When Spoilers Find You: Vulture Should Be Ashamed

[00:00:00] What is happening in your world on Tuesday?

[00:00:04] Did you walk around humming Neil Young's Pocahontas song all weekend like I did? Like me?

[00:00:11] Yeah, that's what I did. You get it? Fantastic weekend too.

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[00:01:07] Uh, so what has been going on? The this is a spoiler free episode in full. Just a couple of things off the top of my head.

[00:01:18] Short form, the sympathizer aired its best episode with episode four.

[00:01:23] Now that's not the most recent one that aired on Sunday, but episode four truly saw the series snap into focus, at least for me.

[00:01:32] I'm a little behind the curve sometimes, but I saw the I saw what it was going for and it worked in spades in that episode.

[00:01:40] Loved it. And it was also pretty funny and sad.

[00:01:44] I hate it. Adam and Donovan's not here with me, but Shogun getting a second season. That's the rumor.

[00:01:49] A lot of that rumor is based around the fact that the gentleman who plays Torre Naga, they've got him wrapped up for something another season.

[00:01:59] I don't know where could they go with it? Is it not going to hinder or color the way we view the first season?

[00:02:05] It was fantastic. Damn near flawless. I would say maybe flawless that first season.

[00:02:10] Something else top of my list this year so far, Shogun.

[00:02:14] I don't know if you need a second season, but it's just hard to resist how great and successful it was.

[00:02:19] I suppose if they do an anthology, they could even use the same people in different story about Japanese history.

[00:02:28] That could be fascinating. They ran out of material with the book,

[00:02:31] but there are historical stories based around that time period that kind of mirror what James Clavel was doing in the book.

[00:02:39] So maybe that's what they want to do. Game of Thrones killed off characters and kept going.

[00:02:45] Maybe they could do it here. I don't know. It seems like a cash grab, but you can't blame on me.

[00:02:52] It was successful. I watched the first two episodes of Dark Matter on Apple TV+.

[00:02:57] I really liked it. It has this idea that we simultaneously inhabit all the choices we didn't make as well as this one we did make.

[00:03:05] I love that idea. I love that notion about what would that be parallel universes?

[00:03:13] Perhaps I'm fascinated by that fat way more fascinating than the multiverse or whatever the fuck that is.

[00:03:19] That's so boring and just stupid elementary compared to this parallel, though.

[00:03:26] There's a version of you out there that took the other choice and is doing this and that.

[00:03:31] That's just super fascinating stuff. I love the premise. I like the show well enough.

[00:03:40] Two episodes in, hard to say much. We don't have the benefit here of getting the full set of episodes

[00:03:46] so we can kind of give you more of an idea of if it's worth your time or not.

[00:03:51] But if you're wanting to look at those first two episodes, they're worth it.

[00:03:56] I did one more episode of Three Body Problem. They've got to get out of that video game shit for me.

[00:04:02] I don't care about it. It's so boring, so uninteresting. There are no stakes. Get out of it.

[00:04:09] I don't care. So I've only digested three of those. I really don't know if I'll stop it or not.

[00:04:15] I'll give it a few more. We'll see. It's just not as good as Benioff and Weiss' previous work, obviously.

[00:04:23] You know what that is. Let's get in the show proper and I want to talk about spoilers.

[00:04:28] No Adam, no Donovan, no Natalie, no one this week. It's just me and I have a rant.

[00:04:35] Stick around if you want to hear it. Let's get into the show.

[00:04:38] I'll take projection.

[00:04:41] All right. So before I begin, I'm not going to spoil anything.

[00:04:50] I'm going to try to dance around this issue to bitch and moan, I suppose.

[00:04:54] But it all goes to the website Vulture and the critic Catherine von Ehrendach.

[00:05:00] And before I begin, I'm a big fan of Vulture. I subscribe to Vulture.

[00:05:05] You know, they only limit you a certain number of articles per month, but I subscribe so I can read everything.

[00:05:11] I admire their work, respect their work. Critic Matt Zeller-Sights wrote for them and still does write for them quite often.

[00:05:17] He was the person that kind of drew me there because of his work and his writing and his work with the Vulture TV podcast years ago before it shut down.

[00:05:26] It's one of my favorites. It's how this podcast kind of came to be because I missed it and I thought I want that, but I might as well make it.

[00:05:33] Anyway, Vulture critic Catherine van Ehrendach.

[00:05:38] I don't. What the hell is she thinking? Here's what happened.

[00:05:41] So there's this show Sugar on Apple TV+. It's a little weird, but it's good.

[00:05:46] I liked it for many episodes. It got a little dull toward the middle.

[00:05:50] I'm not going to spoil anything, but viewers know that there is a there's a big moment.

[00:05:55] There's a big event, a big reveal, a twist, whatever you want to call it.

[00:05:59] And you learn something about one of the characters and it's huge.

[00:06:02] It's really huge. That aired a couple of weeks ago on a Friday when the when that episode dropped, you figured it out.

[00:06:10] Big reveal. Most people were baffled by it.

[00:06:14] OK, my wife included. She was a little disappointed by it.

[00:06:18] Actually, my wife was I was just scratching my head.

[00:06:21] You can predict it pretty easily. There are big hints.

[00:06:25] I mean, one of the characters says I have a secret.

[00:06:28] It's it's really not huge that there is a secret.

[00:06:32] It's what the secret is, I suppose, kind of changes everything. OK, you with me so far?

[00:06:37] So critic Catherine van Ehrendach goes to Vulture, writes up this column, puts the spoiler in the headline,

[00:06:45] puts what it is in the headline. Tell your friends that.

[00:06:48] Boom, she reveals the spoiler. That's the name of the article.

[00:06:52] They use a picture that spoils it. So it's not like, oh, I'm going to look away from the headline really quick.

[00:06:57] The pictures there. It was on the front page of the Vulture site for three or four days and it infuriated me.

[00:07:04] Her opening line says, yep. Blah, blah, blah.

[00:07:07] Is blah, blah, blah, blah. Guys, my assertion here is she doesn't have a right to do that.

[00:07:14] Yes, you could make the argument that if you're a viewer, you watch it on Friday or Saturday

[00:07:20] and seeing this on Sunday or Monday morning won't be that big of a deal.

[00:07:24] OK, that's not the case for everyone, is it? No one in our day and age of conveniences.

[00:07:30] Rarely do people watch the show as soon as it drops, even with Shogun, which I loved.

[00:07:37] I wished I could have watched it on Tuesday night. I was unable.

[00:07:40] Sometimes I watched it on Wednesday night. A lot of times I watched it on Friday night.

[00:07:44] So I avoided spoilers. I avoided any headline that said Shogun.

[00:07:48] Averted my eyes. That's the nature of the beast.

[00:07:50] I would honestly just get off social media totally if it wasn't for, you know, running some of the website stuff.

[00:07:56] But it is what it is. Back to her. Back to this critic.

[00:08:00] She puts this in the headline on Vulture front page mere days, two days after the episode airs.

[00:08:07] Most people watched it on Friday. Some people probably watched it on Saturday.

[00:08:11] Some people, as you can read in the comments of this article, was waiting.

[00:08:15] They were waiting until all the episodes dropped and they were just going to watch it.

[00:08:19] That's like a trend. A lot of people do that.

[00:08:21] I'm going to wait until all the episodes are there or I'm going to wait till like six pile up.

[00:08:25] Then I'll watch them. And then by the time I'm finished with six, seven will have been on the streamer.

[00:08:29] I can watch it right. Just do them all. The binge. Right. There's nothing wrong with that.

[00:08:34] I don't like that. Hey, there's nothing wrong with it, though.

[00:08:36] She puts this spoiler in right there in the headline as a picture.

[00:08:41] It is not her right to do that. That's my assertion.

[00:08:44] And I want to quote her a little. OK, she states that the first episode of the show Sugar should begin with an opening title card that tells you what what the reveal is.

[00:08:55] Does she not know people created the show? It's not a I created it.

[00:08:59] People created this and this is their intention. They want that.

[00:09:02] If they wanted you to know, they would have told you first.

[00:09:04] She's a movie critic. We know if you know anything about criticism, you critique what's been given to you.

[00:09:12] You don't try to suppose what would make it better.

[00:09:16] You don't try to add in what you think should happen.

[00:09:20] You don't rewrite the script. You take what you look at the intention was the intention meant and was it worth it?

[00:09:27] Guess who? Guess who taught me that? Matt Zoller Sites from Vulture.

[00:09:32] That's the idea. She's not doing that. Of course, she's writing more of an opinion piece here.

[00:09:36] I'll give her that much. Maybe I should add that is the reveal worth it?

[00:09:41] I kind of agree with her that it would be more interesting if you knew it maybe off the bat.

[00:09:47] But that's not what the creators wanted to do.

[00:09:49] She is wrong here. She is wrong by not following the intention of the creators.

[00:09:55] It's not like the creators put this out and then someone at Apple above them decided to cut and edit it their own way.

[00:10:04] One of her lines that really irritates me is where she says,

[00:10:07] There's no need for everyone to suffer the same fate. Tell your friends! Tell your neighbors!

[00:10:14] Pay t-shirts. Post it freely on social media. That's the line that got me.

[00:10:19] That's the line. Because some people do this.

[00:10:21] They really used to be bad about it when Netflix would drop 10 episodes of something

[00:10:26] and you being a person who has a real life, only watches one or two episodes, then goes to sleep.

[00:10:33] And you wake up the next Saturday morning and someone has done the,

[00:10:36] Aha, I watched it before you, childish game of posting it on social media.

[00:10:41] First of all, fuck that person. You know who you are. Fuck you.

[00:10:45] And this is what she's wanting. It's not what you should do.

[00:10:50] Brings up several questions, of course, and I've tried to answer a couple.

[00:10:54] One I haven't gotten to is what's the timeline on spoilers?

[00:10:57] I don't know. I don't know. Is the show still airing?

[00:11:01] Maybe that's kind of good judgment to use. Are people still invested in it?

[00:11:07] I don't know. I really don't. A month? A month seems fair.

[00:11:11] Two months? Three months? I don't know.

[00:11:14] But when you get into the comments of this article, she really piss some people off.

[00:11:18] Rightfully so. Many people pointing out it's just mean-spirited to do this

[00:11:22] just because you feel strongly about a particular twist shouldn't give you the license to shit on the creative team.

[00:11:28] That's my point too. I agree with that.

[00:11:30] It really angers me that there are some commenters and some people who think that

[00:11:34] you're angry at people who say, I've been meaning to get around to watching this.

[00:11:39] And now you've spoiled it.

[00:11:41] And then they get really angry and say, you've been meaning to get around to it.

[00:11:44] It's available to you 24 hours a day. You know what?

[00:11:48] Fuck you. Some of us have lives. We don't sit in front of the TV for 16 hours a day

[00:11:53] as much as I would like to. That really sounds like an ideal job.

[00:11:56] Fuck you. It's not everybody's job to warn you, hey, I'm going to talk about something you haven't seen.

[00:12:01] Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is.

[00:12:03] Especially if you're A, a movie critic, TV critic.

[00:12:07] B, you're writing for a national online magazine.

[00:12:11] C, you put it in the headline.

[00:12:13] D, you use a picture that would give it away. It's not fair.

[00:12:17] The show itself is pretty good because of Colin Farrell.

[00:12:21] I really am enjoying it. I have no idea where it could go.

[00:12:24] I haven't watched the most recent one. I mean, I'm sure it'll get spoiled for me anyway.

[00:12:28] Who cares? And it does bring up the final question of my rant.

[00:12:33] And this also comes from Matt Zoller Seitz, greatest critic around.

[00:12:37] He's made the claim that if a show or movie has a big spoiler,

[00:12:42] knowing it does not ruin the show or movie if it is a good show or movie.

[00:12:48] That's true. I agree with that.

[00:12:50] But at the same time, if the creator meant for it to be buried a little bit,

[00:12:55] play along for a little while, it's just a little disrespectful, I think.

[00:12:59] I keep saying it's not fair. That sounds very childish.

[00:13:02] I don't want to be a spoiled child over this, but it's just disrespectful, I think.

[00:13:06] And that's my rant. That's it for this show.

[00:13:10] Thank you for joining me for my rant. Not the kind of episode we usually do.

[00:13:14] I do recommend Sugar. I mean, it gets haywire for sure.

[00:13:18] I have no idea what it could do now. I'm going to find out.

[00:13:21] If you're a fan of this show or of the Alabama take,

[00:13:24] you know we try our best to put our spoilers in the back half or after we've made recommendations.

[00:13:30] I hope you appreciate that. I did that on purpose as a creator here.

[00:13:34] As far as thealabamatake.com, visit that.

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[00:14:10] You'll hear from us. We appreciate your attention.

[00:14:13] We appreciate your time. Tell somebody about us.

[00:14:16] Give us some word of mouth. Let me know what you think about spoilers.

[00:14:19] What is the correct timeline? Was she fair?

[00:14:22] Was she disrespectful with her article?

[00:14:25] Even if you don't watch the show, does that sound cool or not?

[00:14:28] Let me know. Talk to everybody later. Have a good week.