‘Alien: Earth’ Episode 3, ‘Peacemaker’ Season 2 Premiere, and Netflix Theme Parks

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23:50Andy Greenwald:Evening. Buyer's remorse. Buy a new car? I'll be moving in. Let's get started. Sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana. You what? Yeah, great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it. So there's no... No, no buyer's remorse. More like buyer's rejoice? I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it. Buyers rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana. Limitations and exclusions may apply. See our seven-day return policy at Carvana.com. Let's talk a little bit about Alien, just because I didn't get to weigh in on the third episode. So this is as a product of what's been going on with me.

24:26I watched it, was fully prepared to talk about it, wasn't able to attend that podcast, obviously. Completely forgot what happened. Rewatched it. and just because like every time i think i sent you a bunch of texts that were just like and then this happens and you were like i don't think so uh so i rewatched it with love i said i don't think so i know i know you were you were being an you were an alien why can't you focus no noah holly worked really hard the least you could do is take some time out of your grief and then zoom in here uh i was just gonna say that i liked it a lot better uh the second time around because i think i understood what was happening now granted so knock knock down like 15 of my brain capacity from the first time just given circumstances but like i did not know and spoilers for episode three of alien uh earth i did not know how moro was communicating with slightly I did not understand the first time I was like does this guy hack into a computer speaker or something how is this even happening I don't think I understood

25:40Andy Greenwald:did you Google is there Bluetooth in future well I don't think I even understood that like Hermit got stabbed I thought he just got like knocked around a little bit and I was just like why is this dude under full you know they're really getting the balloon inflated inside of this dude like what's happening so some of the set pieces and some of the details made a lot more sense to me the second time around I will not I cannot promise that I will watch every Alien Earth episode twice but it did click a little bit more for me the second time around did you talk about this at all on Thursday? no we didn't we talked about Kaya's brief onboarding to the Alien Universe it was it's not for her it's not for her was this the was this the on-ramp or did she try It was like an on-ramp with nothing.

26:27Andy Greenwald:It was just kind of to nothing. It just sort of went off the side of it. It was, we talked about this once we finished recording. That's Kaya backing away from Alien. Like, it was actually quite moving because Kaya's worked with us for quite a long time and we love having her, but I didn't realize just how much a part of the Watch family she was until I sat with her for an hour and we did an entire podcast on shows neither of us had watched. And then she recommended a 10-year-old German film. Perhaps it's time to turn over the keys. I was like, sometimes they grow up so fast, you know? No, we didn't really discuss it.

27:00Andy Greenwald:We didn't really discuss it at all. I have a bunch of different things that I'd like to sort of get at with this episode, but I don't want to break this. I don't want to break the conversation into too fine. I don't want the points to be too fine, but... Yeah, because we're going to talk about it again probably on Thursday. That's true, with another one. I think that what I find compelling and confounding about this show is that it's rare in my experience to find something that contains in every episode thus far things that I like this much and things that I dislike this much. Maybe it's kind of repeating the take I had after the first two episodes, which was, you know, the intensity of feeling is probably a good sign.

27:41It's actually a good thing.

27:42Andy Greenwald:There's definitely, this was human made. Because there are, like the show in which Babu Cisse as Moro is the star, is the leading character, is one of my favorite shows of the year. I love this actor. I love his intensity. I love his... His story is incredible. Like, I'm like a man without a country. My country was a corporation. Yes. But now I'm like very mission-oriented because like, otherwise, what am I? Just a half man, half robot. You know, who can't relate? And who can't really even enjoy the delicious street food being cooked up around him in future Bangkok because you know I had to say it.

28:20I thought young Bourdain might jump out at that.

28:23Andy Greenwald:I love, I genuinely expressed something about Game of Thrones a decade ago about wanting to spend more time in the spice markets of Essos or whatever. Then it became a cliche, but like it does give something. Like I find it very, very compelling that they went to Thailand for, I'm sure among other reasons, but tax reasons being chief among them and then took full advantage of it and made Prodigy City some future version of Bangkok and then put the actors out into the street and found ways to film at night on bridges over the river with around people cooking and living and shopping. And it feels alive.

28:58Andy Greenwald:And that kind of life is what I think makes a show called Alien Earth earn its name. Because the traditional alien films are just hermetically sealed haunted houses, basically, right, in space. And this is not that. And I really appreciated the way, like that whole scene when he's grabbing the phone and grabbing the food. And that was the highlight of the episode for me. I think you're absolutely right. The cool thing about, I mean, you're right about the haunted house is generally, even on, I was going to say that like Alien 3, for instance, is a prison planet, but like is realized as a haunted house.

29:37You know, I think that that claustrophobia and keeping people in these intense spaces is part of like what makes these movies so remarkable. holly has to open that up because you can't sustain the tension that's right um over the course of 10 hours i mean plus of of television and i actually find myself i wouldn't say not bored at all but when the alien aliens if there's ever any combat if there's any ever any like oh the alien's gonna get hermit i'm like well this dude presumably has plot armor for at least a while longer so this fight is really only there to frustrate me because i've seen so many of my homies go down uh so many so many greats from tom scarrett to to bill paxton i've seen them all and uh it's kind of frustrating to watch an alien dilly dally you know for the sake of of tv or for the sake of alex lawther being a regular star on this television show when i'm like this guy would have gotten chompers through the forehead like instantaneously i totally agree with that and i think that it it makes it a unless there's like a whole plan for that fam well

30:49Andy Greenwald:clearly there's something and we should get to it but i but i think that um this is one of those cases where the way that we that you and i tend to talk about tv which is a little bit it can be a little bit 10 000 foot or meta or like trying to think about the problems that were being solved with this is useful because there's no absolutely no question that noah and whoever else he collaborated with in the early stages of this had to run right at this problem. That there's a, the reason the Alien movies are so uniquely successful has to do with their construction and limited timeframe. And once you start giving people magical get out of, um, uh, Fang's free cards, it feels different.

31:26Andy Greenwald:So that said, something that I admire definitely more on a practical, clinical writer's room kind of perspective is the way he designed a season to give us, potentially, we've only seen three episodes, but to give us both. Meaning we got the claustrophobic alien movie in the crashed ship inside of the tower. And we even got a epic battle with a xenomorph that proved that the hybrids can defeat them. What he then also gave us is four or five more, right? So it resets the clock. He showed us what an alien movie that we expect and what we might see going forward and then gave us the potential to revisit it.

32:06Andy Greenwald:I think that's very smart. It might be frustrating to some viewers. And similarly, the like, we went claustrophobic and now we are back out onto the city streets or into the suites of these trillion dollar corporations. It's a smart aperture shift. Is it too jarring for some fans who are only there for one thing or another? Or is it just, you know, par for the course when he has to establish a different storytelling rhythm and language for a franchise as it jumps from one medium to another? Yeah. Also just, um, we probably evaluate TV shows prematurely across the board, like society does that, but also we probably do because we've got a lot of shows that we need to check out.

32:48And I think we've got years of, um, taste oriented, like reflexes where we're like, I don't like that that's not, this isn't, I don't like this, this isn't for me, or I do love this and I don't care even if it's doing it well or not.

33:02Andy Greenwald:By the way, put a pin in that. That's going to come up in Peacemaker. Well, I noticed myself being like, oh, a couple of these hybrid kids who I found deeply annoying, and that's not nice, but deeply annoying in the first two episodes. Because they were kind of in the way of the alien movie you thought you were getting. Yeah, and I was like, this is interesting, actually. So, I think it's Is it Nibs or Curly who's the redhead? Nibs. Nibs. Her, I'm in an Emily Bronte novel staring into the mirror and perhaps there's some stuff wired wrong in my head is fascinating to me now. And Curly, the one who's like, I'm actually the real Wendy because I don't get broken, is cool.

33:50And her going up to Boy Cavalier and saying, I could be you, I could be a better version of you. which plays into his idea of like, I need somebody to talk to who I feel like I can have a smart conversation with. Kirsch and his obvious like changing. I mean, this is TV storytelling. You get incremental change over the course of hours of watching. And I appreciated that in this episode. And I think the things that annoyed me maybe in the first two, like needle drops where I was like, why is this playing in the future? I don't know. It's like, I actually thought the Funkadelic needle drop, Like if you just put down your weapons, you're like, oh, it's pretty cool.

34:29It's like, I like this montage. What, so do you feel, so in other words, on the second viewing, did you feel some of your preconceived expectations or frustrations secede a little bit and you were enjoying the rhythms of the show for what it was and as a TV show?

34:46Andy Greenwald:Because I think it's an interesting point to make. Like this is all of the criticisms that we're having so far about the show. I mean, there's some things that are just absolute. It's very well made. It's very well made. The production value, the cast is interesting and intriguing. If we don't really understand someone yet, they're compelling enough or eye-catching enough or curious enough to keep us interested and leaning in until we reveal a little bit more. I still found the Lost Boys conceit to be a little bit of a struggle. Yeah. Only because it's like the, you know, how did this flavor get in my other like it just didn't it's not tasting good together to me yet yes and i think that you can probably go around and be like um nitpicky about some of the behaviors and some of the things that are happening within the um complex that boy cavalier and prodigy has where it's like these are i just said probably billion dollar investments each one of them like are you guys just really letting them like hang out and do do their own thing like is there no like downtime or supervision or surveillance.

35:53Andy Greenwald:And they're seeing, people are seeing everything they're seeing. I know, but then you'd know probably that this kid is talking tomorrow. You know what I mean? Or you would know that this kid seems really scared and staring into the mirror and freaking out. It's the nature of TV to give us, you know, seven to 10 characters to care about, but it does seem a little understaffed. Yes. And, you know, there's a thing that's happened a couple of times on this show so far where especially in the blast site, various characters, but especially Moro has just leapt through a hole in the wall. Always. Yeah.

36:24Andy Greenwald:With the sparks, which is beautiful and calls back to the great shot. And you're just like, what's there? Like, does he jumping 40 stories down? Is he jumping onto a platform that's right there? Like it's kind of unclear. And I was like, this is a little bit of, I think that what I was thinking was like, I hope he doesn't do this more than he has to with the entire plot, give himself a hole to jump through and be like, you guys don't worry about what's there. I've just moved over here. And I think Holly's slowing it down a little bit. Before we get into the real question of what kind of hybrids we're talking about, because is there a lot of alien?

36:59Andy Greenwald:Are you mixing your peanut butter alien with my chocolate hybrid child robot? I want to talk to you about that. But I do want to zag slightly and say that the one way in which I'm intrigued to have so much of the focus be on babies, children, adults, you know, children in adult bodies, is the it does give a different sort of paint job on one of the horriest cliches of horror, which is, why don't we see what this does? You know, there is a right. Again, it's a buy in. Yeah, let's split up is a real fun one. It's just the nature of the genre, and people much smarter than us have spent very successful careers coming up with new ways to camouflage those instincts or that stupidity, frankly, and keep us interested.

37:48Andy Greenwald:Having them be children, and three children and a robot dissecting something that probably shouldn't be dissected, you know? Respectfully. Respectfully. Respectfully. we gotta get the dyes out of food and we gotta stop dissecting xenomorphs and no and we gotta just let let the egg be what it's gonna be you know what I mean they stamp the date on it for a reason that's maybe I shouldn't but I do respect big egg to kind of get that going for us so Wendy wakes up from her and by the way I am sure that there is a place, clinic, maybe more than one clinic in Los Angeles that would charge us a lot of money to lie down on a glass table that glows red for a while.

38:39Andy Greenwald:And it seems to have remarkable healing benefits. And I'm interested. I'm curious. I'm in the market. Yeah, I'm open. So she wakes up, but she seems to be now have having some sort of siren song in her head of these creatures. Is this, I want to know, as the alienologist, I'd like to know your read on this. Because is this similar to... Resurrection obviously gives us a... Sigourney becomes... Yes, and has a connection to the species itself. I won't spoil resurrection too much, but there is previous in the alien universe for people or whatever becoming one with the alien in various ways. I thought the first time I watched this episode, I did not understand really what was happening with Wendy.

39:32Was she just having a, I'm empathic so I can feel? Or was there, and there is a missing moment of her and the alien behind this steel door that gets... We don't fully know what happened. And when they open it back up, she's decapitated the alien, but herself, she is also bleeding, you know, her milky blood. So I think that it could be there could be an alien inside of her. There could just be a connection somehow made.

40:08Andy Greenwald:I gotta stop you. So we learned from Kirsch that the eggs are like aliens don't want to and that would be the first time as far as I know no as far as I know, no alien has ever been a huge, a synthetic has never been a host for an alien. It's always a person. Right. It bursts through a couple of synthetics, but not like they don't stay inside. But we've never, this is a whole new invention for the show, this idea of a hybrid and we don't really know what kind of what's the phrase, people meet that he used to make them. I think a lot of this stuff below the brain is pure Volkswagen. It's German engineering?

40:48Yeah. But I think that everything up top is...

40:52Andy Greenwald:They seem to get... I don't want to make this personal, but these Lost Boys get better range than I do. I'm pretty sure that they have to plug in less often. Are you complaining about your EV again? No, no, I don't want to complain. I'm just saying. I'd like to have Boy Cavalier give it a once-over. That's all. The other night I watched a 25-minute YouTube video that's just Tommy from Landman explaining things to people. had, I'd forgotten the wind farm one with a lawyer. It's like, wind is great. And he's just like, oh yeah. He's like, you stupid idiot. You stupid Northwestern alumnus. So, the certainty is amazing.

41:37Andy Greenwald:That said, I'm willing to say that I may have wagered on the wrong future when I went all in on electric vehicles. You know what I mean? I definitely put my finger in the wind. Maybe this was my first problem. I was like, I see where things are going. I'm going to get in front of it. Not me. Not me. I would like to imagine Tommy from Landman in this in the alien earth world. Explain things to everyone. Honestly, that is... Wait, this can't just be like a minute 41 digression. I can think of five shows right now that would be improved and shortened by a Tommy from... If Tommy just came in and yelled at everyone about the way it was going to be, show would be over.

42:17Yeah. Yeah.

42:18Andy Greenwald:This is, this is a prime air cav and Halliburton starts a file on these guys. This is a, this is fast. Um, it's a wrap. Uh, do you have any, but do you have any, so at the end, uh, our guy, Hermit is, he's lungless and they've implanted something in one of his lungs and he's under and Wendy, I couldn't tell if it was, my sense is that it was meant to imply all of this was affecting her, but, but you know was she overly empathic about her brother's plight about the egg no I think she's reacting to Kersh I mean she walks towards where Kersh is so again this is how I've been approaching the show because of how I've been processing it when I see when the end of the episode is like and now we're going to do a ninth thing that my warning signs my warning alarm goes off as opposed to cool let's do more and more and more and I so I want to be honest about that because the fact that then this is where it's going, it's very busy.

43:15Andy Greenwald:There's no shortage of ideas and density. Just talking to you about it, the fact that we're only talking about three episodes is remarkable and is in and of itself worth noting because often streaming shows are very clearly stretched. This seems quite packed. It seems really packed. And I think my big question for it is how reliable are the characters in terms of being, when they're doing their expository exposition dumps or when they're talking about their intentions, like how reliable are those characters about their intentions and how sincere are they? I think putting Wendy in play as an uncontrollable new force who might be a hybrid of not just human and robot, but also alien and what that would mean and what are Boy Cavaliers' true desires in this whole thing and what are Kirsch's?

44:13Because I think Kirsch is starting to deviate from the plan. And also, obviously, in the sort of lore of Alien, to the extent that Noah Hawley winds up honoring it at all, the Weyland-Yutani Corporation is very present and Prodigy is not. so yes i think that obviously the introduction of the yutani air who calls moro on the phone and he's like oh i used to deal with i think her grandmother or something like that um obviously like there's there's a lot of shoes to drop in that area and it'll be interesting to see how holly decides to be like i'm showing you x yet this amount now this amount later but you know for three episodes you might think kirsch is like kind of boy cavalier's you know Friday and instead yeah exactly

45:04Andy Greenwald:should we get you tease at the top I don't even know if it's just something like maybe we'll just just something to think about and return to but you sort of tease the idea of like wondering if this was a big show or a big enough show yeah well I mean I saw like the 9 million number and I'm sure it's grown exponentially since then for the premiere and by that you mean like FX as all these places do now release you know had a press release being like premiere of X show smashes records by reaching this many people in its first seven days. It's almost par for the course to get a release like that, but they do seem bullish.

45:36Andy Greenwald:And, you know, the public facing... We're not trying to create smoke here. We have no idea how they feel internally, but everything was bullish. This is going according to plan. This was a really stupid bid for me. I was just going to be like, nobody's really talking to me about this. Like, I think we're podcasting about it. I know that Mal and Rob have been podcasting about it on House of R, but like Tom Friedman style, like no one in a diner in America has like pulled me aside and been like, sir, sir, what do you think of alien earth? And I, but I don't, they aren't really, I did hear someone talking about some right term pretty at a bar, but no one has like kind of been like, oh dude, if you, I got to go home, aliens on tonight.

46:15That could build.

46:16Andy Greenwald:And like we've said, he is putting down a marker for potentially a much larger universe expansion and story. And I think that if it, whatever internal benchmarks FX has, if it meets them, then they are beyond thrilled because then they have an IP franchise to go with everyone else. But the reason why I think it's a relevant conversation is twofold. One is what I was saying moments ago, or a while ago in this pod, about what is the ceiling for adult-centered, R-rated franchises? I can tell you exactly what the ceiling is. Okay. Alien versus Shogun. Well, that's the... No, that's where all this is going.

46:53Andy Greenwald:And that would be so sick. That's an amazing idea. by the way you're just coming back to the big leagues but you're still throwing gas like there's no these warm up games you haven't lost any ticks off your fastball but do you want to do Blackstone encountering an alien for the first time give me a second I mean I guess the ceiling is something like Penguin right which was an incredibly successful show for HBO in ways they didn't expect and has had an even more successful afterlife as it started getting nominated and even potentially winning lots of big awards. I don't think that's necessarily what they thought it was going to be, but it was an interesting validation of the idea that we can do adult stories in these larger universes.

47:44Andy Greenwald:The other piece of it, though I think it's a relevant conversation, is for as much as we have liked, loved, and always respected his work, Noah hasn't had a quote-unquote big show. I mean, none of his shows are Game of Thrones. I mean, what shows are, but do you know what I mean? Like they have been big in the realm of cognoscenti like them, podcasters like them, award voters like them, and actors like working with them. That's not nothing. But, you know, he does seem to have taken some steps, as we were describing. And this is a completely different proposal because like theoretically Tim Oliphant's got to go to Thailand for the next five years.

48:23Andy Greenwald:Although I think they talked about how they were moving production. That was a season one thing. But like it's different for Fargo when it's just like, hey man, come play. And we've seen that. For six months and yeah. But we've seen it already in the sense that like he put the xenomorph, full xenomorph story arc battle in three episodes. Like he is foregrounding things in a way that he didn't. And I say this as someone who was there with Legion season one where the brief really was, it doesn't matter if Professor X is never even mentioned, right? Like this is not that. So it is definitely a play to be a little bit more mainstream, but.

48:51Andy Greenwald:So this actually goes right into Peacemaker for me. Great. So let me just say that I would imagine

48:59the dream for any studio right now is to be able to have multiple titles that are under the same property banner. So to have DC stuff or Alien stuff or whatever and have them in conversation with each other with a dream possibility. You can always do something that collapses some timelines or brings multiple characters into it. But I distinctly feel, at least for now, like there is no like, when's Ripley going to show up? Okay, yeah, that's fair. Okay. Penguin's a good example of, I saw some Colin Farrell quotes where he was like, yeah, I'm reading the Batman 2 script soon. I don't care if I only have to do like a two days.

49:46I don't think I'm in it. And I don't care if I only have to do like two days of work. Like I just love Matt Reeve so much. But he's also saying that because like he's got this huge show on television now where, you know, he is kind of the main character of a series. A show that hasn't been renewed. But did not need Batman.

50:06Andy Greenwald:Yes. That's, yeah, it's a great point. So this idea now of like, we're making this stuff. Yeah, in the background, in the foreground, maybe like it's referenced in Peacemaker. They talk in the first episode of season two of Peacemaker. They make reference to things that happen in Superman. I would be pretty surprised if Superman shows up in Peacemaker this season. Well, so I think that's actually what they want. It's like a super-powered version of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Marvel, and where Marvel put all their marbles in, okay, people are going to watch every single one of these, stay for the post-credit sequence, and we're going to have people charting and graphing character appearances and how you have to watch all of this to know what's going to happen in the next thing.

50:51I don't think that's the model anymore

50:53Andy Greenwald:well I think it's a uniquely it's a unique divergence from the model because the Kevin Feige in the background saying trust me all this is connected and there's a vision in the case of the new DCU is James Gunn who is himself the creative force not just the architect so it is unique in the sense that the Russo brothers didn't direct Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. this premiere episode I mean, Gunn was the showrunner of season one of Peacemaker, a show that we should, full disclosure, I did not engage with. I did not watch. I believe I watched the first two episodes of the first season. People seemed to like it.

51:35Andy Greenwald:And so in between making season one of the show and season two, Gunn was given the big job, given Superman, and given the incredible... Remember the magic... I'm realizing the trouble of this reference already. but do you remember what was the Bill Cosby like reading show where he had the I know but remember he had like the pen I'm not saying like it was very gentle he didn't like use the pen to like put anything in anyone's water I'm just saying do you remember that what was that that I'm thinking of I honestly don't remember man you're gonna make me look this up this was an important part of our childhood Google Bill Cosby a couple of times let's see what happens it wasn't picture pages Okay.

52:19Andy Greenwald:You don't remember Bill Cosby picture pages? I don't. I don't. Do you think it's because Bill Cosby asked you to look at some picture pages? Is that why you... You're coming down with me, okay? We'll see. Kaya's not here to clip this. Anyway, in between season one and... No, no, I'm moving on. In between season... Who's the real peacemaker here? Between season one and season two, Gunn got the big job. and so in his ability I was trying to use the magic marker to say he could say what is canon and what isn't. Yes. He could both. Retrofits and stuff. Yes. So he kept his baby as part of the universe but then also retcon stuff so that in the previously on Peacemaker montage there is a very significant difference where I guess season one ended with an image of Snyder's Justice League with like Aquaman in the shadows.

53:11Andy Greenwald:It is now the Justice Gang from the Superman movie and he can. Your point about Superman not showing up is probably right, but Guy Gardner and Hawkgirl and his brother Sean's Maxwell Lord are in this premiere. That's not a favor. I mean, I'm sure the people who have showrun many Marvel shows, whether they were Marvel TV like S.H.I.E.L.D. or part of Marvel Studios, I bet they're furious when they see this. Like, we had a plan, but you didn't let us do it or we didn't have access to the codes. So it is much more closely drawn. I think the bet that the show makes that I am very unsure about is, does someone want something this tonally different than the movie they just watched?

53:59Andy Greenwald:There's room for all of it, is what he's saying. But I found it to be really, really, really challenging because, I mean, I just found it to be nihilistically self-satisfied, glib, and violent, and kind of drab. Like the banter felt really forced. And the best case version of this for me, and then I'll take my answer off air is like Superman worked so well for me because I think that the best version of James Gunn mixes the glib with the heartfelt and Superman as a character forces him to have that counterbalance right in the middle of Guy Gardner talking about butts or whatever he likes to talk about and I think that that works for me.

54:50Andy Greenwald:That's a recipe that works. His side project, this is like best case scenario, this is his metal machine music to me and he gets it all out of his system and I don't have to engage with it because this side of it is not for me. I think this is a guy who loves trauma. Not trauma. Trauma, the old sort of basically direct-to-video genre studio, horror and sci-fi studio. I think he used to work there. And he used to work there. And I think he loves creature features and he loves horror and body horror and all this stuff. and then he also loves talky kind of one-liner comedy and then he has a very very very big heart that sometimes is is almost like unwieldy you know where he will like you said he basically goes from um crass humor to saccharine sentimentality within the same conversation between two characters and I think what you're reacting to is the same thing I reacted to which is within the context of Superman he's swinging from PG to PG-13 yep and it's not even like I could give a shit about the violence like I'll I'll watch violence all day I don't that doesn't bother me but if you're a kid or whatever if you're watching Superman what's like there's some scary monsters Lex yells, a dog gets kicked.

56:18There's some fart and poop jokes. And then there is basically this overwhelming sentiment within the film about idealism. It's an idealistic movie. And he's explicit about that and talking about Superman. Peacemaker is asking you to care about a guy who's like, I'm going to have a coke orgy and punch someone a million times in the face and shoot people in the head.

56:47Andy Greenwald:By the way, that is the Ray Velcoro spinoff that I think we all want. Peacemaker is swinging from PG-13 to R or NC-17. And I wonder whether that swing, when it's starting more extreme and going further, rather than it's starting at Goonies and going to the harder parts of Back to the Future. you know it's like you basically like are identifying something that i was i noticed watching this which is that i think it actually works better when he has more restraint now i to be completely honest like i familiarized myself with what happened at the end of season one of peacemaker i watched this episode of peacemaker i think uh there are parts of it that i like there are parts of it that i immediately recognized as frustrating like of course there is a quantum library where all of your loved ones live and their alternate realities and all the tongue-in-cheek jokes about the hair metal bands that have different names slightly and different songs slightly and the James Gunn thing where something really you know soft and soft focus happens and then like an ironic needle drop kicks in and all that stuff but I will give this whole thing some praise for this reason I could basically agree with you I don't think I'm as allergic to it but I just want to say this.

58:07I fucking really admire how industrious this guy is. Okay, I'm with you on that. He's got a sensibility that he is able to apply to a bunch of different stuff. And I think it is cool that he has one of the biggest movies of the year in the box office still. It's still in theaters. This is obviously one of his babies. Peacemaker is obviously something that he could have left in season one, offloaded to protégés. you know he's got other people directing on the show but is i think doing three episodes this year and he did five episodes on the first season and good people directing he's got greg mottola

58:41Andy Greenwald:he's got peter solid like he has again kind of like i'm i kind of want to see what greg mottola does with a block of peacemaker episodes and i don't disagree i don't really think that this is going to be an essential i mean i i know that there are rumors about like it's it's important to watch Peacemaker and understand that I don't really care, but I really admire that he's got this and now he is about to go shoot the sequel for Superman. Like this is kind of to your point, if Feige was just directing these movies or if he had turned everything over to Marcus and McFeely or the Russos, like I kind of admire the sort of like mass production of this story, because I think it feels more coherent when there's more of it to take in.

59:27Andy Greenwald:I think it's a great point and a fair point, and I agree with you. I think that his likability and sense of community that he clearly engenders is one of the selling points and why he maybe was the right person to get this job, the big job at Warner Brothers to be head of DC, even more than his filmed output. Because this show that is his baby, that he can now protect and nurture, is giving Danielle Brooks and Steve Agee, people that he likes who are surprising, interesting performers, interesting work to do. I did like that. I am not made of stone. I like the dancing opening. I think that's fun.

1:00:03Andy Greenwald:I generally like, I love the Guardians movies. I think what I bumped on a little bit was ultimately a little bit of a fear that there's really nowhere for the shared superhero universe stories to go other than are these metahumans a threat backed with the multiverse is coming. We have seen those stories in countless ways. In the Marvel universe, it's the boys. I'm curious if there's a different way to do it. And one of the reasons why I like Superman so much is that, and he owned this, and he owned it again in a very typically like everything's on front street, almost corny way with a needle drop at the end of the movie.

1:00:44Andy Greenwald:But making a character who was decent and good and saved squirrels despite all this nonsense was more punk rock than having the 378th scene of a woman who walks into a bar and picks a fight just so she can feel something and get beat up. Like, I didn't, it was very well directed. You know, it was kinetic action. He's good at what he does. But, you know, but maybe we're thinking about it wrong. And the other reason why he's a good king of content is because this show at its baseline is delivering certain packets of entertainment for people who reliably want to feast on them. We might enjoy it more or less if we were up to date on all the operations and teams and failures of these characters.

1:01:33And I don't mean to make a sweeping generalization about the show, having not watched every single moment of it. But I do think we're informed enough to like... I'm talking more about the tone and I'm talking more about the project than I am about whether or not Rick Flagg Sr. is wasting government resources. I think, is he senior or junior? Grillo is senior.

1:01:55Andy Greenwald:Rick Flagg Jr. is Joel Kinnaman. Was Joel Kinnaman. It was. Shout out respect. Can I ask you one quick question? I get your take on this. Don't Google. How old is John Cena? Don't Google. 51. Okay, John Cena, I thought so too. I was like 53, looks great. By the way, we didn't even really talk about him. He's really good at doing this. He's a very reliably, funny, charismatic performer. He's three weeks older than me. Yeah. Is that wrestling? Do you know what I mean? I'm not pretending that I am like, he is a very fit man. Do you look better than John Cena or do you think you look worse than John Cena?

1:02:37In what way?

1:02:39Andy Greenwald:I'm just asking the question. wait what's your I really want you I thought he looked older I was shocked but maybe we look really old now and I just don't see it I thought that he was quite a bit older we definitely look old yeah oh I know I've seen the tapes the other fun thing about us is that we didn't go on YouTube for 10 years which is just an awesome way to age gracefully in the public eye yeah just take off 10 years and then come back so thanks everyone for putting us on camera I love it why don't we wrap it up there let me give you the listeners who are still with us a roadmap of the next couple of episodes.

1:03:13So Thursday, Andy and I are going to talk about Alien Episode 4. Alien Earth Episode 4. And I think we're going to try and finish Eastern Gate. So if that was a project that you embarked upon, we're going to talk about the end of Eastern Gate Season 1.

1:03:26Andy Greenwald:And by the way, if you didn't, it's six episodes and they're awesome. We loved the show. So I think you can do it. We're off Monday for Labor Day. That's right. And we'll be back the following Thursday And, you know, by that point, we'll be getting almost into task. We'll have the paper, obviously Alien, but we'll probably also try to catch up with the end of families like ours by before task kind of takes over half the week for us. I'm really putting a lot of eggs in the task basket, but I think you'll see why soon. I'm very excited about that. And if anybody wants to send me a task basket, I would receive it.

1:04:05I would take it.

1:04:06Andy Greenwald:They could send it locally as long as you're there. It's true. send it CEO care of bad brother I'll get it eventually Greenwald great to see you thank you so much for being there for me for the last few weeks and thanks to Kai and John and everybody Kaya on vacation for producing and for making making this thing run and we will be back on Thursday and when we're back in studio we're going to talk about redecorating okay we need to we need to add some flair here so think about that on your flight home so that's where the task basket comes in see look how good you are

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