Fear and Authority: The Dark Underbelly of 'Blue Lights' Revealed

Hey, welcome, everyone.

It's taking it down.

It's the podcast from the Alabama take for TV and streaming.

What we do is we offer up ideas about television in non spoiler fashion and then in spoiler fashion.

But we make sure to put a break in between.

This week we're going deeper into the Britbox series Blue Lights that's also streaming on HBO Max, and we'll set up some talk on FX and Hulu's Alien Earth for the coming weeks.

Here come Adam and Donovan to join me.

Alabama take projection.

Here they are.

It's Adam from Sister Ray Davies.

It's me Shoals to Ducastle.

That's how he gets his introduction now.

And it's Donovan, media specialist, your personal librarian.

We're going to continue our discussion of the BritBox TV series Blue Lights, which has come to us via HBO Max's partnership with the streamer Britbox.

HBO now has a few shows from the UK on streamer for, I'm assuming a limited time, and Blue Lights is one of them.

It's a cop show.

Put that in quotation marks because it feels deeper or more resonant or more analytical than what someone may consider a cop show.

It's created by Declan Long, Adam Peterson, and Louise Gallagher, and I think they all co run the show.

Blue Lights is about three paired cops, each one a veteran and a new probationary cop tagging along for training.

I guess most of our listeners may recognize Ms. Brooke as one, as one of the pro probationary officers.

Grace Ellis.

She's one of the recent stars of Sherlock.

The show, set in Northern Ireland's Belfast, features a lot of the city's woes as a backdrop to these cops jobs.

We're in non spoiler territory.

I mean, you probably could have figured out Blue Lights Northern Ireland just from the title and where it land, where it's from.

Brit box.

Adam, you said you had a visceral reaction only to the first episode.

I was specifically talking about that reporting into you guys because y' all had already seen the first episode.

And I guess what I mean by that is the way that, as you've already said, they're they're pairing up probationary officers with the old heads in their attempts to show them, you know, the ropes, essentially.

And it's just this thing of like, maybe I'm bringing some of the kneecap movie and say nothing and other things that we've consumed in the last year into this.

But the whole time you're thinking, like, who signs up for this job in this place?

Like what is the makeup of wanting to be a part of a system that is so complex and.

But also needed?

Like, you have to have, you know, some of the basics that they're doing are, like, responding to somebody's unconscious and they're the first to go.

Like, somebody has to have that job.

Right.

In a civilized world.

But how do you square that?

And just all of the beats in episode one, you're just kind of flooded with, man, this is someone's choosing to do this, and it forces you to put yourself in their shoes, I think, in a really a way that, like, it's not trying to transcend the cop drama, it's just doing it really, really well.

Yeah, it's really compelling.

I had the same feel, and I've enjoyed the episodes.

I've seen up to three, but there was a lot in the first episode I thought they did a really good job of just kind of establishing the world and the stakes in ways that feel really tense and compelling.

Right.

Because if you watch a show, like, if you watch like, the Wire or something like that, there's not.

You do wonder at times, like, how are you matching wits with these drug lords and gangsters and then just going home and, like, not worrying about them shooting your windows out or, like, how, you know, what are the rules and engagement here?

But at the same time, if you put down the badge, you can just go back to being a citizen, you would think.

I'm sure that's not always the case.

But in a place where it's like, such a.

And as the episodes unfold, you see, it is such a choice to be there.

There's so many layers beyond just beat Cop out doing shit, you know.

Yeah.

It's one of the most deceptive shows of late where it doesn't look like it's doing much, but I have yet to figure out its depths.

If you're to watch this in passing, let's say you're a spouse or a friend walking through the room and catch three minutes as you pause.

I would imagine you'd have a reaction akin to shrugging your shoulders.

But there's something going on, even for Americans.

One, it's not hand holding, you know, it does not bother to say, oh, I understand you over in the States aren't going to get this reference.

So let me explain why this is going on.

Right.

Because I think that's the benefit of it not really being made for a US Audience.

I do.

For readers, readers, listeners who sound terrified by that, there's nothing that a little Googling Won't tell you.

Like, don't.

That's not.

It's not a barrier, but it is.

Yeah.

It's much.

It's very.

Hit the ground running, which works for me.

I had to Google one thing and it was exactly what I thought it was.

So I had to look up the police service of Northern Ireland's jurisdiction because I was like.

I did not know it was as large a police force as it is.

Oh, things like that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So just little things.

It really.

Not really not bad.

That's kind of granular.

And not your average viewer.

Donovan, the.

The media specialist is going to look.

I was.

I was.

I was just curious.

No, it's great.

You know, you gave that example of maybe wandering through the room while it's on and.

Yep.

What would you glean from it for me?

And I think probably both of you if you wandered in.

The characters are so rich.

I think I would kind of be hooked.

You know, if I'm walking through my laundry or something, I think I'm probably sitting on the couch for a second to be like.

Or overwhelmed.

What's going on here?

Even if you're overwhelmed, there's a certain, like, magnetic quality to what's going.

Donovan used the word compelling.

That's the best descriptor for all of it.

You know that.

So you want to know who these people are.

You're.

I mean, I was desperate to know backgrounds, what their motivations were.

And they're obviously, they're slowly doling out that information.

What would probably happen to someone is if they walked through a room and episode one was playing, they would think it was probably season two.

Yeah.

Of something.

Yeah.

It did hit the ground running for sure.

Yes.

Also had that feeling about the characters where part of what makes it work is they've got a little bit of shorthand.

It's like, okay, we've got the rookie cop and the experienced cop.

But it's not overly reliant.

It's a little reliant, but not overly reliant on things that you've seen before.

And it.

From page one has just a really good sense of who these characters are.

And I don't quite know how to articulate it, but it feels like the characters are acting consistently with their personalities even as we are learning what those personalities are.

So the more we learn about them, the more we're like, ah, like the acting and the writing just reinforces what we've already seen.

I think they're doing a really good job.

Yeah.

There's several moments where you Think this person is acting this way because of three possible reasons and it might be an episode or two before you figure out what the reason is.

It feels very consistent.

Like you said.

I think that's a compliment.

Like you might think it's season two just because it really doesn't have that.

You know how a lot of first seasons really have some kind of feeling out to do this.

Doesn't really feel like it has any of that.

It's.

It's very tight.

Before we shift into the spoilers of the first three episodes of season one of Blue Lights, Donovan, you're big on Alien Earth and this could be a setup for next week or since we're in non spoilers.

Or perhaps we'll return to it once it's aired a few more episodes.

Maybe even the midpoint of its streaming live on FX and Hulu of its first season.

I bet it goes longer.

I hope so.

Okay, well, there you go.

Of course this is an extension of the Alien franchise of which you're a fan.

Tell me what people would enjoy about this series were they to watch.

Good question.

Because I.

There was a lot of stuff that was working on me pretty early.

First off, it's a Noah Hawley series.

If you're completely allergic to the work he's done in Fargo and Legion, it's probably not for you.

I think for most other folks, if you like what he's done, you will like this.

I like everything he's done but Legion.

Oh, you didn't like Legion?

It felt too self important to.

Wow.

It felt like, okay, I really, I really liked Legion.

It kind of felt like a high end JJ Abrams product.

Interesting folks, if you're a fan of the franchise, I think you're not going to be disappointed.

Everything looks the way it should.

It's kind of fleshing out.

It's fleshing out some stuff that was implied.

But you do not have to be a fan of the franchise because most of the stuff introduced in this show is, is brand new for, for the show.

I mean, maybe I'm dumb, they have the numbers, but it felt like a big gamble to really set a series on this franchise.

But this one seemed super specific.

I guess Alien Romulus did well enough that they were like, maybe we can support a TV show.

One of the great things about the first episode is written and directed by Holly.

Second is written by Holly.

Both of them feel cinematic.

I'm not going to say anything that isn't in a basic review, but the, the premise is really interesting.

Right.

Because you've got kind of the main, some of the main characters are children in synthetic adult bodies.

So you've got kind of playing with like these.

There's a tech trillionaire that's done this.

You have Timothy Oliphant as a synthetic person who is just knocking it out of the park.

So I've heard.

Well, I hope fans and people who watch movies have forgiven me, but I had never seen an alien movie or show.

And you piqued my interest last week when you said it's, it's about how corporations ruin ecology.

Yeah.

And I was like, right, Holy.

Well, I'm reading Murderland, which is a direct connection to corporations ruining ecology and causing serial killers.

So for, for the premise of this show is that the world is controlled by, by big corporations and kind of the inciting incident is Wayland Yutani, who we know from the alien movie, has, has sent out deep space research ships to get dangerous specimens.

They basic bioweapons and one of their ships crashes.

And this stuff is starting to, you.

Know, I certainly want to watch it and you have me very interested in the entire franchise if that's kind of what it's trying to unpack.

So like I said, this could be a good setup for an episode or two later of our podcast covering Alien Earth on FX Hulu.

Yeah, they dropped the first two at once.

So the midpoint will come in two weeks or a week from the Tuesday that you all are hearing this.

That seems about right.

Yeah.

Very good reviews.

I don't want to like build it up too much, but it is extreme.

The first two episodes are extremely solid and it's doing a lot of different things.

Not a sit on your phone show.

You in headlines have me definitely going to watch it.

Is the timeline on when.

Let's pause here though and we'll get into spoilers when we come back.

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Sign up for it and in your email inbox you'll get the goings on of the Alabama Take, as well as a few short stories.

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Okay, we're back.

We're going to get into spoilers of the first three episodes of first season of Blue Lights.

I've been waiting to discuss this.

Now that we're in spoiler section.

Did you know that these people are Irish?

I don't know if you're supposed to figure that out.

Not all of them, which is a point.

So this is on hbo Max, originally from Britbox.

If you haven't seen it, don't want to know the specifics of the first three episodes.

This the section to avoid of our podcast.

Just so you know, Adam will duck out after episode two because he doesn't want to be spoiled either.

And I'll open the floor for Adam on episode one because we did talk about it last week.

It's titled the Code.

I mean, to continue on from the non spoiler section, you're just immediately confronted with the idea of like, who signs up for this job.

It's really clever writing to, to drop us in.

They're not brand new recruits.

They know enough that they should be mildly functioning in their their roles, but they're also probationary and so still a lot to learn and you know, you have nothing.

They didn't reinvent the wheel, you know, they just are doing it really well with, you know, say, having the seasoned.

You find out social worker who has become the cop versus the younger crowd who one seems to be kind of the maybe from the part of town that they have to deal with a lot.

And then you have the guy who can't shoot a gun straight.

It's like, okay, this is, we know what's going on here.

We know these beats, but they just did it so well and the world is so well crafted and they're using inciting incidents just enough, you know, that it, it really does in the way that I'll reference the Wire again, where it's like, it's a big city, but you see the same people over and over again.

You know, like, how many times that day do they run into the same troublemakers?

And it's a great introduction to that and to the different responses of, you know, when a cop says, that's above my pay grade, you know, you hear that a lot of like, just let somebody else deal with it.

I'm just doing the best that I can to stay afloat.

But, you know, for them it's.

You don't want to put your nose into something in a place where a sectarian violence still has the possibility of flaring up.

You really just want to respond to the call, go by the book, go back home.

So anybody that was willing to go above and beyond, you know, is kicking the hornet's nest.

So I thought it was great.

It's a great wrinkle with, you know, take what is already a dangerous job and add the like and your mom could get killed too.

Aspect.

Because it really, it makes those encounters like that much more visceral.

How do you police in a place where you are expected to just kind of take it when people gather around your car and start throwing bricks and bottles at you?

Oh yeah.

When you're not able to establish your authority to like, police.

Right.

In the way that we understand that authority to exist, obviously we're stepping into a policing in the US is.

So I said earlier in the show, like, someone kind of has to have this job in a society.

Meaning like someone has to respond when, you know, the woman runs out of her house with two knives and is threatening the neighbor.

Like, who.

Who do you call?

They're like, somebody has to have that job.

Do you call them the police?

Whatever it is, somebody has to have that job.

Who would want that job?

Yeah, I don't want that job.

Do y' all want that job?

Could you see having this role?

No, I'd be miserable.

Yeah.

Oh, no.

Anxiety level through the roof.

That takes us to episode two.

Episode two's bad batch, which makes perfect sense in context.

This is where it opens with probationary officer Annie checking under her car for bombs.

And it's a series that doesn't offer any explanation for that, although it may be as obvious.

I mean, episode one opens with that early on too.

Yeah.

It expects you to know that car bombs are damn well near the norm in this city and country.

And what it does for the unbeknownst, like me at times, is it creates, you know, some intrigue, some mystery, but it's still not too hard to deduce because.

But then the next scene, she's playing lacrosse.

I. I think it is.

They're playing hurling, which is like the.

One of the oldest sports in the world.

Like the Irish have played hurling for thousands of years, which is again kind of like a cultural note of like this is a very Irish person to participate in this.

Yes.

And it's there that one of our acquaintances asks if she knows who's the cop on the.

Who's the peeler?

Yeah, who's the cop here?

Would they not know?

Would that not be pretty public information that she.

She's probably not spreading it around.

Right.

Well, I wondered about this with like, could you.

Could you get on a database and like look up the cops names?

They kind of learn.

The gangsters are like learning their names in kind of a threatening way anytime they encounter someone new.

You notice how often they say their name after.

It's like a form of intimidation.

I don't know, Annie is the same young cop who face down the son and the cohort of city kingpin James McIntyre in the previous episode.

I mean, talk about.

We keep using the word visceral.

It doesn't get much more visceral than getting punched in the nose and then puking on the ground.

Yeah, yeah, that's a very realistic reaction.

But.

But her chicken under her car and then getting her acquaintance asked, asking her about, you know, cops on the team, it all kind of ratchets up the danger, which almost the next scene where her superior officer tells her, you're going to receive a lot more threats and he very warmly helps her by offering her a pamphlet on how to deal with danger and threats.

That's such like a. Oh, you have cancer.

Here's this informational brochure that just like lives in this room.

Exam room.

Like, what, how do you, how do you wrap your head around that?

I don't know.

It's day to day though, for, for these people, what's the ordinary citizens reason for.

For despising cops.

I get it in the States, but.

Here I know the Royal Ulster Constabulary was the force that preceded the psni and they were a militarized force that took part in the Troubles and they were really seen as, you know, more oppressing Catholics.

We see that in one of the photos too with the psny.

There's more Protestants than Catholics in it.

Although from a Wikipedia search, apparently they do some form of kind of like affirmative action to try and get more Catholics in.

But the idea is that like you're, you know, like for Anne, like you're, you're a traitor.

You're oppressing your people.

Any figure of authority that's, I assume, would be seen as if not participating and certainly condoning, you know, the unwanted occupation.

It's the arm of what many people see as a colonial power, or is a colonial power, I suppose.

Yeah, these people didn't, these people didn't get here on their own.

Right.

And that's, that's what I was.

And I'm sure the show will continue to develop this idea of like, again, this would be the third time I say someone, you have to have a cop in a major city.

But, like, is that person seen by their constituency, for lack of a better term, as like working for them or as an extension of this really gross, long standing colonial power.

And you know, the neighborhoods we go into where, you know, the Irish flag is flying and things like that.

It's pretty obvious how these folks feel about, you know, these guys are an occupying force in territory where they don't belong.

Right.

It's also the episode where I don't know if I've ever felt.

Felt as seen as I had when Jerry's aghast at Tommy, his young officer, who doesn't know Kris Kristofferson and Johnny Cash as a teacher.

These are conversations I have two or three times a day.

More of a podcast guy, though, so maybe he's listening to us.

Yeah, that was funny.

That was funny.

Which I don't.

I. I don't know that many young people who listen to podcasts either.

Not like young.

Young.

His age, probably.

Yeah.

I do have a question concerning this episode.

Is that.

Is Jerry smoking weed?

He's just smoking a cigarette.

Right.

That's what that was my.

That was.

That was what I thought.

Well, it makes the first two times in this episode where the proceed area officers warn not to mention something to anyone higher up.

Very different reasons, though.

Very different reasons.

Because later it's much the much afraid.

Jen Robinson, I think she tells Annie, don't mention my fears.

Her whole storyline took about, I don't know, three quarters of a second to figure out in the first episode, you know, which is fine.

You got to have that in that you knew she was afraid to go.

She's always trying to get out of the policing and she's definitely hooking up with the.

The ranking officer.

Right.

This is my guess.

Just they seem to be dropping clues.

Maybe this is a big swing and a miss for me.

I don't know.

Tommy, whom I mentioned, and Grace are both new officers.

That fascinating that they come at policing from different areas.

Tommy comes from it from an academic sense.

And Grace socially, humanly, as a former social worker, neither of them are coming into it.

Like, I wanted to be a cop and here I am.

Yeah.

Yeah.

None of them are like, I can't wait to like, you know, arrest someone or whatever.

Although.

And again, I'm sure that we're.

I'm going to say something that will be explored in much greater detail as the show goes on.

But when you see Grace kind of flex the police power in a way that maybe the social worker wouldn't have been able to with the two parents in episode two, you get a sense of like, was she.

Is she like, maybe a little too soft to be a cop, but maybe a little frustrated by the limitations of social work.

Like, how do you find yourself?

Yeah, here.

Do you.

Do you need a little more muscle to affect change?

For sure.

Like, the only job harder than being a social worker is probably the job.

She's now chosen to be a police officer.

So.

But yeah you really get the like okay.

She's done it for 10 years.

She got bumped up against the walls.

Right.

And now, now she can fresh approach.

Right.

Right.

She can put the screws to these people and affect change potentially.

As the title implies, there is a bad batch of pills floating around which causes simultaneous overdoses.

Initially I assumed this was purposeful like it was done by McIntyre in order to kill some people, maybe even setting up these two scenes.

But no, it's real people addicted most likely addicted.

And the, the drug is pregabidin.

It's a nerve pain medicine.

It's not quite.

It's not an opioid as we see here in the States.

That's also key to understanding that that's why none of the officers tried to administer Narcan because it wouldn't have helped.

Interesting.

But yeah.

McIntyre is behind these overdoses though not purposefully in that way, in that he wanted them to happen.

Instead it's an accident which makes him have to clean up his mess as well as unintentional mess.

JP's greediness.

That's the kid on the scooter who's doling out the, the drugs to everyone.

So he's going out of his area to higher end places so he can up the price and sell outside of their domain and they, they get them in some trouble.

I thought that was a great world building exercise when they're like, like it almost felt like a, like a Grand Theft Auto cut scene or something where like you're not sitting in like a new part of the map is illuminated that you can go to or something setting the, the stage of the world they're operating in.

A lot of it is where do you have dominion.

Yeah.

Yeah.

When we see the cops continually running up against literally being told that's out of bounds, don't go there.

Yeah.

And even if not like sometimes it's not worth the trouble, you know, blah blah, blah.

So.

But the.

To see that there are restrictions on the.

What the cops may see as out of control gangsters.

Yeah.

It's something for us as Americans to see McIntyre, his son and Gordy try to clean up the dope off of the streets because I don't think that's a plot point you'd see there's a.

More limited supply of customers.

Right.

Probably.

So you don't want everyone dying and you want to keep them maybe a little bit happy.

Yeah.

That was my, that was my thought.

It's like, this is just bad for business.

Like, of course they've got it and they don't want the police getting involved.

This is a pragmatic decision.

You know, may maybe you turn a blindish eye, like.

Or I should say maybe, like, drugs are a little bit of a lower priority, but if people start keeling over because of them, it's going to go to the top of the chart.

Yeah.

McIntyre even sends his own attorney to help with one of the overdose couples who survived, yet have to face the police for doing so in front of their kids.

They were looking pretty fresh for 24 hours later.

Yeah.

They needed some bags under the eyes.

I mean, the Guinness has gotten me worse than they looked.

They needed to do the whole Tony Soprano where he'd like, actually, like, drink too much and stay up too late so he'd look hungover in the mornings for.

That's commitment.

Yeah.

So Annie pairs up with Jen, the much afraid ginge.

I did question her reluctance.

I thought she was just a coward, but it's pretty quick to see that either she might be involved with McIntyre.

I thought she might be roped into them and trying to stay out of the way or make everyone else stay out of the way as well.

Or she's just scared to death to do anything because she knows who runs the streets.

I think part of it too is she's not.

She's just.

This is not where she's gonna end up.

You know, she's not gonna be a patrol officer because she.

Her mom.

I think it's her mom.

You know, she tells, like, she's so important.

She's breezing through everything.

Right.

She's.

She's gonna get to go wherever she wants.

So it kind of doesn't matter.

She doesn't have to put herself.

I mean, she is obviously scared, but she doesn't have to put herself in harm's way.

I felt for her in a way.

Even though you're, like, mad at her, like, yeah, you have to do your job.

You can't, in the sense that you can't let the person in the foxhole next to you down by not doing your job kind of thing, but at the same time, she's playing afraid so.

Well, you know that you.

Have you ever been in a situation where you're looking around and you're like, wow, whatever we're doing, this comes so easily to everyone else here.

And I'm.

It doesn't to me, you know, like, everyone else has no qualms about.

You know, we watched Annie just Get punched in the face and spit on by the same guy the episode before.

And she doesn't seem to really have any fear about it.

Yeah, she gets mad and unafraid.

Right.

This is a series that's about people trapped and housed by fear as much as anything else.

I think that the tell sign is that even shots when they're indoors seem to have it blocked so that people feel like they are stuck there, that they're in another room and the entryway is blocking them in a way.

There's several of those kinds of shots done with a purpose, I think.

Well.

And they do some clever.

Like one of the early road stops when they zoom out and they do like a helicopter drone shot over them taking off again.

Like, one of the classic dividing walls of Belfast is.

They were right next to that the whole time.

Yeah.

It's pretty different examination of how civilian life can work in another country for us, Northern Ireland there, the States here, mostly here, it's like the rich and powerful, they're the ones who keep politicians in their pockets so they don't have to worry too much about things.

But in this version of Belfast, a powerful civilian keeps his thumb on the police force and may be higher than that.

All the vets are the ones who seem to be worried about not shaking the boat.

But he's intelligence serv.

I don't think he's a civilian, he's intelligence services.

Right, right.

Because there's.

All along.

There's also the knowledge that there are people who are working counter terrorism, essentially.

Yeah.

So, like, what is the role of the beat cop in that scenario?

There's observe and pass it on.

A lot of the time it seems like, respond to overdoses, that sort of thing.

Yeah.

And frustrating to be a beat cop.

Right.

In a world where, like, I think we.

There are many intelligence services across the world that would be more than happy to, like, if three people die, but I get my big mark or whatever, like, that's acceptable for me.

Right.

Whereas, like, the beat cop is like, I can't let.

How can I let anyone slip past me?

The episode ends with James McIntyre's estranged wife, ex wife.

Maybe he makes her get her house shot up so that it could be a big distraction.

I mean, that whole sequence was like, think if.

If Scorsese had had social media when he was making Goodfellas to like, you know, wait for somebody to.

To like, on something before you make the move to the idol.

Wild, you know, to go steal or whatever, that'd be great.

Such a brilliant point.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was just genius for him as a character in the routing.

They do overheads really well in this show, I think, like the, the zoom out contextualizations.

You know, I mentioned the wall thing at the end when they're resupplying the dealer and they lift off this house and you see the blue lights of the cops are.

They're literally like a block and a half away.

Right as the.

As the crow flies are just right there.

And they show that.

And there's another moment earlier where they.

I can't remember what the scene is.

Maybe they're setting the stage for all of that.

But they do an overhead of the whole city and you see it all sprawled out and you're kind of thinking about what we've discussed, like the tangled webs of criminality and like what is the compromise that the people who are supposed to be enforcing the law have to make with the quote unquote bad guys to just make sure it's not chaos.

You know, at a certain point you just live with the hornet's nest instead of trying to destroy it because that would be so chaotic.

But it, it shows this overhead of this is a man made problem.

You know, like if you create a city of division and lack of resources and kind of hopelessness and all these whatever happens adjectives you want to use like.

Yeah.

You create the cauldron that these problems arise from.

So you're.

There's the.

The funny.

I live underneath the pool of.

And I run around with my bucket trying to get it.

You know, that's.

That pool was not.

This is not a natural evolution of humanity.

Yeah.

It reminds you a lot of the 80s and 90s, quote unquote crime epidemic and poor neighborhoods, particularly black neighborhoods in America.

In the States.

Yeah, absolutely.

Which.

Talk about intelligence agencies.

Yeah.

Where.

Where did the drugs come from?

I don't know.

Right.

Yep.

That does get us into episode three and it.

It's called the Fear, which is what everyone has.

Especially great name for this episode.

It could have been a great name for the series.

Everyone has that.

When it comes to James McIntyre, almost everyone has that fear, or at least deep concern of what he's capable of doing when Grace and Steven are called to the shooting, when JP is shot.

Grace has this firm understanding that, I don't know, I would have had that maybe no other new cop should have had.

Where she says, was this done by appointment?

Having the social work under her belt probably helps her deduce this.

She's seen all of these situations just that like kind of like she says in this episode, she sees the aftermath.

She's not usually right there, but she knows what's going on.

But I know several people who are social workers and my, my sister in law is a social worker and I kind of love that, the respect that the show is giving her for that work.

Because y' all go out and like thank a social worker today because they have literally the hardest jobs and the saddest jobs.

So much so that I don't even know if I know any.

They're.

They're few and far between.

Yeah.

And.

And just like a great setup too.

Right.

Like, it's kind of like you were, you were saying earlier, Blaine, they do very, a very good job across these three episodes so far.

Something's happening and you like, you can kind of maybe guess what's happening, but they don't straight up tell you.

Right.

Like, like the McIntyre son comes to the dad and then the, you know that we go to the.

They're at the house and they're.

He's, I assuming like a, a painkiller or something like that with the whiskey.

Like.

Yeah.

As you slowly figure out, like, oh, like they told these, have him out in front or we'll kill him.

Yeah.

It's not a familiar thing for me as a Southern American, but Grace, has it figured out.

Yeah.

James visits Gordy's mom there and it becomes pretty apparent here, if it wasn't before that Gordy's dad had worked alongside James.

That's how he's become a part of the crew.

I will say this about James.

He does not project menace ever for, for that villain of the series.

He does not.

And I don't know if that's purposeful or not.

And I assume we're gonna find out a little bit more about that.

I, I feel like it is because that's, that's something that's funny that you said that because John, John lynch, who is playing, playing this, he like he shows up at your door and the, the dissonance in, in my head between like between his eyes, he seems kind of pleasant and.

But you like, you know, to be afraid.

Yeah.

Like we've seen what he can do.

That's really working for me.

I'm assuming it is intentional because we see some point, we've seen times where he gets angry.

You know, he hits his son.

He pushes, you know, he pushes, Pushes Gordy's mom.

Gordy's mom.

Thanks.

I. Yeah, you know, like pushes her.

He gets angry.

He's very kind of menacing when he Tells like the whole thing where he's like, oh, Gordy will have a cup of tea.

You know, like, there's some.

There's some steel there.

So him just, like showing up and just seeming completely pleasant.

Like he's just asking how you're doing, how your day is going, is very minute.

That's very menacing to me.

Certainly almost everyone's in on not wanting to rustle his feathers.

For sure.

Like you said, I thought that was really good, Blaine.

You could have just called this whole series Fear.

And at least right now, you know, I think part of it too, is James McIntyre seems to be the only man who's not afraid.

That's true.

So I wonder.

I wonder if we will explore more of that.

He's a strange one.

Has a few, has some balls, but she knows her limits.

Yes.

You know, this is a guy who.

It's like you think, like, okay, he should be afraid of the cops.

He should be worried about that.

He's not.

He's not too concerned.

It seems at this point they label him as paramilitary.

Can you explain on this concept of not military, but paramilitary?

That prefix, even sort of a broad.

Definition, paramilitary, you know, it's like not.

It's not like a recognized.

It's not a recognized military, but it's operating in a military sense.

There's a.

There's an order to it and there's.

You report to officer.

Very much like we saw in say nothing with the nra.

Yes, there were.

This is not just like the Catholics in Northern Ireland doing this too.

You know, the Protestants also had.

You know, these people were killing each other.

None of them were soldiers of a recognized nation, although obviously some of the Protestant one had sort of tacit, you know, approval.

But they're.

You know, they're so.

They're.

They're.

They're almost.

They're.

They're military organizations that are not, you know, legitimate representatives of their nation.

You know, and you have.

Not that this is the same thing, but you.

You know, you see this in, you know, if you think about what, you know, about the rise of fascism in Europe, you know, like Mussolini's black shirts.

Right.

They're not the army, but they are organized.

They're loyal to Mussolini.

That's a paramilitary.

You know, some of the.

When Hitler's coming into power, some of his fascist units, those are paramilitaries.

And it comes to the end of this one, the fear where Jerry takes a turn.

Yeah.

He goes against his own saying of.

Don't go looking for trouble.

When he asked Tommy to pull up the incidence map that he has collected.

And.

And then Gordy's mom also takes us.

Yeah.

When she is at Grace's house to end the episode.

Which it does a nice.

It throws you off nicely when her son answers the door and you don't see who's on the other side.

Yeah.

You don't know.

That's the fear.

Right.

You don't know who's gotten pissed off at you this week.

Perfectly set up to show you what that might feel like and I can't.

I kept thinking the police officers would come in and rush to Grace and say well your son's been shot or.

Even killed, you know, because she's been seen in the vicinity of this family who's given a statement and now has to like run away, you know.

Oh yeah.

So there's the danger.

The danger there.

Yeah.

It's a fear of retribution that's in a non systematic system I guess you could say, you know, McIntyre is not what the status quo.

He's not governmental but at the same time he's got his thumb on almost everything anyway.

He's like a parallel authority structure.

Right.

Yeah.

More on blue lines as we go.

At some point we will get to unpacking Alien Earth.

We'll see how that goes.

I'm excited.

I don't want to oversell it like it's not Mad Men but I thought it was, you know like a perfect show but really, really good, really cinematic, really enjoyable.

It looked as though it looks nicely.

And you can see what some of the themes that it's going to be playing with.

I like that.

I love it when shows and movies are open about their themes but leave a lot of room for interpretation.

Same and that's what we tend to be drawn to.

Well that's the end of our episode this week for Adam and Donovan.

I'm Blaine and we hope you don't know any McIntyre's, at least not James's.

There's a James McIntyre somewhere in this country who is, who is filing slander lawsuit against you right at this moment.

Talk to everyone next week.