Ranking & Wrap Up FIFTY SHADES OF GREY Trilogy + Parody! | Bonus Minisode

Today is the epic conclusion of our Fifty Shades of Grey miniseries fondly titled "Fifty Shades of May" series, and boyyy are we excited. Come on this first time journey with us as we do the ultimate book and movie ranking / showdown of the entire trilogy! We give our overall star and spice ratings of the Fifty Shades of Grey book trilogy by E. L. James, the movie trilogy, and even include our thoughts on the Fifty Shades parody book: Fifty Shames of Earl Grey. 

What did we love? (Veiny arms and grey sweatpants. 🤷‍♀️🫠) What did we not love? (Almost everything else? 🥴😂) Ultimately, after doing all this research in the name of romance genre science, was it worth it? Was it problematic? Did it help or hurt its cause? Stick around to find out why we’re filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and insisting Christian Bale go back in time to FIX THIS! 

Lastly, we announce what delightful coming of age series we’ll be covering over the summer. Here’s a hint: “I wish I were rich, and I could spend the whole summer at a hotel, eating ice cream and chicken salad.” See you there!

Join our Virtual Book Club & Buddy Read on Fable! | https://fable.co/club/50-shades-of-grey-pod-read-with-bestiesandthebookclub-487898954653

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Check out these author interviews? ⬇️

We interviewed Callie Hart all about her NYT Bestseller Quicksilver! Watch it here! https://youtu.be/CED5s7qDBdQ?si=8xtIRO1IzX6Rsld4

Check the official Author Interview with Lindsay Straube of Split or Swallow! Now a Barnes & Noble & Amazon best seller titled: Kiss of the Basilisk!  https://youtu.be/fknhocSNIKM

Watch our Author Interview with Indie Dark Romance Author Ember Nicole here |https://youtu.be/tHV9rXSTBpY?si=OwxdMVfPmtFkcYu6

Looking for your next murder mystery Romantasy? Preview This Monster of Mine with our interview with debut author Shalini Abeysekara! | https://youtu.be/dMoOSLW1vTE?si=n6z3RXxSutNXN2o

Shop bookish apparel worn in this episode!

Ashley is wearing: Crescent City “Bryce” Tee from @CaffeineAndCurses  | * https://caffeineandcurses.com/collections/sarah-j-maas-merch

Liz is wearing “Reading ‘Cause Fu*k This Sh*t” Tee by @darkanddisturbedshop | Use Code: VEGAN10 to save! | https://darkanddisturbedshop.com/products/praise-me-tee?_pos=2&_sid=81592a902&_ss=r

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Chapters

• 0:00 Spoiler Free Intro
• 4:33 Overall Rating & Reviews for Fifty Shades of Grey Series
• 42:42 Best 50 Shames of Earl Grey Parody Moments
• 49:50 Overall Conclusion of the Series
• 55:22 Is Fifty Shades of Grey a Positive or Problematic Book Series?
• 57:32 Fun Fact!
• 1:02:27 Summer Book Series Announcement!!

Transcript

0:03

it's gonna be great welcome to the Besties in the Books podcast guys i'm Liz and I'm Ashley and today is part four believe it or not of our Fifty Shades of Gray miniseries yes May is wrapping up here in our time on It's Going to Be May it's going to be Gray 50 Shades of May is coming to a close remix you guys this was our fourth miniseries if you've joined us for all of these miniseries thank you if you haven't well you we got playlists for you okay cuz we've done Harry Potter we did Twilight for the first time both of those reads and we did The Hunger Games leading up to Sunrise on the Reaping and now Fifty Shades so you know what that tells me there's something for everyone yeah we're very wellrounded yeah and we're about to get even more well-rounded we'll get into that later yeah yeah because we're going to announce our summer miniseries okay at the end of this episode so stay tuned there will be a new musical instrument you know entering the chat at that point so you guys will want to stay tuned we're not going to announce it here though sorry you got to wait but thank you guys so much for participating in those polls and suggestions on what musical instrument I shall have to play in the summer so we're excited for that thank you so much for joining us in this series covering Fifty Shades of Gray and talking all about like what all the hype was about what the hell is happening and why and we're going to talk more about it we're going to finish our thoughts here today in this episode episode number four yeah so this is the wrap-up so all of our thoughts on the book series as a whole so we'll give you our overall star and spice rating for the whole threebook trilogy we did not cover the spin-off so just the three-book trilogy um we're going to be talking about the wonderful cinematic masterpieces um which are the movie adaptations one two and three and then we will also be talking about our read of the parody book um 50 Shames of Earl Gay by Fanny Mkin um which was originally going to have its own episode but we decided it would work best if we just worked it into the wrap-up episode but we will discuss that book and what we thought of it um and that's a spoof so like really I want to say like watch out for spoilers but like you don't really need to like it's just kind of a funny good time um but if we're going to give anything away we'll make sure to let you guys know and so and then we'll rank everything so we're going to rank the movies we're going to rank the books which did we like better um and just if anyone is new here we this was like our first introduction to Fifty Shades of Gray basically so like neither of us had read the books before i had watched the first two movies but it was like when they came out and it was so long ago I remembered nothing and so I felt like I was watching them for the first time um so yeah this is like all brand new all new information for us um and yeah if that sounds good to you to follow along on the wrap up of our journey so we can put this 50 Shades of Gray series behind us um stick around but before we get into that we just wanted to say thank you so much for being here thank you guys so much for being here taking time out of your day and your book to tune on in to listen to us weirdos with microphones talk about today 50 Shades of Gray and all the things in May so hey make sure to like follow and subscribe anywhere you like listen to your favorite podcast including YouTube we're at Besties in the Books podcast everywhere we're also over on Tik Tok and Instagram too so we'll be having you know our summer series go up where you can if you're going to read with us follow along on Fable at besties in the book club kind of you know send us your reading updates and things like that which we repost on stories too if you're listening or watching this video you can now comment along with us on Spotify so hey I want to know you guys if you read Fifty Shades of Gray at any point in your life what was your favorite book or did you hate it all let us know we want to know you can also comment on on YouTube of course but that's really exciting that we could do that now and did you love them all so much that you can't choose a favorite yes we want to make sure everybody's included here because you know there's something for everyone to each their own we want to hear it defend your case ready go let's just kick this off with our you know one sentenceish spoiler-free star and spice rating for the book series as a whole so for the original trilogy altogether yeah okay all right go okay yeah overall I'll give him three stars this isn't what I signed up for i was sold a bad bill of goods how did we get here where do we go cotton eye Joe um no not really i feel misled misrepresented i felt like this didn't get as dark as I was hoping to except in a trauma-babed way and I was not expecting that so I also don't think it was very well written so that's my cumbersome review for you guys spice rating for sure yeah doesn't mean it's good doesn't mean it's good it's true sorry sorry if people love it sorry it's just my opinions yeah um Okay so my star rating would also be a three and that's generous like I rated the first book a four star just on like good vibes and like the fact that it was like Twilight good vibes and good intentions it was like Twilight uh book three was a solid or book two was a solid three star book three was a solid three star honestly okay it's hard to describe but we'll just try right now okay yeah so I g I'm giving the series as a whole a three star because I could see how someone who enjoys a good contemporary billionaire romance with maybe a few psychologically dark themes might enjoy it however it wasn't for me and I did not like the writing style okay um honestly I would say if I that's like my official rating compared to other contemporary romance if I were to rate it in my like the series as a whole and my overall enjoyability once I was done with it I'd probably rate it a two star two yeah because and the reason why it would be lower is because I just I feel like I kept holding out for it to give me something more and it just kind of never did so like I said compared to other contemporary romance billionaire romance we'll give it a three however yeah at the end of the day I feel like entertainment wise it would get a two for me and then yeah the spice I would rate it uh overall for the trilogy a four spice as well but as Ashley said not because it's good or even because it's particularly dark but just literally due to frequency of it happening yeah mhm yeah that's basically it okay goodbye this episode's over if you guys time we have more to say don't worry but if you remember from our first episode you know about the specific first book Fifty Shades of Gray I was predicting Liz and I would have totally different takes on this series cuz she's like I'm having a great time and I'm like I can't wait for this to end you know the series not the I love doing the series but just like the books you know for me it never got better so what an interesting turn of events i feel bad because sorry Liz you know I was I was rooting for you we're all rooting for you and I'm sorry it had to be this way because truly I didn't I was like you know I don't know it just went totally different than I thought it would yeah so I think that you know it's like file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau like we didn't get like we didn't get what we paid for i'm filing now going on that old school website that like doesn't ever work properly and I'm filing to the Better Business Bureau imagine Fifty Shades of Gray was not what I thought it was going to be i thought I was getting BDSM and I got an accidental pregnancy you know like oh come on so all the worst tropes you guys all the worst tropes were brought into the chat and we did not want that no no no no um okay so also let's just give our star and spice rating of the movie trilogy as a whole okay so confession time right i didn't I couldn't get past the first one i barely got through the first one at all so I did the first movie and I about had enough i was like I can't keep doing this to myself unfortunately it's just like the book in movie form but only like the worst uh changes like imagine the book but worse so for me that's what happened so Ash rating movie one okay movie one yeah first and last place no I mean technically because I can't go on any further the rest would have to be below that but hey I don't know what would So Liz what would your rating be though oh I mean still yeah i'm like okay I guess a two golly a two star movie cuz they somehow made three wor they made a three star worse for me so yikes and then Spice like how would you rate Spice for movie one oh I mean I guess it was a four yeah but it doesn't mean it was good yeah okay interesting all right so yeah I did watch all three movies so for a couple reasons two reasons reason one was I had back in the day I had watched movies one and two but I had never seen movie three okay that should already be a bad sign right where you watch two parts of a trilogy and then you're like I don't need to see the end um but you know a little bit of my brain was curious right like what does happen at the end do they change it is it the same whatever okay so that was one reason the other reason was because I literally was sick with a cold and like I was in bed and what else are you going to do like it was it was like the perfect movie to watch like other than like a comfort movie you know like one I've seen a million times like the perfect movie to watch where I was like my brain can be minimally engaged i can be tired and not feeling well and it's fine you know what I mean so I did watch all three um I would rate them as movies as films as films cinematic masterpiece yeah um okay i'm torn on this for one reason all right so I would rate them a three a three you know and and that's like even kind of generous honestly if I'm comparing them to like other cuz the only thing we can really compare them to is like other quote unquote romance movies yeah okay but I will say this after watching all three movies I do think it's very interesting that because when did the these come out 2013 2014 15 somewhere in there okay let's say like mid yeah okay the point is I don't know that I have seen any other movies with such sexually explicit content continuously ever and for that reason I do think that they deserve a little bit of credit because I think that that is important and doesn't happen enough in popular media because we still are very much living in like the residual effects of purity culture because we get to watch a lot of really horrifying stuff on TV all the time really um yeah beheadings and such yeah be or just or just you know gun violence like other types of you know sexualized violence like just a lot of really horrible things so you can't even say like oh well it's because across the board we censor TV no no no no we don't yeah we don't um so I think that it does deserve some credit for depicting in I'd say most of the scenes Anastasia having a good old time yeah yeah mhm that's good that's a good I think that's a good positive thing you know so for that reason you know it doesn't get lower than a three star i feel like good for them for putting it out there yeah but but still I wouldn't like rewatch them you know it's just Yeah um and then as far as spice goes in movies like I'm gonna have to I mean honestly I struggle between a four and a five spice because like I said I don't know that I've ever seen a movie with that frequent of like sexually explicit content happening in it you know what I mean like I don't know i I really struggle to think of especially like in romance movies like there most of it is like maybe a little bit and then like closed door you know what I mean um so yeah I'd say for a movie for a movie that would make it to the movie theater mainstream you can rent it from your TV it's pro that's rated R you know probably a five like probably a five spice I would say as far as like the trilogy goes yeah i mean send me send me your recommendations if you know of ones that are more sexually explicit that are just like rated R movies i'd be curious honestly that aren't rated R and sexually explicit because of um you know traumatizing or triggering elements but more so like everyone's having a good time kind of stuff you know positive yeah obviously they have their you know ups and downs as any relationship does but I wouldn't necessarily call for the majority of people anything in the movies particularly triggering when it comes to the sexual acts so let's talk a little bit about the parody okay and how we would rate the parody book before we just like move into kind of like discussing the movies and uh you know the book series as a whole kind of in more length so as we said before we were originally going to do a whole episode based on Fifty Shades of Earl Gay but truly like it didn't really need its own episode um it stuck pretty close to the plotline I felt like um of Fifty Shades of Gray it just condensed it way down and made it funny yeah it put all three books into one so I appreciated that didn't it now I forget yeah I think so yeah it was like 300 pages that's all we needed not even I think yeah yeah um that's all we needed they did us all a favor so that was a zero spice or maybe like one but it was like funny it was like funny making fun of it spice so it wasn't like for real so I'd say like one and then um I rated it a three star because I felt like while it had its moments it wasn't particularly in my opinion that clever like it was funny and the jokes were good but I didn't find it to be remarkable so I just gave it a three what about you yeah I gave it a three as well for the same reasons cuz I I was having a good time and it was funny i listened to it and uh but some of the stuff was like a too obvious joke you know but I did really enjoy all the millennial nostalgia that was in it we We're suckers for that we love that but was it a necessary parody eh you know hey you know it was a good time but eh nobody you don't have to read it unless you want to do it like really unless you really want to double down on the Fifty Shades content you know yeah yeah needing more but to make fun of it mhm so palette cleanser maybe uh yeah just like a funny little like I listened to most of it i want to say like did I listen to it on the plane it was like pretty short so I just like listened to the audio book and I was just kind of like laughing at myself a little bit yeah I must have been on the plane so I was making notes yeah um Yeah okay so should we get into this the kind of spoilery section slash like book versus movie showdown portion sure okay boom boom ji wow time for spoilers let's go what is that i don't know so which should we like better if we were to do like a movie versus book showdown obviously you can only do book one versus movie one but what would you say would win out of the two i'd have to go with book interesting yeah so for that reason okay because I figured okay and this is a spoiler for my ranking but book one was the best out of the bunch because I still had hope okay so if the movie was that bad that I made me like the book better there can't be any hope for the other movies i'm done like you have to like turn a completely new leaf yeah yeah yeah which if I had time and you know I didn't prioritize it at all to finish it i would have done it for science but it was yeah I'd rather read my books so sorry guys to disappoint but you're the expert here what say you let's go so book one movie or book boom book for sure uh but however two and three I choose movie because I would Did they fix No they they Well we'll talk about it a little bit they fixed a couple problematic things I feel like in the movie if for no other reason than to not have us hate Christian cuz it's like you know it's one thing to kind of dislike him in the book but if they were to put some of that stuff in the movie too you'd be like oh now everyone just like can't stand him great you know um I simply would say movie for two and three because there's no point in reading the books in my opinion like you could literally just watch the movies and it's good enough you know what I mean like it's fine um like I don't need to read 600 pages to tell me this story that like I half watched while sick and still digested completely fine you know what I mean in an hour and a half in an hour and a half yeah so I would say you know give the first book a chance for sure i liked that it was a lot like Twilight but then after that it's kind of like h movies are good you know that's the reading order consumption consumption order so ranking the books from most liked to least liked how would you rank them well here's my full ranking okay okay including the the one movie I watched okay fifty Shades of Gray obviously number one spot number two I'm going to give it to the parody number three Fifty Shades Freed mhm even though I didn't like it number four Darker cuz I don't remember even what happened number five would be the movie because like I said somehow they made me like the book better so okay so we basically have the same ranking that's interesting so I ranked the books 50 Shades of Gray parody 50 Shades Freed and then 50 Shades Darker because in my opinion book two like literally nothing happened and it didn't Why does it exist if you really wanted to drag it out I stand by you could have just smooshed Freed and Darker together if you want to have two books but look it Parody did it and all three in less than 300 pages 300 pages um and the whole series together was like 2,000 pages give me a break i'm sorry golly golly um and then my movie ranking you know was one so 50 Shades of Gray and then three 50 Shades Freed and then again two because again why why oh okay yeah so basically the same vibes from both exactly well at least they're consistent we'll give them that yeah it's true it was consistent i agree so would you say that your favorite book then just like mine would be book one Fifty Shades of Gray if you had to choose a favorite of this trilogy and I would say because because we know it's Twilight fanfic it felt the most Twilighty so at least it had something to give me the movie too mhm this is the most I mean I only I It was very Twilight vibes for a couple things I'll mention in a minute yeah but um what about you yeah same you know book one for sure but that's when I still had hope in this world exactly just kidding um none left guys none left you know I still had hope i was you know I was fully immersed in the you know rainy angsty Seattle vibe that was very similar to Twilight you know and even though Anna is a few years older you know than Bella they're still very similar too so yeah I was just really feeling it and then um it just kind of went downhill from there I guess you could say um but no my my least favorite book would be two though like the flip side of that so favorite book was one my least favorite two for the reasons we've already said it just nothing it was it felt like filler and felt unnecessary and long and drawn out to me in a way that didn't need to happen yeah unnecessary and it kind of went off the Twilight rails it's kind of like she tried to get away from that you know which I get as an author of like oh shoot this blew up and now I want to kind of make it my own maybe but then obviously that didn't work out and so back in book three we kind of reel it back into some Twilight with the wedding and the honeymoon and stuff so it's like you need to either be what you're going to be or don't ever be it i don't know maybe that's not fair for me to say i'm just a consumer over here but that's just our opinions yeah this is just what this is what I feel and yeah with that said if you're listening to this and you're like I love these books like more power to you i'm glad we are not very into contemporary romance as it is and we didn't even know that's what it was going to be getting into it so we were kind of sold from seeing it as spectators when it first was coming out as this dark romance oo crazy so that's what we think we're getting and then when we get a contemporary billionaire romance Yeah we're like "Wait what?" Yeah you know it just Yeah it was I think this is another reason why I ranked the movie one and the book one as my favorites is because they were more Twilighty but also I think at that point Christian is still a mystery and you know we love a good man of mystery around these parts you know whether he's you know mysterious because he has a troubled past or he's mysterious because he has a secret or maybe he has magic or maybe you know what I mean it's like we love a good broody dark mysterious man and I feel like Christian was still kind of giving hints of that in the beginning um and you know then that tied into this whole like BDSM lifestyle that we were thinking would be the darker place that he was going to take Anastasia to and so we still thought that's where it was going in book one and then you find out as you're going through that it's actually doing the complete opposite of all that and he does have kind of a dark secret but it's mostly just terrible childhood trauma um yeah and we work our way away from the BDSM lifestyle as we're working to the end of the books and so while the titles get increasingly more dramatic darker freed when really it's like okay darker means that we're just getting more into Christian's troubled psyche and then freed is basically just now because of this relationship with Anna he's able to free himself from But does he though but does he though but does he honestly which we talk all about in the last episode covering Freed because we don't feel like he does that would have been good that would have brought it up if he was like actually getting some justice brought to him actually fully you know he has this little moment of re we don't get that full backstory of the full realization of everything that's happened to him well imagine if you could just like cure your trauma by getting a girlfriend for 4 months yeah like It all happened so fast that would be just a amazing cure all wouldn't it but unfortunately that's not realistic yeah so the basically this book see like Yeah it we just end up hating the MMC because he's an emotionally stunted manchild manchild that Anna has to come in and pick up the pieces of and cater to him and then even in the epilogue oh you know my my sweet little boy that they now have just like her his father like have to take care of him and baby him i don't know i didn't like the representation i didn't enjoy almost anything about it except when they gallivanted around the globe that was the only time I was enjoying it i was like "Oh cool colorado love that place." Yeah exactly right ashen great france great like really we just like the places they went it had nothing to do with I had to find something then um you know I think that it must it needs to be said though and I want to make this really really really clear for anyone listening maybe you just hopped on this episode and haven't been following along with our journey the reason why we find these books problematic not enjoyable and what not enjoyable why we don't like the MMC like all these things it are not to do with any of the reasons why we thought those things would be true so it's not because you know he necessarily like takes her like I thought we were going to get into like a he takes her on this like sexual journey into this like BDSM world that she's kind of like not into and he has to kind of like manipulate and mold her into the person the submissive woman that he wants right none of that happens okay so I just want to make that clear that that is not why we have problems with these books we literally have problems with these books because it was the complete opposite of what we expected and while the MMC has significant trauma it's basically just from child abuse and that's it that's like and like obviously we need that representation we read books with that content all the time but this wasn't done in a way that was positive and healing you know it was very obviously Christian dismisses it a lot and doesn't see it as an issue so we just we yeah we take issues with the facts as they were presented and I think at this point and maybe it just comes to the publishers who knows how much the author has control of at that point but just purposely misled you know and just sold books in a way so but that could be really triggering for people that you know are triggered by some of this content to not know that going into it it's totally different yeah you're thinking like "Oh well you know I'm really triggered by maybe manipulative partners or you know maybe like I don't know like specific like sexual acts things like that." It's like well those probably wouldn't be any of the reasons why this might trigger you so yeah so the issues we have are just the Yeah all the representation was very very surface level and just a little oversimplified I think so that being said did you have any favorite movie moments i did like that it had that grayish blue kind of aesthetic to it just like Twilight cuz that's like one of my favorite things about Twilight is that cinematography and um yeah that's that's pretty much all I wrote down okay I want to say in my defense I was going into the movie like there is no way Dakota Johnson is that her name is as bad as people say she is cuz I've seen her in other stuff she's fine like there's no way she could be bad i really like her a lot yeah there's like you know about this Fifty Shades movie her and this Fifty Shades movie i was like there's no way her bangs are that bad there's no way Christian is that awful of an actor they're just there ain't no way this is a multi multi-million dollar film you know that all went into the film like literal camera production i think I don't know what this director was on but her acting I'm sorry terrible the her bangs I'm sorry terrible what length are you it's like that terrible in between stage and I'm gonna critique it this hard because I can okay not that I'm perfect but like it's like either go short on the bangs or go long what was that it was like and it was awkward so I'm going to rag on it because I do it even with movies I like okay also I wrote down on here oh no bad wigs just like Twilight because her brother and her bad bangs i don't think her bangs were a wig but her brother enters the chat with like a bad wig at one point i'm like "Oh my gosh." Were those the things that you hated about the movie yeah i just went I went on a ramble cuz I found one thing that I liked and the rest of everything I hated um and then I'm so sorry i don't know how to say this tell me if this is too mean okay the way Christian spoke okay is like maybe like he's trying to have an American accent i don't know anything about this actor i don't know if he has an Australian I think okay because it was so distracting because he's just supposed to be like a Seattle dude you know and it just felt like formal i think I think he was supposed to sound formal okay and like I get that to a degree but it didn't sound like that to me yeah it's it did sound weird i agree didn't bother me as much as it bothered you I think yeah their chemistry seemed fine enough to me i just as individually on screen I thought it was a mess so that's fair i did not have as big of a problem with Dakota Johnson's bangs yeah I did i have to say that's good i'm glad you pay that close of attention at that point I was looking at everything okay yeah that's hilarious um I'm not saying they were good either but I just I'm saying I just didn't care about him that much you know yeah i guess it was hard to watch because I will say in Dakota's defense she seemed like Anastasia it was her on from the paper onto the screen like she got it she nailed it christian on the other hand I don't think so he and that was another thing is like he's seems like a small guy he would didn't seem very doineering he didn't give that vibe to me on the movie set like he didn't seem like who I would picture as gray he seemed like who I would picture as the Christian version in Freed honestly because we kind of get to know him a little bit more he's a little more boyish because he's a little bit boyish I guess totally so maybe they cast him perfectly exactly so you know he's gone full circle full circle well done bravo hey people liked it it's a multi-million dollar hit although it wasn't streaming everywhere and I had to pay for it so yeah yeah um I will say that you know I think it's the same it's the effect that it's the Bella effect it's the Kristen Stewart effect i feel like Kristen Stewart played Bella perfectly and people criticize her all day long for how bad the acting was well hey did you read the books because I feel like it was spoton and I feel like it was the same way with Dakota Johnson playing Anastasia yeah yeah it's not her fault the character and her character doesn't even suck i don't even hate her character as much as I hate Christians but yeah it's not her fault she's awkward she's just a inconsistent awkward character yeah but she played the character well I thought you know she does um Yeah uh Jamie Dornan I think that's his name who plays Christian you're right he's 5'11 i looked it up yeah it's not too short but hey i mean it's like you said it's like you said it's okay so I'm rewatching right now with my husband um all the Christian Bale Batman's okay listen there are other guys out there you could cast in a role like that so much better like I don't know for instance Circa this time Christian Bale for example for example literally yeah i'm watching it like Yeah that's who I would picture you're right american Psycho like American Psycho 100% mixed with Batman cuz more mysterious like dark yeah although I mean American Psycho is obviously pretty dark too but yeah there's plenty of times in Dark Knight where he's you know as he's dressed up like Bruce Wayne so he's wearing a suit he's going to his office he's very like Christian gaycoated only I mean I don't know how tall Christian Bale is and I'm not going to look it up and no one tells me i don't want to know i don't want to know uh but he just he gives those vibes more to me than Jamie Jordan but as you're saying he is very you know he's got those big old round eyes and kind of that boyish face and so it makes sense that they would cast him since he's essentially playing a manchild yeah but even my husband was like "Wait how did this guy make a bunch of money this guy?" Okay yeah yeah that's the thing it needs to emote that powerful you know billionaire energy and he didn't to me so sorry hey it felt very surface level like superficial i agree like I feel like he would have played a good like guy in a romcom like we're not supposed to take so seriously you know cuz I couldn't take him seriously yeah i feel like it's like Yeah like I'll just say it he does not have daddy energy at all he doesn't he doesn't and Dom energy no neither okay so I will say though since we've gone off topic here um things that I liked about the movie yeah we're just trying to end on a positive note for the movies you know intentional should I start then with things I didn't like because I have a list of those weren't the ones that was just confirming my bias okay yeah yeah well no go ahead with uh go ahead with your favorite favorite things um I put veiny arms so there was a lot there was a lot of veiny arm shots especially we know that I'm into a good guy that plays piano the only acceptable instrument he did look very small playing the piano but sorry that's okay i think I think it was more of like the zoom in just his arms just of the of the forearm area if you will um and then you mentioned this i think that and I agree with you after watching it the inception of the gray sweatpants obsession yes yes i post on threads i'm like you guys did we see Are we here at the birthplace cuz it's mentioned a lot in the book i think so i think so the invention of men in gray sweatpants yeah something does Christmas does come to us today veiny arms and gray sweatpants yeah thank you Fifty Shades hey we'll take the good we'll take the wins with the loes yeah we'll accept we just We have to We'll suffer through we'll suffer through um in the movies okay so we talked extensively about the turning point in book three where we really started to dislike Christian when he freaked out when she told him that she was pregnant and he called her stupid and that basically that basically was like the the kiss of death I guess you could say for Christian's character right um in the movies that does not happen yeah so I was like "Okay that was a choice for sure." Because I think that if that would have happened on screen it would have been an automatic ick everyone out turning point in the series for sure yeah in the movies they depicted him more of like it was like a much more lighthearted situation it was like she tells him that she's pregnant he's obviously upset but he kind of acted more like a like a harmless upset like kind of mopey frat boy like he just went and had a few too many beers and then she tucked him into bed you know what I mean it was like it wasn't the whole blow out like thing where he literally literally like calls her stupid to her face like that doesn't happen and so I appreciated that i didn't have to watch so we learned our lesson Miss James good yeah um my other favorite moment that wasn't really a favorite but kind of okay so I felt like all the spice in all the movies was just very like me like just kind of what like whatever you know it's not like just trying to be artsy really i felt like like how can we get as many shots in without you know getting it turned into a different rating yeah yeah kind of right um I did like in movie three things finally started actually getting interestingly spicy there was one scene where I was like "Look at you go." Like this to me is actually like kind of racy to be on TV like oh my gosh like good for you she says her safe word I want to say within like not even that like 10 seconds and I was like it's over okay so I thought it was my favorite part of the movie and then it quickly turned into a fail because they just they had to cut that one right off it was like the one time that I felt like Christian was actually giving any type of like real dom energy and then it was just gone in like the blink of an eye so okay and this is what we're talking about here it's like we're sold a totally different thing than what we're given it's a bit dramatic of the media and the the people as they were what is the word that I'm looking for i don't know just people as a whole during that time like are we reading the same book we accidentally handed a different trilogy i know ordered the wrong thing yeah so uh yeah I was a little bit like disappointed by that cuz I was like "Oh this is what we've been waiting for this whole time." Just kidding and so I feel like though that did further reiterate the fact that you know anyone who wants to criticize this series for being an unrealistic representation of a BDSM relationship it's just a nice reminder that that isn't what this is and so um yeah to critique it for that would not really make a whole lot of sense I feel um so my least favorite parts going off of that my two favorite phrases were never used in the movies so if you guys have been following along you know that I love myself a good crack horror moment yeah or five or 10 or inity yeah um or a [ __ ] troll moment yes and neither of them were mentioned even once in the movie which I get because well [ __ ] troll I think would have been fine um but yeah crackor would have been maybe a little much but um I was disappointed by that yeah um I did feel like it was focused a little bit less on the plot than it could have been like I feel like the plot could have been a little bit more at the forefront just to suck us in a little bit more make it more interesting it kind of just felt like a whole bunch of disjointed like sex scenes mushed together that's the vibe I got too from the one movie I watched yeah um I didn't get to see the inside of their remodeled house at the end i didn't like that i was lucky to it i know i was like I want to see what it looks like in there no didn't get that um and then the my one thing that I hated more than anything else in the whole series that I texted Ashley about in the night was the uh the scene where Jamie is singing at the piano it was one of the most cringy things I think I've ever seen in the film before yeah it was terrible please don't ever make me watch that again that's that's my hell you know it's like who's who's that like uh like the Greek god right that has to keep pushing the boulder up the mountain for eternity it's like that my version of that would be like my eyes are pried open and I style yeah and I have to like uh for eternity watch that scene of him trying to sing it was just so cringe back to back to back to back yeah oh my god so please no never again yeah um so just to kind of like switch gears a little bit talk about something that we enjoyed did you have any favorite parody moments quotes or things from the parody book that you just thought were funny or Yeah let's How about this do you want to bounce back and forth cuz I got a bunch of stuff written down okay i have I have a bunch of stuff too my inner guided starts to talk to me cuz instead of goddess it was a Jersey Shore guided the whole time yeah uh BDSM stands for bars dragon sorcery and magic that was so funny and weird his long fingers his seriously long fingers like I like that they picked up all the ridiculous stuff we did right and turned it around oh cuz you couldn't you couldn't you could not yeah um so you had to pull a copy of Twilight like the book in or that was like this the way to open the secret door to his dorm room of doom yeah that was great so secret BDSM room is basically just like a um a laring room yeah yeah he throws money around like monkeys throw poop you know just all the great visuals what a metaphor um there was a sex position called the Abe Lincoln but it was not explained i was like Dang it i needed to take a note i know i like immediately thought of you because of Ashley had like a weird madeup obsession with Abe Lincoln in high school and so that's immediately what I thought of yeah she's working at Walmart instead of a hardware store so this is when Gray like stalks her and finds her i throw my smock off and it hits a customer riding a rascal scooter in the face and they run into a display of cheap Katy Perry perfume like this is a short movie like a short show whatever like a 30-minute movie yeah sketch comedy for sure that's right me and Ashley that's going to be our next Yeah endeavor um instead of having her fill out a contract he has her fill out a 12,200 page Cosmo quiz i put that down too so good and it includes team Jacob versus team Edward so that was great um just all the Tom Cruz references cuz we also were doing that in one of our episodes about this before we read the parody i put that his obsession with Tom Cruz on the plane like his plane is the Tom Cruz plane from Top Gun the stock car is the one that he drove in like what is it days of Thunder yeah it was pretty good it's good um great buying everything so like when they just be like "Oh well I just bought your college oh well I just bought that coffee shop oh I just Yeah like I like it i just bought it." Yeah okay she's having her inner monologue and she thinks "What is our what will our babies look like will they have long fingers too?" Uh he pays with a $1 million bill with Mitt Romney's face on it okay this is the last one I have okay every rose has its thorn was played in a mood moody vibe with a tambourine yes a tambourine that's how he does it guys every rose has its thorn she walks in on him i think that's instead of the piano right that's That's so us i love it yeah i honestly would prefer that to whatever we saw in freaking the real movie she's in a car crash where she sinks down to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean so uh Earl Gay drains the Pacific Ocean to go save her get you a guy that'll drain the Pacific Ocean when you fall into it seriously they don't make them like they used to in the 1999 i don't know 2000 that was like literally it was like in 200 200 whatever what is time um his philanthropy project is to prevent drunk diving because apparently it's a problem uh let's see oh he won't allow any I'm on a boat or Titanic references on his yacht yeah that just seems like good business yeah mhm um Oh one of my favorite quotes what time is it it's dicky now baby as we all say here's another one where were we oh that's right nearing the city limit of Foxville like what's even happening right now that's so good um if they mixed some of those into the actual book though hey I wouldn't have even noticed that much it's true one of the best ways they could have possibly ended this was with Tom Cruz being the best man at his wedding the whole thing with 50 Shames of Gray is that Christian or Earl in this case Earl Gray he has 50 things that he's ashamed of um did you have any in particular that you wrote down that you thought were funny cuz I was keeping like a list of some of the things I thought were funny okay go ahead okay so some of the shames that I thought were hilarious that he like literally these are his like secret traumas um he listens to Nickelback oh my gosh yes I forgot to write that down that was great um he shops at Walmart that was funny um obviously he likes role playing games his favorite restaurant is Olive Garden um he cried when Oprah went off the air yeah even though he never watched it or something like that um oh my god this one coconut lime body wash from Bath and Body Works that's his favorite um and the best one is that he laughs when the guy hits the propeller in Titanic every time he watches yeah I mean hey who doesn't relatable i was like "These are so random." I think that was my favorite part of this book was like just thinking about the authors sitting down and like writing these because that is very uscoded like what would be the most stupid thing we can think of oh Tom Cruz being the best man at his wedding yeah okay okay so now that we have covered our final thoughts on the book trilogy our final thoughts on the movie trilogy the parody are you happy with the conclusion and the ending no same same great it was way too you know like happily ever after coded for something that I think um maybe should have like ended a little bit more complexely perhaps i think if you're going to deliver the type of themes and trauma that this author did she did a disservice by wrapping up the ending in such like a happy tidy little bow with no satisfying conclusion for those pieces yeah cuz it was just like and then they got married and then they had kids and then they lived in the mansion overlooking the ocean or whatever and everything was great the end like don't bring all that other chaos into it then that's my thinking you're not going to you're just going to hurt people more i don't know you're just going to open wounds and let them fester so I 100% agree yeah um are there any unanswered questions that'll be nagging at the back of your brain not at all goodbye not at all goodbye million% no there's nothing about this uh Fifty Shades universe that will be keeping me up at night no no so do you understand the hype in fandom now that we've experienced it also no i It's hard for me to speak on this like the question that I wrote it's hard for me to speak on the question that I wrote how dare you ask me that me i know uh but no truly it is and you know lots of times I come up with these questions because they're things that I tr like really want to discuss and talk to you about and like hash out on the podcast because I'm not really sure how to answer them myself so like I don't necessarily understand the hype of fandom if it came out today I think it would fall incredibly flat um I think it's hard to not I think it's hard to relate to the hype in the fandom reading it now yeah not at our age because it's only like 12 years old right but at this time at this time such as this how far we've come in the romance genre mhm that's what it is if if we were It's almost like I wish I would have read this when it came out because I feel like then I could have experienced that like shift moment that um a lot of people probably did experience who had pro you know people who had been reading romance for a long time and finally were like we're getting a mainstream thing like it's getting turned into a movie um it's being accepted by more people or maybe someone who had never read romance and because everyone was reading this book picked it up and it changed the trajectory of their reading life i think that um yeah reading it now after everything else that we've read and continued to read being you know luckily immersed in this community that's so you know welcoming and accepting and openminded um yeah it falls flat truly yeah um so no I don't understand the hype and fandom however if I would have read it when it came out maybe I would have a better understanding of that or maybe if you could send us back in time a good old time machine for us to like experience the phenomenon as it was happening yeah you'd have a different appreciation for it and we can give credit where credit's due you know it did bring this to the mainstream and kind of uh make it more accessible to the public and maybe inspire other authors like"Hey I'm going to do my take or I'm going to see the things I did and didn't like about this and make my own story." You know I'd love to find that out like how many authors created books because of this so yeah definitely I do give credit to the hype and the p the fandom for sure i don't understand the fandom because I thought it was something else so dear fandom of Fifty Shades what like with romance I think too like a big part of it right is like you're we're collecting or at least for me I know you're a little bit more specific but it's like I like to collect my book boyfriends right and like Christian doesn't even begin to like skim the surface of like that fantasy for me yeah um and so I think that's another part of it too right it's like you're reading romance books where that's supposed to be part of the fantasy is this you know like hot billionaire sweeps you off your feet and I'm like I don't know I don't know about that that might be that might be our age maybe um or the times or combination of both yeah i mean and also I think in the back of my mind you know he's supposed to be an Edward he ain't no Edward he ain't no Edward edward was super mature he's 100 years old you know like he had his moments but I feel like at the end of the day like yeah he was he was 100 104 year old virgin yeah so or whatever um but still but still yeah i feel like got very different vibes i feel like Edward was a much more well-ritten well-rounded character also just to wrap up this Fifty Shades discussion unless you have anything else to say about it at the end of the day would you say that you are happy or sad that the series exists and gained such popularity and would you consider it to be problematic or overall a positive contribution i think that kind of like what I was just saying I can give credit where credit's due it must have done something to the industry and I don't I don't know what's not the word not normalized but made it more accessible i mean it's the number one bestselling romance book guys it did something you can't tell me that didn't have an effect on the industry and people's reading tastes you know for better or worse it had a It had a pretty significant influence it did so yeah I'm happy it exists even if it's not for me because obviously there's people out there that love it so good for you i agree i agree i don't think that it was problematic enough i was expecting to tear this book to shreds i was like well we did but for not what we were expecting yeah yeah it cheesy because they didn't explicitly you know say what the darkness was going to be about yeah cuz it was weird misled i mean that I was thinking I was going to go into it and criticize it for ways that in my opinion could have been really really detrimental um and you know we find ourselves more so criticizing you know just lack of character development not great writing um you know not very great uh trauma and mental health representation like things like that so I feel like you know overall I would say that it was a positive contribution to you know the romance cannon in general just for what it was able to do the doors that it was able to open and the conversations that were able to be had because of it and I do think that the actual physical media representation via the movie versions was also positive because I don't know that I've like I said I've ever seen anything else like that it especially not something that got as popular as that yeah fifty Shades movie fun fact originally cast as Christian Gray was Charlie Hoonan otherwise known as that dude from Sons of Anarchy but he had to back out at the last minute due to scheduling conflicts so my question to you guys would that have been a better a better casted Christian i don't think so like Liz and I were just saying he is blonde so I don't know yeah i mean I feel like the most attractive I've ever seen him was in that movie The Gentleman with um Matthew McConna where it's kind of like mafia he like mafia adjacent or whatever and um he was okay yeah better better than this Christian do you think yeah but he's a hair by a hair i feel like I just I have I don't know i did watch Sons of Anarchy and I didn't like it and one of the reasons why I didn't like it was because I didn't like him and so uh I have a hard time with it like I feel like it might have just been like the same you know what I mean why is he more intense though he's definitely more intense but I don't know about in a good way like I always felt like he was kind of like overacting oh yeah well this guy was underacting so we only got one or the other in the middle can we find someone to be in the middle of Okay tell us who your ideal fan cast would have been i personally I love Dakota Johnson i would keep her as Anastasia yeah she did great at the end of the day she did exactly as her character is yeah um you know I think she's beautiful like I feel like she fits the role but like who would be your fan cast for Christian in an ideal world who would it be yeah a young Christian Bale for me younger uh yeah younger i mean it has to be fan cast it would be Christian Bale now but like as appropriate for We can't talk about that we have to move on it's getting too steamy in here christian Bale now you can't handle the truth okay now I'm just getting awkward but no seriously though like who would you cast as as Yeah as Christian Gray as I mean I think another part of it too is that it's like he's supposed to be 28 it's kind of like it's hard so it's hard it's hard when you're not in your 20s to like think that's cute you know it's like so did Hollywood for the first time actually cast people that were the age that they were supposed to be that might have been the problem yeah maybe Christian's actually 28 i know at least 38 at least but let us marinate is what people come up with i know just a little while you know maybe that'd be extra bad though because then we'd be like "Now you're 38 and you still have all these issues you're dealing with Yeah that's true forget it forget the whole thing so lose lose we can't lose get out Anastasia get out." Okay so on that note we're just going to wrap up 50 Shades of Gray yay goodbye May what do you say i say that we are going to announce our next mini episode series coming for this summer wait hey have we done a Smasher Pass yet for Christian Gray oh I don't think so yeah I know our answers but sure i mean maybe you don't though oh hey oh hey what do you say smash christian Gray christian Gray i say smash okay simply because um why not like you know what I mean why not like take me to the red room and actually maybe do something do something about it fingers i'm not going to think about that okay don't make me think too hard about that yeah i just You're out yeah i mean it wouldn't have anything to do with personality yeah that's for sure it would just be like well let's see how this goes poor thing i think I'd scare him it's okay apparently he's all talk at this point yeah he's all talk i think that's what it would be it would almost be like a standoff like I think that you're all talk let's see let's see if you got 28 doing that stare down thing that dogs kind of do well well yeah yeah um but yeah not necessarily because I think that he has anything all that exciting there we said it so now that that has been discussed the important hard-hitting news um so we have a summer coming of age girlhood series coming up how exciting pendulum be swinging guys swinging hard swinging hard um so we are going to be reading covering I almost said 50 Shades of Gray again what this is a nightmare and you're all trapped in it with us we're in the bad place mayday mayday mayday mayday no we're going to be covering Ann of Green Gables it almost sounds like a joke when I say it after that it does no but we're really serious we're really serious we are going to be reading all eight Ann of Green Gables books okay so for anyone who has ever accused us of not reading everything under the sun here we go nobody variety if you will no one exactly um so we'll be covering the series in its entirety the reason why we're doing this and so I have my original copies from back in the day you can see how old and decrepit they are um but I only have ever read books one two and three there are eight books and so when we were thinking about doing this series we were trying to decide if we were just going to do the first three if we're going to do the full series we decided to read all eight because Ashley's never read any of them before so super exciting i've only read three back in probably elementary school and so we're going to read all eight to tell you guys whether or not we think it's worth it to read the entire series all together because we've heard mixed reviews about it um and then the kind of the format's going to be we'll cover two books because they're a little shorter so we'll cover two books per episode um and then we will have our final episode not unlike this one covering the movies and um kind of like our overall thoughts of the series just to be clear in case anyone wants to rewatch these with us we will be watching the 1985 and 1987 movies part one and two and then the continuing story that came out in 2000 i had to do a lot of digging to figure that out um cuz we don't want a Secret Garden situation where we're all watching a different movie you know Dark is Rising yep yeah yeah yeah um so you know we're going to have the fable chats up for those if not already then shortly so that you guys could get started on those we thought it'd be fun because it's summertime you guys can read them with your kids if you have kids of the appropriate age yeah I'll be reading them with my daughter mhm yeah it's going to be so fun we're going to be watching the movies with them i'm so excited guys I got to visit Liz this summer so I'll be at her local and we're going to watch all the movies together it's going to be so fun i love them i've seen them so many times like oh my gosh they're such a treat and I'm so excited to share them with you i remember my older sister loved them but I almost have like no memory of them so it's gonna be all new to me yeah experience weird the first time yay so if you guys want to get on the Ann of Green Gables bandwagon please join it with us it's going to be a good old time yep yep that's good i'm like do we have anything else to say about that i think that's it that's good i think that's good so make sure to check us out on Fable at Bessies in the Book Club that's a free app that you can download and you can remain spoilerfree you can just jump in into any chapter that you're reading and leave a comment see what we have to say and that goes for all of these miniseries that we do as well as our monthly virtual book club right now for May we are finishing out Enchantra the follow-up to Fantasma so far I almost remember nothing about Fantasma so I don't think you need to read Fantasma first because she kind of has been recapping a little bit so for anybody wondering and then who knows what June will be follow us on Instagram and Tik Tok to find out cuz we'll be announcing that shortly the June book club read and make sure to follow us and subscribe anywhere you like to listen your favorite podcast including YouTube best season of the books podcast everywhere you guys every Tuesday we're going to be dropping episodes we just there's so many things happening okay so get your pen and paper out we got you know for June and July will also be our Spark of the Everflame months slash you know Kindred Curse Saga so stay tuned for that that'll be on Tuesdays and then every other week will be different you know themed episodes so if you're not reading that series you don't have to miss out on our episodes and then the miniseries for Anna Green Gables I believe that'll start in August august and September yeah something like that exciting so you guys we can't wait to see you again next time thanks for sticking around and we will see you then or another time at another time bye bye guys