The Watch - Ep. 95: 'Doctor Strange,' 'Westworld,' and the 'Black Mirror' Episode "San Junipero"

Episode Date: November 7, 2016

The Ringer's Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald discuss Marvel's 'Doctor Strange' (6:00), how 'Westworld' inverts 'Lost' (18:00), the fourth episode of 'Black Mirror' (30:00), and Anthony Bourdain's patriotic Houston adventure (40:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by American Express. Hey, American Express card members, you don't want to miss this. Now through December 31st, there is a big reason for you to shop small at local stores in your neighborhood. Learn more and enroll your eligible card today at Americanexpress.com slash shop small offer. That's Americanexpress.com slash shop small offer. Terms apply. I ain't sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk.

Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com and joining me in the studio Listening to Kid A and crying human tears over real robots! It's Indy Krivo! I can't believe you got your dandruff like that considering it is sub-arctic in the studio. Yeah, but when you have the warmth of two timelines just to snug you up. Oh, I get it. Like one's one blanket and one's another blanket. I don't know what's going on in here. I don't know what's going on in here. know if Tate and Joe are trying to do like a Letterman situation where it keeps people on

like on the... Is that a notorious letterman move? Yeah, Letterman kept his studio very cold because that he felt it kept people alert and active because if it was warm they would get a little slow and whatever so the audience suffered for it. I don't understand why it was just like, why can't we all just be comfortable? Well, here's

what I think. I think that maybe Tate has actually has a sideline in like smuggled organs and he has to keep the temperature at a certain... Our organs? Well, I don't know if he's harvested us yet, although I do have kind of a weird scar on my back that I didn't have before, and I woke up in a bathtub full of ice. But I'm just saying, like, I think people appreciate it when we set the mood. Yeah, you look like the Unabomber. We're going to talk about Dr. Strange,

then Westworld, San Junipero, the Black Mirror episode. Did you get people a warning that we were jumping? I did. Thank you for listening while you were out. I don't recognize podcast that I don't appear out. I give a very thorough, you know, outline of what we were doing, which is switching episodes. And then when we have time, if they very end, we're just going to talk a little bit about Anthony O'Burdy and Parts Unknown episode that we both adored. We might weep. Yeah. Let's get started with Dr. Strange. Doc Strange. Doc.

Andy, the latest origin story from Marvel Studios. Love origin stories. That's my first problem. Yeah. So I think that I watch this movie. Me too. It is very much, you know, what if we took Batman Begins in Inception, but took all the dread out of it and put a lot more fun in it and shaved till the Swinton's head. But I think that I hits some wall, and I don't know what movie ago it was, but I felt it very acutely in the first hour and 15 minutes of this one.

I was like, I got it. I'm okay. I don't need to start over with any more characters. To be fair, I agree with you. But to be fair, they've got it. gotten pretty good and ruthless at it. I mean, this dude was a neurosurgeon, and then he was a bum in Nepal in like eight minutes of screen time.

Yeah. They yada yada at the S out of it. And in a way, it reminded me of, it was, in a weird way, it was actually... Yada Yada A.F is my favorite insecure episode, actually. I thought that was season two. It's very true to comic books in a way in the way that they've changed around,

because if you look at, like... I know you love to do it, But when you look at like original Marvel comics, like stories from the 60s, the stories that introduce Spider-Man. I usually go back to the text whenever one of these come out. Like the Spider-Man origin story that Stanley and Steve Ditko laid out was one page. The Batman origin was initially one page. And then they just started. And then it was a trend in the last 10, 15 years.

Brian Michael Bendis at Marvel was a guy that sort of did this, where when he did Ultimate Spider-Man, which is he took something that was one page in the 60s and made it something like 12 issues. of only origin story. And so I feel like we are moving back in the direction of the 60s because this was basically all three of Nolan's Batman movies in an hour and 40 minutes.

With inception, just taking what they did in inception and we're like, what if we did that the whole movie? What if we just kept spinning? Yeah. I agree. So I admired the ruthlessness with which they got through the origin story. And I admire the ruthlessness from which they are like,

you know what, let's just take these cool things from other movies. Let's take the like open your mind part of the matrix. Let's take the cities collapsing and moving things with your mind from the inception. And let's take the quasi, like, yuppie becomes a martial arts student from Batman begins. Throw it all together, get out all the bad stuff. Well, and let's take the like C grade comedy alts from Iron Man 3 and put them in. Yes. I think this movie's, it's interesting. I think that people are battered and beaten down by comic book movies and by the Marvel machine at this point. And I'm a fan of Marvel movies in general. I think this movie's been wildly overrated.

Or maybe that's not the right way to look at it. I think that people are shrugging and saying, like all of them, it's fine. There's some things that are clever. There are some chances that are taken. It's winning. It is a winning movie. And I don't even mean that in a Charlie Sheen sense. Like the performances are good. It looks okay, except for that one weird shot where he's like swag surfing over the multiverse in the end. And it literally looks like Kevin Feigy was just like, Fine. Just put that in the movie. I do think there's actually some cool, intentionally campy special effects stuff happening in there.

And then also some like intentionally like, what if you, what if my lava lamp was like my world. And the score was actually in some ways more inventive than even the movie was because Michael Diakino put in a couple like Moog lines and he tried to get a little bit 70s into it, even though the movie kind of resisted that. It's interesting. So we're caging here. I'm not caging. It thought it was fine. It's fine. And I think that when you, we've kind of, I think that my problem with it is, as you get

deeper and deeper into your life, do you want to keep starting over with essentially, now we're going to do Paul Rudd, Benedict Cumberbatch, Black Panther, which I'm looking forward to? But we're going to have another set of origin stories and another set of meetup movies and another set of in person, like, honestly, can you guys just like get one bad guy that, like, is interesting? I think Black Panther, that's another good point.

Like a set of eyes over a dark moon who's like, I've been fooled by a riddle. It's like, are you fucking kidding me? Come on, man. That's a great Dorma movementation right there. I don't think Black Panther is an origin story. I think we got the origin story mostly in Captain America three. I think Captain Marvel might not be

because I think Queen Bree is showing up in one of the Avengers movies first. I hope so. I don't think that, I see, I feel like no matter what, they're still going to do a lot of origin stuff in those movies. Just to be like, in case you didn't catch this 11th subplot of Avengers 3. I think my biggest problem with the movie was that it's, as many of these things are, it's not a movie. It's the latest widget. And I don't even mean to be like, you know, death of Hollywood about it.

I just mean, look in the broad strokes of this. It was, it's so much easier to admire these movies. at this point as feats of business and IP engineering than creative enterprises. And I don't even mean that cynically, because whoever sat down, however many years ago with Kevin Feige and the rest of the Marvel Brain Trust and was like, so we're going to lay out these infinity stones

and we're going to connect the movies this way and it's going to build up to something. When they were like, what if the time stone was the eye of Agamodo? And someone was just like, and someone literally fell out of their bodies into the astral plane when they heard that. That's clever. The problem with that, in my opinion, and I'm saying this as a deep strange head,

I don't think that character is about time travel. They tried to make this movie fundamentally about this idea of time, and his big get is, you know, the loop where he beats this floating space demon. Anytime you want to jump back in with that voice, I'm fine with it. Oh, I can't be trapped with you, Betty Cumberbatch. First of all. And your weird mid-American accent. First of all, I love that he went to the Hugh Lurie School of American Growling.

I think that is a great choice. if you're not totally there in the American accent, you just start growling like a feral bear. Yeah. But that's just sort of not essentially what it is, but it is maybe more understandable than someone who can manipulate worlds and astral planes, which leads me in my other point,

which is I was a little bit saltier on it after I saw it, and I was doing some chatting with our friend Sean Howe who wrote a terrific book about the history of Marvel Comics, Marvel Comics, The Untold Story. And he was much more forgiving about the movie because he was basically saying, put it on paper. Like, think about what Dr. Strange is, not just the origin story, but like this, what you're asking audiences to accept.

Like, you can accept maybe a World War II soldier frozen in ice with a shield. You can maybe accept a North Scott. Yeah, that science is there for that. But this idea of everything also having a magic layer underneath it and you making these gestures in the air and blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, he was saying a lot, he was impressed that they basically streamlined it to something that people will pay their $14 to go see you. Yeah, I mean, a lot of these movies. are getting, they have huge budgets and a lot of talent behind them and you kind of make this, if you're not a real comics fan, like you make this agreement with yourself.

Where you're like, well, this is what Hollywood is giving me as a blockbuster, so I'm going to take what I can get out of it. To that end, it was interesting. You know, this movie, we had a little bit of controversy in the lead up to its release about the whitewashing of the ancient one character. And she's Celtic. Unfortunately, Dilda Swinton is by like seven and a half laps the best thing about this movie.

I know. It's like, but it was also, this is sort of my favorite thing about any movie, whether it's Dr. Strange or Conair, is when someone like Tilda Swinton is like, yeah, sure, I'll come take batting practice with you guys. And it's just like, but I brought like a redwood with me. It's like the scene in that everybody wants some when like the dude who's now playing Superman just takes a few cuts. Yeah, that's right. and it just marches off the field. I agree with that. I think that Loki, though, ChihuahedioForce performance as Mordeaux. Loki, not Loki.

Not Loki, because, spoiler alert, that's coming. He may have given my favorite Shakespearean British actor slumming in a science fiction movie performance since Christopher Plummer in Star Trek 6, The Undiscovered Country, where he's like, I don't know if you guys remember that one, Plummer. He basically acts the way Roy Choi does at the Sizzler Bar. in one of my favorite episodes of Parts Unknown with Anthony Bourdain, where he's just like, bring it.

And that's, you know, when he talks about how Shakespeare's better than the original Klingon, dude, Jewettel is just lit. He's like, we're doing this, we're doing this. On the flip side, Andy Bezitt Mediades or whatever, what was Rachel McAdams' sister detective season two character? Bezaredes? Yeah, we...

She gets to be... She gets to wear nothing but hospital scrubs, stand on one set, and just hits the fucking, William Hill afterwards puts it all in Manchester City to win. The biggest question that I have coming out of this movie

isn't what are they going to do with a sequel? Yeah, how does this connect to Thor? What does Benjamin Bratt's contract look like? How many days of work? What does Benjamin Brat's contract look like? Pangborn? Is that a... Hangborn? Wait a second. So there's a moment in this movie. I'm going to spoil it, too. I'm completely

proud of this. I'm so much McAdams to talk about still. Wait, just table it for a second. We got to ride the brat. There's a move. There's a point where like some guy tells Cumberbatch. Oh yeah, by the way, this one dude healed his severed spine. Not just any dude. And I saw him on the New York streets.

Some machinists. And he was like, he goes and finds Benjamin Bratt playing pickup under the BQE because there's wild games under the BQE. I don't think that's where he was. I think he was at the 338th Street Y from the Royal Tenenbox. I think he was basically like doing falconry up there. He is wearing like a Sergio Tuccini jumpsuit while he's playing basketball.

Also, Benny Bratt. Best moment. So he's like 55, right. Classic pickup basketball moment is when he walks off the court and somebody goes, Hey, Pangborn! Are you going to keep playing or no? And he's like, no. And then he's just like one scene, here's how you cure the nerve damage in your hands.

Now, pass it on. Chris, you stayed post credits, right? Yes. Because Pangborn back. Wait, he's in another, was there another credits jump? Oh, I didn't. You missed the tag, the stinger. We left after the-

With Pangborn? Wait, are you being sarcastic? I'm not. I am there as, if you stay past the credits, Spoiler, everybody. We find out what Mordo's up to, and Mordo now thinks there's too much magic. So he reaches inside a Pangborn, and he pulls that magic out of Pangborn. I'm sitting the Panborn back in the wheelchair now?

There's a scene of Benjamin Bratt collapsed with his hands, like, all palsy, and he's like, why are you doing this? Are you being serious? Yes. Does it happen when he's coming off like a high screen? And he's like, I'm open, top of the key, this is my hot zone. He looks like when a... Check out my shot chart.

When an NBA mascot goes off the trampoline and just bricks it and then hits the I can't believe I didn't stay. What a disappointment for me. You better go back. Let's do quick McAdams and we'll get out of here. My question about McAdams was, I mean this genuinely. What side hustle does she have in London? Because she did not take this movie for career opportunity.

Like, is she a Swansea fan? Like, was she ready for? Was she a secret sleeper agent against Brexit? Why did she want to spend time in London? Does that where they shot this? They shot the whole thing in London. Okay. I have no idea.

I'd be fascinated. Also, why didn't they just shoot her scenes in Pittsburgh? Because doesn't she just go into his cool apartment? Here's the other thing that I'm starting to notice. And people have complained about the sort of similar color palette of the movies, of all the Marvel movies and the tonal palette with the same jokes. I don't listen to this podcast, so that's news to me. Only my pods with Jason.

And I think that's valid. I also think you could look at it, you know, at the flip side again, you put on your, you know, president business hat, and you're like, that's smart. That's smart business. It's, you know, it's a unified product. But the main thing I got out of this is I think maybe they've gotten too good at doing this because this looked in many ways. The special effects were obviously very expensive, but the feeling of all of it altogether

look cheaper than some TV shows because what they do is, you know, if you really think about how much screen time your boy Mads-Mickleson has with his eye makeup, he's maybe on set for a week. McAdams bangs out all those scenes in the hospital in a week. This is a very... Pang-borne. Yeah. I'm just saying there... These things are so economical now that you're starting to feel the restrictions on the actors and on the scene.

And whatever. It just feels very, they went to Hong Kong, right? For the finale? You stuck around for that, right? I did. I saw that part. Also, shouts to the dude just flipping a walk. That looked incredibly authentically Hong Kong, by the way.

That's what I'm saying. They built a corner of a street for one scene. And then it says they're in Hong Kong. Yeah, but not everything can be Serpico. I mean, they've been shooting on backlots since they started making movies. No, I know. I just feel like we're starting to get. more and more, the limitations,

we've been saying this. We've been making excuses for a lot of these Marvel movies for a while, and I think this was the one where it started to flip for me. And all across the board, because, yeah, it's fine. It was fine. But reading the reviews, just the reviews to me, the really positive reviews, just sort of reeked of exhaustion. Like, it was just like waving the white flag, like,

of course it's fine. Yeah. They're never going to be worse than that. But, you know, I'm still rolling on that train where I think maybe Guardians of the Galaxy was the best one because it felt the least connected to the rest of them. I was actually just having this conversation with Fantasy where I was like, what do you think the best one of these was? And we were just really, it's definitely not like one where you're like, oh, it's so hard

to make a top three. You know what I mean? I think that, like, in some ways, Iron Man is still the best one I've seen. And Iron Man 3 is like weirdly my favorite. Well, the whole, Ben Kingsley's performance in Iron Man 3 is my favorite thing. Well, it's just a weird movie. You talk about taking chances. It's a weird movie.

talk about breaking them up a little bit and like breaking up what they're supposed to be. I think that those are probably... Winter Soldier is good, I think. Winter Soldier is very entertaining. That's the thing is with Winter Soldier and Civil War, both of them were sort of clouded by like the marketing job that they did where they were like, it's like the parallax view. The thing about Winter Soldier that I think holds up, it is, let me full stop, not the parallax view. But I remember watching it and then I've watched it again, and it is very entertaining.

And the world building and sort of reveals and it feel a little more organic and surprising and just engaging. It moves. it moves, whereas this movie felt like it was very much on a track because it had to get to the next one. Small shout out. The current Doctor Strange comic book, I'm a Marvel Unlimited guy. I subscribe to this. You're great. This is great.

This is your version of the West World Reddits. Written by Jason Aaron, who also does great work on Thor, drawn by Chris Baccholo, really entertaining and really a vision of what the possibilities of the character are in a very, very fun way. It is also bonkers in a way that the movie wasn't allowed to be. You are so full optimism. Let's talk about Westworld. Hey, sure. I know people missed me last week. Hello.

Here's my, I just want to do a macro thing right here. Okay. Do you think this is open source prestige television at this point? In that it's pulling things from so many different sources. I know that they made it, had to go back and fix it, have now like there's, I've been reading some interviews where they're sort of trying to piece of chronology and like directors are like yeah I shot this episode I thought it was going to be four but it wound up being five I Anthony you know there are scenes that they went and they redid the pilot almost entirely etc like whatever the real story is of the production

this show has basically taken all of the theorizing all of the um you know choose your own adventure all of the you solve it kind of fan employing like real deep fandom in people and also like awakening their inner sleuth. And it's just done away with all that ugly character. Yeah. And story. And like, I mean, there's story, but it's really plot. Yes.

Because story tells you something about the world you're watching. There is no Westworld. Like, Alison Herman kind of hinted at this in her piece. But if it's in space, it's just, only thing it really says is like, oh, well, we've got no point in society where we can go to space. It's not like, oh, it's in space. if it's happening in two timelines, like, who cares? It's just, that's just a trick.

And I actually really find this show super entertaining. That was hashtag Greenwald right there. Why, did you say that before? No, but that's my take. You don't listen to my part of the phone. No, I do, but usually all I hear you say is that you don't care about robots. What if we only listen to the show like in mono? We only listen to ourselves.

I'm like, good point. This is going to be really interesting to move into San Junipera, which we're not doing yet, but it's a very interesting comparison to Westworld. I think that I have definitely been riding that robot thing too hard, and I apologize. Because that is a symptom. Got a note from the Robots Union, didn't you? That is a symptom. I'm bought and sold, man.

That is a symptom not the disease. All I mean is what makes stories about robots interesting is what is to use them as reflections. And, you know, so to that end, this week's episode, I thought the stuff with Mave was engaging. I thought it was entertaining. It was also light. Yeah. And I thought it was intriguing because we were just able to spend time with someone and start to figure something out, start to piece something together,

start to feel for her in the circumstance, and there was a little bit of fun to it as well, playing into the character that was built for her. Yeah, because whenever motion picture soundtrack comes on, I always feel like fun is the key thing. But I was thinking, and then not to go too deep Marvel Unlimited, the best comic book that I have read in many years, at least in Smat for Actions, Hawkeye,

is writer Tom King and Jason. We're not talking to Jason Concepcion this week, but he's been all over this and wrote a great profile of Tom King for the Ringer, a comic book series called The Vision, based on the character that, you know, Betany plays in the movies. But Betty's not playing priests, he plays the vision. This is so disturbing and beautiful and brilliant, and it is essentially about can, the comic book, can synthetic people be human? And what it is that ultimately makes them human is fucking up, like really fucking things up. And that is what makes them human more than anything else, not the perfection or not the ability to. to integrate. And so that made me realize it's not the robot thing. It's to tie it all the way back to what you're saying. It's the lack of interest in what they're saying about anything else.

Yeah. And when I speak to people about, when I speak to people about Westworld, because I like to go out and press the flesh, you know what I mean? I'm like Tony Hopkins. I go down into the world. Sure. I touch the rump. I touch the robot dogs. And people who like the show, generally, in my opinion, are pretty, they just don't get worked up about what it. It's not, which I understand because they don't need to talk about it on a podcast. And maybe that's why it has 11 plot lines. They like watching it because they like solving puzzles. It's Sudoku.

It's, you know, it's scratching a niche that has been lingering since maybe because Game of Thrones is away or since Lost has been off for a few years. It's exactly right. I don't like watching TV for that reason. And so I find it frustrating. Right. This is the thing is that like with Game of Thrones and with Lost, I think that there was so much there. First of all, and I hate to be a dickhead. And I know I sound like one and I do this all the time where I'm like it was cool and I liked it.

but now that everybody else is doing it, it's annoying. But, you know, I remember the first time, who was the character on Lost? Was it Ruth? And there was, like, this huge explanation about, like, the biblical relationship to her and the biblical character that she was named after. And it was just like this long, like, it was like an awesome.

I think there was anyone named Ruth, but I'm with you. Who was the girl on the island when they, like, oh, man, there was not a Ruth on, and Lost? Tell me more about Ruth. It doesn't matter. The point is that I remember a huge long theory about Ruth. Let's just call her Ruth. Big picture.

Did you watch Lost? So it's set in Sleepy Hollow. Set in Vancouver. Anyway, the point is that this has been a long-running thing where, like, there's an under-sides, like, there's a television underworld to these shows where basically there's the surface plot and there's the surface characters and the surface stuff that's happening. And then underneath you could be like, but what about this? And this Easter egg and what about that?

And what about this? And Westworld simply flipped it. They were like now, all that stuff, you guys listening to cereal and trying to figure it out, and you guys watching making a murder and trying to figure it out, just do that with this show. And don't even worry about whether or not like Teresa and Bernard are really going to make it click or like if Lee's an alcoholic or whatever. That was the lowest point of the series.

A huge comeback for him. First of all, like has anyone who were. And I mean this sincerely. I respect everybody who works on their show's work. Yeah. Have you guys ever been to a fucking pool? Who wears a button open button up shirt with black slippers to a pool? I guess a British person would.

Have you ever been to the Chateau Marmont during like on a Tuesday afternoon? Like literally that guy is a, there's 20 of them. Yeah, I guess so. Like there are 20 hosts built on him. Tessa Thompson, that's a big get. What would you, yeah, that was exciting, but what would you, like if one of the writers you hired for the ringer started behaving like that and literally came into the to your 2 p.m. meeting and just started urinating on their whiteboard and somehow didn't get

fired. It's classic writer stuff. But I wanted to say, back to your loss point, it's a point that I think is an important one to make, and I wanted to come back to it, because two things. It did not matter if you read the Wikipedia for the philosopher John Locke to enjoy the show because Terry Quinn's performance and the pathos they built into that character with the pretty astonishing reveal early on. Ruth was Desmond's girlfriend. What? Yeah. You mean Penny?

Nah. Ruth. Do you just Google Ruth while I'm talking? I got a point. This person. I literally have no idea of that person is. What show did you watch? I don't know.

What if you watch, like, the event or the nine? This is like Bruchurch season two. I'm really sorry. Go ahead. We can even cut that out. This is goal. This is process-oriented. You didn't need to know who John Locke was

to be invested in the character. You did not need to do it. If you wanted to, you could read it. You could read a lot of interesting ideas into it. But here's the thing. I think people continue to do Lost Wrong. This is something I wrote about for Grantland. The thing that people remember Lost for in a negative sense, I think, was actually its greatest strength.

And what I mean is, when people talk about Lost Now, they're like, oh, they were just making it up as they went along. Oh, they had no plan. They had no roadmap. As if that's a criticism. When, in fact, I think that led to the wildly explosive creativity of that show because they were constantly walking out onto a ledge without a net. They didn't know what it was going to be, and they let the characters guide them, and they let their ideas in the moment guide them. And, yes, for the thousandth time in one of these microphones, I will say the ending of the show

didn't work for me. But the way that the show morphed from being about one thing where, you know, if you look at their early notes, what the smoke monster was going to be, they had no idea, to suddenly having a season about time travel. Like, the show could become anything. And that in itself lends to a certain kind of freewheeling excitement. The Westworld is the opposite of that. And that is a non-prejorative statement, but it just is fact.

They have planned everything down to the slightest, you know, the fabric of the made-up eyeballs. Like everything they have an answer for. And I think that leads to a feeling of claustrophobia within the story because, yes, they have an answer, but they don't have a reason. Well, if you need answers, all you have to do is look to Shannon Woodward's character because she'll tell you all of them. She'll just be like, I'm in this room looking at this shit. Alone in a dark doll factory. Yeah. Have you guys seen insidious? I would say there are some poor decision-making across the board.

But again, like, this is what happens when they have done, they've designed, no Tony Hopkins, you've designed the forest, but then you're like, how are you going to get the trees in there again? Well, they're not going to act like trees. They're just going to be sort of bent into shapes to plant there. Yeah. Any like more micro- takeaways from this episode? I liked, the other thing that I did like very much in the episode was the idea, again, so I'm complaining about all the ways. they got there. But the idea of little pockets of the park

being held apart, being populated in weird and surprising ways that Anthony Hopkins character that Ford has basically recreated his childhood in a corner of the park that no one's supposed to go to. Now the fact that he happened to be there right when his robot dad was about to kill Bernard is

pretty preposterous yet again. But that's an interesting idea. Yeah. That's a cool idea. There are these ideas that make sense in the world, but then you have Marzin with a Gatlin gun. I'm like, what are we even what are we doing?

Guys, I still decide I want to do that. I want to do a show called Westworld Intervention where it was just like, we just like crash. Like it's basically like a bud-like. Even in Harris was like,

what the shit? I know. It's like a bud light commercial where you and I show up with a cooler of cold ones and we're like the writer's room and we're like, guys, what's up?

Like for real, what are we doing here? What are we doing it for? And what are we doing? That's all I want to know. But do I still want to watch next week? I do. Do you think that

Arnold is... Bernard is like Arnold's... His consciousness is in there. That's what this one felt like a little bit. It felt like that's where we were headed this week, that he was in some way. But at this point with the buildup, unless Arnold is Tessa Thompson,

which all in... That's dope. Arnold has to be hiding under our noses the whole time. What would be amazing is if Tessa Thompson was just like, you guys, I came here I'm the executive chairman of the board of Delos. I'm really ready to lay down the law. But the thing is, is I've found love in a hopeless place.

And me and Lee, we're out. We're going to Love World. And then it was just like season two of Love Westworld. It was just like a Noah Bomback movie about those two. Just like they're in a boat made of swans forming a heart behind them. What if she's like, guys, I'm here to explain fucking everything. Arnold, the future, why we are in space, why the one tech is so mean to the other for no reason.

Yeah. But first, do you guys know what a John is? And it was called Philly World. Oh, man. Let's take a quick break. And then we're going to talk about West Philly World. Black Mirror of San John Apparel. Hey, guys, just want to tell you a little bit about the Black Tux.

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save $20 in your first shirt. That's proper cloth. P-R-O-P-E-R-C-L-O-T-H dot com slash watch and gift code watch for $20 off your first shirt. All right, we're back. We are talking about the fourth episode of Black Mirror. So we said we were going to talk about one episode per Monday. Sorry, shut up and dance. And then we decided just because of like, obviously the streets have acknowledged San Junipero being a very important Black Mirror episode. We didn't want to wait too long. So we want to get this one going. Last week, Jason and I talked about playtest. We talked about, what's that first one called? Nosedive a couple weeks ago. So I don't know. I haven't, usually you'll be like, dude in a text. What did you think about this? I haven't

heard your feelings about it yet. I loved it. I loved San Juanapiro like many people did. I think that, look, Chris, here's the thing. Here's the hallmark of great culture disruptors. You know, people really like just TED talking it outside the box. Charlie Brooker made Black Mirror and knew, even though he had only made seven of them essentially, that it had already calcified into a thing. And one thing that always separates British TV from American TV is generally with the shorter seasons, things don't become cliche. They don't calcify. They move on.

Creators move on to something else before they become old. You know, the British office, the original British office was, what, like 12 episodes, 13 episodes across all of it. So I really appreciate that, and this is, and he said in interviews, this is the first episode he wrote for season three. He was basically like, why do Black Mirror episodes have to be dark? Why I'm going to zig when everyone thinks I'm going to zag. That's just good storytelling. That's just a way to make more interesting art, and I really appreciated that. I saw an interview with him where he went even further.

He was like, this is bizarre to me, and I think the timeline doesn't really check out. But basically he implied that when people found out, it implies that he hadn't written any when he got the deal with Netflix, which is a weird choice to make when you have to do 12 hours of something you've only done six of. But in this interview, he was like when people started grumbling. To be fair, that is basically how you and I work. Yeah, but we are not, this is not a multi-million dollar enterprise. Unlike Tate's organ harvesting concern that's happening downstairs. Most of that happened, Tate does a lot of prep, though.

That all happens in the... Tate was here all weekend. And by the way, the fact that there are black shades over all the walls and windows now has nothing to do with what he was up to over the weekend. I'm just saying he was... So Charlie Broker was responding to the fact that people were grumbling that Netflix invested in it. And it's like, oh, it's going to be an American thing now. And apparently he was like, fuck you.

You know, exterior shot, California. He was going to do that on purpose. I just thought that it was a very beautiful and imaginative episode that dealt with emotions and ideas in a way that was deeply unexpected for the show and deeply rewarding because of it and stands as a very, very strong counterpoint to Westworld. I think you're absolutely right. It was exactly what Black Mirror does so well. And it's the best part of it actually did make me feel like I was watching a Twilight. Zone. It just had a good episode. But those Twilight Zone's where you're like, and it's over. There's nothing lingering. It's all within the box. And I can close the box or open the box again

and look at it. But there was something about it that made me feel like it was just such a complete paragraph of a statement. It was so their balance of it was there was like, what's going on here? Yeah. This doesn't seem like it's really like happening in the real time. Are they in heaven? Are they in purgatory? Wait, they can jump back and forth across time. Oh, that's why she can listen to the greatest hits of the 80s because it's harvesting her memories of it, not an actual like film of this moment. And, you know, it's okay to give people a happy ending every once in a while. And also, you can sort of pick at the scab a little bit and be like, what happens if the plug gets knocked out? Right. Or if one of them decides they don't like driving around in a

Miata all the time. First of all, that's crazy talk. I've always wanted to drive around in a miata regardless of who it's with. But I think that that is an interesting point because if you just shift the light filter a little bit on one of these episodes, you realize that they are not, and I think Charlie Brooker has come out very strongly saying that he doesn't want the series to be viewed this way. These are not necessarily scolding. They are not anti-technology. They're not Luddite.

He's just asking the question, mate. He's just wondering. And this one, while giving us a nominally happy ending, he's not necessarily happy. They're fully dead. They're fully dead. We don't know if this is a good thing. You know, the strongest, I mean, the hardest part of the episode, I think the performances are so good. Also, we need to say McKenzie Davis would love to see her freed from the 80s, but she's really good in the 80s.

Gugu Mabatha Ra is tremendous in the show. She's great. And her scene when she breaks down near the very end and she explains, you know, that she was never, no one asked her why she doesn't want to continue in this fantasy. She wants to be with her husband, what that meant. That chunk of words is a tough fucking chunk of words. That is a whole emotional, expositional info dump. And she sells it. And it's crucial, not just to make us buy into the performance,

but it's crucial because it broadens the context of what's at stake here. So that even though we get anomaly happy ending, we are aware that she has in some ways gone back on her promise. And then maybe in some ways she's not as strong as her husband. And we're left with that value judgment as an open question. Yeah. And I think it was, like you said, it's one of the first benevolent looks at technology.

I think that there's a lot of, I definitely feel as we've sort of ending, as we're ending this election cycle, aside from feelings about democracy, I definitely have like a pit in my stomach about the usefulness of social media, which is like this incredible connector and this incredible way to amplify voices that don't normally get heard and just kind of coming out on the other end of that and being like sometimes I don't want to hear certain voices personally, you know what I mean? like mine apparently well no and then also the idea that it's somehow like I mean this that it's it's amplifying like the darkest parts of ourselves you know what I mean it's amplifying the least humane parts of ourselves and that kind of is going to segue nicely into the last segment we're talking about today but I kind of it's not necessarily it's it's weird at this show repeatedly asks the question is like is technology a benign actor? in what's happening with it? Is it...

Does it have its own consciousness? In some ways, that's what Westworld's about too. But is it something that's inherently good or evil, or is it just a tool that we use? Yeah, and I think, you know, every piece of our particularly on television is improved by widening the canvas to accept possibility of more than one point of view,

more than one tone, more than one color. You know, we talk about the extreme violence and sadism of Game of Thrones is only really tolerable because there are occasional moments of levity. You need to have a little bit of both. And I'm not saying that show gets the balance right. I'm just saying that they make that effort to do that. So to see a Black Mirror episode where the people were essentially good people,

that a guy like Greg exists in that world. Yeah. That helps me into the story. I really had some bad feelings about Greg for a second. You thought Greg was going to go real dark? Well, this is the thing is that he also knew that when he made this episode. This show like Westworld asks us, you know, here's this tool. and are you going to use it for good or are you going to use it for evil?

And so often in television and in movies, it's used for evil. It's very rare that we spend an hour talking about what if technology could make love last through time. Also, think about the really smart twist that he put on it. I mean, making a same-sex couple was really powerful and because in the era when these people were young, they could not have been married. So the idea that that marriage comes in

as this act of kindness is a really beautiful wrinkle on the story. And it adds McKenzie Davis' Yorkies' character's backstory even more poignant and painful. But also just think about the way that the show, two things, that the love that is allowed to go on forever, unlike Be Right Back, is a new love. That it's possible to start over and feel something again is a pretty interesting and not unradical idea.

And similarly, who would have thought that it would be Black Mirror and not like This Is Us on NBC or whatever that would humanize the elderly, who are generally, I'm not here to be Mr. Elder Care on the show, even as I trend there myself, but the idea of allowing older human beings to have a full access to humor,

vivaciousness, sexuality, all of that, and find this interesting technological way to communicate it, that was pretty exciting too. It was really, but to end the conversation, the single most exciting thing about this is the sense that for once Netflix has used its multi-billion dollar death star budget to license literally every good song from a decade.

Charlie Booker had a, there was an interview with him, and he was like, oh, you know, I made this, I had this 1984, 87, Spotify playlist that I was just listening to. It bangs. And he was just like, and then there were some songs that we couldn't get. And I was like, like what?

I know. Dog? Like what? What songs? Rhythm nation? Like, what couldn't you get? You have the Smiths on. there that you use for 10 seconds.

It's wild. Every song on there was so... What was the song from Kick that they had? New Sensation or was it? Need You to Night? I'm blanking. But they had a kick song, right? Do you like that album?

Oh my God, I love that album. Yo, Tiny Dagger's? What do you know about Mystify? I actually never turn us the part. It's still the eighth grade dance jam. InexS is deep. We need to do an InexS spot. That is a deeply misunderstood group.

How about like the Club New Vos version of Lean on Me? Yeah. Essential track to 10-year-old. your boy here. And then even when they went into 2002, they were playing Kylie. Yeah. Can't get you out of my head.

It was... That was weird. It was weird to be like, I literally remember when this song was big, so we're having an O-2-ness, like... It was a little odd. Yeah. But I also wonder...

This episode also made me wonder just the level of production ambition on this show. How much time did they put between the filming? How did they do it? Because this one especially, I mean, Nosed-Dye was really ambitious, too, But, you know, it's a lot of location shoots, plus the sci-fi future shots, plus the music sinks, just the dance numbers, like all of it. Yeah.

My only sense is that there is a company. There's some smart entrepreneur, probably in California, who just realized that there's a huge market demand for orgies. And he just keeps one going for film crews, you know. Like there's always going to be the guy who's just like, oh, let me jumble your bits, you know. There's always someone holding a snake. There's always some gold paint. You know, and that's just where we are as a nation these days, as a rhythm nation. Speaking of where we are as a nation, let's wrap up by quickly talking about.

This one kind of came out of nowhere. So we don't really even get a chance to talk about this show anymore, but you should know that Anthony Bourdain has been probably like making the best television show week to week for 10 years now. I mean, the television show itself has changed, but he's been making TV shows since 2000. And they are like they they frequently will be a point of conversation for me and Andy and they are also just I think probably one of the most rewarding entertaining educational and life affirming even when they're about really complicated difficult issues or war zones like life affirming acts of pop culture that you can see on like your cable network It's on CNN on Sundays It's always like kind of like a little bit this this season especially with all the Trump breaks there's been its kind of jumbled around when it comes

comes on. If you can before tomorrow, it doesn't even matter, though. I just hope that at some point you take an hour and watch the Houston episode that they just aired. I think it was this Sunday, right? One of the most remarkable episodes that he's done, one of my favorites since the Baton Rouge episode from the old show, the Baton Rouge cookout that he did, or the Spain episodes or Leon or some of my favorites, anything when he's in Vietnam. Jerusalem episode. Jerusalem. This is just, he, Bourdain goes to Houston. He goes to Houston because he has some preconceived notions about the place and he wants to find out whether those are right or wrong. And he gets there and he finds a wildly diverse,

welcoming first and second generation immigrant story and then also hangs out with Slim Thug and goes to a Kinsignera. And it is like one of the most moving portraits of America that you're going to see this year. It is so, it's such a beautiful hour of TV. And the other thing to say about the show is that it's generally the most beautiful, most beautifully shot thing on television, no matter where he goes. His crew is unbelievable.

But this episode in particular, sometimes it just hits a moment. Like, there are always going to be episodes that are food porny or episodes that are exciting so you're traveling to a place you've never been. Or he gets to do his schick where he makes Eric repair eat something spicy. Obama and him have, you know, like. It's always going to be, it's a reliable watch no matter what. But this one just hits in such an amazing moment because we're at this moment. where obviously the fate of the American experiment is on the brink.

But even beyond that, there is almost none of the reality of the country being represented in the overheated conversation that has dominated us for the last year about immigration, about what makes us good or what makes us at least trying to be good. This episode is so vibrant and so alive and so affirming because the people that he visits, the people, the immigrants in this, particularly in this high school, the principal, came to America after escaping Vietnam on a boat, then when the army went into the Marines, and it was the principal of the school, the most diverse school in Houston, where the majority of the students don't speak English as a first language.

The kind of rhetoric that we're being dominated by, this has nothing to do with these kids. This is literally what makes America great, is seeing people come here for all the various reasons and then eat together. Yeah, the thing that unites everybody in this episode, and I would hope everybody in America, so we really like to sit outside and eat food and drink beer.

Yeah. He eat a lot of spicy food and drink beer. So there's a scene in a park with a bunch of Indian and Pakistani cricket players, and they're making this huge spread. Slim Thug takes them to Burns Barbecue. They have like a crawfish bake with... The Vietnamese principal and his Salvadoran wife. And their extended family.

And their extended family. Where they eat tamales and recipes for... from Central Vietnam. And that's Houston. Like, I want to go to Houston. I want to go to America again. And so it is the best tonic to anyone who's been, like, checking airfare. Yeah, no matter what your politics are.

But if you've been, like, checking kayak.com for flights to Canada or whatever, or you feel like this is the end of it, like, this is really the beginning of it. And it is such a nice thing to be able to have in this week. I'm grateful to you, my friend, for reminding me to watch it off the DVR. It was weird. it was like, you know, it's been, it's been a tough couple of weeks. It's been a tough couple of months year in terms of, of the coverage of the country and kind of, you know, the way you, it can make you feel about your country and your country

mates, you know? And I don't, I'm not normally a patriotic person in terms of like being very showy about it, but this, you know, and I have family in England too and I talk to them a lot about what happened over, what's happening over there with Brexit and the rise of certain voices in that country that's just really disturbing. To see something like this makes me really proud to be an American. Proud of what the country

actually has to offer. Yeah, and to remember this week of all weeks, regardless of what happens tomorrow, demographics don't vote. Demographics is a concept. People actually vote. People who are American citizens actually vote. And to see people who value that

so highly, who are newer to this than we are is extremely affirming and I hope people check it out and I hope the country survives to our re-up on Thursday. So see you Thursday? Yeah!

Make America great! It's already great, Baranski! Hey guys, thanks again to our sponsor Proper Cloth. Finding a dress shirt that fits is hard, collars are too tight, sleeves are too long, something is always not right. Well, ordering a custom fit shirt

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