Reviewing the Sandwich Generation on TV | Kerry Milligan and Melissa Reader | Club Sandwich
In this bonus episode, Sarah Macdonald is joined by Kerry Milligan and Melissa Reader to discuss representations of the sandwich generation on screen.
Ageing parents? You've got them. We've got you.
This episode was supported by Australian Unity, home health and care services — australianunity.com.au/clubsandwich.
With thanks to NSW Trustee and Guardian — search NSW Trustee and Guardian, or call 1300 10 20 30.
Vera is your candid companion as you care for an ageing parent. Have a look at https://vera.guide.
FACES (Families for Aged Care Equity and Support) is a family-led campaign asking for one honest count of the number of people waiting for their aged care funding and the people who die while they're waiting. Add your name at vera.guide/faces.
Put The Kettle On — Vera's free conversation guide: the five questions worth asking your ageing mum or dad, at putthekettleon.com.au
Credits:
Sarah Macdonald – Host + Executive Producer
Melissa Reader – Commissioning Editor, Executive Producer + Clubber
Justin McArthur – Executive Producer + Editor, for P. Zinner Podcasts (https://pzinner.com.au)
Thanks and kudos to Sean Wayland for our theme music Club Sandwich — hear more at https://seanwayland.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
This podcast is recorded on Wurundjeri land. We recognise elders past and present and pay our respects. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. This episode of Club Sandwich is going to deal with some confronting issues such as mental health, suicide. We'll put in our show notes some actual numbers for places if you need support afterwards. Club Sandwich is brought to you by Australian Unity Home Health and Care, helping Australian families keep their parents well, independent and at home for longer. Visit australianunity.com auclubsandwich. Club Sandwich is brought to you by New South Wales Trustee and Guardian. Helping families across New South Wales make a will, plan ahead and protect the people they love. Search New South Wales Trustee and Guardian or call 1300-10-2030. Hello, welcome to Club Sandwich. Now, this is the podcast for you. If you possibly grew up watching mash, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo or something like Chips. Gee, wasn't that a great moment in TV history? My name is Sarah McDonald. My mum is 93 and I still remember her yelling out while we were watching the Brady Bunch even. I've seen this episode 50 times. And we're gonna talk about what you can watch on screen today on the podcast because we're finally getting depict of the sandwich generation on the screen that you have to pay for. And they still have ads, but anyway, that's another bugbear of mine. So to discuss this, we have in the club today Carey Milligan, who of course used to review TV for Gogglebox.
On the couch.
On the couch with Melissa Rita, the CEO of Vera and the commissioner of the podcast. Hello.
Hello.
I've never reviewed a TV series, but I can't wait to do it.
It's great.
That's so much to talk about.
Here we go.
Well, the one we're going to talk about mostly is the one that I think about 60 people have messaged me saying, have you watched Riot Women? And it's free because it's on sbs. Kerry, give us a brief overview of what people are in for if they watch Riot Women.
Well, it's a group of disparate women who don't necessarily know each other that well, who decide that they're going to start a punk band and they're going to enter a local talent quest. That's the premise of it. But of course, they're all dealing with their own issues. As we know, they're all in their 50s, they've got elderly parents, they've got troublesome adult children and some of them have grandchildren. So it's bringing all of those factors together of their Lives trying to get themselves organized to start rehearsing this punk band to do the talent quest.
They're such good characters and they're such good and menopause and they're all a
bit dispirited and a bit like exhausted and broken in a variety of ways. But, you know, part of the kind of storyline is just how they find their mojo through this band and these friendships and this music. And it's punk.
It's punk and this. And I want to start with the punk because punk has always been sort of the music of the youth. Right. And it's the music of rebellion. Right, Sarah?
Youth, youth.
And it's the. It's the music of rebellion.
Yes.
It's the music of our purs and anger.
Yep.
So I love that it's the music of middle aged women starting a punk band because that is rebellious.
Well, it's very clever because like the sandwich generation are almost by design accommodating to everyone. Everyone and everything. And punk is the opposite.
Passing of the crucifix.
That's very clever. There is a lot of that. So, yeah, and punk saying up there to that expectation in some ways, although they still fulfill the expectations of the Sandwich generation in this. They' saying up yours to that, but they're saying up yours to society. About how middle aged women should, what, behave, do you think, Kerry?
Oh, absolutely. It's all about the rules of how women in general are supposed to behave. We're not supposed to be angry, we're not supposed to express our frustration.
Yeah, we're supposed to be, you know, invisible in terms of our emotions or, you know, the things that are really, really on our minds. And I think that's, that's where each of those characters kind of started, apart from Kitty, because she's anything but invisible. She's like explosive.
Poor Kitty.
Yeah, talk about Kitty. But yeah, it's that spirit of rebellion. It's that confronting, that midlife erasure that happens of not being seen on screen. And that's what Sally Wainwright's so good at doing. And she does this on all her shows. She has these strong, complex, powerful female characters who are a bit rebellious and are a bit up yours to social expectation. And we did try and interview her for the podcast, but the bloody. That was a disaster zoom didn't work.
So no pressure. This conversation has to be as good as the one we were going to have with Sally Bain right now, who created this.
But this is what she does and she depicts the Sandwich generation and she loves punk music and she Uses bands like Hole Through This.
Like the soundtrack's fabulous.
God, it's so good. What's your favorite song?
Give me hrt.
Yeah.
Give me hrt. Yeah. Because they're singing about life in this generation.
They write their own songs. They write the songs.
Yeah. I think they had a band, a girl band, write some of the songs.
Yeah. But in the, in the show, the two characters, Beth and Kitty, are writing the songs.
Yeah. That's kind of part of how they kind of really connect, isn't it?
Yeah, absolutely. That non conformity, that refusal to go away, that's what punk is. So I love that. Punk has been co opted by a bunch of middle aged women.
I love it.
And they're fulfilling my fantasy basically too.
And they're tapping into their own adolescence and early 20s before they had all, all of the life's things that pile up on them like marriage and children and looking after their elderly parents. So they're tapping into that, you know, that rebellious adolescence.
Still there. It's still there.
I know. Yeah, I know. I was like, I want to start a punk band. I've got the name for the punk band.
What is it?
I'm not telling you because one day it might happen because next year I started learning drums. I've dropped it because I've got too busy with mum. But I am going to learn an instrument next year and you never know, it might happen.
One of the characters, who's the character that plays the drums, what's her name? The one that's running the pub, she actually learns the drums and she gets pretty good after about six weeks, I reckon.
Yeah. Let me tell you, it's not that bloody easy, Jess. You make it look a bit too easy. And she's a great character because she kind of holds them all together despite
all the shit that's going down in her life.
We've all got a Jess in our lives, haven't we? We've all got one of those people that just kind of keep it all together and try and keep the family all stitched up. And she's the total organizer, isn't she, in that group?
She is the organiser. But what's interesting about her character I think is that she's a bit grumpy, like.
Yeah, she's got an edge.
She stands up for herself in the end, but. And she's got that fancy man too who drifts in and out.
Yeah, but she's not nice to him. She's not very nice to him. She's a bit grumpy.
She's definitely not nice to him. She treated him like shit. Can we talk about the opening scene?
Yeah. Ok, let's get back to the men in the series because we shouldn't do the men right up the top, but there's interesting depiction of the men in it. Okay. So when you watch this show, which you probably should, if you're in the sandwich generation, you definitely should. Yeah, the opening scene is pretty confronting and I'm going to say right up the top, actually, now that this. This episode of Club Sandwich is going to deal with some confronting issues such as mental health, suicide, we need to give out a warning here if people are feeling delicate and we'll put in our show notes some actual numbers for places if you. If you need support afterwards. But, yeah, the opening scene, Melissa, it encompasses everything and it's silent.
Well, the first bit is silent, but I tell you, the bit that just totally tells you everything about the Sandwich generation experience is her explosive phone call with that shitbag of a brother.
Yeah. So just setting it up. So she, the character Beth, is at the end of her tether.
Yeah.
She is burnt out and she's basically suicidal with grief.
And she's the good woman. She does good by everyone, looks after everyone except herself.
She pours herself a really stiff drink and she is clearly suicidal. And then the phone rings and she has to answer it.
She answers it. I can.
And it is her complete douchebag of a brother. The conversation she has with him. We should share a snippet.
She was a saver mum all her life. She saved for a rainy day. Well, this is her rainy day. It costs 5,000 pounds a month in that care home. And if she lives for more than three years, which she could easily do, how much she's covered.
Yep. So that conversation, for anyone in the sandwich generation, I could almost hear people screaming watching it.
Because what she does is she stops being nice, she stops pleasing everybody. And she says it like it is.
Yeah. And her brother's like, why are we spending all this money on Mum? Because she's got dementia.
He was arguing for his inheritance. He hadn't been to see the mum in six years and she wanted to know that her mum, who needed 247 dementia care, had everything she needed for as long as she was going to live. And she'd put all that in place and he was just arguing that he and his wife Abigail may not get the inheritance they had planned on.
I don't know why I'm laughing.
It hurts you so much.
I'm appalling. Because I think she's feeling guilt that her mum had to go into aged care. She's feeling grief over her mother's dementia. She's feeling completely burnt out. She tells people at work she's feeling this and they just ignore her.
And her brother expected her to continue to look after her. Yeah, of course.
To protect his future. And he says, inheritance.
What do ordinary people do? And she literally erupts and says, we are ordinary people. Mum was always a saver. This is her rainy day.
It's her money.
She needs the money for the care. I just. I just love it. I've watched that on repeat quite a few times.
Yeah. I think we should do an episode on money because it's this really hidden thing for the sandwich generation, the conflict over money.
Yeah.
And this. And this is. You know, this show goes there, doesn't it?
It opens with it.
Yeah, yeah. It punches you in the face. And then she gets a second phone call from Jess, like, let's join a punk band.
Yeah, that's great.
And it gives her this new lease on life. Being rebellious, as you said, Kerry, stop being the good girl.
Yep.
Being a bit naughty. And that's my favourite song. The first song that she and Kitty write together when she meets. After she meets Kitty is because she' Also grieving a divorce.
Yes.
And an empty nest because the son moved out. Horrible divorce. And her husband used to say, you're just like your mother. And they sing about. He says, you're just like your mother. Yeah, that's right. Oh, such a good song.
And I love the way they all change their appearance too. You know, they do the mohawks, they do the coloured hair, the. The earring, the piercing, they rock it out completely, you know, stop being nice.
Well, Kitty is not nice. So those opening scenes where she's totally unhinged and she's, like, jumping on cars, smashing windscreens and then getting very violent in a supermarket, she's full on.
But she's got every good reason to be like that, to feel like that.
Then comes my favorite character, Holly. Remember that supermarket scene where, like, you
kiss and he's just the policewoman?
Yeah.
So that's how those two meet. But see, the thing about Kitty is, like, Beth, she's been gaslit in her life. There's emotional violence against most of the characters and physical violence.
It's trauma as well.
There's trauma and that's why she just completely loses it. But, yeah, Holly, who learns bass, comes in and she's the.
She's, like, so wise in that scene, she can see this poor woman is totally unhinged.
And remember, she's good at her job because she's older. So good at her job even though she's about to retire.
Yeah.
And she just doesn't treat her like someone who is on the margins of society because that's how Kitty's behaving. Maybe she goes to the hospital and actually stays with her in ed and anyway really starts to look out for her. But I was reading in one of the reviews that Tamson Grieg, who's the actress who plays Holly, modeled her on Chrissie Hine from the Pretenders. How cool is that? And she's dealing with her ex husband, former boss, who's remember she's trying to report and reveal the misogyny that's happening at work.
Like her ex husband, the inspector. Yeah, because I didn't connect that.
Yes, because this is the other thing. Not only are they in the sandwich generation dealing, she's got a mum with dementia like Beth, who's in a different stage of it. So she's dealing with that. She's retiring from work to probably one reason is to do all of that, but she's also trying to be a good mentor and an ally for the younger women coming up at work. And she tells her ex husband about some sexism and misogyny at work.
And she did that in a very balanced way and he just completely.
But she does it in a very clever way because she makes him think it's happening to a bloke and then when she flips it on the dime, he's got nothing, he dismisses it. And this is where we go to the main characters, even the good guys, he's an okay ex husband, but they're just no idea. Don't want to see something, can be blind to it. Like.
Unbelievable. And then Holly has her little kind of hot something on the side. Remember, she has all that little dating, little dating scenarios as well. So she's like. She's a great character.
Yeah, they're complex, aren't they? And they've got a lot going on in their life and she's trying to balance the care for her mum, the mentoring of the younger, and she can make things worse by doing that. But the other thing I think is really interesting about this depiction of the sandwich generation that Sally Wainwright does so well is the kids. So the grown up kids and the grandkids are in there too, but the grown up kids, they don't behave their sons, they are so dismissive of their Mothers like, mum, we're out of milk, you know, and they're embarrassed about their mums being in punk band. They don't want to help with the demented mother. Yeah, they're horrible. Like, they're not. The sons are not good, but they're not evil. Right.
But we need to be asking why.
Yeah.
So why do the sons treat their mothers like that?
Well, why would you say.
Well, I don't know.
Don't say it's the mother's fault.
Oh, well, I'm saying. I'm about to say it's a number of factors, surely. It's the role modelling that they've had from their fathers, it's the role modeling from men in society, and it's possibly because their mothers have been too nice. Yeah.
Well, you know, we did the Kid Ults episode, Kerry. Right. And there we talked about, don't let your adult. Don't keep parenting your adult children. Get them to be flatmates. And when I watched this show, I thought, well, if that's the outcome. If you don't.
And I agree with you, get onto that flatmating theory.
Get onto that.
I am. I just. I've been thinking about this a lot in terms of, like, how Sally Wainwright really tried to flip the archetype of the sandwich generation, because it's almost like you're meant to be accommodating and feminine and just hide all the mess, just absorb it, soak it up for everybody and just keep everybody kind of moving forward in the right direction. And she's deliberately trying to completely flip that, don't you think?
Yeah.
And the punk, the choice of punk is absolutely aligned with that and the
complexity of the characters. You know when I said Jess isn't very nice and she's kind of grumpy. That's good. We get really grumpy.
Well, thank you. Menopause.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah.
And she has conflict in her own family.
We're all so nice. And then menopause hits us and it's, get fucked, all of you. Is anybody gonna change the toilet roll in this house or is it just me?
Is that the thing that makes you most cross?
That's the thing. That's when I knew I was going through the menopause, really. When I lost the toilet roll. I never lost it. I never slammed doors. I never yelled that. That was the last straw for me was the toilet roll change. For God's sake, somebody else.
It's the petrol in the car that gets me. Even though I did exactly the same
the thing that makes you snap.
Yeah, like you're in a rush, you're trying to get somewhere. Some kids borrowed your car and they give it back. It's full of McDonald's wrappers.
Oh, how rude.
It's on red in the table.
Yeah, but see, that's the thing about the adult children. They just take everything for granted and that can be enraging. But aren't we lucky that we can get the most pissed about a toilet roll or McDonald's in the car? Because Kitty in this cannot. Kitty has complex problems from childhood of trauma and being gas lit and treated like, you know, with all these problems. And we don't want to give too much away because you really have to watch it. You do have to watch it. And so we're making it sound really heavy, but it's actually really delightful.
Well, it's that beautiful blend, isn't it? That's why it's so well written and so well acted, because it's that beautiful blend. That one minute you're just horrified, the next minute you're literally pissing yourself laughing and it's like pelvic floor exercises. Yeah.
Good reminder. Thank you, Kerry. It's also just really tightly written. Like it doesn't drop into an episode or two that just feel kind of flabby and unnecessary.
You can't wait for the next one. You actually. You binge watch. I did.
I binged it.
Yeah.
You will binge watch. Maybe it's a good one to go back and watch and.
Yeah, I think so.
It's so. And some of it's really kind of like in your face and some of it's really subtle. Like some of the men's behavior, like some of the sons, you might not notice unless you're in this sandwich generation or the neighbour. That's really dismissive. Oh, you're in a punk.
You know, like even the dynamics around adoption, you know, from all sides of the family triangle, what that's like for Beth, what that was like for Kitty, what that was like for the slightly obnoxious son. Yeah. I just thought there's some really clever writing in it.
Really? Really. Yeah. And beautifully acted.
And, you know, I don't. I think the British do that so well. Those sort of complex stories, they do it so well. I'm not convinced that the Americans can. No.
Have you seen Last Tango in Halifax? That she wrote as well. And I think both shows leapt off. Her own mother. Her mother had dementia and Last Tango and Halifax is. I think she made it sort of probably made about 10 years ago, when her mother. Or 15 years ago, her mother hooked up with an old love. And it's about these two people in their 80s falling in love. And it's actually gorgeous. And their daughter. Their daughters, and. And the kind of conflict between the families. But it's a beaut. Like. So she's also betraying older people as being. Falling in love, as being giddy and having sex. And it happens. Yeah, that's what she does.
Something to look forward to, ladies.
We know, Kerry.
It happens.
But that's what she does where other people don't do that so much. She's a strong lass from Yorkshire, like a lot of her characters, who takes no shit and she just goes there where people don't want to go.
It's awesome. Yeah, it's very liberating.
Okay, but could a man write this? No, no, no. It has to be written by a woman.
Kudos to the man who might want to have his own version of the Sandwich generation story. I'm totally interested in that.
Why haven't we got one?
We will watch it. I would love to watch that because that kind of also normalises.
Where is it?
Men are in the Sandwich generation and do this care. And I would like to watch that.
Will we review that?
We will review that.
Critique that.
Yeah.
Well, it has to be made first.
Yeah, well, exactly. Let's see it happen. But it is a great show. It's on sbs. Catch up. There are ads on sbs, but now there's ads that you pay for on the streamer. Have I mentioned how cranky I am about that? I'm gonna get angry, but if you wanna watch a show that is funny, is powerful, is sad, is infuriating, and it. And anger is a big thing. That's why I'm wearing my Women of a Certain Rage T shirt. Like, the depiction of women's rage is kind of cool in it too.
Yeah, it's so good.
Oh, this should be more of it.
Well, there's another one with another. Another move we want to talk about today, isn't there? Which is totally different to. Right. Women, but also very, very profoundly the story of the Sandwich generation.
This is the Anthony Hopkins. Yeah. This is not really about female rage.
No. But it is about the Sandwich generation. And you and I started to watch this when we were on the Careless tour. And as I usually do, I fell asleep halfway through it. Not because it wasn't a great film, but I just can't seem to make it through entirely one sitting. So it's Anthony Hopkins and He won an Oscar and Olivia Colman as his daughter. And it is this remarkable story about what it means to be living with dementia through the lens of the elderly person and what the real reality of the family around him, what that really looks like day to day. Like it. It sounds. It's actually pretty profound, isn't it? It was adapted from a theater play, so you can really see the.
And the director put. Was the actual. Yeah, was. Yeah. Put it on the stage and then the screen. And they use the screen really cleverly in a way they probably couldn't have with the theater, to shift things around. So characters will change. One person, a different actor will play another character. Because you're kind of seeing what life
must be like, seeing what confusion might feel like that this elderly man thinks he's talking to his wife's husband and then suddenly that's the nurse in the aged care home. And I mean, I just think they did such a good job of bringing us into what that confusion really looks like in terms of setting and place and time and sequence and people and relationships.
Yeah. Because time must jump for people with dementia. It made me really, I think, more empathetic and understanding of people with dementia because it must be so bloody scary. You go into a room and you come out and everything's different and changed and times jumped and you don't know who people are.
Oh, that would be awful.
Yeah.
Which explains sometimes why people have irrational responses or particular behaviors, because it would be so unsettling. And I thought the way that they just showed. It's Ann, isn't it the main character's name, who Olivia Colman plays? Like just all the parts of her life that she had to compromise or put on hold. You know, that that's basically like the thread that runs through almost every scene. She's absolutely doing her best, but then she falls in love with the man and wants to go to Paris to live. Remember? And I mean, just.
Yeah. Or does she? Because we're never quite sure what the reality.
Yeah.
And what gets clever. I think about her, and I know you can't watch this, Kerry, but it's good to hear about. Is that she knows she's not the favorite daughter. Frankly, the dad's a bit of a dick.
And.
And sometimes we care for people in the sandwich generation who don't love us as much as they. We have to now. Care for love.
That's the big issue. Who's the favourite child?
It always seemed like Lucy was his favourite daughter and he just carried that kind of in A pretty gritty way through a lot of the conversations. So he would throw a lot of commentary at Anne. That was pretty painful to watch.
But I think if you know you're not the favourite child, then you've accepted that you're not.
But if you're the main carer for somebody who needs. Like, he's living with her. He is everything she's putting on her, off her life, you know, she's trying to manage it all. She's trying to find him people to help her and he doesn't like them. I don't like that girl. No, I won't have them. And then knowing that, you know, he'd rather be with someone else, the other daughter, that's. You'd have to be Mother Teresa on the Dalai Lama to not let that piss you off.
I did like that the film didn't try and make you really like him as a character, and I don't know that I could either, because he's always Hannibal Lecter somewhere in my mind.
Yes, he is, isn't he? God.
But it. It didn't try and make you feel really deep empathy or really like the father or take sides between him and Anne, but it just really explored what disorientation is and would feel like day to day. As a person living with dementia. I think it did such a good job of that. And you're right. So it's like an educational piece in that way.
And you have empathy for him, even though you don't particularly like him, and that's what you have to do. So that's actually interesting, Kerry. You say, well, you've got to get over that. Well, you do have to get over it. You have to give them empathy and love, despite the fact that, you know that they may not have given that to you and they may not be capable of that now. He said he drew a lot on his own father for that. And I think it tapped on that fact of, like, that men can get very angry when they're feeling very vulnerable and when they have dementia because they've lost that power that they had in society.
Oh, gosh. That is an episode in its own right.
It is.
Can we slate that for another conversation? Got a lot to say on that topic.
Do you? Okay, yeah.
And there's that beautiful moment, this is quite late in the film where he. They just have beautiful footage of, like, a park with lots of trees. And he says, I feel as if I'm losing all my leaves, the branches and the wind and the rain. I don't know what's happening anymore.
That's why I can't watch it. No, I know, I know.
Well, you've lived it. And. And I found. I've got to say, I found it really confronting and upsetting to watch, but I also found it very useful. And I'm lucky because my mum's such a sweetie and such a darling and I'm probably not the favorite daughter. You don't love the one you're with as much as. As the one that's not there all the time, but I am. My mum's never had favouritism, but I found it really useful to kind of go inside that confusion, bewildered state and how scary that would be. It's made me a little bit less rushed and a bit more tender, perhaps, when I'm with my mum and tried to see what that must be like, because you never know where you're going to end up there yourself either, which is our great fear. Right.
You also did a beautiful job of showing how some of the care staff. Because, you know, he. At one point, he is in a. In a home and one of the scenes, I think it's quite towards the end of the film, without giving too much away, you don't actually know if this woman is his wife or his daughter or a nurse. It's like an interchangeable role. And she's just telling him that the sun's out today and they're going to go for a walk in the park. So there's a beautiful side of it, but then it actually just feels like a Groundhog Day conversation, that his world's become so small, that the walk in the park is the only thing that they can structure the day around.
And the fear is there. His fear.
Yeah.
And he's sobbing. He's just sobbing on his shoulder.
And he's fearful because it must be so scary.
Yeah.
So you're not going to watch that. But if people would kind of are interested in seeing perhaps. What a representation, I think, of the sandwich generation playing out and dementia. The father is available.
Yeah.
But you've watched something that you really love just for a kind of sheer great chick show.
Sometimes you just need something, you know, that's fun.
What do you got?
Drive or Die with Hannah. Is it Waddington?
Yeah.
That amazing Amazon woman from TED Lasso. She is unbelievable.
I love her.
She just.
Yeah, she's boss lady, isn't she?
She's boss lady. She's amazing. She plays an assassin in this and she's just reached her 50th birthday and they're about to give her the flick, of course.
Cause she's getting too old for the job.
Cause she's 50 and she's got her best friend and they team up together through very difficult circumstances. But it's one of those films with these series with these fabulous female characters that you can identify with. So I've watched the first episode and then I went out with my best friend and I said, I've just watched this show and you're her and I'm the other one. And it's. We're not killing anybody. But, you know, it's just so us. I said, it's so us. I'm the goody two shoes, you're the reckless one. And they. It's just all about female friendship and bonding. It's really.
All right. That's going on the list too. That's going on the list.
It's very cartoonish in the sense that I don't normally watch violence. So there's a lot of violence in it. But it's like James Bond kind of violence.
Okay, I can do that too.
So she plays a James Bond kind of character. And she's fabulous. She's so. Not only gorgeous looking, but she's just so smart.
Awesome.
I love her. And you're right, she is an Amazon. She's just got this strength and this light and this power and this. Yeah. Presence.
Presence.
Real presence.
She is.
I bet there are so many other films and TV shows out there.
Well, we want your suggestions. Yeah, we do watch them and review them.
And maybe sometimes you don't wanna watch the sandwich generation on screen. Cause you're living it a lot in your life. But if you do write women, and the father, if you don't. Kerry, Straight drive or die.
And I've also been watching the Women's Tour de France. All these fabulous young women scaling these mountains. They're fantastic in Lycra. Yep, they're fabulous.
I wish I could say I was watching something else, but like I said, I have good intentions and then I just fall asleep.
That's because you're exhausted.
Watch it. Don't watch it in real time. Watch it on. What do you call it? You know.
Oh, no, I am doing it on demand.
Yeah, it's always on demand.
Yeah, it's always on demand.
Life's so demanding. We often don't get to do it.
Yeah, it's my husband crazy because, like, he's got to watch episodes 10 times. So I get through the 40 minute.
Yeah.
Drives him mad.
Right.
Thank you.
Well, you Know that's the thing, if you fall asleep to it, then that perhaps that's a good social service as well, that it's done for you. So, yeah, let us know what you're watching. What depictions of the sandwich generation do you love? Maybe it could be a book or something as well that is really useful to read because I think it is important to see ourselves represented and to tell those stories and to have a bit of female rage and a bit of female punk and not assassins, but friendship. And wouldn't we all like to go to Paris like Olivia may or may not do?
Who knows?
Yeah.
So what did you do for yourself this week, Sarah?
Um, nothing yet. Oh, no, I know what we did. Sorry. We went to a.
That wasn't a trick question, by the way.
Melissa took at me to have a soak and a massage.
Yeah, we treated ourselves yesterday.
Did you go to the Japanese onsen?
No, that's closed. I think we went to another one and we both came out just in a delightful stupor, didn't we?
Yeah, so that's because I'd even forgotten we'd done it because I was so relaxed.
What about you, Kerry? What have you done for yourself this week?
Well, before I met up with you two, I actually had lunch with an old friend from France who's just over here for a little holiday and I haven't seen her for about 15 years, so that was nice. Catch up. Oh, sure.
And what did you do for yourself?
I hung out with you at the bunkhouse, which was fabulous, but I've also had a beautiful friend here from Europe who is a schoolie friend of mine and we don't get to spend that much time together, so we did last weekend we hung out. It's gorgeous, you know, the people that just really know who you are and where you come from. It's one of those types of friendships.
Friendships and bath houses. I mean, you know, what better could there be in life? Like the massage for those weary bones, if you can take that time for yourself, but, you know, it's hard to do. Yeah. So you can just get out of your hot bath and get into a cold shower, emulate the same thing.
Still pretty good.
Kerry's like, nah, nah. The cold shower, I mean, me too, Kerry, not into it.
I'm not interested in any kind of sadomasochistic behavior, thank you.
Fair enough. Let's be gentle with ourselves. Hey, clubbers.
Yes.
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