House of R - The 2025 Spring Mailbag

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

From books to ‘Star Wars’ to ‘The Last of Us,’ the House of R mailbag is here. Jo and Mal are here to answer all of your burning questions about the content you love! (00:00) Intro (07:09) Book club with the Orioles (17:39) House of R countdowns (25:19) R-rated 'Star Wars' movies (43:49) 'Survivor 50' casting (52:30) 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' reboot (57:37) Book recommendations (01:13:13) Bras and gauze in 'The Last of Us' (01:21:15) Food options in 'The Last of Us' (01:28:43) Finale reaction Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Joanna RobinsonProducers: Jessie Lopez and John RichterSocial: Jomi AdeniranAdditional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to by Paramount Plus. Beth and Ripp 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 by Whole Foods Market. Spring is here, so celebrate it with fresh, juicy, seasonal produce and some very tasty,

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Save at Whole Foods Market. Hello, welcome back to you, House of R. I'm Joanna Robinson, joining me today. Her eyes are shining. Her hair is glossy. She's just my favorite person on this planet. It's Mallory Rubin. It's mailbag time.

Nothing I love more than being with you and the bad babies. Listen, hello. Welcome to Watch the House of Bar. We've been covering a lot of very quaity, in-depth, wonderful television for the last few weeks. And we thought we would just take a quick breather and do a mailbag episode. Fun and breezy mailbag episodes. We have some lingering the last of us thoughts and questions and ideas from you folks, the bad babies. But then we also have just some fun and random prompts from you as well, which you sent to us.

Hobbes and Dragos at Gmail.com. So thank you so much for your mailbag prompts. We got a lot of great emails for you guys. Thank you so much as ever. Um, yeah, we're just going to zip through some mailbags, thoughts and feelings and questions and comments and ideas. And I can't wait to go deep with you on book clubs and Survivor and Buffy and all of our passions that we don't always get to dedicate a lot of time to here on a house bar. Um, quick program reminders before we get into the mailbag. Um, um, What is happening on our feed next week? I don't know.

How much do we want to keep that a little bit of a mystery? I would think we're going to keep next week a little quiet. We've got some balls in the air. Like genuinely exciting stuff, but I don't want to jigs it by announcing it. Some things cooking that we're hyped about that could definitely change due to a number of different travel schedules and other sorts of schedules. So we have, we are very excited. We're not just making this up. We have very exciting plans.

I just don't like to jigs them. keep your eye out for whatever it is we're going to do. The Midnight Boys Pew Pugh, you know, did their mission impossible vinyl reckoning reactions. And next week they're doing a racist movie draft, which is going to be a totally fine and cool and normal episode. And I can't wait to hear it. Incredible. Button Mash wrapping up their Last of Us coverage and also Eldon Ring Night Rain, instant reactions from Ben Jumman, Limburg. And of course, the ringer of us recommends for May.

So that's all the stuff, including some really fun, I think, mystery stuff from House of Ar. Once our schedule is set for next week, should we see if Jeff Probst is available to reveal our plans the way that he revealed the Survivor 50 cast? I think he'd absolutely do that for you, Mallory Rubin, and you alone. Do you want to explain to people who don't know how that happened, how it happened? Picture it. Jeff had a, picture it. Picture it. You're at Final Tribal slash in a filming studio somewhere in there. Jeff Probst is.

Dimples, dimpling. I was supposed to say. Fire like gleaming off the dimples. Yeah. Everything that you could hope and dream. And he's pulling out of the air. It's not the vote. It's the reveal.

One cast member at a time. All 24 of them, except not because two of them are mysteries at the end because we have two season 49 participants in season 50 interesting yeah real interesting real interesting we'll get to that later and uh you know jeff managed to make reading people's names for five minutes Oscar worthy cinema I was wrapped excellent um okay mary bin yes ma'am how can folks keep track of all the great content we have that they can both listen to on spotify the app or the choosing or watch on Spotify app or on YouTube at Ringverse. Thanks for asking.

Here's what I would recommend. It's simple. Follow the pod. Follow House of R. Follow the Ring Reverse. On Spotify or wherever you get your podcast, as Joe noted, we are on video. You can watch full video episodes of House of R and Midnight Boys, Bupu, on Spotify and on the Ringerva YouTube channel.

So subscribe there as well. If you're like, what are you guys doing on video? Well, just a couple minutes ago while Joanna was doing our intro, there was about, I'd say, a 27 second period where I'd say, where I'm going to be. I was trying to catch in midair a cat hair that was floating in front of my eyes. If you're not watching on video, you miss that. Something to think about. Okay, great.

We're also on the social media platform of your choosing. There are other things that happen on video. Sometimes Mallory does dance moves. That's true. Yeah, that's true. I often will like just seculate wildly and then pull a muscle. There's that to look forward to as well. No, our video team is fucking killing it as always.

and working incredibly hard to bring this show and so many other ringer shows to you on video. So check them out on video if you haven't yet. You can watch it right in the Spotify app or on YouTube. Follow the Ringervverse on social media as well. The Ringervorverse is on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter. And for episodes such as this one, but just in general, send us your emails.

The inbox is open. Hobbits and dragons at gmail.com. Keep them coming. Is it too late to start emailing us about Superman? Or is it too early, I should say? Definitely not too late. It's never too early. No. Did you see the clip of Nick Holtz and David Cordswett on Instagram talking about how David's like number one flaw is the way that he likes to correct people's grammatical errors and syntax? And then Nick Holt, our favorite, says that's very pernickety of you. And he's like, it's persnickety. And Nick's like, see.

Wow. Whether that was genuine or. bit incredible either way. Absolutely love it. A great bit from our guy, Nick holds. Love it. Just top tier. Really good stuff. So, you know, the press door is already started. Please keep us involved in your minds and your thoughts and your prayers. And we are going to, at some point, maybe not next week. Maybe it's what I'm saying, I'm going to do a hype meter for the summer in which, you know, we'll certainly be thinking about Superman. Anything else? Spoiler warning? I don't really know what the spoiler warning should be for today. I mean, we'll obviously be talking about last of us. We have multiple, we have multiple last of us questions. And we'll be hitting, if you haven't, if you haven't watched Andor on Last of Us, that's a spoiler warning you should take seriously. Other than that, I think it's pretty loose, pretty open today. Yeah. We'll talk about the topic and then you can be like, oh, I don't want to know anything about who's on Survivor 50 or whatever it is. So, you know. Um, all right, let's just, should we get right into it? Let's fucking do it, dude. Let's do it, maybe. Okay. I'm not going in any order that you could. predict. It's just what Joanna feels like reading first. So here's we go. Here we go. Wow. What a twist.

Well, right now it's like alphabetical by topic and that's not really necessarily what we need to do. Okay. Our listener, Elizabeth, wrote in to let us know that the Washington Nationals, which is a baseball team, has a Tolkien book club. Yes. Ironically, there are only eight of them on the journey through Middle Earth. If you were to have a book club, I don't get that. Okay. If you were to have a book club with a professional baseball team, which team would you pick and what would you read? This is, as I texted you last night, when we received this prompt and we're considering including it today, a real life version of the worst person you know just made a great point meme for me because the Washington Nationals are the regional.

Washington sports teams, I am a Baltimore sports fan, so Washington is the enemy. The Nats are the enemy. and learning that the Nats not only have a book club, but are reading, Tolkien, our reading Lord of the Rings is so charming that I am enraged that I have to find something the Nats are doing, winning and charming.

I do like this little nugget from Elizabeth that they could not figure out how to get a real fellowship of nine going and had to stop at eight. Great stuff. If we were to have a book club with a professional baseball team, I mean, I know my choice. It's the Baltimore Orioles. God damn it.

Obviously. Obviously. I'm going to read a little quote to you from the WAPO, the Washington Post article about this book club, though, before I reveal what I'll be picking to read with the Orioles. Okay. Finnegan and Williams have been joined by Irvin, Soroka, and fellow starter, Mackenzie Gore. Wild to learn that McKenzie Gore is in this book club. Designated hitter, Josh Bell, Outfielder Alex Call, and first baseman Nathaniel Lowe represent the position players. The Bell said he didn't intend to join.

Someone just put the books in his locker. Just a remarkable nugget inside of this article about the Nats. Should I leave a book for you inside of like the mail room lockers just to let you know that we're doing? That would be, no. You should leave the book inside of the bowl of hichu. Yeah, when you fish around to the bottom of the bowl of hichu, then you get it's actually not going to be a book. It's going to be the DVD collection of Buffy season one waiting for you at the bottom of a bowl of hichu. Fantastic stuff. I feel like I know what mailback question we're going to next.

After that little tease. By the way, I will be texting you later. My new order has arrived because, yes, I have finished these six bags of Hichu that came just a couple weeks ago. And now I've gotten an eight pack and I will be texting you a photo later. And I think the next time I see you. A couple new flavors. A couple new, a couple new variety variety pack offerings. I don't know at this point how I have teeth. I also don't know. Or a stomach lining. And I'm not sure I do. I was just the dentist and they were like, your teeth are looking pretty good. I'm like, thanks so much.

But also, I don't think they should. Because whenever I go to L.A., the Hichu situation is not a good one. I think it's a great one. This is how Spotify keeps us coming back to the office. I mean, first of all, there's our paycheck, which is one thing. But also, there are bowls of Hichu everywhere. So, no free ads.

No Friads, but hi-chu if you're listening. Yeah, sponsors. And LaGroix, if you're out there. So I will be starting a book club with the Baltimore Orioles, my favorite team. And we will, perhaps unsurprisingly, be selecting a Star Wars book to read in our Baltimore Orioles book club because the current Orioles roster is full, full of Star Wars obsessives, full of Star Wars obsessives. Not just casual Star Wars fans.

Like these guys are watching rebels. They're in deep. Okay. When Tony Gilroy calls rebels the cartoon, they're like, excuse me, sir, you mean Star Wars rebels. We will be picking a Star Wars book that I think is a necessary way to process what is happening this season. Because, Joanna, it breaks my heart to tell you, you a person who loves support and encourages me and will ask me every now and then, you know, is a their year. Can I just, can I just tell you something really, really quickly? Do you know what

the Orioles record is right now? Is that what you're about to tell me? I don't need to ask you, because here's what happens to be on social media. People are constantly asking me to check in on your well-being, given what is going on with the Orioles this year. The Orioles so far to this point of the season have been one of the worst teams in baseball. They are 19 and 36 there in last place in the American League East. This was not what was supposed to happen. Here's what was supposed to happened this year they were supposed to win the World Series. So it's been tough. But all that means is that we have a rich reading and learning experience ahead of us because we will be reading Claudia Gray's master and apprentice. And in doing that, we will not only share a great Star Wars story together, but we will learn

about and reflect on phases of life. Trials and tribulations, perspective, expectations, the journey from student to teacher, pupil to master, and specifically, what is required to overcome. This is a great book for the Obi-1 and Quigon heads, like the two hosts of House of Art.

It's just an incredible, like incredible reading experience. A lot of Duku in this book. Raelle Averos, one of my favorite Star Wars characters. And I won't get into the plot, particular is here, spoiler for anyone who hasn't read, but like a lot of the book is about moving through the perspective of understanding where a person was when they were a Padawan and then when

they become a master, what happens if you are a Padawan and you think you're supposed to get something from the relationship with your master and then that is lacking or it is different than what you expect it to be? When you move to a certain point and you think the next thing that's supposed to happen is thing X and then it's thing Y and you have to adapt in real time, how do you confront that circumstance? And I believe that this would be a rich and necessary reading experience for the 2025 Baltimore Orioles, who again are in last place. This sounds like very healthy and like a very like, yeah, therapeutic. Exactly.

Exercise for for your boys over there. Yeah. What about you? What are you going with? My pursuit is not quite as pure and it's this. I am using this prompt as a sneaky backdoor way to forward my agenda. of befriending my favorite baseball player, which is Hunter Pence. So Hunter Pence and I will be co-running the book club for the San Francisco Giants.

Obviously, it's the San Francisco Giants. Okay. And orange recognize orange across the board here. Right, Mallory? Okay. So here's some things I know about Hunter Pence. He's a gamer. He loves Magic the Gathering.

loves D&D. He twitch streams playing D&D sometimes. He and his wife opened up like a gaming themed coffee shop in Houston. But they are like doubling down, you know, bouncing back and forth between Bay Area and Texas has been a thing in Hunter Pence's career, but they are anchored in the Bay Area. They are all in on, you know, being part of the community, all this sort of stuff like that. So I really do feel like Hunter Pence would want to run a book club with me for the San Francisco Giants. And in order to make sure that he wants to do. wants to do that. We can either read Magic the Gathering novelizations, which do exist, or to sort of feed, because that is like, I think his chief passion is Magic the Gathering,

of which I know nothing about, really. So, like, this could be very quite educational for me of a new, like, lore and universe. The Magic the Gathering, as far as my research has determined, the magicity gathering novelizations are not like the top tier novelizations that have ever existed of an IP property. Okay. So I'll try. alternatively. Yeah. We could turn to books that I loved and mentioned on this podcast, which is the Dragonlance series, which is for the D&D heads, and have some actually, like, exquisite novels that exist inside of that series.

So if Hunter Pence is listening to me, listening to this, which he's not, but if he is, and he has ever seen me, like, shyly look at him from across the room at, like, various movie press greetings that I've attended with him. But I've never spoken to him because it's Hunter. pens. I would like to run a Dragonlance book club for the San Francisco Giants with you. And I think there are a lot of, like, to your point, in genre storytelling, there is a lot of lessons to be learned for, you know, our heroes. You know, you can swing a sword. You can swing a baseball bat. You know, go down swinging either way, which is a phrase that I learned has to do with baseball. So this is what I brought to the table. Here's my follow-up question for you. I love this. Love this.

will the Joanna Robinson Hunter Pence book club? Yeah. Have official merch. And will that merch be knee-high socks? Obviously. Okay. I assumed it wasn't given, but I did want to confirm. We're wearing our book club uniform pants tucked into knee-high socks that will be themed for the book that we are reading.

And I just want to make this really clear about Hunter Pence. I have like a friendship crush. Hunter Pence is like a classic wife guy and it's one of my favorite things about him. So this is nothing like weird. This is like, I love that Hunter Pence loves kale. I love that he loves being part of community service. I love that he's a nerd. I'm a big Hunter Pence fan as a person and I just want to be pals and run a book club with him.

Fantastic. A real listener, Elizabeth wrote this email, but if she has helped me get a step closer to my dream, I will take the opportunity. I'll grab on with all hands. So that's my plan. It's beautiful. Call me Sarasco Gaiets. Okay.

Where do you want to go next? Wherever you want to take me, baby. Okay, baby. Let's go. Countdowns. This comes from Brian. This one bring me a laugh. Brian says he appreciates all the great and deep reflective content.

One thing that he's lost track of over time are all of the countdowns that are going on in the House of Ar. Could the Browell? bringer. What a great website. House of our page have a bunch of countdowns. And if not, can we get occasional cross-the-board countdown updates? The ones I can think of so far are for Shimmer the horse from the last of us.

The Lothcat from Asoka. Sweet Murley, yeah. Mirling. Cobbamp. The icon, the legend, the original. We're still counting. Does Timothy Oliphon in the Apple TV Plus show Stick count? No. Does Timothy Oliphon and Alien Earth count?

No. It's Cobb, Panthers, get the fuck out, okay? And I don't know that we've ever done a countdown for Mephisto, but certainly we've like said, hey, where is Mephisto? So certainly we could do. It's been this too many days since we started speculating where is Mephisto and we haven't seen him. But listen, that might be Ironheart is coming soon. and, you know, rumors about. Okay.

So, Mallory, I mean, in terms of, like, topics for what could go on a house of our countdown, do you have anything you want to add to this illustrious list? So the interesting thing about Brian's email, which really made me chuckle, was the I've lost track of part. You know, one thing I've lost track of over time, and I'd like to say Brian's name.

You know, I wish that we could claim to have perfect recall of all of the all of the countdowns. But we can commit moving forward to tracking this with the diligence and intent that we pride ourselves on here at the House of Our, whether we are doing serious literary criticism or just wondering the state of Cobbant's skin and wounds inside of a Bacta tank, whatever the case may be. How long can one marinate a Bacta tank? It's a great question.

It's a great question. So maintaining these countdowns in the future sounds like that. like delightful, delightful idea here. I, uh, there are the two other things this made me think of. So I was like, what if we, what have we, what have we, what have we, in the past? Like, how many days has it been since X? It made me think about if we had been covering Game of Thrones together in real time. Oh.

Brand, a brand counter? A brand counter? But a ghost counter. A ghost counter? A jora counter? A jora. Between. Season 6, episode 3 and season 8, episode 2, the anguish-inducing wait for ghost.

Boy, that would have been something to track. This is not a countdown, but I'd like to throw out one other idea for formal tracking moving forward. Yeah. It's a lot of stuff that we're saying here on the record we're going to track, and then neither of us is going to do. But if any of the bad babies are data nerds and they want to do this, we love an infographic. It's true. It's true. We do.

I would like to suggest a formal, maintained. list of all of the times that we have said, I'm not an ex. All of the, all of the professions, we are not. That we have gone out of our way to make sure it is abundantly clear. We are not professionally capable of or participating in. We're not doctors. We're not scientists. We are not mathematicians. On and on the list goes, I believe recently we said we are not meteorologists. We're not How long could the whiskey? We're not religious. We're not parents.

We're not a lot of things, you know, but we are here. And we are podcasters. We are people who eat a lot of high chew, you know? It's true. How many days since we last, how many days since Mallory last went to the optometrist? How many days since Mallory last went to the dentist? You know, like these are questions that her mom texts me sometimes. But I would like to add a couple other suggestions.

What do you got? They're mostly Mallory based because I just spent a lot of time observing. serving you. Okay. Number of times that Mallory hits us with the Dave Matthews Band Ackleite drop. It's gone way down, but it was abundant. There it is. There's another one. Okay. Number of beverages that any one of us has, and this is video based, you got to watch the videos to know this. Because at any given time, Mallory usually has like a reasonable two, like a hot and a cold sometimes or a cold brew and water. Like that's the sort of thing. I often have upwards of like four on my desk and you will see me take a sip of a topacheco, a lecroy, a coffee, you know, any other given things. So beverage counter. Great one.

Lip bomb swipes. We recently, no free ads on this podcast. We recently had a bad baby email to ask what kind of lip balm Mallory uses. Yeah. No free ads, but it's aquifour. Okay. If you want to be like Mallory, you got to get the aquifer lip balm. So a running counter of lip-bomb swipes. A complete list of things that Mallory Rubin finds iconic. Oh, my God. These are going to be a really long list. Chapstick applications and uses of iconic. Geez. A complete list of the most important things that have,

moments that have ever existed on television. Yeah. That ever have and ever will ever exist on television according to Mallory Rubin. The 947 examples of the times I've said that these 100 things are the top five of that thing. Last but not least. It's clear and easy to follow as the plot of Mission Impossible Final Reckoning. Last but at least, this is for me, some sort of wig infographic, a wig-based sort of, maybe we need to come up with like a taxonomy a la like a classic Jodi Walker sort of, you know, four quadrant, you know, infographic for ways, you know.

I think this is a great idea. I think that it's easy also to see the evolution of the project. how long until we build toward a 3D digital rendering. You know, like think about if you're shopping for some furniture and you can like turn a shoe, you can, you know, rotate, place it in your living room, rotate it, really get the full effect. Imagine doing that for wigs, but with your commentary? Yeah, it's color, it's texture. It's like, can you see the lace? You know, there's a lot of things we need to consider when we consider wigs.

is it an abomination? Is it a ringing success? Luthan's flashback brush cut goes down here. Captain America's blonde Wiglet is a rousing success. So, you know. You love a Wiglet. That's another thing we can formally keep track of is how many TMs do we have?

You know, how many TKTM with Joanna Robinson TM? Do we have? Luthier Corner TM with Joanna Thompson T.S. Exactly. It's an expanding canon at this point. I kind of biffed that one, but we love to see it. Okay. Are you referring to the time that you thought they put a human bone on the guitar?

Is that what you mean? I stand by it. Okay. It's a zombie. It's a zombie show. Who cares? All right. I think we did it.

But anyway, this is not something we will track. It's not something our beleaguered producers who have to edit down multiple hours of content from us a week will track. But, you know, listen, if anyone is out there and they love a spreadsheet, let us know. Okay. This one comes from Neaton. I'm going back to Star Wars. Ryan Reynolds wants to make an R-rated Star Wars movie. Dave Filoni has said,

maybe if the idea is good, we would make an R-rated Star Wars movie. So what would your top five R-rated Star Wars plotlines look like? And Neaton is guessing that Mallory's would involve Obi-1 and Satin. And so Mallory, what do you got for us here? What a thrilling prospect this is.

Boy, did the imagination run wild. Though also not, I was like, I think everything we're about to say is incredibly predictable and nobody will be surprised by any of it. Can we go back and forth and one of a way? Let's do it. I'm going to just say, like, because I agree, I think the question from Neaton, yes, Obi-1 and Satine, as discussed many times on prior podcasts with spin-off ideas and dream story ideas in Star Wars, it's so clearly my number one and obviously,

I would want it to be R-rated and very explicit that I'm not even going to put it in. Why I'm not even mentioning. Yeah. Let's just assume it's a lock, it's a given, and let's talk about other ideas. So instead of that, which again is a given and a lock and a thing I believe we deserve, my R-rated romance will be an Assange Ventress, Quinlan Voss. Yeah, yeah. Story.

This is for the Dark Discipleheads. This is for the Tales of the Underworld heads. I think this would be electric and that it is frankly outrageous that we haven't gotten it yet. Great pick. I think what has been really fun about this exercise is like trying to consider what could get us in our rating because there's sexual content. There's language. There's violence. Yes. What are the things? Three of my five involve sex. To be clear, I don't know that we need our rated Star Wars, but it's fun to think about.

It was actually kind of challenging to me to think about, like, where would I put the sex, the violence, the language, or whatever. Yeah. Did all of the ones you ended up coming up with involve incest inside of the Skywalker family? No. None. Just four of the five? No. None. Interesting. Okay. Same. Is that a preview? Okay. I'll put, I have two, I have two sex-based ones. Here's my top. My number one pitch, the one we really deserved. And it's season two of the Ackleit. This is my next one. And it's Chimer and OSHA in their master and apprentice training that will also, of course, involve copious sexual content. Ackleite season two are rated. Give it to us. We deserve it. So this is my next one, too, though.

I will say I have, I'm, I don't need it to be the Ackleit Season 2, but I do need it to be a Chimer. Kimer and OSHA movie. Yes. Yes. I don't even really need OSHA to be there. I just, I'm sorry. I don't. I need it.

That would be great if that was the form it took. but if it took place elsewhere in the life of the stranger, like earlier, later, I'm open to all sorts of permutations of this as long as we got manages into playing chimera again in an erotic thriller in Star Wars. That is the thing that we need. Okay. What if, and I know you're going to be like, but what about the timeline? Don't worry about timelines, okay? No. I assume that time travel is a given for the exercise.

We replace OSHA with House House House House. Shin Hadi from the Ackleite. Oh. Kimerian House Hottie having evil sex together and probably killing people. My God. You've got a pitch that you should ship to Lucasfilm. She might need a new master, you know? Like, we don't know what's going on in her master apprentice set up here.

All I could think about and reflect on a lot of what we do here, we try to reflect. Yeah. was the moment in episode six of the accolite when Chimir said feels good doesn't it to hold one in your hand again? And it is unfair that we are being deprived with more of that. I actually think our top countdown

of the sexual innuendos from Chimir is maybe one of our best reforming social media assets we ever put out in the world. So listen, people come to House of R for a lot of different things and one of them is your trademark cornyness. Okay, since we shared a Chimir, A Wish for Chimer.

Yeah. Is it my turn again? It is. Okay. Should I get all of my sex out of the way? Or should I veer towards violence? That's each person's personal preference. Okay.

This, I don't need to be a whole movie. It's just a deleted scene from The Last Jedi. And it's the way in which Kylo Ren and Ray definitely had sex. Whether or not they had it like in the throne room next to the smoking remains of Snokes body with a Pretorian Guard sort of like in pieces all around them or they ducked into a like a corridor and then, you know, but something between, you know, their breakup and that they really deserve to have just extremely vigorously athletic sex after the throne room fight scene, which is itself one of the best sex scenes that's ever existed. Indeed. in sedimentic history. So, yeah.

Sparks were flying there. Love that one. I have no notes. Thank you. I would also accept as an alternate version of that, lingering in the Ray, Kylo,

forced Skype, force timing. Sure. And, you know, a little phone sex, a little mutual masturbation. That would be wonderful. Would it come in that scene

when, when Kylo sees a drop of acto moisture on his glove and he closes his fists in the leather creaks? Is that when we would go right into what you're envisioning? Yes. Okay, great. And I can't believe you didn't say phrasing after starting that sentence with,

would it come in that scene? I would, I leave that up to you. When I'm talking, it's your job to say phrasing. That's the old dance. All right, what do you got? Okay. I'm going to save my final sex one for last. So I'll hit my violence picks here.

Great. Or one of them. this is not an idea that I have come up with. It is just a way to talk about something that we very briefly talked about with Chris the other day on our Rogue One Revisited Post and Or Pod. I actually genuinely can't stop thinking about the K2SO. It's on my list. Episode that we didn't get. This should be a true horror movie.

They should do this. If everybody needs a little bit of a break and a little time away and then they rediscover their excitement for it, cool. But the psychological, like, body horror and tantal. of what it sounded like awaited inside of the story. Yeah. We need. Absolutely. K2S. Horror movie 100% on my list.

Yeah. My last two are language and violence. Here's my language one. Okay. We're not bringing Lars Mikkelson. My apologies. We are doing a Thron story. But it is a Thrawn story from Armandoi Anucci.

And we're doing the in the loop, the thick of it level, political, in fighting, backfighting. maneuvering with creative and excessively British insults thrown around. Fantastic. And that is what I would like a fuckety buy from Thrawn. I would like all sorts of things. I would just like him eviscerating people around him with the most creative, foul language. And if they want to make it like dang ferric, like if they want to make it galactic, that's fine.

But we need some actual F bombs in there, too, to earn our rating. So that's what I would like from this world. I love it. I'm quite captivated by the idea of how Thrawn would respond to and process other people speaking that way. That's like a really fun thing to think about. Yeah, I wanted to get a Throne idea on my list. I'm glad that you have one. I love that.

We deserve it. Once again, Disney get on it. I'm going to stick with violence for my next one. I want a hard-ar hit man story. and I'm calling it Meatbag, and it is a Knights of the Old Republic adjacent adaptation starring HK47 as a Jedi assassin. Love it. But savagely violent. Love it. Yeah, I really want that one. I want that one.

My last one is, I'm of two minds about this. I could go either way. I'm excited. Well, I think the one that most people go to and they think about a lot is an idea of an R-rated vaidate. Like, do we want to see, as we saw at the end of Rogue One, as we saw in the Obi-1 TV show, like, Vader at his most violent just tearing through people? Like, is that something we want to see? Or does that make it harder than for us to stomach the redemption arc in Retire the Jedi? If we go too dark, you know, as certainly some of these supplemental material has, like, is that something we want to see on screen and then think about Luke and Humpty Dumpty Anikin, like having their moment and Richard the Rediret.

of the Jedi. You know, like, that's a question I have. What do you think? I want it. I also thought about this. I was, I was contemplating an R-rated fashion some of the Vader comics, which I think is probably the move. There's just so much compelling, rich story in there, and a lot of it is very dark. And some of it is like outward darkness, the violence, the heart. But a lot of it is just the maturity of the introspection, which I think is like a really interesting thing to consider mining with Vader. The only reason I didn't put this on my list, though I was not quite so disciplined elsewhere obviously was, you know, our vow to try to work outside of the Skywalker's for a bit. But what I say no to an R-rated Vader movie, I would not.

If we want to not do R-rated Vader, then might I suggest we actually use the fucking Knights of Ren for something useful and cool and cool as shit-looking? So, you know, a Nice of Ren sort of story. What's their origin? Who are they? And what are all the things that they're capable of with their very cool looking costumes and weaponry that we never got the full potential of inside of the saga. Also just the kind of like inherent violence of the visuals from some of like the Kylo comics canon burns and that. Yeah, that would be.

Yeah. Great. I love that. Here's my last one. I think you're going to be in. I'm ready. It's a crossover event. It is the White Lotus season four.

where two of the guests on a rare, rare getaway are Dedra Miro and Cyril Karn. Can you imagine a week of Turnout the Lights with Dejra Seril trying to enjoy themselves on vacation and not only having to interact with each other face themselves, this is always a central proposition of White Lotus, but like be next to people at breakfast at the resort. And EDI definitely shows up like midway through the season. We get the season one mom crashing from Eidie. Exactly. And I will say once again that I believe this is something we deserve.

We are owed, frankly. On the dead refrain, I will take this excuse to read this email we got from Michael, who sent a really long, beautiful email about this idea of an Andor spinoff, and I've referenced it a couple times in podcasts. And I just want to make sure that everyone knows this was not my idea. this is definitely Michael's idea and it's so good. So this is the pitch and I'm not reading it in full but I'm reading it in length. Okay.

The bulk of the first season is said a few years after Return of the Jedi and Mon's last year as Chancellor as she fights for the soul of the Republic with an ascendant Senate faction that wants to make peace with the remnant. With her now Senator daughter as a key figure, basically Mon's conflict is whether to do the right thing and step aside like Washington or succumb to. the temptation to stick around to keep things, quote, on the right track and risk becoming what she fought against. Pause. We've talked about this a lot about this idea of, like, wanting to spend time inside of, like, how did Mon fumble the bag so excruciatingly? And Genevieve O'Reilly, like, watching Mon's later post-rebellion later years, I think would

be incredibly fascinating. So. More or less interesting than a spinoff that just. stars Perrin. Paren's here, though. Peron's obviously in this show. Like, obviously, Perrin. Then I've heard all I need to hear.

It's kicking around. Okay. Resuming from Michael's email. Bell and Clea are now the leads of a unit dedicated to hunting down key imperial leaders, both in the remnant and hiding in the Republic. Pause. This is Joanna again.

So basically, as I think I've mentioned elsewhere, this is basically Michael Fassbender as Magneto Nazi hunting around the globe. but make it Bel and Clea resuming. The twist is that their

primary boss is Dejra Miro due to her being officially blamed for leaking the death start plans and the

general Luther erasure by feckless alliance leaders she was freed and promptly made herself useful

in tracking down some key imps before Clea could get back to set the record straight.

Dedra is of course playing a double game and I love this where she's steering the

unit to pick off her enemies while maintaining enough deniability that Clea can't build the case to arrest her. Pause. This is where being, bring people like Blevin back in, you know, like, what is Blevine up to? Dendra's going to find him and take him off the board. She's going to use,

masquerading as a hero of the rebellion, Dendramero, like, exacting her petty ventures on people sounds delightful to me. Thrilling. Okay. Resuming. Last paragraph. Michael writes, in my head. it would broadly follow the contours of Cannibal,

wherein the season one, Dedra is nearly perfectly hidden to all but Clea. Season 2, Val and Clea go rogue, while the appeasers continue to back DeDra, and season three scenes Dedra

openly defect and take over a segment of the remnant, allowing our heroes to return to the fold and lead the effort to bring her down for good, stunning her immediately

gloating once she's back in prison. End of email, essentially, from Michael. This is just top-tier shit. It's so good that like Michael like can you get thee to a copyright like I just want to make sure that this idea is not stolen from you it is so delicious and uh I we deserve it so this is a Mon political show yeah a Dedra hidden villain show a killing Nazis aka Imperial show which I love and Val and Clea as like uh you know be they girlfriends or not planet hopperous and, you know, bringing justice to an unjust galaxy. Oh, man.

We deserve this. Does Will, will get to make an appearance? Will will, I mean, this is a question. Do you want him to stay true to Trino or is he just like effing his way through the galaxy? Okay. Yeah. That will get us our R rating. Will will get us our R rating.

I think it's really great that Will has found love. Yeah. And has proven loyal inside of the. this beautiful romance, but I really liked the idea of Will having a girl in every port. So I think that would be great. I think that this is absolutely genuinely inspired this idea. And the prospect, you know, in general, we talked about this a lot during like Mando season three. Love to fuck around with the Imperial Remnant.

Love a remnant. Love to understand more about that time period. Anything about like the path toward the first order. still interesting to me as canon that I think would be very useful to explore and expand and flush out as we bridge toward the sequel trilogy. But now I'm going to say to you something specific that we would potentially get inside of that. And I think you were already in. I don't think you could be more in. But if you could, this would be the sentence that got you there.

And here it is. Dejramiro interacting with Brendel Hawks. I just like flushed. It's like. And his... And his pet cat? It's just incredible to contemplate. Yeah.

Oh my God. Bring the Hux family into the mix. I would love to see every generation of the Hux is involved. And I just care a lot about this idea. Tony, take a break. You deserve it. And the good news is you need these characters to age up a little bit because we've got some time to get through. So let these ladies get, you know, let these ladies get, you know, a little bit more time on the clock and then we'll come back. We're not trying to de-age anyone.

We're trying to move forward. We're moving ever forward. Love this. Okay. Great idea, Michael. You just, like, chatteled Stannis Parathian. We're fucking forward, only forward. We marched toward victory, and we marched toward defeat.

We go forward only forward. Worked out fine for him. Mallory, I have this to say, yeah. Go on. Do your duty. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? Zepbound terseptitide may be able to help. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity. Or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off.

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We got a totally real email from a totally real listener named Jeff P. Yeah. Jeff P asks, Mallory, the world demands to know your Survivor 50 casting thoughts. Mike White? Surrey?

The shambling corpses of coach, Ozzie and Colby? Nerd Queen Aubrey? Tell us everything we need to know about why we should be losing our shit about the 50th season of Survivor and the cast that they have assembled here. Dude. First of all, I'd like to thank Jeff P for writing in today.

He said, dimplingly, comma, Jeff P. Just before this very podcast, we were both recording other podcasts. You were recording Prestige TV with the icon legend, Luminary Rob Mahoney. And I was recording an episode of The Pot Has Spoken, with our colleague Riley Mackey and my all-time favorite survivor player, Tyson. Riley and Tyson have a wonderful Survivor podcast here. Would you not say Tyson is the hunter-pence of Survivor? Oh, my God.

Wow. Wow. I think the energy is similar. Holy shit. We broke down the entire season 50 cast. We went person by person, and it was fucking fun. We had a blast. Oh, good.

So we obviously only have a few minutes here to linger on Survivor. If anybody wants to hear more, check out the pod has spoken, which should be, I think, up by the time you're listening to this mailbag. I'll give you my quick takeaways here. Everybody should read Riley McAtee's piece on this on the ringer.com. What a great website. He wrote a wonderful columnist. I think his takeaway was exactly right.

I think he nailed it. I will summarize what Riley wrote, which is basically a lot of thrilling player inclusion. 24 castaways is just astonishing. A lot of thrilling players to see on the list and a lot of interesting players and a lot of players who will probably play a really interesting game together.

However, there is so undeniably no core theme across the cast that I'm a little bit confounded by it. You don't think it's like, and as you know, I am far from an expert and most of my takes come from a Instagram real I saw from Kelly Wentworth and her thoughts on this.

But you don't think it's like half new era, half old guard. I think they said it was going to be a spanning tapestry across time. And then we had season one and season two and then skipped more than a handful of seasons before the next pick.

And then we jumped from season 18 to 32, I think. They're just huge swaths of like missing seasons. So that, I think the, it way over indexes. on recent players to me. So that's just a little bit, I think of like a, that dilutes the, this is a survivor across time. I do think inside we still have the prospect of many interesting playing styles across eras.

And the extra ingredient then of the in the hands of the fans element of this where people have gotten to vote on different aspects of the game, do you want firemaking at the end? Do you want idols, et cetera? That's this fun extra. I have lots of thoughts on in the hands of the fans of the fans. fans on whether or not it's a good idea. I don't believe that I should be trusted to decide how a survivor season is structured. Though I do believe that season 51 should start with a cast people who have never seen the game before. You know how I feel about it. Do it. Do it like a jury.

That's an extra kind of fun element because you have not only playing styles from across time, but then like people don't even know what they're about to confront. They can't count for sure on like a beware advantage will be here, et cetera. So that's interesting. The thing that is missing to me, like this just, I believe, you look at season 40, which was all winners, obviously, winners at war, one of the great, one of the great seasons in Survivor history, iconic, added to the fucking counter, just said it, iconic, genuinely iconic players. Like, it was almost going to be impossible, I think, to match that. I believe that the move would have been the best who never won.

And I think that's close to what happened here, but undermined by the inclusion of two winners. I just don't understand it. I thought Kyle just played like an incredible, I love Kyle. I thought that was incredible. Putting a couple winners in, I don't know why we did that, and there was a chance to do something. And then you don't have Jesse,

I think undeniably one of the fan favorites from recent seasons and also a great embodiment of the, can the best player actually win their season anymore? If not, what does that mean? So that's a little weird to me. However, Mike White is here, and that is just astonishing,

beyond belief, and amazing to me. I can't believe it. And not only that, but we're heavily indexing on David, versus Goliath, which is one of my favorite survivor seasons, the single most exciting thing to me here. Other than just, I got roasted by Tyson and Riley for being as excited as I was about Colby, but as I said to them and we'll say again to you here now, Colby is a very formative part of my awakening. It's a sexual being. Colby is very nice, but also just like the most deeply boring. Also, I just don't need like that first outback season, though.

Like, I just don't need. Coach, I'm excited about it. I don't need Ozzie. Coach I'm excited about it. I don't need that. I don't need this. Christian is the single most exciting player on the list to me, though. He is my... He is my... I just think he was an extraordinary... He's one of the reasons I love David versus Goliath so much, and I just thought he was, like, a genuinely extraordinary player.

And him getting eliminated where he did is, like, one of the great what-ifs and, oh, man, I can't wait to see him get another shot in Survivor History to me. And I think that a lot of players in the modern era who were like, I'm a scholar, I study, I can crunch the numbers, I can do the math, I'm a genius in addition to a fan. I said this on the other pop, but basically they think they're Christian and only Christian is Christian.

He's just like the archetype of a specific type of player to me, and I really hope he wins. Like I will be rooting hard for him. So yeah, it's an interesting, I think like a little, just anecdotally talking to people in my life, I think most people saw the cast and they were like, oh, okay. But also it's season 50, so how could you be anything other than extremely excited? I think people are really excited for, I think Mike White and Surrey are like the two people that people are kind of like most excited to see, right? I think. Your mileage may vary.

And again, I'm winning would be amazing. Amazing. Yeah. And, but, you know, there are some people like, I would take, Jerry apparently was like on the long list and I would take Jerry over Colby any. day of the week, you know. I would take Rob, Rob, Rob, Roshino. I, like, there are, like, people that I would be... Rob not being here is, I think, quite weird. I think there's, like, just like a lot of people that I would take over. And the fact that it's, like, quite heavily loaded in, like, such recent seasons. Again, I really am robbing a bunch of Kelly's takes,

but I, like, I really like how she talks about Survivor. So, anyway, um, no Carolyn, no Jesse, just very, very, very odd. If we're going this heavy on recent seasons, very odd. Okay. So that is, uh, so that is, uh, um, The thing I worry about with Mike White is that he was such like a killer that he's going to be voted out really early. And I just hope that that would be my expectation. So anything other than that would be a thrill. I know. Keep Mike White around. Please. Okay. All right. So that has been Survivor Corner. But please do check out the full podcast. Tell folks where they can buy that again, Marley Rubin. The pod has spoken on the Ringer reality TV podcast feed and YouTube channel. And just listen in general. If you love Survivor, Tyson and Riley make a great pod. It's so fun. That's just Tyson was really on one on this episode. He had takes. I like how he's the best on filtered he is. It's incredible. It's very special. He's the best. There are certain people who are like, I don't need to go back to Survivor. So I will say whatever I want to about Survivor. And like also there's some people like Tyson who are like, I can say whatever I want and they might still ask me back because I'm that. good, that fun to watch on the show. My teaser for the pod is that he referred to multiple selected players as Jeff Probst's

Nepo Babies. Wow. It was incredible. Was Colby one of them? He shared a really interesting Colby Proops story, actually. Great. Can't wait. Okay. We got several, and I only put two in the dock, but we got several questions.

Survivor's Deep Passion of Malarys and one that she has. has brought me into, you know, my, my very, like, basic bitch, shallow takes the survivor. I only have by virtue of the fact that Mallory's, like, watch these seasons. I've tried to watch as much as I could. Had a great time with all the Survivor I've watched. My really good friend, this is actually really, this is a great bridge. My really good friend, Jenny Own Youngs, who co-hosts the Buffy Vampire Slayer podcast, Buffering, one her survivor

league fantasy league which comes with like a physical cup that she showed me on Zoom earlier this week so like are you mad

that you're not in a Survivor Fantasy League and should we start one? Or are you already in one? I'm not but I like that you thought I might be that makes me happy I would do it

I don't know if I should be allowed to do it Oh you're too good? No, I just think I become unbearable. More so than usual. That genuinely sounds fun to me. As you know, I'm no longer invited to participate in fantasy football leagues with dear friends of my

I used to play with. So, yeah. But I would give it a try. I would give it a try. Sounds like a blast. Okay. Speaking of my pal, my pal Jenny, we got a lot of Buffy Vampire Slayer questions from folks. And I will read this one from Alexandra, who said, in a very touching video released this week,

Sarah Michelle Geller, well, this is Emil was said a little while ago. Sarah Michelle Geller told our beloved fern from Skeleton crew, Ryan, Kira Armstrong, that she will be the new Slayer on the Buffy Vampire Slayer reboot. Quick pause. Mallory, what does knowing that Fern from Skeleton Crew is going to be the lead of the new Buffy show due to you, someone who has here to before never seen any of Buffy Vampire Slayer. Yeah. I thought this was.

I have obviously no frame of reference for. any aspect of assessing this. But I was like, that seems sick. That seems great. Because I thought, I thought she was really excellent in Skeleton Crew. And I got, yeah, I got really excited. I was like, oh, how interesting, how neat, how cool, delightful. Did you happen to see this video or you just like read a news story?

I did not. I read a news story. I mean, sorry, is that a weird thing to say? Did you read a news story? Do we not read news stories anywhere? Okay. I read a news story. Did you read it in the trades? Okay.

For fans of Buffy Vampire Slayer or fans of crying, like this is just a really beautiful video to watch like a young actress, like get a really, really cool part and to watch Sarah Michelle Geller, who, you know, played Buffy originally, well, actually, secondarily,

get to be the one to tell her, it's just very, I cried. And then, and then I told Rob to watch it, Rob Mahoney cried. Like, it's really good. Anyway, resuming. Alexander says, speaking of my favorite show of all time,

Buffy, will we finally get a Doctor Who Ask House of our podcast series and Joe introducing Mal to the Slayerverse in 2025. 2025.

It's 2025 right now. I know. Oh. There's some blank spots on the schedule. When does the show, when does the show come out? Oh, probably 2027 would be my guess.

So we've got time. Yeah, we've got time. Yeah. I'm in. I'm in, man. I definitely. I've long as you know considered this a real

a real hole, a real absence in my television education and in general I've always thought, this is probably a thing I should see but knowing how much it means to you, knowing how much you love it, the prospect of getting to share it with you and you getting to like

guide and accompany me through a journey. I mean, should we do what we do, did with Dr. Hu and spend months and months and months watching, rewatching Buffy and then never record about the current season. Yeah, the current season. That sounds great. Sounds great.

That could be another countdown. Some of the people really love that we did. Um, okay. Uh, I mean, we, we talked about the specials. Um, okay. So that's on my 2025 bingo card is to do a bucket list is to like start. We don't, we're not going to finish. But we, I would like us to dip a toe before.

I'm fucking in, dude. And the first season. ordinarily I would have a skip the first season, but you're not going to let me do that. I know. The first season is a shorty. It was a mid-season replacement show. So it's a shorthy first season. So that's just something to think about.

How many episodes are we talking? The first season is only 12 episodes. Oh. Oh. Late work. Oh, yeah. We can do that. Okay.

We can do that. Season one before the end of 2025. I'm I'm in okay lock it in baby as we promise we're going to get to a lot of the last a few or I will say a few lot the last of us questions from you guys before we do that we have one last question is kind of the classic house of our mailbag question we've gotten versions of it over the years because Mallory Stad is such an icon and a legend and there's a maybe like a slight twist on it this this time around so we're going to do what we can to answer this in a fresh and exciting way.

Maggie said, my question is about a story Mal mentioned a while ago about her dad filling a bookshelf with books for her to discover on her own as a kid. I love this idea and think about it often and hope to do this for my daughter when she's old enough to be reading on her own. Can you recommend some deep cuts outside the obvious or some just some must-haves? Need to make sure I'm covering all the bases on my quest to raise a kid on the right side of the rebellion. All right.

Love it. So that's from Maggie. What a lovely email, Maggie. I know. I mean, Mallory, you. Do you want to tell a story about your dad just in case folks are new to the pod? We've been getting a lot of emails recently from people who are like, I've been listening to you since the latest season of Yellow Jackets.

I'm like, that's so recent. So welcome. Welcome to our home. Welcome to all of the people who had a... Wait, didn't you cover the show on another feed once experience with us? Welcome. So anything you want to say? Sure.

Yeah. So I will quickly recap something I have shared many times before and usually end up weeping about. My dad's the fucking best. Barry Rubin, legend icon. The two people who got the legend icon on this episode are Rob Mahoney and Barry Rubin. Feels right. Feels right to me. And I would say Tyson and Hunter parents.

Exactly. I mean, talk about a murder's row. Yeah. I'm out Rushmore. So my parents. divorce they split when I was very young I promise the story's not going to be as long as that starting point makes it seem I was born at a hook hospital um and at my dad's house my dad has books everywhere you know he's got the kinds of bookcases that are just like stuff right like how do you

manage books on the side on top of the book yeah yeah it's it's wonderful yeah and in my room at my dad's house when I was very young, he put just a little chef, filled it with books, and it was just there. And it was filled with a lot of genre books, but not exclusively genre fiction. I'll stick with genre stuff today. Or will I? And it was always, because I was a very late developing reader, like really struggled to read when I was in elementary school. I was like not till fifth grade that I became a confident reader. I was slow to learn. And, but I always loved stories and loved talking about them. And my dad, uh, put this book, this book shop in my room and put a bunch of his favorites and things that he, he loved there for me, but never like forced them on me, never said, this is one you have to read now. They were just always there waiting for me to crack open. And I always used to like love looking at them and seeing all of the different veins and lines and the spines and thinking about all the times that clearly he had read them, you know? And one of the fun things getting this question that I was

thinking about. It's just like that my dad, my dad is like still doing this. It's just so incredible to me. I love him. He's the best. Like he still is just sending me and giving me books all the time. Oh yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, he knows about my book club with my college pales. So every now and then he's like, when are you guys going to read like sotweed factor? Every now and then he's like, I've got an actual recommendation, but mostly it's just like he'll come visit and he'll just like leave a book. You know? Like the last time he was here, I was just like, there was just a little stack of books waiting when he left. the past. He's great. And I've told you the story before about the copy of Dune that has his inscription in it that like I just opened like a box of my stuff and when I was unpacking my college dorm and like there was. He's the best. So I decided, you know, to answer this by giving three actual examples of books that were on the Barry Rubin bookshelf that I want to be clear.

I do not think fill the deep cuts outside the obvious parts of the prompt. but I do think Phil the must-haves part of the prompt and are ones that I, you know, talk about on the pods, I think a little bit less frequently than the dunes and watership downs and hobbits and cat's cradles of the worlds, all of which were also on the shelf. Cats cradle was on the shelf? It was.

There's a lot of Vonnegut on the shelf. I would say an outsized portion of Vonnegut compared to how many other authors are represented. I'm just sorry, can you remind me how old you were when he gave you that shelf? I have to ask him if you. knew the year, I would say it probably popped up late in, like, in middle school. Okay. Probably. Okay. Um, and I think I was really like beginning to spend time with it in high school, which was when I became like a serious reader. Like high school was when I, we would go on Outer Banks vacation. So I would be like, I'm staying home today to finish this book. Like, that did not start happening for

me until high school, really. Um, yeah, I was looking at a picture of it. I was like, there's a habit. There's watershed. There's watershed down. Like, this is just, this is great. All right. So here are the three I'm going with. Again, not deep cuts, but definitely must-haves that are not doing Watership Down things I talk about all the time. I do talk about this one, actually, quite a bit. Nightfall and other stories, the Isaac Asimov collection. This is a collection of 20 short stories. It's one of the first things I pulled off the shelf, and I cannot overstate just for me personally the significance of reading Nightfall for the first time and like how that unlocked something in my mind about what science fiction can do and the way to explore.

It's just it's a masterwork when it comes to exploring perspective and scale. It's fantastic. My next nomination is the left hand of darkness. Ursula Kela Gwynne, my stepmom, Debbie, legend icon, there you go. We have our fifth. I think she would probably sub in Earthsea here, but left hand of darkness was on the shelf and EarthC wasn't. So here we are.

You know, this is just, this is obviously a masterwork, but as we talked about on another mailbag recently, I think, we talk about the Ursula masterworks maybe a little less frequently than some of the masterworks. And this is just one of the most stylistically inventive stories, you know, the guidebook structure, it's, it will unlock a lot for like the creative mind of a young reader. And in terms of the theme, the themes that it explores just like, you know, the way that this, you know, the way that this. novel, examines exposure to different cultures that one might consider alien, the role of sex and gender in our lives,

how we come to understand and connect to each other, it is exquisite and timeless. So that would be my second. And then, again, I would like to be clear, these are not deep cuts. These are all Titanic, tomes of consequence, but I don't actually talk about this when I talk about the dad book recommendations as much, and this is probably the single most important thing in my

formative years as a reader other than Tolkien with my dad, the Canterbury Tales. Like, my dad is such a chaucer obsessive and we'll just recite verse from memory kind of routinely for fun. But this as like a study in language. I think if you have a kiddo who is interested in reading and writing and storytelling and the way that stories are like passed out and shared, this just has to be there. It has to be. Have I done my party trick for you where I can recite the prologue in Middle English of the Canterbury Tales? Okay. You've been holding out on me. That's something that my high school English teacher offered is like extra credit if we could come in and recite the prolog in Middle English who got extra credit. So I learned it in Middle English. Yeah.

I'm waiting. Won that offer with a sure so to the draught of marshes, perth, to the rose and bathered every rain and switched lique. I wish for virtue and genre does the floor. We're not going to do the whole thing. Holy shit. But I want to do it for your dad. That's who I want to impress with that. Let me tell you. I feel like this has all been building up to me. He's already an admirer, but that would really... Press your dad that I don't really steal it. Canterbury Tales. Canterbury Tales is a really fun one, too. Canterbury Tales, actually, everything you mentioned really feeds into sort of what I want to address here, which is not necessarily specific titles though I have a few, but like sort of my twin, as I was thinking about this problem, my twin ideas about the kind of books, kinds of book I think are good to give to children. Yeah. And this might be just like my, my, I grew up in the 80s mentality sort of thing. But like, I think a lot of parents these days, and again, I'm not a parent.

I don't know if you know this, but I'm not a parent. And I'm not judging any parent who does this. But from what I've noticed, parents are certainly more afraid than the, we raised them feral parents of the 80s of like allowing their children to spend time in darker stories. Yeah. So I think I think not being afraid to let your kid experience like darkness and danger inside of the stories that they consume. So something like the fairy tale book collections that. that I had growing up were like the original brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson, the unsanitized, there's like blood dripping out of the shoe, like, you know, and Cinderella sort

of version of those stories. And I think like, I think it's good to expose children to like, you know, danger and darkness and mature themes and stuff like that. Like, I was asking you to your age because I was like, Cat's Cradle, I wouldn't like give to like a small child. But like middle school kid, yeah, maybe I'd give Cats Cradle. But, like, you know, people are always asking, like, is my child the right age for X? And I would just say that, like, your child often knows, you know, like your child often knows, you know, if something is too scary for them or if something is too, the language is too mature. I feel like they will, you know, again, I'm not a parent. But, like, that's been my experience, like, you know, with my nephews and other people.

And something I will say about my nephews, something my sister has done. so well. I don't remember if I told you the story, but we were at this like hot springs. I did tell you the story, but I'm not sure if I told it on the pot. We were at this hot springs over the summer or like a couple months ago. And my sister and her husband had like gone to get massages and I was watching the boys and they were just sitting there reading. She's like, oh my God, this is my dream. She thought I was their mom. She's like, good job, mama. Like, I can't believe this is my dream. I have my kids reading at the pool. And I was just like, I get no credit for this. But I do think it's really sick that my nephews just want to like read wherever they are. I think that's It's very cool. And so this part, I will give credit to my sister. In addition to that sort of like darkness and danger, which I do think that kids are more capable of experiencing than we give them credit for. And it's different from like some of the actual like nasty shit that exists on the internet that I think kids should be protected from in ways that they often are not. Is point of view. And we talked about this and we talked, you know, this will help us bridge over to the last of us in a second.

but like we talked about this a lot when we talked about um p ov like yeah something my sister has done a really good job with she is two you know like brought up two white boys in in you know modern america and she gave them a ton of books uh with girl main characters and non-white main characters and this is just like a concentrated effort to just be like hey man like why don't you spend time the the biggest gift that stories can give us is empathy and if you're talking about like being on the right side of the rebellion. I think empathy is so key to that, caring about the perspective of the people around you who are not like you and trying to think of how can I think about their perspective, how can I help? How can we all help each other? And I think empathy is so key to that.

And so I think, you know, this idea, this idea I hear a lot of like, my kid won't be interested in that. It's too old-fashioned or my kid won't be interested in that. It's a girl book and they're a boy. A lot of, again, I'm not a parent. You can, you can disregard me. I'm not a parent. But like a lot of, a lot of that I think is parental dependent. Because I've seen, I've seen parents who, who said that to me. And they're like, well, this is not, none of their peers are reading this. So, why would they read this? And then I've seen parents, like, my sister and a few other people who are like, yeah, it's important to me. So to do it with your kid, you can sort of guide your kid along that path. That just depends, like, how active you want to be on that friend. And there's no judgment on that because, like, we don't all have the same number of hours in the day. in terms of like our time that we can dedicate to, you know, doing exactly what we want to do as parents and stuff like that. So all that's the same. Here are some titles I would recommend. I would say something like Bridgetaerabithia, which like traumatized me when I read it, but was like really, really important for me to read at a young age. The aforementioned classic fairy tales that are unsanitized, I think are a really, really good idea.

there's a graphic novel called Bone that I love that is so fun and exciting, but also a little scary and dangerous. I would say mouse by Art Spiegelman is an incredible graphic novel that is about the Holocaust, but also about mice. So maybe not like the smallest children among you, but like that is like a really, really good text. I think also is always worth thinking about when you're looking for deep cuts. It's always like what are the classics? Everyone, everyone will give you good night moon or where the wild things are, these other like children's books. But like, okay, my kid love where the wild things are.

What else did Mory Sendak do? Should I get them in the night kitchen? Should I get them outside over there? Like there's just like a, like what are the deeper cuts on an author? My child already responds to that I can get and to sort of fill out the bookshelf that way. something fun like Everett gory so like the gashly

gashly crumb tinies or like you know all that like sort of gory gothic but like make it fun and childlike murdery stuff I think is really fun to think about

and then in terms of like a house of our core a fantasy epic that does not get the love it deserves is the Chronicles of Prudame by Lloyd Alexander which includes

the black which was turned into a famously flopped, Disney movie. But this is like, it doesn't get talked about the way that, you know, the Lion, the Wish and the Wardrobe, or like a number of other fantasy series. But I think it's like right up there in terms of like quality. So it is something that I would recommend.

But like, yeah, don't be afraid to, you know, watching my nephews get really into like Little House in the Prairie or Anna Green Gables or all these other like female people. POV stories was just really exciting to me. And it's just like, you can do that. It's not, girls read boy books all the time. And all of this is sort of like messy and whatever we decide we wanted to be. So that's what I was saying about that. Love it. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? Zepbound terseptitide may be able to help. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity,

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may help reduce the frequency of minor digestive discomfort, which includes gas, bloating, rumbling, and abdominal discomfort. Which brings us to the last month. Let's just touch on a few, mostly ones that made us laugh. Because we spent a long time talking about the last one finale, but we sure did. I think I want to talk first about the most important one, which comes from Lindsay. Lindsay says, where have all the good bras gone? And where is all the goss? Did bras survive the mushroom apocalypse?

Ellie has no bra on when Dina checks her wounds in the dressing room unless Dina knows a graceful way to get a bra off with a T-shirt. And I watched a play-through part two and I'm not going to say what happened. but there's an iconic moment from the game that certainly does not seem to feature a bra either. How is Ellie fighting infected and avenging Joel with her girls flying free? On another note, Jesse is obviously not a fucking doctor and obviously has no fucking sense about wound care because why else would he wrap Dina's wound on the outside of her pants? I am not a doctor or medical worker, but I am a human who has wounds to care for, and that deplorable bit of bandaging looks almost useless. What are my favorite emails from ever gotten? Yeah.

Where of all the good bras gone? Where is all the gauze? But like set to like, yeah. Where have all the flowers gone? Yeah. Where have all the good bras gone? Yeah. Long time.

There we go. What? Okay. Brawes. The first thing that I would do in the apocalypse, mushroom or otherwise, is stop wearing a bra. The first thing that I would do.

So my response is not the same as Lindsay's. I'm not like, where have all the bras gone? I'm like, thank the old gods and the new alike that we are free. Of clasps and underwires. Not everyone has this luxury, Mallory. Totally fair. Totally fair. The first thing I do when I get home,

bras off. Not that I go out that much, but on the days they do, bras off. So I would be... Hard pants and bras are gone. Anything with like a tight waistband or an underwriter. It's done.

A hook or a button gone. Yes. No hooks or buttons while I'm home. None. So I would be thrilled. Here's what I assume actually happened. though. A bra is not a wax trucker jacket. A bra is not a sturdy denim pant. I believe that all of the underwire in bras the worldwide probably need it, like take it as a supply for some.

Joanna, how did they get the fucking metal they needed to restore the fence in Jackson? They melted down all the underwear. They melted down all the bras. That's how. One can simply use a sports bra that has no underwire. And that I might be open to personally, actually. I actually find sports sports bar is terribly. That's a whole other podcast. But, you know, I don't exercise. So it's also not really a part of my life. The bra is an interesting, we're on a couple extremes here because on the one hand, you have the metal, like the precious material that would probably need it for other aspects of apocalyptic living. And then you have, you know,

a lot of like delicate materials that maybe 25 plus years into the apocalypse just haven't lasted. So I'm sure there are plenty of people who are like, God damn, I'm where's my bra? I need that support. But I'm not surprised that the bras are hard to come by. How about you? Where are you on Brow Watch

in 2009 in the Cortostops Apocalypse? I have questions about a lot of things in terms of clothing and what clothing has survived and stuff like that. There's some stuff. And this has been critique this season is that like yes everything looks a little worn but like everything's a bit more fashion forward this season than it was in season one where everything was a bit more utilitarian

and I talked to the costume designer about this a little bit but like the idea of like what is gale wearing gale is like a fashion plate inside of jackson and sort of like so what fashion has survived and what are undergarming I'm actually more concerned about the underwear supply uh we had to be like sewing new underwear in the mushroom apocalypse because, you know, on the supply front, using like old cloths as like adult diapers or something, like. Thanks for that. I don't know. I am, yeah, you know, there was a critique this season of like everyone's hair looks too good. Yeah. I saw an Instagram really the other day of three women on a podcast spinning out. out because Caitlin Dever's Abby is wearing lip gloss in the finale.

And they were like, what the fuck is Abby doing wearing lip gloss? At the end of the finale. And I was like, okay, yeah, fair point. Okay, everyone be less groomed in the mushroom. But isn't a lot of lip gloss? I'm not a, I'm not a, I'm not a, a cloth maker, a scientist, a chemist, a cosmetician. Yeah, yeah. Isn't a lot of flip gloss made of like a natural, you know, like,

like wax and like beeswax and stuff like that. I went to look. Of course she did. It's not, it's not quite a Maliborubin I have aquifer on situation. It is like pink and borderline sparkly. You know what I mean? It's a little like, you know, bubble gummy. And I don't begrudge Abby that, but you know, listen, we'll have to spend more time with that in season three. Okay. Speaking of supplies. Do we have, wait, do we talk about the gauze, the good Jesse gauze enough? Do we have any further commentary on Jesse's ability to wrap a wound? I mean, I have to just simply guess that they didn't want to take the pants off of, you know, their actress or they could have done the tremors route, which is like you sort of like rip up the pant leg and sort of like keep the other one intact.

But like, you know, in the vein of where of all the good jeans gone. maybe you just like only we need to like so one arrow slit versus like you know slit up the entire pant leg yeah because he did he jess he tore the pan i'm thinking back in this well as you know to connect to our next question in terms of just what supplies were taken what they have not a lot of clothing that they packed right they're like you know winter coats will be blankets and everything's multi-purpose so that pair of pants is precious completely destroying it would probably be like very damp i was glad that that there was some commentary on the morning breath and trying to correct it, but everyone fucking stinks for sure. So like at that point. But I was, I kind of,

I also found it utterly perplexing that Jesse put the bandage in the outside of the pant, though I wonder if, um, it's strategy, it's tactics. Like I cut into this precious pair of pants. So in addition to tending to your wound,

I need to bind the garment that I have compromised. Uh, mostly I just think, It is really great, actually, that Captain Wyoming, St. Jesse, is not good at all. Bad at field medicine. On the one hand, you can think of it like, oh, it's just a temporary fix. But as we're about to talk about, it takes a long time to get from Jackson to Seattle. So, like, Jesse's like, we need to take her back.

She needs actual medical care. Yes, it's going to take us like a month to get there. Okay, so this is what John wrote. My biggest question, these latest Seattle episodes of Ellie and Dina, is what are they doing for food? In Jackson, the food issue is understandable. There are crops, livestock, and a full kitchen. Human bones, if you want them, for arts and crafts, whatever you might want. A delicious compost made from the dead infected. Roasting mushrooms galore. You know? Okay. Now that you've left Jackson with not much more than a backpack, I don't understand

what the food options are. I think at one point in the theater, they opened up a small supply of some jerky. That makes sense. But how much jerky did they pack? Are they living off just Jersey at this point. Pause. When I read this first time, I was like, they're more jerky than men now. Okay, resuming. Google Maps has a walk from Jackson to Seattle taking about 40 days. Let's say, let's say, lonely shimmer horseback, cuts that in half. That's 20 days of travel where you need to eat each day, which cuts into whatever food you're managed to back. Cuts into, I would say eliminates, but sure. Okay. Even assuming you can forage your way to Seattle, somehow picking wild berries and mushrooms along the way.

Once you get to, I'm not eating a mushroom. Once you get to Seattle. Not the fucking mushroom apocalypse. You're not. No. Once you get to Seattle, I'm not seeing a lot of food options. The wolves, WLF, Sarah Fyce, they presumably all have infrastructure for farming,

etc. We already saw the kitchen that Isaac is familiar with. Yeah. Why did we? Ellie and Dita have none of them. What are they eating? They have a lot of energy.

They are burning off every day, trying to elude multiple groups, trying to kill them. Plus, Dina is eating for two. Now I've been. What a thoughtful question. Thank you, John. Welcome to Forage Corner with our bad baby John.

Boy, this is a great question. Yeah, the energy, they have a lot of energy they are burning off every day trying to elude multiple groups, trying to kill them, plus Dina is eating for two. Also, the energy required for post-apocalyptic sex. They need calories. This is just a great question. Okay. When they are readying, when Dina and Ellie are readying to hit the road in episode three. food was a focus, a light focus, but a focus.

Canabines, a couple can of discussion. Right. We noted that Ellie had a few cans that I can't imagine we're safe to eat at that point. But just needs them us. Three-ish cans on the ground. Okay. Dina's provisions list. Because Dina is, of course, there to say you haven't really packed properly or thought about what you need at all.

So I went back and I paused on the provision. Visions list. I'm on the list. I look at the food visions list. We can only be who we are. And here is what it says. Quote, food. Parentheses.

High protein, non-perishable. In parentheses. Actually, those are both in their own parenthetical, high protein and then non-perishable. Beef jerky, which we will come back to. Trail mix. Trail mix is listed. Huge.

Which I love. I have said many. times. I love tromics and I love jerky, so I feel that I could survive in the apocalypse based on that alone. You have told me you don't think I would last a day in response to that. What would you do without your candy supply? Probably worry a little bit less often about needing a root canal, honestly. Honestly, I'd love to see you in a in a life where you don't have as much access to caffeine. I think that would be interesting to know. It would be a caffeine and sugar. It would be a struggle. It would really be tough. Okay. Then,

on the provisions list right after that, after trail mix, there are three words that I cannot read. I do not know if that is because they are actually, like, illegible, they're a little too blurry or because I need glasses and they're only blurry and illegible to me. It looks to me like it's possible. There are vague shapes that seem like it could say oats, turnip, and berries, but I don't think that can possibly be right because they're not taking berries.

There's just no way. Those aren't turnips? That doesn't fit the non-time. I don't. It looked like it could be the word turnip. I don't know. I don't know what those three words are. I'm sorry, but there are three more words there are.

So presumably that means there are other food items that they pack. It also says on the provisions list, quote, frying pan, cup, bowl, spork, which means, clearly based on that, they are preparing to acquire game, meat in the field, right? And cook it. Okay. So there's a little bit more of a strategy here for finding food on the road than maybe we had gotten to see. Also, we must note, of course, that Seth, Joanna's favorite character. The one I most identify with, the one where I'm like, that's me on screen.

In the saddlebag, the saddlebags that he loaded the supplies, he noted specifically, granted he did say two weeks worth, so only two weeks worth, but hard tax. So they have more food there from Seth. Okay. However, despite all of that, two things are still true. One, in the show, we have established canon of how hungry you are after a road trip. When Ellie and Joel got to Jackson in the first place in season one, remember the way that Ellie was housing that meal and said, it's been a while since we had a proper meal. Actually, I don't think I've ever had a proper meal. This is fucking amazing.

And Joel's like we do all right. It was very sad. You're hungry on the road when you're traveling at that distance over that many days. You are. So they should be ravenous. And the tin of beef jerky that they are gna's great in the music store. Like I'll go, I'm going to make us a beef jerky. The beef jerky covering the morning breath, the important follow-up question of, is that better?

Personally, I would say yes, it is. But to each their own. A little peppery? Exactly. I mean, well, if you've got a peppery jerky, you're living. I mean, you're thriving. You are thriving. The fact that they are not more actively pursuing food in Seattle is,

a, it's a puzzler. It is. And, you know, we know, obviously that it's not just that Isaac is a culinary enthusiast with his preferred saucepan. As we discussed on our finale pod, our guy has Johnny Walker Blue just sitting there on his desk. So, like, they're stocked. They're stocked. I don't think this is a spoiler because it's very clear that from everything in the setup of season two and just things the creators have said that we'll be spending a lot of time with the wolves and the seraphites alike in season three and clearly spending time in their respective dwellings. So without going into any detail, I will just say, a detail about the plot around. And I would just say, like, when we get to glimpse some of the food that the seraphites are working with in the game, looks fucking delicious.

And also, an organic lifestyle. I would say the question of the land. The question of supplies and who has them and who gets them and who, you know, blah, is key to the story of season three as well. So, yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I actually don't know is what is hardtack? It's like a cracker. Yeah. I always think of it as Lembass bread even though it's not, but that's what I always think of Hardtack. I feel the stomach of a man. How many of you have? Whatever I've ever seen Hardtack right now, I'm like, oh, lemba's bread. Okay. Yeah. Cool. Okay. I'm not going to read the last question specifically. I just want to actually do a, you know, we're almost out of here. I just want to do like a sort of blanket question for you because

the last of us finale aired Sunday. We didn't have a chance to listen to the official pot beforehand. We didn't have a chance to like see what people thought of it before and because we pre-recorded.

Have you, what have the finale reactions that you've been able to absorb in the last few days? How are they sort of sitting with you? Do you have any like rebuttals that you would like to make

to people who might have put out thoughts that you disagree with or have Have you heard some POVs that change your opinion of the finale in any way? Or sort of like, how has that discourse been hitting you? Yeah. No, I mean, I just, you know, as a general rule, I'm like not interested in trying to convince people to agree with me about a thing.

I think that I would say that the finale seems divisive, right? And that there are. I would say even more it feels genuinely with love unpopular. and less, certainly people seem to like it way less than we liked it. Yeah, I have a number of people in my life who seemed quite high on it and fond of it, who pals are family members who I talked to about the show who seem to like it a lot. So my personal experience has not been that like everybody is down on it, but certainly, it's certainly that I've also confronted plenty of people who are not, as you said,

not as high on it as we were. I think the interesting thing that really seems to be central to the discussion at the end of the season is the structure. Like the structure for the adaptation, timing, the length, the volume of time we spent with Ellie and Dina in Seattle. The decision to ultimately, obviously, tons of adaptive changes still inside of the season, but broadly to adhere to the structure of the game and then go back to. Abby. Abby's days with Seattle day one. You know, it's funny because you mentioned on our finale pod that you got a text from our dude, the crank daddy, like, wait what? And I did get some texts like that for people when they watched. When we get, to be clear, we get like Abby, day one, people are like, when is this day one of what? What am I watching here? Yeah. I don't know if you

heard that from more people, but I had a couple people tell me about that. Just a couple. But yeah, so I think the question of structure and like, it's interesting because, I don't know, I think, I've seen some discussions, like, and some comps to the House of the Dragon season two conclusion in terms of like where we end. A lot of build up to what, yeah. And what we then are left for a long time waiting for.

And I think that debating whether maintaining the game structure made sense for TV is an interesting discussion. and, you know, I think people obviously can disagree on that and interpret that differently. And I think that's a fascinating thing to consider and assess. It doesn't feel the same to me as what happened with House of the Dragon, though. I will say that because, like, I think that the, in general, yes, we are in an era, the streaming wars peak TV era where television shows take a really long time to make.

And we are waiting. The seasons are shorter and shorter. The seasons are shorter. We're waiting longer. And so without question, that has a bearing on how they're received. How could it not? Right. If you're waiting two, two and a half, three years to be back with those characters.

And obviously that was something that was on the last of us creative team's mind in terms of something like, as we discussed a lot of the time earlier in the season, moving up the clarity about. That's backstory and motivation, for example. Dragon, a show that I broadly, as you know, enjoyed quite a bit, but certainly we both had some notes on how the season concluded was just so clearly a, we are building up to a thing that actually happens next. Like, right away in the story,

and it's just not going to happen for a long time because there weren't enough episodes and we wait two to three years for it. That's different to me than this, you can again, I think it's totally valid to debate whether sticking to the, we do day one, day two, day three in Seattle from L.A's perspective. And now we go run it back day one day two, day three from Abby's perspective makes as much sense in the TV world. I think to be clear, if that had not been the choice they made just as many people would be unhappy about not doing that. Right? That's just kind of like the world we live in, I think undeniably. Genuinely damned if you didn't. It's really tough. 100%. But I think this is like not the same as we now have to wait two years for Gullet. It's like, this is the way the story was originally structured to then go back to Abby and that is what we're doing. So I think the questions about how much the story was compressed to your point are a little bit different than that. I mostly agree

with you, but a slight nuance I would put to it is that like in both cases, there is a sizable, though I don't even know if it's majority, percentage of the of the viewership that knows where the story goes next. And so has their overall? thoughts and opinions about where was the right place to end the season. Yeah. You know, this is a somewhat natural breaking point in the story, of course.

But, you know, something that Rob and I talked about a lot on the prestige episode that we recorded this week was sort of about this idea of like, when was the right place to end it? Would this, would it have eased some of this tension to have a longer season

and more space? Like, could you have done some more of that Abby stuff if you had more room to work with or even just inside of that last episode did it feel a bit bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, rushed because we were only dealing with a seven episode season. So, you know, like in terms of structure, in terms of a place for an ending, and then everyone at home has their own opinions about like, well, they should have just given us gullet or they should have just given us this or, you know, like, because they know what comes next. Versus like when you think about thrones, I was actually,

I was talking to Seppan Wall about this because he was asking me for the piece that he was writing. Alan Zeppewal, what a genius will ask me anytime he has a question about Game of Thrones, we'll text me. And so he's like, wouldn't it be accurate to say it was one season one book for Thrones? And I was like up to a point it was. And then it got messy because of not just like adaptive changes, but also like the way in which George splits the story. And that's a similar thing where like George in his book series splits his characters across books. and that something simply the HBO adaptation could do.

You couldn't adapt Feast and then dance because you would be too long without certain characters. And so they had to start like mishing and mashing the story in order to make sure that like, you know, we know what Amelia Clark is up to or whatever. So these are adaptive choices that need to be made. And so I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, really liked this season a lot. I really like talking to you about it. I'm much higher on it than some of our colleagues seem to be. But like, I, I, and I am actually like quite optimistic for season three. Oh, yeah. It bums me out to what has happened with some of the discourse around the show. And this to your point sense of consensus that, that it was disappointing when I don't think that's actually the case anecdotally, from one of the show. And this to your point sense of consensus that, that it was disappointing. It was disappointing when I don't think that's actually the case, uh, from have experienced the world. Anyway. Yeah. Highs, highs. High, high, highs in this season. I don't think the finale was the best episode of the season. Oh, no. By kind of a sizable stretch for me, but I am impatient and excited for

season three and the last of us. Same. Well, impatient is a tough thing to be with with these properties, obviously, because we take, it takes well. I'm like, I'm definitely interested in the alternate history where the Abbey and Ellie days are just mixed and told at the same time. Yeah. And I, we talked about this. I can't honestly remember probably in the spoiler section at the time, like at the beginning of the season when the Abby, some of that Abby clarity about her father was moved up. My assumption at the time was that that meant that would be what was happening. Right, right, right. Actually. That we would get a turn of Caitlin Dever. Yeah, exactly. And it was, it was the fact that Caitlin Dever was listed as a guest star. that made us wonder like, oh, is she not a lead this season? Yeah.

So I think that version is, you know, potentially a really great one. I think that the like bold, inventive nature of how the game is structured, I certainly understand the impulse to try to do that here too. What does it mean for season three in terms of like, think that the stuff will get with the people who we know will be featured is probably going to be great. I have very high hopes for it as well. You know, what does it mean for how long we're waiting to be back with certain other characters? No idea. So that's an interesting thing to think about, too. We're not just talking about, well, the wait to season three. Like, maybe we're talking about the wait

till like season four for certain things. And so that's where people, I think, like, yeah, I get it. It can be, it can be really hard. And I don't, I'm not implying it's only about like, oh, well, how long are we waiting for things that people have notes on? Obviously, that's not the case. But it's tricky. But it's part of it. It's part of it because, you know, and again, Rob brought up a really good thing because, you know, an end of a season that doesn't feel like an end of a season or feels like you're like, oh, is that where we're ending sort of question that we talked about recently that really frustrated us was Squid Game. But as Rob pointed out, like, we're getting the conclusion of that story just a few months later. Like, if season two

and three had been shot concurrently, and we were getting season three, The Last of Us, like, soon. But, you know, again, like, budgetarily, logistically, digital effects-wise, people's schedules. Like, there's, you know, we're living in a different era, but it does present challenges on the storytelling front. And audiences are just so, like, you know, it's our luxury that because this is our job, as part of our job, we're like, let's rewatch everything before every season. And it is our job. And it is our job. job to help people reorient themselves as we remind them what happened in previous season. So like, you know, the job security, I guess, in this new TV model, but like it can be disorienting for

people who are like, are used to watching, taking their stories a bit more casually. So the last of us, Star Wars, Buffy, books, Survivor, baseball, what more could you ask for? It's a house of our spring mailbag. We'll be back next week with a smorgasbord. Some stuff. content. I'm hoping it all pans out. I'm quite excited for everything. Thank you to Malie Rubin. Thank you to Joanna Robinson. You're welcome. Thank you to the whole team that's working on the show today. Arjuna Raqqa Pall, our bud, the best. John Richter is here. Jesse Lopez is here. Jomey a dinner around on the social. And if I missed anyone else who touched this pod and helped it be what it is. I apologize. I will thank you next time. Thank you to the bad babies for your great emails. And we will see you soon. Bye.

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