#013 - 2025 Year-In-Review (Capt. America: BNW, Thunderbolts*, F4:FS, Superman, Alien: Earth, Ironheart, Andor, Stranger Things, and more)

0:04 Greetings humans and aliens. This is Todd the editor,

0:06 starting off with a little bit of an explanation and apology.

0:09 First, I'm sorry for the gap of time between episodes in January

0:13 2026. We've got several episodes

0:15 recorded, so trust me, we're not done and there's more to come.

0:19 I guess I came out of the holidays being a little lazy and

0:21 my normal procrastination kicked in.

0:24 So for the first half the delay between episodes, I confess I

0:27 don't have a good excuse. Then I had a slightly busier

0:30 week of work than usual, and just when that was calming down,

0:33 my mom went to the hospital. She passed away four days later.

0:37 Then starting the day after the funeral, I spent several nights

0:39 at my dad's house during the ice apocalypse and again right now

0:43 during the subsequent snowpocalypse of January 2026.

0:47 And my parents house has crappy Internet service, so January

0:51 2026 has not been normal. This episode is a 2025 year in

0:56 review and was long enough to be a 2 parter, 1 for movies, one

1:00 for TV. But being behind on editing, it

1:03 was quicker and easier to just power through on the second-half

1:06 and have it as one long episode. And if I had looked for more

1:10 clips to insert into the reviews and or to make a fancy intro

1:14 montage, it would have taken even longer.

1:16 So I apologize for both the lateness of the episode and its

1:21 bare bones nature. I hope to get back on track in

1:24 February. And now on with the episode.

1:28 Greetings, humans and newcomers, and welcome back to Alienating

1:30 Ourselves, the podcast where we examine sci-fi entertainment

1:34 with a focus on aliens and the humans they celebrate the new

1:37 year with. I am one of your hosts, Todd.

1:39 I hope everyone had an excellent holiday season and a happy New

1:42 year. And in keeping with that timing,

1:45 we decided to do another impromptu detour to review the

1:49 year of 2025. And joining me, as always, is a

1:52 guy who became a podcaster in 2025.

1:54 It's Nick. Nick, how's it going?

1:57 It is going really well, Todd. And this was 2025 was a huge

2:00 year for Nick. There were definite negatives,

2:04 but I'm going to forget all that tonight and just focus on the

2:06 fact that I became the podcasting version of a

2:09 published author this year, which is just dynamic.

2:13 Mostly I just wanted something in my resume.

2:16 So now I have con cred when I go in and like, say, yeah, I got a

2:21 podcast too. So you guys aren't special.

2:23 I'm special too. But for night, we will be

2:27 looking at the year in review and kind of focusing on a

2:30 handful of the movies and a handful of the TV shows that we

2:34 both watched this year. We may go on some detours and

2:36 talk about some stuff we don't both have in common, but we're

2:40 going to kind of go over some of the big names and sci-fi and

2:43 maybe other movies and TV. So to start it off, we'll look

2:48 at 4 movies. They're kind of tentpole films

2:50 and big deals. A lot of anticipation.

2:53 And the first one of those is going to be Captain America,

2:57 Brave New World. That was a huge thing coming

3:01 out. And just generally, what was

3:03 your response overview of that movie?

3:07 Todd, how do you feel about Brave New World?

3:10 I think I had an unusually positive response to that movie.

3:15 As far as I'm concerned, it is underrated.

3:19 Yeah, I, I know that a lot of people were kind of nitpicking

3:22 it when it first came out, at least on the YouTube channels

3:24 and podcasts that I, that I watch or listen to.

3:28 I actually thought it was OK. Now, it wasn't stellar.

3:31 I could definitely see some problems with it.

3:33 But yeah, overall I thought it was underrated.

3:36 So how about you? Well, I guess I had some

3:40 concerns going in, and I'm pretty easy to please on a lot

3:47 of things, so if you hit your Marks and do most of the stuff

3:51 you're supposed to do, I'm happy.

3:52 I really wanted this movie to be good.

3:54 I wanted Sam to have an outstanding experience at the

3:58 box office and everything. I wanted America to be able to

4:02 move past Steve Rogers. We're all going to have to be

4:05 able to let go of some of these beloved portrayals.

4:08 So I had high hopes. I actually got my wife and kid

4:11 to go with me to this one, and I ran out to the restroom right

4:16 for the moment. We might mention at the very end

4:18 that everybody was waiting to have.

4:22 That was really funny. So I I went back to the theater

4:25 and watched it a second time. But I liked it very much.

4:29 I liked it very much. I even liked it more the second

4:32 time. I don't think it was a home run,

4:35 but I think it was definitely a good movie.

4:39 So yeah. Yeah, I thought the the IT had

4:42 very good characters. So obviously Sam Wilson is he's,

4:48 you know, maybe not one of the standout stellar characters of

4:52 the MCU, but he's a good support person and I think deserving of,

4:57 you know, look, being elevated to one of the major players.

5:00 Then we also have Joaquin Torres as the Falcon, kind of taking

5:04 over Sam Wilson's old role, and I think he makes a good

5:09 sidekick. I think they have some good

5:11 chemistry together. And also, we revisit somebody

5:14 that was in the TV show Falcon in The Winter Soldier, and that

5:19 is Isaiah Bradley, played by Carl Lumley.

5:23 And he plays a very sympathetic character.

5:26 You know, he's kind of starts off the movie having something

5:29 to celebrate and having a good time and kind of feeling better

5:33 about things. And then stuff kind of goes

5:35 sideways. And it's kind of the sympathy

5:39 for his character and how he kind of gets screwed over in the

5:42 first part of the movie. That is kind of the driving

5:45 force for the characters. And I think to a certain extent

5:47 us the audience. So would you agree with that or

5:51 have a different take? Yeah, I I really enjoyed Falcon

5:55 and The Winter Soldier, and I think it wasn't my favorite of

5:59 the Marvel series just because it was so serious.

6:02 There was some heavy stuff in there and Nick is an escapist,

6:06 but it was very well done. But I think the the strength and

6:09 center of the show was that they accidentally are on purpose

6:14 decided, discovered that there was this wonderful chemistry

6:18 between Anthony Mackie and, oh, Gee, Sebastian Stan as Bucky.

6:25 This movie might have been so much better if we had had.

6:28 Yeah. Yeah.

6:30 So. So it's kind of like, I think

6:33 everything I say about this movie is not going to be a harsh

6:36 criticism. It's it's going to be one of

6:39 those movies that I think its biggest detractor is what it

6:42 could have been. Maybe so yeah, like you

6:46 mentioned our new Falcon and he does great.

6:49 And Carl Lumley, who plays Isaiah Bradley, he's just

6:53 wonderful. He's giving an Oscar performance

6:56 in this very small part in this movie.

7:00 And I mean, I Harrison Ford, I think the media tried to tease

7:04 him a little bit about what he had to do in the movie and he,

7:08 Harrison Ford does not care. He gives 0 damns about it.

7:11 He's like, he did the part, he went all the way with it.

7:14 He did everything he could. So I I didn't have any technical

7:18 problems with it. I have listened to other people

7:21 and their critiques of it. And I think on the second

7:23 viewing I understood a little bit better what they were

7:25 talking about. But yeah, what you're saying

7:27 with the casting, I think it was very good.

7:31 I think Sam, if you look at every Captain America movie,

7:37 every Captain America movie up till now has really been about

7:41 Steve. And a chunk of it is about his

7:44 relationship with Bucky, and he kind of grows and struggles.

7:48 Sam doesn't get a lot of opportunity to grow and struggle

7:51 in this. He's kind of a straight man

7:53 who's doing his job and kicking butt.

7:55 He wants to help people, but it's not really a story about

7:58 him very much. It's like he's the good guy

8:01 trying to solve this story that's more about what's going

8:04 on with President Ross and a side character from a previous

8:08 movie. So yes, I thought he did great.

8:11 I think he probably needed more of a He needs another turn at

8:14 bat, frankly. Yeah.

8:17 And as far as Harrison Ford's performance, it, if I remember

8:20 correctly, I think it's the very first moment of the film when he

8:24 is given some kind of speech and he has to deliver some lines

8:27 about, I think what Celestial Island and something about

8:32 adamantine or something or, yeah, vibranium or something

8:35 like that. You know, he has to say these

8:37 weird comic book words and, you know, Harrison Ford could be a

8:41 little bit of a grump and and stuff like that.

8:43 And that very first scene where he was saying all these comic

8:47 booky words, something in me kind of triggered and I was

8:52 like, Oh no, is he not going to take this seriously?

8:54 Is he going to be like, I can't believe I'm saying all these

8:57 stupid words and and not take it seriously?

9:00 And that didn't happen. He did not phone it in for the

9:02 rest of time. So yeah, I agree with you that I

9:05 like his performance. I really don't.

9:08 Oh, OK, I'm going through the cast list.

9:10 OK, This was not the actress fault, I don't think, but Tim

9:12 Blake Nelson as Samuel Stearns, which I think he's got like a

9:16 comic book name, like the Brainy, not Brainiac, but you

9:21 know, something Brain related. His makeup was not done very

9:26 well and his character was a little weird and I don't know if

9:30 we totally needed him. So that was a little bit of a

9:33 dark mark on the movie. Also Giancarlo Esposito's

9:38 character Seth Volker, and it looks like he has a code name of

9:43 Sidewinder. He might have been like a little

9:46 bit kind of shoehorned in a little bit.

9:50 And that kind of brings me to one of the problems with the

9:52 movie is that I did hear some behind the scenes news about how

9:57 there might have been some editing issues and some rewrites

10:00 and stuff like that. One of the things I noticed was

10:03 that there is kind of like a new character.

10:05 I don't know if he or she is in the comics or not, but at one

10:09 point in the movie this character is wearing what almost

10:12 looks like a superhero type costume under a jacket or

10:16 something or like battle armor. But then we do not see that

10:19 character in action at all. And so I can't help but wonder

10:22 if there were scenes shot with this character being kind of

10:26 like a comic bookie type character, and then those got

10:29 cut and then that character was just more of a grounded

10:32 character just having normal stuff to do.

10:35 So I think there were little tiny issues like that in the

10:38 movie that maybe held it back from being better.

10:42 Did you notice anything like that or was it just me?

10:45 It all went past me on the 1st viewing.

10:48 I saw everything on the surface level and as a completionist who

10:52 watched all of these movies, the fact that spoiler everybody, I

10:56 mean that, you know, we bring back a side character that was

11:00 hinted at back in I think 2008 from the The Incredible Hulk

11:05 movie with Ed Norton. And that is Tim Blake Nelson,

11:08 the weird superhero name you were thinking of for him as

11:11 leader. He's just leader, but that's

11:14 easy to forget. He did break one of my main

11:17 rules of superhero movies is you can't make the villain too

11:22 unpleasant to look at. Yeah, See also Green Lantern,

11:28 where you have someone kind of breaking down like Jeff Goldblum

11:32 and the Fly. So Sterns is mutated, and that's

11:36 fine. You know, you mutate in the

11:37 comics. He's real.

11:38 He's really hard to make comic accurate because the character

11:40 just has a huge brain. And I'll be honest with you

11:43 guys, if you make somebody in a movie accurately with just a

11:46 huge brain, they're going to look stupid.

11:49 That's very hard to realize in real life.

11:51 So instead they made him mutated with just kind of a bizarre

11:54 cranial situation and some other stuff going on.

11:58 I like the idea that he was a sort of evil genius.

12:02 I like some of those plot lines and stories.

12:04 But I didn't notice what you were talking about until it was

12:08 pointed out to me. And then when I went back and

12:10 watched it again, I realized it. It adds up.

12:12 So if you're not sure what's going on with the movie and you

12:15 do watch it a second time, listeners, the suggestion is

12:20 that this movie was supposed to be a fairly different movie

12:24 where it's like Captain America versus the Serpent Society led

12:28 by Sidewinder and Giancarlo Esposito would have been kind of

12:31 a big deal. Or whoever they had before they

12:34 cast him to try and sort of save the script.

12:37 And instead what they did was take a Incredible Hulk sequel

12:42 script from 2010 or 2011, dust it off and push Captain America

12:49 into it. And once someone tells you that

12:52 and you watch the movie again, it may not be true.

12:55 I don't know what the truth is, but it really feels true.

13:00 So yes, yes, it does feel like a an Incredible Hulk movie that

13:05 was given a facelift and some substitutions made.

13:09 I don't think that that's necessarily, it didn't destroy

13:12 the movie, but it did add some confusion and stuff.

13:15 So that's why you come out of it, You know, not sure exactly

13:19 about who the bad guy is. And I mean, Giancarlo Esposito

13:25 is a pretty significant bad guy, but he's very sidelined in this,

13:28 sidewinded in this. Yeah.

13:32 Well, since we do have other movies and TV shows and

13:35 depending on time, maybe a little bit of other stuff to to

13:37 talk about. Might need to wrap this up.

13:41 Is there anything really big that you need to mention about

13:44 this one before we do wind it down?

13:46 I think it's easy to make a Hulk not look great, and I think they

13:50 did a really good job. I think Anthony Mackie has a lot

13:54 of personality and I wasn't sure what was lacking.

13:57 But I thought back to my other great Marvel heroes and this may

14:01 come up in the other ones we talked about.

14:03 And it's really not fair to blame Mackie and not that you

14:07 did or anything, but for the movie not excelling because if

14:11 you look at all the others, you know, Star Lord Thor, they have

14:18 comedy backing, they have help, they have other characters that

14:21 are really interesting. Iron Man may be the exception.

14:24 We all just love Robert Downey Junior Logan.

14:28 Wolverine's a pretty big lead, but for the most part, we need

14:32 sidekicks and comedy support and or buddies or something that

14:35 liven it up. And Sam, he did not have rocket

14:41 or group or nebula or something. He and Torres are like pretty

14:48 serious, they're doing their best and they're just like

14:50 soldiers. My son's favorite part was when

14:53 Bucky shows up for 5 minutes, he's like yes, that was it.

14:57 OK, they saved the movie. He just really wanted more Bucky

14:59 time. Which is a good segue to

15:01 Thunderbolts. Yeah, well, all right, so let's

15:04 wrap up Brave New World real quick.

15:07 So you mentioned the the cameo. I did like the cameo.

15:11 It also shows a nice progression in their relationship because I

15:14 remember when those two first crossed paths, they kind of hit

15:18 each other in the TV show. They were working through those

15:21 issues and now they're actually kind of glad to see each other

15:24 and kind of supporting each other.

15:27 I think they might have even hugged and if our murder, if

15:30 maybe even said I love you man to each other.

15:33 I think. So.

15:34 So yeah, they've come a long way.

15:36 Sam Wilson should have taken the Super Soldiers serum, but at

15:40 least he's smart enough to admit that too.

15:44 I I think the movie had good overall acting and good action.

15:49 I know there's going to be a really weird nitpick.

15:51 I'm probably way in the minority.

15:52 I do think the movie had a little too much profanity.

15:55 None of it was extremely, It's not like they they dropped F

15:59 word or anything. It was mild profanity, just a

16:02 little too frequent. So I know I'm probably a little

16:05 bit of a prude for saying that. That's confirmed.

16:07 And overall, I give the movie AB and I apologize ahead of time, I

16:13 did not see a whole lot of movies this year and none of

16:15 them were that stellar. So oddly enough, this is like my

16:19 second highest movie of the year, even at B.

16:24 So I might be in the minority for for liking it, but what's

16:29 the last little bit that you want to say about this one

16:32 before we move on? A major character in this movie

16:34 is Thunderbolt Ross, and this bothers me immensely because in

16:42 Civil War they introduce another character named Ross, played by

16:46 Martin Freeman. He's not related, completely not

16:50 related, and he's in the same movie, Ross.

16:53 Thunderbolt Ross is in that movie as well.

16:57 Also, Thunderbolt Ross, unrelated in Marvel to the

17:02 Thunderbolts we're about to talk about.

17:04 He is a giant walking paradox. We have a Thunderbolt Ross

17:07 that's not connected to Ross or the Thunderbolts in this

17:10 universe. Drives me crazy.

17:12 Thank you. All right, so now we'll move on

17:16 to the Thunderbolts. And I don't know, technically

17:20 this movie has another title and the Marvel and Disney did not do

17:26 a great job of holding that back.

17:28 So I don't think it's a spoiler, but I'll I'll leave it to you

17:32 and say what the alternate title is.

17:34 I would say I like these characters, but I don't love

17:39 them. The movie overall was good, but

17:48 I don't know I I don't know if it has a whole lot of repeat

17:52 power. Yeah, I honestly don't have too

17:55 really much to say about it. So do you have any leading

17:59 thoughts about Thunderbolts? I really, really dug this movie

18:05 and Todd and I haven't rated Marvel movies together before,

18:08 but Marvel movies, I think most of them actually get like a

18:14 pretty high grade from me. I don't want to throw around the

18:18 idea of an A, but it's like you have a few that are home runs

18:22 that are just grand slams that I will tell my wife.

18:26 She has to go see this one, even if she's feeling jaded or like

18:29 she doesn't know what's going on.

18:31 Guardians of the Galaxy are just they're home runs and Iron Man

18:37 and The Avengers movies just amazing.

18:40 But then B tier Marvel is like still pretty good for me.

18:47 So I guess this is AB, but that for me that's that's in company

18:54 with just about every Marvel movie that people say they like.

18:57 It just means it's not a home run.

18:59 The C tiers are things like Quantum Mania and Love and

19:05 Thunder that I think are not that bad.

19:08 I'd probably say you know, B minus or something and people

19:12 are like, I heard it. The only thing I give a failing

19:15 grade to in Marvel so far is Secret Invasion.

19:19 Oh, really? Yeah.

19:20 Yeah. But it's it just, and that took

19:23 a lot. I'm so generous with my grades,

19:25 but I really do like all of these.

19:27 So I'd watch a bunch of them again.

19:29 But Thunderbolts was, I don't consider it a home run.

19:32 I haven't made people watch it yet, but it's like I think they

19:36 did some really cool stuff with the people.

19:39 So I had a lot of I I give it a non home run.

19:43 AI just dug it. It did have some great moments.

19:47 The problem is those moments didn't quite stick with me

19:49 because when I was going through my notes, I couldn't really

19:52 think of some of the best moments, and it's not like it

19:56 didn't have them. And like I said, I really don't

19:58 have a whole lot of notes for this one.

20:00 And sadly, some of the notes I do have, or really all the notes

20:03 I have, are negative, despite the fact that I still love it

20:06 overall. Todd misspoke.

20:09 He meant to say like it, not love it.

20:11 So like one of the issues I had was at the end had too much

20:14 psycho Babble. I think I might have mentioned

20:16 that in a previous episode, probably one of our episodes of

20:20 the two par that we did on Star Trek.

20:23 I probably mentioned how I don't like psycho Babble in that one.

20:26 And yeah, I kind of felt like that's what this one was where,

20:29 you know, the the big conflict at the end is the you enter

20:32 somebody's dreamscape or their inner mind or something.

20:36 And I don't like that kind of thing.

20:39 Another thing I didn't like is I hate it when movies suck the

20:43 color out. And this is a movie that did

20:46 kind of have some color grading to it.

20:48 There are some scenes that are almost grayscale in nature.

20:51 And so that kind of bugs me. And then something that you've

20:57 already kind of hit on a little bit is that this is supposed to

21:02 be like the one of the next big Marvel teams.

21:05 And I don't really buy these characters as being the next big

21:08 Marvel team. Now, on the good side, the movie

21:11 itself makes fun of that same fact or that same opinion

21:16 because they are kind of a joke. Like one of the things I will

21:19 say that I did enjoy was the credits when you see like the

21:23 thing, the articles, the newspaper articles and the

21:27 newsreels and stuff that are kind of making fun of them as

21:30 being the B team. I think there was one thing that

21:33 was like Avengers, more like B Avengers.

21:37 I love that, that little snippet during the the closing credits.

21:41 So I do like that even the movie realizes, yeah, these are not

21:45 our best characters, but we're but that's intentional and we're

21:49 making fun of that. But then there was a post

21:53 credits scene that implied that they had been A-Team, a valid

21:58 team working together apparently pretty well for, I can't

22:02 remember if it was 18 months or nine months or maybe 12 months,

22:05 but anyway, approximately a year or more.

22:08 So they are technically The Avengers for some long term

22:13 period. And so I kind of have mixed

22:15 feelings about all that. And that's really all I have to

22:19 say about it other than my grades.

22:21 So do you have any thoughts? You need to get out there before

22:24 we finish that one up. Yeah, this movie, it bet big on

22:29 Florence Pugh. This is kind of her movie.

22:32 It's not sold as she's the star. Like it's not a White Widow

22:39 movie or something, but it's she is like at the beginning of the

22:44 main trailer. But she carries a lot of the

22:48 action, the emotional weight, the resolution.

22:51 She leads them through a lot of that.

22:53 And I think that she pulled it off.

22:56 And what I said about Anthony Mackie, I mean, Florence Pugh

22:59 has several unique characters to interact with.

23:03 So if you just gave her Bucky and he was quiet and serious

23:07 most of the time, it would not have as much to bounce around.

23:13 But just her interactions with David Harbour as the Red

23:15 Guardian. And she knows he's not her real

23:18 dad and she has all this damage and she resents him sometimes,

23:22 but then she'll kind of break down and she needs him to be her

23:25 dad. And he like understands that.

23:27 And he's he's kind of a crap dad.

23:30 He's not a horrible one, but he he reminds us all of a dad who

23:33 drops the ball and knows he's dropping the ball.

23:36 So he does his best gosh darn it.

23:39 But those things, I loved the emotional weight.

23:42 So I think that was really good. I know what you're talking about

23:46 with the psycho Babble because we did, we got into it some with

23:50 the Doctor Who dream crabs. But when you aren't grounded and

23:54 you just do everything abstract or the Star Trek episodes where

23:58 it's like, is it all a dream? You know, is it all a

24:01 hallucination? And but they took a chance.

24:06 And I think Sentry, the character that turns out to kind

24:10 of be like the big bad guy or obstacle.

24:13 That's, I think those are pretty comic accurate things they did

24:18 with some of his powers and they made the big bad guy in the

24:22 movie sort of clinical depression, which is difficult,

24:27 but they addressed it and got into it.

24:30 And I was in an audience for a sneak preview for this movie.

24:35 I saw it twice opening week. We have a Marvel movie group in

24:41 Atlanta that would do big openings and there were people

24:44 in costume and stuff. But when I think they save a

24:51 little girl and Red Guardian reaches toward her and she's

24:56 dusted like like a shadow at Hiroshima, which was a really

25:01 obvious and visual indicator, the whole audience just gasped.

25:08 They were like shaken, like we were all knocked over.

25:11 And it's it's things like that where you feel like everybody's

25:14 in it. So, yeah, what you're talking

25:16 about is a struggle for the movie.

25:19 It's like it ends and they are the new Avengers at the end.

25:22 And you spent this whole time convincing us they were the the

25:25 Thunderbolts and actually kind of started liking them as the

25:30 Thunderbolts. But I think that's why Bucky was

25:34 moved from Captain America over to this movie is I think Marvel

25:38 is kind of betting big on positioning these guys for

25:42 whatever happens next. And yeah, that bit is kind of

25:48 awkward and weird. We're not sure about how it

25:50 ends, so I can understand people criticizing that part, but I

25:56 did. I like the emotional weight, I

25:57 like the action, I like the characters.

26:01 I don't think I had any big problems with any of it like

26:05 that. But yeah, yeah, this is a, it's

26:07 a fun one to watch, but I think I've only watched it 2 1/2 Times

26:11 Now, which is not that much for me.

26:15 Yeah. And so just to follow up on a

26:17 few things, you said the the scene where the little girl got,

26:20 I don't know what you want to call it, but shadowed.

26:22 Yeah. Yeah.

26:24 That was one of those most where, like you said, the people

26:26 in the theater gasp. And so it's at that point where

26:28 you're like, OK, either they need to defeat this guy twice or

26:33 this needs to get undone. And of course, one of those two

26:36 things happens. And then you were also talking

26:39 about Florence Pugh, as would her code name be White Widow.

26:44 I just made that up, man. I mean, it's one of the things

26:46 that people say when you're a a Black Widow and then you know

26:49 something else. But who knows?

26:51 But but anyway, her character, I'm not that thrilled about her

26:55 character. I don't have anything majorly

26:56 against it. It's just she doesn't stand out

26:58 out as much as Black Widow did. However, she did have that great

27:03 scene where she was kind of complaining to her dad about how

27:06 her life wasn't going that well and he said some very dad things

27:11 to support her. I lost my sister again, but

27:14 forever. And you disappeared.

27:18 I'm sorry. I didn't think you wanted me.

27:21 I did. I see that I'm late, but I'm I'm

27:24 here now, Daddy, I'm so alone. All I do is sit and look at my

27:29 phone and think of all the terrible things that I've done.

27:32 And then I go to work and then I drink and then I come home to no

27:36 one and I sit and I think about all the terrible things I've

27:40 done again and again. We all have things that we

27:43 regret. There's so many.

27:46 You're stuck, you're alone. You look only at the bed.

27:49 When I look at you, I don't see your mistakes.

27:52 That's why we need each other. Yeah, sometimes that kind of

27:55 tugs at me a little bit whenever I hear that one little snippet.

27:59 So that way is one of the better moments of the movie.

28:04 And overall I give the movie AB minus.

28:08 Anything more you want to say about it before we move on?

28:11 No, this is another non home run high, high grade marvel for me.

28:16 I'd put this up there with just about everything that isn't a

28:22 Guardians of the Galaxy end game Infinity War kind of absolutely

28:27 amazing blockbuster. I just, I thought it was very,

28:29 very fun. So yeah.

28:31 All right and sticking with the MCU yes, three out of four of

28:36 our movies are MCU and the fourth one is still comic book

28:39 movie. So at least we're consistent

28:40 tonight. The third one is Fantastic Four

28:43 First Steps, and this one was fine.

28:50 I felt similar to Thunderbolts. There was nothing hugely wrong

28:56 with it, but not a whole lot to get enthused about either.

28:59 In fact, I would say I still technically like Thunderbolts a

29:03 little bit better than this one. And it's not even necessarily

29:06 this movie's fault. I've never been super impressed

29:09 with Fantastic Four, not in their previous movies.

29:12 Which, Grant, that's not saying much because, yeah, those other

29:14 movies were not great. But also when I went through a

29:17 phase where I actually collected comics a few years ago, I

29:21 couldn't get into them anytime they made like, a guest

29:23 appearance or like I tried to collect their title for one or

29:27 two issues. I've just never been that much

29:29 in a Fantastic Four, and this movie did not totally help with

29:33 that. So do you have a more positive

29:35 view of either this movie or the Fantastic Four overall?

29:39 Well, I'm the odd person that you'll hear from that has nice

29:43 things to say about most Fantastic Four movies.

29:46 I haven't seen the famous Hidden One that never got released.

29:53 That's trash. I think I can say confidently.

29:57 But the Chris Evans Human Torch ones, yes, they're dated.

30:02 Yes, they're they have almost an 80s feel even though they were

30:05 in the 2000s. But I had fun with some of them.

30:08 There's some cool stuff in there.

30:09 You go back and watch those Silver Surfer bits, yes, they

30:14 completely tore apart like what Doctor Doom's even supposed to

30:18 be like. But kind of to go with what you

30:20 were saying before. In my humble opinion, listeners,

30:24 the Fantastic Four are a bizarre superhero team.

30:29 Ben Grimm is awesome. He's a tank.

30:31 He's like the Hulk. Everybody gets that.

30:33 Human Torch is awesome. He flies, he shoots fire.

30:37 He is fire. That's that makes sense.

30:39 So Storm can turn invisible. I know there's force fields, Mr.

30:43 Fantastic stretches, and what I said about the Leader a few

30:46 minutes ago. Movie makers struggle with how

30:50 to make invisibility and stretchiness both useful in a

30:55 plot and look any kind of good on screen.

31:01 You cast a beautiful woman as the invisible woman and then you

31:05 make her not there. There's problems with that just

31:08 in a narrative capacity and they do you watch this movie and I

31:12 swear they do two things really, really well.

31:15 And one of them is they don't spend very much time at all on

31:20 her ability to turn invisible or his ability to stretch.

31:23 In fact, when he does stretch, if he had done everything he did

31:27 but like jumping really far or something, they just, they don't

31:31 highlight it at all. I think because they're figuring

31:33 out it looks really strange in live action and that's nobody's

31:37 fault. It's just, in my opinion, the

31:40 fantastic forward function best as like a annoyingly awesome

31:45 family of superheroes over to the side that everybody likes as

31:49 a foil to a different superhero set in the foreground.

31:53 So that having been said in an overview way, what I liked about

31:58 this movie was how much I like the people.

32:00 I liked Pedro Pascal's job as Reed.

32:03 I liked Vanessa Kirby as Sue. I thought Ben had wonderful

32:07 personality and Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm.

32:13 I just I liked him. I like the family very, very

32:15 much. And my big thing honestly for

32:18 this movie is just for some reason, y'all, the mole man

32:23 absolutely cracks me up. Paul Walter Hauser plays Harvey

32:28 and I don't know, maybe it's just because he's unashamedly

32:31 mole man, but he shows up and every scene he's in, I just

32:35 think he's awesome. He doesn't do that much.

32:37 He just, oh, there's Mole Mannequin.

32:40 I love him. So yes, I think the movie was a

32:43 big success for me. Another high passing grade.

32:47 I just wanted it to be OK and for people not to hate it

32:50 because they're so negative about some stuff.

32:52 And I think it did that all right.

32:54 But it was, again, Marvel really wants a home run right now.

32:57 And it wasn't that. So unfortunate.

33:00 Yeah, I mean, when I get my final grade, you'll see that I

33:03 do still technically like this movie, barely.

33:09 I am on the positive side of it, but you wouldn't know it because

33:12 I can't really pinpoint a whole lot of positive stuff when I can

33:16 pinpoint some negative stuff. So before I do get negative, let

33:19 me say that one of the things they the movie does do very well

33:22 is portraying an alternate universe that is a mix of future

33:26 science and retro tech. You know, it kind of, they can

33:30 have advanced stuff, but everything looks old and it has

33:33 a little bit of a different look and feel to our world.

33:36 And so, yeah, it it's obvious that is an alternate universe.

33:41 So they did do that. Well, really, everything else I

33:45 could kind of agree with you is like, yeah, the acting is good

33:48 and the casting is good, but it's like nothing is stellar.

33:51 So before I get into the negatives and maybe you might

33:53 even have something -2 any more positives?

33:57 Galactus could have looked really, really stupid, and I

34:00 feel like they did a pretty good job with it.

34:04 Yeah, I don't know. You have a big guy in big boots

34:07 walking through a city. It's just when I first saw his

34:10 shadow falling over the city in the advertisement, I was like,

34:14 oh, I hope that doesn't look terrible because it's just.

34:17 It's so easy to make it look bad.

34:19 But I feel like they pulled that off pretty well.

34:23 There was a lot of hatred anytime they gender swap

34:28 anybody. America is so sensitive to

34:30 anything like that now that people blew up and other people

34:34 said, well, no, there is, you know, Sha Labal is a comic

34:37 character, you know, and there's there's a second Silver Surfer

34:40 character that, but it didn't really matter.

34:42 The haters were already upset. I thought that she did very,

34:46 very well. My defense of that whole thing

34:49 is just that at the end of the movie, we have a good reason to

34:52 never see this particular version of Silver Surfer again

34:56 without Galactus showing up again, because she should be on

34:58 the other side of the universe. So, you know, it should make

35:02 everybody happy. But those things, I think just

35:05 as a general positive, they could have been questionable and

35:10 I think they pulled them off pretty well.

35:12 Yeah, I would agree. Galactus did look pretty good.

35:16 And I think they're getting braver with that type of thing

35:19 with showing, you know, oversized things or comic

35:24 accurate costumes and stuff like that.

35:26 You know, back in the day they didn't do that.

35:28 That's why the X-Men movies, the early ones had black leather and

35:32 why the first time they tried to do Galactus, he was a big cloud

35:35 and everything. And so they're getting braver

35:37 and able to do, you know, the big giant guy in a purple helmet

35:41 and, and, and also make it not ridiculous.

35:46 So maybe they couldn't have pulled it off a few years ago

35:48 and they can now. As far as some of the negatives

35:51 I've already mentioned a little bit, I think the characters are

35:53 kind of bland. I don't totally buy the whole

35:57 team family chemistry. In fact, you were talking about

36:00 some of the older movies. One of the redeeming qualities

36:04 in those is the back and forth banter between The Thing and

36:09 Johnny Storm and I felt like that was kind of missing in this

36:12 movie. Also The Thing had that

36:14 relationship with I can't remember what her name was but

36:17 he kind of had a girlfriend off of huh?

36:19 Rachel, Natasha Lyonne. OK, yeah.

36:23 But he he kind of had like a girlfriend off to the side in

36:26 the previous movies. And in this one, there was kind

36:28 of like a hint of that, but it never really went anywhere.

36:31 So I just felt like these characters were just kind of,

36:35 they just didn't really go anywhere for me.

36:37 Also, overall, I felt like the movie was a little bit slow and

36:41 boring in parts. I even fell asleep during a

36:43 moment where some important information was being conveyed

36:47 because I woke up and I was like, wait, wait, what, what,

36:51 what, what, what did I miss? And then I feel like the really

36:56 big overall problem and is actually Preston my coast over

37:01 on discerning geeks portal who got this out of me because we

37:03 went to go see it together and he was kind of pressing me when

37:09 we went out to dinner afterwards, he was like, well,

37:11 was this the problem? Was that the problem?

37:13 It's like, no, that wasn't it. That wasn't it.

37:15 And finally he kind of pinpointed it and it didn't seek

37:17 him what he was saying right away.

37:19 It was like a day or two layers like, oh wait, I get his point

37:21 now. That was the problem.

37:23 And that is that this felt like it should have been the second

37:25 or third movie in a Fantastic Four trilogy, not the first.

37:29 Because if I understand correctly, Galactus is their

37:33 biggest enemy and they're fighting him in their first

37:36 movie. It's like they should have saved

37:38 that for later. Also, I want to get to know the

37:40 Fantastic Four characters themselves.

37:42 But then already Sue and and Marie from blanking on his name.

37:50 Reed. Reed and Sue are already having

37:52 a baby. I don't think that's a huge

37:53 spoiler because I think they put that in some of the previews.

37:56 They're already having a baby. And I know that baby is, you

37:59 know, grows up to be a big deal in the Fantastic Four.

38:02 And so they're already, you know, forming the Fantastic

38:05 Five. And it's like all of that stuff

38:07 is just too soon. And they're jumping ahead.

38:10 They're making these big leaps. And so, yeah, that was that was

38:14 kind of my biggest problem with the movie is that it they just

38:17 jumped ahead too soon. Greetings, humans and aliens.

38:21 This is Todd, the editor cutting in briefly during the review.

38:24 There was one thing I forgot to mention.

38:25 Nick talked about it being hard for movies to illustrate the

38:28 special powers of Reed and Sue Richards.

38:30 I can see that to a certain extent.

38:31 But if you're going to do the Fantastic Four, we need to see

38:34 their special powers at work, preferably a lot and in creative

38:37 ways. And I felt like we did not see

38:39 enough of Reed Richards stretchy powers, while the same could

38:42 possibly be said of Sue's invisibility and or force

38:46 fields. The part about the stretchy

38:48 powers that annoyed me specifically is that Miss

38:51 Marvel, AKA Kamala Khan, one of my favorite Marvel Comics

38:55 characters, also has stretchy powers.

38:57 In the comics, her stretchy powers also border on shape

39:00 shifting ability because she also has the ability to change

39:03 her appearance. But in Miss Marvel's TV show,

39:06 her powers had changed to a hard light ability, with her able to

39:10 make temporarily solid shapes out of energy projections.

39:14 OK, weird. And it's been assumed by many

39:17 fans that they changed her powers in the MCU so that they

39:20 wouldn't seem so similar to Reed Richard's abilities.

39:22 Once he was introduced, that made a little bit of sense.

39:25 But now he is introduced and we still don't get to see a lot of

39:29 his stretchy powers anyway. It makes Miss Marvel's lack of

39:32 stretchy powers feel like a waste and a missed opportunity.

39:35 In Miss Marvel's TV show, there was a slight hint that she could

39:38 also be a mutant, and I think they might have made that retcon

39:41 in the comics too, that she's a mutant instead of in a human.

39:44 Or maybe somehow both. So hopefully stretchy powers are

39:48 still to come in the MCU as a mutation of hers, but who knows

39:52 because where is Miss Marvel? The only time we've seen her

39:56 since her TV show was in the movie The Marvels, including the

39:59 post credits scene which was the best part of the movie.

40:02 Spoiler ahead if you haven't seen that.

40:04 But Kamala Khan goes to recruit Kate Bishop, the new Hawkeye,

40:08 into a new team that could turn into Young Avengers or the name.

40:11 I hope they go by Champions. When I saw that I literally sat

40:15 up straight and put my fist in the air with exciting.

40:17 Right man. Yes, folks, I do sometimes.

40:19 Like stuff. Really rarely.

40:21 Rarely. Unbelievable.

40:22 Inconceivable. Are you sure?

40:25 When exactly did this happen? Still debatable.

40:27 But what happened to that? Where is Miss Marvel?

40:30 I don't think Iman Vilani was announced as a cast member of

40:33 Avengers Doomsday. So where are the Young Avengers

40:36 slash champions? I never read Young Avengers but

40:38 I love the Champions comics title in the late 20 tens.

40:42 If you want to call them Young Avengers, fine, but if you wait

40:45 too long, the Young Avengers are going to be Old Avengers.

40:49 MCU what are you doing, God? I can feel your anger.

40:57 OK, sorry I went on a tangent. Sideways rant and original

41:00 nitpick both over back to the recording.

41:04 So the only thing I have left is a grade, but is there anything

41:07 you have left especially in the negative category?

41:09 Well, what you're saying, I agree with some of that because

41:13 we have what I was just describing where you need to

41:16 have characters interact with different people in order to

41:19 expand on that character. And if you limit who they

41:22 interact with, it limits them and how much we get to know

41:24 them. So they had this idea to have

41:26 Ben Grimm go down to the street level and walk around and kind

41:29 of want to be a normal guy in this old neighborhood and run

41:31 into a nice lady named Rachel. And they seem to kind of

41:36 connect. It was Natasha Lyonne.

41:38 Like the other thing is I think they cast somebody a little bit

41:41 too big for that part and then made the part smaller.

41:44 So if they had had a person I didn't recognize is Rachel, I

41:49 might not have paid so much attention to her and it wouldn't

41:51 have mattered as much. But I'm like, what is Natasha

41:54 Leon doing here? Does she have secret powers?

41:56 Is she going to be as love interest?

41:57 You calm down, Nick. All right?

41:59 He's just talking to a nice girl.

42:01 It's not that big. Yeah, but it's Natasha.

42:03 So yes, some of that. I was told that there were other

42:07 reasons why they might have not had Alicia Masters, the

42:11 character Kerry Washington played in the previous movies,

42:14 who is one of his major love interest, show up and why they

42:17 might have created this new character, Rachel.

42:19 I apologize, comics fans, if she is an established comic

42:22 character. I haven't heard that.

42:23 But like that there could be a sort of rights thing where they

42:26 don't have to pay somebody if they don't use Alicia Masters or

42:31 Kerry Washington or something. But yeah, that bit seemed extra.

42:36 I think everything else I was pretty fine with.

42:38 What you said about going too big too fast, that's a theme I

42:42 have with lots of movies where if you save the entire planet in

42:46 your first adventure, you don't have anywhere to go.

42:48 Yeah, yeah. And that's, you know, who does

42:51 Iron Man fight first? You know, he fights the

42:54 Ironmonger and they blow up a building.

42:57 You know, Captain America ends up fighting the Red Skull on a

43:03 plane that crashes. Thor fights a big robot thing in

43:06 a small town. We start a little bit smaller

43:09 than the entire planet, and we kind of build up.

43:11 Sure, the Guardian saved the whole planet, but it was a

43:13 different planet, you know? I don't know.

43:15 And it felt like local. So anyway, yeah, I'm with you on

43:18 that. So probably not a big surprise

43:20 from the way I've described it, but my grade is AC plus.

43:23 That's kind of the bottom end of me liking something because

43:27 overall I do feel like it was well made, it just didn't blow

43:31 me away in any particular category.

43:34 So it sounds like overall you would recommend it to.

43:37 Yeah, Marvel BA Tier 2, good all around.

43:42 Not a home run. If someone is interested in

43:45 seeing it, I think they'll have a good time.

43:46 If someone is not sure about seeing it, you don't have to

43:49 drag them. All right.

43:51 So moving on to our last one that we have in common and that

43:54 is Superman. I think it was originally

43:58 supposed to be called Superman Legacy or something like that,

44:01 but then they just changed the name to Superman.

44:04 I did like this movie. I liked it just a little bit

44:08 better than Captain America Brave New World.

44:11 I felt like overall they did capture a better tone for

44:15 Superman both visually and narratively.

44:19 In fact, I'll just say the best thing about this movie was they

44:21 bring color and brightness back to both the picture and the tone

44:25 of the characters. I hated that in the DC EU when

44:28 Superman was, you know, super dark in both tone and you know,

44:34 the the color of just about everything that those were a few

44:38 movies that where they really did kind of over color correct

44:42 stuff and just ZAP the color out.

44:44 I like in this movie, blue was blue, red was red, yellow was

44:48 yellow, the sky was blue, the sun was out.

44:52 So I love that. So what was your first

44:54 impression of Superman? Well, I was going into this one

44:57 like the other two. We agreed.

44:59 We talked about where my goal for the movie is for it to be OK

45:04 for them to be able to build DC on this.

45:06 This was like the much lauded first attempt by our guy coming

45:12 in to try and run DC and get it course corrected and start

45:16 everything over. And there were concerns because

45:19 we do have a completely new guy. And I'll be honest with you,

45:21 even people like Todd and me who feel like the other Superman

45:25 movies recently were depressing and they were so gritty that

45:28 they were like a bummer. We still seem to love Henry

45:31 Caville. He's just a all around amazing

45:34 sounding dude in person and in character.

45:37 I think he was given really rough scripts, so we weren't

45:39 sure if somebody could step in and replace Henry Cavill, even

45:43 if we didn't want stuff. And my initial take is that it's

45:48 amazing how good a job David Cornsworth did.

45:51 He's like, I think he brought everything that you could hope

45:55 for from the other side of Superman, not the tortured side

46:00 that Zack Snyder and Chris Nolan would say.

46:04 You know, The Dark Knight movies did really well with brooding.

46:07 So we need to make Superman brood too, because that worked

46:10 for Batman. It's like, well, if we decide to

46:13 go the other way and we are going to have a Superman who is

46:16 actually happy sometimes. If James Gunn wants to have a

46:20 colorful positive in some ways likes helping people Superman,

46:25 are we going to have that charm and that boyish quality and that

46:29 smile and the the, you know, can do almost naive attitude?

46:34 And I think he brings all of that.

46:36 He seems really genuine and he seems really sweet.

46:39 And I bought into all of that. So yes, I like the movie very

46:43 much just because of how good a job they did with Superman.

46:48 There are other things in it that are great, but that was

46:52 that was all I was hoping for was that it was passable and it

46:55 exceeded that clearly, not just with me, but I guess with a lot

46:58 of people. So what are some of your?

47:00 What are some of your points about this one?

47:02 All right, so my positives are it had great casting

47:05 performances and special effects.

47:08 They made good use of crypto. He was a little bit annoying in

47:13 his extreme bad behavior, but it was kind of cool to have a dog

47:17 in there. You know, they haven't done that

47:18 before. And he did kind of help brighten

47:20 up the whole movie. There was good chemistry between

47:23 Clark and Lois, plus the other support characters like his

47:27 parents. The Justice Gang is an

47:29 interesting sandbox to play with before establishing the Justice

47:34 League or Justice Society, which I assume they'll get around to

47:37 eventually. But before, you know, messing

47:40 with that kind of Canon stuff, just kind of making up something

47:44 new and just saying, yeah, we're just going to throw a few people

47:46 together and call them the Justice Gang was kind of a a

47:49 neat thing to to play around with.

47:51 The only thing is, is 3 people really a gang?

47:54 But other than that, I did like. So what were some of your

47:58 positives? Well I mean you brought up

48:00 crypto and crypto half stole the movie I think.

48:06 And people like pets. I mean, if we are suckers for

48:10 something cute, it's the whole secret behind the Mandalorian.

48:13 He kicks ass, but then you've got Baby Yoda to balance the ass

48:16 kicking. If you just have straight ass

48:18 kicking, it can get old, But then you have this sort of cute

48:21 other thing going on and Americans just melt.

48:25 So Crypto, he was a mess. And I think there are a lot of

48:29 pet owners that they love their animals and they complain about

48:33 their animals and the idea that you created a Superman.

48:36 You created a Superman who was like not losing his mind because

48:40 he's just saving Lois, but he is turning himself over to the bad

48:44 guys just so he can find where the dog is.

48:47 It's like, Oh my gosh, way to connect with American audiences.

48:51 So I just, I think that was amazing.

48:54 I think it's clever that they brought in Guy Gardner as a

48:58 Green Lantern, and they did a pretty good job of showing just

49:02 how dickish Guy Gardner is. I don't know that much about

49:06 comics. I would give myself AC Plus as a

49:08 comic book fan, but I know what Guy Gardner is like him and his

49:13 haircut and he's. Yeah, yeah.

49:18 The only, the only inaccurate things were he could have been a

49:24 little bit less handsome with not so deep and rich a voice.

49:32 But the hairstyle and the obnoxious attitude were on

49:35 point. I think some of the side

49:38 characters were a lot and they kind of get swallowed up in the

49:41 plot. So like the engineer was silly

49:45 and over the top. But that's OK because it's a

49:48 comic book movie. And I I tend to agree with James

49:50 Gunn that you can have weird, silly, over the top characters

49:54 and not make a big deal out. I don't know, I feel like

49:57 there's others where it's just hot girl is kind of swallowed up

50:01 in the narrative. It's not her story.

50:03 She's a side character in this. So did she do OK?

50:06 Yeah. I mean, she.

50:07 Yeah, she's fine, but it's not about her.

50:11 So yeah. You didn't mention the other

50:13 huge positive. Were you saving that for me?

50:15 You want to say it? Oh, that was all my positives.

50:19 I might agree with you, but I don't have it in my notes.

50:21 Yeah, that's the surprise backbone of the movie for me is

50:25 Eddie Geffeggy as Mr. Terrific. Oh, that's right.

50:29 Yeah, yeah, yeah. He is just, Oh my gosh.

50:31 And if you know this guy's career a little bit, so he got

50:34 to be an X-Men for 5 minutes in first class playing Darwin, a

50:39 secret fan favorite character that I didn't know that who's

50:43 you know, you can say a lot of things about Darwin, but one

50:45 thing you can say is that he survives.

50:48 That's his ultimate superpower is he's even more unkillable

50:52 than Deadpool probably. And they killed him.

50:58 So it really bothered fans. So Eddie Gethiggy got this one

51:02 turn and it's really awesome that he came back and they gave

51:05 him this awesome character. So he plays Mr. Terrific, who I

51:10 know from a couple of cartoons and man.

51:14 Oh, and the, the, you know, Flash and Arrow verse on The CW,

51:18 Mr. Terrific showed up and I was like, who is this?

51:21 So he got to do a really a really cool part.

51:26 Some of it might have felt a little bit like Guardians of the

51:28 Galaxy with Yondu in his arrow. It was pretty obvious, but that

51:33 didn't mean it wasn't fun. I really, I think between Crypto

51:36 and Mr. Terrific, the show, the whole movie had like a lot of

51:41 support. So like I said in my intro, I

51:45 was pleased with it just because of them sticking the landing

51:48 with corn sweat doing Superman. But with the addition of those

51:53 two characters, it was pretty great.

51:56 I do have some negatives though, so if you get into some

51:58 negatives I think it can bring some negatives.

52:00 Yeah, yeah. So I'll speed through mine.

52:03 Let me see. My main problem is I did not

52:07 like one particular sci-fi aspect brought on by Lex Luthor.

52:12 If anybody seen the movie, you know what I'm talking about.

52:14 I just felt like that went too far and kind of similar to the

52:18 Fantastic Four movie. I felt like the the thing he

52:21 created, the science fiction thing he created, what felt more

52:24 like a second or third movie Mecca nation than it did a first

52:28 movie Mecca nation. That really should have been

52:30 something that was saved. It just felt like too far for

52:34 one person to accomplish. Also, I do have in my notes, I

52:38 say the action scenes were a little too over the top, but let

52:42 me clarify what I mean by that. It's mostly connected to that

52:45 first negative I was talking about the stuff where it's

52:48 tearing up the city. I thought all of that was too

52:51 much. Some of the fight scenes between

52:53 Superman and two villains at once, Some of that was all over

52:57 the top. Other things that were good were

53:00 things like the big monster that attacked downtown.

53:05 What else? Oh, when Superman and Lois were

53:09 having a conversation in one of their apartments and you see the

53:12 Justice gang fighting some kind of weird giant eye floating

53:16 eyeball off in the distance, That was awesome.

53:20 That that was amazing. And there were one or two other

53:22 action scenes that were good also.

53:24 I do like the little snippets they put in of Superman saving

53:30 kid, a dog, a squirrel, you know, is showing that Superman,

53:34 you know, loves all life forms and everything.

53:37 So I like all that. But there were a few action

53:39 scenes that I think did go too far as mostly near the end,

53:43 Jimmy Olsen and Eve Tessmacher I think felt like they might have

53:46 been in a different movie. Maybe not quite as much Jimmy

53:49 Olsen, but especially Eve Tessmacher.

53:51 I mean, she was just a little bit too over the top where other

53:54 things felt a little bit more grounded.

53:57 Last two things we didn't see enough of Clark as a reporter.

54:01 In fact, barely any. We basically see him like show

54:04 up to work one day and sit at his desk and then that's it.

54:07 He doesn't actually do any reporter stuff.

54:09 And then another nitpick, similar to earlier, I think

54:13 there is a little too much profanity in the movie.

54:15 And I know that might sound extra prudish of me to say

54:19 because it's not even like there was that much.

54:20 It's just that for a Superman movie, I think almost any

54:23 profanity feels like too much profanity.

54:26 So yeah, those are my negatives. So how about you?

54:31 Yeah, I mean, some of the things you're saying, I can see where

54:34 you're coming from. I was fine with the Jimmy Olsen,

54:36 Eve Tessmacher thing. It was a weird mechanic.

54:39 But they tried something new. And James Gunn hypothesized that

54:44 he could do sort of a flashy parade of characters and effects

54:48 and fights and that people would buy into it, not just be

54:51 overloaded. And for the most part, he was

54:53 right. What you said about grounded

54:55 before, I mean, when there is no ground and everything is

54:59 confusing and that maybe there's other dimensions or maybe you're

55:02 just being swallowed by the earth or everything at once,

55:06 that could get lost. But then they might bring the

55:09 dog in and it's kind of fun. So I was mostly OK with all of

55:12 that. My beef that I have to mention

55:14 here today, it's not just this movie.

55:18 I don't understand why comic book movie makers are so

55:25 interested in doing things with Daily Planet editor Perry White.

55:30 I mean, the character has been around since the beginning.

55:32 I respect that he's part of the story, I get that.

55:36 But they struggle to find something for this man to do.

55:41 In Man of Steel, you had Laurence Fishburne climbing over

55:45 rubble because we had to see what Perry White was doing as

55:48 the city was falling apart in this one.

55:51 No hate to Wendell Pierce, Sir. You are a capital actor.

55:54 I like the cigar. Great work.

55:57 But they had to come up with something where Perry White and

56:02 his team are flying around trying to do news stories during

56:06 the events. And I'm just like, this is

56:10 wonderful. If if it was even remotely

56:13 important, but it didn't matter to me at all.

56:16 I think if you edited all of those out, I would, you know, if

56:19 I was Wendell's friend, I would be very sad for him.

56:21 But I think the movie would have worked fine without much Perry

56:25 White in it. So I'm I'm glad they're trying

56:28 to be comic accurate with that, but I don't see the point.

56:31 I do think the interactions you mentioned, Clark and Lois having

56:35 this conversation, their conversations behind closed

56:38 doors felt very authentic. They did a really good job.

56:41 I don't know how much they practiced, if they practice like

56:43 doing a play, but they seem to really connect.

56:48 And those bits where she's interviewing him toward the

56:51 beginning felt very, very real. It was cool.

56:54 And it introduced us to the character well, and he was

56:56 already flawed. And they do something similar

56:59 where we have Clark talking to his dad, who looks like a

57:02 completely different version of POC hint than we've ever seen.

57:06 But it felt really, really cool. It felt grounding and nice.

57:11 So yeah, I liked all of that stuff.

57:14 If anything, I liked more of it. But yes, that's about all I got

57:18 to say about the Superman movie. OK, Yep.

57:21 And so the last thing I'll say on that is my grade for that one

57:24 is AB similar to Captain America, Brave New World, Maybe

57:29 just a slightly higher B, not quite B Plus.

57:33 And sadly because I only saw 6 movies at the theater and two of

57:38 them were not as good, Superman by default, by lackluster

57:44 default, ends up being my best movie of the year at only AB.

57:48 Yeah. So not a great year for movies

57:50 for me. Yeah, grading it, If you've ever

57:53 had a kid in class that needed to be graded on a curve because

57:57 they were just never going to get there, I feel for DC Comics,

58:01 and I feel like they do not. My Marvel scale is based on the

58:05 idea of home runs existing, and DC doesn't have them.

58:09 If they did have them, it might be like the first Wonder Woman

58:12 movie for me. And gosh, everything else is

58:17 like AC for me since I don't know, I like The Batman very

58:22 much, but it's like I don't have that scale.

58:25 So this is going to sound crazy, but so far, ladies and

58:29 gentlemen, live action for this generation, this is ADCA.

58:35 It doesn't make sense, I know. But if you watch this compared

58:38 to all of the other DC movies of the last 10 years, it's pretty

58:42 much Wonder Woman is better than this.

58:44 But is anything else DC has made it's live action, you know I

58:49 don't. Know and those are the four

58:53 movies that we had in common. Like I said, I only saw two

58:56 other movies at the theater. So I also looked and we're at

58:59 almost an hour for just movies and we still have to do TV.

59:02 So speeding through this trying to do this as quickly as

59:05 possible. Maybe going into very little if

59:07 any detail I I can mention my two others.

59:10 Do you have any two either honorable or dishonorable

59:14 mentions or or one of both? Yeah, OK, I will say Wicked for

59:20 Good was amazing, and I'm not just saying that because it's

59:24 popular to say it, but I don't know what it is.

59:27 Cynthia Revo is really fun to watch as that character.

59:30 The songs that are based on the musical originally are still

59:33 wonderful. The new songs they added, I

59:35 could kind of take her leave, but she's like, you know, you'll

59:39 see a sort of Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow or something where

59:43 you really like seeing someone play a particular character.

59:45 And she was sort of wonderful in that.

59:47 So I've seen that twice in the theater within the same week and

59:51 really, really enjoyed it. And I have a friend who hasn't

59:53 seen it yet. And I'm like, I can get you

59:55 there. I'll take you again because it

59:56 was very fun. And the other one I saw this

59:59 year that's not on our list is Tron Aries that I kind of wanted

1:00:03 to mention because it also gets trashed and it's better the more

1:00:09 I think about it. I just think all of the Tron

1:00:11 movies are bizarre misfires, beautiful stylistic, creative

1:00:17 misfires with interesting music and effect.

1:00:20 So this is more of that. But if you take the last Tron

1:00:24 movie. And you say, you know, legacy.

1:00:27 And you say, hey, let's do that again.

1:00:30 Except people really liked Olivia Wilde.

1:00:33 Get rid of her and put in Jared Leto.

1:00:36 That's pretty much what you have.

1:00:38 So you can imagine how audiences reacted.

1:00:41 Jared Leto is a good actor, but he is not.

1:00:44 You'll never hear anybody say, I've got to see that new Jared

1:00:47 Leto movie. We don't say it as Americans.

1:00:49 He's not a draw. And I don't know why Disney bet

1:00:52 big on Jared Leto. He does amazing in it.

1:00:55 Y'all, he does a really good job.

1:00:57 But it is a big weird misfire like all Tron movies.

1:01:01 That having been said, they're big, weird, splashy misfire.

1:01:04 And this is starting to grow on me.

1:01:06 I think I might need to watch it again.

1:01:08 So if you haven't seen it and you're interested, you liked

1:01:12 Legacy, I would encourage you to give it a shot because it's yes,

1:01:15 it's bizarre, but I mean, you, you're, you're watching Tron

1:01:18 movies. What do you expect?

1:01:20 That's it for me. For additional, what do you got?

1:01:23 OK so Demon Slayer Infinity Castle.

1:01:27 This was something that was recommended to me by Preston, my

1:01:29 Co host over on Discerning Geeks Portal.

1:01:32 Went into it cold having watched nothing but a trailer for the

1:01:35 movie. It is anime, it's based on a TV

1:01:39 show, and in fact I think this might be the second big screen

1:01:41 movie for the TV show. I'm not positive about that.

1:01:45 And it split into three stories. I really liked the first story,

1:01:48 except maybe for how it ended. The middle story was in the

1:01:52 middle. And in the last story was way

1:01:54 too long, way too slow. It was like a redemption art

1:01:57 where I did not feel that much sympathy for that, that

1:02:00 character. I didn't care if that character

1:02:02 got redeemed. I was starting to wonder, OK, do

1:02:05 I live in this theater now? Should I have packed the bag?

1:02:07 Am I going to be here forever? I mean it just totally slowed

1:02:10 the movie down when we reviewed it on discerning each portal.

1:02:14 I was really kind to it at the time and gave it AC Plus because

1:02:19 since then I was like you know that third story dragged it down

1:02:22 so much. I have now lowered it to AC.

1:02:26 Also with the grade of AC is Mission Impossible Final

1:02:29 Reckoning and I feel bad about that because I've had mixed

1:02:33 feelings about the mission Mission Impossible franchise.

1:02:36 I did not like the first 2 movies so it took me a long time

1:02:40 to ever get around to the middle movies, but I actually ended up

1:02:44 kind of liking them. I think I would say like 3

1:02:47 through 7 I liked okay, but this one, the 8th movie was not a win

1:02:55 for me. I gave it a C yes, I know

1:02:58 there's some mind blowing stunts and everything, but there were

1:03:01 some other things that the movie did wrong, mostly separating the

1:03:05 Tom Cruise character from the rest of his team.

1:03:07 So that kind of took out the team aspect.

1:03:09 Tom Cruise was shirtless like two or three times in this

1:03:12 movie. So it made me wonder, OK, is

1:03:13 this like a like a, what is it Scientology propaganda thing to

1:03:18 get his next wife or something? It just overall it just didn't

1:03:22 work for me. Again, kind of a pacing problem

1:03:25 with that movie. So yeah, sadly, that one a sea.

1:03:29 I would just like to say about the Mission Impossible

1:03:31 franchise. I've seen two.

1:03:33 I've seen the original when it came out and I was upset that

1:03:36 they started by killing the entire Mission Impossible team

1:03:40 and not inviting Peter Graves to be in it.

1:03:42 Girl, you know that's right. And then I didn't watch another

1:03:45 one until friends invited me to the second to last one.

1:03:48 And I just, I've decided since then that James Bond and Mission

1:03:52 Impossible are pretty fun if you see them in a theater, like

1:03:56 they're kind of a festival. There's lots of cool stuff to

1:03:58 see. It was fun.

1:03:59 I had a good time. But I I wasn't really drawn to

1:04:02 see this one. No one invited me and I wasn't,

1:04:04 like, going to run out and see it.

1:04:06 So yeah, yeah. I'm not sure what's next for

1:04:10 Tom, but yeah, I'm not surprised by anything you're saying.

1:04:13 Yeah, that that franchise has never done great with the team

1:04:15 aspect. And every time it feels like

1:04:18 they're building a team, then one or two characters go away

1:04:21 and it's like, oh, and and so eventually the team is just like

1:04:24 a core of three people. It's basically even Hunt and the

1:04:27 two hackers, and it's just it's not enough, but they do well

1:04:31 enough in other ways that I kind of like the middle movies.

1:04:33 But yeah, that last one was not a home run.

1:04:36 OK, so switching to TV. Our first one is going to be

1:04:41 Alien Earth. What was your general response

1:04:44 to that, Todd? So yeah, I've got this.

1:04:46 One's a kind of a split of positives and negatives, but

1:04:50 ultimately it kind of faltered for me.

1:04:54 I feel like it had excellent production quality.

1:04:57 It successfully mixes the feel of alien encounters that usually

1:05:02 happen on ships and other worlds with the familiar locale of

1:05:06 Earth. The characters, including ones

1:05:10 that are, I can't remember if they're called androids or

1:05:13 hybrids, but those kind of characters, they start off being

1:05:16 intriguing and sympathetic characters.

1:05:18 Doesn't quite stay that way though, and it does an excellent

1:05:21 job introducing new species into the alien universe.

1:05:25 So it isn't just our Xenomorph, it's some other aliens then.

1:05:28 I think I've got one more positive and a few negatives,

1:05:31 but what was your impression? Faltered is a good word because

1:05:35 it kind of implies that you lose your footing or something.

1:05:37 So this show won me over right at the beginning because it did

1:05:43 a lot of extra work to match up to the aesthetic of the original

1:05:47 movie. And Oh my gosh, that just like

1:05:53 that's AI don't know heroin. What did you say?

1:05:56 It's like a shot of heroin or something.

1:05:58 Drugs are bad. You shouldn't do drugs.

1:06:00 Oh, good. The initial thing when every

1:06:02 episode starts is like a green cursor on the screen, which

1:06:06 matches up the show. They matched sound effects and

1:06:09 tones, and then they built a ship that was very, very similar

1:06:12 to the one we see in the first movie, which to me, if you match

1:06:16 to a previous aesthetic, you're really taking a shortcut to

1:06:20 authenticity. By lifting up that old movie,

1:06:23 you make your own movie more real for me and a lot of

1:06:26 viewers. And it did that.

1:06:28 So I bought into it and I loved it like they won meal.

1:06:31 OK, let's talk about LSD. That having been said, I feel

1:06:35 like the show was designed to have a terrifying one season

1:06:40 story and it built and scrambled and moved around and in the last

1:06:46 few episodes I feel like they got greenlit for a season 2.

1:06:50 And the guy wasn't. I mean he didn't just make stuff

1:06:52 up. This is not like Lost Season 2.

1:06:55 Drugs are bad because if you do drugs, you're a hippie and

1:06:57 hippie sick. He had ideas.

1:06:59 So it's it's not, it doesn't feel completely manufactured.

1:07:03 But it started to lose me then. So that's why I like the phrase

1:07:06 faltered in the last bit. I was very, very much less

1:07:11 interested. It seemed less tight.

1:07:13 It seemed to be wandering off into the woods as opposed to

1:07:17 going somewhere. So yes, season 2 might be

1:07:19 interesting, but I was really really they hyped me with those

1:07:24 first few episodes. Like it was very powerful and

1:07:27 well plotted. Yeah, I totally agree with you.

1:07:30 It did start off well. And in my notes I do say that

1:07:32 between the chaos of alien breakouts and Android hybrid

1:07:37 rebellion, the whole plot kind of gets convoluted there at the

1:07:40 end. And to be honest, I forgot where

1:07:43 the story left off, so I did. Maybe it will be good in Season

1:07:46 2. They're going to have to give me

1:07:47 a little bit of a training wheels on on what happened

1:07:50 because I kind of forgot already and a couple other negatives.

1:07:56 I kind of feel like some good characters kind of went down

1:08:00 some bad or weird paths and it ends up in a place where I'm

1:08:04 wondering who is the good guy in this show?

1:08:06 Who is the protagonist? I'm, I'm not sure that there is

1:08:10 a hero of the show. There might be 1 character, but

1:08:13 they're not as many as I was hoping for.

1:08:16 And then while the idea of seeing some of the people behind

1:08:20 the major corporations starts off kind of interesting, they

1:08:23 also end up basically being the embodiments of corporate greed.

1:08:27 And that's not totally unrealistic, it's relevant and

1:08:30 relatable, but it's also kind of blatant and annoying.

1:08:34 And so after a while, they just kind of end up being straight up

1:08:36 villains with little or no depth.

1:08:39 And who knows, maybe they're not supposed to have any.

1:08:41 But So those are my negatives. But steering back to the one

1:08:45 positive I have, and it's similar to what it might be,

1:08:48 similar to what you may have said, is that some scenes were

1:08:51 shot and edited in such a way that it does build some tense

1:08:55 moments. Even if sometimes some of those

1:08:57 moments are a little bit predictable, they're still

1:08:59 pretty, pretty tense. So yeah.

1:09:01 And my overall grade for this one is AC.

1:09:05 It did not start off that low, but it gradually sunk down to

1:09:08 that. I would say B, maybe B Plus, the

1:09:13 Alien franchise has struggled with what to give audiences.

1:09:17 You could make a comparison to something like Star Wars, where

1:09:21 some people want it to be exactly what they've already

1:09:23 seen, and some people demand that you show them something new

1:09:27 and no one is happy. And I think the creatives you

1:09:30 think about, like Ridley Scott, he says, oh, I'm going to give

1:09:33 you guys a new Alien movie. I'll do what I did when the

1:09:35 original show you things you've never seen and terrify you and

1:09:39 everybody. He did not realize how much we

1:09:41 love the Xenomorph. Like we just really wanted to

1:09:44 see some more Xenomorph. So he's very frustrated.

1:09:48 So in his second movie, he gives us a whole bunch of Xenomorph

1:09:50 and it kind of feels like a slasher.

1:09:53 And we weren't really thrilled with that either.

1:09:55 So this this show kind of splits the difference.

1:09:58 It gives you a full Xenomorph in a few seconds and then it kind

1:10:02 of parcels it out and it gives you these other creatures and

1:10:06 stuff that really do, Oh my gosh, just freaky.

1:10:10 So kind of trying to play it both ways.

1:10:13 And I respected that. The whole thing with hybrids

1:10:16 where you're like putting a child's brain metaphorically

1:10:20 into a robot, not literally. And are they really alive or are

1:10:23 they just transferred data is interesting.

1:10:26 And it didn't seem to mess up this, the alien continuity for

1:10:30 me. So I was, I was very curious

1:10:32 about that. And I like Sydney Chandler a lot

1:10:35 as Wendy. She was great.

1:10:38 But I do see what you're saying where it's like she feels like

1:10:42 our hero protagonist at the beginning, but not to give it

1:10:46 away by the third, from the last episode, maybe the second to

1:10:51 last, she really pretty clearly doesn't care about human life at

1:10:55 all. And I think she's pretty

1:10:56 straightforward about that. And it's hard to root for

1:10:58 somebody who is horrified that you have damaged A synthetic who

1:11:05 only tore a person apart. You're like, oh, maybe you're

1:11:09 not on my side. Like, narratively, I don't think

1:11:11 that's our fault as the viewer to say.

1:11:13 I don't think you're on my side. She's not.

1:11:17 So yeah, I I have problems with shows that don't have a clear

1:11:20 protagonist. They don't have somebody to root

1:11:21 for. Instead, it's sort of like,

1:11:25 you're just seeing what everybody's going to do.

1:11:26 And it's a lot of private interests.

1:11:28 But there were a lot of cool pieces in here, and they really

1:11:32 did introduce some new creatures, especially, of

1:11:35 course, the eyeball, which was the surprise secondary star.

1:11:40 You know, they showed us new things while bringing us along

1:11:43 with things we were familiar with.

1:11:44 So I think BB for Nick Oh Ironheart is next.

1:11:50 Yeah, So Ironheart, to me, it had excellent production

1:11:54 quality, good performances. It finally incorporated a

1:11:58 villain that people have been anticipating for a while.

1:12:02 And so overall it was good, but not that good because I do have

1:12:08 some negatives. But what was your first

1:12:11 impression of it? I did not like this show very

1:12:13 much. OK, I Well, so RiRi Williams is

1:12:19 a really cool and interesting character.

1:12:21 She is kind of like what you get if you have a genius Tony Stark,

1:12:26 grow up on the streets, self-made person.

1:12:29 They have all the ability, but they do not have the money and

1:12:32 the backing and stuff. So if you give them, you know,

1:12:36 air conditioner parts, unlike comics, they really can't turn

1:12:39 that into a robot, but they can turn it into cool stuff and

1:12:42 that's her. So I think as a character she

1:12:45 has a lot of promise. But this show, man, they, I

1:12:49 don't feel like they let her win very much.

1:12:52 Like, if you think about the first Iron Man movie, he he did,

1:12:56 he was sloppy and he got knocked down and he, you know, shot

1:12:59 himself into a wall. And it was kind of funny at

1:13:01 times and he struggled, but he also got to kick so much butt.

1:13:06 And I don't feel like in the entire series, RiRi really got

1:13:10 to confidently kick butt for more than half a second.

1:13:14 It's like every time she punched, well, she took two hits

1:13:18 in return. Her choices were all rough.

1:13:21 It was just I wanted her, I guess I wanted more for

1:13:25 Dominique Thorne. I wanted her to get more of a

1:13:27 kick ass opportunity. So it it frustrated me.

1:13:30 RiRi makes a lot of bad decisions all the time and

1:13:34 you're just like, no girl, please don't do that.

1:13:36 So yeah, I was frustrated with this series.

1:13:39 I'm not sure if I'll rewatch it. I just think there were some

1:13:44 good parts when you do watch people criticize Marvel and

1:13:48 they'll say things like this is what the graphics used to look

1:13:50 like. This is what graphics look like

1:13:52 now. And they try and trash Marvel.

1:13:54 You will notice they don't show any scenes from Iron Heart

1:13:57 because if they didn't bring a script that I like, they brought

1:14:01 excellent effects to her costume and her mechanics.

1:14:05 It looks really, really good. So you know, there's there's

1:14:08 some great stuff in there. She has listeners.

1:14:12 If you haven't seen it yet, spoilers, She's uploading an AI

1:14:16 and she accidentally sort of does something like putting her

1:14:19 dead friend's soul into her AI. So like Tony has different

1:14:23 people like Friday that he talks to in a suit or Jarvis.

1:14:27 She has Natalie, who is her dead friend Natalie, and it's really

1:14:30 messing with her, but it's kind of like, it really is this girl

1:14:36 and they mess with that. I thought that was very, very

1:14:37 clever, but I don't know if we got to go to great places with

1:14:42 that. It was just sort of another odd

1:14:45 thing going on. You want to say more before I

1:14:47 say more? Yeah, because you've already

1:14:51 mentioned something I would kind of agree with.

1:14:53 When I collected comics a few years ago, I think this was

1:14:57 actually pre pandemic, I went through a phase where I

1:14:59 collected comics for about two or three years.

1:15:01 And RiRi Williams was actually one of my favorite characters

1:15:04 that I was reading at the time. And so I really like that

1:15:07 character. And when they introduced her in

1:15:09 the second Black Panther movie, I was like, I don't know if

1:15:13 that's really what I imagined her being like, but I was like,

1:15:16 OK, I guess I just have to go with it.

1:15:17 She continued to not be what I imagined the character to be.

1:15:22 They did kind of go a different direction with her Weird thing

1:15:25 where she kind of hooked up with a group that would kind of steal

1:15:28 stuff. I mean, it just did.

1:15:30 It didn't feel right. And some of the support

1:15:34 characters are annoying, or at least that's what I have in my

1:15:36 notes. I was trying to think, OK, who

1:15:38 might I would be referring to? And I'm think I'm probably

1:15:41 mostly referring to that group that she hooked up with.

1:15:44 I did not like them at all. And then I also hate, and I'll

1:15:48 try to be vague on this so it's not sport, but I hate how it

1:15:52 ends with the main character showing bad decision making.

1:15:56 So it makes me wonder, OK, do I even want to see a season 2?

1:16:00 And if so, it really needs to involve a correction of what

1:16:03 happened at the end of Season 1. Yeah, we need to see RiRi make a

1:16:08 series of good choices and be rewarded for that because she

1:16:11 hasn't done that once yet. She has made terrible decisions

1:16:15 and then tried to fix those consequences and that's it.

1:16:19 So yeah, that's not really. That's not great.

1:16:22 She ultimately, like, I don't know, she creates additional

1:16:25 super villains. That's not that's not a good

1:16:27 ratio. I did like what Alden Ehrenreich

1:16:30 did. This is young Han Solo.

1:16:32 I'm playing Ezekiel and he's a nice guy and he's a good actor

1:16:37 and he plays the character well. But because of bad decision

1:16:41 making, that plot line seems to go badly.

1:16:44 I don't know. They bring in the Red Hood and

1:16:46 we kind of the Red Hood, I'm sorry, the hood, they bring in

1:16:50 the hood, which is we saw that character a little bit in What

1:16:55 if as an introduction. But yeah, it's I'm not giving

1:17:01 away the thing. You didn't give it away as well,

1:17:03 but some of that was OK. It just did not blow me away and

1:17:07 I wanted more. I did like that she has a friend

1:17:11 named Zelma who turns out to have like sorceress skills.

1:17:15 That was fun. I would say there are a few like

1:17:18 treats hidden in this show if you can get through all of the

1:17:22 stuff. But I don't know.

1:17:24 I I judge teens pretty harshly as a grumpy old guy, and I like

1:17:29 it when you show teens being heroes and making good choices.

1:17:33 When we saw the Hawkeye series, Kate Bishop, she doesn't beat

1:17:38 everybody. She's not as strong as some

1:17:40 people, but she's consistently awesome in almost the entire

1:17:44 show. Almost every choice she makes,

1:17:46 even if it's not a great choice, she's awesome.

1:17:49 And I don't feel like RiRi got to do that.

1:17:52 So yeah, I want to see some of that.

1:17:54 If they do a Season 2, I hope they do.

1:17:56 I hope they do just so they can do course correction.

1:17:58 Yeah, I don't know if we're going to see a season 2.

1:18:00 There are not a lot of these shows that get a season 2.

1:18:03 Some of them probably weren't intended to, so I don't know

1:18:06 this this might have been one shot, which kind of annoys me.

1:18:09 I wish some of these shows actually would continue because

1:18:12 I just don't feel like we get enough.

1:18:13 But but anyway for iron heart I give it AC plus.

1:18:18 I guess I'm around there with you.

1:18:20 I think you might actually be generous on this one.

1:18:23 OK, so our next one is Andor. Andor, we're going to hear some

1:18:30 some interesting takes on this. Ladies and gentlemen.

1:18:32 Let me let me do some of my overview first here and then you

1:18:36 sweep in on this. So Andor, if any of you don't

1:18:40 know, is an incredibly popular spin off of Star Wars based on

1:18:44 the Rogue One series and Cassian Andor really, really cool

1:18:47 character that came out of that prequel.

1:18:50 And it's popular because of how it shows political intrigue and

1:18:55 the slow building of a rebellion that would be shown in the

1:18:58 original Star Wars movies. Diego Luna does a really good

1:19:02 job. There are several quality actors

1:19:05 in here, like Stellan Skarsgard, who gives a famous speech that

1:19:09 yeah, I'll admit it, the show has some clever writing in it,

1:19:13 especially a couple of speeches, his and Genevieve O'reilly's as

1:19:17 Mon Mothma. I don't like it very much

1:19:21 because I'm a Star Wars fan from my childhood and Star Wars kind

1:19:25 of taught me to like good versus evil and moral dichotomy and

1:19:31 space Wizards and roguish smugglers and good guys winning.

1:19:37 That's that's on me. That's not to say there's right

1:19:39 and wrong, but this show is it is a slow burn, political

1:19:47 intrigue spy thriller set in the Star Wars Galaxy.

1:19:51 So if you watch the scene from the original Star Wars A New

1:19:54 Hope where they're sitting around the Death Star talking

1:19:57 before Darth Vader comes in, or you see any of the scenes in the

1:20:00 prequel trilogy when they're in the Senate talking about

1:20:03 legislation and you say. I want to show that's all of

1:20:07 that with no swords and lightsabers and and magic

1:20:11 powers. That's largely what Andor is,

1:20:15 which isn't to say bad. They they do a really good job

1:20:18 with some of it and I have some positives I can do.

1:20:21 But Todd, what's your take on this show?

1:20:23 OK, so you're saying you didn't like it?

1:20:26 It's not for Nick, OK. OK, thank goodness I'm not alone

1:20:30 because I didn't like it either. And I wasn't, I wasn't not that

1:20:33 fond of season 1 either. And I think I'm in the minority

1:20:36 on both because there are some people that I follow on YouTube

1:20:39 or in podcasts or elsewhere that say that this is the best Star

1:20:44 Wars has been, if not ever, then at least since the original

1:20:48 trilogy. And I don't get it.

1:20:52 So do you want me to do positives first or negatives

1:20:54 first? No wrong answers man, go with

1:20:57 it. OK, so since we're already a

1:20:59 little bit negative, let's come back to positive.

1:21:02 So let me, yeah, explain my negatives a little bit.

1:21:05 So similar to the first season is often too slow and or too

1:21:10 boring. You mentioned something about a

1:21:12 planet named Gorman where there's a bit of a rebellion

1:21:17 going on. There's one scene there where

1:21:19 people are chanting and singing and I get the purpose of hell.

1:21:23 It just goes on forever and ever.

1:21:25 And I'm like, I get it. And there are just other scenes,

1:21:28 inner first with that of just people just walking around, just

1:21:31 walking from here to there and from here.

1:21:32 And another person goes from here to there and it's like

1:21:34 they're all positioning themselves.

1:21:35 And I get like, I get it, Just get on with it.

1:21:39 So the whole show feels like it moves at half speed.

1:21:42 Some of the story is convoluted, even outright confusing,

1:21:46 especially the parts about the stolen fighter in the first few

1:21:50 segments. And that fighter never appears

1:21:53 again. And so I'm not even sure what

1:21:55 the purpose of that whole storyline at the at the very

1:21:59 beginning about the stolen fighter.

1:22:00 I don't know what that was supposed to be for then.

1:22:03 Let me see. Wait, let me let me respond to

1:22:06 that one because I had the same question.

1:22:09 And it was explained to me that we see him go on this fetch

1:22:14 quest. And the purpose narratively of

1:22:17 the fetch quest, I was told is when he crashes and eventually

1:22:21 escapes from the planet without actually accomplishing anything.

1:22:23 And they could have got that entire scene.

1:22:26 The purpose was to show him encountering early bits of what

1:22:30 would become the rebellion and how disjointed they were so that

1:22:35 they could be compared later with a more tightly controlled

1:22:39 connected rebellion. But it was frustrating to.

1:22:42 Watch. Yeah, because I kind of got that

1:22:44 because I think I was already losing interest like that early

1:22:49 that I wasn't paying enough attention and have a feeling if

1:22:52 I had paid more attention and maybe it would have been more

1:22:53 clear who those people were. But I got the impression that

1:22:57 everybody involved was on the same side, but they weren't

1:22:59 communicating well enough that they didn't know they were all

1:23:02 on the same side. Is that kind of what you're

1:23:04 saying? Yeah, but you and I are on the

1:23:07 same page. So there are people who enjoy

1:23:10 the show a lot and they're not necessarily fans of it because

1:23:13 those people really were all doofuses in the woods.

1:23:16 Nobody like, likes them. So yeah, it's not a pleasant

1:23:19 scene for anybody. It's just you and I don't see

1:23:22 much of the value and other people do.

1:23:24 Yeah, yeah. And then a couple of the other

1:23:27 bad things. Let me see at least one

1:23:29 character that we followed since Season 1 continues to be boring.

1:23:33 And to me, he's close to being pointless.

1:23:35 And I think I'm in the minority on that, too.

1:23:37 I think I've heard some people say, oh, it's it's interesting

1:23:40 seeing his his path. And I'm like, I do not care.

1:23:43 I never understood the purpose of that character.

1:23:46 Let me see, some climactic moments aren't as exciting as

1:23:50 they're supposed to be. One of the main examples being

1:23:54 Mon Mothma's speech. I'm not saying it's a bad

1:23:57 speech. It's just there's a whole lot of

1:23:59 anticipation for it. And then it's given it and it's

1:24:02 like, it's it's good, but it's not great.

1:24:04 And then there's the whole chase scene afterward to like get her

1:24:07 out of there and everything. And it's just not quite as

1:24:11 exciting as I think it's supposed to be.

1:24:13 So those are kind of my big overall negatives, and maybe it

1:24:17 was good to get those out of the way at first.

1:24:18 We can kind of salvage it with some positives next.

1:24:22 Do you have any more negatives or positives?

1:24:25 Yeah, just briefly off the top of my head.

1:24:30 Like I said, there are things that you may want from Star

1:24:32 Wars, and if you watch a Star Wars that doesn't have what you

1:24:36 want, you're going to be more frustrated.

1:24:38 So if you watch the original trilogy and you're like, I like

1:24:41 this, but I wish it was all on one planet with like teddy bears

1:24:44 fighting the Ewok adventure is for you.

1:24:47 And if you're frustrated by a like lack of lightsabers, you

1:24:49 may not enjoy the Ewok adventure and the battle for and some

1:24:53 people don't think that's great. Star Wars.

1:24:56 If you watch Star Wars and you really, really like like some of

1:24:58 it, but you kind of wish it was a variety show, the Star Wars

1:25:01 Holiday special might be for you.

1:25:03 And some of us are like, I don't want a variety show.

1:25:06 So for those of us who don't especially want a slow burn

1:25:10 political intrigue spy thriller, this was very difficult to

1:25:14 watch. But for those of you who are

1:25:16 like all I want from Star Wars is spy political thriller.

1:25:20 I'm sick of lightsabers and space Wizards and clear right

1:25:24 and wrong. I want to see the struggle of

1:25:26 people on the ground without God like entities controlling their

1:25:29 every decision and stuff. You know, some people really

1:25:33 appreciate it. The only thing I resent is that

1:25:35 I feel like some people feel like they feel like I'm saying

1:25:39 my Star Wars is right and then they don't realize that they say

1:25:42 the same thing back. So if you think that space

1:25:47 swords are childish and intrigue is grown up and the only way as

1:25:53 a grown up you can continue to enjoy Star Wars is if it grows

1:25:58 up with you and leaves behind teddy bears and lightsabers.

1:26:04 It frustrates those of us who feel like we can grow up and

1:26:07 still enjoy what it used to be and and is sometimes still.

1:26:11 So I would argue that we all need to let each other enjoy

1:26:14 things. I do think Todd and I talked

1:26:18 briefly about some other franchises and how they struggle

1:26:21 with trying to be gritty and realistic and others try and

1:26:26 have fun and what's right and wrong and fan service.

1:26:31 So one of the most popular moments in Andor season 2.

1:26:35 That is not a speech is when K2, SO the awesome robot from Rogue

1:26:40 One, gets to do something and he walks into the building and

1:26:43 absolutely kicks ass and it's awesome.

1:26:47 Big surprise, it's awesome. And like the hallway scene in

1:26:54 Rogue One, it's a big departure from what the rest of the show

1:26:57 is like. But people seem to really enjoy

1:27:00 it. So I would argue that you'll see

1:27:02 that in a lot of different shows where they will sneak in a

1:27:04 little bit of something that is that other format.

1:27:08 And that's, you know, I think that we can have it both ways.

1:27:11 But the other, yeah, yeah, I have positives, but I think

1:27:16 that's plenty of negative. I think there's good things

1:27:19 about the show, but there are some things that frustrate me

1:27:22 just because of my taste. So what are some of your

1:27:24 negatives of positives, Todd? OK, so this has unbelievably off

1:27:29 the charts production quality on a scale of 1 to 10, the

1:27:31 production quality about a 15 or 20.

1:27:34 Part of that is some amazing real life scenery and shooting

1:27:37 locations, some things that you would see and you would think

1:27:41 surely that architecture has to be fake.

1:27:43 Surely they're using, you know, either the volume or some kind

1:27:48 of other special effects. But then I looked and there are

1:27:51 actually some places, I think there's a place in Spain that

1:27:54 has that really interesting architecture.

1:27:56 And now that I think about, I think I've seen it in other

1:27:58 movies or TV shows before and they use that and other, you

1:28:02 know, real places and it just looks awesome.

1:28:05 From again to end, basically visually, everything in both

1:28:09 seasons 2 and one are visually flawless.

1:28:14 Great performances. You know me, I like a little bit

1:28:17 of structure. I like the format of the four,

1:28:20 three episode segments with a year in between each segment.

1:28:24 I like that. I just, like I said, I felt like

1:28:26 it went too slow. So each one of those segments

1:28:28 really should have been 2 episodes instead of three.

1:28:30 And usually I like more episodes, but I like more

1:28:33 episodes that are filled with stuff.

1:28:34 I felt like these were stretched.

1:28:35 But anyway, I do like the structure, just not the pacing

1:28:39 that goes along with it. And even though I've done a

1:28:42 little bit of griping about the story, the character's pacing,

1:28:44 and excitement, I will admit that all of that did gradually

1:28:48 improve toward the end. It just was enough to save it

1:28:51 overall. And if it's any consolation,

1:28:55 yes, I said I didn't like it, but I also didn't hate it.

1:28:59 And so I do give this AC which is the top end of my Not Like it

1:29:04 category. OK, so positives when I watched

1:29:10 season 1 and I was very, very frustrated and I but I do try

1:29:15 and round everything up and focus on the positive and what I

1:29:20 really liked in season 1, as you mentioned, the production value

1:29:23 is top tier that I was still getting to wander around in the

1:29:27 Star Wars Galaxy and sightsee. You know, it's just like a

1:29:31 museum and in a world in a universe that I really enjoy.

1:29:35 If you make a soap opera set in the wizarding world of Harry

1:29:39 Potter, but I still get to see flu powder and witches in Diagon

1:29:43 Alley, I may watch the soap opera.

1:29:45 So it's like I I got to see cool settings and places and robots

1:29:50 and ships, and I was trying to really focus on that.

1:29:53 So some of the culture really spoke to me in that sense.

1:29:58 I like bits with Mon Mothma and her husband.

1:30:04 I think Per Per and Furtha that they they do some things.

1:30:11 They're Chandrillin. And I remember when they did a

1:30:14 toast in season 1 and they say Sigrona and then you say back

1:30:18 Sigrona Tima. And I'm like, wow, U.S. star

1:30:20 Wars fans, for the first time we have an official toast.

1:30:23 I haven't heard it all. A lot of other people do it, but

1:30:26 I loved it. And apparently the writers,

1:30:28 including Tony Gilroy, felt the same way because in season 2,

1:30:32 there is this wedding toast that Paran Fertha gives.

1:30:36 And this is the best part of the whole show to me, just because

1:30:40 it's it's beautiful. It's a beautiful wedding toast.

1:30:43 I would use it at a wedding tomorrow.

1:30:45 Like it. It translates really well.

1:30:47 It it's about joy and pain and how you struggle as a couple and

1:30:52 looking for the good moments and appreciating them and not just

1:30:56 it's wonderful and beautiful. And I think they wrote some of

1:31:00 that culture very well. That is my biggest positive.

1:31:04 My other positives are just probably some of the work done

1:31:07 by the actors. When we talked about Doctor Who

1:31:10 for our Christmas episode, we mentioned Faye Marseille and

1:31:13 she, she's in this, but she's just such a chameleon, getting

1:31:18 to play these other characters. But she's Velsartha in this, and

1:31:22 she's very serious and a very different person.

1:31:25 Bix is pretty great, but I think just even more than the good

1:31:32 guys, you have this evil couple and it's it's a Deidre Miro and

1:31:39 Cyril and Cyril and Deidre are just so interesting to watch.

1:31:44 They're not my favorite thing, but if I had to sit down and

1:31:46 watch this show, just their weird interactions.

1:31:49 These are two very odd people and they are not on the good

1:31:53 guys side. They're committed to what

1:31:56 they're doing. So I thought both actors were

1:31:58 kind of amazing. If you see them backstage or

1:32:00 talking about making the show, they're really interesting

1:32:03 people and the characters they create are really great.

1:32:06 So I bought into all of that. I wasn't outside of the drama.

1:32:10 I part of Gaz the the way that things are set up and when

1:32:14 Chronic shows up and how he interacts with them, I thought

1:32:17 that was all done really, really well.

1:32:20 I do appreciate some of the writing and I I get some of the

1:32:25 acclaim. It's just, yeah, a different set

1:32:28 of tastes. I think that's it for my

1:32:31 possums. Who were those characters again?

1:32:34 Well, the two. Characters and Deidre are the

1:32:37 evil ones that are the couple, the awkward couple.

1:32:42 Yeah, the office guy and the and then the other woman and they

1:32:44 kind of pretended to be a. Couple there, evil office guy

1:32:47 and evil office woman. Well they are.

1:32:50 I think they're about as in love as Imperials could be at that

1:32:53 high level where you just use everybody and constantly think

1:32:56 about public appearance. And she tells off his mom in

1:33:01 this really manipulative, controlling way that's kind of

1:33:04 good. Like she's not a bad guy at that

1:33:06 moment. She's like the things that

1:33:08 you're doing are unacceptable and this is how it's going to be

1:33:10 moving forward. And she might as well have been

1:33:13 a non neurotypical good guy in that scene.

1:33:16 She was an interesting character, so it was played

1:33:18 really well. But there are lots of characters

1:33:20 and choices like that part of Gas is their superior for a lot

1:33:25 of it. And he's a very good actor doing

1:33:26 a good job. Lutheran Rail, Stellan,

1:33:30 Skarsgard. His speech was good that

1:33:33 everyone raved about in Season 1.

1:33:35 But I don't know, like the character didn't knock me over

1:33:39 as much as probably Clea. And I feel like they tried to

1:33:42 suggest in Season 2 that Clea ended up being the center and

1:33:50 that we all kind of felt like it was Lutheran all the time, but

1:33:53 she was really doing so much of the connection and planning and

1:33:57 things that she was the brain behind a lot of it.

1:34:00 But that was just, there were things like that to make us

1:34:03 question stuff. So I I respected these actors

1:34:06 and what they were doing work wise.

1:34:08 It just that the storytelling style didn't connect with me as

1:34:13 much. But like, there's a robot called

1:34:15 B2 EMO, you know, I didn't know his name.

1:34:18 I had to look it up. I think they call him B for a

1:34:21 lot of it, because this is not a Droid story.

1:34:24 It's not that kind of Star Wars. Yeah, yeah, you're right about

1:34:29 all the acting. The acting is fine.

1:34:31 No issue with any of the actors. But those two characters I was

1:34:34 asking about, they were complete waste of time for me.

1:34:37 I did not understand their purpose.

1:34:39 The yeah, they were just too much of a diversion.

1:34:43 Well, so Cyril has both of them have very poignant ends and that

1:34:50 that meant a lot to me. So I think that's the the time

1:34:53 that I felt most what fans of the show were talking about.

1:34:58 And to defend Tony Gilroy and his craftsmanship, he really

1:35:04 does like Gorman. When you brought up Gorman, he

1:35:08 did do his homework and he dug into the lore and there really

1:35:11 were events already in the timeline that he built the story

1:35:15 around. And he asked himself, you know,

1:35:18 what can I do with these characters?

1:35:20 What kind of Arc can I put them through and where do they end

1:35:23 up? So I don't even know if I want

1:35:24 to give that away because maybe one of y'all listening have

1:35:27 watched the show and enjoy it and the things that are so good

1:35:31 that I like them a lot. You should stick through to

1:35:33 that. So I really felt a lot of

1:35:36 poignancy and how serial story ends and how Deidre story ends.

1:35:40 I thought that was done very, very well.

1:35:42 And what, I keep forgetting her name, Clea Elizabeth de Lau.

1:35:47 She has this scene in the hospital.

1:35:50 It's almost played for comedy at moments.

1:35:52 It's a terribly serious scene, but she's kind of Wheeling an ET

1:35:57 around this ET grandmother. And yeah, it's it's interesting

1:36:02 choices. So yes, there were some good

1:36:04 things in there that I enjoyed. My my grade is, I don't even

1:36:08 know if I have a grade for this show.

1:36:09 It's an A for some people and you know, not a book I would not

1:36:16 reread for Nick. So I I appreciate y'all

1:36:19 appreciating it. I may look at the speech every

1:36:22 now and then and that's about it.

1:36:23 The wedding toast, but that's it.

1:36:25 Moving on. Yeah, another.

1:36:27 TV show, Our last TV show. We were going to just touch a

1:36:32 little bit on Stranger Things, which just ended.

1:36:36 So this segment, listeners, it will probably contain a little

1:36:39 bit of spoilers. So if you got this far and you

1:36:42 haven't watched Stranger Things Season 5 yet, the grand finale,

1:36:45 the entire show, there's so many goodies in there.

1:36:48 So please pause this episode, come back to us later.

1:36:51 But we've both watched it and we're going to get into what

1:36:55 happens in the whole show and like what we think of it for

1:36:58 this year. So Todd, what was your general

1:37:00 response to Stranger Things Season 5?

1:37:04 It was definitely good. There were some bumps in the

1:37:08 road along the way, but there all were also some things that

1:37:11 impressed me, especially about the very last episode.

1:37:14 So I do feel good about it. Just to kind of set the stage a

1:37:18 little bit, I've never been huge on Stranger Things.

1:37:21 I have always watched it and had just enough enthusiasm to, you

1:37:25 know, binge watch it as soon as it comes out.

1:37:27 But I'm not one of those people who's ever been a super fan of

1:37:30 it. And so this season to me, it's

1:37:35 ups and downs weren't that different from other seasons ups

1:37:38 and downs. And so it was nice to see the

1:37:42 conclusion of the story and to have it contain some closure.

1:37:45 But at the same time, it's not like I was absolutely blown away

1:37:49 by anything, nor did I feel like anything was garbage like some

1:37:53 people on on TikTok and and YouTube might have claimed.

1:37:58 So how about you? I've heard a couple of people

1:38:00 complain or point out things that they didn't like or didn't

1:38:03 resonate with them. And I think everything in Season

1:38:07 5 was targeted directly at me. So I appreciated all of it.

1:38:11 I liked all of it. I think the weird bits for other

1:38:15 people were like, I was the guy that is just like raving about

1:38:19 it. And I guess I kind of hear what

1:38:21 you're saying. So like, the second-half of the

1:38:24 last episode is more about resolution than conflict.

1:38:29 And some people wanted more conflict.

1:38:31 They wanted the action to keep going.

1:38:34 And instead they ended the entire series, the finale

1:38:38 finale, with resolution for all of the characters as much as

1:38:42 they could in that time. And I've heard two different

1:38:45 sources say that this was some kind of a let down for them.

1:38:49 But I was just eating it up with a spoon.

1:38:52 I thought it was absolutely great their writing and how it

1:38:55 was done, and I have also seen people online point out my new

1:38:59 details and just things that they incorporated from previous

1:39:02 seasons and references and callbacks that I would have

1:39:05 missed. So I think there was a lot of

1:39:07 thought that went into it. So yes, I'm a big fan of the

1:39:10 series. I've rewatched all of it until

1:39:14 season 5 at least twice, and I'm assuming that we'll probably go

1:39:21 through a bunch of it a bunch more times.

1:39:22 I'm kind of trivia for Stranger Things, but this was, this was a

1:39:25 great conclusion. So yeah.

1:39:27 Yeah. And as far as my positives, I

1:39:30 would say again, mind blowing production quality, very

1:39:33 different kind of production quality.

1:39:34 You know, obviously a lot of fake locations because of it

1:39:37 being in you, you know, a fantastical world and

1:39:39 everything, but just a lot of visual effects being used.

1:39:43 Also the D aging of Will in that very first scene that was kind

1:39:47 of a flashback to when he was young longer.

1:39:49 All of the flashbacks that they had to edit in just all the

1:39:53 special effects, just oh, and all of the both real life full

1:39:58 body makeup and also special effects used for Vecna and other

1:40:03 monsters and everything. I mean just mind blowing

1:40:05 production quality. You can really tell if they

1:40:08 threw a whole lot of money at the screen.

1:40:10 Mostly good acting. There might be a tiny exception

1:40:14 and I'm not even sure I'm right about that.

1:40:15 I'll get to that in the negatives.

1:40:17 And then I've already kind of implied it, but some very nice

1:40:21 nostalgia and bookending in the series finale, those are some of

1:40:25 the techniques I really like where they kind of take a look

1:40:27 back at how far they've come since the first episode and they

1:40:31 do get a little nostalgic. And you said some people really

1:40:34 wanted more action. I'm one of those people where

1:40:36 it's like, if the entire last episode had been nothing, like

1:40:40 they had already wrapped all that up in the last episode was

1:40:43 nothing but just saying, what was all this for?

1:40:46 Again, among so many other reasons, that's one of the

1:40:48 reasons Babylon 5 is still my favorite TV show of all time is

1:40:52 because J Michael Straczynski knew to wrap up all the big

1:40:56 stuff before you get to the finale.

1:40:58 And then when you get to the finale, all you have to do is

1:41:00 say goodbye for an hour. Whenever a series finale comes

1:41:04 on, I'm always watching the clock saying, OK, how much more

1:41:06 time do they have? And I was doing that during

1:41:09 this. I was like, OK, I think they're

1:41:10 almost wrapped up with the action stuff.

1:41:12 Oh, good. They're going to have something

1:41:13 like 40 minutes to just do Thealzia and saying how far

1:41:18 they've come. And sure enough, they did.

1:41:21 And also think that the final scene, what our main characters

1:41:26 were doing, that final scene was a great way of bookending, you

1:41:30 know, compared to the one of the first scenes, if not the first

1:41:34 scene from the first episode of the whole show.

1:41:37 I thought that was a great way of kind of bringing things full

1:41:40 circle. So yeah, those are my positives.

1:41:43 Yeah, yeah. And I'm just did this with Alien

1:41:48 Earth. But you want to try and have

1:41:51 something familiar while also having something new.

1:41:54 And you want to keep the previous lore and honor it and

1:41:59 use it and grow it in cool ways, but also grow the lore.

1:42:03 And in season 5, they expand the universe of Stranger Things and

1:42:10 the dynamics of it and very creative ways that I felt

1:42:13 landed. It was there was already plenty

1:42:18 there, but they added more. They had like a whole nother

1:42:20 level, literally. So I felt like that was good.

1:42:26 The only complaints I have I think are things that I felt

1:42:29 like they could do with even more seasons just because I

1:42:32 enjoy the show so much. Everything that I've heard

1:42:34 people criticize, I think I've bought into in the extreme.

1:42:37 What you said about bookending. I mean, you have a group of

1:42:41 kids, and it's centered around a group of kids at the beginning,

1:42:43 like little kids, Will's friends and 11:00.

1:42:46 And then you have sort of this, you got a couple of rambly

1:42:50 adults, Hopper and Joyce, mostly running around.

1:42:53 And the group of kids grows. Max shows up in Season 2.

1:42:57 And you also have more and more adults like Murray showing up

1:43:02 and bit by bit. But we get to the end and we've

1:43:04 got a pile of kids and a pile of adults and they're all running

1:43:08 around doing stuff and I felt like they found a lot for all of

1:43:12 them to do. There was 1 moment where Joyce

1:43:15 showed up and I genuinely didn't know she was there because I

1:43:18 hadn't seen her. Just editing wise, I'm like, oh

1:43:24 hey, what did Joyce get here? You know, I knew there were like

1:43:27 8 people there or something, but I hadn't seen all their faces.

1:43:29 But everybody seemed to have things to do.

1:43:32 I like that. I like that they had what you're

1:43:34 talking about where you have a sort of bookended closure for

1:43:38 the kids and then you have another bookended closure for

1:43:43 the adults. And you have this group of young

1:43:48 adults, older kids that have grown along the way.

1:43:51 Steve Harrington's age group with Nancy and how she keeps

1:43:54 juggling boys all the way through the series and each of

1:43:57 their journeys. And you kind of have them

1:43:59 together and we've grown that group as well.

1:44:01 So I, I loved all of those closure bits.

1:44:05 I thought that that was really, really cool.

1:44:07 And I think, you know, if you have the whole series be about

1:44:11 kids not having normal and then you show them having some

1:44:15 semblance of normal at the end, I thought that was amazing.

1:44:19 It's kind of like the epilogue in the last Harry Potter movie

1:44:23 where it's like, how do you really give a character a happy

1:44:26 ending when it feels like every six months something terrible

1:44:28 happens? Well, you've got to show the

1:44:31 future a little bit further than six months and show that the

1:44:36 next terrible thing didn't happen and they seem to be just

1:44:39 doing OK and they did that. So that was great.

1:44:42 Yeah, So we might actually disagree on a couple things here

1:44:46 because one of my negatives is that overall the show,

1:44:49 especially after a huge gap between seasons, got more

1:44:54 complicated when it should have gotten simpler.

1:44:57 And so I felt like they added a whole lot of new locations.

1:45:02 And there again, well, maybe not new locations, but there were

1:45:05 too many locations. And in fact, you know, they were

1:45:07 talking about how old this is dimension X and this is this

1:45:10 other thing. It has been so long since

1:45:13 Stranger Things has been on T or since season 4 that I just

1:45:18 thought there was Hawkins and the Upside Down and I had

1:45:20 forgotten about the rest of it. So that when they talk, start

1:45:23 talking about Dimension X and one other thing beyond dimension

1:45:26 X, and then they add this new thing to say how they're all

1:45:28 connected, but they're upside down from each other.

1:45:31 I was like, OK, they've they've lost me.

1:45:34 And especially when they try to make it sound science fictiony

1:45:37 when this is really fantasy or horror.

1:45:40 In fact, I kind of hate it when Stranger Things get slumped in

1:45:43 with science fiction say, and people say, oh, this is one of

1:45:46 the best science fiction TV shows ever.

1:45:47 I was like, it's it's not science fiction.

1:45:50 But anyway, you mentioned the characters.

1:45:53 Yes, there were a whole lot of characters.

1:45:55 I do feel like there were too many characters and that not

1:45:58 enough of them were useful all the time.

1:46:00 Usually I love it when shows have a sprawling cast of both

1:46:05 main characters and support characters.

1:46:07 It's one of the reasons I love Deep Space 9 and Stargate

1:46:11 Universe is they have all these extra characters, but all of

1:46:15 those extra characters have their own little thing to do.

1:46:18 I feel like sometimes Stranger Things was just filling up the

1:46:21 screen with Warm bodies, and they didn't necessarily each

1:46:25 have a unique purpose. So I did feel like there were

1:46:30 too many people, too many locations, too much new stuff in

1:46:33 the final season. And I've still got a little bit

1:46:35 more negatives, but I'll let you take a turn.

1:46:38 Well I like it when you argue about genre because you had

1:46:42 mentioned before. I'm re listening to our

1:46:45 Christmas episode about Doctor Who and listeners.

1:46:48 Todd makes a distinction between Doctor Who and being science

1:46:52 fiction versus being possibly like, what did you say?

1:46:55 You said horror maybe, or a part of horror, possibly fantasy.

1:47:00 Yeah, and sometimes fantasy, sometimes horror like.

1:47:03 Yeah, and honestly some of y'all may find arguments like that

1:47:07 pedantic, but I find them kind of hilarious because if you care

1:47:10 about content, the specific designations can matter a lot.

1:47:14 So, for example, I do not like horror and I don't, I mean, I

1:47:18 literally don't like being scared.

1:47:20 And if you turn all the lights on and you show me the creature

1:47:22 effects, I think I have a wonderful time because I like

1:47:25 monsters and fantasy. But I don't want the thing to

1:47:28 jump out and grab me by the ankle and I scream and get

1:47:31 dragged into the bed and there's a splatter of blood.

1:47:33 That doesn't appeal to me as much.

1:47:34 But my friends point out that I consume all of this horror

1:47:39 content, and my argument is not that it's not horror.

1:47:43 Some of it is definitely horror, but in my mind, if there are

1:47:47 monsters, if there are creatures, and most of all you

1:47:50 think about Dracula or the Wolfman or or a bunch of things,

1:47:54 even the Xenomorph, there's a mythology.

1:47:57 There's lore and lore and mythology and preachers appeal

1:48:03 to me. So I would argue I'd be wrong.

1:48:06 I admit it, but I would argue that some of the stuff that's

1:48:09 called horror Nick sees as dark fantasy.

1:48:14 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm like.

1:48:17 Dark fantasy, I still don't want the person to slowly be stabbed

1:48:21 in the eyeball, you know, especially when they scream and

1:48:24 and things like that. And season 4 at the beginning.

1:48:27 I mean when the 1st girl gets killed it's so brutal and I'm

1:48:32 like whoa, I don't know if kids should be watching this.

1:48:36 That is much closer to horror. Each of these seasons brings in

1:48:39 different movie like inspirations.

1:48:42 I think you pretty much have a guy like the Terminator running

1:48:44 around in Season 3 and that's pretty fun.

1:48:47 But Season 4 at the beginning I'm like, OK, we're doing Freddy

1:48:51 Krueger and we're doing a little bit of Hellraiser.

1:48:54 OK, not for everybody, but there are aspects of it I like.

1:48:58 So yes, I kind of see where you're coming from.

1:49:01 My definition of science fiction is where you incorporate clever

1:49:07 scientific ideas and scientifically fantastical

1:49:11 notions and try and build a narrative around that.

1:49:15 So when you have things like wormholes or piercing an

1:49:19 alternate dimension or experiments on people or things

1:49:22 like that, yeah, it's all muddled for me.

1:49:24 And I, I don't draw the same distinction.

1:49:26 But yeah, I think I enjoy that more.

1:49:31 I went, I want people to, you know, it's like, oops, you got

1:49:34 chocolate in my peanut butter. Oops, you got peanut butter in

1:49:36 my chocolate. If I have my fantasy with dashes

1:49:39 of science and my horror with dashes of fantasy and you mix

1:49:43 them all together, oh, my gosh, that's just great for Nick.

1:49:46 So yeah, I'm just a confused person.

1:49:49 I will say what you said before. We have talked about things

1:49:52 being grounded and not grounded. And in Season 4, I realized that

1:49:58 we had created a third dimension where we have Hawkins and we had

1:50:03 the Upside Down and Vegna introduced a dream dimension

1:50:07 where people were like in Trances and then they were in

1:50:09 his little Freddy Krueger dream boiler.

1:50:12 Room kind of war. And I'll be honest with you, it

1:50:17 started to get kind of confusing because they had to fight him in

1:50:22 in two different places in Season 4.

1:50:26 And even that narratively I held on and I was OK.

1:50:30 But this one, he was in two places again and possibly 3, and

1:50:36 he would jump from one to the other.

1:50:39 And it's like, oh, well, he's not there anymore because he's

1:50:41 back over here. You know, normally Freddy

1:50:43 Krueger doesn't escape you by jumping into your world, running

1:50:46 down the street, you know? But it's kind of like he Vetna

1:50:48 could do that. So there was some confusion with

1:50:52 the narrative there. I was mostly OK, I followed, all

1:50:55 right. But I could tell that

1:50:58 narratively there are people in the audience who didn't get that

1:51:01 at all and just rolled with it probably.

1:51:03 But yeah, it's like, wait, so how many worlds are there?

1:51:06 Because technically this one had at least 4.

1:51:11 And that's a lot for an area. They helped it a little bit in

1:51:14 Season 5 by frankly not doing much of the upside down or

1:51:19 making the upside down kind of like the, The Dirty end of town.

1:51:23 Like because the, the, our world, the upside down, we're so

1:51:26 connected by Season 5 that you can kind of drive from one to

1:51:29 the other back and forth. So it's sort of like a big

1:51:31 fence. It's like, well, we're over here

1:51:33 in the upside down side and we're back over here and you

1:51:35 know, it's, it's a lot more connected.

1:51:37 So try to bring that back down to feeling like two or three

1:51:40 worlds, but it was still a lot of worlds.

1:51:43 Yeah, because there was the upside down, the place where

1:51:45 everything was red. There was the desert inside the

1:51:48 desert. He couldn't go in The Cave.

1:51:50 It's just yeah, there. Yeah, that was dream world, but

1:51:54 but there's also, there's a red dream world with water on the

1:51:57 ground and stalagmites, and that's the dream world we saw

1:52:02 mostly in season 4. And then you have dream world.

1:52:05 That's his consciousness. You're right.

1:52:07 You just convinced me. We are up to at least 5

1:52:09 dimensions and that's that's a lot of dimensions.

1:52:12 And then there was the house and the park and it just just too,

1:52:15 too many places. It's a.

1:52:16 Lot and when, when Elle goes in, she's in a 6th place because

1:52:20 it's all wet and black and that's her mind and not his.

1:52:24 Yeah. So it's like that's a lot for a

1:52:26 viewer to keep track of. And she they do explain it to

1:52:30 us, the audience, because a character says like, wait, are

1:52:33 we in this place? And Ella's like, no, we're in

1:52:35 this place. So they they are aware.

1:52:38 But it it was fine for me narratively, but it was

1:52:40 complicated. And then let me see, so already

1:52:43 talked about too many locations and too many characters, but

1:52:46 more specifically when it comes to the characters.

1:52:48 Also, some characters were added a little late in the game and

1:52:52 that were pretty important for being added late in the game.

1:52:55 And I'm I'm thinking mostly about Holly now.

1:52:58 I've seen a lot of people online really compliment that young

1:53:00 actresses acting and they are right.

1:53:02 She is awesome. No complaints whatsoever about

1:53:05 the performance. Where did that character come

1:53:07 from? I know that Mike always had a a

1:53:10 sister, but she was always younger and they had to age her

1:53:13 U. So I think this is a brand new

1:53:14 actress laying the role and to make her important all of a

1:53:18 sudden in the very last season. And then to also have this other

1:53:22 subplot with her and the other kids.

1:53:24 And the kids keep coming and going and it's like they almost

1:53:27 get rescued, but they're not quite.

1:53:29 And they keep getting put back in the thing with the tubes

1:53:32 going in their mouth over and over again.

1:53:33 It's like that was too much again in the final season.

1:53:37 The show should have been getting simpler instead of more

1:53:39 complicated. And so as much as she did a

1:53:42 great job, it was just like an added complication that I can't

1:53:46 help but wonder, did it really need to be there?

1:53:47 Especially the whole thing with like, collecting the kids.

1:53:50 Because in the end, that didn't matter because the final battle

1:53:53 was basically just everybody against Vecna and a giant

1:53:56 spider. So the kids were basically just

1:53:59 there to be rescued. And that that's it.

1:54:01 Also, a few other plot points were left dangling.

1:54:06 And if you go out there on the Internet, you're going to find

1:54:08 plenty of people on either TikTok or YouTube who will point

1:54:11 them out. Two that stand out in my mind,

1:54:14 What happened to all the pregnant women that were

1:54:16 introduced to at 1:00 point who are supposed to be growing new

1:54:19 versions of 11 and eight? I guess they got totally screwed

1:54:24 over when the upside down got destroyed.

1:54:26 And then also there was a whole lot of shooting, especially by

1:54:30 Nancy of American soldiers. Were there any consequences for

1:54:35 shooting American soldiers? I mean, yes, they might have

1:54:37 technically been on the bad side and I guess you could chalk it

1:54:40 up to self-defense, but still, they were killing American

1:54:43 soldiers. And after the the Upside down is

1:54:47 totally wiped out, then we go to like 18 months later and nobody

1:54:51 is in jail and nobody's been on trial and everybody is just

1:54:54 totally free. And so, and I'm not the only one

1:54:57 to point that out. So that's a plot hold that other

1:55:00 people have mentioned too. He's not a long.

1:55:02 Last and then lastly about the acting, I mentioned there was

1:55:05 one possible exception and it has to do with Millie Bobby

1:55:09 Brown. And I'm not saying she's a bad

1:55:11 actress. She's been, she's been great.

1:55:14 And you know, I have nothing against her or anything, but

1:55:17 some people have pointed out that her facial features don't

1:55:21 move as much in this season. And some people have theorized

1:55:24 that she might have Botox. And I'm honestly not enough a

1:55:27 big enough expert on Botox or any other plastic surgery to

1:55:31 know whether there's any truth to it or not.

1:55:33 But subconsciously, I did kind of notice that there was

1:55:37 something going on with her face or maybe not enough going on

1:55:41 with her face, and it just did just seem like, I don't know.

1:55:45 I don't know if it was the right choice to like slick her hair

1:55:47 back. Maybe there was maybe it wasn't

1:55:50 like a like a problem with her face, like any muscles or nerves

1:55:54 or anything like that. Maybe it was a makeup problem or

1:55:57 a hair problem, or maybe it was a me problem or maybe it was an

1:56:00 Internet problem. Maybe I never would have noticed

1:56:02 it until I came across some people saying it.

1:56:05 And then it got stuck in my brain and then I was seeing

1:56:08 things that maybe I never would have seen before.

1:56:10 But I couldn't help but notice something where it's just like,

1:56:14 yeah, she is a good actress and she is emoting, but it's not

1:56:18 coming through on her face as much as I would expect.

1:56:21 And then they also kind of intercut some flashbacks of her

1:56:25 as a younger kid. And I was, like, trying to

1:56:26 compare, you know, what was her facial features, you know,

1:56:31 moving? Was she really acting with her

1:56:33 eyes and her forehead and stuff more when she was younger?

1:56:36 And I'm not sure she was. So maybe it is our imagination

1:56:39 and we're just looking for something wrong.

1:56:41 But still, regardless of whether it was right, wrong, accurate, a

1:56:45 misconception, it was a distraction if nothing else.

1:56:49 OK, so just to to restate mansplain what you might be

1:56:54 saying, like there's a chance that Millie Bobby Brown has

1:56:59 played Eleven with a sort of flattened affect and not using a

1:57:03 lot of the muscles in her forehead and stuff consistently.

1:57:06 And this is how she portrays this character.

1:57:08 But the Internet might be promoting the idea that there's

1:57:11 other reasons for it. And then that can get in your

1:57:13 head. Yeah, as one possible

1:57:15 explanation, right. Yeah, so maybe she's had no

1:57:18 Botox and no plastic surgery whatsoever, and maybe it's total

1:57:21 crap. Somehow the crap got into my

1:57:24 head by accident, so I apologize.

1:57:26 Your head was thoroughly full of crap to start with.

1:57:28 No, that's OK. It's, and I mean the the actors

1:57:33 have changed and grown a bit. But yeah, she is.

1:57:38 She's had the biggest blow up off stage that we've seen in a

1:57:40 lot of interviews and stuff. I swear Finn Wolfhard looks

1:57:43 largely the same. I like that they let him be Mike

1:57:46 be a little bit less of a jerk in the season because he's often

1:57:49 very frustrating to me. But yeah, I agree with you about

1:57:52 Nell Fisher. Holly Wheeler, this little girl

1:57:55 who played Holly Wheeler in the previous seasons.

1:57:57 I I wish they hadn't had to recast her.

1:58:00 But this other actress apparently is just a

1:58:02 professional little kid actress who stopped acting after she

1:58:05 wasn't a little kid. So Nell is, she did step in and

1:58:09 do a pretty good job with that. I think I was fine with

1:58:12 everything else you said, but yeah, I did.

1:58:14 The pregnant women did occur to me and they went out of their

1:58:17 way to say that. This is also a memory that

1:58:19 Callie had from a while back when she got loose.

1:58:22 We don't know how long ago. It could have been the day

1:58:24 before or like a year before. But she said at the time that

1:58:28 they were all dying. I think that was an intentional

1:58:31 writing choice to suggest that if they they might have already

1:58:35 been dead, that experiment might have already been terminated.

1:58:39 Or when they did die in the cataclysm at the end, they were

1:58:43 already mostly dead, but it was just supposed to be a driving

1:58:46 force not to do more. But you are right, there was a

1:58:48 lot of collateral damage. There were a lot of lines

1:58:52 crossed in this. It didn't bother me narratively,

1:58:54 but I can totally see her. And then there's actually one

1:58:57 more negative that I forgot that I don't have in my notes, and

1:59:00 that is that there were a lot of scenes that kind of came to a

1:59:03 screeching halt by too much talking.

1:59:05 And don't get me wrong, when I know when I complain about

1:59:07 pacing, I probably make it sound like I just want everything to

1:59:10 just be neck brake pace all the time.

1:59:12 No, there are moments for fast pace or moments for slow pace.

1:59:15 I just feel like there were some moments where it's like, OK,

1:59:18 we've got a plan. We got to get going, we got to

1:59:20 get going. And it's like, let's slow down

1:59:22 to talk about something for half an hour.

1:59:24 And I just felt like there was nothing wrong with those scenes

1:59:28 and there's nothing wrong with talking and interacting.

1:59:30 That's where you get your character development and

1:59:32 character interaction. It's just I always felt like

1:59:34 they were. Sometimes I'll timed and went on

1:59:38 too long and it's just, I just feel like they just need to hit

1:59:41 the gas a little bit more often. And I know I gave a whole bunch

1:59:45 of negatives, but they really are small negatives.

1:59:48 They really are just nitpicks. What this show does well, it

1:59:51 does very well. So overall I actually do give it

1:59:54 AB minus. I guess I'm in the A+ plus

1:59:57 range. I I think my only negative about

2:00:00 season 5 is that we really didn't have any Demogorgans.

2:00:06 Like they dragged a dead one over and used it well, no, no

2:00:09 Season 5 Part 2 I got to stand corrected.

2:00:11 We had plenty of plenty of them in season 5 Part 1.

2:00:15 The show is largely about Demogorgans for the first three

2:00:18 seasons. There's a lot first two seasons.

2:00:22 So yeah, I just, I think I love the creature, just like I said

2:00:25 about the xenomorph. But oh, my goodness.

2:00:28 I went to the theater to see this last episode on New Year's

2:00:31 Day. I waited a day because of

2:00:33 holiday stuff, but was not spoiled for me.

2:00:36 And we were all worried about who was going to die and who

2:00:39 wasn't going to die. And there's a moment in the

2:00:41 finale when we think a character's going to die.

2:00:43 And I swear to you all, there was a lady in the audience who

2:00:46 yelled at all of us. I am going to leave right now.

2:00:51 Y'all don't do character's name like that.

2:00:55 And she meant it. And we were all like, we loved

2:00:58 it. So that I mean, that's why you

2:00:59 go to the theater. But yes, I I liked how all of it

2:01:03 turned out. So that's pretty good.

2:01:04 There were loose ends like you talked about.

2:01:06 And we have Doctor K played by the amazing Linda Hamilton to

2:01:11 bring some gravitas. And you know, as far as we know,

2:01:14 she's still running around. She doesn't have like

2:01:16 comeuppance and the series will often have the bad guy get it in

2:01:19 the end. The same way with the bullies

2:01:22 who beat the ever living crap out of Dustin.

2:01:24 You know, season one or two, something would have to happen

2:01:27 to them or they have to learn some kind of lesson.

2:01:29 But in this, the characters kind of tell Dustin that he's picking

2:01:32 these fights like it's a lot of it is his fault, which is brutal

2:01:36 because the guy's injured. He looks he got the crap beat

2:01:38 out of him. So but yes, that was those were

2:01:42 interesting choices and I was fine with it.

2:01:44 But bad guy in season 4, he dies brutally.

2:01:47 It takes half a second. So you might have blinked and

2:01:49 missed it. But yeah, usually jerks get

2:01:52 what's coming to. And I did not like the moment

2:01:55 where the the fake out happened because I think the fake out was

2:01:59 a little too blatant. I mean, when you literally cut

2:02:01 to black, so you're basically stalling, it's like, oh, is he

2:02:05 going to make it or not? And let's actually black out the

2:02:09 screen. So we're at literally showing

2:02:11 you nothing, just letting you just we're just stalling.

2:02:15 I I didn't like that. It's one thing to kind of like

2:02:17 fake people out or or whatever, but to actually just cut the

2:02:21 black, that's a step too far for me.

2:02:25 It works. That that's their way of saying

2:02:27 no, we we're just, we're literally messing with you and

2:02:30 even letting you know we're messing with you.

2:02:32 Yeah, there were a few moments when I really thought this

2:02:35 character, that character was about to, you know, the rumors

2:02:38 going around. So any of you listeners who may

2:02:40 not be in the Atlanta or Georgia area, we have a lot of filming

2:02:44 locations here and we actually have a place that I think

2:02:47 they're called Hawkins HQ South of Atlanta where they have a lot

2:02:53 of sets. I think it's the Main Street

2:02:55 with Melvald's store and stuff. They have the storefronts up so

2:02:59 you can tour locations and stuff.

2:03:02 And they had, I think on the second they had a candlelight

2:03:06 vigil. They said it was to recognize

2:03:10 the impact of the show. They tried to say in the

2:03:12 advertisement, we're not saying we know anything, but almost all

2:03:15 of us knew going into the last last episode.

2:03:18 We expected we were just trying to figure out who was not going

2:03:22 to make it like we're putting bets on who was a goner.

2:03:26 And it's like we were all we're all tense and grasping for our

2:03:30 favorites. So yes, that was I love that

2:03:33 they had a pre emptive planned candlelight vigil that I think

2:03:37 was very on the nose. Yeah, because it's whoever dies,

2:03:41 it's tomorrow. But yes, yes, lots of stuff.

2:03:47 Yeah, I did see, I think a TikTok video or a YouTube video

2:03:51 about what you're talking about, about that that street where

2:03:53 they have some of those locations.

2:03:55 And in an earlier season, there was a time when I when I was

2:04:00 coming home from Dragon Con, I stopped at the mall that served

2:04:03 as Star Court Mall. So I took a picture the outside

2:04:06 of it and they had one section kind of walled off, but you

2:04:10 could kind of like peek in a crack and see where they had

2:04:14 redecorated this one area to make it look like the 80s Star

2:04:18 Court Mall. And it probably was not very

2:04:22 hard to do that because I think that's one of those malls that

2:04:25 was near death itself. I don't even know if it's still

2:04:28 there or. Not, yeah, Gwinnett Place Mall

2:04:30 is there and I've shopped there and is.

2:04:34 We did not get as locals to tour it while it was all set up.

2:04:37 Pretty, but I don't think. But yeah, we all knew that was

2:04:41 going on and we saw lots of pictures as it was happening and

2:04:43 stuff. But yeah, you can still go into

2:04:45 that mall and stuff. It's just no longer pastified.

2:04:49 But yeah, cool stuff. Final thoughts on STRANGER

2:04:52 Things? Well, just overall a a good

2:04:56 show, but just not one of my favorites.

2:04:58 So I do respect what they pulled off for five seasons.

2:05:03 I think they had some things going against him like the

2:05:07 pandemic and then the strikes. And so I know that it was

2:05:11 probably never their intention to stretch out a five year story

2:05:13 into 10 years. And so all the jokes we make

2:05:16 about the kids looking older, you know, I know that probably

2:05:19 all of that was never intended. And if they had it their way,

2:05:22 they would have done five years in five years.

2:05:25 So I try not to hold that against them, but at the same

2:05:29 time, because there were these great big gaps, I think they

2:05:33 should have put some training wheels in that last season

2:05:35 because like I said, I went in thinking, what is this location?

2:05:38 What is that location? Who is this character in that

2:05:41 character? And there were just so many

2:05:42 things I forgot. I felt like they didn't help out

2:05:46 with that any. They went full steam ahead and

2:05:48 maybe they should have, but for for those of us that didn't

2:05:51 rewatch anything, I was maybe trying to play catch up a little

2:05:55 bit and it still ended up making just enough sense.

2:05:59 But like I said, there were so many things going on, it was a

2:06:01 little convoluted. So that's why it kind of ends up

2:06:03 being in the middle for me at B minus.

2:06:05 I will say as my final big compliment for the show, it's

2:06:09 it's hard to maintain tone over that many seasons and years.

2:06:12 And even though the show is not typical and it did not follow

2:06:17 our mythology and patterns from a lot of the shows that came

2:06:19 before, it did seem to stick to its original tone.

2:06:24 Everybody knows that there are retcons and that the Duffer

2:06:27 Brothers did not plan the entire Vecna arc from the beginning.

2:06:31 In fact, I have my own theories about how it was originally

2:06:34 supposed to go, but that's for another day.

2:06:37 But if you know that, and they say it in interviews, that they

2:06:40 came up with a lot of this stuff later as they were going.

2:06:43 They just needed to find cool ways to grow it.

2:06:46 I think that they did it really well.

2:06:48 So like, there are things in each season as it grows and as

2:06:51 you bring in the demo dogs and the Mind Flayer and Papa and all

2:06:56 the things that they're doing and other experiment kids and

2:06:59 finally Henry Creole and things like that.

2:07:02 It's done well. Like the universe has expanded

2:07:04 successfully in a way that doesn't mostly contradict what

2:07:07 came before. So I think they did a pretty

2:07:10 good job on that. None of it's perfect, but yeah,

2:07:14 I do recommend it has a rewatchable show to most of you

2:07:18 fans. It is great for the evenings and

2:07:21 stuff. You turn off all the lights and

2:07:23 you revisit any one of the seasons but totally restart

2:07:26 season 1. And it is, it is very there are

2:07:29 parts you've all forgotten that are really, really fun just in

2:07:32 season 1. The worst part about season 1 is

2:07:35 how much I like Steve Harrington and he's just an 80s jerk in 99%

2:07:40 of season 1. So that's other than that, it's

2:07:44 great stuff. Love Stranger Things, very

2:07:46 impressed with what they accomplished.

2:07:48 So I think that's it. Yeah, I think so.

2:07:50 I was hoping we might have time to maybe work in a little bit

2:07:54 that's not movies or TV or maybe do some honorable mentions for

2:07:57 TV. But we're also 11 hours.

2:08:00 Yeah, if you end up dividing this into we, we split between

2:08:03 movies and TV at about the halfway point.

2:08:05 So we'll see what you do with that.

2:08:07 Yeah, if you want to mention your two, I don't think I had

2:08:10 another show that I really needed to get out.

2:08:13 Like I wanted to mention Tron Aries or something.

2:08:15 So you can do some highlights if you want.

2:08:19 OK, so yeah, I've got two big lists, but everything is really

2:08:23 spread out between D plus and A. But for the sake of time, I will

2:08:28 just give the A's. I've got three.

2:08:31 That would be the Pit, the medical drama that some people

2:08:36 say is the most realistic medical drama on TV, at least

2:08:39 currently, if not of all time. High Potential is one of my

2:08:43 favorite shows that's on ABC and Hulu.

2:08:46 Technically, the A goes to the second-half of season 1 from the

2:08:52 first part of 2025. The first half of season 2, I

2:08:56 give it a minus, is still good, maybe not quite as good, but I

2:09:01 mean just barely. It is still one of my favorite

2:09:03 shows going right now. And then of course, another show

2:09:07 that people are really talking about that I give an A to is

2:09:09 Pluribus. Yes, it has a terrible pacing at

2:09:14 times and the main character can be abrasive.

2:09:16 I hate abrasive people. And again, a little too much

2:09:19 profanity, You're a friend print.

2:09:21 But it's also got multi layers of very philosophical

2:09:27 storytelling, a lot of topics like individuality, self

2:09:31 identity, groupthink, plus a little bit of culture,

2:09:34 creativity, grief, loneliness, and love mixed in.

2:09:38 There are even some undertones that deal with either AI or

2:09:41 religion. It's kind of a unique take on

2:09:45 the post apocalyptic sub genre of science fiction.

2:09:49 And the performances are amazing.

2:09:51 I think the main actress has already won a critics choice

2:09:54 award. I just saw that earlier today

2:09:58 and it's still sparking a whole lot of philosophical discussions

2:10:02 online. And there's going to be plenty

2:10:03 of time to discuss it because unfortunately, even though this

2:10:06 has already been renewed for season 2, I think it's not

2:10:09 coming until 2027 or maybe even 2028.

2:10:14 So we've got two or three years to discuss 9 little episodes,

2:10:18 but I am impressed how much those 9 episodes have in them to

2:10:22 discuss. Oh and I just noticed all three

2:10:25 of my big ones are P words, the pit, High potential, and

2:10:29 Pluribus. You hear that producers think

2:10:34 heavily. So yeah, 9 episodes is

2:10:37 watchable. That sounds doable.

2:10:39 So we will look to the future listeners coming up next time on

2:10:44 Alienating ourselves. Nick and Todd return to

2:10:47 Alienation and explore episode 12, The Red Room.

2:10:52 Someone has broken into a behavior lab.

2:10:54 That's where next to where Kathy works.

2:10:56 This makes it personal for Matt, sort of.

2:10:59 And there's an apparently unrelated string of murders

2:11:01 giving George mysterious deja vu.

2:11:04 Could it all be connected again? Find out next week, probably.

2:11:09 As Todd and I continue alienating ourselves, I continue

2:11:12 to be Nick. I'm Todd.

2:11:14 Thank you for joining us. We'd love to see some reviews

2:11:17 wherever you listen to podcasts. If you love us, like us, or can

2:11:20 barely tolerate us, please give us five stars.

2:11:22 If you really hate us, please give us four stars.

2:11:25 If you give us three stars or lower, you'll be cursed to never

2:11:29 stop writing 2025 on your checks.

2:11:33 As always, may all your milk be as fresh or as sour as you

2:11:36 prefer it to be and have an amazing 2026.

2:11:39 Good night everybody.