The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘Say Nothing’ Series Finale: The Squeeze of a Trigger

Episode Date: November 19, 2024

Jo and Rob reveal the truth to recap the last five episodes of ‘Say Nothing.’ They discuss how the back half of the season landed for them, the adaptive choice to depart from Frank Kitson as the show’s main antagonist, and how the series depicts Gerry Adams distancing himself from the IRA movement (2:38). Along the way, they talk about both the character of Dolours and her real-life counterpart and Marian’s fate at the end of the story (31:40). Later, they unpack how the show handles the mysterious disappearance of Jean McConville (38:26).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. The Precisee TV podcast feed, I'm Joanna Robinson. I'm Rob Mahoney. We are here to wrap up our coverage of Say Nothing. It pains us to only bring you two podcast episodes about this tremendous season of television. But these are the times we live in, Rob Mahoney, these are the times we live in, you know? I'm just so upset. I say that because we could have been even more upset, and we could have been living with the terror

and the tragedy and really the tough vibes that come with the back half of these episodes, but bad vibes masterfully executed, Joe, I have to say. I just think it's a great season. The best bad vibes I've experienced all year, perhaps. If you have not heard our first episode, we covered episodes one through four

of say nothing as well, sort of like historical context, stuff like that. So you, you know, if you're just catching up with the show, you will want to listen to that pod before you listen to this one. Also, if you're in the mood to listen to pods about say nothing, I can heartily recommend what the watch has been doing. Chris had a great interview with Patrick Radden Keefe, who is the author of the book and a producer on the show. And then Andy Greenwell and Sean Fantasy had a conversation about say nothing and how much they love it. So it's just like a love fest over on the watch. and over here about this show. Spoiler warning, I guess, for history. At this point, I think anything that's in the book, I feel at liberty to say I was sort of censoring myself a little bit on some stuff just to like respect the surprise that the show was trying to hold back.

But cars on the table, we're here to talk about evil little maniacs, do no harm, theater people, I lay waiting, and the people in the dirt. Rob Mahoney. Yes. I told you that part one of this, our coverage, was like, the fuck around and then this is the find out half of the season. How did the find out half of the season land for you?

I think very well, which is to say very hard in a lot of cases. And there's varying degrees of that, right? There's a lot of actual tragedy in the form of disappeared loved ones and the search to find them. There's a lot of tragedy in terms of like PTSD and addiction and people grappling with the things that they've done or didn't do. and I think grappling for us as an audience with the rip-roaring good time of the first half of this season and as we said, the kind of Goodfellas ascent

into this story, and then where it leaves all the characters by the end of it, and where it leaves us by association and kind of engaging with the story in this way by the end of it. I do want to, like, I'm primarily interested to talk to you about the real-life figure of Jerry Adams and now that you've like sort of seen the full arc

and in terms of like, Sean and Andy were talking about the success of the show being that it operates in the moral gray and you and I were talking about in the first half, this idea of like a show that is not like passing judgment on these young revolutionaries and like not not really coming down on one side or another. And then we got an email from a listener who's like, but the book hates Jerry Adams. And I was like, and I would say the show does not come down favorably on Jerry Adams at the end of the day. But that's something that I'm really curious to talk to you

about. But I do want to, I don't want to linger too long in what's left out from the book adaptation because Patrick and his interview with Chris and we talked about this in our first episode, acknowledged that when you're adapting source material, there's a difference between reading a book and watching a show. And so leaving things out, we talked about this with Shogun all the time, leaving stuff out, he's almost always in service of giving us a better TV experience, which is going to be different from your book reading experience. I do have a few notes about this back half, just like before I knew what was missing from the book, like before I had read through the rest of the book.

Like there are things like Kitsyn is established as this sort of antagonistic force and then he literally just like disappears from the narrative. And I feel like yada yada over like Brendan's time in prison, which is like very narratively important to the story or what happened to the McConnellville kids after, you know, their mom was abducted and all this sort of stuff like that that in order to drill down very closely on basically Dolores and like and then like the the Jerry fallout. So I guess leaving aside what isn't there because you're not a maniac, you've a little maniac like me and you did not

consume a lengthy audiobook over the span of a week. What do you think about some of those like skip, feel like you skip over or Kitsyn sort of just evaporating from the story and stuff like that. I'm very interested to talk about it in these terms as like an adaptive work because for me, just with the experience of watching the show, I certainly clocked it. And I think the Kitson one is notable because you almost don't quite notice it's happening until like, oh my God, we're jumping 10 years into the future. Oh, it's the end of the series. I literally haven't seen that character in five episodes. Right. They were such a prominent part of the story. And it's crazy to think that the last time we left Kitsyn was in the conversation we brought up on the last pot

about like this triple agent cost of war, like a psychological manipulation that he was trying to run against the IRA. That's the last we heard of that character or saw that character, even had him mentioned in the show, which is an insane thing, narratively speaking, to grapple with. That said, I found myself like really kind of appreciating the rhythm of what was being dropped in and out of the story for this particular show. It is a story that is grappling on a lot of levels with the idea of disappearance

and the idea of your mother can be taken in the night and you'll never see her again. And not just that, but everyone in the town around that is so complicit in it that they're just not going to talk about it. It is a fact of life that people are vanishing off the face of the earth. And so to have it be kind of part of the story in a way

where, yeah, like Brendan goes to prison, we don't follow him in there. And so he just disappears, from the story until he suddenly reemerges. The idea of these people popping in and out of each other's lives, I think it's kind of consistent with the story that they're trying to tell. And it made it as a viewer, I think we're really rewarding in some sense, right? Like seeing the McConville kids reunited as adults when it's clear,

these people just haven't even seen each other in a long time in many cases. They not only lost their mother because she was taken from them, but half their siblings aren't even really their siblings anymore. They didn't grow up together. and having all of these reunions, having all of these moments of characters zinging in and out of the story, it left me feeling that,

like, Say Nothing is deeply empathetic, but it is not very sentimental. And I think that's an interesting line and a balance to draw for a show. That's a really good characterization. I really like that. We should just probably ask them, but I am, like, interested narratively

if a reason to not show how truly traumatic and, I think actually some of the toughest stuff for me to digest in the book is what happened to the McConville kids, just like the lives that they led to not show that is to maybe when we have characters like Dolors and Marion who were according to this story and we'll talk about sort of what is known, what is not known, directly involved in her death, in Jean's death, then it sort of softens the impact of what they did because if we just see those kids tormented, then Doler is a

character we're asked to have a lot of empathy for and Marion by extension maybe it's just even harder for us to stay in that empathy space if we see the reality of the fallout. But something we edited

it out of the first podcast, which you wisely called out, is because the show had not made it clear that Jim McConnell died that night, essentially, or soon thereafter. This phrase that Patrick Radd and Keith likes to say, and maybe it existed before he sort of started talking about it in the book,

but this idea that like 10 children were made orphans with a squeeze of a trigger. And so that's why this figure looms so large as like the emblem of the cost of this movement. There's so many, there's costs across the board. There's costs to Brendan and Dollars and like all these people as well. But in terms of like a figure that people, can have nothing but empathy for. It's these children. And in that sense, Kitsyn vanishes from the narrative.

And then Helen sort of, even though we meet her in the first half, her younger self, she really, Laura Donnelly as adult Helen sort of just really emerges in this last couple episodes as having to carry all of that on a character that I don't know that I felt I had like, I expected that Helen was going to be this, like, such a through line. Do you know what I mean? I think making Helen one of the anchors of the back part of this show and really everything after the time jump is very smart and it reorients the story clearly. I'm sensitive to what you're saying about the idea of taking out the McConville Kids' lives

as the overarching narrative or kind of a through line of the entire series, decentering what they went through and decentering the trauma and the desperation and the despair that comes with something like that. I think they do a pretty good job in the series of kind of, catching us up on the emotional aspect of that, if not the literal, like, what of these people's lives have been like? But in the sense that I want to get back to this

in the kind of larger conversation about how Dollers and Helen almost become, like, unwitting allies in a way. Like, that's a stretch of that term. But their interests become aligned at a certain point in terms of revealing the truth. They do that. But you also get the moments where Helen is reading about,

you know, Dollers in the news and, like, the terrible trauma, that she has sustained and been like, what the fuck? Like, she gets her moment to call it out in a way that I think is really, really necessary for the balance of this kind of story. But overall, I like, I want to talk about it in this way, which is you can either show the story of the victims or you can show the story in this case of the people who are pulling the trigger and setting the bombs and who are involved in the IRA, or you can try to do both

at the same time. Doing both is always going to be hard in terms of how you juggle those things together. And if we're going to anchor the story around the people who are pulling the trigger, I think you can do that when you create the obligation of who has to initiate change here. Like Helen wants answers,

but Dolors has to find it within herself to be like, I want to tell everyone what happened because this is fucked up. And it's very fucked up that Jerry is at the front of this whole movement, pretending to never know any of us. And in particular, the conversation that Dolors and Brendan have about,

like, if he is abdicating any responsibility, it is falling on us and we are carrying it every day. And what Dollers as a person and as a character ends up doing with that is using it to reveal the truth ultimately and using it to shine a light on some of these things and clearly not a perfect person, clearly not a perfect character. But if you're going to anchor your story with the people pulling the trigger, the people who are villain-ish,

if you want to borrow the play adaptation of Doller's life, this is what they have to do. This is the kind of role they need to play in your story for it to work. Yeah, I think that's really a stupid. And I think that, like, I think it's a, I think a lot of the adaptive choices work for me. And so I'm not, I'm not here saying, like, because it's in the book, it needs to be in here. I'm just always curious about those choices and, like, why do you decide to excise this? Why do you, for the Brendan side of it, he was in the same prison with Bobby Sands.

So that whole stretch, he did a failed hunger protest right before Bobby Sands, like, if you want to call it successful, successful hunger protest. And so there's this domino effect of like the way in which Dolors and Marin, their protest and their protest specifically against force feeding is what led to Bobby Sands and that hunger strike movement, which resulted not only in his death, but a number of other participants in that hunger strike because they could not force feed them because of the work, if you want to call it that that Dollars and Marin had done on that front. And Bobby Sands is just this huge turning point in the movement. And you and I both recommended the film Hunger, which covers that Michael Fossbender doing an incredible job playing Bobby Sands. That's a huge part of the story that the show just leaves out. And I can understand why, because A, a really great version of that story already exists. And B, something that Patrick said, even in the context of his more involved narrative in the book, is that it's not, He didn't set out to chronicle everything that happened in the troubles in those 30 years.

Yeah. And so, like, Bloody Sunday and, like, all these other sort of, you know, integral moments in this movement are kind of footnotes in his book. Bobby Sands, because he's connected to both Brendan and, you know, like, Jerry, you know, Jerry knew him. Brendan knew him, you know, like, he's woven through that way. but I can understand that if they're trying to sort of like, I'm sure there were versions of the script where that was all in there. And then I'm sure that they were just sort of like, we can't, it's just slowing down the back half of our story.

This story is known and out there. We're not doing Bobby Sands a disturbance for leaving him out. His legacy is known. So we just basically get that, all we have is that scene of Brendan in the prison watching Jerry give this interview. And it is, I think, one of the most effective, Anthony Boyle, as Young Brendan is, I think, tremendous throughout. But the scene where he's watching Jerry give this interview

and watching Jerry disavow the IRA and the shot of him looking up through, like, the cage that's around the TV screen, and that's the last we see of Young Brendan as him left behind in a cage, you know, by this person that the show went to great pains and the book does as well, to establish how close. the two of them were inside of the movement, not just as leaders, but like in that sequence that makes it into the show where Brendan cuts his arm open on the window and Jerry comes personally, like coming out of

the shadows, leaving the morgue where he would like hide away. Like Jerry exposes himself in a very uncharacteristic way because Brendan was such a close friend of his. So this becomes not just an ideological split, but just such a personal betrayal between two people. Absolutely. I think that's the way you bring it to the people who are watching this show. You can have the historical epic that is spanning literal decades trying to explain

the Northern Irish conflict in a broader sense. It's always going to be hard to not have a series like that at arm's length. And the way you bring it in is with scenes like that and with relationships like that. And honestly, for everything Jerry Adams has done, you can judge a lot of that character and a lot of that. person and the actions he has taken or disavowed that he has ever taken, but the stories portrays certainly that he took them. But then you get to moments like at the end of this show when Jerry is being interviewed by the police and when they insinuate that he was friends with

Brendan and he says, we were friendly. I'm like, fuck this guy. You know, it's like there is an, there is a understanding on a human level of these people who were in a terrible situation, a violent situation, one that they were participating in and propagating in certain ways, but they were in it together. And when those people start abandoning and turning on each other, and if you're someone like Brendan, how could you not feel abandoned by ultimately, like, the arc of Jerry's career,

even just watching, you know, Dolors in an identical position when she was being arrested and facing life in prison, refusing to disavow her involvement in what happened, refusing to take accountability because of what it stood for to do that. And so, yeah, like that character is going to feel like a coward. That character is going to feel like a turn code. That character is going to feel like they have none of the greater Irish interest at heart or the kind of the overarching question of these last couple episodes is like,

what was this all for if this is where this was going to end? And how could someone like Brendan or Dollars feel like what they did was for anything if this is how Jerry Adams is going to wrap up this whole situation? Right. And it's a line that they literally give Dollers. Like she says it, I think, like four or five different times in the back half. A bunch of characters. Like she's trying to have that conversation with everybody.

and it feels like Brendan is the only one who will really engage her on it. And at the same time, what makes this such deliciously complicated story is that Jerry Adams, as we sort of alluded to in the first episode, is, you know, the president of Sinn Féin, like, a hugely public figure. We get a scene of him and, like, he's at the White House. Clinton knows, like, Clinton is on the record talking about him, like, all, you know, sort of, like, he is just moving and shaking in this time in a very public way. and there are people who think he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize,

and there are people who think he is the most traitorous rat that has ever existed. And what is complicated about Jerry Adams is both of those things are kind of true. Because what I remain, even when the book goes even harder than the show does on all the steps it took for Jerry to get from where he started to where he ended, I am partially convinced, and the book is not trying to apologize for him, but could peace have been, negotiated without Jerry. There's like a convincing argument that it couldn't have. Not just that like Sinn Féin and the political approach versus the the freedom fighting approach. But Jerry Adams himself as a convincing, reasonable, avuncular.

We get this earlier scene in, I think it's episode three, I want to say, maybe four, where he like goes to that like sort of negotiation in England that's cut. short, like abruptly cut short. The guy who speaks up at that meeting, played by the guy who played Marin Tren and Game of Thrones, one piece of shit. A lot of Game of Thrones alone. How did you feel that father barrister and Selmy

appearing in this episode or in this series of episodes? Well, I mean, he's been a fixture in Derry Girls for years, so I've been used to seeing up there. For me, it's Art Parkinson who played Rickumstark. Yes. Appearing as like a nine-foot-tall strapping lad that really like broke my brain. But like there were figures in the movement who were incapable of doing the negotiating that Jerry was able to do.

So like is there is there an argument to he made that this betrayal that he enacted on these particular people, Brennan Duller's, all these other people, was necessary for he certainly believes so, necessary for the greater good, the greater peace. That's what's morally complicated because I can't, I can't, I can't, I fault him for a lot of things. and to your point, Friend Lee is a real sort of twist of the knife, an unnecessary one. But there's some big picture stuff that maybe I can't fault him for. And I feel cynical in general about politicians and sort of their altruism of their intentions. But what is true is that he achieved a piece. And what is true is that a lot of people who bloodied their hands in pursuit of that piece felt like the piece he brokered was a concession and that they,

lost. They won nothing. And that's the tragedy of this entire thing. Was he essential to achieving that kind of peace, perhaps? Was that piece worth anything to vast swaths of people? Clearly not, on the terms that they wanted

to find some kind of resolution to this conflict. And as far as his place in his story, like, I think Josh Finnan and Michael Colgan just do an exceptional job of playing Jerry as, for one, very consistent accent work, the time jump. I'm here for it. I love the juggling of the older and younger cast in general,

very difficult to do. I thought they basically nailed it on all fronts. I enjoyed all of the counterpart presentations and performances. But Jerry is just being this incredibly opaque figure, who you're never quite sure where he stands. You know that he is a political animal from the start. Like he is the guy who picked up the bullhorn and started talking because there was a vacuum. and just by virtue of knowing what to say kind of ended up seizing a kind of power. But you do get little glimpses at times just in the way that the show kind of characterizes him

or shows him. Like one of the few moments I think Jerry kind of allows himself some satisfaction is when he goes to visit the United States and is initially blocked and gets to tell the border agent, actually the president has given me a special exception. And it's like there is a satisfaction. I'm like, oh, this is part of why this character and this person does this. There is a, there is a status, there is a power. And it's the exact thing that

Brendan points out as far as like why he feels so left behind by Jerry sailing off from the shore and leaving everyone else stranded. Like, this is a guy who has created a career and gotten his book deal and found his relative fortune. And like made himself a historical figure while disavowing everything that he stood for before that and leaving behind everyone who was there. And I just think that the way that that is constructed over the course of the show is so smart and so careful and so considered. And a lot of it is just like shot chaser kind of filmmaking, right?

Like the cut of Jerry grabbing Brendan's hand in the hospital cut immediately to Brendan talking about why he hates this guy's guts. I just, I think that's master stroke kind of stuff in terms of helping us understand who this character is and how the world around him views him. Something that Patrick Rodenkeef said to Chris Ryan

is that like one of his preoccupations across many of his, you know, articles or other things that he's worked on is this his fascination with charisma, this idea of charisma and how like you can almost become like high on your own supply of your own charisma. So when you take characters specifically like Brendan Hughes and Dollars Price, the two sort of like firebrand charismatic figures, because Jerry has his own sort of muted scholarly avuncular charisma and Mary has her own like appeal.

but like in terms of like just like in your face hot young attractive charisma like brend and dollers are these figures to to have them be these two figures that we follow them through their belfast project confessions and then see these like broken versions of them as played by maxing peak and tom von luller i just think that like to your point on casting nina gold who uh i talk about all the time she cast throne she cast the crown she cast like the Star Wars sequel she just goes to the British theater and casts all these incredible actors off the stage and elevates them on the screen it's amazing. The work she did to find people that both match but can give us just that sort of like

hollow echo of these are still charismatic people but just sort of like broken brittle versions of that same charisma is I think one of the like one of the genius aspects of most genius aspects of the show. And the shot

that I think most perfectly encapsulates that is when you watch older Brendan with his groceries, walk back to the Divis Flats under the mural of his younger self, who is and this is like a real thing that happened, sort of plastered in

Belfast as this hero of the movement, but like, who cares about him anymore? Nobody. He's forgotten. He's like, the image of his youthful self is venerated, but he himself is for God. He's a guy who works at a construction site.

Yeah. Right? And the movement has moved on. And the movement in some ways, at that point in the story, is kind of like outlived its usefulness, at least to a certain segment of the population, who's trying to take this more political approach. I think there is all kinds of stories wrapped up in here.

And I think one of the miracles of this show, and in particular, the back half of these episodes, it's like, this is a bombing op that plays out like a spy story. It's a harrowing, hungry. strike that's like really its own isolated tale. You get the time jump as these people like trying to figure out what to do with their lives. And it's overall like a bridge between, as we've seen many times throughout history for many different kinds of people, like what revolutions or revolutionary groups do when they either succeed or fail? Like how do you move on from something like

that if you are involved in that kind of movement on either side of it? But what's interesting about the like not everyone, but plenty of people when they talk about the end of the troubles, I think particularly people who are active in the in the provisional IRA is that there was no winner to this conflict that's this forever sort of like lack of closure on this time in your life is just sort of like they felt like they didn't win and they didn't lose they just it just ended and how dissatisfying that is because even in your loss you can have this sort of like righteous will fight again sort of attitude or something like that but when people are just telling you to shut it down and it's over without you achieving anything and without you being

able to justify the blood that's on your hands when when you were a teenager in your early 20 starting this and you're like this will all be worth these moral compromising I am making the way in which I am like selling my soul to this cause will be worth at the end for the freedom I am bringing to my people and then that's not what happens but people are telling you you won but you didn't win. And it's no surprise in that respect that Dolors as a character can't move on, right? That she is seeing ghosts around every corner, that she has, she's plagued by regret because what was it all for? Like, why did I drive Joe Linsky to his death if this is where we're going to end up? And Helen on the other side of that, just like makes this very impassioned case for how, because of what happened to her, like, she literally refuses to move from Belfast. Because what if her mother comes home? Right. And so, so you have these two. women by the end of the story who just like can't move on. And I think the story kind of naturally segments into these two categories, right? There's the people who can put it away and there's the people who can't. And Jerry Adams, at least on the surface, can put it away. He can move on.

He can engage in a different kind of activism. I think, I think Marion on some level can put it away. Like she has the bit about like, what good is neurosis going to do at this point, basically? But also, she's still like mired in the cause. And she's the one who's still wanting to participate and still wanting to, if not take up arms, at least enable people who will, despite the fact that, as Dollers points out, she's too old for this shit, frankly. But I think that's how Helen and Doleers

kind of find themselves aligned in a way is these are two people who are just, like, fixated on the past for very understandable reasons. If a member of your family disappears in the middle of the night and you never see them again and you never find their body, you never have a chance to grieve, you don't have a chance to process and move on,

or even understand what, happened. How could you not be stuck in that moment in time? And to watch the people who disappeared your mother be celebrated in the political sphere or be in your church choir or whatever, you know, like there's no repercussions for these people and they are still your neighbors because Belfast is like, you know, a small place to live. What you're saying goes back to the scene that we identified in I think it's episode two, binge drop, is the scene between Dollars and Brennan outside of the wake when they're talking about this idea of hesitation. Yes.

And that Marin, from like the moment they do that hospital job is someone who doesn't hesitate. And we see that in the conclusion when we finally see. And I'm going to talk about that, about the actual pulling of the trigger. For sure. On Jim McConville. And then Jerry is someone who's just sort of like plowing forward is able to sort of consign Kevin and Seamus to death because that's just sort of like what the cause needs. and Brendan and Duller's characters who were both passionately dedicated to the cause,

willing to put their own lives on the line time and time again for the cause, but conflicted from the start about putting anyone else's life on the line when it comes to that. Obviously, they were involved in things that directly killed people, so I'm not saying like, you know, their conscience were like clean or anything like that. But in terms of like their comrades at arms, they're like, I will put myself out here. But it's, it's, and then for Jerry's main tactic to be, I will never put myself out there. Yes. I will put all these people between me and, you know, the actual explosion is so chilling in all of this.

And I mean, it's no secret that he's one of the people who can sleep a little better at night because of that, right? The distance he has put between himself and the conflict to where other members of the IRA are kind of like openly wondering, has he ever pulled the trigger before? Has he ever been on the front lines in that way? We know he's been arrested, but it's mostly when he's gotten

pinched in some other situation. Everyone is wondering, like, to what extent was Jerry, like, actually tangibly involved in this? And this is where I think you get these really fascinating comparisons of like, Dolors and the actors in the bar. And these actors are like pushing her about her

life and the things she's done and the kinds of regret she's had. It's like, to them, these are very abstract ideas. And to her, it's like, this is my life. This is extremely real for me. This is hard to talk about. This is not just like an idea of a thing that I'm talking about in a bar. And I think

when you look at the overall story, Jerry is someone who I think believes in the cause on a certain level, I'm sure, like, has a certain interest in Irish independence, but it is a person who deals with the ideas of these things. And not the realities of these things. He's the person telling Dollers, get on the plane to fly to London, and Brendan is the one saying, you need to be in the car with the people. It's no coincidence that,

I mean, I think it's the name of the chapter of the book, but it's no coincidence that they pulled this Jerry conversion to this public figure into the episode titled Theater People, because this is like theater, this is theater for him in a certain way and in a way that it wasn't ever for something like Dollars. And, but it was, I mean, it was, like there was like costume and excitement and all of that sort of stuff. But like at the heart of it, it wasn't about that fur. And I love the scene where, because I told you off pod, I was like, did you know the Dollar's Price married Stephen, the actor Stephen Ray?

And you and Kai and I were talking about that off pod last week. And like before I realized sort of how it was going to be treated on the show. And I mentioned the movie that I first saw Stephen Ray in was The Crying Game, which is he plays an IRA gunman in that movie. And what I didn't realize is that Miranda, the actress Miranda Richardson plays an IRA associate with like short, bright red hair in a way that is like clearly kind of based on Dollar's Price. So they didn't bring the cranking him into it.

They did this sort of like play version of it in the show. But this idea of the romanticization of the movement and how unwelcome, meal it feels for so many people who are just sort of like watching it from afar. And then the crisis that she has in that moment where they're not, this actress

who is shallow, not like totally villainous, but like just ask these questions in a way she doesn't understand their impact. This idea that Dollar's Prize had a moral code that she claims and the book backs her up that she never used her sexuality. I mean, perhaps

other than flashing her knee at a border crossing guard, like never honeypot seduced someone to their death, that she never, she believed that they were fighting a war, and so she never wanted to kill, like, a British soldier out of uniform, like, off duty or something like that. It's like, we are fighting a war. So if they die, they die with their uniform on. And that's, that's what she firmly believed. And so the implication that she was like a seductress and all the sort of stuff like that, and she's like, that's not what I did, you know? I was like leading, you know, I was like leading in know, big bombing, like, you know, projects in London.

Project is a stupid word. In London, like, I found that scene incredible. Her breakdown in the alleyway, incredible. And that's the last time we see young Dollers, right? Is that breakdown in the alleyway afterwards is really incredible. Well, it's also a refutation of the sort of more judgmental telling of this kind of story, one way or the other, right? Like, there's a version of this story where Dollers is.

a woman with a haircut, seducing soldiers, reduced to a single character trait and extrapolated into something that wasn't even exactly true, at least based on her telling. There's a version of that you could do for every aspect of this story,

every dimension of this period in history, or you can try to understand these people in the way that say nothing the book and say nothing the series does, and I think largely does so, at least in the series form, that I can account for very successfully. Spending time with her in this way

and understanding how that would sit with you, when you are a person of a kind of principle, if not one that everyone agrees with, and you're being portrayed as like a seductress in a stage play for narrative convenience. Yeah. There's lots of adaptations that work that way. And I don't think they're the ones we generally appreciate.

I want to talk to you about Marin and how she's used in this story because, you know, something that you identified in our first episode is like, we had not seen the older version of her. And so there's this narrative tension if you haven't done any like Wikipedia Googling outside of watching the show of like, does she survive?

And the show knowingly constructs a few scenarios like at the end of the hunger strike or them sort of like being potentially like rumbled on the ferry on the way over to London where it's like Marin, not Dolors, but Marin is in what seems like mortal peril. And the show is holding back from you the information that she survives to adulthood and actually outlives Brandon Endollers. How does that work for you? Does that feel like

manipulative to you at all? Or like how do you feel about that construction of the show? I feel honestly I have no problem with it whatsoever. I didn't feel manipulated at all. I felt like there were a lot of interesting twists and turns and reveals in that way. And getting to see the older Marion

was honestly like a bit of a relief for me. Like we get to go through the time jump with all of these characters we've spent time with. I think it works because ultimately the interview structure of the show of the Belfast Project at a certain point becomes the story right? Like this is not just a framing device

like this is an item of agency that is ultimately leading to plot development right? Like the information revealed in those interviews is instrumental to the telling of say nothing and because that is true the two voices on the tape are who they are at least the two that we are familiar with for the story like clearly lots of other people

spoke for the Belfast project revealed their stories told their true Marion was not one of them. And so the tension of Dolers and Brendan being the primary voices that we hear on tape and see as they're giving their interviews. And also the very clear and obvious sense that Dolors is withholding information. And who was she protecting about who pulled the trigger? Who was on the gun team that ultimately killed Gene McConville?

Who was involved in these situations? You can feel her being cagey in a way that feels true to certainly assist her protection. a sister, although there were moments in the story where I was like, is she protecting Brendan? Is she protecting someone else? Are there other people she's trying to look out for? But I think ultimately this show being, in a lot of ways, a show about sisterhood and a show about women,

if you want to extrapolate to Helen and women on kind of like opposite sides of circumstance. But the Dollers and Marion relationship is so critical to the way this story is structured and told that I didn't feel tricked or deceived at all by the fact that ultimately we're going to get some twists and turns, we're going to get some reveals, but everything felt so emotionally satisfying

with the way that those two characters were interacting. I agree with you. I both noticed it because I did know that she survived, so I both noticed every time they were trying to get the audience to wonder if she was going to survive. But I didn't resent it or feel... I don't feel like the show is cheapening any of that in a way because these are all things that happened,

and it's true that Marin did seem like she was going to not make it through that hung up. Strike and stuff like that like that's all those are all true things that happen there are two sort of big things that like first the show does and also the book does about sort of making a decision about what happened that is not necessarily fully bolstered by evidence and I want to get your read on both of them Patrick Raddenkeef has talked about how the McConville kids who many of whom you know spoke to Michael did uh Helen did I think so like that were dissatisfied with his book because his book presents evidence that their mother was an informant

and evidence that she wasn't, but it does not come down as hard on she wasn't the way that the kids wanted it to. Where do you feel like the show lands with that, with like whether or not she was or wasn't behind that sheet, say, or taking money or whatever it is? I think the show is fairly clear that it probably was not her who was informing. That seems to be the way that, the way the story is told on screen?

I agree. I think the show is taking the tack that the kids would want it to take, which is that, you know, especially with the, like, I own a pair of red slippers. Like, are you guys really played fast and loose in this woman's life? We don't see, like, according to Dollers and a lot of other people, she confessed. We don't see that confession.

You know, we just see her being, like, tormented before she's put in the car. So that's like, that's a choice the show makes to sort of paint her as less ambiguously innocent or not the way the book does. The other thing is the identity of who pulled the trigger because this is something that in his all the interviews that I watched promoting this book, Patrick Radden Keefe was like, I think I've solved this. I believe I have solved this murder. That this is not a known thing and that he believes he puts this together based on two

bits of sort of accidental evidence. One is that either Dolar said this or someone heard her say something that like this is something sisters did together or something like that. And then someone else, independent of that said, whoever killed Jean McConville, later Jerry Adams tried to hire her as a driver. And then he found out from someone else that he tried to hire Marin as a driver. And she said, no, that would be too boring. So these are like the bits of evidence that he put together to be like, I believe that

Maron Price is the person who pulled the trigger on Jim Convo, but there's no one on tape saying that. There's, and Marin, as we add the disclaimers to the show, Marin, to this day, denies that, you know,

he tried to get her comment for the book. She didn't, but she gave a comment after the book came out. So he has accused her of this murder based on these pieces of evidence that he has pulled from various interviews. And that's sort of like, kind of an exciting,

sexy PR promise of this book of, I have solved the G. McConnell murder. The show just shows it to us and presents it as fact. I'm inclined to believe that it's true. I think, you know, I think Patrick Rogenkeef is a very rigorous journalist. I don't think that he would make this accusation. But what he said is he's like, it's a thing I can assert in a book that would not hold up in a legal case.

We do not have evidence on a legal basis. No one could prosecute Merrim Price for this. there isn't enough evidence for that. There is enough evidence that I felt comfortable putting it in this book. So where do you say with that, Rob? So this is where these, like,

various ideas kind of come together in terms of these changes or these kind of assumptions that are presented differently on screen. It's like, who gets to play with circumstantial evidence? Who gets to extrapolate based off of the bits that they know

and the dots on the chart and draw a line between them? Because clearly, with the way the show treats Gene McConville's case, there's the big looming question of, like, But how do you really know that she was the person behind the sheet just because of some slippers?

Like, how can you be sure? And it's a lot of hearsay and it's a lot of gossip. And we see Jerry, when he's being interrogated by the police being like, how do you know this isn't just Doler's opinion when I never talked to her about that thing? And so to do it in a journalistic effort, to me, for one, in the show, there is the clear, like, off the record conversation between Dollars and is it Mackers? Macers, yeah. Is that the entrepreneur Macers?

there's an off-the-record conversation that I have no idea if that conversation happened in reality or not I would guess that maybe Patrick Radin-Keefe has a better idea if it did and that's the kind of thing you can't say Dollar's Price confirmed this off the record at least journalistically speaking

but you can go out on the limb with this other information that you have and try to extrapolate it another way and try to create the image and recreate the idea of what actually happened based on the information you do have that is above-board You see the, like, knowing that that's where they're going to land and you go back to, like, the hospital job and you watch Marin take the gun and pull the trigger, like, you can sort of see the through line that they constructed in this show.

I will say the one piece of the through line I felt like I was missing was if Pat is going to be there at the end, I think I needed more Pat. I really agree. That was like a weird little, like, because he was the leader of the unknowns. It was so easy to sort of cede him in to the London job or like other things, you know what I mean? and they just didn't. Especially when they're like, the choice they make is like, it's unfair to make Pat do this.

And I'm like, who's Pat to you? Why do you care? Why is, what is this? I really agree. Not to like Tuesday morning quarterback a really exquisitely done show.

There's a part of me that almost wishes we had gotten a sort of like Roshaman version of events where we see like a number of different possibilities and we don't know exactly who it was. Given that it's like a little speculative, slightly speculative. Patrick might not

agree that it's speculative, but like, it's slightly speculative, but like, I wouldn't mind living in the ambiguity of that. You know what I mean? I completely agree with you. I also have to say, Tuesday morning quarterback is the most Joanna Robinson's sports expression I've ever heard. I know it's Monday morning quarterback, but it's literally Tuesday

we're recording this. So I know what the real phrase is. Okay, okay, okay. I withdraw. I withdraw, Your Honor. All right. What else do you want to point out from these episodes we haven't talked about? I don't want to gloss over the hunger strike episode. Primarily a Doller's episode, because we stay

with her basically the whole way through it. I think what it portrays is awful to watch in terms of the force feeding. The conversations that are able to emerge out of that, I think, are fascinating and who has the right to die under what circumstances? And their mom going on the radio and pleading

for the dignity of their own willingness to die is just like such a heartbreaking idea and a heartbreaking thing. And I think watching Dollers and Marion go through that process to the point where like yes these people blew up bombs in London I wouldn't understand why people would call that terrorism

sometimes terrorists are just like two sisters holding hands in a prison yard withering away in a hunger strike and it's hard to not feel for people under those circumstances it's hard for not to feel for these people when it's like Doler's listening to her sister sob through the pipes in the sink the casting on the show as we've alluded to has been really exceptional Lola Pettacru as the younger Doleys,

I think just did an amazing job all series long. If I can spotlight one little moment, it's the way that Doleers kind of like flutters with relief and dignity when they finally bring back the food tray. It's like a micro moment across her eyes and her face. It's like that's what seals an episode like that, in addition to all the conversations between the sisters, and in addition to all of the ideas that are exchanged between,

you know, her and Dr. Mansoury as far as like, how should this work? is this ethical? Why are you participating in this? That's just an again episode of television that has a lot on its mind and a lot in its heart. And I think it's it's really, really well done. I really agree. And I think this is a much more like obvious for the Emmy reel moment. But like when she is like pleading with her sister, like I go first. Like that is just absolutely devastating. And obviously like the makeup work they did on the girls to make them look emaciated. And it's just sort of like, yeah, and you're struck by how young they are. And also like on the

the one hand, hearing their mother, Chrissy, who, you know, died and they couldn't go to her funeral, like, hearing her on the radio advocating for them is, on the one hand, uplifting and then also just, like, twisted because, like, in any other version of this world, you would want their parents to be begging with them, like, not to hurt themselves, you know, but that's not the house that they were raised in, and that's not the culture that, you know, that's not the brew that produced people like the Price Sisters, you know, who were able to be so committed to their cause because they were weaned on this idea that this is the right path, the righteous path, you know, so.

I just think there's so many moments in that episode that really stopped me on my tracks, and that was certainly one of them, like, hearing their mom on the radio, understanding every, like, how their lives came to this point. And the glory that Dollers seem to think was awaiting her in a prison sentence, and then the reality of living it, and certainly the reality of having a tube shoved down her throat and force-fed egg and powder mixture every day. It's legitimately just awful.

The dialogue to me is a lot of what makes that episode work. There's a version of that episode that is obviously heavy, but so overwrought. And so, like, absent, like, the characters would become so minimized over time and by their circumstances, they would become unrecognizable to us, that there wouldn't be a lot of, like, drive for the episode of television to work. And granted, like,

that's a horrible thing to have to say when you're talking about a historical event like this, but, like, if you're going to portray it on screen, it needs to work as a product on screen. And I think part of the reason it does is you get all of these amazing character moments between the sisters. Like, you get Doleers talking about,

I think, in, like, a perfect bridge moment between the young Doleers that we know and the kind of fraction of a person, as you alluded to, that she ultimately becomes. Where she's talking about how, like, the things she regrets most is that she can't attend her own funeral, which is a very young Doller's sentence to say. But then when she explains why,

it's like that she wouldn't have the opportunity to stand in a crowd and weep for them. And that, like, she's like, it really does feel like the death of their girlhood in those moments in that prison in a lot of different ways to the point when they get out it's just like

what do we even do now like how are we supposed to live a life how involved are we supposed to be in any of this anymore it's perfectly understandable why those characters and those people

would be so like dislodged from anything that they knew or anything they understood because like they've lost all this time they've had this harrowing experience I was really impressed by that episode

the decision to include the figure of Dr. Mincery who I think is at least someone what show invented. We both cannot recommend the film Hunger enough, but if you don't feel like you can sit, it's

a tough sit. So if you don't feel like you can sit through the whole film, you can certainly find on YouTube the scene between Michael Fusbanders, Bobby Sands and Liam Cunningham of Game of Thrones fame as, you know, the priest who he has this, I think it's a, I think it's a oneer.

It's a long one take around a table conversation that they have about you have this compassionate figure in, you you know, talking to this person as a human, not as a political figure, not as this, that of the other thing. And then these philosophical ideas of what is right, who is allowed to die, all this sort of stuff like that is, is sort of encapsulated that. So I think this is a, to have a compassionate figure there, who nonetheless is complicit in this horrible treatment of

Without a doubt. Like, the complicity is undeniable. I love this show. Anything else you want to say about this show before we go? Would you say that was the standout episode for you, the Do No Harm episode? It's hard. Like, I had great moments with all of these episodes, I think especially over the back half. Like, for as energizing and propulsive as the first four episodes are, like, the payoffs are really intense and I think really profound in a lot of these.

Like, for as little time as we spent with the McConvilles, I wasn't sure how. those, that narrative was going to sit with me when they did come back. But like, seeing them interact in that trailer next to the like parking lot that's being excavated really hit for me. And I think... Asking about the pen. The pin, like, the swelling

music as they're all like standing next to this crater while this bulldozers like pulling up dirt only to realize that it's like a bunch of dog bones, just like completely wiped me out. And I, again, I'm not sure what the perfect balance is in terms of the

McConville story versus the prices versus Jerry Adams versus Brendan Hughes like how you balance all these things is very delicate clearly but what they did work for me and so yeah maybe there's another version of the show that's even more McConville based or another version of this story that's strictly anchored from their

perspective but for the minimal screen time that they had especially as adult adult versions of those kids the McConvo kids I thought they really knocked it out of the park I can't tell if it's just like me feeling this is also abrupt because of the binge aspect of it. It's only

nine episodes. Often we get like 10 episodes if we're going to get more than like six or eight. I think I want 12 episodes of this show and that's like just like my greedy heart talking but like I just want even more time with these performers and even more

of the story fleshed out. I can really enthusiastically recommend the book to people. I think it's a even if you know exactly what happens in the show. It's a really I think fascinating flushing out of the story with a lot more historical context

if you want to get even angrier at Margaret Thatcher have I got a recommendation for you? It's say nothing. Rob, when are we coming back to this feed? We just had a meeting about it and I confess

that I'm not sure. Yeah, I'm looking over my notes right now. I'm trying to remember what the actual date is. I don't think we are coming. I don't think we'll be here next week. No. Just Thanksgiving week.

But we will have stuff for you the week after that. Right? I believe so. That sounds like a thing that we can promise and do. Here are some things on our radar, we can say. The agency, speaking of Michael Fastbender, Big Babe. Black Doves, a Netflix show. It's coming out in December.

And then we've got some urine stuff and potentially some crossover stuff on the horizon as well. So that's sort of what we're looking at for the rest of the year. You can reach us at any of the emails that we've given out. Oh, yeah. We didn't even really talk about it. our email this week, non-bank heist at gmail.com, which not a lot of non-bank heist is happening anymore in this show

by the end. No, we got a few emails from people, thank you so much, but I think again, the binge nature of this has made it less of like a listener involved thing. But we did get someone emailing us, their say-in-thoffing thoughts to Arstime the Pope. So just so you know, all of these emails are still being monitored. You can email us and any of them if you have

thoughts about what you want us to cover for the rest of the year, thoughts about the agency or black doves when you get around watching them. Yeah. I did have an email thought while watching these episodes. It gets pretty dark pretty quickly and pretty bleak pretty quickly, but the first episode, kind of like the London job situation, there's a moment where they're calling in like the bomb locations and threat to,

I guess, like the operator effectively, to give them the license plates and where these cars are located in a phone booth in London. And there's a bunch of flyers on the window of this booth, Joe. Did you clock any of these? No. this is what they say play and pain medical slash dom slash bondage

slash golden showers join me for ultimate sin and I thought join me for ultimate sin at gmail.com might have been a good one for us once upon a time also sub exclamation point 20 year old beauty wants to please you domination spanking water sports oral pleasure

massage find you a show that can do both right or I guess all of these things and more that can be every version that it wants to they can put these flyers on a phone booth wall. Really tremendous stuff from say nothing. You're in the U.S. I hope you have a happy Thanksgiving week. Dare we recommend some crab rangoon to supplement your turkey dinners?

No, no, no. I want to get on the record about this. Not Thanksgiving Day. Okay. On the weekend, go have some Chinese food. What if she never consumed the rangoon? I mean, I feel like that's ideally leftover season. I just want to go on the record about this right now.

seafood integrated into Thanksgiving dinner. I can't support it. I don't think you should support it. The idea of a seafood-based stuffing, absolutely not. Now, if you have a dietary restriction, if you're trying to, like, pescatarian. My sister's pescatarian, so there was always, like, sushi or crab or something for her at Thanksgiving.

That's totally fair. But if everything is fair game, and you're just pulling seafood into this for absolutely no reason, simply no. Sure. We dare not get into all of the people on this. podcast's Thanksgiving meal thoughts. But on that note, love to Kai Grady, our tremendous producer, who has the oddest food thoughts you've ever heard in your life.

Thanks to Justin Sales for his work on the feed in general. Thanks to Ramahoni for being the best. Thanks to everyone who made this great show. And we will see you in December, I guess. Bye.