The Ringer-Verse - Ringer-Verse Recommends: March 2026 (Featuring ‘Paradise')

Episode Date: April 1, 2026

Spring has arrived, and with it, a bounty of nerd-culture content! First, Ben Lindbergh and Van Lathan explain the compulsive appeal of 'Paradise,' first in a general, high-level, non-spoilery sense, and then in a (clearly indicated) spoiler section on the series' just-concluded second season. After that, other Ringer-Verse hosts, friends, and listeners salute unsung releases to top off another monthly roundup of fandom favorites from TV, anime, movies, video games, books, comics, and beyond that were released recently but not yet covered in depth on a full-length episode. Intro (0:00)‘Paradise’ (2:50)‘Paradise’ Season 2 finale and spoiler section (21:10)Steve's recommendation (1:01:07)Arjuna's recommendation (1:03:18)Matt's recommendation (1:04:50)Ben’s recommendation (01:07:18)Aleya’s recommendation (1:14:31)Daniel’s recommendation (1:17:40)Listener nomination (1:20:52Recap of picks  (1:22:49) Host: Ben LindberghGuests: Van Lathan, Steve Ahlman, Arjuna Ramgopowell, Matt James,  Aleya Zenieris, and Daniel ChinProducer: Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Tramphia today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit Trimfairadio.com. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech. Everyone knows winter is the MVP and making a mess. You don't need WeatherTech floor liners in the summer unless you hit the beach or go camping. Then you'd want a cargo liner. Or a road trip goes sideways, ketchup goes rogue, ice cream drips.

Yeah, you'd be pretty happy about those WeatherTech seat protectors. So just to be clear as the mud, you're inevitably going to step into the summer. You don't need WeatherTech unless you plan on doing summer. Visit weathertech.com today. Hello and welcome into the Ringerverse, your nexus feed for all things fandom. I am Ben Lindberg, senior editor for The Ringer, your host at Buttonmash. Also, your master of ceremonies here at Ringerverse recommends, along with my loyal companion, Grumkin, the Doxend, who accompanies me for this intro today.

As usual, it's the monthly tradition here at the Ringerverse at the end of each month. We round up some of the many nerd culture releases that we liked. but we're not able to cover in-depth on a full-length episode, at least as of yet. And we tell you why we liked them and why you might like them. And obviously, this has been a busy, crowded month, but as always, some stuff has slipped through the cracks and we'll be covering some of it today. Our spotlight feature conversation will involve me and Mr. Van Lathan. And we will be talking about Paradise Season 2 on Hulu,

which just wrapped up this week, Van and I are big favorites. ends of the show. We're going to talk about it first in a general introductory, non-spoilery sense. And then for those who are current on the show, we will have a spoiler section where we talk about the wild end of season two. That will be clearly noted on the show notes for this episode. Also on the show notes, the other recommendations that will follow my conversation with band. So if you want to skip ahead to some of the shorter clips or go back and find them later, you can do so. And as always, there will be a listener. submission, you can nominate recommendations by going to RingervorS Recommends at gmail.com.

Send us some text. Send us a video. Send us an audio recording. Whatever medium, we will accept it and we'll be happy to include it. But we do have several clips to get to this month. Now, I'm actually double dipping in addition to the main conversation. I'm going to pop back up for a mid-episode recommendation because we had a late scratch. Our friend Charles Holmes, he was all set to recommend the.

end of the chainsaw man manga, and then he fell ill and was not able to complete his sacred task. And so I will be showing up again to make a recommendation. You know, it's a tough time for us trekies or trekkers, but I'm going to make the best of the situation and tell you about a little Star Trek show that I think you might actually like if you can get past some initial resistance. Resistance is not futile in this case. So let's get right to it. I'll be back at the end, of course, to recap.

cap all the selections and share the listener nomination, but I don't want to delay my conversation with Van. Well, for me, Paradise is podcasting with Van Lathen. So podcasting with Van Lathen about Paradise, I need a new word for that. Maybe that's Nirvana, whatever it is. Always happy to have you here on Ring Averse Recommends. Welcome, Van.

Welcome, welcome, welcome to me. I'm happy to be here. Thank you. Thank you for the warm welcome. I love this show. Me too. And you've recommended this show on Ringiverse Recommends, but it's worthy of more than a short clip.

We just have much more to say about this show. And I think this is the perfect place for it because, you know, maybe it's not prestige enough for our esteemed colleagues over on the prestige TV feed. Elitists hoity tooty TV snobs looking down at entertainment for the common people. And so we're slimming it here on Ringverse Recommends with the show that we care about quite a bit. So we've been watching since the start. Season two just concluded. So we will get into spoiler territory later.

We will warn you. Don't worry. We'll talk about the finale. A lot happened. But first, high level, let's just talk about how we got into the show. Why we liked it, the premise, take us back to the start. Take us back to season one. This is a Kalika thing.

Hold on for a second. Kalika! This is a podcast first. Yeah. I can't, I cannot in any way take credit for this. Listen, podcast audiences, you're listening. I'm hoping that all of this gets kept in. I'm hoping that she gets over here.

Yeah. She's the Terry to your Xavier. She should be here. I don't know how she got into the show. I'm not sure what happened. but she kept telling me that the show was good. Come on. She kept telling me that the show was good.

How long? Talk to Ben Lindberg. Hey. Hi, Ben. Good to see you. Okay, come to Ben. Ben's question is, get on the mic, Kalika. When you did some microphone, it makes.

Oh, okay. I'm sorry. Let me lean in. So tell the audience how you got me into the show Paradise. I don't remember. Did you have to twist his art? Did you don't remember? Did you resist?

I don't remember exact details, but I remember telling you that it was one of the best shows. Love Sterling K. Brow. And then I made you watch. I think it's like episode, is it episode five or six where they show how everything happened? Oh, yeah. That's the one I made you watch. Yeah. Yeah.

I made you watch. I didn't make them watch from the beginning. That was the first one I ever watched. All right. So then I went back and watched. And that episode is. interesting because Paradise does something that's really, this is an unconventional podcast and that you're doing right now.

Paradise does something that is really interesting is that most of the shows you could watch by themselves. They have full narrative arcs. They're like little many things that you could watch standalone. But inside of those standalone episodes, they lead to larger narratives that they have to pay off. They get paid off later. So when I watched that one episode, I then went back and watched the entire show.

It didn't really ruin anything for me. Only enhanced it. And then season two, I was waiting with bated breath. And I got to say, Ben Lindbergh, it delivered from the jump. From the jump, it comes out. I'm like, what the hell? Who is this character? What is she going to do?

And then the twists and turns were almost infinite until we got to the end and got a whole new adventure, a whole new adventure and Kalika Kalika is the one I wanted to give her her credit say hello to the podcast world one more time before you leave. Hi podcasters, shout out to Shailene Woodley I felt like she does it like

give her all the nominations she was great she was great she was excited I'm glad you like it. Thank you Kalika this is recommending at work I mean this is how it works right here Ringverse recommends. So she recommended

to me then I watched then I recommend it to you guys, and now we're on recommends, like, finishing up the season. Yeah, I think it was episode seven. I think the standout in season one. It's called The Day, and it just takes you back through the disaster. So the setup here, this is a post-apocalyptic show. We follow Savior played by Sterling K. Brown.

He's a Secret Service agent, and so he gets to go to the bunker, and you get to go underground. And this isn't really, I mean, this all becomes clear quite quickly, right? So then it just pulls back further and further and we figure out, well, what was the disaster? And we learn a little bit more about the nature and was it natural causes or was it not or was it some combination of both? And then how do you keep this society going in the bunker? And then it gets even broader and bigger and it's about rebuilding the world and what's going on outside the bunker. But it's just, you know, it's kind of a classic nonstop thrill rides of a show.

It's just, it's eight episodes per season, and they're not saving anything for season six or whatever. Like, there might be a roadmap here, but they're not holding back. And I think there's a reason why they're able to do that. We were watching the season finale. A remark to Kalika, I said, there's something weird that's happening right now. She was like, what is that? I said, this feels like it's really happening. I was so emotionally in the middle of,

of the narrative that with everything happening to everyone, every character on screen, I felt like a little something. Like, it felt like there was stakes and weight to the outcome

of what was going on. And that's because what the show does is it gets you in deep with a character, deep with that character. And then it places the fate of that character. It does this

individually over and over and over again. It places the fate of that character as a circumstance of the larger narrative and driving plot of the show. So like with the Shailene Woodley character, they spend an entire

episode setting her up. But really, they do that just for her to be the driving force to meeting Dylan and then Dylan's place in the world deepens and then there's AI but by the time you get there every time you see him, you see her and you see the baby and you see all of this stuff so you can't help but be connected to everyone. I've never actually, I was trying to think when I was

watching it, I've never, unless you count this is us, of course, I've never quite seen a show do it this way. Yeah, it's a little Lost-like, I guess, right? It's very flashback. I never watched that. Centric, got to watch Lost. Have you been

with me and Joe and Malad at everyone for this long? And still no lust. One of these days, it's got to be for content, got to be a rewatch pod. Anyway, there's a lot of flashbacks in that show. And, you know, Fallout, I guess, which we've covered together.

Pretty flashback heavy. but this one, season two is like half flashback or maybe more actually. It might be even a bit much flashback at times, but yeah, because you get to see what were these people's lives like before the disaster,

how did they handle the apocalypse, how did they relate to each other, all these relationships that form. And it's pretty exciting stuff, and it just never lets up. It's very twisty, it's very suspense-inducing. Every episode ends with some kind of

cliffhanger or big development so that you instantly just want to watch the next episode. And it just gets bigger and broader as the season goes on. And, you know, it's not this sort of self-contained bunker anymore that it was. And as you mentioned, this was created by Dan Fogleman, who, yeah, created This Is Us and also a lot of other things, right? Movies, TV shows. one of my favorite canceled too soon single season shows, pitch, the baseball show. Oh, yeah, the baseball show, yeah. There's a lot of baseball in this show, just a lot of baseball references. He's clearly a sports guy.

So I think that the pop culture references, the sci-fi stuff, like there's no shortage of post-apocalyptic shows and post-paclactic shows in bunkers. But, you know, we have silo, we have fallout. It's a pretty crowded genre these days. But this show, it's just so propulsive. It's just incredibly compulsively appealing and viewable. And maybe the reason it's that prestige, like, you know, this show never met a monologue it didn't like, right? Yeah.

So there's always just like, we're clearing out now because Cal, the president, played by James Marson, like he's going to go on a monologue for a while. Or Julianne Nicholson, who plays Sinatra, this sort of sinister power behind the scenes puppet. or Sterling K. Brown, who plays Savior, you're just going to get these, like, really kind of sentimental, cloying, you know, just a bit, a bit melodramatic, honestly, exchanges and dialogue. And yet, I am so invested in the story in these characters that I'll allow it. Even if, like, a lot of these exchanges don't actually sound like something someone would say.

I'm just, I'm in it anyway. I don't know that a prestige show can. have too much heart. Fogelman, everything he does has a lot of heart. He's a heart guy. Yeah. And that's kind of how he believes in television. Even like crazy stupid love, which is a rom-com,

you would think that it's the rom-comiest of all rom-coms, but it's got just so much heart to it. Everybody's invested emotionally into what they're doing, which is why they're doing it. But like, in this, there's so much emotionality that kind of the entire narrative is built on, that I think sometimes that takes people out of the prestige thing. I think prestige can be oriented around violence.

It can be oriented around high concept. It can be oriented around premise. But if it's too oriented around like heart, then it's not going to work. Like you wouldn't consider, despite how much people love the show, like you wouldn't consider like Ted Lassow. I'm not saying this is Tehrasso. Tealasso is actually a little small.

You wouldn't consider that to be like a prestige. Yeah. You wouldn't consider that to be like a prestige show. Yeah. However, the bear, which doesn't have very much heart at all, but has a lot of emotionality that's through desperation and through this feeling of destiny and intensity, that speaks more to like what people would say is prestige to me.

And Sterling K. Brown is just, I mean, I would follow him anywhere. I'd follow him into battle. I'd follow him into the bedroom. I'd follow him into the shower where his well-sculpted physique is shown off. He's great because he's kind of like he's buttoned down. He's stoic. You know, he's a secret service agent. Like he's supposed to be sort of emotionally repressed. But then sometimes you see the sense of humor comes out. out and the love that he has for his family, another fallout parallel. I guess it's not unusual for a post-apocalyptic show, but it's all about got to keep my family safe, got to find my wife, got to find my family, right? And so he's extremely dedicated, big wife guy, great dad, and also just a stone cold killer. And it's just a great portrayal. Like, he's just incredibly magnetic. He runs sprints like Tom Cruise, you know, he's got one of the best sprints

in the business, I think, but also can show some emotion, you know, he can cry, he can let it out. And I think he's just, he kind of gives it a gravitas that it wouldn't have otherwise

because that character just has such a dignity to him that even though there's some silly stuff going on around him, he kind of anchors it. There's a charm there. The movie, the show makes you think

that Sterling, almost being underused. That like, because I'd love to see Xavier as a Secret Service agent or some type of vigilante in this grander way with a $100 million budget behind it. But with this, he is just so effective when he is mission-based. When his mission is to guard the president, that is 100% his mission. He does a great job of that. him in the middle of all of this stuff.

But then on top of that, though, you have situations that are pulling at him. And a lot of this show is, to me, it's sort of interrogating your function versus your family. Like, this type of high-stakes environment where you have to like, 25,000 people that end of the world are living in this bunker, this huge cataclysm is. happened, what do you bring to the table? What is the thing that you do? Because right now, we can all do whatever we want. But in a situation like that, everybody has to do something. So Sinatra has to be the leader and the brains and the sort of pragmatic, you know, a schemer of the vision. The president has to be the guy who keeps everybody sane. X has to be a person

that protects the president. But on top of all of this function, you have all of this trauma that these characters are dealing with. His wife isn't here. He's messing around with a little something on the side, a little psychiatrist, little therapist, something going on, you know what I'm saying? I had to get a little thing in, you know?

And like which part of that keeps you human? Is the fact that you have a family and you are a father and you have an estranged, a son that was killed or whatever in case of Sinatra? Is that what keeps you human? Or is the fact that you have a family? worth in this new world. Is that the thing that keeps you human? And the show keeps going back and

forth and they really do that through the Xavier character. That's why it was so interesting to see what he was going to be when he left the bunker. Because when he left the bunker, he only had one thing that he had to do. And that one thing was to get to his wife. And like how much of the character, I was kind of worried that we were going to see him like eat a human being or something. What was he going to have to do in order to get to that one mission now that. Now that he's, he did to complete that one mission now that he didn't have like anybody top down like orienting what his day to day was yeah and there's that consistent theme and post-pocalypse shows just like what do you have to do to survive and do you lose your humanity in the course of preserving your

life and i guess that's best illustrated through sinatra who's the puppet master of the bunker and is trying to sort of put the best interests of the bunker in humanity first but then what does that do to her? And she has to shut down the emotional side of herself and she has to be kind of cutthroat to get there. Do you think they need podcasters in the bunker? Do you think we would make the cut? Would we make the priority with?

People need to be entertained, right? When you need podcasts more than ever in that situation. I think you do. The question is what kind? Yeah. Because there are no shows. That's true. So we're like, so you know, we could podcast about like what's going on.

in the bunker. There's all kinds of things in the bunker that they don't really like delve into. You know, the president was the most famous guy that was in the bunker, right? Yeah. Did other celebrities make it? That comes up from time to time.

Like in the season two finale, they're like, you got Brad Pitt in there somewhere? But we don't. Oh, yeah, he did say that. Yeah, he goes like who's like who's, yeah. Yeah, when he's trying to ask like who's in there and stuff. Like so, you know, they, that doesn't, what will we pod about is the thing.

Like our pod would be kind of, it might freak people out, Ben. People probably wouldn't. People wouldn't want to think about the fact that they're in the bunker, I think. We would need to bring them distraction of some sort. So we would have to, I mean, you know, you did a wire pod.

You know, we could just, we could do that lost pod. You could watch Lost. You could do that Lost Pod. Just any kind of distraction. Just keep people's minds off the apocalypse, I think, you know, even if they're not making new shows, there's a big back catalog that we could dive in.

But while we're doing the pod, because, I mean, we could, if it was TV, we could pod forever, right? So many shows. Yeah. But like, while we're doing the pod, do we make jokes and remind people that there's not going to be any more TV? Is that like a thing? Because I can't promise I wouldn't do that.

No. I can't promise that, like, I wouldn't be like, hey, you know, just let you guys know, you're not getting that new season of the morning show. That's not going to drive. Yeah. Because Jennifer Anderson didn't make it inside of here. It's me, you, Ben.

But Jennifer Anderson and Reese Witherspoon, I don't know. What do you think where's Roospoon is right now, Ben? Like I would have to ask questions like that. I wouldn't just be able to like pretend like it wasn't happening. Reese would be on the list, I think she would be in the bunker. But, yeah, we would not be getting Paradise Season 3 were we in the bunker. So we'd have to content ourselves with the first couple seasons. It would be tough.

But I guess we can kind of transition to, spoiler territory a little bit and talk about season two more specifically and then we'll get into the finale also. So you mentioned this that this pulls back a bit. So Xavier at the end of the first season, he knows that his wife is out there because they've been sold a bill of goods. They think everyone's dead, that it's just a wasteland out there. But as is often the case in these post-apocalyptic bunker shows, there's still life out there because you can't have a whole several season series set inside a bunker. So it has to turn out that. There's a conspiracy.

Actually, there is some stuff outside the bunker because it'd be pretty boring otherwise. So, yeah, he hears the radio call. And he goes to her. Turns out, you know, he's a licensed pilot to what can't he do? So he just takes a plane out there. He's kind of like a revolutionary. He's a rebel. He's a hero.

He's exposing the shadowy cabal of leaders for what they are. And he goes to find his wife who's in Atlanta and they're in this Colorado bunker. But the interesting thing is that we don't see Sterling. We don't see X until the end of the season two premiere because we meet this new character, Shailing Woodley. Kalika just gave her flowers who plays Annie. And Annie is a new character who's hold up in Graceland, Elvis's Diggs, which made me wonder, is there anywhere? Because this is kind of a common trope, you know, Last Man on Earth, other post-boclactic shows. It's like when you have the place to yourself, you can just go.

and collect all the valuable artifacts. You can just post up in the fanciest house, whatever. Is there some monument, some landmark you have your eye on if you're in the apocalypse and you have your choice of housing that you're just going to settle in someone's mansion? The White House. White House, yeah. I mean, it's an obvious pick, I guess, but yeah, it's probably a pretty good pick.

So there's a couple of them. So this is the reason. So I thought about this before because there's a movie called Damnation Alley. I love you guys saw this back in the day. That's one of those ones. They were making all of these post-apocalyptic movies in the 80s. And it's like, what happened when nuclear war happens? Blah, blah, blah, blah.

But Damnation Allie is one where the lady lived in like this mansion. And, you know, she came down and it felt like she was, you know, everything under control. And then she actually is kind of crazy because she hasn't seen people in a long time. whatever. She ends up getting with the group. They have big, huge radioactive roaches in the movie. It's really crazy. Go watch it.

But that made me think about that for the first place. The White House is the obvious answer because the White House has all the facilities that you need. But also, when you think about it, you don't want a place, like, you don't want a high-rise, right? Because you don't want to get stuck in the elevator at some point. You want a place, really, where the chances of you getting fucked up in the place that you live, very low. Yeah. Right? But the amenities there are high.

So it's either like a casino type of area where you could like hang out if it's on like, if it's like one floor or something like that and they got a nice hotel with it where you don't have to use the elevator and stuff. Or it's like one place fixed to the ground. It has everything. So it would be the White House or like, I don't know, like the Spelling Mansion or something like that. What about you? Yeah. I think the problem with the White House is that you're going to attract attention. there because people are going to gravitate toward the White House. They want to see if anyone's

there. Oh, wait, there are other people around or I'm the last person on Earth? I mean, it depends. If you're the last person on Earth, you have your choice. But if this is the typical post-pacly scenario where you might have roving bands of marauders around, then I would say probably avoid the White House because that's probably going to be a top priority for them. So you might want to just be in the middle of nowhere somewhere, probably, right? You don't really, now if you're by yourself, you probably do want to be somewhere urban, some sort of. city center or at least suburban so that you have access to supplies. But if there's still just gangs around, then maybe you want to be more in the middle of nowhere.

So, you know, no one. I have a, I have a, I have a thought about this. Okay. I know where I want to be. Yeah. Bentonville, Arkansas. Okay. That's not far from where any is.

Tell me why. Benville, Arkansas is the headquarters of Walmart. Ooh. Good thinking. So, but there's a couple of things. couple other things about Benville. Benville is where a ton of rich people live because they have Walmart there.

And I don't know if you know, but Walmart is a very successful company. So there are a lot of rich people there. The Walden family lives there. It's like a very rich place in Arkansas where people live. It's a Benville, Arkansas. But there are also other headquarters

of Fortune 500 companies that are there in Benton, Because they want to get close to Walmart. So like Tyson Chicken is there. And there are a couple of other places that are right there that are around Benville because they want to be close to Walmart. They're also distribution centers and stuff that are in that area as well. So if you're living there, you got Rich Diggs.

Okay. They got all kinds of stuff in Bentonville that they wouldn't have in other places like these high class, falluding museum of arts and all this kind of stuff like that. But you also have supplies around. Yeah. Because of all the stuff that's near there so you can go harvest all that stuff for a while. Okay. That's good thinking.

Can I come? Can we split? Is Bentonville big enough for the both of us? It definitely is. We could be the kings of Benville. Like you and me, we arrange people. And you know, you're going to have, you know, Walmart got guns in it and all that stuff. Sure.

Everything that we need is going to be right there. All right. All right. Well, we work that out. That works. And it looks like about a five-hour drive to Graceland where Annie sets up. So if we want to visit, we can do that. So she's a tour guide at Graceland.

And so she just hunkers down in the basement there in the Kings digs. So what do you think of the character of Annie? Just now that we know the whole season arc. Again, spoilers. Annie doesn't make it. So. It's a pretty, pretty thankless part, ultimately, because, you know, she meets up with Dylan slash link.

I'll use his video game name. They have one little one night stand, and then she doesn't go with him on the road. And then she is left to fend for herself, at least until Xavier crash lands in her backyard, basically. but she's pregnant and she has some medical training, but not enough. And she suffers the fate of many an unfortunate mother in the post-apocalypse, which is that she bleeds out.

And she gives birth. This is, it's very much, you know, Ellie's mom sort of situation in The Last of Us, minus the zombies. And so it's a great portrayal. It's a character you really care about. And then ultimately, you know, the baby. becomes the charge, the sacred charge of X. So he basically adopts a kid that he has met along the road and Terry does too.

And I was apprehensive. We never got to see the conversation where X is like, I got a baby now. But I was wondering how that was going to go. You know, definitely some explanation. This is clearly a white baby, Terry. Don't worry about what's happening here. But, you know, she's picked up a kid along the way, too. So they're even...

Anyway, she gives her life, and then this baby basically gets passed via X to Dylan, and at the end, he's a devoted dad, I guess. But what do we make of Annie's part in this season? Because she doesn't survive to see it through. She's kind of the most important character in season two. Yeah. She's kind of her pregnancy and her entire story,

story, kind of set the terms and the rules for the entire season. So let's look at it this way, okay, in three ways. I'm doing this off the top of my head. By the way, I'm looking at Benville, before people will look this up. All right, so the companies don't have their headquarters in Benville. They have major satellite offices there. Yeah. But they're still there. Everything you need. General Mills, Colgate, Kraft, the Mars company, all of these companies are right there. let me have distribution series or not. You're going to be able to go ahead and get what I said was true.

Don't go think that Tyson Chicken's headquarters in Benville. It's a big huge satellite office where they also distribution and stuff like that. Bad news about Bentonville though, as we mutually read the Wikipedia page together. In in 1920, the first

Ku Klux Klan chapter was opened in Bentonville. How is that? You know what's funny about that? Yeah. Like, I glossed over that shit. And I'll tell you, I I'm from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. You take the good with the bat. I'm lost over that.

When I look, it's funny living out here or living in a place like New York, like anything that's named in any town in the South, like let's say I went through a place and it was called McAllister's Gulch, right? And it was in Baton Rouge. Like, there's no McAllister's Gulch, but let's say it was there. You go and you see McAllister's Gulch.

Just don't go look up who McAllister was. Just like, don't, if you want to, just go have fun at the Gulch, hang out with your friends. Yeah. But don't look up who McAllister was. Because if you look up who McAllister was, you're going to see he was a general in the Confederacy. Yeah. He had 5,000 slaves. So, like, just don't do it.

So I've learned this lesson a long time ago. Yeah. There was a whole Confederate monument in Bentonville. I'm looking at the whole thing. It's not great. But it's Arkansas. It's far for the course. It's the way it goes.

The clan has cleared out in this scenario anyway. Right. So when you think about Andy's character, you think about three things that the show uses her character to do. Shout out to Foggle, Fogel. Number one, the show uses her character to prove that they were highly skilled people that survived the environmental cataclysm. Right. So the first thing you see with Annie's character is that she was a mental. medical student.

But for some reason, she didn't have the nerve or there was too much trauma in her back story. I mean, we go back to Annie's childhood. Yes. Right. Yeah. But that she's brilliant, right? So that establishes the framework that there are brilliant people who, through guile, a little bit of luck and circumstance were able to survive. So Annie's character just let you know that there are many annies, right?

There are many annies. And this is how they survived. Number two, Annie's meeting of Dylan and the rest of the people are link and the rest of the people that he's traveling with kind of lets you see how people are surviving. And not just that they are surviving, that they have bacon, that they can fashion vehicles to move around, but that they still have goals.

That is really important for the season. Because the season ends up setting up this dynamic where they're competing interests of people. And that's not what the first season was about. The first season was about competing inches of people, maybe inside of the bunker. But now the second season sets up, or Annie's character sets up,

that people still have things that they want to do. They still have goals and desires. They still have visions about how the world should be run. All of that stuff did not die during the apocalypse. It actually endured the apocalypse just like Annie did. And also, through her character, last thing, there is a birth. Yeah. Incredibly important.

There's a part in the show where they just go, babies are built to survive. They say babies are built to survive because Annie's baby is taken by Sterling and then, like, he has to travel with the baby and all of that stuff. I don't know if he must be stopping in Benville. Like, where the fuck is he getting formula from or any of that crazy shit? Yeah. But whatever, fuck a newborn baby. But like babies are meant to survive. What that really signifies is that humanity is built to survive.

And it's not going to be easy to kill humans off of the earth because of the perseverance of the human spirit, the ingenuity of the human mind, and the depth of the human emotional experience. And those are the three things that Annie's character sets into motion in this new world. That character completely redefined. the entire show. Yeah.

And there's a flashback to the first baby born in the bunker and how important symbolically Cal the president thinks that will be. So I must say in my experience, babies are not really built to survive. You've got to do everything for babies. Babies are helpless.

Babies are completely incompetent. My baby survived not because of my baby, but because my wife and I did everything for that baby. Babies useless. But what if it was, But what if it was, we always have adventures together. Like we've gone to Bentonville.

We've talked about other stuff. And like, you know, we always have adventures. We remember the adventure we had in New York. It was very special. But what if it was like 5,000 years ago, though? How did those babies survive? I mean, people had to take care of them. Yeah.

But at some point, they had to be little G's. Yeah. They were so G's than they are now. Yeah. We're coddling them today. It's just cradle to the grave. You know, we want some self-reliance. Push them out of the cradle.

feed yourself the formula. We don't have to do everything for these babies. I'm going to prepare you for life. A little tough love. That's what I'm saying. Anyway. Get out of here. So, Annie meets her demise at the end of the season, as does the bunker.

I think the other important part that Annie plays, though, is, you know, she learns to trust again, right? Because she's had this tough upbringing. And she expects, like, she's seen too many post-pocalyptic shows and movies. And so when Dylan and his crew show up, She assumes that they're there to pillage and rape and kill. And really, they're not. They're seemingly pretty nice guys, at least until the end of the season.

So I think that kind of subverts the post-aparct the trope a little bit. But then she has to learn to trust. She has to open up to X. She ultimately has to entrust her child's life to X. And he shows her through his trust in humanity that people are inherently good, that you can't go through life, just expecting everyone. is out for themselves and they're going to turn on you. So that's the more hopeful, optimistic message of the show that she learns and also conveys. So one of my concerns, I think,

for the show was that the bunker is really distinctive, even if it's not unique. It's a unique bunker, you know? It's not like the silo bunker or the fallout bunker. It's a much nicer bunker. You wouldn't even know you're in a bunker most of the time. And that's kind of the hook for the show, that, wow, there's this bunker. It's underground and it's a Truman show sort of setting. And It looks like real life more or less. So if you lose that and you're just kind of roving around the world and it turns out that the world's, you know, three to five years on is pretty much okay, like at least in terms of the environment.

I mean, there's disaster brewing. It's going to get worse. You're going to get greenhouse gases, but the initial disaster has passed. I was worried it would be a little less distinctive. Like, this is the bunker show. And now it's not the bunker show. It's just another kind of wandering around the wilderness show. And there are a lot of shows like that.

So that was my concern, but ultimately, I still enjoyed it. And X just kind of carried it and his mission and his determination. And we still got glimpses of the bunker and we got flashbacks of the bunker. But it was kind of preparing us, I guess, for the new normal of the show, because season three, no bunkers anymore. Or maybe there's an entirely different bunker, but not the bunker that we know and love. Yeah. The show without the bunker means that they have to establish a new paradise.

Yeah. And I kind of feel like that was what the final shot of the season was establishing. You know, it pills back, it pans back from Xavier, and you see that all the factions have combined now. You have the train people plus link slash Dillon's people, plus the people from inside the bunker. And they're outside. People are making fires.

They're doing whatever. There's cars and stuff like that. whatever they've been able to bring out of the Paradise bunker. And maybe that's the new paradise. There's some built-in sort of problems in there. X has the user codes and stuff to Alex. Dylan Wads Alex. The fight for Alex is a thing.

So there's not going to be a bunker, but there probably will be a new paradise. Then, of course, you get the pan, the whip pan 100 miles away. That really weird horse that's outside the Denver airport. You ever seen him before? Yeah. There's a lot of conspiracy theories about the Denver airport.

And what's going on in there? And is there some 100 mile long secret tunnel to NORAD and government experiments? It's all true. It turns out confirmed by Paradise Season 2. Right. Yeah. I was leaving the airport. I'd never been to Denver.

I was leaving the airport. And I saw that horse, man. And I was like, what the fuck is that? It's like it's a weird fucking thing. It's like, you know, you leave the airport. I'm there in Denver. I was going there to do some kind of TV conference or something like that. And I see this fucking horse.

Yeah. And he's back on his hind legs. He's a black horse. And so, you know, shout out to the community. And he's got red eyes. Yes. And I'm like, what the fuck is this horse doing? Yeah.

And I never thought I would see that horse again. It's an anatomic. I didn't know what time I would be back to Denver and stuff like that, but I was fixated on him. And then at the end of paradise, they go right to him. And then they go underground. And I'm like, there's that fucking horse again, man. Yeah.

And the horse is, it's modeled accurately when it comes to the full physique of the horse. The horses is hung, as horses are, I suppose, by reputation. So we'll find out what that means. But yeah, New Paradise. and maybe the paradise is the friends we met along the way, we'll see. But of course, there's some discord here, and there's still, you know, there's Jane, for instance. Oh, Jane, yeah. She's a lot friendly and happy-go-lucky agent who's been protecting Sinatra and various other people.

But then as we learned through her flashbacks, she's had maybe the toughest childhood of all. And also there's like a secret prophecy that she's going to be a killer. and is that related to Alex, or is that just a completely random thing? So Alex, which is what everyone's wondering, who's Alex, what's Alex throughout the season, Alex is a super advanced quantum computer who can predict things that have not yet happened and could also maybe bring them about and can manipulate time, which scientifically is pretty dodgy. I mean, I was reading up on quantum computing here. and you know, there's like a shred of truth to this maybe,

but the idea that like a quantum computer is going to change time for people, you know, little shaky, but look, it's a super advanced quantum computer. So, okay, I guess we'll go with it. And it turns out Dylan is this quantum computing expert, and he builds this computer, and that's why he is going to the bunker. It's not the typical, like, we want to conquer the bunker so that we can get the food and stuff and be safe. It's because they've got my quantum computer hold up in there.

Though it's actually your princess is in another bunker, right? So now X, now that Sinatra has gone down with the ship, sacrificed herself to keep everyone from being exploded when the bunker explodes or implodes, now she's delegated control of Alex or, you know, it's his new sacred charge. He's got to go to this other bunker under the horse in the Colorado airport. and do the bidding of the computer, protect the computer? Who knows? We'll find out in season three.

Can you explain to me? Okay, so look, I asked what Alex was, and everybody was figuring that Alex was some sort of AI, but then also people were like, it might have to do a time travel or something like that because they're unanswered questions like Jane's episode. They predicted her. Her birth was predicted.

Yeah. And some guy was compelled to go and try to warn her mom about her and stuff. So there's something that's happening. From what I do know about loss, is it's lost-esque in some kind of way. There's something that's going on. You can't fool us, folk, women. There's something that's happening.

But what is a quantum computer? Like how, how, what is that? So as I get older, I'm starting to just like, you know, stop these shows to Google stuff. Yeah. Like, what is a quantum computer? Why would a quantum computer in any way

be able to affect like the flow of time. Yeah. So it's a super advanced computer. You know, like there are concerns that quantum computers within a few years are just going to crack all of the encryption that we use for everything, basically,

and that like no passwords will be safe anymore because these computers will just be so advanced. But it's just like, quantum stuff is complicated. I'm not a theoretical physicist here. But, you know, there's like the whole idea of quantum entanglement where like particles can be connected

across a distance, you know, and like quantum superposition and all this stuff. Like it could be exponentially faster and more powerful than a typical computer. And like they've done some experiments where you can take an atom or something, take a particle and like rewind it a second or a millisecond or something. Like theoretically there's some basis to this,

but the idea that you could then extend that to like a community and people is just, you know, beyond anything that we could conceive of. We're firmly in the sci-fi realm here. So this is very much a techno-babel, hand-wavy, sure, quantum computer. Okay, let's go with it. But it reminds me, like, it's almost a different type of show now because it has graduated to, it's always been sci-fi in a sense, in the sense that, like, we're in a future

post-pocalyptic scenario here. We hope that's sci-fi. But now it's kind of graduated to almost paranormal territory, because, like, there are parts of this season where we're into like X files where, I mean, literally X is getting like premonitions, you know, premonitions. He's like seeing visions of some sort. And there's like deja vu going on. There's like a matrix aspect to this. And then we learn it's the quantum computer just messing with their minds in some way. And we don't really know what that means, ultimately what the upshot of that is. And the one thing that worries me, so when Sinatra hands off

this key card to X. She is basically like, you know, he's like, what makes you think I'm going to do any of this for you? And she says something to the effect of like, I think you already have. You already did it, yeah. Yeah, or like, you know, Alex has already saved us because Alex is the contingency plan. If the bunker didn't work, we have this supercomputer that's going to bail us out and save us from this worst case scenario where Earth turns into runaway greenhouse effect and we turn into Venus or something. So she's just like Alex has already taken. care of it. So do we end up in this scenario where there are multiple timelines and like, is there still suspense at that point? Because if we can't even understand what this computer is

doing and the computer is kind of like taking care of it and we don't even know what's happening, then do we just trust in Alex and say, well, I guess it'll all work out because Sinatra seemed convinced that it would. So narratively, this is an interesting question because part of the eerieness of the show was that the normalcy of the bunker existed. Knowing that the bunker was artificial was very important for the tone of the show

because it's like any show where it's like the 1950s, but it's really not the 1950s, or it's like it's on Earth, but it's really not Earth. It's like the end of interstellar, right? The end of Interstellar, and, you know, he goes to that little thing that they have and they're playing the baseball game and then they hit the baseball and it comes on the other side because it's the fucking thing is a, is a cube or not cube or whatever it is a sphere. Yeah.

That's inherently eerie. Is it really night? Is it really day? Like, who's controlling the day? Who's controlling the night? If that doesn't exist, it's essentially just another post-apocalyptic show with people roaming. around and we got a lot of those. Yep. Right? We got like we we've seen that. We've experienced that.

Yeah. And as a matter of fact, I'd argue that if there are no zombies, that's not even that interesting. You know what I mean? Yeah. I'd argue that the only thing that makes the walking dead interesting is post-apocalyptic everybody walking around and the superflu happen is the fact that there's zombies. If they're no zombies, fucking cares. What are you going to do? It's a shit. Then it's a show about farming. That's the whole show. Yeah. Right.

So that's a paradise problem, which makes me think that not only is the show going to be super duper, even more so flashback heavy next season. We'll see how much work they have for James Marsden next year. They always use him a couple of times. But that there's another bunker. That there's another bunker or another settlement or something else that brings us back to that tone of where trying to feign normalcy in a post-apocalyptic world,

they got to be able to stick with that because that's the show's calling card and coming back to that really worked when X's character was outside of the bunker because you got to see the brutal reality of what people were living with outside. But you'd come back to the quaint

sort of synthetic reality of what was happening inside the bunker. If that's gone, I don't know what you replace it with. Yeah. We know there's the bunker where the supercomputers hold up, but we don't know if that's a habitat for humanity or not. So, yeah. Well, the one guy lives there.

He's hanging out. What's his story? Yeah, we'll get a flashback in season three, I'm sure. And we'll learn what his story is. I also, look, the season two finale was entertaining. But I had some grapes with that episode. You know, it felt to me like the first time that it was running off the rails a little bit, you know, just like, do they know what they're doing? here? Do they know where they're going? I lost a little confidence in the roadmap. And just like the

plot mechanics of that episode. And I know it's, you know, it's sci-fi. It's just you can kind of accept it or not. But the whole like, you know, it's the indestructible bunker. It's the Titanic, basically. Like, you know, it's unsinkable. It can't be defeated. And then this nightmare scenario happens and there's this whole cascade of crises and suddenly the bunker ends up imploding. But the, way that that happened when I actually stopped to think about like, wait, why is this happening exactly? It didn't make any sense to me, really. It's like, you know, they were trying to force the doors open by fooling the sensors, the computers, into thinking that they were running out of air. So they just kind of like destroyed some of the sensors. And then at the same time, the people at the tower were

trying to put the place on lockdown. And somehow those two things, it was like one person's trying to open the door, the other person's trying to close the door, and that caused a catastrophic meltdown where the reactors are melting down for some reason. That's all it takes. Like, one person's pressing the door open button and the other person's pressing the door closed button, and they didn't think of that. And this somehow caused like reactors to overheat and we're melting down. And that just, it didn't track for me when I was thinking, like, wait, why is this crisis happening exactly. Well, do you know another reason why the show isn't really prestige?

Why? It's not this. The show is very heady plot-wise. Yeah. But it's not smart, right? Right. And you think Graceland has enough food there for three years? How did the people that all, so all of the people that were in the basement of the mail room?

Mm-hmm. So they stayed in the nuclear, but. It's seven people down there. Yeah. They got hatching eggs. It's just, it's, for three years is a long time. And they basically just go, okay, these people survive. They had some chickens.

They did some stuff down there. They, were they able to plant? They had everyone that they need. They had a nurse. Turns out she wasn't really, they had an engineer that wasn't really engineered, but they still survived. But there's one point in Annie's, story where she offers Sterling K. Brown some food and she goes, I hope you like rat.

Yeah. So in a show that was trying to be smarter, they would show how she caught the rats. You know what I mean? Like they would show how she caught the rats or not even show how she caught the rats, because if we go back to the walking dead, in shows like that, the fight for resources is a part of the plot. Yes. Like how you do what you do, that's a part of.

of the plot. Well, hey, we fucking have to fight because this is the guy that has the only water pump in the whole fucking county. Which bothers me sometimes because it's like 99.9% of people are dead. Like just go somewhere else, you know? Go to Bentonville or wherever. It's like you don't have to fight some tyrant over this little plot of land where you happen to end up. Just like go somewhere else, you know, go the next town over.

There's probably like a store that no one has even raided yet. it just seems like there's always this great scarcity of resources. And meanwhile, if everyone's dead, they should just last longer. Anyway, that dollars me- No, no, no, no, no. Stay here real quick before we move on. Yeah. This has always been a thing.

Okay. So like, if everyone's dead and they're like, let's say that there are two million people left in the whole world, or let's say it's even three, you have infinite resources. Yeah. Especially if you can move around in vehicles. You have infinite resources. you have infinite reasons. Legitimately, in one city, you could scavenge

and you could probably do it for about 10 years. Maybe more. Yeah. Maybe more. Yeah. And that's before you have to learn how to grow, right? Before you have to learn how to grow. Yeah.

So here in this story. For the rest of my life. Yeah. Here in this story, I like go, hmm, I'm sitting down on Washington with Kalika. Annie's story is so, it's so emotional. Dense.

The hook is so It works so well That I don't ask you know What is she doing down there? Yeah They ran across the store Ran across and basically grabbed what they could grab While everything was going to shit

And she survived three years. Yeah He survived He survived going from Tennessee to Atlanta It's not terribly far With a newborn baby baby. He goes, do you have anything to heat up water she needs a bottle? What the fuck are you

heating up though? Like, you're giving the baby some hot water? Like, what are you feeding the baby? Where did you get it? Like what, like, just one scene of him breaking into like a Win Dixie and taking formula. Then maybe someone sees them. Whatever. They don't do any of that. They go, he could take care of babies. You go, babies are meant to survive. The baby's fine. Yeah, sure. Just leave him in the rubbles. You'll find them there three days later. sure it's not my experience but okay yeah this is this is not an issue on pluribus because you can just get the hive mind to bring you stuff so you don't have to worry about that but yeah that bothers me a bit and another thing that bothers me is like in this finale especially when you get like

the emotional reunions and meanwhile the reactor's melting down and it's like just catch up later like get to safety and then hug and you know share what you did the last three years. Everyone I'm watching was like, go. Like the alarms blaring, this place is about to blow, and you're just having these heartfelt reunions, just, you know, table it for a second. So that and then, like, yeah, it's like there's an army massing outside the bunker and conveniently, we have to open the doors to release pressure on the reactor. Like, what? How does reacting, you know, open a concrete door? What does that have to do with the reactor that's buried underground? I don't know. So it's best not to think about these things too closely

and just enjoy the roller coaster ride of the show. Sometimes the show uses the fact that it is insane to ground itself. So when he walks in there, he's talking to her. I'm talking about Link to Sinatra. And he goes,

she goes, what do you want? He goes, I want a nuclear reactor. Part of me was like, well, that's impossible. So you can't do that. Okay, so he has no way. He can't.

That's impossible. All right. But when she calls him on it, I go, oh, there are some rules. So we're not expected to believe that they could hitch a nuclear reactor to the back of the truck and pull that bitch to Georgia. Like we're, so that, so there's something, there are rules that exist. They might not make any sense. but there are rules that exist. But it seems as if the show comes from the strict school of,

if we say it, it's true. So when the president was like, what happens if all of these things happen at the same time? I was like, you know, it's going to happen now. Yeah. All of these things are going to happen at the same time. Yep. Yeah, got to open the doors.

Got to take the pressure off the reactor. It makes sense if you don't think about it too hard. So, yeah, look, I'm glad that Sinatra and her husband hooked up one last time because it seemed like it had been a bit of a dry spell for them. So that's good. And, you know, I'm excited about the future of the show. I'm a little apprehensive too just because even though it's just a wild show, it has been somewhat grounded at least. And so now if we're into the truly futuristic territory of the super advanced AI that can change time and predict the future, I don't know. Maybe it all just kind of falls apart.

we can't kind of track the plot the way that we did. But I'm along for the ride and, you know, I hope they have a plan. I don't know that I have a sense. You know, it's like watching Severance, for example. I feel like they know where they're going and I trust them to take me there with Lost. Didn't always have that sense. Not sure I have that sense with Paradise at this point, but until they really let me down, I'm on the end and I can't wait for season three.

Ben, remember the rule. Yeah. all smart shows have to get dumb. Yeah. A show can't begin smart and then stay smart. The show starts premise heavy, super duper duper dense, and by the end of it, it just gets down to who's fucking who. And that's just, that's the way that it happens. There are very few smart shows that say it's smart and or say.

stayed smart, kind of. But the smarter you start, the dumber you end up. Yeah. Well, if you start dumb, can you get smart? Or is it too hard? You know, I'm thinking about it. Yeah. And maybe you can. Maybe you can.

I have to think. I'm thinking about it and maybe you can. But it's like this show was never ever the smartest. It is really, really good. Yeah. But this next season is almost certainly to be a battle between

Link and X. And I'm here for it. I can't wait. I love Paradise. Me too. Yeah, it's really great. It reminds me of, you know, we've talked about loss.

It reminds me of Jericho, that CBS show from like 20 years ago, post-apocalyptic show. It reminds me of this show I love that no one has watched called Travelers, which is like a Canadian sci-fi show co-produced with Netflix. It's on Netflix.

And it's like a, it's very much like what Paradise just turned into. It's like a future. AI is trying to send agents back to the past to prevent a disaster, sort of a Terminator-style scenario. So it reminds me a lot of those things, but it's also its own thing. And, you know, just to see Xavier sprinting across the city one more time like he did in the series premiere, I will be sprinting to Hulu when season three returns. So great stuff, great performances, great plotting, and great to talk to you about it, Van. Thank you. Always. What we're doing

next. Boy, I don't know. We'll have to we'll have to plot. We'll have to get together in Bentonville and figure out what we're covering next in our new headquarters. What we should do? I want to talk baseball with you this year. Oh, I would love to talk baseball. Yeah. I'm so into baseball. Like never before. I'm the world's probably foremost baseball mind. Yes. Right now?

As far as like what's going on and different, you know, if you got any questions about ABF, ABS, ABS, ABF. If you got any questions about the Which letters are in the engagement of it? Yeah. Yeah, if you got any questions about the pitch clock, disengagement I can talk about. Okay.

You know, any questions that you guys might have about the declining batting averages across the stars, you know, everybody's throwing the ball 170 miles an hour. Any of those questions you can bring them right here, I've got them. I would love to learn from you at some point soon. And thanks to Kaleika, too,

for bringing us together. You know, she was like the Annie of this episode, except that she's alive and well, but she connected us. And we bonded over Paradise. Paradise is our baby. This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business. Fast, reliable internet means everything for your business.

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may help reduce the frequency of minor digestive discomfort which includes gas, bloating, rumbling, and abdominal discomfort. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice. Off campus, L, every year after,

The Love Hypothesis, Sterling Point, and more. Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. What's up, Ringaverse? Steve Allman here with another Ringerverse recommends. For the month of March, it's coming up. My birthday's coming up, but I've still got one great movie that we have not yet talked about this month.

It might have passed you by if you haven't seen it yet in theaters, but it's going to be coming out on streaming relatively soon. I need to put this on your radar. That is Pixar's Hopper. It came out earlier this month, and this is truly a deranged little movie. It's directed by Daniel Chong, and he's a director that has worked on We Bear Bears, and he's done quite a few Pixar shorts. It stars a great cast, and this is about a girl who is trying to save her local glade,

full of wildlife, and recently is able to body swap with the mind of a robot that is engineered to be a beaver and can talk with other local real-life beavers and wildlife to convince them to come back to the glade and repopulate this treasured piece of land. And that seems like a simple enough and wild out there concept, but the humor and punchiness that comes with this movie is something that's actually quite unlike Pixar and is kind of akin to something like a Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network movie. Not to say that it doesn't have any of the sentimentality or any of the very good messages

that a lot of these movies are known for, but there's something about the type of irreverence and wild madcap comedy that comes with this movie that is truly refreshing for a Pixar movie and something that I think you need to support. If you, like me, are kind of sick of the idea of a Toy Story 5 being out there in the world,

these are the movies that should be supported and should probably be watched by people like you because this is the thing that's going to be getting people's attention. And don't let Hoppers pass you by. It's really funny, incredibly sweet, and something that Pixar has been missing for quite a while. And that's a really big breath of fresh air. Check it out. Hoppers. Our journey here with my March Ringiverse Reckonverse recommends. And I'm recommending a movie this month. It's the new movie, They Will Kill You, starring Zazi Beats. The action comedy horror is kind of getting mixed reviews and, you know, is probably

not going to do well with Super Mario and other movies coming out. But if you're just kind of looking for like a really violent action, good time type of feeling at the movie theaters, I think you could do worse than they will kill you. It is very highly violent. So I would not recommend, you know, taking those who are opposed to. of violence or, you know, younger members of the family to this one. But if you're looking for something that is just going to kind of be a good time, you know, and kind of stars some of, you know, your favorites in the, in the IP world, like Azazi, a Tom Felton, or some of the others out there,

it's a good time, you know. I'm not going to say it's like the best movie in the world, but the action sequences are definitely entertaining and fun. It's a really simple story. And it's, you know, it's kind of goofy. It's kind of fun. So I, I think I've said fun about 500 times at this point, but it is something I saw this month, and I definitely enjoyed and had a good time with at the movies. And I think it's a good one to enjoy with the crowd for sure, just because there are definitely some moments in there where crowd participation can enhance the film experience. So yeah, check out, They Will Kill You.

Let us know what you think in the comments and enjoy. Hey, Ringiverse. It's Matt James again from Button Mash. New month, new-ish recommendation for your. you. I'd say new-ish because I'm recommending a video game that came out in 2024, but has only recently hit consoles in early March of this year. The game I'm recommending is called Mini Shoot Adventures. It's incredible. I played through the whole thing back in 2024. Now that it's on Switch, I'm playing through the

whole thing again. It's basically a top-down Zelda game with the control mechanics of a twin stick shooter. So if you're unfamiliar, basically you move around with your left stick, and you shoot with your right stick. But despite the control scheme, it really screams Legend of Zelda. You can see that there are hearts that represent your life. It's very Zelda. There are dungeons. There are bosses and keys in those dungeons.

You unlock new abilities that let you get to places of the map you haven't been before. And as in any Zelda game, there are tons of very clever secrets to discover. And as you dispose of enemies in this game, you get to collect the crystals that they drop. And by collecting enough crystals, you'll level up, of course. And then you get to your level up screen, and you can choose what you want to focus on in leveling your ship up. So maybe you want to go just for straight up attack power. Or maybe you want to play a more conservative defensive game, and you want to increase the distance that you can shoot. So you can play a little bit safer.

you can really build your ship the way you want to play, which is really fun. And it's a satisfying leveling up system that makes you constantly feel like you're slowly getting more and more powerful. Very addicting loop. The controls in this game are so finely tuned. It just feels great to play. Like, you know, in Spider-Man, when you're swinging,

and it just feels good, like, that's kind of how this game feels. It just controls in a way that is just, satisfying to pick up and play. It has several difficulty settings so anyone can play this game without having to worry about it being too hard or too easy because it really runs the gamut based on those difficulty settings. Here's another great thing about it. It's $16 on Switch, PS5, and the Xbox series consoles.

I strongly recommend you check it out. It's a really good game. Mini Shoot Adventures. Hey, it's Ben. back again this time to talk Trek. It's the 60th anniversary of Star Trek. It's a time when we want to celebrate this franchise. I know I do. It's near and dear to my heart, but it's a tough time to do that. Star Trek, the franchise, is in flux right now. There's actually no live action Star Trek currently being produced, which is sort of a sign of the times. And look, New Trek has been hit and miss

up and down. And what franchise isn't really? If you're going to be prolific, then sometimes you're not going to nail it. And there's good Star Wars, there's bad Star Wars, there's good MCU, there's bad MCU. The same goes for Star Trek. And sometimes it goes for the same series within the same series from season to season. So we'll get Star Trek Picard. Rough couple first seasons, especially season two. Season three, great. Star Trek Strange New Worlds. One of my favorite Star Trek shows, Season one, good season two, season three, spotty, as we covered here on Ring Reverse recommends. Lower Ducks, fantastic all the way through. Can't recommend lower decks highly enough, but it's over, unfortunately. Discovery, started strong, sort of fizzled. Section 31, an abomination, a crime

against media. So that brings us to Star Trek Starfleet Academy, which just concluded its first season, and sadly has already been canceled, though there is an already shot. season two that will be coming out next year. I'm all for experimentation. I am not one of these people who thinks Star Trek has to be this or that. And this goes against everything that I understand Star Trek to be. By all means, experiment, take a time jump, do a comedy, try animation. Some of these experiments have worked really well. Others less so. Starfleet Academy is essentially an experiment with kind of a CW show, just like a YA show. We're going to have a bunch of kids, teens, adolescents, young adults at school.

And they're also going to be learning how to become Star Trek officers. And it will follow their drama and their romance and all the ups and downs of daily life at the Star Trek Academy. Now, one of the curious decisions, I think, is to set this in the far future timeline. So it's essentially a discovery spin-off, which means that if you didn't watch Discovery to the bitter end, you may not know what's going on. And the show doesn't do a great job of actually explaining the premise and the state of play in the universe. But you catch on eventually. The other thing is that, look, I'm all for a low-stakes franchise show. I love it.

Night of the Seven Kingdoms, great show. Wonder Man, great show. I even sign up for skeleton crew. The one way that Starfleet Academy went wrong, though, is if you're going to sort of start a start. out low stakes. You want to keep it bite size. You want to keep it to half hour instead of that full hour-long drama length. And some of these episodes, the stakes just did not match the running time. And it became kind of a slog. The other thing, look, the dialogue, not the best at all times, right? I think there's a lot of acting talent here on display. Holly Hunter plays the head of the

academy. Paul Giamatti, chewing scenery big time with all the prosthetics here. shouting and striding around the sets. There's a lot to like there. Holly Hunter loves to sit in unusual, atypical alignments. She never met a couch that she couldn't stretch out on or a captain's chair for that matter. It's a slow start. And I was not sold on this series after the first few episodes. I kept going largely out of loyalty to the franchise just to see where it went.

And I was rewarded because the later part of the season actually gets good. And partly because it sort of abandons that low stakes, it's just interpersonal drama, and it becomes kind of what Star Trek oven does, which is an existential fight for survival. And sometimes the science and the premises, they can kind of strain credulity a little bit. But once you start to see these young ensigns, these cadets, strut their stuff in these real world situations as opposed to fake flooding and tests and all of that, then the series really started. starts to soar, you know? Then we go from impulse speed to warp and then the season ends. And there's only one coming and the death sentence has already been pronounced. So that's unfortunate. But a lot of likable characters, especially Jaden, the kind of bookish Klingon character, put aside all of the complaints about Star Trek going woke or whatever as if Star Trek was ever not

woke. You just haven't been paying attention if you haven't noticed that. They're legitimate gripes and critiques about the way that this show is written and produced. And look, the look of New Trek, that sort of J.J. Abrams inspired aesthetic that a lot of these series has, it's not for me. I've never seen so much lens flare on indoor scenes. So that gets tiresome. But these characters, you do grow to care about them. It's largely well-acted. Sometimes the characters are almost too hot for Star Trek. You know what? That's controversial. There's plenty of hot people on Next Generation and elsewhere in the series. Too jacked for Star Trek maybe.

You're kind of taken aback by some of the size of the biceps in this show. Holly Hunter's included, for that matter. So I suggest give it more than the first few episodes. If you can, you will actually like the way that it goes later in the season, I suspect, which means that you'll be more upset, that it's evidently not going anywhere beyond season two, which is already produced. And hopefully they had some sense that this would. ending so that they could tie it up in some satisfactory way.

I don't know where Star Trek goes from here. There are two more seasons of Strange New Worlds, but both of those have already been shot. So right now, there is some suggestion that, yes, maybe a movie will be made. The latest attempt, Star Trek movies have been in development, hell forever. Who knows how Paramount Mergers will come into this, but it seems like they have some pretty good people selected

to take the films in a different direction. And I'd settle for any direction at this point. I want the best for Star Trek. There's some video games. There's a new Voyager PC game. There's a Star Trek infection VR game. I'm all for exploring the Star Trek space here. But this show, you will eventually grow to care about the cast.

It is one of those school shows where you only know like six characters and you're wondering what happened to all the other kids at this academy. And what do they think of your main cast members who are constantly like getting them in, huge trouble and life-threatening situations. I would watch a lower-dex version of Starfleet Academy where we just see all the other students who are kind of just diligently going about their business and studying and not getting themselves or anyone else into trouble. I'm just saying Star Trek probably needs a little bit of a new direction, maybe some new blood, maybe some new leadership.

But I appreciate a lot of what it has done in the past few years. And I actually appreciate a lot of Starfleet Academy. So give it a chance. What's up, Ring Reverse? My name is Alea, and I'm one of the producers on Midnight Boys, Poo-Pu, and my Ring Reverse recommendations for this month is Netflix's Live Action Season 2 of One Piece. Now, listen, I am not usually a fan of Western live-action adaptations of manga or anime. I'm looking at you, Death Note, but One Piece has been just a fun time, man. I am having so much fun with the show.

I really didn't think I would get as deep into it as I have so far. And season two only has furthered that. I think just the addition of the Baroque characters have been so much fun. They're so interesting, like, ability-wise. They're so interesting look-wise, especially Mr. Five. I think his fits are going super hard. And my favorite part about season two is that we're not really wasting any time. We're jumping in and going straight into the Grand Line. There's no filler episodes,

no beach episodes. We're jumping straight into island hopping in the Grand Line. And some of the storylines of these islands are so special in the way that they move the plot forward, but also in the characters in the worlds they introduce. Because we're seeing it for the first time just like Luffy and the Straw Hats. They don't know what they're getting into in the Grand Line. like they have been understanding in the East Blue. So we get to experience it with them all brand new. And we meet some characters that genuinely you want to be with forever. Like you hope that they come up later in the series.

You hope that you meet them on their island sometime later down the grand line. And especially you meet some amazing animals that you're super in love with from Chopper to our whale friend in the Grand Line. It's such a fun time. We're learning more about really the political system of the East Blue and the Grand Line. And it's super interesting to see how Luffy and the Straw Hats not only navigate that, but figure out what they want. The reason I really love this show is because it's my favorite genre of media,

which is Ragtag Group comes together, travels, and makes the way. world a better place as they're kind of going through it, which is essentially me just chasing the high of Avatar the last airbender forever. And I don't apologize for that. But One Piece gets you exactly what you're looking for there. So you also get the return of some of the characters from season one that you love slash hate, including Bugsie, the most annoying, but maybe the funniest character in One Piece. And Alveda, who is now TikTok famous for saying Slip, Slip lip fruit the way that she did. So it's a good time.

You're going to really enjoy it. I think anyone who might be new to One Piece would really enjoy it. So check it out on Netflix now and enjoy. Hey, everybody. This is Daniel Chin. And for this month's Ring Reverse recommends, I am recommending Season 4 of Invincible. Now, I know that there have been a lot of Ring Reverse listeners out there

who have been wondering where the Invincible coverage has been on the feeds. I don't know if the Midnight boys are going to be covering it on their show. I know they've mentioned it on the pod before, but I can tell you that for next month's Ring Reverse recommends, Ben will be spotlighting the full fourth season of Invincible, so he'll be having a more in-depth conversation about it then, so make sure you tune back in. And until then, I'm just here to say that if you're not watching Invincible,

now is the time. The first four episodes of the season have had their high and lows for sure. there are some really compelling character developments happening with Mark and Eve in particular, and there have been some great moments. But the show can also spread itself a little bit too thin by dividing its attention with too many characters, villains, and plot lines. And last week's episode four was a prime example of that. It was definitely the worst episode of the season and probably one of the worst of the series.

I think I saw on IMDB. It was the lowest rated episode of, series yet, which I think for good reason. I mean, doing a bottle episode on Mark and Damien Darkblood was certainly a choice, and it halted the momentum of the season overall. I know this isn't a glowing recommendation so far yet, but with all that said, this week's fifth episode is where the season really returns to form and gets back to what the show excels at. I've only watched ahead to this week's episode, and I won't spoil the specifics of it. But it gets back to that emotional character-driven storytelling, the action, and this central story that it's been interested from the very beginning, which is the fight with the Viltramite Empire that Mark has been dragged into.

If you've read the comics, you'll know what I mean when I say there are a lot of exciting stuff still to come in this run. And here is where the season really starts to hit its stride. So like I said, now is the time to catch up if you fallen behind on this show and tune back in for next month's Ringaverse recommends for an extended conversation about Invincible Season 4. It's Ben back again to bring this thing home. Sick me yet. I hope not. But I got to recap all of the picks that have been made. I have to share a listener nomination. And I'll give you a little sneak preview. So as you heard there in Daniel's recommendation of Invincible, we are planning to cover that further. Tentatively, that will be our spotlight conversation subject for Ringiverse recommends for April Invincible. After that, I'm thinking for May, we go for All Mankind Season 5, one of my favorite shows. It's back.

I'm excited. It's going to have to do battle with the final season of Outlander, but maybe I'll double up and do a recommendation for that as well. I've already recommended it on a past edition of this show. So keep your suggestions coming, keep your nominations coming to Ringers, Reverse Recommends at gmail.com. And this month's recommendation comes from one of our regular listeners, a buttmash devotee, J.B. Bonifacio, who has submitted for the month of March

2026, Slay the Spire 2. J.B. writes, with AAA releases like Resident Evil Requiem, Pokemon, Pocopia, Marathon, and Crimson Desert, March 26 was about as good a start to the year as you could ask for. and yet the game I spent the most time on this month was none of these. Enter Slay the Spire 2. The sequel to the 2019 deck-building rogue-like that, along with Hades, really ignited the whole rogue-like renaissance that we're currently in in 2006.

The basic premise is that you're trying to ascend a spire of death, armed with a basic set of offensive and defensive cards. Your goal is to discover new cards to craft a card deck capable of getting to the top of the spire. How you do that is up to you. Buy them at stores. them through combat or discover secret rooms and luck your way into it. As a rogue-like, every run is a bit like gambling. Sometimes you get lucky.

Sometimes you don't. But most of the time, you're threading the needle between risk and reward. And you're not losing any money, except the money you spend on the game, which isn't that much, as we'll cover in a second. The original Sway the Spire was super addicting. So how does the second one build upon the first? The short answer is that it's basically more of the same with a little something extra, but that's like turning a 10 out of 10 game into an 11 out of 10 game.

What are we on the midnight meter here? I'm talking about more character classes to experiment with, more card options for more strategies, and an all-new multiplayer mode where you can do cooperative runs with up to four players. Even though it is only in early access, it already is one of the top five most played games on Steam and sold 4.2 million copies in its first two weeks,

and it's only 2499. I can only imagine what the full release will bring. Thanks, J.B. Thanks to everyone who contributes to these. Again, ringerverse recommends at gmail.com. The inbox is always open. So let's talk about what was discussed. Van and I, of course, had an in-depth conversation about Paradise, specifically Paradise Season 2 on Hulu. Then I showed up again to tell you about Star Trek Starfleet Academy season one of two, sadly.

We know that now. Daniel Chin told us about Invincible Season 4 on Prime Video and Matt James weighed in on minishoot Adventures, the video game now available via consoles. Arjuna Ramgopal sang the praises of They Will Kill You, a major motion picture. And sticking with the theme, Steve Allman talked up the delightful Pixar feature Hoppers, followed by Alea, who sang the praises

of the Netflix One Piece Live Action Season 2. Finally, listener J.B. Bonifacio told us about Slay the Spire 2, now available via early access on Steam. A lot of good stuff. A lot of great stuff coming up in April. We will have continuing coverage of Daredevil Born Again season two. We will be covering the boys. We will, of course, be covering some Star Wars for the first time in a while.

We've got Darth Mall, Shadow Lord, coming up soon. And then we will get back to Invincible on Ringiverse recommends lots of big game coverage coming up, of course, on ButtonMash. And next up on the feed, we will have double-barreled bullet bill action. We will be talking about the series. Super Mario Galaxy movie on both Buttonmash and The Midnight Boys, Pew, Pew. So thank you so much for listening. Stay tuned because we've got a lot of great stuff coming for you in April on this show and others. Thank you to Devin Milnotto for producing this episode.

Thanks to Arjuna Ramgo Pal for greenlighting it, as always, and his senior podcast management. Thanks to Grumkin for accompanying me for the intro. She's asleep now. I don't blame her. And I will let you get to sleep and release you from your obligation. of watching Ringaverse recommends. Until next time, I hope that you'll recommend the Ringerverse. Feels like every product claims real protein these days.

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