298: Robert Galbraith

In this episode, Professor Mouse, the Cosmologist, and Teddy discuss WWE, the NBA vs. the world, Harry Potter, and J.K. Rolling's pen name. People need to know. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Time. It's like a clown.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
No, don't this little page he's bagging boarding batman in
the gut, or like a maze story tellers me some fellas,
we some felons. Isn't amazing, It's like a Pella bearver
sell it because this shit is so contagious.

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Mouths on the.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Summers can pilet got the show while the cycle spinning
knowledge on the getty like appro beat the babo, be
the rabbit. Don't step to the squad, we get activic
and hate. It's like a steple of parts. You don't
like fish talk?

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Do you hate? It's a batl with.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
The cuttle fish killers tender pools on the taping the
Greatest Five of Stars. If you cherish your life, Bucky Barneshit, squad,
spray and leg and your pipe.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
Hey ready, welcome to another vision of it is It's
just bad? Is just bout the best podcast you never
heard of him? Press Mouth Strode has always been because milogist.

Speaker 4 (00:42):
We're here. How's a guy?

Speaker 3 (00:45):
It's going all right, it's going all good. This is
coming off of the heels of I don't know what
time this is posting or in what order, so uh
fairly recently we saw each other in person in the
flesh at a party. Uh, just fucking like putting it

(01:05):
down big style.

Speaker 4 (01:09):
Always a pleasure to get the boys together when our
various parallel universes worlds collide. I think the so I
brought a bunch of tiny little belts wrestling belts that
I think were a big hit. The fiend told me
that while his kids are super excited about them, he's

(01:31):
not rolling over jobbing to any of them. They got
to really try to beat it. That doesn't work for him, brother.
So I don't know exactly who's gonna be wearing console belts,
but it might just be him strapped up.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
I was doing a whole thing with a baby fiend
that you called the tail end of where I was
pretending like I had won every belt. I was just
trying to put every belt on. It was hard, man,
some of those decorated like dudes, I mean, there's so

(02:04):
only so much real estate on one's body to put a
put a belt on. And then I was questioning, like
what those belts even signify.

Speaker 4 (02:15):
You've got multiple versions of a belt, you've got various
the levels of belting, and then as the design changes
over time, truly the level of international relations of why
is the US title and the Intercontinental title more or
less than the world title of the universal title? Like

(02:37):
how does any of that work?

Speaker 3 (02:39):
Why is the United States title and the Intercontinental title
like a lateral move where one of them is like
representative of connections among various continents on Earth and the
other one is just one country in a continent you

(02:59):
would think would be like immeasurably worse, but those are
kind of like similar levels of prestige those belts.

Speaker 4 (03:06):
Yeah, AW has as an evolving new company has been
going through that, Like they had a continental title and
then like another classic tournament that ended up with a title,
and then they ended up combining those because they realized
that was dumb, get overly complicated, and it's like what
even is the Atlantic Championship or is it only oceans?

Speaker 1 (03:30):
What?

Speaker 4 (03:31):
Yeah, so it goes back and forth that way. Yes,
absolutely so.

Speaker 3 (03:34):
There there was a there was a very similar like
not really a controversy, but it was sort of like
it sparked a debate where this American sprinter, Noel Isles,
who's an olympian, said that dudes in the NBA, whoever
wins the championship, the NBA Championship calls themselves world champion.

(03:58):
And he was like, in in my realm of sport,
in Olympic sport, you actually can lay like an authentic
claim to that because I have to be faster than
everybody from every country on planet Earth. Whereas you play
in one league in one country and then a lot

(04:21):
of NBA players I think made a very good point
where and this is very similar to and like WW
and stuff is like the world comes to the US
to play in our big league. And so like if
you think about some of the previous champions, like the
Denver Nuggets had their best player is Serbian, the Milwaukee

(04:43):
Bucks when they won, their best player was Greek. And
so it's like, yeah, technically it happens in the United
States and Canada only, but also like, what do you
want us to do play like real Madrid, Like have
the Bucks go play there, like they'll just kill them.

Speaker 4 (05:00):
Yeah, And that is and it's completely US centric and skewed.
And that is why to your point that the US
title and the Intercontinental title or these lateral moves like
one before the United States and one for everybody else,
Like that's bullshit. But to your point, you know, thinking
about like the Baseball World Series, like okay, but they've

(05:20):
got are they going to go play the Japanese teams?
Well no, but a bunch of Japanese players come over
and as a sourcing of international talent, so you get
this like justice league of all the best in one place. Yeah,
it would be cool if we're not all hosted in

(05:42):
the US by a US league, if it were like
some kind of I don't know arm of the United
Nations as a sports but it's really what the Olympics is. Yeah,
the so what do you make of like because in
the Olympics you get like the nationalism is I wonder
if the NBA style is better because they all pick

(06:04):
a team, but it's not just per country. It's like
you can have access to the entire world whoever you
get and you build a team out of Is that
more egalitarian? I don't know. It's all money based.

Speaker 3 (06:18):
Yeah, it's like, yeah, what's what's the best way to
assess like who the best people are? And it is
all money based because so you have the problem the Olympics,
which is that not every team competes equally in terms
of like the amount of resources they have access to.

Speaker 4 (06:38):
And you'll see, like when we get to like the
Olympic Hockey, all of like the entire I don't know
Capital's team or whatever breaks off into their other countries.
That's it's weird.

Speaker 3 (06:54):
Yeah, yeah, it's It's very similar also in hockey. But
a flip of it is that in the United States
it's the same thing. I mean, the problem is capitalism
as it usually is, is that not all teams have
access to the same amount of capital and resources, or

(07:16):
they have stingy, fucking owners who are not willing to
like develop their players. So I am a fan of
the worst team in the league in terms of both
record and player development, and so the Washington Wizards. We
have seen several European players drafted. The biggest bus is
this guy named Jan Vessely who drafted second overall I

(07:37):
think the year after John Wall who was like a
Wizard legend was drafted and he totally flamed out. Was
a bus in the NBA. And if you know anything
about the league, maybe I don't know what the percentages.
I will put it generously because I'm like a Wizard's fan,

(07:58):
which means I hate them. Is like eighty percent the
Wizard's vault that that happened to that young man. And
then and then you see, like a player that I
really liked when he was on the Wizards didn't get
enough time to play. Mo Wagner went to the Orlando Magic,
it managed to kind of like scrap his way out

(08:18):
of DC and now is like a really valuable good
role player on a like solid team and a good organization.
And so there's all like so in a lot of cases,
it would have been better if they had just stayed
in their home country and played in their professional league,
because then they would have gotten better, they would have

(08:39):
made an Olympic roster that the Olympic roster would have
increased because they're not chasing the dream in the NBA.
And then you have like a stronger basketball culture in
your country. So it's it's sort of like, yeah, six
and one half a dozen to the other. It doesn't.
I'm not sure, but I do think in that debate,

(09:03):
I did fall on the side of, like, the NBA
World Champions are undoubtedly the best team in the world,
and I would love if they did like a like
they do the Club World Cup in soccer, if they
did that with basketball, but I fear that it would

(09:27):
look very simple because like it's not like the Olympics
where everybody the Serbian sent all the best Serbian players
and the Spanish sent all the best Spanish players. There
might be like two good players on that team and
then the rest of the bench sucks, as opposed to
in the NBA you have from one to twelve some

(09:48):
of the best players in the world, and so there's
still not that level of like club level parody that
you can draw upon to make the case for the
rest of the world. So it is Yeah, no, I
just talk myself out of it. A better judge is
the Olympics.

Speaker 4 (10:05):
Yeah, that makes sense with bringing back to par wrestling
because of course not real and so and very involved
in like protecting people's reputations and such. The two diverging models.
You've got ww which is trying to buy everything and
they've just absorbed Triple A and they claim to be
as the WWE universe. They've built out their pocket dimension

(10:25):
where you know, the McMahons can be shielded from their
consequences of their sexual predation forever and they're super gross.
But it's it's an empire AW to this point has
been trying to do like a World Cup model, and
a lot of the Luta promotions have done this too well.
They'll bring people represent different countries or different promotions that

(10:47):
are then like they analogs for different countries to do
some kind of interpromotional thing. And you know, everybody benefits
from making everybody else look good because you don't. It's
you don't get anything from like, yeah, if you just
beat everybody else real easy, you look good, but you
look better if everybody looks good, and then it's like

(11:08):
a big deal that you beat them. So trying to
kind of prop everybody up. Mercedes Monet formerly Sasha Banks
is in AW nine and it has been going on
like a belt collector gimmick. To your point about limited
real estate. This is a small woman, so she's got
less real estate than most to hold all these belts,

(11:31):
and they just not just depending when this comes out,
but there was a one of their Forbidden Door events
in London which is very like inside Baseball, I guess
term about like the Forbidden Door was inter company cross promotion,
and AW has been really trying to do that again.
It's this like alliance of everybody who's not WWE basically

(11:53):
like trying to figure out a way to work together
to prop everybody's, uh, prop everybody up. So she comes
out for her big interests with a full on royal
guard procession, each of them holding one of her like
six or seven belts that she's got at this point.
So that's your answer, is you should have lined everywhere

(12:16):
all of your guests up and had each one holding
them out for you.

Speaker 3 (12:22):
That's so funny. Is it still like, uh, is it
still somewhat segregated in WWE such that it's like like
the Japanese wrestlers and the Mexican luchadors are not are

(12:44):
seemingly still kind of like marginalized even within the company,
where it's like there's like a there's something special or
different or weird about like Raymistereo or whatever, as opposed
to it just being like these are all people in
there like impeding to be the best champion.

Speaker 4 (13:02):
Yeah, I mean the problem is racism. The problem is
also bloated rosters. And to be clear, I don't watch
this any longer. I barely keep up with keep up
with aw a little bit. W It's mostly through Instagram
posts from the fiend frankly, but big picture, yes, they
want to buy everyone so nobody else has any toys

(13:24):
to play with, and then they'll give them a big
fancy intro when they are when they debut, and then
they basically get lost in the shuffle. And so the
Lucha doors end up all in a lutrador faction together,
and all of the black wrestlers end up either fighting
each others or in various factions together, and there's not

(13:45):
and then they're sort of lost in this mid card
and sometimes there's like the factions you know, old school
like Latino World Order is a thing again. Ray Maasterio
is leading a version of that, and it's it seems
sort of like a way to compartmentalize them because there's, frankly,

(14:07):
despite the like a million hours of television that they
have to fill, the Cody Roads and Johnson are busy,
I guess, doing stuff, so we'll like leave everybody else
in their little like groups, and so yeah, it is it.
Occasionally they break out of that group and do something cool,
but then they get kind of lost back in that

(14:29):
shuffle again. It's too crowded, it's too bloated, and it's
coming from I think just a a lack of imagination
that we've talked about on previous episodes of like wait
globalization good, I don't get it.

Speaker 3 (14:43):
Oh man, that's so funny. The uh Teddy has joined
us here, Teddy? Are you aware that for the for
the listener, Teddy's zoo background keeps changing.

Speaker 4 (14:59):
We're just getting a carousel of memes.

Speaker 1 (15:04):
I was trying to enjoy. Have you all enjoy that
as I was going through anyway? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (15:11):
Am I aware of the movie?

Speaker 1 (15:13):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (15:15):
Are you aware of Yeah? What's the question?

Speaker 3 (15:19):
Oh no, I was just asking him of you is
aware that zoom background kept changing?

Speaker 1 (15:25):
Yes, that was on purpose.

Speaker 3 (15:28):
The the the Kombucha Lady is like a very famous
comedian named Brittany Broski who has like one of the
biggest fucking YouTube shows on planet Earth.

Speaker 1 (15:39):
Yes, she originally came from Vine and she's one of
these She's one of these influencers that I really enjoy
their story because you have this truly, you see some
folks who get the not the ramification, the good parts

(16:03):
of having a democratized system of entertainment, Vine, TikTok, all
of these various areas. You actually do have this. Oh,
if we have thousands of monkeys out of typewriter. Eventually
we're gonna get something good. And this is one hundred percent.
You have her Anthony Padilla, like some of these other

(16:27):
folks who are now like oh established, have these really
robust careers, and they made stupid shiit on vine or
just like we're really bored during the pandemic and just
it was like let me give TikTok a try, and
now it's there. They have a really robust system. So yeah,

(16:48):
Brittany Boryski I really enjoyed her. Her Royal Court YouTube
channel and then the brose Key Report is actually very
fun and it's not as I thought it was gonna
be very early YouTube annoying pundit, but it actually like
she's actually legitimately very funny.

Speaker 3 (17:09):
Yeah. The World Court had like uh, I started with
sort of like improvisers and stuff, but like recently they
had David corn Sweat when he was promoting Superman. They
had Nicholas Holt on there. Yeah, so that was just
like a listers and shit going on.

Speaker 1 (17:26):
They had a Cole Spruce on there.

Speaker 3 (17:29):
Oh yeah that I didn't realize that though. Did you
know that the Big Daddy kids grew up to be
like like kind of problematic teenage like actors.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
Some of them.

Speaker 4 (17:42):
Yeah, it's wild, Like I'm only aware of Spruce from Riverdale.

Speaker 1 (17:47):
He was also in uh Sweet Like him and his
brother were also Sweet Life of Zach and Cody.

Speaker 4 (17:54):
Oh is that them there? Zack and Cody?

Speaker 1 (17:56):
Yep, they were the animals kids from in the Day.

Speaker 3 (18:01):
Also that one of them, I can't remember which one
it was in Lisa Frankenstein, which you did do a
get wrecked on the show.

Speaker 4 (18:08):
I wish that it could have been wrecked. He was fine.

Speaker 3 (18:14):
Yeah, But they're also in like like a series of
like vaguely problematic sort of like a weird like indoctrinal
trad wife like teen movie series. It's it's very bizarre.

Speaker 4 (18:30):
There, Twilight, what are you talking about?

Speaker 3 (18:33):
Like something like that. I can't remember what the hell
it's called, but it's like a book series based on
like a Ya novel that is like very whil like
coded stop describing.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
Well, yeah, that's the weird part about all like all
of these like at a certain point in time, you're
gonna be connected to something problematic, like as our Overton
window continually shifts in just weird directions. You're gonna be like,
what do you mean my co star is in charge
of a cult? What? How many? How many young men?

(19:15):
Oh my god? What like that?

Speaker 3 (19:18):
That'll be tame, though the more like nexiums, like they're
just gonna keep uncovering this shit, and then at a
certain point it's going to be like, oh yeah, they
canceled fucking that the sitcom that came at nine am
on ABC on Sunday because one of them had a
cult or something, And you go, oh, well, yeah, I
guess you got to cancel it at that.

Speaker 1 (19:41):
The source material author did what with how many?

Speaker 3 (19:45):
Oh no, they said, they said this new Harry Potter show.
Could you imagine this signing up to play Dumbledore on
that and them telling you that you have a ten
year obligation to shoot that show. WHOA, no, thank you,
and trying to be like reasonably sure that you're not
gonna die. I was reading about it in Variety. They're

(20:09):
doing like they're doing the whole thing. It's gonna be
like they're doing it again. It's gonna be much more
sort of like uh uh, true to the true to
the source material, Like all of the ship that they
cut out of the movies, which from my recollection were
like good cuts. They're gonna put it all back in

(20:30):
and they're making the sort of like a mammoth remake
of this thing. Where we're now remaking stuff from it
does kind of feel like we're in a an entertainment
loop where they're remaking The Lord of the Rings and
they're remaking Harry Potter, and like it kind of started
with the Matrix revolutions, like just all of that, like

(20:53):
weird when Hollywood was king and Titanic launched a thousand
ships and then franchises at the turn of the millennium
were it's fantastic, and like I can understand why your
you're remaking this ship because it's awesome, but also it's
like the craven crash crab crash grab that sucks, but

(21:16):
like it's all getting remade.

Speaker 4 (21:18):
Yeah, rejiggered and recycled again. And to be clear, you know,
Jake Carrelling is the worst human and produced what is
in retrospect, while obviously formative for people our age, not
that distinct from like a bunch of manga you could
just go and pick up instead.

Speaker 3 (21:40):
You know, there's so much of that that's been on
not that hasn't been made, like they should make that.

Speaker 4 (21:46):
Ship and they make it and crunchy girls pumping that
at as fast as they can too. But truly am
in the hallmarks of It's a school time, uh, you know,
kids with powers. It was at this point it has
tried to sort of look at all of the grabs
Rowling took. It's more important that she's just a terrible

(22:10):
person and benefits directly from any new investment into this series.
And so yeah, it's kind of time to walk away
from it if you if you haven't already. My big
thing has always been the uh at the Scar being
a direct Dracula ripoff, but nobody ever makes it into

(22:32):
eighty percent of that's never been adapted anywhere else, and
it's like eighty five percent of the way through that book.
And so I didn't even get to it for a while.
So I understand why people don't know that that's what's
going on.

Speaker 3 (22:46):
I I I didn't know this. There was a guest
on on z Way's show, who who ZiT me off
to this? But Jack Rolling has written under the pseudonym
of a man before has the pen name Robert Gullbraith

(23:12):
and has published, has published in such a way where
she has identified as a different gender as a way
to like express herself in a median that wasn't directly
represented of her identity. The fucking irony of that is

(23:34):
insane and her, I mean, maybe it's just because I
don't pay attention to her or her publicists are doing
like overtime to be like, I mean, JK is just
doing this like whole anti trance thing is her entire identity.
Now we've got to barry Robert gal Braith or people
are gonna fucking loose it at the hypocrisy. But that's crazy.

Speaker 4 (23:57):
Wild, And yeah, just the the knots that the the
turf psychology like kind of ties itself into in order
to be able to justify that and also not be
able to leave people alone is yeah nuts. But yeah,
trying to sign up, so signing up for a ten

(24:19):
year deal for something that is already this like copy
of a copy of a copy and modern TV interesting,
you're talking about like putting things back in because this
modern TV, like nobody knows how to write a Monster
of the Week episode anymore, or nobody the writers don't

(24:40):
benefit or are not encouraged to write episodes that are
self contained and they are all chapters. It's a real
slog getting through some of that stuff. And in cutting
down material into a movie, like we talk a lot
about adaptations and what is missed and what is lost
and how difficult it is to do an adaptation in

(25:02):
a reasonable amount of time. But cut mal said something
really insightful, I think, which is about season long arcs.
If we think about old school television, network television that
we all like, season long arcs are really only about

(25:24):
the length of a movie because you get like the
last two episodes of the season where everything comes to
a head and it's you know, ninety minutes, and then
the other if you get up to like one twenty
for a full movie length, that over the course of
the rest of the season, it's a few minutes here
and there where they advance the plot a little bit
and they drip feed you some stuff and you sort

(25:44):
of slowly understand what the overarching thing is while you're
also doing Monster of the Week, social commentary of the week,
moral dilemma of the week, and then you can you know, oh,
that's the episode where this thing happened, as opposed to like, well,
I don't know. That was like three chapters into the

(26:05):
movie's worth of plot that they stretched out over eight episodes.
Would I ever watch any individual one of those episodes again? No? Yeah,
how do you feel about that?

Speaker 3 (26:15):
That's like that that sort of model I think was perfected.
It's weird because the prestige television starts at the moment
that it's also perfected, which means that it has only
gone downhill since The Sopranos came out. And that is
like in the first season of The Sopranos, there is

(26:38):
this like bookend with Arti Buko's restaurant spoilers for The Sopranos.
In the pilot of that television show, Tony's friend from
high school Aready Buko, who didn't get into the mob,
who became a restaurant tour Tony's uncle, Uncle Junior, is

(26:59):
going to kill little pussy, just describing the show it's
so crazy, is going to kill a little pussy at
Artie's restaurant. And Tony finds himself in this like a
weird position where he doesn't want to he doesn't want

(27:20):
to undermine his uncle, and he knows that if somebody
gets murdered an ARTI's Restaurant, that Artie is going to
lose everything, and so what he does is he blows
up Artie's Restaurant to which is such a great I mean,

(27:41):
people describe it as like one of the best pilots
ever written. And part of the reason for that, and
one of the reasons why we get like the sort
of like the film filmization of television is because David
Chase didn't think it was going to get picked up
because it was so intricate, and made it as a movie. Basically,

(28:02):
he was like, I'll just shoot this and I'll shoot
ninety minutes of material. They won't pick up the pilot,
and then we'll release it as a film. They loved it.
It's genius and it has all this film equality to it,
and it sets something up here and so then the
rest of the season they're writing it and it was
never supposed to go beyond that point. But there's like

(28:26):
little things about Artie's Restaurant that keep coming up, and
throughout the series you have all of these like various episodes, uh,
the one where where the one where Uncle Junior and Olivia,
Tony's mom escaped from the asylum, the one where Meadow
and Tony go up to Maine to visit a college,

(28:50):
and Tony ends up finding a dude in witness protection
and killing him. Like you remember those as like episodic
individual episodes of television and all of it. Tony wrestling
with his mother's influence on him in therapy and him
being paranoid that she's trying to kill him, and this
sort of like weird, like edible relationship that he has

(29:13):
with her all links back to the arty of it all,
where Already goes to visit live Tony's mom and then
Tony's mom pretends not to know who he is and
then says it just kind of like she's in a
delirium that Tony blew up that young Man's restaurant. And

(29:39):
that's in the season finale of The Sopranos, and so
it's just like it is this like beautiful season of
television that like launches all of this shit, and then
everybody is trying to emulate that show forever to like
varying levels of success. But yeah, that like the ability

(29:59):
to make great television lies in capacity to make episodic
television that is interwoven, and that's fucking impossible to do.
It's so hard.

Speaker 1 (30:12):
Yeah, And I think an addendum to that sure, because
I think if we take one step removed from television
and like one step removed in terms of television and
going into storytelling, I think it's how one is able
to engage your audience through that particular medium. And the

(30:36):
reason I say it that way, there is some if
we look at like the microcosm when it comes to
like Instagram creators, TikTok and some of these folks who
do written content but have a sketch that initially has
like one premise and then suddenly you have a thirty
nine forty part like epic story. They're all told within

(31:01):
two minutes, but you still have this a very particular
engagement and they have these callbacks and very similar to
there is like developing arcs. The reason I would want
to take a step back, I think it's in terms
of like even media medium agnostic, it really depends on

(31:22):
the intention of how you're going to engage with your audience.
Prestige television, the entire as you were saying, like initially
they went, oh, it's not going to get picked up
for network, We're just going to release this as a film.
Then you have HBO, No holds barre, do what you
want for this season. So you have these very cinematic

(31:43):
television shows, and the expectation as The Sopranos goes on, is, oh,
our audience is going to theorize and talk about this.
It's going to engage in a very particular way. And
then you have something like Lost. Lost started airing I
think seven years after the Sopranos. Eight Sopranos was in

(32:07):
ninety nine, so yeah, like seven years afterwards, and they
started going, oh, we need to engage with this and
stay ahead of our audience. And that's where we start
seeing in terms of television. Instead of an engagement of
what is how is our audience enjoying and engaging with this,
they're saying, well, how do we trick and how do

(32:28):
we manipulate our audience? And that's why I really think
that you would need to step back in terms of
how you want to tell these stories, because again, it's
if we're looking at and tying it back to what
we were talking about with Harry Potter when it comes
to actual play and some of these other ones, Misfits
and Magic, some of the other kids on bikes actual

(32:51):
plays they actively talk about, well, we're Harry Potter is
foundational for an entire set of generation like generational. So
there it does inform how millennials and some members of
gen Z, but certain folks interact with that school like
boarding school narrative because Americans don't necessarily have that m

(33:16):
but they can still say, well, we need to engage
with this in a way of going, well, we don't
respect the turf of it all, but we do still
engage with this material. This is how we're taking it
in a different direction, so they can still Again, it's
that idea for me at least, it's that idea of
the audience going, oh, we can still engage with this

(33:39):
element or this narrative without necessarily having to interact with
what the initial author wanted, like DS nine is not
necessarily what Gene Rottenberry was thinking of, you know what
I mean? Like, so, I think there is there's something
to the idea that how the audience engages with you

(34:00):
and how you how one as a creative engages back
does influence how engaging overall, these narratives.

Speaker 4 (34:10):
Tend to be okay. So there's a maybe adyalist explanation
for some of this also in the how TV is made,
So you're absolutely right about like the TV we're talking
about of network television made week two week truly like
produced and filmed week two week and being very much

(34:32):
engaged with its audience in real time. And so Supernatural
can't help but bring it back to Supernatural, but it
is engaging with its audience. It's seeing the fan fiction
being written and then writing the fan fiction into its
own show. Of Sam and Dean reading fan fiction about
themselves and going to a convention. It's bizarre and like

(34:52):
a crazy thing to do, but it's it happens because
it's live interaction in any ways, Prestige television after a
certain point, like well, we're making a movie. We're going
to chop it up into episode length slices, but it's
all being made all at once, and so we are
not able to get feedback from our audience, and we

(35:15):
don't we're not interested in getting feedback from our audience
until the season's over, and so there is no ability
to it to adjust or interact in that way. We're
just sort of creating a single thing.

Speaker 1 (35:28):
Those rails are there, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (35:30):
Yeah, and that and that that also is like a
very sort of contemporary phenomenon because when when we were
sort of growing up, the the the whole thing of
like trying to pick something to watch and trying to
pick something short, but the only thing that's short is
TV and not being able to pick any TV to

(35:53):
watch when you're kind of like in mixed company, like
like when my mother in law is over, like my
parents or something, we can't just like throw on something
we were already watching and enjoy it, because the whole
thing is like, how am I gonna know where we're
at if, like, you know, you don't tell me what's

(36:14):
going on kind of thing. Whereas I watched so many
different television shows as a kid just because of the
way that syndication function. Syndication functioned in the way of
make of putting television on different channels that already premiered

(36:36):
in prime time during a time where I wasn't allowed
to watch TV, right, And so it's like you know, whatever,
you you'll watch, you know, Friends or Seinfeld on TBS,
and those are sitcoms to they're easier to get into.
But like even stories that had large arcs of like
a fucking boy meets World, you'd watch when they're in college,

(36:58):
and then the next one happens and they're twelve, but
it doesn't it doesn't matter because they still function. There
are there, there's a beginning in the middle and an end,
and the beginning is not predicated on any fore knowledge,
and the end is not predicated on any expectation. It
is all predicated within the context of the show. But

(37:21):
it is a rewarding and gratifying experience to watch it
in order, and so there is still a reason for
it to be a long form.

Speaker 4 (37:31):
Yeah, and that middle ground, like, that's what you see.
We've swung so far between two elements of the spectrum
of you know, any random TV show from the sixties,
Star trek Lational series included of each one of these
functions as a single story on its own, because it
has to, because you're never going to watch these in order,

(37:52):
and they're going to be on forever randomly, essentially, And
then you get into the nineties of they still have
to function individually, but characters do change over time, and
we're watching I've never seen Mash. Mall's introduced me to Mash,

(38:12):
and Mall's experience watching Mash as a child was very
much what you're talking about it's like random episodes on
tv Land and having this whiplash of the characters change
so much from early season to late season, starting with
a late season episode and then watching them kind of regress,
like suddenly everything's way cartoonier and less funny and what's
going on? And so we started and season one is

(38:36):
is terrible. As with Star Trek, we're doing a written
record of which ones are worthree watching, and half of
the ones from season one are like just trashed immediately,
and you get into season three and like, okay, now
more of them are starting to last on our we
would watch this again and you see them, you see

(38:56):
them build over time. But you can also just picking
an ividual episode, watch it and be done with it
and walk away. And that's satisfying in a way. It's
its own capsule. This chapter length. We've got you locked in.
You're going to tune into HBO or whatever each Sunday
at nine, So we're just doing chapters. There is your net.

(39:19):
We're never gonna rewatch these out of order. You lose
something because I don't find that I would. I'm not
interested in watching week two week. I'll wait till it's over.
And then I'm gonna watch eight episodes and be frustrated
that I could have if you gave me this footage
edited down into one hundred and twenty minutes, and it

(39:40):
would have been just satisfying because all you did was
tell me a movie length story. Stretched.

Speaker 3 (39:46):
Yeah, the And also to Teddy's point about like the
the audience's relationship to the creators, there's a show that's
frustrating to watch, uh called Severance, and Severance to me
is a show it kind of like I have, like

(40:09):
just the whiplash of Westworld getting bad where there is
in West World. We often talked about like having to
having to stop and realize that con there's no way
to quell the confusion because you don't you don't have

(40:34):
the information. They haven't explained it yet, and that's part
of what's going on, and you have to trust that
the writers have thought about this clearly enough to explain
to you why in this like weird data mining place,

(40:55):
there's a room full of goats and you just have
to like accept that that that's going to be explained
somehow in a satisfying way. Three seasons from now or whatever.

Speaker 4 (41:05):
You could either be talking about West World or Severance.
I don't want to.

Speaker 3 (41:09):
That's what I'm saying. It's like, if you haven't seen Severance,
I think you'll recognize the kind of tone immediately of like, Okay,
we're living in a fucking fucked up, a bizarre world
where shit doesn't make sense. It's abstracted. Time is a
fucking construct like all the same like assumptions that you

(41:30):
have to have when you watch Westworld, you have to
have when you watch Severance. But what but one of
I can't remember. I think it was Zach Cherry was
talking about in an interview, like, yeah, we see the
fan theories and sometimes like, honestly, you all are right,
but I'm not gonna tell you that.

Speaker 4 (41:48):
Which is because they aren't changing it because somebody guessed it.

Speaker 3 (41:53):
Well, that's what I'm saying. Like it, it indicates to
me both that there is an engagement with at the
very least the cast, but probably Ben Stiller as well,
because the man is vainer than most Hollywood people, an
engagement with a discourse surrounding their television show to know
what people are saying and what people are thinking, and

(42:15):
also seemingly not upset when people guess what's happening in
the show, because that's kind of like, it's almost inevitable
if you do construct a show such that there's a
mystery to be solved, someone's gonna solve the fucking thing.

(42:39):
Someone's gonna figure it out, but most people won't. And
that's what Lost got trapped up in the message boards
and fan discussion around that show and them trying to
be like, oh God, we did something like so basic
that people guessed what it was, misidentifying that actually you've
done is you built a foundation that allows people to

(43:02):
engage with your show in a creative way, and so
they're able to expect that something is going to happen
based on all of the clues that you've given them.
All the scientists built a coherent world. Good job, Yeah,
And that's the same with Severance. Severance is, for all
of its like weird abstractions, a coherent world. It all

(43:25):
makes sense within the context of the show, and it
is frustratingly confusing as well.

Speaker 1 (43:33):
I will. One of the interesting things to show up
in comparison is how manga and anime adaptations specifically work
within that kind of paradigm but also are so different
than the American cycle. Specifically, I'm thinking about one Piece

(43:53):
because Oda as a writer over almost thirty years, has changed. Originally,
you have like these really unfortunate, like weird depictions of
when it comes to trans folks and it comes to
gay and there's there's a whole bunch of and obviously

(44:16):
there's a lot of Japanese cultural things that also don't
necessarily translate to audiences. But over the years you can
tell by the writing he eventually was like, oh, I
actually made a lot of transfer, Like you can see like, oh,
this man has met burlesque performers, has definitely met a
bunch of trans folks, and has kind of updated the

(44:36):
depth of writing and characters over the years. Now this
is a thousand, one thousand chapters long. It is a
goofy pirate manga. And when I say that, I mean,
if you, as a person tried to watch today even
the recap, when I say it is almost incoherent to

(44:59):
be like, well, this is what's happened so far, you
will not. There is no world in which somebody goes,
I'm gonna try out one piece, let me try episode
one thousand and for them to be like all right,
so wait, there's a panda robot and this Why is
this guy transformed? What's happening? Why is the world doing this?

(45:21):
What's going on? And when I say world, I mean
the physical location of the world suddenly is squashing and stretching.
What is the music? What is happening? Why are there drums? Now?
It is visually and just it's an incoherent mess. But
if you've been following the story since nineteen ninety nine,

(45:42):
there's a lot of payoff, a thing that American TV
does not have in terms of, oh, this thing is
going to be on some type of media for twenty years.
Oda has things in the manga that took ten and
fifteen years to pay off. He dropped something in and
then twenty years later or fifteen years later, said, here's

(46:05):
the resolution. You remember this guy from ten years ago,
He's still alive. You can't do that with Zeffrance or
Prestis Television. You just that's just not a thing that
we're able to set up. So when you compare the two,
you can still have that. It's a weird like, oh, yeah,
you can have this engagement, but you also have to

(46:26):
have like some sort of security. As I'm gonna tell
this story for like ten years.

Speaker 4 (46:31):
This is an interesting point. I'm fascinated that he brought
up one piece specifically, because that feels to me much
closer to American comics that we're familiar with. Of this
extended continuity never ends. We can pull things from ten
years ago. But the difference being and what's so unique
is it's one guy who's still writing it, as opposed

(46:52):
to we've been through fifteen creative teams and we're pulling
it back from ten years ago. Because somebody who was
writing a book ten years ago came back, has been
through four different comic book companies since it was picking
up where they left off. But having a single vision,
even if he's like, just did he intend to like
I'm gonna wait ten years to pull that back? Or

(47:12):
is he leafing through his own old ideas, being like,
I gotta gets up about this month, let me see
what I've got left. Don't know, but that single voice
is helpful something about manga having a single and not
having to continue forever, having that like it just can end.

(47:34):
Therefore it can have lasting consequences. If you kill somebody off,
they stay dead because this author has a single world
they're building and they don't have to be rebooted later
does I think make a big difference. And the outliers
in many ways are like the long running shown and

(47:56):
that feel in comprehensible unless you approach them with an
American comic book lens to be like, oh, yeah, no,
this is just like picking up a villain from nineteen
seventy four that we haven't seen since that Batman has
to contend with again.

Speaker 1 (48:17):
Yeah, it's I am fascinated with how we're like the
fact that One Piece specifically is getting has a season
two of its live action, and how it's still cartoony.
But they have done some successes with the adaptation. There
are some things that fell flat, but hey, if you

(48:39):
need oda, if you're listening and you want somebody to
someone tall to hop in there to play somebody, I
got you. But like you have these weird loops because
the Cowboy Bebop lade of adaptation people did not engage
with the same way. So there is no way that

(49:00):
the One Piece live just there isn't a way for
the One Piece live action to last as long as
the anime just it's just not likely for them to
be able to continually have the audience stay with them
as long as they have. When it comes to the anime.

Speaker 4 (49:20):
When it gives an opportunity to do like a condensed
version of pick all the best ideas and do kind
of a you know.

Speaker 1 (49:28):
Well, so be able to not just pick the best ideas,
but be able to thread them. Live action Full Metal
Alchemist Brotherhood spoilers for that. They just did a highlight
reel in live action and it was terrible because you
didn't it was a character driven story, so instead of

(49:49):
having these smaller character moments that they're filler, but you
still get a that's why you even like the protagonist
because you see you see the other stuff besides big
fights happening. Right, But then when you see the big
fights happening, you're like, well, I mean it's cool, but
after a while mah, Whereas in one Piece you're like, oh,

(50:11):
it's still like you still get this character driven story,
you still get some other elements, and it's we don't
see that as much all. Pulling another one from comics,
dead Boy Detective Agency looping into sand Man, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (50:28):
They don't loop the same way. That's an excellent point. So,
speaking of these mouse do we need to get wrecked.

Speaker 3 (50:35):
Yeah, let's get we're wrecked.

Speaker 4 (50:41):
Okay, so this is a good segue. I'll start. I
watched the first episode of Peacemaker, and this is, you know,
talking about what we're talking about, Prestige television chapterized but
also based on a comic book. So we had uh
interesting thinking about highlight reels and recaps. Beginning of that
episode starts with previously on the and then what follows

(51:03):
is a recap of all of the character moments from
Peacemaker season one. The big like brain drilling aliens are
mentioned like once, you don't even ever see them in
the recap because and that's kind of how I felt
when I watched season one of like there's a lot
of interesting character stuff. I'm interested in his trauma and

(51:23):
like the various vigilante activity. I don't care about these aliens.
They're gross. And the recap is like, yeah, you were right,
we don't care what the aliens either were doing. So
this season two is gonna be about the character stuff.
And then episode one suffers from what we've been talking
about of it is it feels like fifteen minutes of
setup stretched out into a full episode. I can't tell

(51:47):
you like a couple of things happen. They could have
happened in like the cold open of a network television
show to get you set revved up, and then there
would be like an actual episode that happen. That doesn't
feel like that.

Speaker 1 (52:01):
Here.

Speaker 4 (52:01):
There's some a lot of great needle drops, a lot
of great sort of music videos built in, but it
I can't like, oh, that's the one where this entire
fully fledged story occurs. It's just set up. The setup
is fine, but it does feel to me like I
would recommend waiting till it's over to watch the whole

(52:23):
thing because I'm concerned it's going to be chapterized, as
we have been in the planning about characters are great though.

Speaker 3 (52:33):
The but also one way to think about this show,
because John Cen has been doing the rounds in full
Peacemaker attire as usual, one way to like conceptualize the
show is that you're actually watching season one of Peacemaker
because the one of the questions he's been getting asked

(52:59):
a lot, and that James Gunn has been getting asked,
is that what changed fundamentally when between season one and
season two, James Gunn and Peter Saffron became the architects
of the DCU, and one of John Cena's answers to

(53:21):
that question was, we realized that we would not be
in production as soon as we thought. We realized that
production was going to alter tremendously based on what we
thought we were going to do, and that we would
have to be patient. And it was truly years and

(53:42):
years between when they shot the first season A Peacemaker
and when they started shooting the second season A Peacemaker,
because James Gunna had to do a whole Superman in
between them, and so it really is like kind of
a new Like maybe James Gunnan was trying to build
some with the fucking weird butterflies, but he was like,

(54:03):
we got to get rid of these butterflies because we
have to connect this to the DCU. This shit doesn't matter.
We're talking about doesn't matter. Like and then all of
these questions of like via Vivica, a Fox was like
in the suicide Squad like on an iPad or something,
and a peace Maker on an iPad before I took
over the DCU. The Suicide Squad is not in the DCU.

(54:27):
It might be, but it's not right now. Peace Maker
Season one we're gonna like part of that is going
to be Cannon and the other part is going to
be like maybe hearsay of shit that people heard might
have happened. So it's like this whole thing where they're like,
it's weird. It is weird where those two things exist
pre animposed crisis.

Speaker 4 (54:49):
So it is confounding that they are ret conning things.
Season two is going to be about the multiverse, and
yet they're not doing the psycho pirate thing. So the
reason go of, I don't think so. The recap includes
they reshot the end of season one to replace Jason

(55:09):
Lamala in company with Nathan Fillion and and and that
is just like that's just what happened now, and so
we're not doing like John c The better world John
Cena or Chris has found is the new DCU wink wink,
nudge nudge like Venom and Spider Man stuff.

Speaker 3 (55:31):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (55:32):
Instead, it's just like that the Superman continuity that starts
with uh, corn sweat is that's the world we're in.
Chris and company are in that world. Nathan Fillion has
always been there. Don't don't worry about it. But also
we have alternate worlds.

Speaker 3 (55:52):
Why why open that.

Speaker 1 (55:54):
That's so much work.

Speaker 3 (55:56):
Oh my god, that's awesome. I can't wait to watch
the worlds.

Speaker 4 (56:00):
But Jared Leto specifically does not exist in them. They'd
make a bunch of thirty seconds to Mars jokes in
the first episode to be like win quin nudge, nudge.

Speaker 1 (56:08):
Maybe Margot Robbie might show up at some point contracts.

Speaker 3 (56:14):
Yeah, that's the other thing that they're building the cannon around,
like Margo Robbie's tech availability. So it's not even like
it's not even like it does Harley Quinn belong in
this universe, would role as she play? It's like, can
we can we get her on set to do something?
Because if so, she's going to be a major part

(56:34):
of this universe. If not, she never existed. That's that's crazy.

Speaker 1 (56:41):
If James Gun decides to make Birds of Prey shit,
like if he's just like, no, this was good and
just kind of shoves it into the DCEU again like
the amount of power. Just well done, James Gun. Please
don't let it go to your head, but well done.

Speaker 4 (56:57):
Yeah. So what I want him to do is to
just single episodes of television and he is for all
of the good good he's doing he's so far not
doing that.

Speaker 3 (57:06):
But he also needs to write a fucking like a
document that's like explicit about like what's in here and
what's not in here, because I mean there's just so
much in that like bizarre trench period of like what
James Gunn is doing everything in DC basically, but he
doesn't become the boss until like after three projects. That's interesting.

(57:30):
Uh yeah, I guess I'll recommend Severance because I just
finished watching it. Uh good satisfying television. Interesting. Ben Stiller's
working on a World War two movie, so he won't
be directing any episodes of Severance. It's weird when you
have a creative change like that. I don't necessarily think

(57:52):
they need him to direct, but I'm worried that his
limited involvement might affect this show. I never understand who
I like, and maybe it's just because of the pressure
of producing television, but like, as an audience member, I
would much rather them wait for the creative team to

(58:14):
be available and get the show later than for them
to rush production and have an inferior product. I felt
that way with Ted Laso's season three when Brett Goldstein
left to do shrinking, and he was like not able
to be in the writer's room. I'm like, it probably
would have been funnier if they had the comedian in

(58:36):
the writer's room. Like, but yeah, it's it's it's it's
really good. It's really interesting to build a very specific world,
and yeah, the mystery is the mystery is a one
worth thinking about, which is another thing that has like
with the sort of recurrence of mysteries and thrillers and

(58:56):
things like that, they're there is usually a tacit presumption
that you want to know the answer to the mystery,
and that is fifty of the time not the case.
Like like you, I mean, it's hard to do, but
like you got to build like a foundation for the

(59:19):
audience to like get invested in in the character such
that we want to know what all the secrets are,
We want to know what people are hiding, we want
to know what Luhman is hiding. And this is the
kind of show that deals in the abstract in a
way where that could easily be lost as like the
audience is just like trapped in a fog of confusion

(59:42):
and like considering everything that's happening arbitrary and that they
toe the line really well of it being like very mysterious,
almost inexplicable, when Gwendeline Christie Brient of Tarth herself shows
up holding several goats and you go, okay, now this

(01:00:06):
is part of it. Like that, that's that's that's the
real test of that show is like when you get
to that episode season two and do you go, I
think I'm done watching this or or you're like, all right,
I guess that's that's part of it now.

Speaker 4 (01:00:23):
So pun may be intended there, It could easily be
capital l lost.

Speaker 3 (01:00:28):
Yeah, truly.

Speaker 4 (01:00:30):
So the question is can you episode episode like as
you were doing with Sopranos, so this is the one
where X happens?

Speaker 3 (01:00:38):
And yes, they they make moments that are there's a
great episode where Zach Cherry bites bites his boss. That
is like they they've managed to make like these very
distinctive moments in that show. And what is interesting about

(01:01:03):
it too is that these are all people who are
excellent actors and also excellent comedians, and so a lot
of what you remember. Maybe you don't remember the intricacies
of a plot because it truly is all over the place,
but you do remember the scene where John Deturot and

(01:01:25):
Christopher Walken are doing incredible work and sussing out whether
the other one is gay. Like, you remember that moment
and the feelings that that evokes. You remember Britt lower
in the in the elevator that turns you into your

(01:01:47):
severed Audi spoiler alert, hanging there. Like you remember these
like very striking moments, and you do also remember the
progression the story over the course of the season and
the kinds of callbacks that happen. Like in the first episode,

(01:02:09):
they're like doing this like job and you don't know
what the fuck it is. They're just like putting numbers
into a bucket, and Zach Cherry says something like, yeah,
if you're the best Macro Data Review employee, you get
a waffle party. I'm going for that waffle party. Total
bullshit line. Who gives a shit? Waffle party ends up

(01:02:29):
being the culmination of everything, and you're like, whoa they
really they paid this off, So yeah, it's good.

Speaker 1 (01:02:42):
I'm going to wreck give someone a hug and have
a meal with loved ones at some point. Just do
it simple to the point, hug somebody, have a meal
with folks.

Speaker 4 (01:02:57):
Callbacks. Listen to our back catalog of sign offs and
make a recipe that Teddy has recommended and then share
that a little loved one.

Speaker 3 (01:03:05):
Yeah absolutely, uh yeah, and watch some good TV. I'd
have fun and'd be good to each other. That'll do
it for this episode. Oh it's just as bad. We'll
see on the next one. Bye.

Speaker 4 (01:03:22):
It's just an ad. It's like, oh, pirates boat your brain,
Robin Kneale is no joking, open in your mind with
the probots as you woke and hitting Hydra halen Hares
had for time, for head of reasons for more than
with the soldiers, with them for all seasons. Listen closely
while we share our expert teason costolic comments, culture, Deane Street,

(01:03:42):
tuition to the multiversity, and it's like good teaching, perfect
balance when we snap in benit gents into your ears,
just their shoulders when we speak purple men, versuasive feet
were Randy Savage randals with their immortal technique