The Capture spoiler discussion

0:04Welcome back after our brief interlude there for our isolated capture chat safe safe away from all the people who haven't yet finished season three of the capture or seriously it is a British show. So we will sound these spoiler clacks are now which seems somewhat redundant given that this is literally a spoiler podcast, but you know, it's tradition.

0:24anyway as as promised as promised we are going to begin with a listener question about this this comes from will and will said boydy strap in for this oh god what now oh god a bit of a rant for the capture spoiler discussion i love this show and i'll be the first in line to watch the next series but james and boyd's attempts to define it as fine cuisine when it's not even a gourmet burger sound increasingly ridiculous it's a burger with everything from a light night burger stand it's terrible and you know if you stop for a second and thought about it you'd know how bad it is but you still munch it down and enjoy every last mouthful the first two seasons were vaguely plausible but this series is absurd and absolutely telegraphed an ai twist that's been done a million times before surely a more interesting take on ai gone wild would be to include ideas of AI hallucinations or psychosis.

1:21Increasingly, they're just throwing ideas at the screen in the hope that something sticks. There are about four different competing deep states. People switch sides all over the place. Killian Scott was a cackling psycho, then a reformed reluctant killer, and then somehow went bad again because they asked him to. Were there super soldiers? Did one of the factions plant a memory in Noah slash William of him killing someone who looks a lot like Holiday Cranger so that he wouldn't be able to carry out their order to kill him? what the show does do well is shocking deaths of which we get three in this series and a sense that holiday granger can't trust anyone and is massively out of her depth i quite enjoyed the scene you both hated where she's trying to get noah william to tell her what's going on because it shows that she's a bit shit it's only in the position she is because she was in the right place at the right time which also explains why she completely abandons her principles at the end and uses correction to manufacture evidence because it's a bit more convenient i do love the show but it really reminds me of Alias, where the first two seasons were fairly standard spy thriller, and then it went off the deep end with long-lost family members, ancient prophecies, and magic artefacts.

2:24Wow. I have to say, that is a brilliant analysis, shall we say. The thing about the... Just to address the gourmet burger phrase, don't forget the burger element. It's not gourmet, it's not like, you know, gourmet, five gourmet, five course... It's not Michelin-starred, it is a burger. No, it's the whole point, it's still a burger. And I'm sorry, but this is the absolute classic example of it, because it is full of ludicrous things happening. Yeah, it's really tasty junk food. Yeah, but it's really well done. I think on a technical level, you particularly, not I was going to say we, but you particularly, often berate British homegrown drama for being cheap looking or the visual effects.

3:08Yeah. I think this is a very slick, brilliantly made, incredibly entertaining series. And yeah, it's a burger, but it's definitely gourmet for sure. Right. We talked about this on the show. We alluded to things. We referenced things, can I say, alluded to. Maybe we just said it. And we talked about how much we were enjoying the show. Now, the question I have for you, Boyd, is when you got to the end of the final episode, were you enjoying it as much as when we were talking about it at the end of, say, episode three? Yeah, I know what you're getting at. possibly not because there's a lot there's a lot that the ben chain and the the creator gets in there isn't there like i mean even the just the ai revelation that simon simon you know that all of these simon says he's got to sell the idea that the all of these um upper echelons of institutions in the UK from the army, the secret service, MI5, MI6 whatever and the police are all enthralled to this AI I mean and yet it seems ridiculous and yet when you actually deal with AI when people say stuff about AI now that is utterly preposterous so maybe it's not that maybe it isn't that ridiculous after all but I have to say And then as it goes on, as it drives towards the finale, more and more there were more and more moments where like, I'm interested in, I'm really interested in Linus Roach's character, the Colonel in charge.

4:51Like, what is he? Is he a psychopath or is he? Yeah, I would say his characterization wasn't the strongest. He was a little bit cartoony. Yeah. I don't even question Simon. and I do everything it's really to you? Yeah. And also do stuff where you're literally like killing all these people. Yeah. For what? Like what is it, you know, so that, and I know there was a, you know, it's a couple of weeks since it was alright, but there are moments when they're all explaining why they're doing what they do. But I think in the end, funnily enough, because I think the whole point of the show is to say, whoa, you know, all of these things get out of hand and everyone's doing stuff that is amoral or questionable, and down to her using the technology herself in the end when she really has to.

5:44It's like, well, we're all in this morass of amoral bullshit, really. So when there are moments that seem insane, and you think, why are they going that far? It kind of fits in with the general gist of the whole show in a way. So I think it kind of gets away with it somehow. If that makes sense. Do you think that makes sense? I think a lot of the criticism I've seen of this have been, Series 1 and Series 2 are really grounded and realistic, and Series 3 is mad. To which I would point out, that is just not true, because Series 1 and Series 2 were both mad. The fact that reality is caught up with that is neither here nor there.

6:23When it came out, it was mad. But now it seems, actually, that's not far-fetched at all. So by that rationale, come back to me in 10 years' time or five years' time or God help us two years' time and then tell me this is mad. And you might be like, well, actually, this is fairly realistic. So I don't think it's a huge departure. I think there's certainly, there are moments in this because this, it was maybe unrealistic to think it was sustainable. Like you have that first incredible first episode with the killing of Papa Esiedu. And then, you know, Killian Scott turns up at the end, the big twist.

6:54He's the new commander of SO-15. Oh my God, that's incredible. and then obviously you have the thing where he gets abducted by by by frank you know and he's being tortured like oh my god this is absolutely deranged how is she going to get out of this one and i have to say if you were going to get him abducted and tortured by the cia why did she have her kind of like um almost like uh a crowing moment where she walks in and he sees that she's complicit in it she'd have been far better if she stayed at the car and just maintained plausible deniability anyway and then he goes for jason born it kills absolutely everyone and all of this you're just like oh my god this is wild like what is happening but it's that episode in the tunnels isn't it that episode in the tunnels where the ai stuff breaks and someone like like our dear reader who wrote in listener i should say and said you know it showed he liked the sequence where they're not talking in the tunnels because it made you think well actually she's a bit shit and she's not but i don't think it's i don't think she's bad at her job i think she's bad at having a human conversation because whether you're like a master interrogator or absolutely anyone if you're in that situation the first thing you're going to do is saying right stop what is going on because fundamentally that's the only question that anyone would ever ask and she doesn't ask it yeah and that's that it's incredibly frustrating because it's all done for sort of narrative structural purposes and so that's why it doesn't ring true the ai stuff i didn't have as much of a problem with i do think for me this episode this series i should say this series did if not fall off a cliff definitely slide down a shingly slope um i think the last episode in particular and i enjoyed it exactly as everyone else has done i had a really good time with it but it was it was silly in a way that while i was having fun with it i was like it's a shame that they couldn't maintain the quality that they had at the beginning and it's not silliness in terms of i don't believe the ai stuff it was the human stuff i didn't really believe the decisions people make and the outcomes like i still don't fully understand killian scott's character's motivation perhaps that's my own stupidity i don't know but the fact that so what we just say that his whole um redemption arc was an act but then at the end he says that he was planning like because he turns back on his device can we please talk about the fact that his device uses the same battery as an apple air tag which is amazing to me but you know whatever fine uh the fact that he cuts open his chest and sticks a battery back in and is suddenly jason born again was deeply stupid um yeah the fact that he goes to save her gets a text message then goes off goes and then murders jemma in front of a whole kind of like committee uh and then goes back and you're like and he's and she shoots him because she thinks he's there to kill her but then when he says to he says i was actually coming to save you i thought i was coming to save you and so you're like were you brainwashed were you being like genuinely what's going on and then i didn't really buy the whole oh yeah you once killed someone with red hair therefore you won't shoot holiday granger and the main reason i say that is holiday grain granger one of the world's famous redheads does not have red hair in this show hair is fucking dyed brown so how exactly was he drawing a direct parallel those flashbacks to where was it in Afghanistan?

10:12It is. It's in Ukraine, isn't it? It's in Ukraine. Sorry. Yeah, she looks a bit like him or something. She didn't look anything like her. I know, I know. That was weird. That was just Batty. Absolutely Batty that was. I agree with you. I thought it was me, actually. I thought it was my own stupidity that I didn't understand in the end what was going on with him. Yeah. Because the killing of Leah Williams' Gemma, that is, it's like, Like, first of all, maybe he's doing it because he thinks that's the right thing to do, because she is, like, you know, kind of a monster, maybe. Well, he says, he's a soldier, I follow orders.

10:49And you're like, hang on a minute, we've just had a whole discussion about this, and you said you were actually going to expose the unit. So either he was lying, or there's some kind of Manchurian candidate thing going on here. Yeah, it felt like a mini Manchurian candidate, didn't it? It did, didn't it? Like, he's been programmed in some way. But I thought all of that was a bit hand-wavy, like, it wasn't really addressed. it's just but yeah it's probably this it's probably that like i'll tell you what really it those things yeah the more you really get get delve into them and try and make them clear that the more chances you just completely lose any credudence you you've got so is it kind of like oh yeah let's kind of make it a bit ambiguous um because even with the scene the incredibly powerful scene where she thinks is it her where they've got her sister right and she's watching that and then he and then they shoot her and all of that like even i was like can they how would they really do that was she i don't know like this suit also has to sell the idea that you can do literally anything with the technology now yeah anything at all what was going on in that yeah so even then um there was that moment where when they go back and they show you how uh how i said i keep i'm just gonna call him killian because if i call him like if i if i call him uh he's either noah pearson or william whatever it is um he his his whole you know his incident ukraine it all goes tits up because they're using correction to fool that russian general commander whatever he is the officer and then because isaac turner believes in accountability they literally flip a switch and quote unquote turn off correction yes in the middle of the operation and look i know you have to suspend disbelief but i feel like anyone who has even had like a passing experience of using i don't know a computer it's just oh come on like what are you doing like no computer has ever worked that way like oh yeah politicians said this so we're just going to turn them all off with a switch it's just i know it's things like that i bump on i don't bump on the ai i don't bump on the conspiracy in the deep state it's stupid shit like that like day-to-day how technology works stuff that's the stuff that bothers me yeah what about what do you make the guy the character with the fluffy hair and the nerd guy, the king nerd guy.

13:00Oh, wizard. Yeah, wizard, who witnesses the massacre of everyone he knows. I know, and he starts listing ailments as a special code word thing. Again, a lot of these bits don't really kind of hang together for me. The whole kind of conspiracy at the heart of it, it seems to be that, you know, because you talk about the abduction and the bit where they kind of kill her sister but don't, And they leave it till really late before showing you that that's not what happened. I was just like, this doesn't make any sense. I don't know why you're doing this. The only thing in retrospect you're supposed to understand, I believe, is that Simon has been...

13:39The whole crux of this series is that Simon, this AI, fundamentally... It turns out that Rachel Carey is so maverick that Simon cannot predict what she's going to do because she's so super maverick, she does the opposite. and it can't get its head around how she how to manipulate her because she's uh you know got this the whole point of her character all the way through this show is she's about disclosure and she has this unwavering as often detectives do completely uncompromising moral compass yes and indeed yeah you think she's really fucking predictive yeah you know what it reminds me of though is it's um there's a thing called the optus supercomputer in football at the moment where the Optus supercomputer is literally what it's called.

14:21And it's supposedly genius AI, whatever it is, that is going to predict the outcome of the English Premier League in which Arsenal are competing at the moment. I mean, I can probably predict where Arsenal's going to end in the Premier League if that's helpful to you. You may think you do, but the Optus supercomputer disagrees with you. Because even though everyone thinks Man City are going to win the league now instead of Arsenal, the Optus supercomputer is sticking with this prediction and it's saying that like 70 % chance of Arsenal winning and everyone's like what the fuck this stupid computer has gone bonkers it may be broken so you know it's the same way Simon is just a bit shit because all the inputs he seems to be dealing with he's ignoring the obvious input that she just does the right thing she's always trying to do the right thing if in doubt she will always do the right thing it's the easiest thing exactly that's the equivalent of Man City always doing the right thing in terms of footballing terms not morally by the way quite the opposite anyway um yeah it's it is that is but that was bonkers her whole character is she is plain spoken morally rigid completely uncompromising like the most predictable person alive you know you know roger ebert i remember reading a roger ebert review years ago when um when he was still with us about some thriller and he said um what's happened so often in thrillers is that i'm obviously paraphrasing massively is that um they have villains create the most elaborate ruse like serial killers that create these hugely complicated kind of storylines and then to carry out their kills based on these really complicated things.

15:50And you're like, if you just did one tiny little thing, the whole house of cards collapses. And in this case, getting her in that tunnel, whatever it was, and showing her a sister, that whole sequence, that was when I felt, I thought, this is Linus Roach masterminding this elaborate fake-out thing where they're so threatened by her that they're pretending they're going to kill a sister. The whole thing was like, I don't, I'm not sure. I feel like they could have shot her at the beginning and solved the whole thing. That's exactly what I'm getting to. The whole point that Roger was pointing out was there's just a simpler way if you really want to do it.

16:29It is like Austin Powers, isn't it? Austin Powers, like, a voice of avoiding shooting someone. Those scenes are among the funniest. And this is a similar thing. Yeah, what are they doing with her? What are they fucking doing? I guess what they're trying to say is like, they're trying to get her to a place where she will compromise herself. They're trying to, and all of that nonsense with the system stuff. The idea is that Simon has predicted this incredibly elaborate series of events. If they do all these things, it will take her to breaking point and she will finally betray her ironclad principles and use correction.

17:03The one thing that she has railed against is the beginning of this show. And I thought that in itself was quite an interesting moment. when she relents and she does kind of come to this place where Gemma's been for quite a while, that the end, in this case, will ultimately justify the means. She will use correction to essentially portray reality. So instead of lying, she's creating a fabrication which is true, and that's a moral justification, because she's not lying, it is true, but she's using false evidence to do it. And that's how they get her. Yeah. I tell you what, I mean, I'm sounding quite critical, but despite all of these doubts and questions and things that strike you while you're watching it, as the correspondent you wrote right after, when you sit back and think about it, it all falls apart.

17:46And yet it's still incredibly entertaining. It's still really fun. And really fun. And you know what my final, I loved, I alluded to this, I did allude to, I think in one of the recent podcasts, I think it might be when you were away, but I love that you can tell what a fan Ben is, the creator of the show is of conspiracy. He really loves this conspiracy sort of stuff when you have that final shot of all of the men gathering all of these people who hit, before which they'd all been like at each other's strokes and trying to kill each other. The Illuminati. Yeah. Suddenly they're all together having a lovely dinner at some private men's club.

18:22Yeah, I love that moment. Because it's like, he'll work it out in the next series, you know, why all these people, what the fuck they're doing. They're just having a great time. I love that. illuminati and being the people in power i thought that was so good i really enjoyed i could just imagine that it's like all these high level villains all like hanging out at soho house just having a nice dinner together exactly exactly um yeah i thought that was great i really i thought he's gonna go there yeah like just give you a one last twist of utter joy and uh yeah i really love that yeah that was great no i agree i thought the one thing i i thought was ill thought through was when she sees like the reflection of gemma you remember when she's like she sees like a reflection of her like in the phone she's like she sees gemma behind her like it's like okay when we're seeing ghosts i mean it's not a ghost obviously but when we i was like that's let's park that shall we like yeah yeah i was not bored with that but the rest of it i was having fun with and you know like even line of duty does mad stuff all the time and it's wildly over the top and unbelievable but you roll with it because it's hugely enjoyable and i think the same is true here so i think much like our correspondent i really enjoyed this show i do think it peaked about the halfway point and then was on a down slope towards the end which was a shame but i had a good time with it yeah i had a really good time yeah i think the line of duty comparison is absolutely right because that that goes back to again what what he what um he always says it's more exciting is the thrill is is getting to the point where you're absolutely stretching credulity and the view just you just about keep them on side enough take them to the very edge yeah but it's that taking us to the very edge that makes it so much fun.

19:55And this show definitely is a huge amount of fun. I hope this is a full series. Oh, so do I. I absolutely love it. I'm not going to say to people, yes, this is the peak of peak TV. It's not. It's loads of fun, but I don't think everything has to be 100 % believable, 100 % serious, 100 % po-faced. I think as long as you can, within reason, and I'm put off by this more than most people, can maintain your level of willing, you know, suspenseful disbelief, it's fine. And this, I mean, don't get me wrong, it took me to the fucking brink. But, yeah, I did enjoy it a lot. Okay, the capture then. That was our little chat.

20:35We will talk about something else. Who knows? Maybe it'll be paradise next week, Boyd. Maybe you and Steph will finally have pulled your fingers out. Well, apparently Steph's watched the whole thing already, according to you. Well, apparently. You know, that's not true. So I've heard. That's the rumor. Yeah. 60 % of it, at least. Anyway, anyway, right that is it for this capture chat we will see you on monday morning pilot's out