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Warning: For those just looking for our views on the movie, Eighth Grade starts at 49:20. We have a lot to talk about today.
This might be our most personal episode yet. That’s not to say we’re not having so much fun, but Eighth Grade was so good and real that it opened us up to talk about our own surprisingly similar memories of that time in our lives. But first we need to talk about Bo Burnham. He wrote and directed Eighth Grade, but he comes from Youtube and standup comedy and we gotta say, we hope he’s doing OK.
Bo has a kind of darkness and cynicism which he manages extremely deftly in his comedy. It’s never overbearing, but you feel the point he’s trying to make just below the surface if you’re willing to look for it. And you should. He’s brilliant. He makes commentaries on a lot of things; from something silly like country music, to slurs like the “f-word”. You know the one. And he manages to be funny a great deal more than he is sad. His comedy took us on a path to touch on the James Gunn situation too.
Eighth Grade takes that same underlying darkness and cynicism and turns it on its head. The movie is so cringey, but our hero Kayla is always doing the right thing for herself so that she can grow into the person she so desperately is trying to be. There’s bumps in the road, the darkness peeks in, but she persists nonetheless. It was a wonderful movie.
With all that said, we hope you see Eighth Grade and Bo’s old standup specials, and we hope you enjoy a deep dive into our lives on today’s episode of So…I’m Watching This Show!
EIGHTH GRADE SHOWNOTES!
Two days later, everyone is sick of the @michelleisawolf #WHCD takes. So I thought I'd drive right into the abyss, go long, and look at how the routine is structured. I've been a fan for a long time; that will be obvious. This will take 3 days.
— J.D. Connor (@jdconnor) May 1, 2018