‘Disclaimer’ Episode 6: Fragments of Reality

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Hello, welcome back to the Prestige TV podcast feed. I'm Joanna Robinson.

I am Rob Mahoney.

It is a big week for our friend, the grief cardigan. Cardi G is here, the star

I don Joanna Robinson. I am Rob Mahoney.
It is a big week for our friend, the grief cardigan. Cardi G is here, the star of the show of this episode of Disclaimer.
I believe Steven is wearing it in every single frame, whether it's under the suit, under the robe. The cardigan is getting as much play as the cat usually does.
So I think we did a great job picking our email for disclaimer. I think so.
And it really, as you pointed out, it's part of a capsule wardrobe. You know, you can accessorize, you can layer.
It's great for all seasons. I really appreciate the work that Steven is doing with the cardigan.
And this is definitively, I think, the Emmy reel episode for the cardigan itself. Yeah, yeah.
And it's like, if it's between the cardigan and the cat, I don't know. I have to, like, my heart has to go team cat, but we've got one more episode to really see what the cardigan has to offer.
All right, here we are talking about an episode of Prestige Television. And we've spoken about a cardigan before we've spoken about it's starry leads or it's starry showrunner.
might be an indicator to you, listeners at home, that we are struggling here at the end of Disclaimer. We've got one more week after this, and we will be here with you through the bitter end of Disclaimer.
But it is like the sleeves of a grief cardigan unraveling a bit before our eyes. I just want to hit a couple sort of email related things or big picture things before we get into the episode.
First and foremost, and this is sort of highlighted by some things we learned in this episode. We've gotten several emails over a few weeks now about the fact that every episode of Disclaimer opens with a warning about sexual, physical, and emotional violence.
And I think they are likely warning us about more than Steven taking a header into a cabinet inside the hospital this week and stuff like that. So that's something that's looming.
We've got one episode to go. Would you say, I mean, how are you feeling about that, Rob? And also, did knowing that, whether or not you noticed it or or our listeners sent us a bunch of emails about this did that flavor how you received sort of like the sasha information this week jonathan's girlfriend went home early and his and his girlfriend's mom is uh pissed uh what do you what do you think rob i think it flavors a lot of things about the way you watch this show, but honestly, only to a degree.
We've been talking from the very start about waiting for the perspective turn to Catherine's story to figure out what kind of person Jonathan really does. There's been a lot of hand tipping to the idea that maybe he wasn't the best guy in the world.
Maybe he wasn't the kind who you would expect to jump into the water and save a child even if that does turn out to be exactly the case. There's something more complicated at play here.
And there's certainly something in Catherine's character and demeanor. And even as we spotlight earlier in the season, her pointing out that actually she is the victim in this story.
There were a lot of signs pointed in this direction, whether there was a content warning or not, but I have to say, putting that before every episode, you're just kind of primed and waiting

for something really heinous to happen.

We haven't seen, I would say, something especially

heinous yet. I am not

looking forward to it. In the SVU sense.

Yes, in the SVU sense. I'm not looking

forward to it, but it's coming, and I

hope they make it work. I really, really

do. I don't have

extremely high hopes. No.
And then

we got several emails this week with

this theory that, and this

is I hope they make it work. I really, really do.
I don't have extremely high hopes. No.
And then we got several emails this week with this theory that, and this is not exactly a theory craft show, but this theory that maybe what we're watching in present day is also either part of a book or part of an unreliable narrator. And I think it's worth in this moment then just sort of like parsing the various narrations that we're working with here.

We have been working from the start with Stephen's point of view.

I, Stephen, narrated by Kevin Kline, that's one narrator.

We've been operating with Indira Varma, narrating largely Catherine's stuff, Robert's stuff,

Nikki's stuff, but in the U, not the I. And I think

some third person, too, for Robert, right?

Doesn't she refer to Robert as Robert?

Yes, I think so. So some second, some

third for Deer Farmer. Yeah, you're right.

And then we get

Cate Blanchett, Catherine's

I, to narrate

the sort of new version

of the past

that we get snippets of in this episode, and I imagine we're going to get more of in the finale. How is all of that now with the introduction of the Catherine Eye? We've been asking sort of all along about these different second versus first person.
And I think I'm inclined to believe that part of, um, sort of what we talked about last week in terms of cutting away when she's talking to her mom, this like kind of a trick to keep us out of Catherine's head, uh, to a certain degree. But also, you know, this episode ends with Catherine saying, it's time for my voice to be heard, um, in the show's very subtle, light way that it's going through this.
So now we are hearing from Catherine finally. So how is all of that working for you? What's your interpretation of what's going on? What do you think? Yeah, I thought up until this point, honestly, for all our complaints about the show, I thought it had done a pretty decent job of juggling a bunch of different timelines and perspectives and these different narration styles in a way that I thought was really interesting, and I hadn't really bumped against at all.
I got a lot of whiplash in this episode from, I think in particular, Catherine's first-person narration just being thrown in there, and the way it was introduced, and the way it was clipped in, it just felt kind of jutted into the story without explanation or introduction. And of course, by the end of the episode, yeah, she's sitting down to tell her story.
I'm kind of wondering if, like, why not just wait for that? At this point, why not just wait for the story at, like, recommendation of what's happening here? I wonder if there was a version of this where that all of that flashback did start just after she sits down with a cup of drug laced tea to tell it. If there was ever a version of this where it ran just sort of in sequence rather than inter cut.
It felt that way. It did feel that way.
It felt snipped up for sure. Yeah.
Yeah. But this episode does start with Catherine in her POV for the first time saying, the truth is, right? And then we get the first of these snippets of the flashback to her version of what happened in Italy.
As we had sort of guessed from the start, this version is shot differently than the version that was showing us sort of Nancy's book version of what happened with Jonathan. I think, I don't know for a fact, but I think this is probably Chivo shooting this.
It's interesting, though, because going with like through those snippets throughout the episode and sort of seeing it from her point of view or the different version of it, we're still using like Golden Hour. Like there's still some some of that Golden Hour setting, but trying to think about the way that Chivo versus Dubonel, again, this is my assumption that the two of them both shot in this location, how they use that Golden Hour light differently, how it feels a bit harsher under Chivo's lens.
What do you think of the two styles? For one, I think the two versions of this show have never felt more disjointed and disconnected than they do when it's edited together in this way. You know, when these scenes do feel like they're just completely disconnected from everything we've seen so far, I think somewhat purposefully.
They've been holding back Catherine's story to this point. Right.
And now we're thrusting it into the mix to reveal what the truth actually is. I thought

I was most taken out of it

when we get a hard

cut from Catherine narrated

version of events on the beach in Italy

straight into

Cate Blanchett in the middle of the frame

second person in Dira Varma

narration style while she's

in the hospital with Nicholas. And it's like

something about this whiplash

I'm just not particularly enjoying.

But as far as the Italy stuff, it's

Thank you. style while she's in the hospital with Nicholas.
And it's like, something about this whiplash I'm just not particularly enjoying. But as far as the Italy stuff itself and this version of events, I do think there's something notable and probably something worth digging into about the golden hour aspects of it and kind of the slow reveal of a different Catherine than we've known at any point in the story.
A version who is younger, but with her own understanding of herself versus just like, uh, the lens of some guy's mom who died and she's interpreting it from some raunchy photographs. And this version, even though it is a golden hour, it's not the sort of lustful golden hour that we saw last time around.
It's honestly like more of a love story about her finding herself as a mom and enjoying being a mother for honestly what maybe sounds like the first time. Like she's kind of settling into herself and her routine and like her alone time with Nicholas and starting to really enjoy it.
And so from that perspective, like I can get behind the sort of warm and fuzzy feel and repurposing it for that kind of emotion. There's also some moments, and I kind of liked this actually with the earlier Robert sequence on the bus, this moment of someone sort of thinking really highly of themselves.
And then maybe like, whenever she was like, I just remember thinking what a good mom or how patient I am, what a good mom I am. And I'm just sort of like, I kind of like that because I'm like, that's so human.
Yes. Be like, I'm so great.
Wait, am I? I don't know. Intercut with all the rest.
Okay, as far as the like, are we still watching fiction in the present day? Which is, again, an email we got from a lot of different listeners. I don't think so.
I can't decide whether I hope so or not. Would it be better? I think it would be better just because I clipped two things in this episode for us to listen to.
This one, Kai, can you play the one of Stephen speaking for all of us, please? I was surprised by how easily the pieces fell into place. Tell me about it, pal.
Same. Hard same, Stephen.
Tell me about it. Big same.
I would say the moment for me that I maybe even let out like a small frustrated scream. The opposite of Stephen's ha in his living room and how easy all this has come together.
Is when the hospital staff takes the word of an absolute stranger over the mother of the kid in the bed and pushes her out of the room in order to tend to him. And the explanation later is sort of like this doctor or whatever has a pushy husband and she recognizes his tracing Catherine.
And I guess, you know, like we got it last week. We get it that the idea is like women aren't believed or, you know, all these various things.
We understand sort of what the show is trying to do, but that one just like really, maybe even more than the entire office turning on her, uh, broke my credulity. Like I couldn't, I could not accept that that was something we were supposed to take as, as a real scene happening in front of us.
It's preposterous. And honestly, I think at this point in the show, it really does have clearly some ideas on its mind, some pretty complicated human emotions, as you mentioned, the kind of self-reflection and overall neurosis of these characters is something that I think can be pretty effective and is worth diving into.
But the version we get is just increasingly broad and I have to say just increasingly dumb. It's just turning into a dumber show by the end of it in a way that I don't appreciate.
Like there are a lot of interesting things that I think could be said about these sorts of situations and this character and gender. And I suspect given the content warnings, I'm sure that's going to continue in the finale and there's going to be a whole conversation to be had.
But the version of what we get is the office debacle that you mentioned. Sarah from HR calling, asking to give you someone to talk to about your anger, treating Catherine like a hysterical woman and literally telling her she needs to calm down.
It's like, I see it. We get it.
Everything in that vein just seems super obvious to me in a way that, like, Joe, am I missing something here? I don't think so. And like, I have to say that like this kind of story, story about like women not being believed or thought of as hysterical or pushed out by like men and women alike or all these stories.
Like that's an interesting story to me as depicted by, you know, Cate Blanchett, one of our like most talented actors. actors.
That's a story that's interesting to me. And Cuau Rohn, like, usually one of our best storytellers, but, like, the way in which it's done here is just not, there's no finesse.
It's just very clumsy. And so, like, yeah, it's exactly the kind of story I should be interested in.
We got an email from a listener, Nick, who wrote in and said, I wonder if Disclaimer might have felt a lot more exciting or challenging if it had come out, say, five years ago, when these types of characters felt newer on TV and the intersection of wealth and death felt more transgressive. But in a post, quote, eat the rich world, how tragic is this all supposed to feel? And how shocked are we supposed to be? These people have dark secrets.
While the show repeatedly takes turns I i don't expect i can't say i'm ever particularly surprised by any of its larger ideas and i think that really that sums it up you know we were talking about this i was hoping that this would be like sort of a better version of some of the like uh big little lies knockoffs that like i would say specifically nicole kidman has been you know sort of diminishing returns doing versions of the story again and again and now at this point I'm like this isn't any better than those I think even though I think Kate is doing there's a shot in this episode when Stephen hears the glass breaking after the B&E he goes downstairs looks in the garden there's a dark thing, turns on the light, and it's like Cate Blanchett with a knife in the bright light. That's such an arresting visual.
I rewound and watched it a couple times. It's so beautiful, and her desperation, but still a grounded desperation.
And I'm like, in a better show. I know.
This is incredible in a better show. But unfortunately, I wonder if it goes back to, you know, I know you said you want to say some of this finale, so we don't have to like linger on it.
But if it goes back to just stretching it out over this much space. Yeah.
If Cuaron, who's like an expert film storyteller, if the stretched out version, you know, maybe we wouldn't have time to question why all of Stephen's plans are going so well. Every single one.
Or all this other stuff. The length is definitely working against it, though.
I think we can talk about some of that this week. And look, I hope we feel differently next week.
I hope some of the gender conversation feels different next week. I think right now, this show kind of wants to be like a he said, she said kind of story.
And I think where I'm having trouble with that is she hasn't said anything over six hours about what happened until we get final snippets in this episode and no sense of who that is being communicated to until the very end when I guess that's part of her conversation with Stephen. If this is a story where they are pulling out this theme about believing women and women being heard, the woman at the center of the frame has to speak and tell her truth for us to be able to contextualize any of that.
On the one hand, yes, I really agree with you. On the other hand, I don't want to verge into, and I don't think you are, but I don't want to stray into territory of like, well, if this happened, why didn't you report it? I know that's not what you're saying at all, remotely.
I just want to make it clear for people at home that that's not what we're saying. But this is the last email I read.
We got this email from Jane who said, this is why Catherine never told anyone. Why would anyone believe her, especially after the young man drowned saving her child? The world would always believe the worst and most salacious version of what happened about the woman.
It just needs a little prompting. There are certainly other problems with the show, but this underlying theme is unnerving.
And again, I think you and I agree with that as a theme worth exploring. I think it being done so clumsily and so broadly then sort of undercuts the point.
Because if you're watching this and you're watching Jisoo say you're so canceled, Catherine, or the hospital staff not believing her when there's a full-blown stranger in the room and all this other stuff like that, then you watch it and you're like, well, that would never happen. And it's true.
That would never happen. But versions of it happen.
And so if you showed us the subtler, more realistic version of it, then we can engage in that conversation. You know what I mean? And I think that's where you wash out the good parts about the ideas that are being explored here and the really valuable concepts and emotions that are being explored in that broadness.
Ultimately, I'm landing somewhere like this, where if you're going to do a Rashomon-style perspective story, we need to see both perspectives so that we can judge and evaluate them. Or if you want to do this version of the story where you hold back Catherine's version of events until the very end, which give or take a couple scenes in this episode seems to be what we're doing here.
Right. You need to actually sell us a version of Catherine that is less believable because it just never seemed plausible for a minute that we should believe the version of Catherine that was in The Perfect Stranger.
Right, right. If there were more for us to grab onto to think like, actually, what if this woman like is a really bad person? Not just a complicated person who isn't always the best mother and maybe isn't always the best boss and is vain in the way that people are vain, but there might be actually something wrong with her, then I think I would be more amenable to holding back the story for this long because we would be pulled in that direction.
But I've never felt pulled. I think this goes back to Nick's email.
He gave it a five-year timeline. I would hopefully push it back even further, but I think there's earlier times in our culture where if you think of something like the Jodie Foster film, The Accused, which is about a woman who was sexually assaulted and there are moments throughout the film where there are things about her where you're supposed to be like, well, why should I believe this person who lives X way or whatever? I really think we've moved beyond that as a culture.
And so, no, to your point, I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just sort of saying...
Well, the politics of telling, if this is an assault story, as all the disclaimers before the episodes would tell us, you probably just can't do that version of events where you challenge the woman's credibility all the way leading up to horrible assaults at the end. That wouldn't feel good either.
I kind of feel like that's the trick the show thinks it's playing. This is the problem, right? It's the show the disclaimer seems to think it is.

And then the show that it is in reality.

And those have turned out to be quite different things. So again, I think it's possible that if we were watching this like in the 80s when The Accused came out or whatever, or perhaps early 90s, I think, you know, it's possible we see someone like Catherine and we say, oh, well, she's kind of like a shitty mom or at least doesn't know how to connect to her kids.
It's like maybe she is cruel and callous, but I think we have hopefully learned to understand that women have more nuance than that. Okay.
I want to play another clip for you and it's to discuss, and I don't want to say our guy, Nikki. He's not our guy.
He's not our guy. I just want to share with our listeners.
I won't, I won't read it out necessarily, but this tremendous one,two punch of an email we got. We got this email from Melissa who was like, a couple weeks ago, who was like, you're being way too hard on Nikki.
Like, Nick, these are all the things that like, you know, have gone wrong in his life. And we've only seen him in these, like, blah, blah, blah.
Like, be nicer to him. And then they watched, not this week's, but last week's episode.
And they're like, and then it's just like a follow-up that was just it like never mind he sucks he does suck it's like never mind this guy sucks nick is uh unconscious in a bed the entire episode but that doesn't mean uh we

don't have occasion to be unimpressed by him i would just like to play this clip please guy

do you have any idea who he might be with friends i mean i don't know if he has any friends

I'm not that sure she even exists, Catherine. Oh, tough.
Extremely tough. What is the London version of the girlfriend in Canada? That's what we need to get to the bottom of.
Like, where are they geographically? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Isle of Man? A visa? I don't know.
Well, with all due respect to this exchange, we do know the answer to this mystery. He does not have any friends.
Well, I will say, he does at least go to a drug den where they tell him to wash up. They do.
They do drop him at A&E. You know what I mean? The people at your drug den are not your friends.
They're not your friends, but I'm just saying, some drug den people wouldn't have even dropped him at the hospital. It's true.
It's true. They're the real heroes of this story when you think about it.
It's them or the cat. So, you know, that's all I have to say about that.
During this phase of the episode, I think is when it really hit for me that Robert at this stage, six hours in, just could not be more insufferable if he tried. And this is one of the areas where if this were a movie, I don't think I would feel it as acutely.
And if this were a movie, maybe there's even parts of Robert's character that are a little bit relatable or that you can lock into in a certain way. But when you just see him being an idiot over and over and being rude and cruel over and over, it just doesn't work.
Like that character just doesn't work at this stage. He's just yam.
I'm just like, shut the fuck up. I'm having really tough time with him.
It's tough. And if you thought being shown repeatedly that he's wrong would result in some kind of comeuppance for him in this episode, you'd be wrong.
He's just going to keep being a little shit all the way to the end. Yeah, we'll see what happens to him in the finale.
Okay, Nancy. We get a bit more Nancy information.
So along with information we get about Nancy, chiefly sort of through these conversations she's having with Emma, Sasha's mom, her sort of temperamental nature, perhaps. I'm judging her less like post-Jonathan death, obviously, and more this pre-death conversation when she won't hear this girl's mom about sort of whatever it is that Jonathan did to send Sasha home.
We also get several more mentions in this episode by Stephen himself about sort of like the liberties that Nancy took, but that the way in which her fictionalized version of events reveals deeper truths, like this is something he fundamentally believes is true of Perfect Stranger, that is, however fictionalized it may be, that there is a deeper core fundamental truth here that his son is good and a hero, and that his death is a result of this cruel, callous, horrible woman doing something.

Yeah.

This was news to me that Stephen had this perspective.

I'd just been kind of operating to this point with the assumption that Stephen thought everything in the book was true.

Maybe that's not giving a character that, as we saw earlier, is basically like at least an English teacher.

Yeah.

Enough credit for parsing the text.

Yeah.

But to have that perspective and then be just like unleashing

all hell on this family.

Yeah.

Feels a little fast and loose

with a version of the facts

that your wife dreamed up

while she was holed up in a room

and not speaking to anybody.

She's not psychic, my guy.

And the degree to which

I can have empathy,

I will say.

Completely.

You know, Nancy's unraveling, Stephen's unraveling in the loss of both Jonathan and then Nancy. Yes.
We meet him smearing lipstick on his hand and kissing it. We see him in this episode, put Jonathan's deodorant on, and obviously Cardi G is here with us throughout.
And he's just like, the three of us together will avenge ourselves against this family.

And so it becomes this desperate attempt for him.

And similarly, it's played for humor, but the moment where he has to delete his catfished Instagram account of Jonathan, there is real loss playing on Stephen's face as he does it. So it's like this is how he feels like he can still be close to Nancy.
And I think it was an email we got. I can't remember who sent it right now, though, unfortunately.
But this idea that this was never Nancy's intention. Nancy didn't publish this.
Nancy didn't write it necessarily to punish Catherine. We saw them have an interaction in a cafe.
So like we know that Nancy maybe wasn't the hugest fan of Catherine, but this invented this creepy little fan fiction that she wrote about her son that both Stephen and Catherine are remarking about how detailed it is, was her own personal therapeutic working through a story that she has invented here. She didn't leave it with the instructions, now please self-publish it and get it placed in bookstores and take a syringe full of Drano to the hospital to visit her child you know what I mean? This wasn't Nancy's Nancy for all of her issues this is not her idea this is Stephen's idea There's a lot of this is what Nancy would have wanted used for reality and for propping up as an emotional crutch in this episode We don't know what Nancy would have wanted because she put that book in a drawer and didn't show it to anybody.
And correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like there was a scene in the first episode where Steven is adding the disclaimer in the book about how like there's not a coincidence that these characters may resemble real people, right? Yeah. Yes.
Yes. So that feels like a very pointed gesture in releasing the book on Stephen's part that that's not part of the core text, right? Like that's not what Nancy was trying to do to like expose some great ill, it seems like.
She was working through a lot and working through it in some admittedly pretty strange ways, but do what you gotta do. But private, like ways that aren't hurting anyone.
Yes, in the privacy of your own son's bedroom and your own home, do what you got to do. But clearly, Stephen's version of grief is much more vindictive than that.
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Here's a moment in the episode where I really admired Catherine's restraint and patience, and it's when Jisoo texted her and said, sorry about Nicholas. Hot off the heels of saying you're so canceled, Catherine.
And if it were me, I would text, I would say, fuck you. I'm already getting a call from HR.
I don't care. Also, HR is like, no one can escape sort of the rules.
No one's above the rules, Catherine.

So we have to investigate what this stranger has alleged.

And like, I suppose what Stephen has alleged is... The harassment, I guess.

The harassment?

Okay.

Like, I was trying to figure out too, like what is...

Like, statutory rape and like...

Is he underage?

Is he not?

I don't know.

Or like a degree of murder by neglecting to...

Is that murder?

I don't...

Is that a crime?

I said a degree of murder.

I don't know what degree it is.

What is Catherine's crime?

The harassment.

Okay, I guess.

That was the closest I could come to figuring it out.

I just like, why is HR involved in this?

Don't know.

Okay, like the workplace part,

confrontation between colleagues, people are pushing, slapping, grabbing each other. Yeah, that's an HR situation.
What's in the book? I can't see why it would be. Especially, oh, look.
This is what gets me the most about this show. I acknowledge that, Joe, working in journalism, I don't know if this happens to you, but anytime I read a feature story that recounts a conversation between two people in a room, my brain immediately goes, how did you...
How do you know? How do you know? Where is this from? It's got to be one of the people in the room or one of the people in the room told enough people that you can successfully corroborate and recreate it. And that's very dicey business.
I would not recommend it. And then you only have their version of what happened in the room.
Ideally, you need both people's version of what happened in the room. How an office full of documentarians would pick up this book, a book that puts thoughts in the Catherine character's head that is relying on the perspective of someone who died that day.
Yeah. And trying to reverse engineer all this stuff when it's pretty clear it's a book that's pointed at Catherine front and center like look at what this horrible bitch did it's just like it's way too credulous so to go back to the documentarian question we've talked about the other version of the Jonathan in Italy story that we've seen that starts with the sort of vignetting quality of sort of the camera in and out iris effect.

In Catherine's version, we hear the sound of a film reel playing very loudly in the background as she's telling this story, like a sort of home video almost in the Don Draper days version of this holiday. Why? Yeah, why? I don't know.
On the one hand, it's almost like a very West Andersonian sort of effect. But on the one hand, that sound to me, you know, it's almost like artifice, right? So is there a version of the story where we're meant to not believe Catherine's version of what happened either, which I don't love inside of a story that's like, believe women, but like- Yeah.
Again, if you're going to do that, it takes more track to get there than they've done've done. But like, or are we meant to be thinking of it as like, she's a documentarian, this is the documentarian's version, which would also sort of give us that film reel audio.
But I was trying to understand that choice inside of this episode. I can't say I get it so far, other than to the idea of artifice and whether we're supposed to trust this version of events.
Like, clearly is going to be a perspective-based story. This is everything from Catherine's perspective.
What she knows, what she doesn't know is all going to be a factor in that. And she even kind of alludes to it in some of her narration of like, did I flirt with him? Did I smile at him? Did I say something that would have given him the wrong sign? She's pulling from memory too.
Yeah. So get on on one hand why we're doing a different sort of visual device to separate the perfect stranger version of italy from catherine's remembrance of italy i think you probably have to do that on some level uh just to like draw a really clear line that we are not showing that version of events anymore i just don't get why you go to the film real effect necessarily i'm kind of missing what they're going for there.
The thing that I did appreciate about her version that we were watching in this episode is that Jonathan is silent, is a background character. She is never trying to be inside of his head, presume his motivations.
And that's just a massive difference from Nancy's exercise, which is, you know, assigning not only blame, but sort of, you know, interiority of Catherine's character. Whereas she's like, here's this guy.
He was staring at me on the beach. He was taking photos of me.
He was sort of leering at me in the bar or, or, or smiling at me in the bar. And like, yeah, did I, did I sort of like bloom a bit under the intention of this like handsome young stranger? Perhaps.
But then also for us to see, I will say like, even as we were watching this season and I was like, surely Catherine's version is coming in which we see something very different. But how do we square it with the photographs? Like, how do we explain the photographs? To see her trying to get sand out of her bikini being like, then this salacious photograph that he took on the beach of her, of her exposing her nipple to him or whatever is perhaps chilling preview of something to come.

But that's just sort of like, okay, there can be just like very prosaic explanations for some of this stuff. But I'm really scared to know how we explain the bedroom stuff.
So we'll have to see. To the idea of do we believe this version that Catherine is telling, again, I would really like to not be asked to question this woman's depiction of what happened to her.
And the fact that Jonathan is just sort of like almost a prop in this makes me more inclined to believe her because she's not trying to ascribe any motivation to him or anything like that. Well, Andy, it is a little bit more in line with what we know to be true of Jonathan.
The little bits and pieces of information

we get about Jonathan as a

person is maybe not the

naive schoolboy who needed to be

shown the ways by Sex Yoda that

was portrayed in The Perfect Stranger.

Sex Yoda.

I forgot about Sex Yoda.

I had the thought, like, I bet Jonathan was really

big into the prequels. I bet he was a prequels guy.

He's like, you know who had a point? Palpatine. Great points, you know? Great points were made.
But even the stuff with Sasha that's kind of talked around in this episode, I think that stuff is done to pretty good effect, right? The idea that we don't actually know what happened between Jonathan and Sasha. We know that Sasha's mom was angry enough to yell at Nancy on the phone.
And that whatever she's saying is so distressing to Nancy that she can't even hear it. She literally is taking the phone away from her head.
She can't process what is being told to her. All of which suggests that you can fill in the blanks for yourself.
I think especially the follow-up conversation between them in which she's telling Sasha's mom that Jonathan has died and is saying like, I have some very distressing news. No, no, the distressing news that I have is that Jonathan has died.
It's like clearly something really bad went down between them in the fight that Jonathan and Sasha had. and to have that version of this character, a version that by Stephen's own admission,

he can't even imagine doing anything for anybody else,

kind of in the background,

stalking, watching, taking photos, making Catherine feel uncomfortable and embarrassed. And yes, also feeling his attention in an intense way that has some positive interaction.
But I agree with you, using him as this background presence, I think is very smart. And it does create a pretty chilling effect on this version of the story.

To the Sasha point, I think it's interesting and important that Steven never hears exactly what her mom, Emma,

has to say about what happened.

And Nancy purposely downplays it, right?

She says she didn't say anything, basically.

Right.

And on the phone, she's like, let's not aggrandize.

That's very extreme.

I mean, I can't interpret it in my head any other way than like he sexually assaulted his girlfriend. That like, okay, this is a story that I've invented.
Sasha is like traveling around Europe with him. They're like young, they're hot, they're in love.
But like she is not ready to have sex or doesn't have sex right then or like whatever. And he takes it too far and she goes home and her mom's like, he raped my daughter.
Like that's, again, that's led by the disclaimer we have at the beginning of all of these episodes. And if that's the case, how fucking disturbing is it that Nancy would open Perfect Stranger with the two of them like frolicking happily on a train? You know what I mean? Like that's, that's the very first like image we get is this like happy consensual, like two puppies in love sort of train sex scene.
And that's very disturbing. And again, if that's just like how Nancy felt like she could process, I'm inclined to be empathetic to processing like this horrific thing of your child death, however you must.
But also, her disinclination to believe anything bad about her son even before this happens is a sad truth about a lot of parents of young men who do terrible things. Or any young child probably who does terrible things.

So bummer. Fun times.

Bummer.

Love everything about this show

at this stage in the season.

Yeah, I think the part of that

that sticks out to me about Nancy

is like if that was part of her processing,

like part of processing is acceptance

of what happened

and accepting maybe the bad things

that people told you about Jonathan.

And again, I get what's happening.

As you say, this is a very true thing

that people will do to like

refuse to believe things

about people in their lives.

such a ham-fisted way to stumble into the key themes of the show at this point get it Nancy doesn't believe things said about her own son but she's so willing to write all these things about Catherine. Isn't that funny? All right.
So disclaimer,

it's a show that is almost over and that we watched.

We have a few plans

in the upcoming weeks

for shows that we have our eye on.

I would say the next show

we feel like we are for sure covering.

I'm always like hesitant

to just say it,

but I'm just going to say it.

Say Nothing,

which is an FX show

that is dropping as like a binge drop,

which we wish it weren't, but it is. I've watched some.
Chris Ryan has watched some. We're both big fans of it.
I've spoken, most importantly, I've spoken to people who have finished it and they're huge fans of it. We need to pick a show that ends strongly.
That ends on a high note. I've heard that Say Nothing, which is based on a very popular book, which is dropping November 14th as a binge.
We'll be covering it in two parts, I think is our current plan to sort of break up the season in half, cover it in two parts. It's an FX show.
You can stream it on Hulu as well. And that is the plan.
Anything else you want to say, Rob, about the state of television disclaimer? What's going on in basketball? I don't know. Actually, I have two bits of closing business for you on this episode of Disclaimer, Joe.
One, we missed a crucial update, which is that I regret to inform you and everyone watching the show that Counterbug has passed away. You're right.
Do you have any favorite memories of our guy, the Counterbug, and these standout scenes that are going to stick with you forever? I think there was like a sort of, I'll call it like a flickering or like a wrestling, the last gasps of counterbug. And you didn't even know you were watching the end.
I know. Until it was too late.
It was so strong, really, fighting all the way to the end. I support Counterbug.
Well, honestly,

the most riveting thing that happened on a counter

in Stephen's home, because I gotta say,

Catherine not seeing Stephen sweeping

a bunch of drugs into her tea.

I'm sorry.

The least

subtle drugging of a tea, of a glass of

builder's tea I've ever seen in my life. And like, at the very

least, she put like a heaping spoonful

of sugar in there to like maybe

explain why she wouldn't notice the graininess

of the sleeping pills Thank you. of Builder's Tea I've ever seen in my life.
And at the very least, she put a heaping spoonful of sugar in there

to maybe explain why she wouldn't notice

the graininess of the sleeping pills

that he has mashed in there.

A whole fucking blister pack in there.

He's popping the pills.

He's crushing them.

He's sweeping.

Big arms.

Big arms with the sweeping.

You know?

I don't care what it is.

Don't sweep anything off your counter into my tea.

I want to go back to Counterbug for a second.

Sorry, I moved us on too quickly.

Do you think... I don't care what it is.
Don't sweep anything off your counter into my tea. I want to go back to Counterbug for a second.

Sorry, I moved us on too quickly.

Do you think any of our listeners would be capable of knitting a grief cardigan so small that Counterbug's mom and dad could have their own little grief cardigans

to really process what happened to Counterbug over the course of the story?

I like to believe in our one in our listeners and their capacity for crafts. I suspect this is a crafty bunch to be honest with you.
I think they can do it. I think we could get a tiny little...
Micro crochet. That's a booming market on Etsy right now.
I love it. Okay.
Alright. So get your tiny crochet needles out for Counterbug's parents.
Yep and Nancy of the counter, and don't drink anything that someone has swept something into, I would say. Sweeping into a drink is bad.
It's a no. One last follow-up, because we talked extensively earlier this season about the football allegiances of our core characters.
Chelsea, yeah. Chelsea has played a role in the show so far.
Nicholas and Robert, we assume, are both Chelsea fans based on their dialogue. Lewis Partridge, who plays Jonathan, did appear at a football match over the weekend with Olivia Rodrigo, a Chelsea-Manchester United match, in which it appears they were there in a Man U capacity.
So I'm, you know, really, for plot purposes, we're completing the circle here. You know, like, we're really seeing a Man U family versus a Chelsea family.
This is the thing. Really a tale as old as time.
Two households both aligned to dignity divided over football clubs. All right, also, I would like to hear from any Chelsea fans how they feel about their association with Robert and Nicky in this story.
It just gets worse by the day. Feeling good about it? I don't know.
All right. So please email us your thoughts at tinygriefcardagainatgmail.com.
Actually, it's just griefcardagainatgmail.com. Thank you to Rob Mahoney.
Thank you to Kai Grady. Stick with us for the the end of disclaimer I just think we've gone this far we just need to why would we turn back together and cause yeah I mean we end on a like dun dun dun is she gonna pass out from her tea before she's told her story like god if that happens I'm gonna be so mad I'm gonna be so mad she very sleepy.
She can't finish her story. Will the syringe of Drano be employed? I mean, check off syringe.
Yeah, I'm excited to find out. And then, yeah, sort of get ready for Say Nothing, which I think is going to be a really, by all accounts, an excellent trip to the Prestige TV store.

We will see you next week.

Bye.