Jia Tolentino
speaker
981 appearances
13 recordings
3 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Apr 2025
Jia Tolentino’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
It's like the best we can get out of this character changing is like the realization that he's not, you know, American Psycho after all or whatever. He looks at Chloe, the female version of him, and is like, no.
Whereas the first episode, he was like, that's all I want.
And he realizes, like, again, he's vulnerable after the Lachlan thing, but he has realized that he's soulless and no one will ever get close to him unless he has a soul. And I do remember thinking, like, what I want for him.
Do you remember when I said, like, I wanted for him this season to confront the unknowable other, to confront the sort of unassimilability of just another person right in front of you and how kind of terrifying and amazing that is. And he's never experienced that. And I wanted him to brush right up against it.
And I thought he was doing it in the funny way when he accidentally had a threesome with his brother.
But instead, he was doing it when he saw that Chelsea actually loved that something seemed so transactional. And actually, it was love, illogical love. And he wanted it. And we love that for him. The family interaction that precedes the death smoothie is when Saxon is like, worship me, but don't jack me off, bro. Lachlan's reading his tsunami book that is foreshadowing his near death.
And he's like, I'm a pleaser. I come from a family of narcissists. And he clearly feels trapped by his family. And Saxon says, he's like, he says, no one's going to make you a man, okay? You got to do it yourself, which is like him talking to himself. You know, you're not talking to Lachlan at all.
He's doing his best. And then Lachlan's like, you know what? It's been a confusing week. I'm just going to make a smoothie with one scoop of protein powder, water, and this poison stuff.
He tells his dad that he thinks he just saw God, but what we see him see is four figures hovering above him in the daylight that he's trying to swim to through black water. And at first I thought it was the family, then it is the silhouettes of four monks.
That's what I thought was going to happen. Yeah, that's what I thought too. I mean, the general sort of Oedipus-esque trajectory of the thing you fear the most is the thing that you cause.
It was a good fake out of the of the Jason Isaacs being the pure tragedy. Yeah.
But also, you know, we were talking about people passing tests in the last episode. It's like he, you know, arguably he passed the test. Like the second when he knocks the coconut milk out of Saxon's hand, he's actually saying I am stronger than I thought I was and I don't have to actually kill my family. Yeah. You know.
Yeah, although when he's clutching Lachlan in his hands, he's like, oh, there are things more important than money, such as your child being alive. And I bought that. Like, I bought that. He felt that. And he was like, that would have been a worse loss than all of it. And here I was 12 hours ago thinking, actually, I would kill everyone.
In fact, I would give everything to just have everyone be alive.
I know. I want to talk about the gal pals.
Well, how I thought it was actually going to work out was the way the dinner starts, which is they are far more distant than they were when they started the vacation. You know, like you can feel the sort of the vacation ennui of the very privileged, you know, sinking in where they're just like, this is done with, you know, like, let's get out of here. I'm tired from my vacation.
And you think it's what Jacqueline and Kate start snapping into, which is the beginning register, which is like, isn't this just the most fun we've ever had? Like, I have felt so good, ladies, when I'm with you. Like, I feel, I just feel at home. My heart is so full when I'm with you. And they're just fucking lying through their teeth.
She's like, the garden has bloomed.
And it's like me hating my friends more than I've ever hated anyone. My garden has bloomed so much. And then Carrie Coon steals the show, of course, as always. But her monologue is so beautiful. It's so good. Her face is so amazing, the way she delivers that.
Jacqueline says, like, my other friends dislike me because of superficial reasons, but you guys can dislike me because of profound ones, which I think is a beautiful thing to say about old friends. Yeah. But Lori breaks it all open.
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