The Beanie Bubble, the latest comedy film from Apple TV, is based on the 2015 book by the same name written by Zac Bissonnette. We are not aware whether that book places the women at the center of the narrative or if the movie has adapted its own unique approach, but it has made for a wonderful watch. At its core, this is the story of a businessman who was too insecure to be good. Delegation is an important part of any business, but that means that it is important to recognize that it is the team that is making the magic happen and not the individual.
Ty Warner never understood this simple fact, and the people who were the most affected by it were the women on whose backs he had turned his company into the success it was. He wanted their labor but never wanted to give them their due because that would mean that the spotlight wasn’t solely on him any longer. One may argue that this is not really a gender issue, and Ty could have done this with men as well. But it is important to remember that the inherent conditioning of working without expecting, aka not standing up for oneself because of a fear of loss of reputation or worse, is rather unique to women, and Ty took advantage of it. That is the precise reason his empire crumbled when the women he had wronged stood up for themselves, and this is the recap of The Beanie Bubble.
Spoilers Alert
How Did Ty Warner Go Wrong, Robbie, Sheila, And Maya?
Let us start with Robbie, because she came first. Robbie was introduced to Ty when she took lasagna to his house to comfort him after the loss of his father. From then on, they were friends, and soon enough, they turned into business partners to sell “moldable stuffed cats,” which was Ty’s idea. Ty relied on Robbie’s business acumen and head for logistics to do a huge share of the work, and eventually, the two of them started dating as well. It wouldn’t be fair to say that this job had ended Robbie’s previous marriage because it was simply a case of her finding and choosing what was right for her and who could be the person to support her while not holding her back by being happy for her success. However, there is one thing that Robbie’s ex says that she would later wish that she had paid more attention to. He tells Robbie that Ty uses his personality to get what he wants, and he is not the sweet and kind man he shows himself to be.
Robbie and Ty’s relationship doesn’t last, but their business partnership runs for a decade until Ty’s ego gets hurt. Robbie wants to expand their business into the UK, but Ty is dead set against it for no real reason other than that he doesn’t want to. This is when Robbie says something along the lines of her being the one to run the show, and that is enough for Ty to want to push her away. He removes her name as the co-founder of the company and cuts her salary to a quarter of what it was. Realizing that Ty never saw her as an equal, Robbie is just about done with him, which is when she finds that he had been spying on her through a listening device in her office. While infuriated, she thinks like the superior businesswoman that she is and uses that to her advantage, which we will get to later.
Sheila and Maya enter Ty’s life right around the time Robbie makes her exit. Ty was immediately taken in by Sheila and wanted to marry her. But he was a man who wouldn’t make any association without it being inherently beneficial to his business. Sheila’s daughters become his bouncing board for ideas, and it is with their input that he improves the designs of his company. The toys start coming with tags, crediting the kids as the designers, and some of them even carry the poems they come up with.
On the other hand, Maya is no less than a marketing wizard with her insights and schemes, and she is the one who leads the company towards more streamlined success with the idea of using scarcity of production to drive up the value of sales. Maya did all this while working on minimum wage; therefore, Ty should have just acknowledged it and given her the job of COO. But that would mean sharing credit, and he had proven to be incapable of that, which is why he hires another man, though he is clearly not right for the job. Maya actually stands up for herself and successfully presents her case, not just to Ty but to the Japanese executives who were interested in working with the company, but she is not able to overcome Ty’s insecurity.
‘The Beanie Bubble’ Ending Explained: What Happens To Ty?
Ty had a very particular way of letting down the women around him. Basically, he wanted them to keep working for him, either emotionally or with their business acumen, but he wanted them to “know their place,” which would always be in the background, hidden away from the world because he felt too threatened by them. The most glaring example of this is with Sheila’s children, when he removes their name from the tag on the toys crediting them as the designer, and replaces it with his name instead. Sheila initially thinks it is a mistake, but when she sees the boxes of canceled stock with Ava’s tag on them, she realizes what must have happened. When she goes to meet Ty at his party and finds him cheating on her with Robbie, she knows that he has simply been a terrible man, and she doesn’t care anymore as she punches him out of her elevator.
Before we try to understand why Robbie was in the room with Ty, let us look at things from Maya’s perspective. When Ty announces the new guy as his COO, Maya knows that she will never be considered for that post. To add insult to injury, he adds a measly $8 to her minimum wage and wants to keep her around as an underpaid “secret weapon.” Having had enough, Maya decides to move on, once again leaving Ty without one of his strongest soldiers.
Now is the time for us to address the game Robbie played. She had nothing to do with what happened to Sheila or Maya, but she got back at Ty in her own capacity. She used the listening device in her room to hype up Ty’s useless idea, and when he was convinced that she would stay back at the company and help with the UK expansion, he greenlit the entire project. This is the moment that Robbie walked out of his business and went to Mexico with some man she was seeing. Ty was left high and dry due to her absence, and he desperately needed her back to take care of things since it was all beyond what he could do by himself. It is finally when he admits that to her that she agrees to help him but as the only wholesaler for the toys in the UK division, which would be through her own business. Having no choice, Ty agrees, and Robbie wins their battle. Years later, they are still seeing each other, but from our understanding, it is more of a power play where they both use the other to get what they want.
At the end of The Beanie Bubble, we learn that Ty Warner is convicted of massive tax fraud while the women go on to have rather illustrious careers and lives. Ty never gave them their due, but as long as they remembered their own worth, they came out of the whole thing bright and sparkling.
Final thoughts
We are not sure how much of The Beanie Bubble is fictionalized or the exact instances that are based on real life. Yet, if watched as a piece of fiction, it is an interesting look at what it means to fight for what you are owed for your work as a woman. Sheila and her kids brought a perspective to the designs that were very female, and Maya and Robbie did not just manage things for Ty; they unconsciously took care of him, his ego, and his eccentricities, a job that is uniquely conditioned for women. These are the very qualities that could have been a boon for the business if only Ty’s toxic masculinity had not felt so threatened. As a movie, The Beanie Bubble was fun, especially the latter half, and as a real story, we bet it would make for an interesting case study in business schools.
