C (3:53)

It's interesting that you bring up the idea that this topic, specifically the challenges that young boys, young men are falling into, that is persistent. You're saying it has existed well after the pandemic, well after previous presidential elections, in terms of that coverage in stories we see on streamers, in the media, less about the news, but more just like the stories that we consume. Do you feel like this is kind of new territory that the show is breaking through and covering, or do you feel like it's been covered before, the show's doing it differently? What do you make of that?

B (4:26)

Well, you know, this particular modern feel of it. Right. The sort of coming of age within the age of the Internet, in its very specific form right now, which is full of darkness and full of unknowability in an age of we don't quite know when young kids log on to YouTube, what exactly they're watching. That's the specific unknowability of the way we live online right now. It feels like we're crossing in the threshold, and it feels like this show is a very good first wave of really grappling with that question, but the sort of larger question of what's up with the boys, what's up with men? It's been an issue that's been reflected and grappled with in pop culture for as long as there is the sort of archetype of the Bully, the archetype of the sort of violent young man. You can think about it all the way back to Taxi Driver, right? Robert De Niro's sort of alienated young man who, who eventually gets into his head that he should assassinate a political figure. But there's a real relationship that you can draw across history between these two kind of archetypes. But right now, this feeling, this feeling of dislocation because of the Internet, this is new. And that's kind of what adolescents, I feel, is pretty good at disturbing and grappling with and feels pretty sort of novel and fresh for doing so.

C (5:43)

Is that what motivated you to write about it?

B (5:46)

Uh, what, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm. What motivated me was the phenomena of it. Like, I, I, I am the Slack.

C (5:52)

Channel that blew up on Monday morning.

B (5:54)

That's, you know, I, look, this is a job, you know, like, I, I know what my job is, but I had been thinking a lot about, you know, the prospect of, like, what does it mean to raise a boy? You know, my partner and I are in the very early stages of our sort of journey towards parenthood. And one of the things that I'm reflecting on is that if we do end up having a boy, like, I do not feel particularly equipped or ready for the journey. Right. Especially now more than ever. And as things change so quickly.

C (6:20)

Yeah, you've got a good text here. It says, as A mother of 12 year olds, I'm too scared to watch it with a crying emoji there. We've also got a couple callers on the line. Let's go to Maggie in Irvington, New York. Hey, Maggie. Welcome to the show.

D (6:36)

Hi. Thank you. Well, I think adolescence is by far the best television I've seen in years. And there are many reasons why. First of all, the complexity of emotions is so well portrayed by every actor in the program. And it's. I can't get over it. I'm gonna watch it again. The third episode. I'm a, I'm a psychologist. The third episode is breathtaking. And, you know, the, the feelings for the boy. I forget his name. James. No, I can't remember. But Jamie, Jimmy.

C (7:27)

Jamie.

D (7:28)

I can't. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He is gonna be. His acting was also breathtaking. The father who created the show, the emotions of every single actor. There are few, few actors in it. And you really get a sense of what they're going through deep, in a very deep way, and how they create that, how they created that, I don't know, but I, you know, it's interesting. I've told a few friends about they felt the same way I did, but I haven't told some friends about it.

C (8:09)

Maggie, thank you so much for that call. We really appreciate it, especially the fact that you're a psychologist in saying that you found these performances so moving. And I think this is a great moment, Nick, to bring up some of the performances and hear your take on it. The show stars actor Stephen Graham, who worked with Philip on Boiling Point and helped write the series alongside Ashley Walters as a detective and Aaron Doherty as a child psychologist. Tell us among those, because I want to get to the actor who plays Jamie as well later. But among those that I just mentioned, tell us what stood out to you about those performances.

B (8:44)

They were all uniformly excellent and there is sort of a social realism to the project that each individual actor kind of really roots into what feels like a very much of a lived experience. It's these feel like actual sort of human beings who, who go in and out between the sort of in between moments of day to day life and these sort of big traumatic things that's happening on them. And it continues to impact them on a day to day basis. One thing that we should talk about, and I don't think we've talked about yet, is the sort of formal conceit of the show. Each episode is shot in one take or assimilate in one. My understanding is that they did shoot in one take. Maybe they cheated here and there, I'm not quite sure yet.

C (9:24)

I was trying to figure that out while I was watching this and I could not see any other splicing as.

B (9:28)

A of part of it.

C (9:28)

It's very impressive.

B (9:29)

There is a chase sequence in the second episode where Ed. It feels like the camera moves out through the window with the characters and it was quite fascinating. But there's a purpose to the Oner, which is what that sort of one shot take is called. And a colleague of mine, Fran, wrote a really good piece about it over at Vulture. Please read it. But with the Oner, what you're simulating here is the experience of the ins and outs of how you would actually process an experience like this. So in the first episode you follow Jamie Miller, the 13 year old boy.

C (10:00)

As he's processed by the system.

B (10:02)

And when you're stuck in the claustrophobia of that experience, you go in and out of a certain humanity in that process. And in that third episode which the caller talked about it is, I believe, this sort of major set piece. And it's the make or break moment for the series where Jamie Miller, played by a young Owen Cooper, I believe this is his first project. I'm not terribly sure, but. But he is quite a revelation in this show. He's visited by a therapist played by Aaron Dougherty. And it plays out like an extended theater sequence because for the most part you're with these two characters and the therapist is there to essentially evaluate Jamie for his upcoming trial. And there is this multiple layers of balance here. Owen Cooper plays Jamie Miller as a 13 year old boy who's gravitating, oscillating between aggression and being a 13 year old kid. And he is also now several months by that point into being processed into the juvenile system. And so he is confused. He's developmentally sort of, I guess worsened by his experience there. And he's exhibiting these behaviors as a 13 year old of all these sort of toxic masculine traits that we come to fear from the archetype of boys and young men who get radicalized by intel culture and Red Bull culture in the manosphere. Aggression, sexual aggress. And again, he's a 13 year old boy expressing these things to a much older adult female. And there's this dynamic within adolescent male sexuality that the show really steers into and that Owen Cooper's performance really kind of lands. It's a remarkable episode. There are aspects of it that's worth critiquing, but from a sheer performance standpoint.

C (11:45)

He really nailed it.

B (11:46)

Really nailed it. There's nothing quite like that episode really. Wow.

A (11:49)

You're listening to Kushinavadhar's conversation with Vulture critic Nick Kwa about the 13 time Emmy nominated drama series Adolescence. We'll have more after a quick break. This is all of it. This is all of it. I'm Alison Stewart. Today we're talking about some of the best television of the year with shows that have been nominated for the 2025 Emmy Awards. They're happening on September 14th. Before the break, we're listening to a conversation with vulture critic Nick Kwa about the drama series Adolescence, which follows a 13 year old boy in the wake of his violent and fatal attack on a classmate. The conversation was guest hosted by Kusha Navidar. And although Koosha took some calls, this is an encore presentation so we won't be able to take your calls today. And with that, let's get back into the conversation.

C (12:55)

Nick, I'm going to go through some texts that we got during the break. Here's one that says I finished it last night and was shaking as I felt the parents Pain in my core. I loved the show and thought it was brilliantly done, acted and how the narrative was more about the why behind it, rather than just another whodunit. That's from Juliana and Nick. You were mentioning that kind of how. This is a show that talks about archetypes that we've talked about for a long time, but in a new, modern way. Here's another text. As a parent, I know that I can only control what is in my grasp. I can monitor what my children watch and who they follow. However, once they walk out the door, I can no longer control who they talk to and what they discuss with their peers. If they have parents that have been sucked into the manosphere, I can't stop them from sharing those ideas with my children. Which what's a parent to do? It's a big question. I think that last question, what's a parent to do? Is something that the show tries to look at through the experiences of those parents. I'd love to play a clip from the show, Nick, and get your take on it. So the series opens with a casual conversation between detectives, Luke Boscombe, who's played by Ashley Walters, Amisha Frank, who's played by Faye Marseille. And they're about to raid a North England home. The police tell the entire family, the mom, the dad, the sister to get on the ground while 13 year old Jamie wets himself. And he's presumably afraid and shocked by the police entering his home in such a manner. Let's listen to a clip. This is Jamie in the police van on his way to the police station after the raid.

B (14:24)

I haven't done anything. I haven't.

E (14:25)

Hey, hey, hey.

F (14:27)

We'll get into that conversation when we get to the station, okay? This is not the place to be speaking about anything like that, all right? Save all of this for when we get there. Don't say another word. I'm going to suggest something. When asked, you ask for a solicitor, okay? Now, you can speak to your parents about it when you get to the station. It won't make you seem more guilty. Just for your best interests, all right? Jamie, this is Derek. Derek will be your appropriate adult for the purpose of this arrest, all right? Hey, Jamie, I'm from Doncaster Social Services. All right? Once you get there, the custody sergeant is going to ask you whether you want to keep Derek on or whether you want someone else or you can even have one of your parents. It'll just be for your searches, Bloods, anytime you're talking to your solicitor, that sort of thing. Okay? We Won't prejudice your case. Whatever you decide, mate.

C (15:23)

All right, so it's quite intense. Nick, what do the first 10 minutes of the series reveal about the detectives and the crime that's been committed?

B (15:32)

It reveals no spoilers, right?

C (15:36)

Yeah, no spoilers.

B (15:38)

I don't know. First of all, I don't think this is a show that functions on spoilers.

F (15:41)

Right.

B (15:43)

I'll just say it because I think knowing this is actually really important going into the show and how to process the show. By the end of the first episode, it's unambiguous, like the kid did it. And that's why the show is less a whodunit and it's not even a why done it kind of situation. And in that opening sequence in that first episode, it kind of sets up sort of the genre trick of the show. You go into it. You've seen many, many true crime E crime drama shows before, countless of them. We kind of have grown up in a TV culture that has so many of these tropes and you go in and expecting something about maybe a twist, maybe something about this kid was wrongfully accused. That's a larger sort of system at play. And by the end of the first episode, nope, there is security footage. And now what the show really revealed its hand to be, which is just asking the sort of larger questions, then prompting this conversation about how we feel about it and how these sort of characters feel about it, how these representations of presumably real experiences feel about it. And in that opening episode, it is, it is. It's. It kind of establishes the thesis that this is a visceral watch and you're going to be in for quite a ride.

C (16:56)

How about on the detective side? What is it? What do you think? Those first few minutes, I mean, we hear in this clip we have the detective kind of flipping, trying to play. I don't know if it's him playing like good cop or being very humane with this child right now. What's your take on it?

B (17:09)

Well, it's established the fact that, you know, this is a juvenile case, that he is 13 years old and a 13 year old who is accused and then later proven to murdered a classmate. And there is a real delicate line that the justice system and that specific scene that the detective has to walk, this is still a kid, he wet himself, he is crying, he's afraid. But we come to also learn that he did this. And the delicate sensitivity of that situation kind of pulls the show into a very specific place. When we kind of think about perpetrators of violence and perpetrators of Murder. And that's what I believe. That sort of first 10 to 20 minutes and then all through the processing that Jamie experiences in the police station, it kind of always reminds me that as a kid, like he goes through this, he goes through the system and you know, he's eventually given police supply cornflakes to eat. And when his father, played by Steven Graham comes in, you know, he's still young enough for his dad to be like, eat your cornies. Like, you need to keep up your strength. And it kind of consistently reminds you that this is still a kid ultimately, but a kid who's done the greatest, worst possible thing possible.

C (18:20)

Let's go to K from the Bronx. K, sounds like you just started watching the series. What's your take?

E (18:27)

Yeah, I just actually started watching it this morning, like three in the morning. I couldn't sleep and I scrolling and I'm like, oh yeah, I keep hearing this, this movie. So I started watching and my first impressions was, I don't know if you guys remember this thing back in the days called Scared Straight where you know, kids, I guess go to the prisons and they realize, oh my gosh, I never want to get arrested, I never want to go to jail. Well, that's the type of impression I was getting for the first because I only watched it for the first half an hour, hour and they bang your door down. He takes him out, the guy, the kid is just terrified. And I think that this is a great show for every adolescent to watch. Just for that sheer understanding of what you go through, you know, that would scare any kid to be like, yo, I never want to get arrested. I never want to do anything bad.

C (19:20)

Yeah, it felt really lifelike to you then, right? Yeah. So, Kay, thanks so much for that call. We really appreciate it. Happy watching. I mean, happy, I don't know if that's the right word, but hope you keep watching it, finding something valuable out of it. Let's go to Carol in Leto Beach, New York. Hey Carol, welcome to the show.

D (19:37)

Hi, thanks for having me on and thanks for having the show again. I watched, I listened to the one last week and they said if it was anything, it's not relaxing and boy, was that true. It's just incredible. I watched it with my 15 year old granddaughter because we like mysteries and we were riveted and we still have the fourth episode to watch together when we get together. But I did want to say about the directing, it was, it was really intense. I mean that scene with this strip search, the father's face, it was uncomfortably long but necessary in that scene and you just got such a sense of a depth to these characters. It was just amazing, including the touches on humanity, of the kindness of some of the officers that they showed. That touched me too.

C (20:32)

Carol, thank you so much for that call and for that insight. Here's a good text, Nick, that I I want to read to you and then I want to go talk about the Manosphere a little bit. As the mother of two adult sons, honestly, I think we had it easier as a generation because of Sesame Street, Zoom and Children's Television Workshop in the US My second son was exposed to video games and thankfully we were able to balance reward, academic rigor and access. I was very lucky. Neither of my son's fathers were exposed to toxic male figures whom in turn did not negatively affect our boys. My perspective now is an adult woman of men and of sons. After seeing Adolescen, essence is to watch carefully and with great sensitivity, as was the archetype of the patient, good, nurturing mother figure in the series whom, beyond her capabilities and her own needs, held her husband, son and daughter together despite the past and present history of both father and son. It was heartbreakingly and breathtakingly acted. Thank you so much for that thoughtful text. And Nick, I want to touch on that a little bit by talking about the Manosphere, because Adolescents acknowledges this much larger discourse around manhood that's happening online. It references figures like the controversial influencer Andrew Tate, who is facing charges in Romania including human trafficking and sexual intercourse with a minor. Can you explain the Manosphere a little bit, what this movement is and their ideas for listeners who are unfamiliar?

B (21:53)

Well, it's less a movement and more sort of a descriptor for a very it's a kind of show usually or kind of platform usually spearheaded or mounted by a very specific kind of toxic male. Jordan Peterson is another person that you could associate with the manosphere. Joe Rogan has often been associated with the manosphere. The podcaster Jordan Peterson is sort of this Canadian, somewhat academic who is now kind of writing these very, I feel, reprehensible sort of discourses on what masculinity looks like it should be. And they tend to be pretty archaic in many senses. But it's usually this. It largely corrals around this sort of response, reactionary response to what has largely been sort of derided as like woke culture today. They often believe that boys and men are being feminized. They often believe that, you know, brute, traditional masculinity, crude masculinity is a thing that should be prized seem to be really extreme responses to sort of the like modern, like shapes of what we've been talking about as a culture over the past couple years. And of course it has manifested in a generation of young boys and men who often feel quite angry, often are responding to the dislocation of what they feel to be the dislocation of society these days in very extreme ways. And they often exist and are online. And young men and boys are accessing these ideas and interfacing with these platforms not just when they walk out the door away from the purview of the parents, but when they log onto the computers and when they pull up their phones. It is, I think, one of the bigger talking points for any parents these days of how to deal not just with dear boys who are being exposed to these platforms, but also how to protect everybody else around them.

C (23:54)

Yeah, I'm really glad you brought that point up because I'm looking at the clock. We got a wrap here, but I want to ask you a question about that and I want to lead in with some texts that we got, which I find very interesting. Here's one text that says, in this tragic event, this young white boy is going through. If he were black or Latino, the emotional feeling would be totally different. That's from Arnold. Arnold, thank you so much for that text. We also have the pain of the parents in the final episode realizing how they have passed on their generational trauma really gutted me. I'm a 39 year old woman who has gone through a decade of therapy to unlearn that trauma in my own life. And I want to protect my parents from the pain of the knowledge of their faults like Jamie's parents experience. So, Nick, final wrap up question here for you a little briefly. What do you think is the takeaway for parents, especially to young boys that are watching this show?

B (24:45)

The thing of that's. It's kind of embedded in the headline of my piece here that adolescence doesn't quite have the answer because that's not the thing that's going for. The. The thing is going for us to start this conversation. The. The thing it's going for is to tackle this question head on as a public, as a collective, in a way that really sort of raises the question of we should be talking more in terms of policy, we should be talking more in terms of how we sort of model parenthood. Because ultimately the show, even in that fourth episode, the parents are really torn about whether they could have done anything differently, how they felt their kid and ultimately what the show seems to evoke, and maybe there are multiple readings of this, but this is what I took away from it, is that to some extent, none of this is in your control. But you try your best anyway. You try your best anyway because even without the online radicalization, even without the Internet, it's a miracle that anybody survives childhood, let alone life. But you try your best as parents to create the best possible probabilities.

A (25:46)

That was Kushinavadhar's conversation with Vulture critic Nick Kwa about the drama series Adolescence, which is nominated in 13 categories at this year's Emmy Awards. Up next, a conversation about Severance, which made its second season return. This year, the sci fi drama show has earned 27 Emmy nominations, placing it at the head of the pack. We'll hear about it from its stars Tramell Tillman and Britt Lauer. That's next.

G (26:21)

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