The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘Say Nothing’ Episodes 1-4: Bank-Robbing Nuns, Fatal Affairs, and The Big Lad

Episode Date: November 14, 2024

Joanna Robinson and Rob Mahoney stare at a spot on the wall to recap the first four episodes of the FX-produced Hulu limited series, ‘Say Nothing.’ They discuss it as an adaptation of the critically acclaimed 2018 book of the same name, give some background context on the Troubles conflict that the story takes place in, and whether each episode feels distinct despite it being a binge drop (6:34). Along the way, they walk through a character-by-character breakdown of the period drama’s main players (29:02). Later, they highlight how the visual flourishes of the show enhance the moment-to-moment intensity and look ahead at what’s to come in the final five episodes (60:20). Email us! [e-mail] Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Rob Mahoney Producer: Kai Grady Additional Production Support: Justin Sayles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, everybody. Chris Vernon here and welcome to a new season of the NBA and the mismatch. And huge welcome as well to my new co-host, Dave Jacoby. I can't wait to link with you twice a week every Tuesday and Friday right here on the mismatch to break down everything that's happening in the league. Who's playing well, who we loved, who we loathed, trade rumors, team dysfunction. We've got you covered right here. So follow us, subscribe, and hit us with those five-star ratings on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. And also don't forget to follow us on social media. That's at Ringer NBA and check out

the full mismatch episodes with the two handsomest podcasters in the history of podcasting right on the Ringer NBA YouTube channel. This episode is brought to by Whole Foods Market. Spring is here, so celebrate it with fresh, juicy seasonal produce and some very tasty limited time flavors. New Whole Foods, Market Peach, Apricot, Rose, Italian soda. Perfect for a picnic or brunch, as is their trending mango Yuzu chantilly cake. But if you're on the go, new 365 strawberry pretzels make a great sweet snack. That sounds delicious. Get savings with yellow sale sign storewide and everyday low prices on 365 brand items.

Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring. Save at Whole Foods Market. This episode is brought to by Borris Head. What if we told you the taste of deep fried turkey is now available at your local deli? Well, Boar's Head just did that. Bursting with flavor, perfectly seasoned with that indulgent taste that usually means pointing your whole day around it. Presenting the Friars Turkey Breast only from Boar's Head.

The backyard tradition now available behind the counter. Visit your local deli today. Discover the craftmanship behind every bite. Boershead committed to craft since 1905. Hello, welcome back to the Prestige TV podcast feed. I'm Joanna Robinson. I'm Rob Mahoney. We're here today to cover show.

We're really, really excited about a show. We are absolutely loving. It is called Say Nothing. It is on FX or on Hulu, if you prefer. We're here to talk about episodes one through four. This is a binge drop. So there's nine episodes. So we're going to cover one through four in this podcast.

And then we'll be back next week to do five through nine. So if you're not caught up through four, or if you've binged a whole thing, you're welcome here. But if you're not caught up through four, we are going to talk about episodes one through four. Also, on the spoiler warning front, we haven't really talked in depth about this, Rob, but this is a show based on historical events. How much of a spoiler warning are we putting around history? Do you feel? Oh, interesting.

I think as far as it relates to the core characters, maybe let's try to stay away from the outcomes of these specific people. But, like, world events, I think are fair game at this point. I have one exception that I will check in with you when we get to it. So that is what we are doing. There's a lot of stuff going on the feed right now. there's like some Yellowstone coverage happening. There's some other things that are upcoming. So, you know, bounce around the prestige feed.

But we will be doing this for the next two weeks. And we're really excited about it. Rob Mahoney, as you are want to do, you have come up with some email options for our listeners. If they want to write in about the show or the book that the show is based on, hit me with your brainstorm. Your genius. Your brilliance.

I told you, Joe, coming in. I was a little concerned, not knowing what the day. tonality of say nothing was going to be exactly, how a cutesy email was going to land. But I feel confident after saying, you know, four episodes in, this is also a cutesy-ass show, right? This is very funny. It's very funny.

It's very sharp when it wants to be. We're seeing the whole spectrum of human emotion, which I think empowers us to get a little cutesy with our email choices yet again. I have a whole list available to you, starting with right off the top, the red meat for the base, none bank robbery at gmail.com. N-U-N, bang robbery, gmail.com? I think there's a whole range of quote-related email ideas. For example, good we operators at gmail.com.

One of my favorite descriptors of the girls' elite characters, which we'll dig into, the pink iguana at gmail.com. I also had the pink iguana written down. I like that. Very evocative. I would love to know the origin story of the actual pink iguana. Maybe we can figure that out at some point in our coverage of this show. Potato gun at gmail.com.

or Kevin is a little gun freak at gmail.com. Kevin, maybe my new favorite character in all of television. We only had a little bit of time with him, but a real incredible one. So I don't, I didn't do intensive brainstorming because I knew you had some winners in your pocket. But I do think that a lot of the things that the Brigadier Frank Kitson, a truly terrible figure in all of history, said in among these episodes, I was like, if I could make chin up Penelope, I hear they've a tennis court at gmail.com work. I would. Okay, we tried some of Rob's options. We couldn't get any of those to quite work. So we've landed on

a compromise, non-bankheist at gmail.com. That's N-U-N-Bankheist at gmail.com. And that's where you can reach us for a week or so. We still check all the old emails. If you want to send it to, you know, Arstime the Pope or whatever else you want to do, it will find us. All right. So that is that. And then the other thing I want to say, in the vein of being cutesy,

Rob and I both are of Irish descent, strong Irish descent. And I thought about, I thought this might be a struggle for myself, but you Rob told me off pod that it might be a struggle for you as well. I would like to not lapse into any version of an Irish accent,

which is available to me based on relative. that I have. But I would prefer not to do that inside the coverage of this. What accent? No, we said we weren't going to do it, Rob. Oh, it's out. It's out. No accent. Well, you can do it. You can do whatever you want. But I will just say that I want to put an Irish accent tax on myself and say if I accidentally slip into it, I have to pace. Like, what should be the cost of me accidentally slipping into the Irish accent? I mean, that's really the thing. I think once we instill this tax, we're going to be able to avoid it pretty well. But I think we need to clarify. a couple things up top. For example, number one,

how are we pronouncing the main character of this show's name? Because I would say it's different in like Americanized English versus the, it's more Dolors. Dollars. With an Irish accent. But I would say if you're an American saying that name, it's probably more Dolores. I would think we can say Dolors or like her sister is pronounced like Maureen. Yeah.

Basically in an Irish accent. And if we were just Americans reading it on the page, we might say something like Marian or something. Right. So I think we should try to say the names close to how they say it in the show. Seems fair to me. But I just, look, I just want to get the legislative priorities in check vis-à-vis the tax. Should we call in the arbiter, Kai Grady, to see what the cost of slipping up should be. Kai Grady, do you have any thoughts or feelings about this? Not off the top, but it's a great, it's a great prompt. It's something that maybe I'll give some

thought over the course of this recording. And if there's anything of that. We'll record infractions, and you can let us know at the end what we owe, I guess. Yeah, I think if anyone's lips, let's keep Tally. All right. Here we go. We are covering The Cause, Land of Password, Wink, and Nod, I'll be seeing you and tout the first four episodes of, say, nothing. Michael Lennox is a director in two of those episodes. He was a director on Dairy Girls, a show that I love.

Mary Nahi of the Bill Nijis is a director on an episode, on two episodes here. And then we've got the showrunner, Josh Zetummer, Zedmer, who I, there's nothing on his CV that would help me understand why this show is so good. So I look forward to further thinking about that. Claire Barron wrote an episode, and Joe Murtaugh wrote an episode. And Claire Barron is this incredible playwright who I really love. So she wrote episode three. So that is what we are covering here in this podcast.

This is a lot to get to in a prestige TV. This is like House of Our size concept, but we're kind of try to do it in a tight little prestige TV package. Rob Moni, what's your overall take on these First War episodes and sort of your experience with the series as a whole so far? This might seem odd to say, given the subject matter, but I'm just having a wonderful time with this show. And I think it is the difference in my mind

from treating your characters as, quote, unquote, historical figures versus real people. and everyone in this show feels incredibly real in a way that I think makes the overall experience really balanced, right? You have characters on both sides of this conflict who are kind of whip smart in their own ways and their plans hit and there's banter all around.

They put things together really quickly. They're really observant. It creates this sort of almost like spy versus spy dynamic at times and the fact that you can have a show that's about a significant and dreary and tragic point in history, but that also at times feels like a heist show

or a spy show or like a teen drama in addition to being this like quote unquote very important story about this very important time I think it's just a hell of a thing to pull off Joe.

So the question I have so you and I I mean I haven't watched past episode four, right? So you and I have only watched through episode four. This is based on a book Say Nothing,

a true story of murder and memory in Northern Ireland from 2018 by New Yorker journalist Patrick Radden Keith. I have started to read this book. I'm actually listening to an audio, great audio book experience. I have not gotten to a point in the book that's past where we've watched. I will say the signpost I want to put here on this podcast is from the reviews I read. So I haven't watched Beyond. I haven't read beyond, but from the reviews I've read, we might have a sharp turn and tone on the horizon. It feels that way. Yeah. And the comp that I saw in a lot of reviews from some of our pals and colleagues was Goodfellas. And so basically, we're sort of like in the, isn't it fun to be a gangster?

We're going to the Coba Cabana era of Goodfellas, and we're not in the like, I'm Coked Out and the cops are chasing me era of Goodfellas. And so that might be sort of what more the back half or maybe the back third of this show becomes. This is the ha-ha-ha-ha-soing, and then we're going to be doing the oh-no reaping in episode two. Exactly.

Okay, sounds good. So just to talk about this book a little bit before we get into everything. I'm not going to be citing the book throughout, a la Shogun, that's not really what we're doing here today. But I think it's interesting to think about what the book is trying to do. I was thinking about this a lot. We were recommended by one of our listeners to try out the book and specifically the audio book. And per what you said, our listener was saying the book isn't a dry history. It reads as something like really fun

and engaging. It reads almost as fiction. And partially that's because the author was drawing from just countless interviews and spent years and years working on this book. And so he is inside the head of a lot of characters in a way that does make it feel like you're inside a novel and you're getting emotional

sort of reactions to things rather than just like X went to Y and then Z happened. And so I know you only read nonfiction and I don't read nonfiction and I will just say that this is maybe like the one book we could hold hands across. We can come together. Yeah, exactly. Because

a non-fiction book that reads like fiction. I would say it reads like non-fiction based on your description, but, you know, that's maybe neither here nor there. Okay, we'll see if you get to it. But like, the sort of assignment that the author gave himself was, this is a quote from an interview, he says, I thought of it is the story of these two women, one, the archetypal victim, Gene McConnell, and the other, this very conflicted perpetrator, Dolores Price. so that it was like it's sort of a tale of two women. It's sort of like a forehander to a certain degree,

but that that is the idea of the book. And so far as I've read in the book, that is kind of happening. I will say the show is much more Dolores show and Gene is kind of foot-doddy, and I don't know if that will continue, but it's just sort of like we check in on Gene, but we're not really spending a lot of time with Gene.

And part of that, and this is sort of like the last, sort of text context I want to give is like, and this is part of the show, is that the author of this book is drawing on something called the Belfast Project, which is what we're watching in the show when older versions of Brendan and Dolores are giving these interviews in, I think it's 2001. And this is like a project put on by Boston College. And this idea that because there is this culture of silence around this third.

year conflict and actually, you know, centuries-long conflict in Ireland, that they wanted a record of what actually happened, the truth telling of what actually happened, the truth in sort of reconciliation a la what happened South Africa, but in a way that was safe for the people to talk about. So the promise of the Boston College made, and we see it happen in this first episode by the interviewer, is this will not come out until long after you're dead. That turned out to be legally not a promise Boston College could make. So that's just something to think about. So some of those interviews, Dolores interviews and Brendan's interviews are sources in this book. And so it makes sense that we get so much more of the interiority of Dolores and Brendan because they have all this content from them versus someone like Gene McConville, who the people who are most likely to be able to bring us inside of her head are her children who were like at the oldest 16 at the time of her abduction. So that's sort of the imbalance of perspective that I think the show is kind of wisely leaning into. Does that make any sense?

It makes total sense. I want to touch on both parts this year. I'm curious with your experience reading the book how it's structured in this way. I think opening the show with Gene is really smart. And frankly, if you don't open the show with Gene, I think the tragedy of her story could probably get away from you a little bit. Like these other characters, for whatever heinous things they have done and will do going forward in the story, like, they are charming, interesting people. And I think by anchoring a show

with them, if you spend enough time with those people, an audience is going to feel kind of bonded to them in a way. And if Gene is like a thing that comes in later, even later in episode one or in episode two, is kind of, as you're saying, like a side story or an asterisk on Doller's ultimate kind of like journey into this world. I don't think we look at her in the same way. And I think leading with fear and paranoia first. And that's our kind of interesting. point into this story, and then you circle back and show us how this fear came to exist and why these characters might be behaving the way they are. I think this is the only version of that structure that can work. I think that's really true. It is how the book, mostly it's how

the book starts as well that we get this abduction and then we get some more information about Gene, about our family, which I assume that the show will go into. But I think there's this context question, and this is, this touches a little bit on like how much of history do we talk about because the author of this book is American, the showwriter of the show is American, we are Americans, we are in a hot second going to do basically like the Troubles for Dummies section. If you don't know what the troubles are, we're going to talk about it really briefly. Because as an act of service journalism, if you don't have that context, if you are someone who lives in, I would say, Ireland or the UK and are much more aware of what happened,

the name G. McConnell is quite famous. My understanding from context is it's sort of like when we talk about the Manson family murders and we talk about Sharon Tate. And Sharon Tate is the name that comes up because she was young

and she was beautiful and she was pregnant and she's married to someone famous and that's why she is sort of like the face of the victims of this. So the name Jim McConnell then is associated with the perpetrations of the IRA in this era.

And the other reason why her name is so famous is on this, on the, on in this idea of say nothing, um, her family, unlike other families were unwilling to stay silent about sort of what happened. We'll talk about, I guess, that much more in the, in the back half of this story, but that is, that is just some like context on, like, you know, and similarly Jerry Adams, and we'll talk about him, but Jerry Adams, who's a figure in the IRA, is a quite famous Irish politician. So like, there are, there is context that some, viewers will be bringing to this that we as Americans less familiar with the conflict do not have. And that's why we are here as podcasters to bring you some context.

But I do think overall this conflict from an American perspective is honestly reduced to really abstractions, right? You may not know the names and the people involved on this kind of level in a way that even if you are familiar with the conflict in a historical signposting kind of way, like I don't know the exact outcomes of some of these characters. And frankly, even with the Belfast Project framing, normally those sorts of devices for me when I watch a show or a movie,

the journalist interviewing somebody and you're getting the retrospective commentary, I find that it often takes the air out of everything for me a lot of the time when I'm watching those sorts of stories. I feel the exact opposite about this particular one. And some of that is like Maxine Peak, who's playing older Dolors, like incredible hang, great energy.

Like I'm really enjoying those scenes. And some of it is also the sort of mystery and intrigue you're getting in her characterization, this idea that all her life she was sold, the idea of the IRA being the most noble thing someone can do, and all of it in her accounting was a bunch of lies. And how we're going to see that change and unravel and shape the story, I'm eager to see from her perspective.

And her arc from like, you know, we're going to go sort of character by a character, but her arc from a teenager who believed in peaceful protest to someone who's radicalized by the movement, to an adult who, who has remorse over some things that happen or at least wants to talk about them, can have an act of confession about them is a very fascinating. And this is something that Patrick Redden Keef was talking about in terms of like

thinking about the young people in this movement and you do things because you believe you are fighting for a good cause and what you're doing is justified. How does that sit with you 10, 20, 30 years on when you have children and you are like going through your world and you're seeing the world a little bit? differently, how do you think about your youthful actions? You shout out Maxine Peak, which I love. I want to shout out Tom Von Lawler, who is the older Brendan actor, because I don't know if you looked up his CV, but I didn't have to because Tom von Lawler is the person who

embodied the character of Ebony Ma in Avengers and In Inaneymore. My favorite of Thanos's foot soldiers, so I'm just really excited to see him here. Coon erasure from you. Sorry. It wasn't a good role for Carrie Coon. It was not. Ebony Ma legendary. Okay.

Back to the Troubles for Dummy section. Natural pivot point. Ebony Ma to Irish history. The clear pipeline. Some people object to the name the troubles. They feel like it is too light and fluffy for what happened here. But this is the sort of accepted nomenclature. It's a 30-plus-year conflict and part of a much, much larger and longer struggle over

uniting and liberating Ireland from English rule. We entered this story in the late 1960s, which is when the era of the troubles, so-called starts. There isn't like a clear, as is often the case of these things, there isn't a clear starting date for all of this, but one of the instances that is sort of named

as one of the starting points is the Civil Rights March to Darren. on the 5th of October 1968, which we see in this first episode, we see the girls participate in. And then it comes to a conclusion of a sort in 1998 with the Good Friday Agreement or the Belfast Agreement.

So to put it in prestige TV terms, if you are a Dairy Girls fan, the finale of Dairy Girls has all of the characters voting in the referendum that was part of the Good Friday Agreement. Yes. And a lot of what, what I know about because I never studied this in school or anything like that. A lot of what I know was either sort of like absorbed when I was kind of too young to be paying attention fully to what was going on or through the lens of films that I've seen like hunger or the boxer or in the name of the father. Like, you know, that there's like films about this. And that is up until this point some of the closest I've gotten to understanding the nuances. But I would say this version of the story.

the book and the show, is trying to take a less morally conclusive stance than any other depiction I've seen. What do you think so far of like this idea of trying, not both sides it, but to try not to pass moral judgment on the people involved inside of something like this. What do you think of that realm? I think it makes a lot of sense. And especially when you're trying to humanize something like this on the level of like we're seeing it through the lens of one person or a handful of people or even one little elite team that they're cobbling together on kind of both sides of the aisle here. I think it makes it really effective. I mean, clearly the show is a little bit more interested in the Republican point of view, right? That's kind of more of our anchor

point. And if anything, the British Army specifically is a little bit more of a counterpoint perspective and a little bit more of a push and shove. And it's like, as you're saying, you know, there's not even a conclusive starting point to all this. It's like the overall architecture of what was going on in Northern Ireland is very familiar to any point in history. It's a tale as old as time in the sense of like occupation, destruction of rights,

the inevitable and sometimes very haphazard pushback against that police brutality, wash, rinse, repeat. It's like we're just kind of going in those circles as a species over and over and over all over the place. And so to point at one specific time and say, this group did something heinous,

I think is true, but you fast forward a little bit down the cycle, and it's like, well, there's a counterpoint that's very heinous too that's coming, just down the pipe. And I think the more you can put us in the perspective of Dolors or Mar, whoever it is, and say, like, this is how these people are trying to enter this world. This is what is making them energized and excited about fighting for their rights. This is what is giving them pause. This is the thing they don't want to do anymore that because they're neck deep in it,

they have to do anyway or feel they have to do anyway, I think is just a smart way to approach this kind of subject. but if you want something that is a little more pointed, if you want something that is far bleaker, I really can't recommend hunger enough for anyone who has the, if you'll pardon the pun, the stomach for that kind of dread and dreariness. It's a hard, hard, hard watch,

but really an amazing movie. Yeah, really incredible film, really tough film. The last thing I want to say, just sort of like in this section is that the show doesn't really bother going to the nuance of this, and I understand why, but it's a little too simple to think of this is like the Catholics versus the Protestants.

There have always been Protestants inside of the IRA. Like it is not a clear dividing line between the Catholics and the Protestants. And something that I thought was really interesting that I learned in the book is because there's like some, there's some questions like, why don't you just leave?

You know, you shouldn't have to leave your home. But maybe you could just go down the Republic of Ireland if things are as terrible they are. And they did in droves. 10% of like Belfast emptied out and left. But like it's not as simple as all the Catholics should be down in the bottom of the country and all the Protestants should be at the top of the country

because that's not how things were divided. And there's also this idea, this double minority idea. The Catholics are the minority in Northern Ireland. But if the country were unified, then the Protestants would be the minority in the larger country. And so both feel embattled and backed into a corner. And either result makes them feel like they don't have control of the situation. And that is part of the impossibility of this entire situation.

And we get that great line from Dollars, she's kind of flirting with the Protestant border guard guy in the pink iguana. Anyone can be a majority. It just depends on how you draw the line. Yeah, yeah. You really feel that in these scenes and in these dynamics. I think that relationship is a great way to illustrate it. You get the feeling watching Dollars interact with this guy that, like,

even though she kind of flirted with him to get past border security, it seems like maybe in a different world she might actually have some interest in him. And there's a part of her that is like, I literally cannot do it. this and even just talking to him comes with consequences for her. He's very dangerous for her. And so, yeah, the double minority idea and what that border guard

represents when he comes into this turf and this space and this world with people from the IRA all around him, there's peril everywhere for basically everyone who's living in Ireland at the time. I love that moment with them outside when she goes to tie his shoelace and then, you know, he's like,

are you going to come back up and she's like, I don't know if I should or if I can. and we're going to talk about these questions of boundaries and borders, which are often quite artificial in certain ways. But that's one of the boundaries, right, that she feels she can't cross. Because what harm in just, like, having maybe like a one-night stand with this guy? Well, as we see over the course of the show, like, that could be enough to get her shot. Like, if we don't know the whole story with Gene, but the information we have so far is that she brought a pillow. to a dying British soldier.

Yeah. And couldn't even stay to be with him as he died despite his pleading. But even that act of humanity put her on the radar of her neighbor. You know, and so it's just sort of like it's life or death. These things are life or death for these people. And like the fact that, again, we are going to go bit character by character, but I think it's so masterful in what we've seen so far, this escalation of what Dollers and Brendan and Mariner feel like they can do.

And the people who we see die, we see Joe die, we see Seamus and Kevin die. These are like friends and close colleagues. If you're willing to do that to your friend, what is going to happen to someone like Gene who has not made friends with anyone in this community? Completely. Yeah. You know, we're joking of top in the email about Kevin and, like, that character is amazing. And I think overall, the way that they have been able to structure and, like, introduce us and endear us, whether for good or ill, just like getting us familiar with characters and their whole deal very, very quickly in the show, it's amazingly efficient.

Like, the degree to which I was wrecked when Seamus's last letter to Cushlin was thrown in the grave with him. Horrible. It's like, this is a guy who asked. at bare minimum betrayed everyone around him, regardless of what you think of the ethics of that or which side he was on. It's like he betrayed everyone who had invested in him, everyone who trusted him.

And this is basically the first time we've seen Cautilin at all in the show. Like she's not a character we knew. One episode, and I'm a mess. Like watching Seamus and Kevin in front of the Open Graves period, I think just really broke something in me. And Seamus's offer of humanity to Kevin in that moment,

Kevin a character who has done nothing but aggravate him, you know, since they met, but then he's just sort of like offering him. Yeah. Okay, we'll come back to that. To your point in terms of the structure, maybe the last thing I want to say. Joe, this is a podcast. You can say as many things as you want.

That's the beauty of it. Thank you. I was thinking about disclaimer. Very fresh in our minds having just finished it. And our question of like, this is a binge drop show. Binge drop based on an incredibly paced book. So are these going to feel like distinctive episodes Or are they going to feel like one long sort of smear the way that disclaimer did? And disclaimer, which didn't even like bother to name its episodes.

And so I think this does pass the TV test and forgive the morbid nature of this recap. But this is the TV test for me. If I could take an episode and I can say the one where, right, the friend's test, right? So the one where the girls join the IRA, that's episode one. the one with the hospital job or the nunbank high, if you prefer, the one where Joe dies, the one where Kevin and Shamy die. Like, that's, that's, like, these are distinctive turning points for Dolores and Marr as they move deeper into or make more, more and more moral compromises on their journey into this fight. When you're also getting in their assent, like a clear change in their job responsibilities with all of those things, right? Like it is bank robber and I guess liberator of Jimmy out of the hospital to like their bomb smuggling era into being cleanup crew officially.

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Exclusion supplies to homedipo.com slash price match for details. So let's start with the Price family. This Price sisters and their parents and sort of where we meet them. The two things that I feel like I really want to highlight at the top here are the difference between these two sisters, despite them being sort of like thick as thieves and inseparable throughout this. And also getting to see them when they're younger and hearing the stories from their father, the sort of romanticism of the movement as it was sort of pitched to them as when they were young.

This idea of it being intoxicating is a word that's used in the book about it. It's just sort of pitched to them as the noblest, cause and also just sort of something exciting to be a part of. And what's interesting is to watch them go from rejecting that as teens, having this horrible experience on the Peace March, and then swinging back into the violence that their parents have felt is necessary for the cause. Let's start with the romanticizing aspect or this decision to show their parents and their parents' impact on them.

How did that work for you, Rob? Definitely worked. And I think it's of a piece, not just the stories from their, parents, but even when you see Dolores, for example, watching Brendan in action robbing the bank for the first time. And she's almost like moon-eyed watching him work. And it's all of, again, all of a very romantic idea of what this is going to be. And I think in some ways how easy it's going to be, right? How simple it's going to be. How straightforward it's going to be. But guess what? Literally every war that has ever happened is messy as hell. Any occupation like

this certainly messy as hell. And the more we get into the interpersonal dynamics involved in this stuff and the costs and the philosophical debates to say nothing of just like you have to be the person who drives this guy you know to be murdered and cold blood. The wake-up calls are pretty fast and furious, I think, for both of them, but especially for Dollars, who I would say has to kind of find her nerve in a way that Mar doesn't. And I want to maybe carve out a whole bunch of space for that because, look, Mar, maybe my favorite character on television this year, just as cool as they come, does not need to be brought up to speed. you want to rifle through their entire house

she's going to dust off her tie, put it on and go to school. You want to hand her a machine gun in the middle of a hospital. She's going to go to work. And I love this character. I love both. Honestly, both of them, I think, are really singular just like portrayals on television. Dollars is like the

sort of more obvious, like, flashier character. We're getting her, the older version of her as point of view and all the sort of stuff like that. So Mar is like in some senses a plus one to a certain degree. But to your point, in the first episode, when, you know, Dollars is an artist and is going to go to college and her sister, who is three years younger than her, but like her sister,

who's like, I'm not good at anything, right? And she's like, I don't have a talent. And Doler's like, quote, everybody has their thing, Marr. Sometimes it just takes a wee minute to find it, okay? And then in the hospital height, like the hospital job, she found her talent? Mar just like opens fire and I was like, holy fucking shit, I guess this is it, you know, and when they go to the pub later, they're at the wake and everyone's like

celebrating dollars for this, she's like, you're thinking of my sister, and then Marj just sits down and it's just sort of like drinking a beer and having a great time being like basking in this role, this purpose that she's found is perhaps the like slightly overlooked sister inside of her own family, you know?

But yeah, and just completely unflappable in her capacity to do that. I think again, part of the magic of this show is these characters get to be all these things and also get to be hilarious sometimes. I think the conversation between the girls and I think it was most of D Company or a chunk of D Company about how they flirt.

And I want to quote this directly from Marr, I don't, and I'll not lob the gob with any of you so don't get your hopes up. Irish slang Joe is very powerful. And I just want to say, I'm listening, I'm learning, I'm taking notes. This is a powerful time to be alive.

You didn't want to do lob the gob at gmail.com? I had it on a long list. In addition to some other Mar gems, like you shouldn't have shown him your nans at gmail.com. To be fair, it was just the one nan. It was only one nan at gmell.com. Maybe a good spin-off. Yeah, and I think Doller's getting,

Mar maybe being the person who is like more the true believer to a certain degree, and Dolers being the person who is caught up in the glamour, the moment where... Do you think that, though? Because I feel like Dolors does have some true believer. No, she definitely does.

I just think she does, and there's another thing that is in it for her. Oh, yeah. That isn't there for Mar. Is it the leather trench coat? Is that what's in it for her? It's the haircut and the leather trench coat.

When she, even in her older, perhaps more remorseful state, is like, I got to tell you. I was hot shit. I really crushed that one. Hot shit. Like, that's, again, when she walks out in that leather trench with her new short hair in slight, you know, reservoir dogs like slow-mo, I really understood, like, this is a teenage girl. She's a teenager when she starts this. Like, this is a teenage girl caught up in all of this. And that's when I started to think about the Manson family. Obviously, the Manson family and the IRA are not like a great comp necessarily. But the idea of like a teenage girl buying into.

a belief and sort of getting caught up in sort of the trappings of it much more than the actual ideology of it even though she is yes a true believer I think she is definitely someone who believes in this but we are watching her wrestle much more than Marr with like

the cost of it and what the cost of peace is and then again I guess this is a spoiler for history if you if you prefer and you can call me on if you want to but like the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 does not result in the British leaving Ireland.

So if the question is, what did we do this for? The answer is going to be dissatisfying to these characters. Another POV thing, Dolors did the Boston College, the Belfast Project with Boston College. Mar did not. Yeah. Don't think that went unnoticed by me.

I'm really hoping this means that she was, you know, skeptical and cagey, and not that she meets a fate over these last couple episodes that is going to rip me up, because we must protect Mar at all costs at this point. I say that not necessarily knowing what terrorist acts she might commit, or quote-unquote, terrorist acts she might commit. But look, again, I feel very intrigued by these characters and these portrayals and where they find themselves this far into the show. The last thing of the Price Girls that I think is worth noting, and this is something that

Padder does so well in his book is establishing that if the troubles start, quote unquote, start in 1968 and then 1972, the year that Gene McConnell was taken from her home, is, as they say in this show, the most violent year. That's a dizzying assent. This is a quote from Patrick. He says, in 1968, things look relatively normal, at least as normal as have been defined up to that point. By In 1972, there are bombs going off every day and people shooting each other in the street. And so this idea, that's the end of that quote. So the idea that Mar and Dollars, their sort of dizzying assent in the IRA matches the rapid escalation of violence in this era of the troubles is, you know, a brilliant piece of storytelling.

Also fact, but also just like a really good piece of storytelling. And the way they unveil that, not only in showing us some of the violence, in laying out that, yes, this was a historically notable year. But I think it really comes home strongest in basically the very temporary ceasefire that occurs around the negotiations. And you see all the kids out on the playground for what must be the first time and forever.

Like the elation of that scene and also just like how fucking sad it is that they are like clutching little pieces of like ribbon or whatever that they had on the playground to go home at the end of the day. And guess what? Now all the violence is escalating again. And it's really heartbreaking, and I think the way that that is shown it to us is just really effective.

I come to it at every corner in this show where whether it's something that it is sort of the Goodfellas rapid ascent in a way that feels euphoric, even though you know that the comeuppance and the turn is coming. Right. Or these little piercing bits of light that are coming through really dark or really violent circumstances. They really just give you such a vivid contrast of this show, and they make it feel so much more fully realized. Should we move to Jerry, a.k.a. The Big Lad, and Brendan, aka. The Dark. Also, A.K. Brendan, fucking Hughes, as he's referred to by his full Christian name in the show. I like this, the way that, like, Jerry and Brendan mirror Marr and Dollars in terms of like this sort of like cold, clear conviction versus this hesitancy, this, the charisma and attractiveness of, I mean, all four of these. people are quite good looking, so I'm not like, but like the charisma rolling off of Dolors and

Brendan as they go through the world and Mars and Jerry being like the more reserved, but more clear in their convictions or not hesitating kind of people. I loved the hesitation conversation that Brendan and Dollars have outside of the wake after the hospital job. And also, Brendan is this sort of like emblem of the seductive nature of like when you when, at least for me, when I'm watching the first couple episodes I was like, oh, Brendan and Dollars are definitely going to have like a romance of some kind.

That's clearly being set up. We haven't had any of that payoff so far at least. And so it's then much more just like about her attraction to the movement much more than like an actual person and the way that he was this sort of street general charming face of the movement and Jerry's operating in the shadows. And so Brendan knows every single person in town. He can knock on any door except for jeans and like hand them a gun and they'll like get rid of it for him. Or pull a machine gun out of a piano? Yeah, from like some old

dude's house. Whereas Jerry's just like hiding in the morgue operating from the shadows. I think that's just a really interesting contrast. What do you want to say about these guys? Well, I think they, because of their positions in the IRA get to have the sort of like outward debate a little bit about those two perspectives. In a way that Dollers and Marr don't really, they don't interact with those ideas on that level with each other so much

except to say that Dolors is hesitant to, you know, to finish the jobs that she started. Like, she has trouble pulling the trigger. She has trouble driving someone who's going to be killed all the way to the destination without like that gut check moment. But in Jerry and Brendan, you're getting sort of

like, Brendan is not only, a little bit more wed to the people than the cause, but there is a bleeding heart kind of like flesh and blood revolutionary part of him that is as much in it for the people around him as it is for the cause. And so like the conversations they get to have about like the balance of people versus ideas and the balance of like, you know,

it's very telling that when the leak kind of comes to light, this idea that there are spies within their company. You know, Jerry is trying to figure out like, how can you run an army without being able to trust anyone? And Brendan is like, we got to find the one guy who did. Like, I need to know which of my friends did this to me. Yeah. And the fact that they get to engage with those ideas because of their positions,

I think just brings them delight in a really interesting way in the show and lets us kind of wrestle with them as we get all the bits of information and every twist and turn of the story and every twist of turn of like, even when you think, you know, Brendan in some ways is in this violence in a way that Jerry isn't. Right. Like, he is on the front lines of this a little bit more often. But he's also naive enough to think that, Seamus will be able to live after like turning against the IRA,

that Jerry is going to allow that to happen, that that will be an acceptable outcome to him. And what's so interesting to me is like Seamus knows. Right. And Joe knows. Like everyone who like Dolores has to drive other than Kevin, everyone that Dolores has to drive to this destination knows because they know that this is the bargain that they've made

signing up for this organization. I think Brendan, the interview moment that Brendan has when he talks about the IRA is his family, right? He says, never saw my father, my brother's, my sisters. I had the lads instead, right? Like, this is his family.

And so when Jerry is telling him, he's too soft, and it's just sort of like, well, if we're not, aren't we fighting for the people? Isn't that what we're fighting for? Are you putting the idea of a cause above the flesh and blood of the people who we are allegedly fighting to protect?

Well, and that gets into the idea of using bombs as blunt instruments, right? of like what kind of violence are you willing to carry out despite the collateral damage in order to achieve a cause? There's some Jerry Adams context that based on like things that you said, I think is best saved for the back half of this. But I'm just going to tell anyone who's listening and is aware of Irish politics that we will talk about all of the Jerry Adams of it all.

But just I mean like just basically, I guess I won't give the comp that I was going to give. But like imagine you're watching this FX limited series and it's about the youthful, violent days of an extremely famous American politician. And there has to be a disclaimer at the end of every single episode that says Jerry Adams has always denied

being a member of the IRA or participating in any IRA-related violence. So, like, legally, they have to do that because he is a very well-known person. And so I won't get into, like, sort of the where's in the house of his, like, political assent because I imagine the show will cover that and we'll talk about that later. but like that adds just a whole,

this show feels and the book feels so subversive in a way because as much as some people, I think the book was incredibly popular and really well regarded, but there are some people who go a little harder on the book for being as approachable as it is. And I don't see that as a flaw of the book and I don't see that as a flaw of the show

to sort of, it's not simplifying what happened, but it is making it something, we have emotional access to, whereas there are dozens upon hundreds of other books about this era in Irish politics that go into the much more granular detail and are much more probably impetrable for the more casual reader or casual TV watcher. And so I think sometimes the book gets, based on my research, gets a bit knocked for that. But I think there's something intriguingly subversive about this book that, that, and this show that centers on this quite famous Irish political figure,

controversial Irish political figure, and the concept of silence, the concept of say nothing, everything here is not supposed to be known, is not supposed to be talked about. That is the whole gimmick of the whole thing. Gimick is to a glibble word, but like that is the through line of this story is we don't talk about this.

And there's a part of we don't talk about this that is as much about the culture of the IRA and the guy in the first episode like sinisterly putting his finger up in front of his like, you know, mouth to shush, you know, one of the kids. And there's the part of the post-peace agreement that talking about doing up the past will only endanger the very fragile, existent peace

in Ireland. We worked hard to create this text. PENUIS peace agreement, if you insist on digging into the house and wins and why of how Gene was taken from her home or anything else, you are doing a larger disservice to the peace accord in Ireland. There are people who don't care about that and there are people who care very deeply about that. And I think that that is all like an interesting tension that is layered on top of this, as you put it, like a very entertaining story that we're watching. I mean, that's always going to be a tension

when you try to make something both watchable and true to real life and reflective of the seriousness and the gravity of these situations. I think what works well in this first batch of episodes is even if you didn't know how all of this, quote unquote, resolves because it doesn't, I don't know how you could watch these first four episodes

and think, oh, there's going to be a clean resolution to this. There is an easy solution on the horizon that they just have to push a little further in either direction to solve. Like some of these things are unsolvable, right? Some of them are changeable. Some of them are fixable. Like you can reallocate rights.

You can change who is allowed to go and live and work where and how. Like all those things can be changed and are a little bit more malleable. But there are certain things here that are not going to change. And they exist to this day, as you mentioned, like regardless of the fact that, you know, some of the violence may have quelled in some ways. But the tensions are not totally gone. Not even in the slightest. And even like something like Brexit,

which is just like some Brexit happens and all of a sudden the border which had been sort of gently erased between Northern Ireland and the Republican Ireland all of a sudden becomes this area of contention again because of the EU and all the implications of that. I just think that's like incredibly fascinating

and terribly tragic because as we are sort of like bogged down and all of this, the question, you know, I was reading an interview with the young actors in New York Times, the quartet of young actors at the center of the sort of the IRA storyline. And they were talking about this idea of like, three Irish actors and one English actor. And they were talking about this idea of like, what would you do?

You know, all of them are too young to have been like in the mix of the actual action of this. But they're empathetic to this question of what would you do in this situation. if you're Doleur and Mara and you see your house flipped, you know, brutally torn apart by soldiers. In Dolears, we should say beaten by, if not soldiers, people that the soldiers allowed to beat her. Yeah. And the cops come in to help her belatedly.

Yes. Very belatedly. There is that one line that older Doleer says, she describes the Protestant man who is sort of bearing down on her with a club, a cudgel, as his eyes were glazed with hate. That's a line pulled directly from the book, and I'm tempted to imagine maybe pulled directly from the tape.

We don't know, but some of the greatest lines that are in here are just lifted directly in the book, which is something Shogun did beautifully all the time. All right, should we talk about? Brigadier Frank Hitson and the British Army. We definitely should. Roy Koneer is here. my guy, Rory Keneer, I'm always happy to see him

even when he's playing an absolute monster like brigadier Frank Kitsyn. Somewhat often, we should say. He has a talent for it. I think for monsters, sometimes just like stuffy, self-serious bureaucrat types and sometimes buffoons, but he's an occasional monster too. The introduction we get with his daughter, Penelope, when he's brought in to sort of

clean up what's going on because of his experience. and other parts of the world doing some, you know, employing similar tactics, which we learn about over the course of these four episodes. And it should be noted, his tactics here, which involve, you know, like real psychological warfare were sort of eagerly taken up by the United States directly and used in some of their dubious goings on going forward to put it way too mildly. I'm shocked to hear that, Joe. But the introduction here, when they're like, how is the trip and he says over 45, oh, 45 minutes? Or it's not a war, it's an insurgency. That sort of gold star Penelope, right? It's not a war, it's an insurgency.

We don't call it war. But also chased by, this is the war room. Yes. We're now going to have to rename. Yeah. So there's like a levity here because Rory Kinier is like very good at what he does. And it's written this way for him to be like, almost like an Armando Nucci sort of like, character and that he's like somewhat overly charming or ridiculous so that you can understand

how it is that he is able to manipulate as many people as he manipulates. And the atrocity of what he's doing is there throughout, but really sharpens in that final episode when he's talking about, you know, when Sarah Jane, who is the sort of like the woman who is like the lieutenant in his operation when he's talking and she's like, I think Seamus and Kevin are dead. He's like, they're dead. She's like, they're missing, aren't you worried? He's like, they're dead. And here's why that's a good thing for us. Yeah. He's like, they're turning on each other. And that's great. And we love to see it. And so that sort of so dissent and chaos among the ranks and watch them pick each other off. Yeah. Which to a certain degree is what the whole conflict in Northern Ireland

is. And also, if we keep coming back to Jean, this is the central. sort of idea we have to keep thinking about is like fighting the wrong enemy losing track of who your real enemy is and fighting each other sort of thing. And I think it's made all the more powerful by the fact that we see Brendan and Dolers in particular falling apart at what they now have to do and what they

are now asked to do and what the realities of the situation are when yeah, Kitsin is not too fussed about the double agent turned triple agent situation. It's like great. That's yet another win for us if not quite in the way we were winning before. Drive them to murder their own men. Either way we win.

This is the thing that, like, yes, these are devious tactics. There's a lot of things here that are devious, like, kind of evil things to do in the grand scheme of human interaction. There's also stuff that happens even on this side of the conflict that's like, look, testing everything that comes to the laundromat for explosive residue is a very smart strategy, right? Like, I think there's a display of intelligence on both sides that makes it feel. interesting and I use the term rewarding lightly given the gravity of all this, but like

that makes you invested in watching it and doesn't feel aggravating. It doesn't feel like there's like some accident that's happening leading to the capture of characters who you are watching and invested in. It doesn't feel like a random turn of chance in a lot of these cases. It feels like people who are trying to scheme against each other. Yeah, it's a cat and mouse. Completely. Sort of hunt. And like you want to respect the cat even if you're rooting, for the mouse or vice versa. And so, yeah, Kitsen coming in and every time he's like, well, you know,

did you consider letting him win or getting on the ground at the level of Seamus or all the things that he does or just like observing where Kevin's eyes go when his gun is in the room or all of these sort of things? It's like it's, it's despicable what he's doing and also interesting to watch him do it. Anything else you want to say about the British Army or Kitsyn as a character? We don't see kind of the total outcome for Sarah Jane, I believe, right? We know she gets away from the laundromat ambush situation. I guess we'll see what becomes of her.

I was, again, on the levity note, very tickled by the fact that the girls picked up on the fact that she was probably a spy, not by her fishy explanation, but the fact that she offered to share lipstick with them. It's like, no, something is very off about this woman. All right, Jean McConville and her brood of children. How many do you need for a brood? Over five. Over five is a brood? This could be a double brood.

Like, yeah, brood times two. A baker's brood, it's a lot of children. And Gene McConville is someone who is widowed, and this is sort of more evident in the book than it is in the show, massively depressed on medication for her depression, doesn't leave the apartment, essentially. And I think that's highlighted. best in that brief ceasefire when she leaves her house and goes to see her children playing.

And there's just that moment of like, it should be like this all the time. And Gene McConville should not be locked up in a house with 10 children. But basically, like, the background on her is that she was a Catholic. She converted to Catholic. Her husband was a Catholic. She was a Protestant. They were bullied out of their Protestant neighborhood into. to basically the Divis flats where she winds up

because she wasn't welcome in the Protestant neighborhoods. And so she winds up there. She is technically a Catholic, but not in a way that she has sort of like a lifelong allegiance to Catholicism. She converted for her husband. And so her desire to just not be involved and also just her massive depression.

This is a quote from the book that, like, stop me in my tracks. Jean McConville was nearly 38. and she had spent half her life either pregnant or recovering from pregnancies. Oh my God. And then her husband dies

and she's got a meager pension and she struggled to get out of bed. Like this is what she is grappling with. And so the fact that she's like, please don't involve me in your land war that is happening all around me. And the idea that like she's on,

she's on like what they call nerve task. But that there was like a massive uptick in people on nerve tablets in Belfast that they called the Belfast syndrome because basically they were all walking around PTSD because there was just there was in a war zone at all times. It is just like a stunning state of affairs to be trying to do anything, let alone raise 10 children in. So this is like this is where we meet Jean. In over her head like completely from from the start to the point that she like I can't even get dinner to please go to the chip shop, please get food for all the kids. She's delegating because what else can you do but lean on your oldest children to help take care of the younger children in a situation like this.

I do think it's, you know, we talked about her helping the injured soldier. That's even too strong a work, giving a pillow to the injured soldier, not even really helping him, just giving him a pillow. The other piece of that is after the hospital jailbreak sequence, Brendan hands off a bag of guns to the red-headed woman who eventually identifies Gene later. and comes around with the crew. Yeah. Who, because her own flat, she says, is being searched on a regular basis,

she can't hide the guns. And she tries to give them to Gene who refuses for basically exactly this reason. Like, I just, I don't have the bandwidth for this. I do not want to get involved with this. And so it's like the ticking of these marks, and you can see people start to look at her a little differently as they're amassing. I don't know what is the thing that kind of pushes it over the edge. Maybe it is as simple as helping the soldier.

Maybe there's still one or two more things she does down the line that shift opinion. on her. I don't know. But you can feel it mounting already. When that woman said, like, noted, right? Like, got it. In the ledger. And then, like, I think the very next day there was the, like, Brit lover graffiti on her door and stuff like that. Yeah.

This idea of, to go back to this neighbor versus neighbor idea, this paranoia, right, goes back to this sort of, like, widespread psychological, state of affairs in Belfast at the time, when Kitson says a bomb is a blunt instrument, which is a line that both you and I sort of zeroed in on, and he says it with almost like empathy. Like, of course, of course,

they're using books. You don't know what you're doing. They don't know what happened. Yeah, of course. The Belfast syndrome, this is the description of it that I found that I thought was so interesting, living with constant terror

where the enemy is not easily identifiable, and the violence is indiscriminate and arbitrary. So this is like, of course it's neighbor versus neighbor. You don't know who your enemy. And sometimes maybe your enemy is shameless at the pub, right? Or maybe it's your neighbor who has 10 kids

and, you know, like, who is your enemy? And people are being grabbed off the streets and interred and, you know, deported or driven across the border and shot. Like, it's just, of course, it's a constant powder keg. And of course, that doesn't stop the horror of the fact that when these masked people burst in this home and take Jean in her towel and all of her kids are screaming all around her,

the fact that the people in the room can tell the children by name to be quiet so that it's not strangers, it's their neighbors, as this absolute level of just dystopia to what you're watching. especially with this turning point in the story where, yeah, the people who are banding together with their neighbors to say, like, hide the guns or hide a member of the IRA who has jumped through their window or stormed through their door, like, they are putting themselves in their family at risk by doing that,

right? They are taking on the risk of violence, the risk of retribution, all kinds of potential danger. The people in the IRA who are being captured or who are being turned aren't just being beaten indiscriminately in the way that prisoners were in episode one. Like now that Kitsen has kind of changed,

the tactics. It's, you know, like, it's telling that even when Jerry is brought in and they identify who he is, even though he insists he's Joe McQuiggin. Is that the name he's going by? What they offer him is not a stick, but a briefcase full of money and say, like, and visitation from his wife. Visitation from his wife. What they offer Seamus is a chance at a new life in London to do the, have the kind of life with his wife and his family that he always wanted to have. What they're offering a literal child in Kevin is, hey, like, you're fascinated by guns, we have this cute little hobby for you to partake in here. Yeah.

Like, the stakes in what is being offered to these people in exchange for their help is so distorted by the circumstances, right? Like, one has so much more tangible individual benefit to offer to you and your family. And the other one, even though you may believe in the cause and believe it to be righteous and want to fight for your rights and everyone else's rights, like, you're walking into something that's completely different. Excellent points. All around, Rob.

I have a question for you about anything very very important. visually that you want to call out on the show, like anything in terms of like the filmmaking that you thought was particularly striking? I think there is one really clear standout. And it's a moment that kind of ties all these ideas together. And I think points at the sort of complicated balancing act of what they're trying to do here,

which is to say this is heinous, violent stuff that's happening on screen. It's also riveting as hell a lot of times. And the overhead sequence of Brendan coursing through the neighborhood in one door, out the other, bouncing out of windows, is like trying to evade this, this whole convoy of soldiers who was chasing after him. It's like,

they have, this show has a lot to say and a lot to dig into, ideologically speaking. It also has the fucking juice. Like that is just, that is just a great piece of filmmaking to watch, like action filmmaking to watch.

And the fact that it is smuggled into a story about real life events that are violent and tragic makes me feel all sorts of ways, personally, as I'm digesting it. But in the moment watching it, like,

I would prefer if this show, weren't a binge show. I would prefer if this was a week-to-week experience, irrelevant of us doing this podcast. But I can understand why someone would sit down and reel through these first four episodes

like that. The back half, I think, will be different, but the first four I could see it. And that might be, again, like, we'll get to the back half when we get to it next week. But, like,

I was talking to Chris Ryan about a bit about this on the watch when I was talking about, like, binge shows versus not binge shows and the idea that the bear was a binge because they were worried the show was too bleak

that people wouldn't stick with it week to week, but watching in a binge, you can get enough entertainment to pull you along through the bleaker stuff that happens in that show. And I think similarly to this, perhaps you might sit down of a Thursday and say,

am I in the mood for the IRA show? Maybe not tonight, but if you sit down on a binge, you're just sort of like, you're compelled by, and the mystery angle of the show, what happened to Gene, how is Dollers involved?

How is Brendan involved? what happened to Dollers and Brendan that when we meet them as older people they look like they've lived very hard lives and I say that more from like a costume and makeup like point of view and demeanor point of view

the cigarettes the drinking like whatever it is like it's just these are people who have been wrecked by what they've done is my reading on what we're supposed to take from that. The visual thing that I want to call it

I mean, the overhead is incredible. The visual thing that I want to call out is like these sort of ghostly crossing of the border sequences. Yeah. The fog is coming in real thick. Yeah. The fog or the nighttime, just the headlights cutting through the foggy nighttime, it makes it seem almost supernatural and unreal. And I was just thinking about Doler specifically as someone who has to like keep crossing these like moral boundaries of like, What am I okay with?

Am I okay with taking Joe, my friend Joe, despite what he said to me at the pink iguana, my friend Joe, a sensitive man who did this really fucked up dumb thing, am I okay with taking him to his death? And then by the time she's driving Seamus and Kevin, she's just like Seamus stay in the car. But at the same time,

the look on her face when she realizes how young Kevin actually is, right, like you can't even drink. So these like these boundary crossings that she has to continue to, traverse while we're watching her in this car go along this sort of like ghostly border between two countries that aren't even

really two separate countries. And that's sort of just like the messy moral morass that we find ourselves in in this show. Anything else you want to say anything we missed in our attempt to encapsulate four incredible episodes of television into an hour or so podcasting? I really hope people watch this show. I really hope that people can get over that mental hump we've been talking about of, oh, this is going to be about really, really bleak subject matter,

and give it a shot. Because I think there is enough there to balance it out so far. I think there's going to be something that's going to be really rewarding for a lot of people who are willing to give this show at the time. Obviously, if you've made it this far on the podcast, you probably already watched these episodes. So we're preaching to the choir a little bit. Rob, I know for a fact that sometimes people listen to this podcast

without watching the thing we're talking about. They shouldn't in this case. You're welcome to join us at all levels, but also I hope we've convinced you to watch the show. Yeah. And there are shows for which I would understand that, or if you gave up halfway through a show and wanted to see how it ends vis-a-vis us, sure.

By all means, tag along. This is a show I think you should try out, and I think you should dig into it with the rigor it deserves, and the investment it deserves. This is a really, really strong opening to this season. And I know we're going to some dark places. I know our next pod won't be all quite as cheery, perhaps, on some of these fronts for some of our characters. But so far, I have enjoyed the relative rise of these things and these events.

And I can't wait to see how they unfurl. I think I was quite worried. I had heard on the wind that the show was very good from people who had seen it, people who had worked on it, whatever. They were like, no, this is like, this is the stuff. The same level of hype I was hearing around Shogun. And I was worried, the show just felt like vegetables to me for so long that I had the screeners for a really long time. It didn't watch them because I was just sort of like, I don't know, how entertaining can this show possibly be? And it is.

And whether or not we are in for like, and I think we are, a sharp tonal shift or a gradual tonal shift. Yeah. The, like if the vegetables are coming, they started us out with, you know, the starches. and the red meat and the whatever it else it is before they served as the Brussels sprouts. And I think they're going to be Brussels sprouts that are made with bacon. You know, you're going to be delicious. So I'm excited.

I think it's going to pay off because the character beats that we get in these opening episodes are so strong and are so defining. And there's so many little choices in the show so far that I think are already paying off or will pay off. Right. Like the idea you get about Joe from, you know, him thanking dollars for taking him the place where he knows he's going to die. And not only that,

but it was really important to him that she knew that he wasn't crazy about this relationship that he had fostered with the wife of another IRA member. And like little, like, Doler's mom cutting out the police sketch

from the newspaper to put in the family album. Like, there's all this little stuff happening on the edge of the show that it almost like barely calls attention to. There's just, to me, it sets the stakes for everything. And it changes how it feels

when, for example, like D Company is starting to dissolve. or these groups of people are starting to get pulled apart. And it's where, like, I find myself ultimately much more sympathetic and understanding to these sorts of narratives and portrayals, complicated as the subject matter may be, when it's like, here's the human costs and connection that is in this huge world event, that may feel unwieldy, that may feel like vegetables to read about,

that may feel like something you can't connect to. But, like, here's a little part of it that gives you a real entry point into who these people are. I really agree. Like, I just don't think, like, a, you know, sort of like, spoonful of sugar for your medicine. I don't think there's anything wrong with packaging a bleak story inside of a compelling, entertaining narrative. If it gets a bunch of people who never would have engaged with that part of history at all

into watching the show or reading that book, etc. So please watch the show if you haven't, if you listen to this whole podcast and haven't already, check out the audiobook or pick up the book and read it with your eyeballs if you prefer. But the audiobook is great narrated by. someone with a nice, thick, juicy Northern Irish accent. You know what? We got through the whole episode.

Not an accent to speak of. Not a single error. Not a single da in there? Like, there was nothing. We said with, like, the most American of accents. So, but yeah, Rob and I come by it, honestly. We are our Irish people. You have only need to see the paciness of ourselves to know that.

We'll be back next week. with episodes five through nine of say nothing. And we have some ideas for other shows on the horizon after that that we will let you know about. Thanks to Kai Grady. Thanks to Rob Mahoney. Thanks to you, Joe. Thanks to me, Joanna Robinson. And thanks to Justin Sales.

And we'll see you soon. Bye.