Lonely Men, Aliens, and Cops: 'Task' on HBO, 'Alien: Earth' on FX, and 'Blue Lights' on HBO Max

Hey, it's taking it down.

You know that we're the Alabama Takes TV and Streaming podcast.

Let you know what's worth watching, give you some ideas to think about and reckon with on the spoiler side.

And we'll split those in half.

Non spoilers to begin.

Spoilers later on this week, Adam and Donovan and I, we're gonna talk about how TV and streaming has a lot to offer these last couple of weeks and these next couple of weeks.

We'll also talk about the first episode of Task on hbo.

Then we'll give some broad thoughts on Alien Earth from FX and Hulu and our last week of discussion on the Britbox and HBO Max series Blue Lights set in Northern Ireland.

Then on spoiler side, it is definitely Task, the first two episodes of Alien Earth and all of Blue Lights for its two seasons.

We're glad you joined us.

This is a good episode.

This is the one to share, I think.

Let's get Adam and Donovan in here and we'll begin.

Alabama, take projection.

Hey, with me.

It's my buddy Adam.

It's my buddy Donovan.

I love to see him.

You can't see him.

You can hear them every Tuesday.

Before we lay out our non spoiler ideas on shows, I wanted to say I'm pretty floored by the options of streaming currently.

Tell me more.

Like, you can.

You can buy Hulu, you can buy Disney, you can buy hbo.

You can basically reinvent cable all on.

Your own for significantly more money.

No, that's annoying.

I just meant what's on it now.

I mentioned Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd, their film friendship.

It's now on hbo Max on rental, and soon to be on streaming is weapons.

I want to see that.

I was told explicitly that because I liked Barbarian.

Me too.

But I was like, I checked in with my friend, like, can I handle this in a movie theater?

He's like, maybe watch it at home.

Because I have hurt someone by accident while being startled.

There is no more.

There's not a bigger stamp of approval than maybe you should watch this at home.

Yeah.

Well, we're right back to last week's discussion.

Right.

Or sometime recent.

The.

The idea of jump scares me.

Donovan not on board.

Yeah, if it's.

If it's judiciously used, I'll do it.

But I will just throw out an example of a movie that I saw a zillion trailers for.

And I'm like, I can tell.

I'll never see that.

That, like, Smile movie.

Yeah, no, that was advertised.

I'm like, this is clearly just Jump Scares.

I don't like it.

Give me the Shining.

I haven't even seen a trailer for Weapons.

I've just seen a recap, and I was like, yeah, I want to see that.

Can I share a little story about jump scares from my life this week?

You shit your pants?

No, but we've been to.

It's back to school time.

So we did a little like, quote unquote, library challenge to get people to use some of our spaces.

And one of the things was they had to find a face of Pedro Pascal that we'd hidden somewhere in the library.

And we took a.

You hid it in your pants?

We.

What we did was we took a room, turned the light off, taped him on the little narrow thing of glass so that it looks like he's peering out at you.

We had students keep coming up to the front desk saying that scared the shit out of him.

It was great.

HBO Max now has the film Warfare.

That's that real time account of soldiers starring Will Poulter, our guy Cosmo Jarvis, and even Joseph Quinn from Stranger Things in the latest Fantastic Four.

Intrigued?

I am too, actually.

It looks intense.

It's.

It's Alex Garland.

Was he worth.

Wait, was that him too?

Yeah.

A24, I think.

Okay.

I might be wrong, but it's the.

Kind of thing I'll have to watch by myself.

Yeah.

Yeah.

See, the thing with some movies like this, like, I was given a hard sell for Eddington over the weekend.

Mm.

I know that it is great, but do I need to.

And maybe this is some self reflection.

I need to do that.

I am an escapist place with my media consumption.

But do I.

Do I really want to see this?

Yes, I do.

Is it on streaming yet?

It's video on demand.

So soon for.

For very affordable.

Right, Right.

If you wanted to do that much like weapons.

So soon it'll be streaming.

There does not seem to be a middle ground on this movie.

Like, it's.

You either liked it or you thought it was like the worst trash.

That's.

You know, you thought Ari Aster was speaking out his ass.

I'm intrigued, I guess.

The hard sell that I got, I'm willing to believe.

But it's also like, you guys are familiar with the types of fun.

Like, one is like, it was a beautiful day and I had a great time.

Type 2 is like, it rained, but it kind of made it more fun.

You know, once we adapted to, we kind of went through something together, but I really wouldn't do it again.

And then type 3 is like we survived the hurricane in a tent and it was great.

I'm glad that we survived.

I'll remember that for the rest of my life.

But I never want to do that again.

Like watching Grave of the Fireflies.

I don't need type 3 movies in my life, really.

But maybe I do.

I mean, how.

How often have you sat down and watched a movie and said, that was great, I never want to see it ever again?

A lot.

I watched a couple years ago this great Belarus Belarusian film from Belarus called Come and See.

Yeah, this is probably the most famous example of this.

Right.

It's fantastic.

But you do get to the end of it and you're like, that just wrung me.

And then I made the extra mistake of being like, is that all really true?

Never something you should ask yourself about the Nazis.

So I read a book called Bloodlands and to learn even more about the.

Oh, my God, Blaine, it's worse than you can imagine.

Sign me up.

Detour.

The Bloodlands is the.

What Timothy.

The scholar Timothy Snyder called the areas of Europe caught between Stalin and Hitler.

Okay.

And that's where the bulk of the fighting in the Soviet Union happened, not in Russia, although Russia has appropriated it as a nationalist conflict.

So you have the, the.

The deaths that Stalin brought in Ukraine through starvation.

The terror.

And then you have Hitler invading and he's got the, the, you know, I think they call them Einsatzgruppen.

That would literally just go through the country as depicted in this film.

They.

They take out a village, they hurt everyone inside, they set a church on fire.

And that's all like.

That's like the tame version of what happened.

Exactly.

I've seen the Patriot.

Yeah, exactly.

It's.

It's terrifying.

I hate to admit this.

I'll do it.

I'm honest and open.

Talking about things on streaming that are new.

I did watch a nice chunk of the two part documentary on Netflix titled AKA Charlie Sheen.

I don't feel good.

I don't feel good about it.

That's its own kind of type 3 fun.

But, you know, he's telling his own story and he's almost everyone involved except for his dad and his brother.

His famous brother.

No, one of his brothers actually is on there, but not Emilio.

I don't know.

It's tale of rise, fall, rise again, fall again.

How many times can you do it?

I don't know.

It's kind of interesting.

I've only seen him hitting the media circuit for this and he was on.

I don't know if it was good.

Morning America.

But he like talked about while he was deep into drug use and then shortly after hooking up with guys.

Yeah.

And then this was an unexpected part of his, you know, personality.

And he, he's like, I don't really regret it.

He said something along those lines and it's not so much, it's like, yeah, more power to you.

Cool, live your life.

But just the, the idea of shocking the moms of the world with like, we're just trying to get the kids out the door to go to school.

And Charlie Sheen is talking about, you know, the depths of his.

Yeah, I don't mind sexuality.

Yeah.

From.

From one of the co stars of Two and a Half Men.

This is shocking.

My parents used to love that show and it would make really mad that she.

That they liked it.

Yes, they're funny.

And I was like, it's not funny.

But that's neither here nor there because we need to tie this into Alabama.

We're an Alabama tape podcast.

You guys remember that, that when Charlie Sheen was in the maelstrom of his drug abuse, he flew to Tuscaloosa right after the tornado.

Oh, yes, I do indeed remember because he was like, he was like, hang on, Tuscaloosa, I'm coming.

And he was very nice.

I'm coming to save you.

And because of that, I think is why I watched some of this documentary.

I was like, yeah, I remember him.

He seemed nice.

He wore the Alabama Crimson Tide cap.

Didn't he donate quite a chunk of money or something?

I think so.

I believe he did.

So.

Hey, I don't know, it's kind of interesting.

I mean, he's weird and a little too cocky, but.

But you put those ingredients together and bake it in that oven, you're probably going to get a weird dude, right?

Sure.

And you know Martin Sheen's no angel.

No.

Who.

No.

I'm kidding.

We got, we got a great performance out of that in Apocalypse Now.

Blaine.

Exactly.

And they, they reference that and show that scene.

Yeah.

Although I was going to say, I'm not, I'm not sure actually that the, if you, if you look at like the arc of Martin Sheen's life, it's more that like self destructive behavior is ultimately self defeating.

So you have to get cleaned up so you can be the president on the West Wing.

Well, on the West Wing, yes.

In the United States.

Like I have a kind of fondness for folks like Martin and it sounds like Charlie and like David Bowie.

The folks that were like, they were just in like crazy and then they picked themselves up.

You know, they got help or whatever.

Pick themselves up.

And then they kept going and they kept making like art, you know, they kept doing stuff.

That's amazing.

Those folks are tougher than I can ever imagine.

Hey, Platoon is great.

Platoon is good.

Yeah.

Oliver Stone's not.

No, but Platoon and Charlie Sheen in that movie.

It's good.

He's good.

Hey, Red dawn is good, Blaine.

Red dawn is good.

It's okay.

I mean, I remember it.

It's okay.

God damn it, Blaine.

All that plus Black Rabbit would.

That's a Jude Law and Justin Bateman series is going to be on Netflix.

And you guys know me, oftentimes I'll.

I totally avoid spoilers, but oftentimes you just tell me either who's in it or who's directed it and I'll make my decision there.

Jude Law.

Okay.

Justin Bateman.

Okay, Black Rabbit.

Let's find out.

I think it.

I think it drops this Friday.

We'll see.

I'm often the same where it's like, I don't need to know the synopsis.

I want to see the actor.

I like Jude Law.

I do like you Law.

I think he can be brilliant.

We're just kind of overwhelmed with.

I again have to shake my fist at the.

The television and film universe because like, where was all of this in August?

Late July.

Yeah.

And now there's sports to watch, huh?

That's.

That.

That's the issue.

Yeah, I'm.

I watched Wake Forest play NC State Thursday night.

You think I've got time to watch tv?

I don't know that Jude Law is really cracking into that lineup.

You know what I mean?

But would he watch it?

Would he come sit on the couch with you and watch that?

Probably not.

Hey, Mark, I tell you who would Mark Ruffalo.

Probably down.

Yep, it's true.

We record on Sunday, release on Tuesday.

And some of our.

The best television releases are on Sundays, particularly with hbo.

Damn em to hell.

We will watch the releases early if you want to send them to us.

Hbo.

I actually thought, you know, you're kind of talking about like arcs and, and you know, the way people's lives unfold.

And I thought it was really kind of tragic that Mark Ruffalo, he used to be the Hulk and now he is forced to be in a Sunday night prestige HBO show.

That's sad.

That's tragic.

They will take all of my money if they make a lumpy Mark Ruffalo aging yet still the Hulk.

And I'm kind of angry, Blaine.

I know times are hard, but it's not that expensive to go to the movies, so you don't have to give them all of your money, buddy.

Do you know how broke I am?

It's.

It's like the, like, what if the Hulk had heartburn and he just, like, needs a. Yeah, he needs a break for a minute.

Nonetheless, Task debuted last Sunday, which is the show created and written by Brad Inglesby, who also wrote and created the Very Great Mayor of East Town.

We've praised that show and talked about it week by week when it was on the.

On hbo.

Task stars Mark Ruffalo.

Obviously he is not the Hulk here, though.

We haven't watched all of it.

We haven't watched all of it.

We're saving that for spoilers.

The Marvel universe is expansive.

Tom Pelfrey is on the opposite side of the law in this Philadelphia suburb set series.

It's a smart series thus far for a thriller, but the thrill for me comes not from who's going to be called and what they will do, but who do you sympathize with?

As we go through this, you can tell that's where they're going with it.

And it might be a little obvious, but if you're the kind of person who enjoys not necessarily a whodunit, but you know, who did it.

Now let's think about the morality of it all, then.

This is your show.

We've had some, I think, productive conversations about how we as viewers, you know, we do kind of naturally like line up with the point of view character.

And I do like that by having two pretty antithetical point of view character.

Or at least they're.

That's not true.

They're competing for different things.

Right.

So it is that kind of great.

Okay.

They're both the protagonist.

Who.

Who am I rooting for here?

Yeah.

Or at least enough to think and reflect about that.

Was the pilot too familiar ground for you?

Did you guys like it for Task?

I was going to say that it.

In a way, it feels like a throwback to the anti hero thing that so dominated television there for a few years and still does.

Really?

The.

Are the bad guys really that bad or the, you know, this is super dark kind of.

It did feel a bit like.

Like we've been here before.

And I, I'm sure I trust the writers and actors in this enough that I'm going to keep watching and I enjoyed it, you know, but it did feel like we weren't really seeing anything new.

If you're making the comparison to, say, the Sopranos are Breaking Bad, the anti hero there or Mad Men.

Like they were such point of view characters that even if that they were bad, you were still pulling for them.

Here it's divided right down the middle between Mark Ruffalo's character and Tom Pelfrey and I think that makes a difference.

Yeah.

And I think there were some, some good reviews that talked about family and the, the role of, you know, in a time when like masculinity is very much in the national international conversation, what that means, I think it's asking a lot of questions there in a way to, to do something like Mayor of East Town did and then to pivot back to a more conventional story is.

Is interesting.

You know, so ultimately it seems like it's going to be a family thing, which is a funny.

Yeah.

With this much non spoilery there.

There are weapons and drugs.

You know, just say, oh, a real.

Family story and a task force.

Yeah.

Tom Pelfrey lifted the Netflix series Iron Fists.

You know, that was the waning days of.

Was he in that?

I heard it wasn't good.

Is he?

Oh, it's not good at all.

But he was good in it.

It's great that he gets to do serious or maybe well written work here.

He was also in the Amazon series Outer Range, which wasn't bad.

He shined there even in scenes with Josh Brolin.

Yeah, I, I do not think I've seen him and stuff.

Oh, he's good.

He just seemed really, he seemed really good to me.

Well, the beard.

Well, yeah, I didn't.

I was looking at other things he done and by and large, I don't think I've seen him.

He's been clean shaven one thing or the other in everything I've seen him.

But yeah, Adam, there's this epidemic of male loneliness being reported, covered in media, discussed in all kinds of podcasts, from the positive and the negative side, from the manosphere to the brocast, whatever you want to call them.

One side of the coin, you got your, I guess, Jordan Petersons and the other side is the Jonathan Hates.

But this show seems to be facing it head on and timely.

Yeah, just the.

In, in the, in the swirling world of like, you know, are you an alpha, are you a whatever, are you beta?

Right.

I don't, I don't even engage with that stuff to know like the names of who's talking about it because it seems so ridiculous.

But I guess what's funny here, I don't know if we know how deep into spoilers we want to get but you know, there are two people that are still very much concerned with the people around them, which is going to be an interesting collision.

I think it adds to that.

No one is just purely ruthless.

Yes.

Dudes doing dude stuff.

Yeah.

About it.

There's all.

There seems to be a reason.

There seems to be empathy and responsibility.

I know empathy is a funny word to use this week, but, you know, and so to see how that plays out and a good guy versus bad guy scenario will be interesting.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

As soon as I was halfway through the episode, I worried the writers would be criticized as the show is really man heavy.

But that's the point of it now.

These are men without women, and we're seeing maybe the detriment of those situations.

These are weak men.

They're disguising their weakness.

One could argue the two primaries are.

One's doing a little better than the other by covering up fears and loneliness and existentialism.

But they're not strong, silent types.

Well, silent maybe, but they're not strong.

No.

And they're also not.

They're not shown to be okay with the lonely male thing, you know, like whether like the.

The ghost of the.

The women who are not in their lives is very much a character, you know, and they're even actively seeking it out and having like, in one case, like fairly healthy conversations with their.

With their guy friend about what to do about it.

Yeah.

It too has an aspect of the Apple TV show Dope Thief in it in that the criminals are casing and raiding drug houses for money.

So I can see that people would be like, well, we've seen this recently.

Well, I don't think quite like this.

And assuming I've got a correct read on it, intentional or not, there's this motif in the series and it makes for a good crime drama.

It's not just a catch the bad guy or who done it.

It's exploring some issues that are prevalent.

And I. I think it's pretty good.

I'd give this one a thumbs up and say I'm gonna watch more.

It tickled me personally that I made that joke about like, it's gonna be like God is dead.

And then he used to be a priest.

His priest friend shows up.

I don't know if you remember last week I said he was a philosopher.

Well, it turned out he used to be a philosopher.

Philosophy student, majored in college.

Yeah.

So I was half right.

The other pleasure of this is of course the same as mayor of Zeastown.

And that's hearing people say Wooder Ice water.

My wife pointed out they have interesting accents.

Well, we're finally getting into Alien Earth on the spoiler side of things soon in a little bit.

That's the Noah Hawley led production of a spaceship that hits future Earth and all hell breaks loose.

Until we get to the spoiler side of the podcast, though.

Donovan.

I'm going to be the experimental audience for this series as I've never seen an Alien related movie.

Yes.

Yeah, you're coming in pretty, pretty cold.

Yeah.

There's a lot to like about this show, but I think there is a lot for viewers to look at sideways.

What do you mean when you say look at sideways, Blaine?

Yeah, I think people, regular viewers might critique it or think badly about it.

Not me.

But it is so packed with thematic ideas, so much so that the characters will speak them aloud every now and again.

And your mileage may vary on that kind of series.

Yeah, I think that's a Noah Hawley thing too.

I think he does that in Fargo as well.

Yeah, he does it.

Did it.

Did it in Legion.

I don't think he does it as blatantly as he does here.

He did it in Fargo for sure.

That's interesting because I actually thought.

I had the opposite experience where I thought, oh, he's.

He's hiding it a little bit more in his characters than he has in some of Fargo.

For instance.

Well, I'm only two episodes deep.

You're in the.

Those are.

Those are the cinematic movie episodes.

Oh, they were anyway.

Yes.

And.

Exactly.

If you like action, gore, cerebral storytelling, it's for you.

Even if you're only slightly interested in science fiction or the Alien franchise, there.

Was already this kind of good stuff in the background of the Alien franchise that Holly was able to take and kind of repurpose, you know, everything.

They're in the midst of, like, corporate feudalism.

Yeah.

You know, you.

You was.

You.

You are.

You know, we even have the joke where like the, the.

We have the terrible trillionaire who says, oh, rescue survivors by income level, you know, and.

Yeah.

And then we've got.

I mean, like, what is the self territory.

Yeah.

Who.

Who are these people who think that they're children?

Yep.

Also, Timothy Oliphant's great.

Yes.

And he's a.

One of the major actors in the show.

It's our last week of discussion on the Brit Box and HBO Max series Blue Lights, set in Northern Ireland, following several cops in their attempt to, you know, do their job, basically.

Which is if there's a crime going on, you go to it.

And you try to figure out what's up in the spoiler section.

We'll discuss the details of the final two episodes of season two, which is all that's aired, but two more seasons are promised.

Did the second season live up to the first one, satisfy you with its ending, its resolutions?

You know, honestly, for the second, and I felt this a little bit with the first, it was good.

I was left wondering, what would they do if they had two more episodes?

Yeah, that was my.

Which is not a negative review, by the way, for this show.

I believe it was good.

But I, I felt like, man, if they'd had like two more episodes, I wonder what that would have been like.

Yeah, if you rap early rather than string it along, I think that's better.

But there were some moments where agreed.

There were some agreed scenes, some plot lines where I was thinking, oh, that's a little sudden.

I, I tend to agree with you there, Blaine.

I think that the worst sin is to, is to stretch it out.

Like those horrible, you know, we, we saw this with.

You already mentioned Iron Fist.

Like those Netflix Marvel shows were terrible at that.

But there was just, there was stuff here that I found, like, rich and interesting.

So it was more of a, like, I'd like to see a little bit more about that.

And, and I agree with you too, Blaine.

Like, some of it felt a little abrupt, but I think that's kind of a, you know, it's like, okay, you're interesting me.

I'd like to see what, what more you could develop with this as a.

Is a more positive review.

And I, and I don't think it's a vice to, to, to wrap it up in six either.

No.

But good news is we're getting a season three and four.

I'll be watching it, man.

And so come back to some of this stuff.

Yeah, for sure.

We're going to take a break right here.

And that will divide our show in two.

On the other side of the music and the call to action is our spoilers.

Sam.

Okay, we're back.

The first episode of the Sunday HBO crime drama Task debuted last week, and it's title crossings.

We'll discuss that in detail with spoilers, so use timestamps to skip ahead to the section on Alien Earth, if that's where you want to go.

Or Blue Lights.

I'm going to start with some praise.

I thought it was great.

I said so much in the non spoiler part of our podcast.

But in the opening Task does exactly what we, the three of us have asked Television to do and that's to show and don't tell, you know, just some good visual storytelling.

As Pelfree's character, Robbie.

And this was maybe the.

One of the most powerful visual storytelling I had seen in a long time in a show.

All he does is in the early morning dark is he moves his young son from one room to the other without waking him.

And that moved me heavy, heavily.

And that signaled to me as a viewer that he, yeah, he's going to be the baddie.

But he legitimately loves his family.

There's just something about that visual that's resonant and says way more than the actual action.

I thought all of the familial stuff on that side was so well done.

Did it in a show don't tell kind of way.

That scene you're talking about the rhythms of when he comes back from work and it's dinner time and just all of that was so like, you didn't have to say a lot.

You know, it's by.

By clearly showing this.

This is just a normal day in this guy's life, you know, and it's.

It's as close to like a normal routine as you can get.

Yes.

His niece, who's caring for the family for the majority of the time, she didn't have to say, well, we don't have any money in the bank.

Right.

You knew that.

Right.

And.

But.

But Mark Ruffalo's character, Tom, has some nice visual storytelling.

To begin, he's shown struggling to pray.

He drinks a 32 ounce cup of vodka on the daily and he appears out of shape.

Not the Mark Ruffalo of mcu.

No.

And he's.

You know, when you have seen the warm and fuzzies of the.

The criminals family life and then you see a big nice house that feels very empty in most of the shots.

Yeah.

That was also very good storytelling.

And just the.

I don't know, maybe it's because I have had to go to them and be on both sides of it, but the clinical nature of his, like, come to the job fair, you know, him stacking all of the.

You don't have to know that this is a guy whose career has gone sideways.

You don't have to talk about it like something happened.

But the guy sorting the pamphlets and putting them in a little plastic stand.

Nobody wants to be that guy.

For the FBI.

For the FBI.

It's not like he's doing it for Dollar Tree.

Right.

Which would be, I don't know, another story.

Because of that storytelling, I felt that by the end of the episode, all the questions I had were either inconsequential.

For example, they don't right away say that Maeve is his niece.

So I'm like, could be an older sister or younger sister of his.

And the.

So it doesn't matter ultimately.

And it's addressed and it's not.

And then the.

The big questions, right?

Like, what happened in these families?

And I thought that was just great because, you know, like, you know, like you said, you know exactly who these people are, but you don't know what happened to them.

And they're in a time that's not settled.

You know, that you see the conflict with the niece over the house and who's.

Who truly has ownership of a dead man's things, essentially indicating that they're very much in the unsettled stages of grief on that.

And then on the other side, you have a father trying to coach his daughter through giving a statement on something that the brother did in the family.

All that's still very vague.

Right.

I don't think I missed anything.

But all we really know is that something happened in the family unit.

There's an extra kid in a photograph he looks at right there.

That's about all we know.

That's about all we know.

Well, Tom takes a suit of clothes to a prison environment, and they ask if he wants to stick around for visitation, and he says no.

Well, we know where one son is for sure.

That's right.

Yeah.

Yes, for sure.

So are these over complicated characters?

You know, should we have at least one person who has it together a little?

I mean, the daughter.

The daughter's doing pretty well.

Yeah.

She works at Rita's.

Yeah.

The layers of issues from these people are troubles on top of troubles.

Tom can't pray.

He's quit the priesthood.

He doesn't want to be anything more than an FBI worker at a desk or at a job fair.

Maybe his son's in jail.

His daughter's distant, needs him to say something at her brother's hearing.

Or she needs to say something at her brother's hearing.

Tom's got no wife to help him out.

He's aging.

He's out of shape.

That's just Tom went and gotten to Robbie.

This is a show that dares to ask, is God dead?

I really appreciated the Thomas Merton shout out.

I did too.

I like as a person he's no longer interested in.

That was good.

Wasn't felt like a good tie in with obviously it was a Richard Rohr reference there for the friend that comes in, it's like, oh, yeah, yeah, he's done.

Yeah, well, yeah.

Brings me to.

One of my favorite scenes is when he taps the desk, the table, and says, is God in this table?

And he says, are you there?

He must be on bathroom break.

Yeah.

I am curious if they're going to keep up this idea of, like, imminence, of.

I don't want to, like, narrow it down to one religion, but like, imminence of the divine, basically, like in.

In the dirt.

Because that's where that table is, that it's in the dirt of our lives.

And are we gonna.

Is this something we're gonna see more of?

You know, is.

Is it.

Does the divine as the friend.

The friend who's a priest, Father Daniel proposes, Does the divine in fact extend so far as to be in Robbie's family or in the actions with two men who are doing things that are probably not very moral or ethical?

I'm curious.

It may not.

That may just be my own thought, but I thought that was an interesting question to bring in.

It is the withholding the show does points you in the right directions.

I think it wants to show you, you know, family, the divine.

What role does man and woman play in modern families?

This series also relied on repeated images of birds and sometimes nature as a whole.

As Robbie and his friends go swimming, you know, like, give us some freedom, nature, carefree feelings, which is what a lot of these people are lacking or wish to have.

That is a funny moment when, you know, they've shown to kind of live out in the country, you know, on land, and they go swimming.

And it's like.

It made me think.

A lot of people think that you have to attain money to be able to afford those things.

And it's like both sides of the bell curve are enjoying nature more profoundly than maybe the folks stuck in the middle.

Obviously, he is changing his financial situation a few nights a week, it seems like.

But yeah, that scene, I mean, there was a few cues that, like, this little gang is not going to make it out of this episode.

Right.

Like, no one can have that good a time swimming and everybody make it out alive.

That was a really well done scene.

I mean, you're immediately taken there, that summer green, that part of the country.

You're like, oh, yeah, we're just having a great day.

And another thing that task does, and this is super simple, is that when they don those masks, those things are kind of scary.

Yeah.

And when you get your quote unquote bad guys who look scary, I like that in a show.

Agreed.

And I immediately loved the Robbie character.

Despite his wrongdoings.

He's just got some relatable motives.

It's also using masks like that works in like the classic way that a mask is supposed to work.

Like it separates the individual from the image that they're projecting and it allows them to do.

And I know this is like crime 101, but as opposed to just like pulling like a hood over your face or something like that and running in like, this has like some theater to it.

I would dare say that there's some specificity to the mask they picked for each character.

The skull, the devil, and the werewolf and the wolf man.

Yeah, I would agree with you.

I've been wrong.

By TV once again.

I've always assumed a task force was very high level here.

It's like treated low man on totem pole.

Well, this is the era of budget cuts.

Yeah, but that was another interesting thing about the task force is like, you get the impression that for some of them, this is like a.

A big deal.

I mean, I kind of got the impression like, oh, we're working with the FBI.

I have my little FBI hat.

Maybe even if this specific exercise is not a big deal, like, it's still like, okay on the resume, you know, like, and clearly for our main guy, he's.

He's stepping down to run this thing, but.

Yeah.

Is everyone meeting at the same space in their career?

I'm not sure how we're supposed to read that quite yet.

Adam, did you feel related to the Ruffalo character?

He grows tomatoes connected to Earth, drinking 32 ounce vodka.

Deeply depressed.

I was thinking, you know, Adam.

Adam is a noted bird watcher.

One bird in particular.

He's got to watch out for that mockingbird.

The only mockingbird.

That's right.

I did think the montage of him cleaning up the house that they're going to use for the task force.

I thought, man, I could hire this guy.

Well, I thought that, man, any job is hard work.

Usually what you see on these kinds of shows is him opening the files and peering over and creating the cork board.

And I just kept thinking over and over again, they don't have somebody that does this for them.

Can agent go out.

And I appreciate a series demonstrating Ruffalo having to fix a house he's been given for the task force to convenience.

It's also a real dad flex.

Right?

Like, this guy's not a casual dad.

This is a guy who, you give him an overgrown house, he's not only going to pull the weeds off.

But you know, you got some, some walls that need patching.

He can figure it out.

He's making an attempt at transcendentalism, but he just can't break free from the drinking.

Maybe because his son's in prisons or some of the worries or lack of wife.

Straight to the vodka too.

I mean, 32 ounce, that's a lot of vodka.

I discussed in the introduction that these are lonely men, but I think everybody in Robbie's house is lonely, including his daughter and the 21 year old niece who's tasked to, to watch over the house while Robbie does his job as a garbage truck driver.

She tells her cousin she's going on a date with a guy who's a six.

But it beats being alone and stuck in a house with fart jokes.

But she's lonely too, man, the way.

That they set that character up.

I don't know if you guys also at 21, 22, thought like, well, I'm, I really don't know what the hell's going on.

You're off the leash, so to speak, but you also don't really have anywhere.

It's like, I don't understand how this works.

Now what do I do?

It's hard to see how to put one foot in front of the other.

And her just like complete frustration with that when it bubbles over in a few different ways is.

I don't know.

I thought that was well done and characterized that, that kind of moment in life so well, obviously to the extreme of like, I'm caring for children that are not mine.

I'm stuck in with.

With the ghost of her dad.

Right.

And his brother who's like trying to edge in on the.

I don't know, it all just seems so, you know, they work backwards from showing like her putting her best effort into the dinner.

Yeah.

Because she got the recipe online or whatever.

And it's like trying to spruce things up a little bit.

She tries so hard.

But that food did not look edible.

No, it didn't.

And even the little things like him getting on his son, like, we have to be nice.

I'm going to shoot somebody later this episode.

But you still have to be nice to the person who cooked your dinner.

Yeah.

I liked it.

As a counterpoint to kind of like that family can be like this deep wellspring of love as we see when he, Robbie brings his son into the bed without, without waking him.

But also like sometimes family is the people you're stuck with.

Yeah.

And she's feeling stuck, you know, she is.

The task force itself is going to be our other family, I'm willing to bet.

Absolutely.

And it's just another example of everything going to.

They're green or weird or headaches.

Like the lady who doesn't know how phone etiquette at the job.

She shows up having not read the brief and reminds me all too much of that person who shows up in.

You're like, why didn't you read the email?

If you would have just read the email would get started right now.

This project nightmare.

Yeah.

Group project nightmare 101.

Yep.

And I mean all the storylines are pretty pitiful.

That younger daughter of Robbie's who she needs that motherly affection yet she overhears her 21 year old niece might move and she's like, you know, I don't want you to move.

The young boy, he needs someone.

He needs a.

He needs a man.

They're living in poverty.

Everyone's lonely, tired or both.

Family can be very isolating especially if you're somebody who has maybe a clannish idea of family.

You know, these are the people who are the most in.

And we're distinct from everybody else because you are kind of.

I mean.

And maybe we'll see more of this but they seem lonely as a unit.

You know, where are the friends?

There's Uncle Trash.

Where are the kids?

Friends.

Who do they have?

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And we did just get a one episode glimpse.

Oh for sure.

I did wonder.

They.

That was just the impression.

They felt very isolated there.

For sure.

It's like are they going to school?

Do they have.

Yeah, that was.

They have classmates.

Yeah.

But at the same time when the niece goes out and brings the boy back, there was almost like kind of an endearing moment of like he jumps into the closet to try not to embarrass.

And what starts is like.

Like he's.

He's trying to.

I'm sorry, I couldn't help but think of that the Dave Chappelle when keeping it real goes wrong.

Where he has to go live with his grandmother and she's trying to get her swerve on too.

Yeah.

But it's like he's trying so hard to stay out of her way and then finally just like I'm sorry, I'm leaving, I'm leaving.

And the guy.

And obviously it goes to shit.

And that's when the fight pops off.

But he was even trying to be.

A good guy then all he was doing was stealing some reefer.

He was trying to get up there.

He was Gonna roll it up and smoke it like a cigarette.

Cooking food here works really well.

Tom's daughter serves him that.

What is it?

Is it.

It's not ice cream.

What do you call it?

It's Italian ice.

Italian ice.

Beth was very.

My wife grew up in Pennsylvania, so she was very tickled to see Arenas, which was a fixture of her hometown.

Gotcha.

So it's Italian ice.

Water is Italian ice.

And he got just an ungodly amount of it.

Good Lord.

Yeah.

But, you know, other than that, Tom only intakes vodka.

He delivers tomatoes.

Robbie's niece Maeve doesn't cook.

Well, we talked about that, how it's a strange relationship.

And then the cooking being bad is a hint of that.

But let's get to the real heartbreak here.

Robbie carries the kidnapped kid in the same manner that he kind of moves his own son from one bed to another.

It's.

It's.

There's a similar book.

Ends of the episode.

Yeah.

So they go to bust into the most recent drug house to rob them.

It goes to hell.

And they didn't know there was a kid there, and they have to take the kid with them, or Robbie feels as though that's the right thing to.

Do as soon as they took their masks off.

Right.

You know that it's not over.

Yeah.

It's a.

It's a series with this first episode sets up that kids are important here in this world.

In this series, you know, it ends with the kidnapped child from the drug house.

I'd be curious to know if Tom's son is the reason the wife's not around.

She had no desire to see him in prison or something.

I was kind of shocked to see the plot move forward as fast as it did in the last 15 minutes with the death of one of Robbie's crew.

Oh, I figured he was marked for death.

I mean, between the swimming and saying, oh, yeah, one more job, and we can get the down payment on the.

The wedding.

It's like, oh, man, McBain.

Enjoy your screen.

First, though.

Don't you try to drag the body away from the crime scene.

I get you can't clean the blood, but do you just leave the body there?

Or is that.

Is that the point?

You leave it there so that there's somebody to blame for the killings and the robbery.

It's just the one guy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, you almost wonder if, like, the calculus there is.

We're already in, like, a hell house, you know?

Like, this is where bad things happen.

If you're.

They're not as Breaking into, like, a suburban home, you know, so, like, that bad people would shoot each other as maybe less of a blip on the radar than, like, finding a body in the woods.

Yes.

I get the sense that these folk, Robbie and his friends don't.

They don't have a big contingency plan for if things go wrong based off of, like, everything I know is from TV and movies.

Right.

But, like, they go up to peach boy, right?

It's.

It's.

It's middle of the day.

They're not make.

You know, they don't care if anyone's listening in.

They say, hey, we're, you know, we're gonna tonight.

You know what I mean?

Like, they just seem kind of amateurish, like they didn't know what to do.

Although they.

They clear a house pretty well to start out.

They do.

They for and for.

They are seem to be expert shots since they all hit someone with a firearm in the midst of confusion and dark without hitting their friends in one shot.

Yeah, they've done this before.

They have fired weapons.

Certainly they have, but that was just my impression is that, like, these guys are not like hardened criminals.

They're not like, what's good?

What are we gonna do when one of us inevitably dies?

You know?

Right.

You do wonder.

I mean, is.

Y'.

All, correct me if I'm wrong, but he gets a text from someone, right, Saying, like, this is the time to move on.

This one who texted him?

Yeah.

Yeah.

They got someone else involved or helping.

There's a lot, a lot to look forward to in this show.

Do we like our East Town shout out.

Anyone else catch it?

I felt very pleased if you.

In the recruiter fair, where the job fair that Mark Ruffalo is at when he's testing his binoculars, he looks at a police officer right behind it on the banner.

You can see that part of the website says easttownpd.org so presumably the police officers from Easttown.

So.

I thought that was cute.

Very good.

Same universe as mayor of Easttown.

Yeah.

So there you go.

It's the expand.

So a lot to look forward to with tasks.

But for now, as one begins, one ends.

Alien Earth is airing on FX and Hulu.

And here are our more detailed ideas about the series thus far.

Well, not thus far.

I'd say only the first two episodes.

We'll be spoiling those.

And then the rest of the series next week as it wraps itself.

First season Donovan.

Does it have a second season plan?

I don't think anything's been confirmed yet.

Okay.

I mean, it Seems like it will need a second season, but we'll see how.

I'm sure.

It was not cheap to make, so.

It looked very expensive to make.

Yes.

My impression of this first episode titled Neverland, was that it held me at a remove.

And I couldn't distinguish if that was on purpose because a lot of these characters are not thoroughly human, but cyborg synths and hybrids.

And just for clarity, if anybody can't remember enhanced humans or cyborgs, artificially intelligent beings or synths, and synths that have human consciousness put into them are hybrids, and all are.

These are just this attempt at immortality.

So I also.

I couldn't tell if that was the remove I was feeling, but I couldn't pinpoint if the arm's length of feeling was from this being my first encounter with the franchise.

I did often ask myself if I was missing something.

No, I don't think he did.

I think I felt the same way, although I kind of.

I kind of liked it.

You know, we're.

We're getting a skewed view of.

Honestly, what I. I think was kind of part of it was like, we're on like, Dr. Moreau's island here, right?

Like this.

This is Dr. Frankenstein stuff, right?

You know, it was like, perhaps we are making monsters here there.

Okay.

So I said that I felt as episode one, I felt like it held me at arm's length.

It felt distant.

It felt a little cold.

I watched it again.

Oh, yeah, I did.

Huh.

Because I watched it the first time really late at night, and I was like, was that.

You know, was I tired?

Was that it?

Yeah.

I still felt the remove, but I also noted doubly there's a lot to enjoy here.

The aesthetic of the show is eye catching, to say the least.

The way it tells its story by glimpses into the past and perhaps future in short cutaways.

I mean, they're.

They're not even short cutaways.

They're almost like inserts, glitches on of the screen.

And also has this way.

And maybe the original film did this.

You can tell me.

It also has this way of slow fading from one scene to another that looks both retro and gives you a sense of matters lingering or time moving at different speed here.

I think that's more for this.

That's Holly.

Really?

Yeah, it's.

It's almost like time moves differently in our future.

I. I think I said this first time I brought up.

I will probably have trouble talking critically about it just because there much stuff that just thrilled me in this first episode and that it also seemed like it's able to be using science fiction to talk about, you know, like, really, like really real things.

I will say, I do want to shout it out.

The set designs, the design elements are excellent because, you know, obviously Alien, the first alien is 1978.

79, something like that.

78.

78.

So they're, they.

They're doing such an excellent job of doing, like, this is the futuristic technology we imagined in the 70s.

Yeah, this looks fantastic.

And the scroll on the screen to explain hybrids in the year and the city you're in, it felt straight from, you know, 79, early 80s.

I loved it.

I loved it.

That being said, I felt that it instantly fell.

I felt like it instantly fell into its own Groo.

The kids with Boy Cavalier with the mad science that he's doing on his island.

Okay, so here's my question about his entire collection of scenes.

Do you need the blatant Peter Pan references or should that have been implied and work in that manner?

What they.

I kind of do is have him read from the book show the cartoon.

We, the young lady who moves to a new healthy synthetic body, she chooses the name Wendy.

It's very overt.

Obviously they are spending their Disney money here.

We've got a little corporate.

I mean, honestly, we've got a little corporate synergy going on.

Right?

It's the Disney version of Peter Pan that they see actually every movie that.

This is a complete aside, but like every movie this child has ever seen is like 150 years old at this point.

Yeah, yeah.

Modern art is muck, right?

And I.

That's just.

I mean, that's not a real quibble or anything.

I just.

It's just funny.

I actually thought that there are good real world parallels to a trillionaire who loves a book.

But how does he understand it?

His interpretation is completely off.

Right.

Or we'll find out.

And I'll give you.

I'll give you.

Well, I mean, I'll give you a real world example of this.

Peter Thiel has a small company called.

Has a company called Palantir, which comes from the Lord of the Rings novels.

In my opinion, and many people who studied it.

Tolkien would be like, what are you doing?

Oh, for sure.

But it was obviously very meaningful to him enough to name it.

Same thing with like the story of Peter Pan.

Right?

Is Boy Cavalier the boy who never grows up?

Is he Peter Pan?

Because Peter Pan is not a hero.

No, Peter Pan is sort of a primal force, you know, and not growing.

Up to me is Hanging on to that childlike sense of wonder and awe and innocence and not immortality and looking good.

Well, you know, if you.

I believe.

Doesn't it start with all children grow up except one, and, you know, that's Peter.

And, you know, there is, you know, like, you're all, you know there is even in the book itself.

Right.

Because it almost starts off with Wendy's.

Wendy becomes aware that she will die as a small child, and it's like her first moment of this, and, like, that's sad and scary.

But we're not supposed to be children forever, and we are supposed to grow up.

And without death, there's no meaning to life.

There's no, you know, Peter Pan's life is an endless game.

He can't form real emotional attachments with people.

And I think that worked with me.

I mean, it is a little on the nose, but, like, the guy's name is Boy Cavalier.

And Cavalier having the double meaning of being, like, dashing knight.

Right.

But also.

Yeah, yeah.

Send the kids into a disaster site.

I don't care.

Yes.

The cow.

Yet, like, the.

The emotional callousness and treating these children like toys.

That works for me.

And.

But it's also the example of, like, who.

Who hasn't grown up, obviously, Boy, but other people, too, perhaps.

Will they be children forever?

Yeah.

I did talk about non spoilers that there are characters who speak the themes, and sometimes that can be annoying and sometimes you dig it.

But there are plenty more ideas under the surface, too.

I think there's a lesson in some of this, that there's no sense in thinking you're the biggest and the baddest and the richest.

So stop trying to be.

Not just in science fiction, but country to country, person to person.

I thought that when you said they're speaking the themes, the first example that popped into my head was Kirsch on the ship saying, you all know you used to be.

And that worked for me.

At the end of the first episode, he says, you used to be food was how.

He said, it's pretty vague.

And then he explains humans used to.

Be, and now they just believe they're not.

It's working.

It worked with me thematically.

It worked with me that Kirsch is also a character who's at this kind of odd, icy remove.

Timothy Oliphant is playing him.

Very ice cold.

It just.

It worked for me, you know?

It did.

The.

The almost contempt.

Oh, it was the synthetic frightening, I would say.

The contempt that this synthetic being held for humanity.

Yeah, yeah.

And then we get the wonderful.

It's jumping ahead a little bit.

But in the second episode let's get into when the kids are.

When the kids are acting scared.

I love Timothy Oliphant's delivery of Fear is for animals.

You are not animals.

Episode two is Mr. October speaking of art and sports here.

That's 150, 160 years old.

Yeah.

It was what it Was it a 70s World Series game that he's.

That the.

The brother hermit who's a medic in a platoon of.

Of soldiers for this corporate entity question.

When was that?

Was that 79 or the early 80s?

I think that I think they said and I even in the show.

But I'd forgotten.

Episode two though got its hooks in me.

The set for me.

The setup from episode one with like the alien is out, the ship is crashing.

We've got Morrow, you know he's literally.

And not Adam Morrow, our co host.

Yeah.

He's literally in a little coffin here.

And then just the panoramic of like a spaceship just hit a city.

It's all hands on deck.

Like what do we do with the addition of Boy is allowing something terrible to happen to these children because he's put.

He doesn't know what they're going to see.

He doesn't know what they're going to do.

He doesn't know what they're going to encounter.

Yeah, I wouldn't put it.

I would.

Not the same thing.

But like you wouldn't put a 12 year old at like World Trade center cleanup, would you?

Who knows what they're going to.

Who knows what they're going to see?

Who knows what they're going to encounter.

That's a good analogy.

The conversation between Boy Cavalier and Dame Silva.

Sylvia.

Excuse me.

About their children's potential or not their children.

Just children's potential.

And the possible ending, the possible death exemplifies, you know, characters who discuss the themes of the work while you're doing it.

And then of course you mentioned Timothy Oliphants Kirsch did it in the first episode where he told Wendy Humanities has just tricked itself that it's not food anymore.

But that's.

Yep.

We're seeing that's not the.

The case in this episode.

And of course, you know that is kind of one of the right.

The big of the first film.

Right.

Like you do have the ultimate predator.

The alien is the xenomorph is the ultimate predator loose in the ship and.

And there's humanity for all of its.

You know, it can make ships that Go to different star systems.

It can make artificial people for all that we are.

Maybe not food for the xenomorph, but a really good place for you to, you know, for.

For an embryo to grow up.

For episode two, I felt it was mostly search and rescue.

I'll just call it that.

Trying to find Wendy's brother.

Hermit.

That's his last name.

I, I thought it was high tension in every scene I was plugged in.

And even the scenes when it cut to Boy Cavalier talking to the other head of corporation about, hey, we own the spaceship.

He's like, yeah, but I own the building in the city.

I found that interesting.

Me too.

I think it was a well directed episode as well.

It had tight angles even that had you peering over shoulders constantly, which is.

That's just the Alien franchise, I'm assuming.

Well, you.

You get some of that more in, like, Aliens, which is the James Cameron second movie.

Yeah.

Which is.

I won't go too much into it, but it's.

It's more of an action almost like a war film than the first Alien.

I'm going to use Alien Earth as a launching pad to watch some of those movies.

First two.

Very, very good.

And David Fincher is even involved in, like, the third one, right?

Yeah.

Although that one, famously, there was a lot of corporate meddling.

Kind of like a fascinating failure is the basic, basic judgment of it.

No fingerprint of Fincher on it.

Fingerprints of Fincher.

Yeah, but.

And then the fourth one is.

Is fine.

And then the, the.

Anyway, that's getting off the topic.

Well, let's do this, Donovan.

Let's.

Yes.

The show ends, I think, the day of our release on Tuesday.

It's the final episode of season one.

Could be another season.

We don't know.

But anyway, we.

We talked about the first two episodes.

We talked about, like, here's the layout.

Here are the thematic ideas.

What's it going to turn into?

That's what we'll talk about next week.

I will have watched all of them, as will you.

Excellent.

I got it.

I gotta say, now that you've seen the two episodes of Alien, like, there was some just, like, great creature feature moments that I could not believe.

Like when the Xenomorph gets into that.

That party of Fox and you have the guy cut in half and he's.

I'm like, I can't believe I'm seeing this on fx.

Oh, I want.

I said the same to myself.

I thought, is this the grossest show I've seen on television?

I was, I was.

I Was astounded.

Not that, like I revel in the gore, but as much like it's a.

It does have that in its DNA that it's a creature feature science fiction movie.

And that was all the cat, too.

Pretty effective.

Oh, I did not like that.

So therefore it was effective.

The gore is done not to be gory.

Like, it works in on a level somehow or another, and I can't synthesize it well enough.

But the gore creates the fear.

Yes, that's it.

It's not reveling.

It doesn't feel like it's reveling in it.

It's more like, holy smokes, if this xenomorph can cut us in half, maybe we are food.

We're food for him or her or it.

Well, that's what we got on alien Earth.

What we're going to do now is we're going to finalize our thoughts on Blue Lights because the first two seasons have completed.

The third season's coming this year quite soon.

From my understanding.

It will be on BBC and BritBox soon after.

If you don't want to hear anything about the first two seasons of Blue Lights from Britbox, come back to this later.

It's the show from Adam Peterson, Declan Long, and Louise Gallagher.

So we're really gonna hone in on the final two episodes of the second season, which is.

They're all streaming on HBO Max.

So still, this is where Tommy has gotten beaten by the same thug he was told to stop and question.

You know, there's just no winners in this system.

Poor Tommy.

He's trying, you know, he's.

He's kind of the boy scout character, right?

Yeah.

Like, following the rules and.

Yeah, he gets the spit kicked out of him.

Do people like that exist anymore?

Is this realistic enough?

He's certainly an idealist.

That's a great question, Blaine.

I mean, not to be silly, but, like, in this day and age, is it conceivable and believable that somebody would believe in the system, believe in an institution, believe in following the rules.

Yeah.

And believe that.

You know, I think we learn in the first season that his.

He's kind of interested in practical applications of what he was learning academically in his sort of, like, sociology classes.

Is there anyone out there who thinks that would work anymore?

It's kind of.

Kind of sad to say.

I'm such a cynic.

I don't believe in any institutions anymore.

I mean, I think there's pretty much every big capital I institution we can think of.

We either, you know, we Know enough of the.

For example, this is a little example, but like any sports franchise, you know, to be, which is not really a capital I institution, but I think for us to be viewers in this day and age, we, we know enough.

And I mean this has probably always been true, but at least we feel in this moment that if we like or support or cheer for something like a sports team, we've, we, We've made our peace with something else.

Yes.

As much as we can.

And then I think that, you know, between the way that we've seen capital I institutions misused, perverted, undermined, religion being the easiest example.

Religion, Law enforcement, government, you know, I think we, you know, public, public work.

And here it's policing.

Policing.

Yep.

Where I want to be is episode five that begins with the aftermath of Tommy's beating and any deservedly punching smart ass Canning Murray.

Oh man.

If you thought he had the most punchable face in the show, you all were correct.

Certainly the most punchable personality.

Absolutely.

And another.

Yes, go ahead.

I mean, sorry, but just, you know, exactly the.

On the theme developed in the first season and what you just said here, you know, he really, he's.

He betrays Tommy's faith in the institution by being who he is and doing what he does.

Oh yeah.

And Tommy takes a lot of joy in seeing him get anything done to him.

Yeah.

I mean we all did.

Yeah.

As the neighborhood lady was explaining to Lee that Dixon or Hamill had let her have money with the offer of helping her pay for her kids Christmas presents, yet she can't get ahead due to all the interest that compounds.

I could not help but think of credit card companies doing the exact same to me right now.

Oh, for sure.

You know, Lee forgives her loans, so which is worse?

Corporations are crime lords in that moment.

You want to cheer for Lee Thompson.

I wanted to see the rest of the meetings that he was having that day.

When his right hand man came out and yelled next.

I was like, well that.

What good deed is he doing next?

It's true, Blaine.

A lot of what credit card companies, payday loan people, stuff like that.

A lot of it is.

Is legal versions of criminal activity for sure.

And then obviously it is.

This is a little, this is a little rant on, on the side here too.

But you know, credit cards can afford those, you know, rewards cash back.

They are not giving that out to you out of the kindness of their heart.

They can afford them because they' enough people in their system of poverty that they will never escape.

They will never be able to pay it off.

And they will forever be a creditor.

And I think, too part of the.

And you could sort of see it sideways in this episode, part of the problem is, well, you should have been responsible.

You should never have taken that money, you know, and.

And we're not like, as if us, the little folks, have the power and the reach to reshape economies like a credit card corporation does, or like, Dixon can reshape.

Well, the estate that he's on.

Declan loan did a perfect situation here, assuming he was one of the writers here.

I apologize for not knowing, but your kids Christmas presents, that's the one thing you're going to do.

Absolutely, you know, off.

If you're not doing anything else.

You get your kids something for Christmas, and you make them have a great Christmas however you can.

That's the thing, right?

Like, you know, the cold legal thing is like, well.

Or this is illegal in this case, but we pretend it was a credit card company.

Well, you were an informed consumer.

Exactly.

You knew the choices.

You could read the interest rate on the.

I'll give you a real world example that's even worse.

I went to buy a car recently, signed all the documents, took the car home.

I get a letter in the mail three weeks later, it says, oh, the interest rate they gave you was wrong.

It's actually a little higher.

You're going to be paying a little bit more in interest.

And I thought to myself, you do that in the criminal world, your ass gets shot.

I was gonna say, how is that legal?

Yeah, them.

You know, and then, anyway, I completely agree with you, Blaine.

In this moment, we're cheering for Lee, and Lee's a bad guy.

Oh, in that moment, I.

If somebody would have been watching the show with me, I would have.

High five.

I would have thought, this guy's so awesome.

He said.

And it was just with the calm, cool conviction of, no, don't worry about it.

You just, let's just make this neighborhood good.

This is flipping kind of going on.

Something I mentioned.

I would have loved to see what would have happened with a few more episodes.

This is actually one of the occasions where I was like, I would really love to see, like, what Lee would like, because it all kind of.

Kind of comes crumbling down on him very quickly.

I would have liked an episode more because it is like, you know, you know, he's doing it probably very cynically, but it's working, right?

He might be cynically, but there is a little heart to it.

Well, I was just about to say.

But on the other Hand.

You can't argue that he's genuinely making the estate a better place by forgiving this woman's debts.

Exactly.

And so I. I wanted to see a little bit more of that.

It reminds me of Biden forgiving the student loans for however many that he did.

And you got people saying, I had to pay mine.

Yeah.

And you're thinking as if two wrongs make a right.

There's that.

But you do realize this is going to make things better.

Yeah, well, that's what I mean.

You know, putting them through misery does not make this current situation better.

I do think.

And this is a completely other.

But there is a.

There's a big streak of folks who will say to something like, that's not fair, that sometimes it's not fair, but sometimes these are folks who.

There seems to be this idea that hurting other people will make something better.

And I think we're.

If I can bring it around.

We do see that sort of thematically here in Blue Lights.

You know, Lee uses violence.

He kills people.

Yeah.

And he believes that, you know, blowing up someone's house is going to make things better.

And we even see him making things that little bit of better, but we also see him using violence very cynically.

This is jumping ahead a little bit.

Yeah.

So I'm.

I'm.

I mean, I do think that I love the guy that they got to play Lee.

I. I have.

I say I gotta.

I gotta pull up his name because I.

Well, wasn't he also in say Nothing?

Was he Lee Thompson?

Seamus o'.

Hara.

Boy, if he was Seamus, I truly apologize If.

Yeah, he wasn't.

Say Nothing.

You're right.

Yeah.

He had a monorail.

That's right.

I. I thought he was excellent because, you know, you really.

He's got the calm, he's got the cool.

And you want to trust him.

Right.

Don't you?

Yeah, I want to love him and trust him.

And you want to see him.

You want to see him just like his little nephew sees him.

Exactly.

The show's great at presenting hard decisions.

Yes, Lee Thompson may be the best option, and removing him could cause something worse to fill that void.

But he's also working with the same people who killed.

Yep.

Jerry And.

And dealt drugs.

The decision here's so balanced that it's hard to make.

I mean, I do think that, you know, it was.

It was.

It was done well in the first season.

And I think with Canning presenting the option.

Right.

Like, okay, he's a known quantity.

If we work with him, we can manage him.

We can manage the damage as opposed to the next guy.

Could just be a total loose cannon.

You know, we could have 50 bodies on the street.

But exactly like you said, you're just keeping the same system in.

You're never improving it.

That at best, you're keeping it in place.

And how about that?

Having Canning, one of the most reviled characters, make the good point, like, yeah, you know, he's right.

Yeah, yeah, it was good.

What does it say that when Murray breaks the rules, it's okay, but yet when others did, especially last season, it was frowned upon.

If not, you know, here he.

The lady Jen Robinson's mother.

Mom.

The chief, I suppose we would call her, or the commissioner.

She is, you know, pretty actively saying it's okay, do that.

Yeah.

Honestly, part of it is.

I would say it's that institution part of, like, who it's.

I was going to say it's like it's part of who.

Who makes and who can break the rules.

Right.

You get to a certain level, you know what you can get away with.

Yeah, this.

Yeah.

Institutions do lie, you know, to themselves and to you.

In this penultimate episode, for three fourths of the episode, Stevie and Grace didn't share a scene.

It was perfect.

Good timing.

But when they serve the warrant to the old lady for the video footage and Steven gives Grace the look of, oh, well, we're staying for tea then, aren't we?

Yeah.

That is such worth.

That is.

There's such value in keeping them apart to have that moment.

I know, it's all payoff right there.

Yeah.

It serves to remind the viewers of how human Grace is as a cop.

It's just that extra reminder.

And I mean, like, it worked.

It worked for me too.

You know, they just have such a good.

The two actors have such a good dynamic.

Right.

Like, Stevie, if he was by himself, would never stay for tea because Grace is staying for tea.

Stevie will be staying for tea.

Great pairing, great chemistry.

Two great actors.

I don't think season two was quite as good as season one, but they're fairly balanced.

There has never been a more telegraph moment than Henry getting the gun, but the swerve it took from him and what ended up happening, I think was a little different than what you would normally see.

I thought he was going to end up dead.

Yeah, me too.

I thought it was good.

It surprised me.

And then also gave Lee his opening to be very, very cynical about the use of violence and what he's unleashing on his estate.

Because these are folks also, I don't this I don't.

This.

Maybe this is just the difference between policing in this country, but I feel like if you threw a firebomb at a cop in this country, you would be dead.

Yeah.

I couldn't believe they were like, you.

You, you and you and all your friends would be tear gassed.

Yeah.

The military would have come in.

Yeah.

I mean, like, we have police that.

That.

That tear gas, you know, protesters for throwing a bottle, much less a firebomb that could kill someone.

Oh, for.

For standing around in some cases.

Yeah, exactly.

After eliminating Jerry's character in the final episode of last season, the first season, the possibility of Stevie or Grace being shot was tense enough.

I assumed that would be all they could get for the tension from that scene.

But no, that kid came out of the apartment complex with the gun still in his hand, and you're like, oh, he could still do some damage.

Yeah.

I thought it was.

It was great because neither of them being hit.

It's like, okay, that was a good fake out.

But then it's like, oh, but we have a.

A seriously scary situation with a child holding a loaded fire.

Are we gonna kill a kid?

Is the kid gonna shoot?

You know, just great tense situation.

Another good.

Grace and Stevie.

1.

Grace is willing to kind of take a risk.

Stevie has finally heard what she's saying and lets her.

It doesn't try and intervene, and, you know, it works.

You do kind of hate or wonder if that's gonna really burn Grace in one of these future episodes.

Her willingness to.

Yeah, the.

The humanity, the.

The kind of the humanist approach, you know, because sometimes.

Sometimes we get burned.

But speaking of Grace's great writing move to hold off on Grace and Stevie actually acting on their attraction until after such a monumental, heavy.

You know, that's.

That.

That's pretty realistic.

That's like, you know, certain things matter more than others, but when you do have those intense situations with another person, you do feel bonded with them.

You got the.

Yeah, exactly.

The adrenaline's still there.

All that.

It's class.

Some great image imagery there.

Or details.

Images of the police coming back very close up.

They are seen bathed in this hellish red.

Yeah, the van.

The show does look much better this season, and I bet they had a better budget.

But that shot, those shots of some of our buddies, you know, we've come to know in that hellish light, like, oh, man, they're about to go through hell and maybe not make it back.

Mm.

Yeah.

I'll agree with you that this.

Not that the first season looked bad, but there Was some really nice.

I think did some really nice looking scenes especially.

And it helps amp up the, the tension.

Right, because you're afraid for the cops.

You're afraid kind of for the crowd.

You know, that guy, I can't remember his name.

The sergeant with the mustache.

He looks like he's not gonna rob.

I can't remember off the top of.

My head, but he looks like sergeant with the mustache.

The guy who's in charge of ops, you know?

You know, it's like that guy seems scary, you know, like scary, but also kind of someone could get worried about here.

He also seems like someone you'd make fun of a lot.

Like the, the.

Yeah, the Monty Python sketches.

Every time you have a colonel or a general, he's completely pompous.

I want to touch on Happy story briefly, its resolution.

Can you name a movie or series where the storyline was primarily that of forgiveness?

Fargo, season five.

Really?

At the end, just like with.

With Happy, just like with Lee forgiving debts at the end, right.

He comes to the house to take what is owed, what he feels is.

Is owed, and he talks and, and she.

And it again, also very interestingly, is in these terms of like debt and bondage.

Yeah, she.

She talks him out.

Does it have to be this way?

Yeah.

And they break bed together and they eat.

Yeah, they do.

And so that's, that's, that is my, that's my.

I thought that that was fantastic.

And I, I thought, you know, the, the, the, the ideas of debt and that debt being released.

I mean, it's, it's so primal.

I mean, it powers one of the great religious narratives of the, you know, past 2,000 years with the, the, the stories of, you know, in the gospels or whatever.

Like a lot of times there's debtors, but then your debt is forgiven.

It's obviously.

Yeah, it's obviously working on a primal level.

This idea of you owed you, like with the, the guy, he, he owed Happy something.

Something he could never pay.

You couldn't pay in a million years.

You couldn't bring two people back.

That lady who got the Christmas money, she was never going to be able to repay that.

Exactly.

Our debt.

I will never be able to repay it.

That's a moment for you to laugh, Donovan.

It's.

Yeah, well, yeah, but I.

Sometimes when I watch these shows, I, I think to myself, oh, that's brand new, because I'm in the moment.

But it is kind of easy to forget how potent of a storyline forgiveness can be, because Happy's storyline there by saying, I Forgive you and I'll take the money and give it all to the soup kitchen where I help a lot.

Yeah, it was moving.

We are often very cynical about things, so sometimes when something is.

Is sincere and does it well, you know, it really cuts through.

I'll end with this.

That I did not think the ending worked as well as the first season.

I said, they're pretty balanced.

Here's where they, they get a little unbalanced.

I think that the people standing up to Lee to dismiss him seemed like a idealistic, unrealistic ending.

I think the more realistic thing would, you know, bad people don't get ousted that easily and without violence, especially men.

I would agree with you.

It just felt a little pat, you.

Know, a little bit of like, okay, he's meeting with Canning.

Maybe, you know, we can't trust him.

Maybe that.

But this, and this is again where I think part of what I was saying too, where I'd like to see a little more.

It did feel.

There was a little rushed.

Like all of his army buddies are all of a sudden gone in the neighborhood.

Stan.

Like when they never stood up to Dixon and the other one, I can't remember the guy's name.

Thank you, Dixon.

And they never stood up and.

But they're gonna stand up to this violent guy with a gun.

And maybe it's because, you know, he talked to Canning, so maybe there's that explanation.

But.

And I suppose maybe you could write it off to say that though Lee was ingrained in the violence of the community, he was also level headed.

And so they said, we don't want you anymore.

He said, okay, fine, sure, that's.

That's a good point.

Maybe he's, they know he's not gonna, he can't kill all of them.

He won't try and kill all of them.

Yeah, and he's, he's, he's violent when he has to be, but he's not a violent man generally.

Sure.

He's more controlled.

Maybe that's it.

That's the end of our episode, though, and we appreciate you listening.

It was a longer episode.

You found the parts you liked.

I'm sure you wanted to hear.

For Adam and Donovan, I'm Blaine, and we hope that the community doesn't rise up against you.

Talk to everyone later.