The Mixed Morality of Toy Story 4

 Episode 118 of I Hate Talking focuses on the word “debuted,” with the hosts unpacking its meaning, French origins, and why English keeps some borrowed spellings intact. From there, the conversation turns to Toy Story 4, which they revisit as a surprisingly strong addition to the franchise, even as they question its pacing, tone, and shifting character dynamics.

Much of the episode centers on how the fourth film changes the roles of familiar characters. The hosts discuss Bo Peep’s major transformation, Buzz’s reduced agency, Forky’s identity crisis, and Gabby Gabby’s redemption arc, while also debating whether Woody has become less sympathetic as the series has gone on. They compare the film’s more complex moral landscape to the clearer good-versus-evil structure of the earlier movies.

The episode closes with a ranking of the Toy Story films, with the hosts agreeing that the first film remains the most original and that the fourth sparks the most discussion, even if it is not their favorite. The discussion ends, as always, with the reminder that talking helps turn questions into understanding.

Keywords: debuted meaning, Toy Story 4, Toy Story 4 recap, Toy Story 4 explained, Forky, Bo Peep, Buzz Lightyear, Woody, Gabby Gabby, Toy Story villains, Toy Story character development, toy sentience, Toy Story fan theory, Disney Pixar, conversational podcast.

Transcript

I Hate Talking: 0:29

Welcome to episode 118 of I Hate Talking. Hi everyone. So, like we mentioned in, I think our last episode, maybe 2 episodes ago, we are going to do our word or phrase as the word debuted. OK. So, I'm gonna guess it's French and that it is for like the first appearance of is like the definition. OK. What do you think? Yeah, the beginning of something when it first started. OK. So let's check our favorite. Heritage Dictionary. OK. So, according to our favorite American Heritage Dictionary of the English language, 5th edition. Debut or debuted is defined as the first public appearance as a performer or a formal presentation. Of a young person to society or the beginning of a course of action. Such as like foreign policy, the debut of a new foreign policy. There you go, yeah. So that is an example of the first course of action. It can also be used as a verb to formally introduce or to make one's initial formal appearance. OK, so why is it spelled? Most of the words we use, even if they come from French or whatnot, we don't spell the same way any longer. We've um Americanized them. So why is this word still spelled that way? Well, it's probably because English is not really a language. It's more of a mashup of a variety of languages. And In most countries, most languages, they do not have spelling bees. It is really just an English phenomenon to have spelling bees. And mainly, I think in America, but maybe in England too or English speaking countries, and that's because It's the only language where it's actually challenging to spell, cause other languages are exclusively their own language, and therefore everything is spelled in a consistent fashion, whereas English, because it has taken words from other languages, And made it its own that, therefore, you can actually have a competition in spelling words because they have such a variety of etymologies and sources and origins. Since English is such a mashup and often breaks so many rules that they establish themselves. That's why it's challenging and why we only are the ones that do spelling bees. Correct. So debut does come from French, it comes from the word debut. Which literally means first appearance. It was derived from the verb debuter, which means to begin, and that has been part of the English language since the 18th century. And it looks like it is a word that the French use, debut, and English in the 18th century and just co-opted that word and made its own in English. But why didn't we change it? That was my question from before is we change a lot of French words to be more modern or Americanized. Why did we stick with debut? Instead of like some other or or Chow, right? Well, probably because there was not a single shortened word for first appearance. It was easier just to Use the word debut instead of chow, you can say, Goodbye, which we have also done as a word or phrase the episode. Right. What about croissant? Is that A word we did not change. I feel like it did change. I think they have a word for croissant, and then we Americanized it, right? I have no idea. We do use the word croissant in English. I don't even know how to spell it. You wouldn't be good at the spelling bees then, huh? I've not when it's like double S's and things like that. So, let's search for croissant in French. The French word for croissant is croissant. That's what I was thinking, OK, which means literally crescent. Makes sense, the shape. So we did not change that one. Croissant is croissant. You could order a croissant in France and There would not be any translation issues. So there you go. Just an accent accent, -- I think they say like -- croissant croissant. Yes, well, they would also probably say debut instead of debut. So there you go. So Toy Story 4 debuted in what year? Uh, we looked it up, we've said it before. I know you're looking it up right now. So in my head, I'm gonna say 2013. Am I right? So Toy Story 4 debuted in 2019. whoops. But we watched it and Just last week, -- just -- last week, and I certainly have not seen it before. We alluded this to the fact that we have not watched it before in a previous episode or so ago, and that is a fact. I have not seen it. All 6 of us had all really were really enjoying it, and we all said that we never saw it before. Spoiler alert. I am pleasantly surprised at how good the Toy Story universe is. All 4 of the movies hold up. I really think they're good. Yeah, Disney is pretty good at being fairly consistent within their universe, Toy Story included. In fact, there's even some Universes that overlap, like cars and airplane or the planes movie and I think Toy Story and cars overlap a little bit, right? Doesn't cars have like the Pizza Planet truck in it or something like that. So, I was slightly familiar with the character Forky from some I guess social media or just cultural influence of some point, but certainly had not seen the entire feature length film, I mistakenly thought he was the villain. But he's not Was there a villain in Toy Story 4? Yeah Perhaps Gabby Gabby, Gabby, Gabby, Gabby, Gabby, Gabby talks a lot. Mhm. That is like the supposed villain and it's sort of portrayed as a villain. But that particular villain has a redemption arc. Mhm, that's true. So I thought it was interesting that Toy Story 12, and 3 all had very specific. Villains in them. Toy Story 1 was Sid. He was like the protagonist for a lot of the movie. You had the chicken man slash collector, as sort of the human villain, and then sort of his counterpart that had a lot of very similar aspects in terms of their outlook on life and motivation. The prospector. Mm Right, -- for 2 and then 3 is -- lotso. Lotso, and he does not get redeemed, right? He gets, he almost like gets redeemed. He's gonna act like he's gonna get redeemed and come to the light and be like a functioning toy that will go have a kid or whatever, but he Backstabs the rest of the toys and then becomes the hood ornament of a trash truck. Mhm. One of our kids did say for 4, they liked it better because we talked about before about 3 being so dark. They said 4 is less scary. I guess, but 4 was actually like a little bit scary with like the Mannequins that would be used by like a ventriloquist or whatever and some of the antiquated themes of the toy shop and Antique store, things like that. So what about Bo Bo Peep, because she was significantly different and she was not in 3. And she was significantly different in 4 than she was in 1 and 2. Why do you think Bo is this independent powerhouse now? I'd also argue that Buzz is quite a bit different than the 1st 3 movies as well. How so? He just doesn't seem to have any agency, which I think was sort of the joke, so there are some spoilers ahead, I suppose, because like he uses the inner voice, AKA his recorded messages that are played when he presses a button. That He doesn't really make any decisions for himself. He is all guided by this inner voice, whereas like that was part of The major character development in Toy Story One when he saves Woody in Sid's house from like just A life of Being resigned to the fact that he's never going to return, as is actually the one that Inspires him to. Try again. Right, he definitely had a very less small part. In this movie, I thought it was kind of great that he was like growing, like learning about your inner voice, in your conscience, and uh even though he didn't really get it, I thought that was kind of a bit of a growth, but he definitely had a small, smaller part. That's true. But going back to Bo Peep, I think there is a Bo Peep movie, right? Did the Bo Peep movie come out after or before Toy Story 4? Never saw it. Never saw it. I've not seen this one either. I wonder if it came after and it was like. All the things that happened between Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 4, unlike her character development. There's a short film called Lamp Life that was made in 2020. So a year after this movie came out, right? And it probably explains some of her backstory. So, she is quite a bit different. However, you don't really have a lot of screen time of Bo Peep in Toy Story 1 or 2. In my opinion, there's Very few scenes that are associated with her. And then, and then there has been, I guess, many years between Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 4. So, a lot has happened. The person can become a different person. In that sort of time frame, I suppose, and who knows, it's a toy, so. Who knows what happens with the toy. Perhaps in the playground, the children imagined her as more of an independent woman, and therefore she assumed that identity because that is how children imagined her. Maybe, but I feel like all the other characters were drawn very similar from their initial, and she's drawn extremely different. I did notice that one of the kids was watching a clip show of Toy Story one, recently. After the fact of watching Toy Story 4, and there is quite a bit of difference. Yeah, even in 1 and 2, she's drawn differently and then significantly different in 4, not just costume-wise, but like her makeup and face. That's true. But all the other characters are drawn. Identical as far as I'm aware. I suppose so, yeah, I think there's a probably a little bit of cleanup on their like 3D models and things like that, but in terms of like actual differences, yeah, probably correct. So going back to what makes them alive, quote unquote. In 4, I noticed that there were different times like Bo Peep was put on a counter with other figurines and she was alive and aware that she was unable to move because she got glued there. And but all the characters around her, all the figurines. Didn't seem alive and were interacting with her. Is that because children did not know they were, didn't think of them as toys, they were created as figurines for adults? Do you remember what I'm thinking of? Yes. So, yeah, I think. Those weren't really toys though, right? Weren't they more decorative figurine type, but she wasn't a toy, she's a lamp. She's a her and her. Lamps are a fixture to a nightlight. That's true. So, I guess. The kids either broke them off or or they just. Not actually affixed during the original distribution of said lamp. I don't know. I mean, she definitely walked free and when she got glued in place, she was upset about it. That's true. Now Bo Peep is more of a character. Whereas like figurines don't have necessarily a name and backstory. Like Bo Peep has all our sheep, right? Well, it just makes me think like the characters we're talking about, they weren't officially because it's probably copyrighted, but essentially they were like, Uh, Dickens Christmas characters and that sort of thing. So they would have backstories, they would have a specific role in their universe. But they all stayed put. They did not interact with her or seem aware that they were alive. Right. I think that has to do with the fact that either children did not consider them as playthings and did not imagine them carrying out a particular story, or they were not allowed to play with Dickens figurines. They sound very expensive. I guess so. So Buzz was a bit different. I think Woody was pretty much the same. All the other characters really did not have very many large parts in it. No, for Forky, though, I thought it was interesting that a big part of his storyline initially was that he was trash. He was created out of trashed items, and so he kept wanting to go to the trash can. So when do you think he became real? He did have feet created. He got his name written, got Bonnie's name written on the bottom of his soul, and that was said this week. When they talked about. That he is alive or that he belonged to someone, right? Because he has got Bonnie's name written on him. So is that when you become alive? It's when you get. A name written on you? I don't think so because we've mentioned this in Toy Story 2 that all the toys within the toy shop, other buzzes, Barbies, things of that nature that are unowned, unpurchased, they are, they're still alive, they're still alive, sapient, sentient, and have agency and even awareness that they are toys, at least some of them, some of them, right. So I thought it was interesting though, why did he think he was trash versus a toy then? Well, probably in an average child's imagination. Some children would not imagine that as a being. They would have just imagined it as trash. They would view that particular thing as trash. Like, that's just something that was made out of trash, quite literally, and therefore it is trash, and therefore the toy imbues part of that particular aspect of their reality and thinks themselves as trash, whereas other children may view them as an actual plaything. And that way they have sort of this mix of trash and toy. Hm, OK. And then, as I mentioned, I think it's interesting, I don't know if it's a sign of the cultural times or just the particular storyline, but I didn't feel like there was a very defined good guy versus bad guy. Because like, Gabby sort of played the part of the bad guy, the protagonist, -- and -- for, well, for, for the first half of the movie, yes, but then. Like She just all of a sudden decided that. She would not Be selfish or maybe she was selfish the entire way through, but it almost seems like the movie portrayed her in a positive light at the end when the young human being was lost and this particular Gabby toy was the way that that girl was comforted, and then Gabby had a kid. Right, I don't think that it was selfless though for her. She wanted a kid and she seized her opportunity. At the prompting of the other choice though, right, because she was scared that she'd be rejected again because she kept getting rejected. I think selfless or wasn't on behalf of the kid, it was that she thought the kid was going to reject her and so she was doing self-preservation. By not putting herself out there. Yeah, that's true. So I just think the rest of the toys and sort of the movie in general. Just like flipped a switch at some point and was like, this used to be the bad guy and now they're a good guy cause like we decided that they are. What about the mannequins? I'm not sure if they had much agency. They seemed almost Like robotic So what are they doing now that Gabby's not there at the store with them? I don't know, whatever robots do when there's nobody to command them, I just sit there and await their next command. And it sort of makes sense, like, if they are dummy, they're only going to do what the ventriloquist tells them to do. I hope, and I kept expecting this to happen in 4. I hope it happens in 5. I thought Bo Peep because she shows how much. Ability she has at fixing things and helping people. I thought she was gonna help Woody with his soundbox. And take Gabby's broken one, fix it so that he has a working soundbox again. So when it ended and that didn't happen, I was kind of surprised. That's true. But big spoiler alert ahead, Woody does not really need his voice box anymore because now he is a lost toy. So I have no idea what the story arc of Toy Story 5 is, and don't suppose I will look, so. We've warned our listeners that there are spoilers in this episode for Toy Story 4, so please don't -- spoil Toy Story 5 for me until we -- watch it. Right, I don't know how I feel about him giving up on his friend group and Bonnie though for a girl. I guess, but didn't Bonnie give up on him first? She outgrew him. Well, there you go. So, Bonnie still played with the other toys, Jesse and Bullseye and Rex and Slinky and ham. Right. What do you got left behind. Andy gave up on all the other toys more than Woody and Buzz. The others got kind of tossed aside. And they still stuck as a team together. And didn't ditch one another. They could have. They had opportunities and they didn't. -- So it's annoying to me that -- Woody, I think the shark toy would have left if he had the ability to, but he can't really walk. And the army men left. That was part of the, where did that happen at? Was that in That was 2 or 3, I think 3. So they were like, we're out of here. Andy doesn't play with us anymore, so we're gonna leave. So they ditched the group, but they were kind of always like on the outskirts of the group too. They weren't the core group. That's true. It just bothers me that Woody. Woody was not the leader of Bonnie's toy. Empire, right, but then let's say more about Woody that when he's the leader, he's all in and helping. And then when he isn't the leader anymore, he's so quick to ditch everyone. I don't, I kind of am anti-Woody now. Anti-Woody. Interesting. See, this is where the fact that there is sort of mixed moral code and no defined protagonist and antagonists that. These questions come up and it can be confusing for children, especially in these type of movies that don't have good versus evil. Yeah, I mean, he's definitely got the main character syndrome, and I don't like that it has to be all about him. And what he's doing for the group or he's doing for the kid, or he's out. That's true. You can because Buzz after one or halfway through one, when he realized he was a toy and he's part of this group. He always lays himself down for the group. He's constantly putting himself in danger when he could happily just live in with the kid alone. But he doesn't because he doesn't have main character syndrome. There you go. So maybe Woody's The villain. What he's the villain. It's quite possible he is sort of the main reason that a lot of bad things happen in 123, and 4. Interesting take on that. So ranking Toy Story 123, and 4. So I think we both agreed previously that 132 was our preferred ranking order. Where do you rank them now when you add 4 into the mix? I think I'd say 1. 342. I'm very conflicted on that same ranking, so definitely 1, no question about it. 1 is the top still. I would say 3 is still good. I guess I'm debating on whether 2 or 4 would be. The 3rd place rank because It's interesting that, like the other movies, I did not really have any particular, like, really likes or dislikes about them. They were sort of, you know, all equivalent and it was more about the plot and the storytelling and things like that. Whereas, because Toy Story 4 has this good versus evil sort of, Just Not very clearly defined. And then I also felt that Toy Story 4 was longer than it needed to be. It sort of seemed like, oh, they're really close to the goal. And then they're like, oh, no, we got to go do this other thing. Oh, they're really close to the goal and the movie can end. Oh, they got to go do this other thing. And it happened like 5 different times. And then it finally ended. So it felt a bit excessive to me. The redeeming factor, and I did not know this until I watched it, is, do you know who voiced Duke Kaboom from Canada? No, Keanu Reeves. Oh wow, is he from Canada? I think he has some relationship to Canada. Yes, but I didn't know that he does a lot of different voice acting. Yeah, he's in, uh, what's that movie about. The guy that changes minds and things like that. Hilde, Hilde's in the movie. It's a show. Rather. Keanu Reeves does a lot of stuff. We were Hildy in the show about I'll find you. No, I'll find you. We'll have to talk about that at some point. The show about where Severance, Severance, yes, you know, you don't, you didn't know the name Severance. I had trouble recalling it, I guess. I, I guess that was in my other mind. Do you know that Keanu Reeves voices a particular thing in that show as well? What's he? He voices the building in like one of their promo videos. Oh, I think I did hear that. I listened to the podcast a while, a long time ago though. Oh, -- there -- you go. But yes, if I recall right, they wanted Barack Obama to voice at first, and he said he was too busy. -- And so they got Keanu -- Reeves. Well, there you go. Barack would have done a good job at you, I think. Yeah, it would have been a good voice, but I understand it. So I think I'm gonna go with your same ranking 1342, because even though I don't really like 4, it is sort of a like I know, I. The only reason that I like it is that it actually has engendered a lot of discussion. It is more of a heady movie. In terms of like science fiction and things like that, where it has some of these deep moral questions that arise and things like that. So, OK, but what you're saying, so you don't like it, but -- from -- like a pure storytelling perspective, I would go 1324. 1324. OK, it's a little off mine, but do you notice that again on my kick of anti-Woody, 2 and 4 have a main theme of Woody when he's no longer the child's favorite. In the main character, he's quick to ditch everybody for the best of himself. He saw in 2, he was going to ditch everyone so that way he'd become some famous star. In a museum. And 4, he quickly ditches everyone so that he can. Live a rogue life instead of being stuck in a closet. But for everybody else, he's always very. Antie them leaving when they try to go to the yard sales or they try to do anything like that. He's like, no, you're part of the group. Stay with us. I guess, I mean, it took some convincing at the end of 4 for him to go be a lost toy. And there was even the particular arc where like he was very quote unquote, consistent because he went back for Forky, even though like, they had just escaped very narrowly and things like that. So, again, 4 is like a mix. It, it has like some positive characteristics and some very negative characteristics, and they're not really portrayed in. Very different light in terms of like how the movie portrays them. So I just don't like that mixed morality, I suppose. There you go. Well, I'm excited to see 5 when it ever comes out. 5, and then I guess we'll watch the Buzz movie, even though that is officially not considered canon by many fans. In the Bo Peep and Bo Peep, which I guess is like a short film, not a full length movie. There you go. And then will there be a Toy Story 6? Probably we'll probably have grandkids by then. Will the toys have grandkids? Maybe I, for the commercials I see about 5, they make jokes about Woody being bald and stuff, like his balding hairline. I mean, I guess, yeah, it sort of fades or whatever the case may be. Boys age in a different way than people, but. But I don't think they like have progeny. But if they have a new movie every 5 to 7 years. Yeah, maybe we won't have. Well, isn't that part of the plot? I guess I do know a little bit of the plot. Is, is there like 5G buzz or something like that? It can connect to the internet or has like mobile capability or something. I don't know about him, -- but they do have electronics -- now. Yes, electronics, and they're considered toys. Interesting. So, if you did enjoy this episode, you can always like, share, subscribe, maybe you have a different take on Woody or Bo Peep or Buzz or Gabby. Lots of different things discussed in terms of Toy Story 4, so you can always let us know in a comment, email, or text message. And then perhaps our word or phrase of the next episode will be antiquated. Lots of antiquated toys in Toy Story 4. Maybe not so many antiquated toys in Toy Story 5. Yeah, I guess we'll have to see. So, from your friends at I Hate Talking, until next time, remember, it is only through talking that we begin the journey to understanding.