May 27, 2025 • 47 mins
Our Jurassic-ly long exploration of dinosaurs on screen continues with Adult Swim's Primal.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
welcome back to Geek Channel eight.
GC eight for short.
I'm Eric.
And we got first of two episodesfor you today
on the two seasons of primal.
(00:25):
today or talk about is an animated show.
it is a continuing storyfor the first couple of seasons.
Looks like it's going to turn intoan anthology series in the future.
So that is why I wanted to talk about
something I had been meaningto talk about for three shows. Now,
(00:45):
another anthology animated seriesthat we have mentioned
in passing a couple of times,which is love, Death and Robots.
In fact, Love, Death and Robots
and Primal had, similar inspirations.
But we'll get to that in a little bit.
The reason I wanted to bring it upis because I had this experience
(01:07):
that is rare,but it's super cool when it happens.
I was looking for something to readthe other day.
I'd finished
whatever novel I had been reading,and I wanted to pick up a short story
just to read beforeI started another novel.
So I went to my bookshelf
and I took The Essential Ellison Off,which is Harlan Ellison's
(01:31):
Complete Collected Short Stories,or at least the essential ones.
It's like about four inches,five inches thick.
All right.
I picked this thing up,And so the next one I read was called
Life Hutch and I read all of thisstory of life Hutch.
Life Hutch is the story of a, fighter
(01:53):
pilot in space who crash lands on a moon
and, seeks refuge in a pre-built lifehutch.
However, the robot aboardthe life hutch is malfunctioning
and attacks whatever moves the next day.
The very next day,I'm sitting down in front of the TV.
What am I going to watch?
(02:14):
Love, death and robots
like, much like I do with short storieswith love, death and robots.
I got to watch all the episodes in order,which is weird
because Netflix has them in reverse order.
So you got to go all the way to the endand then like, watch them.
And then when it gets the end,instead of say,
next episode, you have to back outand go to the previous episode.
But I was coming acrossthe very next one and.
(02:39):
I didn't catch the title of it,
but I started watching it,and it has, Michael B Jordan,
as this fighter pilot crashes on the moonand seeks refuge in this building.
And it was life, Hutch.
I started to realizeas I was watching it. And
keep in mind, the short story
(02:59):
was written decades ago.
love, Death and Robotsepisode was at least
four years agothat it came out, possibly more.
And I just so happened to read the story
and see the episode back to back
the one day and the next thingThat's some spooky action from a distance.
(03:23):
Yeah.
I love it. Yeah.
So I thought that was great.
And by the way, it'sa really good episode.
I'm sure you've seen itbecause you've seen all the love death
robots, haven't you?
one of those thingswe've jumped around on that I.
I need to make sure I do see that.
I love that what you're.
What you're saying, though, though, is.
And this is something that happened to youback years ago.
(03:44):
Time in reverse.
not like that kind of stars aligning,but this realization
that the things I saw, for instance,and specifically on star Trek, okay,
which was one of the only, outletsfor science fiction.
So they got all the best writerswho are writing all kinds of stuff,
and they wedge all these storiesinto Star Trek,
(04:07):
even though, you know,and and I didn't understand till later
when I was reading old Asimov'sand Analog and,
science fiction magazines,you know, little ones where you could
you could read an entire noveland, serialized form.
But, like, they had great short storiesin there, and those stories would end up
turned into, an episode of Star Trek.
(04:30):
And it was like, wait a second.
And that is, in my opinion,also where Star Trek went wrong.
Because when they revived it,they're like, okay, people like this show.
It's about the Federationand their battle with the Klingons.
But now we're going to make the Klingonstheir friends.
So we need to have them against theKardashians, Kim Kardashian, I don't know.
(04:50):
And then,we need a new enemy every season.
So it'll be the Borg.
And, like, half the episodesare about that, and it's like.
I think they forgot that Star Trekwas just like any good sci fi story.
Turn it into a Trek episode, you know?
a way, they were just like,skimming the cream, right?
(05:12):
And even if it didn't, I was like, wait,what the hell? What?
That doesn't exactly make sense.
It didn't matter because they were onto the next town, Yeah.
wagon train.
And you didn't have to worry aboutall the details of that particular planet.
But I understand why they did it.
sometimes we miss outon some of the essentials.
Like, I knowlots of people who are younger than me
(05:32):
just by ten yearswho loved the prequel Star Wars stuff.
And I freaking hate it so much.
I just can't.
I mean, there might besome good stuff in there, but there's too.
It's if there's too much Well,I've told you before, my one of my.
And I'm now, like, giving this away ideaaway for free on the internet.
Because anyone's going to hear this,but it's a fan fan project anyway.
(05:57):
Not somethingthat's, could really be monetized.
I think that there is enough
good stuff in the prequelsto make one movie,
and you just, you cut out all the garbage,you cut out the Jar Jar Binks
and the slaver, whatever his name is,all the racial stereotypes you cut out,
all the, really bad CGI spacecraft and,
(06:22):
you cut out all that
and you keep, the lightsaber battlesand you keep the good stuff.
You can make one good movie out of it.
I think.
honestly, I feel like thatthere's a lot of future in that
we will see a lot of movies wherepeople are like, yeah, you know what?
This is my take.
This is my cut.
And that will probably bean entire art form in itself.
(06:44):
It already isn't.
You know, there'sthere's plenty of people doing that.
But yeah, I think that'll be a Yeah,This is like my retirement, project
when I have time, because it'sgoing to be, like, a multi year prize.
Probably can take as long as it took
to make a Star Wars film,you know, probably take about three years,
but it totally be worth it,because then I can sit down
(07:06):
and watch the prequel that I made
then then the originaltrilogy, and then maybe stop.
say, oh, man, if you are,if you're an immortal, you just get bored.
You wouldn't have anything to do.It's like,
I don't know, man.
There's always stuff to do.
There's like, oh, I'll make something up.
(07:29):
So let's getlet's get into the episode here today.
This show that we're about to talk about,primal came out in 2019,
which seems like it just happened,
but it is now several years behind us.
So I'm just going to remind youof some things from 2019
(07:50):
that you might have missedor forgotten about,
just to sort of set the context of
what was happening at the timebefore this show premiered.
So in January January 10th
of 2019, researchers published
a paper describing a new giant Late
(08:10):
Cretaceous crocodile species,
Maha Janga Sutures in Cygnus
from Madagascar, offering insightinto apex predators of the dinosaur era.
February 12th
saw the publication of new evidencein nature,
showing early humans controlled firemore extensively and regularly
(08:33):
than previously thought,which is a critical survival skill.
March 7th of 2019,
scientistsannounced the discovery of a 40,000 year
old cave art on the Indonesianisland of Sulawesi, including hand
stencils and animal figures demonstratingearly human symbolic creativity.
(08:57):
April 1st, 2019 brought the publicationof a study reconstructing the bright
colors of dinosaur feathers, revealingyellows, reds, and iridescent hues
far from dull prehistoric beasts.
May 10th scientists
announced the discovery of a new homininspear species,
(09:18):
Homo losa nesses,
in Callao Cave in the Philippines,highlighting
human diversityduring the late Pleistocene.
June 19th Disney's live action
CGI remake that I haven't seen of The LionKing premiered in the US,
which supposedly had stunning earlyrealistic animal
(09:42):
animation and narratives involvingsurvival, predator prey dynamics.
July 2nd
publication of new researchtracing the evolutionary ancestry of great
white sharks, emphasizingtheir lineage and adaptations as ocean
apex predators.
(10:02):
August 14th,
archeologists announcedfinding a 9000 year old
burial site in Jordan
indicative of complex social and ritualbehavior far earlier than expected.
September 10th A new studyusing animated computer simulations
so computer animation to explorehow large thereupon
(10:24):
dinosaurs ran and hunted, sheddinglight on their survival strategies.
That once animation and dinosaurs see.
October 8th, 2019,
Genndy Tartakovsky is primal premieres.
We'll get into a little more
about how this series came about
(10:45):
next episode, but I want to just jumpright in and start discussing the show.
let's start with episode one.
what happens in this first episode?
Okay, so, setting the scene up.
Just a little bit of visuals.
The animation is going to.
If you've seen samurai Jack,which is another one of his shows, it's
(11:05):
going to remind you of that a little bit.
anyway, basically in this episode,
we meet our first protagonist.
We watch him hunt, but he's losing.
He loses his entire family.
To a giant dinosaur.
Okay.
just in the regular parlance, it'sa T-Rex.
(11:25):
has great colorful, markings.
And it It kills them and eats them with
relish.
Not the condiment, but like you see it
having almost, intelligenceand how it does it and sort of like.
Yeah, that was delicious.
And he tries to fight it, he fails,
(11:46):
and he's left the lone survivor.
To the point.
And you see how devastated
he is, and you get to see him
think about
just taking his own life.
Right?
He goes to climbs to tall space andthen thinks about jumping, but he doesn't.
And as he's seemingly wandering aimlessly,
(12:09):
He comes across
a T-Rex and he thinks it's
the same one, right? Yep.
And he is.
He is.
You know, he's going to kill this thing.
But not only is this not the same one,
he realizes this is a mother
(12:29):
who is defending her children, and we see
I feel like the
first thing this isthis is the thing about this character.
this is a caveman.
He's a quintessential caveman,just brutish looking caveman.
And he is,
I can't kill these babies.
I'm not going to kill this mother.
(12:51):
And in fact,when the other T-Rex shows up immediately
in the middle of this interaction
and attacks, he attacks that T-Rex.
point of clarification here.
The dinosaur that, kills
and eats the cave man's family
and attacks the Tyrannosaurus.
(13:16):
This greenish blue Tyrannosaurus
is actually a gigantic saurus.
And not a T-Rex.
So it's a it's a very,very big, Sarah to soar.
Correct. Yeah.
So they are immediately bonded together.
He he, without hesitation, turnsto defend them and seemingly succeeds.
(13:41):
But they're overwhelmed.There's too many of them.
Does get vengeance.
But he's not able to save these babies.
And they're left to living beings alive.
But everything important to themhas been torn away from them.
And for him, it's like twice
if youI mean, he he it's, you know, it's funny.
(14:02):
It gives you this like, oh, I'm a human.
I bond with everything. And he does right?
He's like, he's like,and you'll see these baby dinosaurs.
And he is.
It's like he sees his own childrenin them. Yeah.
It's a lot in one episode.
Yeah.
Yeah.
a couple of things, thatI wanted to talk about with this episode.
(14:23):
First of all, we're going to referto the characters by the names that
I guess fandom has given themor that the animators used
or something like that,because it's there's no dialog in any.
Well, until later.
There's no dialog going onalmost any of these episodes.
so you don't know what their names are,but they have come to be known as spear,
(14:47):
the cavemen and
Fang, this mother T-Rex.
All right.
So we're going to call themspear and fang.
Now spear, let's just talk about thehis look and stuff like that.
he does not look like a modern human.
He's, like, very, very squat and blocky
(15:11):
and he looks like he might be Neanderthal,but we in fact, later on,
we will find out in the series that he isseems to be of Neanderthal stock,
but he seems a little bit more evolvedthan most of them.
he's definitely smart,although of course, his first
(15:33):
go to is like,kill it with force, you know?
the Tyrannosaurus,
fang, interestingly, is teal colored
and also has one really big,
lower jaw tooth fang Had.
on one side of his, head,which is kind of cool.
(15:54):
Yeah.
the visual, the representations of thesecharacters are really cool.
Way more blood than I expected.
this was the first Cartoon Networkshow ever to get a TV
14 slash TV mature rating.
So, they don't hold back on the bloodin this thing.
(16:17):
They really don't.
And actually,I don't want to get too deep into this
right now,but everything about this reminds me,
when I was young man,and I wanted to read all of the,
heavy metal magazinesthat were kept behind the counter.
Right. Yeah.
they were in wraps.
And, you know, when I finally got to readthem, you know, there's backstories.
There's just, like,single, issue episodes of,
(16:40):
caveman survival and stuff like that.
it's like that visually, stunning,really well done.
But also this show has a heart that is,
oh, we will get in more into that.
But man. Yeah.
I think we may have the dino battleof the week right from the beginning.
Dino battle of the week.
(17:04):
This episode,
the fight between, Spear and Fang
and the Gigantor saurus.
That fight is super memorable.
I particularly like after it's, like,
killed one of the baby t-rexes and, like,
spear just goes berserk and is like, drops
(17:28):
and goes charging at it with the spearand then
and then the dino, fang goes flatbecause charging at it
like I wish JackKirby was alive to see this,
that that was that momentwhere it was like,
there's just like a,like one beat between the two of that.
I'm like, going berserk.
(17:48):
You. Yeah.
You remember the part I'm talking about,right?
know, it's like.
beats are really good.
get deep into his emotional pain
get to know so much about this characterfrom the beginning.
You don't even realize that youthey planted the seed of what?
This what what is this guy really about?
I mean, really excellent.
You know, this is a show that gives you
(18:11):
episodic action, Yeah.
lots of relationships and story building.
It's pretty freaking I don't know, man.
We got a lot to talk about.
That's just the first episode. Right.
In the second episode,
while hunting, Fang keeps stealingany food
(18:32):
she and spear come across,so he'll, like, be hunting a boar.
And then at the last minute, fangall rushing and eat it Right.
even the fruit trees.
And he's finally reduced to eating a bug.
He's starving.
Yeah. It's like they're they're really.
Leadership's not formed yet, right?
Eventually he just has had enough.
And he, like, turns on Fang and attacksFang, and Fang bites
(18:55):
a spear and in half and,that would be the end of their friendship.
I think they probably would have,like, killed each other. And.
But just asthis is about to happen, a bunch of snakes
show up, and there's, like a floodthat's pushing all the snakes toward them.
And then there's this giant snake,and it attacks them.
(19:17):
Fang kills it, but they are overcome
by the water and, Tang gets bitten a bunch
by snakes, which is important for lateron in the story.
they go down a river. And
basically go over a waterfall.
Spear hits his head, falls unconscious,
(19:37):
but Fang drags him out of the water Yeah.
and it looks like at that point,
they're pretty much solidified as a team.
Yeah, this is like, somebody's film where,you know, they're not getting along.
And then they are forced to again,
you know, outside force
just welds them together.
(19:59):
And you get to see it. Yeah.
No, it's not a one way like,
oh, what am I doing all the huntingand you're eating everything I'm doing.
No, it's it's back and forth.
Them taking care of each other.
I feel like a lot of this was amazing,where snakes were everywhere.
I mean, they were doing underwater,a whole bunch of this and that.
That's not that easy to do necessarily.
(20:19):
Oh, the other thing I like
is that you just highlightedhow durable these two are.
They're like,
what?
Those are like made out of like, stern stuff.
You know,they're going over the waterfall.
They're they're they're surviving.
this entire seriesjust to jump a little bit out, but
I'm just saying it's like, man,this is an amazing combo.
(20:41):
This is like the best comic bookI've read in years.
I remember when we were doinga previous episode,
in our dinosaur series,and we were talking about the genre
of the cave man and dinosaursyou know, at the.
Well, you know, in the same existing.
And I had mentioned possibly, Casarand the Savage Land becoming a movie,
(21:01):
and they're like, you were like,this is a, genre someone needs to redo.
It needs to come back when they did.This is it.
They thought that. Oh my God.
so, like, evenwhile you were saying that, this existed.
know.
I love the colors on this, too.
They're everything's gorgeous.
(21:23):
And there's sort of a color paletteper episode.
This one is have more of a bluishgreenish color for this episode.
Which makes sense because there'sa lot of water stuff and, you know, yeah.
Let's talk about episode three.
So this is, called a cold death.
Yeah.
There's two things that I get from this.
Number one is this is a wandering duo.
(21:45):
They don't stay in one place.
And this makes sense because.
What do they eat? Meat.
Lay it on me, and they,So they're wandering, hunting the,
And this is the first timewhere it's episode is not about them,
we see a wandering mammoth that is old
and looking sick as by itself,
(22:06):
and it seems to be wandering throughthe cold waste and after a little bit,
you know, our protagonist set upon it.
And there they know there's an epic fight.
It's really cool.
It holds its own,but they they manage to kill it.
And so they get to, you know,they get to feast.
Right?
And it's, this is a lot of meat.
And there's lots of cool, bits.
(22:28):
Okay. Spear is smart.
he has his own tech and everything.
He builds a sledge and hehe pulls up that with the meat on it.
he also uses the hide to create a coat.
And Yeah.
a blanket for fang.
He also uses, the remaining tusk.
It only has one tusk. It uses.
He uses that tusk to be the runnerfor the sled.
(22:51):
Yeah.
Yeah.
So he's using everything and he goes up.
But the realthe the way the real story is
when the,the herd comes across the killing.
So this is the herd of mammothsAnd you see them, reacting.
They know he's dead.
(23:11):
You know, they, they realizethis is what they were missing,
and they starthunting our protagonist down
I don't know how much we want
to give away, but like, essentially theythere is well, I mean, let's just go to it
because it's like they, they it's likea, a posse hunting down like somebody
who murdered, you know, one of their,you know, family members or something.
Right. there's, different encountersalong the way.
(23:31):
But the, the key part ofthis is everything here is intelligent.
These are as intelligentas spear, for that matter.
Thing is as intelligent as spear.
They they aren't humanoids,but they're intelligent.
And when they finally cornered them,they finally corner our our protagonist.
(23:52):
What they wantis the skull of their fallen,
herd member.
They're not mad that you killed this.
This dying. You know, this is their.
Hey, that's just business.
But you took their, remains,
basically, theythey have their own elephant graveyard.
Yeah. we get to see that.
(24:12):
Yeah. Yeah.
And it emphasizesa recurring theme in this,
which is the loss of family by deathor whatever.
Yeah.
Which happened,
when they're in the cave beforethe mammoth pack shows up to attack them.
Spear is having a dream.
flashback or somethingto, teaching his son to hunt
So we're constantly being remindedin these episodes,
(24:35):
there's usually a flashback to eitherSpear
or Frank's previous existence.
Yeah.
I want to also say thatthis one had an overall color of white,
of course, because it was winter,but also some light blues.
And the night sky is amazing,
you know, and this you get the,you know, northern Lights and stuff.
(24:56):
So let's go on to episode four.
This one's called TerrorUnder the Blood Moon.
If you haven't guessed,this one's got an overall red color to it.
this time, Spear and fang
encounter, pack of Utah Raptors
and, there's this lunar eclipse,
(25:18):
and then they encountertribe of albino cave people.
And, while they're doing this,all of a sudden, the key people
all freak out and, like, run into hiding,and they don't know why,
out of nowhere,this flock of giant bats shows up,
and, they attempt to fight off the bats,
but spear is carried away by one,and he drops his spear, we've seen this.
(25:44):
Usually it's a pterosaur or,in most of the ones we've watched
before, it's a pterosaurthat carries someone off.
But this time it is a giant bat
Fang chases after, all the way to.
They fly into the stone cavethat's way up high, and there's no way
Fang can climb you know,Fang has tiny little T-Rex arms and.
(26:10):
So she.
She tries and fails and triesand fails to run up the side,
And then she sees a couple of the batscome out and she plays dead
to allow them to come carry her off to thethe cave.
And then, wants there?
She's looking for him and.
Okay, surprise!
The big band isn't even a bat.
(26:33):
It's a giant spiderthat lives in the cave.
Which is a real headscratcher in some ways.
And then the bat walk returns.
Fang finds that, spear has been,
like, cocooned in, the spider web.
And frees him and,they managed to escape by using the spider
(26:55):
webbing to, repel down and, then,you know,
they make a run for it, to the high grasswhere the Utah Raptors live.
Grabbing Spears spearfrom a cave man on the way back.
He helped them.They helped him. They were they.
You know, there's it's interestingthat, you know, and then they basically,
(27:17):
are fleeing through the, wheat.
But the Utah Raptors, you know, thisthe started out like a scene
right out of Jurassic Park where you seethe raptors moving through the tall grass,
but this time they're the Utah Raptorsare part of their advantage
because the giant batsdon't know which ones are they.
(27:37):
And they just start swooping down
and you get raptorsversus giant bats and, you know, Yeah.
and they finally escape.
And that is basically this episode,I the setting sun.
And this was super amazing with the heatyou know, shimmer That looks so real Yeah.
well, I really like that this episodea couple things.
(27:58):
Number one, would need.
They escape into the plainsand, you know, from the Utah Raptors
and the white people are like,yeah, there's danger from above.
You need to run.
And, but basically there'sa sense of justice that he immediately
spears is like, oh,you know, somebody's trying to kill, like,
something I consider people. I'mjust going to kill it.
You know?
(28:18):
And the dedication that she's going
all the way,whatever it takes to get him back, right?
she can't climb.
She can't fly.She will play dead and let them take her.
She'll do all of thisand their dedication to each other.
And then they escape by the skin or teeth,and they lead their enemies
into each other.It's, pretty freaking epic.
They are statsbadass team right here, right?
(28:42):
they're a boy,and they're really badass dog.
You know, they're.
Yeah.
And know, fangsfight with the giant, spider.
had we not had the gigantic saurusfight, in episode one,
this might be a contenderfor Dino Battle of the week.
Yeah.
All right,
why don't you tell us about episode five,rage of the Ape Men?
(29:04):
the the previous episode, I was like, oh,my God, it's just one danger
after the other.
You go like, oh, wait,this is one where it's like, oh, wow.
They came across this, calm oasis
in the middle of what seems to be like,danger everywhere where it's a calm oasis.
And they
they relax a little bit,
Only to basically be kidnaped
(29:28):
they're separated from each other,the relaxed
and they both get jumped and drug away.
Right.
And where are they drove away to into this
nightmarish scenariowhere it's a whole bunch
of tribe of eight men at different sizesand shapes, and they are,
before anything even happens between,you know, them
(29:49):
and the eight men,because they're all they're all tied up.
They're all in there.You know, our heroes are in cages.
They the eight menhave this entire, tournament
amongst themselves where they are
beating the crap out of each otherand just murdering each other, basically
to find the strongestamongst them, who then the
(30:14):
Well, no.
There's. There's a shaman
who has a ball of this stuff, and he,
like, pours out one drop.
All right?
That, like, goes down this long,channel down, to the mouth.
The winner who, like,gets it on his tongue and then, hulks out.
(30:35):
monsters out.
He's already giant and incredibly strongand just looks out from there.
Now then they screw upbecause they make the mistake up.
We're going to attack the dinosaur.
We're going to you basically it's ait's like this sacrifice by combat, right?
Yeah. Yeah. No, don't do that.
So we have establisheddon't fuck with the boys dinosaur.
(30:56):
That's his.
That's his girl. Don't don't mess with my.
No, it's it's, It's it's Haaland.
It's it's a boy and his dog.
That's what it is.
totally is.
So which, throwback to earlier, but like.
Okay, so essentially when, when, when
when a thing is threatened by, you know,death and, like, being totally jacked up,
(31:19):
what happens, spearit makes his way free from his binds.
you know, he fightsand then he's overwhelmed.
He basically doesreally good against most of the regulars
but against the big guys.
But so he grabs the entire ball.
All the crazy stuff.
And he just goes
Super Hawk.
And just I mean, at this point, man,this show is way over the top.
(31:43):
It's like there's blood everywhere.
It's like there's just squashing things.
They're just like and, wave,wave after wave of eight, man.
He just crushing things.
He's fighting If you can't stand blood,don't watch this one.
Because this is a massacre. Man.
And he
just goto town on every last bit of them, right?
He just murders everything.
(32:05):
But is it enough because
what happens at the end of the episode?
He's killed everything. But,
Bang was just completely destroyedby the super ape.
it looks like Fang might be deadMight be dead.
(32:25):
Yeah, it was great.
It was a great cliffhanger.
We were like. Well, what?
Yeah.
I don't have much to say about this one,except
it is utter carnage.
I mean, the episode opened in the, like,spear fishing in this perfect
grotto with butterflies and,you know, a waterfall that.
(32:47):
The only hint of anything that was, like,scary was like there was a worm.
I think that that, like, when when Fangsees it, Fang freaks out because it's has.
Fang has flashbacks to the snakesthat but bitter in an earlier episode.
But yeah, but that's it.
Otherwise it was super peaceful.
So you're thinking, okay,this is going to be whatever.
(33:09):
And then they, like, kidnap fang
while spear is like swimming underwater.
And he comes up and Fang is gone,you know, and looks everywhere.
And then like,
follows them and.
Yeah.
So all right, that was that episode.
So we open upepisode six, sent sent of prey.
(33:31):
With spear is like, traumatizedbecause he thinks fangs dead.
And then we find outthat Fang is still alive,
just barely alive, too weak to move,but dying.
there are vultures all around because ofall the dead eight men he killed.
So he's like, okay,I got to get her out of here.
(33:52):
So he builds this litter, and,like a stretcher and, like,
starts to carry fang, drag Fang away.
He makes a new spear, he eventuallyhe tries to nurse her back to health,
but they're followed all along
by hyenas like a pack of hyenas.
(34:13):
And then eventuallythey get her to a cave,
and is able to take care of, but knows hecan't, like, stay with her forever.
So, like, when he goes out one time,he like walls the cave off with boulders
and, also there's like, flesheating beetles in the cave Yeah.
you know, and then eventually,
(34:34):
the pack of hyenas waiting
or jackalsor whatever they are is just like, huge.
And you're like, he she goes outto fight them off, but they're gonna
they're going to overcome himand they're going to get in the cave.
And then just at the last minute, backto health, Fang comes busting
out of the cave, turns into another, like,
(34:54):
spear and fang versus a ton of like,
you know, this is pretty standardspear and fang stuff.
Now, are theyjust, like, going crazy, like killing,
like killing hyenas left and right,you know, like, he.
Yeah. It's a blood. It's a bloodbath.
You know, the vast majority of theseis all about them having each other back.
(35:15):
You know, that's whatevery almost every And killing things.
I would say the cold death is the only onewhere it's really.
Yeah.
I was like, okay, it kind of wasn'tabout them, but everything else.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
All right.
Plague of Madness episode seven?
So Plague of Madness is,it's like a zombie story, right?
(35:37):
it's very cool.
we see, I forget what the,
the first, vector was,but we see It was an Argentina saurus.
Arch disorder.
But you see this thingsick holes in its skin,
just like absolutely diseaseand very obviously so.
And it's spreading from one dinosaurto the next to the next.
(35:57):
And, before our heroes, encounter it.
It's caused a lot of damage already.
So what's striking about this is thatwe go from like, oh, it's disease, right?
To like, well, I don't know, man,because this thing is there.
You know, we've already seena little bit of something that is like,
what is this frickin magic,basically with a rage of the eight man,
(36:18):
because they're like, they're taking like,you know, Uber drugs or whatever.
It makes them crazy powerful.
And this one,the dinosaur that pursues them
is, It's a Parasaurolophus.
It's one of those big, quadrupedal,Long neck long neck.
Yeah, kind of like a diplodocus, but.Yeah.
Sorry, Eric.I'm going to just call it. It's like.
(36:39):
It's like a broad saurus, which I knowthat's not a thing or whatever anymore,
but anyway, it's.
But it's it's a planting dinosaur.
But not anymore. It's after them,you know, it's like.
So this is very much.
But every except they keep fighting it.
Of course they're running.
It's running, gunning battle and keepthinking, okay, well now we're safe.
I was like, now you're not safe.
It's being back up. It's attacking you.
(37:01):
like most zombie diseases in zombiemovies, it's got two components to it.
One is the rabid ness, you know,
and the other is the undead ness of, like,you can't kill it.
It keeps coming back, you know?
Yes. And there's like a the accumulationis like where it's like, okay.
Because it's like, oh look, it doesn'treally have any flesh left on this.
(37:22):
Is this just, this is like bones and sinewand it's like.
But like the what?
Finally they they are running throughthis, like, field of, lava and geysers.
Yes. Because there has to be a volcano.
Sooner or later.There had to be a volcano.
but like like what kills it is,it gets freaking dissolved in lava.
But at even as it's on fire,it's trying to kill them.
(37:45):
It's.
And of course it
they're like they're like,they watch it burn
and then they turn to go abouttheir business because that's something.
I mean, this is just another horrorin the world that they live.
Yeah. Oh, man.
but I, I love it.
It was okay.
So we talked on the I, you know,we were talking minor things about,
epic stories, you know, short storiesbeing wedged into, bigger series.
(38:07):
And I feel this is thecharacters were using, but there's they're
telling all kinds of amazing stories,
with these characters in this space.
And I think we're goingto see more of that in just a minute.
This was a very simple episode.
I mean, wrong, was very straightforward.
It was a run from the zombie fight.
Yeah.
They've been slowlyintroducing supernatural elements.
(38:28):
It started with the Hulk potion, Right.
and then this one. Now it's zombie.
So now we're starting to get the feelingthat There are some, magic elements Right.
and that
really becomes, evidentin the next episode.
Episode eight, coven of the damned.
So in this one, they see this green flamesin the jungle, and they go there
(38:52):
and they see antlered humanoids,like burning a man, Yeah.
Burning man.
Yeah. Well, yeah, it does.
It is, it is very reminiscentto anyone who's familiar with like,
The WickerMan or Pagan, like, human sacrifice.
This looks very much like that.
This is a coven of witches.
Well, yeah,we find that out when a Pteranodon,
(39:14):
with, like, a witch riding, it shows up.
instead of riding brooms,these witches ride dragons.
And she creates this glowing green snake
and it goes into the mouth of the guy.
And, produces a baby, and, the pteranodon
familiar spots sword and fangand chases them into the woods.
(39:38):
one of these witches, like, possessesfang and spear is captured.
And then, A witch, uses her magic totravel into both of their past and watches
and sees that, oh, They had familiesand sees their backstory.
So when it advances the plot in this.
But it also again reminds the, you know,if you're just coming into this new like,
(40:00):
you're still getting to see whythey're together, you know, Yeah.
Yeah. now the witch lost a daughter.
so she has some sympathyfor Spear and Fang and saves them
from the others by sacrificing herself,to help them escape.
she dies, but they briefly mourn her lossbefore they go off into the jungle.
(40:23):
And then we also see in the afterlife,she's reunited with her daughter
or whatever.
And I think I do.
I'm not sure we mentioned this, but, like,this is how they make their children.
They.
They suck the life essence out of a man.
And use that to make a child.
So, Yes.
freaking awesome.
So there's so much there where it's like,oh, wait, you know, we're doing this
(40:46):
so we can have our children, but,you know, you know, she has vast powers
where she can,you know, she gets experience
and we get all the flashbacks from,you know, his experiences, his family
and, her experiences, you know, fangs, family and all that stuff.
So, yeah, it's, it's again,this is an episode that is kind of,
(41:06):
it's definitely about their,
their relationship,but the most active participant,
the one who doesthe most stuff is not them.
This is where you know you're
in a sword and sorcery serieswithout the sword.
Right.
I. This is definitely barbarian fantasy.
Yes. this is very typicalRobert Howard type barbarian fantasy,
(41:26):
where, like, magic is evil by its nature,magic is bad.
And and you must overcome magicwith muscle.
You know, human might, you know.
I mean, what does that stop you fromgoing to look, No,
you gotta go investigate the thing,even though you probably shouldn't,
but I just I would like to if,like you guys, if I long go the other way.
(41:47):
But Well,I mean, there's there was a little bit of.
We got to save that dude, you know? But.
there was a little bit of that.
you know, this is way throwback. It was.
I didn't even watch this as a kid,but like, you know, this idea
of a wandering cowboy who goes from townto town and doles out justice.
Yeah. The Clint Eastwood thing. Yeah.
This is athis is a, you know, this is, Paladin,
(42:09):
I think it was the show that that reallyshowed that was like. Yes.
even in Conan, he, like,
he's mostly,
like, chaotic neutral or whatever.
He's, like, mostly interestedin protecting himself, you know?
And he's a bandit and a river and a pirateand all these other things.
But also when it comes down to humanityversus the supernatural,
(42:31):
he'll like, be like,oh, no, that has to stop over there.
You know, it's like,I don't care about like, you know,
I don't care if the person that is beingsacrificed is an evil human.
They're still a human, right.
You know, like, I'm going to stop thethe monster for, you know,
that takes us up to episode nine,night of the Feeder.
Yeah.
This was it was a hard onebecause it was mostly not visible.
(42:55):
There this is a story of a unseen killer.
it starts out,they hear these noises in the night,
and they come across carnage.
That really disturbs Fang.
Like Fang is really disturbed by it.
The next night,it decimates a herd of Triceratops,
and spear wants to go after it,but Fang stops him.
And then the next day, they see vulturesswarming in the distance.
(43:18):
then they're caught in a windstorm,and the next night
they, hear it coming, and they flee.
And then they get stuck in this fogand they make a stand in the fog.
Fang manages the wounded.
But then there's this, like, tar,like slime that comes from its body,
(43:39):
and the thethe beast shrieks and and spear learns
that it's weakness is light.
So he uses sparks from his weapon
and, eventually a ring of fire to trap it.
You know, this is when the invisible manis, like, on the loose.
You, like, surround it, in this case,with a ring of fire, you know?
(44:00):
And, Yes.
Well, that's what they do.
They they totally do that.
And, it turns out to be a therapytype dinosaur.
They kill it by, setting it on fire and,yeah, that's the end.
then we get to episode ten,slave of the Scorpion.
Oh, wow.
This is. This is. You know.
So this is pivotal.
(44:21):
This is the season finale.
So, spear and fang are spearfishing,
and, they, encounter,
what is obviously an escaped slave.
She's got, brand on the back of her head
and, wooden collar thing around herneck and,
they basically save her from
(44:42):
the dinosaur spear fights it off, and,they take her,
you know, they spear, creates a fire.
She spends the night there,she prays to the moon,
when she realizes that they don't meanany harm.
The next night, she helps cook a stew.
They they, like,basically free her from the, the,
(45:04):
the collar and the thethe cuffs and stuff.
she fashions a bow and arrowand actually kills dinner the next night.
So she's pretty good. Archer.
eventually they go to this mountain caveand, Fang doesn't
want to go there, but she lures Fangwith, big bugs that Fang likes to eat.
(45:24):
Okay.
But then an
ape tribe shows up and kidnaps her.
And by now we know her name is Mira.
so spear takes a warhammer
from them, and, Pursues on Fang.
But despite Mira killing a lot of them,she's taken away on a ship.
(45:45):
And, staring from the shore, spearspeaks for the first time
in the series and says, Mira, Yes.
Yes, I should one of usbe clear by humans.
Yes. Sorry. I should have said that. Yeah.
as usual, there's, like, multiple threats
and a given, episode.
(46:08):
So we are just like. She is not.
She is not built like him.
She is built like a modern human.
She has a bald head.
you know, it's not really She's talland thin.
She's not stocky like she is. Yeah.
And she has different
ways, like, you know,we never really see him making stew.
You know, if you're eating vegetables,you don't cook them.
(46:28):
And he's not really crazy about thatanyway.
But It's clear she wasn't. No.
Didn't know what to expect from himor from the dinosaur.
But like, they become fast.
Pretty close quickly because
honestly, what is this guy about?
We know already he's about family, right?
And yeah, like you saidfirst time he says says anything.
(46:52):
Any word I love it.
Yeah. Okay.
I think it's time we wrap this up.
We will be back next time with more on
primal season two of primal coming up.
we'll also get into a little backgroundon, how this series came about.
Until next time. This is Eric.
(47:16):
Signing off.
now you're thinking like a gamer.
So like.
welcome back to Geek Channel eight.
GC eight for short.
I'm Eric.
And we got first of two episodesfor you today
on the two seasons of primal.
(00:25):
today or talk about is an animated show.
it is a continuing storyfor the first couple of seasons.
Looks like it's going to turn intoan anthology series in the future.
So that is why I wanted to talk about
something I had been meaningto talk about for three shows. Now,
(00:45):
another anthology animated seriesthat we have mentioned
in passing a couple of times,which is love, Death and Robots.
In fact, Love, Death and Robots
and Primal had, similar inspirations.
But we'll get to that in a little bit.
The reason I wanted to bring it upis because I had this experience
(01:07):
that is rare,but it's super cool when it happens.
I was looking for something to readthe other day.
I'd finished
whatever novel I had been reading,and I wanted to pick up a short story
just to read beforeI started another novel.
So I went to my bookshelf
and I took The Essential Ellison Off,which is Harlan Ellison's
(01:31):
Complete Collected Short Stories,or at least the essential ones.
It's like about four inches,five inches thick.
All right.
I picked this thing up,And so the next one I read was called
Life Hutch and I read all of thisstory of life Hutch.
Life Hutch is the story of a, fighter
(01:53):
pilot in space who crash lands on a moon
and, seeks refuge in a pre-built lifehutch.
However, the robot aboardthe life hutch is malfunctioning
and attacks whatever moves the next day.
The very next day,I'm sitting down in front of the TV.
What am I going to watch?
(02:14):
Love, death and robots
like, much like I do with short storieswith love, death and robots.
I got to watch all the episodes in order,which is weird
because Netflix has them in reverse order.
So you got to go all the way to the endand then like, watch them.
And then when it gets the end,instead of say,
next episode, you have to back outand go to the previous episode.
But I was coming acrossthe very next one and.
(02:39):
I didn't catch the title of it,
but I started watching it,and it has, Michael B Jordan,
as this fighter pilot crashes on the moonand seeks refuge in this building.
And it was life, Hutch.
I started to realizeas I was watching it. And
keep in mind, the short story
(02:59):
was written decades ago.
love, Death and Robotsepisode was at least
four years agothat it came out, possibly more.
And I just so happened to read the story
and see the episode back to back
the one day and the next thingThat's some spooky action from a distance.
(03:23):
Yeah.
I love it. Yeah.
So I thought that was great.
And by the way, it'sa really good episode.
I'm sure you've seen itbecause you've seen all the love death
robots, haven't you?
one of those thingswe've jumped around on that I.
I need to make sure I do see that.
I love that what you're.
What you're saying, though, though, is.
And this is something that happened to youback years ago.
(03:44):
Time in reverse.
not like that kind of stars aligning,but this realization
that the things I saw, for instance,and specifically on star Trek, okay,
which was one of the only, outletsfor science fiction.
So they got all the best writerswho are writing all kinds of stuff,
and they wedge all these storiesinto Star Trek,
(04:07):
even though, you know,and and I didn't understand till later
when I was reading old Asimov'sand Analog and,
science fiction magazines,you know, little ones where you could
you could read an entire noveland, serialized form.
But, like, they had great short storiesin there, and those stories would end up
turned into, an episode of Star Trek.
(04:30):
And it was like, wait a second.
And that is, in my opinion,also where Star Trek went wrong.
Because when they revived it,they're like, okay, people like this show.
It's about the Federationand their battle with the Klingons.
But now we're going to make the Klingonstheir friends.
So we need to have them against theKardashians, Kim Kardashian, I don't know.
(04:50):
And then,we need a new enemy every season.
So it'll be the Borg.
And, like, half the episodesare about that, and it's like.
I think they forgot that Star Trekwas just like any good sci fi story.
Turn it into a Trek episode, you know?
a way, they were just like,skimming the cream, right?
(05:12):
And even if it didn't, I was like, wait,what the hell? What?
That doesn't exactly make sense.
It didn't matter because they were onto the next town, Yeah.
wagon train.
And you didn't have to worry aboutall the details of that particular planet.
But I understand why they did it.
sometimes we miss outon some of the essentials.
Like, I knowlots of people who are younger than me
(05:32):
just by ten yearswho loved the prequel Star Wars stuff.
And I freaking hate it so much.
I just can't.
I mean, there might besome good stuff in there, but there's too.
It's if there's too much Well,I've told you before, my one of my.
And I'm now, like, giving this away ideaaway for free on the internet.
Because anyone's going to hear this,but it's a fan fan project anyway.
(05:57):
Not somethingthat's, could really be monetized.
I think that there is enough
good stuff in the prequelsto make one movie,
and you just, you cut out all the garbage,you cut out the Jar Jar Binks
and the slaver, whatever his name is,all the racial stereotypes you cut out,
all the, really bad CGI spacecraft and,
(06:22):
you cut out all that
and you keep, the lightsaber battlesand you keep the good stuff.
You can make one good movie out of it.
I think.
honestly, I feel like thatthere's a lot of future in that
we will see a lot of movies wherepeople are like, yeah, you know what?
This is my take.
This is my cut.
And that will probably bean entire art form in itself.
(06:44):
It already isn't.
You know, there'sthere's plenty of people doing that.
But yeah, I think that'll be a Yeah,This is like my retirement, project
when I have time, because it'sgoing to be, like, a multi year prize.
Probably can take as long as it took
to make a Star Wars film,you know, probably take about three years,
but it totally be worth it,because then I can sit down
(07:06):
and watch the prequel that I made
then then the originaltrilogy, and then maybe stop.
say, oh, man, if you are,if you're an immortal, you just get bored.
You wouldn't have anything to do.It's like,
I don't know, man.
There's always stuff to do.
There's like, oh, I'll make something up.
(07:29):
So let's getlet's get into the episode here today.
This show that we're about to talk about,primal came out in 2019,
which seems like it just happened,
but it is now several years behind us.
So I'm just going to remind youof some things from 2019
(07:50):
that you might have missedor forgotten about,
just to sort of set the context of
what was happening at the timebefore this show premiered.
So in January January 10th
of 2019, researchers published
a paper describing a new giant Late
(08:10):
Cretaceous crocodile species,
Maha Janga Sutures in Cygnus
from Madagascar, offering insightinto apex predators of the dinosaur era.
February 12th
saw the publication of new evidencein nature,
showing early humans controlled firemore extensively and regularly
(08:33):
than previously thought,which is a critical survival skill.
March 7th of 2019,
scientistsannounced the discovery of a 40,000 year
old cave art on the Indonesianisland of Sulawesi, including hand
stencils and animal figures demonstratingearly human symbolic creativity.
(08:57):
April 1st, 2019 brought the publicationof a study reconstructing the bright
colors of dinosaur feathers, revealingyellows, reds, and iridescent hues
far from dull prehistoric beasts.
May 10th scientists
announced the discovery of a new homininspear species,
(09:18):
Homo losa nesses,
in Callao Cave in the Philippines,highlighting
human diversityduring the late Pleistocene.
June 19th Disney's live action
CGI remake that I haven't seen of The LionKing premiered in the US,
which supposedly had stunning earlyrealistic animal
(09:42):
animation and narratives involvingsurvival, predator prey dynamics.
July 2nd
publication of new researchtracing the evolutionary ancestry of great
white sharks, emphasizingtheir lineage and adaptations as ocean
apex predators.
(10:02):
August 14th,
archeologists announcedfinding a 9000 year old
burial site in Jordan
indicative of complex social and ritualbehavior far earlier than expected.
September 10th A new studyusing animated computer simulations
so computer animation to explorehow large thereupon
(10:24):
dinosaurs ran and hunted, sheddinglight on their survival strategies.
That once animation and dinosaurs see.
October 8th, 2019,
Genndy Tartakovsky is primal premieres.
We'll get into a little more
about how this series came about
(10:45):
next episode, but I want to just jumpright in and start discussing the show.
let's start with episode one.
what happens in this first episode?
Okay, so, setting the scene up.
Just a little bit of visuals.
The animation is going to.
If you've seen samurai Jack,which is another one of his shows, it's
(11:05):
going to remind you of that a little bit.
anyway, basically in this episode,
we meet our first protagonist.
We watch him hunt, but he's losing.
He loses his entire family.
To a giant dinosaur.
Okay.
just in the regular parlance, it'sa T-Rex.
(11:25):
has great colorful, markings.
And it It kills them and eats them with
relish.
Not the condiment, but like you see it
having almost, intelligenceand how it does it and sort of like.
Yeah, that was delicious.
And he tries to fight it, he fails,
(11:46):
and he's left the lone survivor.
To the point.
And you see how devastated
he is, and you get to see him
think about
just taking his own life.
Right?
He goes to climbs to tall space andthen thinks about jumping, but he doesn't.
And as he's seemingly wandering aimlessly,
(12:09):
He comes across
a T-Rex and he thinks it's
the same one, right? Yep.
And he is.
He is.
You know, he's going to kill this thing.
But not only is this not the same one,
he realizes this is a mother
(12:29):
who is defending her children, and we see
I feel like the
first thing this isthis is the thing about this character.
this is a caveman.
He's a quintessential caveman,just brutish looking caveman.
And he is,
I can't kill these babies.
I'm not going to kill this mother.
(12:51):
And in fact,when the other T-Rex shows up immediately
in the middle of this interaction
and attacks, he attacks that T-Rex.
point of clarification here.
The dinosaur that, kills
and eats the cave man's family
and attacks the Tyrannosaurus.
(13:16):
This greenish blue Tyrannosaurus
is actually a gigantic saurus.
And not a T-Rex.
So it's a it's a very,very big, Sarah to soar.
Correct. Yeah.
So they are immediately bonded together.
He he, without hesitation, turnsto defend them and seemingly succeeds.
(13:41):
But they're overwhelmed.There's too many of them.
Does get vengeance.
But he's not able to save these babies.
And they're left to living beings alive.
But everything important to themhas been torn away from them.
And for him, it's like twice
if youI mean, he he it's, you know, it's funny.
(14:02):
It gives you this like, oh, I'm a human.
I bond with everything. And he does right?
He's like, he's like,and you'll see these baby dinosaurs.
And he is.
It's like he sees his own childrenin them. Yeah.
It's a lot in one episode.
Yeah.
Yeah.
a couple of things, thatI wanted to talk about with this episode.
(14:23):
First of all, we're going to referto the characters by the names that
I guess fandom has given themor that the animators used
or something like that,because it's there's no dialog in any.
Well, until later.
There's no dialog going onalmost any of these episodes.
so you don't know what their names are,but they have come to be known as spear,
(14:47):
the cavemen and
Fang, this mother T-Rex.
All right.
So we're going to call themspear and fang.
Now spear, let's just talk about thehis look and stuff like that.
he does not look like a modern human.
He's, like, very, very squat and blocky
(15:11):
and he looks like he might be Neanderthal,but we in fact, later on,
we will find out in the series that he isseems to be of Neanderthal stock,
but he seems a little bit more evolvedthan most of them.
he's definitely smart,although of course, his first
(15:33):
go to is like,kill it with force, you know?
the Tyrannosaurus,
fang, interestingly, is teal colored
and also has one really big,
lower jaw tooth fang Had.
on one side of his, head,which is kind of cool.
(15:54):
Yeah.
the visual, the representations of thesecharacters are really cool.
Way more blood than I expected.
this was the first Cartoon Networkshow ever to get a TV
14 slash TV mature rating.
So, they don't hold back on the bloodin this thing.
(16:17):
They really don't.
And actually,I don't want to get too deep into this
right now,but everything about this reminds me,
when I was young man,and I wanted to read all of the,
heavy metal magazinesthat were kept behind the counter.
Right. Yeah.
they were in wraps.
And, you know, when I finally got to readthem, you know, there's backstories.
There's just, like,single, issue episodes of,
(16:40):
caveman survival and stuff like that.
it's like that visually, stunning,really well done.
But also this show has a heart that is,
oh, we will get in more into that.
But man. Yeah.
I think we may have the dino battleof the week right from the beginning.
Dino battle of the week.
(17:04):
This episode,
the fight between, Spear and Fang
and the Gigantor saurus.
That fight is super memorable.
I particularly like after it's, like,
killed one of the baby t-rexes and, like,
spear just goes berserk and is like, drops
(17:28):
and goes charging at it with the spearand then
and then the dino, fang goes flatbecause charging at it
like I wish JackKirby was alive to see this,
that that was that momentwhere it was like,
there's just like a,like one beat between the two of that.
I'm like, going berserk.
(17:48):
You. Yeah.
You remember the part I'm talking about,right?
know, it's like.
beats are really good.
get deep into his emotional pain
get to know so much about this characterfrom the beginning.
You don't even realize that youthey planted the seed of what?
This what what is this guy really about?
I mean, really excellent.
You know, this is a show that gives you
(18:11):
episodic action, Yeah.
lots of relationships and story building.
It's pretty freaking I don't know, man.
We got a lot to talk about.
That's just the first episode. Right.
In the second episode,
while hunting, Fang keeps stealingany food
(18:32):
she and spear come across,so he'll, like, be hunting a boar.
And then at the last minute, fangall rushing and eat it Right.
even the fruit trees.
And he's finally reduced to eating a bug.
He's starving.
Yeah. It's like they're they're really.
Leadership's not formed yet, right?
Eventually he just has had enough.
And he, like, turns on Fang and attacksFang, and Fang bites
(18:55):
a spear and in half and,that would be the end of their friendship.
I think they probably would have,like, killed each other. And.
But just asthis is about to happen, a bunch of snakes
show up, and there's, like a floodthat's pushing all the snakes toward them.
And then there's this giant snake,and it attacks them.
(19:17):
Fang kills it, but they are overcome
by the water and, Tang gets bitten a bunch
by snakes, which is important for lateron in the story.
they go down a river. And
basically go over a waterfall.
Spear hits his head, falls unconscious,
(19:37):
but Fang drags him out of the water Yeah.
and it looks like at that point,
they're pretty much solidified as a team.
Yeah, this is like, somebody's film where,you know, they're not getting along.
And then they are forced to again,
you know, outside force
just welds them together.
(19:59):
And you get to see it. Yeah.
No, it's not a one way like,
oh, what am I doing all the huntingand you're eating everything I'm doing.
No, it's it's back and forth.
Them taking care of each other.
I feel like a lot of this was amazing,where snakes were everywhere.
I mean, they were doing underwater,a whole bunch of this and that.
That's not that easy to do necessarily.
(20:19):
Oh, the other thing I like
is that you just highlightedhow durable these two are.
They're like,
what?
Those are like made out of like, stern stuff.
You know,they're going over the waterfall.
They're they're they're surviving.
this entire seriesjust to jump a little bit out, but
I'm just saying it's like, man,this is an amazing combo.
(20:41):
This is like the best comic bookI've read in years.
I remember when we were doinga previous episode,
in our dinosaur series,and we were talking about the genre
of the cave man and dinosaursyou know, at the.
Well, you know, in the same existing.
And I had mentioned possibly, Casarand the Savage Land becoming a movie,
(21:01):
and they're like, you were like,this is a, genre someone needs to redo.
It needs to come back when they did.This is it.
They thought that. Oh my God.
so, like, evenwhile you were saying that, this existed.
know.
I love the colors on this, too.
They're everything's gorgeous.
(21:23):
And there's sort of a color paletteper episode.
This one is have more of a bluishgreenish color for this episode.
Which makes sense because there'sa lot of water stuff and, you know, yeah.
Let's talk about episode three.
So this is, called a cold death.
Yeah.
There's two things that I get from this.
Number one is this is a wandering duo.
(21:45):
They don't stay in one place.
And this makes sense because.
What do they eat? Meat.
Lay it on me, and they,So they're wandering, hunting the,
And this is the first timewhere it's episode is not about them,
we see a wandering mammoth that is old
and looking sick as by itself,
(22:06):
and it seems to be wandering throughthe cold waste and after a little bit,
you know, our protagonist set upon it.
And there they know there's an epic fight.
It's really cool.
It holds its own,but they they manage to kill it.
And so they get to, you know,they get to feast.
Right?
And it's, this is a lot of meat.
And there's lots of cool, bits.
(22:28):
Okay. Spear is smart.
he has his own tech and everything.
He builds a sledge and hehe pulls up that with the meat on it.
he also uses the hide to create a coat.
And Yeah.
a blanket for fang.
He also uses, the remaining tusk.
It only has one tusk. It uses.
He uses that tusk to be the runnerfor the sled.
(22:51):
Yeah.
Yeah.
So he's using everything and he goes up.
But the realthe the way the real story is
when the,the herd comes across the killing.
So this is the herd of mammothsAnd you see them, reacting.
They know he's dead.
(23:11):
You know, they, they realizethis is what they were missing,
and they starthunting our protagonist down
I don't know how much we want
to give away, but like, essentially theythere is well, I mean, let's just go to it
because it's like they, they it's likea, a posse hunting down like somebody
who murdered, you know, one of their,you know, family members or something.
Right. there's, different encountersalong the way.
(23:31):
But the, the key part ofthis is everything here is intelligent.
These are as intelligentas spear, for that matter.
Thing is as intelligent as spear.
They they aren't humanoids,but they're intelligent.
And when they finally cornered them,they finally corner our our protagonist.
(23:52):
What they wantis the skull of their fallen,
herd member.
They're not mad that you killed this.
This dying. You know, this is their.
Hey, that's just business.
But you took their, remains,
basically, theythey have their own elephant graveyard.
Yeah. we get to see that.
(24:12):
Yeah. Yeah.
And it emphasizesa recurring theme in this,
which is the loss of family by deathor whatever.
Yeah.
Which happened,
when they're in the cave beforethe mammoth pack shows up to attack them.
Spear is having a dream.
flashback or somethingto, teaching his son to hunt
So we're constantly being remindedin these episodes,
(24:35):
there's usually a flashback to eitherSpear
or Frank's previous existence.
Yeah.
I want to also say thatthis one had an overall color of white,
of course, because it was winter,but also some light blues.
And the night sky is amazing,
you know, and this you get the,you know, northern Lights and stuff.
(24:56):
So let's go on to episode four.
This one's called TerrorUnder the Blood Moon.
If you haven't guessed,this one's got an overall red color to it.
this time, Spear and fang
encounter, pack of Utah Raptors
and, there's this lunar eclipse,
(25:18):
and then they encountertribe of albino cave people.
And, while they're doing this,all of a sudden, the key people
all freak out and, like, run into hiding,and they don't know why,
out of nowhere,this flock of giant bats shows up,
and, they attempt to fight off the bats,
but spear is carried away by one,and he drops his spear, we've seen this.
(25:44):
Usually it's a pterosaur or,in most of the ones we've watched
before, it's a pterosaurthat carries someone off.
But this time it is a giant bat
Fang chases after, all the way to.
They fly into the stone cavethat's way up high, and there's no way
Fang can climb you know,Fang has tiny little T-Rex arms and.
(26:10):
So she.
She tries and fails and triesand fails to run up the side,
And then she sees a couple of the batscome out and she plays dead
to allow them to come carry her off to thethe cave.
And then, wants there?
She's looking for him and.
Okay, surprise!
The big band isn't even a bat.
(26:33):
It's a giant spiderthat lives in the cave.
Which is a real headscratcher in some ways.
And then the bat walk returns.
Fang finds that, spear has been,
like, cocooned in, the spider web.
And frees him and,they managed to escape by using the spider
(26:55):
webbing to, repel down and, then,you know,
they make a run for it, to the high grasswhere the Utah Raptors live.
Grabbing Spears spearfrom a cave man on the way back.
He helped them.They helped him. They were they.
You know, there's it's interestingthat, you know, and then they basically,
(27:17):
are fleeing through the, wheat.
But the Utah Raptors, you know, thisthe started out like a scene
right out of Jurassic Park where you seethe raptors moving through the tall grass,
but this time they're the Utah Raptorsare part of their advantage
because the giant batsdon't know which ones are they.
(27:37):
And they just start swooping down
and you get raptorsversus giant bats and, you know, Yeah.
and they finally escape.
And that is basically this episode,I the setting sun.
And this was super amazing with the heatyou know, shimmer That looks so real Yeah.
well, I really like that this episodea couple things.
(27:58):
Number one, would need.
They escape into the plainsand, you know, from the Utah Raptors
and the white people are like,yeah, there's danger from above.
You need to run.
And, but basically there'sa sense of justice that he immediately
spears is like, oh,you know, somebody's trying to kill, like,
something I consider people. I'mjust going to kill it.
You know?
(28:18):
And the dedication that she's going
all the way,whatever it takes to get him back, right?
she can't climb.
She can't fly.She will play dead and let them take her.
She'll do all of thisand their dedication to each other.
And then they escape by the skin or teeth,and they lead their enemies
into each other.It's, pretty freaking epic.
They are statsbadass team right here, right?
(28:42):
they're a boy,and they're really badass dog.
You know, they're.
Yeah.
And know, fangsfight with the giant, spider.
had we not had the gigantic saurusfight, in episode one,
this might be a contenderfor Dino Battle of the week.
Yeah.
All right,
why don't you tell us about episode five,rage of the Ape Men?
(29:04):
the the previous episode, I was like, oh,my God, it's just one danger
after the other.
You go like, oh, wait,this is one where it's like, oh, wow.
They came across this, calm oasis
in the middle of what seems to be like,danger everywhere where it's a calm oasis.
And they
they relax a little bit,
Only to basically be kidnaped
(29:28):
they're separated from each other,the relaxed
and they both get jumped and drug away.
Right.
And where are they drove away to into this
nightmarish scenariowhere it's a whole bunch
of tribe of eight men at different sizesand shapes, and they are,
before anything even happens between,you know, them
(29:49):
and the eight men,because they're all they're all tied up.
They're all in there.You know, our heroes are in cages.
They the eight menhave this entire, tournament
amongst themselves where they are
beating the crap out of each otherand just murdering each other, basically
to find the strongestamongst them, who then the
(30:14):
Well, no.
There's. There's a shaman
who has a ball of this stuff, and he,
like, pours out one drop.
All right?
That, like, goes down this long,channel down, to the mouth.
The winner who, like,gets it on his tongue and then, hulks out.
(30:35):
monsters out.
He's already giant and incredibly strongand just looks out from there.
Now then they screw upbecause they make the mistake up.
We're going to attack the dinosaur.
We're going to you basically it's ait's like this sacrifice by combat, right?
Yeah. Yeah. No, don't do that.
So we have establisheddon't fuck with the boys dinosaur.
(30:56):
That's his.
That's his girl. Don't don't mess with my.
No, it's it's, It's it's Haaland.
It's it's a boy and his dog.
That's what it is.
totally is.
So which, throwback to earlier, but like.
Okay, so essentially when, when, when
when a thing is threatened by, you know,death and, like, being totally jacked up,
(31:19):
what happens, spearit makes his way free from his binds.
you know, he fightsand then he's overwhelmed.
He basically doesreally good against most of the regulars
but against the big guys.
But so he grabs the entire ball.
All the crazy stuff.
And he just goes
Super Hawk.
And just I mean, at this point, man,this show is way over the top.
(31:43):
It's like there's blood everywhere.
It's like there's just squashing things.
They're just like and, wave,wave after wave of eight, man.
He just crushing things.
He's fighting If you can't stand blood,don't watch this one.
Because this is a massacre. Man.
And he
just goto town on every last bit of them, right?
He just murders everything.
(32:05):
But is it enough because
what happens at the end of the episode?
He's killed everything. But,
Bang was just completely destroyedby the super ape.
it looks like Fang might be deadMight be dead.
(32:25):
Yeah, it was great.
It was a great cliffhanger.
We were like. Well, what?
Yeah.
I don't have much to say about this one,except
it is utter carnage.
I mean, the episode opened in the, like,spear fishing in this perfect
grotto with butterflies and,you know, a waterfall that.
(32:47):
The only hint of anything that was, like,scary was like there was a worm.
I think that that, like, when when Fangsees it, Fang freaks out because it's has.
Fang has flashbacks to the snakesthat but bitter in an earlier episode.
But yeah, but that's it.
Otherwise it was super peaceful.
So you're thinking, okay,this is going to be whatever.
(33:09):
And then they, like, kidnap fang
while spear is like swimming underwater.
And he comes up and Fang is gone,you know, and looks everywhere.
And then like,
follows them and.
Yeah.
So all right, that was that episode.
So we open upepisode six, sent sent of prey.
(33:31):
With spear is like, traumatizedbecause he thinks fangs dead.
And then we find outthat Fang is still alive,
just barely alive, too weak to move,but dying.
there are vultures all around because ofall the dead eight men he killed.
So he's like, okay,I got to get her out of here.
(33:52):
So he builds this litter, and,like a stretcher and, like,
starts to carry fang, drag Fang away.
He makes a new spear, he eventuallyhe tries to nurse her back to health,
but they're followed all along
by hyenas like a pack of hyenas.
(34:13):
And then eventuallythey get her to a cave,
and is able to take care of, but knows hecan't, like, stay with her forever.
So, like, when he goes out one time,he like walls the cave off with boulders
and, also there's like, flesheating beetles in the cave Yeah.
you know, and then eventually,
(34:34):
the pack of hyenas waiting
or jackalsor whatever they are is just like, huge.
And you're like, he she goes outto fight them off, but they're gonna
they're going to overcome himand they're going to get in the cave.
And then just at the last minute, backto health, Fang comes busting
out of the cave, turns into another, like,
(34:54):
spear and fang versus a ton of like,
you know, this is pretty standardspear and fang stuff.
Now, are theyjust, like, going crazy, like killing,
like killing hyenas left and right,you know, like, he.
Yeah. It's a blood. It's a bloodbath.
You know, the vast majority of theseis all about them having each other back.
(35:15):
You know, that's whatevery almost every And killing things.
I would say the cold death is the only onewhere it's really.
Yeah.
I was like, okay, it kind of wasn'tabout them, but everything else.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
All right.
Plague of Madness episode seven?
So Plague of Madness is,it's like a zombie story, right?
(35:37):
it's very cool.
we see, I forget what the,
the first, vector was,but we see It was an Argentina saurus.
Arch disorder.
But you see this thingsick holes in its skin,
just like absolutely diseaseand very obviously so.
And it's spreading from one dinosaurto the next to the next.
(35:57):
And, before our heroes, encounter it.
It's caused a lot of damage already.
So what's striking about this is thatwe go from like, oh, it's disease, right?
To like, well, I don't know, man,because this thing is there.
You know, we've already seena little bit of something that is like,
what is this frickin magic,basically with a rage of the eight man,
(36:18):
because they're like, they're taking like,you know, Uber drugs or whatever.
It makes them crazy powerful.
And this one,the dinosaur that pursues them
is, It's a Parasaurolophus.
It's one of those big, quadrupedal,Long neck long neck.
Yeah, kind of like a diplodocus, but.Yeah.
Sorry, Eric.I'm going to just call it. It's like.
(36:39):
It's like a broad saurus, which I knowthat's not a thing or whatever anymore,
but anyway, it's.
But it's it's a planting dinosaur.
But not anymore. It's after them,you know, it's like.
So this is very much.
But every except they keep fighting it.
Of course they're running.
It's running, gunning battle and keepthinking, okay, well now we're safe.
I was like, now you're not safe.
It's being back up. It's attacking you.
(37:01):
like most zombie diseases in zombiemovies, it's got two components to it.
One is the rabid ness, you know,
and the other is the undead ness of, like,you can't kill it.
It keeps coming back, you know?
Yes. And there's like a the accumulationis like where it's like, okay.
Because it's like, oh look, it doesn'treally have any flesh left on this.
(37:22):
Is this just, this is like bones and sinewand it's like.
But like the what?
Finally they they are running throughthis, like, field of, lava and geysers.
Yes. Because there has to be a volcano.
Sooner or later.There had to be a volcano.
but like like what kills it is,it gets freaking dissolved in lava.
But at even as it's on fire,it's trying to kill them.
(37:45):
It's.
And of course it
they're like they're like,they watch it burn
and then they turn to go abouttheir business because that's something.
I mean, this is just another horrorin the world that they live.
Yeah. Oh, man.
but I, I love it.
It was okay.
So we talked on the I, you know,we were talking minor things about,
epic stories, you know, short storiesbeing wedged into, bigger series.
(38:07):
And I feel this is thecharacters were using, but there's they're
telling all kinds of amazing stories,
with these characters in this space.
And I think we're goingto see more of that in just a minute.
This was a very simple episode.
I mean, wrong, was very straightforward.
It was a run from the zombie fight.
Yeah.
They've been slowlyintroducing supernatural elements.
(38:28):
It started with the Hulk potion, Right.
and then this one. Now it's zombie.
So now we're starting to get the feelingthat There are some, magic elements Right.
and that
really becomes, evidentin the next episode.
Episode eight, coven of the damned.
So in this one, they see this green flamesin the jungle, and they go there
(38:52):
and they see antlered humanoids,like burning a man, Yeah.
Burning man.
Yeah. Well, yeah, it does.
It is, it is very reminiscentto anyone who's familiar with like,
The WickerMan or Pagan, like, human sacrifice.
This looks very much like that.
This is a coven of witches.
Well, yeah,we find that out when a Pteranodon,
(39:14):
with, like, a witch riding, it shows up.
instead of riding brooms,these witches ride dragons.
And she creates this glowing green snake
and it goes into the mouth of the guy.
And, produces a baby, and, the pteranodon
familiar spots sword and fangand chases them into the woods.
(39:38):
one of these witches, like, possessesfang and spear is captured.
And then, A witch, uses her magic totravel into both of their past and watches
and sees that, oh, They had familiesand sees their backstory.
So when it advances the plot in this.
But it also again reminds the, you know,if you're just coming into this new like,
(40:00):
you're still getting to see whythey're together, you know, Yeah.
Yeah. now the witch lost a daughter.
so she has some sympathyfor Spear and Fang and saves them
from the others by sacrificing herself,to help them escape.
she dies, but they briefly mourn her lossbefore they go off into the jungle.
(40:23):
And then we also see in the afterlife,she's reunited with her daughter
or whatever.
And I think I do.
I'm not sure we mentioned this, but, like,this is how they make their children.
They.
They suck the life essence out of a man.
And use that to make a child.
So, Yes.
freaking awesome.
So there's so much there where it's like,oh, wait, you know, we're doing this
(40:46):
so we can have our children, but,you know, you know, she has vast powers
where she can,you know, she gets experience
and we get all the flashbacks from,you know, his experiences, his family
and, her experiences, you know, fangs, family and all that stuff.
So, yeah, it's, it's again,this is an episode that is kind of,
(41:06):
it's definitely about their,
their relationship,but the most active participant,
the one who doesthe most stuff is not them.
This is where you know you're
in a sword and sorcery serieswithout the sword.
Right.
I. This is definitely barbarian fantasy.
Yes. this is very typicalRobert Howard type barbarian fantasy,
(41:26):
where, like, magic is evil by its nature,magic is bad.
And and you must overcome magicwith muscle.
You know, human might, you know.
I mean, what does that stop you fromgoing to look, No,
you gotta go investigate the thing,even though you probably shouldn't,
but I just I would like to if,like you guys, if I long go the other way.
(41:47):
But Well,I mean, there's there was a little bit of.
We got to save that dude, you know? But.
there was a little bit of that.
you know, this is way throwback. It was.
I didn't even watch this as a kid,but like, you know, this idea
of a wandering cowboy who goes from townto town and doles out justice.
Yeah. The Clint Eastwood thing. Yeah.
This is athis is a, you know, this is, Paladin,
(42:09):
I think it was the show that that reallyshowed that was like. Yes.
even in Conan, he, like,
he's mostly,
like, chaotic neutral or whatever.
He's, like, mostly interestedin protecting himself, you know?
And he's a bandit and a river and a pirateand all these other things.
But also when it comes down to humanityversus the supernatural,
(42:31):
he'll like, be like,oh, no, that has to stop over there.
You know, it's like,I don't care about like, you know,
I don't care if the person that is beingsacrificed is an evil human.
They're still a human, right.
You know, like, I'm going to stop thethe monster for, you know,
that takes us up to episode nine,night of the Feeder.
Yeah.
This was it was a hard onebecause it was mostly not visible.
(42:55):
There this is a story of a unseen killer.
it starts out,they hear these noises in the night,
and they come across carnage.
That really disturbs Fang.
Like Fang is really disturbed by it.
The next night,it decimates a herd of Triceratops,
and spear wants to go after it,but Fang stops him.
And then the next day, they see vulturesswarming in the distance.
(43:18):
then they're caught in a windstorm,and the next night
they, hear it coming, and they flee.
And then they get stuck in this fogand they make a stand in the fog.
Fang manages the wounded.
But then there's this, like, tar,like slime that comes from its body,
(43:39):
and the thethe beast shrieks and and spear learns
that it's weakness is light.
So he uses sparks from his weapon
and, eventually a ring of fire to trap it.
You know, this is when the invisible manis, like, on the loose.
You, like, surround it, in this case,with a ring of fire, you know?
(44:00):
And, Yes.
Well, that's what they do.
They they totally do that.
And, it turns out to be a therapytype dinosaur.
They kill it by, setting it on fire and,yeah, that's the end.
then we get to episode ten,slave of the Scorpion.
Oh, wow.
This is. This is. You know.
So this is pivotal.
(44:21):
This is the season finale.
So, spear and fang are spearfishing,
and, they, encounter,
what is obviously an escaped slave.
She's got, brand on the back of her head
and, wooden collar thing around herneck and,
they basically save her from
(44:42):
the dinosaur spear fights it off, and,they take her,
you know, they spear, creates a fire.
She spends the night there,she prays to the moon,
when she realizes that they don't meanany harm.
The next night, she helps cook a stew.
They they, like,basically free her from the, the,
(45:04):
the collar and the thethe cuffs and stuff.
she fashions a bow and arrowand actually kills dinner the next night.
So she's pretty good. Archer.
eventually they go to this mountain caveand, Fang doesn't
want to go there, but she lures Fangwith, big bugs that Fang likes to eat.
(45:24):
Okay.
But then an
ape tribe shows up and kidnaps her.
And by now we know her name is Mira.
so spear takes a warhammer
from them, and, Pursues on Fang.
But despite Mira killing a lot of them,she's taken away on a ship.
(45:45):
And, staring from the shore, spearspeaks for the first time
in the series and says, Mira, Yes.
Yes, I should one of usbe clear by humans.
Yes. Sorry. I should have said that. Yeah.
as usual, there's, like, multiple threats
and a given, episode.
(46:08):
So we are just like. She is not.
She is not built like him.
She is built like a modern human.
She has a bald head.
you know, it's not really She's talland thin.
She's not stocky like she is. Yeah.
And she has different
ways, like, you know,we never really see him making stew.
You know, if you're eating vegetables,you don't cook them.
(46:28):
And he's not really crazy about thatanyway.
But It's clear she wasn't. No.
Didn't know what to expect from himor from the dinosaur.
But like, they become fast.
Pretty close quickly because
honestly, what is this guy about?
We know already he's about family, right?
And yeah, like you saidfirst time he says says anything.
(46:52):
Any word I love it.
Yeah. Okay.
I think it's time we wrap this up.
We will be back next time with more on
primal season two of primal coming up.
we'll also get into a little backgroundon, how this series came about.
Until next time. This is Eric.
(47:16):
Signing off.
now you're thinking like a gamer.
So like.
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