Speaker 1: Flex and Frooms, Flex and Frooms. This is the Flex
Speaker 1: and Frooms catch up podcast.
Speaker 2: It is Flex and Frooms on CATA.
Speaker 3: A couple of weeks ago, if not before we went
Speaker 3: on break, we were discussing that I would say ten
Speaker 3: years ago, when we all watched the hit indie movie
Speaker 3: Five Hundred Days of Summer. We all got it wrong,
Speaker 3: and we're here to number one apologize for our misdemeanors.
Speaker 3: A number two set the record straight. This is also
Speaker 3: prompted by a listener question we got via the DMS.
Speaker 3: It's Flex and Frooms on Instagram. Any questions you have
Speaker 3: please feedback advice queries go to the Instagram DM. It'll
Speaker 3: be siphoned by producer Mickey. She'll bring us the questions.
Speaker 3: It'll reach us. I promise you don't get trapped in
Speaker 3: our personal dms to waste lands. So listener says, oh
Speaker 3: my god, please dissect five hundred Days of Summer.
Speaker 2: I need this explanation.
Speaker 3: I've always felt so many things about this movie and
Speaker 3: often think of it in life. Like producer MICHAELA, I
Speaker 3: want a deep analysis flex and Room style. Please ps,
Speaker 3: you guys are the absolute best thing since Slice Spread.
Speaker 2: Look I hear you. And for that reason, I've actually
Speaker 2: done some research. I fully not only.
Speaker 3: Did research notes notes, I haven't worked a day in
Speaker 3: my life since twenty ten. But for this, I said,
Speaker 3: I can do some research, all right. So five to
Speaker 3: Day's with Summer A funny, seductive, surprisingly honest dramaticization.
Speaker 1: So you say it anyway, is this your words or
Speaker 1: rotten tomato vibes?
Speaker 2: We're starting rotten tomato.
Speaker 3: We got to meet Okay, dramatization, dramamatization, Jay too much
Speaker 3: of the ways we subject ourselves into incompatible love, I said,
Speaker 3: this is it. So from the beginning, the story in
Speaker 3: itself tells us that the movie is not a love story.
Speaker 3: And that's the thing that by the end, how you
Speaker 3: feel about it that should remain center in your brain.
Speaker 3: It's not a love story. It's not meant to be
Speaker 3: two people meet each other, they fall in love, it
Speaker 3: works out. It's meant to be two people people who
Speaker 3: are living a very similar life to the rest of us,
Speaker 3: experience something and we get to see it like a mirror.
Speaker 3: Right from the beginning, Summer, the woman protagonist says she
Speaker 3: doesn't want to be in a relationship. From the beginning, Tom,
Speaker 3: the man protagonist, is head over heels for her. She's
Speaker 3: everything he could have ever wanted. They have the same interest.
Speaker 3: She's loose and fun and free, cool girl. The movie
Speaker 3: goes on and shares their five hundred days of incompatibility
Speaker 3: all the ways, where he goes on to essentially hate
Speaker 3: her by the end for not agreeing to be in
Speaker 3: love with him and for not agreeing to a committed
Speaker 3: monogamous relationship. By the end, she's engaged to a whole
Speaker 3: new guy. We paint her the villain, we paint him
Speaker 3: the nice guy, and life moves on after ten plus
Speaker 3: years of existing. I've come on record to say Tom
Speaker 3: is all of us, a nice guy, deeply flawed, and
Speaker 3: would prefer that we sent his wants over the reality
Speaker 3: of a situation that requires two people to be compatible for.
Speaker 2: It to work.
Speaker 3: Summer is someone who set a boundary, who provided context
Speaker 3: and presumed, because she had provided context, that she could
Speaker 3: behave in any which way and would not be held
Speaker 3: accountable for what she first said. So, yeah, she said
Speaker 3: she wanted to be single and proceeded to kiss him
Speaker 3: every other day.
Speaker 2: She said what she said.
Speaker 3: Now you know how for the past I would say
Speaker 3: eight weeks now. A core theme of what I've been
Speaker 3: trying to discuss on our show is the way that
Speaker 3: misogyny is so insidious and it erodes at our ability
Speaker 3: to look at anything objectively because somehow, some way, a
Speaker 3: woman is often painted as the person who is uninformed, annoying, annoying,
Speaker 3: crosses the line, doesn't know what she's doing, la la
Speaker 3: la la. And this man, we've infantialized him by saying, well,
Speaker 3: well like he no, okay. It's so much more so,
Speaker 3: as I was reading through the wiki trying to remind
Speaker 3: myself what the movie was about, so many glaring I
Speaker 3: don't want to call them red flags, but glaring instances
Speaker 3: of incompatibility show up from the very beginning that we
Speaker 3: refuse to acknowledge. Like I said before, Tom ignores everything
Speaker 3: about Summer that doesn't fit into his delusion. Right, So
Speaker 3: in his head, he's like, we're perfect for each other
Speaker 3: because we both work at this same place, or because
Speaker 3: we get along, or because we can both tell the
Speaker 3: same jokes. But everything else outside of this he challenges
Speaker 3: so much. So she from the beginning said she doesn't
Speaker 3: want a committed relationship with him, and is he comfortable
Speaker 3: that he says, Yeah, all good, we can do whatever
Speaker 3: you want to do.
Speaker 2: I just want to be near you.
Speaker 1: Taylor's oldest time.
Speaker 3: Now, while we recognize that she said what she said,
Speaker 3: I think when people try and defend Summer, they remove
Speaker 3: her of any responsibility from what Tom was feeling. Right,
Speaker 3: people say, well, she said she didn't want a relationship,
Speaker 3: and therefore she is absolved from any pain she causes
Speaker 3: from simulating a relationship with him, from sleeping with him,
Speaker 3: going on dates, having fun. She's absolved, No, because someone
Speaker 3: should have been responsible for how her actions affected him,
Speaker 3: knowing that it contradicted what she said.
Speaker 1: Really, absolutely, but don't you say that some people just
Speaker 1: want to go on dates but don't want anything serious.
Speaker 1: And that's okay as well.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, But she's also knowingly interacting with a guy who
Speaker 3: is hopelessly devoting himself to her with the hopes that
Speaker 3: she changes her mind, and she knows she's not going
Speaker 3: to It's okay for her to know that, But then
Speaker 3: to actors, though she is without responsibility is immature. She
Speaker 3: could bow out and say, look's actually not that fun
Speaker 3: to be with someone who won't let me live, who's
Speaker 3: angry at me, every day, souse, I want to love them.
Speaker 2: There's a scene in the movie where.
Speaker 3: They talk about She says that she doesn't believe in
Speaker 3: love or something like that, or that love is a fantasy,
Speaker 3: and he's like, I disagree. Even in that moment, what
Speaker 3: he thinks he loves about her is fantastical because at
Speaker 3: this point in the movie she's shown him so many
Speaker 3: ways that love is a fantasy to him. He doesn't
Speaker 3: even know her yet, He just knows that he could
Speaker 3: like her and he could be excited by her anyway.
Speaker 2: Also, there's a bit in the movie.
Speaker 3: Where Summer says, I can't promise you how I'm gonna
Speaker 3: feel in the future when he asks her about some
Speaker 3: kind of like commitment or monogamy.
Speaker 2: But even then he was like, I'll take what I
Speaker 2: can get.
Speaker 3: So many steps in this movie he has or they've
Speaker 3: both knowingly agreed to this ambiguity, hoping in both ways
Speaker 3: it's going to go their way, not realizing that something's
Speaker 3: got to give eventually. Right now, we don't want to
Speaker 3: label everything we see into neat categories, but we can
Speaker 3: view this dynamic from like an anxious attached, avoid attached perspective,
Speaker 3: where the more that Tom leans in it encroaches on
Speaker 3: Somemer's independence. She's like, ah, she goes the more time
Speaker 3: she spends with Tom, is she convinced that she doesn't
Speaker 3: want love generally, or she just doesn't want love with him,
Speaker 3: she doesn't want commitment generally, or just doesn't wt commitment
Speaker 3: with him, because what ends up happening is what she
Speaker 3: gets engaged ooh. In the five hundred days span that
Speaker 3: they've known each other a year and a half, she
Speaker 3: goes from I don't believe in love, love is a
Speaker 3: fantasy to now I'm engaged, And of course he's gobsmacked.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's upset.
Speaker 2: What do you mean engaged? What do you mean to
Speaker 2: whom be truthed?
Speaker 1: I thought this only happened to our grandparents, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you know what?
Speaker 3: And he's like, how is this possible? And she's like,
Speaker 3: how is it not possible? How is any of this
Speaker 3: not possible? Like? Were you living in the same reality
Speaker 3: I was living in when we had this engaged in
Speaker 3: a moment and entanglement, and you refuse to see that
Speaker 3: what I wanted compatible with what you wanted. So I
Speaker 3: went to seek out what I wanted and you stayed
Speaker 3: pining after me. Damn, another thing I've written down. Another
Speaker 3: thing please. Obviously, the internalized misogyny, especially when you're a
Speaker 3: young person watching rom coms.
Speaker 2: Oh, it comes out really really quick.
Speaker 3: But I think also we don't consider that we're watching
Speaker 3: the movie from Tom's perspective, and that man is an
Speaker 3: unreliable narrator, not because he can't be trusted, but because
Speaker 3: you've seen what happens.
Speaker 2: When you get a little bit, a little bit.
Speaker 3: Love sick, a little bit love sick, you see what happens.
Speaker 3: There's not a lot of people to pull you out.
Speaker 3: And Tom's an isolated character. There's not many people to
Speaker 3: pull him out of this delusion that he's in. And
Speaker 3: also the way that he's painted to us is that
Speaker 3: classic nice guy because he's not bad and he's not
Speaker 3: a villain. Why can't she just fall in love with him?
Speaker 3: Good question.
Speaker 2: I have the answer. She does not want him.
Speaker 1: God, I need it. Where can we watch the movie? Flex?
Speaker 3: Also, I'm not done because if you can see here,
Speaker 3: there are more notes to come. Also, the reason why
Speaker 3: I think we the viewer sympathize a lot with Tom
Speaker 3: is that he reflects these beliefs and these assumptions that
Speaker 3: we all have about romance that if we get along
Speaker 3: well enough and we're both attracted to each other, then
Speaker 3: why won't it just work? Why can't you just be
Speaker 3: with me? What is the answer to that?
Speaker 1: Because it's not always the right time.
Speaker 3: My closing statement, yes disguises it is a question disguise
Speaker 3: as a statement. Is Summer actually a manic pixie dream
Speaker 3: girl or does Tom just want her to be one
Speaker 3: because his delusion would have it. So? Is she really
Speaker 3: a girl that was like, Oh, I'm so kooky and
Speaker 3: crazy and down, or just a chick with interest existing
Speaker 3: who's a pleasure to be around.
Speaker 1: Thank you, rewrite that history. Rewrite that history. You run
Speaker 1: a arrest. My case.
Speaker 2: You've been listening to The Flex and Froom's daily podcast.
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