The Ringer-Verse - ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ Instant Reactions | The Midnight Boys

Episode Date: October 5, 2024

The Boys are back to give you their thoughts on the highly anticipated ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ (05:12). Then they check in on ‘Agatha All Along’ and ‘The Penguin’ (52:47). Hosts: Van Lathan, Charles Holmes, Jomi Adeniran, and Steve Ahlman Producers: Aleya Zenieris, Jonathan Kermah, and Steve Ahlman Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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This is of course the Rinkers Nexus podcast feed for all things fandom we are Joe Me to Explain their dinner on you've got questions He's got answers We are Steve The Architect Almond the builder and team airfields

We are old man van He of the receding resurgent hairline We are Co-baby Chuck 24-carat closer A.k.a. The brunch haughty We're joined by the Midnight Collective Alea O'Brien-Zanaris

or Juna the watcher Ramga Pau never has that nickname been more apparent that's funny to you that's funny to you? We are perfect dark

Mr. Screeching tire himself Rubberburn Jonathan Rubberman is insane Kermah Wait what does that mean? What is that? They are the collective

We are the Midnight Boys Beem! Jonathan you know what? The reality is this. I got a lot of people who had a problem with oil slick, and I apologize for it. Then a lot of people were like... It wasn't anything else that you said? No.

A lot of people were like, we should go for more nicknames like that. Oh, my God. We should have, actually. We really shouldn't. That's not. Who are these niggas? Who are you talking about? It's fans burners.

Yeah. It's his fans burners. My brother said we should call him the super black panther. I don't hate it. I don't hate it. I don't hate that. Sometimes you just got to test test them. Okay.

Follows on socials, Insta, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, save Jommi's job. Jomi? It's also going great,

man. All the clips are going crazy. You have some information about one of those clips. No. No. You don't want to talk about that? Not can't.

About how Home State added me for putting a burrito on my pocket. Home State added you on the thing? Yeah. On the comments. Wait a minute. No free ads. No free ads.

Wait, no free ads until we did it. Contract? Are you going to be a fucking... Oh my God. Listen, I can be bought. We're not on YouTube. You can watch every midnight boys,

House of Our and Talk to Thrones episode on YouTube.com backslash at Ringiverse, like, comment, and subscribe. Oh shit. You guys weren't miss this. I've heard all about this video. Next week, you can look forward to some clownery with Charles. Okay? I've heard all about this video.

Had a long conversation with Justin about this. Do not miss this video. Thank you to... They're never going to make another video again. I can't wait to see it. Next Thursday, the Midnight Boys will return to give you their reactions to Agatha and Penguin. Next Friday, Buttmash returns celebrating the 10th anniversary of alien isolation. I want to say something real quick about Buttmash and being Folk and Lindberg.

Okay, so, you know, I've been asked to be on Buttmash before and it's been, you know, come on there when they asked me to be on buttonmash going to be on Buttmash. I actually asked Ben Lindberg to be on Budmash, and it's been on Budmash. And Ben basically told me to fuck off. Like, have you been giving him his ringerverse recommends, or you've been ducking him? I have. By the way, the last ringerverse recommends I gave, I was actually in character, which had a lot of people asking what was wrong with me. But I was, it was. People were worried about your health there.

I was in character, okay? Character. What was the character? The character was like a low-energy van. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you have your vibe-in? Oh.

Post-5. Post-5. I've been going crazy on the five of his Jesus I've been so up I've been at Trader Joe's fucking making friends But Ben I want to come on Button MASH to do

the Marvel versus Capcom fighting collection Which I've been playing nonstop I actually haven't played NCAA 25 It got you off in the air And this is growth That's big for you Over two weeks

That's growth Wow How much money have you saved Or is all the money going into Marvel versus Capcom Well I haven't I don't buy stuff on those games Oh like you don't do my true

No No, no micro transactions, no DLC, none of that. No, no, no ad on. Good for you. That's big time. The only thing that I would do an add-on DLC for is Spider-Man 2 was Jomey assured me they would have a DLC for. That's long delayed, long delayed. Look, take that up an insomnia egg.

Okay, which never happened. If we throw him blame around, Kerm spent $100 on the 2K. Oh, man, that's, he's got a gambling addiction. What do I have to do this? I got $2K for free. But you was buying the VC, weren't you? $20. Don't get crazy now.

So it would have been $70 plus $20. If I had to buy the game. I didn't buy the game though. I look at that as being a chunk. I'm on Madden surfing around as like, would you like to spend $1999 for this Barry Sanders card upgrade? I'm like, nigga, fuck Barry Sanders. Like, I'm not buying that extra shit.

Spoilers for Joker. Fully adieu, instant reaction. Spoiler for Joker 2. We're getting. Ready to talk about Joker. You're listening to a reaction

podcast. The spoilers are coming. Spoilers now, I'll be honest with you. Not much happened, so I don't know how much of us... I didn't even write down

in midnight manifest for Joker. I'm like... Off the top of the dome? We could do a little Wayne, you know, for this. Not much really. Mix tape Wayne. All right.

Three, two, one. Let's go. All right. So to begin our reactions, Chuck has the Midnight Manifest, putting you in the need to know, don't you need to know about Joker? Take it away.

All right. This is your Midnight Manifest with Joker Folly Adieu, directed by... Todd Phillips. Written by Scott Silver, starring Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga. A lot of people from industry that I was like, hey, get that child.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm like, Ken Long. Hey, love to see it. Anyway, so, yeah, this is a very simple story. Joker is stuck in Arco. he basically falls in love with Harley. His lawyer is like, dog, she just wants you for the bread. She's just trying to get you for the come up.

Joker's like, nah, I'm really in love. He crashes out. There's a lot of musical moments. Throughout all of this, there's a courtroom drama where they are basically putting Joker on trial for the five people, actually six, that he killed in the previous film. He ends up deciding, I'm going to represent myself.

The whole city's like, we love the Joker. We love the Joker. A car bomb goes off at the end of the court of all the courtroom drama. His fans break him out. He goes back like Future to his ex-Harley. He wants nothing to do with him because he's renounced the Joker title. He's like, nah, bro, I can only be with a real Joker. The cops come and arrest him.

He gets shanked to death in Arkham. And you guys can correct me if I'm wrong. But the man who shanks him to death feels like it's tease that he is some version of he bludgers Joker. At some point, he splits his mouth in the back and the movie ends. That is your midnight manifest for Chukhapalya, too. Did I miss it? No, not really.

No, you didn't. That gets to one of my core questions about him, like, at the end. because, you know, I wanted to know because I peep that. Okay, so look, we went saw it. We did. We saw the movie.

Yeah. Reactions. Feelings. And look, by the way, you guys, we're not going to high horse this. It was a movie that we saw. It was the follow-up to a very successful movie, both critically and financially.

Okay. Reactions to the movie. I was thoroughly entertained. Okay. Okay. I will say this. shout out to everybody worked very hard on this movie. I was entertained in the way where you're just like,

wow, there's a car burning on the side of the road. Hope everyone's okay, but wow, you don't see that every day. I think it was very courageous of Phillips to make the original Joker when it seemed like the studio and no one wanted him to. He makes a billion dollar movie. Joaquin Phoenix wins the Oscar. Obviously there's backlash.

and to come back to the second one and be like, I'm going to make an entire courtroom drama that is... Plus musical. Plus musical. That is litigating how everyone is dumb. You didn't understand the Joker. I hate everybody who made their original movie successful in terms of like the people who went to the box office.

And to then at the end of the movie being like jokes on you to Shank Joaquin Phoenix and watch him die. Bold. just a bold decision. I was laughing more so because I was like, I can't believe that they let a director get away with that. I don't even know why a director would be like, this is what I want to do with my...

I think the bag was astounding for all for me involved. They didn't have any choice. Oh, yeah. Like, you don't... No, they were... They had to come back and make this movie. No, no, they did. My big question is...

But the bag will be astounding. Is... I'm Todd Phillips. Why would I want to make an entire movie that is basically like litigating the previous movie and all of the kind of like in-cell debates and is this the right movie to be making now and to basically be, I don't want to say shitting on the fans, but there did feel a level of like, even the musical part. No, think I've seen a movie that's held both the audience that loved its predecessor and hated its

predecessor in the same amount of contempt. Yes. Like, if you love the Joker, double fuck you. If you didn't like the Joker, also fuck you because we got you to sit down to watch this. Like, there's a level of, like, in every

respect, I could imagine this movie kind of being great because when I hear the Joker falls in love with Harley Quinn, it's a musical about them embracing their madness and it's like going to be a courtroom drama about him facing up for what he did. In my head, that kind of works.

But this movie is creatively parallel to that first Joker movie in every way. It is antithetical to what, like, Todd Phillips' version of the Joker is exactly in line with what this is. He seemingly intended that first Joker. Joker to be a one-off and like he's he is not the Joker in canon that fights Batman and does all these things. It is like a story about how one person could easily be one bad day away from

being all these horrible things that the Joker seems to be. And then to go to this movie and be like, we're going to have any music that's in it like sort of like half hummed and rasped through and any sort of like actual indictment about the Joker not really happened. but more so be an indictment about the structure and reception of that movie and still be bad is wild. I mean, I truly, I don't think I have anything like nice or positive to say about this. It's a horrible vibe all the way through. I don't, I really like, I'm struggling to come up with the words that I, because we talked about it last week, right? We talked about the first Joker and I didn't really mess with that movie at all.

but at least that movie was, you know, it's a superhero movie masquerading as like something of saying something about wealth, inequality, and mental health masquerading as an art house film. Joker 2 is like, booty masquerading as cheeks, masquerading his butt.

Like, it's just not there. It's not, bro. Like, I'll say this. I legitimately, like, left the theater. Like, how you feel when you leave like an MCU film? You're like, bro, I'm empty. What happened?

That's how I felt leaving that movie, bro. I was like, yo, what was that last, what was that two-hour? was 20 minutes. Legitimately could not understand why the type thing happened. So this is why I would say. I don't know if I left the movie feeling that way. I mean, the movie is one of the worst theater-going experiences

I've had. The vibes are terrible. I love it. But like in the middle of the film, there were some parts that were I used the word excruciating. Right. Because you were so far away from

enjoyment that you didn't really know you could be that far away from enjoyment. movie. So look, number one, I think a couple of things. Number one, I do think they had to make this movie. And I'll tell you why. Really?

Yes. I think they said, hey, you guys took a film that we didn't invest a ton into and you made a billion dollars and you won an Oscar and we need you to come back and do it. Sometimes if you don't make that movie for the studio, they hold a grudge. But I'm wondering, though, if you do that movie to fulfill the studio's grudge and then you very obviously. purposely piss in the studio's face if it would have been better to have not made it.

And the reason why I'm saying that they're doing this purposely is because it's very easy to make a movie that people like. Yeah. It's very simple. You can make a bad movie that people like a lot, right? But to make a really hateable piece of high art, a really hateable piece of worthwhile art

is an incredibly difficult thing. to do. To make a movie that's hard to watch. However, it is undeniably good. It's hard because it takes people operating in a creative space at their higher bandwidth doing things that aren't very easy. This movie takes things that are pretty easy to do and makes them very difficult to stomach.

Like, it's not hard to make a cool song in, or maybe it's really hard, that that takes you away and like, like Lady Gaga sings and dances really well, right? You could have had Lady Gaga sing and dance really well and we'd have been like, oh my God. You got two stars born. I'm entertained by that, but they didn't do that. They barely let her sing.

Wait, but can I ask you this, though? Do you, because like, you shared something in the group chat. There's been this article going around in variety talking about like how toxic fandom is affecting all of these movies and stuff like that. I do think this movie is a question. of what you prefer. I think stuff like the MCU and Star Wars are closer to,

we have guardrails as an institution. We have, whether it's fan groups, whether it's Flonie, whether there's all these people to make these movies, even if they don't turn out good or TV shows. It's going to be a level of quality where it's like even if I leave empty, I'm like, well, that was a movie.

Right. And then I think the other thing for the Joker is, it's like you see what happens when someone has so much power. in Todd Phillips where it's like, I made y'all a billion dollars fuck off. I'm going to make the movie. And obviously this had no guardrails. But it is artistically what I think he wanted to do.

Probably. And it's like, we all left that movie being like, should there have been guard? And I don't, part of me is I'm like, I'm glad I got to see it. Even if it was not great. Like, what is the? This is interesting. You know? Two reasons.

I'll say something about Star Wars right now. The problem with Disney's version of Star Wars, the Star Wars at its core is small, small stories. with big ideas. Mm-hmm. Uh-huh. And Disney makes big stories with small ideas. Mm-hmm.

And that's a huge, and that's a huge problem. They kind of don't get it. Right, right? Sure. What you just said is interesting because the mark of a good filmmaker is like, it's different to different people. Some people look at the mark of a great filmmaker as did they make exactly the movie that they wanted to make?

Mm-hmm. Because you see a movie in your head, right? as it's being written, as it's being, and you go, how close to your vision can you get? That's the mark of a good filmmaker. Other people look at it as, did they make the movie they should have made? And that's two different ways to look at it.

But as someone who makes movies, I have to ask you, for Todd Phillips to get Joker 2 to this point where he's in the room and he's like, not only do I want it to be a musical, but I want it to be a courtroom drama, and I'm going to ostensibly kill my main character at the end of it,

do you think that that's something that he had to fight for? Because that's a thing where it's like, we can have the conversation of, it seems like he got to make the movie he wanted to make. And I still think at the end, it's a, it is a failure. I don't think that it's something they necessarily had to fight for because I think he was like, look, I don't want to do Joker anymore. I think James Gunn is probably like, get him out of the door.

Get this guy off my playground a little bit. Like all kinds of stuff I want to do. Get this guy off my shirt a little bit. Yeah. But I mean, but that. That seems to be happening in the opposite way with Matt Reeves. We'll talk about Penguin later. That's because Matt Reeves is,

Matt Reeves is telling them, I'm going to give you this. And by the way, I don't know if that's true. I would like to know how that situation was. I want to ask you this. Did y'all not see it where it's like, all right, so when the Batman comes out, I remember, like, we loved it.

But I don't know if that movie, like, commercially or critically did exactly what they wanted. It was a success. But then the penguin comes out and credit where its credit was due. I'm wrong. It's a hit for them. So do you think that they see Joker coming out and we got a lot of Batman news? We got news where it's like, oh, we're doing a Robin show now, not show a movie.

And it's like, it's produced by Matt Reese. And it's coming out the week Joker is about to bomb. Where it's like cartoons and all of that type of shit. It seems like Matt Reeves is putting his dick in Gotham a little bit. And that's what I'm asking where it's like, it's the opposite. I think there's actually a problem where we went through this with a Nolan franchise where it was like, obviously they finished that as Snyder is starting to build his. And we're all like, well, get Christian Bail is bad.

But Nolan came to do. Nolan. Yeah, he produced. But I do think that there is a level where it's interesting where it's like, I see for the company why Warner Discovery is like, no, we need Joker to work. They want this to make a billion dollars. Even as James Gunn is like, we need to get this out so we can move on to my shit. So what you're saying is like in this weird way that Todd Phillips kind of just made a like a piece of just like, I guess like cultural like terrorism or something where it's just like no, fuck you. I'm not going to make the second thing.

I'm going to make it so bad that you can't even say no to it because you need it so much. I don't think he thought just knows something bad. Yeah. Yeah. I think that this movie was made when there was a power vacuum. And it's interesting that as the penguin, I think actually the penguin when we look back on it. I don't know how it ends, but that's become a chip

where it's like now the Batman and the Penguin are more valuable to Warner Discovery. And it used to be the Joker probably was even more valuable because it makes a billion dollars

and it's an oxygdugur and all these things. And now it's kind of like it's interesting, where does Batman go? Oskiger. Oskiger. So we also have to look

at some of the things outside of it. It's interesting. We'll get back to the movie, but think about the conversation that we're having right now. We're litigating

why the movie was made. It just kind of tells you something. I mean, it's more of a substantive conversation. We know why it was made. The first one made a billion dollars. Todd Phillips is going around telling you what he's not going to do. Yeah. Yeah.

Normally with a filmmaker, they leave that up to whatever. Todd Phillips is saying, hey, this Joker is never going to be. I'm done. Throwing grenades at Batman. This Joker is never going to be this. This is what's not going to happen. Oh, I thought you meant Todd Phil was literally being like, I'm done up with the DC. And then you get to that point.

He goes, I think I'm done with DC. I don't want to have anything else to do with it. Yeah. So then this movie becomes. you judge this movie, then through the lens of, did he craft a competent and compelling narrative for that guy? Yeah. Like, forget about everything else.

Forget about whatever. Did he craft, is this guy's story something that means anything to you? That's what the second movie had to do. The second movie had to be something, in my opinion, that had to make what we watched from this guy's life meaningful in some way. And the movie fails to me because it's not about him as much as it is a referendum on the first film. Okay?

And so like there's one scene in the movie that's very, very meaningful to me. And it's the scene with Gary Puddles. Oh, yeah. He comes in. Yeah, Lee Gill was was great in that. Yeah, he comes in there. And that's, that part of it is we're finally concentrating on something other. than the trauma of Arthur Fleck.

Yeah. Arthur thinks he stalled Gary out by letting him leave. Right? Hey, I didn't kill you. I've always liked you. What are you complaining about? Like, what are you complaining about? And he says, dude, you're the only person that ever liked me.

And you are my Ghalm. You are my monster. I can't sleep. The whole, the theme of the movie after that, I thought was going to be how hurt people can hurt people. but the movie is afraid to have that conversation. It never goes. Again, it never goes.

It's the same as the first one. It doesn't actually know what to say or how to say it. And like this actually kind of to the movie's credit, it actually gets a little bit closer than the first one. Like a little bit closer. I don't think so. In my opinion, I agree with Steve. It doesn't say it.

It doesn't make it meaningful. But the ways that it flirts like with that scene and in a little bit of a way, like kind of spiraling towards the end when he's about to like that poignant, like, conversation about how he doesn't want to be Joker anymore, about how this whole thing kind of got away from him and the persona isn't exactly who he is. It's like just starting to kind of get it

about what it thinks it's trying to say about everything. And then by the time it even gets close to there, a bomb goes off the court. There's a hole in the courtroom. Harvey fucking Dent's faces half off. No, it's not. And I just, oh, my God. It is so.

He's bleeding. But his face is blown. He's two-faced. Wait, what's what's Rob's name? Harry Lottie? Harry Lottie, I do have to say we got to put him on an accent,

watch. Like, yeah, the accent was flipping through the whole time. He was putting on a matlock thing. Yeah. Hamiest conversations I've seen,

the hamiest performances I've seen of anyone. The guy was dialing it up to fucking tin. And you see right on. I'll tell you what, though. That show here, after show again.

Favorite part of the movie is when Harry Lott is like, you know, he's doing his thing. And the camera turns, and his camera turns. The one in the street. It was a reveal like the industry

I'll let industry have maybe let's go. Listening to fucking the watch for Steve whatever. His last movie's like let's put everybody in Atlanta. This one is like let's put everyone in the industry. But I will say to Steve's point, I think the funniest moment, like I was actually laughing. The best joke, which is also like kind of

an indictment of the movie was what Joker's just like to Harley's like, yo how much did you watch the TV movie about me? And she's like, I watched it 20 times. It was really, really good. and there's Ozzy pizza time. It's like, that awful TV movie. That is pretty meta.

She told me it was good. And she's like, she goes, no, no, no. It's good, it's good. I'll have to say, like, honestly, like, I did laugh a couple times. And, like, I think, like, 90% of my laughter was some of the banter between Joker and Harley. It wasn't, like, all great. The vibes were terrible. But when they're in the courthouse, she's like, yeah, man, I got out of money.

I went and bought it at that apartment building. You know what I'm saying? We can live together. He's like, I don't want to go back there. You were laughing when he's like, you think he's going to have like a really, like, interesting thing to say to Fuddles? He's like, wait, your name really busy?

Mr. Puddles, I was saying. And he was doing the Falkhorn, leghorn, yeah. I was like, this is actually the movie I wanted. My thing about Jokers is, I laughed at a lot of this stuff. There was, the funniest thing to me in the whole movie is like a straight sight gang.

When he's in the courtroom and it just, the camera just comes to him and he's in full Joker makeup. Now don't do anything silly. No, I lost it. The judge was like, he's sitting there in full Joker makeup and the Joker goes, we looked at this and he can dress however he wants to dress.

Which is like how? Where did they get the makeup palette? Where did they get the red suit? Where did he get any of these things? I lost it at that point. That was hysterical to me. I'm not a bullshit. But in my mind, I'm like,

oh, so like the cool thing would have been like, oh, he's representing himself. And like he's just acting normal. But like the camera shows Arthur Fleck, but then we see the Joker in full Joker make up. But it's actually just a real-life Joker. You're doing more thinking about the movie than they do. I know.

To me, though, if we are going to watch, right? Yeah. Someone's dissent into crime, right? Someone's descent into madness. I'm not saying that they have to be gar-rails around movies like this. But to me, there's a compelling way to do it, and then there's a way to do it that is, like, completely sort of bereft, right? So when you see Taxi Driver, I'm going to name all the movies that this movie has been compared to.

When you see Taxi Driver or you see King of Comedy or you see Falling Down or these other movies, what you see are real life things that have affected these characters, real structures that we deal with that have affected these characters. And you watch something that has real world stakes and you come away with it, re-evaluating what your society and what your, community actually is. This movie depowers that off-ripped by putting it

in a comic book world. So when you put it in a comic book world, then you have to do extra work because they have something that we don't have in the comic book world. In a comic book world, they have people with amazing powers and amazing skills and ability that come along and make

guys like that less important. Like, all of the stuff that happens to us in society, it matters more because there is no super Superman because there is no Batman because there is no Spider-Man. So in the comic book world, like, that stuff is lower stakes because some guy can fly through the sky and make everything right. So if you're going to take me on a story with this guy with like a couple of movies and

it's going to be all about this and all about how it ends up, you just got to give me something more. You got to give me something more than what they just gave, what they gave us. You have to finish this off in a way that kind of makes this. story like a little bit more concrete but can I be if I'm giving if I'm being fair to this movie I think that like where we've gotten is the joker to me now holds the same places like a last Jedi or a lot of these movies where it's like what you mean respect the last Jedi I'm not like no no no I'm listening I mean culturally not critically okay where it's like

the conversation that we had a lot of people last week a lot of people feel like you where it's like that's not my joker. You know what I'm saying? He needs to be, like he's the clown prince of crime. He needs to be up to shenanigans doing crimes. And Todd Phillips is like, I'm going to make a taxi driver king of comedy with what is essentially a children's character, right?

To do that well, you are going to have to push the action figure that we know is the Joker to places where you're like, that's not really my character. In the same way with The Last Jedi, people walked away with, yo, that's not my Luke.

That's not when I was a kid. he's not doing the things that I wanted him to do. So we get to follow you do with Joker. And it's like, now this entire movie is a referendum on, I tried to do something more artistic with the Joker. I tried to do my interpretation. And now I'm going to show you why everybody is wrong. And I was right and a big fuck off.

And I think a lot of these comic book movies are getting to that point where it's like they're chasing after something that is supposed to be maybe hot. They think it might be higher. It's going to be challenging. And I'm like, can you, can you, can you, do that with this character? And I'm like, if you do it with the character stand by it, don't make another, don't make a rise of Skywalker where now I'm watching an entire movie about like, actually that movie was wrong or you guys were wrong. We're going to do this the right.

Point taken, I'll say this. I think a lot of these conversations lie in how much of the character is needed for the character to be the character, right? What if Luke had 15 hoes and they were outworking on the streets for him? Would that be Luke Skywalker? What if, when we meet Luke again, forget about the fact that Luke is no longer a Jedi. Luke is a pimp. What if we meet... What if we...

What if we... What if we... What if... You wouldn't watch that movie? What if... What if Ray... What if Ray meets Luke Skywalker, right? And Ray meets Luke Skywalker, and she walks into this thing, and they're

playing, and there's a little flute playing, and Luke goes, what's up, Mama? Come take your seat. Hustle and flow? Hustle and force? The whole thing... Oh, my God. And the whole time Ray is talking to Luke, right?

Luke is like, messing with one of his girls with the force, taking a blouse off, playing with her. Could he do a slap with the force? Like, he just did that spank. Oh, my God.

Like, he's a pimp. Let's say the whole time. And so then, a pimp named Skywalker. Like Ryan Johnson came back and went, hey, Luke, some things happened in Luke's life. And now Luke is pimping.

Luke decided he didn't want to be with the force anymore. And Ray's trying to talk to Luke about the force. And Luke is like, No, if you let your hair down a little bit, you could be one of my top earners. So the question would then be how much,

how Luke does Luke have to be for it to be Luke? Maybe the Luke in Last Jedi is Luke enough that it's still Luke. Maybe Luke as a goddamn pimp is too far away from Luke and that's not Luke anymore. But that's a question to be had. That's an argument that I think can be had in good faith. I think with this particular Joker situation right now, you look at what Matt Reeves did. Matt Reeves, we said this before, Matt Reeves has the riddler in the movie, right?

The riddler in his movie is an anarchist serial killer, right? Yeah. And he's doing the riddles because, like I said before, he's got a riddle something. You got to do the riddles. Yeah, right? Yeah. This Joker is just a dude. I mean, that's gone crazy sad.

The intent by the end of the sequel is that question of, like, artistically, I think it is up to Todd Phelps to make this, where it's like, by the end of the movie, I took away where it's like, Arthur Fleck is just like, I don't want to be the Joker anymore. He is just a guy. He did just have a bad day. And he's taking off the makeup. And when he does that, Harley and the world are like, absolutely not. Get back in the role. A bad day, he killed five people. I know, but that's the, but by the end of the.

the movie, the whole, what I took from the interpretation of him getting shanked, and then the guy laughing, I was just like, oh, is this supposed to be a story of, well, technically this guy was maybe the first Joker, but the minute he tried to stop being that, it became so perverted that there's always going to be a Joker now. And I was just like, that to me is like, it's a worthwhile question to ask. It's not an entertaining movie to watch. So this is the way I look at it in terms of the movie, if we're going to Batman the movie. The way I looked at that, movie was Arthur Flex's character and what they made him mean, breaking the damn for the rise of the supervillain in Gotham.

Because those people, there's an act of, the entire time we're watching the first Joker, there's no major act of crime that we see, right? There is the death of the wanes. All of this is crime that we can understand as far as it being reflective in the real world. Well, he does, he does kill those people in the subway. And then that does accident.

I know. There's this joker running around. But that, but that type of stuff is stuff that, you know, like, you see here a lot, right? You like, you see, it's part of the crumbling of cities and societies and stuff like that. Murders on the subway, murders in the alley, all that stuff. Gotham is known for big, huge crime that's for all of these philosophical reasons, basically terrorism. are like most of these guys that we're talking about. I mean, the Joker is a terrorist, right?

And so at the end of the movie, when they blow up a courtroom, right, to free him, these are the grandiose criminal desires of different interests in Gotham. And it seems like a damn has broken. And people want to make bigger statements in this city. They want grander, more super villainy, supervillains. That's what Harley is looking for.

are going to be the Joker in the courtroom. They want him to be the symbol. So because of that, he kind of created the idea of the Joker. Yes. And so that the guy that kills him, either the guy that kills him at the end is somebody who wants to be that or the baby that Harley has in her

stomach. Wait, no, they didn't actually have sex. I don't think they did. Okay, can we imagine? Real quick, can we just talk about the whole? It's imagine. No, okay. Right? Can we get this like ISO for all of what like Gaga and Harley Quinn is doing here because like for I want to say at least half

of the movie I'm like he's imagining her in his head again. Like I could have sworn that because I'm like there's no way that she can just set fire to a piano and like walk away and oh the guards let me into yourself we could have sex and I could put

makeup on you what? No like there's no way. I'm not so fucked up in art. Yeah. Here's how I understand. I was just talking that up to Gotham being Gotham. Yeah sure. So I thought... But also she's rich. I guess. So being that she's wealthy, she might have paid her way.

But if it did that whole... I don't know. I remember, she, like, admitted herself, right? She was like, I'm prison. I think basically how I understood it is Harley is real. Yes. Like, all these real. The minute he gets into solitary,

I think Todd is doing that thing where it's just like part of the Joker's thing. And they talk about this in the courtroom is that he has these fancful ideas of relationships. So I think he was imagining that he had sex with Harley And he's kind of like going... I thought the more imaginative stuff was in the parts where Like you see like a big like 1940 soundstage and they're actually singing songs Yeah, that's obviously imagined.

Like anything that's like seemingly taking place in the real world where they're not actually singing, they're just more like... Well, he... I think we're big-braining it because it's not imagined... I hate that I'm doing that, sorry. Because she was like, I'm pregnant. Do you know what I mean? He didn't imagine.

But she's a liar. We know she's a liar. But you can't say that without having sex, right? You can't. And then for him to be like, oh, oh, okay, this is the thing I have to deal with now. If he imagined it, I guess, yeah, he could be crazy enough to be like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. But I ultimately think, like, what's imagined are the musicals and what's real is what we're seen on screen. And what's real sucks.

And what was imagined sucked to? Well, can I ask this before we get off the Lady Gaga part? he's so I feel like it was mostly subtext in the last film and now it is text that like the in cell

the insalification of Joker because when he snaps and fires his lawyer is at the moment when somebody's like basically talking about his mom and like telling that story about like he's a virgin

he's never had sex or whatever and there's so many parts in this movie where like the gender sexual politics all of it I'm like, it's messy to damn right uphor. Like, I don't even know what.

Yeah, no, it's bad. Because it's like basically Harley exists as this kind of like. Objective fascination. This object of fascination. And then she's this woman who's nothing. She's just a fucking liar. And she's manipulating Arthur. And then there's this whole subplot about he,

the guards are laughing when he kisses this man. The man gets killed. Like trigger warning. And then there's probably one of the worst scenes I've ever seen in the movie. A sexual assault of Joker. Where a sexual assault happens or rape happens where I was like, who's signed off on it?

Like I actually was like, no, this is when he pulled Todd Phillips aside and be like, what's the point of, like, I thought it was damaging to watch. I was like, this isn't, this is bad. Yeah, it serves nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Well, I think she serves a point.

I think the point that she serves, I think that the point that she serves is, we think that the most important, obsession between them is his obsession with her. Really the most important obsession is her obsession with him. The Joker specifically. The Joker specifically. We think that when we meet her, we think that everything that she says is true.

Yeah. Right? That she's obsessed with him in a way. But that's kind of, their relationship is based upon a truth that he interprets from her. Right? And then when we find out that that's not true, we find out that if he doesn't have a very specific utility in her life, then she has absolutely no use for him.

And she leaves him the one thing that he could not, that he did not want to be, which was alone. You see, Arthur, in my opinion, thinks that all of these people are with him. he feels like he's a part of something. Yeah. But they're not with him. They're with the Joker. They're with Joker.

Exactly. And so when he gets to a point to where he realizes that, that's when that character is at a crossroads and the movie flirts with being something interesting. When he gets up, when they're trying to, when they're trying to, the guys find him, they blow up the thing. The guys find him. And he's in Joker cosplay. Once again.

I thought that was imagined, by the way, like, it looked kind of. awesome where like a dude that looks just like him from the prior movie. I like grab. And it's a oneer. Tom Phillips is telling you, oh my God, this guy might end up becoming a Joker. No, he's already rejected that. What he wants is just connection. And it's just not there for him to watch this lonely.

It could almost be interesting to watch this lonely, hapless prick trigger the golden age of crime in Gotham if it wasn't done so cynically. Yeah. If it wasn't done, if it wasn't done so cynically and with so little care

and with so little regard for the people who are watching the movie. But is that, and this is where I'm not shooting Todd Phillips any bail, I think there are, like I said, there are parts of this movie where I was just like, not this is the dumbest thing ever, I think this is kind of harm. Just harmful in terms of just like, you should have thought of this better. Yeah. But, like,

like, I have to take the movie for what it is. And I don't think Todd Phillips was ever interested in Batman, in Gotham. No. Joker and Gotham. Why blow up half a two-faced's face? But again, I think... Because you can't have it both ways.

Right. No, I agree. But it's... So why... If you don't have... If it's none of that, why... Like, why... Why... Why... Why blow up to... Why blow up to... And to be honest, is this even Harley Quinn?

Like, I was just like... They call her Lee the whole movie. Yeah. She's... Like, Lee, Quinn, like, why? If you have no interest in that, then, like, that's what I'm saying. The movie is either you're interested in it or you're not. And that's where I see, like, that studio, like, you can't not do this movie because we'll hold a grudge or it'll kind of look bad for you if you don't. So outside of that wild reach of an interpretation of like, did he just fuck with us and Warner Brothers to just be like, nah, I'm poisoning this well because.

I just kind of struck gold with one thing and like be careful what you wish for. And that movie is just an act of like, oh, I'm going to blow this whole thing up. That's why when I left the movie, you feel played. Like, you're just like, yo, what was the point of any of this?

There was it. Who in the collective has seen the Joker? We all did. All right. I want to hear something from you guys too because you guys actually have a good moral compass. What did y'all think? I hated it.

Yeah. It was just a hard watch. Like it was just too long. It felt completely unnecessary in so many ways. I wouldn't have watched this movie if I wasn't working on this pot. I was going into it already thinking it was about to be some dog shit. And somehow it was worse dog shit. So you're saying that you can be paid to be somewhere you don't want to be?

Yes. Okay. So Van, you can look forward to his poetry at the, party. Yeah. Wait, no, not at the party, no. Alea, favorite song. Honestly, favorite song was like, and the only one that I would stand by is the

Joker one when he's like doing that in the courtroom as the Joker. Every other, every other song had to go. No, I like going to build a mountain. No, no, no, no. No, no. Oh, wait, wait, wait. Wait, wait. I can't like that.

That was my favorite musical number. Wait, what was the one? Because I was so afraid. Todd, please don't. It's already dog shit. Where basically he comes, Arthur Fleck comes back to the, to the Arkham, right? And they're like

all eating and he like stands up. What's the song they start singing? I think that was in the Saints Go March Man. And there's one point where a guard attacks one of the black, the black. Yeah, because he's into it too much. Yeah, and he like puts him in a chokehold. I was like, Todd, please don't turn this into like a cop is about to murder

this black man. Yeah. Like I literally thought we were like five seconds away from this being Like, not just a bad film, but a film I would be like, guys, we cannot. This is actually, if it makes you feel better, they didn't kill a black man. They did kill another white man, though. They did. Right after, like, the hard thing that happens to Arthur Fleck. And then they're like, that was pretty hard to watch guys.

Would you also like to see the guards murder a gay man? I'm like, what the fuck is happening? It's meaningless. It's for nothing. Nothing. It's for nothing. It doesn't mean anything. It doesn't go anywhere.

It doesn't. It's for nothing. Even the musical numbers in this. this movie. Sunny and Cher situation, all these different stuff. It, for what? Don't make one fucking bit of different. They did look good. They look good, but I think the worst

part for me about the musical numbers. The fake TV show was funny. That looked good. The fake TV show? Yeah. Like this is a fake TV? Oh, right. Right. Get banter. I think the worst part of the musical numbers was that any time the film feigned momentum, anytime you think, oh, we're going somewhere, musicalists interrupt. Yeah.

And it's the fact that like, again, we glom, we, I say the collective we like, the discourse glommed on the idea that this is a full-throated musical because of the idea that there's Lady Gaga in it and they're singing. But we really should have believed it when they said that this isn't a musical because not only are these musical numbers bad, but like they actually don't inform characters, thoughts or feelings in any actual way. I think they pun it on it. Probably. I think they couldn't execute it. That's clear. That's possible. There's a lot of stuff that they're like,

where is this scene in the movie? I actually agree where this feels like two movies where I'm like the courtroom aspect of this is so thin. Harvey Dent as a character. It's like nothing. He didn't need to be there. You just, you could have been anybody, but they just.

They're just like, this one's Harvey Dent. I'm like, what makes him Harvey Dent? He doesn't have any interiority. The courtroom scenes were not, he couldn't commit to like the courtroom drama. And then the musical, your point felt like almost like stitched in.

I was like, were there more musical numbers connecting this? They had it with it. And they were just like, yo, this isn't fucking work. Because he doesn't know, in my opinion, I don't know if he knows how to shoot these musical numbers. They're not. It's fucking hard. No, yeah.

It's easy to make a musical number on screen that people like, but it's definitely not easy to make, to weave a musical into your story. Yeah. It's fucking hard. Like, I think they put it on it. It was sold as a music. And we're like, oh, okay, well, they're going to be doing musical stuff. The whole thing, Lady Gaga, Joker, musical.

We're like, ah, whatever. Then it's like, ah, it's not as much of a musical as you guys think it is. Like, it wasn't coming together in the edit. Because they, I think they were like, ah, this is not really making any fucking sense. And then they tried to do the naturalistic singing. And I'm like, Joaquin's not a strong enough singer where I can listen. I actually kind of think that's okay for the Joker being who he is and having not actually being able to sing. No, bro.

I get it. If you're going to have a musical, you got to sing about it. But then when you put it next to Lady Gaga, like, by the third, fourth number, and it's just my man kind of like not really hitting the notes. Just doing this. I'm like, put some auto tune on that bitch. Like, you know what I'm saying? They should have done them like they did Jack Airfo on a high school musical the first one.

Oh, God. They mixed in Drew Sealy in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jomey, I was thinking this when I was watching it. Yeah. These two Joker movies, you should love them. This is kind of your life. Oh, my God.

You know what I'm saying? Falling in love, crashing out for two hours. crashing out for two hours. No shot. See, that's what I'm talking about. He's going to be on the interrogation videos. No, no, no. You saw a white woman.

No, I want to be very, no. He wins your life. He believes all their lies. No. And now you crashing out. You know what I do? Ball up top. Oh, ball up top.

Ball up top. I got a girl with crash off for zazzy beats. I got a shout out. I got a shout out homie that came up with ball up top. Was ball up top a thing before he said in on Twitter? No. Ball up top is good, bro. That's great, man.

No, it's the most toxic addition. How are you doing it? Which are ball up top. Ball up top. Ball up top, man. We move. It's ball up top. We move.

Charges to the game. And it is what it is. It's what it is. Charges to the game is the classic right there. Charges to the game is the classic. Shout out to my man Terrell, man. You got charged that one to the game. That's the G-Co right there.

He would say that 15 times a day. Worst of your life is in shambles. Worst day of life. Hey, man. You got charged that one to the game. That's the G-co right there. All right. We got to talk about,

we got to talk about Agatha, Midnight meter. Everybody knows what the Midnight meter is. Yeah. One to 12, one being in the worst. We reserve 11 and 12 for true, true, true game changers.

We did Joker, I think last episode. We did 7-7. What were your two scores? I gave me a 5. 3. 4, yeah. 5.4.

Let's start Jomey Steve. Joker, for all you do midnight meter. Deuce. Two. This stuff. Joker, Choker Falaia deuce. Folly a deuce.

Oh, man. Yeah, I got to agree. It's a two. I don't. There's no, there's no redeeming. There's like an occasional, like, maybe there's, and then no. Yeah. It cuts itself like at every single moment.

Every time you think you, like, it's like, you know, you think like, oh, man. It's like the Anthony Bennett of films. Every time you think, oh, man, it's going to be there. It's not. It's not. It's never, it's right. Got it. God.

What did me? Why did it drive by him? Anthony Bennett is somewhere in Turkey, getting up shots in Turkmenistan or something like that, going, what the fuck did I do? Like, hey, bro. Where's Anthony Bennett trying to play right now? Like, so, like, he's somewhere like working on his left hand, like, what the, tell me why? Working on his left hair. Yeah.

Oh, man. Got to give it that dream up, buddy. I'd probably go four. Wow. You're really nice. You're a good person. You're a good person. Just because of the talent involved, I'll go four.

Sure. If I was 37% I can't respect wasted talent Honestly I'm gonna go four too I think you have to go four just on a technical level Yeah Where it's just like

This movie looks better than your average superhero movie The performances like even if like the movie doesn't work Like Joaquin's too good of it Like he has too many moments in this movie where I'm like That's still Joaquin Phoenix you know what I'm saying Like even Lady Gaga No I'm not too precious about that Honestly if I'm gonna be real

The performance is in this the way it shot, the way it looks, looks too good for me to be like this is the worst superhero movie I've ever seen. It's just kind of the dumbest in the cruis. I suppose that's the of a true actor because they have to believe the stuff that they're doing is great and that they can elevate it. But

I guess, guess what? Even the great Joaquin Phoenix and the great Lady Gaga can't polish this turn. You guys are digging it culturally too though. Yeah. You all are like, it's the, it's the, it's the woke thing to do. No, I'll treat it with the same amount of bad it's the whole thing to do. Yeah, no. And listen, hey, if, if anybody thinks

that I'm a, like, you know, bleeding heart liberal soy boy that doesn't get it. Like, watch this movie. Whoa, whoa, whoa. What kind of read its threads a year? What you mean by there? Soyboy's crazy. Or slash conservative for Steve.

Yeah. If you think that I'm, like, predisposed to not like this movie, go ahead and watch it and be like Harley Quinn and see a thing that you can't fix. Soyboy is a perjury term, online communities doing, to describe men perceived to have lack. masculine characteristics

the term bears many similarities and has been compared to the slang term cuck and low T what's the law going on? What message is you on Steve? Why would you know soy boy? I heard it once and it was just like yeah that's a dumb man.

Who are you a soy boy? I've been yeah somebody was trying to fuck with me. What? Jesus. Oh no, we got to write out. Steve is no soy boy. You know Steve get to that, bro.

Let's run it. What like Steve? That's right. Steve is the opposite of soy boy. You're a soy boy. You're a soy man. It's all protein here. Yeah, that's man.

I've never heard soy boy until just now. That's crazy. That's nuts. No one is more online than me. And I haven't heard soy boy. That's a new one for you. That's nuts. All right.

We got two fours. Two twos. Two twos. Two, fours. Two, really harsh, man. It's three. Again, I mean, literally, I left the theater. And it almost said something crazy.

But it was just, It was like I was empty, bro. I was like, what was like what, what of like, literally what led me in life to this specific moment? How did I get here? I express it with gratitude. Yeah, well, if we're taking the glass half full approach, which I'm trying to do more. Sure. I would rather watch a superhero movie where the directors and the writers got to do 100% of what they wanted to do.

You can't say that didn't happen here. And it blew up in their face because I'm just like, Well, that's at least interesting versus you can tell after the director's not giving interviews. The writers, it went to four writers. And you're like, we got a more competent movie, but we got a more boring movie. What I'll say about this, this movie was sometimes boring, but it was always entertaining to me. I was just like, God damn. So you want a spicy turd rather than unseasoned chicken is what you're saying?

Here's the thing. It's all, I would rather watch a burning car than watch a compost. Okay. One is more entertaining. As long as somebody's not in the car, which we were. At the cost of us. At the cost. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech.

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To what? Yeah. Many, many check-ins for Agatha and Penguin. We will start with Agatha. Cool. Fourth episode, light spoilers, run it. All right.

No manifest, no nothing. We're going to do a more robust kind of mid-season check-in coming up here next week. But we're going to just check in with Agatha and Penguin because these are two shows where the vibes seem to be high. Let's go to Agatha first. Fourth episode of Agatha. in the 70s, making songs.

Yeah. That thing came back. You know who I'm talking about? All right. That thing. That's her new nickname, Miss Thang. We can just call her Albury Plaza. We can just call her Lerre Plaza.

Miss Thang has returned. That heat. Rio. In the show. Miss Thang is terrible. Miss Thang is also for black ladies and we can't, you know, because Puerto Rican is, you know, whatever. But so what I'll say is this. Not what I'm.

She pops up as the green witch. Agatha seems to be a show that people are, there's a level, there's a level from enjoyment to tolerating. Okay. It seems to be. No one says that Agatha is bad that I can see, but there are some people that are enjoying it a lot.

And then at the other end of the spectrum, it seems to be like, it's on and it's not offending me. Where do we stand right now after four episodes, and let's talk specifically about what we thought about this episode. I'm greatly enjoying it now. Greatly. I really am. And I'll tell you what, it is the fact that Aubrey Plaza is in this. Because her chemistry with Catherine Hahn is crackling and like legitimately magic.

Like I really think, no, Marvel needs. Remember I hear the first syllable of crack, I thought that you was, thought it was going somewhere else. I'm from the south. No, thank you. All right. I thought, because you could say that. We can't call anybody that, but you could call someone that. It would be racist if we called it.

Wait, it's not racist of a black person calls a white person, Cracker. Okay. I'm with that. Well, you say the R or did you say with the A? It depends. Is it Cracker or Cracker with the E? Well, when we're having a more like philosophical

discussion about it, I'm going to say Cracker. Right, academic. Yeah, you know, but Cracker is like. Cracker. There's a term we used to use called Kack. Oh, I don't like that. That's got to be on a list somewhere. Yeah, man.

That's got to be on a list somewhere. ass cracker. I might steal it. You steal it. Like you need a Are you and us very of self? They're like, we don't know about this one.

What is that? The list. I'll get back to Agatha. Here's the thing. If I call a white person a cracker, you know what I'm saying? There's not like, that's not really going to do anything

to them societally. But a white person calls a black person and it's any wish thing could pop. The reason why we don't care about stuff like that, it's because, like, we, we care about stuff in America that matters, right? So, if, if, if, if, if a black person is racist to a white person, they don't get to do the

electric slide. If a white person, it's a black person, you don't get a house. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's different. You know what I'm saying? It's not the same thing.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You can't come to the cookout. We're going to mastroves, nigger. So, like, you know, like, they don't need to come to the cookout. But like when we get racism, we don't, we can't eat the right food.

We can't get alone. You can't get alone. You Anthony Mackie. Yeah. Can't get alone. Can't get along. Save the universe. Save the universe.

They really should have had a black guy and I give him the loan. God. They really should have had it. Because I'm sitting here like, live it. I'm like, do you know, niggies that snick was flying around? He shot in a fast. It would have been, it would have been more true to life. Because it would be a black banker that would have softed out.

I was about to go to the league. Fuck your loan. Like, I could have been felt like. In the same time, he want to go back to his supervisors and be like, I told him no. That Avenger's shit don't matter to me. You can't avenge me. I'm one of y'all. Avenge this credit score.

Wait, well, so, what? All right. Play the drums. You got to play the drums. You got to play the drums. All right. Play yourself. I'll have you.

You got two minutes. I'll have you know that discrimination exists with black people with similar credit scores. I'm going to sing you some fucking articles. Please. Say you some literature. I'm going to see some literature. I'll come back. That was crazy.

Yeah, Agatha is great. So Agatha's credit score. No, I'm enjoying the show. I think this episode, because I enjoyed the last two, but Arri Plaza is doing the Lord's work in many ways in the show. And part of it, to Steve's point, is the chemistry between her. her and Catherine Ahon. I think like that relationship is the crux of the show. And so having that as the backbone to this last half of the season is important.

And the Coven is great. Alice. Pad of the Pone's funny. Doing her thing. Is the show enjoyable hijinks or are the things about the story that you want to know? Porque no los dos. For me it's more enjoyable hijinks, but I think that's perfectly fine. Okay.

I think, no, no, no. But then you have the story about like the, Nobody knows what the road in, like, they know what the road entails, but nobody knows what's at the end. And that's a level of like story-based breadcrumbing that I can enjoy. But I think really what I'm enjoying the most is the hijinks and dynamics from everybody around. I think that's fair. I think that's fair. For something, I will say that I'm like, sometimes I feel like we're, with Agatha, I like, I like that question, man, because I'm like, I don't know if the story is compelling.

In terms of like the mysteries. And I don't think there's just like an Agatha problem. I think for a lot of the Marvel shows. Like we said, like, I think the first time with like the Powerbrook or whatever, I'm like, what is it about these Marvel Disney Plus shows where if it's like even Plucky

and it's kind of like, yeah, I could see why people like like Agatha, like the vibe of it. There is like a past done on the writing where I'm like, is there something more interesting for the teen to do than be like, who's the teen? And we're like, it's probably Billy. You know what I'm saying? I mean, I ask that question because

I watch Agatha and I enjoy. enjoy it, but that's a question that's a fair question to me. Like, I'm enjoying Agatha. I'm not saying that I'm not enjoying Agatha. I'm not saying I'm not enjoying the nature of the witches having to beat these curses and all of this stuff.

But what I'm asking is, like, do you care about what's going to happen at the end? I should. And maybe you do, maybe you don't. Maybe you don't have to, but I think it's a fair question I ask about fair. I feel so low stakes at this point that there is a part of me where I'm like, I'm not

worried about it. But also, I think that's the first, this is the first MCU project in a long time where even if that doesn't really matter, I don't care. Because I'm having a good enough time anyway. That actually gives it a pass because the chemistry and actual, like,

people on screen are fun enough that this works. I think that's right, because a lot of the shows, the relationships between the characters and some of the dynamics haven't totally worked and were hooked as, like, solely on okay, how do they get to the end?

Like, what's the cherry or what's the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? Like the acolyte. Yeah. Like, we had a naked demon, like, batwoman in this show. And I was like, this is kind of nuts. It was wild. Yeah. I was a little scared.

But I think the chemistry, the chemistry between Rio and Agatha and the entire coven, their, like, conversations and all that stuff, all that stuff works. So we're coming every week to see them. then ultimately, you know, I think it matters a little bit, but it doesn't matter as much as you did with others like the power broker and all that stuff. Which again, I think that if we

like, we can kind of tweak this to the acolyte because we're like we had the stranger and oh my God, what's her name? Our main character's name. OSHA. OSHA, thank you so much. Black woman. That, all right.

Black woman. That chemistry. Stephen, you can remember soy boy. You can't remember OSHA, Steve. I really do. Yeah, it's a hard drive. Occupian. Have you been part of a health fan group?

Like credit scores and the whole nine. I know what they think of. You and those meetings with the rest of the nerds being like, I really can't help my kids. You don't want a black Jedi, y'all, okay? We don't want. That's why. You know why Steve has been called a soy boy?

Because he does the podcast with us. That's why they're calling them a soy boy. That's why you know what that is. That's why you're looking up people's credit scores and all that kind of stuff like that. I'll show you my credit call. I thought. It's immaculate. I thought that you just saw, I don't know if y'all got,

you guys saw the article where like studios are trying to like talk to people about like oh yeah like social media boot camps yeah not social media bootcams but like studios like yo you know we want to have a like we want to meet with like fans or stuff oh right yeah like proofs fan proof the movies Steve is in those rooms and they're like yo like excuse me we don't want no soy boys on this show you were in the racial chat room show he was on a racial chat room show and he was on the racial chat room show for you know want no black people and that was my peak we don't want no black people we're on women and we don't want no Soul Boys in the show.

Hey, man, I'm not going to lie, Steve. You might have to be Steve's soyboy almond for a couple of weeks. That's okay. I could take that. I'm not going to. I would never do that. From almond milk to soy boy, that's crazy. I'm okay.

Almond milk soy boy. He's not a soy boy. That's okay. I don't think anybody's a soy boy. I think soy boy is wrong. Stop calling people that. That's the word that got you. That's too far.

He's so crazy. If Arzuna Texas is in the group chat again, he's like, hey guys, we got a deal with soy milk. Y'all want it? Y'all was it? We're going dairy-free. We all read that. But no, I think the leverage from OSHA to the stranger that we had, like, that chemistry was

like the most notable thing that the Ackleite had. Sure. And that story was so high leverage and so important that when that was undercut or wasn't there, we realized how bad the show was. I don't think Akela is going to make that mistake because it seems like this is committed to keeping everybody together because it knows where the strengths are.

The show, Agatha has, it's a low ceiling high floor show. Yeah. And so it, I mean, that's,

I mean, the floor is very high because it's, the story and the narrative is oriented around characters who are just top flight performers. Yeah.

Right. It's just like people who just know how to make you have a good time. If the show tried to do too much, I think it would probably fail. If it,

like, if, there is a little bit at the end of the show that hints at the end of this particular episode. Right. That hints that we're going to go a little bit deeper with why the sigil is on the team. And what happened to Agatha's son and like Rio bringing that up. They need to navigate that pretty carefully because I don't know, even some of the other characters in their individual. Every time we get to one of these trials, you start to see the individual trauma of the witches come out.

Yes. And for the time that it is happening, it is cool to watch. They're not investing very much narrative juice into unpacking any of that stuff. It's probably because they don't have time. It's possible. But if they're going to try to fit that into four episodes, you guys, I'm enjoying Alkatha. We're talking about the show. If they're going to try to fit that into four episodes, that's the only way that they could probably derail what seems to be a pretty

pretty easy ending for a show that's light, breezy and fun and people don't enjoy it. I guess I just, what I kind of want going forward for MCU shows and maybe I'm like industry build at this point is I am still waiting for that Disney Plus Marvel show that could be like kind of traditional TV, which is like we're burning through plot.

There's momentum. There's mysteries. Every single episode at the end when you watch it. It doesn't have to be the best episode, but there feels like the stakes are so important where I'm like, yo, what the fuck is going to happen to this character? And I just, this, I understand

there's a different type of show. It's an easy, breezy show. I just don't know after kind of just kind of the years that Marvel has where I kind of maybe have like the appetite for something that's this slow burning and inconsequential. I still kind of want that TV show

that kind of feels more traditionally. Like, I care about these characters. We're going to get another season of them. Like, I hope Daredevil is that. I think, you know. I was about to say, I think they think that Daredevil is your show. I think they want to emulate.

Netflix era Daredevil as much as they can. I think with Daredevil, they kind of went, you know what, man, we have story to tell that we just can't tell in eight hours. And we need to tell the story of goddamn Daredevil, and we need to be able to have people really attached to the meat of it. Now, I don't know if, because remember now, there was a way that they were doing this,

and we have to ask the question if it was possible at all from the beginning anyway. The way that they were doing this was they were introducing characters to us they could later put in movies and that by the time these characters got to movies, they wouldn't have to take a little time in movies

for us to do flashbacks of what these characters are or why they're around because we didn't know them as well as what we knew some of the other characters. I don't know if they were able to actually do that and make the stories of the characters. in the shows themselves compelling.

Like, for example, Ms. Marvel works better in the marvels than she does in her own show. Yeah. I think that character and that performance from her, Amani. Yeah. Amon Valani.

Needed the movies. Like, it was like, I was just like, oh, your energy infectiousness pops more when this is a big screen Marvel movie. And I think with Agatha, what I'm realizing is that I'm like, oh no, I see what kind of TV show you're making and I'm like really, really glad people are enjoying it.

But there is kind of that level where I'm like, I do kind of want Agatha to be interacting with witches that we know. And maybe like these witches will be revealed to be more important. But like Agatha to me in the comic books is interesting when she's up against Scarlet Witch. Or you know what I'm saying? Or there's like Dr. Strange is there. Or Franklin Richards or somebody like that.

Like all of this stuff where like she's, because I think right now Agatha as the protagonist, sometimes I'm like, damn, I kind of want the more trickster version, the more when you're like, the Joker needs to do crimes. I'm waiting for, I'm like, damn, I kind of want Agatha going up against the real, like the real magicians, you know what I mean?

Just for there to feel like there's more heft and I might just be at the point in my MCU journey where I'm like, oh, I think I like these shows a little bit more. You needed to matter. You needed to matter. You needed to feel like it's worth your time. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think you need to matter.

Like, right now we're getting a lot of Agatha, but like I said, the last four episodes of the show, the work that they're going to have to do is to me to take us just a little bit deeper. Yeah. And these performers are so capable of that. I think they're going to try. But also, we're at a good point now because I don't actively feel like the show is wasting its time. No. No.

But like, we've kind of been at this middleway point with a couple of these shows where we're like, all right, where was just going? Like, where are we at right now? Well, this show has a very clear thing that it's good. Yeah, yeah. And I don't feel like we're meandering in any point. But if we get to the road, I'm interested because because you guys are enjoying it a little bit more, if we get to the road, we understand who the team is, all of that shit. Maybe we understand more about Arru Plaza's character, Rio. If it's everything that we expect, will you guys be happy or are you guys kind of waiting for more of a surprise?

like does the road have to be a little bit more than just like this was about the friends we made on the way or do you want it to to honestly i feel like i feel like we haven't had a good it was the friends we made along the way moment in a good long while so i can ever had the friends made along the way like when they're like like the one piece you know what i do you think okay first of all the one has said it's not going to be that it's not going to be the one i i don't fuck with friends we made along the way neither do i i'm the treasure bro i do the thing nigga, you fuck with friends we made along the way. You've been watching One Piece since 1997. It's going to be the friends we made a long time. Wait, let me clear out. Let me clear out. His brother, his brother said friends along the way, they haven't found a one piece.

Let me be clear. You fuck with the friends. To get Luffy to the point where he can go up against the Yoncos. All right. Like Keito and Big Mom, you need a long enough story so we can learn how to use hockey. This is Coke. This is Coke.

This is Coat. This is Coke. It's been 40 years, dog. That story is. What did you say you say there to Dallas Cowley? Tell me. No, no, no, no, no. Can we want to be real? That's the long as that nigga being Batman, and he still has to clean up, Doc. Who? He clean it up? They just let the niggas out of prison.

That sounds like a hip-brose. Like, he cleans it up all the time. He cleans it up all the time. But finding the one piece, yeah. The Maple Leaf fans of anime, man. Come on. Yeah, yeah. It's not. It's going to be our year. It's our year. That's a Brickzilla length. Oh, that's not. Y'all know Briggs really

If the friends they made along the way Ultimately is what it is Then like I'm not gonna be too mad at it Because this show like they do start off as enemies They are kind of ops It's gonna be rough for me What's the best friends we made along the way story ever?

Oh God What's the best one Honestly you know what it has to be to me I don't know if it's the best But it's the funniest It gotta be the fast and furious Because everybody Yeah that's friends we made along the way

That's family No. That's true. Family we made it along the way. Yeah. That's so fucking funny. Wait, did the Goonies actually find the treasure?

They did. That's friends were made along the way because they found the treasure but then they didn't get it? Did they not get it? How did the Goonies end? They got some of it. Right.

They got some of it. But then at the end of the Goonies movie the fucking, they found like a couple of them. Goonies reunite with their families. Yeah, they found like a smaller treasure truck. Yeah, they're arrested by the police.

The Goonies prevent Sloss's arrest, Chuck and Vites Sloss to live with him. Which he's... It doesn't say much about the money. I can't remember. They do get it because they get the money. They find, not all of it. Right. They take, I think what's his name, takes one or two coins and

stashes them, I haven't seen this in so long, and stashes them away. And then they find out that they still have a coin, which is enough for them to pay off the developer and keep... Sure, yeah, yeah. Because the fucking ship sails away. When I willie... Yeah, yeah, he gets out of there. But I

think they get like, somebody look this up. I think at the end of the Goonies, they get like one or two coins. They get enough that they can pay their right. I think you're absolutely right. Or like pay to keep. The Gooney is such a good movie. It is good. Yeah, that's great.

That's a no-brainer that they're not fucking around. They give us all kinds of different things. Just give us the Gooney sequel. Everybody doing good. Josh Brolin, everybody. So you want the Gooney sequel or they all in their fucking 50, 60s? Heo-E-O-I-Qaeda doesn't need that? Yeah.

I think that'd be dope. I'd be dope. I'd be dope. Come back for the Goonies. Gooney children. All right. No, goony children. I don't want to, I don't need to see the Gooney children.

No Gooney Children. I don't want to see the kids of the Goonies at all. I don't care what they're going through. Does Goonies sound worse every time you say it? I don't want to say it because y'all change you. You say it. It's the worst thing I've ever heard. Yeah, because y'all took it. You're repressed the motherfucking, bro.

Like, yeah, y'all took. It sounds bad. Goonie children. Y'all took, we, see, in the 80s, we took the goonies and being a goonies at something wholesome and amazing. and then y'all generation got it. Y'all so sex positive and judgmental. I'll be honest with you.

I think Gen Z as as woke as y'all are. Right. Which we, I'm not. You're not. You're not. You're not fucking millennial. Yeah.

But I think you guys are the most judgmental ones. Y'all always looking for people to be trashed to kick out to like it is. We're cancel culture. Did you go to the Joker screening with that? No, I didn't.

So who went to the Joker screening with? Stephen. No, he went. I saw it by myself. I saw it with Alea. Alea was, was Jomey bricked up during the sex?

No. I got to call HR on that one. Oh, you can't ask shit like that. Are you kidding? Are you actually? During that scene? Good producer.

I'll tell you, I was in that thing like, hey man, no way. That's disgusting. Jomi, I will say, Jomey,

was talking to himself most of the screening. What? Which is like the weirdest fucking experience I've ever had on the screening. Oh, I do that.

Can't tell y'all something? Kalika hates this. Jomi will be in a, Joni will be in a movie. Jomey, Colica has what. I'm not going to ask what she asked about Jome. But she was wondering if Jomey, when she first went to a movie with him,

she was wondering if everything was like. Okay. It's definitely not. Straight. She was looking at him like, Arthur Fleck. A little bit. Because Jomey will be in a movie

and he'll be like navigating the movie, talking to the movie, doing like this to the screen. Exactly. He's not going to flow state? And he's like, and he'll like verbally be like, oh, come on.

Yeah. One of these. He's quiet. Jomey's in the movie. You think you in Megalopoulos talking to Adam Driver? He's like, he's like narrating the movie with his hands and his At least it's better than somebody being like,

hey, watch this part. No. Like, especially when I'm not messing with it. Or I'm trying to like, I'm trying to put it together. Right? I got to like, sometimes you'll see me, I'll sit up. I've seen you get mad for real at a movie. I'll be mad.

Like, I'll be mad. Like, I. Like, I, like, I, like, I'm not going to sit there and be like, and just take it. Like, especially in the Joker, I knew that I was going to happen, but I had to get through it. Yo. What the fuck? I have to. Joey said, I'm not just going to take it. I'm going to throw it back.

I got to be in a theater. Like, so, like, when we saw Multiverse of Madness, don't put your hand on me after you said that. You know what I said? I'm not just going to take it. I'm not a domino, no pillow princess at all. Oh, my God. Jesus Christ. A joker.

Penguin. Penguin. Penguin. Penguin. Penguin. Penguin. Penguin. Penguin. Penguin. Penguin. Um, three episodes, four episodes into Penguin? Two. Two. Two episodes. Well, because remember, jobs on Thursday and then they waited to, like, what, ten days? They have to get industry out of the Sunday night spot.

Now they put in Penguins. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So second episode of Penguin, uh, we see Penguin furthering, deepening his connection, uh, with the Falcone daughter. But also having big time problems with the Moroni family. We see the guile and the wit, once again, of Penguin. Um, um, Where are we at with the show, everyone? I think the show's operating at a level that I wasn't expecting to.

I'm honestly like, it's really, like, it surprised me. Like, in that episode, he stabs the guy who was going to snitch, right? And then they call everybody up. And you think he gives the knife to the one guy, right? Like, he fights with him and you think, like, oh. His main nemesis. Yes, you think he's got the knife. And then it turns out it was the other dude.

I'm saying? And I was like, oh, I didn't expect that. That's really, okay, Penguin, I see, I see what you're doing. And ultimately, it gets to a point where he, Sophia's like, actually, bro, you've been trying to get this whole thing cracking. Let's do it. And I'm like, this is, we're starting to see like the penguin become the guy who can go against the Batman. If that's like the goal of the show, that's what the show's like set out to do, it's absolutely accomplishing what it needs to do. I'm having so much fun with it.

Again, it continues to impress me in ways I didn't. know it could. And I honestly can't wait to watch next one. Like, it's doing a great job. I'm trying to think of a show that's, like, done this many good, like, scene to scene work to, like, just enforce a foundation of a character. Because, like, it's operating on a show that, like, it's, like, it has 20 episodes this season. It takes that level of time in an episode to just, like, get across one idea for a character.

And I really like that this is, like, seemingly taking a lot of, lot of time in a very small space with just what we can get out of Colin Farrell's portrayal of this character. It's really, really good. I need Batman or Nightwing to show up. I need Redwood up in this bitch. I need something. Batman just showed up. Not when he can't show up. Okay, here's my question. Because here's the thing. We were talking about with the Joker. There does come a point where I'm like, talk, there's supermen in this world.

I think you know, here's someone to show. No, no. I actually got a little cynical thinking about this because I'm like, wait a minute, what if we actually don't see Colin Farrell go up against Robert Pattinson's Batman in the second movie? What if like this is actually all that we really get to see of him? And if what have we, and if we end up loving this show, are we going to

feel like it's wasted space to just not have him be elevated into a higher place this next film? Do you know what I noticed about this show? What? Not all of it, but a sizable amount of it takes place during the day. Yeah. Yeah. I think they're doing

on purpose. I think this nigga is sleep. Well, no. He's got to sleep at some point. I think he's sleep. But when Oz invites his girl over the women's, I need Batman. I get it. Actually, I kind of like the idea of the looming threat of Batman because

you borrowed my copy of Gotham Central, right? I did. One of the first arcs in that comic is the idea that like how everything in Gotham during the day when it comes related to crime and crime enforcement is a race against the clock before the sunset.

Because like prosecutors have to like work their asses off to actually build a real case against a criminal that Batman just drops at their doorstep before something else happens at night. So like to have the idea of like, okay, Penguin's just doing all of his ops during the day and it's a race to get shit done during the daytime because like we don't know what's going to happen at night.

I like that. So I don't I don't need Batman but I will say that like there of course is a part of you that's wondering you know what's Batman doing? I mean they just

they just flooded the city but it's cool I'm always wondering I'm like what? But like I remember the original Supergirl movie with I think Lori Singer as Supergirl

and it bring back and I watched the movie and it's not like that's a great movie it's not bad as nostalgia. I got nostalgia blinds on when I watch it, but I'm like, I used to watch that movie as a kid and be like,

they're going to show up, just say hello. But also, like, you kind of get- Doesn't he show up though? Isn't he in that? No, he never comes in that beach. No. I never saw that. Wait, can I take your Gotham Central point?

Because it's one of my favorite Batman comics. Yeah. And I read it as a kid. And I think what is actually really interesting about that, which I think maybe the penguin is missing from me, is that Gotham Central is so interesting because you're getting all these villains, these classic Gotham characters.

And instead of Batman being the hero or the protagonist, you're seeing it from the vantage point of the GCPD. Yeah. In this, I think what I'm missing, and I think what maybe it's coming is I'm like, I feel like there needs to be a force against Penguin. That's not just the other crime families. Right.

Part of me is just like, could we have gotten, and I know this isn't great criticism being like, but I'm like, sometimes I'm like, where is Commissioner Gordon? Is there a Roni? Montoy? Is there a character? After that, is he...

Well, see, but see, I think that's interesting because I think when I watch the show, I feel nothing but forces pushing down on him all the way. They're doing a good job to me of making him seem like the underdog, which is part of the thing that impresses me about the show

because he's always been such a powerful character. I guess for you, it's more important of which forces are pushing on it. So here's the thing. I think going off that is I'm like, and I think we started talking about it with the Joker. I think this is when, like, the comic book lore starts to bog this stuff down. And what I mean by that is, like, when you watch the Sopranos, there is a level where you're

like, Tony Sopranos going to be fine. But there are, there's cliffhangers, which is like, damn, like, you don't know how far Tony's going to rise. And for me, I know Penguin is going to be the Penguin. You know what I'm saying? Like, I know where he's headed. So there is a part of me where I'm like, they are doing a good job of putting, like, forces on the penguin and him having to struggle through it.

but there is a level of me where I'm like, I know he's going to be fine. So the stakes still do feel relatively like, I don't necessarily think that he might be fine. Like, are you operating under the assumption that like we might see him in Batman too? Is that what you're like kind of operating under?

I think he is going to play an element or I don't think the penguin is going to die at the end. He doesn't need to, but there is a level of me where I'm thinking of. I'm like, you feel like he's relatively safe from most of the things that happen. I actually don't think that. You know what I remember about the sort of.

Sopranos and I'm rewatching it now. People believe me when I say I rewatch stuff. I fucking rewatch it. Shut the fuck up. It's actually a little different than how you explained it. What the Sopranos does, particularly at the beginning of the show, is go to a great length to make you believe that no matter who is in charge that Tony's actually running things. Yes.

And I actually miss that. Like, at first, Jackie's in charge. and the fucking kid who gets killed. Christopher's friend who gets killed. I know here you're talking about it. Because they won't stop Jack and Junior's trucks. Yeah. Mikey.

Is it Mikey? He gets killed. He says to Tony, he says, come on. Everybody knows that you're running things now that Jackie became the Kimosabi, which is not funny, but that little scene was funny. I'm sorry. Right. And then Tony kicks him out.

It's not Mikey. Mikey's Jr.' I can't remember who this. Brendan. Brendan. And then even when the captains are sitting around having the discussion about who's going to be the boss,

they're all asking Tony to do it. And Tony's saying, I don't want to do it. He's trying to get somebody else to do it. Then they give it to Junior, and they're talking about how Tony is kind of still running things. I think the show, that show right there, is in a way, and because I was re-watching it

because I didn't feel like the Sopranos was a lot like the penguin and I was wrong about that it is. I mean the whole mother's self-ar easy that is. But the thing was really about to me whether or not the pressures

that were around Tony it wasn't so much about Tony rising to me it was about whether or not Tony would crack under the pressure that was on him. No, that's a beautiful way to say it but don't you also think that it's like and it's kind of the same thing

that the penguin is about to whether or not he can keep this going and be one step ahead of everyone or whether or not he's going to crack. But also the sopranos has that thing that I think is so interesting is that like the pilot is about oh, a gangster is going to therapy.

And what makes that show brilliant is that seeing how America is kind of like changing around them where it's just like by the end of it's like you know Christopher is selling is making a fucking movie like they're making fun of Junior for going down on a woman like seeing how all of these things. And what I mean for the penguin is like, I'm like, okay, there's, I haven't seen like the junior figure or the mother figure where it's like,

oh, if they're successful, these people who love Tony are trying to get him fucking out of here. Like, who is that? Like, they don't have that figure. Everyone is his enemy. And everyone. The only, the only people who are with him are the, his, his, who's played by Carmen, Vic, who's starting to get my fucking. there's.

Vic, like, he's too plucked. Like, he's a little crew, but they're hardly in the show. But I think, and that's just, they're just auxiliaries

to get things done. Yeah. I think that you kind of need more people around Penguin because to your point, like this, to me, this episode,

I was like, I was actually interested in terms of just like, I'm like, oh, it's kind of cool some Penguin like wriggle out of shit, but there does come a point

where I'm like, all right, what's the next thing? He can't always just be like, he's about to get captured. He does something cool. he slips out of it. I do want to know

what is that next thing that actually makes me worried for him because right now he just kind of seems like plot Teflon where I'm like he's gonna be the penguin.

Like he's gonna be the penguin. You know? I like to think that the show is operating a bit under like whatever makes the penguin the penguin will be found out

at the end of this show and whether or not he gets away with anything or lives or whatever that means I think that it's more of like a resolution of what that character is. But we know what makes the penguin the penguin.

I understand that. But I mean, to me, I think we know what makes most penguins the penguin. If you ask me, I think he's building up a skill set to be able to deal with Batman. Yeah. At the end of the show, we're going to have to be able to look at this guy, we said this before, and talk about whether or not he can deal with Batman. When you look at some of the stuff that he's going through, we're seeing penguins weak points. We're seeing his strong suits.

These guys that he's up against, the Falconies and the Moronis, they are, I mean, they run the streets of Gotham, sure. They sell the drops on the street, sure. But he is about to have a nemesis that is better resourced, that is more vigilant, that is more dedicated to stopping him, then all of these guys come by. So that's actually, like, I think that would be the success of the show. Where I think it's like it's kind of similar to Joker, where at the end of the Joker, there's that open, like, oh, is this the rise of supercrime and super villains in the Penguin?

I think for it to be the most interesting version of itself, I do want to see how you get him from Lowly Penguin to the Falcons, the Moronies, the GCPD, Commissioner Gordon, no one can stop this man. Like he is so gifted. He's gotten so many talents that by the second the Batman movie, you need someone like the Batman. Like he's a worthy adversary. And right now, if the show just ends in a, this is how he becomes the penguin. And I'm still kind of like,

Batman's going to clean this motherfucker up. I'm going to be a little disappointed. I want to see him become a penguin that is almost like a Heisenberg, almost like a, oh shit, you need somebody to come take him down. Yeah. And I think that's why, like, you don't have the Batman in, at least thus far. Because, again, he's not a guy like Batman would wipe the flow with him. Like, it's not really interesting.

Batman already has. I mean, they were talking about, there were talks about Robert Pattinson showing up in this. But they said they could find a way to do. He might, but they. I thought they said he wasn't. Oh, he's not. Yeah. I think they officially said, yeah, that they couldn't find a way to do it that he wouldn't just take over the show.

Yeah, and I think that's fair. You know, it's. If Rob Pantson had showed up in this bitch, we'd be like, you know, the bad. Yeah, but then it's not the pain, it'd be cool, but... I think they're lying. You think you showing up? I don't know Pattinson wanted to do it, to be honest.

I think maybe Robert Pattinson won't be in there, but it might be a nigga in a suit at the end of this bitch going, I'm keeping my eyes on you. So it's shot from the back, you don't see them. It's just... It's like how the accolite ending where you know it's Yoda, you know? It was just like Batman with the cow. I know.

I don't know. I'd be so bad. Or it'd be so mad. All right, so before we go, like, I've been careful. hearing rumors. Like, well, first, Reeves has said that the next to Batman is going to be set in winter.

And then there's rumors that it's the court of owls and white. Fucking coats. What? Just put it in, put it in summer. I don't need to see Batman coat on. Well, because the first one was like,

literally October 31st, right, Halloween. Like, it's going to be like, what, a couple weeks? December 31st, New Year. Yeah, it's going to be a couple weeks, a couple months later? How long was he on vacation for it? I don't know, but like just.

You want the bloodhaving? Do you think that family? Reeves is going to step on James Gunn's corner if he does. Court of Vowals. And it can be, because I'm like, that's one of the most celebrated modern runs. If it's, if it's a hit. If it's like a hit. That's ultimately what it comes down to.

If Matt Reeves releases the Batman 2 and it's a banger and we're like, yo, this is what it means. Yeah. This is the game. James Gun got to start looking in the mirror and like, hey. The penguin keeps the trajectory where it's a hit, where it's like, oh, I got it. Like, I made the penguin into a hit. and then you got a dark night level

kind of sequel in a court of owls movie, I do think it's a different conversation. I get, honestly, I think that's fine. Like, you could have a separation of church and state a little bit, be like, hey, listen, the Batman's over here doing his thing, and then James Gunn's playing with the shiny toys over there. You're going to confuse the lay people.

I think so. You are going to confuse. If you got the court of vows, and then you got Damien Wayne and Bruce and a different thing popping up, I think people are going to be like, you're going to confuse the lay people. going to confuse the lay people, they're going to be like, especially if Superman is a big hit and everybody goes to see it, Batman, Batman shows up. But is this Batman?

I thought this was Batman. Batman, Batman, Batman, Batman, Batman. You're going to confuse the lay people. And at some point, James Gunn, who wants to foggy out this entire thing, it might get a little. That's what I was going to say. Like, do you step on the product, right? As like, if James Gunn is like, I want to do this kind of Batman. Right.

But Matt Reeves out there making it. hit after hit with his Batman. James Gunn't not going to do that type of Batman now. James going to go do a... He'll do the fun... He's going to do the 60s? He's going to do a... He's going to do a Batman and Robin more...

I think he's going to do more of a Guardians of the Galaxy, very pop, comic-booky version of Batman. And Reeves will probably be the more serious... I got to be honest with you. I like Reeves as Batman, bro, but... God, we got to walk the stairs. We got to throw him a birthday party, bro. You got to...

You got to... You know what I'm saying? cheer up. Like, he, he, he got to, we got to do some, like, but here's the thing. The penguin is it hit. Reeves is probably like, dog, they doubted me. Like, I'm back on my chair. Nobody believed it.

No, I believe it. No, I believe it. He's the planet of the apes. The penguin got some, the people got some joy, though. He'd be like, he'd be making jokes. He'd be making jokes. And he, he's a little winking or not. We haven't talked about this.

This is an brilliantly acted show. Oh, yeah. It's amazing. No. Oh, no. it's not here you have some of my favorite actors in this

who is the lady to cur maloney Christina Melotti she's amazing she's doing great but there is a level of sometimes I guess the rhythm and beats of this show

it is a little cartoon like it's like there's a part of me and maybe it's because if this is a Mac show I'd be like oh it's a Mac show I'm like oh this HBO right this is the home of the wire

I think that's an unfair comparison it's like some of the best film show is a made what are you're not I think the show is impeccably acting. But yeah, I think I agree. I think Colin Farrell, I've said it before, he disappears to the role.

It's the penguin. And we're not going to act like the penguin and don't call it the penguin. You know what I mean? It's like when we just had a whole thing about like the joke is not the joke. Stand on it. Stand on it. I think I think motherfuckers like I need the iceberg lounge.

I need everything decorated. I need an ice skating. You need a monocle. You need a monocleckle. You need a monocle. I'll be honest with you. I take that point. Umbrella guns are cool.

I take that point. I take that point, though. I take that point, this is why I'll say, this motherfucker is waddling. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. He is waddling.

I'll say it's all right there. A little flavor. He's talking like this. He's waddling. He's doing the whole thing. It is different. Yeah. Right?

It was kind of like when Jared Lutter was a Joker and he was like, all right. I want a beast. You don't want to move. At the same time, that's so dumb. His motherfucker was scheming. He was breaking people out of jail.

Are you going to say, You're a clown prince of crime. He got to get up to crime. My penguin got to do penguin ass shit. Are you saying that Jared Letto's Joker was better than Walking Phoenix's Joker? Yeah. Fuck out of here. Wow.

What? Yeah. And you're saying Jared Lett was better? Yeah, he was better. Jared Lett was better. Wait, wait, wait. Wait, wait. Wait, I think what he's trying to say.

No, Jared Lett's a better depiction is the Joker. I'm a hurt really, really. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, I want to be very clear. Hold on for a second. I don't want any miscommunication. I want to be. Are you saying that Jared Letters, I shouldn't touch you, you don't want to touch you. I want to beef.

Are you saying Jared Leto's Joker is a better depiction of the Joker than Joaquin Phoenix better than Joker? Or is it better acted? No, Joaquin Phoenix, this was a better depiction because I want a beef. Okay, okay. All right, all right, depiction. I don't want a beef. I like when he says that. Remember when he said that?

No, I don't remember. I remember when he said that. I saw the suicide squad one time. I want to, you want to wait? Enough is enough. Are they going to give up on Harley Quinn soon in these movies? No.

Well, because Michael Robbie was doing her thing. How's a good movie now? Justice for Pratt. No, no, but here. The second suicide squad. I'm just saying at this point, at this point, bro, they whipped on how many Harley movies.

But she was a cultural thing. Yeah, no, she was great. She is, like, the TV shows pop in, but. I liked Birds of Prey. Birds of Prey. I liked Birds of Prey. I like Birds of Prey. I thought it was awesome.

I still can't finish it, bro. Shout out to the whole story. You McGrager's in that. He's great. That was tight. Black Mask, come on, man. Come on, man. I like that movie.

It was great. Is that where he met his wife, his new wife? Is it? Yeah. I don't know. Maybe. I will say that like, I like that movie, but that movie proved to me that we, maybe we're a little bit premature on, uh, she isn't that.

Like, we were a little bit premature at that point at anointing Margarabi as this major, major, huge hyper A-list star because if she was that, she should have opened that movie. She didn't. Now, she opened Barbie. Yeah. That was a big thing. But there's a lot of things going on there, too.

Yeah, but if she would have been like the gigantic, can't miss Julia Roberts-esque, Julie was doing her thing, Julia opened her fucking movies. So does this, she should have opened that movie. But this is a movie is better post-barre. I was about to say. She could do a Harley movie now. Yeah.

It would still do good. Yeah. I also don't know if Margot Robbie knew how to be a superstar yet, if that makes sense. Where it was like she was still kind of growing into how to like be that. And I think right now she kind of has the tools and just the cultural capital. Oh, she absolutely does now. Yeah. If it comes, yeah, I think of Birds of Pray comes out after Barbie.

It's a different conversation. You do Barbie. You can do anything now. Yeah, at that point. That's a wrap. Very easy day of. podcasting today. This week, House of R will give you their deep dive on the latest episodes of Rings of Power and Agatha all along, guys, officially starts Monday.

That's fun, man. I get into Lord of the Rings Lord. There you go. Good feet, man. I'm proud of you, man. Yeah, it starts Monday. You finished all the Game of Thrones lore videos? I haven't. I can't quit them, bro. That's so long. I learned about somebody new John Connington. No, you know, you know about him? No. Oh.

You could have just said any two words, I would have You don't know about John Connington? I don't. I learned about him. I'm reading through all of this stuff. Look at him. That's him. John Connington.

Yeah, that's him. Okay. That's the man that has that name. Good for John Connington. I was looking at him. But now I got to move on to. Elrod and Adar and Caleb Rimmore. Don't go with me.

I'm on 40K right now. You're on 40K what? Warhammer? Warhammer 40K. What the fuck is that? It's the thing that Henry Cavils into? Oh, that's ruining his career? Is that why you learned soy boy?

You got called a soy boy. Can you remember that Henry Cavill was like, get this soy boy? I'd have to eat that if Henry Cavill called me a soy boy. I'm not taking that. Why do you have to eat what? Oh my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

Jesus Christ. No, sex positive. Sex positive. Eat that soy boy. Is that actually you guys? I want to let Harry Cavill talk to me like that personally. That's fair. I, boy, I talk so much shit to Henry Cavill.

If Henry Calvin was trying to troll me, I didn't, I didn't talk. Like your Superman movie coming up. You should be happy. You got a job, niggas. Wow. Shout out corn sweat. You jump shit already. Somebody get corn sweat on here to play Warhol.

You don't talk to me. You got your ass right out of here. Henry Cavill, we will get at, Hencaval. I do think if we want to do more interviews on the Midnight Boys, we've got to have an intervention for Zachary Levy. talking about. My man's going out. He's going out so bad. Zach, man.

Zach, man. Zach, just stay out of it. No, Zach, come to the pod. Like, well... Zach, come to the pod. This is an open... This is an open... I'm on Zach on the pod?

Zach, come to the pod. Come to the pod. But you've got to come ask Shazam. Because if not, I'm not going to be able to talk to. This week, how's four... This Friday button has to be back. Next week, you'll look forward. to some clownery with Charles.

Next Thursday, the Midnight Boys will give you their reactions to Agatha and the Penguin. And next Friday, Button Mash returns to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Alien isolation. I don't know what that is. Oh, that's a game. It's a scary game that dropped on, like, the PS store, like for free or whatever.

Face others? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Basically. But on today's show, thank you. God damn it. Our producers are Steve I can't do it to you. The Architect Alman. Jonathan's Super Black Pan. Kerma and Alea O'Brien Zanaris. Jomi Adirondon's on socials hashtag no touchy Zomi.

Yeah, no touchy. Not touchy, something in touchy-feely. Additional production from Arjuna, Ryan Capalau. Chuck, take us out. Penguins love to waddle. We always podcast with joy. Shout out to the Midnight Riders and all the Soy Boys. Honestly, I'm going to be honest.

We are all getting sent. I think we should do a review. I think we should do it. Again, we're bleeping that until we actually approve of that. Oh, ooh, you know, I'll tell you why I need the. Again, bleep that. I'll tell you why I need it. Please don't.

I had a second round of waxing. I don't know. Fucking disastrous. Oh, God. 40-year-old version disastrous? Like, did they just stop? So I, so the first round of waxing I had couldn't have gone better. Smooth.

Amazing. Like, actually, it felt. It feels great. Right. No, mind you. On a breezy day, I bet. Yeah, you don't think about whether or not your butthole feels good. All right.

But when you get it waxed, it, like, it feels great, right? Right. Sure. Bro, the second round of waxing, I'm not going to put these people on blast. Couldn't have gone worse. Same people. Same people. Okay.

Couldn't have gone worse. Couldn't have gone worse. God. I'm not talking about the actual waxing itself. Right. I'm talking about the after effects. Oh. Like, when the waxing was happening,

I was thinking to myself, this is different. Is this the way this is supposed to be going? Because she was asking questions. She was like, oh, your skin is sensitive. I'm like, you waxed me the last time. Like, you know. Here's the thing.

They were probably cutting down a forest the first time. They were. Now is it like the hairs come in, they're a little newer or not. Yeah. It's supposed to be full grown. They did it. It's a sex positive podcast.

They did it with the same. They did it with the same four. They did it with the same four. Force. Force. They did it with the same force. Out of 10. There was a little bleeding this time.

Oh, right. And then there was like when it was, when it was, when like my balls were healing up. Healing up. Oh, there was some healing up. Pinchella verger. Were your balls bleeding? There was some bleeding. And there was some flaking of the balls after this.

And then now. Oh, like when you shave your head sometime or like you get a haircut and you're like, oh, it's a little dry. That's why I'm going to get the alcohol. Yeah. No, the alcohol on your ball. balls. And then, like, now there's an insane razor bump situation, which it wasn't before. And so I went to another salon. It's a miracle. You're even sitting down right now. No, no, it was, it's good. The razor bumps probably feel better than watching Joker's.

Wait, can I, like, is it when you get, my last question, is it like when you go to like a barber, like a black barber where it's like after the cut? They spray them in their house. Yeah, exactly. They do put a little something on after the wax. But I'll be honest with, don't ask questions. That's my last time getting... Ball after shave? That's my last time getting... I'm not doing it anymore. Why don't you ask them, like, after you're like, is this supposed to second time be a little different?

Yeah. They said, everyone out there told me that the second time, it would be easier. And that it would be better. Maybe there's an aftercare situation. It wasn't better. Yeah. So if any waxers out there have any information as to what went wrong...

Honestly, any Brazilian waxes in L.A. want to give us, like, a free, like, Brazilian wax will review it. Yeah. Who's a lot of weed going on? We speak of French now? What's going on? Show me. What is...

I don't even have fucking patience for it today. It's like, you're so down on everything. We've had a lot of insane conversations on this podcast before. It's not that insane. I'll be honest with you.

I've been watching this new YouTube channel and it's called... What happened to no free ads? No, I... You know, let me tell you out something real quick. I like to shout out people that I like. enjoy and stuff.

That's not an ad, showing love to the other, like, creators out there is not an ad. Joe, you suck. You're so fake, bro. Like, you don't think that you would want me to do this?

No, craps in the barrel, crap's in the barrel, Joe me, craps in the barrel. The name of this podcast is, whatever, fuck it. But, like, it's called, Explore with us.

It's called Explore with us. Is this just a nature show? No, no, no, no, no. It's like guys being interrogated for horrendous, grisly crimes that they've committed. Explore with us. Why did it?

Oh, dog. I don't want to hear about this. I don't. Like, murderers on the show? The show is interrogation videos. Oh. Like the police? Oh, dog.

Yeah, no. I don't want to know. What I assume, like, you watch a true crime and it's like the camera from the interrogation is the cop and the dude across. No, they're in the room with the guy and the explore with us guy is telling you about all the things that the guy is showing to let you know that he really fucked. He did this stuff. And all the tactics that the cops.

are using to get him to him or her. It's him. To get him to confess to these things. Some of these guys have done crazy, horrific, terrible things. A lot of them are police officers. Oh, boy. But I expect to see Jomi on there one day.

Because Jomey is so repressed. It's getting to a point to where... I don't want to talk about his boss. How was that repressed? No, it's not bad. Brazilian wax. talking about Brazilian waxes. It's getting to a point now to where I'm wondering

if they're healthy outlets. And you doth protest a little, am I fucking tripping? No, and you're only because you're the youngest, you're going to get to an age where you might have, you know, your milk of the week might be like, yo, I would like you to get a Brazilian wax. Oh, yeah.

You know what I'm saying? Yeah. White girls like it like that. I've got... I heard. Oh, God. I saw I heard. So yeah, yeah, yeah. Can we get to the box?

So I've read. Yeah, yeah, yeah.