'Slow Horses,' Season 5, Episode 2: In Communicado

0:13Joanna Robinson:Hello, welcome back to the Prestige TV podcast feed. I'm Joanna Robinson. I'm Rob Mahoney. We're here to talk to you about episode two of Slow Horses, season five. Rob Mahoney, This episode is called Incommunicado. And I have a quick question for you. Please. I have a series of questions, actually, pegged to this episode, prompts for you. But I'm also eager to hear from our listeners. So can you tell me how our listeners can reach us if they want to send us emails about this particular show? I thought you would never ask, Joe. They can always email us at prestigetv at spotify.com, But they should especially email us at arstimethepope at gmail.com with all of their Slow Horses specific comments, queries, theories, whatever you got.

1:00Joanna Robinson:I'm going to start you off with one. And it goes a little something like this. Say you're Diana Tavener and you've come home after a long day of dealing with idiots and assholes. And you're relaxing in your pristine, white, gleaming kitchen. And there's someone at the door and you don't know who it is. given that you it would be a boring exercise if you could grab a knife let's say the corkscrew that she grabs is off the table and knives are off the table what kitchen implement rob mahoney are you presuming that diana tavener has everything in that kitchen what are you taking to the door with you the answer is very easy joe meat tenderizer we're just going metal hammer blunt instrument i'm not even bothering trying to stab or poke or mandolin anybody like i just want to beat somebody to death if that's what the situation requires okay brute force i feel like i would go for the micro planner like the zester and i i don't know that it's a good choice but i feel like i would enjoy taking like little little shreddy slices off of an attacker you know that sounds fun to me i will say this too the one time in my life i told someone zesters aren't really that dangerous i immediately cut myself on a zester within 24 hours so i will not dare question your choice.

2:19That's right. For fear of what my own zester might do to me.

2:22Joanna Robinson:Don't cross the zester gods. They will come for you. Okay. So if you have, if you feel like you have a different answer for which kitchen implement one should grab when they go to the door, arstimethepopeatgmail.com or press THCV at spotify.com. This episode is brought to you by America's cookout classics, Heinz, Kraft, and Oscar Mayer. This summer, we're celebrating 250 years of American cookouts with all the classics, Heinz, Kraft, and Oscar Mayer. Rob, what's your ideal cookout scenario? First of all, I want you on the ox. I trust you with that sacred responsibility to pick our music. I'm going to have to man the grill, and I'm going to need like a copious amount of condiments.

2:55I need every possible fixin imaginable.

2:58Joanna Robinson:Well, make sure to top your burger with only the best, Heinz, ketchup, and Kraft singles. And you know, it's not a cookout without Heinz ketchup and mustard. Different vibes, same ingredients. We all know it's not a cookout without Heinz, Kraft, and Oscar Mayer. Shop at your local retailer. This summer, FanDuel is the best place to bet on goals. including equalizers uh-huh voles yep headers every goal is worth more on fan duel so let there be goals new customers get up to a thousand dollars and bet reset tokens when you bet five dollars daily 21 plus and present in select states often required refund issue does not withdraw but bonus bets that expire seven days after receipt minimum five dollar wager required for five consecutive days max refund two hundred dollars per day restrictions apply including token expiration see full terms at fanduel.com sportsbook gambling problem call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESET Rob Mahoney, what did you think of this episode on the whole?

3:44I really loved it. I thought this was classic Slow Horses yet again. And in particular, classic early in the season episode of Slow Horses, where we are getting a combination of a bunch of stuff thrown at us as regard to the central mystery. A lot of information, a lot of new characters we're trying to get up to speed with in their various plots, to the point that there's so much you kind of can't possibly stitch it all together yet. And at the same time, a lot of Jackson Lamb quips, a lot of Slough House versus the park stuff developing. Like this is this is right in our sweet spot, Joe.

4:15Joanna Robinson:What do you feel are like what's the most important information that we learned from this episode? I mean, how much do we know about what the group I have dubbed the van guys? Yeah, they will. One of them at least will burn a comrade if they need to. We're going to talk about that guy. he had a terrible day uh just just very tough stuff for the guy who got burned alive dissension i would say dissension and early dissension in the ranks sure uh really tough that they were friends but now they're now it's business and friendships don't always survive business now they're colleagues uh right uh let's see they're speaking arabic that is also something we know uh but we don't know what nationality they are and we know that they appear to be behind behind sort of what it seems to be is that they are finding people with causes and pushing them towards violent terrorist acts so that they can sort of hide their own agenda behind other people's like front page agendas.

5:13Joanna Robinson:Does that seem right to you? That does seem right to me. And we've seen it so far with, you know, whatever the shooter was up to at Abbotsfield in the first episode. And then with this group of like, you know, young, seemingly very eager to disrupt the oil pipeline kind of protesters or, you know, environmental terrorists, if you prefer, however you want to classify what they're about to do. Rahm Mahoney, I saw white woman blonde dreads and it was all I needed to see. It's all I needed to see to know exactly who those people were. They coded them very, very quickly. But like, I have to say this kind of, if that is indeed the structure and that seems to be the way we're heading, I think it's just like a really smart way to set up this season.

5:51In an evasive philosophy of a potential terrorist or nationalistic group kind of way, it's like, let's take a little of these people, a little of those people. Let's just create enough chaos so that no one knows what we're up to, as you said. It just seems like a great way to pull the wool over everyone's eyes, the park included at this point.

6:09Joanna Robinson:It's interesting because we were sort of thinking that the Abbotsfield shooting that we saw in the first episode was more of like a homegrown, even though we knew that someone had assassinated the sort of young, angry white man who had done the shooting. But like that it was we were thinking it was more of a homegrown threat this season. That does not appear to be the case. We don't know the motivation of the of the people who are behind this. something I should say, I'm purposely staying behind where the show is, but I have started reading London Rules, the book that this is based on. I am really well behind.

6:44Joanna Robinson:So I don't, I'm not like hiding any insights from you or anything like that. I'm staying like super behind, but I'll just like maybe chime in like, hey, remember a couple episodes ago, I just got to that part and like, et cetera, et cetera. That's how I prefer it genuinely. But does London rules in fact rule? It's fantastic. Our listeners told us all last season that we should read the books. Rob, as we know, does not enjoy fiction. Something that we look past in our love for Rob Mahoney. Thank you. I appreciate that. It's very big of you. But I do love fiction and I love British fiction. And so I have been listening to it on audio and it's really, really funny.

7:24Joanna Robinson:Like really funny. And that's something that our listeners told us, but I didn't realize like how just the way that McCarran does not let a sentence go by without the opportunity for a really dry, like crackling observation because like the lamb isms are there and a lot of them are the same. But, you know, we're bouncing around from people's point of view, which is something we talked about last week. And so in this episode, we are, of course, is always on slow horses bouncing around point of view i want to talk about well first of all my condolences to you um hashtag where's louisa 2025 yeah uh you know we are on day seven of this watch she's gonna be back it's just a matter of episode three or four she's coming back very very soon i mean based on where we are with these plot threads right now three maybe seems like a bit rushed like i don't know how she would bump up back against any of these primary plots except save for maybe uh literally everyone in the story is calling river on his bullshit and telling him to talk to somebody and maybe process like one single problem he has in his life and louisa is his only actual friend so i know she told him to stay away yeah but who else is he gonna talk okay so you're saying louisa please cut your mental health break short so that you can play therapist for the record i'm not saying she should do that but will river show up on her front porch like a sick little puppy i think the odds are pretty good possible very possible um so louisa absence so let's go to your second fave which is shirley shirley has a foot chase um sequence i was like as much as we love talking about them as fail spies as much as we love watching them fail i was a little frustrated with our girls shirley because i was like you can't outrun a guy who's had his back half broken who is limping and shambling now when it came to like the like hand-to-hand combat fight and she was so outmatched by him physically i was like that's that i understand but the way that he was outrunning her for way too long i was like this man is dragging a leg behind him and um but but what do you make of the needle being like like so the camera focuses so much on this absolutely disgustingly filthy needle that she jabs in him this guy's dead anyway yeah so it's not like you know we have to wait to see what the needle will do to him but will it help identify the body in some way like is there a reason why we should be focusing on this needle and how could that pay off in the future i think the reason is it's disgusting and i hated watching it and also it's an ingenious creation to not only have the needle in the leg but then the skateboard slam of the needle to just like jam it in even further yeah i love your take though on a potential like identifying mark right like these are everything else that shirley had was like a little bit of physical description a little bit of scarring or like reaction from the bleach that got thrown in this guy's face like she just didn't have anything else to go by that would be able to corroborate a you know a burned body right so this is one piece of evidence they might be able to use to connect some of these dots if not like in a court of law sense at least in a you know putting together the pieces and the trail of breadcrumbs for their own investigation sense that i love uh one bit of excusing evidence uh as far as the foot race goes so all of this is taking place after you know the kind of various stakeouts of Roddy's place.

10:55Lamb has been upstairs waiting on the waterbed, sipping champagne. Shirley has just been on the curb eating what appears to be the entirety of the pizza she stole. So yes, he has a limp, but she just ate a whole pizza.

11:07Joanna Robinson:It's heavy. It does sit heavy. It really does. Yeah. You need that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle metabolism to house a pizza and then keep going. That's fair. Okay, fair. Turtle power. All right. You mentioned the bleach. Our guy Jackson Lamb continues to sort of like home alone his way through uh through the show lest we forget a couple seasons ago he and roddy together basically home alone their way out of a out of a tense situation in a country home uh here we are in roddy's well-appointed flat i have another query for you rob mahoney yes this was a freeze framers uh dream a delight uh do you want to call anything specifically that you saw here in Roddy's flat.

11:51Joanna Robinson:And once you're done, I have a question for you. Yeah, I have a couple things, you know, as we pan across Roddy's walls. I will say very different from, you know, the shooter we open the season with who has some like really troubling stuff going on. Roddy's mostly just incredibly tacky and very strange. Troubling in a different way. It's true. Troubling in a way where if this person was in your life, you might have some notes and some thoughts. You know, he's got the tiger print that I would say is close to the level of design you would see like on the back of a tacky satin jacket uh you know multiple video game posters god of war horizon zero dawn firewall zero hour which seemed like a fake video game to me but apparently is real uh so shout out to everyone who loves firewall zero hour a graded comic for something called eclipse warriors that i could not seem to trace to being a real thing i also tried to find it and the closest i could find was the book series warriors as an installment called eclipse but it didn't seem to be that okay very cat heavy book series apparently that is popping up with the same name but shout out shouts to roddy for getting that 9.6 grading very important for any collector i support him um but really the piece to resistance show like the giant battle axe slash glowing broadsword with light-up effects mounted on the wall just for for everyone to see and appreciate i i appreciate you know the craftsmanship the artistry there's a lot of good work going on here with the yellow dragon sigil behind it of course um i did google giant light up anime sword just figure like to see if i could figure out what it was directly from and i i came up with nothing but ours time the pope at gmail.com if you are both a slow horses fan and can identify what that sword is or the prop masters just had a really good time making yeah actually now that you mentioned that i kind of wonder if it's from that shows sword art online, which I don't know personally, but I know by reputation.

13:45And I can only assume there is a giant anime sword in it that might look something like this. So if you happen to be a sword art online fan and recognize this, I guess also hit us up at arstimethepope at gmail.com.

13:56Joanna Robinson:Where does that show air, Rob? Could not tell you. It's probably on Crunchyroll as most anime rests and sits. I would like to add just a few details to your beautiful list that you came up with here. We've got an open jar of marshmallow fluff on the side table. And I say side table loosely because what it actually is is a mini fridge filled with monster energy drinks. OK, we've got there's also a head massager right next to the marshmallow fluff and a manga, which is Hunter Hunter the manga. We've got an adjustable multi-way tree floor lamp that is the hallmark of every young man who is not quite sure how to light his apartment.

14:42Joanna Robinson:This is the way that you go. It's very true. Giant flat screen, massive fish tank, LED lights on the wall. And then I think the number one prop set deck element is the pull-up bar on his bedroom doorframe. doorframe i thought that was just like absolute perfection we are two episodes in and two separate characters commenting on how absolutely jacked roddy is it's just happened like this is just the season that we're having right now i mean the guy has like whatever a bowflex-esque like situation right next to his work desk he's not it's true he's not skipping arm day he's not skipping leg day um arstomethepuppetgmail.com if we miss any any detail in roddy's apartment that you would like to let us know about or if uh what you think is the number i really do think it's the pull-up bar but what you think was just like the number one best if there was like an obscure magnet we missed or something like that let us know especially the most roddy detail of all well i mean the the circular waterbed with the red silk sheets is a lot it's a lot it's a lot it's not good uh jackson lamb does not approve but jackson does show up right he gets he gets a message from katherine that roddy's with a with a very attractive girl and he's like something's not right here does show up for his joe uh despite all of his constant protestations that he does not give a shit about them he does show up and he does stay and he does defend um and what you know that's consistent with jackson's character but what does that do for you here inside of this season i mean surprising for him to show up for roddy specifically right they're kind of levels to his investment in the various joes and you would think roddy would probably be at the bottom of that list And yet he shows up for him, too, especially when things seem to be like, you know, maybe not fishy in a way he can fully tape together yet.

16:30But there's just like enough warning signs that there's at least something worth looking into. And, you know, you talked about the home aloning that happens with Jackson and Arati as well. And I think there is something to be said about the way that plays into the structure of this show, too, where especially for law enforcement, as we talked about last week, like guns are not a given. right it's not not a given that a cop or a member of mi5 would be strapped up at any given point in time and so then you have to be creative right then when there's an assault on slough house you're throwing kettles at people then when somebody is storming roddy's apartment with a gun you know the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a broadsword or a squirty

17:06Joanna Robinson:bottle of bleach one of the two does bleach come in squirty bottles in the uk apparently it does I mean, look, that guy, face full of bleach, chased with a broadsword while Roddy is yelling, I believe I am death, which was a wonderful moment of this episode, falls off the ledge onto a concrete railing a few floors down. Harrowing, looks incredibly painful. That was such a crunch. Just like the sound Foley was. Yes. I was like, that's a dead guy. And then he got up and he kept going. And I was like, okay. It's like they broke a whole bag of pretzels at once, right into a microphone. It was tremendous.

17:42then as you said gets up runs off we get the whole business with the needle killed by his own friend set on fire by who he thought was his friend i'm just saying like that's a bad thursday you know like that's just not what you want um you mentioned having to improvise with

17:57Joanna Robinson:weaponry when you're when you're here uh as law enforcement uk how do you feel about a push knife which is what our our guy co decided to use when they went uh door knocking doesn't seem like it would be terribly effective uh but who am i to question the methods of uh a black site torturer as far as we can tell from ko's background like pretty dicey stuff uh he seems look he knows his way around a knife i did appreciate that in this moment where he is maybe a little too eager with the push knife to the point of almost like executing a polish grandmother right i like that we see him bumble too that he's not just like the quiet perfect killer sitting in the corner like he is at slough house for a reason and maybe that reason is that he's pulling push knives on grandmothers but i do love that that river's like wait do you have another one of them for me actually um i i was unaware of what a push knife was um but it's just like a little do you did you know about a push knife i don't know that i've had occasion in my life to know about push knives so i wouldn't have known it by name honestly i did not know it was called a push knife but this exact i mean it pops up in i would say especially like british coded like gangster action type movies but ultimately not really that different than diana taverner with the corks yeah like really they're going for the same thing it is it is a beautiful echo on the on the like arming yourself front we did get an email from a listener you know rob was asking last week about this the mass shooting that happens at outfield and um this idea of gun violence inside of like a uk storytelling space.

19:36Joanna Robinson:And so our listener Will wrote in to say, you requested feedback on the opening scene from people outside the US. I'm British and lived in London for 20 years. My feeling towards that scene and many like it is instinctively, that just doesn't happen here. So it feels jarring on first viewing. We obviously have terror events here, but attacks with guns, especially automatic ones like that feel, quote, TV and bluntly, quote, American. Now things are getting progressively grim in the UK so there's a bit of a feeling that maybe it's inevitably around the corner at some point so while it doesn't take me out of the action slash show my gut feeling is always this feels a bit sensational and made for TV impact so I mean I think inside of a show where people are potentially like flying planes towards large buildings in London and previous seasons or we've got cars exploding like it's an episode of Doctor Who at the end of this episode here.

20:31Joanna Robinson:Like we're in a heightened extreme sort of space, but that's a great feedback from Will, I thought. It's always heightened, but there is like an echo of reality that happens with a lot of the violence on Slow Horses that I appreciate how willing they are to like fly, like just close enough to some things to make it feel somewhat recognizable. And we should say like, I think a little bit shocking that this season is airing as planned, given that other Apple TV shows are getting yanked off the schedule because of the way that their subject matter is brushing up against real world events. And yet this one, which opens with the mass shooting, we're just kind of rolling on.

21:06I kind of wonder if part of the reason for that is because it is a British property. Because it's seen as being like, you know, an ocean away or kind of just removed enough to make it so that it's staying out of that particular like version of conversation.

21:19Joanna Robinson:And that's a reference to the Jessica Chastain show that was like pulled off of the schedule for now. Apple says they're going to air it later. the screeners are still up on the press site. So they haven't like, you know, burned the negatives and buried the show entirely. Jessica Chastain has voiced her, you know, displeasure with this turn of events. How do you, do you want to like, you brought it up, Rob, how do you feel about it? Do you want to talk about it? I mean, the only thing I would say about it is if you as a production company or entity or network or streamer are looking to engage with, like that show is specifically talking about extremism on the internet and violent public acts and the way those things intersect.

22:02If that's what your show is about, I'm not saying like, oh, chase the news peg, but like, you need to not be afraid of your subject matter. And it feels like they're afraid of having, you know, whether good faith or bad faith or not, any kind of discussion about the actual subject matter of the show.

22:16Joanna Robinson:It's interesting. Like, I was talking to you a little bit about it and to a couple other colleagues of ours and friends who I used to work with who are all in the media and there's there's this like feeling that it's um it's a cowardly move right to to sort of run away from the conversation like this and then i was thinking about you know uh a show we love buffy vampire slayer had a show called i had an episode called earshot that was about a school shooting um you know that happened that was set to air right around when colabine happened and it was pulled and then sort of aired quietly at the end of summer and like without you know any sort of fanfare and so but is there a different difference between sensitivity which is sort of what that felt like versus fear of being targeted um did they you know draw attention to the show that nobody was paying attention to in the first place by pulling it and now no matter when it airs it's going to air with this conversation around it for good or for ill is any attention good attention is what did that show have a chance to be judged on its own merit if it had debuted in the midst of this like really heated time like i think it's a complicated for sure question um i don't want to excuse what apple did and i'm not i guess but i also don't think it's just strictly like uh you know a strict kowtow if that makes sense you know what i mean there's there's layers to it so well especially when as you're saying there's like a business decision and an artistic decision that have to be made kind of in concert but are always going to be at least a little bit conflicting i think the thing that i ultimately come back to is like and i think what separates it from things like buffy again the subject matter and the themes of the show this isn't like a fantasy or a sci-fi property that's like kind of using it as allegory or kind of dipping into real world events.

24:17That is the show in the same way that I would expect Slow Horses and everyone making it to be prepared about a conversation about the way that causes are co-opted, if that's the way this season ends up playing out, about the way that people can be manipulated by bad actors or public actors or politicians or terror groups or whatever the nefarious forces are within the season of Slow Horses. That's what the show is about. So let's have a conversation about what the show is about.

24:40Joanna Robinson:I'm really excited to talk to you about One Battle After Another once you've seen it can't wait related and i i want to i want to hear your thoughts on it all new sundays at 9 exclusively on amc and amc plus i am the vampire list thought i'm a rock star now

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26:17This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, campaigns slow down, insights get buried, and opportunities get missed. That's why Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. To learn more, check out Accenture.com slash Spotify. Okay, so going back to Coe and River as this sort of team up, right?

26:56Like with the lack of Louisa, River is paired with Coe instead.

27:00Joanna Robinson:What did you think of this duo? i did like it like i honestly never would have clamored for these two to be paired up but i think within you know keeping in the spirit of everyone kind of calling out river for everything that he has going on ko is actually like a really good agent for that i think because he's at a bit of a remove you know this isn't shirley coming in with her usual demeanor this isn't someone who has like been in the trenches with river and kind of knows all the ins and outs it's just someone who can sit there and rattle off every single time he's fucked up and like force him to confront in that moment the fact that like yeah maybe your judgment isn't great he's like season one tiger team he's been watching the show yeah he's a fan um the stan said one in particular it's like he's almost ducked into the car and then he pops back up to say stansted yeah just really really funny really good um yeah i mean this is a character who we were interested last season but but it was like very background until the very end of last season we've been curious to see how he would sort of flourish as he was brought you know close to the center of the team there was that like jump scare of him in episode one yeah um but if he's here to just hone his psychological know-how as a weapon against river cartwright it's fairly enjoyable i don't mind it it's interesting so you know uh someone on the reddit pointed out i hadn't noticed is that in previous seasons i had noticed that that their billings had changed elsewhere but in previous seasons um the opening credits were uh gary oldman chris and scott thomas and jack loudon and that was like it and then it was like co-starring the rest of them after the opening credits and the whole team has been moved up into the opening credits uh including the actress who plays louisa so that's good news uh for all of us i hope and they've gone fingers crossed co-starring to starring and that's part of that is just like a season five contract renegotiation probably but i do think that with river with with losing the side plot of every season which is river goes to visit his grandfather yeah with with losing the jonathan price uh angle of it which at least so far this season we haven't seen um then it really does feel like much more of an ensemble than like it's it's river cartwright you know the two pillars of of uh the government with diana tavener and jackson lamb and then and also the team this is like roddy is so huge here shirley is so huge here and then ko is is sort of coming into the fold and it just feels like i you know jack loudon's doing great again he's gonna play mr darcy he's a new dad with one of the coolest actresses in the world like he's doing great so it's not like i'm like but river is much more of a punchline this season than he has been any other season and i and i think that's really i'm not like congratulations jack loudon for for doing that but i don't know it's it's interesting to me to see him move more and more into the punchline that everyone else is he's always been mocked by i think because his grandfather took him seriously yes there was someone who was taking him seriously even when his grandfather was like saying you can't do this you need to do it this way he was taking him as a serious person especially with louisa gone there's no one taking river car right seriously and so it's just like a completely different mode that jack loudon has to navigate inside of this series, which I think is interesting.

30:40Well, and dare I say, Louisa, most of all at this point, is not taking him particularly seriously. No. I think it's good for the show, though. I think it's good for the balance. As much as I love Jack Loudon, I also love him getting to play the fool in the way that everyone else gets to. Like, it's good comedy. It's good fun. It's good for the structure of the show. And I think making those elements textual, like you were just talking about how his relationship with his grandfather was sort of an anchoring force narratively and something that's like elevating that character in terms of how seriously everyone is taking him like that's the that's the subject matter of what they're talking about is like since this happened with your grandfather you are a mess you are you know like at sea and you need to settle that before you're of use to anyone else here and i think lamb calling that stuff out specifically as it is baked into the world of the show like that's a really creative way to sort of tackle that problem and also broaden out the interesting plot line so that shirley gets to do this and roddy gets to do that and if louisa comes back she has something to do like it can't be all river all the time um rob allow me to

31:39Joanna Robinson:pour you a brimming pint of red bull and invite you into disgusting into this restaurant that's in a hotel is that where that it seems like it um how did you feel like this location was used uh throughout the episode as more and more of the team shuffle in uh thank you i hate it i i just hate the location as somebody who has occasionally stumbled into such places it's just like a strong visceral reaction that i would say is not quite on par with the one that lamb is having in the elevator as the like projected floor numbers are ticking up behind him but uh it is a perfect slow horses setting like the construction of let's go to the place that no one would think jackson lamb would ever go and also roddy could never possibly afford just just a nice way to kind of duck between the cameras of where people would be looking for them was that like a deconstructed burger on a skewer is that what we got okay and even even the chips he gets i mean are are just like zhuzhed up beyond recognition just an absolute like thick cut rectangular chips arranged in some kind of structural jenga like pattern simply you know doing we're doing a lot um having the whole team just sort of spread out across multiple tables excellent stuff my favorite was standish sneaking bites of her like foil wrapped sandwich or whatever that she brought from home really really good a person though you gotta respect it all right let's go back to diana's kitchen though because we got the return of a character peter judd uh you know disgraced politician is now here in a different guise yeah i mean shocking disgraced politician who became a consultant i didn't know that pipeline existed for the the Zimbabweans, the Chechnians, and the Libyans.

33:28The laundry, again, the laundry list was so great. It's like, I'm here for this one thing, but also I sit on many boards. I'm collecting many fees.

33:37Joanna Robinson:How did you feel about the use of Peter Judd as like a returning character here? I mean, first of all, I unapologetically love Peter Judd. Yeah. He is so slimy and such a great character and making him so, you know, he's not an MP anymore. He's not home secretary anymore. he's just kind of like on the edges of the political machine i really like seeing him pop up and especially like coming up under the pretense of like i am helping and by helping i mean i'm trying to keep this arms manufacturer out of the news publicly speaking uh in a way that you know to go back to will's email you know the idea of like gun violence in the uk being what it is and if that feels jarring in and of itself that's one thing this is like a crate of automatic weapons and grenades that have disappeared from some kind of like arm show yeah like a very sophisticated gun show of some kind where look i expect that you can buy hand grenades at american gun shows i didn't know that it was like that on the uk yeah i i don't know that i would have ever dreamt of a uk gun like thinking about a uk gun show i'm just thinking about like what does one take bird shooting you know what i mean like on a country weekend apologies to all of the uk for uh for typing you that way okay something we didn't i really regret we didn't mention last week then i want to make sure we we underline this week uh jackson lamb has a frog tie a tie full of whimsical frogs on both last episode partway through last episode in this episode i don't know if it's like party tie that he put on for louise's party or what but um i think you're right i've never like i was i i was like has he always been wearing whimsical ties and i never noticed but i look back through and usually just has like a heavily soiled dark green tie is it goes without saying yeah um so these jaunty frogs is something entirely different and new and i just thought worth noting so i mean if you're gonna eat half a caterpillar cake dress the part that's true you know dress for the job you want and ultimately he's doing that did it um not bother you but does it matter to you one way or another that we got no we didn't get any gimbal or or jeffrey in this, like our two politicians in this episode.