A Satisfied Geriatric Millennial
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Good morrow, my sister. Hi. I'm Sam Sanders. I'm Saeed Jones. And I'm Zach Stafford. And you are listening to Vibe Check. Vibe Check.

This week, we're talking about the Tennessee Three, which are the three Democrats. Well, two were rejected, one wasn't, but we're going to get to what's going on in Nashville so you can better understand what happened and what it's also pointing towards over the next few years. And also, spoiler alert, we're going to be talking about succession. So, giving you a moment, if you haven't seen this episode... If you haven't seen this yet or heard what happened yet, you're without a smartphone. You probably don't listen to the show. As someone who doesn't watch the show, I will just say...

It's the fourth season of a show called Succession. I think. Yeah, you can kind of surmise what's happening. What would happen in a show that begins about the succession of a family business? There you go. Well, someone has died. And it made us all start thinking about TV and death and characters we've lost and why it hurts so much when it happens. Or if it hurts. Some of them.

Thank God. Mr. Big and Sex and the City. So we will get to that later. But before we go there, how are we feeling this week? How are we doing? Sam Sanders, how is she? Because I saw you Friday. You did. So I've been thinking ever since that party I had in my backyard on Friday about...

Okay. Say more. What time did it start? Okay.

No one drank too much. Nobody was too loud. Everybody brought good alcohol. Everybody helped me clean up. I was not hungover the next morning. I was in bed by midnight. I think I had three or four separate conversations about the best Costco to go to. Was this a party or a brunch? It was amazing. It was a brunch at 7 p.m. I loved it. It was a 7 p.m. outdoor brunch.

I like this lane of party. Because Sam of 12 years ago was burning shit down. And this is better. It was great. I walked in and felt peace. I saw people I actually wanted to see and catch up with. Like I had excited, excitable moments. I think, oh my God, I haven't seen you in a minute. And had a real conversation. But the best part of it that I love the most and how you can tell it's a good conversation.

adult party is that the wine wasn't cheap. It was good wine. It was good wine. And people brought good wine. Oh my God. And it wasn't for them to drink themselves in a corner. It was to share with other people. It was like the sign of adulthood is good wine. Yes. Let me tell you, I was at yoga the next morning at 830 in the morning. Wow. I'm never going back. Kegger who?

Rager. Were you doing keggers? Oh, Sam in DC. I was out in these streets. Oh my God. I was out in these streets. I'm learning so much about you. All this to say, my vibe is satisfied. Okay. Geriatric millennial. Fulfilled. Fulfilled. Fulfilled. That's my vibe. Um,

I'm feeling all right. You know, it was interesting. I, I'm on sub stack. I've had a sub stack for, I don't know, a couple of years now. Lately, I often use it just to do little newsletters for Caesar because people are always asking about him. And I'm like, here, you can just follow him this way. But,

But over the weekend, they introduced beta testing for their alternative to Twitter. I don't know if they will call it. I don't know if legally they could call it an alternative to Twitter, but that's clearly what it is. It's called Substack Notes. Now it's officially open. So if you have Substack, you can now, you can do it. It's very similar to Twitter in terms of how it looks and how it functions. But over the weekend, I decided to send up what I call a test balloon, which...

which is to mention whiteness and see how people respond to it. Oh, you're brave. One, it's factually true that I think the demographic, the user base of Substack is pretty white. Yes. It's pretty white. So I simply posted on Substack notes, hey, you know, I know it's in the beta testing phase or whatever, so it's a limited pool of users, but they had an option where you could click and just see all of the beta testers in one timeline.

if that makes sense. So imagine just being able to basically see all of Twitter on one timeline, you know? It was all white people. It was all white people. I would have to scan like 50 users to get to one black person or one person of color. And so I just posted, you know, wow, this user base is white, white, white, white, male, white. It's all in one word.

And that's all. That's it. That's it. Because one, it's true. It's true. And two, I wanted to see how people – and, oh, man. Within two minutes, I don't know how many, like, quote-unquote followers I have on Substack. It's very different from my experience on Twitter. But it was incredible that within just the first couple of minutes –

My replies are filling up with like, so, and it's racist for you to, and this is race baiting and dead. I mean, it was, and it just went on all weekend. I had white supremacists or what I think they're white supremacists, you know, posting me to their users. It was very intense. Yeah.

And I was like, oh, okay. So this is supposed to be the quote unquote viable alternative to Twitter. That's feeling so good. We have not since the heyday of Facebook had a platform that all kinds of people use across different income levels, class and race. What is the app now?

That your auntie uses and your friends use. Right. Like, it doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. I think our relationship to social media platforms, we do understand it's the internet. But I think we all have, like, different images in our mind of our intended audience. And this kind of actual open, like, you think you're speaking at a dinner party and you're actually, like, blaring into a megaphone in the middle of the Super Bowl or something. Yeah. Like, that is kind of how these messages travel now. And I don't know if I...

want that. Yeah.

Well, this is the thing about all these platforms. Like, what they need to become fully functional and viable and, like, worthwhile, they need actual Black people making content that resonates for Black people. And that's the tea. Because that's the content that always makes it pop, you know? If Black people aren't there and thriving, then it's not thriving. There you go. Exactly. Where they at? Where they at? Where they at, y'all? Are we now RuPaul and Michelle Visage? We are. Yeah.

Anywho, Zach, what is your vibe? I mean, my vibe this week is kind of like, I would say the word perspective. So I was going to begin up until last night by saying, you know, I watched the show Beef, which is about road rage. Oh, I do want to watch that. I have like two episodes left. It is intense. It's very intense. So anyway, I was like, I've been having my own incidences in LA with like people just being so rude. Like the other day, this like traffic cop,

tried to give me a ticket when I pulled into valet. He was screaming at me by being like, you can't park there. And I was like, it's valet. Like, what are you talking about? So things like that kept happening. People so aggressive, so aggressive. So I wanted to come on here and be like, everyone's so mean to me. What was me? What was me? What was me? I'm always perfect. Everyone's so mean to me. But,

But last night, I went cycling. I go cycling on Mondays. And while I was there, I was rude to someone on accident. So I was the person that people have been to me. So some guy was trying to get in his locker and he was moving slow.

And my locker was above his locker. And I was like, let me just jump. And I like, instead of just taking a breath, sitting down, let him get his stuff and then me get mine. You grabbed the door of the locker. I walked up to him and was like, let me grab mine. No, I didn't do that. I didn't do that. No, I walked up to him and was just like very, like I wasn't mean, but I was just very like, I need my things. And I was like, hey, I'm going to reach above you. As you get yours, I'm going to get mine. Which, you know, the door almost could hit him in his face.

He was so upset with me. He said, I'm going as fast as I can. Calm down. And I felt so bad because then we went to class together and he was behind me. And it was, I needed that. I needed that kick in the pants, honestly, because, you know, you don't know what people are going through. Sometimes we all need to take a breath. But wait, how did it work? Was class good? Were y'all able to kind of reconnect? You know, my little scared ass left at the end immediately when I got my stuff. Oh, no, no, no.

You ran away. My tail was in between my legs, but I have walked away from there saying to myself, Zach, breathe. Breathe when other people may be short with you. Like, just like have more compassion in the world. My question for you, though, is like, you'll probably see him in the gym again. Do you plan at some point to say, hey, sorry about that day? Or do you want to just ignore it forever?

You know, the good part of me is like, yes, I'm going to go up to him and say, listen, because he was queer. He's a person of color. Like we are like sisters in this. Like I should I should say something. I would say something. Build a bridge. Yeah. Well, before we get into the episode, we want to thank all of you who sent us fan mail, your emails and reach out to us on social media. We absolutely love reading your messages. Keep them coming, of course, at vibecheckatstitcher.com.

But for now, let's jump in, ladies. Let's do it. Let's go. All right, we're going to start this week with the Tennessee Three. I'm sure our listeners have been watching all of this. Three Democratic state representatives who represent Nashville, Knoxville, and Memphis are

were expelled from the state house in Tennessee. Their names are Justin Jones, Justin J. Pearson, and Gloria Johnson. These three Democratic state house members in Tennessee were protesting for gun control reform in the aftermath of a school shooting on March 27th in Nashville.

During their protest, the three of them stopped floor proceedings by chanting no action, no peace on the House floor. After this happened, instead of coming together with their colleagues, the Republicans in that chamber compared the actions of those three to the January 6th insurrection.

They said that what they did was a violation of House rules of decorum and procedure. By April 3rd, their ID badges didn't work to get them into the Capitol. They were stripped of their committee assignments. And then by the 6th, the two black guys were expelled by the GOP-controlled chamber. The one white woman was not. And even she said, this feels like a racial thing.

Since their expulsion, Juan has been reinstated by his jurisdiction's municipal council. I want to talk about what this means, what it says about the GOP strategy as we head into a big election year.

But first, I got to ask both of my sisters, what decade does this feel like? Because it felt like 1968 up in there last week. It was really weird. I mean, yeah, it felt like that. But what's weird about it is that it feels like 1968, but with 2023 representation. You know, back in 68, we didn't have folks like Justin Jones and Justin Pearson in those seats. We didn't have Gloria Johnson, a woman, in those seats, especially in Tennessee. It was all white guys. Right.

guys. So before it was, you know, black people were out in the street being activists, fighting, and it was white people in the chambers, you know, passing legislation. But now as we've seen, you know, the

the callback to Saeed Jones, representation is a trap. We've seen them show up. You know, they represent the three blue areas of Tennessee, which are Knoxville National and Memphis. And you see how they're treated by their Republican colleagues. And it just felt like the material reality that we've never solved these structural issues. We've just kind of like swept them under the rug and like use representation as bait to make us think things are changing. But Tennessee has always been red and it's gotten redder and

even as Nashville has become this kind of like super Nova of a city and people go there for bachelorettes and do all these things. It's like in the wake of that or in the shadow of that, it's become Mago land and it's just really scary. And I think what we're seeing happen in the legislature, Nashville is just kind of a symptom of what's about to happen across the country. Very quickly. Can I tell you, I think it was great. I think it was wonderful. I think this is a wonderful development. My heart is full of gratitude for those GOP lawmakers who,

Because, okay, first of all, in terms of material harm, right? What would have been great is if the Tennessee state lawmakers had decided to actually pass some legislation in favor of actual gun control. We know that was not gonna happen though, right? One of the lawmakers is already back. He didn't even miss a day of being on the floor of that lawmaking body. And

Instead, what has happened because of the way the GOP decided to essentially throw gasoline on what was already a fire. Because what is significant, and I hope people have seen the video footage and everything of what was taking place before it got to the point of the expulsion of these three lawmakers.

That state house was jam-packed with young people, with families, with community members from all over the state of Tennessee, just in every hallway crevice, through way of that house, just being like, we are furious. We are furious that you are not taking action against mass shooting and mass violence. And then the GOP decided to respond to that by expelling these three lawmakers who were doing something very reasonable. And as I believe it was

I think it was Justin Jones, it might have been Justin Pearson, pointed out during one of his floor speeches, there was a moment which an admitted...

child molester, lawmaker was on the floor and was not expelled, right? There was a moment where in recent political history in the state of Tennessee, another Tennessee state lawmaker peed in the chair of another lawmaker and was not expelled. And then these three are. So it's like, I think this is great because what they've done is draw such attention, scrutiny. They have galvanized everyone. If they thought people were angry before, there's so many more now. And as Sam has often pointed out, we often focus so much

on federal politics and federal elections and kind of don't pay attention to like who's on your state Supreme Court, who's your state house or state Senate, you know, I think this is going to pay off for us. And this is what was so fascinating to see last week on that last point you made, Saeed, while everyone's watching the non-circus that is a circus of Trump in court in New York, it's like, no, the real action is in Tennessee. The real action is there at the state house.

And I really do think that we're starting to see now where things are going to shake out the next time voters go to the polls. Yeah. In places like Tennessee, in places like Florida, you see Republicans in a desire to please their base with anti-trans laws or with the refusal to actually consider gun control. You see them pushing too far. And they're only making a fraction of America happy. Yeah.

but they're really pissing off the rest of us. You had black kids and white kids and brown kids protesting for these three house members. You had parents of all persuasions saying, no, you cannot check my child's private parts just before they play school baseball or football. We're seeing the GOP go so far that

And they're just giving Democrats video evidence that they're rerunning campaign ads all next year. All next year. Over the weekend, I saw some GOP insiders, to your point, actually criticizing Tennessee GOP leaders. Like, why would you do that? And one of them said, like, you are making enemies we didn't already have. And making the campaign.

ads. If you're a Democrat, you're going to run Justin Jones's speech over and over and over again. And it's not even just the campaign ads. It's just proving this point that is becoming very clear over the past few elections that Gen Z not only is turning out to vote, but they vote overwhelmingly.

liberal and democratic. And they're not shifting no matter what happens. And these school shootings, climate change, et cetera, are only radicalizing them more. And that's what was so scary, I think, to the legislative body in Tennessee, to see those kids show up in the tens of thousands, I think, and yelling at them. And these people were probably their grandchildren, their nieces and nephews. And that reality that they're

they are going to go extinct potentially very soon, at least in the voting pool, and that they will no longer have this power. This feels like a power grab. And the other side of this is that, you know, through the really unprecedented actions, they're showing that, you know, a body of politicians can make

major structural change if they so choose. So when these students see them making huge sweeping changes to drag, to education, to all these things, and they're saying, hey, I want to stay alive when I'm at school, even in my Christian school, and the GOP is not doing anything, I think it just, to your point, shows like, oh, wow, these people really don't give a damn about you at all. And then this is what's even more galling when you see what GOP lawmakers in a place like Tennessee are doing is

no one actually supports what they want to do. In every election where voters vote nationwide, there are more votes for Democrats always than for the other party across the nation. And then you'll see once these GOP chambers take control through gerrymandering, they try to pass these things that most Americans don't want at all. Most Americans don't want to ban drag. Most Americans want smart gun control. Most...

Most Americans do not want teachers to be involved in their children's private parts at school. And so on top of not even having the numbers to really win, you see the GOP going after things that actually only a small fraction of their base even wants. Right. And to that point, to open it up beyond the state of Tennessee, over the weekend, genius, Tricey McMillan Cotton wrote a new column titled,

That I think is titled, Why I Keep My Eyes on the South. And I just want to read one section that echoes what Sam is underscoring. I keep my eyes on the South because the Republican strategy of disenfranchisement is a state-by-state strategy. It looks like judicial rule where they cannot win. Where they cannot win by judicial rule, they will rule by procedural deft. Where they cannot persuade voters to vote for them, they will persuade the candidate they voted for to become one of them. This is a strategy that can be deployed in every state.

But that can be deployed with the most exacting precision in states where racism already conditions the exclusion of non-white voters as inherently illegitimate. That's the big picture. It's so obvious. They don't have a winning message. So their only response is to quiet dissent. Mm-hmm.

They don't have anything to say to these House members, so they kick them out, you know? I will say, it's very interesting. They asked a few of these GOP House members in Tennessee whether or not the two black guys being expelled and the white woman not being expelled worked.

was racialized and if race had anything to do with it. They came out their mouths with all these excuses. She survived her expulsion by just one vote. By one vote. And they said, well, it's because she had legal counsel on the floor or it's because she wasn't stoking up the crowd like those black guys were or it's because she didn't do as much as they did. And it's like,

We see it. No matter what you say, we see it. And the video evidence of this stuff is just not going to go away. All this stuff is on film and we're going to keep seeing it. And I just to like also strike on that human part of what we see and maybe what we're not looking at close enough is that, you know, these two black representatives, they were fighting for children in Tennessee schools, but they weren't just fighting for children in their districts. They're fighting for the state. And they're specifically responding to the shooting at covenant Christian, which is in green Hills, Tennessee. And,

Green Hills is a place I grew up with my mom. I know the place very well. It's very wealthy, very white, very conservative. That school, I would bet, were all white Republican kids in there whose parents do not believe in gun reform, do not believe in these things. And to have two black men from not upper class communities in Tennessee, in Green Hills, fighting for those kids in ways that their parents' own representatives wouldn't fight for them,

is stunning. And I think that just shows to your point, the humanity that is still in the Democratic Party, that we're willing to fight for people no matter who they are and their rights, inability to fight for people for who they are. So it's just kind of striking. And let me not use my comments in this conversation to act like I'm caping for the DNC. They got a lot of problems. They got a lot of problems. Well, this is not the DNC, right? Exactly. That's part of why this is so different. Yeah. Yeah.

I will say it's like, as we move into this big election year, it's important to like not play favorites and not act like any politician can save us.

But look and see who's doing what you want and who isn't. And it's like, it's pretty clear what the GOP wants for us and our bodies. And it's pretty clear what the other side does, you know? Yeah. And so that's why I said I'm genuinely grateful because I think, you know, in the state of Tennessee, for example, the Republicans had a super majority. And I think they just cost themselves a super majority because I think many people who don't pay attention to state elections, who don't show up to vote on those election days are now going to be like, oh, I'm

I'm curious, like who's this Justin Pearson person? Who's this Justin Jones? What happened with this? Huh? They're already raising money. Oh, yeah. And so the moment people kind of find out like what's going on, you know, they get curious. They start asking questions. And I think so much of like local and state politics, a lot of corruption or what Tracy McMillan-Cotton brilliantly calls procedural theft.

That often happens because people aren't paying attention. There's not enough consensus of attention. And so I think we're going to see in Tennessee or North Carolina with what that politician just pulled, that stunt, I think it's a lot of people gonna go like, okay, we're gonna show up and vote so that you don't have super majorities or so that your lead is not so narrow like in the state of North Carolina where one shady politician can just totally take away all of our

power. And I think in the long game, I hope this changes the balance of power, which I think leads to hopefully better legislation. Ooh, we pray. We haven't even touched upon the latest that's going on with access to abortion. The drugs that people can use to have over-the-counter abortions, those are being banned state by state. And I think that's going to come back to haunt the GOP as well. Anyway, more to talk about. We'll keep talking about it. I'm going to take a break right now. You're listening to Vibe Check. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.

This message is brought to you by McDonald's. Did you know only 7.3% of American fashion designers are Black? Well, McDonald's 2024 Change Leaders Program is ready to change the face of fashion. The innovative program awards a monetary grant to five emerging Black American designers and pairs each with an industry professional to help them elevate their brands.

I know specifically and distinctly how McDonald's can support and empower not just black Gen Z, but black people. My first job was McDonald's. I learned a lot there about customer service and how to relate to people. I still love that place and go there very often. Look out for the change of fashion designers and mentors at events like the BET Awards and the Essence Festival of Culture. And follow the journey of the 2024 McDonald's Change Leaders Awards.

On their Instagram page, we are golden.

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All right, we are back and we are going to switch gears to the television screen. So there's no way you haven't heard about this happening on Succession because the whole show is about someone dying and the kids, you know, succeeding them. And because of that, we want to make a bigger conversation happen around TV and death and the characters we love.

But to get us going, let's just clarify what is happening in HBO land this week. So HBO show Succession, which is one of their most popular shows, has been the talk of the internet all week because the patriarch of the show, Logan Roy, dies in the latest episode. His death was not only such a big deal on HBO, but outlets like Vulture and the LA Times wrote obituaries that came out the next day. The LA Times just doing like an obituary. Also, let me tell you, as someone who works for Vulture and loves them,

These people that I work with have lost their minds over succession. Losing their minds. Losing their minds. There's not a lot of nuance in the succession. No. Television did not exist before.

before Succession. No one has ever died on television until Succession. No one will die. It is the beginning and the end. It is. As someone who doesn't watch the show, it's just like, you know, I enjoy reading about it though. Yeah, it's a fun time. But to give you a little taste of how kind of obsessed a lot of reporters and journalists are of the show, and I should say the showrunner was a journalist in the beginning. So I think there's like something subconsciously happening where we like love journalists that have

It's industry narcissism. It's industry narcissism. But here's a quote from the opening of the Vulture article. It reads, Logan Roy, CEO, chairman, and founder of Waystar Royco, the glowing radioactive core of the American right-wing media machine, left this earth as he lived it at a high speed, climate be damned, hurtling toward yet another scheme to make billions of dollars. And that's the opening of the obituary in Vulture. And as you can tell, Logan Roy is kind of a parody of the family that owns Fox News.

He's supposed to be Rupert Murdoch, right? The Murdochs, yeah. Just to pause on the art of that episode. So I watched it late because I was out of town with friends this weekend, but...

but I watched it Monday. They really had fun with that man's death in that episode. They sure did. They drag it out. You don't quite know for a little bit if it's happening. You don't see or hear him. You see his bare chest for a second as he's getting like decompression. And then you watch his kids refuse to believe it for an awkwardly, strangely long time. Yeah.

It's good TV. It's good TV. What I was reading about it that I thought was interesting is that it's like, it's Jesse Armstrong, right? He removes a lot of the spectacle that we're used to seeing with TV deaths. The flashback, everything's in slow motion, the drama of it. And I think for this character who's supposed to be larger than life and kind of a god of capitalism, to have kind of what amounts to a boring, banal, even just small death. Wow. Yeah.

Humbly. Yeah. A friend of ours, a friend of the show, Luke Rogers, who's a film producer, said to me the next morning, you know, he loved it because it proved that no matter how rich you are, how powerful you are, you too will die on the shitter. And that's what happened to Logan Roy. Yes. And what's amazing technically, and then we're going to move on from Succession because there's much more interesting shows to talk about. So many more interesting shows. Arguably, every other show is more interesting than that.

But what I will give to the show is that on the technical front and why they will probably sweep the Emmys is for a lot of reasons this season, but this one episode is amazing because it's a 27-minute long scene that they shot with two cameras on film in one take. So when you see him die...

Those actors are on a boat and they are acting it out like a play. And that's just one. That was one take. And that was just one take. And that's what makes it really raw and amazing. And hats off to them. At some point, we need to talk about HBO's obsession with like, we shot this on film. Because Sam Levinson did the same thing with Euphoria. And I'm kind of like, okay, girl. But anyway. Yeah, it just sounds really expensive. Yeah.

I will say what I love about succession is the way these pivotal moments, the things you think they're going to focus on, they focus on the other thing. Yeah.

Yeah. And that makes it even more poignant. Yeah. When a billionaire like Logan Roy dies, they could have a scene talking about how the stock market was reacting or not. They could have a scene about protesters going to his headquarters to protest this bad man who had died. They could talk about any number of things. Instead, for 15 minutes or more, the scene you live in is the kids away from their father talking themselves to...

through stages of griefs as they make, not peace with the fact, but conclude that he's actually dead. You hear them have to talk through real time whether he's dead or not. That's what Succession chose to focus on in that moment. And I think it was brilliant. And I think that like the acting from the character who plays Shiv,

was like some of the best things I've seen on screen in many, many years. She did the work in that. And I think, you know, to build a bridge out of this is that what Succession did is that it did elevate what we've seen as a common device in a lot of shows, especially when they want to get picked up for another season, which is kill a main character. Really drive it, make it viral, kill someone that you love. And certainly to do it at the end of a season, right? At the end of a season. It has to get renewed, right? Exactly.

But this is the thing about Succession. We know that this is the last season, and we also know it was episode three of a 10-episode season. Of a show called Succession. Yeah. So, okay. All right, so to make Saeed happier, we're going to expand the aperture here because TV deaths have been an ongoing thing in television. And we did, through some research, find out it hasn't always been this way.

way. It began according to US Weekly, which did a report on this this year about this. The magazine. US Weekly is still with us? US Weekly.

U.S. Weekly is still with us, girl. Well, amen. Bless it. It makes money. It makes money. Well, according to them, the very first television death of a major character was back in 1975 on the hit show MASH, which I'm sure all of us have heard of or maybe seen on TV. And it involved the character Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake after he gets honorably discharged from the Army and he dies by enemy fire. CBS, when they aired that, received acclaim.

thousands of hate mail, pieces of hate mail with people irate that they killed a character because it had never been done. You know, you expected these characters to live and it was a fantasy, et cetera, et cetera. After that happened, television changed its course and soap operas began using it as a device. It's on and on and on. And, you know, we're going to talk about some of our favorite moments, but some big ones that you may have forgotten in the past few years have been people like Poussey Washington on Orange is the New Black. Traumatic. Which I can talk about. Traumatic.

Hodar on Game of Thrones was kind of a breakout death among all the deaths on Game of Thrones. Ashtray in Euphoria, the young boy. And then famously, Dr. Shepard or Dr. McDreamy on Grey's Anatomy. That was kind of ground shaking in the 2000s when that happened. So death on TV is a new thing and it's a thing that we've become really connected to. It's new, but it's not, right? Like if we think of MASH as the first time to have like a death of a character that we loved on TV. Yeah.

That was in the 70s, right? So like when I think about why then and why MASH, for me, everything before the TV that came out of Vietnam was like happy-go-lucky sitcoms. It was the Dick Van Dyke show.

And there was this moment of American history from like post-World War II until Vietnam where the image of America was just like we're unstoppable, we're unbeatable, we're perfect, nuclear family, you know, all that shit. And it is kind of ironic or almost fitting, I suppose, that the first real TV death was

would come out of a show about America's worst war, right? Yeah. That's right. That wasn't showing death. It was like, here's a war and that's your death. But then it became a little too real for people. Yeah. But is there a death that became too real for you that you really think about? I mean, I don't think that any of them were ever too real. I remember the first TV death that I actually thought about critically was...

was J.R. Ewing in Dallas. My mother growing up was a really big Dallas fan. This was the juggernaut soap opera from the 70s and 80s, I believe. The finale of that show was up there with MASH as like the most viewed TV events ever. But the patriarch of this oil family, J.R. Ewing, was killed at the end of one season. I believe they have an entire season in which he's dead and gone, but they realize they need him in the show, so they bring him back and say that it was all a dream sequence.

And I remember thinking about how the hell that could happen, my little 12-year-old self. But I loved it. Yeah. I don't know. Saeed, do you? I have tried with Succession, loath as I am to bring it back to Succession, I've tried to watch that show four different times over the last few years. And I can't get into it. But maybe I'll watch just this episode because I am interested in disruptions, particularly for main characters. The way it plays out is so...

It's a spectacle. It's often melodramatic. And so I'm interested in moments that challenge that. And I think the fifth season of Buffy, episode 16. This episode aired in February 2001, which culturally is like several lifetimes ago from how kind of TV functions now. But the episode is called The Body.

And in that episode, Buffy comes home and finds that her mom is on the couch. She's not sure what's going on. And it turns out that her mom, Joyce, has died of natural causes. And the first 16 minutes of the episode are just in Buffy's living room. And if you consider what the show is, Buffy, the vampire slayer, it's action-packed, genre, da-da-da, crazy, kooky. They're musical episodes. This episode is so calm and

So moment to moment that like this is really just like, oh, now the ambulance is here. Now they're doing that. Now that, you know, all of now the body's being wheeled away. There's a moment that sticks with me where Buffy realizes her mom's skirt has kind of come up a bit and she smooths it down. And the episode is called The Body because, of course, it's not Joyce anymore. It's not your mother anymore. It's just a body.

In the show that's literally about vampires and the undead, it's so striking to see suddenly just a very realistic depiction of death as this character, Buffy. I think for me it shows her moving from coming of age into adulthood. It's like, okay, now we're getting real. It was so striking. I've only been able to watch the episode once. I can't watch it again. Because it's so – and I am not a Joss Whedon fan. He is a toxic.

Assholo of a person. But that episode, wow. He really did something. I think because the way you both are right, death on TV is so often used as a ratings gimmick, what sweeps week, or trying to get renewed for another season. I think when a writer decides to go in a different direction, it really stays with you. Yeah. I mean, that's like even with the – I mean, I made a joke about this –

on the top of the show, but Mr. Big dying and the new Sex and City and just like that. It was at the very beginning of a show. Everyone was like, is this going to be good? And it was. And it wasn't. It took, and it took out Peloton stock. It really, it like dealt a death. Oh, right. Because he was doing Peloton early. He was in Peloton. Yeah.

But yeah, I guess, Saeed, I love, I mean, the reason why I wanted to talk about this today was because you do so much work around grief and writing and helping people think about grief. And I'd love to know what you think, because you're seeing this new era of death not just being used season three finale or as kind of like a way to go viral, but as a meditation. What do you think people can gain from seeing their favorite characters losing them on TV? Yeah.

Um, to think of, you know, succession and Buffy as, as I would say, productive, creative examples that are not feeding into our delusion. I think it's frankly helpful for people to see what the first few hours of death looks like. Like I,

as a survivor, I think like, like, like Sam said that the kids on the speakerphone kind of spinning, is this, is this happening? That's real. That is something that people go through. It's not just that these characters are delusional, craving people. It's that it is a difficult reality to wrap your mind around.

Seeing moments of Buffy and the other characters, just like what's going on, what happens next, the way in which death, like the onset of it, you almost can feel childlike. You're helpless. You don't know what to do. You're not an expert on this. And so suddenly you're like talking to, you know, the people from the ambulance. You're talking to like, what do we do now? You know, I think it can be helpful to just get insight into.

Into what it looks like, what happens, because it's going to happen to all of us. It's going to happen to people we love. If you love many people, you're going to grieve many people. And I think to kind of demystify that is valuable. Yeah.

It takes all of the poetry out of it. A lot of times when we read about death or watch movies about death, it is romanticized. Yeah. Or it's epic or dramatic. It's not. It's really. In actuality, where does the body go? Who's going to come get it? Is it really dead? We got to make a statement. Who's going to call who? I'll never forget when my dad died. The first three hours were not poetic grief. It was like, oh, who do I have to call? I got to call everybody.

I got to find a phone number. That is a part of it that I think it was like, oh, this was a beautiful display of the reality of it on this show about people I'm nothing at all like. I'm not like these rich folks on Succession. But you know what? Even when someone dies in their family, they got to deal with logistics. I remember my uncle and I kind of setting up

in the dining room. That was just, and no one else would go in there but us, but we just had legal pads, legal pads, I think a computer. You're making spreadsheets. You're trying, you're kind of like, oh, we've got to call this person. Oh, we've got to call this person. And I just remember being like, it feels like planning a wedding. And it's just that, this big life-changing milestone event, but in the moment, the day-to-day planning of it, it's a drudgery. And it's not, it's not even necessarily sad in a way. It's interesting, the work

of the initial kind of preparing for the funeral, I think it's actually very healthy because it gives you specific tasks to focus on. And so, yeah, it's, you know, anything about grief that's just like real and shows people the many, many facets of how it can manifest, I think is helpful so that,

if and when it happens to you, you're not just totally bowled over. Yeah. You've got to watch this episode, Saeed. I will. You persuaded me. I'll watch this episode. It was one of the more real depictions of death that I've seen in a long time. And you can watch it as a standalone. It feels like a play. It was written like a play. It feels like a play. It was shot like a play. So you could just step in. You're good to go. And that's for everyone. All right. With that, we're going to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere. We'll be right back with our recommendations of the week. Stay tuned. We'll be right back.

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All right, my loves, we are back. And before we end the show, we each like to share something that's helping us keep our vibes right or throwing us off this week. Zach, do you want to get us started? I do. So I have a very Zach recommendation. I would say the most Zach recommendation I can give you. Uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh. I'm curious to see the self-awareness of what you define as a very Zach. It's just I have a lot of self-awareness is one thing. Thank God for therapy. My recommendation this week is a cereal brand called Magic Spoon. Have you all heard of Magic Spoon?

Have you seen the ads? I think I've heard. I hear the ads on Who Weekly. Or like What A Day. Yeah. Yeah, they're everywhere. Okay, Chantel loves Magic Spoon. Chantel loves Magic Spoon. Thank you. Thank you. So Magic Spoon, I finally took the dive. I ordered every flavor and I've spent the past week taste testing them so I could taste everything before I say I'll give my verdict. Because it's supposed to be like healthy.

Yes, so it's like healthier. And I hate saying healthier because it's like, what does healthy mean? Et cetera, et cetera. But this cereal is gluten-free. So if you don't eat gluten, great for you. You know, sometimes I don't eat gluten. It's sugar-free, which is great. It is high protein. So it's like a protein bar cereal. And it's pretty like low-cal compared to everything else. So it's a great place to get protein. If you're not having eggs, like you don't have time to make eggs, it has the same amount of protein as eggs. So that's why I really like it.

It is delicious. It is so good. I have tried everyone, but the very best flavor. Is there like a cinnamon toast crunch one? There is a cinnamon one. It's called cinnamon bun. The very best one though is frosty, which is like Cheerios, but a bit sweeter. It is delicious. And Chantel loves fruity and peanut butter. Peanut butter is so good if you mix it with a chocolate. So try it. It's like, I think 40 bucks. They're not paying for this. I love that being Chantel's first cameo. I love that. Okay.

So anyway, that's mine. Definitely try it. It's kind of like a guilt-free cereal and it's great for like before bed if you're a little hungry. Just have a little bowl with some milk. Love it, love it. Okay, Sam? I want to recommend an essay that friends and colleagues of mine reference a lot and that a listener actually linked to me after our last conversation about Twitter last week, Zach. It is called TikTok's Inshitification. And it is this

Say that again, please. TikTok's in shitification. Okay. It's an essay by internet thinker, Corey Doctorow, D-O-C-T-R-O-R-O-W. Okay. And he wrote this piece and it's a theory that's been talked about a lot, but he writes about it the best. This idea that all social media apps have a lifeline and a timeline and a trajectory. He opens the essay with this sentence,

Here is how platforms die. First, they are good to their users. Then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers.

Finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all value for themselves. Then they die. This is happening to TikTok. It's happening to Twitter. It happens to all these social sites. And Corey makes a plane. It's called TikTok's inshittification. It's great. I will tweet a link and we'll also include it in show notes.

It's really good. That's all. Cool. I love that. The life cycle of an app. Yes. Which is always bad. The life cycle is always bad. If it starts good, it's going to end up bad. That's how it goes. Now, Saeed, what are you feeling this week? If you follow me on Twitter, you might have seen I recently took to go out to L.A. for something for Vibe Check. I had to endure yet again a Southwest Airlines flight. Yeah.

But to get my vibe right, I was like, oh, let me be very practical. How do you navigate this, like being stuck on a plane that you don't want to be on for more than four hours? Drugs. So my recommendation this week is a brand of edibles.

called Smokies. She's trying to get sponsored. Listen, they're cannabis infused watermelon fruit chews. So it's like five milligrams? 9.24 milligrams. Oh, wow. Okay. Listen, so here's my thing. This is what you do, friends. Before you get to the airport,

You nibble. For me, I don't want a whole edible. I don't want to be like losing myself in a travel situation. So I just nibble literally just enough of the corner. First of all, they're delicious. So it's actually hard not to eat the whole edible. But you just take a little bit. And for me, I think a great way to enjoy your flight is just to have a little bit of an edible.

I found a jazz playlist on Spotify. So really, my vibe recommendation is a trio. This is what it is. You have a little bit of an edible. You have noise-canceling headphones, listening to jazz music. And I read a short story collection by Kelly Link, White Cat, Black Dog. All the stories are based on fairy tales. They're all pretty surreal, which when you're in...

A negatively surreal experience, which is to say flying Southwest Airlines, where two examples. At one point, they asked everyone to close their damn windows and turn on their flight attendant call lights so they could wish someone happy birthday. I thought we were in a crisis. I'm like, why are we all closed?

in our windows. And then they were like, can everyone write down your seat number on a dollar bill? And then they collected it so that they could do a raffle for cocktail. It was surreal. This feels illegal. So it was really helpful for me to be stoned and be like, you know what? This is crazy. Let me go to a fun crazy. Because I was just like lightly stoned reading my short story. I would watch a movie of a Saeed Jones type person getting on a long flight and eating too many edibles and like not knowing what's real, what's not.

for the two hours. See, that's too much. And that's why I'm telling you not to eat too many edibles. Just enough, just enough to kind of lighten the edges of your experience. You might take the edible at home and then get to the airport, realize your flight's delayed. That's true. Then you just up in O'Hare. I do be playing it fast and loose. High. Fast and loose. But what I find with these, and I recommend this brand because it's good. I've used it several times while traveling. And to Sam's point,

it's never been an experience where I feel like out of sorts or like I can't, you know, navigate getting to my gate or anything like that. I just want enough. Like I'm an anxious person. And when I'm anxious, I'm really cranky and that just makes things worse. And so I just find it kind of puts me in a state of mind where I'm like, okay, this is wild, but I can go with it. And I think that's essential while surviving this flight situation, y'all in this country. I, it's, you can't buy your way out of it.

You can't buy your way out of it. Okay. Anyway, that's my recommendation for the week. Listeners, what are y'all feeling or not feeling? What's your vibe? Check in with us at vibecheckatstitcher.com. Do you have like travel strategies for those of you who travel a lot? Maybe in particular, traveling for work is like a whole different thing because if you

know you're going on vacation, you can kind of, you know, but if you're like, I'm leaving this, I'm going from one place to another just for work, and then I'm going right back home, I think it makes it even more difficult. So if you have travel recommendations, survive. Share with us, because I will do, and we could later this summer when everyone's traveling, a whole episode on travel hacks or how to get around. Because I tell you what, those little airplane cranberry vodkas ain't cutting it anymore! They're not it. They're not it. Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha!

Thank you for tuning into this week's episode of Vibe Check. If you love the show and want to support us, please make sure to follow the show on your favorite podcast listening platform and tell a friend. Say like, if you really cared about me, if you were a true ally, you would be listening to Vibe Check. Not the ultimatums. There you go. We cannot be friends unless you also listen to Vibe Check. I thought you loved me. Curtis was supposed to love me and listen to Vibe Check. That's how you do it, Curtis.

Huge thank you to our producer, Chantel Holder, engineer Brendan Burns, and Marcus Holm for our theme music and sound design. Also, special thanks to our executive producers, Nora Ritchie at Stitcher and Brandon Sharp from Agenda Management and Production. And as always, we want to hear from you. So don't forget, you can email us at vibecheckatstitcher.com. The one and only Saeed Jones reads the emails first, I swear to you. He is the quickest to draw that email out. I read them once a quarter. I really enjoy them.

And you can keep in touch with us on Instagram at adzackstaff, at theferocity, and at samsanders. Use the hashtag vibecheckpod wherever you can put a hashtag, which is Twitter, but, you know, Twitter's kind of over. And with that, stay tuned for another episode next Wednesday. Bye. Bye. Stitcher. What kind of day is it? It's a white claw day.

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