“DTF St. Louis” and the New Story of the Suburbs

17:43Naomi Fry:One thing I did like is showing how being of the suburb sometimes can mean hanging on by your tippy toes to a certain level, to a certain class perch. You know, if one side is like there is this promised security, prosperity. The other side of it is a kind of like keeping up with the Joneses thing. and there's a scene where Floyd's car is dead. It's like 14. It's too old. It doesn't start. He leaves it. They still have Carol's car, but then they have to, both of them have to go get to work. Both of them have to share the car. He tries to start it and the car doesn't start. It catches. And this I did like because this seemed to me kind of real And like my heart kind of like stopped a little bit.

18:42Naomi Fry:And he's like, oh, shit. Oh, shit. And you can see her being like, oh, not this now. You know, this fucking loser I'm saddled with. How will we get to work? What will we do? We only have. And, you know, that sort of terror, which is kind of telegraphed in a very kind of small, minute way. That is kind of like, for me, the terror of the suburbs in a way. How will we get somewhere if we don't have a car? Like, that's it. We're done. And I think the show does a good job of that. And I think that's a very suburban thing. And I think it does that. Also, to reinforce this sort of classic suburban texture, is it does a lot of that work through the figure of Carol.

19:31Floyd Smirnich's wife, who I think is played amazingly by Linda Cardellini. Totally agree. something that happens in a lot of suburban texts that I can think of at least, especially the ones that concern themselves with the domestic life, is a surface protagonism of men. But then actually all of the themes and the dangers and this kind of peering over the edge of a kind of social death happens in the figure of the woman. You know, at first it's these two guys who are friends, et cetera, et cetera. And Carol kind of just emerges slowly. First, she's an object of sexual desire. Clark you know you can see from the beginning at the cornhole party oh he kind of likes her and of course it in the fullness of time it is revealed that they are having an affair but then all of this stuff trying to keep the family together we come to see her using the affair with Clark as a way to reinforce her own family economically but we see the sort of keeping things together the backstage work of suburbia lands on her yeah i think that is done brilliantly and there's one moment that i really love where they're on a swing set talking about dtfst louis uh the two men are in this very childlike scene and clark we see him go up and down up and down and at the at the zenith of the sort of the top of the the tippy top of the swings uh motion you You can see he's kind of like creep looking at this young girl across the fence.

21:00Naomi Fry:Doing like yoga or something. Exactly. Some very classic like young woman thing. And this is his little glimpse. And it just a similar thing where all of the desire and aggression and weirdness, lecherousness of the men lands on just the body of a woman. I'm like, yeah, that's what this show is about.

21:22Vinson Cunningham:In a minute, how the suburbs went from American dream to American nightmare. Critics at large from The New Yorker will be right back.

21:41This week on The New Yorker Radio Hour, a Democrat and a Republican in Congress on how the immigration crackdown is changing America.

21:48Vinson Cunningham:They're going to see vast swaths of our workforce disappear. They're going to see our economy contract. Mr. President, you've got to change the way when it comes to immigration. Otherwise, we're not going to have a Republican Party. That's the New Yorker Radio Hour from WNYC. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Your living space is your sanctuary, and you want it to feel like an expression of you, right? But unless you're working with an unlimited budget, sometimes that's easier said than done. And that's why I love Wayfair. I don't think there's a room in my house that doesn't have a little something from Wayfair.

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23:56Vinson Cunningham:Before we start talking about the suburbs canon and building up our suburbs canon, I just want to talk about the history of the suburbs a little bit. Because I was looking into it recently, even before we were doing this show. And it's fascinating to me. I think the first true suburb is often considered to be Levittown. Do you guys know about Levittown on Long Island? Where all the houses were built. Abraham Levitt and his son. Yes, Vincent. Speak to it. Tell us about it. Well, as is often the story when we think of cultural items that are meant to symbolize the American way of life and especially the free market, actually it was a great plan of subsidy.

24:41building these Levittowns, the iconic one being very close to here in Long Island, in the wake of World War II. It was a place for the military, I mean, the GIs, to come back and start a life. It was a heavily subsidized zone of almost reward for people who had fought in the Great War. So a space that needed to be filled for a specific purpose.

25:10Vinson Cunningham:Yes, absolutely. I mean, there were versions of suburbs before, but Levittown was the first planned community, gave the image for the post-war suburb. It provides us with the kind of white picket fence, each identical house occupied by an identical family that forms our image of the suburbs and the backdrop to a lot of what we're going to be talking about. And they exist in response to the chaos of war. You're out there fighting, you're in this men's world, and then you're expected to come home and assume this domestic placid experience. And I think the crackage is just built into that premise.

25:44Vinson Cunningham:That's right. It can't stand. So having said that, what are some depictions of the suburbs from early on that come to mind when we think about classic suburban works?

25:56Naomi Fry:I feel like, I'm like, has there ever been an art, a representation of the suburbs that wasn't problematized in some sense, right? Because I'm like, okay, Cheever is pretty early, you know, like early 60s, you know, like a story like The Swimmer, for instance, like published in this very magazine, The New Yorker in 1964, later made in 1968 into a movie starring Burt Lancaster. And I'm like, OK, this is like posts. I mean, it's heading there, but it's posts like the sort of late 60s revolutionary foment and, you know, the sort of deeper involvement in Vietnam, et cetera, et cetera. And certainly women's lib and all of that.

26:42Naomi Fry:And yet the whole story is about how actually the kind of the placid dream of the suburbs is in fact something that is not graspable in actual life. that is kind of maintained through lots of alcohol and sort of like bland niceties and maybe some clandestine affairs that end badly to prop up a kind of facade over the roiling dissatisfactions that lie in the heart of man in the case of the swimmer, but also surely women, which we get to maybe a little bit later I'm thinking about, like, you know, as I mentioned in last week's episode, I'm reading the new Judy Blume biography by Mark Oppenheimer.

27:34Naomi Fry:was reminded of her very racy book, Wifey, from 1977, which is all about a kind of, like, nice upper-middle-class housewife in the New Jersey suburbs who is sick of the kind of imprisonment of being, like, a nice girl, Sandy Pressman, who is married to Norman, who has a thriving dry-cleaning business. And she's like, fuck this, you know? I want to have fun. I want to, like, have sex with, like, various people. I want to have affairs. I want to be bad, you know, because I'm feeling like I'm sick of being at home. I'm sick of taking care of my, like, annoying kids, you know. And so the incursion of feminism into the whole picture of the suburbs also builds a critique of it.

28:23It's so funny that that question is such a good one, Nomi, because it seems like the portrayal of the suburb becomes problematized or not, almost in parallel motion to the larger spirit of the age. If you think about when was the, what is the most positive portrayal of the suburbs? And you would have to say it happens in the 80s, right?

28:48Naomi Fry:In the 80s, and I want to say I have a lot to say. The John Hughes movie comes into being at the same time as like Wall Street and these other things. The whole political economy moves in parallel motion. I have thoughts about that for sure. I mean, I think the desire to return to a past that never was in the Reagan 80s, it's like it's my theory about like Robert Zemeckis' Back to the Future is basically that like my theory. I don't know. I'm sure it's been said by other people. But, like, it's 1985 going back via the sort of time machine of the glory into 1955. And the idea is let's erase the 60s and 70s, the decades where it all went wrong, and go back to the suburb of the 50s before things got fucked up.

29:36Naomi Fry:And our family became, like, a downwardly mobile, like, loser-ville kind of example of kind of, you know, all these people who had dreams that didn't come to fruition. let's go back let's teach dad to be a man let's teach him to like punch Biff in the face the bully who's been cucking him forever the mom will like also you know gain respect for her you know by inhabiting her role by inhabiting her role perfectly and not be a kind of like slutty drunkard and and and going and he goes back to the 80s and they have their house is really nice they have a BMW they have like Like, the brother is working on Wall Street.

30:20Naomi Fry:The sister has dates. Yeah, what are you wearing, Dave? Marty, I always wear a suit to the office. Now, Biff, I want to make sure that we get two coats of wax this time, not just one. Just finishing up the second coat now. Now, Biff, don't con me. I'm sorry, Mr. McFly. It's all good. You know, the suburb has been restored. Like a re-enchantment. A re-enchantment with the prosperity and security and promise of the American dream. Couldn't love that theory more. You will read about it in my forthcoming book, which is yet to be written.

30:56Vinson Cunningham:It was sounding very cohesive. It definitely seemed like thought had been given to it prior to this episode. I'm all for it. So this actually brings up something that's been on my mind. I think this retro idea that starts in the 80s and absolutely has cropped up again with MAGA is the idea that 1950s was the fulfillment of America as America. That is what America should be. It should be a husband and a wife and 2.5 children in every home. And the husband is going to work on the commuter train and coming back. And the wife is holding down the, you know, the house and all of this stuff. The stuff that's getting made about the suburbs in the 50s is dark.

31:34Vinson Cunningham:It's dystopian to begin with. And it's not like we wait until Mad Men to find out that that was a totally cracked situation. Actually, you can just watch the extraordinary melodrama, All That Heaven Allows, by Douglas Sirk. This is from 1955. I rewatched it recently. Blown away. Wow, I need to rewatch. We have Carrie Scott, played by a resplendent Jane Wyman, who, since we're talking about Reagan, was married to Ronald Reagan. Oh, yes. She's a widow, I should say. She's a widow with two adult children who are in college. and she falls in love with her gardener who is a total do-it-yourselfer in a different American tradition.

32:16Their lives were worlds apart. Carrie's world was bound by the country club set, their smug pretensions and their spiteful gossip.

32:23Vinson Cunningham:He is self-sufficient and he doesn't need to keep up with the Joneses. Ron's world was boundless. The great outdoors, the things that grow and real people who give and take all that heaven allows of love. The drama of the movie is about whether Carrie Scott can allow herself to try to experience happiness or whether she must continue to live with the social death that is her lot in life as a widow of a successful businessman, and she has to live out that experience forever. But the thing I want to bring up, which I think is really fascinating, is this scene. Can I just show you guys this scene for a sec?

32:58Vinson Cunningham:Please. She's sitting by herself. She has a glass of a cocktail, and she just happens to notice Walden next to her. The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed?

33:22If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it's because he hears a different drummer. let him step to the music which he hears however measured or far away. Why, that's beautiful.

33:36Vinson Cunningham:So she has an absolute revelation because she happened to come across this key clutch passage in Walden. Swelling strings, we should say. Oh, I mean, this is a melodrama. She's ready to toss away her pearls. It's just, it's absolutely spectacular and it is presenting a different vision of America. another slightly difficult problematic one of total self-reliance, you know, as we all know, okay, Thoreau kind of faked that. You have these two American dreams clashing in the space of the suburbs. Last thing I'll say on this is fast forward to 2004. What should be premiering but Desperate Housewives?

34:16Vinson Cunningham:Another absolute classic. I'm watching the pilot guys the other day, as you do, because I'm thinking, let me remember what this thing was all about. It was kind of young. Stunning comeback with Terry Hatcher. And just, guys, take a look. Take a look at what Terry Hatcher says that her husband said to her. What did Carl say when you confronted him? You'll love this. He said, it doesn't mean anything. It was just sex. Oh, yes. Page one of the Philanderer's Handbook. Yeah, and then he got this zen look on his face, and he said, you know, Susan, most men live lives of quiet desperation. Please tell me you punched him.

34:48No, I said

34:49Vinson Cunningham:really? And what do most women lead? Lives of noisy fulfillment? Good for you. Good for you, Susan. We got Thoreau in the burbs. What a cast. What a cast.

35:00Naomi Fry:Nicolette Sheridan, Eva Longoria.

35:04Vinson Cunningham:But I want to go back to this idea, Nomi, that you brought up of the suburbs and the suburbs in art as a kind of retro fantasy coming back in the 80s. It occurs to me, like, I feel like in the 90s, that continues through the 90s and the early 2000s, especially where teens are concerned. Yes. Like the classic vision of American life of what it is to be an American teenager is The Suburbs. It is American Pie from 1999. Wow, American Pie. I mean, American Pie, hugely influential to a generation. Yeah. Mine. Sort of like silly teen comedy, the likes of which really doesn't get made so much anymore.

35:40Vinson Cunningham:Chris Klein, Tara Reade. I mean, it's... Natasha Lyonne. It's there. It's out there, let me tell you. It's still out there. Superbad. Superbad. Big one. Huge one. Of course. Here's another one, though, I think sort of a little earlier than the ones that you're mentioning. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Mm-hmm. Which is like all about someone who wants to live a normal suburban life and can't because she's the one who can recognize the monstrosity of the scene in the way others can't. It's, you know, it's almost a literalization of, you know, there's something dark that others can't see, but it takes a special kind of protagonist to kind of x-ray it.

36:19Naomi Fry:They just won't let her. I was thinking about teen movies, and of course I was thinking about John Hughes and Sixteen Candles and, you know, Pretty in Pink and The Breakfast Club. And The Breakfast Club, yeah. And Ferris Bueller, of course. And another movie, this is not a John Hughes movie, but it's another teen movie from the 80s that I loved, Adventures in Babysitting. I don't know if you guys— I don't know that one. Starring Elizabeth Chu. I know of it. I haven't seen it. Like Elizabeth Chu babysits for her neighbors, prosperity, enjoyment, but they have to go into the city because her friend is like stranded in the bus station, the scary bus station with the homeless people and the crazy people and the black people.

37:02Naomi Fry:and all the things that happen in the city are what create the meat of the movie. But at the end of the movie, with the parents none the wiser, they return, you know, Elizabeth Chu and the kids return just in time to the beautiful suburb and everything's okay. And it's as if nothing has ever happened, thank God. And is it a happy ending? It's a happy ending. Or is it a horror ending? No, no, no, no, no. It's a really satisfying, sweet, like funny teen movie.

37:30Vinson Cunningham:That's so interesting. I mean, I do feel like the suburban setting has these kind of two functions very often in some of the stuff we're talking about, especially the more recent stuff. For kids, it's kind of the teen movie setting, the par excellence, the big high school, the house party, the running around. And then the second is the suburbs used, when it's an adult focus, used as a scene for horror, for murder or for horror, basically. There's the Lynch kind of horror of something that lurks beneath the surface. There's also horror horror. Nightmare on Elm Street horror. You think that your nice house is going to keep out a psychopath?

38:08Vinson Cunningham:Think again. There's nothing coming. Or a totally different kind of horror, Home Alone? Oh, my God. Scream. Oh, my God. Scream? Scream. Scream, of course. Scream 7 just came out. We salute you. I will never see you, Scream 7. But I'm glad to know you're out there.

38:23Naomi Fry:But I'm glad you exist, yeah.

38:24Vinson Cunningham:Well, this is, can I take it back to Cheever for one second? Please. Another kind of horror. Well, it is horror. That's the thing. It is horror. Nomi, you were talking about The Swimmer. I want to talk about the story The 548, which The New Yorker published in 1954. Again, right in the heart of all of this. And this story is about an executive in New York City who's had a one-night stand with his secretary. The next day, he arranged for her to be fired. It's sad. It's upsetting. We read about what he did to her. And then there's a kind of, like, jump scare, which is, to me, one of the more devastating things I've ever encountered.

39:02Vinson Cunningham:He's sitting on the commuter train, and we learn that one of the women in front of him is his wife's confidant. And a few weeks ago, he came home, and he found that his wife had not made dinner. She was clearly drunk. And then we get this line. He had gone into the kitchen, followed by Louise, that's his wife, and he had pointed out to her that the date was the 5th. He had drawn a circle around the date on the kitchen calendar. One week is the 12th, he had said. Two weeks will be the 19th. He drew a circle around the 19th. I'm not going to speak to you for two weeks, he had said. That will be the 19th.

39:39Vinson Cunningham:That line, that idea, the cold officiousness of it is horrifying and is so suburban as motif. And of course, the suburbs, like, we're throwing a lot at the suburbs, but I think they're strong enough to take it. So much about the suburbs in the 50s and thereafter is about making sure that women stay at home and that men get to commute out and go into the world and return back. And the attendant miseries of that. So I feel like that's still a legacy that is being worked through. Absolutely.

40:16Vinson Cunningham:In a minute, what the suburbs mean to us today. Critics at Large from The New Yorker will be right back.

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41:23Vinson Cunningham:Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. Hi, I'm Nicole Phelps, Global Fashion News and Features Director at Vogue and co-host of the Run-Through podcast. Each week on the show, our listeners get an all-access pass into the world of Vogue. On Tuesdays, join me as I interview influential designers like Calvin Klein, Rachel Scott, and Simone Bellotti. On Thursdays, join Chloe Mao, head of editorial content at Vogue US, and Choma Nadi, British Vogue's head of editorial content, as they explore fashion through the lens of culture with guests like Doja Cat and Margot Robbie.

42:03Vinson Cunningham:Listen and watch the run-through with Vogue wherever you get your podcasts and Vogue's YouTube channel.

42:18Vinson Cunningham:So we threw it back to the 50s. We journeyed to the 80s. We took it to the 90s and the early 2000s. And now we're in 2026. And for this episode, we've spent some time with some more recent depictions of the suburbs. And I want to ask you guys, what is the picture of suburbia that we're getting today?

42:38Naomi Fry:It's looking bad. Yeah. Oh, no. I think what I find when I think about, like, the depiction of the suburbs today is that kind of, like, there's a kind of declineist narrative. So there's all of the problems that have happened before, but now also there are none of, like, the perceived upsides. If we think about, like, a show like HBO's Neighbors, which was a six-episode docuseries that just finished airing, it's about neighborly disputes and neighborly disputes in mostly suburban areas. A lot of these fights are often so petty. For instance, there are two women living in West Palm Beach. So she's been my neighbor for almost 16 years.

43:37Vinson Cunningham:I mean, I've gone as far as picking her kids up from school for her. Her son actually used to babysit for me with my dog. We've been friends since I moved in, up until a month and a half ago. You're not going to cut the grass. My attorney said you're not to cut the grass. I'm to cut the grass. It's my property. I will cut it because I'm not getting fined by calling for that.

43:55Naomi Fry:I cut it every single week. You cut it on top of him cutting it. It was weeds. Giving 35 feet away. on somebody's whim is just not an option. What they're fighting over is a tiny, like a very narrow strip of grass, strip of lawn. It couldn't, the stakes could not be lower in kind of the material sense. And yet they couldn't be higher in the kind of like level volume of dispute and the level of violence that it seems to be reaching. Both of them have guns, as many or almost all of the protagonists in the show do. They're like, we're going to kill each other. We're going to kill each other. It's like, it's very, very depressing.

44:47But this is the thing, though. They are small stakes, but of course, everything that is quintessentially American, property the right to violence

44:59Naomi Fry:the right to protect the right to protect land and its many meanings are all sort of intensely operative in this space more than in any other arrangement that you can imagine if you're really in the country there's a lot of uncontested woods you know that serve as a buffer between person and person in the city we don't expect any of this stuff I just hear your whole life through the walls. Suburbs, it's like, there is this privacy and security, and there is very little sort of outside. The kids today call them third spaces or whatever. So privacy, land, territory, it's all always happening. Down to this shrub is mine.

45:43Naomi Fry:This shrub. This branch is mine. The roots are yours, but as it comes over my lawn, you know, the law is such a big thing in the suburbs. You know, stand your ground, is a very suburban concept. It's like, okay, no, no, no. If you come here and I see you on my ring camera, by the way, again, another hallmark of the suburbs, I can shoot you.

46:04Vinson Cunningham:Vincent, how about you? Have you seen some more recent depictions of the suburbs that add to this thesis? One that I have recently gotten into, a show that actually came out last year, is All Her Fault. Okay, tell us more. It's a mystery thriller starring, to me, the radiant. I mean, she's just amazing. I love her in everything she does. Sarah Snook. She plays a woman named Marissa Irvine. She's a very successful finance person, and so is her husband. And she goes to pick up her child from what she thinks was a playdate. As it happens, the person who lives there is not the person, the friend whose house that she thinks she's picking the child up from.

46:51it turns out that she's been sent a fake text message from someone who has absconded with the child. No. No. And so the first, first of all, the first couple of minutes of this thing are unbearable to watch if you've ever been around a child. The panic, the fear, the worry this child could be anywhere. It is the worst. It's almost a relief when it just turns into a whodunit. But the way that it then plays out, you know, the sociality between the moms, who, of course, are doing most of the work of making sure there is a sociality between the children and playdates and pickups and this and that, such that everything that has gone, quote-unquote, wrong, did you vet this nanny?

47:31Whose nanny is this? This is why it's called All Her Fault. And I think this goes to your point about the gender prison of the suburbs. So much responsibility, so much household responsibility falls on the shoulders of the women such that any tragedy can be sort of pointed at them. And you see this hot potato of blame be passed around between the women. It is a really fascinating subject. And again, I think, deals with a kind of legalism that I think is sometimes epitomized by this kind of, this way of life. When you think about the suburbs, another thing that comes to mind is really the notion of an estate of whatever size, you know, So ownership of a territory and somebody has to be the lord and the lady of this space.

48:20And if something goes wrong, somebody pays for it.

48:25Naomi Fry:Another thing, you know, to speak to Alex's earlier point about horror, a lot of contemporary shows see the suburbs as a place for like violent crime. You know, we have the Apple show, Your Friends and Neighbors, which has like Jon Hamm as a kind of finance guy in a very wealthy suburb who loses his job and begins to steal from his various friends and neighbors. We have Big Little Lies where these women, you know, played by like Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, etc. Laura Dern live in this like very lovely beachside community in California. And much like in DTF St. Louis, there's a murder that starts the series and then it devolves into this whodunit.

49:18Naomi Fry:There's a sense that there is kind of that darkness finds its voice in an actual crime.

49:27Vinson Cunningham:Yeah, so it's fascinating. I think that what you're describing has been a trope of art made about the suburbs for a long time. The crime and that there's a secret, you know, as opposed to this idea of urban crime, that it lurks beneath the surface. I mean, it's to the point of cliche, frankly. And one thing I do find interesting about talking about the suburbs now is that their composition has really changed. The suburbs were a white phenomenon for decades and decades and decades. And actually, the 2020 census showed us that a lot has changed about the racial composition of the suburbs. There's some interesting headlines.

50:04Vinson Cunningham:I'm reading from a Brookings report. Can you even believe that your friend Alex Schwartz is reading from a Brookings report on our podcast? But stay with me now. In 1990, roughly two out of ten suburbanites were people of color. This rose to 30 % in 2000 and 45 % in 2020. So this is a consistent upward trajectory where these places are becoming more diverse, less of the totally lily white facade of American life that a lot of these suburbs texts have put forward. This seems to me like, you know, a really positive development for the suburbs. Like a lot of the things that we're saying that the suburbs represent, unsurprisingly, could function as metonymy for the country at large, like increasing division, anger over small things, inability to talk to neighbors, obsession with personal property and like dehumanizing of the other because of a sense of incursion.

50:55Vinson Cunningham:Like, all these really, I don't think it's a surprise at all that MAGA reads as, even though I wouldn't say MAGA is a suburban phenomenon, but it depicts a kind of suburban fantasy of the 1950s as an ideal for return, as a very powerful symbol. So, like, there does seem to be room for a different depiction. And in fact, one of the things that I like about DTF St. Louis that I think is cool about it is that, yes, okay, murder is there. And that's, again, like we've seen a ton of this, big little lies, as you said, and on and on and on. But the other thing that's there, you actually find this sweetness beneath the surface.

51:31Vinson Cunningham:I think that's the thing that's appealing to me about the show, that you find where you don't expect it this kind of sweetness and generosity that really just surprised me. It felt really idiosyncratic and sincere. And that's what got me about that show. Could it only happen in the suburbs? I don't think so necessarily, but I think that what makes the show work is this sense of isolation and finding that through isolation. Like the chance that friendship doesn't come along very often because everyone's set in their patterns. Like the suburbs give this impression of adult life that is just totally static.

52:08Vinson Cunningham:You've made it. All you need to do is maintain it. You're done now. Forever. Forever.

52:14Naomi Fry:Forever.

52:15Vinson Cunningham:Forever. Speaking of friendship, didn't you watch a different show, Nomi, that maybe—

52:19Naomi Fry:Yeah, it's not a show. It's the movie Friendship that came out last year, written and directed by Andrew DeYoung. And it's Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd. And interestingly, Paul Rudd, much like Jason Bateman in DTF St. Louis, plays a weatherman who moves into this kind of suburban neighborhood and meets his neighbor, Tim Robinson. But being Tim Robinson, something is wrong with him. You know, he's like too eager. he really is lonely he really is lonely and so he's like I'm going to befriend this guy I'm going to get in there and it obviously ends up being bad it's everything that can go wrong goes wrong but to your point Alex there is something sweet about it it does talk about kind of like a desperate but kind of like graspable, understandable need for connection between people, which the kind of suburban anime, you know, we often talk about urban anime, like, oh, I don't know my neighbors.

53:36Naomi Fry:You know, he's lived across the hall from me for, you know, 17 years. We've never said hi or whatever it is. But I think in this movie you get a sense of like I'm living in the suburbs and I have no community. I'm totally alone and I want to have a friend. And especially because I'm a man and men don't have friends. That's right. You know? Famously. Famously. I mean, obviously some men have friends, but you know, it's a problem. They could all use more. They could all use more.

54:10Vinson Cunningham:This has been Critics at Large. Alex Barish is our consulting editor. Rhiannon Corby is our senior producer. Our executive producer is Stephen Valentino. Our show is mixed by Mike Kutchman. And we had engineering help today from Pran Bandy with music by Alexis Quadrato. You can find every episode of Critics at Large at newyorker.com slash critics.

54:41Vinson Cunningham:I'm Jazzy Sefcik. And I'm Shilpa Oskokovic. And we're senior test kitchen editors at Bon Appetit and the hosts of the Bon Appetit Bake Club podcast. Bake Club is Bon Appetit's community of confident, curious bakers. We love to bake. Some might even call the two of us obsessive. And we love to talk about all the hows and whys and what didn't work that come with it. Every month, we publish a recipe on bonappetit.com that introduces a baking concept we think you should know. Then you'll go bake, send us any questions you have. And we'll get together here on the podcast to talk about the recipe. And this month, we're making tiny tomato galettes.

55:16Vinson Cunningham:They are these adorable, maybe four-byte little galettes. So cute. Head to BA.com and come and bake along with us. Send us your questions, pictures, and any thoughts to bakeclub at bonappetit.com or find us on the Substack. Join us the first Tuesday of every month as we debrief about our latest bake. Find BA Bake Club wherever you get your podcasts. Happy baking!

55:42Vinson Cunningham:Hi, I'm Nicole Phelps, Global Fashion News and Features Director at Vogue and co-host of the Run-Through Podcast. Each week on the show, our listeners get an all-access pass into the world of Vogue. On Tuesdays, join me as I interview influential designers like Calvin Klein, Rachel Scott, and Simone Belotti. On Thursdays, join Chloe Mao, Head of Editorial Content at Vogue US, and Choma Nadi, British Vogue's Head of Editorial Content, as they explore fashion through the lens of culture with guests like Doja Cat and Margot Robbie. Listen and watch The Run-Through with Vogue wherever you get your podcasts and Vogue's YouTube channel.

56:24I'm Vincent Cunningham.

56:25Vinson Cunningham:I'm Nomi Fry. I'm Alex Schwartz, and we host Critics at Large from The New Yorker. Each week, we pick a starting point. The new novel you can't stop thinking about, the movie everybody's seeing this weekend, and we kind of go galaxy brain with it. Right, we take the ideas at the center of these things and trace them across history, across mediums, all to get to the bottom of why this particular text is important right now in politics and culture and also in your everyday life.

56:52Naomi Fry:We go highbrow, we go lowbrow, we go everything in between. Food culture to meme culture, Charlie XCX to Toni Morrison. K-pop to the Kennedys. From horror movies to heated rivalry.

57:04Vinson Cunningham:From the Oscars to the Met Gala. The Golden Bachelor of Wuthering Heights, great expectations to desperate housewives. That's what we're talking about over here. We're having fun. It's Critics at Large from The New Yorker, every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.