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.
451
Don't Look Up's Real Message and Ending, Explained
Don’t Look Up is an eerily accurate echo of how we continue to mine our world for non-renewable resources instead of investing in green energy, even though burning fossil fuels is explicitly causing our downfall.
20 min
452
The Pretty Girl Trope - The Pitfalls of "Pretty...
We’re told to worship (or try to be) the "Pretty Girl," but that pursuit can erode a deeper sense of self. When people see you as the "Pretty Girl" type, they’re really seeing preconceived, culturally entrenched notions of what your beauty represents.
21 min
453
Gossip Girl - Why Chuck and Blair Deserve Each ...
Much of Gossip Girl focuses on Chuck Bass and Blair Waldorf’s endlessly destructive love affair. Why are viewers so compelled by their toxic love, and why does it make so much sense that they end up together?
18 min
454
Tangled - How Girls Get Gaslit
In Tangled, Rapunzel’s mental imprisonment and her desire to take the agency to see the world herself speak generally to how young girls need to free themselves from damaging longstanding cultural myths.
21 min
455
Friends’ Emily - The Tragedy of the Runner-Up L...
Friends' Emily is the Runner-Up Love Interest, a character who serves as a transition to the show's one true pairing. Let's take a look at what we can learn from her side of this story.
20 min
456
The Pandemic Onscreen - How Film & TV Does Covid
How much do we want to see the Covid-19 pandemic reflected in our Films and TV shows – should stories be helping us process, or just letting us enjoy a much-needed escape?
22 min
457
How the Madonna-Whore Complex Still Reigns
Many of the labels we still put on women - good girls and bad girls, wifeys and femme fatales – come from Madonna-Whore dichotomy. Here’s how to spot these archetypes on-screen.
21 min
458
Why Ted is the Villain of How I Met Your Mother
Is How I Met Your Mother’s Ted Mosby the good guy he claims to be? Or is his romantic journey more self indulgent and sometimes sinister than he claims it is? What if he's the bad guy?
23 min
459
Bridesmaids: Why Helen Has No Friends
Helen is that woman you hate -- but also want to be. What's the problem of the Bridesmaids antagonist? Why is she incapable of getting what she really wants: friends?
20 min
460
The Matrix 4, Ending Explained - "Fixing" Trini...
The Matrix Resurrections is an interrogation of the original film and its legacy, asking whether anything has improved as a result of the Matrix’s message to free your mind, or if the mind-control in our actual world has just gotten worse.
22 min
461
The Pick Me Girl - Reflecting Our Insecurities ...
Today's "Pick Me Girl" often manifests like the traditional "Good Girl Wifey” who judges single women. She can can even be an antifeminist who disavows women’s rights. But she is truly defined by her lack of time or respect for other women.
21 min
462
Janet Jackson, Taking Back Control
Janet Jackson's early music tackled the body insecurities she’d dealt with throughout her early life as a child performer. Now, she's taking back control once again with her own 2022 documentary. So let's celebrate her legacy of centering female bodily agency in pop.
15 min
463
The Girlboss Villain Is Everywhere - It's Enoug...
The Girlboss Villain is everywhere -- but are these stories about toxic female bosses incisive capitalist critiques, or are they actually kind of misogynistic, suggesting their desire for power is unwomanly or unnatural?
21 min
464
Grey’s Anatomy - Why McDreamy Isn’t That Dreamy
The less dreamy traits of Grey's Anatomy's Derek Shepherd have been the topic of discussion since the seemingly charming doctor was written out of the show. So what can we learn from his lack of growth?
17 min
465
Why We Need Classic Movies (And How To Save Them)
Classic cinema is rapidly declining in popularity, largely because streaming services prioritize only the newest content. As a result, viewers are actually losing the ability to engage with the language of older movies. So how can we save dying classic cinema?
23 min
466
How Phoebe and Mike Redefined "Settling"
Friends’ Phoebe Buffay is quirky, unique, and has lived an interesting life, while by comparison, Mike Hannigan is... kind of bland. So did Phoebe actually settle or did they find the key to happy ever after?
17 min
467
Succession Season 3 - The Secret to Winning ‘th...
The Season 3 finale of Succession leaves us with some key takeaways about the nature of power: so much of it stems from others believing you have it, and that it’s not just about winning the stated game, but setting the terms of winning -- making up the rules and defining what power itself even is.
23 min
468
And Just Like That - How Sex and the City Changed
In the premiere episodes of revival series And Just Like That, Sex and the City catches up with its characters to show us what it's like for women to grow older, though it remains to be seen if ladies can resurrect the seemingly joyless, sexless city that was once theirs.
14 min
469
The Office - In Defense of Toby
Since The Office ended, theories on Toby have proliferated, with many even finding a bunch of clues that he’s the true Scranton Strangler. But Toby doesn’t deserve the hate, so why is he such a punching bag?
19 min
470
Legally Blonde and the History of the “Dumb Blo...
A key mission of Legally Blonde's Elle Woods is fighting the bias against blondes -- in particular, the "dumb blonde" stereotype. But where does this stereotype come from? Let's all dig into the roots of the assumptions about blondes and find out what's really behind them.
17 min
471
Forrest Gump: The Myth of America
The story of Forrest Gump is a myth of 20th-century America. Like any good myth, it filters historical facts through allegory, creating a symbolic journey that helps us make sense of a complicated era. So, what does Forrest Gump has to say about us -- and our national identity?
24 min
472
The Good Girl Trope - Why Women Can't Win
The good girl of film and tv plays by the rules. She's nice, polite, and probably a straight A student. Yet this perfect-seeming facade can mask her darker struggles, even from herself.
19 min
473
Pete Davidson, Heartthrob - Why the “Hotness Ga...
Media coverage of Pete Davidson suggests a society that’s still as obsessed as ever with conventional female beauty and a “hotness gap” between the men and women in celebrity couples. But Pete's attractiveness is actually pretty obvious, and the coverage of his relationships needs to calm down and catch up with the times.
14 min
474
The "Mean Girl" Trio - Three Types of Bad Femal...
Variations on the terrible trio, like The Plastics and the Unholy Trinity, have long dominated cinema’s and TV’s fictional high school hallways. So what is it about this rule of three and these particular recurring character types that add up to the perfect recipe for high-school popularity and oppression?
16 min
475
The Dragon Lady Trope - Reclaiming Her Power
East Asian women onscreen have long been haunted by the figure of the Dragon Lady: a violent seductress who will do anything to achieve her goals. At the same time, the dragon lady is unapologetically driven, ultra-assertive, and has agency.
21 min