Silo Midseason Report (Apple+)

In the spirit of Silo, I recorded this episode on a relic (my iPhone SE) like the residents of Silo, in a secret unmonitored room (my bathroom under a blanket) - these are the lengths I go to, to get the truth out. Silo had a lull that almost killed it for me, but in Episodes 6 and 7 it really has regained its creative mojo and is now back running at the same creative pace it was in the first couple of episodes. It's great to see Iain Glen getting to sink his teeth into some juicy character moments, the mystery is clearly coming into focus with major advances in the plot, and it just feels like a show truly hitting its stride for the home stretch of episodes. Are you still in on Silo?

Trying to figure out, "What should I stream tonight?" Come back to Watch This Tonight as your podcast for the best TV recommendations for what to watch on streaming platforms. Please leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts if you're enjoying the show, and mention a movie or TV show you want me to cover (and I will). Subscribe for future episodes.

Reach out to us @BenamorDan (Twitter), watch_this_tonight (Instagram) or @watchthistonightpodcast (TikTok).

Watch This Tonight is a movie recommendation podcast and TV recommendation podcast, produced by Voyage Media. You can find other Voyage Media podcasts at voyagemedia.fm

Thanks for listening.

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Voyage. Welcome to watch this tonight. I'm your host, Dan Bettimore.

(00:22):
I'm a producer, writer of filmand television and now a podcast producer.
And despite having every streaming service,I never know what to watch. So
anytime I watch something good, Italk about it on the show. This
way, you'll never have the sameproblem I do. I watched this tonight.
There's always something good to watch.Let's get started today on the show.
As I previously recorded an episode aboutSilo on my iPhone, I thought

(00:45):
I would keep the tradition going inthe spirit of Silo, I'm I'm using
a relic to record this episode.I just watched episode seven, The Flamekeepers.
Silos an interesting show, you know. I think it's very much a
prototypical streaming show for better and forworse. So for better in the sense

(01:07):
that it has an incredible cast,it has a clearly very large budget.
It feels like it has all thissort of prestige of a high end streaming
show. Graham Yost obviously like bigname creator and all that. Based on
popular series of novels, so ithas all those elements, and it had

(01:32):
a great first couple of episodes,and then it kind of slowed down,
and I remember when they did thefirst couple of episodes, I think I
said something to the effect of,wow, they're really moving it, doesn't
It feels like they're like expending alot of story material in these first couple
episodes, and I wondered how theywere going to kind of keep that going.

(01:52):
And the way they kept it goingwas they slowed way down and we
got some kind of shoe leather inbetween episodes, and honestly, it got
so enough that I almost stopped watchingit. And the way they kind of
kept me in was they have reallygood end of episode outs where the mystery,

(02:12):
you know, continues kind of unfurling, and then just within I would
say this episode of the one beforeit, it really kind of picked back
up again and now I'm super excitedto get to the end of the series.
So it felt like in a waylike and Or, you know,
and Or had this issue as well, where first, I think the first
couple episodes were really strong, andthen there was a couple of middle episodes

(02:36):
that were a little bit slower,and then it just kind of picked back
up and was awesome all the wayto the end. I don't think this
is as good as and Or.I think that there is some kind of
clunky stuff in some of the writing, and that's part of what I want
to talk about. So we umepisode seven. This is sort of my
mid season check in on or oron side. So if you're not caught

(03:00):
up on Silo with the most recentepisode, you should probably not listen to
this. But if you are caughtup, or if you have given up
and you're just not gonna watch therest of the show and you want to
know what happens, then keep listening. So they've established my guy, Ian
Glenn as Rebecca Ferguson's dad, whois this doctor that she's estranged from?

(03:22):
And Ian, you know, it'sso interesting he in this Endgame of Thrones,
he plays a character who has arelationship with a woman whom he clearly
loves but has betrayed in some wayand now is sort of this like long
suffering, you know, relationship withthat person where you're just like, man,
can we get Ian Glenn a hug? Can someone can she just give

(03:45):
him a moment of grace? Andit was interesting to be that it's that
commonality between the roles. I don'tknow if I mentioned this before. But
I'll just quickly give you thirty secondsof my personal experience with Ian Glenn.
Ian is in an episode of VoyageMedia's series Fever Dreams of Pulp Collection.
He's actually in the first episode calledDown in the Double's Hole. And when

(04:06):
we cast him, typically what wedo is we record and the actors record
themselves and then I direct them overzoom and so that's what we wanted to
do, and they said, no, he's going to record it by himself
and he'll send it to you.And but he just wants to talk to
you for half an hour. SoI talked to him zoom. We talked

(04:26):
through the role and the character andall that, and he basically was like,
listen, I'm going to do itone time. You're gonna get it.
It's gonna be pretty pretty much.He's such a gentleman, he's such
a classy guy. He's just reallylike the coolest guy. But pretty much
what he said was, you know, I'm going to do it once.
I'm going to do it well,and if you have any issues with it,
you know, let me know andI can make adjustments. But that's

(04:48):
how I'm going to do it.And I'm gonna just send it to you
and that'll be it. And wewere a little nervous because that, you
know, you have to put alot of trust in the actor, obviously
when we know he's an incredible actor, but we were just worried, like
what if something was missing or youknow, like an oversighter. It was
perfect, perfect, He did itperfectly. So you know, he's someone

(05:10):
who I have a tremendous amount ofperspect for as an actor, and I
was really excited to see him inthis show. And it's cool to see
they've given him a pretty juicy role. You know, as this episode goes
along, you learn that he's complicitin the conspiracy of the Silo in a
major way. But part of whathappens in this episode, and that's why
I say it's not quite as strongas like and or. So there's this

(05:31):
lady who was a fertility specialist andshe's been drugged and they have to take
her to an area, sneak herout of the medical facility where the drugs
will wear off and she can tellthem what she knows about the conspiracy.
So they sneak her into the nurseryand they have this whole conversation, she
has a seizure a lot, it'sjust them in this room. They're like

(05:53):
the cameras don't work in here forsome reason. And then like ten minutes
in this scene, essentially because thislady was never able to have children and
wanted children, it's an emotional momentwhen a baby cries in the nursery and
then she picks up the baby,So emotionally makes sense, right, But

(06:14):
on a like logical are they justleaving these babies alone overnight? They established
that the nursery is empty. Theleast lady there's like I'm leaving for the
night, So they're just leaving thesebabies completely alone overnight. And also this
baby does not wake up when thesepeople are having like an impassioned conversation right
next to it. Just that wholeit really, I don't think it made

(06:36):
any sense, you know. Imean, I would happily be proven wrong,
but I just didn't see how theymade any sense. So that kind
of felt a little bit rushed tome. And that's where I say that,
you know, you compare it tosomething like and or that moment when
Andy Circus says I can't swim,so heartbreaking you know, they really earned

(06:57):
that moment, and I feel likesome of the emotional beats in Silo are
not pulled off quite as strongly.But I still really like the show,
and I think that they did dosomething actually in this episode that they did
pull off and it was very satisfying. So I want to compliment the show
for that. In the previous episodeI leave it was episode six, we

(07:21):
established that there's people watching everybody.There's a room where they're just watching everybody,
and if you turn on the captions, it refers to the guys in
there as watchers like watch her onewatch or two watch or three. And
over the course of the show,Rebecca Ferguson has been learning all these little
clues and stuff, and they've droppedall these breadcrumbs. And in this episode,

(07:45):
Rebecca Ferguson is in the Fertility Ladiesroom and she puts it all together
and she realizes that there's cameras inthe mirrors, and then she takes a
blanket and covers the mirror, andall the people that are in the surveillance
room they're like, oh shit,Like you see the other people in the
back who were working on other stuffkind of like stand up and walk over

(08:05):
like it's a seismic change in thesilo. So that was really satisfying.
That's I think why the show works. It's a pretty rare situation where the
central mystery of what is going onhere is so good that as long as
they could keep coming up with thesekind of like act outs or episode outs

(08:28):
that advanced the mystery considerably, it'sjust hard to stop watching it. And
such good actors, I mean,Rebecca Ferguson, Ian Glenn, you know,
they had Will Patton was there fora while and they killed him off,
David Oyiloo, Rashida Jones, TimRobbins, which, by the way,
Tim Robbins, it feels like there'sstill some cards left to play.

(08:52):
I think him and Common, whoplays kind of the antagonist. It feels
like they have like they need theirmoment, right, they need their moment
like Andy Serkis had an and or. That really deepens those characters, and
I hope it's coming, like Iwant to believe the show has that up
as sleeve. It's an interesting thing, and that's why I say it's it's

(09:13):
kind of like a prototypical streaming show. It's just good enough that You're like,
this feels really good, like I'mgonna keep watching it. I think
it's very well made, but atthe same time, it also feels like
it a little bit undercooked in somehard to define way. It's almost like
if they had I don't know,I'm not sure. I mean, there's
there's a lot of talk within thewriter's guild, obviously because the strike and

(09:35):
everything about many rooms and not enoughwriters on staff and not enough time to
make these shows and things of thatnature. And I do wonder about that,
you know, I do almost feellike I can sense that, And
I could be wrong. It couldbe that they had plenty of time all
that kind of stuff, but Ialmost feel like they need like twenty one
percent time in the oven. Itjust feels slightly undercooked, but at the

(09:58):
same time, it is really good, Like I'm really excited to finish it
out, and I think it isone of the better streaming shows that's on
TV right now. So that's whereI say it's it's kind of prototypical of
our time, you know. Youthink about and or Tony Gilroy has reached
a point in his career where Ithink he has such juice that he can

(10:20):
really throw his weight around. Andobviously and Or because the Star Wars property,
I'm sure his budget was like insaneand like a limited essentially, So
yeah, I just I do wonderabout that. One of the things I'm
actually kind of worried about for thenext season of Andor is My understanding is
Tony is not I don't think he'sworking on it like day to day because

(10:41):
of the writer strike, so hemight not be able to make the adjustments
you know that he would otherwise beable to make in production and post production.
So I'm a little concerned about that. But yeah, Silo, you
know, it's sort of it gotme in really good in the beginning,
almost lost me in the middle,and now it pretty much fully has me

(11:01):
back, and so I'm very excitedto see where they go with the last
couple episodes. I would love toknow what you all think about Silo.
You can almost reach me at danad Voyagemedia dot com. Watch This Tonight
on Instagram, Watch This Night podcaston TikTok. You can join our Facebook
group. Are you still in onSilo? Did you have that same kind
of middle period where you almost leftlike me? I know, my guy

(11:24):
brother of Doom and I have beenmessaging about it, and you know,
he sort of had a similar feeling, and you know, I think we
both felt that it's sort of gotits mojo back. So yeah, it'll
be interesting to see if it finishesout the season at a real high point.
It feels like the potential for thatis there, So yeah, excited
to see what happens next on Silo. That is the show for today.

(11:48):
As always, thank you so muchfor listening. I'm still on the hunt
for the next great like Sunday nightthing to watch from HBO. Maybe there
isn't one, but if you haveone, reach out Until next time,
m h look, look, look