What’s Aged the Worst?
The Christian storyline, though the hosts move it toward aged pretty well; Christian's over-stylized retro persona; how the teenagers interact, such as Elton keeping Cher's photo in his locker; Murray and Elton sharing a popular crew; Cher and Ty doing a home workout video; the fashion computer's monitor
In the discussion (9)
Approx. transcript time · 00:24:53Read transcript
- Cher's date with Christian is called the most problematic part of a problematic fave; asked whether falling for a gay man is a rom-com trope, the hosts can only think of the Rupert Everett and Madonna film and agree it is not really a rom-com thing, while finding it funny that the straight guys, Paul Rudd seeing Christian dance with a man and Murray, pick up on it before the ostensibly perceptive Cher and Dion.
- Murray's reveal, played as a clip, uses 'friend of Dorothy', an old-school gay self-identifying marker from The Wizard of Oz, plus 'cake boy' and the Oscar Wilde, disco-dancing, Streisand-ticket-holding string; the hosts find it hilarious in a good way that Amy Heckerling put those words in Murray's mouth, call the Streisand line remarkable and Pulitzer-worthy, and the 'cake boy' line unfortunate.
- Christian's analog in Emma, read from Wikipedia in a way Cher would endorse since she loves Cliff's Notes, is Frank Churchill, who courts Emma while secretly engaged to someone else and waiting on an aunt's inheritance, so the storylines are not really the same; the host prefers him being gay to that.
- GLAAD ('Glad' as transcribed) gave Amy Heckerling an award for the storyline, which was very progressive at the time; Murray pointing out that Christian is gay is not malicious, the joke is that Cher is totally clueless, which one host says has happened to teenage girls and, going by the friends that host still counsels through it, women of all ages, so the item is moved to somewhere between aged best and aged pretty well.
- What still annoys is Christian's style: the over-stylized guy obsessed with the twenties and thirties, who deserves Cher not knowing who Billie Holiday is, though Billie Holiday deserves better.
- Discussing a possible remake, the hosts find the way these kids interact foreign to teenagers now; Elton keeping a photo Cher took in his locker is quaint, silly and confusing, which is part of why Elton gets kicked out of the picture because he sucks, and the 'social director of the crew' line is loved.
- Murray and Elton being in the same crew of popular guys confuses one host, whose high school popular set was uniform in style rather than race; another went to a weird school with a wide range, and a third had a clearly defined cool tier with pressure to look the same, so the kids with sagging jeans and the Eltons would have mutually rejected each other.
- Cher and Ty doing a home workout video instead of a class has aged badly, though it is set in the nineties when everyone had workout videos; the hosts recall sneaking a mother's 'Tybo' tape (as transcribed), a Paula Abdul video with a routine still remembered, and the Barbie workout video starring Jennifer Love Hewitt.
- Earlier, during the opening-minutes discussion, the fashion computer's actual monitor is said to look like trash now and not to have aged well, even though the idea was forward thinking.