The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘Hijack’ Episodes 1-4 Recap

Episode Date: July 20, 2023

Joanna Robinson and Van Lathan give their thoughts on the first half of the Apple TV series ‘Hijack.’ They discuss Idris Elba’s performance and career arc as a leading man in shows and movies, what makes this show work, and much more. Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Van Lathan Jr. Producer: Isaiah Blakely Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And together we host The Big Picture, The Ringers Film Podcasts for new releases, career retrospectives, director interviews, movie drafts, top fives, and so much more. Twice a week, we break down the latest releases, argue about whether movies are doomed, and debate our modern film canon. Listen to The Big Picture on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, welcome back to the Prestige TV podcast feed on Joanna Robinson.

And joining me today, we only have seven hours to get this podcast. done. It's Van Lathan. Hi, Van Rerey. I'm here and I'm hoping to hijack this podcast with an inappropriate story. I cannot wait. That's my favorite thing that you do on any podcast ever. So I'm really excited for that. We're here to cover hijack the Apple TV Plus series starring Idris Elba, seven episodes, you know, a sort of in real time kind of show. It's about seven hours, seven episodes of a hijacking incident on a plane. If you have a haven't watched it. We stopped the podcast and go watch it. We will be talking five episodes have dropped. We're going to be talking about the first four. We're doing like a midseason check-in.

So we're talking up through episode four not responding. It's the title of that episode. And then we'll be back for the finale, episode seven to sort of recap the whole season. But we wanted to do like a little mid-season check-in because it's a show that we're enjoying. We want to talk about it. Just really quickly elsewhere in the prestige feed. You can hear Chris Ryan, Mallory Rubin, and you're truly talking about Justified, a Hall of Fame episode of Justified called Bloody Harlan Season 2 finale that we talked about

earlier this week. And then Rob Mahoney and I covered the premiere, the first two episodes of Justified City Promeval, which just premiered on FX. So that is what is going on. What is that about? You know, Timothy Oliphant. Yes, I know. I mean, I know what Justify is about.

Shout out to Dave Andron, who I play basketball with for many years. Really? Yeah. So Dave, shout out to Dave and all the success he's had. Me and Dave used to play basketball every day in LA Fitness and when he was back when he was a writer on Justified. Yeah. So he's the co-creator of City Prime Uval. I had an idea. Yeah. And I thought me and Ilya, actually my friend Ilya, we had an idea for Dave back in the day to where at the end of every show, Ilya, me and Ilya talked about at the end of every show that Timothy Olafont should

like close the prison bars on someone and then look in the camera and go, justified. You know what I mean? And Dave, and every time we would talk to Dave about this, Dave would never take our idea, but I'm glad to see everything going so well for Dave.

Dave's a great guy. I won't lie to you in the first two seasons of that show, the original show. They do say the word justified, like, oh, lot. Do they? Yeah, they do.

City Primeval. is this reboot that they have done where they've taken the character of railing Givens played by Timothy Oliphant out of Kentucky and now he's in Detroit. So it's about like, it's an eight episode season.

His fish out of water sort of solving a crime in Detroit. Angineau Ellis plays this lawyer, defense attorney. She's incredible. She's the co-lead and it's really, really good. So, nice.

First two episodes, Rob Honey and I cover that here on the feed next week i think starting next week bill simmons juliet litman and yours truly will be doing an oc mini rewatch the oc premiered 20 years ago in august so we're doing the first seven episodes of the oc and then you know a bunch of other shows are coming back in august so that's what's going on wait wait you guys are doing the oc on prestige tv the definition of prestige is pretty flexible, I don't know if you knew that. But if you've noticed,

I just want to say this. Prestuages in the eye of the whole holder. Yeah, well, it seems like it. There's a fantastic show right now on Amazon Prime video called I'm a Virgo, which I love. I think it's funny, quirky, poignant, Boots Riley.

Do you know he used to play basketball with Boots Riley here in Oakland? You did? Give them an idea if I'm a Virgo. And so, you know, I'm just throwing my hat in the ring right there. But yeah, because the O.C. man. Give me a fucking break. I mean, I feel like if you texted Bill literally right now and said I'd like to do an episode of Prestige about Hymanburgo, he'd be like, okay.

Anyway, that's that's the, those are the highs and the lows, but all highs, really, of the Prestigevy podcast feed. We're here to talk about hijack. Let's just start with, I actually want to talk to you about Idraselba for a little while because this is an incredible. like showcase for Idris, who obviously is an actor that we've had our eye on since Luther, since The Wire, et cetera, et cetera, has not broken as big in film as I think a lot of us thought he would.

So my question to you is like, why do you think he is so commanding, so like filling the screen in the television world? And why hasn't that translated over into the film world the way that a lot of us expected it would? So Idris, which, by the way, full disclosure, full disclosure to everyone that's listening to this. Idris Elba and I have the same manager. So shout out to Arundi Garrett, just so everyone should know that. I'm actually, I was just texting about, I was just texting around the show a little, a second ago. Arunda is like a big brother to me.

Him and Idris are like brothers. He's been with him with his entire career. so there's a whole incestuous family business type of relationship situation going on. This is what I would say. I would say that Idris has had a really consistent movie career, like a very consistent. When you look at the filmography, he just shows up everywhere. He's a very hardworking and high caliber film dude.

You see him in a lot of movies that you love, like pops up in rock and roll. comes back and pops up in Thor, pops up in all of these movies, and enough films to where he is the lead that you would really like. I think the signature role is what's missing. And I think, you know, I heard Alec Baldwin,

we were talking about Alec Baldwin a little bit before we jumped on the podcast. I remember Alec Baldwin said something that always stuck with me. They asked Alec Baldwin, this is like in the early 2000s or something when I was, you know, really getting deep into reading magazines about movies.

Oh my God, actual magazines. You have to read magazines about movies. And they asked Alec Baldwin, I might have said this before on his feed somewhere how successful an actor he thought that he was. And Alec Baldwin said not really that successful. And I thought to myself, hmm, Alec Baldwin has been in tons of movies.

That's a bona fide Hollywood leading man. He pops up in, the hunt for Red October. And then, you know, he's in a bunch of movies that I like, you know? I like the marrying man. The rest of you guys don't like that movie. I like the shadow. The rest of you guys don't like that.

You know what I mean? So he pops up in so many movies that I like. So I was surprised to hear him say that. And his explanation for it was, I've never been in a movie that was a, I was never been the driving force of a movie. Right. That's what he said. That was a critical.

or commercial phenomena and huge success. I've never been the guy in a movie that either won a bunch of awards or made $150 or $200 million. Yeah. And if you use that metric to an actor, you could argue that perhaps Idris is still waiting on that, right? he's been in a lot of great things.

Luther is great. You know, people love Luther. This is great. And he's popped up in a lot of movies that have had huge success. He's everywhere. There's a ubiquity to his career. He was in The Wire, which is a huge critical success. He's been in great stuff.

But there's no guy in the Wire. You know what I mean? So if you were making that argument, that's kind of what you could say. It's just a matter of time, no. He is, in my opinion, he's got the full package of movie superstardom and has always had it. And it's just a matter of time before he sweeps the award show or that does happen for him. But to your point, when you look back on it, it kind of hasn't yet. There've been some hits and misses if you look at the Dark Tower and different things like that.

Right. Like the Dark Tower could have, if that had hit, that could have been like a, you know, because, yeah, he's in the Thor movies. but like Heimdahl isn't like the thing that people are walking away talking about necessarily. And like I remember Beasts and No Nation when that came out, that was like one of the first movies that Netflix tried to like make a real Oscar run with. That was like 2015. And it was it was like Netflix hadn't figured out yet exactly how to sell an Oscar movie. That was like their first big bid. And then I think that, you know, he shows he's great.

He's great and everything. but like if the Dark Tower had hit or if the suicide squad had hit in a way that we think there are going to be more of them which there aren't you know like there are things like that meanwhile he's Luther you know he's Stringer Bell like he is he's you know he's a he's a guy I mean if you look at it it's you know

Thor to Dark World remember Pacific Pacific Rim Prometheus you know what I mean all of these films these are big fucking movies Rock and Rolls really solid like even in ones I don't like, like Pacific Rim, he's phenomenal in it. Like, he's canceling the apocalypse. No, I don't. He's canceling the apocalypse.

You know what I mean? Like, and even in Prometheus, which is a, is a mixed bag of a movie, like, he's phenomenal. So he's phenomenal and everything. It's just sort of like, where is that, you know, and there was, you know, he was dog for years of the whole, like, James Bond conversation. Like, where is that signature movie role to turn him into where he belongs, I think, which is at the top tier of, like, the movie stardom,

where, like, oh, it's an Idris Elba film. We haven't had that yet, you know what I mean? The harder they fall, great. Yeah. Like, I like Molly's game. I don't know why people don't like Molly's game as much as me. I dig Molly's game. He's all, so he's there, and he instantly makes a movie cooler.

But to the level that people, I think, thought that it was going to happen, not quite the Denzel turn that I think people were, looking for. Maybe not even, and maybe not the Don Chiedel turn. Because Don has been those guys, has been a guy who has push big movies for like, uh, in terms of, um, in terms of like artistic recognition and stuff. Mm-hmm.

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Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-99 or visit zepbounce.lily.com. Well, I think what's interesting when you watch this show, hijack, and the role he's playing here, you know, this is another moment for like Van Goghman to remember like our glory days of like the 90s. Like the 90s was full of these plane movies. And who did you have at the center of these plane movies, right? Harrison Ford, Nicholas Cage.

Like this is a role that the biggest movie stars in the world would have played in the 90s when these sort of like hijack action movie, die hard on a plane movies were, you know, having their heyday. And then 9-11 happened. and are like that trend died with 9-11 understandably, but like in the late 90s, you couldn't like throw a stone without hitting a plane movie like this. And so to bring this idea back, you know,

there have been a few, like lately like Gerard Butler's holding it down for the plane genre, etc. like Samuel Jackson fought snakes on a plane, et cetera. Like that all happened post-9-11, but like not in the same way that it did in the late 90s. And I would say not in the same way that we get here,

which is again essentially diehard on a plane. And what I love about this concept is George Kay, who is a creator of both Lupin and this show, gave an interview for the New York Times talking about his inspiration for making hijack. And it was when he was in the channel, the channel between the UK and France, and it broke down. And he started looking around at all the passengers.

and he was like starting to imagine the various types of people that he saw. And he was like, how would they behave in hijack situation and would be all be able to work together? I think that's a brilliant thing to think about because what this is is hijack is an Adris Elba vehicle. But there are also a ton of personalities on this plane that are really interesting and get more time because we have more time with them. It's seven hours. It's not a two-hour movie where we get to like, we get a sense of like who the captain is, where we get a sense of that ginger who's sitting next to him, you know, and we get a sense of who all these people were before the flight took off.

And then how do they transform under the pressure cooker that is this situation? What do you think of this is in terms of like a star vehicle versus an ensemble and this idea of like thinking about people you've flown with and like how what kind of alliances you can form or who you might rely on in a situation like this. I think the point that you make is the central point that makes this show really good to me. And I'm really having a lot of fun with hijack. Yeah. Is obviously there's the big star in the middle of it, the face that we all know, because a lot of these other actors, the pilot I've seen before.

Ben Miles, yeah. Yeah. But a lot of these other actors, I can't remember seeing them. You know, I'm not up on my BBC type shit. but it is the layers of things that are happening that are adding to the intrigue in the store. Obviously, we know that this guy in some way is as adept as a negotiator and a people person as John McLean was as a two-gunned problem solver. And we see that. You know, this guy is able to do all of these things that McLean couldn't do or Stephen Seagall couldn't do in understabwe.

siege, but he's able to do him with his brain, really, and his ability to kind of read people. But, like, I still don't really know what, at the point that we're watching right now, what the hijackers want, why the hijacking is happening. The people, they're doing these subtle things. The people don't really know at first whether or not the plane has actually been hijacked. So you have people on the ground that are working to convince other people that the plane is in trouble. Then you have to, they have, those people have to get through all of their roadblocks, mental and,

I guess job occupationally related because they don't want to believe. Bureaucratically. Bureaucratic kind of situations to believe whether or not this is a deal. Then it's like, it's the plane that is shut down. So there's, it's actually looking at this the way that it would actually happen. And if this were happening in real life and unfortunately, of course, things like this have happened, all of the, of the intrigue and stuff like that doesn't just happen on the plane. It happens around the world when people are trying to figure out what do we do with this,

the international incidents that can happen from this. We get to a situation here where there's like, hey, if this plane gets shot down, it might start a war. So all of that doesn't have anything to do with Idris. Idges is just trying to figure out how to make it back home. I think the layers of intrigue is kind of what keeps me coming back to the show because there's a lot of stuff I really don't know like what's happening. happening. You know what I mean? And I think it's interesting, like you mentioned, the layers on the ground. It's always interesting to me, again, like post-9-11 to think about a hijacking narrative.

And I'm like, I was like, how are we going to handle like who's doing the hijacking and why? You know what I mean? Like, who's, who's allowed, quote unquote, to be a terrorist, I think, like in, in something like this. And like the fact that the flight takes off from Dubai and is going to London. And so you've got people on the ground in Dubai, like one person specifically who, as you mentioned before, we started recording got got by episode four, like these heroes in Dubai, trying to like help the plane. Do you know what I mean, which feels like a very conscious choice in terms of optics? But see, I dig that. Hey, hey, how about this? Everybody's going to do to Dubai right now, right?

Yeah. There's no reason. No one's afraid of Dubai. No one is afraid of brown people. I mean, there's still people that are making their whole political life telling us that we should be afraid of brown people in Dubai. But every other week I see somebody on my Instagram riding some kind of jet boat in Dubai. I'm like the only guy that hasn't been.

So seeing that, they got air traffic controllers too. Let's sort of go fund me to get van to Dubai. Okay, sorry, go. I don't want to go. Okay. I'll be honest with, I don't want to go. I don't want to, like, travel 20-some-odd hours to get to the desert. If I want to go to the desert, I'll go to Death Valley where it's currently 127 degrees. I know they don't have crazy stuff like the Birch Khalifa, but I don't want to go to Dubai.

Shout out to Dubai. That's great. But what I'm saying is that is a very conscious decision, but it also reflects reality. Like there are people in air traffic control towers in Dubai whose job it is to land plane safely for people all over the world. Exactly. Yeah. Right. I think that having what I will say about air traffic control, and this is true over on the Heathrow side too with the Eve Miles,

Eve Miles, who I know from the TV show Torchwood plays Alice and Claire, who's this like air traffic controller who comes into. I think it's, I believe it's Heathrow, who's like, hey, you fuck up. You have not been connecting the dots on this. Don't you think it's a little weird that this got flagged here and this got flagged here? And I'm like, I'm just an exhausted mom, but even I can see something's fucked up here. But it makes their job look so incredibly glamorous. Like, I feel like we keep checking in with air traffic controllers in different spaces. And I would like to know, if anyone's listening to this and you're an air traffic controller,

and if your office looks as like high tech and glamorous, As the ones on this show, I would, I would really love to hear about it. So let me ask you this real quick before we move on. Have you ever seen Pushington? Yeah, yeah, of course. I was thinking about that. That's the air traffic control. That makes air traffic control movies.

There's one movie, right? For almost every occupation that makes that occupation look like something really important and awesome. And Pushing-10 is the movie that makes air traffic controllers seem like, they are the G's of all G's. It's such a hard job. It's such a high pressure job. It's one of those things that either you can do it or you can't.

I used to love that movie. No, I mean, like, I believe it is a hard job and a high pressure job. I just don't believe that they all, like, look as hot as they do and, like, are in as, like, a high tech of, you know, a brain center sort of organization. But I could be wrong. If you're listening to this to your air traffic controller, you know, you know where to find me to tell me I'm wrong. Everyone does. Anyway, the other thing I want to talk about is just like the idea of a plane as a setting for something like this. I think this, again, because we're spending

more time in it than we do in like a two-hour movie, the way this show makes such good use of the strata of the classes, right? You're moving through, you know, first to business, to premium economy all the way back, you know, to the cheap sheets, cheap seats. way in the back where everyone is like cramped and more irritable because of like where they're fucking sitting, et cetera. And also makes really clever use of just the setting of a plane in general because I was actually just talking to a lift driver really recently about this. We were talking about how post-COVID, and this is not any revelatory statement, but how much harder it is to fly post-COVID because people have forgotten how to like work as a community

in a situation. And when you fly with other people, you are all entering a social contract that you will like behave a certain way. And like we're all somehow working together to get to our next destination. It requires a lot of like just being mindful of the larger group. And I feel like a lot of us have just lost our ability to do that. And you know, not to mention. and how we would handle a hijacking, but just even getting from like San Francisco to L.A. It can be drama on the plane. Do you know what I'm talking about?

I do. I do. I think that I see people all the time that just don't have the basic human decency to put the needs of the many before their minor inconvenience. I also think that as we become more siloed off, and, you know, look for reasons to complain about things.

That's kind of growing in us. But let me tell you what happened to me recently, Joe, that puts me in a different light than the rest of those people. I don't know if I told you about this, Joe. I don't know if we discussed this. I got TSA pre-check. I also got TSA pre-check. It's over.

I hope you motherfuckers. I hope you motherfuckers had a good, time seeing me and commiserating with me at the airport and having me act like I'm one of you. It's over. I'm no longer one of you motherfuckers. I'm out of here, baby. I had clear and I thought that was the deal. No.

I did TSA precheck known traveler number. It's over. Don't fucking talk to me. If you're not one of the checky, checky squad, I'm out. I'm going straight there. I feel different. I feel different now that I have. have it. Okay, but let's just clarify something. You don't have to be like a gigillionaire to get TSA precheck.

Why did you, why did you make it about money? See, that's the thing with you. That's the thing with you Northern California, Silicon Valley millionaires. Why did you make it about money? It's not about money. But what's what I'm saying. I'm just saying anyone listening, you two can be like, you know, for not no money, but not a ton of money. I don't want to gate keep TSA precheck. You can Here's why I'm saying this. My best friend in the world has had TSA precheck for like six years, like so long. And every time we travel, if you travel with them, you can get it with them as like they're plus one. And so I would go with her and I'd be like, what is this wondrous world?

And she's like never worried about being on time for the airport, et cetera, et cetera, because she can just breeze the fuck through. And she's like, why don't you have it? You travel for work all the time. You travel way more than I do. Why don't you have this? And I hate paperwork. I can't do paperwork. I get really intimidated by it.

She, for my birthday this year, did it, like, all the paperwork for me. I paid for it, but, like, she did all the forms for me. And that's why I have pre-check now because, like, someone was so tired of me not having it. So I'm just saying, if you're listening to this, it's worth it. This is why I'll tell you guys, if you listen to this right now, don't do it. You don't want it. Van wants to keep it so he can feel superior. Let us hang out and have pre-check.

We have, you guys don't even know, we have these little pre-check parties where we just hang out and we go in and out of security just for fun. Sometimes, you know that little area where it says do not exit or you have to go back to security? Sometimes I just walk through that bitch. Because I know that there's, I know I could just go again. I know I can just go again. So I say all that to say that, yeah, air travel is, it's.

It's stressful because people don't make space for each other like it seems like they're they used to. That is a very correct assessment. I was just talking to Rob Mahoney and he was telling me about how he was on a, we were talking about shoe etiquette on a plane, right? And he was talking about how he saw like a woman on an airplane recently. He was like she was wearing white flip flops with that like, you know, if you wear white flip flops, you can get that sort of like outline of your foot shape and dirt essentially in a white flip flop. And I was like, in order for you to see that, that means she took them. off. And he was like, yeah, and she put her feet up on the wall. And I'm like, people don't know how to behave. People don't know how to leave their house and get on a plane and just be cool for an hour,

two hours, five hours, however long your flight is, just like seven hours. Be fucking cool to other people. And what I love about this show is that before the hijacking starts, we get so many examples of those kinds of like little squabbles that people have. Like, again, the guy sitting next to Idris Elba is like playing shit on his phone with the sound on. I will kill you if you do that. Like I will kill you if you do that. Or the people down out in the back, like having the conversation about the overhead bins and like does one belong to another seat or whatever? Like these squabbles that happen on like every flight.

And then how do these people react when they have to work together? When they have to work together. You know? Joe, before we get off this, I want you to check your text messages. It's so weird that this just popped up on my Twitter. Just check. I want to get Joe's reaction to this in real time while we're talking about people on planes. Oh, my God.

What is she doing? Is she peeing? It was a woman on a spear flight that for some reason couldn't get into the bathroom or they wouldn't open up the bathroom so she could use it. And she's, she peed. She's just peeing without taking her anything off. Oh, no, she did. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

People just don't, yeah, they don't know how to behave. Like, what is? What is happening? Okay. So that's all in the mix. And then you get any sort of hijack, hostage, life or death situation where you're going to have the characters who are like, don't make trouble, right? Don't move.

Don't try anything. And then you're going to have the characters who want to try something. And what I love about like these middle episodes here is we've got, we've got Idriselba as Sam. And like almost anything that he does, we're like, that's a good. great idea. Do that. You're doing that. That's a brilliant idea. Blah, blah, blah. And then again, we have his plays games on his phone with the sound on, his seatmate, who, like, is like, we should, we should do this thing around the bullets or we should do that. And we're like, that seems like a bad idea. You know, you don't get to do anything. Leave it to Idris,

like, sort of thing. And so I just love that we get that, we get all flavors of how someone would respond to the situation. Just like, keep your head down. Don't do anything. comply, comply, comply, comply, or try to make some moves. Also, those two guys who wound up like zip tied, like in the middle section because they tried to make a move and it didn't work out for them. And so I just like that you've got, it's not just Sam, it's character, trying to make moves. There's a lot of different styles on the mix here.

And it never gets confusing. I never feel like there's too many people to track. It all feels really like brilliantly done. to keep you ground and oriented in the story. You have mother with kids who only can really care about them. You know, you have the young girls soccer team or whatever that are just old enough to be scared. The kids are just whatever,

but you have the young people who are just old enough to be afraid of what's going to happen and to have no control in the situation. You have the priest who seems like, he just kind of wants to placate everyone who by the same token tried to bribe his way into business class with a 50 spot. And then you have something else that you don't really get in other hijack taken over playing type situations, which is you get real, real variety in the personalities of the

hijackers. and you that's interesting you get one guy who's almost mute and angry who never really says very much and seems to not give a fuck you get an older guy who tried to charm his way into a relationship with the kids

with the teens you have with the teens a very staunch lady who's very vocal but super mean another kid who gets stabbed who seemed to be a little bit like he seemed to be... The most anti-violent sort of thing. The most anti-violence from the beginning. Yeah.

And then you have the leader of the entire crew who is obviously being put up to this for some reason. Is I wouldn't look at the portrayal of that character and think that that character is the mastermind behind this. He seems like he's the guy in charge, but more so he's the cog in a wig. So all of that trying to figure out what's really going on with them, why they're doing this, which is unclear, but it seems like there's an engine behind them. It all just makes the show from beat to beat. And the show's kind of moving in real time.

We talked about that a little bit. We haven't talked about that yet, but it's kind of moving in real time. It makes a show very compelling. And also, I'll be honest with you, this is like an interesting and strong performance from Idris Elba. like I'm not he's never bad in anything but he's really tapping into an otherness outside of his his his stardom in a really specific way in this he's really good in this he's I think he's fantastic in this and and what adds dimension to him is that we get to know his family on the

ground his ex his son uh his ex's new boyfriend um who you know is he's tapped into law enforcement, all that sort of stuff. There is, again, I haven't, I haven't seen the ending of this season, but like, I was, I was talking to you and Chris Ryan about this a little bit. It feels so, is astonishing to you think this is not a BBC co-production because it feels so BBC. The beats are so BBC when you have, like, the home secretaries are involved and the, and all the politics of the PMs and, like, that sort of shit always happened.

Like, when you watch something like the bodyguard or, like, there's, you know, like a few shows that came out of the BBC that are this kind of like thriller. There's a political layer. Like what's going on here? I think, you know, and the actors who are involved as well. But I think that in showing us, I'm just guessing here. I haven't seen the end of the season. And showing us Sam's family, I feel like we're,

Idris is going to get to do like full-blown John McLean action star on the ground with this family. Like there's, or talk down or something like that. but there's going to be some confrontation with his family after the plane lands. There's going to be like a coda, a post-plane landing coda. You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, yeah. Yeah, it's interesting.

Sam's wife or his ex-wife in this movie is dating the cop. The cop is a white dude. Okay. So that's an interesting dynamic. Her son is of the younger generation. So seeing his mother date a white. white cop is just another little thing that adds a little bit of interest and intrigue to the backstory what's really going on between sam and his wife why is sam coming back buying her presence

which you see earlier on uh when she's clearly in bed with someone else and she's moved on she seems happy by the way this guy this cop who she's with is heroic right he's not like an asshole doing crazy things it's interesting that you talked about the production of it's, I could make an argument that, you know, this show and Sam's wife have something in common. Neither one of them want the BBC. So, you walked down such a long, long road to get there. Like the longest road you've ever longed. You guys know it was coming. You're dealing with Van Lathen here. I could. I could. I could. I couldn't let it go.

Isaiah's laughing somewhere right now. I know you guys are digging. You just took like a seven-hour flight to get to that. I was like, because let me tell you something, this isn't the Midnight Boys. No. So since this is the Midnight Boys, I couldn't, I had to be,

I had to get there in a very, very delicate way, but I'm always going to get this. But no, seriously. Like, it, another thing I'll say here is this is not a show that I expected to like. Tell me why. Tell me why.

It seems like a nothing of a show. Obviously we're in a very specific climate right now with what's going on here in Los Angeles. But really, we say here in Los Angeles, but these are worldwide unions that work all over the place, talking about the WGA and the SGA. wait SGA

that's the SAG government yeah SAG SAG SAG SAG SAGRA I was in SGA but you know part of the discussion here

are has to do with streamers themselves the content wars and how many shows are out there who's getting paid for these shows

and how things are going right this is on Apple Apple jumped into streaming a little while ago and has actually a pretty solid lineup of shows that you could watch on Apple,

like some really good stuff varied as really, if you're not counting the IP stuff, almost as good as any streamer if you really look at some of the shows that I dig that are on Apple. Yeah. But in today's climate, the reason to watch a show,

it's like the threshold of why you would sit down and choose one show to watch it's like the bar's pretty high man you know if it's not IP that's directly tapping into your childhood if it's not some high concept uh

sci-fi situation or if it doesn't have a ton of word of mouth like Ted Lasso or squid game or something like that or just have this huge cultural story behind it like Dahmer you know what I mean why you watch something it's just like an original

It's just an original story. It's almost a show the way they would have made it 15 or 20 years ago. Just a show about a situation on a plane with a star that you guys all know and love. So it's not something that like they're going to hang banners about like, hey, you have to get Apple TV because hijackers on there. It's just a really good show that's on Apple TV. And that's kind of more of the way things used to be done. I think it's really interesting because, yeah, you didn't use to have to have that, like, subscriber threshold that people had to cross. And they debuted this overlapping with Ted Lasso. You know, I know there's plenty of people who, like, get their streamer subscription for whatever show they're watching and then drop it when that show ends.

So debuting this in an overlap with Ted Lasso means they were trying to, like, get Ted Lasso to, like, hook audience. Like, while you're here, we've got a show with Idriselba. Would you like to watch it? you know, sort of thing. But they're putting all, every drop of their advertising budget right now is going behind foundation. A massive piece of IP that they bought that is in its second season that I don't know anyone who's watching.

I know, I know some people are watching foundation, but like nobody really is watching foundation. There's always one random person that goes, why don't you guys cover foundation on the universe? I know. And I'm like, y'all not fucking watching this shit. That's why. But go ahead.

But I think that people are actually watching hijack. They are. Like Normies are watching hijack, which is like, you know, and I feel like Apple TV, bless them. Yes, have a lot of good content. There's like slow horses. There was just silo. Like, well, there's severance. There's a lot of great stuff they have.

They're historically bad at identifying which show people are going to care about. I feel like they are usually backing the wrong show. if they had put the amount of attention behind hide you know because they didn't promo ted lasso at all and if they had put initially and if they had put the amount of attention behind hijack that they put like a percentage of what they put behind foundation i think this would be like a much much bigger hit um as it is it's already like a kind of buzzing around word of mouth um hit and so and it deserves it's a good it's just like a fun find time at at at the apple tv plus To me, watching it, almost every episode ends in the cliffhanger.

Yeah. But it's a true cliffhanger. What we're getting right now from a show called Secret Invasion. Okay. We're not to talk about secret. We're not here to talk about Secret Invasion. Our faux cliffhangers where we know that where it is not the hangy-hanging situation, the cliffhangers here, because we're, not as dripping in the IP or the source material or whatever.

They're real cliffhangers. We don't know what's going on. We don't know what's going to happen. The next episode is really actually answering questions that were brought up in the previous episode. And the show has strong performances. It's easy. All is the same shit you've seen, right? A guy gets stabbed.

Yeah. In the show, he's bleeding out. Is there a doctor? on board. We have a bunch of different things happening. Number one, we have a man who's clearly being dominated by his wife, which is something that we can all relate to. All right. Let's get a little toxic. Let's bring a little saji into it, a little masaji. Let's bring a little sagey side. This is like higher learning energy that you're dropping on me right now. Let's get a little sagee with it. Okay. He has to defy his wife. Miss me. Miss me with your sagey. Okay.

To go save the life. But, you know, we've seen that. We've seen, okay, we're in a bad situation and somebody's injured, right? But that scene was really interesting to me because the fucking Sam character not only saves this guy's life, but manages to do it while he is also making the situation on the plane better for everyone. So he uses the fact that this guy actually needs help to then do more to let people know about their situation, which is what an awesome negotiator would be able to do, which is see all of those different angles.

This is why he's flying first class back from Dubai, you know what I mean? Yeah. I want to talk about a few other pieces of casting. He mentioned Ben Miles, who plays the captain. people will have seen him recently in Andor, but he has been in like a ton of stuff. Most famously, I think coupling, but like he's been in a bunch of stuff. But he's usually a pretty good guy.

So to watch him like physically beat the shit out of his co-pilot in order to get the cockpit door open because he's having an affair with the stewardess that they have the gun to. really really stunning stuff to uh to open this show with you know what i mean that was some saji man i would be honest like that that scene right there that's the kind of scene right there where they they rope you in they rope you in right there that scene was some saji bro like that that scene was saji from every single angle number one he's got a thing family. He's with the flight attendant. They use the flight attendant, which by the way, another thing, great writing. They let you know that there's more than meets the eye because they know everything that's going on. So there is a mastermind to this, right? Right. They've done

their research. They've done their research. They know what's happening. We only get a very slight indication before this that they are together. So throw in line almost. are like gossiping about it. Gossiping about it. So then, you know, they bring her up there and I'm thinking, you know, but does he love her though? You know, is it like a love situation in that, in that whole deal? But then it is.

And then he like brutally beats. Brutely beats his co-pil, his female co-pilot. Yeah. Beats her about the face until she opens the door. And we have to see her for the rest of the show with like her face busted. open because he did that, you know? And then we just go on like he ain't never do that. Just a saji,

a whole saji, sagi, like a whole situation like he ain't never did that. That was crazy. But what I think is really cool, like he does this absolutely bad shit thing, right? Though who knows what we would do for the stewardess that we are fucking or whatever. Like, um,

and then, and then he's part of team hero. Yeah. You know what I mean? And you have to, accept that in order to get this done, you have to make alliances with the kind of people that would beat their co-pilots about the face to save their girlfriends. You know what I mean? And that's something else what the show is doing.

Because we're unclear of the motives of the hijackers, we're not all the way certain that they're villains. Now, the one guy did kill somebody in cold blood. At least we think that he's. did. We didn't really see it. Oh yeah. Fruitwater's dead. She's dead. Okay, cool. Yeah. But because we don't know why it's happening, there might be a situation where all their loved ones

are being held captive or they're going to be, somebody's going to be killed. You know, Sam's son looks like he might be in a situation. We've seen them use leverage by hurting people on the ground. the security attendant from the airport in Dubai who ended up getting killed the air traffic controller from Dubai who gets suspicious about it. We've seen so much like yeah, that sucks what happened to him. It's tough.

I thought he was going to be like a co-lead, you know what you mean? I thought he was going to be around. It was his birthday, bro. Abdullah, yeah. Yeah, shout out to him. So yeah, so you don't, you're not really sure. And, you know, it just Elba's character for as heroic as he's been,

one of the first things you see him do is give the gun back to the guy, which I'm not so sure that I would have done. Well, that's what I really like about the Sam character because he was just like, you know, he's saying this thing, I just want to get home to my family. That's my priority number one. I'm going to be straight with you. That's, and we're like, we know he's running, he's running a con on them.

There is a way in which he is trying to like save the whole plane. But when push comes to shove, is he? Or will he be? be allegiant to his own number one priority, which is his ex and his kid. You know what I mean? Negotiators, when they're negotiating things, I'm reading a book right now. It's called Never Split the Difference. Okay.

Okay. The book is, it's great. It's by a negotiator dude. And it's about how to get what you want in a conversation with people. Yeah. Before people says, oh, Van, loves to read different stuff. My therapist told me to read this book. So I think my therapist didn't feel like.

like I was negotiated with people in good faith. One of the things that you learned when you read the book is that in order to be a good negotiator, you have to have a singular goal. You have to have one thing that you want. A lot of people try to negotiate things that are not negotiable. Like you can't negotiate whether or not you're a good person or a valuable person to your boss. You can't negotiate that. You can negotiate the dollar amount that they are willing to pay you.

So you can't negotiate. People always say, oh, my, my worth. Yeah, my worth, my worth. You can't negotiate your worth. You can't, but you can negotiate the money. So that's one of the first things. So by knowing that, knowing that this guy is like a fantastic negotiator, there is probably one singular goal in mind for him.

And saving everybody on the plane could be. be too broad of a goal. Secondary. It could be too broad of a thing. There's probably one thing that he has in mind and he is being informed by the one thing that he has to do. What I like about him as a character is that he is oftentimes when he is dealing with the terrorists, etc. Or the hijackers, I guess. He's telling them the truth. He will weaponize the truth. You know what I mean? He's running he's running little things behind their back all the time, but he will also just sort of like, you know, the greatest way to root a lie is

in the truth. Like, that's a whole thing, right? And so, I mean, he's just like constantly kind of telling them the truth while trying to massage a situation into something that will get him home and secondarily save everyone on the plane. Everything I know about negotiating, I learned from Samuel Jackson and the negotiator. That's a good one. That's the outside of my. That's a good one. That's a good one. It's a good one. Samuel Jackson and he was in another guy.

There's another guy that starred in that. Who was that? I don't know. I don't know. A ghost. He doesn't exist anywhere, I think. Another person in the cast, I want to shout out as Archie Punjabi, who was so good on, the best part of the good wife for many years, was also in the fall, great BBC series.

Who's like sort of running things at the special ops. and it's kind of a thankless role. She's just on the phone looking at pieces of paper. But like she's always so compelling. And they decided to like go the extra mile and make her the ex-girlfriend of the white cop who is sleeping with his ex-wife. You know, like that that was like one layer too much that I didn't think that they needed. I'm still trying to figure out why they did that. I'm still trying to figure out how that's going to come back.

Because he's a cop. He doesn't really need to have a prior relationship with her in that regard. to be able to call someone and get them to do him in favor and look into something. He should probably be pretty well connected if he's been on the force that long. But I'm still trying to figure out how that's going to present itself later on.

Yeah. Like it feels like an unnecessary layer, but she's so great. I think that they just like put some real heavy hitters. Eve Miles has been in British TV forever. Shout out Torchwood, etc. Like in these various positions. Like basically casting above the calis.

that the role really needs in order to like make this just feel like a prestige show. Anyway, having a great time with it. Would you call this a dad show? I have a soft spot for dad show sometimes. Would you call us a dad show? Shit, yeah. Yeah. This is as daddy as essentially.

If Chris Ryan loves it, it's a dad show. The best dad shows are about characters that have big dad energy. and it just is essentially becoming the dad of the entire plane almost everybody in it is like dadden it up you know what I'm know what I haven't seen in this I haven't seen any people that I recognize from black mirror every time I watch stuff that comes from Britain I always want to see people that I saw in black mirror like I'm just that's a weird nitpick but everybody that makes shows in

Britain put some people from black mirror in your shows Who's from Black Mirror that was in this? We should do this on the next one. Every time we cover something that's from overseas, we should do six degrees of Black Mirror. Okay. It's facts. I can't think of anyone just looking at it.

Max Beasley, maybe. I'll look into it. I'd be surprised if Ben Miles hasn't done a Black Mirror. Anyway, we'll think about it. Anything else we want to say about hijack? Before we go. No, I think about other dad movies, outbreak is one.

Okay. Outbreak is definitely one. So, no, I'm enjoying the show. I'm really, really, for the first time in a while with something, I'm really interested to see how it ends. And I'm interested to see what happens, for real. All right. So we'll be back with the finale in a couple weeks when episode seven drops.

we'll move back. So like two weeks from now, thereabouts. Again, you can tell me if I'm wrong about the way that air traffic controllers live their lives and enjoy their spaces. You know where to find me. And stay tuned on the feed. We're covering Justified. We're covering the OC rewatch that we're doing. Coming up later in the summer, we'll be covering winning time. We'll only murders in the building. Like, there's a lot of stuff going on the feed. So make sure you stay subscribed. Thanks as always to Isaiah Blakely for his work production work on this and we will see you next time bye