House of R - 'The Vampire Lestat’ Episode 2 Deep Dive

Episode Date: June 16, 2026

Mal and Jo dive deep into ‘The Vampire Lestat’ Episode 2! They discuss everything from the complicated relationship between Lestat and Gabriella to how the show is different from the book so far! Plus, they have a big announcement! (00:00) Intro(02:48) Big announcement(08:25) Opening Snapshot(29:20) Deep dive(01:47:41) Book spoilers Explore the exclusive collection at ⁠Target.com.⁠ orioles.com/houseofr Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Mallory RubinProducers: Carlos Chiriboga and Scott LeeStudio Production: Jacob Cornett and ​​Jamie YukichSocial: Jomi AdeniranAdditional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

welcome back to another listat episode of House of Arr, I'm Jordan Robinson, and we excuse me, it's Mallory Rubin. Oh, the little wee homie. Are you enjoying this exclusive fan experience? I think you know I am. Hello. This is the Vampire Listat episode two. Mallory is wearing normal clothes. I have become more unhinged, and this is what you can expect from our season of coverage of the Vampire Listat. Can I see you through these glasses? Not really, but we're going to do our best. Commitment to content and to your deep and abiding passion

for Lestad and for the vampire lore in general. The question is, and it's on everyone's mind, will you for the finale do the entire podcast and fangs? We'll see. I did a trial run of it for our D&D campaign that we did and there were some issues.

You have a few weeks to file them down. To refine the process. You'll be able to see the fangs in the thumbnail. But for now, it's not part of the podcasting experience. We're going to get to a fangless, yet very bloody and vampirey, deep dive into episode two, plus a very exciting announcement right after this.

This episode of House of R is presented to you by Target. For 30 years, Pokemon has shown that adventures are better together, and Target is calling all trainers to the celebration. That's because there's something for every era of fan in the Pokemon and Target limited time collection. Thought you found them all after the first drop? Think again. Drop two just landed featuring life-size Pokemon puzzles and an instant print digital camera. The entire collection is in store and online, so check it out now.

Explore now at Target.com. Visit BetMGM Casino and check out the newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. BetMDM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you,

Peace contact connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor, free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Okay, quick program reminders, to justify the purchase of this coat, we will be covering the vampire list at every single week. Yes. This is episode two. We've got five more weeks to go. Very exciting. We've got another Nolan episode that we are recording tomorrow.

We were trying to keep the guest a secret, but I guess the Midnight Boy is just just drawing. wrapped it on their pod. So Eric Voss, unless something happens, our pal Eric Voss of New Rocks will be joining us. Crossover event. I know. We're really, really excited for that. We've long wanted to have Eric on the pod. And then House of the Dragon is here. It's time. It's time. Talk to Thrones on Sunday night with CR and then the deep dives on Tuesday. And these vampire list out episodes will be coming out in the middle of those is sort of the current plan. So Supergirl around the corner. Busy summer ahead. We're having a blast. That's not all we're doing in summer.

Okay, we teased, we hinted. And now we can share. Mallory Rubin is returning home to Baltimore, and she's taking all of us with her. My wildest dreams are coming true. House of Our Night at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, folks. We can officially announce, I will repeat, House of Our Night at Oriole Park at Camden Yards this summer, Thursday, August 20th. against the New York Yankees House of Our Night at

Oriole Park at Camden Yards. So join us. We're doing a pregame live show. Then you can hang out with us in the Pure Wager Pavilion during the game to watch the O's take on once again, we repeat The New York Yankees.

How do you have them once? Oh, man. So when are tickets going on sale? Thanks for asking. Tickets go on sale tomorrow. Tuesday, June 16th, 10 a.m. Eastern out here that's 7 a.m. Pacific as I understand it. Get online. We're going to have the information on social on the ad house of our pod handles. You'll be able to find it there.

Orioles.com slash house of R. We have our own URL.com. slash house of R. You will be able to find the special event ticket for our pregame live pod and the in-game watchalong at the Pure Wager Pavilion. Come hang with us. And guess what? there's another little special tree because I'm throwing the first pitch. Yeah, this wasn't in the copier, so I wasn't sure if we were announcing it. But Mallor Rubin is throwing out the first pitch of an Orioles game against, once again, the New York Yankees. But more importantly, the Baltimore Orioles. That's right.

Are you going to, like, put some old bay in your mitt in order to sort of like, you know, don't they use powder sometimes? Some sticky stuff. You know, I think it's an open question of what pitch will I throw? Yeah. You know, will I be working out of a windup? My main goals? I don't know if I have a slider. I mean, maybe like a knuckle curve.

Yeah, we'll see about that. Maybe just some high heat. Perhaps a sweeper. That's the pitch of the moment. Here are my main goals. Don't like just literally fall over. Yeah. And I think right up there, one A, 1B is I don't want to spike the ball directly into the ground.

No, let's get a few feet in front of you at least. I wanted to go Ariel. You know, if I go 10 feet wide, 50 feet wide, that's fine. You know, do I expect to be able to throw the ball six? Not necessarily. Okay, it doesn't have to cross over the top of home plate, but maybe hopefully like at least until... I'm not expecting my ball that my first pitch to be so in the zone that someone's like...

Latitude that we are worried about here. I'm not going to be in the ABS challenge zone. No. I don't think. Maybe. But I have a couple months of training ahead of me, so who knows? So again... You've been saying this for a couple months.

I know. I purchased a glove, as you know. You did. In my homeland of Baltimore, felt appropriate. Got a little kind of like foam training ball, been, you know, just kind of working on some mechanics. So get in the arm limber and asked Adam the other day, I said, man, I think my arm strength is like a lot better than I anticipated. How far was that throw? And he got out of tape measure and everything. And he looked at me and he said 10 feet. So I think I have a ways to go. But that's okay. But aren't you allowed to throw it like close? Aren't you allowed to interrupt the whole point? You don't have to stand on the mound. But like maybe I will. Okay. You know what? It's all about the fun and the joy of the experience. The first pitch is like the highlight of a lifetime. You know what else is the highlight of a lifetime? Getting to do a podcast? at Oriole Park at Camden Yards and then getting to do a watch-along with the bad babies

during a baseball game during a nose game. Unbelievable. August 20th. Sharing this with you, the number one's sports fan in my life. No one knows more about baseball than I do. Incredible. Orioles.com slash House of R.

When you last took me into an Orioles game, which was in Oakland, California a couple years ago, did you imagine the next time we watched an Orioles game together, it would be House of Our night at Camden Yards and you would be throwing out the first pitch. Didn't occur to me, to be honest. Are you going to get it? Are we getting like jerseys?

I heard you might get jerseys on them. I would anticipate jerseys. I think you start planning out your in-game meal, get you some boogs barbecue, you know, a little lemonade, cotton candy, soft surf, crab cake. Okay, if you want to get a stomach egg. Sounds wonderful. Watch Mallory explain all of baseball to me, which people did at the Oakland A Stadium last time we went to a game together. Join us. Yes. Tickets go on sale again. Tomorrow, June 16th, Tuesday, 10 a.m. Eastern, 7 a.m. Pacific.

Yes. Orioles.com slash House of our pregame pod, in-game watch long. Come hang. Okay. I think we did it. Fantastic. Oh my gosh. What a treat. What a treat. Surreal. A a summer. A summer starting with the Vampire Lestat for Pormois. Indeed. And ending with an Orioles game for Valerie. Oh, my goodness. It's our year. It really is. It's our year. House of our summer. Spoiler warning. Yes. Informed by our knowledge of the book, the Vampire Listat. and Queen of the Dam and some stuff that I've heard about from other Anne Rice books, et cetera, et cetera, informed by my knowledge. That's it.

I have no knowledge. Well, you knew something big just by Googling last week. So, you know, what things you have gleaned from the internet, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And there was. And there they were the spoilers. Okay. But we're not going to get into like hardcore book spoiler territory until a very special section at the end.

You will hear a sound cue. If you're watching the video, there's a fun little animation that will play. But we'll be very, very, very. clear about what we are doing here. Should we start with our opening snapshot? Let's do it. All right. So great, robust. Honestly, the bad babies are dialed into the vampire list at, and that's very exciting. We also got a lot of people emailing in about their Disclosure Day thoughts because we had asked the bad babies after we did our Disclosure Day podcast at the end of last week, sort of if they enjoyed it, you know what? True to form of the internet, a mixed bag. A whole spectrum of

people. Some people loved it. Some people couldn't stand it. And then there's some people who, like, us are like sort of more in the in-between spot between those two stances. But thank you so much for writing in about that and also about Vampons. Several people email to let us know that Vampons, which was a great joke in episode one, is an ongoing thing with AMC and this television series because I guess they actually like had them, sold them perhaps on the AMC store, had them at various like premiere parties. Yeah. Sold them for like use? or for like putting on your shelf as a joke. I think they were just tampons that had like packaging.

Yeah, special packaging on it. Fun merch. Use merch you can use. And we love that. Yeah, there you go. Very practical. It's also a reference to an insane scene in the book, Mad Knock the Devil, where I'm just going to spoil this.

Okay. Lestat pauses mid-quitis to consume the menstrual blood of the lady that he is hooking up with. Very special. Very, very special. Thanks to all of you who emailed me about it. Fantastic. Great stuff. Thanks, Anne Rice.

All right. Alexander wrote it to say in the opening scene of Detroit, she wrote, I half expected the auctioneer to say, a popier-mache musical box. Shout out lot 665. That's a fan of the opera reference. And I agree. Like, I was thinking the same thing. I just didn't want to go like, like, I'm already like so vampire nerdy.

Do I need to go musical theater nerdy at the same time? But here we are. Be your fullest self always. The fan of the opera musical starts with an auction about a character who is like, deceased and, you know, and takes you, then takes you back in time. And so this sort of very dramatic, you know, and that's when like, you know, you have the chandelier and all that sort of stuff like that. So like to have open with these auction house, very, very campy, very Adelaide Weber, very list at. I love this as a potential reference. But yeah. Fantastic.

Lot 665. All right. Malcolm wrote in to let us know that the joke last week, the story that Christine told about Stuart Copeland, a member of the police, in a Coofy with Emma, like, et cetera, et cetera, let us know that Stuart Copeland's father, Miles, was a spy during World War II and a founding member of the CIA and his mother was a spy too. Does this movie exist? I would watch it. Like, a husband and wife founding members of the CIA team, because of this, Stuart Copeland rockstar grew up in Cairo until he's five years old, at which point the family moved to Beirut until he's 12. In short, a woman. all the rock stars to wander in on a UN peacekeeper in Mogadishu with a kufi and ammo, Stuart Copeland

makes perhaps the most sense. In fact, it's possible that the writers are even suggesting in this alternate universe that Copeland continued in the family business Spycraft. So... Interesting. Are they, by extension, suggesting that everyone in the CIA is a vampire? Why not? Great. Um, not great. I don't know that I want those CIA folks to be immortal. Vampire spies. Vampire Spire sounds great. Would be very cool. I mean, obviously it would limit unless you were a day walker, what you could get done in more traditional business hours? Nighttime spying only. How much does James Bond get done during the day, really?

Yeah, let's check in with Jackson Lamb. Yes. And the slow horses, mostly at noodle bars during the day. I mean, Gary Oman, iconic cinematic vampire. That's right, of course. All right, Baxter wrote into something I really should have picked up. They make this truthful and daring reference to Daniel's doc. and

Baxter's like this is obviously a reference to Madonna's truth or dare documentary. Have you seen this documentary?

No. Incredible. Incredible piece of 90s ephemera. Madonna, truth or dare backstage tour

stuff watching her I should send you the clip of when Kevin Kossner comes backstage the truth

or dare tour because he is like so earnest and telling Madonna how much he loved her

show. I bet. And she thinks he is such you know, and he's wearing, like, classic 90s-Kosner-like dad jeans and all the sort of stuff like that looks, you know, you'll love him. He looks so handsome. But he walks away and she's just basically like, what a fucking dweeb. What a square. What a nerd. This guy. It's really funny. I love it. There's also a reference in that episode to like with less worn Beatty about the documentary. So there's like obviously a Madonna reference. Crossover event with Bansplain. You know, get Yassie in here during a Madonna month. Absolutely. Yassie will come in costume. I feel like this is kind of a one. inspired by Yassi leaning all the way in on the Madonna photo shoot. What is it?

Yossi is an inspiration to all of us. I quite agree. I think you know that. I quite agree. All right. Jessa wrote in to say, very reasonably, I think, I wanted to push back on your comment that we're seeing the quote, realestat this season. I'd argue that the reunion with Louis at the end of season two is still the only time we've seen the quote, real estate because the only time he has existed in the objective lens

of the show in season one and two or in Daniel Armand and Louis' point of view, et cetera, et cetera. but the entirety of season three, with the exception of the prologue and arguably the few black and white shots we see of Daniel's doc, exists within Lestat's subjective lens within the framing device of the failures. So we're not watching the real Lestat. We're watching Lestat, Lestat's Lestad, and Daniel, sorry, Dan, and Louis, and Armand and Gabriela. So I think Armand, especially Jacob Anderson, talked about this in the scene in this episode and episode two, in the legal negotiation scene, when Louis is being like a real ass. whole.

Jacob is like, and I loved it, but like Jacob is like, I kind of lean into the idea that this is Lestat's idea of Louis. And so I would present sort of the most dickish version of that interaction, the most tauntingly touching my new, you know, lover's arm and all this sort of stuff like that. It's like, how would Lestat remember this? And so in season two, especially when Louis was like imagining this like ghost Lestat that he imagined the beginning of season two. and Sam Reed talked a lot about like who is Louis's Lestat and this is like who is Lestat's

Louis that we're watching here which I think is really fun. Yeah. I think that this is, that's fairly consistent with what we talked about last pod, that the difference in. We did. I think I made a sort of like, we're seeing the real Lestat for the first time. And I kind of agree with our listener that that's not really true. But yeah, you were definitely hammering the like unreliable narrator.

Yeah, now we're getting his version of this and also the idea of presenting as a showman in order to be able to speak your truth inherently kind of fits with the show's overall interest in examining what you want people to understand about like your truth and how. And it's fun to get the different versions of it across time and circumstance. Absolutely. She also pointed out this when we were talking about Daniel Malloy as a vampire. Yes. And this idea of, you know, you said something like Daniel was made to be a vampire and I said this is his version of the hunt. He's on the hunt.

She sent this passage from Queen of the Damned about sort of Daniel as a vampire. Quote, the building had been crawling with gentle humans who noticed not a thing as they'd stolen the clothes they now wore. Uniforms of the young and left by a broken door into an alley. Not my brothers and sisters anymore. The woods have always been filled with these soft, dough-eyed things. Their hearts beating for the arrow, the bullet, the lance. And now at last, I reveal my secret identity. I have always been the huntsman.

So that's from the devil's minion, I think, Devil's Minion chapter from Queen the Dam. But the first time she, Justice said the first time I read that, I'd have put the book down and stare at the wall a while, which is, I love it. All great reaction. And last but not least, our listeners, Jessica and Suka and a couple other people in the comments were sort of addressing our question about this moment that Lestat has on stage before he drinks the drugged blood. But he had this sort of like epiphany moment or crisis moment. And we weren't really sure what the cause of that was the inspo for. for that, right? So Jessica wrote in to say, I think it might have been him getting close to what he refers to as the, quote, golden moment that he would have with Nikki, when they were young and very

drunk, that moment when everything made sense and they were euphoric. I think, though I may be misremembering, and I don't have the book here. And it was one of these golden moments that Lestat first conceives of the world as a, quote, savage garden. Yes, that's where the band got the name. I didn't know that. I love it. And his Savage Garden imagery reminds, certainly reminds me of his jungle snake language. Interesting. So shout out Chicka Cherry Cola. I mean always. Shout out Sabbath Garden.

Formative song of our use. I love that song. And Suka has this great interpretation. She says, in Detroit, Longface and Black Liquorish, our songs at Lestat wrote while still avoiding to connecting with the humans around him and within himself. The lyrics are fake and the fans are okay with them but not feeling it. Longfakes, Longface sucks. I feel really dumb that I like Longface.

It feels like everyone agrees that it sucks and the show agrees that it sucks. And I'm like, what a banger. So maybe I have shit taste. You know, music is personal. Longface sucks. He can't fill 800 suits. The moment he realizes, he realized that letting Larry play what he wants and connecting with him means the music gets better.

And the fans also immediately react back. Something cracks open. Muses slash goes from the past let in and he's unable to stop them. We guess that from now on, Lestat will start writing music slash song lyrics that will reveal bits and pieces of himself. Butterscotch bitch, butterscotch bitch has lines that give clues of how hard he is by Louis. And I think this is interesting to go back to what you were just talking about, thinking about that, about this idea of, like, connection. Like, letting Larry, poor Patrick from Schitt's Creek, letting Larry actually, like, play his guitar versus getting on the tambourine.

Yeah. That's the, that's music as collaboration, not music as, like, dictated by Lestat. Right. So, so Lestat in communion with the world around him rather than in his own isolated space. And I like that as an idea of, like, if that, if that, if. that pushes him towards more truthful music and more truthful storytelling through his music, then it sort of revisits that idea of what it means to be truthful in your storytelling. And for, like, Lestat inside of this failures, who knows how truthful he's being inside of this failures project,

but like what is his music going to be revealing about him and his emotional journey that maybe even his own storytelling into the dictaphone or whatever he's using? I doubt it's a dictaphone. That would be great. Explains. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I like that. And it's interesting, too, to think of just the very organic evolution, like how much of the initial desire to start crafting the songs and pursuing this rock star life was like an intentional

agenda. This is what I can do and what I can say and how and how much is the organic desire to be able to express something and how much is a melding of the two. But then what is the balance of those scales as he responds to different stimuli in real time? and then of course has like Gabriela back in his life now or these moments with Louis inside of this episode. There's the, you know, in any aspect of life, and I imagine frontman of a rock band would fit as well.

There's like what you intend to do and then what you find yourself doing. So how much is Lestat ever in control of his own impulses and how much is he guided by the pull of his heart toward? Definitely as a podcaster. What do I intend to do and what do I wind? of doing. I mean, there's a reason that we're so drawn to this beautiful man. We're pretty good at staying on script generally for House of Ar, but I don't know, when you

show up on like there, there were watchables, and especially like when you're there with like Vanda Bill and something like that, what do you intend and what ends up happening? You have no control. You're not in the driver's seat there. So, you know. All right, so this is episode two, Toledo or, as I imagine, Lestat was say Toledo. I don't know why I said it so managedly. Okay, directed by Craig Zisk, who directed Don't Be Afraid to Start the Tape, as we mentioned, and the season premiere this year, written by Jonathan, Jonathan, written by Jonathan, Jonathan, and Ruebett. Did you like this episode of television? I did. I didn't like it as much as episode one, actually. I think that this had my favorite scenes of the season so far, the boardroom. scene, which like a rare thing where you can see a pretty sizable chunk of something in trailers, and then you get it, and it's like not only not a, oh, well, I've seen this already, but just

like the ultimate kind of euphoric transcendent high. That scene was electric, and there were a couple other really good scenes in the present day timeline of the episode. The flashbacks, like I didn't love. Didn't love. Me neither. Yeah. Tough for me, who loves the period drama. So I also prefer it episode one. But for people who are sort of disoriented and confused by episode one, this is a much more linear. So even though we do get, it's more traditional flashback structure and a more linear forward movement of the present day story. So hopefully that is like less difficult for people to follow. I thought the flashbacks were, I love this show.

But I will always be honest on this microphone. And I will say, I thought the flashbacks were tough. Yeah. Visually, very tough. And then sort of like narratively, they're zooming through a lot of stuff. They're really truncating the flashback stuff inside of this episode and potentially going forward. Everything that I've heard from, Hado Moskowitz, one of the writers and producers on the show

and Roland Jones, a showrunner, is that, I mean, Roland on the official podcast, just plainly said, budgetary cuts. Yeah. And like something we could have all told just by the. the wigs themselves, honestly. The wigs are always the tell. Like, genuinely some of the worst I've ever seen. Like, really astonishing stuff.

I love this show. This was tough. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, visually, you know, and he was talking about how, like, they had to set everything basically in that one room. Room. Yeah.

And they couldn't, like, do the theater troop stuff that happens in flashback or do the monastery stuff that happens in flashback because they just had to, like, then they had to just, like, say it instead. And so they're just, like, stuck. like doing exposition at the dining room table with $2 on a hot dog to spend on the wig budget. And then Jennifer Ely is doing an insane accent. I've been very eager to discuss this with you because I'm like, my beloved Jennifer Ely, like, what is, what am I missing? Lizzie Bennett, like, we love the 90s Pride and Prejudice.

She is an icon of queen. Sacred text. And I think her performance is actually, like, pretty good. The accent's insane. It's given Count Chocula. It does not sound like anyone who has ever been to Italy, let alone, and I speak like a very little bit of Italian, but let alone when she starts speaking Italian, I'm just like, literally what is that? And, like, you know, no one has ever said that Sam Rade's French accent is very accurate French by the way of Australia. And I think for all the vampires, who have lived for centuries, you know, like, their accents can kind of get, you know, and we'll get to, like, Justin Kirk and what he's doing, which is actually genuinely very entertaining.

But the accent choice that Jennifer Ely and at all have made for Gabriella here. Yeah. First of all, they changed, you know, they made her Italian. She's French in the book. They made her Italian for some reason. And the only reason I could think of was, like, maybe she thought she could do a better Italian accent. But, like, okay, is that better? Boy, yeah.

If this was the result of the Italian accent, if they're like, we're going to try an Italian accent and if this is the result, I do not understand why they wouldn't, I love this show, why they wouldn't in the modern day have her super toned down. Yeah. Because like. Right. A bit of a Wanda Maximoff evolution of accent over time. Louis' accent from his like, you know, original New Orleans accent to what he sounds like in the present day. Armand has also gone through like an accent transformation. It makes a lot of sense for a vampire who's lived hundreds of years to sort of like somewhat lose their original accent as they have existed in the world.

But hers is as, you know, thick as Bolognaz as it ever was. And it's a baffling choice, honestly, like really strange to you. Yeah, it's weird. I didn't know that about the French in the book. So I wonder then if the choice to go Italian here, because we have that moment then later playing piano in the present day after murdering some winners. Yeah, exactly. Like one more difference between mother and father and the sides of the family and the home and the choice list that made. And obviously one of the interesting things in that element is that he like really comes out team France in that one, right? Which is like, and you couple that with the OI seem to be quite jealous of Louis, who I'm looking back at during the concert and then looking at a photo on the cell phone. Well, then she said that shit about Claudia. Yes, exactly. So like that felt a very little bit of a way. edge in that moment in a couple of respects.

So maybe if that's part of the reason, that's interesting. But yeah, I think the, I was surprised when Italy was invoked because I was like, is this like supposed to be almost like Transylvanian, like, cartoon vampire energy like on purpose? But then I guess not. So that, the wigs, the concentrated setting, moving through time. But I think it's, those are all contributing elements of like a very heightened tone that I I think often in the show works beautifully, but didn't quite in this.

But for me, it was more the, like, that as a way to then give us, as you said, the exposition dump of moving us really rapidly through time of these key phases of Lastadt's life. So then you get to a sequence of, like, the recurring cabbage bit. You know, the cabbages, the cabbages, the cabbages. And I'm like, I can tell that dad and the brothers who have lived, you know, not in the grave. I can tell they suck, right? They're not helping the villagers who come to beg for their aid. We'll get to some of the other stuff that we know from the canon.

Obviously, these are terrible people. But I'm like, they kind of all seem awful. Like, is Gabriella supposed to seem like a winning personality to me in this stretch? Yeah. No, I don't think she is. So then when they viciously murder them, I'm curious where the show thinks we're supposed to be. I understand why Gabriella wants it. I was like, I guess I have enough in those 15 minutes.

It's like a third of the episode to get us there for La Statt. But yeah, it just didn't quite have the like, I totally understand this character's backstory, which is a thing that we've been longing for. Right. And especially, like, unfortunately, when you compare. And again, I don't know how sizable the budgetary cuts were for the season or how much they felt they had to like allocate for the concert scenes or that kind of thing. If it's like a reallocation or if it's a generally like, hey, we poured all this money into season one and two.

And in season three, you guys have less money to work with. I could see that. AMC just sort of like resizing their investment or something like that. But when you compare it to how the introduction we get to Louise family in New Orleans and his relationship with his brother and his sister and his mother and how like nuance that is and how that unfurls over several episodes and how like you understand Louis' distance from them. But they are not cartoons in their sort of like, you know, issues with him. these, you know, Gabriella not, you know, excluded from this. Like, these feel like more like cartoons

and they do people at this table, you know, these various table scenes. And especially the father and the sons, I mean, justice for the wives who did not really deserve what the God, I thought. But like, the father and the sons, like, by the end of it, the wigs plus the makeup, they look like cave people.

They look like Neanderthals. Like what? Popolstadt is in like a real, like, a real, like Vassaris late in season one of Hot D kind of state, just chunks of space. Yeah, I was like a lot of, okay, so you and I were not fans of that. Yeah. I will say, though, on the opening VO, the opening voiceover from Lestat, at epiphany, yeah.

I have no notes on that. No. At epiphany and then the sort of like the penis, the boat is my penis and the ocean is my mother's and all this is just wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. On that note, let's go to our deep dive. Okay. So is it like Overe?

Overe? Something like that. I do not speak French very well. Seventy-72. We've already mentioned a couple of issues here, but I really agree. I thought the opening was really sharp. There's a lot of really sharp. And here's the thing that has been true of every episode

that all both episodes of season. Every time you re-watch it, you catch something else. Yes. And it is so rewarding in that way. And it can make it, there is this weird feeling you get watching these episodes because, you know, especially like later when, like, the band is having their argument. there's this very sort of Robert Altman-esque, like, overlapping dialogue thing that they're doing here,

where it's just sort of like you really need to... In the band argument scene, which I loved, and obviously we'll get to, I had to like... Wonderful. I was just, like, hitting back on 15 seconds, like, every... You know, just to make sure I knew who was saying what, and also I didn't want to miss the thing because everything was so good. You know? Yeah, same. And so, like, you know, that happens.

So the writing is as sharp as it ever is. and the opening here, this, let's address the incest elephant in the room from the end of episode one. It's interesting to me.

It's funny. And then it sort of recurs. Like, Lestat throughout this episode is constantly sort of apologizing or explaining or being defensive about the choices that he and Gabrielle are making.

And we will talk about all of that and Lestat's discomfort with it. Like, obvious, palpable discomfort with it. And so as a character choice, I think it makes sense and it is interesting. This is his story. Also, like, the fact that, like, you know, Louis does not know what happened and no one how, you know, he's lying about who his mother is. But, like, by the time the failures comes out, everybody knows. Right.

Yeah. You know, that's what he said at the end of last week's episode. So this is, like, a big secret for him. And by the time the failures came out, his secret has been exposed. So that's something we can sort of, like, look forward to. but like, right. So character-wise,

it makes sense to me. On a narrative front, does it ever feel, you know, we are quite accustomed to incest-heavy television shows having covered various Thrones properties.

Yeah. The constant apologizing for it, does it feel like the show feels like it needs to apologize for it or does it feel like Lestat feels like he needs to apologize for it? Oh, interesting question.

I think maybe a little bit of both. Like, I don't have the same sense that you do for maybe what people would have been expecting. Sure. On this front, based on the source material on the text. But I think what these flashbacks, you know, we'll go through the different ages of Lestat that we get in the different phases. But once we get to the wolf killing and the salving of the wounds and even some stuff before that,

I think what is undeniable is that these two wanted to fuck each other long before they were vampires. So I left episode one. One of the things we talked about last week was this question of like... Did this predate vampers? Yeah, is part of the explanation that we will get. It's okay if a mom and son, fuck, if they're vampires, because you have a different relationship to your personhood, your past, etc. It's different for vampires.

It's different as Lestat says. But that's kind of the key, right? Because he's saying it's different for vampires, but this episode shows us that they had this pull toward each other long before that. Yeah, so here's my interpretation. Let's talk about it. Here's my interpretation. And maybe I'm being overly generous to Lestat.

But I feel like there's clear discomfort. from him, you know, inside of this episode of the modern storyline when she was like, you know, I came and came and came. Like, he looks uncomfortable and he's like, hey, let's just not do this. How about we don't do this? What do you say? Yeah. Here's my psychoanalysis.

Let's have it. There is no clear indication in the book that they, like, definitely were sexually attracted to each other before the, they were. turn. There are various phrases that are like somewhat charged. Like she aroused my curiosity. Gabrielle, I said having never called her that outside of some of my very private thoughts, uncommon intimacy between them. When he talks about her coming into his room after the wolf hunt incident, my mother came quietly and almost stealthily into the room. And that whole monologue she gives him about how she really, really wants to fuck. Like that's straight from the book while he's recovering from

this like sort of wolf attack. She's like, you know, what I want to do. So here's my, what's very clear, both the book and the show, is that Lestat is desperate for her attention, for her attention and her affection, because she's the only source of it inside of this home, right? His father and his brothers suck. Right. And her attention is very conditional. And, you know, when he's getting beaten up by his brothers in an argument that, like, they were sort of in together. Yes. She just completely abandons him inside of that, right? or we get that horrible from his POV, her just like not really giving a shit

that he's being beat up. She goads him into the wolf hunt, you know, and his interpretation of that is that she was sending me to my death, better to die by the wolves than become a cabbage. Yeah, than, you know, languish here as a cabbage. So her attention and affection

is the number one thing he wants. And she spells it out for him inside of this episode. She's like, you know what I want more than anything? I want to fuck. Yeah. I want to fuck so many men. That's all I want to do. Yes. Very vivid dream. That's the message she gives him while, you know, like inappropriately applying salve to his body and stuff like that. Yes. A lot of thigh rubbing. So I feel that he gets the message of like this is how, this is the best way to have her attention. This is the best way I can capture his attention. And then, you know, like when when she's like, I belong to nobody's like except for, I mean, devastating. Except for me and silence, right? Or like all the ways in which. In the modern day, this is still true for him.

In the modern day, he's like, are you staying? I only saw you twice in the last century. Like, you know, how can I keep your attention? How can I keep you here? Yes, for sure. And so that's my interpretation of like, because I do think he has like a palpable discomfort with the incest. She seems to have no issue with it. And something that Hannah Moscovich, again, one of the writers' producers said is like, you know, basically Gabriela comes to this crumbling castle.

Overn is like as far away as you can get from Paris is what they say. It's a noble family in complete dissolution and disrepair. They're ignorant. They're uneducated. She loves her books. She is beautiful. She is fascinating, but she is just trapped here. And what she fashions Lestat into as a sort of like husband substitute because he's the only one in the family that she recognizes any spark inside of.

Right. And so she makes him into her sort of like her, like, her husband. accomplice and her, you know, this is what, that word Hannah used was like a husband. Yeah. And so for Gabriela, I think it's always been there. And for La Stott, it's there, but it's rooted in something different from sexual desire. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.

I don't think that was quite, that's compelling. I don't think that was quite my interpretation of it. I think the, I agree with you that it stems from a desire to be like seen and valued and centered in her life, that's for sure, right. I think that the fact that the shame and the like, fear of discovery is only present in the contemporary timeline tells me that that's more about, introduces the possibility that that's more about his fear of what the other people he values would think than what he himself feels about it.

Because, like, when he is, but I still think it's all a product of how you're weaned, right? So if she's basically grooming him to be the mini husband, It's not necessarily, though, again, the Ed Epiphany part of it does also. And this is always interesting with Lestat in the show in general, like, what is the connection to something that's, like, more mythic and eternal and universal and what is specific to you? So the question of, like, using characters in this show to say, hey, does every, like, young boy want to fuck his mom makes sense of something that the show is interested in the story universe is interested in assessing. Young Lestat, I thought, I'll bring this back to the incest thing in a second.

and we should reflect on how often we talk about incest here at House and Bar. Something to consider. Something to consider. Something for all of the streamers out there to think about and something for us to think about here at home. But like, okay, so you already know, you know, the dingy seat of the Leancourt family, a thousand years of aristocratic decline to, like, position us. You have this stunning chateau, but then this crumbling, inhabiting family, holding onto something that they no longer deserve or know how to preserve, right?

They're not caring for the land, caring for the people. the people, et cetera. Then you have the kind of, you know, the man of the cloth is here to introduce this monastery idea, right? Education. The boy possesses an ability to envision the unseen, the holy, he would be well suited to the monastic house. We go to that into the, his dad's rage that Lestat was out playing with the theater troupe, the wagon full of actors. So you have like all of these things about young Lestat on the isn't nature, isn't nurture front, that feel very present in the, future with the character that we know and have come to love, right? Like, there's this, like,

a philosophical mind, like this inclination to think about the way the world works and the things that people are drawn to and why you also have this, like, dramatic performer. Yeah. Yeah, right? And a mode of expression. So all of that is there. And then with his mom, when he was, when his brothers were, the stutter is here, right? And we see that as you, as you teased last week. We have like this stretch where he is pinned. down and I loved when he got like the stab wound into the scy. It was like a meat cutting implement and just stabs. One of his shitty brothers, great stuff.

So he's kind of a fog setting in as one of his brothers is choking him and he looks over. This is teen Lestat at this point. She had a cold beauty like snow behind a thick, distorting wall of glass and I grew hard by example. He definitely, I mean hard, like I grew stern and strong and she. I don't think stern and trying. I think what he's saying is like callous. Calice by example.

Absolutely that as well. But also the language is. But I think both, I think Stern and strong too because like go kill the wolves or die. Be a man, right. What were you? What could you be men the way she shouts at? Like I think it's all in the mix. He's looking at her and he's got a boner and he wants to fuck his mom.

Right? And then when she's salving the leg wound to the inner thigh, I don't think even as we cut hilariously to the maid. To the maid. Who's like, this is pretty gnarly. What's up with these two? he's not like, stop. Don't do it.

And when she gets up to leave, he's like, come back and like give me a handy. I agree. I don't know that that's my interpretation of hard, though. I thought the wording was obviously intentionally double play. I definitely agree about her sobbing his upper thigh and him being like higher. Again, I think it's just him basking. And like in the book he describes how like when he gets injured by the wolf, it's the most attention she's ever paid to him. And he's just sort of like how devastating that I had to be like,

so injured and that's the only time me, you know, that she will like, that I can, like, bask in her warmth. And it's also the time she just uses to tell him that she's dying. Yes. You know, and it's just, like, horrible. I mean, Gabriela, the thing about Gabrielle, Gabriela, I'm not a fan of hers, personally. Hot take. I think she sucks. A lot of people like her because, and it's sort of clear, though not as clear as it is in the book, that, like, she's a woman who felt so frustrated by the limited roles of women in the time that she lived and found liberation inside of vampirism. And so, and being able to break out of the gendered roles. And so she favors in the modern storyline in the books, men's clothing and keeps her

hair short and all this sort of stuff like that. And so like this idea of like gender fluidity or gender roles. So like the way in which she saw in Lestat, a male version of her. And inside of this episode, in the modern storyline, when they are coming up with their fake backstory of how they met, you know, it's like we were wearing the same thing and I saw myself and you and all this sort of stuff like that. So like, is Jennifer Ely wearing like, you know, blazers? Yes. But like, it's less, it's so much less of the like sort of, I'm assuming the role of the man that I could, was never allowed to be in the, in the 1770s. But when she says, be a man, you know, she's just so frustrated. It's, it's very.

Circe. You know what I mean? Like, you should worn the dress and I have worn the dress and I have worn the armor. You know what I mean? Like, I'm suited for this and you're soft and useless. And so it's envy, it's gender identity. It's all those other stuff like that. And so like this idea of, you know, when you think about like Louis as a gay man of color in the time that he lived in and the limitations and how vamporism allowed him to break out of that

for Gabrielle or Gabriela, for many readers, it's this sort of like this power that this woman finds inside of this world. But I find what she does with it. Right. I mean, her hot take. Repulsive. Like, she does groom her child, you know, and that's repulsive to me.

Yes. I'm going to take that stand. Brave. Thanks. I agree. I think the other thing, I love the connection that you made to the Italy. You know, we met at the, took our master. asks off, it's, oh, and put this face, I saw my face in it. Cover story, both because

they fall back, as Lestat observes, so quickly into the rhythm of this shared yearning that they're trying to say, like, he's trying to say, we can't, we can't do this, and then there and back again. But the other thing is, like, the gender roles, the need for attention, some actual, like, edible deep sexual longing, all of it. The other thing that feels, I think, hard to ever use the word appropriate when talking about incest, but appropriate for Lestat a character we know very well at this point, and I think already fair to say appropriate for Gabriella, a character I've just met, this is like seismic narcissism, right?

If you're saying the thing I see in my... Exactly. If you're saying the thing I see in your face is my face, so I want to fuck you, that makes sense, do you? me with these two characters. With these personalities. And so for Lestat, too, the grooming, the choosing that I'm going to make you my mini husband sick, wrong, awful, him then being weaned to like crave that kind of attention

in that form even more horrible. But the like extra degree of and the reason you want me to be that is because I remind you of you of you is in this perverse logic like an honor. Oh, absolutely. Right. So I understand why the show was doing it. It's uncomfortable. Yeah. But here we are. On the wolf hunt front, this is a very lengthy chapter inside of the book and I'm fairly famous chapter inside of the book. It is, again, a truncated version. Sam Reid in the official podcast did have like a funny moment where he was like, he was like, I insisted that I have a flail.

He was like, he was like, Lestat has a flail in the chapter. So I wanted to have a flail even though we don't get to see me use it because we don't get to see the actual like wolf fight. He's like, but I wanted to be there. And he's like, and I think you can, if you freeze it, you can barely see it. But it's there because I was excited about it. Anyway. Great stuff. We get the non-wolf killing scene. And I do think that, though, given the limitations of what they showed us, I think Sam Reed's performance in the aftermath, talking about what happened to his horse and his dog, to me is the most evocative of like that scene.

He talks about the dogs were puppies that his mother, like, allowed him to get. And they were, like, the only companionship he had. And he, like, raised them from puppies. And, you know, his horse was also a gift from his mother. And it was, like, this very important thing to him. And so losing the dogs inside of this wolf hunt, losing his horse and having to actually, like, kill his own horse to put his horse out of its misery. Sabreid has to deliver that, all of that into, like, one line. And when he talks about recovering, I really related to this as like a pet owner who has lost pets,

he talks about crawling and wounded, crawling into bed and the bed is so cold and empty because he's used to sleeping with his dogs there and they're not there. And he's just sort of like, you know, that pain inside of the physical pain of the wounds, but like that pain as well. And so I thought Sam Rhee's like, you know, just my dog, like that whole delivery, I thought was like a really, really beautiful way to connect to the. core of the loss and the trauma of that event for him in his life. I thought the performance was great.

I liked the way the sequence inside of the overall stretch of maybe rushed backstory, edited and cut in a very effective way, you know, the swing of the camera, the widening of the horror on his face as the wolf is Trumpy Torto. On the dog front, though, I actually thought this was like a good, effective early primer for the fact that he's full of shit. The pain is real. He sends the dog. So then he's like, so again, like, what is true?

Right. Right. And what is the version of the thing that either he genuinely feels and believes to be true or is spinning for some sort of consumption? Yeah. So like, does he miss his dog and is the pain supreme? I'm sure the answer is yes and yes. Is the character who feels deeply and develops real attachments to the figures in his life

who bring him warmth and comfort. Yeah. He also is like, go forward into the, I have gutted an animal to draw the wolf pack. And then I am sending my dog forward, go in. And then he stands there as the Yelps fill the screen. Like, what did he think was going to happen to that dog? He sent his dog to the death and then he's like, my dog. So the guilt and shame and remorse and all that.

And it's all like kind of, it's entwined, right? But it's like, yeah, we should just always keep in mind when we're hearing him in his songs or whatever he says. It's full of shit. Full of shit. Sent his dog into the brush. Ultimately. All right. Let's talk about the band.

You know, I will just say I do think book readers are a little, like, because the vampire list out is a book, has this like intro that is, you know, the vampire list at. I am the vampire list at and talking about waking up. And then it's like almost all entirely flashback of like this is what happened in my life. Okay. How he's made, Nikki, like all these other people, blah, blah. And then you get this quota at the end. So that book is like almost entirely like a piece of historical fiction.

Interesting. So I think book readers coming to the season are like, hey, man, we're getting just crumbs of what the book is. And then you've got all this other stuff that is a lot of it is additive or brought in from other books and stuff like that. And the reason that they've done it, and I understand why as like TV makers, they're like, we want to keep Daniel present. We want to keep me present. Presumably Armand, presumably Claudia, like all of these characters that you've come to know and love. We are sort of re-engineering the plot. This is budgetary.

But it's also just sort of like it's a. TV show. Yeah. And, you know, if we were just doing the book, you wouldn't see Daniel at all. You wouldn't see Louis at all. And, like, I don't want a season of television without Jacob Anderson and Eric Bikosian. Like, I don't want it. You know, so, like, I think I understand it.

And I also understand why people are sort of, like, bummed about not getting the adaptation that they were expecting, you know? Yeah. It's interesting because, okay, so you have a line like your father and your brother's bent with shame. Great stuff. Come down. You'll enjoy it. This is, like, the mob who's here for a second day to worship him.

Yeah. It's a god. Good example, I think, of do we need to see Lestat in the past soaking up the adulation adjutant? No, but like, kind of. Right. What does human Lestat do with that? Exactly. Yeah. Like, you know, the fact that this is something that even before he experiences it there, his mother knows that he would crave it and love it, right? The fact that he has sought it in these other forms. I think things like that would be really beneficial. Season two, do we miss Lestat when? he's not as present in the season, sure, is the show very creative and how to keep him in the mix until he's, like, back in full. Right. The imaginary friend that is Listod. Exactly. It's brilliant. Yeah. A lot of season two requires you to, like, care about Santiago and the theater troupe to really

level up your investment in Armand. Yeah. Which I did happily because it was so fucking good. Yeah. Right. So by the time you were in that apartment with Armand and Dan, Daniel, strapped to a chair, it's like the most riveting hour of the season. Yeah. So I think that I say that just because, like, I think that the impulse to keep Louis, Daniel, all these other figures in the mix makes complete sense. I wouldn't want them to be gone for long either. I think the show is proven it is capable of achieving that balancing act.

I agree. And so maybe we still get that with Gabriella. That's entirely possible. Or the band, which those scenes have been good. So we are getting a version of that already with new figures. I mean, Christine, like give her a spinoff. I'm ready. I'm so ready.

Let's talk about the icon of legend. The band only meeting. Great stuff. Which is great stuff. Larry yells out at one point. So good. All right. So Lestan wakes up in the bus on the road to Toledo to the side of Daniel using the bus shower.

Yes. Also, he wakes up from his coffin on the bus. So when he later is like willful ignorance from all of you guys, I'm like, yeah, wait, was he sleeping in a coffin on the bus the entire tour? And they really like, you have super committed to the bit, my guy. Do you think the shower in the middle of the room is the only shower on the bus? We've seen two people use a show for. and Daniel use it. We got some real Daniel Tushcam there.

Yeah. He was really going for it, Washington. Sure was. Well, you know, we learned elsewhere. He didn't, you know, he didn't get the cloud gift. He didn't get the fire gift. He just got the low-hanging balls gift. He wanted more.

So I got to keep him clean. Is that the only shower on the bus? Great question. I think it can't be. It seems impossible. And yet, how much real estate on a tour bus can you devote to like indoor plumbing? I don't know. All right.

So as you mentioned, Christine is the banner argument of what they saw. I'm sorry, I paused and wrote out every single line. I wrote out a lot of them, too. They were so good. I don't think an NDA gives you legal clearance for murders. The opener is when I knew this was going to be special. Christine. Costic.

Wonderful at her job. Boating list out. Yeah. Can perform what most metropolitan draining systems only can only dream of. That's from a later scene. Incredible. Like, lean all the way in, girl. I love Christine.

Mayor Christine, incredible. And there's a huge expansion from the book. all like the band members and Christine are getting like a huge expansion for the book and it is all really working for me. Salamander reading the book the best. Full of questions about Armand. Is this guy secretly the funniest person on the show?

He's hysterical. Every single one of his asides in this and just his delivery too is so funny inside of the scene. He's amazing. I'd like to be in a book club with him given his diligent note-taking and propensity for follow-up questions. I loved also when Lestat shifts after Alex is you know threatening to quit

and then actually leaving. Lestat has the sequence where he's reading everybody's minds and telling them with some editorializing and tweaking of the truth. Yeah. To suit his agenda, what they're all thinking about Alex. And then one of the things he says to Salamander is like, I make it a habit and never sleep with my bandmates, which tells us that Salamander is looking at Lestat as he's thinking all these questions

and like, can we fuck? Which like, again, who among us, but it's just one more just incredible bit on the salamander front, a character who in episode one, I will repeat, was getting a blowjob in the background shot of a really crowded room. Lestat's face when Salamator calls Lepitikut the small cup Incredible. Which is not what that means, the little sift, but he's just like... Incredible.

Really funny. Also, also his face when's the last time you talked to him? It's not just the lines in the scene, which are all solid gold to me. Really great. It is like, everyone's, but Sam Reed's performance in this is just like... Soutational. They were all really good. Like, even the way Larry with the little shutters, like the...

You know, like, that doesn't sound great. No. This was really, really, really good. Tough Cookie has very reasonable Twilight questions. Does a mean and fantastic impression of Lestat, crooning love-six lyrics, love-sick lyrics, calls Louis Lewis, and that explocates the black licorice lyrics in a way that filled me with pride. Tough cookie, come on House of R.

Do you guys play baseball like in Twilight? This hysterical. Just genuinely hysterical. On the official pod, they asked Sam Reed if they thought he would enjoy Twilight, if Lestat enjoy Twilight? And he's like, yeah, I think he likes the glitter. I think he was into it. I think he liked the glitter.

Incredible. All right. Farid, he's here. He lets us know about the blood farm. I think Farid's vibe, which is just very, like, background, but, like, really making an impression on me is really, really good. Key moments so far. And then Alex freaked the fuck out.

You said it was a deer. As D-E-A-R as any K-F-C night manager has a right to be. My favorite line of the episode. The writing on this show is insane. It is so good. Yeah. Alex quits. Actually, my second favorite line of the episode.

We'll come back to the boardroom. Alex quits. He sure does. How do you feel about that? It doesn't seem wise. If I were Alex, I maybe would be a little more reluctant, especially given the telepathically delivered direct from Lestat to me. Hey, you know, actually that wasn't about you.

It was about Larry. You're the most, like, you're the purest, most talented, natural musician this band other than me. Take the time, take the space. breathe, reflect. Don't do any of these other things, though. Don't. Talk about me in your meeting.

Talk about me in your meetings. Don't go to the cops. Like the not so subtle threat from Lestat of what would happen to Alex and the people that he loves. If Alex missteps here, seems like probably things aren't going to go well for Alex. Larry entreat, but perhaps a bit wounded that Lestat did not kill that guy who bugled his sound check. That's right. Gabriela going by Sophia now. And then Daniel out and proud.

Asking Gabriella who her maker is in a way that makes Listott a bit anxious, I think. Yes, indeed. Daniel very much on the like, he's the hunter. He's the hunter. On the Lestat told Louie that she died of consumption and the point you're making earlier about how he has lied about this. Daniel, you know, a journalist who I continue to have notes for, but a journalist. Smells a story.

From the word go here knows that this is a person he needs to figure out more about. And even though he will say elsewhere in the episode in a great moment, about Louis, like, that's the story. I agree. He's the story. And we're like, Daniel correct. Same. Obviously, he knows that there's something to learn about quote unquote, air quotes, Sophia here and this connection to the stat that will be important. I like the way that there's like a variance and degree of the way people are asking questions.

Like you said, like Salamander, book reader, he's really like, well, Aramontza Daywalker, right? He's soaking up the lore already. Larry, who is drawn in a way that Lestat can suss out, like, did you want me to actually kill that guy in there? Are you kind of, like, annoyed? Is that what you hoped? Yeah. Has maybe a darkness in it, but he's also like, sorry, what the fuck is Akasha? Yeah.

You know, the way that there's like, he's just like. I don't know if Lestat's mentioned, but he has the blood of Kasha at him. I don't know if he's mentioned that. A time or two. But he has the blood of a cacha. And the Twilight thing is hysterical because that's like, that actually is a question. Maybe that you would ask if you were in a band in 2025. With the vampire.

And had watched vampire movies and a vampire was now in your band. You'd be like, do you play baseball? Does your skin glitter? Like that stuff. I like the, everybody's asking questions and they're all very specific to who those people are. And Daniel's like, no, I have real questions to ask. Like something is up here. Or this woman.

Yeah. Who is this woman? And then later when they all leave and it is just the band in there. And LaSat is like sort of watching Daniel talk to her outside. Like he's just like uncomfy with the fact that Daniel is on the hunt here. Let's not throughout this episode is doing a horrible job of concealing like how obsessed he is with Louis. But I do think my favorite most revealing line is I live 54,554 days before I met Louis de Pontellac. Did you count the days that you've existed before you met me?

I don't recognize time before you were in my life. I'm the opposite of this. Do you think it's a good defense of how little someone means to you if you have the exact count of days that you lived before you met them? It's a real telling on yourself moment from Lastad here, but I loved that. It's great. Obviously, it's like, as Louis is about to return more fully into the episode, really great. I love too, though, like, you know, we get that, Alex is like, he kills people, we're people, and Lestat says, so was I, right? No vampire is born a vampire. Makes sense in an episode where we're glimpsing his past history. Makes sense as we think about

Gabriella and her conversion as well. Louis will ask Daniel, like, hey, how's it going? How's it? How are you doing? He's like, I understand vampire loneliness now, right? But also like these potential, you know, great conversion, recurring through line now and a beat that has come up many times. How many other people in this band are about to become vampires? Like, I don't know the answer to that, but I presume at least someone? Which one do you most want to see as a vampire?

I think Larry strikes me as, I would be inclined to say salamander would be the most likely to say me. But Larry seems maybe the most likely because he's the least secure. Yeah. Right? So he's the most likely, I think, to want the, like, the level. level up, the power, the power boost of being a vampire. But like, this is part of a human... Sure.

She'd be amazing. Big fan. She'd be amazing. She and Salander would both be a blast. Jury's out on Larry and Alex on the good hang front. But, you know, keeping a count that you could only maintain if you were a vampire in terms of the sheer volume of days, but it's stemming from such a human impulse of like, it is so apparent to everybody, no matter how long or how well they've...

known you that all of this is about this one person who you love and are obsessed with and are not ready to let go of. Yeah. And it is also true that you had an entire life before that and people who meant something to you. And like part of a breakup or any sort of like shift in status and a relationship that's been central to your life, I mean, people deal with that stuff differently, but often it's a little bit of the constant yo-yoing internally of like the thing I want more than anything is to be back with this person and also I need to like prove to myself and everyone else that I don't need them at all. And I'm a full person without them and I was before and I can be again. So like that was a great way to give us that in miniature with a very comedic

exact count. Um, we excuse me. This is this was great. Um, Gabriel, fucking with the we homie, uh, hysterical, uh, which surround me constantly. Have you seen the minions ones like running around? There are ones that are made to look like like a minions because it's like a promo thing. Los Angeles is just like lousy with these delivery robots.

Anyway, they get stuck a lot. We talked a lot about the scene already. I just do want to know that Lestat's famous wolf killer coat's cloak, which we've seen already in season two is his red thing with a wolf pelt on it and that's like made from the wolves that he killed. He's wearing this sort of like modern day version of it

in these scenes with Gabriela. He's got this sort of like wolf killer jacket. that he's wearing. It looks incredible. I mean, as always, his fits rule just as yours do. Thank you. Two of the greats when it comes to... Does not breathe very well. Some sort of overcoat. Companionship without the cum?

Companionship without the cum, and I came and came and came. Just really incredible stuff from Gabriella on this stretch. What, when she says to him, you know, after he says, like, how long are you staying? I only saw you twice last century. It's a reasonable question to ask. And she's like, you know, show me Wilmington food courts. I want to play cornhole. How did this place, and by extension, this person, right, on the Louis jealousy and intrigue front,

enthrall my son? Like, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. She wants to understand why you've been here for the last century. Yeah. Is there any authentic desire to understand that? Or is it purely from a place of like, why anywhere but where I am? Yeah.

Well, I don't think she wants him with her. Right. I think she wants him to always want to be with her. Yeah. So gnarly. Gross. Oh, God. All right.

Toledo. Yeah. The second most depressing city in the U.S. Tough. I googled this. This depression stat is true. But also there's like so many of these rankings. You could find almost any midside city on one of these lists.

So according to whomst. But how do you feel about the hands and the edge of the frame approach to skirting the budget on the cloud gift thing? I kind of liked it, actually. I was, I didn't mind it. I'm willing to accept it. I thought the, you know, the voiceover in the stretch was so good. It's like a lullaby, everything we're hearing from the last corner of a glass building, a group of building glass salesmen were closing a sale of substantial amount of glass

sold to a company in a yet-to-be tariffed Germany. Really great, obviously. So good. And, you know, they're about to like follow the potential marks through this night. the seafood tower, chubs, etc. As the list of contenders to kill narrows down. We also got Gabrielle saying the worst reveal of selves through time and Nogroney.

And I'd like to ask Amanda Dobbins formally if she cares to comment as the world's leading Negroni enthusiast. But yeah, you know, like, okay, you can like the hands and you could sort of kind of pick up the reflection of their passing forms in this glass office building. It's fine. I think it's fine. It's fine. Yeah. So the glass corner of a glass building and also, and we watched as the remaining items on the menu,

marinated themselves in the pull-ravaged sweat of sex-positive, sex-cynical, sex-stipulated dancing. I mean, I'm sorry. I think the writing on the show is some of the best shit that has ever existed. You mentioned this fairy tale aspect. I forgot to talk about this in the flashback, but like I was really zeroing in on this idea of Listott. And especially in the book, he has more siblings who are alive. But no matter what, he's the youngest son. And I was thinking a lot about this, like, fairy tale archetype of the youngest son, how, like, in a fairy tale, there's usually like three sons. There's the eldest brother, middle brother, youngest son. Sometimes it's more than that.

But they're always unworthy. And then the youngest son is the one who's worthy. And so I was, like, digging into, like, where did that come from? And why is it true? And I was reading some sort of, like, scholarly papers about this. And as far as they can tell, you know, in the work that has been done, done with like folklore and fairy tale because this is across like multiple cultures that this archetype is true.

It's an almost like, because the youngest son ever inherits. Right. Right. And that's the thing is like, you know, the eldest always inherits. And like for the older sons, there's usually something, a living of some kind. And the youngest son is just like on your own kid, you know, sort of thing. And so this idea that like it's almost like a populist, it's almost democratic thing of like the one who isn't really part of the aristocracy, the one who's like closest to the people is the one who's

going to be like more pure spirit and noble of heart. And I'm not saying Lestat is like, compared to his like knuckle-dragger brothers, yes, but like, but what is this dark fairy tale that we are experiencing? And how does, you know, Lestat who will be chosen for the dark gift and all sort of like, like, what perverted, twisted storyteller are we watching that the youngest son who usually meets like an enchantry? who bestows, you know, upon him gifts and stuff like that, is a, you know, is going to be turned into a vampire. Like, you know, what, how is that interacting with our ideas of what a fairy tale is? And how does Lestat think about his own making in that way?

Is it a gift? Is it a curse? What is it at the end of the day, you know? Did Lestat, as the youngest son, ever shave his head, pretend to be a stable boy, become a squire? Ad Attorney I'm starting to think about that on the door. What can you do if you're the youngest son front? And then where does it go from there?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so funny. I thought you were going to bring up the brothers from Harry Potter. But, you know, that's seven kingdom of all that works. Gabrielle and the hunt is pretty fun. Gabriel is not a huge fan. But when she's talked to that guy and he's like, oh, you're Italian. There's this great Italian restaurant.

She's like, do they have spaghetti? That made me laugh. It's so funny. hysterical. Omnous Warnings, Iron, The Great Conversion is mentioned. Yes. I think it's pretty self-explanatory what the Great Conversion might be.

Sure seems like it. I assume this is about turning more people into vampires. We've heard a few things over the seasons now at this point. This is actually going back to season one. But like the swelling of the numbers. That's what Raglan says. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So everyone's going to become a vampire and then what does Akasha do with that? Because these are the... What do you eat? If everyone's a vampire, what do you eat? You got to keep some people around on your farms, I guess. Oh, the farms, of course.

Of course. Yeah. Real Rashid is here at the Strip Club. The Telomaska enters the plot. Real Rashid, by the way, kind of a gloop. Like, he was always, like, quite handsome, but he's, like, with the glasses. Looks great. And new hair, like, some sideburn action, some gray in the hair.

Like, looks fantastic. Lassat's dead shitty brother is also here. Yes. An unamusing muse. Yeah. Great, great turn of phrase on that one. Okay, so this is a question we had last week, which is like, because it's not in the book, I don't know the answer to this, which is like, how seriously are we supposed to take

what baby Jenks when she was on the ceiling said about the they who are coming, right? Inside of this voiceover, Lestat calls her an Oracle, the Oracle Jenks, right? And he's like, is this the they she meant? Like, did she mean the ghosts that are coming? And in that case, is it a sort of almost like Christmas Carol, you will be really, voted, you know, visited by Ghosts 3 or something like that, you know, is that what she means? Or is there a different day coming? I don't know the answer, but like him calling her an Oracle inside this episode, to me, tells me that in the grammar of the show, we're supposed to

take her warning seriously. Yes. Would you agree with that? I think that's correct. And this is where, of course, like, the fact that we are not independent of the actual literal flashbacks moving in and out of time with Lestat because he, I mean, we get an actual, in a different part of the episode in the Daniel Louis sequence, just an explanation and like a cover from Lestat on how he's able to tell us what happened. Obviously, he wasn't there, which we'll talk about when we get there. But, you know, the voiceover that we're hearing on the failures, this is after this future horrible thing has unfolded.

So we really know whether or not she was an Oracle. We really know because we have the clarity. He has the clarity of these. future events that is then informing the framing that is being delivered to us through these tapes, et cetera. And then we also have whatever in real time, he, a supernatural being, would maybe put stock in as some sort of prophetic event. So I think it's like kind of there in all directions. That's very smart. There's also, I think with the great conversion thing and because that's, that language choice is prophetic in addition to the actual little harbingers and omens that we're

getting, signs and portents and portents. It's fun to think about like, I don't know how much of this is known and explained definitively in the book and how much of this is new to the show. But, you know, the fact that that is language that we heard in season one and language that we heard in season two makes it clear that this predates Lestat as rock star and even the publication of the book. Something was happening with the swelling of the ranks before then. However, so that makes me think whose plan is it? How many vampires are like maybe deliberately seeking to increase the numbers of the vampire kind?

Right. But then in addition to that, and maybe this. is just something that develops that helps whoever that is achieve their ends, there's a public acknowledgement, even though we talked about this a lot in episode one, how many people are like, oh, interesting, I've moved on with my life immediately, and how many people are like, is this real and can you make me a vampire? Right. Like that guy, that guy, that fan in the audience in episode one who's like, I know you're real. Yes. And isn't the next, the next encounter there most likely to be, will you bite me and make me a vampire? Right. So how many people now are like,

I would like this to be my life because I have been exposed through Daniel's book and now through La Stats's Tore, even in the like body burlesque of what's real and what isn't. I got to say. I want that to be my life. If you're going to send two people to be ambassadors of vampirism, Jacob Anderson and Sam Reed, great point. Great, great choices. I mean, who would be able to resist? Yeah. No one.

Oh, I get to be that. And you don't. Bite me. Bite me. Bite me immediately. Bite me. All right. This was another part, by the way, the, um,

Oh, I'm jumping ahead. This was when I was going to, we haven't hit the Christine calling him about Thomas Pitt, but this was when he was describing the blood down the staircase and being with Gabriela when he was like, it just feels good. Like, again, he's like, I know it shouldn't, but it just feels good. Yeah. But then the things he did are is describing are horrible, but I guess not to a vampire. Well, like, when they go to the motel, the E-Vite thing. After the Christine phone call, after he's like, do I have to sleep with him?

And she's like, yeah. And I'm like, how often does this one have to do that? get them out of some trouble. Gabrielle and Lestat stalk their prey to a motel. Yes. Here's my interpretation of it. And again, maybe I'm like just too much of a Lestat defender. And I'm just sort of like creating more sympathy where there shouldn't be.

But it seems like when the last guy that they are stalking to the motel comes out and, you know, he was like having sex with, you know, a stripper or whoever or a sex worker, calls his wife, talks to his kids. So it's like, okay, this guy, this piece of shit while he's on the road for a business trip is cheating on his wife, etc, et cetera, et cetera. So Gabriella looks kind of more excited that he's got kids and a wife. And I was wondering if that's because she's like, oh, he was cheating on his wife and is a bad dad. So that makes me even more excited to kill him. Yeah. Lestat, to me, looks more uncomfortable finding out that he has kids. And when you couple that with his.

clear discomfort at the end of the episode, again, my interpretation of when he hears his niece and nephew screaming when they find the slaughtered family in the one room in that house we're allowed to go into. And he is awake and troubled by that and Gabriela is like sleeping blissfully having done this. It seems to me that there is a gap in their moral code. Do you agree with that? I do. Yeah. I think the connection for Gabriella. I mean, potentially it's just the overall bloodlust and she's not discriminating. And even though they go through this winnowing of the potential

meal to get to Randy or something, I think, is that. Anyone would have done, I think, for Gabriela, right? I love your observation that maybe the fact that this guy is spending the night at Chubbs, swiping on Tinder, fucking someone

who isn't his wife and then calling and saying, I'm just, I'm just, you know, I'm leaving the Chopp House. I'm not leaving this seedy motel. or I just fuck someone who wasn't you, reminding her of her disgusting husband who she was forced to suffer through a life with as extra, one more thing to just like enjoy about destroying him, exactly. Quite, quite saucy, quite saucy those meals. But we notably don't see that person consumed the next time we're with them they have killed in this restaurant. The Italian restaurant. So I think you're right that it seems at least plausible that Lestad is like,

what if we went somewhere else for a meal? Maybe that's just dessert. Right. It's possible. Or the second course or whatever the case would be. This was also to where he was like in the blood down the staircase. It feels good. Finding the party invitation in your victim's pocket.

Well, I mean, it doesn't have men anymore. Damn, the Evite's incredible. So's a good line. His sterical and his delivery was just perfect. But then this, I was really struck by this. He was like, it's like, it's like, it's like, that's it. How often can we think of a moment where LaSat doesn't finish his sentence? Right?

So Gabriella is a figure in his life who confounds him. There is something that is clear to us already, but very confusing to him. And sends him back to a very young place. Yes. We've got the stutter from him at the end of episode one, you know? It just like, it, yeah, the ways in which he comports himself as this sort of like swaggering, in control, you know, egomaniac, all the sort of stuff like that. But, like, who he is in relation to her, even though he's her maker. Yes.

He's just like completely under her thumb. And yeah. Like he's always such a poet. Yeah. A literal lyricist. Yeah. And that's what I like about the stutter. The stutter is a show invention.

In the book, he's illiterate. And he's actually really resentful of Gabriela because she's always in her books, but she won't teach him how to read. So he hates her books because she's always in her books. And if you think back to season one, after Claudia is gone, Louis just like buries himself in his books unless that cannot handle it. And that's because he's thinking about his mom and her sort of, appearing into her books and how he can't follow her. But this idea that, like, Lestat as a human was a stutterer or illiterate, whatever the case may be, and, like, who he has fashioned himself into just sort of, like, the fastest tongue in

the West sort of, like, a person at the end of the day. Indeed. All right. Speaking of which, Thomas Pitt has an exclusive fan experience. This was... We both agree about the scene. Just unbelievable. But do you agree with me that the show just works on a whole different level when Jacob

Anderson is here? Like, like, I missed him so much in episode one. And I love Sam Rida, as I've said for years. But like, and Arapogosian and Assad and all of them. But like, but there's just something about Jacob Anderson's, like, voice and performances, Louis that just like takes this show to a completely different level. And I shout out Thomas Pitt, which they have acknowledged, I thought, and then they acknowledged is a reference to Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, the stars of the film interview with a vampire. Pretty cute. But yeah, Jacob Anderson is here.

And I just feel like something just like really clicks into place. as soon as he shows up for me. Yeah, I definitely agree. I mean, I think the single best version of the show is when they share a scene. But when we're watching Daniel and Louis at the, I choose to, I'm specifically reminding you, I wasn't in this scene, right?

Let's stop, voiceover, it's them. It's breathtaking. You know, I didn't like me in it, right? When Louis is sitting with Rashid and Raglan, the Talamazka scene, Like any scene that Louis is in is just like at a fever pitch. Just him watching the concert. The way that Jacob Anderson is all the emotions that he's putting on his face as Louis,

watching Lestat sing. And also I just like reround and watched it five different times. The telepathic conversation between Daniel and Louis where I could just like really see those line reads on those both of those actors' faces. And I was like, I was like, what was happening? Like, did they have an earwig in their ear? And they were, like, hearing their line back. And they were just, like, let me match my facial expression to what my line. I don't know.

I just thought it was exquisite. Really great. All right. So, Louis and Lemuel. Incredible. It's really like your music. And Lestat and Christine. So good.

They're arguing over all of this. So, so as you mentioned, we saw this clip as far back as San Diego Comic-Con. You know, they've shown it a lot. something that Sam Reed said is that apparently this scene was supposed to be buried by a voiceover. This was like, because there's a lot of things we see that we don't hear in the show because there's voiceover over it. So this was supposed to be a scene where we hear Lestat, but we're watching the Markue. And so Sam Rame was like, so we really went, you know, in those scenes when you know you're going to be covered by a voiceover, you perform almost to the rafters because you're like, I have to like really show how I'm feeling because people won't be able to hear me. But Roland Jones, like, loved it so much that they just kept it.

And it is so good. Shout out Sausalito. Shout out Marin County where I was born. So Salito, Santiago, like, great, great list that shit here. Santiago, I could understand at least he had a presence, but Armand. Unbelievable. And as we talked about when the clip came out, or maybe when we did our Comic-Con pod, like you said, I bet, I bet. Very specific detail to pluck out of thin air is just.

I bet. I bet. An incredible exchange and incredible scene, the rhythm that they have together. Like, with love and respect to the actual music and musical numbers of the show, which are incredibly entertaining and genuinely like, boy, impressive. This is the real music of the show. Yeah. Like this duet.

And you're right. It is musical. Yes, the rhythm and rapport that they have together. It's a dance, but it's also a duet. And, like, there's just kind of nothing like it. I mean, it's just, it's electric to watch them. I feel someone, you know, like the, I bet, I bet, or like a lot of people were comparing that delivery to in season one when Louis is like, oh, so can I sleep with other people?

And Lassat goes, of course. Yeah. Of course. Of course. You know, or Armand going Lestat, La Satt, La Sot, La Sot, La Sot, La Sot, you know, like there is this, like, you know, it gets stuck in your head, like a line of song. That's a beautiful observation. Later, Louis will tell Raglin that he knows it was the fangangue that fucked up his hotel. So this entire meeting is really just a thinly veiled excuse for Louis to see Lestat.

That's how I choose to read it. Anyway. The songs are not about you. Louis also chose to get involved in Lestat's merch sales. Like, is it fucking with him? Yes, but is it a way to be connected with him? Yes. It's all of the above.

Yeah. You know, it's like incredible moment when Christine Lestat's like, well, what the fuck? And Christine's like, I'll look into it, like a reminder. A way to keep Lestat on his back. foot, right? But the next conversation that we witness with Louis and Daniel is like this real, I feel really bad about this, right? Right. So there's kind of all of it, I think that what you're observing about that desire to be connected to him when they are apart. Yeah. But also like, I have a, you know, I saw a business opportunity. Like one of the things he says to Daniel,

it's like the reach that Louis has, the way that those glassy vampire fingers of Louise have worked their way into. Yeah, immortal properties. Yeah, immortal property. Talamazka coming to him for what exact reason and motive. You know, we have what Raglan actually will say and then we have our theory brains. But like, hey, we need like you to get involved here. So what I love about that is that you can connect that back to the Louie that we meet in season one. You know, and Lestat in this scene calls him what, bottom line, Louis, right? Like there's a business opportunity you go for it.

And Louis later says to Daniel, I saw money on the table, right? You know, this is just this idea of like Louis who always had this sort of on entrepreneurial mindset when he was in New Orleans and how that is just expanded and expanded in his vampire years. And so this idea that he like owns a random hotel in Detroit, but like where, how far does immortal properties go? And, you know, what, yeah. But the idea that like he's always, Lassat has always been interested in the theater and Louis has always been interested in and owning things, and owning property and building money off of other money and stuff like that. Yeah. And, and. then that aspect of like, well, what is authentic to each of them?

And then how does it unlock something in the present moment? Because then you think back to like the red carpet arrivals last week in episode one. And that that set up that we got from LaSada of like the opening, right, of this boutique hotel. So a more plot where the tour was going. Exactly, right? And I don't know how quickly you can spin up a boutique hotel. Those walls crumbled pretty quickly. If you've got the numbers working for you, you know.

And the means, right? which Louis has. So like the business impulse there, the entrepreneurial spirit there. I love that idea. But is he just like, where are the tour dates? Let's make sure that every place this guy goes is somewhere I own. That means that's like making kind of emotional. It's like amazing.

All right. Pretty green eyes than the Cougar Millen is. All right. So two new songs in this episode. The first previewed earlier for us by Tough Cookie is why do I have to feel? this one Lestat sings dramatically and directly to Louis this all really work for me

it's quite cheesy but like slowing down the gold and the like you know levitating up to the balcony but I loved this are we supposed to believe that the band minus Alex

is playing better now like finding their sounds so like so to that email we got from our listener yeah the ecstasy of letting Larry actually play his guitar rather than tambourine

and that idea of like everyone has something to contribute here we're a band And by the way, bands fighting on a tour bus, of course, I'm also thinking about almost famous. Like, could this be more for me? No, could not be more for me. But do you feel like we're supposed to believe that this performance is better? I mean, I already said that I like long face.

But like, are we meant to believe that why do I have to feel is being performed more successfully than their previous concerts? That's a good question because I don't know the answer to that. Because, hmm, the crowd seems bigger. but the venue just seems a little bigger. Yeah, but then we have Daniel. But you can't, he sends them, they sound thin without Alex, but it's Daniel. So you're like, is he just being a dick because he's Daniel? Or like, do they actually not sound as like fully realizes they should when their membership is intact?

Because their best guitarist hasn't fled after finding out that their frontman is actually a murderous vampire. Right. I thought on the floating toward Louis front, that was a, I was. I was like, this looks pretty silly. Yeah, very silly. I liked it. Yeah, and I think one of the things that's effective inside of it is like, I don't know, the way that it reminds us that time can feel like it moves differently for these characters because they're vampires, but also just because of the connection that they have to each other, the way that like everybody, you know, you have, you see. Everybody except for the other vampires.

because Gabriella can see them. Exactly. Gabriella is looking back like, what the fuck? So she has her personal investment in this. Louis and Lestad are sharing this moment. A lot of the people in the crowd are just sort of like looking at the stage still. It's almost like it happens out of the experience of other people's ability to understand.

But then it also still sort of ports you. So you have that where you're like, what are other people even like tracking here versus how much of this is like a projection for Louis? But you could also say the more literal interpretation of like the audience is ready to be deceived. that we got with Santiago and the theater troupe in the way that he would actually levitate. And we talked about a mini version of that with the crowd surfing into the like your feet or not on the ground and they don't even track it or they do and they think it's part of the trick. So how much of that is they're like, this is the whole show I came to see and how much of it is they can't even perceive the signal. How much of it is like.

If they're like, oh, pink can levitate during a concert. So Kinla Stott the Leoncore. All right. Fun fact that I just found by accident by Googling the lyrics of this song. sometimes I do that to find out what the title of the song is. This song, which is called Why Do I Have to Feel, written by Daniel Hart, includes lyrics from a song by the group Man Man, titled The Pretiest Song in the World, so that I wanted to write you the prettiest song in the world,

but I got distracted. That's a lyric from that song. In that song, he says By Fires in Burbank or whatever. Here, Lestat produces that book from God knows where, certainly not in his tight pants and like shoves it at Louis. But a fun fact is that the group Manman is the lead singer is Ryan Kattner who plays Salamander. So this is like lyrics from a song by the guy who's playing Salamander, who's the music supervisor on the show, that they incorporated into this moment, which I thought was just like a really fun thing. We will talk a bit more about the sort of Baudelaer poem that, you know, is part of the second song there.

something that I saw a really brilliant online fandom assessment of this show's version of Lestat because the lyrics here, I was afraid of losing you and then I lost you, which is the lyrics that TuffCookie was making fun of earlier in the episode too. Right, right, right. I lost you.

Like, all that sort of stuff. But I saw a really brilliant fan assess this as like that Lestat will time and again do things that contradict his personal moral code, which is like, turn Claudia, perhaps attack the Leancor fan family. perhaps have sex with his mom when he doesn't really feel like it's the right thing to do even if he is someone to attract to her or whatever is in his desperate attempt to make people he loves stay he will do these things that he believes are incredibly wrong and then they leave anyway and that's just the story of listat sad very sad very very sad um there's also one shot where jennifer elias gabriella is plugging her ears while Stott is singing in the crowd.

It's incredibly funny to me. Oh, God. When Daniel and Louis are having their telepathic conversation. Yeah. And in contrast to season one, when Louis says you're looking old, Daniel, he says you're looking younger, Daniel, right? And Daniel says monocytes and manjaro. Do you think monosites and manjaro is a lost Jane Austen novel? And if not, should we write it?

I thought you were going to say, is it a prestige TV email? I don't say to a major idea. Why don't have too many options inside of this show to me? That's true. So Jacob Anderson has said that Louis receiving this annotated copy that we saw Lestat Furiously highlight right notes in the margin and all this stuff like that. Like him looking at it. And that page that he's looking at in the concert, if you zoom in, the note on the top of the left-hand page is,

why is Louie trying to hurt me? That however bad Louis felt before about the book. This unlocked a new layer of guilt for him. Like seeing, it's not just like LaSat is having a tantrum and like performing that he's upset. Like he wrote these notes, he really is felt wounded by this. And this is just a new level of him understanding that in a way that he didn't before. And the way that in the Louis Daniel conversation, Louis is like, you know, we were working our way back to each other, right? So there's the extra degree of regret.

Yeah. The balloons are nice. They're activating animations on iPads. They're face-timing. They're face-timing. But then, and this is of a piece with the overall aspect that Louis has to confront, it would be easy to just blame Daniel. You didn't ask me and you published the book and you knew I didn't want to

because I forgot about the cloud, but I deleted the file. So what I wanted here was clear, even though I told you all this stuff in the first place. But at the end of the day, he has to write. reckon with the fact that he said these things. Right. And he made LaSat feel this way because of the things he said because of his version of it. Now, there's also the version of that for LaSat, which is like he also has to look at the truth on the page or a version of the truth and say like, the person I, is that how he sees me?

Or is that how he sees me? Or is that how I am? With that shitty-ass haircut. And no scars. And no scars. All right, so let's go into that scene. So Daniel is taking up bowling. This dinner conversation, you already mentioned that we get this sort of lampshading of the

omniscient narration in voiceover. This is my hour, and when tertiary figures appear in it, I will be speaking for them. Just great stuff that also casts obviously more doubt on the reliability of the narrative. For sure. No question. With less whining than these two managed to accomplish. Omnis warning siren, I woke the queen and unleashed her wrath upon the world. I mean, it doesn't sound great.

Doesn't sound ideal. Sounds like it'll be entertaining television, though. I wonder when that happens. I don't know. Yeah, what's your prediction? I feel like this is knowing literally nothing about future events. I feel like this is, so it's a seven-episode season. We're through two.

We have a lot of Harbingers through two episodes, specifically around Akasha and this, like, horrible. Did you know the Lestan has the blood of Akasha in him? It's come up. Wow. World-shattering circumstance that awaits. It feels like it can't actually just then be like, oh, she's here in the finale. Like, it has to be sooner than that. I don't know the answer to that because, again, they're blending two books.

Yeah. So I don't know what timeline, like how much of that book, which is titled The Queen of the Damned, that they're saving for another season they're hoping to get or, you know, how much they're rushing it into this season. My inclination initially was maybe she'll be introduced in the finale and then that sets up the adaptation for like season four and the next renaming of Cole and the Star Wars story. But like, it would be a lot, I think, to forecast and tease a apocalyptic doom and not give us that in this season. And maybe not even get that next season. Yeah. So my new prediction is, I guess, that maybe Akasha arrives in, like, episode five. And then that gives us a couple episodes for whatever unfolds from there.

Yeah, that sounds fun. Again, very Loki-esque. All right. So Daniel claims that some, quote, Hollywood asshole is behind the list at doc. Yeah. Are we supposed to understand that or are we meant to understand just by like the way that Real Rashid shows up at the concert and stuff like that? Right. And they say they have Daniel and Retainer. Are we meant to understand that it's actually a telemaska. Right. Because he introduces them as his producers. So this documentary is a Talamaska produced documentary. Is that your understanding?

I think so. I think so too. But I always open to the possibility of another reveal beyond that. This is not in the show. The book, I don't know the answer. I'm just asking questions. fathers and daughters. So we get this sort of like back and forth about like Daniel and he talks about his unusual connection to our mom. Right. And his inability to connect to his human daughters. Louis lies so blatantly into Daniel here when he's like, oh, that's weird. No, that's not normal.

That's completely weird. Sounds weird. It was so funny. We have seen in season one, like Louis and Lassad's a heartbeat synchronizing. We have seen in the season one finale when they, you know, they have that the like costume ball, New Orleans dance, and the two of them are dancing and everyone in the room goes away and it's just Louis and Lestat dancing alone in the room and then everyone comes back in one of those great like, you know, movie magic moments.

Basically exactly what Daniels described here. Literally when Daniel is describing here and Louis's like, I don't know, it sounds weird, man. Sounds weird. Where's Armand? When do you want to see him? Immediately. Yeah. Asa.

I do. Come to join us. Yeah. I just, I felt. so deeply in love with that character in season two. So, God, yeah. And then Louis tells a story about seeing a girl who looks like Claudia. Oh, this was sad.

Really devastating. Jeez, yeah. Delaney, we await your arrival. I mean, I have to imagine that this is how they're using Delaney this season. Is this, like, girl that he saw in New York? Do you think that's the case, or is it just going to be, like, flashback? Or what do you think? I guess, given the Bruce killer end of this episode,

propelling Louie into this Tal de Mascca task because of this connection to Claudius will go through. There could be, yeah, through more of that history in general. I thought that Chase the Ghost, I guess, was just like so heartbreaking and sad. And like, you know, in some respects, like all of these characters are doing a version of that.

And then the question becomes, can that ghost become, like, take corporeal form for you again, right? Like, is that a possible thing? In this supernatural world. And is that a healthy thing? Yeah. To always be, like, seeking that version of your past again. Yeah, boy, that was sad.

We're going to do all of this Louis stuff before we wind up. We end with Baudelaire. But here comes Raglan and Real Rashid. And I just want to shout out Justin Kirk's completely bonkers accent. It's insane. Is it fair for me? to praise it when I just sort of like lit

Jennifer Ely's accent on fire. Maybe not. But he's intentionally trying to do something very weird here. And we can talk about why maybe a bit more in the book spoiler section. But he's trying to do a sort of like mid-Atlantic via something else via something else accent. That is what he is going for here.

It is when he says Rashid. Just really funny. Really good. Here's the funniest thing that book readers responded to in this scene. And I'll get into a bit more of what it means in the book spoiler section.

But they just offhandedly mentioned that Louis killed a telemaska agent named David Talbot in Dubai. He killed 31 people. You know, the season one ends with this sort of like come and fucking get me moment from Louis and we find out that he killed 31 people, 32 including David Talbot.

David Talbot is like a significant character inside of the Anne Rice books. But a largely, unpopular character. Oh, interesting. And so they're going to have to do, if they get more seasons, they're going to have to do some character shuffling in order to, like, fill the hole that they've just created. But they have just, like, just decided to kill a major character off screen in this offhanded way. Jacob Anderson in the official podcast is like, I hate that guy.

I've always hated that guy. I got really excited that not only did he die off screen so we don't have to deal with him, but like I got to do it. Like sounds great. So. Okay. RIP David Talbot. Intrating. Really wild.

captive choice here. I'm pretty into it. And then we get this Bruce Killer stuff. How do you, how do you feel about this? Good. I mean, this has been a big kind of open source of story and also source of wounds and division and distance between the characters. You know, this, this horrific source of trauma for Claudia, who was out on a journey of exploration and discovery and going to new places and trying to enjoy life and was taken prisoner captive by this man who then tormented her and prayed upon her. And the pain and torment that she carried with her moving forward from this. It was so bad that Louis had to like redact it from the story, like her from her journals because he didn't want anyone to know this thing happened.

to her. Yeah. So, I mean, it makes sense that this would be something that the show returned to. I think Louis's feelings about Claudia

and desire to find a way for, like, this connection and presence to be restored. I think, like, it feels,

I mean, I assume this is all true that the talomasca is. Like, this is, you know, we had that killer tattoo on the back of Baby Jenks,

the Oracle Baby Janks's, yeah, the Oracle Baby Janks's neck. last week. So there's maybe the practical thing that they need this to be done and accounted for, but also like to be able to say to Louie in a way that they know will inside a response. Like, you're not going to let this guy go. So I understand, like, why have Louis do it instead of them cleaning up and the explanation that Raglin gives? And again, we don't necessarily need to believe him. But the explanation he gives is like, we do clean up. We don't, we don't,

we would not do anything this direct. Basically, we need to like manipulate you into doing it. And then we can help clean it up, but we can't have our hands as dirty as they would need to be in order to take care of this problem directly ourselves. Right. So, yeah, it seems very clear that they've got Louie on the hook for this. And again, this is a show-invented sort of storyline for Louis to keep him present here. Got it. So then one of the things that's interesting to me about that as a way to keep Louis really centered in the story is then what is the Lestat connection to this? because, you know, we have, as we've mentioned already,

the reminder that Louis doesn't know about Gabriella, right? So there's a truth kept on Lestat's side. But then there's also, like, what does Gabriela know about Louie? And she's on a real jealousy-driven, fact-finding mission inside this episode. And one of the things that she says to Lestat toward the end is, like, I see why you gave him a daughter, right? And then, like, took her back. and that was the only line.

Yeah, even the incest where he's like, we should make a pact, but then he's like later, you know, when she's slicing his neck and drinking, oh, we rode the edges of our pact. He's like, we have boundaries, but not really. This is the tripwire that he's like, and we were having such a good night. And the mood and the tone changes completely.

It goes icy on her. There's Louis, but also Claudia. And what Claudia means to her family, but to Louis specifically because of how much Louis means to Lassad. And what Claudia means to Lassad also, obviously that was very complicated and messy, but like, so what is Lestat going to do about Bruce and Killer? About Bruce?

Yeah. And if Louie ends up in some sort of sticky, messy circumstance in pursuit of that vengeance, what will Gabriella do about that? Like, hey, pay attention to me, not him and not that. That feels, I wonder how much of the plot will orient around that. I mean, anything that can put the two of them in a scene together, I'm in favor of, as you know. Yeah, for sure. For sure. And there's also just like the overall, like, you know, what is happening with that coven, right? Like how much power do they hold? Like not just Bruce specifically, but. So that's the fangangangue, right? Yeah. Yes. The tooth team.

Exactly. You know, they've got a farm. Yeah. And we talked about like the power outage. Fentinal distribution. Oh, yeah. The power outage. What is that about? Yeah. All right. Anyone fancy Italian? Let's wrap it up here. Along with this musical performance, of Baudelaire, which we'll talk about in a second. We get a flashback to Lestat turning Gabriela, fighting with Nikki, Gabriella taking two vampirism with gusto, and then the two of them slaughtering the family together, which as you noted earlier, this doesn't happen in the book. He does not kill his family. She does not kill his family.

He actually takes care of his family after he becomes, like he doesn't like them. He likes his nieces and nephews, but he doesn't like his brother and his dad, but he takes care of them financially after he is turned into a vampire. And so this is a huge. Yeah. RIP David Talbot and also Lestad and his mom killed their shitty family. I don't know. Does that, is that, in what way is that an interesting change to you?

To me, I guess, to me, I will say, because, again, he feels like a reluctant part, not totally reluctant, right? He pulls a heart out of the chest of one of them. But it seems like. something Gabriela like goaded him into. Yeah. She's like, we can get back there in an hour. And he feels, you know, uncomfortable with it. And something I did like is like they're hiding in those, what you call it a crypt?

Is it a tomb, I guess? A tomb? You see them a lot on Buffy Vampire Slayer or something that is like a big cement coffin that you put another coffin in. But they're hiding in there. But those, like, that's one of the first shots of the episode is those, you know, because he describes his dead siblings. as garden gnomes outside of the manor.

But like those cement or stone coffin things tombs are there and that's where they are at the end of the episode. I thought that was like a cool little circle back. Yeah, I think I agree like this idea that this is like a gift he gave her. Not necessarily the choice he would have made. Yeah. On his own. And then what else is he, is he willing to do for her? For her people to the point of email. The things we do for love, as Jamie Lannister might say.

All right. So let's start sings the second song in the night, it's Baudelaire. It's Baudelaire time. Baudelaire already got a mention in the auction. Right, a song cycle set to the poetry of Baudelaire. That was episode one. So two episodes, two mentions. Why Baudelaire? My guess is that he wrote, it's because, again, this is a word search for Baudelaire inside of Anne Rice. I didn't find anything. So this is a show invention, right? So is it because he wrote poems like Le Vampier and the Vampier and the metamorphosis of the vampire. And I read those poems.

And in those poems, the vampire is usually a metaphor for like addiction and self-destruction and all this sort of stuff like that. So he was like, the vampire symbol is something that Baudelaire was interested in.

He's an early modernist, a lot of symbolistic language. This poem that they set to this tune written by, the tune written by Daniel Hart, the words are Baudelares, and it's from the poem, Fountain of Blood,

Le Fonton de Song. And it's the same tune that he was playing over the iPad to Louis in episode one. And I'm wondering if in the lyrics of, why do I have to feel, the lyrics when he says, I want to write you the prettiest song in the world,

but I got distracted. Like, is this what he means? I was trying to write you this beautiful Baudelaire song or a beautiful song, you know, but then the fucking book came out and I got distracted. Daniel Hart in an interview said,

like, we wanted to show music that would come from his pre-rock and roll era, more like an art song or a chamber song for the 19th century. I really enjoyed writing it. Yeah. There are many translations of this poem, but I went with the Edna S. A. Vincent Malay. Shout out lesbians translation. I'm going to read it.

It seems to me sometimes my blood is bubbling out as fountains do in rhythmic sobs. I feel it spout and laps. I hear it plainly. It makes a murmuring sound. But from what wound it well so far I have not found, as blood runs in the lists round tumbled armored bones. It soaks the city, islanding the paving stones. Everything thirsty leans to lap it with stretched head. Trees suck it up. It stains their trunks and branches red. I turn to wine for respite. I drink and I drink deep just for one day, one day, neither to see nor hear. Wine only renders sharper the frantic eye and ear. In terror I cried to love, oh, put my mind to sleep. But love for me is only a mattress where I shrink on needles and my blood is given to whores to drink.

So a lot of blood stuff. Yes, quite. Very vampire. Yeah. Here's my like a few things that I want to call out from this. You know, in every translation of this poem, the bottom line is he's bleeding freely, but he cannot find the source of the blood. Where is the wound on my body?

I cannot find it. So if you can't find the wound, you can't, you know, stamp the flow of blood. Like that's part of it. but also, like, Lestat has not done the work to the psychological work, the therapeutic work, to figure out what the original wound is here. Right. I'd say Gabrielle personally, but, like, you know, your mileage memory. At the end of the day.

Everything thirsty leans to lap it with stretched head, the blood that he is, you know, his vampire feelings are so big that the blood just like is flooding the city, right, with his blood, with his wound. Everyone, everything thirsty and leaves lap it up. trees in some translations cattle like whatever the case may be um this idea of like as an artist your pain becomes art that other people feed on right so as a songwriter let's say you put your pain into the lyrics and then you know a crowd of a thousand people are sewn in Toledo are like yeah sing me about your heartbreak they're just like greedily lapping it up so your your your pain becomes food for other people to consume this idea of like of a of a

of wine for respite one day, one day neither to see or here. So numbing it doesn't work, right? Does not help. And then love, trying to sort of like immerse yourself inside of love and maybe the love will feel, you know, as the Oracle Baby Jenks, like, does that top up your heart? These various like love stories that you've created for yourself with Nikki, with Louie, etc.

And the answer is, you know, to Baudelaire, at least, no. Right. Bed of needles. My blood is given to horse a drink. not great. Love's not the answer. Wines not the answer. I'm bleeding profusely and I don't know what the wound is. And that's the poem, the lyrics that he has put to this song here. Love it. Anything you want to say about Baudelaire? I think you covered it. I have nothing to add. We did it. Poetry Corner. Beautiful. Thanks for the Baudelaire. Book spoilers? Let's do it. Let's do it.

All right. So as you mentioned, RIP David Talbot, we did get an email about this. Actually, our emailers did not mention David Talbot, but I now understand this is who they were talking about, right? So Jessica was into say, and wanted to clarify, in the great body swap thing that we're talking about, Lestat does get his body back from Raglan James after they swap, but James then swaps with a friend of Lestat who has not yet been introduced in the show. This is David Talbot. That person in James's body becomes a vampire, but Lestat does get to be himself again, but then again, they could change this and use his body double, or it could be a way for quote unquote Lestat to publicly be killed and die.

It would be interesting to see where they go from there. I don't know how to, in my understanding of this shell game that is the body swap. Yeah. I don't know who to put in David Talbot's place. David Talbot, who is an elderly human, who Lestat eventually turns into a vampire in Ragland James's body. So like, if we, who worked for the telemaska and he's a friend of Lestat. So is it like, Daniel? an older man who was already a vampire, but like an older man, blah, blah, is it Louise somehow,

or is it someone else they have yet? Is it Rashid? Is it like, who is it going to be or are they even going to do it? I don't know. But like it feels like they want to do the body swap since they seem like they've already teased that in the auction scene at the beginning of episode one. But I don't, the David Talbot problem creates a real hole inside of this whole equation that I don't know how they plan to.

I don't have a clear understanding of who they could swap in for him. But obviously they want to swap in a character they already have to make it all feel like a tighter story. Potential incorporation of the Anne Rice 2000 book Merrick with this Claudia plot in which Louis resurrects Claudia to find closure. Okay. Yeah. So is that what they're doing here with this waitress that he sees in New York? Right. Is she a resurrected Claudia or is she a vessel that they could put a resurrected Claudia into or like what are they going to do?

but like that is a plot line of a later in Rice book. I don't know the answer. Interesting. Interesting. All right. The Great Conversion. We already talked about this. As you mentioned, it's not, I mean, do you want more specifics of this, of slightly more specifics?

Sure. The right conversion is more vampires than humans, I believe. So like, that's the idea. It's like, let's change the percentage. And we're going to keep the humans around so we can feed on them. But sure, yeah. Let's become the dominant population of the world. Okay.

Makes sense. Devil's Minion is a chapter inside of the Queen of the Dam that is all about Daniel and Armand and oh yeah, baby, their love story. I feel like, you know, this is like, this is so present here in Daniel's like discomfort in talking about Armand and is just sort of like, I feel him even when he's not here. And I kind of love that they're doing this because like because of the time jump shenanigans that they did in season one, like Daniel Malloy is a young man in the same man in the the books. Right, right, right, right. So the fact that they're like, Daniel Malloy is a much

older man played by Eric Begotian, but I think they're still going to do this, like, Armand Daniel Love Story thing. Fantastic. Fucked up. And like, if you think about that and you go back to that episode in season two that we love, it's just like all this, you know, is that what makes you fascinating? Is that what makes you fascinating? God, I loved that. I'm really excited. And then body swapping is an explanation for Raglins, but our accent, Tale of the Body Thief is not his first rodeo at body swapping, he's been doing this. So like, how old is he? I don't know the answer. But like he's been sort of body hopping already.

So like, again, this is what I'm talking about. If you live for centuries, your accent should be weird, you know? For sure. Yeah. Or non-existent, you know. Right. Completely blank or just nuts. Or just nuts. And Justin Kirk has gone for nuts. And I'm a big fan of it personally. But yeah. Great stuff. Anything else you want to talk about here? Any questions you might have that I can.

Might be able to answer or not. I guess on the Claudia front, like, so what are you, what are you hoping for in terms of just, I guess, volume for that storyline?

Um, it depends if Lestad is also involved. Yeah. If it's just like a side plot, I'm just kind of traumatized from this last season of Euphoria where people felt like they were inside plots that did not look back to the main story

and just sort of like a way to keep someone here, even though we don't have a story for them. Yeah. Do you know? So, but by dint of it being Claudia, It is by nature than more naturally connected to the story. I really like Delaney's performance as Claudia.

So like if she's playing a different person, that's going to be kind of fun, I think. And I don't expect it will take up more than like a couple episodes inside of this season would be my guess. Right. But I would love for it to be an excuse to put Louis and Lassat together. Yeah. Yeah. Because I would always prefer that. Same.

Great. Let's do it. That is it for the Vampire LaSat episode two. Thank you to Jacob Cornett, Carlos Chiroboga, Scott Lee, Arjuna, Rican Powell, Jomea, Dinaron. Our entire band that we would talk it through with. And the thing I'm a little about Laestad is that he really did talk it through with them. You know? That guy loves a meeting. Yeah. I mean, the band performed together after all of a sudden done.

We will be back with The Dark Night Rises. That's right. soon. Yes. And that House of the Dragon is the next time you'll hear from us. Listad episode three. Hobbiton Dragons at gmail.com. Yes.

If you want to email us, your thoughts and feelings and bookreader insights, we would love to hear them. Your Baudelaire interpretations, anything else. And we'll see you soon. Bye.