Host Bobby Finger invitesVariety's chief tv critic Daniel D'addario and Vox's senior culture reporter Alex Abad-Santos to the studio. They talk all about You, Sex Education and Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened.Warning, there are spoilers ahead! In case you're cautious and want to skip through, here are the time codes for the title's we're discussing– You: 03:24 - 10:22 Sex Education: 10:22 - 17:30 Fyre: 17:30 - 31:22
Host Bobby Finger invitesVariety's chief tv critic Daniel D'addario and Vox's senior culture reporter Alex Abad-Santos to the studio. They talk all about You, Sex Education and Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened.Warning, there are spoilers ahead! In case you're cautious and want to skip through, here are the time codes for the title's we're discussing–
You: 03:24 - 10:22
Sex Education: 10:22 - 17:30
Fyre: 17:30 - 31:22
Bobby: There will be spoilers in today's episode. So if you'd rather not know about the twists and turns, beware; otherwise, enjoy. Check the show notes for timecodes that will tell you which segments to avoid. Welcome to I'm Obsessed With This, a Netflix podcast about the films and TV series everyone seems to be watching.
For the past couple of weeks, those titles have been Fyre, the Netflix original thriller series NA, Lifetime original thriller series, You, and YA comedy, Sex Education, and we're going to discuss why. I am your host, Bobby Finger, and I am joined on this beautiful winter day by Alex Abad-Santos, Senior Culture Reporter at Vox, and Dan D'Addario, Chief TV Critic at Variety. So, let's meet them. Hi, Dan. Hi, Alex.
Dan: Hey.
Alex: Hi. Thanks for having us.
Bobby: Did I get your titles correct?
Alex: You sure did. That was correct.
Bobby: Good. Because we're going to spend the bulk of the next half hour discussing three shows I sort of demanded you watch or be familiar with, not that you weren't organically, whatever, I wanted to give you both the opportunity to tell me about something you are currently obsessed with that I didn't assign you. Dan, what are you currently obsessed with? Don't feel beholden to Netflix.
Dan: All right.
Bobby: Just generally.
Dan: I'm really obsessed with The Other Two, this new series on Comedy Central, created by Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider, who were the head writers of Saturday Night Live. And it's funny, because I'm not necessarily the biggest SNL fan, but I think them porting their particular sensibility to a scripted 30-minute series about two kind of—not quite has been, more never was adult siblings of a Justin Bieber style teen phenom is just like uproariously funny. It gets all the details of both like pop life and what superstardom is like nowadays, as well as the details of these kind of flop 30-somethings in New York City, completely right. It's a really, really smart show.
Bobby: Cool. If a show description includes the phrase "flop 30-somethings," I'm in. I'm setting the DVR.
Dan: You got to do it.
Bobby: Alex, what about you? What are you obsessed with?
Alex: What am I obsessed with? Schitt's Creek.
Bobby: Oh, you stole mine.
Alex: Oh, no, wait. I could say another one.
Bobby: No, say it. Say it. No, let's—
Alex: I just got into it.
Bobby: Let's bond over Schitt's Creek.
Alex: I was just told to watch it. So one day, it was cold. It was between Schitt's Creek and Beat Bobby Flay. I was alternating. Apparently, there's this whole like what—one of the reasons I'm obsessed with Beat Bobby Flay though is because there's this whole conspiracy theory that it's rigged towards Bobby Flay, like Bobby Flay can never look that bad. Like only no name chefs can beat Bobby Flay, and there's like internet forums of being like, "This is how the battle went. This is why I think it's rigged," and it's amazing." But Schitt's Creek, I had just started on season one. I should really catch up, but—
Bobby: How far are you?
Alex: I'm like four episodes, five episodes in.
Bobby: It only gets better.
Alex: That's what I heard.
Bobby: It only gets better. I watched the premiere. I'm obsessed with—to get to me. I'm also obsessed with Schitt's Creek, and I watched the two most recent episodes of the season five premiere last night, and they're great. It returned with a bang. Moira, the Catherine O'Hara character is starring in a film called The Crows Have Eyes III. That's shooting in Bosnia, and it's as funny as it sounds. It's very good. But enough about me. Let's talk about you. How's that?
Alex: There you go.
Dan: So you did not see that coming somehow.
Bobby: So, You is a show that began as a Lifetime original based on a book, sort of pseudo popular, kind of YA thriller. It started as a Lifetime original series, kind of didn't do so great. There were a lot of subway ads for it. I remember thinking, "These ads aren't good," at the time. They wanted to get a second season. Lifetime said no. Netflix picked it up, and immediately 40 million people watched it, I think. A lot of people watched You suddenly, and the younger people assumed that it was a Netflix original series. So that's You. That's what it is. Have you all watched You?
Dan: Yes, I have watched You.
Bobby: Alex, have you—
Alex: I have watched You, but I disliked You.
Bobby: You disliked You?
Alex: I disliked You.
Dan: I have watched You. I like You. I started You when it was on Lifetime, and I didn't finish it, probably just because it's—when you're so used to watching things on kind of a bingeable timeframe, the moment you get interrupted, it's hard to catch back up, so it was nice to catch back up on Netflix.
Bobby: Well, and this show—I feel like this show more than most is really hard to drop in and out of weekly because it's—every episode is a cliffhanger. It's so plot-driven and requires you to remember details. I also think I was not a big fan of the first five episodes I watched on Lifetime, which is what they send to critics, and I've been catching up for this podcast.
And I actually think a lot of the problems that the show has in its early going get resolved in that at first the Penn Badgley character is kind of almost too sympathetic for this serial killer that we know he is, and it's like, "Oh, but it's sweet Dan from Gossip Girl," and it really leans into his evil side as it goes on in a way that I think works well.
Dan: Yeah, he becomes—you sort of question his motives and you question yourself for being kind of attracted or at least charmed by him at the beginning, and then by the end he becomes completely unforgivable, and he becomes like uncompromising and kind of objective monster by the end of the show.
Bobby: Which I think Penn Badgley has been really good on social media in that all the teen fans of the show who've been watching it on Netflix are like tweeting at him, like, "Murder me, daddy." And he's like, "No, my character's evil. You shouldn't like him," which I appreciate.
Alex: But keep watching.
Dan: Yes but keep watching. Yeah, I need this. I need this.
Bobby: And the show will have a second season. I mean, I guess if you are listening to it now, you know that there are spoilers and you don't care, he gets away with murder at the end of the season. He successfully frames John Stamos for the other murders. He gets away scot-free, and he's coming back to probably do more murders, but let's move on. Dan, I wanted to talk about a tweet that you sent, which is one of the main reasons you're here, not just because you are—
Dan: I'm so flattered, yes.
Bobby: Let's get into this tweet. "The more I think about it, the more I think You flailing on Lifetime and being treated by the viewing public as a Netflix original is going to be remembered as a major turning point in what will shortly be a contraction of the TV industry." So that's a tweet. That's, you know, a quick, little thought.
Dan: I said it at the gym.
Bobby: You said it at the gym. Were you on a treadmill? Were you watching You at the time?
Dan: No, it just popped into my head. I was between reps on one of the machines, and I was just like, "Oh," you know, "I've been thinking about You."
[Laughter.]
Bobby: Do you want to expand on this?
Dan: I would be happy to.
Bobby: What do you mean by this—how do you visualize this contraction of the TV industry?
Dan: So basically, my thought was obviously You is a very appealing show we now see when it's made available in a way that its audience understands. It was marketed as you noted earlier very aggressively by Lifetime, probably not the right way. It probably didn't make the themes clear enough. But either way, young people did not tune into Lifetime and watch it in droves.
So if we then say, "Okay, so these young people are probably simply not really gettable for cable networks like Lifetime, then what's the way forward for these networks that are only really getting older viewers who are in the habit of watching television?" Young people, I know anecdotally, and there's a lot of data I'm sure out there to back this up, young people, like, don't watch television.
I discovered Friends for instance when I had my television set on and it was NBC, Thursday, at 8 o'clock, or in syndication. Young people, for them, it's a digital only show, even though it still airs in syndication. So it just is a question of how many cable networks can survive with these older viewers. It's not to say that I have any crystal ball about the future of Lifetime. It's just the pie of people watching linear TV is getting smaller and smaller and smaller.
Bobby: I think to go back to the original advertising, for you, one thing that I found funny, I was looking at it again. And the original advertising, at least the subway posters, almost seemed like weird pandering from older people trying to get young people because they framed it as a show about social media, and it was like covered in hashtags and Instagram screenshots and it's like that's not really what this show is.
That's kind of how it begins because that's how he sort of gets to know her and starts stalking her. But it's just a thriller. It's a soapy thriller that, like you said, has a cliffhanger at the end of every episode. And now, I've noticed that the Netflix branding is like bloody and a little more savage and a little darker. And I think that even just down to that, they're not treating the audience like kind of children. And Alex, you didn't love You.
Alex: I didn't love You.
Bobby: What are your thoughts on You? Did you watch it on Netflix, or did you watch it on Lifetime?
Alex: So I watched it on Netflix. But I do remember the old commercials for You. Do you remember the old commercials?
Bobby: I don't think I saw the actual spots for it, no.
Alex: It was kind of marketed as this weird like, "Oh, my God. It's a romance." And then you thought it was like from, I guess, the female character's point of view. And then when I watched it, I was like, "Oh, this—it's flipped." But you would never get that from those old commercials. I think what turned me off was, I don't like narration, and so like the same thing with like Dexter and Mr. Robot. And then it just kind of like, oh, it like pauses at my soul, and I just hate like the narration. It just kills me.
Dan: Mr. Robot has narration. I've never watched it.
Alex: It sure does. Rami Malek, future Oscar winner. Rami Malek delivered the narration.
Bobby: I did not know that. Not to completely derail this, I did not know that was his voice until the Golden Globes, and I've seen him in things. I guess I've just never heard him out of character; maybe that's what it is.
Alex: He was perfect casting for Mr. Robot, because it is 100% consistent.
Bobby: Is that his voice as a narrator, his acceptance speech voice?
Alex: I think so. I mean, again, Again, I just didn't tune in. Like something about like this first-person narration of like what I'm thinking, what I'm doing, like it just kind of—something about it, just the style of it. Just I can't really get onboard with.
Penn: I want you to know if I wasn't about to be late to see you, I would beat this guy bloody for the way he talks about you.
Bobby: So you've never liked the Penn Badgley TV show then, because he was also revealed as the narrator of Gossip Girl in the end.
Alex: He just sounded like Kristen Bell; right?
Dan: Exactly.
Bobby: God, we're spoiling all sorts of things in this section of the podcast. But we can move on. Whereas You took its sweet time to find an audience, which actually wasn't that much time in the grand scheme of things. The series Sex Education was a more immediate and predictable smash. So let's move on to Sex Education, which I finished. Alex, you loved. Dan, you kind of started.
Dan: I'm halfway through. And I'm kind of into it. I'm eager to see where it goes.
Bobby: I'm not sure how I feel about the show. I feel like I really liked it. I feel like it made me a little melancholy when I watched it. I thought, "If I were 18, I would just worship this show. I would fall in love with it." It's all that I would think about. It's all I would talk about. And as a 30-something, I kind of felt a little sad, but not really in a bad way. I mean, it just made me a little melancholy, a little wistful. But Sex Education is a new series, eight episodes starring Asa Butterfield.
Alex: Hugo himself.
Bobby: Hugo himself. I was going to reference Dunkirk. Wasn't he in Dunkirk, too?
Alex: Yes, he was in—that's more recent.
Bobby: Let's go to the Chloë Grace Moretz vehicle, Hugo, and it is a weird, a very weird anachronistic teen sex comedy about British teens in question mark/? time, probably 2018, but maybe it's just a year that doesn't exist, who are discovering themselves and discovering sex and discovering capitalism in their school, and it also stars Gillian Anderson. But Alex, I want to start with you. What did you like about Sex Education?
Alex: The clothes are really good. The jacket—all I want is a jacket and a tank top, and I want like—I have no idea when it's—it's like what you said, it's like, it looks like it's set in like 2018, but like all the clothes are from like 1980, but all fit really well. And it's just kind of like, "Oh, yes, I want this closet and I want that outfit." But then I'm like, "Am I trying to dress like a British teen who's 15?"
Bobby: Yes. Am I trying to dress like a British teen in another decade? It's like, "What exactly are we doing here?"
Alex: Like if I showed up to like to a bar in that outfit, they'd be like, "Are you from the future? I don't get you. What's happening?"
Bobby: That's sort of how I felt the entire series. I'm like, "Is this the future? Is this the past? What is this?" But then I sort of—you forget about that as time passes.
Dan: The comparison I read frequently before viewing it, and now that I've seen it, I definitely think it rings true is to the films of John Hughes, where there is a certain timeless element to it. Like, the kids are all both sweetly naïve and a little smarter than they probably would be in other ways. And obviously, the whole visual look of the thing is kind of this idealized suburb where nothing could really go that wrong and everything feels both very strange and very safe.
Bobby: I always thought Gillian Anderson was American. Then, she started taking more British roles, English accents, and I thought, "Oh, I guess she's actually English," and I was wrong this entire time. Then she did this. And I was like, "Oh, she's really falling into her Englishness." She's Canadian, isn't she?
Dan: Yes, she is.
Bobby: I did not know that until last week.
Alex: Well, I went to Wikipedia after. I was like, "What is happening here? Why is she slowly turning into Emma Thompson?"
Bobby: Oh, gosh, with the blonde hair, she really is, yeah.
Alex: But I was just like, "Where is this lady from? I thought I knew her?" And then it's like, "I thought you were Scully? And then you weren't?" And then, but, yeah, but now she's the sex therapist, who is finding all these euphemisms for dirty words like "man milk" and all that. nonsense.
Dan: I just love the range. Obviously, she's an actor. She can do all different kinds of things, but I first encountered her as Agent Scully, and she's so kind of by the book, dogged, like head down, like unglamorous, and then she plays this kind of loopy, similarly a woman of science, but like completely off the deep end in some ways, in terms of her methods with raising her son. I'm like I can't even believe this is the same woman.
Bobby: Yes, she was good. She was very good, the haircut, the robe, the now iconic yellow robe. Who was your favorite character on Sex Education so far?
Dan: My favorite character is Eric. I love, love the scenes with him and his dad, so far. I'm worried that it is going to take some horrible turn. I'm actually non spoiled on this. But the scenes in which his dad and he have a kind of complicated understanding that is far from ideal, but that his dad doesn't blow up and throw him out of the house when he sees him with makeup on, as you would kind of expect the turn that would take.
Eric: We were just having a bit of fun, you know, dressing up for—
Mr. Effiong: It's time for you to grow up, get a job, take responsibility, see what the real world is all about. Take that stuff off your face before your mother sees.
Bobby: And instead encourages him to wipe it off before his mom sees, so they have kind of a mutual protection society of sorts. It's obviously not what would any of us would hope for, but it is much more complicated than I expected from a show probably meant for this audience. So I don't know. I think that he's a really sweet character. He's played beautifully well, and I'm really interested to see where that one goes.
Alex: You will be—you'll be satisfied—
Dan: Okay, good. Okay.
Alex: …with both the relationship with his father and where his character goes by the end of it.
Dan: I'm really relieved to hear that.
Bobby: What about you, Alex?
Alex: There's some amazing outfits for Eric.
Bobby: Oh, good.
Dan: Yes, I'm halfway through. I feel like there's so much more. I'll see him blossom, I hope.
Alex: Stunning looks.
Bobby: They're great. What about you?
Alex: I think Maeve—
Bobby: Margot Robbie Light, okay
Alex: Emma Mackey, Emma Mackey is great. She looked like a baby Margot Robbie, and it's just like—it kind of feels like if you ever need like a suicide squad prequel—
Bobby: There it is.
Alex: There you are. Don't give Zach Snyder any ideas. But, no, there's something I think with all of the teens in it, there's something really sweet about like, "Yes, people are like…" They play on this raunch, which I think is great, but there's like a thoughtfulness that goes beyond it like Asa Butterfield's character. Otis is grossed out by his mom having sex, but it's just—it doesn't stop there, which I think is a lot of like teen movies like stop at like that, "Oh, my God. I can't imagine my parents having sex."
I think it goes a step further, and it's like, at the end, sorry to spoil it for you, for a tiny bit, he feels like a little bit exploited because his mom like knows about his sex life so much and she wants to write a book about it. And it's just like there's a thoughtfulness and kindness I think for the teen characters, that they're just not one dimensional like horny robots. It's more about like the relationships that they have with one another.
And I think Maeve's role, like she's supposed to be the mean girl. But like you see the friendships that she has, and you see like the way she cares for like her brother. I don't know. There's a thoughtfulness about her and I think the actress that plays her. I'm a big Margot Robbie fan, so I think that's part of it too. But we'll see.
Bobby: As a Margot Robbie fan.
Alex: As one of the 99 people that believes in Margot Robbie.
Bobby: The next segue is going to be much less elegant.
J.Lo sings: R-U-L-E.
Bobby: Where were you when you realized she was spelling R-U-L-E?
Dan: Like college. Yeah, I was—I like heard it at a party, and I was like, "Oh, my God. It's not, Are you Ready?"
Bobby: Where were you, Alex?
Alex: I think I was probably at that same party. I was probably, "Oh, my God. You told me this. Wow."
Bobby: I was probably considerably older. I think I was in my mid-20s when I realized J.Lo was not asking, "Are you Ellie?" even though I didn't know what that could possibly mean, but that's what I thought she was asking. She was spelling R-U-L-E, as in Ja Rule, as in one of the subjects of the new Netflix original documentary, Fyre, not to be confused with Fyre Fraud on Hulu.
Bobby: Did you realize that Fyre Fraud is a pun on wire fraud.
Alex: Because of your tweet, and I was going to bring that up. And it's not even a good pun, but that must be what they mean; right.
Dan: There's no other way in which that as a title make sense. So, yes, it must be a pun on wire fraud. But that's not even what that movie is about so, yes.
Bobby: But let's get to Fyre. Fyre is a new documentary about the notorious ill-conceived nightmarish music festival that never was. Fyre Fest, which was supposed to be in 2017, much hyped by some of our culture's most iconic and influential Instagram models like Emily Ratajkowski, Kendall Jenner, and Bella Hadid. It was started by a guy named Billy McFarland, who is sort of a scammer, a Silicon Valley, New York City entrepreneur. His latest venture at the time was a booking app that let you book talent really easily.
Like if you wanted Ja Rule at your party, you could just go to the app, find out how much he costs, book him, and then you'd have him. In an effort to promote this new app, he decided to do a Fyre Festival, a music festival, even though he'd never done a music festival before and, in so doing, frauded a lot of people out of a lot of money, and that's what the documentary covers. How much of the story did both of you know going into it? Let's start with Alex.
Alex: I knew someone that was supposed to go to Fyre Fest, and it was amazing.
Bobby: Everyone gasps. Start from the beginning.
Alex: So, this SoulCycle instructor that I follow on Instagram who's—
Bobby: Everything about this is perfect.
Alex: …whose class that I go to occasionally on Saturday mornings, 9:30, NoHo, if you want to go.
Bobby: This Saturday morning, 9:30.
Dan: Now it's going to be sold out. That was your biggest mistake.
Alex: Well, it's already sold out. You can't—it's so hard to get in.
Bobby: But is he like the best instructor?
Alex: She.
Bobby: Oh, she's the best instructor.
Alex: She's pretty good. But she was recently engaged, and she was like, "Oh, yeah. I'm going to this festival," and she was on Instagram. And I was just like, "What festival is she going to?" It's like clearly not Coachella, because that isn't even happening yet. And it was like—and I'm like, "She's packing a bikini, so it's not Bonnaroo." And I was just like following this. And then she's like, "Guys, I'm stuck in Miami." And I was like—
Bobby: You were supposed to go to one of her classes.
Alex: Well, no. Like she was like, "I'm taking off. I'm going to go to this festival. I won't be here awhile. I'll see you on the flipside. I'm going to have an amazing time." And of course like when she says that, you're like, "Well, I'm going to go follow her on Instagram and see what happens." And so, all of a sudden, like her—it's like she leaves, and it's just like she's in Miami, and I guess that plane that she was supposed to—
Bobby: The plane, yeah, with the bad branding.
Alex: With the bad branding, the branded jet experience.
Dan: Where like the window was broken and stuff.
Alex: Wasn't happening. And she was just like, "Guys, I'm stuck in Miami. I don't know what to do." And then I was just like, "Oh, well, I mean, there are worst places to be stuck." So she never actually got to the island.
Dan: Oh, that's good.
Bobby: Yes, what a relief for her. Did she get her money back?
Alex: I don't know. I haven't asked.
Bobby: Dan, did you know anyone who was supposed to go?
Dan: I can't follow that. No, I don't.
Bobby: What was your memory of Fyre Fest?
Dan: I think my memory was around the same as most people's, which is that I saw—the first thing I saw was the tweet about the cheese sandwich. For those who were not on social media at the time, it was a viral tweet that emerged—
Bobby: Always funny.
Dan: Yeah, but it was like we were promised catered meals at the Fyre Festival. This is what they gave us, and it's a slice of bread, a slice of yellow American cheese, and this like gloppy looking salad. And so—
Alex: In a Styrofoam—in a Styrofoam clamshell.
Bobby: And so, from there, I just followed the news as intensely as everyone else did. Because it really was like covered by CNN. It was kind of the first genuinely funny, in some ways, news story of the Trump Administration, and it felt very kind of a piece with what people wanted to see, which was the most frivolous people in our society, in some cases, being brought low, and in a way that most of them were not harmed. Some were, as Fyre shows very well. Some very innocent bystanders in the Bahamas were really harmed by this.
But I remember it kind of being a fun little bit of schadenfreude that I didn't really realize how much dimension there was until I saw the documentary. I think that was my most vivid memory of Fyre Fest, not the sandwich, although that probably takes that description, but the feeling that like we had had so much bad news for so long, this was just finally something fun that was dominating the headlines.
And at the time, I worked at Jezebel, and it was like something fun for people to cover, even though like you said it was a tragedy for a certain group of people. Well, and that I think is something that the Netflix documentary does really well is show you the people who were harmed by this because as far as we all knew at the time, no one was really grievously harmed by this. People lost money, but the amount of like a flight and a hotel, not something that was financially ruinous.
So yes, I thought it was very interesting and sad to see kind of the dimensions of the harm that McFarland did. But let's get to Andy. What do we think about Andy? Because I didn't see Andy coming until—
Dan: I don't think Andy's—
Bobby: …Andy had his iconic line. Do we think Andy was really prepared to go all the way? Or do we think he's sort of exaggerating the situation?
Alex: Wait. Can we set this up first a little bit?
Bobby: Let's set it up. So Andy is one of Billy's—I don't know a better way to—he's sort of the LeFou to Billy's Gaston, but like very demented versions of both of these people. This guy who seems old enough and smart enough to not be palling around and working for Billy but is doing so anyway because they have some weird history that's never fully explained.
But when Billy gets sort of knee deep in Fyre Fest mess, he calls his old friend and colleague, Andy, and says, "You know, you got to fly out to this island in the Bahamas just north of the Sandals Resort and help me out here because I'm having some problems." And Andy's like, you know, "Anything for Billy. He's a genius. I love Billy. I'm willing to help him out of a jam." At one point, the jam is there's water being sort of held captive at some customs department.
Dan: Like Evian bottled water that's been flown in—
Bobby: At an airport.
Dan: …and they need to pay. The Bahamas has—apparently has extremely high tariffs and they just need to pay the fee.
Bobby: The fee is pretty high. They don't have the money. So Andy is sent to go there. And Billy says—
Andy: Billy called and said, "Andy, we need you to take one big thing for the team." And I said, "Oh, my gosh. I've been taking something for the team every day." He said, "Well, you're our wonderful gay leader, and we need you to go down. Will you suck d**k to fix this water problem?" And I said, "Billy, what?" And he said, "Andy, if you will go down and suck Cunningham's d**k, who is the head of customs and get him to clear all of the containers with water, you will save this festival." And I literally drove home, took a shower. I drank some mouthwash." I'm like, "Oh, my gosh. I'm really…" And I got into my car to drive across the island to take one for the team.
Bobby: What does he say? He brushed his teeth. He like swished with Listerine.
Alex: He like took a shower. Yeah, there's all of this detail about his routine.
Bobby: Yes. And then he goes—he makes his way to this person who is keeping the water hostage. And then, the guy says, "You know what? I'll give you the water. You can pay me later, but you have to pay me later." And he doesn't have to do the sexual favor.
Dan: And it was like $125,000 dollars; right?
Bobby: One hundred and twenty-five thousand. Yeah, that sounds right.
Alex: And we don't even know if the customs guy was gay, or if he was like, "Oh, yes. This is the ransom on it."
Bobby: What was your reading on this? So my reading on this was just that Billy thinks that's how gay people do business. I was like, "Does Billy just think a gay man can just, you know, do some sort of weird sexual favor on another person, not even necessarily a gay person and then get what they want, because I would believe that if you told me that that's how Billy sees—
Dan: Or did Andy take it too literally, to where Billy was just like, "Hey, you need to do this so we can get out of here with water. And Andy's like, "Okay, sure, boss." And he's like taking notes down of like, "This is what I need to do. Perform fellatio on a random custom—
Bobby: Yeah. It's kind of like a perfect storm, where you have a person, Billy, who, by all appearances is completely spinning like a top and coming up with these crazy ideas with no idea of how it's actually going to play out. And you have someone, Andy, who we see is very loyal and very literal minded. And I think those two together created this insane anecdote that really goes to just how chaotic this thing really was.
Bobby: But Andy didn't have to go there. I guess that's good for Andy. But really, I don't know. I don't know what to say about that.
Alex: Yeah. He still chose to share the story. Including his extreme preparedness.
Bobby: And I think that's the most confounding thing about the entire episode. Not that it happened and not that maybe he misunderstood what Billy wanted from him or was too literal, that he was willing to share this with a camera, let alone like an entire audience of however many millions of people would eventually watch this documentary.
Alex: And the whole tone is kind of just like, "Wow, isn't this crazy?" Like, I really made a pretty crazy decision. And at home you're sitting there like, "Yes, I completely agree with you. Andy, what?"
Bobby: We need a follow up that's just called "Andy." But what was your biggest takeaway from the documentary, Alex? Like, what did you like the most about it?
Alex: I mean, I think the best part of it is that—even the people that are speaking to you, aside from like the people in the Bahamas, who have like the businesses ruined and I think there was like a couple of journalists. I was just like, "these people are all scammers too." Like there's no like—it's like a rat turning on other rats.
Like, I'm like the guy with the ponytail who lives with—whose parents have a doorman building, and he was just like, "Oh, yeah, I stood by…" Like these people didn't stand by the whole time. And we're just like, "Well, you know what? Millions and millions of dollars were coming in." And it's just kind of funny to see like—okay, well, these guys are kind of sleazy too, and then just realizing that, and then just having it all kind of—I don't know.
I feel like in comparison to the Hulu one, it really captured like the immense, I guess, like shit show that was happening. And you're just like, "Oh, wow. Now I know what happened to my SoulCycle instructor," or like the fate that she narrowly avoided. But, yeah, I think that was it. Like just this whole idea of these scammy people.
And I think like this whole year we've just had—well, over the past year, we've had like all of these scams like brought to light. Like the woman in the New York magazine story—
Dan: Anna Delvey.
Bobby: Anna Delvey, the iconic scammer.
Dan: Soon to be the subject, I believe, of a Netflix series in development.
Bobby: Really?
Dan: Isn't that the first Shonda—
Bobby: Oh, that's the Shonda show. Yeah, that's the Shonda show.
Alex: I guess Dirty John too is a little bit of a scam.
Bobby: Just a chorus of scammers in this.
Alex: Caroline Calloway.
Dan: Caroline Calloway.
Alex: Oh, my God. So much scam.
Bobby: And I feel like she kind of got away with her scam too in the end. And that's sort of the thing about scammers. They always get away with it, even in the case of Fyre. The people who were sort of involved in this scam in a way get away with the scam because there's always a scammer who's worse.
Dan: Yeah, that's the thing with this one is that—
Bobby: Billy is such a powerful and like unforgettable scammer that you kind of forget that he was surrounded by other scammers. It's so easy to just have him—his shadow covers up everyone else. He was a very effective scammer, and I think the movie kind of makes clear that he was close to getting away with it if he didn't try to push his luck.
Obviously, there was going to be some consequence, but things really start falling apart when he executes the scam after the scam, which is the ticket selling app, and there's some pretty terrific footage. This is one way in which I think this has one up on the Hulu documentary, although I think they both have pluses and minuses. It shows him like eagerly having his front man calling people on the phone and offering them tickets to nonticketed events like the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show and the Met Gala, which both of them are invitation only.
And it's just pretty remarkable to see the worrying mind of this individual who like cannot stop scamming people even though he's had every opportunity in life to go legit. But that's Fyre. I kind of want to—now I want to re-watch Fyre because I want to re-watch just the Andy scenes and see like if there's something I was missing from the beginning.
Because he sort of pops up suddenly with no real—he's like Mary Poppins, in a way. He just appears in the documentary, and he's like, "I'm here. I just came to help Billy," you know. "I floated in on the wind because I had to help Billy out, and now here we are." But that's enough for Fyre. And with that, I think we are done with our second episode of I'm Obsessed With This. Thank you to Dan and Alex for being here.
Dan: Thanks for having us.
Alex: Thanks.
Bobby: You can all watch Fyre. You can all watch You. You're going to watch Sex Education now, and we will see you in two weeks with our next episode. Bye, everyone.