Thanksgiving Special: The Spoiler Episode for 'Welcome to Derry,' 'Death by Lightning,' and 'Plur1bus'

Hey, and Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

What are you thankful for?

What makes you feel gratitude?

Hopefully it's something every day.

You do that Many times a day, I hope.

This is our second episode this week.

It's an odd episode where we'll only talk about spoilers on the things we've mentioned in our previous episode.

Yesterday we got two episodes out in one week.

That's kind of weird, too.

We here at Taking it down cover TV and streaming.

And normally we do it in a bifurcated manner.

So you can hear the first segment as a bit of recommendation on a show or movie or whatever.

And then on the back half, we dissect the shows or movies much more specifically.

Not today, though.

It's all spoilers.

We ruined welcome to Derry on hbo, at least through three episodes that have aired, not all five, but three.

We'll discuss the historical thriller on Netflix, Death by Lightning, about President Garfield.

It's way better than it sounds.

And finally, we try to wrap our heads around all of the four episodes of Pluribus, which is on Apple tv.

It may be why you're here.

Thanks for clicking play.

Maybe you're cooking.

Maybe you get the day off.

Leaves are hitting the ground.

You ready for tv?

So here we go.

Let me get Donovan to join me.

Alabama, take projection.

And here he is.

It's Donovan again, of course.

We were with you yesterday while you were cooking.

Now you might be eating or cooking more.

Thanksgiving.

I don't know.

Are we thankful for anything?

Just one more go round of Thanksgiving.

Yeah, thanks.

Thanksgiving.

I'm thankful for my many streaming subscriptions.

Yeah, thankful for your nieces.

Ah, yeah, they're cute.

I got nieces and nephews.

They're really cute.

Oh, nephew.

I got two.

Two nieces, two nephews.

Okay.

Thankful for our listeners, of course.

Thank you for listening.

So there's Don when he's with me.

This is our it was kind of weird this week.

We because it's Thanksgiving, because it's a little bit of a break, we we're doing all spoilers this episode.

There's your warning.

If there's something you want to hear, specifically find it.

It's time stamped.

We do a really good job of time stamping it so you can just click on it in your app.

I use Apple podcasts, you use whatever.

Click on that little highlighted number, the timestamp, and we won't spoil anything else for you other than what you're seeking.

And we'll go in the same order we did yesterday, just with some exceptions that weren't didn't plan on talking about any in spoiler terms.

Say spoiler.

The French get involved.

That's for the American Revolution.

That was the American Revolution.

If you listen yesterday, if you didn't know.

If you're watching the Ken Burns series, message us, hit us up.

I'm gonna be interested to know.

Or leave a comment on the side.

That's.

That's really the best way to do it.

Unless you're just really private and you want to send an email, that's fine.

Forgive my congested sound.

Still trying my best to boot that out of my system.

Let's get to our first topic.

Let's not waste any more time.

It is a it.

Welcome to Dairy.

Now, the setup here is.

I have watched four of the five episodes that are out.

Donovan has seen three of the four.

So we're really going to go as deep as three episodes.

Maybe a little smattering of episode four, but not a lot.

So don't freak out if you haven't seen episodes four or five if you're playing catch up.

So here we go.

Let's talk some specifics about welcome to Derry, based on the Stephen King book.

It in the two, really, the two recent films of the same name.

I. I thought that third episode we're gonna really get into was a bit meddling.

It felt like it was setting up a lot of different things.

Especially, I felt like the first two episodes had had really kind of good centerpieces.

And this one, it has a big extended sequence in a graveyard.

And it's good and it's exciting, but I mean, I didn't, like, turn off my TV during the middle of it, you know, like, I hate this, but it felt like it was setting some stuff up.

Now, we mentioned yesterday that we.

Something about it still makes us want to watch.

I think it's just, where are they going to go with it?

What are they going to do?

How are they going to try to scare us?

What's the Air Force up to?

I'm really.

I don't know.

I want to know that this episode's called now you see it.

I don't know.

It's just sort of a wobbly episode than the first two.

I thought the first two were mostly solid.

Maybe it was the multiple timelines feeling a bit jarring or pieced together, stitched together without this, without some real glue between them.

I was okay with that.

And this is seeming to be.

This may be a feature, not a bug, but for some dumb.

This is just how my dumb brain works.

The whole Like Francis, the Air Force colonel.

I think he's a general.

He's like, he doesn't even remember Rose, the indigenous woman, but girl that when he was a boy, he befriended.

But how does he have that dang slingshot if he can't remember?

It's something about the memory thing.

Maybe I was like, you're gonna have to go more into this.

I'm not sure if this works for me.

And I think that's supposedly mentioned in one of the two films where I'm sure it.

When you eat dairy, your memory is hindered.

Okay, I'm sure it is, then.

So I'm.

This.

This may be just me being a neophyte for the.

The It.

The it Series.

The it universe.

Not.

Not really.

I'm okay with it as a concept, but, like, the.

Like.

I'm like, how does it work?

Like, how could he remember enough to bring, like, the Air Force in?

It covers.

It covers their.

But for.

Why doesn't the rest of the world know about this place?

Oh, yeah, I'm fine with that as a plot lick.

As a plot device.

Yeah.

That may be a completely invalid piece of criticism.

That's just the one thing that really stuck out for me.

Still.

Enjoy.

Chris Chalk.

Yes.

Well, before I tell you what, before we move away from the flashback, the extended flashback, I suppose it wasn't a flashback.

It's probably a whole set of sequences.

They did this one thing that I've always found distasteful in Stephen King and his books.

Okay, Movies, books.

Is the dialogue.

And I can even narrow it down to the dialogue of parents talking to children or older teens talking to younger teens.

When the young Francis comes out scared to death of what he saw in the freak show, his father doesn't comfort him at all.

We've.

I just don't feel like I've ever seen in a Stephen King book or movie a father go, it's okay, man.

You.

You're okay.

And I know the time period, and I know, but it's like.

It's like 100% seriously.

His father says, don't be a damn sissy.

And I would like to see some subversion of that writing or style to have him actually worried about.

What.

Oh, what scared you?

Why.

You know, why would that scare you?

It's just a very good place for them to start thinking about and talking about fear and hinting that this is an entity that revolves around fear.

But I've always found it distasteful that.

That it seems like there's always a parent who's like, you know, pick it.

Up, you son of a. I, I can't remember.

I haven't read a ton.

But there's no shortage of poor parenting and the Stephen King, you know, Carrie's mother famously, was very good, was very good at her job.

It's one of his tropes, for sure.

Yeah, part of it.

You know, Blaine, I don't, I don't disagree or discount anything you said.

Part of me just wonders if it's like, you know, conflict drives narrative.

And so it's like, I wonder if that's why he's doing it, just because he writes so much.

These are, this is idle speculation.

I don't think you're right, wrong, or that anything you said is, Is amiss.

Yeah.

And King does it, of course.

I just thought that the makers of this show had an open door here to say, ooh, let's do it the.

Other way, and maybe that maybe they will.

But I do think that.

And maybe, maybe they're going to be more explicit or I'll see more of it.

But I think you kind of mentioned it's a miss opportunity.

Blaine.

I think that there was kind of an, an interest, like, and it wasn't super duper explored, but like the, the fears that children, all children, but especially sensitive children have.

And the way, you know, of course, we're often told by our societies, little boys especially, like, well, get over it.

And it didn't really seem like.

So, like, if you're gonna have the dad be like, hey, don't be a sissy.

He met Rose and he had a scary encounter and it was all mostly okay.

Instead of like, the way, like, you can almost be afraid of being afraid, you're ashamed of it when you're, you know, if you're told you're not supposed to be afraid.

But you know what, how are you supposed to feel as a child when you're put into a scary situation or, you know, the situation itself, I thought.

Was well filmed and well done with the guy with the one eye, and he lights the match and, and he, he spooks him and he's a real presence.

And then, of course, Francis goes out into the woods, meets the indigenous Rose.

She's a native of the area.

And well before, you know, he meets her and they play and become friends and.

Yeah.

And then the fear of that happening returns to him because the entity knows that's what he's afraid of.

And.

Yeah, sometimes that's not that clear.

Sometimes you're like, oh, wait, was that the.

Yeah, Was that the entity in the freak show or not?

Yeah, sometimes it's not too clear and that's fine.

I don't, I'm not griping about.

I'm just saying that sometimes you sit there wonder that that's actually an okay thing.

Yeah, I think they, they want to do that.

I think that's intentional.

I suppose Will's parents are really kind hearted and normal.

Yeah, that's true.

And we'll flip over to the good thing about this episode is that the interaction between Chris Chalk and Adepo as the two military guys.

Excuse me, Air Force.

Well, Air Force.

Military.

Military.

Yeah.

So Adepo has taken, let me call them both by character names.

Yeah.

Leroy has taken Dick up into a helicopter for this purpose of.

Let's, let's triangulate where this entity might be.

The military wants it for Cold War purposes.

We don't know really yet.

And that's intriguing.

They want to harness it somehow.

So they take him up first time they've really done this because Dick can sense certain things and he does sense the entity.

And he senses, if you're familiar with the movies or the book at all, you know, that he kind of gets to where he, the entity normally stays underground and he gets a little bit of a peek at him at best before Leroy pulls him back into reality.

I thought that was pretty good.

I like that whole sequence.

I did too.

I like Chris Chalk as part of it.

And I thought it was actually frightening.

Like being in a.

Like being in a nightmare is inherently frightening.

And maybe this is just the kind of nightmares that I've had.

But like I have had nightmares where it's like, oh, I'm, I'm like I'm trying not to be seen by something, you know, I'm trying to hide.

And that's what he expressed that it had seen him.

It's certainly a character trait he would want because he has this special ability and if he lets too many people know, he's going to get used, killed, hurt.

Yeah.

But it gives us the later conversation where Leroy and Dick sit at.

Dick Halloran comes over, has dinner with off base.

You get the sense that's something he doesn't do a lot.

And they're trying to establish a friendship.

And I liked it because you get these two actors talking about who they are.

Well, you know, where are we in this?

What's.

What do you see?

What do I see?

What's real, what's not.

And I like that because apparently Leroy's character, we mentioned this before, he can't feel fear.

Right.

Something about an injury he has had.

His, his amygdala has been damaged.

Yeah.

So he's not suicidally reckless, but he's not afraid.

Is that a real thing that could happen to someone?

I mean, I don't know.

Probably if you.

My understanding is the amygdala is fairly central.

Folks that know that didn't.

That actually paid attention in anatomy and physiology.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but.

And I think they kind of allude to this in the first episode is that I think if your amygdala just where it's located in the brain, I think a lot of other things would get damaged as well.

So I don't think you would be.

Oh, I mean, I'm sure there are people out there who've been hurt in a way such as not to feel fear, but I do not believe that those people are high functioning military air force majors.

Yeah.

I think there's a reason we feel fear and that the amygdala is pretty central to our brain.

So I think you would really hurt your.

You would be severely brain damaged if you had something entered that era area.

Yeah.

Because this is a show and it might go multiple seasons if HBO lacks its viewership.

They could really explore that kind of thing.

They could really dig into why do we have fear?

Where does that come from?

Why do we imagine things?

And it makes us fearful, evolutionary, you know, speaking.

But it's kind of the ultimate question of horror.

Right.

Like we have enough to be scared about.

Why do we invent new things to be scared about?

Yeah.

When sometimes there's new things.

Of course, the, the answer is those new things that we're scared about are ways to talk about the old things we're scared about.

Yeah.

Practice and rehearsal, maybe.

Yep.

Well, you know how little kids reenact things through play.

If they see you talking on the telephone and, and having a conversation, they'll pretend, you know, that it' you know, you talking to a friend.

Right.

And they'll mirror your language.

They'll poop their diapers.

Exactly.

Maybe.

Maybe grown ups.

Maybe we do the same thing too, you know, through plain imagination.

We work things out.

Did you get a lot out of their conversation between Leroy and Dick when they were alone and Leroy's wife was inside the house?

So they get a chance to say, you know, who are you?

Exactly.

They get a chance to go one on one and kind of try and size these each other up.

I like that.

Dick says you're the kind of guy who doesn't feel fear.

And I'm not going to mess with you.

Yeah, yeah.

Dick is smart enough to opt for self preservation when it comes to the major.

Yeah, exactly.

We feel fear for many of the same reasons.

We fear.

We feel pain.

Right.

Like there are people who can't feel pain and they're incredible.

They're in incredible danger every day of their life.

You know, these.

They can.

These are people who will put their hand on a hot stove and not realize it.

Right.

And actually end up really.

So I think there's something kind of like.

I'm kind of with Dick there.

That there's something kind of fearsome and scary.

Yeah.

About a man who can't feel fear.

Right.

Which I.

And I liked that that's the way I feel about it.

I felt like Chris Chalk is doing a good way of, you know, like, not that Dick is not a human being, but there's like, in a way he's not a human being like the rest of us.

Because everybody else can feel fear.

Right.

But Dick can sense things.

He has this.

Yeah, Sorry, did I say Dick?

I meant Leroy.

Sorry.

Dick feels that way about Leroy.

And Dick can say, yeah, Leroy is not a human being in the same way that the rest of us are in the sense that he can't feel fear.

Whereas Dick, even though he has extra sensory perception, he's still very much a human being in the same way that we understand human being and human existence to be.

Because we just had a.

In that great nightmare scene, him feeling fear.

Yeah.

I like both of these actors too.

And I think they did a good job just in the scene playing.

Playing off of each other.

I do too.

As good as the kid actors are.

And I think they've done a good job of picking them and not.

The casting director did a great job of.

Of deciding upon who will be the.

The four kids.

It's still fun to see these two.

Yeah.

And we'll see if the show's smart enough to follow up on this.

But you were kind of talking about dads.

Leroy obviously is feeling like he doesn't understand his son.

But unlike the father at the fair, he's trying to reach out to him.

He's trying to accommodate him.

So maybe there's something there too.

Yeah.

Fear and support or lack of it.

Perhaps I overlooked that purposeful juxtaposition.

There could be or could be a missed opportunity.

Blaine.

I don't know.

Yeah.

The other thing that felt forced to me was this overuse or bad CGI for the one eyed man in the woods and the ghosts the kids encounter at the end of the graveyard.

I just thought to myself, have we not improved how ghosts look since Ghostbusters in 1984?

Man in the woods.

Fine.

You know, it's a scary monster.

I get it.

It's cheaper.

But there was a little bit of the haunted mansion to the ghosts.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Totally.

And, yeah, maybe that was intentional, because I do think.

I mean, there's.

But it's hard to tell.

Like, sometimes the show is very, very dark with its kids, and sometimes there's sort of the element of like, hey, gee whiz, we're having an adventure, you know, So I don't maybe.

I don't know.

That fell more on the gee whiz, we're having an adventure side of things for me, as opposed to, say, Lily's dad in the grocery store, which I found deeply unsettling.

Yeah.

From episode two.

Yes.

It's probably interesting that I still look forward to it each Sunday.

A lot of it has to probably do with the sincerity of the acting, which is odd because a lot of this hinges on one set of characters seeing the unbelievable and a whole other set of characters having to believe them for long stretches.

Yeah.

You wonder if horror wouldn't be better off if everyone just believes there were ghost and evil entities right from the jump.

And someone.

Not someone.

Some horror does go that direction.

It is kind of like if you.

If you.

I have read many a horror short story, Blaine, and I've read many a ghost story, and there does get to be a certain repetitiveness if you have stories where it's like, but ghosts can't be real.

Right.

Like, at a certain point, you're like, I'm reading a horror story.

We all know it's a ghost.

That's not to say which.

Which is not to say that it.

People who disbelieve in ghosts and horror stories are fine, too.

It's a.

Well, a well written story can use any combination of tropes, but, you know, sometimes you're like, oh, we gotta go through the mandatory, like, nobody believes the kids phase.

You know, like.

Right.

Any prediction on how they're wanting to use this against Russia?

I mean, if you.

If something could make you so afraid that it would literally kill you.

Yeah.

You could probably do a lot of.

Of harm with that.

Guess so.

You know, it's more.

I weaponize it and deploy it at a large scale, is my guess.

I don't know.

Be interesting to see how they try.

All right, we'll see what Happens.

But that takes us to Netflix this series, Death by Lighting.

It's produced by Benioff and Weiss.

I'm not sure how much of a hand they had in it.

They, of course, were major creators and writers on Game of Thrones.

And this series, Death by Lightning, just has a host of actors that do it in every scene.

There's really not a lot of downtime.

There's nothing for a historical drama or.

Thriller because everyone is so good, is so good in it.

There's like.

You're not like, oh, these guys.

Again, everyone's great.

Like, all the actors are so good.

One thing I really love is that in the second episode, when it comes to Chester Arthur, the series makes it a point to demonstrate that people who are dedicated and effective at politics are usually the corrupt bastards you wish weren't in office for 50 years.

There's a real.

I liked Arthur.

There's a real.

Like, he's a buffoon at times.

He's obviously kind of the hatchet man, but there's like a.

There's a sadness to him at some points, too.

Nick Offerman's doing a great job as someone.

He's doing a great job.

I don't even almost know how to describe it.

Like, there's some times where he seems disappointed with himself.

There's points where he's just drunk and it's funny and, you know, like, there's.

He's like a bull in a china shop.

Totally.

Isn't it weird that history reminds us that it takes history maybe sometimes to remind us that politicians have been money grubbing assholes for as long as there's been politics?

There's an Onion article that, like, the headline is nations historians ask people to look at the past, think about that happened then, and then ask themselves about the present or something along those lines.

And it is kind of true.

Right.

Like, there's the nothing new under the.

Like, this wasn't just invented.

Yeah.

You know, like as long as there has been power and those who can hold it or those who would rather take a shortcut or have a little more or have all of it.

Yeah.

And then there's the paint.

How they painted Charles Coteau.

He's not only delusional, but he's.

This guy is desperate for something, anything.

Yeah.

The Matthew McFadden plays him with such a twitchiness, you know, no one in their right mind would associate with him for too long, yet there's some sympathy there for him because he just wants his place in the world.

I mean, he is absolutely like, he's tragic.

I mean, I think Matt McFadden did a great job.

You know, there's the mix of, like, childlike naivete about him.

You can see that he's deluded, and he's constantly.

He's like a constant striver.

Right.

Like, he's constantly coming up with something else that's gonna work, and then in his own mind, he's almost already achieved it.

There's, like a.

There's just a sadness.

There's a sadness to him.

Yeah.

You know, very.

It's a deep and dark sadness you don't get with a lot of characters.

And, you know, he does such a good job of playing him as, like, you know, as he does with many of the characters in this show.

But if this was the guy that came up to you on a street in the city, you'd be like, buddy, I need to get out of here.

Like, you know, like, I got to get away from you somehow.

Somehow.

Because you're just.

You're not gonna stop.

It's so good to have him in here, because this is history.

I'm guessing, but Garfield was a man who seemed to know his place.

I'm a man who owns a farm.

I need to work this farm.

I need to be with my family.

But Kateau was lost at sea all the time.

He's looking for something, like you said.

And that's.

Something is clearly many different things.

And, I mean, and this is.

And it's like, it's not.

It is pathos.

But, like, there's humor, too.

Like the bit where, like, they.

In the third episode, they illustrate just how annoying Guiteau is.

Where he's in the Free love colony in Oneida, and.

But no one will have sex with him.

He's constantly surrounded by.

And it's funny.

It is, but it's sad, too.

Like.

But, like, who?

You.

You wouldn't want to spend 10 minutes with this guy.

And as far as Guiteau goes, McFadden truly has to look down.

Have you seen pictures of him?

No, I haven't.

I guess I should look it up.

There may be just the one, but he looks just like him.

I feel like I almost don't have words for how much I appreciate what he's doing with his performance, because it just.

There is something.

Like, it makes you.

He makes you really feel something.

And it's that those different shades of complexity where he's.

Yeah.

It's like you feel bad for him, but also he's delusional, but also, you know, like, there's you know, sometimes he seems truly good natured.

Other time, you know, definitely written and played.

More than one note, for sure.

You know, because there's, you know, in some ways he's innocent, harmless, and in other ways, he's going to take your money.

You know, he's going to break.

He's going to break in, he's going to bother you.

He's got, you know, like there's the bit where he's the good uncle playing with his nephews or his nephews and nieces, I don't remember, and obviously loved by them and his sister.

And then there's the kind of darker side to him that he steals their money, that he steals their money and other unsavory things that he does.

And we know from the get go that he's gonna kill someone.

Yeah.

The producers and directors also understand that for history to appeal for you to be engaged with it, you have to ensure that everyone understands that these historical characters were larger than life.

So you employ your Bradley Whitford, your Nick Offerman, Michael Shannon, Betty Gilpin.

You got to get somebody who's going to be like, oh, okay, I get it.

I would vote for him.

Yes, I agree.

They did a good job for me, too.

As someone who personally doesn't know very much about this period in American history beyond what I think, you know, like what a high school education would get you.

Yeah.

I feel like they've done a good job of giving me a good sense of what's going on.

And I think part of that comes with the characters, too.

Right.

Like, you have just the way it's done and introduced very organically.

I felt like the different characters, by their nature, drew out, like, the concerns of the time.

Right.

Like, Garfield is worried about corruption, and so Sherman comes to him and they're going to basically have it.

He's basically a symbolic candidacy.

Right.

And, like the wheeling and dealing of just these two men, not really wheeling and dealing, but like, talking and negotiating.

Did a good job of not only showing you.

Okay, here's who, Arthur.

I mean, here's who Garfield is, but just the like.

And if you didn't know much about this time period, President Grant was accused of selling offices, you know, to France.

So very deftly handled, I thought, for something.

Because it is very short.

Yeah.

You know, there's not.

It's not expansive.

There's.

There's are.

They don't have a great span of time to work with.

There's only a few episodes.

Well, you gotta admire a man who says he'll Campaign from home.

I.

This made me want to learn more about James.

I'm like, is any of this true?

This makes me like James Garfield.

Yeah, some of it, I think is.

Is quite true.

Yeah.

And as CGI as they are, these sets in New York, old New York, still look so good.

Yeah, they do pretty good job.

It's exciting to see the harbors that you probably have seen, but in that era, that time period is pretty well done.

You get a sense of what it's like that you won't ever get anywhere else.

Yeah, well, you know, especially a place like New York City, most of it's been knocked.

You know, if you're in Manhattan, most of it's been knocked down.

It's not there anymore.

You know, like you said, it's not there anymore.

I think that they do a very good blend.

I've seen some complaints.

The blend isn't quite balanced, but they do a good blend of the language seems right some of the time, but.

But yet they keep the rest of it at a clip.

You know, to my ear, I don't.

I could see how some people maybe would complain about it, but to my ear, it worked.

Sometimes there is a bit of, you know, like the phrasing seems a little quaint or old fashioned, but it's never distracting or slows it down.

And sometimes, you know, people will speak very modern colloquial English.

Yeah.

And it works for me.

It's a blend.

I understand that.

I, you know, it's giving me kind of a flavor for things.

I am able to understand that I'm not watching something for full historical accuracy here.

Right.

It is drama.

There are things that are made up.

That's okay.

It's telling because it's speaking about.

It's not wanting to just be a faithful historical reenaction.

Right.

It's also got its own purposes.

Yeah.

When Senator Blaine scoffs at the vice presidency, he says, that's an insult.

It's the vice presidency that's really good.

And probably not how he would say it there.

And then you get these turns of phrases that are almost eloquent of the.

And reminiscent of maybe what that era would be.

Yeah.

I really like the writing as far as just the simple dialogue of it all.

Dialogue is very good.

I think I agree with you.

The characters are identified very well by their language.

Garfield's a little slower to speak.

Some of his phrases are a little bit more antiquated.

Whereas, you know, Conklin is very, very brash, very modern.

You know, he's.

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

Yeah.

There's so much that are flip sides of each other and I guess that's how history just sort of played out maybe.

So it was a good idea to mine this for a show.

Garfield's simple, but he's asked to be president.

Chester Arthur is a ruffian, but he's humbled to be vice president.

Guiteau wants to be a man of import, but he's going about it in.

Such dishonorable ways, he doesn't even know what he's asking.

The scene where he finally meets Garfield, it seems like he doesn't even know what to ask for.

The dog that catches the car.

Exactly.

Like, it's like this is his big shot.

And Matthew McGh, he does such a good job just playing like that scene is almost painful to watch because you're just like, he's blowing it.

And of course you never thought he would pull it off, but it's just like he's floundering.

He doesn't know what he wants.

Well, these are the moments where he.

Just wants to be important.

Where Garfield opened the doors of the White House and welcomed in the public during certain hours of the.

Of the day.

Do we need more of that today?

I think that the assassination of James Garfield is one of the reasons we don't do it anymore.

But yeah, honestly, I do think that like you, you know, it's kind of like when you're like your congressperson comes home and then they try and duck their constituents because their constituents are mad about what they did.

It's like, you know, you represent all the people, not just the people you voted for.

You represent or I mean everybody.

The people who voted for you.

You represent everyone.

And you don't hear that enough.

Nah.

There's a moment in the fourth episode where they talk about.

They probably talk about things that they didn't in reality and where they're saying, you know, how.

How will history recognize us?

Yeah.

And I think that's a.

But maybe they did.

These guys are presidents and senators and maybe they did think that way.

You know, they lived through historically tumultuous.

These are all Civil War veterans.

Most of.

Not all of them, but a lot of them are Civil War veterans.

They lived through the Civil War, emancipation, you know, all that.

The assassination of a president.

Yeah.

Everything that fought Reconstruction in the South.

So maybe, I don't know, maybe they do have a sense that maybe they have.

History will have its eyes on them.

I don't know.

It's A good moment.

In that fourth episode, we will move on to a show with a title of a very historical title.

Pluribus e Pluribus Unum or whatever it is.

I think you got it.

Is that right?

I think that's it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's not like it's on her coins.

Who has a coin?

Yeah, well, I don't have any of that.

Exactly.

I don't have any money.

Blurbus on Apple TV got a lot of attention.

It's got a lot of headlines.

Still is, I think.

I think the question might be, will it.

Will it hold that attention?

The first two episodes dropped at once, and it really was everywhere it felt like.

And we'll concentrate mainly on the last two of the four that are out.

Grenade and Please Carol.

That's the titles of them.

Do you think it's got.

Do you think audiences are going to be patient with this one?

Enough.

That's kind of the trick sometimes with, like, this kind of high concept.

Miss?

Well, it's not really a mystery.

It's a little bit of a mystery, but.

Little bit.

Not a lot, but a little bit.

Are you just like, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me what happens, or are you able to accept that you're watching a TV show that has to fill a whole season?

You know, like, they're not gonna give you everything in the first episode.

That's true.

Of course not.

But we're all called up here, by the way, people.

Pluribus.

All four episodes are on the table for spoilers.

There is some stretch to these episodes.

There is.

I would.

I would agree with that.

Which reminds me of Better Call Saul.

Like, I'm gonna tell you what I'm gonna do.

Wait, wait, let me back up.

I'm not going to tell you what I'm gonna do.

I'm just gonna show you what I'm gonna do.

And it's going to last the whole episode.

And in this character's life, it.

That actually might be the 40.

The 45 minutes it takes to do whatever the thing is.

Or it might take all day.

But, like, even in the fourth episode, we have the man in Paraguay.

He's somewhere in South America.

I've forgotten.

And we just see, like, for about 15 minutes of the show, we just see his routine.

We see what he's doing.

We have the cold open.

Yep.

And we yell at the screen, do something.

Get up and do something.

I mean, yeah, we're all impatient these days.

Right.

Like, no one has any pace.

But I want to.

And I think that patience will be rewarded.

Because I do.

And I do think that, like, there's something more.

I think I got more out of that scene of him setting a timer, clicking the radio on a frequency and waiting that I would have if he'd been like, you know, if it had been a minute or something like that.

Just like I've been clicking this radio all day, you know.

I don't know.

Does that make sense?

It makes perfect sense.

I feel like having to sit with it, like.

Well, sometimes in the.

You get a little antsy, but you're.

You get a little antsy.

But it's hypnotic too.

It is hypnotic.

Yeah.

And it's well shot.

You know, you.

You get the close up, but the pencil touching the paper.

It's just something about.

This is.

This is the same with like, Carol's trying to dig a hole by herself.

You know, it's like.

It's like.

We know she's not gonna necessarily.

Like, it's not the most fascinating thing in the world.

She's digging a hole.

But it puts you right there with the character.

Yeah.

I didn't like grenade as much as I did the fourth episode, which it totally eludes me.

Please Carol.

Right?

We.

Yeah, please Carol or Carol please.

Or something like that.

You just said it.

You know, let's take a step back and set this up.

Which we never did because yesterday was our non.

Spoiler episode and we.

We divided it up.

This is spoiler.

So we can talk about it.

But I mean, it's.

I would say it's high concept and it's obviously high concept, but it's also kind of hard to understand.

Right.

Yeah.

The idea is that scientists found these messages from space.

Right?

These four kind of messages.

Am I right about this?

Yeah.

They're like radio waves, frequencies, something.

Yeah.

And it rewired our brains and then it's some.

But it didn't just rewire our brains.

It kind of set off a transferable sort of.

I don't know.

Disease is the only way I could think about it.

It is like a disease.

You know, you had the infection points.

All those people went on to infect other people.

We've seen this with zombies.

Yeah, it was a lot like that, except higher.

Higher level thinking.

It's the invasion of the pod people.

It's a zombie apocalypse.

It's.

Except the next day, they're not actually trying to kill you.

They just want to get you breakfast.

Well, they don't seem like they're going.

They do.

It's so questionable about what they're up to.

And then of course, when you die in the show, your thoughts and memories become part of the collective humanity.

Everyone's connected mentally.

And you know, that's.

That's one of the main points happening in this.

In these early episodes with Carol.

But yeah, her.

Her girlfriend and I think she kind of had a managing role.

Yeah, I think she helped with her career.

Yeah, she's really disturbed that they know Helen's memories.

Her.

Her girlfriend who has died due to this infection, invasion, connection, whatever you want to call it.

And it's a very, I think, kind of like smart and primal fear, you know, because if you're everyone, aren't you really no one.

There's almost.

It almost is like questions or thoughts of, for instance, survival after death.

Right.

Like, if I am reabsorbed into the universe, am I okay with that?

Am I still I?

Like, is there any I to be okay with that?

You know, like, do I lose myself?

Is this better?

Is this worse?

There's not a little segment of you anymore?

There's not a little segment exactly, is there?

Who knows?

Are you the same?

You know, the people who have been integrated into this consciousness, are there really 3 billion people in there or is it just one person, one entity?

Well, some of that gets answered in episode four, which we won't.

Some of it does.

But I think that those are kind of still the under.

Like, those are the questions that like trouble Carol and potentially us, right?

Uh huh.

Or hopefully us.

Right.

Cause we're, you know, Carol.

This apocalypse has turned into somewhat of a utopia.

But Carol's not on board, right?

The episode Grenade opens with a very prickly Carol and her girlfriend.

Girlfriend slash manager Helen, taking in this really bespoke hotel in Norway made of ice.

The hotel's made of ice.

And that was scarier to me than anything you can dream of.

Dude, I was not gonna hang there.

But Carol can't stop thinking about where her book is on the bestseller list.

This was years before when I guess her first one has come out.

You get the feeling she doesn't enjoy a ton of things.

Yeah.

Yes, I would agree with that.

You know, I kind of wanted this.

And I love Rhea Seehorn.

She was so good at Better Call Saul and you pulled for her.

Yet here in this series, I wanted to say to her, enjoy it.

And in modern day, Carol is on the plane from Spain with Zosa, I think her name is.

It's got.

She's kind of become her little helper, her guide.

Since all this has happened, they've just Met the only people who did not get connected to the rest of the billions of the world after the alien signal.

All what, 12 of them?

13, something like that.

Yeah.

It's a low number.

It's a very low number.

That's where you find out about the guy from Paraguay who you do end up seeing in the fourth episode.

There's.

There's some of this.

For it to work, well, I think you have to maintain this image of this feeling of love that we didn't really see much between Carol and Helen.

You know, Carol's burying her in the backyard, and that's harrowing and even touching sad.

But, you know, there's a believability.

Like, how much did she care about Helen?

I didn't quite see enough of that.

Actually works really well for me because, I mean, I'm fine if we see more of their relationship, but just being all in the aftermath and her grief and her.

Her anger, like her anger and fear, seems really driven by that loss.

Yeah.

Because it's like, I lost an individual.

Like, you're not a substitute for that individual.

And that feels like it drives a lot of her decision, you know, Like a lot of her.

Her grief and despair.

Like, who.

If Helen was still alive and with her, maybe she'd be like those other families.

Happy to.

You know, at least I can spend.

Yeah, can spend time with you in the.

In the flesh instead of, you know, you're dead and somebody else has your memories.

Carol has to be really careful not to get angry with them.

It puts them into the convulsions, which were similar to how they got into this connection.

It may kind of injures or kill some of them who may be doing something like driving or flying a plane or something.

It's kind of great because it's like a psychoanalyst or a therapist would be like, I.

This is an unhealthy relationship.

Right.

Like, if you get mad at me, I'm going to have some of my people die.

That's what's gonna happen.

Like, you can't lose your temper with me.

You can't express anger.

Right.

Is.

I can't feel.

Feels unhealthy.

Yeah, totally.

They can't lie.

They're willing to help to an extreme, but that just feels devious somehow.

You know, they give her the grenade.

The title of the episode.

They give her a real grenade?

Yeah, a real one.

Yeah.

And she's like, what the hell are you doing?

You know, and she.

She asks, would you give me an atomic bomb?

And they kind of hem and haw.

Yeah, do you want one?

It kind of.

It really makes you wonder, what kind of entity is this?

Right.

And is it.

I don't know, maybe I'm completely, completely on the wrong track.

But is it the master or is it the servant?

How could it be the servant?

Tell me how that works.

Well, why would it be so servile?

Want to do nothing but please.

These individual personalities want to give them things like heroin, atomic bombs and hand grenades.

Is this.

This.

Again, I could be completely out of left field here, but is this like this, this.

This creature, this entity, is it built to serve something else?

It has these instincts to serve and never lie.

Why would it have those when everything's just going to be itself?

Well, it makes her old, the master for a while.

That's what.

Yeah, so I'm one.

I'm just.

I'm just curious.

Maybe that's, you know, because it does.

I wonder if it's like a tool of something else.

Basically.

Yeah.

There's a lot to connect to, forgive my pun.

Connect to what Gilligan's doing here.

They're robots.

They're unfeeling.

Is he saying that's what we are?

Is he saying life's uninteresting?

Is he saying we're all acting like a cult these days?

Is he saying that AI has turned us into this sort of thing?

Well, you know, and I think there's the interpretation that's somewhat carried out.

We're always waiting for the other shoe to drop because we've seen, like Carol in the first or second episode says, like, we've seen this movie before.

There's a bit where it's like, would it really be so bad?

There's no more war.

Everyone gets enough to eat.

Suffering has mostly ended.

If you're in, you know, we can work to preserve the environment.

You know, it's like, is.

Is it so.

Is it so bad?

What is us existing as individuals in the way that we do?

Is that a good thing?

I think it asks that too.

It's the only way communism's gonna work.

Yeah, Yeah.

I mean, honestly, I mean, it's.

We talked about with death, death by lightning, right?

Like, there's all like those.

Unless there's some system we haven't found, like those.

There will always be those who, like, hoard and amass and take from others the haves and have nots.

Whereas all of a sudden, there's no child's gonna go hungry in this new world.

Yeah, I found it odd that it started like an alien invasion almost and then it quickly went away from that.

You just don't see it quite.

Although they're all acting like aliens, I.

Really like that because it did feel like the.

Like, we've seen this movie.

We're waiting for the other shoe to drop, and we are given this fear.

And initially, very fearsome things are happening.

People are convulsing, dying, crashing.

And then it turns out it wasn't the end of the world after all.

And Carol's stuck with that?

Well, they're pretty certain she's gonna join them.

Yes.

It's a biological imperative, they say.

Is it?

I mean, that's a good question.

Pluribus begs viewers to understand that Carol with a grenade, when she almost killed her God.

Zosa.

Zosa.

Yeah.

Isn't just about Carol with a grenade.

If you watch this as a.

As, like, collective humanity is the algorithm and constantly trying to show you what it thinks you want.

That plays pretty hilariously as well as furiously.

It made me laugh in the fourth episode where our good friend Joel from somebody somewhere is.

Is the representative of the entity.

Yeah, He's.

And she's asking.

She's trying to figure out if it can lie, basically.

Yeah.

And she.

She's trying to ask him what they liked about their books, and he's just like, everything.

And it just.

She's like, you think I'm as good as Shakespeare?

She's like, every.

You know, it feels like the kind of.

Like that the AI that, like, gasses you up.

Right.

Like, if you've ever put in a prompt, the AI Is like, wow, this question shows that you're a unique and creative thinker.

Exactly.

And you believe it every time.

I mean it.

You know, I read a very interesting essay by a philosopher named David Bentley Hart that said that we miss.

The real metaphor or story of AI is Narcissus.

Who.

You know, Narcissus was cursed to fall so in love with his.

He was beautiful.

Right.

And he fell so in love with his reflection in the water that he wasted away and died.

Whereas, you know, there's not anything really there, but we're projecting ourselves, the things we want to see, the things we like to hear, into these, you know, this basically math program.

It's narcissism.

So when we all hook up as one organism, there's nothing there.

Well, I can't say about the one organism, but certainly when we, as individuals interact, I think a lot of, like, the AI, like, things that are happening because of AI, you know, especially, like, the social things you hear.

You know, people are Having girlfriends or whatever.

Oh, yeah.

I think it says more about.

It says more about us than it says about the math program.

It says more about us than it does.

Who.

The math program.

Underlying.

Underlying AI.

You know, it's just numbers.

It's just big numbers at an incredibly large scale.

And I think that, like, you know, as someone who's like, maybe lonely and uses a chatbot and feels a connection, there's nothing on the other.

The chatbot has nothing to.

So obviously that's telling you more about the person who feels the connection.

What a great metaphor Narcissus is.

I liked it.

It made me.

So I thought there is maybe a little bit of that also.

You know, Gilligan's playing with a lot of things.

A lot.

And I think.

And I think he's doing it very well.

And I think that he's.

Well, he.

And the.

Cause it's not just him writing and he created it, but it's written and directed by other folks.

And there's just like.

It feels like everything is very slipp so far, that there's not a lot to really.

Really.

It does a good job of kind of putting you in Carol's shoes.

Yeah.

You get pretty frustrated, you know.

Yeah.

There's an almost.

There's an element of like, what would I do?

You know, you, as the viewer can, are also kind of, you know, judge judging, so to speak.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The third episode is kind of there to show us how much, if not everything, anything that the collective will do for Carol, for whatever reason.

We don't know why.

And then in Please Carol, this is the fourth and most recent one I talked about.

I love the way that Gilligan's able to set up tension through attention to detail to see that applied to more of a science fiction narrative.

Yeah.

Just like Albuquerque.

Better Call Saul narrative.

This was.

This was exactly when you said, this is the better Call Saul episode.

Yeah, I see.

You know, because you're like.

You know, you're like, I think I know what she's doing.

I'm not 100 sure what she's doing.

You know, she's testing the anesthesia on herself.

She's recording herself.

And then, you know that you never know until she goes and tries it on.

Well, she makes a mention of, oh, it's going to work, or this is what I want.

And she tries it on Zosa to tell her, how do we reverse this?

That's happened.

And she can't quite get it out of her before many of the people around surround her.

And I don't know they don't threaten her, but they just keep saying, please, Carol, don't do this.

It's kind of scary, surreal.

It's unsettling.

Yeah.

It's that glazed over look in their eyes.

Well, anyway, like, great scenes in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, you don't really know why the character's doing it, and then you just know there's going to be a payoff.

Knowing that there's a payoff is why you hang in there.

You're just like, what's this?

What's this?

And Gilligan's doing that on a minuscule scale in each episode, but he's doing it on a long scale, too.

On a major scale, too, with the whole series.

I think our interest, rightly or wrongly, I agree with you, Blaine, that it depends on, like, I'm expecting I'm gonna get something in episode 8 or 10 or however many.

Yeah.

That makes the wait worth it.

Well done.

For Gilligan and the writers to have Carol both gay and having gone through conversion therapy, that says a lot in a short amount of time.

And it gives you a big insight into why Carol might be a bit hesitant about the new direction humanity is taking.

Yeah.

And why she might.

She might not exactly trust the official.

You know, we're all one.

Everything's great.

I'm really digging it.

I did, you know, the third episode, I wondered, am I enjoying this?

And then the fourth one I saw that I was.

Because of that cold open.

I'm gonna go back to it.

It was so great.

If you've watched any of the shows that Gillian's done, you know, Carol is destined to meet up with him in an attempt at something pretty big.

Yeah.

And, you know, for that cold open, I think, at least for me, probably you, too.

I think pretty quickly, you're like, I bet she's gonna call him, like, right?

Like you.

Like, this is the moment where she calls him that.

This is the intersection.

Right.

So you.

You have, like.

It's kind of.

It's teased.

Right.

But it gets the same way, almost.

Certainly with that last phone call.

Because that's something that the collect the others would never say.

Yeah, exactly.

Something like fuck your mother or something.

Yeah.

In Spanish, yesterday, we briefly mentioned Frankenstein.

You got any lingering thoughts on Guillermo?

Guillermo del Toro's version of Frankenstein?

Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein is a movie that dares ask America.

Do you like to parent?

Interesting.

Sometimes, yes.

Is that an okay answer?

I think so.

All right, I may want to watch it, then.

This is the end of our episode.

We split you up in two.

We hope you enjoyed that way.

We won't do that again.

We'll just do our usual non spoiler.

Take a break spoiler next week, I think, because we won't have as much.

Could be Train Dreams, could be Stranger Things.

Both on Netflix.

A lot of y' all have Netflix.

Seems to be like, you know, Netflix is kind of the cable now.

Yeah, everybody got that.

But do you have the add ons?

That's the thing.

Not everyone has the add ons.

Like Hulu.

Netflix.

Yeah.

All right.

Well.

Or Apple in this case.

By the way, I wanted to make mention before I say goodbye.

What a pairing of Pluribus and severance.

Yeah.

Jesus.

Apple.

And it's on Apple.

Let's.

Let's go ahead and throw that in there.

Do you want to write your essay now?

Yeah, please.

So we've reached the end for Adam, for Donovan.

We're gonna have Adam back pretty soon.

And I'm Blaine, and we hope that you're not overdoing it with the cranberry sauce.

Goodbye.