The Watch - The 'Last of Us’ Season 2 Finale and ‘Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning’

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

Chris and Andy talk about the ‘Last of Us’ Season 2 finale, why adapting the show from the video game caused more limitations and issues in this season than in the first one (08:24), and what’s on deck for Season 3 of the show. Then they talk about ‘Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning,’ the maybe-final installment of the ‘Mission: Impossible’ franchise, and why the stunning action set pieces could not make up for the incomprehensible plotlines (45:44). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen Video Production and Editing: Jon Jones Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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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, if he chooses to accept it, it's Andy Greenwald. You know, my path to this latest new studio was not unlike Ethan Hunt's path. Yeah. To the, I believe it was called a Pavlova, or is that a dessert? It had a Russian name.

I was wondering the same thing. I feel like I didn't stick around to see if they noted it in the credits of who played the Pavlova. Oh, they only said it. 41 times. You didn't catch it? As Andy is alluding to, we are going to talk about Mission Impossible Final Reckoning today. We're also going to talk about the season finale of Last of Us, which aired on Sunday night.

It's Tuesday. We took Memorial Day off. We're just... For the troops. Two relaxed guys. And what are we going to tell people? Oh, I have a few housekeeping things. You can follow us on Instagram at the Watchpod underscore. You can email us at The Watch at Spotify.com. You can watch

us on Ringer-Dash TV. That's the channel on YouTube or on Spotify, where you're fully listening to us. I think that's it. Okay. I have a couple questions. Yeah. Do you think, how do you react at restaurants when the tables go like this? Like, do you think you, do you have one of those? I say, hey, I'm sorry to be a pain in the ass, but can you put a matchbook under there? Do you say that? Yeah. That's good. And I offer to do it myself. And then I lift the table up to show everyone my core strength. Yes. And then I drop it. You're a hero. Okay. That's good. Um, Chaining Day for a bunch of youngsters across the pond. How about

that. It's exciting. Not only for Liverpool FC, but for... Oh, congratulations to you. Dominic Arabella and Alastor Stout. How about that? You made it sound like their siblings. Which would be a wild... That would be funny. I think...

That would get pretty provocative. So what you're alluding to is the casting of the Golden Trio in the HBO series, Harry Potter. No, Harry Potter, yeah. The Golden Trio in TASC was cast quite a long time ago. That is, I believe,

Ruffalo, Tom Pelfrey, and Martha Plimpton. Yeah. That is your golden trio. That's right. Because... My young wizards. I work on this show. I can't really say much.

So I think that what would be fun is to ask you about this. Sure. You've been waiting a long time. Months. For these kids to be announced and unveiled. I have many, many, many bets and fandul about who it would be. Yeah. None of them came through.

You didn't take... I thought the money line saying that at least one of the kids would be named Arabella would of, that felt like a safe hit. That was like picking the Pacers at the beginning of the playoffs. Yeah. Oh, like the real Quants knew? Yeah. I got it.

They were the hottest team in the second half. You didn't know. Check the net rating, baby. I know they won the inaugural NBA Cup last year, didn't they? They did. No, the Lakers won. Yeah. But they made as the finals.

The one and the Bucks won the second one. Okay. Yeah. So that's how much I know. I am thrilled about this. I like how we put this at the top as if we're constantly addressing Harry Potter news. This was the big news of the day

and it's exciting. It is. Kaya, do you want to weigh in on this as someone who may have had an opinion about the first trio? I'll say something that's very revealing about myself right now. Okay.

When I was young, probably a preteen, I had a poster of Daniel Radcliffe from the magazine Tiger Beat hung up in my bedroom. So, yeah. Original Harry Potter cast, very important to me.

Good luck to these small children. These new Harry Potter cast are incredibly important to you. I have yet to find a Harry Potter cast important to me. I think it's going to be this one. I think you're going to like this.

Yeah, I mean... I also will say, again, I'm not beating around the bush. I can't say anything other than the fact that, like, I can attest that this was a exhaustive and exhausting it sometimes to people process.

It was funny if it was just like these are just the first people we saw. They just took the rest of the... Who had 10 years of a veil. Rest of the season off. Yeah, I was not a part of I was obviously not a part of these discussions. I was just there.

When I was there, sometimes I would see some tapes and, you know, we could share our opinions. But I feel like they work really hard at this. And really smart people. And I'm excited about these kids. I can't wait to hear how they are with a lot of dialogue. You packed it in there. Specifically around midseason. But, you know, no reason.

No, I think it's going to be great. I'm really excited. I don't think there's any other, like, new stuff that I wanted to hit, you know. Any holiday weekend stuff? No. I mean, like, you know, just personal observations. I mean, that's all. all I want to do on this podcast.

You know, I watched a bunch of horror movies. Is that a Memorial Day tradition, or were you just like... No, but I feel like every three or four months or so, my wife and I try to like just survey the landscape of terror and get caught up. And you could do a lot of work on the algorithms, you know, like you can just start typing in scenarios and it'll be like, what about this Swedish movie from 2024? Oh, I thought you were at the point where it's like the new Gemini makes the movie for you. Oh, that's probably coming.

I mean, it's here. I just haven't engaged with that. I don't believe in AI as a villain in Mission Impossible movies. That's honestly best case scenario. Speaking of Algo, so when you type for your horror movies and you get, and by the way, feel free to shout out any hits that you discovered over this weekend. Oh, I mean, I watched a Swedish film called Feed that I thought was quite good about social media influencers being attacked by a lake being in Sweden.

Oh, that sounds like something I dreamed up. That sounds amazing. I would watch that. That's not horror? It's pretty scary. Yeah. For the, I mean, for the influencers? For the influencers, yeah.

That's fine with me. Not for the people who run the eco-friendly glamping site that they're staying at. They're actually terrorizing them. Spoiler. Oh. Again, this feels like morally pretty good to me. I'm okay with it. I think you would have some interesting experiences if you went into horror films looking for morality.

If I just brought... This sexually active girl must die. Obviously. Wait, isn't that accurate? I feel like... That's what happens in horror movies. Right. Yeah, but you, you're like, every...

Oh, I think people should let their freak flags fly. Yeah, yeah. Isn't that what Midsummer is about? People just having fun? To some extent, yeah. You haven't seen that. No, I just watched the first five minutes. Everybody seemed like they're having a good...

No, I didn't. What if I watched the first 10 minutes of horror movies, would I generally... Generally, you would be like, these are comedies except for Midsomer, which you're like, I'm going to go... for a long walk off a short cliff. Yeah.

Is that a spoiler? No. Wait. It kind of is. Even I know that. I read the Wikipedia page, dog. It is. So,

last, we are going to be talking about the entity soon, so it is slightly relevant to our show. When you spend a weekend Googling, like, Swedish influencer horror.

That's not what I Google. I Google, uh, horror movie set in the woods, horror movies set at camping sites. Oh, much better. 80s,

vived horror movies, 90s vibe. horror movies, those kinds of things. Okay, then within 12 hours, when you fire up Instagram and you go to like the suggested for you, is it all horror? No, all of my Instagram is how to fix my slice and kettlebell workouts. It's amazing. Yeah, really, and Liverpool parade celebrations.

I really thought I had fixed mine because mine is now just chefs cooking pasta. Uh-huh. I don't know how I got there, but it's very pleasant. Gosh, how did you get there? It's so weird. No, because usually it's like chefs cooking pasta and then adult children of emotionally stunted adults. I'm like, what, that get there? Click, click, click, click.

But then I realized there's actually a door behind the door because this morning when I looked at it, there was a suggestion of Eagles free agent targets for next offseason in Italian. Really? Yes. It has micro-targeted me. Maybe you should be. You should buy one of those houses that the Italian government

is selling for a dollar and become like the preeminent Italian Eagles podcaster. But I would have to speak Italian. And you'd have to have Wi-Fi, which I doubt that those places have they're selling them for a dollar. But I do like the number.

I do like the number you're getting. Let's get into Last of Us because obviously it's a season that I know you found a lot of challenges with. I think that's a polite way of putting it. Sure. I think that this is an interesting conversation to have about this finale and this season,

knowing what little we know, or what actually a pretty significant amount we know about the third season, which will come at some date during the Asoff administration. But like... I do think that both of us know more than we had thought we would know. Because in, am I right in saying this? Like after watching the finale, I was like, excuse me, I'm sorry, what? Yes. And then I learned, and we will spoil obviously this episode,

but also if you would like to, if you were listening to this because you are a, we're not going to spoil the next season, but we did learn. If you're just like, I am pure. Yeah. I just want to watch an episode of television and then never think about it

except listen to a podcast about it. Don't like, I'm not going to spoil anything that happens in the game after what we've seen. Right. But there are things that Craig Mason has talked about and that Neil Druckman has talked about how they're going to do season three. See, I don't even know that. I think what we will be saying, at least,

is just that this is a similar, shocking cut to the video game, from what I understand. Yes. So we will talk about that. Yeah. But go on. I wanted to come at this more as like a writing project and discuss it with your background, working in rooms, working on shows, structuring things. This adaptation of The Last of Us video game, I think, posed certain challenges.

It also posed certain advantages. I mean, there's like obvious, there are set pieces, there are tasks, there are, actions that I think are inherently cinematic, but maybe not necessarily inherently dramatic that I think they get translated from the game into the screen. But what we got from the second season was obviously the shocking moment

earlier in the season of Joel's death. And then more or less, a travelogue and then adventure story and survival story with Dina and Ellie with interspersed with little snobes, and short stories almost about the Washington Liberation Front, the seraphites, whatever was going on in Seattle,

and whatever was going on with Abby's crew after they left Jackson, for the area around Jackson. And basically the season culminates with Ellie finally finding some of Abby's crew, trying to find where Abby is. And when she gets back to the movie theater, Abby has jumped her group of Jesse Tommy and Dina

and she shoots Jesse she beats up Tommy she has a gun on Ellie Ellie is like don't hurt them I'm the one you want and Abby says like I let you live and you wasted it or whatever and gunshot cuts black

the stinger to some extent or the end of the episode is Abby waking up. It's confusing for the viewer on First Pass. She's in, I think, the Seahawks Stadium. Essentially. And walks out, is told she needs to go to a meeting with Isaac, walks out, surveys a bustling kind of military camp that's happening inside of the Seahawks Stadium.

And it says Seattle Day 1. So what that means, and I think for some people who kind of were just kind of like, oh, yeah, whatever. tracking the days. Tracking the days. Like I hadn't even been thinking about that throughout the season is that now we are going back three days and it's Abby's POV or will likely be

Abby's POV of the same time period. That Ellie and Dino were in. That will be what the next season is about. So let me ask you this. First of all, I guess let's broadly talk about did you like this episode? What did you think in the end of the season? I was really surprised and not in a positive way

about this episode. and in fact about the season. I think it is hard to think of a precedent of a show that had within the scope of one season a masterpiece and charitably six disappointments. I was trying to think of... I never really thought... I never thought about Paradise in those terms,

but it did have an episode that was so far and away better than the rest. That's the thing. I mean, it is like a... It was like the baseball guys had like the... How many true outcomes were there? Three, yeah. Yeah, this is like the Kyle Schwabers of seasons,

although I like Kyle Schwaber more than I liked The Last of Us. It was basically a leadoff home run and then a lot of zeroes. I was really blown away by that. And the other thing that I think of is pretty unique, and I'm wrestling with it. And I want to be fair-minded about it

because I'm wrestling with how unfamiliar it is and unfamiliarity at the stage of wherever we are in the prestige television evolution or de-evolution novelty is worth noting. not necessarily worth throwing away. But what I continue to be struck by,

and I would imagine fans of the game are not, because this mirrors their experience, was that a show that felt open and expansive and full of possibility, for those of us who didn't understand what it was, the first season contains not just a potential cure that could save the world in the form of Ellie, but also an open road travelogue of a game.

They're traveling across the country with a destination that has giant repercussions, but week to week, the scenarios could change. Yeah. It's very odd to see a show in its second season contract as much as this show did. Not budgetarily, certainly, but in terms of the scope of its story, from a story about potentially saving the world to a story about the particularly misguided revenge narrative of this flawed character. It collapsed in on itself. And the structural foundation of the show at that point becomes not just Bella Ramsey's performance, which we can discuss,

but the way that Craig Mason and Neil Druckman have written this character this season and in the politest terms possible, I don't think the structural integrity held. Yes. And so I really want to talk about the structural integrity and I really want to talk about the choices that they made as TV writers

that I think that they had to make and I really am trying to personally get away from being like what they should have done is this. Yeah, I have no idea what they should have done. I think I want to posit some alternatives and I want to ask you whether or not not necessarily HBO like would Casey have said yes to this

but whether or not you think this would have worked so this plan's been more or less stated that they're going to do the essentially the events of the second season or at least some of them the third season will depict from Abby's POV now throughout this season we know we find out who Abby is

and why she's mad early on. That is a change from the game, apparently. We see Abby kill Joel, then she vanishes for the rest of the season. But we do get a little bit of stuff with Isaac, the Jeffrey Wright character, Hanahan, some of the other WLF people

were introduced to in various little snippets, various little stories. We see them largely through the eyes of Ellie, but we do get alternative POV stuff. Like we do get stories being told on the margins about this whole situation. If you're going to make the choice that we're going to get to the end of one road, do a U-turn, and do the same road with a different driver, with Abby, is there an argument to be made that they should have gone full on? Everything we see is from L.E's POV.

It may be disorienting. Right. Why are there people executing a child in the city? What are these paintings up about You feel her love? Like who we can't figure this out What's Abby do? Is Abby here? Is she not here?

Why do we see explosions and fighting happening? Every piece of information that we get as viewers Is the information that Ellie is ascertaining As she's going through this You could have maybe done exposition dumps like Tommy and Jesse show up and they're like Here's everything we've learned You could find it like a little bit out

And then at the end of the season essentially you turn back and we've had the explosion on the island and we've had all the stuff she sees Jeffrey Wright at the boats but that's the first time she's seen Jeffrey Wright. So you get all the way to the end of that and then three it's everything told from the WLF Seraphite perspective. So you leave the season with a lot of really juicy question marks.

Well, I don't know though if you would have had basically people being like what the fuck is going on? I think that's a risky run. Because Ellie and Dina are essentially having a season long conversation about love and forgiveness and vengeance and what are we doing out here. And now that you're pregnant, like, how is this changed and all this stuff? And are you selfish or are you for a community? And these relatively like philosophical ideas.

But it's not exactly the most dynamic story because they're essentially like going on a trip. Yes. And then I don't know if there's actually enough action or meat on the bone there if you don't include the seraphites getting jumped and all this other stuff. So I think you're asking a very, I think it's a crucial question to ask. And I think we should preface this by saying, I have no doubt that Craig Mason and all the professional writers involved in this show spent quite a bit of time having this debate. And this is where they netted out.

I do too. So our version of it, condensed for this podcast, has to start with one giant practical response, which is if you make this entire season one half of, you know, a story explicitly and getting everyone kind of, you know, a little bit, a little bit confused, but maybe intrigued, you cannot have two years past before you answer those questions. Yes. And the practical nature of the show in 2025 is that that's how long it's going to take. Yes.

So I think that immediately took it off the board, and I don't begrudge them for that. I think that's being relatively respectful of the audience. I think you could also make the case that the ballast of, well, here's Jeffrey Wright's thing. what's his story, that's interesting, he's scary, does provide potentially some story balancing so that Dina and Ellie can have the emotional conversations that I think drew Craig Mason to the idea of this project to begin with. It's the reason why we still talk about episode three of season one. Like if that's what you can do within this construct, then he's going to be hunting opportunities to do that. Whether he succeeded the season or not, that's not even what we're debating

at this moment. The larger point, though, that I am struggling with in terms of the way this season was structured, is that from what I understand, and I'm sure there are people who understand much better than I do, and I'm trying to be considerate when I talk about it, is that the novelty and power of the video game doesn't necessarily come from the enhanced gameplay or the righteous kills of zombies or whatever. It's the way that it was constructed to test empathy, that it would put you literally in the shoes and in the trigger finger of someone and the way the video games take over our psyche is like, well, that's me, that's my avatar, I'm a hero.

You're asked to kill the most beloved character on the show or on the game. Or you're like, how could that monster do that? And then you flip it. And then you play as the monster and you begin to understand that like Grover in the famous children's book, there is a monster at the end of the book. Right. That's also Rust and True Detective said that. He did say that.

He did say that. So Big Bird and Rust Cole, similar in a lot of ways. They're both blondes. So that idea of a video game that is actually a stealth lesson on empathy and the narrative fallibility of heroes, like that's really, I do think that's interesting for the narrative and that's compelling. Unfortunately, I don't know if that is a one-to-one translation to TV. The thing about TV, among many things, but one of the reasons why I find TV so essentially interesting and compelling, creatively and as a fan, is that it is an empathy box because of the intimate,

we have with TV and we're sitting on our couch, we're watching people, just show us something and we're feeling something for it. And I think that the fact that the show was so, at least through the second season, so devoted to being like the aha, failed the show. I think it honored, from what I understand,

some aspects of the game, but it failed the show in its opportunity to be so much bigger and broader than that. Because we ended up here, it kind of feels stuck in neutral as a tweener, right? It's not an epic story about saving humanity or about even saving a person. It just ended up being kind of like

about the very particular psychologies of these limited characters on a very misguided revenge mission. The Jesse character being maybe the best example for what I'm trying to articulate because, again, this is some expert, not even, I don't even want to say expert, I want to say veteran, TV writing, or screenwriting.

Like Craig Mason knows how to, maybe also because he has movie experience. This is something we were saying Tony Gilroy is so good at. Introducing characters with efficiency. If you think about how much screen time young Menzino has on this season, it's relatively limited. He has to go away. He has to make an impression, vanish, and then come back. So that his meaningless death has meaning. I don't know if it did because because they constructed.

the season this way and a lot of the real estate the way that they did, he spent this entire episode being the most elaborate McBain situation of any non-cartoon character. Now I have to stay alive for my child. Yeah. My notes. Jesse keeps saying he's not dying out here. Keep saying it, bro. When characters give thoughtful show elevating speeches about the best two weeks of their lives,

it's a wrap. Anyway. Oh, that was when the art girl came, right? Yeah, look, who among us hasn't been dazzled by a teenage art girl? Like, that's really, that's talking about shared origin stories. But anyway, do you get what I'm trying to articulate here? And I think that that was kind of a bummer. That it seemed to get, so that the structural narrowing of the show from season one to

season two also came with it came a narrowing of focus to honoring this particular conceit of the game, which I do not feel is as novel in television as it is in the video game. Yeah, you know, it's funny you bring up Tony Gilroy. I don't want to get into the habit of comparing everything to Andor. So I'll compare it to Andor and I'll also talk about Game of Thrones because that was another show that I thought about a lot while I was watching this last episode. With Andor, I read interview with Tony. I think it was with Hollywood Reporter,

but I can't remember. He's done a bunch of press for the end of it and or and for the FYC season. And he was talking a little bit about the

the exhausting work that went into writing. He was just like writing, writing, rewriting, all day writing, fixing things, solving things.

How many steps is it from this place to this place? Not necessarily to show it, but in his mind there is a internal show clock of how Cassian gets from one room to another or from one place to a ship

or whatever it is. And that's usually subconscious for the audience because it makes sense or it feels right. Yes, that's right. But for the writer, it is your primary concern. Knowing what you can take for granted and what you have to over-explain is the toughest balance. I felt a sneaky incursion of video game logic when questions of, time or movement came up in this episode specifically. Like how did people get from here to there? Yeah, and I'm not sitting here with a map of Seattle, and I will say that the reason why I think I'm a lot higher on this show than you are, although share a lot of the same concerns, is that

I find the sheer landscape of the show to be breathtaking. And the scale of the show, the imagination of all these little pockets of the country or big cities in the country, how they've been a full. how they've been divided up, what emerges out of this apocalypse? Like, I think it's fascinating. The rendering of Seattle alone is like, as this nature is healing, but also all this other stuff, like the stadium, all that stuff. I was like, this is so cool.

I would fucking, of course they would build it in the stadium because there's so many entrances and ramps and all this other stuff. Like, I love that stuff. But then there are moments where I'm like, how did Dina get from the water back to the movie theater? Right. You know what I mean? Like, or not, how to Ellie?

get from the lake back to the, or the ocean back to the movie theater. Or why is everything happening? Like, why does Jesse keep arriving one second after Ellie to save her, but also to witness something dark? And also to have a fight. And the same fight. That feels like a little bit of a Band-Aid, and it feels a little bit like when you're playing a video game, and I haven't really played video games like this since really

red dead games, but like, in honest... honestly, like Max Payne, like a long time ago. But there is a degree to which you accomplish a mission and you are sucked into like whatever the next level is. Well, also, you reach the point and then there's a cutscene where characters say the information that needs to be communicated and then you go back into the action.

Right, but usually when you go back into the action, it's somewhere else. It's somewhere else. I totally, totally agree with you. And I think that, gosh, well, location stuff was particularly... Let me just say, the one bone I'd pick you about finding things fascinating is that what I find frustrating about the show is that no matter

where they go, what's fascinating is, oh, Nick Offerman was there in the apocalypse. Melanie Linsky is there in the apocalypse. Like, we're making interesting choices within a framework that honestly feels punishingly familiar, that everywhere is just DMZ, we're the real monsters. That, like, of all the things... Well, Jackson wasn't really like that. No, but it's, but it's either us against them or us against us. And there's really not a lot of wiggle room between that. Now, I'm not saying that like, I understand. It's all like City had a thriving medical community.

Right. Right. It's just like Harvard used to have a thriving medical school. It's like we used to build things. The fact that like, yeah, the fact that it's just still kind of the crushing same like, guess what? We actually suck. Yeah. Like I find that particularly at this moment pretty boring.

But I also understand that maybe like a Joel and L.D. tour where they find like some hippie fregans doing all right might not really fit into the narrative of the show or certainly to the to the game. The location stuff really, really bump me in this episode when Ellie took a boat detour to a B-plot location just to see something for it to, like that that was pretty egregious. So just to recap, she is going to the island. Yes. Right? To find who, I think she thinks that's where Abby may be. Seems like she's out at the Cortez Bank because she gets in by a rogue wave. On her speedboat.

Yeah. And by the way, just there's kudos to everyone involved for making this episode as dark as humanly possible. I hate that. Can I ask you a quick digression? How does she know how to use a boat? She knows aha songs. I mean, I feel like she knows a lot of old stuff. No, but like when did she in her life?

I don't know. Like, is there a lot of river boating in Jackson? Well, do you feel like, I don't know how to sail, but like I feel like I could point a boat towards an island. Yeah, but that would make no difference. If you can't sail, you can steer all you want, but you have to catch the wind. Yeah, but this isn't a sailboat. I know, but I was even just like, I would... Catch the wind.

Young Patrick O'Brien over here. I mean, I was just, it was just funny because I was like, when did she get boating lessons? Yeah, I know. You can probably just start the engine and go like, er. Yeah, and I think, and then when a wave comes, you might be like, what do I do? And she did not know what to do. Yes. But so she goes to the island.

immediately kidnapped by seraphites who string her up, bring out the sickle, have the creepy child say, time to disembowel her. And then at that moment, the Isaac led, we don't know, Wolfpack launch happens, attack. And they're like, never mind. And then she goes back. Yes, they're like, leave her. Now, will that create a other side of the story moment that might be memorable in the upcoming season two to three years from now? Sure. Yeah. But it felt very bizarre and digressive and frankly video gamey of like our character our POV character needs to see this now. So that was actually my Game of Thrones example. One of the things that Game of Thrones I think possibly on a by even adjusted different budget,

especially in the early seasons, well actually I don't know. I think Game of Thrones is always very expensive. But one of the things it did really well was character interoperative. Yeah. And storyline introductions. It did. And there are several times at the end, especially at the end of seasons, like when, when Calisi shows up at Carth, is that the, the, what?

I'm just like, you, it's very bold. You close your computer and your name dropping decade old locations. No, I don't have it written down. I just was like, is that the place where it's like the house of black and white where, what's the one where she like goes into like basically all the puzzles and stuff? Do we have, can we do live calls on this show? Can we call Mallory? I know what you mean.

I am not even going to pretend to. I'm going to say like, there's a lot of like, we have come upon this place and it's so foreign. It's foreign to us and it's foreign to the views. And it's exciting. And it's exciting. And then maybe next season, it becomes the setting of half the season. I think if we had never seen the seraphites,

except for Ellie seeing that kid get killed, and then she's cast away on this island. Yes. And she's seen like those people disembow people. And now she's like, if it's only ever from Ellie's POV, that moment hits much harder. No matter how silly it is that they leave her because an explosion goes off, you know? I completely agree with you. It is disorienting and horrifying, but it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, halfwayed it.

Yeah. And I think that, look, fundamentally, I don't find either half of the Seattle story particularly compelling. It doesn't mean that there isn't more nuanced to be. discovered, or that the clash of civilizations between the wolves and the seraphites is actually quite meaningful or insightful or interesting or compelling or dramatic. It's that what we've been given of it with Jeffrey Wright, you know, giving a monologue about Nancy Myers-Pans and then torturing people. And then Deena and Ellie talking about being in love, like, I didn't find either side compelling. And we're only there because Ellie has made a decision.

to do something quite foolish. And look, I'm not, like, you go back to Greek tragedy and, like, everyone's always making foolish decisions. That's what people do. That's your mom. To be entertaining the whole time, bro. I'm not trying to tear that idea down. I'm just like, it goes back to this idea that all of this is Ellie's doing.

And so for Ellie to keep stepping on moral rakes for five straight, episodes where everyone's just like, you might be wrong about this. And she's like, fuck being wrong about this. I'm going to shoot a pregnant lady now. Like that's crazy. She's deeply, deeply unsympathetic as a character. And now that is not an actor thing. Yeah. That is a writing thing. She's honestly aggravating with her decision making throughout that back half of the season and roping everyone into her revenge quest is a tough, tough beat. And then to circle the drain of it, and then to circle the drain of it with having Jesse show up and him saying, you know, I'm doing what's best for the community, but everything you do, you do for you. And then the firecracker of a response being

fuck the community, which was, by the way, my attitude towards the park slope co-op. So I am not, I'm not immune to that thinking. I believe that's Nithia's slogan. No, it's your opponent's slogan. I'm not getting in trouble with Silver Lake Moms. Yeah, okay. Come on. that's pretty limiting. And so I feel like we're both sort of circling a larger thing, which is so much about the show is well done. And we're not, you know, I don't have a lot of issues with its casting or some of its thoughtfulness or some of the stuff on the margins

or certainly the scale of the production or the cinematography. But so many of the crucial decision-makings are a little bit off. And my main takeaway from this episode was that it was like, I couldn't tell if it's a bag fumble or a heat check for our guy Craig Mason. Well, I wish it had been more of a heat check. I wish that... Like they'd gone further. I wish it had been almost like half of this season is going to feel completely foreign and weird.

So we're getting... Right. And we have... Exactly. We have the wind in our... And Deaver is going to come in in the second episode and fucking upend this entire show and you're just going to be like, where is she? Who is she?

What is going on? And I don't know. I don't know about the video game or whatever. I'm somewhat indifferent to the reveal of Abby's motivation happening at earlier. You know, I think that in the game, you're like, what is going on? Like, why is this the case? Why did this happen? Yeah, I mean, I think.

I don't know. No, but I would imagine it is not sitting right with some people because that that also undercuts. With video game fans, are you sure? No, they're usually pretty, I think I would have heard. Pretty chill. I think that. So if Ellie goes on this journey with the love of her life and her horse shimmer, who I had been thinking about, thank you, Jesse,

thinking that a roving band of sadistic lunatics hunted down my dad, and now I'm going to get them back, I almost get her, then it comes across as like youthful idealism and how revenge is essentially a very immature idea. Yeah. What the show has done is said, no, she knows. And then leading into this episode, she not only knows what Joel did for her.

She knows what Joel did what that meant for Abby, because she hears about, and she then tells Dina, like, she shot her dad in the head, which is like, yeah, you didn't need to say all that. We get it. We get that he's done. You know what I mean? You need to say all that. Show some respect from medical professionalism. It just, it undermines her further. He had an accident.

Yeah. Fell into a bullet. That's that what you said in your Max Payne days? Sorry. Remember the Max Payne board where you had to find the baby sound? In the dark. Yeah. That was real dividing line between us.

Yeah. I think that was when I tapped out on the game. Cigarette number six. You were like, yeah, go to bed. Dad's got this. Yeah. That was wild. It was just a baby crying in the dark.

And you were a vigilante cop looking for the child. And I didn't even have an excuse. I didn't have kids yet. There's been a, ever since I did the Star Wars, oh, go ahead. No, no, I'm good. Ever since I did the Star Wars rewatchables and obviously, End of Andor is spending a lot of time reading about Star Wars. I've come across the burgeoning or bustling online community of fan edits.

Obviously, the famous one is Tofer Grace recutting the prequels into one movie. Oh, yeah. It's essentially people who have the software and equipment to... And the time. Who has the time? So many fan edits, who has the time? But there's some really interesting ones out there. Like, for instance, I saw one advertised that is a Ackleite, the Ackleite series,

like rendered as, like, Kill Bill. Oh. And I saw one that is, like, adding kind of Andor's music to Rogue One. and chopping up Rogue One a little bit that way. When season three is out, someone could do what we're talking about, which is the fan edit, and maybe even chronological fan edit,

where the sixth episode, that's the Joel episode, no, the fifth episode is the Joel, L.E., kind of explanation episode, right? Yeah. And you could basically put that in the beginning, so there's an extra Joel in the beginning of the season. Extra Joel.

And then you have all this Jackson stuff, end of Joel, and then Seattle, but only from Ellie's experience. And then season three could start with Isaac changing from Fedra to WLF. Well, you've got your work cut out for you. But I needed a project this summer because God knows I'm not finishing Anna Karenadon. Don't tell you're so short. I just read like eight pages of a guy doing his checking account. Yes. And then there's a lot of wheat.

I got the wheat. I got off a 11th farm. I'm surprised you. That wheat keeps growing. There's a whole other season. Sorry for the spoiler. I just... This dude is just like, I'm wet from the meadow.

So I stand in the meadow. And the meadow is wet. And I'm like, God damn it. It seems like you're doing the work. Yeah, I'm fucking on page 300 something. But like... Okay. Yeah.

I have to finish. But that feeling of being in the middle of an endless book that you are not like dying to read every day. and be like, I really want to read. Yes, but this is what I have to do. Yeah. Oh, I've had that family.

Yeah. So I want to check in with you about this, because I don't want to go on one of my classic morality diatrives. Your signature. Yeah, everybody. This is bad for us. Yeah. But I think this show might be bad for us.

No, but genuinely, I want to try to have a fair-minded conversation about this, because the show begins with, you know, an un-end, an anesthetized Dina having a cross-bolt cross-bolt no cross-bow bolt Thank you they just pushed through

her leg. It's got to do that. It also features a woman bleeding out from a gunshot wound to the neck screaming at her to take a bowie knife

and cut a baby out of her. It's not a question of me saying like oh that's too extreme or it's unearned or anything like that. It's just, it's so, it starts to feel so dark for darkness's sake. And I think I'm struggling with this show conceptually.

I'm sorry to wade back into these waters, but I do feel some of the same criticisms bubbling up that I had for severance in the sense that it is essentially about itself. It is going down these dark corridors, these cul-de-sacs, in order to justify its own character. characters, particular specifics, and using extreme storytelling methods or very specific storytelling methods, without, to my mind, having very much to say about the larger world. Now, I know this is...

I think it's a huge difference from the first season. I mean, I think your antennas are up for the right reasons. I think maybe you're having... Personally, I think you're overreacting to the show's kind of standing in the world or whatever. I'm overreacting to it because I'm living in the world and then it's like Sunday night and I'm like oh let's fire up the number one show in America and I'm like this is dark and it's mean

and I don't like it. That's me so I'm glad we had a larger conversation more objective conversation about the structure of the show but I am curious about if any of this resonates for you just because it just feels so I think you're about to say it like there were larger themes

about humanity or love or parent food or just exploration every time you turned on the show last season I think you were like, what are we going to get? Like, this is so cool. Like, the interstitials of the talk show and the doctor who's like bombed the city, there was a lot of movement from Boston all the way across to Jackson and obviously Salt Lake City. I thought that it basically took franchise genre storytelling, huge IP storytelling,

and kind of did like a book of short stories about how people grapple, with this enormous change in the world. And obviously, coming out of COVID, there was some overtones with that. And there was also just like, I think some really thoughtful, interesting decisions that were made. And then this became a little bit more of a like,

but there's a lot of story I have to tell from this video game. And, you know, we don't, there is no Abby in the first season, just like there is no, not Joffrey, the sadistic one. who castrates Alfie Allen in Game of Thrones.

Right. That guy. Remember him? Uh-huh. You do remember him. Theon Greyjoy gets got. Gets got. By and gets called Rieke.

Reek. Yeah. That whole, but like that's not... But Riex Theon. I'm not like sitting around in the first season. Oh my God. It's the tip of my tongue. I can picture the kid.

I can picture the cut. It's a great scene. Anyway, my point is that like it's not like I'm unfamiliar with the idea of something being introduced in a new season that's like, okay, now the show's about Abby. and about Abby and Ellie's vengeance tradeoff. Ramsey Snow, Ramsey Bolton. Right.

Right. Go on. It's been a minute. You know? Sorry, read it from five years ago. Are we sure Theon is castrated or just flayed? Mallory? Do we still have her on the line? Go on.

I agree with you, and I think it's a good observation. I would take it a step further. And I think that, and remember, for people listening, like, we are approaching this. We did not play the games. And so we are just taking it as a way. come. So some of this reaction might just be, oh, okay, we didn't know. We certainly didn't have the map, the way some people did, and maybe they calibrated their expectations accordingly. But I think

one of the key differences that I can ascertain between this and something like Game of Thrones is that Game of Thrones is a series of books that expanded and expanded and expanded. And they had a lot of source material to play with and a lot of interstitial kind of ellipsies scenes to fill out, should they so choose. And in fact, it's still ongoing and expanding because George R. Martin may never even finish his own version of the story. What I have gleaned, sorry, flayed, no, castrated about this project particularly, is that the first game is kind of a, you know, a contained story about a road trip about with two people whose relationship changes fundamentally.

And the main character, in that case is Joel, makes a morally indefensible decision that is also profoundly empathetic and human. And that's the story. The game was a huge success. So they went back. And what Neil Druckman and his crew at Noddy Dog decided to do was like, okay, well, what can we do for our second go at this? And we're going to try something different in terms of challenging people's expectations of fallibility and morality and morality and who we are when we play and what it means. And that's potentially in itself a contained thing.

It is not one, two, three, four, five. It is one and then kind of another one. And that might speak to why these two seasons feel jarring to the TV fan. it also may have presented kind of like a poison pill ticking bomb for people expecting the next great HBO show that would just continue to expand and build in the way we're used to them doing. It's more of a project then, which is less gratifying to me in terms of what I want to engage with, separate and apart from whether crossbow bolts get pushed through legs. We can end the conversation on a positive note, which is just that Deaver is enough for meetings. I know. Still have season tickets for the next one.

It is wild how the tenor of the show and my, honestly, my attention and my, and my diligence to, like, just I'm locked in when she shows up. She's an incredible actor. There we go. It is really, it's really true. Deaver fever remains high. It's raging this fever. The playoffs are here, and you can predict the action all the way to the finals with Fandul predicts. Follow all the playoff dishes, swishes, wishes, wishes, and misses.

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Learn more at Wells Fargo.com forward slash active cash terms apply. Let's talk about Mission Impossible, Final Reckoning. a quagmire of another sort. This one's for franchise filmmaking as we end our run theoretically. With Ethan Hunt, with Tom Cruise character

that has been with us since the late 90s. 96. Mission Impossible Brian Top DePalma film. And I mention the history of the character because I found myself, especially during that truly endless first 90 minutes of this film.

Just incomprehensible. I did not like this movie. And I really, it makes me sad to say that because through Fallout, it's among my favorite franchises. I even had time for some of the more belittled entries. Although I think if you ask anybody, depending on what age they are, they have different rankings and stuff like that. Two is usually at the bottom.

I would put Final Reckoning, possibly even below two, but second to bottom, maybe. I don't know. I would really be curious to hear people's arguments why this isn't the worst movie in this franchise that I love. Yeah. And I thought a lot about, look, everything's allowed to evolve and stories changing. People get older and you need to tell a story that's appropriate to the person's age. But I thought a lot about where the origins of this franchise were, both in relatively

compact espionage tales, but also a operative in over his head, into deep, the world's is upside down. He can't trust anyone. Masks, you know, illusion, all this stuff that's kind of hallmarks of the early films. They try to personalize the character more in three, which I thought is one of my

loki favorites of the franchise is the JJ Abrams one. Weren't you glad they finally gave some definition to the rabbit's foot in this movie, though? The anti-god dog. It was all, it was the anti-god the whole time. In the library. But as they were kind of

literally canonizing, Ethan, for most of this film. Get ready. And talking about what he's meant to the world and all the people that he has saved and is the film. And this is obviously spoilers for Mission Impossible Final Reckoning. So wait until you see it if you don't know this. But the film ending with Tom Cruise and Trafalgar Square

being the only man we can trust with the power of God in his hands, with the recently developed special hard drive, one of Luther's last inventions along with the algorithm that killed the entity. It trapped it. And Tom Cruise has the grail. He has the arc.

He has the briefcase from Pulp Fiction in his hands. It's glowing and only he can hold it. And I have to say, I really love Tom Cruise. I spent a lot of time thinking about Tom Cruise over the last couple of weeks because of the Tom Cruise draft, and we're always doing Tom Cruise movies on rewatchables, and he's made some of my favorite movies straight up. But I am starting to kind of get a little tired

of the deification of Tom Cruise as whatever his public persona is and his private life is, we don't have to discuss that specific thing on this podcast. But I think it's now fully infected his on-screen stuff to the point where I'm kind of losing interest a little bit in that aspect of him and this idea of movie Jesus

who will save us both through films but also by getting us all to work together and all this stuff I think there are noble ideas within what he's trying to say but I think that it's starting to get pretty dull dramatically

to have eight people standing around being like this is the fucking greatest guy I've ever met and he's going to fucking figure it out even if it makes no dramatic or logical sense and we've got it. And yes, when he's dancing in a submerged submarine

or when he is jumping from biplane to biplane, it sings, it elevates, it's some of the coolest shit you'll see on screen this year. But man, I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around how this is how this whole franchise ended. There's an incredible double feature waiting to be screened someday, the Passion of the Christ and Final Record.

In terms of just like over the top. But I didn't know that that was what we were doing. Proselytizing. And I would leave it to people who are more expert in the field than I am to point out if this movie is or isn't particularly Scientology coded. Because it is Christianity coded in like an outrageous way. It's a guy wearing a St. Christopher Metal fighting the angel Gabriel. Walking around with a cross key that can, that alone can open up the gates of heaven, basically. fighting the Antigoths.

I think that what you said, the thing that the place to start is, I can't believe this is where we ended up. It is so wildly removed from everything that was appealing about this franchise. And I love this franchise. Just a few weeks ago,

I was saying that we should do a rewatch, we should talk about them, just because the thought of seeing another one of these movies, and it being the last one, made me a little nostalgic. And you made the right point, that things evolve in age over time,

although not Tom Cruise's hairline. The one thing, respect, honestly. I'm sure that, well, I haven't listened yet, but I would imagine that Sean and Amanda on the Big Picture have said some version of this and probably could say it more articulately than I can. But there's a remarkable sub-story of American movies to be told through this franchise

or even just American summer movies, action movies. Because the franchise started as, you know, well, Tom Cruise isn't going to do a T-E. adaptation, is he? Don't worry. It's going to be fun and classy and Brian fucking De Palma's is going to direct it. And then, because Tom Cruise was, you know, trying to, was elevated and still angling for Oscars in the off season, it was going to be a director's showcase. Yeah. Right. And John Wu had a crack at it. And then J.J. Abrams tried to reinvent it. And then he pulled Brad Bird off of the animating table to try his version of it. And then McCorry comes in.

And then McCoy did for the last four. But broadly, the reason why, and we were on this podcast years ago, I really like Dead Reckoning part one. They'll never be a part two. Maybe they'll fix that title like they fix Thunderbolts. Fan edit. Yeah, it's Tofer Grace Busy. And probably we were praising Fallout before it in some iteration of this podcast, you know, at some point saying that these movies felt like maybe they were no longer like the grown-up franchise, but they essentially were because they did not come with the serialized narrative fanboy baggage of the MCU, that you could go see a Mission Impossible movie cold and be like, yeah, I get it. And I also don't care. Like let's just be noisy. Let's be balletic. Let's have fun. Let's be kinetic. And we get it.

He's running. He's driving. He's flying. He's swimming. There's the syndicate. There's the this. Who cares? None of this needs to matter. Sure. Until it does. That by the end of it, That it seems like the brief that Christopher McCorrey either got from TC or he felt for himself or just reading the room or the culture, everything has to be a serialized overstory. Everything has to connect and matter. And so there have been moments in these last two movies that I thought were, you know, quite charming when there was some connective tissue that we never, ever would have considered or thought about before. that some, you know, bringing back, what's his name, Henry Churny as Kidridge and his amazing voice and bringing him back into the last movie. Okay, I appreciate that.

And sometimes when it works and it's clever, it works. So I really liked Rolf Saxon's return as Rumlo, a character. Donlo, sorry. Rumlo is Captain America. I'm still in the MCU. That's Frank Drillow's part. I thought that was sweet and they kind of found something. Like he is a lovely performer.

And the wife, that was really fun, and that was sweet. But one of the most turgid scenes in the history of American cinema has to be the penal helicopter ride, which Tom Cruise explains to Shea Wiggum that his name isn't really his name. He changed his name because he's John Voight's son from the first movie. And they should greet each other as brothers. Who cares?

And similarly, we can get back into the specifics of the movie. The first, I know you said 90 minutes, because they were all pretty bad. But the first 20 to 30 minutes of this movie are bat-shit insane. They are so, so crazy. It begins with, you know, a voiceover about God versus the anti-god and the entity. And then there's a series of quick cut scenes that mean absolutely nothing. And part of me was like, is McCquiry a genius?

Because he has embraced the TikTok aesthetic of filmmaking where everything is fast-cuts. And the entire movie feels like the voiceover British people do and they're showing us the best roast chicken in London on Instagram with like, oh, I went to a store where they sell amazing curry sauce, chips, top notch, chicken, fresh off the bone. And like they record each line individually and then stitch them on top of each other. I never eat chicken again the way you said that. So they don't breathe between the lines because I guess that's what the algorithm prefers.

It's certainly how it serves it to me. Or like when I overhear my daughter watching like a YouTuber who's like 13 years old and her whole things are like, escape rooms with my dad. And it's all like 45 seconds and we burn them. the house down, tune in, click to like to subscribe. I was like, maybe he's tapped into some energy that I want to resist. And then

there's the scene with Angela Bassett and all the fun homies. And I'm like, oh, oh, no, no. This was the first scene of the movie, but then they just kept fucking filming. And then they were like, well, we have to make Haley out well his beloved love interest, so we have to have her be at risk. And then we have to, we have to, and we have to, and we have to, and we're building and we're jenga towering a story. That doesn't make any

fucking sense. And there's no fun. And there's no novelty. Dissimilar from what talked about with Last of Us how long it took from between one and two and however long it's going to take until three, I think that the delay, I mean, Amanda talked about this on big picture. I think she saw it more acutely than I did, but this was supposed to be one movie, right? Like, or then it was a two-part movie. With the reckonings? Yeah, we're like, I think it was supposed to be, I think dead reckoning was supposed to be a movie,

and I think the entity was supposed to be a one movie villain, no. No, no, this was, when they announced the deal for this movie, movies, it was. was Christopher McCorrey has been hired to write and film back to back two more Mission Impossible movies. And it was announced as Dead Reckoning Part 1 and Part 2. Okay. And I think that, you know, and there's a lot of fascinating and also depraved stories about like during COVID and during the strikes where like just how much money it cost to keep this thing afloat and how they basically just changed their mind and shot a whole other movie and they just kept finding it as they were going. Well, they yeah. And I also think you can't see this movie without thinking about how Dead Reckoning

part one, which I really enjoyed, and I think is perfectly good, and in a franchise where perfectly good gets you pretty far, underperform massively and scared the shit out of everyone. It came out in Barbenheimer Summer, and it had the lowest opening of any of these movies, and they were pot committed to the tune of, apparently this movie costs three to four hundred million dollars to make to do another one. At that point, my guess is someone decided that the way to maybe salvage it would be to steer into the final. This is, it. This is, we're top gun mavericking it. We are, you know, we are saying goodbye to something. And so we have to freight everything with pathos that frankly, it hasn't earned because there hasn't been

one moment in the last 30 years where I'm like, what do you think Ethan and Luther and Benji talk about in their off hours? These people are psychopaths. That line where they look at each other and they're all like, one, two, three, foosball. Yeah. Like, oh, did you run a humanity filter on your chat GPT final draft software? Like, nobody gives a shit. And it, and it, it's, and it, So instead it's the escalation where he's like a pretty good secret agent and now he's the Christ. Or Luther is a fun hacker and now he invents a handheld Faraday cage that glows in the dark? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, I think I detected a lot of cast changes this time around too. I think obviously Hiliatwal coming in and essentially replacing Rebecca Ferguson as like a light antagonist in the first reckoning in now, love interest decompression chamber and I want to be clear there will be no Haleyat while slander in this podcast

slandering her I just love Haley Haley Hap Vanessa Kirby was in this franchise then stepped away I feel like Ving Rames' character is essentially replaced by William Donlo

in this movie in the sense that William Donlo has a technological or mechanical explanation for every single thing that's happening in the film once he shows up. Even though he's been living in Antarctica for 30 years, one would assume. But he is like, oh yeah, this is how we...

Diffuse a nuclear bomb? Exactly. A lot of casual nukes. They just got them all over the place. I mean, you're just carrying them everywhere. I think you did touch on something about the way they write these movies. You know, there is... I'm a huge Macquarie fans.

Let me just say that up front. And I think that Macquarie and crews have definitely unlocked something and are building a mythology that maybe I don't necessarily subscribe to, but I get about him. And they've even been working on that since the Reacher movies, which have, like, you know, McCoy did the first Reacher movie. I did the second one. But even that first Reacher film was like,

I know that this character is supposed to be six and a half feet tall, but like, fuck, like, I have the mythos to play this guy. And there's a real hard 70s thriller vibe. to that first reacher movie even when it doesn't work you can kind of see what they're going for but I know with interest that like you know Robert Town and David Kep

and Steve Zalien wrote the first one and that they were crazy crazy movies but felt more finely crafted and characters betrayed one another and there was some opposition to it and there was a moment

in this film I think it's when they're decompressing from his submarine voyage and then swimming up to the top of the Bering Sea and dying and dying and she brings him back. So that's the first time that happens. Although, you know, he's almost died in several of these films at this point. And she says, Ethan, I was thinking, you know, what if we should try to control the entity? Because, like, the alternative is really bad. Like, if we turn the entity off. Right. By the way, I was hoping that they would turn the internet off at the end of this movie. But my whole thing is, I thought Grace.

was going to break with Ethan there. You didn't steal it. Or it's something, that there would be some kind of like dramatic tension instead of five people who are like, I mean, I just unconditionally trust this guy to save the world every single time, no matter the odds and no matter the logic of the plan. And I think that this movie was missing that. And I think Issaim Morales is a good actor who was kind of forced to constantly be acting

90 feet away from everybody and is like, I must away. and like go, he runs away. I mean, he is a 1940s radio serial. Yeah, and like, so I think that the entity is obviously not able to physically manifest itself. It's a weird choice to have a villain. And Issaimorales is like it's kind of, but he's also the fallen angel and has now been disavowed by the entity. So he's kind of just like, I will control the entity.

I think that there was an oppositional force missing in this film. There's no villain. In the same sense that there is like the nation, there is no designated nation state to the opposing Air Force. or Navy in Top Gun Maverick. It's him versus some kind of idea. Who doesn't believe in him? Yes. And that is just the personal hero mythos

that you're pointing out that he is just completely bought into. Everyone is eventually shamed into realizing they were wrong and that the only logical choice is to trust this lunatic. Yeah, but in Top Gun Maverick, even as crazy as that movie is,

it's grounded by like Ham, you know, and Ham be like, I guess I got to put you in that plane. Top Gun Maverick is expertly crafted nonsense. I love that movie. I think it's a huge success. I think the other thing about that movie is that it allowed, I mean, ultimately, it danced a very, very fine tango with Cruz's ego. He was still the hero of the movie. He got the girl.

He flew the mission. He was the only one who could do the impossible things. But it was generous enough to suggest that there was a modicum of torch passing, that there was a second generation, that there were worthwhile people behind him who could fill his shoes. Now, there was already the botched power handoff in the Mission Impossible series with Jeremy Renner. And once that was settled, it really wasn't about an impossible mission force anymore. It's about Tom Cruise's unique bond with his lifelong friends who stand around and tap into keyboards while he martyrs himself again and again for the cause. That changes the trajectory of the franchise, but it kind of reached it to Nadir in this episode where no one does anything. I mean, she learns how to, I guess she learns how to run a dog sled.

But who is the villain? It's a non-existent computer program that wants to launch news. It's the entities hold over nation states and their paranoia and like who's going to nuke who first. And the fail-safe kind of borderline Dr. Strange love stuff happening in the war room with Angela Bassett. Is Kittredge the bad guy? Is he a bad guy? What are his motivations? I don't really even know like he deviates.

And obviously I don't know whether his absence is excused by Angela Bassett. But he seems to be like, I have my own. program. She's not running the tightest ship. I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the ensemble around Ethan, but I wanted to especially highlight Tramel Tillman.

Holy shit. Who, you know, we like on Severance, even though we have various feelings about the show itself. He's obviously quite good in that show and is extraordinary as a submarine captain in this. This is just basically,

I think Macquarie and Cruz just fucking love hunt for October because they do, Jack Ryan is dropped into the ocean picked up by a submarine is being chased by another submarine and needs to do a mission and then they basically do

the whole thing and Tremel Tillman playing Scott Glenn on for October let's fight a ring hot for October with Tremel Tillman like let's go he's so good in it he's also having fun in a way that I think

these movies need he he understands both the intensity of the scenario but also the campiness of it in a way that is really really welcome. He also, I believe, is the clubhouse leader in perfecting the style of acting that is the company style. If you see a kabuki show, like, it's not the same acting, you're going to, it's not the same acting. You're going to see it at a Juilliard review. And the acting style of this film,

I believe is just called like Dead Eyes Exposition Monologues. And so every character at a certain point in the film says, you listen here, mister. If you want me off of this podcast, there's only one way and you're going to have to reach into my warm chest captain and remove my still beating heart with your ginger-haired hands. What do you think about that? Didn't we do a Magua joke last week? Yeah, I just still love it.

And I know that's your preferred method of dispatching your enemies. But they do that and they never move their eyes. And Chappelle Tillman being like, Captain of the Watch, I hope you're standing right behind me. I'll address you as if you are. He kills it.

He's great. Some of the other people being like, this suit's going to pump your body full of so many gases. Only three of them will kill you. What do you think about that, sailor boy? And how would I attack you in a knife while you're in your underwear? I mean, there are other things that are just like, you remember the famous Van Halen's writer for concerts?

It's just like no brown M&Ms or whatever. Like, do you think on some level it's true to say that during the pre-production, the long pre-production of a movie like this, McCory gets a, I want to say, facts from Tom Cruise. that says, like, in this film, I must have an extended fight sequence in my underwear. I think they write the movie around the action sequence. Oh, for sure.

But I just mean, like, specific things that he wants to do or show that he can do or be seen as doing, despite the fact that he's a 62-year-old man. There's a couple of moments there while I was just, like, for the first time, I was, like, it kind of is showing. Yes. And I don't think he's, he doesn't seem super comfortable with, long stretches of dialogue anymore.

Right. Those scenes are very fast. He seems like he's got a couple moves in him, you know, still. And I'm not talking about him physically. I'm talking about him's communicating emotionally. And so I am very, very interested to see. It was interesting to me that this film comes out. It does basically what the Mission Impossible films do,

although I think that the word of mouth is not going to be particularly high on this one. Although it did make more money than the last one. It seems to be doing it. Yes, but I would imagine there's going to be a little bit of a drop-off with this. And then, you know, a lot has been said about Tom Cruise going back into, like, the mainstream world of working with lots of different filmmakers and, like, he's doing an inter-retem movie and maybe he's going to do- Which is now a comedy, apparently? But McCory went on Josh Horowitz's pod and was like, we're working on Top Gun 3, Days of Thunder 2, and the less Grossman movie. And I was like, oh, okay.

So we're maybe talking. about how it would be cool to go and work with the PTAs of the world He did do one. I think he still wants to win an Oscar, but I think I mean, let's be real. Tom Cruise is significantly older in this movie

than John Voight was in the first one. And John Voight played the elderly father figure. There were moments in this movie, I agree with you, where he looks older than he does in other moments in the movie, which also suggests quite a long span of production.

there are a scene like I'll say like a scene when he shows up with Angela Bassett in that room full of like all the best dudes like Briar Patches Charlie Pee and Offerman And my tear my professor McGonigal yeah It's It's all comes back to you It's all about me he looks great and like the it has a little pepinate step the movie and I feel like that was the start of something Is it a whole McElaney or McAllenie I don't know Honestly.

Love Cina. I love him. Yeah. Like just a lot of, you know, not campy, but actors are willing to... I think McCallony. But a lot of actors willing to put on the extra mustard for scenes like this was really fun. And I felt like made a lot of sense for this movie. Action sequences, as advertised, I thought the sub stuff was intense and engaging.

Intense and engaging. How would you do? That's the quote. Sometimes we get emails being like, can we use this thing you said about Gavin Newsom's podcast? Lightly amusing. Yeah. It was fine. How would you do in a torpedo tube, do you think?

You're a lifeguard. Yeah, but I don't really love tons of pressure coming down on my body or being cold. So I don't think very well. And, you know, I would probably sooner try to start that sub back up than I would. Oh. But I guess it had been imploded by the Russians. No, but it didn't seem like it had because he also brought, he brought like the most amazing charger, like that you can just bring

miles under the surface and then plug into a wet powerboard and just like submarine turn on. Do you think, is Tim Cook holding out on us? Can you get that? Any other final thoughts? Final reckonings? I mean, no, it was a disappointing end.

Yeah. I feel like I had a lot of momentum to do a podcast about this movie and it was just kind of a bummer. but I appreciate your point. I feel like I'd like to at some point with whatever movie he does next. The McCrory thing

and him as a filmmaker and as a writer is interesting to me. Like every time there's a moment of wit or humanity that pops out, it's real. Like the end of Gabriel on the plane. Sure. It's a great moment.

And it's a thought, it's funny and it's surprising. And his instincts of, I just also find, and if you've listened to him on podcasts as you have and I have and I like to do, he does seem like the filmmaker or a filmmaker of the moment

because he does approach things. It appears from a problem-solving point of view, you know, and I think that a lot of movies, particularly series-ending movies, have started, again, with good faith and good intentions from a problem-solving point of view. That's absolutely, like, the rise of Skywalker thing. And that movie is an atrocity compared to this movie. But I'm just saying, like, it's a different bar to judge on.

Like, did they address everything they had to address, you know, connect everything, dot every eye, cross every T, and, like, get out of there. Yeah. Is that a great place to begin? Art? No. Maybe not.

No. And, like, it's a long, long movie to spend with this kind of level of anti-god. We'll be back on Thursday. We'll be talking about adults, the new series on FX. Premiers tomorrow? Yeah, I think so.

And we're talking a little bit, maybe from some friends and neighbors, as the finale is airing, and some other stuff that comes up. You know what I watch that's really good? It's the Pee-We-Herman documentary. Oh, yeah. On HBO.

Oh. It really did it for me. I think you'd like the documentary. I think it's pretty interesting. I'm not going to watch a three and a half hour movie about a guy who never really did it for me. I've got to be honest. Why don't you Google guys who never did it for me? Sweden.

Campground. And see what you come up with. It was great potting with you. I'll talk to you on Thursday. Fine. Putting off replacing your window treatments because you think it's complicated. At blinds.com, we've spent 30 years proving it doesn't have to be. And today is your last chance to save big on spring black Friday deals.

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