The Happiest Pod on Earth

Ariel Landrum 0:11
Hello everyone! Welcome to the Happiest Pod On Earth!

Stefanie Bautista 0:14
I’m Stefanie.

Ariel Landrum 0:15
And I’m Ariel.

Billy Madden 0:16
And I’m Billy.

Ariel Landrum 0:18
And we’re all just me fans, but we’re really so much more than that.

Stefanie Bautista 0:22
I’m an educator who uses passions and fandoms to help my students grow and learn about themselves and the world around them.

Ariel Landrum 0:27
And I’m a licensed therapist who uses clients passions and fandoms to help them heal from trauma and mental unwellness

Billy Madden 0:33
And I am a content creator who shares my passion for film by reviewing movies.

Ariel Landrum 0:37
Happiest Pod is a place where we dissect Disney mediums with a critical lens. Why? Because just like we are more than just fans we expect more from the mediums we consume. So what Disney experience are we dissecting today everyone?

Stefanie Bautista 0:48
Well today is a fun episode because not only are we going to discuss something that is of recent events when it comes to the Disney Parks but we’re also going to be joined by a very special guest today. We will be talking about the virtual queue process. I know many of us have been seeing and following the news whether or not you have been to the parks, about the new virtual cube process and how all that works. But more importantly we are going to be talking about the new ride, Webslingers Ride at Avengers Campus. And our very good friend who will be sharing this experience with us today is Billy Madden. Welcome to the show Billy!

Billy Madden 1:24
Thank you guys so much for having me. It’s an honor.

Ariel Landrum 1:27
Yeah! So Billy or better known as the movie greeter that it is a friend who has grown up his whole life in the industry. He knows the ins and outs of movies and he has a podcast of his own called The Movie Grader and it comes out…

Billy Madden 1:41
The Movie Grader and Friends.

Ariel Landrum 1:43
And friends. He has guests I shouldn’t…

Stefanie Bautista 1:46
This Movie Grader has friends guys. Don’t forget that.

Ariel Landrum 1:49
And it comes out with spoiler free reviews of new movies and he actually does them fairly regularly almost like next day.

Billy Madden 1:56
Yeah, I mean I try to be as timely as possible but you know now that I do have a job…

Ariel Landrum 2:02
That J-O-B.

Billy Madden 2:04
The schedule is kind of hairy… So like you know like as Ariel said I am Billy I am the Movie Grader. And in a nutshell I’m just an avid movie goer and I enjoy I enjoy reviewing movies on my podcast and occasionally on the website. Which is you know, getting less and less love because of time in life. But um the whole Movie Grader idea was actually born from an idea that a friend of mine, Adam Goldberg had. He used to go see a movie and on Facebook simply give it a letter grade without any other any other explanation. I figured heck I mean my mom’s is a teacher and I at the time was actually considering considering going into the education field, you’re welcome kids that I didn’t…

Stefanie Bautista 2:48
They say “Thank you!” Just kidding Billy.

Billy Madden 2:51
So I thought like hey, you know what, I can add a little more to it you know, and just just start writing reviews. So I started writing reviews for you know, People of Con, which we have… Had, had I hope.

Stefanie Bautista 3:02
Have.

Ariel Landrum 3:04
It’s achrived.

Stefanie Bautista 3:05
Archived.

Billy Madden 3:05
Archieved. So I started being a writing for people con and then I thought you know what, I kind of want to do this on my own. So I created my website and then I after the website, I started up the podcast because I love podcasts and it’s been a lot of fun and I have friends and come on and do the show with me… And it’s not nearly the level of production that you guys do on this show. But I’m a total amateur amateur but um you know I just have fun with it it’s it’s it’s been a lot of fun I mean it’s been going on for… Jesus over over a year now I think actually so yeah, it’s it’s it’s simply that I mean I just I just grade movies and we talk about it discuss and you know, spoiler free zone. And yeah, that’s that’s pretty much it. I’m you know, I’m not a hero, like you guys are who actually change the world. A therapists and educators. Much respect.

Ariel Landrum 4:01
However you do bring the humor. I will say this to anyone who is listening to the podcast or just like follows Billy on Twitter. He’s just hilarious. He puts a smile on your face. He’s a really great friend to have.

Billy Madden 4:16
Oh I love you guys.

Stefanie Bautista 4:17
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 4:17
So I think like you’re the you’re the type of people I tell my clients to make friends with.

Stefanie Bautista 4:23
Absolutely. And on top of that, Billy, you know, you and the podcast were really instrumental of catching me up on movies that I did not see when all the movies were coming out.

Billy Madden 4:33
Right. right.

Stefanie Bautista 4:34
And I it gave me like an insight because as you know, coming out of the pandemic as a new mom, I just wasn’t readily available to go back to the movies right away. And it was great to always get those updates from The Movie Grader And Friends because I knew should I waste my time and money on this or not. You guys are just honest opinions and I love it. So thank you for that.

Billy Madden 4:56
There’s no problem. There’s that you know, that’s it slogan you know, “We watch it so you don’t have to.”

Stefanie Bautista 5:04
Thank you for your service.

Billy Madden 5:08
Oh please yeah you’re very treacherous going to the theater. I’ve sank many hours into movies that I’ve liked and yeah so it’s it’s it’s been fun I mean I just do it for for fun I mean. I don’t make a dime off of it it’s it’s it’s really just for my own entertainment and I guess it’s it does serve a use a purpose to people who like to go to the movies but are you know I guess a bit more timid to go see a movie. Like I don’t care I’ll go see anything really so…

Ariel Landrum 5:44
No prejudice. “It’s a movie I’m watching it.”

Stefanie Bautista 5:46
Yeah.

Billy Madden 5:46
Yeah, it’s fine.

Ariel Landrum 5:47
The really funny thing is we brought Billy on here to not talk about movies.

Stefanie Bautista 5:53
But low and behold The Movie Grader’s gonna movie grade.

Billy Madden 5:56
Yeah I went on assignment.

Stefanie Bautista 6:01
Yeah, I love how we did that we kind of we threw a curveball at you. We’re gonna take you a little bit out of your element but at the same time talk about something that you had a I guess a good experience with I guess we’ll find out the next couple minutes.

Billy Madden 6:16
Oh yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 6:17
Yeah, so Ariel, do you want to kick it off?

Ariel Landrum 6:19
Yes, I do. So again, our subject today is the virtual queue on the phone and specifically Webslingers. So I think it was Episode 12 or maybe 13… I don’t really remember 12 or 13 somewhere around there I talked about my experience of returning to the park and virtual queue crapped out on me multiple times. And I missed both chances to get into either of the rides, Rise of the Resistance and Webslinger. So I had nothing to report except for that it crapped out on me and I was sad. However, our buddy Billy was messaging us and just doing of course the very Billy thing which is selfies in the frickin line for an Instagram, was like “Hey yeah, I made it in haha look at all this stuff. You can see from my phone. Haha haha.”

Billy Madden 7:09
Not to toot my own horn but I’m free for three with with the what do you call it, the boarding passes.

Stefanie Bautista 7:15
You averaging.

Billy Madden 7:17
For 100% baby!

Stefanie Bautista 7:18
now I’m psyched because now you both have been to the parks and I’m going to be going very soon. So like Ariel’s experience was like, “Wah wah.. I’m never gonna get it.” And Billy is just, “I got all the things.”

Ariel Landrum 7:31
Well and I went again with my family same thing, got in none of them.

Stefanie Bautista 7:34
Dang.

Ariel Landrum 7:35
I mean none of them.

Billy Madden 7:36
It’s kind of like a I guess you could say like a two edged sword because yeah, I mean you feel bad for the people that don’t get so lucky. But like if you do happen to luck out the process is freaking phenomenal. You… I can’t complain because I’ve never been denied a boarding pass so it’s like I don’t know what that’s like. I can only imagine.

Ariel Landrum 8:02
Rejection. It’s like rejeciton Billy.

Stefanie Bautista 8:04
We know this hill that you’re preaching on now for context.

Billy Madden 8:08
I’ve standed on the shoulders of giants so it’s like.. It’s really honestly it’s a matter of luck I mean, like I if there’s any tip I could give I mean like you know, I had my Apple Watch and like I had it down to like, where it shows the time in seconds. So like, you know, if it was like, it was the 7am one you know, I would literally watch my watch for like 5 seconds till then count in my mind as I watched it and then you scroll down to refresh the page. And that’s just go for it.

Ariel Landrum 8:43
I did not do that.

Stefanie Bautista 8:44
That’s a good tip. Yeah, maybe, maybe we can walk through it. As you were like getting ready because I know for some people, Disney days start at different times some people..

Billy Madden 8:55
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 8:56
Like to do the 7am thing so they’re up by 6 getting ready. Some people just like to kind of be a little bit more relaxed about it where they kind of just mosey into the park whenever they want to. I guess now in recent times, because you have to have your reservation and if you’re park hopping, you have to do a lot of pre-planning just like how we mentioned in Ariel’s episode, but maybe I guess we could start with Billy what time and you live in the San Fernando Valley like we do.

Billy Madden 9:19
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 9:19
What time did you start getting ready to head out to Anaheim?

Billy Madden 9:24
Well, like I showered I woke up at like I think 6 I want to say then I was showered and ready to go you know in case it did happen at 7 o’clock and which it did so like I immediately left for Disneyland right after I got the reservation. So like it took me I think like hour, hour and some change to get to Disneyland and like during I think like when I was like 20 minutes out I think they called my boarding group. You have an hour to get to the line.

Ariel Landrum 9:53
And an hour.. Oh, that would have start panicking.

Billy Madden 9:57
No no, you have an hour. So it’s like… But I was kind of confused too because like on the website it said the California Adventure didn’t open till 9 and my boarding group got called at 9 I think it was… Like it was supposed to be at 9 there I couldn’t get there earlier than 9 or something and I was confused. So like I go and I parked like off site where…

Ariel Landrum 10:21
Toy Story?

Stefanie Bautista 10:21
Is it like the Toy Story Lot?

Billy Madden 10:22
Over by the hotel like further down like they have…

Stefanie Bautista 10:25
Like the near Hilton and the Marriott?

Billy Madden 10:27
They have like a Churrascaria over there and stuff. It’s across the way. It’s a pretty short walk basically it’s like

Stefanie Bautista 10:33
Like across Harbor? So you crossed….

Billy Madden 10:35
Yeah Harbo, that’s what it is yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 10:37
Okay okay.

Billy Madden 10:37
I parked over there and you know just jammed over to Disneyland I mean like I was getting there and I was like thinking, and you know what I asked the guy the security guy there’s “What time do you guys open? “Oh, we opened at like 7:30 or something…” I was like….

Stefanie Bautista 10:52
You were lied to.

Billy Madden 10:52
It worked out.

Ariel Landrum 10:54
Okay, wait, wait. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you get two tickets for both parks and did you have to choose which one you were going to go to first because I that I know that’s what I had to do.

Stefanie Bautista 11:04
Yeah.

Billy Madden 11:05
Yeah. I The deal was I had a Park Gopper.

Stefanie Bautista 11:08
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 11:08
Oh okay.

Billy Madden 11:08
Gifted to me by my brother. So like yeah, and like I tried to use it previously when I went before like was it a month or 2 ago? Or 2 months ago? And that specific ticket it was blocked out for reservation so I actually had to buy my ticket the first time. But anyways, this ticket like it was it all dawned on me to go and I was listening to your podcast about we’re returning to, to Disneyland. On a whim I was like “Oh my god the reservations are for Friday I can go on Friday! Boom! Book it! Okay.” So you know it just happened to be available so I had this ticket…

Ariel Landrum 11:45
Okay, so you already had a ticket you just reserved. Got it. Got it. Okay.

Billy Madden 11:49
Yeah. So you know I reserved it as soon as I couldn’t you know when I saw it and then like I had to start off at California Adventure which wasn’t a problem that’s fine I want you know, my main goal was to go and Webslinger as anyways so I wasn’t crying about that that’s fine and yeah, I mean I just got there and it’s it was a very smooth process. I mean like, I got into the park and you know, I just made a beeline straight to the Avengers campus and you know I found found the ride and you found that the the cast member who who has taken you know she took your phone I think. Like I had to hand her my phone or share my reservation for my board my boarding pass sorry and you “Okay go on that line.” And I got into line and you know, I honestly like we walked right on I mean you. You don’t you don’t have much time to really like take pictures of the line I mean in the pictures that I showed you that the quality of them was pretty bad because I was in motion. You don’t have time to smell the roses you know…

Ariel Landrum 11:57
Walk and snap. Walk and snap.

Billy Madden 12:59
Which is cool because you get on the ride really quickly but like bad because you can’t really like drink it all in you know.

Ariel Landrum 13:04
Yeah okay.

Billy Madden 13:05
And there’s a lot to see so it’s like.

Stefanie Bautista 13:08
Yeah, and I totally understand that I feel like for for ride so I’ve been on that have been like very high high volume like the Avatar Rid and Walt Disney World there’s so much to see inside the line. Because they want to make that..

Billy Madden 13:22
Oh yeah Pandora.

Stefanie Bautista 13:22
Yeah, in Pandora Yeah yeah yeah.

Ariel Landrum 13:24
Yeah yeah yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 13:24
But when we went we had also had fast passes so I couldn’t see everything like they had the lab and they had you know all of these little Easter Eggs and stuff and I was just like walking through and like you said like you don’t have time to like, I mean you are excited because you’re going on the ride like you’re not waiting forever playing heads up and what have you with like 5 of your friends but yeah, you’re gonna be on the ride soon. It’s just like you can’t soak in those details that you know Disney’s already like setting up for you.

Billy Madden 13:53
Oh yeah.

Ariel Landrum 13:54
It’s really interesting because when I had I had recently gone again to Disneyland because I had family fly in from out of town, my, my dad and my stepmom and my niece. And my stepmom kept talking about how just like wonderful the line in Indiana Jones was and how immersive. And she was like, “Are we going underground? Are you sure we’re not in a cave?” Because it just felt like that.

Billy Madden 14:23
It’s such a cool line.

Ariel Landrum 14:23
And I had taken it really for granted. And then that just like that moment stuck in my mind and then recently I got free tickets to go to Universal Studios. And I was on the like the Jurassic World line and it’s literally a rope and some TVs. Not immersive at all. It hadn’t even occurred to me that’s like, “Oh yeah, here’s another way that the Imagineers like really cater to us.” And that when you’re standing in line, you have things that you’re looking at and you feel like you’re in that world. You’ve been taken out of like a specific part of the park and you’re just in just completely immersed in this space that like is meant to amp you up. Really.

Billy Madden 14:59
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 14:59
Yeah.

Billy Madden 15:00
Oh yeah. it’s I mean Disney has always been about the details I mean like the the brief period that I was in line that I got to see stuff I mean it was cool like they have like I think they were like plans… That were in like the lab. For um as a Doc Oc’s lab or something that that Peter’s in.. That you’re supposed to be in there and I mean like it was kind of hard to understand what like what the story of the ride was. But I think like it’s about like a Peter in a spider bots and like the spider bots something goes wrong and like I guess they there’s more of them than there should have been. So it’s all about controlling the spider bots and like I think just like decimating them to a controllable population.

Ariel Landrum 15:47
It’s this like like the Mickey Sorcerer with all the brooms.

With all of the little brooms?

Billy Madden 15:54
I mean like it’s like do you have the right is it’s a game really and you know they have like a whole bunch of different like movements for your hands and like you could like apparently grab stuff and…

Stefanie Bautista 16:04
Oh okay cool the good part like pause.

Billy Madden 16:07
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 16:07
Okay so we’re okay we’ve gone through like the line What does so you know how whenever you’re going to a new ride you see all the people board and you’re like “Oh that’s how it’s gonna look.” Like what did you see? Like what does the vehicle look like? Can you describe that to us?

Billy Madden 16:24
The vehicle is.. It’s big it looks like I don’t know how to describe it really? Okay…

Ariel Landrum 16:30
If you think of the other rides it Disneyland?

Stefanie Bautista 16:32
Yeah.

Billy Madden 16:32
Okay yeah it’s comparable to like the the ride the cars from like Toy Story Mania I guess so.

Stefanie Bautista 16:39
Like a duel like you’re you’re facing back to back with someone?

Billy Madden 16:43
Bigger. Yeah, yeah, there’s like I believe there’s spots for 4 people on each bench. They put you back to back but like it’s bigger than like Toy Story Mania. It’s like this whole like

Ariel Landrum 16:55
Contraption?

Billy Madden 16:57
Cargo thing. I mean it’s it’s big.

Ariel Landrum 16:59
Like is there a bar, a lap bar?

Billy Madden 17:03
A little lap bar that you know goes over your over your lap and…

Ariel Landrum 17:06
And you said that it is a game so do you have like a gun or do you put something on your hands?

Billy Madden 17:11
Um there’s something to that so like… I you know like I heard that you could buy like these these actual webslingers you know and it’s like a pay to win type a deal thing. Whoever I don’t know they have whole bunch of different webslingers you could buy to put on your hands and I guess it multiplies your score so like..

Ariel Landrum 17:32
Oh.

Stefanie Bautista 17:33
Interesting.

Billy Madden 17:33
It’s very pay to win you know, it’s Disney, they like to get money.

Ariel Landrum 17:37
Oh this is the cheat code I didn’t know about.

Stefanie Bautista 17:41
See okay I’m gonna look out for this if I get on.

Billy Madden 17:43
I think they’re like 25 or 30 bucks or something. I didn’t spring for that because I didn’t care about my score. I just wanted to experience it, you know what I mean? Like I wasn’t going for a high score but does kind of slow down right before you get into the line where it does allow you an opportunity to read the like the brief little message of all the different moves you can do during the ride to play the game.

Ariel Landrum 18:06
Okay. Okay. Tutorial.

Billy Madden 18:07
Yeah, tutorials. Like you could use like one hand for like a web sling or you could use two hands and like you know, it’s like the…

Stefanie Bautista 18:15
Thwip-Thwip

Billy Madden 18:15
Yeah, yeah, you have to position your hands and stuff I mean like It’s nuts. I mean like the crazy thing about it was it’s in 3D and you have glasses but like prior to getting on the ride, I forgot to mention this. It’s like the story that they do they do show you it’s like a hologram but it’s like in 3D and you’re not wearing 3D glasses. You’re kind of sitting there is like, “How did they do this?”

Ariel Landrum 18:40
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 18:41
Disney magic!

Billy Madden 18:43
You see a cool movie before you get on the ride you know. But like it was just so much get you know going on at that time and I was just super excited and I wasn’t really focusing on it I was trying to look at everything I could possibly see before they you know I ushered us into the ride. And yeah I mean the technology of this ride was was just something else,

Ariel Landrum 19:03
Well oh so so because because of the amount of people you mentioned were you alone or did you go with other people to Disney? This was the sounds like it was huge was there like single rider?

Billy Madden 19:13
It was a solo mission. I mean I’m not sure if they offer single rider. It’s just like the group you with other people I mean in my in my row. There was only 2 of the girls to my right.

Ariel Landrum 19:23
Okay okay

Billy Madden 19:23
And I beat them both with that stay on the record. So yeah, I mean I wasn’t really trying I mean one girl one girl wasn’t that good at it but one girl you know she gave me run free money but I managed to eke her out.

Stefanie Bautista 19:38
So is it like Toy Story Mania where you see your score on like your screen in front of you?

Billy Madden 19:43
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 19:43
Okay.

Billy Madden 19:44
there’s a little screen in front of you. And it shows you everybody’s score in your row. And like everything is I think it’s everything is like color coded. And like, and honestly like when you’re experiencing your ride. It’s chaos, man. There’s so many spider bots on screen so many explosions going on I mean. Honestly I have to read it again in order to like really like see what what’s going on because it’s pretty chaotic and it’s cool but it’s very chaotic and like it’s just like so much stuff it’s like. You shoot at stuff and like you don’t know if you really hit anything or not but like you see your score go up and like and it’s exhausting man. It’s like it’s a workout you’re constantly moving your arms and like yeah, your arms hurt by the end of it.

Ariel Landrum 20:35
Is Spider-Man following you throughout this or talking to you, or are you?

Billy Madden 20:38
Yeah he kind of he kind of dips in and out of the scene.

Ariel Landrum 20:41
Okay.

Billy Madden 20:42
Yeah he like he…

Stefanie Bautista 20:43
Ohhh. I like that.

Billy Madden 20:43
Yeah, I don’t want to give away the story because like I’m not sure if I…

Ariel Landrum 20:48
Oh you can give it away this is not a spoiler free zone.

Stefanie Bautista 20:50
This is not. Disclaimer.

Billy Madden 20:53
I don’t want to give out misinformation because like…

Stefanie Bautista 20:56
Oh I see. I see.

Billy Madden 20:56
I said you know I don’t want to get it wrong. Like…

Ariel Landrum 21:00
There’s a Spider-Man.

Billy Madden 21:01
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 21:02
Yeah.

Billy Madden 21:02
Spinder-Man is in the ride of course so but he dips in and out and he he does I think it kind of helps you. Like he says “Oh look over there spiderbots are, are jumping onto that box. Get them!” And like he he’ll he’ll give you tips basically.

Ariel Landrum 21:16
Okay.

Billy Madden 21:17
As you play the game.

Ariel Landrum 21:18
Okay.

Billy Madden 21:18
It’s like, “Oh look at those explode look at those gasoline cans. If you if you if you hit those they’ll explode and you can take out more spiderbots at once.” Basically, he gives you there to kind of give you tips.

Stefanie Bautista 21:32
That’s cool that’s so cool. I love that. I’m excited for that because I think seeing Tom Holland like in real life but not really real life, it’s a definite pull for me I think.

Billy Madden 21:45
It’s a great time I mean it’s exhausting. It is fun.

Stefanie Bautista 21:48
Would you say it was like would you say it’s sensory overload?

Billy Madden 21:51
Yes yes.

Stefanie Bautista 21:53
One thing little spiders coming at you are a little creepy right and I mean luckily their robots…?

Billy Madden 21:59
They did it in a cute way. It’s not bad.

Stefanie Bautista 22:01
Okay that’s good because it’s not like you know the part of Indiana Jones where like all of the bugs come out and then they’re like doing that like pressure thing to you like that’s creepy

Billy Madden 22:11
No, it’s not like that. It’s kind of cool that they gave the the spiderbots a cute personality.

Stefanie Bautista 22:17
Okay.

Billy Madden 22:19
You’ll see during the line like air duct basically with with vent and you can see the spiderbot crawling along the vet and like you kind of look at the crowd, and then go on his way. It’s pretty cute. I mean it’s like it’s one of the things that you could easily miss you know what I mean? So it’s you know again details but yeah.

Ariel Landrum 22:37
What is the spider so it sounds like the spiderbots are friends?

Billy Madden 22:40
Yeah, they’re friends but like…

Ariel Landrum 22:42
They’re like bud, they’re like your buddies? Your helpers?

Billy Madden 22:44
You have to like control them I guess contain them. And like because they get out of hand basically…

Ariel Landrum 22:50
They’re my dog!

Billy Madden 22:51
Yes. Yeah, it was like an experiment gone wrong I think something. I could be wrong and it was like I said I don’t really understand the whole gist of the story but that’s what it was like too many spiderbots. Population control. You know?

Ariel Landrum 23:06
It sounds like the story is chaos.

Stefanie Bautista 23:10
And I think Billy you mentioned something that is very common with Disney rides where you already said you have to ride it again. So there is already an incentive to want to experience it another time.

Billy Madden 23:21
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 23:21
So you can grab those details and I think what Disney does really well with rides like that is that there’s tiers to experiences. So there’s like your first time brand new experience you’re just like “Oh my gosh, what is happening?” Very basic, scratch the surface level. And then when you do like as you keep riding the ride, it’s like you get a different experience which kind of makes it more. There’s longevity it’s it’s sustainable.

Billy Madden 23:47
It is no it’s, yeah, it’s not only you know, like it has replay value I guess you could say…

Stefanie Bautista 23:54
That’s it yes. If we’re talking about video games, yes.

Billy Madden 23:57
I’m not sure if you get a different experience. I’m not sure if the AI changes at all at any given time that I don’t know. I would have to maybe do some research on that. But I can say the experience is very cool. I mean, like, I mean, I know Ariel, you’ve had the Xbox Kinect you know and…

Ariel Landrum 24:14
Yeah

Billy Madden 24:15
For your because a dancer does a Dance Central? Or what game do you like on there?

Ariel Landrum 24:21
Oh Just Dance?

Billy Madden 24:21
Just Dance. That’s it.

Ariel Landrum 24:23
Yeah.

Billy Madden 24:24
Like the technology is insane because like it could tell if you know your hands are in the correct spider sling a spider web slinging kind of position or if they’re up and trying to grab something. Like it’s crazy how accurate the camera is and like all your all your wearing is glasses. I mean it’s pretty nuts.

Ariel Landrum 24:42
The Millennium Falcon Ride the ummm..

Billy Madden 24:45
Smuggler’s Run?

Ariel Landrum 24:46
Yes, Smuggler’s Run. Yeah. So I remember the first time I was on that, like, just just crash just crashed horribly. I think like what the pilots were because we didn’t know anything about the ride we of course stupidly let the 2 children who can’t even drive pilot the frickin ships…

Billy Madden 25:07
No you kick those kids back to engineer, come on!

Ariel Landrum 25:10
It was huge chaos and I couldn’t I couldn’t if if you interviewed me after that ride I wouldn’t have been able to tell you anything I’d been like, “There’s some buttons… I think heard Chewie. We died. Right?

Billy Madden 25:21
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 25:21
Now I’ve been on it so many times I’ve gotten the idea.

Billy Madden 25:23
Course.

Ariel Landrum 25:23
I know to set my gun to automatic so like oh like actually aims for me I don’t like I don’t even know how I was supposed to aim but I’ve never figured that out just doing the automatic thing. But yeah, that’s that’s the same experience in regards to it sounds like this ride is just like there’s just so much sensory overload there’s no way to really prepare yourself.

Billy Madden 25:42
A lot going on. Yes. No doubt.

Stefanie Bautista 25:44
It seems like from the beginning like from the moment you step into the line there’s already a lot going on.

Billy Madden 25:49
Oh, yeah As far as like stuff to see and stuff to like secrets to fit to find I mean, there’s, there’s a lot in there. They’ve they’ve done a fantastic job.

Ariel Landrum 25:59
Did you happen to find any Easter Eggs? Or could you tell?

Billy Madden 26:02
Um, well, like what I did spot was like, there’s a mural, like where Spider-Man does his show? And like I mean, this sounds kind of obvious, but like the the artists who does the meet the mural is Miles Morales because he has his name Miles on it.

Ariel Landrum 26:22
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 26:22
Yes.

Billy Madden 26:23
But there’s a lot more I’m sure I saw but like I’m not sure if I would count them as an Easter I don’t know. There’s a lot there.

Stefanie Bautista 26:31
That’s so cool. And I think um, I guess what I’m wondering is how long do you think the ride lasted?

Billy Madden 26:36
Oh god um, I would say it’s about 5 minutes around there. 3 to 5 minutes I would say.

Stefanie Bautista 26:42
Okay, do you think it was too short too long do you think it was like a good amount of time for what was happening?

Billy Madden 26:46
Your arms say it’s just right.

Ariel Landrum 26:51
Okay, so so basically, you’re gonna have to do some workouts.

Billy Madden 26:54
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 26:56
I guess it’s kind of like I mean, Toy Story Mania is a workout like I know my forearm is like especially at the end when you’re trying to like hit all those targets like right away in succession like yeah, I go all out and I’m like, “I don’t care if this hurts right now it’s worth it.”

Billy Madden 27:09
Well with with Toy Story Mania it’s just like one basic you know motion the paddle there and the ball.

Stefanie Bautista 27:14
Yeah yeah yeah.

Billy Madden 27:15
With this there’s more you can do I mean, they’re all the different motions you could do. There’s more combinations. So…

Stefanie Bautista 27:21
Okay, so I guess there’s like it’s not just one motion because that’s what made my arm hurt and Toy Story Mania is that you’re you’re pulling that little like lever with the ball. And I’m just like, there’s only so many ways I can do this without getting a cramp in my arm. But so I guess I mean Webslingers for you was a grand old time?

Billy Madden 27:43
Yeah, it was it was worth the stress to you know, hall ass to get to Disneyland on time.

Stefanie Bautista 27:50
Because I mean really, if you think about if we pulled back a little bit for a 5 minute ride, you prepared hours in advance.

Ariel Landrum 27:58
Hours.

Stefanie Bautista 27:58
To be able to do that. And I think that like ties into your tech savvy, you know, your you know, like, you have your timeline for Disneyland. You knew to park across Harbor. I know for Ariel, like one of the things she mentioned about going to the park is the fact that there is no tram. So when you park at Mickey And Friends, you’re already getting a workout walking from there to the parks. And that Harbor kind of crosswalk is maybe a fraction of that walking time. I mean, I think we’ve talked we’ve touched upon how, you know, because Disneyland has been so popular and that, you know, Avengers Campus is their brand new attraction with Webslingers. We know how popular and successful the Spider-Man franchise has been, especially with the Tom Holland reboot, and I think they knew and they anticipated that you know, everybody was going to flock to it, which they did.

Billy Madden 28:50
Of course.

Stefanie Bautista 28:51
And so they put all of these hoops I guess you could say to jump homebrew, and Billy, you were able to jump through all those hoops sucessful?

Billy Madden 28:58
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 28:59
Unfortunately, not for Ariel, but…

Ariel Landrum 29:01
You were an Olympic champ. And I was a kindergartener.

Billy Madden 29:05
It will happen Ariel don’t worry. Don’t worry. I got faith in you it’ll happen I mean I’ve been fortunate fortunate for me I mean like Spider-Man honestly is my favorite Marvel character so…

Ariel Landrum 29:17
Awww..

Stefanie Bautista 29:17
Yeah.

Billy Madden 29:18
This was just like awesome to me. Like I mean like I’ve loved the Spider-Man.. The newer Spider-Man movies. I thought the ones with Andrew Garfield were PFFT

Ariel Landrum 29:32
What grade would you be giving those?

Stefanie Bautista 29:33
Yeah!

Billy Madden 29:35
I don’t want to say.

Stefanie Bautista 29:38
N/A. It’s N/A.

Billy Madden 29:39
On the second one actually was the first movie ever walked out on I can tell you that much.

Stefanie Bautista 29:45
Interesting. I don’t even think I saw the third part of that like trilogy. I think I only stopped at the second one.

Billy Madden 29:51
I think there was only two actually

Stefanie Bautista 29:52
Was there. Did it stop at 2? Maybe. Okay.

Billy Madden 29:55
It should have.

Ariel Landrum 29:57
any of them I was on a cruise ship. Once. And it was playing in the background. So that would be my only experience with Andrew Garfield Spiderverse.

Stefanie Bautista 30:07
I mean there was nothing memorable about it like when you think about other than the fact that he was Spider-Man. Tobey Maguire was such a more memorable Spider-Man to me.

Ariel Landrum 30:16
Way more memorable.

Billy Madden 30:17
And Tom Holland is the best honestly, I think he’s my favorite.

Stefanie Bautista 30:20
He just he like the Peter Parker in him is just like, it’s kind of one person to me. Like, it’s always what I envisioned when I read, like, read the comics, and he brings like, a modern twist to it. Because you know, Peter Parker nowadays is like, you know, Tom Holland and his friends in tech school.

Billy Madden 30:39
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 30:40
Yeah. Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 30:40
It makes sense.

Billy Madden 30:41
It does. You know, what’s really great too is like, you know, Miles Morales and like…

Stefanie Bautista 30:46
Oh yeah.

Billy Madden 30:46
I thought into the spider verse was such a phenomenal movie but yeah.

Ariel Landrum 30:50
But was made by Sony and is not a Disney franchise.

Billy Madden 30:52
Yeah, that’s true. Disclaimer sorry.

Stefanie Bautista 30:54
But holds a special place in Marvel and Disney fans hearts. Yes, it’s earned. It’s earned at stripes.

Ariel Landrum 31:02
I think Disney needs to finish their Infinity Gauntlet and go-ahead and buy Sony.

Stefanie Bautista 31:06
Seriously. Seriously. I guess from you, Billy, what advice would you give me as you know, me and AJ are going to the parks. And we do want to ride Webslinger is however, we have afternoon tickets to a California Adventure. What would be your advice to us?

Billy Madden 31:23
Oh, pray? I mean, literally, it’s it’s it’s honestly just luck. I mean, I’ve been fortunate where I’ve been able to score boarding passes for the rides that I’ve wanted to go on. And, you know, it’s like, I can’t say one way or another that there’s anything to it. My, to my success. It’s just I just been lucky. I mean, like I’ve you know, I’ve seen like the faces of other people who aren’t so fortunate. And believe me, I felt bad for them. But like, sorry.

Ariel Landrum 31:56
I think I really do have to believe this luck thing because umm Billy, I think you’re the only person I know who’s won anything from those Taco Bell.

Billy Madden 32:06
I won two Xboxes from Taco Bell.

Ariel Landrum 32:08
2!

Billy Madden 32:08
Without eating a single taco or purchasing anything from them. So…

Stefanie Bautista 32:13
I on the other hand, I’ve had so much Taco Bell, never won a thing.

Billy Madden 32:17
Thank you so that litterbug for the first one, by the way. Shout out to whoever you are threw your box on the ground.

Stefanie Bautista 32:25
Billy is one lucky individual and we’re always in awe whenever he goes, “Hey, guys, guess what happened to me today? Like I have a thing.” Okay, cool cool cool. But also it gives us a full sense of hope that it will happen to all of us.

Ariel Landrum 32:39
Yes yes, we can visualize it now. Because we have something in our mind to mind’s eye to look at.

Stefanie Bautista 32:47
We can just manifest it.

Billy Madden 32:48
Right?

Stefanie Bautista 32:48
Into the universe.

Billy Madden 32:49
Right?

Stefanie Bautista 32:49
Into the Spiderverse I guess.

Billy Madden 32:49
Yeah into the Spiderverse. It makes total sense.

Ariel Landrum 32:54
So I know that we were really just focusing on Webslingers and we were really just focusing on the virtual queue. But Stef and I will be shooting an episode on the new Magic Key System. And even the the Genie Genie Plus that we’ve heard about. So we won’t give away full details. But we’re just curious for you, Billy, The Magic Key System. Yay or nay for you?

Billy Madden 33:22
Well, I wish I knew more about it. Honestly, I haven’t taken the time to really study what it’s about. So I don’t understand the Magic Key System. I mean, it sounds like to me it’s it’s just like another Annual Pass but with like stricter blackout dates, I want to say,

Stefanie Bautista 33:43
Yeah, well, you’re not wrong.

Billy Madden 33:47
I mean, yeah, I mean, I don’t understand. I mean, it’s, that’s what it sounds like it sounds just like it’s it’s just blackout dates galore. And I guess I might consider in the future. I mean, I don’t know. I mean, my situation is different. Because you know, my brother works for Disney. And usually he just hooks it up with a free Disney ticket for me. So like, I mean, like, would I spend that massive amount of money if I didn’t have that hook up? Probably. You know, it’s like I don’t know how the common family can do that. But But Disney fans are different or different breed I mean, you see families go to Disneyland. I mean, they’re they roll like 8 people deep or something. Like, I mean a just if you figure just like for a basic ticket, it was like $200 or something. I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s more than $1,000 before you can get into the door.

Stefanie Bautista 34:48
It’s true.

Billy Madden 34:48
It’s insane. I don’t know how people do it.

Ariel Landrum 34:50
Yeah, I think I think you really bring up a good point in that. That I think is what makes a Disney fan is they just kind of find a way to make to spend the money to get there out of the park to have their experience they just they literally just find a way and… And shout out to Jamie who just got married, Billy’s brother!

Stefanie Bautista 35:12
Yeah!

Billy Madden 35:12
He’s getting married in October 23. Not married yet.

Ariel Landrum 35:14
No just got married like he has been with his woman her likes since they were toddlers basically.

Billy Madden 35:19
Over 10 years now I think yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 35:21
Wow fantastic.

Billy Madden 35:22
It has been a long time but anyways back back to those Disney fans. I mean like you guys mentioned in the previous podcast about like the those families that were the matching, you know, t-shirts and stuff like that.

Stefanie Bautista 35:36
Yes.

Billy Madden 35:36
Those guys are the diehards and like…

Stefanie Bautista 35:39
It’s true.

Billy Madden 35:39
Yeah, well I agree. I think it’s pretty stupid matching t shirts. I wouldn’t be caught dead doing that. I do give those families a lot of respect I mean those guys you know they do whatever they can to make it happen for the family to go to a public park that you know the common family can’t can’t afford to go to I mean it’s. It’s not an easy thing to get to get into Disneyland. It’s it’s quite a Herculean task.

Stefanie Bautista 36:05
It is and I think that also speaks to the different ways that we have been able to experience Disney I mean like like for you Billy like you have a family member who works for Disney. I was privileged enough to be able to get the military tickets because I have you know, I haven’t I’m part of a military family and so that they would have discounted tickets packages that you could buy every single year. Just to thank you know, service of men and women but aside from that, I hadn’t had an Annual Pass and so long because it was starting to get really pricey and just seeing the prices of the Magic Key kind of brought up those feelings again… About you know, “Oh my gosh, like I have to set aside money and you know, I know I’m gonna be buying things because they have discount for merchandise.”

Billy Madden 36:54
Oh super crazy.

Stefanie Bautista 36:55
Like there’s so many incentives that make you want to spend more but if you still want to be smart with your money and not be you know, just throwing bills around you do have to take a step back and really assess like, what tier is good for you? And so for so many Disney fans is like, “Obviously I’m going to get the highest tier because I don’t want to be seen as any less of a Disney fan.”

Ariel Landrum 37:18
Yeah, yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 37:18
However, it’s like that it’s it’s that just a personal arguing back and forth about you know, what do you need and what do you want?

Billy Madden 37:26
Yeah, of course.

Ariel Landrum 37:27
And for me, I I don’t have anyone in my life that works for Disney and my dad was in the military. You don’t get discounts anymore, I guess when you’re a veteran for Disney. So there you go for that.

Billy Madden 37:40
Somebody should fix that.

Stefanie Bautista 37:42
They should fix that.

Ariel Landrum 37:43
They should.

Stefanie Bautista 37:43
They should.

Billy Madden 37:44
That’s not right.

Ariel Landrum 37:45
But I did get the highest tier I paid for it last time when they were Annual Passes. And really, it’s because I almost am always working 3 jobs. I just left one and now I’ve started another one. So I’m currently working 4. And I don’t drink alcohol. So I don’t spend a lot of money when I go out to like my friends. Who one drink cost my whole salad.

Billy Madden 38:08
Oh yeah, I’m sure alcohol drives the price up of any meal. I didn’t. I didn’t drink any alcohol at California Adventure or the Avengers campus. I mean, I should have because that bar looked pretty awesome.

Ariel Landrum 38:24
I know you went to Pym’s Test Kitchen I thought you bought the drink there.

Billy Madden 38:28
Oh why it was the soda the Pingo Doce.

Ariel Landrum 38:31
Oh I didn’t know they had a fancy soda I didn’t get one!

Billy Madden 38:35
And apparently like it has a story behind it it was crafted apparently by The Hulk.

Stefanie Bautista 38:40
Oh.

Ariel Landrum 38:43
Oh, where does the name come from that has anything to do with The Hulk?

Billy Madden 38:46
I don’t know it was it’s apparently a Bruce Banner creation and…

Ariel Landrum 38:50
Okay.

Billy Madden 38:51
Like, I think that was the story behind it. It was delicious. I can tell you that.

Stefanie Bautista 38:58
I heard a lot of things at Pym’s Test Kitchen were really really good. Can you share with us what you ordered besides the drink?

Billy Madden 39:05
I had the I forget what the official name of it was but it was the it was the chicken sandwich. The fried chicken sandwich and like…

Ariel Landrum 39:13
That’s right the giant chicken!

Stefanie Bautista 39:15
The big one!

Billy Madden 39:16
And the whole thing with Pym’s Test Kitchen I guess you may or may not already know is like they play with their food to like shrink it or or increase it. And like in this case, the bun is an absolute joke compared.. I mean it’s like this little tiny like bun. I don’t think it’s even the size of a hockey puck I would say. And you get this huge piece of like giant chicken and like it’s not a sandwich. It’s like chicken fried steak you know.

Stefanie Bautista 39:50
Which I love. Oh, so it’s called The Not so Little Chicken Sandwich.

Billy Madden 39:54
That’s it. Yeah I couldn’t remember.

Ariel Landrum 39:56
It is not so little.

Stefanie Bautista 39:57
It’s not so little. I swear. I saw the picture and I was just like, “That is hysterical and I needed in my life right now. What is this?”

Ariel Landrum 40:05
I cracked up laughing when you posted that in the group chat.

Billy Madden 40:10
It really was delicious. I mean, like a fan of spicy food. And you had like the sauce had a little kick to it, which I really liked. And like the chicken itself, it was it was cooked, you know, great. And like it was good. And again, like the bun was a complete joke. I mean, like, when I finally got to the bun, like the bun was kind of like hard. The bun wasn’t so great. So like, you could really just tossed the bun to the side and you’re fine.

Stefanie Bautista 40:34
It’s there for photo opportunities, I guess.

Billy Madden 40:36
Yeah it’s there as a joke I mean it’s…

Ariel Landrum 40:37
So really going with with more of the phone app. Did you have to reserve this food on your phone?

Billy Madden 40:43
Yeah, that’s the only bummer I could really say about it. I mean like you can’t just go and order it you have to you can’t go to the counter and order it. But actually I think you could but like the wait for that was astronomical so I just went with the phone I had I had that for lunch. So yeah, I ordered that on the app and I think the wait for that wasn’t that half hour so it wasn’t terrible. So I just kept myself busy. What did you do other things until it was my turn to go back to the Pym Test Kitchen and pick up the food. But then like for dinner, I went back to California Adventure and I wanted to get the shawarma off the cart.

Stefanie Bautista 41:21
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 41:22
Yeah.

Billy Madden 41:22
Which you do, which you do when you go you walk up and you order it and like any other food cart you don’t have to order, okay.

Ariel Landrum 41:27
Oh okay.

Billy Madden 41:27
So..

Stefanie Bautista 41:28
Okay.

Ariel Landrum 41:28
Okay, that was the shawarma?

Billy Madden 41:30
Very good. They were both really good. That Pingo Doce say soda. It’s really good.

Stefanie Bautista 41:36
I have to remember that.

Billy Madden 41:37
Yeah, it was kinda like..

Stefanie Bautista 41:38
That is not something I’m gonna remember but…

Billy Madden 41:39
It was kind of like I want to say like a citrusy Mountain Dew with like vanilla. It was it was delicious. You can only get there which pisses me off. Because you know, they had like those awesome Coca Cola freestyle machines, you know?

Ariel Landrum 41:59
Oh okay.

Stefanie Bautista 41:59
Yeah.

Billy Madden 42:00
Which they have like AMC theaters and stuff. It’s like they could so easily put it there in the theater too. They could program those machines do anything any flavor you want. It doesn’t have to be just at California Adventure.

Stefanie Bautista 42:13
It could be everywhere else. Make it happen Disney.

Billy Madden 42:17
I mean I get why it’s only exclusive to there but…

Ariel Landrum 42:20
We shake our fists!

Billy Madden 42:23
Like I kind of cheated to me. I guess I could make this on the podcast. They give you a cup and like I just saved my cup and I went back for refills. I just had my backpack and stuff like I just you can walk right in and refill your cup as many times as you want… So there’s another tip!

Ariel Landrum 42:40
There’s a tip!

Stefanie Bautista 42:41
There’s a tip. There’s a tip.

Ariel Landrum 42:41
Save your cup. What you did was you lowered your carbon footprint.

Stefanie Bautista 42:45
That’s it thank you Billy.

Billy Madden 42:45
Exactly. I wanted to save cups okay.

Stefanie Bautista 42:50
So I guess here I looked up Pingo Doce a and what it is it’s a guarana soda beverage bottled in Rio de Janeiro. So guarana is kind of like yerba mate guayakí. And during the time Bruce Banner lived in Rio de Janeiro he worked in the Pingo Doce a bottling plant. After Banner was cut his gamma era dated irradiated blood dripped into one of the bottles where it was eventually drunk by The Watcher Informant in Milwaukee. So there is a story to this.

Billy Madden 43:18
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 43:19
Wow.

Stefanie Bautista 43:19
I guess Bruce had a job over and the plant. And and I wonder if now they will incorporate the story into the new movie because that’s something that I don’t remember in in the previous Ant-Man movies. But it’ll be I will now be looking out for this soda in the new movie.

Ariel Landrum 43:41
Look at Disney throw in Easter Eggs in there food and drink line the lineup.

Billy Madden 43:48
Well like I said you know Disney’s all about the details. Even the soda has a backstory that’s pretty nuts.

Stefanie Bautista 43:53
Yeah. And I know this is probably this will probably be discussed in another episode but watching behind the attraction on Disney+ lately has really given another element of how much thought goes into these rides and like the making of the rides not just here in Anaheim but also in Hong Kon,g Shanghai, Tokyo hopefully we can have an episode about that but I think this is definitely one of those.

Billy Madden 44:20
Well i think that the new episodes drop on the 25th right?

Stefanie Bautista 44:23
Oh fantastic! I watch them all they were so good.

Billy Madden 44:26
I watched all of them too. There’s so well done. Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 44:29
You burn right through them they’re great.

Billy Madden 44:30
Yeah, they’re so great. I think I think there’s more to come on the 25th. I could be mistaken.

Ariel Landrum 44:36
Okay, okay.

Stefanie Bautista 44:37
yeah, cuz I’m wondering how they’re going to do because I know they opened up Avengers Campus in Florida as well. And I wonder if it’s identical or if they changed a couple of things because they have a bigger area to work with out there.

Billy Madden 44:48
I’m sure it’s bigger I can I can imagine that.

Stefanie Bautista 44:51
I another one a one off like a question just for me because I love The Bugs Land because I love A Bug’s Life. Is there any trace of it looking like A Bugs Land at all when you are is it completely so transformed that you like if you didn’t know it was A Bugs Land you like wouldn’t even think about it.

Billy Madden 45:14
It’s got trees.

Stefanie Bautista 45:17
Cool cool. Cool, cool, cool.

Ariel Landrum 45:20
Foliage.

Stefanie Bautista 45:22
‘Cause I know some people were devastated like I wasn’t like heartbroken but ’cause I love both.

Billy Madden 45:27
You would you would never know Bug’s Life, Bugs Land existed. Sorry.

Stefanie Bautista 45:32
Okay.

Ariel Landrum 45:32
I don’t remember seeing any, any remnants of it. And I think like, I know you mentioned that some people were heartbroken, but I feel like when it comes to Disney fans of the parks, specifically, any change and it’s like everybody goes upstrel, upset. Sleepless nights doing Tweets and comments on the Facebook.

Stefanie Bautista 45:54
Keyboard warriors.

Ariel Landrum 45:55
Unliking and, and hashtags. And then it comes out it that last for the noise lasts for like a week, and then all of a sudden, it’s a beloved national treasure of a change. So…

Billy Madden 46:08
The fact of the matter is, no matter what they do, you’re never going to please everybody. There’s always gonna be some critics about something. Sometimes it’s something so insignificant, it’s stupid, but it’s important to them so they raise a stink about it.

Stefanie Bautista 46:22
Yeah, I think the cycles of they use this term in behind the attraction where they’re not repurchasing. But like refacing something just like he did with Tower of Terror. I think enough time passes were like, you know, A Bug’s Life was big when we were much younger like my brother was a kid when it came out and like he is now obviously grown 20 something and I think like those feelings would probably not be so strong like if you had changed the ride that a kid loved five years ago and that kid is still a kid that would be pretty devastating to them, to like not being able to see you know, it’s like right on flicks ride you know

Billy Madden 47:03
It’s part of the fabric of their life. Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 47:05
Exactly.

Billy Madden 47:07
That would be devastating to anybody.

Ariel Landrum 47:09
That is really interesting though, that we I don’t think we’ve ever seen the Imagineers put like an homage to what was originally there like a hidden Easter Egg somewhere that reminds you of what used to be in that ride or that area.

Billy Madden 47:20
Yeah, I’ve never heard of that before.

Stefanie Bautista 47:21
Yeah. I wonder if anybody out there would know because I feel like they would do that in Guardians of the Galaxy mission breakout. Because Hollywood Tower of Terror was such a beloved ride and it still exists in Florida but because the structure of it is kind of there’s so many details especially in the line. Maybe there is something in Tivan’s collection that alludes to Tower of Terror who knows. I don’t know if you all know please let us know.

Ariel Landrum 47:24
Someone knows.

Billy Madden 47:25
I haven’t been on the Guardians of the Galaxy mission breakout because honestly Tower of Terrer, the Tower of Terror terrified me. The last time I went on it right I seriously thought I was gonna die. I walked out of that ride like, “Oh my god I dodged a bullet man.”

Ariel Landrum 48:07
Well the last time I went on that ride was when it was Guardians and Stef brought me.

Stefanie Bautista 48:12
Yeah it was awesome!

Ariel Landrum 48:14
And I threw up.

Billy Madden 48:15
You threw up, oh my god.

Ariel Landrum 48:17
I enjoyed it walk to the nearest trash can vomited.

Stefanie Bautista 48:22
I have a love hate relationship with that feeling you get of near death so I love the fact that I know that I only scream bloody murder on that ride. Like I that is the only ride that that would happen but…

Billy Madden 48:37
It’s so scary.

Stefanie Bautista 48:38
If there’s so many like instances where like so I I’m a pin collector so I would wear my pins. I’ve been hit in the face by my pins. I have like my popcorn like my Sulley popcorn bucket that like I saw rise up next to me as we were going down. Like “Is everything here?” And I’m definitely gonna wait until Arlo’s much older and like maybe even almost my height because I would be clinging on to him for dear life wondering if he’s just slipped out of that belt and like ended up in the front of of the tower. But I mean it’s it’s a very unique ride and now that I know how it works because of Behind The Attraction. It the mechanics makes so much sense to me now.

Billy Madden 49:20
It does.

Stefanie Bautista 49:20
It totally I nerd it out hardcore.

Billy Madden 49:24
It still terrifies me.

Stefanie Bautista 49:25
It still terrifies me which is great. It’s great because I feel like sometimes when you go to like Six Flags and you ride those roller coasters, like after a while becomes like a chore and your body just hurts going for that but this one doesn’t do that.

Billy Madden 49:39
I can’t do Six Flags anymore.

Ariel Landrum 49:43
There’s an age and a season

Stefanie Bautista 49:45
Oh yeah.

Billy Madden 49:45
Like I wrote that. That one is called X I think the one…

Ariel Landrum 49:49
Oh yeah the fast one.

Billy Madden 49:50
Yeah, you’re you’re…

Ariel Landrum 49:51
You rotate.

Billy Madden 49:51
Spinning every every which way at any given moment. I mean, I think my brain is still trying to get unscrambled from that.

Stefanie Bautista 49:58
I guess keeping with the theme do you all think that other theme parks are going to go down this route of reserving and just being all technologically you know base? Because i know I mean Ariel you said you went to Universal not that long ago like did you see some of these things implemented there?

Ariel Landrum 50:22
Yeah the the new Secret Life of Pets ride.

Stefanie Bautista 50:24
Ah okay.

Ariel Landrum 50:25
It’s a virtual queue that you have to you have to get on which I didn’t even know. That’s the place where I do know somebody that works there I know I know a few people and they all told me that yeah, that’s that’s the only one that you have to have like a queue reservation for. And even even there now they’re also building the Nintendo Land and so I expect that there’s going to be probably more phone type app and and queue and game things.

Billy Madden 50:57
It’s a sign of the times. I mean, like I you know like like you Ariel. You know, we have common friends that work at Universal Studios and one of my friends who works for security for Universal Studios because he’s the hadd a security. He says that basically they copy whatever Disney does. Like in the know if Disney raises their prices universals prices go right up to. In order to keep people out of the parks. But that really doesn’t work because Disney paint fans pay anything so. They got they got to re strategize that angle.

Ariel Landrum 51:30
I think the phone which stinks because like like the app does just eat up so much battery life.

Billy Madden 51:35
Oh god yeah.

Ariel Landrum 51:36
But I think that the way that Disney has like they have they have a game in there that you can play in different areas of the park and throughout the park like I was… When when Batuu had first opened I was like scanning all kinds of stuff and trying to switch weird light buttons to try and like win for the for the Jedi I don’t know. It was I can’t… I don’t know why. I was… I paid all this money to be at a theme park and here I am on my phone but it’s it is the sign of the times. It I think like augmented reality. I mean we play Pokemon Go like it i think that that that kind of advancements going to stay.

Stefanie Bautista 52:13
And I just hope that you know they don’t go too fast too soon with a lot of these changes. Because I mean people are not only trying to gather the money to get to the parks but also they’re trying to navigate a new way to be at the parks. And although I know that they’re kind of widening that gap with people who just go, “I’m just not going to deal with this maybe I’ll just wait a little bit,” and then they’re like when they like pander it to ultimate Disney fans. I just hope that they don’t make that gap too big that it discourages people who are you know just there to enjoy being at the parks and not necessarily you know, make it a big thing?

Billy Madden 52:53
I agree.

Ariel Landrum 52:54
Yeah, I think it’s part of that you know digital divide in regards to generations but I think it also encompasses what we’ve talked about is like the the technology access and means versus really that… For maybe our generation definitely the generation that’s growing up now it’s it’s ingrained in the culture. But if we’re talking about socioeconomic status and access and means you know I I think my my dad saw as a flip phone.

Stefanie Bautista 53:28
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 53:30
And if he if I hadn’t gone to the park and known about reserving the food on my phone like how was my family supposed to eat? I mean they couldn’t pack something but that was taken a lot of for thought because when the carts were still really down and people were lined at them to get food when all of the the virtual food was had already been reserved. So if the experiences right now it’s because of COVID right? But experience starts to stay that way where you’re going to have to have some mobile device there are going to be a substantial amount of people who are going to be disenfranchised by the experience.

Billy Madden 54:08
Oh yeah absolutely. Didn’t the CEO of Disney say like he said something about like virtual queues are here to stay. Chapek? Bob Chapek? So it’s I don’t know I’m not a fan honestly. Even though it has worked out for me every time I don’t mind waiting in a line.

Stefanie Bautista 54:28
It’s true old school. You know, and I mean, who knows, like I think all of these added layers of like I said, all these extra hoops that you have to jump in order to have a memorable and positive Disney experience. I mean, thinking of it as a parent now like I have a child that has very little to no patience. And if he wanted a Pingo Doce a soda or if he wanted a not so you know what is Not So Small Chicken Sandwich. If he had to wait for it and I wasn’t prepared for that that could have made or make or break you know your Disney experience and multiply that by a lot of children you know. iIt could be very very frustrating and I just hope that they keep like the shawarma cart I hope they keep you know, yeah, churros. Like if I have to get my butt into a virtual line for a corn dog, I don’t know I would have to like kind of, like weigh out my options at that point. Like, “Do I really have to be here for my corn dog or not?”

Ariel Landrum 55:28
Yeah, and I think the other thing is that we’re talking about our experience at Disneyland. I really don’t know what it’s looking like at Walt Disney World in regards to some of the changes they’ve made because they are just bigger and they have more space maybe they don’t have the same struggle in regards to the virtual ordering of food and virtual queue everything you know.

Billy Madden 55:51
I imagine they do because I think it has to do with like the COVID mandates and stuff like that. I would I would imagine they’re gonna be the same thing.

Ariel Landrum 55:59
Well, it’s Florida.

Billy Madden 56:00
Yeah, that’s true. This word I but it’s, you know, it’s Disney’s rules, you know, I mean.

Ariel Landrum 56:05
Touché.

Stefanie Bautista 56:05
And also before, I mean, Ariel, you and I were able to use magic bands, which is their virtual system for checking in and out. Paying for things it’s basically like a RFID wristband that you wear and then you sync it to your Disney app. And that’s how you pay for things. I thought that they were going to bring that over to Disneyland one day but then now they’ve relied solely on the app which eliminates using a wristband but also like you said there’s the navigating of another app on your phone. Not to mention you know you’re taking pictures you’re looking around the parks you’re playing Pokemon Go like all like these open tabs and open windows that you have.

Billy Madden 56:49
They just eat up your battery life.

Ariel Landrum 56:52
Yeah, I would have really liked it if they brought the bands which made sense cuz like people spend a lot of money customizing just those bands.

Billy Madden 57:00
Oh yeah, I heard that’s a thing. I don’t know much about it. But I’ve heard that is a thing so.

Stefanie Bautista 57:05
Yeah. So I’m curious to see if they’ll keep that and I’m just I’m just hoping that..

Billy Madden 57:10
I think they will I yeah, unfortunately I think they will.

Stefanie Bautista 57:13
But maybe if one of us makes it out there we can report back but um, unfortunately we do deal with our Disney culture here in California and that is such a unique niche for fans of Disney for Los Angeles Southern California fans of Disney. It like you said it’s a different breed when you’re dealing with Disney fans. It’s an added layer of a different breed when you’re dealing with Annual Pass Holders from Southern California so. We can only hope for the best when it comes to the future of virtual queue but definitely like for me as an educator keeping in mind that Disneyland isn’t as accessible as it used to be I will be more mindful when I talk to students because you can’t just always go, “Oh you know you haven’t been to Disneyland?” That’s something that you know some kids haven’t just because it’s it’s so unattainable for some families.

Billy Madden 58:11
It’s not easy to get into. It’s the reality of it.

Stefanie Bautista 58:14
Something yeah it is the reality of it and you know I hope Disney continues to be inclusive as much as they can be. It’s getting hard.

Ariel Landrum 58:24
Yeah as much as a large conglomerate corporate can.

Billy Madden 58:27
Yeah, I mean like of course they want to get everybody in the park but like they try to manage it to a safe capacity I guess like you know, they try to piece price people out which sucks. But like I get it. But then again it really doesn’t work. So I don’t know how they handle that problem. But definitely the price inflation doesn’t help.

Ariel Landrum 58:54
Well to try and on on better terms on our Happiest Pod On Earth.

Billy Madden 58:59
Yeah

Ariel Landrum 58:59
Billy? I’m curious. Do you have anything lined up for your podcast with Movie Grader And Friends?

Billy Madden 59:06
Um, yeah, we’re gonna record I think our podcast episode tomorrow. And we’re pretty behind on movies so it’s gonna be a big episode much I honestly forget which ones we have to cover. It’s been so long. Like we got I got backed up because I wasn’t I wasn’t able to go to the movies last week because I did go to my brother’s bachelor party. So

Stefanie Bautista 59:33
Which is a good excuse.

Ariel Landrum 59:34
Had to go to his brother’s wedding part 2.

Billy Madden 59:38
I had to play movie catch up so I went to go see what did I guess the I saw? Oh, Respect and I saw Free Guy so.

Stefanie Bautista 59:50
Yes, I was gonna say probably Free Guy. Any of those stand out to you.

Billy Madden 59:54
Free Guy was excellent. It was probably like, I would say it’s probably the best video game movie I’ve seen.

Stefanie Bautista 59:59
Nice. Oh excited for that. Yeah we me and Billy have gone to Retro Gaming Expo before…

Billy Madden 1:00:06
Oh yeah!

Stefanie Bautista 1:00:06
Had such a blast doing that so…

Billy Madden 1:00:09
I missed that so much!

Stefanie Bautista 1:00:10
I know I missed that so much.

Ariel Landrum 1:00:11
That convention needs to come back.

Stefanie Bautista 1:00:13
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 1:00:14
Fricking COVID!

Stefanie Bautista 1:00:15
But anything video game related Billy’s your guy so I trust you to say that Free Guy is good so

Billy Madden 1:00:20
And like the crazy thing is it’s not even based on a video game.

Stefanie Bautista 1:00:25
But all of the promotional like posters that they have that mimic existing games are so good.

Ariel Landrum 1:00:30
Like Animals Crossing one.

Stefanie Bautista 1:00:32
Yes the Animal Crossing one. So good!

Ariel Landrum 1:00:34
Minecraft!

Billy Madden 1:00:36
They totally play on like different genres and stuff like that obviously the biggest one being the open world type deal that’s like kind of Grand Theft Auto or whatnot but yeah it’s it’s really well done go check it out.

Ariel Landrum 1:00:49
Well thank you Billy for joining us here on Happiest Pod

Billy Madden 1:00:54
Thank you for having me.

Ariel Landrum 1:00:56
Where can people find you and follow you?

Billy Madden 1:01:00
Um, let’s see on Instagram I basically @TheMovieGrader and my websites www.themoviegrader.com and you could find me on any podcast platform you listen to, you know, let’s see Google, Apple Podcasts, Spotify. Just search for The Movie Grader And Friends podcast and it’ll come right up.

Ariel Landrum 1:01:23
So we hope all of you follow our, our best bestie Billy and then if you have any, any information in regards to the Easter Eggs and the Webslinger ride that we that are our friend Billy might have missed go ahead and Tweet us @HappiestPodGT and or message us and DM us on Instagram at @HappiestPodGT.

Stefanie Bautista 1:01:47
Yep, we’d love to hear your experiences at Webslingers and Avengers campus. I feel like everybody’s had a different one so far so it would be great to hear from you all. Thank you Billy. We had so much fun and hopefully we can all do this again soon.

Billy Madden 1:02:03
Oh, God. Yeah. Please. Any time. Good luck to everybody out there trying to get a boarding pass!

Stefanie Bautista 1:02:09
I know. Including me.

Ariel Landrum 1:02:12
Good luck, everybody. Bye!

Stefanie Bautista 1:02:15
Alright, bye!

Billy Madden 1:02:16
Bye!

• Spider-Man
• Guardians of the Galaxy
• Tower of Terror
• Disneyland
• The Imagineering Story
• Toy Story Mania
• Jurassic World
• Universal Studios
• Secret Life of Pets

• Socioeconomic Status
• Disenfranchised
• Pricing out
• Signs of the times
• Digital divide
• Augmented reality
• Technological advances

Stefanie Bautista 0:11
Hello, everyone, welcome to the happiest place on earth. I’m Stefanie.

Ariel Landrum 0:14
And I’m Ariel. And we’re Disney fans. But we’re really so much more than that. Like, I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist who uses clients’ passions and fandoms to help them grow and heal from trauma and mental wellness.

Stefanie Bautista 0:26
And I’m an educator who uses my passions and fandoms to help my students grow and learn about themselves and the world around them.

Ariel Landrum 0:32
And Happiest Pod is a place where we dissect is the mediums of the critical lens. Why? Because just like we are more than fans, we expect more from the mediums we consume.

Stefanie Bautista 0:40
So today, what does the media or experience are we dissecting and learning about and sharing with our listeners?

Ariel Landrum 0:47
Don’t believe the memes there is such a thing as Disney Karaoke.

Stefanie Bautista 0:51
Dj horn soundeffect

Ariel Landrum 0:51
Dj horn soundeffect

Stefanie Bautista 0:54
Yeah I don’t know where that meme came from that mean really pissed me off. Let me just say like, I woke up and chose violence when I saw that meme because I was like… It was a meme that said, “Why isn’t there a thing called Disney Karaoke?” And it confused me… Because it is part of my DNA.

Ariel Landrum 1:14
There is.

Stefanie Bautista 1:15
I don’t…

Ariel Landrum 1:15
We will share this meme.

Stefanie Bautista 1:17
Yeah

Ariel Landrum 1:17
Some memes are funny. This meme was not funny. Like, what are you questioning right now? I don’t I don’t understand.

Stefanie Bautista 1:25
I don’t understand.

Ariel Landrum 1:25
I do not compute.

Stefanie Bautista 1:27
I was like, so you’re telling me when you start karaoke. none of those songs are Disney songs?

Ariel Landrum 1:34
None? None on the docket?

Stefanie Bautista 1:36
Not even one?

Ariel Landrum 1:36
Not on the playlist?

Stefanie Bautista 1:37
Not even A Whole New…? Like None? I don’t know. I don’t understand. Which is why we decided to do this episode and talk to you all and share with you the wonderful therapeutic educational practice of karaoke. I know many of you guys don’t think about it that way. But we sure do.

Ariel Landrum 1:59
We do. It’s so ingrained in us I think, I would say more accurate meme as you remember the theme to emes where it was like “Showering is easy.” And there was like step one is this and this. And then like, “Showering as a Filipino is easy step one step in the shower. So to turn on the water. Step three and get out karaoke mic.”

Stefanie Bautista 2:16
Yup. Pretty much. Yep. See those memes I can get on board with not only and we have mentioned before that we are Asian American, we are Filipino descent. So karaoke really is ingrained in us.

Ariel Landrum 2:30
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 2:31
We love karaoke. I’ve grown up with it. I think. Just being in and around my Aunts. Having a karaoke machine just readily available in… And people a Magic Mic to me did not mean half naked men on stage. A Magic Mic to me, man, a mic that you had a keypad on, and it came with a large book and you browse through that book, put in the number and sing your song. And it rates you. I don’t know how it rates you. It was such an archaic system back then. Like…

Ariel Landrum 3:04
Yeah?

Stefanie Bautista 3:05
Is it just reading your participation? Or is it actually rating your your level of talent when it comes to singing? I don’t think it was the latter…

Ariel Landrum 3:13
Accuracy of words?

Stefanie Bautista 3:14
I don’t think it was the was the former because like if you’ve ever done karaoke at somebody’s an Auntie or Uncle’s house, like you know, that thing is not accurate.

Ariel Landrum 3:25
No, and especially when you put that reverb on there. That echo.

Stefanie Bautista 3:30
That everybody loves so much because it makes them sound like Whitney.

Ariel Landrum 3:33
Yes, yes. Essentially, the pre-autotune.

Stefanie Bautista 3:38
Yeah, yep, it was the pre It was like a filter for your voice.

Ariel Landrum 3:41
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 3:41
That made you sound super professional. And I know that even when you go to the Philippines, sometimes in the local bars, they’ll have the reverb all the way up. And you’re like,”Yyou need to tone it down a little bit.” But karaoke and its origins is not Filipino, as much as many of you might think. It is Japanese, hence the ‘ka-ra-o-kay’. Umm, karaoke, which is the way we say it is an English form of entertainment from Japan, where an amateur singer sings along with instrumental versions of their favorite songs. Karaoke is derived from two Japanese words, ‘kara’ from the word ‘karappo’, meaning empty and ‘oke’ means, ‘okesutura’ or ‘or-kes-tra’. ‘Or-kes-tra’ is a Roman, or it’s a Japanese way of saying a Romanized word, which is why it’s phonetic in how you say it. So it’s really literally you in front of instrumentals.

Ariel Landrum 4:36
Yes, yes. Empty, empty room of orchestra.

Stefanie Bautista 4:40
Yes. And I have had the privilege of going to Japan and singing karaoke there. And it is a whole experience.

Ariel Landrum 4:47
It’s a whole new world?

Stefanie Bautista 4:48
It’s a whole new world they, it’s not just you and your Auntie’s backyard, with like a bunch of drunk people around you. You originally and Ariel will explain noraebang in Korea, but in Japan, it’s very, very similar. Where do you rent a box of essentially a room with your friends, you have a system in front of you with a TV, you put in your songs queue up. You sing on 1 or 2 mics and you gather around, eat and drink and have like the best time. And you rent it by the hour or if they have a package, they have all of those details there. So I know it’s very similar in Korea, which I have also had the pleasure of doing noraebang but it’s a little bit different there.

Ariel Landrum 5:31
Yeah, so um, Stef has visited Korea. I have lived in Korea. In Korea, you might hear the word karaoke because there’s an understanding that the this is interchangeable. But really, it’s a noraebang. So ‘no-rae’ meaning singing and ‘bang’ means room. And though ‘bang’ could refer to any room when it’s used as a suffix, it signifies that the room has a significant entertainment function. That it’s meant to entertain you in a specific way. The bang culture in South Korea, it’s in cities, it’s in villages. There it’s really a variety of private rooms that are curated to meet entertainment needs of the community. These rooms can be found really anywhere in South Korea and some examples include PC Bang, which is where I would go all the time to regularly game, MSN Messenger and AOL messenger my friends. I’m dating myself. There’s, there’s a Gamebang for board games, there’s a piece PSbang for PlayStation games. Like this is ingrained in the culture. That you and your friends would go to these bangs. And now it’s actually a lot more popular to go to a coin noraebang which is that instead of renting the room for the hour, you rent it for the song, you pay per song. So even like my memory of the experience is old. I’m old. Because now people don’t spend a whole hour there. Now it’s like, it can even be an individual experience. Whereas these bangs are meant to be entertainment for you and your friends, or really, for business engagements. A lot of business deals are brokered in the noraebang. And…

Stefanie Bautista 7:07
Bonding over music…

Ariel Landrum 7:08
Bonding over music and drinks and food. Yeah, we’re as the coin one, you might go for yourself or with a partner and sing a song or two, just to kill some time while maybe you’re waiting for the metro, the train, or on your way from one sort of event to another to have like a just a moment of relaxation.

Stefanie Bautista 7:27
Exactly. And luckily for us, especially living in a city that has a large Japanese and Korean population, and not to mention, there’s a lot of us Filipinos here too.

Ariel Landrum 7:37
Lot of us!

Stefanie Bautista 7:37
We’re contributing to the karaoke scene playing out here. Now, we first I mean, you may first know karaoke as something that you have to do on stage. That you have to present yourself be vulnerable in front of a lot of people as an amateur singer. I know I have friends that participate in karaoke competitions with their friends that there’s actually like Facebook groups and different types of events where you get together with people you know, and then you perform a song. You get prizes. It’s kind of like trivia but with karaoke.

Ariel Landrum 8:11
Shout out to our friend Daisy who won a Selena impersonation karaoke contest who both dressed like her and sang the songs. So umm, there you go.

Stefanie Bautista 8:20
Love it. And she’s beautiful. Just like Selena, and I’m not surprised that she won because… Dang…

Ariel Landrum 8:26
Right?

Stefanie Bautista 8:26
The best cosplay ever. But yeah, like there. And normally, if we probably didn’t live in a big city, that’s how you would do karaoke, you would just kind of put yourself out there, me and myself, I am not that person. Even though…

Ariel Landrum 8:41
I am not that person either. And I lived in the Midwest, and that was the only karaoke available, which was you went to a bar and sang in front of a bunch of people. And they would do a game where you would like choose the song for your friend and your friend would not know what song playing and then you sing it?

Stefanie Bautista 9:00
It was like karaoke roulette. It’s the worst and why would you…

Ariel Landrum 9:02
It’s the worst.

Stefanie Bautista 9:02
It’s the worse and the way it is, is because how we explain it is that you are literally singing in a room, probably like you shaped and then the TV is your focus here. Since the audience is your focus, your TV is to the side. So you can still see the music but you could really just see the people judging you. And even though like I have performed in front of people, karaoke is a whole different like way because they are judging you from the minute you open your mouth. So that is anxiety I don’t need

That type of karaoke. Even here like if you go to North Hollywood and I’ve I would not sing because everyone in North Hollywood is a live performance actor or actress. They sing in front of an audience for a living and it was like… It It definitely bruised my ego. Yeah, like super not not be able to participate because I was too afraid I’d be judged by these people who do it professionally.

Yeah. So since we knew karaoke from before. And also like, as I got older, I knew that there were different Japanese enclaves like Sawtelle in West LA and Little Tokyo in Downtown LA, where they had karaoke rooms. Every time I would ask like a coworker or something if they want to do karaoke, they’d be like, “Oh, no, like, I do not want to be in front of people. Like, no, I’m not gonna do it.” I’m like, “No, there’s another way. Let me let me show you the way. This is the way.”

Ariel Landrum 10:25
“You’ll be part of my world!”

Stefanie Bautista 10:27
Yes, there’s places like my favorite, Max karaoke in Little Tokyo. Unfortunately, because of the pandemic, they had a West LA one on Sawtelle that’s closed, that I just saw a couple days ago, actually a couple weeks ago. But the one in Little Tokyo still going strong. You rent by the hour. I don’t know if it’s BYOB. It used to be. But I know, things get a little rowdy. So it might not be anymore. But it’s really cheap. Especially if you go on the weekdays. It’s like $13 per hour or something. Don’t quote me on that. But it’s really affordable. They give you a punch card. Me and AJ my, my husband used to fill that punch card back in the day when we had time. And we would just go and have fun and sing songs like anything. And I know in The Valley, we have another one, right?

Ariel Landrum 11:13
Yeah, so I live in Reseda, home of the Karate Kid.

Stefanie Bautista 11:17
Cobra Kai. Never dies.

Ariel Landrum 11:18
Cobra Kai. Never dies.And so the one that I go to is called Carnival Karaoke. It’s a little bit smaller. It’s not as glamorous. But the food is amazing, because the family that owns it, and the restaurant next door. They make amazing Korean food. So if you do not want to sing, you can definitely stuff your face when people are bellowing out. It’s great.

Stefanie Bautista 11:40
Yes, there’s another level to that there are in Korea Town because we have, I think the largest Korea Town either in America in America, I want to say. We have plenty of plenty of noraebang out there. However, I like to reserve those for big events, because normally they have an alcohol package where you buy the room or you rent out the room for X amount of hours. And it comes with a bottle of Petroleum, a bottle of Grey Goose and like unlimited appetizers and water and all that stuff. But that’s more for like a birthday or like a celebration, because you are going to be spending a lot. However, if there’s a lot of you, it always kind of balances out to like $15 a person. And it’s a really, really fun way to celebrate with, with people you’re familiar with and are comfortable.

Ariel Landrum 12:25
Yeah, yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 12:25
Especially during You know, this time. And I know that that’s something that I would love to do with friends that I know that are you know, being safe. And it’s like one of those things that was pre pandemic that can still happen as long as you are all being safe with each other. So yeah, that one is like, third tier of karaoke. Because that’s the one that you get dressed up at and everything and it’s just so fun, especially when you have friends that love to sing. And as you continue to sing your confidence level rises and your your… What do you call it?

Ariel Landrum 12:36
Inhibition drops the more you drink.

Stefanie Bautista 13:02
Inhibition drops with every single drink. But it’s really fun. So plenty of places here. I know. Like in bigger cities like New York, they have a couple that I’ve been to. But yeah, like maybe we can, maybe we can come up with a list of places on our Instagram and our Twitter to link. Hopefully lot of these places are still around. But if there’s any that we don’t mention, we would love to hear suggestions if you all have some as well.

Ariel Landrum 13:30
Yeah. So I’m I’m, I’m curious for you, Stef, when it comes to karaoke, what… You mentioned doing it at home with family, and and you sort of mentioned doing it with coworkers. And you’ve even mentioned doing it with your partner. For you, how do you decide sort of like, whiches is kind of the best for what kind of environment if that makes sense?

Stefanie Bautista 13:58
I think I think I understand your question. I guess it really like you said it depends on the environment. I mean, I have a Magic Mic at home. And I, every time my parents go to the Philippines or I go I make sure to get one from there. Not only because it’s cheaper, but because it’s really high quality. If you go to the Philippines, they have updated versions of home karaoke systems that they sell in Japan and Korea, but they’re in English because the main language, one of the main languages in the Philippines is English. And we can use those same systems here in America. So I if I just want to unwind… Even if my parents just want to unwind, they put on the karaoke, they just sing in their room. I know I did that a couple times during the pandemic, which is why I am glad I bought one. Because if we’re having like a party in the back or something, or if my friends having a party down the street, we could always bring it. It’s portable, and it’s something that we can do. But, you know, I think if you’re being introduced to karaoke, if you have a way to do it, at home, do it at home.

Ariel Landrum 15:01
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 15:01
Because I think that’s how you get familiar with the types of songs that you like, that aren’t too hard for you. Because as much as we all love Bruno Mars, his songs are not easy for everyone.

Ariel Landrum 15:12
They’re not easy. They are not easy.

Stefanie Bautista 15:14
And I think a big part of karaoke is knowing the types of music that work for you that you also love. That’s a big part of it.

Ariel Landrum 15:22
I think you’re even also mentioning, sometimes we think we know the lyrics, and then we see the lyrics.

Stefanie Bautista 15:29
And you’re like, “What?”

Ariel Landrum 15:31
“What am I’ve been singing this whole time, just nonsense.”

Stefanie Bautista 15:35
Yes. And I think going back to like, this is a Disney podcast. Many of our experiences of karaoke are Disney songs, first and foremost. As kids, especially growing up in the 80’s and 90’s. My first foray into karaoke in itself, not taking away the fact that I am of Filipino decent, is the Disney sing alongs that they had on the VHS is in the 80’s and the 90’s. There were these VHS tapes. If you don’t know what a tape is, it is a big cassette, basically, that holds data on ribbons. And you put it into a VHS player that almost every household had in the late 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s. We had music, movies, concerts on them. This particular one, Disney Sing-Along, started in the 80’s. And the one that I had was specific to Disneyland. So they would start off on Main Street as if you were going into the park. So they would sing a song where as you’re going into the park, I think it’s called ‘I’m Walking Right Down The Middle of Main Street.’ And I loved watching it. I watch it over and over and sing with it over and over because it reminded me of going to Disneyland all the time, even though I couldn’t go. So you would watch the video, it would have the lyrics on the bottom and it had this little like bouncy Mickey Ear, that will it would go on every syllable. And that was my first foray into karaoke. If you’re our age, that probably was yours too.

Ariel Landrum 17:01
And now like if you’re if you’re looking at the lyrics and karaoke, they do the syllables by filling up the word right?

Stefanie Bautista 17:07
Yes.

Ariel Landrum 17:07
Like it’s like, slowly lights up like a bar. And so that that bouncing Mickey it’s just harking to that, that essentially loading of the song and how long you’re supposed to hold the note, right?

Stefanie Bautista 17:19
Yeah. And then it went down and up and down on the same syllable. It reminds me a lot of just doing Nursery Rhymes in kindergarten in class. That’s how we get introduced to music is looking at words, figuring syllables out, going one by one by one. Following along. And music is such a great way to get kids used to you know, phonetics, and how to not just sing things but pronounce words. That’s why I think a lot of these Disney music songs that were on the karaokes were kind of essential in helping kids understand how to read and how to speak and how to sing eventually, because music is such a powerful tool for for phonetic education in the early stages.

Ariel Landrum 18:03
And in therapy. When I’m working with with youth, one of the things we talk about is like reward systems. And I’ve been doing online therapy since 2016. So my rewards aren’t going to be physical tangible objects, they’re usually rewards that involve relational building. So if I have a client who has to stop teasing their sibling for 3 days, right? Because that’s that’s doable whole week is not doable, especially if you’re still learning. But if 3 days they didn’t tease their sibling, in our next session, we would pick a song to sing together. I would let them choose that that Disney song. We would we would look it up, we would practice it, we find the version that we liked, that was always something fun. And that that was a reward a lot of my youth even to this day still want to earn. Now, some of it’s not just Disney music; it definitely is popular music, and songs that they themselves gravitate towards. But that’s singing along together that joining experience is such an amazing reward.

Stefanie Bautista 19:06
Yeah, absolutely. And kids response so great to music. Whether it be young kids, older kids. I know that there’s some middle schoolers that like say they’re too cool for something, but if you put on like, you know, “Zippity Doo Da,” they’ll sing right along. So it’s very nostalgic for them as well. I think you could say the same for us. And when they hear and see these musics on the Disney Sing-Along songs when you go to the parks, and then when you listen to these things in the movies and music.. It’s familiarity to them and so they feel comforted by the fact that they can sing the along to the songs. And then when you see live performances at the park, you can engage and participate and I think that’s just like the full circle beauty of these home videos that were so popular in this the 80’s and the 90’s.

Ariel Landrum 19:56
Yeah, and now even during the pandemic, specifically, ABC and Disney collaborated together to do a Disney Family Sing-Along. So they had Volume I and II and a holiday special. Ryan Seacrest was the host of all of them. And they what they did was they had star studded performances. With a lot of inventive at home choreography and sets. A lot of people were shooting at home because we were in lockdown and Disney and ABC had decided, “Well, what’s the way that we can sort of bring some some hopes and magic for people, particularly in a time where we are in mentally emotionally drained, struggling, you know, doom scrolling?” And they brought the the singalong back. And, and the best thing about that singalong was the fact that we got to see inside celebrities’ homes. And a lot of the creativity in creating the each segment was dependent on each celebrity. We got to see their individuality, their uniqueness in editing… And really some homemade styles in regards to shooting on the iPhone. You could just tell that these were more intimate video settings then like from a studio. They definitely had the two choreographers from…

Dancing with the Stars Dancing?

Dancing with the Stars Dancing…

Stefanie Bautista 21:21
Yeah Julian and Derek Hough. Yeah

Ariel Landrum 21:22
Yes, yes. So they did an amazing routine. They had lots of costumes with shows you, at their house.

Stefanie Bautista 21:29
They needed the outlet just as much as we did.

Ariel Landrum 21:32
Amazing kitchen, by the way, so I’m seeing my inside of their kitchen and it was like kitchen jealous dreams here.

Stefanie Bautista 21:38
Yeah right?

Ariel Landrum 21:39
Um, they even did like fisheye lens. And they did like the the cup challenge where you have like a cup on the pyramid and you like, see how fast you can sort of like, take it down. So that was that was hilarious. And then for me, it was probably like, like, I had some questionable choices on on some of the people they chose because it’s like, “I’m not going to be able to sing like Beyonce. Why Beyonce singing the song?”

Stefanie Bautista 22:06
Because Beyonce has a contract with Disney+, because Black is King. And…

Ariel Landrum 22:12
Yeah, yes, I get it. But I was singing the song but also like, “I don’t sound anything like you’d Beyonce and I don’t want to sing along with you. But I also do…” It was like it was a conflict.

Stefanie Bautista 22:22
It’s a low key concert. And I know that’s what happens sometimes when you do go to karaoke with somebody who can really really sing. I mean, like I can sing, but like I have friends who are really, really saying…

Ariel Landrum 22:31
No Stef can sing she’s just not boastful about.

Stefanie Bautista 22:34
I’m not and I mean, I’m not seasoned also, I don’t do it regularly. So it takes me a while to get to that. You have to turn your voice and everything. So I have friends who are really really good singers and I’m just like, “I’m just gonna do your harmonies. I’m just gonna be in the background.”

Ariel Landrum 22:48
“With my tamborine!”

Stefanie Bautista 22:49
“Oh, the ad libbing leave the ad libbing to me. Oh, the rap part. I got the rap part.” I don’t know about these, like, you know, the bridge and everything. Like, I’m not sure about that.

Ariel Landrum 23:00
So yeah, so they had 3, The Disney Family Sing-Alongs, 2 Volumes, and then a holiday one. On Disney+ right now. I think it’s just the holiday one that’s left. But you can actually go on YouTube and watch these. And so the one that I watch fairly regularly and I have done with my my clients is a Halsey singing part of your world. They do such a beautiful rendition. They also have amazing red hair that I was trying to figure out if this was a wig or if they had found time to dye it. The vibrancy was beautiful. But I love every version of that song obviously because Ariel is my favorite Disney Princess so I’m hearing Halsey’s version. Chefs kiss.

Stefanie Bautista 23:42
Yes. I’m so excited for the live action, by the way, because Chloe, is it Halle or Chloe? Yeah, Chloe. I think Halle. Yeah, she her way to her and her sister have amazing, amazing voices. They were discovered by Beyonce. So seeing that and their rendition. I’m so excited for it. I’m pretty sure.

Ariel Landrum 24:02
And Halle and Chloe were even on the Volume II.

Stefanie Bautista 24:06
They were…

Ariel Landrum 24:06
Of The Disney Family Sing-Along.

Stefanie Bautista 24:07
They were. They were. Yep. I apologize. I know. There’s music going on in my background. My brother is playing. He’s a musician. And also now my dog has started snoring so apologies for that. It is soothing. And as we talk about music, how soothing it is. It’s soothing for everybody animals and humans alike. So not only can you do karaoke at home, you can do karaoke in a karaoke room, noraebang. You can do karaoke Disney style. But there’s also other places that we’ve seen karaoke. What are the other places that we’ve seen opportunities to do karaoke?

Ariel Landrum 24:43
So and maybe we’ll share this on our social media, but on long road trips, my partner and I do Carpool Karaoke. So actually, you can you can buy the Carpool Karaoke mat, mic. James Corbin comes on and says, “Let’s see sing a song…”

Stefanie Bautista 24:58
Corden?

Ariel Landrum 24:58
Gahh… James Corden comes on, and you play… I can’t. I can’t.

Stefanie Bautista 25:05
Corbin is a street in the San Fernando Valley. There’s also a there’s also a bowling alley on Corbin.

Ariel Landrum 25:12
Yes. James Corden?

Stefanie Bautista 25:14
Yes.

Ariel Landrum 25:15
Yes. I the Carpool Karaoke Guy. Whatever.

Stefanie Bautista 25:18
Yeah yaeh yeah.

Ariel Landrum 25:19
So he comes on when you turn it on. And then you can sing. And what it does is it actually connects to the Bluetooth to your phone, and then uses your your, your phone, your cell phone, and then it uses a radio signal on like a radio station that isn’t working..

Stefanie Bautista 25:40
Yes…

Ariel Landrum 25:40
In your car. So the the downside is that you have to keep changing the radio station as you get further along in your road trip.

Stefanie Bautista 25:49
Because the frequencies might be taken up by other things.

Ariel Landrum 25:52
Yes, yes. But it is something that we My partner and I do every road trip, particularly we drive to Vegas often and we sing Disney songs on these trips. When we were up north and we’d picked up some of his friends when we were staying at a cabin up north. I had them sing Disney songs with me in the car when we were driving around in between just destinations and stuff just just something fun to do.

Stefanie Bautista 26:20
Nice. I love that. Yeah, and also like at different events that we would go to like conventions they always have karaoke at Comic-Con.

Ariel Landrum 26:29
Yup. I I definitely did the karaoke bus at Comic-Con again maybe a video we’ll share. I am I am in cosplay as Ariel as a nerd or I don’t know like modern Ariel and I do sing “Part of Your World.”

Stefanie Bautista 26:43
Love it. I I love on brand your were that whole time. And everybody loved it too. Your costome is so cute. But also the the funnest karaoke is when you go to, it may be fun. But also comical. Is when you go to comic to go to Anime Expo and do karaoke there. Because you have a ton of people that don’t sing in Japanese don’t even understand it, don’t even talk or speak it. And they’re singing full force in Japanese. Because they love the music so much. And like I’ve done it, it’s just like, my best impression of the Japanese language. It’s a beautiful language. I’m so sorry if like I did it so wrong, but it is hilarious. And I know they’ve done it also at concerts, like if you go to like a BTS concert, or if you go to any like K-Pop concert, they have places that you can do karaoke outside. And sometimes they give prizes out if you are brave enough to do it in front of people. There’s also TikTok.

Ariel Landrum 27:41
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 27:42
TikTok. Social media. I mean, like you can always find like either a filter or some sort of thing that helps you like either sing with someone or sing along with like words. Those are always fun, if you want to put yourself out there.

Ariel Landrum 27:56
And again, another really good therapy reward is not you as the therapist, but how like recording your client or helping your client create a Lip Sync Battle or a Sing-Along or a karaoke song on their TikTok. It’s something they’re going to do either way. So to make it an earned reward, helps with not only a therapeutic alliance, but helps them reach any goals in their treatment plan.

Stefanie Bautista 28:21
Yep, definitely. And there’s also a platform for teachers. GoNoodle is like the one that we use all the time. Not only do they have get up and move like wiggle breaks, they also have karaoke for the kids to do that safe. I know Kidz Bop has like a version of that, that you can look at on their website, but GoNoodle.. Umm I love it because it has like a lot of really good visuals. And there’s a variety of different lip sync or have them sing out. And they’re really good at call and responses. So chants, things that you can use in the classroom, things you can use outside the classroom, when you’re on the yard. Those like little cahnts and things can be utilized in so many different ways. And the kids love them. And it’s something musical that they can remember because it’s so much easier for them to remember something if it has a rhythm to it.

Ariel Landrum 29:04
Yeah, yeah. And then you know, we we mentioned and you mentioned celebrations. The the last time Stef and I together went to karaoke was for our best friend Malaysha on her bachelorette party.

Stefanie Bautista 29:19
Yep, that was so fun.

Ariel Landrum 29:22
It was one of the best bachelorette parties one of. And it was we just ate and we sang. That was like there was no pressure. I didn’t have to buy a shirt that’s a, you know, Bride Gang,’ or whatever.

Stefanie Bautista 29:35
Because I’m not for that. And I will never ever wear it again. I’m not a fan of those.

Ariel Landrum 29:40
We may maybe we will do a segment on this. But there are parts of bachelorette and bachelor parties where it’s just like, ‘Why are we spending this money?’

Stefanie Bautista 29:49
Also, by maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I am not a big fan of matching family shirts at Disney.

Ariel Landrum 29:57
Oh, no.

Stefanie Bautista 29:58
That’s kind of like. I don’t know maybe…

Ariel Landrum 30:00
In that Disney font. Mom, dad, brother, little signer….

Stefanie Bautista 30:04
I know there’s an industry on Etsy for it, I get that. But as a kid, I hated singles because I did not want to be that person that was like, outted. And I know it’s such a more prevalent thing at Walt Disney World. And maybe we can do an episode on different Disney fashions in different Disney parks. Because what we do here in Anaheim is so much different from what they do at Walt Disney World, which is different from Tokyo, which is different from Paris. It’s like the culture of just dressing yourself to go to Disneyland and doing Disney events is so different in different parts of the world.

Ariel Landrum 30:38
So different.

Stefanie Bautista 30:38
I’d love to explore that. But yeah, like doing the whole Disney font and shirt thing was not my cup of tea.

Ariel Landrum 30:46
No, no, not mine as well. I do like being coordinated. We did mention that on one of our episodes. That’s not the type of coordination though that I’m going for. It’s not my vibe if it’s your vibe, you know, do you but I’m not joining that. And I don’t want to join that in in a bachelorette party. I think that’s I’m cool with if like you know we do the thing where like the bride or will be bride wears white and will wear black. Like I get that I get that. Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 31:16
And I did one where we all had our like, it was a black shirt, but it had like a Minnie Mouse logo with our names in the front like at the front pocket like portion. And then on the back it was like a more like a bachelorette thing. But that was more subtle and I love that and like I can go along with that but not like… Like Bautista Family Trip 20… Like I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.

Ariel Landrum 31:41
And I know my my friend Kae had us have a shirt that said, Kae’s Golden Girls because she loves the Golden Girls. And then it had the Golden Girls on it. Like if I wear it, it does like nobody really thinks like, “Oh, this is a bachelorette like tank top,” because it was a tank top. “Just tank top with the Golden Girls on it.” And like, “Who doesn’t want to wear the Golden Girls?”

Stefanie Bautista 31:59
Exactly. Their the best. Their golden. The GOATs.

Ariel Landrum 32:03
The GOATs.

Stefanie Bautista 32:03
The GOATs. But I mean, just like karaoke is kind of almost a cringy thing, just like shirts are. I think, too, when we go deeper into the benefits of being able to sing along with our favorite types of music and also because Disney music in and of itself is very singable and it’s geared really towards, of course, children. But the musicality of it is is so so digestible, that it’s easy to just be like, you know, what, if I don’t have a popular music, artists that I want to sing right away, you can always fall back on a Disney song. And that could be a great way to segue into whatever karaoke experience you’re gonna have for the night. So I know a level of that is a lot of emotional safety, right?

Ariel Landrum 32:51
Yeah, so there’s, there’s comfort in the nostalgia of using a song that you remember from childhood. Using a song that’s been around for a while. Using a song that even like, if you’re a parent, your children may also sing. So there’s comfort in the familiarity. There’s definitely a comfort in singing in front of your friends and family when they’re affirming. I do want to say that because again, there’s this whole I’m going to choose a song roulette thing. So some people some people like to rag on their friends. And if that’s your relationship, and you know it’s your relationship and teasing is part of it, then maybe you’re going to pick like a villain song that like is not very good, right? But if you if you’re intentionally trying to do emotional harm in regards to making fun of versus teasing, then yeah, probably not the crew you want to do karaoke with. So when you have family and friends are very supportive who cheer you on who sing with you, who’s who like sing with the with the chorus…

Stefanie Bautista 33:51
Yes.

Ariel Landrum 33:51
That is so self affirming, that really helps build self esteem. And even you know, again, like in going into like the therapy room, just like cheering your client on in regards to their singing. And, and being affirming that they got the words right. That they were on beat. That they got the rap, solo, whatever it is, that that creates such therapeutic alliance, and it gives them such a boost in self confidence. And when it comes to singing, that’s so vulnerable. You’re at a really vulnerable stage when you’re opening up your mouth and and trying to be on melody on tune. When you are trying to remember the words. And so doing it in a space where people aren’t staring you down. And the people are your friends who you probably are singing the songs in the car together that you’re probably you know, like back in my day, wishing that MTV would play the whole song.

Stefanie Bautista 34:48
Oh my gosh, seriously. Those are the days.

Ariel Landrum 34:54
And then you you mentioned potential physical safety right now in regards to the pandemic because of the fact that you are renting a room for just you and your individuals. No one else.

Stefanie Bautista 35:04
Yes, you have, you can control the level of sanitation that you do. I mean, a lot of these places, now we’re taking extra steps to sanitize. Like, I know that you would probably be sharing mics and everything because there’s only one mic, not everybody can have a mic. Even as much as 2 mics are still sharing. So you might want to disinfect that like to your comfort level. There’s also especially in Asian karaoke places, they have disposable papers that you put over the mic. They’re like cloth, almost like cloth paper, much of same material that you would find on a mask. That is replaceable, and like disposable. So if you want to use multiple of those every time you pass the mic, then that’s fine. So I think that physical safety is so very important, especially when you’re going to be vulnerable, because not only are you sharing, you know, the emotional state of singing something, you’re also in very close proximity to people. You’re drinking, you’re eating, you’re singing, so saliva is going everywhere. And like once you get into it, it can get even more intense. And I think that’s why I remember CDC guidelines saying that you couldn’t really sing out loud. That’s why like concerts weren’t being performed, because everybody would be singing and you’re sharing the same airspace as people inside. And that necessarily wasn’t safe in containing the virus. So definitely that and I think also not just, you know, thinking pandemic times, but in the classroom, when you have all the kids participating and seeing together, it’s such a great sense of community that you’re building with your classroom. And it could even be like, I remember me and my room partner, so like my classroom, we had a door that conjoined our classrooms together, because we were in a bungalow, we would have kids intermingle with each other, back before all of this. And so they would have different times to play games together whenever like that. And sometimes we would have them either watch a movie or you know, do a sing-along. And it would be a great way for them to make those connections outside of their own classroom too. So you can even have like a karaoke club for kids who just love to sing that necessarily can’t do theater, because that also comes with a level of privilege to be able to be in theater and to be in choir. So if you want to create that same experience for them, karaoke is such an easy way to do that. And YouTube has so many different ways of doing kid friendly karaoke if you’re in the classroom, or regular karaoke with obscenities when you’re at home with your friends.

Ariel Landrum 37:36
And, and definitely when it comes to these spaces where you can rent a room, like the safe, the other safety, emotional safety is there’s no hecklers, right?

Stefanie Bautista 37:45
Yes, oh my gosh.

Ariel Landrum 37:45
So if you go, if you go to a bar, and you’re singing, there’s people who might heckle you. And if you definitely go to, again, a bar in North Hollywood, where everyone is a performer, you are not allowed to be bad. So…

Stefanie Bautista 37:56
Not allowed to be bad. Can’t suck.

Ariel Landrum 37:57
You can remove that sort of like, negative experience of the audience. There’s also no judgment on music choice, when it’s friends and family. They brought they want to think Disney songs to like no one, no one is going to… I think umm… There’s a dueling bands piano bar that I used to go to at City Walk. I knew one of the performers there. And there would be certain artists where they would encourage the audience to pay more to get them to stop playing the song. And it was like, “I don’t want someone to hate on my artist just because they hate on the artist.” And that’s less likely to happen when you’re going with people that you are, can be emotionally vulnerable, vulnerable with and feel safe with.

Stefanie Bautista 38:40
Yeah, definitely. And like we mentioned earlier, just singing in itself is so vulnerable already, that you want to set yourself up for success, and not for a traumatic experience. Because I know, that’s why a lot of people that I’ve talked to didn’t want to do karaoke. Didn’t want to have that as an option, because they probably had a really traumatic experience, being in front of people who they didn’t know and, you know, like messing up on a song messing up on a note, in a song getting a word wrong, even though it’s in front of you. Like these are human errors that happen all the time.

Ariel Landrum 39:10
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 39:10
We’re not professionals. I don’t know why there’s this assumption that if you get on the stage, automatically, you have to have a stage presence. We’re all like beginner level here.

Ariel Landrum 39:20
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 39:20
And I think that’s the beauty of, you know, box karaoke, or at home karaoke. You could still enjoy it, but you don’t have to check all of these boxes in order to have a good time.

Ariel Landrum 39:31
It removes the pressure and particularly with clients that I have adult clients and you have clients who have anxiety, this is a great way to do what we call ‘distress tolerance.’ So if you think of being able to be to sit in uncomfortableness, that emotion of uncomfortableness, it’s a muscle, even though it’s not an actual muscle in the body like it is a emotional muscle and we need to be able to practice stretching it. And so having 1 song that we love. So we have some emotional connection to it, and singing it in front of peers, even if we mess up if we get that audience participation and support, and we can sort of sit in that uncomfortableness get through the song and realize that like, “Wow, if the song is about 3 to 6 minutes, I was able to tolerate a level of anxiety for 3 to 6 minutes and transitioned out of that anxious state, sit back in my chair, cool off, shift my focus towards someone else.” And that then becomes a learned ability when it comes to managing the diagnosis of anxiety. And, and and especially with social anxiety. You start to create this muscle memory of like, “Oh, I can sit in this uncomfortableness for just a little bit longer, just a little bit longer.”

Stefanie Bautista 40:45
Yep. And that is such a big thing, like social anxiety is I think the number one probably most biggest deterrent of karaoke. Is that social anxiety and it’s a real thing. And it’s okay to have that, which is why I think us sharing these different ways to get around it, but also be able to enjoy just singing Disney music with your friends and family is so important because like there, there is such a level of therapy when it comes to not just listening to Disney music, but to engage and sing it out as a form of release.

Ariel Landrum 41:17
Well and definitely, unlike, again, those bar karaokes is in front of people that everyone puts their name in, but we don’t know who gets called right?

Stefanie Bautista 41:25
Yes.

Ariel Landrum 41:25
It’s really up to you who’s ever MCing it. And even when I was doing that, SyFy Comic-Con SyFy Fan Karaoke, again, it was like everyone on the bus put it in, but it was random out of the hat. So I wasn’t even guaranteed that I was going to be able to sing. With with karaoke that is in an actual room, everyone chooses their song, so there’s no surprise, and it goes in the order of choices put in. So if you’re someone who needs to get comfortable to the environment, you don’t have to be the first second or third song. You can wait, you can put yours in like maybe fifth or six, right. And it shows you the next one that’s coming up. So you get that prep time of being forewarned. And you can even start off with a duet. So you can sing with a peer that you feel comfortable singing with. So you don’t feel like you’re singing alone. When we sing again, community singing your voice, a little bit drowns out with the community, and that feels a little bit more comfortable. And you can build up again, that that muscle that ability to do it. “Okay, I’m right now by myself on stage, which is not really stage, I’m just kind of standing in front of the chairs.”

Exactly. And what I like to do with my friends, too, is like when we get in there, we never know what song we’re gonna sing first. So we just pick a random song that has a good instrumental that we all know and let it play. And then we automate like we naturally just start singing along with it. So that already breaks the ice.

Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 42:48
So we don’t even have the mics up. We’re just already singing in the room. And then once we go through the book and go, “Oh, I want to do this song.” We start queuing it up all the way. And what actually ends up happening is that as we get more comfortable with it, let’s say we only have an hour, we choose too many songs. And we have speed karaoke for the last, like 10 minutes. And we’ve done this so many times with me and Ariel and our friends. We just have to do like the first verse and then the chorus and then end it and then go next. So that at least we get a little snippet of the songs that we want to hear and sing, but we don’t necessarily have to finish out the song. Because we are we do want to be a little frugal.

Ariel Landrum 43:28
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. We can’t go past that hour mark.

Stefanie Bautista 43:31
Exactly. So going into song choice. We are now going to share our favorite song choices Disney song choices when we do karaoke. So Ariel, we’ll start with you. What are your favorite Disney songs to sing? And maybe tell us a little bit about why you like these songs.

Ariel Landrum 43:48
So definitely Part of Your World. Animated The Little Mermaid.

Stefanie Bautista 43:53
Typical. Just kidding. No. It’s so you.

Ariel Landrum 43:55
So typical. So me. Obviously favorite princess. My name. And also it’s I think it’s a good heartfelt song. I like it if I want to to sing alone. And I’ll definitely sing it like when everybody’s eating or even when they’re looking at their own music. I don’t even though it’s it’s meant to be a solo performance. I don’t even need eyes on me to sing it. It’s really me singing to myself. So I that’s why I love it.

Stefanie Bautista 44:22
I love that.

Ariel Landrum 44:23
I love singing Un Poco Loco by on, from the animated Coco. And that’s one that I like to sing with a group. It’s such a fun upbeat song. It’s one of the songs I made James’ friends, our friends, sing in the car when we were driving around town. And a good chunk of it is even if you don’t know the words, it’s a good clapping song. So that’s, that’s a great way to get like, I guess you’d say community or audience participation.

Stefanie Bautista 44:50
There’s a lot of repetition in that song too, which is great.

Ariel Landrum 44:53
Mm hmm. A Whole New World as a good duet song. My partner and I have have sung the song together in the car. We haven’t done it in karaoke and so that’s that’s a hope of mine.

Stefanie Bautista 45:05
I’mma hold you to that. I’mma hold you to it.

Ariel Landrum 45:07
Another one I like to sing with friends that’s just a big hit, I Just Can’t Wait to be King animated Lion King. And Zero to Hero animated Hercules. Now that song is it’s hard to get on karaoke so there are just a lot of like if we go into K-Town I know that songs there. If I go to… And same with bare necessities also one that’s not on many karaoke setlists. And so another just sort of like audience participation song. It’s one that’s easy to clap to. The the final 3 are I’ll Make a Man Out of You. Again, a group song.

Stefanie Bautista 45:46
Yup.

Ariel Landrum 45:46
Again who doesn’t like Donny?

Stefanie Bautista 45:47
Who doesn’t like Donny? Who doesn’t like Shang?

Ariel Landrum 45:52
Funny story, the first season of The Masked Singer, when they Donny Os, Danny’s character came out he started singing I was like, Is that Donny Osmond? That’s Donny Osmond? And I was right. I was right. It made me so happy to be right. And it was only because I noticed his voice… His singing voice from this movie. And this song.

Stefanie Bautista 46:10
I mean, how else would I mean, we’re not big Donny & Marie fans. So…

Ariel Landrum 46:13
No. No.

Stefanie Bautista 46:13
We’d really only know it from there.

Ariel Landrum 46:15
Just from there. That’s How You Know from Enchanted. Another difficult one

Stefanie Bautista 46:21
Deep cuts. That’s a deep cut.

Ariel Landrum 46:21
Deep cuts. That is hard to find. Usually it’s not at a karaoke bar. It’s me singing it from pulling it up on YouTube or Spotify. And with the Carpool Karaoke Mic, if you’re doing it from Spotify, like you’re playing the song with the singer. So that’s another way to like feel a little comfortable because you don’t hear yourself. You hear them. And then the song that I wish I could sing at karaoke, the song that I wish I can find, have not seen it is ‘The Tiki Room’ song.

Stefanie Bautista 46:54
Yes. Well, actually, now that you’ve… Well, not only as ‘The Tiki Room’ song, a great song, it’s one of Ariel’s favorite places to visit. And it’s on her must do list whenever we go to Disneyland.

Ariel Landrum 47:06
Must do.

Stefanie Bautista 47:07
I’m actually really excited to take my son into The Tiki Room, because he’s becoming more aware of like lights and like moving things. And I think his mind is going to be like blown and when he goes into The Tiki Room.

Ariel Landrum 47:20
Yes!

Stefanie Bautista 47:20
I’m so ready to record all of that, because like he, we have like a there’s like an Oscar like life size puppet at the doctor. It doesn’t move. It’s just there. But this last time we went, he was staring at it for like 5 minutes. And he was just like, “Is it gonna move? Is it gonna talk to me. So he’s making those connections, which is hilarious. I can actually give you a little bit of a solution to The Tiki Room song.

Ariel Landrum 47:45
Oh yeah?

Stefanie Bautista 47:45
I know, earlier that you can pull it up on YouTube. And I think you only pulled it up on YouTube when you’re doing Carpool Karaoke, right? So when I went to a family party not too long ago, it was on the Fourth of July. My sister in law, she doesn’t have a Magic Mic and I didn’t get to bring mine. But another one of their relatives brought their portable boombox, like the ones that you get from Costco. And they have an auxiliary cord that you can plug in a mic to. Very much like the mics that we use here for podcasting. All you need is like the universal auxiliary cord. And what we did is because they have a TV outside, we just pulled up the YouTube karaoke.

Ariel Landrum 48:23
Oh yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 48:24
And we just plugged in and we sang, and that we would just turn down the volume a little bit on the TV and turned up the mics on the boombox. And that’s how we were able to pick any song. I mean, we were able to see…

Ariel Landrum 48:36
So The Tiki Room’s gotta be on the YouTubes.

Stefanie Bautista 48:38
Yes, it’s gonna be on YouTube. And it probably even has the visuals and all of the sound effects too. So…

Ariel Landrum 48:45
Yeah!

Stefanie Bautista 48:45
I think next time we do that, we can definitely make it happen for you…

Ariel Landrum 48:48
Yes!

Stefanie Bautista 48:49
And it’ll be safe. And you can sing your Tiki Room heart out.

Ariel Landrum 48:52
Yeah! Oh I would. I would love that. And and I have the perfect mic. So I’ve joined a group on Facebook called Buy Nothing Reseda. Buy Nothing is a grassroots social movement which is in 44 nations. You can find your local group on buynothingproject.org. The purpose of the group is to develop a gift economy with your local community. Their mission is to allow communities to share in their abundance, create community connection, and to divert materials from filling landfills and oceans. And so my partner recently picked up a pink microphone that’s connected to my karaoke machine at home. And this microphone has Disney Princesses on it!

Stefanie Bautista 49:31
Cute!

Ariel Landrum 49:33
Ariel, of course, and Belle, and Aurora.

Stefanie Bautista 49:35
Yep, all you need is a boombox with an auxiliary cord and most like a lot of them have it now because they become popular to bring on the beach with you. They have their own sustained battery. There’s the one that I’ve seen has a charger on it. It’s connected to Bluetooth so you can even hook that up if it’s a computer like there’s so many different ways to connect technology now that…

Ariel Landrum 49:57
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 49:57
I think is is really good when we’re all Trying to, you know, guess distance ourselves away from people. But also, we do want to implore you to support your local karaoke place, whether it be a noraebang or Kbox or Japanese karaoke because they’re struggling to stay alive during the pandemic and we want these places to survive until all of this has blown over. So yes, we will definitely link those places if you want to go

Ariel Landrum 50:23
Stef, what is your list?

Stefanie Bautista 50:25
Yes, my list is… I didn’t want it to overlap yours because a lot of the songs you sing I love singing too. So I tried I’m glad that you wrote your list first because I was like, “Okay, she already said that one.” I’ll overlap a little bit but not a lot. But my favorite one first and because it’s such a short version of the song the original version of Reflection from Mulan is like A kind of hard to sing. I struggle because Christina Aguilar is not like you know, and even Lea Salonga who’s sings the original animated one. She is a Broadway singer and she is fantastic. She sings most of Disney Princesses song, but I love Reflection because it’s short.

Ariel Landrum 51:07
Okay, okay.

Stefanie Bautista 51:08
It’s short and it’s emotional and everybody loves singing it at the same time whether or not you’re a great singer not. But I love that because it’s, it’s it’s a good icebreaker. My favorite Little Mermaid song is Kiss The Girl because I love the ad libbing from the frogs and everybody in the back. And the “Whoa! Whoa!” And the, “Yeah!” Like a lot of those. I love those parts. The next is How Far I’ll Go from Moana. That’s also kind of hard song to sing. If you’ve been seeing a lot throughout the night, that’s probably not one you’d want to sing at the end because you’d be totally winded and your voice would hurt so much.

Ariel Landrum 51:50
Yeah so you lose voice a lot when you go for a whole hour and especially if there’s less people.

Stefanie Bautista 51:57
To fill in that hour you’re going to be using your voice a lot to have a lot of water on you have like snacks like sustain yourself because it’s a lot of energy. It’s a workout in itself. You’re literally putting out a concert for you and your friends for like an entire hour. So if you want a glimpse of you know what a musician is being like puts a little bit of it. I am not sure if I’ve ever seen Where You Are from Moana and that is the song that they sing with the whole village but I love that song because it’s beautiful. The harmonies are great Nicole Scherzinger who plays Moana’s mom sounds so great in that song. But I mean seeing multiple parts unless you have friends that know those parts by heart is kind of hard. So it’s kind of like singing N’Sync or Backstreet Boys where there’s multiple harmonies, but you’re doing all of them at the same time. That’s like, also something that you don’t really think about until you start singing karaoke. But if I find that through YouTube, I’ll sing it. One of my favorite songs that has recently resurfaced is I Won’t Say I’m in Love from Hercules.

Ariel Landrum 52:59
Aww yes.

Stefanie Bautista 52:59
It’s such a beautiful like almost 50’s kind of swing sort of love song. Very reminiscent of like The Supremes and Diana Ross. I kudos to the girl who sings it. I…

Ariel Landrum 53:13
Susan Egan?

Stefanie Bautista 53:15
Oh, yeah, I think she’s the voice of the actress herself of the character herself. So I guess she sings it. Yeah, yeah. And that one has really good harmonies for the background because it’s like a, like a 60’s Supremes kind of song. So that one’s fun to sing with your girlfriends. I’ll make fun of you is always fun. Um, the bmm part is just like the best part to just like hype yourself up. And next one is Beauty and the Beast, but the Celine Dion version and the Peabo Bryson version. I love that because I remember being a kid and Beauty and the Beast, coming out in like 1993 and it was the first time I heard a Disney song on the radio, because it was from 2 artists that were so popular already.

Ariel Landrum 54:00
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 54:00
And like the end like the way they both ad lib around each other during like the bridge and like the crescendo of that song is it’s so 90’s. It’s so great. Uhuh. And I overlapped on A Whole New World because I have to.

Ariel Landrum 54:15
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 54:15
It’s just part of it. I’m great, do it. I like singing also Somewhere Beyond the Sea from Finding Nemo.

Ariel Landrum 54:22
Aww.

Stefanie Bautista 54:23
It is actually an old song from the 50’s by Bobby Darin. And I think I want to say Michael Buble a covered it for Finding Nemo. I could be wrong, but I think it is him. He would be the only person who could cover that song for Finding Nemo.

Ariel Landrum 54:38
Not a lot of people can croon.

Stefanie Bautista 54:39
Yeah, because it is a crooner song. It’s fun to sing with a lot of friends too. And my last one Love is an Open Door because it’s so comical and the part where she says, “Sandwiches.”

Ariel Landrum 54:53
“Sandwiches!”

Stefanie Bautista 54:53
“We finish each other’s sandwiches,” is like so fun to sing and I love singing that with my husband. But yeah, I know there’s more. But that’s just like the short list of fun songs to sing not just for, like with yourself but with friends. Because I think, I mean, as much as I love to sing, like singing with friends is so much better. And..

Ariel Landrum 55:14
Mm-hmm.

Stefanie Bautista 55:14
Disney allows you to be able to do that, because everybody’s heard the songs before. It’s not like you’re finding like an obscure song that like is only played on like one playlist that you have on your Spotify. Everybody’s heard the song. So yeah.

Ariel Landrum 55:28
So as we started, we will end do not believe that meme. There is Disney karaoke that exists.

Stefanie Bautista 55:35
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 55:36
And even so much so as the way Stef described that you can just do it at home.

Stefanie Bautista 55:41
Yes. And if you have your favorite playlist Disney playlist to share with us, be sure to tweet us @happiestpodGT, and comment in our comment sections on Instagram or DM us. And maybe we can compile one master list of…

Ariel Landrum 55:56
Yes!

Stefanie Bautista 55:56
Disney karaoke songs on Spotify that we can share with you. Because we know that the Disney music catalog is just as big as its film catalog.

Ariel Landrum 56:05
Mm-hmm.

Stefanie Bautista 56:06
And I know we’ve mentioned instrumental songs before but if you guys have a favorite song to sing, or hum, I know we didn’t even like touch Marvel music.

Ariel Landrum 56:16
Nope we didn’t touch broadway.

Stefanie Bautista 56:18
We didn’t touch Broadway. And that’s a whole nother genre. I mean, even just like off the top of my head, singing All The Stars by SZA and Kendrick Lamar from Black Panther; one of my favorite songs ever…

Ariel Landrum 56:30
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 56:30
Ever, ever. And, and it’s from Black Panther. So…

Ariel Landrum 56:33
Yeah. I mean, even like I we didn’t even talk about all of the High School Musicals

Stefanie Bautista 56:39
No.

Ariel Landrum 56:41
Which is literally singing.

Stefanie Bautista 56:43
literally singing and literally whenever you sing the song that Troy sings when he’s on that golf course. It’s a meme in itself. And you have to be Troy in order to sing that song. But it makes for fun drunk times, for sure. And even if you’re not drunk, I’m sure you can find a drunk friend to entertain you.

Ariel Landrum 57:06
Or if you’re allergic like me, you can be the person drinking ginger beer and the one who drives everyone home safe.

Stefanie Bautista 57:14
Or the great thing about sometimes doing karaoke in places that have public transportation is that you can just all be either drunk from food or a drunk from alcohol and not even worry about that. But I think that’s for another time. I know I missed I missed karaoke days, for sure. I mean, I mean, just to wrap it up, I have not been to karaoke since. But I know friends who have and I think as long as you kind of do it within the parameters of safety and have that agreement with your friends. It’s the best way to do it. Even doing it at home, you are letting people into your own home too. So that’s another level of safety to consider. But hopefully we will get back to going to K-Boxes and celebrating with our friends at the karaoke place. And yeah, if you have any other tips for karaoke singing, let us know.

Ariel Landrum 58:06
Yeah. Thank you for joining us everyone.

Stefanie Bautista 58:08
Bye!

Ariel Landrum 58:09
Bye!

• The Little Mermaid
• Coco
• Aladdin
• The Lion King
• Hercules
• The Jungle Book
• Mulan
• Enchanted
• The Tiki Room
• MOana
• Peabo Bryson
• Celine Dion
• SZA
• Kendrick Lamar
• Finding Nemo
• Frozen
• James Corden
• Carpool Karaoke
• Cobra Kai
• Karate Kid

• Singing
• Vulnerability
• Community connection
• Familial bonding
• Karaoke
• Noreabang
• GoNoodle
• Buy Nothing Project
• Distress tolerance
• Reward system

Ariel Landrum 0:11
Hello, everyone, welcome to the happiest pod on Earth. I’m Ariel.

Stefanie Bautista 0:14
And I’m Stef, and we’re Disney fans. But we’re really so much more than that. Ariel here is a licensed therapist who uses clients’ passions and fandoms to help them grow and heal from trauma and mental unwellness.

Ariel Landrum 0:24
And the lovely Stef is an educator who uses passions and fandoms to help her students grow and learn about themselves and the world around them.

Stefanie Bautista 0:32
And here at Happiest Pod. It’s a place where we dissect Disney mediums with a critical lens. Why do we do that? Because just like we are more than just fans, we expect more from the mediums we consume. And so today, what Disney the media or experience are we dissecting and sharing on this episode?

Ariel Landrum 0:49
I think this is one that you are highly familiar with as an educator.

Stefanie Bautista 0:53
Yep. Yes, it totally is. And I’m really, really excited to talk about this. And we are talking today about recess.

Ariel Landrum 1:03
Recess!

Stefanie Bautista 1:05
And I’m sure all of you are like listening to that theme song from Recess in your head, because I loved it so much. I wish we could have it here on the podcast, but we probably need to license that. And there’s the gardener in my house. Low and behold gardeners are not part of recess, but we’re going to be talking about Recess the show, and also recess as it plays into how it works in our kids lives, lives of kids who we know if you don’t have any, and also the impact that it has in our lives growing up.

Ariel Landrum 1:39
Absolutely. So recently, I got to respond to some research in an article that talked about the importance of recess for students and their mental wellness. And some of the things that they identified was that recess offers an opportunity to support just the healthy development of children. So that they became come well, whole humans and entire experience of themselves. And that the biggest factor was quality recess; factors such as a safe play environment, sufficient play equipment, and even supportive adult engagement, along with student autonomy and minimal disruptive conflict. Would you agree with some of these findings?

Stefanie Bautista 2:24
Absolutely. I think recess as it has evolved over time, I know that us playing recess in the early 90’s looked a lot different than how recess is conducted today while I’m working at a school. But I remember recess being the time that you are your whole self. In the classroom, you’re in front of an adult, there’s expectations, academic expectations, mannerisms, that you kind of get used to as you’re going into school. But when you’re on the yard, you are really who you are outside, just without your family. And this is where interactions with your peers, interactions with different ages of kids, interactions with other adults who aren’t your teacher, those connections and those opportunities only happen on the recess play yard. And that’s why I think A. I love the show Recess, because it was such a fun way to describe that, obviously in a way more fantastical setting. I did not have a king Bob at my recess yard. But the sixth graders were hecka scary.

Ariel Landrum 3:24
They were.

Stefanie Bautista 3:24
Like I did not want to interact with them at all. But absolutely, recess is so integral in, you know, a child’s development socially. And I think this past year, having not had recess really had an impact. But I know we’ll talk a little bit about that later. I know for my school in particular, we do more of a structured recess where we have TAs leading different games, only because we do have limited space on my campus. But at the same time we realize that kids loved structured play. Recess doesn’t have to be a free for all, maybe in kindergarten, as we saw that there, you know, little unruly human beings in the beginning, not really knowing how to socialize yet. But definitely, as you see in the older upper grades, third, fourth and fifth grades, they’re longing for that structure, and they want to use those structured structures to learn more about play and evolve the way they play.

Ariel Landrum 4:18
Absolutely, absolutely. And research that was published in the Journal of School Health, titled Recess Quality and Social and Behavioral Health in Elementary School Students. And the article that featured my comments was in VerywellMind.com, and the title of the article is Quality Recess Gives a Boost to Children’s Mental Health Study Says. I’ll be sure to link both in the show notes. I agreed with some of the findings in regards to and and again, I think this might be something that you can talk to you because I believe this is maybe similar to your educational environment. But something new that when I came out here had not experienced; in the show Recess, they have a fixed building. And they have a fixed play yard. And there are a lot of schools here that the buildings are not fixed they’re not permanent fixtures.

Stefanie Bautista 5:11
Yup.

Ariel Landrum 5:11
Play yard is just asphalt there aren’t there is an equipment, there isn’t toys, there’s maybe just a chain Link fence that separates them from just the street. And it that disparity and access to just play is really disruptive to just the the mental wellness of youth and causes disengagement from adults. Though they’re finding that I definitely agreed with was when the anyone supervising the yard actually wanted to play with the youth and was very attentive, versus, you know, now, maybe on their phone when they shouldn’t be or talking to the other adults and not really paying attention, that that attentiveness created positive memories for for youth in regards to engaging with adults. That play is something important; its the way that they communicate and that it was a thing that was encouraged.

Stefanie Bautista 6:01
Absolutely, I think that there’s two really important things that you touched upon. The first part is that growing up here in the San Fernando Valley, and also other parts in LA, you have really old schools, and then you have schools within schools. That’s something that’s common here. Because we do have things like charter schools, private schools, and depending on which school you attend, sometimes they have a play apparatus. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes, because they’re located on a school, there’s an apparatus there, but they can’t necessarily play with it. So you have to kind of be creative. And depending on the resources of your school, you can, you know, do structured play, like I mentioned before at my school, but other times I remember being probably in middle school where you don’t really see like a play apparatus, it was more so like you were participating participating in organized sport like soccer, or you know, basketball. And otherwise, you were just hanging out on the yard. And that’s where you see, like you mentioned ‘The Yard Ladies,’ which is like our favorite ‘Yard Lady’ on Recess being her grumpy self. And I remember that was so much more prevalent in public schools. We always called them the ‘LAUSD Yard Ladies,’ they were always frowning. They were super upset everything, they just wanted to, you know, share the gossip with their, you know, your their coworkers and they weren’t really paying attention. And when you went to them, ask them for help or something, they were just like, whatever, figure it out on your own. And that was definitely something that I experienced in public school, as opposed to now working for a charter school. And also knowing other kids, other friends of mine who went to private school, those yard ladies actually played with them on the yard, they were leading games, they were helping do arts and crafts on the side, they had those materials. And unfortunately, that’s just the reality of funding when it comes to public, private, and charter schools in the United States across you know, from coast to coast. But it really does affect the way that kids view play. And it’s no surprise that by the time High School rolls around, they don’t want to play outside anymore.

Ariel Landrum 8:06
Aboslutely.

Stefanie Bautista 8:07
Because they never really had those, like positive opportunities when they were younger.

Ariel Landrum 8:11
And you definitely talked about school funding, right? And one of the I think in the very first episode of the series, we see The Swinger; not not to be taken as a related to Austin Powers. The Swinger is a little girl dressed very much like Amelia Earhart…

Stefanie Bautista 8:29
Amelia Earhart yup.

Ariel Landrum 8:29
On a swing, who is wanting to soar to new heights, and getting essentially injured. And one of the characters says, “Oh, we’ll have to talk to her when she comes back to the school from the school nurse.” And I do know that a lot of American schools’, maybe the school nurse shows up two days, maybe there’s no one at all.

Stefanie Bautista 8:45
We don’t have one at all. And you know what, I was just watching that episode again. And now that I’ve been educated, I haven’t seen it since I was, you know, way younger. And I was like, “Wow, we would just give them an ice pack. But who knows where she flew to. She could have flown in a bush, she could have flown out a bunch of kids. She got a foam flat face on the asphalt. We don’t know that. But we could only give her an ice pack.” And, you know, that goes into the limitations of what you can do as a staff member. That’s a whole nother list of do’s and don’ts. What because we’re not medical professionals. We study education, not you know, minor, or at least, you know, a little bit more than first aid on the yard. But you know, like, I think the nature of play is getting hurt. And it’s just a part of it. But unfortunately, because of funding like we mentioned, kids experienced that in different levels. Could be in extremes also.

Ariel Landrum 9:44
I think the other thing in regarding to like funding in schools and disparity. Again, in that sort of first episode we see a discussion in regards to American school cafeteria food, which is not good.

Stefanie Bautista 9:59
Nope.

Ariel Landrum 10:00
And a joke about the good food being hidden and locked up and essentially for the adults. And sure, I can remember a couple of things that I enjoyed eating. But I mean, I’ve seen artwork of cafeteria food in schools around the world, right?

Stefanie Bautista 10:17
And it makes you feel so sad to be in America.

Ariel Landrum 10:19
So sad to the things that we feed our students. And these are disparities that are still happening today. Right?

Stefanie Bautista 10:26
Yes.

Ariel Landrum 10:26
And so the fact that there was kind of a nod to that in this show that was created in the 90’s…

Stefanie Bautista 10:31
In the 90’s, and you know what I think so our at our school for a little insight we, we don’t serve the same LAUSD food, even though we’re technically you know, under the LAUSD umbrella, so we’re not exactly serving like that coffee cake, and you know, those like weird calzones that tastes like rubber and feel like rubber. However, because I was so scarred from those things. The coffee cake was good, but the calzones I don’t know. Chalupas I guess I was trying to say. But it took me all the way up until this year to actually say, “You know what, I’m okay with eating a school lunch, because there’s extras I don’t want it to waste.” And that’s me thinking as an adult, however, “It’s not so bad.” But I think it’s because we have like a private vendor that we go to.

Ariel Landrum 11:17
Oh okay.

Stefanie Bautista 11:18
You know, that was it’s way different. Like it has vegetables it has, you know, like chicken nuggets that actually look like chicken. But I it took me you know, how many decades to be okay with even like thinking about touching that food. And consuming it just because we have, you know, these images especially perpetuated in media. Like shows like Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide on Nickelodeon, and, you know….

Ariel Landrum 11:43
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 11:43
Other school shows that it’s just basically slop. And it’s very reminiscent of the way prison cafeterias are. So many parallels there. And also…

Ariel Landrum 11:53
Yes

Stefanie Bautista 11:54
And mentioning that first episode, where essentially, TJ is kind of shamed for wanting to go inside ‘The Good Food Refrigerator,’ that like platform that they’re on totally looks like a jail type of platform.

Ariel Landrum 12:09
Yeah. Like this bars above in the cafeteria, where the adults can essentially literally look down at the youth. Yeah, definitely looked institutionalized.

Stefanie Bautista 12:22
Absolutely. Um, but yeah, I mean, like, the school lunches, and I must say, yes, there is always a fridge in the school that has the better food.

Ariel Landrum 12:31
This is true? Not urban legend.

Stefanie Bautista 12:33
But, but they’re brought by teachers, so you probably couldn’t eat it anyway. And even sometimes, the teachers don’t want to put their food in there ’cause they don’t want it touching other teachers food. And I’ve yes, I’ve had somebody eat my lunch and not tell me.

Ariel Landrum 12:43
Disrespect. Disrespect.

Stefanie Bautista 12:51
Super rude. But I anyway.

Ariel Landrum 12:55
So some of the other findings was that when children had quality recess, and so again, they used the factors of safe play, adult engagement, sufficient play equipment, student autonomy, and minimal disruptive conflict; when they had those criterias met, the students always returned to class with a better ability to have executive functioning, better emotional self control, and adaptive classroom abilities. Which all of these things were impacted if they didn’t have recess or if they did. And these things were vastly improved if they did have recess, and it was quality recess. And I think…

Stefanie Bautista 13:36
Absolutely.

Ariel Landrum 13:37
That when we go back to the show, we kind of see this, right?

Stefanie Bautista 13:41
Yeah, definitely. I think the kids first and foremost long for recess in the second part of that first episode, they change the clock so that the recess bell rings earlier than normal. And it’s a real thing, because you know what, wiggle brakes, just that outside, just getting up and moving. That is such an important thing to staying focused. I mean, even as adults, we need to get up at least once an hour, if you’re sitting at a desk, just so that you can get your mind right, like take a break from the screen. Even if you’re writing something you just got to take like that mental break, get your body moving, because your body isn’t going to, you know, the blood isn’t gonna go to your brain if your blood isn’t, you know, moving because you’re not using your limbs, you know?

Ariel Landrum 14:21
Yeah yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 14:21
And I, we incorporate so many wiggle breaks in the younger, in the younger grades for kids to get up and dance a little bit before they sit down and do some really tough math. All the way up until fifth grade. I mean, they’re not called wiggle breaks anymore, but we want to go just so that they don’t feel like little kids. If we want to go outside and you know, play a really quick game of, you know, foursquare or something. We’ll do that. Just because we know that if those kids get antsy in their seats, now you’re all of a sudden trying to play whack a mole. Like, as a teacher. You’re trying to keep one kid down and then you’re trying to keep another down and another kid down, and then you’re trying to keep another kid down. But if you just have them all do that mental break, take a walk, it helps so, so much. And you can essentially get more done out of the day and the week. And the kids feel like they have a well rounded experience not just being locked inside a classroom.

Ariel Landrum 15:18
Yeah, yeah. So getting into the show.

Stefanie Bautista 15:21
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 15:22
It is a 30 minute cartoon format is animated series, made in 1997, I believe. And it’s the format of 2 15 minute segments. So you’re actually watching two episodes in one. And if you go on Disney+, there’s actually more than just the original Recess.

Stefanie Bautista 15:45
Yes spin offs. And a like a movie.

Ariel Landrum 15:46
Yeah. Which I have no idea exists, right?

Stefanie Bautista 15:49
Yeah. Those were made like the early 2000’s, I believe. Right?

Ariel Landrum 15:54
So we’ve got Recess, Recess: School’s Out, Recess: All Grown Down, so this is them as kindergarteners, and Recess: Taking The Fifth grade. So that’s them growing up into the fifth grade.

Stefanie Bautista 16:07
Yeah, you know, what, and Recess to me was so like, I loved it so much, because it was very reminiscent of Rugrats. But they were just a different age, it was 2 15 minute segments, easily digestible. They had a problem, they were going to rally their friends to solve it, they solved the problem, and then we go on to the next day in their lives, or the next recess in their lives. And on top of that, as the show progressed, you see them getting older, but then they also toyed with “What happens if they were younger?” And Rugrats, we would, you know, they had a whole nother spin off of Rugrats All Growed Up where they grown up.

Ariel Landrum 16:40
Yeah. Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 16:41
And I love that show, too. It was so successful. And I feel like recess probably took a lot of cues from Rugrats, because it was such a groundbreaking animated feature that, you know, we could grow with these kids and look into Child Development really in a different way. And see things through the eyes of a child, because I think also watching these shows as adults, we then think about, “How did I see things as a child?” And I think so many of us resonate with that, because we see these images, and we see like, the playground essentially is not a big place. But when you were in fourth, third grade, it seemed so huge and vast, like to the point where you had two kids digging on the side trying to get to China.

Ariel Landrum 17:21
Yeah, yes.

Stefanie Bautista 17:22
You know, these these worlds within that playground.

Ariel Landrum 17:27
Yeah, that’s what made the playground so big. And even in the show, the playground is a character itself.

Stefanie Bautista 17:33
Yes.

Ariel Landrum 17:33
It has accepted laws and was lived through like a social hierarchy in regards to the the youth that were engaging with it, and had even its own moments of commentary. And when it comes to the actual core group core characters, and even with all the students, it was that anticipation for recess. I remember antas, like looking at the clock and counting it down for when this, like, I could just bolt out of here and go and just let myself loose on the playground. And when I think of my like moments at recess, I remember that having that autonomy, and I remember there being social rules and norms. And that, really, that my lived experience of socializing was on the playground, it wasn’t in the classroom.

Stefanie Bautista 18:26
No, not at all, especially when you were confined to your own desk. I mean, as you get into the upper grades, you don’t share a desk really anymore with other students. I mean, definitely now you would not share a desk.

Ariel Landrum 18:37
No definitely not now.

Stefanie Bautista 18:38
Not during the current COVID climate. But I mean, you didn’t have circle time anymore. You didn’t have rug time, as you know, an older student. So I mean, all the interactions you had were outside. And then you learned who hung out with who what type of kids hung out in a certain place. What type of kids hung out in the cafeteria? Where did eat? Did they even get school lunch? Did they bring their lunch from home? All of those social hierarchies and, you know, social challenges that kids need to navigate around, start at recess on the playground.

Ariel Landrum 19:08
So in talking about Recess, I know that you and I both watched it again to to get an idea. And I feel like for just to remind ourselves and I feel like for this show, it’s one of Disney’s most well rounded social commentaries.

Stefanie Bautista 19:23
Oh, yeah.

Ariel Landrum 19:24
I find that the the social dynamics that they sort of displayed on the playground and the the stereotypes really of different kids. I could think back in my mind to someone that was similar to that. So you mentioned The Diggers digging to China. They had Upside Down Girl. I remember plenty of kids that always hung upside down. They really liked that that kinesthetic feeling of like feeling the world being the other way. Right? If we’re thinking of even just like now with a Black Widow.

Stefanie Bautista 19:55
Oh, yeah.

Ariel Landrum 19:55
“Oh we’re both upside down.”

Stefanie Bautista 19:56
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 19:59
I’m thinking of King Bob totally made sense. He was he was someone of an older great.

Stefanie Bautista 20:05
He was a jock.

Ariel Landrum 20:06
He was a jock. There was the Ashley’s…

Stefanie Bautista 20:11
Oh my gosh…

Ariel Landrum 20:12
They were Valley girls, which you’re from The Valley. Does anybody talk that way?

Stefanie Bautista 20:18
You know, it’s funny because I feel like once the media started perpetuating how we, how they talk, I guess how I I don’t even know if I talk like this. I was hyper aware of how many times I say ‘like’ in a sentence at one point of my life. But like that, I there’s a word for it. It’s like that. The roadie like way of like elongating your syllables very much like how Kim Kardashian talks like, “Oh my god.” Like…

Ariel Landrum 20:48
Yeah very pulled.

Stefanie Bautista 20:50
Definitely know people who did talk like that, who totally bought into you know, “I’m like, Mandy Moore. I’m Britney Spears.” Or because it was the late 90’s you had these icons to look up to and The Valley, there were those girls who, probably richer than me, richer than most people about that hustle, you know, highest rung of the social hierarchy that only hung out together and probably didn’t talk like that. And the Ashley’s totally reminded me of another show, Daria, which had The Fashion Club also 4 girls who talked like they were from The Valley led by Daria’s sister and they were exactly like I was like “Oh the Ashley’s just grew up to be the fashion club. Cool. Cool. Cool.”

Ariel Landrum 21:36
Yeah. Yes. a clicker for wearing skirts. Right?

Stefanie Bautista 21:40
Yeah. Skirts.

Ariel Landrum 21:41
They were very, very Clueless.

Stefanie Bautista 21:42
Yes, very Clueless, very Clueless.

Ariel Landrum 21:46
And then, like, there were in the even in the first episode, we meet The Guru Kid, and I can distinctly remember in my mind, there was one kid that just seemed so like…

Stefanie Bautista 21:55
Zenned out.

Ariel Landrum 21:56
Yeah, like smarter. I was like, on another plane, and we will regularly seek out advice from this kid was a really good mediator. So…

Stefanie Bautista 22:04
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 22:05
But I have that I have that in my memory as like someone that to me, I like immediately when I heard guru kid because they they’re like, “We have a problem we need. We talk to Guru Kid,” it’s like, “Yeah, you do.”

Stefanie Bautista 22:18
Yeah. And it’s so funny how he literally gives the same advice to somebody who wants to make a great higher. And it was the same analogy, but like, so it wasn’t really The Guru Kid that was giving advice. It was just the interpretation of the person asking for advice ends up giving their own advice to themselves.

Ariel Landrum 22:33
Oh, very similar to how it happens in therapy, but thats a different podcasts

Stefanie Bautista 22:37
Interesting. We will definitely have to catch up on that one day. But yeah, I think those different characters that’s what I loved a lot about the show because like you said, you could identify other people but also you could identify yourself as one of the main characters because they were so diverse. And they were so different, but yet they all hung out together and all work together as a team. So Ariel, who did you identify with in the Recess crew?

Ariel Landrum 23:05
Okay, so in the recess crew, there are 1,2,3,4,5,6. There are 6, 6 people in the crew in the gang or posse, I don’t know whatever you want to call them. For the girls, there was Ashley and Gretchen. Ashley was more of a tomboy Gretchen is would be considered the smart kid I guess.

Stefanie Bautista 23:27
You mean Spinelli.

Ariel Landrum 23:28
Yeah, yeah. Ashely Spinelli. I apologize. Spoiler alert.

Stefanie Bautista 23:33
Spoiler alert.

Ariel Landrum 23:34
Her name is Ashley. But they call her Spinelli. My bad.

Stefanie Bautista 23:36
It was like, one of the best reveals I think of a show. I loved that. But anyway, go ahead.

Ariel Landrum 23:45
Yes, Spinelli tomboy. Gretchen smart kid. Then we have Mikey whose sort of like a big teddy bear. We have TJ who’s the leader. And I would say like, plan guy. I don’t know. Yep. We have Gus who’s coming along for the ride. Seems to just kind of absorbing everything. And it is it was the new kid. And then we have Vince who is the the sports guy or jock, right?

Stefanie Bautista 24:14
Yeah. Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 24:15
So I think for me, I really gravitated towards Gus.

Stefanie Bautista 24:21
Yeah, I knew you’d say that.

Ariel Landrum 24:24
And the reason why is we get introduced to guest because he’s a new kid, and he’s a military brat. And he says, like, I think he says, “I’ve been to like 12 schools in 6 years,” or something like that. And I remember the distinct difference of going to school off base and on base. And on base, it was a way more healing experience because we all knew we were the new kids. And we all knew that we were going to move. Like it was it was actually easier for me to make friends with kids on base because we we were always trying to develop ourselves and create a unit and we knew that the unit was going to get disrupted. When I went to school off base, it was really those clicks. It was really people who had known each other since diapers. And I was the new kid. I was othered. I, in the episode, they talk about a rule where you can’t talk to the new kid for 48 hours, a new kid doesn’t get a name. And I remember a lot of people having trouble remembering my name. And I was like, “But it’s a Disney Princess, like, how do you not know who Ariel is?” And that like being not having anybody to sit with not having anybody to talk to you. And remembering the few times where someone reached out and someone talked to me and someone tried to be a friend. I know, it took, I would say months before I actually had a friend group and some of my off base schools versus going to school on base. And I knew that experience of like, consistently being uprooted. The other thing was the the trope of his military dad, introducing him is like a cadet. And like if you go to their house, he’s got barbed wire and a Humvee like that, that stereotype that is exactly what the off base off base kids thought my life was like. And thought my dad was like, and if any of you, and I know Stef has met my dad, he is far from trope.

Stefanie Bautista 26:20
No he’s more of like of The Guru kid.

Ariel Landrum 26:22
Definitely more like The Guru Kid. So yeah, I really resonated with with Gus and how much he just like he cried. So that to me was also important because we see a male figure crying, and being open about his emotions. And he cried, saying, “No one’s been so nice to me. Thank you guys.” And I remember that. So yeah, I’m wondering who you identify with?

Stefanie Bautista 26:46
Oh, my gosh, well, I love that Gus gave you a little bit of visibility in a cartoon. And I think that’s so important, especially for you know, all of our kiddos who are military brats, they are so special and you know, they go through just as much as their, you know, their parents do. And you guys do deserve that visibility, because it’s a real lived experience that a lot of people have. But for me, so I know straight out, I probably identified with Spinelli, Ashley Spinelli.

Ariel Landrum 27:14
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 27:14
Just because that’s how I look like when I was in elementary school, I was…

Ariel Landrum 27:18
No no no. Not just elementary school. I’ve seen that exact outfit on Stef with the combat boots…

Stefanie Bautista 27:24
Regularly.

Ariel Landrum 27:24
And the leather jacket and a dress and some sort of beanie and or hat, or coverage.

Stefanie Bautista 27:29
Literally throughout my life.

Ariel Landrum 27:31
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 27:31
Yes, I lived Spinelli’s outfit. I should have royalties for that. However, I actually identified a lot with each and every character because each and every character was a bit of me. So if we’re going down the list, I was Spinelli because I dressed like her. And sometimes I just didn’t care about stuff. And I was just like, “You know, whatever. I’m grumpy.” I was Gretchen a little bit because I really loved science. And I really loved figuring out things and that was one of my favorite subjects in school. I was a little bit of Mikey because I was like the mediator and also I was not the skinniest girl. I was very like, I guess athletic, you could say in my body type. So I didn’t really I didn’t wear like tank tops or anything like that during school just because I was so self conscious about my body, not being super super skinny as a girl. And leading into that I was a little bit of Vince because I really loved sports. I did dress like a tomboy.

Ariel Landrum 28:28
You do love sports.

Stefanie Bautista 28:30
I love sports so much. And then I think I identified the least with TJ just because he was just the troublemaker.

Ariel Landrum 28:37
Yeah scheming.

Stefanie Bautista 28:39
Without without Vince he was literally Zack Morris just causing just wrecking havoc on everything and…

Ariel Landrum 28:45
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 28:45
You know, Vince was like his, his his foil I guess you could say and…

Ariel Landrum 28:50
Moral compass like a Jiminy Cricket.

Stefanie Bautista 28:51
Moral compass, for sure for sure.

Ariel Landrum 28:53
Now, you could say that Vince is a essentially a stereotype and that he is a Black athlete. And that was a common stereotype especially in the 90’s. But then you miss a really some important part of regarding his depth of character. And that he was kind and calm. And then he had a lot of integrity and he was the reason that the group was grounded. So it makes sense that he was TJ’s is Jiminy Cricket. His conscience. I also want to just mark that one of my favorite episodes is where he is essentially teaching Spinelli what to do in regards to an upcoming beauty pageant. He spent all night watching some pageant videos and he learned how to sashay, how to walk and step. And I would say that was very forward representation of a Black male walking in heels and modeling with no embarrassment in regards to what he was doing. He just knew that this is a competition and this is how you win the competition. I’m going to dive in it headfirst and fully engage. Essentially, what could have been made fun of for walking around these heels, so shout outs Vince.

Stefanie Bautista 30:07
Gus I identified with not because I was a military brat I didn’t, you know, I was not introduced into being a military family till I was older. But I moved schools a lot in LA. So in elementary school, I think I attended 5 different elementary schools. So I was also the new kid, but in a different way. Like I was a local but also I wasn’t a local because I never had a peer group that I knew from diapers like you Ariel.

Ariel Landrum 30:34
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 30:34
And so I always had to find my way into these specific bs actual circles very much like Recess where it was just an amalgam of different people who were outcasts in their own I guess social ways coming together and just hanging out together. I remember my group of friends in late elementary just being you know, kids who back then guys, anime was not cool. You were lame for loving anime and, and cartoons, so I hung out with like five other kids, and none of us looked like we would ever be friends. But we all like the enemies. So we ended up hanging out together. But I think that was also the beauty of recess is that you… Just because you’re a jock, you didn’t have to hang out with just jocks. Just because you were a nerd didn’t have to hang out with just nerds. If you were, you know, Mikey, you didn’t just have to hang out with other kids who looked like you. You could be friends with different people. And it was okay. And you did great things together.

Ariel Landrum 31:30
And I think that you’re you’re also noting the difference between us following the narrative of like one character and sort of like our Disney media and a core group. Because you’re saying, like, “I identify with components of each and that’s okay.” And sometimes it’s one of the things that turns us off in regards to media is, “I just don’t like this main character. I could not be them. I can’t, I can’t find I can’t find relatability.” And in this case, you had options. And you could switch in episodes like, “I totally agree with Gretchen in this moment, or I totally agree with Mikey in this moment.” And that you that narrative change allows you to again, see more of a holistic kid, because there was definitely in this group, moments of infighting because of disagreements. And I think the really, again, beautiful thing about this group is that they were so diverse. What we did see was literally clicks on in the Recess playground. People only playing with people that were of similar interests. And this group accepted each other just because they were fun to hang out with. And then that was it. They didn’t have to have completely similar or same interests. And then they never seem to poke or make fun of each other for having differences. It was just we were automatically introduced to Gretchen being smart. And she was saying things that were smart, and no one questioned it. No one made fun of it. And no one tried to have her like, explain in a different way. If they said they were confused, she would and it was never seen as her talking down on them. And it was never seen as them telling her she was a dweeb, right?

Stefanie Bautista 33:07
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 33:07
It was like there was just like, “Oh, she just likes to be smart. And we like her. So let’s like learn a thing or two.”

Stefanie Bautista 33:12
Exactly, exactly. And, you know, like, seeing them as a group. It was it was so nice that I don’t know if you remember this, were they all in the same class? Were they all in Miss Grotke’s class?

Ariel Landrum 33:25
They were shout out to the best teacher.

Stefanie Bautista 33:28
Best teacher.

Ariel Landrum 33:29
More woke than I even I am today.

Stefanie Bautista 33:32
More woke in the 90’s, too. And I remember I think I had tried on a pair of like Harry Potter style glasses, and I had just cut my hair really short. And my husband was like, “You look like Miss Grotke.”

Ariel Landrum 33:43
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 33:45
And I was like, “Oh my gosh.” But then I was like, “That’s not like, that’s a compliment. She was the coolest teacher.” I wish. I wish that I had, you know, like a ‘woke teacher’ like that when I was growing up. Now I know teachers that are woke just like her, but I can’t be their students anymore. They’re my counterparts. But she was so compassionate and so loving. And I think with the chaos of the playground, it was such a nice way for them to come back and be grounded. Whenever they did come back in the class, even though they still wanted to be outside. They appreciated her and she always had their back.

Ariel Landrum 34:16
Yeah, and I remember having really good teachers, formative teachers and I remember teachers that did not like their job. Did not want to be there did not want to engage with kids like a like our Yard Ladies. And I feel like Miss Grotke was she was the maybe like the epitome of like what a teacher should be or how I imagined or hoped that they would be if I had kids that were being taught.

Yeah. Let’s I you know, it’s funny because when as we’re talking about adults in the school setting that you know, had their had their roles to play in our lives. Like you know, Miss Grotkewas the ideal teacher. What is the name of The Yard Lady? I literally just saw it like a couple minutes ago. What is her name Ariel?

Oh, her name is Miss Finster.

Stefanie Bautista 35:04
Miss Fist… Yeah, Miss Finster. Miss Finster was the grumpiest oldest lady that you could ever have on a yard. But for some reason, she was like built like a linebacker, and she could chase a kid down.

Ariel Landrum 35:15
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 35:17
there, lunch lady was just as miserable. Their principal was just as you know, they always paint the principal is so oblivious to what’s going on. And just always concerned about like, the administration of everything and not the actual happiness of the kids.

Ariel Landrum 35:33
Is that a trope? Or is that real from your knowledge as an educator.

Stefanie Bautista 35:37
Not in my school, however, more traditional schools that I have worked that there is definitely a gap between up and coming teachers who are my age who have just graduated, and also the tenured teachers who have been there when through you know, multiple generations of students.

Ariel Landrum 35:55
So bright eyed and bushy tailed or seen shit.

Stefanie Bautista 35:58
Seen some shit and you have the ones in the middle who have seen some shit but are still, you know, trying to bridge the gap between like the non technological and technological I think that’s the best way that I can describe it. And sometimes the principles just don’t follow that. Thankfully, for me, I have a boss that is way in tune with like a lot of things that are going on and she’s great. But I remembered student teaching on like other sites and the principal just kind of being aloof, or just being that figurehead and not much more else. And I want to know if you think this but I always thought that Randall Miss…

Ariel Landrum 36:38
Miss Finster.

Stefanie Bautista 36:38
Er, yeah, her her little pet. Miss Finster’s pet? Yeah, I always knew Randall. And I was like, “This kid always screwing up everything.” And the she treats him like a little dog because she gives him a treat like a puppy.

Ariel Landrum 36:53
Yeah she throw a cookie at him.

Stefanie Bautista 36:54
Yeah she throw a cookie at him. And I was like, oh, it was always just like, weaselly looking kid that just like, never really fit in anywhere. But I guess found safety and being next to an adult.

Yeah, I feel like the one of the things that this show does well is it gives you a way to simplify social challenges in regards to having characters identified in your mind on how to tackle these social challenges. So it’s like you think of Randall, he thrives at being used as a pawn to carry another person’s favor in order to maintain really social hierarchy, relevance, importance. He’s like a literally aligning himself with power. And if you look at that, you can look at it in a strength based way. And that is probably a kid who survives as a kid who can align himself with power.

Ariel Landrum 37:46
And if it means not having friends that are your age, and just align yourself with adults, then so be it.

I think like even in some of the other sort of character tropes, you can see like, are you struggling with someone who kind of, in your mind seems to match that of a sixth grader. They just want to maintain dominance, they just want to maintain control. And that’s their motivation. That’s the reason you’re having a social impasse with them is because somehow in this moment, they feel like you’ve removed control and you have asserted your own dominance, and they don’t know how to respond except to push back and be aggressive. And then even mentioning like The Swinger Girl, are you working with someone who has such daring desire and drive that they are doing so much, despite potential danger. That they don’t even see the risk or the potential harm that they’ve put themselves in? I feel like in watching the show, it gives you these snippets of the simple characterization that you can then use to tackle complex social engagements.

Stefanie Bautista 38:52
Yeah, definitely. And also the performativeness of Swinger Girl. Maybe she was doing it to be popular because you know what she maybe she just ended I want to know, the backstory of Swinger Girl now. Because you know, it’s wishing doing it for attention, like, did she not have anybody to go to and that’s why she was like, “You know what swinging is going to be my thing.” Just like Upside Down Girl, that’s going to be my thing. The 2 Diggers I’m pretty sure they’re brothers. Right? So they’re twins, I believe.

Ariel Landrum 39:19
I think they are. Someone correct us if we’re wrong, we haven’t actually like fully rewatched all of the episodes.

Stefanie Bautista 39:27
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 39:27
I was very young when I seented them. So my memory is but wasted.

Stefanie Bautista 39:32
Yes. Same here. But yeah, they I mean, they look exactly the same. They’re both digging and they argue like they’re siblings. So I’m assuming that they are siblings, and you know, maybe they just didn’t have anywhere else that they could fit into. So they were just like, “You know, we’re just gonna dig our way out of this.” And for some reason, no staff member decided, “Hey, there’s a hole in the ground. Next to a fence.

Ariel Landrum 39:55
This isn’t safe.

Stefanie Bautista 39:56
This is safe.

Ariel Landrum 39:58
Why do these kids have shovels in the first place?

Stefanie Bautista 40:00
Who gave them tools? Also, I mean, blathering safe. They have a hardhat. But, I mean, why are they in this hole? This is this is not okay, guys. Another one of my…

Very primitive ways of doing it. Not like an actual, like construction site with a sign that they made that says “China or Bust.” That was well thought out.

Ariel Landrum 40:21
Well thought out.

Again, it’s elementary, right? So I do remember in elementary school kids just randomly digging holes. Like that was that was like with objects with sticks, just like making digging sound effect

Stefanie Bautista 40:23
Very primiative ways of doing it. Not like an actual like construction site with a sign that they made that says, ‘China or Bust.’ That was well thought out. And without any notice, for whatever reason. But yeah, I mean, it’s so funny that you, you mentioned, just the ways that we perceive things now, as opposed to the way we perceive them before as kids. And I think that’s the fun part about looking back on shows like this, like Recess, especially one that kind of stands the test of time. And I think that there’s a there’s many things that we already said that, you know, hasn’t stand the test of time, because this is really how kids navigate their way socially in the world, right? But there are some things that don’t test, you know, stand the test of time, right? I think watching it, I was just like, “I don’t know about this.”

Ariel Landrum 41:13
So for me, that was the kindergarteners was that for you? So the kindergartners are, they’re described as being sort of wild and unpredictable, but they’re shown using really what’s called like an Indigenous Savage trope. So the this trope is in media, it’s used to show how Indigenous people are beneath Western white society by showing us that we need to fear them, that we need to fight them, and essentially convert them to our ways. And we see this by the kindergarteners having tribes having painted faces, having…

Stefanie Bautista 41:54
Feathers.

Ariel Landrum 41:55
Feathers…

Stefanie Bautista 41:56
Face paint.

Ariel Landrum 41:57
Face paint. Having rituals that involve tying kids up, and like saying they’re going to eat kids, like all of this is to portray that they’re primitive. And even Gretchen says in the first episode that these ‘primitive grades’ really saying like lower grades, and when when they go to visit, they say like, “We are from Big Kid land.” And “Here is shiny tinfoil we give you a few help us.” Like really just feeding into that trope. Now looking. I know, I know, seeing it as a kid when I was watching, I didn’t get that. I was not woke. I was not a woke ass kid. I was dead asleep. I did. I saw that as like, “Yeah, kindergarteners, like they don’t have… Their lawless. Like they just want to see the world burn.” But I didn’t see that they were portraying it using this trope. Now that I do see that, I know that that could easily be removed, and it would still be a good show. And I do know there’s an episode where TJ like goes and visits the kindergarteners and has a whole day there and enjoys a nap time. And so essentially realizes that they are not lawless, and they do have their own social norms and that they’re different. So maybe that was a little undoing of that.

Stefanie Bautista 43:08
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 43:08
But I would say that anybody who wants to pick this show up now that hasn’t seen it from childhood; that doesn’t have like maybe some nostalgia connection, those are going to be those, like points of disruption for you.

Stefanie Bautista 43:21
Yeah, I agree. Definitely the kindergarteners and working with kindergarteners, yes, there is an amount of lawlessness to them. They do like to bite each other. They do spit on each other. They are just learning and because they’re babies still like a lot, especially these ones coming from preschool. They’re coming from like daycare and they don’t have… They don’t know how to stand in a line. They don’t know how to hold their crayons correctly. They don’t know how to sit in a chair. So yes, there is a element of them not knowing but the way that they portrayed them as savages not knowing was you know, kind of probably the wrong direction. And like we said, it’s the 90’s it was a different time, we had different ways of perceiving other other norms, I guess you could say in other lands. However, I think now if you were to look at it, you would really have to look at it from a developmental standpoint, saying, you know, like, take away the, you know, feathers, we use feathers in arts and crafts, we use, you know, paint in arts and crafts, like kids are going to be messy. They literally look like that all the time. If you’re looking at it from an arts and crafts standpoint, and not an Indigenous people standpoint. You could always make that argument that you know, when TJ did go over there and was just like, “Oh my gosh, I love kindergarten like they got to take a nap. They get to do fun stuff like everyday seems like recess.” But also you know what, someone might bite you and like that’s okay, it’s normal.

Ariel Landrum 44:50
It’s normal.

Stefanie Bautista 44:51
It’s super normal. I think when I first was a teacher in kindergarten I literally thought of Recess. And I’m like, it’s scary, because you don’t know what these kids are gonna do. It is like being in a foreign country because you can’t really speak their language you, they don’t understand you. You have to learn the lingo of “Let’s all come together. Let’s clap, clap clap to pay attention.” Or, “If you can hear me match me. If you can hear me match me. Let’s shh.” And like you get this whole nother vocabulary and whole nother like way of talking to them. And sometimes when you don’t talk to an adult after being in kindergarten, for so long, you forget to form sentences. It is like being a foreigner in their land until you get used to being around them. So there are parallels to that. But I think as we are moving away from looking at Indigenous people, as people who are just never gonna get it, we can definitely form this in a way where it’s more true to child development, and not so much looking at foreigners in that way. Another thing that really, that I noticed watching it again, was the fact that a lot of the grades didn’t really interact with each other. The grade levels always stayed with their grade level. Like, if you’re in elementary school, now you have opportunities to talk to fifth graders, you have opportunities to talk to fourth graders as a first grader. And we actually encourage those connections, because then you can see where you want to be in the next couple years, like “Do you want to, you know, maybe you can identify with this person.” Like, or say, “You know, what, being a sixth grader is not so scary.” I think…

Ariel Landrum 46:34
Like do you guys assign like peer mentors or?

Stefanie Bautista 46:37
Yeah, we’re very much. And we also have a lot of fifth graders sometimes go into the younger classes, be a mystery reader, and say, “Oh, we’re going to actually hear from a fifth grader.” And they get to ask them questions like, “How does it feel to be in fifth grade?” Like, “How does it feel to be going into middle school soon.” Like, “Are you scared?” And you really get to establish those connections, and then now the younger kids have a wider, a wider vision of who they can be in the next couple years, as opposed to them just sticking with their grade. And because by the end of the year, you want them to grow.

Ariel Landrum 47:08
And removing some of that fear, right? Because there was definitely a lot of fear of the the older grades, because there was uncertainty, it seemed that they, they because they were bigger, they were stronger, they can bully you they can push you around. And that sounds more developmentally appropriate and that you are encouraging children to engage with diverse people. Including age as diversity.

Stefanie Bautista 47:33
Absolutely. And I think that’s the beauty of having different grades intermingle with each other is that you get those different levels of understanding that a teacher just can’t give them. They see each other as peers and not necessarily as enemies you don’t pit them against each other because I feel like that’s how it felt like being in elementary school. The the the scariness, the fear, it’s just it’s gone, essentially. And you don’t get those opportunities until you go to like a summer camp, or if you go to any extracurricular activities, so why not use the recess yard as one of those places?

Ariel Landrum 48:11
Absolutely. And I would say something else that was, again, just problematic, still very heteronormative. Again, it was the 90’s. There was a episode that involves kissing. First of all, TJ and Spinelli were like, forced to kiss each other out of peer pressure. And it was guise to science. And I think that sort of cohesion. And now I will say that, that on the playground, I remember levels of affection being performative. Like everybody gawking and watching.

Stefanie Bautista 48:46
So awkward.

Ariel Landrum 48:47
This case, it was we were accepting that they were doing this because because their peers are pressuring them. I think that that already is problematic. And then the reason that it all started was because a another youth was telling them that their future was girls were gonna like kissing boys and boys were gonna like kissing girls. So that just just that narrative, very heteronormative and then really wanting to explore if that was true, and what would happen, and “No, we’ll never kiss you.” I think that again, that’s another probably narrative that that doesn’t need to stay could be thrown out. I think talking about essentially kissing is a form of sex, sexual attraction, finding a way to show these elementary kids really uncovering that in a different, more safer way, I think would have been better social commentary.

Stefanie Bautista 49:40
Absolutely. And I think that knowledge just wasn’t there yet in that day. So I would love to see how people decide to portray that now if, you know they decide to do a remake or if they decide to do a show, similar to Recess. I think will be impactful to kids nowadays.

Ariel Landrum 49:57
Or even what these new episodes are like, right?

Stefanie Bautista 50:00
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 50:01
Because I think they were made in the 2000’s.

Stefanie Bautista 50:04
Mm hmm. Yeah. Maybe it’ll be interesting for us to revisit this topic again after you know, a Recess Part 2, or instead of just recess, it’s lunch recess now, which is always Recess Part 2. Because, you know, like, you know, we mentioned like we I was only watching the original Recess series. And like, when you look it up on Disney+, I did the same thing where I typed in Recess, and I’m like, “What are all these other things?”

Ariel Landrum 50:29
“What is this?”

Stefanie Bautista 50:29
“What is this? Feeling like an old lady here? What is all this new stuff these newfangled contraptions.” But I’m really interested to see if they did evolve from these tropes and stereotypes, because the knowledge of students and parents now are evolving so fast. And with recent events, were restructuring the way we look at play. The way we look at child development, the way we look at social interactions, not just with how we learned it in the past, but also how we’re teaching our kids how to do it. So yeah, maybe we’ll come back to this.

Ariel Landrum 51:04
I’m curious. What do you think recess is for adults?

Stefanie Bautista 51:09
Oh, recess for adults?

Ariel Landrum 51:12
Yeah. What do you think that looks like?

Stefanie Bautista 51:13
Happy Hour! You know, recess to me, as adults is like when you and I go, “Let’s get coffee.” That’s recess. Yes. Yeah, that’s like us just chillin, getting, you know, some snacks, nice cup of coffee sitting down, forgetting all of the things that we have to do for the day, just reserving that hour. And it doesn’t have to be 15 minutes, y’all. I don’t recess back then was just like 20 minutes of get out and get your body moving. But it can also be going to the gym. It can also be you know, having a picnic. It could also be engaging yourself in maybe some sports or with a league or something. I think that’s also considered recess. What do you think recess is?

Ariel Landrum 51:58
Well, I know if you’re thinking larger organizations and companies they’ve sort of embraced play, right? They, they have playing fields, I know lots of people who are on like a softball team at their job. And and take breaks for to practice or to prep for the next game. I think of when you’re talking about company and employee development, we have like here in the state of California mandated breaks, right?

Stefanie Bautista 52:26
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 52:27
You’re supposed to take every like your 2 15 minute breaks on your lunch. It and I feel like the the part that’s missing is the equipment and quality engagement. Like here’s a break for you. But I know that a lot of people will work. They’re not supposed to you into their lunch hour, they will check their email, they will respond to….

Stefanie Bautista 52:50
Me included. That’s so me.

Ariel Landrum 52:54
Yeah, yup. And so I feel like recess is that respite that we need. But we have to have some sort of equipment. I know. Definitely games, mobile, mobile phone games have become a way to create that, that respite and that release. I just I think that for that intentional break, just like when when you’re at school, like you had that intentional break, there needs to be intention to release to get out of your office, if you can…

Stefanie Bautista 53:24
Take a walk.

Ariel Landrum 53:26
Take a walk, walk your dog, if you’re working from home, you know, anything that you can do to remind yourself of your whole body. To remind yourself of the environment around you. I think that is what recess should be for adults. I definitely think that many of us have forgotten that we need recess that we need to play.

Stefanie Bautista 53:46
Or even translate recess into a vacation. I know sometimes we…

Ariel Landrum 53:50
Bing long recess…

Stefanie Bautista 53:52
A big long recess.

Ariel Landrum 53:53
Snow day.

Stefanie Bautista 53:55
I mean, whether it just be like a drive up the coast, if you live in California or drive, you know, to the park or National Park, if you’re near one or like just taking that day you actually use your weekend not to be productive. But to like we mentioned in self care, just do you is really important, because as you see, I mean, in other countries they have mandated vacations that you get paid for. An integral requirement. I know that you so…

Ariel Landrum 54:21
America do better.

Stefanie Bautista 54:23
We are sucky at that. The worst of. It is the worst. So I mean, as Americans, sometimes you have to equate having your recess as a vacation, and to intentionally be like, “You know what I’m going to unplug. I’m going to unwind. Don’t talk to me.” Put on that out of office message on your email, and really…

Ariel Landrum 54:42
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 54:43
It’s just it’s a little sad to say that we have to work so hard to create these little recesses for ourselves, but the frequently that you do that I feel like the more productive you’ll be. For myself, I totally look forward to planning all my vacations, whether it be like a drive away. I’m going to be driving pretty far in tomorrow. I’m going out to, yeah, I’m going on my reassess to a National Park just to get some air. So definitely those instances of play, of doing things that give you pleasure, are super important to maintain that quality of life and to maintain sanity.

Ariel Landrum 55:24
I’m curious for you, what have you noticed with students when they don’t get recess?

Stefanie Bautista 55:28
Oh, it’s the worst. It’s actually literally so hard to get A. kid focused if they don’t have recess. That’s why we never ever use no recess as a punishment at my school. Just because if you take away that play, you were actually adding work to yourself. You only don’t get a break, but the kid doesn’t get a break. And if you’re going to go through that 8 day, 8 hour day together, you’re kind of setting yourself up for failure. So definitely changing the way that you give consequences. Logical consequences is different. And I’ve seen back then, and other schools that I’ve worked at play being taken away, having them take a break from socializing, it isolates themselves so much more. And now they think you’re the enemy. And now they think that you are taking away their socialization, their play things that they love. And that really breaks that connection that you’re trying to make with your student, whether you’re the TA whether you’re the teacher, whether you’re the administrator, you’re not connecting with them in that way. You are severing the connection, essentially. So it’s something that I feel that all schools should be moving away from. Just because it’s it doesn’t do anyone good.

Ariel Landrum 56:44
Yeah, I think when I see it in adults, right, I get as a therapist, I’m seeing general mental unwellness. I’m seeing actual clinically diagnosed depression and anxiety. But I’m also seeing chronic stress. And people forget that the things that happen when we have chronic stress is we get irritable bowel syndrome, we get GERD, we get acid reflux, because it shuts down your digestive system. You’re not if you’re activating fight, flight or freeze, you’re not supposed to be digesting your food you’re supposed to be running away from like a tiger. In this case, you are feeling that sitting in your office, one on your break when you’re checking your email. Many of the things that I see are, you know thoughts of self harm, inability to engage with people, not wanting to socialize. Forgetting. Lots of memory loss, short term memory loss and inability recall, these are some of the things that we start to notice when we don’t give ourselves a break. And it starts off small we think we can sort of shake off these these sort of frustrations and I think once we we start to ignore them that much. We start to forget to you know, harken back to our previous episode, our self care. And recess is definitely part of lifestyle, it’s part of self care. Shout out to Simone Biles for her ability to recognize that she needed some self care that she needed to to ground herself literally.

Stefanie Bautista 58:17
Definitely. And for her because now that her form of play became her profession.

Ariel Landrum 58:23
Yeah…

Stefanie Bautista 58:24
I’m pretty sure as a young girl and hearing so many stories and learning about her story. Gymnastics is a way for kids to let loose and you know, just be in tune with your body and because she was so good at…

Ariel Landrum 58:35
Your whole body.

Stefanie Bautista 58:36
Your whole body and like push it to its limitations and like go above and beyond what you think is is possible for you know your sport. Now that this is her livelihood. And this is you know what the world sees her as her taking a break from it is actually normal come competitions are so stressful.

Ariel Landrum 58:56
So stressful.

Stefanie Bautista 58:57
I remember being in swim meets just like wanting to throw up in the pool, so that I could be disqualified. And you know, you never, ever really get used to that. And like I think as an athlete, her taking that time to ground herself and and still win two medals is still so impressive. She is still The GOAT. She is still amazing. She’s setting herself as like such a good role model for so many kids in sports, Kids of Color in sports, women in sports, there’s so much burden on her and you know what? Like I say to all these naysayers, you try doing all the things that they do. And do it in front of the whole world on a time difference. Being The GOAT and upholding that at her age.

Ariel Landrum 59:48
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 59:48
She’s a legend. She’s amazing. And I’m glad that you know, she did that for herself the ultimate form of self care and the ultimate recess for her brain.

Ariel Landrum 59:58
Yes. Yes. And harking back to recess and another Woman of Color who is The GOAT Miss Grotke.

Stefanie Bautista 1:00:07
Yes.

Ariel Landrum 1:00:08
I want to read some of these quotes to end us with?

Stefanie Bautista 1:00:11
Nice.

Ariel Landrum 1:00:12
“I look forward to reading your thoughts on how the male authors of the Constitution helped shape our gender based society.” snaps Okay. “The founding fathers didn’t think twice about excluding an entire gender from their rants. I mean, where were the founding mothers?”

Stefanie Bautista 1:00:29
Where were the founding mothers? I want to know this. She’s asking the questions.

Ariel Landrum 1:00:33
She really is asking the questions. snaps “So the noble Native Americans share their bountiful food supplies with the undeserving European savages.” snaps “And then our hero Beowulf, ripped Grendel’s arm off and beat him with it. A metaphor for man’s cruelty towards endangered species.” Thank you, thank you. snaps Woke. Woke. Woke.

Stefanie Bautista 1:00:55
Woke. Woke. Woke. Love Miss Grotke. She is The GOAT of for not only Third Street Elementary, but to all of us, you know, living as students and now adults. I strive to be like her as a teacher. And just you know, her calm presence. I love it.

Ariel Landrum 1:01:14
Yay.

Stefanie Bautista 1:01:15
Yay. I really like I hope that you all like our talk on Recess. It is, if you are our age, and maybe you are, you know how much this little show really shaped our outlook on being at school, interacting with our peers, maybe even outside of school too. Let us know who your favorite recess character is either on Twitter @happiestpodGT, or on our Instagram when we post about this, to remind you that the episode is out very, very soon. Let us know who your favorite character, whether it be part of the crew or whether it be part of the staff or maybe even just the one off child that was you know, in the background. Because all those kids on the Recess field made Recess, whether or not the remain character. They were all important. And I loved this talk. I really enjoyed it.

Ariel Landrum 1:02:07
Me too. Me too. Thank you everybody for joining us and we will see you next time. Bye everybody.

Stefanie Bautista 1:02:12
Buh bye!

• Recess
• Spinelli
• Gretchen
• Mickey
• TJ
• Gus
• Vince
• The Swinger
• The Diggers
• Upside Down Girl
• 90’s Cartoons
• Mrs. Grotke

• Social-Emotional Learning
• Play
• Playground
• American school lunches
• Punishment
• Stereotypes
• Tropes
• School funding
• Developmental
• Excutive funcitoning
• Emotional self-control
• Student autonomy

Ariel Landrum 0:10
Hello, everybody, welcome to The Happiest Pod on Earth. I’m Ariel.

Stefanie Bautista 0:15
And I’m Stef. And we’re Disney fans. But we’re really so much more than that.

Ariel Landrum 0:19
Like I’m a licensed therapist, and I use my clients passions and fandoms to help them grow and heal from trauma and mental unwellness.

Stefanie Bautista 0:26
And I’m an educator who uses passions and fandoms to help my students grow and learn about themselves and the world around them.

Ariel Landrum 0:32
Happiest Pod is a place where we dissect Disney mediums with a critical lens. Why? Because just like we are more than just fans, we expect more from the mediums we consume.

Stefanie Bautista 0:42
And so today Ariel what Disney media or experience are we dissecting and sharing on this episode?

Ariel Landrum 0:49
So we’re gonna take it back a similar to what we’re dissecting we are going to dissect Wandavision

Stefanie Bautista 0:58
Wandavision lately got so many Emmy nominations, did you know that?

Ariel Landrum 1:04
Hey yes. Worth it.

Stefanie Bautista 1:06
Worth it. I don’t know exactly how many maybe we can get that number by the end of the episode. But I think it’s super awesome that these, The Academy or whoever is recognizing the work of Disney, not just Disney, but the work of comic book material, because I’ve always felt that comic books themselves as readable mediums have; their storytelling is so much more advanced than people take them for face value.

Ariel Landrum 1:36
Absolutely. Absolutely. And the appreciation that it’s becoming more than I think, I think we consider comic books and comic mediums very childlike or immature. There, there seems to be a stigma about the culture of people who consume comics and and even Disney media. Right?

Stefanie Bautista 2:02
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 2:03
So I think that now it’s, we’re gaining more recognition, it shows that it’s become very mainstream. It’s becoming a part of the general populace’s palette, but also that were given the way that Wandavision is created in regards to both honoring the comics and old sitcoms. It’s showing that that that projection and growth and evolution in regards to how we consume medium, but also the things that are still classic and timeless, and how that molding together is, I would say worthy of praise and are worthy of an award. But just something that we’ve known all along as as the audience; the consumers.

Stefanie Bautista 2:50
Yeah, absolutely. And I think in the time where I guess not a lot of people are so focused on getting those awards. I know, there’s so much controversy around like Emmys and the Oscars and the Grammys, I just think the recognition from a wider audience not just you know, our geeky audience and people who consume that media, it means a little bit and I think it just shows that the people running these shows are true professionals and the people who are producing the episodes and who are writing these scripts, they’re really taking the time to elevate the storytelling that we’re we’re used to seeing in our previous Marvel movies. So I do have the statistics, Wandavision earned 23 nominations, including outstanding limited series at the next Emmy Awards. They also get a nomination for “Agatha All Along,” the song…

Ariel Landrum 3:48
Heyyy!

Stefanie Bautista 3:48
For outstanding music and lyrics because you know that was an earworm for everybody who listened to it. It was like everwhere.

Ariel Landrum 3:55
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 3:57
And Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany have Outstanding Lead Actor and Actress nods as well. So I think everybody from I think also the, the cinematography maybe. There’s definitely directing, Outstanding Supporting lead actress in Kathryn Hahn as Agatha because she was crazy good in the show. Outstanding production design outstanding period and our character hairstyling which they fully deserve. I hope he wins. I do say here they have outstanding sound editing and sound mixing. Yes. That was the even got the the crackling of the old timey TV down. Yeah. And the visual effects. I’m talking about that were fantastic. They really got that old bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie style animation in the beginning of the episodes so perfect. But yeah, that just leads into what we’re going to talk about. And like we mentioned whenever we talk about a TV or movie. It’s full spoilers. So if you haven’t seen one division, pause and listen to any of our other podcasts or any other Geek Therapy podcasts and come back to us because we are going to be diving into the very nitty gritty details of wandavision and pulling all of our pop reference cultures and knowledge to make connections and how we can use that to further our practices.

Ariel Landrum 5:25
And if you have already seen one division after listening to this episode, I would encourage you to go to GT Radio and listen to their review on Wandavision and its notes to grief and loss.

Stefanie Bautista 5:38
Yes, yes. So where are we going to start with this Ariel? It’s a lot.

Ariel Landrum 5:43
So there are so many ways we could have taken really talking about and dissecting this medium and something that Stef and I have an affinity for is definitely retro vintage and and things that are stylistic. We, we like we like to have a nice aesthetic. Even with our straws like you know, no more, you can get your paper straw, but if you use a reusable straw, obviously way better. So for us, we were thinking very much artistic visual design, the sound of really much of the consumption of this medium, a little bit in the story arc of Wanda, but really more in its nods to other other shows other mediums and sitcoms, and very how it was so retro, but now it’s considered very avant garde. So I think umm starting off with obviously, the classic episode one, which if you remember watching it the first time was like “What is going on? Why is black and white? Why? This? I don’t I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel. Is this where it’s gonna be at?”

Stefanie Bautista 7:00
Normally when we watch any sort of Marvel beginning, it’s like a flashback, there’s a child, things are happening. We’re going to follow this child and they’re gonna discover something or, you know, Peter Parker’s gonna get bit by spider. I know that didn’t happen that way. But that’s just what we’re expecting. So we’re expecting to follow a character and a journey, but it totally threw a wrench in our expectations where it started off exactly like how the not Dick Van Dyke we’re going way, way way further. We’re going like, I Love Lucy, black and white opening sitcom like animation…

Ariel Landrum 7:37
And they definitely did in the first episode.

Stefanie Bautista 7:39
Yeah…

Ariel Landrum 7:40
Some Dick Van Dyke Show. Yeah, tropes. Yeah, so definitely, but but even had, you know, some a little bit of Bewitched in there. Yeah. Especially in the the special effects.

Stefanie Bautista 7:52
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 7:53
And I was, we were used to fast pace.

Stefanie Bautista 7:58
Yeah. And we were used to like, not just, I don’t even know how to explain it. Like, I know, we mentioned Michael Bay, and like, the whole Transformers trope I like blows everything up. But we’re so used to action Marvel movies that were just like, okay, there’s gonna be some sort of Chase, or we’re gonna just like follows a movie, some crazy cinematography. And it completely grounded us and took us back to an era of TV viewing that we don’t see anymore. Where it is, you see credits first. You see an animation, you see something silly. And then you see a hard opening of a show where they open the door, and you see a set. And even in modern sitcoms, you don’t see that anymore. It’s it’s a totally different way of storytelling. So you find it’s more of a linear, I guess….

Ariel Landrum 8:50
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 8:51
Way of viewing it, especially because it’s, it’s an open set in clearly what looks like a stage, you know, homes that look like that. And yeah, it was, it was like what is happening. And I do want to mention, before we go on that not only are we lovers of retro style, and going to Dapper Day and everything, but Ariel here knows a lot more about art than I do, because she is an art therapist. And so she definitely engages in this medium and this visual medium so much more than I do. So it’s gonna be really fun to see your take on just visually consuming what they put on the screen in this very different way.

Ariel Landrum 9:32
Yeah, not so much in one division. But I never saw Knives Out when it came out. And I watched it on streaming with my roommate. And in the opening scene pne of the main characters is holding a mug that says, “My house my rules,” and I was like, “Oh, I wonder if this person’s like very controlling.” And I read it out loud. And I was like, I was like “That’s probably an important mug,” and the mug makes it in the end and has a very specific meaning in regards to |My house, my rules.” And it and he was like, “How do you just notice something like that?” But I’m like, “How do you not notice something like that?” Again? props, the props. I’m very into zooming in on props.

Stefanie Bautista 10:10
Yeah. And it’s great to to have that perspective. And this is one of those mediums or this is one of those shows that because everything was so retro, we didn’t use we weren’t used to finding Easter Eggs in small props like that. Back in the day.

Ariel Landrum 10:27
Yeah, like the commercials they had, right like, the very first like, it was it was a toaster commercial. I was like, “Oh, look, that’s Vision.” Like it’s like there’s it has a red dot says it says it says a Stark on there somewhere. And everyone’s like, “What are you talking about?” But if you freeze frame it like it’s a robot toaster, like made by Stark Industries and as a red dot in it’s head.

Stefanie Bautista 10:50
And we’re used to trying to find these Easter Eggs at this point, because we have seen so many different Marvel movies that inject these either just like playful props or playful visuals, but also some of them are foreshadowing. So they did a little bit of both in Wandavision and using those commercials, as vehicles to to show how scary the world she was, you know, weaving together was because in the later commercials, they were featuring the same people. And you know, those people were actually townspeople of Westview. And they were trapped. Because this was all just her orchestration, spoiler alert. Super spoiler alert. But yeah, we’re now seeing a 30 minute format write of a Marvel show. And we had feelings around that.

Ariel Landrum 11:46
Yes, so something we’re not used to, right? We I mean, not only before the pandemic, we were used to just seeing Marvel movies, and obviously, a movie format is a lot longer than a TV format. But additionally, because of the pandemic, we’ve been given more and more movies that are even longer because they can stream longer. And even with TV shows, we’re given the entire series. Like you can binge it all up front. But with these series, I mean, we didn’t see this until the Mandalorian. And now I think is going to be more common on Disney+ where it’s just like watching TV back in our day where you had to wait, you had to wait a week for the next episode. And it it’s not as easy to find those continuity errors what like now is with bingeing. And so it it force it, you mentioned being grounded, it forces us to have to really consider what we were consuming, it forces us to have to pause, and it gave a lot of opportunity to try and predict, right? Like “What who do we what do we think this Easter Egg means or what do we think is going to come in next?” And if you weren’t going on IMDb, then you were doing a lot of just your own guesswork and your own fact finding and weaving things together. And I think that builds excitement and anticipation that we don’t have to necessarily feel when we can consume an entire series in essentially a weekend.

Stefanie Bautista 13:16
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it keeps the the mysterious things that Marvel likes to keep under wraps, because you know, all of their cast all of their crew is tight lipped on anything that they’re doing. And I’m feeling that if I was a Marvel Disney executive, they were already doing that in the larger sense with their movies, they had to wait months on end for Avengers Age of Ultron Avengers Endgame so why not do that in a smaller scale format? And in not releasing everything all at once? They know the fans are going to wait for them. I’m gonna wait for them. And I’m gonna wait and maybe not all the time. But I know some of you will wait till midnight 12 pm or 12 am on the dot to, press play and see it over everybody else’s so that the next day when you’re at work or at school, or wherever you are, you can talk about oh my gosh, did you watch this? Like I watched that this morning and so many of our friends and in our group chat said “Oh my gosh, I just watched it,” it’s like freaking three in the morning.

Ariel Landrum 14:16
Like what you guys doing?

Stefanie Bautista 14:18
But that’s that’s the hype that they that they’re really good at, at projecting and, and coming up with because they know that we’re going to wait for it. So might as well keep keep people guessing, keep articles coming keep the buzz, like at the top of everybody’s feeds, because even when we were talking about Loki, we were guessing every single week what was going on because we didn’t know how it was going to end. So I think with Wandavision it being so far out of what we’re used to seeing. I think people were just either stumped; mad that they didn’t know what was going on…

Ariel Landrum 14:56
Straight up upset.

Stefanie Bautista 14:58
Totally like turned off to the series because it’s not what they were expecting. Definitely a lot of the action heads in our communities were just like, “What the is this? Like? I didn’t tune in to like see some old timey whatever blah blah.”

Ariel Landrum 15:15
Black and white what?

Stefanie Bautista 15:16
Yeah, if you weren’t invested in the storytelling of Wandavision, you probably were totally turned off by it and didn’t tune in again until the Malcolm in the Middle episode maybe where the cosplay happens.

Ariel Landrum 15:30
Yeah, I think that like you mentioned you know, some execs they took a risk with this they took a huge risks because you know, in watching Falcon and The Winter Soldier and in watching Loki those felt like, quote unquote, traditional Marvel media that we’ve been consuming. This was very unique and different. And I think you know, because of its uniqueness stands out in regards to to these other series. Give it to the girls.

Stefanie Bautista 16:05
Give it to the girls to make it stylistic, classic and also smart. I think Wandavision was very smart. You really had to think about what was going on and like, detach yourself because they didn’t detach themselves from the Wandavision world until Episode Two right where we see Monica.

Ariel Landrum 16:26
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. until until then we’re, we’re not really sure what’s going on. And I think that that eeriness, that confusion… I really liked it I liked not being able to to predict and guess what was going on it made it more exciting and I think is pretty much the ambivalence we feel about Wanda or the because it’s… Is she a good guy or she a bad guy? That is how she’s been introduced in the series very back and forth, and her journey in regards to that, that decision, we need to decide at some point whether this character is going to be villainous or not. And I think I think this series answered that and it answered it in the in very much the way that we felt her which was, we would see, we would see her against the Avengers. We’d see her with the Avengers, we’d see her split up with the Avengers like it, we’d see her alone it that that common theme is represented in all these episodes in regards to her story arc.

Stefanie Bautista 17:31
Yeah, absolutely. And I think what you mentioned about it being creepy. I think that’s a sentiment that you can feel for a lot of retro TV and a lot of retro movies. Because you see this world portrayed so perfectly, and so well thought out, everybody has hair is coifed clothes are totally iron, like all the way everyone’s dressed to the nines all the time. In our reality that’s just not true. We wake up out of bed not looking cute, no makeup on, like, “I woke up like this,” is like a real thing. You know, there’s something creepy about everything being so perfect like The Stepford Wives and that trope of being the perfect wife and being the perfect mother and being the perfect house, house woman caregiver to everybody. Having it all together just waiting for your husband to come home and have everything perfect than laid out there’s something creepy about that. And I think that was definitely translated in the way that Wanda wanted to make everything so perfect. So she can shield herself from the world around her and shield the sadness and the loss and the pain that she’s still actively going through. Because it was the only way that she could cope.

Ariel Landrum 18:49
And and very dreamlike, right like when we’re talking about using it as as a coping mechanism living sort of in a fantasy a full on fantasy that she was able to create with her powers. Those beginning episodes are dreamlike because everything is perfect. And then we find out that the mishaps that do happen they’re from Agatha not from her. So

Stefanie Bautista 19:09
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 19:10
Agatha had not noticed her powers and not inserted herself in Wanda’s world. I’m I would think that it would be even eerier than like looking back at old sitcoms because there probably would be no plot and there probably would be no quote unquote struggles. I don’t even know if we would have moved past you know, like the 1950s….

Stefanie Bautista 19:33
Oh probaly note.

Ariel Landrum 19:33
In her in her timeline, I think that she would have still been very curled hair coifed and even the costuming they had it forced her to sit up right. They they talked about in assembled if you watch that series on Disney Plus, the costumes definitely had a course that type feel to force everybody to sit up straight and just that very like 90 degrees. You’re sort of like her correct angle kind of gives you the sense that this world isn’t supposed to be off balance. And how is that possible? And then it isn’t until near the end of the episode, when we get very much they use the Twilight Zone effect of tilting the camera zooming and changing the music that we were like, no, yeah, this this world’s off.

Stefanie Bautista 20:22
Yeah. Let’s talk a little bit about what it takes to recreate something so accurate, right? In order for them to really capture the feel of these sitcoms in their respective areas. They had to do the same things that those exact shows did. And a couple of those things is that episode one was taped in front of a live studio audience. And that is something that is very rarely done nowadays, especially COVID, because you don’t have live studio audiences anymore. And you won’t have a laugh track, right? And can we explain a little bit about what a laugh track is, and like using that in, in TV shows? I think I can definitely speak to that, because I’ve seen a lot of old old old sitcoms, and the laugh track was used as a break for the script, basically.

Ariel Landrum 21:13
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 21:13
And they use that for the people who are acting to play off of and use that to kind of project and move their emotions forward. So they would pause, they would know when the audience was going to laugh because it was put in the script. And there was a little light in the audience that turned on that says “laugh” or “audience.” And then the audience was then laugh because they are part of the experience, and they are part of the taping. So in order to create that field, they did that in the first episode. And I would have loved to have been one of those people.

Ariel Landrum 21:48
Yes, I wish I’d known there was a call for that to be part of this live studio audience taping. I think even when you’re thinking of the the laugh tracks, the other thing is it’s training the audience to know what’s funny.

Stefanie Bautista 22:01
Yes.

Ariel Landrum 22:01
And the and for me in regards to thinking of the the Marvel Universe, like we’ve seen them shifting more and more towards jokes and humor. But it’s hard to tell when something’s supposed to be funny. Given that, you know, like, everybody has very different humor styles and kind of laugh at different things. That the again, these these beginning episodes are telling you, “You are only allowed to react this way. Or you’re only supposed to.” That again…

Stefanie Bautista 22:29
It’s so limiting.

Ariel Landrum 22:30
Yes. So limiting. It shows you not only how limiting those errors were in regards to just emotional depth and the ability to be expressive. It also, again, gets that eerie vibe of like, “Wait, why is this funny? Why is that funny? And why is everything funny?”

Stefanie Bautista 22:49
Yeah. And even when vision is like, I’m going to work doing the computer things…

Ariel Landrum 22:54
Oh hello kitty.

Stefanie Bautista 22:55
Hello kitty. When he’s typing and doing the computer thing, he’s not even 100% sure of what he is doing. So I mean, he and I think that that’s really interesting that we’re going through this world through Vision’s mind? Vision himself is kind of like the audience in where he’s not sure what’s going on. So the only person that we can relate to his Vision because he’s been dropped into this place. Without knowing what happened to him previously, or what is going to happen to him in the future. Everybody else seems to know what’s going on. Especially his um, his desk mate at work is just like, “Oh, you know, we’re doing these things and computing the stuff,| and he’s just like, Oh computers. What is what is this?” And you’re just like, “Wait, what the heck is going on?” Even he doesn’t know what’s like happening. And then he doesn’t know if it’s their anniversary, or if they’re celebrating something. And then when, like, that is scary in itself. Imagine waking up and not knowing what day it was what your agenda was for the day. We’re so used to planning things out digitally and in our minds and months, weeks in advance, that being present, which is a very common thing in retro TV and also just in the world of our past being present and just going through your day. And letting it unfold like that is something so foreign to us and scary.

Ariel Landrum 24:20
So foreign.

Stefanie Bautista 24:22
But yeah, I think seeing the world through Vision’s eyes really made at least me feel a little bit comfortable because it was starting to get really creepy and not exactly knowing what was real and what was not. And in a world where everything was so obviously fake. It was kind of like a mind trip to go on because the lobster that pure old and clearly fake. They could have made that really really

Ariel Landrum 24:46
Clearly fake. Yeah, I think that was the other thing is they decided to not only shoot in the frame that TVs were back in those days. So that so they had to they had to find very specific type camera framing and cameras to shoot at that format. They use special effects until it was an era where visual effects were created. So they match that era. And the special effects and props artists were, some of them had worked on Bewitched, so they were able to recreate, you know, those those recipe cards floating on a string. But looking at it from our perspective, we clearly know this, this is fake. Like “I can tell that this is not she’s not really using her magic.” So what exactly is going on that they are, you know, really stepping back in the way that they’re visually creating things? And it was because they were replicating that experience of sitcom. The, I mean, and even being acknowledging some of the, I guess, tropes of those sitcoms and like Agatha coming in and she was like, “You know what modern life nowadays wouldn’t have a full like dinner ready on hand?” That was an expectation back then that that women, very again, Stepford Wives that you have a specific role and your role is to feed the familym you roll is to keep this house clean, your role is to look cute. Somehow, make that lobster in your heels.

Stefanie Bautista 26:18
Yeah. And you know that Wanda is sort of a foreigner still. And we know that Wanda herself. Her character is a foreigner. She’s from a Sokovia, Eastern European made up nation. And you see that there’s an element of if you’re an immigrant, or migrant, or child of an immigrant, you know that these things are familiar, but still foreign. So the idea of having dinner on the table having like a spread and all of those fixings together for this dinner with the boss is still sort of a not so familiar concept. And she’s just like, “Wait, I need help with this. Because I don’t exactly know how I’m supposed to do this.” And you you then see, “Oh, my gosh, Wanda is still trying to figure out what this exactly looks like.” Because as real as it seems. And as like onpoint as we see it to be, there’s still something quite off about it. And as you were talking Ariel, I was thinking there was definitely some Disney Magic involved in this show.

Ariel Landrum 27:21
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 27:21
Because we know going to the parks and we know with very old, old, old Disney movies, animated and live action, there’s a certain style that comes with it. There’s a certain like Disney Magic that I don’t know, can’t really explain. But when you’re watching old movies like the old Parent Trap, and you’re watching old movies, like I think the one that they shot at Disneyland, I don’t know if the Disney movie, but they shot it at Disneyland. I forget the name. But I know a lot of you Disney fans know about it. It’s there’s just this feel to it. That is a little bit magical. And I think they really captured that in one division. Because they got it so right. But like a little too, right?

Ariel Landrum 28:04
Yeah, yeah, they did just they turned it all the way up. So that’s how you knew something was wrong. But it I mean, if I hadn’t known this was Wandavision, and someone had just shown me like some 1950 shows and then that I again, I would have assumed.

Stefanie Bautista 28:20
Wouldn’t have known.

Ariel Landrum 28:20
And even the rest of the areas; when we got to the 70s. And when we got to the 90’s. Like if you had shown me some sitcoms there and then this they matched. And they match not just in special effects not just in wardrobe, not just the set and propping but they matched in music. The two writers of all the songs they picked a specific melody to input in all every episodes’ theme song, but they only use instruments that were very common in those areas. And they only used a sort of songwriting and beats that you would expect in those areas. So it was a completely immersive experience.

Stefanie Bautista 29:01
You’re not hearing no trap beats 808 music in these early episodes and you totally see that and it became really evident to me during the Malcolm in the Middle Halloween spectacular episode because it felt super 90’s to me. The graphics that they were using in the beginning, the iconic like stretching of the background behind the the text title was so iconic of Malcolm in the Middle. Like the the fisheye lens where everybody’s just kind of getting in the camera. It was very early 90’s. Such a such a big step, I think from the previous episode, which was still kind of Brady Bunch inspired. I feel like it was like a…

Ariel Landrum 29:47
Definietly Full House and I’m trying to think… Umm.. Ah was it there’s one more? I’ve gone blank, but that happens. But yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 30:05
Are you thinking like of another?

Ariel Landrum 30:07
Oh, Good Times good times.

Stefanie Bautista 30:08
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 30:08
Yeah. Good. Yeah. It was very Good Times and Full House and a little bit of The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Stefanie Bautista 30:15
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 30:16
But…

Stefanie Bautista 30:17
I think there was just over that period. And…

Ariel Landrum 30:19
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 30:19
I was surprised. I was really surprised because when we think of 90’s sitcoms, yes, of course, I do think Malcolm in the Middle, but that’s why I’m like 99 almost like borderline millenia area millenia era. Because I think a Full House, I think of Family Matters, I think of Step By Step. I think of all of the TGIF; Sister, Sister. Like…

Ariel Landrum 30:39
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 30:40
Those are the things that I remember, from 90’s sitcoms, and I’m wondering, and I don’t have the answer to this, why they decided to kind of skip that, like, stylistically.

Ariel Landrum 30:52
Yeah. I feel like maybe because it’s not as stylistic as like, like, iconic. Like we’re shifting from vintage to retro, right.

Stefanie Bautista 31:01
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 31:01
And now we’re, we’re, when it comes to sort of like 90’s, that has become at least some of the 90’s styles has become more present and modern now. It’s being sort of reclaimed. And not the the shirts over jeans. No, it’s like the crop tops. So like, the glowing part of the 90’s.

Stefanie Bautista 31:21
Seriously, I know.

Ariel Landrum 31:23
Y2K era.

Stefanie Bautista 31:25
We’re gonna we’re gonna digress a little bit because I know we’ve been having conversations of as women. I struggled in the 90’s to find any sort of, well, I mean, I was like, what, 11 right? So that kind of shows our age a little bit, but I was not feeling cute in the 90’s. I was so frumpy, like, I think I could barely afford going to Limited Too at the time. End like you would shop from a catalog remember Delia’s?

Ariel Landrum 31:52
Yes, yes.

Stefanie Bautista 31:52
Yeah, everything was like, but then everything then was harkening back to the 60s, because everything was like very flowery and tie dye and like block colorings.

Ariel Landrum 32:02
And they did have bell bottoms.

Stefanie Bautista 32:04
Yeah, bell bottoms. So it’s like, do I stick with my cargo baggy jeans, cargo baggy khakis with the super crop top that like I A. feel comfortable in and B. would probably get a dress code violation at school for. Or do I just stay looking like a tomboy, and I just stayed looking like a tomboy. Because that was just easier for me.

Ariel Landrum 32:26
Not only was it easier, but I for me, I was raised by a single dad and I had a brother. So at a certain point, we were all going to kind of dress the same.

Stefanie Bautista 32:36
And I mean, I come from… Excuse me, from a migrant household. So I didn’t really have the money to keep up with trends. And I thought about that, actually. Before we filmed this episode, I knew so many of these sitcoms, because I didn’t have cable. I don’t know if you didn’t grow up without cable. But I was…

Ariel Landrum 32:59
Oh there was no cable on the military base.

Stefanie Bautista 33:02
Really, they don’t pamper you for you know serving our country and laying your life on the line for the goodness of our borders?

Ariel Landrum 33:11
Nah fam. I had like six channels. Disney Channel was one of them thank goodness.

Stefanie Bautista 33:15
See and I didn’t even have Disney Channel, so I was living in 13 channels. For those of you in LA know, 2 a CBS, 4 was NBC. 5 was KTLA but then they always showed reruns, so if you were sick at home, you would watch things like The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The Brady Bunch. I loved and I think that’s why I have such an affinity for retro TV. And vintage TV is because I, that was the only thing that I watched. Being, you know, working class and not being able to afford cable not to like way way at like later on in life. I could only consume media that was limited in what they showed in the mornings and in the evenings. And I think tying back to the way Wanda was viewing American culture in another country and that is a… That’s a journey that a lot of immigrants and migrants and foreigners consume American media. Some is going on in my voice. But they only see what VHS shows them. They only see what their family in America sends to them. And they only see what is pirated and sold for pennies on the street. So many of my cousin’s in the Philippines only know American culture through the Brady Bunch and through I Love Lucy. I Love Lucy is so popular in other countries because of the way that it’s connected different people in different countries to what the American dream was.

Ariel Landrum 34:54
Yes. Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 34:54
And if your journey is to get out of your country and go to America, that is the ideal. You want to be in a nuclear household with a loving, you know, male and female relationship. And that is what’s portrayed. And that is what you you aim for. And anything outside of that is considered out of the norm. And so I think that’s really, I really like the episode where we see Wanda and her DVDs, and her holding onto her DVDs for dear life because that is what her hobby is. That is what her love is. And that is what she connects to. Because she’s so, so so wants to get out of her situation. And you see that is it’s not a good situation.

Ariel Landrum 35:38
Yeah, and in regards to like talking about that medium we consume like that, that was what she was consuming in regards to an ideal life. So of course, if she has the actual powers and ability to recreate that she’s going to recreate that. There was there were levels of safety. I think the the other thing in regards to just how her experience was growing up with with this, this imagery in these films, I was… I noticed that a good chunk of them had, you know what she was emulating really like male leads. And it wasn’t until she sort of created literally, her own episode that we then became the Scarlet Witch that we saw her actually claim her show, right? Like, like, actually claimed this world as her own. She was letting things even unfold for herself, despite the fact having the control. And I think that that very much shows her her shift of how control and chaos are a fine line. People think that they are binary in that they are worlds apart from each other. And their next door neighbors.

Stefanie Bautista 37:02
Yep, they’re so close. They could be sharing a wall.

Ariel Landrum 37:05
Sharing a wall. I, I always relate it to you when I’m talking to clients about like integration, like integrating different parts of ourselves. My dad has OCD. And he has OCD where he has to check things. And so you can say that’s very controlled, he has to you know, check the locks at least 20 times. That’s it’s a high number, right? And that’s very chaotic to have to go back and check something 20 times and not trust or what your what you saw what you touched what you felt. Your mind telling you, you know, essentially gaslighting you and saying like, “No, you need to check it again.” So that’s that, that fine line. And I feel like because she’s essentially she has chaos magic, like we’ve already identified it cah…, as actual chaos. It really shows how controlled she’s actually been this whole time.

Stefanie Bautista 37:59
Yeah. The whole time, in not in just what we see her in Westview. But also, when you’re looking back at that scene with like her parents, she only had a limited amount of DVDs that she could take and only a limited amount of choices that she had. And also she had to be told when and where to watch it. They had to you know, she wanted to wait for her family, obviously. But they were so limited in what they could see when they could watch it, that every single step was calculated for her. And you see that already in the beginning. And then when everything gets blown out of the water, and they’re left to just her and Pietro, she then becomes the decision maker. But she doesn’t quite know how to do that. So she somehow and we don’t see this part. But I know in the comic books, she finds herself in her brother in certain situations where she has to kind of attach herself to larger male figures in order to go on and survive in her life. And also in the comic booksm she’s seen as Magneto’s daughter. So that way is a little bit and very much different from the way that they decided to portray her in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but also it it draws parallels from there is a higher purpose and she is just kind of like a pawn in that. And that is how she is used in the original story. But you also see that when she’s introduced in the MCU, as somebody who’s just used to following directions.

Ariel Landrum 39:32
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 39:32
And really looking out for her younger brother, and that’s a very older sister, sort of sentiment that I can relate to. I’m an older sister, and I see a lot of that.

Ariel Landrum 39:46
And common even in twins. People forget that there’s still an older and a younger and they vehemently know it. And so for her like she and then to lose her younger sibling… So so the amount of grief and loss she can tell us experience right we’ve got we’ve lost parents we’ve lost an entire country so so no no actual home to sort of go back to. And you know now is essentially losing her life partner… It it’s it’s very much understandable why she would want to escape to these mediums and even going back into her childhood. There was war going on and Sokovia and that the people were having to try and like ignore what’s going on in their outside walls to keep themselves safe and essentially emotionally safe. Right? We we fully divulge or digest our mediums. We we fully immerse ourselves because that’s the only way that you can ignore sort of like these bombs going off. I know. For me, I lived in the safety of a military base. But, you know, depending on how close you are to the armory, like you, you heard those things all the time, you sort of started to get jaded and and not not be able to tell the difference between what was considered unsafe and what was considered safe. Or even like, when my dad retired in Kansas, you know, we had an alarm that went off at noon to tell us, it was our tornado watch alarm, and it’s just just the test it. But after a while he got so used to it that when there was actual tornado coming, it was hard to tell the difference. And when we should go underground, which anyone can tell you in Kansas, they still don’t go under the ground. Everybody wants to see it. But that’s neither here nor there. In talking in regards to just knowing what’s considered safe, detaching ourselves from the moment is, is a is a level of safety. It’s a coping skill that we that we need when when things are out of our control. And for Wanda, her grief was literally out of her control, there was there was no way that she was going to be able to summon up enough magic to even recreate Vision that that was Vision because he was very autonomous. And her Vision was not. It took them a while to get there.

Stefanie Bautista 42:06
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 42:09
But I think, yeah…

Stefanie Bautista 42:10
it took them a while to get there. But we, we still see him as vision, the amalgam of Tony Stark’s AI, you know, just him being frankly, a robot. And I mean, for me, I always wonder like, “Wow, like she found love in somebody who isn’t fully human.” Like it really takes a special person to find a life and a heart in, in something that we see as just a creation of technology. Right? So we already know that there’s something special there that something that we don’t see in quite understand, but we still see it as very beautiful. But Vision himself he as he’s discovering himself through this series, he’s stuck in the middle of “Am I supposed to act like a human? Or am I supposed to act like what I’m feeling, which is more of Vision, as you know, AI Vision fully, you know, realized.” But I do want to go a little bit backwards in what you were saying when you were in Kansas and living on a military base. I feel like being a teacher in pretty much downtown Los Angeles, like we’re downtown Los Angeles adjacent. We’re always hearing sirens, helicopters, we’re always going into lockdown. That is just like a normal thing for us. We’re we’re, you know, used to hearing people on the street kind of yelling. Transients. We’re used to seeing, you know, people who are displaced, just like not knowing where they are. We’re used to that sort of chaos in and around our schools. And so our kids are jaded to some extent into just focusing on school. Us as teachers, we put on media, we do all sorts of things in the classroom to distract ourselves from letting them know, Hey, we’re in a lockdown based police activity just right across the street, probably either a domestic dispute, somebody has like a gun. Those things are normal to us. And I think that is very relatable in the way that Wanda as a child decides to cover herself and shield herself from all the chaos around her. Because that’s what children are really good at doing; their imaginations are so large, and they’re so eager to find comfort in anything. Whether it be in storytime and closing the blinds and putting on a short film or closing the blinds, listening to storytime just like totally detaching yourself because you just want to feel safe.

Ariel Landrum 44:33
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 44:33
And in some ways, I feel like switching gears we did that during the pandemic.

Ariel Landrum 44:38
Yeah we did.

Stefanie Bautista 44:38
I remember during the protests and during civil unrest here in an I’m in the valley, so I was far away from where I work downtown, but Van Nuys was like one of the places that was really hit with the looting and a lot of protests and just people just like fed up and upset and just like going through all of the businesses and destroying them. So at one point, I was just hearing explosions, maybe like, every 30 minutes. I didn’t know what they were.

Ariel Landrum 45:09
Yeah. Yup.

Stefanie Bautista 45:09
And at that time, my son was about four months old. So I was trying to shield him as a parent as well, from hearing all of these sounds. He doesn’t know yet if they’re scary, or real, or whatever, but I didn’t want him to feel my fear. So we would distract ourselves. We would put on Disney+, we would watch things and try to just make sure that they felt safe in any way, shape, or form. So we I definitely can relate to what you were saying. But I know that we talked a lot about not just grief, but creating this world that is your safe space, right? Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 45:55
Yeah, I think in therapy, we ask clients to create comfort corners, either like in the real world or in their mind. Safety corners, safe spaces that you can go to in your mind’s eye when you are feeling anxious. And for for Wanda, she was able to do that with these sitcoms. And again, because I think sitcoms were a smart choice. They’re formulaic, they’re predictable.

Stefanie Bautista 46:21
They so comforting.

Ariel Landrum 46:22
They’re so comforting. And then even thinking about the way the comedy is, it’s very slapstick. Right, like if we think of Queen of Slapstick, I Love Lucy. Like we saw some of that in Wandavision in the the way that she was, you know, moving the ingredients around. Yeah, it was very Nick at Night.

Stefanie Bautista 46:43
Very Bewitched.

Ariel Landrum 46:44
Very Bewitched.

Stefanie Bautista 46:45
And I Dream of Jeannie so cute.

Ariel Landrum 46:48
It was a good respite. Because a lot of the humor is often very sarcastic, snarky, right?

Stefanie Bautista 46:57
Dry.

Ariel Landrum 46:57
We don’t get that…. Dry. We don’t get that until we get to like the 90’s. Yeah, the the Malcolm in the Middle sort of inspired episode. And we we start to see her, let her guard down there. And that’s why the humor changes. And I think that that’s also when we start to see her world unravel.

Stefanie Bautista 47:24
Yeah, in the classroom as well. We have a piece corner in every classroom for kids to just take a break because sometimes learning is really stressful. And you know, you you can feel some emotions that you just need to learn how to self regulate. And Wanda was the Queen of Self Regulation because she was creating all this magic to create her piece corner. But yeah, definitely the the humor and the comfort that we find in just the sitcom structure where we know it was every Friday, at 7 pm. We knew that there was gonna be one story that we followed, and that we are going to laugh and we’re going to find a little twist at the end. We’re going to end the episode resolving whatever problem that was presented in the beginning of the episode. And then we get to rest and then look forward to the next one. There wasn’t too much of an underlying like, larger story arc in many of these sitcoms. It was just very… Problem. Resolve. Happiness. Let’s have dinner. You know? Not Not until we see the interweaving of storylines in Modern Family, which they touch upon in the later episodes. And I have to shout out Elizabeth Olsen for her Claire Dunphy impression, I am such a huge Modern Family fan and the way she looks at the camera and does that like mom stare? Like, “Are you freaking kidding me?” I love that. That was like the best and I was just like, “She freaking nailed it.” Like, I love it. So we didn’t see those interlocking story lines until then. And there was there was no, there was no comfort there anymore, because now you have the kids who are grown. And they’re kind of thinking of their mom. And we’re not quite sure if they’re figments of her imagination yet at that point when they’re introduced, because the weird way that they aged, and that kind of creeped me out. Did it creep you out? It creeped me out.

Ariel Landrum 49:31
Which it also made me think of sitcoms when they were like replace younger kids and siblings and all of a sudden they’re just older but everybody else isn’t as older because they’re not like kids aging. That rapid aging thing is something we’ve seen usually doesn’t happen in that episode.

Stefanie Bautista 49:46
No. It happens over seasons.

Ariel Landrum 49:48
Next season, they’ve replaced this person with someone who’s like way older that somehow supposed to play younger. I think that also the like the knowingness that they knew that they were aging like I’m going to make a decision to be 10. Because I want a dog.

Stefanie Bautista 50:03
That self-awareness so weird. But speaking of kids, the way she gave birth, let me just say, if I could give birth that easily, I’d have a ton of kids at this. Because I was like, how are they going to show this and then I, as a mother, who had just given birth, was like, I’ve seen so many different ways that sitcoms portray this. Mainly, the one that sticks out to me is the one in The Office or a Pam is. She, her water breaks, and then she she gets, you know, sent to the hospital with Jim and it’s just like total chaos, because like, Michael’s tried to record it, but then when she’s in the delivery room, you hear her screaming, and you hear her just like in pain. And then Michael steps in and he’s just like, “Oh, God, that baby’s gonna have a lot of hair.” And that is the first time that that kind of grossness of of childbirth in a sitcom was, you know, portrayed to me. But back then we didn’t we never saw Lucy give birth to Little Ricky we never…

Ariel Landrum 51:04
Well so in The Mary Tyler Moore Show…

Stefanie Bautista 51:07
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 51:08
Georgette gives birth at Mary’s apartment. So yeah, that’s sort of what they were harking to.

Stefanie Bautista 51:13
I think so too…

Ariel Landrum 51:13
Because it is the 1970s.

Stefanie Bautista 51:15
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 51:16
And just as a as hilariously goofy as that.

Stefanie Bautista 51:20
Yes just as hilariously goofy, and anyone knows any woman any real like 21st century being knows that, childbirth is not like that. It is not cute. It’s very messy. And that’s all I gotta say about that. And to keep this prestene world it would not have happened.

Ariel Landrum 51:39
And the only mess they sorta had was her magic sort of like being in and out, right? But yeah, babies were came out clean.

Stefanie Bautista 51:48
Like fully grown almost like?

Ariel Landrum 51:50
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 51:51
They look like they had lived a couple weeks at least. Because we all know in creating a perfect sitcom, babies are not going to follow your stage directions. They’re not going to know their cues. So whenever we saw babies in sitcoms, they were fully grown.

Ariel Landrum 52:07
They are fully grown. Or they’re plastic.

Stefanie Bautista 52:10
Yes. Or they’re plastic. Oh my gosh, the plastic baby. It’s always fun to see and point out “Oh my god that baby’s fake!”

Ariel Landrum 52:15
“Fake baby!”

Stefanie Bautista 52:16
Fake baby. But we touch there’s so many things I think in one division to to tackle stylistically. Emotionally with Wanda’s female, female, I guess gaze, you can say in somebody as an outsider looking in. But at the same time creating her world she’s kind of laying out the tracks that she goes. And how I feel like many women do that in their everyday lives, especially as mothers and as wives and just caregivers, we’re kind of laying out the tracks as we go. Because if we don’t know what’s going to happen, chaos can ensue. I feel like every mother and wife has a little bit of or any head of household, that’s a woman really, you don’t have to be a wife or a mother to know that. If you’re keeping the house together, there’s little chaos magic that has to happen in order for it to make it to the next day.

Ariel Landrum 53:10
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 53:10
So I think there’s there’s a lot of things to be said about that, that we can, you know, tackle in a whole other episode. But I guess with every medium, maybe we can talk about what we loved and what we didn’t love, I guess because we really loved Wandavision.

Ariel Landrum 53:27
Yeah, I did. I really loved Wandavision in regards to the evolution of her hair.

Stefanie Bautista 53:37
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 53:39
So we know that it represents different areas of television, but it’s also very symbolic of her mental state throughout the series and that be wanting to control her identity and forcing a very specific presentation of self, and the unraveling of it. And literally the unraveling of her hair showing that. Because in the 1950s episode, again, we mentioned it was curled and coifed and had, you know, Stepford Wives vibes shorter pressed towards her head. And if I think of, you know, The Hex it was smaller at the time, it was still sort of being crafted. It was pressed close to her. There wasn’t other narrative being that we were aware of. But still, there wasn’t other narrative being brought in at least on Vision’s part, right? Eventually we see him sort of go off on his own. And then her hair continues to lengthen as her powers in The Hex grows.

Stefanie Bautista 54:35
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 54:36
And once sort of the town mirage comes undone her hair is shaggy, it’s loose, it’s messy, it’s uncapped.

Stefanie Bautista 54:45
It look like I’m done braids. Like when youdo your braids.

Ariel Landrum 54:49
Undone braids? Yes. Like I I need to let this out. I need to breathe. Yes, until it became a main once she was fully Scarlet Witch, it was red. It was. It was wavy, it was…

Stefanie Bautista 55:01
Big.

Ariel Landrum 55:01
Eluding fire was huge. It was a huge main. It was her chaos magic coming off of her. And a part of it was her embracing her full self. If we think of tight like coifed curls, you’re you’re not embracing really your full self, what you’re doing is you’re creating a presentation of self you want others to digest. In this case, it was like “To hell what you think,” right? ” Will literally sennd you there.”

Stefanie Bautista 55:28
“I’mma be me.”

Ariel Landrum 55:28
“I’mma be me.”

Stefanie Bautista 55:29
And it takes time to do hair like that. So you already know that there’s, oh my gosh, if anybody’s done pin curls, it takes for ever in a day to get them right.

Ariel Landrum 55:38
For-ev-ver.

Stefanie Bautista 55:38
And it takes practice, you got to do it every single day until you get them right. And I think that is something that it’s a very vintage personality trait of women back in the day to get themselves ready in order to be presentable for the males and for everybody else in the world that they’re going to go out and see when they go to the grocery store. So I mean, her being her full self just shows that you know what, “I don’t care what anybody else thinks I’m not living for anybody else. I’m living for me and what makes me happy.” Which she’s still trying to figure out.

Ariel Landrum 56:10
Yeah. Yeah, I I know that this is probably a moving towards her being a villain. So I’m wondering how her hair will change in that sense because there’s no way it’s going to stay even with with this because this embracing yourself that’s her embracing her power and and that it may actually also be just naturally an innate to her, not just given to her by the mind stone, but I also think that as she starts to become more villainous, it’ll probably become like those tendrils like we saw in Agatha, right? Like, these sort of like, has has its own arms and legs even. Could reach out and grab you. The other thing I really liked, obviously, I loved the music choices. And in the in the 90’s episode for the what was like the Malcolm in the Middle, the singer of that theme song is Kathleen Hanna from Bikini Kill. From the Riot Grrl music era. For those who don’t know, the Riot Grrl music era happened in 1990’s, and it was an underground feminist punk movement. In this subculture had music that was for feminism and politics. And at the concerts, what Riot Grrl bands like Bikini Kill would do is they would tell the women, “Come to the front. Men you go to the back. We’re going to make space a safe space for women, they’re going to be able to mosh they’re going to be able to be themselves and you’re going to cheer them on, you’re not going to make noise at them, you’re going to make noise for them, you’re going to lift them up.” And it was interesting because in this episode, we see her at the end like really assert herself in regards to Pietro her her fake Pietro.

Stefanie Bautista 57:55
Her fake Pietro. Which we could talk so much more about fake Pietro and… I was like “That’s not Aaron Taylor Rogers.”

Ariel Landrum 58:03
“The goofy uncle err.” Yeah. I think that that was that was really reminiscent of her saying like, “I am not just a mom. I am not just the wife.” This is an even in her costuming. right this is this is symbolizing that, “I am going to be the Scarlet Witch.”

Stefanie Bautista 58:19
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I totally got that right girl vibes. I grew up in music discovery, listening to Sleater-Kinney and Le Tigre and like thinking, “Oh, I can totally be a tomboy still, but I could be a girl while doing that. And, and it’s okay to be a girl and be a badass.” And that was totally something in the 90s that a lot of girls went through where they were just kind of tired of being pop princess. And the dichotomy of seeing Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera at the time, but also knowing that there were these girls who could rock out and be punk rock badass. Totally his maybe it shows a dichotomy of what Wanda wanted to be and who she was before. I feel like every girl has a bit of a transformation when they grow up. When they go through those formative years. I know I had many stylistic choices that were very, very different and still are changing to this day. But I think that that was really fun to see. And also really touching to see that she was going through these real life emotions, even though she is somebody that has a lot of power to control her own universe. She’s still going through these things. And that really made her way, way more human and way more relatable, especially to women.

Ariel Landrum 59:38
Yeah, so I would say that those were some of the things that I really loved. And then certainly the episode where the beds get combined for like a foreshadowing of them having kids.

Stefanie Bautista 59:48
Babies yeah.

Ariel Landrum 59:49
I thought that was that was very clever and again that moving of the eras because we did only see couples sleep in separate beds. And then apparently, Mary Kay and Johnny was the first show to feature a couple in a bed together and be pregnant.

Stefanie Bautista 1:00:04
I never saw that.

Ariel Landrum 1:00:06
I’ve never seen it either. But there you go. There’s some history for ya’ll to put in your trivia night. Yeah, I think the thing that bothered me, which I don’t know if it quite bothers anybody else the same is that Scarlet Witch is, is that character is inspired off of the Romani people. But it does not really show the honoring of them. In fact, Romani people are presented as being chaotic, as being emotional, as being uncontrolled. And even in her having her classic Scarlet Witch costume in the Halloween episode, even though she is saying that this is, you know, Sokovia fortune teller, they didn’t have to sort of insert that sort of type of language. She could have just said that she was a made up comic book character. But the more that they kept hinting towards her Romani pass, or or at least what is inspired by the Romani people, the more it was the stereotype of, of these individuals and not so much their their actual heritage.

Stefanie Bautista 1:01:15
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 1:01:16
And so I wished that we hadn’t gotten that close to it, I felt like we could have pushed the narrative slightly different in in regards to her past, especially because she’s already not Magneto’s kid.

Stefanie Bautista 1:01:27
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 1:01:28
And now, I would say that was the only thing that bothered me because even her sort of exploding and her grief, Romani people have experienced a lot of grief because they, they’ve been removed from their lands, they, they have had a lot of harm and trauma to their people. But that’s being made fun of as, like, “You just don’t know how to control yourself, you just don’t know how to be controlled.” So that’s where the history of the like the chaos magic comes from inspiration wise. And I feel like if we kept it in with the mind stone, and I feel like if we had not inserted that line about a fortune teller, I think I would have liked that liked it even more, it would have been a full nine. It’s like an 8.7 for me.

Stefanie Bautista 1:02:11
Yeah, I totally, I totally understand that. And like they portray them as such outlandish, kind of almost comical type of people, but it really is part of their culture and something to, you know, be respected and honored. So I totally see that. For myself. I love Wandavision. I love the mystery of it. I love the unknowingness and kind of like, “How are they going to? How are they going to immerse me in classic television, but also make it creepy and mysterious, like the Twilight Zone.” And I love the Twilight Zone. I actually probably watch more retro TV than I would like to just because I was so used to it. And it’s comforting to me. So I I really liked the way that just the the style choices and the way that they were so they were so true to the era. They like took things from the Brady Bunch like you saw staircases that look like the one in the Brady Bunch house. You saw, like you said, I mean like the the set for the first episode was almost exactly like I Love Lucy set where the kitchen was on the right, the dining room and the dining room and the living room are in the middle. And then they had their bed somewhere else. I think that that was really smart of them to present it in that way that was familiar, but also foreign. And I think whenever they played with that all throughout the series was really fun to kind of just like go back and forth. Because I like watching something but also having a hidden agenda of like, like, “How is the production thinking about this every single time?” And that’s why watching Assembled really, really helped because I saw like what they were thinking of and I was like, “If I were to recreate a whole scene,” kind of like how sometimes we do theater in the classroom, like “how would I wow can I make this real?” Like what do I tell like my students, the actors, what mindset do they have to be to make this feel tangible and make this feel like how it’s supposed to? I love the breaks the commercial breaks as creepy as they were. I love that they brought back Randall Park as Jimmy Woo because I love Jimmy Woo in Ant Man and The Wasp. I think he’s hilarious. I love Randall Park. He himself was on a sitcom Fresh Off the Boat, which was based off of Eddie Wong’s life who is a chef and entrepreneur and that sitcom was so important to me because it was the first time since I think Margaret Cho’s sitcom where you saw an Asian family going through their life in America. So I really love Fresh Off the Boat. So I’m pretty sure that Randall Park was really excited to be part of Wandavision being that he was also in a sitcom himself. even talking about a Darcy who is from the Thor movies. She…What is her anem?

Ariel Landrum 1:05:06
The ultimate Sass Queen.

Stefanie Bautista 1:05:07
The ultimate Sass Queen.

Ariel Landrum 1:05:08
Kat Dennings.

Stefanie Bautista 1:05:09
Kat Dennings is also in a sitcom Two Broke Girls on CBS.

Ariel Landrum 1:05:14
And..

Stefanie Bautista 1:05:14
She.. Yeah, and she’s also

Ariel Landrum 1:05:16
The dolls one?

Stefanie Bautista 1:05:18
Yes. Dollface.

Ariel Landrum 1:05:20
Yes. Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 1:05:20
It was yeah fun show on Hulu and has a fantastic set of girls that are just so weird. Quirky. And is part of everybody’s girl group I guess girl group of friends of anyway watch Dollface it’s hilarious.

Ariel Landrum 1:05:36
It’s hilarious. Particularly the brunch episode.

Stefanie Bautista 1:05:41
That whole series is just so funny. So she brings a little bit of her snarkiness and sassiness from Two Broke Girls and Dollface into the MCU as Darcy and she did Darcy before she did those sitcoms. And and being in Thor and seeing the comedic style in Thor change from the first Thor to Ragnarok. I think she brought a little bit of that too. So that was really cool to see because it’s familiar. Seeing those two characters pulled from a Marvel Universe into now Wanda’s world and introducing Monica Rambeau who is from the Captain Marvel movies, who is played by Teyonah Paris who is beautiful by the way. She…

Ariel Landrum 1:06:25
Grog. Gorgeous.

Stefanie Bautista 1:06:26
A gorgeous human being. Everything looked fantastic on her. And…

Ariel Landrum 1:06:31
Yes, it was it didn’t matter what outfit home girl was wearing grog.

Stefanie Bautista 1:06:35
I mean, everybody looked amazing. But she so gorgeous Teyonah Paris, shout out to you. Did an amazing job becoming Photon. Who will we will probably see in the later movies. But yeah, there’s just like, overall the feel the vibe, the the tone of Wandavision and the unknowing and mystery of it I loved. What I would have liked to see was more episodes because I feel like they were so honed into the Bewitched and the I Love Lucy and the I Dream of Jeannie eras, that they didn’t give that due diligence to other eras. And I think it could have maybe she could have used those 80’s 90’s sitcoms to interact with the townspeople more.

Ariel Landrum 1:07:25
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 1:07:25
And I would have liked to see what their perspective was because as they were sort of becoming self realized that they were in a world that wasn’t theirs. And they were you know, trapped essentially, I think those instances would have really made it difficult for Wanda to want to continue, because she was juggling, “Do I do this for my family? Do I save these people because they also have families that they are missing. And you know, I’m changing their world in order to make my world better.” I think that would have given a lot more depth to her dilemma. And not just throwing Agatha in there right away. But also I wanted to see more Agatha and Wanda interactions.

Ariel Landrum 1:08:05
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 1:08:05
It was so electric seeing them on screen. And Kathryn Hahn, who has been in so many different sitcoms, the first time I saw her was on Parks and Recreation as the no nonsense lawyer that is funily on enough representing Bobby Newport who is Paul Rudd, who is Ant Man. So all of these all of these fun connections that I was making, in my mind, being an avid consumer of pop culture.

Ariel Landrum 1:08:31
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 1:08:32
Seeing her step into Agatha and being really scary and just like controlling and that that ultimate portrayal of a witch who is just out there to just destroy. She played that really well. And I think that witch versus witch. “Who is good who is bad are they both bad? Are they both just gonna destroy this earth?” I wanted to see more depth in that so more episodes would have been greatly appreciated. I hear that they’re not doing as season 2 is that correct?

Ariel Landrum 1:09:01
That’s what I hear as well. Hopefully that’s just a rumor and that there or or that it’s gonna be titled something different right? Like Falcon and Winter Soldier who is no longer the Falcon is Cap.

Stefanie Bautista 1:09:14
Captain America.

Ariel Landrum 1:09:15
Uhh I don’t know.

Stefanie Bautista 1:09:16
Scarlet Witch Vision?

Ariel Landrum 1:09:18
Scarlet Vision.

Stefanie Bautista 1:09:21
Hey, you know what? That could be a play on her seeing red, and that symbolism of her’s. She’s just now we see her in her remote village somewhere is it probably there’s the Sokovia I don’t know where it is…

Ariel Landrum 1:09:33
Some kind of Eastern Europe area yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 1:09:35
She’s in the Himalaya somewhere. She has red eyes. She’s controlling her projecting of herself in front of the house and she’s trying to get her babies back. So you can see that she is fully seeing scarlet because she is just laser focused on getting her family back. So Disney if you’re listening… Marvel if you’re listening… We have an idea for you, which is probably an idea that you probably thought of already.

Ariel Landrum 1:10:04
Yes. Probably an idea. We will we will only take 2%.

Yes we will only take 2%. Hey, but that’s a big chunk though. I’ll take it. take what I can get.

Stefanie Bautista 1:10:16
But yeah, is there anything else you want to say about one division? Oh, I didn’t get my rating, right?

Ariel Landrum 1:10:21
Yeah, what’s your rating?

Stefanie Bautista 1:10:23
Man. I think just this is my favorite. Did I did I say Loki was my favorites. I love Loki so much. But Wandavision. It just speaks to my vintage retro heart and all of the things that I love about pop culture growing up. So if I gave Loki… Did I give it an 8.5?

Ariel Landrum 1:10:47
I think you were in the middle between Rachel and I.

Stefanie Bautista 1:10:51
Yeah, I was in the middle. I put it at an 8.5 to maybe even an 8.6. Just because the styles were just so true in the beginning, and they really got the costume down. And it really pissed a lot of people off, which I loved. I love that I got the the Neck Beards shaking. It’s always fun to see that and it’s always fun to see the fandom shock because if the fandom shock, then you know you did a good job, because you really. You are really onto something, and it’s usually a hit with Marvel. Sometimes it’s a miss, but we haven’t seen a mess since I think the Incredible Hulk?

Ariel Landrum 1:11:37
What? There was no Incredible Hulk movie that doesn’t exist.

Stefanie Bautista 1:11:40
Edward Norton that wasn’t Oh, that was Fight Club. That’s right. It was all it was all a figment of his imagination.

Ariel Landrum 1:11:46
Yes, yes.

Stefanie Bautista 1:11:47
That’s right. That was part of Fight Club. Yeah, it was really good to see that.

Ariel Landrum 1:11:54
I think for me, the only thing is, again, in regards to the music, and I really loved the scene where they had “elped Me Rhonda playing to then all of a sudden Help Me Wanda.

Stefanie Bautista 1:12:06
Yeah. So good.

Ariel Landrum 1:12:07
I think that was a good sort of like narrative shift.

Stefanie Bautista 1:12:12
So good. Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 1:12:14
But yeah, I think that I don’t know if we’ll get something similar to this again. In regards to any of the the Marvel movies or shows. I think we’re gonna get very traditional back to the Marvel Marvel formula. And so I I’m okay with that. I’m okay with this being it’s it’s you it’s unique thing, I think that there’s no way to recreate this and have it just be as magical.

Stefanie Bautista 1:12:43
The timing was so right, we were coming out of the pandemic, sort of, right, we weren’t out of it, we’re kind of back in it. But everybody was still at home. We were still consuming media, mainly through our television screens and our computer screens. And I think the timing was just right to reintroduce the Marvel Cinematic Universe in this way, because we haven’t seen anything since everything shut down. So, it was a perfect way to launch Disney+ Marvel media.

Ariel Landrum 1:13:12
Yeah, yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 1:13:14
Because they saw how successful like you said the Mandalorian was. And because they knew it was successful for Star Wars, they’re like, “Hey, we have a whole new phase to introduce. And it’s gonna take a lot of details.” So now knowing that they’re using this in tandem with the movies, it really kind of conditioned us to consume this sort of media in this grand world of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And get ready to dive in and analyze alongside each other with movies and TV.

Ariel Landrum 1:13:49
So Stef, the Happiest Pod on Earth universe. What will be up on our docket next? What do we have coming up?

Stefanie Bautista 1:13:58
What do we have on our docket next? I know that we are done with Well, we’re not done with talking about all the shows. Right? We still have to talk about Falcon and Winter Soldier which I loved so many things about.

Ariel Landrum 1:14:11
Yeah

Stefanie Bautista 1:14:12
I love Sam. I love Sam and I love Bucky and they’re they’re like, they’re like the boyband that exists in my Marvel heart.

Ariel Landrum 1:14:26
The bromance.

Stefanie Bautista 1:14:27
The bromance, and you guys will come to see how much I love buddy cop comedies.

Ariel Landrum 1:14:33
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 1:14:34
I have so many favorites, but I’ll talk about that later. So we are going to be talking about Falcon and Winter Soldier pretty soon. But I know that we’re gonna have some special guests, right?

Ariel Landrum 1:14:44
Yeah. So yeah, yeah, we’re gonna have a guest tell us their experience on webslinger. We we have a friend who got in.

Stefanie Bautista 1:14:53
He did it.

Ariel Landrum 1:14:53
He did it. I also know that we’re going to talk about AIA combining our music passion with our passion Disney karaoke.

Stefanie Bautista 1:15:04
Yes. Disney karaoke which is the thing, guys. So don’t don’t believe the memes.

Ariel Landrum 1:15:09
Don’t believe the memes. It’s real. It’s real.

Stefanie Bautista 1:15:10
Yeah, we’re gonna talk about karaoke. And the ways that we use karaoke to connect and the ways that we’re going to use karaoke and music, especially Disney music, to, to relate to other people, other fans and the way that the uniqueness of Disney music connects us and our kids too. Yep, so a lot of things to look forward to. I will be going to the parks hopefully soon.

Ariel Landrum 1:15:38
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 1:15:39
So you’ll see that in an episode. Hopefully, I have a good experience. Fingers crossed.

Ariel Landrum 1:15:44
Fingers crossed.

Stefanie Bautista 1:15:44
Because I want to have at least experience that you had Ariel because you had a really good experience.

Ariel Landrum 1:15:50
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 1:15:51
Yeah, okay. But once again, thank you for listening to the Happiest Pod on Earth. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter at happiest, @happiestpodGT, and on Instagram @hoppiestpodGT, where we will be updating you on all things happening in the Disney Marvel Star Wars universe.

Ariel Landrum 1:16:11
Absolutely. Bye, everybody.

Stefanie Bautista 1:16:13
Bye.

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Stefanie Bautista 0:11
Hello, everybody, welcome to the Happiest Pod On Earth. I’m Stefanie.

Ariel Landrum 0:15
And I’m Ariel. And we’re Disney fans. But we’re really so much more than that.

Stefanie Bautista 0:19
Yep. I’m an educator who uses passions and fandoms to help my students grow and learn about themselves and the world around them.

Ariel Landrum 0:25
And as for myself, I’m a licensed therapist who uses clients passions and fandoms to help them grow and heal from trauma and obtain mental wellness.

Stefanie Bautista 0:33
Happiest Pod is a place where we dissect Disney mediums with a critical lens. Why do we do this? Because just like you we are more than just fans, we expect more from the mediums that we consume every day.

Ariel Landrum 0:43
So Stef… What Disney medium or experience are we dissecting today?

Stefanie Bautista 0:51
Today we are talking about Black Widow.

Ariel Landrum 0:54
What!?

Stefanie Bautista 0:54
The movie that we have been waiting for for so so long.

I feel like…

Ariel Landrum 1:00
So long.

Stefanie Bautista 1:01
Not only because the pandemic made it longer, I feel like we’ve been waiting for this for what is it more than a decade now? Marvel celebrated its 10 year when again? Like a year ago?

Ariel Landrum 1:12
Yeah…

Two years ago?

At least that that long.

Stefanie Bautista 1:16
Yeah. I mean, when they took that picture, Scarlett Johansson had brown hair.

Ariel Landrum 1:22
Yes. Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 1:23
She had long brown hair. So definitely not Endgame. She didn’t have the short blonde bob right?

Ariel Landrum 1:31
No.

Stefanie Bautista 1:31
She had. I mean, she changes her hair all the time. But I don’t remember seeing that after or before I saw the 10 year anniversary. But Black Widow back to the movies, Marvel really stated that this was their big return to the movies. And how did you feel about that?

Ariel Landrum 1:50
Yeah, I was actually really excited. I genuinely miss our theater experiences. Well, in the before times…

Stefanie Bautista 2:00
Yeah. Yes.

Ariel Landrum 2:01
We used to get those midnight showings, we would we would stay up late, we would stay all the way to the end credits to make sure we got every scene that they put in there and every Easter Egg and I often I would rent an entire row. And so it was it was a gang of us. Like we had we had the squad 20, 30 seats.

Stefanie Bautista 2:21
Deep.

Ariel Landrum 2:22
It was great.

Stefanie Bautista 2:23
We would hang out beforehand, have dinner and drinks. Pregame. Kind of like we were tailgating for a game or you know, pre gaming before a concert, we treated it exactly like that. So I’m sure many of you guys did the same thing. Preparing for all of these movie releases these Marvel releases that were so important to us. Are so important to us.

Ariel Landrum 2:43
Yeah, yeah. So it’s so it was, it was nice to sort of have that back, but not really. And since since I lost I last saw this movie versus like what’s happening now. The LA has mask orders again.

Stefanie Bautista 2:59
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 3:00
And wearing them inside. We were that delta variant is no joke.

Stefanie Bautista 3:05
Yep. It’s no joke.

Ariel Landrum 3:05
So this was a pause in the pandemic that I got to embrace.

Stefanie Bautista 3:10
It was a hard pause. A positive that was gonna be a longer pause. But you know, we we had a little too much hope for that. But I know both Ariel and I saw Black the Black Widow in theaters, but we sought separately due to our schedules and everything else that’s going on in our lives. So we would like to share with you guys are 2 very different experiences, apparently, of going back to the movies, because, I mean, this was not my first movie back in the theaters. Although this is my first large movie back without there being many restrictions. Was it the same for you, Ariel?

Ariel Landrum 3:48
So this is my This was my first movie back during the pandemic. I did go see the Trolls movie? I hadn’t even seen the first one. But it was playing at an outdoor movie theater. So I saw it in my car.

Stefanie Bautista 4:02
Oh, right. Yeah, yes.

Ariel Landrum 4:03
Um, other than that, I had not stepped foot in a movie theater the entire shutdown.

Stefanie Bautista 4:09
Yeah, I went to see a drive-thru movie too. I saw. I’m forgetting the name of it. It’s the one with Shia Labeouf and he’s like a cholo?

Ariel Landrum 4:18
Oh, yeah. I don’t remember the name of that.

Stefanie Bautista 4:21
No, it’s not the negotiator. It’s something like that.

Ariel Landrum 4:26
Help us Dr. Google.

Stefanie Bautista 4:27
Yeah, help us doctor… And I saw it at Mission Tiki just like you did.

Ariel Landrum 4:31
Yeah MIssion Tiki.

Stefanie Bautista 4:31
You went to Mission Tiki. Yeah, pretty far away. And it was technically the first ever movie my son went to as like a 6 month old. Which is really funny. It was not very memorable. Shia Labeouf was cool. And I’m glad that he had a lot of dedication to this movie, but it was it was not it y’all. Definitely not my first movie back. My first movie back was Demon Slayer. And for all you anime fans out there, that was a fantastic movie to see in theaters especially for it being an empty theater at the time. But Black Widow was definitely my first big Marvel movie release full capacity theater. Back to the movies and yeah, I saw it at Burbank 16 which is a very popular place in LA to watch movies. It’s a huge cineplex. Very central to a lot of people who live in LA Valley area, and plenty of parking and we would normally see our Avengers movies all of our Iron Man’s, Captain America’s, Batman vs. Superman, all of our real big comic book theaters. If we couldn’t dish out the money to go see it at Arclight and the Cinerama, we would go to Burbank because a little bit more affordable and it was part of the AMC A List that many of us were a part of.

Ariel Landrum 5:45
And they had Dolby so…

Stefanie Bautista 5:47
They have Dolby

Ariel Landrum 5:47
You’re not missing out too much.

Stefanie Bautista 5:48
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 5:49
And and now everywhere you choose seats, so…

Stefanie Bautista 5:53
Yes.

Ariel Landrum 5:53
That was that was we… We used to go see it at the AMC that was the one in Winnetka maybe?

Stefanie Bautista 5:59
Oh my gosh, yes. Ariel would drag us all the way over there way out yonder in the deep Valley.

Ariel Landrum 6:05
Because of the prizes and the fact that I could get tickets.

Stefanie Bautista 6:08
Yes, but we could have done the same thing at Burbank, which we started to do. So

Ariel Landrum 6:12
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 6:13
We we live in we learn. And more people showed up because you started choosing Burbank, which is great. So yeah, Burbank normally is a solid theater, because it accommodates so many people and it’s usually always busy. They’re pretty on top of things. However, that was not my experience this time. This is not a theater review by any means necessary. But you know, for it not being my first experience back, but it was for many other people. I mean, there was just things that were kind of amiss. The great thing about Burbank is you don’t have to pay for parking. And I think that’s why a lot of people choose it. So parking wasn’t so bad. I watched on a Sunday night. And it was a 7:50 showing so not super late not super early, pretty prime time to watch a movie.

Ariel Landrum 7:01
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 7:02
We were able to purchase our tickets early. So we were able to reserve. I was in the Dolby Theatre, which was great. Been in that theater so many times. But my friend decided to get us our popcorn and drinks before we got there because I was running a tad bit late. And so I’m getting these texts from my friend and he’s like “Ah Stef, they ran out of Coke on all the machines and every single machine be routed with Coca Cola.” And they also did not have Ginger Ale, which is like my second choice. And so he had to get Diet Coke and I am not a fan of Diet Coke. It has that taste that I’m just like bleh afterwards. I don’t know what it is I do they sweetened with Stevia or something?

Ariel Landrum 7:48
No I that Coke Zero isn’t it doesn’t have sugar right is a thing? I don’t know.

Stefanie Bautista 7:52
Coke Zero doesn’t have sugar. But anyway, it has this taste and I’m sure you diet drinkers. I’m sorry. If you like diet, I’m just not a fan. So I knew I was gonna go in having to drink that. And it was like a large. The popcorn was like it wasn’t popped.

Ariel Landrum 8:09
What?

Stefanie Bautista 8:09
We sat down and it was a huge bucket of popcorn. And we usually do that to share. Me and my husband normally do. And my friend got his own bucket of popcorn and the minute we sat down, he leans over and he’s like, “This is the worst popcorn I’ve ever had in my life.”

Ariel Landrum 8:26
So I mean, was it was it mushy? Or was it not all popped? Or was it cold?

Stefanie Bautista 8:31
They were tiny, uncooked kernels, like crumbs. And so the top layer because I had the fresh batch because my friend had been eating has already. The top layer was like maybe an inch of freshly popped popcorn. And then under that was all the not popped popcorn.

Ariel Landrum 8:49
No.

Stefanie Bautista 8:49
Like maybe I would say six inches down. So here we are, like trying to like not choke.

Ariel Landrum 8:59
Hm hmm.

Stefanie Bautista 9:00
Eating the popcorn. And you know, I was like, all right, well, this is gonna be more work than I thought. And so we’re trying to get through the bottom of popcorn. But I think that was one of the things I was looking forward to the most about being back into theaters; theater popped popcorn. I love the smell of freshly popped buttered popcorn. It’s like my last treat that I like to eat before I leave the parks. Like I mentioned in our last episode.

Ariel Landrum 9:24
Yup. Hm hmm.

Stefanie Bautista 9:25
And I don’t know like I really love popcorn. So this is kind of disappointing.

Ariel Landrum 9:30
Oh, man. Okay, so one of the things that we talked about in a previous episode in regards to my experience going back to the parks, like we really highlighted expectations.

Stefanie Bautista 9:42
Yes.

Ariel Landrum 9:43
How they can sometimes be a detriment to happiness. So it sounds like you were you were expecting what you considered even a traditional movie going experience not not even very, like you know, like you weren’t asking for the extra.

Stefanie Bautista 9:57
Nope. I just wanted my drink and my popcorn. Literally it I knew I knew the theater was going to be fine. I had a plan already to just eat my popcorn and drink as fast as I could, so that I can put my mask back on knowing that there was full capacity. So that’s really my plan going into the movie theater. And it kind of got jacked, because I was trying to navigate this popcorn situation, and in the dark. You’re not really trying to look inside of your popcorn bucket and trying to find things that won’t kill you. So I mean, at that point, I was like, “You know what, I’m just gonna use my my sense of touch, to find the ones that were popped, and enjoy the movie away.”

Ariel Landrum 10:41
Way to evolve and adapt.

Stefanie Bautista 10:43
Yeah, way to evolve and adapt. Just like, you know, how we do. The pandemic taught me a lot y’all. So I mean, it could have been worse. There could have been no popcorn, we could have been, you know, I couldn’t have I, I maybe could have had a friend who couldn’t get me popped, you know, so many other things. That you know, we we think about walking in and you know, there are certain privileges that I’ve had going into here, but it was just a little disappointing.

Ariel Landrum 11:08
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 11:08
The beginning of the movie, and it didn’t really set the tone for the movie just because the movie in in in itself, and we will talk about this in a little bit. It just pulls you from like, minute 1. So, you know, aside from that… It was okay theatre experience.

Ariel Landrum 11:28
Okay.

Stefanie Bautista 11:28
I will try it again maybe not on a weekend. I’m you know, at that point in my life where I don’t have to see a midnight showing. I don’t have to watch things on the weekend, even though it’s very convenient for me. I will be A-Okay with watching on a Monday night so.

Ariel Landrum 11:45
Well I think part of it is like we have gotten older so maybe that’s not something that we need. You you definitely have family, a little one that you have to go home to and accommodate. But I also think like with the evolution of media, it’s a lot easier to avoid spoilers now. Umm even that term, I think in the beginning of my Marvel watching career wasn’t really even a thing. And it was like “How do I how do I read a movie review without somebody telling me like who the bad guy was and how they got destroyed?”

Stefanie Bautista 12:16
I mean, like a wise person once said, “Ain’t nobody got time for that.” So…

“No buddy go time.”

“Ain’t nobody got time for that.” But I know you had a very different experience.

Ariel Landrum 12:26
Yes, yes, I did a very different experience. Um, so this was the first time that I went back to the theaters and like you said, I also wore my mask unless I was going to be eating popcorn or drinking Coke. Again with weird ticket buying situations, my partner and I tried to buy tickets to the El Capitan Theatre. The El Capitan Theatre used to be a playhouse theatre; is built in 1926. And it was actually balt, bought by Walt Disney Studios in 1989. And they did like a two year restoration with Pacific theatres. And so gorgeous. It has a Wurlitzer Organ, it has a street level walk up Box Office, and it’s actually marked as LA Historic Cultural Monument.

Stefanie Bautista 13:16
Yeah, it’s definitely a very touristy area to watch a movie.

Ariel Landrum 13:22
Right on Hollywood and Highland.

Stefanie Bautista 13:25
Right front of the Dolby theater, where they host the Oscars.

Ariel Landrum 13:28
Walk of Fame. Stars.

Stefanie Bautista 13:30
All of that. So Ariel, you really went for the Hollywood experience for this one?

Ariel Landrum 13:35
Yeah. So I told my partner I’d never been to the El Capitan Theatre. Never.

Stefanie Bautista 13:40
“Dun dun dunn!” Can’t believe that.

Ariel Landrum 13:42
And there’s like a list of LA things that all ‘LA-ers’ do and then there’s a list of LA things that all tourists do, right?

Stefanie Bautista 13:50
Angelenos.

Ariel Landrum 13:51
Now ‘LA-ers.’

Stefanie Bautista 13:53
No one ever calls us that.

Ariel Landrum 13:55
Does that, does that count as one?

Stefanie Bautista 13:57
No, I’ll let that slide just because you’re a transplant.

Ariel Landrum 14:01
Thank you. But I and so one of those things is going to the El Capitan Theatre. I had never gone because I didn’t have a partner that wanted to go that far. Which…

Stefanie Bautista 14:14
It’s not that far.

Ariel Landrum 14:15
It’s not that far but in LA traffic, it’s like far enough, right?

Stefanie Bautista 14:18
I work farther guys. Much farther.

Ariel Landrum 14:23
But so he said, “Okay, well, then, you know, we’re gonna go back to the movies. We’re gonna go see Black Widow. Let’s see it at this theater.”

Stefanie Bautista 14:29
Love it. Yes.

Ariel Landrum 14:30
So we tried to buy tickets online. And they they make it so that you have to reserve there, there can’t be a seat on either side of you that’s filled as part of spacing.

Stefanie Bautista 14:41
Okay.

Ariel Landrum 14:42
For social distancing, and the system would not let us do it. Like it would not let even if we had like three seats on either side, like it was not letting us buy it. So then we called the Box Office, and they were telling us to just use the app. And then we’re like, “We tried the app. We tried the websites, it’s not working.” And then they finally let us buy tickets. And we were supposed to go in the at like 3:30, where it was supposed to be a matinee. And we ended up going at 10:30. We had to switch the tickets twice to 2 different times

Stefanie Bautista 15:16
Oh my gosh.

Ariel Landrum 15:18
Because my partner’s job and a shoot came up

Stefanie Bautista 15:22
Oh okay.

Ariel Landrum 15:22
And all that nonsense. This will be a common theme and a lot of these episodes where I will have plans that change because my partner’s job schedule is not consistent as he works in the industry. So there you go.

Stefanie Bautista 15:34
And like you said, area we are learning to adapt and, and learn about our expectations and our realities.

Ariel Landrum 15:43
Pivotting.

Stefanie Bautista 15:44
Pivotting. It’s just part of our it’s part of our MO now.

Ariel Landrum 15:47
Yes, yes. So um, my first time so if anybody has not been there. Totally worth it to go.

Stefanie Bautista 15:56
Yup.

Ariel Landrum 15:58
The there’s an intro show before your previews before your movie. So the the intro show was just just some lights and music but it’s Disney Magic lights and music. So there’s a stage in front and the music turns on. And there’s sparkly lights that are glowing all over throughout the theater. And the stage has a curtain and the curtain lifts. And then there’s a beautiful scenery of animals with a peacock in the middle. That’s just glittering and sparkly. And then that turns out to be a curtain and it lifts. And there’s a crystal beaded curtain that’s just sparkling with a cityscape behind it. And it turns out that beaded curtain and the cityscape are also a currtain and they lift. And then there’s a tensile shimmery curtain that gives you like a cool holographic effect. And that’s a curtain and it’s the final curtain. So that that was that made my freaking night. I did not expect it. I know that in one of our episodes, we talked about a Disney short that involves jobs. And I did get to see the guy who plays a Wurlitzer. I didn’t see him in person here, but I saw it on that.. In in that show. So I just thought that was the only performance and if he wasn’t on stage, then I wouldn’t get anything. But it was the lovely theater. No no lifting of the curtain.

Stefanie Bautista 17:26
Yeah, he’s not always there. And I think I’ve seen quite a good amount of movies there at the El Capitan. I probably only have seen him once or twice over the years. And I don’t even know if that’s the same guy who is on One Day at Disney. It might even be like a long time ago, because the first movie I ever remember watching there was Mulan in like, ’94.

Ariel Landrum 17:47
Okay.

Stefanie Bautista 17:47
So who knows who was playing at that time?

Ariel Landrum 17:51
So not the remake? Not the live action one.

Stefanie Bautista 17:53
No, no, no, no, no, this was this was Ming-na Wen. Mulan, like not live action, animated.

Ariel Landrum 18:01
Yeah. So um, I think something that I think probably was at your theater because and so I know it was mine. And I think is a very Los Angeles thing, because we are so close to the film industry was they had a lot of the props and costumes that were actually in the film. And for us it was in 2, like, opera boxes?

Stefanie Bautista 18:23
Yes.

Ariel Landrum 18:23
And then throughout the theater. Were there any for you?

Stefanie Bautista 18:26
Yes, it wasn’t for Black Widow. But they did have the costumes from Jungle Cruise at Burbank. I know, when you watch movies at the Arclight, either in Hollywood well, as they’re preparing to open it up, whoever’s taking it over. Any Arclights will have a bunch of costumes from many different movies. And it is a very LA thing, just because you know what to do with all of these beautiful costumes after they’re done doing their job? I mean, they’re just gonna sit in storage in all of these places in the Valley that store them. So what they do is that they do put them on display for long periods of time at theaters all throughout the Valley. So I hope they continue to do that.

Ariel Landrum 19:06
Yeah. And and then it’s something else that I and this is where I don’t know if… So, so again, I was I’m a military brat, and I moved around a lot. A lot of the theaters I went to where the free theaters on the military base. They are by far not snazzy or glamorous.

Stefanie Bautista 19:23
No.

Ariel Landrum 19:24
But they they never had trailers. It was just you saw the movie at the time that you were going to go so. And then and then my dad retired in Kansas. And that’s not really a big film industry area. There was I even remember there only being one theater and one in the city that I went to. So this is something that you’ll have, you’ll have to Tweet us if it’s changed in the Midwest. But I know one of the things that I loved when I started going into theaters out here in LA was was my swag. Had no idea that gave out swag and so at this theater, I got a tin popcorn bucket. It was tin and it has the El Capitan on it. My my drink cup, I could get a topper that also just stands on its own so I can put it on top of the drink or I can. It’s a figurine. So I got Taskmaster.

Stefanie Bautista 20:14
Nice.

Ariel Landrum 20:16
And I also got a poster at the end.

Stefanie Bautista 20:18
Yeah, I know that, from all the, you know, experiences that I’ve had at the El Capitan, because you’re paying slightly higher price for your movies, you are always going to get some sort of souvenir; a pin, a popcorn bucket, a little poster, what have you. It’s just all part of the experience of going to the El Capitan. I can’t say the same for a lot of AMCs, Pacific Theaters around LA. Sometimes they do, but they normally have that as a disclaimer before you buy your tickets.

Ariel Landrum 20:45
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 20:45
So if you do want to get some swag, there are plenty of opportunities to get that swag, you just kind of have to read the guidelines on the specific showing that you’re going to. But yeah, I think that is like an LA thing that we do have those opportunities. I don’t even know in, in New York or other major cities if they do this sort of thing. Maybe now with the rise of, you know, the popularity of Comic-Con and you know, comic book movies, especially, you know, incorporating Disney movies into this sort of category. Swag is a really big part of the experience of going to see a movie.

Ariel Landrum 21:21
It’s definitely part of the culture. Like you expect swag when you go to the cons.

Stefanie Bautista 21:25
Absolutely. So I think they’re really starting to incorporate that with the movies. But I know, for the El Capitan specifically, it is something that is included, as well as sometimes I don’t know, Ariel, did you get to go to the basement of El Capitan?

Ariel Landrum 21:37
No, we didn’t go to the basement.

Stefanie Bautista 21:39
Okay.

Ariel Landrum 21:39
And again, we saw the movie at 10:30 at night, and it was showing and when we got our popcorn, they gave us our refill right away because they’re like, “After, after this we gone.”

Stefanie Bautista 21:49
Yup. It’s closing time.

Ariel Landrum 21:52
But I’m, I’m curious for you. I know that some of our friends, when they went to AMC, they were able to get a comic book.

Stefanie Bautista 21:58
Yes. I think that was for some showings. It wasn’t part of my showing, unfortunately. But I think it was a part of the IMAX showings. I only went to a Dolby showing. So I know IMAX also does a promo because you know, they, they want people to spend that extra money. And I know that there’s an IMAX at City Walk next to Universal Studios. However, you do have to pay for parking there. And that’s why, although it is fun, and I suggest going for like a really special movie that you want to see. It is going to cost you a pretty penny, knowing that movies are not cheap nowadays. But yeah, I asked if you went to the basement because I remember watching Finding Dory there and a lot of other Pixar Disney movies, and they always have a really special exhibit downstairs. For Finding Dory they had an aquarium. And they had yeah, like they had Dory. And you know, all of they had an octopus for Hank. And they had like the different characters. And I know they’d done it for Frozen as well. They had like a whole behind the scenes of how they made Frozen downstairs. I don’t know because of COVID if they’re trying to limit the amount of people that are in an enclosed space, but I know pre-COVID they always utilize that basement for some really special thing. And then they would actually have people exit out from that bottom entry. So that..

Ariel Landrum 23:18
Nope. went out to the main lobby.

Stefanie Bautista 23:20
Got it. Got it. Yeah, so I’m sure things have changed since the pandemic and I’m sure that they’ll adapt moving forward, but I’m glad to see that they’re using at least the opera boxes.

Ariel Landrum 23:30
Yes, they’re using the opera boxes, we got to go upstairs and there was a Jungle Cruise like backdrop but no actual items. And so again, because the tickets got changed 3 times so did our seats. And it was because it was so late at night. Even though it was a Saturday, we had the entire right side of the theater to ourselves. Like talking about social distancing. I don’t I’m a I’m a bad aim, but I don’t think I could have thrown popcorn at the next person. ‘Cause they were so far away.

Stefanie Bautista 24:07
I’m sure you wouldn’t want to throw it because your popcorn is probably really good.

Ariel Landrum 24:10
Oh my popcorn is amazing. So fulfilling.

Stefanie Bautista 24:12
Their popcorn is always amazing. That’s I was thinking about I was like “Oh man Ariel probably really good popcorn. She’s at the El Capitan.”

Ariel Landrum 24:19
However, we did have a Mickey pretzel; again owned by Disney. So there was a Mickey pretzel and it was just okay. It was not Disney park good. I could tell a difference and so I don’t know if that’s common for that, that theater or if it is…

Stefanie Bautista 24:34
They use that hard LA water. I’m sorry. There’s nothing we can do to mask that I’m sorry.

Ariel Landrum 24:42
And then the other really crazy thing about the experience was they raffled off 3 gifts and it was like a bag full of Black Widow swag. I did not win, or I would have said that. But er ahh. Yeah I’m mad that I didn’t win because there was only like, what 5 other people? It was like, there was nobody there. And there was 3 in my aile, and there was 2 of us, I thought our chances were, were high, but they were not. But it was just really cool. They they, they did the raffle. And they actually handed the items to the guests, the guests and a half to get up. And again, owned by Disney. So their cast members, and the they they started the intro with, “Ladies and gentlemen,” and I don’t know if you guys have been following some of the Disney news. But a lot of the parks have changed the intro to their firework show to, “Welcome all dreamers,” to be more inclusive of individuals who are nonbinary. And so we were wondering if that’s going to change there too. I’m just gonna take note and keep an eye on that.

Stefanie Bautista 25:50
Yeah, I’ll definitely take a look at that too. Because now, I want to make up for this theater experience of mine. And the next movie, I’m gonna watch it, I’m gonna dish up the extra books to get me my fresh popcorn. But I’m glad that you had such a fantastic first time at the El Capitan. That’s really great to hear, especially, you know, coming from an Angeleno, myself, I always want people to have the best experiences when they go to touristy places like this. I know it’s always a hit or miss when you go to Hollywood, because it’s just, it’s a wild place out there, also, but the El Capitan does have that Disney magic. So they will go the extra mile to make sure you and your little ones have a really good time. Because, you know, we’re always bringing kids to the El Capitan because they’re always showing Disney movies. So so many things can go wrong with watching a movie with kids. So I’m glad that you had that fantastic experience.

Ariel Landrum 26:46
I’m not glad that you didn’t.

Stefanie Bautista 26:48
No. It’s all right. I mean, it be like that sometimes.

Ariel Landrum 26:53
It be like that sometimes.

Stefanie Bautista 26:54
It be like that sometimes. But let’s dive in to the movie itself.

Ariel Landrum 27:00
Okay, um… You go first.

Stefanie Bautista 27:04
Yeah, again, this is not a review podcast…

Ariel Landrum 27:07
But there will be spoilers there. Will you want a spoiler free pod review in a podcast We do have a friend named Billy he’s not part of the GT Network. But he is The Movie Grater. That says podcast, he grades movies, and none of them have spoilers.

Stefanie Bautista 27:23
Yes, none of them are spoilers. They have really great conversations about different perspectives on the movies. And you’ll laugh a lot. Because Billy is a very, very fun person and a good friend of ours. So check his podcast out if you want spoiler-less review or commentary. So if you haven’t seen Black Widow, put a pause on this. Listen to any of our other episodes. And we will see you back after you watch Black Widow. Go see it ’cause we liked it.

Ariel Landrum 27:54
We liked it a lot.

Stefanie Bautista 27:57
Yes. Um, I don’t know, Ariel. Maybe we can just kind of riff off of each other of this one? Just because I know that we can take this movie in a lot of different angles. Now, Black Widow was supposed to be released. And not this year.

Ariel Landrum 28:12
Oh, no.

Stefanie Bautista 28:13
Not last year. But way before we really went forward with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, right?

Ariel Landrum 28:21
Yeah, believe 2019 or 2020? Yeah, that was. Okay. So other experience in talking about Comic-Con earlier, Stef and I went to Comic-Con in 2019. And she was able to attend the Marvel Hall H, ah, and she got some swag. And she gifted it to me because she’s the most loveliest friend ever. And it was a Black Widow ballcap um, it has her silhouette. And it says Marvel 2020 on the back.

Stefanie Bautista 28:55
Yes, Marvel 2020 because it was the big reveal of all the things that were happening in 2020. They hype this up. I was in tears. Everybody in Hall H was just like losing their minds. You can see Scarlett Johansen comes out and then you see Florence Pugh come out and then you see Hopper I’m forgetting his name David Harbour come out.

Ariel Landrum 29:17
Yes. Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 29:18
And then you just see all these you see Simu Liu. I mean, it was just like, all of the YouTube videos that you see of Comic-Con.

Ariel Landrum 29:26
Hm hmm.

Stefanie Bautista 29:26
It was just it was major. And as they all were like, introducing the movie they put on these hats facing facing the stage and not facing the audience and they turned around to reveal Black Widow’s silhouette and her, her monogram, and it was it blew everybody’s mind and then as they turned around all of the all of the Hall H workers started giving hats out. And we again hats. Oh my gosh.

Ariel Landrum 29:56
And you get a hat and you get a hat!

Stefanie Bautista 29:59
I think correct me if I’m wrong, Ariel the popularity of the Marvel panel at Hall H has gotten so large that they don’t give away too much swag recently. Right?

Ariel Landrum 30:11
Yeah, they’ve Yeah, they’ve cut the variety of swag. So the final Game of Thrones panel Hall H, I got to see it and that that was a bag full of swag.

Stefanie Bautista 30:25
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 30:25
There was a poster. There was a pen.

Stefanie Bautista 30:27
There was a tote bag.

Ariel Landrum 30:28
There was a water bottle there was I think of a…

Stefanie Bautista 30:31
A shirt.

Ariel Landrum 30:32
A shirt. Yes, yeah, sure.

Stefanie Bautista 30:33
I still wear that shirt.

Ariel Landrum 30:36
And the the Marvel ones have slowly started not giving as many things I think not just because of the popularity, but also because they are not wanting to reveal anything. Everything. Is Marvel’s all locked down tight lipped. I mean, unless you’re Spider-Man.

Stefanie Bautista 30:53
Yep. Yeah. So we’ve been waiting for this movie for a really long time. And so I if we’re talking again, about expectations, and what we as women wanted to see out of Black Widow, I feel like over the years, it has changed for me, how about you?

Ariel Landrum 31:12
I, I think it definitely has changed. I if you look at her evolution, she certainly changed. I am looking at an image right now at me and I will I will link in the show notes of the evolution of her wardrobe. And this is what caught me when I when I was watching this movie. And and now even more so as I’m looking at the evolution of her wardrobe. So like black latex Iron Man 2 Black Widow. Very low cleavage. I think at some, I learned that apparently they they do a lot of special effects even on the clothes when things bend a certain way. So so certainly the special effects on this clothes like there’s just tightness. So just really hyper-sexualized, and going into the outfit she’s wearing here, the zippers hire so there isn’t as much cleavage and there’s actual padding. Like you see it on our elbows and her knees and on her shoulders. And even on her gloves. She looks like a fighter to me. And her hair isn’t like in these ring like curls. And she is wearing a vast amount of makeup. She actually looks. Now we know everybody’s wearing makeup on set even the men. But her makeup is toned down it is more natural, and even her hair is sort of more free flowing. Like she has some braids in a few different areas. But they aren’t tight knit they aren’t curly. She doesn’t look like she’s meant to be sexually digested. It looks like she’s meant to, you know, whoop some ass. Yeah, exactly. And I know that that’s always a point of contingency when it comes to looking at female fighters and female characters in action movies. As a woman, you’re always thinking to yourself, “How in the heck are you fighting with just the latex suit on, hair all up in your face? Makeup, you know, full, full face makeup all the way done? How are you not realistically sweating and uncomfortable in that? And not everybody is Catwoman because Catwoman is, you know, otherworldly. She has you know, cat like reflexes. Not everybody’s Michelle Pfeiffer

Different franchise has different magic. Quote unquote.

Stefanie Bautista 33:28
Yes. Different franchise. And, you know, I always thought about that whenever I played Mortal Kombat. Whenever I played Street Fighter. I mean, clearly, these are video games. They’re not supposed to represent real life. However, you got to have a little bit of realism when it comes to it. And especially if you’re doing a movie like Black Widow, which is more of you know, she doesn’t necessarily have superpowers per se. She’s not a mutant. She’s hasn’t been injected with any sort of super serum.

Ariel Landrum 33:57
Isn’t a sorcerer

Stefanie Bautista 33:58
Isn’t a sorcerer. So she has no abilities, aside from the fact that she’s highly trained and skilled in what she does. So, I mean, I think realistically, she looks a lot more suited to the work that she’s doing.

Ariel Landrum 34:13
Yeah, and, and even in talking about her being highly trained, like we’ve known that throughout all of these movies, but I feel like this is the first time where I was able to really appreciate her training, even when she was fighting Taskmaster. Like, like in the comics, and even in this iteration, Taskmaster, Taskmaster learns your moves and mimics you, essentially mirrors you. You’re you’re like fighting yourself. And she kind of picked that up right away and was able to adapt her fighting style instead of going to like her common go-tos. That’s just difficult. That’s that’s not an easy thing to do. As as a therapist, I work with a variety of people and I have a large caseload of people who are MMA fighters. And we talk about how it can be easy to default to a fighting style, but that makes you more predictable to your partner, or I mean the person that you’re attempting to fight. Your opponent. And in this case, Black Widow is always learning and always growing. We do see her sort of couple of her same signature moves. But she in this movie has shown even more wider variety in her stance and her fighting style. So I, I think, like, again, she’s not she. So so when we meet her an Iron Man 2, she’s a spy who attempts to infiltrate Tony Stark’s operation, but she’s a femme fatale. She uses her sexuality to get men to drop their guard and trust her. Now, we’re a decade a little over a decade later, and she is no longer a spy, she actually gets to be her full self. I think that’s, that’s a very different approach. Like we we actually accept her as a hero, and not sort of like having ulterior motives. And she she isn’t a sexual object, and she doesn’t use her sexuality as a weapon. And then even Scarlett Johansson has said in many interviews that she no longer comfortable playing with this character as someone who’s objectified.

Stefanie Bautista 36:14
Yeah, absolutely. Um, I think the first time when I saw her in Iron Man, she was like a Bond girl to me. She could have been somebody that I knew was working for somebody else, not somebody who was working out of their own volition, but somebody with an ulterior motive that was working for the man behind the chair. And ultimately, that is who trained her however, like you said, the evolution of her character started to become more and more independent over the films.

Ariel Landrum 36:45
More autonomy.

Stefanie Bautista 36:46
Yeah, more autonomy. Exactly. Every time we saw her in all the other various movies, she was attached to Hawkeye. They were working as a team more of like a duo where, I don’t know and I can’t really say that I saw one leading the other, but I kind of knew that one worked in tandem with the other and they always talked about, you know, their, their previous jobs. And you know, how…

Ariel Landrum 37:10
‘Buda-pesh.’

Stefanie Bautista 37:11
Budapest. Buda-Budape-sht. And that was such a wild thing in the movie, but anyway. But yeah, she was always working with Hawkeye. And they were always paired up together. So I was just like, “Okay, well, we haven’t really seen Hawkeye by himself. But we also haven’t seen Black Widow by herself. And then when everybody split their separate ways during Civil War, she was now Cap’s right-hand woman.

Ariel Landrum 37:32
Yup.

Stefanie Bautista 37:32
And so we didn’t really see her as her full hero self she was more of, you know, Cap’s confidant, which was great, because, you know, he was so nice to her and, you know, always respectful to her, but still, she kind of took a backseat. Definitely the second tier of the Avengers.

Ariel Landrum 37:50
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 37:50
So it was really nice to see her, you know, act on her own volition and also find about find out more about herself because us as an audience, we want to find out more about her and where she’s coming from.

Ariel Landrum 38:06
And in and that she has, she has leadership qualities. She took a leadership stance in this movie, and when we remember her RIP in End Game, she out after the 5 year Blip, she was the one running the Avengers. She was the one giving people orders. She was the one who really tried to keep it all together. And that seems even more believable now after seeing this film.

Stefanie Bautista 38:31
Yeah. And not just motherly, where we’re expecting her as the woman to be like, “Okay, everybody, let’s get it together.” Like “We got to save the world,” kind of thing, where it teetered on that I don’t think it was fully realized. And this movie definitely shows that her empathy as herself as Natasha was shown more above anything that we’re expecting out of her as a female superhero.

Ariel Landrum 38:56
Absolutely, absolutely. So I think like really highlighting those those big changes in differences. I mean, I I’m trying to imagine how I would feel if this was how I was introduced to Black Widow versus the previous versions. I remember trying to buy those those costumes and outfits and, and I’m a I’m a well-endowed woman, I have rather large breasts, so I could fill that part of the costume if I wanted to. However, I wasn’t always comfortable. That that costume is not easy to wear a Comic-Con. It apparently, it gives permission for people to to grope you. And as someone who cosplays fairly regularly, it’s one of those things of, “How do I like make sure to set that boundary?” And why I tend to, quote unquote, have a ‘Comic-Con guard’ with me so that people won’t,. This costume I could see being respected. I can see people seeing me as the fighter of Black Widow and not so much as this hot thing I can take a picture with. Like a like really much like, “I’m taking a picture of Black Widow like this is the character and the hero that I love.”

Stefanie Bautista 40:10
And on top of that you’re carrying weapons on your back. You are carrying weapons on your back. So I really hope that if they are looking at your backside, they’re looking at your weapons and how you will use them on them. But absolutely, I think the the playing field for cosplay has gotten larger, especially with having her sister having Iron Maiden there. I mean, even having a Red Guardian, Red Gaurdian right?

Ariel Landrum 40:42
Yes. Right.

Stefanie Bautista 40:43
His portrayal of kind of this fallen male icon, especially Soviet icon where us as Americans, we view you know, Cold War era 1980s Soviet Russia as this big, you know, iron curtain. Everybody’s you know, stoic, of course, like with the Tocky films like you think of I know, Drago and you know, you have this, like very macho sense of all men, all Russian men. But then you meet Alexi. And he is definitely fallen from grace since he was kind of pushed aside after his undercover mission in Ohio with the girls and you see him struggling to fit into his his suit. And I thought that that was a really great moment for men. Really.

Ariel Landrum 41:31
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 41:32
Dad bods everywhere. And I think that David Harbour played that role just so nicely, because he’s so loveable.

Ariel Landrum 41:40
And that scene of him trying to fit in that suit is that scene of me trying to fit into the Black Widow costume. It ain’t happening in the same way that I think is.

Stefanie Bautista 41:50
Yeah, I mean, for me, I I’m not as well endowed as Ariel. However, I don’t have the typical Asian slender body. I am much more Moana and Nani than Raya.

Ariel Landrum 42:03
Thicc.

Stefanie Bautista 42:04
So you know, I can’t really find a one size fits all costume. I have the make er actually adopt many male costumes to my suiting and I normally go that route just because it’s a little easier and more comfortable for me to attend cons that way. So I think, yeah, it was it was really great to see the differences in body types and the realism of getting into a suit that is meant for fighting and meant to you know, get hurt in. Because there was a lot of getting hurt In this movie and I

Ariel Landrum 42:38
Oh, the hits look hard. The you know those…

Stefanie Bautista 42:41
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 42:41
Who the stunt actors I applaud to them because it looked..

Stefanie Bautista 42:45
They deserve an award.

Ariel Landrum 42:47
I was cringing all the times that any of the characters got, you know, hit up because it It didn’t look just like a big explosion or that Star Wars kick that never quite hit.

Stefanie Bautista 43:01
Yeah, it wasn’t. it wasn’t Michael Bay blowing up everything. Like Natasha was getting thrown off a building. Yelena was like, you know, falling and rolling all over the place. All of the Widows that were doing their stunts. They were so fantastic. It reminded me a lot of Justice League and seeing all the Amazons on Themyscira, but harder. Way harder because they were falling. They’re getting stabbed. They were you know, she’s you Yelena stabs herself in the leg to get out her little transmitter. And it looked real.

Ariel Landrum 43:34
Looked so real. So real. She barely flinched too.

Stefanie Bautista 43:38
Barly flinched. And you could hear it squelching. Like, you could hear the bones like I don’t know I mean, I heard an Dolby, obviously so I heard everything. But I liked how they didn’t go soft on the women. And because they were doing such big scenes and also car chases that involved women.

Ariel Landrum 43:56
The best car chase scene I have ever seen and I have seen except for the the new one, which I haven’t seen yet I’ve seen every Fast and Furious. And you know, they start to get the same where we’re trying to get away and we’re coming up with some stuff. I have never seen what Yelena did in regards to the car chase scene and I was thoroughly impressed with the ingenuity and literally, like Black Widow was saying like “I’m trying to get away and escape.” Like she acknowledged that that was her plan.

Stefanie Bautista 44:31
I love the banter, too. That was that same I think just the overall banter between sisters is something that we don’t see. And the only other way that we’ve seen it is Frozen.

Ariel Landrum 44:41
Well I guess Lilo and Stitch?

Stefanie Bautista 44:43
Lilo and Stitch, which is more of a motherly approach because you know Nani is her caretaker. But yeah, I think between sisters who are working and sisters who haven’t seen each other for a really long time. I don’t have a sister myself, but I do have cousins who have sisters and I know, and I see the struggle between you know, I’m just we’re trying to one up each other I guess you could say. And if you’re a trained assassin trying to one up an Avenger who is your sister figure. I mean, hilarity ensues. And I think that was a really great move to insert humor into there. I died in a half when Yelena was trying to be like, “How do you how do you do that pose when you go down, and you.” Wow.

Ariel Landrum 45:29
“Such a poser.”

Stefanie Bautista 45:30
“You’re such a poser.” And I didn’t know that she was going to use that word poser, but I love that she did use that word poser, because she is just essentially taking down this Avenger who we have seen do so many great things for the universe. Work alongside Captain America, Iron Man. You know, calm down the Hulk. And now you’re reducing her to a poser there just because she looks at the camera.

Ariel Landrum 45:53
And really humbling her right when it comes to siblings. So not just sisters, your siblings can humble you in a way that nobody else can.

Stefanie Bautista 46:01
Like nobody else can. Nobody.

Ariel Landrum 46:04
‘Cause you are an older sister.

Stefanie Bautista 46:06
Yeah, I am an older sister. And my younger brother can humble me in ways that, you know, I do humble him too, because he is my younger brother. But I mean, there’s just this dynamic when when you’re an older sibling, you always try to keep it together. And I felt that with especially Natasha because she’s trying to keep it together for her family. She’s trying to just get the job done. By any means necessary, because this is just what she does. And she’s just gonna go at it however she can. And you know, even even in her laser focus of a job doing this. You get your Yelena who is the youngest. She is you know, blonde, and she’s more sprightly I guess you would say?

Ariel Landrum 46:47
Yeah. Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 46:48
She has a spark. She has this fire in her. And she she’s got a mouth on her too. It’s just awesome.

Ariel Landrum 46:55
She feels like the new generation of Avengers. Like like a completely different take with different experiences that is is even just it’s just fresh and and really wonderful. I fell in love with her honestly.

Stefanie Bautista 47:10
Oh the best.

Ariel Landrum 47:11
Just amazing. Actress of Florence. Is it ‘pew’ or ‘few’?

Stefanie Bautista 47:17
I think it’s ‘pew’. But correct me if I’m wrong. I haven’t really this is what I’ve heard on interviews, but I might be wrong. Uhh I think she’s British.

Ariel Landrum 47:25
Yeah, I feel like I’ve heard ‘pew’ of the most.

Stefanie Bautista 47:27
Yeah, I know she’s British. So if if that helps, I’m not familiar, but she is a fantastic actress. If you look up her IMDb, she has done it all y’all. And now she is the future Black Widow as we are going to see in the future. So I think they picked the fantastic person to play her and…

Ariel Landrum 47:48
And I think that when we’re talking about banter, the funniest scene, which I didn’t think I would ever see in a Disney movie, I never thought I would hear the words. ‘hysterectomy’. I never thought I would hear the words ‘fallopian tubes.’

Stefanie Bautista 48:04
Yes. They went there.

Ariel Landrum 48:07
The word ‘uterus’ and and the great thing about that she adlibbed that scene.

Stefanie Bautista 48:12
I love that.

Ariel Landrum 48:13
She ad loved it. It was just hilarious. Again, I felt very seen. Because again, if we’re talking about girls, young girls who have been taken from their families or or taken off of the streets, this is this is a real life issue issue when it comes to trafficking and sex trafficking. Women and girls statistically are the majority who are trafficked. And those are things that do happen to them so that they can still be considered a marketable object. You know, “If you don’t get pregnant, it’s easier for me to market you and that.. can be see have it put it plainly on on a in a Disney movie, though, was a joke. Like it made the characters more real, because I’m sure that there’s been fandom questions in regards to how come Black Widow doesn’t have any kids? And it’s like, well, this is why this is part of the horrors of of her of her trauma and her past experiences before an Avenger.

Stefanie Bautista 49:10
Yeah, and as a clap back to, “Is it your time of the month?” Which is every woman’s just who loves to hear that? Absolutely no one. No one loves to hear that.

Ariel Landrum 49:22
Every every woman and every person with a uterus.

Stefanie Bautista 49:25
Yes.

Ariel Landrum 49:25
Just like really?

Stefanie Bautista 49:26
Yeah. And as a clap back to that I applaud that whole entire scene, because you know what, it’s not just a matter of us being on our time of the month, and nor does it have to do with any of your concern if you’re asking. So maybe you should walk that all the way back and he walked it all the way back. So…

Ariel Landrum 49:46
All the way.

Stefanie Bautista 49:48
All the way and it was liberating without burning a bra and it was liberating without using any of those, “this is a feminist movie trope,” which you know, has been played out over the last couple of years. So…

Ariel Landrum 49:59
Yeah, yeah, again, a different way of looking at feminism and older way. And I think this, this is very much how this current generation and I think our generation is, is accepting the openness around feminism, which is that these aren’t things we’re going to be afraid to talk about. But we’re not. I mean, we’re bringing them up in a moment. It is, it’s a shutdown to you, but it isn’t a weapon. It’s the truth.

Stefanie Bautista 50:22
Yeah, and I really want to highlight the fact that you mentioned Yelena being more of the new generation representative of the Avengers. I think that really worked well parallel to Rachel Weisz’ character as the Iron Maiden, because she lived her entire life being cycled through the Red Room 4 times, as she said, and she is the classic example of conditioning. And she is an example of having been used as an object as a woman under under the spell of.. Why am I forgetting his name right now?

Ariel Landrum 50:55
Oh, Dreykov?

Stefanie Bautista 50:56
Dreykov. Yes, Dreykov. I didn’t want to come Alexi that’s not him. Yeah, under Dreykov rule. And I think by her breaking away from that, to open doors to the younger generation is just, I think symbolic of Marvel’s way of opening that door from female superheroes that we’ve seen in the past and female superheroes like Black Widow, who this story is about and how she was portrayed in the past and how we are going to introduce her and every other female character after her now. Because although that, you know, it might not have been the best way to portray female superheroes. It still exists in the past, and we’re going to acknowledge it, but we’re going to take that and learn from it.

Ariel Landrum 51:39
Yeah, we’re not we’re not going to hide from it and we’re not going to minimize it. So it’s going to be presented as as factual and truthful, but it’s not going to be presented as the always in will be.

Stefanie Bautista 51:50
Yeah, and in fact, we need that perspective to move forward. Which is exactly how we needed Iron Maiden to help you know, kind of orchestrate that one explosion that ended up taking the entire island down?

Ariel Landrum 52:07
Floating Red Room.

Stefanie Bautista 52:09
Yeah, I don’t know what…

Ariel Landrum 52:11
Flying ship thing that somehow Iron Man miss every time I… Okay.

Stefanie Bautista 52:17
Okay, so now that we’ve talked a lot about what we loved, I’m sure there’s things that we could have improved on, right?

Ariel Landrum 52:26
Okay, this is my first and biggest gripe that I as soon as I found out after that’s Stef had finished finished watching the movie. I texted, did you notice that thing? Okay, I think you guys can hear my cat. I apologize.

Stefanie Bautista 52:43
Hello.

Ariel Landrum 52:43
She says, “Hi, feed me for the fourth time,” and I won’t because you’re on a diet. But anyways, as soon as I found out she’d watched it. I texted her immediately. And I was like, “Did you find the mistake? The continuity mistake in the beginning when they were in Cuba?” And she was like, “What are you talking about?” And now I am a huge Disney fan. But I will also say that I am a My Little Pony fan. Yes. I love my ponies.

Stefanie Bautista 53:18
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 53:19
And so when they land in Cuba, Yelena is holding a stuffed animal. And this stuffed animal gets passed around at least 4 times. So I got lots of views of this stuffed animal. And it is a My Little Pony. And it is an Alicorn Twilight Sparkle. So that’s the name of the character. However, Twilight Sparkle did not become an alicorn until February 16, 2013.

Stefanie Bautista 53:47
Oh, no. Way after.

Ariel Landrum 53:49
An this animal was was featured in time where it’s supposed to be 1995. So I don’t know. If Loki and Wanda had done some kind of multiverse thing and somehow Twilight Sparkle was put in this 1995 because that’s what got messed up in this universe. I’m thinking not but I was upset for the rest of the movie about this. I was… I don’t know what prop person done messed up that. And I and I had I went online I had to confirm that I was not I was not crazy. And I found all kinds of Reddit threads from other My Little Pony and Brony fans.

Stefanie Bautista 54:24
Yup.

Ariel Landrum 54:25
Yes. Yes, this was the Twilight Sparkle that did not exist in 1995.

Stefanie Bautista 54:31
Yes, I am not a big My Little Pony fan. I do love My Little Pony. However, I’m not that big of a fan. I, so now that you said that, what if there was a Nexus event that had to do with Sylvie? ‘Cause we know how old she is. And. No. I know there’s nothing nothing, somebody messed up.

Ariel Landrum 54:50
Somebody messed up.

Stefanie Bautista 54:51
in that in the opening credits. Me and in my attempt to connect the multiversus of all the fandoms that I love. I was like, okay, so David Harbour is in this movie. I’m a huge Stranger Things fan. And I’m like, “Are they in Indiana? Why are they always in Indiana? Oh, no, they’re in Ohio, which is next to Indiana. Why do they always have to pick? Is that Hopper’s house? Is that?” And I was just trying to find all of these Stranger Things Easter Eggs for whatever reason.

Ariel Landrum 55:19
Evemnthe name ‘Alexi?’

Stefanie Bautista 55:20
Even the name ‘Alexi’. I’m like, “Oh my gosh, Alexi, just like Alexi. Poor Alexi.” And so, you know, if you’ve watched Stranger Things, every 80s reference, I think, because Stranger Things has done it so so so well, I always think of Stranger Things whenever I see something 80s now because I think they kind of hit the benchmark of what it is to portray the 80s in, you know, the 2020s. So I don’t know why my brain went to that. But I was trying to connect those things, which is probably why I did not notice that My Little Pony stuffed animal. And, you know, I think everybody goes through that when they sit down to watch a movie. Especially when it’s in a multiverse like the Marvel Cinematic Universe. We are so trained to find Easter Eggs now. And

Ariel Landrum 56:04
Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 56:04
I talk about this all the time with my students, especially when Endgame came out. I remember, and my coworkers can attest to this. I remember watching Endgame, midnight showing, and I had to work the next day because it was Thursday. And of course, you know, Friday, we still have school. So I came into the classroom and the first thing I said to my students was, things just be dropping everywhere today. It’s okay, this is real life, guys. I walk into a classroom and I said, “If you guys don’t behave today, I will spoil Endgame for you. And I am not joking.”

Ariel Landrum 56:39
Ohhhh. So you put down there, hammer. You put down’s Thor’s hammer.

“Your Have a Good Friday. Today, you are going to get your play time you’re gonna get your free time. But if somebody slips up, I am spoiling Endgame for you.” And we had the most fantastic day in my class. So and they always love talking about Easter Eggs. And we always try to one up each other like , “Oh Miss Stefanie, did you remember this? Or do you know if you saw that?” So I think we all go through that as Marvel fans and Disney fans now. We always try to find the Pizza Planet Truck. But I think…

Yeah, that really shows you how much like when we’re talking about dissecting medium like that gives you such a good critical lens and also being observant, right? Like that’s probably I know, for my clients, and I’m assuming for your students, like being more observant of the moment is a critical skill to obtain.

Stefanie Bautista 57:27
And it’s a really, it’s pretty high level skill when you’re thinking about it because you’re accessing memories that you’ve had from previous experiences in previous movies, and you’re making those connections. And I love it when you know, kids make those connections and what stands out for certain students and what doesn’t stand out for certain students. For you, for example, the My Little Pony thing totally stood out for you.

Ariel Landrum 57:47
Instant rapid processing. Executive functioning boom, there it is.

Stefanie Bautista 57:53
For me, it was the time period and I love time period, everything I love how Marvel and really any sort of medium decides to portray any sort of time travel, any sort of retro imagery, because I feel like as technology is evolving, we’re getting so much better at it. And our understanding of prior eras has gotten so much more clear. So I mean, I think that was good, but we’re talking about things that you know, we could have fixed, right.

Ariel Landrum 58:19
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 58:20
So I think for myself really quickly, Taskmaster could have been done a little bit better.

Ariel Landrum 58:28
Okay.

Stefanie Bautista 58:28
I think it was kind of Oh, I know it was kind of like a guise for who the real villain was. And we all know that. The real villain of course is the red the Red Room and I’m gonna keep forgetting and Dreykov.

Ariel Landrum 58:44
Forst time I’m saying things right.

Stefanie Bautista 58:45
Yeah. I think it’s because they don’t want to mess up the pronunciation. Dreykov.

Ariel Landrum 58:49
Yeah. Ohh.

Stefanie Bautista 58:52
Dreykov. So I know he’s, you know, kind of a Wizard of Oz thing again, where he is the man behind the curtain. He’s the person who we really need to take down. However, with the original Taskmaster, I knew that it had more of like a skull face. This one had more of a Daft Punk robot looking face.

Ariel Landrum 59:10
Yeah, yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 59:11
It was like, “Are we gonna see him behind the DJ booth?” Like it looked really Daft Punk. And Deadmau5 to me. And the hood didn’t quite make so much sense because she was already wearing like a skin tight, like, cap.

Ariel Landrum 59:27
Yeah, it was just kind of some extra.

Stefanie Bautista 59:31
Yeah. And I don’t know like, it was fun to see the different fighting styles like clearly claws came out Black Panther. Shield came out Captain America. It didn’t get large like the Hulk? That didn’t happen. But I think even even when you’re tying who that character was and their relationship to Natasha, it wasn’t fully fleshed out and I know that wasn’t the goal of the movie. And that was kind of like part of the journey for her. But I think that was a little bit wasted.

Ariel Landrum 1:00:05
Well, they, they, I mean, if you if you remember Black Widow was always talking about wanting to, she’s got read on her ledger and she’s wanting to wipe it clean. Like, that’s just some of the common quotes that that she has. And this was one of those reds. And unfortunately, it didn’t it didn’t quite meet expectations. Now, I really liked that they did change the gender and they connected it in the story. This wasn’t just a random person who teamed up with Dreykov like that seems to be a common thing like weird superhero team ups that don’t make sense or supervillain team ups.

Stefanie Bautista 1:00:39
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 1:00:40
But it didn’t seem like this was something that she regretted as much as she probably should have. And it was too easy of a of a forgiving, I think, because it was so instant. All that I don’t remember that Taskmasters daughter’s name is Valentina?

Stefanie Bautista 1:01:04
No, no Valentina is

Ariel Landrum 1:01:05
No that’s who came out at the end. But a task, it was really that Taskmaster asked, “Is he gone?” She she wanted to get away from from her abuser. So that totally made sense. How, however, given the amount of trauma, given friggin jumping out of falling ship, and then and then being unprogrammed, I just I feel like it would have made more sense if if she was just disoriented and it wasn’t really quite speaking or or engaging and wasn’t there. I don’t I know that I would want Black Widow to have redemption. But I don’t think in this case that she should have had it. Not that easily.

Stefanie Bautista 1:01:48
Exactly. Umm her name is Antonia.

Ariel Landrum 1:01:51
Gah.

Stefanie Bautista 1:01:51
Yes.

Ariel Landrum 1:01:53
We were close.

Stefanie Bautista 1:01:54
We were not very close. But yeah, I think with her especially being one of the actors who’s truly of Russian descent, she is, you know, Olga Kurylenko, who is she’s an action actress. And she’s been in other films. It was it was kind of a miss to see her not highlighted in that way. But also, I’m sure it was hard to do that because Taskmaster already has such a reputation in the Marvel Universe in the comic books. So I know they were trying to just pull in characters probably where they could. I could be wrong. I don’t know. But yeah, I think it could have been fleshed out a little bit more. However, I know, we were teetering on what a 2 and a half hour movie at this point.

Ariel Landrum 1:02:42
Were you surprised that she was Taskmaster? Or did you figure it out?

Stefanie Bautista 1:02:47
Um, I knew Taskmaster was gonna appear at some point. Like you said, spoilers are kind of unavoidable at this point in time, so I knew I knew that character was gonna come out and the only way it could have been her. So and like, there was major foreshadowing when Yelena was talking to her and said, “Did you I did you recover the body?” And when she said, “Well, there was nobody to recover.” It was kind of like “Well, clearly she is MIA. So she’s gonna pop up somewhere.”

Ariel Landrum 1:03:14
Yeah, I I knew instantly that that moment one of 2 things and that I leaned towards it was gonna be Taskmaster or that she took over the Widows. I thought that was that could have been a take or twist. But at once I actually saw a Taskmaster fight. I was like, “Okay, yeah, this this has to be Dreykov’s daughter.” If we’re talking about him dabbling in bioengineering him dabbling in you know, conditioning mind control. Yeah, I don’t see him having any qualms doing that to his daughter. So it was it was somewhat predictable. But I thought I was going to appreciate the predictability. I didn’t as much in this case.

Stefanie Bautista 1:04:01
Yeah. Fun random fact, the woman who played Taskmaster, Olga Kurylenko, was a Bond girl. Or she was in a James Bond movie. So she was in Quantum of Solace. And that is the last time I saw her. And she, yeah, was a Bond girl named Camille Montez, for all your Bond fans out there. So yeah, I think that is just one of the things that I, you know, kind of had an issue with. But other than that, I think the linear progression of Natasha finding her roots using that to kind of wipe her ledger clean and in the process, liberate the Widows, was fulfilled pretty straightforwardly. Um, yeah. And I think the end just because of when it was released, you really had to reach back. I’ve heard from a lot of my friends who have watched it who do follow the Marvel Cinematic Universe, maybe not as closely as you and I do. Or if you know our listeners do, they just said “I wish maybe I could have been prepared in watching some of the prior movies again, just to kind of freshen up.” like watch civil war again to see you know, “Why is she on the run? You know, why is you know she living out in a trailer with her version of M or Q in the Bond movies, who supplies her with all of her necessities to live. Which I like that character. I like…

Ariel Landrum 1:05:32
Mason is the character and the actor. His name is OT Fagbenly and he is also British, and he went to the same elementary school as Florence Pugh but just like 10 years earlier

Stefanie Bautista 1:05:45
That’s wild. He reminds me of Craig David.

Ariel Landrum 1:05:49
UK be small.

Stefanie Bautista 1:05:51
Oh, yeah. I kept looking. I was like, “That can’t be Craig David. He’s not an actor. He sings. He sings ‘7 Days.’

Ariel Landrum 1:05:59
I guess he plays Luke in The Handmaid’s Tale, but I’ve never saw that show.

Stefanie Bautista 1:06:01
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 1:06:02
The Handmaid’s Tale.

Stefanie Bautista 1:06:03
That’s one of the ones I’ve yet to see. I know it’s on my list of things on Hulu that I have to watch. And I don’t watch Hulu very often anymore.

Ariel Landrum 1:06:11
So some of the other sort of small nitpicky things, because I think we’ve gotten to the point where, at least I have, I can be nitpicky in regards to Marvel movies.

Stefanie Bautista 1:06:21
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 1:06:22
Okay, so the the scene where you Yelena is calling Natasha poser. They’re doing that a convenience store. They they didn’t confirm what are the convenience store person spoke English or not. Understood what they were doing or saying. They’re talking about people they’ve killed. And now she’s on the ground like whipping her head back forth. Wipe her hair back and forth. And that and he had no reaction. That extra if his his line or direction was do nothing, say nothing. They could have put a mannequin in there. And I wouldn’t have known because literally no, no response to…

Stefanie Bautista 1:06:55
None.

Ariel Landrum 1:06:56
This woman on the ground whipping her hair back and forth. Umm.

Stefanie Bautista 1:07:00
And just taking things from the shelf. I don’t know if they have any intention of paying for them.

Ariel Landrum 1:07:06
But I didn’t see them stealing them in their outfits. So..

Stefanie Bautista 1:07:09
No. Also just them hanging out in that gas stations front or in clearly it’s a family owned gas station. Yeah. And they’re in like the boonies of this country. Are they in Budapest? Their in um…

Ariel Landrum 1:07:23
I don’t remember.

Stefanie Bautista 1:07:23
I don’t remember, but very in like a very remote town and in remote towns everybody tends to know each other.

Ariel Landrum 1:07:30
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 1:07:30
Quite well.

Ariel Landrum 1:07:31
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 1:07:31
Look at these 2 Russian slash white women talking.

Ariel Landrum 1:07:36
Yeah just sitting here talking to each other.

Stefanie Bautista 1:07:37
Super cas’

Ariel Landrum 1:07:38
Enjoying some beers with no like, no other party, no chaperone like just, you know, I, it was odd, right?

Stefanie Bautista 1:07:47
Yeah a little odd.

Ariel Landrum 1:07:47
Like there would be there would be a response. Like, I don’t think the kids would be out playing. Yeah, if these strangers in this random town are chilling. Yeah. And then the other thing was at the very end, the not not the end credit, but the very end Black Widow, rolls up in a motorcycle, and then jumps out, and then kicks Mason, and he wakes up. And I’m like, “He didn’t wake up from the sound of the motorcycle? But he wakes up because she nudges him.” I don’t buy this, I get that this trope is that he sleeps because he’s worked on a bunch of time zones, but but they should have done that better. She should have been driving a Prius and like rolled up on him sneakily.

Stefanie Bautista 1:08:25
Also why wasn’t his sleeping in the quinjet?

Ariel Landrum 1:08:28
I’ve no idea.

Stefanie Bautista 1:08:29
Isn’t it comfortable in there. And I mean, we’ve seen the inside of that thing. It’s pretty state of the art.

Ariel Landrum 1:08:34
And how did she not notice it? Like why was it “Oh, thanks for this jet.

Stefanie Bautista 1:08:39
“This gigantic quinjet that all the Avengers are gonna fly in one day. To save the quantum universe.” Yeah, you know, those? Yeah, I think we can nitpick on those things. And I, I’m right there with you on that. So I think in the grand scheme of things, I mean, even and I this is probably the last thing I’m going to, like contribute to this part of the conversation, but the whole subway part of them just like going in. Have you guys been in a subway station? Anything goes down. I’ve been in many subway stations in many different countries, and the smallest thing goes down. Everybody turns and no one is just watching to see what goes on. You will see them scatter like roaches.

Ariel Landrum 1:09:27
Scatter. And there’s a shutdown, like it reported to them the metro authority.

Stefanie Bautista 1:09:35
Yeah. Especially in Europe, because it’s such a small enclosed space like. Do not tell me.

Ariel Landrum 1:09:40
And there have been plenty of, you know, in reality, terrorist attacks that have happened in those areas. So the response time is instant.

Stefanie Bautista 1:09:47
Yeah, I even think that was a better response time in the Italian Job way back in the day with Mark Wahlberg. And Charlize Theron because I love that movie. It’s one of my favorites. And when they shut down Hollywood and Highland right across the street from where you watch Black Widow, shit goes down it goes.

Ariel Landrum 1:10:04
It goes down.

Stefanie Bautista 1:10:05
So yeah, that’s the last thing I’m gonna say about that. But oh, I enjoyed it.

Ariel Landrum 1:10:11
I think like a couple of things before we end. I think The Cap would disapprove of the language. I counted I counted. So a bitch was said in English once. Shit was said in Russian once. And in English three times. Bullshit was said twice in English and ass was said three times in English. So watch your language. Language. Watch your mouth. Cap would disapprove. And I think really the only other thing that I would want to touch on is I there was some foreshadowing in the beginning with the fireflies, right in regards to like bioluminescence, and that sort of like illuminating darkness. And if we think a Dreykov off, he’s operating in the shadows. He’s hiding. I think. And then when we talk about the serum, it used light, right? Like it seemed a sparkle. Very much similar to the fireflies. I thought that was really lovely. But I feel like in the writing to the completion, something was missed in like connecting that.

Stefanie Bautista 1:11:10
Yes, yeah, it didn’t come into full fruition. And yeah, I they spent so much time on that scene with Rachel Weisz explaining it to her that I thought it was going to come up again, maybe even in the scene where Yelena visits her grave afterwards. I would have liked it to be at night maybe where they would revisit that. And then we could see, you know, fireflies, but again, it did not happen. It was more symbolic, I guess.

Ariel Landrum 1:11:11
Yeah, definitely foreshadowing for the, the the way the story is supposed to go, which is like illuminating this, this person operating in the dark and in the shadows, but I, I think it should, it seemed more like it was going to be talking about their sisterly connection. And I agree with you. Like if we saw the fireflies in regards to like at her grave that would have felt like very healing as part of just grief and loss. We do tend to look for the ones that we’ve lost in the symbols around us. So I think there was a hidden amiss there.

Stefanie Bautista 1:12:13
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I definitely agree. And I think that, you know, minus those little snafus, I think Marvel did a pretty good job considering that this is a release, not just in theaters, but also Disney+ as premiere access. Again, as a big theatrical release, it’s pretty hard. But I know that they’ve done quite well. Making I’m not sure hundreds of millions at this point 5, 7 or whatever.

Ariel Landrum 1:12:44
Yeah, yeah, domestically and internationally, this is broken, broken the records. And I think I think what we expected and even broken records in regards to premiere access and new subscriptions. Totally worth it overdue for this character.

Stefanie Bautista 1:13:01
Definietly.

Ariel Landrum 1:13:03
And really just makes me sad that we aren’t going to see her again. I’m hoping maybe flashbacks? Or like a variant?

Stefanie Bautista 1:13:10
Who knows like it like we’ve said before, the multiverse will probably surprise us in ways that we can’t even figure out yet.

Ariel Landrum 1:13:18
Can’t even figure out.

Stefanie Bautista 1:13:19
Yep.

Ariel Landrum 1:13:21
Well, if you want to hear more about Black Widow, go ahead and check out GT Radio’s episode where they talk about more of the family dynamics.

Yeah, definitely.

Stefanie Bautista 1:13:31
I know that there’s much to explore with that with the dynamic of what is considered a family and what they define as a family and what Natasha, all of those people go through because of their experience as this undercover family. And yeah, it’s a must listen to.

Ariel Landrum 1:13:51
Yeah. So thank you, everybody for listening to Happiest Pod On Earth. I’m Ariel.

Stefanie Bautista 1:13:58
And I’m Stefanie.

Ariel Landrum 1:14:00
And we are Disney fans. But we’re so much more let us know how much more you are than just the Disney fan by tweeting us @happiestpodgt or dming us on our Instagram @happiestpodgt.

Stefanie Bautista 1:14:12
Yep. And let us know how you like the movie and maybe some of the things that you noticed or had gripes with also. We would love to hear there is no judgment here. Okay, bye. See you next time.

• Black Widow
• Captain America
• Thor
• Iron Man
• Iron Madien
• Loki
• Sylvie
• Red Gaurdian
• Yelena
• Stranger Things
• My Little Pony

• Trauma
• Objectification
• Human trafficking
• Sex trafficking
• Childhood trauma
• 80s themes
• Anatomy
• Continuity error
• Leadership skills
• MMA fighting
• Cosplay
• Costumes
• Body image
• Body types