‘Task’ Episode 4: All Roads

8:41Rob Mahoney:you rob i mean he's been in like literally everything and especially in terms of like semi-prestige TV products of the last 20 years or so has just popped up in every single show, it turns out.

8:51Bill Simmons:So he figures out that the gun in the killing was used in the big Redding fight, which we're getting that scene. They just keep eluding it and circling around it too many times. And now we know that. Now that the flashback sign has been turned on, we're going backwards with that.

9:08Joanna Robinson:What Allman Brothers song do you play at a shootout in Redding?

9:14Bill Simmons:probably something a little rollicking right yeah yeah something with a little oomph to him you honestly might even zoom over to Leonard Skinner which I think is allowed

9:25Joanna Robinson:yes

9:27Bill Simmons:it's like adjacent almost like a brother in the family so he says it's got to be something personal it's got to be something fucking personal and he goes and has a little car meeting with Dark Hearts guy who's do we know that guy's name bearded kind of he's kind of the mob boss of the dark hearts but we don't know his name or really what his job is i don't even know that he's a vincent yes he is

9:54Rob Mahoney:vincent but he's almost more like an envoy from the dark hearts hq or something it's like he's he has been at the meeting and he's come back to give perry the notes from the meeting so we have Have we met the leader? No. Well, my understanding is that there's something called the Mother Council.

10:12Joanna Robinson:Love this terminology. The Mother Council, which is, I think, like 12 people or something like that. And Perry's on the Mother Council. But he's been off playing Detective Perry, trying to cover Jason's ass. And I'm really curious why he's so invested in Jason. But trying to cover Jason's ass. And meanwhile, the Mother Council had a meeting without him. He's like, nobody told me you were meeting. and they were like, that's because you're out here having relations with the woman bartender and investigating what happened with Billy, et cetera, et cetera. And so Vincent's like, we decided without you that Jason's out.

10:43Joanna Robinson:Jason's your guy, but he's not handling things and he's out. So I don't know that there's like a boss boss. I think it's like a council of bosses, a surprisingly like sort of democratic association and the MC.

10:56Rob Mahoney:They're very evolved. And honestly, like the Dark Hearts are apparently incredible scrapbookers, like going back through the records is just immaculately done. So congratulations to Perry or Reaper or Breaker or whoever it was that did all the scrapbooking because they just really have a delicate touch with it.

11:13Bill Simmons:I was jealous of the scrapbooking. Yeah, we don't do that for the ringer at all. I don't have a 2017 ringer yearbook I can look through. This had one of my favorite tropes in a show like this. And there's a couple because there was two others later. the call's been made when the guy's trying to be like no no what if we do this he's like the call's been made this is done it's a wrap we're dealing with this dude and this is now out of your hands I still don't know that guy might have been the leader of the mothership council though

11:46Rob Mahoney:oh you think so

11:48Bill Simmons:he's either the conciliary or the leader and I felt like there was a certain weight to him that made me wonder if he's actually running the whole thing we need an org chart

11:57Rob Mahoney:that's how we got on the counter yeah i mean like he has the gravitas you know so perry it's happening it's happening friday yeah uh mother daughter father daughter dance

12:09Joanna Robinson:which is not happening because uh we didn't even get tickets for it that's thursday uh and it are is it wednesday is that yeah because tomorrow is the dance yeah so it's wednesday jason's supposed to be out of there by Friday. So that's the TikTok and what we're working with here.

12:26Rob Mahoney:And out of there, just so we're all on the same page, like he's getting killed, right? That's the plan as far as the motorcycle gang is concerned. And it does seem like Perry, you know, Joe, you mentioned earlier, like, why would he be going to these lengths to try to save Jason? I do think there is like an investment in your protege kind of thing happening there, like trying to bail out this relationship that has been personally and professionally important to him that said i mean he's going to great lengths and great urgency and kind of like increasing menace and brutality to try to turn over these stones and you know the methods aren't always great but the results kind of speak for themselves like he's the best detective on this

13:03Bill Simmons:show so he is the best detective that's a good point yeah he he cracks down he gets dark hearts number three whatever that guy's name is and finds out that uh billy was running around with jason's wife pulls that piece out uh here's the beating story this is the second time we've heard about this beating that apparently just went on for like as long as an overtime football game and stuff was just oozing out of his head i hope we're not getting that flashback uh but that guy said it's been following us around like a curse ever since trope number two yeah really good one really good and then uh and then he goes to see jason i'm a big fan rob of the going in for the meeting but you see the guy subtly putting some sort of like punch thing oh yeah it's like wrapping the knuckles with the metal yeah it's a pro wrestling thing it's like oh my god he pulled the brass knuckles out of his out of his trunks but um did you think he was going to beat that guy to death

14:02Rob Mahoney:right there i didn't think he was going to beat him to death just because he seemed so invested in saving him but i was a little surprised at how quickly he let up it was kind of just like a a one punch and then an impassioned headbutt between them of mutual frustration and then all of a sudden we're just like back to business which look who am i to argue with motorcycle gang justice like they clearly have some stuff figured out that the rest of us could learn from uh structurally speaking hierarchically speaking i'm just saying there's lessons you know maybe it's not the metal knuckles but maybe there is a forgiveness there we can all learn from

14:38Joanna Robinson:what'd you think jeff um yeah that was like one punch and it was over i was quite surprised by that but again like i'm i think it's really interesting to track these relationships across um like inside of these non-blood-bound families inside of like law enforcement inside of you know we meet grasso's chief inside of this episode we meet grasso's co-workers um you know the way that Grosso is like keeps calling like keeps asking Tom about like the priesthood and calling him boss there's all these just sort of like pseudo father figures and then a lot of like missing dead parents all around all around the show that I think that's what's happening with Perry and Jason it's just in a very toxic space inside of the motorcycle club as much as Rob thinks they have things to teach us we can agree to disagree joe was your interpretation of perry uh who who menaced and wrestled aaron uh back down to her own kitchen table inside of that that really good scene yeah if you need to leave i can put you and the kids somewhere he'll never find you is that in the ground is that your interpretation what perry is saying like not i will get you out of here but i will kill you if you try to leave what did what was your i took that as a as a absolute absolute threat yeah i will kill you she i think aaron took it that way as well so yeah

16:06Rob Mahoney:i mean yeah message received in many ways like but he is terrifying in that conversation with her and there's no part of him or that character that you would ever believe would actually help this

16:16Bill Simmons:woman yeah well i thought he was going to kill jason because he said he lied to him um there's a lot of spit in this scene and in this episode but their faces are really close and he's spitting as he's talking and i every time i see that i always think of the actors like what's what would have been a bridge too far for me where what's the actor who plays perry like like yo dude maybe not just like a hunk of spit in my face as we're doing this like could you could you speak down jamie mcshane yeah jamie mcshane yo jamie um can we do a second take where you're not just heaving mucus all over my face and then later at the end Cliff gives a nice little blood spit but this is a very spitty this is the spittiest episode we've had of the do you think we need

17:03Joanna Robinson:do you think we need a flashback to what happened to Billy because we saw what happened to Cliff and I feel like we could just sort of we understand what it looks like when you do that.

17:12Bill Simmons:We're getting the flashback

17:14Joanna Robinson:okay.

17:14Bill Simmons:The flashback the flashback door has not been opened the portal of the past

17:19Rob Mahoney:this year after seeing the prosthetics and makeup team work on cliff i don't i don't want to see billy's head split elephant elephant man territory it's great it's great makeup well perry jason

17:32Bill Simmons:says to him she was gonna take the kids she was gonna leave me which i think is trope number three uh goes to see aaron get some threats in the kitchen not positive he believes her protestations?

17:47Rob Mahoney:No. I think he knows, right?

17:49Bill Simmons:He's put this together and I'm not sure what his endgame is with Aaron, but I don't think it's going to be good for her or the family.

17:55Rob Mahoney:Yeah. Nope. I think he's got Aaron figured out. I think he's quickly now has Maeve's relationship to all this figured out and this is the good news, bad news about this being a light Maeve week is yes, she's not in this episode a lot. I think she's going to be in next week a whole ton, like a ton and in very insidious and dangerous ways.

18:11Bill Simmons:Which may be why she wasn't in it that much right probably filming other stuff oh definitely could be the title of the episode

18:19Joanna Robinson:is all roads and i was like all roads lead to what and i think it's mave like right because yeah well that's like tom tom met her perry now has a scent on her and it's like we're all converging on mave and the prendergrast uh home so yeah i'm i like rob's point that perry's the

18:38Bill Simmons:best detective in the show. He's really good. Perry, there's still time. Go to the other side. You can fight crime. We're going to take a break and then we're going to talk about the big revelation.

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20:09Bill Simmons:I feel like I scored big time when I started using Apple Card. Apply in the wallet app on your iPhone. Start using it right away with Apple Pay. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at applecard.com. Okay. Joanna called this, or I called, I think Joanna called this. Martha Plimpton is the mole. I think you called this Joanna I think this might be a double head fake I consider this and I just think so she calls we have the classic it's me we have a problem just like just a staple and then Perry is telling Jason basically almost in the next scene we heard from our informant so unless they're really I mean this is like Rob this is a Andrew Nembhard in the paint just doing like triple fakes trying to get a layup off kind of head fake

21:07Rob Mahoney:we're in Jalen Brunson territory at this point

21:09Bill Simmons:I she so if it's if it is a head fake she's really selling it too on her end because when she meets with Ruffalo and at one point like her eyes just kind of start darting like she's like almost like a law and order character like almost intentionally trying to look guilty then has the call I think it's her

21:28Joanna Robinson:i mean yeah she asks like what time are you meeting in the park you know she asks all the information all the questions you would want uh you know a mole to ask i just think that showing it that reveal is so underwhelming just like showing it to us like that it feels like a fake because if if she's not the mole what that call could be is the call she promised to make which is to figure out what's going on with the mole so like we have a problem we cut away the next thing she says is we have an informant in the department you know what i mean like that could be the call that she's making i still have my eye on on grasso that's that's my we were we were talking about earlier i just think the lizzie grasso stuff is so they're like hitting that so hard that that like we have heartbreak in store for us uh in terms of someone betraying someone else and i or or dying one of the two but i think it's more interesting if it's like a betrayal so yeah what do you think

22:26Rob Mahoney:rob this is this is my prediction for the week i think we're going double mole i think plimpton is a mole but she's also working with one of the two grasso or lizzie because like if she's the person putting together the task force it would be an incredible stroke of luck for one of them to just like end up on it and also be tied into the motorcycle gang but if both of them are compromise and she's been told to put this person on the task force then all of a sudden the pieces start connecting and there's there's just so many little things with grasso and lizzie both that make them feel a little bit suspicious like you know the camera will linger on lizzie a little bit during the gwen stefani song when she's like singing about being a bad girl doing bad things and look there's lots of meanings that could tie in there but also grasso's want to get with lizzie but refusal like he doesn't want to be in her marital bed which we can unpack if you you guys would like, but also doesn't offer to take her back to his place.

23:19Rob Mahoney:He doesn't offer any alternatives in a way that feels like fishy and closed off. And like, he doesn't want other people to know too much about him.

23:27Joanna Robinson:I also think there's just like a weird, like religious conflict thing happening with Grasso that is super interesting. Like we've been, from the start, we've been hearing about his religious upbringing, his protestations about fish Fridays and all this sort of stuff inside of the Catholicism. But he keeps asking about, you know, the priesthood and all the sorts of stuff like that raised catholic it felt like his objection to being in the marital bed was a religious or moral one and so like i you know spiritually what is going on uh with this guy which makes him i think a perfect candidate for something as conflicted as um i'm ratting or i'm

24:03Bill Simmons:molding or something like that so dj take care of business and then feel guilty after come on you're under 30 years old to grab the sex when you can get it come on what did he think was going

24:14Rob Mahoney:to happen like they go they're going back to her place did he think that when lizzie split up with her ex she like burned the bed on ceremony like what did he think was happening some people have

24:24Joanna Robinson:spare rooms weird but i don't i don't know what he thought was going on here's my living room like

24:29Bill Simmons:there's other spots in the house she said she's like she's like i don't want to have sex on the

24:34Joanna Robinson:floor or like over my recliner but i'm like is there a couch like we can we can make this work here here's my question here's my question are we sleeping in our jeans is that the implication there she's just like good night and they're cuddled up shirtless with their jeans still on in in the marital bed is it worse to like sleep with your jeans on in the marital bed than it is to just like have sex i just thought i didn't think that was a good scene i i didn't i didn't

25:01Bill Simmons:that scene did not work for me um his reasoning it just didn't seem like a it didn't seem like a realistic way for these people have been courting each other for a couple weeks. They're getting drunk at a bar together. It's on. And then just the faucet shutting off that fast. I don't think that was realistic. It was also unclear how they were drunk, but then they weren't. I just thought that scene was all over the place.

25:25Rob Mahoney:I think those characters are all over the place in a way that it's just constantly making alarms go off for me with both of them. I like them, but I don't know what to make of them, and I'm still suspicious of both of them within the context of the mulling and ratting.

25:39Joanna Robinson:I really like the Lizzie performance. I think that is really good. I really liked her scene with Aaliyah. The Aaliyah Chekhov sharpshooter sort of line that we got. And her talking about being on a softball team and making patches and this idea of nicknames and camaraderie and this is another bid towards family and community. This is something that Brad Inglesby has talked about how he's so interested in the Delco area is these ideas of community and how we show up for each other. And inside the motorcycle gang, it's a very toxic version of that, I would say.

26:14Rob Mahoney:Joe, you say that, but they also do the same version of what Lizzie was talking about with her softball team, where she was like, I made patches with nicknames for everybody. The motorcycle gang is literally wearing those.

26:25Joanna Robinson:They do patch in. It's true. It's true.

26:28Rob Mahoney:Rob, softball flashback to the championship game.

26:31Bill Simmons:Lizzie up with the bases loaded making rice krispies treats for everybody and then knocking a grand slam i'm gonna say just

26:38Rob Mahoney:on neuroses alone lizzie is not a pitcher i don't i don't think she has it in her she would be an

26:42Bill Simmons:absolute nervous wreck out yeah definitely like second base right field just try to keep lizzie out of it before she self-combusts um i think lizzie's really good she's a hot mess in a good way and uh i really like it and i'm ready to do my power rankings for if you if there's a double mole or if we're wrong about Martha Plimpton saddest you'd be if somebody was the mole because for me Lizzie's number one yeah I'd be like oh I was really getting attached to you is that would you have

27:13Joanna Robinson:somebody above her Joanna or no no that would be that would be the most devastating I want to see her like confront Anthony if he's the mole that's that's what I really want to see but I'm curious why we're setting up Aaliyah as as a as a crack sharp shooter I think that's something that we need to think about and also uh we had a bunch of listeners write in djgrasanova at gmail.com uh that's one really was really uh busy this last week and a couple people point out that alia had this line earlier in the season uh that she says there's mice in here little shit little shit everywhere so this idea that she would be the one to figure out who the rat is, who the mole is inside of their organization.

27:58Joanna Robinson:A lot of people thought that that might be an indication of that.

28:02Rob Mahoney:I also thought in her conversation with Lizzie, when they're talking about the sharpshooting and wanting to give Aaliyah the nickname, and Lizzie kind of gets stuck on the idea of like, I wish I had something. Like, I wish I had something I was good at, which makes me a little nervous that she went outside the organization to find something she's good at, like ratting out to a motorcycle gang. But I hope we're wrong. I hope

28:24Bill Simmons:this is not the beat well we have uh we had one other big thing happen you knew sam was gonna have to hop out of the car at some point and it was always in these altruistic sam moments where he's just it's just hard to tell if he's not sure if his iq is over maybe 30 but he's like fish water just like wandering out um and there's somebody having a segu season and that leads to robbie running out and uh it's a little bit of a dark side for robbie that was the darkest it's gotten with that dude um but unfortunately uh there's witnesses the kid says the name robbie so now

29:05Joanna Robinson:here we go when he says when he says robbie like did anyone else just like feel their stomach drop you know he just like he it almost like slightly slows down he's just like robbie and you're like

29:15Bill Simmons:yeah yeah yeah that's it yeah why are we rooting for robbie but somehow i don't know it's a good

29:22Joanna Robinson:question um we also got we also got an email from a listener uh steve who had a really good prediction that i like i'm sorry bill a little bit better than your uh the cute child is gonna die prediction which is that sammy who loves animals and tom who loves bird watching what if Sam winds up in Tom's household at the end of all of this. I don't know how I feel about like do-over. Was that gone baby gone?

29:51Bill Simmons:Like there's. Yeah.

29:53Joanna Robinson:Yeah. Like I don't know how I feel about like do-over adopted son. But like, yeah, the animal lovers get to have a connection and it sort of helps pull Tom out of the depression that he's in. And maybe it like that healing sends him to Ethan's hearing or something like that. But I like that idea of chickens or birds. Let's talk about birds together. I don't know.

30:16Rob Mahoney:Look, someone needs to adopt Sam. And preferably somebody who's not regularly beating random dudes' faces to a pulp in moments of distress. That would be ideal, I think.

30:26Joanna Robinson:Yeah.

30:28Bill Simmons:So Sam and Ruffalo are fishing or looking at birds. And then the Allman Brothers come in with, Tuesday's gone away. And then that's it. And credits. That's it. And credits. I personally would think that would be a little corny. They would really have to sell me on that one. If that was the full circle that he gets one more chance at adoption. But, well, the other thing that happened was Cliff died. We had the Fandu odds. What did we say? Cliff, five and a half episodes? When we did our first? I think we crushed this. We said five and a half. Yeah. We did. We all went under. And Cliff didn't make it to episode five.

31:06Bill Simmons:He didn't make it out of looking. And he didn't make it out of this either. that poor actor just keeps losing this is a scenario we talked about which is that the

31:14Joanna Robinson:motorcycle club the mc gets cliff yeah and then you know probably the cops get robbie uh is probably what's gonna happen but yeah cliff my guy i will say the um i mean the the makeup was really good this is horrifying and horrible i think earlier i do i do think we should talk about the like flashback a bit more but when the when that flashback ends yeah when it flips back when it flips back to the cold, sad quarry and Cliff is just sort of like heaped over her rock. And it's just like, so like Cliff was already gone. Like he was just, you know, he's just like sleeping in the car. He's just like, it's over.

31:50Joanna Robinson:And this whole, you know, theme that comes up from Billy in the flashback of like, it's already over. You don't know, but it's already done. And Cliff was like, yeah, I'm already done. And Robbie's still acting like Robbie's still dressing up, dancing with his daughter, making plans to go to Canada as if it's not already over, but it's over. I think that's sad. It's over.

32:12Rob Mahoney:It's like fully saran wrapped at this point. We are completely done and dead and suffocated.

32:17Joanna Robinson:Put it in the fridge. It's over.

32:19Bill Simmons:Rob, should we do a first take segment? What would you like to hit? Did Cliff deserve to die? Did he cause this himself? Did Cliff's mistakes lead to his own death? Because I think Cliff really fell apart the last couple episodes. I mean, he fucking fell asleep in the car that was sam in there you have one job just stay awake for eight minutes um but he really felt like he was unraveling yes uh over really since the shootout and um we've all seen too many of these shows to know that he's not making it to the end so there you go but isn't the

32:50Rob Mahoney:unraveling maybe the better response than the delusion like if you're going to be on one side of it i think what cliff is doing is probably in a lot of ways more healthy and human than what robbie is doing which is not just continuing on as if no there's no problems until all of a sudden people are killing your friend and stealing all the drugs or some of the drugs but like looping your family deeper and deeper into this stuff pulling sam who everything we've seen from sam to this point has been feeding chickens and eating pancakes and generally like pretty happy under the circumstances like yeah he just watched robbie beat the shit out of this dude like he's gonna

33:22Joanna Robinson:be terrified at this point yeah that wasn't great it's interesting that you say that because uh Again, we got another really good email from a listener who is a child psychologist who was talking about like the way that Sammy is reacting to basically being kidnapped and how he's very like go with the flow. And they're like this this listener Dave was saying like this is absolutely accurate child psychology for someone like Sammy who was who was abused, who was like put down in the basement, like all these sort of things like this. He's learned to just be like quiet and soft and amenable and sweet and just, you know, make himself appealing to whoever it happens to be taking care of him at any given time.

34:00Joanna Robinson:So like while I'm sure he's traumatized by watching Robbie beat this guy nearly to death. Yeah. Also, what else has he seen living with the parents that he lived with up until this point?

34:12Bill Simmons:You know, listen, Sammy's kind of wired like a 70s kid. This is what all the 70s kids were like. We just rolled with the punches. Didn't know what was going to happen. who is going to be home. We just walk around with no oversight whatsoever. He rolls in the punches. I respect it. Quick NBA question for Rob. Sorry, Joanna. Which side is Balmer on more? Is he in the cliff? This is the anchor is about to come down in my head or is he in the Robbie? I'm just going to plan for the father-daughter dance and pretend all this stuff isn't happening.

34:45Rob Mahoney:Which side is offering more carbon credits right now?

34:48Bill Simmons:Probably the Robbie side.

34:50Rob Mahoney:Then I think we have our answer. I do think, you know, that's certainly a little more delusion happening in terms of being able to sweep all that under the rug. There is a little bit of I'm just going to be able to get in the back of this truck and disappear quality to the Clippers PR messaging right now.

35:04Bill Simmons:And Robbie, because this is the key to these shows is the guy who's like he's fucked. There's no way out. He's going to get killed by this gang or he's going to get caught. He's got this kid that he's obviously not going to kill. So he's no outs with that. he thinks he's going to go to Canada a plan that's never worked in the history of TV or movies ever and just like yeah I sold my fentanyl and I opened a little farm here in Winnipeg with my adopted that plan's not working I'm going to bring my kids it'll be fine they'll just move right into the Calgary school system just completely delusional but I don't know that's what we get in these shows

35:43Joanna Robinson:I think it's interesting like we've talked from the beginning about this idea of robbie being like this romantic this like dreamer kind of character and that's who he's always been and i thought it was really interesting in the flashback to have the billy versus robbie pov to have these like two brothers with their matching back tattoos yeah you know like sitting by the lake and this idea of like what you lose when you lose someone who not only that you love but who sees you a certain way right so you know Robbie's like she's just gonna maybe she'll find someone better Robbie's like doesn't have to look hard to find someone better and then you know Billy gives him a bunch of shit uh you know about the size of his dick or whatever but then is also like but you're great you're the best around and so like losing the person who sees you that way and there's no one else in Robbie's life who's like you're the best around certainly not Harper certainly not Maeve like no one's like you're the best Robbie that devastation, like what that does to you, that kind of loss, losing someone who's known you your whole life, like they don't, their parents aren't around, like who knows Robbie anymore?

36:50Joanna Robinson:Cliff, Cliff is loyal to him. Like Cliff is great. But like that, what that costs you to lose, I think is a really something that Brad really captured in that flashback scene.

37:02Rob Mahoney:I think you're certainly losing the tenderness of that kind of exchange and dynamic, right? Because I think Maeve and Robbie's kids know him in a way. And in fact, they kind of see right through him in this episode. Maeve is calling him out left and right. His daughter knows better than to rely on the fact that her dad is going to show up. It's like, if you are the romantic in your life, you kind of end up being surrounded by realists because someone has to pull you back down to earth at times.

37:28Joanna Robinson:You turn them into pragmatists. Absolutely.

37:31Rob Mahoney:And the fact that he's doing that with his daughter specifically is heartbreaking to watch. The fact that she has to be the sobering adult in the room who's like, yeah, this is not happening. I put the money back in your wallet. Fucking sucks. But what makes it interesting in good TV is it comes within the spirit of Robbie trying to be a good dad. He just doesn't know how to be a responsible dad.

37:52Bill Simmons:Yeah, and they did a nice job of making it super awkward. That father that let's do a dance right here. It's like, oh, my God. I could barely watch it. I love the flashback scene. I thought it was great. Yeah, I agree. The fade to sad, like semi passed out cliff and like a shitty day at the quarry versus where we were. I also there's so many important things that happen in that scene. But just Aaron showing up and the way she like ran at him and the fact that the whole family is kind of watching it, which leads to, you know, stuff every family has where it's like, oh, yeah, we got to keep this secret for our guy, Billy.

38:30Bill Simmons:but I just I thought that scene did so many different things and also explained you know the the the Aaron why she would she obviously loved that dude yeah why she would want to get

38:42Joanna Robinson:revenge on these guys and the whole thing I love I love that conversation that Billy and Robbie have of like you I thought you said it was over like you ended it and Billy's like I tried I tried like I thought that was really good and and the look on Maeve's face right we see Maeve and Billy like playing around in like the water father daughter sort of like uh fun earlier but then look on her face of just like this is this is a disaster uh and and putting mave in that similar harper space of just having to be the pragmatist of like here's my dad following his heart doing this thing he's in love with this woman and i know how the motorcycle club works and this is an absolute disaster um what is this going to do to us uh it's i mean rob she she had a thing for six

39:24Bill Simmons:foot three strapping guys with a lot of tattoos you could have a chance like you know back in

39:28Rob Mahoney:your motorcycle days i'm a few tats short but you know i could ride with the best of them you know i was i was really i was really moving up in the gang until i got waylaid it's too bad the fentanyl

39:39Bill Simmons:incident didn't help you no um yeah i like aaron um and then i think that's i think that's all the stuff we i wanted to hit just about the episode itself except for um me giving robbie the ultimatum yeah um not enough mave but it makes me think next episode is a mave episode because that's usually how this stuff works um anything else you want to hit for just for episode four

40:05Joanna Robinson:joanna i guess a problem that we find ourselves in right now and in the middle of a season like this when uh a lot of people are trying to chase down clues even though it was fun to watch detective perry um and i really loved actually that scene he had with um his his lady and and their back and forth about the coffee like i thought that was really necessary uh for to have that moment with perry but like um we're ahead of most of the characters like we know what's going on for the most part and that's always a tricky place to have a tv audience in if we're ahead of most of the characters we have the information uh barring this like potential mole head fake or something like that so as we move into the last three which is going to be like action action action chase all of that stuff that's going to be propulsive but i think that might be why this middle section feels a little soft it's just sort of like it's not a mystery we're chasing along with them we're just like it's a it's a when not who what how it's a sort of like how how soon is this all going to come crashing down which can be tense and exciting but i think in this case feels just like a little bit softer than some of the earlier episodes well especially because the task

41:17Rob Mahoney:force is the party that's so far behind like they're so caught up dealing with this mole stuff in particular and just getting like we should say i wasn't sure about the mechanics of the phone like ray's phone is what's used to being used to set up for the sting was the phone given to the motorcycle gang like the actual phone or was it a cloned phone so that they could kind of eavesdrop on the text like i wasn't sure what was happening there exactly but he said he like

41:42Joanna Robinson:we saw grasso send a text and then cliff said i haven't heard from him yet so whatever is happening in the phone like he's not getting those messages from the phone that the cops have so i don't know there's something happened with the phones that i don't feel like we understand yet you know maybe

42:01Bill Simmons:Plus, Cliff breaking his phone was fun, too, in the car chase. Cliff had a lot of unforced errors down the stretch. Like, maybe get off the phone and try to drive away from these guys. What?

42:12Joanna Robinson:Robbie! Here's what I'll say to Robbie. Some notes I have for Robbie. Robbie breaks the phone of the guy who took the photo of him, but then he just tosses it. And, like, I understand you don't want to take a cell phone with you because you don't want it to be traced. but I just felt like him tossing the cell phone and leaving it there did not feel like the move to me.

42:34Bill Simmons:You bring the phone, toss it later. Yeah.

42:38Joanna Robinson:Put it through the shredder. Like it doesn't blend.com. I don't know.

42:42Bill Simmons:It's almost like Robbie's not that good of a criminal. No. Almost. He's being reinforced over and over again. Yeah. It's a little new to all this. Rob, when's the next time you're going to have a heavily sarin wrapped bagel without thinking of Cliff?

42:57Rob Mahoney:I don't think I'm ever going to be able to look at plastic wrap the same way again. There was something about just the intensity of the way it was being wrapped that really, really got under my skin.

43:06Joanna Robinson:Are we putting Saran on bagels?

43:10Bill Simmons:Yeah, in New York City, they'll like super duper. They Saran a bagel? Saran wrapping. Yeah. How do you think they did that with the actor? That was one of those. How did you do this? Like, I just couldn't figure it out. That's got to be like. you put little like air holes in there for him i'd be so bummed out if that like first like being spit on i wouldn't want that i wouldn't want to be in that scene but then yeah we're gonna saran wrap you with a bunch of fucking makeup on where you can't really breathe anyway and just try to

43:39Rob Mahoney:hold your breath for a minute it wouldn't be great that spit scene in particular how many takes was it was it like fourth take let me get a sip of kool-aid blood splatter on jason yeah angles b is like one more we need the coverage yeah now do it from this side um all right it's prediction

44:00Bill Simmons:time joanna let's go we got three episodes left uh i assume episode six is gonna be our mac daddy awesome holy shit episode would be our experience with these shows could be um do you expect any sort of huge swerve anything crazy in episode five or is it the mave episode well my main

44:22Joanna Robinson:question is when and we've been asking this before when do we get tom and robbie in the same place when are we getting our like diner heat scene right like yes if if like sick if six we only three episodes left if six is the big like actiony moment and then seven is the sort of come down like that has to happen next week right we have to have tom and robbie next week

44:50Rob Mahoney:i mean you could have it in the action episode you know the first 15 to 20 minutes is them intersecting for some reason or another and then the back half of it is the action extravaganza

45:01Joanna Robinson:i also just feel like i need more ruffalo being a bit more competent or like maybe he's just not competent maybe that's the thing he looked like a like the saddest like sack of potatoes once his like staying went went poorly but like yeah what why is tom and the fbi what is he good at what have we seen him be good at so far are we going to see that uh evolve or should we just send him back to the job fair like what like what do we think i don't know does he have a taste for the

45:32Bill Simmons:action at the level like this it's funny because it made me think a little bit of no country for old man when uh when tommy lee goes in the he sees he sees the thing shot out of the door after brolin dies and just the fear he has being in that room versus how he would have handled it 20 years ago and he like officially realizes like i'm a little too old for this job i was getting those

45:53Rob Mahoney:vibes from ruffalo i think you know to the extent that this is he we are not getting the like this crew is good moment like this is not oh these guys are hyper competent this is both of these guys like are kind of okay and also kind of suck at their jobs or or the criminaling in robbie's case like i think some of the bumbling is the point for ruffalo right and perry's the best at his job of anyone but even perry maybe should have put two and two together with who is has a vested interest

46:22Bill Simmons:in fucking with us took him well a month to kind of start patching it together that somebody had

46:29Rob Mahoney:it out for the gang i did like that wrinkle that like on a local level it was an open secret that jason had beat billy to death but on a one step up level within the organization like perry just bought the company line about him skimming money and and thought that was the end of it like i like that there's that barrier to entry because jason does not seem like the sharpest detective in the world i don't think he would be putting all the pieces together but perry now that he has seen the one critical piece is starting to get the whole picture i'm still i also like i feel really

47:00Joanna Robinson:sort of dialed in on perry at this point jason remains kind of like uh a mystery character to me in terms of like who he is what he actually cares about like she was going to take the kids but like does he actually care about that or is that a pride thing um does he have like a rage you know switch that flips like uh you know what what's his what's his overall deal i'm not sure i I feel like I understand his interior life at all.

47:24Rob Mahoney:But I guess we're going to need to see that head splitting flashback to figure out if the rage problems are real for Jason.

47:30Joanna Robinson:I don't want it.

47:33Bill Simmons:So the two flashbacks we think we might get are the Redding fight and then maybe Billy getting beaten to death. I actually don't think we're getting either.

47:42Joanna Robinson:Why? Okay. Yeah. Why? Like, what would it show us?

47:45Bill Simmons:If we were going to get more flashbacks, those would be the two candidates, I would think.

47:49Joanna Robinson:Are we not getting more? We're still waiting on Tom's wife.

47:51Bill Simmons:Tom's wife? Oh, and Tom's wife is another one. Yeah. Rob, any big predictions?

47:56Rob Mahoney:I'm on double mole watch. I'm going to say that the second mole is Lizzie. I think Plimpton and Lizzie are in cahoots in some fashion. Whether they have a longstanding relationship or not, I don't know. But I think it's the two of them who are both moles.

48:10Bill Simmons:Wow. I see. I'm more suspect of Aaliyah just because she's been suspiciously quiet. And it feels like they're tempting us. Anything else from the readers, from the listeners?

48:20Joanna Robinson:That means I take Grasso. Yeah, we do have a couple of things. We got a Pearl Jam email from Seamus who notes that Brad Inglesby wrote this great movie called Out of the Furnace with Christian Bale, Casey Affleck, Woody Harrelson. And the Pearl Jam song release recurs throughout the whole movie. So Seamus is wondering if like Eddie Vedder is just a Brad Inglesby fan and has been. And that's how they got to use Pearl Jam in last week's episode or two weeks ago. and then Reyna wrote in to say just writing in because I was shocked that Bill Simmons didn't pick up on the fact that the priest in Task is the same as the priest in an episode of The Sopranos Amor Fu who basically enables Carmella to stop feeling guilty about her marriage to Tony knowing what he does to make money and just try to live a little more of the humble life so as not to partake or benefit from it so a Sopranos connection should have gotten that one

49:09Bill Simmons:listen even the great slip up from time to time never pass that along to the listener alright so So episode five, we have coming next week, obviously, three left. And it feels like shit's going to really start going down in real way. Plus, you're doing the hooked thing. We're not going to cover the girlfriend from Amazon, I don't think, on the prestige show because it's not very prestigious.

49:34Joanna Robinson:Are you enjoying it?

49:35Bill Simmons:I gave it a whirl. I gave it a whirl.

49:37Joanna Robinson:Bill, is your household a the summer I turned pretty household? Oh, yeah. Or not so much?

49:44Bill Simmons:What are you talking about? I have a 20-year-old daughter.

49:46Joanna Robinson:Yeah, that's what I thought. That's what I thought. Just making sure. Staying up in Boston until three.

49:50Bill Simmons:She's staying up until three in the morning because that's when Amazon puts a new episode on. Bill's Team Jer, I think.

49:55Joanna Robinson:Are you Team Jer or are you Team Conrad? What do you think?

49:58Bill Simmons:I have not watched the show. I dabbled in just being in the room when it was being watched and made fun of it and was told to leave.

50:08Joanna Robinson:Being in the room, dads, is my favorite part of the whole The Summer I Turned Pretty phenomenon. So I love that for you. I think Bill, who has excellent taste, would be Team Conrad. I really do.

50:18Bill Simmons:Team J is a demented take, honestly. In episode 11, apparently there was this sex scene where they went for it. And my daughter said people were very confused by it. They're like, this is a show for teens. Why did they go for it with a sex scene? What's happening? Why would teens want sex? We're all waiting to find out. They want the sanitized Amazon teen culture sex, not sex. sex they she was a little uh well they were in paris first of all and and like things you know

50:47Joanna Robinson:things are gonna go the way they're gonna go in paris secondly when i did talk to jody and nora about the episode i did say i was worried for the dads of america about that sex scene so there you go the show's over built the finale happened but there's gonna be a movie so so the the saga continues so did she stop turning pretty or is she gonna be able to turn

51:08Bill Simmons:pretty again. There's no more summers where she can turn pretty?

51:11Joanna Robinson:Well, there's going to be a movie, so there's always more opportunities to turn prettier.

51:16Bill Simmons:Smart. Turning the TV show into the movie thing actually kind of works.

51:21Joanna Robinson:The Downton Abbey approach, I think it's going to work.

51:23Bill Simmons:The first Sex and the City movie was massive and then sadly they made a second one. They did.

51:29Joanna Robinson:Sadly, they just kept going with Sex and the City.

51:33Bill Simmons:Pretty good. Alright, so who do we have to thank?

51:38Joanna Robinson:Donnie. Donnie Beachum.

51:39Bill Simmons:Let's thank Donnie for stepping in. Let's thank Justin Sales, as always. And thank you to both of you, Rob and Joanna. Thank you, Bill. Great to spend this hour with you. As always, I will see you for episode five.

51:50Rob Mahoney:Sounds good. Bye.

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