again, getting back to the Narcissistic family structure, you often think about golden Child scapegoat and then like the forgotten one and sometimes like a joker. So golden child is usually the one who reminds the Narcissist most of themselves. So it's like we think that's Kendall right?
[37:07] Portia Pendleton: I feel like it is even in season two, because I know there's two more seasons. I just feel like Kendall, he's been.
[37:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, primed to take over. But then Logan gets threatened by that. And so then you're right. I think he is the golden child until he does something his dad doesn't agree with, which then he's nothing to do. Right. And then the scapegoat, I feel like a lot of the times is Roman or takes a fall. He's a goofball. He's just blamed for everything. He's kind of the joker to lighten the tension. And then Shiv, I think, is, like, forgotten. And a girl I really think that matters.
[37:49] Portia Pendleton: Being a girl is, like, the reason why we almost can't figure it out. Because I feel like Logan can't figure it out.
[37:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't know how to relate to her unless she's like, a sexual object or I think that's how he's probably related to other women. So he doesn't know what to do with his daughter. I totally agree. Sometimes people with narcissistic personality disorder also display other personality disorder traits, like antisocial personality disorder, sadistic traits, paranoia, like, things like this. And we totally see that in Logan. Again, when we think of antisocial personality disorder, by that we don't mean, like, you don't like to socialize. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about this ability to know the difference between right and wrong and doing wrong anyway. Because you get off on it. You get a thrill out of it. And so I think we sort of see all of that coalesce when they're at that awful hunting retreat again. Every episode, they're flying off to some new country, they're doing some new something. And all the crews going like, Jerry. I'm always like, Jerry, do you have a life or no, I think, yeah, right. Her life. That is her lifestar.
[39:03] Portia Pendleton: So it's like her, I think, just interesting thing of the women. So it's like, Jerry and then the woman who runs ATN, like, under Tom remember when Tom gets it? And she's like, yeah, you guys all come and go, but she seems like she's been there forever. Seems a little, like, rough and take it.
[39:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: But it's like the women who are running the show but get none of the credit. Right?
[39:21] Portia Pendleton: Yes. I always just think about I wonder what they're thinking of this. So at the retreat, first of all, like, hunting. And again, this is really sexist, but I don't think of hunting with females. And I know they do, and that's great and wonderful, but just as a generalization, it's like going on a hunting retreat.
[39:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[39:41] Portia Pendleton: You might go to a spa right.
[39:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: Or something, or just have other activities to do.
[39:45] Portia Pendleton: It's like such a masculine we're going to kill animals.
[39:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know, but then didn't they go to, quote, unquote, hunt?
[39:52] Portia Pendleton: Then they all stand around and wait.
[39:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: Someone to drop the creatures from the sky.
[40:00] Portia Pendleton: We're surrounded by the people with the guns and it's just like this is so spot on. It makes me think of all the this is my personal opinion, people who go shoot beautiful animals in Africa and it's like you just paid a million dollars to have someone drive you to where they're keeping it corralled so you can shoot it and then bring it home.
[40:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's just disgusting and disgusting. But then it's just like so symbolic of like that is these kids lives. Like they have just been like, let go from the sky to be hunted, their dad, but then somewhere like in that retreat or whatever. What is that supposed to be? Team building? Yeah.
[40:47] Portia Pendleton: What we see goes down. I was like, this is honestly, in a way, it is team building because there's a trauma.
[40:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes. Like trauma bond. Yes. You're so right. It's like, usually think of team building exercises as like, everyone gets a free donut and we're going to do trust falls. Right. And this is like Logan and you get your pen. This is logan's.
[41:08] Portia Pendleton: And it seems like again, I'm taking this as a norm. I think Logan's private. That guy, the security guy, who we see throughout all the seasons while they start and then we'll obviously get into this specific boar on the floor thing, but you see him kind of ushering the staff out.
[41:25] Dr. Katrina Furey: He shuts the door, he knows what to do. Exactly. And that to me, implies that Logan also knows that this is wrong. It's not like Logan's, like, reacting and then remorseful later. He has zero capability to feel remorse, this guy Logan. But yeah, the bore on the floor, my God, I guess Logan got tipped off that someone's maybe talking to some unauthorized biographer or something, and then he wants to know who it is. And so who were the people that he was, like, making get on the floor?
[41:54] Portia Pendleton: So Carl, Tom and Greg.
[41:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. He was thinking like, it's got to be one of them. And so he has them all get on the floor and people are like, oinking at or he's asking them to oink or make pig noises and they're like throwing food at them, basically trying to humiliate them until the person fesses out.
[42:10] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[42:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: It was as sick as that baseball scene.
[42:15] Portia Pendleton: And then Roman, you see kind of filming and again, I feel like Roman is so injured to me that I'm not going to say he can do no wrong in my eyes, but I feel like I have such empathy for Roman that I personally can explain away. Even though he doesn't know horrible things.
[42:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes. I think he has such a warp sense of world that he really doesn't know right or wrong. Right. And I think he's just so desperate for his dad's love that he'll do whatever his dad wants. His dad knows that and takes advantage of it. Right.
[42:48] Portia Pendleton: So Tom, Carl and Greg are kind of on the floor. Oinking. They're all trying to get the one sausage right. It's like whoever eats the sausage first or whatever wins. And what I just think was sad as they kind of switch back and forth between the scenes, is that Shiv is having sex with this guy. And again, they had a conversation, seemed one sided about having an open marriage, wedding.
[43:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: Again, time of life, transition. Not surprising that Shiv sense of self, someone with narcissistic traits herself, would be shaken up.
[43:22] Portia Pendleton: Right, exactly. So she's getting pleasured while Tom is being humiliated. So they initially think because Kendall wrestles the phone away from Roman, they think that Roman was the one who was talking to that other family. And that's kind of why the deal fell through. They ended up learning that it was mo.
[43:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's why he was upset was about the deal, was about the biography. That was something different. You're right. Yeah. And, man, season two really gets you feeling for Tom.
[43:51] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[43:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. And I didn't like Tom at first, and then in this season, I really started to feel for him. There's some really intense scenes between him and Shiv, and near the end, he's like, Shiv, I'm really unhappy on our relationship. And you start to think like, oh, Tom really loves her, and she's not treating him well.
[44:10] Portia Pendleton: I think that Tom is a narcissist. However, he is not. And I think really, it's like, solely he is not the same kind of narcissist. And it's even like, he might have the same traits, but I think how I see him differently is I don't think he grew up like them. So it's like, I think he still is. I think he's, like, grandiose, and I think he injures other people. I think Greg does things to get one over another.
[44:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. He does things to Greg that are done to him, and it's just like.
[44:39] Portia Pendleton: For whatever reason, it doesn't feel not as bad, but not as big to me. And that's why I think even season one, I thought he was funny. I kind of felt bad for him, even though he was being really horrible.
[44:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, making people flip. Yeah, no, I see that, but right. Because I think he is from the Midwest. Right. But I think his mom's an attorney. So you think he grew up, like, fine.
[45:02] Portia Pendleton: I think he's not this went to a private school. I think he was in a fraternity.
[45:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. I wonder if he I thought maybe this is my fantasy. Like, him and Shiv met in law school. I don't know if Shiv went to law school, but I could see her going to law school right. Or, like, being an English major, like something. And that's where they met, because I always am like, how did he get hooked up with Shiv? But I just have this sneaky feeling he's still a really bad guy, but he's fooling us all. I just have this feeling.
[45:30] Portia Pendleton: I think he's getting worse behind the scenes.
[45:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: As he's getting closer and closer more.
[45:37] Portia Pendleton: It'S like he's being wounded. So then he's now becoming in the family. So just like they were being wounded and that's why I think they're all horrible. He's now in that position, too, and I think that's why he gets worse and worse.
[45:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: So in an interesting way, it almost as you're saying that portia. It's making me think that Tom's character development parallels Logan's earlier character development or personality development that we didn't see, but how the person being abused becomes an abuser.
[46:09] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[46:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: I wonder if that's going to play out with Tom in future seasons, because definitely in this season, I really was really feeling for him. They're all so terrible to him. They're so insulting to him. They laugh at him. They really just put him down to, again, maintain their sense of superiority. And then we see him do that to Greg, who actually is closer to the family than he is. And I think that's part of why Greg's the target rather than, like, some random assistant who's unrelated to the family. I don't think that would feel as good to Tom to insult as someone who is connected. So I don't know. I'm really interested to see where things go with him.
[46:49] Portia Pendleton: It's like he's learning how to fit in with the family. So he's getting worse, but if it's not there to begin with, that's not going to happen. I think he already is a narcissist.
[47:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: But it's like he's getting a worse. That's a good point. Yeah. And I think he is so wounded and embarrassed, like, the way he behaved at that questioning thing where he really, like, such a buffoon. Yeah. So we can't wrap this episode up without exploring the Roman and Jerry twist. Like, I didn't see it coming until it was happening, and then I was like, oh, my God, this makes sense.
[47:28] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. I think it's like, in some ways so perfect.
[47:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[47:33] Portia Pendleton: It's like so on paper, like, messed up and inappropriate for many reasons, even just because of the job itself. But I think it's like for him and what we kind of think of Romans borderline, this is it. He's with Jerry.
[47:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. What we're referring to, if you don't remember, you haven't seen up until this point, roman again, is kind of impotent. Like, doesn't have sex with girls, can't perform that's become an issue in his relationships? It seems like all the siblings know and really make fun of him for it. And then all of a sudden you see him get aroused and ********** on the phone when Jerry is berating him for something. I don't even remember what, but, like, berating him. And I was like, is Jerry understanding what he's doing? I think she was. I don't think it was like, yeah.
[48:29] Portia Pendleton: Why do you think she did it? Why do you think she played along?
[48:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: So I think there's a clearly, again, Jerry as like an attachment figure for Roman and a sexual figure. She's older than him. She's maternal. They always joke about how he wants to pork his mom is, like the phrase they use. So there's something with that that I think is arousing to him. But also they can't get too close because she is kind of in the business kind of boss. But I think he's so used to being hurt by everyone, like the dad. I think that for him is all mixed up with pleasure. Just like with Logan, being sadistic and hurting others gets him off. I think for Roman, getting hurt gets him off. And I think his other romantic partners remember, even when he tried to have sex with that girlfriend, he wanted her to choke him or really, he wanted her to play dead like a corpse, remember? There's something really twisted there. And I feel like with Jerry, she's maternal.
[49:36] Portia Pendleton: I mean, like we said before, either.
[49:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: She feels like Tom to me, where, like, on the surface, you want to think they're kind of good, but then you're not if you've stayed involved this long. So I feel like she's manipulating him.
[49:51] Portia Pendleton: You know what I mean? I think in his sense of what a mom is, which is a horrible mom, I think she's, like, so much nicer, but it's like, well, she, in a way, has to be because she.
[50:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: Works for your father, right? So that kind of is like, your business, mommy. But so why does she go along with it? And she does go along with it. She keeps saying, like, stop. But she keeps going. Right? So she is participating consensually. Even if she's saying, Stop sending me **** pics or whatever, she's still doing it, I think, for her own power. I think she wants to be the top. And I feel like that's a way to manipulate him, to know what is Logan doing?
[50:38] Portia Pendleton: Because you have to think, like, she survived at Logan's right hand for what appears to be years. She's not new to this. She's not naive.
[50:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. She wasn't so appalled by what happened at cruises. She's in it. And I think Logan and Roman roman will then go to Jerry to ask for advice. So I think it's also, like, a backdoor look into what's on Logan's mind if he's not telling her. So I think it's just like all manipulative and sick, but perfect. And there was a part of me that was like, could they be a couple?
[51:20] Portia Pendleton: And we'll see. It starts in season two, and we'll have to see what happens. Does it pick up? Does it get shut down? Like, what happens in season three?
[51:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's like I love to analyze my own reaction to this show because one big question I have is, like, why do I feel so bad for these kids? Why do I keep calling them kids when they're grown adults and they're all, like, pretty terrible, but I really feel empathy for them.
[51:45] Portia Pendleton: Why do I feel like I want Roman and Jerry to work?
[51:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: Why am I hopeful?
[51:52] Portia Pendleton: And I think, though, it's because typically, even as therapists and providers, we don't see the full family picture. We hear it from the patient's perspective, whether it's 100% accurate or not. And I think that we're seeing the entire family dynamic played out and we're seeing really the why. And I think that makes you be more empathetic.
[52:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I think the kids we're seeing.
[52:15] Portia Pendleton: Them be abused and kids are abused. I don't know. I think it's maybe that's how you.
[52:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: Feel so empathetic to Roman. I find myself, my empathy growing for Roman as it's Dwindling for Kendall, they're like inverting as the Seasons Go On. Maybe because we see him be slapped and abused and like, Kieran Culkin does such a good job portraying a victim of abuse. Totally agree with his eyes down. Just all of it. He seems like body language, but all of his body language around his dad, he does such a good job. He does such a good job. But yeah, I'm like rooting for Roman and Jerry, even though it's so messed up and I don't know why.
[52:58] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. And I think that's a great question, though, as two seasoned mental health professionals. It's like, why are we kind of it's the good writing.
[53:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: And why did we totally forget the scars on Roman's back last time? Right. It's because I think I don't want to feel empathy for Logan because he's so terrible. Oh, my gosh. Anything else for season two for us to wrap up? I don't think so.
[53:24] Portia Pendleton: I mean, I think we're going to kind of see where a couple of things go. So I'm waiting to kind of see what happens with Connor and Willa. He's forgotten, which is why I always forget about him. That's perfectly played out. But I think he's always an interesting lightener to the mood when he's on screen.
[53:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: He's just breezing in and out and.
[53:48] Portia Pendleton: Love that he is from the iconic Fair movie.
[53:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I love Willa's hair. She's so pretty, and her hair is just, like, so nice.
[53:57] Portia Pendleton: I think they're comedic relief. I think Greg is comedic relief. I'm curious to Greg again what being in this family, this does horrible family environment does to him. I think he grew up so poor, which is so ironic with his grandfather Yuan having still millions of dollars poor.
[54:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think he was like he's failure to lunch. I think his mom got sick of it. I don't think you okay, well, from related to standards, not like related to working.
[54:26] Portia Pendleton: And maybe they're divorced. I have no idea. Because we have a mom, but they're working.
[54:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: They have jobs and need their health insurance and stuff. Exactly. They're not in private helicopters. Right? Yeah.
[54:36] Portia Pendleton: So it's like he's kind of being pushed into this family and he seems very naive. I don't know if you think he is.
[54:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think, again, like Tom and Jerry, he can put on a show of being naive, but he has these moments where I think there's more going on, and I'm happy for him for it, but otherwise he'd be eaten up and spit out. Exactly.
[54:58] Portia Pendleton: So do you think that he's just like a survivalist or do you think that he is a narcissist? You know what I mean?
[55:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think he's like a covert narcissist. Like failure to launch. Remember he was supposed to be the mascot thing. He's, like, throwing up because he got too high. And then eventually his mom's like, I'm done helping you. You need to go. You have to figure it out. Yeah. I don't want him to be because I like him so much, but I think he is like, he holds onto those documents. I loved that scene in season two between him and Tom where Tom they're, like, talking and joking, but really Tom's like, so where are the documents? Greg's like, I'm never going to tell you. I think he's smart enough for stuff like that because we know he could just get out and eventually get this ginormous inheritance from Ewan. There's something about it that's keeping him involved, right? Like, he could go get a normal job and be fine and wait for his inheritance, but something about it's keeping him in.
[56:01] Portia Pendleton: Well, and I guess asking yourself, as the viewer, what would you do? You know what I mean? Like, if you were kind of sucked into this system but he's not level.
[56:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, you have autonomy. You can walk away and would you.
[56:20] Portia Pendleton: DM us on the private jets? I think that's all very appealing for people for different reasons, and everyone has lines where I think they would get out or wouldn't. And I'm just curious to see does he have a line? Because I think that speaks more to what's innately in there versus I think anyone could get sucked up into something. But then what disgusts you? Then what? Where do you say?
[56:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: No.
[56:44] Portia Pendleton: No.
[56:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. Exactly. So feel free to, like, DM us and let us know. What's your line? Yeah, it's hard to know.
[56:54] Portia Pendleton: Bore on the floor, the hitting the.
[56:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: Softball game and all the sexual assault and murder that occurred on the cruises and then covering it up.
[57:04] Portia Pendleton: It's pretty bad, right? Yeah.
[57:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: All right, well, tune in next week to hear us recap an oldie but a goodie the movie side effects, followed by season three of succession the following week. Find us on Instagram at Analyze Scripts and on TikTok at Analyze Scripts podcast. And I guess we'll see you next time.
[57:25] Portia Pendleton: Okay, thanks.
[57:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: Bye. This podcast and its contents are a copyright of Analyzed Scripts, all rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited unless you want to share it with your friends and rate review and. Subscribe, that's fine. All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we're analyzing the Netflix series "Wellmania." We love how this comedy portrays various forms of toxic wellness culture. In this episode, we explore everything from gurus to sexual liberation. We also plug Dr. Pooja Lakshmin's new book "Real Self Care" as a resource to explore authentic self care practices, rather than expensive, ineffective "quick fixes." We hope you enjoy!
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we analyze the first season of the hit HBO Max series "Succession." We spend most of this episode getting familiar with each of the main characters and the toxic Roy family dynamics. We explore themes of covert vs overt narcissism, attachment, substance use disorders, personality disorders, and toxic entitlement. We also explore the expert portrayal of ineffective family therapy, as well which behaviors of the adult children stem from child abuse and emotional neglect. We hope you enjoy!
[00:17] Portia Pendleton: Hi, welcome back to another episode of Analyze Scripts. Today we are so excited to finally be talking about succession.
[00:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: Finally. Oh, finally.
[00:25] Portia Pendleton: Succession. Season one, which is on HBO, max, huge show for them, like big time. Their last season is currently being released right now. Every Sunday, I think, right?
[00:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think every Sunday. And we are such journalists that we are watching all four seasons this month. And we will be releasing one episode a week per season, every other week with some movies and other things thrown in. But boy, oh boy, I don't know how I've been sleeping on this show.
[00:56] Portia Pendleton: It's so I know I have had so many people personally and then even on our Instagram page be like, you need to do succession. You need to do succession. And I really will say at first I didn't think I was going to like, me too.
[01:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: The first two to three episodes, I was like, oh, snooze yeah.
[01:11] Portia Pendleton: Feels a little dry. Feels like a business, small political, a.
[01:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: Lot of navy and black and a lot of boring. And it also just left me feeling icky right away. Like, this is capitalism and I don't really need to see this anymore. And I already suffer the consequences of capitalism.
[01:33] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. So I can say we're not going to talk about season two, but now I'm like, I just finished season two and I'm obsessed with this. I really am trying to slowly watch it because it's so good and pick up on all the characters and all the storylines and all of the kind of like real life things. I was thinking kind of automatically in the first couple episodes when I wasn't that into, it was like, okay, in real life, who owns what, right? Like, this is a big conglomerate of a media corporation and you see that different. A couple of people own everything. So we were both kind of saying it reminds us of like Disney and who? Disney. And all of the things that they do. Their Hulu partnerships. Discovery partnerships.
[02:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: ESPN. Yes. Lucasfilms with like Star Wars. How there's the theme parks, the cruise line.
[02:23] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[02:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I kept wondering, is this based on some big time media family?
[02:28] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[02:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: I didn't get a chance to look into that. But Portia, I think you looked up some interesting facts.
[02:33] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. So unsurprisingly. There are about 15 billionaires and six corporations who own most of the US. Media outlets. So the biggest ones are at and T. What Comcast? The Walt Disney Company National Amusements, which includes Viacom, CBS News Corp. And Fox Corporation, which are both owned by the Murdochs. Not the same Murdochs.
[03:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: Who are the Murdochs from that South Carolina documentary? Not those ones, but the other ones. Yeah, it's a toss up.
[03:09] Portia Pendleton: It's a similar name. It's an interesting name. Yeah, so I thought that was interesting. And then Sony and Hearst, I guess they're smaller.
[03:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: Wow. I feel unwell learning that. So much of the media that we see is owned by a handful, two handfuls of people.
[03:33] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[03:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's kind of scary.
[03:35] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[03:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: I'm curious what you thought, Portia, but as a psychiatrist, I was really fascinated by the family dynamics. And I was so thrilled when they showed them doing family therapy at the end, which we'll talk about in a little bit, but just getting a sense of what are these long standing dynamics that are really coming out as we see Logan, the patriarch of the family, maybe retiring, but maybe not. And like, who's going to get the company, right?
[04:05] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[04:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: So Logan has four children. I kept wondering, what is their birth order? Did you figure this out? I think Connor is the oldest, and I wonder if he has a different mom. I think he does because he's kind of more aloof. And then we have the three other children, kendall, Roman and Siobhan. I kept wondering if Roman and Siobhan were twins or like, I think Kendall's second oldest and like the first oldest of his nuclear family. And then Roman and Shiv, I couldn't figure out who's third, who's fourth. Are they twins?
[04:41] Portia Pendleton: I feel like they are probably very close in age, if anything. I got the vibe that Roman was younger, but I think it's just his personality and maybe a defense mechanism that he uses. But, yeah, I think it's definitely like a patriarchy family. Logan, it seems like, came from nothing and kind of started this entire company himself, so has a very different view of the world.
[05:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: Kids do.
[05:11] Portia Pendleton: I mean, in the wealth depiction is extreme. You are only flying private. You have 20 homes, you call it. You don't have to when you water for yourself ever. I mean, it's like that.
[05:25] Dr. Katrina Furey: You're doing well. Real.
[05:27] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[05:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: No, this is this crazy rich. And again, probably on par with the people, the families who own these media companies.
[05:34] Portia Pendleton: I think that he still, to a degree, has an awareness of the world that his children do not. That they are kind of silver spoon fed and have really no regard in.
[05:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: A lot of ways for people.
[05:47] Portia Pendleton: I mean, the baseball scene, right?
[05:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: It made me disgust.
[05:53] Portia Pendleton: Me too.
[05:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I was like, I don't know if I'm going to like this show.
[05:56] Portia Pendleton: Yes. Because it was early on and I was like, I don't like this.
[05:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: That was disgusting what Roman did with that little boy. And then you see them paying them off, and you see that a lot throughout season one is when they've had bad behavior. They pay people off, get them to sign an NDA. I thought Kendall really hit the nail on the head sort of like midway through season one when he was telling his dad, like, you're so jealous of what you've given your children. I think there's a lot of truth to that. So these are people who are like, uber wealthy. They're in a different stratosphere they all have these insane apartments in New York City.
[06:35] Portia Pendleton: Huge egos.
[06:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: Huge egos.
[06:38] Portia Pendleton: No awareness.
[06:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: No very limited awareness.
[06:40] Portia Pendleton: Even.
[06:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, at first I thought Shiv might have some, and then as we got to the end, I was like, no, not her.
[06:46] Portia Pendleton: I feel that way back and forth with everyone. And one of the characters that I don't feel that much like he is just out of this world is Kendall. And I'm wondering if it's because of his substance use issues. I feel like that really humanizes him for me. And maybe whether it's through I don't know if he's had any substance abuse treatment or it sounds like he's been.
[07:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: To rehab a time or two.
[07:12] Portia Pendleton: And even his fellow substance use comrades, it's just something that affects everyone, regardless of your socioeconomic status. So I think I don't know if that gives him just some little extra viewpoint of the world that I don't think anyone else appears to have of his siblings.
[07:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, no, probably. I think yeah, you hit the nail in the head. It does humanize him. I was so sad when he relapsed and I was really sad he relapsed with Smirnoff and then went right to math. I was like, oh, wow, it's really ratcheting up very quickly. And that is a good point, Portia, that substance abuse can affect anyone from all walks of life. And actually the rates are higher in licensed professionals compared to the general population, which most people are shocked to find out. That's something I used to tell a lot of people when I'd see them in the Er. And maybe they're a fellow mental health worker or a doctor or an attorney or a social worker or a teacher or physical therapist or what have you, that the rates of substance abuse are higher in people who hold some sort of professional license. So it isn't that more education, more socioeconomic resources necessarily shield you from that. And I think we see a lot of that in teenagers who maybe grow up in really affluent communities with less supervision. Like I'm imagining these four had growing up. I don't know. I just wonder what their attachments were like to anyone. Did they have a nanny or they must have had nanny, something that they felt connected to. We haven't met that person yet.
[08:58] Portia Pendleton: And I don't think I mean, in my opinion, based on me making up their childhood, I feel like they probably didn't have as good as an attachment they could have with a nanny. And maybe it's because nannies were fired regularly or like there was a high turnover because the expectations were so unreasonable. Because I know people who have nannies and opairs come in, have strongly attached childhood, don't turn into kind of how this family is and then other families who have opairs nannies do.
[09:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. And I would imagine that the mom who we don't meet till the end, I kept wondering where's the mom where's the mom?
[09:39] Portia Pendleton: What is she like? Yes.
[09:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: I thought that was an important choice not to show her right. Until the wedding. I bet that's just how she's related to all the kids the whole time.
[09:49] Portia Pendleton: I bet.
[09:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: This is what I'm imagining. Their childhoods. Were they're, like, living in a castle or whatever? Very fancy place in New York City. Dad is working all the time, doesn't really care about them, except as sort of, like, bolstering his own image. And then Mom, I don't think would have worked, but also probably wasn't hands on or invested in them. And so they probably did have nannies. But I would imagine that then mom maybe felt competitive with the nanny and would fire her. Or if the kids did start to grow attached to the nanny and not her, I could see that creating issues and leading to a lot of different caretakers coming in and out, which I don't think is good for the kids. Right. That's my hypothesis about what their upbringing was like. I have no idea if we'll see any more backstory to that or not, but they all certainly are displaying traits, at least of various personality disorders in the cluster B range, from borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, to antisocial personality disorder.
[10:56] Portia Pendleton: Well, I guess who should we start with? Do we want to just maybe, like, quickly we talked a little bit about Kendall. Anything else you want to add? So it seems like he's separated or divorced from his wife.
[11:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think they're separating. Yes, you're right.
[11:10] Portia Pendleton: Because they talk about it later at the wedding.
[11:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: So at first I hated him. The first couple of episodes, I just hated him. I thought he was such a douchebag. Like, sorry to use that word, but I think he is in the way. He's so rude and aggressive to all the business people. Maybe that's how business is done. I don't know. I don't do business. He's so rude and gross and vulgar, and he really thought really highly of himself and would get so offended when someone would mention, like, do you want to call your dad? Or should we run this by your dad? Which is, like, the only reason he's in that position.
[11:43] Portia Pendleton: I love when he said back, though, to one of one, do you want to call your dad? Yeah. I was like, that's funny.
[11:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: So at first, I hated him, and then as I saw the dynamic between Kendall and his dad play out, I felt so sad for him. And then those I just got chills thinking of the final scenes after. So they're at the wedding. He's trying to get drugs. He goes for a ride with a waiter or something, and he's the one driving, and he even says, like, it's been a long time since I drove. And the waiter is like and they're on the other side of the other.
[12:18] Portia Pendleton: Side of the road, right?
[12:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: Because they're in, I think, they're in somewhere in England. And the waiter is like, oh, really?
[12:23] Portia Pendleton: Like, why?
[12:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: And he's like, Well, I'm insanely wealthy, so people usually drive me around. And then again, the car accident. The guy dies and he leaves.
[12:32] Portia Pendleton: And he tried to go back twice. So I count yes, because I thought that that was, like, an important moment. He did demonstrate some empathy and compassion and regard for humanity.
[12:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: Shame and regret.
[12:49] Portia Pendleton: Back two times to try to get to him. It appears like it's cold. I mean, this isn't pleasant. It's life or death. And then he kind of comes to realize that he can't get to him and just I mean, then he's in shock. Interesting, because he kind of then immediately shuts down. He walks back. He's just like he gets inside. He takes that bath.
[13:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my God.
[13:11] Portia Pendleton: Cleans off.
[13:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. He has to break in to get inside because he lost his room key. That was just so chilling, that whole portrayal. But I thought it would spot on portrayal of what it must feel like to be in shock and just sort of going through the motions and trying to cover your *** by showing up to the after party and the brunch the next day and all this stuff. I was kind of surprised that the authorities or his dad or whoever was able to piece together that he was there by his room key. I was like, would they really find the room key? Whatever. So they did, right?
[13:48] Portia Pendleton: And why was it his room key? Why wasn't it just, like, a room key to the house? So somebody who was working right at the property had that seems strange that they right.
[13:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: That seems like a detail that realistic.
[13:59] Portia Pendleton: That is.
[14:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: But okay, fine, we'll give it to you. And then the way the dad uses oh, my God. Masterfully.
[14:04] Portia Pendleton: As soon as that happened, and I just assumed that this person was dead, and as he's kind of walking home.
[14:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: I was like, this is going to happen.
[14:13] Portia Pendleton: His dad gets him back under his 100%.
[14:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: So, again, to sort of recap the plot, if it's been a while since you watched season one or if you haven't watched it yet. So his dad, Logan, is the first episode, like, about to announce he's retiring. Kendall is going to take over. And then at the last minute, he's like, I changed my mind.
[14:31] Portia Pendleton: I'm going to stay on.
[14:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: And he really crushes Kendall's dreams.
[14:34] Portia Pendleton: Then he has some medical issues.
[14:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: He has, like, a hemorrhagic stroke, which I thought they portrayed really well and accurately at first. I thought the dad was faking it. I thought he was what we say malingering is like the fancy psychology word for sort of feigning symptoms for secondary gain. I really thought he was faking it at first because all the kids were bickering about who's going to be CEO, who's going to be CEO, and then.
[14:58] Portia Pendleton: Changing the trust for marcia.
[15:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: That was interesting.
[15:01] Portia Pendleton: And they were kind of all trying to fight her, right?
[15:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: And then eventually he gets back to work and, quote unquote, recovers, even though he was not ready purely to keep Kendall from taking the reins, it seems like. So the whole season, you see this push and pull between him and Kendall, and then eventually Kendall tries to hostile takeover. Hostile takeover. This bear hug, all these business words I don't understand, but basically try to use the shareholders to vote them out. They try to do the vote, remember? Oh, my gosh, we'll talk about that in a minute. And then eventually the dad learned about this hostile takeover. It was like, going, okay. And then Kendall's another good example of always getting in your own way, right? Like, he just keeps getting in his own way, getting in his own way. Telling Frank when he shouldn't, like, trusting this person when you shouldn't, like, going out to score drugs the night before the hostile takeover meeting. And then it all gets foiled. And so his dad learns about the fact that he was at the crash site and basically is like, come back and work with me, and I'll take care of it.
[16:08] Portia Pendleton: And he really becomes you just think that he's going to be his dad's right hand man. He does whatever I say. Now he's going to take the fall for this. He's going to do this.
[16:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: And it wasn't even for me, Portia. Like, the fact that he would use that against him, it was the fact that that was the only moment we saw the dad have any type of affection for Kendall, giving him a hug, saying, like, you're my first boy. I love you. And it was all manipulative. There was, like, not an ounce of authenticity there. It was so disgusting to me.
[16:42] Portia Pendleton: So Kendall pairs with, it seems like a college buddy, Stewie, and Stewie is in a private investment firm. And then Kendall tries to get Stewie to kind of buy and help with the board, because I guess Stewie has votes. Again, this is not my all business.
[16:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: Word, like shares and stocks, and I'm all like, I really don't understand. This must be what people feel like when we say medicine and psychology words.
[17:06] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, all the three letter, all the acronyms, acronyms over and over again.
[17:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: We could just use, like, okay, but.
[17:15] Portia Pendleton: Kendall, I think he just adds a really helpful, humanistic flavor to you.
[17:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: You definitely see his humanity. And so I did look up some facts about Jeremy Strong, who's the actor who plays Kendall, because I'd heard his name in the news, like celebrity media news, not like, hard hitting news, I don't think. And I just thought it was interesting that he's the one who is really into method acting. So, like, when he's playing a character, he lives as the character. And if you read a little bit about succession, which I'm trying to avoid. But some of his other castmates say it can be hard to work with.
[17:54] Portia Pendleton: Wow.
[17:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: Because he's always the character and he's married to a psychiatrist, which I thought was really interesting.
[18:01] Portia Pendleton: Love that for him. Yeah.
[18:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I think there were some things on his Wikipedia page or something where either he or she was talking about how it can be hard because he'll have this identity diffusion was the phrase they used. How wild. Right. I thought that was fascinating. And I'm like seeing it, though, in his acting, being so shocked. But can you imagine being his wife and having to live with him, living as Kendall?
[18:29] Portia Pendleton: Kendall is so desperate for connection and intimacy and for his father specifically to validate him. And I think that he though, by doing that, pushes everyone away and becomes.
[18:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: Really isolated and is often, I think, really lonely. I think so, too. And the expense of his children. Right. So that scene, was it Thanksgiving?
[18:53] Portia Pendleton: Yes. It's only a couple of episodes in that was shocking to me. So they're at Thanksgiving, everyone's invited. It seems like pretty uncomfortable.
[19:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: I love that. It was like such a typical uncomfortable family holiday.
[19:07] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. This is the norm. So Tom appears to this be like a first holiday with Shiv because he's like, shocked. He's like, why don't we go around the table and say thanks? Which, again, is like such a normal and Tom regular person thing.
[19:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: Tom's like this, like, good old Midwestern boy who's, like, marrying Shiv. I still get the icks from him right away. One of my first three notes in my notes app as I was watching this was Tom Gross. So I just have this feeling he's going to be a surprise sociopath at the end.
[19:37] Portia Pendleton: We'll see.
[19:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: But yeah, so they're going around and everyone's kind of like they're just so mean to him. They really put down everyone who's not in their family.
[19:47] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[19:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: So gross.
[19:48] Portia Pendleton: Right. This is a brief character, but Logan's brother, Ewan, who is like very anti capitalist, anti politics flavor that Logan is, like anti technology.
[20:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: He lives out in the boonies alone and wants to be left alone, but he's still on the board and so has a vote and shows up at key moments.
[20:11] Portia Pendleton: And it's unclear if he had an early, important role because I think it's like, if he didn't, why does he have, it seems like hundreds of millions of dollars as well. He's very wealthy, has board seats. So I'm wondering, did Logan and Ewan, did they started something and then got out really fast and Logan bought him out and so on? Because Logan maybe yes. I just don't think he would give his brother hundreds of millions for no reason.
[20:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: Let's make a pact here now, Portia, that when this podcast takes off, we won't turn into Logan and Yan. Okay. Pinky promise.
[20:46] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[20:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: Or Shiv or any of them.
[20:49] Portia Pendleton: Roman any of them. Greg maybe.
[20:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: But yeah, I love Greg. We'll get to him in a second. He's like the best. But yeah.
[20:56] Portia Pendleton: So back to Thanksgiving.
[20:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: So, again, this is where Logan so he has like a hemorrhagic stroke. Like, a lot of people die from this. Very serious again, I loved the scenes of them, like, in the hospital. You want the best care, dictating care.
[21:09] Portia Pendleton: Where we need to go.
[21:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: I have this neurologist on the phone.
[21:13] Portia Pendleton: Totally.
[21:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my God. It totally happened.
[21:15] Portia Pendleton: They're in a special wing.
[21:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: They have a special boardroom. This happens. But anyway, so then we see Logan coming back to work mostly to screw Kendall.
[21:25] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. He pees in the office. He doesn't know where he is a couple of times.
[21:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: There's a couple of things where with stuff like that, like the peeing in the office when he grabs Siobhan's hand when she goes in to see him and moves it toward his crotch.
[21:36] Portia Pendleton: Oh, yeah.
[21:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: Some parts where you're like, are you confused and delirious or is this deliberate? I thought the thing was Siobhan was confusion and delirium, but the peeing in Kendall's office, I was not sure.
[21:47] Portia Pendleton: I feel like that was deliberate because it was Kendall's. Okay.
[21:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, I feel like that was deliberate, but he knew he could get a pass, maybe. I don't know. It seemed like if it had been anyone else's office, I might think it's more just confusion, but I think he just had a way of building Kendall up to shut him down at the last moment. I think he really enjoyed that, which gross me. But then getting back to Thanksgiving, so they're playing this game where they pass around this, like, cranberry sauce or something.
[22:22] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. And I think it's like you just have to remember going to the market. Right. So I'm going to the market for a can of beans and you say, I'm going to the market for a can of beans and turkey. And then I have to say both.
[22:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: Of those, like one of those games used to play at camp. I also loved Sidebar, that they kept bringing him the cranberry sauce in the camp. Like, everyone knew he loved that. It's just so weird. You would think that would humanize him, but no, it doesn't. And then the little boy who this was Kendall's son, right. Who had a hard time transitioning in. And so I felt like the mom was doing a good job, like sitting with him, trying to make him feel comfortable to bring him in. And then Logan was getting so irate over it. Logan, definitely. I think parents, like, you say, what I yeah.
[23:07] Portia Pendleton: With an iron.
[23:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, you do what I say no matter what.
[23:10] Portia Pendleton: Authoritarian.
[23:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes, authoritarian, for sure. And I think Kendall's maybe trying to do it differently, but this is definitely where you see the pull. And then the little boy tells Logan, like, you're doing it wrong or you're.
[23:24] Portia Pendleton: Getting it wrong and he lost. You lost.
[23:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: And he hits him in the face with that can really quick, really hard. I was shocked.
[23:33] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[23:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: I felt so uncomfortable.
[23:35] Portia Pendleton: I think I audibly gasped. Me too. Because it was so out of left field. And I think you didn't know in that moment specifically, is this a lingering from the upper stroke or has he done this before? Right?
[23:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I think he's done it before.
[23:52] Portia Pendleton: But it was horrible.
[23:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: It was horrific to watch. Just awful. I feel so bad for that little boy. But then, even then, Kendall still doesn't fully stand up for his kids. I don't know, he's still so torn.
[24:07] Portia Pendleton: It's like he is probably to the best.
[24:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: I keep wondering, why don't they all just take their bazillions of dollars and get out of there?
[24:21] Portia Pendleton: I don't know if it's all like a majority is tied up in the company or the company. Whereas in like, if Logan wanted to say, you're all cut off, like, he could you know what I mean? Maybe they would have nothing. Which is just such also, like a power move. Right?
[24:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think you're totally right.
[24:41] Portia Pendleton: So, anyway, I think Kendall I enjoyed his storyline throughout the show. I'm telling sad, but I think it helped me get into the show for sure.
[24:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: I'm really sad. He relapsed. And then when Logan would want Greg, who's like this cousin who came out of nowhere. So I loved at the beginning episodes when Greg is like the mascot at.
[25:06] Portia Pendleton: The theme park, he throws up his eyes.
[25:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. And he's like, talking to his mom on the phone. Like, I didn't smoke.
[25:13] Portia Pendleton: I was just in the car. It just smelled. I don't know.
[25:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't know if the contact hot. I can't tell you how many times Portia I would work in the Er and people would come in high as kites and we would say their urine toxicology screen is lighting up like a Christmas tree, which means everything's positive. And I literally would hear this all the time, but I didn't do it. Just someone in the car. And it's like, that's not how it works. We all know that's not how it works.
[25:41] Portia Pendleton: This isn't program where we did in home family therapy for teens with primary substance use. And sometimes I'm like, why was I doing this? Just like, it's a funny part of the job. So I would bring in the little bottle or the little container for them to do, like, a urine sample, and they would go into the bathroom. And then I'm thinking, too, they'd like, Hand it to me. This isn't like a clinical setting where it's like, we have gloves, put it.
[26:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: In that little shelf, and then you.
[26:13] Portia Pendleton: Have gloves, a nurse or someone else, then, who's running the test is like putting it in the bath, really. So then I'd, like, wash my hands and obviously piles of hand sanitizer everywhere. And I remember it just saying multiple pretty significant substances. It was not marijuana. It was very and them just denying it.
[26:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I'm like, but it says here denial is very strong in substance use disorders. It's the primary defense in just teen life. Right?
[26:48] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. Why was it there a picture of you there? Well, that's not me, but your face.
[26:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't know what to tell you. It is.
[26:57] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. So Greg is I love him. I think he's like the comic relief because he's just, like, kind of walking around.
[27:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: This cousin Greg comes out of nowhere somehow. The sister, I think, is Logan's sister, maybe, or no, the sister is Ewen's daughter. That's how it is. There's some family rift there, which I wonder if we'll learn more about later on. But he's so funny. He's like, mom? What's? Me? I have no money. Bail me out. She's like, no, I'm done. Go see your uncle and he'll give you a job or something. And he shows up right before Logan has this stroke and he's, like, trying to get a job.
[27:39] Portia Pendleton: I like him.
[27:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: I also think he's smart. So I was really happy for him when Tom, who's Shiv's now husband, like the good old boy from the Midwest who I don't think is all that good of a boy, asked Greg to destroy all those documents that would basically implicate the company and some kind of awful cover up through the years. And Greg was smart enough to keep some. I was like, yes, Greg.
[28:07] Portia Pendleton: Greg.
[28:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I wonder I'm betting that'll come out in later seasons. And you can see how Greg is kind of doofy as he comes across, does have that smart side to him. And Logan picks that up at some points and is like, yeah, did you.
[28:24] Portia Pendleton: See or obviously you did because he watched it when they went to the restaurant. So Tom and Greg and he's like, introducing them to fine dining.
[28:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: Greg was like, oh, I want to go to California Pizza Kitchen. And I was like, I loved that place in med school. Yeah. But then Tom is like, oh, California.
[28:44] Portia Pendleton: But Greg has already had dinner with Ewan and a lot because Ewan is like, you got to eat it all. There's somebody so Greg has this huge noodle dish and then goes to this fine dining, which I will say at fine dining, when you are doing a tasting menu, it is really small and.
[29:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: It'S supposed to be like a bite of each. Like, maybe you could get away with that.
[29:03] Portia Pendleton: But still he seems really full, like.
[29:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: A sparrow or something. And they had to cover themselves because it's, like, illegal. And I was like, but did they really? Or was Tom doing that? I was like, oh, yeah, you have.
[29:16] Portia Pendleton: To do this because it's this rare bird.
[29:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: But then everyone else around the restaurant can see they're not, like, in a back room.
[29:22] Portia Pendleton: You should look that up.
[29:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: Or if you're listening and, you know, send us a DM. Yeah, but that's where I think Tom really enjoys getting one over on Greg. Like, right away. You see that when he like, they're at that weird baseball thing, remember, and and I wonder, like, is he dressed with Shiv to, like, marry into this family? Like, I wouldn't be surprised. And then we have shiv.
[29:45] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[29:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: So beautiful. Redhead.
[29:47] Portia Pendleton: Interesting. I don't know what to think of her.
[29:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't know how to place her.
[29:51] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[29:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: Also, she's always in a pantsuit, and I just keep thinking, like, aren't you so uncomfortable all day wearing a pantsuit?
[29:59] Portia Pendleton: But you know what?
[30:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: They're probably the most tailored that's true. Perfect fit you've ever silk or, like, whatever fancy.
[30:06] Portia Pendleton: Not tight around the waist. I think I'm just like, can someone do that for me?
[30:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: But they're all in suits all the time, and I'm just like, don't you just want to put on a T shirt? But they don't.
[30:18] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, even when so I think I don't know why I'm just thinking of Roman here, but he often to me appears the most dressed down, and he's in pants and rolled dress leaves, but he looks the most relaxed versus, like, a full suit. Not in sleeves. Right.
[30:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, Kendall always has, like, a new dry clean suit every day. Rowan's, like, in a suit, but it's rolled up. He's doing, like, working out in his office. Remember when he masturbated in the beginning when he was made COO, and he's, like, in his office and he masturbates, like, all over the window and barely cleans it up because he knows someone else will? That's so gross.
[30:55] Portia Pendleton: He's a strange cat.
[30:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: Well, that's, like, a really polite way of saying it.
[31:01] Portia Pendleton: Portray I don't know where to place him.
[31:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: Let's go back to Shiv. Let's go back to Shiv. I know we're, like, jumping all around, but it's hard not to.
[31:09] Portia Pendleton: So Shiv I don't know what to place, like, specifically, way more than Roman. I just feel like she she was a surprise. I like her. I don't like her. I like her. I don't like her. She does something that I'm like, and she does something that makes me feel bad.
[31:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: Until episode, like, seven, probably, or eight, I was like, okay, she's the only quote unquote normal one. Or she's, like the only one with a whiff of a moral compass, wanting to go into politics and seemingly to root for the guy who's fighting for the common man, wanting to maybe break away from the family in that way, but feels like she can't fully probably like you're saying because she might get cut off or something. She's with Tom, who's not, like, a ******, fancy guy, like, sort of a normal guy. So you're thinking, okay, maybe she's, like, the most well adjusted, but then we see. Again, I think even her being with Tom is, like, fueling her narcissistic ego. Like, look, I'm such a good person. I'm with this normal guy.
[32:07] Portia Pendleton: I have a stable relationship per her. Right. I'm trying to think of the guy's name that she is very flirty with and also, like, masturbates with. He works for Gill.
[32:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. Really attractive, whatever his name is. It seemed like they'd had a fling or something in the yeah, they were.
[32:30] Portia Pendleton: Like, past coworkers, FBI. Right.
[32:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: And then now she's engaged. I think he's engaged, and they're working together under this campaign for Gil, and they're really toeing the line, and then they cross it, and it keeps happening. Even at her wedding. He's, like, grabbing her and all this stuff. And it was really sad when Greg tried to bring it to Tom's attention. You could tell Tom just, like, didn't want to hear it.
[32:52] Portia Pendleton: And when I was really sad for Tom, when she kind of dropped the bomb at the wedding night that she wanted, like, an open marriage after the.
[33:02] Dr. Katrina Furey: Wedding, like, at the reception, they're up in the room, and he's like, I wish you would have told me that before. And when Tom was like, but I do love you.
[33:13] Portia Pendleton: I know. And I don't want that. Right. And then he kind of agrees because.
[33:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think he feels like he has no choice.
[33:19] Portia Pendleton: What guy maybe and this is being a little bit, like, stereotypical. Right. Like, he's the guy not wanting an open relationship. Right. What guy wouldn't want that at a bachelor party?
[33:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: He felt like he had to do something, but then he was, like, calling her, like, okay, is this okay? Is this not okay? And then Roman brings the girl.
[33:37] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. She doesn't know how to have a stable, secure relationship, an authentic relationship.
[33:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. People are objects, I think, to her, which we often see with narcissism. But I think she maintains this air of morality and plays the martyr or the victim a lot of the time.
[34:01] Portia Pendleton: And I think, as a whole, I think what's interesting to remember is you almost can't not be a narcissist in this family to survive. Right. You have to be, I think, sometimes, right. Genes versus our environment. It's like this is a norm in this family. And also, I think, to a degree, like, at this level of wealth, maybe. Yes.
[34:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: And also, I think sociopathy goes right along with that. At that level of wealth and power, you've screwed people over. There's no way around it. And this show maybe we won't get to fully talk about it today, but I think you see the difference between overt and covert narcissism depicted really nicely. I think Shiv is more of a covert narcissist. And also, I think we often think of narcissists as being, like, the person taking up all the air in the room, really gregarious and outgoing, talking about themselves all the time, really charming. But a lot of times, even when they're more of a covert kind of flavor and they're more passive and things like that, the real inner wound is just this intense feeling of insecurity and almost like nothingness unless you're able to put someone else down to keep yourself up. And I feel like Shiv is really demonstrating that even with this guy who we can't remember his name and Tom kind of playing them off each other to sort of feel wanted by a man, and she probably doesn't feel wanted by her dad. So now that her mom and my.
[35:31] Portia Pendleton: Tom isn't enough to fill that void because she needs to do some inner child work, if that's possible. But she needs it to get it from even other people.
[35:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: She can't tolerate it.
[35:43] Portia Pendleton: And this is like a new marriage, relatively new relationship. Maybe they've been dating for years, but you're not in your 10th year where you're trying to spice things up and.
[35:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: You'Re like, hey, let's try it.
[35:54] Portia Pendleton: This it just seems so strange. And when she tells it's bizarre. It seems like maybe she's freaked out that she's like, locked in and she's like, and we're going to have an open marriage and that's fine. What do you mean? That's weird, right? We have this working partnership and we.
[36:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Just maybe will sleep with others and.
[36:11] Portia Pendleton: He'S like, she's manipulating gaslighting him to think it's normal.
[36:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: Very different from the polyamory we saw depicted in you. Season three was Sherry and Carrie, which had some like, boundaries and forethought and openness and dialogue. God, I miss Sherry and Carrie right about now.
[36:37] Portia Pendleton: So let's talk about Roman.
[36:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my God, we need a whole bonus episode for Roman.
[36:42] Portia Pendleton: Roman to me is so projective, so defensive, so provocative that it's so obvious that he's so wounded and he displays.
[36:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: Being an abuse victim so well. Like, when they're at that vote and he's like trying to put his hand up and the dad says something, you just see him flinch. Like those flinches, the downcast eyes, like being so scared around his dad. Really giving me chill. Spot on depiction of a child who's been abused by this parent and is now around him a lot and tries to give off this go with the flow, like whatever persona, but totally is terrified all the time. Yeah, a lot of acting out, like, outwardly instead of the substance use, which you kind of think of as like acting out inwardly.
[37:31] Portia Pendleton: And I could see him as a child being awkward, quirky. Maybe he has ADHD. He does have ADHD.
[37:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: I really do.
[37:40] Portia Pendleton: Punished relentlessly for it. Like, sit down. No, maybe getting hit versus like, I feel like could maybe be quiet more. Tolerate being quiet more. Shiv can tolerate more, but I don't think Roman Cane and I feel like that to me, maybe he seems so much more like abused and different.
[37:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: He does, doesn't he? And then the whole thing about the dog cage that came out.
[38:02] Portia Pendleton: Do you remember that? Remind me.
[38:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh my God. Because it's awful. So at the bachelor party for Tom, somehow it comes out that a game, quote, unquote, they used to play as kids was Kendall would lock Roman in a dog crate and feed him out of, like, a doggie dish. And Roman has held onto this forever. And I think that's probably part of the deep seated resentment competitiveness they have.
[38:32] Portia Pendleton: It's just terrible detail.
[38:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: And then at the bachelor party, kendall's going around and even ask Connor, yeah, he enjoyed that game, right? It was a game, right? Like, Kendall can't believe that he was participating in something that wasn't being enjoyable for him. And then Connor says, Well, dad would make you do it. He would watch. That's probably why you blocked it out, because that is so dark, but totally tracks, doesn't it? And again, that's why I think Kendall's older than Roman, I think is and Shiv's a girl.
[39:08] Portia Pendleton: She's still getting the same flavor. She's still in the same family. But I think there is a tiny thread that's like the size of Vestrand of hair difference for that, where she's still like a daughter versus a son. Yes.
[39:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: He doesn't feel logan, I don't think, feels as competitive with her because she's a girl. He probably also is very misogynistic and so doesn't think much of girls, so he doesn't think she can really go toes with him. But, yeah, Roman, I go back and forth between vomiting on the TV when he's on screen because his behavior is so atrocious and then feeling so sad for him. So sad. And I do think he has ADHD and probably borderline personality disorder, as he said. And why wouldn't he? Yeah, why wouldn't he?
[40:01] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. I'm really interested, excited, nervous to see where his storyline goes throughout the show.
[40:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: He's just always saying the most provocative, uncomfortable things. And I think that's because that's how he feels inside all the time.
[40:20] Portia Pendleton: There was some really small sprinkle of info that we got about his sex life in season one with the first.
[40:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: Girlfriend who he broke up with, because I don't think they had sex.
[40:33] Portia Pendleton: Right. And so she was like, Why don't we this isn't even a real relationship, or something like that. We're not even breaking up because we never were even together. We would never have sex. So I'm curious about his impotence.
[40:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. I think a lot of these men feel really impotent around their dad. Logan and in that way, it's, like, really concrete. So that is an interesting detail that's when he brings the girl that Tom hooked up oh, yeah. And again, just like the detail that she gave him a ******* and then.
[41:06] Portia Pendleton: She redistributed his body fluid to him.
[41:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: And he swallowed it.
[41:11] Portia Pendleton: So it was not cheating because it stayed in his body.
[41:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: And he kept trying to be like, what? It's a thing.
[41:18] Portia Pendleton: It's a thing. Everyone was like, that's.
[41:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, really not a thing.
[41:23] Portia Pendleton: Strange for that to occur, I would say. And this is not a judgment on people who practice this, but I feel like it's more strange to have the exchange of fluids that way than the actual *******.
[41:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right?
[41:39] Portia Pendleton: At the party. It was a butcher party. I am personally not pleased by that behavior, but seems like that to me was like, what? Whoa.
[41:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I also could imagine him being shocked. Like, maybe she came in for a kiss. And then he was like, oh, yeah.
[41:54] Portia Pendleton: What do I do now?
[41:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: But I just loved when he was trying to be like it was a thing. It's a thing, guys.
[42:01] Portia Pendleton: So then we have briefly we have Connor's, the older brother. He's like not seemingly involved. Shares.
[42:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: I thought he was going to be like the most well adjusted one until he's like, I'm going to run for president.
[42:15] Portia Pendleton: Pretty delusional.
[42:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: And that relationship with Willa, I'm really curious porsche to hear your thoughts about.
[42:22] Portia Pendleton: I just feel like it's not surprising at all. Like he's paying this woman to have a relationship with him. And it's so like and everyone know.
[42:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: It takes a while before you realize that she is a sex worker.
[42:39] Portia Pendleton: And she's a playwright.
[42:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: And a playwright. Because they were always like, oh, why is Willa here? Oh, no, Willa's here again. And I was like, what's wrong with Willa? Is she like a toxic ex? Or why are they upset? And then it comes out. And then you're like and then he's like, yeah, I'll pay for you to your playwright.
[43:00] Portia Pendleton: He wants more from her thinking.
[43:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: I mean, she's taking him up on it, but only because he's like footing the bill. He's paying for it. So again, here again, it's like all four of these children inability to have a secure, authentic relationship, not only with a spouse or a romantic partner, but even with children, which so far we only see with Kendall, but also, like their friends. They don't really have any real friends. No, it's either like they get something.
[43:31] Portia Pendleton: Out of the old school. People who seems like who have been around for a long time. We have like Jerry, I think they're like attorney, like their in house legal counsel. And then Frank, who seems really close with Logan, who is treated poorly and then brought back in and then tries to take over with Kendall.
[43:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: I mean, it's just like, yeah, you can't keep where's the alliance here and again with Frank. It's like, why do you keep coming back? It's like all these people come back to Logan. I think because he has all the power portia we can't wrap up before we talk about the family.
[44:08] Portia Pendleton: Therapy. Therapy such a power move. And so they only did it for optics. So there'd be a family photo, which doesn't materialize. Kendall is off the deep end doing meth at a meth house. That Roman then picks him up. The therapist dies, headfirst into the pool.
[44:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: This therapist is the actor who played Nikki in that show. This is us. I don't know if you watch that.
[44:31] Portia Pendleton: No.
[44:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: Such a good show. Very different from this. But I was like, oh, it's that guy. So he's the therapist. Always weird to, like, fly your therapist to you, but I'm sure rich people do this. And then they're having this quote, unquote, family therapy. I liked how the kids didn't just participate in the way their dad wanted them to. It was such bullshit.
[44:54] Portia Pendleton: And they finally I think they took a break and then they never came back. So right before the break, Shiv said something like, well, this is bullshit, right? So I'm not going to participate. Right?
[45:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: And so I wrote down a couple of key quotes from that that I loved. I think maybe the therapist starts off with this, or maybe there's a toast at, like, a breakfast or something. But they say they **** you up, your mom and dad. They do not mean to, but they do. They fill you up with faults they had and add a little extra too.
[45:23] Portia Pendleton: That's great. What a limerick. Who says that?
[45:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: I forget, I thought it was the therapist. Maybe I'm pretty sure it was to open the session and be a little funny or something.
[45:36] Portia Pendleton: Maybe I should say that.
[45:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: And then the dad like just saying his party line. Such a narcissistic thing to do. And again, we keep going back to our episodes on you, but it's just such a good show. When we were talking about if the Quinn family went to therapy, what would it have been like? I feel like it would have been like this, except maybe the dad wouldn't have showed up. The only reason Logan showed up was to get the photo to boost his PR image and the stock price. But then the dad's just saying something like, everything I've ever done is for my children and I love them.
[46:09] Portia Pendleton: That's it. That's like as warm as it gets.
[46:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: There's nothing else. And I wrote down the therapist is like, well, kids or whoever, what do you think about that? And I think Shiv said, I hear it. And then I think Roman said big words.
[46:22] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, the extent of their reaction.
[46:25] Dr. Katrina Furey: But I loved that they just didn't play the role that they knew he wanted them to. And then the therapist, like, dives into the pool and busts teeth out and you're like, what? Family therapist is like, swimming around. It's just wild.
[46:40] Portia Pendleton: And Logan is like, almost rightfully so.
[46:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, what the f like, what? This just exploded in his face. Oh, my God. So I think that's a great depiction of how family therapy shouldn't be, right? It shouldn't be like that, but probably.
[47:00] Portia Pendleton: Can go to therapy and like, totally bullshit. You often see as a therapist, these dynamics play out so clear as day, right? Like the parent maybe, who just repeats the same thing over and over again, or who's playing the victim. And then you see a kid who almost like, sadly is really trying. And then the other kids who have just which totally checked out Shiv and Roman seem to like they're just like, I'm not going to say I'm not going to throw the stone at myself. I'm not going to throw myself under the bus here.
[47:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: But then so you need to have a therapist who's really in it for the right reason to be able to I think you also would have to navigate and understand is this even a safe space? Absolutely. Stop it. The ethical thing would have been like, we're not going to continue. I'm going to leave because it's not safe. It's clearly an abusive dynamic. They're not safe to be open. And you're just, like, enabling this awful abusive behavior. Oh, man.
[48:05] Portia Pendleton: So stay tuned for season two coming.
[48:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: Up in two weeks.
[48:08] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, we're excited. We've been diving into the content like crazy, and it's so good. I just can't stop watching.
[48:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: I love shows like this.
[48:17] Portia Pendleton: But like, always make sure that you are following us on Instagram and TikTok at Analyze Scripts podcast on TikTok and then at Analyze Scripts on Instagram. And we will have some really exciting guests over the next couple of months as well, so stay tuned.
[48:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: And some light hearted summer movies coming your way too, to sort of break up the sociopathy.
[48:38] Portia Pendleton: Well, you never know.
[48:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: Well, yeah, that is true. Surprising when you find these people sometimes. All right, see you next Monday.
[48:47] Portia Pendleton: Bye bye.
[48:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: This podcast and its contents are a copyright of analyzed scripts. All rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited. Unless you want to share it with your friends and rate review and subscribe, that's fine. All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings, or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
[49:59] Portia Pendleton: Our channel.
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TRIGGER WARNING: This episode discusses potentially triggering topics including suicide, self-harm, and eating disorders.
Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. As two dancers, Dr. Furey and Portia were thrilled to revisit the 2010 psychological thriller "Black Swan" starring Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey, and Winona Ryder. In this episode, we analyze the masterful depiction of Nina's first psychotic break and wonder if the character Lily was real or a hallucination. We also discussing toxic dance culture and discuss the differences between anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorder. We hope you enjoy!
[00:17] Portia Pendleton: Hi there. So, yeah, before we get started today, I just kind of wanted to give a little trigger warning for some of the content. We will be discussing the film Black Swan. And there are some themes of suicide, self harm and eating disorders that we're going to discuss. So if that is something that is triggering or might be upsetting to you.
[00:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: Please feel free to skip this episode.
[00:36] Portia Pendleton: And catch us next time. Thanks.
[00:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: Hi. Welcome back to another episode of Analyze Scripts. I'm Dr. Katrina Fury, a psychiatrist, and I'm joined by my friend and colleague.
[00:50] Portia Pendleton: Portia Pendleton, a licensed social worker.
[00:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: We are just going to dive right in today. We're talking about the 2010 psychological thriller Black Swan. There's so much to talk about. So we just got to dive right in. Portia oh.
[01:04] Portia Pendleton: So I saw this movie in theaters when it came out.
[01:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think I had a couple of times.
[01:08] Portia Pendleton: Yay. Like dance movie.
[01:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think I went with some of my dance friends.
[01:11] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, it was supposed to be I actually don't think I knew that it was like a psychological thriller.
[01:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: Do you think it was going to be like center stage?
[01:18] Portia Pendleton: Yes. I was expecting it to just be kind of like toxic ballet culture and some relationships. I went with my at the time boyfriend and now current partner. And I think he was traumatized from it. He was very confused. And I left that movie feeling like gross. Oh, yeah, I can remember it.
[01:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: I remember you told me when I recommended this, you shuddered. And you were like, well, I'll have to watch it during the daylight hours.
[01:54] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I don't know. And maybe we will talk about this a little bit. Like if it's because it hit on stuff for me. But oh my gosh, there were just so many moments that I feel like physically make my skin crawl and make me feel so uncomfortable and shudder almost.
[02:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. It's a beautiful movie, period. I think it was nominated for a bunch of Oscars. I think Natalie Portman won an Oscar for best actress, rightfully so. But even like the physical stuff, like her scratches and skin peeling and all of those things. Exactly. And I think it's meant to make.
[02:36] Portia Pendleton: You feel that way. Yes. I feel like I'm very.
[02:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: Visually impacted.
[02:43] Portia Pendleton: I guess in previous episodes, I talked about vomit a lot. Like, seeing actual vomit makes me crazy. But I work with people who sell farm and we've all seen, I'm sure, especially you in your training, like scars and even fresh cut wounds and things like that. That is just not bothersome to me at this point. But seeing someone peel their skin back, that literally makes me shudder. I feel like it's meant not, but.
[03:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think it's totally meant to there when she's washing her hands on that scene. I think we all know what we're referring to there. But so to give a recap of the plot if you haven't watched it in a while. So this movie focuses on Nina, who is, like, prima ballerina, I think, in New York City Ballet. It seems like they're implying. And she really wants to be the lead dancer, the principal dancer in her company's production. She sort of goes back and forth with another character, Lily, who's played by Mila Kunis. A lot to say about her. And then her mother, nina's mother is played by Barbara Hershey. That dynamic. And their home is fascinating. I'm sure we'll get into it. And then there's, like, this gross director. We'll talk more about him, too, and.
[04:11] Portia Pendleton: Then I totally forgot about her. But Winona Ryder makes his parents as Beth, like, the retiring maybe on being forced to prima ballerina.
[04:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, exactly. And so I believe this movie really amazingly predicts, nina's first psychotic break. Is that how you interpreted it, too, or did you see other things?
[04:35] Portia Pendleton: No, I mean, I don't know what else I would call that. Yeah, I think throughout the movie, we see the really the final push right into that. But I have many questions, as I'm sure many people do. It's like, how did you get here and why? So I think the movie just starts off right away. We see this kind of relationship with mom. It almost feels a little bit like Mommy dear.
[05:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes, I was going to say the same thing 100%.
[05:09] Portia Pendleton: It feels real icky.
[05:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, even Nina, she looks like she's meant to be, like, in her twenty s, I would guess, right. She alludes a couple of times to Beth being, like, 27 or 28. So she's, like, too old now to dance. So I think she's in her early 20s, maybe mid 20s. Like, maybe she's getting there. But she's, like, so infantilized, very childlike. Like, her room still has, like, pink flowers everywhere. Her mom tucks her in, brushes her hair. What did you think about when the mom fed her breakfast of a big old grapefruit and egg white?
[05:45] Portia Pendleton: I was like, oh, that's pretty spot on, I think, for, like, I'd say, right, like, toxic ballet culture to kind of remain very small in your body. Which is, I think, kind of a crazy feat because the amount of work that it takes to be a ballerina a ballerina. I mean, it's you are so strong, even though you look so small, like crazy.
[06:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
[06:11] Portia Pendleton: I mean, your entire body physique is just muscle and strength.
[06:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. But I thought it would depicted it so perfectly that they're so thin. They're, like, scary thin. I felt uncomfortable watching them. I remembered back then they had talked about Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis had talked about how much weight they had to lose. And they are already petite, period, like, just by themselves. But they both and I looked it up after I rewatched the movie, lost, like, at least £20 following these crazy, restrictive diets. And on the one hand, I'm like, that's really accurate for the roles they're playing. On the other hand, I feel really gross about that, just like in our society. And it makes me worry for them that they were able to sustain that, to play these roles and train.
[07:00] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[07:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: Mila Kunis said that she survived on carrots and cigarettes, which is shocking. But yeah, I mean, they both looked so gaunt. And there's that physical therapy scene where someone's working on Nina and you just see her ribs, and it's just like, again, talk about feeling, like, visually uncomfortable, right?
[07:22] Portia Pendleton: I mean, it's like you're all kind of bones and so even kind of stepping away from the story a little bit. Like when she gets dropped on her knee, like, her ankle kind of snapping. At one point, I was so worried.
[07:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: About her bone density, just even from.
[07:39] Portia Pendleton: Being a dance, I guess. Specific ballet. I feel like I have a lot of physical.
[07:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: How do I say this?
[07:48] Portia Pendleton: Physical trauma from the act of dancing. Bleeding toes. Or I have knee problems. And so I think a movie like this, for me, again, really hits me in a physical sensation when she's on.
[08:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: Her know what that feels like.
[08:05] Portia Pendleton: Oh, my gosh. Definitely my body tightened up exactly how that feels. Her getting the physical therapy, like you were just saying, it's brutal. The amount of training and pain that people at this level, I do believe and will say exist 100%.
[08:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I did appreciate in this movie that they really did show that. Especially, like, the dancer's feet, because, of course, when you're on point, your feet are disgusting. You have all these blisters, your toenails break. There's such physical trauma to your body and your feet. And they really displayed that in this movie. And I also was so curious. All of the ballerina's outfits, like their leotards, the shrugs they were wearing. All this stuff is just so accurate. And I also feel like now, looking at it as a physician, I'm so worried about all their labs. They probably all have labs suggestive of anorexia. They're probably all freezing all the time.
[09:08] Portia Pendleton: They probably all have a mennorrhea, so they are not getting their period.
[09:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: They probably every time she fell, I was so worried she was going to break something because I don't think I bet she has osteoporosis because she's not fueling herself. Like how gleeful she was at how pink that grapefruit was. So perfect. Like, such a good scene. But she clearly has an eating disorder. And then when her mom gets her the cake what did you think about that scene and the mom's reaction?
[09:38] Portia Pendleton: I thought it was interesting because I feel like the mom, on the one hand, really wants her right to be this, like, prima ballerina. And I feel like, you know what?
[09:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: The mom could never be, it sounds like because she got pregnant with her.
[09:47] Portia Pendleton: And so she serves her typically because, again, she is treated like a child, typically, like, pretty low calorically, dense food. And then it's like, you get her.
[09:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: This cake for a party size.
[09:58] Portia Pendleton: You're cutting her this big piece. Nina right.
[10:02] Dr. Katrina Furey: To celebrate that, she was chosen to be a Swan Queen.
[10:05] Portia Pendleton: So Nina is like, oh, I want a little smaller. And mom immediately is, like, so hurt.
[10:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
[10:12] Portia Pendleton: Puts it right back on Nina. I'm going to throw it away. Makes Nina feel bad. Nina then apologizes and then eats it anyway. I'm sure she probably threw it up, but it was, like, a very strange moment besides Mom's mental health issues. But just like, you want your daughter to be this person. Let me back up a little bit. I felt like through the movie, the mom comes across as Mommy dearest. Like, kind of like abusive, weird, like manipulative, narcissistic.
[10:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: And we did see that dynamic. Remember, in center stage with that ballerina and her mom.
[10:49] Portia Pendleton: That's interesting too.
[10:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: Do you remember that? I forget that ballerina's name. But that mom was also really involved in calling around and also involved. It's really similar. And I wonder if that's again, part of the ballet culture, if that happens.
[11:02] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. So mom, in some ways, is trying to protect Nina. And it's almost like at the end, she sees Nina literally falling apart and losing her mind and doesn't want her to go through the role, obviously. Then Nina feels like then she ends up going to perform. That is later in the movie. But I thought that that was different. At first, mom comes across as just really inappropriate.
[11:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
[11:30] Portia Pendleton: Just the paintings of Nina all over.
[11:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: There's some things in the movie that I'm sure we'll get into more that I really wondered about Nina's perception of it. And I wondered, are those paintings of her or are those examples of her hallucinating? But certainly the mom, it's just weird. It's just weird. They're very enmeshed. Mom strips off her clothes and brings her to clip her nails because she sees her scratching. It's just icky.
[12:01] Portia Pendleton: It gives me the ick.
[12:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's a really dysfunctional relationship.
[12:05] Portia Pendleton: Mom emerges from the dark of the apartment. At times. It's always like it's startling. It's scary. It feels like the mom is coming in to be mean. And I think you hit the nail on the head with what I was trying to allude to is, like, it's hard to know if mom is really as bad as she is or if it's Nina's perception paranoia. Right. Like, all kind of coming out throughout the movie. And I think initially, it seems like, really clear mom has all these issues. She's not a good mom. She's, like, making Nina to be this way, in my opinion. Then by the end of the movie, I'm really questioning, was she really that bad? Was she even really in the room? Was she really even coming in? I mean, right?
[12:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: 100%. Like, when she finally got that stick of some kind to keep her door shut when she was masturbating and turns over and mom's right there. Those kinds of scenes are just, like, no boundaries. But, yeah, I think it's a really interesting depiction of a toxic mother daughter relationship. But again, I think, like, Ford Nina's story and thinking about her first break. So we know that first psychotic breaks most often occur in that time frame for women. Like, between your twenty s and thirty s. For men, it's a little younger. It might be like late teens into your twenty s. And again, so you're like, okay, so let's rewind. And how did she get here? Like you were saying? So she has this relationship with her mom where she feels like she's supposed to be this prima ballerina her mother never could be. And she even said that thing to her about at one point. Nina is like, what career? To her mother and her mom's like, well, I would have had one if it weren't for you kind of thing. That's really toxic. But just thinking about the stress of that relationship, there's no dad in the picture or even alluded to. So we don't even know what kind of stress was there. What kind of stress was Nina under as a child growing up with this huge expectation on her? Who even knows if she wants it? So that's like A, and then B, we see that she seems to have a very neurotic personality. And I'd love for you to speak more to that, especially in your line of work.
[14:22] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I mean, it seems like, right? Like, one, it's not a causation, but it's often a correlation. Right. So it's narotic a little bit Type A, I'd say, or a lot Type A compulsive. Again, there are a lot of rituals that kind of come out in just like I think the job right. It's like tying your point shoes a certain way. It's like you do all these things that are very ritualized and rich and rigid, and I think it's like a perfect opening for I think there's a lot of ballerinas, in my opinion, who probably do have OCD, probably are perfectionistic, 100%. And I think all of these traits and symptoms really kind of do fit hand in hand with eating disorders, both bulimia and anorexia. I think you see quite frequently in dance self harm. I think it's just, for whatever reason, it breeds just this type of person. Chicken or the egg.
[15:25] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[15:25] Portia Pendleton: I mean, I think if you think.
[15:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: About ballet, to take ballet classes, how many classes Nina has taken over the course of her life? Probably from the age of, like, three. Ballet classes aren't the most exciting thing to do.
[15:41] Portia Pendleton: Very repetitive.
[15:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: Very repetitive. Boring. It's always classical music. Again, it's beautiful, but it takes a certain kind of personality to tolerate that and to do it to such a degree. These people are taking, like, seven classes a week this isn't like just once a week. You're doing it, and you've done it.
[16:02] Portia Pendleton: For years at that level.
[16:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: Exactly. And to be on point, point hurts so bad. I remember I was so excited to finally get on point, and I was not the best ballerina, so it was like, late high school, and as soon as I did, I was like, I hate this, it hurts so bad. But to keep doing it despite the pain again, sounds like such a parallel with anorexia, like, being able to keep depriving yourself despite that physical pain, and.
[16:31] Portia Pendleton: Ultimately it's sometimes getting a little bit of pleasure from it. I feel like there's two ends of the spectrum. It's either, like, you're kind of numbing everything or you can kind of develop specific to anorexia, like a level of euphoria around starvation. And I think research says that also just fun. Fact anorexia really is the rarest eating disorder by far, and it's the most.
[16:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: Fatal mental illness depicted, though.
[16:53] Portia Pendleton: So I think when we think of eating disorders, we think of anorexia, but that's not true. Anorexia is more rare, and like you said, it has the most fatalities. And there's really a certain type of profile that can maintain anorexia. Typically, people might start restricting and then kind of lean into bulimia because you cannot do it for that long.
[17:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. Your biological drive to eat kicks in. Most people, if you can really push past that, like, whoa.
[17:24] Portia Pendleton: Right? I don't want to say normal, but it's really not part of a general experience to be able to do that. That's why we get all these signals. We get hangry, we get irritable. It's like our body's way of cueing us to eat, and most people don't feel good doing that. So it's like, there's this flair. I think it's a lot of genetic research. It's like, what makes some people be able to develop and maintain this disorder for sometimes, really sadly, like, decades. And why, you know, can't others do it? And it seems like there is some sort of a gene marker that makes, like, extreme hunger desirable, almost fascinating. It is really opposite of our human nature. Our human nature kicks in and we need to survive. So food and water and shelter is all a part of that. So it's like when your body is screaming at you that eating is dangerous. It's like that is so injecting that you are able to kind of over.
[18:25] Dr. Katrina Furey: In your brain and see the neural networks are just like flip flops. I wonder if there is some sort of, like, if there's so little, like, dopamine, which is, like one of the pleasure neurotransmitters, like, what's their dopamine? Like, does it bump up the longer they go without eating? Yeah, it just sounds so fascinating.
[18:47] Portia Pendleton: Like, everything is controlled. And you even see with Nina, like, that night that she kind of goes out on the town with Lily, that's not something that she literally has ever done. She does this routine, she practices. Her life is very controlled.
[19:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: Life is all ballet in her mind. Right.
[19:03] Portia Pendleton: And I think that is a similar profile. Again, with someone who has really classic anorexia. It's like everything is controlled. There's no small you're not even going out to, like, a concert and having fun. You can't it's stressful to go.
[19:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right? It's like your world is so small and just totally consumed by this. And then I think with such severe malnutrition, your brain just isn't functioning.
[19:28] Portia Pendleton: You're more anxious, you're more depressed. And I always kind of say to patients, like, you don't have depression first. You probably never would have self harmed. You never would have wanted to kill yourself. I think it's about even with death rates of anorexia by medical complications, heart complications, and suicide.
[19:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
[19:51] Portia Pendleton: And I think it's like most of these people without anorexia would not have these other disorders that arise because your brain is kind of solo functioning, right?
[20:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: 100%. I feel like it's interesting, I think our different perspectives here, Portia, because you do this all the time. That's why I'm fascinated to talk to you about this movie. But I see it come up when people are like, I think I have Add, and they come to me and they're like, £90 and we have a totally different discussion, like you're talking about. And I'm like, no. And also, again, it's like, no, you can't focus because you have no energy source in your brain. And I would never start a stimulant on you because your heart is already compromised. You're already so thin. It's just really fascinating. And I did think this movie did such a good job, and Natalie Portman did such a good job just portraying that obsessive pattern that you see in this character and probably in a lot of ballerinas, maybe. And I think it's also the culture. Like, the ballerina body type is so unattainable for, like, 99.9% of the world, I would imagine. And the technique you need, the turnout you need, all of it is so hard. And so you have to practice so much to get there. It's just this unattainable standard and goal that just feeds into breeding, this perfectionism, this obsessiveness, the rituals, the diets, the everything to get to this unattainable point. And I think we see Nina have a psychotic break under that level of stress.
[21:32] Portia Pendleton: And I think, too, what I think is really hard is while you are performing oftentimes in a core, so in the corpse, which means with the group of people, you're not the prima ballet arena who's in the lead role, you're.
[21:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: All this other swans. Right.
[21:50] Portia Pendleton: And it's like that still at a level like the New York City Ballet, american Ballet Theater is like the highest of the high, but it's so uniquely like an individual sport still. Right. Like, you're not a soccer team where it's like you're passing back and forth and the team is celebrating. It's weirdly. Very individual. Even though you're competitive together, it's wildly competitive. And I think, again, feel like a failure. It just breeds this type of person who chooses to go into it, who.
[22:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: Sticks with it to this level. And again, you're so right. That's such a blow to their self esteem. You see Nina come home and just fall apart with her mom when she thinks she's not going to be picked. And she's tried so hard and she's still not good enough. It just feeds this almost I want to say narcissistic, but in the, like, I'm never going to be good enough way. But you stay in it and it's like you're flagellating yourself over and over. You're just in this culture where you never feel good enough. Oh my gosh. And then she does get the role, but after the director has assaulted her.
[22:59] Portia Pendleton: Right. So we see Tomas. He seems like he's the artistic director of the company. It seems like he has had a history of a relationship with Beth, who all the premium. Right. It seems like this is probably a kind of toxic, abusive, sexual assaulty environment.
[23:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: Interesting to watch. It now post Harvey Weinstein in the MeToo movement compared to back in 2010.
[23:24] Portia Pendleton: And so he is kind of, I think, like trying to see to test her. That's my impression of first. Right. He's like asking her all these questions. He invites her back, is asking her.
[23:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: If she's a virgin, if she has a boyfriend.
[23:40] Portia Pendleton: And again, it's like.
[23:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think that was after she got the role. Yeah, but even before then, they were maybe dancing and he was trying to seduce her, remember?
[23:50] Portia Pendleton: And then he kisses her, she bites him, which she thinks is, now it's done, she lost the role, she's not going to get it. But for whatever reason, the bite really got. Exactly. And then she still thinks she doesn't get it. She thinks Lily no, she thinks another random girl got it because she says, oh, congratulations.
[24:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: That girl was maybe Michelle Trachtenberg, but maybe not. No. I don't know.
[24:16] Portia Pendleton: Not Harry. Looks like, yeah, that's a good call. And then she ends up getting it, goes to the bathroom, calls her mom. You see her at times. I don't think that time she went.
[24:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: In to throw up. No, but other times she's feeling a big emotion. You see her go to the bathroom. I thought that was a really smart depiction of bulimia.
[24:36] Portia Pendleton: So it would be anorexia. How would you type? Okay, because I'm assuming that she is not binging. So you have to binge in order to have bulimia, which is actually like a lot of people don't know that. A lot of people only associate the purge with bulimia.
[24:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's so important.
[24:53] Portia Pendleton: Many people with anorexia do purge, for example, they might have something that they believe to be a larger meal that would be, I would say, a subjective binge.
[25:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like someone might come in eggs rather than an egg white, right.
[25:07] Portia Pendleton: And then they're going to throw that up versus somebody who is really, truly engaging in a binge behavior, which is about consuming like 3500 calories in kind of around 90 minutes in secret. You almost are dissociative. You're eating a lot of the same food, so it's not like you are going up for your third helping at Thanksgiving and you're feeling really uncomfortable. You have overeaten.
[25:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's also not like you're sort of mindlessly grazing at dinner time while you're prepping dinner. So 3500 calories in 90 minutes, that's a helpful right?
[25:40] Portia Pendleton: So it's really rapid. You might be eating like loaves of bread, right? So you're not going up and taking multiple bound piece items on your plate, bringing them back. It would be like consuming an entire.
[25:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: Party sized cake, right.
[25:55] Portia Pendleton: And then having a bag of donuts and then having a bag of plain untoasted bagels. It's like it's not we're going through the drive through, like seven times, multiple drive through. So I think a lot of people kind of say that they binge. I think a lot of and maybe you're serious. Some people I do think we throw that word around a lot.
[26:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
[26:13] Portia Pendleton: But bulimia really does require a binge.
[26:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: Again, I don't have as much experience with eating disorder, so this is really educational for me. I've always wondered, how do you quantify a binge?
[26:25] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. So I think that's more of like a research criteria, which I think is helpful.
[26:31] Dr. Katrina Furey: No, it's super helpful for me to know. Yeah.
[26:33] Portia Pendleton: And then, so I'd ask someone, like, did you have an objective binge, which I just described, or did you have like a subjective binge? Same thing, just with binge eating disorder. So people are then not using a compensatory behavior. So they're not self induced vomiting. They're not taking a laxative, they're not then restricting.
[26:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: They're not over exercising.
[26:52] Portia Pendleton: Correct. They're not over exercising. But I think a lot of people who do show up with binge eating disorder often do restrict. So they'll maybe restrict during the day at work, intentionally or unintentionally, and then they go home, and then they might consume like a large quantity of food. There is a little bit of difference between night eating syndrome and binge eating disorder, but I think we think of restriction only in anorexia.
[27:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: And that's it. I think, like you've told me before, that's super rare to have that form of anorexia where all you do is respect.
[27:26] Portia Pendleton: Most people have purged who have anorexia.
[27:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: And again, purging being the self induced vomiting which we see depicted in this movie, but also laxative use over exercising. There's a lot of different ways of purging. So, like, your patients you have who meet criteria for the restrictive type but then run a lot. Would you say that's the purging?
[27:48] Portia Pendleton: Because oftentimes if they are unable to exercise to a certain degree, they might then restrict more of their food intake because they're not able to compensate for it or have a lot more anxiety.
[28:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: And this is where, oh, my God, I just so worry about their hearts. And we've talked about this a lot, just not in the podcast.
[28:10] Portia Pendleton: People who have heart rates in the 30s, right?
[28:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: They're like running marathons and you're just like, how are you doing this? And again, these ballerinas, this is what they're living in, too. And it just makes me so nervous. Like, if I strapped an EKG on them, I would have a heart attack myself.
[28:25] Portia Pendleton: Because restriction does impact your muscles and.
[28:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: Your heart is a muscle.
[28:31] Portia Pendleton: So I think as someone's just wanting to lose, as so many diets say, that will work, that we're just kind of taking the fat away. Restriction doesn't work that way. Your body doesn't know that. You just want to target this quote unquote problem area right on your left hip. It's like no. Restriction takes from everywhere. It takes from the gray matter from your brain. Yes, we need fats for our brain to work. Well, so seeing Nina's diet is really concerning. And again, she has a really high output of exercise. She should be fueling throughout the day, protein shakes.
[29:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: She should be eating like Michael Phillips. Yes, it's just wild.
[29:11] Portia Pendleton: But then when we think about ballet culture, right, so I noticed the costume design piece. So in most ballet shows, you tend to do them more than once. So The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, you have.
[29:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: To fit in that costume giselle.
[29:27] Portia Pendleton: So they keep these costumes, especially the core, and they might refresh the prima ballerina's costume, but they try to use them over and over again. And if you are bigger than the last dancer was who was in your costume that you are getting that is so upsetting and shameful, even if somebody is not directly shaming you, it's like, oh, we have to add this piece of fabric on to make a new one.
[29:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: Or you're not in you're not in the show. Right. 100%. I agree. I thought that was like yeah, there.
[29:59] Portia Pendleton: Is pride in a really sick way that when you are smaller and they need to take it in and there's shame and guilt when you are too big and it won't class.
[30:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: 100%. And also just the lifts, like the male ballerinas lifting the girls, like the lighter you are. I mean, the prima ballerina, I think, until like, Misty Copeland always had the same very small body type. Yeah, misty Copeland was white. And so Men white.
[30:26] Portia Pendleton: Copeland kind of came in. And if you don't know about her, she's this really amazing black ballerina. And she is, though, I will say, in a very small body. But she's muscular.
[30:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: Muscular?
[30:38] Portia Pendleton: I would say like more toned. It seems like she has more muscle mass, but still in a very small body. Right. And I think that there is still way more room to grow. In many literal areas of diversity, in all ways in the ballet field. So that leads me to thinking of Lily, who is played by Mila Kunis.
[31:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. Tell me what you think about Lily, then I'll tell you what I think.
[31:07] Portia Pendleton: So kind of on the surface level, I think Lily is supposed to be so obviously like the black San Francisco tattoo on her back, which is like these black wings. Natalie Portman's character, Nina, is very childlike, dough eyed. Where's pink where's pink ballerina? E. And I didn't know the hair down.
[31:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: Sorry to interrupt. I did find it interesting, the first scene we see of Natalie Portman walking into rehearsals, she had some wispies, which in the dance world means, like, your bun isn't totally hairsprayed. Like, there's some stray pieces. And I thought that was interesting because she would not have wispies like that version of her at that point, would not. I just thought that was again, maybe no one thought of it. Or maybe it was sort of purposeful as like, she's unraveling already. Right. I don't know.
[31:56] Portia Pendleton: Anyway no, I mean, that's a good point. Hair, I think, is so important. I think, again, it really cared characterized them as so different. But I think there is no way that they would ever allow it's just not ballet etiquette to not have your hair in a box. I know.
[32:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: When she's dancing around with her hair.
[32:14] Portia Pendleton: Down, like flinging around, you can't spot if you have your hair down, it's going to get in your partner's face.
[32:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: Absolutely. There's no way. But she's like San Francisco. That's what I'm trying to do. Right.
[32:21] Portia Pendleton: She's like, cool, she's sexy, she eats a cheeseburger. Right. And it's just, again, to me, that's so unbelievable. But it's all, like, triggering Nina because Lily is the exact opposite of her.
[32:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: And what she needs to be to play the role queen. Right. I don't think Lily was real. I think she was a hallucination the whole time I.
[32:49] Portia Pendleton: Felt that way.
[32:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: I didn't think that back in 2010. No, I do.
[32:54] Portia Pendleton: I was, like, kind of mind F word in 2010 after seeing it and had a lot of questions about that. I think you are 100% right. I don't think Lily exists at all. I think in so many ways, Lily is this version of Nina that she needs or wants or that she's trying to access. There's so many times when she's not really there. I think it's like when Nina is not herself, she is Lily. Like, Lily goes out to the bar. I don't think she was ever there. Right.
[33:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: No.
[33:27] Portia Pendleton: When they have sex like that, she was masturbating. I think when she sees Lily having sex with Tomas and then he turns into this swan creature again, I don't think any of it's real.
[33:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think you're right. That didn't hit me until I was watching this at the end. I remember back when it came out, the sex scene between them was like, that was like all that big draw, see the movie. But now watching it, I'm like, I think the closer she gets to Lily that's representing the further she's going into psychosis. We see, like, at the very early, early on in the movie, when Nina is walking onto the subway, she thinks someone laughs at her. She sees a weird face. We see some of that early on.
[34:20] Portia Pendleton: These little ghosts see Lily.
[34:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. Or, like, someone's face that I couldn't tell who it was, if it was Lily or that other girl she was feeling competitive with, that Michelle Trachtenberg looking girl.
[34:31] Portia Pendleton: And then it always morphs back into Nina, though.
[34:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right, exactly. And so I thought this movie so artistically and beautifully depicted the descent into Psychosis with some very classic things. Like, again, those little things that can happen at first, where you have, like, a small break from reality. Was it real or was it just in my head? Okay. I think I hear people laughing at me. Are they really or are they not? And then it just growing and growing and growing and growing. Like, the mom's weird paintings, like, laughing at her. I started to even wonder about the scratches on her. Were those real? I think they were. I think she was doing that out of stress, but not realizing she was doing it. Oh, it's so interesting.
[35:18] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. I mean, such an artistic way to I think exactly what you just said, to kind of show Psychosis and, like, the descent into it. I am even kind of remembering, which I had talked about before with the mom. Yes, I believe that they do authentically have a strange relationship and national, however, right then, I think it kind of throws me to having all these questions about everything. Is the mom really that bad? I don't know. Is all of this just, like, in paranoia now?
[35:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: Some paranoia, yeah. And you even see when Nina shows up late to a rehearsal, I think after their big night out, maybe, or her, who knows? Big night out. And I wondered even about the ecstasy. I don't think she was actually on drugs. I think that was the psychosis. Like, she was starting to feel disconnected from herself. And she shows up, she thinks she sees Lily filling in for her, and she runs after Tomas, like, really tearful, like, really paranoid. She's after me. She's trying to take my role, like, all of that. She's just unraveling. And at some point, her mom tries to stop her from performing. Right. So at some point, the mom, I think, is trying to help.
[36:32] Portia Pendleton: I know that's where I was confused, fuzzy. Right.
[36:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: Because then mom's in the audience. Right. And the mom but even, like, as she's performing as the swans, like that last half hour of the movie, however long it is, you just see the full descent, like, in such a beautifully.
[36:51] Portia Pendleton: She becomes the black swan. I mean, it comes out of her skin. She performs it so amazingly well. Tomas is, like, giving her such good feedback after initially, right? Like, the first scene, she has that fall, the white swan, and I think even that more I think that's real. I think that even catapults her further.
[37:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: Because the stress, the stress that she's under, it seems like she has this complicated relationship with her mom, this perfect storm of an obsessive neurotic personality with an eating disorder. And then we add on this level of stress. She has a psychotic break. I don't think she's depicting schizophrenia, which perhaps she goes on to develop. But schizophrenia would involve other things, too, like her thought process, her affect, which is we think of mood as, like, your own subjective experience about your emotions and affect being what other people observe on you. There's negative symptoms associated with schizophrenia. She's not displaying any of that. She's really displaying a first break, which at that age, you don't really know. Is this a one time thing? Is it stress induced? Is it signs of an underlying bipolar disorder or signs of a schizophrenia? We don't know. But oh, my God, it's so masterfully depicted.
[38:02] Portia Pendleton: So fun fact, I watched it on Amazon Prime. I rented it, and they give you kind of a running some facts on the side, like, if you move the mouse and who's on screen right now?
[38:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: So they always say the characters.
[38:13] Portia Pendleton: So I really enjoy that sometimes. And they had shared that Natalie Portman recommended Mila Kunis for the role. She really wanted her to do it. She felt like she would be a perfect kind of counter to her. And then Mila Kunis, I guess, didn't even audition. Like, they just kind of talked to her over Skype or something. And then they gave her the role. They thought she was the perfect fit.
[38:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I know Natalie Portman said that she did a lot of ballet training. I think she was a ballerina as a kid. Not professionally, but then there was a body double, of course, because the ballet was amazing. Those left sided fuets were just like, oh, my God. But, oh, my gosh. I know. I feel like we should break down just a little bit before we wrap up the final show. Yeah.
[39:02] Portia Pendleton: Prior to that, though, I was curious on your thoughts about why is Nina visiting Beth in the hospital? Right. So Beth, like, jumps in front of.
[39:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: A car, attempts suicide, and then she's in the hospital.
[39:13] Portia Pendleton: Like, her body is damaged, which I think is just like the ultimate I don't even know, trauma and trauma. Right. You had the suicide attempt, and now your body is really more even incapable of being who you identify as, which is a dancer, which now that you're not. That that's why she, I'm assuming, you know, wanted to kind of end her.
[39:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: Life, and she was feeling rejected by Tomas and yep. It's terrible.
[39:38] Portia Pendleton: So Nina brings her or gives her back the little items that she stole.
[39:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: Those weird little things she stole. I thought that was interesting, and one.
[39:47] Portia Pendleton: Of them being, like, it looked a letter opener, but I'm assuming it was some kind of knife, maybe even for, like, point shoe stuff, like it was some part of a kick up or something. And then she stops herself.
[39:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think that was all a hallucination.
[40:00] Portia Pendleton: I hope, building all of this energy. I feel like just the watcher, like I'm all over the place.
[40:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: That was also super graphic. I do think she visited her initially when she brought her flowers and everything. I was really uncomfortable when she was picking up the blanket to look at her injuries. I felt like that was really a violation. And I think Nina so wanted to be Beth.
[40:28] Portia Pendleton: Yes.
[40:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: And so maybe it was like seeing her potential future that was, like, haunting her. Maybe she felt guilty that now she's the Swan Queen, and then Beth attempts suicide. Maybe she felt guilty, and then she did. Even before Beth was ousted, there was that scene early in the movie where she leaves her dressing room angry, and Nina goes in and takes all those trinkets, kind of like a Kleptomaniac. I don't know. I was like, Are you trying to become her in a real creepy way?
[41:00] Portia Pendleton: I even wonder. And maybe it doesn't add up in the movie, but did Nina push Beth in front of the car? I mean, it just seems like anything could be part of her psychotic break or not. And I think that's the fun of the movie is trying to kind of figure that out. But so she wakes up late. Mom hides the doorknob. She's in her room. She looks at the clock. It's way too late. So she gets ready. She like fights, mom.
[41:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: And mom said, like, I've already called and told them you're not feeling well. Which I think, again, for Nina, is like, what the f? I've lived my whole life trying to be this person.
[41:36] Portia Pendleton: You want me to be nothing.
[41:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: Now I'm here, and now you call me out. I still can't be good enough for you, mom. Right. So anyway, so she rushes in, she gets ready. I was really interested in the fact that she did all of her own makeup. Is that true? Yeah.
[41:54] Portia Pendleton: So I thought about this while I was watching it. So in, I guess, traditional ballet production, too, you are not doing you always try to do, like, a dramatic face, dramatic eye, comp dancing, all of that stuff. But again, it was a little triggered by the makeup because I've done that makeup before. You try to make the top of your face really white, so it's, like, reflecting. You draw, like, really wide black eyeliner. So, like, under your eye all the way out. You wing it white in between. And that makeup is so sticky and uncomfortable.
[42:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: And she had to redo her makeup multiple times throughout the show. And the makeup and the costumes were so amazing when her eyes turn red as the black swan, but so she starts off as the white swan. She has the fall, which is devastating. And then her and Lily have the physical altercation and she ends up in.
[42:50] Portia Pendleton: The dressing room stabbing her with the glass.
[42:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: Also, Lily was trying to take the role, remember? Lily was like Toma had said she was going to do it because Nina was late. Again, I don't think Lily is actually real, but that all depicts it so well. And then she stabs her, drags her into the bathroom and just leaves her there. And I thought she really killed her.
[43:14] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. There's blood coming out from under the door. She puts the towel on it. She goes and then performs as gets positive feedback, which I think was very interesting because the whole movie, it's like all she's getting is negative feedback. She's not sexy enough from the male partner and from Tomas. Everyone's jealous of her. But then at the performance, besides the fall, you hear all of this positive feedback from her peers, people in the core, Tomas. It's really nice that some of people are asking her if she's okay after she fell. So I'm wondering, too, that doesn't fit her previous view, that's like everyone's out to get her. Everyone's trying to take this role. It's like, I wonder again, was that all in her head?
[43:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: There's some competition, of course, or was she unraveling? And people are like, oh, my God, are you okay? I think she's starting to appear psychotic. The way she carried herself was different. She walks up and kisses Tomas after the performance. She dances differently. The way they have her sort of sprout the wings as she's turning, it's like now she's psychotic. Right? It was just so beautifully depicted. But she was hearing them laughing as they were switching. She was in the wings and the core was coming off stage and their faces kind of looked off. She was upstage when she should have been downstage. She was confused. I thought they were asking her that. Not out of I mean, out of caring, but because she was, like, appearing more and more psychotic. And then she gets back to her dressing room. There's no blood coming.
[44:52] Portia Pendleton: There's no body.
[44:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: There's no body.
[44:54] Portia Pendleton: There is a glass, though.
[44:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: There is the glass. And she looks and she stabbed herself. And that's when at least watching it again, this time I was like, Billy was never real. It's like a depiction of her wrestling with that part of herself. And then she carries on, puts on the white swan makeup again, goes and does a beautiful performance at the end, and then quite literally jumps to her death.
[45:18] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[45:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: And at the very end, as she's dying, I think she says it was perfect, or I was perfect or something, and I was like, oh, my God.
[45:27] Portia Pendleton: Just floored.
[45:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: Just floored. Like, the lengths you go to achieve perfection.
[45:32] Portia Pendleton: I mean, it does drive you mad. I feel like at both times that I've watched, I'm always left a little speechless besides feeling unwell and triggered. But yeah, I had a lot of questions, which it seems like the glass was real on the floor, but I don't know if you get stopped, I just don't see you performing.
[45:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: But again right, but also, she is the person who can sustain anorexia for that period of time. Right. I don't even think she feels it. And they even kind of show that, but where her wound doesn't grow until she's finally done dancing. God, what a movie.
[46:13] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I think it touches on so much stuff and so much toxic energy that is in the ballet world. I think it talks about also, like a psychotic break. Mom and daughter relationships.
[46:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's predatory.
[46:30] Portia Pendleton: Predatory relationships.
[46:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: Touches on so much and it's so artistically beautiful. Yeah. I don't know if I'd say it was a pleasure to watch again, because it's really disturbing, but yeah, amazing movie.
[46:48] Portia Pendleton: For me, I think I didn't quite enjoy dance while I was kind of competitive at that level, like, in high school. And I think I really started to enjoy dance again when I stepped away.
[47:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: From the ballet world.
[47:06] Portia Pendleton: I mean, I think that's not a universal maybe experience, but I think if something doesn't become fun anymore and it's not fulfilling and it's just, like all work and pain, I think it's, like, time to move on to something else. And I think it's really hard for dancers as like, that's your identity for so many people. We don't become professionals. I know. It's just really hard to do that.
[47:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: Did you ever have guest teachers be like, raise your hand if you hope to be a professional dancer someday? I feel like they were always asking us that, and I always raised my hand. I think it was just like I.
[47:43] Portia Pendleton: Feel like we were some of my instructors at some places. That was the assumption. I mean, this is kind of like a horrifying thing to share, but when we started Point, I think I was probably like eleven.
[47:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my gosh. Your little feet are still developing.
[48:00] Portia Pendleton: We were not allowed to use padding.
[48:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: No.
[48:04] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[48:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: So if you're not familiar with point so, like, in the point shoes, actually, same with me. I just started later. But you can put, like, wool or buy these gelburns. There's all sorts of but all these pads in the very tip of your shoes. So your toes have some padding.
[48:21] Portia Pendleton: But you're right.
[48:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: Same with me. Now that I'm thinking about it, you weren't allowed to use padding because that's.
[48:27] Portia Pendleton: Not what the professional a real feel for the shoe and build up your toe. Your calluses.
[48:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: I remember I used to cut off dead skin like in between rehearsals.
[48:36] Portia Pendleton: You weren't allowed to get a pedicure because you didn't want soft skin, right?
[48:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes. If I would get one, I would say, don't remove the calluses.
[48:43] Portia Pendleton: So I sneakily brought in cotton balls and put them in my shoe. It was so painful.
[48:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: So painful. It's the worst.
[48:51] Portia Pendleton: Oh, my gosh. I think dancing now as an adult and doing other forms of dance, like tap, I feel like the joy has returned. And it's fun and it's nice, but I think I do follow. Her name is Isabel Boylston. I think she's a prima ballerina for the American Ballet Theater. I like her content. I mean, I will say, like, she is a small bodied ballerina, pretty traditional speaking. She's an amazing dancer. And I'd like to think and hope that the ballet world is making some efforts to be more inclusive and to be safer for everybody. I'm not in it anymore. I can't speak to that. And I know I feel like we said a lot of negative, bad things about it today, which I think that's just the reality. But I also am hopeful that there are wonderful companies with wonderful instructors and better PT. But I think it's cutthroat. I think it is.
[49:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: And at least the way it's depicted in this movie, very cutthroat. So I'm just thinking, like, if you and I experience some of that on such a local dance school level, imagine what it is at the New York City Ballet. Right? Wow. So is there anything else we wanted to touch on?
[50:06] Portia Pendleton: No. I'm glad that it's behind us. I feel like it deserves to be.
[50:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: Called a film, not a movie. All right, well, this was fun. I'm also glad it's behind us. Thank you all for tuning in. If you could please rate, review, and subscribe, that would be great, and we will see you next time with succession.
[50:25] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[50:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: All right. Bye, guys.
[50:27] Portia Pendleton: Bye.
[50:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: This podcast and its contents are a copyright of analyzed scripts. All rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited. Unless you want to share it with your friends and rate, review, and subscribe, that's fine. All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings, or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening, and see you next time.
[51:23] Portia Pendleton: Bye. Our channel, Sam.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we chat about the adorable 2015 Disney/Pixar animated film "Inside Out." We love all of these characters and were so impressed at how well this movie depicted the development of psychological ambivalence in a pre-teen. In this episode, we comment on the humorous portrayal of various cognitive processes including memory, dejavu, and dreaming. We also touch on neuroplasticity and resiliency as it relates to trauma experienced in childhood. That leads us to reflect on what it's been like to work with patients of all ages through the COVID-19 pandemic, and our plea to Disney to release a sequel about Riley living through the pandemic. We hope you enjoy!
Portia Pendleton: Hi.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Welcome back to another episode of Analyze Scripts. I'm here, as always, with my co host, Dr. Katrina A. Fury, a psychiatrist. And I am Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker practicing as a therapist. Yes, we're really excited to dive into today's episode. We both watched me for the first time, you for the first time at the movie Inside Out. Yeah.
Portia Pendleton: Disney Pixar movie. Yeah. I've seen this movie a bazillion times, but I love it every single time. And I remember I first saw it when it came out a couple of years back. I was just going into my second year of psych residency at Yale, and me and a couple of my co residents went to the movie theater together and watched this all together. And it was so great. And I thought it was such a great depiction of emotion and development, and we'll totally get into all of it, but I just really love this movie.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Do you remember talking about it or what you guys thought right after? Did anything stick with you? Anything that anybody said or like?
Portia Pendleton: I think so much of it. I think we loved the depiction of the different types of memory. And when they're on the train trying to get back to Riley's what do they call it? The control center or something. Just, like, going through the different lands of the brain. And it was so well done. One thing I remember we all talked about was, like, I wonder how they came up with the five main emotions because they were anger, disgust, fear, sadness and joy. And I always thought disgust. That was the one where I was like, I wonder how they came up with that. I remember we sort of spent some time talking about that.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. So just like a little premise. If you haven't seen it, I do recommend it's. Like, short it's silly. I feel like you can pause it and put it back on. But it's about a child who yeah, most of the story takes place when she's in that age range, but you first kind of see her as a baby and the movie kind of goes through her experience with really, I'd say, like, innate basic emotions to developing more complex emotions. Right.
Portia Pendleton: All in the context of a big move, a major life transition when Riley and her family moved from Minnesota to San Francisco. And it was just, like, so well done and just so amazing. I thought even picking her age was spot on. I feel like we go from seeing her have these five primitive, very separate emotions to being able to start integrating different feelings and hold on to them at the same time. And that's, like, exactly around the time, I think, psychologically that would be able to happen. And just throwing in the move and how that sort of disrupts her feelings and showing the tension between her own inner feelings and what she thinks her parents want her to feel and then rebelling a little bit at the end.
Dr. Katrina Furey: It was just so great.
Portia Pendleton: I really loved it. It was such a unique concept, an interesting premise and way to depict psychological development in childhood as you move into adolescence.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And what really does I think it just gives kids and adults, like, a really good picture of what happens in your brain. I like to think of it, and I feel like it would be nice to even explain maybe to some people, maybe, I guess a little bit younger, but I think adults, too, that this is what happens. It's more like technical and it's not as pretty. Our brains are like, gray, but the control center with the emotions kind of working together or sometimes in conflict.
Portia Pendleton: Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And then how our memories are stored and them directing each way. That is what happened.
Portia Pendleton: Right. And I think it does give language and imagery to little kids about this stuff. And I've heard children say depict their.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Anger, their turning red, just like that guy.
Portia Pendleton: And I just think it's so great. I just loved it.
Dr. Katrina Furey: So, Inside Out also has a pretty all star cast. And I think some of the voices I recognized but couldn't place. And now that we kind of took a deep dive into that, I'm like.
Portia Pendleton: Oh, my gosh, I love them. We have Amy Poehler, who plays kind.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Of the main lead, which is Joy, which is perfect.
Portia Pendleton: Like, what a perfect casting.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Her voice, her cadence, her tone. I feel like it's very joyful. Very joyful.
Portia Pendleton: She was great.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And then we have Mindy Kaling, who did the Disgust characters. Her I didn't place at all. If I listened back, I probably would. And she did a great job, too, right? It was perfect.
Portia Pendleton: And then we have bill hader as fear. That one I didn't place till I looked it up and I was like, so great. They're just so perfect. And Louis Black is Anger, who is, like, one of my favorites. Again, I really love the depiction of Anger, and I'm so curious about how different creative people put Anger into imagery and words and everything. Whoops.
Dr. Katrina Furey: You liked angry man. Shrink too.
Portia Pendleton: That's interesting. Yeah, I like that. And then who else did we have for Sadness? We had the woman from The Office that you were really excited about.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Okay, if you have seen The Office, you know how her voice is. And so, please, if you have not seen Inside Out, like, just picture her character and her tone and how she talks just as this little short blue blob of sadness.
Portia Pendleton: I know.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Walking around and, oh, I didn't mean to do that. She's perfect for the role.
Portia Pendleton: And also, the way they drew these five main emotions were also perfect. We have joy. He's, like, taller and wearing this bright blue dress, and I think she's got, like, blue hair and she's, like, bopping around all zoom. Zoo, zoo, zooming. Everywhere we have sadness. The little blue, your blob with glasses and a turtleneck. And then we have discussed who's green and kind of like, sassy and wearing jewelry, and her hair is a little flippy. And then anger is like a big red square. And then fear is just this little string bean. String bean of something that could just.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Melt into the floor, right?
Portia Pendleton: And I was just like, It's so great.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I love it.
Portia Pendleton: And then the human characters were also really interesting and pivotal. So we have Diane Lane, who voiced Riley's mom. We had Kyle McLaughlin, who voiced Riley's dad. And then Riley herself was played by an actress named Caitlin Diaz. And they've all been in a lot of different movies and TV shows themselves. So it really was an all star cast.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton: Oh, and how could I forget Bing Bong? What did you think about Bing Bong?
Dr. Katrina Furey: So Bing Bong was the imaginary friend, right? So I thought his character was so sweet. The only time I got a little teary eyed was in the movie where I think Bing Bong kind of realizes that he's supposed to kind of fade into your childhood experience and not kind of follow you to adolescence. So he helps Joy get back to the main switchboard so she can help Riley help Riley out.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I know. So beautiful. So Bing Bong was played by Richard Kind, who is an actor that I wouldn't know that name off the top of my head, but I know him. Like, when I look at him and he voices all these different funny characters, like on Curb Your Enthusiasm, Mad About You, he's just really a funny comedian. Yeah. So where do we start?
Dr. Katrina Furey: So I liked the first scene a lot because I feel like it's really kind of accurate with what babies see. So it's like the first emotion that kind of shows up as Joy, right. And it's like you're kind of awe at the world. You don't see very well, but you can see your parents faces. Right. They're really close to you and they're really happy. They're smiling. And then I think that was just like a really beautiful moment. And then very quickly yeah. I think sadness comes in.
Portia Pendleton: I thought it was anger, like, when she starts crying, maybe it was sad and I don't know which one of those.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And it was just like, a lot. Someone took over, right? Changing my diaper. I'm hungry. That's how I get my need met. I don't know how to speak.
Portia Pendleton: It was so funny and how they showed I'm taking over so quickly, like, at the switchboard, I just loved. And I love the parents reactions, too.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. So I just really liked that scene in general. I thought it was really accurate again, and kind of a good introduction to all the characters and how the emotions kind of show up at different stages of early early development.
Portia Pendleton: Right? Early super early development.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Total fear, right? Like, fear is really appropriate because it does keep us safe. It helps kids. I think she was like hopping over a cord, which again, is like, safe.
Portia Pendleton: But to a child that age.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Was like, warning her. And then Disgust came in and was like I think it was funny about the broccoli. What is this? It's green. I can't take this. She has a temper tantrum.
Portia Pendleton: Then also like, yeah. And then how that carries over to when they're in San Francisco, they thought like, oh, let's go get some pizza. This will be safe. Riley brings that up. She can tell her parents are stressed because the moving van doesn't show up and there's fighting, and she's like, let's.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Go get some pizza.
Portia Pendleton: Then they show up and it's like, San Francisco probably like vegan broccoli pizza. And I remember Anger was like, they.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Can'T even get pizza right here. Yeah, it was so sweet. So I think just knowing about child brain development, I think we could go off on a really long tangent here that I will try to shorten. But I really wanted to kind of just talk about child brain elasticity and why children can be so resilient. Their brain is still forming. They're still making all these connections in their synapses.
Portia Pendleton: They're all fire science words.
Dr. Katrina Furey: So I think that was really cool. And then when we see later on in the movie, we see the long term memories, like shapes, and it looks like yes, it looks like a brain.
Portia Pendleton: The sulci and the Gyrie of the brain. Exactly.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I know.
Portia Pendleton: And then when they had all the memories, there as these beautiful little glows that all had at the beginning, like one color. It was like one main color. It was like yellow for Joy, blue for Sadness, green for Disgust, red for Anger, and then purple for fear, I think. And then as we progress into adolescence, they start being multiple colors. And that's at first when Joy was like, sadness, don't touch this. You're going to ruin the core memory. And sadness is like, oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. And that tension between Joy and Sadness the whole time. Chefs kiss moi. Wow. And then the fact that at the end, sadness was the hero of the day. Being able to sit with your authentic feelings in this big move and missing your friends and approaching adolescents, it was so beautiful.
Dr. Katrina Furey: There was a powerful moment with Sadness comforting. Was it Bing Bong?
Portia Pendleton: I think so.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And Bing Bong was really upset, crying. And then Sadness sat down and offered her ear. And it was just like, yeah, that's really sad. And Joy, up until this point, was really trying to avoid right. Like, any uncomfortable emotions, specifically Sadness feeling. It like, as unhealthy.
Portia Pendleton: It's going to hurt Riley.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. And so Joy at that moment was like, whoa, how did you do that? Because Bing bong is like, be able to regulate himself after sadness helps him. And sadness was just like, yeah, I just sat with him and I was sad.
Portia Pendleton: And again, that's what we all need to learn, right, is that it's okay to feel sad or any of these other authentic feelings and a big mix of all the emotions and to sit with it and validate. Even when she got on Bing Bong's level, it's like, such a good depiction. And again, Joy, I feel like if Riley developed with Joy still steering the ship the whole time, you could totally see her turn into a toxic, positivity type of person. Can't acknowledge any sadness. Like, has to turn away from it all the time. It's just so beautiful. I really loved it. And I loved the depiction of the different types of memory we have, like, long term memory, short term memory facts. I loved the bubblegum jingle, how it just pops into your head even if you don't want it. Do you have a jingle in my head?
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. Do you have a commercial or like, a song?
Portia Pendleton: Because I totally have, like, five. Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: What are yours? So the JG. Wentworth commercial call JG. Wentworth. Don't you ever forget that.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And then the one from a long time ago that was like, education connection, connected for free education. Oh, yeah. Yes.
Portia Pendleton: About, like, connecting you to colleges and stuff.
Dr. Katrina Furey: It's a song that I'm sure I knew the entire thing at one point, but I'm such a music hook person where I think that's too, why they Make US, which this made me think of it when they were in Long Term Memory, and the cleanup crew comes in and they're throwing away some of the presidents. Let's keep Lincoln. Let's keep George Washington. I was like, that's so relatable. But I learned a song when I was little to remember the presidents, so I remember probably like, the first ten. It's like washington Adams, jefferson madison Monroe, jackson moon veron. And then I don't remember.
Portia Pendleton: Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey: But songs are helpful in memory, for sure.
Portia Pendleton: That's so funny. And I love that depiction of how certain songs and things like that get stuck in your memory and how they were thinking about getting rid of that, but they didn't, and it would come.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Up at other points. A little cleanup crew thinks it's funny. They're like, we'll send up this jingle to Main Central office, and they all of a sudden get that memory up to it. It was just do you see, like.
Portia Pendleton: The parents also hearing it in their own version of The Emotions? I love the parents having their own versions. Like when they were at the table, like, in their first night in their apartment, or not the first night, but trying to talk to Riley. And she's, like, really cranky after that day of school and how the hockey trials didn't go well. And mom is trying to signal a dad like, I need some help here. She's a real cranky. And you see the mom's emotions being like, oh, send the signal to dad. Oh, he's not getting it. Why do we give up that? I don't know. Brazilian music?
Dr. Katrina Furey: And then they show him. So they project this past love to Mom's vision in front of dad so she can tolerate dad, it feels like. And I thought it was funny, or I noticed that all the emotions in mom and Dad's brain all had like, the same hairstyle, like the adult versions. Yeah.
Portia Pendleton: And then when dad finally gets the hint and he's like, so, Riley, how was your day? And all the mom feelings are like.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, God, we just asked that. Jerry responded poorly.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah. No, I thought that's so funny. I just loved it. And then when Dad's anger and Riley's anger are both, like, coming together, I loved it.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton: Some other things I loved about the depiction of memory was how they have to go down again, the windy hallways to try to sort of crawl their way out. And then how Joy, like, when she was trying at the beginning to get Sadness to go away so she could save the day, she was like, here's, Sadness, read this. It's like this huge binder about memory storage or something, and it just conveys how complicated it is. And it is super complicated. And it's like Joy would not read it.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
Portia Pendleton: And then later on, it turns out, was really helpful that Sadness did read it and knew kind of like, what.
Dr. Katrina Furey: To do or where to go.
Portia Pendleton: I really liked that, too.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, no, I think it was wonderful. Something that I thought of that wasn't really like in the movie, but made me just kind of reflect on is that I got the sense that it made me think about trauma and how, to a degree, all children and babies start out more on the same page and only really different by genetics. Right. So it's like you have your own genetic makeup, et cetera, and then it's like, we're putting different environments.
Portia Pendleton: Unless the pregnancy was tough or the delivery is tough, could already start the trauma.
Dr. Katrina Furey: That's true.
Portia Pendleton: Cortisol firing and things like that. Yeah, but I hear what you're saying. I think I know where you're going here.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Again, it's like you have the opportunity, literally, maybe at birth, a little bit different. Totally. Good point. And then it's like all these things.
Portia Pendleton: Can happen to you at different stages and ages.
Dr. Katrina Furey: So whether it's really positive experiences, really scary experiences, but it's like all of those things we think of, like, right, nature versus nurture impact us. So I think that if Riley in the movie hadn't been able to speak with parents or parents hadn't been as supportive or nurturing or able to provide that level of connection, it's really a beautiful moon. They're all hugging at the end. And Riley is then able to share really difficult things, but then she feels better.
Portia Pendleton: I know when she was able to say, like, I know you want me to be happy, but I'm so sad.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And that's huge for so huge young child to be able to verbalize and then to have a really positive response, right? So I think it's like this movie did a good job at showing, ideally, and what does happen a lot, but when it doesn't happen, that's when our kind of predisposition validated might kind of be triggered. Specifically eating disorder treatment. I'm thinking of, like, we say often that genetics loads the gun and your environment can pull the trigger. So it's like if she had a predisposition, maybe for depression or anxiety, it's like something like this could really bring that to the surface versus just like a situational, right? Like she's sad, like this difficult change. So that's what I was kind of like carrying through the movie. And then it just made me think of even more so, like the Aces study. So all environmental stressors and traumas that.
Portia Pendleton: We can go through that make us.
Dr. Katrina Furey: More likely to experience mental health disorders, medical issues, 100%.
Portia Pendleton: And on that note, as a little teaser for a future episode, I think we should watch this movie called The Florida Project. Did you ever see that?
Dr. Katrina Furey: No.
Portia Pendleton: And talk about the Asus study because it's a very different movie from Inside Out where they show a lot of trauma that a young child is exposed to. And anyway, stay tuned if you want something a little less light hearted down the road. Another thing I love and 100% Portia, I love that point. I also love that they didn't like the parents weren't perfect at this. That they really did show sort of that tension within Riley between feeling like she needs to kind of be, quote, unquote, strong and happy for the family and for her dad. And her mom kind of says that directly at one point. And then it's sort of like, thank you so much for making this easier. And how that puts so much pressure on a kid. Again, not she wasn't intending to.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
Portia Pendleton: It was meant to be, I think, like an acknowledgment of how, quote, unquote, well she'd been doing and appreciation. But it just shows like that tension between Riley's authentic feelings and the feelings she feels like her parents want her to have. And again, so beautiful that the parents didn't just do it perfectly right from.
Dr. Katrina Furey: The start, but that they were able to get there.
Portia Pendleton: And again, that they handled her rebellion with stealing the money and getting on the bus in a nurturing way. They didn't immediately chastise her or punish her or yell at her or put their own big feelings, which understandably would get triggered in a situation like that ahead of hers. They were like so glad she was safe, right? Wanted to know what was going on. And then hopefully did have some kind of consequence that felt appropriate. It shouldn't be without consequence, but at least my opinion. But they were really able to meet her where she was out there, which is beautiful. Yeah. What did you think about at the beginning when Joy and Sadness were going back and forth over their recollections of the same event in the past?
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
Portia Pendleton: When Sadness was feeling so sad. And so all of the globes, or whatever you want to call them, started, like, having a blue hue. And Joy is like, think of something happy. Think about this or that or something. And sadness is like, oh, I do love the rain. And Joy is like, oh, yeah, jump in the puddles, splash around.
Dr. Katrina Furey: It's so much fun.
Portia Pendleton: She's like, I really like just standing there when the water fills my boots.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And runs down my back and I get really cold.
Portia Pendleton: Really cold.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And then she was like, oh, yeah, I remember that movie when the dog died, and Joy was like, don't think of it. But that's sadness.
Portia Pendleton: I know. And then at the end, that Core Memory, when she starts to kind of lose the different islands, family Island, Friendship Island, hockey island, when they sort of remember that Core Memory together, that it wasn't just like someone scored the winning goal or didn't.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
Portia Pendleton: It turns out that Riley was really sad, but then her team sort of came around her and helped her feel better. And that's such a beautiful, simplistic, common type of childhood experience to kind of learn how to integrate your emotions and hold on to two conflicting feelings simultaneously.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Because then she was using Anger to play hockey, which was like a really appropriate way to get out some aggression or some of that energy. And so it's like anger was allowed. Right. But it wasn't just Joy all the time. Right.
Portia Pendleton: And I loved that they showed a girl playing hockey like a really aggressive sport.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I just loved I loved it.
Portia Pendleton: You probably didn't. But also on Disney Plus, when you watch a movie, then they'll recommend other things.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Sure.
Portia Pendleton: So, of course I have watched all of them because I have kids and they have, like, a little short where it's like, Riley going on a date, and that's really adorable.
Dr. Katrina Furey: That's cute.
Portia Pendleton: Because I loved at the end, or toward the end when they're trying to get back and they use her crush, I would die for Riley. They multiply and use them as a ladder. And then near the end, when she bumps into a boy and you see.
Dr. Katrina Furey: The boys, I thought it was hilarious and so sweet. It's like all the alarms are going.
Portia Pendleton: Girls, guys.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. In his brain. And it's like they don't know what to do. He's like, frozen.
Portia Pendleton: And then Riley's like, okay, bye. At the very end. I think the last line just cracks me up when they're like, Joy's like, everything's great now. What could go wrong. We're making friends, we're twelve. Like, what could go wrong? And you're just thinking like, puberty is.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Coming and they have a puberty button on the screen and they're like, what's that? It hasn't gone off yet.
Portia Pendleton: Just wait, just wait. That was so perfect. I would love to see a sequel about puberty. Like, oh my God, I would love to see that. That would be good.
Dr. Katrina Furey: But you made a good point about the parenting not being perfect, because I think what happened to Riley initially, before there was kind of that repair is like a really common experience, I think, in childhood, many people and it's not like a trauma or this big event or these little misinterpretations where it's like if you had gone back and asked a parent, is this what you meant? They would be like, no, my gosh, of course not. I'm so sorry that that's what you thought, but us wanting you to be strong was just like our hope. We didn't want to put that on you. I imagine them saying, but that happens a lot. People have a hard time talking about their parents, especially guilty.
Portia Pendleton: Love them. I hear a lot. Like I felt bad about what I said last time and it's usually when they're expressing anger, fear, shame, sadness, things like that. I think that's what I was wondering about the five main emotions. Why did they pick disgust over something like shame? The disgust emotion was the one where I was like, I don't know if that would have been the fifth one I would have picked. What about you?
Dr. Katrina Furey: I feel like they tried to frame it as it was also keeping Riley safe, they said, from being poisoned, like hob broccoli. But I feel like to me it could have been fear's job.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah, that's what I mean. Fear were kind of but I think.
Dr. Katrina Furey: They should have included shame. That would have been nice. But I feel like shame is so complex for kids. I don't think it is for adults. I still can feel shame as a kid, but I feel like maybe you.
Portia Pendleton: Don'T have the words at that age yet. And as I was saying that, I was thinking like, well, maybe they were thinking about what are primitive emotions?
Dr. Katrina Furey: Disgust is primitive, right? Showed anything. Something like raw. Even animals, animals know.
Portia Pendleton: Maybe these are like the main primitive feelings. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, I'll give them a pass for that. Some other things I loved, I loved the night shift when they would change over to the night and she's dreaming. And I loved that her dreams as like a twelve, 1112 year old girl are like about unicorn princesses and her teacher and being at school and all these things, just how they depict it, dreaming, and how sometimes it incorporates what you went through that day and all the feelings that come up and then like dancing uniforms.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I just thought it was like so and when she was a little girl in early childhood, I liked how they showed when she was jumping over furniture, actually lava. And it was like your imagination is so big, powerful and real when you're a child. So it's not that you are seeing lava on the floor, but your imagination is so powerful that you really can feel it.
Portia Pendleton: And that even goes into with Bing Bong and how excited Joy was to see Bing have so much fun and just showing all the ways that Riley would play with Her Majesty friend again, as an only child, I thought that was an interesting choice as well. And then how while Bing Bong had to have the realization that he had to stay behind for Riley to grow, it was almost like her core emotions had to be able to tap into her inner child in order to grow.
Dr. Katrina Furey: It was just so beautiful.
Portia Pendleton: I loved it.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I thought it was just like an excellent I think you should watch this in grad school or any psychology psychiatry.
Portia Pendleton: In middle school and they teach you about sex and it's always awkward and weird. Like you could also watch this as.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Part of that curriculum of development.
Portia Pendleton: Maybe we introduced this in fourth grade. It's real easy for kids to understand. I think kids really resonate with it. But again, because you're seeing these really complex emotions depicted in a movie with imagery and jokes and all this stuff and kids at Riley's age mostly wouldn't really have the words to say to her parents. Like, actually, I feel this way and when you say I'm strong, it makes me feel confused. Or this way. Like, again, they don't have the words. So it's just so I just loved it. They were on the train and the whole thing like, well, what are these? This is facts, this is fiction. Oh, who cares? We just mix it up. We don't have to keep it organized. Just like funny little jokes like that. We're so smart and witty. I loved it.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. I laughed at the fact versus opinion. That's what it was in a box. And they all look the same.
Portia Pendleton: Just mix them up. What else?
Dr. Katrina Furey: I thought it was interesting to have the memory dump, right? And where we forget things. But I think it's also interesting or just something to reflect on, is that it's still to a degree in there somewhere, right? So you can be triggered and all of a sudden have this memory or have a little bit of almost, which I think is such an interesting concept. Like deja vu, right? You have this deja vu yes. Feeling based on a smell. You're like, oh, there's something I remember about this and you can't quite touch on it. Again, not in the words that I'm using, but referenced that they did.
Portia Pendleton: I love that, the deja vu reference. And I thought they picked just such poignant cognitive functions to portray.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
Portia Pendleton: Like, obviously they don't depict everything, but the ones that they did and when they used the ones like humor fact versus opinion. Sorry. When they used deja vu fact versus opinion to really be humorous. But on point, I just loved it. It was so funny.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I had heard one time that deja vu or someone who experiences a lot of deja vu is like an older soul, and you've been here before many times, and someone who doesn't experience it a lot, like, is new. I kind of like interesting way to think about it. I've heard. What else? If you have a lot of deja vu, you're way more open. You're more, like, empathic. You're more just, like, have a lot of self awareness. You might not be a great human, I don't know, but you just feel like you're open to things, and then if you don't, it's like you're closed. I think it's just interesting how people perceive it. Besides, I guess, the definition of it.
Portia Pendleton: That makes me wonder if there's any neuroscience that's looked into that. I bet there is now. I kind of want to go look it up. If we find any, maybe we'll again, try to put it in the show notes. I don't know what that means.
Dr. Katrina Furey: We'll try people link their merch to it. So I feel like it's got to just be a link.
Portia Pendleton: Okay, maybe we can make some merch for deja vu. Be like, you bought this before, buy it again.
Dr. Katrina Furey: That's funny.
Portia Pendleton: Do you have a lot of deja vu? I feel like I don't really I.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Feel like I used to, and I don't know what that means, but I feel like I used to have deja vu very frequently and would say that to my mom or my partner or a friend and just be like, oh, I have feel deja vu right now. I haven't lately. And I don't know. Just even thinking of brain development, right. Like, my brain is less elastic as it was years ago. I don't know if that decreases it. Again, thinking about more of, like, a neuro approach to it.
Portia Pendleton: That's interesting.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Or I'm something.
Portia Pendleton: You'Re closing that door. Is there anything else about this movie you want to talk about or not?
Dr. Katrina Furey: Then that just everyone should see it.
Portia Pendleton: I know, I'm really curious.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Adorable. Get people's perspective on it, you know what I mean? I just think it would be interesting for patients to watch it for friends, family, just and what they take.
Portia Pendleton: I'm curious. I feel like this is the kind of movie that on an inpatient psychiatric unit of all ages, honestly, but especially probably kids and teens. This would be a great one to have on, like, in the Milieu, which is that's like a fancy word for just saying, like, the common area. But don't you think that would be like, a great one to have on? It's just so great. And I really want to start a GoFundMe or something for a sequel about puberty.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I know. I think that we got like a three second approach with the boy and his brain.
Portia Pendleton: I was just like, but you know what? We really need Portia, and honestly, maybe this is our call to task with this podcast is a sequel about living through COVID as an adolescent. Don't we need that? Don't all the teens need it? There's such a huge mental health crisis right now. We need it. Disney we really need it.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I feel like every intake I have with a younger person, I'd say like 22 and under. And I know obviously it affects older people, but I think it's really interesting to see how COVID impacted youth and college students because it was so I think when you're an adult, things tend to be a little bit more stable, right. Or the same.
Portia Pendleton: Your frontal lobes, the part of our brain that makes us human and helps us with our cognition, decision making stuff, doesn't finish developing like 25, 30.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton: So, like middle school, right?
Dr. Katrina Furey: Like middle school is so important. High school is so important. College can be so important, right. For specific developmental milestones. So to miss about two years, really, I think, like the end of one. So I was kind of reflecting on it with someone recently who's, like, freshman year of college, went home and did not come back in March and never came back. And then the following year their school did online only. So it's like they missed two full years of what to me, and again, are developmentally such important times. I know adult we have been impacted in many other ways by COVID, and we could go on and on about that, but I think it's very unique to younger people in the context of.
Portia Pendleton: Their development and also unique that it happened to all of them.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
Portia Pendleton: It was happening because of a trauma, right? Like a very scary, life threatening time that as a middle schooler, high schooler, how is your brain making sense of why you have to stay home and why mom and dad are scared and why you're doing school online? And I will say I found, like, some people, especially, like kids who were being bullied or have a lot of social anxiety or things like that, really thrived in that break from daily peer interactions. But I think on the whole, Gosh just so disruptive and social media, it's just like I feel like we're just going to be seeing the effects for the rest of our lives and careers, honestly. I think so. Disney we really, really need a sequel about coming through COVID.
Dr. Katrina Furey: COVID did impact every single student in the United States. Whether it was just fear, whether it was online learning, whatever it was, everyone.
Portia Pendleton: Impacted everyone's experience and impact it have will be different. But it was there, right? Did you ever learn about the what was they called? The gaff score where they would try to rank stressful life events. We used to use it like in the Er when you'd be evaluating someone and trying to think about what are their psychosocial stressors, there's some researcher out there who wants to quantify it. So they did some kind of research study and then assigned points to different stressors and death. Divorce and moving were like the top three. So these were positive stressors, like having a baby and then also negative stressors and just did back in the day, I guess people used to actually tally it up and put a Gaff score in your note and that would help gauge, like if you go to inpatient or outpatient or things like that. We kind of stopped doing that, but it was really helpful to sort of keep that in mind. Structures COVID is like top of the list now, right? For literally everyone. Even if you're generally doing okay, it's still there.
Dr. Katrina Furey: We're coming up. Yes, coming up. I think really interestingly in ways that I with all of my patients, whether it's like just reflecting on why you kind of got catapulted into this mental disorder around that time interesting what's that about? Or having parents kind of lose it during COVID and then make decisions that then impacted my patient or something like that. So I think a lot of stuff keeps coming back to that time. I think emotions or anything that you were going through separate from COVID during COVID maybe got even shuttered. And now it's like things are coming out. It comes up everywhere.
Portia Pendleton: Everywhere. It's interesting. I don't know if you're finding this, but now that we're closer to three years from when it's also hard to believe where we were three years ago. I think about that sometimes. But just now when people are noticing having reactions this time of year, or people are starting to travel more and maybe have anxiety about that when they didn't. And I'm finding a lot of people don't recognize that you live through Coat. Let's not forget that part. So usually I remind them and I say, even if this isn't at the front of your mind, if you're not worried about do I wear a mask or not? It's still there. And of course it's going to affect you. And you might just notice feeling different about traveling or something than you did before. So I really want to petition Disney to make a sequel.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I feel like the kids need it.
Portia Pendleton: Like the kids need it.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Kids need something, I think, to make sense of and just kind of not that it's Disney's job, but just something to help them process.
Portia Pendleton: But Disney does such a good job with this stuff.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And not that it's not this ongoing issue, but just some way to formulize or identify, make it concrete. Yes, just like this movie did with.
Portia Pendleton: These typical developmental things. What a hard concept. Friendship changes, integrating complex feelings and being able to sit with it. It isn't Disney's job, but Disney's, like, really good at this stuff, and they have the budget.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton: So maybe I'll write them a letter today. We'll see.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Well, thank you for listening. We hope that you enjoy the hearing about Inside Out. It's really fun, I think. Watch it again if you've seen it. I just think it's great.
Portia Pendleton: And please sign our change petition in the show notes.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes. So make sure you're following us on Instagram at Analyze Scripts. Make sure you send us an email if you'd like to chat or give us some ideas at analyze scriptpodcast at gmail. Make sure that you are subscribing to us on Apple Music and Spotify and wherever else you find your podcast. And I think that's all of that.
Portia Pendleton: That's it.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Stay tuned. See you next Monday.
Portia Pendleton: All right, bye bye.
Dr. Katrina Furey: This podcast and its contents are a copyright of Analyzed Scripts.
Portia Pendleton: All rights reserved.
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Portia Pendleton: Your friends and rate review and subscribe, that's fine.
Dr. Katrina Furey: All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings, or products is intended.
Portia Pendleton: Or should be inferred.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are joined by Dr. Jessi Gold (@drjessigold) to discuss the first season of "Yellowjackets" on Showtime. We break down the show's depiction of various forms of posttraumatic stress disorder and how the characters' pre-trauma backgrounds contribute to the different symptoms they experience in adulthood. We also explore the show's depiction of adolescent, teenage girl group dynamics, and the blurriness between psychosis and mysticism. We hope you enjoy!
Dr. Katrina Furey: Hi. Welcome back to another episode of Analyze Scripts. My name is Dr. Katrina Fury and I'm A psychiatrist. And I'm joined by my friend and co host Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker. And today we are super excited because we also have Dr. Jesse Gold joining us to discuss season one of Yellow Jackets, the hit show on Showtime. A couple of episodes of season two have already started rolling out, but we're going to focus on season one today because there's a lot to talk about before we welcome our guests. I just wanted to give a little bio. I feel very strongly about reading people's full biographies, especially women, so I'm going to read the whole thing and I love it. Jesse Gold is an assistant professor and the Director of Wellness, Engagement and Outreach in the Department of Psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. She's a nationally recognized expert on healthcare worker mental health and burnout, particularly during the Pandemic college mental health using social media and media for mental health advocacy and the overlap between pop culture and mental health, including celebrity self disclosure. She works clinically as an outpatient psychiatrist and sees faculty, staff, hospital employees and their dependents, particularly their college age kids. Dr. Gold also writes for the popular press and has been featured in, among others, the New York Times, the Atlantic, InStyle, the Washington Post, Time and Self. So, like, no big deal. She is on the Rare Beauty Mental Health Council and the Mental Health Storytelling Initiative and a co author of The Mental Health Media Guide, which can be found@mentalhealthmediaguide.com. Dr. Gold is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a BA. And a master's in anthropology, the Yale School of Medicine, and completed her residency training in adult psychiatry at Stanford University, where she served as chief resident. Again, no big deal. Her website is Dr. Jessegold.com, and she can be found at Dr. Jessegold Drjessigold on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. Cool. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Jesse. This is so super cool.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Thanks for reading that thing. I was really hoping everybody would get to hear that also.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I know, I know. If you want to tell us your favorite color or your deepest, darkest fears, we got all the time in the world.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Can't wait.
Dr. Katrina Furey: So speaking of deepest, darkest fears, this is probably one of mine. Plane crash in the middle of the mountains of Canada. In adolescence, I cannot imagine a more frightening, terrifying experience. And Portia here, we're learning that she likes more of, like, the light hearted things. And I really like the dark and twisty nasty things.
Dr. Jessi Gold: So I was like, really worried for you.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I know.
Portia Pendleton: You gave me some. You were like, episode six, trigger warning this. And I was like, okay. I watched some things on. I skipped over a couple of scenes.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. I was like, you got to watch it in the day with the lights on, hold all your pets. It's a lot, right?
Portia Pendleton: It didn't help my plane anxiety, but.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, yeah, I forgot you have plane anxiety, too. You got to take a beta blocker before you watch these.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Who.
Portia Pendleton: You're just fine.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Oh, gee, sorry about that. It's a really interesting show in that when you try to tell people about it, one minor is just horrible. You're like, hey, it's a really great show. I swear. It's about teenagers who crashed in an airplane and may or may not become cannibals. And also they see them as adults, too. And people are like, what? And I don't like horror and really dark stuff. I like psychological thrillers. That bother me. I thought you guys said you kind of have boundaries on what it's going to show, and you can choose not to watch some of the stuff.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And I think it's just such a fascinating portrayal of how one trauma affects so many people in a different way and then how you sort of simultaneously see the depiction of their back stories and their future stories and how they all weave in. And it's like at the beginning, the things you think are going to happen don't happen.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton: I think Vanessa the goalie. I liked that we saw a little bit of her backstory with, like it seems like mom is an alcoholic. She was kind of like a caregiver. And then the trauma of the plane crash, and then she was left in the plane almost like, died via fire. And then comes out and is really mad at Jackie and Shauna for kind of like leaving her there. So I think even that initial, it's like she had a double trauma right at the crash scene, like the crash, and then had her friends leave her for dead. And then she survives. And then I think that she does not like Jackie.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right? Yeah. So Vanessa, again, to remind everyone, because there are a lot of characters, is the redhead on the goalie team, and she's ties love interest van oh, yeah.
Dr. Jessi Gold: People knowing kids.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And even like you're saying there we see those traumas right back to back, but also we see her backstory of her mom and how she's kind of been left by her mom in that way. And now here she is strapped in a plane that's exploding or catching fire, and now she's kind of left again but somehow gets out. So I think maybe we'll start with a rundown of the main characters.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Sure.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Probably just to orient ourselves a bit. So Jackie is on the team. She's kind of like the it girl, right? Like, she's the pretty one. She's the popular one. She has the boyfriend. And I thought she was the one we saw running naked through the woods originally. Who they sacrifice or something. Something. Now I don't know. I don't know who anyone is anymore. And then Shauna, played by Melanie Linsky, is her best friendfriend. Of me, maybe unclear. She's the one who ended up having sex with her boyfriend, with Jackie's boyfriend and getting pregnant. Oh, my God.
Portia Pendleton: Ends off right. She is still pregnant.
Dr. Katrina Furey: She's still pregnant, yeah. At some point. The trigger warning I gave you, Portia, was she tried to have an abortion in the woods. I thought that was really heart wrenching. I can't even find a word strong enough. What do you think? What did you think about all that part? Yeah, that part. That little part.
Dr. Jessi Gold: I think I get it in a lot of ways. If you don't have food and you are a kid anyway, like, what would have your choice been? A choice in the normal kind of setting, let alone setting where you're starving, everyone else is starving. You know nothing about babies or how to have a baby, and you are a baby. And I mean, I get and it's almost like you saw something on TV and that's what you do and so that's what you try to do. That's what it felt like.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
Dr. Jessi Gold: This is what I thought be a thing. And it's almost like just sort of the influence of restrictions and what people learn from that. But it's heart wrenching and it also just shows how scary it must be to be in that position as a kid anyway, let alone after a flame crash in the wilderness.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I know.
Dr. Jessi Gold: I think it's a lot of trauma and a lot of vulnerability and it comes to ahead of it there. But I think it shows also how they support each other.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Introduce Taisa, but she's there.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right, exactly. And that dynamic between Taisa and Shauna, I feel like again, in their adolescence and now in adulthood, as they're coming back together, just thinking that they were there together through these awful, horrible things. And when Ty, like, really is showing up for her in that way, I just thought was really intense and just really interesting way to see how the characters relationships develop over time. And with Ty, like, keeping that secret for as long as she could about the pregnancy and things like that, tyisse is another main character. Yeah.
Portia Pendleton: I was kind of shocked, I guess, at the end, which I don't want to just skip all over her other.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Scenes, but how it really did in.
Portia Pendleton: Fact impact her, like eating the dirt, her sleepwalking, her family situation, kind of like after the crash, her son, so we think is like the problem.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
Portia Pendleton: Or having some reaction to his mom, clearly. And then her political run, and then all of a sudden trying to jump back into the media. And it seems like all the other characters are like, we planned and we promised that we wouldn't do this, we were going to stay kind of under the radar. And here you are doing like a Senate run.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
Portia Pendleton: But I feel like I like her character a lot as a teen, I feel like she's really strong. I just saw a lot of resilience with her through everything, like trying to go out and lead them to find help, knowing that it was probably like a death sentence, but she was going to risk it before the animal attack. And then her relationship with Van is really sweet. I feel like there's some sweet moments that come out with her and her family and then with Van kind of back and forth, which is nice in kind of the whole conflict within the trauma, and it being really terrifying.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't feel like we got a lot of her backstory. Pre crash?
Portia Pendleton: I don't think so.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Did we hear a lot of I don't think we really got a lot.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Remember correctly, her parents were kind of supportive. They were there, they said, Bye. There wasn't anything that we saw that was particularly traumatic in a Natalie kind of way. I think some of the backstories are there to show that sometimes the resilience comes from previous history, previous trauma, or you never know what people are coming in with that's important. We can have the same trauma affect everybody, but whatever your history is, it.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Might affect you differently 100%. And we see a lot of her family in the present day, like with her wife and their son. And I think touching on her sexuality with Van being a teen in the an all girls soccer team, how she was very reluctant to be open at first and then got more comfortable. I thought that was a really interesting storyline, too, and how she, again really showed up for Shauna when she really, really needed her. And, yeah, I think with her character in particular, all the snippets along the way of, like, she's running for politics, for Senate, I think state senate. And then the stuff with her son, at first I thought, like, oh, something's up with her son. And then as things unfolded, it was like, oh, she's the lady in the tree. He's not seeing. I thought, does he have some sort of early onset psychosis or is he stressed or what's? Like his full story? And then I thought the show's depiction of his evaluation with the two way mirror, that was him. Right. Was really good. I think overall, I think the two way mirrors and stuff, I don't know about. At Wash, you like, at Yale, we didn't have that, but I know at Duke, when I interviewed, they did stuff like that for family therapy, so I know they do that, and I think it was actually a pretty good depiction of that. And I always love when I see accurate and well rounded and positive depictions of therapy in the media, because so many times they are terrible.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Yeah, I mean, it's sort of like you're concerned about your kid, you come together to figure it out. It's important enough to you. You can see that there's some tension about who it's more important to, which I'm sure comes out. At Stanford, when we learned outpatient, we even did it behind, and the patients knew we'd, like, come out and talk to people and go back in. It's interesting from the family side to also have the family behind and giving feedback. We're allowed because I think people tell their own stories and kids tell their own stories, and it helps to have context or see even family reactions to things when people are talking. But I think in a lot of ways, too, it wouldn't be surprising if their kid had issues and the mom was like, there's all this data even, like, let's say extreme example comes to my head. Like, Holocaust parents, like parents who survive the Holocaust. There's a lot of restriction and limits and trauma exposed to the next generation 100%. That doesn't surprise me. If you had something like that, that a kid could struggle 100%, it makes a lot of sense.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
Dr. Jessi Gold: So you're kind of like, okay, I get where that's it wasn't, like, surprising that the kid could be dark and struggled 100%.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right?
Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Look what happened to the mom.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Of course there's something there, and, like.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Actually, it still is the mom. Yeah. We had a fellow Yale psych grad, Christine Aradondo, on a couple of episodes back to talk about Encounter and, like, the very different movie from this show.
Dr. Jessi Gold: But.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Totally different vibe, but talking about that intergenerational trauma, like how the first trauma kind of trickles down in Generations. At first, as we were watching Taisa and her family in present day, I was thinking, is that just like, you're saying, jesse, of course he might have some stuff going on, and she's, like, running for Senate, and he comes from a home with two moms. It sounds like maybe he had switched schools. Now he's in public school. There's a lot going on. I didn't see coming that it was going to be like, Taisa doing all these things sleepwalking. But then as they connected that to what happened to her in the woods sleepwalking, and when Van and her would tie themselves together and she would bite her and all these things, I was like, oh, okay, now I see it. But it's really sad to see that kind of unraveling of her family. The moment where she asked Simone to go stay with her mom, and she was really pleading with her, like, you don't understand. I could really hurt you. That really broke my heart, but I thought was really genuine and authentic. And I don't even think she's aware of everything she's capable of. I don't think she remembers that place in the basement with the dog head and all this stuff. Right. I would say I don't often see things like that with PTSD. I feel like that's a very severe depiction of it. I guess it could happen. Right.
Portia Pendleton: Or almost just like how much it impacted their brain. Their trauma is just so severe, and it seems like they have not really talked about it with people because everyone wants something from them.
Dr. Katrina Furey: They just want to know, did you eat each other?
Dr. Jessi Gold: Right.
Portia Pendleton: And it seems when we meet them as adults, they're not really close. I think some of them talk or I know that Tyesa had paid for Natalie's rehabs, but it sounds like they're not like, friends and they so desperately need to I mean, Shauna finally tells her husband some of the details, and it's just like he has no idea. So, I mean, I think gosh, it's not even like they processed at all.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right?
Dr. Jessi Gold: Yeah. I think it's like an extreme dissociation. I suppose sleep does all sorts of weird things with trauma and safety and not wanting to be asleep because they're not safe and all of that. So I guess some of that is possible. There's, like, a mystical aspect of the show too, but I think inherently the not processing is going to be a reason for the dissociation. The portrayal is, like, super extreme, which it is. Like, I've never had a patient, like, killer dog.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. And create, like, a shrine.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Also never had a patient who was surviving in the wilderness and eating people. So I don't know what that really does to someone from a patient, from having heard a story that was similar. So I guess it's definitely extreme, but there's some elements of possibility in there. I'm hoping at some point they show us that they forced them into therapy at least a little, and that they all just didn't say anything because they didn't want to get in trouble. Probably what they thought was like, a crime. At some point, they actually hunt people, and so at some point, they kill people. That's a crime. I sort of wonder if you find them, you're going to probably get them into you would hope, right? I don't know. Maybe that wasn't a thing, and you wouldn't have forced them, but it seems weird you wouldn't have had them go to, like, one session or even in the hospital.
Portia Pendleton: I'm assuming that when they were they were all evaluated, all taken to a thing, all given IV fluids and kind of checked out. And also I would hope that there was a psychiatrist coming in and being like, hey.
Dr. Jessi Gold: You'Ve had a lot going on.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Tell me. Great. But I would think, how do they trust anyone? I don't even know. I think it'd be really hard for any of them to do therapy. I feel like the one who I would think would maybe jump on is Misty, who I find I don't know. Well, I think she'd do it for attention. Okay. I think she would, like, feeling connected to someone who wants to listen to her and cares about her.
Portia Pendleton: It's so funny.
Dr. Katrina Furey: She's one of my favorite characters.
Portia Pendleton: Both absolutely. Oh, she terrifies me.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I love Christina Ricci. Like hello, Casper. Hello. Now and then. I love anything. I want to watch her all the time. But she destroyed that box thing, the signal thing.
Portia Pendleton: She watches the rat in the pool or the mouse struggling.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton: That's pre crash.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I know. Portia what do you think, Jesse? Are you terrified?
Dr. Jessi Gold: I mean, I wonder if anyone ever figures out she destroys a boxing. Never. Because they talked to her.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Again, people died because of her, so there's no way right.
Portia Pendleton: They can't have and I was confused about that folder thing that she has all the information in in the woods. She keeps it in the trunk.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. She, like, doesn't want them to be discovered.
Portia Pendleton: And why do you have that?
Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't know.
Dr. Jessi Gold: It's because she's, like, popular there.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Exactly. That's what I mean.
Dr. Jessi Gold: She has skills that people want there.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
Dr. Jessi Gold: On the team. She's like the water girl manager, water girl person who's there. Whereas in the wilderness, she can help. And I think feeling needed and wanted is something important to her. Whether there's some kind of actual severe pathology there that's dangerous is one thing, but I also think it's just like a desire to be liked and making rash decisions as a result, including destroying the box, because maybe she thought people would find them eventually and it would just give them a couple more days together or something. Like, I doubt she was like, I bet we're screwed forever now. But I think in the moment, she was like, I like this, and I like being needed, and I'd like to keep being needed, so let's just totally have that. Stay.
Dr. Katrina Furey: But then she tries to poison the guy who loses his leg. I just think she might be a sociopath.
Portia Pendleton: She definitely is demonstrating some traits.
Dr. Katrina Furey: At least two traits, and then she kidnaps the reporter lady and ties her up. Right? Yeah.
Dr. Jessi Gold: She's also really defending her own. Right. So it's again, she's protective of her people and their story and what she reporters kidnapped to help them. In her mind. I'm not saying it's, like, healthy, but the decision to do that was to protect her friends. She wants to protect Natalie, and I think that she sees where she's stronger in some aspects than they have been, and I think their story she tries really hard to protect. So I don't know. I think that there's definitely some problems going on up there and that she definitely kills kind of easily or chops legs easily and things like that.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
Dr. Jessi Gold: But in the same respect, she has a defense of people she cares about. That's nice. In that setting, I want someone to kill for me. But it's nice to know if you.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Needed it, you could call her.
Dr. Jessi Gold: I guess she means that she'd be there, right? I don't know.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, she's there through Thick anthony yeah.
Portia Pendleton: And the setting is so unusual.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
Portia Pendleton: It's so not a societal norm that it's like, it's interesting, like, who does well in that setting, right?
Dr. Katrina Furey: Exactly.
Portia Pendleton: Jackie feels very normal teen and she has like a really hard time. She's popular in like a traditional high school setting, falls apart in the woods. And Misty is not popular in high school setting. And then kind of like really need really helpful and shows up for people in the woods. It obviously still does some questionable things, but I think that's just interesting because in our society, some of these people don't fit in and have these antisocial.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Traits, but then it turns out really useful when you're starving in the woods.
Dr. Jessi Gold: I do agree, though, that the social hierarchy of ending is interesting. Right. And I think it's one of the things that makes it kind of cool that it's that population of like, roles, because you're like, teen girls are mean girls and there's bullying and there's reasons people are cool. Like they're dating the popular guy and they're pretty and they put out I don't know. Right. It's like things that are admired as characteristics in a person who's popular, but then when they go to the wilderness, that person has zero skill set and actually annoys them.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Because they can't do anything. Right. They're like, you're obviously useless here. We don't need a cheerleader. And at times that helps them right. To have the support and care. But a team captain for a soccer team is not the same as a team captain for a soccer team that needs to survive.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
Dr. Jessi Gold: That upending, I think is really cool.
Portia Pendleton: I think it's just like, of course that she goes for Ben and then he turns out he's gay and he.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Kind of is so afraid of her.
Portia Pendleton: It seems like that he's willing to.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Go to the prom. Yeah.
Portia Pendleton: That they're in this secret relationship or that he plays into this vanity.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Well, yes, he did chop off, kill him, poison him. Again and again. It's the think about again, both we see Ty and Ben with their sexuality and struggling, like how open to be. And again, maybe the wilderness when you're starving isn't the time to come out. For Ben it's hard, but I feel.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Like for Ty it's like safe and protective altogether. And she wants to be loved by someone and loving someone is protective against all of the bad stuff. I don't know, I think that that story, like the Van and Ty thing is sort of like really bad things happen, but you can together dance with somebody. Emotions are weird and mixed and don't all have to be bad at once. And sometimes you need those little moments of wind keep going.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
Dr. Jessi Gold: I don't know. I think that for them it was like, whatever and we love each other, might as well. This is the last time we see each other, we might as well. And I think it was safe, right? That stuff ends up being kind of like a safe place for them.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. And again, it's interesting how they depict that being a safe place and, like, a really sweet storyline and theme to carry through when there's so little sweet storylines. Right. But then for Ben, the coach, how it didn't feel safe for a really long time until it kind of felt like he had no other choice.
Portia Pendleton: He discloses to Natalie, which I think.
Dr. Katrina Furey: They have a nice bond, I thought.
Dr. Jessi Gold: I wonder if it's just like, in a way, he's an assistant coach, too, right?
Dr. Katrina Furey: I think so.
Dr. Jessi Gold: I think it's like he was left to take care of all of them. And he's not that old.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. He's probably, like, 19 or something.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Just graduated college, are still in college kind of age. He's not supposed to be the one helping people survive while he's barely surviving himself. I can't imagine how pain that would be.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. Yeah.
Portia Pendleton: I think we want to talk about Natalie and her character.
Dr. Katrina Furey: There's a lot to talk about with her. First, how did her hair stay blonde in the wilderness for 19 months?
Portia Pendleton: It starts to grow out, I think, towards the end, it's like, this much.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I thought about that, too. There were some things like that. I don't think Van would have survived that wolf attack. Like, she totally, unfortunately, would have gotten septic, I think. Right. There are just some plot holes, we'll call them, but we can have some.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Creative life fantasy in it.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, I would like that fantasy. Right.
Dr. Jessi Gold: I don't think they were, like, thinking so much about the hair or I don't know. I mean, lottie's off medicine.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I know the location decision about what.
Dr. Jessi Gold: That is something I haven't talked about Lottie, but yeah, I think Nat's backstory is the most interesting. I think Natalie probably coaxed in the way most people don't think they will, but will.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. I totally agree.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Using alcohol, being aggressive, like, using drugs, like, not really wanting connection because they go away.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
Dr. Jessi Gold: It's a really common reaction, though. Like, most people, I think, would be like, well, of course they won't turn to that. That's not me. But it is if it makes the feelings go away.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. I mean, look at COVID and how high the alcohol rates went up. This totally happens.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Natalie was a really fascinating character, I think, all around, and she just got more and more complex, I think, like, as the yeah. As the season went on, almost, to.
Portia Pendleton: Me, the most, like, typical reaction. Like, not I feel like I wasn't surprised about how she was handling things.
Dr. Katrina Furey: At all after yeah.
Portia Pendleton: Her teen prior crash traumas, and then obviously the crash. But I was kind of interested to see where she learned how to shoot the gun.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Right.
Portia Pendleton: So then it kind of flashes forward to her and her dad, who seems abusive, and then she is pointing the gun at him and clicks the trigger. He must be very abusive. That's a pretty far place to go, and then it doesn't go. And I'm like, now he knows that you are going to shoot him, and.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Then we see how abusive he is, that he's so insulting, and then he.
Portia Pendleton: Falls and shoots his head. And I was like, wow, that is traumatic to see, like, gory and wow.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. Trauma.
Dr. Jessi Gold: And I also think it's like the things she doesn't I'm sure none of them know that. It would be shocking to me. They probably know her dad's dead. Right. And that's it. I doubt any of them know that. They just were like, oh, she knows how to shoot a gun because they went hunting or something. I don't know. I mean, I think maybe that guy who's, like, he's a cop now. Maybe he was there and kind of had more of a relationship with her.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
Dr. Jessi Gold: I don't know that she would have told that. He has the people in the wilderness.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, no, I don't think so.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Like, hey, soccer team talk is not like that. Probably. I don't know.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I was surprised she was on the soccer team, I have to say.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Yeah, she's edgy for it, which is actually good. Right. I think that could be part of it. She actually was decent at the game, and so for her about the stuff that comes with it, as much as she actually liked the sport, and it's.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Probably a great way to get out some aggression as a teenage girl going through that and probably so much more at home. And then when she was at the soccer game with that guy from high school and his kid, and she was, like, telling him, you do this move and you do that move, and then he won. I thought that was really sweet, but I wasn't surprised that she didn't sort of continue with that connection. I think, like you said, Jesse, connections and closeness feel really scary to her. So I think she's someone who, I think, craves it but avoids it, given everything she's gone through. And I really am interested to continue seeing and learning more about her relationship with Travis when they're in the woods, and then what happens, like, when they all get back. Yeah.
Portia Pendleton: Because that was just also, like, another person leaving, right. When he's, like, we think killed the police. Don't think so, but we think so.
Dr. Katrina Furey: That he was murdered.
Portia Pendleton: That's another huge loss for her.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, 100%. And she has this feeling like that he wouldn't commit suicide. And then we get into that symbol, and I think that kind of brings us also into talking about Lottie, who was, like, a surprise. Big deal at the end. I was really fascinated at the beginning when they showed that she was on a typical antipsychotic, and I was like, oh, no. What is going to happen to her in the wilderness without this? This is not good. And then when she started having these visions. And stuff. It was really interesting to me. How do you frame it? Is it more mystical or is it psychosis? And it's interesting to see how the whole team reacts to it while they're all under duress and desperate for some sort of leader and some help and.
Portia Pendleton: On mushrooms, that's when she kind of becomes this leader in this attempt to.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Sacrifice kill the Travis. Yeah.
Dr. Jessi Gold: I think it's like when people ask us if cult leaders have mental illness. Right. And I think probably there are some people that do and some people that don't. And people who follow cults are not necessarily psychotic either. But I think that there's this gray line that very blurry with that stuff, where diagnostically, they don't necessarily have that, or they have more insight than we would consider someone with psychosis having or something. But it kind of shows that blurred lines and cult leaders and psychosis that I think is super interesting, this desire for something bigger than them, almost like religion, is also where cult comes in, which is, like, I need to believe in something to keep going. And the thing that they're starting to believe in is, like, the power of nature and the relationship with nature and nature saving them. And what Lottie can do is because she could talk to animals, whatever it is. And it's just sort of like, I need to have a higher power. The higher power just happens to be based in this world of someone who might not be in touch with reality. But I also don't think that they know that. They're like, I bet Lottie's off her med, right?
Dr. Katrina Furey: 100%.
Dr. Jessi Gold: No, that's a secret.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right?
Dr. Jessi Gold: Because she just, like, ran out.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. NBD.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Doesn'T she take medication? Maybe we should listen to her. Which I think would happen in the real like, as bad as that is. Right. Like, in sort of stigmatizing, to sort of assume that that person is having some sort of mental illness related thing. I think that in the world, if someone knew you were on antipsychotics and then we're in the wilderness and not on antipsychotics, they'd say, Where's that coming from? Her head should be you scared and worried about her as opposed to following her. And that saying is true. But they just wanted something to believe in.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I know. And so I think it just totally speaks to how desperate they are, just like you're saying.
Portia Pendleton: And Cam is one of the first ones I'm sorry, not Cam. Van is one of the first ones to really take an interest in it and kind of also want the seance, and then when they're back, she just kind of wants to pray over their meal. And I think it's interesting that Tyisa.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Is really opposed to it.
Portia Pendleton: Does it then, kind of for Van, but even with just their backgrounds and this is really, like, making big assumptions here, but based on Van's backstory, I feel like it's less surprising that she really needs something to kind of anchor her and ground her. And TYSA is more able to, at this point, kind of have an inner self. Yeah, but then she does it for Van, which is sweet, but I think.
Dr. Katrina Furey: That'S a nice thing.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Van also survives in multiple times. She shouldn't. When that happens, people get weird.
Dr. Katrina Furey: They do.
Dr. Jessi Gold: I don't know, people turn to weird mystical stuff or there must be some reason I'm alive, right?
Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, the laws of probability become magical and mystical. I see this even with people with, I want to say, run of the mill PTSD, like, not related to something super severe, like the Holocaust or a plane crash like this, but someone who's maybe had, like, complex childhood dynamics, maybe a parent with an addiction. They're in an abusive relationship and they got a car accident or something, like just sort of like a series of things, and they keep surviving or they don't. And it does start to feel like it has this, like, you're saying mystical or religious meaning to it. And I think that's part of the way humans try to process trauma and things that are hard to make sense of, especially when so many of them happen to you. You start to think like, well, I must be cursed, or, there must be someone looking out, or something like that does make a lot of sense.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Look for a meeting. You were saying at the beginning, too. She almost was in the plane when the plane was on fire. Too right. So in a lot of ways, there are a lot of things with fire for her, a lot of things with animals. And I think that also goes with the symbolism. What Lottie 100% very much prey on the things that she survived to do that she would be probably the most vulnerable to it.
Portia Pendleton: The other.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Lee. And so the religious person also wants to believe in stuff. It might be different stuff, but she doesn't say anything weird about the experience of what Lottie is talking about because she believes in religion pretty strongly herself. So I don't know. To me, it's like a logical person to be most convinced from crazy stuff multiple times. And, like, someone stitching her face in your house. I know.
Dr. Katrina Furey: She's got, like, barely a scar.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Am I here? Also? I am. And we know from season two spoilers that someone was cast as older Van. So we know Van makes it. So I think that's also important.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. There were a couple of people near the end who we found out made it that I didn't think would have the whole season. I thought it was like, this core group of, like, four or five girls, and then we learn, like, oh, no, more of them.
Portia Pendleton: Last scene, I see them calling a couple more survivors.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Wow.
Portia Pendleton: Okay, here we go.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Also, you guys are mentioning they separate. Something happens where they don't want to be around each other anymore. And, like, Tyson band clearly break up. Right. I think that it's not surprising we don't see them all in the same stuff. And that core group was kind of a core group during anyway. They're kind of clicky a little. They were like friends before. They supported each other through it. They pull in some others, but some of the other ones, they're there and they get in the wilderness and maybe just not otherwise.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right? Yeah. And I wonder in season two if we'll see more and more of those other girls. I know we see more of Lottie, who's given me, like, Teal Swan vibes. We'll talk about it more next time. Have you watched that yet, Portia?
Dr. Jessi Gold: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton: Okay.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Have you seen that, Jesse?
Dr. Jessi Gold: Oh, yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Or the Teal Swan documentary?
Dr. Jessi Gold: Oh, no, I don't think so.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, you got to watch it. You'll love it.
Dr. Jessi Gold: What cult is that?
Dr. Katrina Furey: It's hers. She's called Teal Swan. It's on, hulu. I had a patient way back in the day come to a session in distress because they had a sibling who was, like, getting all involved in it. And I was like, I don't know who that is. And then fast forward, like last year, there was this documentary out, and I was like, but it's very similar to this dynamic. And you can see how not to spoil the documentary for you, but I will. Basically, Teal Swan hires this private investigator who is a very nice elderly woman. Interesting choice for a private investigator to follow them around and investigate and prove they're not a cult. And it turns out her findings are that they are indeed a cult. And then you see all of Til Swan's rage and all these reactions and just so many interesting dynamics. It just reminds me a lot of what we might see in season two.
Portia Pendleton: It reminds me of the show also on Hulu with Nicole Kidman based on.
Dr. Katrina Furey: That big little nine perfect stranger.
Portia Pendleton: It's very similar to that. Like a cult leader.
Dr. Jessi Gold: They're all on Shrooms, too, which is also relevant to this.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Which is like the weird mystical aspect. Shrooms mixed with psychosis, mixed with not sleeping and not eating and not having normal body temperature regulation.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. All of it.
Dr. Jessi Gold: It's like a permanent state of mania. Right?
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. And again, I think in the Teal Swan documentary, which is reminding me of this show, you do see certain types of people are more vulnerable to these types of people like Lottie or that influence like we're talking about. And I feel like in the show, showing that it was Van and Laura Lee really tracks, I think, in the real world. And it's interesting to me how Natalie is so against it. And again right. Like, AA. And a lot of the treatment we sort of recommend for addiction also has this reliance on a higher power. And I wonder how Natalie feels about that probably not great, is my assumption.
Dr. Jessi Gold: You kind of see that right at the beginning. It's almost like she's going through the motions to get out of there.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Exactly.
Dr. Jessi Gold: She wasn't using or whatever, but she kind of feels like, to me, the kind of patient that would go once and be like, this stuff's ridiculous.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right?
Dr. Jessi Gold: Also figure out a way to quit themselves that has enough internal whatever where you're like, you did what? And they're like, completely cold turkey. Did I see that? But I also could see that probably AA and even group therapy in general might feel like that to her, right?
Dr. Katrina Furey: Especially after this whole experience.
Dr. Jessi Gold: And because the biggest complaint people have with AA is like, the higher power part 100%, people are always like, it doesn't have to be a spiritual thing. Like, it can be whatever a higher power is for you to try to not scare people away. And there's so much evidence that it works. And it's I also think, like here's, supporting group support is not going to work in a group that had to survive that and doesn't trust anybody. Ultimately, the normalization of experience, et cetera, would be helpful, but unless the group is them, I can't right imagine that you go to a group like that and you're like, Well, I survived the plane crash. Everyone stares at you. Then you're like, I lived there for however many months.
Dr. Katrina Furey: 19 months.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Yeah, I lived there for 19 months. They're like, well, what did you do? Well, we had to curiosity, like voyeurism support. It's like this voyeuristic interest in what happened and why. And that's why journalists are interested, too, but it's not in healing them. And I think sometimes people think therapists do that too, right? Where your story is so unique and original that when you're telling your therapist, people watch the reaction, and the reaction or the questions feel like you're like, wait, what? Tell me more about that in a way that feels incredulous or feels like you're asking for education on it. People don't want to go back to therapy either, right? Because they feel like they're telling their story in the way that you said, maybe Misty would like it for the attention, for the interest, not for support. And I think it will be hard to find somebody I mean, there are therapists who specialize in quotes and things like that, but who knows what they did back then? But I do think that it would be hard to find somebody in a support group with people who are there doing other stuff in that sense, because it also ends up like grief Olympic thing. And you're not going to beat the person for 19 months. You're just not, right? So it makes it a weird dynamic for a group where the group's then like, can I talk about how I'm fighting with my husband? And of course you can, because your trauma is your trauma, and is valid and your feelings are valid. Right. But if you're that person who turned to substances to hide how ashamed they were to begin with, and then the person next to you is like, I survived 19 months in the wilderness. You'd be like, I don't think I would be able to be like, school is hard. I don't like med school. I don't like this, and things that have really stressed me out in my life next to someone, it's just really impossible.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
Dr. Jessi Gold: It's human nature to sort of compare in that sense. And it would make for a weird.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Group that it would. Right. Like you said, I feel like the group would have to be them. And like an expert therapist, I said skilled.
Portia Pendleton: If they're going to see someone, I feel like skilled is not even the right word. Used to be someone who's not reactive. Okay, so what emotion was that? Not like, oh, and then what happened?
Dr. Jessi Gold: I think anything you could say could be very easy, even if you're just trying to support them. And I'm more animated as a human. I didn't go to psychoanalytic school of thinking and I self disclosed and stuff like that. So for me, I wouldn't necessarily be doing that because I wanted more interestingly, but I think it could come off like that, or I would do the opposite, which is try really hard not to come off like I was like, flat or something, not interested or what they were saying wasn't important or something. I don't know that I could handle the middle ground as well. I think people probably don't realize that we can say that about why we don't see certain reasons and why we like certain things, because I can see what it would be like to tell someone from the other side that stuff. And if I don't feel like I can handle that appropriately, you shouldn't waste your story on me 100%.
Dr. Katrina Furey: It's really important.
Dr. Jessi Gold: It would scare them away from therapy, right? I don't know. I can't imagine that there's a safe place to land for most people in those circumstances. And probably a lot of them, the place that they land if they do get care is not the right one. And then what? I know they don't want to get help again. And then it's all weirdly repressed and coming out and killing rabbits and stuff. Right. I think it's a mental health. We're not perfect at what we do, but I think when you come in with stigma and beliefs about what it's going to be like and then we eat into it because that's not great in your head or whatever, I think it just makes it worse. So I'm hoping they show a lot of that stuff.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I am too.
Dr. Jessi Gold: I don't know that they will, but that stuff, at least for me, is like, super fascinating, which is like, how the heck do you get back to life at all? When that happened. And what does that look like for someone? I really hope they get into that because it's a weird time frame. Like, it's not the time frames they're showing right in between, but I hope they do, because at least from a psych perspective, that's super interesting to me. I don't even know what I would do as a psychiatrist in that situation.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. I totally agree. I really hope we do see some of that, because they are at least like, Ty, Shauna, Misty, Lottie. I feel like I'm forgetting one. Natalie. They're all functioning in different ways. And it's like how like how how.
Portia Pendleton: Shauna seems like and I wrote this as a question mark. I don't know if it was true. Was she at the first episode in her daughter's bedroom masturbating to her daughter's boyfriend's picture?
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, it blocked.
Portia Pendleton: I think that she feels very stuck in her teen. Right. She came back and married her best friend's boyfriend, who she had been hooking up with. She is attracted to this young boy.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Survive. I don't think that baby is her daughter because the ages don't match up. But what happened?
Dr. Jessi Gold: She marries the guy no matter what that trauma was.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
Dr. Jessi Gold: You said we talked about the beginning, like her wanting to get rid of it, but on top of it, maybe it doesn't survive, maybe it does. Who knows? But what happens with that conversation that leads you to stay with the person too? Interesting. Your babies as a person too. And then the whole she feels like we always say people are stuck when their trauma happens. She feels like that definitely evolved beyond that, even beyond the weird daughter's boyfriend thing. When she's dating Adam, the things that she's doing are, like, rebellious, jumping off, like having a beer at a party.
Dr. Katrina Furey: In the parking lot of a gas station.
Dr. Jessi Gold: She's really excited about it, and it feels so exciting and new and whatever.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Because she never got to do it.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Normal childhood in teenage years. So she does feel to me very stuck in that. But at the same time, my role is to be mom and housewife, and so I shall make dinner and kind of go through the motions, but then.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I'm going to feed you. All rabbits do at the same time.
Dr. Jessi Gold: I'm very much the same age as my daughter, which is why my daughter doesn't buy my stuff. My daughter doesn't think that I should be able to mother her because I can't.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. I will say it was touching when Shaun is talking to Jeff and they're all coming clean to each other and she realizes that he knew this stuff all along and he stayed. I just thought that was really touching and really spoke to however dysfunctional their relationship is, I think anyone who goes through a trauma, huge, small, medium, whatever size, however you want to quantify it, just wants to feel held and accepted and not shunned. I think you were sort of touching on that, Jesse, about how would they ever function in group therapy with this being their trauma. I don't know. I thought that was a really sweet moment that she felt like he knew all this about her and yet he didn't run away.
Dr. Jessi Gold: It's very different than Taisa's relationship. He's somebody different that she met later in life. We don't know a lot about that part, but my guess is she doesn't know as much as she should, because when stuff starts to come up, it's really scary to her, as opposed to being like, remember when you used to do that? You're doing that would feel like she told her any of that. So I feel like their relationship was built on like, that didn't happen, where there's some component of the Shauna jeff thing that was like, we were bonded long before. We are bonded by this stuff. We're bonded by jack.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I know. The whole birthday lunch thing with her parents.
Dr. Jessi Gold: We're bonded by Jackie. I don't know. And so I think maybe she thought he knew some stuff, but not as much. But they didn't really talk about it, but the unspoken stuff was, like, enough to help that relationship sort of survive, where tyes is just never discussed or something very different.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. And as we're talking, I'm just thinking, like, jeff was probably traumatized, too. He was still in school, but he probably has his own stuff that we haven't even seen. Maybe we will someday, but be curious to hear.
Dr. Jessi Gold: No way. He doesn't have some. They have to, at some point, basically throw them funerals. 19 months, you say, we lost the plant. They're not coming home. Don't you think that at some point somebody calls it and they have some kind of ritual for them?
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
Dr. Jessi Gold: I can't imagine that they don't even.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, at a school wide memorial or something.
Dr. Jessi Gold: They have to have something. And I'm sure the school is not a good situation to be in, let alone when you date two of the people that are there.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
Dr. Jessi Gold: He was such a kid. Right? Yeah. There's no way that was fine for the people at home. And it makes you wonder if he's supporting jackie's parents while also in love with shauna and then not able to say that because it's were they even.
Dr. Katrina Furey: In love, or did they just bone him and shauna? Right. They were like teenagers. Stay tuned. Yeah. It is complicated, jesse.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Right?
Dr. Katrina Furey: No, not at all. All of them. Oh, my gosh. And then the whole twist the show takes with, like, is adam somehow involved and manipulating shauna? I was like, yep. Yes, he is. I knew it. And I was like, oh, turns out he is not. Turns out that was a red herring. And now when natalie gets kidnapped at the end, I was like, what is going on? Where did this show go? It just really took a turn.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton: I need to watch season one or season two, episode one after this really kind of dark.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Some of that is like, this impermanence of safety or something, where no matter who's in their life, even if they're happy, it's hard to be happy. So technically, Shannon was happy with Adam, but the second she thought there was something bad about what he was doing or he was hurting her, it was like completely 180 being bad and dangerous and no, I have to protect myself. And I think that, again, was very much a trauma reaction, as is the rest of dealing with Adam afterwards.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Call your girl.
Portia Pendleton: I just think so much is so interesting and how she seems to be taking medications regularly from where she works. It seems like it's her specific tracks.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Though, that she would be a PCA but not rise to a higher level. I think just with her personality type, without the crash, I think that tracks and then add in the crash. Right. Don't you think?
Dr. Jessi Gold: Yeah, I mean, I think she's just doing a job to do a job, and she likes that people are dependent.
Portia Pendleton: On, and she's, like, powerful there for.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Men, and they need her, and she can make them in pain and not in pain and also lackness those situations. Older people sometimes don't have support. And so you're in this situation where you kind of have more power than you should because there's not enough accountability in those places. And so, yeah, it doesn't surprise me she found her way to a place like that at all.
Portia Pendleton: And is this, like, expert online of.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Detectives, like the detective and her bird yeah, I forget the bird's name, but it was great.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, gosh.
Portia Pendleton: So you have started season two. Not really, I guess, talking about what you've seen. But what do you want from season two? Like, where do you want to see it go? What are you interested to see happen? What do you want more of?
Dr. Jessi Gold: I don't know. So you're watching a show about cannibals. So at some point, you wonder where that comes from and what happens to change that and how they get there. You wonder who the person they're chasing is.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
Dr. Jessi Gold: At the end of their first season, we also know somebody prominent dies. So you're also curious how they all react around that. And so I think you want to know that. I think you want to know. I don't know that I want to watch. It's so weird because it's like you're watching a show where you know that's the premise, but it's like, do you really want to watch that? And it's, like, not really. It's super uncomfortable to think about. But you do want to know how they get there and what happens. I think that is something I'm interested in psychologically. I think that how they get home and stuff like that. I hope we see eventually, but I would assume it's not this season because they already renewed for three. So at some point, they're not going to do that. Right. Rescuing seems very end of show to me. Or close to end of show, how that happens.
Dr. Katrina Furey: We could have a whole season with them trying to do group therapy.
Portia Pendleton: I think it could take forever.
Dr. Katrina Furey: It could, yeah. I think it's going to take, like, a darker, mystical turn in, like, Travis's Murder. But I would like to see season three just devoted to therapy.
Dr. Jessi Gold: From a mental health perspective. There's a lot they could do if they wanted. Right? You hope that some of it's there, because for me, watching, I'm, like, I think it's really helpful for people to feel seen by these different characters and there's different reactions to the same thing, because we all have that. No matter what, the same thing is, like, families reacting to family trauma, all of us reacting to COVID, whatever it is, we all react differently. And I think it helps that the portrayals of PTSD are not just like the same sexual assault and military and flashbacks and hyper vigilance, and there's more to it, and that helps people go like, oh, maybe that's what I'm dealing with. But at the same time, from our side of things, it'd be really nice if someone actually got treatment. Very dysfunctional, and that's part of it. But maybe one of the people on the team isn't maybe Van. We don't know what Van is doing. We don't know if there's anybody else. Right. Where's the coach? There's these people that you wonder people are, and you're like, did somebody get help? And can they model? That would have been a way to come back from this, right?
Dr. Katrina Furey: A healthy way right away.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Because I think people get super scared about trauma therapy. Like, I can't relive that whole thing. I just got out of there. You absolutely can't make me keep saying that over and over. Like, they don't want to go to trauma therapy for that reason. And I think that's also important as like a resistance thing to talk about. But you'd hope that from our side things somewhere they at least discuss why they didn't or right. What was going on with people from resistance side and why that's valid, that sort of thing.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. I would love to see that when.
Dr. Jessi Gold: You watch TV as a psychic. I know.
Dr. Katrina Furey: It's so true. It's so true. Yeah. And I also think it's important to put out there that there are forms of trauma therapy where you don't have to rehash the event over and over and over and over. I think you're spot on. A lot of people are really scared to come to therapy because they think that's what they're going to be expected to do. And a lot of times, as people are kind of getting more comfortable in therapy, I try to gently talk about how they are reliving it over and over and over just when they're not wanting to, and somehow that's how the therapy can help. But just to put it out there, you don't always have to go through your trauma narrative every time.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Wow.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Jesse, I don't know if I should thank you for having us watch this show. I mean, it's very dark, but really enjoyable.
Dr. Jessi Gold: What do you want to talk about? I was like, this is the most mental health, interesting show I've watched in a while. And for better or worse, right? There's always good and bad things, and there's always things that could be better. And I'd love people to consult people.
Dr. Katrina Furey: More so that they were I know.
Dr. Jessi Gold: And we are a lot of things and lived experience, and I get it. And we have that same conflict all the time on social media. I get it. But I do think that when you're like, what do you want to talk about? For me, has been the most interesting show in a long time to think about from our perspective, the person that we are mutually friends with. And I talk about the show a lot, and so I think that was, like, an obvious suggestion from.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I have to say I was surprised. I was like, oh, Dr. Wilkins.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Yeah. I mean, don't be confused by the.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Exterior.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Bubbliness and the heels and the necklaces. She watches some good stuff.
Dr. Katrina Furey: We all do. We all do. Well, again, we are so grateful that you spent your time with us today talking about the show. I agree. It was really a good watch. I inhaled it.
Portia Pendleton: Excellent acting, excellent cast.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Yeah. There really isn't a better cast, which is also true. They did this thing where they're like, pulling on your own nostalgia. Yes. Christina region.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
Dr. Jessi Gold: We're just amazing. And then on top of it, they look exactly I know the casting was sick. There's not a lot of sometimes you're like, I mean, I see it from but you're like, oh. And they practice mimicking each other's perfect. And think about what would be different in the future versus now. And they do. That part is, like, phenomenal.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Wouldn't you love? Yeah, I know. I was just thinking, like, I want to be involved in that. Like, if anyone wants to consult us for season two or three, give us a call or I guess DM or whatever the kids do these days.
Portia Pendleton: Phenomenal.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Just do reach. Send me a carrier pigeon or a smoke signal. Like, here you go. Well, thank you so much, Jesse. Again, we so appreciate your time. Is there anything else you want to add before we wrap up?
Dr. Jessi Gold: I don't think so. I look forward to coming back to talk.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. Oh, my God.
Portia Pendleton: Please.
Dr. Katrina Furey: We would love that.
Dr. Jessi Gold: Season two, steady, quick on the intensity. If anyone who's listening is already started.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, I know. Seriously, we would love to have you back. We would love to have you be like our yellow jackets field. Correspondent. It's cool to know that there's other psychiatrists and mental health professionals out there who share our love of the media and wanting to just put out factual info based on these depictions, good and bad.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah, well, thanks again and make sure that you also follow Jesse on Instagram and TikTok at Dr. Jesse. Dr. Jesse.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And then follow us at Analyze scripts. I think we have a TikTok now.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah, we did yesterday. All right, well, thank you and thanks for tuning in and we'll see you next Sunday.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Bye bye. This podcast and its contents are a copyright of Analyzed Scripts. All rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited. Unless you want to share it with your friends and rate review and subscribe, that's fine. All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time. Bye.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are analyzing the Oscar-winning film "The Whale" starring Brendan Fraser. This one's a doozy! This emotional film stirred up a lot of different, conflicting emotions for Dr. Furey and Portia. While exploring our own sadness and rage, we also discuss the masterful portrayal of depression, binge-eating disorder, childhood abandonment, and end-of-life care. We hope you enjoy!
Portia Pendleton: Hi.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Welcome back to another episode of Analyze Scripts. I'm Dr. Katrina Fury, a psychiatrist, and I'm joined, as always, by my friend and colleague, Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker. Thanks for joining us. Once again, or if it's your first time, welcome. Today we are going to be talking about the film by Darren Aranovsky. I think I'm saying that right. The Whale, which recently Brendan Fraser, who stars in this movie, won an Oscar for best actor. So we're pretty excited to talk about it.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton: Brendan Fraser is, like, all over the place. He just seems so precious. And that's a perfect word to describe.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And precious.
Portia Pendleton: I like that it means, like I don't know. I want him to be I want.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Good taking care of him. I know. I want him to have, like, a serenity garden with a little quiet waterfall and some butterflies. Yeah, that's what I want.
Portia Pendleton: And all the awards and accolades that he deserves. So I think a lot of people remember him from Georgia the Jungle, the big shirtless man. And then he was in the Mummy trilogy, and then he kind of stalled for a bird.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I thought maybe he just was like, all right, I'm done now.
Portia Pendleton: Yes. I think we've learned more recently I don't think that this really came out of the time, but he did report a sexual assault in 2003 by Philip Burke, who was the then Hollywood Foreign Press Association president. So I think this kind of piggybacked on what we've seen before with the MeToo movement and what's the guy's name?
Dr. Katrina Furey: Harvey Weinstein.
Portia Pendleton: Like a Harvey Weinstein kind of situation. And I think Brendan Fraser can be added and welcomed into the Me, too. He put himself out there as a young man, 30s, back in the day, and what happened is really normal then, right. It kind of got brushed in the rug. He was blackballed by the industry. His name was not brought up for things. And I think it's just such, like, a beautiful story that now he got this opportunity and he just, like, knocked out of the park. I mean, he got, I think, an eleven minute standing ovation when this film was shown at the Sundance Film Festival. People are just loving him and his performance.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And I think it's kind of shocking, right, to see someone who was like George of the Jungle or in these other shore roles that weren't so deep and emotional to really perform in that way.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I think there was also some sort of I don't know about controversy. I don't think that's the word I'm looking for. But I don't think he went to the Golden Globes specifically because I don't think he felt supported when all this happened and he continued to take a stand. I was really proud of him for that. Really proud of him for that.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton: I think he just is. I hope that he's being welcomed back with kind of open arms into a supportive and getting the credit that he.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Deserves, and I hope he has some good therapy along the way.
Portia Pendleton: So The Whale has kind of, like a little bit of an interesting story. I don't have the details exactly in front of me, so I'm kind of just going to recall it, but it was based on, like, a play, and it was forever. Like, the script has been floating around for, I think, the past 1510 to 15 years. And there's been, like, different directors, different producers, different actors kind of floated around with it at some point. I think that oh, he's the host of the Late Late Night Show.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Seth Meyers? No.
Portia Pendleton: Steven Colbert. England.
Dr. Katrina Furey: The redhead?
Portia Pendleton: Yes.
Dr. Katrina Furey: No. James Corgan?
Portia Pendleton: Yes. Okay.
Portia Pendleton: As a potential he was going to play not a good he didn't yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I'm really glad I didn't know he was an actor.
Portia Pendleton: I don't know.
Dr. Katrina Furey: That's what I saw, according to the Internet.
Portia Pendleton: So I just think it's an interesting path that both The Whale, in one sense has had and then Brendan Fraser and I feel like they both kind.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Of came together like it was meant to be. Wow.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: That is nice.
Portia Pendleton: So why don't we do, like, a little brief, brief, brief rundown about the premise of the movie?
Portia Pendleton: Okay.
Portia Pendleton: So if you haven't seen it, but you want to kind of just, like, hear the podcast episode, we'll try to give you some context.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. But also I think we wanted to include a trigger warning with this episode because The Whale is a really emotional film and we will be talking about some pretty intense themes today, including disordered eating patterns, strained parent, child relationships, abandonment, trauma, and suicide. So we did just want to give that little warning because it is intense. And even if you haven't watched the film yet, again, do so, but just be aware it's intense.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I definitely was feeling a lot of emotions throughout the movie.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And it's really interesting that we both left the movie feeling very different, but very strong feelings. So we'll talk about that. So the premise I recall from this movie, again, I feel like I was so angry at the end, I've blocked some things out, which is interesting. But basically we see this very obese man and I don't know, we wanted to talk about even what terminology we wanted to use to talk about his character.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton: So, I mean, there is, like, kind of, I guess a split field with just, like, how to refer to someone who's in, like, a much larger body. I think some people would prefer just to be called fat. This is a fat man. Other people, I think, prefer to use more, like, just medical terminology. And it's like, with non judgment, but just kind of stating more facts most.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Likely meet medical criteria for morbid obesity.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton: So I think maybe we will use interchangeable language throughout the podcast, whether we are referring to him as fat and a large body or morbidly obese, we'd.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Be curious to hear your thoughts about what you think about these words and terminology as we talk about these tough issues. So, anyway, Brendan Fraser plays Charlie, who it looks like is a teacher for like, an online college writing course. And he also appears to be somewhat of a hermit. The whole film takes place in his apartment. My husband, he's so witty. He kept saying, like, wow, they really saved money on the budget there.
Portia Pendleton: I had that thought after. And again, such a quote unquote low budget film. There's not really per se, like these crazy special effects and all of these sets. It's like they built this set, this home, and we really don't see anything outside of it besides this one flashback. So totally like a beach. But yes, it's like around the apartment. It's in the apartment. It's right outside his apartment door. The parking lot of the apartment, right.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And we didn't know for a while was it an apartment or a house. We just start off right in the house and in the home. And then as the film moves on, we see the different rooms and like the one room he's kept locked and things like that. And then at some point, I don't remember exactly how far into the movie, but not right away, we see that he's actually on the second floor. And so, again, that sort of was like, well, okay, now I see why he really doesn't leave because he has a lot of mobility trouble. But so basically, it seems like this film is sort of capturing the last week of his life, right, that he is morbidly obese and dealing with all of the medical consequences that unfortunately come with that. As a physician, I thought they did a really good job accurately depicting that. They depicted hypertensive emergency with his blood pressure being I wrote it down. Actually, I was going to ask you. I wrote it down in my notes. My first note was while he's masturbating. That was a surprise, just real quick. And then the next one's. Blood pressure was 238 over 134. And I have three exclamation points because that is so scary high. Normal blood pressure is around 120 over 80. So that is really high. In us physicians, we really worry about the bottom number, the diastolic number. I mean, we worry about both, but especially the diastolic number. We worry about it when it's between 91 hundred. So 134 is like, really scary high. Like, he could have a stroke.
Portia Pendleton: He could have heart attack.
Dr. Katrina Furey: He could all the things. And then you see him, like, I.
Portia Pendleton: Think.
Dr. Katrina Furey: As he ********** or something I thought was having a heart attack. He's wheezing, he's sweating, he's grabbing his chest like he's having chest pain. He's like moving his left arm, indicating it's radiating down there. And I was like, oh, my God, he's having a heart attack. He's not going to die because then the movie will be over. But this is, like, really accurate. And then with his wheezing and his friend who comes over to listen to him, immediately, I thought he's probably in heart failure and his legs are swollen. All of it was really accurate.
Portia Pendleton: Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey: So, again, from a medical perspective, I thought they did a really good job portraying that. And the struggles of living in such a large body, like with the walker, with the wheelchair, with all the assistive devices, like the four year lift to get in and out of the bed, things to grab things from up high or down low. He alludes at some point to having bed sores and things like that, which is probably true if you're not able to work around too much. So I did think that was spot on.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton: And I think kind of right away, we are introduced to a couple. Again, not a big cast.
Dr. Katrina Furey: There's like five characters.
Portia Pendleton: So there's Brendan Fraser, who's Charlie, and then there is his friend, it seems like a longtime friend who is a nurse, I believe, or some kind of medically trained she looks like a nurse.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Liz, I think was her name.
Portia Pendleton: She was nominated, I believe, played by Hong Chow. And then Thomas, who is this, like, traveling missionary, seems like. But then there's a little bit of a twist at the end. His daughter, who's played by Sadie Singh, Ellie. And then we briefly see Charlie's ex wife and Sadie Singh's. Or Lily's, Ellie's mom, Mary, who was.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Played by Samantha Morton. And then we also have Dan, I believe was the name of his partner.
Portia Pendleton: Right.
Portia Pendleton: And then a little brief character of the delivery person.
Dr. Katrina Furey: The delivery person, that's right.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: So I got kind of sidetracked summarizing the plot. Did you have anything you wanted to.
Portia Pendleton: Add before we dive into we kind of get the feeling that he is a little bit of a hermit. His apartment is really dark, like, windows, shades are drawn, a lot of clutter.
Portia Pendleton: Yep, yep.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Maybe kind of hoarding, but not like kind of hoarding.
Portia Pendleton: And then we see him teaching. He doesn't have his camera off. So I'm kind of getting the feeling that he has some shame about his appearance because it's kind of demonstrated to us the camera does work. It's just kind of like a choice that he's not putting it on.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I at first thought, Is this during COVID I did, too.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah. So my first thoughts were like, Whoa, there's masturbating. Is this during COVID And then I was like, wow, like, really interesting. Those were, like, my kind of back and forth.
Dr. Katrina Furey: So, anyway, intense feelings right away.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton: We start to see his health seriously decline. It seems like he appears at first to not want to get to medical help because of worries for cost. We learn later, like some other information around that. But that's what he's telling Liz to not go to the hospital. She's encouraging him.
Portia Pendleton: Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey: So Liz, who at first we think of as his friend, she's always showing up in scrubs. She has a stethoscope. She seems to be a nurse. She works night shifts, things like that. She's sort of like being his nurse and medical caretaker. Which I kept thinking, like, what a hard position for her, to be sure. But I know, like, toward the end, they were like, oh, wait, you do have this money. You could go to the hospital.
Portia Pendleton: Let's be real.
Dr. Katrina Furey: The level of care he would need is, like, ICU level of care that is crazy expensive. Like, his bill would be astronomical. Like, the 140 grand or something that he has would not cover it.
Portia Pendleton: Maybe like two days is you can afford health insurance. Okay, there we go.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton: I feel like that's also something that I wanted to spend a little bit.
Portia Pendleton: Of time talking about.
Portia Pendleton: It's just, like, health insurance and kind of, from our perspectives, his potential barriers, or just like, potential systemic barriers. But my thought was really, like, he might not qualify for Medicaid. Maybe he does make too much. But then I would assume that there is some kind of supplemental insurance or that he would be paying into something. And again, even if he was paying into a high deductible and his deductible was, like, $15,000, that's way less than hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars of his bill.
Dr. Katrina Furey: So it's so true.
Portia Pendleton: That's where I was a little angry. Kind of like it felt like a little bit of misinformation. While I'm very aware that health insurance can be wildly costly and there's a lot of people who need better care, and that's a barrier. So I think I'm trying to balance both sides of the coin.
Dr. Katrina Furey: But I think that is sort of the mixed feelings Charlie stirs up in you, at least for me, is like, you get so frustrated with him that he's not getting help or taking the help that's being offered. And I think that's actually a really good example of that. You do have the funds to get health insurance. Like he said, his expenses are very minimal at that point at somewhere along the way, he could have gotten some help and he hasn't. And so that stirs up some really kind of icky feelings, at least in me. I was feeling really angry with him for a lot of the movie.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton: And I think that anger is magnified because, again, a part of the storyline is that he is kind of choosing to step back into his daughter's life, which appears that he abandoned her when she was eight, I believe, and kind of left that family to have a partner.
Dr. Katrina Furey: It appears that he is gay and.
Portia Pendleton: Maybe was in that relationship, as his ex wife discusses, because you just wanted a child. She says that at one point in.
Dr. Katrina Furey: The movie, but again, or maybe hadn't really even come out to himself yet. We see. This totally happened, right? So again, it's like, gosh, this movie really stirs up a lot of big feelings because it's like you understand the wife's perspective because they were married, they had this daughter, and all of a sudden he leaves to be with a man. And I couldn't tell if the wife didn't want him in the daughter's life. And that's why he stayed away, because he kept trying to say, like, I sent you letters, I send you money. I would ask about you. Your mom didn't want me around. I couldn't tell how true that was.
Portia Pendleton: Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Or if he's sort of saying that. I don't know. What were your thoughts about that?
Portia Pendleton: I wonder if initially she was so angry, rightfully so, and maybe just based on the time where they live, and embarrassed and anger and then embarrassment, kind of, because I guess he tried to get custody, shared custody, whatever, and she fought him for that.
Dr. Katrina Furey: She had full custody.
Portia Pendleton: So I don't know if he then interpreted some of those things as I'm.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Out, or if she did keep the daughter away. And I couldn't tell. I can't remember where they all lived. I couldn't tell how was being gay viewed in their town and their culture and their religion. It sounded like Charlie was part of this what was it called? New Life Religion, or at least his partner was. So was that like, the religion everyone is sort of a part of in their area? And are they against homosexuality? That was unclear. But for whatever reason, he wasn't in his daughter's life, effectively. And then he makes contact again at the end of his life, and and.
Portia Pendleton: It seems like it is behind, like, the mom's back and and I do remember actually, there was some, like, alluding to that. It was I don't want to say, like, illegal is not the right word.
Dr. Katrina Furey: But, like, not part of the custody.
Portia Pendleton: Agreement or should not be reaching out. She could call the police on him for doing that.
Dr. Katrina Furey: That was the sense I got, too. So that was where I was like something went down. It seemed like it was more severe than just like, he left. It seemed like there was a really firm line drawn. Unclear exactly why, but it was drawn.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah. And then so we learned a little bit that he had left this family to be with a student. And so at first, right, immediately I.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Was like, oh, is that why is.
Portia Pendleton: He now a sexual predator?
Portia Pendleton: Right.
Portia Pendleton: I wondered how long it seems like he was teaching adult classes. So it was more of like an ethical issue that he was maybe let go for than, like a legal issue. You're in a position of power, but you're both adults.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right, but I had that thought too. I was like, Is that why the line was so firm with the custody or something like that. But I think he said that Dan was in grad school and it was like night classes, if I remember correctly.
Portia Pendleton: And he wasn't currently in his classes at the time when they got together. I don't know. I mean, so he's telling all this to his daughter.
Dr. Katrina Furey: So, by the way, who he hasn't spoken to since she was eight, and now she's a senior and, like, just, hey, let me lay all this on you.
Portia Pendleton: Then kind of the second part of the film appears to just be around his interactions with his daughter, Ellie, and then occasionally with Thomas, who is like this traveling again, we believe, to be missionary, and Liz his nurse. That's it. And then it gets very emotionally intense.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton: So why don't you want to start talking about his daughter a little bit?
Dr. Katrina Furey: Fine.
Portia Pendleton: I have a lot of angry feelings.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Toward Charlie for the way he interacts with his daughter. So Ellie, I thought, was, like, really angry, really feisty. It seemed like she was at risk of failing out of school, and he wanted to help her. So I can't remember now exactly how he got her to come over that first time. Did he send her a message or something saying he had money for her, or do you remember?
Portia Pendleton: I don't think he initially said that he had money for her because he then says, I'll pay you. And then that's where she kind of chooses appearingly, so on the surface to stay or to keep coming back. But it sounds like that was new information to her.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And it sounds like he is an English teacher. And throughout the film, there is a lot of significance to this paragraph about the whale from Moby ****. Right. And thomas the traveling.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I keep wanting to say traveling salesman, but that's not what he was traveling. Like, missionary comes in while he's masturbating and then having seems like a mini heart attack or something. And he asks him to read this paragraph to sort of ground him and bring him back and everything. And it's not till the very end of the movie that we learn that Ellie wrote that when she was much younger, and he's always kept it and read it. And I think it really resonates with him, again, being what some people would call a whale, just based on his large size. I think in a lot of ways, it resonated with him. And he sort of starts to say that he will help Ellie rewrite her essays so that she doesn't fail her English class. And then Ellie wants him to write them for her. And he kind of agrees, I think, in an effort to keep seeing her. And there's this tension or thought, I think, in his mind throughout the whole film about, is Ellie a good person or a bad person? And even her mom toward the end is like, she's terrible. I've had a really hard time raising her. You left me with her all on my own and now you're coming in and going behind my back and you told her about the money, she's going to spend it all and blah, blah, blah, blah. But she's very provocative. She really gets under everyone's skin, especially Thomas. And I'm curious what your thoughts were about the final thing they talk about with her. Like sort of telling Thomas's family if that was like a good thing or a bad thing or we don't really know.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I think she did a really good job in the role. And I know her from Taylor Swift's ten minute version. She's in it all too well. Like the movie with Bill O'Brien and also Stranger Things. But I really like Z. No, I recognized her name, so I thought that some of the things that she was saying to Charlie, her dad, you could feel how hurtful they were. It sounds like she really knows where to hit you.
Portia Pendleton: Yes.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Like lying and disgusting and even if you weren't fat.
Portia Pendleton: And that made me feel really sad. But kind of throughout that, I feel like Ellie was just so sad.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
Portia Pendleton: And abandoned. I think on paper she almost feels a little bit, like, odd and then maybe like moving into some conduct disorder with dead animal stuff. Yeah, I forgot. So on her Instagram page, she has, like, pictures of a dead dog and then she has this knife at one point and it almost feels like she's going to kill the bird that's outside his window. And so again, I think just like, on paper, it feels like a little bit.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Where is this going to go? Does she have antisocial personality disorder? Is she growing into that? Or is this like trauma?
Portia Pendleton: Right.
Portia Pendleton: So I feel like it's trauma.
Dr. Katrina Furey: It could also be both.
Portia Pendleton: Right. I think at this point, I have a really big heart for teens.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I've worked with many.
Portia Pendleton: And my heart breaks for her because she keeps coming back. She's so mean and trying to push him away, but then she keeps coming back.
Dr. Katrina Furey: She doesn't leave.
Portia Pendleton: At one point, I think she's going to leave, but then she goes back and sits in the chair and does what he says.
Dr. Katrina Furey: She writes him.
Portia Pendleton: She's like, I'm going to make you a sandwich. No, it's not going to be big. But then she's like, doing these things for him. So, again, it's like she wants so badly, deep down to be like, parented.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And loved and supported and all children want. Right. 100%. I thought it was like, such a chilling since you get goosebumps everywhere. Such a good portrayal of just a really difficult parent child relationship. And I think with her coming in and confronting the person, she feels like abandoned her. Who did you see why she feels that way? Right. Whatever the reasons are, he wasn't there, right? Period. And now coming back and of course, I feel like she's just all her anger and yelling and acting out is just, like, externalizing all of her pain rather than internalizing it, which it seems like Charlie internalizes his pain by binge eating. And we'll get into that in a minute. I think what made me so angry about this movie, and maybe it's supposed to, is that he comes into her life when he knows he's dying.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton: Right.
Portia Pendleton: For him to see her, that she is okay, it's like, you don't want to make her okay. You are just, like, checking back into her life to make sure you did one thing right. And it's like, for you. So selfish.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I was going to read my final notes here on my notes app. At the very end I wrote ended movie feeling really, really angry. Didn't cry at all. Is he the most selfish person ever?
Portia Pendleton: Help.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Seeking help, rejecting reconnecting with his daughter to die in front of her. I was so angry. I remember, like, furiously typing this in my notes app because I was just like, God, that is you abandoned her all over again. And she sees him die. Like, he has the final heart attack in front of her while she's reading the Whale to him.
Portia Pendleton: And let's just talk about so mad. I don't know if there's a name for it. We could probably call it something. But he is openly rejecting help at the cost of then traumatizing people around him, literally. To watch someone die, even if it's, you know, like a an uncomplicated death. You know, you're you're in the hospital. You're saying goodbyes to your grandparent who's 100 years old.
Dr. Katrina Furey: They're on hospital.
Portia Pendleton: It's still so traumatic and really hard to watch. So watching your father who 100 years old and who's refusing, don't call them. Don't call them. Even in that moment, don't call them. Just read me this letter instead. It's like, I just feel so abusive.
Dr. Katrina Furey: It does, right? That's why I was so mad that I was like, I don't like Charlie.
Portia Pendleton: Even within the traumatic end and his apparent rejection of her and abandonment of.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Her, it's like he should have asked her to leave.
Portia Pendleton: Don't let her watch you literally die. Literally die and force her to read this.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah. Right?
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes. I was so angry. I don't know. This movie stirred up so much anger in me. I know. Portia after you watched it, you texted me like, oh, my God, I'm crying. I'm so glad I watched this during the day so I can decompress and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, I did not shed one tear. I am so full of rage over here.
Portia Pendleton: I was like, sad for everyone. Obviously, I'm angry at what he did, but it felt a little bit like an assisted suicide. He knew he was going to die any day, and I think he was kind of just waiting for his heart to give out.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. But also, I think if we replaced obesity and binge eating with drugs yes.
Portia Pendleton: That'S exactly the example I was thinking.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I kept feeling for Liz. And then I'm like, and you're enabling him. You're bringing these huge subs by listening to him when he says, don't call for help and putting yourself in that role. You're part of the problem. But I understand why you keep coming. It's so complicated. So I was really just fascinated by whoever's choice it was to use obesity or binge eating as the diagnosis, if you will. And I was curious, Porsche, about your thoughts as someone who does a lot of work with patients with disordered eating, about the depiction of his eating habits and things like that.
Portia Pendleton: I guess I would start off with, like, everyone, to a degree, has a different presentation with eating disorders, period. Like what it's used for, whether it's coping or almost like a little bit of self harm. This felt a little bit like self harm versus avoidance. Yeah. And then at times, I think in the bridge it was coping. So I thought we saw kind of two parts with use of kind of food being what we're supposed to be kind of watching and thinking about. So one was him eating like a large you see, like a pair of fried chicken, right. And Liz eating a lot of it. And that feels like, to me, almost a little bit more like self harm. Like, you're kind of intentional at this point. You're kind of dying. It's almost like I was getting the feeling like he was hoping that by doing this, he might speed it up or speed it up, die. And then in the other part of the binge so it seems like it was triggered by which this, to me, feels very common.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I thought this was like an amazing depiction.
Portia Pendleton: So throughout the movie, we see this almost like, relationship build between him and the delivery driver. So the delivery driver seems like, at times concerned.
Portia Pendleton: Right.
Portia Pendleton: There's this person in this house. I never see them. I would imagine the person is maybe thinking the person inside is depressed, maybe a hoarder, maybe elderly, like unable to get up, something like that, when you.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Were like, but is this COVID?
Portia Pendleton: I was like, but if this is.
Dr. Katrina Furey: COVID, then we wouldn't think it was weird not to open your door for the delivery man. Right. Interesting.
Portia Pendleton: And it was just little fact this was pre COVID. And it seems like it was around the time of the 2016 election. We see some of the news clippings between Hillary and Donald Trump.
Dr. Katrina Furey: You're right.
Portia Pendleton: I saw an article about like, they chose that intentionally. It was supposed to be like, in 2009, they wanted the movie placed in, but then they moved it up that it impacted it too much. That wasn't like something I was paying attention to. But anyway. So over time, the delivery driver is kind of, like, talking to him more. They get his name. And so it seems like at one point, Charlie feels comfortable enough to go to the door, open it and see him.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't think it was that he felt comfortable enough. I thought he would be like, oh, the money's out there. Take it. He leaves it, and then he waits a certain number of minutes and then goes to get it. I thought the delivery driver stayed back.
Portia Pendleton: Oh, you do?
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. Who was that's?
Portia Pendleton: Interesting.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't know if there's a right or wrong. It's just how we interpret the film. Right.
Portia Pendleton: So he goes to the door and the delivery driver sees him and appears to be really disgusted and does not engage. Charlie sees that. He sees him and appears to be disgusted and not engaged. And he kind of, like, runs away. And so Charlie goes back inside and starts to binge.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton: And this, I feel like, is a pretty typical binge episode. Like, there's a trigger of something that's emotional associated typically with negative emotion, shame or guilt. And then you proceed to start coping, quote, unquote, by eating a really large amount of food, right? And, yes, there are all different kinds of binges, sometimes people, large or small.
Dr. Katrina Furey: But this really is like a clinically defined binge episode. And I think, for me, I found myself feeling really uncomfortable and sick, almost, like physically sick, watching him eat. And I'm like, I'm sure they did this on purpose, but just like, the way he was eating so fast he could barely breathe, he starts to get sweaty and red, and he's, like, drooling. And there's that really intense scene where he's choking the meatball and just all of it, I felt like. And I'm just getting chills. Again, like, talking about it, I think just speaks to the intense emotions driving that behavior that I just thought, again, was really accurately depicted and really stirs up those feelings in the viewer.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton: So he is eating really rapidly. He's eating multiple kind of pizza, an odd mix of food, right? So going into the fridge, putting on different condiments, like the things that don't.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Belong together, like jelly mayonnaise. And that is binge eating, right? You're not eating, like, third helping a cake, right? You're eating, like, a whole loaf of bread or just sort of kind of odd things.
Portia Pendleton: So it's rapid, and we see it kind of end with he unintentionally throws up. And again, that is a difference between a self induced purge where trying to kind of get rid of it. That would be more along the lines of bulimia. But you can end a binge with something like throwing up. And that's not considered bulimia because it's not intentional. And it's kind of all over him. Again, it does bring up feelings of disgust. And I think that's kind of intentional. Intentional for the movie. They really want you to see that he is just, like, suffering. The thing that I took away, and I think he'll.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Empathy as you talk.
Portia Pendleton: Is that I just felt like his death almost to me, felt like a suicide. And that is where I think a lot of my empathy came from. I think what he did to Ellie is horrible, and I think that's why I really cried. I think I cried the last ten minutes. I could feel it, like, building.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I was, like, dissociating from my body from rage. Like, I was just, like, watching it. I was so angry that I was like, I can't get too close to this. Honestly, it was wild.
Portia Pendleton: Like, the pain you could feel, I had to get. So I think that's why it was very impactful.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And I think, too, the whole story with Dan, his partner, is so tragic. So it sounds like at some point I knew this was coming. And this is where sometimes I feel like a genius when I'm like, I can anticipate the storyline where I was like, oh, my God, Dan is Liz's brother.
Portia Pendleton: I didn't get that at all.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And then he was but so anyway, because I was like, how does he know Liz? He hasn't gone to a healthcare setting. It's not like she was his nurse and has this inappropriate bond to him or continued trying to help him out of the hospital or something like that. It's not like she was a student of his. How does he know her? It doesn't seem like she's his neighbor. But maybe. But so it turns out that Liz was Dan's sister and she was adopted into the family. And we sort of start to learn about this when the Thomas, the traveling missionary person, says, he's from this church. And she was like, I hate that church. And we learned that the beliefs of that church, it sounds like when Dan and Charlie fell in love, dan was so wracked with guilt, was my understanding, because that wasn't okay in the eyes of the church, that he ended up committing suicide. And so then you're like, that's why they're so bonded, because that was Liz's brother and that was his partner. And you do see some photos of him around his apartment. And Charlie wasn't thin, thin as you would think. Like, he was always maybe living in a larger body, but not morbidly obese. And so to me, I then also started looking at his relationship with food as his grief, like a depiction of grief and his guilt and shame and almost like, taking on literally the weight of Dan's death and in that way kind of like paralleling Dan's suicide, like you were saying, right? It was just so intense. So intense.
Portia Pendleton: I know. And I think I don't want to say it's just classic, but it's like, such a common presentation with binge eating disorder. There's so deeply rooted emotions, typically, of guilt and shame grief, rejection, out of control.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. I don't know. That's just kind of my guiding it can spiral.
Portia Pendleton: Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, he didn't put on that weight overnight. It took years and years and years and years. And you imagine as that's happening, his world was probably getting smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. Like, he was staying more and more in the house. And that's just sort of like you feel depressed watching the movie. It's dark. His apartment is cluttered. He, like, showers to see his daughter. But otherwise you imagine he's not really keeping up with his hygiene and all the things. And because it's hard to physically challenging.
Portia Pendleton: It's a production to get up and even use the bathroom.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I know. And it was so sad to me when Ellie was like, get up and walk over here.
Portia Pendleton: I got teary watching that.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: That made me and then he felt I mean, it just made me so uncomfortable. Like, that was another feeling I had throughout most of the movie, was just like, discomfort in so many different ways.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah. And he repeatedly throughout the movie says, I'm sorry.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right?
Portia Pendleton: Like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, like, over and over again and gets, like, so mad about him because, like, you're not sorry.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, that's the thing, right?
Portia Pendleton: You can be both. But it's like he needs some DBT, right? Because you're saying you're sorry, but you're not doing anything to make it better for others, even not even just for yourself.
Dr. Katrina Furey: But I didn't get the sense again, I was so angry with him by the end, but I also look at him as being so traumatized. And I didn't get the sense it was malicious.
Portia Pendleton: No.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. I just got the sense he was so hopeless and depressed. But then I would be so frustrated with him to not take people up on the offer to help or get the insurance or have sought help earlier on or anything. But I'm just like, maybe he just felt like he didn't deserve that.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I think that's absolutely part of it. And I think I just frame the entire thing as a suicide. And I think all of these feelings that we're talking about right now, you feel when someone takes their life suicide.
Portia Pendleton: Right?
Portia Pendleton: You're like, how could you do that? How could you leave your family, your kids? And there's really natural reactions that come up, like, you're selfish.
Dr. Katrina Furey: How could you choose that?
Portia Pendleton: Why wouldn't you reach out? Why wouldn't you go to the hospital? Why would you embark on a really planned and follow through event that leaves everyone just wrecked?
Portia Pendleton: Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't think Ellie is going to be better.
Portia Pendleton: Right.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't think this is going to help her. And I think I was also so angry because another sort of storyline throughout the movie was between Ellie and Thomas. We get the sense at first that Thomas is this, like, goody two shoes, new life missionary who doesn't swear, doesn't drink, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that Ellie's, like, being provocative and trying to poke him and trying to get him to smoke pot, or she's going to call the police and say he raped her. She has all of these really provocative things and keeps taking his picture, which I thought was so weird.
Portia Pendleton: And she takes her dad's picture and posts it and has a really in common.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. Just a lot of boundary violations on her part. At first I was like, she's giving me a lot of cluster b vibes, like you were saying. And then it turns out that this guy was part of the church, but then stole their money, so he ran away. And now he's like, ran out of the money so he can't get back. And he's kind of lost. He's full of guilt and shame and worried that his parents will reject him because of what he did. And so somehow she sends the photos or something to his parents and they welcome him back. They surprise him and actually say, we don't care about the money, we just want you back. And he shows up near the end of Charlie's life to tell him about this and that Ellie was responsible for it. And Charlie internalizes it or interprets it as like, see, Ellie is good. But I was like, I don't think that that was good. Right. I don't think she was doing that in hopes that would be the outcome. I think she was, like, trying to hurt it. Right?
Portia Pendleton: Yeah, totally. No, that's what I got from that. And I thought that Ellie is just such a good example of how for some people, events that happen in childhood can lead to, you know, and a later in life presentation.
Portia Pendleton: Right.
Portia Pendleton: Like, and I I think at this point and I'm I'm very hopeful with.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Kids and teens that like a chef. If you listen to our episode about.
Portia Pendleton: Choke Open, that's my what is it called? So I think in a perfect world, if she could have worked, if her father had stayed alive and healed his mental health and health, and she was able to get really good therapy and.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Family therapy, like go to residential.
Portia Pendleton: Exactly.
Portia Pendleton: I think that there is a path for her, but I feel like her watching him die is not going to having no closure. And now it sounds like no guidance from mom. It seems like mom is now checked out because she said to Charlie, I raised her and you gave her the money. That's the best that we could do.
Dr. Katrina Furey: It seems like mom really also gave up on her. She was like, duly abandoned.
Portia Pendleton: I just don't see a great outlook for her.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't either. And I don't think that was an act of good for Thomas. I think she's always trying to hurt people.
Portia Pendleton: Right. And I think what's scary and concerning is it gets worse when you're an adult. Right. There's more consequences. You often as an adult are not referred to justice system like a residential instead of jail. You're 18 and if you do something I mean, she's threatening. She's literally threatening Thomas. Like you can't tell someone that you have to smoke pot or I'm going to tell people that you raped me. Provocative is a great word. Like aggressive.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Provocative. It is threatening. Right, exactly. So I think you're right on the nose about her totally being this odd presentation. Odd. By that we mean oppositional defiant disorder, which is something that's diagnosed, I think, in teenagers. Right?
Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
Portia Pendleton: It's kind of like the prerequisite to then conduct disorder, which is like a little bit worse. It's like children specifically and teens who are very hurtful of others intentionally and typically there's a little extra layer there like you're setting fires or you have killed like a small animal. So I mean, it's very concerning.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Know the difference. This is the important thing we talked about again back in you if you haven't listened yet, please go back and listen. But this is the flavor of the type of personality that unfortunately will become antisocial personality disorder with a lot of criminality. Like, you know the difference between right and wrong and you want to do right. You want to hurt other people. And a lot of times kids who meet this criteria do have a trauma history and you're like, you were so hurt, now you want to hurt others. It was interesting that it was a daughter. I feel like oftentimes we see this in boys, right? Like boys are more often diagnosed with that girls are more often diagnosed with like borderline personality disorder. So it's interesting to see a depiction in a girl.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah, that's a good point.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh God, I need a shower.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I mean, the movie is just like I think it just made me sad because it just made me feel really like everyone was suffering so deeply and no one even Liz.
Portia Pendleton: Right.
Portia Pendleton: So she finds out at the end because Mary raised by his ex wife.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I think, so something like that.
Portia Pendleton: Because she kind of does bring up the fact that he has, I think, like around $120,000, which again he's planning to leave to Ellie and Liz is.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Just like, why you were able to get insurance this whole time.
Portia Pendleton: And she talks about her car.
Portia Pendleton: Right.
Portia Pendleton: At some point she was walking in the snow and rain to him to bring him things. And you could see so hurt that he a was not helping himself, but also like her.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And I think that the Charlie Liz relationship is a really good depiction of a codependent relationship right. Because they're each enabling each other and getting their own kind of psychological need met.
Portia Pendleton: I don't know.
Dr. Katrina Furey: What do you think?
Portia Pendleton: And have a shared I think yeah, they have all shared shared trauma that they're both like, using each other to cope with. And again, it's not I feel like that sounds bad, but it's just like we also just do that. We find ways to cope, and they're using and coping with each other in an unhealthy way. What did you think about the moment when Charlie was sitting he was sitting down and Mary kind of came over and was putting her head on his chest, and they were just kind of like, having that moment?
Dr. Katrina Furey: I honestly don't remember it because I think I was so angry by the end, I blocked out a lot of I guess I thought it was like.
Portia Pendleton: She was kind of saying goodbye, probably.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, I could see. I mean, I think they all knew who I don't know if Ellie understood he was dying.
Portia Pendleton: Oh, we didn't talk about her giving him the ambien. Again.
Dr. Katrina Furey: These are the things that cross over from being a rebellious teen and not listening to mom and Dad's rules and breaking curfew to egregious behavior. Right.
Portia Pendleton: Like, literally drugging someone.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, you could have killed him. Yeah. And then it also gave a sense that mom is maybe taking a lot of pills or something at home and I think drinks a lot. She said so. Also not really checked in. Oh, God. It was just so sad. I think I just really get sad when kids are abandoned by their parents. I think that's hard for me to watch. All right, well, any other final thoughts about this movie?
Portia Pendleton: So when we were talking about Charlie's size and it definitely does take time to get into this position, and I wanted to point out in always, right? Mentally, physically, it's like, this isn't something that a large size of chicken wings does.
Portia Pendleton: Right.
Portia Pendleton: It's repetitive behaviors over and over and over again, kind of in Always with also a lot of health care avoidance.
Portia Pendleton: Yes.
Portia Pendleton: And I think there's a double edged sword to that. So I think a lot of people in larger bodies feel a lot of shame and can experience, like, fat phobia medical professionals. So there's a lot of avoidance, which is really too bad, because if you were with a provider who was really offering support and guidance in a non judgmental and shameful way, but maybe even just like the same information, you would feel more comfortable going if you get to your healthcare setting. And it was a challenge to write, walk into the building, get up, take up the elevator, walk into the door, and then you find that there's no chair that you can sit in because it's not big enough for you. It's like all of these little, small kind of micro aggression, oppression really kind of sets the effect and makes people not go. So I think I just wanted to talk about having fatty food does not necessarily lead to this. It's a really significant mental health part and kind of a multifaceted place that a person is in to get here.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. And I think, again, I kept wondering about why did they pick morbid obesity over drug use, cutting, drinking, these other things we think about as self harming types of behaviors that you think you could develop in response to a tragic loss like this. We see that depicted a lot more in the media than something like this. So I think maybe that is why it all struck a nerve for everyone. And I thought overall, they did a remarkable job portraying binge eating the medical consequences that would come from living in a morbidly obese body and all the big feelings that he was probably feeling is what gets stirred up in us for watching, which was really fascinating, something we talk about a lot. And I think it's important, and I hope we keep reiterating with our show, is bodies come in all different shapes and sizes, and unfortunately, the medical field can be inherently fat shaming if you adhere too much to the BMI standards, which, as it turns out, aren't really predictive of overall health and longevity. I think there is some evidence that people with on the lower end of, like, the overweight BMI are sometimes healthier. They might not have high cholesterol or high blood pressure and things like that. A lot of people with a lot of muscle mass weigh more. So BMI is really not that accurate, but it's something a lot of people use.
Portia Pendleton: I think it's some of the advice that I give is really just kind of following what, to a degree, like.
Dr. Katrina Furey: What your lab work says.
Portia Pendleton: And if you are eating, in general, a balanced diet, and you're moving your body in a way that feels good to you, and you're living kind of a lifestyle that feels good, and your lab work is good and you're not having health issues, it's like you're probably okay. Right. And I think that's so true. People who appear and are in many.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Other ways very physically healthy can have.
Portia Pendleton: Really high cholesterol because it's genetic and there's parts to all of this.
Portia Pendleton: Exactly.
Portia Pendleton: I find that very interesting.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, that's the other thing is, even if you do all those things, if you have a family history, you still might develop it. You could be thin and still get diabetes because you're genetically predisposed. It's not only like a quote unquote, fat person disease.
Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
Dr. Katrina Furey: So I don't know. I think we feel really strongly about that.
Portia Pendleton: But this movie was intense.
Dr. Katrina Furey: How would you rate it?
Portia Pendleton: One to five? Like five stars? Four stars? Four, I think.
Dr. Katrina Furey: For sure. Five stars. I mean, I don't know that I want to watch it again because it was intense.
Portia Pendleton: I don't know if I could. Not for any near future.
Dr. Katrina Furey: I feel like I've been anticipating recording this all week. I feel legit, like a weight is off my back. Which, again, is just really interesting.
Portia Pendleton: Yes.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Remarkable. I'm glad he won the oscar really well deserved, and I hope he keeps acting.
Portia Pendleton: I hope to see more.
Dr. Katrina Furey: And if he wants to come on the podcast, you're invited. Yeah, we'd love that.
Portia Pendleton: Well, thanks so much for listening to this episode. We hope you enjoyed it. If you would like, we would love for you to follow us on Instagram at Analyze Scripts. And if you could rate, review and subscribe and share with five people. Yeah, our channels on Spotify it seems like it's pretty active, as well as Apple Music, the most out of kind.
Dr. Katrina Furey: Of all the other places.
Portia Pendleton: But we are everywhere.
Portia Pendleton: Yes, we are everywhere.
Dr. Katrina Furey: If you wanted to go subscribe literally everywhere, feel free. All right, we'll see you next time.
Portia Pendleton: Bye.
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Dr. Katrina Furey: All rights reserved.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we wrap up our analysis of season 1 of "Shrinking" on AppleTV+. We are THRILLED this show has been renewed for a second season! In this episode, we chat about various character arcs, including the cliffhanger at the end. We also share a tender friendship moment and demonstrate how to sit with big, vulnerable feelings. Much like "Shrinking," this episode is full of tears and laughter! We hope you enjoy!
[00:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: Welcome back to another episode of Analyze Scripts. This is Dr. Katrina Fury, a psychiatrist, and I'm joined, as always, by my friend colleague Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker. And today we are going to dive into the last four episodes of the first season of the show on Apple TV, plus shrinking. So this is episode seven to ten. And fun fact, we actually just watched episode ten together, so that was kind of fun.
[00:45] Portia Pendleton: I cried in front of you.
[00:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's okay. I cried at home when I watched it the first time. And then I watched you cry as you watch. So it was really interesting. I thought about, like, is this what content is? Like, should I be filming you cry? And then we put that we probably.
[01:03] Portia Pendleton: Should have, only the setting was a little awkward because I can't figure out how to put Apple TV on my living room TV. So we watched it from a bedroom.
[01:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: I'm really cool with.
[01:15] Portia Pendleton: I don't know if I'd want to put that out in the ether.
[01:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: This show is about crossing boundaries.
[01:26] Portia Pendleton: Funny.
[01:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my gosh. So there's a lot to talk about. We pick up where, turns out Gabby and what's his name?
[01:34] Portia Pendleton: Jimmy.
[01:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: Jimmy. They went all the way.
[01:36] Portia Pendleton: They did.
[01:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: They went to fourth base. Fourth base. Home run. They sure did. Out of the park. And then a lot has transpired. Yes, a lot.
[01:51] Portia Pendleton: I feel like every single person in the show had emotional growth.
[01:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
[01:56] Portia Pendleton: In many ways.
[01:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, they totally did. Yeah.
[01:59] Portia Pendleton: So we see the aftermath of the party. Jimmy's on his apology tour. He's apologizing to everyone. He has to apologize to Brian, but Brian's like, I'm not sorry.
[02:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: We're engaged. Yeah.
[02:11] Portia Pendleton: He apologizes and has a conversation with Gabby where Gabby's like, it's fine.
[02:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't regret it.
[02:15] Portia Pendleton: And then Jimmy's like, I do, and.
[02:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: You'Re like, I know, but then Gabby's like, you're safe, ****. And then that sort of comes up over and over. And spoiler alert, turns out he's not. At the very end, when they're all gathered at Brian's wedding, and he's giving this really moving speech, which I thought was actually really touching. You see Gabby kind of having the feels, and I think Liz, like, pops over her shoulder and is like, I hear your ****** humming.
[02:42] Portia Pendleton: She's like, It is not safe, ****.
[02:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's not safe, ****. So we'll see what happens in season two since it got renewed. Yes.
[02:49] Portia Pendleton: Very excited.
[02:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: Very excited.
[02:50] Portia Pendleton: So I don't even know who to focus on first. Maybe we should just focus on Jimmy, like, his curve. So he seems like he kind of just falls apart at the party. Right. He's reminded constantly by Tia.
[03:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, I know.
[03:06] Portia Pendleton: It feels like he has gone up since then, so that would make sense. I wrote down a couple of things that I was still a little bit, like, annoyed with, with his patience. Like, I feel like in those episodes, or in his sessions after the party, like, he's still, like, over sharing. And I'm like, Wally.
[03:25] Dr. Katrina Furey: But then I was so glad when she called him out and said something. I didn't write down the exact sentence she used, but she was like, you're making it about you. Or she called it out that he has a tendency to do this. I think he knew that, but it helped that being brought to his attention. And also I noticed that one of the writers of the show is named Wally. Oh, wow. Okay. I know wally, if you want to come on the podcast yeah, I was going to say holler at us, but we don't say that anymore.
[03:53] Portia Pendleton: Just like DM us.
[03:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: DM us.
[03:56] Portia Pendleton: That's more cool.
[03:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: Okay.
[03:58] Portia Pendleton: So, yeah, I think Wally's the OCD patient. Yeah. So I thought it was funny. I wrote down, like, her eyes are closed in the session. She won't look at him because of the kiss. Like, she's really embarrassed.
[04:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: At least she came.
[04:11] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, that was a big step. And he's kind of, like, trying to make her feel better by over sharing. Like, he shares a way that he is embarrassed, and again, that helps her, but I'm like, stop doing that.
[04:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: And then eventually again, I didn't write down exactly what she said, but she basically draws it to his attention. Like, dude, you're over sharing too much. Good for you.
[04:32] Portia Pendleton: Yes. So we also see Jimmy and Paul and Brian in the episode track down Alice at the college. I'm kind of, like, rescue her from this college boy. So Jimmy, through these last couple of episodes, is becoming stepping back into his parent role.
[04:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: Thank God. Finally. Thank God.
[04:57] Portia Pendleton: It sounds like you're finding that attractive.
[05:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, I know. I was telling Portia by the end, I was, like, really attracted to Jimmy, maybe.
[05:05] Portia Pendleton: And in the beginning you were not. No, I didn't.
[05:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like because he's, like, being a parent now.
[05:11] Portia Pendleton: You're fulfilling your role in your duties. You're stepping up. And again, we know why. That he had kind of a breakdown and wasn't able to be there and still right.
[05:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: There's no exceptions. I'm a very harsh judge when it.
[05:29] Portia Pendleton: Comes to this, to parenting. We want what's best for the kids.
[05:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. And we were so worried about Alice and is she going to rebel? Is she not? And she kind of did. I love they're like, no, not a guy in a vest. But I felt like she did enough maybe to finally get his attention, which sometimes teens act out, right? All teens act out right. Like, to push buttons and stuff. But I felt like she did it enough to get his attention, not so much for this show to take a different turn.
[06:02] Portia Pendleton: And I feel like it was within her character. Like, I don't see her as a big risk taker. I don't see her.
[06:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: But yeah, I.
[06:11] Portia Pendleton: Just feel like she's very risky.
[06:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: She told a friend. She told a friend where she was going. I loved when they barged in on that what did they call it? The garden party.
[06:23] Portia Pendleton: Party I've ever seen in my life.
[06:25] Dr. Katrina Furey: But they're all their food. Oh, my God, it's so funny. But I loved how it was so similar to drinks under the bridge, and Paul had said something like, oh, so and so is really good at coming.
[06:34] Portia Pendleton: Up with the name Summer.
[06:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: Summer. But then when Paul's leaving and he tells so and so, like, stop trying to get with your English. Yes.
[06:42] Portia Pendleton: And everyone's like, what?
[06:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. I thought it was just so funny.
[06:45] Portia Pendleton: That these are the parties, right? I'm expecting to raise your house party. Or again, like a garden party where you're in a garden, but everyone's trash and there's balls everywhere. And I was just like, all these.
[06:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: People are just like, you're drinking like.
[06:56] Portia Pendleton: An insultzer and you're smoking marijuana and you're on your phone, like, not playing music. I mean, hey, this is a relatively speaking safe party, so that's great.
[07:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: I will fingers crossed that's the party my kids go to someday. That's the extent of it. But I thought that was just, like.
[07:15] Portia Pendleton: A funny little I don't know, it made me laugh.
[07:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: Are we millennials? Yeah. I am Millennials. You are older than you are. You not? No, we both are.
[07:24] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. We're in the middle.
[07:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: We're in the middle. Okay. And then whoever wrote the show maybe is a millennial or older, I'm assuming. I feel like it was, like, a funny commentary on that generation.
[07:36] Portia Pendleton: Gen Z.
[07:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: Is Gen Z the young one. Okay.
[07:39] Portia Pendleton: I think they got a lot, right?
[07:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like Alice's Style.
[07:42] Portia Pendleton: I just think it was funny.
[07:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, but even the party, I feel like they're just like, oh, the kids are on their phones now. Maybe they are. I don't know. So I don't know. I thought that was pretty funny.
[07:52] Portia Pendleton: I liked when the college guy opens the door and he's like, alice, your two dads and grandpa here.
[08:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: I love that.
[08:02] Portia Pendleton: And then so mortifying. And then Paul is, like, saying we as they're walking in, and Brian's like, don't. We're not peers. Stop comparing me to you.
[08:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: I loved it. And I love that they had to use Brian's car because Alice took his car and Paul can't drive, and that they make Brian sit in the back.
[08:18] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. He's like, I think this is about my self esteem.
[08:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, but all these details are so perfect. I just loved it. And I love how Harrison Ford, I guess we'll call him, paul is so protective of Alice, and even then, when she's so mad that they were there, you could tell she appreciates. And that is so true of teenagers, Toddlers. All children appreciate when their parents set boundaries. And then I love that he finally grounded her. Although it looks like maybe the sentence didn't last long. I don't know. I guess she wasn't really like, going out and about. But he did ground her. And even though she was mad, that's, like, the appropriate step. Yeah.
[08:55] Portia Pendleton: And I think in that moment, it was a little bit I could see a parent having a hard time setting that boundary, because, again, I feel like Alice at the time, and that's the reason you set boundaries, is a really good kid.
[09:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[09:09] Portia Pendleton: I don't think she would maybe do.
[09:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: That again, but you still have to set the limit.
[09:14] Portia Pendleton: Setting the limit. And initially, she's really mad and upset, and she still says, mom wouldn't do this. And he's like she would exactly.
[09:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I thought that was so powerful.
[09:23] Portia Pendleton: And then she says, I ******* hate you.
[09:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: And he goes, I ******* love you. And I started crying. I cried a lot in these episodes. I was like, whoa.
[09:35] Portia Pendleton: It was like, I'm crying. My eyes are watering. A tear falls. And then the next scene, there's a comedic relief, and it's from Liz or Gabby.
[09:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
[09:46] Portia Pendleton: And that was a really I think the balance was really nice.
[09:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know we kept saying as we again watched episode ten together, and I kind of watched you watch episode Ten, which was like a fascinating anthropological adventure. Do you have no, I sketched you. No. I was like, I want to work with them. I want to be friends with my neighbors. Like this.
[10:09] Portia Pendleton: I know.
[10:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Put rocks in that thing, make it.
[10:12] Portia Pendleton: Really smooth and give it to someone.
[10:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. I don't know. I'm so glad this show is coming back.
[10:20] Portia Pendleton: So, like, Jimmy is on this arc. He's stepping up as a parent. He's being such a good dad. He is having tough conversations with Alice. He's having tough conversations with himself.
[10:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my God. But we have to talk about them sitting her down to tell her that they have I love when she's like, alice has never called me Auntie Gabby. Like, do you want to make this worse? It's just so funny. I have to say again, this is like a comedy. We want it all to end up fine. But I was like, I don't know if Alice will get over that easily.
[10:49] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[10:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't know. I feel like they kind of blew through it.
[10:52] Portia Pendleton: Do you think it's like a little bit of almost like a stereotypical? Like, a therapist as a parent, psychiatrist as a parent, like thing to do, sitting her down and talking about it? I feel like another parent would just be like, yeah, this is really uncomfortable.
[11:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: We're not going to talk about or, like, avoided.
[11:09] Portia Pendleton: Right. And the therapist parents are like, let's.
[11:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: Talk about it a lot. Yeah.
[11:15] Portia Pendleton: There's got to be a medium. There's got to be a middle ground.
[11:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, I have no comment on that. Okay.
[11:23] Portia Pendleton: I'll ask you a couple of years.
[11:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think Jimmy was talking about how he's, like, starting to slip up at work to Paul, and it's like, starting, like, you know, he's been sort of acting silly and he was like, yeah, I told the patient to like, ********** for, you know, anxiety relief instead of meditate. And Paul was like, well, they both work. I feel like their banter is so funny. I just love it.
[11:50] Portia Pendleton: I mean, I know we say this every time, but I really, really give like 100 out of 100 stars to the writing. They get things, the smallest details, so right.
[12:02] Dr. Katrina Furey: How'd you do it? I don't know.
[12:04] Portia Pendleton: I could never come up with that. This is not my strong suit. The things that they think about because.
[12:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: We want them to someday call us to consult. This is our strong suit.
[12:14] Portia Pendleton: Let me rephrase that.
[12:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: We are so witty and we're mental health experts, so give us a call, guys. I know exactly what you mean, though. I don't know how to do it. Yeah, because the writing is so funny. Like that tongue in cheek, the part how it makes you cry and laugh sometimes at the same time. So you don't know which way should my mouth be happy or sad? But then also the mental health layers that are pretty accurate. I'm just like how'd you do it.
[12:43] Portia Pendleton: Totally how'd you do it. I 100% agree. And I do feel like it's worth kind of bringing up and laughing at. So when Brian, Paul and Jimmy are again rescuing Alice from the college guys dorm, I love that Brian interjects and he's like, Well, I'm a lawyer and.
[12:59] Dr. Katrina Furey: Did you know that she's twelve? I know. She's like, I'm not twelve.
[13:04] Portia Pendleton: Because she is underage, by the way.
[13:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: But I just think it's like they.
[13:08] Portia Pendleton: Are just so funny in that way. They're all playing this role. And I was like, oh, I want that.
[13:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know. I want them to be my dad's and cranky grandpa. And Alice is probably like, I'm so glad she has them now. He's getting better. Yeah. I wish he'd go to his own therapy. Maybe season two writers.
[13:30] Portia Pendleton: That would be good.
[13:31] Dr. Katrina Furey: I like that idea.
[13:32] Portia Pendleton: If it's in there, I'm going to say that they stole credit.
[13:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: We could sue. Yeah. Oh, my God. What did you think about Gabby at Nico's art show and Liz with the laser pointer? I just feel like, again, that's such.
[13:48] Portia Pendleton: A small detail that I know.
[13:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: Of course it has a laser pointer.
[13:53] Portia Pendleton: And she uses it because, again, she's overbearing and judgy. She likes to be involved with things per her.
[13:59] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I was like, of course you.
[14:00] Portia Pendleton: Carry one and you're pointing it at people in public.
[14:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: You could shop for that. And she's a white woman pointing it at black women for a long half time. I'm really surprised they didn't notice. I know.
[14:16] Portia Pendleton: I feel like I didn't know what to I was like, really? And I feel like sick.
[14:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: Do you think that was intentional? Sort of like that commentary on white privilege and stuff?
[14:26] Portia Pendleton: And I think to an extent. Like, Liz very much so owns it. Even the white guilt catering.
[14:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my God. I know. Please call it that. I know. And then when Gabby was like, are you worried later? Are you worried it's going to be like Sandra bullockIn? Oh, God, I love the show so much. I do have to say I love seeing Liz and Gabby's like, evolution as friends and stuff. What do you think about that?
[14:53] Portia Pendleton: I think their friendship is beautiful. I noted that when they're at the art show. I loved how Gabby and it's obviously, like, silly, but it's also serious. Gabby is not happy with how Liz is responding to something, and she tells her, like, in the moment, it's not awkward. She's directive. It's not three months later after you're holding a grudge. She's just like, I really need you to do this for me tonight and not do this. And then Liz says it.
[15:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: And then later on, Liz can say that to her husband. Remember when she's sitting down with Sean, which is, like, one of my favorite scenes of all time. And I love just them getting closer. And I also love their age difference. And it kind of reminded me of us, even though I don't think which one do you think I am? Which one do you think I think you are.
[15:38] Portia Pendleton: First of all, for our listeners, the age difference is very small.
[15:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, four years.
[15:43] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, it's not a lot, but okay.
[15:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: I thought I was Gabby.
[15:50] Portia Pendleton: I want to be Liz.
[15:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: I was Liz. I'm like older.
[15:54] Portia Pendleton: I just like Liz. I like them both, but I feel like I am a Liz. I would like to be a Liz.
[16:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: Really?
[16:03] Portia Pendleton: I want to be a fun neighbor. I want to be, like, a fun, alter, middle aged woman. I want to be fashionable. I want to be self care.
[16:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: White cardigan, and it's always white ironed.
[16:16] Portia Pendleton: I want to buy an $8,000 toilet that has a heated seat.
[16:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know I thought of myself more as Liz because I'm older, and I thought of you as Gabby because I feel like you wear, like, cool clothes and you're like, hip and.
[16:34] Portia Pendleton: Either one. I like them both. I'm happy.
[16:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: I loved near the end as Liz is, like, giving out rocks to people. There's this theme of the little funny, shiny rocks. What did you think of that? How that keeps carrying over? I thought that it was such, like.
[16:52] Portia Pendleton: A little tiny detail that had such a big storyline. It's not like there was a lot of time spent on it, but you see it throughout all the episodes and then you learn all this meaning associated with it. I was laughing at we find out that two of her three sons, she has given Rock and Alice, and that's it.
[17:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: And then she gives one to Gabby. But only after Gabby officially confides that she has, in fact, slept with Jimmy. And they kind of talk about it. I loved Gabby being like it's like Mariah Carey. Yes. Well, in honor of that portia, I do have a small gift for you to celebrate our friendship, our partnership. And we've reached 5000 downloads and it is a tiny rock. Wow. It's beautiful.
[17:43] Portia Pendleton: It's very smooth. I'm going to try to describe it to you listening out there. It is like a dark deep purple, which I love purple. It is smooth. The bottom is kind of circular. The top is a little bit pointy.
[17:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. Wow. It's kind of like a fingernail.
[18:02] Portia Pendleton: Fingernail?
[18:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. I've been carrying it in my pocket all day. Wow. Just waiting for this moment. I did find it outside of a grocery store parking lot on my way here. But that's to symbolize how I feel about you as Liz feels toward the people she cares about.
[18:20] Portia Pendleton: That's beautiful and very touching.
[18:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: And it might be a little dirty.
[18:25] Portia Pendleton: I might tear and I don't know why that is. Maybe it's from oh, are you really going to yes.
[18:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: No, I didn't really care about you.
[18:39] Portia Pendleton: I don't like being vulnerable guys.
[18:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: So I think it's because I watch.
[18:42] Portia Pendleton: Drinking and not because of this moment.
[18:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: Not it's not. I know we hate real feelings, just as Liz says. You remember? I know. Oh, maybe someday we'll have merch of little rocks. Yeah. Porsche, do you want to take a break? No. Okay. We'll just maybe cut out.
[19:01] Portia Pendleton: Now this current part that I'm talking about during commercial.
[19:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: Now a word from our sponsors. Listeners, it's really important to learn how to sit with your big feelings. So right now we're going to show you how it's done. Ready? Sit.
[19:21] Portia Pendleton: Okay, that's enough.
[19:25] Dr. Katrina Furey: Sometimes we think we're so funny and I'm just curious if it translates. Yeah, if it's just us.
[19:32] Portia Pendleton: I think it does.
[19:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: Well, I actually don't know because the.
[19:35] Portia Pendleton: Person who thinks it's also funny is my mom. So I think she's a little biased.
[19:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: So anyway, send us a DM. Let us know what you think.
[19:42] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[19:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: Okay. So let's see.
[19:45] Portia Pendleton: We were talking about Jimmy's Arc. So let's kind of dive into Gabby. So we see her she has sexual relations with Jimmy and his safe ****. We see her and Liz's budding relationship. We see her kind of wanting to pursue this goal of professorship after she attends her ex's art show.
[20:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I think honestly, as a black female therapist, that is so important. And again, this is like how do these writers know about this? Right. That she said to Paul, it's so important for more of me to see.
[20:20] Portia Pendleton: Me in this role.
[20:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: And it's so it is true. Yeah. I really, really like that arc. And I love the whole letter of recommendation thing. I've had mentors do that. You write it and I'll sign it and that's always so awkward. Right. So again, even them knowing that, how do they know?
[20:40] Portia Pendleton: Right? So I liked the anecdote of her patient, who is a black woman who.
[20:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: Is like, you just get me.
[20:47] Portia Pendleton: I don't mind the 90 minutes drive. And Gabby's like, what 90 minutes drive?
[20:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: She's like to see a black therapist. And that's so true. And I think that there's a couple of points in these episodes that really speak to the special bond between a therapist and patient when it's a really good match like that, and then when Grace thanks, Jimmy. And he has actually a really nice reply that always makes me tear up. Because every now and then I feel like I don't know about you, but I feel like there's not a ton of thanks or appreciation in our line of work, nor should there be. That's not like why I go to work every day to be told, like, thank you. But when it happens and it's genuine, it always knocks me off. I always feel kind of, like, taken off guard and like, oh, and I.
[21:34] Portia Pendleton: Have to work really hard to and cry not to cry. Again, sometimes you can't hold it back, but you have to be a professional. And then again, being in the role for the patient than anything you say or do. But also sometimes that can be really.
[21:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: Powerful because they can see how much. Yeah. So I thought again, at first, I thought her patient was the new girlfriend of Nico. Oh, yeah. Because they were kind of wearing a.
[22:08] Portia Pendleton: Similar outfit that was like a reddish tone, long jumpsuit.
[22:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, it was like two piece that matches. And she really likes the girlfriend, too. I loved her outburst at Nico's show. And I was just like, you know what, Gabby? Don't be so hard on yourself. You're allowed to have an outburst. It sounds like you've been there and born witness and cleaned up a lot of Nico stuff.
[22:30] Portia Pendleton: And she was right. She was right. She was the muse who loved it.
[22:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: And she was like, Muse on the couch. Where did therapist sit? On couches? And I got a freckle, and I was shocked.
[22:43] Portia Pendleton: So then she has lunch with him, and he's like, we were really good. And then you see her in bed, and I was like, oh, it's going to be getting back together with him. And then it was Jimmy.
[22:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know.
[22:53] Portia Pendleton: And I was like, wow, they did it again.
[22:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: But I thought, like, good for her to not fall back into it, because I could imagine how tempting now he's finally got it together, he's sober, and.
[23:06] Portia Pendleton: Again, he's what you knew he could be.
[23:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know. And again, it's like you really felt her frustration. Like, I put in all the work. Yes. And now you reap the reward. And I think that's where she had her outburst, like, no, you are not the muse. It's me. And I was like, you're allowed to say that. Yeah. And then but then when she's talking about the butt stuff leaving, I was like, well, yeah, I was like, this.
[23:30] Portia Pendleton: Has maybe crossed the line, but funny and sometimes again, therapists are human, as we've seen throughout this whole show, and make mistakes and are silly and sometimes don't know how to handle our emotions.
[23:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know you would think we're experts, but sometimes we're not.
[23:46] Portia Pendleton: No.
[23:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, I loved again, we're like jumping all over the place, but I loved at the end as Jimmy is like, trying to reconnect with Alice and be a parent and he talks to her when she's like, sitting in the dark and having that memory of her mom. That really was touching. In a tear darker moment when she starts talking about forgetting parts of her mom, I just feel like that rings so true. Like anyone who's lost, anyone they care about, I think can resonate with that. It's really beautiful. Finally, his replies are good, where he's like, you were being a normal kid, that's what you're supposed to do. And then sort of introducing a little humor, like, do you want to talk about it? Apparently I'm good at it. I'm going to use that. I'm putting that away in my memory file cabinet to use on my own children at some point. And then when she said no and he said, okay, but when you're ready, I'm here. Perfect. Yeah, that's what you say, guys, to anyone grieving, that's exactly what you say. But then when he goes to Paul and he says, I wrote this down, I have all this training and experience, but I feel so helpless. And Paul says, you should put that on your business card. I love that.
[24:57] Portia Pendleton: Way to reel them in.
[24:59] Dr. Katrina Furey: Way to just yeah, it was so funny. But yeah.
[25:02] Portia Pendleton: The healing that we see take place with the grief, I think is just like so beautiful because again, they're not healed right.
[25:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't think you ever really are, but you've changed.
[25:14] Portia Pendleton: They're getting better at communicating and tolerating thinking about it. We see him kind of remove the wedding band. We see him going through the stuff. We see him talking to her. We see him visiting her grave. We see Alice kind of going there and wearing her things. We just see all these changes start to help. It's really showing that they're moving forward through it instead of avoiding it, instead of holding it in.
[25:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. Again, I feel so much less angry with him and I think this is why. Because he's, like, showing up, doing some of the work himself, and then by doing that, can really be there more for Alice, even if it's in a more, like not super overt in your face way, but just like there he's not like I don't know. I'm like should he have talked to her about taking off his ring? Should given her a heads up or not. But he can tolerate her reaction, which I think is important.
[26:11] Portia Pendleton: I feel like that does come up. It's such a symbol.
[26:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[26:16] Portia Pendleton: And I think I just was thinking, kind of reflecting on the episode, grief is such a different timeline for everyone. So it's like, for him, he's like taking the ring off. Like she's not ready for him to do that. But it's just interesting to think about.
[26:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: It is. It so is. And I thought that again, I feel like maybe in real life, alice might rebel a little more, maybe not, I don't know. But I thought them writing it so that he asked her if she wanted to go to the cemetery. She said no and then later realized it was her mom's birthday and forgot. Starting to forget certain pieces about her. I feel like all of this is so true to what it can feel like to be grieving and like, what a hard thing to go through as a teenager, trying to still be a teenager, but going through this major thing. And I just thought Jimmy really validated how hard that is for her. Really? In a real nice, simple way. Yeah.
[27:16] Portia Pendleton: And he wasn't shame or guilt by missing the birthday, but he did not put it on her at all. And he just said, I did remember, and I just thought that you maybe wanted some space. I think he gave her the out. She did forget, but that's also what happens.
[27:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: Exactly.
[27:34] Portia Pendleton: Forward.
[27:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. And he didn't shame her. And I think that was probably really honest of him. And those are the things that are gosh just so hard, I would imagine, to navigate. Right. These are like the split second decisions you're making when these things are coming up. Right. She probably says no, and he probably has to make a quick decision, like, do I remind her? Do I not? And that's the road he took. But I mean, just to verbalize it, I don't know. It's great. Yeah. I feel a lot better about him as a parent now.
[28:09] Portia Pendleton: What happens, because, you know, there has to be shenanigans in season two. Like, I'm just curious to see what turns it takes.
[28:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know. I mean, I feel like Gabby and Jimmy will be together or trying to be, or maybe they were, then they broke up or like something. I really hope Sean's food truck business takes off. I loved the scene with Liz and her husband as like her Hype man and D man. I just really like him. I really like him. Derek.
[28:41] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[28:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: They're so sweet together.
[28:45] Portia Pendleton: I feel like he's just, like, so kind. And yes, I'm sure he's a spouse, so he can be annoying. And we know he is per Liz, but he's just so sweet and supportive and knows when she needs him. Seems like he listens to her request when she's like, please move over a little bit. You're squishing me.
[29:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. And it was really nice, right. Because she was all nervous about when he retires, he's always going to be around. And now. She's like, naturally found this thing she can do to take up her time. And I wonder how Sean's parents will feel about it. I wonder if we'd ever see that or not.
[29:21] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, that's interesting. So we don't get a lot of Sean in the patient role these past couple of episodes, which I appreciated.
[29:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. Except one of my favorite early, like maybe episode seven or eight when he's got a job now with his dad. That's what he was going to do before he got the investment money from Liz and D man to start this catering business. He was going to do some administrative work, it sounds like, which still okay, good. You're with your dad. But again, I'm like, I wonder how his parents feel about all this. But again, gives Jimmy a check for rent, again at the office in the lunchroom. And Paul walks in and sees this happening. And the line was so funny. He's like, there's no prouder moment for a therapist than when their patient pays the rent. Yes. I was like, I wonder how long it took them to just perfect that line.
[30:20] Portia Pendleton: Because Sean is like, well, just be happy for me, separate from this whole thing, this really bad situation. So, I mean, again, it's a show. And I felt like as the consumer and not wearing my therapist hat, I liked where it's going. I want Sean to be friends with them. I like that he has all these supports, but can we just cut off the therapy? Stay with it. That still shouldn't really be happening, but refer out, stay with the friends. You got this family now.
[30:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: Great. Refer to another therapist. And then I do have to say, though, putting my therapist hat on at the end, I was really glad when as they're like dancing at the wedding and it's so great. Alice looks so beautiful in that dress. Everyone's dance, everyone's happy. And they're like cutting to his patience from the beginning, sort of like being better. And I was like, okay, but he's really not doing great. And then the very end, I was kind of glad they included that. Right. Where spoiler alert. Like, Grace is on a hike with her emotionally abusive at best husband. And earlier in a session, she had said, like, I'm starting to stand up for myself. I'm noticing how abusive he is. And he's really lucky we're not on a cliff somewhere when he's criticizing me because I push him right off. And at first you're like, oh, and Jimmy's kind of like, yeah, push him off. Bash his skull, ease brains or like something silly, you think. But then at the end, they are hiking on a cliff. He's really emotionally abusive to her and she does push him off. And I have to say again, I don't want anyone to die. But I was glad as a therapist they showed like, some of these techniques are not working. Yeah, I don't know what were your thoughts? Yeah.
[32:14] Portia Pendleton: No, I totally agree. I feel like, in a way, him telling her initially that he won't see her unless she breaks up with him has created almost this role where Jimmy is like, God, he's in charge. He tells her what to do versus offers potential solutions or encourages her. What do you think? He's now kind of giving these things, these suggestions almost, that she had to follow, and then she did. So I think that's a seed almost like a little bit planted there that now to me connects to the present because they joked about this. And then again, what are the odds?
[32:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: But they do hike.
[32:58] Portia Pendleton: They do hike. So that's the thing. He's seen them hike, right. Because they had that beautiful moment at the end of that session where she thanks him and then he says, It's my pleasure. And I was like, oh, that's exactly.
[33:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: And then I was glad they didn't just cut to all the patients, like, doing great with this out of the box therapy.
[33:18] Portia Pendleton: Because I'm just now thinking, too, like.
[33:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: What'S that going to mean in season two?
[33:22] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. Does she get arrested? Does she blame him? Does she recall this being said in therapy? What's his liability? What did he write down in that session?
[33:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: What's his risk assessment right in the moment? It doesn't sound like a legitimate threat. I would not have thought that was going to happen until they showed it happening. Even as she's, like, walking up, I really wasn't sure. Is she going to push him or just stand there? But yeah, it's like, what is his liability? Yeah.
[33:53] Portia Pendleton: So I had kind of commented while we were watching it that I guess this is some information for you. Never push someone off a cliff for two reasons, you guys know, one, because it's bad. And the other reason is because they can tell where the body lands is further out than if someone fell or even jumped. They can tell. How? I don't know how. Obviously, it's math and science and like.
[34:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: Forensic, probably you need one of those protractors do the arc and physics and math. Yes.
[34:30] Portia Pendleton: Because, for example, if someone wanted to die by jumping off a cliff, you would probably step off.
[34:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: You might land feet first or something.
[34:40] Portia Pendleton: Not that far away from the cliff. If you were maybe, like, running from something, you would see, like, footsteps pushing, propelling you off dirt in the back, and then versus being pushed, like you're landing further with none of the evidence on top.
[34:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: How do you know this?
[34:56] Portia Pendleton: I learned this in a docuseries. Like some kind of true crime true crime thing.
[35:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: Wow.
[35:04] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[35:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's not because you're looking into pushing anyone off no cliff.
[35:08] Portia Pendleton: Right. Something that crosses my mind.
[35:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's really interesting, though, and I wonder, like, did he survive? We don't know.
[35:18] Portia Pendleton: Cliffhanger.
[35:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: Literally.
[35:20] Portia Pendleton: Literally a cliffhanger.
[35:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: They're so witty.
[35:23] Portia Pendleton: So we see angry man talking to that barista.
[35:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: And they're laughing.
[35:29] Portia Pendleton: Wally, she goes down in the park.
[35:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: And you're like, she's going to go home and sit on her bed.
[35:34] Portia Pendleton: What did she say to that woman?
[35:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: She's like, first time.
[35:39] Portia Pendleton: I love that.
[35:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: We are totally skipping over Harrison Ford.
[35:46] Portia Pendleton: Oh, yeah.
[35:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think that's because at least for me, that was like the most emotional part.
[35:52] Portia Pendleton: So season seven starts with, like, the aftermath of him getting high. So he wakes up on the couch. He starts eating the doritos again.
[36:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: Sean makes everyone pancakes, has a ties.
[36:03] Portia Pendleton: In his he picks up a pancake, pours syrup in it and folds it like a taco.
[36:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I was like, that's clever.
[36:10] Portia Pendleton: That sounds like a great idea.
[36:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: Try that. Or like Taco Bell. Yeah, get on that. Good idea. Yeah. Taco Bell. You want sponsor us? Shout out.
[36:19] Portia Pendleton: And then his daughter comes and they go to the doctor's appointment. She's like, oh, you're vibing with her. It's really sweet. They're having a good time. And then she does this kind of grand gesture, which I think is a really big deal of inviting him to come stay with them, like live with them in their guest house. And I think what's hard is I'm not surprised his response and not like.
[36:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: Because he's obsessed with work, but more.
[36:48] Portia Pendleton: Like just like that would signal that he is done almost. He's going to retire. It means so many more things because I think of course he wants to see her. Of course he wants to be with his grandson, but that means so much more and she so hurt.
[37:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, because she rightfully suffered.
[37:08] Portia Pendleton: It's another rejection. So I really do see both sides.
[37:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[37:13] Portia Pendleton: And I understand kind of where they both land. At the end of that episode, she's really upset her. It leaves and he's like kind of spinning, doesn't know what to do.
[37:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: And you see him, like, trying to call her. She's not answering. The grandson answers. I loved when her husband's on the phone and he's like, you tell her that this is very childish. Yeah. And the husband's like, I'm not going to do that. Hangs out like, good boundary. And then again okay, so this whole time we thought Paul had like, really stringent boundaries, which I think is interesting because I read somewhere his character is based off of the real psychiatrist Stuts. Who? There's that whole Netflix documentary about with Jonah Hill. Have you seen that yet?
[37:51] Portia Pendleton: No, I saw it.
[37:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: I have thoughts, but we'll save that for another time. But it's interesting because I don't know if it's a secret, but like, in the documentary, there's a lot of boundaries. Yeah, that's what I boundaries that aren't typical of a therapist patient relationship. So I thought it was interesting that they wrote Paul to be so boundaried until he gets in a relationship with his neurologist. Yeah. But again, they're like, well, that's kind of cute, though. I don't know it doesn't feel as icky.
[38:22] Portia Pendleton: It almost seems like they have a relationship before she they know. It seems like they know each other, like, for a while and are very comfortable. It doesn't seem like that's his first neurologist.
[38:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: And then oh, maybe.
[38:37] Portia Pendleton: I don't know.
[38:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: Maybe. But then it was so sweet. When he shows up, he's being honored with an award at Las Vegas.
[38:43] Portia Pendleton: We think he's going to Las Vegas. He invites his daughter. She says no, she can't because she.
[38:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: Has her son's play. And then he shows up at the neurologist door trying to whisk her away. She says, yes, it's really cute.
[38:56] Portia Pendleton: Tell everybody that. I thought about it for a week and I was unsure. But she's like, yes, I'll get rid of it.
[39:02] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think there's also just something about seeing older folks finding love. I like that. And I like older folks, like having a really active life. Like, I really fantasize my retirement years in my mind, so it gives me hope. But then he shows up at the pool.
[39:21] Portia Pendleton: You see him walking down. You still think that he's like, right at the conference, going to find a seat to accept his award. And it wasn't until and then you see the daughter. And I was like, did they surprise him?
[39:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: That's what I thought too. He did. I was like I started bawling. I was, like, watching. I know. It was just like, he's showing up for his daughter. Jimmy's showing up for his daughter. We're all showing up for the daughters. Like, finally justice for the daughters. It was just really sweet. I don't know. And then to start wrapping up. Also, like, shout out to the fun dip reference.
[40:03] Portia Pendleton: Seems like Paul's a little, like, addicted.
[40:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: But it's so true. He's like, this is sugar, and then I can eat the stick. And you're like, well, that is innovative, isn't it?
[40:16] Portia Pendleton: It depends on the flavor. I have had fun before. I like, I think maybe like the.
[40:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: Blue raspberry or, like the cherry. Which one of them? But it's literally just sugar powder.
[40:26] Portia Pendleton: And then the stick is sugar.
[40:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: Sugar. Yeah. Who thought of it? I would love I wonder if I could Wikipedia this later. Legit. Who had this idea and pitched it to investors? Like, how'd you pitch this idea? You just go around and ask kids, like, you want sugar? They're like, yes. And it's like in solid form and granular form. I don't know. So cute. Yeah.
[40:48] Portia Pendleton: So we see Paul really come around. He's being a supportive dad. He's also showing up to Gabby. He comes to her internship in her interview and is really just great. I loved Liz kind of like directly calling him out. That seems like it kind of opened his eyes to be like, you're right. He owns that. He has a problem with women he cares about. Gabby was like, I'm one of them.
[41:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know when he finally compliments her and I loved he slammed that water bottle down on the desk, and you see him, like, using it more and more. It was just so cute. I don't know. It's really sweet. I loved that.
[41:26] Portia Pendleton: I loved that. And then the wedding is the last episode. We already talked about it, but Jimmy's speech is lovely. We see Brian's dad coming through and being supportive to him. I really liked the speech he gave. I liked that he incorporated all the friends and family.
[41:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: There this really sweet ending. It's like everyone's in a good spot. And then Grace pushes her abusive husband. So we'll we'll see. Yeah. What comes next? The last thing I wanted to make sure we talked about was I loved also the depiction of academia with Paul and Gabby, how Paul was like, Why do you want to be a professor? And he was like, Academia is one of the five circles of hell, or something. And he said, the five circles are babies, musical magic, kale, and academia. And I was curious what your five circles would be.
[42:18] Portia Pendleton: Oh, my gosh, that's a great question.
[42:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: Put you on the spot. Okay. What are the five circles of hell? It's hard.
[42:30] Portia Pendleton: Okay. One of them would be forced to sit and watch old, sad Disney movies.
[42:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: So, like, bambi.
[42:37] Portia Pendleton: Dumbo. Like hell.
[42:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: Okay, so I have to keep that in mind.
[42:41] Portia Pendleton: I don't like those.
[42:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: Okay.
[42:42] Portia Pendleton: They're very sad. I think moving to Antarctica, like, a really frigid place, like North Russia is hell. I don't like being cold, okay? I don't mind, like, snow.
[42:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: Wow.
[42:56] Portia Pendleton: It's a beautiful Christmas. I'm skiing, but besides that, hate it.
[43:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't know why.
[43:01] Portia Pendleton: I live in the Northeast, but that's fine.
[43:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: What else? Cheese.
[43:08] Portia Pendleton: Well, I love cheese, but you know what? My GI system doesn't.
[43:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: Well, maybe that's how that tension between your heart and your stomach. Yeah. Tarn.
[43:19] Portia Pendleton: Oh, this is such a good question.
[43:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: Interacting with insurance companies, hell and all.
[43:25] Portia Pendleton: The like, anything to do with billing with insurance, hell. And then I'm trying to think of.
[43:31] Dr. Katrina Furey: Just, like, a slam dunk one, like a Zenpic.
[43:35] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I think that's just bad.
[43:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: Maybe not hell. Maybe that's a little hard.
[43:39] Portia Pendleton: I mean, I think all those people like big Pharma.
[43:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: Big Pharma. What else?
[43:45] Portia Pendleton: Big Pharma. Sponsor us.
[43:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: Just kidding. We don't want your dirty we don't want your dirty money.
[43:51] Portia Pendleton: I can't think of another one. But here's a fun fact. If you go to our Instagram page at Analyze Scripts, we will circle back and create a video each of our five circles of Hell.
[44:02] Dr. Katrina Furey: OOH, I like that idea that way.
[44:04] Portia Pendleton: Check us out and comment yours.
[44:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. Does it include kale? I didn't think babies and musicals needed to be on it. Like, I like babies, I like musicals. Kale's. Okay, sometimes.
[44:16] Portia Pendleton: But for Paul, it was funny.
[44:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: And then he went to his grandson's.
[44:21] Portia Pendleton: Musical of the elephant or mouse or whatever.
[44:25] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. All right, Portia, any final thoughts? No, just the end of thinking.
[44:30] Portia Pendleton: I love the show. I feel like I didn't I really got Apple Plus to watch it, and then I was like, oh, I'm probably going to cancel it now. I love this show.
[44:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: I'm so excited for season two.
[44:40] Portia Pendleton: I'm also like discovering little other cool.
[44:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: Shows, like Ted Lasso is a big hit. I know. I never watched it.
[44:45] Portia Pendleton: Ted Blaster. And then I'm watching Eugene Levy.
[44:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: He's like the traveling or something, right?
[44:50] Portia Pendleton: But he's the what traveler. He doesn't really want to. Oh, it's so good. I watched a couple of those episodes. He's good.
[44:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: So shout out Apple Plus. Shout out if you want to sponsor us. We've had 500 downloads. So anyway. All right, guys. Well, thank you for listening once again, please don't forget to rate, review and subscribe. Follow us at Analyze scripts on Instagram. Send us a DM, send us an email. Analyze Scriptspodcast@gmail.com. We have not yet gotten a listener email, so will you be the first? We'll let you know next time. Okay, bye.
[45:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: This podcast and its contents are a copyright of Analyzed Scripts.
[45:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: All rights reserved.
[45:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited. Unless you want to share it with your friends and rate, review and subscribe, that's fine. All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings, or products is intended.
[45:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: Or should be inferred.
[45:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are thrilled to recap the end of the fourth season of "You." We touch on topics ranging from ketamine to ideas of reference and - of course! - erotomanic delusions. But mostly we spend time analyzing all of the twists and turns. Do YOU think Joe Goldberg is a psychopath? Listen to hear our take and if it's changed over four seasons. This episode is brought to you by our first sponsor, Therapeutic Bodywork, out of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Check them out at www.therapeutic-bodywork.com if you need a "calm" box after listening to this episode! We hope you enjoy!
[00:17] Portia Pendleton: So today we have a sponsor for our kind of wrap up of season four of you.
[00:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: And guys, this isn't a fake sponsor or like our previous fake sponsor. For real? Yeah.
[00:28] Portia Pendleton: So we're really, really excited, really grateful yes. To kind of share with you therapeutic body work. They are kind of a do it all wellness center in the Cape in Massachusetts. They do ship nationally. So I am going to kind of talk about briefly just what we received from them, which is the calm box.
[00:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: Perfect for winding down after this episode or finishing season four of you or just like a normal Wednesday.
[01:00] Portia Pendleton: So we received four products in it. They're all kind of to promote calming, relaxing. So one of the first products that I was really excited to get is their magnesium mineral magic cream. So this is something that I have tried before. You basically rub this cream on your wrists or the bottoms of your feet before bed. And the intention is that it's supposed to kind of help you have a restful sleep and also to reduce some of that anticipatory anxiety that you get pre bedtime if you just watched something.
[01:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: Stressful looping in your mind.
[01:39] Portia Pendleton: Yes, exactly. So we also received this let me just get it out here. The Sleep Easy Oil, which is again, to promote deep restful sleep. You can put it on different parts of your body. The directions are on it. It's very clear. Head temple, solar plexus, soles of feet for a night of sound sleep. Putting it on 20 minutes before I have not tried this. I'm really looking forward.
[02:02] Dr. Katrina Furey: I can't wait. And those two products pair really nicely with the other things that they were kind enough to send us. A lavender eye pillow, which I might just wear for our whole next episode as we talk about you. But this is the kind of thing where you can either heat it up or keep it cold and you just place it on your eyes and inhale the lavender. I cannot wait for this. I love lavender. And then the last thing they gave us was this awesome tea called Zen AF. Quit freaking out already. Herbal tea to calm stress and anxiety. Has no caffeine, which is great. Has a lot of natural ingredients that have been shown to help soothe anxiety, provide some calm and relaxation. As always, whenever using over the counter supplements, please check in with your provider if you are taking any prescribed medication to make sure there's no drug drug interactions. But overall, I can't wait to try all of these things.
[02:54] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I'm super excited.
[02:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I'm also just like, how did.
[02:57] Portia Pendleton: You know I needed something calming?
[02:59] Dr. Katrina Furey: Well, over therapist. Thank you.
[03:02] Portia Pendleton: Exactly. So they have other boxes that are for sale. Again, they ship nationally so you can get a detox box. Immunity. Calm love. Yeah, that one looks cool and very fitting for you. They are located on cape Cod, Massachusetts, where they do provide in person services.
[03:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like reflexology, acupuncture, massage, body work, really nice things like that. And then I believe they also ship nationwide at no charge.
[03:27] Portia Pendleton: Yes, they ship some nationwide at no extra charge. And you can find all of these boxes for sale at their website, which is therapeutic.com. Again, that's therapeutic.com.
[03:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. So check them out. And thank you so much to Therapeuticbodywork for being our first sponsor. I feel like we're in the big league now. Yeah.
[03:51] Portia Pendleton: So grateful.
[03:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: So grateful. Super cool. All right, I hope you enjoyed this episode. Hi, welcome back to another episode of Analyze Scripts. I'm Dr. Katrina Fury, and I am here with my friend and colleague Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker. We are thrilled you're joining us today to dissect the second half of season four of you. There's so much to talk about. So before we dive in, Portia, I just wanted to give you some updates because I don't know if you can believe this. Not only have we gotten our first sponsor, but we've also gone international. Okay, so someone in New Zealand and someone in Canada is listening. Hi, there. Hey, what's up? What time is it there? That's so cool. I have no idea who you are, but thank you. Please feel free to spread widely and send us a DM or an email or something. Introducing yourself. That's so cool. And then I had a couple of thoughts in between the last time we recorded for part One, as we were waiting for part two to be released. The first is, do you know about Anna Delvey? Yes, of course. Right. Doesn't she belong at Sundry House? Oh, yeah. Isn't that, like, what she was trying to do? Right.
[05:12] Portia Pendleton: I feel like she belongs 100%.
[05:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, not just as, like, a scam artist, but that's her kind of place. And then my other thought was, and I can't take full credit for this, my husband kind of had this thought, too. He's been really into watching Yellowstone, which I haven't gotten into yet. Have you? I haven't.
[05:29] Portia Pendleton: I've heard great things.
[05:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, it looks really intense. It would probably be a good thing for us to discuss at some point. But anyway, why doesn't Joe find himself in a Yellowstone situation? He always ends up with this new crew. That's the same, right? Like these really wealthy, egotistical narcissistic people. But what if in season five, he's, like, in Yellowstone or something, right? Like in the Wild West with cowboys.
[05:55] Portia Pendleton: Like, I wonder how he'd do that's a good thought. Because it's like he's attracting a type of person or purposely, intentionally bringing them into his circle. I don't know. I don't think he would ever maybe even put himself in that position.
[06:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. I don't think he'd go to Montana to him.
[06:14] Portia Pendleton: Or more unsafe. I know that maybe doesn't make sense, but it's like he doesn't know if he would understand them enough or he wouldn't feel like he could manipulate them or I don't know.
[06:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think you're totally right. It's so funny. He's like this interesting character where on the one hand, he really looks down on the very people he's surrounding himself with almost as a way to make himself feel better. But anyway, that's not where we find joe.
[06:39] Portia Pendleton: No, we don't. We find him kind of back after almost being killed at the estate in the country. So we kind of see him back with all these people. We're like, what's going to happen? Is he going to get in trouble? What's going on with reese? Are him and reese friends? Is reese going to kill him? It's just like, what's going on?
[07:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I do have to say, after we recorded our first episode, without having watched the second part, I was, like, a little down with the first half, right? Because I was like, oh, where's marianne? Where's the cage? Where's the plot? I'm used to what is going on? And this yeah, we both said that. Right? And then this, I was like, all right, you redeemed yourself. Like, very good. A plus. Like this all track. And I was like, whoa, I didn't see a lot of these coming at all. I feel like I was just getting.
[07:31] Portia Pendleton: Like, slapped in the face left and right.
[07:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, whoa, whoa.
[07:35] Portia Pendleton: So we kind of see right away, marianne get on the train again.
[07:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: As soon as we did, I was like, okay, good. We are going to see what happened to mary.
[07:44] Portia Pendleton: They didn't just, like, write her off exactly. But then he says something that's, like, he's really trying to heal his heart after letting her go, and I was like, okay, we talked about this last episode. This does not fit the profile of a psychopath. Does not fit his profile of letting things go.
[07:59] Dr. Katrina Furey: And you had the ingenious idea, and it's like you were on the money, where you're like, something had to have happened to Mary Anne for him to move on.
[08:06] Portia Pendleton: And lo and behold, plot twist of the century. Yeah. So we see kind of joe watching reese. He's at, like, a press conference of his. He's just listening.
[08:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: And at this point, we think that reese is the eat the rich killer and that he's trying to frame joe to sort of make himself look good for catching the real killer as he's trying to become mayor. And remember, we left last time being like, how did reese figure all this stuff out about joe?
[08:40] Portia Pendleton: Right?
[08:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: Turns out he did it. Oh, my god. That was the plot twist of the century for me.
[08:46] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. So reese, it seems like he wants a friend, and then it seems like he's kind of pressuring joe to kill because all these other people are now, like, a liability.
[08:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[08:56] Portia Pendleton: Like, all these rich people at the sundry house, they know too much. Reese is like, maybe risky sides, and he needs them to die a mayor and great, clean guy.
[09:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. And Reese kept basically being like, okay, Joe, this is the last time I need you to do this. Plant Simon's ear on someone. Just anyone. I don't care who it is, but plant it on someone, and I promise that's it. And then you'll be left let out scot free. I can become mayor all as well in the world. And he kept saying, like, we're doing this to do good. We're killing to do good, which I feel like just spoke to Joe's inner views of himself. Yeah, it was fascinating.
[09:41] Portia Pendleton: So he kind of decides to frame Connie at first, and he meets with him, and then Connie appeals right to this ego of Joe that Connie is like, you know, you make me want to change. I'm going to go to rehab. Really just seeing everything, like, you've made me into this better person. And then Joe is, of course, his narcissistic traits being like, oh, I'm helping him so much, and I've impacted his life, so he chooses not to. Connie and again, reminded me of when.
[10:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: We were talking about PTSD back in our shrinking episodes. I think it was episode nine, like the fight, flight freeze or fawn response. This is an example. Connie's not doing it on purpose. Right. He doesn't know Joe's trying to frame him. But of like, that fawn response, which we've seen in the show before, mostly when people are locked in cages and really afraid they're going to die. So, yeah, here it is again.
[10:35] Portia Pendleton: And it seems like that one does really work on Joe. If he feels like it's genuine, it is. Connie wants to make a change. So Reese wants Joe to kill Kate's father or find out what he has on him.
[10:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: That part got a little confusing to me, but it sounds like I was like, oh, is Tom Lockwood running for mayor too? Is that his opponent, or does he have something on him?
[11:02] Portia Pendleton: Or is Reese's, one of his policies, going to damage something of Lockwood's business who's super powerful?
[11:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. So somehow it became like that was Joe's final act of service to Reese, was going to be to kill Tom Lockwood.
[11:19] Portia Pendleton: So he brings him into his office at school, and remember, there's the tarp down on the floor.
[11:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
[11:24] Portia Pendleton: And I'm just like, this is so obvious, especially, I feel like, in Lockwood's world. And he knows. He calls him Joe, first of all, at that lunch when he takes the bathroom, he knows who Joe is, I believe, and knows what he's capable of. And so he's like, oh, why is there a tarp on the floor? And she's like, oh, you know, there's 3 miles.
[11:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: He's like, okay. You could give the sense also like, hey, what's up, Greg Canier? Nice to see you.
[11:51] Portia Pendleton: He did a really good job in.
[11:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: This role, but you got the sense, like, Joe felt uncomfortable around him because what he was doing was predictable to Tom Lockwood. Tom Lockwood was like, a step ahead almost every step of the way.
[12:06] Portia Pendleton: And Joe is not used to that.
[12:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: He's not used to that, and it really throws him off his game. And then I don't know when we start talking about the major twist, but at some point I started wondering, is this happening at all? Like, what parts of this actually happened? What parts of it are delusion that we're kind of seeing play out? Right.
[12:26] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. That's interesting to kind of think, like, hindsight wise.
[12:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
[12:29] Portia Pendleton: Because Lockwood convinces, at that moment, Joe to kill Reese.
[12:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: Reese. Right. And before we get into that, we have to talk about the blonde lady. Yes. Remember in our last episode, I was like, we were so blonde lady. Like, why do they keep showing her? Is it Reese's? Mom.
[12:49] Portia Pendleton: What does she have to do? Is it someone from Joe's past?
[12:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: My God, Porsche. Can I tell you how titillated I was when that became a whole storyline?
[12:58] Portia Pendleton: I was like, oh, my God. And it was like a Rotomania everywhere. It was all over the headlines. And I was like, from you to you to boop.
[13:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my God. I was like, this is the you I love.
[13:09] Portia Pendleton: Finally, it's back.
[13:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: So basically, it turned out don who's like this server or waitress as Sundry.
[13:16] Portia Pendleton: Gets hired for that event.
[13:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: For that event. She's been seen in the earlier episodes as, like, a paparazzi photographer. She was in the very first episode following Joe at the art show in.
[13:29] Portia Pendleton: London, which didn't really make sense.
[13:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: That didn't make me quite on there.
[13:32] Portia Pendleton: Because he had not met at that crew. Yeah, that crew.
[13:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[13:37] Portia Pendleton: I don't know. Maybe we're missing something.
[13:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: Maybe.
[13:39] Portia Pendleton: I know.
[13:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: I feel like I want to rewatch it now, like, with a fine tooth comb. Kind of like, I'm rewatching Vanderpump rule since the scandal broke. But anyway, so finally it turns out she's like, oh, Lady Phoebe, security is here. Lady Phoebe is, like, in the throes of an acute stress reaction, maybe PTSD, which we'll get into coupled with drug use. Exactly.
[14:03] Portia Pendleton: Everything's elevated. Paranoia and maybe some delusions because of the drug use interacting with her stress reaction.
[14:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: Exactly. She's probably not sleeping. She looks, like, really troubled and disheveled, and she ends up later on having it sounds like a psychotic break with everything going on. She's making really risky choices, like getting married so quickly, and Kate's really worried about her and tries to get her into treatment, which I thought was, like, a really good plotline. And eventually she does get into treatment, and we see her at the end sort of in a better place, a better frame of mind, but we don't see that yet.
[14:39] Portia Pendleton: So tell me when you me started to feel like dawn was off. So I got a kind of a weird vibe when she wouldn't let Nadia take a picture with Phoebe. And she was like, no, we have to go into the I was just like, something's up, something's up. And I didn't know then that Don was like, the stalker Phoebe, but I thought, Don is something she involved, something she's either going to tell Phoebe all about Joe and then he's going to kill Phoebe. I was like, something's off, something's off. This is weird. What's going to happen?
[15:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
[15:12] Portia Pendleton: How were you following those couple?
[15:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: I was kind of the same way. Like, seeing that she was there working, I was like, oh, she is involved. I'm so excited. We're going to see what her role is. I didn't expect what happened. I agreed, like, when she wouldn't let Nadia take a picture, when she was ushering Phoebe to, quote unquote, safety, but all by herself, that seemed off to me. And then when they got to the hotel room and she started talking to her, I was like, oh, my God.
[15:38] Portia Pendleton: Wheels spinning and being like, so scared. Why are we just in here? Even after the lock click, I feel like Phoebe was still kind of like, okay, I'm safe. And then all of a sudden, Don started talking, and Phoebe was like, what?
[15:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: And she started talking in such a delusional way. And I thought this was a great depiction of a psychotic symptom called ideas of Reference, where she references the pictures that Phoebe has posted on Instagram, remember? And she's like, I knew you were posting that for me and saying that I was your sunshine. And that is a classic symptom of psychosis where people who are in a delusional frame of mind whether it's a one time psychotic break or schizophrenia they can have these ideas of reference where they interpret things in their reality as some sort of special message being sent to them by whoever aliens, God, the person of their erotic obsession. I thought that was actually, like, a really good depiction of that. I got so scared when she took out the knife and was like, where's your tattoo?
[16:45] Portia Pendleton: I know.
[16:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: Getting really scared for her.
[16:48] Portia Pendleton: And then Phoebe, which I just thought was kick ***, like, went into this mode where she was like, I'm going to say or do whatever again to figure out how I can get out of here. I'm going to lean into this. I'm going to make all of her dreams come true and hopefully at some point be around people and help.
[17:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Exactly.
[17:10] Portia Pendleton: And we saw that then play out with Joe, like, when he kind of enters the room. Phoebe's like, yeah, at first like, oh, yeah, this is my friend dawn, and Dawn's saying this, and then Joe's getting obviously he heard too, because somehow so.
[17:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, Nadia ended up there because she's dating that guy who has a rich, fancy dad or something, so he could get her in there. And then she was so excited to meet Lady Phoebe. And then Nadia saw joe there. And so that's how they're all there. And they kind of figure out Nadia.
[17:38] Portia Pendleton: Is like, she just starts putting all these pieces together. Joe being in all these circles and pieces. That's not the moment that she thinks Joe is bad.
[17:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[17:48] Portia Pendleton: But it's just like, that's interesting that you're here.
[17:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, exactly. Her wheels kind of start turning too. But then they all work together to find Lady Phoebe. Joe comes in as, again, like, the.
[17:59] Portia Pendleton: Hero of the day.
[18:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: But I loved this sequence of scenes, again, where Joe's met his match. Right?
[18:05] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[18:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: We're like, he someone with erotomanic delusions is talking to Don. A person with erotic delusions. Right. And so I just love when they.
[18:15] Portia Pendleton: Depict and Joe has no awareness of his own, and he's like he's probably thinking that Don is nuts. How could you ever think that? And it's like, you do this.
[18:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: I do this literally. So fascinating to me why I love this show is they do such a good job of like, he can hit the nail on the head but has no insight into himself but, like, enough where he can talk to her in the way, like she needs and somehow eventually disarms her and she gets arrested.
[18:42] Portia Pendleton: And taken away the ear with her.
[18:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: Exactly. So now she's framed as the Eat the Rich killer. And again, it's like, what a level of sociopathy and psychopathy right. To be, like, trying to save your friend and thinking about your own motive here in such, like, a heightened emotional state.
[19:03] Portia Pendleton: Oh, my God. This is kind of the storyline that then takes off with Lady Phoebe and her beau. I always get Adam.
[19:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: He's not spaker. Pratt.
[19:14] Portia Pendleton: Adam Pratt.
[19:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: So Adam Pratt is his fake name? Yeah.
[19:18] Portia Pendleton: The act of character.
[19:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: Lucas Cage. Okay.
[19:21] Portia Pendleton: So Adam comes in and is like, oh, of course, Joe, you're saving the day again. And immediately kind of is then trying to get Phoebe. We hear all this backstory of him not having money, and then he takes that bet with that friend about the ring and his car collection. And to me, Adam, until that, just seemed kind of like a dumb rich guy who was just, like, making poorly have any deaths to him.
[19:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right? Didn't have a lot of death, but Brad, wow.
[19:47] Portia Pendleton: I was like, I hate you. You're a jerk. You're conniving, you are hurtful and just as bad.
[19:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: You're not killing people, but you're basically, like, killing her.
[19:57] Portia Pendleton: I really was so mad at him, and then he kept coming in between her and Kate. So he kept trying to talk to her about not going through with the wedding, at least having a prena, I.
[20:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: Mean, all of these days.
[20:09] Portia Pendleton: And he kept appearing and being like, oh, Kate, how come you keep every time you see Phoebe, she's upset. Like, he's manipulating and gaslighting.
[20:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: Just like Joe would do, like, in early seasons, right? Like Peach and Beck again, they try to distance themselves. Like, she tried to break up with Adam over and over and was like, I don't want to be with you, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then he just gets her when she's vulnerable and keeps weaseling his way.
[20:33] Portia Pendleton: In and then is doing things like the artist.
[20:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: What?
[20:36] Portia Pendleton: Like he's drugging her? He's, like, making drugs available. He is.
[20:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[20:41] Portia Pendleton: He's making her do all these things, not allowing her to get psychiatric help.
[20:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: He's just doing whatever he can. Like rushing the wedding to get married to her and have access to her money.
[20:52] Portia Pendleton: Starts, like knowing that, but then I think she's such an kind of, like, walk back out of it. And I'm just like, phoebe, you are so powerful. You're the most powerful person here.
[21:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: Poor thing. But she is, like, so traumatized after everything that happened.
[21:05] Portia Pendleton: Of course she is paranoid.
[21:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right? And then turns out she actually does have a stalker. Not just Joe or maybe Reese or whoever. Yeah, she actually does have this other stalker. So she had all the trauma at the Castle place, all the trauma of being stalked and feeling really uneasy, and then the trauma of the whole thing that happened with Don, her stalker. And she's just, like, distraught. She's abusing drugs and alcohol, which she was doing beforehand anyway, but now that's, like, really escalating. And he just, like, weasels his way in and is doing anything he can to get her to marry him, to take her money, basically. It's awful. Yeah. I was like, would the marriage even be valid?
[21:46] Portia Pendleton: I think if she then a week later was like, what the heck? Or like she was mad because then he spent all her money on all of the other sundry houses. I think that she could get it.
[21:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: Annulled, but then she might have lost her money by then. It's so risky. I think she sort of started to realize it when her parents weren't coming.
[22:04] Portia Pendleton: I know.
[22:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I was like and Kate was.
[22:06] Portia Pendleton: Like, reminding her of, like, this is not the wedding that you've dreamed of your whole life.
[22:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: What are you doing?
[22:10] Portia Pendleton: And she got very upset with Kate, got very defensive. Was probably internally, like, having a really internal with herself.
[22:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. And Kate kept referring to her as being, like, in a manic state. And I think that's, like, a pretty good depiction. I think it's induced by all the substances in the stress. I'm not so sure this is indicative she has a bipolar disorder. But she was probably not sleeping, probably not eating on all sorts of substances, behaving very irrationally, impulsively. Her speech was off, and her thought process was a little disjointed.
[22:48] Portia Pendleton: Her pupils were really and obviously substances, but she just looked like she was off. Right.
[22:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: She was off. Right. So I thought it actually did make a lot of sense when she finally was found wandering. It was so sad when Kate said people took pictures of her and all these things and not helping her. Yeah, just like and I think that unfortunately does happen.
[23:11] Portia Pendleton: We've seen that with celebrities, especially female celebrities, time and time and time and time again.
[23:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know, it's really sad, but then in the end, I was glad that she got help and kind of, like, escaped that world.
[23:22] Portia Pendleton: That was, I think, the only for me, positive thing to come out of this episode season. Yeah, I just wanted to talk about Adam Pratt's demise.
[23:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes, I agree.
[23:36] Portia Pendleton: So he is a purveyor of prostitution, and he has, like, a dominatrix kind of coming in to get his needs met, and then it goes really wrong.
[23:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, it does go really wrong. But also, again, such witty writing when as they're, like, tying him to the bedpost, he's like, I'm so relieved my wife is finally getting the help she needs. They've been married for 12 hours, and he's like, I'm so relieved, and, oh, you're making this really tight burp. And then she's like, can we bring in the boys? And he's like.
[24:12] Portia Pendleton: And then he says the safe word over and over again. I can't remember what it was.
[24:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: What was it? It was like butterfly something really silly.
[24:18] Portia Pendleton: And then don't stop. And then we learned that that's all because Kate told her father that she was really worried about Phoebe and so on and so forth. And then Lockwood took care of it for her, and Kate's very upset.
[24:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: That was so manipulative of her dad to be like, well, you know what was going to happen if you talk about it in front of me, it's like, no.
[24:37] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. So you can't say anything about anyone.
[24:40] Dr. Katrina Furey: Apparently going to die.
[24:42] Portia Pendleton: I got an A minus, not an A on this essay. Does that mean that my professor is going to get killed?
[24:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: Potentially.
[24:49] Portia Pendleton: Right.
[24:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I was kind of confused about why did her dad come into the picture here?
[24:54] Portia Pendleton: Well, we find out. But that he was kind of pursuing her this whole time, or like, she was never free. Right. So he had made all of these internships happen.
[25:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: So kind of like he was stalking her. Oh, my gosh. This show gets so meta by, like, all the layers of he had that.
[25:09] Portia Pendleton: File on her, which she talks about.
[25:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: At the end in the last season.
[25:12] Portia Pendleton: With Joe, where my father knew the person I gave a blow job to, and then my menstrual cycle and all these things. And then when Joe does kill Lockwood, Lockwood's like, you're no better than me, so you're like taking care of her.
[25:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: By doing these things in the same way he was.
[25:31] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. Also, I think Blockwood was trying to not die, but that was just, like a really interesting storyline. But anyway, getting Adam, he was just I was, like, kind of laughing. What do I know?
[25:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: I didn't know he was going to die. I thought maybe torture him a little bit or something. Yeah. Or make him sign an annulment paper. I did not expect him to die.
[25:54] Portia Pendleton: I was surprised that it was death.
[25:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: But at that point it was like, okay, this is when everyone dies.
[25:59] Portia Pendleton: You die.
[25:59] Dr. Katrina Furey: Everyone. It's like oprah, like giving out cars. It's like, you die, you die, you die. You know, like at this point in the season, that's how it goes. Twist.
[26:05] Portia Pendleton: Twist. Yeah.
[26:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my God. Oh my God. I think that brings us to the ultimate twist of all.
[26:17] Portia Pendleton: Oh, my God.
[26:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: My God. So basically, right, we think that Reese is like in on Joe basically manipulating and using Joe's history to his advantage to get Joe to kill these people. So Reese looks good to be mayor. Right. That's what we thought was happening.
[26:32] Portia Pendleton: And then Lockwood comes in and.
[26:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: That he can kill Reese.
[26:37] Portia Pendleton: And that then Lockwood will take care of Joe and give him his identity back.
[26:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: All he's got to do is kill Reese. And then Joe's like, okay. And he was trying to figure out, what does he have on you, Reese? What's going on? And then finally he's going to take Lockwood up on that offer. Right.
[26:52] Portia Pendleton: He goes to Reese's it sounds like his ex wife's country home.
[26:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: And where he sees argument because there was like bad press coming out about his book being fake and all these things, which we kind of predicted, right? Yeah. Joe witnesses the argument and then holy ****, I'm going to let you talk.
[27:12] Portia Pendleton: Because I can't so we see him go up to the door, knock on the door, and Reese again, this seems like I'm not surprised. We see Reese not know him. And I was like, okay, like Reese is just pretending to not know Joe. And then Reese then Joe barges in. And I'm like, okay, it's going to go down. It's going to go down.
[27:30] Dr. Katrina Furey: Still.
[27:30] Portia Pendleton: Nothing's really crossing my mind at that point.
[27:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: Me either.
[27:34] Portia Pendleton: Yeah. And then we see Reese tied up and nude.
[27:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: Basically. I wasn't upset.
[27:41] Portia Pendleton: A little like loincloth.
[27:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think he's like beautiful, man. That's fine with me.
[27:47] Portia Pendleton: And Reese is still which I'm like now denying everything. This is weird. Is there a camera here? Does Reese know that someone else is home? So again, he's like playing this role. And then we see Reese walking in the two walking.
[28:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: And then my first thought was like, oh, God. Not an evil twin story. I was 100% like, I was like, come on, guys. Come on.
[28:13] Portia Pendleton: Really?
[28:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: You're going to go with like that old trope?
[28:18] Portia Pendleton: It was not a twin.
[28:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: Not an evil twin.
[28:21] Portia Pendleton: It was a projection.
[28:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know. Okay, so it's a projection of Joe's bad side, like the good and evil.
[28:30] Portia Pendleton: You're like watching it and even their clothing, right?
[28:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
[28:34] Portia Pendleton: Is in this black suit, real suave.
[28:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: Charming, like all the everybody. Yeah. He's like really in tune with his sexual urges and who. Cares about other people and just, like, do it, and then, like, real Reese, like, naked views dead. And then you're like, Holy ****. Reese hasn't been real this whole yeah, I said so.
[29:00] Portia Pendleton: I was watching this in my living room. My husband didn't watch it because I had to get through it too fast, and he kept hearing me gasp.
[29:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.
[29:08] Portia Pendleton: So from this point on, I think I gasped, like, every ten minutes. I was like, what?
[29:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I was like, the show is crazy. I know. All the things we were anticipating, I was not anticipating that, and I loved it. Did you ever see the series Bates Motel from a couple of years back?
[29:26] Portia Pendleton: I haven't.
[29:27] Dr. Katrina Furey: It is so good, and it's kind of similar.
[29:29] Portia Pendleton: Okay.
[29:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: But I just loved this on your screen projection like depiction of his projection I thought was so good.
[29:40] Portia Pendleton: And it's like he was learning about it while we were you know what I mean? All of this coming out and all of this confusion and all this uncertainty and this shock, it's like we were feeling the same thing that Joe was.
[29:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know. And it's like, since when did we identify with Joe feelings? That feels a little icky, but, oh, my God, it was so good. And when they would, like, roll back the footage, so to speak, when he's.
[30:05] Portia Pendleton: Like, oh, no, I can check the.
[30:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: Camera because you came over. And then he checks it, and he's.
[30:09] Portia Pendleton: Like, talking to him.
[30:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know. I thought it was so good. Portia and also, I think, really in line with the way he'd be unraveling, like, at this point in time. Remember last time we recapped the first part? I was like, he's too it didn't make sense.
[30:26] Portia Pendleton: Marianne didn't make sense. His his healing himself and moving on.
[30:31] Dr. Katrina Furey: And the fact that he had more empathy. It wasn't tracking. Remember we kept saying, like, the wheels are kind of falling off, guys, the writing is not as good. And now I'm like, Holy ****, it's so good.
[30:42] Portia Pendleton: I was like, you set us up, writers.
[30:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my God.
[30:45] Portia Pendleton: Applause. Like, round of applause.
[30:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: I would give you an award if I had one. It's so good.
[30:51] Portia Pendleton: Then you're thinking back, right, of the whole first half. And then I loved how they took reese took Joe. Joe took Joe, but Reese took Joe through all of the times that he thought he was there, and he was like, but did I ever did you? Anyone else? Right?
[31:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: And of course, I wanted to go back and rewatch it myself to see and I probably will at some point when I have a little more time. Oh, my God, it was so good.
[31:17] Portia Pendleton: It was so good. Yeah.
[31:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: So good. Angeles.
[31:20] Portia Pendleton: And that, to me, was like, okay, I was 100% right, because obviously, I like being right. Who does this about Marianne? So it's like, Marianne, he did not let go.
[31:31] Dr. Katrina Furey: And that was the thing, right? That's what it was. Where? He kept asking, where's Marianne? Where's Marianne? And real Reese was like, I don't know, Marianne. And he's like, Where is she? Where is she? And he loses it to the point of choking him and killing him. And that tracks, right. With his, erotomatic, delusions and everything and just sort of losing your cool and now you really don't know where she is. Right. And then we get into that whole storyline, which was so fascinating.
[31:56] Portia Pendleton: And Reese won't tell Joe, right? Because he's like, no, you know, you have to figure it out. You have to figure out so I know. Jumping a little bit, but the other moment for me, that was like, was when Joe is in front of the cage with Marianne and he says, I'm not Joe.
[32:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, I know. Because he was like, Reese. Yes, but also you see it in his eyes. Like, his eyes are dead. There's nothing there. I do have to say, when we finally saw the cage again and Mary Ann in it, like, again, I don't want to be putting people in cages. I don't want any part of that. But as a consumer of this type of entertainment, I was thrilled to see it back.
[32:40] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I'm glad we didn't like that.
[32:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: I was like, Where's the cage?
[32:44] Portia Pendleton: We said, that all part one time.
[32:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: And again, it made me wonder, like, you asked Portia, like, how do you get it there? Can you ship it? Does he have to buy it from someone? How is he putting it together? What is going on?
[32:56] Portia Pendleton: And so Reese, right, was like, from now on, we're going to be referring to Joe's alter ego, Reese.
[33:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. Okay.
[33:04] Portia Pendleton: So Reese doesn't care, like you said, about people. So he leaves Marianne starving. Right.
[33:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: Because he becomes obsessed with Kate.
[33:13] Portia Pendleton: He wants Joe to just move on and be with Kate. Joe, I think this is what's interesting, and I'm curious to get your take, like, the inner Joe that maybe even like the one you feel like you've.
[33:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: Always seen, the one Portia you've always seen is desperate.
[33:31] Portia Pendleton: I mean, it's still yes, he has severe issues still. But he would never starve Marianne.
[33:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[33:41] Portia Pendleton: He does sick and twist things as well. But he is so mortified, so horrified that he did this to Marianne.
[33:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[33:48] Portia Pendleton: Like, when he's learning that, quote, unquote, reese left her here and he will not let her go.
[33:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[33:54] Portia Pendleton: Like, he wants to figure it out. He's going to set the timer. Right. He's trying to figure out a way Joe is to let Marianne go. Well, Reese is like, no, with the passports, or let them go off together.
[34:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right, exactly.
[34:09] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[34:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't think he's going to let her go like, she's free. I think he wants to be with.
[34:14] Portia Pendleton: Her and have her move on. And Reese wants her dead. The gun, the pills, he's just like, be done, let's move on.
[34:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, exactly. It was such a good depiction of the good versus evil part of Joe and his psyche. And it was so good. There's nothing else to say.
[34:35] Portia Pendleton: Mary Ann, when her face such a good actress.
[34:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my God, she is just like, oh. Whoa.
[34:43] Portia Pendleton: Like, when she sees that it's not Joe, she that is happening. Her eyes and she's like, I don't know how to manipulate this anymore. You know what I mean? Like, she fawning isn't going to work.
[34:53] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. Because I don't know who this is anymore. And I thought the way that they talked about what was going on with Mary Anne through the story and the poem with her daughter was, like, really heart wrenching. And then was Nadia getting involved? That was like another twist. Kind of like this stuff with dawn that I didn't see coming. It was a whole other layer to the story.
[35:13] Portia Pendleton: And it was such a good layer to the story.
[35:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right? Because so at first, we have, like, jock my memory portia because so much happened in these five episodes.
[35:22] Portia Pendleton: How did Marion get in the cage, Reese? Joe never let her get on the.
[35:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: Train because he drugged her. Coffee. That's what it was.
[35:31] Portia Pendleton: And then he took her to that house. That was weird. And he kept her drugged, feeding her, like she's sitting at the table with him. That's first. And then he drugs her, puts her in the box and takes her to that abandoned building in the cage. And that's her where the cage is. But she fights back in that moment and then hits Joe, hits his head, which is kind of like where so there's two almost like, storylines here or there's two ways to think about it.
[35:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[35:57] Portia Pendleton: It's like, yes, the trauma of the season three and all of that. And obviously Joe's lifelong trauma and brain kind of not working well. And then there's like a head injury. So it's like does the head injury kind of initiate this?
[36:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. Is that like the last strain to psychosis?
[36:15] Portia Pendleton: Right. Because it's like after that, you kind of see him for a moment, almost like waking up and then kind of starting to change and time slipping. All of the having two really different parts of self being present totally split off.
[36:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. And he's been interacting with this Reese Hallucination all this time. And I'm like all the people around.
[36:37] Portia Pendleton: Him notice or maybe they were all.
[36:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: Too strung out to pay attention.
[36:40] Portia Pendleton: I wanted to ask you, so you picked up on some erotic tension between Reese and Joe, part one. What do you think about that? Now?
[36:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know I thought about that because even when the other Reese came back and there were two Reese's, and I was, like, so confused. So again, I think it wasn't what I thought, where Reese was going to become the love interest, but I do think there's like this erotic code love between the two parts of himself, right?
[37:08] Portia Pendleton: It's both him and he is such.
[37:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: A narcissist that he ultimately loves himself above all. And I think the part that Reese is depicting, the quote, unquote bad parts, are the parts he loves the most. And he can't get away from it, right? Like, he just loves it.
[37:26] Portia Pendleton: And so Penn Bagley directed the second to last episode, which was so good.
[37:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I knew we were going to see Love again, remember?
[37:36] Portia Pendleton: And you were really hoping she was.
[37:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: Real, but I'm sorry, Portia, she really did die. But I love that we saw Beck again, that we saw Love. And I love that they were, like, leading him to the ultimate, like, where's the key? Where's the key? How do you get to Mary Anne's stuff? And that Love was trying to tell him the only way out is if you kill yourself, right? Yes. And then I was like, Is he going to I never thought he was actually going to.
[38:02] Portia Pendleton: No.
[38:02] Dr. Katrina Furey: I was surprised when he jumped.
[38:04] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, me too. Yeah, that was a twist that I also didn't see coming.
[38:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: And then when he woke up in the hospital, I was like, he's going to be so upset he was found. Then it's like, are those the ways where his quote unquote good side is like, trying to crawl up and overpower.
[38:21] Portia Pendleton: The bad side because he throws Reese over the bridge first?
[38:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes, exactly. All of that is so good. It's just such good depictions, isn't it?
[38:31] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I think I was speechless or going, like, for 5 hours.
[38:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, exactly. I totally agree.
[38:38] Portia Pendleton: So what kind of stood out we'll get into Nadia in a minute, but what kind of stood out for you as I don't know. Where were your emotions during this? Were you just kind of like, heightened and excited? Were you sad? Were you frustrated? How did you feel? Watching it in disbelief, literally on the.
[38:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: Edge of my seat, just massively consuming it as quickly as possible. Because I just was like, what happens next? What happens next? Really sad with the whole Mary Ann storyline, I think because she has a daughter and we always hoped that would be like the saving grace, remember?
[39:18] Portia Pendleton: Just really seems like she was almost, like, dissociating in a way to help her survive.
[39:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[39:27] Portia Pendleton: Thirsty.
[39:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: And Joe gives her narcotics, right? Because he breaks her arm or something, knowing her history.
[39:33] Portia Pendleton: And I think that's Reese would you think what do you think?
[39:37] Dr. Katrina Furey: Probably, yeah. Wanting her to overdose or die or he's not, like, doing it, like, here's some pain relief because he gave her ibupro.
[39:44] Portia Pendleton: Would have given her ibuprofen or something. Or ibuprofen. You're right. But I thought that was really interesting just to get the full bottle of pills that was so manipulative and calculative and horrible, disgusting.
[39:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: And it was like, are you trying to tempt her to off herself here? And at what point is she going to right.
[40:03] Portia Pendleton: Because he did want her dead.
[40:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[40:05] Portia Pendleton: So I think that kind of tracked, and I think that he was hoping.
[40:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: That that would just be, like, the easy way out.
[40:10] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[40:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think at some point, you really see her getting so hopeless, and I.
[40:15] Portia Pendleton: Was, like, making all of the little figurines out of the food bag.
[40:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know. Is that cold? I forget origami origami yeah, but just, like, being so hopeless about just thinking about her daughter, being, like, wondering where she is, if she relapsed again. It just broke my heart, and it was just so sad. It was so sad. And then somehow Nadia finds her.
[40:42] Portia Pendleton: I know, right?
[40:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: Somehow I think after the party, Nadia's wheels start turning, and she starts to be like, why is he the hero every time? And starts to think about the mysteries that he so looks down on and starts piecing it together. And again, I was always like, do we need Nadia? Like, what's the point of this story? And then I loved this storyline because I think at the very end right, just, again, nail in the coffin. He's a psychopath, right? So I want to hear your thoughts, Portia.
[41:10] Portia Pendleton: So we see Nadia kind of pulling some threads together, and then we see that she's in his home and gets the key, right? And then she kind of tracks where he is based on pictures of him and figures out and just tries that empty, abandoned building, goes in, then comes across the cage.
[41:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my God. With Mary. Can you imagine? What do you do when you come across a poor woman starving in the cage?
[41:35] Portia Pendleton: You want to go to the police? But Marianne is like, no, you cannot. I will still somehow end up here again.
[41:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: And she's raped. Yes, we've seen this happen. He is so scary.
[41:46] Portia Pendleton: Danger so has powerful friends at this point, and I think that he is just, like, the master manipulator to get out of situations. So Marianne knows that. So she and Nadia kind of come up with a couple plans, like plan.
[41:59] Dr. Katrina Furey: A and plan B, and that's where.
[42:00] Portia Pendleton: We see more of Nadia's boyfriend kind of enter the storyline.
[42:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: And again, she just, like, uses him for guys.
[42:08] Portia Pendleton: He seems really cute and sweet to me. I really like him. And then I'm obviously really sad at the end. So Nadia asks him to get her.
[42:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: Drug, So Ketamine, which, again, you can use it as, like, a date rape kind of drug. You can also abuse it as, like, a party drug, and it does have some antidepressant properties, which are being explored now in clinical trials in certain centers. But, yeah, she was trying to get that and then a knife, because Marianne wanted the knife. I think she wanted to kill drove herself. And she was so close. She was so close, right? Nadia was so close. And then she got stuck on, like, trying to get on the subway, everything fell out of her back.
[42:49] Portia Pendleton: That Nadia was down there. Right. She was down there talking to Marianne. And Joe comes.
[42:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: My heart was racing. And then Marian's like, there's something over there. I thought, he's going to pick up that there is something going on, and maybe somewhere he did. Right. I don't know. But then eventually so that plan gets.
[43:09] Portia Pendleton: Foiled because Nadia can't get out of the police station soon enough because they find her bag.
[43:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[43:15] Portia Pendleton: She goes through the turntable turnstile thing, and her bag gets caught, and they see the syringe. So she finally kind of gets bailed out. Her boyfriend is there or I guess it's not technically her boyfriend, a boy who wants to be her boyfriend is there.
[43:31] Dr. Katrina Furey: Also interesting because she's a brown girl in England getting detained, and then her white boyfriend can kind of get her off. Right. So I think that's interesting. Yeah.
[43:40] Portia Pendleton: So I definitely was thinking that there's no way that Marianne died when she collapsed in the cage. I was like, okay, I think there's probably something else going on here. We did not know about the planet. Yeah. I don't know why I feel like I actually knew what happened because I had some sense of what was going to happen with Nadia and Marianne and, like, Marianne dying in the cage. I was like, there's no way she's dead. She's no way she's dead. So back to Nadia's kind of plan A and plan B. It sounded like plan A was to get him, shoot him with the ketamine so he's, like, can't move or passed out. And then Marianne would stab him or kill him, and he would be dead.
[44:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[44:28] Portia Pendleton: And then plan B we never hear until we then kind of see it. So it sounds like plan B was that Marianne would take propranolol, a beta.
[44:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: Blocker, which does slow down your heart rate, used for high blood pressure, things like that. We also use it for performance anxiety. So, like, oh, I get nervous giving a speech. You could take some perennial as long as we can tolerate it, like, 30 minutes before. And they did a good job with that, too, saying, like, well, again, how does Nadia know how to titrate? I don't know.
[44:56] Portia Pendleton: And I think she didn't because she was afraid it was a crazy idea that you could die from. I think the rest of the give.
[45:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: Her enough to slow down her heart rate so Joe doesn't know that she's still alive.
[45:09] Portia Pendleton: And then she shot Marianne in the park bench with, I'm assuming, some kind of like an adrenaline. Yeah, probably to kind of wake her back up. That whole series of events was wild, and I think we really saw a lot of it after it had already happened, like the flashback.
[45:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: Because, you see, Mary Anne is with her daughter, and she's reading that news article about Joe and so angry about it. Right.
[45:34] Portia Pendleton: And then you're like, oh, she survives. Hooray. Were you so upset? Because I was when Joe uses Marianne's phone to text the person her daughter is staying with, and she's like, we're done. You have no more custody. It's over. And then Marianne again, when you don't know that this is all planned and it's really Nadia answering the text right. That this is when Marianne falls apart. This is why she overdoses and dies.
[46:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: For sure. I thought she did it for sure. I was like, okay, so now that's going to happen. How do you she's hopeless.
[46:09] Portia Pendleton: The only thing that's been keeping her alive is the hope of reuniting with her daughter.
[46:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. And just again, you imagine the shame in her daughter knowing this about her and then knowing this happened again when you promised you'd come back and now you're stuck in a cage, starving to death. At some point I was like, she's going to overdose. It right there. What else are you going to do?
[46:28] Portia Pendleton: Or just to take some of the pain. I think it would have been so easy for her to just start with one pill.
[46:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
[46:38] Portia Pendleton: I mean, I was so happy that Marianne is alive.
[46:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: Me too. But now still worry for her.
[46:44] Portia Pendleton: Upset about Nadia.
[46:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my God. So then it's like, you think it can't get any worse, right. I thought that was Nadia's storyline, like, helping to get Marianne out, right?
[46:54] Portia Pendleton: Yep.
[46:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: And then it's like Nadia and her boyfriend really want to get Joe caught, and rightfully so, bearing witness to all the destruction. Joe is like now with Kate.
[47:06] Portia Pendleton: And after the suicide attempt.
[47:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, after the suicide attempt. And they both sort of tell each other like, they've done these horrible things, people have died. I don't think Kate is getting it.
[47:17] Portia Pendleton: And they're going to think they're good. I think Kate believes that Joe has killed maybe lovely and just that kind of storyline, because that was national news, people were aware of it. And I think he comes clean about that and maybe having a really horrible childhood and trauma. I think that's what he discloses.
[47:35] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I think she's probably like, well, but love was like, crazy, so I can see where you had to kind of exactly.
[47:43] Portia Pendleton: I don't think he disclosed that he's the rich killer, you know what I mean?
[47:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, no.
[47:47] Portia Pendleton: So and then I think that Kate does have a lot of shame and guilt about the cancer trial patients dying that her dad kind of talked to about and that she talked about. And I think she is afraid of herself having a lot of power like.
[48:02] Dr. Katrina Furey: That she sees that part of her dad in her. And I was surprised when she revealed, like, no, I did that and intentionally. It wasn't like I didn't realize what I was doing. I did it.
[48:12] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[48:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: So they both have that power hungry sociopathic nature. So in that way, they are a good match. For each other. Right. And I'm, like, terrified.
[48:23] Portia Pendleton: I know that now they're like, with all of these resources, all of these.
[48:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: Resources, all of this power, but they're.
[48:28] Portia Pendleton: Going to keep each other good. Yeah, sure.
[48:31] Dr. Katrina Furey: We've seen how that goes.
[48:32] Portia Pendleton: We've seen how Joe immediately does not stay good because he kills Nadia's Beau and then frames Nadia, offers her the money. So that's how you know that he's already with Kate, because he's like, I have all these resources now. And there's like, kind of a moment of him being like, what? You work all these three jobs. I could offer you to this. But then she sees, oh, my God, portia on the ground. And it's like I think Joe just then knows that he can't let her get away.
[49:02] Dr. Katrina Furey: I think he planned this whole thing. Oh, my God. Yes. Portia god, he's a psychopath. Portia there is no shred of empathy. I think he somehow knew they were in his place, probably. And then right, she's like, having her boyfriend be, like, the lookout, and then she's trying to find him at the car. She can't find him. She turns around. There's Joe. So cool, calm, collected. He seems, like, less psychotic now. He seems like both of his parts are now one. Those parts have his self have combined against he's fully mentally there. And then you see him talking to her, offering her the money. She's terrified. She's backing up. I think the whole time he knew he was going to frame her. He had that knife somewhere. He was, like, walking her back to show her her boyfriend, who he killed. And then he hands her the knife. I know.
[49:57] Portia Pendleton: What is she going to do? She knows she's done. But I was just like, don't take.
[50:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: I don't even think she knew what he was handing her.
[50:03] Portia Pendleton: No, because he handed it to her kind of like back end, like handle first, almost.
[50:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: And it was, like, covered in a cloth. I don't remember what he said he was going to hand her. Obviously, it wasn't the weapon, but then she's holding it now. Her fingerprints are all over it. And the way he spoke to her was chilling.
[50:20] Portia Pendleton: I know. It made me so chilling him.
[50:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: You haven't yet.
[50:28] Portia Pendleton: I hated him in this season the most part, too, so I feel like a lot of the stuff that he did, he really held out hope.
[50:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: Portia a long time.
[50:40] Portia Pendleton: I don't even know if it was hope. I think it's just one of those things that's, like, you you understand why people are the way they are. That doesn't mean that they're they're what they've done is good.
[50:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.
[50:49] Portia Pendleton: It's not an excuse, but like, I feel like the explanation for his behavior just made me be like, oh, like, a lot of people watch all of these kinds of shows and somehow align with the villain. So I felt like I was kind of on that train but then I was like, no, you should die. You should be lethal injection. I hate you. There's no rehabilitation.
[51:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
[51:12] Portia Pendleton: Nadia to me sealed the deal. Like, you're done 100%.
[51:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: I totally agree. And it was like, again, the show did such a good job with the Reese of it all, like, depicting these two parts of himself, him really losing touch with reality, like really unraveling. Then he's back, right. And now he has all this money, all this power. I loved when they showed him looking out the window and you see Reese's reflection and I'm just like, oh, my God, I'm so scared. And when they were doing those interviews, they so reminded me of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry doing interviews. Not that I think there's any similarities in any way. I don't think of that. But it was just weird that they're doing all these interviews and he was, like, making a coffee for her and schmoozing and so performative, which is what.
[51:59] Portia Pendleton: I get from Megan and Harry performance.
[52:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.
[52:03] Portia Pendleton: It's not a mental disorder or anything like that. I just feel like it's very performative.
[52:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. Putting on the show and I'm just, like, really terrified for him. And I feel so bad for Nadia.
[52:15] Portia Pendleton: She is in jail forever and he.
[52:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: Said that she hasn't spoken a word. Probably because she's so traumatized and who's going to believe her? Again, a young brown girl compared to this white man I know with this redemption story and like, oh, my God. I don't know if it's been renewed yet for season five. I thought it was. And then I googled it after all this and it says, like, it hasn't been they're not sure if it'll come back. I hope so. I know.
[52:44] Portia Pendleton: I feel like there's such an easy and I'm not saying like, I have a storyline in my head, but I feel like there's such an easy, like, so many directions to go with this.
[52:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes. And it's like, who's going to finally take down Joe? Is anyone? Can you take him down?
[52:59] Portia Pendleton: And is that how it ends or does not? Or does it end here where it's like no, people like this do exist. People like this absolutely do get won over on other people. I'm not going to say win, but are fine, like, compared to Nadia, that they get some horrible illness that takes them out at some point because sometimes that's like the karmic end. But there's people like this who do exist who are horrible and who do horrible things and there's no check for them. There's no checks and balances.
[53:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. And then to see I was glad Marianne made it out alive. I feel so sad for Nadia. I feel so sad for her. I know.
[53:38] Portia Pendleton: Because she risked her life knowingly this whole time that she was trying to save Marian for this person that she didn't know, which is just like, a wonderful thing and really believed her. Right. Away and I was like, I'm going to get you out of here. I don't care how dangerous it is that this is wrong. And then now she is framed different from not Dr. Nikki because Dr. Nikki did terrible things.
[54:01] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. But she hasn't done a terrible thing as far as we know. Oh, it would be so cool if, like, somehow Nadia Marianne teamed up and took him down somehow.
[54:10] Portia Pendleton: Let me ask you this, okay? If you're going to ask me what.
[54:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: Kind of treatment I would give Joe Goldberg, I will just death.
[54:17] Portia Pendleton: No, sorry. Maybe that's a little, you know, not very therapeutic, but that's just how it is. I don't regret what I said. So I don't think that Joe without and I think there was always Reese in his head just because there's always that part. But obviously Reese came out more. I don't think that Joe when Joe's.
[54:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: Joe would have framed Nadia nadia. Oh, I totally think so.
[54:53] Portia Pendleton: You do? She doesn't fit his but she's gone.
[55:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: In jail.
[55:05] Portia Pendleton: But she's not free.
[55:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: Ellie's not in jail, but she's not free.
[55:08] Portia Pendleton: I know, but same thing. But that's what I mean. I feel like that's where I'm like I'm a little bit I think that this is now because Reese is now getting bigger.
[55:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: Okay.
[55:23] Portia Pendleton: I don't think it's like empathy or anything like that.
[55:25] Dr. Katrina Furey: I just think that it's like because.
[55:27] Portia Pendleton: Reese is now kind of showing stronger and stronger, joe is leaning in to that real, authentic I'm just this person and now I can get away with anything. I think that that's why he can do that he did that I'm on board with. I don't know, just threatened her and was like, I'm keeping the knife forever in your fingerprints.
[55:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I think that's why we thought he was just going to give her the money and let her go like he did with Ellie and stuff. I can see that. I think he is unraveling and that part of him is growing and taking over and like, please come back for season five. I want more.
[56:02] Portia Pendleton: I know what happens. You don't have to do love scenes.
[56:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: But, like, please bring back the cage.
[56:07] Portia Pendleton: Oh, and okay, obviously the you writers, producers, whoever, are t swift fans because another song.
[56:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know. I wanted to mention that, too.
[56:16] Portia Pendleton: And it was like the perfect one they picked, right?
[56:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: My covert narcissism disguises altruism. It's so perfect. Oh, my God. So perfect.
[56:27] Portia Pendleton: Like, Joe, you are the problems.
[56:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: Another Taylor Smith. I loved that touch, too. And I thought of you immediately. It was so good. I'm so sad it's over. I know. But I do think it's a nice segue into the next series we're going to be talking about, which is succession.
[56:42] Portia Pendleton: Yes.
[56:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: I had no idea what's sort of going to end up with Joe and Kate teaming up and being these, like, business tycoons, but I have a feeling succession is going to. Have some similar dark and twisty themes.
[56:54] Portia Pendleton: And people do have maybe are already up to date on Succession. I know that season four is what's coming out this spring, so neither of us have seen Succession at all. I think we both first watched the first episode so far of season one.
[57:08] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, that's right, guys, we are super professional. You're going to watch all of it to recap for you. Can you believe we have so much.
[57:15] Portia Pendleton: They'Re definitely I'm getting like, similar vibes.
[57:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: But I will say I feel like.
[57:19] Portia Pendleton: Succession and I won't spend a lot of time talking about this, but I feel like Succession is going to be like just dark and one of those shows that I probably shouldn't watch right.
[57:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: Before I go to bed because he's.
[57:30] Portia Pendleton: Thinking about it a lot.
[57:31] Dr. Katrina Furey: Use your stuff from Therapeutic Body Work to unwind because I think it's almost.
[57:36] Portia Pendleton: Just going to be a little bit of like a mind because it's about.
[57:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: A parent, his kids. I feel like they're all going to be ******** each other over, but that always makes me so sad when it's a parenting, your kids and you pick that up right away and just like.
[57:49] Portia Pendleton: People with too much money, too much power and power doing horrible things and not being checked for it. That's just like the vibe. And I'm sure I think that's just what the show is about.
[58:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, we have no idea because we haven't seen it before, but that's the vibe we're getting.
[58:05] Portia Pendleton: So back to you. It sounds like Joe has nationally come.
[58:09] Dr. Katrina Furey: Out about internationally in Europe come out.
[58:13] Portia Pendleton: That he has survived.
[58:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I'm like, how did they spend that?
[58:17] Portia Pendleton: I don't know. Money and media and a PR team can do magical things.
[58:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my gosh. Raquel from Phantom Pump rules needs his PR team.
[58:27] Portia Pendleton: Well, I was going to say Haley Bieber needs his PR team. Selena, haley of it all.
[58:33] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. The eyebrows scandal heard around the world.
[58:37] Portia Pendleton: Also, we'd love a PR team, so if anyone wants to be our PR and marketing team, feel free to reach out.
[58:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: All right, well, thank you all very much for listening in. Please don't forget to rate, review and subscribe. Please share our show with loved ones near and far. It's doing really well so far, but we'd love to reach even more people.
[58:59] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.
[59:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: So visit us on Instagram at Analyze Scripts, email us at Analyze Scriptspodcast@gmail.com and visit our website, www.analyzcripts.com and we'll see you next time. Thanks.
[59:10] Portia Pendleton: Bye.
[59:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: This podcast and its contents are a copyright of analyzed scripts. All rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited. Unless you want to share it with your friends and rate, review and subscribe, that's fine. All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time our sand close.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, Portia and Katrina continue exploring "Shrinking" episodes 4-6 on AppleTV+. We decided to split this analysis into two parts because HARRISON. FORD. GETS. STONED, which deserves all the attention it can get! We discuss turning on Liz when she emotionally blackmails her son and being shocked when Gaby hooks up with Jimmy! UGH WHO IS WATCHING OUT FOR ALICE?! We hope you enjoy!
[00:17] Portia Pendleton & Dr. Katrina Furey: Welcome back to kind of, I guess, part two of Shrinking, episodes four through six. Turns out there's a lot of content cover. Yeah, we wanted to kind of break it up a little bit to give listeners a little break and not make like a two hour episode. So I'm Portia Pendleton. I'm a licensed clinical social worker, and I'm here with Dr. Katrina Fury, a psychiatrist. And we're breaking down. Currently, the show shrinking on Apple TV. Plus last episode, if you didn't listen to part one of this, we are talking about or we spent a lot of time talking about Sean PTSD. Again, kind of inappropriate boundaries. We talk about OCD and the kiss or the attempted kiss between Wally and Jimmy, his patient. So I think we're just kind of going to move right into more thoughts and feelings about these episodes. It's kind of funny because these episodes are like 30 minutes long. So I kept thinking, like, gosh, I don't know if you're going to fill the time. And then turns out it's so rich. There's so much to talk about. So where do we start? I think you wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about marijuana. Oh, my God. Cannabis. Seeing Harrison Ford, like, high as a kite, I felt like we needed a whole episode just about that. I mean, I really didn't see that coming. I was surprised that Liz was the one who had these gummies. And I'm also, like, not surprised, but also not surprised. Right. They are in Pasadena, and Liz seems like kind of bored. Yeah. But I loved that she was like I don't know exactly what she said, but she was like, my yoga teacher's cousin got these from their nephew who said this has, like, totally been proven scientifically to help, and it cured him. And I have to say, as a psychiatrist, I get so many questions about CBD gummies, cannabis, marijuana. And of course I do, because it's everywhere right now. It's being legalized and everything like that. So of course people have questions. But I just loved that that's where she got it, because I just feel like that's always what I hear. Well, I got it from this person who got from that person who got from this person who said it helped their dog. I hear that a lot about diets of work. Like, oh, my hairdresser aunt did this diet and it cured her of this. And it's just like, what? Yeah, well, it probably won't work for you for these reasons. Why? Right. Again, knowing that you treat a lot of patients who struggle with eating disorders, that makes a lot of sense. So, yeah, I mean, what did you think about I wanted more. I feel like I just loved when he kind of showed up and she is removing his sunglasses and he's like, oh, wow, it's so much better. He has cotton mouth. His mouth is really dry. So to sort of rewind a little bit and set the stage. So eventually, the lawyer, whoops brian. Brian decides to propose finally sounds like he's really been hesitating about commitment. And he had that touching, like, faux therapy session with Gabby, which I thought was nice, but also kind of predictable. It wasn't earth shattering, but it was nice. And so he finally wants to propose. So he plans his party to invite his partner over. He's, like, super nervous. He's buzzing around it's. At Jimmy's house. Jimmy was really hesitant about the party, I think. Right. A lot of stuff was coming up for him, like, pre party that I think he should have maybe been really forceful with a no. Like, I want to host this. Right. Again. Boundaries, Jimmy. But it sounds like he and his wife used to throw parties, and this was the first party he was throwing since she passed. And that maybe that fight they were sort of flashing back to was happening around a party or something. And he started we again start to see that their relationship wasn't perfect. When the wife died, they were fighting. She seemed kind of unhappy, and he was really struggling with that. So they're having the party. Initially, Paul is like, I can't come. I'm busy being alone. He doesn't want to go, which, again, kind of inappropriate boundary when you're, like, the boss of all these people. And then he shows up high as a kite. And I think he took the gummy because he'd told his daughter about his Parkinson's diagnosis, and she was about to fly out, and he was feeling really nervous and for his character. Right. Paul is so a little bit kind of tightly wound. I feel like he's very cautious by the book. It seemed like it was just, like, super impulsive, kind of like an effort moment. Do it. And then it was like and they took a couple more. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, he shows up at the door, and everyone's like, oh, my God, you're here. And he's got this funny little hat on his glasses, and he's like, you poisoned me. He's, like, pointing at Liz. He's like you poisoned me. I was like, God, I hope he didn't drive there. Maybe he got an Uber. Well, it seems like he's not driving right now. Hopefully he didn't impair. And then just like, the banter when Liz is like, I took one too, and we need Popsicles. And then her husband is like, which ones? And she's like, the special ones, apparently, for when their mouths are dry, when they're hot. Oh, I didn't catch that. And he was like, okay, I guess I'll go get them. It's so funny. Oh, my God. And then my favorite part was when the proposal goes awry, because Jimmy's supposed to play you are so beautiful, and they start throwing up every projectile again. I cannot tolerate seeing puke like that. And I was like, gagging to myself while laughing, while being like, it was so funny. This episode was so good. Like, from an entertainment perspective and also from a psychology perspective, I thought there were some really nice moments. Like, I thought Gabby and Liz's relationship going. They had like a repair. They both kind of owned their lie or their kind of mean spirited comment. And then they got really close and we're connecting. I thought there was a nice moment between Gabby and Jimmy when she shows him the picture of yes. His wife looking at him. But as soon as she came in that bedroom, I think you blocked that out. I did block it out. You're just remembering it right now. Oh my gosh. I was so I knew it was going to happen. I know. As soon as she came in, I just knew they were going to make out. I can't believe I know. I totally blocked it out. I did, because it's painful. I was disappointed about the trauma. I was so disappointed because I thought it was such a beautiful moment. And I think you seems like you picked it up like a couple of seconds before maybe like 2 seconds before they did it. I was like, oh no. Yeah, you can feel the tension. There was maybe music. I was just like, I know. Oh my God, it was so nice. I wish they had just left it at that hug. Right? Give each other a hug. Pat on the back, go your bed. Right? But I think she was drunk and she was saying, Remember partner? And she was like trying to get back out there, remember? And she was like, I can't get a lady *****. What do we call it? All that stuff is really funny. Oh my gosh. So Jimmy throws up everywhere. Projectile vomiting, like a lot. Too much. Don't show that. But it was so funny. And I'm always like, how do they do that? Yeah. Is there like a hose behind him that someone's like under the piano? Like funneling vomit looking liquid through? Is it like a sprinkler? I'm always so curious about Hollywood, especially. I don't think it is. Yeah, it looks like can you imagine, like, if your job was to create the vomit? No, but so he ruins the proposal and then Brian is all flustered, like, oh, forget it. Forget it. Jimmy starts singing. Brian's like, trying to sing. This isn't a duet. It's so funny. But then finally Brian and his partner outside, and the partner says yes, and that was so sweet. And then you hear Harrison Ford eating doritos. And I just died. You just think of like, hi as a kite eating doritos. Of course it's doritos. It was just so doritos amazing. It was so funny that you hear the crunch and then oh my God, I just love it. Just like the camera pans and you're like, again, because that's so out of character for paul. He would never wander outside with his turn and then just being a part of this special moment. But I thought it was kind of sweet because Brian, it turns out, is doing like the life planning for him. And in that way, he is seeing a very vulnerable side of Paul that no one else has seen. So in that way, it was kind of touching to me that now he gets to witness this really vulnerable again. We got such poor boundaries in this whole group. But I thought that was really sweet. And I feel like Paul used the gummies to begin with because he's so nervous that his daughter, now that he's finally told her, is like, flying in. She's like, we're going to go see all the specialists tomorrow. We're going to come up with a plan. She's like, really on it. And I think that's why he was hesitating, because he doesn't want to feel dependent yet. And I think that's like, again, a nice depiction of something super common when people get diagnosed with things like Parkinson's. Yeah. It totally changes the relationship. I think it just automatically launches people into caregiver roles to some degree. And so now kind of like, he's the father, he's the caregiver, but he feels so guilty because he really wasn't there. There's so much there. I think his emotions about it feel really authentic, like the hesitancy and then they're not wanting to be a burden and wanting to be close to its grands. I mean, all of that, I would say, is really spot on. Yeah. And I think Mr. Ford is doing a really nice job depicting all of that comedy. I saw online that they approached him kind of as like a lol. He'll never say yes, he did. And they said he's so great at it. He's having so much fun, his sense of humor that he is able to portray really dryly at times. I love the role. I do, too. I love it. I know. Now that you say that, I feel like I only remember him from Indiana Jones, star Wars, Fugitive. Did you ever see that movie? Oh, so good. We watched it as a kid. So good. Air Force One. Is that a movie? Like Action? For sure. But I love him in this role and he can bring that grittiness and the comedy element to it. Seems like it's perfect for him. I know. Can't picture anyone else playing. And can you imagine everyone else acting with him? Like they are just like over the moon, right? All right, portia. Well, we don't have sponsors or anything like that yet, but maybe someday we will. And if we did, this is where they would go. So what kind of sponsor would you like to see? I think really anything that is like I want to use, like spindrift, sparkling water. I would love for that to sponsor us. You love that you have them all the time. All the time. So what else would I like? I feel like I don't wear a lot of makeup daily, but I am like a makeup. Get ready with me, girly. I love watching that stuff. So any makeup brand want to send me something? Even though you can't see us, that maybe is problematic. What else? Again, on the delusions of all grandiose delusions on our vision board is an airline with the lay flat seat. I really want to take a flight and lay down. I mean, if you're going to go big, maybe you should just do Emirates and you don't actually have to take me anywhere. We'll just lay down, go up in the air, circle around a couple of times and we can come down. But that's my ultimate sponsor dream. So this is where you'd hear a commercial. If we had them so far, we don't, but keep subscribing if you don't. I just love the whole cast. I love everyone from Liz's husband who just makes these appearances. I think he's so silly. I like Alice. I like, obviously all the therapists. Like, it's just Brian. Yeah. I think all of the casting is just so good. It's so good. It's so, so good. It's such a good show. Like, I'm really enjoying watching it, even though I am so mad at Jimmy. I'm so disappointed in him. I am so mad. We talked last time about again, how I just feel like he's hurting everyone around him with his patience, for sure, but also Alice. And we really see that continue to develop. He gets so uncomfortable and angry when she reveals that she lost her virginity to Connor, who's Liz's son. And it sounds like it was like a nice way to lose your virginity, right? Of all the ways it could possibly happen, it was consensual. They knew each other really well. They were friends. They used protection. Right. They were safe. And he just flips out. And there's a part of me that's like, dude, you don't get to be mad. You've been like Mia. Even especially within that context. Her losing her virginity in that way, I feel like is a very nice way. There is a thing from a father about her age which I could see. You never want to think about your children, but Jimmy, you were absent and she saw others, those young girls, in many different ways. You don't get to be mad at this at all. You don't also like her reaction. Remember the first scene ever those young girls in the pool who we think are like hookers and he's doing drugs and it's like, you haven't exactly like she says, or her comeback is like, well, I cleaned cocaine off the picture of Mima. Right? Like when he got mad at her for cutting school to go hang out with Sean again, it's like he's trying to be like, I'm the dad and we're going to have rules now you really have to repair first. Totally do. Not going to work. It's not going to work. And he was, like, so mad at Liz, and I'm just like, you're mad at yourself, dude. That's what it is. But you're not looking inward or like, doing any of the work. You're just acting out externalizing and hurting everyone around you. I know. Drives me nuts. Yeah. I think he apologized to Liz later, which I appreciated just for his kind of outburst about it. Again, it's funny. Like, it's funny part of the show. He's having a temper tantrum. It's funny and everything, but it just makes me, like, angry at it. Well, and then Connor keeps reaching out to Alice, and she's, like, not responding because she's so caught up with Sean. Grown man in the house. So I was just kind of like I think it's like that's, like but again, like, appropriate, like sweet. Like, they seem like they're an age apart. Like, yeah, you know, that's who she should be interested in. And now she's also just, like, setting a boundary and seems really, in some ways, like like positively mature. Right. She didn't really want to go to that party under the bridge. I love that too. That's like, such a typical high school. We're going to have a party under the bridge. We're going to be a wine cooler. In so many ways, she was neglected 100%, and she's still really I feel like she has a good moral compass. I know. And these are the things, too, that, you know, she wishes she had her mom to talk about, like losing her virginity. How do you interact with people who are interested in you? Are you interested in them or not? These are all the things that I think a girl wants to talk to her mom about. So it is nice for Liz to be there, for Gabby to be there, but it's really sad that her dad hasn't been there. And now when they're trying to start mending that relationship, he has such big temper tantrums about her behavior, when really, again, when you're comparing her behavior to his behavior, there's no comparison. So I'm really interested to see how their relationship continues playing out, especially now as they're leaving it with this tension between her and Sean. I bet she feels just so embarrassed and rejected. And I just so felt for her as, like, a teenage girl. I know. It's just like, oh, no. And then I'm always thinking, like, what are you going to do now? Right. Especially in movies, it's like, well, now you run away. Now you do go to you hang out with another older guy who will cross that line. And that's always where I feel nervous. Bad things happen. Yes. And this happens. Right. For vulnerable kids who have faced such a big loss, in some ways, Alice has lost both parents. She lost her mom, and her dad isn't there. And thank God she has Liz. And thank God she has Gabby. But it's really I wonder if you and I prickle up more about this, given our line of work and all the different cases we've seen, because it's like, this is like the perfect storm brewing for her to run away. I don't think she will, like, in this show, but it's scary. No, I agree. I did catch something that I did not like that Liz was talking about. I think it's called kind of like emotional blackmail. And it's like when parents, because they did all of these things for you while you were a child, then have this expectation that you are supposed to fill their need, whatever that may be, emotionally, financially. When she called her son, that's what you're going to talk about. I hated that. Yeah. So she texted her son, I think, to show Paul about children being there for you. He was really again, he's having this kind of dilemma about his daughter's involvement with his Parkinson's and this new kind of relationship dynamic between them. And then Liz proceeds to text her son something along the lines of, like, I'm not doing well right now. I need you to call me. And then he calls her immediately. And then she like, ignores, declines. I know. And she's like, see, like, we were there. I wiped their butts. Like, so they should be there for me. Right. That's not so unhealthy. That's played out a lot. Not a lot, but that is played out by parents and it's so conditioned. It's not good. No. Yeah. Thank you for bringing that up. That's so true, because I think Paul is really grappling with he knew his daughter was going to want to run in and save him and really take charge, and he's not there yet. He wants to be independent. He's already given up the driving, which it's got to be hard. He doesn't really want that guy and he doesn't want her to feel like she has to swoop in and save him, I think, because he feels so guilty that he really wasn't there for her in the way he wishes he should have been. And Liz, like, misses the mark. I think she's also high. Yeah. But yeah, I thought that was she's just, like she's like, just doing a really poor job of learning how to cope. And this is a challenge, but having an empty nest, which, again, is really appropriate and helpful to Alice. She steps in. She's like this new parent for Alice and that's great and everything, but I think it's more than just being helpful for Liz. I think she has this void that she thinks it's filling her need, too. Right, exactly. So in those ways, Liz and Jimmy are kind of similar, right? They're a little selfish. Yeah. Like, kind of quote unquote helping, but to make themselves feel better. And that's really dangerous. So that's a really interesting parallel I wonder how that'll keep playing out. Yeah. And then I'm like, how is episode seven going to open? Is it going to be like, Gabby and Jimmy in bed? Like, holy ****. Yeah. Like next morning, regurts, did Alice no, she's in the house. She probably gabby's still there. You know what I mean? And also she's still there. Yeah. I don't know. I'm really nervous about that in some ways, I feel like. And what a violation that was. Alice's mom's best friend. So I could see Alice becoming very upset because maybe I feel like the hookers were bad. Right. But they were meaningless to her. So now it's like this person who she knows was best friends with her mom and who is there for her on this deeper level, has now been with her dad. If she finds out, like, that is a big violation, I would assume, for Alice. That would make me feel horrible. Horrible. Not trust, not want to talk to Gabby. I think that's just like a termination of that relationship, which is unfortunate. And Alice has already lost so many important people. I assumed they went all the way, but I wonder if they'll pull away from the kissing. I feel like that would be good, right? But I don't know. And again, if we took out them both, being intoxicated this happening for both of them, when they're both emotionally charged about, you know, Gabby's ex husband and the demise of that marriage and Jimmy losing his wife and Alice. Like, right there and and all of that. Like, if this had been like they gradually grew closer and they were like, you know what? Maybe this would be good for both of us, and I feel safe with you. Or if you develop communication, authentic feelings. Right. And, like, Alice wasn't next door. Like all these things. I could see how that might actually be really nice, but the context is so not that. And I'm so upset. No one's watching out for Alice. I know you just want to run in all these adults are just not acting like adults. No, they're not. But again, it's like not all adults act like adults. So in that way, it's nice to see some flawed characters. Yeah. What were you going to say you did talk about before, which I really wanted to bring up because I thought it was just, like, a beautiful statement. When Paul is eating doritos while Brian and his now fiance are having kind of their moment, the advice that he gives them is, like, two vulnerable people will always find a way to connect. So stay open. I thought that was just, like such so true, so meaningful. Such a nice way to say that. Because I think ultimately it's just a simple it's so real good advice. I feel like I'm not giving it the justice that I wanted to say about it. But if you're vulnerable, if you're open, if you can listen and hear and be just kind of in like a receiving position for your partner. Not defensive, right? Not defensive. You're not closed off. You're not kind of pivoting almost. I'm picturing, like, you're back to them. The relationship can work. Right. There's going to be problems, there's going to be bumps. But if you can try of course no one does it perfectly. No, but I think a lot of problems that arise in partnerships are often because of poor communication or someone not sharing how they really feel or it's as simple as I'm fine. It's like, well, you're not 100% share how this small thing hurt you so that it can be addressed and you can move on. Instead of it building and building and building. Right. And learning that it's a safe relationship to share that stuff and that the other person does want to hear it because oftentimes they didn't mean it that way. They didn't know it was landing for you that way based on your own experiences. And then when they realize that, hopefully they can internalize it and move forward differently, and then that's how you feel more and more attached. I feel like Paul was really speaking from experience, which I feel like he did not stay open. I know. Of course. That just gave me chills. I know. I'm really excited to see what happens. We want to see, and I'm sure we will, like what happens with Gabby and Jimmy. I don't want Alice to run away. What happens with Alice. I want to see, of course, what happens with Sean. I want to see, like, Liz. I want Sean to fire Jimmy. Yeah. I want him to again, learn somewhere because he's not learning it from Jimmy or anyone else. But to be able to be like, I deserve better than this. So I'm going to find a different therapist. Yeah. What else do you want to see? I would like to see Harrison Fort hike. Yeah. I liked I would like to see him get high and do a little dance or some kind, maybe with a top hat and a cane. I don't know. I want him to have more. I feel like his talks with Alice are really good. I liked when they were on the bench and she wouldn't sit down because she was mad. And he was like, well, I'm sitting and I'm always mad. He's so funny. And then she sits down. He's like, see, you can be mad while you sit. And I love all the commentary about his little hat. He keeps wearing all these little things. I really do enjoy this show. I think it's really funny. It's really entertaining. I hope there's a season, too. I already want that. And it is bringing up a lot of interesting stuff about mental health. Again, we were thinking, like, we'd have a hard time talking about these three episodes because they were short and we had to split our recap into two episodes. So hopefully we will probably the next time we recap shrinking, it will be over. It'll be over. So I'm really curious to see. I think that'll come out. Yeah, the end of March, probably. All right, well, thanks for joining us for this two parter. Next time you hear our voices, we will be finishing up you season four and we can't wait to see what happens. So excited. I I don't know what to expect. I know. On the edges of our seat. Yeah. Will we hear any more about Marianne or is that it? What happens with Reese? What's going on? And then as we move into the month of April, we are going to start making our way through the hit HBO show succession. A lot of our followers and listeners keep requesting that, so we can't wait. And neither of us have seen it, so we're going to be watching it ferociously and then recapping it together for the first time. And then we're also going to throw in some cool movies from the past, like Black Swan, The Hangover. I'm excited for the hangover. Me too. Yeah. So you guys know the drill. Please rate review and subscribe and share to all your friends. Follow us on Instagram at Analyze Scripts. Send us an email, analyze scriptspodcast@gmail.com and we'll see you next time. Yeah, thanks. All right. Bye bye. This podcast and its contents are a copyright of analyzed scripts, all rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited. Unless you want to share it with your friends and rate, review and subscribe, that's fine. All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings, or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time. Our.
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we jump back into "Shrinking" (episodes 4-6) from AppleTV+. In this episode, we explore the unraveling of three therapist-patient relationships due to Jimmy's poor boundaries including a depiction of erotic transference. Ugh!! JIMMY!!!! We also analyze Sean's depiction as a Veteran struggling with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Using this character as a case study, we provide education about the clinical presentation, neurobiology, and treatment strategies for PTSD. If you or someone you love is a Veteran struggling with PTSD, please consider seeking treatment at the Veteran's Administration Hospital system. We hope you enjoy!
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are joined by our very first guest, Christina Arredondo, MD, who completed psychiatry residency at Yale University alongside Dr. Furey. Dr. Arredondo currently works as a medical director of several opiate treatment programs and as director of Behavioral Health at a federally qualified healthcare center (FQHC) in Tucson, AZ, where she is raising three daughters amongst an extensive family unit. She provides thought-provoking insights based on personal and professional experiences as we explore themes of intergenerational trauma, displacement, and toxic familial expectations. We hope you enjoy!
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we analyze the psychoanalytic classic "What About Bob." Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss portray a larger than life characters allowing for a rich discussion about the therapist-patient relationship. We discuss everything from our diagnostic impressions to our critiques about Dr. Marvin's office decor and...bizarre family puppets?!? We hope you enjoy!
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywoods gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, the hunter becomes prey when we revisit Joe Goldberg in "You" Season 4, Part 1 from Netflix. We wrap our heads around a new cast of disgustingly narcissistic characters while trying to figure out - who's stalking Joe? Along the way, we discuss everything from benzodiazepines to Spencer Pratt. We hope you enjoy!
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywoods gets right and wrong about mental health. On this episode we are breaking down three psychologists in "Shrinking," a new show on Apple TV Plus. The characters are everything and their boundaries are questionable, but that makes for great TV, right? Listen to us discuss their grief, hijinks and water consumption. Who would you want as your therapist, Paul? Gaby? Jimmy?
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Welcome to the first episode of Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we dive into Season 1 of "You." In this episode, we meet a rich cast of characters and begin exploring erotomanic delusions, personality disorders, stalking, substance use disorders, and the life-saving opioid reversal medication naloxone (Narcan). We hope you enjoy!
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, Katrina and Portia analyze Season 2 of "You" and it's just so good!! In this episode, we explore attachment theory and the classic narcissitic family structure using the Quinn family as a case study. We also compare and contrast Love Quinn and Joe Goldberg, which leads us to ask - what IS the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath? We also make fantasy treatment recommendations for some main characters and applaud this show's depiction of bipolar disorder with psychotic features. We love it when Hollywood correctly portrays how lifesaving psychiatric medication can be when used appropriately! We hope you enjoy!
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Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are on the edge of our seats discussing Season 3 of "You," especially that Taylor Swift song at the end! This show just gets better and better! In this episode, we explore Love and Joe's early attachment with baby Henry and wonder if Joe is showing signs of postpartum depression. We also analyze the depiction of couples therapy, which Portia rates as 8/10! We further explore Love's unraveling, again asking ourselves if we think she's more of a sociopath or a psychopath. We also get to know Sherry and Cary Conrad, who become two of our most favorite characters ever. Give them a spin-off! We hope you enjoy!
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Meet the hosts of Analyze Scripts - Portia Pendleton, LCSW and Katrina Furey, MD!
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