PLUS The Terminal List: Dark Wolf, and Smoke spoiler discussion

31:01If I'm doing this and I'm editing it, I'm putting it on pilot and you can't stop me. Yeah. Bravo. I went a bit rogue there. A little bit rogue. A little bit rogue one, if you will. Luckily, the best interview about Alien Earth was our one with Alex Lothar, which is on this feed because it's part of Pilot. Congratulations, Boydo. Yeah, yeah. Just saying. Some more messages about Alien Earth. So we've got one from Nicola who says, Hi, Dot and Ethel. Now that James is back, I think, I was thinking about this, I think he would be Dr. Leg in this scenario. Dr. Leg? Yes. You don't need to trouble yourself, James, about who that is.

31:36Maybe Frank Butcher. Ooh. No, because then he had the twirling bow tie. No, I don't want to think about James like that. Oh, God. Oh, my God. In the post-Thailand James, you know, persona. My eyes, my ears. Okay, anyway. Hi, Dot and Ethel. It occurred to me whilst watching Alien Earth that the nasty ice spider creature seemed familiar. Then Timothy Olyphant reminded me, Mr. Bull Legs from Santa Clarita. Is this a coincidence or did Timothy arrange for his former co-star to be given a new role after the show was cruelly axed? I have to be honest, I never watched the Santa Clarita diet. It didn't really appeal to me.

32:16So I don't get this reference. I watched some of it, but I don't get the reference either. I don't remember that element of it. That was a wild, wild show. Yeah, wasn't it Drew Barrymore, Timothy Olyphant, cannibalism in the suburbs? Basically, yeah. Okay, I obviously didn't watch it. Baha says, oh yes, in honour of Alien Earth, what are some franchises that never got a TV show and you think should? In the live pod, it was mentioned that, oh, Alien Earth is Alien franchise's first TV show. We know that Marvel have overdone it to perhaps their detriment. Bond is in danger of it after the MGM sale.

32:50and Star Wars surprisingly knocked it out of the park with Andor after some hits and mostly misses. And there are many more examples of big franchises testing out the prestige TV waters. So what already existing franchise would you like to see as a TV show and think would work especially well in that format, whether it's a spin-off about a character, a completely different setting, or just an expansion of the story and the world? Brackets, importantly, not asking about adaptations. yeah no that's fair but weirdly adaptations tend to be where it works best because books are long and they are better suited often to long-form storytelling than you know the sort of short cinematic treatment the books you read might be long they're not necessarily long well no take even a crime thriller right even a crime thriller like yes some crime thrillers are quite sort of like structured in such a way that they can be quite easily pared down to work as a movie but then equally some of them are slightly knotier like you know take uh like the alex cross run to be fair that wasn't actually based on the book was original story so that's a bad example but like you know if you get a really knotty crime thriller actually works better as a long-form thing that said some of them also outstay their welcome so you can you can go wrong in in either capacity um i don't know i think this is it's a dangerous thing this sort of like ip farming era that we're in at the moment where it's like how much can we possibly milk this ip for before it just dies and marvel 100 did it and you know say what you want about the state of Marvel at the moment, but I do think the arrival of Disney Plus during the pandemic and all of those TV shows, that sounded the death knell for the golden era of Marvel, just because it was just too much.

34:22It was just overload. And weirdly, exactly the same is true of Star Wars, except then Tony Gilroy pulled it out of the bag with Andor, and Andor just immediately forgives all sins because it's so much better than anything else in Star Wars. So you're like, okay, I will forgive your fucking, all of your fucking book of Boba Fett and all this other shit if I can have Andor, so that's absolutely fine. But I don't know, is dangerous the mandalorian was good the mandalorian was good and i enjoyed it but like i don't think it's you know i remember thinking that as the first fruit or at least the first fruit that we saw on screen of yeah of star wars spin-off tv stuff that i think at the time everyone really appreciate really yeah but it did also downhill from that diminishing returns yeah and also i thought obi-wan was very mid ahsoka was a bit mid i didn't enjoy scale and i feel a little bit like again with all these things when a star wars movie arrived it used to be a cultural event and it was so exciting and then there's just star wars every three seconds like go back you know back in the day you had the original trilogy and then you had to wait decades for more films and so it was this massive thing and even with marvel and they were churning up multiple films a year each film still felt like an event and i think and god i've you know i've talked about this so endlessly i'm so sorry for being boring about it but the tv shows i think leech that event status from those films and they made them run of the mill and that was their biggest crime.

35:40Anyway, this is not answering the question, by the way. I don't even remember what the question is. What would I like to see? None of them. None. Don't do it. I've got a good answer. Go on, Boyd. Totally away from that genre. But you know, because the Spinal Tap sequel is arriving soon. Unfortunately. Oh, God. One of the funniest films ever made, obviously. No, the sequel. Have you seen the sequel? No, I haven't seen the sequel. Have you? I have not seen the sequel, but then I've not seen the original, so I'm not really one to judge. In fact, we're going to be reviewing Spinal Tap 2 on the Empire Live podcast in a couple of weeks.

36:11So really, I'm probably going to have to go and watch Spinal Tap for the first time in advance of it. Yes. So I should be interested to see how it directly measures up. Yeah. Well, anyway, I know someone who has seen the sequel, but anyway, we can't talk about it because it's heavily embargoed. Anyway, but what I'm saying is Spinal Tap, I think, would make for a really good TV show because they improvised half of it anyway. And in fact, you could easily have all of those brilliant improvisational comedians playing those characters in a half hour sitcom form and I am mooting that right now and I think it should happen and there's an article in the current or most recent issue of Empire where Alex Godfrey interviews them in character Yeah, that's amazing and it's hilarious It's amazing It's really funny Yeah and so they could they could adapt themselves those characters into all sorts of situations so yeah that's my answer to the actual question my actual answer to the actual question rather than droning on endlessly about Star Wars welcome back james hi um message now from annika he says i recently started a rewatch of euphoria and completely forgot how outrageous shocking and bold the pilot is which shows do you think were the boldest of their time working to push boundaries another obvious example is the excellent queer um queer as folk that's the answer isn't it yeah well and boyd's other answer will of course be Skins.

37:30Yeah, it will be. I've got another answer. Go on. Girls. Yeah, oh, definitely. 2012. Yeah, that's a good one. For sure. Lena Dunham's comedy drama. Yeah. I mean, in a way, it's completely the opposite of those shows, Euphoria, Skins, which are daring in their kind of explicit nature, if you like. But something like The Royal Family, which was just, you know, a half-hour sitcom about people sitting around watching TV, that was revolutionary at this time. I mean, that was absolutely... Well, in which case... Oh, sorry to interrupt. Sorry. That's okay. No, I made my point. Well, in which case, I know it's not the genre we are supposed to talk about, but then in that case, Big Brother.

38:09Yeah. Back in the day. Yeah, yeah. I'm not supposed to talk about that. Yeah. Also, I just thought... It was the first. That was the harbinger of doom, that show was. It ushered in the nightmare era of reality TV for me. That's one achievement we can all applaud then. Yes, that's true. I met Nasty Nick, incidentally, at the premiere of Snatch. Wow. Was he nice? Was he nice, Nick? He was wearing a sun hat. And someone, I remember someone came up and thrust him at Brad Pitt. And Brad Pitt had to have his picture taken with him. And Brad Pitt was like, who the fuck is this guy? It was very funny.

38:42We've had mentions before because there was the whole thing that Nick, wasn't Nick going out with Brad Pitt's girlfriend or something like that? There was some connection there. Oh, really? Yeah, it was insane. We're talking about nasty Nick rather than Nick DeSemlin, right? Just to confirm. Nick DeSemlin is nice, Nick. yeah oh yeah he is nice neck also the office yeah it was quite yeah definitely groundbreaking completely right i think that's about it we've got more stuff but we can save for the next post bag because we got to get smoky now yes where there's smoke there's fire uh or in this case a spoiler chat about smoke on apple tv plus so if you've not yet seen smoke the absolutely batshit dennis lahane show on apple tv plus then maybe go and do that before you listen to this if you have then spoilers await let's sound the klaxon

39:31okay before we discuss all things smoky uh okay you had a you had a question didn't you had a listener question germane to this particular show yes well rather it was a bit of feedback they wanted to have their say so um amar said just finished the smoke um finale and my thoughts are really entertaining and never dragged taron edgerton and journey smollett were excellent leads also great supporting cast amma liked freddie who he thought was terrifying he said the twists were never over the top what unbelievable i mean i'm i've got stuff to say and overall a really good time and it it's in his shows of the year so far who is this wise um communicator amma absolutely yeah yeah and then oh right and so i like to have a bit of you know i want to have a balanced um output yeah so now we've got a message from kathy who says just listen to the latest plus and agree with you and your correspondent on smoke i think she's agreeing with me she said i thought it was a huge mess of a show sorry boyd taron edgerton was so over the top and his character was just baffling i mean what was the final episode for me this show was all grit and darkness but emotionally empty as shakespeare put it it was full of sound and fury signifying nothing on a similar theme oh yeah just as a side note on a similar theme i was also your correspondent who said apple shows were the ones that they gave up on most i was wondering whether and we disagreed um with that well i specifically and she said i'm wondering whether this is a consequence of you three getting to binge shows all in one go while us normies have to go week by week i i too tend to lose the will to continue with something that has clearly got lots of apple cash behind it but can often be self-indulgent and yes pretentious the deliberate pacing of some apple shows along with some big swings brackets i'm looking at you sugar and smoke and probably a ton of other shows beginning with s means it's not high on my list of favorite streamers although at least it hasn't given shows to youtubers yet um and then she kathy finishes by saying i'm also mad that so many people tend to overlook one of its first and very best shows dickinson three seasons of just a brilliant bold and lavish show obviously an homage to you there boydo dickinson was good it was no c but it was it was good yeah it was good yeah it was yeah yeah that was like day one apple tv plus wasn't it i think that's right yeah so that's some of the feedback we've had about smoke i get it you know like i get why people don't like the show um and while i actually did have a really good time with it and i wonder whether part of that is because i was able to binge it i think that definitely helped for me and i think if it had been week by week i probably still would have watched it but i would have found it more frustrating like i enjoyed being able to just mainline it a little bit but um i you know i don't i maybe i don't think it's maybe as good as boyd thinks it is as i really enjoyed it but i do think it's quite flawed what i like about it is it it does swing for the fences like it really does and i've read the interviews with dennis lane talking about it and i love how he literally name checks tonal shifts he said our goal was to have like a tonal shift at the heart of every single episode and you do feel that like the tonality is all over the place and it but but deliberately so so it's not jarring and i did enjoy it and it's like a it's quite you know in its own way because it is essentially a study of modern toxic masculinity like that's essentially what he set out to do with this series and i think the way he explores it is really interesting but i think you really have to be able to kind of get on board with this very particular frequency which is absolutely fucking mad and tonal shifts all over the place and performances that walk a line between being actual normal relatable human beings and not being in any way how people act slash speak um but it is weirdly gripping and i think part of that is that there's something mad that happens in every single episode of this show and you just you can't stop watching it because you want to see what happens next and you know you're all the way through you think oh my god i can't imagine what they're going to think of for the finale and oh my god did they pull it out the bag in the finale with the maddest episode yet i i listen i will defend the show to my dying day this is if you know i'm sorry but obviously you go along with the tone of it and and the tonal shifts and all of that but give me i don't like to blow my own trumpet but remember when we reviewed this show to start with i pointed out that for me what when peak tv really really works and the reason it's become a thing and the reason we we do this podcast really is for the shows that go that do swing for the fences that go that further just go that bit more over the top in a in a kind of self-aware way they know what they're doing right i just uh you know that the denser hand gave an interview to variety after the finale went out that was absolutely brilliant at underlying my point that they he felt if i'll read you the quote now.

44:18As we progressed in the writer's room, we kept going, how much more extreme can we take this? Because we are living in extreme times. I remember the day I came in and said, and this is for the final finale twist. I came in and said, Dave is not Dave. Dave's not looked like Taron Egerton. And it was pretty early. And we hid it from Apple because we knew they'd hate it. And they did. He's my kind of guy. Yeah. And everyone was like, what? And I was like, no he's projecting the storyline is about projection he's projecting who he is and then i love that element of yeah that shot was fucking brilliant and and to have another final twist that's even better in a way than the end of episode two twist that kicks the whole thing off is genius and i love that and for me this sums up what's good about outrageously kind of daring bold tv drama and i just love it and i think it achieves everything it sets out to do which is And you say, you know, oh, it's because we had access to the whole thing.

45:17But I definitely would have carried on watching it diligently week in, week out. I think after episode two, you definitely would, right? Oh, 100%. Because that twist is so good that you then, like, feel compelled. Like, you just need to know. And it did help. I think it did help having it to bitch because I binged it pretty much quick smart. Oh, no, I love that experience. Yeah. I love that experience. I really, like, I really enjoyed the whole thing. I found it very fun and entertaining, especially after the episode two twist. I couldn't get it. you know, I couldn't lap it up quick enough because I was like, oh my God, this guy is so crazy and so weird.

45:51And I think Taron Egerton probably is the only one of the few people who could play this character, right? No, he's fantastic. It's all in those small little glances, the weird little furtive eye movements, the smirks. I don't know. He just plays it so well. And I was really on board with the whole thing and I really enjoyed the whole thing. But my issue is the finale, right? I really did love that whole, you know, the reflection in the mirror and we realized that actually it was just a projection. He's like, you know, he looks very differently in real life and it's part of his, you know, his whole mask rating as a different person.

46:26FYI, one of my favorite small detail moments is when his wife, I think it's his wife, Ashley, or maybe it's just his partner, Hannah Emily Anderson, says to him like about taking off the fake glasses. like and at that point I was like oh my god even the glasses are fake just this small little brilliant detail about how odd he is and so telling about his psyche that it's just a small thing that he wants to do to appear smarter or more sophisticated when in fact he's just a big phony like but um yeah the the bit that really just pulled me out of it and I saw oh my god okay I know I know you're being bold and ambitious and like swinging for the fences and all that and everything but it's that fight driving into the fire right fine i get that all good it looks really beautiful crashing the car right and our friend journey aka michelle somehow miraculously survives with just maybe four or five beautiful scratches on her face totally walks away with it grabbing a scrunchie i love the scrunchie i love the scrunchie no probs i mean at that point i literally I was really pissed off because I was like, wait, I mean, and I know it's ridiculous for me to get angry considering what has come before it.

47:39But I was like, this is a joke. Come on. She like, she wouldn't have survived. And it's, and I know like you're going to come back and say, yeah, but there's a lot of it that isn't maybe, you know, realistic and whatever. But I was just, I found it annoying. That part of it. But I mean, like I did like certain elements though of that scene. like you know when he does that annoying little laugh that he does and she just absolutely knees him in the balls knees him in the knackers and i was like yeah very effective when she shoves the gun in his mouth that scene right the that was another one that i was just like okay this biblical rain coming down dripping off her chest as she sticks this phallic gun in his mouth um it was just ridiculous it went on way longer that scene in the original 45 seconds it was originally that sequence was because he said lehane said he wrote it as a rape scene like that was that was the intent yeah um i totally get it's totally um i think probably more people will agree with you than me i'm sure yeah but um i i just i just say i just look i just love things that go go for broke and um you know by that point i don't think we watch for me i'm like i'm not watching this show for realism do you know what i mean i'm not i'm not expecting you know um gritty gritty you know diligently observed um yeah authentic authentic um story plot lines or this it just you know again it's all about you just buy into the type of the mad tone of it or you don't again i'm just gonna read one more quote sorry i'm obsessed with this interviews it's so brilliant dennis lane's i love him anyway i mean this is the guy i remember who wrote shutter island which is one of the most preposterous stories slash films ever made it is yeah that has one of the great you know timactic twist things that happens he said so he said i wrote the notes for this episode in a kind of fever my assistant viewed some of it and it's one of the craziest things she ever saw i went into a room and turned on the oppenheimer soundtrack on a complete loop and then i just began to envision everything and threw it up on a board i felt like a mad scientist but that's where all that all that came from i knew what molly miller another writer done in episode eight so i was like oh man the gauntlet is thrown i've got to top that go big or go home was the whole point of that episode yeah well he's certainly done that like and like i said overall i did enjoy it was just that those those two moments that scene yeah i just was like it pushed me to the edge i didn't that didn't worry me too much i think that's that's something we see so often in kind of police or even just action shows it's like yes you've gone through a window and you're absolutely fine go for it grab your scrunchie let's move on like i did that didn't worry me so much i think the like the revelation that his self-image is what we've been seeing all way through was an interesting one because there's that episode halfway through when he has the car crash where you see a flash of the real dave in the mirror because the mask slips yeah because his wife has just essentially said she's leaving him and his sense of self is shaken and so you see the real him before he kind of corrects himself and at the time i love the fact that that is just dropped there without any explanation whatsoever and we're left for weeks not knowing what the fuck was going on yeah and then at the end we realized that all along he's looked like this i will say the fact that he's a bit bald i felt attacked i felt attacked well he's a thought listen well the worst than that is a ball over like middle-aged trap like i was like no no even more so he's a he's a baldy weirdo right that's even you know he's yeah i'm talking about how how clear that connections to to me and you're saying he's also a weirdo yeah yeah i felt attacked by that revelation no sorry i didn't realize that's what you're doing his heroism fell away with his hairline sadly yeah i do like the fact that it was like you know when the michelle and dave like are talking about themselves you know and i like the fact that she herself it's not black and white right it's not like a villain and a hero and she herself has transgressed and i like that exploration at the end um can i just give a little shout out to fred the character freddy who i think is fantastic all all of that storyline you know including the bit at the end i think it's the penultimate episode when he um plans to set fire to brenda the hairdresser's house and um i just thought throughout he's been phenomenal i hope he gets an award actually because i think he's a real standout in the whole thing um but also as a in those scenes right just sort of highlighting again dave and his fucking weirdness because if you recall he goes into the house and it's his heroic moment he like but you know he's he sprays that fire extinguisher all over him and then we pat and it pans down which is a brilliant moment from dennis pans down and he's got erection the hero boner yeah yeah that's so upsetting well he goes in In the interview, Derek Nezler goes and says, yeah, he effectively ejaculates on the guy.

52:32Oh, yeah. Oh, good. Of course, yeah. We should say, we should say, Freddie, and bless you, Kay, you've been judiciously avoiding saying the actor's name. But the actor, and he is fantastic. It's Natare Guma Mbaho Mawine, and he is really, really good in this. And he's also, what's quite interesting is that he is, I mean, he's the victim of this. He's the villain, but he's also the victim in a way that Dave's character, he thinks he's a victim. He sets himself up as a victim. the minorities all these sort of people woke is like is condemning him like he'd be an alt-right hero like in real life whereas actually freddy is a guy who's been dealt a shitty hand all the way through his life and he's lashing out yes he's a murderous arsonist we're not apologizing for that but he's got the short end of the stick and i thought that was quite an interesting kind of counterpoint also tonally as well because that's a really dark storyline that yeah but he talks about dennis lane talks about how he that story um freddy's story is the kind of thing he's Absolutely.

53:23He knows he can do. He loves telling those kind of stories. Oh, that's very him, yeah. You know, people whose lives are not just bleak, but kind of downtrodden. Tragic. And tragic. Yeah, but particularly downtrodden by society, by the mainstream society, people who are just kind of like, have no future, can't see any way out of their miserable existence. It's that kind of story. He's very expert. So part of the whole kind of conception of this series, which I thought worked so well for me personally, if not for many other people, is that shift, is the constant switch between the two storylines.

54:00Because let's face it, the Taron Egerton Dave story is fucking hilarious at various moments. It's really funny in a twisted, dark, demented manner. But that doesn't mean that the Freddy story isn't beautifully told at literally exactly the same time. You cut between one really moving, painful episode in Freddie's life, and then you cut to something fucking stupid that Dave's done, and it works. I thought they pulled that off. I just thought it really worked so well. And it is, you know, the whole tonal shifts discussion, the reason why I got that t-shirt printed for James is, it's such a lazy, critical thing.

54:39Oh, wow. Sean's fired. I'm not having a game with you personally. I'm genuinely not. I think you are. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not. not only you're having a go I mean you got it printed on a t-shirt I've said this before this is not new you remember I've said this and I fall into the trap as well but it's such a critical cliche to say the shift the tone varies between one thing and another I disagree it doesn't matter if the tone shifts but I think you're taking out of context you're taking out of context let me finish let me finish the skill is in making it work for the viewer but that's the key isn't it if you do it well yeah and this show does do it well but when I think my issue with tonal shifts is when it's not done well of course And I think that is often the case where things sort of like ricochet between different tones and it feels like there's no narrative cohesion to it.

55:23Some of the Star Trek Strange New Worlds does it incredibly well from episode to episode. The tonal shifts there are off the fucking scale, but they do it very adeptly apart from a recent episode that I will talk about on Monday. But I think it is a skill. And I think if you are going to use tone in that way, it's absolutely fine. It's valid. And Boyd is absolutely right that something that has tonal shifts is not bad by default. but I do think if you do it badly it can take people out of the story because you get in a very specific mindset to kind of believe a narrative if it wrongfoots you tonally it can pull you out of the story a little bit I find if it's not done well just to clarify what I'm saying one thing is when I read a review of a film or TV show or listen to a review of film or TV and the first thing the critic says is blah blah blah blah it's all very well but it's got the tone shifts wildly you know and this phrase comes out and you're like if that's the first thing you're going to say about it It implies that inherently to shift tones is bad.

56:16That is what I'm arguing against. I'm arguing against the idea that many critics still cling to if they can't say anything interesting about what they're talking about is, oh, it just, the tone, it turns all over the place. So what? A tone being all over the place can work, or it might not work. But in itself, intrinsically, it doesn't mean it's a bad thing. That's my point. I'm going to do a tonal shift now and talk about something different. I really love the fact That Esposito Was the one who discovered The stuff in Dave's glove books Do you know what I mean After he's been so Treated so badly It was so fitting That he's the one Who manages to Basically unmask Dave And get the evidence That's a really good point He's a really interesting character Because at first you think He's a complete loser Right Who's kind of You know But then he becomes Filming porn As a side hustle All of that As a side hustle he's an alcoholic isn't he basically but he turns out to be a key member of the team of the team that's gathered which I love that by the way of Calderon's team that she helps put together and he ends up being as you say a key element in the whole investigation I think I love that Can we talk about race ball please because I love the fact that in a lesser show in a show that wasn't as ambitious journey smollett would have been a very straightforward you know good guy counterpart to this kind of like villain who thinks he's a hero presents himself as a hero but he's very much not one and i actually think the way that he was very kind of domestic abuse coded the way he had that really nasty vicious side that came out with his partner and which specifically with her son which was really really horrible uh but but she's not because she's almost as big a fuck up as he is and she also has an incredibly skewed sense of self and she's also like basically a criminal framing people left right and center and i love the idea that at the end of this he literally does get sent down for something he didn't do like she literally does frame him for something but it doesn't make it even more delicious that's the thing yeah it's hilarious but when she kills race board you're just watching you're going what the fuck is i know i felt a bit like don't get me wrong rafe at the end was an asshole but like i just feel a bit bad he was like oh no that might be the most batshit thing that happens it might be It's definitely up there, yeah.

58:34But he is fantastic in that role. And his accent's great. Oh, yeah. He knows. He's fantastic. He's done loads of great American roles, I think. But what I thought was interesting, but they didn't, to start with, you thought that they were really going to depict an abusive figure, right, who's totally exploiting her in every way, you know. But they kind of, I thought they made it more three-dimensional than you might expect. Like, he was more subtly drawn. There were moments he was kind of okay, right? Like, you know, in real life, people who hide horrible stuff about them, you know, in their lives, put themselves across as quite charming, you know, to some extent.

59:14I thought he was a really well-drawn character, not as simplistic as you initially thought he might be, is what I'm trying to say. And part of that is down to Rafe Spool's fantastic performance, yeah. I take it back. Sorry. When he squares up against Dave, like at the party, like that's a great scene yeah because you're on his side against Dave right because Dave's such a fucking you know psychopath it is yeah but it's all they're all as you said James it is about toxic masculinity and all the men are on a scale aren't they almost of that toxicity if you like rather than any of them not being toxic they're all fucking toxic well interestingly so she that is from a place of trauma you know yeah yeah completely I take it back I didn't feel sorry for Ray Swall's character I forgot the bit the moment leading up to it and I was like yeah no I was just uh recalling him and Dave and stuff like that and then I was like oh no how did he come to die yes he was he was the nasty bastard that she thought great great great can hear we should mention as the commander of the I mean again you know like he was initially like okay he was okay and then you see like oh god you know he's no he's completely untrustworthy yeah he's been embezzling cash yeah what the fuck yeah listen he wanted a summer home girl i mean who among us hasn't embezzled money to buy a summer home on a lake i mean it's fair exactly yeah yeah um yeah the men do not come out of this well at all um it's very interesting i thought the the dynamic between dave and his ex-wife was very interesting as well yeah that's true yeah yeah um i re-watched a bit of the final final episode or was it the penultimate episode when he when he goes there and he then is looking for a alibi an alibi do you remember it and he was Like, can you, I was here, I was here.

1:01:01And he's really menacing, but I love the fact, and she just went really like toe to toe with him. He's like, well, I can't confirm that. So no, you weren't Dave. And I was like, whoa. And I love the fact that the son can completely see through Dave right from the start. He totally, you know, gets, he's a fucking dodgy character. So what are we saying in terms of like, obviously it ended in this kind of, you know, there was no sort of definite conclusion to the story of dave deliberately so yeah dennis lahane says that he wants to do another yeah i think he almost certainly won't be able to so he like he they have an idea of where they want to take it but he said and he was very candid he said like he's worked on many shows where they've been hits and he knows what that feels like and he's like this doesn't feel like a hit he said maybe if it builds an audience over time maybe possibly we'll get a chance to another series but i don't think he's optimistic about it get that together and watch it don't worry about the fucking tonal shifts right just get on it boy do you put the t-shirt back on yeah do you know what i really like dennis lahane and because he's in terms of him and mike white do you know they've got this energy of like not giving a fuck just going for it doing what they want creatively it's also he's really good with little character moments like the bit that i really love one of my favorite scenes was at the amusement park where freddie and the other dude he works with at the chicken shop have that incredibly tense exchange where the guy gives him his phone and he's clearly shitting himself yeah and i was but i don't know like i was watching i was like i don't understand why he's so afraid because freddy's not i mean he clearly he's exuding menace that is true but he's not armed or anything like i found the whole but but i got it like like again it's that's almost like it's like negan's power in the walking dead like it's not always violent it's that kind of unspoken threat that you want to keep him being nice you do what he says because you don't want to see the other side of him i thought it was a really good scene in the exercise of kind of unspoken power and threat it was it was good very very well very well i could totally see why he was scared though yeah absolutely you know like freddy's snapped and he's a quite you know this quiet you know and you don't know how far he's gonna go because he's never seen him like this before because he's such a quiet you know but i think he i think he had seen glimpses though as well he pushes him in the shop doesn't he like he gets up in his face in the store once yeah yeah there's a lot of moments but i mean they do it quite subtly this is a show that does have subtlety as well by the way but yeah there are a lot particularly in that strand of the whole thing in that storyline when they're together in the kitchen of that fucking hell hole chicken restaurant Oh, yeah.

1:03:36He sees a lot of... He gets glimpses of this guy's deep issues. Yeah, his dark passenger. Yeah, absolutely. Speaking of which, Natara, we should say, is actually in Dexter Resurrection as well. Hmm. Yeah. Which I've been watching, but more of that on the regular podcast. And speaking of which, that is it for our smoke spoiler discussion. We will be back in your ears on Monday when we will be reviewing. Let me have a look at the calendar. I fought the law on ITV1. We're going to be taking a look at that. we'll be looking at the guest on BBC One and, assuming they get us screeners in time, the runarounds on Prime Video.

1:04:10And we're going to be doing the paper on next week's Pilot Plus. I'm excited for that. Because it's heavily embargoed. It's heavily embargoed. I did speak to my good friend, Donald Lisa Novella, so you'll get to hear that. Exciting. And then on the podcast off that, we've got Task, which is very, very exciting indeed. But we'll get onto that then. Kay's looking at me blankly. It's a Task for you, Kay. It will be a Task for you. Have you been sent to Task? Oh, really? Have you used instant screeners? I can either confirm nor deny. No, I have not. I can deny. I have not got Task. Just confirm you haven't.

1:04:43That's it. We're done. See you Monday. Pilot out.