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
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
452
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
453
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
454
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
455
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
456
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
457
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
458
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
459
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
460
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
461
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
462
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
463
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
464
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
465
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
466
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
467
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
468
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
469
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
470
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
471
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
472
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
473
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
474
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
475
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