History and Scares: A Non-Spoiler Episode Full of TV Suggestions

Hello, Happy Thanksgiving Week.

If you're listening as we release.

I hope you are.

That's the way you should do it today.

You should for.

For sure.

It's a full episode of Non Spoiler talk on TV and streaming.

It's what we do.

We break down streaming and TV in ways that won't ruin it.

If you haven't watched anything, we do that in the first half and then usually we'll take a short break in the episode and return to you to specific, singular examples if you have seen the episode or episodes or movie or whatever it is.

It's a special week, though.

Hopefully it's special because you've got more time on your hands, you got more things to do with family and they help you enjoy life even more.

But also it's special because we have two episodes this week.

This is one of two.

Today's episode.

We do not get into examples or specifics.

So you can use it to figure out if you will like or dislike a series or a movie.

Let's run down what we'll talk about.

We'll discuss the American Revolution from PBS and Kim Burns the Beast in Me on Netflix with Claire Danes and Matthew Reese as the stars.

The HBO show Welcome to Derry and how it's different than other HBO shows in more than one way.

The historical thriller on Netflix, Death by Lightning, which covers the assassination of President Garfield, I'm sure you all remember.

And then we'll get some broad recommendation like thoughts on the Apple TV series Pluribus.

Pretty popular show right now.

It's made by Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan.

Oh, and we'll tack on some brief takes on the recent incarnation of Frankenstein on Netflix from Guillermo del Toro.

Things pile up.

We talk about that, too.

Well, let's get to it and let Donovan give some input, too.

Alabama take projection.

And here he is.

And here I am, too.

Back with him.

It's Donovan.

He's the man with the most money on any action game in your area.

I bet it all on you, Mass.

And I need a new place to live.

Listeners.

Can you support him with you?

Matt?

I'm sorry, I just went up, but I'm fascinated with UMass as a concept.

Like there are people out there that attend UMass football games and give money to this program.

The thing that kills me is when you, when you sent me a message, it said they have boosters.

They do.

That's an interesting concept.

They do.

Who boosts UMass athletics?

I could get you a name.

The Athletic wrote an article about it and interviewed one of them.

So.

So this is recently researched.

This is real, terrifyingly sad.

With me, of course, my friend, my intelligent CO host, it's Mr. Donovan Reinwald.

We're expecting Adam back soon, but we'll see.

It's usually.

Sometimes it's three of us, sometimes it's two of us.

And if I sound stuffy, I sound stuffy to myself, but Donovan says I don't sound.

Yeah, you don't sound congested.

Okay, well, I.

This was why we were off last week, is.

Death came knocking and.

No, it wasn't that bad.

Answered.

Yeah, it was just prolonged.

Yeah, it wasn't bad.

It was just prolonged and.

And tiresome pretty much.

When I get a cold, that's the kind that I get where it's like, you're not really sick enough that you can't go to work, but you just can't do anything and you can't think.

Oh, I was at.

Well, I was one tier above that.

Yeah.

Okay.

I couldn't work.

You were at the straight up.

I can't think.

I'm just miserable.

Yeah, no fever, but I definitely can't work.

Yeah, I get you.

Yeah.

I hate that it's Thanksgiving week.

It is Thanksgiving week.

What are you thankful for, Blaine?

Yeah, thankful for all this great television we got this week.

Ah, that's nice.

I was.

I was.

You were thinking more spiritual.

I was thinking spiritual things.

Okay.

Okay.

Excuse me.

We have a.

There's nothing says Thanksgiving like another entry in Ken Burns Au vieux or canon, whatever.

And this time he's tackling, if I'm getting this right, the American Revolution.

That is correct.

You and I have both watched.

Well, you've watched some of it and I've watched a little of it.

Blaine, let me get the New England take.

Let me give you the New England take on this series.

I'm gonna tell you right now.

Okay.

I was after church.

Are they hot under the collar?

We were at church talking about this.

We already talked out about how they missed something about Connecticut.

So the people are informed.

Well, don't spoil it here.

Well, okay.

I'm not going to tell you about the French.

Can you spoil the American Revolution?

I mean, we have the fourth of July every year.

Oh, that's what that's for.

I thought that was just to ensure that dogs and cats don't come near your house for a year.

Would you like to give your animal a nervous disorder?

You've watched both episodes.

I think there are two out.

There's two or three.

Darn you.

I think darn near the whole thing's out.

Oh, I thought he was doling about.

I don't think two or three a week.

Maybe I'm wrong, but.

Okay.

I think.

I think a bunch of it's out.

I've watched a lot of that first episode.

But what did you think of it so far?

My review.

Yeah.

For lots of things lately it feels like has been if you didn't like it before, you're not gonna like it now, but if you do like it, you will like it.

So I see.

That's my.

That's my question mark right there.

Is because his style is entrenched in American television and filmmaking.

But I do.

I don't know why he's not tinkering with it more now that filmmaking can do the miraculous Ken Burns productions feel especially antiquated.

I don't know.

It's a throwback style.

It's a very almost classic documentarian style.

I suspect that the reasons behind this have things to do with.

With authority and.

And sort of the like.

And I mean that with, like, lower a authority.

Like, this feels authoritative, you know, like this feels like, you know, for better or for worse, it feels like a school project.

Right.

It feels like instead of something that's like flashy, flashy, flashy, flashy.

But maybe you're not getting all the content across.

Look, I like it.

Yeah.

The last Ken Burns piece I watched in full was his meditation on Vietnam.

Did you watch all of that?

Yeah.

That was very good, very sad.

And I found it both overwhelming and insightful at the same time.

I liked it a lot, but I think it was boosted by Burns having footage to use.

So that has been.

I actually am not super duper annoyed with.

With that.

But this is really the first time he's had.

He's never really done anything from before the dawn of photography, you know, for the Civil War.

Of course.

We do have some photographs, things like that.

You know, you have portraits, you have illustrations, you have drawings.

But he is filling things in with.

With reenactors, which does have a little bit of like old school history channel about it.

I thought it was fine.

Or maybe I should say I thought it was fine.

And I found that the story being told and the people being consulted to tell the story.

Yeah.

Were very interesting.

And those.

Those were really just moving me along.

In my opinion.

I. I just oscillated from.

This is horrible to say.

It's a.

It's a tv.

What.

What am I?

Person?

TV reviewer.

I found myself oscillating between very engaged and very bored.

Yeah.

I think that is fair.

I'm already kind of like.

I'm already intrigued by the subject matter.

I already know some of it about some of it, the background.

So I feel like I had a little.

Not that I'm like, know everything about this.

I was finding tons of stuff that I didn't know anything about.

Yeah.

But I felt like I had a little bit of a leap in where it's like, oh, okay, I didn't know about that part of, you know, whatever.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, that's interesting.

I think Burns is better when he has moving images to use contemporary images.

When he's got that one extra arrow in his quiver, I think he's complete and it makes it more fascinating to me.

Well, maybe that's part of the work on basically anything of a documentary nature from before the advent of photography and film, you know, I don't know.

I really don't know how you get around.

Get around it.

He's done baseball and jazz.

Yeah.

But there, you know, that's in the era of photography and film.

No, I just thought earlier you had said he hasn't had much with that had film.

No, no, I'm sorry.

I said he hasn't had much that has not had film.

As far as I understand the.

This is the first one.

Let me restate it.

If I wasn't, I might not have said it clearly.

You know, this is the first documentary he's done where there's no film and then in the case of the Civil War, no photographs.

Because obviously for the Civil War documentary, we do have photographs.

So I think this is the first that he's done that doesn't have that kind of.

You know, it has pictures, it has illustrations.

But it does.

Because there was no means of capturing the human likeness other than, like sitting down and drawing.

You know, it is thoroughly mind blowing that he lived through the American Revolution.

And Civil War, and we still have him with us here today.

He was kind of getting a little dipping his toe in the controversy areas of America, which is not Ken Burns.

Did you see this?

Uh, yeah.

He was getting some pushback on.

I don't think so.

Well, as much as you possibly can.

No, I mean, I'm sorry, I didn't.

I didn't see it is what I meant was what I meant by that.

Some people were doing a little finger wagging that the founders should not ever be shown in a harsh light.

Oh, I hate that shit.

I'm sorry.

Stuff.

I'm gonna make a plug right here.

One of the historians that is consulted during this documentary is a guy named Rick Atkinson.

And he, he's a really, really great popular historian.

He wrote a trilogy about the American army in the world for the Second World War.

And in 2019 he wrote a wonderful book called the British Are Coming.

And he's writing three books again, just through the whole revolution.

If you like, if you like this.

There was stuff about the reaction of the, the colonial governors in the south, the panic and the way that they said, then said some of them were like, okay, well to enslave people, like if you join up with the British and help protect us, you'll get your freedom.

And the way that our founding fathers, George Washington especially reacted with stuff I had never heard of before.

I mean they were, they couldn't believe it.

They thought this was just like the worst thing.

People.

It's very interesting.

It's all part of the portrait.

You know, it's this and that.

That's part of the fascinating thing.

You know, you've got someone like George Washington who exemplifies leadership, you know, even when he's not the best battlefield commander, who at the same time owns people and is an aristocrat from Virginia, but is able, you know, it's fascinating.

Did Ken Burns the American Revolution, what did it show you you hadn't already known or thought about?

The American Revolution is just such a broad tapestry.

Yeah, that there's.

For me it's not just stuff I didn't know about, but it's almost connecting event.

Like there's things that I'm like, well, I know about that, but I know about it in isolation and so like kind of connecting it together.

It's like, oh, okay.

That was exactly what I.

Even the hour and a half I watched of episode one, I was thinking, oh shit, yeah, that was happening at the same time.

Some of the really, I thought some of the really interesting stuff is looking at our ill fated Canadian adventure during the revolution, you know, we attacked, we, I think captured Montreal and attacked Quebec.

We were repulsed.

Benedict Arnold was there and some of the western fighting and then the relationship of the Native Americans to the British and the Americans, the different Native American states, which were not a monolith by any means in there.

It's hard to keep all in your head.

It is really.

I have been enjoying it too because years ago during the first Trump presidency, this must have been 2019, I went to the Smithsonian and they had an exhibit looking at the American Revolution as a global war, so featuring stuff from the French and Spanish perspectives, you know, because the French and The Spanish, both, they were fighting a war that our war was a small, was a, was a theater of.

Really fascinating.

Just making the picture bigger is really, really interesting.

Yeah.

If you don't like it, you're probably not going to like it.

If you do, you might stay up too late.

It's almost like you've zoomed in on one part of the painting and you forget to take away the microscope and just look at it as a whole.

That's what I do.

All right.

Also, something I want to talk about.

Completely different, but its own little American Revolution on its own is actually.

Well, it takes place in the same area.

Next, the Netflix thriller the Beast in Me.

I love those sad eyes.

Yeah, I know.

It's got a lot of high profile names both as stars and behind the camera.

Claire Danes and Matthew Rees.

Man, they act their asses off.

She's an author whose new next door neighbor is definitely a real estate tycoon and maybe a wife murderer.

I didn't even know the.

I mean, I know the premise now because I looked up reviews, but when I was learning about this, I didn't know anything about the premise, but I just saw Matthew Reese and Claire Danes.

Yeah.

And I'm like, that's got an 80% chance not to be a waste of my time.

Like at least 80% because they're so good.

Just on an entertainment level.

Yeah, exactly.

I give a lot of credit to Rhys and Danes because they, during the first, second and third episodes, all of which I've watched, they take my head out of.

Did Matthew Reese's character murder his wife?

You kind of forget about that.

Well, not completely, but like you focus on so much, so many other things.

Yeah.

The creator and handwriter is Gabe Rotter and he's.

I guess he's only known for working on the X Files.

Yeah, I'd never really heard of him.

I don't know if that bit of information tips it's had toward how to think about the series or how it might be a little different.

So like the aliens to tell you.

Noted that Conan o' Brien's an executive producer too.

Oh, interesting.

What is this?

The Simpsons?

I know that's very interesting, but.

But Matthew Reese can play gentle and menacing and grief stricken in the same scene.

Yeah, he's got.

It's incredible range.

It's innate, I think because he just has that look.

But.

And then you have Claire Danes on the other side who's made a living off of extreme emotions.

Yeah.

And she's doing the same here.

And also in this show is Jonathan Banks from Breaking Bad.

Better Call Saul.

Oh, I like him.

Yeah.

No, he was in this show.

It's nice to see him.

Yep.

So you'll be entertained at worst.

That's kind of where I am with it.

And you were talking about Matthew Reese's ability to do things in one scene.

I just remember scenes in the Americans, especially towards the end, where he had this sadness in him and then there would.

There would be rage and anger, but it was so clearly coming out of this sadness and you just.

Oh, man.

Like you wanted to cry watching it.

He's so good.

Claire Dean is good too.

I'm not.

Not casting any aspersions on her, but I'm just really a big Matthew Reese fan.

Well, this one is a.

It's good performance by him.

I'm interested to see what they end up doing with his character and you know, how.

How interested are they in.

Is he a wife killer or not?

I don't, you know, I don't know.

Yeah, you and I both continued watching it.

Welcome to Dairy on hbo.

I've.

I've really no intention of stopping same.

It's.

I have no intention of stopping which.

In the Lee in the least.

But here's the thing.

We'll be a couple episodes behind.

Yeah, I got.

I got messed up by one of the episodes releasing.

It's a Sunday show, but one released on Halloween.

So I got mixed up.

So I'm an episode behind.

And then of course, when you're hearing this, I will be two episodes behind.

Yeah, that's the thing.

Here's my quip.

I've got a few quips with welcome to Dairy.

I do think it's adhering heavily to the lore of Stephen King rather than trying to tell its own story.

Sometimes I would.

It's like, which route?

Which road are you want to travel?

Yeah.

Do you want to travel building lore or do you want to tell me a brand new thing?

It feels a little too chained to check me some boxes for a King universe for.

To plant Easter eggs for fans.

I don't know how much involvement King has with this.

I don't either.

So you're feeling that it kind of is maybe falling into the same trap that some of those Disney Star wars shows have fallen into, where it's like, tell me a story that I can enjoy without having seen seven seasons of a cartoon and I don't care about all this.

Yes.

Well said.

But much, much less annoying.

I mean there's definitely like, okay, yeah, they've.

The people making it.

I'm gonna shock everyone.

The people making this have seen the it movie that they themselves made.

Like, they got the kid, you know, they got the kids.

They got the.

Blaine, I don't disagree.

Blaine.

I do think there's a lot of.

Like, these are elements from his fiction.

I don't know this particular story well enough to know if it's like, okay, this is straight up from it, or.

But I've read enough of his short fiction and novels to be like, this is from his.

His brain, you know?

Yeah, this is where his brain is.

I mean, we've all seen Stand By Me, right?

Yep.

But.

But to praise it, though, the child actors they've chosen to play the primary cast are pretty top level.

I think that Chris Chalk is incredible.

I love a very good actor.

I love Chris Chalk.

He's.

He's very good.

Yeah, he can do work.

His, dare I say sidekick is Jovan Adepo.

I think I pronounced his name right.

He was in the recent Netflix series for Three Body Problem.

Yeah, he was okay there.

But did you like.

You watch that?

Did you like it?

It was okay.

Okay.

It was interesting concept.

Sometimes poorly executed.

Yeah.

But Chris Chalk plays Dick Calloran and Joven Adepa plays Major Leroy Hanlon, which can get a little confusing for me because they both have these h. Last names with multiple syllables.

And I'm like, wait, which one did he just say?

So I will call them.

I'll call them, respectively, Dick and Leroy.

All right, Just.

That's same for listeners.

That'll help you.

That seems fair.

But I think that they are doing pretty good work.

The lady playing Major Leroy's wife is also doing quite well.

And one thing that it gets right and makes me wince at sometimes is, is how perfect the credit sequence is for this show.

It is just the balance of nostalgia and fear that welcome to Derry wants to have, I think.

Yeah, there is an almost.

This is gonna sound weird for a show that's a horror thing about something that scares you to death.

It's almost like maybe they'll really skew this.

But there's almost like a comfort to it.

Like, in the same way that, like, at least in these early ones that, like early seasons of Stranger Things, like, oh, kids get in adventures.

Cool.

You know, you're kind of along for the ride.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Kind of like the Stand By Me you mentioned.

Yeah, exactly.

Something that I didn't know, and I just stumbled across an article for it.

Apparently the creators for this worked.

I thought this was kind of cool.

Something behind the camera worked with one of the main.

There's indigenous characters in this show.

Worked with one of the main tribes, including folks who are faculty members at the University of Maine, to try and get their.

There to be, you know, honest.

And of their depiction of the fictional tribes, I'm like, that's actually.

They probably didn't have to do that.

So I think that's really.

I think like it would have.

I think it's good they're doing it, but I think it's cool that they like did it because I bet they could have gotten away with not doing it.

So I was.

So I'll just.

They get the.

They get the.

They get the good effort.

The kudos of the week award from.

Me now I've seen the most recent one for us being recorded on Sunday.

It was called the Great Swirling Apparatus of Our Planet's Function.

I did think it was one of the better episodes because it really helped paint the image of it as an entity rather than a clown.

Right.

Because it's not.

I mean, I think that's the thing that makes it the most scary is it's like it's not.

It's not a personality, you know, like it's in kind of in the same way that, I mean, I think King read his Lovecraft, but some kind of.

In the way that some of like, you know, Lovecraft's things are from.

They're from outside of your reality.

They just don't care about you.

You're nothing to them.

Your food, if that.

Yeah.

And it's funny that that for you works, but for me, you have to get me there.

Yeah, that doesn't scare me too much.

Interesting.

If you have something that does not have intent and probably shouldn't have intent, whereas you give me something that does not have intent but should.

That's scary.

Okay, interesting.

Like the.

Like the.

The movie.

The Strangers.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, what are they doing?

And then.

Yeah, there.

It's just.

There's no reason.

They're just doing it.

That.

There.

That's.

That's interesting because.

Yeah, that.

That concept, like, it works in Lovecraft, it works here for me.

One of my favorite books that I've read recently is a Russian science fiction novel called Roadside Picnic.

The movie Stalker is based on it.

And the reason it' called Roadside Picnic is because there's an.

There's parts of Earth that have been affected in some way by.

By aliens.

They don't really know what or how.

And the analogy that's made is it's like just if we.

If we had a roadside picnic and left our trash on the ground.

What would the ants think about it?

And we're the ants, obviously, for the aliens.

So it's kind, it's kind of scary.

Like we'll just never.

We can't.

It's.

We will never understand because we can't understand.

Yeah, we're locked out from understanding.

Does it ever startle you that welcome to Derry isn't.

Is on HBO front and center, like it's one of their Sunday night primetime HBO shows?

I was a little surprised, honestly.

I was a little surprised that it's Sunday night.

I was a little surprised that they didn't have it running a little bit more before Halloween.

I don't know.

I'm not in the.

I'm not privy to the details of HBO scheduling.

I think the task probably took up that time.

I mean, I think it is fairly.

It's obviously a fairly popular franchise.

So I assume this is motivated by, you know, one of the breweries in my area did like, they brewed two special IT theme beers for Halloween.

You know, so obviously people.

Obviously it's recognizable and there's cultural cachet.

Yeah.

So possibly that's it.

Well, it's a big, It's a big jump from task to welcome to Derry though, for your Sunday night show.

It's a big jump.

It's.

It's jarring.

And, and we're.

We have no segues here today either.

And we're going to be jarring some folks for some Thanksgiving dads out there.

A little bit more history.

How About Benioff and D.B.

weiss produced historical drama Death by Lightning on Netflix about the oft forgotten president James Caulfield, who just so happened to be assassinated not too many years after Honest abe.

Yeah.

About 15.

Oh, it was.

Or 16.

Maybe it's 16 years.

I was thinking it might be 20, but wow, it's shorter than that.

Yeah.

Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865.

Garfield ran for president in 1880, I believe was shot in 1881.

Like March, something like that.

Yeah.

The show's got a plethora of stars.

Michael Shannon is Garfield.

Matthew McFadden doing just killer work here.

Yeah.

Oh, man.

As the assassin to be Charles Couteau.

Betty Gilpin is Garfield's wife.

Bradley Whitford is Senator Blaine from Maine.

That's.

I didn't make that up.

There's always the welcome Shea Wiggum as a crooked New York senator.

And they always welcome Nick Offerman as Chester Arthur.

All playing real people, historical figures.

I would say that if you like, act.

If you had pitched this to me, I'd be like, who wants to hear about this?

But y'.

All.

Wait, really?

If you, like, act, you know, it just seems like the kind of thing that, like, it's a historical drama about James Garfield.

You know, you remember him, right?

Putting aside everything else, which I also think is good.

That's my spoiler, folks.

I enjoyed it.

The acting.

We get everything from folks who are clearly loving chewing the scenery to people who, in their depictions, swing between buffoonery and sensitivity and then some real.

I mean, I think the foundation of the show is Matthew McFadden's Guito, and he is.

Folks, he is good.

This is the real deal.

Everybody's good in it.

He's really good.

This show does not work without him.

Yeah.

He somehow manages to be insane enough to where you think, I would never do that.

But also downtrodden enough to think, yeah, I guess I could do that.

There's.

There's a pathos to him, and it swings between, like, there's stuff that's really funny with him, and then there's stuff that'll almost make you.

You cry.

Like, you feel so sad for that, that a human being is.

Has come to this, or could act like this or could feel like this.

Right.

There's.

There's some good jokes about how annoying he is.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All said, it may sound like a dad show.

I mean, I guess it is, but.

Yeah, it doesn't.

It feels like it's.

If it's a dad show, it's not your dad's.

James Garfield, not your parents, not your daddy's.

Yeah.

There's a wildness to this series where it knows that history is not some thing on a page.

Blaine, I think you identified it exactly.

Where it's like, for us, we know this gets swallowed up in the dramas of, you know, World War I and World War II and the.

The 20th century.

But, you know, in this.

In this, like, this stuff mattered, and this was.

This was.

It was a raucous time for everyone, you know, and you've got.

You know, you've got historical figures like Fredley Douglas in the mix.

You've got the Civil War casting its long shadow over everything still.

I mean, every single person in America knew someone who had been killed or wounded in the Civil War, and that's still dictating the politics of America.

You've got, I mean, the famously corrupt President Grant, who's a war hero, or he may or may not.

You know, maybe he's just overly swayed by his Friends.

But it is.

It's an America where there's a lot of cynicism about what politics are and can be.

And into this we world were sort of dropped.

And unfortunately for us, Guiteau is sort of an idealist as well.

So America really was that cynical at that time.

The Grant administration really was famously corrupt, you know, giving things to friends and things like that.

New York politics were.

There was the machine, like, you know, I don't remember.

I'm gonna get mixed up.

But this was the era of, like, Tammany hall politics in New York City.

And the thing that they're so, you know, they mentioned a couple times, but there was no income tax.

So most.

That's when they're saying 75% of the federal government's revenues comes through New York.

That.

Because that's how the government is getting funded.

They're getting funded with Customs House money.

You know, no income tax yet.

Not a lot of these other taxes.

Yeah.

That gives New York an outsize pull on the system.

Yeah.

And of course, this is.

I'm sorry, Blaine, I didn't mean to.

But this is.

This is an age of deepening wealth inequality.

You know, the rich are getting richer, the poor, who's, you know, who's helping them.

We're going to see the government turn its black.

Excuse me.

The.

It's back on the freed black folks of the south, you know, after.

About which it won't be until the civil rights era that they have that kind of political representation again.

Or after the civil rights era, I should say.

You know, it's.

It's.

It's a big old mess.

Wow.

Well, the show itself is fascinating.

I think it bears witness.

It's reminiscent of today.

They don't forget to remind you.

This stuff lingers throughout our own history.

I feel like they haven't been too cute about it, you know, in the sense of, like, did you get that?

It's about whatever.

But just in the sense that.

Right.

But the first historian, essentially, Thucydides, who writes his history of the Peloponnesian War, and he says, why am I writing this?

And he says it's because my opinion is that human nature doesn't change.

So if I write this down and human nature doesn't change, we're always going to be able to learn from my account of the Peloponnese.

It's always going to speak to us.

And I think history done well, does that.

Well, it enlightened me a lot and it entertained me a lot.

But then it slips into.

I Think after the four.

It's only four episodes.

Fourth, fourth and final episode.

It's kind of a powerful series.

I, I, I, I'm, I'm three in folks.

Very much enjoying it.

It's, it's got incredible energy and it's also, it's also very funny.

Like I'm, I'm laughing throughout the show.

Yeah, it's not dull.

It's not dull.

Well, this will be.

We're doing something special this week.

We talked about that at the beginning.

We're splitting our show up into two episodes.

This week.

It's Thanksgiving.

You could probably handle that as why.

Two more things in our non spoiler show today.

Pluribus, Apple tv.

How do I talk about this in non spoiler space?

I was so excited to talk about this show with you because I don't know what to say.

I assume.

Let me get some basics out of the way.

Yeah, yeah.

There are now four episodes on Apple TV plus or just Apple tv.

You know, I, I really am dying to know what Donovan makes of this.

It's from Vince Gilligan.

That's a brand name these days.

If you even remotely know about Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul, you know him, he's the guy who got those up and running.

Really headed those.

He got his start on the X Files though.

Again.

Again we're mentioning it.

Pluribus may have more in common with that than the two AMC dramas.

This series has racy horn a she's a disgruntled fantasy author in the midst of one of the oddest post apocalyptic scenarios I think we've seen in a while.

I don't think I'll say more.

It's hard not to say more.

What did you think about this?

I'm intrigued.

Is it good?

It's.

Yeah, I think so.

I think it's, I think it's.

Sometimes that's not right.

I think it's pretty well paced.

Sometimes it goes a little slow.

But I think that's my, I think that's my impatience coming out.

And I think it's very much high concept.

Right.

Like it's gonna.

It has a pretty intriguing premise and so far, for four episodes, it hasn't been too afraid of following the implications of that premise.

I could see so many of the hallmarks of Better Call Saul in the fourth episode.

Yeah, I could really see that.

I see what you mean.

Yeah.

There's very little I think we could say that wouldn't be spoilers.

Folks, at this time, you've probably seen it's been getting great reviews I'd recommend a watch at least.

It was Apple's best debut, I think.

Yeah.

Even above, like a.

Like a severance or something.

Yeah.

I think it's still hitting number one.

I mean, they self report the numbers, so who really knows?

But that's true.

Well, last on our list today, before we say goodbye to you, a non spoiler episode, only last on our list is the Netflix.

We're sticking with Netflix again.

Bouncing back to it, I should say.

The film Frankenstein, made by Guillermo del Toro, putting his own touch on the creation horror piece that it ran in theaters for a couple weeks, and then it landed on Netflix.

It was only in theaters in the major cities, and in this one, I think it's not really a spoiler to say that the monster is not Frankenstein.

Well, Frankenstein is the monster, Blaine, in broad terms.

What'd you think about it?

Liked it very much.

Like love.

I wish I'd seen it in a theater.

Although I think del Toro usually operates on a pretty high level, I think this is on par with his best.

I think it's a great adaptation.

He had this.

I'm trying to remember what he said.

He talked about adapting something, and he said, like, adapting is like marrying a widow.

He's like, you've.

He's like, you've got to be respectful, but you also want to dance with her.

So there's a bit of.

There's some really great faithfulness to the source material that he, I think, draws out and makes interesting.

The acting is great.

We've got Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein.

We've got Jacob El Dori as the creature, the hot creature.

Christoph Waltz is in it.

He's got Mia Goth playing both Victor Frankenstein's mother and an object of his affections.

Yeah.

It's weird.

Okay.

And it's.

You've read the work by Mary Shelley?

I have read Frankenstein, yes.

Yeah.

I have not.

I've only read Dracula.

Of those sort of classic horrors.

I have never.

I read the great illustrated version of Dracula, but every time I'm like, I'm gonna read Dracula, I'm like, he's describing the dinner again.

Yeah, it is a lot like that.

It is.

I bet Frankenstein's a better read.

It's very much of its time and what it is.

And by that, I mean, it's a romantic novel with heightened passions, but Mary Shelley is.

I mean, there's a reason it stuck around for so long.

Right.

Like, Mary Shelley tapped in sometimes.

This is not a knock against Mary Shelley.

This is all the novels of this era.

Era.

Sometimes it seems, in my opinion, it's a little florid and overdone, but then when it hits, it hits so good.

And obviously, she tapped in.

She's a great writer, and she tapped into something primal about us.

Right.

So is Del Toro doing a adaptation?

Is he trying to adhere to the text, or is he trying to do his version of Frankenstein?

Or both?

I mean, what makes this different?

I would say he's doing his version of Frankenstein.

Honestly, the things that make it the most different are things I cannot talk about in the non spoiler section.

I thought that the ending was really interesting and some of the other things as they go through, honestly.

Del Toro is obviously.

I mean, this is based on the book, but he is obviously aware of the cinematic history of Frankenstein.

Oscar Isaac is great as Victor Frankenstein.

But I love him anyway.

It's really.

I mean, he's really good in this, but there's really.

There's a.

The focus on the creature is really astounding when we get to his part of it, because it's done, you know, much like.

So the novel Frankenstein.

You keep leaving out the adjective hot.

He's too hot.

Well, he's.

You know, he's stitched together.

Oh, wow.

He's.

He's made from different pieces.

There's even a great scene.

I mean, Oscar Isaac plays it beautifully.

There's this great scene where men are being hanged, you know, criminals are being executed.

And Isaac goes up and he's feeling around the bodies for body parts.

You know, he's trying to see which one's going to work the best.

Pretty morbid.

Yeah, very morbid.

It works.

One of the things I did enjoy about it is, you know, the movie of.

Or the book.

Frankenstein is actually framed, as many novels are, by its.

There's an arctic explorer or a ship in the Arctic, right?

And there the captain is writing about this man that he's encountered on the ice, Victor Frankenstein.

So Victor is telling his story to the captain, and that's what is happening in this movie.

But at a crucial moment, the monster gets a chance to tell, or the creature gets a chance to tell his story, too, just like Frankenstein does.

Okay, I may try to work that one in.

I don't know.

It's gothic, it's romantic.

Sometimes it's over the top, sometimes it's understated.

I thought it was very good.

If you don't like Del Toro, you will not like it.

Well, I don't know if I do.

I think I.

He's.

He's a filmmaker that's just consistently intriguing to me because he'll make something like Pan's Labyrinth, Devil's Backbone, Chronos.

He'll goof around with, like, giant robots in Pacific Rim.

He's interested in adaptation.

Lots of adaptations.

Everything from comic books.

You know, he adapted that.

Two of the.

The Hellboy.

We made two Hellboy movies to Pinocchio.

Yep.

Our friend Raz is a big Del Toro fan.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Rez, I haven't watched my.

Yeah.

Well, there you go.

We're getting close to the end of our episode.

I wanted to throw in a couple things, just.

I don't know if this will happen.

But now tomorrow's episode will be spoilers of everything we talked about today.

So if you want spoilers, you got a night to catch up on them.

But I will say that next week, when we're not splitting our episodes in two, it could be Train Dreams on Netflix, if you wanted to watch that.

And we might have some things to say about Stranger Things coming back on the.

That's right, it's coming back.

Thanksgiving.

It feels like we have to look at it, even though, like, these kids are, you know, they're all 38 now.

Yeah.

They're rolling around in wheelchairs.

Right.

They're barely there.

Well, for Adam and Donovan, I'm Blaine, and we hope that your Thanksgiving is going well.

And you know what?

We'll talk.

We'll talk to you tomorrow, too.

Bye.