The Boroughs

Something is definitely up in the fantastic new Netflix series The Boroughs. Monsters, or maybe aliens? It’s set in a seemingly idyllic mid-century modern retirement community in the middle of the desert, and focuses on a septuagenarian Scooby Gang formed by Geena Davis, Alfred Molina, Alfre Woodard, Denis O’Hare and Clarke Peters. Subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus at plus.npr.org/happyhour https://plus.npr.org/happy See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:28Speaker 01

  Something is definitely up in the new Netflix series, The Burrows, which is about a seemingly idyllic, mid-century modern retirement community in the middle of the desert. Is it monsters? Is it aliens? Well, it's some weird, anyway.

• 0:41Speaker 00

  Yep, that's the plot. But the real draw here is the cast. Alfred Molina, Gina Davis, Alfie Woodard, Dennis O'Hare, Clark Peters. It is fun to watch them get drawn into investigating these creepy goings on like a kind of sectarian Scooby gang. I'm Linda Holmes.

• 0:58Speaker 01

  And I'm Glen Weldon. Today, we're talking about The Burrows on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.

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• 1:34Speaker 03

  Oh, Kevin, it feels good to be back.

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• 2:12Speaker 01

  Joining us today is film and culture critic Kate Young. Hey Kate, welcome back.

• 2:15Linda Holmes?

  Hi, it's lovely to be back again.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  Great to have you. In The Burrows, Alfred Molina plays Sam, a recent widower, whose family moves him into a picture-perfect desert retirement community very much against his will. Takes a while, but he eventually falls in with his neighbors Judy and Art, played by Alfred Woodard and Clark Peters, Renee, played by Gina Davis, and Wally, played by Dennis O'Hare. When Sam starts seeing things, the powers that be dismiss his concerns, but his fellow residents don't. Soon they're investigating the weird occurrences and mysterious deaths, which brings them to the attention of the young man who runs The Burrows, Mr. Shaw, played by Seth Numrick, who oozes charm and maybe some other stuff as well. The Burrows is streaming now on Netflix. Linda, what'd you think?

• 2:58Linda Holmes?

  I really liked this. I thought it was really fun. You know, the Duffer brothers who made Stranger Things are credited as executive producers. They didn't create it, but they're EPs. And I didn't really know whether it was gonna feel like the things about Stranger Things that I liked or the things about Stranger Things that I didn't like. It does have a similar feel in a lot of ways. It is a group of people kind of getting together to fight forces they don't understand. But I really liked seeing that, first of all, executed with, you know, older people rather than kids. And second of all, with this incredibly appealing cast. Everybody in this main cast, this sort of Scooby gang, as we said in the intro, is somebody that I'm always happy to see.

• 3:38Linda Holmes?

  I'm always actively happy to see Gina Davis and Alfred Woodard and Alfred Molina and Clark Peters. And Denis O'Hare, it's really a terrific group of people. And as they kind of cohere into this group of friends, I think there is a really good combination of some, I think, compelling emotional material about what it's like for them at this stage of their lives. Especially because you see Sam, played by Alfred Molina, moving into this place that, you know, the original plan was that he was gonna come with his wife, but she has since died. But he is sort of in this contract to live in this place. So now he's moving there by himself. His daughter, played by Jenna Malone, kind of moves him into this place, and she loves him.

• 4:21Linda Holmes?

  But she also moves him there. And I found kind of his interior life very moving a lot of the time. I think he's wonderful in it. I think the marriage of Alfred Woodard and Clark Peters is really well explored. This is not a show that believes that when you are 70 or 72, the only things going on in your life are activities at the senior center. These people still have a marriage that still has its own complications that revolve around the same things that any marriage can have in it. I liked the kind of underlying story. Now, by the end of Stranger Things, they had made the lore so complicated that I was totally and

• 5:03Linda Holmes?

  completely lost. I don't know if there will be more seasons of this. They certainly leave the door open to it, but I did not feel in this season like it became difficult for me to manage. So I enjoyed and was invested in the kind of the underlying, you know, I think we can say monster story, given the opening scene. So yeah, I really liked this. I was quite pleasantly surprised.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Cool. What about you, Kate?

• 5:25Speaker 06

  I mean, I feel mostly similarly. I think especially the cast is easily the best thing about it. I think for me, though, there was too much Stranger Things and not necessarily because of the monsters, but because I felt like the monster story wasn't substantial enough to justify retreading that particular premise. However, the cast really is stellar. And I think that I almost wish that I could transport them to a slightly different show and see what it looked like then. I think I came on the show when Grace and Frankie ended. And a lot of what I talked about then was about how much I like that the show directly deals with the fact that they're older, right? There's a scene in this where they're all around a bonfire and they're basically showing off their battle scars from all the surgeries they've had to have because their bodies

• 6:10Speaker 06

  are failing them.

• 6:12Speaker 07

  That ain't nothing. Sorry. I had a whole new hip and style.

• 6:18Speaker 06

  And that was the stuff that really compelled me because I feel like we don't get enough stories about older people. And I did like that this was a story where they are forced to use the skills that they've now had to abandon because they're retired, or they have to investigate things and follow their curiosities. And that stuff I found really compelling. I just felt that the mystery itself was kind of a big nothing.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  Hmm, okay, I'm kind of, I guess I'm somewhere between you two. When I was a kid, my parents loved the 1985 film Cocoon, and I didn't see it. I didn't get why we watched it as often as we did. And of course, what they saw in it was that, you know, here are these actors that they'd grown up with doing wacky sci-fi hijinks. That's what they liked. And that was, you know, Donna Meche and Jessica Tandy and Hugh Cronin and Maureen Stapleton. And those names didn't mean anything to me, but they meant everything to them. Mom and dad, wherever you are now, I just want to say, I get it. I get it now. Because seeing Gina Davis on my screen, looking great, kicking butt, having sex. Clark Peters, like, listeners, if you don't know the name, you know Lester from The Wire, maybe the greatest TV character of all time.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  He's here, he's wakin' and bacon, he's having a good time, good for him. I know that I would follow Denis O'Hare anywhere because I have followed that man through some really lousy American horror story seasons.

• 7:33Linda Holmes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  But, you know, I'm a sucker for them, I'm a sucker for this setting, for this architecture. I kept saying to myself, I would live here.

• 7:40Speaker 06

  A hundred percent, it was gorgeous.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  A hundred percent, it's gorgeous. Also, I do think it's a smart premise because, and this gets to what you're saying, Kate, but one of the main aspects of the Duffer Brothers, Spielberg, you know, kids sci-fi thing is the story engine, the reason those things kick into motion at all is because nobody listens to kids, nobody believes kids, and that's the reason they got to go investigate stuff themselves. And what this show understands is that in life, there is a bell curve, and as humans age, they start getting ignored again and start getting disbelieved again. So it's a great setting.

• 8:15Speaker 06

  I had that same thought.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  I was concerned going into this, and I think some listeners might actually have a concern, that are things like dementia going to be treated on? This show in a kind of a glib way as a plot device. And, you know, your mileage may vary. That's always going to happen. But I do think to Linda's point, I think they really respect these characters enough that the very first scene in this show features Dee Wallace and Ed Bigley Jr. Going through something, some complications in their relationship. And that scene works on two levels. I think it really gives the sadness room to register and breathe and exist alongside of, or maybe on top of all the wacky sci fi hijinks or whatever. I think the show has a certain respect for that.

• 8:57Linda Holmes?

  Yeah, there is a particular development that happens fairly late in the show that has to do with Sam, his relationship with his daughter and her trying to care for him and how she's responding to kind of changes in him that we know are motivated by things that are actually happening, but she doesn't. I found all of that very moving. And I think also, you know, you mentioned Gina Davis having sex. And one of the things that I did really like about this, you know, you have elements of the emotional stuff and sort of plot devices that are about the fact that they're older, as Kate referred to. But you also have a lot in here that could happen anyway.

• 9:40Linda Holmes?

  You have a lot in here where these could just be a bunch of 30, 40 year olds in a town running into some of the same problems. I think this is one of the few times I've seen a completely like not played in any way as a joke, relationship between a woman who is 70 and a significantly younger man, who the story never remotely wonders whether he's really hot for her or not. And in fact, she never really wonders whether he's hot for her or not. For the two of them, this is a relationship that they're going to get into. I really appreciated that. And I appreciated the fact that these are actual, you know, one of the things when

• 10:21Linda Holmes?

  you look into like, when people pass around the memes about like, you're older now than Rue McClanahan was at the beginning of The Golden Girls or whatever. Yes, part of that is, you know, you're older than you think, which is always what that joke is supposed to be. But it's also that like, They used to make shows that were about old people and they used actors who really weren't very old. And, you know, they're using people here who are mostly seventy and above. I think Denis O'Hare's in his sixties, but the rest of them. So they are using people who are old enough that you might encounter them in a retirement community as opposed to people who are significantly younger than that.

• 10:57Speaker 06

  Yeah. I really do kind of keep coming back to the premise because I feel like the characters are so rich and the relationships are so fun. Like, I think the dynamic that Art and Judy have in their marriage and the kind of betrayal-ish thing that happens between them is so beautifully explored and it felt.

• 11:17Linda Holmes?

  I agree.

• 11:18Speaker 06

  It was such a lovely thing to see that, like, those kinds of foibles don't stop happening just because you're seventy-two. You know, they're in this retirement community. It's a town. It's a real town. They're living in the real world. It just so happens that all of the residents are older. The way that those dynamics play out is so fascinating to me and I desperately want more of that. And I just felt like there wasn't enough room for it because they were busy doing hijinks. And I kind of wish that it was more of like a simple, maybe murder mystery so that it felt a little bit more grounded to match what I felt was coming from the interpersonal stuff. Because I really, I can't say enough good stuff about the way that these characters interact and the performances and how good they are. But I just feel like by the

• 12:00Speaker 06

  time we get to the last few episodes, it just feels like we're like on a cartoon chase. Yeah. I don't care about the details of like which monster did what when. And especially since we've just gotten Stranger Things and they kind of bumped it. I didn't see the need to retread this. I think that if we had gotten it first, I might have been more open to it because then it would have felt certainly more novel to have older characters in that kind of position. But we've already done it and I don't think that it brings enough new to the situation. For me to be really invested, I think in the early episodes, I was kind of intrigued because I didn't really know where it was gonna go. And I thought that, given what we had learned about their interpersonal relationships, that it would tie more directly into that. And that was kind of interesting to me.

• 12:43Speaker 06

  But once we get those answers, I was honestly kind of like, that's it. I don't know that this was worth all of that.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  No, I'm glad you unpacked that for us because I wanted to come back to you and ask, like, is it just the sci-fi shenanigans that feels like it's taking away from these characters? Or, but you said you'd be happy with something like a murder mystery or something, a smaller grounded story as opposed to the particulars of this particular sci-fi story. That's kind of what I'm getting from you.

• 13:07Speaker 06

  The problem isn't that it's sci-fi. The problem is that it feels to me like we are doing the same story, again with different characters. Even the design of the monsters looks fairly familiar. And I wish that it had been something that felt completely novel and fresh because as I'm doing right now, all I'm left with is kind of comparisons to something that I think does it better and longer. And while that, you know, lore did get to convoluted in the end, it was something that was interesting and engaging and new at the time, at least to me as an audience member. And I feel like this wasn't different enough to distinguish it because I think that the sci-fi is fine. There's some early developments when Sam is kind of figuring out like what the feedback

• 13:50Speaker 06

  in his house is about and spitting with electronics, he's an engineer. And that stuff was actually compelling. I thought that was going somewhere really interesting. There's, I don't even know how to describe it, that happens in his apartment when they're experimenting. That was really beautiful and lovely and I thought, okay, so we're getting something a little bit more existential, which makes sense with characters these age. And like, it's not any of that. It's just monsters again.

• 14:11Linda Holmes?

  I think my only kind of, the main reason I feel differently than you do about the sci-fi story is that I do think particularly by the end, they do a good job of tying this particular sci-fi story and its specifics to some of the things that these characters in particular, especially the Denis O'Hare character. You know, his situation in life and his story and what he's been through in his history, which you don't kind of find out until Till fairly late in the game is related to how he processes the sci fi elements of this story. And I do think that by the end, these people are looking at, it's people who are much more familiar on a day to day basis with dying than,

• 14:56Linda Holmes?

  you know, they probably were earlier in their lives. They probably are starting to think about dying more than they did when they were younger. And so I do think that there is some stuff about mortality and wellness and illness and the well being of your body and mind. That I do think is specifically coming out of this particular science fiction story. I did reach a point somewhere around the middle where I sort of looked at one of the characters, not one of the main Scooby gang characters, but one of the other characters. And I, I thought, I think I know where they might be going with this, but it wasn't because of anything that struck me as particularly heavy handed.

• 15:36Linda Holmes?

  It was the actor performance. And I thought, I like the fact that I feel like the actor's performance without more is making me feel like I understand enough about this character to feel like I'm starting to get where they're going with this. And I appreciated that. I don't mind figuring out the story. I just don't want to figure out the story and feel like you're making it super, super obvious to me. But I do like when I feel like I'm getting clues. I don't have a problem with that. So I think eventually they justify the use of this specific science fiction story in the context of these particular characters. And so because I found the characters so compelling,

• 16:17Linda Holmes?

  it did ultimately kind of hang together, you know, for me in that way.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  I'm coming at this from a, from a sci fi bias, which is why I'm going to say a thing that no listener wants to hear about a streaming series or any series, which is for me. You've got to stick with it.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  Which is for me, I wasn't really on board until episode three, which is where the rubber meets the road, the momentum increases. And to your point, Kate, a lot of the science fiction wackiness starts getting wackier. That's when I connected with this. It's not that I was bored in the early going, when it was really, really character focused and character driven. I just needed more. And I get that by episode three.

• 17:02Speaker 06

  I mean, it might be just like, you know, the narcissism of getting older, but like, the characters' ages was to me, the most compelling part of this, specifically because it gives them life experience that a lot of the characters were more accustomed to seeing on screen don't have because they're not that old. And so we essentially kind of by virtue of them being older, we have more stuff to play with, more information to play with. Like you mentioned, the Dennis of her character and kind of how his situation shapes the way that he responds to these elements. And like, I really liked those elements. There's this particular speech that he gives where he kind of mentions the kind of work that he had been

• 17:44Speaker 06

  doing. And immediately that character made sense, right? And it was such a lovely moment because he plays it so well. And it was so, it was so moving. However, we can do that without monsters. I felt like there was so much good stuff in it that just like, it felt like a distraction from all of the great character work. Because like, each and every one of the main cast is going through this like wonderful, beautiful transformation as people, as they're figuring out what their lives look like at this stage, what kinds of things they want to be doing at this age. Cause they're all retired, you know, they can all be playing bocce ball or whatever it is. They're able to kind of reconfigure their relationships now that they essentially. Don't have to do anything else.

• 18:28Speaker 06

  They have all of this room to play and to kind of show us what kinds of foibles come up when you've been alive that long. And not just the physical maladies, but the way that relationships grow and change, the way that they become malleable in ways that you maybe didn't predict. Honestly, if this was just like a straight drama, I'm like in. Cause I really do feel like, I feel like the characters are so, so, so rich. And like more of that gets pushed aside as we go into the sci-fi stuff. And it really isn't even just the sci-fi stuff specifically. I do think that if I felt like that part of the story was more satisfying, it would be fine. Because all of the investigating, all of the, the hijinks that they do to get there is interesting. I just wasn't satisfied with the answers. But that could just be me.

• 19:14Speaker 06

  I mostly really liked this. I think that it has a really good foundation for great characters. I don't know that I need to see more of them doing this particular thing. I don't know what it would be, given where it ends, but I do want to see more of these characters.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 19:32Linda Holmes?

  And I do want to say a kind word about the design. We briefly talked about the mid-century modern nature of this cul-de-sac. I love that. I love the lusciousness of that. There is a kind of a more of a nursing unit and it has a very infantilized design that I think really is, is well done to emphasize how they want you to feel about this particular place for these particular people, right? Kate alluded to the fact that Sam was an engineer. And partly because of that, the show also has a real fondness for analog technology. And I liked the fact that this combination of mid-century modern, it's like retro,

• 20:14Linda Holmes?

  but also has a certain amount of super modern technology. There's sort of super modern surveillance technology that these people are subjected to. I really liked that mix of retro and kind of super contemporary. Cause some of like the TVs and stuff that Sam moves in look like they would belong in these mid-century modern homes. And I really liked that. I thought that was very clever. And so that kind of echo of time, I found more appealing than a straight up period piece like Stranger Things is, right? Sure. Than kind of the constant, like, remember this song? Remember these clothes? Remember this kind of backpack? Like, this, to me, is a little richer in how that kind of out of time

• 20:58Linda Holmes?

  quality, which of course is relevant to the fact that these are people who, you know, were born in perhaps the 1950s or whatever. So it makes sense, but it's without straight up trying to emulate. I just thought that the design was very clever and I enjoyed looking at it.

• 21:15Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 21:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the quality of light in these houses is not the kind of washed out Netflix

• 21:21Linda Holmes?

  It's not.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  vibe, blanched Netflix vibe that we get so often. It's allowed to be quirky. It's allowed to be interesting. So, look, I think we've done a service here because I think, listeners, you know if you're Team Kate or Team Linda or Team me, so you know what you're going to think of this show. That brings us to the end of our show. Kate Young, Linda Holmes, this was great. Thank you so much.

• 21:41Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 21:42Linda Holmes?

  Thank you.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  This episode was produced by Hafsa Pathama and Mike Katsev and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy, and Allo Kimin provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glen Weldon, and we'll see you all next time.

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  This week on Up First, we're in the final days before the midterm elections. And this is one of the wonderful things about politics, one of the wonderful things about humanity. We have all this data, we have all this information, and nobody really knows what's going to happen. We're going to follow it day by day, through Election Day and beyond. And you can listen to Up First every morning on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 22:31Speaker 04

  I'm Kevin Roos.

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  And I'm Casey Newton.

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