The Love Hypothesis

The Love Hypothesis brings the beloved trope of fake dating to the world of science and academia – but does it bring a fresh take to the bestselling book by Ali Hazelwood? The new Prime Video movie follows Stanford graduate student Olive (Lili Reinhart). Her best friend Anh (Rachel Marsh) is holding back from pursuing a guy because she thinks Olive is interested in him. Olive wants Anh to follow her heart, so she lands in a fake-dating situation with a notoriously harsh post-doc Adam (Tom Bateman), who for reasons of his own agrees to be her pretend boyfriend. If you’re looking for more romantic comedies, check out these episodes: Olivia Wilde is a problematic dom in 'I Want Your Sex' https://www.npr.org/2026/08/03/nx-s1-5914620/olivia-wilde-is-a-problematic-dom-in-i-want-your-sex ‘Office Romance’ stars J. Lo as a CEO with a bad case of Brett Goldstein https://www.npr.org/2026/06/09/nx-s1-5848102/office-romance-stars-j-lo-as-a-ceo-with-a-bad-case-of-brett-goldstein ‘You, Me & Tuscany' has got us lost in the pasta sauce https://www.npr.org/2026/04/10/nx-s1-5779705/you-me-tuscany-has-got-us-lost-in-the-pasta-sauce Connect with Pop Culture Happy Hour: Letterboxd https://letterboxd.com/nprpopculture/ / Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pchh Our weekly newsletter https://www.npr.org/newsletter/pop-culture Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org http://plus.npr.org/. 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

  This message comes from Capella University. That spark you feel, that's your drive for more. Capella University's Flex Path learning format lets you earn your degree at your pace without putting life on pause. Learn more at capella.edu.

• 0:15Linda Holmes?

  You're listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour, the podcast that keeps you plugged in about the latest and greatest in pop culture. Now, if you're a pop culture enthusiast that's not following the show yet, we're recommending you fix that right away by following Pop Culture Happy Hour on your favorite podcast app. It's really, really common in rom-coms, really common, to center it around this really kind of lovable female lead character and kind of not bother to write the guy. And I think this is one where, I'm not speaking about the book, but in the movie.

• 0:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 0:56Linda Holmes?

  The bestselling rom-com novel, The Love Hypothesis, brings the beloved trope of fake dating to the setting of science and academia. And now it's a movie full of misunderstandings, suppressed feelings, rifts, and reconciliations. I'm Linda Holmes, and joining me today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour is Margaret Willison. She's a culture writer who is also teaching a class about Jane Austen. Hello, Margaret. Welcome back.

• 1:21Speaker 03

  Hi, Lynda. Thanks for having me.

• 1:23Linda Holmes?

  Of course. Also with us is Christina Tucker. She's the co-host of the podcast, Wait, Is This a Date? Welcome back, Christina.

• 1:30Speaker 04

  Hello, hello. I'm thrilled to be here on this day.

• 1:33Linda Holmes?

  It is always so wonderful to have both of you and both of you together. The Love Hypothesis is based on the bestselling 2021 novel of the same name, which was the debut of author Ali Hazelwood. It tells the story of a Stanford graduate student named Olive, played by Lily Reinhardt, who's a cancer researcher. She's got a tight circle of friends, and she realizes that her best friend, An, is holding back from pursuing a guy they both know because she thinks Olive is interested in him. Olive decides, as only a character in a romantic comedy can, that the best solution is to create the impression that she's in another relationship, so An will feel free to follow her heart. This lands Olive in a fake dating situation with a notoriously harsh post-doc named Adam,

• 2:17Linda Holmes?

  played by Tom Bateman, who, for reasons of his own, agrees to pretend to be her boyfriend. So we're fake dating?

• 2:23Speaker 05

  Uh, yes.

• 2:26Linda Holmes?

  Sorry. No, it's just, I mean, it's just so-

• 2:29Speaker 05

  Unbelievable that she would date Dr. Evil.

• 2:31Linda Holmes?

  You get absolutely no points for guessing whether Adam will turn out to be less mean than everyone thinks he is, or for guessing whether they will fall in love. But of course, as always, it's about the journey. The Love Hypothesis is streaming now on Prime Video, so we should note, Amazon supports NPR and pays to distribute some of our content. Christina, I'm going to start with you. How did you like The Love Hypothesis?

• 2:55Speaker 04

  Here's the thing about The Love Hypothesis. I found it as a movie to be quite mid, just middle of the road. I was not offended while watching it. I was not furious while watching it. I just kind of was watching this movie for the duration of the time it was on the screen. I will say what I do really appreciate, I do think Lily Reinhardt is deeply charming, and I find her ability to kind of elevate, just kind of based on her charisma alone, the source material, very refreshing and I think needed. And I think it could have been unwatchable had her presence not been there. But I do think she brought what would have been kind of bad mid, kind of closer to an acceptable mid.

• 3:38Speaker 04

  But we are, just to be clear, staying in mid.

• 3:43Linda Holmes?

  Margaret, how about you? What'd you think about The Love Hypothesis?

• 3:45Speaker 03

  Yeah. When I set out to see if my screener would work, the good thing was, like, I got immediately sucked in, you know? And I was just watching the movie, and I was like, okay, well, that's got some momentum to it. But when my computer battery died an hour and a half, and I was like, okay, I'll get back to it when I do.

• 4:01Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 4:02Speaker 03

  So I feel like that's the space we're in. It's like surprisingly watchable. Again, I would credit Lily Reinhardt for that. And I would also credit, I feel like, I haven't read the source material, but because I live in the world of romance readers, I feel like I know of it. I think I could have told you who to recommend it to. Right. Just by vibes. So knowing it comes from source material, I think I'm glad that they did as much as they did to ground the significance of the friendship that prompts the fake dating trope. Because I could easily see that being something that kind of got left on the cutting room floor as you're adapting what is meant to be a romantic love story.

• 4:42Speaker 06

  What could you possibly see in Dr. Evil? I mean, I get it, he's super hot, but most serial killers are.

• 4:49Speaker 03

  He's nice.

• 4:52Speaker 06

  Nice? Do you have a brain tumor? Wait, do I have a brain tumor?

• 4:58Speaker 03

  Despite the truly clunky dialogue An has to deliver, I think that that relationship being the starting point and the engine for the story worked well for me.

• 5:11Linda Holmes?

  Yeah. Let me say first, I think with a story like this, a lot of it comes down to, is this to your taste? When it comes to rom-coms, I mean, a lot of people who follow romance know that there are these kind of tropes in romance that people refer to in shorthand, enemies to lovers, whatever, there's only one bed, blah, blah, blah. This is fake dating. It's also a little bit enemies to lovers. And it's sort of part of a long, long, long, long tradition of a woman who is sort of nice and amenable and kind to everyone, falling in love with a man who is apparently mean and harsh and rude. I will say, at the beginning of the movie, he's kind of Sheldon from Big Bang Theory

• 5:54Linda Holmes?

  coded, but only for a short time. But then that kind of goes away, and you don't get that feeling from him. So then you're dealing more with just a sense that maybe he's just kind of harsh and makes students cry and stuff like that. I was just having a conversation online with somebody recently about the fact that the older I get, the less patience I have for not just enemies to lovers, but like, nice woman, mean man.

• 6:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, grumpy sunshine.

• 6:20Linda Holmes?

  As a setup. Yeah, I, yes, grumpy sunshine. Thank you.

• 6:23Speaker 03

  And again, if you invert those tropes a little bit, if you're playing with them, if it's like, oh, it's grumpy sunshine, but like, it's two men, and, or it's grumpy sunshine, and the grumpy one's the small one, and the sunshine one's the big one. Like, you can do something playful, but it was literally like grumpy sunshine, and it's like, big, tall man, scowling, and like, sprightly little girl, isn't she adorable? Doesn't she eat so much sugar? Isn't it cute how much sugar she eats?

• 6:49Linda Holmes?

  Oh, boy. Yeah. And the thing that's interesting about this is that the origins of this story, it started off as fanfiction, as Star Wars universe fanfiction of the Rey and Kylo Ren variety.

• 7:02Speaker 04

  Yes, it did.

• 7:03Linda Holmes?

  Which I would expect to fall into this, I mean, that goes beyond grumpy sunshine, right? That's, that's-

• 7:08Speaker 04

  Yeah. That goes a little further into like genocidal dictator vibes.

• 7:12Linda Holmes?

  Murderous, not murderous.

• 7:14Speaker 03

  It's a messy space.

• 7:15Linda Holmes?

  So I'm not surprised that it's not to my taste. With that said, I loved the friends in this movie so much that it almost, I think the biggest challenge for the romance is that, to me, Olive is surrounded by friends who are more interesting than she is, and who I wanted to watch more than I wanted to watch her, as An, who's played by Rachel Marsh, who I think is really terrific in this and really so charming and lovely. When she's sort of like potentially going to get together with their friend Jeremy, I was like, why isn't the movie about them? Can the movie be about them?

• 7:48Speaker 04

  Let's watch this rom-com.

• 7:50Linda Holmes?

  Right. I want to watch the movie about them. And it's a very common problem in romantic comedies, very common in romance generally, actually, that the friend is a better and more interesting character than the lead.

• 8:03Speaker 03

  As I like to say, the alto couple.

• 8:05Linda Holmes?

  Exactly. That's exactly what it is. And it goes, you know, there's a long tradition of this, and I think this does suffer from that. As it evens out, I thought it was pretty bad at the beginning. As it evens out, it's fine. I think mid is exactly where I ended up also.

• 8:22Speaker 04

  It's interesting. I had the same feeling, Lynda, about the friend specifically. I think there's one line that Jaboukie Young White delivers where he says like-

• 8:31Speaker 05

  It's called self-care. It's for gay guys, too.

• 8:34Speaker 04

  Like, self-care is for gay men, too. And he says it just so earnestly and so sincerely, and I was like-

• 8:39Linda Holmes?

  He's great in this.

• 8:40Speaker 04

  That's just a delight. Like, it is a delightful space to see kind of, in a romance, having a woman who has like a full life, and you can like kind of understand that like these people mean something to her, and you understand those kinds of connections. It does unfortunately hit one of my current contemporary romance bugaboos, which is, everybody gets like one ethnic friend, one gay friend. Like, it's very much like we have to have these kinds of, you know, personalities rounding out the group of our straight white woman, or else like, something will fall apart. And like, I understand where it's coming from, and I understand why it's happening, and I know the intentions there are good. But it is, once you start to notice it, it's like, oh, yes, every single white woman has

• 9:22Speaker 04

  like an ethnic friend and a gay friend, and sometimes two gay friends.

• 9:26Speaker 03

  Has a whole tampon commercial.

• 9:27Speaker 04

  It's like, it is, it's very tampon commercial sometimes.

• 9:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:30Speaker 04

  I think in this version, I think they did a good job of casting people who actually made those characters feel real and lived in. And not just kind of like, here is, you know, your stand-in for friend, here is, you know, your gay bestie. Like, they felt like real people. And maybe even too much, to the point where I was like, well, I don't actually care about the main people that this is about. I'd rather be hanging out with Malcolm when he's going to parties.

• 9:52Speaker 03

  Yeah. I don't really care for a grumpy sunshine when we're dividing it along typical hetero lines, but I do love fake dating as a trope, typically. Typically, that is extremely my jam. And in this, you just don't get any of the pleasures you typically get from fake dating, which for me comes from like the man recognizing all the little symbolic things he needs to do to sort of make you seem valued. As a woman who spent a significant amount of time dating in my lifetime, I'm typically like, men only have that awareness when they want to weaponize it against me, to show that I like, I'm not important and don't matter. And so to get to see the inverse of that, where it's like in To All The Boys I Loved

• 10:35Speaker 03

  Before, when Peter knows that like people will know they're in a real relationship if like he has a picture of her-

• 10:42Speaker 04

  Have the lock screen.

• 10:43Speaker 03

  On his lock, on his lock screen. When characters have that kind of awareness and that kind of social cue reading, like, that's what really brings the joy for me in fake dating.

• 10:52Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 10:52Speaker 03

  And we don't get like any of that here. The most we get is like, oh, he remembers that she has that one character trait, which again, she loves candy. And so like, one time, he like leaves her candy, and it's like, oh, my God, it's like he understands her.

• 11:06Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 11:06Speaker 04

  Well, and one time he changes her sugary drink for a healthful green juice.

• 11:11Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 11:11Speaker 04

  So that's also paying attention in a different way.

• 11:14Linda Holmes?

  Yeah, that was supposed to be charming, and I found it sort of, I think that's controlling.

• 11:19Speaker 04

  I said, brother, did you just throw my drink away in the garbage?

• 11:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:23Linda Holmes?

  I was like, I don't think I agree with your police work there in terms of how that plays. Well, we'll have much more about the love hypothesis after the break.

• 11:34Speaker 00

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• 12:03Speaker 07

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• 12:36Linda Holmes?

  Welcome back. If you're not following Pop Culture Happy Hour yet, hit that follow button on your podcast app and stay plugged into everything PCHH has to offer. Part of the reason why this as a fake dating story does not work so well for me is that neither one of them to me has a great reason for wanting to engage in fake dating. Now, listen, fake dating always seems like rather a ridiculous solution to almost any problem. But in this case, the business about On, as much as I love On in this movie and I love their friendship, as Margaret kind of alluded to, I think the exact details of how that plays out do not make a lot of sense. His is even more of kind of an afterthought. His wanting to get involved in this is kind of even more of an afterthought.

• 13:21Linda Holmes?

  And I will say, it's really, really common in rom-coms, really common, to center it around this really kind of lovable female lead character and kind of not bother to write the guy. And I think this is one where, I'm not speaking about the book, but in the movie.

• 13:44Linda Holmes?

  Did they, did this guy, did this character really get written? Because I don't want to blame the performance, but I think, as I said, there's that weird shift from him seeming kind of neurodivergent-coded, maybe, in the way that TV and movies do without talking about it. But then later, you don't really get that. And so, because I don't think they really are prepared to write a romance in that space, which you can do, but which requires some sensitivity and some particular thinking. I have not read this book, but I have read another one of Ally Hazelwood's kind of STEM romances, as they call them. I think the books are a little weirder. I think the books have a little more.

• 14:23Speaker 04

  I have to agree.

• 14:24Linda Holmes?

  I think the books have a little more of an embrace of the lead characters kind of having conversations about things that a lot of rom-com characters don't have conversations about, because they are interested in science and because they do think about things in a very scientist kind of way, which is sort of fun and different. And I think that's one of the things that's charming about the book. And I do think that although there are like a couple of moments where they reach for that in the film.

• 14:49Speaker 03

  It's not earned.

• 14:50Linda Holmes?

  I think a lot of that is sanded down. This doesn't feel to me as much like a love letter to people who work in STEM as the book perhaps did, the one that I read.

• 15:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, I did read this book and I gave it a kind of a reskim in preparation for this as a dedicated culture enjoyer. And I think for me, what really, what really sticks out in this book to me is the, the amount of how much it feels like the fanfiction it was coming from. But there is, in that, there is a lot more kind of built-out grounding of these people who kind of, yeah, they feel like real people who are real scientists, who have like conversations about the work that they're doing, and that conversation kind of bleeds into everything. I do think the book and the movie kind of suffer from another one of my contemporary romance issues, bugaboos. We are on number two, for those counting, where it does start to feel like what, we

• 15:42Speaker 04

  start with the tropes and work backwards from there, as opposed to like, starting from, these are two characters who would like to tell a story about what's going to come naturally out of that, as opposed to feeling like, this feels like, I would like to tell a story about fake dating and possibly a workplace romance and enemies to lovers. And I'd like there to be like an only one bed bit, and then we'll just kind of work the characters to get to those places, as opposed to kind of naturally following where those characters are going and like what journey that may take them on. And I do think that that is something that sticks in my craw a little bit more these days than it used to. I think it's just kind of feeling a little more repetition in that space.

• 16:25Speaker 03

  There was no yearning. I needed more yearning. I'm confident, based on the structure of this movie, that in a book, it feels like a slow burn. But there is no slow burn here. It's just like, oh, well, I guess at this moment, because it's what happens in the plot, this is when we're going to consummate our relationship.

• 16:41Linda Holmes?

  Right.

• 16:42Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 16:43Linda Holmes?

  And this is when suddenly a lot of the difficulties of communicating just kind of aren't there anymore.

• 16:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:50Speaker 03

  Like, there's a very interesting setup where you're like, oh, I can see how it would be difficult to have a conversation about this, because there's an evil character and they evilly say it'll have these evil consequences. And they're right. It would realistically have those evil consequences. And then, things that would trigger those consequences happen, and like, none of the negative consequences appear. And I'm like, okay, well, we were in a real space for a second, and I didn't love being in that space, but I was like, at least we're being honest. But now we're retreating from it and we're back in a sort of fairy tale space.

• 17:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, we are in fairy tale STEM in a lot of ways in this. This is kind of like a fairy tale Stanford experience that's occurring at this time.

• 17:30Speaker 03

  There's one point where On kicks someone away from his experiment that is a timed observation. I was like, I don't think On would do that. I think On would take her best friend to a different room that's private and let her fellow scientists continue conducting their experiment. But, okay.

• 17:46Linda Holmes?

  There is so much here that I wanted to sort of be able to enjoy. I think, you know, I think Lily Reinhardt has something, but I think, I think there's not enough kind of oomph in this character, maybe. So even she, I think, is a little bit, comes off a little bit flat here.

• 18:07Speaker 04

  She does.

• 18:08Linda Holmes?

  But when you talk about, you know, Jabuki Young White as Malcolm and Rachel Marsh is On, I think you get so much charm and so much, like, so much of romance is about building up a world in which these people can meet and fall in love. And I think that part went really well. There's also a, there's also a very quick kind of waving off of the fact that she is a PhD candidate and he is a postdoc.

• 18:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, I had a hard time letting that go, personally.

• 18:40Linda Holmes?

  He's in charge of one of her friends.

• 18:44Speaker 03

  Right. And makes employment decisions about that friend based on his relationship with her.

• 18:48Linda Holmes?

  Right. And so there's a little bit of like, there's a moment where she says, well, wouldn't this be violating some kind of, of rule if we were to have this fake relationship? And he says, oh, no, I checked. It's okay for a, it's okay for a grad student to date a postdoc if they're in different fields of study. I have no idea whether that's true. I have no idea. I don't even know if I really remember exactly how their fields of study relate to each other. And the fact remains that he's employing one of her friends. And it becomes an issue in their relationship. And that's how you know it's not a good idea. And not only do they kind of breeze past it in this conversation, but like, nobody

• 19:30Linda Holmes?

  else seems to notice it or say, you know, she immediately says, is that something you're supposed to do? But like, the other people that he's trying to impress by having this girlfriend?

• 19:43Speaker 03

  Right. Don't seem to have any issues.

• 19:44Linda Holmes?

  Would that work? Because wouldn't any of them say, I don't know if I think that's a great idea while your lab is employing one of her close friends? I mean, it may not be violating any rules, but there's definitely some weirdness around their positions that's not tackled.

• 20:00Speaker 03

  And the bigger problem is like, yeah, it's definitely a bad idea. And there's not enough chemistry between these two leads, nor enough charm to the telling of their love story, that I'm distracted from these like moral, ethical questions. Like, is it moral and ethical to pretend to be engaged to a man you've had a crush on while he's in a coma?

• 20:20Linda Holmes?

  Of course.

• 20:20Speaker 03

  After you saved him?

• 20:22Linda Holmes?

  Exactly.

• 20:22Speaker 03

  As a subway token collector, as Sandra Bullock does him while you were sleeping. No, absolutely not. That's, that's a very, very, very frightening storyline if you take Sandra Bullock out of it.

• 20:31Linda Holmes?

  In real life, it would be terrible.

• 20:32Speaker 03

  But Sandra Bullock's there. So you're like, I mean, of course she would. Her father's dead. She needs family. It's the holidays.

• 20:39Speaker 04

  She needs a family.

• 20:39Linda Holmes?

  Right. And she doesn't know how to tell them. There's a lot of like, there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of support built in that movie, a lot of scaffolding around the idea that she doesn't know how to tell them.

• 20:49Speaker 04

  This was very scaffold less. This needed more.

• 20:52Linda Holmes?

  This one is very, they just kind of do this and nobody really reacts in the way that I would expect, at least somebody. Because like, if she, if she thinks it might be a violation of the rules, how come nobody else thinks it's things that might be a violation of the rules?

• 21:05Speaker 04

  It was a little distracting to me as a former student affairs staff assistant for a PhD granting institution. I was like, this would actually be kind of a huge deal. I do not think that all of his colleagues and all of like, you know, the other faculty would be like, oh, lovely to have you at the cocktail party. Like, I think it would be a little more dramatic than that.

• 21:25Linda Holmes?

  I brought the grad student I'm dating. Oh, wonderful. Well, it's great to meet you. Like, and it's not that people date, like, I'm not, I'm not a.

• 21:32Speaker 04

  It's not to say it doesn't happen. Trust.

• 21:34Linda Holmes?

  I'm not an infant. Like, people, people date, right?

• 21:36Speaker 03

  It was a split-second decision, Linda, and he was the only option available. It's just incredible that you don't know that.

• 21:42Speaker 04

  Because again, their labs are quite close together, because they do kind of work similarly near one another.

• 21:48Speaker 03

  I think the absence of scaffolding is something that comes from a certain type of adaptation, where like honestly, the safest adaptation of a very, very popular item is like, I haven't actually tried to make this into a movie in its own, right?

• 22:02Linda Holmes?

  Mm hmm.

• 22:02Speaker 03

  I haven't actually tried to fully capture the charms of the original, but I've done a very competent visual Cliff Notes of the thing you already love.

• 22:12Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 22:13Speaker 03

  And if you love it, you're gonna come and you're gonna watch it and you're gonna remember all of the things you loved about the original and you're gonna be like, that was a successful adaptation.

• 22:20Linda Holmes?

  Mm hmm.

• 22:20Speaker 04

  I think that is where we are, like even based on my skim of the, the novel, I was like, they are like, they were pulling a lot of dialogue kind of directly from the book.

• 22:29Speaker 03

  Oh, boy, you could tell.

• 22:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, and which is why it sounded so much like people reading pages from a book at times.

• 22:35Speaker 03

  Which is why On speaks exclusively in like tote bag slogans, especially when she's interacting with male scientist characters. You're like, okay, well.

• 22:43Speaker 04

  Yes. She's like, ladies in STEM, hashtag black girls who code.

• 22:47Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 22:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's very that. It's a lot of that, but it is faithful.

• 22:52Speaker 03

  And again, he, huge credit to the actor who really, really like manages to make that character charming, even with that terrible dialogue.

• 23:01Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 23:01Speaker 03

  Uh, but yeah, you can definitely feel that this is something that has been very, like laboriously faithful to the original, kind of to its detriment.

• 23:11Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 23:12Speaker 04

  There is less sex in the movie than there is in the book.

• 23:14Speaker 03

  Again, there's less yearning.

• 23:16Speaker 04

  And I was gonna say, not to be a perv on main, but like, it is a little weird to have kind of a beloved kind of dirty romance novel adapted and kind of, we're just gonna have the, the, the sex scene and we're gonna kind of just, it's gonna be very tasteful, it's gonna be very loving, and we're gonna just kind of move past that.

• 23:33Speaker 03

  Right.

• 23:34Speaker 04

  Where I'm kind of like, in, let's say it, in a post-heated rivalry world, like, I think we have proven that we can handle more content in that way.

• 23:42Linda Holmes?

  And the thing that's interesting is they have all this, they keep all the swearing, which I was, I was interested in the fact that like, they keep all the swearing, which means they're, it's not, they're not trying to make it, you know, PG rom-com, which is a thing you can do. They're okay keeping all the swearing, but they take out a lot of the sex, which I agree with you, Christina. I think that's a curious decision in the current, in the current moment.

• 24:04Speaker 03

  And to have such a formulaic sex scene, such a character-free sex scene, is like, well, and just one.

• 24:12Linda Holmes?

  It's a bit generic.

• 24:13Speaker 04

  I did not learn anything about them as people based on that sex scene. I was like, yeah, this is the sex that men and women have. Awesome.

• 24:19Linda Holmes?

  And by the way, while we are talking about things that do and do not work about the whole setup of this romance, I am 1,000% over anything that starts with somebody grabbing somebody else and kissing them without any sort of consent, which book and the film kind of make it, they kind of make a little joke out of it. It's not, it's not hilarious to me. This is like, I just, and again, this is a thing where if it were charming enough, I probably wouldn't care, or I could probably get over it, or I could probably be like, well, but in the end, blah, blah, blah. But it does seem, first of all, rather out of character for her, based on everything else about her, that she would do this.

• 24:59Speaker 03

  We're nodding so, so hard.

• 25:01Linda Holmes?

  Second of all, again, we are in an academic setting, and even if you make a little joke out of it, you're, you're really not supposed to do that. It can make people uncomfortable.

• 25:11Speaker 02

  Because I asked you first if I could kiss you.

• 25:13Speaker 05

  Hmm, you asked, but then you didn't wait for my consent.

• 25:16Speaker 02

  I did.

• 25:17Speaker 05

  You did not.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  I did. I didn't?

• 25:19Speaker 05

  No.

• 25:20Speaker 04

  No, I was like, he could file a Title IX complaint. That could happen.

• 25:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:23Speaker 04

  Madam, this is no joking matter.

• 25:25Linda Holmes?

  I don't like to pull this card too often, but if it was a guy grabbing the woman and kissing her without consent, I think it would be pretty easy for people to see, not, not, not, not cute.

• 25:37Speaker 04

  Not cool.

• 25:38Linda Holmes?

  Right. Not, that's not a meet cute. That's a meet not cute at all.

• 25:42Speaker 03

  It's a meet ugly.

• 25:42Speaker 04

  A meet anti-cute.

• 25:43Linda Holmes?

  It's a meet anti-cute. But again, in the end, I think if you, particularly if you like this book, particularly if you like these kinds of books, I think if you sit down and watch this, I don't think you're gonna sit there the whole time going, oh, this is really unpleasant and I hate it and whatever. It's just gonna flow over you and then you're gonna forget all about it. And yeah, the book will still be the book and, you know.

• 26:04Speaker 04

  And then you'll have this also.

• 26:06Linda Holmes?

  And I definitely like, I'm in favor of adapting like romance books, you know, whether it's, it's Emily Henry books, like people would meet on vacation or Heat of Rivalry or anything like that. I like this idea of making, you know, movies of them.

• 26:19Speaker 03

  Or series.

• 26:20Speaker 04

  Me too. I love it.

• 26:21Linda Holmes?

  I think it's a great idea and I encourage them to, can you, you just have to, you just have to kind of, you gotta get a little, you gotta let it get a little more specific. You gotta get a little more of the specificity of the book into it.

• 26:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, be a little more specific. Let us have a little bit more fun with it and let us see a little more sex. That's what I'm asking for.

• 26:39Speaker 03

  Truly.

• 26:39Linda Holmes?

  I get it.

• 26:40Speaker 03

  Let us see a little more sex.

• 26:41Linda Holmes?

  Yeah, I get it. Listen, no wrong time to bring that up.

• 26:46Linda Holmes?

  All right. That brings us to the end of our show. Margaret H. Willis and Christina Tucker. Thank you so much for being here.

• 26:53Speaker 04

  Thank you for having us.

• 26:54Speaker 03

  Thank you for having us, Linda.

• 26:56Linda Holmes?

  This episode is produced by Liz Metzger, Lennon Sherburne, Kayden Mills, and Mike Cassiff, and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Hello, Come In provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. And to keep listening and keep enjoying, please make sure to follow the show on your favorite podcast app. I'm Linda Holmes and we will see you all next time.

• 27:17Speaker 07

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