This week, host Bobby Finger has New York Times Books Review columnist Jaime Green and comedian Emmy Blotnick to the studio to hop on the horse and discuss the inspirational new Netflix film Walk. Ride. Rodeo.–what it does well, what it does not-so-well, and what blintzes have to do with all of it–as well as the baffling and wonderful Australian competition series Instant Hotel–which needs a U.S. adaptation immediately. We also discuss our other current obsessions: the lovely and life-affirming Amy Adams vehicle Junebug (Bobby's), Britain's serene gardening show Big Dreams, Small Spaces (Jaime), Bob Ross's timeless The Joy of Painting (Emmy), and *checks notes* Russia's Toughest Prisons (also Emmy). Skip segments you'd like to keep spoiler-free with these handy time codes: Walk. Ride. Rodeo.: 9:48 - 23:15 Instant Hotel: 23:15 - 35:27 You can read Jaime's column here, and watch Emmy's new Comedy Central special here. Call 754-CALL-BOB and share your current obsessions, and we may discuss it on a future episode! Once again, it's 754-CALL-BOB.
This week, host Bobby Finger has New York Times Books Review columnist Jaime Green and comedian Emmy Blotnick to the studio to hop on the horse and discuss the inspirational new Netflix film Walk. Ride. Rodeo.–what it does well, what it does not-so-well, and what blintzes have to do with all of it–as well as the baffling and wonderful Australian competition series Instant Hotel–which needs a U.S. adaptation immediately. We also discuss our other current obsessions: the lovely and life-affirming Amy Adams vehicle Junebug (Bobby's), Britain's serene gardening show Big Dreams, Small Spaces (Jaime), Bob Ross's timeless The Joy of Painting (Emmy), and *checks notes* Russia's Toughest Prisons (also Emmy).
Skip segments you'd like to keep spoiler-free with these handy time codes:
Walk. Ride. Rodeo.: 9:48 - 23:15
Instant Hotel: 23:15 - 35:27
You can read Jaime's column here, and watch Emmy's new Comedy Central special here.
Call 754-CALL-BOB and share your current obsessions, and we may discuss it on a future episode!
Once again, it's 754-CALL-BOB.
[Music]
Bobby: Welcome to I’m Obsessed With This, the Netflix Podcast about the shows and films everyone seems to be talking about and why. As usual, we will be having a spoiler filled discussion on all titles, so check the show notes for time stamps in case you want to avoid them. I’m your host, Bobby Finger and I’m joined today by Jamie Green, columnist for the New York Times Book Review and author of the forthcoming book, “The Possibility of Life” and Emmy Blotnick, writer and comedienne whose new stand-up special can be seen on Comedy Central right now. And hello to you two.
Jaime: Hello.
Emmy: Hey, hi.
Bobby: Hi, Jaime, how’s everything going?
Jaime: Good.
Bobby: Great.
Jaime: Yeah.
Bobby: It’s still very cold, I feel like I always start the episodes opening like, it’s cold, but it’s still cold. It’s freezing.
Jaime: It’s very cold, yeah.
Bobby: So, thanks for making it over here. You’re all in the studio today, that’s great.
Emmy: Yes, hello. I can see you both.
Jaime: Yeah, it’s nice. It’s nice to look at you both.
Bobby: We’ve got three different flavors of seltzer, which I think is nice.
Emmy: I was really hoping we were going to do the beverage check.
Bobby: You have to do a beverage check. I’m doing the Pamplemousse La Croix, La Croix, you’re doing the tangerine.
Emmy: I’ve got tangerine.
Jaime: I’m doing lime.
Bobby: Yes. It’s really nice that we have, like, three very unique perspectives on today’s titles, you know?
Jaime: Yes, we’re sort of the Tony Tony Tony of drinks and shows.
Bobby: It’s great. So, I want to ask you what’s the last thing you watched on Netflix? Not counting the things that I forced you to watch on Netflix. Like, what’s the last thing you watched on Netflix of your own free will.
Emmy: It’s been, okay, a lot of Bob Ross for me. I’m thrilled that that’s on there because it is the most soothing show in the world.
Bobby: Everyone says, I haven’t watched it since I was a kid. It’s actually as good as people say?
Emmy: Believe it, Bobby. It is so good and it’s like, that kind of show will probably never get made again where it’s just like, you know, a gentle man painting. That doesn’t feel like a pitch anymore. And, it’s just, and I didn’t, I’ve watched it when I was a kid, but the part I didn’t remember is that there are these little interludes of Bob Ross with small animals, and that, so, in the middle of painting he’ll be like, “We’re just going to take a little break from these lovely trees and play with these baby squirrels.” And it’ll just be him with, like, a handful of baby, like chipmunks or squirrels or whatever and he’s petting them and feeding them and you’re like, this is, like, a beautiful fever dream.
Bobby: I’m looking at his Wikipedia now. I didn’t know he died so young. He was only 52.
Emmy: Oh.
Bobby: That’s really sad. But he amassed how many episodes of the show? Let’s see how many episodes of the show, I’m going to find out.
Emmy: It seems like an awful lot, yeah.
Bobby: He filmed 403 episodes of that show in that time.
Emmy: No shit.
Bobby: So, yeah, we can, we can watch him forever.
Emmy: Yeah.
Jaime: Yeah. That’s a good supply.
Bobby: That’s, like over double the episodes of Golden Girls and I watch those all the time. Over and over and over and over and over again. It’s also funny to me that he’s from Florida and lived in Florida and yet, his landscapes made me think that he lived in, like Colorado.
Jaime: Yeah.
Emmy: Yeah, he’s like a Wyoming man.
Bobby: Like what do you, does he do a lot of Florida landscapes?
Emmy: Is there a Florida landscape?
Jaime: It’s flat.
Bobby: It’s like swamps. Flat.
Jaime: Flat swamps.
Emmy: Here we have some nice sharks by this dumpster.
Bobby: I feel like those at least haven’t gone, like viral or entered the, like, collective consciousness the way his, like, pretty trees and rivers and, like babbling brooks have.
Emmy: Yeah, yeah, it’s like, here we’ve got a motel that’s caught on fire recently.
Bobby: Jaime, what have you been watching?
Jaime: I have been similarly in the comfort viewing vein. I’ve been going back over and over again to the John Mulaney specials.
Bobby: Oh, okay.
Jaime: Just like rotating through. The other day I, like, got a line of his stuck in my head and I was like, I need to find this, I need to hear it, I need to, like, absorb it into me. It’s the, where he’s talking about his wife and how he checked with her if it was okay to talk about her in his comedy. And she’s like, yeah, just don’t say, like, my wife’s a bitch and I hate her. And then he says, the most beautiful line anyone has ever said about their partner, which is, my wife is a bitch and I like her so much.
Jaime: Aw, yeah, that’s great.
Bobby: That’s very sweet.
Emmy: It’s just, you know.
Bobby: I was thinking about him recently because I was, it doesn’t matter where I was, but I was with someone else and there was a gazebo around and I was like, oh a gazebo, like the John Mulaney joke, and they knew what I was talking about and I almost thought about trying to, sort of, like, struggle through a quotation of that joke and I was like, yeah, it’s like when he looks at the plank and, and I was like, you get it. I’m not even going to try because I can’t deliver this like that.
Emmy: It’s so lucky that they knew what you were talking about, that you didn’t have to, oh, well, there’s this John Mulaney…
Bobby: But we could have, like, the silent, like, 30 second recollection of his stand-up and, like, enjoy the memory and not have to suffer through, like, me getting it completely wrong.
Jaime: Yes. Oh, I’ve butchered, there’s one line in the newest one about the puppet woman who comes to the assembly where he’s like, what was so funny about that woman with the long, you see I’m about to butcher it. But that’s my favorite joke in that special.
Bobby: I tried to do this on our first episode of this podcast, I was talking about all the Bird Box memes and I was, like, you know what doesn’t work? Talking about Bird Box memes. Nothing, nothing is a harder sale than talking about a Bird Box meme.
Emmy: What about a meme you haven’t seen about a show you haven’t watched, what could go wrong?
Bobby: Sandra Bullock in a blindfold has to be seen. It cannot be spoken. So, I re-watched June Bug. Like, every once in awhile, like, a diamond in the rough pops up and it, like, knows me so well. So, I re-watched June Bug, I haven’t seen it in, like 10 years, have you seen June Bug?
Jaime: No.
Emmy: I’ve never seen it.
Bobby: Oh my God, it’s so lovely. It’s Amy Adams’ first, like Oscar nominated role.
Jaime: Oh.
Bobby: Probably, maybe her best performance. Do you know what it’s about?
Jaime: No.
Bobby: Oh my God, it’s like, Alessandro Nivola and Embeth Davidtz who is best known as Miss. Honey in Matilda, are, like, a posh New York couple. She’s, like, English and, like, cool, she works at a gallery. He falls in love with her, they get married really quickly, but he’s southern. He’s a southern boy who lives in New York. They go to his hometown and Amy Adams is his sister-in-law. His brother is Ben McKenzie of The OC fame.
Jaime: I love him.
Bobby: And he just has to spend, it’s sort of like culture clash, they have to, these New York cosmopolitan people have to spend, it’s like very red state/blue state, have to spend a weekend in North Carolina, but Amy Adams is just like, overflowing with love and adoration for everyone and she’s pregnant, it’s just, it’s not condescending about small towns, it’s just very sweet.
Emmy: The grin on your face right now is just…
Bobby: It’s like truly, it’s like truly, like, I mean, this is, I’m obsessed with this.
Jaime: You’re beaming like a pregnant woman.
Bobby: I was re-watching it and I was like, she’s so wonderful.
Emmy: Ben McKenzie.
Bobby: Ben McKenzie. And he’s like, fine. He’s maybe the weakest, he’s the weakest link in the movie, but, like, who doesn’t really have some sort of affection for him, I guess. If you watched one episode of The OC, I think you will be endeared to him. Forever. Have you, have you been surprised by anything you’ve been recommended to watch recently?
Jaime: My recommendations get really polluted by what my husband watches. Like, uh, a few nights ago he watched the documentary about flat earther’s and then immediately followed that with a documentary about the all right.
Emmy: N ice.
Jaime: Which sounds like a real fun night, sounds like the exact opposite of what we’re describing. Like, he, I had gone to bed and he told me about that in the morning and I was like, that sounds so depressing. Because in the…
Bobby: Which one? Both of them?
Jaime: Both. Because in the flat earther documentary, in the second half of it they start buying all this extremely expensive equipment to disprove the roundness of the Earth. The buy, like, a 20,000 dollar thing to prove that the Earth doesn’t, like, move 15 degrees every hour and then they find that it does.
Bobby: Oh no.
Jaime: And so, like…
Bobby: And they can’t return it.
Jaime: It just feels like sad and expensive and embarrassing, so things like that in the recommendations and so it’s like, it must be very challenging for the algorithm because it’s like that and bake-off. What do you think we want to watch next? And they’re just like, more episodes of The Office.
Bobby: Are they right?
Jaime: Sometimes, yeah.
Emmy: Yeah.
Bobby: What about you, what’s the weirdest thing you’ve gotten?
Emmy: It might have been, like, Russia’s toughest prisons or something like that, I think it was one of those ones what I’m like…
Jaime: From Bob Ross.
Emmy: Yeah, and I’m like, who do you think I am?
Bobby: And then how many episodes did you watch?
Emmy: Seven. We did, I watched a little bit of it because it was so, the title was so grabby –
Bobby: Russia.
Emmy: ...that I was, like, I should check out what this is and, it’s what it sounds like. There’s no twists.
Bobby: This other thing I wanted to show you guys that I didn’t talk about in advance because I wanted your earnest reactions to it. This show has been recommended to me and it’s called Northern Rescue and I just want you to look at the poster and see if you can discern what it’s about. Do you know who the man in the center is? Can you name this man?
Emmy: Is it one of the Baldwins?
Bobby: It is one of the Baldwins, but can you name the Baldwin.
Emmy: Phillipe?
Bobby: Phillipe Baldwin.
Jaime: I’m just trying to think of, like, who the like, the lowest tier of Baldwin is that I know.
Emmy: I want to say, it’s not Steven.
Jaime: No.
Emmy: It’s, Franklin.
Bobby: There are two left. If it’s not Alec and it’s not Steven…
Jaime: It’s not Billy, is it? No.
Bobby: It’s Billy.
Emmy: Damn.
Bobby: It’s William Baldwin.
Jaime: That’s not what he used to look like. Like, what are they rescuing? People from the woods, is it animals?
Bobby: I will read you the...
Emmy: Themselves?
Jaime: Probably.
Bobby: I will read you the plot description really quickly.
Jaime: Thank you.
Bobby: After the death of his wife, Sarah, John West, played by Baldwin, Billy, packs up his three children and moves from their hectic urban life to a small northern hometown to take command of the local search and rescue service. I love it. Once there, the family struggles with their new surroundings and new friends and accepting Sarah’s death. So, it’s like a procedural wrapped in family drama wrapped in Canada in ice.
Jaime: Yeah.
Emmy: Cool.
Bobby: Did we all watch Walk, Ride Rodeo? Walk, period. Ride, period. Rodeo, period.
Jaime: Yes.
Emmy: Yes.
Bobby: We watched it.
Jaime: Yes.
Emmy: Yes.
Bobby: Jaime, what did you think of Walk. Ride. Rodeo.?
Jaime: Man, I thought a lot of things. I, I don’t even know where to start. It never was exactly what I expected it to be.
Bobby: I agree.
Jaime: Except for the fact that it was very sentimental and tear-jerky. That was exactly what you would expect from it and that it was, you know, inspirational. The point of it was about overcoming hardship and inspiring us, the viewers, people within the movie, yeah, I guess that part was expected, but, the way that it went about it kept sort of throwing me off.
Bobby: It took a winding road.
Jaime: Yeah, and its...
Bobby: To get to the inspirational part.
Jaime: And it spent time in places where I didn’t expect it to spend a lot of time and then would skip over, like, emotional changes and then we were like, all right, ready to be inspired. And I was, like, okay, let’s go.
Bobby: And by the end, I guess I was inspired.
Jaime: Yeah.
Bobby: It took the long road.
Jaime: It did.
Bobby: It walked slowly, it rode slowly, it rodeo’ed pretty quickly, I would say.
Jaime: It rodeo’ed very quickly, like 17 seconds, pretty awesome.
Bobby: It rodeo’ed pretty quickly. What did you think Emmy?
Emmy: I think the winding description of the whole movie also applies to many lines in the movie. I was thinking of one, it was in my head on the way here and I hope I’m not butchering it, a Mulaney joke. It was a mixed metaphor, I believe, it was something like, this chair can either be your wings or be your anchor. And, like, it’s like three metaphors in here.
Jaime: And I was like anchor isn’t a bad thing to have, but in that case, it’s her mom saying to the girl who uses the wheelchair now, like, it can either be a tool that you use or it can hold you back. I was like, anchors are like, they make you steady, they make you solid.
Emmy: It’s a classic wings or anchor situation, you know?
Jaime: Of course. Everyone has one or the other.
Emmy: And you’ve got to choose which one it’s going to be. Are you going to fly in your chair or are you going to drown in your chair. It’s just such a, I was, anyway. I think I probably am dumb. This is not going to get better.
Jaime: Well, but also, like, the, a lot of the lines have that sort of meandering quality, but they were also extremely direct. It’s, like, very upfront about exposition points and setting up the stakes and setting up, like, who believes what and what they want you to know about each character in each situation. It’s like an emotionally very intense movie, but it’s not challenging in any way. It’s that weird, it’s not like the Bob Ross comfort stuff in that there’s like, a lot of pain and suffering and…
Bobby: It’s pretty violent, actually.
Jaime: It is. Actually, the, the car crash scene. We’re like jumping into details, do we need to give, like…
Bobby: Yeah, describe what the movie’s about. Like, what’s the set-up, what’s it about, Jaime?
Jaime: Okay. So, it’s about this young woman, she’s like 18 years old, and she’s a rodeo star. Not like a bucking bronco thing, but like a horse obstacle course kind of rodeo. And she is driving somewhere that her mother doesn’t want her to drive on her own and gets into a car accident and has a spinal cord injury and becomes paraplegic. And that’s maybe the first third of the movie and, as you were saying, like, the car crash is very graphic and violent.
Bobby: So much more graphic than I expected.
Jaime: Yeah. Because it’s, like, with a move like this, you’re kind of expecting it to be like that sort of, like, nice warm bath feeling but it doesn’t hold back from the, the violence of that or the intensity of the agony of everyone’s emotions. But, so, she is paraplegic and is told she’ll not be able to use her legs again and she goes through some rehab and physical therapy and the title comes from – At one point the physical therapist says to her, at their first session, what are your goals. And she says, walk, ride, rodeo. And, long story short, and to steal the really charming last line of the, of the movie is that she gets back on her horse and learns to ride again, she competes in rodeo again and then as for the walking, you know.
(sound clip from movie)
When the doctors asked what my goals were, I said, walk, ride, rodeo. I got the last two. About that first one, maybe one day.
Jaime: And it’s based on a true story. So, you’re constrained by the actual facts of what happened.
Bobby: Hm-hmm. (affirmative)
Jaime: I was about to say I’m glad she didn’t learn how to walk again, which is an awful thing to say and is not what I mean. Narratively, I’m glad that she didn’t and to separate it from the fact that this is someone’s real life story. It would have been so much unrealistic triumph if she was just, like walking around and find. But, instead she’s, like, on her horse doing amazing things on a horse, but strapped in with seat belts. Like, there is still adversity there.
Bobby: Hm-hmm. (affirmative) One of the most inspirational parts of the movie comes at the end, they reveal that the real Amberley did all the stunts on the movie. Which was a nice, a nice little thing.
Jaime: And that was moment in the movie that made me cry. Which is like...
Bobby: No crying before then.
Jaime: No crying before then. And so, it’s like, it’s like a little post script of the movie, like, Amberley still rides rodeo, she’s a professional and she did all the stunts for this and you, like, see her on the horse and I just, I started crying and it made me wish that it had been a documentary. Because just seeing her on her horse – When I was watching the movie I was wondering, especially when it was that, you could see that it was the actress and not the stunt person, I was wondering if she was still kind of using her legs to ride and what it really looks like if you don’t use your legs at all. Because your legs are a huge part of riding and directing a horse. And just knowing, finally, that I was actually watching the real person doing this, had a totally different emotional level for me.
Bobby: I almost wonder if it would be, if it would change the sort of, like, emotional journey you go on through the movie if you knew that up front. If there were some weird introductory text that said all the stunts performed were performed by Amberley. And I don’t know, I don’t know if it is kind of a nice reveal. Maybe it works better as a reveal, where you can, like, reprocess everything. I’m not sure. But, I wonder if that’s a conversation that was had. When I sent you both the trailer for this before we watched the film, I thought, and I think you did, Emmy, and maybe you did too, I thought this would be much more of a romance. Because the trailer sells it as, like, not only is she overcoming adversity, she’s overcoming this, like, disability, but she’s also meeting a hunk and, like, a hunk who can walk and who doesn’t care that she is, you know, confined to a wheelchair and loves her anyway. And I was like, that’s sweet. I love that. I love that so much. But the romance sort of does take a back seat to…
Emmy: A reverse cowgirl.
Bobby: A rever – The romance takes a reverse cowgirl –
Jaime: That’s definitely it.
Bobby: ...to the inspirational, you know, triumph, disability angel of the movie. And I personally think that it would have been maybe a more satisfying movie as like a film narrative if they would have added in some of their, like, cliché stuff. Because, when you’re in this category of movie anyway, when you’re in, like a very TV, Hallmark-y movie, you kind of want it to hit certain beats. And this movie hit a lot of those beats but it didn’t hit the romantic beats that I wanted. Even if something is, like, predictable, I don’t care as long as it, like, touches me, like, in this way that I’m used to a movie like this touching me. Were you also dissatisfied with the lack of romance?
Jaime: I appreciated the fact that the romance wasn’t the vehicle by which she came to terms and made peace with her injury and that she didn’t need the romance in order to make this emotional recovery. But, it was narratively confusing. Like, the first time he kissed her – They had been mostly face timing a lot and chatting. So they obviously were building this connection, but I was still surprised the first time he kissed her. It’s right before the, like, big climactic competition. And, I think he’s helping her from the horse to her chair and so he’s holding her, like cradling her, and they kiss for the first time, I would assume.
Bobby: Yeah, the first kiss.
Jaime: There was like a real red flag moment to me. Where she says to him, you’re the first person who’s made me feel like I’m not in this chair. And I was, like, ahhhh.
Bobby: Yeah.
Jaime: Because the chair is not her anchor, it is her wings and, like, when she’s not on a horse, she uses the chair to be able to get around and it’s like, a tool and a helpful thing and being in the chair is never even shown to be so, like, confining to her.
Bobby: Right.
Jaime: There’s one, like the first time she tries to take it out to go see the horse, she, like, gets caught in a rut in the dirt. But, like, being on the horse is amazing for her. The movie stops being about whether or not she can walk really quickly, which I appreciated, it’s just like how to I ride this horse.
Bobby: Yeah.
Jaime: And that, like, just made me feel a little cringy about how the chair and her disability were treated as an obstacle or an anchor –
Bobby: An anchor.
Jaime: ...for her. Because it actually, like, from, from my point of view it kind of becomes moot. Like, she’s able to ride, she’s doing great, and…
Bobby: The chair is part of her and the chair is helping her and she’s grown to respect the chair. And so, it’s like, when he falls in love with her, he falls in love with her chair included not like –
Jaime: Yeah, it has nothing to do with the chair.
Bobby: ...despite the chair.
Jaime: Like, he doesn’t, exactly. Which is, like, which is great and is avoiding another disability story pitfall.
Bobby: What did you think of the movie, Emmy?
Emmy: I’ll admit that horses are not my animal and never have been, so…
Jaime: What is your animal?
Bobby: Yeah, what’s your animal?
Emmy: I guess I’ll go dog. I, I mean, that’s, I’ll watch, I’ll watch any dog thing, but the, the, I was never a horse gal, so my compassion is limited in this area. She’s, it’s obviously a good story. I would have liked to be there when they’re like, it’s a story about a girl who gets back on the horse. Is there a metaphor here? How do we make this? Is there a lesson that could be learned? But yeah, I thought it, you know, it’s, it’s what it’s supposed to be.
Bobby: Yeah, it fills this bucket, like, it, it’s, it reminded me of The Princess Switch, it reminded me of a lot of the holiday content that’s been popping up on Netflix lately like the original movies, because yeah, they’re, like, lower, they’re not Roma, you know?
Emmy: Yeah.
Bobby: Like, they’re not, they’re not Alfonso Cuaron films. They’re not, you know, whatever the new Martin Scorsese one is, The Irishman, but they fill, like if Netflix was truly going to replace television, they have to replace as many buckets as they can and this is definitely a bucket. Like, the Hallmark movie, Lifetime movie is a bucket that exists and there is a demand for, so it’s like I understand the desire for this but it’s definitely not my bag. I didn’t, I wasn’t mad watching it. Like, I was like, this isn’t for me, but I’m not annoyed. And also, there’s something to said about just watching a movie that just gets from point A to point B and you’re done and I don’t have to, like, watch two episodes of Working Moms and think, like, this was good, but do I want to give, you know, another four hours of my life to finishing the season? Where it’s like, she got back on the horse and she’s in love with boy, the hunky boy who can walk. And I was like, you know, I’m happy that I saw that and I’m inspired, so, in that respect it filled a void, but it was also, like, come on.
Jaime: Yeah, but then, like, comparing it to the other movies that you mentioned in this bucket, I don’t think any of those are harrowing.
Bobby: Yeah.
Jaime: Like, that surprised me that the car accident and there’s a long scene after the car accident because they’re getting to the moment where the paramedics try to move her and she screams in pain.
Bobby: Oh, it’s awful, yea.
Jaime: And so there’s a very long scene of her propped up against this fence and we know that she’s not going to be able to move her legs, but, like, she maybe hasn’t figured it out yet.
Bobby: Hm-hmm. (affirmative)
Jaime: I mean, I think it’s meant to be sort of a tear-jerker where it takes you into that dark place but you know it’s going to pull you out again at the end. Like, you know that you’re going to sort of be inspired for going through that.
Bobby: Hm-hmm. (affirmative)
Jaime: But it’s way more intense than any of the romcom-y stuff or even like the, sort of, holiday type movies. I don’t mean movies like The Holiday, I mean holiday season. Although it’s probably also more harrowing than The Holiday.
Bobby: Yeah. I mean, Cameron Diaz has to that back through the snow, so, I, I don’t know, I felt for her in that instance. Related to the inspirational thing, I’m, I’m thinking about what I said about the romance and I still wish there were more romance, but at least it let itself be inspirational first. Although I am, would have loved to have that hunk introduced a little earlier. You could tell there was a, a very deliberate effort to make her overcome her injury on her own first, before they brought him in. That easily could have been where it was, like, she did it for love, but she didn’t do it for love, like, they, they cut to the real story, but then they were like, you’ve got to work in, like, a hunk, like, give us a hunk.
Emmy: She did it for love of rodeo.
Bobby: Yeah, she did it for love of rodeo.
Jaime: Yeah.
Bobby: What would be your walk, ride, rodeo movie? Blank, blank, blah blah blah.
Emmy: Oh wow.
Jaime: Oh my gosh.
Emmy: Bagel, bialy, blintz.
Bobby: Bagel, bialy, blintz. Okay. Bagel, bialy, smoked salmon.
Emmy: Ooh, that’s good, that’s good. That goes better. They, they go better together. I was going for alliteration, but it’s about substance.
Bobby: Yeah. What’s yours?
Jaime: I, like, I don’t know if I should try to like, out-Jewish you or just…
Emmy: I mean, you can try, but you will not win.
Jaime: Not after that list.
Bobby: So, that’s, that’s it for Walk, Ride, Rodeo, because it’s very depressing. I don’t know, and I don’t like thinking about cars. One of my favorite things about living in New York is not having to drive a car. Because, that accident is, like, and also that accident comes out of nowhere which is the scariest thing about cars.
Jaime: She was on a very straight road, I don’t know why she needed the map that second.
Bobby: No one was around.
Jaime: It was very stressful.
Bobby: It was extremely stressful, but all this talk about paralysis is really depressing me, so, let’s talk about something happy, Instant Hotel. We all watched Instant Hotel.
Jaime: And I argue with that characterization.
Bobby: The wildest, which, oh that we all liked…
Jaime: That it’s happy, no that it’s happy.
Bobby: It’s not happy. You said you were stressed out.
Jaime: Yeah.
Bobby: Instant Hotel, before we get into it, Instant Hotel is an Australian reality show that is now streaming in its entirety on Netflix. It’s, I believe, 12 episodes. Honestly, feels like 30 episodes.
Jaime: Yes.
Bobby: I was, it’s so long. It’s, I mean, I loved every second of it…
Jaime: Packed.
Bobby: They’re jam packed, it is a very confounding and terribly structured reality show that is split in two halves plus a two episode finale. And it’s basically people who have Air B&B’s in Australia, all around Australia, all the quadrants of Australia, have Air B&B’s and they’re competing to find the best Air B&B and they call them instant hotels in Australia which is, like, I don’t think that term existed before this. Instant Hotel doesn’t even…
Jaime: Yeah, I was wondering if they just didn’t want to say Air B&B a lot.
Bobby: Yeah. And, and I looked some of them up. Some of them are on booking.com, some of them are on Air B&B, some of them on, like, whatever, VRBO, it’s just a catch all. Although, what hotel isn’t instant when you think about it. Like, what makes that instant hotel? I don’t really know. The terminology is really bad. I hate the title. But, I understand what they’re do – It’s about, it’s basically Air B&B Off, is what it should be called.
Jaime: Yeah.
Emmy: Yes.
Bobby: But they can’t. It’s two groups of, I think, five couples. And couples does not necessarily platonic or romantic, it’s just, like, two folks who operate an Air B&B or online based rental home. And they all go to each other’s rental homes and they rate them. And at the end of the first five episodes, there’s a winner. Then they bring in five new people, five new couples, and then they do five more episodes of that. Then there’s a winner. Then those two winners compete in the grand final and they try to improve their listings based on the commentary that they got earlier. And there are a lot of flaws in that structure and one of them is, you benefit from being first and you benefit from being last. You’re really stuck if you’re somewhere in the middle. Because the first people, they get higher ratings because, like, no one knows what they’re doing. And then by the end, people get, like, lower ratings or higher ratings because they’ve developed grudges for other people. So, they rate based on what they’ve seen before. It’s just like a nightmare structurally. And…
Jaime: And also, I spent most of the first episode trying to figure out how it worked.
Emmy: Yes.
Jaime: Because they don’t explain it at all.
Bobby: They don’t, they don’t explain
Emmy: There is no, here’s how it wor--, like, you, even on, like Shark Tank, or whatever, there’s, like a one line summary or something going in.
Jaime: It is so confounding.
Bobby: You can’t do it. This took me 30 minutes to explain Instant Hotel.
Emmy: Yeah, no. It’s, it’s a, it is an M. C. Escher of a reality show.
Bobby: It’s wild but the, but the personalities are very distinct. You’ve got your, like, fussy gay couple, they call them the fussy couple.
Emmy: Wait, they’re called the fussy couple.
Jaime: I had with a problem with that, too, because it feels like other…
Emmy: Like showing all your cards.
Bobby: Fussy Couple Brent and LeRoy.
Jaime: The other, like, the mother and daughter is mother and daughter and I can think of a lot of epithets for them that are not just mother and daughter. They were a lot.
Emmy: Yeah.
Bobby: Did you see the entrepreneur bestites? They try to do this weird strategizing thing as do, I think, what people call them the villains of the show, Shay and Mikey. But the strategy doesn’t really help you in the long run because in the end it really is – You can be a terrible person, but in the end it really is all about the house and there’s no really getting around that. Which is kind of…
Jaime: Well, only if people are voting fairly.
Bobby: Yeah, yeah.
Jaime: Like, and, and so they do, I only watched the first couple episodes.
Bobby: They, they do vote fairly and fortunately they have this woman who’s kind of the moderator and she is a little more diplomatic with everything and very fair and I think her influence makes people realize, like, you can’t go crazy here, because at the end of the day, it’s all about the houses. What was your favorite house that you saw of the ones?
Emmy: Oh, I mean, it’s the Johnny Rocket space.
Jaime: Yeah.
Bobby: The Johnny Roc---
Jaime: Well, and they also were my favorite couple.
Bobby: They were so sweet.
Emmy: I love a coarse, gray mullet.
Jaime: Yeah.
Bobby: Mark and Janine.
Jaime: And they’re just like, at first they seem sort of like, well, their obsession with 1950s and 60s Americana is weird.
Bobby: And they’ve never been to America, either.
Jaime: They’ve never been to America. Wait so...
Emmy: They’ve hoarded all this crazy shit.
Bobby: But they’ve never been to America.
Jaime: But the prize is a trip to America.
Bobby: Yeah.
Jaime: They don’t win, do they?
Bobby: They don’t win.
Jaime: Aw.
Bobby: So, the winners are Terry and Anita, very clearly, I think it was just the obvious choice from the very beginning, that they had the best house. Because it balanced just like a really nice interior, there was plenty of space for everyone to sleep, because, like everyone gets in the same pitfalls where it’s, like, there aren’t enough beds, there aren’t enough bathrooms, like…
Emmy: Also, not every Air B&B is built for five adult couples.
Bobby: Yeah. Exactly.
Jaime: Yes.
Bobby: So, it just had the clear winner in terms of, like, space and comfort.
Emmy: The bed not being covered in bugs.
Bobby: The bed wasn’t covered in bugs.
Jaime: Oh my gosh. No windows in the shower.
Bobby: What’s…
Emmy: That was very strange.
Bobby: That couple, that couple runs into bugs, like, in the finale of the series and I was like, what is it about bugs? Also, I thought, it’s Australia, I’ve never been –
Jaime: Someone needed to tell them to close the windows.
Bobby: ...but I expected bugs to be everywhere. Yes.
Jaime: Like, they didn’t close the windows before they left for the night.
Bobby: Don’t you know that in Australia that there are just bugs the size of your face?
Jaime: Or, it should be in the, the guide to the house –
Bobby: The welcome packet.
Jaime: ...in the welcome packet.
Bobby: Yeah.
Jaime: But yeah, the Johnny Rocket’s house was my favorite because it, as the interior designer moderator woman mentioned, it was incredibly clean, like, it just looked beautiful. But, also that couple of the first batch, they were the only ones who were not terrible.
Bobby: Yeah.
Emmy: That’s true.
Jaime: Everyone else was terrible by the middle of episode two. And, like, I don’t need my reality show to be 80% villain.
Bobby: Yeah. And, Babe and Bondi end up winding that, winning that round. Babe and Bondi. Babe and Bondi. The mother daughter…
Jaime: She named her daughter after the beach.
Emmy: That is really str – The whole, I, the one thing I, my boyfriend and I were watching it together last night and there’s something about the Australian accent, too, that, like, every word has, like, seven extra vowels in it.
Jaime: Oh, I love it.
Bobby: Yeah.
Emmy: And it’s like, I was really overwhelmed and –
Bobby: I love it.
Emmy: ...it’s like, there’s every vowel in all of, like, it’s I is spelled O-I-A-U.
Jaime: And it is, that is actually, to me, like one of the most pleasurable aspects of the show.
Bobby: Absolutely.
Jaime: Is, because, if I think about the other things that I, like, watch, like with devotion on Netflix, it’s Terrace House –
Emmy: I love Terrace House.
Jaime: …Bake Off, all the Monty Hall of Gardening shows…
Bobby: Not American Speaker.
Jaime: Not American, exactly. And there’s this, it’s cool to, like, see how other cultures work, like, apparently, Australians are really hard core about fences around pools which maybe Americans are too, I live in New York City and don’t have children, so, but, like getting a sense of, like, the different regions, like the North Coast and all the different parts of Australia, and listening to all the accents and I got really caught up in – I think one of the fussy couple guys is American, but then, like, of the Babe and Bondi, the daughter has a very mild accent and then the interior designer sounds very British, but sometimes some, like, more posh Australian accents sound British. I was just, like, going down this whole linguistics tear.
Bobby: Yeah.
Jaime: And then, like, sort of muttering to myself trying to emulate the accents –
Emmy: Oh yeah.
Jaime: ...because it’s so much fun.
Bobby: Because none of them sound the same. Like, none of them sound like my Siri which I set as Australian man.
Emmy: Oh, wow.
Bobby: You know, you can change the accent of your Siri.
Emmy: I didn’t know that.
Bobby: Yeah, mine’s Australian.
Jaime: Yeah, my husband has a New Zealand woman, I think.
Bobby: Oh, a New Zealand woman.
Emmy: Wow.
Jaime: Yeah. I also realized I said Monty Hall instead of Monty Don for the gardening.
Bobby: Mo…
Jaime: I just need to, just apologize about that, in case…
Bobby: What is that show also called? You love that show.
Jaime: It’s called Big Dreams, Small Spaces. It’s like the opposite of this. So, like, I, I…
Bobby: Tell us.
Jaime: Okay. It is, it is in the Bob Ross school of soothing. It’s, like, milder and gentler than Bake Off. So, he is a British gardener celebrity. I’m really curious about what his, sort of, actual fame status is in the UK. Because, on this show, it’s like, like the, like Beyonce is coming to your house.
Bobby: Does he have, like, a great voice? Is he one of those radio gardeners?
Jaime: I don’t know.
Bobby: I know that’s a category of, like, AM Talk show.
Jaime: No, I don’t know. Although, growing up, we had, on local radio, we had a gardener, Ralph Snodsmith. He was our local gardener.
Bobby: People would call in.
Emmy: That’s a great name.
Bobby: Local radio gardeners are a big deal.
Jaime: Yeah. But I don’t, I don’t think that’s his deal, but, but, so anyway, the premise of the show is he, so everyone in England apparently has a garden. It’s like, it might be very small, but it’s, it gives me a lot of outdoor space envy as a New Yorker. But each episode he helps two people transform their little plot of land. And so it might be their front yard, their back yard, there’s this thing in England where you, it’s sort of like a community garden where you might have a plot that’s not attached to your house, and, so, each episode, they, each season must have all been shot concurrently because each episode spans, like, from Spring to Fall.
Bobby: Okay.
Jaime: And so they have all of that growing season time to buy plants and dig stuff up and, you know, clear away brush and just make the space something beautiful that they love. And sometimes there’s, you know, a reason, you know, one woman wanted to make her front yard a, like, a community garden that’s inviting for people all around. One couple has a kid with, like a sensory processing disorder so they wanted to make a garden that was very safe for him or her and, like, with things to smell and touch and play in and he dresses like a early 20th century painter with all, like, suspenders and, like, canvas jackets and stuff, and he’s so gentle and so sweet and knows so much about gardening and it’s like the perfect show that you actually can pay a lot of attention to if you want and, like, learn a lot about gardening, and, in terms of design and plants and stuff. And he’ll sometimes, like, if someone’s going for, you know, an Italian garden feel, he’ll take them to somewhere where they can see how a professional does that. Or you can just sort of, it’s beautiful, soothing background for just, like, there are gardens and kind people.
Bobby: Yeah.
Emmy: That sounds lovely.
Bobby: That sounds nice.
Jaime: It is so lovely and just so, and the gardens are beautiful. Like, it’s aesthetically beautiful, too.
Bobby: Like you said, the opposite of Instant Hotel.
Emmy: Yeah, Instant Hotel is not that.
Jaime: Yes.
Bobby: And even…
Emmy: I’m, like, oh, these black sheets are so magical.
Bobby: Oh my God, the black sheets.
Jaime: Bugs.
Bobby: I mean, that’s the judge, Julia Ashworth, is like, sounds like the opposite of that woman, of that guy, too. Where it’s like, she comes in and you’re like, oh no, it’s, it’s a very, like, Miranda Priestly.
Emmy: Yeah, it is.
Jaime: Hm-hmm. (affirmative)
Bobby: Like, she comes in and it’s like, oh, no, Julia’s here. I mean, I love Julia, but, like, that’s not a pleasant experience to have Julia be like, and these sheets disgusting, you should have white linens and, like, this, there’s a, there’s a hole in the, in the port-a-loo or whatever, like, there’s, like, one of the, one of the bathrooms has windows looking into the staircase and everyone was, like, horrified understandably, yeah, this show is not pleasant to watch. But I found it completely hypnotic and I loved every episode of it. It, just because it was so absurd. Like, it, it seemed to have no sense of the fact that it made no sense.
Emmy: Yes.
Jaime: Yes.
Bobby: Like, it was completely unaware, oblivious to the fact that, like, it was incomprehensible. Are you going to finish it?
Emmy: I don’t think so.
Bobby: Oh you’ve got to finish it.
Jaime: It’s too mean for me.
Emmy: It is really, it’s...
Jaime: It’s like, like, four of the five couples were bad.
Emmy: And it’s a lot of petty trash talking.
Jaime: Yeah.
Emmy: And, like, it, yeah. I do feel like they’re all egged on. I think that, that comes through.
Jaime: And, like, it could be done in a much more Bake Off way.
Bobby: Yeah.
Jaime: Where it was supportive and it was, like you said, like the judgment is in the house. It doesn’t matter if you’re mean, so, like, why not just be cool.
Bobby: Yeah.
Jaime: But the casting was, for these difficult types –
Bobby: For petty people.
Jaime: …they were obviously pushed.
Bobby: Fussy Couples.
Jaime: Yes.
Emmy: Fussy Couples.
Bobby: Fussy Couples.
Bobby: I, I appreciated the pettiness. I was, like, very entertained by the pettiness because it was, like, oh, they didn’t clean underneath this one dresser. Or, like, someone they didn’t lock their personal belongings into a, like, another drawer. It was like, wow, they didn’t lock the stuff in, or, like, they have fake, plastic rocks in their water feature and not real rocks in the wa--, I, like, the pettiness is fun.
Jaime: Which is also the attitude I bring to every Air B&B I go to.
Emmy: Absolutely.
Jaime: So, it is very true to life in that way.
Bobby: Hm-hmm. (affirmative)
Jaime: I wonder what the show would be like in the US?
Bobby: Yeah, like going around, like, all different states –
Jaime: Yeah.
Bobby: …seeing pieces of the county.
Emmy: Violent, probably. I feel like, hey, we found this gun with the safety off of it.
Bobby: In every single house, there was a gun with the safety off. I wish Eurovision were a state by state song contest in America.
Jaime: Oh that would be great.
Bobby: And I wish Instant Hotel were a cross-country journey around American Air B&B’s because…
Jaime: Put them in a Winnebago and do it like Road Rules.
Emmy: Ooooo.
Bobby: Please, please, if you’re listening, Netflix, I hope you are, I hope you are. Just, just bring the (inaudible 00:35:17) over again, honestly –
Emmy: Yeah.
Jaime: Oh, yeah, that would be great.
Bobby: ...that would be great. I’m going to, I’m going to put a link in the show notes to –
Jaime: Oh, yeah.
Bobby: …a place where you can book all the hotels, because it really is funny to see the prices. But, enough about Instant Hotel. We’ve talked so much about these two shows and we have to end. Thank you, Jaime and Emmy, for being here with me this afternoon. I hope this was fun to talk about; our new favorite shows. Even though they might not be our new favorite shows.
Emmy: They’re our new favorite shows.
Bobby: Do either of you want to A) Open and Air B&B or B) Start rodeo-ing?
Jaime: No, I want to have a garden in England.
Emmy: I want to paint little trees.
Bobby: I’m Obsessed With This, we’ll be back in another two weeks with another new episode. And in the meantime, you can call (754) 225-5262 and tell me what series or film on Netflix you are obsessed with and we might play them on future episodes. And in case you couldn’t get that number down, yes, it is (754) Call Bob and you might be featured on the next episode of I’m Obsessed With This. See you in two weeks.