House of R - ‘Alien: Earth’ Episode 8 Deep Dive. Plus: Timothy Olyphant!

Episode Date: September 24, 2025

Jo, Mal, and Rob are back together to dive deep into the final episode of ‘Alien: Earth’ Season 1! They talk about how the episode begins in contrast to how the previous episode ended, Morrow vs. Kirsh, looking ahead to a potential Season 2, and so much more! Also, the one and only Kirsh, Timothy Olyphant, joins Jo and Mal! Timothy discusses what he liked about portraying the synthetic character, working with Babou Ceesay, Kirsh’s relationship with Issac, and the "milking" process. (00:00) Intro (08:08) Opening Snapshot (37:11) Deep Dive (37:45) Fill In the Gaps (43:09) Kids In Cages … What Could Go Wrong? (01:04:43) To Morrow and To Morrow and To Morrow (01:14:02) Battle Bots: Morrow Vs. Kirsh (01:21:05) Wendy, Too, Is Sick of This Peter Pan Bullshit (01:29:27) Hide and Seek (01:34:57) Joe Vs. the Volcan-Eye (01:46:25) Adults In Cages … What Could Go Wrong? (01:49:26) Oh Needle Drops (01:53:29) Looking Ahead to Season 2 (01:58:42) Timothy Olyphant / Is Kirsh OK? (02:00:56) Will there be a new Kirsh hairstyle? (02:02:26) What is the “milking” process like? (02:06:00) What was it about working with Babou Ceesay? (02:09:16) What is the Kirsh-Isaac relationship? (02:14:59) What is the most helpful note a director can give? (02:16:22) Does Kirsh know how to flirt? (02:17:55) What led to giving Kirsh the signature hip waggle? (02:20:51) What does Kirsh really think of Boy Kavalier? (02:24:29) Are Givens and Kirsh connected by his daddy issues? (02:25:30) Which of his characters would survive longest in the Alien universe? Hosts: Joanna Robinson, Mallory Rubin, and Rob MahoneyGuest: Timothy OlyphantProducers: Jessie Lopez and John RichterSocial: Jomi AdeniranAdditional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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This episode is brought to by Whole Foods Market. Spring is here, so celebrate it with fresh, juicy, seasonal produce and some very tasty limited time flavors. New Whole Foods, Market Peach, Apricot, Rose, Italian soda. Perfect for a picnic or brunch, as is their trending mango, Yuzu chantilly cake. But if you're on the go, new 365 strawberry pretzels make a great sweet snack. That sounds delicious. Get savings with yellow sale sign storewide and everyday low prices on 365 brand items. Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring. Save at Whole Foods Market. Hello, welcome back to the last for now. Triple House of R. I'm Joanna Rubin. Also with an R. And that's Rob Mahoney also with an R and is Rob's last Alien Earth

episode with us. Thank you for the journey. Mallory Rubin. How are you doing today? we're all ghosts, you know. Sometimes that's how it feels for us, for Nibs. So relieved that Nibs is here. Oh, thank goodness. You guys really had me spooked after last week. Yeah, I was terrified that she was going to be butt of milking corpse. And yet, she's here, she's living.

She's, you know, beating dudes to death all over again. Was that under a minute to the first milk reference? Yeah, and like 30 seconds to the first spoiler, even though we hadn't issued our spoiler morning yet, so we're doing great today. I would hope people know what they're listening to. This is the Alien Earth finale podcast, episode eight. Spoilers through the entire first season of Alien Earth

because it is now aired and we have watched it all. We're going to talk about Alien Earth finale. That is very important for us to talk about, but also perhaps more importantly. We have a very special guest on this podcast today. Timothy Oliphant, curse himself. The milky man himself

has joined us to talk about all things ill in earth. A little bit of Deadwood justified Star Wars, Cobbantiness in there as well. He, definitely we don't want to do that thing where we like

spoil our own interview that's going to come at the end of the podcast, obviously after our discussion. But he called the whatever they used for the milk, the stuff. And I haven't been able to stop thinking about that. He just called it the stuff.

We might have to adopt it. I think he was likening it to like various fake blood that, you know, he's like, the stuff has really changed over the years. And I think he was sort of likening it to like fake blood that he's experienced in his life. Anyway. To be the funter. Listen, it was the interview of a lifetime. Let's just say it.

Well, you covered a lot of bodily fluids, clearly. It was, it was chaotic in the best possible way. It was incredibly fun immediately as people will hear this will be the last spoiler probably not but the last spoiler that we intentionally issue for the interview immediately he was like

where's the guy who's sometimes with you? Yeah, where's Rob? Where's Rob? Thanks for the invite guys. Yeah, thanks for looping me in. Thanks for the CC. Very tough. Very tough. If you're watching on video

please enjoy the attempt over video team to capture the chaos of Timothy Oliphant. Sometimes on a bench outside, sometimes walking inside to get his charger. But it's all captured on video. I'm really excited. It's actually really, really fun interview. Please tune in for that. Elsewhere, you know, if you're listening to this on Tuesday evening after the finale dropped, yesterday we crashed an emergency pod because there was a Madeleurian and Grogu trailer that dropped on

Monday and Mallory and I had to get on, you know, the old Zoom chat to talk about that. So we have a trailer breakdown. A very modest, a very light hour-long discussion of an hour, a minute and a half of footage, I think. Just, no problem. Only here at the House of Our could we call an hour-long breakdown of a 90-second trailer modest

and genuinely mean it. And genuinely mean it. Definitely demure. And we should say, Men Eye Boys, Poo-Pew. Their episode this week is a combo of looking at the Mando and Groguer trailer and an Alien Earth finale, a recap. that will be up, I believe, tomorrow at some time.

On the horizon for us, we have a couple of things coming up. Chris Nolan Fall is confirmed. We are doing it. We are continuing our Christopher Nolan adventures. We've got some hype meters coming, some Best of the Century is coming. Mallory is over halfway through Buffy Season 2. So we will have a couple Buffy Season 2 episodes coming for you. Very excited.

Keep your spoilers to yourselves in the comments. Mallory is pure. Keep her pure. Keep her experience pure. Thank you so much. Don't you do? I have to say, Buffy, very kind of subtly fall-coded show in a lot of its seasons. Clearly, there's some springtime events, but a lot of Halloween going on, a lot of sweaters. You know, there's just a lot happening. It is Southern California, so it's not a typical fall. This isn't Gilmore Girls, is what I'm saying. But we're in the season. Yeah, we're always going back to school at Sunday at Ohio.

And the other thing I want to mention, this is very important, is that we have a Dunkin-Agg mailbag coming up. have a mailbag in general coming up. But Duncan Egg, A Night of the Seven Kingdoms is the official name of the show, which is premier in HBO next January, this next January. They're going to be in New York Comic-Con. They're going to be talking about the show

at New York Comic-Con. We want to be talking about what they talked about in New York Comic-Con. So we want your questions about Duncan Egg, Night of the Seven Kingdoms, and then anything at all that you want to email less. Malloryoryman, where can they reach us? Hobbits and Dragons at gmail.com. Send us your

Night of the Seven Kingdom's thoughts. We're going to be doing our Stranger Things season. Three revisited Potsuit and set us your thoughts on that. If you like me have spent the bulk of your past week looking at the behind the scenes alien earth photos of the performer who portrays the xenomorph but was only wearing the costume in the top, it was running around wearing Adidas sneakers. Send us your thoughts on that. I thought that was some of the most incredible content I'd seen it a long time.

The inbox is always open. You can follow us also on any podcast platform of your choice. You can also watch this on video for all of our reactions to the whatever unhinged thing, Mallory and or Rob, never me, says on the podcast. I'm always in check. And you can watch us on YouTube. You can watch us on Spotify. Spoiler warning we already issued through episode 8 of Alien Earth. Wait, tell us where you guys have cooking on prestige.

It's a busy stretch for you guys. What do you got coming? Tell us. It really is. I mean, we've got hooked still in process. We've got our ongoing task coverage. And most crucially and most timely, slow horses is back. We're back at Slough House. We're both, we're back messing up, you know, spy assignments and cases left and right. We're just blundering about in our coverage of slow horses. And I couldn't be more happy about it. One of my favorite shows on TV. I can't wait to watch the news season. I can't wait to listen to the pods, truly. We have, I mean, I think we can just say the hooked episode we're doing, the finale, It's not coming out this week. It's coming out allegedly next week.

And Mallory already made fun of us for being coy about it. So I'll just say, we're doing the Sopranos. Rob and I are going to watch some episodes of the Sopranos. We are. We've never seen the Sopranos. Never even heard of it, to be honest with you. I don't know what it's about. So we're going to watch it.

Yeah. We're going to get to the bottom of it. Okay. I'm so excited for you those. Truly. This is going to be a. game change a transformative experience in your

television of doing lives this is a huge moment this is great I gotta say so we pre-recorded the prestige episode with Bill about this upcoming episode of task because we're usually like a week ahead on that show so we already told Bill that we were doing this and I gotta say I think Bill was like a little disappointed

that he wouldn't have this bit anymore to share with us right? He was like oh you guys are? You're taking away his favorite toy. What will I what will I make fun of you for and now. Okay. Anything else before we get to the opening snapshot? No, sounds like nope. All right. Let's do our opening snapshot. All right. Episode 8 is titled The Real Monsters,

directed by Dana Gonzalez, written by Noah Hawley and McGezy Pensonno. And The Real Monsters, of course, makes me think of one of our favorite Station 11 quotes that we talk about all the times, do the Monsters were the Monsters? Mali, were you thinking about that? Or do you have any other thoughts on the title of this episode? It was a two-way tie. for me between to the monsters were the monsters and a show that we talk about in conversation with Station 11 a lot, the last of us.

Very like, the people, who am I going to tell you to watch out for? The people coded as well. So those were top of mine, for sure. Rob, any title thoughts you want to share? I mean, clearly, as usual, a lot of places you could go as far as who the real monsters are.

A lot of real monsters to be had in Alien Earth, as it turns out. I find myself very compelled and energized by the idea that the real monsters may be in fact the hybrids and this kind of almost sort of point of view

inversion of spending so much time with them endears us to those characters they're obviously children we're so like locked in on their stories and yet in a Last of Us kind of way or in a Station 11 kind of way the camera turns about you just tilt your point of view on the show

just so and all of a sudden it's a fucking horror movie or at least like a smart home version of a horror movie in which robots are controlling the entry and access and communication of everything going on in this building in a way that honestly terrifies me. Yeah, I think we'll obviously hit this a lot, scene by scene as we go, but many of the decisions that Wendy or the other hybrids made

and the things that they said were simultaneously like, yes, take control, assert your power, insist on and then exhibit the agency that you rightfully possess, and also you are now saying and doing the thing that the evil people did to you immediately.

So I think pretty much everybody is monstrous in some way at the end of this season. There are a couple exceptions but pretty few. You know, honestly,

the xenomorph is one of the best behaved characters that we wound up with in the story. Very polite. Very, very polite. Would you say, does Joe have his hands clean in all of us? of this, does he come out the other side of this season

as sort of the most morally pure? He makes this decision at the end of the last week's episode. But inside of this episode, he seems very much like this cautionary, I'll save who I can. Yes. And the only perhaps tempering force standing just behind the crowd of powerful children

here at the end of the finale. What do you think, Mal? Yeah, I think Arthur obviously pretty pretty pure. Even Arthur, we had some notes for across the season, but pretty pure. And I think Joe is on a relative scale, behaving with good intentions in mind, and certainly as his goal and his ambition is to help people

and to behave well, not to harm people. I think even Joe, though, was put inside of this finale in a little bit of a, I'm going to call you out on your bullshit and make you think about what moral righteousness really looks like and means. you know, the don't say it's complicated. That's what powerless people say to make doing nothing okay. That immediately shifts into an empowering moment for Wendy. I'm not powerless.

But for Joe, it's like actually like equivocating between all of these different groups that you have some sort of affection for or loyalty to and not being willing to make a stand saying like, I tried. I would have been there doing saying, oh, like they were hurting my friends. Right. At the end of the day, you're probably going to have to come down more firmly in one position or another inside of this universe. So I think very few characters were let off the hook completely for some of the choices

that they made, or at least it's like muddied. Some of the characters who I think were operating throughout the season in that more gray in a way that was enticing to us position, Morrow, maybe the best example of that, I think actually shifted more firmly into like, I think it's hard for us to keep saying, oh, you're doing evil villainous things like turning a child into, you're, soldier by threatening to kill his family, but actually, like, when you're in opposition to a character like boy, Cavalier, we are rooting for you, you are the hero.

When you get into like, go save the kids before I burn them alive, it's just hard to find that balance, I think. So everybody slid down the scale. You weren't sharing for that? Yeah, I think you make a really good point about this idea of, like, is it's easy to claim your hands are clean when you're just fence sitting the whole time, you know, and trying to stay above the fray entirely when, like, in this kind of conflict.

At the end of the day, you have to make a choice at one point. And he does make a choice at the end of episode seven. But then in episode eight is sort of back into this like, mostly just trying to keep all of his eyes in his head, you know, through the lengthy episode. Reasonable. I do think, though, I mean, the two characters that we just singled out in terms of Joe and Arthur, like, two of the most ineffectual people in this space.

Absolutely. Even as they are, like, I wouldn't say either of them are monstrous by any definition, whereas the other characters, you could make an argument almost to the person that they are. But those two, like they are hemming and hawing. They are fencing sometimes. They are trying to be righteous and live by a kind of code in their way, or at least like an ethical code. And yet they get absolutely nothing done

and are constantly roadblocked and are bumping up against all of these people who have, if not firmer, resolve, at least kind of like looser boundaries on how far they're willing to go. Because we brought up Arthur, I just, I have to be impatient and say, I made a loud cheer

in my own home by myself watching this episode when our favorite character, the eye jockey, made her new home inside of David Bristall one of our favorite performers and the

contemplating the opportunity that presents for season two of a sort of zomboified weekend at Bernie's-a-fide you know, evil, smart, David Ristel in the face of our soft sweet

Arthur is just so delicious to me I like can't there's we'll talk about some other things to think about for season two there's plenty of ways in which this sets up a second season but you know you Tani's flying in like a bunch of stuff is happening

but I'm like all I care about is eye jockey and Arthur and what that's gonna look like I'm so excited inspired inspired oh and we've just been talking about the eyeball jockey and boy cavalier and kind of like their conversation or is the outball jockey going to warm its way

into his head? Sometimes the best pairings in TV are the ones you don't expect. You know, the ones you didn't even see as being on the board. And eyeball jockey and Arthur, it really is a beautiful thing. And it's one that I never would have anticipated and now that I have it, I don't even know what to do with myself. I'm even going to like go back in time

and apologize to the sort of like Whalen Yutani soldiers for, dumping Arthur's body in the water because had they not dumped his body in the water like that, perhaps he would not have washed out to the beach the way that he did. And then perhaps he would not have been in the perfect place to get i jockeyed. And that, I mean, that's a gift for all of us. Thank you. We've already sort of talked some broad strokes. I've talked to Mallory about this a bit, Robby, before our interview with Tim, but I haven't gotten to check in with you. What

did you think of the finale? How did it feel for you? I really liked it. To me, it was the kind of finale that sort of clarifies the show you've been watching the whole time. It just kind of shifts right under your feet in a way that to me feels really energizing about the direction that the show could go. And I think the idea of taking season one in totality as the season where the kids kind of rest control of the daycare, so to speak, the trillion-dollar daycare, as kind of the manifestation of this proxy war for like the future of humanity, basically, right? And I think having all of that is really cool

and it invites like a lot of interesting ideas that they've been kicking around all season. I'm sure we'll be more to come in a potential season two. But also it kind of zooms me out knowing that these hybrids don't appear in any of the other alien projects, obviously, because they didn't exist yet. And it makes me think, like, are we seeing,

now that the hybrids are in control and understanding what they're capable of, are we watching the slow crawl of the Titanic toward the iceberg and the hybrids will get annihilated by something or another, which is why they wouldn't appear in any of the other stuff. Or are we seeing the beginning of their like Dr. Manhattan arc and they're going to buzz the fuck off because they're tired of us humans and our petty little squabbles and our little lives. How much does our previous season conversation about what counts as canon and what doesn't

impact your perspective on that? I mean, I think it factors in for sure. I mean, it's clearly is a take a bit of a piece of this, take a bit of a piece of that. we're going to kind of forget these other entries even existed. All that I think is fair and good. But at the end of this show, whenever that is,

you still need some explanation for why Prodigy is not a thing in any of these other entities, why these hybrids are not a thing in any of these other entities. I think you need some acknowledgement of that. I'll be interested to, I don't know if Noah Hawley agrees with you.

He might not. Or if he's just like, I've created my own branching reality. I don't know the answer to that, but I wonder that. That would be very boy cavalier of him. to feel that way. Yeah.

In a student, interesting observation. I, yeah, I think this is like the, have your cake and eat it to downside of the canon fluidity, like in a universe where there are different versions of canon. Like something like you as evoked Star Wars as a different sort of example of where this kind of thing can happen. But like, I think that in the conversation a couple weeks ago, I think that's something like legends where creators who are making canon in the new canon era

can't wait to pull something out of legends and officially canonize it is one thing. When you watch Star Wars Visions, it is unmistakably not canon. It's very clear that it's not canon. It's behaving by different rules. I think that saying we're going to create this show and set it two years. before the first movie and then talk in interviews about how you're marching toward hopefully if you get enough seasons.

A connected story and then saying, but we have the cover of saying it's not canon is potentially pretty messy. And I just think that if you're going to totally do like we're playing by our own rules, things, it doesn't matter if the hybrids are around and not here and not in the

other stories or prodigies a factor here and not in the other stories. Put it further away. Make it less recognizable. And I think, what's particularly interesting to be about that at the end of the season is, and who knows what the future plans are, I don't want to like understate by saying this, the presence and relevance of the xenomorse in this season, but I think it is very fair to say that the hybrids, the eyeball jockey, the new creations, the Aztecs were just ultimately way more interesting, the cyborg to Noah Hawley than the more traditional facehugger xenobor. So obviously we got facehugger xenomorph action, but that wasn't the central thrust of focus. of what the season was orienting around. So, yeah, it's not my understanding. I think you make a good point. It's not my understanding that Noah Hawley created this timeline

so that he could do like what they do at the end of Andor, which is like we're marching literally up to what happens at the beginning of Rogue One. I thought of it more as like he loves alien. And so he wanted to set it two years before Alien so that everything could kind of look like Alien and invoke Alien the way that he likes to do with something like Fargo where he's like, this looks like something you recognize. Totally.

I'm here to give you this woman in law enforcement, but it's not Francis McDormand, but it looks like something you recognize. So let me just sort of like, you know, this gum you like is back in style, right? So like that's the advantage of setting it two years, like right in that. So it's like unlike Prometheus or Covenant, where you're like, it should look different.

This is like, it should look the same. But again, I think there's sort of playing a little, not in a way that I'm mad about, but playing a little fast and loose with like, yeah, exactly, yeah. What, how beholden they are to that sort of thing. Mallory, another question I had for you is I know you were tracking as recently as last week, sort of these flashing images that we've been seeing all season and you were like what we have seen, what we haven't seen. Do you feel like we got to see all the flashes? Are there any that you remember that never crept up? I think the one, I'm sure there are plenty of others, but I think the one that stood out of my mind just because it was so

disturbing to confront in real time when we confronted it was the doll's head that was popping in the ocean because, and like especially when we got you know, a star showing, a star making turn for Mr. Strawberry in the penalty episode. I was like, the kids are going to go to war with their toys.

Like, this is going to be debauched and insane signed me up. And then that didn't happen. But here's the thing. Doesn't mean it can't happen in season two. I think that's entirely possible. We know that the Uttani forces are, approaching near further more forces reinforcements are coming so the battles are going to ensue i mean it feels like there's a chance that season two picks up like the second that season one concluded so

i would think it might have to like that i would have oh go ahead joe well i would think that too except for the way that they sort of yada yadaed over the way that last week's episode ended and good for like joe is what's happening here so i mean i would say there's no way you can show us what they showed us in this finale and not pick up right where it left off, but also Noah Holly might not care about that. Okay. It's fair. Rob, I have an important question for you.

In this episode, I would say, and maybe my math might be off. I'm not a mathematician. 35% of the episode is just the xenomorph posing while eating slash stalking slash slashing something. Yep. Running through the jungle, being backlit, posing with its child sibling on the side of a cage. Yes.

How much of this is just like glamor shots, but making xenomorph? And do we mind if that's the case? I do not mind. I enjoyed it for the style, if not necessarily the substance. I didn't think like the xenomorph like recently or previously on xenomorph encounters flashback. Like added a lot to the proceedings of this episode per se, but I myself look forward to the super cuts.

And I hope people put some like very inventive musical choices over the xenomorph moving around and maneuvering and kind of dancing through this episode. I would love a four non-blond's what's going on cut of the xenomorph in particular, I think could work very well but I'm open to suggestions.

I think true to what Mao was saying, the xenomorph's presence in this show and even in these episodes is so much more like seasoning or so much more in this case like here's what you think you're afraid of and it is just kind of a guy dancing around through the jungle

and here's what you should actually be afraid of. It's the literal children who have superpowers and don't have any hesitation on using it now. Melanie Zenomorph, other than, of course, the shoe endorsement angle. Eddie Zenomorf takes you there. I'm personally on a real like Adidas,

New Valence A6 kick, so I felt a kinship, much like Wendy has. I felt a kinship with the xenomorph in that moment. If that percentage that you are tossing out there is right, I would not be surprised. I'm digging the, like, jungle fade cam that we have going

with the xenomorph. What I will say is the finale had no issue with the prominence of the xenomorph moving through drooling way, way, way too much of Adam,

Siberian, and Rashidi for me. These are just not characters that I care about at all. And they got multiple scenes. And I think we were light on meaningful time with some other characters where we needed

those extra minutes. Yes. So that calibration was like, I thought the finale was really fun and there were a couple scenes that gave me chills,

but I thought that character balance was a little off inside of the finale and I think it led to like me reassessing some of the choices across the season in terms of like

if we're going to get big action sequences and the first long-await to Florafana kill with Siberia and like I would like to give a shit about those characters. Yeah.

The giant, Joe called weeks ago, multiple scenes, not just one. We have story time with Boy and then the action showdown with Joe and Wendy, multiple scenes oriented around Adam. We got that, I would say, at the expense of scenes with Kirsch, the synth that I cared way more about. So those were puzzling choices to me inside of an episode that I still had a lot of fun watching.

My last kind of big picture thought on the finale is I am just astonished by how many characters made it out of the season alive. Not in a good or bad way, I guess mostly in a good way, but like I am. If we're counting Arthur by that, if we're counting Arthur as alive in a sense, he's more alive than he's ever been. He's present in the show. Is it just Tootles then? And I think like the body count of the Maginot obviously counts, but in like a different way.

But if we're talking about like, yeah, what, everything that happened on Neverland with that crew, I mean, it's, it was really contained to just like a bunch of squadrons of characters we didn't know. Now, that makes me very happy in terms of what it means for season two and the fact that like all of these figures who are interested in are still in the mix. I was like incredibly worried that Kirsch was going to die in the finale when his back broken. The stuff started dribbling out of his mouth. No, no. Don't take Kirsch. I'm really happy that Morrow made it out. I'm relieved that none of the other nibs, et cetera, that none of the other.

lost boys perish, but I'm like, kind of floored that Boy Cavalier is still alive. Again, delighted, because it's a performance that we've had such fun with, but that was not what I was anticipating heading into the finale here. What about you guys? I mean, even Adam, too, and also, like, the moral one

is confusing to me because I want him to live. I also cannot tell you a single good reason why Kirsch would not kill him in this moment. So there's some of that happening where it's like, yes, some of these characters are surviving. Sure, I might have expected more fatalities just given alien has a pretty lethal history overall. But why some of these characters are surviving is a little flum mixing to me other than we need to

pat out the cell with more people who we want to string up in artistic poses. Boy, I think, is interesting. Yeah. Having him alive is a little bit interesting to me. Adam's still being alive, I'm like, I feel like, I agree with you, Mallory, that even though we've been talking about, when I did a couple weeks ago, Assybite, Secret, Synth, you guys both were like, but it will feel so inert.

That reveal will feel so inert. And I think it did. And so that felt like a miscalculation that it was supposed to be this big, like, whoa, that was a synth this whole time sort of moment. And it didn't really feel that way. I think even if we hadn't clocked

like him catching the ball with like robotic speed, then it still wouldn't have been like that interesting. What Mallory predicted last week about the synth and that it's tied to the story of boys' father, is a little bit interesting to me,

but I still don't know that it all came together. But, yeah, Joe's Army's pals, Siberian being the victim of the Florifana, like that just, that didn't really work for me in the way that I think the episode wanted us to. So I understand the impulse on the secret synth front, and I understand, you know, this whole boy wants to kill his father, father wants to kill his son stuff,

which Timothy Olafont will bring up of his own accord in our interview. And like, I think all of that is kind of interesting, but not the way that it was executed here. Yeah. I don't know. Rob, what do you think? I mean, I think you easily could have done it and then disposed of Adam within this episode.

Like, make it his big kind of exit moment if you're going to have that sort of revelation. But as it stands, we just get the story of like, young boy cavalier built his C3PO and it killed his dad. And now that character's just going to sit on the bench, frozen when he can't,

like, he literally can't do anything. Because Wendy has, Wendy slash Marcy has hacked into the mainframe and basically frozen him because he's connected to the Wi-Fi. Like, what purpose could he serve narratively or otherwise at this point? They're going to have to. And I, again, I put this in the notes. This is something that they back themselves into a corner with in Westworld when they gave a character, Tandui Newton's character, the ability to do this to just sort of like freeze any other host. It's a very cool, like, moment. But then you're like, uh-oh.

narratively, uh-oh. And so, you know, they're going to have to take, you know, they're going to have to take Kirsch and Adam off the Wi-Fi essentially in order to, like, reroute things so that Wendy doesn't have control, which they can easily do, I think. But question for the two of you on that front, just spitballing in terms of where the story could potentially go. Do you think Wendy has that ability with the other hybrids as well?

Because they're mechanical bodies. And so in theory, could she freeze them as well if she wanted to? I bet she could. And that's, yeah. Messy. Very messy. Who's she going to freeze first? Curly.

Yeah, maybe curly, but I kind of like the idea of being. But like Nibs, Nibs who's like the most barrel? She is okay with everything that Nibs is doing. She's unbothered as Nibs is just ripping people apart. Nibs needs to roam free. I agree. I will say slightly is really leaning into some violent tendencies,

so I don't know. Maybe slightly. Yeah. Made us do it. I don't know how Maro survived that blow to the head from slightly, which I definitely think should have killed him. But again, I'm relieved that he did survive it and is still here. You know who should have gone into the flora fauna?

Dame Sylvia. And somebody should have been there to watch and said, like, you wanted to swaddle us like babies. Get swaddled. Yeah. Sylvia really could have gone. But then we won't have the drama of her confronting the shambling. corpse of her husband next season, which is...

It's true. It's not going to feel meaningful to us when it's like their second conversation we've ever seen. Third? You forgot all the conversations that the actors had off screen together. Okay. Quick mailbag business before we get into sort of like some more C-by-Sean breakdown. Our listener Harrison wrote in and was just talking about the way in which they used Wendy and the xenomorph in this season, which is very Deneres Targaryen and her dragons,

especially right here at the very end of the finale. But I think you guys brought this up earlier in the season, but he likened it to blew the Raptor from Jurassic World, which was, you know, the Raptor, the Velociraptor, one of the scariest, you know, images from our childhood from Jurassic Park or the xenomorph, one of the scary, you know,

tamed, befriended, turned into, you know, like, let's understand it's psyche sort of thing. making these monsters toothless and not like toothless a dragon, but just like toothless in a way, like so very toothy, still killing a lot of people, but on your side,

tamable, reasonable, can work with. That to him, it just like sapped some energy out of like one of his favorite movie monsters. Do you guys, would you agree with that? How do you feel about that? I would a little bit. I mean, I feel like this is where the collision of the ideas behind it are interesting.

Right, like the idea, when Wendy is talking with Hermit about, you know, this idea that they're, whether they're predators or not, and they're really only predators to him. They are not a threat to her in the same way. And so internalizing the idea and creating this dividing line between brother and sister over an existential threat facing humanity, that's an interesting idea to kick around. Turning it into a pet, and now that pet has a little pet, because I guess we are still within the Walt Disney Corporation, so we cannot resist a lone wolf and cub. of some kind or another. It does take a little bit of the juice out. I mean, look, the merch is right there. I would buy merch of the little Zeno just crawling on the side of the cell. Honestly, same. I think the blue Jurassic World Coding has been there.

And it was even there last week, too, in terms of Wendy Marcy's, like, interaction, like physical interactions with the xenomorph in which she's doing a similar, like, hold out the hand, cautious, gesturing, a little, a little whoa girl moment from her. it's hard not to demystify

something like a xenomorph and come out the other side feeling as scared by it. Yeah, I think I'm in a similar place with it. I do conceptually actually find this really interesting and compelling to say like, well,

first of all, like, did anyone else even try? You know, it's always like, we're going to capture you or we're going to kill you or just immediately from the word go. Yeah. there's also, of course, as Wendy would be happy to remind us, the idea that Wendy is special premium chosen, not sure if you've heard. And that, like, actually she is positioned in a way that no other character in the history of the franchise has been to form this kind of relationship in a way that we still don't fully understand.

And I look forward to them exploring over the seasons. I feel that way about it. And I think that is true. And I also think the other part of it is true. That, like, the xenomorph is in rarefied air as he just genuinely, like, unimpeated. reachably scary thing. I don't think that the idea of the xenomorph acting in partnership or concert with another being is like not scary. There's still, I mean, in some ways, the idea that someone could use a xenomorph as like a higher gun is terrifying. But it is a little bit different,

just the kind of core premise that there could be any level of like a link or acting on any intention other than its own. So, yeah, I'm torn. I'll withhold judgment. I'll feel. future seasons, I think. Do you know who really wishes they could coo and click at a xenomorph? Who's that? David. David would have loved to coo and click. Can you even imagine? He would be so jealous of Marcy.

Listen, he spent a lot of time on the drawings, not as much time with the tongue clicking. It's something to think about. You know? The linguistics. Yeah, the recorder, but not, anyway. Okay. And then in a cautionary tale about AI, I just want to mention our listener, Lisa,

and we've actually gotten a couple of these emails recently from listeners, just commenting on some of the delightful adventures inside of automatic captioning that happens on our podcast sometimes. We just got one yesterday after our Mandalorian and Grogu episode, where apparently it was captioned Mandalorian and Girlgoo was something that the captions attempted to give us. Different podcast, but sure. Mallory's now infamous sort of pre-com comment

that really drew a reaction from Rob and me last week was apparently captioned as like P-R-E-C-O-M-O-M-E or something like that. So anyway, just like, Joy's and Adventuresers and AI captioning all in an attempt to make our content more accessible, we should say. So like there is a good motivation behind it, but it is an imperfect technology that is hopefully improving. I like to think it's impressionistic. You know, even the AI cannot fathom what might come out of Mallory's mouth at any point in time.

And I will say in my entire podcast and career, my favorite screenshots of various reactions have all come in response to things Mallory has said. And there have been some truly amazing ones this year. It's true. It's been a banner year. Sorry, I didn't hear anything you guys said in the last three minutes because I was just thinking of the Mandalorian and GirlGoo. It was a spin-off we didn't get after Chapter 4 sanctuary when Mando should have gone. back to live a life with O'Mara. Something to think about.

I'm going to think about. All right. Think about that as we go now to our deep dive. All right. As we already mentioned, start episode eight, a little bit after episode seven ended, with like a showdown at the docks, and then we can make some guesses as to how all these kids got in cages. But something that our listeners have been sort of asking questions about all season is the power scaling of the kids, like, how strong are they?

does it take both slightly in Smey to drag Arthur's body, but Wendy can just like hurl things around. Now she is premium. They're all premium, allegedly, but like how strong are they? Do we really believe that they could have rounded up and captured all of these children and put them in a cage if they didn't want to be in that cage?

Especially given how easily Wendy snaps them out of the cage part of the way through this episode. How do you feel about this is like not getting to see the resolution down at the dock and we just sort of yada, yada, yada. here we are in the next scenario. Rob. I share in some of that confusion about the power of these kids and these hybrids,

but to me it works textually because the story of this season is about these kids coming to understand what their power is. And really, like, the idea of putting a bunch of hybrids in a cell that physically cannot contain them is the structure of the show. It's been the structure of the whole season,

these like artifices that these adults are putting around, them and they are drafting on the idea that these kids will continue to act like kids. And so I think a lot of the things like slightly and Smee, you know, picking up Arthur's body together is as much about like the muscle memory of being a kid as it is them not understanding how strong they are. It's about like, I am a kid. I need help. I'm going to ask my friend.

And also like I am emotionally freaked out and I need help in that way as well more than it is. Yeah, you could throw them over your shoulder like a sack of potatoes physically. But they're coming to terms with what that means. Yeah, that's a great, that's a great point. I like that a lot, and I think that also transfers to some of the other characters, like Wendy being so not only concerned about the state that Nibs is in, but astonished by what her brother did that maybe she is,

like, I need a beat, I need a beat to process, and then I'll break out of the cell that I know I can break out of, etc. So, yeah, I did have, I think, a, wait, what? Yeah. reaction to how the episode open. Like, not only how they were all taken into custody and contained like that, but also just

it's such a giant emotional beat at the end of episode seven. We're worried about Nibbs, did you do? What did you do? What's the same status of that relationship? And obviously, that will continue through this episode and be the subject of conversations. But I'm like, was Nibs just out for like 30 seconds? Like, I don't know that that warranted that reaction.

Now, of course, it did because to Wendy, it's about what it represents, which is who Joe chose, of course. But, like, did they, was any work done on Nibs? Was this just like a little zap nap? And then she was totally fine. There's a little bit of a disconnect there between where the episode ended and where this one began. And a missed opportunity there, too, I think in terms of that follow-up with Marcy

and Joe specifically, like, I want to hear what comes next after what have you done. I want to see these two people in a, they're in a standoff. And we just yada yada to the standoff being over. Why would we skip over that when that could have been the emotional crux of the first part of the episode? I mean, you could argue that the follow-up conversations they have inside a boy's office post-eyeball showdown is the follow-up of that conversation, right? But yeah, it felt a little fast-forwardy to me. Mallory, I want to make sure that I leave your room and time and emotional space to talk about. the crab moment that we get on the beach here.

Thank you. Tell me your thoughts. Tell me how much you were thinking about old base seasoning. Tell me how much you were thinking about the crab feeder from House of the Dragon. How much you were thinking about our pal of Christopher Ryan who loves the crab feeder? Like how do you feel? You got the complete list. Okay, sorry.

I didn't need to step on your bit. No, that was you know, be so well. That was what ran through my head. You know, I love some steam crabs. the old bay always on my mind, but immediately that just the visual, not only when crabs are crawling on bodies or we here at Talk to Throats and House of R are going to think of the crab feeder. Of course, the visual, like the beach, the way that the water glistened on the sands and

the rocks were popping through and then a crab crawls up onto a corpse. I was like, this is right there. Very, very House of the Dragon, crab feeder, episode three, like a visually informed. And so I was thinking of Chris because he's such a fan of the character, but also then of course was thinking of David Targary and just shouting, Prince J. Ha! Which, as you know, was one of my favorite vocal deliveries of the last season. Prince Drake.

My favorite, CR Talk to Thrones moments because he was so obsessed with the crabbeater and we had to be like he's not a main character. I wish he was, though. Don't get attached. one of the most visually evocative parts of that show. And in the same way, I was charmed and delighted by our little, you know, beach time we spent here. This crab being like standing off with the xenomorph and just being like, this is my food, get away. Like, I thought was fantastic.

Really good. Alien versus crab. It was like a cat move, I thought. The way like a cat that's like smaller than some other animal feature dog would be like, get away from my cheroon. tube or whatever the case may be. So I thought that was great. And the xenomorph for treating subtitling was a little touch. Nice little touch. Did you see those pinchers going? You don't want any part of that. Incredible. Snoring, gasping during sleep, feeling fatigued, ask your doctor about Zepbound, terseptite.

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Taking Zep bound with a sulfonylurea or insulin may cause low. blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsened kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-9 or visit zepbound.lily.com. All right, so we get a handy voiceover from our not second favorite synth, Adam, inside of this world telling us about the state of affairs. You know, the hybrids are contained, but they're in a cage that probably can't hold them. Like, here's where, you know, we're cut off from the mainland. surely other forces are coming to get us. We really are just doing Jurassic Park all over again.

Yes. Like, come on. Absolutely. Meanwhile, Boy, you know, Adam's like, I think we should leave, sir, essentially. And Boy's like, I'm sorry, I just got to stare lovingly at the sheep and think about our future together. I really am going to miss that sheep. I got to say. I'm excited for our chair.

Why can't we have more than one eye jockey? That's my question. Can we? We got to go back to space. What's the reproduction rate? Like, you know, can we split and have multiple eye jockeys? I would love to say. We're going to have to get to the bottom of iJockey reproduction,

a rich and fertile area of exploration for future pods, I'm sure. But in particular, like, I don't want to zoom into the Arthur stuff, which we are very excited about while just forgetting about that sheep, which I would say was dropped like a coat on the floor. You know, as soon as that eyeball jumped out, it was like it didn't matter at all. It was like that relationship was unimportant. And to me it was important.

To me, it meant something. So I just don't want to see that sheep done a disservice and disrespect it in that way. I mean, presumably the carcass... That sheep is a lie. I was going to say, presumably the carcass can still be reused. Should an eyeball jockey need to, like, leave Arthur's cranium at some point early in season two?

I don't know. Who would want to? It's true. It's a cozy home. You know? is but also I think Arthur is going to be under fire pretty much immediately. So I just, I don't know, I'm still very invested in, um, on the, you were right to draw our attention to Boy Cavalor's eyes and I'm still very invested in that outcome before long, I think. Yes. I would, I would like that to be the eventual. I just want David Risdell to get paid. But like, uh, on the decomp front. Yeah. Like the sheep body looked healthy and hail throughout all of this. Yes. Does the eyeball entering, and I'm just asking questions, we don't know the answers to you, but does the Does the eyeball entering Arthur's waterlogged, bloated, surely stinking corpse, does that arrest the decop? Or is Arthur going to start dropping body parts?

Like how, like, what's going to happen? He needs to start dropping parts. I want a full, like, Vincent Dinoffrio in Men and Black style performance from David Mizzle. I think that's the zone I'm looking for. Will he also drop a deuce? That's the question. Like, we got such a memorable shit from the sheep. So is Arthur going to take a dump on Boy's floor at some point?

I don't know. It's possible. Adam's speech about Neverland and Boy's response, I thought was pretty delightful. Like, the number of moments in this finale where Boy just does something that is even by the standard that he has consistently established across the season, utterly inexplicable. Like, we've gone well beyond hubris into something that is, like, not really defends. but does feel completely in keeping with how he behaves. It's the skipping for me. It's the skipping that he does.

Meliobrocks to like whoever can meet me at the airship. I mean, that's not very much when you're constantly talking about how you're a trillion air, by the way. Yeah. You know, throughout the entire season, we talked about these like, Chekhov's Private Island, Chekhovs, you need a transport. And, of course, to get the other side of that, which is when Morrow's team cut the line and X, Y, and Z has happened. And like, it's not just, okay, we're hard to find. Great.

It's when someone finds you, which we knew they would, you are cut off from receiving any help. I thought that was a very like take in space. No one can hear you scream and make it on Neverland. No one can hear you scream. On your private island. Delicious way. I liked that quite a bit.

And I thought, I do want to ask you guys about the like the part of Adams' rundown of all of the problems they're facing, though, and he said it wasn't designed the cage. it wasn't designed for synthetic beings. I'm not sure how long it will hold if they decide to break out. On the one hand, I'm immediately hearing in my head, Loki and Avengers, like, it's an impressive cage, not built, I think, for me. I don't understand the setup here at Neverland.

Because, like, okay, the things that went wrong in the lab, the fly melting the circuit breaker, or, you know, we talked about is it sabotage or is the equipment just not holding up on the lunch tray, previously, like, Boy couldn't very well have said, hey, we need to get this lab equipment to the level where it can

withstand acid blood. Don't ask me why. Don't ask me why. We need metal melting spluge to be able to go all around this lab. Don't worry about it. I'm not going to like incriminate myself when this spaceship crashes into my city

in a few days. Why are they not prepared to deal with the hybrids, though? They knew what they were. building there. Now, we have the moments of surprise. Yeah, go ahead.

Absolutely not. This is a question we've been asking all season. Why are you letting these children in the lab? Why are you know, like, why this, why that?

They are not prepared for any of this throughout the whole season. Yes, but there's no, this is like, totally, but this is a level of like, okay, like, they don't know, they're surprised to learn in real time that Wendy can hack the HR bot

and like see that, right? Okay, reveals about the extent of her power that she then capitalizes on inside of this finale to beat them. that great. Letting them in the lab, whether that's wise or not,

I think you can put under the cover of like, they're studying, they're amassing data. Boy is like, look at all the data coming in when I sent them to the crash ship. It's like Christmas. This is like,

there's actually no fail safe in place. There's actually no safety blanket. They had no physical space or tech to say, like, we need to take them. They definitely could have. No, they definitely could have because they can knock

them out, you know, they can like shut them down. Yeah. Why did they shut them down? That's a question. And why don't they do that? They can lock them in the room. That's what they did with nibs at one point. Why did they do that? I don't know. They just put them all in a cage because it was aesthetically pleasing. It seemed very cute or Pan-esque and it would look cool for the finale. They're in a cage. It's not going to hold them. But like, let's go with that. Why did they keep all the bad adults alive at the end and put them in a cage? Like, no one's, no one's making the proper decisions on this island. Yeah. It's true. I do say. I do

think as far as like whether there's just like a kill switch for the hybrids. Yeah. I got the impression from the nib stuff earlier this season that like you kind of need to walk them to the lab and lay them on that table to turn them off. Did we ever see a hybrid just getting switched off at any point this season? Like this this episode would lead me to believe that like there's no way to just remote turn off, you know, nibs at this point. Well, they shocked her to like unconscious at the end of last episode.

Temporarily. Do not shock. Oh, that's true. shock them and then just sort of carry their bodies and place them in their little charging base. But you need a shot on. But then we wouldn't have an episode. So that's true. Great point.

Compelling evidence. I don't know why they're doing it. I want to talk about Curley. I don't watch a ton of documentaries. It's not my usual thing. But I have watched a lot of cult documentaries. That is like the one way you can get me to watch a documentary. Okay.

This is, and now listen, the hybrids are premium, accelerated intelligence, all this sort of stuff like this. I can buy into that. This is remarkably fast deep programming work of Curley, who has been like, her whole plot this season is, I'm team overlords, I'm team boy, I need to be the most special, all this sort of stuff like that. And all it took was Wendy just being like,

I'm the favorite actually bitch for Curley to essentially change her mind, adopt her old name Jane, which is very conveniently ties into the people, Pan storytelling. Like, um, did this work for you? Did you enjoy this turn for Curley or does it feel like they were trying to get,

give each kid like something pointed and targeted to do in this finale, right? And it's like nibs with Sylvia. Okay. Sely and Smee with Morrow and Kirsch. Okay. Um, obviously Marcy has to like,

you know, deal with, with the boy directly and also her brother or something like that. And they're like, and Curley's also he. also here. And so give her this moment where she changes her mind

about how she's felt all season. What do you think, Mallory? I think that I will put this into a larger note on the season of like, I think at the end of the day, there were just too many characters to properly service.

So many kids, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or like there's a version of it where I think the kids are all kind of the main characters and that is in a way that the finale, I think, supports, like, the central interest and preoccupation of the story, and they all have a little bit more time. And then it doesn't matter as much if we have a little bit of a trade-off with other characters.

But, you know, we're at the end of the season of a show we enjoyed watching saying, this turn from Curley feels really quick. We were maybe most excited about, like, a showdown between Kirsch and Morrow. Did we get enough out of that, like, that we wanted? Did we ever get out of Joe and Wendy exactly what we wanted? you know, on and on the list. Like, we never, we've recurring bit about how we haven't seen enough conversations of substance between Arthur and Dane to be invested in the dissolution of that marriage, et cetera. So, you know, it's like, and that doesn't even get into the fact that, like, Utoni is almost here as, I clock that as IP, right?

And it's like never really a character or more just like an aspect of like a plot device and something that's going to be recognizable and familiar to. fans, which is fine, I think, ultimately. But, you know, I think we got a lot of really good time with Boy and Wendy consistently. And then there were other characters who moved in and out of like, okay, I feel like they're about to enter the top three or four of most relevant figures. And then we move away from spending meaningful time with them for three episodes, etc. So, yeah, I feel the same way about Curly at the end here. I was like, boy, that was like, that was pretty fast. That was pretty fast.

Now, enough things happen to, I think, convince me and get me where I need to be that, like, she would say, okay, boy is telling me to my face again. Did I say that? Like, I don't think that about you. Yeah. Your floor model. Yeah. Yes. The floor model thing would just obviously deeply harrowing.

I would recommend to Boy Cavalier on the floor model front. Also, sweetie, like, very reminiscent of how we talk to you, Tani, you know, sweetie, honey. Together? Floor model is right to each other. It's terrible. Absolutely not. Reading a lot of Peter Pan, if you're going to say floor model to a bunch of synthetic beings, I would recommend he brush up on his Ishiguro.

He should read Clara on the sun and think about what he's doing here. That's my recommendation to him. I think the damning part, I think the damning part on the character front is if you just took Curley out of the show, basically nothing would change. And I say that as someone who, like, I think there's some interesting stuff you could do. And I'm not even talking about, to talking about plot driving perspective, but in terms of the themes that the show is interested in, the idea is that the show is interested in. Yes, it would be nice to have somebody who's like a little more bought in

on the prodigy bottom line and on what Boy Cavalier are saying. Like that could be useful in theory, but if you're just going to fast forward what's supposed to be the progression at the end, it makes the earlier stuff feel not as important. And I think, I think, I was thinking a lot about, we all three of us just recently saw Mad Max Fiery Road and in the collection of the wives, you know, the group of wife characters inside Mad Max Fiery Road, there is a character who is like, we should go back, right? And that's used interestingly inside of that movie. So that character type is interesting.

But inside of like a relatively short movie used better than I think Curley has used this season. And I think to think about the shows that Noah Hawley has made, which we love, this is something that he does. He does sprawling ensemble cast in both Fargo and Legion. And I think historically throughout those seasons of television, sometimes the equation balances and sometimes it does it. You know what I mean? And sometimes you're spending time with characters you're not invested in and you're like, wait, we didn't do the lead-up for me to have the buy-in on this character. And meanwhile, I'm missing this other character that you did do the good work to get me invested in. And so I think that's something he has always done.

And I think it stands out more here than it has in Legion and Fargo because of something that I brought up earlier this season, I think, which is Fargo and Legion are both shows that are very like mannered, very stylized, very heightened reality. Not that having aliens here isn't heightened reality, but like the way that the characters behave in an alien franchise is always supposed to be very grounded in human. What would space truckers do? What would these army grunts do if they were encountering these monsters? And so if the prompt is make it real, make it grounded, but make it alien, that's a thing we haven't seen Holly do inside of TV. And I think there are some ways in which he absolutely nailed it. And there are some performances where we were just like, the Morrow character is like one of like the greatest accomplishments, I think, in television this year. Fantastic.

And Baba Sisi as like an introduction to an actor, like, for me at least is just like really incredible. So there are many ways in which this definitely succeeded, but I think there are ways in which it just shows that you can't transplant something you've done really well in one franchise directly over to another franchise. Despite the fact that Noah Hawley is, and I believe I'm a huge alien fan. Oh, clearly.

Yeah, definitely. I think on the grounded front, though, it did feel grounded to me when Nib shouted a fly-Aid his face. I'm just kidding. That was great. I love that. Nips rule. Nips is never left to down. Not even once.

Not even once. I think to, that's exactly right, Joe. And I think, like, Rob, what you're saying about, you know, the character who wanted to be there or had the pull, like, we just got a better version of that with Isaac. Yeah. We had not a ton of time with Isaac, but that really landed and I think really pulled off. And it is ultimately, I will say, like, it is important, I think, inside of the season that there's dissension in the ranks and that the hybrids do not all agree, both because that feels true to life and because it's more dramatic. interesting, as we talk about across many of the properties we cover, when the group of people who are, like, theoretically aligned are opposed to each other. So, you know, I think positioning Curley as another character in addition to Isaac, who's like, my life is better here than it was before, was interesting. It's just the place we got. I don't know, like Smey, I would be curious to see the total runtime for Curly and Smey. I bet it was pretty similar.

and Smee is one of my favorite characters at the end of the season and also as a character who moved in and out of different states of comfort, culpability, active questioning. All of the characters are in a place both because they're young, they're on a coming of age journey,

and because they're in this extraordinary circumstance forced to make these decisions that nobody should ever have to make, let alone this many times in this kind of circumstance where they're looking inward and asking about each other but also about themselves.

Like Smee is a, I would watch an entire season centered around Sme. I do not feel that way about Curley at the end of the season. I love that kid. I think that at the end of the day, this idea of like the hybrids are the monsters, the children are the monsters, the children are the monsters, something like that.

I think, you know, given that this entire season has been a metaphor for parenting and all of that, this idea of confronting the children you've made and confronted them, having to consider them as not just sweet, sweeties that you can put in a cage, but, you know, actual threats who can snap open the cage

if they need to at any given time. Like, that's interesting to me from a sci-fi point of view, taking a very sci-fi turn on this very common, almost universal experience that parents have when confronting their child turning into an adult.

And so I think it can be done really interestingly. I'm not sure this seasonfully nailed it here at the end, but there's potential for future seasons to do that. And there's a lot of meat along the way, too, in terms of that side from the parenting and also for the hybrids in a very kind of buffy-esque literalization of like, what does it mean to become a person? And are you even a person in this case? Like the idea of these kids growing into themselves and slowly coming to realize that honestly, they really don't have anything in common with any of these adults who are telling them what to do. And thus, who are they? And thus,

Who are they to tell them how to live their lives? I really enjoyed the like smart home haunted house stuff with Marcy being like, we're going to haunt them the way that she popped up on the monitor and Dame Sylvia's, you know, quarters and then just like showed the footage of her as a younger child being like, we're going to be okay, right, right, right? Messing with the elevator. all of that stuff, I thought was actually really fun.

Elevator-wise. Why does this elevator have a self-destruct function? That falls into the conversation we're having a few minutes ago. It's like, who built in Neverland? What the fuck happened here? They don't have cells that can hold their own creations, but the elevators explode?

Why would they need to explode? What about a childish emotionally stunted trillionaire who doesn't wear shoes and skips around? I guess. That's probably the answer. The answer might be. that simple. And it could be that simple to almost any question we have, unfortunately. Marcy's messing with the comms. One of the conversations that she interrupts is between

Boy and Kirsch, right? And she's garbling the transmission. But inside of the garbling, we hear Kirsch say, ADHD as severe as yours, which is like one of my favorite lines of the episode. But what do you make of maybe Mallory, specifically in light of Tim's interview, again, we don't want to spoil it too much. But like, in light of what he said about basically we're really trying to parse what Kersh is thinking and feeling in any given moment. The answer kind of seems to be intentionally oblique in a way that maybe even Tim Oliphant doesn't even know. But given the kernels that he did give us, how did that inform how you're thinking about this interaction between the two of them? Yeah, I think that this feels

like attracts to me in the sense of like what he explained to us about the idea that Kersh is responding basically each time to what boy is putting in front of him. I don't know. Like, I think that from boys' perspective, everything in this scene made complete sense to me. I'm curious to track this relationship most of all, I think, on a rewatch.

Because I, and I try to like think about how much of this is just, I've kind of like gotten myself, you know, I've whipped myself into a friend. the anticipating an outcome and then that's not what happened versus like does this feel like it is how the character should be behaving, you know? So I, you know, as you guys know, have been spending most of the season, I think, waiting for Kirsch to do, I guess what feels to me like what he should have done, which is just say to boy, you're going to tell me to grow a pair of balls, like, fuck you.

You're not as smart as you think you are and I don't have to do what you say. Now, I thought that this response was, as you said, Joe, quite comedically compelling, just genuinely very funny. I also like that for boy, it was kind of like a humanizing thing, right? And I think for Kirsch, it's a reminder, like, thinking back to one of the first six stages that he and Morrow had, like, you know, where are you king of? And it's like, why work for prodigy, right? You know, this idea that like this is his creator and this is this, this extent of the reality of his life is like, work. for Boy, taking orders from Boy, doing what boy wants, working in the lab. And that's not an easy thing, I guess, to turn off.

But I don't know. I think, like, okay, we didn't get pushing Boy into an egg and that's fine. But I do feel like he should just be like, you're a fucking idiot. Yeah. This is why everyone lives, you know, broken backs can be fixed. I sure hope so. Especially mechanical ones. Yeah, there was this idea.

Yeah, actually, I'm not going to get into it because I would wrap. other people listen to Timothy Oliphant tell them than me. Tell them. Rob, take us into the cage, a different cage, with Morrow and Joe. And we get this conversation, you know, talking about the events of the first couple episodes of the season, you know, you shot me, I saved you, blah, blah, this idea of that's a yesterday conversation. Like, how does the end?

Also very good. We're not so different. You and I. You've got a synth long. I've got a synth arm. I'm like, you know, how do you feel about that? So how did this interaction, a payoff of an earlier meeting in the season, work for you? I mean, I wouldn't say it was like a particularly rich payoff.

But the idea that Joe in particular would honestly have more in common with someone like more than he would with his own sister at this point is an interesting idea. And as I think a good wedge to kind of drive into these dynamics and relationships, even as Joe is getting sort of like grandfathered into the gang, because Smee's like, yeah, he's cool, I guess. I don't really understand why the hybrids would be down with Joe at this point, considering he just electroshocked nibs. But this, ultimately, these two people...

Didn't he, like, played Django with them essentially one time? Played Jango watched as they ate some, like, flavor strips or whatever. Like, honestly, by the grace of Ice Age, he is grandfathered into their little group. Other than that, I don't have an explanation for it. But I like the idea of Morrow for... for, yes, he's wanting to do some horrible things and he clearly has terrible intentions within Neverland and Prodigy at this point.

But that doesn't mean he's just like indiscriminately killing everybody. It doesn't mean he has an axe to grind with every single person. He is mission driven. And Joe is kind of irrelevant to his mission at this point in a way that, yeah, the last time we bumped into each other, that really was a yesterday consideration. That was a yesterday problem. Now we're just two guys sharing a cell

and one of us has his hand in a Pringle's can. It's all very normal. How did this interaction work? Yeah, I thought, so I thought that on the, that's a yesterday conversation front, that felt right to me, given that Maro, like, arrived, return to Earth with this totally myopic. Like, I got to get the specimens back. It's all I have. I orient every decision and my entire worldview around this mission. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. I was really struck by feels good, doesn't it, being more than human? because that felt to me very contrary to what we had previously heard from Morrow, which was the worst parts of a man, like that he was ashamed, almost of the human parts of him that continued to linger,

that made him weak, that made him susceptible, that made him vulnerable, that made him feel, that made him think about a past he couldn't have. But then I really liked how this all tied together, which is like the price, right?

The price being everything is, again, this is all like how he has to justice. this to himself because his kid is gone. The years that he could have had with her, gone. The justification that he made for signing up for the mission in the first place because his daughter died, gone. The crew dead. The questions about his own morality and his choices, clouding every aspect of his thinking, waking life now moving forward. He's asking random children he meets, would you have done this thing? So the idea of this being the most awesome. consuming thing I thought was an appropriate weight to share with Joe.

Can I go back to something you just said? I don't feel that that's what he says here is contradictory. When him saying the worst parts of a man feels right in line with me with feels good, doesn't it be more than human? And this idea that he wants one of those hybrid body. I got to get me one of those bodies. Like he doesn't want to be human at all. He wants to be all synth going forward.

And so that feels connected. it to me, right? Like the worst parts of a man feels good, doesn't it be more than human? Like the little bit of synth inside of you feels like makes you feel a little special, a little shiny. And I would like to just, once I get my hand out of this Pringle's can, just give me the whole hybrid treatment and I, and I will gladly take it. Yeah, I think he's a man who's done being human because like his heart is broken. His child died. I just want to feel that anymore, you know? Sure. I think I'm probably taking this conversation. with Joe and that line to Joe in concert

with what he says to Kirsch, where he's like, the human will will always prevail. Yeah. I'm like, so he's, he's, there's something still sacred and superior to him about the human experience. And ultimately to Joe, he sang it to another, like an essence cyborg, like a hybrid of a different sort.

So I, I'm not, I don't think that's a critique. I think this is like an interesting, um, place to find. Morrow, but it felt like a little bit of an evolution maybe of what he had said before. I think what you guys are talking about feels like an extension to me of what we saw for more earlier in the season when he first like plugged himself in for the download or whatever. And it was like his body was at war with itself. And I think there is the part of him that wants to wipe away all this pain.

There's also the part of him that is a cyborg as a means of being saved by Uttani, right? Of being pulled out of the gutter, basically, and given a kind of life. and he you know it's weird to feel like indebted and thankful for that but at the same time maybe resent some of what it takes away from your humanity but also elevates you above humanity in its own way and him having to like reconcile all of these different feelings about being a little less than and a little more than human in some ways and there's also the cost that comes with it right which he mentions which is just like you know everything everything doesn't even begin to cover it right you know like they own you forever He's emotionally indebted and also just sort of like they've got a, you know, they've got the copyright on my arm. Like, you know, what I'm not my own person anymore. Right. What follows here is we get, I guess, the payoff of this whole, like, Joe didn't visit Marcy when she was in the hospital because he was at war and he gets, we see this flashback sort of similar to Marrow's contemplation of letters from his daughter of Joe reading these really sad, like,

letters from Marcy being in the hospital. Yeah. Their dad, Noah Hawley isn't even visiting her. And she's like really sad. She's like, I really wish you could come and hang out. And he's devastated. We see how much this hurts him to not be able to go. But my question is, to what end all of this?

Mallory, this is something that you've been tracking a bit and sort of waiting for a payoff for this. To what end at the end of the day, this sequence? So this is like right on the heels of Wendy and, and Smee talking and Wendy's saying to Smey, like, he chose them. And I think that Wendy's current in this stretch of the episode, he chose them. Uncertainty is, is made, like, increasingly potent by us knowing that she has those seeds of doubt from the past, right?

Like, did he do everything that he possibly could to come see me? Could he have been by my side? Those are enriching elements in conjunction with each other. Like, would he choose me above all else? And then that is back on her mind when she thinks he didn't do that by Fryen Nibs, albeit for very temporary. Microwave, at best. Very temporary.

Just like actually kind of where those like, those rejuvenate yourself treatments where you just get like minor shocks all over your body and you're like, oh, my collagen is reactivated. Oh, my God. I would love a little like recreational tasing before the next pot. like really juiced me up. Exactly. Yeah. Get us ready to go.

Rob, you got it. Thank you, Joe. I think the thing is, we saw this. I don't think any of us doubted that Joe

was sincere when he said, like, I missed you, I was devastated. I would have been there if I could have been. And like Wendy didn't gain any insight here.

So I don't think it achieved anything ultimately other than showing us something that we had no reason, frankly, doubt. I only wanted to follow up if there was doubt. If there was like some great area of something he wasn't telling her or holding back or some other reason he couldn't be coming to visit her, that would have been interesting. But if you're just going to show us, as you're saying about, the thing that we already were kind of told by the characters to believe. And yes, there was some

ambiguity and some like, should I trust him about this kind of sewn into that episode. But this just felt like a sliver of a story that I either don't need it or I need more. So this kind of deployment didn't really work for me with this. Follow up question to you. Do you think this is included so that Noel Holly could get the requisite screen time to get his screen actor's guilt card? Yeah. Just a question.

Just asking questions. We're doing the important work. We're getting people registered. We're getting a crucial, like, you know, let the actors weep on screen scene. It's all very important within the context of the show and the production. All right. next we have a section I'm calling Battleboss. Moro versus Kirsch.

This is something that we've been like sort of, it's been building and building these interactions between these sassy cyborg and the sassy robot and their hatred of each other and how they definitely have to lead up to something here. Friend of the pod, Alan Seppinwall, the great Alan Seppinwall, often will text me questions about Game of Thrones.

Hey, Joanna, what was like, what technically is this in Game of Thrones? Like, what did the fandom think about this? This is like, I'm his like, Game of Thronesopedia or whatever. And so he was asking me about Clegan, he's like, what was the origin of Clegan Bowl? Like, what, you know, blah, blah. Did it come from the fans?

Like, what was all that? And I was, so I was telling him. And he was like, because that's what I was thinking about. And he was like, that's what I was thinking about, and I was thinking about Morrow and Kirsch. And I was like, same in that I didn't, I felt kind of let down by both, to be honest with you. I'm not a huge Clegan Ball lover.

And this just felt like, okay, I don't know. We watched them fight and smash each other. up and I'm not sure. The John Henry section, however, which is... In defense of the comp, Joe, like, this is six episodes of buildup versus seasons and years of potential buildup in the Clegane case. Yeah.

The Clegan Bowl, no, no, it's not a one-to-one comp, but it's just sort of like, in terms of like something that they have laid track for and then they're like, here you go. And I'm like, is this what I thought you were cooking me when you put all these ingredients in the bowl? That being said, the John Henry was a steel driving man, sort of conversation I thought was really good.

And yeah, to Mallory's point that she's referenced in the end, men will always win. It's a question of will. Didn't John Henry die of exhaustion? Marrow was saying, I'm just getting started. Something I thought was interesting, you know, digging into sort of the John Henry

legend, which is wildly distorted. You know, there was a man John Henry. Did he do any of this questionable? did he die of exhaustion? Surely not. All these other things. But in 2000, there was a Disney short, animated short that I remember.

There's like a couple different filmed versions of the John Henry story that I've seen. But in this Disney animated version, his hammers are forged from the chains of his like enslaved existence. The chains are turned into the hammers that he then uses to beat the machine and then die. And, you know, I thought that. Spoilers for John Henry. I thought that was interesting inside of Maro's earlier conversation about sort of like, you know, they, they put this arm on you, then they own you. Like, you know, you, you belong to them, your property. And so I thought that was interesting. I really, really, really liked that conversation. In terms of like the rest of it, I'm, I, I did enjoy, you know, watching the goo come out. of our guy Curish. That was pretty fun. Watching the goo come out of

Curse. Crazy. Frazing. Unintentional. How high and mighty Joe was earlier in this episode. Look at it for social. Mallory, what did you think of

of this interaction? I'm with you completely. I just like, these two are the best and their interactions have been the best. crackled with electricity every time they've shared an exchange. Now, you know, granted, it's only been a few scenes and it's mostly been oriented around a pissing contest. So we've critiqued a lot of other characters for not being ready to fire.

Mara sneaking in and Kersh, like, I'm at the soldering table. I'm going to turn around and shoot you immediately. Whoops, I accidentally shot the glass of the floor of a fauna cage. And then things unfold very quickly from there. I guess actually is like appropriate. I would have loved a version of this scene that was like 40 minutes long. Yes. Honestly, because to your point. conversation, yeah. Yes.

The John Henry stretch was, I thought sensational. I mean, Bob, as you know it already, has been like astonishing all season. And I thought this was one of his, even by that standard, better moments. In the end, man, we'll always win. It's a question of will, like, give me a chill. I cannot possibly find sufficient praise for Kirsch, back broken, oozing the stuff. mustering the strength for that witty rejoinder. Oh, yeah.

It's like incredible. Only the greats have that in the mouth. Oh, my God. I wanted more of that. That was just fantastic. On the Thrones comp front, listen, you'll never hear me support the episode of the bells. So that's not going to happen now, of course.

I had a similar response to like the length of time building up to the game bowl is different. I was thinking, here's another scene that this does not measure up to, to be clear. got some mountain and the viper vibes from the like, I didn't finish the job and then you swept out my ankles. Sure. I got caught taunting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Also, we got a Utani the younger turn of phrase.

So that's very thronesy too. So throats on the mind here throughout this scene, not for the last time in this episode, certainly. I did like that intersection too in terms of morrow of like the human will and human folly kind of all coming, swirling forward here. And ultimately, like, being his undoing in terms of this fight, which I agree could have been much longer,

I think would have been, like, very satisfying if it were a little more drawn out and if there were a little more back and forth between them. I also, in addition to, you know, the Jurassic Parks and the Game of Thrones and everything that is in kind of the stew here, I mean, big, like, Batman versus Bain vibes in terms of the broken back.

The first of two Batman... Well, I mean, later we get Boy Cavalier basically telling them how he got these scars. like almost doing word for word the like my father situation. So clearly it's in the mix here as well. I love like an incapacitated character

having to be resourceful in this moment and the fact that it is a synthetic and the synthetic is being kind of challenged not just for his ability or his intellect or whatever but for his heart and kind of coming through in exactly the way that he's being challenged by more of

that I think that's pretty enticing. I will say great Batman comps, great Thrones comps, all this stuff in the air, we would be remiss inside of an episode that has a Timothy Oliphant interview to not say to people who are listening to this, who haven't already, you should watch Justified. It's an incredible television series. And this idea that our guy, Timothy Oliphant,

railing gives himself, would not be quick on the trigger, first to fire is his most on brand. Justified. It's actually in his contract, a la like, you know, Jason Statham and the Rock can't lose a fight in the Fast and the Furious. It's like Tim Aliphant has to shoot first or else he just simply will not show up.

Exactly. Okay, we've already talked a bit, plenty about the Adam reveal, the floor models and sweeties moment and stuff like that. Anything you want to add to this section when boy just like wanders into the cage? I mean, I will say, Marcy sitting there cross-legged,

saying, what's the story and snapping open the cage is, I actually think her BAMP, it's either that or her like sort of World Cup worthy kick of the eye jockey across the room that she does a little later in the episode. That was rude. But I think the snap, the casual seated snap of, you think you can, you're in here with us, my friend. What's the story is, I thought it was.

really, really good. I really, really liked that. But, Mal, anything you want to add to this boy backstory? Let's see. I don't understand why he walked into the cell as we've already discussed. I just feel this nuts. I think that, you know, to continue this through line of our pod today about like, where do we find the hybrids morally in terms of what they're justifying to themselves? I think we must absorb. that as boy is telling the story, Daddy was a drunk, mouth breathers, you know a stranger thing season when someone's saying mouth breathers. He said, and to this troglodyte was born a miracle, a boy genius destined to rule the world. Referring to yourself as a miracle, chosen, special,

premium, and then saying, as we will hear Wendy say, rule, I'll rule. I think those parallels are certainly not accidental and they are worth observing and considering in terms of where we find Wendy. Also just casually snapping the neck of any given soldier that, you know, might be around. Like, no worries about that. Light work, no problems. I mean, as far as why boy is walking into this cage to begin with, I do love the idea that that character is at a place where it's been so long since he has been checked by anybody that he has almost like forgotten what danger looks like. That there is a part of him that still, even as Wendy is snapping the door open, thinks that he is in control of the situation, thinks that he can walk in. there and say whatever he wants

and they're just going to listen to him. He's clearly not up to date on some of the internal dynamics among the lost boys at this stage, but he's also not up to date on just like how far out of his control this whole situation has drifted. Well, this from a character... Oh, sorry, go ahead, Joe. Apologies, go ahead.

Well, I was expecting, you know, either when he's inside of this cage here realizes that he's surrounded by threats or later when he's toe-to-to-toe with his xenomorph. To get that sort of like Peter Pan to die would be an awfully big adventure sort of

moment. But when he's tied up in the cage at the end of the episode, he's still King Joffering his way through it. It's just sort of like, are you going to let her speak to me like that? You know, like nothing radically altered inside of him at the end of this season, which is not the end of the world, but like what is it going to take?

Is it only death going to stop his raging ADHD. I have ADHD, so I'm solidarity. Not to zoom ahead too much, but ultimately, like the lasting image we get of boy at the end of this episode, as he's being kind of like bossed around. I mean, I think he likes it a little bit. I think there's a part of him that is terrified.

And there is a part of him that's like, this is exactly what I wanted. Like, I wanted to create. Yeah, I wanted to create something that would surpass humanity. And so there is that war within him too where yes, he wants to stay alive, although I don't know what putting the bulletproof vest

is going to do at this stage. This doesn't really seem like the primary concern, but he is getting what he wanted in a sense. Yeah, definitely. I think the character who spent like all seasons saying, just assume I'm one step ahead, finding himself at a critical moment actually behind

is very dramatically compelling and satisfying. I think that you're right, Rob, that like he enters that cage almost, like the shape of it. It's almost like we're in like an MMA like octagon. You know, like, boy's actually not, I don't think boy is stupid. So he cannot possibly believe that having one guard with a gun

is going to do jack shit. There's no way he thinks that. But he's there to exert or for as long as he can continue to pretend he can, say, I'm the one in control. Yes, I'm the one who controls you. I get to make these decisions. And so we have this like connective thread and cyclical nature of he's there

to complain about his father who would have killed his son and then of course he's talking to his children, he is their creator and they feel the same way about him now that he did about his dad, right? So there's all of that, which I thought was very satisfying

to watch inside of this conversation. You feel like each of the characters has some level of awareness of that parallel circumstance and some of them have decided to process it differently than others. I'm with you guys. I think when we build toward that final moment,

and there are tears in his, because there are tears in his eyes elsewhere in this episode when he's rewatching, if I'm remembering correctly, when he's rewatching the moon landing sequence and it's almost this like wistful, okay, this hasn't actually gone exactly how I thought it was going to go. And even I have to admit that, right? And then the kind of mad gleam in his eyes

and on his face at the end when he has clearly been beaten, I read it the same way. It's like, my loss is ease of victory because only I could have done this. Only I could have put somebody in the world capable of beating me. Yes. And finally a worthy opponent. Yeah. You know.

Yeah. It's not a conversation on the mountaintop, but like it's the next best thing. It is. Could we interrogate some of the Peter Pan stuff briefly? Because I was fascinated by its role in this episode. And I would say kind of the level of introspection. that the show itself seems to have about its own kind of framing device.

And Wendy, as a character, kind of calling out, like, this fucking mythology that you think, that you are subscribing to, that you have built your life around, that you've constructed all of us as Lost Boys and Neverland and conceived of yourself as Peter Pan, not only are your metaphors all busted

and, like, the analogy, not one to one, but whatever I am cannot be explained in an old book. And I thought that the show kind of confronting, at least that's what it felt like to me its own sort of framing device. I love that idea. I love, you know, we've called out at points over the season

the fact that like, okay, this excerpt felt like a little much, this felt like a little much. And in retrospect, I think a lot of that stuff feels like boy, narrativizing and trying to make sense of everything that's happening

through this stuff in a way that is an unreliable narrator kind of tendency and is something that the show is in like direct conversation with. I really like that. I like that a lot. other things I liked on the on the on the Wendy Marcy front or I should say the Sydney

Chandler front I would say the delivery of run yeah was really good her little like gesture run and then when she says uh and this is a reference to Mallory can get now when she says nobody touches my brother was real buffy nobody messes with my boyfriend energy which I really enjoyed so I love that I also love the kids just using like these childlike ideas what do ghosts do like they haunt houses

that's a very like kidlike way to talk about that how are we going to what they are ultimately doing is hunting down the people that they intend to now control and exert the same power over them that they had had exerted against them and they're like well we're going to do that by playing hide and seek

like that stuff was perfect I thought and smee to me going full like monster mash in the background. Like there's a lot of juicy stuff. Along with the nibs growl, which internally wonderful. Really, really good. So yeah, I thought the whole Hyden sequence was like pretty great.

Nibs dropping down from the ceiling to grab Dame Sylvia. Very xenomorph-like. You know, that's the Zeno's move. I did think it was, I found it interesting that as they're rounding up all the adults, like very particular attention was paid to Dame Sylvia. It's like everyone else they're just kind of grabbing or tying up or apprehending in some way. Dame Sylvia is like being punished, right? Like she is being kind of tormented with the old video.

She is being kind of like backed into an emotional corner in a way that like, as it kind of actualizes later when she's in the cage and like, you know, going out of her way to apologize and basically plead for her life. Like there is an emotional dishonesty to that character that it feels like the kids have really picked up on. Yeah, I think I think the person who's, messing around with your memory, who is offering this, yeah, fake comfort,

saying Wendy Darling, not just in a cute Peter Pan way, but in a just sort of like, I'm your mother. I wear a lot of scarves. I'm personally pro-scarf, but not in the way that she uses them to soften, like some really shitty stuff that she does.

How did you feel about her, like, bohemian headscarf look in this episode, Joe? I'm a huge fan of it. I really, really loved it. I also love the her aesthetic moment of I'm going to gaze dreamily out this window at this rain in a sort of moody. Look at my tea. Look at my scarf kind of way. Like, I feel like she knows the exact picture that she's painting of herself.

If the pop culture that moved into the future had been Deadwood instead of Ice Age, she would know not to have kept her back to the door or the ceiling vents. That was nuts. I'm like, you guys are all under threat. Stay frosty. Look, throughout this entire episode, Dame Sylvia also is just like out wondering about to the graves where we should say she just almost gets got by the xenomorph at point blank range. I know we're in flashback territory. So it's like, you know, not everything has happened yet, presumably when that happens.

But there are already soldiers out patrolling constantly because they're needing to be vigilant of threats. Is now the best time to go lay the flowers on the graves? I mean, no. It's not the best time you walk into a cage of hybrid children who kind of want to kill you. No. Nothing anyone does makes sense. Nobody's behaving rationally. I think this is of a piece with what you were saying a couple of minutes ago.

We're like, you know, what you were just saying kind of reminds me of how Wendy talks about the aliens and why she likes them in the conversation with Joe. It's like they're honest. What they do is honest. And like Dame Sylvia, you know, the characters are, I think, in the same position we are as viewers, which is satisfying. there is something more deplorable about her her falsehood, right? And saying, I'm doing this for you. Boy is honest. He's a monster and a piece of shit,

but he'll look them in the eye and say your floor models. I own you. I can do whatever I want with you, sweetie. Cursh, I think in some ways, Kirsch is kind of the most fascinating, like, oh, yeah, it makes complete and total sense to me that when Smean slightly show up, and he says, tie up Morrow, they tie him up instead.

it makes sense to me that they put him in the cage because he's yet another adult who used them as a tool who didn't help them who didn't go out of his way to help them and stand with them who didn't protect them right which he could have and chose not to put them in the cage but last time we saw slightly in Smee it was like under his protection so he put them in that he sent them out under false pretenses to to the beach all of that so he has clearly like not been their protector and ally and supporter and has wronged them but they come down, Wendy in particular, parroting the lessons that he has imparted.

So I was kind of almost like hoping for a version of the scene at the end where like basically they say to him like, you could have been here with us, but, you know, almost a Sansa little finger like, thank you for teaching me this lesson kind of a moment where the extent of the disappointment they had in him was kind of like put in of him to have to process and confront.

But yeah, Dame Sylvia, all she did was say, I'm your mom. I'm going to cradle you to my bosom. I'll care for you. I'll make you the tea and the flavor that you love. I'll tell you, I'm going to teach you about your new body, even though that new body is a thing that I helped build and control. I thought it was great touch that, obviously, the horror of the Marcy, won't we, won't we, won't we repeating was chilling.

We get to hear from Rose, from Nibs before that in the archival footage. And, like, that was such a great touch. Well, that's so intentional, right? Yeah. I'm going to send you some nibs footage. All right. Enjoy that. Suck on that.

Well, this is where, I mean, like, honestly, the best punishments are always specific, right? This isn't just, like, something doled out as a sentence. It's like, we, Wendy Marcy at least knows this is a cutting thing for Dame Sylvia. And maybe the cutting thing for Kirsh in a way, like, maybe they know synthetic life well enough to know that, like, like we can't really get under this guy. Like there is no point in a come-upance moment. There's no taunting him. He is a toaster.

And so we're just going to put him up on the top shelf, draining milk, and just leave him up there. Because what else are we to do? Mali already called out some close captioning about this episode. I want to shout out raspy bleeding slash ragged bleeding. Really good. Which is what we get from our friend, the eye jockey inside of the sheep before the sheep collapse.

is like a pile of laundry. And we get Adam trying to feed Joe to the eye, essentially. I will give Joe this credit. Like, you know, he had a few moves inside of this. He wasn't just like nibs like hand in front of the face, though he did plenty of that move. But like, you know, he gets inside of the little sheep container. Like, that was quick thing.

That's a good move. That's a good move. You know, what's faster thinking, Joe, is the eyeball jockey jumping in the food tray. I know. I have seen a food tray come to play in this season. The TV before. But I liked how it was like that classic horror movie.

Like, did I lock all of the car doors inside of this car that I have sort of like tried to escape the killer from? Like I thought that was, you know, the pattering on top of the like, I thought all of that was real. As is everything with the eye jockey. It's great. 10 out of 10. No, no. It's really, really good stuff. I feel like the eye jockey and part of the reason it's so successful is it kind of captures what's terrifying about the facehugger and the xenomorph at the same time.

Like it has that sort of clattering around the room, creepy crawly thing going on. And also to just, like, rip your head open, danger. And so the fact that it can tap into both those things to such a degree that you are locking yourself at an animal crate, you know, it's a formidable foe. So we get this, like, after the fight, after, like, Marcy has defended Joe and Frozen Adam and all this sort of stuff like that, we get this line that Mallory has already brought up this, like, you know, I like them, the aliens, they're honest. which feels to me very tied to this quote we brought up when we were talking to Noah Hawley from Ash and the original alien, right? When he says, I admire its purity of the alien,

a survivor unclouded by conscious remorse or delusions of morality. It's a very famous alien line sort of twisted and Ash is a villain. So inside of this like the real monsters, who's the villain inside of this episode, to have Wendy Echo a quite famous line from a famous villain inside of the alien

franchise is, you know, should give everyone some pause. You know, terror can come with micro-bangs. It can happen, you know? You got to be on the lookout always. I have a question on the honesty front. I would argue that, especially the face hugger, fundamentally dishonest.

The whole like bait and switch of I'm going to latch onto your face and lay my egg discreetly, and then I'm just going to leave and die and make you feel like you're okay for a little bit. I don't think that's very honest. I don't think it's an honest way to live. Wow. You feel like you've been emotionally manipulated

by the face on your head, I'm just saying, calling the xenomorph and the alien species honest, direct, sure, driven by instinct, absolutely. But they creep around in vents, trapping people, hiding, as we saw in this season,

laying traps and trying to pull people out using humans as bait. That does not seem particularly honest to me. You know, I don't know. That just feels like creative problem solving to me. Mallory, sorry. And we got to like consider the audience. You know, she's saying this to Joe who was bait.

Fell for Adams. Like, hey, I know you think Boy Cavalier wants to kill you. Yeah. Why don't you come to his private quarters? Just swing by the office. Yeah, I know your sister has rights. Yeah, we've been reflecting. We think she has rights now.

I know the last time we talked. I told you. that unless you QCD is this convincingly a human experiment, we would take your lung back, but like I promise it's going to be fine. And Joe's like, lead the way.

Lead the way. So what does Joe know about honesty, ultimately? Great question. What does Joe know about anything? Increasingly nothing. I was really like to see him use. He's got met,

he was, I want to say he was competent in the earlier episodes, but really he was just extraordinarily lucky time and again with that xenomorph. But I would like to see his like medic knowledge coming to play. Like he's got some skills.

He's a skilled guy. Like let's see him or you know the heart. Sure. So far he's has mostly been damsels which you know. A little bit. It is what it is. I want to give him credit for one thing. I thought one of the most terrifying moments in this episode

is in that conversation that he's having with Wendy slash Marcy about the idea of things being complicated. and in a way her saying that like it's complicated is what powerless people say to justify doing nothing. It felt like a little writerly to me and not necessarily something that this literal child would say

but admittedly it's a literal child with a robotically enhanced brain so who am I to say? She's premium. She is absolutely premium. Curly or French in a week. You know what? You're absolutely right and I'm not here to judge her.

I do think Joe as a character is very like feckless and ineffective in the way that Marcy is sort of calling out. He is using the complications of these situations as covered to basically do nothing. And the way that, to be honest, a lot of us often do. Like, things are very complicated and we get frozen in place and we don't make decisions or we don't pick sides, whatever it is. But there is something about a child thinking that power is the solution to complexity that is fucking terrifying to me and how they would wield that to just kind of bludgeon their way through

whatever they consider to be a problem. Like one of the most terrifying constructions you can have is not just the like unsparing lethality of this alien species. It's the idea of something having an immense and uncountable amount of power without any mental ability

to grapple with what it means or what it is or even in this case to like stop nibs from ripping people's jaws out. Yeah, I mean we have the like emotional payoff of hearing Nibs, Rose on the footage talking about how she's like unsure, right?

She has mixed feelings. And then we understand how that sense of like moving in between states of acceptance really defines where we find Nibs as a hybrid. We also heard Nibs say it would be pretty, it would be pretty sick to have superpowers. I could be invisible and sneak up on people. That's what NIMS is doing now. Right. So like all of that happens. I think like one of the, you know, because we're, I think, rightly really zeroing in on the things that we hear Wendy say,

both because she is the main character of the show and also the leader. of this group and the one who is most with the most assurance espousing this point of view, but she is, and this is crucial, not the only one. Like in the Marosmey slightly scene, your time is done. It's art time now is absolutely no different from Wendy saying, now we rule. And it fits exactly with what you're saying, Rob, about like how terrifying

that is. Do you think Goonie's survived along with I said? Why are they not watching that all the time? If so, but yes, I hope so. our time now. Yes. And okay, I think to continue with that line of thought, Rob, like I was really struck by in this same stretch right after

the, you know, you know, I like them, the aliens, they're honest. Their predators were food to them. No, your food to them. Yeah. Very striking, not only because it's another, like there's a separating of humanity and hybrid status, we are superior.

But this was a real, like, Blair egg siren short memory warning for Wendy. Like, Isaac was food two episodes ago. It's true. You had this whole sister from curse and it was a lie. But when she's talking about, no, but when she's talking, well, my understanding of Wendy and granted, I don't know, the inner workings of her beautiful mind, but like, she seems really focused on bonding with the xenomorph.

She's not the one she can talk to. She's drop kicking the eye. For sure. You know, like, I don't think she gives a shit about the flora fauna. I think she's like, let's fry the fly. It could hurt us, you know, blah, blah. But like, I think this food chain conversation is a little interesting because they've had a version of it already.

Like, this is something that they've talked about. Like, we're not the same. Yeah. I don't share your line of thinking because I am not on the same place in the food chain that you are on, my guy, Joe. And so we've seen them have this conversation. She's having it with him again. he's never going to really get it, I think,

because he's not just because he's like, hard guy Joe, but also like because this is Marcy and he's never going to be able to let go of, unless he will in a later season, be able to let go of this idea that this is my little sister, you know? But as she says, like, she's not Marcy. She's not windy. She's not a girl, not yet a woman.

It's the whole thing. She can't be everything to anyone at any sense. She's the Colise. She's the Colise. She is Nicolese. Yeah, I think the fact that the her, I agree, her special relationship and special feelings are specific to the chitter, chatter, tongue-click relationship

with the xenomorph. But like, that's just another version then to me of her making the same mistakes that she's accusing other people of making, which is like, I get to decide who's relevant or what's relevant or who's worthy of some sort of recognition. And, you know, the fact that, like, in some ways, if she considers the flies and the florifoy,

doesn't think about, them at all probably. It's like more Don Draper than I don't think about the fly at all. But like if she does and she considers them lesser than the xenomorphs and the fact that they got Isaac should be even more damning. It should be even further cementing the idea that they are vulnerable to and that part of moving forward should be saying how do we protect ourselves? How do we make sure we're okay? She's mad at Joe because of the choice he made, but also because it was one yet another moment where they had to confront the fact that they were vulnerable for a couple seconds between episodes, admittedly only. But but I think, yeah.

I think you calling out like what, you know, the, it's our time now is really important, but also the slightly in-smead conversation when they talk about like sort of why they did what they did and slightly sort of really sticking to a, they made me do it. They made us do it. We didn't do anything wrong. They, the adults made us. And then inside of this episode where they're taking control of the compound, they're the ones in charge. You know, it, of course, harkens back tomorrow talking about taking responsibility. responsibility and this is what a child does versus this is what an adult does.

But like this idea that we can rule, we can put these bad actors in cages, we can do all these things without going through the emotional psychological evolution that one has to go to in order to become an adult and become capable of being in charge. Yeah. And when does it switch from to harken back to yet another moment that they shared with Maro with the initial quandary that he posed to them and this kind of like test, well, what would you have done?

Immediately they greeted that with this, well, what's the context? And so when does it shift for these characters from, even here now they can say, either they made us or we're doing it for our friends. We're doing it to protect our friends. When does it shift into, actually we just kind of like it?

Actually, we just want to. You know, and it feels like we're right on the precipice of that or maybe that's already happening. Anything you want to say before we get to the pearl jam needle drop at the end of this episode, anything I want to say about this final encounter in the cages? We've already talked about the like, I will do what queens do. I will rule slash now we rule. Calisi moment.

We've talked about boy laughing and what we think that means. Kirsch is dribbling milk. Adam is also there. Yeah. You know, Dave Sylvia is being. put in her place, and the kids are in charge. Anything else you want to say? If the reason for the cage is just to have the visual,

I'm still here for it. I think it's very compelling. I think the way it's staged, I think the circular nature of the cell that allows the camera to kind of pan around and find everybody is really compelling stuff. And we should say, boy, among everything else is going on with him, tied in like a very like Christ-like sort of way for some reason.

I don't know what the lost boys relationship to religion is. We have really explored any of that this season. But him and his positioning, I think ultimately Kirschitz, we already talked about. Like I love him just like sitting up on the high shelf dribbling out. Very, very good. And also, I don't understand with Morrow, who is both in chains and has the Pringles Can situation.

Can he not just T-1000 his way out of that thing? Like, we've seen it be a giant spike. We've seen it be a blow torch. Like, would that really contain him? It felt to be like the equivalent of like the collars and stranger things or something. Like it's like a power suppressor. I have to assume. Otherwise, yeah.

How can he not just like cut right through it? That's just cutting off the Wi-Fi. In enticing, like an enticing season two set up to have Morrow in the cage with them. Right? They've been at odds all season. But now he's on team. The kids should not be in charge of discompan. Yes, exactly.

Of a small compound. Yeah. On the parallel of this, too, when the kids are in the cage, I just want to give particular shout out to Smee who's sort of like hiding in the back, hands behind his back, leaning against the cage standing on the sides of his feet in a way that... Does Gold Star Rock from all of them?

Some incredible poses for Nibs. Nibs is fucking over it. They're all great. Like, I thought that the look on Slightly's face when he hit Morrow in the face in the lab was like... Yeah. Silling. Yeah, I mean, obviously a really good horror episode in general,

but that was great. I thought Rob, when you noted that boy was, you know, legs spread, you were going to ask the really important question, which is, did anybody, did we get a change in close? He pissed himself, he said it. He did. Everyone has to sit within a couple feet of him. Oh, yeah.

As he manspreads, reeking of piss. Thanks for asking important questions is always most. Terrible. A man who thought he's changed and saved the world being strung up Christ-like in his own piss. I mean, look, it sounds about right for Boy Cavalier. That sounds great. Here's my closing question for you.

Before we get to sort of like any sort of lingering season two thoughts that we might have. Here comes the Pearl Jam. Rob and I were recently talking to Bill about the use of Pearl Jam over on task. And we were like, wow, this is so rare for Pearl Jam to be used in a TV show. But then, of course, it was also used in The Last of Us,

quite memorably earlier this year. So my question is, do we need to be? to retire the it's rare to use pearl jam and a TV show. Does that even like are there gambling deaths involved? Like what's what's what's what's going on here that all of a sudden the flood gates are open for pearl jam to show up? Obviously we've had some great needle drops all season. The pearl the animal pearl jam needle drop and especially great one. Any other ones that like we've talked about a few of the season but just wondering if you wanted to like shout out any in particular or have a favorite one that closed out a particular episode.

It's hard to beat the godsmack for me. Into the sheep's eye, godsmack needle drop at the end was fantastic. But look, as far as the Pearl Jam stuff goes, I don't think it has to be gambling debt. Sometimes you just want a second lakehouse or something. A boat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's always, you know, part of being incredibly wealthy

is apparently that you just find new and exciting things to spend money on. Some of us, you know, build robots or buy synthetic arms. some of us, you know, just want to subsidize your latest vacation. A Pearl Jam song opens every single episode of the Bill Simmons podcast, so I have never considered Pearl Jam Needle Trots Rare. But it is a whole thing where you have to like have a conversation with them. And like I just think it's very interesting that, yeah, get any better that boat. That's fine.

I'm down with it. Here's a question. If someone were to sample, say, this podcast, you know, just like excerpt like a little clip of us, say it's like playing on a TV in the background of Alien Earth Season 2 for some reason. Do podcasts incur the same royalties that say Pearl Jam Tracks do? Like, are we in line for a big payday if someone

wants us as background talking heads on something? Rob, do you want a boat? Do you have gambling debts? Well, actually, I don't want a boat. Look, the rule of thumb stands, you don't want to be the guy with the boat. You want the friend with the boat. So if one of you would like a boat, I would love that for us. I can't even go to the eye doctor. I can't be trusted to maintain a boat. Get out of here. But I'll happily join you guys if you're invited on a yacht.

That sounds lovely. Mallory, did you have a needle drop that you wanted to call out other than this Pearl Jam moment that we have? I mean, five against torture from me to you, you know, ending this episode, very good, obviously. I liked the bookends of the season. All of the closing needle drops were good, but I did really, I liked the mob rules, Black Sabbath at the beginning, close the city, tell the people that something's coming to call. That was good. I enjoyed that. The jeans addiction was good. That was like the middle of the season. They all have been pretty good. I was, yeah. I liked the Smashing Pumpkins also, Chair of Rock's

smashing pumpkins. I think, so Noah Holly's been asked a couple times, like, sort of why these particular kinds of songs, and he was like, he was basically saying, he's basically said in a couple different interviews, like, he wants this show to feel like arena rock. Like, he's like wants it to feel big. Yeah.

And like epic. And so that's why he went with these songs. Then why did he pick alt rock, would be my question. This is all straight off of like when I was growing up in the Dallas area 102.1, the edge. Like the like very slightly off

alt rock station. This is all straight out of circulation as far as I've considered. So I think if we're going to do a rena, we could go bigger. You know, there's different scales. There's different realms for this stuff. Who are you picking then, Rob, for your arena rock that's better than

Metallica and Pearl Jam? Pearl Jam and Metallica, absolutely. Smashing pumpkins, borderline. Tool is definitely not Arena Rock. We're too trog and two alt to be in full arena mode. In my humble opinion,

but, you know, Noel Holly's the author. What can I say? I mean, it was ultimately a show where Arena Rock ambitions, but the jail cell was clearly built to hold like the mold scrubber if you showed up late for work and not the hybrids.

So it feels right, I think, that mix of Needle Drown. Spot on now. I would really love a season. too just like the mold scrubber in the in the birdcage or like they have to scrub the bird cage too so you know um snoring gasping during sleep feeling fatigued ask your doctor about zeppbound terzepatite the first and only FDA approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea osa and adults with obesity zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea

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Think green goddess chicken. Garlic aoli. Crumbled bacon? corn salsa 40 grams of protein made to keep up with whatever comes next new sweet green wraps hit different order now at order dot sweetgreen.com all right speaking of looking at to season two other than the shambling corpse of um arthur sylvia what are you looking forward to in season two mallory oh my god i i'm excited for season two i think i was more critical of every single scene in this episode than maybe i had disdivated being when we started the pod. But I like this season a lot.

And I'm looking forward to being back with these characters into seeing what Noah Hawley has on his mind and is most interested in continuing to do. I think at the end of the day, we brought our xenomorph-centric expectations. But the promise of the show is there on that first, like not a crawl, but opening crawl that doesn't crawl,

whatever that's called, just words, I guess. You know, the triple race, right? Cyborgs since. And it's been a long week. It's only Tuesday. The crawl But doesn't crawl

I don't know You know The three-way race Cyborgs, synths, and hybrids And like The show was about that Quite a bit And I'm interested in that

Will that continue to feel like an alien story? I think I'm very excited to see What Flora Fana does in season two Obviously can't wait to be back with the eyeball jockey How? I'm interested to see like how what the extent of Wendy's control over the xenomorphs

is like you know xenolung that bond was one thing is that xenomorph controlling the little baby is Wendy like what what level of puppeteering are we going to see for Wendy there but mostly I'm excited for

the eyeball jockey to go into Boy Cavalers face at some point I don't want boy to be out of the show but I just can't wait to see that Truly can't wait to see that. Though it will be in the end of Arthur, so that's tough. I guess I'll have to be patient. I don't want to say goodbye to Arthur yet. I'd like to see Dame Sylvia die.

You know, that would be fun. She absolutely deserves to. Maybe Arthur will get to kill her. That would be kind of exciting. Well, just deserve it. In a horrifying way? Wife, I'm back. You barely talk to me or acknowledge me

so you don't recognize anything different about my chest cavity or my face right now. But I'm here. But I need you to do that. I need to do that in a like garble tendrils manipulating the vocal cords. I assume that's your pick

to hear it speak but yeah just you know Arthur like for the the ashticks we know the eyeball jockey and the as ticks can work in in harmony

the blood plugs let's sprinkle some of those in a dame Sylvia beverage and go about our day well I mean if the eyeball jockey and the ashtics can work together but the eyeball jockey

and the xenomorph are kind of like mortal enemies it seems like they had some history from their running earlier in the season I once again point you in the direction of the fact that the ad ball jockey is now the hero,

because the xenomorph is working in support slash servitude of some hybrid creations that seem a little scary, if you're asking me. Other notes, Florifana can fucking move. The way it was crawling across that room did not expect it. I really thought we were in Venus flytrap territory. The shimmy was awful in a great way. I am looking forward to one, as Mal kind of alluded to, what are the rules with the Zeno at this point?

How trainable are they? Are they sleeping in a crate? Are they on the bed? What is it that Wendy slash Marcy is willing to allow in terms of her household? This is dog language. Dog owner language. For these creatures that she considers to be like benevolent, but is basically treating like servants and pets.

Don't know what's going on with that as if yet. I look forward to finding out more. Also, what the future of dissension among the hybrids looks like is something that I hope we get into in season two. And maybe that's an area where Curley ends up coming full circle. Like she's the least bought in in terms of the rest of this gang. Like maybe she is the dissenter again, but in a way that feels more restraint,

feels more like a voice of reason relative to all these other kids who are kind of getting high on their own supply. I would say other than the adventure of Ijockey, which is my number one priority, I would say the potential buddy cop energy, of Morrow and Kirsch on the same side having to grudgingly work together

is... That might be reason alone for that fight to not have ended in anyone's death. Like, it's just... It is pretty juicy. Just Tim and Babu just like chopping it up for a season. I would love to see it.

Sign up. Spin off waiting to happen, even if it doesn't happen in season two. Speaking to Mollifant, let us go now to, I don't know, the greatest thing that's ever happened to me. It's our conversation with the absolutely charm dripping with charm Timothy Oliphon

Can I start by asking you the most important question I think that we have on our minds here? Let's hear it. Is Kirsch okay? Is he okay? This is we are talking, I haven't seen it. We're talking post episode eight. Post finale.

Yeah, finale. Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, they've inquired about my availability, so I assume that as a positive outlook. I'm taking that as a positive outlook. It's not official confirmation, but it's an encouraging sign. I think exactly. This is not official. That's exactly right. Mallory. I'm going with what you said. Okay. As your lawyer, Mallory is looking out for you. That's right. We're going to engage. solely in future hypotheticals. You know, nothing but things. In my fantasy world,

in my fantasy life, for a significant pay raise, he's fine. He says as the golf carts drive behind him. I know, I know. Just waving to some of the locals. You know, we've been here for a week. We've gotten to know people.

You know what I mean? We've been here for a week. It's beautiful. It's wonderful. And you're like, with a better pay rise, maybe two weeks next year. Exactly. A whole summer, the entire fall. Here's, I think, the real question that.

We can't say for sure what the future holds for Kirsch in terms of health viability. Joanna, she led with the not the real question. That's good. I think you'll find that that was the, that was, in fact, the real question. This is not the real question. That's the whole game, you know. If Kirsch is okay. Kirsh is okay.

You know, we're going to fix the back. We're going to get into a little, like a little spring training, best shape of my life mode for Kirsch, you know, prepping for a new season. Yes. Do we need to pair rehabbing the back? It's a flesh wound. It's a, it's a serious flesh wound. It's a non-flesh wound.

It's a non-flesh wound. Okay. Yeah. Skeletal flesh. Skeletal flesh. Exactly. As we look to restore, repair, rehab, revive, what are we thinking on the hair? on the hair care front. Will the back repair come with a new hairstyle for Kirsch or the bleached brows eternal?

First of all, let me give you credit for practicing this question appropriately. This is the real question. Exactly. I'm going to be honest with you. I don't have an answer, but I've thought of it. Okay. Yeah, yeah. How much do I got wiggle room? Do I got some wiggle room to come back with like, oh, look at that, changed up the do? Is there, is Kersh more? Or is Kirsch, like, is he, is that the look and we're just committed? Or is there like this, he's like a lady Gaga? You know what I mean? Like, you don't know what you're going to get. Wow.

You know what I mean? Because we didn't make a lot of costume changes season one. But that doesn't mean we can't go, you know, oh, hello, like it's season two, right? So significant pay rise for the return of Kirsch. And also, Tim doesn't have to bleach his hair anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Forgive me, by the way. I was saying, I was trying to say the word raise. If I said rise, that's fine. But I would say significant pay raise. I was just being very British, British about it. I think that's what the Brits say. Pay raise. I want to pay rise?

Yeah. Pay rise. I think they say that. Anyway. Do they? I think so. Give it a try. See if it's more effective, you know?

Stick it. I like it. I've never heard it, but I like it. Sounds. Can you take us behind the scenes of the, of the milking process? When you are, spitting out milk, covered in milk,

what is that substance? How was that for you? Tell us, take us all through it. First of all, I appreciate you guys starting with all the hard-hitting questions. Yeah,

and just getting right to the thick of it. We're thoughtful people, you know? Here's my recollection of the stuff, I think is the technical term. One, you know, if I've said this before, but you know, a group of actors, you know, there's a murder of crows and there's like, it's a complaint of actors. So I prophesied the answer with, didn't enjoy it. It was sticky.

I feel like it's improved, though, this stuff is improved. I've been doing this for a long time, and I feel like they've made some small improvements over the years, maybe a little less sticky. Doesn't taste bad. Interesting. No, I think it's a little sugary kind of deal. Okay.

It doesn't taste bad. But here's what I do recall, which is when we made the choice to be upside down and then I say, give me more stuff because this is going to look great. I was pretty confident. I was like, oh, I'm a little, I'm up here looking down and I'm like, this plays. This is going to look awesome.

Also terribly awful going up the nose and into the eyes. Not good. But that, ladies, is the sacrifice I'm willing to make for good, solid entertainment. For your art. Yeah. For your art. Sure. I meant my art.

I said solid entertainment. but of course that's the same thing it's all the same thing I mean now that we know that this is basically like a liquid marshmallow topping for a snow cone or something I sounds actually like a kind of fun day

fun day at the office well I will say if I have it take a moment did you see the dog there no you froze for a second oh man oh no really upsetting Celebrity dog.

Wow. This is tragic. We miss the dog. It's fun. It's all celebrity on Nantuck. But do we see the dog down there? Yes. Now I do.

Do we see a dog down the walkway there? Yeah. Now we do. Okay. I know I'm here to promote alien earth and I want to, we want to stay on that's the subject. But that he's one of the cast members of the five-star weekends with Jennifer Garner. But I think that dog is mostly.

stealing the show. Oh my goodness. I think that the authorities will be looking for that dog because he's stealing it. Okay, let me just have a moment of sincerity, if I may say, because that was a day with Babu, and every day I got to work with Babu was, no disrespect to the rest of the cast, everyone's wonderful. He was particularly lovely and thrilling to work with, and I just can't say enough about that man's work and the man in general. So it was a great day on set, even with the stuff of my nose and in my eyes. We're happy to to take a pivot to sincerity

because I've heard you talk a couple times about how, you know, you read what's on the page, but then when you go in to work with your fellow actors, it really has a lot to do with your interaction with them on set. And I'm curious, you know, your scenes with Babu,

the moro-Kirsch stuff was so compelling to us. What was it about working with Babu? What did he sort of bring out in you? And then also what is it about Morrow that sets Kersh on edge so much? Let me just start with, not that no one needs another compliment, but those characters,

those two characters from the jump were like, oh, these are going to be great characters. I do remember reading on the page, Noah sent me the script, told me to look at Morrow, but I do even remember saying, excuse me, asked me to look for Kersh. And I did take a beat

when we had our first follow-up conversation. They say, talk to me about Mora, because that also looks like a juicy little nugget of a role. Yeah. And so I want to say, one, it's on the page. And two, you know, they're active. They have secrets. They're scared. They have all these things that are, you know, so appealing to play.

And then to not have to worry about playing because it's taken care of. And then there's just Babu, which is like, you know, one, I like, I experience what everyone's experience. I experience on set what everyone's experiencing now watching the show. The who the fuck is this guy and why have I never heard of him? And like, you know, it is a, it doesn't happen very often, as you guys know, when you watch something and you're meeting both the actor and this, this riveting character and performance and an actor all at once. And usually it's like,

oh, here's this incredible performance and this credible actor done by this person that we'd seen three or four times, and now, wow, they've hit it out of the park. But when it happens at Hello, it is so special for an audience. I mean, America, to some degree,

had that with McShane and Deadwood. Like, who the fuck is this guy? And then who is this character? Like, it was... The best. It just, you know, it's the one and one is three kind of experience, right? And then,

and then putting that aside. So I experienced that on set. I was like, you know, at hello, I just saw what a force he was and what command he had of the craft. And, you know, it's that wonderful experience where he's like,

I can't wait to work with him, and I'm a little nervous about being blown off the screen. And so, you know, we're going to play this little game. You know, we're going to, We're going to throw the ball back and forth, and I'm going to try to throw him some curve balls and see if he catches them. And at the same time, I'm going to be really alert because I might be the person who's in trouble here. Just working with another actor of that caliber. And that is a very exciting day.

It's a fun day on the set when you get to work with people like that. That's awesome. I'm going to stick with the baseball comp for a minute and build off the curve ball because I think something that we really loved with Kersh in general is that, like, you never know when you're getting the high heat. you never know when you're getting the backdoor slider. You don't really know what's coming when and why. And that unpredictability paired actually with some predictability and then putting us in the position of the audience is consistently like feeling like we

understood the character, but there was always a degree of mystique and we were trying to parse the motive. And so another relationship in addition to Kirsh and Morrow that we really were struck by was Kersh and Isaac. And maybe that's a way for you to take us through that relationship and just in general. into Kirsh's psyche for a minute. Like, does he care? Did he care about Isaac?

Because in a moment like Isaac choosing his name, it felt to me in real time, like there was an earnest note of pride and encouragement on Kirsch's behalf. But then he's dispassionately watching what is unfolding on the tablet and letting it happen. So what is, what is Kirsch's stance on Isaac as an assistant, a boy who's trying to become a man? and just in general, the nature of a relationship

that in many ways is very human. Okay, Mallory, prepare to be disappointed by this answer. I don't know. I just don't know. I am guilty and take this with a grain of salt, but it's pretty much, it's pretty true, which is I really don't know, and to some degree I don't care

in terms of when I show up on set as an actor. I mean that because, I firmly believe in this idea of the audience only knows what you tell them. And they will attribute your behavior to whatever it is you tell them. And so I know when I'm shooting that scene with Kit, who I enjoyed thoroughly because he was so willing to mix it up and was so there like the baseball metaphor. You know, you could just throw a lot of fastballs and he would catch them back on.

thing. But I look at it when I show up on set, forgive me, I sound like an actor. I'm not a big fan of them. I'm being honest. But I show up, I show up thinking like,

well, what's the scene? What am I doing? And then what's already, like we talked about before, what's already taken care of? And what just is the most either interesting thing that you can bring that's maybe not available on the page. Where's the contradiction?

And I thought one of the fun things that happened a lot, both with working on those scenes with Isaac and with some of the others, was deciding that I could just be charmed by them, deciding that I could be, see how charmed I could be, see at times like if I could just decide their dorks and just decide, you know, that you're essentially a parent.

And you can be like, roll your eyes. Like, you know, that when, when Adirsch says, you know, everybody needs friends, you know, you can decide if it's what happens in the moment, that that sounds so dumb. You know what I mean? Like, you just sound like an idiot. You know what I mean? And why not, right?

Like, why not? And I was always a fun game. And this also was a testament to Noah that I thought, I have a lot of room here because I could be, I can be totally engaged in Isaac and really believe, like, look at him, he's out there exploring, he's trying, he's at a stage of development that he should be at, right? Kids, when they're young, they come up with little,

they want to change their name. That's all kids, right? And it happens. And I'm like, oh, this is, This is where he is, and I'm here to support this, and I'm just going to lean into how proud I am of this moment. But I know that if Noah wants to say, I just did that because he's giving me what I want.

Or he can, Noah can decide later that when he dies, that my character sheds a tear because he genuinely loved him. And I thought I had a lot of room, and it was one of the things that was so much fun to play a non-human character, but felt like I had so much room to explore the emotional life of a non-human character was a ton of fun.

Forgive me if I went on too long about that. No, I really don't know. These are two and a half hour podcasts, as you know. We love a long. I'm here to fill some time. I'm here to go to go ahead. Okay, cool. I just keep going.

I just keep going. But you know, there's a thing, I was living on set yesterday, and I did this, doing this scene, and the director came up and said, just reminded me that I haven't talked to this. My character hadn't talked to this other character in like 15 years.

And that was the note, and she left. And I might have mumbled. That does nothing for me. Because what is I? You know what I mean? Like, I know that if I'm having dinner with my wife, and someone says, oh, the reason they're acting like that

because they've been married for 34 years, people would be like, oh, that makes sense. But if someone went over to the waiter and said, they just met two days ago, the waiter would say, oh, that makes sense, right? So there lies my, that's the end of my spiel. Can I ask you a question then? What is the opposite of that? What is something a director can say to you that is the most helpful? That is the opposite of these characters haven't seen each other for 15 years. Well, the smart-ass answer, which is somewhat true, is faster, slower, happier.

I mean, those are very useful. pick up the pace, pick up the cues. Those are like, oh, gotcha. Those are, you know, it's just very, the other thing that really doesn't happen that much, but it's sort of, I feel sometimes the job of the actor to translate a note to is like actable actions. Like if the director comes up and says,

this passage right here, you're flirting, that's like flirt there. I know how to flirt. So it doesn't matter what the words are. If the director's like, on this thing, you're confiding, then I'm like, I got it, right? Like roll it and I'll lean in and confide someone. Those are very active.

Those are so useful. You know, you're doing something. You know. But those aren't usually what comes up on set. Does Kirsch know how to flirt? That's just a. An important question I have, right? I think so. I think so. I sort of chose that. Yeah. When I took the job, I thought like I do, I try to, like, don't get seduced by the fact that he's not human.

Their job is to show up and people lean in because they want to see behavior, right? They want to see, I mean, that's the theory, right? People want to see behavior. They want to see spontaneity and they want to see drama. And that's where drama is. So you have to like, so all I could do is bring, I was like, you know, we dressed it up. I realize I'm doing something, right? I'm doing, you know, I do know, I'm aware that I'm doing something. And I spent, I worked really hard to try to come up with something at hello, an economical, superficial way to say he doesn't seem normal. And then you work on that really hard so that hopefully when people watch it, they say

he just seems like he's, you know, that it doesn't seem like you're doing anything. So there's that part. And then the other part is just to bring yourself, bring your, so be available to within the scene that you're just present and available to having a spontaneous response to what the others are doing. And that's, you know, so bring yourself to the job.

Otherwise, he doesn't need me. You just hire anybody. Well, so on that front, bringing yourself to the job, wasn't sure if we'd have the courage to ask this, but you told us you're familiar with our coverage. And so you've probably heard us, in a way that is deeply embarrassing for all three participants of this conversation right now,

heard us talk about Kirsch, He's got the signature hip waggle when he walks. How much of that was your decision? You're like, why would Kirsch not walk like he's got a revolver on the hip? I'm putting some sass into this sin. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I wasn't, by the way, have listened, enjoyed, didn't hear that. Okay, well, now you know.

Now you know. That's a surprise to me. Yeah. And quite frankly, I didn't know that's what I was doing. but I'm going to take your word for it. I don't know. I mean, I just kept, I don't know. I showed up on set.

We didn't rehearse. Noah said this is, he said it was, you know, I got something for you. We talked about the hair, and he said, he said, great, I showed up with the hair. He said, you should do the eyebrows as well. I was like, okay, he's basically telling me, you know, what my acting teacher told me. right, commit. Got a commit. And then we just showed up on set and started shooting.

And I did what, you know, we had no conversations prior to me showing up on the, we had conversations about the material. We had conversations about the tone, right? And we had, otherwise it was just sort of a gut instinct of what I think he's asking me. to show up and bring. And I just start doing more or less what you see there.

Now, keep in mind, take to take, I'm sure there's versions where there was completely different tones and responses or humor take to take. And he chose the one he wants. The wiggle in the hips, I don't remission. He's walking with attitude. You know, he's walking with attitude. With sass.

He's sassy. Yeah, sassy. Sassy, Kersh. For sure. Yeah. Look, let me tell you something. I'm in show business. There you go.

And I'm pretty sure with most of these gigs, you don't want to lose, you know, the people want some entertainment. That's all I know. And as long as I'm not trying to force a square peg through a round hole, you know, I'm guilty of, I'm not unawares, but I didn't know I was doing that.

much wiggling. Well, you're sharing a number of scenes with a man who's walking around barefoot and putting his feet up on tables and stuff, you know? You got to do, you got to do. You got to compete. Right. Right. You got to.

Can we, can we ask you about, about Kersh and the shoeless wonder boy cavalier? Let's hear it. Does he hate him? Would he really enjoy throwing him to the monsters? Is he programmed to protect him? What's his, what's that energy? Okay. So at the risk of repeating myself, I don't know.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't, here's, but in sincerity, here's what I do know. I do know that we were playing, the sandbox we were playing in, the assumption we were, we brought to the table was that he would do no harm to his, the person who created him. Okay. And so, but once you understand that that is the problem, there's two, there's a two, it's past districts to put that. The big fear that many people have about artificial intelligence is whether they're here to help us, whether it's here to help us or destroy us.

And I guess the big quandary is, is, will it help, the best way to help us is, will it decide that the best way to help us is to destroy us? right that's that's the big concern right like i'm i can i can help i like the idea and i brought this up with noa which is you know there's a version of this where he's saying uh you know i can take care of your problems but you might not like the answer right right so but i know because there's a continuing story i know if we ever do get to that moment we're not getting to it right away because it's the way the medium works. So I thought the game that I would lean into was you can't hurt this guy, but that doesn't mean you can't think about it, right?

It doesn't mean you can't inherent. I'm no dummy. I've seen enough TV and movies where, and not to mention, a little bit about Freud, a tiny tiny bit and most people want to destroy their fathers, right? The boys want to kill their fathers. So it's got to be the sandbox that we're also playing in.

That guy created me, and so usually that's what's on the mind. He wake up every day. He wakes up every day, and the first thing he thinks is he'd like to kill his master. But he can't, and so on we go, we put all that energy into other things. That seemed like there was a lot of fun there to play.

So you're thinking about those like, oh, go ahead. No, go ahead. No, I mean, not the other part of my job, right, is you're just looking for the conflict, right? You're looking for the, you're looking for, where's the obstacle? You're looking for where's the drama? And so nine times out of ten, that's a good place to look, is that Elmore Leonard once said to me that a great scene was,

in every great scene someone's either about to get fucked or someone's about to get fucked and if both those things are happening you've got a really great scene powerful and I also know that he said oh he's wanted out keep it simple stupid

so I tend to walk onto the set thinking okay who here is about to get fucked in this scene right look for it look for the opportunity would you say the biggest uniting force between Raylan Givens and Kirsch is daddy issues, or they bonded by

their mutual daddy issues? Yeah. There's always been daddy issues in almost every job, every character. I mean, I don't think most, I mean, that's we're all, it's the same story. We're all telling the same stories, right? Listen, I'm not making this up. I remember

showing up on a set of Deadwood and Milch said, let me tell you, this man wakes up every morning and he wants to kill his father. that's the first thing he wants to do is get up in the morning and first thing that he's got to do is go kill his father but he can't his father's already did so he's going to take all that rage and he's going to put it towards whatever's on the docket that day and he's going to put all that rage and energy and just transfer it to something make something positive out of it

and it's those kinds of men that made this country great wow what a what an illuminating glimpse into the psyche there would would set bullock railing Givens or Cobb Vance be best equipped to thrive in the alien Earth universe? Well, I'm going to, I mean, I mean, the temperament, I'm not, by the way, how different are they? I mean, I think Cobb's got a better gun. So we'll give them an edge. Well, he's also in a Bacta tank, though, and I'm going to tee up my co-host here for truly

the most important moment of the. Let's go. Now we're getting to the hard-hitting stuff. We're just, we're doing something. I believe the kids call this telling on yourself, and now we've done this twice in this podcast. But we have a running, a running countdown on the clock that Joanna maintains for the pod. Joanna, I would like to invite you to share this now with Tim.

It's been 1,360 days since we last saw a Cobbvan. And that's upsetting to us. And I've heard, you know, too long. Yeah. It's too long. Well, let me say that one, the flip side of that is you telling me that count is so lovely and so nice to me. So I just want to say, no, that's not nothing. I appreciate it.

That means a lot. Is there a question? Yeah, yeah, is there a question? Did you know it had been that many days since we saw a Cobbant? And what are you going to do about it? I've heard a rumor that there's a Lego set coming out, a Cobbant Lego set coming out, and I just want to know, are we ever,

outside of Lego form, ever going to see him again? I'm sure you understand that even if I knew the answer to that question, I couldn't answer until someone gives me permission. I there's like but and I'm not saying there is an answer but I just obviously

you know if I say I don't know I can't pretend that I might not be lying I can only tell you that I just want to make sure that our relationship is clarity you know what I mean

yeah yeah yeah trust I can tell you it means a great deal I was just a I was just a private conversation between a three of us and all of Nantucket. No one else is listening. It's just,

you, Mallory, just the celebrity dog. The island, yeah, just a celebrity dog. The dog's name is Ben. The dog's name is Ben. You look him up on his IMDP page.

Good old Ben. Fly's first class. Wow. Does Ben know what will next see Cobb Vance? Does Ben have any insight? Maybe we should talk to Ben. I might. may or may not be talking to Ben about a two-hander.

I mean. People love Star Wars. People love pets. Sign us up. I can only tell you, I will say this. I had a ball. I've only done two episodes of, you know, I don't know, count many countless episodes.

They've done of those shows, and I showed up for two of them, and they were very, both very, very special experiences. And those guys know that, let me tell you that I am guilty of sending John Favreau and Dave Polonia a text that said just a reminder that neither me or Cobbant are dead if you want to I just every now and I send them a text and say guys just a subtle I want to give you a little reminder that neither one of us both of us so far alive and well

Now you have a countdown to text them as well. Yeah, I was going to say. If you want to send John and Dave the countdown. Give me the number again? It's 1,000, 1,360 days. Yeah. They will be receiving a text to say, guys, just a friendly reminder. It's been 1,360 days since people have seen copy.

Incredible. Or we're starting. I think. I appreciate the answer. And I, and if we ever, if we ever, if we, if we ever, if we. ever get a little something going, we'll circle back and have this conversation. Sounds good. Enjoy to and tuck it. You guys are the best. Thank you for doing this. I appreciate you. I really, I appreciate you guys.

You know, that we don't do this, you know, for nothing. It's nice when you do something that reaches an audience. I feel like you want to join it. And listening to you guys talk about it. I'll put a smile on my friends. So, thanks very much. I appreciate it. Thanks, Tim. Thank you. All right. Thank you. You guys be well. All right.

That does it. Rob Mahoney, thank you so much for joining us for this entire alien earth for covering for me when I was gone, for staying with us for the entirety of the alien earth run.

I know this is a show you really wanted to cover. I'm so glad you got to cover it with us. Thank you for being here. You're the best. Thank you for letting me tag along. This has been a true privilege, the adventure of a lifetime. Thank you for waiting,

I don't know, at least ankle deep in the milk together. I feel like we've seen and heard and experienced a lot together. Are there crabs in the ankle deep milk? I hope not. Now you're just talking seafood chowder at this point. Oh, okay.

Now you have my attention. Yeah, now we're talking. The extremely on brand, Mallory Rubin, the best always. Thank you to Jesse Lopez to work on this episode. To John Richter, as always. To Arjuna Rengel Powell, who has just been doing a lot of work for us with us recently. Just absolutely crushing it, always Arjuna. and joining a dinner

on the social for making sure that all of our most embarrassing facial reactions make it on to the grid on Instagram. We will be back

with more, I will back with you, Rob over and Prestige and you Mallory here on House of Arn. Who knows when we three shall meet again. But I hope it's soon.

And thank you all for listening. Bye. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's

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