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In this episode of 'Need Some Introduction,' I delve into the season finale of Apple TV's adaptation of 'Dark Matter' by Blake Crouch. The discussion highlights the improvements in the series over the novel, particularly praising Jennifer Connelly's performance. The host also recommends several low-budget time paradox films, including 'Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes' and 'Lola,' offering detailed descriptions and accessibility information. Additionally, updates on 'The Bear' and 'Presumed Innocent' are provided, setting the stage for future episodes and reviews.
00:00 Introduction to the Podcast
00:49 News Update: The Bear Season 3
01:23 Upcoming Reviews and Recommendations
01:52 Dark Matter: A High-Budget Adaptation
02:12 Time Paradox Films on a Budget
02:39 Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes: A Clever Japanese Comedy
04:38 River: Expanding on Time Paradox Ideas
05:33 Lola: A British Low-Budget Time Paradox Film
08:08 Dark Matter Season Finale: Initial Thoughts
09:27 Comparing the Adaptation to the Novel
10:20 Character Development and Performances
12:18 Plot Breakdown and Analysis
13:49 The Complexity of Alternate Realities
21:55 The Many Jasons: A Shocking Twist
23:14 Amanda's Heart-Wrenching Decision
24:14 Jason's Parallel Encounters
25:02 The Revelation of Circumstances
26:05 Action-Packed Episode 8
28:03 Daniela's Realization
28:41 The Final Episode's Breathing Room
37:42 The Tragic End of Many Jasons
38:56 Emotional Yet Illogical Ending
45:06 Support and Upcoming Reviews
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome everybody to anotherepisode of Need Some Introduction.
In this podcast, I try to introduce youto new things that you may need some
introduction to, usually films thatare currently in theaters or popular TV
series, and along the way, recommending
less known films and series alongthe way, usually thematically
tied into the subject at hand.
(00:21):
Today's subject, the season finale ofDark Matter, the Apple TV TV series, an
adaptation of the Blake Crouch novel.
Apple TV's output is almost all noveladaptations, if you've noticed, and there
are a few more yet to come this summer.
If you'd like to reach out to me, or ifyou'd like to follow me on Letterboxd,
I've got And check out movie reviewsand lists that I compile around
(00:45):
these episodes, check the show notes.
All the links are available there.
A little piece of news about The Bear.
There's an episode I published just lastweek where we were preparing for this
much anticipated third season of The Bear.
Hulu slash Disney Plus announced justyesterday, if I publish this on time,
I'll be publishing this on Wednesday, thatthey have bumped up the premiere date.
Thanks.
(01:05):
Of the bear by a whole other day,meaning tonight, this Wednesday
evening, the bear will be availableand I will be watching at least part
of the season tomorrow and expectmultiple episodes where I'm breaking
down those episodes, as well as havingconversations with my co-host Sona, about
her impressions of the series as well.
Also expect next weekthat I'll be checking.
(01:26):
With the Apple TV plus book adaptationagain, of Presumed Innocent, which had a
terrific fourth episode this week afterkind of a meh episode for three, really
strong episode this week, and after nextweek's fifth episode, Sona and I will
be having a midseason near midseason.
Catch up on that series as well.
And before getting into thefinale of Dark Matter, a couple
(01:50):
of recommendations for all of you.
Dark Matter, this TV's adaptation is,seems to be a pretty expensive endeavor.
It's not only the talent on screen,but the special effects in some of
these alternate realities that thecharacters step into are pretty advanced.
So even for relatively little screen time.
probably a decent amount of moneyspent on what looks to be some
(02:10):
pretty expensive production.
Alternately, I want to recommendto you a few time paradox films of
different genres, comedy, thriller,that are made on tiny budgets.
First of all, to introduce youto some pretty impressive talent.
being able to pull this off on such asmall budget and possibly for you younger
(02:32):
hobbyists to introduce you to how on avery very small budget you can achieve
some pretty impressive world building.
My first recommendation isBeyond the Infinite Two Minutes.
This is available almost everywhere.
It's available on Vudu, Tubi, Freevi,Amazon Prime for free with ads usually.
So incredibly easy to access thisincredibly clever Japanese comedy.
(02:55):
in which some workers at a coffeeshop discover that on the monitor they
can see two minutes into the future.
And then this continuously compounds.
The movie keeps iterating over thesetwo minute intervals in which you see
characters walk back into the two minutesor forward into the two minutes and then
witnessing what's happening in the back.
And then we're seeing this verysmall cast of characters continuously
(03:17):
repeating the same events as they'rewatching either on the screen.
Or in real time, and the logistics ofthe production here is truly astounding.
I honestly do not know howthey could have achieved this.
And if it sounds like this is goingto be pretty limited, there's a really
entertaining moment in which pretty earlyon where they get these two screens.
to face each other.
(03:38):
And then you create that mirror effect.
You've probably seen when youface two mirrors at each other,
two TV screens at each other.
So this starts to create thistunnel effect as they're going
two minutes into the future
going further and further into thistunnel of screens and then in the
future they see an act of violence notthat far off and it's getting closer
and closer as those screens move furtherand further down this image tunnel.
(03:58):
Basically it's utterly confoundinghow they could have pulled
this off incredibly clever.
The resolution is the weakest partof the whole entire film, but it
does resolve itself in a satisfyingway, but up until that moment, as
lackluster as that particular part maybe, and when I say that only because
it doesn't meet the incredible highstandards of everything that leads up
to it, this is really inventive andreally intelligent, and really puts
(04:21):
you in the shoes of these characters.
What would you do in this circumstance?
Which of course they're in andcompletely unexplained until
pretty late in the going.
It's a short watch, uh, incrediblyentertaining, , easily available to
everybody and made for almost nothing.
So really kudos to thesefilmmakers for this achievement.
And I'll also call out that they madea much bigger budget version of this
same idea, more or less, in a moviecalled River from 2023, I believe.
(04:47):
Not as easily accessible, but definitelyyou can rent it if you look for it
and definitely a much bigger budget.
But similarly, you have thesecharacters that are now different
characters working in this beautifullocale, this Japanese in, and what
our main character discovers is thatshe is repeating the same two minutes.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, she startedto repeat the same two minutes
(05:07):
of her life over and over again.
Now, what's interesting isthat other characters start
to catch on to this as well.
And before you know it, you havethe entire staff all trapped
in this two minute repetition.
So an expansion on the ideas in thefirst film, also very entertaining.
So check that out if youfind it, that's called River.
Use my description thereof the plot as your guide.
There are quite a few differentfilms and TV series called River.
(05:30):
Okay.
Okay, another incredibly low budget.
and really impressive time paradoxfilm that I just caught up with just
yesterday, actually two days ago, Iguess at this point is a movie called
Lola, another title that you're goingto find lots of search results for.
So you may want to use mydescription as a guide.
This is a British lowbudget film made in 2023.
(05:52):
It's available everywhere.
It's available on Peacock.
It's available on 2B for free.
It's available on Pluto TV.
on Plex and a lot of thefast free streaming services.
And this film presentsitself as found footage.
So this is a film that was shot on,I believe, 16 millimeter cameras
appropriate to the 1930s . And itpresents itself as a documentary of this
(06:15):
footage that's found at this house.
So in that way, it feelslike a found footage movie.
That framing device that Ijust mentioned may remind you
of, for example, Blair Witch
.This is not a horror movie, by the way.
And what the contents of thefilm ends up being is these
sisters who live in this house.
And, uh, Who have invented aradio, and this radio can receive
radio and eventually televisionbroadcasts from the future.
(06:38):
So as they continue to tune thisantenna, they're able to capture
or witness news days, weeks,months, years into the future.
And supposedly this is shot duringthe German raids over London.
So by tuning to future broadcasts anddiscovering where the Germans are going
to bomb, they anonymously broadcast.
(06:59):
to the British Secret Servicewhere those attacks are going to
be in the hopes of saving lives.
As you would expect, eventually, they arelocated and they get into this tenuous
collaboration with the British military.
And I'll just leave it there withoutany spoilers that the more they try
to manipulate and improve the future,the more unforeseen consequences
(07:21):
there are to their actions.
Once again, not a perfect film.
The performances are all pretty solid.
The conceit is pretty well pulled off.
There is just a little CGI herein the film, and when they do
use it, it is really impressive.
The biggest compliment I'll pay to thisparticular film Is that the scope of
(07:42):
the world building here really ends upbeing convincing and immense considering
the very tiny purview we have into thisworld purely from this one 16 millimeter
camera, but how it seems to convincinglycapture this alternate reality that's
spinning off from this discovery.
So once again, that movie is called Lola.
(08:04):
It's available on manyfree streaming platforms.
Okay, onto the main event.
As far as I can tell, this Dark Matteradaptation has been pretty big hit for
Apple TV especially by their standards.
I'm not sure how Apple TV pickstheir winners and losers other than
something like Ted Lasso, which trulyis a crossover phenomena where tens
(08:25):
of millions of people potentiallyhave seen at least part of that show.
And maybe severance, hopefullycoming back for season two
within the next six months or so.
I'm hoping we get it before 2025,although that might not be the case.
I'll have to have a whole separateconversation about the troubled
production history of that second season.
It is hard to gauge when somethingis hitting or not for Apple TV plus.
(08:47):
However, just from looking atwebsites that track Television
episode activity and searches forstreaming options for TV shows and
movies such as Just Watch or IMDb.
This show has bounced up to numberone many times since its release.
Over a month ago, and if you haven'tlistened to the preview episode for dark
(09:08):
matter do check out that episode herein the feed where I covered the first
two episodes of the series as Well ashad a science corner on some of the
other physics that's being exploredhere theoretically in this series.
Although I don't know howaccurate the science is, but at
least the concepts behind it.
Before I break down any of the plothere, I do want to just have some
(09:30):
broad points about this adaptationand the source material as well.
I've read this book.
I would say if you read the bookand you liked it, you should
absolutely watch this show.
This is a vast improvementover the novel version of this.
It's the rare.
adaptation that I thinkreally significantly improves
on the source material.
Blake Crouch himself has called thisthe authentic version of the story.
(09:54):
Apparently he wrote the book, andthis really, I can really feel this,
by the way, in reading the novel.
He first wrote this as a film scriptand then expanded it to a novel length.
But I feel as he expanded it, it pads outwhat really is a relatively short story.
And if you think that's a problem withthe novel, I think the series, at nine
episodes, pads it out even more so.
(10:16):
However, some of that paddingout improves the storyline.
In the book, we really do notspend a lot of time with Jason
2, the antagonistic Jason.
And since we don't spend that much timewith that version of Jason, we also end
up spending relatively little time Withthe original Daniella and making this
material work with a Daniella characterin the book really is just an excuse
(10:40):
for the plot and feels so badly sketchedout in my opinion, even the way she can
quickly accept things at the end, we'llget into all that breakdown, but all that
is to say that Jennifer Connelly is theMVP here because Especially in the season
finale, which is excellent, by the way,the finale of the season is the best
episode of the series, in my opinion, andso much of it is Conley's performance and
(11:04):
the way they treat the Daniella characterhere, playing out all the complexity
that is skirted over in the novel.
But pretty well developedhere in the finale.
My critique there is that a lot ofthis should have been introduced
a little bit earlier so that wecould have explored it even more so.
Another huge improvement in this seriesadaptation is the expansion of the Amanda
(11:26):
character played by Alice Braga here.
Once again, she is Almost a plot device.
She has less of arelationship with evil Jason.
Let's call him here.
So they've expanded her.
They've made her more centraland to the extent that the middle
of the series works at all.
So much of it has to do with thisreally believable alternate history.
(11:47):
Jason can have with this Amanda character.
So all this is to say that this isthe better version of the story.
All that being said, thisis still way too long.
This should be about five episodes long.
A five episode version of thisstory is the best version
of this particular material.
And I could say the exact same thing aboutthe Apple TV plus another sci fi mashup
(12:09):
of a kind that just wrapped up last month.
Sugar with.
Colin Farrell, another series thatwould have worked significantly
better at a shorter running time.
Okay, so a little bit ofthe breakdown of the story.
At the end of episode 2, Jasonhad been sent back in time.
Is just acclimating to this, runs intoalternate history version of the story.
(12:29):
Daniela, they hadn't seen each other forover a decade or hadn't been involved
with each other for over a decade.
He gets her to reluctantly acceptsome of the things he's saying.
She ends up dead bythe end of episode two.
In episode three, Jason, ourJason, is brought back to the
facilities where the box is housedand is questioned by Leighton.
He continues the play that he is.
(12:52):
There, Jason, but that the tripthrough time has muddied his memory.
At first.
They seem to be buying into this.
It takes Jason way too long, my opinion,to figure out that he needs to play act.
This alternate Jason way earlier,he seems to be surprised constantly
by the predicament he's in.
He shouldn't be the surprisedI personally think considering.
(13:12):
His own experiments from the past,but Layton and Amanda, someone else
who works at the facility who turnsout to also be Jason's lover, figure
out that this is an alternate Jason.
They decide to torture him, they decide totorture his friend Ryan Holder, a chemist
who created this chemical that allowsthis perception of multiple realities.
And by the end of the third episode,they have entered the box, Amanda
(13:35):
and Jason with this chemicals intow in Jason's original timeline.
Evil Jason, Jason two is way moreaffectionate , with Daniella, but
she appreciates this rekindledpassion in their marriage.
This is when the show.
Cool.
And the novel, to be honest,has the most potential.
This idea that you could have thisalternate history that you may have
(13:57):
wished for, for many years, and thatin a way, by stepping into a different
reality, you could actually leave behindthe life you know, but step into an
even better circumstance for yourself.
That's what Jason thinks he's giving.
Jason prime.
And that's what Daniela gets at thismoment to this newly rejuvenated
relationship with her husband.
My personal taste.
(14:17):
This is what I would like to showto have explored significantly
more and a novel as well.
They kind of throw that out the door bythrowing in the thriller plot immediately.
We have Jason Prime inside the boxnow traveling to different dimensions.
Those first three episodes areprobably a little too long,
but set up the world pretty well.
If anything, I think they rushinto the box , a little bit.
(14:39):
And then we end up with thesemiddle three episodes, which
are definitely the weakest part.
Of the series, Jason and Amandaare literally just entering
one world after another.
After another, Jason pretty quicklyunderstands that their mindset,
their fears, their anxieties, theirexpectations of what's going to
happen when they open the world ismanipulating the worlds they choose.
(15:02):
And also that the two people travelingtogether are somehow impacting
the decisions they're making.
There's a lot of time spent ina very cold, desolate Chicago,
which they barely escape.
And once again, unlike the novel, Jason2, our evil Jason, We spend a lot more
time with him than we do, which isinteresting because in the novel, he just
(15:22):
seems that he has adapted pretty well.
And he's just this idealized versionof Jason without much question.
There's a lot more complexity tothat in spending more time with him.
Once again, MVP, Jennifer Connellyconveys that she starts to get suspicious
of this potentially ideal versionof her husband, way more attentive.
(15:42):
But also way more needy.
He wants her attention.
He's craving this thing he's neverhad and he expects her to just be
this idealized version of herself.
And she says, okay, I'm glad thatyou're way more into me than you have
been recently, but I have my own life.
I have my own routine.
I'm going to go exerciseor I'm going to go to work.
I'm not just going to sithere with you all day long.
(16:04):
And you see how Jason, too, that thisis well done in Edgerton's performance,
especially on the dark side of Jason here,that he bristles against this expectation.
Why isn't it the way he wants it to be?
Which is realistic, you would expect forsomeone who has been obsessing about this
and also someone who's probably sosmart, he always thinks he knows exactly
what he's going to get and is surprisedwhen it's not exactly what he expected.
(16:25):
It's also interesting that our evilJason, Starts to have his own issues
with the lack of ambition that this Jasonprime had he decides to quit his job
He suddenly wants to perhaps reinventsome of the discoveries he did in his
alternate life Meanwhile, Jason primeand Amanda continued to travel through
these not quite right realities atone point in a plague infested world,
(16:50):
tragically meeting up with Daniela.
Their son has already died, and she'salso infected with this killer virus.
This injects a littledrama into the series.
Some of this works.
This is also in the book, by the way.
But I think all of this could havebeen truncated, in my opinion.
Although there is some interestingcharacter development here Evil Jason
(17:11):
finds this universe's Layton, who didnot achieve billionaire status, who
certainly is, in a way, the characterthat he expected to find with his
alternate Jason here, when he isintroduced to the box and all the
alternate realities, he immediately ison board with becoming this multiverse
(17:33):
traveling adventurer and basicallyhands over all his wealth to Evil Jason.
I'm not sure why we need this particularplot point, to be honest with you,
considering how things wrap up.
I'll leave it there for now..
Another thing that I think they puttheir thumb on the scale a little too
much here in the series versus the book, until the end, they really make this.
alternate Jason to be kind of a straightup douchebag, to be totally honest.
(17:56):
He never seems to be, in our view, andwe know what's actually going on inside
his mind, to be an idealized versionof Jason at all, which should be the
appeal of this character, to be honest.
They make him villainous right from thestart, and I think that is a mistake.
He doesn't know about not from thebook, by the way, but there is another
sibling who passed away years beforethat's in creation for the series.
(18:20):
And he's forgotten about thisanniversary since he wasn't part
of this family and even more.
egregiously gives Charlie hisson ice cream that contains
nuts, and he has an anaphylacticreaction, ends up in the hospital.
All of this makes Daniela really startto feel like he's not quite right.
She notices some tracks on his arms,obviously from these injections that
(18:42):
he's been giving himself when he wastraveling for hundreds, potentially, of
iterations through these different worlds.
She suspects he may just be a an addictand that might be the reason for the
change to his personality and then yellowstarts to do her own investigation.
This is when the series starts to pick upsome momentum, which really accelerates
and culminates in the final episode.
(19:03):
She has followed.
Jason to a storage to aself storage location.
She's able to retrieve one of thesevials, takes it to Ryan, who's a
chemist, and when Ryan sees what thecontent is, he goes to Jason and asks
him, have you been stealing my work?
Because this is a chemicalcompound that I've been working on.
Jason's reaction to this.
(19:24):
This is Jason's react.
This is evil.
Jason's reaction always is toshow Ryan how the box works.
and abandons him in thisidealized version of Chicago.
This is even more outlinedwithin the novel itself.
In this version of Chicago,everything's incredibly high tech,
(19:44):
there's no money anymore, everybodygets to purchase things for free,
and public transportation is free.
It's basically like an H.
G.
Wells idealized version ofthe world of the future.
A lot of stuff happens in episode seven.
First of all, they're looking for Ryan.
Where's Ryan?
He's the last person.
Jason, evil Jason is the lastperson who's been seen with him.
(20:05):
The cops , come aroundasking a lot of questions.
His solution as is always thecase is to go into the box.
He goes to an alternate realitywhere this Ryan is just a mechanic.
Just Josh Mo has taken hisskills and applied them to being
a auto mechanic, definitely anunderachiever and a former addict.
He decides to bring him into thisreality, clean him up a little
(20:27):
bit and drop him off at his house.
Hey, any Ryan will do, right?
You should have gotten onethat was a little closer.
Then again, that guy might'vefigured out what's going on.
Everybody thinks he's nuts.
Daniella though, goes and talks to himand starts to get really suspicious.
What is up with this?
This guy's not acting like himself.
He seems to have an alternate history.
My husband seems to havean alternate history.
(20:48):
What is going on here?
This is well done.
She obviously cannot connect the dotsyet, but when she's presented with it,
this is way more believable than inthe book where this has just sprung
upon her who seems to be very happywith the way things are going and
seems to just accept everything here.
She is very suspicious and prettyunhappy with her version of Jason.
So when this alternate explanation comes.
(21:11):
She's ready to hear it.
That's not the only interesting thingthat happens Jason and Amanda have gotten
very close during all their travels.
Amanda had been intimate with theother Jason So she's obviously meeting
to her and idealized more emotionalemotionally available version of
Jason Which obviously appeals to her,but she's falling in love with him.
(21:31):
They end up in that idealizedversion of Chicago also.
And they have a wonderfulweekend together.
And you start to feel like I mentionedearlier that there is another place
that maybe Jason can be happy withAmanda in this world that seems to
be a pretty safe place for them to.
Exist, but that's not the onlything that happens here as well.
(21:55):
We've discovered thatthere are alternate Jasons.
Jason goes to look at how he wouldbuy a gun, discovers that there was
just another Jason just here, justmoments before and before he knows it.
He keeps running into more and more.
Jasons.
Not only is Jason Prime running intomore Jason's evil, Jason has been
nearly murdered by one and leaves oneof these bodies right behind his house.
(22:19):
Or I guess he ends upin the trunk of the car.
There's a funny moment where it'salmost revealed that he's in there, but
definitely leaves another Jason bodylocked up in the bathroom while he goes
on a college visitation with his son.
So there are a lot of Jason'sall converging on this location.
It appears that as Jason, originalJason has been traveling backwards
(22:39):
towards his, I guess it's not backwards,sideways towards his original reality.
There's been alternate pathways.
of other Jasons who popped out ofother doors, who took ones that made
different decisions along the way.
And all those slight variations havenow created alternate Jasons, who all
sprang from the same original Jason.
And just like this Jason, they've allbeen trying to find , their way back.
(23:01):
And now hundreds of them, thousands ofthem, millions of them, who knows how
many it eventually will be, are workingtheir way back towards this reality.
This is a shocking, honestly,twist in the storyline.
And in the moment when it's revealed.
It really gets your pulse poundinglike you really think there's going
to be something truly massive andcataclysmic potentially coming at this
(23:22):
point in this recap I'm doing I'vejumped from Episode 7 right into Episode
8 as this continues to accelerate.
I did skirt over the fact that bythe end of Episode 7 Amanda has
decided to leave Jason behind.
She's developing feelings for him andshe realizes that she might be giving
him an alternative to his reality.
(23:43):
Which might be impeding him frommaking it back to his world.
And of course she knows she can'tgo back to her original universe.
She's a wanted criminal by theorganization she worked for, obviously.
Her Jason is no longer there.
And wherever this Jason wants to endup with in his original timeline, or
at least a timeline very similar to it.
And he wants to end up with his wife.
(24:04):
So where's her place?
She decides she's going to go somewherewhere she can make her own way.
She leaves him behind.
Also, this is some interestingcharacter development here
that I should have brought up.
Jason in parallel with this falling forAmanda is still getting closer and closer
to a more stable timeline where he doesencounter alternate versions of Daniela.
(24:25):
In some cases.
Charlie is there, but they're estranged.
He's been an abusive spouse, for example.
In other cases, he's still there, andhe seethes with resentment that maybe
I could just kill that guy and takeover his position, and suddenly feels
maybe what Jason 2, the evil Jason,was feeling when he was observing him.
And in yet another case, , hedoesn't exist in this universe, or
(24:48):
at least they didn't know each other.
She's just a successful artist on her own,and he just tries to turn on the charm.
And she just thinks he's a weirdo,meaning that it wasn't just about
them meeting each other, whichis maybe what he had hoped for.
It was meeting each otherin that moment in time.
So it's all about thecircumstances that led up to it.
To their marriage.
(25:09):
Now, once again, my personal taste, thisis what works for me in this material.
Why couldn't we have a whole episode wherehe is trying to woo her over and over
again, like a rom com in a time loop.
And he can't, and hecomes to that realization.
We come to that realizationthat it's not only about him
being him and her being her.
It's about them being thosepeople at that moment in time.
(25:30):
And then of course, having a childtogether and then all those experiences.
It's not just, Hey, if I meether, she's going to want me.
This is probably the revelation thatJason 2 came to, evil Jason, that
he came up to the revelation that hecouldn't just meet her and be with
her, he needed to steal the kismet, theserendipity of their meeting as well,
and of course that was something thatoccurred only with this other Jason.
(25:54):
Once again, more breathing roomfor all this, and less of the,
oh we're in some bat infesteduniverse, I don't really care.
So that's kind of filling ina little bit of the blanks.
Episode 8 is action packed withmultiple attacks from multiple Jasons.
Jason Prime ends up meeting aslight variation of him that's been
(26:14):
through some pretty rough stuff.
He has got a cut to his head.
He lost the man along the way.
But we know that many Jasonsare all an avalanche of them are
just converging on this reality.
By the end of episode eight, there arenow multiple Jason bodies laying around.
Once they start getting discovered, thisis going to need a lot of explanation.
(26:35):
But Jason Prime comes up with a prettyclever way, surprised that none of
the other Jasons came up with thiseither, to reunite with Daniela.
He just lights up a cigarette in themiddle of a restaurant until the cops
get called in and he gets arrested.
When they contact Daniela to come gethim from the police department, luckily
for him, Jason 2, , evil Jason, is onthat college tour murdering another
(26:58):
Jason and does not intercept the call.
She shows up at the police stationand he lays it all out for her.
She doesn't buy it at first.
Great performance here.
Once again, , these are difficultscenes that don't work in the
novelization that Jennifer Connellyis able to make completely credible
here, to be honest with you.
Very interesting, verygood performance at first.
(27:19):
She's hesitant, but he goes,please just do one thing.
Call me on the phone right now.
So she does it.
And then the other Jason answers.
This is really confusing to her, butshe goes, please just get charlie.
Please just trust me.
This is what's happening.
And he says, we have to have a safe word.
You come up with it.
It's Jupiter.
That's the title of the episode and shedecides where they're going to meet.
(27:39):
And now we start seeingJason's everywhere.
They're all going after each other.
There's car accidentswith multiple Jason's.
Once she gets home, she knocks her, theevil Jason who's been living with her
this whole time, or recently anyway,down the stairs into the basement,
she locks him down there, escapes withCharlie, running into many other , um,
Jasons along the way, and when shearrives at their preordained home.
(27:59):
Meeting spot.
He knows the safe word andthey're off and running.
She's borrowed her co workers bar and theyare headed somewhere Who knows where and
that's where the previous episode endedoff Daniela I believe in this episode
is the first one to bring up somethingThat's a very interesting point when she
asked who are all these other Jasons Hesays they're just versions of me and she
(28:21):
realizes that They're all versions of him.
It's not just that she wants heroriginal husband back potentially.
And it's not only that there was a versionof Jason living with her, idealized in
some respects, but that all these otherJasons all have the same claim on her.
They all had a child with her.
They all lived with her for decades.
This makes everything much morecomplicated, to say the least.
(28:41):
And this all leads up to thisfinal episode, which has a lot
of breathing room and all for thebetter to prevent the other Jason's
from knowing where they're going.
They have Charlie pick the location,which is this beautiful seaside mansion
that one of his friends families owns.
And that he and his friends have partiedat before, but the parents were not
(29:04):
familiar with it, which is perfect becauseif none of the Jason's know about it,
then they can't intercept them here.
And there's some very strongconversational dialogue here.
Once Jason and Daniela finally reunite,most of it delivered by Daniela and
in these really terrific interactionsbetween Edgerton and Connelly.
They finally lay out someof the themes of the show.
(29:27):
This craving for, what if?
What if I hadn't madethe choices I'd made?
And would it be better?
Would it be worse?
And of course, this is the driving force.
This fantasy is what has driven Jason2, the evil Jason, to steal his life.
And of course, when Jason suddenly waspresented with this alternate version
of himself, and of course, has had manyother alternate versions of himself
(29:47):
that he could have potentially He alwayskeeps coming back to that commitment
he made to the Connelly character.
And once again I have to give creditto Connelly's performance because
she makes it believable that here isthis woman who is seeing her husband,
versions of her husband that couldbe absolutely terrible versions.
(30:08):
Not only this, Jason hadstolen her Jason's life.
But the ones that she'llencounter, murderous versions
of him that she'll encounter.
And this is something that the bookand the series cannot truly deal with.
Who is this person that she's married thatcould become, over the course of weeks
potentially, or maybe months, murderous.
(30:30):
Potentially risking even her andher son's lives for what he wants.
And it is not a divergencefrom 10 or 15 years ago.
These are divergent versions ofher husband from just weeks ago.
This is something Jasonneeds to deal with as well.
That there's this ugly side to himthat he has not fully embraced.
Even when he steps into one ofthese slightly divergent versions
(30:52):
of his reality and he discovers thatthat Jason was an abusive husband.
who no longer can see his son.
This is some of the trickiestmaterial and really not dealt with
in either adaptation of this work.
But there is something in Connelly'sperformance where she just kind
of resigned to, you take thegood with the bad in a marriage.
(31:14):
And she even stated that theseother Jasons, if one of these
other ones had shown up, that'sprobably the one she'd be with.
But now she's just in this circumstance.
This is the direction she'sgone in and she needs to be
with someone at this point.
She's really not safe on her own becauseof all these other Jason's because of
all these other permutations of hervery husband He has become the danger
(31:36):
to her So it's interesting when youthink about that metaphor, but the
show honestly is not ready to deal withthat particular Aspect of the story.
There's also another Really strong scenehere in the finale not in the novel
Where we see this version of Jason,who's been through the worst of it,
(31:57):
basically, who Jason Prime has had drinkswith at one point, and who's found evil
Jason in the basement of his home, andhas tied him up and beaten him, and
really just lays into him, just callinghim a rapist, calling him a monster.
And for the first time in thisentire series, we see Jason.
the wounded version of Jason, thisevil Jason, who's been honestly pretty
(32:20):
one dimensional, very confident in allthe decisions he's made, and finally
dealing with the consequences of hisactions and realizing, to some extent,
the weight of what he's created, that hethought he knew what all the consequences
were going to be, and now suddenly ina situation where there's no out for
him, there's no out for any of theJasons, and obviously these people that
(32:42):
he supposedly loves and wanted to bewith, their lives are now on the line.
That night, Evil Jason figures outDaniella must have borrowed Blair's
car, and by luring her to the house,they're able to track the family down.
I'd love to see thisinteraction, by the way.
She gets the upper hand.
Maces them and then gets their hands onthe gun when she sees these two Jasons.
(33:02):
She has many questionsWhat is this conversation?
We're triplets Someone'spretending to be me.
You don't understand we have toget to her as soon as possible.
She doesn't know she's with this otherunknown triplet Maybe that's how they
I mean, they just don't put this on thescreen to get Out of it because do they
(33:24):
tell her there's alternate versionsof him and she's like, uh, okay.
And really there's hundredsof other ones out there.
Trust me.
They might be knockingon the door right now.
Uh, so please tell me where she'slocated so I can go track her down.
I really here to help.
Uh, I don't know if that would fly,even if she , believed it for a second.
I think the evil triplet is the, um,the only possible explanation they
(33:48):
can give her that could have her,uh, reveal their current position.
Long story short, that night heends up getting to the car somehow.
Uh, she does share the location with them.
Evil Jason, that is.
The other Jasons track him.
They must have put a tracker on his car.
And there's dozens or moreconverging on the house.
Jason, in the meantime, has discovereda chat room where they're all chatting
(34:11):
and they're trying to negotiate,you know, shared custody of the
family, which I'm sure that's areal turn on for any woman, right?
Maybe the son won't mind having 25 dadsor, who knows, 175 dads, but that could
be a little confusing as well, butFeeding all those people on one salary.
I mean, I don't know how you canget, I guess you have to get some
fake social security numbers.
We'll get into the logistics ofall this when we get to the end,
(34:33):
but all hell starts breaking loose.
We hear gunfire in the woods.
There's going to be piles andpiles of dead Jasons out there
when the police finally show up.
And that's going to make allthe headlines in the world.
By the way, Jason tells Danielaand Charlie to take cover.
While they're getting ready to escape,this Jason, either the same Jason
that he met previously or a differentone, slight variation of that one,
(34:55):
basically wants to take over Jason'slife once again, tells him to keep
quiet, take off all his clothes, he'sgoing to pretend to be him, and he'll
hurt Daniela if he doesn't comply, thisleads to a scuffle And, as he's about to
kill Jason Prime, he's killed himself.
This is when evil Jason shows up.
Not so evil in this particular case.
(35:16):
He has suddenly realized the fullweight of everything he's done.
And he's there to try, as besthe can, to set things right.
And the family rides off togetheronce they get to the car and
run down yet another Jason.
After yet a different Jasontries to shoot into the car, what
the hell is this guy thinking?
They decide to go back to the box.
Couple things that are differenthere, by the way, in the book.
(35:39):
Evil jason is still dead set on tryingto make this work even though it's
like she doesn't want you back dude sheknows everything's going on this isn't
gonna work out but it's kind of a muchdumber version of this I much prefer
this version with evil jason or this um,instigating jason coming to some sense
of remorse because he is evil jasonOnce again, has to have some humanity.
(36:04):
He is this version of Jasonthat we've been pursuing.
And of course, once again, once everyone'scards on the table, he has to realize
that Daniella doesn't want to be with him.
He's, she's not going tochoose him at this point.
So what else other option does he have?
He's left them a bunch of ampoulesso that they can enter the box.
Once they get to the box, there aredozens, hundreds of more Jasons waiting.
(36:25):
The one who speaks forthem basically says, Yes.
We know this isn't going to work out.
We know we just are here to say goodbye,but some of them still seem like they
still, why does he get what I want?
And they're reminded once againthat it's not about what he wants.
It's about what's best for them,which of course is a very bitter pill.
You can imagine.
Legitimately, if we want to engagewith this material, imagine you have
(36:47):
just been on this incredible journey.
You have made it back almost impossibly.
You've lost so much alongthe way, and you have somehow
made it back to this universe.
Potentially along the way,Amanda was there with you.
You could have made something workwith her, but you left her behind.
Either she died or she abandoned you, andnow you are on your own, and maybe out
of ampules, and now you've gotten to thisplace, and you made it all the way home,
(37:10):
and you're not going to get what you want.
That's a very, very bitter pill toswallow, but I do like the way the show
deals with this because in the end,imagine being in that circumstance.
What do you want?
Do you want your wife and child to bemiserable for the rest of their lives?
The whole purpose was to getthem away from this other Jason
to make their lives better.
(37:30):
It is unfair, right?
In the end that roll the dice.
Just random fate that you arriveda little too late and that's got
to be really hard to deal withThere is no other alternative.
So it's really a tragic endto so many of these Jason's.
It's a , really sad ending.
And the show does a good jobof engaging with that feeling.
(37:51):
And then the door closes, thefamily's inside, and they have a
suitcase full of vials of this drug.
So they may be headed towards, many different destinations,
but they let Charlie decide.
Because if they don't let Charlie decide,there are many other Jasons that are
hot in pursuit, I'm sure, some of theones that are still stinging from the
(38:15):
loss and might think, hey, I just needto sneak up on him one day when he's by
himself and I can have that life too.
So, can't be his decision.
It's gotta be Charlie's.
And the door opens onto,potentially, a bright future.
The family steps through, entangledforever, and they step into?
Question mark?
We don't know.
We do catch up with someof the other characters.
(38:36):
Layton seems to be a steampunk,multiversal traveler.
Seems to be loving it,so good outcome for him.
And Amanda and Ryan, who both ended up inthat utopian Chicago, have met each other.
And that's where the season ends.
Emotionally, I have to saythat this really worked for
me here in the final moments.
(38:56):
Now, logically, okay, if you don't wantto hear science corner here, which is
also going to be not just nitpicks, butI mean, logical inconsistencies, this
whole thing collapses to a large extent.
With the critiques I'm about to make so ifyou want to end on a positive note Here's
a time to step away and come back laterthis week to hear my breakdown of the new
(39:19):
season of the bear So stay tuned for that.
But that being said, here we go.
I'm going to get into nitpicks Slashscience corner slash this whole show
falls apart upon even the slightestlogical investigation Okay, so
cleverly, I mean I have to say thiswas like a real big Surprise and a
good one when we suddenly realized.
(39:40):
Oh my gosh other Jasons are around tohave they been around this whole time.
What is going on with theseother Jason's really thrilling?
moments in the story But then it's notlike one or two or five snuck in, there's
like dozens and then hundreds and thenpotentially thousands of them by the end.
And if each one of them is branchingoff more and more and more, this
(40:01):
reality of Chicago is going tobe crawling with these Jasons.
These bodies are going to turn upnot only at the compound, uh, at
that beachside mansion they were at,but That's going to be hard enough
to explain, but can you imagine allthese guys who are so depressed out of
ampoules, can't get a job, don't have anyidentity, will start committing suicide,
or killing each other, or ending uphomeless, drunk on the street corners.
(40:25):
All of a sudden, they're goingto be all over the news, , oh
my god, this guy disappeared.
Wait a second, we foundthis body in the college.
Wait a second, we found 10 of these guys.
This is going to be thebiggest story of all times.
There's no way this storydoes not make sense.
International news forever.
And then the surviving guys are goingto get questioned and they're going to
say, well, I stepped out of this machine.
(40:47):
And after the 15th one saysthis, they're like, man, we got
to try to build this machine.
And then of course, if that happensto this one, Jason, then think about
all the other, just few people thatthey have sent back through the box.
They are also spawning infinite numbersof duplicates that are not just.
invading one reality.
What if one of those people got tiredof going back in time and trying
(41:08):
to set things right, and they allsettled into one particular reality?
But then all the alternate versionsof that particular subversion
are now filling up that reality.
This basically is the end ofhistory, because you're going to
start having billions and trillionsof people stepping through.
This machine.
And if there's another alternatehistory where another alternate Jason
(41:29):
makes another version of this box.
Now we have billions upon billionsupon billions of people invading
all these multiple realities.
. So that is one problem with this story.
That it could lead to the end of allhistory, or human history anyway.
Okay, problem number two.
Where does the family go?
The family's going to stepthrough into this other reality.
(41:51):
Are they stepping into a realitybased on what Charlie picked?
Maybe Charlie says, I want to gointo a reality where I'm together
with my girlfriend insteadof that other guy dating her.
But then what if his whole family'sthere now they're going to bump into
those people and then what if theydecide that hey we want their reality
let's murder them in the middle ofthe night and we then will take over
(42:13):
their lives and then we're going tocreate a cascade of billions of those
people showing up here as well in agroup of three each time but still.
Or where do they go intoanother reality where maybe it's
that utopian reality, right?
Where you don't need identificationor whatever else, but then all of
these other alternate versions ofthemselves are also going to end up
there, or they end up in some kind ofmedieval society that never evolved.
(42:37):
And now, are they suddenlygoing to live that way?
Is Charlie going to be happysuddenly living in a world
where technology doesn't exist?
Because if they're going to end up inanything near contemporary Chicago,
how are they going to survive withoutsocial security, without any credit
history, without any work history?
They're just going to be likeillegal, uh, immigrants basically.
(42:58):
And they're going to have to live that wayfor the rest of their lives, which is not
a very satisfying ending for this family.
So I wish that there was some waythat this thing had been able to
almost collapse those timelinesand heal this rift in time.
And that had been the conclusion becauseit seems based on the rules they're
setting up here, that there's going tobe infinite versions of these alternate
(43:22):
characters popping up into infiniteuniverses and clogging them all up
with, uh, uh, cataclysmic effects.
And I really do feel like at the end,it's almost as we're saying, well,
that's what's going to happen in thisreality, but they're stepping out
of this reality, but it's like, Hey,there are realities that are just
slightly tangential from this one.
(43:43):
And there are just slight variationsof Jason that are going to end up with
just slightly different versions ofDaniela could be just slight variation,
just days different in experience fromthis Daniela, but then that's a close
enough version of Daniela, right?
So then they're going to start lookingfor that version of Daniela, slightly
variant version of her and they'regoing to clog up that reality and then
(44:04):
there'll be another one and anotherone and the logic of this box and how
it works is not ready to deal with.
Okay, so given the fact.
That, logically, this wholeentire thing falls apart under the
smallest amount of examination.
I do, nonetheless, find theending emotionally satisfying.
That maybe, just possibly, these threepeople together can make a choice
(44:27):
that only they would make together.
Because they are just thisunique version of themselves.
That we're supposed to betogether and that's it.
And if we accept that, that this is theversion of Charlie and the version of
Daniela and the version of Jason thatwe're always supposed to be together and
they'll make a decision that is completelyunique to them and that no one else will
follow them through, then Hey, all theother realities around them can collapse.
(44:50):
They'll be happy in question mark.
Maybe that utopian version of.
The future and maybe they'lleventually hook up with, uh, Amanda
and Ryan, maybe, Hey, that's possible.
, and maybe that is what is being impliedhere in the final moments of the show.
Okay.
So that's.
If you'd like to support the show,the easiest thing to do is recommend
(45:11):
this to your friends and family.
Post this on your socials.
Check out my Letterboxd for more reviews
and just some other themed lists that Icreate here and there, check out the bear
premiering a day earlier than expected,and then expect multiple episodes covering
the bear over the next week or so.
And in the near future, catching up onpresumed innocent, excellent episode
this week, by the way, a bunch ofinteresting movies coming out in July
(45:34):
that will probably be get reviewedeither letterboxd house of the dragon
discussion somewhere later next month.
And honestly, it's a very.
Eventful July with movies and new seriessome very interesting content coming up.
So stay tuned Hopefully you'll bewatching stuff that we're watching.
I'll talk to you soon
Welcome everybody to anotherepisode of Need Some Introduction.
In this podcast, I try to introduce youto new things that you may need some
introduction to, usually films thatare currently in theaters or popular TV
series, and along the way, recommending
less known films and series alongthe way, usually thematically
tied into the subject at hand.
(00:21):
Today's subject, the season finale ofDark Matter, the Apple TV TV series, an
adaptation of the Blake Crouch novel.
Apple TV's output is almost all noveladaptations, if you've noticed, and there
are a few more yet to come this summer.
If you'd like to reach out to me, or ifyou'd like to follow me on Letterboxd,
I've got And check out movie reviewsand lists that I compile around
(00:45):
these episodes, check the show notes.
All the links are available there.
A little piece of news about The Bear.
There's an episode I published just lastweek where we were preparing for this
much anticipated third season of The Bear.
Hulu slash Disney Plus announced justyesterday, if I publish this on time,
I'll be publishing this on Wednesday, thatthey have bumped up the premiere date.
Thanks.
(01:05):
Of the bear by a whole other day,meaning tonight, this Wednesday
evening, the bear will be availableand I will be watching at least part
of the season tomorrow and expectmultiple episodes where I'm breaking
down those episodes, as well as havingconversations with my co-host Sona, about
her impressions of the series as well.
Also expect next weekthat I'll be checking.
(01:26):
With the Apple TV plus book adaptationagain, of Presumed Innocent, which had a
terrific fourth episode this week afterkind of a meh episode for three, really
strong episode this week, and after nextweek's fifth episode, Sona and I will
be having a midseason near midseason.
Catch up on that series as well.
And before getting into thefinale of Dark Matter, a couple
(01:50):
of recommendations for all of you.
Dark Matter, this TV's adaptation is,seems to be a pretty expensive endeavor.
It's not only the talent on screen,but the special effects in some of
these alternate realities that thecharacters step into are pretty advanced.
So even for relatively little screen time.
probably a decent amount of moneyspent on what looks to be some
(02:10):
pretty expensive production.
Alternately, I want to recommendto you a few time paradox films of
different genres, comedy, thriller,that are made on tiny budgets.
First of all, to introduce youto some pretty impressive talent.
being able to pull this off on such asmall budget and possibly for you younger
(02:32):
hobbyists to introduce you to how on avery very small budget you can achieve
some pretty impressive world building.
My first recommendation isBeyond the Infinite Two Minutes.
This is available almost everywhere.
It's available on Vudu, Tubi, Freevi,Amazon Prime for free with ads usually.
So incredibly easy to access thisincredibly clever Japanese comedy.
(02:55):
in which some workers at a coffeeshop discover that on the monitor they
can see two minutes into the future.
And then this continuously compounds.
The movie keeps iterating over thesetwo minute intervals in which you see
characters walk back into the two minutesor forward into the two minutes and then
witnessing what's happening in the back.
And then we're seeing this verysmall cast of characters continuously
(03:17):
repeating the same events as they'rewatching either on the screen.
Or in real time, and the logistics ofthe production here is truly astounding.
I honestly do not know howthey could have achieved this.
And if it sounds like this is goingto be pretty limited, there's a really
entertaining moment in which pretty earlyon where they get these two screens.
to face each other.
(03:38):
And then you create that mirror effect.
You've probably seen when youface two mirrors at each other,
two TV screens at each other.
So this starts to create thistunnel effect as they're going
two minutes into the future
going further and further into thistunnel of screens and then in the
future they see an act of violence notthat far off and it's getting closer
and closer as those screens move furtherand further down this image tunnel.
(03:58):
Basically it's utterly confoundinghow they could have pulled
this off incredibly clever.
The resolution is the weakest partof the whole entire film, but it
does resolve itself in a satisfyingway, but up until that moment, as
lackluster as that particular part maybe, and when I say that only because
it doesn't meet the incredible highstandards of everything that leads up
to it, this is really inventive andreally intelligent, and really puts
(04:21):
you in the shoes of these characters.
What would you do in this circumstance?
Which of course they're in andcompletely unexplained until
pretty late in the going.
It's a short watch, uh, incrediblyentertaining, , easily available to
everybody and made for almost nothing.
So really kudos to thesefilmmakers for this achievement.
And I'll also call out that they madea much bigger budget version of this
same idea, more or less, in a moviecalled River from 2023, I believe.
(04:47):
Not as easily accessible, but definitelyyou can rent it if you look for it
and definitely a much bigger budget.
But similarly, you have thesecharacters that are now different
characters working in this beautifullocale, this Japanese in, and what
our main character discovers is thatshe is repeating the same two minutes.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, she startedto repeat the same two minutes
(05:07):
of her life over and over again.
Now, what's interesting isthat other characters start
to catch on to this as well.
And before you know it, you havethe entire staff all trapped
in this two minute repetition.
So an expansion on the ideas in thefirst film, also very entertaining.
So check that out if youfind it, that's called River.
Use my description thereof the plot as your guide.
There are quite a few differentfilms and TV series called River.
(05:30):
Okay.
Okay, another incredibly low budget.
and really impressive time paradoxfilm that I just caught up with just
yesterday, actually two days ago, Iguess at this point is a movie called
Lola, another title that you're goingto find lots of search results for.
So you may want to use mydescription as a guide.
This is a British lowbudget film made in 2023.
(05:52):
It's available everywhere.
It's available on Peacock.
It's available on 2B for free.
It's available on Pluto TV.
on Plex and a lot of thefast free streaming services.
And this film presentsitself as found footage.
So this is a film that was shot on,I believe, 16 millimeter cameras
appropriate to the 1930s . And itpresents itself as a documentary of this
(06:15):
footage that's found at this house.
So in that way, it feelslike a found footage movie.
That framing device that Ijust mentioned may remind you
of, for example, Blair Witch
.This is not a horror movie, by the way.
And what the contents of thefilm ends up being is these
sisters who live in this house.
And, uh, Who have invented aradio, and this radio can receive
radio and eventually televisionbroadcasts from the future.
(06:38):
So as they continue to tune thisantenna, they're able to capture
or witness news days, weeks,months, years into the future.
And supposedly this is shot duringthe German raids over London.
So by tuning to future broadcasts anddiscovering where the Germans are going
to bomb, they anonymously broadcast.
(06:59):
to the British Secret Servicewhere those attacks are going to
be in the hopes of saving lives.
As you would expect, eventually, they arelocated and they get into this tenuous
collaboration with the British military.
And I'll just leave it there withoutany spoilers that the more they try
to manipulate and improve the future,the more unforeseen consequences
(07:21):
there are to their actions.
Once again, not a perfect film.
The performances are all pretty solid.
The conceit is pretty well pulled off.
There is just a little CGI herein the film, and when they do
use it, it is really impressive.
The biggest compliment I'll pay to thisparticular film Is that the scope of
(07:42):
the world building here really ends upbeing convincing and immense considering
the very tiny purview we have into thisworld purely from this one 16 millimeter
camera, but how it seems to convincinglycapture this alternate reality that's
spinning off from this discovery.
So once again, that movie is called Lola.
(08:04):
It's available on manyfree streaming platforms.
Okay, onto the main event.
As far as I can tell, this Dark Matteradaptation has been pretty big hit for
Apple TV especially by their standards.
I'm not sure how Apple TV pickstheir winners and losers other than
something like Ted Lasso, which trulyis a crossover phenomena where tens
(08:25):
of millions of people potentiallyhave seen at least part of that show.
And maybe severance, hopefullycoming back for season two
within the next six months or so.
I'm hoping we get it before 2025,although that might not be the case.
I'll have to have a whole separateconversation about the troubled
production history of that second season.
It is hard to gauge when somethingis hitting or not for Apple TV plus.
(08:47):
However, just from looking atwebsites that track Television
episode activity and searches forstreaming options for TV shows and
movies such as Just Watch or IMDb.
This show has bounced up to numberone many times since its release.
Over a month ago, and if you haven'tlistened to the preview episode for dark
(09:08):
matter do check out that episode herein the feed where I covered the first
two episodes of the series as Well ashad a science corner on some of the
other physics that's being exploredhere theoretically in this series.
Although I don't know howaccurate the science is, but at
least the concepts behind it.
Before I break down any of the plothere, I do want to just have some
(09:30):
broad points about this adaptationand the source material as well.
I've read this book.
I would say if you read the bookand you liked it, you should
absolutely watch this show.
This is a vast improvementover the novel version of this.
It's the rare.
adaptation that I thinkreally significantly improves
on the source material.
Blake Crouch himself has called thisthe authentic version of the story.
(09:54):
Apparently he wrote the book, andthis really, I can really feel this,
by the way, in reading the novel.
He first wrote this as a film scriptand then expanded it to a novel length.
But I feel as he expanded it, it pads outwhat really is a relatively short story.
And if you think that's a problem withthe novel, I think the series, at nine
episodes, pads it out even more so.
(10:16):
However, some of that paddingout improves the storyline.
In the book, we really do notspend a lot of time with Jason
2, the antagonistic Jason.
And since we don't spend that much timewith that version of Jason, we also end
up spending relatively little time Withthe original Daniella and making this
material work with a Daniella characterin the book really is just an excuse
(10:40):
for the plot and feels so badly sketchedout in my opinion, even the way she can
quickly accept things at the end, we'llget into all that breakdown, but all that
is to say that Jennifer Connelly is theMVP here because Especially in the season
finale, which is excellent, by the way,the finale of the season is the best
episode of the series, in my opinion, andso much of it is Conley's performance and
(11:04):
the way they treat the Daniella characterhere, playing out all the complexity
that is skirted over in the novel.
But pretty well developedhere in the finale.
My critique there is that a lot ofthis should have been introduced
a little bit earlier so that wecould have explored it even more so.
Another huge improvement in this seriesadaptation is the expansion of the Amanda
(11:26):
character played by Alice Braga here.
Once again, she is Almost a plot device.
She has less of arelationship with evil Jason.
Let's call him here.
So they've expanded her.
They've made her more centraland to the extent that the middle
of the series works at all.
So much of it has to do with thisreally believable alternate history.
(11:47):
Jason can have with this Amanda character.
So all this is to say that this isthe better version of the story.
All that being said, thisis still way too long.
This should be about five episodes long.
A five episode version of thisstory is the best version
of this particular material.
And I could say the exact same thing aboutthe Apple TV plus another sci fi mashup
(12:09):
of a kind that just wrapped up last month.
Sugar with.
Colin Farrell, another series thatwould have worked significantly
better at a shorter running time.
Okay, so a little bit ofthe breakdown of the story.
At the end of episode 2, Jasonhad been sent back in time.
Is just acclimating to this, runs intoalternate history version of the story.
(12:29):
Daniela, they hadn't seen each other forover a decade or hadn't been involved
with each other for over a decade.
He gets her to reluctantly acceptsome of the things he's saying.
She ends up dead bythe end of episode two.
In episode three, Jason, ourJason, is brought back to the
facilities where the box is housedand is questioned by Leighton.
He continues the play that he is.
(12:52):
There, Jason, but that the tripthrough time has muddied his memory.
At first.
They seem to be buying into this.
It takes Jason way too long, my opinion,to figure out that he needs to play act.
This alternate Jason way earlier,he seems to be surprised constantly
by the predicament he's in.
He shouldn't be the surprisedI personally think considering.
(13:12):
His own experiments from the past,but Layton and Amanda, someone else
who works at the facility who turnsout to also be Jason's lover, figure
out that this is an alternate Jason.
They decide to torture him, they decide totorture his friend Ryan Holder, a chemist
who created this chemical that allowsthis perception of multiple realities.
And by the end of the third episode,they have entered the box, Amanda
(13:35):
and Jason with this chemicals intow in Jason's original timeline.
Evil Jason, Jason two is way moreaffectionate , with Daniella, but
she appreciates this rekindledpassion in their marriage.
This is when the show.
Cool.
And the novel, to be honest,has the most potential.
This idea that you could have thisalternate history that you may have
(13:57):
wished for, for many years, and thatin a way, by stepping into a different
reality, you could actually leave behindthe life you know, but step into an
even better circumstance for yourself.
That's what Jason thinks he's giving.
Jason prime.
And that's what Daniela gets at thismoment to this newly rejuvenated
relationship with her husband.
My personal taste.
(14:17):
This is what I would like to showto have explored significantly
more and a novel as well.
They kind of throw that out the door bythrowing in the thriller plot immediately.
We have Jason Prime inside the boxnow traveling to different dimensions.
Those first three episodes areprobably a little too long,
but set up the world pretty well.
If anything, I think they rushinto the box , a little bit.
(14:39):
And then we end up with thesemiddle three episodes, which
are definitely the weakest part.
Of the series, Jason and Amandaare literally just entering
one world after another.
After another, Jason pretty quicklyunderstands that their mindset,
their fears, their anxieties, theirexpectations of what's going to
happen when they open the world ismanipulating the worlds they choose.
(15:02):
And also that the two people travelingtogether are somehow impacting
the decisions they're making.
There's a lot of time spent ina very cold, desolate Chicago,
which they barely escape.
And once again, unlike the novel, Jason2, our evil Jason, We spend a lot more
time with him than we do, which isinteresting because in the novel, he just
(15:22):
seems that he has adapted pretty well.
And he's just this idealized versionof Jason without much question.
There's a lot more complexity tothat in spending more time with him.
Once again, MVP, Jennifer Connellyconveys that she starts to get suspicious
of this potentially ideal versionof her husband, way more attentive.
(15:42):
But also way more needy.
He wants her attention.
He's craving this thing he's neverhad and he expects her to just be
this idealized version of herself.
And she says, okay, I'm glad thatyou're way more into me than you have
been recently, but I have my own life.
I have my own routine.
I'm going to go exerciseor I'm going to go to work.
I'm not just going to sithere with you all day long.
(16:04):
And you see how Jason, too, that thisis well done in Edgerton's performance,
especially on the dark side of Jason here,that he bristles against this expectation.
Why isn't it the way he wants it to be?
Which is realistic, you would expect forsomeone who has been obsessing about this
and also someone who's probably sosmart, he always thinks he knows exactly
what he's going to get and is surprisedwhen it's not exactly what he expected.
(16:25):
It's also interesting that our evilJason, Starts to have his own issues
with the lack of ambition that this Jasonprime had he decides to quit his job
He suddenly wants to perhaps reinventsome of the discoveries he did in his
alternate life Meanwhile, Jason primeand Amanda continued to travel through
these not quite right realities atone point in a plague infested world,
(16:50):
tragically meeting up with Daniela.
Their son has already died, and she'salso infected with this killer virus.
This injects a littledrama into the series.
Some of this works.
This is also in the book, by the way.
But I think all of this could havebeen truncated, in my opinion.
Although there is some interestingcharacter development here Evil Jason
(17:11):
finds this universe's Layton, who didnot achieve billionaire status, who
certainly is, in a way, the characterthat he expected to find with his
alternate Jason here, when he isintroduced to the box and all the
alternate realities, he immediately ison board with becoming this multiverse
(17:33):
traveling adventurer and basicallyhands over all his wealth to Evil Jason.
I'm not sure why we need this particularplot point, to be honest with you,
considering how things wrap up.
I'll leave it there for now..
Another thing that I think they puttheir thumb on the scale a little too
much here in the series versus the book, until the end, they really make this.
alternate Jason to be kind of a straightup douchebag, to be totally honest.
(17:56):
He never seems to be, in our view, andwe know what's actually going on inside
his mind, to be an idealized versionof Jason at all, which should be the
appeal of this character, to be honest.
They make him villainous right from thestart, and I think that is a mistake.
He doesn't know about not from thebook, by the way, but there is another
sibling who passed away years beforethat's in creation for the series.
(18:20):
And he's forgotten about thisanniversary since he wasn't part
of this family and even more.
egregiously gives Charlie hisson ice cream that contains
nuts, and he has an anaphylacticreaction, ends up in the hospital.
All of this makes Daniela really startto feel like he's not quite right.
She notices some tracks on his arms,obviously from these injections that
(18:42):
he's been giving himself when he wastraveling for hundreds, potentially, of
iterations through these different worlds.
She suspects he may just be a an addictand that might be the reason for the
change to his personality and then yellowstarts to do her own investigation.
This is when the series starts to pick upsome momentum, which really accelerates
and culminates in the final episode.
(19:03):
She has followed.
Jason to a storage to aself storage location.
She's able to retrieve one of thesevials, takes it to Ryan, who's a
chemist, and when Ryan sees what thecontent is, he goes to Jason and asks
him, have you been stealing my work?
Because this is a chemicalcompound that I've been working on.
Jason's reaction to this.
(19:24):
This is Jason's react.
This is evil.
Jason's reaction always is toshow Ryan how the box works.
and abandons him in thisidealized version of Chicago.
This is even more outlinedwithin the novel itself.
In this version of Chicago,everything's incredibly high tech,
(19:44):
there's no money anymore, everybodygets to purchase things for free,
and public transportation is free.
It's basically like an H.
G.
Wells idealized version ofthe world of the future.
A lot of stuff happens in episode seven.
First of all, they're looking for Ryan.
Where's Ryan?
He's the last person.
Jason, evil Jason is the lastperson who's been seen with him.
(20:05):
The cops , come aroundasking a lot of questions.
His solution as is always thecase is to go into the box.
He goes to an alternate realitywhere this Ryan is just a mechanic.
Just Josh Mo has taken hisskills and applied them to being
a auto mechanic, definitely anunderachiever and a former addict.
He decides to bring him into thisreality, clean him up a little
(20:27):
bit and drop him off at his house.
Hey, any Ryan will do, right?
You should have gotten onethat was a little closer.
Then again, that guy might'vefigured out what's going on.
Everybody thinks he's nuts.
Daniella though, goes and talks to himand starts to get really suspicious.
What is up with this?
This guy's not acting like himself.
He seems to have an alternate history.
My husband seems to havean alternate history.
(20:48):
What is going on here?
This is well done.
She obviously cannot connect the dotsyet, but when she's presented with it,
this is way more believable than inthe book where this has just sprung
upon her who seems to be very happywith the way things are going and
seems to just accept everything here.
She is very suspicious and prettyunhappy with her version of Jason.
So when this alternate explanation comes.
(21:11):
She's ready to hear it.
That's not the only interesting thingthat happens Jason and Amanda have gotten
very close during all their travels.
Amanda had been intimate with theother Jason So she's obviously meeting
to her and idealized more emotionalemotionally available version of
Jason Which obviously appeals to her,but she's falling in love with him.
(21:31):
They end up in that idealizedversion of Chicago also.
And they have a wonderfulweekend together.
And you start to feel like I mentionedearlier that there is another place
that maybe Jason can be happy withAmanda in this world that seems to
be a pretty safe place for them to.
Exist, but that's not the onlything that happens here as well.
(21:55):
We've discovered thatthere are alternate Jasons.
Jason goes to look at how he wouldbuy a gun, discovers that there was
just another Jason just here, justmoments before and before he knows it.
He keeps running into more and more.
Jasons.
Not only is Jason Prime running intomore Jason's evil, Jason has been
nearly murdered by one and leaves oneof these bodies right behind his house.
(22:19):
Or I guess he ends upin the trunk of the car.
There's a funny moment where it'salmost revealed that he's in there, but
definitely leaves another Jason bodylocked up in the bathroom while he goes
on a college visitation with his son.
So there are a lot of Jason'sall converging on this location.
It appears that as Jason, originalJason has been traveling backwards
(22:39):
towards his, I guess it's not backwards,sideways towards his original reality.
There's been alternate pathways.
of other Jasons who popped out ofother doors, who took ones that made
different decisions along the way.
And all those slight variations havenow created alternate Jasons, who all
sprang from the same original Jason.
And just like this Jason, they've allbeen trying to find , their way back.
(23:01):
And now hundreds of them, thousands ofthem, millions of them, who knows how
many it eventually will be, are workingtheir way back towards this reality.
This is a shocking, honestly,twist in the storyline.
And in the moment when it's revealed.
It really gets your pulse poundinglike you really think there's going
to be something truly massive andcataclysmic potentially coming at this
(23:22):
point in this recap I'm doing I'vejumped from Episode 7 right into Episode
8 as this continues to accelerate.
I did skirt over the fact that bythe end of Episode 7 Amanda has
decided to leave Jason behind.
She's developing feelings for him andshe realizes that she might be giving
him an alternative to his reality.
(23:43):
Which might be impeding him frommaking it back to his world.
And of course she knows she can'tgo back to her original universe.
She's a wanted criminal by theorganization she worked for, obviously.
Her Jason is no longer there.
And wherever this Jason wants to endup with in his original timeline, or
at least a timeline very similar to it.
And he wants to end up with his wife.
(24:04):
So where's her place?
She decides she's going to go somewherewhere she can make her own way.
She leaves him behind.
Also, this is some interestingcharacter development here
that I should have brought up.
Jason in parallel with this falling forAmanda is still getting closer and closer
to a more stable timeline where he doesencounter alternate versions of Daniela.
(24:25):
In some cases.
Charlie is there, but they're estranged.
He's been an abusive spouse, for example.
In other cases, he's still there, andhe seethes with resentment that maybe
I could just kill that guy and takeover his position, and suddenly feels
maybe what Jason 2, the evil Jason,was feeling when he was observing him.
And in yet another case, , hedoesn't exist in this universe, or
(24:48):
at least they didn't know each other.
She's just a successful artist on her own,and he just tries to turn on the charm.
And she just thinks he's a weirdo,meaning that it wasn't just about
them meeting each other, whichis maybe what he had hoped for.
It was meeting each otherin that moment in time.
So it's all about thecircumstances that led up to it.
To their marriage.
(25:09):
Now, once again, my personal taste, thisis what works for me in this material.
Why couldn't we have a whole episode wherehe is trying to woo her over and over
again, like a rom com in a time loop.
And he can't, and hecomes to that realization.
We come to that realizationthat it's not only about him
being him and her being her.
It's about them being thosepeople at that moment in time.
(25:30):
And then of course, having a childtogether and then all those experiences.
It's not just, Hey, if I meether, she's going to want me.
This is probably the revelation thatJason 2 came to, evil Jason, that
he came up to the revelation that hecouldn't just meet her and be with
her, he needed to steal the kismet, theserendipity of their meeting as well,
and of course that was something thatoccurred only with this other Jason.
(25:54):
Once again, more breathing roomfor all this, and less of the,
oh we're in some bat infesteduniverse, I don't really care.
So that's kind of filling ina little bit of the blanks.
Episode 8 is action packed withmultiple attacks from multiple Jasons.
Jason Prime ends up meeting aslight variation of him that's been
(26:14):
through some pretty rough stuff.
He has got a cut to his head.
He lost the man along the way.
But we know that many Jasonsare all an avalanche of them are
just converging on this reality.
By the end of episode eight, there arenow multiple Jason bodies laying around.
Once they start getting discovered, thisis going to need a lot of explanation.
(26:35):
But Jason Prime comes up with a prettyclever way, surprised that none of
the other Jasons came up with thiseither, to reunite with Daniela.
He just lights up a cigarette in themiddle of a restaurant until the cops
get called in and he gets arrested.
When they contact Daniela to come gethim from the police department, luckily
for him, Jason 2, , evil Jason, is onthat college tour murdering another
(26:58):
Jason and does not intercept the call.
She shows up at the police stationand he lays it all out for her.
She doesn't buy it at first.
Great performance here.
Once again, , these are difficultscenes that don't work in the
novelization that Jennifer Connellyis able to make completely credible
here, to be honest with you.
Very interesting, verygood performance at first.
(27:19):
She's hesitant, but he goes,please just do one thing.
Call me on the phone right now.
So she does it.
And then the other Jason answers.
This is really confusing to her, butshe goes, please just get charlie.
Please just trust me.
This is what's happening.
And he says, we have to have a safe word.
You come up with it.
It's Jupiter.
That's the title of the episode and shedecides where they're going to meet.
(27:39):
And now we start seeingJason's everywhere.
They're all going after each other.
There's car accidentswith multiple Jason's.
Once she gets home, she knocks her, theevil Jason who's been living with her
this whole time, or recently anyway,down the stairs into the basement,
she locks him down there, escapes withCharlie, running into many other , um,
Jasons along the way, and when shearrives at their preordained home.
(27:59):
Meeting spot.
He knows the safe word andthey're off and running.
She's borrowed her co workers bar and theyare headed somewhere Who knows where and
that's where the previous episode endedoff Daniela I believe in this episode
is the first one to bring up somethingThat's a very interesting point when she
asked who are all these other Jasons Hesays they're just versions of me and she
(28:21):
realizes that They're all versions of him.
It's not just that she wants heroriginal husband back potentially.
And it's not only that there was a versionof Jason living with her, idealized in
some respects, but that all these otherJasons all have the same claim on her.
They all had a child with her.
They all lived with her for decades.
This makes everything much morecomplicated, to say the least.
(28:41):
And this all leads up to thisfinal episode, which has a lot
of breathing room and all for thebetter to prevent the other Jason's
from knowing where they're going.
They have Charlie pick the location,which is this beautiful seaside mansion
that one of his friends families owns.
And that he and his friends have partiedat before, but the parents were not
(29:04):
familiar with it, which is perfect becauseif none of the Jason's know about it,
then they can't intercept them here.
And there's some very strongconversational dialogue here.
Once Jason and Daniela finally reunite,most of it delivered by Daniela and
in these really terrific interactionsbetween Edgerton and Connelly.
They finally lay out someof the themes of the show.
(29:27):
This craving for, what if?
What if I hadn't madethe choices I'd made?
And would it be better?
Would it be worse?
And of course, this is the driving force.
This fantasy is what has driven Jason2, the evil Jason, to steal his life.
And of course, when Jason suddenly waspresented with this alternate version
of himself, and of course, has had manyother alternate versions of himself
(29:47):
that he could have potentially He alwayskeeps coming back to that commitment
he made to the Connelly character.
And once again I have to give creditto Connelly's performance because
she makes it believable that here isthis woman who is seeing her husband,
versions of her husband that couldbe absolutely terrible versions.
(30:08):
Not only this, Jason hadstolen her Jason's life.
But the ones that she'llencounter, murderous versions
of him that she'll encounter.
And this is something that the bookand the series cannot truly deal with.
Who is this person that she's married thatcould become, over the course of weeks
potentially, or maybe months, murderous.
(30:30):
Potentially risking even her andher son's lives for what he wants.
And it is not a divergencefrom 10 or 15 years ago.
These are divergent versions ofher husband from just weeks ago.
This is something Jasonneeds to deal with as well.
That there's this ugly side to himthat he has not fully embraced.
Even when he steps into one ofthese slightly divergent versions
(30:52):
of his reality and he discovers thatthat Jason was an abusive husband.
who no longer can see his son.
This is some of the trickiestmaterial and really not dealt with
in either adaptation of this work.
But there is something in Connelly'sperformance where she just kind
of resigned to, you take thegood with the bad in a marriage.
(31:14):
And she even stated that theseother Jasons, if one of these
other ones had shown up, that'sprobably the one she'd be with.
But now she's just in this circumstance.
This is the direction she'sgone in and she needs to be
with someone at this point.
She's really not safe on her own becauseof all these other Jason's because of
all these other permutations of hervery husband He has become the danger
(31:36):
to her So it's interesting when youthink about that metaphor, but the
show honestly is not ready to deal withthat particular Aspect of the story.
There's also another Really strong scenehere in the finale not in the novel
Where we see this version of Jason,who's been through the worst of it,
(31:57):
basically, who Jason Prime has had drinkswith at one point, and who's found evil
Jason in the basement of his home, andhas tied him up and beaten him, and
really just lays into him, just callinghim a rapist, calling him a monster.
And for the first time in thisentire series, we see Jason.
the wounded version of Jason, thisevil Jason, who's been honestly pretty
(32:20):
one dimensional, very confident in allthe decisions he's made, and finally
dealing with the consequences of hisactions and realizing, to some extent,
the weight of what he's created, that hethought he knew what all the consequences
were going to be, and now suddenly ina situation where there's no out for
him, there's no out for any of theJasons, and obviously these people that
(32:42):
he supposedly loves and wanted to bewith, their lives are now on the line.
That night, Evil Jason figures outDaniella must have borrowed Blair's
car, and by luring her to the house,they're able to track the family down.
I'd love to see thisinteraction, by the way.
She gets the upper hand.
Maces them and then gets their hands onthe gun when she sees these two Jasons.
(33:02):
She has many questionsWhat is this conversation?
We're triplets Someone'spretending to be me.
You don't understand we have toget to her as soon as possible.
She doesn't know she's with this otherunknown triplet Maybe that's how they
I mean, they just don't put this on thescreen to get Out of it because do they
(33:24):
tell her there's alternate versionsof him and she's like, uh, okay.
And really there's hundredsof other ones out there.
Trust me.
They might be knockingon the door right now.
Uh, so please tell me where she'slocated so I can go track her down.
I really here to help.
Uh, I don't know if that would fly,even if she , believed it for a second.
I think the evil triplet is the, um,the only possible explanation they
(33:48):
can give her that could have her,uh, reveal their current position.
Long story short, that night heends up getting to the car somehow.
Uh, she does share the location with them.
Evil Jason, that is.
The other Jasons track him.
They must have put a tracker on his car.
And there's dozens or moreconverging on the house.
Jason, in the meantime, has discovereda chat room where they're all chatting
(34:11):
and they're trying to negotiate,you know, shared custody of the
family, which I'm sure that's areal turn on for any woman, right?
Maybe the son won't mind having 25 dadsor, who knows, 175 dads, but that could
be a little confusing as well, butFeeding all those people on one salary.
I mean, I don't know how you canget, I guess you have to get some
fake social security numbers.
We'll get into the logistics ofall this when we get to the end,
(34:33):
but all hell starts breaking loose.
We hear gunfire in the woods.
There's going to be piles andpiles of dead Jasons out there
when the police finally show up.
And that's going to make allthe headlines in the world.
By the way, Jason tells Danielaand Charlie to take cover.
While they're getting ready to escape,this Jason, either the same Jason
that he met previously or a differentone, slight variation of that one,
(34:55):
basically wants to take over Jason'slife once again, tells him to keep
quiet, take off all his clothes, he'sgoing to pretend to be him, and he'll
hurt Daniela if he doesn't comply, thisleads to a scuffle And, as he's about to
kill Jason Prime, he's killed himself.
This is when evil Jason shows up.
Not so evil in this particular case.
(35:16):
He has suddenly realized the fullweight of everything he's done.
And he's there to try, as besthe can, to set things right.
And the family rides off togetheronce they get to the car and
run down yet another Jason.
After yet a different Jasontries to shoot into the car, what
the hell is this guy thinking?
They decide to go back to the box.
Couple things that are differenthere, by the way, in the book.
(35:39):
Evil jason is still dead set on tryingto make this work even though it's
like she doesn't want you back dude sheknows everything's going on this isn't
gonna work out but it's kind of a muchdumber version of this I much prefer
this version with evil jason or this um,instigating jason coming to some sense
of remorse because he is evil jasonOnce again, has to have some humanity.
(36:04):
He is this version of Jasonthat we've been pursuing.
And of course, once again, once everyone'scards on the table, he has to realize
that Daniella doesn't want to be with him.
He's, she's not going tochoose him at this point.
So what else other option does he have?
He's left them a bunch of ampoulesso that they can enter the box.
Once they get to the box, there aredozens, hundreds of more Jasons waiting.
(36:25):
The one who speaks forthem basically says, Yes.
We know this isn't going to work out.
We know we just are here to say goodbye,but some of them still seem like they
still, why does he get what I want?
And they're reminded once againthat it's not about what he wants.
It's about what's best for them,which of course is a very bitter pill.
You can imagine.
Legitimately, if we want to engagewith this material, imagine you have
(36:47):
just been on this incredible journey.
You have made it back almost impossibly.
You've lost so much alongthe way, and you have somehow
made it back to this universe.
Potentially along the way,Amanda was there with you.
You could have made something workwith her, but you left her behind.
Either she died or she abandoned you, andnow you are on your own, and maybe out
of ampules, and now you've gotten to thisplace, and you made it all the way home,
(37:10):
and you're not going to get what you want.
That's a very, very bitter pill toswallow, but I do like the way the show
deals with this because in the end,imagine being in that circumstance.
What do you want?
Do you want your wife and child to bemiserable for the rest of their lives?
The whole purpose was to getthem away from this other Jason
to make their lives better.
(37:30):
It is unfair, right?
In the end that roll the dice.
Just random fate that you arriveda little too late and that's got
to be really hard to deal withThere is no other alternative.
So it's really a tragic endto so many of these Jason's.
It's a , really sad ending.
And the show does a good jobof engaging with that feeling.
(37:51):
And then the door closes, thefamily's inside, and they have a
suitcase full of vials of this drug.
So they may be headed towards, many different destinations,
but they let Charlie decide.
Because if they don't let Charlie decide,there are many other Jasons that are
hot in pursuit, I'm sure, some of theones that are still stinging from the
(38:15):
loss and might think, hey, I just needto sneak up on him one day when he's by
himself and I can have that life too.
So, can't be his decision.
It's gotta be Charlie's.
And the door opens onto,potentially, a bright future.
The family steps through, entangledforever, and they step into?
Question mark?
We don't know.
We do catch up with someof the other characters.
(38:36):
Layton seems to be a steampunk,multiversal traveler.
Seems to be loving it,so good outcome for him.
And Amanda and Ryan, who both ended up inthat utopian Chicago, have met each other.
And that's where the season ends.
Emotionally, I have to saythat this really worked for
me here in the final moments.
(38:56):
Now, logically, okay, if you don't wantto hear science corner here, which is
also going to be not just nitpicks, butI mean, logical inconsistencies, this
whole thing collapses to a large extent.
With the critiques I'm about to make so ifyou want to end on a positive note Here's
a time to step away and come back laterthis week to hear my breakdown of the new
(39:19):
season of the bear So stay tuned for that.
But that being said, here we go.
I'm going to get into nitpicks Slashscience corner slash this whole show
falls apart upon even the slightestlogical investigation Okay, so
cleverly, I mean I have to say thiswas like a real big Surprise and a
good one when we suddenly realized.
(39:40):
Oh my gosh other Jasons are around tohave they been around this whole time.
What is going on with theseother Jason's really thrilling?
moments in the story But then it's notlike one or two or five snuck in, there's
like dozens and then hundreds and thenpotentially thousands of them by the end.
And if each one of them is branchingoff more and more and more, this
(40:01):
reality of Chicago is going tobe crawling with these Jasons.
These bodies are going to turn upnot only at the compound, uh, at
that beachside mansion they were at,but That's going to be hard enough
to explain, but can you imagine allthese guys who are so depressed out of
ampoules, can't get a job, don't have anyidentity, will start committing suicide,
or killing each other, or ending uphomeless, drunk on the street corners.
(40:25):
All of a sudden, they're goingto be all over the news, , oh
my god, this guy disappeared.
Wait a second, we foundthis body in the college.
Wait a second, we found 10 of these guys.
This is going to be thebiggest story of all times.
There's no way this storydoes not make sense.
International news forever.
And then the surviving guys are goingto get questioned and they're going to
say, well, I stepped out of this machine.
(40:47):
And after the 15th one saysthis, they're like, man, we got
to try to build this machine.
And then of course, if that happensto this one, Jason, then think about
all the other, just few people thatthey have sent back through the box.
They are also spawning infinite numbersof duplicates that are not just.
invading one reality.
What if one of those people got tiredof going back in time and trying
(41:08):
to set things right, and they allsettled into one particular reality?
But then all the alternate versionsof that particular subversion
are now filling up that reality.
This basically is the end ofhistory, because you're going to
start having billions and trillionsof people stepping through.
This machine.
And if there's another alternatehistory where another alternate Jason
(41:29):
makes another version of this box.
Now we have billions upon billionsupon billions of people invading
all these multiple realities.
. So that is one problem with this story.
That it could lead to the end of allhistory, or human history anyway.
Okay, problem number two.
Where does the family go?
The family's going to stepthrough into this other reality.
(41:51):
Are they stepping into a realitybased on what Charlie picked?
Maybe Charlie says, I want to gointo a reality where I'm together
with my girlfriend insteadof that other guy dating her.
But then what if his whole family'sthere now they're going to bump into
those people and then what if theydecide that hey we want their reality
let's murder them in the middle ofthe night and we then will take over
(42:13):
their lives and then we're going tocreate a cascade of billions of those
people showing up here as well in agroup of three each time but still.
Or where do they go intoanother reality where maybe it's
that utopian reality, right?
Where you don't need identificationor whatever else, but then all of
these other alternate versions ofthemselves are also going to end up
there, or they end up in some kind ofmedieval society that never evolved.
(42:37):
And now, are they suddenlygoing to live that way?
Is Charlie going to be happysuddenly living in a world
where technology doesn't exist?
Because if they're going to end up inanything near contemporary Chicago,
how are they going to survive withoutsocial security, without any credit
history, without any work history?
They're just going to be likeillegal, uh, immigrants basically.
(42:58):
And they're going to have to live that wayfor the rest of their lives, which is not
a very satisfying ending for this family.
So I wish that there was some waythat this thing had been able to
almost collapse those timelinesand heal this rift in time.
And that had been the conclusion becauseit seems based on the rules they're
setting up here, that there's going tobe infinite versions of these alternate
(43:22):
characters popping up into infiniteuniverses and clogging them all up
with, uh, uh, cataclysmic effects.
And I really do feel like at the end,it's almost as we're saying, well,
that's what's going to happen in thisreality, but they're stepping out
of this reality, but it's like, Hey,there are realities that are just
slightly tangential from this one.
(43:43):
And there are just slight variationsof Jason that are going to end up with
just slightly different versions ofDaniela could be just slight variation,
just days different in experience fromthis Daniela, but then that's a close
enough version of Daniela, right?
So then they're going to start lookingfor that version of Daniela, slightly
variant version of her and they'regoing to clog up that reality and then
(44:04):
there'll be another one and anotherone and the logic of this box and how
it works is not ready to deal with.
Okay, so given the fact.
That, logically, this wholeentire thing falls apart under the
smallest amount of examination.
I do, nonetheless, find theending emotionally satisfying.
That maybe, just possibly, these threepeople together can make a choice
(44:27):
that only they would make together.
Because they are just thisunique version of themselves.
That we're supposed to betogether and that's it.
And if we accept that, that this is theversion of Charlie and the version of
Daniela and the version of Jason thatwe're always supposed to be together and
they'll make a decision that is completelyunique to them and that no one else will
follow them through, then Hey, all theother realities around them can collapse.
(44:50):
They'll be happy in question mark.
Maybe that utopian version of.
The future and maybe they'lleventually hook up with, uh, Amanda
and Ryan, maybe, Hey, that's possible.
, and maybe that is what is being impliedhere in the final moments of the show.
Okay.
So that's.
If you'd like to support the show,the easiest thing to do is recommend
(45:11):
this to your friends and family.
Post this on your socials.
Check out my Letterboxd for more reviews
and just some other themed lists that Icreate here and there, check out the bear
premiering a day earlier than expected,and then expect multiple episodes covering
the bear over the next week or so.
And in the near future, catching up onpresumed innocent, excellent episode
this week, by the way, a bunch ofinteresting movies coming out in July
(45:34):
that will probably be get reviewedeither letterboxd house of the dragon
discussion somewhere later next month.
And honestly, it's a very.
Eventful July with movies and new seriessome very interesting content coming up.
So stay tuned Hopefully you'll bewatching stuff that we're watching.
I'll talk to you soon
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