‘Disclaimer’ Episode 6: Fragments of Reality

Speaker 1 What's up everybody? Chris Vernon here and welcome to a new season of the NBA and the Mismatch. And huge welcome as well to my new co-host Dave Jacobi.

Speaker 2 I can't wait to link with you twice a week, every Tuesday and Friday, right here on The Mismatch to break down everything that's happening in the league.

Speaker 1 Who's playing well, who we loved, who we loathed, trade rumors, team dysfunction. We've got you covered right here.

Speaker 1 So follow us, subscribe, and hit us with those five-star ratings on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast.

Speaker 2 And also don't forget to follow us on social media.

Speaker 2 That's at Ringer NBA and check out the full mismatch episodes with the two handsomest podcasters in the history of podcasting right in the Ringer NBA YouTube channel.

Speaker 3 This episode is brought to you by Viore.

Speaker 3 Look, I'm not a big, let's hype up workout clothes guy, but Viore, I gotta say, total game changer. Been wearing a lot.

Speaker 3 If you see me power walking around Los Angeles, probably going to see me wearing some Viore. Sunday performance joggers that they have.
It's made with four-way performance stretch fabric.

Speaker 3 One of the most comfortable things you own. You will wear them everywhere.
I promise. All you have to do is go to viore.com slash Simmons and you get 20% off your first purchase with Viore.

Speaker 3 V-U-O-R-I dot com slash Simmons. Enjoy free shipping on all U.S.
orders over $75 plus free returns. Exclusions apply.
Visit the website for full terms and conditions.

Speaker 3 This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods Market. At Whole Foods Market, you'll find great everyday prices for this Thanksgiving.
Check out their 365 brand.

Speaker 3 No antibiotics ever turkeys start at $1.49 a pound with Prime with Organic Birds at $299 a pound. You'll find Thanksgiving essentials like condensed soups.
I love those.

Speaker 3 Instant mashed potatoes, like those too. Organic baking spices plus low prices on everything else you need from fresh produce to frozen appetizers.

Speaker 3 Enjoy so many ways to save on your Thanksgiving spread at Whole Foods Market Terms Apply.

Speaker 5 Hello, welcome back to the Breast Seeds TV Podcast Speed.

Speaker 4 I'm Joanna Robinson. I'm Rob Mahoney.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 4 Oh, huge part.

Speaker 5 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 yeah 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 and it's like if it's 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

Speaker 5 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 its starry leads or its starry showrunner.

Speaker 5 And that might be an indicator to you, listeners at home, that we are struggling here at the end of disclaimer.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 I just want to hit a couple sort of email-related things or big picture things before we get into the episode. Please.

Speaker 5 First and foremost, and you know, this is sort of highlighted by some things we learn in this episode. We've gotten several emails over

Speaker 5 a few weeks now about the fact that every episode of Disclaimer opens with a warning about sexual, physical, and emotional violence.

Speaker 5 And I think they are likely warning us about more than Stephen taking a header into like a cabinet inside the hospital this week and stuff like that. So that's something that was looming.

Speaker 5 We've got one episode to go. Would you say, I mean, how are you feeling about that, Rob?

Speaker 5 And also,

Speaker 5 did that, did knowing that, you know, whether or not you noticed it 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?

Speaker 4 Jonathan's girlfriend went home early and his girlfriend's mom is 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 you know we've been talking from the very start about waiting for the perspective turn to catherine's story to figure out like what kind of person jonathan really does there's been a lot of hand tipping to the idea that you know maybe he wasn't the best guy in the world maybe 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 yeah there's something more complicated at play here.

Speaker 4 And there's certainly something in the Catherine's character and demeanor. And even as we spotlit earlier in the season, her pointing out that actually she is the victim in this story.

Speaker 4 There were a lot of signs pointed in this direction, whether there was a content warning or not.

Speaker 4 But I have to say, putting that before every episode, you're just kind of primed and waiting for something really heinous to happen.

Speaker 4 We haven't seen, I would say, something especially heinous yet. I am not looking forward to it.

Speaker 4 Yes, in the SVU sense.

Speaker 4 I'm not looking forward to it, but it's coming. And I hope they make it work.
I really, really do.

Speaker 5 I don't have extremely high hopes.

Speaker 5 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

Speaker 5 maybe what we're watching in present day is also either part of a book or part of an unreliable narrator.

Speaker 5 And I think it's worth in this moment then to 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,

Speaker 5 I, Stephen, narrated by Kevin Klein, that's one narrator. We've been operating with Indira Varma, narrating largely Catherine stuff, Robert's stuff,

Speaker 5 Nikki's stuff, but in the you, not the I.

Speaker 4 And I think some third person too for Robert, right? Doesn't she refer to Robert as Robert?

Speaker 5 Yes, I think so.

Speaker 4 So, some second, some third for Indira Varma.

Speaker 5 And then

Speaker 5 we get Kate Blanchett, Catherine's I,

Speaker 5 to narrate the sort of new version

Speaker 5 of the past that we get snippets of in this episode. And I imagine we're going to get more of in the finale.

Speaker 5 How is all of that now with the introduction of the Catherine I? We've been asking sort of all along about these different

Speaker 5 second versus first person.

Speaker 5 And I think I'm inclined to believe that part of it is just

Speaker 5 sort of what we talked about last week in terms of cutting away when she's talking to to her mom, this like kind of a trick to keep us out of Catherine's head

Speaker 5 to a certain degree. But also, you know, this episode ends with Catherine saying, it's time for my voice to be heard

Speaker 5 in the show's very subtle,

Speaker 5 light way that it's going through this.

Speaker 5 You know, so now we are hearing from Catherine.

Speaker 5 Finally. So how is all of that working for you? What's your interpretation of what's going on? What do you think?

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And I hadn't really bumped against it all.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 I'm kind of wondering if, like, why not just wait for that

Speaker 4 at this point? Why not just wait for the story at like recommendation of what's happening here?

Speaker 5 I wonder if there was a version of this where that all of that flashback did start

Speaker 5 just after she sits down with a cup of drug lace tea to tell it. If there was ever a version of this where it ran just sort of in sequence rather than intercut.

Speaker 4 It felt that way. Like

Speaker 4 feel that way. It felt snipped up for sure.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 But this episode does start with Catherine in her POV for the first time saying the truth is. Yes.
Right.

Speaker 5 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,

Speaker 5 this version is shot differently than the version that was showing us sort of Nancy's book version of what happened with Jonathan.

Speaker 5 I think, I don't know for a fact, but I think this is probably Chivo shooting this.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 Like there's still some of that like golden hour setting, but trying to think about the way that Chivo versus Dubonel, again, this is my assumption that the two of them shot, both shot in this location.

Speaker 5 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?

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 and now are thrusting it into the mix to reveal what the truth actually is.

Speaker 4 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 Kate Blanchette in the middle of the frame, second person in Deer of Varma narration style while she's in the hospital with Nicholas.

Speaker 4 And it's like something about this whiplash, I'm just like not particularly enjoying. But as far as the Italy stuff itself and this version of events, I do think there's something.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 A version who is younger, but with her own understanding of herself versus just like

Speaker 4 the lens of some guy's mom who died and she's interpreting it from some raunchy photographs. Yeah.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 enjoying being a mother for honestly what maybe sounds 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 And I'm just sort of like, I kind of like that because I'm like, that's so human. It's supposed to be like, I'm so great.
Wait, am I? I don't know. In intercut with all the rest.
Okay.

Speaker 5 As far as the like, are we watching, are we still watching fiction in the present day? Which is, again, an email we got from a lot of different listeners.

Speaker 5 I don't think so.

Speaker 4 I can't decide whether I hope so or not.

Speaker 4 Would it be better?

Speaker 5 I think it would be better just because I clipped two things in this episode for us to listen to. This one, Kaya, can you play the one of Steven speaking for all of us, please?

Speaker 6 I was surprised by how easily the pieces fell into place.

Speaker 4 Tell me about it, pal. Same.
Hard same time. Tell me about it.

Speaker 5 Big same. I would say the moment for me that I maybe even let out like a small frustrated scream.

Speaker 4 The opposite of Steven's ha. in his living room at how easy all this has come together.

Speaker 5 Is when the hospital staff takes the word of an absolute stranger over the mother of the kid in the bed

Speaker 5 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 has a pushy husband and she recognizes his tracing Catherine.

Speaker 5 And I get, 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, all these various things.

Speaker 5 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,

Speaker 5 broke my credulity. Like I couldn't, I could not accept that that was something we were supposed to take as a real scene happening in front of us.
It's preposterous.

Speaker 4 And honestly, I think at this point in the show, it really does have clearly some ideas on its mind, some like pretty complicated human emotions, as you mentioned, like the kind of self-reflection.

Speaker 4 and like 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.

Speaker 4 And I have to say, just like increasingly dumb. It's just turning into a dumber show by the end of it in a way that I don't appreciate.

Speaker 4 Like there are a lot of interesting things that I think could be said about these sorts of situations and this character and gender.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 treating Catherine like a hysterical woman and literally telling her she needs to calm down. It's like,

Speaker 4 I see it. We get it.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Everything in that vein just seems super obvious to me in a way that like, Joe, am I missing something here?

Speaker 5 I don't think so. And like,

Speaker 5 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 things.

Speaker 5 Like, that's an interesting story to me. As depicted by,

Speaker 5 you know, Kate Blanchett, one of our, like, right, most talented actors, that's a story that's interesting to me.

Speaker 5 And, and Cua Ron, like, usually one of our best storytellers, but, like, the way in which it's done here is just not,

Speaker 5 there's no finesse. It's just very clumsy.
And, and, and so, like, yeah, it's exactly the kind of story I should be interested in.

Speaker 5 We got an email from a listener, Nick, who wrote it 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.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 While the show repeatedly takes turns, I don't expect, I can't say I'm ever particularly surprised by any of its larger ideas. And I think that really

Speaker 5 sums it up. You know, we were talking about this.

Speaker 5 I was hoping that this would be like sort of a better version of some of the like big little eyes 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.

Speaker 5 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 Steven, he hears the glass breaking after the BE.

Speaker 5 He goes downstairs, looks in the garden. There's a dark figure in the garden, turns on the light, and it's like Kate Blanchett with a knife in the bright light.
That's such an arresting visual.

Speaker 5 Like, I rewound and watched it a couple of times. It's so beautiful, and like her desperation,

Speaker 5 but still like a grounded desperation. And I'm like, in a better show.
I know. Like, this is incredible in a better show.

Speaker 5 But unfortunately, I wonder if it goes back to, and you know, I know you said you want to say some of this for 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.

Speaker 5 If Cueron, who's like an expert film film storyteller, if

Speaker 5 the stretched out version,

Speaker 5 you know, maybe we wouldn't have time to question why all of Steven's plans are going so well.

Speaker 4 Single or one.

Speaker 5 All this other stuff.

Speaker 4 So 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And I think where I'm having trouble with that is she hasn't said anything over six hours about what happened until like we get final snippets in this episode and no sense of who that is being communicated to until the very end.

Speaker 4 When I guess that's part of her conversation with Steven.

Speaker 4 If this is a story where they are pulling out this theme about believing women and women being heard, like 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.

Speaker 5 On the one hand, yes, I really agree with you.

Speaker 5 On the other hand, I don't want a virgin to territory, and I don't think you are, but I don't want to like stray into territory of like, well, if this happened, why didn't you report it?

Speaker 5 I know, 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 like,

Speaker 5 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?

Speaker 5 The world would always believe the worst and most salacious version of what happened about the woman. It needs a little prompt.
It needs, it just needs a little prompting.

Speaker 5 There are certainly other problems with the show, but this underlying theme is unnerving and like again i i think you and i agree with that as like a theme worth exploring i think it being done so clumsily and so broadly then sort of undercuts the point because

Speaker 5 if you're watching this and you're watching jisu say you're so canceled catherine or these the hospital staff you know not believing her when there's like a full-blown stranger in the room and all this other stuff like that um

Speaker 5 then you watch it, you're like, well, that would never happen. And it's true, like that would never happen, but versions of it happen.

Speaker 5 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?

Speaker 4 And I think that's where you wash out like the good parts about the ideas that are being explored here and the really valuable like concepts and emotions that are being explored in that broadness.

Speaker 4 Ultimately, I'm landing somewhere like this, where if you're going to do a Rash Aman style perspective story,

Speaker 4 we need to see both perspectives so that we can judge and evaluate them.

Speaker 4 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, you know, give or take a couple of scenes in this episode seems to be what we're doing here.

Speaker 4 Right.

Speaker 4 You need to actually sell us a version of Catherine that is less believable. Because it just never seemed plausible for a minute.

Speaker 4 that we should believe the version of Catherine that was in The Perfect Stranger. Right.
Right.

Speaker 4 If if there were more for us to grab onto to think, like, actually, what if this woman 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 like 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 like, we would be pulled in that direction.

Speaker 4 But I just, I've never felt pulled.

Speaker 5 I think this goes back to Nick's email. He gave it a five-year timeline.

Speaker 5 I would hopefully push it back back even further, but I think there's earlier times in our culture where, you know, if you think of something like the Jody Foster film, The Accused,

Speaker 5 which is about, you know, a woman who is 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?

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 4 Well, the politics of telling if this is an assault story, as all the disc, all the disclaimers before the episodes would tell us, like you, you probably just can't do that version of events where you challenge the woman's credibility all the way leading up to a horrible assault at the end.

Speaker 4 Like that, that wouldn't feel good either.

Speaker 5 I kind of feel like that's the trick the show thinks it's playing.

Speaker 4 This is the problem, right? It's 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.

Speaker 5 So, again, I think, 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

Speaker 5 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. Like, maybe she is cruel and callous.

Speaker 5 But I think we have hopefully learned to understand that women have more nuance than that.

Speaker 5 Okay,

Speaker 5 I want to play another clip for you. And it's to discuss, and I don't want to say our guy, Dickie.

Speaker 4 He's not our guy. He's not our guy.

Speaker 5 I just want to share with our listeners.

Speaker 5 I won't read it out necessarily, but this tremendous one-two punch of an email we got.

Speaker 5 We got this email from a listener who was like a couple weeks ago, who was like, you're being way too hard on Nikki.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 And then they watched not this week's, but last week's episode. And they're like, and then it's just like a fault that was like, what was it? Like, never mind.
He sucks.

Speaker 4 He does suck. I was just like, never mind.

Speaker 5 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

Speaker 7 this clip please guy do you have any idea who we might be with friends i mean i don't know if he has any friends do you

Speaker 6 um

Speaker 6 He mentioned uh he mentioned a girlfriend, but I haven't met her. I don't I don't know her name.
I'm

Speaker 6 I'm not that sure she even exists.

Speaker 4 Oh,

Speaker 4 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?

Speaker 5 Isle of Man,

Speaker 4 a visa. I don't know.
With all due respect to this exchange, we do know the answer to this mystery. He does not have any friends.

Speaker 5 Well, I will say he does at least go to a drug den where they tell him to wash up.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 5 they do drop him at A ⁇ E. You know what I mean? Like,

Speaker 4 the people at your drug den are not your friends.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 4 It's true.

Speaker 4 They're the real heroes of this story when you think about it.

Speaker 5 It's them or the cat. So, you know, that's all I have to say about that.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And this is one of the areas where if this were a movie, I don't think I would feel it as acutely.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 5 He's just, yam. I'm just like, shut the fuck up.
I'm having really

Speaker 4 tough. And if you thought being shown repeatedly that he's he's wrong would result in some kind of comeuppance for him in this episode, you'd be wrong.

Speaker 4 He's just going to keep being a little shit all the way to the end.

Speaker 5 Yeah, we'll see what happens to him in the finale. Okay, Nancy.
We get a bit more Nancy information. I think, so along with information we get about Nancy,

Speaker 5 chiefly sort of through these conversations she's having with Emma, Sasha's mom, her sort of temperamental nature, perhaps.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 Like this is something he fundamentally believes is true of Perfect Stranger.

Speaker 5 That is, however however fictionalized it may be, that there is a deeper core fundamental truth here that his son is good and a hero

Speaker 5 and that his death is a result of this cruel, callous, horrible woman doing something. Yeah.

Speaker 4 This was news to me that Stephen had this perspective. Like, I've just been kind of operating to this point with the assumption that Stephen thought everything in the book was true.

Speaker 4 Maybe that's not giving a character that, as we saw earlier, is basically like at least an English teacher enough credit for parsing the text. Yeah.

Speaker 4 But to have that perspective and then be just like unleashing all hell on this family

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 5 And the degree to which I can have empathy, I will say.

Speaker 4 Completely.

Speaker 5 You know, Nancy's unraveling, Stephen's unraveling in the loss of both Jonathan and then Nancy. We meet him smearing lipstick on his hand and like kissing it.

Speaker 5 We see him in this episode put Jonathan's deodorant on. And obviously Cardi G is here with us throughout.

Speaker 5 And he's just like, the three of us together will, you know, avenge, you know, ourselves against this family. And so it becomes this desperate attempt for him.

Speaker 5 You know, similarly, there's, it's played for humor, but the moment where he has to delete his like catfished Instagram account of Jonathan, there is real

Speaker 5 loss

Speaker 5 playing on Steven's face as he does it. So it's like that, this is how he feels like he can still be close to Nancy.
And

Speaker 5 I think it was an email we got. I can't remember who sent it right now, though, unfortunately, but like this idea that like

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 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

Speaker 5 Catherine are remarking about how detailed it is,

Speaker 5 was her own personal therapeutic working through, you know, a story that she has invented here.

Speaker 5 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 Dorano to the hospital to visit her child. You know what I mean?

Speaker 5 Like this wasn't Nancy's, Nancy for all of her issues. This is not her idea.
This is Stephen's idea. Yeah.

Speaker 4 There's a lot of this is what Nancy would have wanted used for reality and for like propping up as an emotional crutch in this episode.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like there was a scene in the first episode where Stephen is adding the disclaimer in the book about how like there's not a coincidence that these characters may resemble real people, right?

Speaker 4 Yeah, yes, yes. So

Speaker 4 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?

Speaker 4 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 got to do.

Speaker 5 In a private way, like ways that aren't hurting anyone. Yes.

Speaker 4 In the privacy of your own son's bedroom and your own home, do what you got to do. But clearly, Steven's version of grief is much more vindictive than that.

Speaker 8 This episode is brought to you by Spotify Portal for Backstage.

Speaker 4 But you're wondering, what's Portal?

Speaker 8 Well, it's an internal developer portal built to improve developer experience and boost productivity. All software components are centralized.
Documentation is automated and easy to maintain.

Speaker 8 New projects and components? Just a few clicks. With your best practices already built in, think less friction, more innovation.

Speaker 4 Ready to double your productivity?

Speaker 8 Try Spotify portal at backstage.spotify.com.

Speaker 3 This episode is brought to you by Boarshead. You know one of the best parts of football season? Getting together with friends and family to watch a game and the tasty food.

Speaker 3 And guys, if Boar's Head isn't on your home gating menu, you're fumbling big time. That'll help you serve the perfect game day spread, premium meats, cheeses, dips, and more.

Speaker 3 Trust me, nothing better than a Boar's Head sandwich during halftime. Throw in their blazing buffalo chicken dip.
Delicious. And you may even score an extra point or two.

Speaker 3 Elevate your game day entertaining with Boar's Head. Visit your local Boarshead deli for platter options.
Boar's Head, committed to craft since 1905.

Speaker 9 Hi, it's Eva Lingoria. And let's be real.
After 40, we should ask for more from our skincare. I swear by Revitalift Triple Power Moisturizer by L'Oreal Paris.

Speaker 9 With vitamin C, pro-retinol, and hyaluronic acid, it reduces my wrinkles, firms, and brightens. And it's not a procedure.

Speaker 5 It's just a hard-working moisturizer.

Speaker 8 Revitalift Triple Power Moisturizer by L'Oreal Paris. Grab it today in fragrance-free or with SPF30.

Speaker 4 Available at your local Walmart.

Speaker 5 Here's the moment in the episode where I really admired Catherine's restraint and patience. And it's when Jisu texted her and said, sorry about Nicholas.

Speaker 5 Hot off the heels of saying, you are so canceled, Catherine.

Speaker 4 And if it were me,

Speaker 5 I would say, fuck you.

Speaker 5 I'm already getting a call from HR. I don't care.
Also, HR is like, no one can, no one can escape sort of the rules. No one's above the rules, Catherine.

Speaker 5 So we have to investigate what this stranger has alleged. And like, I suppose what Steven has alleged is the harassment, I guess.
The harassment? Okay.

Speaker 4 Like,

Speaker 4 I was trying to figure out, too, like, what is statutory rape?

Speaker 5 And, like, is he underage?

Speaker 5 Is he not?

Speaker 4 I don't know.

Speaker 5 Or, like, a degree of murder

Speaker 5 by neglecting to

Speaker 4 alert? I don't know. Is that a crime in anything? I said, I have a degree of murder.

Speaker 5 I don't know what degree it is. What is what is Catherine's crime? The harassment.
Okay, I guess.

Speaker 4 That was the closest I could come to figuring it out.

Speaker 4 Why is HR hr involved in this don't know okay like the workplace part confrontation between colleagues people are

Speaker 4 pushing slapping grabbing each other yeah that's that's an hr situation uh what's in the book i can't see why it would be especially oh look i i this this is what gets me the most about this show like i acknowledge that joe we're working in journalism I don't know if this happens to you, but like anytime I read a feature story that recounts a conversation between two people in a room, my brain immediately goes, How did you like?

Speaker 4 How do you know? How do you know? Where is this from?

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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, is just like, it's way too credulous.

Speaker 5 So, to go back to that 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, you know, the camera in and out iris effect.

Speaker 5 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

Speaker 5 in the Dawn Draper days

Speaker 5 version of this holiday.

Speaker 5 Why? Like,

Speaker 4 why?

Speaker 5 On the one hand,

Speaker 5 it's almost like a very like Wes Andersonian sort of effect. but like on the one hand that that sound to me denotes almost like artifice right

Speaker 5 um

Speaker 5 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 want inside of a story that's like believe women but like again if you're if you're gonna do that it takes more track to get there than this yeah but like Or are we meant to be thinking of it as like, she's a documentarian.

Speaker 4 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 to the idea of artifice and whether we're supposed to trust this version of events like clearly this 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 like did i say something that would have given him the wrong sign and like you know, she's pulling from memory too.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 So why we're, like, I get 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.

Speaker 4 I think you probably have to do that on some level, just to like draw a really clear line that we are not showing that version of events anymore.

Speaker 4 I just don't get why you go to the film reel effect necessarily. I'm kind of missing what they're going for there.

Speaker 5 The thing that I did appreciate about her version that we are watching in this episode is that Jonathan is almost silent, is a background character.

Speaker 5 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,

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 He was sort of leering at me in the bar 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?

Speaker 5 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?

Speaker 5 Like, how do we explain the photographs? To see her trying to get sand out of her like bikini being like

Speaker 5 then this salacious photograph that he took on the beach of her of her like exposing her nipple like to him or whatever is perhaps chilling uh preview of something to come but that's just sort of like okay there 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 really, I would really like to

Speaker 5 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

Speaker 5 makes me more inclined to believe her because she's not trying to ascribe any, any motivation to him or anything like that, you know?

Speaker 4 Well, and it is a little bit more in line with what we know to be true of Jonathan.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 What about Sex Yoda?

Speaker 4 I had the thought, like, I bet Jonathan was really big into the prequels. I bet he was a prequels guy.

Speaker 5 He's like, you know who had a point?

Speaker 4 Palpatine.

Speaker 4 Great points, you know? Great points were made.

Speaker 4 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?

Speaker 4 The idea that we don't actually know what happened between Jonathan and Sasha.

Speaker 4 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 like can't even hear it.

Speaker 4 She literally is like taking the phone away from her head. She like can't process what is being told to her.
All of which suggests like you can fill in the blanks for yourself.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 No, no, the distressing news that I have is is that Jonathan has died. It's like clearly something really bad went down between them in the fight that Jonathan and Sasha had.

Speaker 4 And to have that version of this character, a version that Steve, 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.

Speaker 4 And yes, also like feeling his attention in an intense way that has some positive interaction. Right.

Speaker 4 But I agree with you, like using him as this background background presence, I think is very smart. And it does create a pretty chilling effect on this version of the story.

Speaker 5 To Sasha's point, I think it's like interesting and important that Steven never hears exactly what her mom Emma has to say about what happened.

Speaker 4 And Nancy purposefully downplays it, right? She says like, she didn't say anything, basically. Right.

Speaker 5 You know, and on the phone, she's like, let's not aggrandize like all this sort of, that's very extreme.

Speaker 5 I mean, I can't interpret it in my head any other way than like he sexually assaulted his girlfriend.

Speaker 5 That like,

Speaker 5 okay, this is a story that I've invented. Sasha is like traveling around Europe with him.

Speaker 5 They're like young, they're hot, they're in love, but like she is not ready to have sex or doesn't want to have sex right then or like whatever.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 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?

Speaker 5 Like, that's that's the very first like image we get is this like happy, consensual, like two young puppies in love sort of train sex scene. And that's very disturbing.

Speaker 5 And again, if that's just like how Nancy felt like she could process,

Speaker 5 I'm inclined to be empathetic to processing like this horrific thing of your child's death as however you, 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

Speaker 5 of young men who do terrible things or any young child probably who does terrible things. So fun times.

Speaker 4 Love everything.

Speaker 4 Love everything about this show at this stage in the season.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And look, 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, especially their children.

Speaker 4 Just feels like such a ham-fisted way to stumble into the key themes of the show at this point. Yeah.
Get it?

Speaker 4 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?

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 Say nothing, which is an FX show that is dropping as like a binge drop, which we wish it weren't, but it is. Um, I've watched some.
Chris Ryan has watched some. We're both big fans of it.

Speaker 5 Um, I've speaking, uh, most importantly, I've spoken to people who have finished it and they're huge fans of it.

Speaker 4 So you need to pick a show that ends strongly.

Speaker 5 That ends on a high note. I've heard that Say Nothing, which is based on a very popular book,

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 You'll probably, 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?

Speaker 5 What's going on in basketball?

Speaker 4 I don't know. Actually, I have two bits of closing business for you on this episode of Disclaimer, Joe.

Speaker 4 One, we missed a crucial update, which is that I regret to inform you and everyone watching the show that Counterbug has passed away.

Speaker 4 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?

Speaker 5 I think there was like a

Speaker 5 sort of, we'll call it like a flickering or like a wrestling, the last gap

Speaker 5 of Counterbug. And you didn't even know you were watching the end

Speaker 5 until it was too late.

Speaker 4 It was so strong, really, Fighting all the way to the end. I support counterpoint.

Speaker 4 Honestly, the most riveting thing that happened on a counter in Stephen's home, because I got to say, Catherine not seeing Stephen sweeping a bunch of drugs into her tea.

Speaker 4 What?

Speaker 5 The least subtle drugging of a tea, of a glass of Builder's tea I've ever seen in my life.

Speaker 5 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 that he is mashing.

Speaker 4 There's a a whole fucking blister pack in there. Like

Speaker 4 he's popping the pills. He's crushing them.
He's sweeping.

Speaker 4 Big arms. Big arms of the sweeping.
You know? I don't care what it is. Don't sweep anything off your counter into my tea.

Speaker 5 I want to go back to Counterbug for a sec.

Speaker 4 Sorry, I moved us on too quickly.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 4 I like to believe in our one and our listeners and their capacity for crafts.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 micro crochet.

Speaker 4 That's a booming market on Etsy right now. I love it.
Okay.

Speaker 5 All right. So get your tiny crochet needles out for Counterbug's parents.
Yep. Steven and Nancy of the Counter.
And

Speaker 5 don't drink anything that someone has swept

Speaker 5 something

Speaker 5 into, I would say.

Speaker 4 Sweeping into a drink is bad.

Speaker 5 It's a no.

Speaker 4 One last follow-up because we talked extensively earlier this season about the football allegiances of our core characters.

Speaker 5 Chelsea, yeah.

Speaker 4 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. Yes.

Speaker 4 Did appear at a football match over the weekend with Olivia Rodrigo, a Chelsea-Manchester United United match, in which it appears they were there in a man you capacity.

Speaker 4 So I'm, I'm, you know, really for plot purposes, we are, we're completing the circle here. You know, like we're really seeing a man you family versus this is the thing.
Really a tale as old as time.

Speaker 4 Two households both selected in dignity.

Speaker 5 Divided over football clubs. All right.
Also, I would like to hear from any Chelsea fans how they feel about their association with Robert Nikki in this story.

Speaker 4 It just gets worse by the day.

Speaker 5 Feeling good about it? I don't know.

Speaker 5 All right. So please email us your thoughts at tiny griefcard again at gmail.com.
Actually, it's just griefcardaginggmail.com.

Speaker 5 Thank you to Rob Mahoney. Thank you to Kai Grady.

Speaker 5 Stick with us for the end of disclaimer. I just think we've gone this far.
We just need to

Speaker 5 stop together. And

Speaker 5 because, yeah, I mean, we end on like, dun, dun, dun. Is she going to pass out from her tea before she's told her story?

Speaker 4 Like, God, if that happens, I'm going to be so mad.

Speaker 4 I'm going to be so mad.

Speaker 5 She just gets very sleepy. She can't finish her story.

Speaker 5 Will the syringe of Drano be employed?

Speaker 4 I mean, check the syringe.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I'm excited to find out.

Speaker 5 And then, yeah, and then sort of get ready

Speaker 5 for Say Nothing, which I think is going to be a really,

Speaker 5 by all accounts, an excellent

Speaker 5 trip to the Prestige TV store. We will see you next week.
Bye.

Speaker 5 Ah, the sounds of an Etsy holiday.

Speaker 5 Now that's special. Want to hear it again? Get original and affordable gifts from small shops on Etsy.
For gifts that say, I get you, shop Etsy. Tap the banner to shop now.