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Still catching up on this thread, but wanted to address it... I agree with everything Taylor has said. I, too, had toxic relationships, particularly in high school and there's something about Edward's behavior that goes into triggering territory where Travis Bickle et al. do not. Yeah, he's intentionally creepy, but the audience is supposed to interpret that as a sign of love. Women and girls are brought up to translate men's aggression as affection. "He teases you because he likes you." And he's sneaking into Bella's room, and stalking her because he loves her. Or so the movie/books would have us believe. Men (I'm not even going to try to put a percentage on how many, but enough of them) act this way with girls and women, and we often interpret it as affection because that's all we see. Everywhere. All. The. Time. It takes a lot of counter-programming to get passed some of this stuff. Particularly for an audience of young girls who don't have the capacity to analyze the story or the language to discuss toxic masculinity, I think the author should have known better. You can make Edward weird and awkward and loving without making him a controlling, possessive, emotionally abusive stalker. She could have even kept in all the LDS messages she wanted. It was a choice to make him that way. A way that many boys and men actually think they can act around women. And as Taylor said, it normalizes it, and it shows girls that as long as you're meant to be together, and as long as it's true love, just stick with it. Don't' worry about what your friends and family are saying. Don't worry about all the warning signs. He just really loves you, and you're meant to be together, and definitely, as soon as you're married and have a baby, you'll all live happily ever after. I didn't quite mean to open a whole campaign against the movies, but I legit have a hard time watching that kind of relationship on screen because I've been in one. And yeah, maybe us women who've survived them are tough-as-nails now, but wouldn't the world be better if we could be tough without having to go through it?

I think it’s so funny that on ‘Conan Needs a friend’ Gorley is constantly trying to be friends with Conan and he keeps getting shut down.

I see intentionality in those other movies to criticize society and the main character. It's very much crystal clear to me that's what the filmmakers are doing. I don't see it in Twilight. Maybe a little bit in the silliness of the first movie (vampire baseball!), but by the sequels it feels like everyone is taking this completely 100% seriously. The filmmaking seems straight-ahead and unironic to me. Maybe the books are different, I can't speak to that. The filmmaking choices don't suggest active criticism.

But no one here is doing that. We all happen to have very specific feelings about this series, and I don't see the point in going against them because you think it's not well thought out. You're speaking to us as if we're all in the same boat of those who rag on the fans online and dismiss them (mostly because of their gender). I'm here telling you I was one of those fans and that I feel my feelings on this very popular book series are being dismissed literally right now.

Alright, I see what you're saying now, but I think what we're getting hung up on here is the fact that we are indeed talking about Twilight specifically in this instance, so obviously it's going to be our punching bag. If we were going over Hunger Games I would talk about fucking Liam Hemsworth's character who's name I keep forgetting as the other epitome of WAH FRIENDZONED AND FUCK HER CHOICES RAH! And I would have to say that this isn't just anecdotal evidence. I lived it. There's truly a difference in people being stupid and thinking they can fly, and then the representation of men and women and hetero relationships effecting the youth. Also, I'm not sure any of us were saying that these problematic flaws are the reason why we don't like these films/books (for me at least I can't speak to anyone else that has chimed in). In fact, before I recognized the problematic nature to this relationship I had realized they just weren't good lol. That's not the point I think any of us were trying to make. It's just that we happened to watch the last movie (which I actually really enjoyed) and were pointing out the things we don't like about this series now.

I'm not saying that she shouldn't have written from her POV or her upbringing, but we should still call it out when it's problematic. Like, I love me The Chronicles of Narnia. That was my first exposure to fantasy and allegory and really cool writing and mythology. And most of it is pretty good but book 5 (The Horse and His Boy) is DEEPLY problematic that is only borderline and marginally corrected in book 7, but book 7 also has that horrible revelation that Susan was more concerned with boys and dresses and parties and forgot all about Narnia and didn't get to go back when her siblings all died. Like Lewis is is saying that if you like boys and dresses and parties you don't deserve to go to heaven. And I'm going to call it out. I still love Narnia (and I really love Lewis' Space Trilogy) but that doesn't mean he didn't write from a problematic POV that may have influenced people negatively (thankfully the Narnia neighbors who are problematic in the books never showed up in the films)

Okay, but as a 16 year old in this time I can wholeheartedly say that teenage girls are stupid enough to eat this shit up and wish dudes would act like that. It's a fairy tale, but when fairy tales are some of our only representation of teenage romance, then that's all we start to see as truth. This is the problem with stuff like that. Until we can get proper stuff in front of kids' eyes then we can't actually chalk this up to just being a fairy tale and therefore none of it is accurate. Edward is still supposed to be a 17 year old, and so it does teach girls that these actions are okay from men, because they saw Edward do it. Like I promise you I'm writing this all from genuine experience. It took going through extremely toxic relationships and growing up to realize those actions are not okay, because no one told me otherwise.

Kevin's Phyllo-Dough TV ad was so bad I'm going to order the product and cancel it immediately. God help them if they send me a survey asking why I cancelled.

Maybe this movie is just a response to Nihilist Arby's, since even if you die after roast beef, you can actually come back as your daughter

To add to this - aside from the Google search heard 'round the world, I don't recall them doing anything to try to figure out how to get the daughter back. I may have blocked it out, but the characters feel completely resigned to a "well, this will all sort itself out somehow!" mentality, and then poof! the daughter's back (or IS she?). It just feels so passive and unresolved. You can tell it's a remake of an adaptation of a remake of an adaptation. It's not so clear anymore. If it ever was.

The guys touched on this a little bit, but I think it deserves more attention. In the beginning of the movie, the daughter goes to a sleepover and the parents have a date night in the house and reminisce about their past. Duchovny tells a story about how on the second night of their honeymoon in Provence, he had to find her a roast beef sandwich or else they weren’t gonna bone for the rest of the trip? First, they’re only on the second night in Provence, so it feels too early to start craving food from home, unless they started their honeymoon earlier at a different location. But secondly, why would anyone crave a roast beef sandwich? It’s not some exotic food that’s hard to obtain and I feel like Provençal beef stew would be an acceptable alternative to satisfy the craving. So I think the natural conclusion is that the roast beef sandwich is some sort of a kink and she needed it or else there wasn’t gonna be any sex for the rest of the honeymoon.

Oh SNAP! You C&O'd my C&O while we are in the C&O!

A bizarre moment for me was at the end when Hannah-as-Sam is signing her friend’s yearbook and when the subject of her handwriting comes up her friend says something like, “I really miss your mother,” and I was just thinking, “You DO???” This is one of the “friends” who was complicit in the whole, “Let’s get high at your mother’s wake” plan. At no point did I ever feel like any of her friend’s gave a single shit about her mother - at all. When they show up on their doorstep at the beginning, Hannah doesn’t even seem to know who they are. But apparently, unbeknownst to us, this one teenage girl had a real surrogate mother/daughter thing going on with Hannah. Something never brought up until the very last scene just so Hannah-Sam can tell us with a wink that she’s permanently hijacked her daughter’s body. #Momoftheyear

I agree with the gang about how all their arguments and huge emotional moments seemed to happen in public. My favorite example of this was near the end of the movie when Duchovny is coming to terms with the idea that he’s going to lose his wife for a second time and he’s straight up ugly crying at work while looking at photographs of the two of them. Then, slowly, the camera pans over his shoulder and reveals a dude sitting in the optometry chair waiting patiently for his optometrist to get his shit together and examine his eyes. I can’t even imagine what must be going through that guy’s head, but I’d love to read his Yelp review: Arrived on time for appointment and was promptly led to Dr Duchovny’s unusually dim office to begin the exam. He sat me down, complimented me on my “beautiful eyes” - which seemed mildly inappropriate - and then turned his back to me for, like, five minutes while he stood crying over some blurry photos of nonsense. He kept mumbling something about his “daughter-wife?” I don’t know. I’m sure that’s not what he was actually saying, because that’s crazy, but it was strange and really uncomfortable. Like, what do you even do in that situation??? He just stood there sobbing and sniffling loudly. I know he’s a doctor and all, and I should trust him, but he was clearly emotionally unstable. I mean, I was there for cataract surgery for Christ’s sake!!! There was no way I was about let this crazy person anywhere near my eyes! Anyway, eventually he told me he wasn’t feeling very well and asked me to leave, which, at that point, I was more than happy to do. One Star - Do Not Recommend!

A better title for the movie: "Would Ya?"

There seems to be a lot of confusion. Check out this Rotten Tomatoes page: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1175785_secret The movie poster looks right. The listed cast includes David Duchovny, Lili Taylor, etc. Okay. MPAA rating, director, writer; check, check, check. But then, genre: documentary? Synopsis: Interviews with leading authors, philosophers, scientists, with an in-depth discussion of the Law of Attraction. The audience is shown how they can learn and use 'The Secret' in their everyday lives? Whoops. The best part has to be the 70 pages of audience reviews for a very divisive self-help documentary. I am getting a kick though out of pretending that some of the less specific reviews are actually for our Duchovny flick. Matthew M gave it one star and says "Complete non scientific non sense". Tahirih N notes that it's "Kind of dramatic at times but a great message!". According to Mihir D it's "One and a half hours of repetitive crap. Argh!", but Michelle H contends it's "A must see. It can change your life if you see it with an open mind." Can't argue with that.

That's exactly how the Japanese novel ended. The accident happens when the daughter is 11. The wife possesses her body for years into her teenage years. The daughter's personality begins to partially emerge and grows stronger until she is fully conscious and in control again. The father accepts this and raises her as his daughter again. On her wedding day, he breaks down as he suspects that his daughter never came back and his wife just gave up being her original self and decided to be the daughter.

Sorry to be the one to point this out, but I think you’re math’s off. Twenty years from when the film was released would have put that concert in 1987 or '88. A quick gander at the Cure's discography shows that their album Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me came out in ‘87 and featured the hit song “Just Like Heaven” - which I would argue is The Cure just getting to their commercial height. (Disintegration w/ hits “Pictures of You” and “Lovesong” [their highest charting single] was released in ‘89 and Wish, w/ “Friday I’m in Love,” was released in ‘92.) So, it checks out is what I’m saying. Everything checks out. The whole damn movie checks out. There are no holes.

Several people have brought up the question of the handwriting at the end. I think this movie is pulling a brilliant Minority Report style ambiguous ending: if you want the handwriting to show that the daughter has gained a new respect for her deceased mother, then you can walk away without thinking about it any further. Stop reading if that sounds nice to you. However, if you want to think about the real consequences of a grown woman who has been trapped in her dead daughter's body, keep reading. So you have just been busted doing drugs by your husband/dad who is having his own emotional breakdown over the question of what is going to happen to his family. You've just had a vision in which you see your own dead body fading out of existence. You now realize there is no going back. You finally understand your daughter's life, and you finally understand that she is gone. What do you do? Do you try to convince your husband to face this fact? He has rejected your attempts to remain a wife, and he has rejected your attempts to find a new life for yourself with this new body. He'll only accept one way out: the daughter's return. Conveniently, this is an outcome in which he: Accepts your life choices Doesn't try to bang you Supports you financially while you restart your life Trying to be honest with him would just result in a bizarre divorce, and he would probably try to have you committed to an institution. So, you convince your hus-dad that the daughter is back. You don't get hit by car, or struck by lightning, or anything. You just wake up one morning and pretend to faint dramatically. He wants to believe you, anyway. And then you carry on with your new life. It's a little tricky that you can't help but use your old-style handwriting, but you pass it off as an homage to your late mother. But at least you can bang that hot photography teacher on the regs.

After The first time she tries to sleep with him I think Duchovny should’ve just called an exorcist. ”I’m glad to see there is an afterlife, I will see you there one day, but the power of Christ compels you.”

I did not watch this movie. I read the summary and was like nope. I am surprised, from listening to the episode, how little attention is given to the teenage girl. Not only do the parents not seem to care she is dead. But also, like, would a teenage girl WANT David Duchovny? Because I remember having crushes on boys and feeling like I couldn't control it. (Memorably I worked at a movie theater slinging popcorn and I had a crush on a co-worker who was tall and dumb and hot. It was so annoying and distracting. Eventually he dyed his hair that terrible blonde and it was such a relief because I didn't have to crush on him anymore.) It would be more interesting if the wife has an emotional connection to the husband but is physically attracted to Just-In or something. But maybe DD doesn't do projects that don't have every character wanting to fuck him? That is all I can figure. The Japanese version sounds much more interesting. ETA: I do agree with June that teenage girls aren't usually (some are) horny. For me, obviously, it was more crush related. Admiring guys and kissing and such. It is also weird that she'd be so confident in her sexuality to wear lingerie and such? I suppose that is the mom's influence but I would just be in crush-love with boys and NEVER speak to them. Obviously, this goes without saying but this would NEVER get made with the genders switched, as June proved.

The adaptation of this novel is so much different from the Japanese movie and from the novel itself and is more bonkers then the American adaptation. I will try my best with this convoluted story line. It does play into Japanese tropes of Lolita complex and repression of outward feelings. The mother persona never leaves the daughter body like in the American adaptation and the mother takes it as her chance to have a second chance at life and do things should didn't do in her previous life. The mother persona in the daughters starts dating the son of the bus driver that caused their car accident and end up dating him!! Knowing that their relationship wont work with her husband while living in her daughter's body. She fakes a split personality disorder and pretends her daughters persona is coming back and taking back the daughters body so she can then date said son and marry him. The husband realizes that the mother persona never left and was faking the daughter persona so they can both move on with their different lives. This becomes the secret they keep not telling the other what the other one knows. Wikipedia did it better. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naoko_(novel) I love the author Keigo Higashino, since he is one of the few English translated works I could read while I was living in Niigata, Japan. he is a really great murder mystery novelist (Devotion of Suspect X is really good and won many awards and I recommend reading or listening on Audible) and the book The Secret is based on Naoko is based on Japanese surrealism like any Murakami novel. Thanks Paul, June and Jason, I have been listening to you since Burlesque and it helped when I was living in Japan during the 3/11 quake .

Oh gigi-tastic, I am so incredibly sorry for your loss. I lost my main dude, Tiger, in 2015 and it still hurts so I totally understand how you're feeling right now. I'm terrible at taking my own advice but something that I wish I had done that I didn't do was actually take the time I needed because mourning is hard and it's even harder when you don't allow yourself time to do it. I always seem to put my life responsibilities over my mental state and that's definitely not the thing to do lol. As far as other podcasts that ALWAYS delight me I recommend: Why Won't You Date Me with Nicole Byer, Never Seen It with Kyle Ayers, Dumb People Town, Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend (Matt Gourley is the producer and pops up a lot and it's amazing), 2 Dope Queens (no longer releasing new stuff but their archive is all there and highly recommended), and Sooo Many White Guys. If you're into spooky stuff then I also recommend (if not then ignore all this): Alice Isn't Dead, Tanis, Bizarre States, Ghosted! By Roz Drezfalez, Lore (pretty heavy but if you love true stories reported throughout the ages this is a fucking amazing podcast), and My Favorite Murder.

A not great movie made infinitely more watchable with a pretty delightful performance from Bill Pullman. I recommend both this and Ruthless People if you want to see a young Bill Pullman stealing not just scenes but entire movies.