House of R - Taking a Look at 'Silo' Season 2 with Rob Mahoney | House of R

Episode Date: November 15, 2024

Sometimes, you just have to make your way through a pile of corpses. Thankfully, Jo and Rob Mahoney are here to get you across as they take a look at the first episode of the second season of the Apple TV+ drama "Silo". They first discuss what they thought of the first season a a whole before diving into the stunning first episode along with all its twists and turns. Hosts: Joanna Robinson Guest: Rob Mahoney Senior Producer: Steve Ahlman Video Editor: Steve Ahlman, John Richter Additional Production: Arjuna Ramgopal, Aleya Aleya Zenieris Social: Jomi Adeniran Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to by Paramount Plus. Beth and Rip are back in a new series, Dutton Ranch. Kelly Riley and Colehouser returned, and this time they're taking on Texas. As Beth and Rip build a future together, peace will have to wait as they face corruption, danger, and a ruthless rival ranch, willing to protect its secrets at all costs. Legacy is a beautiful thing, but only if it survives. Dutton Ranch starring Colehouser, Kelly Riley,

Annette Benning and Ed Harris, now streaming on Paramount Plus. This episode is brought to you by Borris Head. What if we told you the taste of deep fried turkey is now available at your local deli? Well, Borishead just did that. Bursting with flavor, perfectly seasoned with that indulgent taste that usually means pointing your whole day around it. Presenting the friar's turkey breast only from Borishead. The backyard tradition now available behind the counter.

Visit your local deli today. Discover the craftmanship behind every bite. Borershead committed to craft since 1905. They left me and turned out the lights and I woke up and I couldn't see a thing. Did they come back for you? No. Then how'd you get out? I didn't.

I've stayed here the rest of my life. I went really, really slowly, but I found my way. I couldn't do that. Sure you could have. What else are you going to do? Die. Hello, welcome back to House of Ar. Robinson join me today deep down all the way down at the bottom of the silo I suppose it's

Rob Mahoney hi Rob how are you doing it's exactly what you uptoppers would say Joe I feel the discrimination oozing out of your voice yeah it sounds like me listen um this is my sixth podcast of the week this is the third podcast Rob Mahoney and I have done together this week so I can promise you right now is going to be a real normal one. Yep, extremely. Rob is graciously filling in for Mallory Rubin, who is working on a special project. And so we thank Rob for binging all of Silo season one in order to join me here today. Thank you so much, Rob Mahoney.

You're the best. Mal will be back with me at the top of next week. We're going to be talking about Dune Prophecy. and both the Midnight Boys and House of Arr will of course be checking in on Gladiator 2. Its thighs o'clock. It's a very important time in the culture, so don't worry about that.

Mint Edition is continuing as cover of Arcane, and ButtonMash is covering some video game anniversaries that I don't understand, but people are really excited about. So tune in for that. And if you want to catch up on all of that, You can follow us on the social channels that we're on. You can follow us on Twitter.

Rob and I are both on blue sky. You can find us over there. We're on Instagram. We're on TikTok. There's a Facebook group. All sorts of places. You can just subscribe. Let's go.

Let's do it. You can just subscribe to this podcast. That might be a good thing to do. Subscribe to the Ringervverse. Enjoy what they're up to. And why don't you to subscribe on YouTube? The newish Ringervverse channel, on YouTube. That way you can watch us

do this as well as listen to us, do this, talk to each other for the third podcast this week. You can watch it on YouTube. You can also watch us in the Spotify app. You can just open up this podcast on Spotify and la la, there's video. It's tremendous.

It's amazing. This is the world we live in. In fact, we might like you a little more if you do exactly that. I would recommend it. I'm not willing to put a... A liking people measure on it, but yeah, why don't, why don't you try it? It's an amazing experience. Dabble? You've subscribed to the pod.

You're watching us on Spotify or your app of choice. Why don't you shoot us an email? Hobbits and drags at gmail.com. We want to hear all of your thoughts. Some of you've sent post-finally penguin thoughts. We appreciate those. We're looking forward to your Doom prophecy thoughts. We're definitely looking forward to your Gladiator 2 thoughts.

And skeleton crew is coming up. We're going back into Star Wars land pretty soon. So all of that, you can reach us Hobbit of Dragons at gmail.com. Spoiler warning, Rob, what are we talking about today on the pod? We're talking about the television show Silo. Correct. Now, here's my question for you, Joe. How much are we spoiling vis-a-vis the books that this series is based on?

I got to admit, I have no idea where we are in the books right now. About halfway through Book 1. Okay. It's where we are. Yeah, yeah. Rob, for House of Our listeners, famously, does not read fiction. It's fine. Don't worry about it. But you can hear him talk about that more. The Prestibe TV podcast week. You can't throw me to these wolves in that fashion on this podcast. You know? He reads books, just not fiction. Just not those books. Yeah, we can all go to the library together. We're just going to come out with different stuff. In fact, I'm not competing with you and all of your listeners for your fiction reservations. I'm doing the hold feed on the novels that people want to listen and read. I'm just saying we're on the same team here. I love that. I love that, Rob. Thanks so much. Book-wise, I think we can just leave the books out of it, chiefly because I have not read them. So it's not really irrelevant to our coverage here. So everything from Silo Season 1 is on the table. And we're going to talk about Silo Season 2 episode 1, the premiere. That's it. Nothing beyond that. No book spoilers. None of that. If you are dying as am I to hear Mallory Rubin's thoughts and opinions.

and everything on silo, we will probably be checking in towards the end of the season, which will be, I believe, in 2025. So next year, you can probably hear Mallory Way in on silo as we sort of wrap it up. It sort of depends on the season goes,

if it's like the best season of television we've ever seen, we might check in sooner, but at the very least, you will, at some point, hear Mallory Rubin. Any other questions before we get into what we're going to talk about, Rob?

Just all the big ones. Why are we in the silo who built this thing, what is going on in the world around us? I have many, many questions, Joe, but I think they're best saved for the procession in front of us. Okay, great. Let's go to some quick facts. Those are my favorite kind of facts.

I'm going to be honest with you. As Rob mentioned, this is based on a number of fiction properties that he will never read. Wool, shift, dust, some short stories, and a graphic novel. These are all the source text here. And the showrunner of this particular series, Graham Yost, who Rob and I have a lot of experience with, has said they wanted to do four seasons of this show. So they're spending the first two seasons on the first book, Wool, and then you can kind of probably graft the next two books onto the final two seasons is the plan. I know you have not read these books, Joe. Do we know what the titular wool is?

It's an acronym for a shady organization. Okay. But there's also, I think, is it wool that they use to clean when they go out? That's true. I think that is a little pocket wool, like giant lint that they're busting out on that thing. So I think that's a wool, but there's also W-O-O-L, which I don't know what it is. That's a problem for future Joanna and future Rob and future silo people, but not us right now. Season one really well received.

I think it was a surprise hit for Apple. Rob and I have a lot of experience covering Apple TV shows of late. We certainly do. And we have a lot of thoughts and opinions about their strategies. But I think what is fundamentally true of an Apple show is that Apple never knows which one of their shows is going to hit. And this was a real, I think, shocker for them. And a stat that they were touting was that this was their most popular. dramatic series until

presumed innocent came along this summer and blew everything out of the water and if you want to hear Rob and Joina Rob to talk about presumed innocent that exists over on the Prestiash TV podcast feed a week by week, us unraveling as the show

unraveled in front of us and Bill joined us for a pod, so that was great so. You did not watch Silo Season 1 until I begged and pleaded with you to do so a couple weeks ago. It did not take much arm twisting. This is safe to say because of that reception has been like a perpetual

on the list show for me since it came out. That was going to be my question. It's sort of like, what was your awareness before you watched? How much of the buzz from season one were you absorbing? Definitely absorbing. And I'm always like keeping my ear to the ground specifically for sci-fi TV. It can be so hit and miss. It can be so like, if it's not your exact

version of sci-fi, you can bounce against it really hard sometimes. And so I'm always willing to I want to give these things a try. I want to do an episode or two or three to see if it's in my zone. And I think thankfully this one is in a lot of different ways that we can get into.

And it's not surprising to me that it is so widely received positively. I would doubt that it's anyone's favorite show. But it's a show that a lot of different people can like. And there's a lot of different entry points. There's a lot of, there's star power involved. There's enough genre trapping to pull in sci-fi fans, but not so much that it would be off-putting

where you're looking at like green aliens every week for weeks on end. It's accessible enough, I think, for people who aren't as versed in genres type storytelling. Rob Mahoney, doesn't like fiction, doesn't like Gamora. Good to know. Not me. I'm looking out for our fellow people out there

who are just looking for the latest procedural, you know? Rob is, like, pretty willing to do a massive rewatch project. Like, this is something that's true of Rob. So he was, like, receptive to this. Definitely. And then I said something about tattoos. in Rebecca Ferguson and he was like all the way in. As are all of us.

Yeah. This is the big draw for Silo is Rebecca Ferguson. And as we're going to talk, season two episode one, the engineer, written by our guy, Graham Yost, directed by Michael Dinner, who is a classic justified TV director. It's the Rebecca Ferguson show. And if you are not buying into the Rebecca Ferguson show, you are not buying into the season two premiere of this, of Silo. Absolutely not.

Or the show as a whole. I don't think it works without her. I think she is far and away. There's a lot of incredibly talented people in the cast hit and miss as to whether or not they're hitting for me on this show. But every time Rebecca Fergus is on screen, I am like sitting up and paying attention. So that's what Silo is.

She has that effect. We are but red-blooded humans who like watching Rebecca Ferguson do things on screen. To her liking, in whatever way she prefers, honestly. I like that she can be kind of a weird performer sometimes, and certainly, as we know, a very weird junket interview presence, like one of the most chaotic energies you can put into that particular setting. Did you see her on Seth Myers this week? No, what did she do? She talked about how she steals stuff from set. That's fine. That was like cute. It was like whatever. She tried to send like a skull that she stole from set with her, oh, from Hercules, I think, with her daughter to show and tell. And the teacher was like, no, thank you. But more importantly, she is like an elevator phobia. And so Seth's like, how do you, how do you like, she's like, so I take the stairs all the time, right? So like, this is the

Rebecca, this is the perfect show for you. Like, let me bring you into this world. Yeah, she hates, she hates an elevator, but can hang with a trash shoot, I guess. I don't know. But okay, so, so Seth's like, well, how do you, how do you like prep yourself? Like, do you have to like leave extra time? Like, what do you do? She's like, well, I'm a celebrity now. So I make things. to me. And so she was talking about, like, turning on the Christmas lights at the top of the Empire State Building with the rest of the cast of the greatest showman and how they had to bring the switch down to the lobby. And, like, Hugh Jackman and Zendaya and Zach Affront had to be down with her in the lobby of the Empire State Building because she would not go up to the top and do it. And guess what?

We stand. We love her. I love that for her. So, you know, be the Rebecca Ferguson you wish to see in the world. What a fucking flex. I know. Aspired to a level of greatness where whatever your phobia is, you just can make the people come to you so you don't have to confront it. On the one hand, you could process it and try to work through it, but on the other, what if you never had to deal with it again?

What if you were just that powerful? Okay, great. Most of the season one cast is back in the habit here for season two, other than like the various characters who died in season one. We presume David O. Yellowow is not showing up for like a flashback or something like that. And Steve Zon has joined the cast for season two And we get the barest glimpse of him A part of him At the end of this episode

Rob Mony, are you a Zonhead like me? Like how do you feel about Steve Zon? Of course. Yeah. Steve Zon and I are bonded very closely. In particular, that thing you do Was an extremely formative movie for me. So Steve Zon in that like

zany energy sidekick zone is where I usually like to be and I will watch him basically anything. And it's been interesting watching me get older. It's like he trends a little cookier and cookier every time I feel like in terms of the roles he's being offered. I'm not mad about it. This is

Cooksville. It feels like it. Yeah. This is as cookey as I think this is like maybe beyond Cookey to Spooky perhaps. Like I think we're like Yeah, yeah. I think we've gone down that pipeline. But like yeah, Steve's on.

that thing you do was going to be my like number one pick for Steve's on. But also you've got mail or reality bites. Of course. There's just like a bunch in the 90s where he played that like that zany level. Offbeat best friend. Yeah. Or out of sight. Or then he did stuff like Tramey or White Lotus season one.

Like, you know, it's just like and it's always, it's always worth buying a ticket to the on show. So adding Steve's on to the Rebecca Ferguson show, as long as he is willing to do things in the lobby of buildings rather than go up any stairs or elevators, is a very exciting prospect. I'm really, really excited about this. I love that his characters, to me,

almost always feel like they are having fun, and they may not always be the most balanced or the smartest people in the world, but they are often having a good time, and it feels like he's having a good time when he's acting. This feels like it's going to be a darker kind of thing, as you said, Cookey to Spooky. Yeah. But I love that zone for him too.

And I think we've seen him trend that way. Like, Righteous Gemstones is a great example of kind of torn the line of spooky and kooky of like, is this guy just a weird uncle or is he like a crazy extremist with bombs? Maybe both. Why not both, Rob? I have to ask you. But like also, I think that not to get too far ahead, we are going to talk a little bit more about season one and your experience through it before we get into the particular as the season two.

But on the like spooky, kooky, am I having fun sort of spectrum, there is so much drama that the character himself orchestrates around his reveal in this episode that I have to imagine he's having a bit of fun. And I have to imagine that where we find him. And if you are listening to this podcast, you've not watched the season two premiere yet, uh, he, he has been alone in his own. silo for according to Graham Yos, the showrunner, decades.

So when it comes to creating your own fun, he's got to be a master at that, right? You've got to make your own fun or else maybe, as we heard in this opening clip, what are you going to do? Just die? No. Okay. Let's go down to our opening snapshot.

Rob, tell me about your journey through season one. Did you have a good time? How are you doing with it? Definitely had a good time. I would say my overall experience is this, that I felt myself being more invested in the mysteries of the show than the characters of the show.

And even Juliet, like, Rebecca Ferguson, we love. Juliet, I like well enough. I wouldn't say she's the most vibrant character that I've seen on screen. And so a lot of the characters in the show overall, I feel have the same problem, which is like they're a little bit inert for my tastes, but the overall twists and turns

and the big questions of the show are what get me and what hook me. And what kind of pulled me on, I would say, from episode one, on, but really once it starts heating up and you start getting a sense of some of like, you know, the ticking clock mechanisms of keeping the silo running and obviously this kind of a lighting a fire under Nichols once she becomes sheriff to quickly unravel this mystery before she's ousted, you know, out of office and eventually out of the silo.

Those are mechanisms that I really like and enjoy. And so like I was in it for the mystery box. I'm still kind of waiting for that second level pull of like, I really care about these people. And I'm hoping we can get there in season two. Yeah, I mean, I feel like I was really invested in David E. L.O.O.S. character and Rashida Jones's character. Like, those two characters, I really felt emotional about them. Actually, most of the characters that I got, like, really emotionally invested in in season one died. Like, Ruth Johns, like, you know, the previous mayor or Will Patton's character. You know, like, I was really feeling for these people and then they died. So maybe they invested all of the emotionality in the people that they knew they were going to rip away from us. But I was for, like, Rebecca Ferguson being, her character, Juliet being slightly inert. So what's it?

Okay. I told you I haven't read the books, and that's true. I read, like, the first chapter. I do know, though, that they added the, like, sort of murder mystery element to season one, to give Juliet more of a motivation than they felt like she had more momentum than they felt maybe she had on the page in the book. And so in doing that, they turn Rebecca Ferguson into this almost like noir lead. You know what I mean?

It's sort of like what, like, you know, in classic noir, it's like a dead missing girl. But like what happened to this person? And I am trying to either emotionally process it or stifled down my grief so that I can figure out what happened. And so there's sort of like this built-in stoicism to that character archetype that kind of works for me. But to your point, now that we are in a different mode of storytelling, I'm curious to see where they go from there, because Rebecca Ferguson, an actor with just like an abundance of charisma and intrigue and all these other things, I think there's so much,

even more that she can be doing in this role and in the show. Definitely. And I think this episode is a great example of that, right? She's incredibly stoic because she has no one to play off of until the very end of this episode. And so it is a mostly silent performance, give or take the occasional scream into the void. A grunt or two, you know. A stray grunt. Who among us would not be grunting under these circumstances?

A choking, flailing gurgle at one point, I think we did get. Some sloshing, for sure, at minimum. Yeah. But yeah, so it is, you know, it's not film noir in this way. It is much more adventurer in kind of mode, like stoic adventurer. And that, I think she does really, really well. I think some of my hesitation is not with her being a film noir lead and more with the specific film noir story they were trying to unfurl,

which it is not a surprise to me to hear that they had to basically draw up some of that stuff whole cloth because I don't think it works very well. Like her backstory with George felt like the exact kind of thing that probably would have registered much more strongly in the film noir mold if we knew and saw less of it. I kind of want, I wanted hints and bits and pieces and like little items and mementos and memories, but not full on flashbacks.

And once we started dipping into here's them being cute together and making these promises to each other and he's like, they had a lot of screen time together in season one in a way that I think ultimately was kind of counterproductive

to making me feel invested in her character. So more of the Pez dispenser less of the canoodling, the active canoodling. Yeah, I want the hint, the suggestion of canoodling. Yeah, okay, just a scotch of canoodle.

On the Graham Yost front, A creator that you and I, we love Justified. Of course. We cover Justified City Prime Evil for better for worse. That's how much we love Justified. Exactly. Over on the prestige feed. Grameos has been sort of like shepherding a number of other series,

like shepherding the Americans a little bit, shepherding slow horses a little bit, like sort of using his shine off of Justified to get these other projects up and running. But this is a show that he is like genuinely show running. do you see connective tissue between silo and justified? I do not. Yeah. I don't see a lot.

I think in some ways to its detriment, this is a show that could use a little bit of justified in it. But it does fit like one of his buckets. I feel like if you look at the overall body of work for Grammios, whether it's the things he's shepherding as you're saying or the things he's overtly show running, it is like those sorts of super digestible, fun action procedurals like Justify and Slow Horses.

You've got your historical drama, like The Pacific, Masters of the Air, that stuff. And then you've got straight sci-fi. And I'm not a falling skies head myself, Joe. I'm sure they are out there. But I appreciate his interest here and elsewhere in like the genre here

and the project. I think there's something here that I would love to see him merge some of these ideas and interests of him, like that he has a little bit more overtly in a way that might give these characters a little more life or a little more to do. that recap of Gramios CV was Broken Arrow Eurasia, and I just want to know that I noticed. Well, that's super fun, digestible action procedural. That's the zone.

But, like, there, you know, these are both books that he was fond of, right? These are book adaptations in the case of justified Elmore Leonard books, and here are these Hugh Howey books. And the tones are so wildly different. And so Elmore Leonard is like, you know, dry and sharp and witty and all the sort of stuff like that. And like Hugh Howie is a tremendous world builder, but is not infusing his story with a ton of like wisecracking or, or again, I really have only read like a chapter.

So I'm not, I'm not, if you are a woolhead and you would like to email hobbits and dragons at gmail.com that I've gotten it all wrong and the book is full of hilarious wisecracks. It's just a bantery book. Really when you get into, when you get past the wolves and into the other wolves, Joe, that's when it really gets bantery. When we get to acronyms,

yeah, once the rebellion is in full sting and people are dying all around you, that's usually when it gets more fun, you know? I'm sure, I'm sure. I will say along these lines, I feel a jolt of life in silo when Patrick Kennedy is on screen, who's played by Rick Gomez,

justified's own ADA, Rick Gomez. I love Rick Gomez. I'm so happy he's here. He has a totally different energy than almost anyone else on this show. And I'm just like waiting for him to come back every time he leaves. And so it was a great joy in season one

that he kept kind of falling into the story in all kinds of ways. And I hope that's not the last we see of him. I hope he's still kind of instrumental in some way. Yeah, he's on the cast list for season two. Again, like we only watched season two episode one. And so we did not get to check in with the OG silo in this episode.

But I saw a list somewhere. I saw like a mention somewhere. It was like mostly the original cast is back. And I was like, Number one on my list is like, did they get Gomez? We got to go back. Did they get Gomez back? Yeah, I agree.

A real bright spot. I also thought in season one, I thought that, like, Harriet Walter as Martha Walker is struggling through a really strong accent choice. And don't worry, people who are stressed that we talked so much about the accents last time in Silo, I'm not going to dwell too much on that. But she's struggling through a lot of. Vax and stuff, but she's, Harriet Walter, who people might know from Succession or if you're really cool, sensibility, whatever it is, but like, she's always, to me, worth watching.

Yeah. So that stuff really works. But then when you've, like, performances like Tim Robbins, who doesn't seem like he's just, like, giving it his all, or common, who sort of just seems like he's excited that he gets to wear this cool other coat. Is he excited? He's delivering every line like it's a Jaguar commercial. I don't understand what he's trying to bring to this character,

but Common feels miscast to me. That is a character. He needs to be more intimidating than Common is capable of projecting in the way that he tried to act out that part. Yeah, Tim Robbins is, I think that's kind of, when I say a nerd, I think I mostly mean Tim Robbins. Some Robbins. Sort of sleepwalking through some of this in a way that I am sensitive

to the way they tried to reveal his character in the first season. It's hard to know how to play that before the turn. But even after the turn, he was just kind of the same guy, just maybe with like a slightly more furrowed brow. And something that Mal and I talked about when we covered season one is it just felt like a really blatant casting spoiler to put Tim Robbins in that role and give him that haircut. And I was like, that's our bad guy, like, clearly.

That is the haircut of a crypto-fascist if I have ever seen. one. Exactly. All right. Let us sort of splash around with Silo season one, shall we? So as I mentioned, something that Hugh Howie does incredibly well

and the show does incredibly well is this like astounding world building. This is an incredible environment to find a story in. Just the physical construction of this world, the set that they built for the show, which is a massive set. A set so impressive

that when they made this premiere episode, they had to shoot it last because essentially the second silo that she goes to, they just took the original set and fucked it up essentially. And so they had to wait to shoot that stuff. Wouldn't you love to be on the demo team that's just scuffing up silo number one?

Yeah. We need more muck over here. Can you toss some corpses over here? I would really appreciate it. And so how does this sort of physically stratified sci-fi world work for you? How do you compare it to other similar versions of this kind of story? Or is there something similar that you can compare it to? Yeah, the similar versions thing is interesting to me.

Because I agree, in terms of the world that has been created in concept, a lot of fascinating ideas. There's so many little bits and rules and pieces and elements of this that are just like, it's so specific. it makes me really invested in finding out the answer to why things are the way they are in the silo. The way that the set is ultimately created and the visual world of the show, I agree with you, is clearly a massive undertaking. And kind of the undertaking that only a company like Apple

can really do right now to this scale and degree. Like this is Apple TV money, and it looks like a big expensive set. It also looks a lot like every sci-fi thing you've ever seen before in a way that I, I wonder how intentional that is in terms of like, is it meant to evoke the artificiality of this experience? Like, I see this. I mean, there's Star Wars stuff all over here.

There's the Matrix stuff all over here. There's like demolition man stuff all over here. And it's like it feels like a hodgepodge of every sci-fi thing you've ever seen in a way that I think can be a little jarring at first and give it a little bit of like a galaxy's edge kind of vibe the first time you see it. but the more time you spend in the world, it's like there's an uncanny element that I think oddly enough actually sort of contributes to the overall vibe of the show. Are you suggesting to me, Rob Mahoney,

that Tim Cook, when he's done, you know, congratulating the president on his president-elect on his win, should build like sort of a silo experience in Cupertino or something like that so you can just like go and be in the silo and maybe draw straws for who's

like an upper level member of the silo and who's down at the bottom, is that, would you enjoy that experience? Just the Stanford prison experiment, but in the silo? Well, make it silo, yeah.

Honestly, I would hang on like the farming level. That seems like a good ambiance. I would enjoy spending some time there, looking for like the one loose rabbit that's hanging out. I mean, on the one hand, I agree with you.

There's this sort of like a brutalist architecture, a lot of concrete. Yes. And then the tech, yes, similar to Star Wars and a number of other things we've seen. I do just think that the central idea of the stairs and what they mean and the stratified layers of this society, especially down below, I think it gives it an edge. I hear what you're saying and I don't disagree, like all the way back to, you know, like Terry Gilliams, Brazil. Right. There is this, like, connection between, like, brutalist architecture and near-future sci-fi or post-apocalyptic sci-fi.

But, like, I think that the stairs are so compelling and also the screens, which we'll talk about in a second. But, like, the stairs as metaphor, the stairs as continuous action set piece, the stairs as a limitation on what you can do, both, like, you know, personally and societally and. physically inside of the space. And then the set deck inside of the rooms, I had a question for you, this dips into the season two premiere, but like, did you feel like the rooms inside this other silo

were decorated? I mean, it was hard. It was dark and dripping and dusty. But did you feel like the interior decoration was different than the types of stuff we saw in the rooms inside? I guess my fundamental question is, are we meant to think that there's like a dramatically different culture? There's obviously clear similarities between the two silos. But was that set

deck supposed to show us that, you know, this one is more influenced by maybe this geographical location in the world or something like that. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I think there is some of that. It's clearly, I mean, look, it's the same physical space. So there's going to be a lot of similarity. But the way it's accessorized and dressed is clearly different. And it's different in a way that, yes, I think can reflect culture, but also in the way that culture can reflect resources, right? It's like what is available to you? Yeah, yeah.

And so in this, there's like a little bit more like yarn work and bead work than I think we saw in the home silo. Now, some of that may be because we sit most time with like Nichols, who does not seem, she's not like combing the pottery barn catalog. She doesn't love a tapestry. I don't think she's into like a little like yarn wall sort of situation. What about like a comfy throw blanket? No, I think she would.

It's tough way to live. Prefer to let her her memories of George keep her warm. I think is what we're working with here. I think so. But I do agree with you on the larger

sort of conceptual product here of the stairs, of the verticality of the silo. I think some of the most interesting ideas that the show has grappled with so far have been about class and about the divisions

and sort of the way these people are segmented by the type of work that they do, how that clusters you with the people around you and the way it'll either affords you

or like limits your mobility as you're trying to navigate the silo. And the fact that it is physically taxing to go from one end to the other is a really compelling idea. On the, did you watch Fallout? No. Yeah, me neither. Okay.

Sorry, guys. We'll get to that event. Someday I will get to Fallout. But when we talked about season one, I remember the Fallout game being like, and I think Hugh Howie has talked about this Fallout game being a huge inspiration for him. So I will be curious, Hops and Dragons at gmail.com, if you watch Silo Season 1 and then watched Fallout and now watching Silo Season 2, how much has, like, having seen Fallout in the interim, change, or impacted, how you, how original this world feels versus not. I'm curious about that. I don't have a good answer, but that's something I'm curious about. And then, like, yeah, go ahead.

One more thing, too, about the influences and I think the sort of like brutalism you're talking about in the design, there is something. to that in the sense that the world of the silo, as we understand it now, we still need to figure out why this thing was built. But it does not feel like a work of tremendous imagination. This isn't like a society reaching for the stars. It's one burying itself in the dirt, presumably to survive. And so there is like a rote pragmatism to everything in terms of the way this is designed. Now, does that explain why there's no elevator other than the fact that Rebecca Ferguson won't take it? Does it explain why they can't magnify anything for God knows what reason, am super compelled to find out.

The magnification is very compelling, a compelling little girl. How is that so good? I would never have guessed that something like that would have hooked me as much as it did. Yeah, it's, how would you rank it? Is it like, does it come above the Pez dispenser or below the Pez dispenser in terms of things that hooked you into the show? The Pez dispenser is almost like two on the nose in an it was Earth all a long way. I think I would have preferred to not know where we were for longer in season one.

And the Pez is like, okay, clearly we're in a human society somewhere. Let's save the PES for a little bit later. We live in a society. All right. So in terms of the screens and this idea of living inside and viewing the world through your screen, Hugh Howie has talked about, directly talked about the fact that this is intentionally like sort of a social media comp. And I think for a lot of us, especially, I want to say right now, again, just generally, I don't, I do care how you feel about the election. But no matter how you care about the feel about the election.

A lot of people are experiencing what's going on around them through updates on social media, be it TikTok or Twitter or Instagram or Blue Sky or whatever. And there are these, it's so distorted based on the silo of belief that you have put yourself in in terms of what news you're absorbing, whether or not the news you're absorbing is real or, you know, I have a friend of mine who every single day will tell me, report to me something wild that happened on TikTok. And I said, is that true? And she goes, yeah. And I go, show me a news story. And then she can't find it. I'm like, you're being liberal Q&OND right now. Like, you need to check your sources, man.

So, like, this idea of having this screen we view the world through. And, of course, in many ways, in many ways, like the Pesda Spencer, it's a bit on the nose. But in the other, another sense, I mean, this is as old as Plato, this idea of, like, having a limited idea of what the world around you actually is and being kept in the dark and it speaks to conspiracies and government control

and all this other stuff inside of the silo itself. Water that makes you forget, I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about that. But as a tech analogy or any analogy as you prefer, how does this work for you and what level does it work for you, Rob?

I think it works pretty well. Ultimately, it's interesting to do, draw that comparison because the world of the silo feels so analog in so many ways. Like huge technological power and advancement is basically forbidden by a lot of the rules and a lot of the ways that they operate. And so this idea of putting yourself in a physical silo as a kind of metaphorical manifestation of the silos that we all put ourselves in, I like because it's not banging you over the head too hard. Like I think there's a lot of range of

idea within the silo of the show. And so there is a kind of captivity. And, and a kind of captivity that we all opt into on some level of like we are willing to abide by a certain set of rules and like I'm not going to push too hard on the walls of this thing because on some level I am convinced that it will come crashing down whether that's true or not like I have been told that and I have believed it and I have internalized it right I think you can see that as social media and you can you can certainly see social media as the kind of captivity that we have accepted for ourselves but I think it goes so much further than that like it's it's any kind of community it's any kind of grouping. It's any kind of like us versus them or us versus the world or we can't open our door

or X will get in. It's all of those things kind of wrapped up into one in a lot of ways. Fun time is we live in now. I mean, it's not relevant at all to current society. This is so abstracted that we could never, we could never contextualize these kinds of ideas, Joe. Sci-fi is escapism, Rob. It has nothing to do with the way we live now. It's fine, it's fine. Um, any of the specific world building stuff that you want to talk about either in the book or the show, I know you haven't read the book, No, Norvye, but like, they're, um, like, when they say like up top, maids down deep, like, just little, like, language bits like that really, really work for me in creating this universe as much as any piece of set deck does. Um, things like the pact. Yes. Um, you know, just like, I don't know, it's just like fun trappings of sci-fi shit that I absolutely love that, like, It's so easy to get it wrong and overdo it. Did it ever feel like overdone, overwrot,

over upper case named things inside of this world? Not that often. I think overwhelmingly it works in a positive way. There are a couple times where, look, there's just some phrases that if you watch enough of this stuff, it's like, if anyone utters the phrase the before times, I'm just like, I'm just like tired of it. So there's some of that.

But ultimately, I think most of the terminology they create, the world they create, everything around the pact in particular, like the recitation that is read to everyone who is going outside, like the series of questions and statements that are like applied to the society. I'm really into all of that. I'm into the detail of this world in a lot of the cases. And I have a lot of questions. I can't wait to see how some of it kind of unfurls itself. But it's also like just something as simple as like,

the little snack that keeps getting passed around, the hush puppies in season one. I'm like, are they sweet? Are they savory? Like, what is the vibe here? Is it a little bit of boat? Is this a beaver nugget situation?

Like, what do we think this thing is? I have that level of questioning. Sorry, do you want to double back? A buckies drop? A Texas buckies drop? You're in House of R. Contractually obligate. I can't count on Mallory to bring the Texas specific knowledge.

So I feel like I need to indoctrinate your listeners as, as the silo would respect. You know what's great about a Buckees beaver nugget? And if you guys don't know what I'm talking about, please do Google this. It would last forever in the silo. Oh, no doubt. Forever. What do you think they've been surviving on?

Yeah, it's essentially the beaver nug. Wow. How grim does the future feel if the beaver nug is like the thing that's going to outlast us all of us all? It's going to be it, we need the cockroaches and then just like a sea of beaver nuggets from Buckees. Honestly, that doesn't sound too bad. Now that you lay it out in specific, I'm kind of down for that. No free ads. But if you've never been to a Buckees, you maybe have not truly lived.

It's an experience. Yeah, I agree. I love sci-fi food. Oh, yeah. Just my favorite version being in The Force Awakens when Ray takes like a bit of powder and puts into a bowl and it blooms into a perfect little loaf of bread? Incredible. Why don't we have that? I'm waiting like, everyone's like, where's my hoverboard? I'm like, where's my blooming, like, perfect little bread loaf? I want it. I think you're thinking too small. I want the fifth element tablet on the plate into a giant

roast chicken. That's what I want. You always know how to dream bake, Rob, and I love that about you. I try. I do love that about you. You talked a little bit about Rebecca Ferguson's, like, as like this stoic and we talked about her as like somewhat of a noir lead at least in season one as she's like gum-shoeing her way

through this murder mystery. She also is very much like a reluctant hero Mal and I talk about this archetype a lot on the show. Like, you know, John Snow being our favorite example, but

she doesn't want, she doesn't want to come up from the down deep all the way up and have this. Wait, she doesn't want what? I don't want it. I feel like, I feel like if you're going to do it, you got to do it, right. I don't want to take that. Thank you.

You're welcome. I don't always know if you listen to this podcast, Rob, but I would believe you did. I literally have in my notes that I was going to try to bust it out. But look, we got there organically. I would like to hear it, Rob, please. See, I don't think so. I don't think so. Maybe a future house of our appearance.

Or maybe later inside of this episode. Perhaps. Just like drop it later. and I'll be delighted in surprise. Thanks so much. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? Zepbound terseptide may be able to help.

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on 365 brand items. Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring. Save at Whole Foods Market. So how, like, that kind of character, how do you reconcile that with, I'm going to like, I assume ahead a little bit to season two, episode one. But how do you reconcile that with, like, someone with so much grit in them that against every single odd, they trek their way across a poison landscape to this other silo, have to leverage the door open with their full body weight on the crowbar, like, you know, almost drown, fall from a great height, this, that, the other thing, and they keep going. Like, what, how do you reconcile the, like, I don't want it nature of Juliet with,

the indomitable, like, journey that she has inside of this episode. I mean, the, I don't want it nature is the only thing that makes her, like, fit for power in the first place in the way that many of these heroes find themselves in. I think what's interesting about her is even when she's sheriff, like, she's not good at being a sheriff, right? She's, she's incredibly resourceful. And that's the only reason she can kind of bullshit her way through it for even as long as she does. And so it is not surprising to see her in this kind of physical capacity. just like being resourceful all over the place.

Being clever, but not so clever that everything works, being really good at scavenging, but not so great that she has the perfect item and the perfect thing every single time. She's doing her best in a broken silo. And to see that version of Nichols, that's a version I'm really interested in. The version that is outside the silo

that isn't just like, you know, unwitting revolutionary. Like she didn't take the job to stoke, discontent among the people of the silo. She just wanted to find out what happened to her boyfriend, and she thought he was murdered. And so this version of this character, in a lot of ways, makes more sense to me

than the one she was kind of like pushed into being by the end of the story of season one. I have a really important question for you, Rob. So you find yourself inside of a spacesuit sealed in by the good tape in a poison landscape, yes? I want to talk about the space suit. Let's circle back to the suit. I want to hear this hypothetical first.

come back around to that. You find yourself, it's like the start of the video game, right? You're in your suit. You're like, you've got the good tape on whatever. You start encountering obstacles as one does. Yep. When do you, Rob Mahoney, when watching season two, episode one, when did you go, that's where I would give up? Wedging the door open? Yeah. Actually, I mean, maybe even crossing the body, like the field of bodies. I feel like if you have to cross an ocean of dead, dustifying bodies to get somewhere, maybe you shouldn't go there.

Yeah, if people are literally like piled on top of each other and they're frantic, you know, either escape or return to the silo, maybe that's not the place to go. I thought about I would give it up. I would give up there. I would certainly give up before I had to haul a number of corpses up. and make my own rope swing Do you rope? Out of the corpses

or... It did occur to me as she was doing that. I'm like, is she going to do something with the bodies? And I'm thankful that she did not. Oh, like a body bridge. I thought a body bridge might be in play, but I'm glad it was just the rope. She falls into the water.

She can't swim. She almost drowns. I loved her, like, scream that she gave when she got out of there. Great stuff from Fergie there. But, like, I, there were so many moments where I wrote, couldn't be me, wouldn't be me, couldn't be me. And I would say chief among them was when she did the first rickety bridge. Oh, sure.

That was literally like Indiana Jones crumbling underneath her as she walked across. I was just like simply could not. Like the minute she stepped one foot on there and it just like creaked and grown and wobbled, I was like simply no, just simply not. I would say maybe I'll go back to my silo and submit to whatever. that Tim Robbins wants me to do rather than continue with this. That's why I'm not a hero of any kind of story. I think you're the hero of your own story, Joe.

I think you're the hero of this podcast now that you mention it. Thanks, Rob. I don't think that's true. I mean, at least a co-hero. Thank you so much. Okay. Well, here's my question. Let's say the second bridge, the stronger, stabbler bridge.

With the like, with the Incredible Barrel maneuver and then the like sandbags that are holding it down in place. Oh, no, not that. Wait, is that the second bridge? There's so many bridges I'm getting in the community. Well, no, she like rope swings first. Yes.

That's a no. Then she rickety bridges. That's a no. And then she does the like barrel, like platform sandbag situation. I think either the rickety bridge or the strong bridge. She takes like a very slow and steady approach, which as someone who myself is not like thrilled about a very narrow walkway, I understand. But I feel like if you did McGee. the walkway, you might just want to like try to book it across that thing. Just go.

Like if you can bound and take one big step across the middle and launch yourself a little bit, I think you might be rewarded for it. That said, like, you also don't want to get stuck on the other side and you don't really know what's over there ultimately. I have to let people know in case they've never met you and have only seen like your head on a podcast. You're speaking for the privilege of having extraordinarily long legs. You're a very tall person. So I think that you could maybe span that chasm in a few bounds, whereas a shorty like Rebecca Ferguson might not have the same ability, you know?

But also a shorthy like Rebecca Ferguson can climb above the door and hang from the crowbar and leverage her body weight in a way that, like, frankly, I could never. Like, I simply could not contort my body to do that thing. And so I never would have made it to the bridge. I never would have made it inside the silo at all. I really love, I really actually enjoyed this episode and we'll sort of loop back around to it,

but before we go fully a bit more into that episode, even though we've already broken down a few of her mechanisms. I do want to talk about the pacing of season one. Yeah. And staring down the barrel of season, another 10 episodes or season two, knowing that they split one book over two seasons, and that it was Apple's request that it be a 10 episode season for season one.

I don't know if they made the same mandate for season two. Did you feel in the pacing of it? I know you were watching it. You weren't like, you didn't do like a 48-hour binge, but you did like over a couple weeks binge. Right. How did the pacing were for you? Did it ever feel like they were like there was filler inside of season one?

Is it something that you are thinking about in terms of season two? I honestly wasn't too bothered by it. I think some of it is the balance of the mysteries that are put in front of you. And as I said, like the big questions of the show really gripped me and are kind of what is the primary hook for me. I also was really interested in the small-level mysteries of the show. What happened to Juliet's mom? What exactly happened to her family? Those sorts of interpersonal dynamics, we were strung along slowly enough that I was

like, I really just kind of want to know what happened there. And what happened to her younger brother? What tragedy exactly befell them and how they got kind of pulled apart? Where it missed me was like the middle-level mystery, which is to say what is true. of the outside world and what is the illusion. This sort of like, what is, I think, structured is like a fundamental question of the show? Of like, is the outside real or is it lush and green

or is it barren? Like, I wasn't as interested in that, to be honest with you, as the rest of it. Like, Rob, do you feel like if you were in the silo, you wouldn't want to go outside? You wouldn't care about going outside? It's not that I don't care about going outside. It's like in the structure of the story

that's presented to us in the show, I just kind of assumed from episode one on that it was lush and green outside. And so I don't really have a doubt in my mind that that's like a mystery that I need solved, even though it turned out to be a different hologram and like a double faint that is its own kind of interesting turn.

A real screen saver situation. A real screen saver vibe. But yeah, it's just like, that was not the central tension that was pulling me through the show. I'm trying to figure out like what's going on in this world. Like how did this place become this way is kind of what I was interested in?

given the double fake on the display, how did you feel about all of the revelations as they cascaded at the end of season one? And how important is something like shock and surprised you? Does season two need to shock and surprise you with like bigger revelations? I don't think it needs to. I think obviously the way they are doled out is pretty important.

And you don't want it to come all at once and you also don't want it to come too late. It's a really delicate balance that you have to strike with these kinds of things. but ultimately, I think what is driving not just my interest in the show but the primary motivations of a lot of the characters is not just, is this a vision

or is this like a hologram or is this a screensaver? But if that is true, why are we being held in this way? And I think that's sort of the interesting question that comes up out of the double fake, which is like, why would you go through the trouble of the double illusion? And I wonder how much that's going to tie

into some of the central themes of the show of this idea of a control society. And one way to create a control society as they've laid out is to dictate who gets to have kids and who doesn't. And I wonder if it's almost like a trap to tempt the more curious people outside. Right?

Like if you give them enough of a breadcrumb that everything outside is not what it appears to be, the people who are curious enough to investigate it might find their way outside and therefore are no longer of danger, quote unquote, danger if you're running the silo to everybody else.

to interrogate the system. Yes. To be curious about the system. Yeah. Let's, and folks listening at home who are like, wow, they're an hour in and they haven't talked fully about season two episode one, that was always the plan, just so you know. It's one episode. It was always our plan to sort of dwell in. You say that as if House of ours is incapable of doing three hours on like a half hour episode of television.

Oh, no, I'm saying that we got three hours more. Let's go. I have lots of thoughts about the rope swinging technique and the knots that are being tied. Do you? No, not really, but everything else pretty much. I was ready for you to be like, as a Texan. Not in my skill set. I have some rope knot thoughts.

But let's build a bridge to Silo season two with Steve Zon's character, quote unquote, solo, who is probably just the little kid, Tim, from the opening flashback. Do we agree? Sure seems like it. Let's go. So we're not going to do B by B because it's mostly, Juliet

scavenges and build stuff that's basically what happens in that episode You don't want to do physical challenge by physical challenge like ninja warrior style and dictate the terms?

I don't but basically this episode is Juliet picking up exactly sort of where we left off with her with her traversing this poisonous landscape

she finds this other silo she finds so many dead bodies and she enters and she has to rig up a lot of stuff in order to finally find the one other person who is still in the silo played by Steve's On. And we have three flashbacks, well, three-ish flashbacks inside of this episode.

We've got what happened at this silo that prompted all of these people to go out into the poisonous air. Yeah. we have or the hazardous hair do we like do we do we know what's killing them exactly oh um no sure

I'm happy to cast a wider net of possibilities yeah like depressurization heat poison like I honestly don't know what's happened that's kind of what I wanted to circle back

with the suit a little bit it's like I'm not sure what exactly the suit is supposed to do other than clearly fail filter the air I thought it was something you're inhaling. That was my assumption because when they take the helmet off, then they like gasp and choke and die.

But then what good is the good tape? To seal in the good air that is being filtered through the suit? Maybe. I honestly am not sure. I really torn as to like whether, I think ultimately something I've bumped on in this episode is when Juliet has to bash open the visor of her own helmet. Yeah.

Because she's gasping for air. Yeah. Is that the suit malfunctioning, or is that the suit functioning as it's intended, which is to say, these things aren't really designed for people to live once they get outside. They're operating under the assumption that anyone who goes out is going to die. Is there like a very limited amount of air and resources in the suit? I did have a question about that, and I didn't know whether or not this was like a slight metaphor for the larger. Because when she bashes open the glass on the helmet, she doesn't know that the air inside the silo is good, right?

There's just more corpses everywhere, so she doesn't know. But I guess to go back to that opening clip we had at the top of this episode, when Shirley's like, what are you going to do, die? Like, what are there options you have? Or a flashback that starts episode two of, you know, the sheriff and the rebellion inside of this new silo, basically the whole place is going to flood anyway. Yeah. So we got to take our chances outside because what else is going to happen?

Completely. So sort of like she has to bash this glass towards her face and risk potentially contaminated air in the silo because she's not going to survive whatever's happening inside of the suit. But I don't know that I understand the full mechanics of the suit. And if you do, Hobbes and drag is at Gmail.com would so appreciate your suit expertise. If you're a tape enthusiast and you really know what's going on there, I would love to know more. What makes good tape? You know, I would guess stronger adhesion would be my guess. Okay, so listen, this theme of isolation as it pertains to the Juliet flashbacks, which are both around Shirley and then also around Walker, and both Shirley and Walker tell a story of, I had a dream or I had an experience where I was all alone and it was the scariest thing and what did I do?

And, you know, it's not subtle, right? that those are like the two stories we get. And it's not just Juliet alone for most of this episode, but it's us having to think about what does that do to someone like Steve Zon's character who we see at the end of the episode has been surrounded by corpses for, again, apparently decades, according to Graham Yose, has just been there with dead bodies all around him. Maybe not, I mean, I do have questions about this.

Like, was he the only survivor of what happened here? Or is he the last survivor left alive inside the silo? Did he have to kill other people to survive the few people who were left? We don't know any of that information. But, yeah, having endured what happens in the silo in season one, which is all about society and government and structures and, like, how that can feel clock. and how that can feel isolating and how that can feel. Taking the entire other side of the coin and bringing us to a character who has just had nothing for a very long time is, I think, an interesting thing that this season has on its mind. Completely.

And how these characters interact, if at all, going forward. I don't know how Juliet gets in that door, given the threat that has been issued at the end of this episode. But Steve Zahn isn't showing up on the show just to show his eyes through a window. Like at some point we're going to get more of him in some capacity. And I want to see what he's like after this time. What is left of this person who, especially if it is young Tim, like that's a child growing up in this world, maybe all alone. Maybe in complete isolation without so much as another human being, without even the comforts of like people on video. Like really no human interaction of any kind potentially.

And so to see what his world has been like, I'm a little torn as to whether I want. the flashback day after Tim's story or the like, maybe he just talks about it version of that story and explains what happened to him. I'm a little torn on what I actually want to play out in this show, but that is a character I want to know more about how he got here. I feel like with 10 episodes,

we're going to get the Tim to Solo Evolution episode. So we should make it really clear. So the episode opens with this rebellion in this new silo many years in the past. I guess, about 35 years in the past, that they are fighting IT, this guy named Russell in IT, who I guess is like the Bernard Comp or something like that. Same haircut, I'm sure. Who won't open the door, and they have to storm, you know, the IT to get the door open.

They have to, like, cross this chasm and, you know, kill each other in order to make this revolution happen. and we've got the sheriff and his kid is named he is name checked he is Tim and there is Roy who is a guard and these are the names we learn very clearly and so they go when they go to storm out

into the open air and we know what happens because we then cut to all of the corpses and his flag, his green flag in Tatters how did Tim get from the front of the vanguard back to safety when there's so many other bodies out there is a question I have. Was Roy, who, the guard, who we've already seen once, they said, hey, get Tim out of here.

Is that his role again once they start gasping and gasping? Are they just sort of like, Roy, get Tim out of here? I mean, that's the only thing, that's the only question mark I have around whether or not this is Tim grown up. Like, I feel like it has to be. But logistically, I'm curious how he gets from the front of the vanguard all the way back down into the safety of the silo. Any thoughts, theories, questions, concerns about that? I mean, many, many concerns. You know, there's a lot of people or bodies he had to cross to get back into the silo.

And how he manages that, I don't know. I suspect the answer will have something to do with why his eyes look the way that they do. And also the fact that we only get this very limited physical glimpse of what he's like. like what other injuries or deformities or other things might have happened to him from being in such a hostile environment. And I say hostile in both ways, right? Like, if people are going out there and starting to die, everyone is going to lose their shit. Then it's an all-out battle potentially to get back inside. How he gets back inside, I want to see. And I kind of suspect that whatever it is that's happening with his eyes is indicative of like some, whether it's poisoning, exposure. Like,

maybe he's blind in that eye. I don't know. Like, what does he physically capable of at this point and what exactly has happened to him. There's just no way for us to know, but there's a lot that's being teased out. There's a sign in and among the other graffiti that Juliet sees as she goes through here, like, you know, lies on the screen or like fuck the founders, like all this sort of like rebellious graffiti that, you know, this is like, this is the potential future of the silo that she came from is like what she's walking through here. And, but in among all of that graffiti, there's a graffiti that says any survivors please help us, which to me is the biggest indicator

that it wasn't just Tim who survived, like whoever us is. So then did it become just this like feral Lord of the Fly situation where there's just like a few little bands of survivors and they, you know, killed each other to see who could enjoy the very limited resources that or left in the silo. I don't know. It's not an accident that he's locked into a room

that if, like, basically the fact that he has the capacity to kill Juliet when she's standing outside it, to me, says this is like a barricade,

right? This is a structure he has created to protect himself from other people. And I'm assuming those people are gone or dead at this point.

Is your interpretation that he cut the rope that she was hanging from the first time? Because she goes back and she examines sort of the phrase, edge of it. She's kind of like, huh, you know. So is your interpretation that at one point he slipped out of whatever that little bunker is and tried to cut the rope before she even had a chance to get to his oscillating fan situation over on the other side of IT?

It seemed like that's what the show was hinting. Yeah. I mean, that's him covering a lot of ground to be able to do that in that fashion, unless he wasn't in the room to begin with. Like maybe he was coming back from elsewhere in the silo. and happened upon her trying to swing in that way. I guess that's always possible. But the way she looks at the rope certainly suggests that this is not just like frayed from rubbing against the edge of the banister. Okay. I'm glad we're on the same page with that.

So, like, he's already tried to kill her once. Juliet can't swim. None of them can swim. Yes. She goes into the water. She barely makes it. She's also just, like, surrounded by ropes that are trying to drag her down to.

It's just like it's a lot of, a lot of flailing. And to try to kill her, if that is indeed what happened. no questions asks. This isn't we're going to have a conversation. This is like, I'm going to try to kill you. I don't want to know who you are.

I don't care what you want. I'm going to go live in my little hut with the viewfinder and hoard whatever resources I've got to myself. He's locked himself into an even smaller silo inside of there. I think that like, I think all of that is pretty chilling and scary to figure out. And probably if anyone can charm their way into a bunker, it's Rebecca Ferguson. And so we should also mention, I mean, I think I am interested, especially in a 10-episode season of television.

I am interested in a Tim episode, like, what happened to Tim and to watch that child actor and then eventually, presumably Steve Zon, like, show us the sort of degradation of this character. But something Graham Yost said in describing him is he called him Robinson Crusoe without his Friday or Tom Hanks without Wilson and Castaway. And I was thinking about Rebecca Ferguson in this episode who largely has to carry this episode by herself on screen. And how rare it is that an actor could do that. I was like, yeah, thinking about Tom Hanks and Castaway. I was thinking about Matt Damon in the Martian. I was thinking about Sandra Bullock and gravity. But it's just it's like mega stars can do this.

but it is not something that a lot of actors can do? Can you think of other examples or like what do you think it is about Rebecca Ferguson that we are just like down to hang watching her as you put it, McGuiver her way through the situation? Yeah, let's take that part first because I think part of the reason that she's able to pull this off and that it works so well is that Rebecca Ferguson is just an incredibly gifted physical performer. Like she's obviously great and charming, like you watch any Mission Impossible movie or any movie she's ever been and it's like, yes, this is a person who could talk their way into a room.

Yeah. But she's also so good at action set pieces. She's also so good in this case at making things feel effortful. Because if everything is too easy, right, like if building the bridge is too easy, if getting into the door is too easy, this is not an interesting episode. Like, she has to fail. She has to struggle with everything. And to do that, she, an actor in a like somewhat practical but also very CGI heavy space

has to sell us that this shit is real. And I think she does an incredible job of it. Like her muscling some scrap metal onto some barrels is compelling television because she makes it by will compelling television. And not everyone can do that. I also think there is something pleasurable and just like understanding the like mechanics and physics and leverage and this is like the way that her brain works in order to solve these puzzles. Yeah. That there are no. Am I remembering in C's one correctly that there.

there's no pulleys allowed, like that that's one of the rules? I think that's one of the rules. Damn, no pulleys. No, you gotta have a pulley. And she sort of like makes her own pulley by like looping the rope over something and using leverage. You know, and that goes to, again, the flashbacks are to show us Shirley and Walker talking to her about isolation, but also this idea of like recycling things that people think

are broken or thinking about things in a different way or not giving up on the way that you attack a problem and all of that sort of stuff. So again, I would have given up quite early, but that's not what Juliet did. It is not. Thank you so much. There were 400 visual effects shots in the season two premiere. That's a lot. Something I will say, I think they did a great job making the haunted season two silo look as haunted and derelict as it does. There was some stuff. Maybe this is like the way that I watched the episode. You might have watched under better circumstances. In the opening flashback, was it actually physically hard to see things sometimes for you? Or was that just like my screen resolution? It seemed pretty dark.

I think dark by design, but not unintelligibly dark. Yeah. I think it like bordered on unintelligibly dark for me, which is something that I've like been on high alert for since the final season of Game of Thrones where I'm just sort of like, it doesn't have to be this way. I, understand that they are in the literal dark. So, like, obviously, like, the power is out everywhere, but IT, like, you know, you have to convey that it's dark, but I'm always, always hoping that shows that these budgets can still make it so that we can see the incredible work they've done to make this silo look derelicted and haunted and under a rebellion and stuff like that.

Well, I think they do a good job of that in the, like, present-day version of this silo. Yes. Because there is this glowing light and room that Rebecca Ferguson is trying to get into. It illuminates the space. It gives you like a beacon to orient yourself in space and figure out like how does she need to cross this particular chasm and all those things. I think things like that help ground all of those effects, all of the set deck, all of the stuff. Like when you light it that way, I think it makes everything feel pretty practical. It's also like this episode more so than anything I remember from season one, maybe her like trying to fix the generator sequence or something like that. But like it felt very video gamey to me and I don't mean that as an insult at all.

But like it's super like I'm not famously not a huge player of video games, but like I have played some. And like this idea that like here's a locked silo that you have to figure out how to get in and there's the light. you have to get to the place where the light is coming from and then eventually you're going to hear some spooky music and you have to follow that down the hallway like it's you know and on all the things you tried and failed and like what are your resources and what are your skill sets and all the sort of stuff like that it's like it's fascinating to me and I'm curious if like more of the season is going to feel that way or not and again it's not a knock to me like there's plenty of great fun stuff that feels like a video game um but that yeah that was my vibe

off of this episode. Yeah, and I think to your point about what actors can pull this off, it does feel evocative of a video game in that way. Like, it does feel like, you know, you're Joel and the Last of Us or something like that, like in the parts where you're separated,

where you're having to navigate spaces by yourself, basically any genre of like semi-horror or horror-adjacent game where you are a character with a flashlight in a dark space cobbling together items, which is to say, I don't know, a third of every game that's made in 2024, yeah.

Yeah, there's a lot to draw. from there. And there's a lot to draw from in this performance. Like it doesn't work without her being interesting and captivating as she's trying to do this stuff. I take your point about the like Sandra Bullock. I think that's a great comparison in terms of like physical

obstacle and like mission oriented filmmaking. Like that's a lot of what's happening here. There's also the range of stuff that I wonder if we might get a version of here where it's like a person who's isolated but acting opposite a voice. Maybe she doesn't get into the room with Tim but there's like a walkie talkie type situation.

where she has something to bounce off of but has to still do all of the acting in terms of these scenes by herself in like a Joaquin Phoenix and her kind of way in a Sam Rockwell and Moon kind of way you know like maybe less the AI love story element of that and more just like

dissociated voice is this my genre like maybe this is the thing the other thing that came to mind from me watching this was Wally like it felt like the first part of Wally a little bit in the sense of like person scrapping together a life or maybe Tim is the Wally in this case and he's kind of hoarded himself up in there and he's just like watching old-timey like you know hello dolly peak peak Hollywood dance like music music musicals in there I don't know except

he's watching breakfast of Tiffany's I guess because I guess moon river so I did want to ask you about that um moon river plays hauntingly down the hallway and she follows it again Probably the only choice you have, but also I don't know that I got. Don't go to Moon River. Like, don't do it. Do you just take a beat? Like, eventually, I mean, what else is she supposed to do? Die?

Like, what do you do if you don't follow the spooky music down the hallway? I'm going to go sit under the tree with the water, and I'm going to hang out there. And I'm like, look, that's your space with Moon River in the creepy IT department. I'm going to be over here with the plaintiff ferns. That's where I'm going to hang out. Speaking of the water, do you feel like, was your sense that she washed the toxins off her suit with coffee or dirty water? It seemed like dirty water, maybe. Right, it wouldn't be decades old coffee.

That would be like sludge at that point. I would think so. I think I answered my own question, but I was just trying to figure out which I would prefer more to douse myself in very old cold coffee or in water that looks like very old cold coffee. or in water that looks like very old cold coffee. Pretty gnarly. Needs must. Okay. Spooky Moon River.

Yes. Lower you down the hallway. I have been, before I watched this episode, I was staying with a friend of mine, and they had a record of the Inkspots, which is this, you know, like this group that they play the Inspots music in Fallout. It's a go-to-speople.

spooky, old-timey sort of group. You hear it at the beating of Shawshank Redemption. You hear the ink spots all over the place when you want to feel unsettled. And I've been listening to The Ink Spots, like just Spotify playlist. No free ads, but it's our company. Spotify playlist. And it's been a really good time. I've been really enjoying the spooky ukiness of it.

You've gone from Kooky to Spooky. I'm still kooky, though. I could tame multitudes. Is there a more haunted group than the Ink Spots? Or what is the most haunted music that could or could not lure you down a hallway, Rob Mahoney? You said a couple of very key words there for me, one old-timey. It clearly has to be before a certain period of time.

And it has to feel old in style in a way that is going to make the hairs on your arms stand up on end. Yeah. Also, you mentioned that your friend had this on a record. I think it's very important that you get that like analog scratchy vinyl scratchy viner's like popping speaker vocal distortion I think a lot about

in Gremlins there's a scene where they're playing like do you hear what I hear the Christmas song on a record? Either the needle gets like dragged off the record or like maybe the gremlin scratches it or whatever but you get like the with the voices that kind of like vocal

and like if you can get that in a song and it's kind of glitching back and forth even better. The first song that came to mind for me, and I'm not sure if I've been horror movie pilled into this song, and it's happened, and I've just kind of internalized this as a horror song, is K-s-a-sara-sera. Like that, I could see if I'm... Like the Doris Day version.

The Doors Day, specifically the Doors Day. Like, I could see myself walking down a dark, dimly lit, brutalist hallway hearing that song, and I am of the Nope variety. I'm turning around. I am not following Moon River to its conclusion. I'm good. Yeah.

So that was the one that came up for me. Did you have any other candidates? Case Rosara is a really good one. Like, Doris Day is very capable of sounding quite haunted. Just a little haunted is all you really need. Yeah. I don't think I can top that or top the ink spots, like just as like a generally haunted group. But hoppice and drag is eGml.com.

If you want to give us haunted suggestions. I might even make a haunted songs playlist. If enough of the bad babies email and suggestions, I will put that on. Old-timey, spooky. The only thing that makes you go down that hallway is the knowledge that Steve Zod might be waiting for you at the end of it. Otherwise, it's a note for Romhoney. Anything else you want to say about this episode? It's kind of spare.

That's why we sort of sort of dwelled in season one because it's sort of like, Not a lot. A lot happens and not a lot happens inside of this episode. But I guess I like the choice of it because Yost has said that episode two will take place entirely inside the other silo. So they like did episode one. It's just Juliet in this silo. And then episode two, we're going to go back to the other silo. And then presumably we're going to cut back and forth until we get the episode of our dreams, which is the Tim only episode.

at some point. I just want Tim to be a little bit older in his teenage years, but would de-aged Steve Zon face on him? That's what I want. They're like, you thought a sea of corpses was an impressive special effect. Wait until you see baby-faced Steve Zon. What do you think of the choice to do it that way, to split the story over Juliet here,

and then to go back to the remaining cast of characters in the next episode. For this balance, I like it for these first two. If it's that way the whole way through until they meet or whatever, maybe it would get exhausting at a certain point. But episode one, episode two, I like it because as we are watching the flashback in episode one

of this other silo and they're march outside, it's impossible not to think of the home silo. And in particular, that we left it in a place where we didn't even really see the fervor like really heating up yet. But we know that anyone who was looking at a screen was shown a vision of the outside world

that is much more lush than they have led to believe and certainly would suggest to them that they've been lied to would really rile some people up. One of my favorite Tim Robbins moment of the whole season is when he's like,

on see what you just saw. Honestly, you say favorite. I say if I have if I can lodge one more objection to season one, a lot of the dialogue is like 15% to direct and 15% too much like people saying

exactly what they mean and exactly what they want. Correct. But that moment works for me for some reason. It works on a level. I probably laughed at it more than it was intended, but it worked. It got a reaction out of me, that's for sure. And I think he's supposed to be a little pathetic

in that moment. Absolutely. Absolutely. He is like trying to cover people's eyes from something they've already saw. It's a doomed errand. Yeah. It's Ed Harris, end of Truman show. It's like, you know, like, whatever.

It's all crumbling around you. So, like, that worked for me, but more broadly, I do take your point about some of the dialogue in season one. But overall, in terms of this structure, like, there is a natural, propulsive want in a show like this for the truth to be revealed. And the tyrants at the top of this to be overthrown. And, like, yeah, Bernard is unseeded and Sims is, like, taken down and all this stuff. And the people get the truth. And they get what they want. And it's like, to show us a version of that end game.

that is everyone marching outside into the open air because they think it's okay and summarily dying in a giant crater together, I think gives immense stakes and heft to everything we're about to see an episode too. I'm getting that train on a track hurtling toward a destination feeling of like, oh no. I want these people to have their version of the truth

and to know what's going on in their world, of course. But at this point, like the only people who might be able to save them from their death are like the villains of this show to this point. point effectively. And that, I mean, and will Juliet be able to get word back to them in time to prevent whatever, like calamity? But yeah, that's why the flashback is so interesting to like sort of parse and parse and parse

that starts this episode because there's the question that the sheriff asks his wife, you sort of like, why, like, why do you think he wouldn't open the door, you know? And she said, because he was like told not to. But like, is Russell, who seems to be like the head of IT in that flashback? Is he actually the hero who was trying to save all these people? And even though the silo is flooding, maybe they could have made some sort of go of it in a flooded silo versus certain death outside, you know?

I like that that stuff is getting a little murkier because when it is just bad men lying to people and keeping them in this locked box, it's a little too straightforward in terms of what you would want in an ongoing show. You need the dynamics to gnarle up a bit And for everything to feel a little bit more situational And it's like there is a circumstance here

By which Bernard is the only thing standing Between the people of the silo and dying Right, like is he actually not the good guy at all But like for the greater good sort of thing Right, you know? I mean, I think he literally has like a greater good Kind of drop in again 15% too direct in season one He was a hot fuzz of fan before it all went sideways

You know what I mean? Listen, anything else you want to say about silo or about this episode? Rob Boney. One last thing as we're moving forward back into the home silo, one character we haven't touched on that I'm looking forward to getting back in touch with is Billings, who I really found myself being more and more interested in his story, not just because he has the syndrome, which is in itself this whole, like, tangent and can of worms and interesting kind of side story involved in all this.

But I don't agree with every decision he's. making obviously as a character, but he just wasn't at all what I expected him to be. The first couple episodes of season one, it's like, oh, this kind of shadowy, this by the book shadowy figure who's going to be installed as sheriff

and you see him and he's like, I mean, with all due respect, like kind of a fucking dork and the kind of dork that's very endearing and ultimately like is unraveling this story and finding the truth and everything along with everybody else and certainly with like on a parallel journey to what Julie

is doing. There's something that's really endearing about this character who was supposed to be this sort of like strong arm puppet sheriff turning out to be this like wounded, sick, like beating heart guy who's like just trying to figure this out and who has dedicated his life to acing pact bees and now all of a sudden has to confront the reality of what the pact is actually all about. To that end, there was an interesting interview I read, um, Common and Tim Robin's an incredible junket pairing, I'm sure, gave an interview where they were talking about sort of who they act with or who they're seeing partners are in season two. Conn was talking about how his character, Sims has, like, he has a family, Billings has a family,

we go home with them, we understand their home life, and Tim Robbins' character, Renard, doesn't have anyone. No. And what Comyn said in this interview, he said, quote, what is life about? if you don't have anyone. So, like, shots fired at... Damn. Bernard and Tim Robbins.

But, like, that idea that, like, you can be... The Russell figure or the Bernard figure, the person who knows more... Yeah. ...is keeping secrets for, quote, unquote, the greater good, which ultimately, I think, is not the move. But let's say, like, that's what they think they're doing. How lonely and isolated is that existence?

Yeah. And what line... Can you draw between that and Steve Zon's character? Completely. Who I don't want to call solo. I would prefer just to call probably Tim. I'm just going to call probably Tim. Until we're told otherwise, I'm just going to go with Tim.

But yeah, to construct a world in which no matter what angle you look at it from, every character is isolated. Even the characters who, again, have this power, have this agency, even Juliet in a lot of ways who is put in positions of great power and authority. Her response to that is, I'm not going to let anyone touch the generator. That is my job. And I'm going to, like, isolate and imprison myself in this kind of responsibility.

Yeah. And then she becomes the mayor, and she does the exact same thing with a totally different mission. And it's like, every person is locking themselves in a room. And they're doing it for different reasons. Sometimes it's to maintain a visage of the truth.

Sometimes it's to protect themselves. Sometimes it's like, I mean, I don't know that we know entirely what walk is, like, afraid of other than maybe being rounded up by one of the Raiders or something as some of some of other friends have been. But everyone is terrified

and everyone is isolated and everyone is lonely and now we just get a guy who is physically in one of those rooms peering out at us hopefully with a lot of interesting things to say, Joe. Sometimes you lock yourself in a room

because you only want left in the silo sometimes you lock yourself in a room because you have a podcast to do and this is been our podcast on silos season two, episode one and sort of our look back at season one in general. Thank you so much.

We'll be back next week with Doom Prophecy. Excited. Excited to go back to Iraqis or wherever else we might go in that universe. And also, Gladiator 2, as Mallory likes to say, it's thighs o'clock. We're having a good time in the sandy deserts next week. That is the plan. Thank you to Rob Mahoney.

This is kind of a desert, too, in its own way. You know, maybe not as sandy, but a dusty craterous. A poison desert. It's a desert of a kind. Yeah, an emotional desert, certainly. Thanks for Rob Mahoney. The best that there ever was. Thank you for talking to me about three entirely different shows this week.

You're the best. Thank you to Steve Allman and John Richter for their work on this podcast, the video side. We're doing new, experimenting with new video techniques this week, so we're really excited to see all of that come together. Thank you, too, Arjuna Rangipal, for his production work on everything that we always do. he is the best on all ends and all sides. And thank you to join me a dinner on for his work on the social. We'll see you next week.

We'll Mallory will return. Bye.