The Reel Rejects - ALICE IN BORDERLAND Season 3 Episode 5 & 6 Beakdown!!!

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Starting point is 00:01:54 So, What are you thinking? I know you've got thoughts. You had thoughts that you held back during the watch. I did. I did. Um, so this season had some good stuff in it.

Starting point is 00:02:11 Um, but, you know, the performances were good. It did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Some of the games were fun. Repetitive. Those are repetitive. I'm not going to lie to you guys because we're here to be honest

Starting point is 00:02:29 this is probably my least favorite season of the three. Me too. For sure. And, you know, I will say I'm happy we got to see our characters again in the end, kind of giving it a nice bow, nice, nice tie. You know, but ultimately,

Starting point is 00:02:49 you know, when it comes to things that are in the form of a series, is usually to propel the narrative, propel our characters into some new ground, some new area that helps them develop overall and change them in some way. And, you know,

Starting point is 00:03:08 we continue these series and hope that each season justifies its own existence. And now that things are all said and done, I don't think that this season did justify its own existence. The one thing, the thing that bothered me that I didn't want to say is that two things one those two guys

Starting point is 00:03:30 that were in the game in season two how one of them we thought was the joker and it was like the other guy in the suit yeah he had one scene and then just never came back you know just like what was the point what was the point of that um but i think that they were about that but the thing is that guy who was our our main antagonist our our boss the entire season It didn't hold any weight because Aresol never knew him in the other show. That was the blonde dude who went up against him in that prison game. So he meets him in this season. So I was like, okay, if we're going to have this big overall villain who's like the Joker,

Starting point is 00:04:08 the chaos card, it should have been the one dude who got burned in season one. Because he was there in the end talking to Aresol, but the guy who was like the piercing who was like freaking crazy, tried to assault. Yes. Homegirls. He should have been our big bad because that's someone that's a personal tie to Eroso. For sure. Who is also a psychopath.

Starting point is 00:04:29 But that guy, I was like, Arizona never knew you. So there's no real holds for that to a happen. You mean the Joker God that they put up? Yeah. Yeah. He should have been like the representative of the Joker. Absolutely. So. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:04:43 Yeah. Yeah, the games didn't like hit as hard this season. I was never really on the edge of my seat, or at least not much. I think I like the train game. and the arrow stuff was kind of cool but overall it just didn't hit for me y'all I'm sorry and I know you guys watch us to watch you watch the reactions to watch I just have a good time

Starting point is 00:05:07 but something about this one was just not flowing just not clicking I don't think it really left room to let these emotional character beats breathe I felt like it put our characters in situations that normally we would be very scared or very on edge about but because we've seen them do this so many times and last season

Starting point is 00:05:31 set the precedent where these have they have unrealistic I mean it's not about realism we put our characters in high-stake situations and then find a way to not have them in harm's way which kind of diffuses some of the tension because we're like oh you can put them in whatever situation

Starting point is 00:05:50 we know they're going to be okay and I feel like if I don't feel the risk of them fighting impossible odds then I feel like it loses the tension of the premise and which is unfortunate also the fact that because the mystery of what this place is is gone that was another huge propelling fact of what kept things engaging because this whole thing of like why do we keep fighting if we don't know what's at the end but our characters do know it's at the end this is purgatory that's set from from the inception of the show that all these characters chose to return here because aeroso won the games last time so it just i don't know for me just didn't have that uh that same weight to it but yeah i've been talking long enough Tara how'd you feel yeah same i mean we opened up on the arrow game right i think that was the first game that we saw when we came back to this season and it wasn't i mean sure we're trying to figure out puzzles but it's repetitive in the sense that it's like always it's erasoo being like we get three force through any game and erasu going think

Starting point is 00:06:57 think and then he kind of figures out something with the other people and then we move so it's like we know where it's headed always there wasn't like a huge switch up sometimes yes it would it would you know turn our expectations in in a little bit of different places but once i realized that the plot armor was thick as hell again i was like Well, okay. I mean, what we watch, what we want to watch in a drama, which this really is. It's not like there's a lot of comedy. We're going slow here. We're playing violins and strings. We're showing people happiness and death, dealing with their deepest, darkest secrets and fears, and dealing with what we think, what they think would make them happy. right it's it's a drama so i'm like but in that we have to take a lot of risk with these people

Starting point is 00:07:56 and of course with tetsu and um what was the other one that died in the game just now it was tetsu and um the brother yeah the brother that that scene with the brother i was like this is the one that i actually feel right now i felt it for tetsu too but not like not as much there was some um some sort of string pulling me to that relationship between his sister and a brother. Maybe it was just the acting. We, I don't know. I felt like sometimes in these scenes, especially in these last two episodes, we took a long, we took a long time, like just getting through it.

Starting point is 00:08:36 Like I felt like they were really a little bit being melodramatic, slightly, you know, where it was like sort of like they could have picked up the pace a little bit and maybe, I don't know I just I didn't feel the risk that much with the characters that mean the most to us Tetsu is around a minute

Starting point is 00:08:56 but when we even both of us I think would agree that our favorite characters were the characters that showed up at the very end here so the new characters that are here we cared but not as much as the ones prior

Starting point is 00:09:11 why is that story yeah plot it's repetitive Are we going to spend time on that foundation? No, we're not, because we already know what Allison Borderlands is. Skip to the games, because we know we're going to get there anyway. So they didn't spend time on the characters, which is fine. But, like, I don't know.

Starting point is 00:09:33 You know, that's what I got to say about it. I mean, I think that the acting is still really good, but the story could have been a lot stronger. And I think, like, this feels... like a football team that won the Super Bowl two times in a row and the third time

Starting point is 00:09:53 they lose and that's when they retire and you're like dang you went on a on a dud right and like I know they're not going out because we saw Alice but that's what it feels like yeah yeah so

Starting point is 00:10:06 and it's weird because again we we watched both seasons or all three seasons now and I feel like last season I didn't like as much as season one but I still appreciated aspects of the journey. Yeah, it still was more exciting.

Starting point is 00:10:20 It was more exciting. Yeah, like the game with the band and then the stuff with the prison. Yeah. And, yeah, the different characters we met. Even the girl who lost her leg, she was mad interesting. We got her. Totally. We got her backstory and we became super invested in her in such a short period of time.

Starting point is 00:10:41 And I didn't feel nearly as much pull for these new characters. in less time. We had more characters in less episodes and I felt like it didn't really give me a, not that didn't give me a reason

Starting point is 00:10:55 to care. Something about the writing did not pull me in as much as I would have liked to. And when you first meet the girl with the blue hair, the one who wants to do anime or manga,

Starting point is 00:11:07 I thought she was like, okay, she has a cool look. I bet she's gonna be really interesting. But we really didn't get much of her and her personality. We just spent a lot of time, with them and their team dynamics

Starting point is 00:11:18 trying to survive these things together but because it's about them trying to survive together rather than them as individuals and their sense of individual purpose for the majority of the show it didn't really give us a reason to latch on

Starting point is 00:11:34 and yeah and I felt more seeing the characters in the first two seasons in those flash or in those quick moments than I did for a lot of the characters throughout the season itself and the finale sort of treats it as so as well because they're like they're still in that little area.

Starting point is 00:11:54 Yeah, we end on them. Yeah, we end on the old friends. Yeah. And then the new friends, they were like on the side of the building and the flood. And then we don't touch on them until we get back to the real world. And even then, it's just a quick flash. I was like, damn, the show felt like he didn't really care about those characters either. And that is really unfortunate. At least it didn't care as much as it did about the characters from season one and two and yeah it makes you wonder like why didn't they just bring those characters back for this season because we were already so attached to them like

Starting point is 00:12:26 i mean it would have been a thing where it's like oh uh usagi is back there and so are all the rest of them for some reason like i don't know and they could have like all worked together but i guess it like maybe that wouldn't have made the most sense but it was unfortunate that we did have more characters and less time with them because then we didn't get to build a relationship with the new characters where we really cared about them. It was really sweet at the end seeing

Starting point is 00:12:55 them surviving and being happy but like I should really feel something when I see that. Like I should be close to the verge of like tears. Yeah. And also an unfortunate fact of them coming back with the third season is the fact that

Starting point is 00:13:11 seasons one and two were about aerosol going from a gamer who had no ambition in life to becoming a leader and making the ultimate sacrifice and making the ultimate choice is making it to the end, right? But he's already gone through that arc and he's both learning to become independent,

Starting point is 00:13:30 learning to fight for to survive while also dealing with the grief of losing his friends and finding love at the same time. So with us taking him from point A to point B, as far as his character growth goes, he doesn't really have much place to go other than oh i got to save my wife which granted alone is a very understandable motivation but because we had such an enriching arc in those first two seasons it kind of leaves him a little stunted as far as him being interesting as a character

Starting point is 00:14:01 coupled with the fact that his motivation for the series wasn't really something that was focused on for a majority of it it came in like in flashing moments and i feel like if the show had more moments that reminded us of why they loved each other in this life even they had no memories of what happened in the games. I feel like that would have pulled us in and geared us in to this

Starting point is 00:14:25 retread of going back to the games. Because ultimately a different skin on it, but him having that conversation with the Watcher is almost reminiscent to when he was doing the T-game and she was going to make him

Starting point is 00:14:40 like question life and then exactly and uh usagi was like no we have to fight we have to keep living yeah so and pulled him back exactly but this time i guess he pulled himself back and he went to go save her right but well and did and did which what the fuck was that i mean why how did she just see him i know why was she the character that's the weird part it made no sense that like i was like wait why can she see him and like knock him away from him i don't know i would love to see somebody do an edit a that in real time she like injects him and then he falls asleep and then she in slow mo just swipes at nothing and falls in the floor it's so silly like the the disappointing part is that

Starting point is 00:15:25 the reveal of it being where i know like i love eating there like i spent a lot of my time grow up in l i at that exact intersection okay and so i'm like oh that's kind of cool okay we're didn't do US. But then, you know, we do a cool reveal of Alice, but I'm like, am I excited? Not really, because I feel like what, how do we make it different? It's just going to have to be the American English version of what they've done, right? And if they're going to be like, it's going to be totally different. I'm like, well, season three tried to make totally different. And it was not, you didn't hit it out of the park. I wasn't. like, wow, at the edge of my seat like I was, really in season one and a good amount of

Starting point is 00:16:15 season two. Yeah. But this time it's like, it's literally going to be Alice, because Erosso, I guess, is Alice in Japanese. So the fact that we're going to America. That's what I mean. I'm like, so if Alice is Eresu, how different are the games going to be? Well, we don't know because we don't know if it's going to have American writers doing this and they have different sensibilities different things we're focusing on that's true that's true that's true

Starting point is 00:16:42 because i think that you know with this show specifically being uh having its setting in in japan having its characters i'll be japanese there comes this this certain sense um about the relationships and and their their culture and you know how they perceive the i mean granted stuff like you know like wanting to live is a universal thing but i feel like there's a lot more um I think it's more dramatic, but there was like a heftier sense of melodrama because of just the way that things like anime and Japanese shows are. I mean, I feel like bringing this concept to America, I feel like for American audiences, they would adjust it because I don't know if the same ways in which they were handling things would be appealing to watch American actors do because there is this heightened sense of performance. in uh in japanese shows and i and i don't know i i'd be curious i would watch it i'd be down to watch it if they ever uh end up following that yeah me too yeah as of right now i'm like

Starting point is 00:17:52 oh all right we'll see but i'm also wondering okay they said this is a global thing now right so will we have some sort of crossover like or is purgatory specific to each country right because this is this is only the city of of Tokyo and like you saw the mountains and stuff but if this is something that happens all over well looks like I mean obviously it's coming for LA next I'm curious I'm curious too I'm curious who they're going to cast what it's going to look like I just hope it's not the same show with a new skin like oh it's this girl Alice and she loses her two friends that's what I'm scared about so lost But I have to imagine.

Starting point is 00:18:39 I don't think they would be that dumb to do that. The optimist in me says that, okay, we can have the character literally be Alice's time, but change the circumstances of how we go about playing the games. Of course, which I hope that they do because the assumption you're not going to put that stinger on the Japanese version and go to American and copy a lot of it. But my only, and again, this goes to the. the nature and how the show is constructed because we know it's purgatory it loses some of that that mystery box appeal because we know what it is we're actually watching back they can come back but the first two seasons were like what the hell is this place they were trolling west they're like

Starting point is 00:19:26 oh yeah it's aliens oh no it's us from the future totally and now we know exactly yeah you're right you're right so that mystery is gone out the window unless they just repackage it not repackage but they just sell it to new audiences so then they have the mystery and you know this kind of shape the characters in a different format I guess but like why right it just seems odd that like they're going to have to switch it up if you're going to use that as a stinger because if the Japanese audience that's supposed to be a reveal for us right right that means they want us to watch that American version so it's got to have a switch up.

Starting point is 00:20:10 But judging on season three only, that wasn't a big enough switchup. No. Not for me. Storyline. Not, not. I think like, like I said, with the football teams,

Starting point is 00:20:25 it's like they go to the Super Bowl and they lose, but you know they're such a good team, but then they retire and you're like, dang, it kind of feels like a dud after something that's so good. But, I mean, There's still, don't get me wrong, still many parts of this season that are fun, really thoughtful, smart. The games like great visuals, especially with like the big ass tower and the balls falling and you're like, well, that's wild.

Starting point is 00:20:52 The visuals with the arrows I loved. You know, this last game, it was kind of like, I get it. You know, we're going to see life and death, happiness and sadness. And it didn't hit me, I think, the way the writers, especially with the music that they're playing, wanted it to. Yeah, because I feel like when Erosso and Yusagi reunite in that fifth episode, we should be, like, really cheering for them. We should be, like, emotionally swept up in the way that the characters are. And I think both of us were just sitting here just like, yep. Because that plot armor is sick.

Starting point is 00:21:35 Yeah. It's too thick because it's not, we did not get to a point where we really dig in more to their relationship. We just kind of pop up to where it's like, oh, they're together. We're married and you're like, oh. And it makes me sad because I remember us in the first season. We're just watching these games. We're like, I don't know how the fuck they're going to get out of this. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:21:55 But I didn't feel that at all watching this third season. No. Not at all. Not at all. He got it. He'll figure it out. He'll figure it out. Which makes the, if they were, if this was like sarcasticist,

Starting point is 00:22:08 like if they did something like where they're winking to the audience that they knew how ridiculous it was, but they don't. They're not playing it. They're playing it really seriously. And I'm like, are you kidding? You have set Eresu up to be the hero every time and have zero chance of death. Zero chance. Zero chance.

Starting point is 00:22:28 Yeah. Which means anyone that's like really connected. to him also no chance they they they've no chance to die over a wheelchair together dude the weight and the massive weight and the massive force that you would need for two people holding on to each other she is the jumper she would have made it not them together dude she'd be climbing dude it was the pregnancy strength the baby gave her the leverage to jump over the wheelchair I just like there's some stuff in here that was fun like fine you put

Starting point is 00:23:06 the bracelet the door closes it pops you're like oh god how are you going to do it but I liked your idea where like use the body and then I said use the clothes and then it was just like seven seconds of her using her foot I was very intrigued at the seven seconds I was like but that shit rode back like three times

Starting point is 00:23:23 I know like I was like is your foot getting longer like how did you I know I could have sworn that couple times he used the same shot to like to do it yeah I'm with you. I'm with you. Like, it's little things like that where I was on the edge of my seat being like, what the hell is going to happen here?

Starting point is 00:23:40 Like, are they what's going to happen? But of course, like, I kind of thought like, all right, she gives it back last second. Got it. It's just stuff like that where we already know that they're going to be safe. And if you know that the characters that you care about, which they only made us still care about, Arisou and Osagi. the past ones we miss the new ones they're cool we get it but we don't love them like we love the last ones yeah we don't and if the characters that you know and you love if they have no risk

Starting point is 00:24:17 of death or risk of losing then it's sort of just like okay yeah i'll watch the roller coaster but i know we're going to make it out in the end yeah i mean part of me and maybe this is just reflective back because we now have finished the show. It was like maybe they shouldn't have given away the mystery at the end of season two. That way we can have all our same characters and spend another season

Starting point is 00:24:42 in the box of the concept of the show. I'm with you but I think that they probably didn't know where to go with those same characters which is why they gave us new ones except not in the best way.

Starting point is 00:24:58 Because Joker still could have been a thing but if you never gave us the faux finale of oh they're back okay now we have to go back into it but like they never actually left and then you thought you're going to leave psych joker is the last thing you got to do exactly but with all of our old school people

Starting point is 00:25:15 that we still are like oh my god none of them can die so maybe it's like old school people add in a couple of duds that you can kill off right but I don't I don't know they didn't think of that they didn't

Starting point is 00:25:30 it is still weird a producer somebody must have come in and said we have to end on the favorite characters who's that the ones from before yeah this feels like in a way like the last two seasons of the office or like the last season of scrubs where it's like a spinoff show but it's not quite the show yeah but i mean it's it's still the show but you know the the show that we got attached to for all in person or all intensive purposes sort of ended and then they just tacked on this extra thing totally because they wanted to make another season totally and you know what the thing is it's like we still love house and borderland obviously the first and the first two seasons where it's at if anybody were to ask me people have asked me i said yeah i do think it's better than squid game especially in the first season because we you get kind of a lot more juice than his squid game but i love squid game i do i love squid game but um you know for the rest of this i just be like you can skip season three and maybe watch wait to see what the american one comes out with um still you know a good show very inventive uh something wackado wild that i've never

Starting point is 00:26:39 seen before so i will give it the originality obviously that it deserves the great work that they have done in the first two seasons it wasn't there's still really cool aspects of games and stuff they use in season three it's just the story didn't it didn't sell me um but you know those are my thoughts there do you have any last thoughts you want to tell the people Um, no, nothing left on the show, but go support the rage pod for Tara. Yeah, please. Go support the Crystal Rail for myself. It's a video game that I'm in.

Starting point is 00:27:13 And yeah, that was, that was Allison Borderland, you know. Yeah, man. We love you guys. Leave the likes, leave the comments, tell us how cool we are. Tell us what you think. I'm actually, you know, wildly curious if there, there might be some of you out there who were like, season three was my favorite. And if you're that. And I would love to hear from you.

Starting point is 00:27:32 If you're on our side, let us know. We'll see you on the next one. See on the next one. It started with a scream inside a quiet Maryland home. A mother trying to protect the family dog and her son in the grip of a violent hallucinogenic rage.

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The Reel Rejects - ALICE IN BORDERLAND Season 3 Episode 5 & 6 Beakdown!!!

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