The Prestige TV Podcast - 'Poker Face' Episode 8 Recap

Episode Date: February 23, 2023

With a flourish, Joanna and Rob discuss the juiciest and most meta episode of 'Poker Face' to date. Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Rob Mahoney Senior Producer: Steve Ahlman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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God, and this is a major relief because with the hair and everything, I thought maybe we're potentially some kind of a... serial killer? Well, if I was a serial killer, I wouldn't need hair. I already have the hair. Well, you could be a serial killer of a ball. Hello, welcome back to the prestige

TV podcast feed. I'm Jonah Robinson joining me today to talk about all kinds of mess. It's my poker face co-host, Rob Mahoney. Hi, Rob. How are you? I'm good. It's truly a house of horrors this week, Joe. We are all over the place. We got a lot

to unpack. It is extremely messy in here. Oh my God, I'm so excited. I loved this episode. This is a great episode of television. And there's a lot of meta content to unpack as well. We're here to talk about the Orpheus Syndrome, written by Alice Jew and Natasha Leone, and directed by Natasha Leone.

So it was a, you know, a three-fer for Natasha on this episode. This is also sort of like the most Charlie, I think. we've gotten in an episode. She shows up quite early in the runtime. We don't have to wait like 20 minutes to get our dose of Charlie in this episode. Before we get into sort of the mess of it all, the meta mess of it all, I'm like, I freaked out when I watched the episode. Our producer Steve can attest.

I was just like texting. He hadn't watched it yet. And I just had to talk to someone about this episode. I'm so excited to talk to you about this episode, Rob. So before we get into sort of like the meta, it's like what literally happens in this episode of television, Ramahone? My head literally exploded for one.

But plot wise, we open with a suicide. You know, a man is stumbling across the back balcony of what I can only describe as like the L.A. version of the parasite house. He turns his back to the woman who's falling behind him. He jumps off the ledge. And then we kind of rewind and learn who these people are. And they are Max and Laura. they're two of the three founders of what is pretty clearly industrial light and magic.

And following Max's death, Laura reaches out and begs their third co-founder, Arthur, who's a visual effects specialist and a pretty tortured artist who's living in solitude to make a lifelike macket of their dead friend. So that she says she can finally say all the things to him that she never had the chance to. And as we find out, it's also so Laura can get into Max's conversation. which is locked by facial recognition and contains some pretty explosive footage that would change the lives

of pretty much everyone involved. So Joe, is there anything you would like to add to that or anything you would like to call bullshit on in that description? The only character I will add into the mix is Louis Guzman who plays Raoul. A wonderful edition. A long time

employee and sort of archivist at what is called LAM Lights in Motion. Not I-LM, Industrial Light and Magic. Two very different companies. Very subtle stuff. The cast here, incredible cast, Sherry Jones and Nick Noltee leading the cast

and Tim Russ as Max. And Rowan Blanchard, as, I had to go back and figure out who she was in this episode, but she is the late Lily Auburn in a snippet of footage, archival footage, but still gets her name above the credit. So shout out to Rowan Blanchard's, you know, agent on that credit situation. Okay.

Wild episode. Why is it a wild episode? In addition to the fact that Natasha Leon did some really fun artistic things with this sort of in this season, directorial debut from her, really fun, like, angles, fun stuff with the score, fun stuff with like the film grain, stop motion, all the stuff that's going. on this episode, really, really cool stuff that we'll get into. There is the larger meta-narrative. You already mentioned that LAM lights in motion.

The company that's in question here is a clear I-LM stand-in. But not only that, Cherry Jones as Laura is a very clear stand-in for Lucasville President Kathy Kennedy. Just straight up. They may have pulled clothes out of her closet. Could not be clearer that that is who is. is who is supposed to be here today. And of course, very famously, creator of Pocafraise Ryan Johnson, along with his longtime

producing partner, Ram Bergman, who is also a producer on this show, they made a little film called The Last Jedi for Kathy Kennedy at the film. Have you heard of it? And we're meant to go on and make like a whole other trilogy of Star Wars films that has been like shelved, backburner, back burner, back burner, we're pretty sure it's never happening. Now we're really sure is never happening because Ryan went and made the Kathy Kennedy. I mean, Ryan does not have a writing or directing credit on this episode. We should be clear. So let's say Natasha did this. Somebody made this Kathy Kennedy stand in, the murderess,

um, quite villainous murderess of an episode of television. Uh, Rob, how do you feel about that? I mean, it certainly makes the Kathy Kennedy quote about when she was asked about, you know, What's going on with Ryan Johnson's Star Wars trilogy? And she had some quote about how he's unbelievably busy. Now we know what he was busy with, burning every bridge that connects him in Lucasfilm ever again. Incredible stuff. A wild thing.

I cannot believe this episode exists. Like, there is taking shots at people you may have worked with or may not have worked with. That happens in Hollywood all the time. Usually in ways that are a little less overt. Like, this is undeniable. It is not subtext. It is the plot of the episode. And also just want to get on the record,

Les Jedi is dope. We love the Les Jedi. Love it. I think we're going to look back on it as one of like the defining achievements of this very IP-obsessed moment we're in. So I'm all for a Ryan Johnson or someone on behalf of Ryan Johnson victory lap or revenge lap or whatever it is this is. It was a great episode of television and a great pot shot.

Later on. So like, and to be clear, I have no personal beef, obviously, with Cassidy. Kathy Kennedy. I think she gets a lot of shit that she doesn't deserve. But I also don't know what goes on behind closed doors. And I don't know what happened at the end of the day. I do know that when The Last Jedi came out, like Kathy had nothing but glowing things to say about Ryan. And Ryan had nothing but glowing things to say about Kathy's support of him.

What has happened since? Like with The Rise of Skywalker and his trilogy being shelved, we don't know. But I think it's very interesting that this episode is a. about a Kathy Kennedy stand-in, Laura, against a guy named Arthur, or as he's referred to several times, art. So it's Kathy Kennedy versus art,

I guess, in this episode of television. Super wild stuff. Two, you know, for those who are dubious about whether or not this is supposed to be a direct sort of Kathy Kennedy, ILM parallel, I'll just point out some of the clear, clear

points here. Number one, in the LAM M-40th anniversary segment that happens at the end of the episode. They talk about the fact that it was founded in 1975, which is the same year that Industrial Light and Magic was founded. They talk about how Laura and Arthur and Max were all Cal Arts alums who founded this. There are a number of notable Cal Arts alums who were there at the beginning of ILM, like Robbie Ballick and Dave Barry and all these early Star Wars, look at some guys, and I'm sure some women were out of Cal Arts. And then my favorite part is when she's having her confrontation with Arthur over the fire pit, which was like, I thought, beautifully shot the way that the fire is reflecting on both of them, the way that the camera is angling on both of them. She's got this section where she says, I shielded you two. You didn't even know how much we were in the hole.

I did it and I held it so you boy geniuses could make your monsters and not wonder how much it all cost. I was doing the dirty work always for both of you. And so I mean, Kathy Kennedy's never said anything remotely like that, but if you read about Kathy Kennedy's backstory, there's a great, very fair piece from 2016 about this. But like, you know, Kathy Kennedy gets her start working with Spielberg, working with Lucas, working with her husband, Frank Marshall, to make, you know, the Indiana Jones films and ET and all the sort of stuff. So this idea of this like woman in a boy's world, being the producer. around all these men who get all this credit and are, you know, are considered these. You know, Kathy was a background player until really just about a decade ago. Like people in the film industry knew her, but she wasn't a household name.

The way that the men like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg and even Frank Marshall, who she supported and did production work for became. So that's just, that's my list. Do you have anything else you want to add, Rob? I mean, I would just add that, you know, not only is she a murderess in this episode, but she is Machiavellian, she is evil, she is literally two-faced. Like, there is a shot in this movie in which she is orchestrating a cover-up on the phone, and her face is half made up as she's doing the other half.

Like, again, it could not be more obvious than this. But in addition to, you know, the Kathleen Kennedy stuff, I think you do have the Arthur Art situation. You also have what's a pretty clear nod to Phil Tippett, a visual effects artist who worked with Kennedy before and the Orpheus syndrome, the title of this episode, the titular film that this character is making is basically straight up Mad God,

the movie that Phil Tippett just released last year. And so you do have this interesting dynamic. What I can't figure out is who or what is Max? Like, who is that character supposed to represent the third part of this triumvirate who is unceremoniously killed off and we don't really learn a lot about? I was thinking Frank Marshall, just because Kathy Kennedy was married to Frank Marshall,

who was a key producer in the early days of this film movement. But, you know, not, I mean, to be clear, we don't think Kathy Kennedy has killed anyone. We don't think that she's ever, like, plotted to kill someone. We don't think that probably, you know, she would get a maquette made of Frank Marshall in order to use face recognition to unlock something. But, I mean, it's just like a, like,

this is something you make about someone after they're, like, dead. You know, no longer a massively influential person in Hollywood. But like, you know, Ryan has the Knives Out franchise going for him. He's got his lucrative Netflix deal. He's getting Oscar nominated every time he makes a Knives Out movie. Like, I guess he just feels like, well, you know what, I am where I am and I don't need to go back there. And that's fine. But I mean, from the jump, we get this interaction between Laura and Arthur where he talks about having been retired for several decades, but that he's still following her work. And he says, Superheroes in Space, Fourth Dimension, CGI. And she's like, I think you would have loved

he says, I needed something real to hold on to. So this idea of like superhero, we're already like taking shots at like the MCU to a certain degree, but also like, you know, Star Wars and all of that. And this idea of like, what is real filmmaking versus sort of a CG confection. How did that land with you, Rob? What did you think of that? Again, I'm here for every element of that. I'm here for every element of their dynamic. And particularly, as it relates to the plot,

I think this is just such a clever construction of, for starters, even if the episode was more kind of black mirrory in the sense of like, we're going to create this macket of our dead friend to access his technological devices. Like, that's an evocative idea in itself. And the fact that that itself is a manipulation for something even more insidious, I think it's just a great setup. Like, pitting these two characters against each other in this way and these two actors,

who, like, Nick Nolte and Cherry Jones are just powerhouses in this episode. Like, they are carrying this thing. They are lifting it. They are so good in every scene that they're in, and especially in the scenes that they're in together. I just think this is a perfect marriage of everything that poker face can be at its absolute best. And I think, you know, I don't know how useful it is to be like, oh, I knew something

was up when. But I will say that, like, okay, so I love the overdramatic way that the opening is shot when we, the first time we see Max go over the railing. Very, like, Hitchcock. Yeah. And the score is going and again, and, like, the wind is blowing on Cherry Jones. She gets to wear, like, a series of beautiful, like, robes in this episode. But then she shows up at Arthur's, and she's giving him this whole story about, you know,

needing his help to sort of, you know, make amends to the ghosts in their life. lives. Can you, can you apologize to the dead? You know, like all this sort of stuff. And I was watching and I was like, you know, Cherry Jones is a better actress than this. So I was like, this, this, I was calling bullshit on her way before Charlie did. Because I was like, this is, unless they were asked to act poorly in this episode, she's like putting on a performance. And what's really fun about watching Cherry Jones on this episode, to your two-face point, like I love that we see her in half makeup, up not only in that scene on the phone, but like the whole rest of the time, like when she's talking to Charlie through the next, like, you know, a couple scenes, like she's half made up,

but all the performances we see her do, like when she's unraveling at the ceremony at the end, and she's just putting on this higher pitch voice, which is like a couple times when she gets on the phone and she's just sort of like trying to work someone, and then she drops the nice act, and then she's all like, you know, steal and spikes. And it's a, Cherry Jones, I just think is a complete icon. And I thought she just decided to go turn it all the way up for this episode. I loved it. She fits so well into this world.

And Nick Nolte does too and Luis Guzman does too. Like, that is a, that's an incredible trio to get. And the kind of trio where I was thinking about Cherry Jones, I'm like, how would, how was she not unjustified? How would Nick Nolte not unjustified? Like, these are characters. For some reason, there's something about the DNA of these two shows. Maybe it's like the kind of lived in quality of them.

and where the characters tend to come from and maybe it's like the Every Man America nature of zigzagging across the country that exposes you to different kinds of characters and affects and things like that but I don't know all those elements really worked for me and in particular the Charlie and Arthur relationship

might be my favorite of Charlie's bonds with the people that she's met so far I mean you have this element of her wanting to be around someone honest for a change I think that's like such a clever idea and such a clever inversion of everything we've seen of all the people who are constantly lying. I mean, frankly, the barbershop bit was just a great,

a great setup. But it really just feeds into her relationship with Arthur and sets these two up. And what really may be the upset of the episode, Natasha Leone has been outgraveled by Nick Nolte, whose voice is just like straight sandpaper. I would not have bet on that this season. I got to say.

I wrote Raspoff. It's a Raspoff in my notes. I was just, I was waiting for Tom Waits to come in from the top rope. Yes, exactly. Just like eating hotbox and hot pockets and fake blood jelly sandwiches. Great stuff. Yeah, no, I mean, of all the like under the table cash gigs that Charlie has gotten so far,

this is my favorite, just like shown up to be the assistant of this, you know, eccentric effects guy in his barn. What a job. Speaking of zigzagging around the country, let's just do like a Charlie location check-in. again, to the listener who told me to check the license plates, you have been a godsend because I would have bet anything in the world that this took place somewhere in California, but the plates are all New York plates other than Charlies, which is still a Nevada plate. So to recap, Laughlin, Nevada, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Houston, Texas, Kenosha, Georgia,

Seneca Lake, New York, Tennessee, back to New York. So I do think we're getting some shuffling of episodes here where it would make more sense to go like Georgia, Tennessee, New York, New York, or something like that. Either a shuffling of episodes or Charlie has a lot more disposable income and is like, you know, pushing the car into jets and moving it around the country somehow. But one of the two. We also need to do. We haven't done this in a little while.

Benjamin Bratt check-in. We have not seen Ben since episode four, I think. It's been since the metal tour episode. So that's been a while since we've seen him. and I miss him. And I would hope and pray for his return. But what we do get in this episode that I really liked is in Charlie's conversations with Arthur, and they're talking about regret and loss and deaths.

We get this reference to episode one where she talks about Natalie, like her friend that she couldn't save and the regret and how that haunts her and that made this episode feel more connected to a larger arc of a story than some of the other episodes has, Felt. What did you think about that? I like that little turn. And really, I liked this episode's whole meditation on loss and on grief. And in particular, there's that great line where, you know, Charlie picks up pretty quickly that Laura is lying about her whole scheme with the maquette, that something is off there.

Like, she kind of overhears the conversation as she's done in a couple of episodes now. But the line you get from Arthur about, like, I don't even know what lies mean when you're that deep in grief. And, I mean, you have the performances within the performances in this episode. You have people who would ostensibly be very tortured, be very sad, who would be in positions where they might be lying for more innocuous reasons. Yeah. And trying to see, you know, the force for the trees with all that, trying to really get to the truth of what's actually happening is much more complicated than I think the premise of this show would ever let on when you start out with that episode one. When you start out with Charlie in a casino, is this person in front of me lying? Burn notice references.

Right. We've come to a very different place. Also, I really love the way this episode, I mean, we already talked about the stop motion, like Arthur's whole art that he does throughout this episode. You know, this is this Ray Harryhausen stop motion art that we get, that we get come to life by the end of the episode as Laura is unraveling,

but also early on as Charlie is talking to him and she's talking about regret and the dead and all this sort of stuff. And then she does a little analysis of his Orpheus syndrome set up with the guy with a movie camera for the face and the red light bulb, you know, Cyclops guy and there's a girl, you know, bring a girl back from the dead, all of that. And then what she says here when she says, you got to revisit the past to get past it, right? She says it here to him and then she sort of mutters it later thinking about him scrubbing through the footage. Natasha's co-writer on this episode, Alishu, is a Russian doll writer. And so I think there is a lot of that Russian doll DNA in here, this idea of like repetition, cycling through regrets, how do we process things?

How do we move past things? What do we do to move on to the next stage? I think a lot of that really soulful DNA from that show worked its way into this episode. I mean, even in the structure of it, even. in just, you know, we see the initial, quote unquote, suicide. I guess it's just straight up a suicide, ultimately, even though it was a murder, I mean, attempted murder previously, followed by suicide. I don't know.

I don't want to diagnose it. But we see the multiple versions of those events. We see Laura, at several points, see this very realistic macket of her dead friend come to life and have to reconcile with these visions, effectively, of this person who she knew. I think there's lots of interesting dynamics with those cyclical elements of dealing with grief, of trying to process, even for the villains in this episode, of trying to come to terms with what they've done. Yeah.

No, and I love the, speaking of, like, Benjamin Brat Watch, the way in which we've seen this happened a couple times as Charlie, but never so painfully for her as in this episode when she finds Arthur's body and she calls the cops and she can't stay with him because she knows there's the clock on her now. And so again, that felt just a little more subcutaneous than some of the other episodes we've seen where it's not just like a quirk of the premise that Charlie can't stick around. It's like a real pain point for her in this episode because she really does, as much as we've seen her connect with various characters and we've talked about her empathy being her superpower and all of that throughout the season. And as you say, this connection between Charlie and Arthur feels more profound. You kind of want to get, like, you wish she could have just stayed in that barn forever with him.

Like, what a nice spot for her, you know. So it's tough. A lot of agony there, honestly. And I thought that was one of the more effective parts of this episode overall, which has kind of a poker face as Twilight Zone quality in a great way. And I think that actually exit stage death had some of this, too, where in that episode, you know, at the end, you have Ellen Barkin and Tim Meadows who finally give like the performance of a lifetime and they can do it because they know they're about to get arrested. It's like a very be careful what you wish for kind of situation. Yeah.

And in this episode, like Laura goes through a lot of agony too, even though she effectively does silence the two people she needs to silence. Like she does kill these two men who know the truth about what happened. Really, the only two people who have actually seen the footage to that point who actually are familiar with what she has done. but in doing so, in killing them in the way that she does, she pulls in that empathetic impulse where she cannot help but come to Arthur's defense, even when he's already dead. And that leads to like a really nightmarish sequence

at the end of this episode for Laura, where she's just like she is unraveling, like she is descending into hell in her own way over the back like 15 minutes of this episode. It's incredible to watch. This is just great. This is great filmmaking in this episode. Yeah, and that,

like last run she makes, like sort of after we see all the creatures come to life and she's following the specter of Max out onto the walkways where she will make good on the earlier line about like following him over the edge, right? She does exactly that. The grain on the film there is just extraordinary. And again, and then also like the way in which the footage is projected over her as she's sort of giving the speech and she's rambling and she's losing it, the ghosts that she's. sees in the audience. Again,

you hire a Cherry Jones to do this. She's incredible. Again, yeah, it's just like, I wish every episode of poker base were like this go this ham on every episode of poker base. You can do it. I believe in you. This one is absolutely a haymaker. I think the one part of Laura's story

that I got a little stuck on is, you know, so the one thing we've kind of omitted in our discussion so far is the actual event and question that's caught on film, which is Arthur's career basically went into a tailspin because in his first directed feature, an actress in the movie was submerged in a water tank as part of a stunt and ends up dying as a result of that stunt. There's some kind of error. She's not able to notify them that she's in trouble. She dies. Arthur's career and life go in a totally different direction than it might have

otherwise. And it's later revealed that Laura has basically unscrewed the warning light that would have allowed everyone on set to know that this actress is in trouble. And she explains that you know, she was maybe just like trying to teach like a diva actress a lesson. She thought she was being difficult. A silly actress is what she says. A silly actress. I don't like I don't know that I totally buy that. Like I believe that's what they're trying to sell us in the script.

But it's like how does that achieve those ends? Well, I think it wasn't so much like teacher a lesson. It was like I think what Arthur says is they were behind. They were like they couldn't get the shot. They were burning money essentially like taking all the time to try to get the shot. so it was sort of like anything for the shot. Ah, get the real panic on film. Right.

Even at the expense of some danger. And get it done, you know, which they couldn't get done because the actress signaling to them that this stunt was too dangerous. And we've heard this story again and again again from, you know, film sets that this is a thing that happens, you know, maybe not quite as directly villainous as unscrewing the, you know, the warning light bulb. But something that I do like about this. is that reveal. Again, we're messing with the poker face formula a bit because, like, we see Max go over the edge and it looks like a suicide at first. And then we find out, like, pretty quickly within like 10, 15 minutes that, like,

she actually put something in his tea and he went over that way so that he could fuck up his face so she couldn't use it to unlock the file. Great stuff. Love that for him. But we don't find out what she did in the past for sure. until like close to the 30 minute mark as Arthur scrubbing through the footage, but we can, but we get to play detective and we can put the context clues together and we hear Max sort of talk about her doing something.

We know which piece of footage she's after. And then we hear Arthur tell the story about the red warning light and like the actor's dying, something like that. So you can like kind of put it together yourself, but it's still keeping your brain engaged trying to figure out what exactly it is that she's so desperate to cover up. how terrible was her original sin that she murdered her even ex-husband for it, you know? And that's another part of this episode that we're like, we're doing layers, we're going down different levels of hell, like, all this sort of stuff.

You know, and her hands just get dirtier and dirtier and dirtier. Like, when she kills Max, you know, it's awful, but there's genuine regret there and stuff like that. and then when she kills Arthur... Oh, my God. When she kills Arthur and he then tells her that he's not going to tell anyone. Actually, I kind of believe him, like, even though he snipped out the footage to put in his Medusa statue, like, I kind of believe that he just would have left it there. So then she killed him for nothing.

Yeah. And she doesn't even seem to really have a pang about that. And it's just her soul is getting sort of blacker and blacker. the episode goes on, it's pretty fascinating. There's, I mean, not only there are those kinds of layers, but there's so many great textual elements as you go through them where, like, just to go back to the

footage, for example, not only do we see Laura do something obviously terrible that ends in someone dying, but you see Arthur in his element directing his first movie where he's not the gentle guy who we know later in life. He is a legitimate asshole on that set.

Like, he is incredibly cruel to this actress who he's trying to direct, we see these dimensions to these characters through that kind of footage, I think really adds to the experience. It really fleshes out the idea of, you know, later in life,

he's just a guy who's making these cute, hellish movies in his shed, basically. But, like, there's a whole journey for all of these characters to get where they are, for all of them in their increasing desperation or their increasing grief, or they're increasing, you know, whatever at entropy that's leading them

to whatever moment they're in at the end of it. the setup is just is so profound. Like it's so well coiled. Yeah, I love that. Well coiled is a really good way to put it. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? Zepbound terseptide may be able to help. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet

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Talk to your doctor. call 1-800-545-9979 or visit zepbounds.lily.com. I think also and I would love if there are some Colombo experts listening who want to email us at Hobbits and Dragons at gmail.molm, Rob and I are not Colombo experts, but in fact, I've never seen an entire episode of Colombo, though I did get, apparently Spielberg directed an episode of Colombo. So I should probably, we should watch that episode of Colombo before the season's over and just sort of like get a taste of it. But there is a show. shot in this episode when

Charlie is out on the gravel drive looking at the gravel with the sort of cigarillo in her mouth as Laura notices her from inside her parasite house, I guess the New York version of a parasite

house. This is L.A. Who are we kidding? Definitely California, but whatever. That's my understanding that that's a classic Columbo moment of like the killer will like watch see Colombo sort of stalking around the property, like putting clues together with the full-blown Stogey in his mouth. And I feel like that's like one of the more direct

Colombo homagees we've gotten is probably that shot. And it's like an interesting little zoom in also on her. So again, Natasha really went for it stylistically in this episode. And that's sort of what I've been begging Pokerface to do more of on the back of like Ryan's episodes is like give me style, give me panache with the who done it. And it's like night and day. I mean, I don't, I don't mean to like kick dirt on an episode we already talked about. But like last week's episode just felt like so bare bones compared to like all all the stuff that they had on their mind when they did this episode, you know. Yeah, this is just not a show that doesn't really have a lot of need for stylistic continuity. Right. Like it can be a cameal. Like not only can you

the setting, you can shoot every episode totally differently. You can get that different film grain as Laura unravels. You can get some fish islands in there as Laura unravels. Like, go for it. Why not? I also love there's that line she has when she's talking to Arthur at the fire pit where she says, I was moving forward, always forward. I'm not losing what I built. And I just love that like moving forward, always forward is how she goes, right?

Just like chasing and chasing. Some Kathy Kennedy shit, if I've ever heard it. That sucks Kathy Kennedy. So I feel a little conflicted. It's just like so juicy and wild that this exists at all that I just... I also want to talk about Luis Guzman as Raoul in this episode because something that... I, again, I'm not a Colombo expert, so I don't know how a Colombo episode works, but like in and I get the Christie story, oftentimes you get your head sleuth, whether it's a Poirot or a Marple,

like drafts a little assistant for a mystery. And I just like really love that Raoul, like... the role that role plays here. We got, you know, we got a little bit of that last week at the stock car races, you know, with like her having people help her.

Like, occasionally she has various characters, but this is like sort of the best version of that. Like you get someone great, like Louis Guzman to like talk about his mother's Honda or whatever it is. You know, it's my mother's car. It's all right.

You know, whatever it is. And that just adds, again, another level of delight. to the episode. Just a wildly efficient performance from Luis Guzman too.

Because he's a guy who will be instantly sympathetic and recognizable when you cast him in a role like this to the point that doesn't get a ton of lines, doesn't get a ton of screen time, but when Laura turns on him and fires him and starts taking out basically the situation on him, it's like, you really feel for Raoul.

Again, it's incredible. And I honestly hope we see him again. I hope not only is he the one-off in this episode, helping Charlie. I hope we get our Charlie Dream Team moment. You know, I hope there's an episode

where she's pulling in all these favors from people who have been laid off and cast aside and various law enforcement officials who may or may not have given her their card. Yeah, it's like Simon Helberg.

Like who else are we drafting in? Let's get a team together. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Avengers. Charlie Led Avengers. I love that. Yeah, is it fucked up to say that I was more upset

when she fired Raoul than I was when she like, killed Max. I mean, I didn't get a chance to know Max. But, like, I was like, that being has worked for you for 40 years. How dare?

How dare. The gall. It's really going to hurt when we find out that Raul's based on a real person, you know, but there's that story coming out from inside. So, I guess we'll find out. I'll be very... Gossip trails out of this episode.

I'll be really curious to see how people react to this episode. I'm so, like, I didn't talk to you about this episode. but you had the same reaction than I did. But I did talk to another, like, a TV critic friend, and he was saying, like, I don't really see it. I don't think you're overreacting. You're overreaching.

L.I.M. He doesn't see it. What could that possibly mean? If we're overreaching, we're overreaching together. But I am curious what the larger conversation, you know, we're recording this a little bit in advance for scheduling reasons. And so I will be curious to see what the reaction is next week when this drops. Maybe it'll just be the two of us being like, holy shit. Everyone else is like, I don't really see it.

Kathy Kennedy's hair is brown. Cherry Jones's hair is great. I don't get it. Look, it's a great point. I can't argue with that. The evidence is all there. All the clues are there. I gave you all the clues, Mr. Policeman.

What can you say? All right. Also, give Cherry Jones an Emmy right now for her line delivery of, we have a problem. She's told there's a horse on the premises during the party, and she says if she steps one more hoof on this property, again have her arrested with a straight face. 10 out of 10 no notes.

Give that woman her trophy. Love her. All right. Anything else you want to say about this episode? One last thing, because we did kind of skip over it, and it's a running theme throughout this episode. We have a new device, a new little physical tick that Charlie has developed in relation to people lying where her eye will twitch. And I really hope it doesn't last.

Like for me, a lot of the fun is we know when people are lying, we have all the information, generally speaking, or at least a good chunk of it. And it's more fun to try to read Charlie's expression to see what she's picking up on than her eye literally twitching. And honestly, it gave me big, like,

David Tennant in the Harry Potter movies doing that weird tongue thing. Wow, it's a Barty Crouch moment for you. Brendan Gleason then has to emulate when they do the body swap. I just don't do these things It's not necessary You know

As a one episode gag Because she's been in the barbershop too long I like it Yeah If it keeps going I'm gonna be a little disappointed It's so funny because I know you don't like it When she says bullshit

So I thought maybe the I-twitch Would be an improvement for you But what you really prefer It's just for her to silently stoically I prefer acting Absorb the oh Capital A Oh you want acting

I see Not tics and tricks Not ticks and tricks, but also we did have a big development in the superpower discussion vis-a-vis Charlie, where I think we get some clarity because someone refers to her power in this episode as woman's intuition. I think we're at the bottom of it now. Listen, Rob. Listen, Rob. For me, it's when she calls out not the father on the Jerry Springer knockoff show without really, we didn't even see her absorb the full story. Doesn't even need it. That seemed supernatural to me.

That's women's intuition. One last shot I want to call out. And again, I want to see more things directed by Natasha after seeing this episode. Hell yeah. There's a shot where Cherry Jones is more as pouring the tea and her reflection in the high polished chrome of the teapot is just one of those things where you're like, how'd they do that? Where was the camera? It boggles the mind, honestly. How do they do it?

So, yeah, anyway, more of this, more juicy Star Wars bridge burning. Rob, where else can folks hear from you, if not, on the prestigious TV podcast feed? Look, you can hear me every week on the Ringer NBA show feed, every Wednesday on group chat. This week, you can hear me on the big picture. You know, otherwise, various ringer-verse properties of many kinds. What are you talking about this week? the big pick. God no. Thankfully not. Talked about all of

the fine movies of 1993 in draft format. So it was a delight to do. You did a draft. Oh, I can't wait. I'm just trying to keep up. I mean, the draft that you and Mal were on was something to behold. Was a picture of competition,

I will say, that I took notes from, that I would not say I'm modeled, but I definitely learned a lot. Yeah. Once you drafted with Mal, You never go back. All right, well, I'll be here also covering The Last of Us with the aforementioned Mallory Rubin. Also, Van Lathan and Charles Holmes will also be covering instant reactions to The Last of Us. And over in the Ringerverse, we're covering Quantummania, of course, and also getting prepared for Mandalorian Season 3 that's coming up.

If you listen to us in the Ringerverse, those episodes were produced by Steve Alman. And guess what? Steve Allman also produced today's episode. Hey. Hey. We'll be back next week with, we don't know what. We have not watched ahead some new exciting location and one step closer to Rod Perlman and hopefully Benjamin Brad. We'll see you then. Bye.