How Heavy Was 'Task'? Does 'Chad Powers' Deserve to be This Good? First Reactions to 'Welcome to Derry'

Welcome to Taking it down, the TV and streaming podcast for the Alabama Take, which itself is a site for writings and other podcasts all based here in Alabama.

Mostly giving insight that you wouldn't expect from the Deep south, we hope.

Today we're answering the question of relevancy in relation to the recently finished HBO series Task.

Do you need to watch it if you hadn't started it yet, but was it worth it if you did?

What's it attempting to say?

We'll also discuss the value of Chad Powers on Hulu and we'll peek behind the blinds of the new HBO series it Colon.

Welcome to Derry.

I think we'll just call it welcome to Derry.

I think we can handle that.

Yeah, you'll leave knowing if any of those are worth your time.

I say we because.

Joining me, you heard him, it's Donovan.

Here he is, Alabama tape projection back from, from the grave.

Really?

Really.

It was an intense, intense Halloween.

Tell me about it.

Yeah, but we're all here.

No Adam, as I understand.

I've been trying to piece together what, what Adam is up to.

And my, my understanding is that his house just fell apart at some point and he's been having to put it together piece by piece.

This is the first time I'm ever going to say this, but I really hope Adam doesn't listen because I don't really know what he's doing.

Like, I get that he started with a kitchen remodel, but then like things escalated.

He had to take his floor out and then he had to put his floor back in and now they're putting in windows.

I don't know.

It's, it's scary.

It's way above my pay grade.

Oh, absolutely.

We've had two weeks off, partly planned, partly not for various reasons, some personal reasons.

We're fine though.

Yet still no Adam, who is both remodeling a kitchen from top to bottom and preparing the release of a full length album with his duo sister Rae Davies, at, on Sonic Cathedral Records over.

Y' all.

Go get yourself some damn headphones and listen to those songs that are out right now.

He's even starting to get people on Instagram playing those riffs and sending them to him.

Like, hey, love it.

You know, kind of thing.

Like a, like you would with a.

If you're a fan of someone, you play their, their, their song on your guitar and you feel great.

So good.

Isn't that nice?

Listeners can still pre order Sister Ray Davies that album right now on Band Camp or on Sonic Cathedral Records.

Easy to find Comes out this month because it's already November, Donovan.

Yeah, I know.

I just got used to October.

You just.

Well, October felt long for me, but I. I'll admit I wanted it to linger.

Yeah, I like a good October.

It was a good month here.

Here we are with the ass end of fall.

November.

That's okay, though.

It's got a holiday that no one gives a shit about.

Thanksgiving.

Yeah, I guarantee I'm gonna get angry at my neighbors for putting up Christmas decorations in a day or two.

Just driving around furious.

Nah, do it.

I've accepted it.

I've accepted it.

Nope, I'm still mad.

Hey, listeners, where are y' all with your Christmas decorations?

Do they go up right after Halloween or do you give some Thanksgiving time?

Let let us know.

Some listeners may think we're excluding things this week, but in truth, despite our time off, we're woefully behind as.

As TV critics.

I'll rattle off some of the things I've been meaning to get to and I think might be worth our time, but I've yet to do it.

Apple TV has released Down Cemetery Road, which sounds intriguing.

It's Emma Thompson and if I'm not mistaken, she's playing a detective.

It.

It sounds intriguing, though, you know, Apple TV usually gets high marks from us.

Then we have the coming episodes of Blue lights in its third season.

That's massive.

Mr. Scorsese on Apple TV again, which is supposedly a very fine documentary series.

And there's also the Devil in Disguise over on Peacock, which has my interest.

It is almost the.

The antithesis of Ryan Murphy's true crime shows.

The Devil in Disguise is about John Wayne Gacy, though attention is paid to the victims to the point where it makes it a very intriguing drama from what I understand.

There's more, but that's the biggest in the list.

Now, what we'll go through today, let's do Chad Powers.

Let's do welcome to Derry and let's do our final thoughts on Task.

We do start with non spoilers so you don't have to run away at all until the break and then pick and choose which you've seen with the timestamps.

I've mentioned Chad Powers on this podcast a couple of times and Donovan, you finally got around to it.

My review of this series is it gets the solid and sometimes coveted better than it needs to be award.

So much better than you ever would have imagined.

Absolutely.

I've told it's so good that I've told many people about this show.

There.

There is.

I'm really not gonna have much smart to say about this because honestly, I think the thing that is keeping me watching is somehow, somehow Glen Powell does something with his eyes and his face whenever he's about to have to say something insane.

Yes.

And it's, it's hilarious.

Well, that's the thing.

He never knows it's going to be insane.

Exactly.

Comes out and he's like, that was insane.

There's like this, this look, but without really.

I don't know how he's doing it, but he's got like this look of look of panic in his eyes almost.

It's hilarious.

This is the Hulu series based off a sketch with Eli Manning from espn.

Eli Manning was in disguise trying to join another football team as a stranger.

It sounds like it should have gone nowhere, but Chad Powers just aired its final episode.

Stars Glenn Powell, as we mentioned, as the titular Chad, AKA Russ Holiday.

Russ Holiday, two roles, hot shot quarterback of the Oregon, the very real Oregon Ducks, who has it taken all away in a series of idiotic moments in a national championship game.

Now, Donovan, convince somebody that this show is more than what I just described, because that's a good note.

How I felt when I saw it advertised on social media.

Primarily, it's more than a skit from espn.

It's more than a regurgitation of Ted Lasso.

What have you told people?

Oh, that's a good.

Well, honestly, mostly there's this look that Glenn Powell gets when he's first off a college football fan.

Especially as somebody who used to have access to the ESPN family of networks.

I used to consider myself a college football fan, but now I can only watch Rutgers.

But if you are a college football fan that just kind of.

The winks are fun.

Like, they'll have real announcers in for the games and stuff like that.

We'll see.

I haven't.

I haven't seen the last episode yet.

There's a poignancy.

I think part of this is like Glen Powell is like calibers above any star, like, needed for this.

Right.

Like, they could have gone with somebody two or three tiers down in talent from Glenn.

Agreed.

But there's this real kind of sadness because Russ Holliday is kind of a Johnny Manziel figure.

Very much so.

And Chad is, although insane, is widely beloved for, quote, unquote, who he is.

And it's kind of making Russ, the real guy, a little psychotic.

But it is sad because he seems to have not a lot of understanding of how his own actions have made people feel about him because of that, he's kind of out of control with Chad as well.

So it's actually kind of sad.

Yeah, there is a sadness to that.

Now that you mention it.

It's not something I would have brought up.

I'm glad you, I'm glad you said that.

Yeah.

Like I said, I've told a lot of people about this show and I've encouraged them to watch it.

Mainly college football fans.

But let me say this, here's my question.

What's the appeal of this show for non football fans?

If you don't like football at all?

Never.

Or you just don't watch it, what.

Are you going to get anything out of this?

Yeah, I don't think you'll get as much.

I mean, if you don't, if you don't.

I don't, I don't know people's level of familiarity with like the current state of if you just really don't watch college football, they're going to be talking about stuff that you have.

No.

You don't care about.

I don't think there's a lot of that, though.

Not, not a lot.

Not, not a ton, but a little bit.

But if you just don't watch it, I think you could probably end up enjoying this as well.

It's not like the premise is, you know, like the premise kind of exists on its own.

Right.

Like the college football is the dressing is the window dressing.

But you could, you could, you could do this with anything.

I think.

So now here it's.

To me, it's icing on the cake that they, they get everything about college football.

Right.

I'll save some for spoilers.

Yes, they do.

But there's nothing in, you know, I was thinking just the other day, oh, they haven't mentioned this thing about college football and then it was in the episode I watched.

So it's kind of.

It is fun.

Like if you, it feels like they went out and did their homework.

Yeah.

Well, it's produced by the Mannings.

Yes.

So it makes sense.

And espn.

So it makes sense.

Without spoiling things.

I'll say that this show is.

It's genuinely funny and I think that's what people who have no idea about college football.

The jokes will land.

Yes.

I think that's kind of what I meant when I said you could do the premise with anything.

Like you just said, like the jokes are the jokes.

Right.

The joke is that like, you know, he's in disguise and he has to, you know, try and be anyone other than himself.

I was trying to Put my finger on this idea that it's more than one note.

The jokes are.

Yes, but I think so.

They do.

There's a lot of them that revolve around.

He's trying not to reveal who he really is.

That look in Glen Powell's eye, folks, that's so good.

You're just gonna put that in front of a camera.

But is your wife watching this with you?

She is, yes.

Big, big laughs from your wife.

Yeah.

Getting some good laughs, too.

That's great.

Of course she likes college football.

Yeah.

Yes.

You know.

Yeah.

She's a Penn State fan, too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Rip depend state.

That is honestly what the jokes have.

Like, it is a situational comedy in a lot of ways, but the kind of, like, he kind of seems like he's going towards a full tilt psychotic break.

And that is actually.

This sounds horrible to say, but that's actually really funny to watch as it gets more and more out of.

Out of Russ's control.

Yes.

I did not know this going in, but Steve Zahn plays a key character, and I was pleasantly shocked to see him.

Yes.

He's so good.

It's a good cast.

Good cast.

Good supporting cast.

Yeah.

Steve Zahn is pretty.

That was fun.

His.

He does the best.

He and the offensive coordinator do the best.

Oh, my God, you just said that.

React.

Yes.

But, you know, the thing with this show is it has actual tension that goes beyond the one note.

That goes beyond.

Oh, my God, they're gonna find out who he is.

There's actual tension here.

I think the stakes get raised every episode, and you just keep thinking there's no way that he's going to continue this.

And it kind of makes you a little anxious for both him and just you as a viewer.

I. I will say that another criteria for the better than it needs to be award is that even if you know what it's doing, it still makes you like and somewhat care about the supporting players as well.

So I. I feel that way.

Like, there's a couple different things where it's like.

Like you said, Blaine, it's not just the one note.

It's like.

Or.

Or maybe it's like we're.

We're understanding the.

The deepening stakes of, like, oh, my God, what if this is revealed and that's actually done, I think, pretty well through the supporting cast.

Yes.

The aspects of the college football game aren't fiction.

I think the acting's incredible.

They.

They sell the jokes.

The jokes feel hilarious because the actors don't treat them like jokes, and they Are ridiculous.

Yeah, like he would something really ridiculous where everybody normally would say, dude, that's not real.

But they all treat it real.

The right.

The writing is making me laugh because like, you have.

If, you know, you know, like you have jokes where he's.

He's like, he just.

He comes up and starts using, you know, he gets so lost in what he's saying that he starts using blindside as a verb.

As in the Michael or.

As in the Michael or movie.

It was a very good moment.

That's a good one.

I'm gonna circle back around to Chad Powers in the spoiler section and we'll dig into maybe some specifics, but two HBO shows on the docket today, this past Sunday, putting us a Sunday behind the world.

Was it this past Sunday or two Sundays ago that they released.

I think it was two Sundays ago.

Okay, for.

Wait, for which one?

Welcome to Derry.

Oh, it would be.

They released the most recent.

Let's see, episode two was Halloween.

They released it early.

So episode one was okay, basically last week.

That's why I was confused.

I didn't know that.

So, yeah, they pushed it out early.

I think it's a Sunday night show.

It was the.

It was the one opportunity I had to get ahead of the curve and not be the usual re record on Sunday, but release on Tuesday.

And I didn't do it.

So anyway, Sunday And Friday night, HBO's venture into Stephen Kingland with it colon welcome to Derry serves as a prequel to the two recent films IT Chapter one and IT Chapter two.

I think the first one is just it.

I think you're right.

I, I do have faith in HBO adaptations of things, particularly maybe even Stephen King.

I, I felt the Outsider was good television all the way through this series created run by three of the people who had a lot of input in the two films.

So fans could have a sigh of relief with that knowledge.

I don't know much else about this other than.

I've seen the miniseries on ABC with Tim Curry as the.

As Pennywise and I've seen.

I remember it very well.

I.

And I kind of liked it up until the ending.

I think everybody did kind of.

I think.

I think that was basically the.

Everyone hated the ending.

It just got silly.

Now I don't know how these new ones pan out.

And I would.

I'm.

I'm itching to see them.

I'm itching to carve out some time and watch them and.

And kind of base it along with what I'm seeing in the show.

But the show's a prequel.

I think you could probably dive in without having seen those movies.

This is a complete side note, but I remember, or at least by the time I was old enough to remember seeing, like, books at.

I think they still sell Stephen King at Walmart.

The.

The first IT cover I can remember as a kid was with the Tim Curry.

You know the Tim Curry poster for that?

It scared the shit out of me.

Yeah.

Just.

I had no idea what it was.

Yeah, Tim Curry, he nailed it.

Very much nailed it.

I don't know other things about this show other than it's 1962 in Derry, Maine, where the evil clown Pennywise stalks and kidnaps and kills kids.

Well, we have a fun Stephen King tie in.

Go ahead.

I don't.

I.

Well, this might be for spoilers, but we get to see our old.

Our old friend Chris Chalk is back.

We last saw him in Perry Mason and there's some connections to other.

Other Stephen King works.

Yeah.

And I'm sure I'm going to miss them.

I read it somewhere or I would have missed it.

Okay.

Well, I'm.

I was a fan of Stephen King as a kid.

I read so many of his books back to back.

Read many of them twice and then got into, quote, unquote, serious literature.

And then I went back to him a couple times for some Halloween scares and just didn't find it appealing.

The writing, I don't think is very good.

Somebody, and I wish I could remember who, because when he's.

He needs an editor and he didn't have a common complaint, but somebody once described his novels.

He's really not.

If you read some of his more recent short stories, those are actually not too bad because he's put a limit on himself.

But they were like, Stephen King has such faith in writing.

Instead of revising, he just keeps writing.

It's like the next sentence might be the one that saves it all.

He just keeps going.

That's funny.

Yeah.

This show kind of true.

I have nothing against Mr. King.

I really don't either.

I think he's very good with characters.

I think he's very good with relationships.

He can be.

He's written some.

Some of his short fiction really still stands out for me.

Yeah.

Sometimes I think his dialogue is really bad and I think his endings are bizarre.

Most of the time.

Yeah.

Endings are hard.

Endings are hard for lots of people.

Well, I've watched one episode of welcome to Dare.

You've watched the two?

Which I watched two.

I didn't even know I could from the two episodes.

I've I think my.

I.

What I've come to understand is that this is a show that dares to ask the question, do you like to scream?

Oh, I didn't.

You like a little spooky?

Little spooky screamies?

I was surprised at how blatantly horror this show was.

Yeah.

I thought it would be with.

With HBO having their hands on it.

It would be.

They would add the drama you've got to care for so and so, so much.

Yes.

So I was actually pleasantly surprised.

I think this is another thing that's like, it's as fine as it.

It's as good as it needs to be.

But I actually kind of like that if they jump kind of right into the pulp.

Yeah, it's.

That was very.

That's a, That's a thumbs up for me.

The novel though is almost a prototype.

Stranger Things.

Yes.

I would confuse kids bewildering and nightmarish things happening to them in the town.

And the fear of revealing it to any adult might be bad.

There's something in the second episode, not, not a big thing, but just a scene in the second episode where my brain was like instantly, like, well, people are gonna think they knocked off Stranger Things, but it goes the other direction.

I found the premiere a little bizarre, a little disjointed to begin, but I did find it exciting.

The pulse of the opening episode is very high.

It's pretty non stop, so at least I was interested and I didn't wanna pause it or do anything like that.

I was engaged.

I was okay with not knowing everything because honestly, over explaining can be a killer.

At the end of the first episode, I thought, okay, like I'm enjoying this enough that I'm gonna give you an opportunity to explain to me how these disjointed parts are connected.

Because at the end of the first episode, it's not necessarily evident by the end of the second episode.

I mean you can probably.

Usually when something's in a TV show, it's there for a reason, you know, I think by the end of the, the second episode you can be a little bit more like, oh, okay, that's how they're gonna try and pull that together.

Okay.

I could see how the.

You probably answered this just now.

I could see how the show could easily get off the rails or even just continue without worrying about answering everything.

If that's the case, could be disappointing or not.

It.

I don't mind ambiguity, but I do think that there, if you, there are certain things if you bring up, you just have to Answer them.

Yes, Yes, I agree.

For instance, one of those things being like, okay, why is this character here?

You know, character X?

We're following them.

Obviously it has some meaning.

Why are we paying attention to this character story?

If it never ties back in, you're going to feel.

Or if it feels like there's no reason, it's going to feel pointless.

Yeah.

I'm hoping it also has a lot more to offer throughout the rest of its episodes, other than kids often die.

And that's really scary.

Yeah, it kind of worked for me.

Not the dying, but the first kid who disappears.

I think this is a Stephen King thing, but just like a kid who was.

It's really sad to me that there's a kid who's reaching out in various ways.

Yeah.

Basically taken because his home sucks.

You know, that's a very real horror.

It is.

I mean, I think we.

I think that's.

I mean, children die, obviously, that's terrifying.

But I do think that there's the horror of, like, you know, we see it every day.

People whose homes create circumstances that.

That end in tragedy.

Yeah.

Not to get too grim here, but I think there's something about.

Sexual predators seem to have a knowledge or a skill of picking out who has a rough home life and being able to use that against them.

That is true.

I.

This is at the forefront of my head just because the Prince Andrew had learned the former Prince Andrew headlines.

But I remember Virginia Giuffre, the lady who.

Her memoir about Jeffrey Epstein came out, and I believe she unfortunately killed herself earlier this year.

But she said, you know, he was really good at picking the kids who, you know, they'd come from.

From bad places, and that made them feel sp.

And there's like.

There's something like, extra horrible about that.

And I think.

I think that, you know, for.

I. I don't.

Because this is a prequel, I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to be like, you know, the.

It is a thing that feeds on your fear.

I think something.

To have something like that attacking a kid like that is really kind of scary and insidious in a way.

That was, like.

It was good creature feature stuff for me, but there was also a little bit of, like.

I feel this is poignant.

Like this kid's.

This is.

This kid's lost.

Kids get lost, you know, Interesting.

But, yeah, I'm gonna stick with it for sure.

Speaking of hbo, too, finally, we want to put a period on the end of the sentence as task, though our schedulings caused us to miss conversations of the last two episodes.

We'll just pick those up today.

We don't want to spoil things on this side of the podcast, so there's no need to flee for the quarries for a swim just yet.

Of course, Task is the acclaimed HBO show written and ran by Brad Inglesby.

He did just as much with Mayor of Easttown on hbo.

It's the Mark Ruffalo as an FBI agent show.

He's trying to stop and arrest Tom Pelfrey's small group of house invaders.

Before we get any further, I'm really floored that the series did not employ Frank Reynolds as a montage.

Point out he was behind all of this.

It's like, who is the mastermind pulling the strings from Philly?

Did the show reach the heights you thought it may?

We thought it might.

I think it was pretty good.

I think everything came together pretty well.

I mean, I think maybe we'll have some conversation about how it accomplished things, but I think, much like Mayor, this was one that had more to stick around for than the crime, you know, than solving the mystery or.

Well, that's not really a mystery, but, you know, seeing.

Seeing how it plays out.

Yeah, the crime was barely part of it.

It felt.

Yeah, we.

We know what's going on.

In a good way.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'd say the show encapsulated heart.

It's a little odd to have a crime drama in 2025 so full of empathy.

Yeah, you can have a series that's about detectives or murderers or cowboys or whatever.

But then to have it be so transcendent and true, realistic emotional center or hard.

As I said, Task had it in spades, in my opinion.

Yeah, I thought I'll break down why later.

I thought the last episode was really good.

So if you haven't watched Task do so, then come back to the end of our episode today with the timestamps that'll help you.

Let's take a break and we'll.

And we'll cover some of these in more detail.

Y' all know it's a pain to follow a podcast, grow to love it, enjoy being a part of its community, feel like they're your friends for it to suddenly stop without a goodbye.

That's what we try to avoid with all of our podcasts at the Alabama Take.

And you can help.

Click on Buy me a coffee on the Alabama Takes site, make any donation that you wish, and know you're now part of a community that helps out podcasts in the Alabama Takes family and podcast.

I'LL include a link in the show notes for you or head to thealabamatake.com and click on donate.

Now back to the podcast episode where spoilers begin.

Yeah, we'll return to our list, same order.

And I can't wait because it's bringing us back around to Chad Power.

He is trying his best down in South Georgia.

You had mentioned this just popping in here because it was something interesting that there was a little bit of, you know, kind of laughing at the.

Not laughing meanly, but like at the acknowledgement of the football players who, you know, at the end of winning every game.

Well, first off, I'd like to thank my Lord and savior, Jesus Christ.

Like, like he has anything better to do.

The backup being the kind of kid who would have been baptized by Hugh Freeze.

Yeah.

Or the.

The former starter, now the backup.

It's hilarious to me.

Yes.

Every second of it.

He.

Yes.

He's quite creepy with his, His.

His overzealousness.

Yeah.

Overzealous is probably the way to put it.

So I do think that.

And the reason I bring that up is I think there's a bit of a wink and a nodding at us, too.

This knows the world that it's portraying for us, you know?

Yeah.

You know, there's even the notion that college football and right wing fundamentalism go hand in hand somehow.

And that's acknowledged in this show.

We get some.

I mean, there's George Soros.

I was gonna say we get a really funny bit where she's, you know, the booster whose name I've forgotten.

I have everyone pulled.

Trisha.

Trisha.

Who's the biggest booster?

Is she the biggest booster out there or the ad I couldn't figure.

I thought she was the biggest booster, but I might be mixing it up.

But, you know, she says something about, you know, it's media, it's George Soros and Russ is trying to get out.

Or Russ, as Chad is trying to get out of doing another interview.

So he's like, I read something about George Soros.

Like, it was so good.

He plays it so well as Chad, and then he has to turn it off to be Russ and be Russ again.

Kind of normal, more Glenn Powell kind of guy, except maybe more of a.

Jerk at times, I think.

You know, every.

Everything you need to know about Russ is that over the course of the show, we know that he has a cyber truck and he has a Truth Social account.

Oh, yeah.

That'S it.

And he.

And he hit a dying kid.

So that's.

I think that's really all you need to know about him.

Yeah.

Punch to punch the kid with cancer.

So it's wonderful to pair him with his roommate.

He is a openly gay guy.

Very funny, as he's the mascot.

The cat.

The catfish.

The catfish.

As the coach tells him.

It's.

It's not my business where a man hangs his hat.

Yeah.

Because I suspect they suspect Russ.

Excuse me.

Chad might have a thing for him.

And Chad says, no, we're related.

They blindsided each other.

Well, he kind of.

His family blindsided me.

Well, my family did for him, too.

He's so funny.

The things he, you know, he's stuck in a moment and he's not smart enough to say anything that would make sense.

And the funniest of those for me is, why aren't you showering?

And he said, I got too big of a pee hole.

Yes.

Coming back to that one.

He does.

He does such a good job of seeming like someone who's.

Who's inventing language as he's speaking it, like, literally.

He has no idea what he's gonna say either.

Yeah.

But this.

And everyone has seen this on social media, even the.

Which I didn't find funny at first, but the more I think about it, it's so funny.

When the very real ESPN anchor Marty McGee asked him, well, tell us more about you.

And he goes, I'm Chad.

That did make me laugh, actually.

The first time I saw it as a preview, I thought, well, that's not that funny.

When I saw it in the show.

I was like, that's so funny in context.

It's really good because it's like you said, he has this smile and this look in his eyes like, please don't ask me anything else.

Doesn't discover it.

This is more of the.

The meta fiction than the fiction.

But I just.

I remain astounded that Glen Powell is a part of this.

Like, man.

Man's a movie star.

He's a big star.

I'm looking forward to him.

I hope it's going to be good.

You know, he's in a Stephen King running man.

Edgar Wright's directing it.

He's going to star in it.

I think it could be awesome.

This guy can.

This guy can.

Can.

You know, he pulls in viewers and we're, what the hell is he doing here at this show?

But he's great.

He's the perfect choice for it.

He is the perfect.

I hope that they're able to do more seasons.

I would enjoy seeing more because it is, you know, I think that if you if it's done smartly, it can.

It can.

You can take stuff in new directions, right?

Where the.

The first season is kind of, you know, one premise, one joke.

But, like, you know, I think a good TV show can develop those in.

In different ways.

The only thing I groped about, it felt too obvious that Steve Zahn's character, the coach, has a daughter who is also a coach on the team.

And I just saw it coming that Chad slash Russell would fall for.

For her.

Well, of course.

But I did not see the twist of Russ sleeping with her mom by accident.

That was.

That was actually a very good one.

Yeah.

And Chad.

A great Chad reaction where he cannot think of anything to say.

So he was just like, is this all wood?

Keeps tapping everything.

He just starts walking around.

That floored me.

And I know probably viewers would have seen it coming, but not me.

I. I think, too, that this is a pioneering show, because I am pretty sure that this is the first show to feature sex in a cyber truck.

I don't think it's been done before.

First, and we hope, hope last.

It's the sustainable truck of the future.

Blaine.

I hope there are more.

I hope every car is a cybertruck, and I hope they all get to have sex and.

And they pull surprises you wouldn't imagine.

Steve Zahn's character has a heart attack.

I didn't see that.

You know, just things like this.

He's so good as that coach, though.

Steve's on.

I mean, like.

And the.

The.

The.

Would you call it a filler episode when they travel to.

Yes.

The very real Tennessee Knoxville and they have to try to recapture his makeup glue, and they end up with a gun.

It's just like all of that is antics and filler, but it just works.

It was.

It made me laugh.

Right.

You know, you've got, like, what depths are they gonna sink to for this?

Like, they've got this Tennessee fan who's, like, trying to reconnect with his dead father through.

Through his game day makeup and just trying to get the clue from him.

Yeah, I think.

I think that's what it is.

It's there.

There's a lot of things that work well for this show, despite the one little storyline that's a little predictable and silly.

But it gets these things right.

It gets college football right.

Every aspect.

They even talk in il.

Yes, yes.

He's living in a nice place because of Nil.

He gets a boosted apartment.

And I love.

He's doing better.

Okay.

So they get that, right.

They get everything about college Football.

Right.

The jokes are genuinely like funny.

Like, like it's always sunny kind of funny.

Yeah.

And the third thing is the characters all seem real without being too silly.

Other than which I was gonna say, which sounds crazy.

The fact that I can't believe he.

What he says is.

Which they don't.

But they.

The fact that they just take it is just killer.

They have to.

I do love that by the.

This was something I was thinking of too, because it is also to me realistic that like, if you're.

If you're a major SEC program, I think we're supposed to believe that they're major.

They could.

If you're an SEC program and a guy with a golden arm shows up, tells you he's been homeschooled, you're just going to be like, I hope he has three years of eligibility and get him on that field.

Because, like they're not going to look.

Into anything to get into play.

Exactly.

Truth.

Exactly.

Ask as little questions as possible.

And it really is a good dynamic with.

Like you said, none of them are too ridiculous.

Except Chad.

But yes.

Because they don't kind of want to look too deeply into who or what Chad is.

They all just kind of have to accept.

It does make you laugh that he's from West Virginia.

Yes.

Something about that.

Very much me.

Like that is honestly a genius move on Russ, the character of Russ, because you really can't find out much about people from West Virginia.

He was homeschooled.

Yeah.

They get the idea that there's a lot of right wing politics involved in all of college football that's brought up in crimes.

So they're just.

They're just.

The politics and the money are interesting as.

Because they're not like very obvious.

But it's like you said, like, oh, he got bumped up into a better house.

You know, it's there.

It's part of it.

Right, Right.

Yes.

They don't spend a storyline on.

No.

Oh, this is the nil episode.

Yeah.

But they get.

They put it all in there.

That's good.

I really love this show.

There's a joke I've been.

It's from the most recent episode I saw.

So it's probably fresh in my brain.

Which is the penultimate.

But the.

There's a bit where he's trying to sign a football and he starts signing his own name and he.

So then he.

To make up for that, he just starts scribbling and Sharpie all over this football.

Explains.

That's how he does his foot, how he does his signature.

And Then the kid is like trying to take the ball from.

And he's like, just a minute now that.

Now I have to get another Sharpie.

That was a good.

That was a good joke.

The Voice.

I mean, it's good stuff.

The Voice is hilarious.

I'm a big fan of the show.

Big fan of the show.

And it doesn't hurt that I also like college football.

I have a lot of.

Absolutely.

I think a lot of people would get some out of it even if they weren't football fans.

Again, the better than it needs to be.

I think this is my better than it needs to be award of the year.

Absolutely.

And like I said, I've said it two or three times now.

I have off the podcast.

It recommended it to about four or five different people.

Yeah.

And just been like, you're gonna love it.

When you get to this one joke, let me know.

It's the pee joke.

The P hole.

It's the way he says it.

Yeah.

It's the P hole joke that gets so good.

So good.

Probably.

Probably.

Quick little breakdown on some thoughts of welcome to Dairy.

I've only seen the 1.

The premiere and Donovan scene 2.

And that's really all.

It's out anyway at the time of our recording.

So we'll talk briefly about those.

Let's see what we got.

So what do you make of the two headed, eyeless, one wing, baby.

Man, that thing is gross.

It's crazy, right?

So that's supposed to be Pennywise in its initial form.

I think that it's a manifold, like a manifest.

Because it's a thing that makes you afraid.

Right.

So I don't know if that simply is it all by itself or if the whole.

I think the whole thing is.

It is the.

The fear creature.

When you say the whole thing, what do you.

What do you mean?

Oh, I like the.

The family.

Like the family, the car, everything.

I think it's all.

I think it's all part of it.

Of.

Of it.

Yeah.

I had a hard time figuring out that scene.

Oh, that was great for me.

It just goes to creepy so fast.

It went to creepy.

It was good.

But I was.

I suppose this is my brain wanting too many answers.

And I was like, wait, well, then who's the dad?

What's the mom?

Wait, are these.

Do they give birth to Pennywise?

Is this a.

You know, and I don't.

I guess they're all the entity of.

I mean, you know, it's a thing that manifests is what makes you afraid.

Right.

There's things that can Scare you.

So we're going to see it in a lot of different forms.

And you know, I'm kind of like, oh, it's basically like an extra dimensional being that feeds on your fear.

Fine.

I can accept that.

And it can take the shape of many beings at once.

It can.

Okay.

And I think so also.

Those are my other notices.

Those are the meanest fucking kids in the world.

Once we find out that that girl's dad was killed in a pickle jar related accident and they filled her hot locker full of pickle jars.

Pretty cruel.

1962, you didn't have the Internet to go on and make fun of people.

So I'd be.

I'd be.

I'd be fine if some of those kids got eaten.

The big thing I think everyone took away, a lot of viewers took away, if you go online, is that it looked like this was going to be the crew of kids.

In a standard IT story, you got a crew of kids who have been disregarded or picked on and it felt like this was going to be them, but instead they kill off all but.

Two of them if in fact they're dead.

That's a good point.

But yeah, pretty.

Pretty gruesome stuff.

I think everyone online were pretty shocked by that.

I said take takes a left turn pretty quickly.

So do you like it?

Is it good?

Yeah, I'll watch it.

Yeah.

I liked two episodes.

Thought it was.

Was pretty good initially.

You know, I kind of.

So we have the figure of the.

The Air Force major.

That's what's getting me.

That's the beginning part.

So that for me too, I was like, okay, well, I don't really know how this is tying in, but this is pretty good.

I assume it matters and then by.

You'll figure it out by the time episode two rolls around and we get a little bit more of our friend Chris Chalk as Dick Halloran, who.

I'm an idiot.

I would have never noticed it.

That's the guy from the Shining.

The.

The cook that recognizes that Danny has the Shining.

And apparently Dick Halloran is really in the original IT novel as kind of like a.

A side character.

This is apparently faithful to.

Huh?

Yeah.

So that's who.

Yeah.

So he's.

He's got psychic powers.

Okay, well, he must be important because Chris Chalk's playing him.

You.

You pick up on him and then of course he gets those extra seconds of glances in his screen time.

It definitely is like, right.

Like it's like, oh, the guy in the background whose name I know.

Like whose real life name I know that guy might be important.

Mm.

Another concern I have is that they throw in really heavy issues and I don't know if they're handling them as well as I could.

I see.

Yeah.

The racism part, especially with the major.

You know, he has one guy who does not salute him out of racism.

And I'm just thinking there probably should be a little bit more to this.

There's.

Maybe it will happen in episodes three through whatever and, and, and.

But, you know, if you're going to do that, I feel like you need to have a.

A certain hand weaving it in and out and not just bring it at one time and go.

Yep.

See, 62 people are racist.

I think that the second episode might alleviate some fears.

Okay.

There.

I'm not.

I'm not sure.

We'll have to see how you think it's handled.

But is not just mentioned once.

And I realize I shouldn't bring expectations like this to shows.

I should let them show me what they have and then judge.

But I really hope it has something to say about childhood and the fears we have at that age of being a kid, whether we're coming from dysfunctional houses or not.

Yeah.

This is a perfect opportunity to do that.

Being a Stephen based off of Stephen King, it feels like the kind of.

If they have any kind of understanding of the thematic resonance of it, they will.

Because it's scary to be a kid.

Yeah, it is.

It's the scariest time.

And it's perfect for horror.

It's perfect for this.

Yes.

I've watched it many years ago and it felt like it kind of did some of those things.

Well, if I remember.

But I mean, with a series you could really go so, you know, hard to judge with only one episode.

You've got the two.

We'll see.

We'll see.

We might bring it back up too here.

If it does some of these things and.

And it has things to say.

It could.

It's.

It's perfectly set up to do that.

Yeah.

Well, this is where advantage of it.

Or will they just try to scare us?

You know, that's the thing.

This was where my assessment that it might just be as good as it needs to be.

Yeah.

You know, it could be though, because I.

It could transcend, but it might not.

I don't know.

I was really excited that it landed when it did on TV a couple of weeks before Halloween and that.

That kind of had me pumped at least because we usually have something Halloween specific.

Yeah, we.

It's like finally there wasn't a lot this year.

Well, speaking of.

Finally, we'll wrap up our specific feelings thoughts on the drama task from hbo.

Brad Inglesby.

Mainly the final two episodes, though that last episode might get a lot of discussion here.

The penultimate episode.

It was the sixth, was titled Out Beyond Out Beyond Ideas of Wrongdoing and Right Doing.

There is a river.

That's a mouthful.

And.

And there was indeed a river.

The final episode's called I Still Small Voice.

I want to talk about those titles.

I'm bringing them up for a reason.

That penultimate episode, Out Beyond Ideas of Wrongdoing and not doing.

It's a bit of a misquote.

It's actually.

There is a field in the actual text.

Not a river comes from an opening to a poem from ancient Persian poet Rumi.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

You didn't know.

You didn't.

I didn't pick up on.

I never know.

Rumi.

I didn't pick up on that.

The poem's called a Great Wagon.

I suppose the idea is that there's more than just good and bad in the world.

You can't bifurcate those.

The world like that.

There's more than right and wrong.

I guess it's.

That's a real simplistic breakdown.

But it's also about spaces of love and understanding that exist outside of being human.

So it's a powerful stuff.

I feel like that this episode even conveyed some of that.

Yeah, Yeah, I think it did.

There.

It was, this episode, the penultimate one.

This was very tense, and there was some things that, like, it was like, oh, man, you can kind of see what's going to happen here.

But I felt.

I felt that it was, you know, it was like.

It was a good tragedy, honestly.

Yeah.

With what.

And it's like, okay, that's why we have Grosso and Elizabeth kind of almost being a thing.

I thought it was a fantastic episode.

I don't think I can mention this long episode title without talking about the scene where Ruffalo almost reverts back to his priesthood while Robbie dies in his lap.

Yeah.

Such a poignant piece of filmmaking.

I thought things like scenes like this run into the possibility of being too saccharine with the.

With the flashback images they overlaid on it.

But here I thought it was very skillful, skillful lead.

If you.

If you do it right.

Like, there's sometimes Terrence Malick will kind of do things like this where he'll almost like.

Like in the Thin Red Line, you know, he'll put in the shots of nature as a counterpoint.

And I Do think, like, if you do it right, it's.

It's really good.

You can.

It's.

It's such a.

It's almost like a good shorthand for like.

We're so much bigger.

Yeah.

Than what we.

What's just right there in front of you.

Right.

Like every single one of us is made up of feelings and thoughts and experiences and memories.

And we're all a part of nature, whether we like that idea or not.

We're all a part of nature.

We're all a part of each other.

I think there's a really kind of like, woo woo way to look at that.

But there's.

I think especially with continuing climate catastrophe, I think we're some.

Some of us are starting to understand the ways that we're much more deeply connected than we thought we were.

And the show didn't look away from those things.

That's kind of where it was focusing.

Could have been.

Could have been Preachy, wasn't it?

Wasn't.

It didn't hurt that Tom Pelfrey looked genuinely dead.

He looked as bad as anyone I've seen an actor.

Yeah.

Because that scene was so good and Mark Ruffalo plays it so well.

And I had kind of been wondering, you know, we've got Robbie, you know, and Tom, and, you know, they intersect.

But in a lot of ways, Tom's life is also on a parallel track with the other to this with everything else going on in his life.

And I think.

I think this might possibly be kind of a clue to why do Tom and Robbie intersect the way they do thematically.

I mean, for the show, obviously it's all a fiction.

Right.

So things are done with intentionality.

Somebody had to make it happen.

I mean, it was an odd penultimate episode.

It was long in the pacing.

It was long.

The pacing was kind of weird where you had the first half of the action and death and then the back half was resolution.

And as a viewer, you knew you were still getting another episode.

Yes.

Like Grosso versus Tom.

In those final moments, it's almost like you almost could have ended it there and went with the idea that, okay, well, we know Grasso will be arrested, and that's that.

It's.

It's almost like the true denouement that you don't get.

Yeah.

The.

Like Inglesby was saying, we really are gonna tie up every end so that, you know, there's nothing else to think about.

But it's done well.

It is done well.

Especially with that last episode.

I think part of what made it good for Me is.

It was.

There was a lot of stuff set up throughout the series that I think was touched on again, kind of.

And especially ideas of, like, coming home or returning, you know, in a way that Robbie couldn't.

Yeah.

A bit of salvation or redemption.

Yep.

Totally oddly paced penultimate episode.

Very odd.

Almost like a little mini movie.

I totally loved it.

You know, throw the formula out the window.

Oh, yeah.

Make the show you want to make.

It was great.

We still get some.

We still get some tension.

Yeah, you do.

You do.

You know, the formula is completely thrown out the window.

Exactly.

Because you're left with the cliffhanger of Tom leaving Grosso's house as if to say they're going to have some conflict in the next episode when Lily.

Lizzie.

Excuse me, When Lizzie gets hit by Jason and Perry in the truck.

I'm not so sure the series wanted us as viewers to be affected by her death, but what we needed was to care that Grasso was affected by it.

Yes.

And I think that's a little different.

You hate when there's a woman character who's just like, the reason they died is so that a man will feel something.

I don't.

I don't feel like that's 100% fair here, but I do see how people could think that.

But there was a little bit with her of like, she's.

She's braver than she thought she was.

She's braver.

I agree with you.

Not in a bad way.

That, like, it's really important for you to understand that Grosso can't.

Can't live with this.

Two quick things before we move to the ending of the show as a whole.

Tom and Grasso's final scene in this episode.

Very well done.

Grosso ask about forgiveness, and Tom gives that very thoughtful response that forgiveness isn't about God, it's about the person, so the person can move on.

That's something to think about long after the show's ended.

And I still don't know if I have my head wrapped around it.

And the other thing is, Tom brings home Sam.

Yeah.

And.

And that's likely, I suppose, but it still made me feel great about humanity and led me to realize that, well.

Oh, yeah, damn it.

Chickens are birds, too, but they just aren't birds that can fly.

And birds seem to be a motif throughout.

Well, they can't fly any further than a tree limb.

Yeah, not.

Not a lot, you know, what's the usage of the chicken?

Well, with Sam being so drawn to the one friendly chicken, you know, he's the bird that.

That won't be flying very far.

And it's a sad, though, you know, he gets.

He gets an okay ending.

Sam is that bird.

Sam is that bird.

He can't move far without help.

At least not yet.

That's.

Yeah, that's.

That's the poignant thing, right, is.

Is that he named what you just said, basically that, like, he's just like a.

Just like this.

You know, he's just this sweet kid.

What a sweet kid.

And.

And those sweet.

The sweetest people we know are sometimes the most at the mercy of the world.

This is a heavy.

This is heavy show.

Final episode I mentioned called A Still Small Voice wraps up all the stories.

The title could allude to the idea that God speaks to people in a still, small voice or.

Yep.

It could even allude.

Now this I might be stretching.

It could even allude to a 2023 documentary of a.

A chaplain who.

Who must look within to tend to certain patients.

And both very much sound like the nature of task.

Yeah, I thought too, you know, there's still small voices from, you know, a certain.

Translate Bible translation.

But also.

I thought it could also be your conscience and that it might be hard to tell the difference.

This true.

When it comes down to it, it.

Is speak, you know, back to nature.

Plenty of beautiful scenes in the natural world here.

It's fascinating to note, and I'll say it here, the only one shot in the darkness of nature is the revelation of Aaron's body and its discovery.

She's floating at the top of the water in the quarry where Perry had drowned her.

There are shots in the dark at night, but it's mostly with cars, with.

A bar or exterior of the house, something like that.

Yeah.

Here it was a very much a nature scene, but in the dark.

I thought that was probably purposeful.

Yeah, I think so.

You know, deeds done in darkness are brought to light, that kind of thing.

And who knew Grosso's sister is the same actor to play the girlfriend in Stick.

I know she showed up.

I'm like, hey, I know who that is.

Yeah.

Great to see her, albeit too briefly.

She makes perfect sense as a Grosso family member.

Good casting.

The writing makes perfect sense that Grosso would want to confess and that he was.

That he was taking money from the bikers for.

For family.

I think it fits with every motif the show established previously.

The opening image, he slips right in too.

Yeah, that opening image is Robbie putting his son to bed.

People are doing things for family.

Wrong things.

If it's.

If this is a show about families and parenting.

The bikers are parents in their own way who kill.

But Tom has a family with a son who's committed murder too, so.

And not just any murder, it's matricide.

So you know who's better.

Right.

It did occur to me that the bikers, the gang, is a family of people who are not related by blood.

And Tom's family is a family of people, some of whom are not related by blood.

It's a maid family, you know, it's a built family.

So true.

So many mirrors and similarities, I suppose.

Motifs.

I suppose.

Yeah.

I felt like this episode really was one of those.

That it kept me asking the whole time about the Robbie and Tom storylines, asking to myself.

The show wasn't asking any questions, just asking myself, like, how these two.

How did Robbie change Tom?

Because I think that Robbie did change Tom.

And I thought that this episode being at the end of the series the way it was, it benefited from a whole lot of just kind of like delivery of what the show had been talking about the whole time.

I agree.

And I do.

I do think that besides it being obviously like, it's a crime, it's a good way to keep things moving, you know, to have like a crime show.

I do think that.

That.

That Tom was.

Was changed or.

Or brought back to himself.

Either either changed or part of him kind of returned.

You know, a lot of shows you think that the person that deserves to kill the bad guy, you think, oh, I can't wait for them to go head to head and kill the bad guy here.

In this case, it happens in an expected manner.

As Grasso, maybe an unexpected manner is what I meant to say.

Grasso should have already been dead, probably.

I was a little confused about how Harper, the daughter got what she was doing out there, how she helped him pull off the revenge shot of killing Jason.

I couldn't tell you.

I know exactly the scene you're talking about because she does that out and then he shoots.

It didn't matter for me.

I was like, I understand what happened here.

Viewers could grab that grass as a.

Almost redemption stories to Pat, but that he was deep in his Catholic religion and the writers set that up from the very beginning more than any other movie or show has done in a while.

This is what he believes.

And then, you know, redemption is so.

Huge in that someone who's been, like, raised in a certain religion where that, like symbols and ideas almost become primal or archetypal.

So for instance, the confessing of sins, you know, he asked Tom if he ever gave penitence and, you know, things like that.

It's well blended.

Big ideas about parenting, family, forgiveness and redemption.

I don't even think it had one too many storylines for seven episodes.

Nah, it kind of all came out right in the end.

I think as far as the structure of it, there were a couple in the middle where I was like, oh, well, we'll just have to see how it plays out.

But that last one really wrapped them up.

Yeah, pretty, pretty well.

It didn't really leave anything too implant or ambiguous.

It could have and still been good, but it didn't.

I think this what is more interesting, it's not that things are necessarily ambiguous.

It's that by the end of the episode, a lot of characters, especially Tom, are taking a big step and we don't know how that's going to turn out.

And we'll.

And of course we'll never know.

But that's the, you know, that's the question that it leaves us with.

Tom gives the speech in the courtroom for his adopted son who shot and killed his wife.

I thought he pushed her down the stairs.

Yes, it is.

And very real life resonant.

Honestly, talking about medicine not being available during COVID that, you know, I have a before and after with the medicine that I take.

I didn't kill anyone, but it made a difference for me.

That's really a fear of mine.

Kind of a basic fear is that if this medicine is taken away, I won't be able to.

To live in the way that I want to live.

So that, that's just a side note, but it really spoke to me.

And then of course, the, you know, I'm glad we.

We talked about the prodigal son earlier because this is really, you know, Tom is the father who the.

As I mentioned the last time I talked about it in the Prodigal Son, the son says, okay, I'm going to go home and I'm going to say, dad, I've sinned against heaven and I've sinned against you.

And in some churches, some church traditions, that's actually something you can say right before penance.

Right.

But it's something that in the story of the prodigal son, the son says to himself, I'm going to say this, but the story goes, while he was still a long way off, his dad saw him and he raced out to get him.

And the son never says to his father, I'm sorry, I've sinned against you.

And his father never asked for it.

And so I think that Kind of the way, you know, that he.

It's a very dramatic way to do it, but, you know, to turn to his.

To Ethan, and say, like, I forgive you and I love you and you have a place in my house.

Is that kind of like.

And that's a pretty big change for him to go from.

I can never forgive him.

I can't even visit him in prison.

And I think that, honestly, the interaction with Robbie, I think that scene, in my opinion, the scene in the car is crucial because he tells Robbie that he can still come home, and Robbie doesn't.

He died with Tom.

And so it's really powerful to see in other ways, too.

Like, he has good things happening in his life, but I think it was really this idea of coming home became resonant.

Yeah, yeah, it was excellent.

I think it's hard for our culture to get into the idea that one incident doesn't define your life.

Yeah, yeah, that too.

Is it Bryan Stevenson who said, I believe he's, you know, everyone is more than the worst thing they ever did?

I believe that's.

That's one of his.

His lines.

And I. I think there's some truth to it.

I do, too.

Yeah.

Tom's admission of forgiveness and love hits that much more powerfully since his son is adopted.

It shouldn't, but it's a deeper and a truer form of love, a pure form of love.

Not the natural sort that a mom might feel upon giving birth or.

Yeah, the kind where you're like.

Well, you're, you know, like, if you bring it to, like, a very biological thing, like, well, we share some genes, so I'm going to make sure that you, you know, you.

You survive.

You know, there's none of that, which, like you said.

Yeah, there's almost an extra power to.

To choosing to love a child.

The show, too.

Ask dares to ask a question here.

We do.

We do good things to make us feel good, or do we do good because we know it makes others feel good?

Yeah, it's a good question.

You know, I think especially, you know, at the end where Tom has to give up Sam and that's the right thing to do.

Yeah, And I think.

I think it was really.

It's a really good question, too, because I do think that there is an aspect of, like, good doing good.

Doing good.

Helping up, truly helping others.

Like, it does make you feel good.

And in my opinion, there's not.

That's not ne.

That's not selfishness.

That's like, we're.

We're, you know, I think was it.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Called it the web of mutuality.

You know, we're like, doing good feels good because, like.

Because good is good for you, you know, in a way that.

That bad is the opposite.

And that's very black and white, of course, but.

But I do think some of that's there.

And so I think that the priests coming.

I think there is nothing wrong with Tom coming to life a little bit with Sam and loving Sam and taking care of Sam.

And so I think that his friend the priest coming in and kind of drawing this distinction, and then Tom is able.

You know, sacrifices.

I think that's important because it's like, probably either thing would be some.

A degree of good, a better outcome for Sam, but Tom really has to.

To be unselfish.

And I think in the long run, that's.

That makes Tom better.

And you get Tom and Sam out in nature as Tom teaches him about Beats getting their hands in it.

We got the.

We got the Phillies cup turned into a. Oh, yeah.

You know, for the bird image.

Inglesby's really good with final images.

They was.

I think I was thinking the whole time that this really paralleled Mare in the sense that it was like it all came down to that ending that the character kind of earned or we, the viewers, kind of.

With the character, you know, as Mare is finally able to.

To go to the spot in her house, the attic, and then.

And then this one.

What do you mean?

That final shot where Tom's window for birds is incredibly small.

But we say all these different things, too, in many traditions, even like, Southern folk traditions.

Birds are spirits, birds are souls.

I think there's an.

That was my understanding of that.

It's a window, right?

And we see.

Yeah, nature.

That's good.

Well, that's the end of our episode.

Hope you got something out of it.

For Adam and Donovan, I'm Blaine.

We.

We hope you're looking at a beautiful window.

See you next week.