“Wuthering Heights” and What’s Making Us Happy

Summary

Pop Culture Happy Hour: “Wuthering Heights” and What’s Making Us Happy

Date: February 13, 2026
Host: NPR
Panelists: Linda Holmes, Glen Weldon, Barry Hardiman, Soraya Nadia McDonald

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Main Theme and Purpose

This episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour dives into Emerald Fennell’s bold new film adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic Wuthering Heights, starring Margot Robbie as Kathy and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff. The panel discusses Fennell’s stylistic choices, the adaptation’s strengths and weaknesses, how it relates to previous versions and the original novel, and broader themes of lust, rage, and aesthetic provocation. The show also rounds out with the popular “What’s Making Us Happy” segment, where the hosts share recent pop culture joys.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Emerald Fennell's Stylistic Approach

• Going for Feeling Over Message:
  • Linda Holmes notes that Fennell aims to evoke the intense emotions she felt reading the book as a teenager, prioritizing grandiosity and extravagant visuals.
    • “She’s going for a feeling. ...I want you to feel the kinds of passionate feelings that I had when I first read this book.” — Linda Holmes [02:20]
• Visual Extravagance:
  • Fennell's choices—use of red, diaphanous and “not really period” materials, “strange rooms”—bring a lush, fever-dream quality to the film.
• Taboo and Grossness:
  • Soraya Nadia McDonald admires Fennell’s commitment to incorporating taboo, filth, and physicality into her work.
    • “Her fascination with dirt and filth and grossness. The things that are taboo, like her willingness to put things on screen that make your jaw drop.” — Soraya Nadia McDonald [04:19]

2. The Panel’s Spectrum of Opinions

• Linda Holmes: Enjoyed the emotional and stylistic rollercoaster, embracing the film’s evolution from romantic to deranged.
• Soraya Nadia McDonald: Finds Fennell’s “vibe cinema” compelling, likening the romance to something out of the Marquis de Sade, full of wild, taboo energy.
• Barry Hardiman: While appreciating some visual choices, felt the film didn’t connect emotionally or develop Heathcliff’s humanity enough.
  • “For me, it was a series of images that were connected by some speeches that I recognized from a book and very little else. ...It only gave me that and didn't pull out enough for me to see his humanity, which I think is important and the reason the book has lasted for so long.” — Barry Hardiman [06:29]

3. The "Camp," Gothic, and Cinematic Elements

• Glen Weldon:
  • Praises the feverish, febrile (“I don’t get to use that word much”) intensity, but wanted the film to be even more “bonkers” and campy.
  • Compares aspects to Tim Burton and Guillermo del Toro’s “Crimson Peak.”
    • “If you don’t got those adjectives, do you even got Wuthering Heights? ...Them heights, they gotta be Wutherin’.” — Glen Weldon [07:00]
• Isabella’s Character:
  • Welcomed as a highlight, she brings energy aligning with the film’s potential for melodrama and camp.
    • “Isabella is vibrating at precisely the frequency I wanted this whole movie to be vibrating at, which is embracing the ridiculousness.” — Glen Weldon [15:50]

4. Provocation: Lust, Disgust, and Taboos

• Style Over Social Commentary:
  • The group debates whether Fennell’s films are best viewed as works of style versus social commentary. Linda notes similarities with Tarantino’s stylized, referential approach.
  • “She’s provoking the gut. ...She’s provoking the body lower than the gut in some cases.” — Linda Holmes [14:27]
• Body Horror & Eroticism:
  • The film is packed with moments of squishy aspic, raw eggs, and a fascination with bodily sensations — a hallmark of Fennell.
    • “You get Kathy sticking her finger into an aspic, which is so squishy. ...It's all, to me, about provoking your yuck response or your lust response.” — Linda Holmes [14:57]

5. Adaptation Choices & Critique

• Changing the Narrative:
  • The adaptation modernizes and alters characters—particularly by making Isabella’s relationship with Heathcliff more consensual, muting some of the original’s transgressions.
    • “Heathcliff is friggin’ terrible. He is a stalker and a horrifying man. ...By making Isabella kinda into his particular form of abuse and making it, you know, sort of a consensual thing, you’ve backed away from the point.” — Barry Hardiman [16:13]
• Loss of Class & Racial Complexity:
  • The discussion addresses how the casting of Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff and changes in his backstory flatten his outsider status and erase opportunities to explore deeper themes.
• Are These People In Love or Traumatized?
  • Panelists question the authenticity of Cathy and Heathcliff's love, seeing it more as a trauma bond.
    • “Do these people even really know what love is? ...I think this is just a trauma bond.” — Soraya Nadia McDonald [20:47]

6. Chemistry, Wetness & Melodrama

• Margot Robbie & Jacob Elordi:
  • Discussion of their onscreen chemistry – is it real or a product of perpetual “wetness” (literally, in the rain)?
    • “Did you guys ever wonder watching this movie if Robbie and Elordi actually had chemistry or if they were just wet?” — Glen Weldon [21:00]
    • “I could totally see someone making a TikTok edit and just calling it Pneumonia Corps.” — Soraya Nadia McDonald [21:44]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “It starts with the public hang that drives the crowd into sexual ecstasy. So she's linking sex and death from the jump. It's not subtle.” — Glen Weldon [07:30]
• “This feels like Flowers in the Attic. ...It feels like a kind of taboo.” — Barry Hardiman [11:47]
• “I actually think this movie is arguably restrained for her. ...For her it is.” — Linda Holmes & Soraya Nadia McDonald [14:55]
• “If you are a person who watched Moll Flanders on PBS and yet also maybe had crushes on like Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Andrew Keegan... This movie will make sense to your 13 year old self completely.” — Soraya Nadia McDonald [11:25]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Emerald Fennell’s Adaptation Approach: 02:17–04:17
• Panelist Initial Impressions: 05:11–06:46
• Granular Design/Campiness: 07:00–09:13
• Comparison to Tarantino/Del Toro/Style vs. Substance: 09:30–14:57
• Adaptation Choices & Character Changes: 15:28–19:03
• Discussion of Class and Otherness: 20:05–20:47
• Chemistry & ‘Wetness’ Jokes: 21:00–21:52

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What’s Making Us Happy This Week (24:00–end)

Barry Hardiman ([24:06])

• All Creatures Great and Small: Cozy PBS drama about a country veterinarian. Comforting and family-friendly.

Soraya Nadia McDonald ([25:04])

• Selena’s music: Inspired by Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance, she revisited Selena’s joyful Tejano hits.

Linda Holmes ([25:45])

• “For Human Use” by Sarah G. Pierce: Satiric, strange novel where people “adopt” dead bodies, a commentary on modern loneliness and connection.

Glen Weldon ([27:37])

• “A Place Both Wonderful and Strange” by Scott Meslo: New book on Twin Peaks, offering rich reporting and analysis for fans and pop culture scholars.

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Tone & Atmosphere

The episode was lively, playful, and irreverent—marked by the panel’s signature blend of serious analysis, personal tastes, cultural references, and sharp wit. Much like the film they’re discussing, the review is feverish at times, with a generous awareness of camp, style, and pop culture tradition.

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Takeaway

Pop Culture Happy Hour’s take on Wuthering Heights celebrates the value of bold artistic choices—even if the panel lands on a full spectrum of enjoyment. The discussion explores the tension between style and substance in adaptation, what it means to provoke audiences, and how canon can be playfully and provocatively reimagined. The episode closes with the panel sharing what’s currently delighting them in pop culture, always inviting listeners to expand their own happy hours.

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Useful For

• Readers curious about Emerald Fennell’s adaptation choices
• Fans of both the original novel and modern Gothic melodrama
• Anyone interested in where style, camp, and provocation intersect in contemporary film
• Listeners looking for warm, witty, pop culture banter and recommendations

Transcript

[Announcer]

This message comes from Great Wolf Lodge, where there's family fun all under one roof, including an indoor water park, attractions, dining and more. With 22 lodges across the country, you're only a short drive away from adventure. Learn [e-mail].

[Glen Weldon]

Writer, director Emerald Fennell makes movies that drive the discourse Promising Young woman, Saltburn and now Wuthering Heights, unquote. Those quot are part of it. This time out, she's tackling a beloved classic with a cast led by young Hollywood royalty.

[Linda Holmes]

Margot Robbie is Kathy, headstrong, impulsive and horny. Jacob Elordi is Heathcliff, dark, brooding and horny. Their love on the wild, windswept moors is passionate and doomed and as adapted by Fennell, pretty bonkers. I'm Linda Holmes.

[Glen Weldon]

And I'm Glenn Weldon. And today we're talking about Wuthering Heights on Pop Culture Happy Hour from npr. Joining us today is Barry Hard. She's a senior editor for NPR's investigations team. Welcome back, Barry. Hi, Great to have you for this. Also with us is Soraya Nadia McDonald. She's a cultural critic, journalist and the senior criticism editor for the Rumpus. Hello, Sariah.

[Barry Hardiman]

Hello.

[Soraya Nadia McDonald]

Hello.

[Glen Weldon]

All right, let's get into it. This will be a fun one to get into. Emily Bronte's only novel has been adapted many, many times. This time out, Reddit director Emerald Fennell is steering us into the lush fever dream of it all. Kathy is an impetuous young woman who lives in a decaying manor house. She's played as an adult by Margot Rob. One day her father brings home a young brooding urchin whom Kathy adopts as her plaything. At first, that's Heathcliff, played as an adult by Jacob Elordi. Look, you know the plot. The two young people love and hate each other, separated by class and by Kathy's ambitions and by Heathcliff's seething jealousy. They treat each other horribly until they start treating each other very, very well in a fun, sexy way. But society in the form of Kathy's marriage to a wealthy neighbor, intervenes. There's love and lust, hatred and revenge and lots of lusty looks in the soaking rain. The who factory installed Gothic Bundle. Really? Wuthering Heights is in theaters now. Linda, kick us off. What'd you make of, quote, Wuthering Heights, unquote?

[Linda Holmes]

I tend to be a fan of Emerald Fennell. I really liked Promising Young Woman and I really liked Saltburn. And I think this is a continuation of what I like about her work. I think that she is somebody who always and she says this in some of the comments she's made about this film. She's going for a feeling. She's going for. I want you to feel the kinds of passionate feelings that I had when I first read this book. Right. She talks about having read it as a teenager. She loves it dearly. I will say I personally do not have an attachment to this book. I know it sort of vaguely Gothic romance has never really been my thing. And I think that in this film, you see so many things that I appreciate about her extravagance. In this case, it's things like her love of the color red. And if in Saltburn you see a lot of her love of red, here you see it her of, like, diaphanous materials, her love of strange rooms, unexpected, not really period materials in Kathy's clothes. It's sort of period stuff. But then you see her in cellophane. They've talked about drawing from different influences. I think the grandiosity of her vision is always something I really appreciate. And I like going in and just kind of seeing what she does with a story that in this case, you go in and it's sort of like. Well, at one point it seems kind of romantic. And then it starts to be like, oh, these people are horrible. And, you know, I enjoyed that evolution. So I had a lot of fun with this. I enjoyed it.

[Glen Weldon]

Okay, Sara, where'd you come down?

[Soraya Nadia McDonald]

Yeah. I think romance perhaps is conceived by the Marquis de Sade.

[Announcer]

Yep.

[Soraya Nadia McDonald]

I agree with Linda on Emerald Fennell's aesthetic habits, which also tend to draw me in. There's plenty to focus on, and it's very weird, particularly with the skin wallpaper with the freckle.

[Glen Weldon]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Soraya Nadia McDonald]

And the other thing that I appreciate about Emerald and her just her habit of just going big, regardless of whether or not I think the writing sort of stands up to the grandiosity of the imagery and the cinematography is her fascination with dirt and filth and grossness. The things that are taboo, like her willingness to put things on screen that make your jaw drop. And then at the same time, you know, I think the older that you get, the more you appreciate how strange human beings can be. I appreciate her willingness to run toward that rather than stuffing it away somewhere in honor of propriety.

[Glen Weldon]

Okay, cool. All right. So we got really liked. We got appreciate. Barry, do we have a spectrum?

[Barry Hardiman]

We have a spectrum.

[Glen Weldon]

Tell me, what do you think?

[Barry Hardiman]

We have a spectrum. I find myself in the odd position of agreeing mostly with what everybody has said here, but it did not work. For me, emphatically, I love the idea of freezing this moment in time, this horny, billowing moment of puberty, essentially. Like, I like that. And I also love the image. But for me, it was a series of images that were connected by some speeches that I recognized from a book and very little else. So for me, I really do need the characters. I like Wuthering Heights. I'm not a Wuthering Heights obsessive. I'm mentally healthy. Sure, there are a lot of retellings of this, modern retellings of Wuthering Heights. And those tend to work for me a little bit better, because you can kind of support the oddness of the story in a way that Emily Bronte does, sort of in terms of the framing of the story. But one of my favorites is by Alice Hoffman. She wrote a book called Here on Earth, and she said something about Wuthering Heights that really stuck with me, which is that, you know, you love Heathcliff at 16. You are kind of horrified by Heathcliff at 30. And then you get to 50, and you're like, well, people are weird. You know what I mean? You sort of understand his humanity.

[Glen Weldon]

Soraya's point.

[Barry Hardiman]

Yeah, you know, exactly. You're like, okay, I can see how this could be a human. Right. The problem is, it only worked for me at that first level. You know what I mean? It only gave me that and didn't pull out enough for me to see his humanity, which I think is important and the reason the book has lasted for so long.

[Glen Weldon]

Okay, interesting. Well, look, this thing is fervid. It's feverish. It's febrile, which is a word I don't get to use much, but it just means fever. So why didn't I just say fevers?

[Barry Hardiman]

Feral.

[Soraya Nadia McDonald]

Feral, yes.

[Glen Weldon]

Feral's a good one. It's swoony. It's breathless. These are not adjectives that show up in my wheelhouse a lot. I'm letting this movie wash over me, and I'm thinking, look, if you don't got those adjectives, do you even got Wuthering Heights? I mean, I don't think you do. It does what it says on the label. Them heights, they gotta be Wutherin'. And Fennell is making choices here, which is exactly what you want in anything that's been adapted this many times. You want big choices. It starts with the public hang that drives the crowd into sexual ecstasy. So she's linking sex and death from the jump. It's not subtle, but I went back to considering the source. And for A long time I was wondering exactly what those quotation marks in the title were doing. But then I realized, no. Everything in this film is just that bit ridiculous. The two main sets, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, which is the neighboring manor, you know, they're art directed to the gods. The costumes go hard when Catherine goes to visit her father at one point, who's played by the great British actor Martin Clunes, by the way, with exactly the kind of mustard you want from him. He's great. She's wearing this gown that is ostensibly silver satin, but it looks like tinfoil. It looks ridiculous. The movie does that thing in period drama where sometimes if they don't get it right, the costumes just look like costumes. They don't look like clothes worn by actual people. But then that's kind of the point.

[Linda Holmes]

I mean, it's absolutely on purpose.

[Glen Weldon]

That's exactly it. Lagrange feels like a dollhouse because that's what it. And so that fit for me. That worked for me. I confess. I wanted this to be like a notch more bonkers, a bit more arch, a bit more comic. I'm a middle aged gay man. I'm gonna use the word camp. I kind of felt it edging there in the scenes in Thrushcross Grange especially, which is kind of low key Tim Burton in its silliness. But it didn't go full Crimson Peak. It didn't go full Bram Stoper's Dracula. I felt it wanted to. The scene where she crosses the moor to go back to Wuthering Heights. And there's an empty doorway in the fog. But then the fog blows and the doorway isn't empty anymore. I'm like, that's cinema, baby. All those scenes with a thunderstorm raging outside. I was like, go off. Pathetic fallacy. Do your work. I wanted more of that. I was happy for what I got, though. I was happy for what I got.

[Linda Holmes]

It was so funny to me. Cause there's a moment where you see Kathy kind of walking into the foggy, misty moors. And it's not just foggy, misty. It's like she instantly vanishes. She can't see two feet in front of your face. And it's just everything is kind of overclocked.

[Glen Weldon]

Yeah, exactly.

[Linda Holmes]

What I find interesting about Emerald Fennell is that very often I find people. I'm not talking about this conversation. I'm talking about in the discourse, as we've already mentioned. I find people trying to figure out a way to read kind of a lot of social commentary into what she does. And I think that maybe is because she started out with Promising Young Woman, which is a really like, angry, meaty piece. But when you get to Saltburn, and I think when you get to this, you more realize that she's a stylist much more than she is a social commentator. What I would compare her to actually is Quentin Tarantino. I think when you see the kind of. The stylishness kind of pushing everything else, and even to the degree that he likes to play with kind of extant aesthetics and mess around with them the way that she does in this film, with how the costumes have some period elements and then some things that are drawn from like nightmare 1940s and 50s melodrama. And I think when you see her kind of mixing and matching sort of from these other elements, I think she's a stylist. And when I read her that way, I don't necessarily think that she goes into this thinking, here's what I think Wuthering Heights is about. Here's what I want it to be about. Here's what I want it to be. Saying she's thinking, I want to put you in the body of a young person who is experiencing this story for the first time. And whatever it takes for me to take that book reading experience and make it something that you feel in your body, that's what she wants to do. And that's what I think this movie is supposed to do. And it's obviously not gonna do that successfully for everyone, but for me, I think that's what I liked about it.

[Soraya Nadia McDonald]

Yes. I think Emerald creates vibe cinema.

[Glen Weldon]

True.

[Soraya Nadia McDonald]

Do we know how old emerald is?

[Linda Holmes]

40, I think.

[Soraya Nadia McDonald]

A millennial. Okay. Yeah, that makes perfect sense because I was like, if you are a person who watched Moll Flanders on PBS and yet also maybe had crushes on like Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Andrew Keegan.

[Barry Hardiman]

Yeah.

[Soraya Nadia McDonald]

This movie will make sense to your 13 year old self completely. That is what it speaks to. Yeah.

[Barry Hardiman]

When you put it like that, it does. I'm like, oh, this feels like flowers in the attic. You know what I mean? It feels like a kind of a taboo Again, you know, it did not work for me. But when I look at it as a style rather than an idea, I can appreciate it further. I think the thing that sort of disappoints me is that I was not like a particular fan of Saltburn. I liked looking at it, but I kind of wanted to know her ideas is the thing. Like I actually wanted something beyond, you know, the hormones. And so partly it's because I think there are interesting things to say still within the style that she's making. I think this movie doesn't actually have a lot of rage. We don't actually get that sense of, like, hatred that's actually horny. There are some things about it that I really would have liked to see her take a hold of. I think there's so many interesting ways to remake this. And, you know, one of the interesting ways would have been to have cast an actor of color instead of Elordie. I understand we are looking at a particular kind of pulp paperback, and, you know, that's okay, but I think for me, I'm just. It became boring about three quarters of the way through because I thought, oh, there's not gonna be another idea other than this, you know?

[Glen Weldon]

Yeah. And in the production notes, there's a bit about how Emerald Fennell wrote this version with Elordia in mind because he looked like the Heathcliff on the COVID of the version that she read as a teenager. Go ahead, Linda.

[Linda Holmes]

I think Barry is so right that you can certainly do the kind of provocative aesthetic work that I'm talking about. And also sort of things that stimulate the intellect, so to speak.

[Announcer]

Right?

[Linda Holmes]

Yes. Your Ryan Cooglers and those kind of folks. Like, if you look at sinners, it has a really similar intensity of aesthetic and intensity of visceral response. And it also has a lot of Guillermo del Toro.

[Barry Hardiman]

This reminded me in many ways of Frankenstein.

[Linda Holmes]

Absolutely. Del Toro, too. Although I do think that, like, there are some similarities in the fact that people sometimes come away from del Toro also saying, like, I don't necessarily know what this is about, but it, like, looks great. Right.

[Barry Hardiman]

I like a scarlet veil.

[Linda Holmes]

And I think, like. I guess one of the reasons why I instinctively, like, defend her or want to defend, I guess, more my enjoyment of her work is that it is so common to see everything is meant to be provocative. Right. It's provoking something. You're provoking some kind of a reaction. You know, nobody makes art not wanting to provoke anything. I like the fact that she is really provoking the gut. I think that's why you get her. She's provoking the body lower than the.

[Barry Hardiman]

Gut in some cases. Yes, absolutely.

[Linda Holmes]

That's why I was just gonna say that's why you get her interest in lust. And one of the things that we talked about with Saltburn is it's about that fine line between lust and desire and revulsion. Right. I think that's one of her animating things she's interested in. And that's why in this movie you get, I would say, fewer bodily fluids than Saltburn. She's eased up on that a little bit. I actually think this movie is arguably restrained for her.

[Soraya Nadia McDonald]

It's very tame in a way, for her it is.

[Linda Holmes]

But you get Kathy sticking her finger into an aspic, which is so squishy. And you get this fascination with raw eggs and people putting their hands into raw eggs. And it's all, to me about provoking the.

[Barry Hardiman]

It's like body horror.

[Glen Weldon]

Yeah.

[Linda Holmes]

Your yuck response or your lust response. And I like the fact that she's like, proudly a provocateur of the body rather than necessarily the intellect. I think that's cool. I think that's cool.

[Glen Weldon]

Well, we talked a little bit about some of the changes she made. Let's go through some of them. There's a reason I never liked this movie more than when Isabella is on screen.

[Barry Hardiman]

Oh, she's wonderful.

[Glen Weldon]

Isabella is the ward of the man Kathy marries. She's played by Allison Oliver from Task. I didn't realize that. Alice and Oliver Tufts.

[Linda Holmes]

Owen from one of the Sally Rooney adaptations.

[Glen Weldon]

Yeah.

[Announcer]

Oh.

[Linda Holmes]

Oh, you're right.

[Glen Weldon]

That character Isabella is vibrating at precisely the frequency I wanted this whole movie to be vibrating at, which is embracing the ridiculousness. I also love, I would agree, the adaptation choice of making her a real character. Someone who's a bit more control than she is in the book. I mean, you gotta understand that in the book, Heathcliff does not negotiate consent.

[Barry Hardiman]

When you say Soraya, that it felt tame, I think that actually was a little bit of my problem with it. Because by not actually going all the way in terms of the BDSM of it all, in terms of letting Heathcliff's not just his freak flag, but also his, you know, just awful personality too. We didn't. It was as though by making Isabella kinda into his particular form of abuse and making it, you know, sort of a consensual thing, you've backed away from the point, which is that Heathcliff is friggin terrible. He is a stalker and a horrifying man. And so you actually backed away from something that is a less tame idea. And even putting in the consent, you know, even though it's a control, but also it's like it's a little bit of a wink to a millennial Gen X audience that does want to also see consent, but not seek consent. And so there's a pulling back from the actual edge, which she doesn't do visually, but she does do. I think in terms of the Ideas. And that was the movie I wanted to see.

[Soraya Nadia McDonald]

I think I do agree with you there, Barry. Absolutely. You do realize there are no other ideas, and yet there's just more dresses. That scene. I wrote down that line. I think this speaks to why directors flock to Jacob Elordi, whether it be in Euphoria or Frankenstein or Wuthering Heights, to be able to pull that off, you know, where he's saying, I don't love you. I will never love you. I will treat you abominably. Do you want me to stop?

[Glen Weldon]

They are also pulling back from a key Heathcliff character trait, which is his revenge. By combining Catherine's brother in the book with her father. It also means Heathcliff's revenge storyline gets emotionally blunted because the brother in the book is antagonist. And by combining him with the father, I think you lose some of that juice. You lose some of that. Yeah, get him. Yeah. Another change, pumping up the character of Catherine's lady maid companion. Whatever, Nellie, you do that because you hire Hong Chau. But with adaptation, you want to ensure that you're changing something for a real plot reason, not just to do it. And here I think Nelli's presence alters a very pivotal eavesdropping scene, which I never liked, but it's a very pivotal eavesdropping scene midway through the movie book in a. It gives that an extra layer, and I think it makes that scene make more sense. And also Nellie's presence also later in the book movie, like here, it alters Kathy's ultimate fate. I think that change makes sense to me.

[Barry Hardiman]

Make it about something.

[Glen Weldon]

Make it about something. Make it speak to something. Make it alter something in the plot.

[Soraya Nadia McDonald]

You know, I think the other thing is that I found myself thinking about is Margot and her attraction to roles where you see women confined and sort of squeezed into this sort of mean girl role, in part because they are infantilized in such a way and expected to be dolls. Right. Whether you go back to Barbie or this, you see the ways that that sort of those restrictions squeeze people into being utterly terrible. Right. She's petty, she's mean, she's cruel, and all of those things. If we're gonna try to squeeze out an idea, here are dynamics that shape women's behavior when they are dropped into societies where they have few choices and are expected to be decoration. More or less.

[Barry Hardiman]

For me, she wasn't mean enough for the choices that she was given. A, and then B. This is where you could do something really interesting with Heathcliff, who, as a member of A different class in the book. He is clearly othered in any number of ways and there has been lots of speculation. Is he Spanish, is he black, Is this an escaped enslaved boy? Also, it takes away his motivations too by not giving him those boundaries. You know what I mean? Like, you know, all he has is a sort of is a sketch of this abusive childhood instead of a series of motivator that you're talking about.

[Soraya Nadia McDonald]

No, that's true. Because you're like, do they love each other? Do these people even really know what love is? Like, is this love or is this just a trauma bond? I think this is just a trauma bond.

[Barry Hardiman]

That's what my husband said too.

[Linda Holmes]

Sure.

[Soraya Nadia McDonald]

Okay.

[Glen Weldon]

All right, last question. Did you guys ever wonder watching this movie if Robbie and Elordi actually had chemistry or if they were just wet?

[Linda Holmes]

I liked both of these performances. I have seen both of these people do very interesting things with a variety of roles. Obviously we' him be a monster and her be a doll. And in a way, this is a meeting of a monster and a doll in certain ways. I did think they had chemistry. I did think the sexy stuff was pretty sexy. I did think that it was excessive that he's probably wet in about 2/3 of the movie. And that did strike me as like perhaps the overdoing it that I expect and relish in her films. But no, I thought they had good chemistry.

[Soraya Nadia McDonald]

I could totally see someone making a TikTok edit and just calling it Pneumonia Corps.

[Glen Weldon]

Well, tell us what you think about Wuthering Heights. Find us on Facebook. Find us on letterboxd. Let us in at your window. We're so cold. We'll have a link in our episode description up next, what's making us happy this week?

[Barry Hardiman]

This message comes from BetterHelp. February is full of flowers, candy and lots of relationship talk. It can feel like everyone has it all together in their love lives, but the truth is they're still figuring it out. And whether you're married, dating or prioritizing being single, just remember you're right on time. Therapy can take the pressure off and help you feel lighter. Just a little outside perspective from a professional can lead to new understanding and a lot of progress. Visit betterhelp.com NPR for 10% off.

[Announcer]

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[Barry Hardiman]

The following message come from Strawberry Me. If you could go back and talk to your younger self, would you tell yourself that you have a job that truly makes you happy? Many people are stuck in jobs they've outgrown or never really wanted. A career coach from Strawberry Me can help you move on to something you actually love. Benefit from having a dedicated coach in your Corner and get 50% off your first coaching session at Strawberry Me. Support for NPR and the following message come from Warby Parker, the One Stop Shop for all your vision needs. They offer expertly crafted prescription eyewear plus contacts, eye exams and more. For everything you need to see. Visit your nearest Warby Parker store or head to warbyparker.com now it is time.

[Glen Weldon]

For our favorite segment of this week and every week. What's making us happy this week? Barry, what is making you happy this week?

[Barry Hardiman]

So I am a lover of cozy television. Obviously this is the time of year for a PBS cozy moment and All Creatures Great and Small is back. There you go. If you are a person who has not come upon this lovely drama series which is just about a country vet and there's a kind of kindness and, but also for comfort tv, sometimes you don't get like too much reality. There's enough dirt. There's enough good Yorkshire dirt in there. Not the Emerald Fidel kind of the actual kind. It's more like manure, if you will. This is kind of the thing that like my husband loves it, my 11 year old loves it. It really does run the gamut. And so if you are feeling in need of comfort, I cannot tell you how much that is making me happy. And I think it might make you as well.

[Glen Weldon]

Yes, Barry, that is a safe bet, I think, among the PCHHH literature. Thank you so much, Barry. That is All Creatures Great and Small on pbs. Soraya, what is making you happy this week?

[Soraya Nadia McDonald]

You know what's making me happy? Well, it's sort of an extended happiness. I am still sort of vibrating from just the utter joy and audacity of Bad Bunny's super bowl performance.

[Glen Weldon]

Here we go.

[Soraya Nadia McDonald]

And that kind of led me down a rabbit hole of Latin music through salsa and cumbia and bachata and eventually I got back to tejano. And so then I just went on an extended run of Selina's discography. And that has just put such a tremendous smile on my face.

[Glen Weldon]

That's wonderful. Okay, so that's the music of Selina. Thank you so much, Saria. Linda, what is making you happy this week?

[Linda Holmes]

All right, so we talked about a kind of a bonkers movie. I want to talk about a bonkers book that I have been reading that I'm about halfway through reading, but I want to recommend it anyway. It's called For Human Use, and it is by a woman named Sarah G. Pierce. The setup is somebody invents a dating app that matches you with a dead body. Really? Even though they set it up as a dating app, it's really just buy a dead body and keep it like a pet. And it is a satire of how broken people are in terms of human connection. As this app starts to become popular and more and more people have these dead bodies, you have a cycle of media responses. You have a cycle of political responses. Should a hotel be allowed to bar you from bringing your dead body to the hotel, or is that discriminatory? There is a whole community of young men who feel like they are being super, super feminist by bringing dead women into their lives, referred to, by the way, as women who are dead, because that is more polite than dead women. They bring these dead women into their lives because it's not fair to ask living women to be as subservient to you essentially, as they want women to be. This is a book for a really, really impressively strange mind. And I mean that as the most complimentary possible thing I could say about it. Again, it's Called For Human Use by Sarah G. Pierce. I cannot stop reading it, and I cannot read too much of it at the same time.

[Glen Weldon]

Well, that's a great wreck. Thank you so much, Linda.

[Barry Hardiman]

That feels like the dating that Heathcliff really wanted. You know what I mean?

[Glen Weldon]

You know? Yeah.

[Linda Holmes]

I mean, kinda haunt me, Catherine.

[Glen Weldon]

All right, thank you very much, Linda. What is Making Me Happy? Book is coming out next Tuesday, February 17th. It is called A Place Both Wonderful and Strange, the Extraordinary Untold History of Twin Peaks. It's by film and TV critic Scott Meslo. Now, I consider myself a Twin Peaks uber nerd. And I looked at that word untold in the subhead, and I thought, thought, oh, bring it, buddy. And it gets brought in. If you belong to that subset of folks you read a lot about Twin Peaks, you'll get more interviews with all the people you would expect, the writers, executives, and actors and directors. But Meslo does get something new out of each of them. What I love most about this book, I now realize, is what it isn't. It isn't an oral history. Sometimes they're great, right? But sometimes you want a ringmaster, somebody to hold folks feet to the fire. He brings the context of a good shoe leather reporter. If two people's memories conflict, he calls it out. He digs into it. That's what you want. But he also brings the analysis of a critic, which is hugely useful for a show like Twin Peaks. Anyone with a passing interest in the show and its legacy, because let's remember that Peaks walked so that Lost and Westworld and Severance could run will be interested in this book. It's called A Place Both Wonderful and Strange by Scott Meslo, and that is what's making me happy this week. And if you want links for what we recommended, plus some more recommendations, sign up for our [e-mail] popculturenewsletter that brings us to the end of our show. Sariah, Nadia McDonald, Barry Hardiman, Linda Holmes, thank you so much for being here.

[Barry Hardiman]

Thanks.

[Linda Holmes]

Oh, thank you.

[Soraya Nadia McDonald]

It's a pleasure as always.

[Glen Weldon]

This episode was produced by Liz Metzger, Carly Rubin and Mike Katsif and edited by our showrunner Jessica Reedy. And hello, Come in provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from npr. I'm Glen Weldon and we'll see you all next week.

[Barry Hardiman]

This message comes from Capella University. That spark you feel? That's your drive. For more Capella University's flexpath Learning format lets you earn your degree at your pace without putting life on pause. Learn [e-mail].

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