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Table, Hello and welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics.
Friends.
We've established a while ago that one of these superpowers is being a spy, that we think of that as kind of super heroic behavior. Well, what if you're a spy to solve a crime that's like kind of like double And what if it's all about going undercover? And what if you're an amateur who's never gotten undercover before but has to because you're the only one who can
do this job. And what if you're Ted Danson doing it in a show written by the folks who brought us The Good Place, and many other such things.
We're talking today about A Man on the Inside.
It's a short little show on Netflix, eight thirty minute episodes. If you haven't seen it already, it's really a treasure. I pretty much adored it. I'd one or two complaints that'll bring up, but really it does so many great things about take the mystery genre in a new way.
But also, I mean, if you had any kind of hard Thanksgiving or just for whatever reason, you need comfort show, this is like the ultimate like just it's very much cozy television, Like it deals with hard issues, but it's just like everyone is just a fairly good person in the show.
And it really.
Brought up a lot of great issues about aging, about relationships between parents and children, about widow and and sort of what happens after your partner passes away and how you find a new life for yourself, all wrapped up around this mystery that involves an elderly man who needs something to do being hired by a private investigator to go undercover into a not a nursing home, but a
retirement community. Retirement community, yeah, where it's you know, kind of a it's what my step grandmother was in, an aging in place where there are medical facilities for once you need them, but it can start out just as like, yeah, you just have an apartment here the cafeteria and people do your laundry, but you predict to live your own life.
And it was just there was so much of the show did in the short four hours that it had, And Paul brought this to my attention and wanted to talk about it, and I'm here to talk about it too. So Paul, let me just start by what made the show something you want to talk about?
Number? One, I enjoyed it, and I think that, you know, goes a long way, and wanting to talk about something every now and then, maybe we talk about something I don't enjoy so much or enjoy some of but think other parts of it are preposterously bad. Yeah, maybe even something we talked about recently. But also one of my like recent pet peeves is just the like abundance of overt agism really that just pervades pretty much all levels
of society or whatever, and certainly Hollywood as well. And one of the things about agism that I think is so interesting is it's not just like anti aged people, right, like the older you are the worst or whatever. There's also it really goes in all directions where there's ages.
I'm directed at young people, like children and then young adults and like, you know, generations which I kind of have to break out the quotes for because like they're they're a thing, but they're also not a thing, like many things, you know, and and the way you know, going at each other, and these stereotypes for like enormous groups of people that are by no means monoliths, and you know, there's obviously there's some reality to the situation, you know, to the fact that you know, when when
humans are born, like our brains are not that developed, and over time the body and the brain develop and we we gain information and we'd learned skills, and at a certain point some aspects of those begin to decline. But like that point is different for different people. And the idea that then that that's like inherently a bad thing and like it is solely negative, and that that
is like the defining feature of a person. I mean it seems very ablest, you know, right, yeah, but then just also just the idea of just thinking you know so much about a person when you really only know one thing about them. Yeah, right, And and so this show I felt, I thought was really good in terms of representation in a broader sense in terms of you look at the cast and the characters, and it looks like San Francisco. To me, it looks like, you know,
northern California. I mean, there's people in Sacramento, there's there's yeah, the East Bay is involved a little bit, right, But like a lot of that is sort of to me in the kind of the kind of subtle way where it's just that's just there and it's not commented on. But then, you know, because it's a retirement community, you know, age is obviously discussed in a way that like within the show in a way that doesn't feel like we're
trying to make a point. It felt to me more like just a show that was like, we want to portray life with real people, the majority of whom happened to be you know, between seventy and ninety or something like that, which is just very uncommon in television shows and in movies.
It really is.
And I think that's true both just for shows that are just about people like you know of this Gus's Union statist in age, but also in stories about those folks and the generations under them, like the their kids or their grandkids. And that is certainly a part of this story. I mean summary, I'm not gonna give away the murder mystery that I'm not gonna give away the mystery ending until kind of a spoiler section at the very end.
But because some of the most parts the plot doesn't matter.
It's very much about just sort of like the the experiences these people are going through.
Yeah, I would say the plot is non central to the story.
That yes, the plot is an exercise to give us these these story moments and these character.
Moments based on a true story.
Though, by the way, oh that's awesome.
So anyway, there's this guy, Charles, whose wife has very recently passed away. We eventually learned it from Alzheimer's, and that the last six months had been really hard, as it often is with Alzheimer's, and he's doing well, like there's no he seems to be medically in good shape. His memory is sharp, but he's he's retired and his wife has passed away and he's not doing anything, and he's kind of clipping out articles and sending them to
his daughter, but not really communicating with her much. She is married and has three kids, uh entering. They're white, her husband is Asian, and their kids are are mixed and really kind of a beautiful representation I think of that. Yeah, like yeah, like you're in San Francisco in tech like that, they're in Sacramento, Sacramento. Yeah, and it goes completely uncommented on. That's one of my favorite things that it's just that's just California.
That's he's a loving grandpa.
They're loving grandsons, and you know, they're between like I think eight and fourteen, and they're kind of idiots and.
Yeah they're kids, they're teenagers, you know. Yeah, but they're just people too.
Yeah, all the characters feel real and nuanced. I'll get to that second. Let me just finish the summary. So, meanwhile, a woman has had something stolen from her. Her son is very concerned about this. Her son hires a private investigator to find out what is this crime happening in this retirement community and is offering a huge amount of money to help. So the people the private investigator who they hire says, let's hire a can i you know, subcontractor.
A man to be our man on the inside. And they do some interviews.
They find Charles is a good choice and they send Charles in and Charles does some interesting stuff to figure out who, you know, why the why these thefts are happening. So it turns out there's multiple of them, and there's some interesting stuff about being a spy and being you know, mystery solving. This is a mystery show, and we'll talk about that.
To be sure. But along the way, he also has a lot.
Of great sort of connections that he makes with the other people in the In the nursing home, there's a number of women who are interested in him and flirt with him. There's another guy who surceees him as a romantic rival because of.
That sexual rival sex rival many times.
There's a friendship that he has with Deti, who is the woman running all of it. Who is Roman of the actress's name.
It's Rosa from Yeah, Rosa from Brooklyn ninety nine. It's Stephanie Beatrice.
Sephanie Beatri's neck. Yet it's by the same folks who've made Brooklyn nine nine and the Place, and so a lot of those acts pop up parks and wreck. A lot of the actors who you've seen in those things pop up a bunch. I'm not gonna give away who because it's fun cameos, but it's definitely a cool thing.
And so there's some high jinks.
His actual daughter finds out and like pretends to be the niece so that she doesn't get caught. He strikes up a good friendship with a guy who's there, but eventually he is being the spy. The man on the inside gets revealed. He's asked to leave, and there's tension and people are upset at him, but everything kind of works out in the end and he doesn't go back. He doesn't stay in the nursing home, but he maintains friendships with people there, and he by the end of
it is much more active. He's starting to lecture again. He was a former professor. He's developing friendships and doing things. He has a much better connection with his daughter and they're they're connecting more and doing more things.
He's coming to better terms with the loss of his wife and his feelings about that, and it all just kind of wraps up in a.
Very nicely but not in a like super sacriine like I said, Like I had a sense of like, oh, he's gonna decide to move in now, and it's like, no, he doesn't need.
It by any means.
Yeah, he stays friends with some of the folks in there, but he's on his own. He's lecturing, he's working. Some people who felt like they were good romantic connections get together. Some people you could see them as having good romantic connections don't, because not everything gets tied up night little bows. And it's what struck me more than anything was just that it never painted in broad strokes.
You know.
This is what I was kind of saying before that, Like a lot of times, it feels like the show is going to take one perspective of another, either a it's all about these old folks, and they're ungrateful wretches of children who are super selfish, who are super mean, who don't care enough when I'm always kind of wondering, like, so, what did you do to those kids to make them not want to come visit you all the time? Or it's all about the kids who are having to kids.
I mean, there are people in there has.
The kids of the parents, but they are adults.
They're trying to leave their old lives, but like, you know, grandma's living in the spare bedroom and she's always driving you crazy, and like it always feels.
Very one sided or the other.
And sort of have this show where it was like, yeah, everyone's struggling, but everyone's doing their best, even like there's a couple of moments where the parents, the daughter and the son in law of Charles are struggling with their kids because their kids, you know, all jump on a trampoline and all break bones within one day of each other. Yeah, and they're all like, oh my god, are we horrible
parents or are these terrible kids? Because yeah, parents feel that way sometimes, but they get through it and they talk about it. And it just felt like it was a really a story about people, none of whom were painted with a broad brush.
Everyone who had characteristics. You know, there's one or two who are.
Kind of like, let's make them the foils of some parts of the stories, in which case they're quite funny. But even then, like there's some understanding ability.
To who they are and what they're doing. Yeah.
Absolutely, I mean, I think above all else, it just feels to me like a show about people, and you know, the people are from a diverse range of ages, and you know, when you're a parent and you're not sure what's you know, going on with your kids or like are you messing things up? Like maybe one of the most helpful people to talk to could potentially be a parent.
Might not be for everybody, you know, But I think in the show we get the sense that they hadn't really talked in that way before, you know, and then now that they're connecting about something else, you know, he's like, yeah, these things happen, you know, like kids are going to break bones. Like you know, just because your kid does
something stupid doesn't mean they are stupid. It just means they did something stupid, and it doesn't mean you did something bad as a parent, Like, yeah, you know, they're people, they make some bad decisions, to make some good decisions, and and so yeah, just the really the treatment of kind of of all the characters as as people. I really appreciate it. And you know, this is in a
thirty minute comedy dramedy. I don't even know, like I think it's a comedy, right, but it's not like a laugh outside, laugh out loud constant Hyjenk's kind of comedy. You know, it takes its time with things. But again it's you know, it's only up eight episodes long, so it's you know, it's four hours. And you've got to
fit a mystery, You've got to fit personal development. And you know, you need a certain number of characters if you're going to have a mystery, right, Like you can't have three characters and you know, one's a victim, one's investig in, and it's like, well it's probably the third
person then yeah, you know. So, but I did appreciate that Charles's new friend, Calbert, like had a thing going on himself with his son, you know that like they had their own thing, and and that there were a lot of little things like that where you know, the characters had most of them. Not everybody had that much of a story, right, but they they got to have their part of the story as well, even while you know you have the needs of the plot and to move the mystery forward and everything.
I think Colbert's story was one of my favorites, particularly because it was the one I felt like it would have been so easy for them to again paint with that broadbrush, because his story is that he has a son who's incredibly successful in the tech world. He's black, though again that's never brought up. It's just kind of one more part of filling out the diverse world that
he's all living. They're from Baltimore, and his son got a job in the Bay Area, and so had kind of suggested, but maybe pretty firmly suggested, without really talking to his dad about it, that the father kind of moveo move across the country to this retirement community so this son could be near him.
And now the son.
Has gotten off for a job in Singapore and wants to move to Singapore, and also is kind of in the same way like, well, come on, dad, you'll I can find.
A retirement community for here in Singapore.
And again this could have so easily been a story about a dad who just doesn't want his son to succeed or doesn't want his son to outgrow him and wants his son to always stay close to him, or it could have been about a son who is just a terrible son and just feels like his father's a burden and will take his father wherever he is because he cares more about his own need to be near
his father than his father's actual needs. And it's not like both of them resent each other a little bit because they haven't been communicating very well, and they kind of have a breakthrough and Charles helps him, Like you know, Charles's that kind of character who helps most of the others have the breakthrough they need to fix their own stuff.
And I think it's like they have the conversation and the father kind of makes it clearer, like he has found a life for himself in San Francisco and he's not gonna hate his son or be mad at his son his career takes him. He's very proud of his son. His son does decide to not take that kind of new position and stay in a good job in the San Francisco Bay area, and the father's clearly quite happy about that.
But it never.
Feels again like the son has to learn to not be terrible or the father has to learn that not terrible. It's just two people in a tough situation and they figure it out.
Yeah, exactly. They have to learn to understand each other, to figure out what they want, and then just to make their own decisions, you know, like they both had agency in those decisions, right, And I thought that's that's kind of what was important there in terms of their relationship, was that you know that Calvert was like, no, I'm I'm not going to move to Singapore, you know, like I already moved across the country. I'm not going to move across the world. Personally, I might be like, yeah,
that sounds fun. Check out singing. But also he just made a new friend, you know, and and he you know, he seemed to be getting along well.
So you know.
The fact that his son decided to stay is nice and I think makes the story feel a little warmer. But if he decided to move like that wouldn't necessarily been bad or horrible thing. It's like, you know, his dad's well taken care of. He can still visit, like you know, just because you're both in San Francisco doesn't mean you see each other.
All the time.
Yeah, you know, that's but you know, they can they can go to some Giants games, maybe when the O's are in town, try and figure out which orange and black uniforms are which the All Halloween baseball game.
Yeah, And it feels like that's done.
And I feel like that's done not only for the characters, but also for the very idea of the retirement community. And I've talked about this a little bit in regard to mental health, and I feel like the same thing here, which is that in both cases, there is a long history of both mental health facilities and elder care facilities being places of extreme neglect, and they're being a real sense of kind of warehousing the people in society who we don't like and don't want to see and we
don't want to be burdened by. And that's horrific and a history that should be dealt with. And it is true still in you know, both elder care and mental health care facilities all across the country still to this day. But it's not the majority, and I don't know if it ever was. It is certainly not the majority anymore,
and it's getting better and better. And I know for myself when my mother was, you know, starting to really age and have problems, like she made it very clear she did not want that in any way, shape or form.
And I think that.
And granted that was fifteen years ten years ago, and things have gotten even better since then. But like this portrays, a retirement community is not like the perfect heaven on Earth, but also not as hell on Earth. It's just a nice place where you get to be with people and you don't have to cook your own meals anymore. And my mom would have hated that part probably, but also would have liked that you.
Didn't have to do her own laundry.
But I do think that my mother, like a lot of people of her generation, had gotten this idea that these places were horrible and also that it was a sign that your children were abandoning you or abandoning your responsibility to you if for them to do that, And I think that's really harmful.
And I don't blame my mother.
As people her generation, I think because she never saw TV shows like this, Like right, it was not how horrible it.
Was, and like you know, our family structures are very different.
My father grew up in a home with his grandparents and his great grandparents and a lot of his cousins, and like the whole family who was living together. And when it's eight adults and four kids, having one more adults who's kind of really needed me medical help, that makes a lot of sense. When it's a nuclear family that very often has very little connections with other people, having you know, an older person in the house who needs a lot of medical care and attention is a lot harder.
Doesn't mean it's not important, doesn't, but it does.
It doesn't mean that you're not a loving child or a loving grandchild or whatever, or sister or brother if you don't want to be that person or you can't be that person. So I just really appreciated that they kind of moved beyond the idea of that that somehow children are doing something wrong by putting parents in places like this. I mean that just that phrasing of I'm
putting my parents there. What's very clear is that in some cases the conversation was not as good as it should be, but that it's the parent and the child or and the caregiver whoever it is mutually coming to the decision that this is what they should do, and that for the most part, the people in the in the retirements community are pretty happy about it.
Yeah, and I mean, I know, I don't have a lot of experience with retirement communities. I recently met someone who lives in a something sort of like this, I guess it's a little different, who really doesn't like it, but because you know, they don't get along with the building manager basically, you know, and like obviously anything like that, whoever's running the place, like getting along with them and having a good relationship with them seems pretty essential as
well as you know, whatever staff there is. I know, my mom for two years lived in a place that wasn't it was like it was like one of those like fifty five and up communities or something like that where it's it wasn't a home. It was it was an apartment complex, you know, but it was an apartment complex that was you know, people all around her, you know, age range, and and she she liked it, you know,
she she made friends there. They had you know, this this food thing that was like you know where you could like they you would get food there and whatever. Not like a cafeteria. It's like a food bank thing that they did like once a week and whatever. You know, local places would like donate to it. And but you know that's definitely not the same. I I do have a couple of people that one in the family and one a family friend who went somewhere like that and
then died very shortly thereafter of COVID. And I mean, you know, we know that that hit very hard in those places during right early on especially, and so you know, my only view is really as an outsider and like you know, being aware of my own ignorance. And then from like watching The Golden Girls, where you know, Sophia is like the home say it Dorothy the home like you know, shady Pie, you know, and Dorothy's like shady Pine,
like it's a threat, you know, just ender there. But then you know, then they have another episode where somebody goes to a worse place, but then they try and find a better place for her, you know, with acknowledging that like there's different there's different kinds, you know. But like also like in Fraser where like his dad, you know, the pilot is like you know, his dad's I don't
I don't think he's even that old. Maybe he's in his sixties or something, but he's you know, his brother Niles is like, oh, there's this wonderful brochure here, you know, whatever it's called. You know, we care, so you don't have to like it doesn't say that it's like it might as well, but you know, the point being that, like, you know what you're talking about, Like, obviously that is the perception I think among among many anyway, and it's
good to hear that that's not the reality everywhere. Of course, any sort of facility or group or whatever, there's going to be variation, right of course, and people are gonna have different experiences even in the same place. But you know, I mean, because we can see that there's a couple people who really don't have positive experiences in this place. Yeah, you know, but that's not necessarily the fault of the place.
Maybe it's the fault of the person, or maybe it's just a bad fit sometimes, you know, or maybe it's that they never get a visitor, and like if they were there but then they got a visitor once a week or something, maybe they'd feel differently because then it feels less about like, oh, we're just stowing you away here more like, well, this is where you live, you know, and there's emergency services to take care of you. There's food, so you know, if you don't have to cook your food.
Some places also you can cook, right, But then there's also a dining there. But like if it's just a place you live, and then it has these additional services and these facilities, like I think that feels very different than almost feeling like it's an institution, like a like a prison basically, you know.
I also two things there. One is that I should have brought this up before.
I think it is very important to mention that like Charles clearly has a good deal of money, and there's a lot of like that this is an expensive place. Yes, yes, And I think that probably again with both mental health and elderly care, the amount of money you're able to pay is not gonna get Like I am sure there are some medicare only facilities that are quite good, and I'm sure there are some very expensive ones that are quite bad. But for the most part, the more you spend,
the more you're gonna get. And is like probably you know, the at the bottom rungs, I'm sure that for both mental care and elderly care is nowhere near enough, and that is a real, real problem in this country. But no, I do think that that it shows, yeah, that these facilities can be good, and the people who work there
are from incredibly caring. Is a really nice There is a person who dies at one point during the show, and you really see it the effect that it has not only on her whole community, but on the staff. And just this last weekend. It feels weird to say this because most of my life I didn't have a grandfather. Then I married Mary, and I all of a sudden had grandfathers. And one of them passed away and we did the memorial this weekend and a couple of people.
He was in aging in place facilities what they call it, and he had started out being fairly independent and he had his own kitchen and things like that, and then kind of eventually over time got moved to more of a a real like medical room where he's getting you know, much more around the clock care until they eventually passed away. And I think we had like four residents and three members of the staff all came to his memorial service,
and two of them were in tears. You know, you can clearly tell, you know how how much they he was loved in that community. The other thing I wanted to say, because I think it is it's it's an ongoing issue throughout the show that I think they framed really well that you kind of brought up, especially with COVID and stuff, is the idea of loneliness. And one of the things that is kind of the starting idea
of the show is that Charles is quite lonely. And yes he has his daughter, he has his grandkids, but he's not really connecting with them. You know, his wife was probably his wife and his work were the two things that really like brought him alive, and he doesn't have those anymore. And you talked about how COVID is really devastating in communities like this, and because our grandfather was in one like he got moved in about a
year beforehand, so we were very concerned about him. And from what I understand, I haven't seen too much of the data.
I was just a little of the data that this is true.
COVID like itself, did an awful lot of damage and had a high mortality rate in nursing homes like that. And in aging care facilities, but also the simple fact that because of because of the need to lock down, you couldn't have visitors that a lot of people just kind of faded and either came out with like brain function that was nowhere near as good, or you know,
passed away at some point from something else. But in part because like they weren't fighting it, you know, theyn't as much to live for because they did not have people getting come to visit.
And the place that Grandpa.
Chuck was in was really good because like we were able to like drop off a computer and they like fully you know, sanitized it, but then taught him how to use it.
So we can video chat with him.
That's great.
I think a lot of places did something like that, but I'm sure other places didn't, you know. And we talk a lot about male loneliness, especially now in regard to like the election and younger people and stuff like that, and I don't think it gets talked about a lot in terms of older folks.
And I think I was really touched by that.
Yeah, absolutely, I mean spoilers for the end, not what happens, but I mean, I guess this eliminates one of the suspects.
But when.
When Dedi, the head of the facility, finds out that Charles is a spy and that he was there under false pretenses for you know, thirty days, and she she resigns, and and then he tries to convince her to stay, partially by saying, hey, look, you know I was there under false presenses, but like I really was lonely, you know, and you saw that, you know, like you you see everything that's going on, and you you know, you know, even if you didn't know why I was there, like
you knew what I needed, even when I didn't know what I needed, you know, and that that loneliness really was a very bad thing for him. And you know, he quite possibly would even without any real health issues, like might die earlier if you know, without a connection to anyone, you know, without really connecting with his daughter besides clipping newspaper articles. And even if not, even if he lived longer without interacting with other people, you know,
it would likely be a less fulfilling existence. You know, It's not just about how long you live, you know, it's like what you know, what do you get out of what do you experience? What's what's your life? Like, you know, and there's I don't think there's any reason that someone's later years or last years like need to be in solitude, you know, and don't need to be
with only people of their own age. I mean, I certainly understand it can be harder to connect with people of different ages, you know, on all sides, on all sides, but I've I've always felt it was worth the effort, and you know, and having some people closer to your own age to be around to connect with, I think
always does have some value. Like it's not like those are the only people you can connect with, but you know, those might be the only people who really understand some things about what you're going through, right or who are more likely to be able to relate to certain experiences.
There's this great conversation about nouns and that, you know, Calvert initiates, and then and then Charles continues, and you know about just like starting to just lose nouns and be like, you know that that thing, uh, you know, that that movie with what's his name and and what's her name? And then they were both in that other film what's it called like? And you know that's a that's an experience that you get a taste of, maybe
at a at a younger age. You know, I certainly have more of a sense for it now in my forties than I did in my thirties and than I did in my twenties. But I also know, like I don't experience it the same way my mom does in her eighties, you know, And that, you know, being being able to talk to someone, having having some connection to somebody with certain similar experiences or just like a certain mass of experience. I think.
There's a couple of things there.
I wanted to go back to what you said about the clipping out of news stories because that I was kind of tearing up earlier. I think I'm okay now, but like that hit me really hard because that was something my mother did.
She didn't.
Literally do that, but she would, like, you know, she had a New York Times subscription, and she would copy and paste things. She didn't quite ever find the forward button, but she would literally just like take a screenshot and send that to me of an article that and I, you know, watching it, I was both like reminded of how much love there was in that and and had a kind of waves of guilt of like, did I respond to those enough?
Did I not?
And then kind of, you know, went through some of the emails and found that I did respond a lot and felt better about myself. But also, you know, there's always a sense of like you could have done more. I think that that comes with losing someone like that. But yeah, it's just that moment hits so hard because it felt so real. Because again it's so clear that the daughter is not like, oh god, mom, I want you to never bother me again. She loves her father.
She clearly wants to connect with her father, but she doesn't care about he's an architect, he's an engineer, and he sends her things about like interesting architectural facts about you know, Belgian monasteries and.
Nine hundred year old Belgian monasteries. She's like that sounds so boring.
That There was one part where he says to Colbert, his friend, Hey, do you want me to tell you all about some interesting facts about the Gildinggate Bridge. He's like no, And Mary, my spouse was watching, was like I want to hear some facts, so I read them.
Yeah. Yeah, somebody should write his book, although I'm sure there's already a book about like one hundred books about the Golden gate Bridge.
For sure.
For sure, I would say there's one little thing that bothered me, and it was it's become a trope in movies like this, that on TV shows like this that I don't love. But I do think it was handled a little more respectfully than it was before. But I wish we would just kind of get past this, which is the as medical science improves, and I know, like look in any chart about like STI use STI rates and a nursing home and you'll see, like you can find the exact moment when VIAGRAA hits the market because
sexuality in these places have greatly increased. And overall that's good, you know, they'll say, for sex obviously needs to be taught, but we continue to find the sexuality of old people something to laugh at, particularly the sexuality of older women. And there's kind of a running gag of a couple of women in the in the community who are very horny and and one of them has a like it's coming on pretty strong to Charles, and he lets her down very gently with a like, you know, he never
kind of shames her in any way. He kind of explains that you know, he hasn't over his his wife
who's passed on, and it's a very nice scene. But the show that like, you know, every time he talks about like the sexuality the people around him, like the younger characters in his life, especially the private investigator, a kind of like, oh, don't tell me about that, and it just it just struck a little bit as a wrong note to me because it felt like, yeah, there's a time and place, and I truly get like boundaries, but the idea of particularly older women being like, oh,
isn't it so funny that they're so sexual, or you know, things like this. You know, one makes a comment about Pedro Pascal and like how she's always having dirty thoughts about him, and both me and my spouse were like, yeah, same, I get it, but like, yeah, so that was kind of like my one sour note. But again, it's sort of like of all the bad things people do that are kind of like ageist and like making fun of the elderly, this is so many steps of steps better
than anything else I've seen. I just would have wished that one was a little better.
Yeah, I mean I could have done without that as well. I do think that is part of the reality of people of different ages interacting and having conversations about things. You know, Yeah, like you could have the same what was uh.
I feel like.
I was watching something else and somebody was talking about, Oh no, it happened that. So I totally hear what you're saying, and I get it, and I respect it and I mostly agree. Yeah, but they they turned it around also though, where the daughter mentioned hooking up with like this kid a friend that.
Right, he was showing a picture of like, oh yeah, remember that's like my friend's son when you're like eight, Like, oh yeah, I hooked up with hi when you were seventeen, when we were seventeen.
Yeah, and like he had a similar reaction of like I don't want to hear that, you know, yeah, And so I do feel like, you know, I mean, there's certain things that are common reactions that like you don't need to center right, you don't need to have them there, and and so I do agree like kind of playing it too much for laughs, I think is I don't
think it's great. But at the same time, I also feel like it wasn't played that much for like, I feel like it was played for more than laughs, I guess is the way I would say, you know.
I think it would be much better to do this than to not address the topic at all. And at one point they mentioned like an older woman who like needs more batteries for a vibrator, you know, like, yeah, that's great, it's the It was things like the kind of like over aggressiveness of the women who are hitting
on him. Okay, And there's a scene where like they're having some machinery installed and the men who are doing so are and the two women are kind of like scoping them out, and it felt like the show was laughing at them instead of celebrating in a humorous way that they're still sexual and still you know, joy the side of people are attracted to.
So yeah, I would say in that scene, I didn't feel that like that's fair, you know, But the other ones where there were reactions from a third party, yeah, I feel that, Yeah.
You fair, that's fair. So let's talk about the mystery of it all. And I know you're someone who, like I really love mysteries. We haven't talked about them too much. What do you love about mysteries and how do you feel about the way that this handled the mystery.
Yeah, So I love puzzles in the first place, anything where there's like an answer and you need to think to figure it out. Like I just I actually just made a book called one thousand and one Easy Sudoku Puzzles for my Mom, where I literally assembled a thousand and one Sudoku puzzles for my mom and then I put them into a book because I was like, well, if I'm going to put these on a sheet for her anyway, I might as well. But so like I'm
just I'm just always really been into puzzles. I love chest puzzles, and mysteries are this like they're like people puzzles, you know, it's like not just about figuring, Like there's and you know, there's some artifice involved in composing a mystery and displaying it and throwing some red herrings in there.
And so sometimes I can solve a mystery by just thinking like, well, they wouldn't have had it be this if they were this person, they wouldn't have had this scene, you know, or they're putting this in here for this reason. And I prefer not to do that too much because I think that kind of takes away from it a little bit. But it's really hard not to, you know, yeah, Like it's hard not to think about the writing usually
while watching something. I think with this, I didn't that much though, which is really a testament to great writing, I think, is when you know it's it's like an umpire or a referee in in baseball or in a sports game. It's like, if you don't notice they're there, they're doing a good job. Yeah, but also yeah, so so it just in general, in terms of mysteries, I love the kind of people puzzle. I love cozy mysteries, especially more than kind of the you know, more hard boiled or whatever,
but all sorts of mysteries. This one, I I loved the mystery. I suspected correctly and maybe the second episode I think, and then it took a couple more episodes to really figure out exactly what was going on, not just like kind of who it was, but I thought it was, Uh, are we going to say what happened?
Now?
I think I think we can. I think we're gonna have a bit of a spoiler section here. I'm not gonna say who the person is, but I will kind of say it a little bit broadly spoiler in kind of three to two one. And I'll say I predicted this from the first episode because my first wife worked in nursing homes for a long time.
Yeah, as a little nurse.
Yeah, And one thing she told me is that at least every week someone reports something stolen. Yeah, and well, yes, well, like in the three years she worked at a place like that, once there was an actual stolen item.
Yeah.
Most of the time.
It's that you have a lot of people with a lot of memory issues, yeah, who either can lose things or who can take something from someone else because they
think it's theirs. And yeah, in the end, it turns out that it was someone who would like they talk in the show about how once you start to have real memory loss issues, you go to a different part of the facility and that that's kind of like people are a little like scared or nervous of that, and it winds up being like and again, this is very much.
The cozy part of it.
Someone who's not maliciously stealing, but it's just getting confused about she sees things that remind her of things she owned many years ago, thinks they're hers, and takes them. Yeah, and yeah, I saw that coming. But then I did think they did some good. For a while, I thought it was going to be the staff, and then they like they thought it was gonna be the staff in an early episodes like okay, her right.
So then it won't be the staff exactly.
And then I kind of get so caught up in the in the stories and the people that I kind of forgot like, oh, right, there's a mystery.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well it's like he forgot to write, like he was there doing you know, his friend died, like and then he's like, well, I've got to I've got to go to Sacramento and just do anything but be here with this grief. And and so he basically bailed on the case at some point, not not on purpose, but like out of sort of like self defense, self preservation, like yeah, you know, and yeah, so I thought it was it made it so I mentioned before there's actually
there's a Chilean documentary. I forget the name. I'm sure they reference it here, but where this guy, yeah, the mole Agent. That's not the origin name. It's in Spanish, but it like basically this this guy did this. He went into a retirement community and and like tried to investigate something undercover and found out, you know, that one of the things that was going on was something like this.
And obviously this is this is a fiction series. It's not a you know, a direct adaptation or anything, but that's that's the inspiration for it, that like something like this happened, and you know, as you're saying, like, it's not an uncommon thing to happen that you know, somebody takes things that you know aren't theirs, but they don't know that, you know, they don't you know, maybe don't know where they are, like and so it to me it was a it also made sense that like he
solved it because he had experience with that, you know, if you think about it too hard, like maybe it's like, hmm, shouldn't they shouldn't the people working there, Like maybe DD could have solved it, you know, but it's like, okay,
you know, it's like, but it just it. I thought it was just a really nice mystery because it's like most of the mysteries I watch or read are murder mysteries, you know, like and a bunch of people get killed there, and like people are dying here already, Like we don't, we don't need a murder, you know, And not every mystery has to be a murderer, not every mystery has
to be malice. Like, sometimes it's just something happened and we don't know what happened, and we want to try and figure it out, and you know, and that that pervades life and and all sorts of things, you know. I mean, that's what science is basically, is trying to figure out what's going on, right, yeah, and so yeah, So I just thought it was a nice.
And I think I think we live in a world today where we are very quick and I hold myself to this as well, to associate malice to any decision of someone else that we don't like, or any action of what you don't like.
And I think there is a lot of malice in the world today.
But I also think a lot of the times it's you know, I am, I am working with this set of facts, and so I judge your action with that.
But if I remember that you are working from a completely different understanding of the facts of the situation, your action takes on a very different tenor you know, and we can talk about like why do you have a different set of facts or whatever I have different set of facts or whatever, but like still it's it's you know, I think that this is a great example of that. We're like, yeah, there's no malice whatsoever, but of course everyone jumps to that, and I'm kind.
Of glad that they didn't show this.
But I will say that one thing that I think is frequently a reality of these situations. Certainly, we're in the places that my ex wife worked at, and a lot of the others are friends of my worked at in unfortunate reality and not this true of all, but like that, often older white folks will wind up blaming the staff, who often people of color, for things disappearing and stuff like that, and.
Like, again, we didn't need that in this you know, right, it is a reality.
It's worth mentioning, but because also it's not the case a lot of and a lot of times it is like Grandma forgets that she sold something or gave it to someone else and then assumes that like, you know, the Hispanic maid sold it or whatever sold it, right.
Yeah, yeah, And I mean that dynamic was present, right, like Didi's latina, and you know a lot of this,
I mean, the staff is representative of the region. I'd say, you know, it's I mean, it's a diverse staff, but like the main suspects we were not white folks, you know, and that wasn't brought up, but I did feel that, you know, and I kind of felt like because of the show and the feel of the show, I was like, therefore, they probably didn't do it, you know, like like his friend Calbert is black, and I'm like, and his son's black, and I'm like, they probably didn't do it, yeah, because
you know, like it would feel like it would feel worse and like ultimately like you should be able to have anyone be guilty or be the cause of whatever, you know, like in a better world. But you know, stories are viewed within the world in which they're made, and our world has a lot of you know, racism and and other various bigotries, and so having a story where that wasn't you know, where I feel like the viewer could bring their own prejudice prejudices, you know, right,
And I'm sure many do. And there's at least one other show where I remember watching and someone being like, oh, they're going to have the black guy be like the
you know, the bad guy here or whatever. I was like, just keep watching this show, like you know, but they obviously played on on that stereotype or that that that bias of people to sort of misdirect and and here I don't think they were doing that like super deliberately or anything, you know, but that that was there, and and it you know, it made the actual resolution more of almost like a relief, you know, that was like, ah, Okay, there's not any because I feel like if it had
really been a real theft, like a deliberate theft, it would have undermined the I'm not saying this is like the message of the show, but it's a message that does come from the show. Is like these places can be nice and good, you know, and good for most of their residents, not everybody. It's not going to be a perfect fit for everybody, but like the goal is to help people and buy and large they're doing a good job of that.
No, I think that's true, and I actually that you're going to go a little bit of different direction, but I think it's very similar.
But to me, I think that's the message.
But also a real big part of the message is, yes, there's shitty people out there, most people are fundamentally good to some extent or another, and a lot of their conflicts, even where they're kind of being not great people, yeah, there's probably some misunderstanding or some reason behind it, you know. And like the guy who's kind of like the the you know, erotic rival of our character.
Like sexual rival, and he got it.
Like he's very toxic, masculine, and he's very kind of like possessive. He's also dying of cancer, and like that's never presented as an excuse, but it's also like this guy's kind of like, yeah, I'm just gonna do what I when I know, I'm not gonna try and change.
I've got six months left. And in one of my favorite moments, because I remember something my mom fought about a lot, you know, like my mom, My mom could have probably lived fifteen years longer than she did, she'd show and part of it is because she was an addict, but also like she could have eaten healthier, but she kind of made a conscious decision of like in her words, like she could live twenty years eating rabbit food, or she could live ten years more eating the food she really loved.
And there's a scene.
Where, again this guy is dying of cancer, and he to go smoke a cigar, go buy cigars. And one of the people at the at the home, one of the staff isn't comfortable doing that because he knows it doing that, like every cigar he smokes is gonna like speed up the clock on whatever time he has left, And and Deeede both doesn't like tell the staff member like, no, you have to go, like she validates the staff members feelings, but make sure that the staff member stands like that
is their concern. It's okay to not want to participate, but that she's also she's gonna take him shopping for the cigars herself, because she fully honors the choice that this guy's making of saying like, yeah, if I can have four months with cigars or five months without, I'm gonna I'm gonna keep smoking cigars, and and other people don't want.
My father is the exact opposite.
He has cut out more and more things out of his diet, and he's in great shape and will probably live well into his nineties if not hit one hundred.
And I think his choice is just as valid as my mother's.
But yeah, so just that one little moment really like touched me, and I was like, like, I'm so glad that that.
Yeah, for sure, I mean, and then she kind of talks him out of getting the cigar. Yeah, but not in a like in a deeply manipulative way, but not in a in a like empathetically manipulative way though. Yeah, so it was.
I didn't love that part. I forgot about that.
But yeah, but like she drives him there, and it's his choice. You know. She doesn't say you shouldn't do this.
Or I won't let you or something like that, right, right, right.
Yeah, it's like this is your choice. But you know, they talk about some stuff and he's like, yeah, maybe I won't do this, like maybe I would rather spend time, you know, maybe I would rather have more time like and that, to me, the part that matters is that that's his choice.
Right because like, yeah, if either staff members have been like no, I'm not going to do that, then it's not his choice.
Yeah, And like, I don't think all manipulation is necessarily bad, Like, you know, I mean, people can make a number of different choices, and there are ways I think of leading people to make better choices without leveraging something or guilting them or.
You know, like.
Her point wasn't really so much like you owe this to you know, Virginia, you know who you're marrying. It's not that you owe this to anybody, but it's that you could do this and this, this could be like your gift to her kind of right, you know, because he's kind of trying to figure out, like what can
I even do to console her? You know, her best friend just died, and it's like, well, not dying might be helpful, you know, and like I don't know so and you know, I mean, it's encouraging people to make healthier decisions, I think is something that I appreciate and support. But the difference between encouraging someone to make healthier decisions and basically telling them if you make any other decision that's not a valid choice, I think those are two very different things.
I want to push back a little bit on your use of the word healthier there, because I think that.
I mean literally, yeah, I mean in.
Terms of physical health, yes, I think that there are times in which emotional health and other kinds of health matter a lot more. And I just think there's a lot of really problematic language around like what is or is not physically healthier? Then I know that's not what you necessarily mean, but that I think is wrapped up in that. But I do agree with your general concept, Yeah, for sure, And I.
Think that that's the.
It's she offers him a different way to understand the choice he's making without trying to tell him what choice to make.
Yeah, exactly.
Just on the subject of mysteries, though, I.
Think I've talked about this on the show before, but not for probably a couple of years now. My favorite set of novels are about a character named Matthew Scudder by Lawrence Block, and they are much darker books. They're like very there's always a murder, there's always like you know, some danger, there's always high stakes.
It's Hell's Kitchen, right, Yeah, they.
Help well, I mean one of the biggest in the same way that Baltimore is a character in The Wire. Yeah, New York City and especially Hell's Kitchen as it becomes Clinton is very much a character in the book. And I feel like for people want to understand, like my my knowledge of New York. The books go from nineteen seventy five, which is like right before I was born, till the early two thousands, or about when I left
the city. But like, the thing with the character is he's an alcoholic and he is in treatment, and as the books go on he's better and better, but especially early on, he really needs he's fighting tooth and nail to not take another drink, and he solves mysteries as a way to keep himself busy, and as part of that he goes on a lot of like psychological journeys, and every book is about some different step, not like that each book is the Twelve Steps, but like they're
always about some different part of his recovery in some way that he's dealing with life, and the murder mystery is often like they're often quite good and well done, but they're never the most important part.
Of the book.
It's a character study where the mystery is kind of the plot device to kind of take us along. And this is very different in tone and feel, but it felt very much that same way, where like, yes, there's a mystery, and yes I love it, but I also feel like if if you've decided to keep listening now and you haven't seen it, I think that you will can go in knowing the mystery and still love this in a way that a lot of other mystery is like I've never seen the Sixth Sense because I know the spoiler.
We were at the Mayfair and someone said, what happened? At least I was I think you might have been there? Yeah, right, And then I saw the movie like ten years later, and I was like, what was the point of watching this movie? Like I already know. I won't even say it here because I respect maybe somebody doesn't know and they can go see it and hopefully they haven't listened to the song Jiz in my Pants, but because it
has a spoiler for it. But like, you know, I really appreciate that I got to see the usual Suspects without knowing what was going on that you know, knowing a mystery, like certain mysteries, I mean the sixth Sense is like, really, it's just such a certain types of mysteries when especially when it's such a twist thing or whatever, I think, really don't play that well without the mystery
being a mystery. Whereas you know, I think you can see Empire strikes back and like already know whether or not Vader is Luke's father.
And like you'll be okay, yeah exactly.
I personally love generally prefer mysteries where the mystery is really central and the detective doesn't go through a bunch of personal crap and they're just like they're like a person who this is what they do. They solve mysteries. They're like the constant through line through a series of mysteries. But that's not what this show was. This show it wasn't about someone going through a bunch of personal crap.
It was about life, you know, and then there was a mystery there that was like, you know, kind of the construct for that.
And we're gonna talk more about mysteries and our bonus content for members, which, by the way, if you're not a member yet, for only five dollars a month, fifty five dollars a year, you get to become a member. With that, you get avery content, you get bonus content, you know a lot of other great stuff, and you get to help us keep the lights on. So if you haven't done that yet, please think about becoming a member for only five dollars a month. And we're about
to wrap up. Paul, any of the kind of last things you want to say about the show.
I just enjoyed it, you know, I don't have I don't know. I didn't. I didn't make a list of things I wanted to talk about. Basically, I started watching the show. Then I was like, Oh, I'm going to get my mom to watch this show. So I watched the show with my mom and then and I saw it because Lee was watching it, and then I was like, Oh,
what's this? And actually I ended up watching it partially because Lori Tanchin is in it, who plays she's the President of the Council of the Resident Council, but she's in another show that I enjoy a lot that I don't think you made it through. I didn't think it was quite your brand of humor necessarily. Nora from Queen's she plays the grandmother in that show, and one of the things I love about that show is her in that show and how much of a character she gets
to be as the grandmother. And it's they're just throughout history have not been enough characters who are like important to a story and really get to be full people over the age of sixty, you know, unless maybe they're old white men and they're like a politician characters or lawyer or something like that, you know, but.
Or are there the mister Miyagi or the you know exactly the wise old person who's often a person of color, like the magic you know, et cetera.
Uh trope.
But you know, you're right, like who get to be fully actualized characters instead of talking plot devices?
Yes, or character growth for our younger characters.
Yeah, and like I love mister Miyagi, you know, I think it's the best character in the Karate Kid. But like you know, first of all, that's not a super common thing, and like you know, the older character as plot device is the main place you see them or have and I think it's been getting better over the years,
you know. I mean we did the episode on the Golden Girls, which was like an outlier in its day, but I do think it's continued to I think Netflix has had a lot of shows with older characters, and I mean even something like The Book of Boba Fat, like it's an action show where you know they're in their fifties and maybe tomorrow more.
I think sixty two and ming No Win with like fifty seven.
Yeah, something like that. And you know, it's just nice to see because it's like everybody should get to play an important character, like no matter what age you are and and so it's just nice to see more of it. And I just really enjoyed the show. And you know, when you were like, can you do a podcast tonight, I was like, yeah, if you'll watch four hours of this show, and you got through it, so.
Yeah, yeah.
We had a couple of other episodes plan. I really want to do something on Prey, which I don't know if you've seen.
Fantastic.
It's another retelling of the Predator story, but set in an American community, like just at the start of where white people are coming into it.
And I had a lot of fun watching it. I have a lot of good thoughts on it.
Mostly I was like, it is so cool that they did such a good version of the Predator movie in this community in a way that was really honoring and authentic to that community.
I still don't like Predator movies.
It was great so that we want to do something about Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood. We'll see where those go. But yeah, thank you Paul so much for stepping in last minute. Hope you folks enjoyed all of this. We'll have a lot more to say about mysteries and spy stuff, or not a lot, but a little in our bonus memo content for everyone else.
Thank you so much. We have spoken