ESPN App, the Rules of 'Blue Lights,' and Touching Base on 'Alien: Earth'

Hello, welcome.

It's taking it down the TV and streaming podcast from the Alabama Take.

This week we're getting deeper into the first season of the Britbox series Blue Lights.

It's now streaming on HBO Max as well.

We'll talk briefly about FX and Hulu's Alien Earth.

But to begin it all, we discuss ESPN's change in an app and what that says about streaming.

We're here to address that.

The that there may be too much television, that some of it's a waste.

Each Tuesday, we'll tell you spoiler free, if a show's worth your time, then we'll break down episodes of it so that you know exactly why it works, why it's junk.

Compare your own theories with ours.

With me, as usual, is Donovan.

And let's get him in here and begin the show.

Alabama take projection.

And here he is.

Donovan R. No, Adam.

He is doing a few.

Doing a few.

He did a show this weekend.

If you were in Tuscaloosa, you might have seen him.

Can you believe how lucky these Tuscaloosa folks are?

Because literally, you usually have to go to London for this.

Yeah, we'll get around to Blue Lights.

And just a little on Alien Earth.

Thursday, ESPN came out with an updated version of its app that would be subscription based.

What the hell's going on in the world?

What, you're telling me you're not happy to.

To pay for the ESPN app?

I would be.

Especially that they fold in Hulu, which in and of itself has folded in FX and Fox, but they've also folded in Disney.

I would be okay with all that being bundled and then that would allow me to completely get rid of streaming television.

But one huge caveat remains, and that's there is no place to watch the currently airing season of the Challenge unless you have some form of cable or streaming television.

It's not included with like a Paramount plus or something like that.

Not until the season has ended in like a month or two, later even.

Okay, yeah, it's weird.

It's the only show that I know of.

I'm sure there are plenty other examples.

But the only show that I watch where there's not a opportunity to watch it streaming or the next day on a streaming service like Paramount would be its home base.

But digging around just fervently, I did find that Paramount, if you dig around enough, you can find an MTV hub and you can find many episodes of Unplugged.

They really put that down in the basement of the Paramount TV app, huh?

The cellar, the wine Cellar.

You can go and watch many of them.

I. I saw several.

There were a few that were noticeably absent.

Like.

Like which ones?

Maybe I didn't scroll far enough, but I did not see the Neil Young.

They did have a Neil Young which they labeled Unplugged.

But it was just a concert of his.

Okay.

It wasn't the real.

Yeah, gotcha.

Which he recorded two episodes of Unplugged and the first was never released.

Oh, I didn't know that.

Yeah, he got up and walked out.

Really?

Yeah, he got up and walked out and went down the street to New York.

Just went walking.

It was going.

Pissed him off.

Yeah, he just didn't like I was going.

Then he came back to the second one and it's fantastic.

I happened to look up Ornery in the dictionary and add a picture of Neil Young.

He is an ornery fella.

Yeah.

I don't know.

ESPN has its own streaming app.

It sounds appealing to get away completely from a cable based or streaming type thing.

And you know, I don't know if it would save money or just equal.

Out, but I do cobble enough together, enough college football together from disparate places that I am still pretty glad my YouTube TV subscription because I'll get the ESPN games.

Now granted ESPN has, if you're paying for that, there's a lot of stuff, not necessarily top tier stuff, but if you for instance, have a favorite FCS team, ESPN is probably your best place to watch it.

Or the ESPN app.

I gotta have the terrible games on FS1.

Blaine, if I got rid of the CBS Sports Network, how would I watch UConn football?

Well, that's a funny thing because so many of those are now streaming on your Paramount plus for CPU stuff or your Peacock's doing a lot of live games.

College football and NFL, especially NFL.

Yeah, NFL for Peacock.

There's just places to pick up here and there and.

And you would only miss out on a few games if you went this ESPN route because they're airing ABC games, SEC network games, ACC games, so you're getting some low tier additions there.

I'll say that if you get, you know, between ABC for a marquee matchup, ESPN for a pretty good one, ESPN2 for the slightly second tier, and then the kind of rounding it out with the ACC network, SEC Network, you're going to watch a lot of college football.

Yeah, like ESPN still owns a lot of stuff.

They do and they, they kind of have their hand on the dial there with all the rights and ownership.

Anyway, we'll Leave it to taking on sports to get you to the more detailed analysis of the games.

It is obviously not an observation original to us, but it is as it has been observed.

It is funny watching cable being reinvented in real time, having lived through the unplugging generation now.

And, you know, even stuff like Hulu going away there, you know, it's just getting folded into Disney plus.

Like, oh, we just.

We're recreating a cable subscription.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So is Hulu going away?

I believe it is.

Next year it'll be a difference for us.

Yeah, it's going to get phased out end of next year.

The ESPN app was not advertised.

Well, I don't think.

No, I just showed up on my Roku screen Thursday and I was thinking, wait, this is.

I knew this was a plan, but.

I was watching the Farmageddon yesterday where we confuse the Irish every year, and that's.

It's great.

But they had like a.

And this is where I agree with you.

Like, this wasn't advertised very well because they had like a commercial that was like a walkthrough.

Like, and here's how you sign in, guys.

And it's like, if you.

If.

If that's.

But what's the concept?

Like, tell me, you know, like, tell me what it is.

Why do I want to sign in?

Yeah, because ESPN had an app already, and if you were a subscriber to any sort of cable or streaming tv, you could just use it.

Yes.

But now if you had ESPN plus, you could get all those games.

So what's different?

So what's the difference, guys?

Their marketing could use some work.

A lot of these streamers.

Marketing could use some work.

Paramount plus especially.

What the hell is on there.

There are areas of that app I have yet to explore.

Paramount plus really feel.

And I do not subscribe to.

So this may not be fair, but just seeing what they have and what it is, it feels like the Pluto TV of paid streaming services in that someone just scraped all the IP they could get, threw it in a big bag and was like, y' all go nuts.

Yeah.

You know, all except for current seasons of the Challenge.

So thanks for nothing.

We're going to continue our discussion of the BritBox TV series Blue Lights.

It's come to us via HBO, Max's partnership with that streamer.

HBO has a few shows from the UK on, on its app for a limited time.

Blue Lights is one.

It's a cop show.

To describe it with two words, that would be it created by Declan Lawn, Adam Peterson and Louise Gallagher.

They, they co run it.

The premise here is three pairs of cops, one veteran, one probation, probationary officer.

And they go about Belfast, Northern Ireland to answer calls, much like a cop would do anywhere.

Who would love this series if they haven't started it?

Who would get into this?

You're making me think.

Because I'm trying to think of like a, a US analog because it's, it's, it is a cop show, but it is not.

And maybe this is me revealing my ignorance, but I don't feel like it's a police procedural in the same way that you get those on like the major American networks.

Right, Like Law and Order or something like that.

Which granted, I haven't sat down and watched a lot of Law and Order, so this is maybe my own ignorance, but this is, this is kind of the, or maybe this is like the prestige version of that, honestly, you know, and this is, this is going from our, our buddy Adam.

It just popped into my head.

If you like it's not the Wire, but if you liked the Wire, you very well will probably like this.

Yeah, I would say that the Wire has a much more kind of sociological take on, on, you know, it kind of starts with the cops and it radiates out throughout the entire city.

This one, at least in the first five episodes of a six episode season that I've seen does stick pretty closely with officers.

But it is also, you know, a pretty good depiction of people who are enmeshed in systems, various systems spoken unspoken, you know, even to the degree that it's.

They're probationary cops.

Right.

So they're in the, you know, that's one system they're in.

And then they're in, you know, a place where there's, there's ethnic strife.

So that's another system.

And then you have characters.

Like one of the characters is pretty, I don't think they straight out say it, but it's pretty clear that her background is Catholic and she's on the, you know, so a lot of different interlocking stuff there that I do think makes it really interesting.

Also, the story is well written, it is well acted and it looks darn good.

Yeah, it's very much a series about rules.

That may be obvious.

It's a series about rules, laws, but more so even rules that you wouldn't suspect police have to adhere to in.

A very nebulous way.

I've been thinking especially, I think episode four really snaps it into focus, but I think you're bang on right, Blaine, when you said it's all about rules and what you operate with and the rules that are followed, rules that are broken and kind of how we, the viewers think about all that.

Yeah.

And how many are too many?

You know, after a certain point, you're going to.

You're defeating your purpose by having.

Exactly.

You just can't follow.

Now, what are people missing if they haven't started or noticed blue lines.

You're missing a really tight.

It's an hour show, so it's a really tight couple of minutes.

If sometimes British TV has a.

Not all of it because it's just a stereotype, but a kind of like.

Oh, it's very.

It's cozy, you know, it's gonna be Ms. Marple, you know, and that's not this.

That's not this at all.

You're missing a really interesting cross section of a group of professionals who are in many ways trying to do the best they can with the hand they've been dealt.

The scenario Belfast is very compelling and interesting if.

And I think, too, because it is a, you know, policing, unfortunately, in the United States, we've had to have some really tough conversations about it.

And it's swung one way and it swung the other.

And I think that sometimes something that is familiar, like we know what police officers do, they serve essentially the same function here.

They're.

They're sort of, you know, combination of, you know, paramedic and law enforcement in.

In Belfast.

But kind of seeing something that we're somewhat familiar with in a different environment and not seeing our same stresses and prejudices laid into it can make us think about, like, even things like, hey, what's the same?

What's.

What's different?

What am I noticing in this fiction that is applicable to real life?

Because I do think that.

I do think that policing is really.

Is really fraught, you know, is a really fraught conversation and one that's hard to have good conversations about in this country for.

For many reasons.

Yeah.

For me, they're missing what appears on its surface to be a standard cop procedural, though it's not.

It's serialized and it may even be one that's messing with American tropes in an un.

American setting of Northern Ireland.

Yeah.

But it's a cop drama that delves more into higher, more significant snake stakes and richer characters, perhaps particularly with backstory.

In some cases, their backstory exists through a singular but meaningful line of dialogue.

Yeah.

One thing that the show has done, kind of jumping off of what you said.

Well, is.

It's not.

It's not Just interested in.

It's not just interested in the police work.

Right.

Where it's like you could have a show where it's like, okay, like arresting people and all that kind of stuff is like fun and exciting enough.

That could be pretty much all the show, but instead it has a lot of characters who are really trying to figure out what it means to be an officer and what it means to be able to help in any way.

And even if helping others is possible.

Maybe this is something we can dissect without spoilers or even bring up in the back half of our spoiler section as we need.

But my question is this.

If.

If this is a realistic depiction of Belfast and its culture, the writers have moved well beyond some gender expectations.

You often see in the States, over half of these police are ladies, and they're doing exactly what all the males are doing.

We saw ladies take a big role, an active role, and say nothing as well.

So if you're itching for a follow up to say nothing.

This may be what scratches it, and it may be, are we slower on implementing recruiting female police in America or what they're allowed to do as police?

Am I ignorant on policing in this country that in that there probably is a same number ratio there?

It's an interesting question, Blaine, and I don't know the answer.

What I'm going to say is born out of.

Hopefully I'm not sexist in thinking it, but just general sexism in that in my own town.

I do notice when there are female police officers in a way that maybe I wouldn't for.

You know, just because especially growing up, right.

It's like boys are cops and ladies, you know, and obviously we know all that's not true, but there is still.

So that.

That would actually be a really interesting question to look at, Blaine, if this is.

Maybe we can do some.

I can do some digging on that, see if we can get some stats.

I don't know.

It's really.

It's pretty hard to research police forces because there's so many of them.

You know, it's like.

Like FBI crime statistics.

It's like, okay, well, one organization is keeping track of all this, but multiple, you know, every different city has a different police department.

Keeping track of the demographics.

Really hard to dig stuff up.

Yeah.

But people have.

People have.

So I.

That's a great question, Blaine.

I'm very.

I'm curious too.

Yeah.

None of these ladies are portrayed as any more emotional than the guys or any more irrational.

In fact, they're.

The divisions here, aren't male, female as much as they are hierarchy, Northern Irish cultural divisions, you know, those who want to be a part of the uk, those who don't, those religious divisions.

And there are slight class divisions at play here, which is always a fascinating way of viewing a show.

I'd agree with, with that blame, because you do have, like, for example, Grace, who could easily be, you know, she really wants to help.

She really takes it seriously.

And that could be easy.

Like, oh, she's too sentimental, she gets too involved.

Whereas with her, it's much more.

She's.

She's seen the other side of things.

So she knows how the system works.

She knows what she can do.

She's bumping up on the edges of what she can do, but also the division or not division, but kind of the.

One of the things going into her character is not like, oh, she's a woman, she wants to help.

It's that she is not from Belfast, she's from England.

And so there's always like, they're much more interested in that as a source of tension, even little, you know, I don't think it's like a major thing with her, but it's a source of tension in her life, as we see in some of these episodes, much more than like, you know, yeah, some tired old trope, which I for one appreciate.

And something she does later upends a little of that.

So.

Mm, we'll pause here because we'll dive into spoilers after a break.

But before we get there, you're caught up on the Noah Hawley Loran FX Hulu series Alien Earth.

It's obviously based on the Alien franchise.

I'll be getting to the series, and it may even be as a final episode review.

As the whole, how do you gauge this show as you're continuing it?

Well, so it's three episodes in right now, and the first, they dropped the first two at once, which are really kind of establishing the setting and the stakes.

The third one wraps up some cliffhanger stuff from the first episode or for the first two episodes.

And it's sort of a businesslike episode in that it's moving pieces around to set up for the rest of.

The great thing about the show, at least so far, is I feel like this third one, it was more of like, okay, we're getting our pieces in place, but there's still really, really interesting stuff going through it, being threaded through it.

I'm curious.

I mean, I've only seen three.

I believe the total episodes are eight.

So we're nearly to the halfway point.

I'm wondering if that's going to be enough episodes even.

And even with.

I said this is kind of like moving the plot.

A lot of moving things forward.

Even in this one.

They're just a ton of shit that's like.

Do you like things that are cool?

You do?

Yeah.

You should watch the show.

Yeah.

There's some.

Really, really.

Yeah, there's some.

There's just some cool stuff going on.

You have to love the blend of cool stuff to see on the screen when it's mixed with good writing and thoughtful issues.

Yeah.

And I think the.

The huge issue right now.

And we'll see what happens.

But is still.

Which has always been very much in the series that these corporations are doing horrible like things that are potentially disastrous to get a little leg up on the competition with no thought to the consequences to the rest of the world.

Which I'm sure there's no parallel like that in any of our real lives.

I was about to chime in and say that great sci fi uses the imaginary fantastical wild to just hold a mirror up to what's real.

I think so.

On top of that, y' all comfort Timothy Oliphant as the Android Kirsch.

He's so good.

What a contrast between that and what he did this year with Stick.

It was hilarious.

My wife is not like super big Timothy Olyphant fan, but we watched Stick and Alien Earth and it wasn't until I pointed out that he was in Stick that she.

That she recognized him.

Oh yeah.

Because.

Well, he looks different but his mannerisms are so different.

Y'.

All.

I'm really.

I'm really enjoying.

And he's one of my favorite factors in this show.

I'm really enjoying it and I'm interested to see what's gonna happen.

I kind of came to him from Deadwood and then saw in things that he had done before.

But Deadwood being one of my favorite shows.

It's another contrast between the other two.

With Alien Earth and Stick.

It's just a different every time.

And I've also seen many episodes of Justified.

I say many.

I've seen three or four episodes of Justified.

He's good in Justified.

Justified and Deadwood, they have a.

Those two characters have a.

Similarities.

So not just the Cobb thing, but they have a stoic similarity.

He's.

He.

I don't want to turn this into.

It's just Timothy Oliphant, but I'm loving the way Major name.

I think.

I don't.

I think.

Yeah.

He probably Played by Small.

He's probably about.

He's probably about the biggest person.

He's the one in the credits that gets the.

And Timothy Olafon, you know, the nice and.

But the.

The way.

So he is a.

He's a synthetic human being.

You know, he's a robot.

He's a science officer.

He's.

And the way that he plays, he plays his character with like, he's got a steady, like an icy calm, a cool, a reserve, a step away from everything.

And also he seems like he, he seems like he is so fed up with everyone and everything around him and he's just.

He's going to explode at any moment, like simultaneously.

It's great.

I'm loving it.

He's awesome.

That's up his alley.

But that's not to say he can't do it all.

Will.

Oh, yeah, for sure.

There's a lot of stuff that if we, you know, we're not in spoilers.

There's a lot of stuff that particulars I could go into, but I do believe that like first off, it's a well made show.

Noah Hawley, you know, we know that he can develop characters.

He's got an interesting take on these characters.

And then beyond that.

Exactly.

What you said, Blaine, is.

It is doing the cool interrogating real questions via another lens, which I think.

The franchise is kind of known for.

Right.

Especially the first ones, Alien and aliens in a lot of ways.

Okay, let's pause here, give you a little break so that you can distinguish between non spoilers versus spoilers.

On the spoiler side, it's only Blue Lights this week and that will be episodes three, four and five.

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That's what you did.

And now you're hitting play because you've seen Blue Lights episodes four and five primarily, but, well, some are three.

Be warned, we Talked about reasons why you'd want to watch the Britbox show Blue Lights.

It's on HBO Max.

That's one reason why you may not have Britbox but you probably have HBO Max.

You might.

Now it's time to get into some specific ideas of the most the season one.

Like a lot of British television, it's a six episode series.

I've also been on of the understanding that a lot of British television tend to do two seasons and be done.

But a Blue Lights I think has a third season coming.

Yeah, that would be cool.

My perspective on this show really changed because I was, I was watching my brother's dogs, they were out of town and Blaine, do you know how many times someone rings a goddamn doorbell on this show?

Is it a lot?

You'll find if you have dogs that bark at a doorbell, you'll find out it's more than you want.

Wow.

Never didn't notice.

So we're talking about these police in Northern Ireland, Belfast specifically, and they have such strict rules and they.

Those rules become more apparent in the back half of the first season.

It's like a fence surrounded by a fence surrounded by another fence.

Often they just end up having trouble abiding by them all.

And you know, we talked about it in the non spoiler section.

How many do you need?

I think this is kind of what especially for specifically episode 4 Full Moon Fever, which is where they're just overwhelmed with emergency calls and they kind of, they kind of cut some rules and everyone cuts some rules and it's for what we think are good reasons.

You know, I think I as the viewer at least identify with the police officers there.

But I do, I think a really good police show invariably starts to ask the question like, hey, what.

What rules are here for for a reason?

You know, like, okay, yes, like you're sympathetic to the figure of the lawman who knows when to bend the rules and knows when to break them and is allowed to.

But that person is also standing above the law and is no longer beholden to the law.

And these.

And I think what was great, if it wasn't intentional, it certainly sparked my thinking, which I think good, well made stuff will do.

I thought that this one was really good because we are very familiar with the characters.

We know them very well at this point.

And none of these rules seems like life or death.

So we're really on their side, I think, as they skirt the rules.

And yet how do you choose what to break and what not to break?

Right.

How do you choose what's the right thing to do in one situation.

And it was, I thought, very good.

And I felt extended that theme into episode five, where we see some folks who are maybe not so good at following the rules.

Some of it boils down to how is this the rule that will get me fired versus I'll just have to sit down and have an interview about it.

Yes.

So from the Fear, that third episode to Full Moon Fever, the fourth of six, what we have, I think is writer Fran Harris tells this episode's story differently than the rest of it.

It's not unusual, it's not a original thing, but rather than chronologically, it's a back and forth episode between the police giving cover up recounts to the events where a person dies on their shift.

Now, if it's well done like here, it's enjoyable to see hints of something bad and then the lead up to it divided up like this.

But to me, here's where it's smarter than the usual cop drama.

Harris chooses to reveal most of the end result, which is that a civilian dies.

Some shows and writers will only allude to it and poke you in the ribs with it in a frustrating manner.

You know, something bad's going to happen.

You know, here's the shot look now, two weeks before.

Yeah, yep.

Here it doesn't do quite that.

You know, the end result.

You, for the most part, you get the interview pieces where they're.

They're covering it up for one another.

What I kind of liked with, with this is it went from the end result is.

No.

Is this a spoiler space for the Murder on the Orient Express?

Sure.

Okay.

Well, it did.

I think it did kind of a good Murder on the Orient Express thing where it's like, you know, something happened, you know what the end result is and you're waiting to figure out which pair, which group did this happen to.

And then you get to the end and it turns out they're all covering something up.

Every.

Every single one of them.

Full Moon Fever is also the episode where Adam from last week gets his confirmation on his suspicions that Johnson, whom we'd call a chief police, figure he is sleeping with Jen Robinson.

Hence the big reason she's getting so many breaks.

I didn't see a lot of sleeping, Blaine.

Not a lot of sleeping, but that's the euphemism.

Her mom is also Johnson's boss, which may play a role.

Anyway, I think we both predicted or said that much.

We both were a bit correct, though.

Adam sniffed out the bigger reveal of the two.

Yeah, he was sharper than I. I didn't see it at all.

Yeah, me either.

I didn't see the wayward glances between the two long before it's so.

Yes, this is Full Moon Fever.

I do love how the show puts them in nighttime shifts and then daytime shifts and you know that swing shift is a very realistic thing for cops.

Uh huh.

I know.

There's so much.

Well, we do, you know, we get back on the theme of rules.

Right.

Which is our kind of broader theme running over it is that the Sneaky Beakies are running some kind of operation.

Right.

And our police officers cannot interfere with this.

They're not supposed to.

You know.

We find out that James is in fact working with the intelligence services.

Yeah.

To.

In.

In some capacity.

And James pretty explicitly makes the point that I think has been there all the time, which is the intelligence services are perfectly happy for these guns to end up in the hands of criminals and people to get killed as long as they're able to make their arrests again.

It's the folks that it's, it's a question, right.

Of like, when what rules are okay and when do you break them?

Right.

The security services would say they're doing this for the greater good.

Right.

Kind of a utilitarian view of things.

Right.

If I, you know, if I don't do this, 60 people get killed.

If I do this, 30 people get killed.

Well, that's 30 people that weren't killed, for example.

Various.

And then I think you have the officers who are like, the greater good is the situation right in front of me.

I can't just leave this because these people are not less important than the hypothetical folks that you've stopped.

I thought it was a good surprise conclusion to the episode and really kind of snapping things into focus.

Because all of them think they're following the rules or bending the rules.

Yeah.

And they're also left out in the cold on a lot of information.

They're not told this.

Which I was gonna ask you.

Yes.

How much of this strange reality wouldn't they know?

Something.

Something vague.

All they're told is you get these double obs.

Don't go near them, don't mess around with this stuff.

Shouldn't they be told a little bit more?

I mean, the specifics they can.

They don't need.

What more can you tell them?

Just that there's.

There's some national security stuff going on with this.

They should know that with the double obs.

Right?

I guess so.

Because they know who's doing it.

And it does become a question of do you save 30 people here in the moment, or do you turn a blind eye so that you get the one big arrest?

Yep.

That's possibly best in national interest.

And this is where some of this stuff really started to feel like the wire to me.

Yeah.

Where, you know, a big theme of some of the seasons.

Right.

Is like, what do you allow to happen to get the big arrest?

That looks good.

It looks good for leaders and not so much for cops, per se.

Absolutely.

Long before it's even stated in the Q word, which I wasn't thinking about what that could mean.

I kept thinking.

I thought it might have meant quit because we have Jen.

Quit.

Yeah.

Because we had Jen front and center.

And then we had Tommy having, you know, he has to pass his.

His arms training again and.

Yeah.

And then, of course, they say what the key word is.

They do.

I was reminded of the L word, an old HBO series.

I was thinking, is it.

Do they mean queer culture or something?

Oh, yeah, Yeah.

I didn't think of that.

I could.

That's a reasonable association, I think.

I still kept thinking, well, this is a slower episode in a good way.

Change of pace, you know, just settling in, getting to know some people.

And then Jerry warns Jen he's not with Tommy this week.

Or, excuse me, he's not with Tommy in this episode because he's.

Tommy's taking his tests.

And Jerry says, don't say the cue word.

Bartenders, ER doctors, nurses, other industries.

No.

Not to say such, lest the peace be disrupted.

It's quiet.

The word.

And then, of course, all hell does break loose.

And it's true.

Well, here it is.

Jerry antagonizes, perhaps, and creates the.

The hell that breaks loose in.

In his own way.

But leaving up to that, it's good to make you care about Jerry as much as you do, because we've never seen him out of uniform.

There's so few of these people we see out of uniform.

All we know about him is what he discusses with other cops or Happy, the civilian he has some past with.

But we still find him captivating.

And therefore, it's just devastating to see what happens to him there at the end.

My review of this episode would be effective.

Things are effective.

And that, like, I can see what you're doing.

And you know what?

It's working on me.

Yeah.

I think they did a great job with having Cherry kind of bring something that we haven't seen before out of Jen.

Yes.

That we.

And we see, you know, and the same kind of thing that, like, we've Seen what a great mentor he is for Tommy.

And Tommy's using his.

You know, he always says, take a beat.

And he kind of gets through that.

But just him like the.

It gives you like a whole other side of Jen where you're like, wow, if she had had Jerry earlier in her career, you know, like, who might.

How.

How different would she be?

And, you know, it kind of breaks your heart, right?

Yeah, it is.

It's so well done.

She's not quite the coward who's hiding behind the firework.

Not quite.

You know, she's pretty decent in the field even.

You know, two episodes prior when she was with Annie breaking up a bar fight, she wasn't horrible at what she did.

And no, here she gets closer to Jerry and she tries to protect him.

It makes you like her.

It makes you like him.

It' what a balance of writing that ends up being.

And I like, again, this is effective.

Things are effective on me.

But I liked how it comes out because it seems that although she has used him to get out of a death shift, she sees happy and she genuinely wants to know how she's doing.

We see this little part of her personality we haven't seen before.

And Jerry really responds to that.

Yeah.

And.

And compliments her.

And you can tell that makes her.

She's, you know, she may be on the fast track.

Right.

Yeah.

But you can tell she's not getting a lot of compliments because she's.

She's not doing her job very well.

Yeah.

Jerry's taking it upon himself to stop the.

He's been told to avoid.

That's because they're really only told double ob.

And you're right, they probably piece it together.

This is a.

Some sort of national security or higher than them.

Unfortunately, Jerry has those conversations with his wife and the department about taking a vacation and then he utters the phrase, I'm here for a good time, not a long time, which those types of things fly around by me every time.

It was.

Tell me in hindsight that I catch them.

Like, if he had gotten in the car and been like last shift before retirement, like, he couldn't have been more doomed.

You know, like.

His outcome.

Here's another good example of how it's a bit of an elevated cop drama.

You know, it's not quite often that you see in procedurals, though.

This is not where you get top tier character, fan favorite, maybe injured like he is.

And this is, I think, a function of British television in some ways being different than American television where this show.

This is not it's not a perpetual motion machine.

It's not supposed to go on forever.

Right.

So you can't lose that character until they get fed up and quit.

Right.

If it.

If it has a more discrete chunks, you have it where you can be much more flexible with characters.

You can use them as the story requires instead of like, well, we can't write old Jerry out.

Viewership will drop.

Yeah.

None of these characters get spotlight treatment.

Though both Jerry and Grace do feel like the ones whom audience will watch more than others.

They have a very similar level of care.

Jerry and Grace seem to have this similar level of care about Belfast and its inhabitants, though different tacks on how to deal with it.

Jerry's more old school, out of the times of the Troubles.

Grace is from London and social work background.

But yet they both make it a point to.

To fix what they can.

What they say wrong rather than play the part or work in the bounds in order to say the job's done and I get to clock out.

You get that especially with Grace, where, you know, just kind of little things that are peaked together.

Right.

Like she's been here 10 years maybe, or she was a social worker.

She's been here for a while.

Ten, I think.

Yeah.

She was a social worker.

And she like.

So she.

And we know that she made the decision to like possibly choose the only job harder than a social worker.

That's right.

So I mean, we just.

We know that like, it's true.

Like she really did fall in love with the place she wants to help.

Because the other response is to get as far away as you can from this mess.

After 10 years of being a social worker, nobody would blame her if she needed a break.

She and her partner Steven seem to be getting closer.

Yeah.

You want them to give her a little peck on the cheek.

Bit of a trope.

But it is.

But, you know, this is kind of what I was joking about when I said effective.

Things are effective.

Yeah.

Like, you know, some things are tropes because they're effective and you know, and when done well, it's like, yes, I see what you're doing.

I know this is a trope.

I know that.

But they seem like nice kids.

The back and forth between Tommy trying to pass two tests and Jerry out and about with Jen narrowing down that.

That they aren't really.

Jerry particularly isn't really gonna.

I'm gonna not gonna abide by this double O B shit.

We saw a little that last week when he saw the car.

Mentally noted it.

Yep.

Jerry's kind of a cowboy.

Right.

Even where, like, he's the guy who knows when to break the rules.

And I thought we actually had, like, an interesting setup with that where Tommy actually doesn't bend the rules when he's in his hearing about the man who died from a drug overdose.

Yeah.

And Jerry, you know, you're gonna.

A lot of, you know, we're going to get in trouble.

Just follow this.

And Jerry is probably right here.

Right.

Like, Tommy did nothing wrong.

That's right.

But we also see.

We have a nice.

I. I don't know.

I thought it was just a really nice moment of small moment in the show where the.

The parents are able to say thank you to Tommy because, you know, there's.

L. Probably.

Other than them, he probably cares the most that their son died.

And I just can't, you know, and in a culture where people who.

A lot of times when things happen to people, we say, well, they got what they deserved.

So I can't imagine, you know, I just thought it was a great little.

Like, he didn't break the rules and all of a sudden had a moment where he gave something to the parents.

It's just.

And I am in my own brain, and I don't think I've.

I've thought this out in a good or coherent way.

This show is smart where it's like, it's not that all rules are bad or all rules are good.

Right.

Because, like, that's just, you know, black and white thinking, like, that is usually a really stupid way to live.

Right.

Like, it is really contextual, and it lets you ask the question of, like, hey, was like, okay, nobody, for example.

I'm gonna jump back to episode four.

Nobody was really harmed by Jerry and Tommy saying that.

That the sergeant was there to check out the death and make sure it wasn't suspicious.

Right.

You know, like, at this point.

But I bet that rule exists for.

For a reason.

Right.

I bet there's been things with misconduct or things were missed, you know, missed or things like that.

So, like, how do you.

How do you decide if it's time?

And I think it's.

I think it's done a good job of giving us really sympathetic characters who we identify with facing these.

These questions.

Yeah.

And it's done so in.

In small chunks because you spent so you spend so much time with.

You spend a limited amount of time with.

Because you have so many.

And they give them equal screen time.

They do.

They've done a very good job of handling a somewhat large cast, you know, a cast without One main character.

You do a lot of homework on this.

In a good way, at least mentally, because each time someone pops up, you think, okay, that's Annie.

She plays hurling.

Okay, that's Jerry.

He.

He likes country music and is married to the lady who intakes people who've been arrested.

It's never.

It's a good kind of thinking.

It keeps you on your toes.

There really isn't any wasted moments either.

No.

Everything has been.

Even things that are more affecting to one person than the other sort of seems to spill over into the show as a whole.

You know, it all has.

So at least so far, to me, it's all seemed pretty relevant, which I appreciate, because I think that's probably pretty hard to do.

Yeah, it's gotta be.

There's also a hint of how much of that leftover NRA component becomes organized crime or just criminal activity in general.

I am wondering.

I thought that was interesting with James's story, especially his son.

He cuts this side deal for Libyan arms.

He doesn't know who Colonel Gaddafi is, which was funny.

Yeah, but.

But you know what James wife says?

Well, he's doing it because he wants to be like you.

He doesn't have political ideals or anything like that.

Right.

Like he's following his dad in what is essentially at this point, just another crime ring.

Yeah, you're right.

He has no flag to plant.

He doesn't seem like he does anyway, you know, and if you think of.

You know, it's hard.

They're different shows and they're doing different things, but it is a little hard not to say, think of, say nothing watching this show.

Would.

This.

Would.

Would Mo ever consider himself a political prisoner if he gets caught?

I don't see it.

No.

I take it.

No.

He just knows he's.

He's done something against the law.

Exactly.

He's just got.

He's just kind of a punk.

Yeah.

And that takes us to the end, I think now.

I can't wait to watch episode six again.

Effective.

Things are effective.

Well, yes.

Yes.

I have more to say on that, and we'll probably touch on that next week.

We're Adam and Donovan.

I'm Blaine.

And we hope full moon doesn't disrupt your evening.