Be Good and Rewatch It

Bummer news, Be Good and Rewatch It fans: we’re going on a hiatus. We’ll be back. Probably. Somebody's gotta rewatch all of Neon Genesis Evangelion, right? But even if this is our final episode, we’re going out with a banger. Cado, Austin, Natalie, Rob, and Patrick recently spent time in a theater with the latest horror film from writer/director Jordan Peele, Us, a movie that’s impossible to watch without having a strong reaction; it’s a movie that will not be ignored. Thanks for supporting Be Good and Rewatch It and everything Waypoint does.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

​Caution Warnings: ​We talk about assault and sexual violence over the course of this episode Be not alarmed, listener, that this episode contains any further renewal of the ​Pride and Prejudice ​podcast series. But many different letters were laid to our charge over the course of this re-watch, and now honor demands that Austin, Natalie, and Rob be allowed to respond. We have a very serious conversation about Lydia's storyline and the challenges it poses in any adaptation or in any attempt to modernize it. We also also get some excellent food for thought about neurodivergent characters in Austen's work and in this particular adaptation of ​Pride and Prejudice. ​Speaking of food, we finally learn what that "sausage pastry" was from the first episode. Thanks once again for listening to this absurdly detailed, loving, and ridiculous return to a landmark TV series.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

​Here we are, huh? The last episode of the 1995 BBC ​Pride and Prejudice​​, and therefore the very last episode of our Be Good and Rewatch It series, which of course will conclude next week because we ran long and broke the letters section out into its own podcast! God and Waypoint aren't done with you yet, Mr. Darcy and Lizzie Bennett! First, however, we have to get these two problematic faves into a marriage knot... and see Lizzie finally square-up with Lady Catherine de Bourgh, who has condescended to get her ass kicked. We also delve into the mystery of who tipped Lady Catherine about Darcy's attachment to Elizabeth, and consider our final verdicts on Mr. Bennett. We also talk about the more realistic, restrained portrayals of the BBC adaptation with the more tempestuous approach taken by the 2005 film, which tries to render the interior monologues of the novel into action on film.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

With their co-hosts out of action this week, Rob and Austin take a break from the team's ongoing deep dive​ into the BBC's 1995 adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice ​in favor of something altogether different... a deep dive into the BBC's 2009 adaptation of Jane Austen's ​Emma​. They dig into the story's class satire, the startling chemistry between leads Romola Garai​ and Jonny Lee Miller, and their own romantic missteps. And they do all that in just ​one​ recording, making this a true Waypoint achievement.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Things are going well, a little too well, for Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy. Which means it's time for Lydia Bennett to stop being a supporting player in this comedy and become a star in her own romantic drama. Today on the first part of our Pride and Prejudice rewatch finale, we discuss the fatalist snark of Caroline Bingley, Lizzie's growing maturity and awareness, and what Georgiana Darcy reveals about this story. But the biggest topic of discussion is Lydia's disastrous elopement with Mr. Wickham. How do we approach a story that treats as a scandal the sexual agency of a teenage girl, and underplays the predatory aspect of Wickham's conduct? If the entire subplot is built on an outdated, misogynist foundation, is it still fair to find Lydia to be a loathsome heel by the end of it?  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

For BGRW We might as well face this head-on. There's no hiding from it. We spend an hour of this podcast discussing, in detail, our discomfort and ambivalence about the way our heroine, Elizabeth Bennett, begins to turn all the way around on Fitzwilliam Darcy when she sees his mansion. Is she being influenced by crass material considerations? What do we make of this weird, almost mythologized connection between Darcy and his estate at Pemberley? We discuss Romanticism, Transcendentalism, and Austin's slashfic about Peter Parker and Darcy. We also dig into both the creepiness of Wickham, and the ways he is still misjudged and his dangerousness under-rated even after his character has been revealed, plus Mr. Bennett's maddening complacency. We learn Natalie has trouble with imagery and metaphor, Rob is a bootlicking landlord apologist, and Austin has a worrying thing about wolves.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This continues to get out of hand. Once again we got in too deep, so our second episode of the BBC ​Pride and Prejudice ​only covers the third episode of the miniseries. But who can blame us! As connoisseurs of human folly, we are eager to savor such delights as these: Charlotte Lucas's marriage to Mr. Collins and what it is meant to say in the original novel, versus Lucy Scott's decides to portray in her reading of the character. Mr. Wickham's increasingly oily charm and aggressive self-pity. Lady Catherine, in which we get a taste of what happens if you took Lizzie's and Mrs. Bennett's worst possible traits and poured money over them. Col. Fitzwilliam's catastrophic assistance to Darcy. And finally, Darcy's own attempts at balancing romance with radical honesty. Clips: Darcy's Confession, Rest in Fucking Pieces Mr Darcy, 2005 Darcy Confession  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In what was supposed to be an episode covering the first half of the six-part series, Rob, Natalie, and Danielle spend two hours breaking down the first three-quarters of the first episode. Then Rob and Natalie reconvene to discuss the second episode. The third episode, our original stopping point, is completely forgotten! It will have to wait for next week. But don't get discouraged, there's a lot to dig into here. Who do we find ourselves strangely sympathetic to in this telling of Jane Austen's masterpiece? Mr. Bennett: avuncular dad or secret villain of the entire story? Is Lizzie actually that good a sister? How did we miss the red flags with Wickham? Is Matthew Macfadyen's awkward and conflicted Darcy in the 2005 film a more convincing portrayal than the intensely magnetic Darcy portrayed by Colin Firth? And finally, what are you supposed to do with Mr. Collins?  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Content Warning for discussion of incest, sexual harassment, and relationship age gaps. Clueless ​was one of the most successful movies of 1995, and also proved to have one of the most important legacies. A modern adaptation of Jane Austen's ​Emma​, ​Clueless ​was a comedy of manners for children of the 1990s... or at least those who dreamed of what life might be like if you were that young, that rich, and that insulated from consequences. But does its tongue-in-cheek portrayal of young women and their social lives hold up today? Did the media that came after ​Clueless ​and often imitated it, like ​Cruel Intentions ​and later ​Gossip Girl​, break from the film's philosophy or merely unearth a darkness that was already there? So is Paul Rudd like her step-brother, and isn't that kind of weird? Danielle, Natalie, and Rob dig into all of it on this episode of ​Be Good and Rewatch It​.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sunshine—Danny Boyle’s 2007 sci-fi/maybe thriller, maybe horror tale about a dying sun and one intrepid crew’s mission to save it—so intrigued us that we just had to do a BGRW episode on it. Join us as we discuss the movie’s gorgeous cinematography, interesting heroes, and not-so-grand final third, with plenty of room along the way to think about, well, “what do you see?”  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Join Patrick and Danielle for a journey through Event Horizon’s tightly wound, terrifying core, discussing its production and aesthetic influences (borrowed heavily from both Hellraiser and Alien), its strong performances, and its lasting effects as a cult classic. Extra props to the folks at the Faculty of Horror podcast for inspiring some of the discussion here on popular tropes about hell!  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Content Warning: Discussions of Sexual and Physical Abuse and Domestic Violence Upfront, we should say that ​Serenity ​is a movie that manages to offend in both its meta narrative and main narrative. To some very loaded topics around domestic violence and abuse, it brings an ill-conceived and poorly delivered central conceit. And yet there is something compelling about its ineptitude and the elaborate earnestness with which it attempts to create an erotic thriller for the digital age. It is also fascinated by video games, and that fascination is expressed in some strange and almost unforgettable ways in this greatest of bombs of 2019.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Be Good and Rewatch It brings its three-part breakdown of M. Night Shyamalan’s Eastrail 177 trilogy—Unbreakable, Split, Glass—to a close with a conversation about the director’s latest musing on the nature of superheroes. Glass brings together the main characters of each movie, with the intention of commenting on what it would be like to live in a world where people were obsessed with superpowers. Like a lot of Shyamalan’s work, it’s a lot, but that’s why Natalie, Austin, Rob, and Patrick are here. You don’t have to go through this alone.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

M. Night Shyamalan has made horror movies about a lot of things, including ghosts, aliens, and, uh, mental illness! Yikes? Yikes. Split, a 2016 movie about the kidnapping of three young women by a man with dissociative identity disorder, is the focus of our discussion (and ire) on this installment of Be Good and Rewatch It. Austin, Patrick, Rob, and Natalie convened, as we work through Shyamalan’s Eastrail 177 Trilogy (Unbreakable, Split, Glass).  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We live in an age of endless comic book movies, but it didn’t always used to be that way. M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable, released in 2000, came long before popular culture decided Thor was cool, actually. This slow and plodding origin story about a flawed man discovering he’s something more was a revelation in 2000, but sits even weirder in 2019. With Shyamalan having a chance to revisit the Unbreakable universe with his new movie, Glass, Austin, Rob, Patrick, and Natalie decided it was a perfect time to revisit Unbreakable.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.