The Take
This is the Take. It's where you come to understand more about your favorite movies, shows and culture. Our video essays make the story worlds you enter richer and deeper. Think: Endings Explained, Character Studies, Hidden Messages and Symbols Revealed, Actor and Director Profiles, and more.
We want to share our love of visual culture with the world. So here's our Take.
426
Why Game of Thrones Already Feels Dated
Game Of Thrones rushed toward a finale that left a confusing and disappointing legacy. So, are we ready yet to talk about the show again - and can it ever regain that place in our hearts?
20 min
427
The “Cheugy” Problem - Why No One Can Keep Up w...
When does something stop being trendy, and start being "cheugy" – and is it time to just stop trying ever to be “up to date”?
15 min
428
Licorice Pizza and Love in Paul Thomas Anderson...
Paul Thomas Anderson's films present a portrait of love that entails accepting the good, the bad, and the ugly in another person – seeing all your partner's flaws and adoring them anyway.
21 min
429
The Disposable Black Love Interest - A Tokenist...
We can spot the “Disposable Black Love Interest” character almost instantly: they’re the fleeting guest star, presented as great in theory, yet we know the main character’s not actually going to end up with them.
22 min
430
How Euphoria Visualizes Feelings
When you’re a teenager everything can feel overwhelming and intense. Euphoria takes this to an extreme, communicating "emotional realism" through cinematic techniques.
21 min
431
The Material Girl Trend - Buying Your Way to Em...
The Material Girl TikTok Trend can be viewed as an inclusive rallying cry for marginalized people and increasingly disenfranchised youth to declare and flaunt their fabulousness, however much material wealth they have (or don’t...).
17 min
432
Unreliable Narrators - Why We Love To Be Lied To
Unreliable narrators of books, film, and TV often explore mental illness, the fickle nature of memory, and revisionist bias. And these days, it’s gotten harder and harder to trust the narrator of any story, fictional or not. This is the unreliable narrator, explained... Or is it?
20 min
433
How Margot Robbie Escaped The “Bombshell Trap”
Margot Robbie has always managed to bring something extra to her "bombshell" roles, but she became a master of her own destiny and widened the range of roles available to her by developing not just as an actor but as a producer.
22 min
434
Inventing Anna - American Dream Gone Haywire
Anna Delvey embodies the 21st century American dream gone haywire in a “fake it 'till you make it” world that treats image as reality. So what lessons can we take from her playbook on how to hustle?
14 min
435
That Girl: Turning Self-Care Into a Job
While "That Girl's" lifestyle promises shortcuts toward fulfillment, does it actually create more work, and raise expectations for women yet higher?
20 min
436
The Imperfect Mom Onscreen - Why She Deserves t...
The Imperfect Mother is so jarring because she doesn’t fall in line with our culture’s assumption that a good mother must be selfless. The controversy around this figure reveals we haven’t come as far as we might think.
22 min
437
Bennifer - The One Who Didn't Get Away
Why are we even more enthralled by Bennifer’s second go-round than their first one? In part, it’s because we’re fascinated by the concept of “the one that got away.”
22 min
438
Pam & Tommy - Our Obsession with the Barbie-Bad...
The upcoming release of the Pam & Tommy miniseries coincides perfectly with the resurgence of interest in Barbie-&-the-Bad-Boy pairings to reexamine the couple’s cultural significance, as well as the most infamous part of their story - the leaked sex tape.
18 min
439
How I Met Your Father - Why We Crave Comfort TV
How I Met Your Father understands that today, the totally uncynical rom-com sitcom is a rare, if not extinct, relic – but that struggle to keep believing in love is still real if not far more dire.
21 min
440
The Matrix Ending Explained: A Guide to Freeing...
The Matrix is far more than a sci-fi action classic - it's a practical guide to freeing your mind and fulfilling your potential, to becoming "The One" yourself. The Wachowskis ground-breaker - now celebrating its 20th anniversary - shows us how to follow the 7 steps of Neo's journey to Enlightenment.
26 min
441
And Just Like That - What It Got Wrong (And Wha...
While And Just Like That faltered early on, it ultimately got its groove back, and left us with the classic Sex And The City takeaway that it’s the ever-evolving relationship you have with yourself that matters most.
22 min
442
Pam Beesly - The Perils of Being Normal
Pam Beesly is the "normal" one in The Office. Is that actually a good thing? Here's our take and find out how being normal is both the strength and the downfall of our favorite "Girl Next Desk."
22 min
443
How I Met Your Mother - The Mother Deserved Better
How I Met Your Mother's Tracy was the perfect love interest viewers spent 9 seasons waiting for... and then the finale undercut the romantic ideals at the show's core and underestimated it's audience by treating the Mother as disposable.
22 min
444
The Little Mermaid as a Queer Allegory, Explained
Is The Little Mermaid actually a story about realizing you’re queer and the world you’ve grown up in can’t accept you as you really are? If it is - it suggests that there's a lot of pain, sacrifice, and compromise ahead of anyone who wishes to come out.
17 min
445
The Smart Girl Trope, Explained
She's a Smart Girl, and it's never been cooler to be one, to be proud of what you know and what you can achieve. So how has this archetype evolved, and what does it really mean to be a smart girl today?
17 min
446
The Rise of The “Cool Mom” 2.0 Today
The unexpected life of the new Cool Mom both onscreen & in real life is defined by enlightened parenting philosophies, mom hacks, & venting sessions over wine with other Cool Moms. But can she really exist?
22 min
447
Clueless - Cher, Master of the Argument
How do you win an argument? Learn from the master of rhetoric: Cher Horowitz, star of Clueless. The Alicia Silverstone character may be remembered as a 90s fashion icon, but she's in fact most impressive for the debate skills she puts to use in all aspects of her life. She teaches us a few things about how to make our case so that people will listen.
21 min
448
The "Disabled Villain" Trope Is Medieval - Why ...
While strides are being made around disability representation on screen, disabled characters are still often reduced to monsters, bridges to the supernatural, or bad guys.
19 min
449
Sex and the City - Why Carrie Should Have Chose...
In Sex and The City, growing old with Aidan would have made more sense for Carrie if marriage was what she truly wanted – but secretly, it seems like she really prefers to be alone.
21 min
450
The "Dyed Hair" Girl - How She Stopped Being Edgy
Dyed hair was once a visual shorthand to convey a character’s “edginess” or "alternativeness.” It even came across to some as scary, unsettling, a threatening challenge to the social status quo. Today, though, it's almost the norm. So what changed?
18 min