Cooler Than Homework #011 – Don’t Look Under The Bed & Tropes We Hate

Nicole Sweeney 0:18
Welcome to Cooler Than Homework, a Disney Channel Original Movie podcast. I’m Nicole Sweeney and not only did I have an imaginary friend with a ridiculous name, it was Brixa, I also went that extra, extra step and had an imaginary frenemy who was my imaginary best friend’s other friend who I kept around because Brixa like, so that’s who I was as a child,

Matthew Gaydos 0:46
Did your frenemy have a name?

Nicole Sweeney 0:47
Amra.

Matthew Gaydos 0:51
All right, well, I’m… I’m Matthew Gaydos. And when I was little I had an imaginary friend named George, and I don’t personally remember George, but apparently my mom told me that I had imaginary friend named George, who I was always concerned about people sitting on because he was sitting in certain chairs and I would be like “no, you can’t sit there, Georgia sitting there!”

Marines Alvarez 1:16
My name is Marines, and I was a very vivid daydreamer, like I would be– I was a very spacey child, but never to the extent of having an imaginary friend. So sorry, guys. I’m the boring one this week.

Ceri Riley 1:29
And I’m Ceri Riley and when I was younger, I played too much of the N64 game Hey, You Pikachu where you yelled into a microphone and had Pikachu do things. And so when we were moving across the country from Indianapolis to Washington, I thought I heard you talking to me all the time. I guess that’s an imaginary friend,

Nicole Sweeney 1:50
Matt’s addition about George reminded me that one of Brixa’s qualities was that she could be any age she wanted to be, which I would rely on when it was my bedtime because then I had an adult to stay up with me, you see, Brixa felt like… Brixa felt like being 20 years old when it was time for me to go to bed. So then I didn’t need to go to bed.

Matthew Gaydos 2:14
That’s very good.

Marines Alvarez 2:15
Amazing.

Nicole Sweeney 2:16
So… I also want to point out that this is the second week in a row that we’ve introduced ourselves with a story in which I am the most extra, but I did not pick either of these intro themes. These were not my choice. I just happened to be a lot as a child and also now, but anyway, this week, we are talking about Don’t Look Under the Bed and Mari is going to tell us what happened.

Marines Alvarez 2:44
Well, I can tell you first off what didn’t happen and that was most of what Ceri guessed last week, but one little detail that she got surprisingly right, I didn’t know you said something kind of about like personalized demons. And that sounds like a Boogeyman to me.

Nicole Sweeney 3:03
At least this this story is version of the Boogeyman.

Marines Alvarez 3:05
For sure, yeah, so anybody keeping track at home feel free to give Ceri a point for that. In this movie we start and strange things have been happening in the town of Middleburg. We watch us clocks all over town move forward. At the McCausland house mom, dad, the two brothers and our protagonist Francis, all wake up and are super sleepy and cranky until the Dad confirms that it is indeed four o’clock in the morning and not seven o’clock. When it is actually time to go to school, we learned that Francis has skipped a grade and is going to high school early. As she walks with her best friend Joanne, they see that there are dogs on roofs all over town, and Francis also spots a boy staring at her with interest. But when she tries to point him out to Joanne the boy disappears. Weird things continue to happen and they all point back to Francis. So eggs go missing at her house and somebody eggs the teachers car. Jello goes missing at home and somebody turns the school swimming pool into jello. Spray painted B’s appear on every locker at school at set the B is spray painted inside of Francis’s locker. When Francis sees the mysterious boy again, he introduces himself as Larry Houdini, an imaginary friend. It takes her a long time to accept this even though no one else can see Larry, and she embarrasses herself a lot trying to get people to see him and I hated it. It was so rough to watch for somebody like me who has chronic secondhand embarrassment. More bad things happen. The whole town has a blackout for instance, and the McCausland house is lit up in Christmas lights, and someone outs Joanne’s crush. Her parents start to get really worried about all of this. The press gets involved and the school gets involved. We also learned that Francis’ little brother had cancer but their older brother donated bone marrow and now Darwin is in recovering. Larry explains that Francis is being framed by the Boogeyman. She follows Larry to the library to check out a book on Boogeymen, which explains how to build something called a tetra fuse, which will age the boogeyman into being harmless. It also has a recipe for Boogie goo, which is a disgusting combination of ingredients that will attract the boogeyman. Meanwhile, something is not right with Larry. His eyes are sensitive to light, his nails grow longer, and he finds the yucky Boogie goo yummy. All of this scares– All of this scares Frances who looks up in the boogeybook where Boogeymen come from. And it turns out Boogeymen are made when children stop believing in their imaginary friends too soon. Larry used to be Darwin’s imaginary friend, but Francis convinced Darwin to stop believing once he got sick. Darwin accidentally steps in some boogeygoo which attracts the boogie man who kidnaps Darwin and takes him under the bed to the boogeyworld. Francis and Larry follow and try to save Darwin and defeat the boogeyman, but the tetra fuse doesn’t work. And also Larry has finished his transformation into a boogeyman. Faced with two Boogeymen, Francis tells Darwin that she was wrong and his imaginary friend is in fact real. Darwin starts believing again and Larry comes back. Francis also realizes that the original Boogeyman who has been framing her this whole time is her own imaginary friend Zoe. Francis stopped believing in her when Darwin got sick, and she decided it was time to be a grown up. Francis grabs the boogeyman’s hand and it turns him back into Zoe. Back out from under the bed, Francis’s parents come with the news that the same things that have been happening in Middleburg are happening elsewhere. They apologize for not believing in her. Zoe and Larry decide to head out to that other town that now has a Boogeyman and help there. They also break the news that Francis won’t be able to see them anymore. Francis is upset about this, but the Larry gives her a kiss and she’s like, wow, you are right. I’m grown. Larry tells her, though that you can grow up but you don’t have to get old. That night. Darwin is scared probably because he got straight up kidnapped by a Boogeyman and like, sure, I would be afraid to. So Francis, let him sleep with her Larry and Zoe, smile and watch before disappearing. The end.

Nicole Sweeney 7:27
Matt, what is this cast up to now? I have no idea genuinely. So I’m excited for you to tell.

Ceri Riley 7:36
I know one person!

Matthew Gaydos 7:38
Yes! That’s what I was hoping for. Yes,

Ceri Riley 7:41
Yeah! I watched Groundhog Day seven times in a row. And I will recognize every single person in that movie.

Matthew Gaydos 7:51
So yes, speaking of the one and only person Ceri will possibly know in this movie, and probably the most interesting person on my list. So to be fair, I’m starting high and going downhill. Stephen Tobolowsky, who plays the dad and this, he is a writer, a podcaster. He has a podcast called the Tobolowsky Files, and an actor in just about everything. I actually had in my notes that I wanted to check and see if Ceri recognize this man.

Ceri Riley 8:19
Ned Ryerson.

Matthew Gaydos 8:22
Bing! Got it.

Nicole Sweeney 8:25
Ceri, I feel like you should also explain why you watched Groundhog Day seven times in a row.

Ceri Riley 8:30
Oh, yes. Our local community movie theater The Roxy on Groundhog’s Day did a challenge where if you sit and watch the movie Groundhog’s Day, I believe seven times in a row, you get free movies for a year and free popcorn for a year. And so I thought, what else am I going to do on a Saturday? So I sat and watched it seven times in a row with like 13 minute food breaks, whatever it is like the movie is almost two hours and so whatever small bit of time you had in between viewings was the only like bathroom food break you are allowed.

Nicole Sweeney 9:03
So that is why our very, uh, Tig Notaro “under a rock” Ceri Riley is like wait. This is it!

Matthew Gaydos 9:09
He is in Groundhog Day. He is also in Spaceballs, The Goldbergs, Heroes, Glee Deadwood, One Day at a Time. This man has 270 acting credits

Nicole Sweeney 9:22
Woah!

Matthew Gaydos 9:22
Yeah, and a fun little tidbit I found out about him that is just completely wild and isn’t necessarily a “where are they now” situation but had to be shared. He has a form of ESP he calls hearing tones. And while working with David Byrne on his film True Stories, he told burn about this gift, who was inspired to write the song “Radiohead” about him, and then later on the band, Radiohead took its name from that song. So Stephen Tobolowsky is the reason that Radiohead is called Radiohead.

Nicole Sweeney 9:57
What the hell?

Ceri Riley 10:03
This man can’t be a real person.

Nicole Sweeney 10:05
That story also just had so many moving parts. I felt like the middle aged lady doing math like, like listening. there’s so many things going on there. That was wild.

Matthew Gaydos 10:16
Yeah, I feel like I know a lot about Stephen Tobolowsky because he’s just been a person through like out my childhood in almost everything I watch. So, to learn something completely new and completely wild about him was, uh great. So yeah, continuing with the cast, somebody who for some reason at one point disappears in this movie, Rudy Sadem I’m going to pronounce that that way, plays Jo the best friend, I guess in this film, and she acted in a few more things after this but seems to have stopped about 10 years ago. She was in Big Momma’s House and a couple other things, and doesn’t have much of an online presence except I found some tweets from a few years ago where she was very like sweetly tweeting at the singer from Incubus, telling him how much she loved him. Next up on the list we have Steve Valentine who played the boogeyman in this. He has gone on to do a lot of minor roles in things like Spider-Man 3, NCIS, Psych, The Big Bang Theory, and most recently is the voice of Commander Heist, who’s a villain on a show called Mickey and the Roadster Racers, which is probably on Disney Plus, I don’t know if you have kids, they’ve probably seen it. Next up, we have Robin Riker who plays Francis’s mom, who we’ve talked about before on this show, so I don’t have much of an update because she was also Brink’s mom but Robin Riker plays Catherine Madison in episode of Buffy called Witch, which I think we talked about last time, and she’s also just been in a lot of soap operas. Next up we have the star of the show, Francis, I guess that’s arguable star of the show Francis played by Erin Chambers. She’s gone on to do so many episodes of not only General Hospital but also Days of Our Lives, The Young and the Restless. And she was in the movie Alvin and the Chipmunks

Ceri Riley 12:02
As who?

Matthew Gaydos 12:03
I don’t… I didn’t see that movie, so I can’t place her.

Ceri Riley 12:08
I’ve seen that one too, but she was just not I didn’t watch it seven times. So I don’t remember anyone in it.

Nicole Sweeney 12:13
According to IMDb she was “press coordinator.”

Oh,

Matthew Gaydos 12:17
Mm, so probably not.

Ceri Riley 12:18
No, like if she was the main woman like the love interest in it. Maybe I would… I am the fool for not recognizing her, but Press Coordinator? No, no.

Marines Alvarez 12:30
Nicole, She was also Amelia DeLongpre in Veronica Mars.

Nicole Sweeney 12:33
Oh, yes. I knew I knew her dang face and I couldn’t place her. Yes, yes. Okay. The whole world makes sense to me now. I was waiting. I was like, I’m not gonna like look her up. I’m gonna let Matt do the thing. And like that will make it make sense. But this was not something that would stand out to Matt.

Matthew Gaydos 12:55
No.

Nicole Sweeney 12:55
It was really unsettling the entire time. I was watching it that I was like, I know I know this face.

Matthew Gaydos 13:00
I also found out she was 20 in this film when she’s playing 14 year old Francis Bacon McCausland

Nicole Sweeney 13:07
What?

Matthew Gaydos 13:07
Yeah. 20 years old.

Nicole Sweeney 13:09
I’m not surprised that she’s not 14 but it is wild to me that she’s 20.

Matthew Gaydos 13:13
Especially playing like a middle schooler who has been like bumped ahead into high school like, it’s weird that they would cast an even older person to play that person. Last but certainly not least, in our where are they now segment, we have Ty Hodges who played Larry Houdini. First of all, I’m going to send a visual aid link over to my fellow podcasters here just so they can see how Ty is holding up.

Nicole Sweeney 13:39
Wow!

Marines Alvarez 13:39
Mmmhmm.

Matthew Gaydos 13:46
Just a quiet “mmhmm?” This man is insanely ripped that like this man is just ripped to the nines. I don’t know like what his diet is, but I want it I’m going to steal it, whatever it is whatever workout he’s doing, looking great Ty Hodges

Nicole Sweeney 14:05
Matt wants to get on the imaginary friend workout plan.

Matthew Gaydos 14:09
Yeah, whatever– whatever he’s doing good job dude. Apparently since being Larry Houdini in this film, he also went on to be in Even Stevens. I don’t know if anyone else watched Even Stevens. I was not really watching that when it was out, but I don’t know if you recognize him from that.

Marines Alvarez 14:25
Sorry, I was still looking at this picture.

Matthew Gaydos 14:29
That’s fair! It’s on Instagram. For those that are interested. Just find Ty Hodges on Instagram. It’s the Ty Hodges and it’s one of his more recent photos so you too can see the–

Nicole Sweeney 14:40
It’ll be in the show notes as well.

Matthew Gaydos 14:43
Yeah, there you go.

Marines Alvarez 14:44
I watched Even Stevens pretty regularly. I feel like I don’t recognize him in my head but if I saw an episode of Even Stevens again, I’d be like, oh, that kid

Nicole Sweeney 14:55
I– that is exactly how I felt too. He was another one who while I was watching it, I was like he vaguely familiar, but in that way that Disney the Disney Channel sort of used its actors across a lot of different things. So I just sort of assumed anybody that looks familiar like probably they were in something else on the Disney Channel couldn’t necessarily place what but I just stopped and looked him up. He was Ren’s rival like the other like smart.

Marines Alvarez 15:22
Oh, sure!

Nicole Sweeney 15:23
Yeah, right?

Marines Alvarez 15:24
Yes, yes, yes. I just saw him!

Nicole Sweeney 15:26
I read the character description and I was like, okay, yes, that guy.

Matthew Gaydos 15:31
Yeah, he’s gone on to he had a food truck apparently with his family called Drippin Chicken, which is great.

Nicole Sweeney 15:37
Sure. The food industry does appear to be a really like popular choice for former DCOM stars. And I love it. Yeah,

Matthew Gaydos 15:45
it’s like soap operas and the food industry.

Nicole Sweeney 15:47
We should go on a big road trip, like okay, if we ever get a place where we can do a tour.

Marines Alvarez 15:55
This is the project of the episode

Nicole Sweeney 15:57
This will never happen, but yes, we’re gonna stop and eat at all the restaurants. It’ll be great.

Matthew Gaydos 16:04
I’m on board. Speaking of food, and also Even Stevens. He was recently on Christie Carlson Romano’s Throwback Kitchen cooking show that she has on YouTube. So you can go to be charming together and they make jerk chicken together. So yeah.

Marines Alvarez 16:19
his Instagram profile has hashtag 305 which I’m assuming means he’s in Miami, so I can find him and ask him about his food and workout regimen for you, Matt.

Nicole Sweeney 16:35
This is just for Matt. For Matt..

Marines Alvarez 16:38
Clearly.

Matthew Gaydos 16:38
Yeah.

Marines Alvarez 16:38
I’m a good friend.

Nicole Sweeney 16:44
Don’t Look Under the Bed, nostalgia check. Do you remember watching this movie as a kid?

Matthew Gaydos 16:49
No!

Marines Alvarez 16:50
I do. And I was so worried last week about the experience of revisiting it, because it was totally my jam. And I’m still really nervous but yes this was my jam.

Nicole Sweeney 17:02
I have no recollection whatsoever of watching this movie as a kid.

Ceri Riley 17:05
And nope, no recollection at all.

Nicole Sweeney 17:10
You know, we keep hoping like maybe this week, it’ll be time. This will be the one Ceri will be like, Oh, yeah, I watched that DCOM all the time. It was my favorite movie.

Ceri Riley 17:21
Yeah, I’m kind of afraid that I’ll watch it. I’ll see a movie and I’ll be like, this actually seems kind of familiar. But it will take me until like halfway through to realize that I’ve watched it before.

Nicole Sweeney 17:32
So this is a new experience for most of us. But did you like this movie? Mari did– did it hold up? How do you feel?

Marines Alvarez 17:39
I don’t know. I, um, I feel like I can totally see why this was my jam growing up. I mean, I think part of it too was it was like on heavy repeat when it came out. And I watched it every time but also it was a little slower paced I think and there were times where I found myself tuning out. And I don’t know if that was partially because this was like very familiar to me. But also when I was trying to do the like summary of the plot, there was a lot in the middle where I was like idk man, like weird stuff is happening. So I feel like there is some muddiness in the plot. I really didn’t want to go first because I wanted to hear what you guys had to say. There are some feels for sure but Erin Chambers, I think, didn’t always do a good job of like selling her more emotional scenes. But it’s like sibling feels and it’s like grief and it’s I mean, even have like, cancer thrown in there. So there were a lot of times that I was like, Yeah, man, that still gets me in the heart. So I don’t think that it’s my favorite. It doesn’t hold up that well compared to some of the other ones that we saw. But yeah, it was good. It was no Can of Worms.

Matthew Gaydos 18:56
bottom bar I think for a long time of like, yeah at least it’s not as bad as Can of Worms.

Ceri Riley 19:02
My bottom is still Genius. I committed to it. I can’t change my list.

Matthew Gaydos 19:08
That’s I mean, I also like Genius is my second to the bottom. So I agree that those, those two deserve each other down at the bottom of the list. But that being said, Don’t Look Under the Bed I really enjoyed, actually. So I I love the slow pace of it. Actually, I think that was one of my favorite things about it was that there wasn’t a lot going on. And it didn’t try to like throw you into this super heavy concept in the first five minutes and just throw a bunch of information at you. It kind of let things develop. And for a while, yeah, I think there are parts where it slows down enough that you could easily be looking away or forget what happened in sections because not a lot happens. Larry Houdini has to be very charming and carry this movie because no one else is doing anything. So I think that he does a really good job of that and makes me interested enough in his character and in the movie to keep me enjoying it. So I think it kind of lands somewhere in the middle for me and– on the DCOM list, but I still can’t think of something that I outright disliked about this movie.

Ceri Riley 20:13
Yeah, I had similar feelings where it was just kind of middling for me. And Larry Houdini, like you said, Matt had the task of carrying this whole movie, and I thought he did a pretty good job. Like, the costumes were entertaining. He was constantly very high energy and had a lot of, I don’t know, physical comedy and sight gags and was just like a goofy kid. The other kid actors did pretty good, pretending he didn’t exist and things like that, too. And I really liked going under the bed at the end. I can guarantee that I would have wished as a kid that I could shrink down and go and explore the spooky under bed where everything becomes giant, because I don’t know that was the kind of stuff that I was into and it would’ve been fun and weird.

Matthew Gaydos 20:59
The Boogeyworld was very, very cool.

Nicole Sweeney 21:01
Yeah, the that whole Boogeyworld thing was super cool. I agree with everything that’s been said so far about the character of Larry Houdini. I think that he was super fun. And just the whole end of the movie I thought was really good. This one got off to kind of a rough start for me, both because of all of the the, like the camera movements, I was just like, please stop, please just be still. So that was like a little rough for me. And also, we’re going to talk about this later but the central plot is one in which people are not believing the protagonist about something that’s going on. And like, it has to be that way and it’s for the point of the story, but that is a thing that stresses me out so much. Like I hate I hate it I hate hate, hate, hate the trope of people not believing the main character about something that like that we the audience know to be true.

Matthew Gaydos 21:56
Especially when there’s so many moments in this film where we know very clearly like what she could say to get out of this or just we know that other characters are experiencing similar things to her. And so that it like everyone is blind to the outside world and is only focused on her being the one clearly to blame and won’t listen to reason. But also no one else is really giving the good reasons that we know there are to give.

Marines Alvarez 22:25
I also I started thinking about this as like, you know, it’s billed as horror, you know, Disney Channel has had like two horror films in their original movie lineup. And so it’s interesting to me, obviously, it’s got like the boogeyman and the monster, but also from the perspective of what would really scare you as like a 13 or 14 year old, the idea that all of this was happening and that you were being set up and that you could see things that other people couldn’t see. And then everybody starts questioning her and not only her but her sanity, like all of that is like undercover scary and I like maybe says more about who I am still as an adult then it says about like, what the movie did good, but watching it still I was like uncomfortable. I was like, I don’t want this. I want somebody to believe her. So it was still, I guess effective in that way. But yeah, the things that it did that were like about the boogeyman and this whole idea that if you had an imaginary friend, and you stopped believing in that person, then they would become a Boogeyman like that, I thought that was clever. Like there were a lot of lines of it that I was still like, Yeah, man, I see why I watched the crap out of this.

Nicole Sweeney 23:39
Yeah, totally. I think I bring up the not liking that trope, mostly to say why I got off to a rough start with this movie. So like for the first half hour, I was like, I am not sure about any of this. I’m not sure how I feel about this fucking camera that won’t stop moving. And all these adults who are accusing this girl of doing this thing that she clearly didn’t do. And for sure this was you know, the stuff of my young nightmare. So if I had seen this, like maybe I did see this movie and I, like blocked it out because it’s traumatic. But I– so that first, you know, like half hour, I was like, This is not the experience that I am looking for in a Disney Channel Original Movie. If I want to be this upset, I will watch, not this. But I think that yes, ultimately, the ideas in the movie are really, really interesting to me, because there’s a lot of like heavy high level stuff going on in what is fundamentally to its core, a children’s story. And so I think that is super interesting, just like the way in which she is– what is her name, I want to call her Amelia DeLongepre now.

Marines Alvarez 24:48
Francis.

Nicole Sweeney 24:53
The way in which Francis is dealing with her sort of guilt and grief combined about her brother and you know, just the idea of like an imaginary friend going through a, like painful growing up sort of phase too, like, all of the layers of that kind of stuff I thought were really, really interesting and thoughtful. And it is the kind of thing that I find super interesting and kind of wish, like I want to see it in a more complex story. Like I’m glad it exists in a space like this, that is well and truly for children, but there’s also a part of me that’s like, okay, but can I get a more fleshed out version of this for adult me?

Ceri Riley 25:41
You basically said everything so beautifully. That has now reinvigorated my appreciation for this movie. But I’m going to be negative because I have to justify why it’s halfway down my list.

Nicole Sweeney 25:54
I mean you could move it but–

Ceri Riley 25:55
I could move it but no!

Marines Alvarez 25:57
Sure, I guess you could also ruin it.

Ceri Riley 26:01
They’re very petty grievances. I think in the same way that camera angles at the beginning were jarring to you Nicole, the same shot of the dolls turning their head, or the camera that they use maybe like, it was probably like three, but it felt like 50 times throughout the movie. I thought it worked for me and it probably would have worked for me as a kid, but as an adult watching it that pulled me out of it a little bit like the–

Nicole Sweeney 26:27
Ceri did you never have to sleep in a room full of dolls?

Ceri Riley 26:31
No.

Nicole Sweeney 26:32
Because let me tell you if you have that experience as a child, mmmm. It– it still affects me some type of way as an adult.

Ceri Riley 26:43
Clearly, I’m not the target demo for this movie. I never slept in a room with dolls. Creepy but I think the the emphasis on the unlike environmental horror of it the ways in which the boogeyman wasn’t just causing pranks, but like i don’t know i All I remember is the and like the crow flocked in the back of the classroom or something like that, but it was okay. Not not particularly for me and then when she kissed– when Larry kissed her.

Oh, yes. I agree!

Unnecessary plot point. I started thinking about how it was weird that her brother’s imaginary friend was kissing her. And then I was like, nope! Can’t!

Nicole Sweeney 27:21
I also super felt that way. And I messaged Mario as soon as I got to it. So part of me feels like you added that line to your plot synopsis mostly like to preempt the line about her being like I am grown now or whatever slowly to preempt to this point, which I totally forgot about, but I am 100% with Sorry, that was fucking weird.

Marines Alvarez 27:42
What did you send me?

Nicole Sweeney 27:43
I basically just something along the lines of like, that was really weird. I was with the movie. I was straight up crying. I mean, I had been crying before I started watching this movie. It’s like I was in a state. I was primed to be emotional, but like something at the end that ended sequence had me in tears, and I like messaged you about how I was in tears. And then, five seconds later, the imaginary friend kisses her and I was like, wait, I’m sorry, what?

Jesus Christ.

Matthew Gaydos 28:10
Interesting side note about that kiss. It turned out that when Ty Hodges was auditioning for this, he tells the story on the Throwback Kitchen video. He said he went in to audition and like everyone else who was sitting in the audition room was like the Erik Von Dettens of the world. Like they did not write the role to be played by a person of color and they were planning on just like casting the generic DCOM blond hair blue eye kid. And so Disney Channel was unsure about casting him because of the kiss scene especially because they apparently had concerns about their Southern affiliates being unhappy with the onscreen kiss.

Marines Alvarez 28:13
Yeah.

Matthew Gaydos 28:13
Yes, in 1999. Yeah.

Marines Alvarez 28:59
You kiss the heck out of her Ty Hodges.

Ceri Riley 29:01
Yeah, now I’m in favor of this kiss.

Nicole Sweeney 29:03
Yeah, now I begrudgingly have to support this fucking kiss.

Matthew Gaydos 29:07
I didn’t know I didn’t mean that as like a way to try and sway you because I also agree that it’s really weird that the imaginary friend kisses because I actually read that fact and the trivia before watching this. I assumed that this would like naturally lead to a romantic moment where they would kiss and then going through the movie I’m like, hmm, they don’t seem to really like falling for each other. And so then when he does kisser it is, is it is weird.

Marines Alvarez 29:34
They’re not falling for each other. I’m not defending this… Listen…

Nicole Sweeney 29:40
Aren’t you though?

Marines Alvarez 29:41
When he– when she first sees him like it’s this like very aw shucks kind of thing where she pulls her friend aside and she’s like, that guy is looking at me. And then there’s another moment where they’re interacting or whatever. And she like you can see her like she puts her hair behind her ear and she’s like doing it in a very nice blushy kind of like, yeah, I can see you kind of way. So for her, it was always like, ooh, cute boy and then things kind of spiral out of control. But also there’s also like she shared with him a lot about like, grieving for her brother and like, he was a friend. I don’t know, there was an emotion there, I guess. I think that what makes the kiss weird is it is that it wasn’t like, goodbye, Francis. I’ll miss you. Kiss. It was like she wasn’t she didn’t want to say goodbye. And she was like, he was like, I got this and he kissed her. And she was like, Okay bye. I don’t know. That dynamic is weird. The fact that these two people who went through a lot at the end, you know, it’s about like, growing up. So I sent–

Nicole Sweeney 29:42
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Marines Alvarez 30:03
So I sent Nicole message. And I was like, I can’t wait to talk about some of the undercover weird like messages or like politics of this movie. And one was the fact that like, at the end, she’s like, ahh my sexual awakening is here. No more imaginary friends. Weird.

Ceri Riley 31:03
Now that you’ve said that, and I think this is maybe brewing in the back of my head, but until you explained her, like ongoing crush so wonderfully, I think I wouldn’t have a problem with it if she kissed him instead. It was like that was the culmination of like she had had a crush on him this whole time. And then he was like, Whoa, didn’t expect that because he’s a supernatural being of whatever.

Nicole Sweeney 31:25
Okay, but counterpoint if like, his whole thing is I’m the imaginary friend and I’m like, you’re, you know, I’m your youth, right? But this moment of the imaginary friends leaving her and like literally saying, you know, bye forever he will never see us again. We will only exist in your memories. Part of what Mari is getting at like that is meant to be a moment of like, see, here you are, you are grown now.

Ceri Riley 31:50
You’re a woman now.

Marines Alvarez 31:51
your interests are elsewhere, right? Like–

Nicole Sweeney 31:53
Yes, your interests are elsewhere. I will demonstrate to you now.

Marines Alvarez 31:59
Me, a handsome man who lives only in your imagination this shall happen to you a lot.

Nicole Sweeney 32:09
Oh, wow!

Matthew Gaydos 32:10
It’s gonna be an awkward first kiss story. How, wait, are we getting into like some weird like Edward Bella territory? Like how old is his character supposed to be?

Marines Alvarez 32:20
Millennia honestly

Ceri Riley 32:22
He just keeps going from one child to another I think, maybe? I don’t know.

Nicole Sweeney 32:28
I don’t like it. Next.

Marines Alvarez 32:29
So the other the other thing that I was like kind of like this is weird watching as an adult, but then I came back around like I convinced myself. There were a lot of things like this, like where do the imaginary friends come from? And how do they exist? And like, they went to the library and there was magically a book there about boogeyman and there’s a guy who talks him in his head and they’re all things that I was like, what, but then I was like, you know, just accept it. It’s a story about imaginary friends and like Boogeymen. And the fact that Is that the point of the story is like, don’t grow up too soon, just like have fun, and be carefree. And you know a lot of ways the movie is almost like forcing that upon you too, and I am an adult so I was like no, but looking at it for the intended audience, I can see how it would have been like fun.

Nicole Sweeney 33:19
Every time you are thinking to yourself, well, this doesn’t make sense the movies like fuck you. This isn’t for you!

This week’s group discussion topic is some of our least favorite tropes. I mentioned previously, that sort of this idea of stories where people do not believe the main character about something is a like a big one for me. And I– it’s interesting too, because I actually can think of a couple of examples of stories that use it really well. One of my favorite Buffy episodes is Normal Again. The premise of the episode is basically that Buffy is institutionalized and she believes that the entire however many seasons of the show up to that point, I think it was in season five, which had a lot of like heavy sort of mental health related themes and stuff built into it, but that she is supposed to have basically had like a mental breakdown and that that is the cause of all of the the story leading up to that point. Like the reveal is that she is a demonic sort of force has tricked her into this position. I think that’s what it is. I actually forget how or why this happened. But the episode has its flaws, but like the actual fundamental concept of Buffy believing firmly in this thing that we the audience know to be true because we’ve, you know, watched all those five seasons play out while nobody is believing her, like that idea was really really cool and interesting of a thing for a show about sort of supernatural stuff to be to be tackling and like, I think it was, like cool and smart of them to do. But also, it’s just like, really painful for me to watch. And it was only in getting ready to have this conversation that I started to kind of think about why this is something that upsets me so much. And I think some of it is something that Mari said earlier about the fact that it is often situated in children’s media. So this is like a very particular kind of thing for kids, especially, you know, to have, the idea of not being believed, is very directly tied up in a sense of powerlessness, for children. And so like those two things going hand in hand just becomes really stressful and unpleasant for me as a viewing or reading experience. And then it’s also just like, you know, in a bigger broader sense culturally like that, like that is also true more broadly, that like people not believe in you when you are going through something is directly equated to a kind of powerlessness that, like– I don’t think that media needs to be escapist but it is a thing that I often am like, I don’t know that I want to have this experience. I don’t know that I want to choose to have the experience of of like, putting myself in the position of that kind of powerlessness. So I don’t know, for all of those reasons this this sort of trope and phenomenon of people not believing the main character is definitely one of my least favorite tropes, even though it is something that I think can be used very effectively in the right story.

Matthew Gaydos 36:36
Yeah, I feel the same way about that trope like I– I am not a fan of it typically. And I think that stems from one of my greatest fears is being misunderstood or not being like, or not really being I don’t know as I stammer with my words, that’s hilarious.

Nicole Sweeney 36:55
Right, it’s this!

Marines Alvarez 36:57
This exact moment right now?

Matthew Gaydos 36:59
Yeah, This is my greatest fear realized! But no, I also, I also hate that trope, I think because it stems largely from my, one of my greatest fears of being misunderstood and I am someone who often will like over talk or over explain things, because I am afraid of that person walking away from a conversation and thinking that I didn’t make myself clear to them. And so I like when I see it to the extreme level of people like downright not believing the truth when you tell it to them. I, I start to stress out myself, but my trope that I hate, I guess is a strong word maybe for this, but I definitely when it when it happens, it’s one of those things that irks me and I kind of it ruins rewatches of something for me and it’s the contrived stupidity trope, which is sort of when a character who has not in the past been dumb is suddenly made to be dumber, because the writers couldn’t think of anything else to complicate the plot, I guess. And one example of this is kind of an easy one to point out but on The Simpsons over the 30 seasons they’ve had, Homer is a character who has been downright like three year old intelligence and doesn’t know how to like operate a car and then other episodes, he is seen to like be a normal functioning adult human being kind of thing. And it’s just, it’s the way they play with that character is kind of like Okay, do we need Homer to be dumb this episode? Sure, cool. He’s dumb now.

Nicole Sweeney 38:43
That kind of thing is definitely much more common in serialized storytelling where, like, they’re, they have to sort of constantly invent new kind of plots and stuff and so, like, for 30 years there’s a point at which you like, well, I don’t know man, this plotline only works if this character isn’t smart enough to notice things that in previous circumstances, they would have been smart enough to notice. I think it kind of depends on the type of story that you’re telling whether or not you can get away with that sort of things like whether or not the Simpsons can do this thing that is annoying and then like carry on, versus a story that relies on me that is more like inherently intricate. There’s a point at which as a viewer, you’re like, Oh, you just need to stop, you need to end this story. You need to be done trying to tell this story, because at this point, you are no longer keeping your characters consistent, because it’s not possible for you to keep coming up with these stories for these characters that, you know, that makes sense for them all to still be together and be having these kinds of experiences.

Matthew Gaydos 39:46
Yep. Which leads me to my prime example that I wanted to bring up with this trope that I is a more recent one that it’s not a heavy spoiler, I promise you, but it’s in Toy Story 4. So if you haven’t seen Toy Story 4, it’s a little bit of a spoiler, but it’s more of like how a character behaves in Toy Story 4, rather than what actually happens. But in Toy Story 4 for some reason, Buzz Lightyear is extremely dumb, and has seemed to have forgotten all the lessons he learned in the previous movies. And especially since by this point he’s been around and been a toy in this world for like 20 years, we’ve seen him do a lot of fun adventures with his friends and suddenly in this, the idea of someone having an inner voice or a conscience, he starts to believe is actually a voice that talks to you through your push button, and he has to do whatever the push button says. And I’m like, what, what? What this character has never been this dumb, since like when he was first opened in the box and Toy Story 1 and now you need him to be dumb for your movie so you completely change the character.

Nicole Sweeney 40:50
Yeah, it’s like it’s a form of character regression without actually exploring what it means for that character to like, it’s fine that you have a character like backslide. And and you know, unlearn lessons like that is totally a thing that happens. We did a an episode on Emma, which is my favorite Jane Austen novel. And like, one of my favorite things about Emma, part of why I love her as a character is because she keeps insisting that she’s going to learn her lesson and then she doesn’t.

Marines Alvarez 41:17
She does the opposite!

Nicole Sweeney 41:20
Like no I’m gonna be better now, but then like, you know, she messes up and like, it takes her a few tries to, like really get it right, which is incredibly human. Like that’s a very normal and human thing to do. But it like that only works if you’re actually exploring that, right like that is baked into the premise of the book, like part of what is going on in this book is this story about this young woman, you know, continually messing up until she finally gets it right. As opposed to just suddenly deciding that in order to move our plot along, we we need to, you know, move this character backwards a ton, but we’re not actually going to explore that character regressing in any way.

Matthew Gaydos 42:00
And no one acknowledges it or realizes in really and part of that is because I think and this is what I love Toy Story for and a lot of things they do, but one of the things that makes it hard as a rewatch for me is that a ton of these characters who have been around for all four movies are stripped of most of their personality and are given like nothing to do so the ways you would expect them to react to Buzz acting like this or other characters doing other things they don’t really do because they don’t have much personality. And so it just kind of is similar thing of like maybe you should have stopped at 3 because maybe you didn’t have a story that you thought you had especially because they give like Woody this very deep emotional story and so they had a good idea for one character and then go right we have all these other people that need to come along.

Ceri Riley 42:50
I will say the one time I don’t mind I guess dumbing down a character is if it’s in like an exaggerated supervillain character and in certain kinds of stories and this is probably coming from like watching cartoons a lot reading comics a lot superhero stories. On the one hand, I think in order to have a world ending or world threatening crisis, like you have to exaggerate in some ways, but the other thing is that usually these really big really evil forces like the big bads are usually written like that in the first place and then they sort of bend to their character to meet whatever the heroes are doing at any given time, which is different than what you’re describing about like the character was one way and now it is a different thing because of what we need. This is like this character was always just like a generic force of evil and this evil is changing forms because we need the the main hero to be pressured in these ways. I don’t have any specific examples because I’m tired.

Nicole Sweeney 43:48
But you want what you’re talking about, though, is inherently different because the the examples that Matt gave that bothered him are all examples of main characters.

Ceri Riley 43:56
Yes.

Nicole Sweeney 43:57
Or they’re both examples of, of like main care And like a part of your point is that it’s the villain it’s it is a essentially like a foil character. It is a character who fundamentally exists to serve the main character and some sort of way or another so it is less bothersome.

Marines Alvarez 44:14
Once when Matt said his trope, like I felt it deeply like this is something definitely that I had experienced in media. I’m having like a hard time pinpointing one except like the example that came to my head, and it’s also not exactly right, but I’m just going to share with the people. The first thing that I thought of was Anastasia Steele in Fifty Shades of Grey. But only because like half the time she was like a super genius and she got like an amazing job and she’s the smartest person ever. And then the other half of the time she’s like, I don’t have any email.

Nicole Sweeney 44:51
That’s just what I was about to say to what is email and she’s like, a 22 year old college student like I what?

Marines Alvarez 44:57
It was because she had to be like, a stupid Now that she would put herself in the in like the situation not to victim blame, because nobody invites themselves to get almost murdered, which is essentially what I felt like was going on there. But like she had to be naive enough, I guess to get herself into certain situations, but then like also the like smartest prettiest human being So, anyway, that was my example. Um, a trope that I really hate is enemies to lovers. I feel like also that this is a job that generally what happens I think in stories is that you get kind of enemies to lovers baited were more of the story like puts the sexual tension there and there’s a lot of times that the couple maybe doesn’t even end up together. And I’m fine with hate to love Pride and Prejudice is one of my favorite stories of all time and there it’s not full blown hate, I would say but it’s like, you know, misunderstanding, they don’t get along and they proceed–

Nicole Sweeney 45:57
He is the last man on earth that she would ever prevailed upon to marry, Mari. Come on now!

Marines Alvarez 46:04
So okay, hate to love is great, fine. We can do that. situations. It’s the enemies to lovers. Like if Mr. Darcy had tried to murder, Lizzie like maybe that’s a different story. Yeah, so that entire idea of like, I want to kill you, but then sometimes somehow it ends up being like, no, but that means I love you. Twilight is a great example of that wants to drink her blood can’t help but like, want to murder her every time he sniffs her and then all of a sudden they’re in love, hate it, don’t want to do it. I don’t. I don’t want to consume those stories.

Nicole Sweeney 46:41
And it seems like everyone that you follow on social media loves it.

Marines Alvarez 46:45
All of my friends love enemies to lovers because it’s so quote unquote complex. Fuck that. No.

Matthew Gaydos 46:55
We’ll see if we have to have a conversation about that in a few weeks after Star Wars Tise of Skywalker comes out.

Marines Alvarez 47:00
I know. This is why– this this is really coming from my deep hatred of even the possibility of Reylo happening. And you know what, even if it doesn’t happen, I’ve had to be put up with the Reylo for so long in fan communities. I’m so upset.

Ceri Riley 47:18
Listen, you’ve suffered online. The tropes that I could think of and I wanted to keep it simple was also something where I see it and I’m like, fuck that, I hate it is when Asian women in movies or TV are given a streak of colored hair to stand out. Big Hero Six, Glee, Scott Pilgrim, always like a blue streak, a purple streak, a pink streak, something to show that they’re not like other girls. It’s like the modern version of I’m not like other girls, but it’s specifically like, Oh, I’m Asian, but I’m cool. I don’t have just black hair. I have a streak. And I say this as someone with dyed hair but it’s just it’s like bonkers to me. I saw people had like put together a montage of this. And it’s always like one streak of very long hair short hair, that’s a weird color.

Matthew Gaydos 48:13
Yeah, Pacific Rim is another one.

Ceri Riley 48:15
I hate it. Like let your characters write your characters to be different. Write your characters to encompass a range of emotions and personalities and everything. But if you just don’t make your Asian female leads have one streak of color in the hair. You can be more creative than that.

Marines Alvarez 48:31
Whatever you do.

Nicole Sweeney 48:35
Or Ceri is coming for you.

Ceri Riley 48:37
Yeah, I’ll fight you.

Nicole Sweeney 48:41
And now it is time to discuss the lessons that we learned from Don’t Look Under the Bed.

Matthew Gaydos 48:46
I learned that mostly based on this conversation we’ve been having that it’s okay to have imaginary friends, but you don’t need to kiss ’em.

Marines Alvarez 48:55
That’s really funny and I swear that this is my note for my lesson. My lesson that I learned is that kissing is better than imaginary friends.

Ceri Riley 49:08
My lesson is fingernails can be deadly so remember to keep them trimmed.

Nicole Sweeney 49:15
And the lesson that I learned is a direct quote from the movie: Just because you’re getting older doesn’t mean you have to get old.

Matthew Gaydos 49:24
Deep.

Nicole Sweeney 49:27
And now to close out this episode, it is time for Ceri to guess the plot of the next movie that we are watching on Cooler Than Homework. Next time we will be discussing Horse Sense.

Ceri Riley 49:39
I look at this– I’m so tired and I just think it has to be about a horse girl. It has to be about a girl who’s dreamed of having a horse her entire life. And then this horse. Her name is Annabella and she goes to..

The horse or the girl?

a farm.. The, oh the girl the horse. The horse’s name is Excalibur.

Matthew Gaydos 50:02
Mmm, good. Good good.

Ceri Riley 50:03
She like sees all the other horses and goes to the stables and much like you are peering out over a new cafeteria. She sees all these loving horses with their loving owners. And then Excalibur is like an asshole at the back, who’s like rowdy, mean, kicks the dirt at her, but then she has a telepathic connection to the horse. And really, he’s just mean because he got captured from the wild and he misses his family. And I was not a horse girl so I’m not channeling real human emotion to this. So she really loves Excalibur and he misses his family. And so then she like rides away with him into the woods and then find some other horses and then her parents are like, Oh, no, she’s gone. She’s like, I must save my horse. And then she really learns to trust her horse and then they went a horse jumping competition or whatever they do. What is the tagline

The tagline for this movie is can this city guy and his cowboy cousin saddle up to save the ranch?

Oh, no. It’s not a horse girl movie at all! Well okay, obviously it’s about a city boy. He’s probably 13 he comes to a ranch. He has a cousin who’s probably like 14 or whatever this older cousin, noble, knows horses, cleans up chicken poop. And then the city boys like, Huh, I don’t care about farms. And then the cowboy cousins like my dad died and left the farm and now, me and the horse need help. And then the city boy is like, okay, I guess I do learn that hard work pays off. Also, horses are rad. And so it’s a horse boy movie instead of a horse girl movie. Because really, horse people can be of all genders. the end.

Marines Alvarez 52:00
Beautiful.

Nicole Sweeney 52:01
That’s gonna be the lesson that I learned for next time for gifting me with that, and you can join us next time to find out if that is in any way the plot to Horse Sense. If you are enjoying this podcast, we would greatly appreciate it if you would tell your friends or rate and review it. We would love to hear all of your thoughts about Don’t Look Under the Bed. So there will be a post dedicated to this episode of snarksquad.com/DCOM you can find us all on Twitter @DCOMsquad. I am @SweeneySays.

Matthew Gaydos 52:36
I am at @MatthewGaydos.

Marines Alvarez 52:37
You can find me @mynameismarines.

Ceri Riley 52:39
And I’m @ceriley.

Nicole Sweeney 52:41
This podcast is produced by the four of us, edited by me, transcribed by Mari, and our theme music is by Stefan Chin. We will be back again in two weeks with Horse Sense.