Welcome to Desperately Devoted.
Think of us as your favorite neighbors as we chat about life and relationships.
All while we revisit the iconic show Desperate Housewives together.
I'm Terry Hatcher, I'm Andrea Bowen, and I'm Emerson Tunny. Well, Hi, welcome back to Desperately Devoted. Hello, my favorite podcast that I've ever hosted. Well, we get to rewatch Desperate Housewives every week.
This week we.
Are rewatching episode twelve, which was amazing, and Weerson and Andrew. How was your week. I've missed you. I love seeing your little faces.
It was good. It was a really busy week.
It was a combination of busyness and fullness and so much gratitude and surging pregnancy hormones that made me feel totally out of control. And I was googling in the middle of the night, like what is pregnancy rage? And I found out that there is a thing in their third trimester which I'm now in of pregnancy rage.
And oh, thank god for online communities.
Not always sometimes there's scary bad places, but in pregnancy, I think, oh, thanks for my people letting me know that what I'm feeling is totally valid. And okay and normal.
Yeah, well, I mean I kind of have that with the sandwich videos I'm doing about caregiving on my Instagram. Yeah, creating a community and podcasts do that, you know, and that's what we're trying to do here.
So yeah, yeah, I alwish your week.
My week.
My week has been good. I mean, I'm working. I'm working really hard on a pitch that I a movie I'm pitching, and it's really been one of those incredible experiences when you drop into a story that you feel so passionate about telling, and a part of you feels like, you know, what this is actually already been told and thinking about I mean, slightly different, but that kind of connectivity of how you feel a part of something larger, you know, whether in the case of Desperate Housewives it's
the community of a street, the way the community of the neighborhood comes together in your case, Andrea, finding online forums, in the case of our podcast right now, you know, finding our listeners and thinking what makes us feel not alone in the world. I've really been meditating a lot on this week. How I think the idea of being truly no by another person is the biggest gift.
That we and can have I mean known, I guess seen as part of me.
Yeah, but sometimes I think we're seen and we aren't actually known. And to be known by someone and recognized in that way, I think, you know, when thinking about the idea of Martha Hooper, like what constitutes an exciting life or in her case, an exciting death as we get into in this episode. But I feel like, to me, an exciting life is a life where I feel that I am known by the people around me. I love that.
I mean, I'm committed to continue to know you, re meet you through all of your many colors and phases of life.
That's an interesting thing that you would put it that way, though, too, because it makes me think about how sometimes we are not able to broaden our view of somebody like they are what they are when we first meet them, and if we know them for decades, we don't actually let them evolve into maybe a different version of themselves, which reminds me of what Susan and Edie go through a little bit in this episode, which we'll get to all.
I got to ask you first, though, has anybody desperately devoted to anything this week?
For me, it was my.
Pillow because I, like you, was very busy and super tired and overworked and overtraveled and overvirused, and I just wanted to be in my bed on my pillow at all times.
Yeah, So for me, it was my pillow.
Yeah, for me, it is my mother.
Oh.
I am so desperately devoted to my mom. I feel so extra connected to her throughout this pregnancy. And I just have to say that one of her gifts to me at my shower was to bring me which you both saw, the outfit that I wore when she brought me home from the hospital, and she has kept it in pristine condition and she gave it to me, and that is what I'm going to bring my little girl home in. So it's beauty much, but that's what I'm devoting to.
Wait to see that.
That was the most beautiful, little yellow baby outfit. God, it made me so happy. I think I'm desperately devoted to my Spotify playlist right now. I make playlists for each project i'm writing, and I have one for the project I'm pitching later this week. And I was kind of stuck in the story and I put it on and I went for a long drive and I really like to do that. I sometimes like let myself watch how I imagine the movie would unfold and what the
soundtrack might be. And so music has really been a great unsticker. It's unstuck me from various Yeah.
Inspire me a lot of ways about music in my life, and I've had other people suggest that to me, and I find music can be a good unsticker.
Yeah.
Well, okay, so speaking of music, Yeah, this episode episode twelve, every Day a Little Death comes from the stephen Son Time musical A Little Night Music from nineteen seventy three.
This one aired on January sixteenth, two thousand and five.
I know we're into five, we're out of two thousand and four. I love it.
And my highlight reel for this episode, which by the way, I'm now referring to it as my highlight reel because it's football season and I'm a huge football fan and I love everything football and I had football on all day yesterday and so but the forty nine ers lost and that was sad, and they lost badly so and they're a lot of their team is beat up. So that's not a good sign for my team. But anyway, my highlight reel on episode twelve was Missus Hooper's death.
Death is confirmed, your body is found? Lynette Is she uses the false assumption that her son has cancer to help her get into the overbooked yoga.
Class that a new parenting low to me. I mean to go from gum and the hair to my childhoods a terminal illness, so I can just please let me into yoga is really karmically. I think you're circling the karmic drain. There.
I love that image, circling the karmic drain. And car Wills is out of jail. He's home, but he's also on house arrest. So he's home, but he's also stuck.
And he gets.
It in his head that the way to be the man of the house and control Gabby is to replace her birth control pills with some sort of talk about circling the drain.
Yeah, oh my god, I mean this is abhorrent to me, and I have so much to say about it, but I don't want to get in it.
We'll get involved with your heart.
Then we have Brie, who continues to hang out with George even though she is really using it as a friendship and understanding that it's not going to evolve into anything more romantic. So she's with her wacky pharmacist who proceeds to shoot his toe off at a shooting range.
Where date really ended in a bang.
Nicely done.
We need a drum roll, but yeah, and then Edie ropes the very guilty Susan, who feels so because she knows that she burned Eddie's house down. She ropes her into going out to a remote lake to spread missus Hooper's ashes. And for me, those were my highlights and I love the themes that came up around them. Do you guys have anything to add well?
I wanted to ask because you mentioned the Edie and Susan in the rowboat scene, which I totally want to get into, and I want to hear about if you remember filming that and where that was shot. But there's a line that Edie says to Susan, and just because you mentioned the forty nine ers, where Edie says, I bet you were a cheerleader in high school. And I laughed at this because and I thought maybe you could
speak to it. You were actually an NFL cheerleader, not in high school, but for the San Francisco forty nine.
Ers asert photo here.
Yeah, exactly, But I think that is very I thought, as your daughter, oh my gosh, that is so counter to how you have talked about your actual experience in high school. And I just I wanted to hear your if that line stood out to you in the way that stood out to me.
It did not, But I do understand what you're saying, and I feel like a couple of things. I mean, there's no reason we don't have there's no reason to go in order of the episode, really, but I think this was a very resonating area between Susan and Edie, and for me, it was a couple of reasons. One I thought people would really relate.
I did.
And I think this is what you're alluding to, Emerson, is this idea of so Edie says to Susan, we never outgrow high school, that who you are in high school is who you continue to be, and that in high school, she assumes that Susan was the cheerleader and popular and everybody's friend, and that Edie was more of like the bad girl who was smoking and getting into trouble. And these two groups of people do never co mingle and even past high school and on into life, they
never would either. And that's the sort of conceit that Edie puts out there. At the same time, she all So is taking Susan up to this remote lake to spread what Edi expresses as her best friend, missus Hooper's ashes, And I have a personal experience with spreading someone's ashes, So I wanted to share and discuss like both of those things. So to answer your question about I mean, and I'm interested to see what you guys think. I think that Edie is sort of right that people in
a way don't outgrow their high school position. I think. But it's sort of like I said to you earlier, I would hope that they would. I would hope that I did, and I would hope that people would let them. And I think these things are they're different. Like your ability to outgrow your high school self, I think is very accessible. If you do the work, I think you can evolve into a better, more or just broad better person than most of us were in high school because
we didn't know anything. But sometimes people don't want to let you. And it is a very interesting thing. Was I was on the dance team in high school, and I was.
A cheerleader adjacent it.
Is, and I was captain of the dance team seconds.
But you know, I look at that.
And I think of it as the responsibility it held. And if you're really challenging me to go deep on, what is that journey? And it's actually kind of painful. I don't really like in hindsight that I feel like I've held positions of responsibility that I either didn't want or wasn't ready for. And in my high school, I was on this drill team and I was the captain. But like California at the time, it was like Prop thirteen and public school has lost all their tax money,
so they fired our advisor. Like we didn't have college advisors, we didn't have. All these people lost their jobs, so I didn't have an adult supervisor over the drill team supporting. So I was in this position as a seventeen year old being like telling girls what to do, and it was my position to try to carry that out to the best of my ability to have a drill team that could compete against other schools, and we often won. We were not we were the featherets, and we were
known for winning the act nut. But I don't think I wanted it. I just got it, you know. And I think about my role as an only child in a pretty problematic household of parents fighting and trying to like make the peace and create an environment that would be better for all of us, which also was not my job. And if I think about it, I just feel like maybe that I end up in that position where I and I wonder as it applies to Susan.
I don't know that somebody who I think of her character as as somebody who actually things don't necessarily go well for and she isn't always like the winner of the best guy, you know, and her love life doesn't always work out, and she doesn't seem powerful to me.
I mean, this is my view in hindsight twenty years later.
I'm not sure I was thinking these.
Things when I was playing it, but I think look at the two of them, and I think of Edie as going through the world and getting what she wants. Yeah, And I think of confidently, and I think of Susan not.
And it's so interesting because I think I can see Edie's I think I am thinking about my physician in high school, which I don't know if I still occupied today, but in some ways maybe I do. I was always a very floater in high school, Like I floated between a lot of different social groups. I was friends with the popular kids. I would get invited to parties, but I didn't necessarily like sit with them at lunch or go back to their houses after school or hang out
with them all the time. I was really integrated into the musical theater scene, which my school was much more of an athletic school, so we had a very small kind of nerdy.
But arguably the best group to be around.
I mean, I would argue that we had a very small nerdy group there. I was also one of the editors of our lip magazine, so that was also its other kind of subset. And I floated between all of these different social groups in a way that was great but also kind of left me fundamentally on my own.
You know.
I had connections to a lot of people, but not like, oh, I I the bell rings for lunch, I know exactly what table I'm going to to sit at. Oftentimes I actually went to my English teachers classroom and ate lunch in his classroom, which.
I think that says a lot about who you are now.
It does say, yeah, and I do.
Think of you as somebody who everyone likes and your friends with everyone, Well.
Thank you. And I love people and they're my species and I like to be friends with them. But I think I now I kind of while I was definitely not like the bad girl smoking cigarette of God, I do not smoke cigarets in Edie's perspective, but I was a little bit more of a loner the way that she is, and I can see her perspective that you're
viewing is very powerful. I think some of people who know me might view me as powerfully kind of going from thing to thing in my life, there is sometimes a fundamental aloneness in that, like, yes, I go after the things that I want, but I go after them alone,
and I take care of them myself alone. And so for Edie, looking at someone like Susan, who we maybe can view as potentially a more character, but who does sort of seamlessly fall into the community of the other women on her block, even if it's while they're consoling her for the various mishaps going on in her life, she sort of has a place that I could imagine Edie looking at and envying because Edie doesn't necessarily have you know, the same seat at the high school lunch table that community.
Yeah, And I think it's really so speaking as someone who went to high school on the back lot of Universal Studios and I was the only one there, and my studio teacher I.
Did it was also Drew Barrymore's studio teacher, Yes.
Who was also Drew Verrymore's childhood studio teacher for a lot of her career. I didn't have any sort of tent poles community of this is where the cool kids sit, this is where the class clowns are, this is the you know, artsy people that I mean. It was just me and I sort of kind of fit, I would say, in a lot of those different boxes. But I will say the other thing that I thought about based on this particular storyline was how hard it is to make friends as an adult.
And I think a lot of people relate to that.
I think, you know, you have these built in opportunities for friendship when you're a child growing up, because you have school, and you have sports, and you have you know, all different kinds.
Of things clubs.
Yeah, and you're already batched together with kids in your same age range and maybe some of your same interests if you're exploring hobbies or extracurriculars. But when you're an adult, you know it's much harder and you don't always the people you interact with on a daily basis are For a lot of people, the people they work with and their commonalities might be work related, but it doesn't necessarily
mean they vibe outside of that. And I remember when I moved back to New York after Desperate Housewives ended, and I was excited to go back to where I grew up and just kind of get out of LA for a little while and explore being in my mid twenties in New York City.
I had had a lot of childhood.
Friends in New York City, but a lot of them had since grown up, been moved and started new things, And so I did, for the first time in my life, feel like I had to actively go out and seek new friendships as a mid twenty something, and I remember
really feeling like, this is hard, This is hard. I even had a moment in a coffee shop once where I was like desperately trying to bond with someone that I thought seemed cool, and I was just trying to It felt like I was like flirting because I was trying to be witty and I was trying to be charming over something about like the stir sticks or something so uninteresting. But I wanted so badly for her to see my sense of humor or for her to see And then what did I think was going to happen?
That I was going to be like, hey, do you want to take my number and hang out?
Like I didn't even know where to go with it, but I felt this desire because.
She seemed cool. I don't even remember why, and I just thought, this is how you do this? How else do you do it?
I think you're making though really good point. And as a single woman for like decades, it has been something that I have thought about a lot, investing in new friendships, investing in friendships with other single women, because you know, my married friends, most of my friends are long term married, most of my closest friends, and while they make themselves available to me and we do things all the time, they still have their husbands and families are always going
to be their first priority. And so in finding single women that were older that were forty to fifty now sixty years old, that I could interact with. Yeah, it's a conscious effortful thing. But I would recommend to anyone of any age get out of your house, do things that you're interested in, and don't be afraid to introduce yourself to people.
Don't be I hear prof G. Do you you listen to him?
Yeah, I hear him talk about this in regards to young men like that, they just don't have the confidence. And I would just encourage anyone listening to get out of their comfort zone, meet other people, find common interests, have community with actual humans in person.
I think it's really good for your.
Life, and invite the invite the person to the poker game.
Yeah, I was gonna say, I am so the proponent. I have totally made some friendships by talking to people in coffee shops who later have gone to my friends and then like, I don't know if she was flirting with me or she wants to be friends. Well I did want to be friends. But I was gonna say in Edie's case, I actually think it makes sense that Edie and Susan are paired up, and often they're sort of paired up in scenes as adversaries, but they are the two single women on Mysteria Lane and Edie just
wants to be invited to the poker game. And so if you can, you know, find someone who's also single who will accidentally burn down your house and then feel so guilty about it that they for the rest of your they invite you to a pogram after hosing down human remains off of you on your lawn, which I have to say, that scene where Edie shoots you down with the hose yeh is so funny. And I want to circle back to your.
The memories of Ashes, So my memories are loose, and again I think I've said this kind of thing before. What I remember, in a very general way is that everyone cared that those scenes were good.
Do you know what I mean?
Like they felt like worthy.
Yeah, they felt like worthy moments. And I feel like I don't have specifics, unfortunately, but I just feel like, I mean, Nicolette was great, and I will again make a bid for I think they missed the boat on the Nicolette, I mean, on the Edie Susan storyline, because as you're pointing out, they were the only two single people. I think it would have been an interesting show and
maybe it still is as a spin off. To see two people that seem very like they would not like each other and they would have nothing in common, like slowly grow that friendship into a thing where they need each other. Like that would have been something I would have liked to see.
And I'm lobbying for the Susan Edie spin off.
Right, So I don't think we do really see that in the show. But like I don't remember any of the episodes. I mean, that's another thing that comes up. I don't know if it's coming up for you, Andrea. I watched this thing and I'm like, I don't remember any of this. It's so great that and if I do remember it, like the scene with Cody where well, we'll come back. But I was sticking with this scene and when she hosed me off from on the lawn, like I have some buried memory of just being.
Like, oh my god, this is happening. She's gonna squirt me with that hose.
But like I have only done that once.
I probably, I mean, they would have taken way too long to dry you off and need it.
We probably did it all nailed it on take one.
But what I noticed, because I wouldn't have seen this when we were shooting it. She goes behind me, Nicolett goes behind me, and she's got the most glorious like smile, you know, like just chest your cat grin. I mean, it's so but I would never have seen that, you know. And I just I love, I really love them together on screen. And I think the Eedy character is incredibly
powerful and the way Nicholette does is amazing. When Catherine Jusin died, who played Missus Missus McCluskey, who were about to have introduced, I think it's like one or two more episodes, So I'm excited for that because she's so great. Oh she's amazing, so great. So she and I were friends and so much so that I after she died.
Her.
Son and daughter in law came to me and said, we were just talking about what are you going to do with her ashes? And I think Emerson and I were getting ready to take one of our epic trips to Europe, yeah, which I mean we traveled a lot in the summers during when she was in high school, going to different restaurants, and that was like our thing, to take these big vacations. And I said, should I take some of her ashes and spread them around the world.
And they said that Catherine would have loved nothing more than being everywhere in the world, Like that would have been her favorite thing to know that she was everywhere. So I actually brought some pictures, but like the behind the scenes, I was.
Going to say, the one thing that she would have actually loved more than being everywhere in the world would have been seeing the absolute hannish it induced it to spread the ashes around the world.
Was big responsibility.
And more than that, my mom is such a rule follower right about that. You know, she hears, oh, you can't, you know, technically without a permit spread someone's ashes in the ocean, and you know, it's like a tablespoon of ashes if that. And we are on a boat and she's like with the bag of ashes behind her back, like waddling to the back of the boat, looking side to side, making sure, and then like get go go
on the ocean, Go on the ocean. And then we'd be, you know, at some beautiful cathedral and we'd be out in here gardens and she'd like waddle over and be like, okay, Emerson, make sure no one's looking.
And then she like.
Thrown her shoulder and run away, and I think she would have gotten a real kick out.
Of here, right, she would have.
Emerson actually videoed me. I'm like, I do this whole thing where I tell the story about why her family gave me the ashes and that Catherine would have loved this, and so like, I'm gonna swim out into the ocean with this amount of ashes, and she's gonna be here, and so I like swim out and I'm about to like and we are literally like in the middle of note like a boat has dropped us off on some private beach and we're in the middle, and I'm like about to put the ashes, and this god in a snorkel,
like a creepy FBI spy snorkel, and I'm like, I start laughing. I of course don't do it, because now there's a witness, like an arbitrary s lone snorkling man in the middle of the Mediterranean. And then so we cut the video, the snorkeling guy goes away. We're back to having the beach by ourselves, and I tell the story in the video about how I think Catherine would have liked that moment of humiliation for me of more than even what we were doing. And so so that
is the only person's ashes I have ever spread. My mom has talked to me about me wanting me to spread her ashes. If anybody's ever been to the Laguna Montage, it's a beautiful hotel.
Have they have?
It has a walk, it's it has a walk along the ocean with you know, plants and flowers, and Grandma wants her ashes and I'm like, Okay, I'll do that. It's probably wasted, but Mom, I'll do that.
Well, that's going to be way more public than the Mediterranean, that's too. Speaking of being arrested, I do I was really taken with Gabby and Carlos's storyline in this episode of I Mean for a host of reasons. Carlos returns,
he has a fantastic anklet, he's on house arrest. We get some really great comedy which I think has actually been turned into a meme that my friends will sometimes send around of Gabby sitting on the other side of the curb eating the fried chicken and the French fries out of the bucket while Carlos is suffering with.
His alarm.
Going on those fences that they can't go past.
So sad, but it's also not sad because Carlos is a bad man in this episode and honestly in previous episodes. Also, I really struggle with Carlos's character because he decides that he wants Gabby to have a baby, despite her saying numerous times that her uterus is not up for debate, and again things that feel politically timely today. Man, he decides he's going to tamper with her birth control, so she's taking Placebo pills. This brought up a few different
macro questions for me. I mean, obviously, this feels as a woman deeply violating and like, I mean, dare I go as far as saying a form of assault, you know, to have someone get pregnant against their will by tampering with their medication. But it also brought up like two kind of bigger themes for me that I was thinking about in this episode. One is staying with your partner
through tough times. The conundrum that Gabby is faced with when Carlos returned Burns on house arrest, going to jail kind of looming potentially or just be having this limited lifestyle where he's stuck.
In his house and you could also argue that bri and Rex are you know, like I know personally people who have survived affairs, you know, in real life. So I mean it's just another humpin in a relationship to get over.
Yeah.
And then this kind of balance of confessing and asking for forgiveness. I mean, Carlos is not at the point yet of confessing what he's doing or asking for forgiveness. But you see Susan confessing to Edie. You also see Lynette unintentionally being forced to confess that she's been lying about her kid having a terminal illness and asking She doesn't really ask for forgiveness. She says, I'm never going back to that ya studio.
And does she switches to at home yoga?
Yeah, and she probably shouldn't. But brought up two questions for me. One, have either of you ever had a lie that has spiraled out of control that you've either you know, gotten away with until this podcast? Where can you tell me or gotten caught and had to confess for? And Two, where do you fall on the pros and cons of toughing it out when the person that you are committed to or even you know that could be
a friendship commitment. I know in this case we're looking at relationships and marriage types of commitments, you know, falls on a time that really makes them not maybe be their best and most vibrant self.
Well to your second question, I would say grounds for divorce are entirely permissible when someone is tampering with one's birth control. I agree, So I think that's a tough it out type of dynamic. I also agreed that I didn't remember that storyline, and we've talked a little bit about how much more problematic Carlos is in this rewatch to all of us or to Emerson for your first time. But this behavior is just probably the worst thing that's happened,
and I'm curious to see where that goes. I do think that the idea of sticking it out is one.
That has evolved a lot over the years.
I think when I look at relationships of people in my life that are older, their idea of sticking it out was because in a marriage format anyway, was I made a commitment. This is what marriage is. There's no you can't go back on that commitment. It's sacred and it doesn't matter. I have to stay right. The idea of I have to stay. I don't think that rule is really as strict for people of my generation and
future generations. And sometimes I think maybe we're getting too loose with it, where it's like the first sign of a bump and.
We're out because we feel like life's too short.
And I don't want to feel like I'm, you know, on home arrest because of something that this person did. I don't have to be changed to this person who made a mistake. And so I think it's like a living, breathing thing. For your other question, I am so uncomfortable with lying. I really am a bad, bad, bad liar, and I'm almost a chronic truth teller in a way
that's also not great. I've definitely had times in my life where I've made the decision to overshare in the attempt to garner someone's respect and trust and for them to feel like, wow, well she's so transparent that you know, I have to give her credit for that or something. And so if I fall anywhere, I almost fall on striving to be so honest that sometimes I think I could hold that back. But I don't think I could live with a lie that just kept spiraling out. I would come clean too soon.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, I'm not going to pull it anna up to think that I've never lied
about anything. So while I don't think I want to discuss like the couple of untruths that maybe played out when I was younger, because like I said, I'm not going to say those things never happened at this point in my life, I agree with you, like I just can't get caught up in not telling the truth and not because there's been something that was went wrong, just because it's too much energy, Like I just it's too much energy.
I agree. I mean, I think we see these characters, you know, the lengths to which Paul is going to cover up whatever lie is happening there, the lengths to which Rex has gone to cover up his affair, landing him in the hospital with a heart attack, The lengths which Susan goes, which you know, ultimately she's not an incredible liar, which I think is a good trait to.
Be bad at it.
Yeah, I think it's a good trait, and I do think you're right. I think it takes a lot of energy time to then it as things spiral, continue to cover your tracks, and ultimately that just hurts the person who's telling the lie, even if the lie starts from a place of trying to protect other people or other people's feelings. Ultimately, I think it it hurts the people around you.
And I did just a thought that just occurred to me while we were talking about this particular scene and Carlos calling the pharmacy to man, you know, to get Gabby's birth control refilled and delivered.
To the house.
I'm wondering if it's the same pharmacist. I'm wondering if he was on the film with George.
Oh, George pharmacist.
Oh, it's just that one guy.
One guy.
Yeah, I mean, I think that's how it is that the CVS I go to, because it takes for effort, there's just one pharmacist back there.
I will say, in terms of getting over bumps, the one thing that I have reflected on as again being single since basically I was forty, that I will say to older friends of mine that are considering getting divorced that and it doesn't mean that I'm not sorry in any way that I got divorced. And I'm thrilled for your dad with his current situation. He's been married longer than he was married to me. It has nothing to do with a reflection of like, oh, that shouldn't have
gone that way. But I do recommend to my friends who are getting divorced to not live in a fantasy that somehow you're going to get divorced and then you're just going to like meet the perfect person that doesn't challenge you in any way and it's just all going to be wonderful and easy, because that's the way it was always meant to be.
Like, if you need to get out for.
A number of reasons, some more serious than others, then do it, But don't do it thinking there's going to be a.
Savior on the other side.
Like do it and understand that you may be living out your life as a single person in a I think I live in a very robust way. I'm not living out in longing or desire. Not to say I wouldn't welcome a relationship if it could happened, but like it just I think women I think arrive in their forties and sometimes they feel empowered. They feel like I'm done putting up with this shit, Like I can take
care of myself. Like a lot of things that I felt or that I agree with, but it just don't do it without having really reflected on who you are, your honest part in what is wrong with your current relationship, like really try to be honest with yourself.
It makes me that great advice.
It makes me think actually of this Joni Mitchell quote, this great Joni Mitchell quote that I heard. She was talking about relationships. This was many years ago, but it's really stayed with me. And she says, if you want endless repetition, date a lot of people. If you want endless variety, stay with one. And this idea that when you are dating initially, when you start to date, when you're in those early stages of a relationship, you run
all your best material. You know, you tell your funniest stories, and you're the most charming version of your highlight reel. Yeah, it's your highlight reel. And it's really you falling in love with yourself through someone falling in love with all the best qualities of you. And if you're with someone for a long time, you know inevitably you were going to look like an asshole to them at some point they are going to look like an asshole to you.
But navigating through she says, and I agree, like navigating through those spaces of turmoil and of disillusionment and then still knowing each other. Back to the idea of how how do you live your life in a way that you're truly known by the people around you That ultimately creates a space that is ever evolving and more padded and more safe and and in her opinion, can you know sustain you for a lifetime.
I I got to see her at the Hollywood, But can I jump to the gun range?
Sure?
Please?
Because so Brie.
In this episode is very much still struggling with if she should stay with Rex, and she's you know, they're they're in a horrible They're still in their horrible divorce, anger and resentment and all of that. And she's still monking around with dating the wacky, wacky pharmacist George. And he buys her this antique gun, which she gets very excited about and in a public park, waving it around in a public park.
I love the bait and switch of He gives her this box that looks like, Oh, is it going to be chocolates? Is it going to be a bracelet? She goes, Oh, she looks at it before we see what it is. It's like, oh, George, this is so beautiful. This means so much to me. And then we see and it's a gun, which also, yeah, whoa. She takes the gun out in the park and people don't scatter it.
She's waving it around, sitting on a little picnic blanket.
It's madness.
But anyway, they go to the gun range to use it, and she's trying to teach George how and then he tries to kiss her and she jerks away and then he shoots off his toe. But which you know, as as as you does as you do. But has have you guys been to a gun rate because I have, and I kind of wanted to tell.
You I have not, but I did play a cop in a lifetime movie and I had to learn how to properly hold a gun.
You know, make you feel anyway, just as I hated it, You hate it?
I hated it? Okay, how about you?
My friend keeps trying to get me to go Clay pigeon shooting.
That I was going to talk about.
Well, go ahead, because I haven't gone yet.
Oh okay, but wait, didn't you shoot rifles? Weren't you the best rifle shooter as a nine year old.
I went, yes, yes, I wait, why a pase no?
I went.
I had a very brief stint of going to summer camps. They weren't my thing. Chronic only child, didn't like organized anything, being told I had to do anything at a certain time. But I did go to summer camp in Reno, Nevada. This is, of course, where they would let nine year olds be shooting rifles and there was a rifler I mean these were like two barrel shotguns. There was a riflery course, which I probably took to because it was like the thing you had to be the least athletic
to do because you're laying on your stomach. But I actually I got really good at it over the summer, and I remember, I.
Feel like you came home with a ribbon. I'm sure rifle.
No, well exactly. I think that is where my rifle recent stopped because I got back to LA and I'm like, I loved shooting guns, and they're like, well, that's never gonna happen again. So I hope you enjoyed it.
Like you're in Los Angeles.
BID recently did go with my friend who knows a lot about guns. I mean, that's the thing you don't want to go with unless you're with somebody who's taking it seriously, who knows what they're doing, like it's not a frivolous hobby. And I take guns very seriously. I think I would lean to the They make me uncomfortable. But I sort of decided I need to learn about this so that not necessarily to have one, but just
so that I'm less uncomfortable. And my great friend Matt, he took me to arrange out in like northern Los Angeles, and it was really fascinating because we were doing the clay pitching thing with the shotgun, and first of all, it's a lot of muscle and a lot of like my shoulder after we finished basically an hour of shooting was I don't think I could move my shoulder for the next like.
Day or so. It was very sore.
But anyway, it was a great learning curve because at first I completely sucked and I didn't even get close to hitting it at all. And then he did this great thing which made me learn something about myself. He videoed me and then he showed me the video and he said, do you see what you're doing right before you pull the trigger. Do you see how you're jerking your shoulder back. That is why your.
Aim is off.
And I realized about and right after he showed me, I did it and I hit three in a row, and I happened to be wearing camouflage pants and I'm going to show this video also I am such a badass. It was a very bad ass moment. And I own that, like, I mean, I hang on to that because it was kind of a I was surprised that I was able to do that, but it taught me something about myself, and I wonder that I'm a visual learner like you.
He could tell he was.
He was telling me for fifteen minutes, don't move your body, don't move your back, don't move like he was audibly telling me what I was doing wrong, and I couldn't translate it into physicality. And as soon as I looked at it, the next thing, I never missed one. Like it was just like boom, boom boom. And it made me think, like that makes sense because I'm a dancer right in my bones, and I would be looking in a mirror at choreography and looking at my own body,
and like, does that look right what I'm doing? And so maybe that's how I learned things.
Well, just speaking of being a badass, I have to say, and I did write down while watching this episode, Oh my god, Bree is so daddy right now. With this gun behind George and the way she says, you have to hold it like you're holding a beautiful white dove. I know, what a combination.
It's tight enough to kill it, but you know, yeah.
Also what a combination of war and peace imagery. A white dove is a piece. And then but it's a gun she's talking about.
I think the gun was from World War two too. I think you might have said that, yeah, makes that imagery there's really.
Yeah, it's a it's a fraud image. I just have to say. Obviously it ends with terrible timing on his part to lean back and try to kiss her wall shooting the gun. But what have you ever had a date that? Like, what's the worst way a date has ever ended?
I have a bad kissing date story, So it's not that. But I will say my husband loves this story. I feel bad for the person it's about, but he loves laughing at this story because it's really it really is.
A bad look for me, which is okay.
So I'd gone on a date, a first date with someone, and the first date was good. I would say it was fine slash good. It wasn't amazing, but it was fine.
You know.
We went on the date, we went to a comedy show, we went for drinks afterwards. At the end of the night, I let him kiss me good night. Okay, that's the first date. And then he asked if he could take me on a second date. I said sure, because, like I said, it was fine us right b plus and I was like, okay, we'll see. So we go on a second date and we just go to dinner that time,
and halfway through the it'd been bothering me. He reminded me of someone and I couldn't place who this person reminded me of it halfway through dinner I realized he reminds me of my brother Alex.
Oh yes.
And then of course I was like, well, that's the end of this, and how do I wrap this thing up? Because I cannot sit across from this person who thinks we're on a romantic date. Now that I've realized he reminds me of my brother, and so that's in my head the rest of the time.
We get through the date. He's driving me home, he's dropping me off.
Of course he thinks, well, we kissed on the first date, so I'm gonna go in again, and so he does, and of course I'm like, my brother's about kiss me. So I turn and he kisses my cheek and it's very awkward. And because I am a people pleaser and because I wasn't good at sitting in the awkwardness or just being honest in that moment, even though I'm a chronic truth teller, he was like, oh, you turned And I said, well you can try again, is like the worst thing.
So he does try again, and I turned my head again. I mean, I feel like such an asshole. He must have been like, what is she playing again? What is this? She is horrible?
Yeah, And then I send him the next morning like a I didn't tell him he reminded me of my brother, but I send him a nice worded text of you know, I just don't see this going in that direction.
Whatever, but okay, I'm not a pretty with a one liner of a date that Vanessa Williams set me up on a date with a British guy once who I slept with on the first date, and after it was over, he told me it looked like I had a tail, but that was because that needs a little more common Well, it means that my tailbone structurally sticks out of like I have an extra vertebrate bray. I guess I broke.
I broke my tailbone, and so my tailbone sort of like sticks out a little bit, and it might to an an inappropriate British person prompt them to say, you look like you have a tail.
That was the end of that.
Thanks, I have a first date end of a date story that reminds me a little bit of yours. Andrea, Oh my god, I'm dead. You can try again, and you turn again. So I had been on a first date with someone who I knew for a little while. I think he kind of thought it was romantic. I was like, hmm, being open to like, oh, I'm just gonna say yes to more things and like meet new people that maybe I wouldn't typically date. And he planned He called my friend before he planned, like what would
she like where she liked to go? Took me to a nice restaurant. I was like, you know, there's a little bit of chemistry. And then he had another plan after and the other plan was to go to an after dinner we went to this art thing. And we went go to the art thing, and it's like this weird psychedelic art exhibit in downtown lay we have to like lay on the ground and there's all these interact which, honestly, it would be cool if you were with someone you wanted to be like laying close to and like.
On your shoulder.
Yeah, exactly. And when I realized between dinner and arriving there, I wasn't physically feeling it, not just because now I'm dating women, but I just it wasn't it wasn't there for me. And then we have to like suffer through laying and dure all these things, and he's kind of trying to like hold my hand and be romantic and I'm like recoiling. And then we finished that and I'm like, Okay,
I get to go home and he goes. So now for part three of the day, and it turns out we were going to like a music venue he'd also plan. So it just was this endlessly torturous night and finally I'm like, I have to go home. Please take me home.
He drives me home into I have like an outdoor parking structure in front of where I live the building, and he drives into the parking structure and he walks me up to my front door and we're kind of standing at the front door and he's like, things, this date has gone amazing because we've been on it for eight brigan hours now, and he goes, so, can I like come inside to see what the you're the loft looks like smooth, and he kind of like leans in and I lean back and I go the gate opens
automatically on your way out.
You want to know what?
Almost did a spit take? That was the perfect time the first take. I I can't believe that.
Wow.
Okay, Well, this episode wraps up with Mary Alice saying death is inevitable. We hope something will happen to us romance family, great loss to make our lives meaningful. We want that for ourselves. But do we just sit on the sidelines waiting for something to happen before it's too late? And that was kind of like her reflection that she
leaves us with. So I think we want to leave you this episode with reflecting on how to make your life as great as you can, how to make it as fool as you can, and.
We're devoted to helping you do that. So thanks for joining us again.
And we'll see you well.
We'll share with you next week.
Yes, we'll share with you next week
Because we are desperately to you