Matt Koplik (0:00)

Hi, I'm Ariana Grande. Hi, I'm Cynthia Erivo and you're listening to the Broadway Podcast Network. Visit BPM FM to discover more. Nordstrom brings you the season's most wanted brands, Skims, Mango Free People and Princess polly, all under $100. From trending Sneakers to beauty must haves, we've curated the styles you'll wear on repeat this spring. Free shipping, free returns and in store pickup it easier than ever. Shop now in stores and@nordstrom.com McDonald's meets the Minecraft universe with one of six collectibles and your choice of a Big Mac or 10 piece McNuggets with spicy nether Flame sauce. Now available with a Minecraft movie meal. I participate in McDonald's for a limited time, a Minecraft movie only in theaters Did I just hear an alarm start ringing? Did I see sirens go flying past? Though I don't know what tomorrow's ringing Got a singular impression Things are moving too fast I'm gliding smooth. Hello all you theater lovers both out and proud and on the DL. And welcome back to Broadway Breakdown, a podcast discussing the history und legacy of American theater's most exclusive address, Broadway. I'm your host, Matt Koplik, the least famous and most opinionated of all the Broadway podcast hosts. And today is a double whammy review day. Woo. We saw a whole bunch of shows this week and due to embargoes and opening nights, the order in which we review them is a little shuffled. But today we are doing a double whammy reviewing both Boop and the last five years. Now you might be wondering why you're hearing like a little rattling with my voice. Well, last time we recorded we had just blown out our voice due to our birthday festivities and also got a little bit sick. So we've been downing these Cold Ease lozenges that have helped perpetuate the healing of our cold and getting our voice back and lubricating the voce. So unfortunately, I do have to suck on this Cold Ease lozenge while we record this. It's not technically eating, so my misophonia listeners, I'm sorry, but it's. I'm not. I'm not falling back into bad habits before we get into reviews. We're going to start with Boop first actually, and then go on to the last five years. Before we do any of that, we do have another review to read. So I want to give that person their flowers now and then we will get into boop. Cue the light and the Piazza Overture, please. 5 stars all you need to know. In short, this podcast has such great balance. Thoughtfulness and passion, humor and respect, immense theater knowledge and humility, openness, a genuine voice to rely on. I may not always agree, but I always listen. I like that. In long. Sorry, that caught me off guard. In long Matt is a charismatic, thoughtful, eloquent, earnest host who approaches everything on this show with good faith, love and respect. Thank. Thank you. Because of this, he is able to be honest, funny. Funny is subjective. I don't think many people find me funny, informative and occasionally a little sassy or a lot sassy. You will laugh, you will cheer in agreement. You will disagree with vigor. You will love every minute of it. Ultimately, when I listen to the show, more often than not, I am reminded why I love this art form. Thank you very much. Jake Zed that's a lovely, lovely review. I don't know why I find the need to respond as I'm reading it, maybe to. I don't know. I think compliments, no matter what format, even when I'm asking people to write reviews, always make me a tad uncomfy. So I'm always like, I'm gonna. I'm gonna say things, Cecily to undercut the positives that people have said. But thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you guys always for writing those. All right, let's get down to business because many people say that I talk too much. Boop. We went to one of the last press previews for Boop, the musical starring Jasmine, Amy Rogers, faith Prince, Stephen DeRosa, Eric Bergen, directed and choreographed by Jerry Mitchell, with a book by Bob Martin, a score by Susan Birkenhead and David Foster. Somebody else is who am I missing from the oh, Ainsley Melham, who plays the hunky romantic lead, as well as Anastasia McCleskey, Angelica Hale, Philip Huber and Abi Merylies. I had heard quite positive things about Boop. When it was out of town in Chicago. Everyone said that Jasmin Amy Rogers was amazing. She was a star, and they really just needed to kind of focus more on her and cut down a lot of miscellaneous stuff. And they spent a long time in between Chicago and Broadway. I got a little nervous because they announced Boop and Smash in previews at the exact same time. And Boop and Smash, I think, opened within like four days of each other. The Smash review will be coming out a couple of days after this one. And I was like, I'm not sure if Bob Martin has it in him to go back and forth and make major changes to either show during this time. That's a lot to ask of one man. And I'm not entirely sure what all the major changes were from Chicago to New York, but when I was at the show, my friend and I were there, and there were two gentlemen who sat behind us, and they had seen Boop in Chicago. And we asked them, oh, any major changes you can notice? And they mostly just said it felt shorter, but that didn't seem to them any major overhauls. That could just be faulty memory. Maybe someone involved in the production can counter that and say, actually, this song is new and this scene is new, so that all might be possible. But to them, they said that it felt much like the show in Chicago, just tighter, which is, you know, tighter is always good, especially in a musical comedy. Now, I will be giving spoilers on Boop just because one of the things I need to do with this review is I have feedback that is very specific. And in order to correctly give it, I have to actually address the plot of Boop and things that happen in the show, which are two separate things, by the way. The story is very separate from events that happen, which is a thing that we need to just distinguish right now. So in order to give that kind of feedback, I have to be specific. So if you don't want to hear any spoilers about the story of Boop or anything like that, I'm sorry, turn it off. Now you can flash forward to the last five years review. I'm sure many of you want to listen to that one anyway. So Boop Boop is based off of the IP of the cartoon Betty Boop, which was a very prominent cartoon of the 30s and 40s. You are unfamiliar with her. You can always see her with her cameo in who Framed Roger Rabbit? A amazing movie, one of my favorite movies of all time. And honestly, like a brilliant screenplay, she has a little cameo in it. And the joke is that once toons went to color, she lost work. So she's waiting tables at this cartoon slash human bar, and she does her little boop, boop, be doop, boop. And it's fun, it's cute. You know, Betty Boop is a cartoon that was always kind of sexualized while still being innocent. And one of the major things was that men were always chasing her. The musical opens in the cartoon world of Betty Boop. It's in black and white, and we're watching basically a run of Betty Boop shorts of all different scenarios that she has. This is a cute, clever concept that they do with jazz and Amy Rogers sort of standing behind. I guess you call it like a cardboard cutout. You know, when you go to fairs or you go do, like, a day trip to, like, an orchard or field, and they have those, like, wooden cutouts where you put your head in the hole and stuff like that. It's that. But the head is cut off. So it's just Rogers head on top of this cutout. And then for each new scenario, they sort of flip the top of the cutout, and it flips, folds over, and there's a new outfit for her, and she's standing behind it the entire time, a little kind of rigid. It's very much giving Diana in her wedding dress during the. I will. I will. It's very much that. So she's. She's kind of rigid in that stance while things are happening around her. But it's clever. It's, you know, it's cute enough. And the song is perfectly fine. The song ends, and Betty Boop is interviewed by the press. The press of her world, I should say, because she is the biggest star in her. In her world. Everything revolves around her. And the public wants to know, who is Betty Boop really? And she can't answer. She doesn't know. And she goes home to Grandpa, played by Steven Derosa, and her dog, I think Pudgy is his name. Super adorable. I got Pudge, maybe. I think it's just Pudge I need to. Yeah, Pudgy. Her dog Pudgy, who is very adorable. Sarah got me a. A plushie, Pudgy down in the merchandise store. And so she tells Grandpa, you know, she doesn't really know who she is. She wants to sort of get away from everything and just sort of be anonymous for a little bit. She wants to take a break from being Betty Boop because she just feels like everything is crowding in around her, and she. She's basically has lost her sense of self. And Grandpa informs her that he's made a device that can take her to a different dimension, to essentially our world. But he advises against it because he went once upon a time, many years ago, and came back with a cold that he's never been able to shake. But Betty Boop decides to go anyway. And when she's in the real world, she shows up at Comic Con, where she's like, oh, my God, look at all the colors, because she's only seen black and white, so they have a whole song about colors. She runs into a girl who is obsessed with Betty Boop. It's, like, all over her Clothes. And Betty Boop wants to be incognito, so she claims she's somebody else. She meets this teenage girl's older brother who really loves jazz. They take her to their apartment. The 17 year old girl, I think she's 17. Her parents have been. Have been dead for a while. I think like five or six years. She says she's been in therapy for five years. She and her brother live with their aunt who is working on a mayoral campaign for Eric Bergen, who is clearly corrupt. And once they're at the apartment, we learn about the brother's love of jazz, the Much. Sorry. The much older brother's love of jazz. The. And then Betty Boop confides in the teenage girl. I'm actually Betty Boop. The girl's like, I knew it. I knew it. You seemed like Betty Boop. And the girl's like, I want to be a designer, but I don't know if I'm good enough. And I want to apply to this program, but I don't know if I'm good enough. And then Betty goes to Times Square with them. Betty goes with the brother to a jazz club where she sings at the end of Act 1. And then Act 2 begins and we find out that apparently that was blowing her cover. And now all of New York knows that Betty Boop is in New York. And all of New York is going bananas for the fact that Betty Boop is now in New York while this all happens. We also have cut back to Betty Boop's cartoon world where her producer, director and his assistant are going insane because their star is missing. They need her. They. They want her back. She is the sunshine. They don't know what to do without her. There's a very good joke about how the director's like, I don't know what I did or didn't do, but I apologize for it. So he has his assistant write a letter being like, dear Betty Boop, like, I'm sorry for blank. I will never blank again. Please accept my blank. You know, all these things. And I don't remember if he did it, if he made this joke too. But they implied that he also would apologize for anything that he did not do. So I actually thought that would be funny if the director is like, I apologize for blanking. I will never blank again. Blah, blah, blah. Letter two. Ms. Boop, I am so sorry that I did not blank. And I promise in the future that I will blank if you ask me to. I think that would be funny. Anyway, they inform grandpa that Betty Boop has gone missing. They don't know where she is, and they need her because their whole world is about her. So grandpa knows she's gone off to New York. He brings Pudgy with him. And they go to New York, where he runs into Faith Prince, the woman he met 40 years ago when he first went to the real world. And they fell in love. And then when they separated, they each got this cold that they couldn't shake. She's now working at NASA or something. And everyone's like, oh, if you have a cold, it's because you're in love and you need to stay in love. And so they're like, well, that's nice. And that's the end of their Act 1. And then Act 2, they go and they find Betty, like, halfway through act two, and they're like, oh, by the way, Betty, Faith Prince and I got married. And she's like, well, that's nice. And Eric Bergen's like, oh, Betty Boop is super popular. I'm gonna have her stand beside me on the campaign trail, and everyone will see her like her, and they'll want to vote for me. And he rises in the polls, but he doesn't ever let Betty speak. He has her in his office, where he reveals that he's corrupt. He chases her on the desk for about five seconds. She knocks him on the head, Tells teenage girl and Jazz boy's aunt, you should be running for mayor. She says, okay, I will. She runs, she wins. And. Oh. And with her cover blown, Jazz boy is upset for, like, two minutes that she lied to him about who she really was. But they still fall in love anyway. And as all that happens, Steven DeRosa, as Grandpa and Faith Prince show up. And he's like, our world is falling apart. You have to go back. And she's like, okay, I'm sad to leave, but I know that I have to. And Faith Prince is like, I'm coming with you. I've always wanted to be a cartoon. And she's like, okay. And Grandpa's like, I don't know if that'll work. We've never had a human come to our world, but, like, let's risk it. And so she says her goodbyes. They go. She sings a big 11 o'clock number about, like, I've got something to shout about. They're in their world. She's like, I will not. I will be making new cartoons now. You won't be chasing me around the desk anymore. I want to make stories that know people in other worlds will see. And Find inspiration from. And then five seconds later, jazz boy shows up and he's like, it's okay. My aunt is mayor and she's kicking ass. And my teenage sister, you know, she's in that design program now and she's helping out my aunt and she's going to be mayor someday. And, like, they're doing great. And I'm here because I want to be with you because I love you. And she's like, great. End of show. Now I'm going to start with the things about Boop. That work. Believe the hype about Jasmine Amy Rogers. She is genuinely a star. Now, I do not use that word lightly because I have felt for a long time that people want to create moments to justify the money they spend, the time they spend. That's why we have all these mid show standing ovations. Standing ovations at the end of shows. People were trying to give Jasmine an 11 o'clock number. Standing ovation at our performance. And by people, I mean, it was probably like 30 people in the orchestra, a couple in the front row, a couple people behind us, but they couldn't make it. The rest of the audience did not buy into it. And so they sat down. But how many times have we heard stories of the understudy going on or the standby going on, this unknown going on and everyone going, astounding, star is born. You're going to hear their names. And how often does that actually follow up? Even if they work constantly, even if, you know they have a following, they have a fan base. That's wonderful, but really, we're talking like a Barbra Streisand in I can get it for you wholesale. And Audra in Carousel. A Sutton in Millie. Moments where like, truly a career is born. Jesse Mueller in On a Clear Day. Right. And even Jesse Mueller. And on a clear Day. It wasn't like this launching of a star so much. It was the first domino that fell that created her stardom. Right. Like, by the time Beautiful happened, she'd had a few property credits. She already was a Tony nominee. The industry knew her, the industry loved her. And she blew up with Beautiful, but like a genuine going from one level to another level within a show. I do think with Jasmine Amy Rogers, that is the case here. She is so special in a time where I feel like programs are, I hate to use the word, the term churning out, but churning out very strong, smart and dependable talent, but kind of indistinguishable. She is very indistinguishable. First of all, she has an amazing voice, which, who is surprised about that, Is a wonderful dancer, but she's a gifted comedian and an intuitive actress. And she has a phenomenal way to balance the hyper specific and stylized tone of Betty Boop with a fish out of water while also having a. What's I looking for? Gregarious spirit that doesn't feel forced and doesn't feel put upon. She's never commenting on the humor, she's just playing the humor. And it's so phenomenal to see. And if you watch her and you watch her physicality, she's always doing things with her body, showing whether Betty Boop is ill at ease, when she's comfortable, when she's happy, when she's in love, all these things. Like, it's all defined and specific and intuitive and it's great and it's so wonderful to see. Every time she was on stage, I was happy and I always wanted more of her. We'll come back to that in a second. Other positives, there are some design elements of the show that are really well done. Costumes overall are really great. The set is a lot of projections. Sometimes that works. Pretty much everything in the Betty Boop world works quite nicely, as well as a few special effects. Most of the stuff in New York City, design wise, I hate I'm going to say this, but it blows. But Boop World stuff is actually very well designed. There's a number, the opening number is very well done and very well choreographed. There is mostly solid choreography in the show. The two highlights for me are the opening number of Act 1 and the opening number of Actors 2. Act 2 is basically a number where Betty Boop's cartoon world and the real world are singing about Betty. Real world in New York is like, oh, my God, we love Betty Boop. We're so excited she's here. Cartoon world is like, where is Betty? We don't know where to find her. And the way that the ensemble's costumes work is that one side of their costumes. Spoiler alert. But one side of their costumes is color, the other side is black and white. And the. And they flip flop whenever they are, you know, different characters from different worlds. And what makes it smart is like half the ensemble, their fronts are color, their back is black and white, and then the other half, it's the reverse. So there's a lot of, like, switching and switching and it's. It's very well done. And I was with Sarah and she was enjoying the number, but when they did the first switch, everybody was like, oh, that's really clever. And I think it even got a little bit of applause. But Sarah didn't really clock it. She was just sort of like enjoying it. And like by the third switch, because they did it a couple of times in the first minute or so and Sarah's like, oh, it's, it's, it's fun. I'm like, sarah, are you aware what they're doing? And she goes, what do you mean? I'm like, sarah, look at the costumes. And she's like, yeah, they're so cool. And then they switched again and she goes, oh, it's, it's, it's black and white now. Then they switched back to color and then she realized, but she's a sweetie. But it was just funny to watch her, like, enjoy the number because it was a good number. But she just, she was so much enjoying the energy of it, she couldn't even clock the twist. And I had to be like, no, like, pay the fuck attention. Imagine telling someone to pay attention to Betty Boop. It's not something that really should require that much attention. And yet there are a couple of good songs again. The opening song, I think is good. The opening of Act 2 is good. I think Where I Want to Be is a bop. The rest of the score, it's not bad. It's just not as colorful and as enjoyable as those three songs. There are some really solid jokes in Betty Boop. Bob Martin has written a couple of really great one liners. It's overall very strong cast. Everyone is giving their all and doing really fun work. I enjoyed Steven derosa a great deal as grandpa. Here is where we now have to get into the nitty gritty of it all and why I had to be specific about plot and characters. As I said, every time Jasmine Amy Rogers is on stage, I was happy. She is not on stage nearly enough. This is where I pull a Jerome Robbins and talk to the team of Funny Girl and I tell them, you don't really have a show. What you have here is a star. And every time she's gone, the show deflates. So get back to your star for a show called Boop. Betty Boop is in like about half of the show, maybe 55% if I'm being generous. And like, it goes back and forth. And I give them a lot of props for not giving her such an impossible track to do. This is not a Lempicka or an Elle woods where you're like, how are you alive at the end of this? That said, we could. She could stand to have a little more to do, especially because her character is the best one, has the best material, and she is truly like. She is lightning in a bottle. And you feel your adrenaline go down when she leaves the stage. So that's the first thing. The other thing is Betty Boop, or should I say Boop, the Musical. It's a fun time. It's also a mess. And I don't say that to be cruel. I say this because this can be fixed. I think the musical can be fixed. It's not going to be fixed now because they have frozen the show. But if anyone from the creative team is listening, and the way my luck has been going these days, one of you probably is. I want to talk to you about what I feel like is not working about this show. You have a fun time, but it doesn't make much sense. It doesn't make much narrative sense. There's no cohesion to it all. There's no real arc to it all. And granted, this is Boop the Musical we're talking about. But if you can create a strong narrative with pivot turns and inciting incidents and everything that's concise and economic, it separates your show from the week. It'll allow your show to survive and thrive in the future because having the energy in the moment allows an audience to have a good time. And then the more time they spend away from your show, the less they'll think about it. And you don't want that, not when you need that kind of word of mouth to bump up your show. When you need Tony nominators to walk away and then two weeks later go, when they're making their nomination choices, go, oh, you know what? Yeah, no, that was really clever. That was very good. You don't want people to have to return to remember things and to enjoy the thing. So without further ado, here are my notes on what we can do for Boop. First things first, you have three characters that you can cut. You would cut Faith Prince's character, which I know she's Faith Prince, but if it's not played by Faith Prince, and her character's name is Valentina, she's second build in the program. And it makes no sense. She doesn't show up until the very end of act one, and then she has, like, three scenes in act two, tops. Cut. Valentina, she doesn't add anything to the plot. Everything she says could be said by Grandpa. So cut her. Cut. All of Grandpa's being in New York and with Valentina and like, oh, I'm in love. Again, we have to cut. And this is not just because I don't like children, but we do have to cut the teenager. What's her name? Trisha. We cut Trisha for many reasons. One part of the reason why Betty Boop leaves her comic world to go to the real world is she wants to go where no one knows she's famous. And then. And the first person she meets when she's in New York at Comic Con is a teenage girl who's obsessed with her. And she's like, well, I gotta hide my. My true identity. And then reveals herself. And there's no stakes to it, there's no tension about it. But also, there's no difference of opinion between Betty Boop's life in the comic world and the real world once people know who she is. I think cutting Trisha helps with two things. First of all, it cuts superfluous minor storylines that don't need anything and takes away from Betty Boop, but have a contrast between Betty in her world where she is everything, she is the center of everything, to the real world, where Betty Boop is now passe. And people haven't thought about her other than ironically, in, you know, merchandise on Etsy for years. And that makes Betty wonder what's going on between the two worlds. What changed in the decades that she's been around. Also, it allows Trish's older brother and what's his name, I want to call him Hugh, but I don't think that's correct. Dwayne. Dwayne. I think of that. Amy Sedaris clip on David Letterman. Dwayne, Trish's older brother, Dwayne. He, by the end of the show, he romantically goes into the Betty Boop cartoon world to be with Boop. And he abandons his aunt and his 17 year old sister who she says, I'm fine. I had five years of therapy to deal with my dead parents. But my older brother, he's basically like a half brother, half parent to me. He leaves to go be with Betty. I'm like, you abandon your sister? And we bandage that up real quick of like, oh, well, she's doing great. No, no, no. Give him less responsibility in the real world. So when he leaves to go with Betty Boop, we aren't worried about any ties he has to our world. So there's also the question of what is it that Betty Boop wants? What is her journey? What is her arc? And the truth is, we don't know the first part of the show. It's, I Don't know who I am anymore. Goes to the real world, comes back, and she's like, you know what? I want to make different movies now. Cool. I like the idea of Betty Boop wanting to make new movies, but let's find a way to tweak that, because the plot is sort of half Barbie, half Annie with, like, sprinklings of Back to the Future in there. Right? Because we are told in Act 2, towards the very end, that Betty's world is crumbling because she's not there and she needs to go back to which she says, absolutely no problem. And Betty is told about Trisha's parents. Oh, they're dead. And she has no real response to that other than, oh, I'm so sorry. Now, Betty Boob is a cartoon. She's fictional. And she comes from a world where people don't die and everything lives on forever. Think of Toons in who Framed Roger Rabbit? So we can lean a little bit more into the Barbie thing of this all. There's an episode of south park, by the way. And I bring this up for a reason. I think it's the first episode of season seven. It's called Cancelled. And it's the boys at the bus stop, and they are recreating the very first scene of the very first episode of South Park. And they realize we've done this before. And they realize, oh, we're in a rerun. And they realize that Earth is actually a reality show made up by the universe. But Betty doing one of her shorts or a number of her shorts in the opening number, going into a new day of something, not knowing that it's a repeat. But then all of a sudden, kind of being hyper aware that I feel like I've done this before. I feel like this has happened before. This thing with Grandpa or this thing with my director, all these things. And then she takes a moment, or she and Grandpa or Grandpa, through his calculations, they take a moment to realize that they have done this one thing or all of these things like 10,000 times. And Betty Boop's like, well, how can that be? Like, we used to have new adventures all the time. What changed? Why are we on the. Why are we doing these repeats all the time? And why did it take us so long to realize it? And she is told by Grandpa, you know, oh, there's another dimension where you can figure that out. You know, you. You can go to the real world. I did it. Grandpa not thinking anything of it because he did it once. But he's also like, it wasn't Great. I went there. I met a girl. It was really nice, but I had to come back. And Betty decides she's gonna go. And while she's there, she realizes that no one really knows who Betty Boop is. And while she's there, while she's at Comic Con, that is when Eric Bergen's character and the aunt. Aunt Carol, and we don't even really need Eric Bergen's character. The mayor candidate, Raymond Demarest, he's so inconsequential to anything. But if we want to keep that plot line, then we have to introduce him sooner, because he doesn't show up until two thirds of the way into Act 1. And he has one scene, it's like 80 seconds long, goes off stage, doesn't show up again until the top of Act 2, and again, only has two scenes, and then he's done. It's all little pieces of things that just sort of happen, and none of it is part of a cohesive whole. So if we do want to keep Raymond Demarest, introduce him at Comic Con. The moment Betty arrives, he's there with Aunt Carol trying to sway voters and get publicity, get exposure, because Aunt Carroll's like, hey, let's go outside of your demographic and reach younger voters. It doesn't work because he's a douche. But while they're there, that is where they run into Betty Boop with, let's say, Aunt Carol's nephew Dwayne, who's there to help out, because Dwayne is sort of a jack of all trades, master of none, which he sort of is in the musical already, but we can lean into that more. Like, Dwayne is sort of directionless. He has interests in many different things, but they all cost money, and they all take a lot of time, and you can't really make so many things. He wants to do your job. You have to, you know, earn a living and. And pay rent and all these things, and. And. And there's not enough time, and everything costs money, and he just. He has so much potential, but he doesn't know what to do, so he's directionless. So he's helping Anne Carroll on the campaign while she's, you know, the campaign manager for Raymond Demarest at Comic Con, and it doesn't go great. But let's say Betty Boop does something at Comic Con to help them accidentally, and she and Duane start to connect, and she says, oh, I'm new in town. I don't know where to stay. And as sort of a thank you for helping them on that day. And Carol's like, oh, well, you can stay at our apartment today. You know, everything's good. You can. We have a spare bedroom, blah, blah, blah. And so she's stays with aunt Carol and Dwayne. She and Duane connect. He takes her out to a nightclub where she sings. Something happens to reveal that she's Betty Boop, or nothing is revealed that she's Betty Boop. And something happens with Raymond Demarest that ultimately allows aunt Carol to usurp him and go run for mayor herself. And while Betty is away, we see in her world, it start to crumble. We start to see how her, you know, the things are getting erased. Things are starting to fall apart. People are getting wonky because. And grandpa realizes, oh, because I was a supporting character, it didn't matter that I left. But Betty is the center of our universe, and therefore she has to come back now. They imply this in the show. They have, like, a quick line of his when he's in the real world where he's like, it didn't matter. I'm a side character. It didn't matter. But we need to see more of that, because we never see Betty Boop's world crumbling, so we need to see that. So there are stakes. And he. And he goes into the real world to find Betty. He finds her in Act 1. But the conflict is Betty doesn't want to go back. She likes it here. She likes being anonymous. But she also has found out that Boop comics have been passe for a long time. People watch it on YouTube. It's sort of jokingly, and that's sort of why they're in a repeat in their world, because no one has made new Betty Boop stories in decades. And there's the question of, well, can Betty Boop herself make new stories in her world? Or does someone have to make new stories in their world? And they can make a quick joke about, like, who fucking cares? You make the art, you know, you make your life, and that is art. And that art will find its way into the real world. You can make a joke about it. But she's already starting to think, oh, you know, there's so much out there in the world. There's so many things I can do that we haven't explored yet in our world. People, you know, the stories that we put out of me, getting chased around the desk, that didn't do great for narratives out there for women, for anybody, for romance, anything like that. And she says, I don't want to go back. I want to stay here. And Grandpa's like, fine, if we're going to stay here, I want to look up the woman that I met last time and see what she's up to because we fell in love, and I would love to see her again. And they find out it's been 60 years since Grandpa was in New York, and the woman that he fell in love with was 60 years old then, and she's dead now, and she can't come back. And that's when Betty and Grandpa realize, oh, in this world, people die and they don't come back. You don't live forever. And that's when Betty realizes she has to go back to her world, but she's going to take what she learned from this world and bring it back with her so they can create new stories and put out art into the world and narratives into the world that can inspire a new generation of women breaking this repetitive cycle that she once had. And then ultimately, Dwayne does come with her because he learns by going into Betty Boop's world that he is going to be granted time to try all the things that he wants to try and do the things he wants to do well. And that also provides new storylines for him and Betty Boop. And by being in a romance, they have new storylines of showing a new generation of girls what a healthy, communicative romance can be. All the humor and stories that can come from a healthy marriage, that it doesn't have to be a battle of the sexes, it just has to be in equilibrium. And I think that is something that could really fix Boop. You know, we. We, as I said, we cut Faith Prince, we cut Trisha the teenager. I wouldn't even argue. We cut Eric Bergen and just have it be that Aunt Carol is an independent running for mayor. And it's not going great because she's a woman and she doesn't have a lot of money or a lot of exposure and something with her. And Betty works where Betty Boop can help her get that exposure. As I said, show us earlier, things going wrong in Betty's world. Also, they make a whole thing about when Betty comes back that she tells her director, like, she's going to do new stories, and she says, I'm not going to be chased around the desk anymore, and I'm not asking you. And the idea is, oh, she's empowered now. The problem is that it's been established for comedic effects, but it's been established that everyone bows to Betty Boop. And Betty Boop's world because it's Boop World. She's the star, she's the center, and all the men in that world cater to her anyway. So nothing has changed in terms of dynamics so much as what she wants to make now. So it's not as if she's grown a pair. It's not like she's grown a spine. She's always been the leader of her world. It's just that now she's like, oh, I have things I want to do now or new things I want to do now. But that has nothing to do with her not knowing who she was at the beginning of the show. She doesn't have a specific want that she then gets. She doesn't have or specific want that she thinks she wants. That changes halfway through the show, the more exposed she is to the outside world, which changes her for something else. It's all just sort of things happen to her, and she gets a little more. I hate to use the term, but she gets a little more woke as things go on, and she comes back to her world a little more woke and everything goes back to normal, just with new stories. There's so much more you can play with here. Right. Any other major changes? I wanted to say. No, that's really it. They have a brief mention when they ask her about her stories, like, do you ever do stories about love? And she says, no, now that I think about it, not really. And that's because she's never been in love. I think we can explore more of that, of why is it that Betty Boop has never been in love? Why has she never had a real relationship? They say, well, it's because all of the stories are her being chased around a desk. But that's not entirely true. There are a lot of stories of her being ogled, but. But when you are the center of your world, why is it that there are no new stories? That's why I like my idea of they are in a repetition. Because the outside world that created Boop has sort of forgotten it and not added anything to it. And she has to break that cycle to create new stories for herself. And by creating new stories for herself, creating new narratives to go out into the world. And just because they're fictitious doesn't mean they don't have merit and that they don't make an impact. Right? The movies, the shows that we see, the books that we read, they matter as much to us as anything else that's actually happened to us in this world. Right. There's a whole trilogy about it in south park, the Imagination Land trilogy. It's great. I highly recommend. So those are ultimately my thoughts on Boop. Tony Wise, I think if there's any Broadway justice, Jasmine, Amy Rogers will be nominated. She is honestly currently my vote for best actress. I wish that the show gave her more, but what they do give her, she absolutely nails hard. I see costumes being nominated for them. Choreography, they could get a score nomination. It is an original score. It's a big brassy sound too. They could even get an orchestration nomination. They could even do get a lighting nomination. That's where I'm going to cut it. The book is honestly just too scattered and cluttered to be nominated. Although we have had worse books be nominated. I don't see it really selling enough to be a best musical nominee. But it could be that being the underdog, the community really rallies behind it to bring it up. It's also, I mean, it's a very feel good show. It's just not. It needs to be stronger. You can't just run on vibes alone. You have to have something worth committing to, even if it is one foot on the ground, one foot in the air. And that's my thought on my boobs, my thoughts on the boops, and my personal fixes that I would do to make this show the stronger show that I know it can be. I think the show has so much potential and I really would love, I would love to be in the room with the whole team afterwards and be like, your next iteration. This is what we got to do. Because you have something here, but you aren't really going for the jugular with it. And not in the like, oh, you gotta be Tom Stoppard. But just if you're gonna be the glitzy fantasia that wants to touch on some of these themes, be it. And be, to quote Ms. Alyssa Edwards, if you're gonna be a Rowdy Bowdy bitch, stand up and be Rowdy Bowdy. That's me paraphrasing, but still, just don't be weak sauce. If you want to be this, be this, but be the best this. And that's it. That's what I got to say. So we're going to take a quick break and then we'll get into last five years. Billy, I beg to differ with you. How do you mean? You're the top. Yeah, you're an arrow collar. You're the top. You're a Coolidge dollar. You're the nimble tread of the feet of Fred estate.