From Oasis to the SEC: 'King of the Hill' Returns, 'Any Given Saturday' on Netflix, and 'Blue Lights' Comes to HBO Max

Hey, y'.

All.

Welcome to Taking It Down.

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We're back after a little bit of a break this week.

We're going to be talking about Adam's return.

He was over in the uk.

I got to see Oasis.

That kind of thing's not our forte being a TV podcast, but it was interesting stuff.

And then we'll run down new episodes of King of the Hill is back on Hulu this time.

Then we'll discuss a little of SEC Football, any given Saturday, which is on Netflix, and documents last season of SEC Football.

And then lastly, we'll talk about the series Blue Lights, which is on HBO Max, and how it came to land there.

Stick around.

Let's get the show going.

Alabama, take projection.

Look at us, we're back.

Some of us have been to the uk, Some of us have been to the toilet.

Some of us have been to the toilet in the uk.

Just real quick, Adam.

Good times, huh?

Yeah.

People might be more interested in this than.

Than the shows we're gonna be covering, but.

But the Oasis show, you saw one or two.

I saw the one.

You saw the one Oasis show their.

First night back in Manchester, and you.

Couldn'T stop crying your heart out.

They were imploring me from the stage to stop crying my heart out, and I could not.

Yeah, it's tough in the sense that, like, you, yes, it's the lyrics for the song, but you're actually bringing everyone else down.

Yeah, Y.

Like, stop.

There are 79,999 people here whose time you were ruining.

Right.

It's like we're all trying to enjoy ourselves.

And here you are in the middle.

Your Instagram, your social media accounts are.

They're not private, are they?

No, I'm not telling tales out of school to say that.

You.

You met a famous soccer gentlemen.

Excuse me, Football se.

Several.

Yeah, you met.

You meant Pep.

Yeah, that's the guy TD likes.

I mean, he is the greatest living, I would argue the most innovative, the most important football manager of.

Of our time.

I like that Blaine's like, triangulating this.

He's like.

Well, I don't know anything about him, but TD Likes them.

So.

Yeah.

Famous enough for me.

TD Host of taking on sports for those listening famous.

If you don't listen to them.

It's our sister podcast.

Is he like the Nick Saban of football?

I'm serious.

Why is it funny?

Because he, you know, Nick Saban is, like, famous in part of America, and this dude is famous around the world, except America.

I bet Nick Saban's a little bit more famous than part of America.

I bet he's pretty.

He's a famous guy.

It's just.

It's a little apples to oranges.

I say this as a Saban devotee.

I. I'm.

I'm getting angry.

As a Saban worshiper.

I'm sorry, but it's just the scope of the thing.

But yes, he would.

He would be one of the goats, if you will.

Sure.

No, he really is right.

Like, worldwide.

People are like, pep.

No, he's.

He literally changed how they play the game of soccer.

And the funny story I can add here, if anybody gives a shit, is I sent the.

I screenshot it and said it to Donovan and I was like, donovan, is this a.

Is this a soccer guy?

And because Pip wasn't Dr.

Dressed in his very demure football manager.

You know, he's.

He's a sporty looking guy.

He is a sporty guy.

GQ kind of guy.

Which made his shorts at this concert that much funnier.

Yeah.

So I sent it, Donna, and I was like, hey, is this that Pep guy?

You know?

And Donovan's like, I don't know.

Yeah.

For a second, Donald was like, I don't know.

And so I looked it up and did some comparisons.

I was like, no, it is.

Adam's hanging out with this guy.

It was like seeing an NFL player out of uniform.

Like, I will never recognize you.

Yeah, it was funny because the, like, the gap between people who knew and people who were like, I think that guy might be famous.

Like, there were people in my Instagram responses who were very rightly like, holy, what.

What is happening to you?

Yeah.

You know, kind of thing.

And then other people Is, you know, just go, oh, neat.

You know, like, this is.

If I.

If you had made me craft a list of people, that I would be the most starstruck by.

Tom Skinner.

He might be on there.

But I've told people like this sounds.

I hate saying this in what is kind of a public forum, but, like, if you play music long enough, you meet people who were heroes or still heroes, whatever.

It's.

It's really just.

I say that it's an act of attrition for me.

I stuck around long enough.

I've met cool people.

But you can at least understand what they do.

I can.

It's like, in some way, I understand the building blocks.

Obviously, you meet some of them.

It's like you were an alien, talent wise.

But I have some scope.

Meeting an athlete like that, Meeting a.

Specifically, a mind like that, a dude who's won everything that you can possibly win many times over, redefined how the sports played, blah, blah, blah, that I have watched on my television maybe more than any other individual for the last 15 years in sport.

I was like, holy, that's him.

The Nick Saban of football.

Blew my mind.

He's basically Nick Saban of.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

I just won't make that clear.

Well, Nick Saban's a little more famous.

No, but.

But you.

You and your cohort, Jamie, are part of, or combined, your sister Ray Davies, and you did a show over there.

That's why you were over there.

And it worked out.

And you get to see Oasis.

Got to bump into some of these people.

Had a pint or two with Noel Gallagher.

It was two pints.

I don't.

It just feels weird to talk about.

No, we won't.

But the show, your show.

The show was great.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was.

It was really good.

I appreciated the moral support from the home front.

Fellas, that's us.

It's y'.

All.

Yeah, it's us.

Y' all are the boys.

I'm the boy.

Yeah.

We're really glad to have you back stateside.

And Donovan and I held it down.

And then, of course, we do our usual August break.

Our August break.

This time is actually shorter than usual.

I was.

I managed to do my work in a faster amount of time.

I am a high school teacher as a side hustle.

And I made it back, and here we are.

We're podcasting.

Let's get into TV and streaming.

That's what we promise everybody.

Just, you know, the first 10, 15 minutes are spoiler free.

And you may want to get to know us.

I don't know.

Maybe not.

Maybe you don't want the chatter.

You'd be better off without it.

But look, we.

We love one another, and we.

We hope you can hear it in our voices.

So I just want to check in with Adam as I.

As I've seen him in person, I've messaged him a lot, but haven't seen him in, in person until now.

Back with us, I guess maybe from a hiatus from.

I don't know if I don't think hiatus is correct because it was probably just planned as a finale.

Series finale.

But anyway, back is King of the Hill.

It's now on Hulu, where all episodes of its 14th season appeared this week around Tuesday.

The show is a creation of Mike Judge, he who is responsible for Beavis and Butthead and Daria, I believe, which.

And Beavis and Butthead are airing new episodes soon.

It's 1995 all over again.

It's a great time to be Mike Judge.

Oasis is the biggest fan in the world, and Mike Judge is active.

Yeah.

But my Judge seems like a nice guy, so kudos.

Am I wrong about that?

Is he.

No, he seems cool.

Oh, okay.

Because y' all know more about him than I.

The Animated Series has Hank and Peggy Hill returning from Saudi Arabia back to Texas to live out their retirement years.

And if you know anything about the show, you know it's about Hank and Peggy Hill.

It's called King of the Hill.

You probably know the guy that talks funny, you know, in semi incomplete sentences.

There are a few things you probably just know.

It just comes with the territory.

It's hilarious to me, Blaine, that you.

I feel like we should put it out there at the top of the show.

Blaine does not really like animated shows.

Not much.

Yeah.

Here's the reason why.

If it's animated, it needs to be doing something that you can't do live action.

Otherwise, it's distracting to me that it's animated.

So for King and the Hill, there's nothing that they do on there that can't be actors doing it in front of a camera.

I disagree with that fairly strongly.

Oh.

Oh, no.

Tell me.

Tell me more, because I haven't watched enough of it to know.

Well, I think when it was created, I think they were able to do more jokes and more set pieces and all of these things that would have been.

I mean, you're right.

It is in many ways, it is a sitcom.

There are set pieces.

The inside of the Hill residence, the alley where the guys are drinking beer, Hank's workplace Et cetera, et cetera.

But they were able to materialize jokes much more rapidly.

Obviously, south park would be like the extreme version of this.

Or the Simpsons, maybe.

Yeah, absolutely.

Because I always love the Simpsons.

Springfield is like this undefined thing that can have whatever they need the town to have to make the joke that they're trying to make or create the situation.

I think you get a little bit of that with King of the Hills, Arlen.

And this.

This came to mind because I watched this great unofficial Arrested Development documentary where they said the way that they shot and the cameras that they shot on allowed them to do these really chaotic cut scenes and pickup shots that because they could move so fast and light compared to the way that television was produced at the time, it introduced this whole new world of jokes, and they were basing a lot of that on 90s animated stuff.

Wow.

So it wasn't just in the editing.

It had to do with cameras as well.

Well, you have to do some cutscene, say, when Job is supposed to mail a letter.

And there's just this like 15 second joke where he.

They say, oh, I mailed the letter.

And then it shows him going to the ocean and trying to throw it into the sea in this dramatic.

So, like, the conventional way the television had been shot would have required way more permits, way more gear moved to that beach.

It's like if you just have this camera and you've accepted that it's going to be of a slightly lower quality, but the best run and gun thing that they can have at the time.

It's like, Will Arnett, your call is at whatever beach today.

You're gonna throw this piece of paper into the wind.

But there's so many things like that that when you watch a show through that lens, it's like, man, there are so many shots like this in the show that I'm not sure that it would have existed previous.

Maybe there's some technical expert out there that can tell me why I'm wrong.

But I do think the King of the Hill does have a strength there.

You've worked in film.

That sounds right, though.

I'm being completely influenced by a Texas monthly article I just read, but I do think that they wrote a whole article about how King of the Hill doesn't have to show, for example, golden Hour in Texas, but they do anyway.

And just the kind of like the love that was put into the details.

I think if you're on a conventional set, right.

Like, you can't show that world as fully as they're able to in King of the Hill.

Right.

Terence Malik is not making the show if you're.

If you're filming it, you know, but you can do those quick tricks in animation.

Exactly.

Like, the comedy is obviously comedy, but there's like, something almost naturalistic about it where it's like, you know, these are.

These are folks that you've met or very.

Or.

Or archetypes of folks that you've met and places you've been.

Naturalism throws me for a loop in animation when it's like that because I think, ooh, for me to really laugh at this, I need more expression than what an animated piece can give me.

I do remember this kind of confounding me when I was younger, when it was actually on air, because you can kind of wrap your head around, like, obviously you're a kid watching cartoons, and then the Simpsons is cartoonish.

And I was allowed to watch that maybe in, like, sixth grade.

I remember my dad watched an episode and laughed a lot, and he looked at me and was like, you can watch this now.

But then there was a. I think there was a phase where I still wasn't allowed to watch King of the Hill.

And it may have been because it was a little too realistic.

I don't know.

There was a brief window where the Simpsons was okay, but some of those other edgy animated shows weren't.

And then it's funny now to.

To watch it.

And like, my thesis for why it's so great is it's so deeply heartfelt and representative of that era of middle America in a way that I'm not sure any other show of the time captured it.

Yeah.

In a recent string of drunken texts, you proclaimed that this show was the epitome of middle America.

It doesn't take alcohol for me to.

Say that I was joking about that.

I don't know if it was involved, but I don't remember sending that.

But it would not take alcohol for me to say that.

I will also add, there are some intangibles that does not give this show a fair shake from me, although I've come at it this week with more clarity.

I had an ex girlfriend at the time, and I lived in Tuscaloosa at college.

My weekends would be in her town, and then on Sunday night, pretty late, I would leave and go back to Tuscaloosa, and she would always be watching King of the Hill.

And she loved it.

So I watched a lot of that first and second season.

I can't remember her lane of it because I was in and out and really concerned about getting back to Tuscaloosa.

And I think I associate with her, which is a turbulent time in my life.

We can say all that said, I did.

I came at it with clarity and I have things to say about the first two episodes.

We'll cover in the spoiler section.

And I appreciate that.

Adam, help wipe my lenses clean on it by saying, no, it's pretty good representation of middle America.

You might be on to something.

But I will say that the.

Even still, some of the characters are still a little annoying to me.

They're a little too.

Yeah, there's caricatures.

I think that when you, when you see.

I can't imagine watching the.

These reboot episodes without having spent a significant amount of time with the main body of the show because it fell into such a great rhythm of, you know, self referential jokes and world building and all of this stuff where I think they went long stretches where, yeah, there was caricatures, but you kind of just got used to them and it just remained such a.

Like, yes, they're kind of making fun of everybody.

But it's done in this really also empathetic way, I think, where it's like you, if you met Hank Hill, you would think in this era you'd think, here's this MAGA guy from Texas, blah, blah, blah.

But it kind of just, it constantly works at undermining like you're maybe if you want to speak in very broad terms the other way, your coastal view of what it's like to live in flyover country.

I picked up on that and I appreciated that a lot.

Which we'll get into in the spoiler.

I think in the new episodes, maybe they're aware that we feel this way.

Yeah, it felt a little more natural in the older stuff.

Yes.

You have the characters that could be caricatures or start out as caricatures.

And I would also argue that the portrayal of these characters is impossible with animation.

And that's Brittany Murphy being Luann and Pamela Adlin being Bobby Hill.

And they could just be caricatures.

But there's.

Over the, the length of the show, there's.

There's a depth to them.

So much so that I think Luann has one of the most genuinely beautiful moments in the series at the end of the episode with Buckley's Angel.

Oh, what season was it?

Three, maybe.

Is that three?

Yeah, like it's, it's.

It's genuinely, genuinely moving and it doesn't.

Luann is still a great comedic character on top of all that.

They've done the work.

It's like, guys, you've watched the show already.

We know you have.

It's 14 seasons in.

Just assume you know the characters at this point.

Yeah, yeah.

And I think, you know, I remember reading.

I don't know how much truth there is to this or where the line was, but it was an animated show that had, you know, that Buckley's angel episode is at the end of a.

Towards the end of a season, or at least some episodes are moved from the series of episodes where the MegaloMart explodes and Buckley dies and Hank is part of the explosion.

And they say, are you okay?

And he says, that's the funny thing about dying.

You either do or you don't.

He's denying that he has ptsd, but.

So there's an episode about him working through that and then you kind of.

They don't talk about it for a while.

But for an animated show to then revisit Luann's grief as something that would be ongoing, it's pretty remarkable.

And at some point they were told that they needed the episodes to work in isolation, so they stopped doing as many multi episode arc.

Yeah.

Which is a bummer because I would have loved to have seen more of that.

But yeah, it was a strength for sure.

As you can tell, me and Donovan have watched our 10,000 hours on King of the Hill.

So Blaine just kind of turn the faucet off whenever you need to.

Poor Blaine.

Yeah, that's probably good enough for now because we're going to get into a lot more in the spoiler section.

One of the other things we'll.

We'll touch on is the Netflix documentary sports series SEC Football Colon, Any Given Saturday, which really wants to be in the vein of previous Netflix endeavors, most notably Last Chance you.

It seemed this one retails some of the on the field and some of the off the field stories from the last season of the sec.

And we're right there on the cusp of football season again.

So this was a knit, a ditch that needed scratch for me.

But this is no Last Chance you.

Thus far I've only seen the one episode, but even bad seasons of Last Chance, you hovered over the one that I saw here.

It's really funny to me how well they know their market that like late July, early August, there's a sizable part of the population that is literally getting itchy, can't take the weight any longer.

And so you get your last chance.

Use Hard Knocks came back this last week.

It's very good.

I don't know you guys are not Hard Knocks viewers, but they're with the Bills this season and it's fun to see an actual good team.

I don't know, I did like a little bit of the jets because they were so hapless and Aaron Rodgers was so out of control.

I didn't watch the whole thing, but there were like, there were some good moments there.

It was kind of great.

Yeah.

I mean, I don't know how many ways there are to tell sports stories, you know, Like, I feel like the.

Especially the last 15 years with like, how nice you can make footage look for less money.

There's been a lot of romanticized tellings of SEC football, but yeah, it scratched the itch.

If nothing else, it worked as a recap of what happened that I might have forgotten from my season.

Same.

Yeah, I think that.

And I'm only one episode in, so maybe I'm coming at it a little too harshly.

I was expecting more behind the scenes stuff like more dirt or things.

I would have never guessed.

This is coming from the athletic review.

I read the people, they did not know they were filming an athletic Netflix documentary like the.

The eight the Ads.

And like, obviously this was agreed.

Like, the players had no idea this was going to be a documentary.

They didn't tell them what the guys with the cameras were doing.

Oh, they just thought it might be for the program itself.

Yeah, no clue.

So interesting.

So.

So there.

Apparently there's a little bit of that as you go on.

This is also going off the athletics review.

There's just a huge factor of luck of what they managed to have a camera on at the time.

Yeah.

Okay, that does sound promising.

I definitely am going to finish it because like Adam said, between now and August 30th or whatever, it is not much to do as far as college football is concerned, that is.

I always find myself hanging on that first episode of Hard Knocks as if it's a life raft and I am a drowning man.

And then by the last episode, it airs the Tuesday after Labor Day, I guess.

So college football has already kicked off and I, like, can't even be bothered to finish the season.

Most of the time.

It's like, shit, I got to shore.

You know, you got me there.

But this is not a valuable craft for me anymore.

And Blaine, I'm gonna say, as this podcast has come, has come into being, what are two of the themes that have stood out?

I'll tell you what, Ireland and Flyover Country.

Are you forgetting that we're gonna force the Irish to watch Kansas State play Iowa State in a mere.

In a mere two weeks.

What a segue.

Because last thing we're going to talk about this week is HBO now has its hands on a few shows from BritBox, which includes Blue Lights, a show set in Belfast.

So not quite Ireland, but Northern Ireland.

Easy there.

I know.

I've learned.

Mom say Nothing taught us well how to tiptoe around this.

There's some Irish flags out there, though.

You know, it's very much dealing with.

With this tension.

Yep.

So HBO Max now has a few Brit box shows on it.

They did something similar with Netflix last year or the year before.

You can find the British incarnation of the Office on HBO Max for a while.

I can't recommend it enough.

If you love to cringe.

I thought you were about to say I can't recommend it.

Oh, I love it.

Can't recommend it.

No, I can't recommend it to everyone, I'll say that.

But it is.

It's a hoot and a holler, as Bo Hicks would say.

But yeah.

But one of the shows that jumped out at me from the HBO Max acquisition, temporary acquisition was Blue Lights.

It's got two seasons, six episodes each, and I just saw a headline.

This is the only thing I went on.

It called the show gritty and intense.

Those are two adjectives that'll pull me into a series faster than Scooby Doo into a van of weed.

You know, I was there.

Is that what they're doing the whole time?

Wait, does Scooby Doo smoke weed?

I thought it was just Shaggy.

Well, he eats the weed cookies.

Oh, wait, is that what, a Scooby Snack?

Is that why Shaggy will also do things for Scooby Snacks?

Yeah.

It's not sexual, Donovan.

I didn't think it was sexual.

I'm just saying Blue Lights is set in Belfast where a set of cops do cop work.

Dare I say it's a cop show.

I'll get into some specifics in the spoiler, so don't worry about that.

But we've run out of names here because despite knowing the reviews this is received and knowing it's a good get for HBO Max, I still had to be like, get it through my mind that I'm going to watch a show called Blue Lights.

It sounds so lame.

It does sound like something that would come on USA after, like, the soccer game that I was watching ended.

Yes.

And I, like, Wandered Away has won his thousandth game.

Like, I wandered away to, like, do a chore and came back and poor IRA has been subjected to watching some horrible procedural cop show.

It does sound exactly like that.

Is there anything, though, and that's my question, Donovan.

Is there anything setting this apart from being merely a cop show?

How many episodes are you in?

2.

Oh, yes.

You can answer this then.

I was engaged.

And I also think that just the overlay of protagonists being in the Northern Ireland Irish police force and the obvious ethnic tension that they're still dealing with ethnic and religious tension is another overlay that's.

That's really interesting to me.

You giving it high marks, you recommending it to our audience.

This is a thumbs up for me.

And it got the coveted Dr. Reinwald mealtime watch award.

So.

Which would be your wife?

Yes.

I won't say much more because it's.

It's truly a show that just almost throws you in the deep end.

I was gonna say, I feel like I can't say a lot more until.

Spoiler section.

I can speak very vaguely about it, but.

Thumbs up, y'.

All.

It's, you know, it's an hour show, it's well made, it looks good, it has good actors in it.

Watch an episode.

It might not be your cup of tea, so to speak, but.

But it might be.

I. I'd give it a recommend.

I. I got the feeling the whole time I was watching it this is going somewhere big.

But I have nothing to show for it yet.

I still liked watching it because I kept thinking, any minute now, somewhat on the edge of my seat in that manner.

So let's do this.

Let's take a break.

Boiler section coming up in about 30 seconds.

If you're a fan of the Alabama take but hate social media, well, then you might be me.

You can avoid all that.

The track.

There's a lot going on on the Alabama take in the fall, their Friday college football picks along with NFL games.

There are podcasts in production, plenty of writings on the Alabama take.

And if you're not on social media, you don't know when to look, when to check.

So subscribe to the newsletter.

It'll give you links, tell you what's on there, what's new.

Go to thealabamatape.com newsletter and you're all set.

Can I put in a plug for the the football picks?

Yeah.

To our listeners.

Football Galaxy.

I love reading Blaine's analysis.

It's always funny.

And on top of that, I cannot tell you how much money I have lost following these pics.

Hey, I had a good year last year.

You did have a good year.

I'm being silly.

I went over 50%.

But no, it is very fun.

It's fun to see Blaine's the picks and the rationale and then see how it turns out on Saturday.

Usually not good.

Let's return to King of the Hill now on Hulu instead of Fox as it was in years past.

We'll talk some specifics.

Definitely spoiled the plots the first two episodes at the very least.

You know, this new season of King of the Hill may be the most interestingly viewed through that lens of Trump that you mentioned.

Adam.

He's the specter that hovers around everything, especially this show.

I mean, he is and he isn't.

You know, they have dealt quite a bit in the past with politics and even with politicians.

I mean, Bill dated the former governor of Texas, Ann Richards at one point, so.

And it's a show that has been on and establishing its characters moral compasses since.

You know, they had a 2000 election show.

You know, Hank had to get over George W's limp handshake to still vote.

Such a good episode.

Yeah.

They have been playing with this idea for literally 25 plus years, which is kind of remarkable.

And I mean, he is again, this is.

They know what they don't have to be as of the time.

Does that make sense?

Because it's such a long running show, I don't think that they would want to spoil that whole history by letting it be dominated by Trump.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Because I think they know that this will be viewed with a longer lens.

Yeah.

The whole first and second episode that I've seen, it's all about change and mostly due to aging.

For longtime fans like you guys, how did it hold up in comparison to the first 13 episode seasons?

Well, the core of the show is still there and I think the core of the show is.

Is Hank.

Honestly, he's a.

He's.

And it is that like he, he is who he is.

He's a traditional guy, but he's neither a crank nor a reactionary, as you'll see at the end of the first episode where the Girl Scouts say to him, well, we don't call him Samoas anymore.

That's more respectful.

And Tank says that's a nice change.

Yeah, he does say that.

They've always done that with Hank where he's often, you know, he's.

He's a traditional conservative guy, but he's often the voice of reason if somebody, you know, he, he tries, he tries to be accommodating and respectful to people.

I mean, there's an early episode where they're talking about recycling.

And Dale says there's no point, you know, because blood spills out some conspiracy.

And he says, dale, it's already 110 here in the summer, and if it gets one degree hotter because of you, I'm going to kick your ass.

You know, so there's a certain, like, I think that that gets across his pragmatic approach to life, you know, like, if you can be nicer to someone and they played with, like, you know, there's an episode where lady bird gets angry and bites this handyman who is black, and so hang for the next 22 minutes is trying to figure out if he has somehow unconsciously created a racist dog.

And then by the end of the episode, you find out she just doesn't like handymen coming in and touching Hank's stuff.

But it's always been playing with that.

That rub of, like, here is a decent human being in some ways, put into this caricature, which it brings true with the Alabama growing up, too, of, like, not everybody fits the mold of the Fox News man, but kind of have to fold themselves into that to.

Kind of echo something you said earlier, Adam.

And I think there is an element of, like, just because it was out for so long and it's back, and it's like, okay, we're catching Hank and Peggy up on everything really quick.

So it does feel like a little bit more of the moment.

But the show was always about change, you know, like, we have the.

The supernusaphones moving into the neighborhood.

Right.

And the joke is not that they're from Laos.

The joke is.

The joke is that Khan is insufferable and he thinks they're all redneck, you know?

Right.

But, you know, you have.

You have Hank trying to figure out his son.

Right.

Like, you have.

It's like all the new things that Bobby's going to be, you know, like, it's always been about, like, these, like, change coming and how he deals with it.

And I think that these first couple episodes have kind of, like an easy end to that because a great sense of humor has always been, how is Hank gonna deal with X, Y, or Z?

And he learned the word canceled at some point, which.

I really loved his tweet.

Yeah, he did.

He did.

Little as I know about the show.

It was.

I felt like a pretty good reintroduction to the characters in their world for episode one, you know, have them come back as well as you, the viewer come back.

They were physically coming back from Saudi Arabia.

Is that something that.

That Saudi Arabia?

Yeah.

Or what is Arabia?

Is that something that they did at the end of season 13, move to Saudi Arabia?

No.

So the.

The last episode was supposed to be one where Bobby.

It wasn't its strongest at the end.

Right.

There's some definite filler episodes and.

But the last episode, Bobby joins a meat team.

Do you remember this, Donovan?

Like a what they were like a meat identification squad?

Something like that.

So basically, he goes, and you have to find, like, what is this cut of meat?

Are there imperfections in it?

Blah, blah, blah.

And it turns out that he's like a savant at this because Hank has raised him to be, like, a grill master.

And something finally stuck and all that boy ain't right.

Years and years of that.

All of a sudden, it ends with the two of them grilling together, and it's like they finally have this thing.

And in its true King of the Hill style, it's very understated.

All the neighbors come over, they're grilling out, and the show ends, which I thought was beautiful, but.

So there was no indication that any of this was coming.

Okay.

The first episode did try to pack in a lot of cultural references back to.

Back to.

Situated in.

In a world that's moved and changed, you know, to let.

To let us know this is the one that's in 2025.

I'll unfortunately echo Blaine on this, too.

Just my personal feelings on some of the stuff that's like, you know, we have a college student complaining about what he's learning, green initiatives, things like that.

It's like, there's a.

Like, just knowing that there's such a violent backlash to get, like, literally violent against all this stuff right now.

It did.

It put a little bit of a pall over it.

I still love the characters, and I love Hank meeting with it, even just in the.

You know, like, they're trying to get rid of tenure in ut.

Things are not great.

Episode two, we could talk about these.

I think the first two in tandem.

Episode two is where it just falls back into its, I guess, rhythm as a show that it once was.

It's called the Beer Story, and I'll start with this.

I can't think of a lot of television about life after retirement, at least not any that aren't on CBS now or previously.

And there is the exception, too.

And these are usually movies of the classic mafia where the guy can't retire because he knows too much.

But retirement doesn't suit Hank.

He's listless.

He gets a hobby to make beer, and then that Brings in Bobby and they both enter the the beer competition.

The beer war between Bobby and Hank and the involvement of both sides of their friends.

I thought that was okay.

Way too.

To laugh and examine and uncover generational divide and how silly both sides are when thinking that the other isn't as smart as they are.

But I was also thinking, I'm willing to bet that the series has excelled this type of contrast better at other points.

It just didn't feel new.

Especially coming off the heels of say Stick and knowing how many more television shows run off the comedy and drama of generations having to get along with one another.

It felt a little stiff.

They hadn't quite got the old engine fully revved up.

I've seen five episodes so far and I think that they do hit a stride as they get going.

I don't think that they find it here.

I think that's a little bogged down by, you know, episode one was going to be kind of what y' all said of like, let's throw all of these changes at the wall and get our jokes in about it and calibrate the hills and us for what Arlen looks like now.

Episode two, they were trying to do that.

And like there's a lot of fun beer jokes to be made for sure.

It's like a great.

The whole IPA thing is a nice line in the sand between generations.

But they were already kind of doing this humor at the end of the run.

Right?

Donovan.

This felt like a late era episode.

This episode almost made me laugh more around the edges than it did with its straight up conflict.

Like the whole subplot about Boomhauer's step kid or whatever getting into non alcoholic beer.

See, that's great.

Was hilarious.

The ongoing bit where the kid cannot understand a word.

Boomhower.

I love that.

And just like the way the actor keeps going, like what?

The middle stuff is fine.

Like, it was not bad.

It was fine.

It wasn't bad.

But it did feel like a joke that could have been done 11 years ago for sure.

I think part of it was, you know, for the first time, they line all of the adult men up in the alley and give them beer.

And that has never included Bobby and Joseph, you know, so that image is like if you're a longtime watcher, it's a little striking.

Yeah.

More in the aging thing.

I got to admit, the hills aging bothers me on an existential level.

Say more.

It's like watching family members get older.

Yeah, it is.

And I'm not even necessarily, quote unquote, A fan.

I appreciated stuff for this episode where it did feel like they were back in the old groove.

Stuff like Hank wistfully remembering how his job filled his time and he didn't appreciate it at the time.

Or just like, Peggy being the absolute worst on the edges of everything.

You know, she's like.

Like.

Like, Peggy is so great because, like, she's so annoying.

You've absolutely met this person, especially if you're a teacher.

When she's like, I have to go teach my Pilates teacher how to run a class.

She's awful.

Oh, she's terrible.

I was really curious.

I didn't remember her being this annoying.

All right, so here's.

If you want a theory, I don't think that she was that bad to start with.

And as the show went on, that was her caricature to lean into.

Well, I watched the pilot this week as well, and she was.

It's come a long way from there.

She was.

No, she was a fairly normal, somewhat gentle mom.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think around the time that she fell out of that airplane and her chute didn't open after that, she just became like a.

The caricature of herself.

That's Natalie's favorite episode when it ends and her shoot hasn't opened because Natalie enjoys living in the brief moment where Peggy may just be killed off the show.

So we're supposed to be irked at her?

Yeah.

Yes.

Is that not a little misogynistic to have all these guys drinking in the alleyway and then Peggy's the one that annoys us?

No, because I think they're all supposed.

Hank annoys us as well with these.

Bobby annoys me.

Hank doesn't annoy me as much because I know Hank.

I don't know a Bobby.

That's just a unique, quirky, somewhat annoying kind of character.

I got two thoughts on this one.

It's, you know when, like, you are so close to the source material for a book or a movie or a show or something that you don't realize that the rest of the world finds it funny and odd.

I was like, I know 10,000 Hanks.

You know what I mean?

Oh, yeah, me too.

So, like, the rest of the world finding him odd and entertaining was kind of like, oh, yeah, this isn't normal, but it's get out of jail card on the misogyny towards Peggy is that Hank adores her and kind of puts up even in his own.

He has the stifled ability to actually express that.

But, you know, he knows that she's annoying and he just kind of rolls with it.

Yeah.

In episode two, he even tells one of the guys to not bring her up again or not mention her leaving again.

Well, he.

Bill is in love with Peggy.

Bill, that's.

That's the one he tells.

Don't mention her again or something.

Dale thinks that Peggy is the worst thing that's ever happened to this group of people.

But Bill adores him.

There's already, I feel like, some kind of, like, calibration between the audience in the alleyway with that.

Different attitudes.

And Peggy, of course, does not care about anyone except Hank, probably.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, totally.

Yeah.

Well, I just meant that, like, doesn't bother her because.

Not that she's callous or anything.

I mean, it.

Her character.

It doesn't bother her.

But they, you know, they see each other as useful tools at various times over the run of the series, which.

Those are some of the funniest episodes, I'll say that.

Years past, when I did watch a few episodes, and this current season when I watched two, Dale is still.

Although he's a caricature, I feel like he's the most deserving of being a caricature.

Because those kinds of people are caricatures in real life.

Totally.

Absolutely.

You know, these people with their.

The qanons and the.

And they'll post weird shit on Facebook.

And you're like, you don't really believe that, do you?

The more that you watch the show, the more you realize that Dale is by far the best thing about the program in the original run.

I think they really.

Society has created circumstances that allowed Dale to be too much of a thing.

I think in this new season, at some point we gotta talk about the folks who have passed since the original run.

And specifically on the topic of Dale losing Johnny Hardwick, who I thought was just a complete genius.

The original episodes mid production.

Right.

Donovan, like, he taped some.

And then Toby Huss, who has voiced other characters on the program, stepped in to do it.

But even the stuff that Hardwick did is a little.

It doesn't sound like Dale to me.

And it takes me out of it.

And I am sensitive to the fact that people's.

It's okay for the characters.

Voices to change over that amount of time because people change.

And obviously in real life, people.

Vocal cords change, whatever, but it does.

It does take me out of it when everybody else has been pretty pitch perfect so far.

It's funny that you had that reaction, because I felt the same way.

Even I felt it.

I was wondering if part of it was me it was like, okay, well, I know he passed away, so I know that, like, there's gonna be a person who changed at some point.

But, yeah, I felt.

I felt that it makes some of.

His jokes not land as well.

Oh, yeah, that makes sense.

Not to harp too much on Dale, but it's almost as if America has come down to Dale's level, which makes him a little.

Maybe less funny or interesting.

Well, because, you know, too many Dales now.

Yeah.

Dale's awareness coming all the way around to the other side, where he's able to acknowledge that an election that would end with him as mayor is neither free nor fair.

Like, that's the, like, continuing to follow.

Follow that.

That.

That makes me, like, that writer's room spent.

I don't know how much time coming up with that joke.

Like, you know, as they're watching everything and they're like, oh, my God, we have to reintroduce Dale into, like, a.

This reality.

Like, what.

What are we gonna do?

This show revolves this season.

I mean, revolves around Hank.

For me, I like Bobby.

Bobby's fun, but really the main character for me right now is Hank.

And I think just.

Yeah, they're nailing the.

Like, he's not a crank.

Some things annoy him.

Many things annoy him.

But you know what?

I think part of the.

One of the great jokes in King of the Hill was like, you know what?

Many things in modern life are indeed annoying, and Hank's kind of there to point that out for you.

And just the whole, like, the little simple bit where he's just like, yeah, that is a pretty good change when he finds out about the Samoas is.

That was a moment.

I think they really.

I think they really nailed that.

I think that was big for me.

It's like, ah, they know what they're doing.

Okay.

I can remember my eyebrows perking up at that moment.

I thought, oh, is that the character that he is?

I don't know if I realize that.

Oh, yeah, for sure.

That's totally in care.

And that's.

I was gonna say, I'm sure that there are people who watch this and think, oh, King of the Hill starting to go a little woke, you know?

But, like, that's.

That has been him all along, I think.

Yeah.

Can you think of another example?

I mean, he's always.

He goes out of his way for, like, recycling stuff, green initiatives, even things.

Like helping Luann, who is a big pain in his butt.

But he, like.

Like, he.

He loves and helps Luann, even if she really annoys Him.

His relationship with Bobby.

Right where?

Am I insane or did I dream this up?

That Luann had a abortion episode?

No, none of those.

She had a baby.

Oh, maybe that.

Okay.

It's the opposite of the.

I learned so much on this show.

No, I think he.

That has always been in his character.

He has no time for Dale's nonsense.

You know, it just.

You would think if he was ingesting the Internet between 2015 and now, he just hated everything.

This is a.

He's a George W. Voter.

He's not a. Yep.

Did he vote for Trump?

I don't think so.

He was in Saudi Arabia and he.

It.

It hurt.

It hurt him.

But in that.

In those elections, he did not vote at all.

I don't think so.

Or did he vote third party?

He might have liberty.

Although I feel like you got to watch the 2000 election episode to really grasp.

Yeah.

Okay.

Hank's politics here.

The fun.

The funny thing about Hank is he's completely out of step with Trumpism in many ways, but in.

In one way, like, there's a great joke where I can't even remember what.

But like, somebody who says, like, Hank, these are the guys that run the post office, and he kind of gets a far away look in his eye and he's like, the post office.

Like, he loves the institute.

He loves governance and the institutions of governing.

He loves governance that, like, helps people, like in the post office.

That's not quite libertarian, then.

No, he's not.

He's definitely not libertarian.

He's not a libertarian.

Dale is more of the libertarian, caricature, survivalist guy.

Hank is a Post World War II, Cold War American that's in ham.

He's a Rockefeller Republican, essentially.

Yeah.

He.

Even later on in an episode you guys haven't seen, it won't be a spoiler.

He says people are getting mad at the ref at a kid's sporting event, and he's like, well, this is un American.

The disrespect for authority, you know, that we're.

He has that idealized.

There is someone sitting in a government building with a crew cut keeping things on the rails.

You know, that's Hank's reality.

I think the other way that he.

His character has been out of.

Out of step with Trumpism is the.

The basic acceptance of other people who are different than him.

And he.

Hank, is a builder, not a destroyer.

He would be totally against these immigration policies and ice.

This ice ship.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, he'd be against that.

He might be strong for, like, a strong border, but In a law and order kind of way, in, like, the genuine sense of that word.

Like, let's develop a process to people fill out the right paperwork.

We need a strong border, but you can't be ripping families apart.

Yeah, there we go.

Exactly.

You know, I think the.

What y' all are talking about with the Girl Scout, the other powerful thing about that and what this show does so well, he has that line.

But then the guy coming out, you know, offers to let Hank use his contractor number to get a discount on a power tool inside.

And then all these people, they're suddenly back in the middle of a vibrant community and, you know, they're standing outside of the stand In Walmart, the MegloMart, which is, you know, Hank goes to war with the megalomart at one point.

Like, he kind of hates what it represents, but there is dignity provided into the people that you meet going in and out of Walmart there.

That's what the show does so well.

And it isn't judging it.

It zooms out with very loving music playing like, yes, they did live this idealized life in Saudi Arabia in many ways, making good money and kind of living in luxury, but they are back home amongst their people here.

Well said.

Let's use that good moment to move into the.

The specifics of one episode of sec, any given Saturday on Netflix.

Only seen the one looks as though it's just a document of what went on in the SEC last football season.

I felt like this had all the elements of good Netflix production, sports documentaries, but it had trouble coalescing.

It relied on the mythos of the SEC solely without setting up a narrative.

I'm interested to see if these remain self contained.

Yeah, and I think they will.

They're little portraits of, like, by the end, you realize, oh, they're building up towards lsu, South Carolina, giving context for that game.

And it's when you think about, like, who was this?

When they sat down to make the show, they're thinking, like, who is this for?

And the answer, a lot of the time with a sports doc specifically about the SEC is like, it's for people who don't get it.

You know, like, it's always.

You're gonna hear some line about, like, it's like religion here, like all that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

As if you.

You have discovered fire and are explaining it to the rest of the world, which I understand.

You know, it's like a.

It is a cultural portrait in some ways, but there's.

There's always like the, oh, here's this linebacker dude that we're gonna, we're gonna go hunting with him and he's gonna talk about how those Southern California boys can't move the.

The Southerners or whatever.

There's always some element of that in there.

I wanted more behind the scenes things maybe during the game.

You know, what do they say in the headphones, locker room?

Talk helped or hurt or what plans helped or hurt?

What's.

What's said in that QB helmet since it's so new.

I bet they throttle down some of that out of.

I mean they have to get final edit in the way that like even in the meetings.

Did you notice that there would like.

If a screen was shown like with actual install of plays going on, it was always out of focus.

Oh, was it?

I don't think that either of these programs would want lingo that may be used year to year.

Yeah.

Out in the world though.

I'm sure they change a huge majority of it.

A lot of this just played like Talking Heads going over highlights.

That's my favorite Talking Heads album.

Going Over, Going Over.

It's actually a pretty good album title.

I thought that they constructed the game into a pretty good narrative as far as those things go.

It could have been more interesting for sure.

I mean we've seen like a gabillion of these at this point.

But I think maybe.

Okay, I'll say this.

And it's a bias.

It could have been unappeal, unappealing because they tried to make Brian Kelly someone I want to watch or hear and I do not want to watch or hear Brian Kelly.

See, I came away thinking they made Shane Beamer look like a pretty.

Yes.

Good dude, empathetic guy.

You got backstory on.

I mean he straight up says two things that I think a lot of coaches may not.

One, being we're at South Carolina, not one of the premier SEC schools traditionally teams, and he wants to change that.

And two, that he can't be at Virginia Tech because he's trying to establish his own name.

Yeah, those are two like non media trained moments.

Yeah.

That were kind of nice.

And then you have Brian Kelly on the other hand, who I don't think could motivate a team to fight their way out of a paper bag.

So Donovan will be pleased to know that when he sits down to watch this that they do include the Brian Kelly fist on the pounding, the fist on the toilet.

God, it looked as natural in that context as it did on Twitter.

Which is to say not at all.

It's just his just add water outrage there Is.

Yeah, quite literally.

Yeah.

The show still has me on the hook.

One, because I, I love football.

Two, because I love SEC football and three, because there is a promise of some Sam Pittman footage.

Apparently this is going off that review I read the Sam Pittman stuff is pretty good.

Oh, look, just the world needs more and genuine.

Like they like part of his coaching but also part of his talking.

Like being a genuine guy seems actually kind of cool.

I think I'd like to hang out with Sam Pittman.

Have you a cold beer?

Yeah.

Anytime he's on camera he feels genuine.

So yeah, there's no doubt about that.

That's going to be a highlight.

And Donovan, I don't know if you want to confirm or deny, but absolutely no shots or mention of Alabama in the, in the show or preview.

So my understanding is that Alabama, Georgia and whoever else didn't participate.

They opted not to participate.

There are, there are programs that chose not to participate.

Well, God damn.

Apparently one of the highlights of the show is, you know, obviously Vanderbilt participated and they lucked out and had cameras the day that Vandy beat Alabama.

Yeah, I don't want to watch that again.

So that's what you're finding.

But they interviewed the creator and he's like, I would like this to be an ongoing thing and I'm hopeful that all the programs will jump on board.

See, in my head I was thinking it's really funny that this starts the year after Saban leaves.

He ain't putting up with this in his league.

No, no.

That's kind of upsetting to find out.

But I will watch it because again, it's football and hey, Sam Pittman footage.

I also like that it seems set up so that when I need a hit I can go to it and if I don't continue on, that's fine.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

There's not really like.

Is there a big through narrative, Donovan?

I don't believe so because it was just them.

This is like a load bearing athletic article at this point.

Yeah.

You know, but part of it is what they said was it's just where that you happen to.

They're guessing what's going to happen.

Right.

So sure.

You happen to have the cameras that week?

Yeah, just.

Just tie off the arm and get you a little hit this week.

Let the needle do its work.

Let's head back to Northern Ireland and HBO Max and Blue Lights and three sets of vet cops and three sets of rookie cops assigned with them.

It's three, right?

Or is it four?

Three.

Yeah.

You figure out the idea.

I didn't want to put this in spoilers because I went in completely blind other than knowing it was in Belfast and it was cops.

But the setup is a veteran cop is paired with a rookie cop who's on probationary period before they get the.

The hire.

Yeah.

Every.

Every one of them is.

Is being.

Is learning on the job and.

And being.

Or the rookie cops and is being evaluated too, which I guess is kind of the other level of, you know, they could.

They could lose this job.

Yeah.

Then I mentioned it throws you right in the deep end.

And no one gets a moment where you're thinking, oh, that's Nancy from northern part of Belfast.

Got it.

Got it.

None of that.

It opened with a slight twist there, what it wanted to be.

And one of the only few twists I think that it might ever do.

I don't know though, with the.

You see someone bringing a gun down the stairs, it definitely looks like a young man, looks like a teen.

And you get the rest of the cold open that it's actually just the son who has found one of those rookies is his mom and he's found her gun in the bathroom.

And it's kind of set up to remind you, I think that kids are going to be maybe a source of violence.

Having seen episode two episodes.

I'll say.

I don't know if that's the theory for the whole scene series, but it seems like you may not be too far off base plane.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

It seems there's a lot to be said about the danger of youth and to youth.

I say danger of In Danger 2 has been recurring at least with the two that I've seen.

I've only seen the second, but there is.

Yeah.

You get that opening shot and then the whole episode revolves around this worry of the mackerel son who's not coming home.

He's hanging out with a bad crowd and he's supposedly hanging out at the palace.

And that's a place for troubled young adults.

So it's a lot of violence and not nothing for young adults to do but crime.

Maybe that's what.

That's the feel I. I thought the show was wanting to go.

I may be completely wrong by the.

Episode six and I think it's got interest at least.

Interesting for me is on top of that it has the.

The.

The overlay of the ethnic strife right where you've got, you know, the.

The what's.

You said his name and I've already forgotten him.

Mackerel.

Thank you.

That's his last name?

Gordy, I think.

Gordy Mackerel.

He almost becomes a plot point in the first episode.

They're trying to keep track of him.

He's running around.

He's mixed up with.

With dissident or splinter Republicans.

Oh, oh, is that okay?

I thought they were a Mafia type figure.

No, he's, he's, he's.

And that's the.

My understanding is that James, he's on the terrorism list because he's.

He's a Republican.

And that's why he's operating in neighborhoods where you're seeing the Irish flag.

That's why there's the hostility towards the police officers.

That's why we have the, you know, a couple times they see signs talking about police brutality.

You shouldn't join the.

The.

Is it psni.

I can't remember.

Whatever it is of Northern Ireland, they attack more Catholics than Protestants.

And, and that, you know, even the stuff like the cops taking off their tags.

Yeah.

When they go into that neighborhood, it's because they, they're at.

Their lives are at risk because of.

And that's why.

And that's why the bridge security services are on these guys as opposed.

And yes, there's organized crime happening too.

Right.

Like, obviously they're funding their activities through organized crime, but there's the, the extra overlay of that.

That ethnic comes go back to the.

Taking off of the tags.

Yes.

Obviously doesn't make them not look like cops anymore.

So what are they trying to do there?

They don't want to be identified by name so that they're.

They're.

Because if they're identified, they could be threatened.

Their family could be threatened.

Which is how the episode one ends.

We have undercover cops driving by Grace Constant.

Constable Grace Ellis is probably the primary character.

She's former social worker.

And that social worker, bleeding heart has made her unable to shake the mackerel lady and carried over.

Carried over into trying to care for the mackerel lady.

Gordy's mom.

And yeah, she gives her ride home.

That might put her.

Put a target on her.

I just thought that this show, even more so than say anything, I think was striking in its cultural difference.

These young boys on bikes are throwing bottles at cops for being in their neighborhood.

And the big.

I just kept thinking you in America, that would turn into a police brutality moment.

I thought that those were some of the most interesting moments.

Even with the, you know, the police are armed.

They have, we see a couple times they have heavier.

They have.

I guess they're still small arms, but they're, they're like semi automatic and.

Or automatic rifles where they could really kill a lot of people.

But they're afraid there.

And you kind of, you, you.

I was watching it like kind of thinking the same thing.

You were playing like.

Yeah.

In the United States.

Like do some reading I've done in passing.

Right.

Like the worst thing, a police.

There's one police officer, there's 20 people on the street or whatever.

Right.

Like the police officer has to establish their authority and they will often do that through violence.

And so kind of seeing them in a situation where they can't do that, probably because they know that they would be killed and that things would go very, very badly if they started the, the piece.

The piece is tenuous.

I also got a sense that the officers and maybe entire police department have a pretty thick dividing line of.

This is minor.

We're worried about the major.

Yeah.

Probably because, you know, throwing bottles at cop cars will get you arrested here.

But there it was shrugged off.

Well, I.

My assumption there was.

They know if, if you start arresting those kids or whatever, you're going to have an uprising and that's going to do much worse for Law and Order than having some bottles thrown at your car.

Right.

Yeah.

Constable.

Constable Grace Phillips is played by Sion Brook.

She is also the most recent Sherlock, good actress.

She and her partner, who's the veteran, they visit this palace, this place where troubled teens perhaps go try to live, get on their own.

And I think that this is one of the better moments of the first episode because it establishes.

Establishes both.

Grace is intelligent.

Also, people there are under some sort of threat, enough to be afraid of cops, likely from maybe this McIntyre.

Yeah, I had to look up double OB because they said it so many times.

I was like, what does that mean?

Double.

Out of bounds, out of bounds, double.

O, double O, B. Yeah, yeah.

They.

So they end up back at Gordy Mackerel's mom's house because she's putting on a show with a set of knives and yelling at neighbors and they can't tell if it's a.

If it's all put on or if it's.

She's sincerely having some sort of mental break.

But they, they be.

They get called off by the chief's supervisor who's in a suit because this Gordy Mackerel is supposed to be under surveillance by them.

I thought that that scene was really well shot toward the end there.

It's.

It's the climactic moment of episode one.

You sent Stephen.

That's her Partner.

Grace's partner.

You sense his unease at not knowing if there's a sniper.

Yeah.

Already.

I just knew he was gonna drop at any moment, but he didn't.

I. I felt like the tension on that scene was really good.

They played with the ambiguity of, like, is this a.

Are they trying to lure someone in to kill them?

You know, is it.

Or is she.

Is she truly having a psychotic episode?

And then the overlay of.

And I think it's.

Maybe I'm grasping at straws, but I do think that there is at least the question with.

I've completely forgotten her name.

With Grace's character, who was a social worker, you know, what are we doing here?

Right.

Like, she's saying, like, hey, hey, people can never be double ob.

Whereas we know the security services are going to be happy to let something play out and someone be killed.

Right.

If it gets you.

Them closer to their objective.

Yeah.

Whatever their objective is, we suspect it might be James McIntyre.

Right.

Yeah.

Both McIntyre and the cops are using people as pawns, whereas Grace wants to see people as people.

Exactly.

And I. I think.

I mean, I think it's like a reason.

I think that's a reasonably interesting question to ask in this day and age if you're not gonna just make a work of propaganda.

Right.

Like, what are we doing here?

You know?

Right.

Like, we're.

What.

What are we doing?

Yeah.

This show actually reminded me a ton of the HBO series starring John Bernthal, where he played the crooked cop, Wayne.

Oh, we won.

Was it.

We run the city.

That was it.

We.

That was pretty good.

And it was so good.

It had elements of it in this first episode.

I think that this show knows its audience, and its audience are those people in the uk.

So therefore, I think some people stateside just kind of have to trust the show.

You know, these.

These minor key character reactions are what you have to go by.

Like, if they're scared and looking like it, they're afraid, then, yeah, it's dangerous there.

But for us stateside, we're like, it's broad daylight, the neighborhood looks fine.

You know, yeah, sure, the music's a little tense, but I don't get a sense of danger otherwise.

And then, of course, it does.

Haydn.

It's.

It's some different indicators to let us know that they are in trouble.

And they do it fine.

Because I got that sense that they were.

Yeah.

I feel like knowing.

Not being an expert, but being like, oh, okay.

Like, at first I was like, when they took the tags off, and I wonder if this was Set up for the UK people too.

They're talking about like going to talk to Gordy's mom really quickly and you figure it out.

Almost in retrospect, I'm like, what are they talking about?

And then they're in the neighborhood.

You see the Irish flags.

You see that they take off the tags.

They're looking around.

You're like, ah, this, this is not a safe neighborhood for them.

I am interested, especially when I pair episode one by itself with those headlines I've read at the top of the episode.

Hmm.

Interested to see.

Did you.

Without spoiling it, can you say if episode two improves upon what they're doing?

I think so.

It's.

It's not like there's not like a, may I say, like needle drop moment, but it continue, it continues the narrative begun in one.

I think it does so in a satisfying manner and I, I think this is a, this is a well made show.

Yeah, I, I think it's, I think it's interesting.

I'm interested in the, in the setting.

I think the characters are, are good.

They spend a little bit more time.

They do focus on Grace and her partner, but they spend a little bit more time on the car.

Kind of fresh faced Stevie, bless his heart, who can't shoot.

And then his partner, played by Richard Dormer, Jerry Cliff.

Like good actors in a.

Well, you know, acting in a.

In a good situation.

It's interesting, right?

Yeah.

The character of Jerry is your trope of the grizzled cop who makes jokes in Cops Meeting.

But he's doing it really well.

It continues the, the threat or danger that these officers might be under.

It's decent.

It's pretty good.

And that, that's well made.

Yeah.

That lies maybe even in its subtlety.

Whatever is supposed to be frightening isn't frightening to Grace and, and may not be to us as Americans, us as viewers.

So maybe we're just seeing things from.

Her point of view.

Yeah, maybe.

Honestly, I thought part of the, the interest for me was almost okay.

I'm not like, I have a, a layman's understanding of, of the political situation.

And so it is.

It's kind of like watching folks police a war zone and the choices they make there.

It did feel like that.

Which would be tense and hard and impossible.

You can't shoot everyone.

There's places you can go and there's places you can't go.

Your authority is tenuous even.

And in 2023, when this show.

Yeah.

Premiere and, and it's obvious that we still have the tension where, you know, for the folks who dislike the.

You know, the police are being seen as an occupying force.

And with good reason.

You know, they, like.

Traditionally, they have.

Is that an accurate depiction of Belfast in 2023?

Well, I. I think I do know.

So I. I can't speak to that.

That might be an Adam question.

I. I know that.

That it's there.

There have been tensions and tensions remain.

However, this is.

This guy here, he's not IRA or anything like that, because they don't.

They're not fighting anymore.

But there are.

I know there were at least splinter groups within the past 10, 15 years that were still active.

IRA have officially.

They put out the call to.

To cease fighting.

And in.

Now, I'm gonna forget.

Within, like the past 10 or 15 years, the IRA had a letter published.

I think it was published in the Guardian where they asked all of their members to relinquish violence and from now on take place in the political struggle.

So.

So the ira so essentially disbanding and saying, you know, to work with the.

The Sinn Fein, I think, is the.

The party.

Don't.

We're not.

We're not gonna fight anymore.

Interesting.

That obviously folds into what this show is doing, at least in terms of plot.

So maybe more on Blue Lights.

If.

If it looks like something, we definitely can recommend it.

I think it's.

I enjoy.

I enjoyed it.

I'm gonna finish it.

I'll probably watch the second season, unless it just tanks at the end of this one.

It's supposedly not every review that I've seen that I trust say no.

It's a good series through and through.

Yeah, I'm enjoying it.

We'll comment on it if it.

If it continues.

This is the end of our episode.

And for Adam and Donovan, I'm Blaine, and we hope that your beer has just a novel's worth of a story.

See everyone here, everyone, later.

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Go to Album Take and subscribe to the newsletter and you will hear more.

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Bye.