S1E8: Parashat Bad in Bed

"Who is Susan Sarandon?" he said in his best Jimmy Stewart voice. Justin long, still here and going strong. A haircut that's a real ear-cutter. The Kuleshov Effect. Baby showers vs The Evil Eye. And performing feminininityity.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Put on your starfish lingerie and start competing for your place in an ancient Persian harem. It's Parashot Bat in Bed this week on Jew Girl. Welcome to Jew Girl, a New Girl podcast for the Jew Curious, in which I make my brother watch my favorite TV show, New Girl, for the first time and learn some stuff about Judaism. My name is Robin.

SPEAKER_03 0:37

My name is Jay.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

And let's see, anything to talk about before we jump right into a recap?

SPEAKER_03 0:42

No. Well, you know, we just we just spoke for like 20 minutes before we started before we started recording. So a lot of the things I think that we normally would have said, we already talked about.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

It's true. You know what? I'm gonna hearken back to something you said, if you don't mind. Because I thought it was really cool. You sort of wondered. So we were talking about last week's episode and um, you know, how funny it is that the story is like Eluva Elu, these and these are both true, but also this guy was right. Um, and you know, Jay, Jay was wondering if maybe do you wanna you wanna sort of articulate how you were thinking about it?

SPEAKER_03 1:15

Yeah, sure. So, well, I mean, I just I thought that that was very funny that it was Aluva Alo, but also the Halaha follows Bethil. Sorry, my cat is trying to crawl all over me right now.

unknown 1:26

Oh, hi, kitty.

SPEAKER_03 1:27

And you know, one of the reasonings uh that you had given for why that might be the case was that Hillel taught both sides, right? Maybe that's why the hala follows Bethil. But one of the thoughts that I had was, you know, it might also maybe could be interpreted as just like sort of an objective fact, like observation about humanity over time. Because like change is inevitable. It's like built into nature, right? If we think of things like evolution, you know, like you can't stop time and you can't stop things from changing, whether it's language evolving over time. Speaking generally, like change is inevitable, and so maybe saying that the halaha follows Bethill is also sort of just an observation of that, like, you know, people change, cultures change. Like, no matter how hard you try to put your feet in the sand and say, you know, these are the rules, these are those high standards, like you know, people change, cultures change, and and it's uh inevitable.

SPEAKER_00 2:28

No, yeah, I love that observation. And you know, one thing I said in response to that was I think there's I don't, I don't know. I'm not enough of a Talmud scholar to be able to lay out a timeline here, but I think my guess, I think, is that you know, the the Talmud, the oral tradition was oral, and then eventually it was written down in the Talmud. And, you know, it could be that these people were arguing over. I mean, if we're putting aside the story of the voice from heaven, assuming that didn't really happen, everybody. Um, you know, if we're just saying, you know, these were the two positions, these were their competing arguments, but the Halacha follows this one guy. It could be that, you know, it's not like at the time of their debate, they sat down, everybody decided, everybody took a vote and said, you know what, we we like Hillel better, let's follow him. It could very well just have been that, you know, they were they were these were the competing arguments, and then people led their lives on all these various issues and just tended towards one over the other, you know. That's like it just played out, as you say, you know, right? Life was changing, life was moving towards more openness, more progression. And that that was just the way that the chips fell, you know? And so then when they're codifying this, when they're writing it down, they're like, well, the halal ha that as it played out in real life, ended up following Hillel, you know? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:50

So and it also, we were saying, sort of parallels that common phrase about how the arc of history bends towards justice and and progress, you know?

SPEAKER_00 4:02

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 4:03

So yeah, I uh thank you for thank you for bringing that up so that it's actually on the podcast and not just in what we were talking about.

SPEAKER_00 4:09

Yeah, no, I'm really glad that we had that rich conversation before and can now share it a little more widely.

SPEAKER_03 4:15

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

Because that's the kind of people we are. We're having these conversations off mic, everybody. Can you believe that?

SPEAKER_03 4:20

We are, we are.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

Uh boy.

SPEAKER_03 4:23

You have a recap for us?

SPEAKER_00 4:25

Yes. Here is the recap. So this is harsh out bad and bed, right? I'm gonna do this by talking about sex as little as I possibly can.

SPEAKER_03 4:34

I saw the title of this episode and was like, well, this will be something to talk about, I guess. Or not talk about.

SPEAKER_02 4:41

Exactly. I'm doing I'm gonna do a great job. Ready for this?

SPEAKER_03 4:44

All right, yeah, yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

Jess is ready to take her relationship with Paul to the next level, is how we'll say it. But she starts, she starts spiraling about whether she's bad in bed after only being with Spencer for so long. So after she fumbles the first attempt, she overcorrects, she goes and buys lingerie, she assumes she has to start emulating the adult films she stumbles across on Schmidt's laptop. Uh, and then on her next date with Paul, she tries way too hard to be more adventurous than she actually is, which completely throws Paul off, makes things uncomfortable enough that he leaves. But they talk it out the next day, they establish that they're both actually pretty vanilla, so they can just chill out and be themselves, and then they hook up in the elevator. That's just that's just a storyline. Meanwhile, Schmidt is uh he's struggling to advance at work because he's the only guy in the office, and his female colleagues get more opportunities to socialize with the boss, like going to her baby shower. So Schmidt invites himself to the baby shower, which is like a hip nighttime cocktail party by a pool, and he becomes the life of the party. So that works out well for him.

SPEAKER_02 5:58

And there is also, lastly, an extremely small plot line about Nick being reluctant to get his hair cut and Winston convincing him ultimately to come to his black barbershop where Nick gets a like a vanilla ice hairdo with a razor line above his ear. So that also happens.

SPEAKER_03 6:15

Yeah, that storyline felt very just like thrown in because they felt like they needed him to be doing something.

SPEAKER_02 6:21

It's so random. They're like, where are Nick and Winston this episode? Let's give let's give them like a minute, a total of plot, probably.

SPEAKER_03 6:29

Hey, but it led for some very funny credits at least.

SPEAKER_00 6:32

So it did. Those are funny. I do like that.

SPEAKER_03 6:36

Do you want to start with your favorite moments?

SPEAKER_00 6:38

Yes. Actually, you know what? Let's let's just do this all under feeling schtick, umbrella of feeling stick. Let's pass that feeling shtick around. And yeah, first tell me, you know, how do you feel? And then let's get into the specifics of you know what you loved, what your favorite moments were.

SPEAKER_03 6:54

Yeah. You know, I in my notes I wrote down like one thing in bold here, which is that it is wild that Schmidt pushed his pregnant boss into the pool. But I have a a feeling of relief uh that came when when she was not unconscious in the pool, which is what it looks like at hers. And that she was like, Yeah, I'm having a baby, and it all, you know, it all the tension diffused and everyone started jumping in.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

So she really does give it a forgive the pun here, but a a pregnant pause before she decides to move her body. She is just lying there face down in a pool for a good minute.

SPEAKER_02 7:39

I mean, not a minute, a good beat. Right. Or like, uh oh, pregnant pause.

SPEAKER_03 7:43

Yeah, yeah. So that was that was like the biggest like whoa moment in the episode. Other thoughts, you know. I mean, I I feel bad for Jess that she was so in her head about everything in this episode, and very funny that they found some weird starfish lingerie thing for her to wear over her other lingerie, or like I don't know, her underwear.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

That's the best part. She just puts it right on over.

SPEAKER_03 8:11

And you know, broader thoughts, Justin Long. He's still in the show. Who'd a thunk? He's hanging in there, he's hanging in there, you know.

SPEAKER_05 8:18

That's right.

SPEAKER_03 8:19

He wasn't in there for an episode, but they they brought him back just to just to remind us that he's still in the picture.

SPEAKER_00 8:25

He's still there, that's right. Yeah, where was he at that Pan Bell concert? Yeah, come on. Come on, Paul, be supportive.

SPEAKER_03 8:33

You know, also we see some very interestingly timed shots of Nick, specifically reaction shots. I don't know if I'm dipping into Oive Edife here, but but there's a lot of well-placed reactions of Nick that I think are being used to hint to the viewer or make the viewer think about his relationship to Jess being with Paul, with Paul.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 8:59

Right? Because if like I think Nick is endgame, they want to plant those seeds in our mind, like, oh, how does Nick feel about this in the moment? Almost every time that like something big would happen about Justin and Jess together, you'd see a shot of Nick by himself reacting.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

Very interesting.

SPEAKER_03 9:18

Yeah, he's the only one who stands up and walks away when Jess is like sitting them down in the living room talking to them, and he's like, Alright, I'm done. And he's like, he gets up and walks away.

SPEAKER_00 9:27

Oh right.

SPEAKER_03 9:29

I mean, he comes back and sits down, but he was clearly more not willing to have this conversation about Jess's intimacy with Paul. Right. Sorry. Little little things like that.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

Yeah, all right, good. And did you have any favorite moments?

SPEAKER_03 9:44

Gosh, you know, I actually forgot to whittle them down on this list right now.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:51

I love that Jess learned everything she knows about sex either from Spencer or the Clinton affair trials being broadcast on NPR. That was that was such a good joke. That was so good.

SPEAKER_00 10:03

And we get young Jess back. I know you liked that, right? You looked over young Jess, same actress, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:09

Same actress, yeah. Good on them. Mm-hmm. Also, the video that Nick watches of a guy trying to teach the viewer how to cut their own hair, and he ends up cutting the back of his head and spurs everywhere. It's just such a good gag. No wonder this has so many views. That's right. Which brings us to a little J aside. Do you know what I'm gonna say?

SPEAKER_02 10:34

No, no idea.

SPEAKER_03 10:35

Well, my wife knows what I'm about to say, which is that she who very graciously, I should say, has cut my hair for a very long time now.

SPEAKER_00 10:44

Oh, I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_03 10:46

Yeah, she's really good at it.

SPEAKER_00 10:47

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 10:48

But there was this one time where she accidentally started to clip my ear just a little bit, just enough that it drew blood.

unknown 10:57

Oh no!

SPEAKER_03 10:58

But nothing, nothing like this, this guy. And she is she's eternally remorseful for it. And I feel bad even airing this on the podcast. I'll ask her if it's okay to include this. If you're listening to this and you hear the story, it's because she gave the approval.

SPEAKER_02 11:15

Okay, good. Oh man, were you guys watching the episode and it happened? And you just you just you just oh, was there tension in the air?

SPEAKER_03 11:23

Could you cut it with a knife? I mean, my brain immediately went to, oh, well, I can tell this story on the podcast. Oh no, we didn't, we didn't talk about it. But I'm sure we will after this.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

I'm I'm glad you're okay. Survived the ordeal.

SPEAKER_03 11:38

Other favorite moments, when Schmidt says that he used to hear Nick being intimate with I forget the name of his ex already. Caroline. Caroline. He said it sounded like you were a rescue crew helping a miner like trapped in a mine.

unknown 11:55

That's right.

SPEAKER_03 11:56

Other things, Schmidt closing the laptop after Paul walks in the room. It just a very funny shot because there's adult content on the laptop, and he's like, oh, it's gotta close that. That's right. And uh, I'm shocked that Schmidt doesn't know what afterbirth is. I think that's yeah. Oh, and then the crowning jewel of this whole episode was Paul doing the Jimmy Stewart voice.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

Jimmy Stewart voice! That's on my list too, too. That's on my list after she's like a young, young man, a young man, and he comes back with the Jimmy Stewart.

SPEAKER_04 12:31

Well, Mary are that's incredible. You do a good Jimmy Stewart. I'm gonna go lasso the moon, Mary. That's it.

SPEAKER_03 12:40

Thank you. So, anyways, that those were those are my favorite moments and and feelings for the episode.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

Love that. The two moments I will add that I loved are when Nick tells Winston that he's not gonna go to the black barbershop, he says, I've seen the movies, I know how fast they talk.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

Like that's the that's the prohibitive factor. I know how fast they talk. And then when Schmidt tells his coworker, what are you like a bond villain? You just told me your whole plan. I love that.

SPEAKER_02 13:10

And she sort of lays out, you know, how she's gonna get promoted or whatever. Right. Like a bond villain? So I just like those two lines, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:19

Very good.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

And nothing problematic jumped out at me. Maybe I just wasn't watching closely enough. But do you have anything for the douchebag todako box?

SPEAKER_03 13:26

No, I I don't. I mean, I guess you could like vaguely gesture at all of the like probable HR violations happening at Schmidt's work.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 13:38

But true. But you know, I mean, overall, for for an episode being about a very explicit topic, they didn't have that much that was like, I thought, aged too poorly, at least in terms of jokes.

SPEAKER_00 13:52

Right. Great point about HR though. Great point a lot of problematic stuff there. Well, I've just got a few um morsels of trivia for you.

SPEAKER_05 14:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:03

They're not very good. They're all about the actors. It is that Justin Long is Jewish. I don't know why I didn't look this up the first time. Oh wow that he was in it, but he's Jewish. Um boss Gina, Michaela Watkins, pregnant one. She's Jewish. Oh wow. And Beth, the coworker, I don't think she's Jewish, but she's Susan Sarandon's daughter. Susan Sarandon, famous person, Susan Sarandon.

SPEAKER_03 14:32

No idea who that is.

SPEAKER_02 14:35

You can look up Susan Sarandon later.

SPEAKER_03 14:37

I will take your word for it.

SPEAKER_02 14:38

Yeah, it's crazy. It was on a Wikipedia page. Susan Sarandon.

SPEAKER_03 14:42

Sorry, say that again. Wait, wait, who is she?

SPEAKER_00 14:44

I don't know, Shay. Famous.

SPEAKER_03 14:46

Oh, okay. Older.

SPEAKER_00 14:47

Famous and older actress, I think. Actress from the, I don't know, 70s. I don't know.

SPEAKER_05 14:53

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

Should I have brought it up if I wasn't prepared to tell you exactly who Susan Sarandan was? No, probably not.

SPEAKER_03 14:59

Hey, here we are. You know, but I bet there's that one listener out there who does know, and they're like, I know who Susan Sarandon is.

SPEAKER_02 15:06

Yeah. Write in. Tell me who Susan Sarandon is so I won't Google it. Oh boy. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 15:14

Well, do you have anything in the uh the Oyvey at Bay today?

SPEAKER_00 15:18

No.

SPEAKER_03 15:19

No, I do not.

SPEAKER_00 15:20

Nothing. Well, that was a good note about the reaction shots. I liked that.

SPEAKER_03 15:24

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, you know, I should also say, because I kind of talked about montage last time, but I didn't I didn't touch upon this one idea, right? Like nowadays we use montage to usually mean like a sequence with a bunch of shots, right? Like, oh, they're going on a road trip, see a montage, right? But montage itself also, just like at its core, can be juxtaposing two images, right? I don't know if you're familiar with that classic example of they had this footage of like, I think it was this man staring, right? And then they would cut to a bowl of soup and they would ask people what was the man feeling, and they'd say, Oh, he was hungry. And then they'd use that same shot of the man, right? Same footage, not a different take or anything, but they'd intercut it with like a baby crying, and they'd say, Oh, that man was sad. Right? It had less to do with their actual face, and it had more to do with the juxtaposition of images that you were using to edit together. So, so I think montage can also apply to that sort of juxtaposing of of images to create meaning that wasn't there to begin with. Hey, Jay from the future here. If you want to look up more about what I'm talking about in this part, it's called the Kulashov effect. Reading off of Wikipedia on the Kulashov effect. Quote, Kulashoff demonstrated the necessity of considering montage as the basic tool of cinema. In Kulashov's view, the cinema consists of fragments and the assembly of those fragments, the assembly of elements which in reality are distinct. It is therefore not the content of the images in a film which is important, but their combination. The raw materials of such an artwork need not be original, but are prefabricated elements which can be disassembled and reassembled by the artist into new juxtapositions. End quote.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

Interesting. And that's like exactly what they're doing with Nick. Like, you know, the things he's doing in those moments isn't, you know, anything super special, but the fact that they're cutting it in at those moments. Oh yeah, they're interesting.

SPEAKER_03 17:24

Right. They want you to associate him and and something about him whenever they talk about Jess being with Paul.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

Right. Love it. Yeah. Well, thank you. Yeah. Well, yay-di-die-die. Because I like to I like to sing.

SPEAKER_03 17:43

I do put music in there. You just don't know what music I put in there, and it's not yide-eye-di.

SPEAKER_02 17:52

For fiddler.

SPEAKER_03 17:53

Have you still never seen Fiddler on the roof, Jay? It's been a very long time. Well And maybe never.

SPEAKER_02 18:02

I need I need my own my own mental musical lead in here, so I'm just gonna yi-daye die.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

I think it is time for us to be observant Jews. And talk about whether we two Jews observed those things in the episode that we try to keep an eye out for. Those two things, of course, being any Jewish jokes or content and the ever-present episode bear. So, did you find any Jewish stuff?

SPEAKER_03 18:40

I did not.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

Yeah, me neither.

SPEAKER_03 18:44

But I did see Fridge Bear. Good old Fridge Bear.

SPEAKER_02 18:47

Fridge Bear! That's right.

SPEAKER_03 18:48

We love Fridge Bear.

SPEAKER_02 18:49

Fridge Bear's holding it down. I feel like Fridge Bear might be holding it down a lot in a lot of these episodes where there's no actual bear. Probably. The great lie of there being a bear intentionally in every episode just gets to coast a little bit because there's still that bear on the fridge.

SPEAKER_03 19:05

There were no uh no big poster bears on the wall this episode that I missed?

SPEAKER_00 19:10

None that I none that I noticed. And I I did not, I don't think I Googled it to see what the Reddit threads say about this.

SPEAKER_03 19:17

I stopped looking up whatever McWaffles had to say, or I forget the name.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

McWaffles. Shrimpy McShrip. There were a couple, there were a couple that really helped me out.

SPEAKER_03 19:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:28

Uh shout out to those Redditors whose names we can't remember anymore. Oh man. Well, good. Thanks for being an observant Jew with me. Of course. Yay-day-day. No, just kidding.

SPEAKER_03 19:40

Hey, should we have a name for Fridge Bear?

SPEAKER_01 19:43

Let's have a name for Fridge Bear. That's a great idea. You got any ideas?

SPEAKER_03 19:47

Elijah.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

Elijah. Going straight biblical.

SPEAKER_03 19:54

We were talking about Passover before this call, too. So I was thinking, oh, open the door. Open the fridge door for Elijah. Let Elijah in.

SPEAKER_01 20:02

Oh, that's funny, Jay.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Hey. Opening the door. Okay, for our listeners who may not be familiar with why this is so funny and clever, Jay. Uh, in the Passover Seder, there comes a point in the Seder where we welcome in the prophet Elijah. Sort of just symbolically, it's this weird thing you do where, you know, usually the kids run up to the door and they open the door. And like you imagine, ooh, Elijah is coming in. And there's a little song about it. Uh, and sometimes if you've got like a cool aunt or something, they'll we we put out a little goblet of wine for Elijah. Like you set a place for him at the table symbolically.

SPEAKER_02 20:46

Um, so sometimes if you got like a cool relative, they'll like chug that, chug that little goblet of wine so that when the kids are turning the table, oh my gosh, look, Elijah came. Wow, he drank all his wine. And then, you know, then you you got a family member who's like a little happier for the rest of the Seder, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 21:04

But anyway, that's great. We're opening the fridge door for Elijah the Bear. Yeah, you like that? That's great. I love it. That's wonderful. I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot of Elijah the Bear. And speaking of Jewish things, now that we've dipped our toe in a little bit there with that, I am prepared to bring you a little schmid bit, a little Jewish tidbit of knowledge inspired by something that our main man, Schmidt, canonical Jew of the law, Schmidt, did or said this episode. And this week we are gonna talk a little bit about uh baby showers. The Schmid bit today is about baby showers. Nice um, because of course he invited himself to one. The tidbit is that a lot of Jews don't have them. A lot of Jews don't do baby showers in many communities. Um yeah, I actually didn't know this for a long time growing up. I I didn't realize this. In a lot of communities, particularly Ashkenazi. Communities, so Eastern European, Jewish. Uh, there's a big superstition around it. There's a superstition that throwing baby showers or even buying baby stuff before the baby is born invites the evil eye. Ooh, so evil eye, there's even a a Hebrew word, a Hebrew phrase for it if you want to reference the evil eye. Sure. Ion hurrah. Ion hurrah. I put that in the chat for you. That's evil eye. Um, it's a cross-cultural superstition. So actually, a lot of, you know, like Mediterranean and Middle Eastern countries have this. You see those blue eyes. You ever see that? Uh it's there's an emoji for it. That's the evil eye. So that's sort of like an amulet you put up to try to ward off the evil eye. But anyway, evil eye, cross-cultural superstition about being cursed by a malevolent glare, and often a jet a jealous glare, a lot of the times. So in the Jewish tradition, at least, you're you're trying to avoid the evil eye by not calling attention to good things in general, sort of. And then in this context, specifically about having a baby. There's also um a less spiritual, less superstitious and more practical reason that you might not want to throw a baby shower or, you know, talk too presumptuously about childbirth. And that's to acknowledge that pregnancies do not always end well. Um and you know, the superstition, of course, also arose in a time of high infant mortality. But even today, you know, there's uh there's always there's a reason not to count your chickens before they hatch if we're using a different uh animal's birth metaphor. Like you just you just don't know. And it's I like that this tradition is sensitive to that.

SPEAKER_03 23:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:47

It also uh this relates to the fact that uh in in Jewish communities, you will hear people say a different phrase instead of Mazlov. I mean, you'll probably also hear them say Mazatov if they're not like really tuned into this, but there's sort of this superstition around saying Mazletov if you hear of somebody of course Mazatov, sorry, for any listeners who don't know, Mazultov is the thing you say, um, literally actually means good luck. Like good luck, literally, but it's used to say congratulations. And so instead of, you know, you hear somebody's pregnant, instead of saying Mazlov, congratulations. What you'll often hear instead is Bisha Tova. I'll put that in the chat for you in case you have any Jewish friends falling pregnant. Bisha Basova. And that means in good time. Like at the right time. Nice. So instead of saying, oh, congratulations, you're having a baby, definitely, it's like, you know, right. May everything happen at the right time, may it turn out for good. But it's just a little bit of a nice, superstitious way to hedge your bets, be sensitive to the fact that things, you know, you never know. And if you're superstitious, you know, you know, keep that evil eye looking elsewhere.

SPEAKER_03 25:03

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

There's really no halachic prohibition. So back to halachal, we were talking about last week, you know, meaning Jewish law. There's no like law about it, it's not written in the Torah anywhere. It's just a cultural taboo, um, just a custom that grew up with the superstitious times. And it is definitely changing with the times in more liberal communities, especially. You know, we're just all we're just all living our life in the modern day. And so you know, I'm sure you'll know plenty of Jewish people who are having baby showers. But for the people who don't, you might say, Well, how do you prepare for babies, Robin, if you're not buying stuff?

SPEAKER_03 25:38

How do you prepare for babies, Robin, if you're not buying stuff?

SPEAKER_00 25:42

Wow, perfectly crafted, spontaneous thing you just said, Jay. I'm so glad you asked. So I think there's various ways that people accommodate it. And this is this is me speaking sort of not knowledgeably about how they're really, really superstitious or you know, people would handle it. But I know that some people do buy stuff, but apparently don't have the stores. I did see this one online in some observing communities. You buy the stuff, but you don't have the stores ship the stuff until later. So I guess that's one option. I know of someone who stored things at a friend's house. So kind of like, you know, nothing, nothing in here, nothing to see here, no baby stuff here. And then I I can speak for myself personally. I didn't have a baby shower. People did get us things though and just started mailing us things before the baby was born. So to accommodate that, uh, we did have a very kind friend who kept offering, like, you can put stuff in our house. I don't think we ever got around to actually going to her house to put anything there. But what we did was like we kept sort of a really small pile of mostly entirely unopened things, like in a corner until the time came. So it wasn't like fully unpacked, you know, not a lot of like uh decorating a nursery, laying things out, because I mean that's a huge bummer if things don't work out. Anyway, I'm being a huge bummer. I'm not trying to be a huge bummer. Anyway, you're baby showers.

SPEAKER_03 27:02

This is this is really easy to know about uh learn about learn about sort of like the superstition and knocking on wood equivalent.

SPEAKER_00 27:11

Yeah, exactly. Well, let's uh pivot into sort of a larger theme if you'd like. Yeah. I'm a little drosh prepared. That word I taught you last week. A little drosh prepared on this larger theme. This week's larger theme, Jay. Are you ready?

SPEAKER_05 27:26

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 27:26

It is performing femininity. Doesn't that sound like I'm adding an extra syllable? Femininity. There's only two ends. I'm saying it right. All right.

SPEAKER_03 27:42

Feminininity. What if it was femininity? Feminininity.

SPEAKER_00 27:46

In the in the feminininity, listen. Theme this week is performing femininity. Okay? I'm gonna talk about Judaism first, actually, this time. And I'm gonna tell you very, very briefly about Esther. This is related to the Purim story. Last week there was that actress named Esther something something, and I was like, well, with a name like Esther something something, because the the last name sounded very Ashkenazi, but then also Esther, it occurred to me afterwards, maybe Jay did not clock why to me Esther reads as an extremely Jewish name. I don't know about you, but I was sort of like totally blind to ethnic names, the ethnic connotations of names, just generally, like Italian names. It's only in retrospect I'm like, oh yeah, they're they must be Italian. That's like a very Italian-sounding last name. Same thing with Jewish names. It's not like dad was ever like, oh, this is a very Jewish last name. Kids, now you know they're probably Jewish. So I don't know if you felt the same way.

SPEAKER_03 28:50

Really? I see last names for sure. It was on my radar. And so that's like, I forget what the last name was, but it was very Ashkenazi sounding of this actress we talked about last week. So that's what clocked for me when you said, so of course she's Jewish, right? With a name like that. But I didn't catch that her first name was Esther, and the fact that Esther is a very Jewish name.

SPEAKER_00 29:14

Yes, plot twist. It is a double whammy with her name. So we've got the Purim story. Purim is a springtime holiday. Maybe on another episode I will talk more about it in depth, but I'm talking about it from a very specific angle this week, which is performing femininity. That's the theme again, in case you forgot what I said a minute and a half ago. So the main character in this story that we celebrate in the holiday of Purim is Esther. Her name is Esther. Actually, her name is also Hadassah. She's got two names in the story. Esther is like her um assimilated name, not her Hebrew name. That's a little fun fact that has nothing to do with what I'm about to say. So, in brief, in brief, the story of Purim, Esther's story, is that the king of Persia. Oh, oh, we gotta go back in time. I forgot. Is this a bit I do now? I guess so.

SPEAKER_03 30:02

I have a sound effect for it. Don't worry, I include your boolulos in addition to the sound effect.

SPEAKER_02 30:10

Great. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 30:12

What if this week you have to add an extra sound effect if I say that we're hopping in our. Wasn't there a movie that was like hot tub time machine?

SPEAKER_03 30:20

Yes, but I've never seen it.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

Me neither. But this time we're gonna hop in the baby shower nighttime pool time machine.

SPEAKER_01 30:29

We're gonna push a pregnant lady into the baby shower pool time machine. Ah, you can cut all that out. Whatever.

SPEAKER_02 30:37

And we're going back in time to ancient Persia.

SPEAKER_00 30:43

Ancient Persia. Alright, so our story is set in ancient Persia. We've got the king of Persia, and he is holding a beauty contest to choose a new queen.

SPEAKER_03 30:56

Sorry, this is this is in the Bible?

SPEAKER_00 30:58

This is in the Bible, my friend. This is in the book of Esther. So, I mean, I can side sidebar real quickly and tell you a little bit about the Bible if you want. This is not in the Torah.

SPEAKER_03 31:11

I'm just shocked that there was a beauty pageant in the Bible.

SPEAKER_00 31:16

Actually, you know what you will love along those lines if I tell you this?

SPEAKER_05 31:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:20

This is the only book of the Bible that does not mention God.

SPEAKER_05 31:27

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 31:28

How about that? Isn't that a cool fun fact?

SPEAKER_05 31:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:31

This story does not mention God, and it includes a beauty contest. So, but this is a book that is in, it's not in the Torah, so it's not in the first five books of Moses, as we call it, um, that gives us all our laws and things. This is in one of those other books that come a little later, and it's a I won't go into how the rest of the Bible is broken down, but this is it's referred to as the scroll of Esther. So the book of the Bible, if you open up a Bible, it's Esther, but we call it the scroll of Esther. The scroll, the word for scroll is Megillah. Have you ever heard the phrase the whole Megillah?

SPEAKER_03 32:06

No.

SPEAKER_00 32:07

Okay, well, that's a phrase. Okay. Hey, all you listeners who nodded your head yes, as I said, oh yes, of course I've heard the phrase the whole Megillah. Well, it's a whole it's a phrase that it's an idiom that sort of means, you know, like the whole thing, the whole darn thing. Um, and that's because we read the whole Megillah on Purim. We read this whole scroll of Esther.

SPEAKER_03 32:28

You read the whole spiel, the whole spiel of Esther.

SPEAKER_00 32:32

Actually, funny you bring that up. I wasn't gonna talk about this either, but the word spiel is most famous in religious circles for purim because part of the way you celebrate purim is as you're going through reading the Megillah, you pause and you literally put on skits that are called the spiels. You put on a spiel, a perm spiel. Purim spiel is like a thing, yeah. So you're absolutely right. Uh the whole Megillah and some spiel thrown in there. Yes. Oh gosh, I've gotten so off track. So we're reading the Megilla of Esther. All right, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Beauty pageant. Okay. There is a beauty pageant, basically. It's a beauty contest to choose his new queen. And we'll talk about why he's doing that in a second. But he selects Esther, our main heroine, Esther. And she is a Jewish woman who is hiding her Jewish identity. Okay. She's just like not advertising the part that she's Jewish, all right?

SPEAKER_05 33:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 33:33

She just, so she's Jewish, she wins the contest, she enters his harem, I guess is sort of the first step, and then becomes his queen because he really likes her. So then the rest of the story is, you know, the king's advisor starts to plot to annihilate the Jews of the city, as you do in ancient Persia, I guess, in this story. This is not historical, by the way. Uh, you know, there's the probably didn't happen. But anyway, in the story, uh, King's Advisor says, time to annihilate the Jews. Esther then risks her life to reveal her Jewish identity to the king to plead for her people, and the king reverses the annihilation decree. He hangs the bad guy, the Jews are saved. It's actually a really crazy, bloody ending to the story. I won't spoil it for you. Go read it on your own sometime. We'll talk about it in another episode, probably. It's crazy. It's a real topsy-turvy holiday and story. It's crazy. But anyway, that's that's the gist of it, all right?

unknown 34:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 34:31

And she becomes the queen, and there's a whole side plot about the annihilation of the Jews that doesn't come to fruition because she reveals that she's also Jewish. And he likes her. So the reason that this king, by the way, I am not referring to this king by name because he has a crazy name that I never know how to pronounce. Okay. King King Ahasurus.

SPEAKER_03 34:53

Close enough.

SPEAKER_00 34:54

I'm gonna put that in the chat so you can see why I'm avoiding saying it. Okay. So King A. Oh wow, yeah. Why is he why is he choosing a new wife in the first place, you ask? It is because he is throwing a feast at the beginning of the story with his bros, and he demands of his current wife, his current queen, Vashti, he demands that she quote uh display her beauty while wearing her crown, uh, which is usually interpreted to mean he's telling her to parade around naked in nothing but her crown in front of this crowd of people.

SPEAKER_03 35:32

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 35:33

And she refuses. She refuses to do that. Good for her. And then everyone's like, well, you can't have your wife. Exactly, right? Everyone's like, oh, you can't have your wife refusing you in front of everybody. She's embarrassing you, blah, blah, blah. So whatever. Bye, Vashti. No longer the queen. Sorry for, you know, you stood up for yourself, God forbid. Now you're not the queen anymore. So the king needs to choose a new wife. So this is why he throws the beauty contest. But in any case, you know, if we're hearkening back to our theme here, which I remind you once again is performing femininity. Vashti refuses to perform her femininity in that sexualized, objectified way. Okay. So that's the first thing in the story of performing femininity. We got Vashti refusing to be sexualized like that and perform at his beck and call.

SPEAKER_03 36:23

Nice, nice. Hey, can we put the can we put the king in the douchebag Tazaka box?

SPEAKER_00 36:28

Let's put the king in the douchebag Tadaka box. That is a good idea, Jay. Yeah, why are we limiting this to the episode? Absolutely. Let's get those problematic Bible characters in there too. Bible moments. Oh man, there's a lot we could put from the Purim story. I hope we come back to Purim someday. We will, we will, man. Crazy story, Jay. Crazy story. Yeah, he goes right in there. Clink, clink, clink.

SPEAKER_03 36:52

The Sadaka box would explode if we put all the people that were problematic in the Bible in there, probably. That's my guess.

SPEAKER_00 36:59

So true. It's an old book, you know. That's what happens. So, secondly, on the flip side, we've got our heroine performing femininity. She is performing femininity by participating in that beauty contest.

SPEAKER_03 37:16

This is an interesting dichotomy.

SPEAKER_00 37:18

Yes. They gather up all the beautiful young virgins. I put that in quotes. I don't know what I'm quoting. I guess that might be in the text. They gather up all the beautiful young virgins.

SPEAKER_03 37:28

You just want the listener to know those aren't your words. Those are their words.

SPEAKER_02 37:32

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm not just describing people as beautiful young virgins.

SPEAKER_00 37:37

And there's really like a line that the king is like, let them be provided with their cosmetics.

SPEAKER_02 37:44

So it really is laying out like this is a beauty contest. Isn't that hilarious?

SPEAKER_00 37:48

They're cosmetics. Let them be provided.

SPEAKER_03 37:50

Brought to you by Maybelline. Maybelline. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 37:54

That's right. Maybe they're beautiful young virgins. Maybe it's Maybelline. So Esther is presumably wielding her feminine beauty to win that contest. And then she uses it. So sorry, wield is a weird way to apply it to the first thing. She just wins the beauty contest, you know? Parades around, looks pretty, hey, and she wins. But then she's presumably wielding that power that is sort of in that feminine beauty, that that power that won his favor in the first place. She wields it when convincing him to save the Jews. It says in the text that she put on royal apparel and that she won his favor as soon as he saw her. So I think this is an example. She's performing her femininity by wielding it powerfully to accomplish her goal of, you know, saving the Jews. So, in a sense, it is that feminine beauty that allows her to be the heroine of the story because she won the contest and then she is pretty enough that he listens to her and says, Oh, I guess I won't kill Jews after all. So that's how I see performing femininity happening in the story of Esther Vashti on that one side, Esther on that other side, but both performing or refusing to perform. You know, both of their plot lines revolving around that performance of femininity.

SPEAKER_03 39:13

Sure, sure.

SPEAKER_00 39:14

Now let's cut to the episode.

SPEAKER_03 39:16

I know exactly where you're gonna tie this into the episode.

SPEAKER_00 39:19

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:20

Why don't you go for it? Take the wheel.

SPEAKER_03 39:23

Schmidt is our Esther, right?

SPEAKER_01 39:25

That's right. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 39:28

He is performing femininity. He wants to fit in with the women of his office. You know, it's all women. He needs to fit in. So he wants to do that by attending the baby shower and talking about baby things. He's doing all this, all this stuff that in this milieu is sort of performing femininity. Uh, he wants to be accepted as one of the girls, kind of, you know. In fact, he wants to be chosen for a promotion as the result of performing this femininity. Very much as you point out, like Esther was chosen to be the queen after she performed her femininity. So he is our Esther here. And Jess also is, you know, she finds herself performing a certain version of sexualized femininity.

SPEAKER_05 40:15

Right.

SPEAKER_00 40:16

She is actually she's performing literally with voices and costumes. True. You know, she really is performing that femininity. Uh, and she's inspired by the recorded performances of sex that she finds on, you know, online.

SPEAKER_03 40:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:32

She thinks that meeting what society and Paul expect a woman to be like, that's what she thinks she's doing. Meeting those standards of beauty and performance, that kind of femininity is what she thinks she needs to be performing. And, you know, that actually also finds parallels with Vashti, because Vashti is expected to be more sexually outgoing than she really is. Right? That's how she loses her queenship in the first place, is they're trying to get her to perform that version of femininity, a high hypersexualized performative version, and she refers us to. So, and you know, also similar to Esther, though, in the sense of trying to win over a man with those feminine performances. That's what Jess is trying to do for Paul, right? Yeah. It's just that in Jess's case, she doesn't actually need to be trying so hard. Right.

SPEAKER_03 41:22

So except in her case, Paul isn't putting on a contest for all the women in the town to join his harem.

SPEAKER_02 41:31

Unfortunately, the stakes are lower anyway. Paul's not about to go out and kill the Jews if Jess doesn't succeed in wooing him correctly.

SPEAKER_00 41:38

So but all of that brings me to another layer that I see. I think there's another layer to all this performativeness, um, both in the story and in the episode. And it's that the characters are wearing a feminine mask. The word mask really kept coming to me when I was thinking all these things through. A feminine mask in the sense that they're pretending to be someone they're not, crucially, in all of this performance. So Esther is pretending she isn't Jewish. So that's one level of performance. In in her performance of femininity, she's also hiding part of herself. She's it's it's sort of masking something that she really is. Jess is pretending that she's into all the wild sex stuff. That is also a mask. Schmidt is a woman. Exactly. That's exactly right. And even, I mean, not literally, but you know, he really is trying to, he's pretending that he's one of the girls. Like, oh, I fit in so perfectly after birth. I know what that means, right? Obviously you don't, buddy. Obviously you don't, but he's trying, he's pretending.

unknown 42:50

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 42:52

And okay, so and even Nick's tiny plot line, which has nothing to do with femininity, but does have to do with physical appearance, it ends with him in a funny situation, uh, in a black barbershop where he totally does not belong or fit in, right? So, in a sense, he is also trying to sort of perform as something he's not in that moment.

SPEAKER_03 43:13

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 43:14

I know how fast they talk. So, in all these senses, you know, the mask, it's sort of a mask of femininity that they're hiding behind. So I find it, you know, in conclusion, very fitting, very nice that Schmidt's final advice to Jess is like, just relax and be yourself. You're awesome. Which is a nice thing for Schmidt to say also. But it's sort of dismantling that mask, you know, don't you don't actually have to perform this feminine charade.

SPEAKER_03 43:43

Right. Right.

SPEAKER_00 43:44

You just be yourself.

SPEAKER_03 43:45

Those are some really good parallels.

SPEAKER_00 43:47

The parallels I see, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 43:49

So that's great.

SPEAKER_00 43:51

Happy Purim.

SPEAKER_03 43:52

Happy Purim. It's not Purim yet, is it?

SPEAKER_00 43:55

Well, we just missed it. Sorry I didn't warn you. Yeah. A few weeks ago. A couple weeks ago.

SPEAKER_03 44:01

Good stuff. Very, very good theme for a tough episode. Really good themes, actually. And it really connects to every storyline in an interesting way. Nick's the most tentatively.

SPEAKER_02 44:11

Yeah, Nick's nuts so much, but yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:13

Bringing the mask, I think, is a good way to loop that in.

SPEAKER_00 44:16

So Right. That's great. A feminine mask. Well, good. I'm glad you like it. And uh I hope everyone else out there is just as generous in their listening. I want to thank everybody for listening. I'm gonna tell y'all if you want to get in touch with us, you could send us an email at JewGirlpodcast at gmail.com and join us next week when we don't throw a baby shower and get vanilla ice haircuts.

SPEAKER_03 44:47

Join us next week when we have Esther on the show. At some point, that joint format will probably have to go by the wayside.

SPEAKER_02 44:56

Either that or one day it's gonna work.

SPEAKER_03 44:58

Yeah, there you go.

SPEAKER_02 45:00

Esther and Susan Sarandon.

SPEAKER_03 45:02

And Elijah the Bear.

SPEAKER_00 45:04

And Elijah the Bear!

SPEAKER_03 45:05

Join us next week when we find out who Susan Sarandon is.

SPEAKER_00 45:09

Join us next week in which we do just an hour of Jimmy Stewart impressions.

SPEAKER_04 45:15

Hey Mary, pass the gefilterfish, will ya? Say something about the Clinton impeachment trials. Hey Mary, they're talking about the Clinton affair on NPR.

SPEAKER_01 45:26

Is Susan Sarandon alive? Yes.