What’s Aged the Worst?
The hotel-room scene where Carolyn's boss makes his move and she punches him out
In the discussion (9)
Approx. transcript time · 00:32:22Read transcript
- The trumpet-heavy theme song is very 81 to 83, as if a friend named Bob was asked to whip something up; the private plane with fur walls and tables confuses both hosts, who wonder whether it was private or an old first-class cabin.
- The beard as a sloppy, life-falling-apart look has become the actual look for lots of people, so it aged both worst and best, and the hosts now kind of like the beard and suggest adding a baseball hat.
- The early-80s punk babysitter with crazy makeup and purple hair; the kids' room posters of Rocky III and Eric Hipple, a really mediocre Lions quarterback from 82 and 83, arguably the worst-aged thing in any Rewatchables, explained as a Detroit local touch and compared to a Ty Detmer Eagles poster.
- The ending is also aged worst, since the movie simply tells you to leave; the idea that a dad would know how to do nothing, not even plug in a vacuum, is different now that men know how to do laundry, which is read as an 80s exaggerate-everything trope.
- The Me Too scene, seen in 2019 through the Harvey Weinstein stories of hotel rooms and ordered food: Carolyn reads the room, tells her boss to leave, punches him in the face when he will not, and then simply goes to tell her husband, which is very 80s and has not aged well, though women entering positions of power in the 80s made it common and every scene the two share telegraphs it.
- The harassment plot and Joan's interest in the dad are not really needed; in 2019 the climax would be the couple fighting over parenting duties rather than fending off suitors, and 76-to-83 TV movie plots where everyone is trying to sleep with everyone are blamed; most people met at work in 1983, so the boss sizing her up reads as realistic.
- The scene could not be done now, which is why it lands here; that the character knows exactly what to do is both depressing and impressive, navigating it like a quarterback reading a blitz and checking down, and 9 to 5, one of the biggest hits of 1980, with its boss pursuing Dolly Parton, is recalled as the precedent.
- Earlier, stepping on the category during the scene discussion: the beard is supposed to signal Jack's life falling apart but most dads look like that now, and one host admits that a 35-year-old man with a patchy beard and an unwashed flannel shirt is what society has conditioned that host to find attractive.
- Also earlier: Carolyn just stops being a mom for about an hour, completely uninterested in her kids, and the film does not examine it.